Nader talk recap

[dougo]

Well, I'm back from seeing Ralph Nader speak at Harvard. No earth-shattering revelations but it was entertaining enough. It was sort of exciting to be 20 feet from the third most popular candidate for President, but once he got behind the podium and started speaking it mostly just felt like a lecture—not in a bad way, just that he had a low-key professorial tone, which was vastly preferable to the speechifying or cheerleading that he would have done at a "Super-Rally". Anyway, I don't have much to report; he made some interesting points that I hadn't heard before, but I didn't take notes and I'm not up for trying to remember them right now. The main disappointment for me was during the question and answer period when someone practically begged him to put more emphasis on instant-runoff voting in his campaign, and he kind of shrugged it off saying that it was hard to articulate it in soundbites, and that it only really worked in conjunction with proportional representation anyway (which seemed like somewhat of a non sequitur to me). I think he realizes how fundamental an issue electoral reform is, but he has so many other issues that he's trying to push (not to mention constantly having to defend his campaign's existence) that it doesn't get the attention it ought to.

There were some speakers before him, including a guy representing some Harvard workers' unions talking about how Harvard was the richest university in the world (with a $19.3 billion endowment) but its workers are constantly threatened with lay-offs and other mistreatment. The other interesting speaker was a woman running for state representative in Cambridge for the Green-Rainbow party, saying how Massachusetts politics are completely monopolized by the Democratic party who do nothing but maintain the status quo. (She didn't mention that the Governor is Republican, though Nader brought this up later on as evidence of how incompetent the Democrats are). She made some good points about how ridiculous it is to have ballots with only one candidate for most of the offices, but I think she would have helped her cause if she had listed some issues where she disagreed with the Democratic state platform. It's one thing to ask people to get involved, but there has to be more to it than just getting involved for the sake of getting involved.

The audience was an interesting mix. This being the world's most opinionated zip code, there was some amount of heckling, and the question and answer period degenerated into shouting matches a few times—but it wasn't just Democrats who didn't want Nader to run; there seemed to be a sizable contingent from the local Socialist party who thought he was ultimately just another shill for capitalism and that his responsible withdrawal from Iraq stance is too soft. There was also some guy on a Leonard Peltier hobbyhorse. Nader actually handled the crowd very well, and it was clear that he's very familiar with the socialist rhetoric (and its failings). I was actually a little surprised at how patient he was and unperturbed by the occasional lapses into chaos—at one point he chuckled and said "this is just like the '60s!"

Now some pictures. Here's a crowd shot:

The hall was pretty full, and the host had to tell people several times to stay off the stairs and go into the spillover room that had a TV also broadcasting the talk. (I also have a video pan of the crowd).

Here's the woman running for state representative, Carolina Johnson:


Here's some Nader shots:




I also have video of his entrance and some soundbites about "least worst".

Comments

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

Was the woman Jill Stein? She rocks.

Question I would have asked Nader

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

"Mr. Nader, in the 2000 election you said that a vote for you would be a vote for a watchdog and that the more votes you got, the stronger the green party would be of a watchdog. Why is it that you haven't done any watching? Where were you in Florida in 2000? Where have you been the past four years?"

[jtemperance.livejournal.com]

I saw him on "Meet the Press" a few weeks ago and he made an bizarre comment about how Michael Moore should go to a doctor about his weight problem. He had made a good statement about how in a democracy he had the right to run, which was pretty convincing for me at the time, but the weight remark just made him look petty.

In 1988 I worked in Berkeley canvassing for Prop 103, the Nader-sponsored insurance initiative, a job I held for one day.