If you have been celebrating the clear victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the Presidential election, good for you—and now you can stop—and get ready to fight to make sure that they start their jobs on January 20th.
This is no time to be naive: Donald Trump, the current Republican Party, its far-Right corporate and religious funders, media organizations, their base of street-level militants, and armed groups (including current and ex members and organizations of law enforcement and the military) constitute the biggest threat to the experiment of American democracy in our lifetimes. If there is anything that four years under this regime has taught us, it’s that they will go to any lengths, lawful or unlawful, to “win” and maintain their grip on power—particularly now that Trump is President. Don’t forget the “election” of George W. Bush in 2000 when, “coincidentally,” the state that turned the tide for then-candidate Bush just happened to be the one governed by his brother Jeb.
Trump, and the latest incarnation of his G.O.P. backers, has left their turn-of-the-century Neo-Conservative predecessors in the dust by moving even further to the authoritarian Right with such strategies and tactics as:
1) continually declaring the U.S. election system “rigged,” with no evidence, 2) attacking mail-in voting as un-secure and unfair, with no evidence,
3) literally sabotaging the U.S. postal service to disrupt mail-in voting,
4) working in the courts in an attempt to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters,
5) specifically calling for white supremacist/nationalist/militia armed groups with a history of violence to activate if he lost (See coverage of the recent election results protests in D.C. attended by hundreds of Proud Boys, during which 4 people were stabbed, and many others assaulted.),
5) calling for supporters, many armed, to “monitor” polling locations for voter fraud,
6) using weaponized language to target state and local elections officials and workers, resulting in scores of death threats to the latter group, and mobs attempting to disrupt ballot counting,
7) mounting scores of legal suits alleging widespread voter fraud at all levels of government with no evidence to support it, and costing tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process,
8) attempting to influence state and local election results by contacting and/or threatening electors, election, and state and local elected officials and representatives,
and 9) actually investigating “legal” routes to institute martial law in order to stay in power.
PEOPLE: THIS IS CLASSIC FASCISM AND WE CANNOT LET IT STAND. If Trump, the Republican Party, and the Far Right attempt to steal the election, we must be ready to fight it on every front: legislatively, in the courts, in the media, militantly in the street, and in our communities. This election, and this President and party, still have the potential to fundamentally damage—if not break--American democracy for decades to come. Because of this and, in addition to the afore-mentioned strategies, we need to consider the general strike as a way to disrupt part of the nation’s dark turn toward authoritarianism and fascism. As the old Industrial Workers Of The World—one of the founding unions of the American labor movement-- saying goes, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
If Trump and the Republicans try to defy the clear will of a majority of the American people by refusing to leave a position he/they lost to a democratically-elected successor, we need to seriously consider shutting this country down with a general strike. No one goes to work, no business as usual, and everyone who believes in democracy goes into the streets of this country to protest and commit acts of nonviolent civil disobedience until Trump and his ilk leave their then-unelected positions of power. There are more of us than Trump, the crooked and greedy government officials, their funders, their enforcers, and the cowardly politicians—on all sides—that are enabling and perpetuating his regime. These people are supposed to work for us, and, together, we can stop this mad rush toward fascism, but only if the majority of Americans who believe this is wrong take a risk and, if needed, act.
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