The story isn't getting any attention from the mainstream media. Who's lubing the media?
The mood here in San Francisco is somewhere between morose, and a day before duck hunting season begins (and you're the duck). I will try and check things out downtown and see what's happening.
Also, I have been assembling a gallery to accept images of the vast un-covered events the corporate media seems to ignore (to keep their 'access').
Statement from Code Blue
We Shall Be in the Streets:
Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco
9 AM, Nov 3
In a true democracy, every vote counts, and the candidates represent the interests of the people. But America is not a true democracy. In the 2004 election, votes may be stolen, lost, and miscounted because our government is derelict of its duty to secure the very process of a fair election.
Florida 2000 was merely a prelude to what may become an electoral disaster of epic proportions in 2004: the entire nation now faces the crisis of a malfunctioning electoral system, and lawyers, lobbying groups, and politically biased courts will likely act as arbiters for the final vote tally. But beyond electoral malfunction, the 2004 election was morally bankrupt to begin with: election issues are now shaped by corporations, privately controlled media, and big money political machines. Free expression has been effectively silenced, and the result is a moribund choice between a non-elected incumbent republican whose very life blood is oil, and a democratic challenger who has steered the democrat party to the right to avoid the "embarrassment" of a liberal agenda.
Of the issues that really matter to the American people, neither Kerry nor Bush has dared to speak the truth. America is no longer a democracy. It is an oligarchy in which corporations silence individuals, and it is an instrument of capitalism which has unleashed unspeakable violence against populations whose very survival threatens its imperialist agenda.
We believe that health care, like education, housing, and legal justice, is one of the true barometers of a genuine democracy. In a genuine democracy, the candidates pledge to insure the health of every one, they protect the rights of people over and against the profits of corporations, they forbid the very possibility that anyone would ever choose between eating and paying for their medications. In a true democracy we would vote for a president that stands for universal health care, that reverses corporate greed in the medical industries, and that promises to improve the health of the entire nation and the world. We would never settle for less. We would never tolerate candidates that pump billions of dollars into the pipelines of the petrol-military-complex, and we would never settle for candidates that promote themselves on a war platform.
The America that we will wake up to on Nov 3rd will be no different than the one we have already suffered under. And it will be very different indeed. No difference because neither presidential candidate stands for universal health care, and neither has the strength of conviction to declare an end to warfare, an end to corporate greed, an end to world-wide imperialism and institutional racism. But it will be very different because this very election will implode upon its own absurdity: not only will we be unable to vote for a true candidate of the people, but our very votes will be subject to legal dispute, court room antics, and the awful scenario of a repeat of the 2000 election in which a republican biased supreme court selected the president.
We say enough. We have had enough. That is why we will protest in the streets on Nov. 3rd, and for as long as it takes to insure that a true democracy is created. That is why there shall be no peace until we have leaders that guarantee universal health care and true social justice for all. That is why we will call on Americans to transcend the stifling confines of the U.S. electoral system, and to find alternative pathways of political expression. That is why we call for rallies, marches, and civil disobedience beginning the morning of Nov 3rd at Justin Herman plaza in San Francisco, because until there is justice, universal health care, and a fair election, there will be no peace in the nation.
For more information, go to http://www.actagainstwar.org, http://www.beyondvoting.org, or http://www.barhc.org. Contact sfcodeblue@yahoo.com.