[SfN] [Prairiegreens] Top 10 reasons why not to accept Gloria Steinem's top 10 (fwd)

[daria karetnikov]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 14:52:25 -0600 (CST)
From: Alf Siewers <siewers at students.uiuc.edu>
To: prairiegreens at lists.groogroo.com
Subject: [Prairiegreens] Top 10 reasons why not to accept Gloria Steinem's top
    10


TOP TEN REASONS WHY I DON'T ACCEPT GLORIA STEINEM'S TOP TEN REASONS

Or, why sometimes we have to come to the rescue of cultural icons when
they are reduced to writing top ten lists about serious national issues.

> 
> TOP TEN REASONS WHY I'M NOT VOTING FOR NADER
> (ANY ONE OF WHICH WOULD BE ENOUGH)
> by Gloria Steinem
> President, Voters For Choice
> 
> 10.  He's not running for President, he's running for federal
> matching funds for the Green Party!

So it's better to vote for one of the major candidates, not because we
like him but because we're against the other guy?

> 
> 9.  He was able to take all those perfect progressive positions of
> the past because he never had to build an electoral coalition, earn a
> majority vote, or otherwise submit to democracy.

But that's what he's doing now (see Gloria Steinem point no. 1).

> 
> 8.  By condemning Gore for ever having taken a different position -
> for example, for voting against access to legal abortion when he was a
> Congressman from Tennessee - actually dissuades others from changing
> their minds and joining us.

True, but a lot of people change their minds during their careers, Supreme
Court justices and Republicans included.

> 7.  Nader is rightly obsessed with economic and corporate control,
> yet he belittles a deeper form of control - control of reproduction, and
> the most intimate parts of our lives.  For example, he calls the women's
> movement and the gay and lesbian movements "gonadla politics," and ridicules
> the use of the word "patriarchy," as if it were somehow less important than
> the World Trade Organization.  As Congressman Barney Frank wrote Nader in an
> open letter, "your assertion that there are not important issue differences
> between Gore and Bush is either flatly inaccurate or reflects your view
> that... the issues are not important... since you have generally ignored these
> issues in your career."

Whether or not to make issues of reproductive choice and anti-patriarchal
rhetoric more important than issues of corporate control over our
government and our lives is a matter of personal choice, but is also in
many ways a false choice. To some, corporate control issues may seem more
directly related to presidential politics in this election, and to others
not. But issues about turning human beings into commodities for reasons of
corporate control affect all aspects of personhood in our culture, and so
it's a false bipolarity to separate the two.

> 6.  The issues of corporate control can only be addressed by voting
> for candidates who will pass campaign-funding restrictions, and by
> conducting grassroots boycotts and consumer campaigns against sweatshops
> -not by voting for one man who will never become President.

This is why building a strong movement politics in the country, with a
third-party watchdog group, is important. Many important
labor, consumer, environmental and campaign laws were passed under the
Nixon and Ford administrations because there were strong movement politics
in the country then.

> 
> 5.  Toby Moffett, a longtime Nader Raider who also served in
> Congress, wrote that Nader's "Tweedledum and Tweedledee assertion that there
> is no important difference between the major Presidential candidates would
> be laughable if it weren't so unsafe."  We've been bamboozled by the media's
> practice of being even-handedly negative.  There is a far greater gulf
> between Bush and Gore than between Nixon and Kennedy - and what did that
> mean to history?

Well, in the first place, while the difference between Nixon and Kennedy
was significant, the Kennedy administration looks a lot less attractive
historically in retrospect. Among other things, it got us involved in
Vietnam. Most of the positive things that happened politically in the
1960s, again, were arguably related to movement politics, not Kennedy
(who, without disrespecting his own contributions, can arguably be
rated below Nader both in terms of
character and civic achievements as a Senator and President).

> 
> 4.  Nader asked Winona LaDuke, an important Native American leader,
> to support and run with him, despite his likely contribution to the
> victory of George W. Bush, a man who has stated that "state law is supreme
> when to comes to Indians," a breathtakingly dangerous position that ignores
> hundreds of treaties with tribal governments, long-standing federal policy
> and federal law affirming tribal sovereignty.

So why would Winona LaDuke sign on to this nefarious Nader plot? She's a
smart woman. Let her make her own choice and then think a little bit about
why she thinks this effort is worthwhile! As far as Bush's interpretation
of Indian treaties, his views have no controlling legal authority, but the
treaties do.

> 
> 3.  If I were to run for President in the same symbolic way, I would
> hope my friends and colleagues would have the sense to vote against me, too,
> saving me from waking up to discover that I had helped send George W. Bush
> to the most powerful position in the world.

Well, with all due respect, you're not running and no one is nominating
you. Nader is not helping to send George Bush to the White House. He is
asking for votes from people who want to support Nader. Why not support
the best guy for the job? If the anti-slavery and anti-free trade forces
that started the Republican Party as a third party in the 1850s had
followed the logic of your "top ten" list, legal slavery in the U.S. might
have lasted a few decades longer. So it goes with corporate slavery,
maybe?

> 2.  There are one, two, three, or even four lifetime Supreme Court
> Justices who are likely to be appointed by the next President.  Bush has
> made clear by his record as Governor and appeals to the ultra-right wing that
> his appointments would overturn Roe v. Wade and reproductive freedom,
> dismantle remedies for racial discrimination, oppose equal rights for gays
> and lesbians, oppose mandatory gun registration, oppose federal
> protections of endangered species, public lands, and water - and much more.
> Gore is the opposite on every one of these issues.  Gore has made clear that
> his appointments would uphold our hard won progress in those areas, and he
> has outlined advances in each one.

Yeah, yeah, but Gore also made clear how he invented the
Internet etc. Look at Gore's record of voting for reactionary
justices in the Senate, and at how Republican Court appointees are on some
issues more liberal than the Democratic appointees. Building a watchdog
movement is not an unreasonable strategy in working to ensure that the
Washington establishment pays attention to issues that people care
about. That's what Nader is working on.

> 
> 1.  The art of behaving ethically is behaving as if everything we do
> matters.  If we want Gore and not Bush in the White House, we have
> to vote for Gore and not Bush - out of self-respect.

What if we want Nader and don't want to just be voting against somebody?
Then out of self-respect we should vote for Nader, right?

> 
> Perhaps there's a reason why Nader rallies seem so white, middle
> class, and disproportionately male; in short, so supported by those who
> wouldn't be hurt if Bush were in the White House.

Well, first, Nader is the only candidate with a minority running mate,
and that's not just a token choice either. Any
examination of his stands on issues shows how they positively relate to
minority concerns. The Nader campaign and the Green movement probably
have as much or more minority support as the feminist movement did when
Steinem  was a national leader in it. But with Nader being excluded from
TV debates by folks thinking along similar lines as Gloria Steinem, and
with "progressives" such as her presumably applauding support for Gore by
big corporations engaged in economics that oppress minorities and exclude
alternative views from major media (and by the white-run Chicago
Democratic Machine with its control of inner-city political jobs etc.),
it's difficult to reach out to voters of any and all backgrounds. Nader
has made the effort to do that, but part of the reason why it's important
for the Green Party to get federal matching funds is so that a strong
third-party movement will be in a position to engage in such outreach on a
larger scale in future. As with feminism, it takes time and resources to
build a broad-based movement, and the longer that's delayed, the longer it
will take.



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