Election 2008: Ralph Nader in Athens, Georgia

On July 25th, 2008, my father, my thirteen-year-old brother, and I went to go see Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and 2008 Independent Presidential candidate, speak at “Master’s Hall” on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. I had been incredibly excited to see that Nader was coming to Georgia on his “Southern Tour”, and no more than forty miles away from my town, no less! My father, being the good open-minded fellow that he is, agreeably drove myself and my uninterested brother there and paid the $10 each to get in. We each received a free Nader/Gonzalez ‘08 pin for this payment. There was a long table set up just outside the hall for this practice of collecting money, and for collecting signatures on a petition to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in Georgia. The number of signatures necessary to get Nader, or any Independent candidate, on the ballot in Georgia is inane: 42,489 signatures by July 8th. Such ballot access laws are implemented so that independent candidates cannot make a significant challenge to the two major parties in power (who are the ones that make the laws, of course).

The event was at 5:30 in the afternoon; we three were situated in our seats by 5:00, and we watched as the hall filled up with likely about two hundred people. Since Ralph Nader had held an event in Columbia, South Carolina, at 12 o’clock that afternoon, and since he had run into some bad traffic on the way to Athens (no surprise there), he did not arrive at the hall until about 6 o’clock that evening.

After giving a brief press conference upstairs, Nader arrived, amidst a burst of applause. He walked down the aisle, right next to where I was sitting (close enough that I could have touched him, if I lacked judgement and prudence), towards the podium. Nader sat down and briefly rested from his busy schedule while a young African American campaign volunteer, a “concerned citizen”, gave an earnest introductory speech. In this speech, the young man affirmed how much he cared about the country and the issues at hand, and how important it is for everyone to care and be civically involved. And then he said, “And now I am proud to present a more-than-worthy 2008 presidential candidate, Mr. Ralph Nader.” The crowd erupted into applause. This was the moment that we had all been waiting for. We three were not disappointed.

After thanking the young man for such a sensitive introduction and apologizing for being late, Nader began, “Let me start in a more fundamental way. The problems we have in this country start with how individuals, in the millions, use their time. That’s where it all starts. I grew up in a small town in Connecticut. It had a town meeting form of government. And the town meeting was the legislature, the local legislature, and you could just walk to the town meeting; there were no obstacles to going into the auditorium, or the town hall, to decide important issues in the community. It was, in my judgement, the most pristine form of democracy in the world; you really can’t do much better than that. We had a local daily newspaper; if we didn’t print what you liked, you could canvas the whole town, it was ten thousand people.”

Nader continued, “There was no excuse for not having a very democratic form of government, with all the benefits that come from that. The quality of government in our town was directly related to how many people turned out, how many people voted, how many people showed up. And when people showed up, we’d work out our problems, nobody won everything—people didn’t show up, power moved into a concentrated format: the factory-owners, or the local politicos. In other words, if the dynamic of citizen engagement is weak, power flows to the few against the many. And that means that those few make decisions in their favor, against the majority, the masses of the people. And that’s why we get these political candidates, at the presidential and congressional level, who speak in such generalities that their rhetoric belies their record of almost never, in Congress or in the White House, proposing anything that shifts power from the few to the many. For example, public funding of public campaigns; we don’t do that. For example, national referendums, with binding power; we’d [Nader would] do that.”

There, at the part about national referendums, I believe Nader was referring to the National Initiative for Democracy, proposal of Former Senator Mike Gravel, which has now apparently earned the support of Ralph Nader, though Nader does not make it a centerpiece issue. Nader continued with ideas of how to shift power from the few to the many (a major theme of his campaign), and, though he had many, one of the most important of these was, “Getting rid of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the most notorious anti-union worker law in the Western world, and letting tens of millions of workers, whom surveys show want to form trade unions, to engage in collective bargaining with their employers—That would shift power.”

Nader also said, in the area of workers-rights (he is apparently strongly pro-union and pro-worker), “Opening up the courts so that wrongfully injured people, or defrauded people (there are enough of us in that category), could have their full day in court, before a judge and jury, instead of being restricted by this notorious, misnamed ‘tort reform’ movement, perpetrated by the insurance companies and the wrong-doers corporate lobby—That would shift power. 90% of all people wrongfully injured in this country never even filed a claim. Do you know how bad that is?”

I did not record the speech in its entirety, but Nader made several other interesting points, which remain etched in my memory. Here they are, listed out.

1. Nader has visited some dictatorships in his life. They have almost as much personal freedom as a democracy; you can live where you like, go fishing if you like, eat what you like, marry who you want to, etc. The real exercise of freedom, Nader said, is in the area of participation in politics and civics. Nader cited Cicero’s famous quote, describing it as the best definition of freedom he had yet heard, “Freedom is participation in power”. That is where dictatorships and free democracies differ. In democracies, you can participate in power—you can be an active, civic-minded citizen. Participation in power is the real freedom.

2. It seemed as though Nader was speaking directly to my younger brother when he noted that youths who do not care about civics and who do not practice civic engagement will reap the consequences when they are older. They will reap the consequences of their failure to act and speak out and become involved, such as a bad healthcare system, lack of a living wage (despite some claims, the minimum wage is not a living wage; you most certainly cannot live off of it), a corrupt tax code, etc. Nader talked about how youths these days spend 60 hours each week staring at a screen, either television or computer, neglecting the beauty of the outdoors and nature, which he believed was unfortunate.

3. Nader called hotdogs “pink missiles”—a cute name for this decidedly unhealthy food likely made of cow intestines or something equally pleasant. This is a suitable topic for a consumer advocate who greatly contributed to the establishment of a mandatory installation of seat belts in cars.

4. Nader began talking about how the government was bailing out corporations with government funds. Nader told us about how, one time, while his family had been sitting around the dinner table, his father had asked his children, “Why will capitalism always survive?” Their natural response was, of course, “Just tell us, Dad.” Their father answered, “Because socialism will always be there to save it.”

5. Nader described prisons as “finishing schools” for criminals, which focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation. He also affirmed his desire to legalize marijuana and end the “war on drugs”.
6. Nader made a proposal for a “Congressional Watchdog” organization. Congressional districts have an average population of 645,000 people. In each Congressional district, Nader proposed, 500 to 1000 citizens should organize into a group specializing in overseeing the actions of the representative from that district. Each member would pay out a small fee, enough to rent a small office space and hire a couple of full-time employees. This would aid the oversight that each representative receives from the citizens of that district that they are representing.

After Mr. Ralph Nader’s speech (which I, my father, and even my brother, just a little, enjoyed), some fellow from his campaign got up and made a speech, with a great deal of “Uh’s”, “Um’s”, and “Er’s”, and then the purpose of the speech was revealed when the fellow began attempting to auction off a signed copy of “The Good Fight”, by Ralph Nader, for $2300 (it ended up fetching $250). After further painful begging for donations by this fellow (with Ralph Nader all the while sitting quietly, resting, a little bit away from the podium), Nader got up again to take questions from the audience. There were not very many questioners, probably about four or five.

Nader was asked a question about the Middle East and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, about how his policy was different from McCain’s and Obama’s. Mr. Nader said that Obama and McCain are on the side of the minority, the extremist Israeli militarists and wars hawks, while the vast majority of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples in that region just want peace—a two-state solution. Mr. Nader also asserted that we should stand up against the injustices inflicted upon the Palestinians by Israel. There is a ratio of 400 to 1 in the Palestinian to Israeli civilian casualties in Gaza; for every Israeli killed by Palestinians, there are 400 Palestinians killed by Israelis. There is a humanitarian disaster going on in Gaza.

Another fellow asked a question about the Fair Tax proposal, for a national sales tax, and Nader replied that he was not in favor of the Fair Tax proposal but that he was in favor of a fair tax system. Nader said that the tax system should be reorganized, starting with the basic principle that things such as alcohol, cigarettes, pollution, and speculation should be taxed the most, while desirable things such as food and work should be taxed less. His answer was a little longer and more complex than this simple statement I have made here, and he received a great deal of applause for it. Of course, you can see Nader’s full positions on the issues at his website votenader.org.

After all that was finished with, Nader left to go to his next event in Atlanta, Georgia (which was at 8 o’clock and which he was already late for; and, knowing Atlanta, he would probably hit some bad traffic on the way there too). It must be exhausting to carry on with such a busy schedule: three events in one day, each quite a drive away from the others. My father, my brother, and I set off from Master’s Hall back to our car. The sky was darkening, with some clattering of thunder, threatening a great storm. Just as we got into our car, it began to rain, great big noisy drops. The storm had begun.

Is our nation, in this 2008 election, heading for a perfect storm? Some people seem to think so, but it is not just mere, unsubstantiated, wishful thinking that is behind it. Ralph Nader currently has 6% in National polls, while Bob Barr usually receives about 3%, giving third party candidates a combined 9% in most polls. And yet these candidates are rarely mentioned, if ever, in the media. Do you ever wonder about this? Nader was wondering aloud what he would have to do to get any attention in the media—dress up as a panda? Have someone else dress up as a female panda, and then have male-panda Nader flash suggestive looks at them? Nader continued on humorously: the media does, after all, certainly seem to be very interested in the mating practices of pandas, if you’ll recall. There is no time to mention any third-party candidates.

I had a wonderful time at this Ralph Nader event; I very much liked Nader’s key message of civic engagement. He is a remarkable fellow, which is a condition that he attributes to his remarkable parents. My father, after the event, told me in complete seriousness that, if Nader got to 20% in the polls, he would vote for Nader. Dad might vote for him anyway, unless it looks as though Obama might win Georgia, of course, of course. My thirteen-year-old brother asserted a few days later that he would vote for Nader if his middle school held a mock election for President. I hope that you, too, have been pleasantly informed by my, and Ralph Nader’s, words and actions—and I hope that, upon finishing this article, you are now more open-minded than you were before you first laid eyes on it.