The Wild, Wacky World of Deanna Zandt

After November 2 and on to the future -- today.

Hey all...!

I suppose some of you have wondered where I've been hiding since last Tuesday. Well, first I was in a car for ten hours coming back from Ohio, and then I was in a sort of jello-like state for a few days. Then I came out of that little cocoon to meet up with some activist friends (dialog aided by Verlaine's $4 Hanoi martinis) and some old friends (nothing like a yearly viewing of "When Harry Met Sally" and being able to say "the usual" down at the Whiskey Ward)... plus finally sifting through the hundreds of emails and cacophony of voices.

My trip to Ohio has been documented in a couple of ways -- a day-by-day report which should be finished by tonight; pictures from one of my compadres that I'm scanning now; and a video diary that's going to be edited for presentation. If you want to see any of these, lemme know and I'll keep you posted on them.

For now, some thoughts to share with all of you, as we look at where we are.

First of all: election fraud needs desperately to be addressed. There have been emails flying for days, lots of shared stories, and a call to action. The Democrats don't want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they don't want to look like sore losers. The non-profits I was working with are also having a difficult time, from what I understand, because their non-profit status is being threatened by the IRS for appearing partisan. This leaves things in the hands of us, the people. At the bottom of this email, I'm including some information on how you can support this cause.

I'll tell you briefly what my experience was. I was working in the statewide legal office of Election Protection, helping the lawyers organize themselves and establishing a paper process for handling complaints. There were so many calls to our hotline -- 866-OUR-VOTE -- that the system was down for a while. There were so many entries being logged into the nationwide online database that service to it was crawling all day Tuesday. Most of those calls dealt with the issues of long lines -- an average of a two-hour wait became standard, and there was little to nothing we could do about it. Local people in that office told us how they'd been campaigning for more voting machines for months in anticipation of the incredibly high voter turnout, and only succeeded in adding a few machines -- much less than they had asked for. Other calls I helped route and also overheard: a woman at a predominantly African-American + Hispanic polling place claiming to be a voter protection person, walking up and down the long line outside with a big dog; electronic voter machines that wouldn't let a person select "Kerry", and when they told the precinct judges and polling workers, their answer was "Oh, just tell us who you want to vote for and we'll write it down for you,"; Republican-sponsored voter "protection" people who were walking up and down the lines with illegal voter registration lists, telling people they weren't registered to vote there and pulling them off the line; instances of electronic voting machines being continually rebooted, without anyone knowing if the votes cast on it would be retained.

These were just examples from my office. Friends who were in other places working for other groups have similar (and in some cases, much more frightening) stories.

Some have not addressed this issue because they don't think it would change the outcome of the election. This line of thinking is bullshit. What I set out to do was retain this (perhaps false) American idea that EVERY VOTE COUNTS. Regardless of what the outcome may be, it's our duty to make sure that the people who voted are heard.

Beyond the election... many people have asked me: What's next?

Unfortunately, I don't have a clear and concise answer for you yet. What I do know is that I can't accept what a friend of mine calls the "MoveOn Hallmark card sentiment." I think that we definitely stirred up a tremendous amount of resources and people, something that we haven't seen for a very, very long time. At the same time, I don't think we harnessed that energy nearly efficiently enough -- there were a lot of groups that, by Election Day, were doing the same work, completely duplicating efforts. There were still a tremendous number of people who were eligible, but didn't vote. The youth vote didn't turn out in the record numbers it was supposed to. More African-Americans voted Republican in this election than ever before. Eleven states rewrote their constitutions to prevent *everyone* from being able to get married. We had a candidate running that a whole lotta people weren't particularly thrilled with.

Why?

The point of asking these and other questions is not to discourage. Rather, it's to admit to things that need to be fixed -- and CAN be fixed. Already, there are masses of people assembling to not just sit around and talk about these issues, but to implement even stronger strategies to efficiently harness the energy. Along with answering these questions, we are implementing new infrastructure, honing in on the challenges, and most importantly: we are effecting social change. I promise you, we are. It feels kinda crappy right now, but believe me -- there's plenty we can and will do.

What can you do at this very moment?

First, tell me how you want to be involved, what you can do, and what your commitments and convictions are. Second, please please PLEASE talk about your politics with everyone you know in terms of what your values are. This a difficult concept for progressives. I'll get you started: I believe that I don't exist in a vacuum. The community I live in -- locally and globally -- needs me to do the best I can for it, and I need my community to do the best it can for me.

We believe in protection -- of each other, of our environment. We believe in mutual responsibility and broad prosperity -- our individual successes depend on it. We believe in the obligation of the future, to leave this world better than we found it. We believe in the power of hope to overcome fear.

You haven't heard the last of me. ;-)

More to come as developments roll in... for now, get going on calling out the election fraud with details below.

best of the best,
deanna
----------------
Here are some concrete actions that you can take that will make a difference.

Please keep your indignation alive and use that energy to raise the issue publicly until the mass media can use the "F" word - fraud.

Please keep the energy going to help educate the public regarding the devastating truth that our electoral process is broken and is being taken over by right wing zealots and privatization.

Send financial donations to: www.blackboxvoting.org, Bev Harris' site. She is doing a world of good with her tenacious and brave work. She sent out Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to every county in the country, and that type of effort requires funds. Read Black Box Voting, by Bev Harris, available on the web, to arm yourself with the sad facts of a broken electoral process.

Also, send donations to www.eff.org. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been instrumental in all litigation across the country relating to e-voting (electronic voting).

Send donations to www.verifiedvoting.org and www.votersunite.org and www.ballotintegrity.org. These organizations have done a lion's share of getting the word out about what is wrong in this country's electoral process.

Contact www.TrueMajority.org and www.moveon.org and www.commoncause.org and tell them to help pursue a post-election challenge to the vote tallies. Donate money to these organizations.

Write to your local newspapers to inform the public at large what is going on. Tell them to cover the election debacle and tell them to use the "F" word liberally.

Write to John Conyers (D - Mich), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee on the Constitution, who has requested a Congressional Hearing on the 2004 election. Tell him you support the request and that you want him to push for the hearing to be held as soon as possible.

Contact Information for John Conyers:Washington DC
E-Mail Address:john.conyers@mail.house.gov
http://www.house.gov/conyers/l ...
Washington DC Address
2426 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-2214
Phone: 202-225-5126
Fax: 202-225-0072

District Address -
DetroitFederal Building,
Room 669231
West Lafayette Boulevard
Detroit, MI 48226-2766
Phone: 313-961-5670
Fax: 313-226-2085

District Address -
Southgate
DCC Building
15100 Northline Road, Suite 257
Southgate, MI 48195
Phone: 734-285-5624
Fax: 734-285-5943

Campaign Address
19512 Livernoise
Detroit, MI 48221
Phone: 313-864-3671

Write to George Soros and ask him to help fund litigation in Ohio andFlorida to challenge the vote tallies.
c/o Open Society Institute--New York
888 7th Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10106
United States of America
Telephone: +1-212-757-2323
Fax: +1-212-974-0367
E-mail: osnews@sorosny.org

Write to the DNC and ask why Senator Kerry capitulated so quickly - before the information on the vote tallies was even beginning to come in. Tell them that Senator Kerry needs to take back his concession. Democratic National Committee, 430 South Capitol St SE, Washington, DC 20003. Their phone number is 202-863-8000. Their web-site is: www.democrats.org

Contact the Kerry campaign and tell them that he has done a great disservice to the American people by capitulating so quickly - before information could be gathered. Tell him to reconsider in light of all that is coming to the surface.

Contact National Headquarters Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.
P.O. Box 34640
Washington, DC 20043
202-712-3000
202-712-3001 (fax)
202-336-6950 (TTY)

Stay in touch with CASE_OH@yahoogroups.com and www.caseohio.org