Global

This year’s presidential election is between two men; George Bush and Al Gore. Anyone harboring illusions that any one else, other than these two gentlemen actually has a chance needs to retake high school American history.

Fringe candidate Ralph Nader would have you believe that he has a chance and deserves a place at the table, let alone a second look. There are two main reasons why voting for Mr. Nader is not only futile but counterproductive to the environmental movement. Allow me to explain.

A vote for Mr. Nader is a vote for President Bush/Speaker DeLay

Texas Governor George Bush lacks substantive policy experience both in the domestic and international arenas. He is anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-labor, and most of all beholden to the far right of Bob Jones. How can he be up in the polls? He has two things in his favor this year: money and Ralph Nader. Mr. Bush’s fundraising extravagance is legendary. Let’s talk about Mr. Nader.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- Watching George W. Bush's post-debate strategy emerge was interesting. Watching it flower into perfection within days was fascinating.

To go back a mere week, Veep Al Gore won the debate on points, but the immediate spin was: Would it do him any good because he was having such an Eddie Haskell night? The Bush camp complained of Gore's sighing; the media promptly did out-takes of all sighs by Gore, strung them together and -- voila -- he appears as a petulant poseur rather than master of fact and issue.

(I mean, what are we to make of Bush's suggestion that we encourage energy exploration in Mexico so we won't be dependent on foreign oil? Bush actually said he had discussed this with Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox. Shouldn't someone cable Fox and tell him we're not considering annexation?)

OK, the media -- world champions of getting-off-the-point -- now have us worrying about Gore's sighing, but the Bush camp is down to no issues. Nothing works for them, and their only option is to drive up Gore's negatives.

You may have read in the Columbus Alive that the Free Press/Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) was the only nonprofit member of Greater Columbus Community Shares excluded from this year’s charitable giving campaign at the Ohio State University. Twenty-one organizations were let in – only one left out.

And let me stress, left. OSU administrators insist that the Freep’s editorial content has nothing to do with their bizarre and misinformed decision. After all, they were totally unaware that the Freep’s summer issue cover story attacked the OSU administration for its handling of the spring CWA strike and its indefensible invitation to U.S. Representative J.C. Watts to serve a commencement speaker.

OSU Human Resource administrator Ned Cullom told the Alive that he and Human Resource Director S. John Taflan excluded the CICJ because the organization doesn’t “directly address the health and human services in Central Ohio.” I guess we’re not the League of Women Voters or the American Civil Liberties Union that clearly serve such a function, according to Cullom and Taflan. Both groups were let in the OSU campaign.

In 1993, Sarah and Elizabeth Delany became overnight celebrities with the publication of their memoir, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, written in collaboration with New York Times reporter Amy Hill Hearth. It became a national bestseller, was adapted into a highly successful stage play and TV movie, and led to two more books by the Delanys.

“Sweet Sadie” and “Queen Bess,” as they called one other, have since passed on. But picking up the torch are two black men, averaging 99 years of age, who have both published their memoirs this year, with the assistance of younger writers.

George Dawson, born in 1898, is the principal author of Life Is So Good (Random House, 260 pages, hardcover, $23), co-written with Richard Glaubman. The book was done as an oral history, and deals primarily with life in the South.

You remember Steven Kanner, a local activist who refused dominant values, whether by riding the bus instead of a car, refusing to wear leather tennis shoes, or dreaming of working in a cooperative tofu factory. One of my best memories is going with him to Broad and High, ironing board in hand to use as a literature table. We talked with both the rich and the poor about Single Payer Health Care reform and asked them to sign our petition. Few were as faithful as he was—participating in a peace march, hosting a dinner for Simply Living friends, or supporting the Green Education Fund.

What a surprise to get his letter from Iowa City stating that he had been elected to the City Council. Steven Kanner? you ask. Yes. The only person on the council who lists his address as a basement apartment and who deliberately renewed his membership with the Democratic Socialists of America as well as the Green and Labor Parties before he was elected.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known fairly tales. In the story, weavers are making an invisible cloth for the Emperor’s “new clothes”. The weavers claimed that anyone who couldn’t see the beautiful patterns in the cloth was either a fool or an inept government employee. Because none of the characters in the story wanted to appear to be a simpleton, the Emperor ended up wearing his “new clothes” in a parade. Only after a mere child said, “The Emperor has no clothes.” was the hoax revealed. Andersen’s fairy tale on ignoring the obvious was first told in the mid 1800’s.

A close look at the news reports covering the 1993 tragic death of over 80 people at the Mount Carmel Center near Waco, Texas, reveals that a willingness to ignore the obvious is still with us. The obvious question is: “Who is going to be tried for involuntary manslaughter?” The basic facts of the Waco tragedy are not contested.

Fact No. 1

Yuppification . . . corporatization . . . bland o’rama.

What a drag it is getting older as the forces of reaction grow bolder. For a quarter century the people’s liberation front gathered at its headquarters in Columbus, Tradewinds. You entered the revolutionary space through a door under the sign of the Dragon.

On Wednesday, July 19, the Dragon breathed fire no more. Scott Solomon, lacking wisdom, evicted the store’s owner Yvette Garayalde Wyman from the legendary storefront. The late Libby Gregory, activist extraordinaire, founded the original store. It gave shelter to the Columbus Free Press when the underground newspaper was being hounded by a joint operation of the National Security Agency, CIA and FBI in the 1970’s. Indeed, there’s a certain nostalgia for the terms MH Chaos and COINTELPRO.

Perhaps it would have been a more fitting way for the store to go out being blown up by the neo-Nazi Gerhardt brothers in the early 80’s – in fact they testified under oath to plotting the bombing to destroy the progressive movement in Cowtown.

Most people would probably agree that TV news anchors and reporters should have a strong determination to search for and report the truth no matter what the economic consequences to their station or network might be. I bet they would also agree that it is a journalists’ duty to expose and challenge bias or censorship within the news media. But most people don’t know that in many TV newsrooms journalists are routinely discouraged and even contractually forbidden from performing these essential duties. Furthermore, violators are severely punished. Sounds alarming, but it’s true, as I found out last summer.

On July 26, 2000, without ever submitting a letter of resignation and with the corporate security chief waiting to escort me from the building, I “resigned” from my job from my job as a Meteorologist at WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio. To put it more accurately, I was fired (TV bosses nearly always say that anchors and reporters “resigned” no matter how their employment ended. To “fire” them might cause viewers to ask too many questions: the station would have to explain why they fired the employee.) And why did I get fired?

The biggest objection by allies to voting for a Third Party is the “wasted vote” argument — the idea that if you vote for someone who will not win, then the vote does not count.

Join any third party and merely suggest that another person consider voting for a third party candidate and you will hear, ad nauseum, “I don’t want to waste my vote.”

What is a Wasted Vote?

An unprincipled vote is the only wasted vote.

Voting for a third party, contrary to popular belief, is not a wasted vote.

What is voting? It’s a chance to tell the country — and perhaps even the world — what your vision of government and society really is.

But how do most of us vote? Do the majority of those who believe Harry Browne or Ralph Nader is the best candidate, most in tune with our own feelings, actually vote for them? No. Instead, most of us vote the “lesser of two evils” — a defensive vote, rather than an offensive one.

The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Mansfield, Ohio’s locked-out AK Steel workers celebrated “One Year of Solidarity” on September 9 by staging a rally and throwing a picnic for a few thousand friends and supporters.

On September 1, 1999, AK Steel, formerly Armco, commemorated Labor Day by locking out some 620 members of United Steelworkers of America Local 169 after their contract expired. Barbed wire and paramilitary thugs with jackboots and billy clubs greeted the night shift workers who tried to enter the plant.

The locked-out workers report that these so-called private security guards continue to follow Local 169 members and their families around Mansfield, to and from the Union Hall and even like to stake out local schools in an obvious attempt to provoke violence and intimidate the workers.

AK Steel is also employing the use of “slap” lawsuits against the Union, its members, city officials and even a local police officer, in a blatant effort to financially pressure the Union and its supporters. The company has even sought an injunction to prevent the locked-out workers from requesting public information from the Ohio Department of Commerce.