Following the campaign, September 8
From Karin Caifa:
KUCINICH FACT OF THE DAY:
The Thinking Person’s Candidate? During his talks before various U.N. groups Monday, Kucinich quoted or made reference to Tennyson, Browning, Achilles, Descartes, Francis Scott Key, and George Washington.
MONDAY AT THE U.N.
A morning presser before the UN Correspondents’ Association got off to a rocky start. The event was hastily scheduled, just Thursday afternoon, but U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan later scheduled a briefing for the same time. An e-mail bumping the time of the speech up contained a virus, so most U.N. journalists didn’t get the message. Organizer Tony Jenkins, president of the association, had to scramble downstairs to get the press for the new, earlier start time, delaying Kucinich’s remarks.
Kucinich and his entourage, all 3 of them, took it all in stride and the congressman delivered a few minutes of prepared remarks before taking questions from the crowd of mostly foreign journalists. Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi, the Financial Times, the BBC, as well as domestic outlets like the Boston Globe and Baltimore Sun were represented.
Later in the day Kucinich addressed the United Nations NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns. The topic was human security, particularly before the 9/11 anniversary.
“At this very moment in our nation’s history we are presented with a kind of hall of mirrors, distorted images of what constitutes human security,” Kucinich said. “We’re being told that we’ll find our security only through the strength of arms. We’re being told that we find our security by separating ourselves from each other. That we find our securities in philosophies that reflect dichotomous thinking of ‘us vs. them.’”
SEIU EVENT: LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING
Kucinich received a huge ovation before and after his speech before the SEIU Monday night. He was sure to note that he’s still a card-carrying union member (IATSE radio/TV union of stagehands) and said later that the attention, signing autographs and taking snapshots, made him feel like a rock star.
Once again, the most recent polls belie the following Kucinich has attracted. The post-debate rally in Albuquerque, the Labor Day crowd in Des Moines, the ovations at SEIU — Kucinich has a heckuva lot of believers for a “dark horse.”
Rep. Kucinich told me that the campaign is building at a rapid rate. The campaign, he reports, now has presence in 40 states. And, he notes, as communications director Jeff Cohen noted last week, the campaign has done all of this building without the help of the national mainstream media.
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