There will be a rally at Halifax Mall in downtown Raleigh (16 West Jones Street) Saturday, November 7th (which also happens to be the 103rd anniversary of the anti-capitalist Great October Socialist Revolution in the former Russian Empire in 1917) 1 - 3pm "to demonstrate mass, peaceful support for counting all the votes and respecting the results. Join us in celebrating our democracy and protecting our votes." Participants are asked to wear masks and maintain social distance. This is being organized by Team Democracy, Carolina Federation, National Domestic Workers' Alliance, NC Association of Educators, NC AFL-CIO, UNITE-HERE Local 23, Fight for $15, Black Workers for Justice, Durham for All, Down Home NC, Carolina Jews for Justice, Sunrise Movement, Siembra NC, Piedmont Rising, United Electrical 150 - the NC Public Service Workers Union, Southern Workers Assembly, Triangle Showing Up for Racial Justice, Guilford for All, and others. For more information see:
www.mobilize.us/carolinafederation/
facebook.com/events/354726659170975
I think there were similar protests in Durham and Hillsborough earlier in the week and people are observing the vote counting.
The votes for each office should be accurately counted and the winners installed in office, and there should be action in the streets if that doesn't happen, not only in courts, to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election. Once the election is safely over, holding the president's "feet to the fire" can begin (preferably from the start of his term, as happened in 2017), though I think many of the people fired up over the Trump administration will stay silent while the media and some prominent leftists will take a more friendly and cooperative stance towards the executive branch if Biden-Harris wins, and there are few national level organizations not coopted by the Democrats to organize resistance. Whether the president is Biden or Trump there is likely to be continuing police brutality, repression, loss of civil liberties, corporate welfare, anti-unionism, austerity, climate crises, corruption, coups, and the current wars will continue and more might be started, but under Biden there would be fewer protests and the media would hide what is going on or they would cover it, but with less shared outrage and sympathy, to return things to Clinton-Bush-Obama "normal." NPR even briefly referred to the US anti-war movement during the last four years, but I don't remember them ever saying those words under George W Bush or Obama. I have yet to hear them refer to Green and Socialist candidate Howie Hawkins or any other 2020 third party candidate for president, though I did hear about two references to the existence of the Green Party, mentioning Democratic Party attempts to remove the Green Party from ballots and when saying that there were not any third party choices this year. Four years ago they mentioned Green candidate Jill Stein by name only after the election was over. If eight years of Obama-Biden imperialist neoliberalism and inadequate response to climate change resulted in the last four years, how will things stand after four to eight more years of neoliberal Democratic rule with inadequate resistance from the left, economic and health crises, ever more obvious climate change, and the rise of China and other competitors in an increasingly multipolar world? In four years there will again be the demand that Americans vote for the supposedly "lesser evil," covering over what the Democrats have done, there probably won't be a strong third party challenger, and there is the possibility of someone like Trump, but more effective at governing, and possibly less "isolationist," coming up. It seems naïve to willfully misleading to assert that Biden will change his spots much as president, and the Republicans will probably control the Senate, as well as the Supreme Court. If I'm not mistaken the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress at the start of Obama's first term, and so had a free hand to carry out the sweeping progressive policies they supposedly want to implement now. On the other hand maybe things are coming to such a point that public anger won't go back underground for long if Biden wins.
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