"They have the wealth. They have all the money in the world. They have the power [and] the media. [But] we've got 20,000 people here in Tucson and we got 100's of millions of people all across the country." --Bernie Sanders
Back in the good old days when Election Day was a folksy occasion in small towns and the eighty-year-old ballet school owner who'd lived there for years got all dressed up to come to the polls, sporting blue eye shadow, I leafletted in front of the fire station with four or five activists as a steady stream of voters passed by, some accepting our offerings, some not.
I was closest to the entrance. There was one other Democrat, a Libertarian, and others. I stood opposite a Republican lady a few years older than me, and we soon took to chatting to pass the time-- all about anything but politics. She didn't interfere when I exhorted passers-by to help bring our boys home from Iraq-- no opposing words. The weather was nice and we were in a good mood.
Things got warmer and friendlier. We were happy about the number of people who came to vote. No one tried to intimidate voters-- that was the farthest possibility from our minds.
The Democrats prevailed in this left-leaning borough but the right certainly showed up.
That's what we need today. Dialogue, not hostility and threats of violence. And across the country Republicans are showing up in droves to town meetings their co-partisan Representatives have been advised to avoid and are avoiding. They have nothing to answer to their voters. They are as reticent as most Democrats in office are to this horrendous turn to the extreme right and capsizing of beloved institutions: support of our veterans, National Weather Service, USPS. the Consumer Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, let alone Social Security, Medicaid, and predictably Medicare when they get around to it.
Mr. Trump had promised not to touch Social Security. Now they're raping it.
Indeed, the progressives within the Democratic Party suffer from differences that hinder their effectiveness in carrying out vital projects. They need to coalesce and think outside the box to one of their favorite slogans: THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED. How many times have I joined heartily in this chant, marching, protesting, rallying?
We need to join forces with everyone suffering from radical changes that are seeping their way to more and more of us. Our court system is fighting back remarkably but we must join in-- they are fighting for us and suffering from threats of violence to their loved ones but none that I know of has backed down.
What exactly will it take to accomplish our goal of perpetuating our historic and precedent-shaping democracy? Certainly there was a lot to protest before Election 2024, but we must preserve our right to maintain what's good about it and demand the necessary changes once Project 2025 is stopped in its tracks.
What can we accomplish nonviolently? I have a 2002 calendar entitled "52 True Stories of Nonviolent Success." Unfortunately, among these events untold numbers of lives were lost. Our challenge is for nonviolent methods to succeed with minimal bloodshed [lives have already been lost]. The Project 2025 implementers call their activities a new American revolution. Their violence has already cost lives and is claiming more daily.
Beyond elections, which in this country experts have proved have been tampered with, large-scale, again and again, there are the voters taking to the streets. They will be the agents of change and violence will not work.
We must fight precedents and succeed.
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