RE: [A-List] US elections 2004

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

I hear you, Mac.

This whole situation, and the elections themselves, are presenting us
with a lot of contradictions.  They are a very hot topic of conversation
hereabouts among lefties.   Do we, or don't we...  Can we, or can't
we...

The actual fight, county by county has already been engaged here about
the machines, and it doesn't look like this will pass unopposed.
Everywhere we had close calls with all kinds of bullshit in the last
elections, people have been sensitized, and they are already raising
holy hell.  Beating these machines back may not be a grand strategic
victory, but it builds organization.

On the question of Black-majority counties, municipalities, districts
here, there is a fundamental difference of perception about national
elections.  The question is not how does the local Democratic Party
support the national Democrats, but vice versa.

Our best elected officials at the federal level here are Frank Ballance
and Mel Watt, both Black, who are in safe districts, from where they can
take a lot more political risks than white Dems.  But that's an aside.

Black political power is seen here as a sine qua non of
self-determination, part of the process locally of building a network of
social institutions that facilitate dialogue, resolve conflict, and
otherwise regulate social life.  Black churches are a key part of this
network, as are unions, trade associations, NAACP chapters, etc, etc.
It doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's a project that's
been under construction since Reconstruction, and it constitutes a real
foothold.  It's when an outsider tries to ingress upon these communities
that they will get a taste of how stable some of them are.  Many of
these communities are small and semi-rural, along a chain of industrial
development in the Interstate 95 corridor, and they haven't experienced
the nuclear destruction of many urban core communities yet.

On the subject of local politics more generally, it seems to me that
we've glimpsed some kind of strategic thrust with the string of
resolutions from various municipalities around the country who are
refusing to support the USA PATRIOT crap.  At this level, where
community-based organizing can still have a meaningful impact on
elections and elected officials, we might begin to think of developing
points of this kind of ungovernability.  This is a hazy conception, but
it feels promising and appropriate to the period.  Local officials are
enraged at the sequestration of funds with the generalized budget crisis
that's being dumped on them, and we run into them at the library or
grocery store.

I'm rambling, so I'll go.