ARCHIVES: Democrats.com co-founder David Lytel to Speak at Counter-Inaugural Rally on Saturday, January 20, 2001.

Democrats.com co-founder David Lytel to Speak at Counter-Inaugural Rally on Saturday.
 
Democrats.com co-founder David Lytel will be a featured speaker on Saturday January 20th at one of the major counter-inaugural demonstrations in Washington. Lytel will address the rally organized by VoterMarch.org at Dupont Circle late Saturday morning. About 1:00 a march will begin from Dupont Circle to the White House and a rally on the Ellipse. 

David Lytel is a former member of the Ithaca Common Council who served in the White House in President Clinton's first term. “I am proud to have worked closely with Vice President Gore,” Lytel said. “But I believe that if we are to be successful in organizing opposition to the Bush presidency we need to look beyond Al Gore for effective progressive leadership. There are vitally important progressive victories to be won in the next two years on election reform, the minimum wage, retirement security, an HMO bill of rights and defense of abortion rights and other things. If progressives are to prevail we will have to get fearlessly out in front of our leaders,” said Lytel.
The demonstration is being organized by http://votermarch.org, an non-partisan group. "We are entirely independent and very new, so we invite everyone to join us and we welcome contributions from everyone at http://votermarch.org," said founder Lou Posner. 

Both Votermarch and Democrats.com share a commitment to election reform as a top issue. "Given the shocking success of the Republicans in declaring the election over before all the votes were counted,” Lytel said, "the most urgent issue is election reform. There is clear evidence of deliberate fraud, official misconduct and a conspiracy to suppress voter turnout in Florida. We would not tolerate any of these crimes against democracy if they took place in some other country, and we must hold our own country up to democracy's simple rule -- every vote counts.”
Democrats.com worked closely with the members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the challenge to the Florida electors and is very involved in the campaign against the Ashcroft nomination. Most recently Democrats.com has launched a site called http://AshcroftLied.com that details former Senator Ashcroft’s lies to the Senate and the American people about Judge Ronnie White, about his knowledge of the racist policies of Bob Jones University and about his own misuse of public office to raise money for his political campaigns. 

Lytel, a member of the Onondaga County Democratic Committee, was co-founder and managing editor of the award-winning White House Web site.