OPEN LETTER/Michael Moore

Voting As Civil Disobedience

OK, I've had it. The right wing is trying to overturn a national election because ... they didn't like the results! This must be stopped. I would like to propose a legal act of civil disobedience that could send the Right into near oblivion.

I am not a member of the Democratic Party. To me, they are a barely-tolerable version of the Republicans.

I did not vote for Clinton in 1996. I had voted for him in '92, but could not in good conscience vote for him again (NAFTA, welfare, etc.).

We had the lowest turnout ever in 1996, but the majority who could stomach that pathetic choice on the ballot went and voted for Bill Clinton. That was the will of the people. And that is the will the Republicans are trying to subvert.

All the public opinion polls--New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN--have said the same thing over and over: The American public does NOT want impeachment. Yet, Congress has decided to tell the public to take a flying %$#& and has moved ahead with the impeachment process anyway.

This is their fatal mistake and it will be their undoing.

I have never seen the American public so fed up and disgusted that they are ready to do anything now to stop this madness.

I wish our members of Congress had listened to the polls. But they haven't. So, now we have to make them listen to the other polls, the only ones they understand--the polls that are filled with voting booths on November 3.

The act of civil disobedience I am calling for is for each and every American to go to the polls on November 3 and vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress on your ballot. That's right, my fellow cynics and progressives--the only way to send a true message to the right wing is to throw every Republican out of office. I'm talking about a backlash the likes of which American politics has never seen. If you think this is something that can't happen, I need only point to the national election in Canada in 1993 when the voters threw all but two members of the Conservative Party out of Parliament. In 1995, in Great Britain, the people of Scotland and Wales removed every single member of the Tories from Parliament--that's right, EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Now it's our turn in America. Each of us must do all that we can to get our fellow citizens out to vote on November 3. The Republicans are hoping and praying that the turnout will be low, figuring that the public, especially those who had voted for and trusted Clinton, is so burned out on politicians and politics that they are just going to stay home. They know, though, that their own diehard conservative supporters WILL be at the polls, come hell or high water.

I realize a lot of you have had it and probably want to turn your back on the whole damn thing. I don't blame you. But if we don't vote, we're essentially placing our democracy in the hands of some very bad people and we will surely suffer the consequences of this for years to come.

Yes, most of the Democrats suck. I rarely vote for the sorry, wishy-washy losers. But this election is not about how I feel about them--it's about US using THEM to whack the right wing for good. Imagine if the Democrats are voted in by overwhelming numbers (when all the pundits are predicting a Republican landslide). The message would be loud and clear to all these new Democrats--THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WANTS THE AGENDA OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT REMOVED FROM THE HALLS OF OUR UNITED STATES CONGRESS!

Yes, we would then have to stay on these Democrats to make sure they behave and vote the way we want them to. But that's a whole lot better than allowing individuals to stay in office who want to subvert the will of the American people because they would actually prefer a theocracy over a democracy.

I wish we had more than two political parties and I will continue to work toward that goal. Two parties cannot represent the broad spectrum of political thought in a country of 270 million people.

But that is not the mission before us. If you want to stop this witch hunt, if you want Congress to start focusing on the REAL problems facing the country and the world, then the ONLY way this nonsense is going to stop is to throw the bums out.

Find out who the Democrat is who is running in your district on the Internet at www.democrats.org/action/ and then call up his/her headquarters and volunteer to help turn out the vote.

Then get out and vote November 3. Hold your nose if you have to. This is a one-issue election and if you want the impeachment stopped--and I assure you, you have the power to stop it at 8:01 PM that evening of November 3--you must remove the Republicans in your districts.

I can think of a lot of reasons why Clinton should not be President. Staining a blue dress from The Gap is not one of them. Enough is enough.

Yours,
MICHAEL MOORE

Michael Moore's book, Downsize This! is available in paperback, his film on the "economic recovery," The Big One, was released on video in October and work has begun on a new TV show "similar in spirit to TV Nation," and funded by Channel 4 of Great Britain. For details or to join Mike's Militia see http://www.michaelmoore.com/