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

SHADOW CONVENTIONS MAY SHIFT KLIEG-LIGHTS FROM GOP

Protest events are intended to highlight issues parties fail to address,
such as global trade and campaign finance.

Joel Epstein was "disinterested" in politics-as-usual. And he certainly
wasn't waiting with bated breath for either party's political convention
this summer.

Nonetheless, the graduate student now finds himself volunteering full time,
from sun up to sun down, seven days a week in Philadelphia.

No, he hasn't suddenly been inspired by Texas Gov. George W. Bush and jumped
on the Republican bandwagon.

Instead, he's giving his all to the "shadow conventions," the bipartisan
gatherings designed to steal the spotlight from both the Republican and the
Democratic assemblies by addressing controversial issues that the organizers
say the parties are either ignoring or giving little more than lip service.
These range from campaign-finance overhaul to the growing income gap between
rich and poor to the "failed" war on drugs.

Their goal - bolstered by an array of political stars from Arizona Sen. John
McCain to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, as well as an assortment of Hollywood
celebrities - is to revitalize what they say has become a "superficial
political debate" in America.

"It's hard to see how fundamental change is going to come from within the
two parties," says Arianna Huffington, one of the main organizers of the
Shadow Conventions. "Despite the fact that we're living in such prosperous
times, there hasn't been any real reform during the past decade."

While both parties take issue with that assessment, they're also doing their
best to ignore their shadow rivals. But some analysts say the parties have
no one to blame for the alternative gatherings but themselves.

Over the past 30 years, conventions - once hotbeds of political debate,
intense ideological wrangling, and fierce competition between candidates -
have become little more than corporate-sponsored, pre-scripted political
spectacles.

Even the TV networks, which once competed for the most comprehensive,
up-to-the-minute coverage, are balking at interrupting their programming for
any but the most important events.

"They became a coronation, and other issues were deliberately swept under
the carpet," says the Brookings Institute's Stephen Hess. This lack of real
political debate spurred other groups - like the shadow conventions - "to
take advantage of the 15,000 reporters who will be there without a lot to
do."

Critics have attacked the organizers as a group of malcontents who simply
want to steal the spotlight from the parties.

But the organizers make no secret of their hope to entice a few klieg lights
from the main convention hall. And they argue the cameras should come,
because the shadow gatherings will offer what traditional conventions used
to: real debate about difficult issues.

The organizers come from a broad spectrum of political backgrounds, notes
Scott Harshbarger, president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan campaign
watchdog group and one of the shadow's grass-roots conveners. As a result,
they may not agree on much except that the current political system is badly
broken.

"The challenge in reform is to connect the dots, to show the average person
why it matters to them," he says. "Without that connection, people are
either cynical and don't think it will happen, or don't understand what the
possible solutions are."

As for critics who say it's the shadow conventions' issues that are out of
touch, Ms. Huffington points out that before Senator McCain's New Hampshire
primary win, the conventional wisdom about campaign-finance reform was that
it was an issue that wouldn't fly. "That turned conventional wisdom on its
head - it became clear that people cared deeply about campaign-finance
reform."

But for all the organizers' earnest efforts to jump-start the nation's
political debate, they're still dependent on the news media to make their
point.

And so far, they haven't gotten a lot of ink. In part, this is because the
media spotlight is still shining brightly on the two parties' preconvention
maneuvering, like Governor Bush's recent choice of former Defense Secretary
Dick Cheney as his running mate.

For the shadow conventions to be successful, they've got to steal at least
some of that spotlight, says political analyst Diana Carlin of the
University of Kansas.

"Given the people they have involved, and the kind of breadth, they are
going to get some attention - I'm just curious to see how much," Ms. Carlin
says. "But if the media doesn't cover it, it won't have much impact."

What happens after the conventions are over, she adds, will be key to
determining whether these gatherings will be the beginnings of a new
political movement, or a one-shot deal that will be forgotten by the next
presidential election.

New Mexico's Republican Gov. Gary Johnson, who advocates decriminalizing
certain drugs and taking a public-health approach to the nation's drug
problem, will be at the shadow convention to talk about the need for drug
reform. He says he's going knowing that his political career is already at
an end.

"On an issue like this, the first one over the hill gets shot. I understand
that," he says. "And that's the stage that real drug reform is at: It's
taboo, completely taboo, everybody knows that, but they also know that it
should be talked about."