Cross posted on Daily Kos
Tue Jan 31, 2006 at 07:04:56 AM PDT
I beg you to listen one more time.
All I care is that you get off your ass and take action. We can sit here all day screaming and yelling at each other and you know what, we’re going to continue to lose elections.
Yesterday I wrote a diary on Daily Kos in response to Maryscott’s primal scream. She echoed what we are all feeling. She is brilliant and frequently articulates our rawest emotions. So now, let’s take that anger and do something with it.
You might even consider taking back the Democratic Party, not abandoning it, because my friends, we are the party. The Democratic Party belongs to us, not them.
Anger can kill or anger can move you from lethargy to action. Anger is what galvanized many revolutions. Anger is what makes people take action. And I’ll be damned, if I’m going turn away from my historic responsibility.
But the time has come, to take the next step. Since the democrats don’t have a spine, how about we force one on them?
I mentioned in the hasty diary I wrote last night, that much of my motivation has come from the weekend I spent at Wellstone Action. Quite a few of you asked me to write about that transformative experience. It was so enormous and empowering that I still haven’t assimilated all the ways it changed me.
I do know however, it changed my life.
My friends, we are the worst nightmare of the loathsome 19. We are the worst nightmare of Joe Lieberman. We are the worst nighmare of the spineless Democrats. We are their worst nightmare, but not if we don’t take action!
So, I’ll start at the beginning of my Camp Wellstone experience. The first night, we went around the room and everyone introduced themselves and explained why they were there. I was in a room of citizen activists and I asked myself, what the fuck am I doing here.
But when it was my turn to speak I said, “After listening to all of you great patriots, I don’t know why in the world I am here.” Then I said, “I am an outraged American. I want to learn how to focus and channel my anger. Because I can sit behind my computer pounding out angry emails and blogs or I can take action. So please show me the way.”
Much to my amazement, at the end of the evening I was surrounded by activists who were patting me on the back and telling me I was the most important person in the room.
I was shocked. Me?
I’ll tell you why my participation was so important. Everyone else was already knee deep in heavy duty activism. I, on the other hand, was still in the pissing and moaning stage.
Now imagine, dear friends, an army of outraged American citizens.
You cannot politely ask the traitor Democrats to step down. You must mobilize candidates from the community to take on these sorry losers. You must raise money, organize, craft a compelling message, repeat it often, mobilize other outraged citizens, then get them to mobilize their friends, then take down the bad Democrats and replace them with people who will advocate and push our issues, our agenda.
Then, miraculously our agenda becomes the national agenda.
But first we need a seat at the table, and abandoning the party takes us in precisely the wrong direction.
To do less than fight like hell abdicates our responsibility as citizens.
Fucking imagine our power, people! And imagine something else, power grows exponentially when it is harnessed, directed, and focused.
Imagine if we took all this outrage and channeled it into collective, forceful citizen action.
You want a revolution, friends? You want to remove DINOS like Lieberman? Ned Lamont needs your help and he needs it today. So do candidates across the country.
My only suggestion is we spend most of our time and energy taking down Republicans. I agree that we have some piss poor democrats who need to be returned to the private sector, but our situation is desperate and our time precious, and we must use it wisely.
Let’s do it.