corrente

When I can say it better, I will. After reading this I'm even more motivated. Direct action does indeed get satisfaction. Someone in Washington State give Paul Loeb a hug for me! A taste:

…On Election Day [2000], there were 15,000-20,000 of us statewide, holding up signs during morning rush hour, calling and recalling voters who hadn't cast their ballots, watching the polls to check off who had voted. As a result of everything we did, and all our previous efforts, not only did Al Gore carry the state by an ample margin, but after a recount, Democrat Maria Cantwell defeated hard-right Republican Senator Slade Gorton by 2,229 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast. If each volunteer accounted for just a fraction of a vote, our actions changed the outcome…

We've done part of the key work already [2004]. Grassroots canvassers have registered record-breaking numbers of likely Democratic voters, particularly in key battleground states. Americans Coming Together (ACT), which has coordinated many of the progressive efforts, together with MoveOn, expects to end up with 2.5 million new voters. Rock the Vote, less partisan, has registered close to a million young voters. The League of Independent Voters has been registering young voters at bars and clubs -- then going back again with guides to an entire slate of progressive local and national candidates. A Cleveland professor had her students register voters at a jail where people were awaiting trial, working with a local prisoner's rights group that registered 700 new voters…

But the Republicans are also registering voters, particularly through fundamentalist churches. They're organized, well-funded, and have skillfully cultivated a politics of backlash and fear. Combining both parties, a million new voters have registered in Florida alone. Since new registrants traditionally turn out far less often than those for whom voting is routine, how many and which voters show up will depend on what the rest of us do, from now through the election.

…For the moment, enough of us are united enough against Bush's destructive arrogance that we'll have decent numbers of volunteers. And most of us will recognize that just as when French voters united behind conservative Jacques Chirac to reject the threat of the ulra-rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen, this is no time for above-it-all purism, like voting for Ralph Nader. But do we recognize how much our individual electoral actions can matter when they're sufficiently multiplied? What would happen if every environmentalist or union member, every MoveOn member, everyone who feels that Bush has led this country down destructive paths, worked in some way to get out the vote? Or worked with groups like the Election Protection Coalition to ensure that every eligible voter gets the chance to vote and that every vote is counted. It's easier if we live in a swing state, or can travel to one -- we simply sign up with ACT or the local Democratic Party and plug in wherever most useful. But even if we don't, we can still contribute money for critical field efforts, and once we've done that, and then join phone banks being run by MoveOnPAC and ACT, calling swing state voters to help convince them to turn out.

via The hundredth phone call

What else can we do? Ideas? Is it too late to become an election official? Pollwatcher?