Let's Get Behind Some REAL (Decent) Candidates! (Norman Solomon)

Yes, "they" are getting rid of Dennis Kucinich's district in Ohio. They can't defeat him any other way. And it's a fact that the majority of the people in this country want a decent government responsive to the majority of its inhabitants in a viable, sustainable world. Someone is beginning to put the plan together:

. . . wouldn't it be nice to really have one of us in Congress? Wouldn't that be useful if the tide began to turn, whether slowly or in an immediate upheaval?

As I write this, Republicans in Ohio are working on eliminating Congressman Dennis Kucinich's district. They're not trying to vote him out, but to erase his district from the map so that he has nowhere to run for reelection, at least not in Ohio. Also, as I write this, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, longtime chair of the Progressive Caucus and ally of the peace movement, is announcing her intention not to run for reelection.

Yet a possibility is opening up of replacing Woolsey with someone who clearly has the potential to be even better than Kucinich has been thus far.

No matter how Woolsey's district is redrawn in California, it will remain a very progressive district. This means that nationally those who pay attention to and work on elections, as well as those who want their children to have a decent world to live in, ought to take some interest in replacing Woolsey with a real progressive leader, not just someone who will vote the right way most of the time, not just someone who will say the right things, not even just someone who will stick their neck out and take the lead on matters that are deemed controversial within the Beltway, but someone who will educate, encourage activism, and organize within the government.

Luckily, that candidate is available and running, and he's running against one -- possibly two -- Obama followers. No Republican or independent is going to be elected to Congress from Marin County. The representative is either going to be a robotic Democratic drone who votes as the President instructs, thus inverting and perverting our system of checks and balances. Or the representative is going to be the person that progressives turn to for support from around the nation in the years to come: Norman Solomon.

If you don't know who Norman is, read his Wikipedia page.

Norman is one of the best activists I know, and one of the best book authors, possibly the very best columnist, and undoubtedly one of the easiest colleagues to work with whether we agree on something or not (we're working together on http://rootsaction.org ).

Norman may not agree with everything in this column. But I'm not looking for someone identical to myself to elect to Congress. I think Norman Solomon would make a better Congress member than I would, and than most of us would. I think he is ideally suited for it. I expect him to stay connected to the activist world, to make ideal use of independent and corporate media, and to build a caucus of Congress members that doesn't just add members to its ranks but actually takes actions that impact our public policy. When I say I expect these things, I don't mean that I am making these demands of Norman (though I am); I mean that we can safely predict that he will conduct himself in this manner if elected.

That's always a big if. The forces of mediocrity are always gathering strength against the exceptional. Let's nip in the bud the notion that California's Sixth District should be "represented" by a run of the mill hack. We can do that by pumping thousands of small donations from ordinary people all over the country into Solomon's campaign this week before the totals raised thus far are counted and announced at the end of June. Solomon has already raised over $100,000. If Rahm hadn't left for Chicago, the national machine to stop Solomon would be in full gear already. But people who stand for nothing are easily intimidated. I'm doing my bit to help scare them off right now. Won't you? Please give at least the price of a fancy coffee for the sake of having a people's leader in Washington when we need one: http://www.ActBlue.com/page/Supportathon.

Read the whole article here. _____________________