The convention was scheduled to close with the routine unanimous ratification of the state COPE endorsements,
but COPE hadn't reckoned with Green US Senate candidate Medea Benjamin who sat quietly at the back of the
hall and had one on one conversations with delegates about her program for fair trade, universal health care, an
end to privatization, and everything else on labors agenda.
After Monday's session about 20 delegates met with Medea at poolside to hear more about Medea's labor platform
along with a comparison to Feinstein's, who voted for NAFTA, GATT, and was a leader of the campaign to pass
China normal trade relations. Then we talked about what we could do to support her. We agreed that it would be
wrong to remain silent at Tuesday's COPE endorsement and even if we lost 10 to 1, we at least had to go through
the motions of opposing Feinstein's endorsement and make sure it wasn't unanimous.
Tuesday morning we met again for a press conference. Only 2 reporters showed up and they left. The
delegates tossed around ideas of how to challenge the Feinstein endorsement and what arguments to make on
Medea's behalf. Tuesday afternoon, when the endorsements were read off from the podium, our tiny handful
challenged the Feinstein endorsement from the floor and 3 of our number took to the floor mikes to denounce
the free trade policies of Feinstein and praise the pro-labor platform of Medea. After the third delegate spoke, a
motion was made and passed to cut off further debate. A voice vote was called, and to everyone's astonishment
somewhere between 25 & 40% of the delegates voted 'no' on the endorsement.
Though technically a victory for Feinstein, clearly she was the loser and Medea the winner. Not only was it a
warning message to politicians who take labor for granted, but it was also a message from the ranks of labor that
we're fed up with policies from the top that support fair trade and then turn to support candidates who oppose fair
trade. It was also a clear illustration that the spirit of Seattle has taken hold in the labor movement and
is growing.
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S.F. woman's relentless march for peace
Global Exchange founder a tireless advocate
10.26.02 Joe Garofoli SF Chronicle
Medea Benjamin is not only one of San Francisco's leading activists, she's the Zelig of political protest. With the
country inching toward war, the 50-year-old Noe Valley resident has never been in so many different scenes.
She made national news for interrupting Def.Sec Rumsfeld as he pitched his war plan to Congress last month and
for getting arrested at President Bush's Aug. speech in Stockton. And for her street theater outside VP Cheney's
appearance that month in San Francisco.
In her quest to stop U.S. invasion of Iraq, the former Green Party U.S. Senate nominee banged pots & pans in
front of Senate majority leader Tom Daschle's Wash.D.C., home before dawn last month (a "wake-up call"), and
spoke Thursday at the UN press correspondent's club.
Saturday, Benjamin will speak in Wash.D.C., at what's expected to be the nation's largest post 9.11.01 anti-war
demonstration. In San Francisco, the same kind of event will begin with 11am march starting from Justin
Herman Plaza and ending with a 1 p.m. rally at Civic Center Plaza. Similar demonstrations will be held in other U.S.
cities and around the world.
San Francisco & Washington events are co-sponsored by the San Francisco nonprofit Global Exchange,
which Benjamin co-founded in 1988. The group is a vocal advocate of peace, justice and other social issues.
For the past 20 years that she has lived in San Francisco, Benjamin has appeared seemingly everywhere, like the
fictional Zelig of the Woody Allen film, speaking out on everything from corporate sweatshops to self-rule in
East Timor to California's energy crisis.
While the current anti-war movement has her dipping deep into her bottomless bag of activist theater tricks,
Benjamin is more than just a sidewalk vaudevillian. She's the author of 8 books, official observer at a dozen
intl elections and, thanks in part to contacts developed during her unsuccessful Senate run 2 years ago, has
developed into a popular lecturer.
|
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader calls her "a rising player" on the national progressive scene. 5 ft tall, and no more
than a veggie burrito over 100 pounds, she can't lift her left arm above her head, the result of having it twisted
behind her back during the estimated 4 dozen times she's been escorted off the premises. She rarely spends more
than a few hours in jail, and SF police Lt. Morris Tabak said, "She's always been very professional when
we've dealt with her."
For the past 2 months, this mother of two, a 12-year-old & a recent college grad from a previous marriage,
has shuttled back & forth to Washington, sleeping on friends' couches while she lobbies legislators by day and
corrals fellow anti-war activists by night.
Colleagues & adversaries agree she's tireless. The toll: She & her husband spend only 2 days a month
together. "While you see Medea all of these places, what she's really good at is organizing behind the scenes," said
Deborah James, who has worked with her at Global Exchange for 9 years. James wouldn't have been able to help
lead the widely-noted interruption of Sec.State Powell at Earth Summit II in South Africa last month, "without
knowing Medea. I was kind of trying to think what she would do there."
Yet before she adopted the name "Medea" as a Tufts University freshman, she was Susie Benjamin, self-described
"nice Jewish girl from Long Island." A high school cheerleader who dated the school's top athlete. Benjamin jokes
that her mother's favorite form of protest was "returning something at Saks that she had kept for a year."
Her father, Al, is a well-to-do developer, who says he has "donated hundreds of thousands" of dollars to Global
Exchange over its 14-year-history. No strings attached, say both Al & Medea Benjamin. Al has supported
Jewish-related charities; Medea supports a Palestinian state. Said the daughter, with a smile, "It's best that families
don't talk about some things."
"I admire Susie because she is always true to her own heart," said Al Benjamin; only her family still calls her
"Susie." "Even when I totally don't agree with what she's saying."
Young Susie Benjamin's first major experience with the big, bad world happened when her older sister's GI
boyfriend mailed home the ear of a Viet Cong. It jolted the 15-year-old Benjamin out of her insulated Long Island
life. During a trip with friends to Tijuana two years later, she was shocked to see young children starving on the
street.
She spent a year at Tufts, and then told her parents she would continue her studies abroad. Once overseas,
however, she dropped out of school and bolted across Europe & Africa. She hitchhiked alone, supporting
herself by teaching English, picking grapes and doing odd jobs.
By now, Susie had become Medea. Long fascinated by the Greek tragedies, she tried on other names. "Io"
Benjamin didn't ring until deciding to reclaim "Medea". "I just didn't believe the story," she said wryly of the classic
tragedy. "What woman would kill her kids for a guy? I think she was a strong woman, and some people just made
up the story to discredit her."
Overseas, her fearlessness blossomed. When Benjamin was 19, she was raped in France by a man who gave her
a ride. Yet she continues hitchhiking, spending last summer thumbing across Sicily with her college-age daughter.
"Once, I got mugged 2 blocks from work (in the Mission District)," she said. "Does that mean I stop walking to
work?"
In Africa, she gravitated to refugee camps, trying to save children from starvation. She tears up, remembering the
3-year-old boy dying in her arms in Mozambique. Blunting the world's inequities that allow some children to
starve and others to grow up in comfort would become her life work.
She returned to New York and, after passing undergraduate equivalency tests, earned master's degrees in
economics & public health. She returned to Africa and then went to Cuba with her first husband, who was
coach of the national basketball team; Benjamin hates sports.
Yet at first, Cuba's comparative social equality "made it seem like I died and went to heaven." Then she bumped
into the limitations of free speech while working at a Communist-run newspaper; she was deported after daring to
write an anti-govt article. She headed to San Francisco in 1983 for a job with Food First/The Institute for Food
& Development Policy.
[ Was this an IPS pgm?
¹ What
conditioning based training did she undergo? ]
She & her husband split up shortly afterward. By the time she landed in San Francisco, she began thinking
about doing something that would incorporate her growing number of interests.
"Medea likes to say that I radicalized her, but she was already pretty radicalized by the time she got (to college),"
said prof.emeritus of nutrition & education Joan Gussow at Teachers College Columbia Univ., where Benjamin
earned her public health degree. "She was always asking questions, always wanting to know how things fit
together."
Benjamin believes all of her pet struggles are related. Whether it's Cambodian sweatshops or California energy
providers, Benjamin said they're all the fruits of wealthy corporations owning mainstream media, holding
politicians in a money-girded hammerlock, and stocking university boards of regents with their top corporate
officers.
The result of this influence, according to Benjamin: The average citizen or worker can't be heard over the jangling
of corporate coins. So she, often backed by Global Exchange's $4.1 million annual budget and intl Rolodex, is their
mouthpiece.
Her fearlessness has drawn the admiration of political adversaries like former South Bay GOP Cong. Tom
Campbell, who got to know Benjamin during their Senate race. The one where Benjamin's lasting TV image
is her being hauled away from a debate to which she wasn't invited. Even though Campbell disagrees with
Benjamin on everything from Iraq to her disruption of Rumsfeld's Congressional testimony, he understands her
motives.
"She's very well-informed and researched on all of her issues. I wish her views to be heard," said Campbell, who
vainly fought for Benjamin to be included in his 2000 Senate debate against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
D-CA. "I wish she didn't have to resort to theater so often. But our system only hears people who are of the 2 major
parties."
Others defend her omnipresence. "Would you say that Wal-Mart is in too many locations or that Disney has too
many characters," said consumer advocate Nader, a former Green Party presidential candidate. "She has seen a
lot of tragedies around the world. You don't forget the stuff that she's seen."
It was on a trip to Wash.D.C., in the mid-1980s that she met her now-husband Kevin Danaher, a tough-talking
activist. He asked the then-vegetarian out to dinner to a steak restaurant. They've been together ever since.
"While I wanted to save the world one child at a time, Kevin always says, 'Let's get the bastards who are doing it to
these kids.' "
Ralph Nader interview abridged
8.9.02 Bill Moyers Now
B.Moyers: Congress didn't deliver on coverage for prescription drugs before quitting for the
summer, and it didn't finish its business on corporate tax havens either. As we reported 3 weeks ago, these off-
shore shell games enable companies to rent a post office box in some foreign country and thereby cut their federal
taxes here at home. The Senate last week voted to deny military contracts to such companies, but corporate
lobbyists swarmed all over the house of representatives to prevent any action there. Meanwhile, one big company,
Stanley Works, nation's largest hand tools maker, had a change of heart. It was planning to reincorporate in
Bermuda. This would have saved Stanley Works about $30 million on its share of the costs of fighting the war on
terrorism and other public services. As mentioned in our report, co. workers denounced management for being
unpatriotic and public opinion agreed. Last week the co. board said it had decided not to reincorporate in Bermuda.
In the midst of the current corporate crime wave, a recent article proclaimed, "If one political figure looks prophetic
these days, it is Ralph Nader." For nearly 40 years, he's been crusading against the expansion of corporate control
over our political economy. But while Ralph Nader has been called America's preeminent public citizen, his critics
say he is the country's biggest public nuisance. Undeterred, Ralph Nader ran for president 2 years ago on an
independent third party ticket, hoping to get people involved. What he got, say his critics, was George W. Bush in
the White House.
[ The Green Party is not an independent candidacy; Katherine
Harris put GWBush in federal office, not Nader. ]
Viewer questions poured in since last week, when we said Nader would be here. Some people say that we have a
historic opportunity now to renew democracy and reverse the trend toward corporate control over economics
& politics. Do you think that will happen?
R.Nader: Certainly I hope so, but nobody can prophesize it. It's all up to the American people and
the extent to which they have the civil self-confidence to band together & impress their Congressional
representatives and mobilize.
|
Ralph Nader's 1996
Presidential
candidacy
Nader on SoCal issues
Green Party candidate Jello Biafra
more
Presidential candidate
Kovel
author
email
12/12/99 nomination platform speech
Economic Globalization panel
858.457.5616 626.355.7858
Ron Ouellette Campaign 2000
GP pres. also ran
Randall Robinson backs Nader
6.9.00 Wash.Post pC1
Randall Robinson, anti-apartheid activist & president of TransAfrica, announced that he has
signed on as the steering committee co-chair for Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. "The important thing is that
Ralph stands for something," said Robinson at TransAfrica's annual dinner, an event attended by celebrities such as
Danny Glover, Muhammad Ali, Angela Bassett, and Bill Cosby.
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This is an extraordinary moment, because for 20 years there's been a relentless increase in corporate power
trespassing on civic values. The commercialism going into civic values, commercializing childhood, universities,
commercializing elections, politicians, govt. Democracy loses in that way, because civic values represent health,
safety, justice, democratic processes, respect to the environment, respect for posterity.
B.Moyers: Goods & services that the market does not deliver.
R.Nader: Exactly. Every democracy, to its merit, has got to have sanctuaries that are off limits to
commercialism.
B.Moyers: Congress just passed some legislation to reform some of the more egregious abuses
we've seen recently. Do you think that legislation will prove effective?
R.Nader: It's very, very modest. It's the first step, it's very high on rhetoric. But basically it says to
the S.E.C. & other agencies, "here's some tools, enforce the law." But there have been tools for years and, for
example, that these corporate crooks could go to jail for a year or two; now it's up to 10 or 20 years in terms of the
penalties being increased. But they never went to jail for a year or two. To see a corporate crook in jail is about as
rare as the Australian dodo.
B.Moyers: Can we really count on effective democratic govts, govt scrutiny of industry when it is
business & wealthy donors who are making the greatest contributions to the political campaigns that elect the
people who write and oversee the law ?
R.Nader: No, of course, not. I mean, as long as there are "for sale" signs on Congress & the
White House, it's not going to happen. Anything that's commercialized, any public institution that relies on private,
mostly business money, and has a "for sale" sign, is obviously going to sell to the richest people. They're the ones
who can afford to buy it.
B.Moyers: As we talk, the Federal Elections Commission with the connivance of the 2 parties, the
Republicans & the Democrats, are attempting to gut the McCain-Feingold Bill, which would have reduced soft
money from the system. I mean, what can ordinary citizens do about that other than complain ?
R.Nader: A second round. The Federal Election commissioners are basically provoking anger
among John McCain & Russ Feingold in the Senate & others. There's got to be another round. If 500,000
people took 5 minutes off and just told their members of Congress, "We want a second wave of corporate reform.
We want public financing of public campaigns." The finger to the wind goes up in the House, in the Senate. What if
2 million people did that? It's no big deal. If large numbers of people spend 5 or 6 minutes telling the members of
Congress that their trunk line to corporate money is going to be nullified by an aroused public. But people grow up
feeling powerless.
B.Moyers: What should people do who are watching ?
R.Nader: Well, the minimal thing is just to contact their member. A letter is better than a phone
call, and a phone call is better than e-mail. Say, "Do you want more signatures on this letter? Just write me back, I'll
get you 10 more from your own district." Say, "By the way, when are you coming back to the district so that we can
meet you in the auditorium when you have these town meetings. We're sending this letter to 15 other people,
including your opponent, local radio & TV stations and the newspapers and the editorial writers."
There's a way to contact your member of Congress that's more than just a paragraph saying, "I protest, I demand."
It can have a real cutting edge, and that's the minimum people can do. 500 million citizen hours are devoted to
watching the NFL Superbowl earlier this year. That time in one year in key Congressional districts would have
gotten us universal health care.
B.Moyers: But football is fun. How do we make politics fun again, exciting again?
R.Nader: Because it gives us justice. Justice gives us health & safety and the protection of
children and decent education and good health care with emphasis on prevention & clean environment. If that
isn't fun, I don't know what fun is.
B.Moyers: You saw our piece on the pharmaceutical ads. The pharmaceutical industry actually has
more lobbyists in Washington than there are members of Congress. Who's going to speak up for the public interest
in that kind of monopoly?
R.Nader: In 3 years they spent $250 million in Washington lobbying the pharmaceutical
industry.
B.Moyers: They spend $2 billion to $3 billion on these ads we just saw.
R.Nader: That segment really is a story of the drugging of America and the gouging of America.
More people die from excessive prescriptions of the wrong kinds of drugs with the wrong kinds of side effects than
are killed by hard drugs on the streets of America. Far more. More than that, through tax credits, we give drug
companies free research & development right down to the drugs like Taxol and A.Z.T., free to the drug
companies, paid for by the U.S., taxpayer, developed, discovered, tested by national health institutes. And they still
gouge us. They still charge Americans more than in any other country in the world where they sell the exact same
drugs.
B.Moyers: If you were president of the U.S., what would you do about the practice we just saw of
those ads?
R.Nader: If we had universal health care, we would control drug prices. The reason why drug
prices are cheaper in Canada, cheaper in Western Europe, is they put a cap on them. Enough is enough. You don't
want a society that if you don't pay, can't pay, you die.
B.Moyers: What about the argument of the companies, however, that they need lots of money for
research & development to bring along these new miracle drugs?
R.Nader: Yes. If they need more money, why don't they cut down on some of the huge advertising
& promotion expense, which all adds up when you actually figure it, more than what they spend on so-called
research & development that isn't subsidized by the federal govt. We have a web site called essential.org. It
lists the major anti-cancer drugs, and 75% of them were taxpayer funded. Of course, the drug companies then put
ads in papers saying, "look how creative we are." They never put a footnote saying, "Thank you, American
taxpayer."
B.Moyers: If you followed one of those ads and asked your doctor, what would you ask your doctor?
R.Nader: I would ask my doctor if he did his or her own research, or did he listen to that slick
detail man while he's eating chocolate cake.
B.Moyers: Several of our viewers want to know if after President Bush's tax break, after his
environmental policies, after Dick Cheney handing the govt over to industry, does Ralph Nader continue to see no
difference between the Democratic & the Republican parties?
R.Nader: You can always rely on the Republican party to make the Democrats look good. Now,
the similarities between the 2 tower over the dwindling real differences that they're willing to fight over.
B.Moyers: One of our viewers has said, "Why doesn't Ralph get in and wider the difference instead
of standing outside?"
R.Nader: They provide an alternative agenda, and they jolt one of the 2 parties like the Abolition
Party, the women's right to vote party.
B.Moyers: The Progressive Party.
R.Nader: The Labor Party, the Progressive Party. You know, only one-third party ever won.
B.Moyers: Even George Wallace's American Independent Party moved the Republican Party to act
on the silent majority.
R.Nader: And Ross Perot on the deficit.
B.Moyers: They've come along in one election and then they disappear by the next election. How
do you keep the Green Party from doing likewise ?
R.Nader: The Green Party platform is very broad & detailed. It deals with labor, environment,
taxes, corporate abuses, clean elections. Most of these other parties are largely one issue: parties.
B.Moyers: A retired senior citizen in Minnesota asked if you will support Paul Wellstone's reelection
to the Senate in November. He says the Green Party says it wants to protect the environment, but it's running a
candidate against Senator Wellstone, who is the outstanding environmentalist in the city. Will you support
Wellstone?
R.Nader: I'll support his votes & his record. But if you're trying to build a new party and the
candidate who is challenging Wellstone from a very small voter vote, the Green Party in Minnesota, if you're trying
to build a party, you can't pick & choose unless that candidate takes a bad position, at which point I'll criticize
him. But how do you build a party when you say, well, candidates, don't run in this area, run in this district, don't run
in this state? Democrats would never do that for the Greens.
B.Moyers: You're urging people to vote for the Green candidate against Wellstone?
R.Nader: I have to see what his positions are. He's not quite clear on his position, but if I like his
position, I'm trying to build the Green Party.
B.Moyers: But what do you have against Wellstone?
R.Nader: I praise Wellstone, in fact, I just wrote him a letter saying lets have a joint press
conference to have some more corporate crime reforms and to organize investors. I'm willing to do that. You know
he didn't support me and I know I was much closer to him than Al Gore was.
B.Moyers: Some people are saying your waffling Ralph. What should the Democratic voter, the
Independent voter do in Minnesota? Vote for a Green Party that everyone knows is not going to be elected Senator
or send the Republican to the Senate by voing against Wellstone.
R.Nader: Vote their conscience. I'm not going to tell them how to vote this way or that way. If I
was in Minnesota and I liked the Green Party candidate and his positions and I wanted to build a major party out of
a small party I'd vote for the Green Party candidate.
B.Moyers: A viewer from Oregon says, "Mr. Nader, ours is not a parliamentary system and we must
choose between the red & the black. There is a dime's worth of difference between the 2 parties, and why
don't you admit that and try to increase the difference?"
R.Nader: I never said there is no difference. There are few major differences between the 2
parties on military policy, treasury policy, federal reserve, foreign policy, a lot of regulatory policy, believe it or not,
there isn't a dime's worth of difference. They need a jolt from the outside because all these citizen groups, which
I've helped build and many other people have helped build, have been shut out of Washington by both parties
increasingly for 20 years.
B.Moyers: From Hawaii: If Green can't win in the primary, they certainly can't win in the general
election. Why doesn't Ralph run in Democratic primaries in 2004 instead of becoming the spoiler in the general
election?
R.Nader: Well, I don't think you can spoil a system that's already spoiled to the core, the corrupt
dirty money election system that both parties have catered to and both parties have benefited from. If there were no
other similarities than the Republicans & Democrats selling our govt, selling our election to the highest
bidders, that's enough for me to try to build a new movement.
B.Moyers: Do you belong... Actually belong to the Green Party?
R.Nader: No, I do not.
B.Moyers: Why don't you?
R.Nader: Because I want to work expanding the Green Party from the outside. I've been an
Independent all my life.
B.Moyers: You're still actually registered as an Independent.
R.Nader: Yes, I'm an Independent. I don't want to get involved in internal Green Party issues.
B.Moyers: 35 state atty generals lobbied for Chapter 11 to be eliminated from the new trade authority just handed to the President,
but they were brushed aside. Ralph Nader, atty generals don't make campaign contributions to members of
Congress, do they?
R.Nader: No, they don't. Nor do they make news. This whole issue was considered too complex
for the national news media to cover, and unfortunately, it went below the radar screen.
B.Moyers: Could they have done this if it had been a public debate in the open on C-SPAN with all
this happening instead of at midnight and 3:00 in the morning?
R.Nader: It would have been impossible. The country courthouses in the south alone would have
said, "What? You're going to have some overturning of American jury verdicts that have already passed the screen
of the trial judge? No way. You're going to have to have this decided in the secret tribunals." This is really
unconstitutional, yet it's very hard to invoke constitutional protections against these trade agreements, these intl
agreements, because you don't as a citizen have standing to sue in federal court. That's the doctrine that excludes
us.
B.Moyers: Wouldn't one simple reform be to simply require all of this to be done in front of the
cameras, to open the hearings, the committee meetings, the conference meetings, to public television?
R.Nader: That would have helped a great deal. I know when I testified for the House Ways &
Means committee on the G.A.T.T. & W.T.O. There wasn't any camera there. It was considered too dry, too
dusty. Yet it represented the greatest surrender of local state & national sovereignty in American history.
B.Moyers: Didn't you offer $10,000 to the public charity of any Senator's choice who would read...
Actually say he read that W.T.O. Agreement?
R.Nader: Yes, exactly. We scouted Capitol Hill lobbying for a year and we never found anyone,
any member of Congress ever read the 500 or so pages before they voted. They had a year. So we offered a prize.
The only Senator who took us up on it was Sen. Hank Brown R-CO. He actually read it. And then he said, "I have
an announcement to make. I'm for free trade. I voted a couple of years ago for NAFTA. But I read this document, I
was so appalled by the antidemocratic nature of it, that I'm going to vote against it. "
B.Moyers: But despite state atty generals, despite what the public seems to want on something like
this, these still happen; these laws get passed, they get passed in the middle of the night, and they're written by the
very people who benefit from them.
R.Nader: Because we have the corporate state in Washington. Corporations have far more power
than people. You're right, the public opinion polls, even with the minimal publicity, were predominately against
these trade agreements because people suspected that they were going to be controlled by more & more
absentee powers. It's hard enough to deal with Tallahassee, Sacramento and Washington, which is relatively in the
open, instead of having to deal with Geneva, Switzerland, and these secret tribunals.
B.Moyers: Why is it that bought political campaigns haven't created a groundswell for a viable
alternative to the Democrats & the Republicans?
R.Nader: I think that people basically have given up on themselves. They really have sold
themselves short as significant citizens in a democracy. It starts when they're children, when they don't learn civic
skills, and they go to grammar school & high school, they don't learn how to practice democracy. They're
sitting in front of computer screens. They're learning how to memorize, to regurgitate, to vegetate. Then when they
finish their education, they're not ready to participate. Of course, luckily we have citizen groups around the country
that have held up our democracy for the rest of us. That's why we have some good environmental laws, some good
consumer protection laws. But it's not enough.
B.Moyers: Are there any corporations you admire, corporations that have the right stuff, that are
models of good corporate citizenship?
R.Nader: Oh, yes. For example, Patagonia, the maker of very durable clothing in S.Calif.,
extremely environmental, extremely enlightened, extremely good to its workers. The Interface Corporation out of
Atlanta, GA, biggest carpet manufacturer for commercial installment in the world, and it is now moving towards
zero pollution and maximum recycling, a spectacular display of corporate efficiency, reducing its costs and paying
its debt to the planet. Of course, you don't see these on the evening news, either, do you?
B.Moyers: Will we have a single payer universal healthcare measure on November's ballot. Would
you support it?
R.Nader: Well, I usually like to read something before I support it, but if it is that, I certainly would
support it. Every western democracy for decades has given all its people universal healthcare, paid maternity
leave, paid family sick leave. But that's not the case in the richest country in the world.
B.Moyers: A New York viewer says, "I really respected Ralph Nader 20 years ago when I was in
college, but he lost me in 2000 when he botched his campaign with his petulant whining complaints about the other
candidates and his total neglect of any issues except for the environment."
And from Ohio: "Instead of being the fringe progressive liberal Green Party that conservatives ridicule as
extremists, why can't Green become the party for the working family?"
R.Nader: Well, we tried a great effort in that direction. I campaigned in 50 states, in poor areas
from Los Angeles to Hartford, CT. We campaigned in union halls. Actually we got several union endorsements and
considerable support from that end.
B.Moyers: So why didn't the message get through?
R.Nader: No message gets through in the present political climate if you're not on the presidential
debates.
I campaigned all these states many times, coast to coast from Hawaii to Maine, Washington to Florida before huge
audiences, filling Madison Square Garden and the Target Ctr in Minnesota and so on, all over the country. I
reached 2% of the people that I would have reached had I been on one of those 3 presidential debates.
That debate commission, as you know, is a private co. created & controlled by the Republican/Democratic
parties.
B.Moyers: They kept you off and then they kept Buchanan off.
R.Nader: They kept Perot off in 1996.
B.Moyers: What can be done about that?
R.Nader: We have to have a new people's Presidential Debate Commission with some good
foundations supporting it and a whole variety of political opinion represented on the board. And it's got to be really
non- partisan. The presidential debate commission now is a bipartisan, a tool of excluding all other competing
candidates even though the polls showed repeatedly in 2000 that they wanted me & Buchanan on those
debates.
B.Moyers: One of our viewers says, the result of Ralph Nader's efforts have been to rouse the new
conservatives of the radical right to copy & improve on his methods and they've shifted the nation to the right.
This viewer goes on to say that your race for president in 2000 helped to install the right wing into the White House.
In this plutocracy, he says... "How can you crusade for social good without creating a backlash that proves worse
than your solutions?"
R.Nader: You've got to go for more fundamental change. You've got to basically do the things and
build the institutions and rouse the public so that the popular sovereignty overcomes the corporate sovereignty.
That's one, and that starts with the schools. It starts with the union halls, expanding the union movement.
It starts with taxpayer groups that don't like to see billions of dollars go to corporate subsidies, handouts and
giveaways. The only place where democracy comes before work is in the dictionary. It takes a lot of work. People
have to put the time in. They've got to believe in themselves. If you look at American history, that's plenty of
inspiration. Look at the uphill fight of the abolitionists, the women's suffrages, the trade unions; these people were
up against huge odds, and they didn't give up on themselves. They didn't have the equivalent of saying, "I don't
have time. I'm watching the second rerun of CHEERS.
B.Moyers: But if there is such resistance from the system, and as you just said, the 2 parties keep
a lock on the debate, people despair, say it just isn't worth my getting out and knocking on the doors because my
vote doesn't count as much as the contributions from the corporations or the wealthy donors. And they're realistic
about that.
R.Nader: We shouldn't have the luxury of despair; that's a quitter's attitude. People don't
quit on the athletic field. We've got to learn not to quit, because we have to learn that what it takes for the people to
really break through is a lot less than what we grow up thinking it takes. People are still sovereign in this country;
members of Congress don't go back and get reelected unless they get the votes. The money intercepts that, and
the votes has got to drive the money out.
B.Moyers: Last question from a Wash.D.C. viewer "Since I've learned you would be interviewing
Ralph Nader, I've been thinking about his legacy. America was never the same after he took on General Motors.
He shows us that giants can be wounded, could be felled, and that ordinary people do count, even if their fight is a
long & difficult one. Hated & feared by the powers that be, he soldiers on. Ask him how he has the
stamina to keep at it."
R.Nader: Don't like the alternative: the white flag of surrender That's not a very pleasant
alternative. Also the sense of your own self- respect when you're up against injustice and so many people are being
ripped off and harmed and repressed. You've got to lock arms with them and help get a more just society.
B.Moyers: Are you going to run in 2004?
R.Nader: I really think it's too early to say. I don't like long campaigns. There's still 2002 elections
to go through. But I am considering it.
|
|
per 2.7.00 Calif. Report of Registration
Eligible voters
21,220,772 |
Reg. voters
14,631,805 68.95%
|
| Democratic Party 6,684,668 |
45.69% of registered voters |
| Republican Party 5,140,951 | 35.14% |
| American Independent 295,387 | 2.02% |
| Green Party 108,904 |
0.74% |
| Libertarian 87,183 | 0.60% |
| Reform Party 85,869 | 0.59% |
| Natural Law Party 62,183 | 0.42% |
| Miscellaneous 133,997 | 0.92% |
| Decline to State 2,032,663 | 13.89% |
Highest total of registered Greens in Calif. since Green Party of CA qualified for Jan. 1992 ballot
|
|
|
Red
|
Green &
|
Lavender
|
coalition takes Paris 2001
|
Socialist Wins Final Round in Race for Mayor of Paris
3.19.01 SUZANNE DALEY Agence France-Presse
PARIS Paris voters chose a Socialist today to run the city for the first time in more than a
century. The Socialist victory is considered a particular blow to the conservative president,
Jacques Chirac, who was mayor of Paris for nearly 20 years before becoming president in 1995.
Many analysts suggested that it was not the charisma of the Socialist candidate for mayor,
Bertrand Delanoë, that won the election for the Socialists, but the inability of Mr. Chirac's party to
get its house in order that lost it. Mr. Chirac's party chose Philippe Séguin as its candidate but
could not convince the departing mayor, Jean Tibéri, to step aside. The two seemed unable to
stop insulting each other even in the campaign's final days, when strategists were urging them to
unite against the left.
Early polls had suggested an easy victory for Mr. Delanoë, who ran a low-key, tightly controlled
campaign focused on local issues and open govt. These themes appealed to voters
disgusted by mounting allegations of corruption at city hall and bewildered by the spectacle of two
conservative candidates battling it out in public. But the first round of voting a week earlier, in
which Mr. Delanoë won only 31.4 percent of the vote, toned down the Socialist expectations. In
today's voting, his left-wing coalition won 89 out of 163 seats in the city council, the city
govt announced.
|
Even a narrow victory will be seen as a help to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a Socialist who is
expected to challenge Mr. Chirac in next year's presidential elections. The municipal elections also
brought another important victory for the Socialists in the city of Lyon. As in Paris, the official right-
wing candidate there was handicapped by a rival. But the Socialists lost many other important
races, including in Toulouse, Strasbourg, Rouen, Blois and Aix-en-Provence. Yet the battle for
Paris was by far the most closely watched of the municipal elections. It was in disarray almost from
the beginning, when Mr. Chirac's party turned away from Mr. Tibéri, who had been hand-picked by
Mr. Chirac in 1995. Formal investigations are under way into Mr. Tibéri's role in vote-rigging, the
awarding of public housing contracts to party supporters and allegations that some of the mayor's
political supporters hold city jobs but do not work.
Mr. Tibéri has always maintained that he has done nothing wrong and he has refused to step
aside. After months of wrangling over the issue, Mr. Tibéri suggested that his own party poll
delegates to see if he had support. However, the list of delegates he presented contained 1,000
fictitious names. Still, Mr. Tibéri could not be persuaded to step down. Eventually, he was ejected
from the party, but to little effect. Mr. Tibéri ran on his own and managed to get 13.9 percent of the
vote on the first round. Early in the week, he called on Mr. Séguin to merge his party lists with Mr.
Tibéri's. Mr. Séguin, campaigning against corruption and promising a break with the past, refused
to have anything to do with him. But by the end of the week he was forced into an indirect
relationship. Each candidate agreed not to run against the other in certain neighborhoods. In
defeat, each continued to blame the other, Mr. Séguin enumerating the seats he might have won if
Mr. Tibéri had behaved properly.
Mr. Delanoë is one of France's few openly gay politicians. But until a few months ago, he was
hardly a household name, though he had spent years as a member of the Paris city council. By 10
p.m., hundreds of people had gathered in front of Paris's ornate city hall to hear Mr. Delanoë
speak. "Today Parisians have freely decided in favor of a change of power in the capital," he told
cheering supporters. He called the vote a "victory for audacity and reason."
PARIS The Socialist Party tonight wrested control of Paris city hall from the conservatives
for the first time since Parisians began electing the city's leader 24 years ago, polling firms and
television exit polls showed. Analysts interpreted the vote as a rebuke to French President
Jacques Chirac and his scandal-tainted Rally for the Republic party. The Socialists also won
control of France's second-largest city, Lyon. But the capture of two of France's biggest political
prizes was offset by the left's surprising losses in other towns and cities, including the defeat of
some high-profile cabinet ministers seeking mayors' jobs. "The left is in difficulty in the provinces,
and the same is true of Chirac's right in Paris," Socialist leader Francois Hollande said on TF1
Television as the results came in. "Everything remains open for 2002," he said, referring to the
implications of today's results for next year's presidential and parliamentary elections.
Chirac is expected to face Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the presidential election, and
the battle for Paris was seen as a dry run. Both men had invested heavily in the Paris race --
Jospin by recruiting his friend, Bertrand Delanoe, and campaigning with him, and Chirac by
enlisting a conservative political heavyweight, Philippe Seguin, in place of the incumbent
conservative mayor, Jean Tiberi, whose tenure was marred by scandals and investigations. Chirac
was mayor of Paris from 1977 until 1995, and he used his tenure to turn city hall into a huge
political and fundraising machine that became his launching pad for the presidency. So the loss of
Paris to the Socialists was seen as a personal as well as political defeat.
The mayor of Paris is elected by the 163 municipal council members representing the city's 20
districts, so the real race tonight was for seats on the council. According to the projections of
polling firms and television stations, Delanoe's supporters, a coalition of Socialists,
Communists and environmentalist Greens, appeared set to capture well over the 82 seats
needed for a council majority. Delanoe, one of France's few openly gay politicians, was virtually
unknown when he became the left's official candidate last year. He now is set to take over the third
most prominent job in the country, behind the president and prime minister. While the Paris
campaign was being watched for signs of voter sentiment before the national elections, Delanoe
stuck doggedly to local issues, which appears to have helped him among voters wary of national
politicians being "parachuted" in to take over city halls. Delanoe has said he has no ambitions for
higher office.
Elsewhere around the country, some of Jospin's most prominent cabinet ministers failed to win
local mayoralties on the strength of their national reputations. Labor Minister Elisabeth Guigou was
defeated in Avignon, Education Minister Jack Lang was beaten in Blois and European Affairs
Minister Pierre Moscovici lost in Montbeliard. It is common practice for French politicians to hold
several posts simultaneously. The Socialists also lost control of towns they had held -- Rouen,
Orleans and Strasbourg and failed to take control of Toulouse, as many had expected. The
Communists also fared poorly, with the results tonight leaving them without control of any major
cities. "This is a bad night for the left," Communist Party leader Robert Hue said. This was the first
election held under a new law that required parties to field an equal number of male and female
candidates, in an effort to redress a lack of women in politics.
