Anti-government Demonstrators at the
Democratic Shadow Convention
Kucinich addresses the Shadow Convention
|
|
|
Thursday, August 27, 2000
By TOM BRAZAITIS
THE PLAIN DEALER
Nearing the end of a stem-winder on the stupidity of spending billions of dollars on an anti-missile system, Rep. Dennis Kucinich declares, "In the next administration, whether it's going to be a President Bush or a President Gore, our efforts need to continue."
At the Staples Center, site of the National Democratic Convention, that kind of talk could get a guy -even a congressman - yanked off the podium. At the staples Center, Al Gore is going to be the next president -period. Every speaker says so. But Kucinich was not speaking at the Staples Center ("I'm not that significant a figure in national politics," he says, modestly). He is addressing delegates at the Shadow Convention, where the issues loom larger than any politician. The counter-convention is being staged half a mile away at Patriotic Hall, a fitting site to gather for the 21st-century soul-mates of the nation's first revolutionaries.
This is the convention where speakers rage against the corporate interests that are paying for the other convention, mock the "flimsy and farcical platforms" of the major parties and call for a cease-fire in the "failed war on drugs."
This is the convention where the basement bookstore offers titles, such as, "Revolutionary Thought in the 2Oth Century ," "How to Overthrow the Government" and "CHE: A Memoir," by Fidel Castro, one of several biographies of the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
Kucinich seems more at home with these expatriates than with the conservative-leaning "new Democratic party" spawned by President Clinton. He is a "Made in the USA " kind of guy in a party of free traders, an anti-abortion champion in a party of abortion rights advocates, a peacenik in a party bent on proving it's as hawkish as the GOP.
He lobbied the Democratic Platform Committee to take more progressive stands on four issues: peace, health care, fair trade and economic issues. The committee rejected all four.
Kucinich leads two lives. He is the only one at the Shadow Convention wearing a suit and tie. He is the only one at the buttoned-down Democratic National Convention handing out cards with a picture of a dove in flight and the message, "Imagine. ..a Department of Peace. "His anti-Star Wars message delivered to hearty applause, Kucinich departs Patriotic Hall and walks briskly back to the Staples Center to be interviewed on CNN; "I think people in my district understand that my approach in politics has been bipartisan;" he says. "I'm fairly independent minded. So, I'm just doing what I've always done. I can participate in debates and discussion under the big top or in one of the other tents."
"Looking up at the 14-foot chain-link security fence separating the
DNC's convention site from the outside world, Kucinich smiles as he thinks of the perfect metaphor.
"I have friends on both sides of this fence," he says. "But I don't spend my life on the fence."