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They're excellent questions, and I'm honored that you directed them toward me as well as others.
I don't have a "whole package" answer for you, but I'll tell you the pieces rattling around in my brain.
I really believe that to make change we absolutely need massive public outcry. And it needs to come not only from the left, but from the center and the right as well. I think this is challenging, but not impossible. People of all stripes (and probably all stars, for that matter) in this country believe in the right to vote and fair elections. They need to be offered ways to take a stand for this meet these requirements, at bare minimum:
1) Are recognizable as consistent with their other beliefs.
2) Don't leave them feeling that they're siding with the enemy (which they may see as us).
3) Keep them connected to other people who are important to them, rather than placing them in isolation from their communities and systems of support when they take a stand.
4) Offer them do-able actions that fit in with their particular parts of the culture. In other words, a "teach-in" sounds too hippie-ish for the right, and rallies are not likely to be that attractive, either. But letter-writing or calling campaigns could work. Someone who's familiar with the organizing strategies of the right is needed to help devise a campaign. (Revivals for Democracy?)
How do we get there?
People evaluate the information they receive for a number of things, one of which is believability. For information to be believable, it must come from a source one trusts. Sadly, most of this country trusts the MSM, and they're not getting information on this issue there. So we have to get it to them through other sources they believe, other people and institutions they trust.
This can happen on a personal level, with information about the dangers our democracy is in being conveyed from person to person through trusting relationships. But because of the time crunches, that's not enough. We need to create strategies for moving the information outward into ever more conservative communities. My guess is that it won't travel well directly from the group of people who believe in it now to very conservative circles, but that it needs to go gradually--and very quickly--from the left toward the right.
The few people in the center or on the right who already understand the issues at least to some extent could be key in this strategy. I'm thinking of Chuck Herrin, that Republican candidate featured in Votergate (from Louisiana, I think) who tried voting for herself as a test on many machines in the warehouse and they kept registering for her opponent, and the few conservative news folk who have written good stuff). Is anyone working on bringing these folks together and seeing what makes sense to them to do about electoral reform?
I'm really stretching beyond my area of expertise here, but I'm guessing that there are some fairly conservative churches that still have real moral values, i.e., don't believe in cheating, lying, and stealing. They need to be brought on board--again, by people *they* trust, whether it's others in the religious community or their congregants or family members.
One of the challenges in all this, of course, is that so many of the crimes were perpetrated by people calling themselves Republicans. But we know that these folks are really NeoCons, and Republicans in name only. I've heard that there's growing discontent about the NeoCons having taken over the republican party. We need to figure out where the discontented Republicans are and find ways to work in coalition with them wherever possible. Will that be hard? I expect it will be hard and painful. But I think it has to be done.
I've heard that the NeoCons make life very hard for Republicans who don't obey them. I think we need to learn more about what that means, what they do to them, and set up protection for them wherever we can figure out how to do that.
Similarly, I think we need to set up systems of support for whistleblowers, to make it more possible for them to come forward. There are a lot of people out there who know a lot of damaging things.
On another note, there is a huge population of people who know enough about the stolen election to believe that it happened, but aren't doing anything. I think these are the top four reasons why they aren't acting:
1) They don't know what to do;
2) They feel so hopeless and depressed that they're frozen by those feelings;
3) They believe that the organizations they've heard of are taking care of the problem;
4) They're overwhelmed by the details of their personal lives and haven't figured out how to shift their priorities.
One way number 2 and number 4 are connected is that people--even people who will say that they believe the election is stolen--push away thoughts of the implications of this because it's too scary to think about what it means is in store for us if we don't change it. They busy themselves with their daily tasks because they're afraid of falling into despair if they really let in the reality of our current illegitimate government and what it's doing.
We need to find ways to address these reasons (and any others I've left out. One I know I've left out, though I think it affects a smaller group of people, is that they're already busy working on other important issues, like ending the occupation of Iraq, or stopping domestic violence, or, or, or...).
So how do we address these things? (Numbers below correspond with items on the last numbered list.)
1. We create do-able actions for them. Ways they can participate. (A tiny beginning of that is the new volunteer tasks page on solarbus.org. In addition to that sort of thing, we need to create *mass* actions people can take part in, probably including something like the (yellow, pink, etc.) ribbon campaigns.
2. We address the despair. Action is one of the best antidotes for it. Another is having someone to listen who can empathize without falling into despair themselves. Another is what Joanna Macy calls "The Work." We do things like create events that we publicize by asking, "Are you feeling hopeless about the state of our democracy?" But we have to then, at those events, give them reason for hope. And that means each of us needs to address the places where *we* despair.
3. Organizations must ask for the help they need, loudly and frequently.
4. I think the best way to deal with this is to get people to take one action that both breaks the pattern of inaction and also connects them with other active people and possibilities. Once people step into the flow of acting toward positive change, it often carries them into further action. But it only does that if it's a positive experience.
I'm running out of steam here. This stuff is spilling out of my head and I know I have more to say. I seem to be starting to write an article, don't I? Maybe this will get me to do it. I'll try to wind down. I just looked at your questions again and I'm not sure I even answered them!
One huge area where I think we're lacking is cohesive strategy for short- and long-term goals. I'd love to see someone put together first a list and then a colloquium of strategists on the left. Whose strategic thinking do you respect? Maxine Waters? Noam Chomsky? George Lakoff? I'd love to hear people's answer to this question.
One wall I come up against when I try to think about this stuff is this: The more effective we become, the more significant and devastating resistance we'll face. I believe that the NeoCons would rather see the world end than abandon their grip on power. What the hell do we do about that??? Again, I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
Meanwhile, I think people need to specialize. There's so much to be done. In addition to building a mass movement we need to be stopping the attacks on our rights. We need to find ways to take the offensive wherever we can. I personally am not even comfortable with that image. What I believe in is building bridges. Some days I think if we all just learned NonViolent Communication and started using it, we'd be more effective at making fast and lasting change in the world. (See book by that title by Marshall Rosenberg, or cnvc.org for more info on that.)
I can see now that the ideas are not going to stop coming out of my brain voluntarily, but my life is calling on me to stop writing for now. Argh--so much to say! It's urgent to preserve whatever's left of the evidence of the stolen election before it's destroyed. It's urgent to have criminal prosecutions of the thieves. It's urgent to raise money for the organizations struggling to do this important work. It's urgent to stop Negroponte, and, and, and...
Prioritizing is hard, isn't it, when democracy is at bright red alert? This is so long I can't even bring myself to reread it. It's all first draft, but I'm going to float it and see what happens.
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