This Plea for Direct Democracy originally was to have been structured around the theme of equal rights for women, for female equality with males in the U.S. can never become a reality for you. Not in your lifetime. Not while you live in a hierarchical society governed by a Constitution written by privileged, white males to favor privileged, white males. I make this claim as a seventy-seven year old white male who knows American history a bit more than most Americans.

But the need for a changing the U.S. political system has suddenly become more urgent than mere equality among the sexes, races, and religions. Our most knowledgeable scientists have claimed, if human pollution of the atmosphere is not substantially reduced immediately, global warming will reach a point of no return within ten years and the threat to all Earth life will become a bitter reality. Since that warning these scientists have made a distressing discovery. Global warming is melting the permafrost (soil that is permanently frozen, such as in the Arctic and Antarctic), and not only releasing into the atmosphere carbon monoxide trapped within, but also methane gas that has been trapped in the frozen soil for thousands of years. Methane, they say, is even more efficient than carbon dioxide in trapping heat inside the Earth's atmosphere. It means as global warming quickens the melting of permafrost and increases the release of methane gas, the point of no return will happen sooner than originally predicted.

Humanity's survival is now dependent upon drastic changes in human behavior, which can happen in the U.S only by removing political power from greedy, private interests that control our political system, and by changing the system to one in which individuals and private groups cannot grasp control. The only political system with the potential to do that, and the only one possessing the potential to create a fairer more equitable world in which females are truly equal and truly free, because it is the only true democracy, is participatory democracy--also called direct democracy. DD is the political system deliberately rejected by the creators of our Constitution; the system dissatisfied Americans of the Peoples Party of 1892 and 1896 intended to install in this country, should they have won an election; the political system suggested by the angry young Americans, frustrated by the inequities of the U.S., who wrote the Port Huron Manifesto of 1962, a document all Americans should read. DD is also the political system feared most by elites of every culture, past and present.

However, there is much uncertainty and fear of DD within current American generations, because of ignorance and misinformation. I would like to dispel this ignorance once and for all time. I have envisioned a fictional, DD, the way it works, some of the benefits it provides its ordinary working citizens, and a plan for creating it in the U.S. Although it is merely one man's vision, it is a realistic vision based upon Professor Peter Dienel's Planning Cells that have been used successfully throughout Europe since 1970 and, which have proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that common, uneducated citizens, given full information upon which to make decisions, can make them as well, or better, than their opportunistic political representatives. I call this theoretical society, "America."

Our economic rulers and their political puppets have proven they will make no changes infringing upon their profits or power. Are you going to passively sit and watch the possible horrors and hardships inflicted upon your loved ones by global warming and unnecessary wars when you and all other common, ordinary American women, together, hold the power to change such a future? I beseech you as an intelligent person to read about fictional "America" on the website http://www.voicesfordirectdemocracy.com/dd-page.html, and understand, once and for all, there is an alternative for a better and fairer society. There is hope for a peaceful and safer world, a world that our elite rulers don't want, for such a world would deprive them of being an elite. Then, when you fully understand the promise of DD, forward this email to your relatives, friends and members of your women's organizations.

Sincerely,

Lee Gottlieb
common citizen

P.S.
A candidate for the presidency in 2008 who understands the dire need for change has magically appeared. Ex-senator Mike Gravel (D) of Alaska. (http://mikegravel.us/about.htm) advocates a National Initiative Amendment to the Constitution that will give ordinary Americans the power to participate in government policy-making. This would be a giant step forward. However, such an amendment is merely a patch job on a constitution designed to keep political power from the people, and will not provide the necessary crucial immediate action. Email Gravel at info@gravel2008.us and tell him you will vote for him, if he promises to advocate changing our representative to a direct democracy, for a U.S. possessing a DD political system is the surest and quickest way to stop humanity's rush toward an unimaginable and nasty future.