[SfN] This was written by Michael Moore

[daria karetnikov]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 21:22:36 -0600
From: Arun Bhalla <bhalla at uiuc.edu>
To: wolfgang at wolfgang.groogroo.com, karetnik at uiuc.edu, ieyman at uiuc.edu
Subject: Fwd: Mike's Message 


October 31, 2000

Dear Vice-President Gore:

Hi! How are you! It's been awhile since we've talked. Everything OK?

Sorry. Enough teasing. I've been getting a lot of calls from your
friends and supporters. Man, are they freaked out! They actually think
you are going to lose. Talk about no faith in the quarterback! Hasn't
anyone told them that Bush didn't even win his OWN Republican primary
in Michigan? "Swing state?" Ha!

According to your people, all Ralph or I have to do is wave a magic
wand and the Nader voters will "come back to Gore."

Look, Al, you have screwed up -- big time. By now, you should have
sent that smirking idiot back to Texas with a copy of "Hooked on
Phonics" in his hands. You should have wiped the floor with him during
the three debates.  But you didn't. And now your people are calling
ME, asking ME to do the job YOU'VE failed to do! Jeez, I've got enough
on my plate these days, between work and the holidays coming up and
the leaves I should be raking -- and now I'm supposed to save YOU?
Unbelievable!

If you recall, I sent you a personal letter back in June asking you
why I should vote for you instead of Ralph Nader for President. You
sent me a four-page reply, thanking me for my "provocative letter,"
and outlining the VERY reasons that I knew would find you in the
predicament you are in this week.

There is something I think you don't understand. You don't realize
that it's YOU and the Democrats that are responsible for the
possibility of Bush winning next Tuesday. Instead of being men (we
aren't putting any women on the ticket yet, are we?) and owning up to
your mistakes, you and your people are blaming some rumpled senior
citizen lawyer who is only following his conscience. I mean, really!
Ralph Nader has devoted his entire life to making the rest of our
lives better. Because of him we have the Clean Air Act, the Clean
Water Act, the EPA, OSHA, airbags and seatbelts, the Freedom of
Information Act -- the list goes on and on. What have YOU done to save
a few million lives?

Yet, you attack this decent man and those who support him. Let's get
one thing straight -- we didn't leave you, YOU left us. You and your
"New Democrats" abandoned the poor, the working class, and the middle
class.  Your support for NAFTA has cost hundreds of thousands of
people -- your very supporters -- their jobs. In my hometown of Flint,
32,000 GM jobs have been lost since you and Clinton took
office. That's 5,000 MORE GM jobs than were lost there during the
ENTIRE 12 years of Reagan/Bush! Are you even aware that two-thirds of
the school children in Flint live below the federal poverty level? And
you wonder why the race in Michigan is so close!  These people you
left behind had nowhere else to go EXCEPT to Nader -- unless they
choose to just stay home on Election Day, which is what the majority
of them will do.

You and the Democrats have created the monster know as "W." There were
more layoffs in the U.S. last year than in any year in the past
decade. There were more family bankruptcies filed last year than any
year in our history.  The average family carries more personal debt
now than any time since the Great Depression. And yet, you cynically
take a bus ride through the Midwest calling it "The Great Lakes
Prosperity Tour." Has it crossed your mind why the majority of the
"swing states" where the election is too close to call are in the rust
belt that begins in Missouri and extends to Pennsylvania?

Your attempts to scare Nader voters have only backfired on you. Once
NARAL started running its anti-Nader ads in Minnesota, Ralph jumped up
to 10% in the polls! People are not stupid. You can howl all you want
about how "Bush will appoint Supreme Court justices like Scalia and
Clarence Thomas."  But we the people know who voted to PUT that
right-wing nut Antonin Scalia on the court. It was YOU, Al Gore, the
senator from Tennessee who stood up and voted "YEA!" the day Scalia
was confirmed in the Senate! If we ever lose Roe v. Wade, YOU are the
one with the blood on your hands, and those of us, including Ralph
Nader, who fought the Scalia nomination, will never forget the
jeopardy you and your fellow Democrats put women in with that vote.
And when 11 of your Democratic senators voted to put Clarence Thomas
on the Court, giving him the slim 52 to 48 majority he needed, your
party (which was in control of the Senate at that time!) threatened
every woman in America. For the love of God, do NOT have the audacity
to come at us now with your scare tactics about how women may lose the
right to chose. You have no credibility.

So, what do we do? One thing is certain -- George W. Bush MUST NEVER
SIT IN THE OVAL OFFICE. Having met both you and George W. in person,
and realizing that the two of you are in agreement on most issues, I
did come away with the distinct feeling that there IS one difference
between you and the governor of Texas.

George W. Bush is a banal, despicable, and corrupt human being.

And you, sir, are not. Don't get me wrong -- you believe in a lot of
evil things (how sad I was to watch you during the debate as you sat
there in silent agreement while Bush licked his lips at the thought of
executing three men). However, as a human being, I believe you are a
decent guy, a good father and husband, and somewhere deep down you
have a heart and a conscience. I honestly believe that about you. So
what happened?

I want Ralph Nader to get millions of votes on Tuesday. I have seen
the response to Ralph at numerous huge rallies across the
country. There is a progressive movement afoot in America and it needs
to explode into a majority movement -- beginning now, not four years
from now.

I truly believe Nader is closer to how the majority of Americans feel
than either you or Bush. Go ahead, ask around. The majority of
Americans want REAL health insurance, a living wage, a chance to be
represented by a union, less money wasted on the Pentagon, and no one
wants to wear clothes made by a 12-year old in an Asian "free trade"
sweatshop. If the media and you hadn't just woken up to the Nader
campaign, if you had welcomed him into the debates, we all would have
been discussing THESE issues months ago -- and you would have quickly
learned how Americans feel about them.

OK, so you missed an opportunity to do the right thing. Now you are
asking us to pull you out of your mistake and prevent the reign of
terror a Bush presidency will bring us.

How do you want to do this? What will you give the working poor and
the young people who have decided to desert you next Tuesday? I am
willing to discuss anything short of Ralph not getting 5% of the
vote. He can obtain that goal AND Bush can be defeated. They are not
mutually exclusive.

But the ball is in your court, not ours. I will not feel one iota of
guilt should you screw up and lose on Tuesday. The blame I do share is
that I voted for you and Bill in 1992. And I have spent the last 8
years doing what I could, in my own small ways, to try and stop the
hemorrhaging that your administration caused.

Did I ever tell you the story about Buell Elementary in Flint? I
helped build a computer lab there so that the kids (83% of them live
in poverty) would have the same leg up as the students in the
wealthier districts.

But you and the President eliminated federal assistance for millions
of poor mothers. This year, one of those mothers, living near Buell
Elementary, faced eviction from her home. She had to put her kids up
at a relative's house so she could at least keep her "welfare-to-work"
assignment. Under your watch, she became a victim of your policies,
was loaded onto a bus each day and, for 12 hours, transported to and
from a wealthy white suburb to work at "Dick Clark's All-American
Restaurant." Her 6-year old, homeless, was forced to stay with his
uncle. One day, last February, while his mother worked off her welfare
payments at the All-American restaurant, that little 6-year old found
his uncle's gun, took it to school, and shot a 6-year old girl in the
neck, just as they were on their way down to work on the computers I
had bought for them.

Have you had a chance, Mr. Gore, to hear the 911 call from the teacher
as she was trying to stop the geyser of blood shooting out from that
6-year old girl's neck just before she died? You should hear it. She's
the recipient of what you call "welfare reform."

I am reachable by phone or e-mail.

Yours,

Michael Moore 
mmflint at aol.com 
www.michaelmoore.com