hey, here's a thought! instead of making plans to flee

[ulysses]

like a bunch of sensitive, liberal rabbits (as if you're going to anyway - ever tried to emigrate? It's not as if Canada just wants to exchange driver's license information), maybe, JUST MAYBE, we could discuss ways to ORGANIZE and begin the long haul back from where we are now to where we want to be.

Here comes the clue bus, *again* - even if Kerry wins in November, our situation doesn't stand to change much, if at all, for the better. We have MUCH more work to do, we have MANY more years to fight even the crap that's in our laps now. It's up to us. Not the Democratic Party or its elected representatives, us.

If you feel the need to use your resources to plan for escape at this stage in the game, then fair winds and following seas. Otherwise, buckle down.

[greekspeak]

1. Do you suppose it will be easy to plan from one of Ashcrofts new Gitmos?

I suppose, with all us libruls crowded into camps, stripped of civil rights, we will all be able to secretly plan from prison our great political comeback.

[ulysses]

3. get a grip.

What are you going to plan from Toronto?

[greekspeak]

7. Nothing, because I have no plans to move to Toronto.

I cringe to think what a Shrub II administration will be like. I never imagined that things would get like they are now, and I cannot imagine they would be better.

[ulysses]

9. they certainly won't get better

if all the people with better ideas leave.

Feh. Like I say, send a postcard.

[YoQuieroLiberty]

29. I'd say it differently

Get a grip - Gitmo II? Please. They're showing F911 in Iran, for God's sakes. It's getting released on DVD. A huge number of lefties were on TV getting Emmies last night. Your right and ability to gather and idssent will live on.

[sweetheart]

2. some of us help better from abroad

Leaving is not "leaving". It is merely relocating the physical body.

Frankly, i thought that on leaving the US, that i could forget
the whole bad dream, but then the reality struck home that i am a
citizen with a passport and everyone in my new home, thinks of me
as a tourist who will eventually return... and from remote scotland,
i've become more active in US politics than ever before in my life.

Bottom line, we're like the repubicans were in the 70's. We need to
form an ideological base for our party so that another generation of
neo-democrats can use our ideological base as a foundation to take
back america on behalf of its people.

Also, as you'll find in some places abroad, that america is more
intimately present in the places from which our ancestors came than
north america itself. I've gained tremendous insight in to the
scottish diaspora who have emigrated to the USA and have framed many
of the ideals they had "back home".

Truthfully, this world is a global place, and the US border is a
figment of the imagination. The earth's crust is sorta universal.

[ulysses]

4. we're currently witnessing

the (rotten) fruits of a long-planned conservative strategy. That strategy wasn't planned overseas.

You want to play deGaulle, more power to you.

[DrWeird]

6. I don't think it's so much deGaulle...

as it is Einstein.

Saying you're going to stick around and ride it out is easy for Heisenburg to say.

[ulysses]

10. do as you will, then.

:shrug:

[sweetheart]

8. strauss and his lot coulda written their stuff anywhere

The intellectual basis for winning, is planned wherever those minds
best work and survive. degaulle? ha! My heroes are Blair (orwell),
william gibson and shakespeare. Gibson is expat in vancouver,
and the others (tolkien as well) wrote from the UK.

I'm dead sure that had i not left the USA when i did, i'd be dead
by now. I felt it in my bones and HAD to get out. Obviously that
is not your position, or you would be gettin' out. We dance together
in ideas, and amongst us many souls, we must reestablish the cause
for liberalism.

I pray for good blessings for us all, as that is what it will take.

If you want to play "french resistance", then more power to you. ;-)

Godspeed to all who support liberty, equality and fraternity. :-)

[Maple]

5. Or...welcome to Canada eh?

Canada accepts more legal immigrants relative to its population than any country on Earth.

In the past two years, almost half a million immigrants arrived, a shade less than half of them in one city alone -- Toronto. The largest numbers for the country as a whole, amounting to almost 40 per cent of the total, came from China, India, Pakistan and the Philippines.

The federal government, responsible for immigration targets, heralds these waves on humanitarian and economic grounds, the argument being that immigration shows Canada as a caring country whose new arrivals will fuel future economic growth.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.html

[ulysses]

12. hey, kudos to Canada.

I *like* Canada. I just don't want to move there. This is my home. This is where my responsibilities - nasty little buggers, those - are.

[crispini]

11. Word!

All of the following NEED to be done, and are much easier to do when you are in the country:

Canvassing door to door engaging voters.
Teaching other activists about the political process.
Registering voters.
Watching the polls.
Running for office yourself.
Throwing fundraisers and houseparties.
Phonebanking.
Posting flyers.
Networking with likeminded Democrats in your area.

TAKING OVER THE SYSTEM FROM THE BOTTOM UP! No office uncontested! No opportunity to participate passed up!

coming to you from the heart of red America,
me

[nodehopper]

13. many of us are considering living options otherwise

while planning on continuing activist and organizing work here. I, for example, want citizenship in a country where I can be assured that my parents' health care needs will be taken care of once whatever measly social security and medicare they have earned in this country as first-generation immigrants who entered the America work force at 45 is completely squandered to the wind by the criminals in the White House. I am sure many people have very valid reasons for wanting to leave if Bush stays in power. Does not mean that I plan to stop with the activist work. So save your self-righteous rhetoric, that's not a way to build a movement, that's a way to alienate people. And there are plenty of people who are less privileged than you and me who aren't privileged enough to "stay and fight" if Bush wins. They've got families to take care of.

[ulysses]

14. oh please.

And there are plenty of people who are less privileged than you and me who aren't privileged enough to "stay and fight" if Bush wins.

You're able to emigrate but you're not privileged enough to stay? Right. If you don't like my "rhetoric" you're more than welcome to ignore the thread.

[nodehopper]

17. you immigrate when you have more to gain than to lose

even if you have a lot to lose. I am a first-generation immigrant in this country, and I am aware of how difficult and traumatic the process is, so I don't think of it lightly. I'm saying, if someone's family does not have stability and money to weather the raiding of the social benefits infrastructure, yes, maybe they are not privileged/rich enough to stay physically in the United States. Doesn't mean they aren't planning on staying involved.

"You're able to emigrate but you're not privileged enough to stay?"

What does that mean? That is exactly the predicament many people are in. You need a certain amount of money to immigrate. Usually immigrants invest everything they have into an opportunity to have a more decent life. I would invest every last cent I have into ensuring proper health care for my parents if I could get that through residency/citizenship in a country like Canada, however no amount of money I make will be enough to actually take care of them, if the government won't. What's so unclear about that?

[ulysses]

21. go on, then.

Just don't pretend that you're going to do any good for those who don't have the resources to provide their family decent health care OR emigrate.

We're sitting on the most powerful organizational tool in the history of humanity and all you folks can do is figure out where to run to. Sad.

[nodehopper]

23. I am not "pretending" I can do good for others

I am an activist and an organizer. A lot of the work that I do now I can do while holding citizenship and residing elsewhere. I'd be curious to know why you think you are so superior to me in your organizing efforts. I am already very active in progressive politics, and plan on staying that way, and I don't go around lambasting anyone's personal choices as long as they continue to live their life in an ethnical and responsible way.

[ulysses]

25. I'm not "superior" to you.

I'd just like to know what you think you can achieve in terms of organization and activism from outside the country, given the limited impact we've been able to have even on our own party inside it.

And I'm terribly sorry if you feel as if you're being lambasted for running away.

[nodehopper]

31. I guess I don't view it as running away.

And in terms of what I can achieve? Well, in terms of my work specifically, I work in media activism. The series that the organization I work for just finished, "Shocking and Awful" was a grassroots effort produced by activist videomakers around the world. Right now it's running on Free Speech TV which reaches 17 million homes and it's about to run on over 200 public access stations. This was a collaborative project; the people who participated in it were in New York, in San Francisco, in Toronto, in India, in Baghdad, in Sweden and in many other places. I happen to live in New York, but I could have worked on it anywhere. Recently, a larger media coalition I was a part of put out a nightly live TV show covering the RNC and showing everything the corporate media did not; this was produced by hundreds of activists many of whom came to New York for this; had the RNC taken place in a different city, I would have gone there, whether I had lived in California or Vancouver. When you are committed to activism you can do plenty wherever you are and you can go where you are needed when you are needed. I guess if people are going to leave, I find it more productive to try and engage them and see how we can collaborate, how they can help from where they are, what advantages and networks they will have access at other points on the globe, how they can make their defection a politcal act, rather thn alienating them with a "fine, you cowards, run" attitude.

I understand where you are coming from, I just think there are more positive ways of thinking about it.

[ulysses]

32. I guess I do.

I suppose we all have our calling, our activism. It's certainly true that we can, indeed must, engage in activism wherever we are. For most of us, however, our activism is here, whether we choose it or not.

[nodehopper]

33. alright then. as long as we are both doing our part.

But I don't like the implication that somehow the work I would do would be less valuable or inferior than the work I do now were I to do it from Montreal. Again, if your real interest is in building a movement, why are you preemptively splintering off an entire group that is obviously politically aware and disgusted with what's going on?

[ulysses]

34. I'm not - y'all are trying to do it yourselves.

You may well be able to edit film wherever on the globe you please, but at some point, if you're going to build or participate in a movement, you have to be physically present. We're all talking as if we have these great plans to build some fucking leftist movement, but these folks are going to be in Scotland, these in France, these finding themselves in Nepal, you and countless others in Canada, while the folks we're trying to mobilize are stuck in the US without DSL or cable even if they had any damned idea that the revolution was happening.

I'm sorry, I'm ruining the fantasy. Make your movies, enjoy your Canadian health care. Be happy.

[nodehopper]

35. and what exactly do YOU do?

I hate getting all "cred" on you but you persist with your self-righteous rhetoric. You think the work I do isn't important? That it does not enlighten or inform people, that it does not change their minds? You are wrong. I guess if you think media activism is a "fantasy" then you probably also think that the mainstream corporate media are harmless bunnies that aren't the real problem. There is a strong leftist movement on a global scale, and if American activism is going to be as isolationist and ignorant of everything else as the American Empire they are not going to fare much better. So, I have over 40 hours per week and many, many sleepless nights to show for my efforts. During the RNC I devoted my time and risked my ass along with hundreds of others to report on what is actually happening. So I am curious about what it is that you do. All I know is that if you preemprively alienate people you could work with you'd make a great secratian but a poor organizer.

[ulysses]

37. I teach.

I teach learning disabled middle school kids just west of downtown Atlanta. Please, get all "cred" on me. Please.

I do think that the work you do is important. I *don't* think that one builds a social movement from a distance.

[nodehopper]

43. well, I wasn't going to

but saying things like "make your movies. enjoy your healthcare" does not indicate to me that you respect the work that I do or think it important. But if you say you do, fine. For me, I believe a succesful social movement has to be global, and I choose to direct my effors at proliferaton of information, so I don't think of it in terms of "a distance." There is more than one way to build a social movement. Truly grassroots media, which is the project I am dedicating my efforts to, is decentralized and built from the ground up.

[ulysses]

15. oh, never mind.

A couple of bullshit polls come out and people are making plans to leave? Pathetic. Fucking pathetic. Y'all go on with your bad selves. We don't deserve to win anyway, evidently.

[Cleita]

16. Right now I'm just discouraged. We did this back in the

Sixties, got held back somewhat in the Eighties, but forged ahead in the Nineties and now we are back at the beginning of the Sixties again. I think we need a whole new blueprint for our Nation so that these crooks will never take charge of our property, our taxes and our lives again! I just can't make that commitment at my age anymore. Who will take up the banner?

[ulysses]

19. "Who will take up the banner?"

No one, evidently.

I used to wonder why the American left kept losing. It seems that the answer lies in the fact that we simply don't have the will to fight.

[greblc]

28. I'm with you.

Why hand the country over? Many Americans have died within our boarders to get us to where we are. To sacrifice or die right here on my doorstep seems to me, a more worthy and just cause than to run away or fight a war on foreign soil. Running away is easy.

[DerekG]

18. Leaving is perfectly understandable, however....

Don't dare call yourselves patriots. Our enemies are certainly fascist, but we are not yet in the same position as the Jews were (the Einstein analogy does not fit).

I understand if you want a better life for your children; but it doesn't make you special. Our predecessors had children, but they stayed and fought for social justice.

My hero, by the way, is Camus--who fought those f@#$ers with every fiber of his being.

[greblc]

30. Leaving is not understandable.

We have it Cush! We have a much better life than anybody living 100 years ago could have imagined. I'm a GenXer and collectively my generation has sacrificed absolutely nothing. Most everything has come relatively easy to us.
The stories my Grandparents shared with me made me understand this. They lived though the depression and two world wars. They've seen brothers,sisters and children die. I loved my Grandparents dearly. The thought that some Rich Unconcerned Bastard in the White House should negate their sacrifice to the point of me moving my family to Canada makes me sick.

I don't know a conservative that wouldn't laugh at the mention of a Disgruntled Liberal moving to Canada.

And when they're done laughing they may even offer to drive you.

[Wind Dancer]

20. An idea from another DUer

We need to organize a nationwide campaign and boycott corporations. If we could use Rosa Parks as a role model in each city, with a Martin Luther King, Jr. leader, there is a chance we can save this democracy. Until the corporations and the BFEE are changed, this country will not last 4 more years.

Edited to add:

As he taught us so well, violence is not the answer, we must be peaceful on our journey for a better place, a dream we can accomplish with a nationwide effort. It would be a powerful message. We have regressed in the last 30 years in so many ways.

Or, we could all end up in Ashcroft's concentration camp, I just don't know.

[Cleita]

22. I was thinking the same thing.

The British Raj shut down all the domestic cloth weavers in India so the Indians would be forced to buy their cloth from the English cloth weaving factories. Ghandi encouraged his followers to spin and weave their own cloth. We need to do something similar. I have started buying much of my produce at the local farmers markets and am working to growing much of my own and I think I might start going to the swap meets.

If you can make anything at home or in your garage, our local swap meet charges $15 for a place for one day. A friend sold $350 of bird houses he makes in his garage recently. I think it's something we should think about in circumventing the Wal-Marts as much as possible.

Now if we could band together to form cooperatives for insurance and other needs, we could make a difference I think.

[Wind Dancer]

26. Great ideas, I have been a potter

for years but recently had to take a break due to health problems. I try to buy everything from Goodwill or yard-sales, anything recycled.

There are ways to affect these businesses and our state of mind. I've stopped buying from chain stores and have a list of USA made products and other positive environmental-friendly items from websites I've found on the Internet.

People are interested in doing this we just need to find a way to get others involved.

[Cleita]

27. Well, I think I might drag out the old sewing machine and

knitting needles and see what I come up with. I could use the extra money too.

[Djinn]

24. maybe people are thinking of leaving for a host of reasons

I get this from people here when I mention I've been looking into moving to NZ - but for me it's not just about politics, it's about a cleaner environment, living in a smaller place and job opportunities.

Perhaps for some people the politics is the icing on the cake.

[Mr_Spock]

36. We fought for this country and if you leave you aren't American.

How can you be if you don't want to live here? Fighting for what is right is what we do here - running is what the British did.

[Djinn]

38. what???

"if you leave you aren't american" what a load of shit, people leave the country they were born in for plenty of reasons.

Even if people ARE wanting to leave purely for political reasons maybe they feel that after decades of fighting they see nothing has changed (assuming they're fighting an economic fight say rather than a civil rights one - tho even THAT fight is going backwards) maybe they've decided to contribute tax to a nation that they beleive will do the right thing with that money, maybe they feel so appalled by the concept of constant war that they are simply not prepared to help finance it.

The "fight" can still be fought outside the nation in question - how much of South Africa's fight against apartheid was carried out by ex-pats and even people who'd never been there?

[Mr_Spock]

39. I can't imagine fighting from the outside.

It just isn't the American way. I know this seems kind of jigoistic of me, but there are certain principals that CANNOT be violated. Why would I leave my family to fend for themselves with one less liberal supporter for them? I can't even imagine such a thing. It's like letting the terrorists scare us even though any person with a brain knows they are more likely to be killed in a car crash or even hit by lightning for that matter!

[Djinn]

40. what is the "American" way

there's no such thing - like I said people leave for lots of different reasons, it doesn't make them any less American, that's a bad argument to make and it doesn't make sense, unless the freeps can claim that not supporting the Iraq war is "UnAmerican" or that public healthcare is UnAmerican, unless there is a definition fo attitudes and actions that are allowed/not allowed to be American then UnAmerican has no meaning whatsoever.

[Mr_Spock]

41. You're missing the point.

I just don't want to argue with you because I am tired now. Think about it will ya - if you do not value some basic aspects of life here, then you are missing something and I can't help you find it - you need to find it yourself.

[Djinn]

47. I don't live in the US

so you don't need to help me find anything - but just because you leave the US doesn't mean you don't value ANYthing about it and just because you stay doesn't mean you like EVERYthing about it.

[camero]

42. Running from Britain is what Americans did n/t

[Unperson 309]

44. I'll Tell You Why!

Why I would flee if I could...

I'm a liberal. Have been since the Sixties. I have been in demonstrations, my partner was teargassed in a civil rights demo in the Sixties, we both bear the weight of those years.

I'm old and nearly blind, my back is not good, my health not good... my partner has asthma (which killed her mother) and we are both nearing our sixties.

I am tired. I am no use to any country and we are finally (after twenty five years) back in the state where my partner grew up. So, no, we aren't leaving... because we cannot.

But I am heartily SICK of American government! I *PRAY* for a 'von Stauffenberg' to come and end this horror, but I know it won't happen. It won't happen because the vS'es of this land are all on *their* side! Every time something like the memos comes up, I feel the same sick gut wrench you feel when you slip on the top step of a long cement staircase, look over the edge of a building and feel the rail wobble in your hand, or look straight down the barrel of a gun.

This won't end. This will NEVER end. Not until one or the other side is dead. They won't give up unless they are taken out of the game and we won't do it. We won't because we cannot. we fight by the rules and they refuse to. We will do the right thing, the honorable thing the decent, christian thing, we will play their game and we will die. And die. And die. And die.

Nothing will change this because they own the game the cards, the table, the room, the building and the neighborhood.

It doesn't matter. If we had the sense God gave a mosquito, we'd realize that it is the end and we would leave in droves. If we could. Or die in droves, which we will.

What they don't understand, and we REFUSE to grasp, is that when people have nothing left to live for... they become very...... very...... very dangerous. If they have the guts to become dangerous.

We don't.

And we will die.

So keep watching the polls and keep gaping at that razor thin "margin" because it's fake! The polls are shit, the news is shit, the ballots are shit, the election is shit, the Democratic Party is a bitchslapped whore staggering out onto the street knowing her pimp is going to take the duct-tape wrapped coat hanger to her again tonight... exactly the way she was beaten last night. And the night before that! And she'll TAKE it because her drug habit is so bad she can't do anything BUT suck off the next candidate and return her meager pay to her master, the republican Party!

What's she addicted to? The same EXACT thing the Republicans are. Power. Power is like heroin. Pure heroin. Have enough of it and you function. People with access to enough smack can, and do lead normal lives. It's the poor who suffer. And the Dems are the poor. Not enough H and you start to get sick, to shake, to sweat, make bad decisions, stumble, retch, you'll do anything, SAY anything, suck, fuck, spread your legs, ANYTHING for the next hit!

You think we can start over. Yeah, right. Sure. we'll get clean.

Fuck that.

We will die in the street like a fucking overdosed whore who was slipped a "ten cent pistol" by her pimp. We will die on a dime-bag hotload when the Repukes get tired of slapping us around.

So yeah, watch the TV and hop around in eagerness whenever the polls get above a few percentage points. They are PLAYING US! Because they KNOW that under the makeup and bruises, the tawdry miniskirt and hoop earrings we're still the sweet little innocent from the sticks. We won't wise up and play dirty because it isn't IN us!

Hitler was not a liberal. Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't a liberal. Sirhan Sirhan wasn't a liberal. Pol Pot wasn't a liberal. Mussolini wasn't a liberal. Stalin wasn't a liberal. Nixon wasn't a liberal.

Face it. THEY have the hitters, the torturers, the death squads, the ones with the guns, the electrodes, the wires, the bombs, the knoves, the poisons, the evil and the cold steel viciousness to kill us.

All of us who don't flee or die first.

And I cannot flee.

309

[LosinIt]

46. Well stated. So sad that it is so very fucking true.

Why can't everyone see that they are being played? Are they that stupid, or just blind to what they don't want to see?

[LosinIt]

45. We are considering Costa Rica for my sanity if the worst happens

If Bush wins (er, takes it) I honestly don't think that I can keep it together for another four years. I can't take the disconnect between what I know is true and the bullshit that is presented to us as the truth. I can't deal with the sheeple that I have to work with daily who have no fucking hint of a clue as to what is really going on. This includes my dear mother who only watches CNN (and the shopping channels, bless her heart). I am reading a book right now about the German Resistance to Hitler. While it is inspiring, I don't think that I am strong enough to fight and I think that staying here being complacent and complicit is against all that I know to be right.

I know Costa Rica, having been an exchange student there more years ago than I care to share. If you have a verifiable income of more than a $1000 a month you can establish residency there.