Nader Right Again...

So, it's not a very surprising headline is it ("Nader Right Again")? But it happened again last week. Actually, I'm sure it happened many times over last week, but here I'm speaking of the controversy surrounding the Sacramento Kings v. Los Angeles Lakers playoff basketball game several years back, that was all over the news recently, when a referee suggested the game had been refereed unfairly on purpose. At the time, of course, Ralph Nader wrote a letter asking the situation be investigated.

And so, I'd like to take this opportunity to further rub it in, as before, that our politicians and leaders have no excuse for not seeing things coming, not facing up to and dealing with our problems, when there are people like Ralph Nader talking about them years (or sometimes decades) in advance.

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Independents' Suffrage--Still Yearning for the Right to Vote

Most people don't seem to realize that millions of Americans still don't have suffrage (the right to vote). At best, when they hear of a "suffrage" movement, they'll think we're talking about the women's suffrage movement which was not successful in getting women the right to vote until as late as 1920. Failing being removed from the voter rolls by Katherine Harris for having the same name as a felon (as happened so famously in 2000 in Florida), most people assume that if you're a U.S. citizen over the age of 18, you can vote. That couldn't be further from the truth.

More recently, Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News (check it out if you haven't yet), wrote about the three classes of American citizens who remain disenfranchised. Here is the brief quote:

There are three classes of legally competent adult U.S. citizens who are still denied full voting rights. They are (1) residents of U.S. territories; (2) felons in almost all states and ex-felons in some states; (3) members and supporters of minor parties and independent candidates. There are advocacy groups working to solve the problems of all three groups. It would be desirable if those who are concerned about each of these problems would recognize that all three groups have much in common. [1, bold emphasis added]

Yes, you read that right. When people refuse to sign my and others' ballot access petitions, they appear to justify it to themselves, allowing themselves to somehow believe at the same time that they can refuse to support Mr. Nader (or others') right to be on the ballot but still be proponents of democracy, that these are the rules and everyone has to follow them and they have every right not to sign. Yeah, tell me it's fair when you've had to spend hours in the hot sun, every free evening, just so that you might maybe get to vote for the candidate you and millions of others support. Bureaucracy does not democracy make.

Extremely harsh and unfair rules designed to prevent the expression of more voices are not the rules everyone has to follow--they certainly weren't the rules that the Bush/Cheney campaign had to follow in Illinois in 2004, when the Democratic legislature had to pass a special law to allow them on the ballot, since they didn't meet the requirements otherwise.[2]

They'll probably respond that I can write other candidates in. Actually, not all states allow write in votes. Some states even require that one register as a member of a political party, you can't even really be officially independent in those places. And even in places that do allow write-ins, most supporters of independent candidates don't usually realize that's an option, so they're either forced to vote for someone else or not vote at all. That is, of course, why the corporate parties believe it is to their advantage to keep other candidates off the ballot.

It stings every time someone refuses to sign my petition and still claims to support democracy. I've found it interesting, since I started petitioning in 2004, how many people could look me in the face and in effect tell me that I and millions of others who support independents and third parties don't deserve to be heard. I wasn't surprised, I know what the common ideas on this matter are...

...This is a country where a matter of decades ago it was commonly believed that women shouldn't vote because they were too frail, their influence was needed at the local (family) level, that women voting had only led to a mess where it had been tried, that the men were already doing a good enough job taking care of the country. (Replace 'women' with 'independents' and 'men' with 'Democrats' and the arguments start sounding painfully familiar.)

What never ceases to surprise me is the literal gagging feeling I get at the bottom of my throat. At least I know, though, that I am part of a huge class of millions of voters who are diverse in our ideas and political beliefs, but all agree: we want suffrage!

It's been a couple months since I issued the challenge in the header of this blog, but still no takers. Please, go ahead, find me someone Better Than Nader to vote for. But don't ask me to vote for corporate candidates who won't even accord me enough respect to allow me an equal right to expression, and in the electoral arena where we deserve to be heard most.

[1] http://www.ballot-access.org/2008/05/27/hillary-clinton-supports-voting-
rights-for-territories/
[2] http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-119036145.html

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How to Help Nader/Gonzalez '08

I don't generally write posts just to tell people to visit another website, but in this case I am making an exception. That's because I recently came across a webpage on the Swans Commentary site that is devoted to the simple ways you can help the Nader/Gonzalez campaign.

Here is the web address:
http://swans.com/library/art14/nader08.html

Among other ideas, the authors of that piece, Gilles d'Aymery & Jan Baughman, have listed the addresses and contact information of a number of important news programs/networks as well as the mailing address for Google. The idea is to spread the word that we need to write actual snail-mail letters to these places telling them we demand that they cover the Nader campaign and interview our candidates. These are our publicly owned airwaves, we have every right to have our voices heard over them.

The importance of writing Google though, is to demand that they include Nader/Gonzalez in their presidential debates this fall. Imagine it, a real forum to raise the real issues and real solutions!

So go check it out, and write those letters!

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Having Your Cake and Eating it too--the Half-Hearted Wish for Change

Upon being faced with accepting what's really at stake in the election (not just the differences between the corporate candidates, but their differences from our interests), many Americans begin to want to have their cake and eat it too, they begin to ask questions like, "Why not run for lower office first? And work your way up? A senate office for instance?"

Well, luckily, Ralph Nader has provided an excellent answer to these questions. Here it is in a nutshell (he's given similar answers in different interviews, this one was aired on a C-Span 2 program talking with DC high school students recently, you can watch the full interview here):

[FRANK BOND:] Ralph, let me ask you something that--because your ability to get issues on the agenda, get the mainstream candidates talking about them is unparalleled--let me ask you what was asked of Jesse Jackson when he did the similar thing, and that is why not run for a lesser elective office and really establish a track record of giving the constituents the goods and then build from there rather than for the presidency...?

[RALPH NADER:] Because I'm a full-time citizen advocate. When the door is shut on citizen groups in Washington, women's rights groups, labor, civil rights groups, environmental groups, consumer groups, what are we going to do? We can't get hearings for the last 20 years in Congress on corporate crime, fraud and abuse which is reported by the press every day. We can't get the Food and Drug Administration to respond to our petitions to remove dangerous drugs or have higher food safety standards.

What are we going to do? Listen to Thomas Jefferson. What he said is, when you lose your government to the moneyed interests--to the big corporations who control every department and agency now, including the Department of Labor--you've got to go into the electoral arena. He used the word "revolution" [laugh]--I mean Thomas Jefferson was a tough guy. But you go into the electoral arena.

Now if you want to arouse the public on a national level, you don't run for senator. My goal is to awaken people, to inform people, to help galvanize people, and to have them ask one central question of everyone running for political office: How are you going to shift power from the few, who run this country, to the many, who are the people who work everyday and do all the things that have to be done to save this country?
There is too much power and wealth in too few hands in this country. Big corporations [have] taken over our government, they have no allegiance to our country anymore other than to control it or abandon it as they see fit, shipping industries and jobs to communist and fascist dictators. Always ask the question, how are you going to give me more power? To organize as tax payers, as consumers, as voters. To have our own media--why don't you have your own television station for young people?

Do you know that you and others own the public airwaves? Do you know that you and others own one-third of America, the public lands with all the timber and oil and gas and minerals et cetera? Do you know that you own the huge research and development that the US government funds, that goes to business free, like drugs that are developed by the National Institutes of Health, you give them to these companies free who sock it to you with very high prices? That's what we have to do. Always ask, simple question.

You can't believe the facial expressions on the politicians, when the politician says, "Hey kiddies"--that way they change their tone of voice to begin with--"Hey kiddies, what would you like to ask us?" And you look at them and you say, "How are you gonna give me more power, so I can take on the big guys?" "What?! Huh?" Well one way is public funding of public campaigns. And another way is to facilitate forming trade unions, facilitate forming powerful consumer groups. Another way is to allow you to go to court more often, instead of block[ing] the courtroom door under these terribly regressive drives called "tort reform" or forcing you into compulsory arbitration when you have a dispute with your credit card company or your bank. So always ask the question, how are you gonna give us more power so that we can run our own country? And remember, Senator, the Constitution begins with the phrase, "We the People" not "We the Corporations."

Then they say, "start a grassroots movement" first.

• Again, if one wishes to reach, inform, waken, mobilize people nationwide, what better time than the only truly national election, the time when the most people are paying attention to political issues and questions?
  
• Involvement in Mr. Nader's campaigns has sparked many a great local activist and inspired a number to run for local offices.
  
• Plus, as I described in an earlier post, Mr. Nader is hoping to continue his campaign after November in the form of Congress Watchdog groups in each Congressional district.
  
• Furthermore, when the problems and decay are coming from the top down, you go after the top to do something about them.
  
• Finally, when so much is at stake, millions of lives whichever corporate candidate we inaugurate, why not do everything in our power to do something about it?

Then, having acknowledged what's really at stake and that the presidential elections are an important part of doing something about it, there are the people who say this is not the year. Amazingly, every four years they say this year is extra important (forgetting what's really at stake again)--step aside, fall into line, be quiet this time and next time go ahead and challenge the corporate takeover of our government and rampant corruption on Capitol Hill. But "next time" never comes.

Of course there is main argument against lesser-evil voting I've described before (and again here), that such voting makes candidates take our votes for granted and get worse and worse. If you're not already familiar with the argument, read those posts. But there's also another argument against the "not this time" stance, I quote Swans editor Gilles D'Aymery:

Which leads to the conclusion that America has to hit rock bottom (or finally realize it's close to there) for real political upheaval to be in demand. Let's wait until civil rights have disappeared, until foreign policy has subjugated and alienated every country of the world, until our parents are in the street for lack of health care and Social Security, until our children are in the street for lack of education, until democracy is officially replaced by theocracy, and then, maybe then, it will be "safe" to consider a third party candidate. Sure, and then we'll be in a real strong fighting position...

Allow me to let everyone in on a little secret: while Americans look for a way to have our cake and eat it too (but with much more severe consequences) because we're too intimidated, paralyzed or apathetic to take back our country, the corporations and the candidates they work everyday to keep beholden to their interests are laughing in our faces and hundreds of thousands of preventable American deaths continue to occur each year, for no good reason at all.

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Indiana Jones and the Signature Payload--Adventures Petitioning, Pt. 2

Okay, it wasn't actually a payload--as I happily told those who asked, "I'm not getting paid; I'm a volunteer." But I would like to take this moment to thank the cast, crew and advertisers of the new Indiana Jones movie that I have no intention of seeing for finally having a tangibly positive impact on my life. Well, them and the fact that my local movie theater uses the public sidewalk as a waiting area.

For days things had come up to keep me from petitioning and I wasted one evening at a local farmer's market getting--wait for it--three signatures, so I was in a very bad mood. But I thought I would give the opening night of Indiana Jones a shot. As I mentioned, my local movie theater uses the public sidewalk as a waiting area, so I don't even need to ask for permission to petition in front of their fine people-attracting (or was it distracting?) establishment.

I just showed up and started asking people to sign and to my great surprise--about 35 of them did in under 2 hours. I'm sure this is quite unimpressive to those great signature gatherers out there, but it's the best I've ever done in such a short time.

What they say is true: places with lots of people waiting in long lines (even better, on the public sidewalk) are great places to petition. Captive audience. Well, unless it's the Democratic National Convention, anyway. But generally, people seemed much more friendly when they were hanging out with no place to go.

One young man even tried to get his friends to sign, saying rightly that this was "Democracy in action." There were also, of course, the usual comments about 2000 as well as the guy who told me (before even hearing what I was petitioning for) that he worked for the Republican Party and so should I (no, he didn't sign). But I'm starting to wonder if maybe the biggest obstacle to getting past the two party duopoly isn't the 40-plus-hour work week and the great stress Americans are under for time.

Interestingly enough, there were a couple people who, though they refused to sign the petition themselves, commented that they respected my persistence, lack of intimidation, and bravery in petitioning. In retrospect, this is still bothersome in that it shouldn't take bravery to do something as basic to civic involvement as petitioning. But hey, at least they weren't mad at me. They appreciated that I was doing something I believe in.

This brings up another issue. There were more than a few people who were more willing to sign when they found out I was a volunteer. They commented that they didn't like or trust people who were getting paid. I understand where they're coming from, but the fact is that with such difficult and extreme ballot access requirements, it is often necessary (and in fact the common practice) to hire signature gatherers.

In the end, there wasn't much that could lift my spirits like collecting a whole bunch of signatures at once to get the best candidate on the ballot. But one thing that could beat it would be getting him into the debates or, better yet, the White House.

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The Lessons of History and the Myth of the "Powerless" Democrats

In the 2006 mid-term elections, many Americans, largely because they were fed up with the Iraq war, voted Democrats into Congress in districts with Republican incumbents. There was a widespread idea that the Democrats would end the war and hold the president and his administration accountable, if only they had a majority. Of course, it didn't quite work out that way. Once they had the majority, Speaker Pelosi (more recently reported to have known about US waterboarding and not objected) immediately took impeachment off the table and, among other things, the Democrats have voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act and passed billions in war appropriations. The Democrats say that they do not have a large enough majority to end the war.

As Matt Gonzalez described, speaking about Senator Obama's website:

Now, this is an American senator who's telling you, even though we're in the majority party, we don't have the votes to end the war, and we need your help to get 16 Republicans either out of office or behind us. Well, what's wrong with this?

It is so fundamentally--shows such either duplicity or inexperience on his part, because you don't need a super majority, two-thirds of the senate, to end this war. You need two-thirds of the senate to override a veto by the president. But how do you stop a war? Well to fund a war you've gotta have war appropriations, if you don't want war appropriations, what do you do? You vote against the war appropriation, you are the majority party and vote it down.

Now if some of your Democratic colleagues, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe a handful of them don't want to do that, you know what you do? It's called filibustering. Because you, in other words, don't allow the measure to be voted on and then the president doesn't have money to spend on the war. How do you do that? How many votes do you think you need to filibuster? ...if the Democrats can put together 41 out of their 50 or 51 votes in the senate, guess what? Not a single war appropriation could be passed.[1, emphasis added]

The Democrats and Republicans seem to have quite a nice system worked out for themselves. I can't say that it was intentional, perhaps they just stumbled into it despite their incompetence--how to betray the interests of your constituents and get away with it without being held accountable? Blame it on the other guy--"He did it, but don't blame me, I just helped. And by the way, look how much worse he is than me, you don't want more of him, do you? So work with me." It's almost like a really awful Good Cop/Bad Cop routine.

Yesterday, someone refused to sign my Nader/Gonzalez ballot access petition because he was "too afraid it could result in McCain." I think it's been established that he is not alone in this view, and in a number of posts I've already addressed topics such as the myth of the "spoiler" and what's really at stake in this election. There are some things that need to be demanded regardless of how likely people think it is they will be achieved--I certainly don't hear anyone today faulting the 19th-century Liberty Party for pushing the anti-slavery issue by refusing to support the least-worst presidential candidate between the Whigs and Democrats.[2]

Many people defend their least-worst vote by saying that if it was not clear in 2000, it is now apparent that there is in fact a difference between the corporate candidates. I've mentioned before that they rarely discuss the differences between the corporate candidates and their own interests, but they also rarely stop to consider how such differences came about--are they different because the Democrats (for example) became better, or is it because while they've both become worse, the Republicans have even more so?

The fact is that both of them have become worse (read: more beholden to corporate interests with less regard for the well-being of Americans) and continue to do so. As Ralph Nader has pointed out in this video:

And guess what? Even Richard Nixon signed bill after bill that [we?] got through Congress: the EPA bill, the OSHA bill for job safety and health, he signed into law the great air and water pollution legislation, he signed into law the product safety commission bill--he didn't believe in any of these bills, but he had a flourishing statement of enthusiasm behind each bill and a ceremony at the White House. Now why did he sign bills he didn't believe in? Well, one answer is he was the last Republican president who was afraid of liberals. He signed these bills into law because he heard the rumble of the people from the 60s and he was afraid of the rumble of the people. And as the years passed the rumble of the people was reduced and became less and less audible. Half of democracy is showing up.[3, emphasis added]

So how is it that they aren't held accountable?

If you have a low expectation level of politicians, then they're going to oblige you. --Ralph Nader[4]

All they really need from us is our votes and then they're pretty free to do the corporations' bidding. Millions of Americans vote for one party over the other because they're the least-worst, sending candidates the message that our only demand in exchange for this and other votes is that they stay less horrible than the other guy. If the other guy becomes even more bad, they're free to become more bad too. Even though both of them get worse and worse with each election cycle, as long as the Republicans are more in-your-face about being horrible, the Democrats get away with being their accomplices.

How many times do they have to betray us, before we learn they are not an opposition party? How many times before we learn the lessons of history? The lesson that we won't get better unless we demand better.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oJAluM1v5w
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_%28United_States%29#Notable
_third-party_Presidential_candidates
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXxQT-L40Lc&feature=user
[4] http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_jonathan_080514_nader_calls
_u__s___22c.htm

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Stories from the Streets--Adventures Petitioning, Pt. 1

This past weekend I started doing a bit of petitioning. First I watched this how to petition video from votenader.org and then I decided to see how long it would take me to get my first ten signatures of 2008 (a little over an hour). I don't know how those people who get 300 signatures in a day do it--if you're out there, your tips are appreciated.

I didn't get nearly as much anger directed at me as in 2004, but it was still a frustrating experience. I know eventually the memories of frustration fade away, I've already forgotten many of the particularly mean things people in my community said to me when I petitioned four years ago.

One of the images that has stuck with me most from this first hour is of three young men who walked past me as I asked if any of them were registered voters in this state, one of them saying "No" in a very insincere tone and then looking back from a short distance and laughing with his friends, apparently finding hilarity in rejecting the possibility of an interaction that might mean something serious for the state of their country--as if apathy is cool.

I suppose I can't blame them, they probably thought I was trying to sell them something. But then, it's a sadly telling state of affairs when people imagine that anyone trying to talk to them on the streets is after their pocketbook.

Then there was the young woman who refused to sign, even after I had mentioned this was not an endorsement but a petition for ballot access, because "it doesn't make sense to sign" if she doesn't support Ralph Nader or want him to win. I'm sorry, I must be missing something, when exactly did Americans become opposed to democracy? You know, that system where everyone puts forth their ideas, proposals, candidates; gets educated about the arguments for/against them; tries to persuade others; and then votes? Like Matt Gonzalez said, other candidates should go out and earn the votes that would otherwise be cast for Nader/Gonzalez, not force people to vote one way. Nader voters aren't blind sheep that vote for Mr. Nader because he tells us to.

I can't help wondering, let's say she's just opposed to signing this one petition, is there anything, any issue she and others like her care enough about to be willing to petition for? What has to happen for her to say enough is enough? Clearly wars, PATRIOT Acts, indefinite detention without trial, compulsory arbitration and the gradual loss of trial by jury, poverty, hunger, and hundreds of thousands of preventable American deaths every year are not enough. These are all issues that it seems most Americans think "realistically" we have to "compromise" on because the "status quo" of everything getting worse and worse is better than whatever schemes the other corporate party has in mind.

Mostly, I kept reminding myself not to waste valuable petitioning time arguing. My mission was ballot access, not to persuade every last person who walks by me on the street to support democratic elections. And all in all, I didn't suffer any harassment in this first hour, other petitioners and I have taken much, much worse, and of course I found ten people who thought it would be great to have Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez's names on their ballot this November--nothing extraordinarily bad happened--except being faced, yet again, with the now ordinary idea that exercising my first amendment rights or wanting to allow for more voices in the election is insane, radical or both.

I thought of what Ralph Nader has said, about what your level of social indignation is and whether you have an outlet for that anger--well, lucky for me, I have one outlet in the form of this blog. (Another important outlet in this case is allowing the frustration to motivate me to work harder to collect signatures to get the best candidate on the ballot and oppose the unfair ballot access laws.)

If you've been petitioning and you'd like another outlet to share your thoughts on the first amendment, democracy, and your adventures, I welcome guest posts--contact me. Or maybe you think this is all an enormous waste of energy and the way towards a more democratic America is through supporting another candidate--if you think you've found someone Better Than Nader, I'd love to hear about it.

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