I'm going to paraphrase from this Ralph Nader email I got, "Which Side
Are You On?"... the Lion or the Monkey, which is to say the SUVs or
the bicycles? By the way, is Nader for the cyclists? I don't think any
candidate is. Monkeys don't count that much. But I remember Ralph used
to be concerned about car safety... Well perhaps he's really for the
monkeys...
Which Side Are You On?
If you believe that the Democratic Party is the answer to what ails us
as a nation, then please, be our guest -- give them some more money.
If on the other hand, you believe that the Democratic Party is part of
the system of corporate control and domination, then there is a clear
choice:
Support Nader/Gonzalez now.
Earlier this month, we wrote that it was "shameful" that progressives
like Medea Benjamin were supporting the Democratic Party over Nader/
Gonzalez.
Medea posted a response on one of our blogs, saying she was offended
by the accusation, and said we should "respect" each other's choices.
Medea used the word "respect" three times in one paragraph.
One person who was on the receiving end of Medea's "respect" in 2004
was Peter Camejo, Ralph's running mate in 2004.
We asked Peter to respond to Medea.
Please read Peter's essay carefully.
Pass it around.
And let us know what you think.
If you agree with Peter -- then please help fund our growing
alternative voice to the corporate two-party duopoly.
Have a safe weekend.
Onward.
The Nader Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Capitulation
By Peter Camejo
I was stunned to see Medea Benjamin complaining to the Nader/Gonzalez
campaign because the campaign had used the word "shameful" in
referring to "progressive" Democrats who had supported the pro-war,
pro-Patriot Act, anti-labor, and anti-environmental candidate John
Kerry in 2004.
I have great personal admiration for Medea Benjamin for many of the
stands and actions she has taken through the years. But her
capitulation to the Democratic Party has been truly disappointing.
Medea Benjamin eventually joined the "progressive" Democrats and has
become an active supporter of the Democratic Party.
Without the Democratic Party's support, Bush's war policies could
never have been implemented. The Democrats voted in Congress a
resolution that included the phrase, "unequivocal support for George
Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq."
They have voted for all the funding requests for the war in Iraq. In
2005 at the State of Union address, the entire Congress, with few if
any exceptions, gave George Bush 39 standing ovations in one hour.
They rose to their feet and applauded every time Bush used the word
Iraq even before he finished his sentence.
Of course this is nothing new for the Democratic Party. This is the
Party of human slavery, of the Jim Crow of 5,000 lynchings, of
fighting the right of women to vote, and of imprisoning Japanese
Americans in camps.
This is the Party that launched a war of mass murder killing two
million Vietnamese as the "peace" party in the 1960s. It is the party
that has supported the destruction of the trade unions, lowered taxes
for the rich -- while raising them for the poor. The Democrats voted
98% in favor of the Patriot Act in the Senate without reading it.
Earlier, 100 percent of Senate Democrats voted to confirm the right-
winger Antonin Scalia for the Supreme Court.
In 2004 the Democrats ran John Kerry for President -- the same John
Kerry who said he could implement Bush's war policies better than Bush
especially in increasing militarization in America and promoting the
war in Iraq.
What confuses so many progressively inclined people is they do not
really understand that our society is controlled by the corporate
power of concentrated money.
The corporations and the super rich -- through their domination of the
government, the media, and educational institutions and of course the
two parties -- run our society.
The totalitarian rule of money is a self correcting mechanism. It has
flexibility which is part of why it is so powerful.
The two-party system allows the appearance of differences and
adjustments to public sentiment. It has become the single most
successful political form for the rule of a minority over a majority
in the history of the world. How this system of control developed,
consolidated, and has survived through the years will be studied for
years to come.
The front line in this denial of democracy is the Democratic Party
because it is the instrument that controls, channels and co-opts the
forces that otherwise could challenge the rule of concentrated money.
It is precisely the "differences" between the two major parties that
makes the system effective.
And the front line in the battle for the control of money over people
are the so-called "progressive" Democrats who talk the talk. They
confuse people, prevent free elections, and fight hardest to undermine
a Nader/Camejo candidacy or a Nader/Gonzalez candidacy or any other
candidacy whose voice for democracy begins to be heard.
They may think they are helping move the country toward a more
progressive agenda. But in fact, they are deepening the illusion that
answers can be found through the Democratic Party. In turn, this
reinforces the two-party domination over the United States, making
possible the horrendous policies we have seen over the last eight
years.
You -- Medea Benjamin -- are now one of those on the front lines
defending the two-party domination, and as a direct result, defending
the rule of concentrated money and other illegalities and injustices
of our present system.
You can't have it both ways.
In 2004, the Democrats went further than just supporting Bush's
policies.
They led a massive campaign to silence the only well known candidacy
that opposed Bush's policies. They did this by manipulation.
They sent representatives into the Nader/Camejo campaign to disrupt
it, to seek to prevent his supporters from getting Nader/Camejo on the
ballot. They actively sought to prevent those who disagreed -- and
favored peace, social justice and democracy -- to have a voice.
They harassed people trying to petition for Nader/Camejo. They brought
at one time over twenty lawsuits to try to block Nader/Camejo's
campaign from state ballots. They spent tens of millions of dollars in
their battle against free elections and against voter choice.
Even today they are trying to "fine" Nader/Camejo tens of thousands of
dollars for merely seeking ballot access in the State of
Pennsylvania.
I personally had to pay them $20,000 not to have a lien put on my home
for having been Ralph Nader's Vice Presidential candidate.
The Democrats, especially the people you, Media Benjamin, call
"progressives," were the most vicious in their endless diatribes
against Nader calling him "crazy," "ego maniacal," "stupid," and
"agent of Bush."
Media Benjamin you are now shocked that the Nader/Gonzalez campaign
used the term "shameful."
Where was Medea Benjamin during the Democrats hate campaign against
democracy in 2004? You were campaigning for a pro-war candidate and
supporting the vicious anti-Nader/Camejo campaign.
Medea Benjamin in her effort to support John Kerry helped successfully
to manipulate within the Green Party support for David Cobb, the anti-
Nader pro-voting Democrat candidate who favored US occupation of Iraq
in two public debates with me.
She worked to get the Green Party convention to prevent Nader/Camejo
from being endorsed after Nader/Camejo representatives won a number of
Green Party primaries and state conventions, including California.
During the 2004 campaign, there was a letter on David Cobb's web site
titled "Vote Kerry and Cobb." And it was signed by Medea Benjamin,
among others.
If you are going to seek fairness and oppose "trashing," why don't you
start with all your friends whose extreme public attacks on Nader/
Camejo you never protested?
Why not promote among your Democratic friends the publishing of ads
apologizing to Nader and the American people for the twenty-four
harassing lawsuits in twelve weeks filed by Republican corporate law
firms like Reed Smith and Kirkland & Ellis and abuses they committed
in 2004 against the rights of the American people to have free
elections and voter choice?
Yes Medea Benjamin you have the right -- like so many before you -- to
seek to reform the Democratic Party. The truth is, however, that what
you actually achieve is to give cover for this pro-war anti-labor
political organization. Millions upon millions have tried to reform
the Democratic Party for decades.
The AFL-CIO went in to reform the Democrats with millions upon
millions of supporters only to be reduced from 33% of the work force
to 12% -- a submissively controlled force ineffective in defending
even their own existence -- unable to even get the Democratic Party to
repeal the notorious anti-labor Taft Hartley law of 1947.
The generation of progressive "leaders" that capitulate in 2004 will
have to be replaced by a new generation that will stand by principles
like the early abolitionists of the Liberty Party, the Populists who
led the uprising of 1890s, the Debsian socialists and Women's Party
activists of the early twentieth century -- and yes like Ralph Nader
who refuses to capitulate to a Democratic Party that has and is
selling out the American people.
Making personal attacks on Ralph Nader is starting to get a little
old. Maybe it's time for your Democratic Party friends to end their
political bigotry against Nader/Gonzalez.
Yes we should all work together on issues we agree on. Yes we should
try to get people regardless of what party they are registered with to
support specific objectives.
That is how the most massive peace demonstrations ever were organized
in the 1960s and 1970s or the millions who marched together for
immigrant rights just a couple of years ago. Of course none of those
actions were ever supported by your Party, the Democrats.
The ranks of the Democratic Party are desperately seeking change. In
time they will see that the Democratic Party cannot be and will not be
the agency through which peace, social justice and saving our
environment will come. On this issue you and I remain divided. On the
debate about this issue Nader and those supporting him have been
saints in their language in comparison to your friends in the
Democratic Party.
The Nader/Gonzalez campaign has nothing to apologize for. Nader has
been one of the most beautiful examples of showing respect for all
including those who disagree with him.
It is time for you and your Democratic Party associates to show
respect and apologize to Ralph Nader.
