More
than 200 activists picketed the Army Recruitment Center Aug. 2 in
downtown Bostonin an action jointly organized as a Counter-Recruitment
Day called by the UMass/Boston Antiwar Coalition and Boston Stop War on
Iran Campaign. Shouting "We
support war resisters, they're our brothers. They're our sisters," the
picket line stretched an entire block and was joined by activists from
TONC, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Greater Boston Stop the Wars
Coalition, Workers World Party, International Socialist Organization,
Vets for Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, Women's Fightback Network,
Stonewall Warriors and Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Steelworkers
Local 8751. Mike Spinnato
from IVAW told WW, "Reading Howard Zinn's 'People's History of the
United States' opened my eyes to the reality of what armed forces
recruitment was really about." FIST
organizer Miya spoke on the connection between the military recruiting
oppressed youth to fight and die abroad and the need for jobs for
youth, not jails and war.
The above is from Monica Moorehead's "Activists demand: 'Hands Off Iran!'" (Workers World)
and there are stories of more protests in the article from across the
country. We zoomed in on that one due to war resistance.
Now we're moving over to the US presidential race. Ralph Nader
is the independent candidate for president, Matt Gonzalez is his
running mate. Yesterday another state was added. From Jon Lender's "Nader Likely To Be On Presidential Ballot In State" (Hartford Courant):
Ralph
Nader's supporters submitted nearly 17,000 petition signatures to state
officials Wednesday, saying they have assured the longtime consumer
activist from Winsted a spot on the November presidential ballot's
Connecticut Independent Party line. By
law, they needed only 7,500 signatures of registered voters, so state
officials said their total is probably sufficient to survive a two-week
verification process and place Nader on Connecticut voting machines
with the two major-party nominees. Nader's running mate is Matt
Gonzalez of San Francisco. Petitions
also were submitted by Wednesday's 4 p.m. deadline on behalf of
presidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties.
As
the Nader campaign continues to gather momentum, more and more in the
mainstream media begin paying attention to the campaign. This is from
Maria Recio's "Just when you thought it was safe, Nader's coming back" (McClatchy Newspapers):
Nader
accuses the news media of being in a "cultural rut" by ignoring him. He
said he'd been on national television only 10 seconds this election
cycle. "Put me in all the
debates and we'll have a three-way race," Nader said of likely
Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain. An
AP-Ipsos poll released Tuesday shows Obama with a 6-point lead over
McCain and Nader at 3 percent among registered voters. Recent
CNN/Opinion Research polls scored Nader's support at 6 percent. His critics worry about a repeat of 2000. Nader,
who's called Bush a "raging pit bull," hates the spoiler label that's
been hung on him since that election, saying it's "a contemptuous word
of political bigotry." As
for Obama, Nader said he "lost all respect for him" when the Illinois
senator spoke out against impeaching Bush. Nader supports impeachment
because of how Bush handled the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
The
longtime consumer advocate spoke the day after the release of an
Associated Press-Ipsos national poll showing him with support from 3
percent of likely voters. Senator Obama led with 47 percent, while the
GOP’s Sen. John McCain was favored by 41 percent. Support for his
fifth bid for president "will be much greater than" in 2004, Nader
predicted. In the last presidential election, "the Democrats filed 24
lawsuits in 18 states in 12 weeks to get us off the ballot and harassed
our petitioners. So we didn’t get on a lot of ballots." The ticket of
Nader and vice-presidential candidate Matt Gonzales, a civil rights
attorney from San Francisco, will be on 45 state ballots this November,
he said. Earlier this year, Nader called Obama "a person of
substance" and "the first liberal evangelist in a long time." But
Wednesday morning, his assessment of the first-term senator from
Illinois was critical. "All these candidates of the major parties
know far more than they act on. And that gap is the fortitude gap. Do
they want to demonstrate political courage? Do they want to spend their
capital?" Nader said. "Obama has demonstrated a decreasing level of
fortitude, a decreasing willingness to spend his capital. I think for
the bottom 100 million Americans -- low-income whites, blacks, and
Latinos -- he is not really associated in this town with any
comprehensive proposal -- economic, political, social. And we expect
more of him." Nader added, "People who have fought the civil rights
battle economically, politically, legally, as we have since the '50s,
would often talk about - would happen if we had an African-American
president or chairpersons of major congressional committees. It doesn’t
look like it is going to be what we all thought it would be."
I am thoroughly upset with the media's attention to the election candidates. I
wonder how many people know that there are six candidates for the
presidency; yet all we ever hear about are the Republican and the
Democrat. We also have former Congressman Bob Barr of the Libertarian
Party; pastor and radio talk-show host Chuck Baldwin of the
Constitution Party; former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of the Green
Party; and Ralph Nader who is running as an independent. I
thought the money the candidates raised for their campaigns was for the
paid media coverage as well as the traveling they do. This makes me
wonder if they also pay to have normal news coverage. Why
is there never any mention of the other candidates? Anyone who wants to
know about the other candidates can go online to sites such as
Wikipedia.com. - Sheila Lyda,Phoenix
And Julie notes the Nader campaign video below.
Meanwhile Skip notes "DVD: Stop-Loss" (Third) about Kimberly Peirce's excellent Stop-Loss. And he suggests everyone check out his country's At the Movies which has text (transcript of the discussion as well as Margaret Pomeranz' review of the film) and video.
monica moorehead
margaret pomeranz
maria recio
david cook
