Ronnie Dugger excerpt...

[telebob x]

What are we in? We have an illegal President, presiding over an illegal 
administration, declaring an unconstitutional war, and orchestrating, under 
the cover of missile defenses, American development of weapons circling in 
space which would give the United States control of every nation on earth.

What has been true since the corporate takeover of the Democratic Party in 
the first half of the seventies is no truer now, but now it’s out here in 
the open for all of us to see. The issue before us is who governs, who 
decides, who controls–the people or the gigantic corporations and their 
political puppets.

Felix Rohatyn, the famous investment banker in New York City, said to 
Charlie Rose, on PBS, last Dec. 21 (I wrote it down at the time): "The 
government should be the minority stockholder, and the private sector ought 
to be the dominating factor." There is the truth of the intention, coming 
from Wall Street. There is the issue: the people, or the corporations. There 
is the issue: democracy.

One answer for democracy has been struck upon by the Maverick Alliance for 
Democracy in San Antonio. For the past three years they have been sponsoring 
multi-organizational gatherings of many progressive, populist, and community 
organizations under the name Independent Allies. They meet every two weeks 
at Estela’s on the West Side. During a part of the program called 
"Noticias," a representative from each participating organization tells what 
it’s up to. "Independent Allies" is not an organization, but a 
communications protocol and center, and some of us are interested in 
extending the idea across the state and into the country. [Meetings will be 
held in San Antonio November 17-18. You could learn more about that by 
phoning Bob Brischetto at 830-612-3643; his email is 
brischetto@wireweb.net.] It is time for us to form now, among all our 
organizations, the Equal Independent Allies, one national people’s movement, 
independent of any political party, to demand and fight, for example, for:

• Public funding of our elections.

• Single-payer national health insurance.

• The restoration of the corporate tax system, the progressivity of the 
income tax, and the replacement of the Social Security payroll tax with the 
income tax.

• Limits on the size of corporations, the cancellation of their alleged 
"personhood" and their alleged constitutional rights.

• Limits on personal wealth and a guaranteed annual income.

• Free education as high as any student can make the grades.

• First-home building subsidies and the opening of some public lands as 
trust lands for homesteading.

• Equal rights and equal pay for women.

• A living wage for every working person.

• The legalization of undocumented immigrants who have been here a few years 
and work and/or have families here.

• Repeal of the Taft-Hartley law and criminal prosecution of corporations 
that bedevil union organizers.

• Clean energy–wind, and solar–and the phasing down and as soon as possible 
of oil, coal, and nuclear power.

• International trade for people and the environment everywhere.

• A sharing of the wealth of the rich nations, including ours, with the two 
billion people who have no schools and no toilets.

• And world citizenship, an international democracy, and a constitution 
worthy of the human race.

I don’t think we have much time here in our beloved country. Although for 
some years I have been skeptical about electoral politics as a way of fixing 
a country where bribery has been legalized, I have become convinced, in the 
history we are in, that if, in what time we have, we are to form a new 
government for our country to replace the one that we have lost, we must use 
electoral politics as nonviolent revolt. My idea is to try to find people 
somewhat like Huey Long, without his corruption or crypto-fascism, willing 
to defy the leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties in Washington, 
to be candidates for governor or U.S. Senator as Greens, as independents, as 
rebellious Democrats, or even as rebellious Republicans, in as many states 
as we can get going for 2002, so that by the time we get to 2005, we will 
not be staring again at either George W. Bush or Albert Gore.

Ronnie Dugger was founding editor of the Observer in 1954 and later its 
owner and publisher until 1994.



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