Ralph Nader talks to hundreds of Stony Brook students and community members on March 22. (Adam Peck for Think Magazine)

The dinner took longer than expected. Three eager members of our staff waited an hour for one of the most celebrated and vilified progressive politicians of the last fifty years to finish his Stony Brook-issued meal, chum it up with the always-popular officials of the Undergraduate Student Government, and conduct whatever business that activist icons might conduct before sitting down to speak with student journalists.

Ralph Nader does not look or sound like a man who garnered less than one percent of the vote in the 2008 presidential election. One might imagine a perennial third-party candidate that stands little chance against the behemoth Democratic and Republican parties as small, thin, and whiney, a speck in the shadow of regal Barack Obama. Avian in face but not in build, Ralph Nader looks the part of a president. He is tall, and if he wanted to, he could intimidate. Even at 77, his husky voice and vigorous gesticulations grant him an immediate gravity that could only belong to someone who has made a permanent mark on the American landscape. Buckling up your seatbelt is sign alone that he has beat the system for your benefit.

Five seconds into sitting across from Nader, you become immediately aware that this is a man who will fight, literally, until his death for what he believes in. In other instances, it might be trite to write that, but Nader is serious and unafraid. At an age when most people are shuffling off into retirement homes, watching soap operas at two in the afternoon, or quietly contemplating their own deaths, Nader is haranguing people a half a century younger than himself to wake up and fight back against the corporate powers consuming their lives.

Think Magazine: Though well-meaning adults exhort children to go out and vote, can actual, meaningful change come through the electoral process in the United States, considering how limited the two party presidential system can be?

Ralph Nader: There are serious obstacles because you have a two party central dictatorship. But many of the things we want in this county cannot happen without going through the electoral process, getting elected officials who know where they are coming from, representing the people, and getting action through the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It’s a longer haul because of where it all starts—from a very small citizen base—but it can be done rather quickly, there are elections every two years. You can start to turn over at the local, state, and national level.

Think Magazine: Do you think the two party system depresses voter participation?

Ralph Nader: The more similar the parties become, because they are dialing for the same corporate dollars, the more people have a hunch that these parties don’t mean anything to them. They all represent the rich and powerful. In congressional elections, participation is under 40 percent, one of the lowest voting turnouts in the Western world. One of the reasons is that the rest of the Western world has a multi-party system. They also have proportional representation, instant run-off and so forth…

Think Magazine: Recently, you called the struggle between the people and plutocracy the “larger struggle” and what should be the “parcel of every march.” Has plutocracy triumphed?

Ralph Nader: It hasn’t triumphed, which means something final, but it is triumphing more and more. The concentration of power compared to forty years ago is more pronounced. What kind of power? Technological power. Dominant, big corporations. Now they’re beginning to close in on the internet, they want to get rid of net neutrality. And the media is very concentrated. Fox and Murdoch and a few giant media moguls, but it’s also political power because they got their hooks in both parties now.  One percent of the richest people have financial wealth equivalent to the bottom 95 percent. So, right across aboard, even down at local areas, the few rich are dominating cities and towns. And of course there’s Wall Street.

Think Magazine: What can be done about that? Corporate power can seem, especially for students, like such an overwhelming force to counteract, like an elemental force that’s even beyond a machine.

Ralph Nader: That’s the exact attitude the power structure wants you to have. “Don’t even bother, they’re too powerful, there’s no alternative…” Now, these big corporations run for cover once the people mobilize. We beat ‘em again and again in the 60’s and early 70’s, the coal industry, the auto industry, the banks, polluters. They counteract, because they’re very resilient. They expanded their lobby and political action committees, and at the same times unions got weaker because of globalization and sometimes their own corruption. And the media stopped reporting what the consumer and environmental groups were doing and so the cycle turned and now it’s got to turn the other way. There are only three things you got to keep in mind. You outnumber the corporations. You’re everywhere. You’re the only ones that have the vote. And you represent the sentiment of the people. 70 percent of the people want out of Afghanistan. Why aren’t we moving out of Afghanistan?

Think Magazine: The military-industrial complex is quite powerful.

Ralph Nader: Led by the political waverer Barack Obama.

Think Magazine: Do you think these are symptoms of capitalism as a whole? Do you think the system is failing or will eventually fail? Do you think there’s an alternative to that?

Ralph Nader: It’s symptom of corporate capitalism, not small business capitalism, and increasingly multinational corporations who have no allegiance to countries other than controlling them and shipping jobs and industries to lower wage, more repressive regimes like China. We have to make a distinction with global corporations that are incompatible with democracy. They’re highly hierarchical, centralized authoritarian structures. The constitution does not move into the corporate arena, there’s no free speech permitted in corporations. Whereas if you work for a government agency and they try to curtail your free speech, you got a lawsuit, it’s a civil liberties issue.

Corporations do one thing. They engage in strategic planning to maximize their profits. They want to control everything that might challenge them or anything that might enrich them. That’s why they’re planning the educational system, military and foreign policy, trying to weaken the environmental laws, even strategically planning our genetic inheritance. That’s their DNA, that’s the thrust, they have to do that, continually. And that’s why they got away with Wall Street. Crooks and speculators collapsing the economy and killing eight million jobs. What happens? They keep their bonuses and send their companies to Washington for a bailout.

Think Magazine: Do you see now, like with the events in Wisconsin, any signs of hope, of people pushing back?

Ralph Nader: Yeah, that’s a good start.

Think Magazine: Do you think a breaking point is being reached?

Ralph Nader: Not yet, it’s coming. The corporations know no boundaries. After all, they had slaves in the 19^th century. What needs to be done at the university is to have civic skill courses. You learn how to be powerful citizens, you learn how to use the freedom of information act, how to mobilize, how to put on a rally, how to do a coalition, how to diffuse voting records, how to expose Wall Street.  You know, for example, that’s a highly pressurized natural gas pipeline 150 meters from structures at Indian Point? You know that you can’t evacuate New York City from Indian point?

Knowledge, mobilization, and then you look and say, how did the students do against the war in Vietnam? Look what they did in the civil rights movement, the women’s right movement, are they any different from us? They’re not different than us except they had to pay for postage, they had to pay for telephone calls, they had to pay for communications which you don’t with the internet. So it’s developing a greater consciousness, reducing the trivia in your lives. Trivia is a form of control. That thing you hold, every day, hour after hour, is a form of control. The text messaging, the e-mail, the trivial gossip, instead of thinking big…because it’s your country, you’re gonna be around a long time, it’s your world.

Think Magazine: What about NYPIRG? (New York Public Interest Research Group) It’s been having a lot of budget issues lately. How relevant is it in 2011?

Ralph Nader: NYPIRG has a marvelous record. It has trained tens of thousands of students in civic activity and civic engagement. Whether it’s the environment, improving the New York subways, prison reform, exposing hearing aid rackets affecting the elderly. They often get course credit, as you know. NYPIRG is only as good as its students. The students run it, the student fund it.  NYPIRG fills a great gap in the curriculum of the university which is civic activity, civic skills. You don’t learn that. You learn commercial skills, job skills, accounting and computer skills. They’re filling a great gap and they’re constantly being harassed and constantly being sued. Like, “oh, why should the student government have an allocation after a student referendum?” Really? How about the allocation for sports, you get a student referendum of all the money you assess, directly and indirectly for sports?

This is what I mean by, you got to have a larger consciousness, a larger frame of reference, and it all spells to, are you going to be mature at eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, or are you forever gonna be a youngster? Let’s grow up here, you can grow up very fast because you got good brains, but gotta have a little fire in your belly, you gotta have a broader horizon as to how important you are to the country. We need you, I’m not just lecturing you to say ‘be a good citizen,’ we need your energy.

By Najib Aminy 

The three hours Ralph Nader spent one evening in mid-March at Stony Brook University encapsulated his life-long fight—his call for justice, one that continues to drive him at 77 years old.

Clutching the sides of the podium, Nader, a long-time consumer advocate and three-time (technically four) presidential candidate, gave an impassioned lecture targeted at invigorating the young audience that sat before him

He ran as a write-in candidate in 1996, placing more importance on representing the thousands displeased with America’s two-party system than winning the race.

Just days before Nader returned to the campus he last visited in 1974, the former Green Party frontrunner made headlines after calling for the impeachment of his 2008 opponent, President Barack Obama.

“He has done almost everything Bush has done that is unconstitutional, illegal under U.S. law and illegal under international law,” said Nader, referring to Obama’s continuation of Bush’s wars and the practice of rendition, blocking lawsuits with a state secrets claim, and continuing illegal surveillance and indefinite detention. “If there was a big cry to impeach Bush and Cheney and Obama’s doing the same thing, why are we giving him a pass?”

His calls for Obama’s impeachment mimic those he made during the presidency of George W. Bush—the president he is often criticized for having inadvertently helped win.

Bush tallied 543 more votes than his Democratic opponent, then Vice President Al Gore, in Florida, which controversially etched “43” and “W” together in the history books. This came after weeks of legal dispute and a conservative Supreme Court ruling that favored Bush over the legality of recounting Florida’s votes. That’s history, but the claims that Nader stole votes from Gore and cost him the election are still very much alive.

“He’s the reason why George W. Bush became president and he takes no responsibility for that,” said Dr. Jeffrey Segal, Chair of the Stony Brook Political Science department. “And the amount of damage he has done to this country is inordinate.”

Many books have been written on Nader’s role in the 2000 election as a presidential candidate, as the emerging third-party, and as the spoiler of democratic goals. The more than 97,000 votes Nader received not only earned him third place in Florida, but awarded him the first place prize of being the political scapegoat for Gore’s loss.

“At least 40 percent of Nader voters in the key state of Florida would have voted for Bush, as opposed to Gore, had they turned out in a Nader-less election,” wrote professors Michael C. Herron and Jeffrey B. Lewis in their study, Did Ralph Nader Spoil a Gore Presidency? “The other 60 percent did indeed spoil the 2000 presidential election for Gore but only because of highly idiosyncratic circumstances, namely, Florida’s extreme closeness.”

There is also a very different argument—it was Al Gore who cost Al Gore his presidency. Gore’s campaign failed to win both his home state of Tennessee and that of his boss, President Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas. Winning Tennessee would have earned Gore enough electoral votes and changed his address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Additionally, much can be argued about how aggressive Gore was in legally fighting for additional recount votes, and how it affected the results.

“By the way, I do think that Al Gore cost me the election, especially in Florida,”  Nader said rather defiantly before members of the National Press Club the day after the election. “And that’s a far greater concern than whether I was suppose to help elect Al Gore.”

Yet, much of what Nader spoke about was nothing new, a combination of recycled speeches he drafted throughout his years of campaigning.

He expressed concern over the corporate wrangling of American politics, the need for energy reform, and his coined view of the current form of American democracy—“a two party dictatorship.”

For an audience that mostly consisted of a generation that was once too young to remember or acknowledge Nader’s role in American politics, the lecture themes of youth activism, government accountability and a call for civic education are topics largely untouched by today’s politicians.

Despite how cliché it is to draw comparisons between what the CEO of Wal-Mart makes an hour in comparison to the entry-level worker, Nader covered the current extinction of the middle-class stemming from the current economic climate that looms upon graduating students. (For the record, Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke makes more than$16,000 per hour, which is $3,000 more than the annual salary of many Wal-Mart employees who are paid minimum wage.)

“We are living in a decaying society where the few will control the many…where the few will seize the gains that are generated by the sweat of the many,” Nader said.

Following his lecture, Nader fielded questions and encouraged student groups to make their plugs. Amongst the countless number of pitches and audience appreciation, one student challenged Nader.

“President Obama raised a lot of money from people who associate with all the causes that you spoke about tonight,” asked one student, referring to Nader’s message but lack of awareness. His question focused on how progress could be achieved without the ability to reach the masses.

The question struck a chord.

“You know who could have made this campaign a success—not a winning one, but one that could’ve broken through—several million college students, who [instead] followed their parents and grandparents, if they voted at all, who voted for the least worst candidate,” said Nader. “The college students were very disappointing. No one has done more with and for college students in the history of the country running for president then I have.”

And while it’s near impossible to relate the conditions of the youth in Middle East to the problems that face most college students here in America, the difference is that large youth movements pushed for reform, whereas in the U.S., that has not happened since the 1960’s.

The closest thing to a recent influential youth movement, Nader mentioned, were the thousands of youth protestors in Wisconsin fighting against the issue of state union workers losing their right to collective bargaining.

The funding of higher education, both public and private, is amongst the forefront of troubles placed against the youth of America. Rallies and protests have taken place from coast to coast, from schools like UC Berkley where a 40 percent raise in tuition has passed, to protests that haven taken place at Stony Brook, where the administration favors a hike in tuition to balance budget woes.

Nader repeated what he told thousands of supporters in Madison Square Garden in 2000, telling the few hundred students at Stony Brook that the current youth generation was tasked with a great burden—the handling of their future.

“Yours is the last generation that has so much to gain and so little to lose in gaining it. It’s your generation that now has to put your shoulder to the arm of justice and build on your predecessors.”

When asked about entering the 2012 Presidential race, Nader said he would not be running, though he hopes that someone will continue to carry the progressive banner.”

He was a bit more assertive when describing the flurry of support he often receives in the beginning of his campaigns and the endurance of that support. “I was also tired of people encouraging me, saying ‘Run, run, run, we’ll vote for you,’ and then getting cold feet and voting for the democrats,” Nader said.

This will be the first time in 16 years that Nader will not make a challenge for the White House. And while there are other emerging third parties that pundits can speculate about playing the spoiler—the Tea Party in particular—Nader’s absence from this election leaves a new generation of voters without one of the youth movement’s biggest advocates on the ballot.

“The biggest problem of your generation is a lack of an estimate of your own significance and power,” said Nader. “You’ve grown up powerless, you’ve grown up with your gadgets in your hands, you’ve grown up in trivial personal environments and you’ve grown-up being educated in trade schools just to get a job.”

Ralph Nader continued, “It’s really remarkable how undeveloped students are. Of course they don’t have much experience because they’re young, but they have access to all kinds of information that challenges the power structure and they don’t seem to absorb it in terms of changing their own routines and their own sense of what needs to be done for your own future in this country and this world.”

The Editorial Board 

Activism is such an easy thing to support but often very difficult to sustain. It’s almost like rooting for the New York Knicks, only the Knicks rarely deliver. But over the past few years, it’s important to note that Stony Brook’s once purely apathetic campus has become a bit more aware of what’s going on locally and nationally.

It would be unfathomable to think that multiple protests would take place just five years ago in a given academic year, let alone a specific semester. But with groups like the Radical Student Union, an Undergraduate Student Government administration that is slightly more keen to actually taking student considerations into mind and the few student unions that include the Graduate Student Employee Union and Research Assistant Union, the Stony Brook campus has become home to very small minority of active dissidents.

Again, it’s a small minority of students on a campus of more than 20,000 students overall. But movements don’t begin with large grandstands, thousand-man marches or success. And it’s also safe to say that also is true of the politically involved students on this campus, in that many are small, scattered and haven’t really attained anything to their name.

The closest group in achieving success happened to be the few hundred Southampton students who made headway in fighting to keep their campus open. But despite the Stony Brook administration failing to meet the proper protocol, Stony Brook’s sister campus was shut down just around this time last year.

What illustrated this best was the question and answer forum during Ralph Nader’s lecture on Tuesday, March 22 in the SAC. Nader, a former three-time presidential candidate, urged for students to make their plugs and entertained a range of questions.

Even Nader was surprised at the number of groups on campus that gave their plugs, from the Environmental Club, the RSU or the Social Justice Alliance as well as plethora of more focus-related groups. But that’s part of the problem. There is no central leadership and the major groups on this campus operate, often with similar agendas, but in multiple different directions that rarely intertwine or intersect.

It’s reflective not of just this campus, but of Generation Y as a whole. Taking into account the disparity of rising tuition versus oppressive dictatorships, a case in point is role of the youth heavily involved in the Middle East protests to the complacency of today’s American youth.

“In the Middle East, the young people realize something you don’t realize—that first you text message and email and then you hit the streets,” said Nader, who has built up a 33-year career of consumer activism. “Here you text message and email and email and text message and text message and email so you’re not used to going out on the streets. That’s the only thing that gets a politician’s attention is when people are so worried about their situation [and] they amass in the streets.”

Between Stony Brook’s own budget cuts, tuition hikes and fee raises, let alone a current administration that has tallied a track record against students (see: Stony Brook Southampton, staunch support of PHEEIA and lack of student involvement in Project 50), there’s a number of areas for students to rally around and let their voice be heard. And it’s better heard through action, not through some poorly worded and very misleading student government survey.

Again, going back to Nader: “It’s really remarkable how undeveloped students are,” he said during an interview with The Press. Of course they don’t have much experience because they’re young but access to all kinds of information that challenges the power structure and they don’t seem to absorb it in terms of changing their own routines and their own sense of what needs to be done for [their] own future in this country and this world.”

Which is why The Press is endorsing what Nader had initially proposed in 1992, a college-level civics education course. One of the many organizations Nader founded, the Center for Responsive Law published a book, “Civics for Democracy: A Journey for Teachers and Students,” focuses on just that, touching on a variety of social movements that took place in our country’s history.

Nader’s philosophy is that we go to school in a corporate environment. A lot of us take classes, some of us will pass exams and few of us will graduate. After that, we look for a job, and that’s it.  There are accounting classes, information technology studies and computer science courses that all will inevitably lead to a job in some big business. And that’s fine, but when we educate ourselves for one purpose—to get a job.

“You’re not having a liberal arts education, you’re not addressing the big pictures, you’re not addressing historical precedents that improved our country so you can extend them and above all you don’t study a lot of reality in the social sciences,” said Nader.

Which is why, in theory, a civics education course would remedy that. How many students know how to submit a Freedom of Information request, let alone know what it is? Or how to effectively petition or what their U.S. Senators and local congressman are doing or saying? Not many.

So we are asking students and those interested to contact President Samuel L. Stanley, Provost Erik Kaler, Professor Michael Barnhart, Chair of the History department, and Dr. Jeffrey Segal, Chair of the Political Science department to work towards offering such a course at Stony Brook.

And before we come off unreasonably demanding courses amidst a time of state budget cuts, we realize that, if anything, these cuts against public higher education should propel an intensive civic course into fruition. It’s one thing to get a job, and it’s another to learn your rights and the power within them.

“You grow up thinking you can’t do it and the power structure is too hard and that’s exactly what they want you to believe because then you don’t even try because you magnify the opposition,” said Nader. “But once you get organized nothing can stop you. You got more energy, you got more of a state because you’re young, you’re usually idealistic and you can get information at your fingertips and there are millions of you—what are you waiting for?

Right on, Ralph.

Ralph Nader talks to hundreds of Stony Brook students and community members on March 22. (Adam Peck for Think Magazine)

Like always, Ralph Nader is mad as hell and doesn’t want you to take it anymore.

Nader, 77, did not mince words at a lecture last night at Stony Brook University, proving that he is as passionate, outspoken, and pugnacious as ever.

“We do not grow up civic,” the four-time presidential candidate told a rapt audience of college students and community members. “We grow up corporate.”

Nader’s speech, despite the buzz in the crowd, was not a warm-up for a 2012 run at the Oval Office, though he had no problem calling the campus crowd’s darling President Barack Obama a “Wall Street concessionaire.”

Launching his powerful voice from an animated, stoop-shouldered body, Nader decried the state of American affairs on all political, social, and economic fronts.

“This is a decaying society,” he said. “Nobody dies in Europe because they don’t have health insurance. Corporate serfdom exists because your expectation levels are so low.”

Nader’s familiar attacks on corporations in America which “have no national allegiance” were filled with urgent exhortations to fight back against their dominance. After arguing that corporations regulate American lives more than the government does, he said that citizens must push to “inject more humane values into the corporate machine.” The fight begins, in Nader’s estimation, with a wake-up call to reality.

“Serfs didn’t know they were serfs until the history books told them so,” Nader said. “Right now we’re paralyzed. The first step toward changing all of this is having a higher estimation of your own significance. You must learn what your predecessor students did to create change.”

When asked in an earlier interview session with Stony Brook’s Think Magazine about what chance people have of overcoming the seemingly unbeatable influence of corporate power in America, Nader bristled, then smiled, and spoke of the “fire in the belly” and “emotional intelligence” that every citizen needs to act. He said that universities should focus on creating civics skills courses that teach strategies in organization and activism.

Alarming facts, like that the real wage of the American worker once adjusted for inflation was at its highest in 1973, or that $80 billion dollars in military spending are used to defend “prosperous countries” like Japan, England, and Sweden “against non-existent enemies” while millions of Americans cannot earn a living wage any longer, or even that “a relentless decline in standard of living” has meant that one of three American workers earns “Wal-Mart wages” while the CEO of Wal-Mart himself, Mike Duke, earns “$10,000 per hour,” did not consume Nader’s speech.

He took a short break to play John Lennon’s 1970 song “Working Class Hero,” an indictment of capitalism’s effect on the working class that underscored many of his themes that night.

Nader’s speech, like the corporate powers he lambasted, was wide-ranging. He lashed out against Generation Y crown jewels like Facebook and cell-phones, painting them as purveyors of trivia and distraction. He said that “90 percent of radio and television are advertisements and cheap entertainment” and asked the audience if they owned their own network and radio station and why no citizens’ network existed. Following his dictum that “shame is a much better motivator than guilt,” he asked how many members of the audience had eaten at a McDonald’s and how many had attended a town hall meeting of any kind or witnessed a court proceeding. Predictably, all hands shot up for McDonald’s and very few for town halls or court proceedings.

Nader turned his critical eye to environmental issues and nuclear power, calling the lack of an evacuation plan for the Indian Point nuclear power plant, located only 38 miles from New York City, “technological insanity.” Solar and wind energy have not become prevalent yet, Nader said, because they would displace the gas, coal, and oil utilities, and thus upset the highly-influential lobbies that are attached to those utilities.

“Yours is the last generation that has so much to gain and so little to lose in gaining it,” he said.

As the one-year-anniversary of the drastic reformation of SAB approaches, it’s clear that what the current members of the Undergraduate Student Government and SAB are doing is benefiting the campus as a whole.

From last semester’s events that included comedian Christian Finnegan and indie band Best Coast, to last week’s performances by Aziz Ansari and Immortal Technique, Stony Brook has thus far hosted artists in events that could very easily rival those held at other universities, except for SUNY Purchase (those kids are mad cultured).

But the semester is far from over and so are the events. Christopher Hitchens, a prominent and well-respected author and journalist will be coming to campus on March 8. Former presidential candidate and life-long consumer advocate Ralph Nader will also be coming in mid-March as part of SAB’s speaker series.

And before the close of the semester, SAB plans to bring a television-comedian and stand-up legend valued at $40,000 to campus. This would take place just a month before an end-of-the-year concert that is slated to host artists who performed in the 2011 Grammy Award Show. The price of this concert is valued at more than $100,000 and the show will be part of a national tour.

Contracts for the two events are still pending, and The Press was asked to hold off publishing the prospective artists for contractual reasons.

“I guess one thing is you can use the word artists plurally,” said David Mazza, USG Vice President of Communications. “That’s an improvement.”

The attendance records of last year’s end-of-the-year concert have already been surpassed in much smaller and less funded events, such as the Aziz show that attracted more than 1,000 students and the Immortal Technique concert, which attracted 800 people, 700 of whom were students.

“It’s the small events that bring similarity between the people who attend, but that’s not what the student government ought to be doing,” says Moiz Khan, Student Programming Agency Director. “They should be working towards creating events that bring everyone together. In some way you have to do events that force people in the same room together that are different,” said Khan. This, he thinks, builds community.

What doesn’t build community however, is a small, selective group of students, near 15 or so out of more than 15,000 students who are to represent and choose which artists to bring to campus. So far, there hasn’t been too much of a complaint about which artists SAB brought—they all seem to be high profile, which advertises itself, diverse, both in genre and style, and generally favored.
But current members of SAB and USG are setting a precedent of exclusivity in the decision making process that brings artists to campus.

“I think that it’s open in the sense that all of our meetings are open,” said Mazza. “It operates in a very similar way to the senate. Does anyone really ever show up? No not really, unless there’s a particular issue.”

And that mentality, which appears to be in the back of everyone’s minds at USG and SAB as they go forth in planning this semester, is extremely dissatisfying and disconcerting. The idea that $404,000 of the student activity fee being handled by just a few students should concern all of us who are looking for accountability and for great artists to bring on campus.
At some point, this issue needs to be addressed, albeit in the form of a town-hall meeting or some student-input structure included in SAB. Having a concert team of roughly 15 students and additional volunteers is not enough to accurately represent the entire student body.

If nothing is done, the very recent success of the large-upscale and well-attended events that strive to build a larger and more vibrant campus community would be all for naught. You can’t have a community of more than 15,000 with less than 1 percent making all the decisions.

Sure it looks like it’s working now, but at some point, to be truly successful, that has to change.

Contrary to popular belief, not all presidential candidates are in support of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan. A dedicated and passionate coalition of local community leaders and candidates are leading a fight against what they have termed, “The bailout of casino capitalists.” At the vanguard of this movement is presidential candidate Ralph Nader. On Thursday, October 16, hundreds of protesters and thousands of onlookers and passers-by were in attendance for a rally at the foot of the New York Stock Exchange, in the heart of Wall Street.

“Just the usual gloom and doom,” remarked the street vendor on Wall Street, who has seen the usual ups and downs of the financial district. But on the steps of Federal Hall, in front of the statue of George Washington, protesters thronged the streets as traders and executives nervously looked out of the windows from inside the NYSE. As Titubanda, an activist marching band from Italy, played spirited songs, the Reverend Billy, a performer from the activist group The Church of Stop Shopping, preached of the coming of the

Shopocalypse. “We’re here to fight the fundamentalist religion of the free-market.” Accompanying Reverend Billy were the parodical “billionaires for bailouts.” Dressed in gaudy, stereotypically rich attire, they were a representation of the excesses of wealth, and the villains

of this particular event. “Just give us the money,” read the signs of the billionaires, while the protesters donned their “socialism saves capitalism” signs. The energy in the air was palpable as the first speaker took the stage.

The Rev. Billy played MC to the rally, introducing each of the speakers. Before Nader and his running mate, Matt Gonzalez, came on, there were a couple speakers to pump up the crowd. The first was Carl Mayer, author of the book Shakedown: The Fleecing of the Garden State. The first independent elected in Princeton, Mayer was once called a “populist crusader and maverick lawyer” by The New York Times. Mayer started by pointing out the

Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping

inherent hypocrisy happening right now with the financial crisis. He used New York’s multiple stadium plans as a prime example. “Whenever billionaires want a stadium built,” exclaimed Mayer, “they get it—with our tax dollars.” The bailout plan is opposed by the Bush administration’s head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It’s never a good sign when the financial heads of the current administration oppose the plan.

“[Recently] top leaders of banks all met to discuss causes of the financial crisis…none would accept blame,” declared Mayer. The major banks refuse to acknowledge the fact that the reason for this debacle lies with the speculative actions of the corporations and traders. Treasury Secretary Paulson didn’t escape Mayer’s harsh criticism either. At the end of his speech, Mayer incited the crowd to chant, “Jail time yes, bail time no. Henry Paulson’s got to go!”

After a continued chant by Reverend Billy, the Reverend Jarrett Maupin, protege of Al Sharpton, hit the stage with his fiery rhetoric. Maupin in almost every way resembles Al Sharpton, and his speech was inspired. “These two nominees [McCain and Obama] have put their full faith in the advisors of Bush,” he exclaimed. The bailout plan, proposed by the Bush administration, has run nearly unopposed by the two major parties. Maupin, as a liberal African American, is making a statement by not supporting Obama. He went on to reiterate that the bailout plan cannot save Americans. Americans should not have faith in the current system. “How can someone with a knife in your back save you?”

Maupin emphasized the need to prosecute the crime being committed on Wall Street. Underneath the statue of Washington, Maupin informed the audience that, in the time of George Washington, these corporate crooks would be tarred and feathered and paraded around the city. Maupin ended his speech, asserting that this wasn’t a radical liberal movement. It affects all Americans. “We know what’s best for Americans because we’re the Americans.”

Matt Gonzalez Does Not Fork Around

Reverend Billy excitedly announced the arrival of the great Matt Gonzalez, Vice Presidential running mate of Ralph Nader. The 43-year-old Texas native has been actively involved in politics in the San Francisco area since 2000. Originally a Democrat, he switched to the Green Party in 2000 in what he described as a

“political or moral epiphany.” Gonzalez walked up to the stage with one purpose in mind; to get

his point across. He was succinct and exact, and did not pull any punches. “There is a narrative about these candidates, by the candidates themselves as well as journalists, that one party is for deregulation and one is against it. This is simply not true.” He unrelentingly went on to describe what got America into this mess.

In 1999 and 2000, Bill Clinton—a Democrat, gasp!—signed into law two bills: the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. These were the two laws that enabled the current crisis. The GLBA allowed for the consolidation of commercial and investment banks. Undoing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the law was responsible for the large scale mergings of many major bank

s and investment firms, into what is now called financial services. Combined with the CFMA, a law that essentially deregulated derivatives and credit default swaps in the financial industry. The new acts came at the height of “Wall Street and Washington’s love affair with deregulation, an infatuation that was endorsed by

President Clinton at the White House and encouraged by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan,” reported 60 Minutes. The legislature reversed decades of law, described Gonzalez. This deregulation allowed for a “sustained orgy of excess and reckless behavior” as Richard Fischer, Dallas Federal Reserve chief, put it. Making money out of money, this is the primary cause of the Wall Street recession.

“This notion that Democrats are fighting against it is rubbish,” declared Gonzalez. The bailout, as Gonzalez described, is just a bailout of the two party system. Gonzalez continued to chastise journalists for their perpetuation of the current system, and their refusal to cover independent and third party candidates. “Both candidates want to increase the military budget,” emphasized Gonzalez. The Nader/Gonzalez ticket would cut the bloated, wasteful military budget.

“You don’t fix it [the economic crisis] by buying bad credit.” To the scoffs and jeers of the billionaires for bailouts, Matt Gonzalez did not stutter or mince words. Short and sweet.

Ralph Nader Fires Up NYC

In front of a giant poster reading, “Jail time for Wall Street crime,” and a giant screw whose sign read “Congress and Wall St. turned the screws on Main St. Taxpayers,” the Reverend Billy asked the crowd to give him a “Ralphelluiah.” The crowd excitedly obliged, and the 74-year-young consumer advocate, humanitarian, environmentalist a

Total Badass

nd what many consider the last hope for democracy took the stage that Thursday at the foot of Federal Hall.

“What we’ve seen is the collapse of corporate capitalism on the backs of taxpayers,” exclaimed Nader. These are bailouts for speculating corporations, and not a rescue of the American financial system, according to Nader. The corporations are being allowed to cut workers benefits, pensions and wages to support their continued excesses. He pointed out that, if adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage from 1968 would be over $10.

There are three principles of capitalism that are being destroyed by corporate capitalism, said Nader. The first is control for owners. The corporations are property of the shareholders, and the current situation is the exact opposite. CEO’s are egregiously mismanaging their companies, inciting shareholders to jump ship and sell their stock. The second principle is the potential to fail, which means no bailouts for the companies that cannot sustain themselves. The third is no governmental manipulation or intervention; free market fails when government intervenes. These principles are all being ruined by the bailout plan, and both major parties are allowing it to happen.

“Senator McCain and Senator Obama are corporate puppets,” stated Nader, about his opponents. Concerning the debates, he had a few choice words as well. Calling it petty pandering to the public, the consumer advocate described the debates as a “bipartisan avoidance of addressing concentrated corporate power.” Without acknowledging that problem, it is impossible to effectively deal with a living wage, universal health insurance, pollution or the massive deficit and how to deal with it. “[The debates are] a charade…a disgrace to the intelligence of the voter.”

Apparently, Nader is not alone in this, either. “Nine out of ten Americans think America is in decline; three out of four think there is too much corporate control; six out of ten think the two party system is failing,” said Nader, in defense of accusations of radical liberalism. By these figures, in fact, he is actually more of a centrist. The reason for this is due largely to the coverage (or lack thereof) provided by journalists, who didn’t escape Nader’s criticism either. “Why do you expose all these corporate crimes and then shut up the American people and their representatives who are doing something about it,” asked Nader. That is, incidentally, one of the policy changes the Nader/Gonzalez ticket plans to implement if elected.

By 1735, America had thirteen colonies under King George III. “Today, we have fifty colonies under King George IV,” shouted Nader, to the uproar of the crowd. “Today, same as 1735, it is taxation without representation.” Wall Street has positioned itself against the American people, and Nader stands at the vanguard against them. As he looked directly at the NYSE, Nader closed his speech with an emphatic, “Mr. Niederauer [CEO of the NYSE], tear down this wall, before the American people do it for you!”

After reading your article last week on Obama and McCain’s policies towards gays and lesbians I was surprised to see that you never mentioned Ralph Nader as a candidate or any of his policies toward the gay community.  As a gay independent who is still unsure about whom I am voting for, I would appreciate if you could discuss his policies so I have a full picture of the policies of all three candidates.   Thanks so much.

Sincerely,
Still Straddling the Fence

Dear Still Straddling,

I appreciate your concern that I did not look at all the candidate’s policies.  I agree with you that in order to give voters the full picture of all the candidates, one must start by including all the candidates and their policies regarding all issues, but in this case issues that directly affect the gay community.  After doing a little research I am now able to provide you with the facts behind Nader’s policies.  Nader, like Obama, supports equal rights for gays and lesbians as well as equal rights for same-sex couples.  Furthermore, Nader opposes a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and same-sex unions and believes that same-sex unions are a step in the right direction, but are only a starting point because they do not actually afford same-sex couples all the rights that marriage does.  Moreover, Nader believes that everyone should have equal protection under the law regardless of their sexual orientation and says that, “the only way to ensure full equal rights is to recognize same-sex marriage.”  I personally believe that Nader’s policies regarding the gay and lesbian community are positive, but as we all know it is highly unlikely that a third party candidate will be elected. It is in my opinion that anyone who believes in Nader’s policies should vote for Obama rather than McCain, or just vote for Nader himself.  Hope that clears things up.

Sincerely,
Ilyssa Fuchs
(Special thanks to www.votenader.org for the information obtained for this article)