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