Left wing activists are pouring everything they have into stopping Bush’s policies, and are declaring victory when the President only gets through Congress a fraction of what he proposes. Many of them consider it na

What to make of the peace movement? I intend that question in two senses, including this one: what can we now build out of this movement? The first thing we must do is not let it die out as the warriors pause to reload. The surest way to prevent war is to prevent the construction of a crisis that can be sold as a reason for war. The times of pause between wars are the ideal times to push that work forward, to demand with great urgency the construction of systems of understanding, of dispute resolution, read more

The Fight for Higher Minimum Wage
CNN Financial: CNN Money Morning
April 3, 2002
Guest: David Swanson

Host: David Haffenreffer

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE
UPDATED.

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNNfn ANCHOR, MONEY MORNING: Most Americans would agree
that the national minimum wage of $5.15 an hour isn’t really a living wage.
But more individual cities and counties are joining a living wage movement.
And joining us now with more on all read more

Also published on democraticunderground.com

Politically, we are a nation of proud pessimists and phony optimists. We associate hope with candidacies of content-free invertebrates like Bill Clinton. Our idea of gutsy change is to root for Bill Bradley or John McCain from our couch. Our most common act of rebellion is to keep our asses on the couch on election day.

We’re defeatists and proud of it. We have no shame. We denounce politics and politicians as if we were not responsible, and we read more

Also published on democraticunderground.com

June 14, 2003

Dear Non-Voter,

I vote and you don’t, and that either makes me too gullible or you too cynical. It’s probably some of each. In a lot of general elections, you’re probably right to stay home. Any way you look at it you lose. And if some candidate offering you something you can really use is running in a third party, why bother voting for them, right?

But I want to talk to you about primaries. What do you say when someone prepared read more

See also: http://www.kucinich.us/responses_examples.htm
Below is a sampling of letters. Some are responses to media bias or meginalization. Others are creative uses of newspapers’ letters pages. Some small newspapers are open to readers expressing their views without responding to specific articles. The letters page is the most read page of many newspapers, large and small.

Young voter apathy
(Published in the Contra Costa Times 9/14/03)

This past week I spoke with three young men who told read more

Bush’s policy positions are well known and have been put into action. Each of the nine Democrats vying to be the one to send Bush packing has created a campaign website with a section laying out the candidate’s positions on the issues he or she deems important. Below is a chart showing what these 10 people’s positions are on many of the issues. A blank indicates that no information was found on their website. In a few cases, information was used from other reliable sources.

While read more

Also published on CommonDreams.org and Voice4change.org
I’ve always been an activist. I’ve always seen the purpose of a life as changing the world for the better, not observing it or recording it or drifting through it or playing it for my own gain, but altering it so it’s a better place with less hardship, destruction, humiliation, and hunger. I used to be a reporter, and I found that I was able to do some good, but that too often I had to write about things I didn’t read more

By David Swanson
Jan. 31, 2004

Back in September I quit the only steady job I’d ever loved to work as press secretary for the Dennis Kucinich for President campaign. In November I published a column explaining why I would do such a thing:
http://www.davidswanson.org/columns/whyI.htm or
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1124-13.htm

Last week I quit the Kucinich campaign in order to search for a job. I now speak only for myself, not the campaign. I did not quit because I had finally been read more

Jan. 18, 2004

America has become something more of a dream of late. The images that the mass media feed us of America fit more with a fictional portrait of a country than with the nation we actually live in. I can’t recall the last news story I saw on working homeless families. I haven’t yet seen a funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. When will we be flooded with stories on the immorality of paying for HMO executives’ stock options but not the health care of sick people? Oprah read more

People all over this country over the past several months have told me “Dennis Kucinich is my first choice but I’m voting for someone electable.” The largest group of such overly wise disciples of their televisions have always chosen to back Howard Dean as the “electable” next best thing. Yet Dean has now almost proven to be unelectable.
The same compromise (judging by these unions’ long-standing concerns and how those compare to the platforms of Kucinich read more

Also published at http://www.buzzflash.org

I have often heard Democrats accuse Republicans of being selfish. That’s nonsense. The economic policies of the Bush Administration have dramatically benefited only the wealthiest two percent of Americans. There are a lot of Republicans nowhere near that level of wealth. To my mind, most people who have voted Republican have not been selfish enough. I encourage everyone to vote their economic self-interest.

By voting Republican, you are voting for read more

So, you backed Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton because of their progressive platforms, or you backed Howard Dean because he stood up to Bush – Now what?

President John Kerry? We have to hope so, given the alternative, but how can we get excited about a Democratic nominee who has so much in common with the Republican incumbent? One way would be to recognize the strength we have and force John Kerry to get excited about us and our demands.

Some say that progressives will be taken for granted read more

Feb. 13, 2004

I have become convinced that progressives cannot win without reforming the media, no matter how much time or money we put into grassroots organizing or policy analysis. So what should we do?

Ultimately, of course, we’re going to need governmental solutions and leadership. We’re going to need to break up the media monopolies, open up opportunities for smaller companies, and provide free air time for political campaigns. We’ll have to place new caps on media ownership read more

Feb. 17, 2004

Are you lucky enough not to have heard of NESARA? If you do enough grassroots progressive politics, chances are you will.

NESARA stands for the National Economic Security and Reformation Act, an act that was secretly passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton, and which will be announced in due time. NESARA will forgive all credit card, mortgage, and other bank debt, eliminate income tax, back currency with precious metals, accomplish regime change in Washington, read more

Feb. 19, 2004

Is there a substantive difference between John Kerry and John Edwards? You wouldn’t know it from the issue-free media coverage. CBS touches on issues in 21.4 percent of its campaign coverage, 33.4 percent for ABC, and 32 percent for NBC, according to a study by MediaChannel.org, which must have been extremely generous in defining a story as dealing with issues.

Still, you might know that Edwards is younger and better looking, and you might get the impression that the media has read more

Feb. 23, 2004

Dear Terry,
Did you get the check? There’s a lot more where that came from. We’ve put together an informal little band of brothers and sisters called Sane Leaders Against W, and we’re loaded. I’m talking about over 150 executives on a mission, Terry, each of whom can fill a $2,000 per plate gig. But we’re thinking bigger than that. Soros hasn’t figured this one out. Do I have your attention?

But listen, Terry, before we roll this machine out, we read more

Feb. 24, 2004

President Bush made a speech yesterday about how badly he is frightened by even the remote possibility of a Democratic nomination for Dennis Kucinich. Here is how David Shribman, Executive Editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reported on the speech today:

“The last Bush re-election effort, having succeeded so well in portraying Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts as a doctrinaire liberal, tried the same tactic on Clinton. It didn’t work because Clinton wasn’t read more

Feb. 25, 2004

The thought of four more years of President George W. Bush — and the possibility of seeing him actually winning the title of president in an election! – sends chills up the spines of many Americans. The passion with which people oppose this unelected president has helped to create a wild ride of a Democratic nominating process. We’ve seen some good candidates generate a lot of activism, bring new people into politics, and then lose out.

The nominee will be the favorite read more

Feb. 29, 2004

Also published at www.TruthOut.org

Also published in an edited version on www.Alternet.org

“Well, I’m not going to be addressed like this.” — Elizabeth Bumiller

The headline about today’s CBS debate on the CBS website is “Dems Get Feisty In NYC Debate,” and it’s followed by an absurdly dishonest article suggesting that the four remaining Democratic candidates for president engaged in unusually spirited disagreement with each other over read more