July 10, 2002 -- Hartford (APJP) -- Last September, just before fundamentalist thugs changed the course of world history, I wrote a piece for American Politics Journal called KMA, GOP. It was, essentially, a summation of the findings about the 2000 presidential election. It began, "Now that the cumulative weight of the evidence from the journalists, researchers, legal scholars and authors has mounted, the verdict is in. It is unanimous and it is loud and it is clear: the Republican Party stole the presidential election of 2000."

I compared that moment-when the realization that a presidential election had been stolen and that the person in power was not the people's choice -- to those dark days in the aftermath of the two Kennedy assassinations and the murder of Dr. King. If I may be allowed to quote myself again, I wrote, "It was, in short, a naked power grab, as unseemly as anything that occurs with regularity in Africa, Asia and Latin America, those areas we used to dismiss as Third World 'banana republics.' The crime is so vast and so well-documented that no amount of dissembling, rewriting and Sunday morning punditry can paper it over. It's on the record, an indelible blemish on the American soul.

Meanwhile, the rest of us who weren't born into privilege and have not had our places assured at the table in the corporate state of America, Inc. must muddle through the best we can for another three-plus years of what is, in effect, a bloodless coup."

The reaction to that piece was dramatic. It was hailed by some as a much-needed tonic, but it was also used by those who disagreed as a means to try to ruin my life and my writing career. Though the piece was written before 9/11 and every statement of fact in it was backed up with its original source, the terrorist attack gave some on the right a green light to become America's homegrown version of the Brownshirts. One creep, the editor of a rightwing Web site in the Midwest, even contacted the myriad publications for whom I write (but not the American Politics Journal, where my story appeared), in an attempt to extract some sort of career-ending revenge on me. Similar ditto-monkeys pestered me for months with unsolicited hate email, some of it of a physically threatening nature to myself and my family.

All of this was, of course, just an indication of how close to the truth I had come. The words that probably cut to the quick were: "So, to those who still gloat over this tainted 'victory' and posture loudly about 'moving on' and 'getting over it,' enjoy your brief moment in the sun, because it will be brief; it is, in fact, already dimming. You know why? History is written on facts, and endeavors to arrive at some sort of higher Truth, outside the slaughterhouse of partisan politics."

Now, in July 2002, it is time for the rest of us to change history. A mid-term election beckons three months away, and nothing less than the future of the nation is at stake. The propagandistic spin of the mainstream media is that Bush still enjoys high popularity ratings. This is accepted, for some inexplicable reason, as the conventional wisdom. But it is wrong. Conventional wisdom is just the wishful thinking of the power elite and has little connection to the truth. It is time to for us to point this out vigorously, in the spirit of open debate, and without fear from those with whom we disagree.

I submit to you that we can turn this thing around, and it is not as difficult as it may seem. Indeed, it happened in the town where I live and it can happen across the nation. I want to briefly share the good news from my town as a reminder that a perceived "GOP invicibility" is a myth, nurtured by a cowed and compliant press, and accepted by a populace that has been made to live on the edge of fear and the false sense that the GOP is like Robert Young in "Father Knows Best."

Seven years ago, when I moved to my town, a so-called "bedroom community" near New Haven, I instantly smelled a rat. I saw the Town Council was made up of a 7-2 Republican majority and that the same configuration applied on the Planning and Zoning Commission (a.k.a., the Planning board). And yet every town resident with whom I spoke could not explain why this was so. Most of the people I met were not rock-ribbed conservatives or culture warriors who despised gays, blacks and Hispanics. They were, in fact, moderate on most issues and surprisingly liberal on those of a social nature.

More to the point, they were not happy with the town government; they simply accepted that this was the way it had always been. And it had been, more or less, a pro-Republican town government for the previous 90 years. Mildly challenged by this paradox, I went to town hall and secured a printout of the town's registered voters. Not surprisingly, I learned that there were more "unaffiliated" voters than either registered Republican or Democrats. I knew right then and there that the GOP did not own this town, which is why I had smelled such a rancid rat when I came here in 1994. The town had simply been cowed into apathetic compliance by the status quo.

A further investigation -- believe me, it wasn't hard; I'm no Greg Palast -- revealed that most members on the Planning board were affiliated with the real estate industry. Hmmm. The old Dracula-guarding-the-blood-bank syndrome. More inquiries ascertained that most members of the Town Council had a vested financial stake in the continued commercialization of what was once, not even that long ago, a farming community.

Then I learned that the town's drinking water contained traces of trichlorethylene (TCE), a known carcinogen. Again, this was not difficult to ascertain; it was hidden in plain sight. That is, thanks to a Clinton Administration mandate, water utilities are now required to release an annual Drinking Water Quality Report to consumers. Buried in one of the footnotes of my Regional Water Authority's report -- in letters almost too small to see with the naked eye -- was a statistic showing that traces of TCE have been found in my town's drinking water and that the water company was mitigating it at the source to comply (barely) with federal accepted levels.

I pointed out this fact in a letter to the editor of my weekly community paper. Partly as a result of that letter, residents began to demand answers. The community paper followed up with a series of articles about the town's industrial past, which may have explained the presence (for decades!) of TCE in our drinking water. I also notified the alternative newspaper in New Haven, and Carole Bass of the Advocate did an exceptional job of reportage on the situation. She discovered that, in fact, there were 12 potential Superfund sites in our town, information that had never been shared with residents by the town's elected officials or legal department.

Around this same time, a member of the Town Council -- and a member of the family, like the Potters in "It's A Wonderful Life," that has its fingers in all my town's money pies -- applied for a special permit to build the largest truck terminal in New England in the northern part of town. He owned the land and wanted to maximize his investment, even if it was at the expense of the public's health. The site in question, you see, sat on top of the town's already tainted aquifer.

The trucking terminal proposal was the tipping point for the GOP's presumed invincibility in my town. The proposal was, sneakily, brought before the town government in the middle of the Yuletide season, a time when residents were not fully prepared to pay attention. Had not a few of us raised Holy Hell at the start, the project may have gained quick rubber-stamped approval by the GOP-controlled planning board -- all of whom were friends of the Councilman -- and the Inland Wetlands Commission -- whose most powerful member was godfather to the Councilman's son. In the midst of all this, another GOP councilman was arrested and convicted of embezzling state funds and is now in prison.

Oh my. Such chicanery for such a small town!

The rancid rat gave out an unholy stench by January 2000, and by November of that year, the GOP hammerlock on our town was over. Poof, the Republicans were sent packing. Though that local election turned things completely around in my town, it was a mild consolation to the chicanery that was unfolding in Florida. Nonetheless, as a result of that election, the Town Council and Planning board are both now 6-3 Democrat, and the myth of GOP invincibility was graphically exposed as a lie. Republicans didn't just lose by a few votes; they were swamped by a landslide! The godfather resigned, the truck terminal king on the council resigned, the longtime town attorney was replaced, the new "mayor" hailed a new era.

The lesson here is this: What was perceived of as a "popular" power elite collapsed like a house of cards in less than a year. It took educating, encouraging and even emboldening the voters to make the change. In the final analysis, it simply required that the voters be reminded of their collective power in a functioning democracy. As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that has."

In July 2002, of course, the times are even more dangerous, and the American voters need to be encouraged and emboldened now more than at any time in my memory. The tipping point has been reached by the GOP on the national level. Though Democrats in Congress are timid about pointing this out, I do know this for a fact: A vast majority of Americans are eager to hear a message that offers an alternative to the horrors of the new Bush era. What a shambles this man has made of our country and our Constitution. What a disaster his half-term has already been. What a time for change!

Just think of my town. Ninety years of GOP rule was flushed away in nine months, giving birth to a new sense of community spirit, a new level of volunteerism and openness. And here is the simple formula: Tell the truth about Bush and his policies. Be bold, be fearless and never allow any other person to question your patriotism. Why? Because you are the real patriots. Like Paul Revere, like Thomas Paine, like Thomas Jefferson, like John and Sam Adams.

Let's get going. History is depending on us.

Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate and author, most recently, of Famous Last Words: Apt Observations, Pleas, Curses, Benedictions, Sour Notes, Bons Mots, and Insights from People on the Brink of Departure (Pomegranate)