Ronnie Dugger is a long time activist from Texas. This is a must read for everyone and has some really good suggestions. We don't have much time left to get prepared. The 2004 Election Hurricane is out in the Atlantic and bearing down on us.
Ronnie Dugger (rdugger123@aol.com) was the founding editor of the Texas Observer, co-founder of the Alliance for Democracy, and a reporter and writer, author of biographies of Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. This article is an excerpt from a speech the author gave at Fanueil Hall, Boston, Tuesday, July 27 in an event sponsored by Alliance for Democracy, American Friends Service Committee, United for Justice and Peace.
Published on Friday, July 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Let's Act in the the Democratic Emergency
by Ronnie Dugger
We are in an American emergency. It is the emergency of all our American emergencies. Along with the Civil War, this is our second crisis of legitimacy, but more, it is the culminative crisis of our identity. Are we a democracy, or have we irreversibly degenerated into a Presidential-corporate-military dictatorship? Are we still a good country, or are we becoming a bad country? Can we understand and act in the emergency well and fast enough, or will we lose the United States as we know it?
snip:
Suppose we were ready to judge the election returns with high-quality exit polls reported to us by midnight election night? Suppose, to cope with this democratic emergency, leaders of the people's movement and organizations assemble now, say, a Committee of the Democratic Emergency, or the Committee of November 3rd, which will be prepared to call for the nonviolent occupation of Washington in the event of a stolen presidential election. Only planning by such a broad-based representative of the entire people's movement could possibly fund and master the million organizing details for Nov. 2, 3, and after, that would be required. Arranging in advance for bedding down thousands in the D.C. area. And coming up with a step by step plan, of daily bulletins, websites, demonstrations and marches, public hearings conducted by willing members of Congress and leading citizens, on such subjects as national health insurance, the public funding and public conducting of public elections, a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote and have your vote counted and manually recounted.
"The odds are that this election the window of opportunity will be 24 hours," as Jonathan Simon, a specialist in exzit polling, says. If it comes to that, such a committee might call for the occupation of Washington in the memory and honor of, say, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King. Might bring back to life the leading spirit of Reverend King by finally enacting the peaceful occupation of Washington he was actively planning when he was murdered 36 years ago.
snip:
......We have to act. As another advocate of planning for November 3rd says, "We need a whole suite of approaches." If you want to do this please tell Dr. Peter Mott of Rochester, New York, who, under the rubric "Save the Election," is collecting the names of organizations and individuals that want to do this, or something like it, before, when, and if worst comes to worst on November 2nd. Peter Mott's telephone number is 585-381-5606, and his email is interconnect-mott@juno.com .
We the American people are on trial at the bar of history. If we let the Presidency be stolen with invisibly counted votes we're both stupid and supine. If we do not act now against the theft of the election, we may be complicitous in the confirmed incarnation of the first privately controlled dictatorship of the mass mind in history.
No. Consider, instead, that we, and all our good and strong organizations, might decide to form--say--the Committee of the Democratic Emergency, and through it take upon ourselves, if we come to deem it necessary, to declare--say,--a State of Gandhian Noncooperation and Nonviolent Civil Resistance, to declare-say--that the stolen Presidency, and the White House occupied four more years by the usurper, we will Never Accept.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0730-10.htm 
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