CALL TO RESIST THE USURPER

I call on all Americans who cherish democracy to engage in non-violent resistance in open opposition to the new administration. 

A majority of the American people did not vote for him.  His presidency is illegitimate in that sense, the bastard child of an unspeakably despicable Electoral College by which the popular will was thwarted.

For many weeks I have wrestled with this grave issue of conscience regarding the obligations of an American citizen: whether to respect the outcome of an election no matter who the victor.

After much soul searching, I have come to the only honest and honorable path left open: I do not recognize him as the legitimate president. 

I consider him an impostor, a pretender, and the leader of a coup against American democracy.

I will not pledge allegiance to him but pledge my loyalty instead to the Constitution.  We must oppose this sabotaging of the American election through the manipulation of Big Money. 

We must oppose a money-corrupted electoral system with all the strength in our possession: moral, physical, intellectual, and spiritual.    

He is not my president nor do I recognize his right to be president.  If non-violent resistance, including civil disobedience, proves inadequate to the task of removing him from office, the time may come when other strategies must be considered but the resistance must go on.  

His elite squad of billionaires now possesses far more political and economic power than the richest kings and queens, oligarchs and plutocrats of times past.  And yet it is we the people who are ultimately sovereign and represent true American democracy, equality, and justice. 

It is time for Americans to recognize how they are continuously behind in this contest between the wishes of the wealthiest elite and the needs and desires of ordinary people. 

The richest families have the power, the control, the monopoly of policy decision-making, and all the rest.  They can now give unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcome of any election. 

This situation has become intolerable.  It cannot be allowed to exist indefinitely like a festering wound upon the body politic. 

From Occupation America to Black Lives Matter, from the Rainbow Coalition to the Women’s Rights Movement, from every progressive group for change and hope, we must organize anew to fight the greatest menace of our times to American social, moral, and political values.

We need emails, letters, phone calls, letters-to-editors, social media postings, demonstrations, petitions, picket signs and every other kind of protest strategy to bring about change and move the nation in a new direction. 

The enemy is at the gates; nay, the enemy has entered the gates.  The richest billionaires have captured the capital city of the United States. 

They have installed their little fuehrer in the highest position of the land knowing that Dictator Donald will do their bidding. 

The working people of America will be further victimized by the Republican juggernaut.  We must not sit idly by and wait for the other shoe to drop.

It is time to organize and to fight for our rights and for American justice!! 

Do not let the usurper go unchallenged!!     

We have lived through a Revolution that founded a nation, a Civil War that ended slavery, recovered from the Great Depression and emerged victorious from two World Wars. 

However dark the moment, however far away the bright light of morning, we the American people have proven our resiliency and commitment to democracy many times over.   

We are called upon once again to face this latest challenge to American freedom. 

We are called upon to repudiate this grotesque caricature of the people’s story. 

We are called upon to recognize and resist this grave danger to our values of American freedom and democracy, warped and twisted to satisfy the selfish ends of billionaires.    

We are called upon as Americans to stand up and fight not only for our own rights but also the rights of others.  We must stand up and protest, stand up and fight for our country.  Let not 2017 be the year that the story of American democracy in the United States came to an end.

Let the year 2017 signal instead a bold new mass movement among the American people to maintain, preserve, and expand their democratic rights to every nook and cranny of the nation. 

Let us prepare to fight for our rights to live as free Americans!!