Note: About the writer Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated
columnist and author of seven books. Her eighth book, "How to
Overthrow the Government," was published in February by Regan Books
(HarperCollins).

Bookmark: MAP's link to shadow convention items:
http://www.mapinc.org/shadow.htm

Note: Shadow Convention websites:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/
http://www.shadowconventions.com/

IN THE SHADOWS OF THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION

The notoriously poor town of Camden -- ironically
the site of the GOP fete -- is living proof of
everything our politicians are ignoring.

PHILADELPHIA - On Sunday, the 2000 Republican National
Convention kicked off with an evening called "Indifference With a
Purpose." Actually, that wasn't the official name, but it was
certainly the spirit of the opening gala held on the newly renovated
waterfront in Camden, N.J. -- just across the Delaware River from
Philadelphia. Celebrating conventioneers were treated to fireworks, a
laser show, a parade of lighted boats -- and the complete absence of
anything that might remind them of the flip side of our ongoing prosperity.

Earlier in the day, participants in the 2000 Shadow Convention (of
which I'm a co-convener) took a tour of a very different Camden in a
moving video put together by a group of kids who live there. It showed
the decidedly not-newly-renovated parts of the city -- the fifth
poorest in America. "The waterfront is not Camden," said NashaunDa
Tilgham, 16. "They go there. They don't come to my house. They don't
come to the community centers that we don't have."

I was taken around this "other Camden" a few weeks ago by former mayor
Randy Primas. Much of it seemed like a third-world country -- filled
with crumbling neighborhoods and dilapidated buildings. Pick any
criterion for a troubled community -- plummeting graduation rates,
skyrocketing teen pregnancies, rampant drug use -- and Camden fits the
bill. The reason it seems like another country is that it basically
is, given that it's not really served by our national leaders.

Yet Camden is where the Republican National Convention decided to hold
its welcoming ceremony. And it did so without even a "compassionately
conservative" nod to the ugly reality behind the Potemkin front. That
willfully unthinking gesture is both a symbol of why I've taken to
calling myself a "recovering Republican" and the raison d'etre for the
shadow conventions.

These alternative gatherings (currently paralleling the GOP fete in
Philly and soon for the Democrats in Los Angeles) are being brought to
you not by the good people at Philip Morris, AT&T, GM and Texaco, but
by a collective longing to fix our political system. The goal is to
generate a national conversation on three urgent issues frozen out of
the officially sanctioned debate: the corrupting influence of money in
politics, the persistence of poverty in the midst of unprecedented
prosperity and the failed drug war that remains unaddressed because
there is no constituency with a financial stake in addressing it.

The shadow conventions are not endorsing any party, nor are they
trying to build an alternative party. They are, instead, designed to
build a movement that will dramatically alter the conduct of the two
major parties and bring about a new politics.

And there are many signs that such a movement is building: the
thousands of activists who descended on Seattle and shook the
Washington establishment to its complacent core; the tens of thousands
of college students who are organizing on campuses against sweatshops
and other injustices; the overwhelming public response to the
janitors' demand in Los Angeles that, in the middle of our golden
prosperity, they be paid a living wage; the tremendous energy
generated earlier this year by the insurgent candidacy of Sen. John
McCain, whose crusade to clean up a system that no longer serves the
people captured the imagination of millions of disaffected voters.
McCain's opening-day keynote address got the Philadelphia Shadow
Convention off to a rousing, if contentious, start.

There is a price to pay for having a convention that's not scripted
and tightly controlled. Along with the openness and spontaneity come
unpredictability, risk -- and sometimes incivility. I don't know about
you, but I think that not just the shadow conventions but all of
American politics is ready to pay that price.

We will never find the collective will to move beyond political
platitudes about "leaving no one behind" until we've loosened the grip
of what McCain calls the "iron triangle of lobbyists, big money and
legislation." Nor will we move beyond bellicose bromides about
"getting tougher" on drugs while more than 400,000 Americans are
locked up in jail for nonviolent drug offenses, and alarming numbers
of African-Americans have been disenfranchised for life under the Jim
Crow laws otherwise known as the war on drugs.

The shadow conventions are about this other America: the 99 percent of
Americans who have not contributed to a political campaign; the more than 70
percent of Americans who favor treatment over incarceration for nonviolent
drug offenders; the more than 60 percent of us who believe that government
today is being run not for the benefit of the people but for the benefit of
special interests; the more than 50 percent of Americans who are not planning
to vote in November; the more than 20 percent of our country's children
living below the poverty line.

"Our children are not criminals," a neighborhood woman says on the
"other Camden" video. "Our children are great human beings; they have
a lot of potential. They just need a little better training and better
education, and they need to be cared for and nurtured."

From the looks of things, it's not going to come from the GOP's
Convention with a Purpose.