Defend Our Rights! Into the Streets! Shut it Down!

We, the undersigned social justice activists, peace and justice organizations, defenders of fundamental democratic rights, defenders of Black Lives, of Migrant workers, defenders of healthcare for all and in opposition to endless war, recognize that no matter who is elected president on November 3, the attack on our democratic and human rights will continue. However, we reject President Trump’s threats to ignore the Nov. 3 election results and declare himself president.

Clearly the system itself is in crisis. Corporate controlled elections are used as a distraction to their failures to protect and defend the people. Tens of millions of people have been in the streets against racist police violence. Their voices are ignored. Both parties want more police funding and ignore healthcare for all.

On Wednesday, Sept. 23 President Trump, in response to a reporter’s question declared: “We want to get rid of the [mail-in] ballots, and we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”

We can only consider President Trump’s Nov. 3 assertions as the attack on fundamental democratic rights and an effort to establish an open U.S. dictatorship.

Democratic rights have been under attack for a long time. The will of the people is denied in a system so dominated by money and corruption that neither of the major party candidates represent our needs or interests.

The defunding of the Post Office and aggressive voter suppression measures, threats to reject mail-in ballots, plans to use Republican controlled state legislatures, state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court are overwhelmingly aimed at suppressing Black, Latinx and Native American representation.

President Trump threatens to void the entire process by massive disenfranchisement of tens of millions of voters and to call in the U.S. military to suppress massive protests.

The fact that U.S. elections are largely limited to the parties of the corporate elite, that ballot access and access to the corporate media is similarly restricted, further confirms the system’s basic failings.

In this period of economic collapse, escalating pandemic, climate crisis, racist police violence and armed militias the only way forward is determined people’s mobilization to secure our rights. The corporate elite and their political parties can’t be relied on.

As collective signers of this statement we take no position on any of the 2020 presidential candidates. We are united in defense of the right of the people to freely cast their votes and that their votes will be counted.

In a November crisis of the entire system and all its institutions we see no alternative but a full national mobilization in the streets to shut down the nation entirely, including the closure of all government and corporate institutions via united and coordinated strike actions and related mass protests. Deploying the mass power of the people is the only way forward.

Prepare to Shut it Down! Into the Streets!

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Initiated by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)