I went to the rally at the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, today, against the voter fraud in Ohio (as part of the coordinated 50-state day of action.) I introduced myself to the rally organizers as the 2004 Green Party candidate for Michigan State University Board of Trustees (see
http://burgisformsuboard.spmichigan.org) and I got to speak from the podium towards the end. (Mostly Democrats in attendance, but very pro-Green given Cobb's role in the re-count in Ohio). This is the speech I gave:
"Hi, like he said, my name is Ben Burgis and I was the 2004 Green candidate for MSU Board of Trustees. It's a fairly strange situation when John Kerry, who just had the election stolen from him, is lying down and playing dead, while the third parties have to pick up the slack.
This stolen election in Ohio is just the tip of the iceburg, as far as the whole process of eliminating what scraps of democracy we're supposed to have in this country. People have asked here today why the election fraud hasn't been covered in any real way in the major media. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that every single cable news channel is owned by one of four giant corporations, and all of them are having their interests served by the Bush regime right now.
"Bush says he has earned 'political capital' as a result of his supposed 'victory' and that he intends to spend it. Think about that. In the last four years, he's illegally invaded foreign countries, cluster bombed the people of Iraq, set up concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib where detainees are routinely tortured and raped, and pushed through the Patriot Act to let FBI agents poke around in the library records of private citizens. That was just the first four years. Imagine what he'll do now that he has 'political capital.' We got an indication when his top State Department official in Latin America openly talked about plans for 'regime change' in Cuba in the next four years. Check it out. Its a matter of public record.
"Now, I wish I thought the Dems in the Senate were going to fight back this time instead out capitulating again, but we all now that they aren't going to. So its very important to continue massive resistance after the stolen election is certified. We need to take it to the streets at the inagguration. In the Ukraine, when they have stolen elections, they have general strikes. That's the right idea.
"We need to continue massive resistance on every level. In Iraq, the soldiers of the 343rd Quartermaster Company mutinied, refusing to go out on what they considered to be a suicidal mission. They had every right to do so. All orders in Iraq are illegal, since according to the Nuremburg precedent, the U.S. constitution and foreign treaties signed by the U.S. government, it is an illegal war. This is an example that we need to do everything possible to encourage, supporting resistance within the military while resisting here at home. To paraphrase Che Guevara's famous comment about Vietnam, we need 'one, two, three, many' 343rd Quartermaster Companies to grind the war machine to a halt and help bring down the unelected Bush regime."
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