Memories of Chile in the Midst of an American Presidential Campaign

Though I have a fairly good feeling that Bush will be fired by the American poeple, we'll all still have work to do regardless of who wins the election. Here's a great, great piece posted on Common Dreams today.

My two favorite paragraphs:

Over the last year, everywhere I have turned in the United States, I have seen signs of an amazing spirit of resistance, another sort of better America mobilizing, citizens not moved by dread but by hope, a vast and plural and creative wave of activism that I had not witnessed since... well, since the year 1970 when my country elected Salvador Allende as our President, when gentle armies of my fellow countrymen and countrywomen took their destiny into their own hands and proclaimed to the winds of history that it was possible to build socialism using democratic means, that we did not have to terrorize or persecute our adversaries in order to free ourselves from oppression.

*****

The real test will therefore come on November 3rd, the day after George W. Bush crawls back to power or John Kerry rides this wave of social transformation into the White House. That is when millions of American men and women who have mobilized in unprecedented numbers over the last months will be faced with the real dilemma of their times: Are they to pack up and go home to the old apathy and submissiveness, or do they deeply understand that, no matter who wins or loses the election, it depends on them, one by one by one and all together, that their country never turn into even a semblance of the Chile of Pinochet?