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Title: Revote or Revolt? Author: L.A. Kauffman Date: November 2000 Language: en Topics: Free Radical, revolt, Elections, USA Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20021205012342/http://www.free-radical.org/issue12.shtml Notes: Issue #12 of Free Radical
Wait a minute: Weren't we the people who were supposed to push the
American system into a crisis of legitimacy?
By "we" I mean those small but feisty pockets of U.S. society dedicated
to rabble-rousing, trouble-making, and fundamental change. For a
shut-it-down radical like me, the election mess in the United States has
been altogether too surreal, coming at the end of a raucous year of
politics in the street.
I'm one of those who believe that our political process is thoroughly
corrupted by moneyed interests and that the two major parties often
differ only in which corporate masters they serve. The heated battle
underway between Democrats and Republicans strikes me as wildly out of
proportion to their actual political disagreements - a classic example
of what Freud famously called the narcissism of small differences.
Yet still I find myself drawn into the vote-counting drama, as if an
accurate tally would constitute a democratic outcome, in an election
between two plutocrats hand-picked by ruling elites. I cheer the
African-American students from Florida A&M; University who took over the
state capitol building for nearly 24 hours to protest the voting
irregularities. I'm moved by the stories of Holocaust survivors weeping
at the realization that they voted for Holocaust-denier Pat Buchanan.
I'm stirred by accounts of protest rallies in Florida whose fervor
echoes the black voting rights struggle of the 1950s and early 1960s.
And I realize that - despite having voted for Ralph Nader, with zero
regrets - I really do dislike Bush more than I dislike Gore.
Over the weekend, I walked over to a hastily organized protest in Times
Square, one of many taking place around the country. Promoted almost
entirely on the Internet, it had a very homespun and spontaneous flavor.
Nobody had yet created buttons or t-shirts. The signs were nearly all
hand-lettered. The crowd had clearly not been mobilized either by the
Democratic Party machine or any of the usual protest organizers (labor
unions, advocacy groups, college organizations, whatever).
The protesters, who numbered perhaps 700 at their peak, came up with
chants full of faith in the basic political process:
"No fuzzy ballots" "Will of the people" "Every vote counts" "This is
about democracy"
The signs were in a similar vein:
"Let Grandma's Vote Count" "No Jim Crow Voting" "Isn't this a
Democracy?"
But that ultimate question - is the United States in fact a democracy? -
was something that no one was really asking. And that virtually no one
is discussing during the topsy-turvy process of battling over the vote.
That evening, I went to a screening of "This Is What Democracy Looks
Like," a remarkable new documentary on last year's Seattle WTO protests,
which takes its name from the most famous of the chants coined there on
the streets.
It was on the third day of the protests that I first heard that chant.
Having successfully disrupted the WTO's meetings through a nonviolent
blockade, we had variously been tear gassed, pepper sprayed, shot at
with rubber bullets, deafened with concussion grenades, beaten,
arrested, and chased. Martial law had been declared, and all of downtown
Seattle had been decreed a "no protest zone," where it was illegal even
to carry a sign opposing the WTO.
Thousands of people - including many Seattle residents who had not
originally joined the protests, but who were outraged by the complete
decimation of civil liberties - decided to defy the ban on public
assembly and began to march through the city. Our numbers swelled as we
crossed downtown and then headed uphill toward the jail where those
arrested for protesting on the previous day were being held. As the
enormous and defiant crowd neared a spot where I had seen the police
viciously gas seated, nonviolent protesters two days before, the chant
went up - "This is what democracy looks like" - and moved me almost to
tears.
For what this brave and extraordinary crowd was saying - echoed by every
crowd that has since taken to the streets for global justice - was that
real democracy is not confined to the voting booth or the halls of
government. Democracy is when those without power join together to hold
the powerful accountable; when people refuse to have basic decisions
about their lives taken out of their hands. Democracy is loud, often
unruly, and always public.
The outcome of this election certainly matters. But it's dwarfed in
importance by a great many other fights taking place through direct and
collective action: for campaign finance reform; against racial profiling
and police brutality; against corporate domination and the privatization
of public goods; and so on ad infinitum. For democracy will not win, no
matter who goes to the White House.