THOUSANDS SIGN UP AT VOTENOWAR.ORG: PEOPLE'S REFERENDUM PROVIDES A REAL CHOICE
By Monica Moorehead
November 7, 2002--The 2002 midterm elections are finally a thing of the past. The Republicans are gleeful that they now have control of both houses of Congress. The Democrats are down in the dumps because they lost ground, especially in the Senate.
What about the masses of the people, those who voted and those who did not? Did they give George W. Bush a mandate for his war on Iraq, as the administration is claiming?
The answer is emphatically no. Anti-war sentiment has steadily been growing among the people, but had little room to express itself in the elections because the Democratic Party had already caved in and given Bush the resolution he wanted to go ahead with the war.
But there is a way that millions of people can register their opposition to Bush's plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in an unprovoked attack on Iraq. It's called the People's Anti-War Referendum.
It was first announced at the historic Oct. 26 anti-war marches and rallies in Washington and San Francisco. More than a quarter of a million demonstrators and millions more watching and listening to live coverage over C-SPAN and Pacifica Radio heard about the referendum, initiated by the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism coalition. A week later, tens of thousands have already registered their votes by going to www.VoteNoWar.org.
The referendum reads in part, "I vote No to War. The U.S. Congress did not represent me when it voted to authorize George W. Bush to carry out an illegal war against Iraq. Thousands will die needlessly unless the people stop this war drive. I join with millions of people who believe that the $200 billion planned for war against Iraq should be spent instead to fund jobs, education, housing, healthcare, childcare, assistance to the elderly and to meet people's needs."
The fact that hundreds of thousands of people turned out around the country on Oct. 26 showed that Bush does not have a mandate to carry out his plans for this genocidal war against a defenseless country. The people's referendum is a natural extension of this growing mass sentiment.
Since those demonstrations, tens of thousands of people have downloaded the referendum in PDF format from www.VoteNoWar.org and are circulating it to make their anti- war views really count. The goal is to have millions of people participate in a real election against this war.
On the weekend of Jan. 18 and 19, a massive march will commence on Washington, followed by a People's Congress where the referendum results will be announced. These anti- war events are being organized to coincide with the reconvening of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill, followed by Bush's State of the Union address.
January 18 and 19 also fall on the holiday weekend commemorating the birthday of the great civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If King were alive today, he would certainly be in the forefront of the movement to stop the war against the Iraqi people. When he was assassinated in 1968, he had just made influential statements against the Vietnam War. When he linked the war to the growing poverty and racism at home, he greatly angered and scared the repressive arms of the U.S. government.
'CONGRESS REJECTS THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE'
Carl Messineo, a spokesperson for ANSWER who has worked on developing the referendum project, told WW, "Two thirds of the U.S. public decided that it did not make any difference to them whether they cast their ballot for the Democratic Party or for the Republican Party in these congressional elections, and chose instead to simply not go to the polls. This is not a reflection of voter apathy, as we all know how hard fought the battles for civil rights and suffrage have been, but is a decision reflecting many discouraged voters' view that the U.S. Congress rejects the will of the people and undemocratically serves its true constituencies: big industry, multinational corporations and a relatively few wealthy elite.
"The most central issues facing the U.S. and the world today are undeniable: war and U.S. imperialism. These are the issues being discussed and debated among the peoples of the world, and across the dining room tables, at the barbershops and places of gathering across this country. But there is no such debate in the U.S. Congress because it has ceded these issues, delegating its constitutional authorities to a single man, George W. Bush, to decide when and whether to wage a potentially nuclear first strike war of aggression against the people of Iraq, a war which serves no purpose but to conquer land and seize natural resources.
"Given the lack of real debate, choice and electoral alternatives, this election--far from being a mandate for the Bush administration--is overwhelming evidence of the poor condition of democracy in the U.S. today."
Some of the elected officials who voted for the war admitted that the calls and messages their offices had received were running 100, even 1,000, to one against the war.
There's no question that this left many disgusted with the electoral process.
A handful of individual Democrats in the House, especially those from the nationally oppressed sectors like Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee, went against their party leadership and opposed the war, as did one senator, the late Paul Wellstone. But they were the exception.
The bottom line is that both parties represent the class of monopoly capitalists and share the same major concern-- upholding private property at the expense of providing for human needs. If the Democrats had not rubberstamped Bush's war drive, if they had offered a real fightback program to counter the growing epidemic of layoffs, lack of health care and so on, then maybe there would have been more enthusiasm for the elections.
It has been documented that only one third of the registered voters participated in these mid-term elections. This means that an estimated 65 percent of the electorate for one reason or another decided not to go to the polls. In addition, millions of people have illegally been denied the right to vote in this country due to their immigration status, their "convicted felon" stigma or because they are less than 18 years old--but old enough to drive a car or join the military.
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