mary jo fahey
04-20-2002, 09:06 PM
Hi,
This just arrived from Bea Bernhausen.
As you already know, Dennis Kucinich, (D-Ohio) has proposed the Space
Preservation Act of 2002. I first learned about Dennis' proposal from Carol
Rosin, one of the Disclosure Project witnesses (www.peaceinspace.com). Carol
is working very hard to spread the word about the Space Preservation Act of
2002. Bea Bernhausen works with Carol and they both forward information from
time to time.
See also: http://www.thespiritoffreedom.com (Dennis Kucinich's Prayer for
America).
Mary Jo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bea Bernhausen" <beabernhausen@... (/group/asc2k/post?postID=L8gmNZGyeL3vmtB37WZHiUIBJicEkzpsGlXBLx w32BCfMKgIPdbddtIqsEgOhFQQCTs9tJzCRZ8YhHdfYkFt2Db7 )>
To: <mjfahey@... (/group/asc2k/post?postID=A8KwRjzAPJDzh8vp-tlvsywEovJFE9pIVo8PBtLzuuJv_fQWb1sVo7TH-ENkrdABPDhL-jOYifEb)>
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 5:47 PM
Subject: Kucinich is the one!
Hi Mary Jo
Just got this.
Peace and love
Bea
"Today, in his second term as a US Congressman from
Ohio, he is chairman of the Progressive Caucus, and
its spark plug. His website reads like a press
release: "He combines a powerful political activism
with a spiritual sense of the interconnectedness of
all living things. His holistic worldview carries with
it a passionate commitment to public service, peace,
human rights, workers' rights and the environment. His
advocacy of a Department of Peace seeks not only to
make nonviolence an organizing principle in our
society, but to make war archaic." This sounds naàƒÃ‚à ƒÂƒÃ‚Â‚ÃƒÂ‚Ã‚Â¯ve
and loonily idealistic, except for one thing: He is a
remarkably practical and astute politician."
Studs Terkel
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020506&s=terkel
Kucinich Is the One
by Studs Terkel
May 6, 2002
When I finished reading John Nichols's exhilarating
communiquÃÃà ƒÂ‚‚ƒÃÂà‚‚© from California ("Kucinich Rocks the Boat,"
March 25), the bells began to ring. In his speech to
the Southern California Americans for Democratic
Action, criticizing Bush's conduct of the war on
terrorism, Dennis Kucinich set the crowd on its
ear--one standing ovation after another. Sure, they
were all liberals, but what counted was the response
on the Internet. The Cleveland Congressman's e-mail
box was stuffed to overflowing with 20,000-plus
enthusiastic letters. Among them was the call:
Kucinich for President. That's when--bingo!--I
remembered my first encounter with him. It was
twenty-four years ago.
At the arrival gate of the Chicago-to-Cleveland
flight, a skinny kid who appeared no more than 19 or
20 reached out for my torn duffel bag. I thought he
was one of those Horatio Alger heroes, whose opening
line is usually "Smash your baggage, mister?" This one
said, "Did you have a good flight, Studs?" I'll be
damned, he was the person I had come to visit, Dennis
Kucinich, the Boy Mayor of Cleveland.
He was 32 then, though he could pass as anybody's
office boy. As he carried my bag through the corridors
of the airport, passers-by called out, "Hello, Mr.
Mayor." I was slightly discombobulated, turning around
several times to make sure whom they were addressing.
The following are passages from our conversation in
1978.
At his one-family bungalow, his wife makes coffee. A
player piano is about the only piece of furniture that
might distinguish the house from any other simply
furnished home in this working-class neighborhood.
"Some of my neighbors are within ten years of
retirement." A photograph of Thomas Jefferson, in the
shadows, hangs on the wall.
When I was young, I never dreamed of living in a house
like this. We were always renters. A number of times
we moved; it was because we were kicked out. It wasn't
for failure to pay rent. It was because our family was
big. I remember sometimes, in order to get a place,
one of the kids had to be hid in the closet. We always
lived above some railroad tracks.
I'm the oldest of seven. There were a lot of tough
times. My father came from a family of thirteen
children, my mother from a family of a dozen. Our
story is an ethnic Gone With the Wind. (Laughs)
I spent all my time as a youngster coming to
understand the experience of the ghetto. It was
growing up tough and growing up absurd. I spent a lot
of time out on the streets. That's where I got my
education. I made friends with all kinds of people,
black and white.
My dad's been a truck driver ever since he got out of
the service as a Marine. He's gung-ho. His dream was
to have all his boys in the Marines. My brother Frank
served four years, two and a half in Vietnam. My
brother Gary served five years, most of it in Hawaii.
My father never questioned authority. His authority
was the guy who ran the trucking company.
I've always been taught to respect authority, although
I was more independent than the other kids my age. I
was constantly getting into squabbles with teachers. I
was the first person in my family, on both sides, who
ever graduated from college. I love literature. My
mother taught me to read when I was 3.
In the late sixties, I didn't go right from high
school to college. I worked for two and a half years.
When I was 17, I moved on my own and rented an
apartment above the steel mills. In the same
neighborhood where The Deer Hunter was filmed. The
frame house I lived in overlooked the steel mills.
When I was in grade school, I would scrub floors and
help with janitorial duties to pay my tuition. When I
got into high school, I worked as a caddy at the
country club, from 1959 to '64. I was carrying two
bags. They called it workin' doubles. Going forty-five
holes a day, six days a week.
I believe in the work ethic. There's a tremendous
dignity in work, and it doesn't matter what it is.
What some consider menial, I found to be just a chance
to make a living. I always tried to do the best I
could at that time. Work hard, get ahead, that was my
American dream.
We lived next door to black people. It was integrated.
There's a lot of poor and working ethnics who have to
struggle their way into the system, who can identify
with black people's striving. I'm trying to show both
that the color of the enemy is green. (Laughs) This is
a city run by the Mayflower-type aristocracy. It's as
if the people here don't even exist. Until recently.
We seized the decision-making power through the ballot
box. If the black movement did one thing, it created
ethnic pride.
I'd ask myself why it is that with so many people
trying to improve society, not that much changes. As I
looked around, I saw many of the kids I grew up with
trapped, not able to get as far as they would have
liked. I started to wonder, What the heck is this? No
matter how hard they work, they can't get ahead.
Seeing all these people working their heads off, you
find out the system is rigged.
When I first started, I didn't question the
institutions. I never really put it together. I think
it was the Vietnam War. I'd see that some people were
profiting, while tens of thousands of Americans were
dying. Friends of mine went over there, and they died.
Kids I rode the bus with to school. I started to
think: This is a dirty business. I'd better start to
find out more about it.
I began to get into city politics. In 1967, I ran for
the City Council. I was 21. I went from door to door,
and I found out about people. Every campaign I've ever
run has been door to door. I spent months just talking
to people. They don't ask for much, but they don't get
anything. They can have a problem with a streetlight
that's out, with a street that's caved in, with a fire
hydrant that's leaking, with flooded basements, with
snow that isn't plowed.
I've visited tens of thousands of homes over the past
years. That's how I got my real education. Door to
door.
I was elected councilman in '69. I had just turned 23.
My ward was made up of Polish, Ukrainians, Russians,
Greeks, Slovaks, Appalachians, Puerto Ricans, blacks.
It was a good cross section not only of Cleveland but
of America. They worked in the mills around here. Some
had lived in the neighborhood sixty years. Same homes.
The churches are still here. They say masses in Polish
and Slovak and Russian. They helped keep the
neighborhood alive. I loved it.
People were wondering how the heck I got elected to
the Council. No one believed the old councilman could
ever be beaten, he was so entrenched. At first, people
wondered if the banks sent me there. Or the utilities.
Or some big real estate interests. All the traditional
contributors who buy their candidates. I was elected
on a shoestring. I financed nearly my whole campaign
out of my pocket, my savings, which weren't much. I
put together a coalition of people who were
disaffected and ignored.
The first thing, some of the older guys came up to me
and said: "You got it made now, kid. All you have to
do is take your seat and shut up. If you just listen
to what we tell you, you're gonna be a big man in this
town someday."
When I started stepping on toes, I didn't know I was
stepping on toes. I was just representing the people
who sent me to the City Council. I didn't know I was
offending somebody else. I found out very quickly
there were a number of special-interest groups who
made city hall their private warren. There are
thirty-two councilmen. Thirty-one to one was usually
the score.
When I got elected mayor, just as I came to the
Council, I was expected to represent the system. When
I started to challenge it, the titans of Cleveland's
business community began to get surly and used their
clout in the media to disparage the administration. I
came to understand that big business has a feudal view
of the city, and that city hall was within their
fiefdom.
When I was elected mayor on November 8, 1977, it was
discovered that the previous administration had
misspent tens of millions of dollars of bond funds.
They could not be accounted for. The city was trying
to negotiate the renewal of $14 million worth of notes
held in local banks. One bank talked: the Cleveland
Trust Company.
I had a meeting on the day of default at 8 o'clock in
the morning, with the Council president, the chairman
of the board of Cleveland Trust and a local
businessman, a friend of mine. The conversation turned
immediately to MUNY Light. The chairman of the board
of Cleveland Trust made it very clear that if I sold
MUNY Light to the Cleveland Electric Illuminating
Company, he would extend credit and save the city from
default. CEI's largest shareholder is Cleveland Trust.
Four members of Cleveland Trust's board are directors
of CEI. If I didn't agree, I could not expect any help
from his bank.
MUNY Light has 46,000 customers in Cleveland. MUNY
Light and CEI compete in most neighborhoods, street by
street, house by house. MUNY Light's rates in the
recent decades have been from 20 to 60 percent cheaper
than CEI's, but MUNY Light's competitive advantage has
depreciated over the years because of CEI's
interference in MUNY's management.
From the moment Mr. Weir [Brock Weir, chairman of the
board of CEI] told me his price, I decided that a
fiscal default was better than a moral default. If I
had cooperated with them and sold MUNY Light to the
private utility, everyone's electric rates would've
automatically gone up. It would have set the stage for
never-ending increases, much the same way that Fort
Wayne, Indiana, is faced with that problem after
relinquishing its rights to a municipal electric
system.
I was hoping I was doing the right thing in holding my
ground. I had to tell 'em no. I felt they were trying
to sell the city down the river. They were trying to
blackmail me. If I went along with the deal, they made
it clear, things would be easy. Mr. Weir said he'd put
together $50 million of new credit for the city. The
financial problems would be solved. My term as mayor
would be comfortable and the stage set for future
cooperation between myself and the business community.
The media picked up the tempo. Why the heck don't you
get rid of MUNY Light? I was asked on a live TV show.
I replied that MUNY Light was a false issue. It wasn't
losing money. Its troubles could be traced to CEI's
interference. I was in office a little over a year and
had inherited a mess. The city had a plan to avoid
default, to which five of the six banks agreed: an
income-tax increase, as well as tighter control of the
management of the city's money. That's one of the
reasons I got elected. I knew I was risking my whole
political career. But you gotta stand for something.
The referendum was to be on February 27. Both issues
were on the ballot: the income-tax increase and the
sale of MUNY Light. We organized volunteers. People
went door to door, in the freezing rain and the bitter
cold, subzero temperatures and big snow. We laid out
the hard facts. We were facing the attempt of
corporations to run the city. We gave the people a
choice between a duly elected government and an
un-duly elected shadow government.
We were outspent two and a half to one, but we created
circumstances where people came to understand that
every person can make a difference. We won both issues
by about two to one. It was the first time in
Cleveland's history that we succeeded in uniting
whites and blacks, poor and middle class, on economic
issues. Usually, they've been manipulated against each
other. Not this time.
My concept of the American dream? It's not the America
of IBM, ITT and Exxon. It's the America of Paine and
Jefferson and Samuel Adams. There are increasingly two
Americas: the America of multinationals dictating
decisions in Washington, and the America of
neighborhoods and rural areas, who feel left out. I
see, in the future, a cataclysm: popular forces
converging on an economic elite, which feels no
commitments to the needs of the people. That clash is
already shaping up.
The American Revolution never really ended. It's a
continuing process. I think we're approaching the
revolution of hope. We have the country that makes it
possible for people, if they've lost control of the
government, to regain it in a peaceful way. Through
the ballot box. Before I got into politics, I didn't
know whether what I was doing even mattered. Now I
know. One person can make a difference. I think it's
something every person can learn. The main thing is,
you can't be afraid.
* * *
In November 1979, with just about all of Cleveland's
newspapers and television and radio stations--as well
as industry--united against him, Kucinich was defeated
for re-election. Fifteen years later, he began his
political comeback, elected to the Ohio Senate. His
key issue: expanding Cleveland's municipal electrical
system, which provided low-cost power to almost half
the residents of Cleveland. In 1988, the Cleveland
City Council honored him for "having the courage and
foresight to refuse to sell the city's municipal
electric system." It was the same political body that
in years past outvoted him thirty-one to one.
Today, in his second term as a US Congressman from
Ohio, he is chairman of the Progressive Caucus, and
its spark plug. His website reads like a press
release: "He combines a powerful political activism
with a spiritual sense of the interconnectedness of
all living things. His holistic worldview carries with
it a passionate commitment to public service, peace,
human rights, workers' rights and the environment. His
advocacy of a Department of Peace seeks not only to
make nonviolence an organizing principle in our
society, but to make war archaic." This sounds naàƒÃ‚à ƒÂƒÃ‚Â‚ÃƒÂ‚Ã‚Â¯ve
and loonily idealistic, except for one thing: He is a
remarkably practical and astute politician. His Ohio
track record tells you that.
It was his voice in the State Senate that caused Ohio
to scrap the planned siting of a nuclear waste dump in
the state. He gets things done in no small way because
of his understanding of his opponents' humanness as
well as his wrongness. There is an ultraconservative
congressman from a nearby state whom Kucinich
describes as a "good, honest man." I spoke to that
Congressman and discovered that he admires Dennis very
much. You get the idea? I think this guy can reach
anyone and change seemingly unchangeable minds.
(Personal note: Dennis, there's one thing I'd like to
change your mind on--your stand on a woman's right to
choose. I know, because of your background, you are of
two minds on the subject. I have faith in your honesty
and in your belief in the dignity of the person that
you will make the right choice: pro.)
It's more than a hunch that tells me Kucinich Is the
One (if I may borrow a Nixonian slogan). I am a
believer in egalitarianism, and I feel it's high time
an Ohioan had another shot at the presidency. We've
had only three since the eminently forgettable
Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.
In 1896, Ohio gave us William McKinley, with a little
help from his boss, Mark Hanna. In 1908, it gave us
William Howard Taft, fondly remembered as the heaviest
occupant in the history of the White House. And in
1920, we were gifted with the genial, handsome,
presidential-looking Warren Gamaliel Harding. Even
though I was only 8 at the time, I remember it with
some sense of pride because his nomination happened in
my hometown, Chicago. In a smoke-filled room at the
Blackstone Hotel, the Boys, blowing wondrous smoke
rings from H. Upmanns, with a touch of bourbon or two
to lift all spirits, boozily announced that Harding's
the one. Sure, he was as little known, say, as Dennis
Kucinich, but with the leading candidates, Gen.
Leonard Wood and Governor Frank Lowden in a damn
deadlock, they said, What the hell, here's a
good-lookin' guy. And we gotta get home.
Now, in the year 2002, Ohio has given us another, of a
somewhat different stripe. I doubt whether he'll ever
make People magazine's list of the most beautiful
people, but the blue-collar Kucinich is the only one
who can win back the blue-collar Reagan Democrats,
among the other disenchanted, and the disfranchised.
He talks the language they understand and, at 55, with
a remarkable eloquence.
Imagine him in a televised, coast-to-coast debate with
Dubya. Blood wouldn't flow, but it would be a knockout
in the first round, and we'd have an honest-to-God
working-class President for the first time in our
history. It's a crazy thought, of course, but it's
quite possible, considering the roller-coaster nature
of our times.
Since plagiarism is ÃÂà ƒÂ‚ƒÃƒÂ‚à ƒÂ‚ÂÂÂÂ* la mode these days, let me steal
the closing passage from the Rev. William Sloane
Coffin's invocation at a Yale commencement during the
Vietnam War: "Oh God, take our minds and think through
them, take our lips and speak through them, take our
hearts and set them on fire." I'll add a brief
benediction: Kucinich is the man to light the fire.
Amen.
Postscript. Obviously, I haven't touched on ways and
means. Obviously, the big dough will not be there. But
this could be the catapult for the hundreds of
grassroots groups on a thousand and one issues to
coalesce behind one banner. Jim Hightower has touched
on that often. And Michael Moore's book Stupid White
Men is a bestseller. And there's a whole new
generation of kids, not just the students, but
bewildered, lost blue-collar kids. And, strangely
enough, it can be done the old-fashioned way, shoe
leather and bell-ringing, as well as e-mails. It could
be that exciting. Nicholas von Hoffman once observed
that when people get active, they get the feeling they
count. Kucinich is like Poe's purloined letter--right
there on the table as we helplessly play Inspector
Clouseau goofily searching elsewhere.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes.)
ÃÂà ƒÂ‚Ã‚Â‚ÃƒÂƒÃ‚ÂƒÃƒÂ‚Ã‚Â‚Ãƒ ƒÂ‚© : t r u t h o u t 2002
This just arrived from Bea Bernhausen.
As you already know, Dennis Kucinich, (D-Ohio) has proposed the Space
Preservation Act of 2002. I first learned about Dennis' proposal from Carol
Rosin, one of the Disclosure Project witnesses (www.peaceinspace.com). Carol
is working very hard to spread the word about the Space Preservation Act of
2002. Bea Bernhausen works with Carol and they both forward information from
time to time.
See also: http://www.thespiritoffreedom.com (Dennis Kucinich's Prayer for
America).
Mary Jo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bea Bernhausen" <beabernhausen@... (/group/asc2k/post?postID=L8gmNZGyeL3vmtB37WZHiUIBJicEkzpsGlXBLx w32BCfMKgIPdbddtIqsEgOhFQQCTs9tJzCRZ8YhHdfYkFt2Db7 )>
To: <mjfahey@... (/group/asc2k/post?postID=A8KwRjzAPJDzh8vp-tlvsywEovJFE9pIVo8PBtLzuuJv_fQWb1sVo7TH-ENkrdABPDhL-jOYifEb)>
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 5:47 PM
Subject: Kucinich is the one!
Hi Mary Jo
Just got this.
Peace and love
Bea
"Today, in his second term as a US Congressman from
Ohio, he is chairman of the Progressive Caucus, and
its spark plug. His website reads like a press
release: "He combines a powerful political activism
with a spiritual sense of the interconnectedness of
all living things. His holistic worldview carries with
it a passionate commitment to public service, peace,
human rights, workers' rights and the environment. His
advocacy of a Department of Peace seeks not only to
make nonviolence an organizing principle in our
society, but to make war archaic." This sounds naàƒÃ‚à ƒÂƒÃ‚Â‚ÃƒÂ‚Ã‚Â¯ve
and loonily idealistic, except for one thing: He is a
remarkably practical and astute politician."
Studs Terkel
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020506&s=terkel
Kucinich Is the One
by Studs Terkel
May 6, 2002
When I finished reading John Nichols's exhilarating
communiquÃÃà ƒÂ‚‚ƒÃÂà‚‚© from California ("Kucinich Rocks the Boat,"
March 25), the bells began to ring. In his speech to
the Southern California Americans for Democratic
Action, criticizing Bush's conduct of the war on
terrorism, Dennis Kucinich set the crowd on its
ear--one standing ovation after another. Sure, they
were all liberals, but what counted was the response
on the Internet. The Cleveland Congressman's e-mail
box was stuffed to overflowing with 20,000-plus
enthusiastic letters. Among them was the call:
Kucinich for President. That's when--bingo!--I
remembered my first encounter with him. It was
twenty-four years ago.
At the arrival gate of the Chicago-to-Cleveland
flight, a skinny kid who appeared no more than 19 or
20 reached out for my torn duffel bag. I thought he
was one of those Horatio Alger heroes, whose opening
line is usually "Smash your baggage, mister?" This one
said, "Did you have a good flight, Studs?" I'll be
damned, he was the person I had come to visit, Dennis
Kucinich, the Boy Mayor of Cleveland.
He was 32 then, though he could pass as anybody's
office boy. As he carried my bag through the corridors
of the airport, passers-by called out, "Hello, Mr.
Mayor." I was slightly discombobulated, turning around
several times to make sure whom they were addressing.
The following are passages from our conversation in
1978.
At his one-family bungalow, his wife makes coffee. A
player piano is about the only piece of furniture that
might distinguish the house from any other simply
furnished home in this working-class neighborhood.
"Some of my neighbors are within ten years of
retirement." A photograph of Thomas Jefferson, in the
shadows, hangs on the wall.
When I was young, I never dreamed of living in a house
like this. We were always renters. A number of times
we moved; it was because we were kicked out. It wasn't
for failure to pay rent. It was because our family was
big. I remember sometimes, in order to get a place,
one of the kids had to be hid in the closet. We always
lived above some railroad tracks.
I'm the oldest of seven. There were a lot of tough
times. My father came from a family of thirteen
children, my mother from a family of a dozen. Our
story is an ethnic Gone With the Wind. (Laughs)
I spent all my time as a youngster coming to
understand the experience of the ghetto. It was
growing up tough and growing up absurd. I spent a lot
of time out on the streets. That's where I got my
education. I made friends with all kinds of people,
black and white.
My dad's been a truck driver ever since he got out of
the service as a Marine. He's gung-ho. His dream was
to have all his boys in the Marines. My brother Frank
served four years, two and a half in Vietnam. My
brother Gary served five years, most of it in Hawaii.
My father never questioned authority. His authority
was the guy who ran the trucking company.
I've always been taught to respect authority, although
I was more independent than the other kids my age. I
was constantly getting into squabbles with teachers. I
was the first person in my family, on both sides, who
ever graduated from college. I love literature. My
mother taught me to read when I was 3.
In the late sixties, I didn't go right from high
school to college. I worked for two and a half years.
When I was 17, I moved on my own and rented an
apartment above the steel mills. In the same
neighborhood where The Deer Hunter was filmed. The
frame house I lived in overlooked the steel mills.
When I was in grade school, I would scrub floors and
help with janitorial duties to pay my tuition. When I
got into high school, I worked as a caddy at the
country club, from 1959 to '64. I was carrying two
bags. They called it workin' doubles. Going forty-five
holes a day, six days a week.
I believe in the work ethic. There's a tremendous
dignity in work, and it doesn't matter what it is.
What some consider menial, I found to be just a chance
to make a living. I always tried to do the best I
could at that time. Work hard, get ahead, that was my
American dream.
We lived next door to black people. It was integrated.
There's a lot of poor and working ethnics who have to
struggle their way into the system, who can identify
with black people's striving. I'm trying to show both
that the color of the enemy is green. (Laughs) This is
a city run by the Mayflower-type aristocracy. It's as
if the people here don't even exist. Until recently.
We seized the decision-making power through the ballot
box. If the black movement did one thing, it created
ethnic pride.
I'd ask myself why it is that with so many people
trying to improve society, not that much changes. As I
looked around, I saw many of the kids I grew up with
trapped, not able to get as far as they would have
liked. I started to wonder, What the heck is this? No
matter how hard they work, they can't get ahead.
Seeing all these people working their heads off, you
find out the system is rigged.
When I first started, I didn't question the
institutions. I never really put it together. I think
it was the Vietnam War. I'd see that some people were
profiting, while tens of thousands of Americans were
dying. Friends of mine went over there, and they died.
Kids I rode the bus with to school. I started to
think: This is a dirty business. I'd better start to
find out more about it.
I began to get into city politics. In 1967, I ran for
the City Council. I was 21. I went from door to door,
and I found out about people. Every campaign I've ever
run has been door to door. I spent months just talking
to people. They don't ask for much, but they don't get
anything. They can have a problem with a streetlight
that's out, with a street that's caved in, with a fire
hydrant that's leaking, with flooded basements, with
snow that isn't plowed.
I've visited tens of thousands of homes over the past
years. That's how I got my real education. Door to
door.
I was elected councilman in '69. I had just turned 23.
My ward was made up of Polish, Ukrainians, Russians,
Greeks, Slovaks, Appalachians, Puerto Ricans, blacks.
It was a good cross section not only of Cleveland but
of America. They worked in the mills around here. Some
had lived in the neighborhood sixty years. Same homes.
The churches are still here. They say masses in Polish
and Slovak and Russian. They helped keep the
neighborhood alive. I loved it.
People were wondering how the heck I got elected to
the Council. No one believed the old councilman could
ever be beaten, he was so entrenched. At first, people
wondered if the banks sent me there. Or the utilities.
Or some big real estate interests. All the traditional
contributors who buy their candidates. I was elected
on a shoestring. I financed nearly my whole campaign
out of my pocket, my savings, which weren't much. I
put together a coalition of people who were
disaffected and ignored.
The first thing, some of the older guys came up to me
and said: "You got it made now, kid. All you have to
do is take your seat and shut up. If you just listen
to what we tell you, you're gonna be a big man in this
town someday."
When I started stepping on toes, I didn't know I was
stepping on toes. I was just representing the people
who sent me to the City Council. I didn't know I was
offending somebody else. I found out very quickly
there were a number of special-interest groups who
made city hall their private warren. There are
thirty-two councilmen. Thirty-one to one was usually
the score.
When I got elected mayor, just as I came to the
Council, I was expected to represent the system. When
I started to challenge it, the titans of Cleveland's
business community began to get surly and used their
clout in the media to disparage the administration. I
came to understand that big business has a feudal view
of the city, and that city hall was within their
fiefdom.
When I was elected mayor on November 8, 1977, it was
discovered that the previous administration had
misspent tens of millions of dollars of bond funds.
They could not be accounted for. The city was trying
to negotiate the renewal of $14 million worth of notes
held in local banks. One bank talked: the Cleveland
Trust Company.
I had a meeting on the day of default at 8 o'clock in
the morning, with the Council president, the chairman
of the board of Cleveland Trust and a local
businessman, a friend of mine. The conversation turned
immediately to MUNY Light. The chairman of the board
of Cleveland Trust made it very clear that if I sold
MUNY Light to the Cleveland Electric Illuminating
Company, he would extend credit and save the city from
default. CEI's largest shareholder is Cleveland Trust.
Four members of Cleveland Trust's board are directors
of CEI. If I didn't agree, I could not expect any help
from his bank.
MUNY Light has 46,000 customers in Cleveland. MUNY
Light and CEI compete in most neighborhoods, street by
street, house by house. MUNY Light's rates in the
recent decades have been from 20 to 60 percent cheaper
than CEI's, but MUNY Light's competitive advantage has
depreciated over the years because of CEI's
interference in MUNY's management.
From the moment Mr. Weir [Brock Weir, chairman of the
board of CEI] told me his price, I decided that a
fiscal default was better than a moral default. If I
had cooperated with them and sold MUNY Light to the
private utility, everyone's electric rates would've
automatically gone up. It would have set the stage for
never-ending increases, much the same way that Fort
Wayne, Indiana, is faced with that problem after
relinquishing its rights to a municipal electric
system.
I was hoping I was doing the right thing in holding my
ground. I had to tell 'em no. I felt they were trying
to sell the city down the river. They were trying to
blackmail me. If I went along with the deal, they made
it clear, things would be easy. Mr. Weir said he'd put
together $50 million of new credit for the city. The
financial problems would be solved. My term as mayor
would be comfortable and the stage set for future
cooperation between myself and the business community.
The media picked up the tempo. Why the heck don't you
get rid of MUNY Light? I was asked on a live TV show.
I replied that MUNY Light was a false issue. It wasn't
losing money. Its troubles could be traced to CEI's
interference. I was in office a little over a year and
had inherited a mess. The city had a plan to avoid
default, to which five of the six banks agreed: an
income-tax increase, as well as tighter control of the
management of the city's money. That's one of the
reasons I got elected. I knew I was risking my whole
political career. But you gotta stand for something.
The referendum was to be on February 27. Both issues
were on the ballot: the income-tax increase and the
sale of MUNY Light. We organized volunteers. People
went door to door, in the freezing rain and the bitter
cold, subzero temperatures and big snow. We laid out
the hard facts. We were facing the attempt of
corporations to run the city. We gave the people a
choice between a duly elected government and an
un-duly elected shadow government.
We were outspent two and a half to one, but we created
circumstances where people came to understand that
every person can make a difference. We won both issues
by about two to one. It was the first time in
Cleveland's history that we succeeded in uniting
whites and blacks, poor and middle class, on economic
issues. Usually, they've been manipulated against each
other. Not this time.
My concept of the American dream? It's not the America
of IBM, ITT and Exxon. It's the America of Paine and
Jefferson and Samuel Adams. There are increasingly two
Americas: the America of multinationals dictating
decisions in Washington, and the America of
neighborhoods and rural areas, who feel left out. I
see, in the future, a cataclysm: popular forces
converging on an economic elite, which feels no
commitments to the needs of the people. That clash is
already shaping up.
The American Revolution never really ended. It's a
continuing process. I think we're approaching the
revolution of hope. We have the country that makes it
possible for people, if they've lost control of the
government, to regain it in a peaceful way. Through
the ballot box. Before I got into politics, I didn't
know whether what I was doing even mattered. Now I
know. One person can make a difference. I think it's
something every person can learn. The main thing is,
you can't be afraid.
* * *
In November 1979, with just about all of Cleveland's
newspapers and television and radio stations--as well
as industry--united against him, Kucinich was defeated
for re-election. Fifteen years later, he began his
political comeback, elected to the Ohio Senate. His
key issue: expanding Cleveland's municipal electrical
system, which provided low-cost power to almost half
the residents of Cleveland. In 1988, the Cleveland
City Council honored him for "having the courage and
foresight to refuse to sell the city's municipal
electric system." It was the same political body that
in years past outvoted him thirty-one to one.
Today, in his second term as a US Congressman from
Ohio, he is chairman of the Progressive Caucus, and
its spark plug. His website reads like a press
release: "He combines a powerful political activism
with a spiritual sense of the interconnectedness of
all living things. His holistic worldview carries with
it a passionate commitment to public service, peace,
human rights, workers' rights and the environment. His
advocacy of a Department of Peace seeks not only to
make nonviolence an organizing principle in our
society, but to make war archaic." This sounds naàƒÃ‚à ƒÂƒÃ‚Â‚ÃƒÂ‚Ã‚Â¯ve
and loonily idealistic, except for one thing: He is a
remarkably practical and astute politician. His Ohio
track record tells you that.
It was his voice in the State Senate that caused Ohio
to scrap the planned siting of a nuclear waste dump in
the state. He gets things done in no small way because
of his understanding of his opponents' humanness as
well as his wrongness. There is an ultraconservative
congressman from a nearby state whom Kucinich
describes as a "good, honest man." I spoke to that
Congressman and discovered that he admires Dennis very
much. You get the idea? I think this guy can reach
anyone and change seemingly unchangeable minds.
(Personal note: Dennis, there's one thing I'd like to
change your mind on--your stand on a woman's right to
choose. I know, because of your background, you are of
two minds on the subject. I have faith in your honesty
and in your belief in the dignity of the person that
you will make the right choice: pro.)
It's more than a hunch that tells me Kucinich Is the
One (if I may borrow a Nixonian slogan). I am a
believer in egalitarianism, and I feel it's high time
an Ohioan had another shot at the presidency. We've
had only three since the eminently forgettable
Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.
In 1896, Ohio gave us William McKinley, with a little
help from his boss, Mark Hanna. In 1908, it gave us
William Howard Taft, fondly remembered as the heaviest
occupant in the history of the White House. And in
1920, we were gifted with the genial, handsome,
presidential-looking Warren Gamaliel Harding. Even
though I was only 8 at the time, I remember it with
some sense of pride because his nomination happened in
my hometown, Chicago. In a smoke-filled room at the
Blackstone Hotel, the Boys, blowing wondrous smoke
rings from H. Upmanns, with a touch of bourbon or two
to lift all spirits, boozily announced that Harding's
the one. Sure, he was as little known, say, as Dennis
Kucinich, but with the leading candidates, Gen.
Leonard Wood and Governor Frank Lowden in a damn
deadlock, they said, What the hell, here's a
good-lookin' guy. And we gotta get home.
Now, in the year 2002, Ohio has given us another, of a
somewhat different stripe. I doubt whether he'll ever
make People magazine's list of the most beautiful
people, but the blue-collar Kucinich is the only one
who can win back the blue-collar Reagan Democrats,
among the other disenchanted, and the disfranchised.
He talks the language they understand and, at 55, with
a remarkable eloquence.
Imagine him in a televised, coast-to-coast debate with
Dubya. Blood wouldn't flow, but it would be a knockout
in the first round, and we'd have an honest-to-God
working-class President for the first time in our
history. It's a crazy thought, of course, but it's
quite possible, considering the roller-coaster nature
of our times.
Since plagiarism is ÃÂà ƒÂ‚ƒÃƒÂ‚à ƒÂ‚ÂÂÂÂ* la mode these days, let me steal
the closing passage from the Rev. William Sloane
Coffin's invocation at a Yale commencement during the
Vietnam War: "Oh God, take our minds and think through
them, take our lips and speak through them, take our
hearts and set them on fire." I'll add a brief
benediction: Kucinich is the man to light the fire.
Amen.
Postscript. Obviously, I haven't touched on ways and
means. Obviously, the big dough will not be there. But
this could be the catapult for the hundreds of
grassroots groups on a thousand and one issues to
coalesce behind one banner. Jim Hightower has touched
on that often. And Michael Moore's book Stupid White
Men is a bestseller. And there's a whole new
generation of kids, not just the students, but
bewildered, lost blue-collar kids. And, strangely
enough, it can be done the old-fashioned way, shoe
leather and bell-ringing, as well as e-mails. It could
be that exciting. Nicholas von Hoffman once observed
that when people get active, they get the feeling they
count. Kucinich is like Poe's purloined letter--right
there on the table as we helplessly play Inspector
Clouseau goofily searching elsewhere.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes.)
ÃÂà ƒÂ‚Ã‚Â‚ÃƒÂƒÃ‚ÂƒÃƒÂ‚Ã‚Â‚Ãƒ ƒÂ‚© : t r u t h o u t 2002