What I Voted For (Page 2)

There was a time when I would have said that it is the "evil" Republicans who fear democracy. But the sad realization I have come to after the 2000 election, and after experiencing the reactions to our support for Nader, is that you can count the Democrats in that bunch, too. Not only do they fear democracy but many in the Democratic Party elite fear, if not outright despise, idealism. I have lost a great deal of respect for a party that admonished its progressive wing, that had no tolerance for dissension in its ranks and sought to demonize the most important and influential consumer advocate of the past fifty years. But we shouldn't be surprised. A similar reaction occurred earlier in this century when another leading advocate, Upton Sinclair, was running for governor of California. The power brokers of the Democratic Party did everything they could to isolate him. If they gave any support at all to his candidacy, it was halfhearted, while some even endorsed his Republican opponent, Frank Merriam. And the press? They demonized him, said he was anti-business, said he was an egomaniac. Sound familiar?

Most of the Nader supporters I met were the real deal, people who have dedicated their lives to advocacy. These were the people at the center of the struggle around controversial, difficult issues; their political engagement was way beyond and deserving of much more respect than that of many people who would wind up criticizing them.

The judgmental and patronizing attitude of those in the generation that fought to end the Vietnam War and work for women's rights is disappointing and discouraging, but understandable. But I am not of the opinion that Bill Clinton was the best this generation had to offer, and I would like to believe there is a dormant power still left in these progressives who have yet to acknowledge the importance of the new movement growing around them. I would like to believe that the children of the Vietnam era who protested that unjust war were concerned with more than self-preservation, with issues beyond not losing their lives to the war. I would like to believe that feminists--recognizing which gender works predominantly in sweatshops and which gender is predominantly sold into slavery--would acknowledge these issues as their own, and begin looking beyond reproductive rights as the only litmus test for a candidate. I would like to believe that higher ideals drive all of us, ideals that have to do with the world at large.

The young people who have helped launch a quest for an alternative party, one that will not compromise this planet's future for campaign donations from corporate sugar daddies, believe the Democratic and Republican parties are united on the major issues of our time. This new movement is a rejection of politics as usual, a rejection that has frightening implications when you consider the progressive community's reaction to it. Have we become our parents? Are we the Establishment? Are we now the status quo that so cynically rejects those with ideals and dreams, that says to the idealist that there is no room for that in this election, that one must vote strategically, that we can't afford our dreams, that we must accept the lesser of two evils? The couple in the theater, the Op-Ed columnist, the Hollywood mogul and the actor beat their drums once every four years for their candidate and talk about their opponents as if their election will end civilization as we know it. This is a gay Op-Ed columnist who would not vote for the one candidate who unashamedly supported same-sex marriage; this is a mogul who would not be having any more sleepovers and private screenings in a Republican White House; this is an actor professing to care about the poor who couldn't seem to find his way to the picket line to support his own union's strike.

I don't respect armchair activists. I respect the kids outside The Gap who don't compromise. I'm not ready to cede their idealism and passion and vision, to compromise their integrity for a Democratic Party that aspires to be centrist, for a Democratic Party that supports the death penalty, that dismantled the welfare system while increasing corporate welfare, that helped create the economic system that tears at the heart of the labor movement.

How embarrassing it must be for Democratic senators that the embodiment of political courage in this country is now a Republican from Vermont. Maybe it's time to stop demonizing people for their political affiliations and to follow the example of the man who risked his political future to follow the voice inside him. To reject politics as usual and follow our grassroots hearts; to form alliances in unlikely places.

It's a long struggle for justice. It is grassroots movements that create real change, and no grassroots movement ever got anywhere compromising its ideals. Real change won't happen at Washington cocktail parties or in the Lincoln Bedroom. It is arduous and messy, and takes relentless agitation. It took over a hundred years of advocacy to eliminate slavery, over a hundred years to put an end to child labor and over a hundred years to establish the minimum wage. This movement is in its infancy, but it is alive and it's not going away. Its door is wide open to you. It's a frightening threshold to cross but an essential one.

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