10/10/05: 23 days until the beginning of the end of the Bush Regime!
From: Debra Sweet
To: All World Can’t Wait Organizers
It
is three weeks until November 2nd and we need to seriously focus on the
countdown to the 2nd itself. This is our “stretch run,” and we’d better
start kicking!
So, where are we in relation to what we set out
in our call: to making November 2 “the first major step in [driving out
the regime] by organizing a truly massive day of resistance all over
this country? People everywhere will walk out of school, they will take
off work, they will come to the downtowns and Town Squares and set out
from there, going through the streets and calling on more to JOIN US.
They will repudiate this criminal regime, making a powerful statement
NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!
There
have been a lot of positive elements coming forward in response to our
call, but we are still not yet in the ball park of being able to
realize our vision. And yet, as we all know, it is urgently required of
us to do just that. So I am sending along some thoughts on how we can
actually bridge the gap from where we are now to where we need to be.
In other words, my ideas on how to get where we need to be in three
short weeks – to making this a truly historic beginning of a resistance
movement that is going to drive out the Bush Regime.
First off,
let’s remember that we have set out to do the seemingly impossible
because it is the only thing that is at all realistic. Only political
action that repudiates Bush and his whole program, and that wins
millions to this stand, has any chance of stopping a fascist,
theocratic remaking of society. This is not rhetoric but a very sober
assessment of the stakes of our times.
Some people have told us
“you can’t talk this way” – for instance, that you can’t compare Bush
to Hitler. But this is what fascism looks like in OUR day and age.
Look,
we raise this alert with no reservations or apology. What the hell are
Americans getting used to? To legitimizing torture – with Bush now
threatening to veto a bill that would even limit it? To what people
watched for a week on their TV screens in New Orleans? To blaming the
people upon whom these crimes were perpetrated for their own suffering?
To arrest and indefinitely hold anyone without trial or even a hearing
– only on the President’s say-so? Some of this quite frankly goes
beyond the early days of the Hitler regime.
Let’s return to the
sober, truthful honesty of our Call. That’s our “time out in the 4th
quarter.” Are we right or are we wrong? We are, in fact, RIGHT. We are,
in fact, today reaching and moving people in their thousands. The
response to the Air America ads has borne this out. And we do, in fact,
have it within our reach to mobilize people in their tens and hundreds
of thousands and reach them in their millions – if we stick to the
truth of our call and if we undertake a truly Herculean effort in these
next three weeks. Even those people who are today clinging to denial or
giving way to despair can be moved to act if we who are not afraid to
take responsibility for drastically changing the course, challenge
them. The call is challenging; that is part of what’s so good about it!
After all, you can’t inspire people if you don’t challenge them. Aiming
for anything less than what we set out to do in our Call – anything
less than creating “a situation where the Bush regime’s program is
repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the
whole direction he has been taking society is reversed” – is a waste of
precious time and humanity.
We need to mobilize tens of
thousands in the major cities on that day, so that they in turn can
call forward in the course of the day thousands and tens of thousands
more, implementing the call to JOIN US. We need to make an announcement
that day to all of society that a movement has begun that can’t be
ignored and will be coming to millions more on the evening news.
So – what do we do? What are the things that are indispensable to success on November 2?
The
first thing I’d like to announce is our new website – which has been,
thanks to the tireless and big-hearted work of our web team, under
construction for the last month. This week we are redesigning the home
page so that all the listeners coming to us from Air America and from
getting our call at Sept 24th and Oct 15th will find in the most
prominent position on the page our call…THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT – DRIVE
OUT THE BUSH REGIME. The new home page will be featuring the most
controversial and essential passages in the Call and featuring our best
arguments for debate. We will also add to the site every day with news
of the movement and news of society, giving people a sense of how we
can actually do this. Start looking at the site every day – for daily
guidance and the development of the dynamic movement that is taking
shape.
Please note: we still need assistance on the website,
including people who know how to make the site much more connected into
the flow of the net.
Second, we need the Voices of Conscience
more fully represented – in print, in endorsement of this call for
November 2nd and throwing in to make it happen. For months now we have
reached out to ordinary people and asked them to do extraordinary
things and people are doing so, but people need those they look to
standing with them and for organizations and social movements of all
kinds to throw in and build November 2nd.
Third, we need to be
assembling the bridges that allow us to really reach out to and speak
to millions,spreading the word throughout society, beginning now, in
the national media. The Air America ads have helped to make this
movement go from unknown to KNOWN, but hundreds of thousands of dollars
more are needed to really saturate the airwaves and lay the basis to
get ads on TV. We need spokespeople and activists to be interviewed,
public service announcements (PSAs) and ads on campus radio and
newspapers, and in the alternative media in the weeks to come.
Fourth,
hundreds of thousands of dollars and more have to start pouring in to
The World Can’t Wait effort. Organizers need support and office space,
and staff need to be expanded. Phone and work space for a rapid
expansion of volunteers have to be planned for now.
Fifth, plans
for the Day itself in local areas that actually reflect the vision of
the Call have to be planned and organized. Not just the day and place
but the permits obtained and speakers lists publicized in PSAs, ads and
mass blitzing of stickers and leaflets that announce what exactly is
happening on Nov 2nd. And these plans need to go up immediately on the
website.
Sixth, the development of a critical movement of
students on key campuses, and then hundreds of campuses more broadly,
taking up the day with political boldness and moral conviction.
Seventh,
the growth of a movement at high schools, both in the working class and
middle class, in key metro and suburban areas actively organized for NO
SCHOOL on November 2nd.
Eighth, a powerful salute and reaching
out to the Millions More Movement in Washington on October 15th, where
word is spread to tens of thousands, and hundreds of new organizers are
brought forward to drive out the Bush Regime.
All committees
will have to plan for the right synergy and relation of different
aspects of the above plans – as they apply to different conditions in
different cities, regions and different sized committees.
Finally
– but hardly least! – I want to tell people about two really big and
important “punctuation points” between now and November 2nd.
1.
Plans are currently underway to launch an “encampment” in Washington
D.C., beginning several days before October 15 and lasting until the
Day itself, which will proclaim the determination of this movement to
make November 2 the beginning of the end of the Bush regime. This will
play a dynamic and critical role, both as a sort of “living website” of
the movement, and giving reality to the emergence and development of
the movement, as well as a force that in many imaginative ways projects
the message of the Call for November 2 out to the whole country, and
serves as a magnet for others. (See the letter on the website signed by
Earl Kooperkamp and me.) This is going to be a really exciting and
dynamic way to reach out to millions of people!
2. The Tribunal
set to open in New York on October 21 and 22 which has now added
testimony on Hurricane Katrina to determine whether the Bush
Administration’s response warrants an indictment for crimes against
humanity – can help create a powerful and compelling impetus for the
2nd, driving home to people WHY MUST the Bush Regime be driven from
office.
In these next three weeks, we all have to throw in with
everything we’ve got. We’ve got to seize on every advance, big or
small, and use that to make further advances. We can’t lose momentum,
we can’t settle back into politics as usual, and we can’t acquiesce to
any puny visions. On the contrary, I think we have to continually
return to the vision set forth in our Call for November 2, and on that
basis bring forward the thousands and millions who really do welcome
what is in the Call and who are urgently seeking a way to become part
of something that is unprecedented in the U.S.: a movement that sets
itself the goal of driving the Bush regime from power and stopping and
reversing the whole disastrous course the Bush regime has set us on.
For a future we’d want to live in, and with love and struggle,
Debra