The blatant disenfranchisement of Black voters throughout the country and particularly in Florida has produced a groundswell of activism that is uniting the groups who were denied opportunities to benefit from the great prosperity of the last eight years. While the major political parties and the major media and the corporate conglomerates that control them turn their backs and act as if they didn’t notice that our votes - and the presidential election - were stolen, all of us who have been politically and economically disenfranchised are coming together.

Every day I’m hearing from activist groups on the left inviting the Black community to meet and work with them on common ground issues. We all agree that democracy is worth fighting for and that victory will come if we struggle together.

We cannot undo the Supreme Court’s political  appointment of George W. Bush to be our president. But we can and we must defeat those greedy corporate forces that favor feudalism over democracy.
Along with the support from our comrades on the left, I’m hearing from the sleeping giant that is middle class Black America. They’re waking up, and they’re mad as hell. They thought they had it made - so long as they left the masses of Black folks behind. All they had to pay for that two-car garage was to buy into white classism. The trouble was that without the masses, Black leadership was left powerless to help those who had found a foothold on the ladder to prosperity. 

You cannot separate voting power from economic power. Take San Francisco and district elections. A new coalition composed of people of color, gays and lesbians and other activists, all threatened by skyrocketing housing costs and gentrification - people whose common need for economic power was so urgent that we could overlook our differences - joined together to defeat a monstrous political machine and to return all power to the people. 

The machine is dead, and its operator in the mayor’s office can’t count on a single vote from the supervisors across the hall. The district election results send a message to office holders that if they work against the people’s interests, they will soon be out of office. 
Now we can use our political power to achieve economic power. We are demanding that the City stamp out discrimination by allowing the Black community to rise up - first by opening up avenues to capital for Black businesses and other small businesses that have been discriminated against. 

These are the businesses that will train and nurture our youth. These are the risk-taking warriors who, together with our youth, dare to demand the equal protection under the law that our Constitution promises. 

Yet even with the law on our side, we cannot win economic justice unless we defeat the forces that would disenfranchise us politically. Unless we are willing to wage a sustained, everyday struggle for both economic and political power, both in the voting booth and in the streets, the best laws, unenforced, are no more than pretty words on paper. 

Protesting Black disenfranchisement will warn the new administration in Washington, D.C., the way the tea rebellion was used in Boston to warn the King of England. By fighting for democracy, we can win both political and economic freedom. 

Democracy means that the opportunity for prosperity is open to everyone and is free of race and class barriers, whether to Blacks and other people of color or the huge percentage of whites who are mired in poverty. By fighting together, the prosperity we win will be the foundation on which we can build a lasting peace.

The Bay View strongly supports the protests planned for Washington, D.C., and around the country on Inauguration Day Jan. 20. With Ron Daniels and the Center for Constitutional Rights, we support the efforts of the Revs. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Walter Fauntroy, Joseph Lowery and all who will make Jan. 20 a Day of Resistance that will long resound through the halls of the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court. 

In his call to action, Daniels says, and I agree, “We also recognize that protest by itself is not enough. We must also act to blunt the effects of policies which we deem detrimental to people of color, women and poor and working people, and at the same time embrace initiatives for reform that will lead to authentic democracy.” And I join him and the NAACP in opposing the nomination of John Ashcroft as Attorney General. 

The struggle for democracy and freedom is on the move. Join the crusade!

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