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/

WELLSTONE ADDRESSES SHADOW CONVENTION

PHILADELPHIA -- U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone was right where he wanted to be on
Monday -- jabbing at the political establishment while urging the kind of
activism that he said must do no less than "reclaim democracy."

Wellstone spoke at the Shadow Convention, a privately-funded counterpart to
this week's Republican National Convention that has billed itself as a
forum for issues that its sponsors say are ignored by the two major parties.

His message was tailor-made for a crowd disenchanted with big money in
politics, the income gap and the war on drugs -- the three major themes of
the self-styled alternative convention.

"We don't reject this system," Wellstone told the crowd, his voice rising.
"We want to save this system. We want to save democracy and reclaim democracy."

The poison in the system, he said, is the mushrooming clout of monied
interests in politics.

His barometer for people's growing apathy was Minnesota's own Town Talk
Cafe in Willmar.

"That's my focus group," he said. "And they tell me that both political
parties are too controlled by the same investors, the well-connected, the
players who get listened to."

The Town Talk patrons, he said, don't attend $500,000 barbecues. "They do
their barbecues in their own back yards," he said. "They believe their
concerns are of little concern. They feel locked out and left behind.
Politics is a game they can no longer play."

Wellstone said that a system driven by corporate interests and corporate
money had corrupted even those of good intentions.

"I do know that the ethical issue of our time is the way big money has come
to dominate politics," he said. The imbalance of resources and influence
has tipped so dramatically in this country, he said, that while "each
person should count as one and no more than one, that is no longer the case.

He asked those in the nearly full auditorium at the University of
Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center to commit themselves to grass-roots
activity that would take money out of politics.

In return, he promised he would amend the next campaign-finance bill to
force senators into voting on whether each of their states could set
campaign-spending limits and public campaign financing that would apply to
federal races.

"We'll build our own coalition," he said. "This is authentic democratic
renewal that will result in elections, not auctions. We need to turn up the
heat."

From the other side, many corporate leaders "are tired of the shakedown"
from politicians, said Charlie Kolb, president of the Committee for
Economic Development, a nonpartisan group advocating campaign-finance
changes that is also one of the Shadow Convention's sponsors.

Later, Wellstone said his 10 years in Washington had made him painfully
aware of money's role -- a role that he said has grown so large in the last
decade that it is eclipsing policy.

"We sit in caucus meetings and we don't talk about issues. We talk about
money," he said.

Wellstone will not be the only Minnesota presence at the Shadow Convention.
A choir made up of children whose mothers are in federal prisons will sing
this afternoon.

About 20 of the 28 children -- ranging from toddlers to teenagers -- are
from Minnesota. Most have mothers who are serving time for drug-related
offenses in out-of-state prisons.

Tamika Gates, 21, of Minneapolis, is raising her five brothers and sisters,
along with her own two children while her mother is imprisoned for
transporting a kilo of cocaine on a Greyhound bus.

Gates is a retail sales clerk working toward a college degree in law
enforcement. "It's been hard," she said. "There's no support."

Convention organizers contend that the federal war on drugs and
zero-tolerance policies have wreaked havoc on poor families and flooded
prisons with low-level nonviolent offenders.

The Shadow Convention also is sponsored by Common Cause, Public Campaign
and a variety of alternative groups. Instead of displaying the names of
states, signs saying "Disillusioned" or "Disappointed" or "Downsized"
distinguish sections of delegates.