Soapbox

What can we do?

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday there was an energy in this town. I was a poll-runner, and as I drove around town I saw people standing in the rain, holding signs that said “Kerry/Edwards for a better America!” and “Vote today!” And people did! Despite the weather, they stood in line and refused to leave until they had cast their votes. It was so energizing: now it feels like all that is gone.

The results of the election are disheartening, to say the least. How can we claim to bring democracy to the rest of the world when our own government worked feverishly to deny as many citizens as possible the right to vote- and got away with it?

Did you notice that the exit polls that pundits now tell us are so unreliable were actually right on the mark about the senate races, the local races, even Issue One- yet were totally wrong only on the presidential race, and only in the swing states? Do you think it’s fair when the referee of this election “game” (Ken Blackwell, charged with assuring fair elections in Ohio) is also allowed to be the coach of one of the teams ( Bush’s campaign co-chair in Ohio) ? You would never allow that at your son or daughter’s little league game, yet the powers that be expect you to tolerate it in a national election!

The media talking heads is now telling us that George Bush won because of “values”, but that is just more Republican spin. I question the values of people who believe that it is right to cut taxes to the rich when all around them, poverty is rising like a tide of despair. I am outraged by the tunnel-vision of a public whose only moral concern is who is having sex with whom and refuses to recognize the immorality of passing the biggest debt in history on to their own children. I worry about the soul of a people who would willingly send their children off to be killed for no explainable reason. And I grieve for the mothers who will get that knock on the door from a military officer but wil never, ever get a word of explaination from their president.

Here in Ohio we passed just that hideous and mis-named “Gay Marriage ammendment” that isn’t about marriage at all, but is about the government telling us how to live our lives by putting bigotry and discrimination into our laws. In re-electing Bush and a Republican majority we have also re-elected government secrecy, corporate greed and the Patriot Act in all its awful implications.

Welcome back to the 19th century everybody, where the needs of the company boss outweigh the needs of everybody else, and it’s dangerous to be different: where corproate growth is more imortant than the very air we breath and the people who breath it. And when George Bush gets through with the Supreme Court, we may well find ourselves in the 16th century, burning witches again!

As a liberal, I am used to supporting causes and candidates that lose. It’s rotten. You get disappointed, maybe you get mad, but you shake it off. Life goes on, right?

Except it doesn’t, always. Life will probably not go on for at least one young American in Iraq today, and another tomorrow, and another the next day. That’s part of what makes this defeat so hard to take. We feel like our children, our grandparents, our homes and jobs and even our right to speak are under attack, so we fought back with everything we had- and we lost.

What can you do when your best wasn’t enough?

To all the people who never before donated to a campaign or worked for a candidate but got involved in politics this year for the first time, I ask you to remember why you did it. It wasn’t because John Kerry was the only answer to our problems: it was because you wanted a better future for our nation and the world. You still want it! That better day will be more difficult to achieve with George Bush at the helm, but it is still out there: a golden ring, waiting to be grasped.

If you got involved in the campaign because you fear Bush’s bizarre foreign policy will spread the fires of war, get involved in a group working for peace! If your greatest concern was the assault on civil rights and the Constitution perpetrated by Bush, contact the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law center and other like-minded organizations. If you supported John Kerry because you were appalled by Bush’s hideous environmental record, talk to the Sierra Club or Greenpeace. If the disgraceful poverty and hunger in the U.S. was your motivation, check out Results a group active in that area for 25 years. The fight for justice didn’t begin with John Kerry’s campaign and it won’t end with it either.

So join up and speak out! Volunteer your time and donate your money to the causes you care about most. Above all, write to your congressional representatives and remind them that no matter how much campaign money the president has steered their way, their obligation in Washington is to YOU, not President Bush! Fully half of this country does not approve of Bush, and our senators have a duty to support us and our needs over the neocon agenda.

It would be easy to wash our hands of this whole mess and say “I give up! American has gone to the dogs!” But please don’t. This summer there was a fire kindled in the hearts of many Americans that has not been seen in generations. Don’t let the light go out! Put your fire to work where it can do the most good to benefit this nation. The battle is not over: it has only begun.