Subject: Tomorrow's election Building A MovementBy Grace Lee BoggsCommentary on WORT-Madison, WI, November 6, 2000 I am looking forward to voting for Nader-LaDuke tomorrow. Ordinarily I vote enthusiastically only on ballot issues. This is the first time I’ve felt that in voting for candidates in a general election I’m also helping to build a new movement. In the last few years, and especially since the Battle of Seattle, growing numbers of people not only in this country but around the world, have become increasingly conscious that global capitalism is not only widening the gulf between the haves and the have-nots but also threatening our biosphere; that Democracy has become the captive of corporate power and needs to be re-invented; and that the rampant commercialism and violence in our society are the result of a breakdown in values. Nader and LaDuke, both in who they are and in what they say, embody the new life-affirming values that are needed to build the new movement that is emerging to resist the national and international ravages of corporate power and to create a new America that all of us will be proud to call our own. I am especially impressed by the way that Nader has been able to reach the young people who, like the Columbine student whose email I often quote, are grappling with "the paradox of our time" -that "we have more conveniences but less time; more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine but less wellness." I have also been encouraged by the number of African Americans who have come out for Nader. I was especially glad to see local grassroots activists making this decision on their own, long before national figures like Cornel West and Manning Marable signed on. I think this is a significant historical development, a sign that African Americans who are actually engaged in local community struggles may be moving beyond the narrow self-interest politics that has characterized and weakened black struggles in the last few decades. I don’t argue with those of my friends (and there are quite a few) who are voting for Gore mainly because of their concerns about Bush nominees to the Supreme Court - although I may remind them that Supreme Court appointees have to be confirmed by the Senate and Senators can be influenced by a powerful movement. I am disappointed, of course, that those who identify as Movement activists do not see this as a unique opportunity to make electoral politics serve Movement politics. But I welcome their assurances that on the day after the election they’ll be ready to join and build the new movement. It was in this spirit that I cast my vote for Jesse Jackson in the 1984 presidential primary. Other historical precedents that come to mind are the abolitionists, anti-slavery Whigs and potential homesteaders who formed the Free Soil Party in 1848 on a platform of Free Speech, Free Men, Free Labor and Free Soil. Or the nearly million men who voted for the socialist Party in 1912. How this movement will develop, how far it will go, I don’t know. No one does. There are no guarantees in history, and Movement activists above all others should not be asking for them. |