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...Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and, at great political cost, told southern bigots that they must end desegregation; the party that created the "big tent," the Party in which we are ALL welcome, ALL Americans, MUST STAND UP FOR BLACK VOTERS AND FOR ALL VOTERS!
It MUST!
We WANT this Party to help us oust this illegitimate, criminal government, end their terrible war, and bring America back to sanity! But the very least that it must do is to support its most loyal voters, who fought so hard, through so much grief and sorrow, for the right to vote.
It MUST do this!
And if they instead choose surrender--even after Bruce Springsteen sang "No Surrender" at Kerry campaign rallies, and even after their promises to "count every vote," and their solicitation of funds to insure the count, and even after 2000, and even after that surrender scene in "F 9/11," and even after their surrender to Wally O'Dell and H. Ahmanson and secret source code and paperless voting, and even after the greatest get-out-vote-campaign ever mounted, by grass roots volunteers, and even after we raised half of Kerry's campaign chest in small donations on the Internet, and nearly matched the BushCons, and even after our astonishing victory followed by the networks alteration of the Exit Polls that showed a Kerry win, so that no one knew, and even with weird and impossible Bush numbers all over the election landscape, --if they choose to surrender NOW, after all this, they will prove themselves, finally, to be unworthy of our support, and lacking in even the most basic principles of loyalty and fairness, let alone belief in democracy.
I will feel positive about Jan. 6 no matter what happens! John Conyers' investigations and his announcement of a challenge have been so courageous and brilliant, as has been the work of so many others, outfront, in the trenches and behind the scenes, that we are already on the path to recovering our democracy. Still, this only one step, and we have a long, difficult struggle ahead of us. Jan. 6 will tell us who we can count on, of our elected representatives--who still believes in democracy, and who does not.
A telling moment. An important moment. Whatever happens, onward!
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