Righteous, Blistering portion below; to read all, go here: http://www.counterpunch.org/camejo04262008.html
Where was Medea Benjamin during the Democrats hate campaign against democracy in 2004? You were campaigning for a pro-war candidate and supporting the vicious anti-Nader/Camejo campaign.
Medea Benjamin in her effort to support John Kerry helped successfully to manipulate within the Green Party support for David Cobb, the anti-Nader pro-voting Democrat candidate who favored US occupation of Iraq in two public debates with me.
She worked to get the Green Party convention to prevent Nader/Camejo from being endorsed after Nader/Camejo representatives won a number of Green Party primaries and state conventions, including California.
During the 2004 campaign, there was a letter on David Cobb’s web site titled “Vote Kerry and Cobb.” And it was signed by Medea Benjamin, among others.
If you are going to seek fairness and oppose “trashing,” why don’t you start with all your friends whose extreme public attacks on Nader/Camejo you never protested?
Why not promote among your Democratic friends the publishing of ads apologizing to Nader and the American people for the twenty-four harassing lawsuits in twelve weeks filed by Republican corporate law firms like Reed Smith and Kirkland & Ellis and abuses they committed in 2004 against the rights of the American people to have free elections and voter choice?
Yes Medea Benjamin you have the right – like so many before you – to seek to reform the Democratic Party. The truth is, however, that what you actually achieve is to give cover for this pro-war anti-labor political organization. Millions upon millions have tried to reform the Democratic Party for decades.
The AFL-CIO went in to reform the Democrats with millions upon millions of supporters only to be reduced from 33% of the work force to 12% – a submissively controlled force ineffective in defending even their own existence – unable to even get the Democratic Party to repeal the notorious anti-labor Taft Hartley law of 1947.
The generation of progressive “leaders” that capitulate in 2004 will have to be replaced by a new generation that will stand by principles like the early abolitionists of the Liberty Party, the Populists who led the uprising of 1890s, the Debsian socialists and Women’s Party activists of the early twentieth century – and yes like Ralph Nader who refuses to capitulate to a Democratic Party that has and is selling out the American people.
Making personal attacks on Ralph Nader is starting to get a little old. Maybe it’s time for your Democratic Party friends to end their political bigotry against Nader/Gonzalez.
Yes we should all work together on issues we agree on. Yes we should try to get people regardless of what party they are registered with to support specific objectives.
That is how the most massive peace demonstrations ever were organized in the 1960s and 1970s or the millions who marched together for immigrant rights just a couple of years ago. Of course none of those actions were ever supported by your Party, the Democrats.
The ranks of the Democratic Party are desperately seeking change. In time they will see that the Democratic Party cannot be and will not be the agency through which peace, social justice and saving our environment will come. On this issue you and I remain divided. On the debate about this issue Nader and those supporting him have been saints in their language in comparison to your friends in the Democratic Party.
The Nader/Gonzalez campaign has nothing to apologize for. Nader has been one of the most beautiful examples of showing respect for all including those who disagree with him.
It is time for you and your Democratic Party associates to show respect and apologize to Ralph Nader.
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