VOTERMARCH REPORTS

Despite that wonderful introduction, I'm new at this. The writing is something I do a lot of, speaking is not something I do a lot of, except for one-on-one, which those of you who know me, know is true.

I wrote a speech to read to you, but sitting behind the stage practicing, I decided not to do that. I decided to talk to you like I'd talk to you if it was just any one of you, and me.

First of all I want to thank you all for being here today. I know that you didn't have to be. Four years is a long time to stand watch, and since Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life -- 20 years can be a long time to stand watch.

So, I appreciate your dedication, and your showing up when you didn't have to.

I don't know how all of you got here, but I want to tell you how I got here. I was... Let me rephrase that: I THOUGHT I was radicalized by the impeachment of our last elected President, but I found out that I wasn't, when my democracy was stolen from me in November.

I had intended, after volunteering for the election, to go back to work; and I intended, In December, after all the votes were counted, to go back to work. That never happened, so I started my website about two weeks after the election, and that's what I do now. It's "The Bush Brothers Banana Republic Resistance," coup2k.com, and the people that come to my site go by many names. They're the "Resistance Fighters." They're "The Americans Formerly Known as Voters." They're "The Jaded."

They are people who feel exactly the same way you do, who maybe don't show up for these marches, but who exist, even though the media ignores them.

Some of the things we've found out -- The Jaded, The Americans Formerly Known as Voters, The Resistance Fighters -- is we found out that we're black. All of us. According to the media, everyone in this crowd is black. They say that the only people upset about having their democracy stolen are black Americans.

Well... They say it, and they're the media, so they must know. When they said it, I changed my race formally, and somewhere in this crowd today is a woman named Lynne from Berkeley, who welcomed me into the black race... officially.

I don't know where she is. She's never seen me, but she's my sister now. Our e-mails are, "Dear Sis," "Love, Sis."

Lynne promised me that, if anybody ever was offended by the fact that I claimed to be black, she would explain to them that I am just a very light-skinned member of her extended family, and that there isn't a black person in America that doesn't have a relative close to as light as me.

We also found out that we are fringe. The media told us that there's nothing mainstream about expecting the votes to be counted. All of us out here -- men, women, old, young, long-time activists, or rookie freedom-fighters -- we're fringe. We don't count. We're upset about nothing. There's nothing to be upset about.

The great thing about the Internet, is that within days of George Bush saying that, and the media spinning it as true, the internet popped a site called "fringefolk.com" -- The Majority Fringe.

For the first time in American history, the majority -- the plurality -- of the people that are out there voting, and being politically active, are fringe.

We also found out that it is more immoral, that it is more unethical, to have a sexual pecadillo, that to steal an election. This came as a big shock to me. I had somehow figured that if you disenfranchized -- as Lantigua wrote in The Nation -- over 200,000 voters intentionally... If you had 200,000 victims... That that would be a more serious crime than, say, cheating on your husband.

That's what I thought, but I found out that wasn't true. That's what all The Jaded found out.

And this was the shock to me: I really did want to believe the media... because the other option -- believing them to be liars -- means that we're up against something huge and dangerous.

And we are.

The point is, the media tells us what to believe about ourselves. And there are people out there, who don't show up to these protests, but who have access to the Internet, who are willing to sign their names to letters saying, "I feel exactly the same way that you do. I'm not eating the way that I used to. I'm not sleeping the way that I used to. I don't feel the way that I used to. America is not what it used to be. This isn't The United States of America anymore. This is The Bush Brothers Banana Republic. It is a place where we hold elections, so that people THINK they are free to elect their leaders, but if the counting of the votes means that the person the powerful want elected MAYBE isn't going to get to be the President, that if there's even that outside chance, the powerful can put a stop to it, and the media can say that that's legitimate."

That that is legitimate?

"Legitimate" means "legal." That doesn't cut any ice with me. There was a time in America when it was legal to own slaves; when it was legal to beat your wife, to beat your children; when it was legal to fire someone for being disabled (as if the Supreme Court doesn't try to make that happen again, with the Sullivan decision). There were times when horrible injustices were not only legal in America, but mainstream, and when speaking out against them made you "fringe."

For thirty years we moved in the other direction -- towards greater freedom, and a greater franchise. And November of 2000 put a stop to that. The Republicans had slowed it down for the last twelve years, but this election put a stop to that progress. We are moving backwards.

Look at the Supreme Court dec... I'm sorry. The EXTREME Court decisions. The Filthy Five: since the election, what have they told us? They've told us, "You're disabled? You have rights -- UNLESS you work for the state, UNLESS you attend a state university." If you're "the disabled," and you rely on your individual state -- California, Texas (where I'm from, which explains a lot), Mississippi -- wherever you're from, if your state decides that it doesn't want to have laws on the books protecting you? You don't have any freedom.

What else has the Supreme Court said? The Supreme Court has told us that we now live in a police state. You can be driving down the street, be stopped by a cop, and arrested and detained for -- and get this -- not wearing your seatbelt. I would like to know from anyone out there in the crowd, how you PROVE you were wearing your seatbelt. Does anybody have any ideas for me? How you PROVE you signaled a lane change? What do you do? Put out an ad in the newspaper that says, "Did anyone see me get pulled over?"

The Supreme Court has changed America. It is taking away our freedoms one by one. We're holding the line at 5 to 4, but that could change any day.

People say that they want to see the Filthy Five drummed out, but I'll tell you what, after what happened in election 2000, I am more scared of who Bush will appoint to replace them. I'm terrified. I've never felt so threatened in my life.

The impossible happened. The unexpected happened. Something I never believed would happen, happened.

And so I work for the destruction -- politically -- of the Extreme Court, the Filthy Five Injustices, the Bush Brothers, their enablers, and any and every person that had anything to do with denying the right to vote, and have the vote count, of any American.

I include in that the people in Manatee and Escambia Counties who turned off the optical scan ballot's ability to tell a voter that their vote was not going to count. I count in that people that worked at polling places and shut down early with people still in line. I have a long list of people that I consider criminal. I call them "coup-conspirators" -- criminal accomplices to the theft of MY democracy.

Something else all of you should know is, you are with family right now. And I'll tell you why we're family: because in America, every single one of you IS The Royal Family. That is THE American Dream. The American Dream is not a great house, a great car... maybe that's part of it for some people, but The American Dream has always been about ever greater freedoms, and an ever-wider franchise. It's never been about anything else.

So I use very strong language when I talk about the people I consider responsible for this mess we're in now. I say that I work for their destruction -- their utter political destruction.

I've been asked... I don't know if you know that Mad Grandmothers had one of their members visited by The Secret Service, because she acted on an action alert on my site. A Florida Congressman attacked gay students who visited him to ask for protection. And I asked people to write him and discourage him from letting his hate flag fly so freely. She wrote a letter to him, and the Secret Service showed up on her doorstep, and I was shocked. I read her letter. There was nothing there for anyone to be concerned about.

I use very strong language on my website, and people ask me, do I want to see Bush 'n Thugs, Inc. dead? And I tell them, "no." I want them all to live to be at least 200, and I want them to spend the next 150... 160 years looking into the eyes of every person that they meet, and knowing that WE know that they're CRIMINALS, that they're THIEVES, that they didn't "TRUST" us, that they LIED to us, that our votes meant NOTHING to them, and that given the opportunity -- and the support of colleagues that would make it happen and help it happen -- that they WOULD and WILL DO IT AGAIN.

It's not enough to say that Bush is not legitimate. That's a neutral statement -- neither good nor bad. We have to say that he is a criminal, and we have to say that every person that put him where he is, is a criminal. And if it isn't a crime to steal an election in America, then I'd like to propose a new federal law, MAKING it a crime. We could call it "The Bush Brothers Act of 2001."

Coup2k will last as long as we let it last. If we're angry enough, and committed enough, and if we speak to enough people, I am convinced... If everyone knew what we know, if everyone read what we read, if everyone listened to the people we listened to, and if everyone cared as much as we do -- this would be over tomorrow.

Bush would get on a plane, and fly as far away from us as he could get, because he'd be scared.

So, I'd love to see him discredited, and I'd love to see them all discredited.

As I said when I started, I'm not a professional speaker, and I have no idea how to get off the stage, but before I go, I want to read a little something that I wrote.

By the way, (regarding James Higdon's introduction, and the stuff about Jonathan Alter) Jonathan Alter wrote me about a piece I wrote called "The Death of Democracy: An Obituary," which I dated on the 9th of December, not the 12th. Most people count the Death of Democracy on the day that the Bush vs. Gore decision came down. For me, I didn't need to wait those 72 hours. As soon as they stopped the counting of votes -- as soon as they said they had the right to -- I knew it was over, and I changed from Tammy into "The Diva."

And I went online, and I got crazy...

And I intend to stay crazy and committed, loud, obnoxious, black fringe... for the rest of my life, or until I get my country back -- whichever comes first.

But another piece that I wrote that got a really strong response was inspired by an interview I did with LA Weekly. The journalist who wrote the interview described me as having sat down, and began my "tale of woe," which sounded very poetic, and reminded me of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

So I wrote a piece called "The Rime of the Political Prisoner," where I argued that every American is now a de facto political prisoner. We didn't choose to be where we are. We're not free, which means we are in bondage, which makes us prisoners. I just want to read a little bit of the closing of the poem to you. And if I get all verklempt, and choke up, and start balling, I'll just leave, and you bring on the next person.

Because this stuff still gets to me.

This is Part IV:

"...'There is nothing lost,'" [The WebMistress replied]

"'That cannot be found, if sought.'

Nor any evil that prevails, nor any damnable lie,

When exposed, and resisted, and fought.

And so, Attentive Protester, you find me thus

Telling my tale to those who will hear

Speaking my truth, to the courageous of us

Who must fight on for what we hold dear.

Who won, who lost, we may never know,

Hero Stevens mused in his dissent.

But the PEOPLE did lose, and WERE overthrown

By the message the Injustices sent:

That the ballot is not sacred, valued, inviolate

Where that ballot's preference might be

That the Injustices' selection is not the candidate

That ascends to the Presidency.

And that the Court itself, once held above

The fire of partisan flame

Is a star chamber deserving of nothing but

The People cursing its name.

'To save one life, is to save the world entire':

A Jewish axiom now of great fame.

'To save one vote, is to save The Vote entire':

Is a principle whose meaning's the same.

So easily dismissed, the singular life --

Or the singular vote, in this case,

'Perhaps,' some say, 'we should let go of strife,

And help our bruised Nation save face?'

For me, it matters little at the end of my journey

That my comfort was forever at peak.

It matters greatly, however, that I spoke my mind truly,

and that Justice I always did seek.

So I will fight on, even if 'tis alone,

For all that America must be.

I hold her, you see, to the spirit and tone

Of a promise she once made to me:

That her rulers would be Her People, The People,

That promise a ruler makes me.

And as her ruler, I'll not cease my dissent

Until America is once again free."

Thank you.

Mike Rectenwald's May 19th Voter March speech

Thank you. And thank you, Louis and the Voter March organization, for allowing me to speak today on behalf of Citizens for Legitimate Government.

"Election" 2000, in Historical Context

I have been asked why our group is called "Citizens For Legitimate Government." "Isn't the government already legitimate?" enquiring minds, most of them Republican, want to know. The question led me to consider what makes a government legitimate in the first place. Legitimacy of government, I reasoned, is judged by the fit between the existing government and the declared principles of that government. To understand a nation's principles, one would turn to its founding charter, its written laws, and its political history.

If one does this review, the short answer to the question becomes quite obvious. The U.S. government has been rendered illegitimate by its own standards, the standards of electoral democracy.

The standard of electoral democracy was eliminated when the vote counting for the Florida electorate was abandoned, and judges selected a president. Contrary to the Constitution, Dale Reynolds writes in his poem, "These Five Against Us All,"

They decided "Republic" meant Republican, though conflicts of interest they hadn't disclosed hadn't pre-empted the candidate they chose, and outside journalists reported it was Bush by a nose. Bush by 5 to 4, The United States Supreme Court said.

The standard for electoral democracy was eliminated when state officials and party operatives broke laws in key posts, spoiling the real electoral results. Reynolds continues, the Supreme Court "would not hear the protest of black Americans stopped outside the polls, or stricken, curiously, from the voting rolls."

The standard for electoral democracy was violated by the takeover of government by corporate interests--and we now have the epitome of that takeover in the white-collar criminal who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In terms of the letter and the spirit of the law, then, our current government is illegitimate--its establishment runs contrary to our nation's constitution, which expresses our dearest principles of representative, democratic government, and equal rights. Against these principles, we saw government officials, party operatives, and a federal judiciary, along with their media mouthpieces, use every means possible to suppress the truth of the voters' expressed will, and to install their own will in its stead. The list of these crimes is long, starting with an illegal purge of tens of thousands of voters, and ending with the Supreme Court Injustices, and I refer you to legitgov.org for the complete record.

The violation of voting rights in the millennial year brings back the long history of struggle for representation against oppression and vote suppression. A complete history might start with suffrage for propertied men in England and the Americas from the 15th century; continue with a centuries-long battle for lowered property requirements for adult male voters; go on to the eventual inclusion of most white working men by the late 19th century; detail the exclusion of African Americans from voting until the ate 19th century, along with a series of reversals and victories thereafter, including the Civil Rights movement; entail the exclusion of women from the franchise until the early 20th century; and include the barriers of racial profiling, property ownership, voting tolls, and literacy requirements lasting well into the 20th century, especially in the southern states.

The long battle for voting rights brings us to Selection 2000, when the United States was driven far afield of its historical goal-- universal adult suffrage. In the year 2000, we were set back to a fate worse than that of pre-1832 Britain, when, before the first Reform Bill, only thousands of propertied men out of millions of British subjects could vote. In 2000, we were reduced to having three white patriarchs, one token black male, and one white woman determine the outcome of a presidential election--by, as Dale Reynolds puts it, a "majority of one."

The millennial election brings back the 1940s in Florida, when the votes of African Americans were called "little jokers." Made of tissue paper, these ballots fell apart and were thrown away by laughing vote-counters; the ballot was a "little joker" played on the African American "voter." In election 2000, over 180 thousand little jokers were dealt in Florida. At least 20,000 voters were purged in advance in a Jim Crow-like manner, never even making it to little joker status. Six million Floridian votes were thus rendered little jokers as well. One hundred million votes thus turned to little jokers.

These were considered by a Supreme Court, whose Chief Justice laughed scornfully and dismissed as ludicrous the idea of counting all the little jokers--in Florida, or anywhere else for that matter! The whole idea of an election had been an expensive joke played on the country--the vote wasn't required at all, the Chief Justice scoffed, it was always already a little joker!

The Selection and its aftermath is a nightmare of history come back to haunt us, in new, monstrous proportions. Our little jokers cast, the punch line of the bad joke was delivered: GW Bush, that Big Joker's face and his policies mock our expressed will. Bush's policies are an extension of the antidemocratic grab for power by which he seized office. The litany of these policies is familiar by now, so I will not repeat it. But a few adjectives will do: anti- women, anti-labor, anti-worker safety, anti-affirmative action, anti- public-health, anti-public education, anti-separation-of-Church-and- State, anti-consumer, anti-child, anti-environment, anti-end-of-the- Cold-War, anti-human, anti-other-species; Polices that benefit only one species--that species of Big Business Animal that wrecks the habitats of other species, like Exxon-Mobil, who junks Global-warning science while raising the Global temperature. Bush raids the national treasury and the national forests for one group only: Big Business Owners. He throws a few crumbs to the reactionary religious ideologues that delivered their lambs for the slaughter.

In light of this fraudulent and dangerous outcome, we say "Nevermore." Nevermore can our votes be little jokers. Nevermore can we be purged from the voting rolls--under the guise of justice, under the pretense of "equal protection," to "protect the interests" of the heir apparent!

At this point, what do we do? We say "Nevermore." But when complicity is tantamount to treason, and the consequences are literally world threatening, true patriots must say, too, "NOT NOW, NOT EVER!" We must explore every avenue for exposing and prosecuting the election theft, and for countering the Bush Occupation. We must continue to protest Bush's every appearance. We must oppose his every executive act with activism. We must boycott Bush's contributors, starting with Exxon-Mobil, the biggest polluter in Texas, the second biggest GOP contributor, and the force driving US policy against the Kyoto Treaty. We must register voters, starting with our neighbors. We must vote into Congress representatives and senators expressly opposed to the Bush coup and Occupation. We must call for investigations! We must work for impeachment! We must turn these jokers into wildcards to trump the kings. We must work to bring democracy to this stacked deck. We must work to bring down this precarious house of cards called the Bush presidency. We must undo the coup! That is what we must do.

Join us at legitgov.org or any of the other activist groups you find here -- join all Citizens for Legitimate Government, in our long haul quest to undo the coup, and redo democracy. Thank you!!!

We must undo the coup!!

Rose Thomas's Speech

PROUD TO BE ON THE FRINGE

This is the speech that Rose gave at Lafayette Park on the morning of May 19th, shortly before the VoterMarch to the Capitol steps.

Good morning, fellow patriots!

My name's Rose, and I'm one of the 'fringe people' who thinks that George W. Bush is a coward, a liar, a thief and a fraud. And if you think that Bush is an illegitimate president...guess what? You're a 'fringe person' too. That's right - according to the Toxic Texan, the ONLY people who oppose him are 'fringe people'.

The first time I heard this, I was somewhat taken aback. I've never considered myself one hundred percent 'mainstream', but I think I'm fairly normal; and certainly the vast majority of anti-Bush people I've met online and at protests are not at all what I would call "fringe".

But hey - if the term 'fringe' has been redefined, and it now means "people who love democracy, and prefer that the winner of a presidential election actually gets to be president" then you'd better believe that I want to be a part of that group.

And you know what? I hope that Dubya continues to call us fringe people. I hope that he continues to say that only fringe people oppose him - that only fringe people think that all votes should be counted and only fringe people think that paying huge sums of money to prevent voters from casting their votes is maybe not the best way to run a democracy. Because every time he calls us fringe, he proves just how clueless, arrogant and downright stupid he is.

On Jan. 20th, I joined over 5000 angry people in LA to protest ShrubÕs inauguration. And that night, other than a couple of 30-45 second spots on local news channels, I saw NO coverage of the rally. The mainstream media practically went into contortions in order to avoid giving accurate coverage of the tens of thousands of protesters here in Washington DC. Their reasoning, it seemed, was that they felt it wouldnÕt be polite to give airtime to people who were angry about the theft of the election - after all, Bush had to get up and give a speech that day, and I suppose it was terribly mean and heartless of all those people to try to distract him when we all know that when it comes to speaking, Bush is...well, "special".

The corporate media has decided that their REAL job is to alternate between acting as Bush's nursemaid and waving pom-poms in the air every time he pronounces a word correctly. And so it's up to us to make our voices heard, to let everyone in the country who feels as we do - and if you don't know by now that the MAJORITY of Americans feel as we do, then you've been watching too much Fox News - to let every patriot and lover of democracy know that NOW is the time to stand up and be counted.

A few months ago, frustrated by the media's refusal to acknowledge us, I started the Fringefolk Project. Many of you may have already heard of Fringefolk - I know there are a good number of Fringers here today. I want to take a moment to explain that Fringefolk is not another activist group - we're an online directory of people from ALL the activist groups. The directory - which is at www.fringefolk.com - gives concrete proof that we are NOT getting over it ...and because our pictures are posted in the directory, anyone who goes to the site can see exactly what the so-called 'fringe people' look like. We range in age from 15 to 82. We come from all over the country. We come from all walks of life -- teachers, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, executives, artists, waitresses, students, scientists, secretaries...we are the face of America; the Fringe MAJORITY.

Our mission statement is simple - to provide an online, ongoing protest against the right-wing coup and Bush's illegitimate presidency. Fringefolk is something to point to when people claim that the country has moved on - it's visible proof that we exist, and that we're not going to shut up and we're not going to go away.

When I started Fringefolk, I didn't know if people would be willing to take such a visible stand against the coup, but I knew I was willing. Today, if someone were to say 'Oh, most people have gotten over the election and moved on', I can offer them concrete proof that nearly 500 people have NOT gotten over it. And that's just the beginning; the Fringefolk directory grows daily.

If you're as disgusted and angered over the theft of democracy as we are, I hope you'll decide to stand up and be counted along with us. We will NOT move on until democracy is restored.

Frank Herbert once wrote: "If you think of yourselves as helpless...it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless..."

One thing that I have learned in the past few months is that the people who claim that one person can't make a difference are full of it. One person absolutely can make a difference. Just ask Katherine Harris if you don't believe me.

Everyone here is making a difference right now. And if you love your country - and I know that you all do, or you wouldn't be here - then you must continue making a difference. We can't afford to let a day go by without protesting the theft of democracy. The right-wingers want you to believe that you're helpless. The corporate media wants you to believe that you're helpless. They want you to feel so overwhelmed that you finally just sit down and shut up. Well, the hell with them, because IÕm not going to shut up. IÕm going to keep on yelling until my voice is heard.

My president is Al Gore. And I'm going to read you something that President Gore once said: "We need more people to believe in this country and to believe in our ability as a people to make it what it's supposed to be...we can change "politics" if we have enough people who are willing to push past the fear of disillusionment and disappointment and do what our Founders did and what each generation has done in really seizing the opportunity to make this country what it's supposed to be."

ItÕs up to us, guys. I love my country, and I believe in my country, and in democracy. And I believe in our ability to make sure that that lying, thieving SOB in the White House gets exactly what's coming to him. We will win. We will get democracy back. Because we won't shut up, and we won't go away. Keep fighting!

Ronnie Dugger's May 19th Voter March speech

The Alliance's website is www.thealliancefordemocracy.org.

The New American Democracy

It is an honor to be among you again.

On December 9th and 12th last, as the second millennium was easing to an end, our 212-year-old American Republic was stolen from us.

After the secret four-month constitutional convention in Philadelphia, a matron of the city asked Benjamin Franklin what they had produced. "A Republic, if you can keep it," Franklin said.

Well, we haven't kept it--we've lost it.

George W. Bush, his lawyers led by the crafty James Baker III, Bush's operatives in Florida led by his brother Jeb the Governor and Secretary of State Harris, and five members of the Supreme Court, inventing a new constitutional right for the occasion, usurped from the people the right to choose the President of the United States. The judges overthrew the government by selecting the President themselves, 5 to 4, rather than letting events take their constitutional course. When Governor Bush was sworn in as President by Chief Justice Rehnquist of the Court that had stolen it for him the government itself was seized in a judicial and presidential coup d'etat.

Bush gave James Baker the dog's assignment of seizing the Presidency in Florida as if it were a bone. The resulting compound crime was one clear line of events, each one pressed for or performed pursuant to a determined and relentlessly prosecuted scheme to abort the voters' will in Florida. Bush was guilty from the outset as an originator and throughout as the principal beneficiary, moving on many fronts to stop the vote recounting in Florida, refusing to agree to a total manual recount of the entire state, accepting the Presidency from Rehnquist after the Court had stopped that recount, selected him, and thereby stolen the office for him. As James K. Galbraith perceived, by obstructing the election of the President, the Bush people prevented it, causing democracy to miscarry. Taking the oath, Bush knowingly accepted the keys to the White House from the man giving him the oath and the four of his fellow judges who had stolen them. Together they denied the people of the United States the right to elect our President, whether it would have been Albert Gore or George W. Bush, for the four years 2001 to 2005.

Congress and the Presidency had already been delegitimized across the past 20 years, for most of us, by the triumph over the common good of uncontrolled campaign finance corruption and bribery. Now, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court delegitimized itself and therefore the court system arrayed below it. These are the only three branches that we have--this is no longer a respectable government. We have lost our entire government to a corporate oligarchy that now governs us without our permission.

Permit me to repeat what I said to you on January 20th. The only basis for democratic legitimacy is the consent of the governed. That was the deal. The Presidency has been seized. The government has been seized. The covenant is broken.

What does it mean, to admit, and to say, that your government is illegitimate? According to the Oxford English Dictionary it means the government is "not in accordance with, or authorized by, law." What Bush ravaged when he accepted the stolen Presidency was much more than our politics, more even than our self-respect as a democracy--he made a mockery of our most fundamental agreement to respect and obey the laws the government passes, to cooperate with the government because it's ours. This is what he has done to the country that we love, he has undermined the authority of law here. That is what we have lost, the very authority of law for our everyday lives.

Going about his first 100 days, he cuts funding for international family planning groups. He cancels new rules to prevent repetitive-stress injuries for millions of new workers. He cancels a tightening of the standard for arsenic in drinking water. He abandons his campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. He reinstates the federal subsidy for roads into our trackless forests for corporate logging. He moves to weaponize space, under the cover of star wars, so that we can destroy any nation's communications from space and thereby dominate all the nations and peoples of the world. He puts a man over the Energy Department who wanted to abolish it. He refuses to slap price controls on power and gasoline profiteers. He shoves through the supine Republican-and-Democratic Congress an insane $1.3-trillion-dollar tax cut that further enriches the already rich on a ten-year set of assumptions that nobody, nobody at all, can accurately make, and which rises in the second decade to a four-trillion cut which will destroy Social Security and Medicare. He tries to "fast-track"--that is, to deny Congress the right to amend in any way--the corporations-first trade agreements, NAFTA, the WTO, the FTAA, that will destroy our local, state, and national sovereignty over our own environment, commerce, and working conditions. He calls protecting workers and the environment in these agreements "protectionism." He and his allies in Congress have crushed all talk of election reform because of the obvious fact that it insults him for stealing the Presidency. And everything he's doing, everything, has no color of law, is illegal, is illegitimate, is done in our names though not we, but five tyrannical judges gave him the power that he is so tyrannically abusing.

If he had not stolen the Presidency we would have to accept it when he and the Congress and their corporate paymasters abolish the estate tax--abolish the tax that curbs, just a bit, the relentless tendency of hereditary wealth to destroy democracy and economic justice--

But he did steal the Presidency, and when and if the Congress abolishes the estate tax--or does any of the legions of other things akin to it that he and the corporate lobbyists he admires are demanding--why, then, the hell we will accept it. That will be just the action of a gaggle of thugs in our house at night dressed up as hereditary aristocrats.

How, now, with a straight face, without provoking outcries of contempt, can the man in the White House, trying perhaps to deal with some crisis of order or rebellion here or abroad, invoke respect for the law having himself stolen the Presidency?

He is no President of ours. Our Presidents in this free country are only elected, they are never selected, never appointed. Only we elect our Presidents and George W. Bush is not one of them.

I see from the signs among you that you know this next: Having seized the awesome power of the Presidency to which he is not entitled, he uses that power only as a tyrant. He feigns law-abidingness as did the tyrant Peisistratus in sixth-century B.C. Athens, who won over the lawgiver Solon by "shows of obedience" to Solon's laws except, of course, to the one against tyranny. Although the President of the United States has absolute power only in some momentous areas, such as control of our foreign policy and the use of our military might, including our hydrogen bombs, Bush, having seized the office, fairly well fits the Oxford English Dictionary definition of a tyrant, "One who seizes upon the sovereign power in a state without legal right; an absolute ruler; a usurper."

Looking back we should, and at least some of us will, label this four years of the Bush illegitimacy as the Lawless Years, the Tyranny in American history, the Tyrannical Interlude.

We trust that George the Second will not be succeeded by George the Third--throwing us right back where we were in 1775--because we are men and women and students on fire with controlled anger and we refuse to consent.

We refuse to cooperate.

We refuse to accept.

We reject the Bush Presidency totally, altogether, in every particular--we will not forgive the theft it rests on, we will not forget that all its acts are "not in accordance with, or authorized by, law," and we will work to turn back on these four years and all the preparatory associated betrayals of the people's good since the early 1970's and cancel the damage to the extent we can.

One idea for something that can be done now to limit that damage--an idea from Professor Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School--is a firm resolve among the Senate Democrats to confirm none--none--of Bush's Supreme Court nominations, just letting the high court drop low to seven justices, or six, leaving those remaining to ruminate on the trust which their institution has forfeited. The Senate Democratic leaders shy, of course, from this, as from any bold idea, but Professor Ackerman has proposed an appropriate remedy.

The Constitution permits impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. Seizing the Presidency ranks among the highest crimes ever committed in the United States. Bush should be impeached, but it's not going to happen in such a Congress as this one.

A milder, but equally effective remedy is available, however, for the crime committed by Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and O'Connor. Scalia told us all about Article II of the Constitution, that the people don't have the right to elect the President, but he failed to tell us about Article III. Article III provides that "the judges, both of the Supreme Court and the inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior." The five judges who stopped the election and chose the President they preferred should be removed under this clause in Article III. Resolutions should be introduced in Congress to remove them; perhaps we will elect a President and Senate who will throw out as many of the five as still dare to sit up there in 2005.

Obviously this is a time, these are four years, when we citizens must stand forth as citizens. How about some citizens' indictments? For purposes of discussion, I propose that we draw up and inscribe our names en masse, on the Internet, to a citizens' indictment of George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, James Baker III, Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Anthony Kennedy for the high crime of acting together to steal the people's right to elect the President.

Democracy without the people controlling the counting of their own votes is no democracy. Yet it goes unremarked in American elections that in most of the precincts of the country the votecounting is done invisibly in computers. Computers are not adding machines, they are machines that obey orders. Computer votecounting codes are prepared by computer programmers in the pay of the private election-business companies, which jealously guard the codes as "trade secrets." Elections can be stolen by the computer programmers, for themselves or for their companies, without leaving a trace. Democracy itself has been privatized--that is, corporatized--and our elections are subject to the tyranny of machines that conceal the counting of our votes from us. As votecounting specialist Dr. Rebecca Mercuri wrote recently, "a government that is by the machines, of the machines, and for the machines can scarcely be called a democracy."

To get our country back into our possession I believe that we should count our own votes again with our own hands and eyes in our own precincts on election night across the country--we are dumb to trust the election corporations' computerized systems, run by often computer-illiterate local election officials relying heavily on assistance from the companies, to count our votes in secret.

I believe, and challenge you to consider deep in your soul and in your body, that we should now go into nonviolent rebellion against the theft of our democracy last December in all its forms and manifestations--

And that the first step in this revolt is to agree that we will not call Bush President.

Don't Call Him President.

Although I am fond of the idea of calling him George the Second, most people will probably feel better just calling him Governor Bush. That's OK. It's civil, and acknowledges he was a governor.

But can we agree never, in any context, written, spoken, or even in our thoughts, to call him President Bush unless and until we elect him? In all our references to him let's call him, civilly but noncooperatively, Governor Bush. Let's write letters challenging reporters and TV for calling him President. Let's amiably, but seriously tweak our friends over a cup of coffee or at dinner if they call him President. This is one unmistakable symbolic way we can nod to each other across political parties, recognize each other across colors, and join together across this beautiful continent as the free Americans who will not accept an appointed President of the United States.

Second, how about a Back to Texas Movement? Bush and Cheney, Back to Texas. Rove, Armey, and Delay, too-Back to Texas.

We should refuse to acknowledge the authority of any judge whom Governor Bush appoints and the Senate confirms. Every federal judge he appoints is illegitimate, whether confirmed or not, and can have no lawful authority to sit in judgment looking down on us from those high federal benches. On the door of any judge Governor Bush gets confirmed should appear the word, "Illegitimate." And when we get a President and a Congress with the courage to do right by the United States every one of them, including especially any of his people who may make it onto the Supreme Court, should be impeached as unlawfully appointed by an unlawfully appointed President. When you steal our country, "Let bygones be bygones" is out, and out for life.

Unless the Democrats in Congress stand tough against the illegitimate President all of us must demand to know, Why not? One main reason the American Republic is in terminal trouble is the fact that most of the officeholders of the Democratic Party, up at this level, have sold their souls to the major corporations and the very rich. Now our collective civic disaster has gone far beyond the tumults of party politics. This is the country we love and would die for and millions of our fellow citizens have. We must, I believe, ask Al Gore, too, why, when the Supreme Court announced that it had stolen the Presidency from him by a 5 to 4 vote, he said that he accepted it. This was his moment as a leader to say, "No--this is our country--we love it--you cannot have it--I am not the issue here, the United States is, and your decision is judicial tyranny." I believe Gore has to get right on this if he wants to continue to lead.

When the world's superpower ceases to be democratic it's the world's business, too. We should get together into a movement in order to invite a small group of distinguished former officials abroad, comparable in stature to our former President Jimmy Carter, to form a small international commission to investigate the 2000 presidential election--the outrages against African-American voters in Florida, the standing of an election when the Supreme Court aborts the votecounting, what we Americans are supposed to do about the fact that the President of our country was appointed by five judges who preferred his election, how we have come to let private corporations take over our votecounting and do it secretly, invisibly, in computers.

Governor Bush's people become indignant when the United States gets thrown off the UN body on human rights--as if his seizing the most powerful and the most dangerous office and military in the world leaves our government with the same standing we had before that happened, in the eyes of democratic civilization. --As if when the people in the rest of the world, told that he, himself, has decided that we will violate the ABM ballistic missiles treaty and the Kyoto treaty on global warming, should meekly accept this world-convulsing tyranny with what Governor Bush calls civility.

We citizens fighting to save our country not only from injustice, but now from illegitimate injustice, should demand that the Senate ratify the treaty establishing the proposed international criminal court not despite the fact that some Americans might get indicted, but because they might.

Finally, it is time, oh, it is time, for us to form now, among all our organizations, with all the sad, drifting citizens looking for hope for our country--it is time for us to form one national people's movement, independent of any political party, the Independent Allies, to demand and fight, for example, for--

Public funding of our elections.

Single-payer national health insurance.

The restoration of the corporate taxation system and the progressivity of the income tax, replacing the Social Security payroll tax with the increased revenues.

Limits on the size of corporations, the cancellation of their alleged "personhood" and their alleged personal constitutional rights, a stiff criminal law taking them completely out of our politics, and the confirmation of their original nature as our artificial creations totally answerable to and totally subordinate to democracy.

Limits on personal wealth, and a guaranteed annual family income.

Free education as high as any student can make the grades.

First-home building subsidies and the opening of some public lands as trust lands for homesteading to redeem the American dream of a home for every family.

Equal rights and equal pay for women.

A living wage by law for every working person.

Repeal of the Taft-Hartley law and criminal prosecution of corporations that bedevil union organizers.

That's just for starters.

And it is far past time that such a new national people's movement should link up with the citizens' movements abroad that are in nonviolent rebellion against the corporatization of human life, to work together worldwide for such attainable goals as--

Clean energy, wind and solar, and the as-rapid-as-possible phasing down and out of oil, coal, and nuclear power.

For international trade for people and the environment everywhere, not just for the rampaging transnational corporations.

And for world citizenship, and an international democracy with a constitution worthy of the human race.

None of this can we get just because our government has been stolen.

Some of this we can get fairly soon only if we rebel and organize and mobilize, as independent allies for communication, education, and action, in coalitions of coalitions, and then in one confederal, interacting coalition of independent organizations, all together.

Let's start with a bumper-sticker rebellion.

Don't Call Him President.

Governor Bush/Is Not the President.

The Supreme Court/Is Not Supreme.

Bush and Cheney-Back to Texas!

Much of the work of building the movement is not high-profile--it's demonstrating, registering voters, teaching people about instant runoff voting and proportional representation, marching and rallying as we are today, confronting our representatives, getting out the vote--it's day-in, day-out dutifulness.

More and more of us will move gravely into nonviolent civil disobedience, too, as history requires--direct civil revolt--risking ourselves, peacefully putting our bodies where our patriotism is, facing handcuffs, locked doors, frozen faces, tear gas, police phalanxes.</