King Richard Ain't Comin' ..!

King Richard Ain't Comin' ..!

Article By Saab Lofton - Aug 10 2007 www.coanews.org

"Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence."
--Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

"Malcolm X and the Black Panthers made King and others' demands seem 'reasonable' and thus politically acceptable to center-right elites."
--Sally Kohn, project director of the Movement Vision Lab at the Center for Community Change

"Although publicly I continued to ignore the raging antiwar controversy ...
I knew, however, that after all the protests and the Moratorium the nationwide protests of October 1969, American public opinion would be seriously divided by any military escalation of the war."
--The Nixon Memoirs

I don't care if historians can prove the existence of Robin Hood or not; the legend is more important than the man, and in that legend, Robin held the line against the forces of evil until King Richard could return and bring justice to England once again. Well, a similar (yet twisted) situation seems to be going on in America's political arena: There are far too many activists who ain't doing as much as they could be because they too are waiting for the return of a king — in this case, it's a Democrat winning the White House. It's as bad as resting on your laurels like Achilles in his tent because you're waiting for the Biblical Rapture to occur!

The problem with connoting Al Gore, Barak Obama, etc. with King Richard is the Democratic Party has proven itself to be either cowardly or complicit with the Bush administration time and time again. For me, its latest sellout move was the last straw. How did the August 7, 2007 editorial of The New York Times put it? "It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress — now led by Democrats — caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush’s powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights."

Appalling? Try perverted and obscene! As I said, this is the last straw, so I'm making the following ultimatum: Either Dennis Kucinich — or someone with an equally left-wing platform — is nominated or I will not vote in the
2008 presidential election. I'm calling that tired bluff — the one which claims all Hell will break loose if a Republican wins next year — because I know my history and I'm putting my faith in the left. Professor Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, said it best, "The ultimate solution is not with the people on top. The ultimate solution is for people in the streets to create an atmosphere for people on top to be accountable."

So it doesn't matter if Satan comes out of a hole in the ground and crawls into the Oval Office in January of 2009, if everyone is doing their part on a grassroots level, the Human race and the planet Earth will not only survive but thrive.

In Ken Butigan's Pilgrimage Through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site, Butigan wrote, "The U.S. peace movement played a key role in ending the Cold War." And Burning World backs this up by citing a series of historians — including Lawrence S. Wittner, author of 1997's The Struggle Against the Bomb. Writes Butigan: "In his book, Wittner argues that the missing ingredient in any explanation of this reality is the world nuclear disarmament movement that has mobilized millions of people around the world. Wittner confesses that he hadn't expected to reach this conclusion. He assumed that the anti-nuclear movement had failed because nuclear weapons had not been definitively abolished. Yet as he pursued his research, he came to understand that this 'people power'
movement had played an important role in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war."

This means the activists all too many are all too quick to dismiss have in fact quite literally saved the world from destruction. Support your troops?

Support your protesters! They're the ones who really keep us safe and free (besides, if you really want to support the troops, make sure they have jobs and health care when they come home)!

Aside from the fact that I'm not as famous as I deserve to be, my ultimatum will probably go unheeded because of something M.J. Rosenberg (a Clinton political appointee at USAID) wrote, "Of course, the reason Democrats reject impeachment is that they continue their quixotic pursuit of the Republican vote. The D.L.C. types are always pushing Dems to pursue evangelicals, gun owners, tough white males, hawks, people uncomfortable with gays, African-Americans, etc. The thought of impeachment terrifies those determined to seek votes from people who would never vote Democratic anyway.

Think of it this way. Any voter turned off by impeachment proceedings against Dick Cheney is not voting Democratic in 2008. So why not do the right thing?"

By the way, Kucinich is the only candidate calling for impeachment ...

Well, Rosenberg, I will continue to "do the right thing" and anyone who's "turned off" in the process can kiss the blackest part of my ass!

SOURCES:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/18/2607
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnimvivi18.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0217-08.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/07/3033/
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0422-02.htm
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/04/14/books_and_lit/books....
http://www.tpmcafe.com/user/mjrosenberg
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/14/2522/
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/07/3059/

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