Sierra Club has endorsed Al Gore for president in the 2000 election. The
following is not an endorsement by Sierra Club of any other candidate.

cc: Carl Pope
---------------------------------

From: "Mike Mail" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000 01:24:35 -0800
Subject: [Mike's Message] Election Day Letter From Michael Moore

November 7, 2000
Election Day -- A Final Letter from Michael Moore

    "...the vice president spoke candidly about criticism
from local filmmaker Michael Moore that the Clinton
administration has ignored Flint while trumpeting
economic improvements in most other parts of the
country. Moore and others have charged that Gore's
recent interest in Flint is merely a symptom of a
candidate willing to pander to voters, especially in a
state like Michigan considered key for his hopes of
victory.
    " 'When we talk about how to help Flint, I want
Michael Moore at the table even though he is not a
supporter of mine, 'Gore said."
                                             -- The Flint Journal

Dear friends,

As I write this, it is early in the morning on the East
coast on Election Day, 2000. On TV, I watch the
footage of yesterday's campaign stops. Al Gore
is in church in Flint. Behind him is the choir that sang
at my wedding. He says I am welcome at his table
should he be elected.

I'd rather he invite my sister-in-law in Flint to that
table. She is a single mother who makes a little over
$20,000 a year lifting manhole covers and inspecting
sewers for the city of Flint. Her son has muscular
dystrophy. Four years ago, Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton
(over the objections of his own wife) decided to harm
the lives of my sister-in-law, her son, and the 300,000
other disabled kids who had their benefits cut under the
law that eliminated our federal welfare programs. These
 have not been easy years for her.

My wife and I and other family members have done our
best to help her. I asked the President then -- and I ask
Mr. Gore now -- what did she and her boy do to
deserve this kind of treatment? Most Americans, I
suppose, have been conned into believing welfare
recipients are a bunch of lazy people who are leaching
off the rest of us. The reality, of course, is that some
of us are dealt severe blows in our lives. We are the
only country of wealth that believes when one of our
own citizens falls upon hard times, they should be
punished and made to crawl on their knees for help.

So I sit here and watch Mr. Gore in that Flint church. I
wonder if the preacher reminded the vice president that
we will be judged by how we treat "the least among us?"

Twenty-eight years ago this morning, on the day of the
1972 election, I was filled with passion and an enthusiasm
to vote for an honest and decent man who would
immediately end the Vietnam War. I was 18. My friends
Rod and Jeff and I were running the McGovern campaign
for the eastern half of Genesee County in Michigan. We
knocked on just about every door because we believed
we had a chance to throw Nixon out of office. Of course,
the next day, McGovern was trounced.

For some reason, I never grew up, and, I guess, weirdly
enough, never gave up hope. To hear my fellow baby
boomers this past week instruct me in the intricacies of
"strategic voting" and "the lesser of two evils" and "you
see, a vote for this guy is really a vote for that guy," made
me wonder how I missed the boat -- the one on which
you learn to act "responsible," and be "pragmatic," and,
of course, "compromise."

That's why it's been so refreshing to be around the
young people who have thronged by the hundreds
of thousands to the Nader campaign. They don't want
to hear about settling for the second worst guy. They
can't comprehend their elders' pleas to abandon their
conscience and do something in the voting booth they
don't believe in. These young people are filled with a
fire to stand up, speak out, and make this world a
better place. Nothing -- not even the fear of the
Bogeyman Bush -- will smother their passion to do
the right thing.

Today, my daughter will vote in her first election. I
believe the worst thing I could do as a parent is to
tell her that she should not be following her own
conscience. I will not tell her to be "realistic"; she
will have plenty of time to deal with the harsh realities
of this world. Why should she begin her adult life
having to settle for something she doesn't believe in?

I have seen the slippery slope that type of behavior
leads to in the baby boom generation. First, you start
with little chips away at your conscience. You agree
to do things that don't seem to directly harm any living
thing, actions in which you convince yourself, "I guess
I can live with that 'cause the alternative would be
worse!"

But bit by bit, as you start to abandon what you
believe in and compromise your values, you end
up being able to rationalize any action. You learn to
turn your head the other way when you see something
in your workplace that isn't right. You settle for
relationships you don't belong in because you fear the
alternative.

Before long, you give up and head to the middle. You
learn that it is safe there. If you strive for complacency
and mediocrity, the system will reward you. Promise
not to upset the apple cart and you will end up with
more money, a nice house, lots of gadgets, and oodles
of things. Who wouldn't want that!

But all of this compromise -- not doing what you know
in your heart of hearts to be right -- not only destroys
you as an individual, it weakens our democracy. After
McGovern, many decided that in the next in election, in
order not to "lose," they would "settle" for Jimmy Carter.
He was the first president to put restrictions on abortion
rights, but we looked the other way because the
Nixon/Ford era had to end.

And each time, for the last 25 years, we have continued to
settle for less and less, to the point where we have so
depleted the political gene pool, the Democrats are now
almost indistinguishable from the Republicans.

Has our willingness to compromise, to vote for the lesser
of two evils, gotten us better candidates? Has our
abandoning the beliefs and positions we once so strongly
fought for resulted in a better life for the poor and the
working class?

You know the answer. Real wages have not gone up for
the majority. Union membership is at an all-time low.
Corporate profits and executive pay are at an all time high.
Mergers and takeovers have set a record every year for
the last five years. Access to abortion is now available in
only 14% of the counties in the U.S. I don't need to recite
the list, do I? We all know where the lesser of two evils
has gotten us. Somewhere between nowhere and worse
than nowhere. It has set us back and made our work for
change all the harder.

At some point, you have to say enough is enough. Today
is that day for me. I will go to the polls and vote for Ralph
Nader. I am doing so for the only reason you should ever
vote for anyone. I am voting for Ralph because it is what
my conscience says is right. I am doing what they taught
us to do in civics class -- vote for who you think the best
candidate is. Period.

How many of you can honestly say Ralph Nader is not the
best candidate? Don't reach into your bag of rationalizations
-- just answer this one question honestly. If you want all the
dirty money out of our elections, you HAVE to vote for
Nader because he is the only one -- not Bush, not Gore --
who would eliminate it entirely. If you think the minimum
wage should go up more than 50 cents an hour in the next
year, then you HAVE to vote for Ralph Nader as he is
only one who would raise it to a real living wage. If you
believe there should be universal health coverage NOW,
then you have to vote for Ralph Nader because he is the
only one who would sign that bill. Click here ("20 Reasons
to Vote for Nader" www.votenader.org/20reasons.html)
and look at this list. And if find yourself in agreement, then
how can you NOT vote for Ralph Nader?

Oh, I forgot. He can't win.

And neither will my sister-in-law, or her disabled son, or
the rest of us when Gore or Bush win by the end of this
evening. That's the sad truth.

But you can send the "winner" a strong message that
there is a movement afoot in this country and the new
president had better pay heed to it. The ONLY way
to send this message is to go into the voting booth
today and vote for Ralph. If he scores big tonight, it
will send a shock wave through the system. I am
asking you to help me do that.

I know many of you in the "swing states" feel a
need to vote for Gore to stop Bush. As I've said
before, I respect your decision. But that also means
if you live in the 37 other states where the outcome
appears to be a foregone conclusion, then why not
use your vote like a political Molotov and vote for
Nader? A vote for Gore in Mississippi IS a wasted
vote! As it is in Texas, most of the Deep South, the
plains states and the Rocky Mountain region. Bush
is way, way ahead in these states. Your vote for
Gore there will get ZERO votes in the Electoral
College, but in the popular vote for Nader it could
make a HUGE difference. The same is true in the
states where Gore is far ahead like New York and
Massachusetts. A vote for Nader there is a vote that
will be counted in a very loud way. You can literally
make history.

Do not vote from your fears, no matter where you
live. Decisions made in fear are usually the wrong
decisions and lead to lousy consequences. You have
to find the courage to act on your convictions.
Remember what that felt like? To believe in something,
even if it was against all the odds?

When Rosa Parks took that seat at the front of the bus,
do you think she was afraid? You bet she was. But she
did not let her fear make her choose the safe path, the
pragmatic path. Her decision to take that seat was
based not in fear but in hope and courage. I'm sure
there were those who told her "You can't win!" I'm
sure no one thought she would win. But she didn't care
about some imaginary horse race on whether or not
she would "win." She just did it because it was the
right thing to do.

Compromise, settling for less, putting off to tomorrow
the fight that must be fought today has never moved
the human race forward. The revolutionaries that founded
this country were not stymied by their fear of King George.
And they did not even have the support of 75% of the
colonists! Nevertheless, they followed their conscience.

The civil rights heroes did let their fear of George Wallace
stop them for doing what was right, even if 80% of the
state of Alabama was against them.

Why should anyone now let their fear of the current
George -- the W. -- make them give up their sacred
right to cast their ballot honestly instead of for someone
whose main attribute seems to be that he ISN'T George
W. Bush? Can we not aspire to what those who came
before us were willing to do so that we would ALL
have the right to vote our conscience today? Do we not
dishonor them by our willingness to settle for less than
our conscience demands?

Finally, to those of you in the majority who did not
vote in the last election, I encourage you to take this
wild opportunity today to really stick it to the whole
damn lot of them! Go down to the local polling place
and do the one thing the Democrats and Republicans
hope to God you don't do -- vote for Ralph Nader!
If you have ever had the fantasy of upsetting every
rotten politician and guaranteeing that they will not be
able to digest tonight's supper, then go to the polls
and vote for Ralph Nader. Bring a friend or two
and the weasels in D.C. may not sleep for a week.

Then let's all get ready for the work we have to do
beginning on Wednesday. No matter who "wins"
we all lose -- and we will all have to join together to
make sure it gets better next time.

Thank you for enduring these long letters about the
election. It is presumptuous of me to assume that
you would want to read them, so at least I hope
they have been somewhat informative or entertaining.
I have appreciated hearing from all of you. One thing
is certain: Wall Street may have bought up just about
everything in this country, but they haven't killed the
democracy yet. As I've said before, as bad as it may
get, the head of General Motors still has the same
number of votes as you or I -- one!

And there's more of us than there are of him.

Never forget that.

Yours,

Michael Moore
[log in to unmask]
www.michaelmoore.com

PS. As I was writing this letter, Letterman got in
the last word: "Now, um, let me get this straight.
They SAY a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. So,
uh, who do I vote for if I wanna vote for Nader?"

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