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Ethan Geto: We are Americans.
Submitted by Howard2 on Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - 20:24
Dear Friends - I sit in my office and hundreds of e-mail messages pour in. So many of you are despondent, drained, frightened and, literally, sick. So many say you want to leave the country. But we are Americans. Moreover, Americans who are progressive, intellectual, socially conscious members of the political, media, academic and creative communities, and thus we bear a special burden of responsibility for the behavior of our society. It is OUR nation that is the imperial power in the contemporary world, and every stupid, reckless, selfish decision our nation makes has the potential to harm billions of human beings, today and for generations to come. It is our moral obligation to stand and fight to reverse our country's destructive policies, for ourselves, our children, and all humanity. Even if we move away (physically OR emotionally) from an America whose government policies we loathe, what will our disengagement beget? Only AMERICANS can win this cataclysmic struggle. Go ahead, renew your passport, but also think about which activist organization you can join (or support financially) to minimize the damage the Bush Administration will wreak in these next four years. What project can you integrate into your professional life to enlighten American society? Can you become engaged in the looming battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, to pull from the ashes a party that doesn't move to the right but rather finds the language and the candidates who can appeal to Americans' best instincts and win? Candidates who actually inspire the American people instead of receiving whatever support they can muster only because of hatred of the opposition? I own an original 1930's campaign poster for Franklin Roosevelt, a simple sketch of his face and three words, "A Gallant Leader." What candidate could issue that poster today and pass the laugh test? I also have precious mementoes from working with Eleanor Roosevelt in the late 1950's and early 1960's in the "Reform Democratic Movement" she launched with former NYS Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman to vanquish the tyrannical, closed and self-aggrandizing Democratic Party machines in New York, and to elect progressives to the House and Senate (the NYS Congressional Delegation had some of the most hawkish Cold Warriors of the era until this reform movement rose up and threw them out of office). I remember working for Robert F. Kennedy on his 1968 presidential campaign and seeing thousands of "Red State" average people reaching to touch his hand and emotionally responding to his message of fighting poverty and ending a fruitless, horrific war in Vietnam. Today, citizens in the Red States are frightened, and have been manipulated into voting against their own interests. While his core message was distorted in the context of the "Confederate Flag" flap, what Howard Dean repeatedly said to white audiences in the South was: "The right-wing has captured your loyalty and your votes through a cynical, Nixon-crafted 'Southern Strategy.' They support flying the Confederate flag over the State Capital, or opposed Martin Luther King Day, or side with fundamentalists to keep certain books out of the library or to put creationism in the classroom. But after decades of manipulating emotional symbols that attracted your votes, what has the Republican right really DONE for you? Millions of your kids have NO health insurance or access to quality medical care; the right has tricked you into believing that universal health care will mean the triumph of 'socialism.' You have lost millions of jobs. Housing costs are eating up 30-50% of your gross household income. Your kids are getting second-rate educations, and they have to mortgage their lives to pay for college. Your real standard of living has declined. Is all this worth it?" Our greatest challenge is to get this message out in a way that connects, and to ease fears about social issues that have been cynically manipulated by the right to keep Americans from seeing how their core social and economic interests are being thwarted. YOU must help make this happen. Ethan Ethan Geto former NY State Director for Dean New York City NY
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