WHERE HAS DEMOCRACY GONE?

The View From The Shadow Conventions

Democracy flourished this summer in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Not at
the Republican and Democratic conventions - those made-for-television
infomercials and exercises in corporate sponsorship - but at the Shadow
Conventions held contemporaneously in these cities.

With the issue of money and politics running as a general theme, the Shadow
Conventions saw columnist Arianna Huffington join with Common Cause, Public
Campaign, the interfaith group Call to Renewal, the National Campaign for
Jobs and Income Support, United for a Fair Economy, and the Lindesmith
Center, to put the spotlight on the critical issues of campaign-finance
reform, the failed war on drugs and the growing gap between rich and
poor. While Shadow Convention participants did not agree on all the
solutions to these pressing problems, they did agree on one thing: that our
broken campaign-finance system blocks thoughtful consideration of these issues.

Big money so dictates what our elected officials care about that Congress
and the White House are paying scant attention to the reality of poverty
among plenty in this country or to the consequences of our drug policies.

These issues are ignored because they aren't the concerns of the big money
system. Once exercises in grassroots democracy, the party conventions now
are closed to the public, with the police barring entry. The Shadow
Conventions were open to all and accessible via the the Internet.

The party convention halls were temples to corporations that paid
handsomely to equip them, to provide gifts to delegates and to fete
powerful members of Congress at lavish parties. They may well be,
according to Sen. Russell Feingold, "the worst display of fund-raising and
corruption in the political history of our nation." The Shadow Conventions
featured box lunches and donuts - and speakers whose messages weren't
designed to draw the biggest TV audience or influence the polls, and who
challenged citizens to listen and debate. Many members of Congress who
participated - Sens. Russell Feingold, John McCain and Paul Wellstone -
and Reps. Tom Campbell, Steve Horn, Mark Sanford, John Tierney and Marty
Meehan - risked censure from their own parties for taking part in an event
that challenged the status quo. Still they came because, as Mr. Sanford
put it, these were conventions "built around the power of ideas rather than
the power of influence."

At each convention, hundreds of citizens - black, white, Hispanic, old,
young - participated in a challenging six-hour program on money and
politics. And hundreds of thousands more participated by visiting the
Shadow Convention web site, which has logged more than two million hits
since July. Why did they come? Perhaps singer David Crosby put it
best. "We feel disenfranchised . . . We feel that our elections are for
sale, and we know that wasn't how it was designed to work."

People are increasingly connecting the dots between our big money politics
and its impact on their own lives.

Griffin Dix's son was 15 years old when he died, the victim of a gun
accident, hit by a bullet hidden in the chamber. "Who's writing our gun
policy?" Mr. Dix asked. "It's the gun lobby. The gun lobby exempted this
gun that killed his son from all consumer regulations." Lynda Uvari always
believed that government would protect her from harm, until she and her
family developed serious and frightening ailments after they were
unknowingly exposed to methyl bromide, a powerful pesticide. That
experience transformed her into an activist who finds herself struggling
against a chemical industry that gives millions of dollars in political
contributions.

Rick Reinert was a small businessman caught in the crossfire when our
government, defending the business interests of large campaign donor Carl
Lindner, applied punitive tariffs to the German bath products he imported.

Mr. Reinert was forced out of business, caught in this Kafkaesque fight
about forcing the European Union to lift import restrictions on
Mr. Lindner's Chiquita Bananas. "I'd been a veteran, taken civics in
school," Mr. Reinert said, but now he is disillusioned. "Our political
system lacks honor," he said. "Everything and everyone you love is at
stake," Granny D (Doris Haddock, reminded her audience. At age 89, Granny
D walked 3,200 miles across America for campaign reform.

Businesses are also enlisting in the drive for reform. Charles Kolb,
president of the Committee for Economic Development, said that many
business leaders believe that "money and fund-raising have become too
important and demanding in our political life" and that some executives
view the current campaign-finance system as a legalized shakedown.
"Together we will take back our democracy," Mr. Kolb added.

Like the conventions of the abolitionists struggling against slavery, or
the gatherings of the suffragettes fighting for women's rights, or the
meetings of the cadre of workers who formed Solidarity and helped bring
down the communist empire, the Shadow Conventions were another step on the
road to reform. No one can doubt the power of an issue which has linked
fortune 500 executives, AIDS activists, consumer advocates,
environmentalists, Latinos and African-Americans in a drive to reduce the
influence of big money on our politics.

The Shadow Conventions were another sign that the voices of average
Americans are growing stronger and demanding more -more action, more change
and more responsiveness by the people who are supposed to be accountable to
them. Until reform is a reality, those voices will continue to grow. And
we will keep marching on.