Repost:: Michael Ventura, Austin Chronicle

HOME: NOVEMBER 12, 2004: COLUMNS AND FEATURES: LETTERS AT 3AM
Letters at 3AM
Dancing in the dark
BY MICHAEL VENTURA




Joe Hill was a labor organizer executed on trumped-up charges in Utah in 1915. The night before his murder he telegrammed his comrades: "Don't waste your time in mourning. Organize."

I once shook the hand of a man who shook his hand. In the spirit of passing that handshake on, here are some thoughts the day after the election:

# It's after a defeat that you find out what you're made of. Cry if you must, cry it all out, but don't let the bastards sap your vitality.

# In 1964, arch-conservative Barry Goldwater was crushed at the polls. Everybody thought conservatism was forever politically dead in America. But conservatives regrouped, rethought, and organized patiently from the ground up; when fundamentalist religion became a force in the mid-Seventies, they were ready to take advantage of it. In 1980, they elected Reagan. Dig: It took them 16 years. American progressives seriously started mass-scale organizing only about a year ago. In just one year we came within reach of victory.

That's remarkable. Now is no time to quit.

# Iraq is a mess and it'll get worse. Our military is way overextended. To keep present troop levels, Bush will renege on his promise and institute a draft – probably next spring, so that he can recover by the midterm elections. Rural poor are already fighting this war; a draft won't change their vote (though continued failure in Iraq might). But the conservatives of the middle class will be hit hard by a draft; that will change the present equation


http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-11-12/cols_ventura.html

it's a great piece of writing...

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for the afternoon...

the piece deserves eyeballs...