Q: Why do you need to drive out the Bush Regime - won't they be out of office in two years and then the pendulum will swing back?

A: You wish. Bush has already embarked on three wars - Afghanistan, Iraq and now (via full support of Israel) Lebanon - with a staggering human and political cost . . . He's already done the Patriot Act, the illegal surveillance, the roundups and lawless detentions of immigrants, the presidential "signing statements", all of which have eviscerated and even abolished rights that people had long taken for granted . . . He's already done serious damage to what is supposed to be the wall of separation between church and state. . . He's already "normalized" torture as standard operating procedure in places like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the whole network of "safe houses" . . . He's already attacked science in order to uphold his theocratic agenda. . . He's already demonized gay people and attacked the right of women to abortion and packed the Supreme Court (and the federal courts more generally) with extreme right-wingers . . . He's already presided over the outrageous handling of Katrina . . . He's already - well, you get the picture.

But if that's not enough, now he's hell-bent on a war with Iran. And the whole world is now trapped inside the same nightmare we've seen before: the cooked intelligence, the phony diplomacy and the utter lack of any opposition from the Democrats. Indeed, the "hard line" on Iran is being cheered on by people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and being supported by every serious contender for president in 2008, including John McCain who also wants to increase the troops in Iraq. The only difference between the buildup to the Iraq war and the preparation for military action against Iran is that this time the consequences could be even worse. We cannot "hope for the best" and let this go down!As our Call says, "people who steal elections and believe they're on a 'mission from God' will not go without a fight." Bush does not plan on phoning in the last two years of his presidency. Lebanon is now widely seen as a dress rehearsal for Iran.  And remember - Bush refuses to remove any options including nuclear weapons from the table! Think about the possible human costs of this. The whole planet is already badly polarized between the Bush crusaders and the Islamic fundamentalists, neither of whom represent a real future for people - you want to talk about what an attack on Iran will do to that?

There needs to be another way posed to people all over the world. They need to see people in the U.S. saying No. Now. Urgently.

Q: Does protest make any difference?

A: It does -- and it doesn't. Let's start with how it doesn't. Protest doesn't make a damn bit of difference if it's "protest as usual". Protest that trims its sails to the political terms set by electing Democrats, or that tries to be respectable, or that doesn't convey that THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND MUST BE BROUGHT TO A HALT. No, protest like that doesn't really amount to much. Never has and never will.

We're talking about tens of thousands going into the streets with a clear standard -- BRING THIS TO A HALT -- and a spirited call to others to join this. Our recent statement envisions "a great wave of people unleashed from the huge reservoir of people who are deeply distressed over the direction in which the Bush regime is dragging the country and the world, moving together on the same occasion, making, through their firm stand and their massive numbers, a powerful political statement that could not be ignored: refusing that day to work, or walking out from work, taking off from school or walking out of school -- joining together, rallying and marching, drawing forward many more with them, and in many and varied forms of creative and meaningful political protest throughout the day, letting it be known that they are determined to bring this whole disastrous course to a halt by driving out the Bush Regime through the mobilization of massive political opposition."

That kind of protest could and would make a difference. It would begin to galvanize into an active political and moral force the millions who hate the way things are going but are now paralyzed. The possibility of turning things around and onto a much more favorable direction would take on a whole new dimension of reality. This would send a different message to the whole world.

Face it: no great change has ever been won without protest, without people acting "from the bottom up" to set a new agenda, without struggle, without upheaval. No. The protests in 2002 and 2003 didn't succeed in preventing the Iraq war, but they let the whole world know that Bush was acting in the face of huge public opposition. They put him on the moral defensive. And they helped to set terms for the future - as the ugliness of the war got revealed and people increasingly have come to oppose it. The problem is not that our actions have had no impact; it's that we have not acted up enough.  A new season of upsurge must start now, one that sets out to reverse the whole direction in which this society is now hurtling, and to dramatically change the course of history.

The stakes now are too high to keep going through the motions of protest as usual -- politics that say: the people in government exercise power and make the corresponding decisions and our only role is to protest certain things they do. Instead, we need to act on the truth that when people take massive and independent political action, they can change things very profoundly. People in the 60's did not ask the liberal Democrats then in office for permission to fight for civil rights and Black liberation or to protest the war. They just did it, mobilizing millions and effectively saying in the immortal words of Bob Dylan that "your sons and daughters are beyond your command." The whole ethos of a generation and a country changed.

Q: But isn't getting the Democrats elected and getting a majority in Congress the only real way to stop Bush?

A: Stop him from doing what?

• From invading Iran? The Democrats support Bush on Iran.
  
• From outlawing abortion? The Democrats are running anti-choice candidates for the Senate.
  
• From carrying out repression? The Democrats voted overwhelmingly to support the Patriot Act and have done nothing to stop the illegal spying on millions of people.From conducting the war in Iraq? Even Ned Lamont only promises withdrawal "a year from now" and he's already hedged on that - and the rest of the Democrats are doing far worse.

Our Call tells it like it is: "There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into 'leaders' who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people."

The situation is way too urgent to allow yourself to be lulled. The reality is this: without the whole political situation being radically altered by people in this country taking responsibility to act, the current fascistic direction will accelerate. Without decisively breaking out of the confines of official politics… without refusing to take orders from the likes of Charles Schumer and the other top Democrats… without refusing to set an entirely different and radically new dynamic from below, we are headed from this dark time to an even darker one. But if we do set that dynamic from below, then everyone in society -- including those on the top who today make horrific decisions unchallenged -- will be forced to respond to that.

Look, go ahead and vote if you think you must. But the question is where are you going to put your resources and energies? Into something that has disappointed you time and again? Something that doesn't even represent your demands and interests? Or into something that you not only agree with, but that carries the only chance now before us to carve out a different road and a different future? Think of what it will mean for the people of Lebanon, for the survivors of Katrina, for the immigrants under attack, and for the rest of the planet to know that there is a massive and determined movement of people in the United States taking to the streets in cities and towns across the country to demand this be brought to a halt. Imagine the start of a new dynamic - actions producing headlines reading: "Anti-Bush Protests Continue to Bring Cities to a Standstill across the Country."  What if THIS were injected into the regular string of shocking atrocities and monstrous crimes being carried out by the Bush regime?

Face it. The political will of the people is not going to find expression through the elections. Look at the state of official politics and how unacceptable the whole process and logic is. There is no other way this fall for people to make manifestly clear that they want the war ended, that they want the right of abortion protected, that they think torture is completely immoral and unacceptable, that they regard a government that abandons and then uproots the Black population of New Orleans as unconscionable. There is no other way to affirm that evolution and global warming are truths that must be acted upon, no way to voice that living under a government that engages in detaining people without trial, spies on its citizens, summarily terminates basic constitutional protections such as due process, and silences dissent is well on its way to becoming a police state - and that all this must be stopped.

And there is no other way to make powerfully clear that we refuse to be dragged into yet another hellish war and nightmarish political situation, this time with Iran!

Q: Well, you have some good points, but I think you go too far. This reference to Hitler in your Call - things aren't that bad yet, and you're going to lose people. It's too strident.

A: After enumerating the many crimes and criminal policies of the Bush Regime, our Call notes that "people look at all this and think of Hitler -- and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, for generations to come."

The question is, is that true or not? Are people thinking of Hitler? Yes, they are. Who hasn't heard that analogy come up in conversation? Are they wrong to do so Is it wrong to sound the alarm - to point to the ways in which Bush has actually begun to remake society in, yes, a fascist direction, to point to the speed of this, and to point to the logical conclusion of the whole thing - unless stopped?  Would it be more truthful to say that "people think of Hitler, but they are wrong to do so" - that the "normalization" of torture and indefinite detention, the empowerment of religious fanatics, the pervasive "above the law" surveillance and suppression of dissent and critical thinking, the military invasion of three countries (going on four) and the blithe reassurance that the deaths and suffering resulting from this are merely "the birth pangs of a new Middle East"? Would it be more truthful to say that all these are mere passing phenomena, of no larger significance or threat, expressing no directional change in society whatsoever?That has to be the point of departure.  Not "is it strident", but is it TRUE? And let's face it -- this is a very "inconvenient" truth. It is hard for people to face up to the fact that not only CAN it happen here; it's going on right before our eyes.   And it is hard for people to face up to the level of responsibility, to be honest, that this presents us with.

Q: But it's not fascism until I'm affected and besides we still have free speech, no one is putting people in concentration camps. People in this country won't move unless they are directly affected by something like the draft.

A: Denial, Denial, Denial, then freak-out & capitulate because it's too late. How many people in history have done this - passively hoped to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror they never imagined nor wished on anyone?A lot of people remember the famous statement of Martin Niemoller, the German clergyman who resisted Hitler, but too late to make a real difference.  After the war, Niemoller said, "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing; then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I said nothing. . ." and so on down the line, ending with: "then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to stand up."Niemoller didn't make his statement and sum up experience so that people could REPEAT it. He was trying to tell us that people like me sat around in denial and had the attitude that as long as it wasn't happening to me, it wasn't happening. People like me could have made a difference, and there were thousands of us, but we kept trying to accommodate to what was going on, because "if it wasn't happening to me it wasn't that bad." Niemoller said that the people who knew should have made huge sacrifices because it would have made a difference. He was saying, "If I could turn back the clock to '33, I would have stood with the ones under attack, I would have sounded the alarm, I would have stood up and resisted."

Today we are sitting in a position analogous to that of Martin Niemoller in 1933. Are we going to do what he did, or what he said he should have done?  Put yourself back in time. In 1933 Hitler was not the Hitler of 1943 -- he had not put the Jews in concentration camps yet and he disguised his anti-Semitic agenda. What if when Hitler first came to power, people came to you and said, "He's Hitler," and you said "You're too shrill. You're too extreme. You're going to turn people off." Which Niemoller do we want to be? The one who went along, or the one who said this is what I should have done?

Q: But stepping outside the normal political process seems scary.

A: Right now the "normal political process" and where it's heading is itself the scariest thing on the planet. The "normal political process" has for some years now been nothing but a "rolling coup," one with disastrous consequences for the whole world. The "normal political process" has given us electoral charades and suffocating terms of debate ("how best do we fight the 'war on terror'?") and a society locked in denial, despair, and political paralysis.

The choice before us is mass political opposition and yes, political upheaval to halt all this, or the continuation of the current disastrous direction under this regime. To go along with the latter (the continuation of the current regime and the current course) in an attempt to avoid the former (the necessary political upheaval) is in fact to become complicit with the great crimes already carried out, and still greater crimes being prepared, by this regime.

Q: But aren't there communists in World Can't Wait?

A: Yeah, there are. Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party helped initiate it. They're in it because they think it's absolutely urgent to get rid of this regime, that it would both lift a huge burden from the world and would also give people a sense of their own potential power, and they think all that would open up avenues to get to the kind of society they want. Same as a whole lot of other people in World Can't Wait which, by the way, includes Greens, Christians, Republicans, anarchists, Muslims, Jews, feminists, Democrats, pacifists, and people who claim no affiliation also think it's urgent to drive out the Bush Regime and also think it can help lead to bigger changes that they want in society, coming from their own viewpoints.

But to turn the question around, if you refuse to pitch in to October 5th, when you know that this is what has to be done just because there are communists in it, then you need to think about how well that worked back in the days of McCarthy or in Nazi Germany (when the many forces opposed to Hitler could not find the ways to unite).  And how exactly would you explain your particular brand of "abstinence-only" policy to a prisoner at Abu Ghraib or a teenager in Tennessee who desperately needs an abortion or someone under the bombing rubble of Falluja or Lebanon?  And then after you think about that, you need to actually start working on October 5. To stand aside at this point is really unconscionable.

Q: Why not focus on one crucial issue, like global warming or the war, in order to actually unite as many people as possible against Bush?

A: Fighting against each outrage and winning on important fronts - from immigrants rights to defending the right to due process, to defending abortion, evolution, against discrimination or to defend critical thinking on campus (you name it, the list goes on) - is invaluable to making real change in a world that desperately needs it. But we are fighting each and every one of these battles on losing ground - ground that is rapidly disappearing under our feet. The Bush regime has a coherent program, and absolutist world view and a mode of operating. They plan on rolling ahead, not hesitating or wavering, but rolling over whatever is in the way. You can't just nibble around the edges of this whole horrific process. And if you don't recognize how horrific this process is and where it's going and the consequences, then the whole world will pay. Whether plodding along or racing to keep up - fighting these outrages one at a time will leave us crushed in the wake of an avalanche of lies and repression. The only realistic chance of reversing this whole losing dynamic is to call forward the kind of massive resistance that can stop Bush and repudiate the entire program. The whole regime has to leave office in disgrace and accountable for the crimes they have committed - or his agenda will be carried forward by those who replace him and those who accommodate to this.

Q: But what difference will a single day make?

A: A lot! If it signals a turning point in the political direction of the country. One day won't drive out the Bush regime, but if it brings into being a powerful movement determined to achieve this and breaks open the flood gate of public opinion for this, it can be critical to changing the course of history. But only if October 5 mobilizes enough people -- a critical mass of people -- will it be sufficient to bring into being something that does not exist yet.

You make the difference in whether this happens or not ... if there are enough funds to reach enough people, if your organization is mobilized, if your church congregants are coming, if your friends and family are all debating  what they will do that day.  Tell everyone you know. History needs to be made that day - where will you be?