rousing the rabble

Progressives, It's Time to Put Our Money Where Our Protest Signs Are

First published December 2004

Last April, over a million women participated in a march on Washington for reproductive choice, the largest march ever of any kind in the history of the U.S. Empowered, scores returned home and quit their old body-hating gyms and joined Curves because it professes to celebrate women in their many shapes and sizes. But rather than celebrating women, in reality its owner is working hard to control women's bodies through pouring vast sums of money into anti-choice efforts. These anti-choice contributions are made up, in part, of our monthly gym dues.

Exhilarated, yet tired and thirsty after a day-long march and rally against egregious corporate war profiteering, a protestor, holding her "Stop Halliburton" sign, sips an Odwalla juice. As she does, Coca Cola, which owns Odwalla, participates in another kind of war - one of egregious and sometimes deadly alleged union busting and human rights violations in Columbia, India, and worldwide.

During election season, countless numbers of us logged long hours during our free time and weekends, working with a collective vision of a different reality for our country. We knocked on doors and made phone calls, asking undecided voters and Bush supporters to look at difficult and often hard to acknowledge facts about what a vote for Bush would mean. We wished and hoped people would wake up and see the truth.

Like those we tried to reach, we progressives could use a little wake up call ourselves and realize (or remind ourselves) how we help create the reality we struggle so hard against by way of how we choose to spend our dollars. And with the holiday spending season upon us, there's no better time for a little reckoning.

An Open Letter to Congress:

First published November 2004

Dear Members of Congress:

As you are no doubt aware, concerns about possible voter fraud abound.  Irregularities have been well documented in many states, more than enough to raise legitimate questions.  Is it widespread or in several isolated places?  Might it change the outcomes of any of the races?  What changes need to be made to protect our vote? We need you to investigate.  But more than that, we need you to understand that this issue is not a partisan one.  It’s not another round in the sparring match of Democrats vs. Republicans.  Nor is it post-election sour grapes or the machinations of conspiracy theorists.  Ultimately it isn’t even about the outcome of the election.  To relegate it as such is myopic and lazy and dangerous because the scope is much larger.

This is about Democracy.  And all of us – the gun toters and the bible thumpers, the tree huggers and the pro-choicers, Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Greens – we all live under the laws and promises of our democratic system.  And one of the most important and cherished promises of this system is that when we come of age every one of us (well, most of us, but that’s another story) can participate in our Democracy by voting and then resting assured in the guarantee that our vote will be on the whole fairly and transparently counted.  This principle is one of the defining features of our country, and, theoretically, part of what separates us from dictatorships and banana republics.

Thank You, People of New York City

First published September 2004

Our bodies ache with bruises and scrapes and sunburns.  Our voices are shot.  We are sleep deprived. 

We were jailed, some of us.  Others were preemptively harassed and spied on by transparent under cover police and Secret Service agents in pristine anti-Bush shirts and perfect haircuts.  They tried to pen us, and they tried to pin us with “Peaceful Political Protestor” pins.  But, few wore the pins or used their protestor coupons to NYC attractions not because we weren’t planning to be peaceful, because all but a very few of us were, but because our voices of dissent and outrage can’t be neatly labeled or preempted or mollified with discounts to Applebees.

It's More Important Than Ever: Speaking Out in NYC

First published August 2004


Explaining the decision to use three-year-old information to raise the alert status to Code Orange, George Bush told the country, "We are a nation in danger."

And so we are.

Bush was talking about the threat of terrorism. And it's real, to be sure. But just as real is the ominous threat looming large over the vast majority of Americans nationwide - the danger of losing a viable future for our children due to the disastrous environmental, fiscal, social, and international policies that are the Bush Agenda. But this agenda supplies more than a threat; far too many of us are already living the loss of a viable present. Countless numbers of our nation¹s children currently find themselves in dilapidated school rooms with outdated books and underpaid teachers, their promised monies diverted to war. Our veterans find the thanks they get for risking their lives is a greatly reduced benefits package. Workers of all kinds are laboring in an environment that until recently was unthinkable, no longer guaranteed overtime pay or guaranteed a safe working environment. The middle class and poor find a downturn in their economic picture, with any upturn only felt by the wealthiest 2%. And each and every one of us breathe increasingly unsafe air and drink unsafe water due to Bush¹s relaxation of more than 200 environmental regulations.

Hope Amidst a Backslide of Women's Rights in Iraq and at Home

First published April 2004

In his State of the Union address, George Bush proclaimed that with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, “the people of Iraq are free.”  He told us,”Today our coalition is working with the Iraqi Governing Council to draft a basic law, with a bill of rights.”  He then introduced Adnan Pachachi, the President of the Iraqi Governing Council and promised him “America stands with you and the Iraqi people as you build a free and peaceful nation.”

As he was waxing poetic about the freedom and rights of the Iraqi people, what he neglected to say is that just a few weeks ago on December 29th, Pachachi and his Governing Council voted in a closed-door session to curtail the rights of Iraqi women as part of that basic law.

Arnold and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up

First published January 2004

Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently announcing his state budget proposal, has his hands where they shouldn't be yet again--non-consensually groping the coffers of programs that assist many of our most vulnerable.

But, enough of that. Schwarzenegger has provided a "Car Tax Rate Calculator" on his website www.governor.ca.gov. He hopes you'll be so distracted adding and multiplying your way into feeling good that he's turning things around, saving you a few bucks, you won't even notice he is busily working to cut services that will not only screw the poor, the elderly, and the disabled, but you, me and your neighbor in the long run.

It's the same smoke and mirrors of Bush's famous tax refund--it provides relatively small, yet concrete "evidence" that he is really on the side of the people. After all, we have our checks to prove it! Our refund check is a shiny, little bauble to divert our attention from his budget plans that are anything but "for the people," plans that make those few hundred dollars we get a drop in the bucket compared to what we'll pay in future social and economic costs.