Out to sway Kerry, Kucinich makes his case in Portland
Originally published in the Oregonian
Out to sway Kerry, Kucinich makes his case in Portland
The underdog aims for a strong showing in Oregon's primary to bolster his priorities, including pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq
03/28/04
JEFF MAPES
The vegan menu at the Dennis Kucinich fund-raiser Saturday morning in Portland -- multigrain pancakes, potatoes and tofu scramble -- provided just one hint that the Democratic congressman from Ohio is not your typical presidential candidate.
It was also clear when the question-and-answer session veered from such standard political topics as trade and foreign policy into a discourse about whether people should avoid using violence-laden language as a first step toward creating a more peaceful world.
"Each one of us needs to find that -- a way to clear our anger," Kucinich advised his audience. "Anger is very hard to let go of sometimes."
Kucinich didn't make much of an impact in the early Democratic primaries that quickly produced a presumptive nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. But Kucinich is the only candidate left running against Kerry in the Democratic primaries, and he says he's going to focus on trying to have a strong showing in Oregon's May 18 primary.
His issues are distinctive. He wants to quickly get U.S. troops out of Iraq, create a nationalized health care system for all and withdraw from free-trade pacts.
On the second day of a four-day Oregon tour, Kucinich sat down after his morning fund-raiser at Southeast Portland's Kalga Kafe to talk about his race and his ideas. Some excerpts from the conversation, edited for clarity:
On why he's still running . . .
"It's no longer a question of who is going to run against George Bush. . . . But the question is what do we stand for as a party? That is not something that is understood by anyone. I think it's realistic that when I get a strong vote out of Oregon, it's going to encourage John Kerry and the Democratic Party to create a platform that is consistent with the broad-based aspirations of millions of Americans for peace, for health care, for jobs, for civil liberties. . . ."
"You have to be able to reach people who may otherwise be disaffected, and my campaign reaches out to the broadest group of people and says, 'Look, stay inside the Democratic Party and direct it toward change.' "
On what to do in Iraq . . .
"I see this as a series of sequenced steps. . . . We go to the United Nations and ask the U.N. to handle the oil assets of Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi people until they are self-governing. . . .
"We do the same with contracts, so there are no more Halliburton sweetheart-deal questions. And by having the U.N. handle it, we can then create conditions where Iraqis can get jobs. That's important because some of the protests -- deadly protests -- that are taking place is because the Iraqi people can't get jobs. . . .
"We also have to tell the world community we're not going to privatize Iraq (industries). . . . The next thing we have to do is to make sure we make good on our promise to rebuild what we destroyed and pay reparations to the families of innocent civilian noncombatants who lost their lives.
"And we have to help fund the U.N. peacekeeping mission, where we bring in U.N. troops and the United States gets out. I believe we have to get out of Iraq because we attacked that nation when there was no legitimate reason to do so. . . . The longer we stay there, our presence there is suspect and destabilization will occur."
On his call to withdraw from free-trade treaties . . .
"We cannot continue these huge trade deficits without it having a dramatic negative effect on our national economy, at which point the borrowing we're doing is not going to be sustainable. . . . We could be looking down the road at our children living under the structural readjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund if we don't get a handle on our trade. . . .
"There's a practical expectation that we need to have that if people sell to us, they buy from us. Then the next question is, what are the conditions under which we do business? The North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization (and other trade agreements) came about because of the desire of corporations to have access to cheap labor. Trying to get cheap labor is one of the oldest stories in humanity. . . .
"We need to create an alternative international trade structure where we put ethical principles in commerce, and those ethical principles are workers' rights, human rights and the environment.
"The president of the United States -- and most people don't know this -- has the ability to withdraw from both Nafta and the WTO, and we could set an alternative trade structure in place. We can first begin with bilateral trade, where we put in these conditions.
"Everybody wants access to our market. How do we know? We have a $550 billion trade deficit. . . . Everybody wants to sell to us; they just don't want to buy from us."
Subscribe to this blog's feed