Alternative Democrats join forces

WALTHAM -- It's an unlikely nerve center for a national network of activists who are trying to change history. The large, drafty room upstairs from a day-care center on Main Street in Waltham seems worlds away from the corridors of power it is trying to reform.

But today, when the Electoral College votes are presented for approval in the nation's capital before both houses of Congress, formally proclaiming the winner, members of the Alliance for Democracy will be watching with particular interest. The group has been vigorously fighting George W. Bush's certification as the nation's newly reelected president, based on alleged vote fraud and discrimination in Ohio last November.

The organization -- which has some 2,000 dues-paying members nationally but claims many more active in chapters around the country -- was founded to challenge the power of large corporations, but in the wake of the recent presidential election has been at the forefront of charges that the vote in Ohio was tainted by fraud.

''The nation is not going to survive unless there is a major reformation of the political process," said Ronnie Dugger, founder of the alliance and a journalist who has written on the dangers of fraud in computerized vote counting. ''Otherwise, the country is about to disappear as a democracy."

The alliance has played a leading role in financing and filing a lawsuit on behalf of 44 Ohio voters, contesting the election in the Ohio Supreme Court. The lead lawyer in the suit is Clifford Arnebeck, an Ohio attorney and the alliance's cochairman.

''We have the same facts in this country that applied in Ukraine, which is a gross anomaly between the exit polls and the final vote," said Arnebeck. ''What we don't have is the outcry." He said that Senator John Kerry's concession of the election has crippled the media and the Democratic Party in any efforts to investigate vote fraud.

The alliance's office in Waltham is run by volunteers from chapters in the Boston area, coordinated by Mary White of Concord.

In recent weeks, White said, the office has been busy funneling donations to the organization's Ohio Honest Elections Campaign. The money began flooding in after Arnebeck and Dugger were interviewed in November about the alleged voter irregularities on ''The Randi Rhodes Show" on the Air America radio network. White estimated the total so far at $107,000.

The organization traces its birth to an article Dugger wrote for The Nation magazine in 1995, ''A Call to Citizens: Will Real Populists Please Stand Up!" Dugger's plea for a grass-roots network of activists -- ''We are ruled by Big Business and Big Government as its paid hireling, and we know it. Corporate money is wrecking popular government in the United States," he wrote -- struck a chord around the country.

''The article got an enormous response," said Dugger, who lives in Somerville. ''I received 1,700 written answers. Almost everyone said, let's organize an alternative to the Democratic Party, because we can't rely on them to represent us anymore."

White was one of those drawn to Dugger's vision. In 1996, she attended a talk that Dugger gave at the Unitarian-Universalist church in Concord.

''I had been active in the nuclear freeze movement in the early 1980s," said White, who worked as a systems analyst at Brandeis before she retired. ''I remember we got so far with that movement that it seemed inevitable that our government would sign on to it. And still our government opposed it.

''When I heard Ronnie speak, I realized that if you want to get anywhere with these issues, you have to go after the corporate interests in this country."

That marked the formation of the first chapter of the Alliance for Democracy. Since then, White said, the organization has grown to include 36 chapters in 17 states. In Massachusetts, the group has a North Bridge chapter (serving the Concord-Lincoln area), a Boston-Cambridge group, and a Mass. Bay South chapter. The organization has a national convention every two years; the most recent took place last July in Boston.

One of the alliance's admirers is Howard Zinn, author of ''The People's History of the United States" and a professor emeritus at Boston University. Zinn said the alliance serves a critical role: ''The major political leaders of the country have really not fought vigorously the power of corporations over the media, the economy, and the culture. The alliance sees itself as an independent political force that is not tied to the parties or business interests."

While its Ohio efforts have taken the spotlight, the alliance is waging other campaigns as well. It opposes corporate ownership of water utilities, promotes universal health care, and battles international agreements that increase corporate globalization.

Some members say their work in the alliance has transformed their lives. David Lewit, cochairman of the Cambridge-Boston chapter, said his involvement ''is almost a full-time job for me." A retired social psychologist who lives in Boston, Lewit said he has long been involved in social issues. In the late '40s, he said, he and other members of the Princeton Liberal Union pressed the university to admit black students.

When Dugger published his 1995 article in The Nation, Lewit was one of the 1,700 to respond. ''He said exactly what I believed," Lewit recalled, ''that the root of the runaway problems we have is from corporate influence." He contacted Dugger and helped him set up an office in Cambridge to begin organizing what would become the Alliance for Democracy.

Jonathan Simon, an Arlington resident who is a chiropractor in Cambridge, said he has been so galvanized by last November's presidential election that he is now devoting about 10 hours a day to efforts to outline the argument that the Ohio election results were influenced by fraud. A member of the Cambridge-Boston chapter, he is helping Arnebeck in the alliance-financed Ohio lawsuit.

Simon said he is dismayed by the way some in the media and the public deride efforts of groups like the alliance. ''Some people regard us as a bunch of get-a-lifers," he said. ''But we all have families and other interests. The reason we're doing this is that we are very alarmed about the future of democracy."

David Whitty, an Ashland resident, attended a demonstration against the Iraq war at the Boston Common in early 2003 and picked up an Alliance for Democracy flier there. He has been a member ever since. Part of his contribution, he said, is to maintain the computers at the Waltham office, which contain the group's nationwide database.

''For me, it is a matter of taking personal responsibility," he said. ''If the country isn't what I want it to be, I can begin to do something about it. I can view the war in Iraq as a spectator event and just watch it, or I can realize that the government is not an abstract entity; it's me, it's you, it's the people around you."

Information on the Alliance for Democracy can be found by calling 781-894-1179 or at the website www.thealliancefordemocracy.org.