Re: [A-List] US elections 2004

[sherrynstan@xxxxxxx]

We are already facing the attempted imposition of new touch-screen voting machines across the south that generate NO PAPER TRAIL, the manufacturers and programmers of which have suspicious ties to the Republican Party.  It is becoming a huge issue in local elections here in North Carolina.

This will certainly provoke some dilemmas for various species of "progressive", including genuine leftists.  A good friend of mine last election, an African-American woman who feared Republican scortched earth policies that impacted on women and people of color, knowing full-well that Democrats were complicit, said - speaking of Nader-voters - a vote for Ralph Nader is an exercise of white privilege.

When these machines and other chicaneries by Republicans are directed at Black voters, there are real questions of solidarity that come up, for which easy abstractions developed out of sight of ravaged neighborhoods and collapsing Black Belt communities will prove inadequate.

This points again, I think, to the critical task of developing Black political power, beginning at the municipal and county levels, and not necessarily along the ideological lines that white progressives might prefer.  A Black comprador is often easier for communities to hold accountable than a white vestigal planter.