shimmer

Be the Wind: On the Upcoming Elections
by Starhawk

As you read this, a mother in Iraq is newly wailing over the body of a dead child. A nineteen year old kid who used to be the star of his basketball team is being sent home without legs. A father in Guantanamo hasn’t seen his kids, or sunlight, for three years. Another chunk breaks off the polar ice caps and the heat trapped by greenhouse gases churns the atmosphere into new swirls of turbulence like those that unleashed four hurricanes in one season in the Caribbean. As I type this sentence, another worker loses her union job, another child is shot in Palestine, another farmer somewhere drinks pesticides in despair.

The stakes are really high right now. And the future is very unclear. It seems likely the outcome of the elections will be a cliff hanger until the very end. Bush could win. Kerry could win. Bush could try to manipulate, steal, or subvert the outcome. His forces could manufacture a last-minute surprise—unearth Bin Laden, say, or stage a terrorist attack. They could even try to postpone or cancel elections altogether. After all, this particular gang of thugs has for decades plotted, planned, schemed, manipulated and murdered to consolidate their power—why should they let it go for anything as simple as a fair election?

I don’t know when I’ve seen so many people so deeply afraid, staring into the future like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Will it run us down? Do we try to deflect its path, or run away?

I’m hearing two schools of thought among progressives. Some are heading to swing states to help get out the vote. Others are saying, ‘Why vote?’ when both candidates are taking such similar positions on the war, and serve the same corporate interests.

I’m a direct action kind of gal, and I don’t generally put a lot of energy into electoral politics. But I believe that we need to vote. We need to do all we can to keep the neocons behind Bush from further consolidating their power.

Posted by Jean on Wednesday, October 20, 2004 at 10:47 AM | Permalink