“It’s
like a kind of psychological trauma that is
happening in our society.”
This interview was done for Relay,
a new socialist magazine in Canada.
Ernest Tate, on behalf of Relay, interviews
Peter Camejo, who speaks about the various left
groups who are cooperating in support of his
campaign and about some of the internal difficulties
in the Green Party. Ernest Tate has known Camejo
since the late 1950’s when Peter was a
leader of the Young Socialists Alliance and
a leader of the American Socialist Workers’
Party. In the 1960s, Peter gained national prominence
because of his work against the Vietnam War
at the beginning of a profound youth radicalization
which later swept America and Canada. He is
now a leader of the Green Party in California
and has emerged as a major figure on the American
left. He ran in the last state election for
governor in which Arnold Schwarzenegger was
elected. He is on the Ralph Nader ticket as
Vice Presidential candidate in the coming November
elections.
Ernest Tate: This morning’s National Post
says Ralph Nader has been ruled off the ballot
in Florida. In your “Avocado Declaration”,*
you predicted these kinds of tactics being used
against you.
Peter Camejo: Well, in the case of Florida,
it’s a judge who has simply taken it upon
himself to declare that the Reform Party is
not legitimate. This is unheard of. It’s
really untenable. In other words, even if a
party has ballot status, they can just rule
it off. This has never happened before to a
party that has ballot status. So we’re
appealing the decision in the court system.
The Reform Party’s national convention
came out against the war in Iraq and against
the Patriot Act - for these reasons they’ve
endorsed Ralph Nader. Once a large party, but
now not so large, it still has ballot status
in six states. The authorities in other states
have accepted that the Reform Party does exist.
Tate: Why are you on the Nader ticket?
Camejo: Ralph Nader is the one voice in the
United States saying that it’s wrong to
vote for the war, for the Patriot Act, to vote
for candidates who have opposed the labour movement
and the environment. Bush and Kerry, agree with
each other on all the major issues. Kerry’s
posture in this campaign is about how to best
implement Bush’s policies. We don’t
agree with that. We believe what Bush has been
doing is wrong. We believe you have a free election
when people can hear different platforms and
can vote for them.
The Democrats have a candidate in Kerry who
gave Bush eighteen standing ovations, on one
day in January. It’s very peculiar to
have a candidate who so admires this President
that he gave him eighteen standing ovations,
and is now running against that President as
a candidate. That’s what we now have.
Kerry voted for everything Bush
asked him to vote for, even stating he agrees
with Bush on his policies on education, the
environment, labour, the war, the Patriot Act
- on every issue.
Kerry is calling for lowering taxes on the corporations,
who now are paying the lowest tax rates ever
in their history, while they have the larges
profit margins ever. Nader is the one voice
that has stood up against all this, so I was
very happy to join him as Vice-Presidential
candidate.
Tate: I’m sure our readers would like
to know how you address the charge from the
Kerry camp that a vote for Nader is a vote for
Bush?
Camejo: We think a vote for Kerry is a vote
for Bush; a vote for Bush is a vote for Bush,
so we think it’s really Bush versus Nader.
The only reason we are saying this is because
in America, like in Canada, we have a “first
past the post” system, and therefore,
the will of the electorate is manipulated because
people don’t feel free to vote for whom
they want. In fact, the most amazing thing about
this campaign is that the overwhelming majority
of those who will vote for Kerry do not agree
with Kerry.
It is very peculiar to have an election in which
a candidate expects to win by getting people
to vote for him who do not approve of what he
stands for. The “first past the post”
system is the reason.
In reality, Kerry is stealing all of Nader’s
votes. There are people who are voting for Kerry
but who agree with Nader and should be voting
for Nader. If the Democrats really believed
in free elections, they would long ago have
proposed that we have a system that avoids such
a situation or have a system that allows proportional
representation, so that if a political party
gets 20% of the vote, they get 20% of the seats.
But the Democrats are opposed to democracy,
they oppose free elections, they want to give
the impression of an election without actually
allowing one.
The most important thing about elections is
that the various points of view that exist in
society should be represented. The Democrats
very much oppose this and are doing everything
they can to prevent this from being a free election.
They don’t want Nader to be on the ballot.
They don’t want the people to be free
to vote against the war and against the Patriot
Act in defense of the constitution of the United
States. They prefer to limit the election to
two individuals who are fighting over implementing
the same platform.
Tate: How is the issue of Iraq affecting the
election?
Camejo: That’s the main issue of the campaign.
There are polls that indicate about half the
population of the United States are opposed
to the war - that is about half agreeing with
the overwhelming majority of the world. Only
the Nader ticket advances this position. It
is amazing to watch how these two corporate-backed
parties, the parties backed by big money, do
not respect the will, not only of the people
of the world, but of the American people. They
don’t want the overwhelming majority of
humanity to be allowed into the debate. This
is the central issue of the campaign. It’s
the central issue we present and our support,
which is in the millions of people, comes primarily
from those people who say, “No matter
what, I just cannot vote for a candidate who’s
for war.”
Our support right now primarily comes from among
young people, from among Arab Americans, from
Muslims, of which there are 7 million in the
United States, all who really see the importance
of the issue, and who see that Nader alone stands
for the views of the overwhelming majority of
people in the world.
Tate: Are you getting much support from the
anti-war movement?
Camejo:. There was a march recently, of half
a million people in New York in which I participated;
all were against the war and against Bush. The
amazing thing to me is that these people, while
they’re against the war, plan in their
majority to vote for war. On the march you could
tell the depth of their confusion and their
guilt over this, because they weren’t
carrying signs in support of their candidate,
who is John Kerry.
The whole march was almost completely empty
of election signs. On the whole march, I only
saw one, a woman was carrying a sign that said
she was for Kerry. I walked over to her and
suggested that perhaps she was at the wrong
demonstration, because this was an anti-war
demonstration and yet she was carrying a pro-war
sign. It’s a contradiction some anti-war
activists have. They feel they’ve become
victims, they’re trapped, and they’re
like prisoners of a political system that’s
designed to imprison them and to prevent them
from ever being able to vote for what they truly
believe in.
Tate: What is the Nader/Camejo ticket saying
about the “Star Wars” missile defense
system?
Camejo: We’re completely opposed to it.
We think it’s a total waste of money.
It’s not defending America from anybody,
or anybody from anything. Once again, it’s
a promotion of the military industrial complex,
designed to give Americans the impression that
there is some kind of gigantic danger to them
somewhere and that this system is somehow going
to protect them. We just don’t agree with
that.
We think the problems American citizens face
from terrorism are due to a continuing crisis,
in terms of relationship, between the United
States and the Arab and Muslim world, with a
great amount of antagonism and hostility to
the United States. But that’s generic.
Right now the entire world is hostile to the
United States and its policies. We’re
seeing more and more individuals who may be
determined to act against the United States
and against individual Americans. The American
people are more and more in danger from the
policies of their own government, which in violation
of international law, occupies and invades other
countries.
The fact is the United States supported Saddam
Hussein and supported Osama Bin Laden. This
is their policy coming back to haunt them from
the past. They promoted terrorism and promoted
terrorist organizations that now have become
anti-American and are using the very methods
the United States military trained them to carry
out. But terrorism is always wrong, no matter
who is using it for whatever ends.
The United States, in order to defend itself
against this danger, needs to change its social,
economic and political policies towards the
Middle East, and become supportive of democracy
in the Middle East, instead of continuing to
support totalitarian regimes such as the one
it has installed in Iraq by military occupation
and those that exist in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Qatar and Jordan, etc. All these dictatorships
are supported by the United States.
Tate: An issue that concerns Canadians is NAFTA.
What’s the ticket saying about it?
Camejo: We’re opposed to NAFTA and the
World Trade Organization. We regard these as
governmental organizations whose leaderships
are not elected by anybody, but which are created
by the corporate world to make decisions on
the environment, labour, the promotion of capital,
all kinds of decisions about trade, which governments
then implement. We think that this is wrong.
All these organizations are set up to provide
cheap labour throughout the third world for
the major corporations, to lower environmental
standards and to permit the continuing destruction
of world’s ecological system.
Tate: What’s happening with the abortion
issue ?
Camejo: We’re pro-choice. We’re
for full rights for women on all issues. Kerry
tends to be for this also and the Democrats
generally agree with us on this and are both
in opposition to the Republicans. On this issue,
there is a difference between the Democrats
and the Republicans. If the Democrats were exactly
the same as the Republicans, they would be useless
to the Republicans.
The way the Republicans look at the Democrats,
it’s the Democrats job to prevent any
serious opposition developing to them. They
want an organization that appears to be different,
and which can co-opt any opposition which may
appear, such as on the war or other issues.
Some issues like the rights of women and the
abortion issue are used as a peg, for example,
essentially as to who’s going to be nominated
for the Supreme Court. This becomes a reason
for everyone to write off all major issues and
announce that because the Democrats and Republicans
are in agreement on one or two things that they
will therefore vote for them.
I think the issues around women have enormous
validity but deep down we still see the Democratic
Party’s failure to do a whole series of
things that are important to the overwhelming
majority of women, such as raising the minimum
wage. Many women suffer the consequences of
a declining minimum wage that has dropped almost
40% in the last four years.
These are issues that are important for women,
like issue of choice, which we stand for and
defend, as opposed to the Democrats and Republicans.
Tate: Are you getting much black support?
Camejo: When I ran for governor in California
against Arnold Schwartznegger, percentage-wise
my largest vote was among African-Americans.
Second highest was among Latinos. Both African
Americans and Latinos voted 2:1 percentage-wise
for me, compared to European-Americans.
The Green Party in California has become a party
whose mass base is now in the youth, among working
people, the poorest people in California and
people of colour. In the case of the Presidential
race, Nader may be the only candidate whose
votes come from a majority of people of colour,
because between the Latinos, African-Americans
and especially the Arab American community,
we’re at about 26% in the polls.
This may be the first time a majority of non-whites
have voted for a presidential candidate. In
truth, I think many organizations – such
as the Latino and African-Americans, –
are very much controlled by the by the Democratic
Party, just as it controls the unions, the not-for-profit
organizations and the NGO’s. The Democratic
Party has a strangle hold on these. Many people
have become their prisoners.
What we’ve noticed recently is the beginning
of a rebellion against this. In California,
the president of MAPA, the Mexican-American
Political Association, the traditional organization
of the Mexican-American people, recently, publicly
left the Democratic Party and joined the Green
Party – in a public registration, which
he did at the Secretary of State’s office.
We’ve had leaders in the African-American
community, and other Latinos, who are beginning
to change and leave the Democratic Party. But
this is all at a very early stage.
Tate: What’s happening with organized
labour? Is it continuing to support the Democrats?
Camejo: Organized labour, a long time ago, accepted
a strategy to work with and to support the Democrats
politically. The end result is that trade-unions
have declined from 37% of the population to
under 12%, and play a diminishing role in American
society.
Labour is unable to grow, unable to organize
- the laws and the policies of the government
prevent it. This situation has been brought
about by the two-party system, especially by
the Democrats and is a result of the union leaders’
failure to break with them.
These union leaders take the dues from their
memberships and without consulting them, give
tens of millions of dollars to the Democratic
Party. This relationship is like a revolving
door with positions and appointments given out,
etc., where the leadership of the unions and
the Democratic Party politicians are both in
a game of corruption.
They are tied together and in return for better
union support for the corporate world, labour
and working people in America are left without
any real political representation and without
any real defense of their interests.
Tate: During the last presidential campaign
when Nader was a candidate, some hoped that
a permanent organization would come out of it.
Are there any beginnings of a class alternative
to the Democrats and Republicans emerging after
this election?
Camejo: After the election in 2000, Ralph Nader
worked very hard to build the Green Party. He
did forty-one different events, engaging in
fundraising and recruiting to the Green Party.
His campaign led to the very rapid growth of
the Green Party and the election of over 200
people throughout the country and now 1,000
candidates running for office.
In the 2004 election, we in the Green Party
decided to become part of a broader coalition
and Green Party members are the largest number
of people backing Ralph Nader. He also has the
support of many independents, some people who
have come out of the Democratic and Republican
parties including elements of the Reform Party.
It’s a broader campaign than in 2000,
even though the ticket may get fewer votes.
It reaches out to other forces because people
are starting to rebel, especially around the
issue of the Patriot Act, the deficit in the
government and the war.
This is all beginning to create a break and
an interest in alternatives. In the Green Party
a peculiar event took place, where, even though
the primary showed an enormous victory for Ralph
Nader, one candidate who opposed Ralph Nader,
who only got 12.2% of the vote in the primary
and who also lost in all the major state conventions,
nevertheless was able to pack the Green Party
convention and win by a small margin. This has
created a big crisis.
The Green Party is now very divided, but it
is still the dominant third party. It continues
to grow and the overwhelming majority of the
members support Nader. A caucus called, “Greens
for Democracy and Independence”, is being
formed inside the party, demanding democracy,
for internal elections to be upheld, respect
for majority vote and the will of the membership.
On the issue of independence, the demand is
that the party must remain completely independent
of the Democratic Party.
There’s no question that Democrats were
influencing the convention and trying to get
the Green Party to vote for Kerry and run a
candidate that would not oppose Kerry, which
is what has happened. There’s now a big
division in the Green Party with the majority
supporting Nader and a minority which is supporting
a person who has a strategy they call “faith
based”, where they call for a vote for
the Democrats in certain states.
Tate: Was that primarily in California?
Camejo: At the Nader-Camejo opening rally in
California, where the Green Party is the strongest,
we had 1,000 of our supporters there from the
Bay area. David Cobb, who is the official candidate
of the Green Party, held a meeting where only
thirty-five people attended, in an area where
we have 40,000 members. Only thirty-five people
showed up for his campaign meeting!
Virtually no one supports David Cobb. Only a
handful, primarily individuals, are backing
him and in reality they are backing Kerry. In
this sense, their whole campaign is a farce.
It’s a tragedy that it’s happening
inside the Green Party, as it will cost the
Green Party very heavily, probably in terms
of losing members and having to battle this
out.
There is, however, among the periphery of the
Green Party, people who are loosely connected,
a lot of people who are influenced by pressure
from the Democrats to vote for Kerry. This has
become the basis of the Cobb current in the
Green Party. There is a real clear left-right
division, with the majority of the party being
with the left and supporting Nader, and because
of the impact of the Democrat Party, a growing
minority supporting Cobb.
The Democrats don’t hide this. All the
Democratic Party influenced press congratulated
the Greens when they voted against Nader in
the convention and supported a pro-Kerry person.
Tate: The Green Party in Ontario is quite conservative.
But it seems to me the Green Party in the United
States is different. Is this so?
Camejo: The Green Party in most countries of
the world embraces an ecological programme around
the crisis of global warming and other issues
concerning the environment. It tries to get
all the political parties to adopt platforms
on these issues. It tries to make society aware
of these issues. In that sense, the Greens play
a positive role.
On other issues the Greens may support all kinds
of different platforms, and are not necessarily
for social justice, for improving democracy
or other issues. But in America there is neither
a labour party, nor a left party or socialist
party. There have never been in the last fifty
years, almost one hundred years, any large forces
that are politically independent from the corporate
world, therefore the appearance of the Green
Party immediately takes on a different colouration.
The Green Party in America is not a party only
organized around environmental or ecological
issues. It is the beginning in America of an
alternative party that challenges especially,
the anti-labour, anti-discriminatory, racist
policies, and international policies, etc.,
of the two major pro-corporate parties. So the
Green Party is not a typical Green Party at
all.
Tate: What is the attitude of the various left
groups to the Nader-Camejo campaign?
Camejo: The small groups that call themselves
leftists or socialists are still much divided.
The International Socialist Organization now
is the strongest in America, has the most young
people in it and is the most active. They’re
working very hard to support the Nader-Camejo
campaign and are very effective in their support.
They have a lot of influence on the campuses
and they’re been very helpful. They also
have people in the labour movement.
There’s another group, Solidarity, which
is doing a lot of work in the labour movement.
They are very supportive and have been in the
Green Party for a long time, and have been very
helpful. Regarding the remnants of the Stalinist
currents, the Communist Party and Maoist group,
they’re all pro-Democratic Party. They’ve
always been for the pro-corporate party.
Other people who are considered leftists, or
independents, are around Global Exchange. They’re
supporting Kerry. All of these organizations
that are dependant on funding from liberals
or liberal Democrats, fear they will be crushed
financially. It’s very difficult to maintain
an organization like Global Exchange and not
be pro-Democratic Party because the Democrats
can cut you off.
That’s how the Democrats function and
the not-for-profit and environmental groups,
to avoid being destroyed financially, simply
go along with them. So we have some organizations
like that, which are supporting Kerry, and not
Ralph Nader. But as for those who are in the
socialist currents, which are very small, there
is a division between those who have come from
a Stalinist background or the historically conservative,
social democratic backgrounds, and others.
But what is of interest is we’re seeing
more and more people, unlike anything since
the sixties when there was a massive radical
shift by Americans, breaking with the Democratic
and Republican parties. Twenty-five percent
of the American people are no longer registered
Democrats, or Republicans. That’s the
highest it’s ever been in the history
of the United States.
Tate: There seems to be more hostility in this
election season than in the last one on top
of the chronic problem of voter apathy. What’s
the explanation for this?
Camejo: This is partly due to a shift in the
policies of the United States government in
the last four years. The reason the government
gives is the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United
States, but I think the real reason is we’re
reaching a peak in oil consumption, and control
of the Middle East is essential for all the
advanced industrial countries. Their economies
need all the oil they can get.
The United States has the largest military and
it has made the decision to arbitrarily violate
all international laws to get control of the
oil. This change in policy has been very scary
to a lot of progressives and liberals who have
always depended on the Democratic Party for
leadership and they’ve watched that party
giving standing ovations in support of this
policy and they see the Democrats voting for
the Patriot Act, which takes away our constitutional
rights, they see them voting for the war against
Iraq.
It puts progressive and liberals in a state
of shock and they just think to themselves that
the only reason the Democrats are doing this
is so they can get elected. That’s an
extremely peculiar phenomenon. We have tens
of millions of people who will vote for Kerry,
hoping he’s lying about what he himself
believes.
It’s like a kind of psychological trauma
that is happening in our society. Of all those
people who agree with Ralph Nader, the majority
are going to vote for John Kerry and the people
who agree with Kerry, are going to vote for
Bush. And the people who actually agree with
Bush and are voting for Bush, really need psychiatric
help because with his positions on everything
and what he’s doing, he’s also disconnected
from reality.
Tate: Can some kind of “left” convergence
take place around your campaign, and continue
after this election?
Camejo: There has certainly been a development
of groups working together in our campaign,
but I don’t see a left convergence taking
place in the United States at this stage. How
things will proceed in the next period is very
unclear.
The Green Party has a membership in the order
about half a million people. It is increasingly
becoming a big centre of progressive activity,
but only electorally. The Green Party is not
very active at other levels.
The anti-war demonstrations are organized by
people who are mainly outside our organization.
The Green’s support the demonstrations,
but doesn’t take the leadership of them.
The Green Party is a rainbow of opinions about
of a lot of issues that have come together within
a single organization. There’s been a
recent shift in the approach of other progressive
and left organizations, but until now they have
not become members of the Green Party. That’s
now beginning to happen. They’re following
what Solidarity did in joining us. I think others
will too. But I think there’s some feeling
among progressives that the Green Party has
too many internal problems and difficulties
and that it may not be the instrument that they
think can be most effective in making social
change.
At this stage I’m urging everyone to join
the Green Party and help us fight to keep it
independent of the Democrats and to democratize
its internal structure and deepen its involvement
in the community, for example, in the unions.
We have tens of thousands of members in California’s
unions, but we have yet to organize them. We
have been trying to organize caucuses in the
unions and this, I think, is how the next period
could go if more forces keep joining.
We are making headway among Latinos, especially
in California. We feel it’s possible we
could become an arena in which different progressive
groups begin to work together to build an alternative
force against those who favour the government’s
policies towards labour.
Ninety percent of our people, in the last few
years, have made no financial gain when you
make adjustments for inflation, in a period
in which the GDP of the United States has risen
more than ever in its history. At this moment,
profit margins are now the largest ever in the
history of the United States. Corporations are
now paying the lowest tax rate they’ve
ever paid. They once paid 33% of all our taxes;
now they’re only paying 7.8%. Meanwhile
the minimum wage has dropped from $8.15 to $5.15,
adjusted for inflation.
But there are changes happening where the Green
Party has had influence. In one city, because
we elected a person to one position, we were
able to have the minimum wage raised to $10.50,
and in another to $8.50.
We have also succeeded in giving the right to
undocumented workers to vote, a democratic right
that’s now on the ballot because of the
influence of the Green Party in San Francisco.
We can see the beginnings of an alternative
political force emerging, and it would be good
to have all those who are doing work in other
areas to come into the Green Party and work
together.
But there is no unanimity on this. For example,
we have a party in California called the Peace
and Freedom Party which has about 70,000 registered
members. While we’re starting to work
together –in my campaign I’m welcoming
one of their candidates to speak with me at
all my meetings – we have yet to bring
our two forces together.
The Green Party has 160,000 members in California
and the Peace and Freedom Party has 70,000.
Therefore, there are about a quarter of a million
people in California who have clearly broken
from the Democratic and Republican Parties.
That lays the basis for the beginning of a movement
that will fight for social justice.
September 8th, 2004.
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