Kucinich keepin’ it real in politics
Originally published in San Francisco Bay View - National Black Newspaper of the Year
Kucinich keepin’ it real in politics
by Aleada Minton
The Hip-Hop vote? Reparations? Dennis Kucinich is a different type of presidential candidate. Rather than the Clinton welfare-reform-behind-your-back-taking-from-women-and-children, or the Bush send-your-people-to-war-but-cut-their-veterans’-benefits thing or take-away-your-personal-freedoms-called-the-USA-Patriot-Act, Kucinich is keeping it real.
How real, you ask? Well, let’s start at the beginning. Like Clinton, he comes from poor roots and worked his way through college. Unlike most politicians, though, he stands up for what he believes in and knows to be right.
Twenty years ago, he put his career on the line and was cast as the worst mayor ever in Cleveland and the eighth worst in the country. This label was stamped on his career after he refused to sell his city’s electrical power company, Muny Light, to a large corporation. He did not have a trust fund to cover him, so he retired from politics with no absolutely no money in his pocket.
Fifteen years later, an investigative reporter discovered that he had made the right decision, saving Cleveland residents hundreds of millions of dollars on their electric bills over that time. The voters came calling him back and elected him back when he ran for the state Senate and House of Representatives, using a light bulb as his campaign symbol.
Dennis Kucinich is short on money, with a net worth of 32K and a small house in Cleveland, and long on the reality of where people need help.
The Kucinich campaign platform is quite simply logical and possible: free public education from preschool through college, freedom for all queers to marry, honest dialogue about reparations, United States out of Iraq in 90 days, withdrawal from the WTO and NAFTA, and signing the land mine treaty. Also, he will create a cabinet-level Department of Peace to address the violence that plagues this country’s urban communities and to work toward complete disarmament worldwide of all nuclear weapons.
It sounds too good to be true, and at first I was skeptical about who this man was and his potential. Hearing Kucinich speak without notes at Glide Memorial Church, informed and with real passion, changed my perception.
Here before me was a leader who happened to be a politician expounding words that I and the audience waited to hear in clear, concise, simple, humanistic logic. Cut defense budgets, health care for all, no space-based weapons and the list on his platform continues. He spoke for only few minutes and firmly shook hands afterwards, eager to answer any questions.
It was January 2004. Alice Walker, in a rare public appearance, was to endorse Kucinich, Pamela Gaddies, co-founder of Operation Save-A-Life, was the MC and a panel of five people representing various groups asked Kucinich a question of their choosing.
So how come Kucinich is not all over the news as the top Democratic candidate? He is poor, short, unmarried and not Christian, for starters. There are trillions of dollars at stake that are controlled by money-greedy large corporations and a few hands.
World peace and our lives are at hand. Who are you gonna trust? A person, a candidate, a political leader who fought to the point of losing his career to maintain honesty in a government system even if vilified - or someone who bombs the world to pieces in the name of peace.
Dennis Kucinich can help save this country, but we need to save his campaign.
To learn more, go to www.kucinich.us or call (415) 553-4025. Volunteers are always needed at the San Francisco office, 1781 Mission, off Duboce, and we promise to feed your body and soul.
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