-Caveat Lector- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Nader: Not Just Another Campaign Speech Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 23:47:30 -0500 (CDT) From: Michael Eisenscher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: ? To: undisclosed-recipients:; From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [IPPN] Not Just Another Campaign Speech Date: Wed, Sep 6, 2000, 9:14 PM Not Just Another Campaign Speech By Ralph Nader (The speech below was given extemporaneously at a reception of several hundred Green Party members, supporters and press at the Green Party's late June convention in Denver, Colorado. We've transcribed it in preparation for the upcoming fall issue of Independent Politics News but are sending it out now because there's a lot of good stuff in here. Thanks to JusticeVision [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] for the videotape of the convention from which this was taken.} This is not the best time for a deliberate exposition, here, but I want to say, I've met a lot of you on the hustings, whether Maine, or Rhode Island, Connecticut, or New Mexico. This is really the core of the whole Green Party effort all over the country, and the key is for all of us to pool our best ideas, tactics and strategies as fast as possible. The agenda is pretty much laid out, the issues are being honed, there'll be more details coming that will be posted on our web site, votenader.org. What we want to do is to move out throughout the country in a whole series of dimensions. One of them, for example, is on the campuses in terms of students. We've got to try to get with students more, on a lot of campuses, and with the internet we can do it very quickly, but that doesn't mean we can't benefit from a lot of practical suggestions by you. The second is to move out in the direction of blue-collar labor, especially those in the steel, auto, textile and other unions that are being more and more politicized. You're seeing a higher degree of legitimate militancy here than ever before. We need to work at the local level. There's PACE as well, that's the merger between the Paperworkers and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers. Then we want to move out to the 2 million nurses. As some of you know, at a news conference about 10 days ago the California Nurses Association, at a press conference in Washington, endorsed us. This is a union that sets the standard. It rallies, it demonstrates, it leads, not just supports, the cause of patients' rights. Last year they got five laws out of five signed, passed through the legislature and signed, on HMO accountability, whistle blower rights, the right to sue HMO's, etc. So we want to try to move out in that direction. Nurses have a great network. There are few people who are as credible in their occupation as nurses. We want to try to move through other constituencies here. One of them is the neighborhood groups in cities throughout the country who are really struggling against real odds in the inner city, in the areas of housing, poverty, transit, health care-this is really the ultimate shame on our country, in many ways, in terms of leaving these people so defenseless to predators, payday loan sharks, rent-to-own rackets, landlord abuses, deliberate withholding of health care, even when they have coverage for it under Medicaid, and of course environmental racism, that's very important. We have some of the most detailed maps on bank redlining ever brought together. We've got them in every community so those of you who want to move forward on that front can do so during the campaign, because these maps are available to everyone, even Republicans and Democrats. We want to also move forward through the day-to-day beat. There are reporters throughout the country who have their hands tied by publishers and media conglomerates, and they don't like it. They would like to cover progressive political movements and not expect third parties to be discriminated against. So don't be shy, reach out to them, talk with them, they'll carry the newsworthy purpose to their editors and, more often than not, you'll get the coverage that you need, because there are a lot of local and state Green Party candidates here, from Hawaii and other places. We need to move at that level as well. With radio talk shows, 90% of them are run by right-wing radio show hosts because, you know, the government doesn't advertise but corporations do. Just try more systematic telephoning. Every time you break through on one of these talk shows, you're talking to thousands, or tens of thousands of people. Then we have to more out through the small farm, the small ranch areas all over the country. Small farmers are really hanging on, they're angry, they've got every right to be angry, they're being exposed to crushing price suppression by their big giant buyers like Cargill and IBP, and on the other hand they're being squeezed by the seed companies and other suppliers, fewer and fewer giant corporations on either side of them moving to replace them, moving into the production area through vertical integration. We started an agribusiness group two and a half years ago, and the website there is competitivemarkets.com. They're networking and mobilizing small farmers and academics who are keen on preserving the small farm, rural economy and way of life. We also have to move out-and don't get excited on this one-through conservatives. I have found, it's really amazing, when you start listing the concrete issues, the conservatives respond. They don't agree on all the issues of course, but look at what they do agree on. I haven't found a conservative who likes to be ripped off by high drug prices. I haven't found a conservative who wants their kids to breathe dirty air and contaminated water. I haven't found a conservative who doesn't want his or her car recalled if it turns out to be a lethal lemon. So once you get a common ground and a recognition between you and the conservatives, once you come down the abstraction ladder, there's a lot of common ground, then start up the abstraction ladder a little bit, not too fast. One way you can do it is, do they really like hundreds of billions of tax dollars going into corporate subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts, massive corporate debt forgiveness? You know, in one little paragraph, in the late 70s, greased by campaign money, Congress passed a huge bill, a cancellation of 11 billion dollars of giant corporate taxes which were deferred under a program in terms of exports, like General Electric, Boeing and so forth. They sell abroad, they get profit, they're allowed to defer, and when the time came to pay Uncle Sam, they paid Congress and escaped 11 billion dollars. You know, 11 billion here, 10 billion there, 15 billion, 200 billion, it adds up to real money, as Everett Dirkson said. So you want to talk about that. Then you say, these corporate exploiters of kids, do you really like that? They're really keen on that, the very, very vicious commercial exploitation of children, over-medication and all the programming that's violent and addictive, it turns kids into gazers and spectators, and so on. Another area they're really upset about is they really like direct democracy. How many of you have seen how many conservatives want the issue of referendum and recall? You can talk about that aspect of it. Now obviously, you're going to hit the shoals sooner or later. But they don't like, for example, giant business having no allegiance to our country, other than to control it. They don't like WTO and NAFTA. On the other hand they have some very good charitable efforts overseas. They don't move into justice efforts very often, but they're very good at charitable efforts, famine, etc. So don't prejudge any folk like this, move right up. The key vulnerability of progressive movements is they circle the wagons, and you can't circle the wagons. You can't spend time persuading each other with ever-increasing brilliance about the abuses of the society and then begin to say, well, why don't all these other people recognize it? Well, why don't you try it, and you'll see that they do, and they'll appreciate it. The other thing is to recognize the civil rights movements as far as minorities, gay and lesbian rights and women's rights, you've got to move beyond the periphery of the circle that you're comfortable with. We, for example, in Tennessee met with Tom Burrell, who was a former autoworker, a Vietnam veteran, he came back to Tennessee, he's farming three thousand acres. He's a black farmer, and he started realizing that black farmers are almost extinct, compliments of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's basic patterns of withholding loans, and so on. He's now a leader so they can try to go back into farming and get equal treatment. We have to keep expanding in that way. One can go on and on in terms of moving out to one dimension or another, but basically, these are very majoritarian values that we are espousing, and people everywhere are sick and tired of being pushed around by the big guys. They're sick and tired of being marginalized, of not being responded to, not being explained to in terms of they sometimes wonder why things are being done, they never get an explanation, they're told to wait, to wait in line; wait on the phone, waiting in traffic bumper to bumper, there's a lot of frustration-all these things are symptoms of much more serious neglects over the decades that we have to elaborate. When people get a sense of why things happen that they don't like, instead of just describing the immediate source of the irritation, if you go back to the concentration of corporate power, how they tore up the trollies and maneuvered our whole highway system to the way it is now, choking traffic, wasting all kinds of time-we could have terrific, modern, flexible public transit systems-then the explanation is a motivation for them. It's almost human nature that the more you network an explanation, the more people say, yeah, that's right, that shouldn't have happened, it should have been caught earlier, we've got to do something about it now. Now, going through all of these different dimensions, there isn't anybody here who doesn't have connections in at least one of those areas, and pretty soon, word of mouth takes over. And word of mouth is lightning fast, its credible and its memorable, because it flows from one credible person to a credible neighbor, or a credible worker, or a credible relative or an acquaintance. You have to encourage people to start talking politics a little more, start talking politics as if people mattered. When they say, "I'm not turned on to politics," then say, "well, maybe that's why politics turned on you." And you say, this is what happens when cash register politics dominates our Congress. You say, here's what happens. Give me ten of your daily irritations, and they list them. OK, this is why this problem isn't treated, because the oil companies own the country, this is why this problem isn't treated because of the drug companies, or the HMOs, and this is why this problem isn't treated because it's the developers, it's in the growth, or the sprawl, etc. This is why this problem isn't treated because the tax dollars go into stadiums and arenas-try that one-and not schools and clinics, etc. So you just weave them out, we've got to have a dialogue of something other than small talk. When you look at the volume of small talk in this country on a given day, I mean, you know, just try to turn it around because there's a cultural inhibition to try to break into small talk and begin turning it around. With three or four people, outside some store or mall, and they're starting to talk small talk, how's the weather, and why the Denver Rockies have it easy here, etc., and then you say, well, what about universal health insurance. The eyes may role a little, but then you know what will happen, one of them will say, you know, my aunt had this terrible problem in a hospital, or it's three hundred dollars a month for the prescription, etc. In other words, if you take people seriously, they will be serious people. If you take people at a level where, well, you know, people are apathetic, they're powerless, etc., they won't disappoint you. These are self-fulfilling prophecies. The other side of apathy is powerlessness. You look them right in the eye and you say, are you a voter, and they'll say yeah, are you a worker, they'll say yes, are you a shopper, they'll say yes, are you a taxpayer, they'll say yeah, you say, do you want more power, do you want more power, tell me, do you want more power, what do you mean more power, and that's the door, it's open, and you can give lectures on that. This is what it's all about, taking on the concentration of power in the hands of the few who make decisions for the many. None of this is new to you, it's just a reminder, a reiteration of how we have to role it out throughout the country when you go back home, and you will see that, come November, this Green Party Presidential campaign and the local and state Green Party candidates are going to surprise a lot of pundits. And these pundits won't all be inside the beltway either. Let's go forward on this. Big steps start with small steps, solidarity, the blue-green coalition, the whole Seattle coalition and moving out. [This message sent using the IPPN Announcement e-mail list] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
