[Dialogue] All Good Politics Are Local

Mon Feb 27 13:35:33 EST 2006

AlterNet

All Good Politics Are Local

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
Posted on February 27, 2006, Printed on February 27, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32483/

What an embarrassment our national government is. Mired in the sickening
muck of corrupt corporate money and right-wing ideology, our so-called
leaders continue to divert our public treasury and our nation's unlimited
potential for good into war, into the pockets of the superrich, into the
self-serving whims of greedheaded corporate executives, into a rising police
state, into the careless desecration of nature 
 into waste.

Then why am I laughing, why am I almost giddy with optimism about where
we're heading? You might say, That's an easy question, Hightower; you're
either stupid or insane. Indeed, I know a few leaders of progressive groups
based in Washington who have been drained of all optimism. Looking at the
national scene, they share Woody Allen's despairing observation: "We stand
today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The
other leads to total extinction. Let's hope we have the wisdom to make the
right choice."

Luckily, however, my work is not based in Washington, and my frequent
travels allow me to be in touch with a grassroots America that's unabashedly
progressive and on the move. Yes, Washington is ignoring our country's real
needs and squandering our democratic promise, but out beyond the Beltway
(and below the radar of the Powers That Be) there are folks, groups,
coalitions, and even elected leaders who're taking action at the state and
local level to build an America based on our historic ideals of fairness,
justice, and equal opportunity for all. I have great hope, because
grassroots people are so much stronger, more resilient, more creative, and
more American than the gooberheads at the top, and they'll not long be held
down or held back.

There is a ferment for change in our land today and undeniable movement
toward it. We should take heart in our people's history, which is the long
story of ordinary folks agitating, organizing, and mobilizing for a little
more justice.

Progress often gets diverted or dammed up by the avaricious powers, but it
ultimately finds another outlet. I can give my own testimonial to this
dynamic. Coming of political age in segregated Texas in the 1960s,
recalcitrant state and local officials were blocking progress, so all of us
involved in the civil rights movement looked to Washington as the channel
for producing progressive action and we made progress. Likewise, in the
1970s, it was through the national government that we opened channels for
progress on women's rights, worker safety, environmental protections, etc.

By the 1980s, however, the monied interests were locking down both parties
in Washington, and progressives were largely stymied. But not for long -- a
trickle of action soon began coming out of cities and states across the
country. I was one of those small trickles. Having been elected Texas
agriculture commissioner in '82, my office became a source of action for
small farmers, organic production, pesticide regulation, direct marketing,
rural development, renewable energy, and more.

Since then, with corporate and right-wing interests seizing all three
branches of the national government, and with the Democratic leadership
being either co-opted or inept, the flow of progressive energy has moved
steadily out of Washington and (like water finding a new course) into
grassroots organizing. In the past decade, these feisty groups using street
actions, ballot initiatives, lawsuits, the internet, media exposés, local
elections, radio, potluck suppers, festivals, satire, and every other tool
at their disposal have become a powerful force on a wide range of issues,
and they are changing American politics from the ground up. Let's take stock
of some of the progress being made.

Wage wars

For years, Washington and Wall Street have been waging a war on American
wages, using everything from monetary policy to immigration policy in their
constant effort to push workers' pay down.

The most visible of these efforts is the obscene sight of fat-cat CEOs and
well-paid Congress critters conspiring to keep our country's wage floor
stuck at the subpoverty level of $5.15 an hour (about $10,500 a year). As
John Edwards says, "it's a moral disgrace." Yet despite support for boosting
the minimum wage from 86 percent of Americans (including the chairman of
Wal-Mart, who wails that these poverty workers can't afford to shop at his
stores), corporate lobbyists have kept hourly pay nailed down at $5.15 for
nearly a decade. Washington won't budge, so there's nothing we can do,
right? Wrong. Led by ACORN, the innovative community-organizing group, a
broad coalition of wage-increase advocates has shifted the battlefield to
the cities, counties, and states, putting forth a concept called the "Living
Wage."

The idea is that corporations getting contracts, subsidies, or other
benefits from local governments should not get away with poverty pay.
Pushing local ordinances or ballot measures, the Living Wage coalitions
propose pay scales that raise the minimum above the region's poverty level,
with most proposals requiring some health-care benefits and many indexing
the pay levels to inflation. Well, you might think, that's a nice
proposition, but people are way too conservative to go for it. Wrong. In
fact, when put before voters, Living Wage initiatives typically win by more
than two thirds of the vote.

A telling case is Florida. In 2004, a modest initiative was on the ballot
proposing to raise the state's minimum wage by a buck, to $6.15 an hour.
John Kerry's presidential campaign studiously avoided supporting this
measure, fearing that voters in this red state were so conservative that
being associated with a wage hike would hurt his chances. So much for his
political genius 72 percent of Floridians approved the pay increase! Kerry,
on the other hand, got only 47 percent of the vote.

For these Living Wage battles, coalitions have been forged among workers,
poor people, women, churchgoers, small-business owners, neighborhood groups,
civil rights advocates and even some conservative business leaders who
either see it as a moral issue or understand that higher pay means more
spending and a stronger local economy. That's a pretty stout coalition!
While it has received little national media coverage, these combined efforts
are achieving stunning successes all across the country. More than 130
cities, counties, and states have already enacted some form of the Living
Wage.

These victories are not just coming in the liberal outposts of, say, New
York City and San Francisco, but also in such places as Dayton, OH ($9.30
per hour, with benefits); Palm Beach, FL ($9.73, with benefits); Louisville,
KY ($10.20, indexed to inflation); Pima County, AZ ($8.35, with benefits,
indexed); Bozeman, MT ($9.73, with benefits); Rochester NY ($9.43, with
benefits, indexed); Covallis, OR ($9.00, indexed); the Richmond, VA, school
district ($8.77, with benefits); and the Central Arkansas Library System
($9.00, with benefits, indexed).

Clean elections

What a scream it was last month to watch George W, Tom DeLay, and some 60
other top elected officials rush out to throw tens of thousands of dollars
at various charities. These were campaign funds they had previously taken
from sleazeball superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. Until January 2, none of these
politicians had been even slightly squeamish about banking Jack's checks.
But on that day, the GOP's leading influence-peddler pleaded guilty to three
counts of money corruption involving his lobbying operation. As part of his
plea deal, Abramoff agreed to "tell all" to federal prosecutors about his
money-for-favors relationships in Washington 
 and to testify against his
former political cohorts.

When the lead prosecutor declared that the corruption "is very extensive,"
that did it. Suddenly our stalwart leaders were spontaneously struck with
the need to offer up loads of cash to charity -- as if such a showy gesture
could remove the indelible green stain that contaminates them and our
national capital. Of course, giving back a few bucks doesn't alter the
culture of corruption (notice, for example, that while George W grandly
donated $6,000 of his Abramoff money to charity, he refused to give away as
much as $200,000 that Jack had raised for his '04 run). Sheesh.

The spreading Abramoff scandal, coupled with DeLay's Texas indictments for
money laundering, the Duke Cunningham bribery conviction, and the relentless
pursuit of corporate dollars by practically all of our top political leaders
shows that we no longer have elections -- we have auctions. Can't something
be done? It can be 
 and is -- but not in Washington. Once again, the action
is in the countryside. In the past decade, eight states and fourteen cities
have passed "Clean Election" laws to end the money chase in their political
races, and eight other states and at least one major city are moving toward
passage of such laws this year.

The key component of Clean Elections is to provide the alternative of public
financing for the campaigns of all candidates who agree not to accept money
from corporations or other favor-seeking interests. This means that people
running for mayor, governor, the legislature, a judgeship, or whatever don't
have to spend the bulk of their campaign time in corporate suites or at the
watering holes of lobbyists -- and if elected, they owe absolutely nothing
to the monied powers! It also means that regular people (a schoolteacher,
factory worker, nurse, farmer, shopkeeper, cabdriver, et al.) can run for
office, for they could qualify for a level of public funding that would make
them competitive with a lobbyist-financed candidate. It gives us a
meaningful tool for reclaiming our democracy.

Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut now have public-financing laws for all of
their state offices, from governor to corporation commissioner. Vermont and
Massachusetts have also approved statewide systems but have not yet
implemented them. In addition, North Carolina has okayed public funding for
its judicial races, New Mexico has done so for candidates seeking to be on
its Public Regulation Commission, and New Jersey has approved a pilot
project for public financing in four legislative districts.

Cities are on the move, too. Portland, Oregon, will have the Clean Election
alternative for all of its city races this year. In 2005, 69 percent of
Albuquerque's voters said "yes" to a charter amendment providing public
funds for its mayoral and city council candidates. Another 12 cities have
put partial systems in place, and Los Angeles is presently structuring a
plan for full public financing.

Most important, the Clean Election system works. In Maine, the state AARP,
AFL-CIO, Common Cause, Council of Senior Citizens, Dirigo Alliance, League
of Women Voters, Peace Action, Peoples Alliance, and others joined hands in
1996 to pass an initiative creating the nation's first public-financing
program. When first implemented in 2000, half of the state's senators and 30
percent of house members were elected without taking a dime in
special-interest money, and the program has grown more successful with each
election. Today 83 percent of Maine's senate and 77 percent of its house are
made up of legislators who ran "clean."

The result is that Maine's state government is able to reflect the people's
will. In 2003, for example, Maine became the first state to pass a bill
providing health care for all of its people. As a state legislator says,
"There is just no way this bill would ever have seen the light of day under
business-as-usual politics dominated by private campaign contributions.
Instead, we took on the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies and
adopted a healthcare plan that serves the people rather than special
interests."

Now the incumbent Democratic governor and two of his three Republican
challengers have taken the "clean" pledge for this year's election. Last
year the state fixed a loophole in its law by requiring that in the last 21
days of an election, all attack ads or other campaign material put out by
so-called "independent" groups must disclose the source behind the ads. In
addition, the state will provide public matching funds for the candidates
who are attacked, so they can respond.

There's similar success elsewhere. In Arizona, for example, 58 percent of
the house, a fourth of the senate, and 10 of 11 statewide officials
(including the governor) are "clean." The grassroots coalition that passed
Arizona's public-financing system in a 1998 ballot initiative has also
remained vigilant, beating back seven court challenges and repeated efforts
by corporate interests to repeal the law.

Again, there's no need to wait on Washington for electoral reform when you
can make it happen in your own city, county, school district, state, or any
other jurisdiction you choose to tackle.

Reefer medicine

Isn't being horribly sick punishment enough without having the FBI, DEA, and
other police agents busting down your door to throw you in jail?
Unfortunately, the federal government's crackpot drug war has turned cops
into drug thugs as they pursue an insane, inhumane, ideologically driven
policy of cracking down on seriously sick people who use doctor-prescribed
marijuana to treat the chronic pain and nausea of cancer, AIDS, multiple
sclerosis, polio, and other harsh illnesses.

Two years ago, nine armed members of a DEA task force raided Don Nord's home
in Hayden, Colorado, arresting him and seizing his three marijuana plants.
Nord is no drug dealer -- he's a disabled, wheelchair-bound, 57-year-old man
battling kidney cancer, diabetes, lung disease, and other problems. He was
not toking on reefer for a joy ride, but using the marijuana under a
doctor's supervision as a medical necessity.

Meet Suzanne Pfeil. She is paralyzed by post-polio syndrome and was under
the care of WAAM, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz,
California. In 2002, she was awakened by five DEA agents pointing automatic
rifles at her head. WAAM is a non-commercial medical co-op that, with the
blessing of local officials, maintained a marijuana garden at its hospice to
treat its 225 members, 85 percent of whom were terminally ill. In the early
hours of September 5, the DEA burst in. They terrified the patients, charged
two with violating federal drug law, ripped up the coop's garden, handcuffed
WAAM's two founders, and took them to jail.

This was too much even for the arch-conservative editors of the Orange
County Register, who called DEA's actions "an unwarranted and extreme
operation against sick people 
 Such cruel raids suggest that a law that can
be used to terrorize sick people is in need of reconsideration." But
Washington -- under Democratic administrations as well as Republican -- has
done nothing to stop the stupidity, instead continuing to sanction such
extremism in the name of looking tough in the drug war. Last year on June
15, for example, Congress voted 264-161 against allowing the ill to use this
proven treatment.

These people are nuts 
 and dangerous. Luckily, though, there's sanity among
grassroots folks. Polls constantly show overwhelming support for laws to let
the sick use doctor-prescribed marijuana. The latest Gallup survey shows 78
percent of Americans backing such common sense. Lest you think that's a lot
of blue-state, smoke-induced, ex-hippie sentiment talking, independent polls
in the deep red states of Alabama and Texas register three-to-one margins in
favor of medical marijuana, including 67 percent support among Texas
Republicans!

More significantly, when given a chance, people are voting their
convictions. Led by the Marijuana Policy Project, coalitions of doctors,
nurses, and patients have come together to raise common sense to high
places. Defying the furious fulminations and fervid opposition of assorted
drug czars from Washington, voters in 11 states and numerous cities have
already approved the medical use of marijuana by compelling margins. Let's
do a brief roll call: 

*	In 2004, while Bush was easily winning the majority of Montana
voters, those same people approved by a two-to-one margin a medical
marijuana initiative that the White House had adamantly opposed. 
*	In 2003, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich became the first
Republican head of state to sign medical marijuana into law. This came in
the face of ferocious campaigning by the White House drug czar to get
Ehrlich to veto the bill. Flexing his ignorance, the czar told Marylanders
that marijuana was "medicinal crack." 
*	This year, Rhode Island became the 11th common-sense state when more
than three-fifths of legislators voted to override the Republican governor's
veto of a bill to protect medical-marijuana patients from arrest. The bill
had passed 30-0 in the senate, 52-10 in the house. 
*	In Michigan, cities are taking the initiative. In the past two
years, Detroit okayed marijuana use by a 60-40 vote, Ann Arbor by 74-26,
Ferndale by 61-39, and Traverse City by 63-37. 

The power is ours

On big issue after big issue -- such as dramatically cutting the greenhouse
gases that cause global warming, declaring energy independence with a crash
program of renewable energy and conservation, bringing the troops home from
Bush's war of lies in Iraq, and giving Americans relief from the price
gouging of drug companies -- Washington has become the enemy.

But rather than wring our hands about that, we can roll up our sleeves and
join hands with the grassroots groups that are taking action on these
problems and making progress. Congress and presidential candidates are too
corrupted or too cowardly to lead our country back to its democratic ideals.
We have to lead ourselves -- and there is opportunity for you to be part of
the renewal right where you live. 

Jim Hightower is the author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush" (Viking
Press). He publishes the monthly Hightower Lowdown
<http://www.hightowerlowdown.org> ; for more information about Jim, visit
jimhightower.com <http://www.jimhightower.com/> . 

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