Found on the door of a college professor:
The elections have enshrined Bush and the vicious agenda he spearheads. An agenda justified by LIES and enforced by naked power, where tens of thousands of U.S. troops are sent to kill and be killed for U.S. empire. A war that has taken the lives of 100,000 Iraqi people. An agenda that calls dissent "treason," where legal rights to trial, privacy and protection from profiling and surveillance are torn away under the "with us or against us" terms of a growing police state.
No matter how much Bush and his team like to hide from, distort and re-fashion the truth, no matter how many dirty tricks they pull, no matter how they try to intimidate or coerce, spin or distract, they cannot change the fact that there are millions and millions of us in this country who know this whole direction is DEAD WRONG! The war is unjust! The deaths are immoral! Any electoral "mandate" they claim for this direction is illegitimate!
We refuse to allow the world to be cast under the cold shadow of a "new Rome" or to accept a razor-wire police state at home. We refuse to accept the terms of an election where the continued occupation of Iraq is not to be questioned and the Patriot Act should be enhanced or repaired. Our will to stop this course will not be stifled.
There are millions of us who THINK. Who don't want to be the cops of the world. Who refuse to go back to Jim Crow and a legal underclass—whether African American or Arab, Muslim and South Asian. Who refuse to let the religious right control our private lives and make fundamentalist Christian morality the law of the land.
Not in Our Name embraces a wide spectrum of political views, including about the efficacy of voting. But all of us unite around the need for massive resistance in the streets and broadly throughout society. We agree that we must repudiate and STOP this course of war and repression, including efforts to steal the election and violate people's rights.
We call on everyone who hates this course and sees the danger - millions and millions across the country—to act with determination and firmness, to refuse to be silent or to acquiesce to terms that tell us we must support their "war on terror" for a hollow promise of "safety." We must repudiate their plan and their logic, and stand with the people of the world—no matter who is elected and no matter what the empire-builders have in store. They are thinking and acting outside the ballot box - so must we.
Because the stakes are so high and so much is at stake, we must act and organize in bold, creative ways that reach and unleash the millions who are not yet in motion. There needs to be a sea of resistance, where people connect and organize with each other and the fascist-types know they don't have a free hand. A sea where opposition to this agenda, even the simple word "NO," is seen everywhere—on shirts, posters and stickers in home windows, offices and shops—emboldening people on our side and signaling support for those under attack. And there must be determined manifestations in the streets beginning even before the final vote tally and growing each day as events intensify.
The future of humanity is what's being fought over - and we must not let the new Roman emperors have it! We must dare to change the course of history.
It's fun to roleplay. Sometimes I like to imagine what it would be like if I were Superman. Other times I pretend I'm the mayor of my own city. Some times I am a dashing knight, searching for the amulet with my trusty steed. But then I turn the computer off and go back to reality.
Unfortunately, these people live in their delusional fantasy world. They imagine themselves to be revolutionaries, fighting against the tyrannical Bush empire. They are the Rebel Alliance. Bush is Emperor Palpatine.
Strangely, they turn a blind eye to true tyranny. I don't see them protesting in North Korea, China, or the Middle East. Instead they make up tyranny of their own. Perhaps it's simply to fill the time. Perhaps they do so because they fear the right is... well, right. Or perhaps they invent tyranny here so they don't feel guilty about ignoring it elsewhere. I don't really know... I don't claim to understand them. I try to ground myself in reality as much as possible. Fantasy is fun, and we all indulge in it, but I don't want to live in it.