A post-election note from the DAGR Chair
It’s been five days since the Election. You haven’t heard much from your ExCom and you may be wondering if we’ve slunk away, tail between legs, embarrassed in defeat.
Not so!
Okay, it did take a couple of days to recover from what we now think of as elect-lag. Staying up all night -- and dragging home if that all-nighter was at an outside event -- followed by another hour or so of BBC or CNN to catch the last bad news takes a toll. Floppy body, mush mind!
Then the need to reach out takes over, and the phone, email, web articles and Facebook frenzy kicks in. Share the grief! Perform the post mortem! Sign a petition!
Do what you will, it’s still surreal!
If you, like me, get your TV English news from BBC, you may be struck this weekend by the notion that Trump may not be such a bad choice after all. And it comes back to you that during the campaign, you noticed they hadn’t seemed sufficiently terrified of him. Now, THAT’s surreal!
Otherwise, reactions are mixed. Some of us just want to accept it and move on. Fair enough! It’s been an exhausting campaign. Others -- and I’m in this camp -- unload our angst by increasing activity and encouraging others to do the same.
There are a lot of options for action now. We’re trying as quickly as possible to get some ideas up on the DA website > Greece > News page. US and state laws provide many remedies, and they fall into a logical sequence.
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track your own ballot and make sure it’s counted
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monitor and make sure your state’s vote count is accurate
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petition the Electoral College to elect the popular vote winner
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draw stateside friends into the discussion in social media and emails
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organize our DAGR country plan and timeline for 2017
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help decide if we should go to an inaugural party or hold an anti-inaugural
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bone up on the issues a Trump presidency is likely to attack
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read about voter suppression in ‘red’ states once VRA was curtailed
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advocate for the National Popular Vote Compact in your home state
That may seem like a lot of work, and some like No. 3 have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. But each action has its own optimal time and unique rewards.
Know that by participating in any or all of these actions, we’ll deepen our knowledge of our system. That means we’ll be better prepared to hold the line on crucial programs (e.g. Social Security) and fight off future assaults on voter enfranchisement.
Of major importance, especially by social media, we can reach out and support those energetic, young, first-time voters who got slapped down. We can encourage them and offer something constructive to do when the weather goes cold and street protests peter out.
ExCom will be meeting soon to assess our performance past and our road ahead. We’ll also put up a survey to learn what you’d like to do as a member of DAGR and what you think the Party as a whole should do.
For now, our approach is the one Elizabeth Warren, among others, shared this week.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/10/elizabeth-warren-faces-president-trump-with-rachel-maddow-no-compromise-on-bigotry.html
Stronger Together!
Karen Lee, Chair