URGENT APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

From:

The INTERNATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY (I.E.D)
at www.iefd.org,
a new non-profit foundation whose Board of Directors includes HOWARD ZINN (America’s leading radical historian), MUMIA ABU-JAMAL (America’s most famous political prisoner), GORE VIDAL (America’s premier progressive novelist and essayist), ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD (winner of the Isaac Deutscher Prize), RAMSEY CLARK (world’s leading human rights lawyer), BARBARA FOLEY (Chair of the Left Alliance, the union of progressive academic caucuses), MICHAEL PARENTI (America’s foremost critic of capitalist democracy), IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN (past president of the International Sociological Association), ANNETTE RUBINSTEIN (America’s longest active socialist teacher), MICHAEL RATNER (President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and past President of the National Lawyers’ Guild), DAVID HARVEY (world’s most cited geographer), MARTHA GIMENEZ (founding editor of THE PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK), HARRY MAGDOFF (co-editor of America’s premier Marxist theoretical journal, MONTHLY REVIEW-until his sad death on Jan. 1st), and two dozen other major American progressive scholars, lawyers and activists.

PREAMBLE
Q: What does the country that has just experienced two stolen presidential elections like to call itself? (For the evidence, see DEMOCRACY LIBRARY, section II.)

A: "The Greatest Democracy in the World".

Q: What does the illegitimate government of this country call its policy of bringing people of the whole world under its control-whatever the cost to them and to their environment-through a combination of military, economic and cultural means?

A: "Democratic Nation Building" and "Democracy Promotion".

Q: What name did the U.S. government give to the organization it set up to subvert foreign governments (including Haiti and Venezuela whose presidents were honestly elected) of which it disapproves?

A: "The National Endowment for Democracy". (See our DEMOCRACY LIBRARY, section I.)

Is there a better example anywhere of the French writer, La Rochefoucauld’s, old maxim: "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue"? In a world where no virtue stands higher than democracy, the U.S. government considered it a smart move to parade its worst vices under the banner of "democracy". We must be smarter, and see this hypocrisy and the criminal vices it serves for what they are. And struggle against them. All of us, together.

APPEAL

HELP! HELP! The house is on fire and we are all living in it. The United States government and its dependent organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have responded to the fire... by pouring more oil on it. They call it "democratic nation building"-a fancy name for the perpetual wars, theft of the commons, exploding economic inequalities, weakening civil liberties (including the introduction of torture), and the intensifying degradation and outright destruction of our natural environment that lie hidden behind "free" trade and the promise (seldom fulfilled) of a "free" election. Billions of people outside America want this madness to stop, but what can they do? Our new and independent organization, the International Endowment for Democracy (I.E.D.), believes it will only stop if democratic nation building (the real thing, not the oil) is applied to the U.S., which is the country most responsible for these frightening global developments, and that people everywhere can play a role in bringing it about.

IN BRIEF: if groups like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) use American government money (whence the "NATIONAL")-and a big dose of hypocrisy-to subvert democracy abroad, the International Endowment for Democracy (IED) hopes to use foreign monies (whence the "INTERNATIONAL") to help build a real democracy in the country that needs it most, the U.S.A. (See DEMOCRACY LIBRARY, section III)

WE ALSO CALL ON THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO MONITOR ELECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES. Is there anyone left in the world outside the U.S. who doesn’t recognize the need for such monitors?

This is not because there is less democracy in America than anywhere else-a few other lands are even worse off in this regard-but because the DEMOCRACY DEFICIT from which our country suffers is a greater threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of people all across the globe than the actions of any other regime. As victims of their own government’s destructive policies, the great majority of Americans have no interest in retaining them and would change these policies in an instant if our democracy really worked as we’re told it does. That they haven’t is because they can’t, because the laws, the elections, the media, the schools and other means for making such changes have been bent out of shape (through systematic bias and, increasingly, outright repression), hidden (through enforced ignorance), bought up by Big Money (especially this), and-when "necessary"-stolen (as in the last two presidential elections). Who can doubt that people everywhere have a huge stake in the democratization of America?

THIS MAY BE A FIRST: Americans asking people from other countries for help. Many recipients of this Appeal outside the U.S., however, are probably still asking themselves-"Why should we help Americans make needed changes in their country? Don’t we have enough to do in our own country?" The answer can be presented best by another question: Is there any reader who lives outside the capital of his or her country who believes it is a waste of time and money to try to influence the policies of the government sitting in the capital? If that’s where the main political power is ... Well, in this period of American military, economic and cultural imperialism, Washington has become the real capital of your country, for it is there that many of the most destructive decisions affecting your life are made. It would seem to make sense, therefore, good political sense, to devote at least some of your time, energy and money to helping bring about the kind of changes you want in Washington. If that’s at all possible...

At this moment in history, it is those of us who live in the United States who are in the best position to confront our common oppressor. The responsibility we bear, therefore, is enormous, but our forces are weak. While the current government’s undermining of the democratic process, as imperfect as it was, constitutes a growing threat to all dissenters, it also provides us with a key issue on which our rulers are extremely vulnerable. As the explosion of governmental hypocrisy clearly attests, democracy remains the American people’s favorite virtue. It is on this crucial issue, with its broad ramifications for government policy in America and around the world, that we need your help.

There are many groups in the United States that are trying to defend what remains of our rapidly shrinking democracy and/or build a better, more egalitarian one. Mostly they are small, and they all lack funds. The International Endowment for Democracy (I.E.D.) wants to give people all over the world an opportunity to participate in this crucial struggle by making a donation (no matter how small) to us, which we will then distribute to some of these groups. Apart from our small operating expenses (no I.E.D. board members are paid), all the money received will be passed on. As odd as this may sound, with this show of solidarity, people everywhere can now help themselves by helping us to help them. Maybe this doesn’t sound so odd, after all.

POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTORS should also know that we will not give money to any political party, or accept money from any organization involved in violent forms of political activity or from any foreign government.

To American readers, who don’t need our advice to donate money to their favorite progressive organizations, we only ask that you continue doing what you have been (okay, do a little more), but please forward this appeal to your friends and acquaintances, especially those who come from abroad. (Should you also want to show your support for this initiative by making a donation, of course, we won’t turn you away.)

THE SUCCESS OF OUR PROJECT depends on getting the word out to millions of people throughout the world. So...if you approve of what we are doing and think it could be important, we urge you to send this appeal (linked to our website) to all the people on your e-mail trees, and to the websites and blogs you visit as well as to the discussion and organizational lists to which you belong, particularly outside the U.S. And please don’t neglect your contacts in the media. The MoveOn organization is said to have reached between ten and twenty million Americans on behalf of Howard Dean during the 2004 presidential primaries in just this way, but ours may be the first attempt to extend this strategy to the whole world. It is certainly the first attempt to use the internet to involve the whole world in the badly needed democratization of the United States. The supremely serious nature as well as the planetary scope of our problem is what makes this approach necessary. The new technology of the internet is what makes it possible. But it still requires a little help from you to make it happen.

WON’T YOU HELP?

See our website- www.internationalendowmentfordemocracy.org or www.iefd.org - for information on the following, much of it in OVER A DOZEN LANGUAGES:

See HOW TO HELP for details on how to make a donation.

See our STATEMENT OF PURPOSE for a more detailed analysis of the crisis in American democracy and what we hope to achieve.

See our PRESS RELEASE.

See WHO WE ARE for the background and publications of the members of our Board of Directors.

See WHERE THE MONEY GOES for our priorities and procedures in passing on funds (and, later, for how much money we received and who we gave it to).

IN ENGLISH SECTION OF WEBSITE ONLY

See our DEMOCRACY LIBRARY, which contains some of the best critical writing on this subject and is divided into the following sections:
National Endowment for Hypocrisy Democracy

Stolen Election(s)

American ’Democracy’?

Is Democracy Compatible with Capitalism? (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for courses that deal with democracy at both high school and college levels).

See, too, sections on
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE / MANIFESTOS
AND CHARTERS
NOBLE PRIZE FOR DEMOCRACY
DEMOCRACY QUOTES
DEMOCRACY CARTOONS
DEMOCRACY WATCH BLOG
WORLD SOCIAL FORUM ON DEMOCRACY IN 2007
CONFERENCES AND LECTURES
CRITICAL BOOK, ESSAY, POEM, SONG AND
CARTOON CONTESTS ON DEMOCRACY FOR
HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
MEDIA REACTIONS TO THE I.E.D.
DEMOCRACY VIDEOS
N.E.D. vs. I.E.D. DOCUMENTARY
LETTERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LINKS.

See HOW TO HELP for details on how to make a donation.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS APPEAL TO ALL YOUR CONTACTS AND ASK THEM TO DO THE SAME.

TO CONTACT US:

WEBSITE

www.internationalendowmentfordemocracy.org
or www.iefd.org

E-MAIL

comments@iefd.org (for readers’ comments or questions)
media@iefd.org (media inquiries)

REGULAR MAIL

International Endowment for Democracy,
P.O. Box 3005
Prince Street Station
New York, New York, 10012, U.S.A.
(for all of the above plus DONATIONS BY CHECK-please include e-mail address with all letters)

PRESIDENT OF THE I.E.D.

Prof. Bertell Ollman
Dept. of Politics, NYU

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE I.E.D.

Prof. Michael Brown
(former Chair) Dept. of Sociology, Northeastern Univ.
Prof. Barbara Foley
Dept. of English, Rutgers Univ. (Newark)
Prof. Emeritus John Manley
(former Chair) Dept. of Political Science, Stanford Univ.
Michael Smith
LawyerED Officers (Incomplete)
Honorary Chairpersons (and Board Members)
Mumia Abu-Jamal - Journalist, activist and political prisoner; honorary citizen of Paris; author of Live From Death Row, Death Blossoms: Reflections From A Prisoner Of Conscience, We Want Freedom: A Life In The Black Panther Party, and other works.

Ramsey Clark - World’s leading human rights lawyer; former U.S. Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson; winner of the Gandhi Peace Award; founder of the International Action Center; co-author of War Crimes: A Report Of The U.S. War Crimes Against Iraq.

Harry Magdoff - until his sad death on Jan. lst - Co-editor of Monthly Review; author of The Age of Imperialism, Imperialism Without Colonies, Imperialism From The Colonial Age To The Present, as well as a half dozen books on the capitalist economy with Paul Sweezy, and other works.

Annette Rubinstein - Lecturer at the New York Marxist School; member of the Board of Editors of Science & Society; author of The Great Tradition of English Literature from Shakespeare to Shaw, American Literature: Root and Flower, and other works.

Gore Vidal - Author of numerous essays, novels and plays, among the best known of which are Imperial America: Reflections On The U.S. Of Amnesia (essays), Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace, Or How We Can Be So Hated (essays), and Julian The Apostate, Washington D.C., Burr, and Lincoln (novels).

Ellen Meiksins Wood - Former Prof. in Dept. of Political Science, York Univ., Canada; former co-editor of Monthly Review and member of the editorial board of New Left Review; winner of the Isaac Deutscher Prize for Retreat From Class; other books include Democracy Against Capitalism and Origins of Capitalism.

Howard Zinn - writer, lecturer, former Prof., Dept. of Political Science, Boston Univ.; author of A People’s History of the U.S., Soldiers in Revolt: G.I. Resistance During the Vietnam War, Declaration Of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology, Marx In Soho (a play), and other works. Website.

President:
Bertell Ollman - Prof., Dept. of Politics, NYU; 1st winner of the Charles McCoy Award for Life-time Scholarship from the New Political Science Section of the American Political Science Association; author of Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method, Alienation: Marx’s Conception Of Man In Capitalist Society, How to Take an Exam...and Remake the World, and other works. Website.

Executive Committee:
Michael Brown - Prof. and former Chairman of the Dept. of Sociology, Northeastern Univ.; co-founder and former co-editor of SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY; author of The Production of Society: a Marxian Social Foundation for Social Theory, co-author of Collective Behavior, and other works.

Barbara Foley - Prof., Dept. of English, Rutgers Univ. - Newark; Chair of the "Left Alliance" (alliance of progressive academic caucuses); Member of the Board of Editors of Science And Society; author of Spectres Of 1919: Class And Nation In The Making Of The New Negro, Radical Representation: Politics And Form In U.S. Proletarian Fiction, and other works.

John Manley - former Prof. and Chair of the Dept. of Political Science, Stanford Univ.; co-author of The Case Against the Constitution and author of "Marx and America: the New Deal" and "Neo-Pluralism: a Class Analysis of Pluralism", and other works.

Michael Smith - radical lawyer; co-host of ’Law and Disorder’ radio program in New York City; author of Notebook of a 60’s Lawyer.

Legal Counsel:
William Schaap - radical lawyer; co-founder and former co-editor of Covert Action Quarterly; co-editor of Bio-Terror: Manufactoring Wars the American Way, and other works.

Other Members of the I.E.D. Board of Directors:
Amrita Basu - Prof. of Government and Women’s and Gender Studies, Amherst College; Director of the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center at Amherst, Mass.; author of Two Faces of Protest: Contrasting Codes of Women’s Action in India, co-editor of Community Conflict and the State in India, and other works.

James Cockcroft - Internet Prof. at State Univ. of New York; author of Mexico’s hope: an Encounter with Politics and History, ed. of Salvador Allende Reader: Chile’s Voice of Democracy, and other works. Website.

Bernardine Dohrn - Prof., Northwestern Univ. Law School; founder and Director of "The Children and Family Justice Center" at Northwestern; Board of Human Rights Watch; author of Incarcerating Children, Mass Incarceration: Perspectives on U.S. Imprisonment, "Letter to Young Activists: But It’s My Own Country", and other works.

John Ehrenberg - Prof. and Chair of the Dept. of Political Science, Long Island Univ. - Brooklyn; former Chair of the New Political Science Section of the American Political Science Assoc.; member of the Editorial Board of SCIENCE AND SOCIETY; author of Civil Society, Proudhon and His Age, and other works.

Francis Feeley - Prof. and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements, Stendahl Univ. (Grenoble, France); author of America’s Concentration Camps During World War II: Social Science and the Japanese American Internment, Rebels with Causes: Revolutionary Syndicalist Culture among French Primary School Teachers between 1880 - 1919, and other works. Website.

John Gerassi - Prof., Dept. of Political Science, Queens College and C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center; a former editor of Time And Newsweek magazines; author of Jean-Paul Sartre: the Hated Conscience of His Century, The Great Fear in Latin America, "Why America Is So Hated: Who Do We Cry For?", and other works.

Martha Gimenez - Prof., Dept. of Sociology, Univ. of Colorado; founding editor of The Progressive Sociologists Network; winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association; author of "Marxist Feminism / Materialist Feminism", "The Feminization of Poverty"; co-editor of Work Without Wages, and other works. Website.

Christine Harrington - Prof., Dept. of Politics, N.Y.U.; founder of Law and Society Program at N.Y.U. Law School; co-author of The Constitution: Law, State and Society and author of Popular Justice, Populist Politics: Law in Community Organizing, and other works. Website.

David Harvey - The world’s most cited academic geographer; Distinguished Prof. of Anthropology, City Univ. of New York; author of The New Imperialism, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism, Social Justice in the City, and other works.

Michael Hudson - Distinguished Prof. of Economics at the Univ. of Missouri - Kansas City; President of the Institute for the Study of Long Term Economic Trends; author of Super Imperialism: the Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Domination, Global Fracture: the New International Economic Order, and other works. Website.

Abdeen Jabara - Civil Rights lawyer; and former President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm.

Mark Kesselman - Prof., Dept. of Political Science, Columbia Univ.; Co-Director of the Columbia Univ. Seminar on Globalization, Labor and Popular Struggles; co-author of The Politics of Power: a Critical Introduction to American Goverment, A Century of Organized Labor in France: A Union Movement for the 21st century, and "The State and Class Struggle: the Trends in Marxist Political Science".

Joel Kovel - Distinguished Prof. of Social Studies at Bard College; Editor of Capital, Nature, Socialism; author of Enemy of Nature: the End of Capitalism or the End of the World, White Racism: a Psychological History, and other works. Website.

Peter Kwong - Professor of Asian American Studies at Hunter College. A labor activist, writer and author of Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New Community, The New Chinatown, The Forbidden Workers and other works.

Sandra Levinson - Founder and long-time Director of the Center for Cuban Studies / Cuban Art Space in New York City; journalist and producer of films on themes related to Cuban culture.

Michael Parenti - writer, lecturer, political science professor at various universities; author of Democracy for a Few, Superpatriotism, Inventing Reality: The Power of the Mass Media, and other works. Website.

Michael Ratner - international human rights lawyer; Lecturer at Columbia Univ. Law School; President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and past President of the National Lawyers’ Guild; author of America’s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees and the War on Terror. Website.

Ellen Ray - writer, editor; President of the Institute of Media Analysis; co-founder and former co-editor of Covert Action Quarterly; co-author of Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, Covert Action: the Roots of Terror and other works.

Lynne Stewart - prominent radical human rights attorney, who has been unjustly accused of aiding terrorism and is currently facing prison for her zealous defence of an unpopular Moslem client. A victim of the Patriot Act.

Immanuel Wallerstein - Senior Research Scholar at Yale Univ.; former President of the International Sociological Association; Chair of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Reconstruction of the Social Sciences, author of The Modern World System (three vols.), Historical Capitalism, Utopistics, or Historical Choices for the 21st Century, and other works. Website.

Leonard Weinglass - Civil Rights activist and progressive America’s leading criminal defense lawyer whose clients have included the Chicago 7, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the Cuban 5; author of Race for Justice: Mumia Abu Jamal’s Fight Against the Death Penalty, Super Power Principles: U.S. Terror Against Cuba, and other works.

Suzi Weissman - Prof., Dept. of Political Science, St. Mary’s College of California; host of "Beneath the Surface" radio program in Los Angeles; member of the Editorial Boards of Critique and Against the Current; author of Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope, and other works.

Richard Wolff - Prof., Dept. of Economics, Univ. of Massachusetts - Amherst; co-founder and co-editor of Rethinking Marxism; co-author of Knowledge and Class: a Critique of Political Economy, Capitalism and Communism in the U.S.S.R., and other works.