Kucinich campaign stop focuses on anti-war themes
Excellent write-up by the Seattle Times (and some nice pictures too)
Kucinich campaign stop focuses on anti-war themes
By Jon Savelle
Seattle Times staff reporter
A Seattle campaign stop by Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich started with a rally yesterday afternoon in the University of Washington's Red Square that harked back to the anti-war rallies of the 1960s.
A folk singer performed a protest song, a variety of left-leaning groups set up tables and handed out literature, speakers warmed up the crowd with impassioned rhetoric, and a small knot of President Bush's supporters gamely held their signs aloft.
When the Ohio congressman finally appeared, all of them — except perhaps the Bush supporters — were ready to hear his message.
"It's wonderful to see you," said Seattle singer Sabriah Rahimah. "I'm sure it's wonderful to be you."
Kucinich might not have expected that comment, but he knew that the crowd was solidly on his side. Washington is an important state for him; supporters had raised $58,000 for his campaign by the end of October.
They were not disappointed yesterday.
"This is a new direction for America," he boomed from the steps in front of Kane Hall. "This is the end of fear and the beginning of hope."
The crowd of several hundred gave a roar of approval that echoed off the walls of surrounding buildings. It followed him inside Kane Hall, where Kucinich laid out his ideas in an animated fashion that used all of the stage.
They include withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and turning its reconstruction over to the U.N.; withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization; repeal of the Patriot Act; universal health care with a single-payer plan; abortion rights; and guaranteed education from kindergarten through college.
"We have the obligation to assume the power of our humanity, to grow to our full size," Kucinich said to cries of "Yes! Yes!"
But during a question-and-answer session, he faced some tough queries. One attendee asked why he is not a third-party candidate if he decries the stranglehold of corporate money on the Democratic Party. He said that he wants to change the party from the inside.
"I'd like to see the Democrats become a viable second party," he said. "My candidacy challenges it all. It challenges the corrupt hold the corporations have on the party."
Abortion was another difficult question. Kucinich, who was raised Catholic and who has opposed abortion in the past, in recent years has shifted to support women's reproductive rights. At the same time, he said, he wants to emphasize sex education, birth control, prenatal care, jobs, housing and other institutions that affect families.
That would allow the nation "to do what a lot of us want to do, which is make abortion less necessary," Kucinich said.
On the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kucinich said the United States should build an environment in which both sides can survive. That means taking a tougher line with Israel, however, which he said should take down the wall it is building, stop building settlements in Palestinian territory, and recognize the necessity of an autonomous Palestinian state.
"The United States needs to do something else," he said. "We cannot put our foot on the accelerator of war and expect that it's not going to have an effect on our ability to keep the peace."
A few in the crowd wanted Kucinich to go further. A representative of the International Socialist Organization said he believed Kucinich's real agenda was to pull people back into the Democratic Party, and that his anti-war stance was not evident when he voted for President Clinton's "Iraq Liberation Act" of 1998.
In an interview after the forum, Kucinich expanded upon another of his campaign themes — to encourage the country to slowly shift from dependence on oil to the use of renewable energy.
That shift, which he would support with a "massive investment," he said would spawn new technologies and new jobs.
But whether those jobs will exist in the U.S. or not is a question that brought him around again to NAFTA and the WTO.
"We must have a national industrial policy that the maintenance of aerospace, steel, aluminum, other metal-working, automotive, shipping and textiles are vital to our economy," Kucinich said. "America will invest to make sure those industries regain (their) competitive advantage."
Kucinich, 57, began his political career as a Cleveland city councilman in 1969 at the age of 19. He was elected mayor in 1977 but, after successfully fighting a private takeover of the city's public electric utility, lost his re-election bid when banks called in the city's loans, and the city went into default. In the early 1980s, he lived in Puyallup for a time while looking for work.
In 1995, Kucinich was elected to the Ohio state Senate, serving one two-year term; he has been a U.S. congressman since 1997.
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