(This article is a compilation and a merging of my own words and the words of the authors
listed in "Sources" at the end. I thank all of them for their eloquence!)

* "Democracy: government by the people or their elected representatives."

"Plutocracy: the rule or control of society by the wealthy." (Collins Dictionary)

Al Gore's Official Platform ---

The official party platform that Al Gore and his team have prepared for the next four years is, in nearly every aspect, an unashamed assault on what once were the core constituencies of the Democratic Party: working people, people of color, organized labor, the poor, and peace, justice, and environmental activists. For those of you still convinced that you must support Gore to stop Bush, think again, and please keep reading!

The new Democratic Party Platform calls for government to act as a mechanic for the
"engines of a new global economy". It proudly touts Gore's role in brokering "more than 200 trade agreements, including NAFTA and GATT", and vows to secure "fast track authority" to strike new deals with nations like Chile and Brazil.

It exults over the dismantling of the federal welfare program and vows to continue waging war on the poor by cracking down on "food stamp fraud". It offers new funding to the military and law enforcement. Last year's aerial bombardment of Serbia is offered as a template for Gore's own brand of cruise missile diplomacy. It promises to pump $60 billion plus into Star Wars.

The platform unwaveringly supports the federal death penalty and boasts that Clinton and Gore have "expanded the death penalty for 60 crimes". It brags about the passage of a federal "three-strikes-you're-out law", and Gore's role in securing legislation that "places limits on appeals". It offers $14 billion in grants to states for expanding their prisons, already overflowing with victims of the "war on drugs".

It wages war on schoolteachers who fail new standardized testing, offering quick termination, apparently with little recourse to appeal. Schools that fail similar tests will be closed. And it endorses "private religious expression in the classroom".

The environment fares no better. (Surprised?) It offers an energy plan giving huge tax breaks to natural gas producers. It promises to find a way of "protecting the environment without trapping business in a tangle of red tape" (such as the Endangered Species Act?) that inconveniences corporate pillagers.

You think Gore's platform is bad?

Gore's Record in Office ---

He's pushed for mandatory sentencing, "sufficiency language" to destroy the northwest forests, denial of cheap generic drugs to fight AIDS in South Africa, continuing sanctions against Iraq, and the bombing of Serbia.

After Occidental Petroleum Corporation contributed $470,000 in soft money to Clinton/Gore, he helped to pass the Defense Appropriations Bill in 1996 which approved the sale of the military's largest strategic fuel reserve to Occidental, of which he owns $500,000 in stock - the largest act of corporatization in US history.

He has helped to pry open (for oil drilling) the largest expanse of undeveloped terrain on the Arctic plain. In the 1970's, he supported every dam project of the TVA, including the Tellico Dam.

In 1996, he urged Clinton to sign the Welfare Reform Bill over the opposition of virtually the whole Cabinet. The consequence: 2.6 million people (nearly half of them children) were thrown into direct poverty, and 14 million people on welfare were put on a three-year limit.

For most of his Congressional career, he earned an 84% rating from the Right To Life movement. He supported the Hyde Amendment which banned federal funding for abortions for poor women. He has referred to homosexuals as "abnormal", opposes full rights for gays in military service, and opposes civil unions. In 1980, he voted to prohibit the Legal Services Corporation from assisting homosexuals whose rights were denied because of their sexual orientation.

In August, 100 of the most respected American grassroots environmental leaders from 25 states formed the ad-hoc Environmentalists Against Gore to urge all environmentalists to vote for Nader. The group issued the following statement:

"If a candidate wins the Presidency by pretending to care deeply about an issue, when he and the whole world know that he doesn't really care, then that issue stops being important in American politics. For Americans who care about the quality of our environment, the one thing we cannot afford to do in this election is give our votes to Al Gore, a man who has betrayed his own vision and our only Earth."

Signers included:
David Brower,
Randy Hayes,
Ronnie Cummins,
Tracy Katelman,
Don Kegley,
Gar Smith,
Meca Wawona,
and dozens of others.

Gore's Veep choice - Joe Lieberman - is even scarier! In the words of Bush's campaign staff: "From Social Security reform to missile defense, tort reform to parental notification (regarding abortion), and from school choice to affirmative action, Gore has chosen a man whose positions are more similar to Bush's than to his own."

What prominent progressives are saying about Gore ---

"What I fear most about a Gore victory - yes, I said victory - is its almost certainly debilitating effect on progressives and their organizations.

During the Clinton years, many a feminist, enviro and labor leader was so charmed by the crumbs of "access" thrown their way and the occasional low-level progressive appointment that they bit their tongues whenever Clinton showed his true.colors, e.g. with welfare reform. . Is this what we' re going to hear when it comes time to protest the war in Colombia or any other Gore-perpetrated horror?

"We are deeply disappointed that VP Gore has failed to speak out [on China]. It's time to forget about party labels and instead focus on supporting candidates, such as Ralph Nader, who will take a stand based on what is right, not what big money dictates."

"I wish to protest the New Democrat consolidation that Gore represents - a business-first party that will selectively defend social guarantees against the other business-first party, but a party that wins by playing to the fears of insecure people without addressing the deeper sources of their pain. What I would like to see is a season of white-knuckle fear among the Democratic establishment. I do not wish for Gore's defeat, but, frankly, that outcome could do much to halt the party's rightward drift, and break open future possibilities."

Ralph Nader for President

Fortunately, one of America's most trusted citizens - Ralph Nader - decided last year that things had gotten so bad in these United States, that he felt compelled to run for President as the Green Party candidate. And something strange is happening. His candidacy is generating enormous excitement from people across the political spectrum. The only problem is you'd never know it because the corporate TV, radio, and print media have locked him out.

For example, did you know that NADER IS DRAWING THE LARGEST RALLY CROWDS OF ANY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE THIS YEAR?

Or that record numbers of Democrats are jumping ship to support Nader? If this is news to you, ask yourself how much longer democracy can survive with giant corporations running all of our media institutions.

On August 25th, Nader organizers in Portland, OR took a huge gamble, and rented the 11,500 seat Coliseum. At $7 a ticket, they still managed to pack the house and had to turn hundreds away. Nader and his vice-presidential running mate Winona LaDuke spoke for two hours about their vision for a just and ecologically sane society.

I was there, and the only place I've ever felt that level of excitement and hope was in the streets of Seattle last autumn. I'm told it was the largest political rally in Portland in over 30 years.

Nader has been consistently polling in the 4 to 7% range with little more than word of mouth and an internet campaign. Imagine if he were receiving equal coverage! Who knows how much public support he might now enjoy.

Many Nader campaign organizers believe Nader could actually win the election if he manages to get into the nationally televised debates scheduled for October 3, 11, and 17.

Of course, the rap on Nader is that he cannot win.

That was the same argument used to belittle professional wrestler Jesse Ventura in 1998 before he was included in Minnesota's gubernatorial debates, at which time he was polling at just 10%; but his straight talk impressed TV viewers, and he won the election by appealing to working people who might never have voted.

With 100 million discouraged voters entering this election cycle, I'm convinced that huge numbers would vote for Nader if they knew he was running. Unfortunately, they'll have to register to vote by October 6th.

(Don't delay!)

The Democratic and Republican parties have joined forces to keep Nader out of the debates. To accomplish this, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a corporation controlled by the two parties (and funded by large corporations like Anheuser-Busch, which gave $550,000 to become sole sponsor of the third debate), is limiting participation to candidates who have at least 15% support in five national polls. (Ventura entered the Minnesota debate with 10% ratings.)

It's a totally arbitrary standard, almost impossible for any third party candidate to achieve, especially with the continuing blackout in the corporate media.

The CPD shoved aside the League of Women Voters in 1987 and has controlled the debates ever since. In response, the League proclaimed in 1988, "The League is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debates because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. . .

[T]he candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public." In a recent poll, two-thirds of Americans said they wanted to see Nader, Hagelin, and others in the debates, yet most people don't even know they're being excluded.

Nader believes that the time has come for the Greens to begin to prepare for governance:

"The two parties are in the process of crumbling. They have no constituency at the grassroots. They're hollow, fossilized parties that happen to hurl millions of dollars at each other, mostly on 30-second TV ads. So in the next five years, you're going to see a major third party arise. I hope it's the Green Party."

Nader's Platform

The two corporate candidates base much of their platform on which way the political wind is blowing that day. Not Nader. His platform is drawn directly from his 35 years of organizing to defend people and the environment from corporate and government abuse of authority.

Wages / Taxes: A living wage for all. Tax justice requires a levy on financial transactions, wealth and pollution, so that taxes can be reduced on work and families.

Abortion: The decision should be left up to the woman with no government interference. "We should work toward preventing the necessity of abortion."

Health care: Universal single-payer healthcare on the Canadian model.

Workers rights: Revoke Taft-Hartley Act, strengthen rights of workers to form unions without company interference.

Social Security / Pensions: No privatization of SSI. Real control by workers over their pension moneys.

Families: Paid leaves for infant care and family illnesses, a national daycare system like in Europe, a Marshall Plan for poor children.

Workers rights: Revoke Taft-Hartley Act, strengthen rights of workers to form unions without company interference.

Logging / Mining: End all logging on national forests and other federal lands. Revoke 1872 Mining Act.

Elections: Easier voter registration, state-level binding initiatives and referendum, public financing of campaigns, free TV and radio time for qualified candidates, term limits not to exceed 12 years.

Military spending / Nuclear weapons: Cut the budget by $100 billion, demobilize our troops in Europe and East Asia. Supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and prompt phase-out of nuclear power, opposes the dumping of nuclear waste.

Industrial hemp: Full legalization.

Federal Reserve: Replace Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan with a central banker who would aggressively represent the interests of workers.

Native Americans: Full tribal sovereignty and settlement of land claims, clemency for Native American Leonard Peltier, protection of Native intellectual and other property rights.

Public schools: "They are the public responsibility. You cannot mix public functions with commercial functions. All these so-called donations come with a price, a restraint." He supports the removal of all corporate-sponsored aid to public schools - including donated computers.

Standardized testing of students: "It leads to standardized thinking, to standardized curriculum, to standardized expectations, and they don't test the real important things about students: their judgement, their creativity."

Lesbian / Gay rights: "[They] should have full civil rights." including the right of civil union.

Transportation: "Bold new investments are needed to create a modern mass transit system conducive to livable cities, which will combat the momentum toward sprawl.."

Here's an excerpt from a speech Nader gave on June 30th:

"Unlike Gush and Bore, I don't promote myself as a solution to the nation's problems. The idea is to encourage a lot of other people to use the tools of democratic government to take control of the assets they hold in common: the public lands, the public broadcast frequencies, the public money. Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism, homophobia, taxes, healthcare, urban decay, you're not going to go anywhere with it unless you focus on the concentration of power.

We have an overdeveloped plutocracy and an underdeveloped democracy, too many private interests commandeering the public interest for their own profit. Most Americans don't realize how badly they're being harmed by the unchecked commercialization of what belongs to the commonwealth. If enough people knew what questions to ask, we have both the ways and means to achieve better schools, a healthier environment, a more general distribution of decent health care."

Nader's running mate, Winona LaDuke, is an extraordinary choice for VP, someone I'd be thrilled to have as President.. She's a highly respected feminist,indigenous activist, the founder of the Indigenous Women's Network, and author of All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (1999). She was named by Time magazine in 1994 as one of America's 50 most promising leaders under age 40.

Nader Endorsements:

Howard Zinn
Noam Chomsky
Jim Hightower
Randall Robinson
filmmaker Michael Moore
Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders

Actors

Bands:

Musicians:

And three unions:

A Vote for Nader is a Wasted Vote? Gore supporters have one main argument: a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.

No, it's not. A vote for Nader is a vote for revitalizing our fast disintegrating democracy, and breaking the iron grip of the current corporate party with two heads. If Nader receives 5% of the national vote, the Green Party automatically qualifies for $12 million in federal matching funds for the next presidential election campaign, which will inspire thousands of young citizen activists to help build a strong democracy movement. So it's vital that everyone reading this take action to ensure a strong Nader showing on election day.

What you can do now and on election day: Check out these websites:

The Greens
Vote Nader
Nader 2000
Reclaim Democracy
Feminists for Nader
Kansas City Labor for Nader - GOOD Articles
Veterans for Nader
Greens Page
Public Citizen (Founded by Ralph Nader in 1971)
Nader on Tobacco/WHO
Nader Acceptance Speech Video (almost FREE)
Justice Vision - Videos of Progressive Events
100 Fires - Extraordinary Books for a Healthy Planet

Phone Nader HQ at 202-265-4000. Send me your email address. I'll send a copy of this article for you to forward to friends and family. Contact your local Green Party, and dive in. Donate generously to Nader's campaign via their website or by mail. Checks made payable to: "Nader 2000 Primary Committee" and sent to:

Nader 2000, POB 18002, Washington DC, 20036.

Contact your local TV station. Urge them not to carry any CPD-controlled debates, and instead to broadcast debates that include all the major candidates.

Contact your local print and TV media. Ask them why they're not giving Nader equal time.

Attend any Bush or Gore appearances in your area. Make sure they know how you feel about Nader's exclusion from the debates.

Contact your Congressperson. Let them know you support House Concurrent Resolution 373, drafted by Jesse Jackson, Jr, which opens the upcoming debates to Nader and others.

Don't waste your vote on "the evil of lessers". Vote your hopes, not your fears.

Sources: This article is a compilation of my own words and the words of the following authors. I thank all of them for their eloquence!

Counterpunch newsletter, June 16 & July issues, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair Harper's magazine, September 2000, Lewis Lapham Nation magazine, July 17, 2000, various authors Portland Alliance, September 2000, Don McIntosh Progressive Populist, Sep 15, 2000, various authors San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2000, Carla Marinucci San Jose Mercury News, July 20, 2000, Alexander Cockburn and the Nader website.

Paul Cienfuegos is the co-founding director of Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County based in Arcata, CA, and co-author of 'Measure F: the Arcata Advisory Initiative on Democracy and Corporations'. For information about his organization or the workshops he leads ('First Steps in Dismantling Corporate Rule'), or to comment on this article, contact him at 707-825-0740 or cienfuegos@igc.org . Paul also runs a social change bookstore with over 200 titles on democracy and corporations -- 100 Fires - Extraordinary Books for a Healthy Planet

Sidebar Article: A Brief Bio of Public Citizen #1 (Most of this sidebar was drawn directly from an article in the September issue of the Portland Alliance.)

Born in Winsted, CT in 1934 to a family of Lebanese immigrants, Ralph Nader graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1955, and from Harvard Law School in 1958.

Nader came to the public's attention in 1965 when his best-selling book, Unsafe at Any Speed, exposed unsafe cars such as GM Corporation's dangerously defective Corvair. When GM went to extraordinary lengths to discredit Nader, Nader sued it for invasion of privacy.

GM's directors, having admitted wrongdoing before a Senate committee, settled the case and publicly apologized. With the money from the settlement, and the reputation for standing up to predatory corporations, Nader launched the modern consumer rights movement, issue by issue.

Citizens from around the country poured in to Washington, D.C. to work with Nader. "Nader's Raiders" successfully pushed for numerous laws to protect consumers, workers, taxpayers and the environment, combating corporate abuse, and increasing citizen access to government.

Nader's effort led to the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Traffic and Motor Vehicle Act, the Wholesale Meat Act, the Radiation Control Act, the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act, and the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. He was influential in the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, and the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.

He also helped create the Consumer Product Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Nader helped to establish the PIRG's - Public Interest Research Groups - student-funded and controlled organizations on college campuses in 23 states.

He founded the:

Center for the Study of Responsive Law
Run, Ralph, Run
Citizens Consumer Action Group
Freedom of Information Clearinghouse
Center for Auto Safety
The NADER Page
Nader Organizations
Disability Rights Center
Pension Rights Center
Congressional Accountability Project
and Public Citizen, (the largest of his organizations - founded in 1971 with projects including the 100,000-member Global Trade Watch.

Nader-inspired:

Consumer @ction

Thanks to Nader, cars sold in the US have seat belts, airbags, and bumpers; and smoking is banned on airline flights.

He has fought against numerous corporations, global trade arrangements which overwhelm American sovereignty, and corporate lobbyists who would block safety standards and deny fair access to court for injured parties. He has authored, co-authored, or sponsored many books,including:

• Action for a Change,
• Taming the Giant Corporation,
• The Menace of Atomic Energy,
• Who's Poisoning America,
• Winning the Insurance Game, and
• No Contest.

Nader speaks fluent Russian, Spanish, and Chinese. He is a bachelor, and does not own a TV or car.

Nader Pull Quotes

"Our country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies. The reason: excessive concentration of power and wealth in a few hands."

"Debates sponsored by the major networks would highlight popular issues ignored by the two major parties. For example, on issues of corporate power, corporate welfare, and corporate crime, and full public financing of public elections, I am outspoken. Bush and Gore are not. Both Bush and Gore favor the death penalty. I oppose it. They both oppose comprehensive universal health care. I favor it. They are both cheerleaders for the drug war, economic sanctions against Iraq, and wasteful, unneeded increases in military spending. I am not.

"Network sponsored debates with major third-party candidates would highlight these issues. Debates with only Bush and Gore will likely ignore them."

"[T]he two parties have merged into one corporate party, with two heads and different makeup."

"When do these corporations begin to lose credibility? They fought Social Security, Medicare, auto safety. They fought every social justice movement in this country."

"The two parties are in the process of crumbling. They have no constituency at the grassroots. They're hollow, fossilized parties that happen to hurl millions of dollars at each other, mostly on 30-second TV ads. So in the next five years, you're going to see a major third party arise. I hope it's the Green Party."

A blueprint for rebuilding democracy:

"All it takes is one million people putting in 100 hours a year and raising $100 each. $100 million is a lot of money - it raises you to the level of the two major parties. And with a mobilized group of citizens one million strong, you'd overwhelm their constituency."