My good friend Delphine Herbert has led a small group of peace activists in Marion County, Florida, called Marions for Peace, for quite some time now. It seems her and the tireless activists of Marions for Peace, who stood on street corners for many months now (enduring threats and insults, yet far more praises and thumbs-up), are finally seeing their efforts pay off.
The South Marion Citizen did an editorial today on the subject of Iraq, but also of the larger issue of the lack of a two party system in Marion County, Florida, and the United States.
It is truly a wake-up call to the far too many (though certainly not all) folks inside the Democratic Party in Marion County (and elsewhere) who are content to bemoan the problems the Republicans have caused and bicker over parliamentary procedure, rather than actually take sorely needed physical political action in their individual communities.
Here's the South Marion Citizen article:
Change Begins at Home
Locally and across the country, realization that the Iraqi war has been going on for three years is coming to light. The Citizen prints almost all the letters it receives and the numbers of writers who question the wisdom of staying there are increasing. Even conservatives who support the president tend to disagree with that part of his foreign policy.
Last Sunday, a small group of independent war protesters gathered at their usual Ocala street corner to light candles in support of bringing troops home from Iraq and finding peaceful solutions to international differences. Around the nation, other groups of like mind conducted similar ceremonies.
So far, there has been no nationwide effort to pressure the administration to reconsider its war policy. But that could change if dissatisfaction continues to grow.
In the late 1960s, the anti-Vietnam War movement started small and gained momentum until Richard Nixon accelerated its pace, when his Watergate burglars got caught with their hands in the Democrats' file cabinet.
Many say that Vietnam and Iraq aren't the same -- and they're not. Different time, place, reason and president.
But we have seen lies; the Gulf of Tonkin incident -- weapons of mass destruction. Lyndon Johnson wanted a troop build-up to fight communism -- Bush says it will be up to the next president to finish building a democracy in Baghdad. So, it looks like this administration is in it for the long haul -- U.S. troops were committed to Southeast Asia from 1965 to 1973 -- officially.
Democrats were in power in the beginning and the `Nam war cost the party dearly in popularity. The Republicans started this one, Bush's popularity is waning and an in-between presidential elections ballot is coming up.
Even with his cronies' shenanigans, the president isn't likely to be embarrassed out of office. But, if the Democrats want to make a stab at re-establishing a two-party system in America, their time is before the next presidential election.
The Republicans started at the grassroots level to unseat Jimmy Carter and other Democrats long before Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy. The national organization worked to fund, support and elect local candidates to school boards, city commissions and dog catchers, so they would have a strong political base to draw votes from during the presidential year.
It has worked well, but the Democrats seem to be clueless -- from national party leaders down to the few who are struggling for political life in Marion County. In the Washington stable, all the horses are jockeying for congressional and presidential position and there seems to be no effort to win any races at state and local levels.
A few diehard Democratic clubs in the Corridor have started to talk up the November elections and bring in speakers who are trying to qualify for the few county seats that are up for grabs. But these little pockets of opposition are using their own initiative, with little help from the state organization. It appears to be busy fighting uphill battles with well-funded Republicans who have a statewide network of county machines to produce local votes.
While those who get elected get the credit and limelight, each vote generated to put a candidate into national, state, county and city office is the result of hometown political networking. The principle of one person, one vote still works; but one party has lost sight of the small picture.
And in the current state of affairs, that lack of vision has rendered one party ineffective and the two-party system is barely evident in Washington, Tallahassee or Marion County. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats only by 8,300 voters. With 34,500 "other" voters in the mix, they should be able to find a seat or two on the county commission or school board this year.
It's not that the somewhat Republican-heavy administrations in D.C., or locally, have done a bad job of taking care of taxpayer business -- or have they? The founding fathers knew that rulers who had no opposition grew to do as they darn well pleased.
To prevent that, checks and balances were built into our governing bodies and a two-party system evolved that created a dynamic, which drove the compromise that tempered representative government. With the current lack of power missing in one camp, that driving force is being lost at all levels.
There is dissatisfaction with the White House, Tallahassee and Marion County. But change begins small, in the backyard, with each voter ignoring the double talk and empty rhetoric, and digging to figure how an elected official will actually stand on an issue like schools, roads, buses and growth.
It will also take some serious and politically savvy opposition candidates to run successful campaigns and get elected. Time is running out and few are making the rounds in this county.