DUers: Send a message to the "We Count 2006" conference in Ohio

[Fly by night]

I posted this letter on another thread. It is a message I sent to Ohio with other Orange State voting rights activists. I figured that it might be nice to start a thread on which ERDUers could send messages to our counterparts in Ohio.

So here's your chance -- let them know how you feel, wherever you are.
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Carrying a message to Ohio for me

Oh how I wish I were stowing away with you folks as you head to Ohio. This weekend's meeting will be very important and is on a direct line toward free election victory or long-overdue revolution from our own humble gathering at Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church almost eighteen months ago. Every time that Americans who cherish our voting rights and want to "get 'er done" right for once can get together, there is power in that patriotic presence.

Think about it -- when we held the National Election Reform Conference in Nashville in the early spring of 2005, the media was still publishing "just get over it" stories -- now our concerns are aired (and aired accurately) every night on CNN and appear regularly in the New York Times and Washington Post. Back then, voting rights activists could not put faces with the names of their compatriots around the country -- now we know each other on sight and communicate daily (if not hourly) to share information and strategy. Back then, Richard Hays Phillips' research work had only begun to surface -- now it has stopped Ohio's 2004 ballots from being destroyed so that they can finally be counted properly for the first time. Back then, New Mexico's leaders had actively blocked a recount of the 2004 election in that state -- now those same political leaders have sponsored and passed a "paper ballot" law that is being praised around the country. Back then, Bob Koehler and Brad Friedman were known by too few folk -- now their screams about stolen elections are anything but silent, their influence immeasurable.

Hell, back then, Clint Curtis was still a Republican, albeit an honest and patriotic one. Now Clint's running as a Democratic candidate for Congress, and he is going to beat that election-stealing ass, that Congressman from Diebold, Tom Feeney, like a cheap drum.

Can this weekend in Ohio continue to "up the ante", continue to energize and mobilize Americans to take our country back (to not coin a phrase), give the now awakened-corporate media even more meat to throw to the lions that Americans become when their knowledge of the threats to our democracy is deep and their indignation is well-deserved? I certainly hope so.

And I also hope that time to discuss and coalesce around successful solutions is given in Ohio. Because our next steps to protect America (as we thought we knew it) may not be as polite as more education and more media coverage and more networking and yet another #@$!&*! web-site. It may involve shutting the Republi-Nazi machine down by taking to the streets, and refusing to leave. It worked in the Ukraine, it might still work in Mexico, it may have to work in the US of A if our country has a future. If that happens, it will truly be a fight for our freedoms -- but one that will be more worth fighting than any foreign entanglement this country has been in for the past half-century.

And we may need to look back that half-century for the best model of what to do. The Battle of Athens (TN) means so much to me now, when returning WWII veterans refused to accept a stolen election in their county, when they broke into their National Guard barracks and -- armed with confiscated rifles and dynamite -- stormed the corrupt sheriff's offices and, in a day-long shootout, rescued their ballot boxes. And prevailed.

I know that many among us don't want to consider that prospect and, unfortunately, I think that our civility and our honoring of the traditions that Martin Luther King and Gandhi left us (before they each were silenced by the bullet) is what our enemies are counting on. Well, if they think that we are going to take their treason lying down forever, they better hide and watch.

So ask yourself this: If Kenneth Blackwell "wins" the Ohio governor's race (when he is behind by 20 points now), what will we do? When the 2004 Ohio votes are finally counted and we ALL know that Kerry won, what will we do? When Rush Holt and Barbara Boxer and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones and Dennis Kucinich lose their next races in a "surprise last-minute mobilization" of non-existent phantom voters, what will we do? What will you do?

I know what I will be prepared to do. And if any of the rest of us waiver at that moment, they will be backing up, from our own rapturous rendezvous with history. Here's hoping that we will all be allowed to sit that deadly dance out. In part, what you folks accomplish (and decide) in Ohio will decide that. Oh how I wish I were in Ohio this weekend. But then again, a big piece of my heart will be there, carried on the wind by you two.

We can change the world, rearrange the world.
After all, someone has to do it.
And who better than us, 'cause
We are the ones we have been waiting for.

My love (and deep respect) to all.

Fly by night (Bernie Ellis, Fly, Tennessee: Federal Bureau of Prisons # 16502-075)
[e-mail]

[Fly by night]

1. One self-kick, before I get back to work.

Anyone got anything to say to the folks in Cleveland?

[JimDandy]

2. What will we do?

We will take courage from the example of the Lopez Obrador supporters in Mexico and, if necessary, sound the Battle of Athens again.