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To staff, volunteers, supporters, donors, and voters Authoritative public sentiments have always been there, have they not? From the Declaration of Independence's majestic prose to the preamble of our Constitution which begins with "We the People of the United States ..." to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "toward a new birth of freedom ... for a government of the people, by the people and for the people" to the last words of the pledge of allegiance -- "with liberty and justice for all." Sentiments remain mere words; heralding hopes, wishes and poignant nods. Unless they are grounded in reality, behavior, respect, attitude, and renewal, they become the words of controlling processes, pacifying the resigned, fortifying the concentrators of abusive power, and ever manipulating the trusting populace by the latest politicians climbing up the electoral hills. The Nader/Gonzalez independent ticket set standards for presidential campaigns that were authentic, honest, factual, far-seeing, and committed to a deliberate, deep democracy that creates high expectations and dedicated actions from the people themselves. Democracy is revered all over the world because it brings the best out of people. But the people have to want it, to work for it, and to use it daily in its many splendid varieties. Elections are a temptation for abstraction, soaring rhetoric without roots in the daily experience of those who are impoverished, ailing, defrauded, and indebted. The vast majority of citizens are marginalized and excluded from the freedom to participate in power -- to paraphrase Marcus Cicero. Our campaign started with the realities of our country on the ground where the people live, work, and raise their families. Politics must never be an abstraction. For if allowed to be such, it will be a mirage that stokes the hopeful emotions while detaching people from a critical recognition that they and only they -- individually and organized -- can make their representatives truly their representatives, dutifully producing more leaders. Leaders who cannot betray the trust of the people, and that of their children and grandchildren, know from whence they came. It is with these thoughts that all of us at the Nader/Gonzalez campaign headquarters tender our gratitude to all who stood with us. We thank your enlightened self-interest, your awareness of the necessity for enlightened communities from the neighborhoods and workplaces all the way to our national government. We must make this government a tribune of peace, justice and freedom throughout this tormented world of ours. While I was campaigning in Syracuse, New York this October in a city beset with hard times, a middle-aged blue-collar worker with calloused hands approached me after our discussion and said, "I'm voting for myself, which is why I'm voting for you." I took that declaration as a serious trusteeship and later on the campaign trail turned it into a basic question: "Isn't it about time that we all voted for ourselves?" Isn't it about time that we planned our futures rather than ceding that essential function of citizenship to giant rootless corporations? What follows is a summary of what we achieved together through the Presidential campaign of 2008, despite being obstructed by the Democrats' and Republicans' ballot access hurdles and traps, despite being excluded from speaking to tens of millions of Americans through the Presidential debates (polls repeatedly showed the people wanted us -- by name -- included), and despite being willfully ignored by the national television and national newspaper/magazine media. These achievements represent persistence, stamina, and the willpower to penetrate this political bigotry so as to give choice to those voters who knew we were running. We believe history will treat the Nader/Gonzalez initiative kindly in part because its reading of the necessities of the American people was accurate as was its condemnation of the concentrated powers that have for so long denied them livelihoods of decency, security and voice. We thank you who made all this possible. Looking forward, we thank all who will make the campaign's legacy proliferate through all seasons at all times wherever human beings seek the fulfillment of their human possibilities. Moving a Progressive Agenda Forward in the Electoral Arena. Nurturing anew the survival seeds and sprouts for a functioning democracy, so that someday the fruits of this campaign will be traced back to the political pioneers of 2008 who carried forward the torch of conscience and justice high across the land.
Civil Liberties for Independent and Third Party Candidates Working to break down unfair ballot access laws that shred the rights of minor party candidates to run for office.
Bringing in New People to the Political Process
Documenting the Multi-faceted Oppressiveness of the Two-Party Controlled Dictatorship of Our Country The exclusion from the debates and the media blackout helped deflate the myth of a competitive electoral democracy. Exposing myths is the first step toward reforms. International Solidarity The Nader/Gonzalez campaign helped show the rest of the world that there are voices inside the Presidential campaign who speak vigorously to the United States becoming a humanitarian superpower that knows how to wage peace, advance justice and enhance the security of all peoples, as envisioned by the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Ballot Access & Voting Success
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Showing posts with label Third Parties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Third Parties. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
"What we accomplished together," a post-election synopsis from the Nader/Gonzalez campaign
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
"Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama," by Ralph Nader
| | November 4, 2008 |
November 3, 2008 Open letter to Senator Barack Obama Dear Senator Obama: In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo. Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man? To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans. You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state." During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe. David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President." Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'" In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008. Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people." A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents. Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya. Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year. Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama! But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America. Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy. Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily. Sincerely, Ralph Nader | |
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Nader/Gonzales campaign on the current economic downturn and Black Monday
| | September 15, 2008 |
 On this momentous Monday, September 15, 2008, we make a simple request. The prudential choice for 2008. We woke up this morning early. Turned on C-Span radio. And heard Brian Lamb quoting Ralph Nader. From years ago. With Ralph warning about extravagance, recklessness, and excessive compensation on Wall Street. Warning years ago about the undue influence of Fannie and Freddie on Democrats and Republicans alike. Warning about the failure of our government to protect small investors. Throughout his career, Nader has strong been a strong advocate for due diligence. For protecting shareholder rights. For prudential regulation. And strict oversight of the markets. While the Democrats and Republicans have bent to the whims of their corporate masters and Wall Street's bottom line imperatives. Nader has been steadfast in his advocacy for safety, regulation, and protecting the little guy. Unfortunately for the nation and for investors, his warnings have gone largely unheeded. On this momentous Monday, as we watch the fallout from the failed policies, greed and extravagance of the corporate political class unfold, we make this simple note. Due diligence, prudential regulation, and strict oversight of the markets -- Nader-style -- would have gone a long way to averting the disaster currently hitting Wall Street. Instead, it was short-term fast and dirty profits, muzzled politicians, and throw caution to the wind. And so now, the American people are learning the hard way about the consequences of a reckless corporate dominated political economy. But thanks to your hard work, we are in a position to give America a choice in November.  For prudence. For strict oversight. For regulation. Right now, we're in the stretch drive of our $80,000 fundraiser -- to help fund our get out the vote drive. To get Ralph Nader into the presidential debates. To let the American people know that they don't have to settle for corporate rule. There will be a choice in November. But first, we need to reach $80,000 by September 17th. We're at $50,000. We have three days to reach $80,000. We haven't missed one fundraising goal yet. And we don't plan to start now. So, please, drop $15 now on Nader/Gonzalez. Help shift the power. From Wall Street and the corporate giants. Back into the hands of the American people. Together, we are making a difference. Onward to November The Nader Team  | |
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Nader Campaign Newsletter, Sept. 14, 2008
| | September 14, 2008
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Dear Nader/Gonzalez Supporter,
September 17th, 3pm "Rally" New Orleans, LA | |
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Nader/Gonzales on the ticket in 45 states!
WWW--This is a wonderful development for the third party movement, a movement towards real change in America where the public has a shot at actual representation in government. Look at the statistics below, it's an exciting development in American politics, and the only road towards accountability in government. Time to smash the two party duopoly that got us into the current mess we're in. Let's roll.
| | September 9, 2008 |
 Drop $11 on Nader/Gonzalez. Why? We're celebrating. At the beginning of this campaign, we made a promise: Nader/Gonzalez on the ballot in 45 states by September 20. Today -- Tuesday, September 9, 2008 -- eleven days ahead of schedule -- we declare victory. We have completed our ballot access efforts and we're set to be on in 45 states. On in more states than in 2000 (43). On in more states than in 2004 (34). On in 45 states. Now, the American people will have a choice. To vote for a campaign free from corporate influence. But, as you probably have figured out by now, we are not a campaign that rests on its laurels. So, today we are proud to announce the launch of our eight-week Nader/Gonzalez Get Out the Vote drive. We need to raise $80,000 by September 17.  This money will be used to reach out to Americans throughout this country. We're planning on deploying 30 full-time field staff. Ordering tens of thousands of lawn signs. Printing hundreds of thousands of pamphlets. And making hundreds of thousands of phone calls. To inform the American people that they now have a choice in November. And to get them to vote for Nader/Gonzalez. Want health care for all? Vote Nader/Gonzalez. Need a living wage? Vote Nader/Gonzalez. Want to transform the country to a solar energy economy? Vote Nader/Gonzalez. Want to reverse course in the Middle East? Vote Nader/Gonzalez. Help us celebrate this historic opportunity the only way we know how. With action for a change. So, donate $11 now to the Nader/Gonzalez Get Out the Vote Fund. (If you give $100 or more now, we will send to you In Pursuit of Justice, the 520-page book of essays by Ralph Nader -- essays on corporate power, the Constitution, and transforming our country. If you donate $100 now, we will send you this historic collection -- autographed by the man himself -- Ralph Nader. (This offer ends at 11:59 p.m. September 17, 2008)) So, let's start to spread the word. Nader/Gonzalez on in 45 states. Time to crank it up. And get out the vote. Let's get it done. Onward to November. The Nader Team | |
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