From: chriswa@microsoft.com (Chris Waldron)
Subject: Re: RON DANIELS For President: A Progressive Voice
Date: 21 Jul 92 04:19:46 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Distribution: soc.culture.african.american


The following was originally posted by harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
on misc.activism.progressive...

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Date: Mon, 25 May 92 17:11:25 PDT
From: stevens@arcus.ATMOS.ColoState.EDU (Bjorn Stevens)
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Ron Daniels recently announced his intention to run as an independent
progressive candidate for president in the fall elections (or so I
believe).  The following is an interview conducted on May 1 1991.
Athough it is more than a year old, it was conducted in the context of
a possible presidential bid, and thus retains much of its relevance.
The interview was initially printed in the first issue of _The
Drummer_ an independent grass-roots paper published by the Alternative
Editorial Group Inc., out of Ames Iowa ... typos are my fault and due
to retyping.  For more information on _The Drummer_ see the footer at
the end of the interview.  Re-print at will, but it would be a good
plug if you chose to cite us.

_______________________
Drummer:  What is your purpose for running as a Presidential Candidate
and leadership of this country at this time?
_______________________

Daniels: It's time to create a new course in American politics.  We
need a progressive, independent third force, if not a new political
party.  And I say that because in reality the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party are conservative.  The Republican Party is
unabashedly for the rich.  The Democratic Party philosophically has
leaned more towards poor and working people; it has relieved the rough
and bitter edges of raw naked capitalism.  [However,] neither the
Republican or the Democratic parties really want to fundamentally
change the system: the pyramid that allows one half of 1% of the
people to control nearly 30% of the wealth, 10% to control nearly 80%
of the wealth.  Neither party is talking aobut fundamentally changing
that.

I talk about finishing the unfinished democracy.  When we look at where
this nation began, it began as a nation where women couldn't vote, and
where not all white men could vote.  Native Americans were being
annihilated.  The land was being seized from Native Americans.
African-Americans were three fifths of the human beings written into
the constitution, [but] 90% of them were in slavery.  A small core of
people ran the country.  The story of this country has not been about
the perfect union, it has been about perfecting union, about finishing
the unfinished democracy.  The struggle has been to continually work
to create a real America, and that struggle has not yet been
completed.  As we look at where we are at the last decade of the 20th
century, it is still about how do we make America the nation that we
know that it must become, if all the people are going to be able to
live here in peace, harmony, and dignity, and with propserity.
_______________________

Drummer:  You were talking about ideological changes toward a more
equitable economic distribution.  These are issues of economics, legal
rights and social injustice.  How could this be realized?

_______________________

Daniels:  The prosperity of Europe and America is built on the backs
of slavery, of the exploitation of people of color in Africa, Asia,
Central America and so forth.  The introduction of the Trans Atlantic
slave trade -- that's an ideological question.  A hundred million
African-Americans lost their lives in the slave trade.  How does
America deal with reconciling itself with that?  Translated into
politics, we must have a society where those who work, those who are
average ordinary working people, those who struggle for a living, must
be the ones who have a greater say over the politics and economics of
this society.  It cannot be an elite view, an elite class who runs the
country.  That means that corporations have to be not only accountable
and responsible, it means that workers must have the opportunity to
own and run their own corporations.    If a corporation closes down,
the community and workers should be able to take that corporation
over.  Because that means greater economic democracy, it means greater
employee stock-ownership in terms of these various corporations so
that we have a greater stake in them.  We can begin to talk about their
direction and how they move.  It means public policy that is based on
people and human beings and not on profit.  It means putting in place
a national health service to take care of the needs of all of the
people in that regard.
_______________________

Drummer:  You have talked about massive civil disobediance and other
possibilities for change.  How do you forsee that this chnage could
take place.
_______________________

Daniels: Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never has and it
never will.  Those who have power struggle to keep power.  They either
keep their power by ruthlessly oppressing, intimidating, terrorizing
and killing people -- that's what the national security state is about
-- or we are co-opted by letting a few people come in and getting a
few crumbs, and therefore we become the apoloogists for the system of
oppression.  I don't anticipate that tomorrow morning either
Rockefeller or Getty, or any of the people who run the system are
going to wake up and say, "Oh gee, I think that we really ought to
change this.  It's been an exploitive system."

We have to fight for change, and we fight for change using those
levers that are available to us.  One lever that is available to us
[is] civil disobedience.  We must always keep before us the vision of
a new society, the organization and mobilization of people in the
streets and at the balot box to fight for fundamental change.  That is
the kind of overview that we have to have as we move formward. So yes,
I have said that the condition of the masses of black people and
disadvantaged people in this country is so urgent that we may have to
use civil disobedience.  In all the different states across this
country, they're cutting back on education .  There are homeless
people.  There are people who don't have health care.  Peoples'
unemployment insurance is running out.  They can take to the streets.
They don't have to accept this.  And not only take to the streets in
tame little ceremonial commemorative marches, which is what black
people have been doing.  Our marches need to be flying into the teeth
of an oppressive system that still exists today.  And we need to, if
necessary, be taking over the halls of Congress; we need to be tying
up the Executive Mansion; or whatever is necessary to bring to the
attention of the American people and the world that there are millions
of people in this country who are suffereing.  And so for me there is
no limit.

Civil disobedience is a legitimate tool, but we also need to lead a
voter revolt.  There are 91 million people who in 1988 either did not
register or did not vote.  Seventy million people are not registered
to vote.  Two thirds of those are low income people.  Eight million of
those are African-Americans.  Four million of the African-Americans
are between the ages of 18-24.  Twelve million of the non-participants
are young people between the ages of 18-24.

Suppose Ron Daniels, running as an independent candidate for
President, articulating a platform that calls for a 50% reduction in
defense spending, a trillion and a half dollars over the next decade,
talking about a socially responsible economy, advocating the idea that
the economy is for the epurpose of serving the people, talking about
full employment, talking about an environmentally sustainable economy,
talking about an education that includes diversity and a curriculum of
inclusion.  Suppose he got half, just half, of the 12 million young
people who either don't register or don't vote.  That 6 million people
is something that the world would have to take notice of.  All of a
sudden people would have to say, "What's going on?"  Public Enemy
talks about fighting the power.  We not only have to react to and
fight the power, we must take power.  We must not only talk about
resisting the government, we must come to understand that we can
become the government.  We must be confident of our ability as young
radical activists.  We have to begin to plan that somewhere in the
21st century we will become government.

_______________________
Drummer:  When you talk about justice for Native Americans, and in
honoring treaties, what do you envision as the ideal result?
_______________________

Daniels:  I can only speak to a broad framework, based upon what the
Native Americans are saying about their treaties.  I know that the
treaties are not being honored.  I know that they have discovered
about 60% of the remaining non-renewable mineral resources are now
being found under Native American reservations.  I know that the US
is getting ready to move the Native Americans off their land again.
So, at least what I can say is that we must respect their treaty
rights.  We must respect their sovereignty as nations.  And we must be
about the business of restoring Native Americans to their rightful
place in terms of economic justice and political development.

_______________________
Drummer:  How do you see international relations in terms of economics
and the military?
_______________________

Daniels:  America has to first confine itself to its own defense.
That is why I'm talking about a 50% reduction in the military budget.
I'm vigorously opposed to this notion that America should be the
police of the world.  Every struggle, every war, we have fought has
been a rich man's struggle and a poor man's fight.  America must
change its international policy to promote peoples' right to self
determination.  America's economic policy must be geared to helping
people to develop based on their [own] perceptions and concepts of
development.  We don't have the right to impose on anybody the US
model of development.  We have no right to impsoe a free market concept
and use the agents of international development, the International
Monetary Fund, and all these agencies that carry out our vision of
what you should be.  We have found that Europe and America are the key
problem in terms of peoples' underdevelopment.  America and Europe
[are] responsible for the underdevelopment [mal-development?] of the
Third World and the resources and markets of these people to keep them
dependant.  That's backwards policy.  We have to turn that policy
around and be a part of a global village where all of us are concerned
with how [to improve] the quality of life for the world.

America's international policy is a reflection of its domestic policy.
Americans talk about how to police people in communities.  We have
suspension of habeas corpus coming down the pipe, now that confessions
extracted under duress can be used.  The Rodney King thing was not
new.  That's what they like to impose, period.  The war on drugs is --
as we say in the African-American community -- a war on us.  Every
young black male is suspect.  What they really want to do is
destabilize the African-Americna community.  So what are they doing
domestically?  Do they provide more jobs, more housing, more health
care, more education? No: [They provide] more police more prisons,
tougher sentences, all this kind of nonsense, and it is not working.
Crime is not on the decrease, it is on the increase.  Why?  Because
this society is criminalizing people.  All of the prisons that we
build are not enough to contain the people who are being criminalized
in this society.

So what does America do?  Externalize, with emphasis on military power,
military muscle, but not on economic development.  most of the foreign
aid budget is not in economic development, but in military assistance.
We just came out of the Persian Gulf madness.  Instead of having an arms
limitation in the middle East, American wants to hastily get back into
the arms business, because it's a profitable enterprise.  Somebody is
making a [profit] off these arms sales.  And then we end up facing
these weapons, and Johnny goes marching off, and now Mary goes marching
off, to the great American interests, facing US weapons.  America
needs to get out of the *business* of foreign policy. [Emphasis added
-- Harel]

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The Drummer is a non-profit independent monthly paper printed out of
Ames Iowa.  It has benefited greatly from ACTIV-L and is happy to
return the favor.  We have conducted exclusive interviews with Tony
Benn, Ramsey Clark, Eleanor Smeal, Michael Parenti, Harold Lamont
'Wili' Otey (A death row inmate in Lincoln Nebraska) in additon to our
news coverage, arts, coalition building, and opinion proliferating
work.  Inquiries can be directed to stevens@arcus.atmos.colostate.edu,
or mailed to Mark Ingles 715 Clark St. Ames, IA 50010.

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