This announcement is making the rounds via e-mail...
WE HAVE GOT TO STOP THIS - THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA MUST RISE UP AND SHUT THEM DOWN IN OHIO.
If everyone devotes just 15 minutes and passes this along, we could create a tsunami of protest.
It is past midnight for Democracy in Ohio. And you must know, as Ohio goes, so goes our country.
I URGE you to read this article, if you haven't:
With new legislation, Ohio Republicans plan holiday burial for American Democracy
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
December 6, 2005.... A law that will make democracy all but moot in Ohio is about to pass the state legislature and to be signed by its Republican governor.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1607What can we do? The Democrats in the Ohio legislature are out numbered and out gunned. The bill will pass - easily. The Ohio election reform activists, the Ohio League of Women Voters, Common Cause in Ohio, are doing everything they can.
They need OUR outrage - ALL OUR VOICES to support them. A NATIONAL "SHAME ON OHIO" CAMPAIGN.
Will you make a few phone calls or send emails, and ask everyone to pitch in? PLEASE! Don't leave it to the next guy.
My friend Paddy Shaffer, whose stand-alone courage against the Delaware, Ohio (my home town) Board of Elections during the 2004 recount inspired me to come to Ohio and join in the fight, wrote the following:
Here is Citizen Paddy:
One thing I hear from people doing questionable things is, that it is not justified to voice your opinion if it is not your district, county, city, or state, where the questionable issue is happening.
In November of 2004 when I started asking questions in Delaware County, Ohio, as to why they had filed an injunction to stop the recount of the Presidential election, I was told that since I live in an adjacent county, it was not my business. I did not stop, it was my business, and I did everything I could to open up the story and let all the truths I could find be aired. The recount proceeded, even though it was a sham.
Why do I tell you this... because Ohio needs your help. We have a horrible new piece of legislation that currently looks like it will be voted on Tuesday December 13, 2005. House Bill 3 could be better titled "The Republican Voter Suppression Bill".
One Republican that spoke on the Radio today about it went on at length about how "out-of-staters should leave us alone, stop interfering, this only concerns Ohioans," etc. I would like to take this moment to invite you to help. Consider yourself not an "interfering outsider" as the Republicans (who paid for the Texas Strike Force) would and will call you, but let them know that Paddy and other Ohioans invited you to help.
Also tell them as an American, everything that happens in this country is your business, it is all our back yard.
http://www.senate.state.oh.us/senators/by_name.htmlhttp://www.house.state.oh.us/jsps/SearchbyName.jsp(the 800 number is not available for oostaters)
Add your voice, call and fill their mailboxes and voicemail over the weekend, call and fill their phone lines next week.
Write too, if you can. Ohio needs you!
1) Call or email the Republican members of the Ohio Legislature.
Tell them the whole country is watching what is happening in Ohio.
Tell them you're watching the votes on HB 3 - a threat to Democracy.
Tell them Voter Suppression is ugly and Un-American.
Tell them you are calling in to radio shows to discuss how Ohio has become a Faux Democracy and The Yahoo State
2) Call or email the Democratic members of the Ohio legislature.
Tell them to hang in there, and THANKS for standing against this terrible bill.
Encourage them to propose amendments to specific sections of HB3 and call for roll call votes so that all senators will be required to take a public position on each of the proposed amendments.
(Then we can use that information in campaigns in all House districts and in half of the Senate districts.)
3) Create national publicity! Call in to the talk shows, write letters to the editor, write to the media:
Take your money out of Ohio - the yahoo state. BOYCOTT OHIO!
This threat to democracy is the business of ALL of us.
Thanks for taking time to view this,
Make it a Powerful Day,
Paddy Shaffer
Patricia Shaffer,
Candidate for Ohio 12th District, US House Representative
(614) 761-0621
Onward, raging for what's right,
Sheri Myers
*** If you haven't yet, buy a copy of Mark Crispin Miller's Fooled Again. It can help convert the ignorant and the resistant.
(Not that you are, I mean, OTHER people!) also get How the GOP stole America's 2004 election and is rigging 2008, by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman