Defend Democracy – Protect The Results Rallies Today

Just as everyone had predicted, Banana Republican Cheeto Benito, our wannabe tinpot dictator, at the White House at 2:20 a.m. Eastern, said it was “a major fraud on our nation” that he hadn’t been declared the winner. “As far as I’m concerned, we already have won this,” he said.

The media immediately pushed back against this false narrative. News organizations rebuke Trump on election results claim:

The words were barely out of his mouth before television anchors rushed to refute him.

CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell said Trump was “castrating the facts” by “falsely claiming that he has won the election and disenfranchising millions of voters whose ballots have not been counted.”

“Donald Trump is losing right now both in the popular vote and the electoral vote and there are many states left to be called,” ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said.

Said NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie, “The fact of the matter is we don’t know who won the election.” Guthrie had interrupted Trump’s speech to tell viewers that several of Trump’s statements were not true.

“This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it,” said Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace.

His Fox colleague, former George W. Bush administration aide Dana Perino, said, “he just went a step too far.” Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted that it was “deeply irresponsible” for Trump to claim victory.

The Associated Press said that at the time of Trump’s statement, its count had Trump winning 213 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden’s 225. The AP has determined that it’s too early to declare a winner in several states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan.

It was an explosive moment after a frazzled nation had sat through hours of uncertainty. Media outlets had warned for weeks that Americans would have to be patient waiting for a decision in the bitter campaign between Biden and Trump, and repeatedly drove that point home through their election night coverage.

Biden had spoken to supporters at 12:42 a.m. in Delaware, expressing confidence in his campaign and saying he wanted to see every vote counted.

“Keep the faith, guys, we’re going to win this,” Biden said.

Trump had immediately responded with a tweet saying “we are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the election. We will never let them do it.”

Millions of people following election coverage on the East Coast went to bed before all the drama, and without knowing the answer to the question they had waited hours for: Who’s going to be in the White House for the next four years?

The president also expressed anger at news organizations for not declaring him the winner in Georgia and North Carolina, where he held leads. CNN’s John King explained that there was still doubt given there were votes still to be counted in regions where Biden was expected to do well.

It’s time for Americans to rise up and defend our democracy against Trump’s attempted coup. ‘Protect the Results’: Americans threaten protest if Donald Trump interferes in US Election 2020:

[D]ozens of activists in the country are readying themselves to claim the streets and raise their voices against the current President Donald Trump if he interferes with the election process.

Cheeto Benito has done this, and will continue to do so.

Nearly 130 groups from Planned Parenthood to Republicans for the Rule of Law have come together to form a colaition titled ‘Protect the Results’ through which they have organised nearly 400 events in different parts of the country where people will take to the streets and peacefully protest against if President Trump interferes or manipulates the election results.

“We can’t assume that Donald Trump will respect the peaceful transfer of power” said Sean Eldridge, the founder and president of Stand Up America, a group that started organising this coalition in June.

The activists fear that the President may interfere in the vote counting process and use his muscle and economical power to try to turn the election results and/or refuse to step down if his Democratic rival Joe Biden wins the lections — a possibility many independent polls are supporting.

“We are very concerned that Trump is going to try to steal this election, using his position of power,” said Kaela Bamberger, an organizer with Shut Down DC, which plans civil action that may include stopping traffic in the U.S. capital.

Hinting towards the uprising in Belarus and Russia, Bamberger said, “The longer the person claims to be in power and tries to force their position of power to be extended, the more likely it is there’s nothing to be done about it.”

The activists decided to group up and be ready for any possibility after Trump hinted that he would not cooperate if he loses the elections to “Sleepy Joe.”

Another student-led group “We count on Us” is planning hundreds of peaceful demonstrations in the city hall and are ready to make regular and peaceful checks to make sure nobody takes over the ballot centers by muscle power and “no line is crossed.” The group is also urging citizens to exercise caution and patience, given the current pandemic. “Because of the pandemic, things look different this year, and that will require us to be more patient than usual,” said Neha Desaraju of the Sunrise Movement, a group which has joined the coalition.

Indivisible has set up a Protect The Results website listing the protest rallies around the country. (screenshot).

There are no events currently listed for Arizona, but you can change this today. Defend democracy, or you will lose it.

The Sunrise Movement has a link to We count on Us. “If Trump tries to steal the election, we need to be ready to lead a mass strike to make sure every vote is counted. We make this country run and if we all refuse to go to work or school, there’s no way for Trump to govern.”

The lead­ers of mul­ti­ple Chica­go-area unions issued a joint state­ment on Mon­day com­mit­ting to take any non­vi­o­lent action nec­es­sary — up to and includ­ing a gen­er­al strike — to defend democracy. “We Won’t Let Him”: Unions Nationwide Are Planning a General Strike If Trump Tries to Steal the Election:

“Every sin­gle vote has to be count­ed,” says Sta­cy Davis Gates, vice pres­i­dent of the Chica­go Teach­ers Union (CTU). ​“We are pre­pared to be in sol­i­dar­i­ty to ensure that our democ­ra­cy is pro­tect­ed in this moment.”

The CTU, Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (UE), SEIU Local 73, SEIU Health­care, Cook Coun­ty Col­lege Teach­ers Union, Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Gov­ern­ment Employ­ees Local 704 and Ware­house Work­ers Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee are call­ing on ​“all unions, com­mu­ni­ty, faith and civic orga­ni­za­tions, and pub­lic lead­ers to unite in vig­i­lance and readi­ness to defend our rights as the votes in the Novem­ber 3 ^rd elec­tion are cast and counted.”

The Chica­go unions are part of Labor Action to Defend Democracy (LADD) — a recent­ly formed nation­al net­work of union mem­bers orga­niz­ing the labor movement’s response to the threat of a stolen election.

Alex Han, a Chica­go-based labor orga­niz­er help­ing coor­di­nate LADD, says the net­work seeks to tap into the unique pow­er of unions and work­ers to not only protest in the streets, but to cause seri­ous eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion, if necessary.

LADD has put togeth­er var­i­ous resources—includ­ing sam­ple res­o­lu­tions and a mod­el let­ter to politi­cians — that unions can use to ampli­fy calls to pro­tect the elec­toral process. In the past three weeks, over twen­ty cen­tral labor coun­cils, state labor fed­er­a­tions, nation­al and local unions have issued res­o­lu­tions express­ing firm oppo­si­tion to any efforts to sub­vert, dis­tort or dis­re­gard the final results of the pres­i­den­tial election.

The Rochester Labor Coun­cil is specif­i­cal­ly call­ing on the nation­al AFL-CIO to pre­pare for a gen­er­al strike, while the Ver­mont AFL-CIO plans to hold a gen­er­al strike vote on Novem­ber 21 should Trump lose and refuse to con­cede. The Seat­tle Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion will also con­vene an emer­gency meet­ing of its board of direc­tors with­in a week of the elec­tion to con­sid­er next steps for pos­si­ble action.

“The labor move­ment knows how impor­tant it is to defend democ­ra­cy in this coun­try. We are demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions,” UE Pres­i­dent Carl Rosen explains. ​“We’re pre­pared to do what­ev­er it takes to make sure democ­ra­cy is sus­tained. We know what it’s tak­en in oth­er coun­tries that have faced tin­pot dic­ta­tors try­ing to stay in office after the peo­ple of their coun­try have vot­ed them out.”

As Rosen indi­cates, unions around the world are often the first line of defense against would-be dic­ta­tor­ships … “The labor move­ment has a proud his­to­ry of stand­ing up for democ­ra­cy and fair elec­tions around the world,” says SEIU Local 73 Pres­i­dent Dian Palmer. ​Citizens across the coun­try are vot­ing like nev­er before. We are uti­liz­ing the rights afford­ed to us to vote ear­ly, in per­son, and by mail. And those votes should be counted.”

We believe in the pow­er of the peo­ple — the mul­ti-racial, work­ing-class major­i­ty,” the Chica­go unions’ state­ment reads. ​Don­ald Trump wants to steal this elec­tion. We won’t let him.”