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For the Long Haul

For too long, Americans have bemoaned their lack of real choices at the ballot box, and the absence of real change upon electing a candidate who promises it.

Progressives received yet another example of this futility in 2008 and 2012. Voters elected a man promising change who proceeded to backed down on nearly all of his stated goals, and double down on the "partnership" (read: bootlicking) of elected officials and corporate elites.

Far from being a change agent, Barack Obama has proved to be a "more of the same" agent, a corporatist dressed in the colors of a party that once - very, very long ago - stood up for working people.

When we go to the polls again in 2014 and 2016, the admonitions of ersatz progressives against voting for anything other than Democrats will echo through staged rallies once more, a clear cry (read: lie) that we have not option but to accept the lesser of two evils.

To which we proudly say: Bullshit! Voting is one of few opportunities granted we the people - other than peaceable assembly and civil disobedience, both of which are on the way - to register our disgust in quantifiable terms, and to begin the long, hard work of building real alternatives. And that's why we're here.

Street actions (a la the Occupy Movement) are necessary and valuable, but if their engineers are - frankly - stupid enough not to vote, they willfully miss a golden opportunity to answer charges being leveled by corporate media: charges that they are but a small and therefore unimportant faction of the population.

We know the opposite is true, and that if we do not stand up and be counted - at the ballot box, in the streets, and in the public square - we'll have only ourselves to blame.

Won't you support our work?

In solidarity,
Tony
tonyn@newprogs.org [1]