Why the November 5 election is NOT a mandate for war
The promoters of war would like you to believe that the November 5 election was a mandate for war. Bush rapidly seized on Republican gains in the House and Senate to claim increased authority for his military campaign. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle stated, "I think it means that the president has an opportunity here [from the election] to enact and proceed with the plan [on Iraq] as he has articulated it." Daschle said on NBC, "I think the American people appear now to give him the benefit of the doubt."
We challenge Bush and Daschle's assertion that the administration now has a mandate to commit mass murder in an illegal war.
The election could have been a de facto referendum on the war issue but that possibility was eliminated when the majority in Congress spinelessly rubber stamped Bush's war plans in early October hoping to remove the issue of war from the political discourse. Following on Congress' abdication of its responsibility to the people, Senator Daschle's comments are an announcement of not only a wholesale capitulation, but an embrace of Bush's global war drive.
It is no wonder that voters had an extremely difficult time differentiating between the pro-war program of the Republicans and that articulated by the Democratic Party leadership. Two thirds of registered voters stayed home on election day. To describe the turnout as mere voter apathy misses the main point. In fact the people of this country have been keenly attuned to politics especially in the last year. Low voter turnout reflects many discouraged voters' view that the U.S. Congress does not represent the will of the people but instead serves the interests of other constituents: Big Oil, multinational corporations, the Military-Industrial complex, and a relatively few wealthy elite.
The President and the Congress must feel the heat from the people. "Formal" democracy has been hijacked by the war-makers. But we are fighting back. People are justifiably angry and disgusted. Thousands of organizers around the country are energetically building a mass movement from the grass roots up. Bush, Cheney, Daschle and the generals and corporate executives don't actually fight the wars and risk their lives, nor is it their labor that makes the war machine function. The anti-war movement is organizing the people without whose blood and labor the war machine cannot function.
Congress didn't stop the Vietnam war, the people stopped it. We know that the majority sentiment in the US opposes a new war against Iraq. On a global scale the antiwar sentiment is nearly a universal consensus. If the White House and Congress rejected the will of the people, if the member states of the UN bow to US pressure rather than listening to their own people -- if governmental leaders shred international law -- then the people must act themselves. This has always been the path to genuine change.
By early January 2003 a massive number of people will have voted in the People's Anti-War Referendum (http://www.VoteNoWar.org ). Local Vote No War committees in cities, towns, campuses, and high schools will be going door to door to collect anti-war votes. The results of the referendum will be a pillar of the mass organizing campaign timed to coincide with the return of the new U.S. Congress. On January 18 and 19 there will be massive street protests in Washington, D.C. at the same time as the convening of a Grass roots Peace Congress.
By acting now we can make a difference.
HERE'S HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED:
1) Register your vote by signing the referendum at http://www.votenowar.org/referendum.html
2) Download the VoteNoWar referendum and collect votes in your area (this is very easy, only Acrobat Reader is required). You can also download a two-sided flyer explaining both the People's Anti-War Referendum and the January 18-19 mobilization. The referendum can be downloaded at http://www.votenowar.org/referendum.pdf and the flyer at http://www.votenowar.org/flyer.pdf . If you have problems downloading the flyers, call us at 202-332-5757 and we'll send you a packet in the mail.
After you download and reproduce the referendum and flyers, ask you friends, co-workers, neighbors and family to Vote No to War. Hand out flyers or set up a table in front of a supermarket, at a college or high school, at a place of worship, or at a metro station.
3) Send people you know information about the People's Anti-War Referendum. You can forward this message to personal contacts or email listserves, or go to http://161.58.14.9/cgi-bin/birdcast_clm2.pl?Tell+your+friends+about+the+An ti-War\ +Referendum=Click+here+to+send+e-mail and enter the names of up to five people and they will be sent general information about the campaign.
4) Add a link to VoteNoWar.org to your website -- or suggest that others do this. Go to http://www.votenowar.org/add_link.html for a graphic button and instructions (it's very simple, you just cut and paste one single line of HTML code onto your web page).
5) Make a donation to advance the anti-war movement at http://www.votenowar.org/donate.html
FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://www.VoteNoWar.org http://www.InternationalANSWER.org
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$1 BILLION BUYS A LOT OF VOTES BUT ELECTION WAS NO MANDATE FOR WAR
By Deirdre Griswold
The election that just gave the Republicans a majority in the House and Senate also put more advertising revenue in the pockets of the media giants than ever before: $1 billion was spent on political spot ads on television. This was twice the amount spent during the last midterm election four years ago--and even far exceeded the $771 million laid out during the 2000 presidential election. What is now called the "political market" way outperformed the rest of the advertising business.
At the same time, coverage of the candidates and their platforms by the networks on their nightly news programs declined to just 2.3 minutes a night, compared to eight minutes in 1994.
So while news coverage of the midterm election was dropping by 72 percent, paid ads were taking over, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Many of these ads were funded by big corporations, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. They used deceit to confuse the voters. For example, "The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the deceptively named United Seniors Association--largely funded by the big drug companies--spent more than $12 million on television and radio ads such as one that lauded GOP nominee Jim Talent, who won the hotly contested Missouri Senate race, for backing a market-based prescription drug program." (Washington Post, Nov. 10)
What is a "market-based prescription drug program"? It's no program at all. There's a real crisis, especially among the elderly, over the high price of prescription drugs. The only thing that will help is a program that puts people's needs over the profits of the drug companies. "Market-based" means guaranteeing the pharmaceuticals fat profits.
If the older people in need of medicine who were induced to vote Republican by this kind of deceptive advertising were given a real choice, wouldn't they take it? What if they could vote for a program to provide drug items to seniors for no more than $2 a prescription? That would certainly enliven the election.
But the supposed "alternative" to the Republicans--the Democrats--dare not propose any such thing because they, too, are a party of, by and for the capitalist profit system.
The small country of Cuba has reduced infant mortality to the lowest in this hemisphere and has more doctors and nurses per person than any other place on earth, thanks to its truly socialized health system, which provides care to the people free. If, in the wealthy United States, the profits were taken out of the health-care industry, including prescription drugs, there would be no health-care crisis.
BLAME WAR ON THE PEOPLE
The Bush administration immediately claimed the vote in this election was a mandate for its planned war against Iraq. Tom Daschle, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, agreed with them.
It was a shameful effort on his part to cover up his own party's capitulation to Bush in the congressional vote for war that had preceded the election. Blame the war drive on the people.
Most of them are so weary and turned off by capitalist politics that they don't vote at all.
Even with all the money spent on this election--the California governor's race alone cost $90 million--only a little over 39 percent of the voting-age population voted. This was slightly more than the last midterm election, reflecting a well-financed and vigorous Republican campaign to get out the vote. However, among workers, especially from oppressed groups, the turnout was down.
The turnout of voters in wealthy areas was often twice that of working-class communities.
The traditionally low proportion of voters in the United States reflects many factors. One is that millions of people in the United States are not eligible to vote because they are not citizens.
Millions more are excluded--sometimes falsely, as was shown in Florida in 2000--because of felony convictions. In 2000, this kept 4.2 million people off the voter rolls. One-third were African American men.
The racist injustice system has replaced the poll tax as a mechanism for disenfranchising Black people.
Only about 12 percent of college students vote. Because they often live somewhere other than where they go to school, they would have to return home or cast absentee ballots--a cumbersome process. Most states do not have direct voting- day registration.
Millions of workers now move frequently to look for work as stable, full-time jobs become harder to find. They also are less likely to be registered.
BLACK TURNOUT WAY DOWN IN FLORIDA
Turnout was down in Jeb Bush's Florida in those communities most angry over the Democratic Party's capitulation to the Bush forces in the 2000 election. The statewide turnout of Black voters, most of whom are registered Democrats, dropped from 72 percent in 2000 to only 43 percent this time, according to newspaper exit polls. The turnout of Republicans was up, however.
Many people who are against Bush's war but have habitually voted Democratic are angry that their party failed to put forward a program very different from the Republicans. They know that there is a growing anti-war movement in this country, and think the Democrats should lead it, or at least make a bid for its votes.
The Democratic Party, however, has never been an anti-war party. On the contrary. It was Democratic presidents who started the Korea and Vietnam wars, the covert war the CIA waged against Afghanistan beginning in 1979, and the CIA- backed invasion of Cuba in 1961.
On closer look, it is clear that the vote, even while it favored Republicans, was not a mandate for war. Take the Senate race, for example. Four Senate seats changed hands from one party to the other, three of them moving over to the Republican side. Of the three Democrats who lost their seats, only one had voted against the war--Paul Wellstone of Minnesota--and he died in a plane crash just before the election. The other Democratic senators who were up for re- election and had voted against the war resolution all retained their seats.
The manipulation of the public for election purposes has never been greater or cost more money. That will not change the fact, however, that the vast majority of the population in no way participated in ratifying the Bush administration's war drive. There is every reason to expect that the grassroots anti-war spirit, seen in mass demonstrations in October, will continue to grow.
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