BETRAYED DEMOCRATS MANIFESTO

THE BETRAYED DEMOCRATS MAINIFESTO

A Strategy for Betrayed Democratic Voters

OUR GOALS

1. We seek elected officials who care about us and will support policies that enable us to care for each other so as to meet our spiritual, creative, and material needs.

2. We want acts and conduct abroad that foster our interdependence and interconnectedness with human beings everywhere and meet our common need for peace and justice for all.

3. We want the US to withdraw our troops from Iraq NOW. We demand that our elected representatives use their constitutional power to vote against further funding of this war and against funding for the looming attack on Iran, and to vote only for funding a prompt orderly safe withdrawal of troops.

4. We insist on foreign policies that will provide a sustainable peaceful just life for all humans on this planet. We insist on having elected officials who will deal promptly and creatively with the looming, coinciding crises of nuclear proliferation, oil and energy shortages, over fishing, deforestation, global warming, ecological destruction, overpopulation, the compounding differences in wealth between the rich and the poor, pollution, and a fragile economy

5. We are willing to give up our unnecessary material goods and to make the changes and sacrifices in our personal lives that implementation of the above demands will make necessary.

6. We demand open access to all information necessary for us to govern ourselves wisely and a clear open public discussion of all issues of public concern, specifically including the most controversial: Israel-Palestine, the Israel Lobby, and an opening to public access all of the classified facts about the tragedy of the 9-11 World Trade Center.


7. We have become aware that it is the controlling financial oligarchy with its media that is determined to maintain the war. This is the same financial oligarchy that provides campaign funds to our elected representatives. We demand that our elected representatives confront this financial oligarchy, reject its financial contributions to their campaigns, their trips abroad, and their lobbyists, and betray the interests of that financial oligarchy instead of betraying us voters.

OUR STRATEGY OF ACTIVE NONVIOLENCE TO ACHIEVE OUR GOALS

We recognize at long last that the Democrats, bought and paid for by the money of the rich and powerful, vote on all important issues with the Republicans. We now realize that the rich and powerful constitute a governing financial oligarchy that now controls both the Republicans and the Democrats. We note that with each additional outrageous act of George W. Bush, the puppet of the Oligarchy, the Democrats simply cringe, acquiescence, and fund even more outrageous acts.

We acknowledge that there are only two viable political parties in the US. Despite its betrayal of us voters, the Democratic Party is the more likely of the two to make changes to meet our needs. We reject the self serving propaganda of the Democratic Leadership Committee that the Democrats are “the lesser evil” that it uses to get our votes and then to betray us. We perceive that the power of the Democratic Party to deceive us, to betray us, and to perpetuate Oligarchic control depends on two things: 1. the money of the Oligarchy for their campaign costs. 2. Our votes. The tragedy is that our votes for the “lesser evil” enable the Democrats to continue to do bad things.

We are determined to overcome our fear, our despair, our alienation from each other, and our silent immobilization. We choose to act constructively together.

THEREFORE

We the undersigned Democrats, in a campaign of active nonviolence in the tradition of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., do hereby pledge to withhold our votes from each Democratic candidate unless that candidate makes a sincere credible pledge to honor and implement each and every one of our goals. We shall monitor every single vote that each elected person makes, and we shall work actively to defeat that representative if he or she breaches his pledge.


Dated: September 9, 2007

Douglas R. Page dougpage2@earthlink.net