[Dialogue] Worth a read

[Michael & Molly Shaw]

The Micah 6:8 email address in the original email jumped right out and
grabbed me.  I believe that's the "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly
with your God" passage.  Sort of the social activist's credo.

Michael Moore in his "Get out the Vote Slacker Tour" said something to the
effect of I don't want to wake up on November 3rd, and find your state
colored red.  But, after you do your job, and Kerry wins, remember this: we
take two days off and then on November 5th, we are "all over Kerry's ass" to
make sure women get equal pay for equal work, everybody has basic
healthcare, we find a way to win the peace in Iraq..."

It makes me wonder what would happen if we understood our passion and energy
to make a progressive change were continued to create a progressive
movement.

Peace,
Michael Shaw 
Seattle

-----Original Message-----
From: Dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:Dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of KroegerD at aol.com
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 5:18 AM
To: MICAH6-8 at topica.com
Cc: steve_pardoe at ars.aon.com; Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Dialogue] Worth a read

Kerry supporter imagines the morning after

My stomach lurches at the sight of November 3 on my calendar, and I wonder 
how I will face that day if I awake and Bush has not been sent back to
Crawford. 
Will I refuse to leave my bed? Watch CNN all day? Escape at a movie theater?

Wallow in a crying jag, unable to quite explain to my three young children
why 
I am so sad? 

Or perhaps I will take my family on a little drive to Canada, sign a 
four-year lease on an apartment, take up organic farming.

I wonder how many Bush supporters dread that morning as much as Kerry 
supporters if the reverse were true and Kerry is declared the winner.

While I am hopeful for Kerry's victory (and feel sure that pollsters 
underestimate both newly registered Democrats and Kerry supporters' fury), I
feel the 
need to prepare myself for the opposite possibility. For this moment, I put 
aside the question of a close race, ballot tampering and voter intimidation
and 
assume Bush is declared a clear winner. 

I imagine that day, that Wednesday that will continue with school for my 
children, work for my husband and me, a day of appointments, car pools and 
commitments, all with an underlying dread. 

If Bush has won, I will know that this is not, as I had hoped and prayed,
the 
end of my work to stop this closed-door, partisan, fumbling and unapologetic

administration with my words and my actions, but only the beginning. And I 
will know that for another four years I will worry about an America that
bullies 
the rest of the world. I will worry about our country's safety at home and
my 
husband's safety abroad every time he takes a business trip to Europe, Asia,

the Middle East.

I will worry about my children and how they will pay for the debt that our 
country is mounting. I will worry about how my immediate family will pay for

another catastrophic illness, following my husband's experience with cancer.
I 
will worry about my friends in the military and their families left behind.
I 
will worry about my nephews, 14 and 16, so close to a military draft age. I
will 
worry about our country's pristine wilderness and the health of Americans
who 
live close to corporate polluters. I will worry about Americans' lessening 
freedoms. I will worry about my friends and their families who are barely 
getting by following corporate downsizing. I will worry about
black-and-white 
decisions made in the name of God.

I know how I will react if Kerry wins: I will experience that joyful, teary,

too-good-to-be-true state that will keep my mind checking off issues - Iraq,

education, health care, the environment, human rights, not to mention the 
United States' accountability and integrity-all inexorably and positively
affected 
by this news. I will celebrate with the thousands of us who have written 
letters, created online communities, shaken our heads in dismay, lit
candles, 
cried at ever-worsening news reports, held bake sales and attended
record-breaking 
rallies. I know that more than half the country and the vast majority of the

world's nations will rejoice as well.

And having thought all of this over, I know that regardless of which outcome

the morning brings, I will not, in fact, run from reality or bury my head in

the sand of a sunny Florida beach, but will face the day with friends and 
family who will share my great joy or my overwhelming grief, all of us
committed to 
working for a brighter American future. 

-30-

Karin B. Miller is a Minneapolis writer and a member of Mothers Opposing 
Bush. On Nov. 3, regardless of the presidential election's results, she
plans to 
greet friends and family members with a gift of coffee and Barack Obama's
book 
Dreams from My Father.

Dick Kroeger
65 Stubbs Bay Road
Maple Plain, MN 55359
952-476-6126
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