Note: Shadow Convention website:
http://www.lindesmith.org/shadowconventions/

ONLY SHADOW (CONVENTION) KNOWS

Forget The Traditional Forums; For Real News, Substantive Talk Look To
Alternative Political Confabs

Who knows what lurks in the hearts of Democratic and Republican convention
goers this summer? The Shadow knows. The Shadow Convention 2000, that is.

CONVENED by public interest groups like the faith-based Call to Renewal,
Common Cause, Public Campaign, Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation,
National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support and United for a Fair
Economy, these gatherings are about everything the Democratic and
Republican conventions should be addressing but aren't. The brainchild of
the crusading columnist and rightist-turned-leftist, Arianna Huffington,
each Shadow convention will deploy gadfly politicians, actors, public
policy experts, community leaders and the assorted oddball or two to shine
a light on the great unspoken issues of the 2000 campaign.

Anxious Republicans

Already the confabs are making some politicians nervous. The conveners
wrangled Sen. John McCain to their opening session in Philadelphia and this
has driven some more orthodox Republicans bonkers.

Why, demands supply-side enforcer and columnist Robert Novak, would McCain
"be the keynote speaker of an alternative political convention with a
distinct far-left aroma that intends to ridicule his Republican Party and
is partially financed by the archenemy of the war on drugs, billionaire
global financier George Soros?" Novak notes that GOP heavyweight Jack Kemp,
who planned to speak has already been scared off and Rep. Christopher
Shays, who like McCain, is a champion of campaign finance reform, is giving
signals of backing away. (Perhaps these signals were prompted by Novak
himself.)

Novak's high-dudgeon tried to give his readers the impression that McCain
would find himself alone in the shadows, with no other Republicans joining
him at "a conclave that may look like the bar scene in 'Star Wars.' " Novak
conveniently forget however, that the admirable California Rep. Tom
Campbell was sticking to his guns and appearing as well. With 16,000
journalists milling around, there's not much to do until the evening's
activities. The Shadows plan to fill that news hole with daily discussions
of issues that both parties would prefer to ignore entirely.

Republicans have reason to be concerned. With absolutely nothing of news
value planned for the GOP convention, the focus of daily news coverage is
likely be driven by the many street protests outside -- as it was last year
at the WTO meeting in Seattle.

The Shadow conventions are a perfect means of dramatizing the substance of
what drives those protests and thereby answering the charge that the media
seeks only to cover violence and mayhem without giving any voice to the
genuine grievances that drive peaceful protest.

But so do Democrats. With 16,000 journalists milling around during the day,
even after long lunches, there's not much to do until the evening's
activities get rolling.

The Shadows plan to fill that news hole with daily discussions of issues
that both parties would prefer to ignore entirely.

In Los Angeles, the Shadow conventions will be kicked off by the party's
two most left-leaning senators, Russell Feingold and Paul Wellstone. Each
day both conclaves will focus on a successive issue that both parties
prefer not be discussed. These kick-off sessions will be followed by
successive days of general sessions on three linked issue areas ignored by
the party conventions -- the predominance of money politics and consequent
need for campaign finance reform, growing economic inequality and the
persistence of poverty in the midst of a seeming long boom and the
dangerously failed war on drugs.

On the Shadow Convention Web page, you can already find an extremely useful
report on a frequently unreported issue: the "color of money." It seems
that communities that are 80 percent white give an average of $1.4 million
to political campaigns while communities with the highest concentration of
people give an average of $7,000. If you assume that the former group is
buying themselves special attention -- and why else do people give money to
candidates -- you can understand why our current corrupt system of campaign
finance further divides the country along lines of both race and class.

Add to that the enormously disturbing facts and figures also available on
the Web site regarding the spiraling gap between rich and poor in this
country, as well as the well documented failure -- and increasing cost-of
the bipartisan war on drugs, and you have the makings of a few stories that
both parties would prefer never to see.

Indicting The Democrats

While closer in political spirit to the Democrats than the Republicans, the
Shadow Conventions can be seen as more an indictment of the former than the
latter.

After all, no one expects the party of Reagan and Bush to care much about
exploited workers, immigrants or the victims of the drug war. But the
Democrats, allegedly the party of the working class, are perceived as
hardly any different.

The ideological thrust of these gatherings reflects Huffington's new
crusade against what she terms the "indistinguishable two-party politics
and the purchase of the public policies by corporate special interests."

The Shadows are almost certain to be a hit with the media, if only for the
easy access they provide and the lack of genuine news available anywhere else.

I asked Huffington what distinguishes her conventions from past insurgent
campaigns by progressives that created a lot of sound and fury around
convention time and then disappeared into the ether by Election Day. After
all, I remember a great deal of commotion at conventions past as Jesse
Jackson and Jerry Brown sought to fight the power of the established interests.

They got a lot of media play, and then they went home and left little or
nothing to show for their efforts for the following four years.

Huffington responds by phone from Los Angeles that this is a genuine
concern that the Shadow conveners are attempting to address in advance.

They are ending each gathering with a day of community service and are
planning to create a full-service Web site , which will help forge links
between different progressive and volunteer organizations. The Web site,
she tells me, will allow people to click on the state they live in and find
a menu of things they can get involved in. "We start with the hope that
some of the people will be energized by the Shadow conventions," she adds,
"and then hope that as the groups continue their excellent work, they will
intensify and one day reach a critical mass to force the system to react."

No one, thank goodness is looking to create yet another good government
organization to suck up the limited money and resources already available.

Instead the idea is to strengthen -- and shower media attention -- on those
already in the trenches, fighting the good fight.

Does Huffington really believe that this effort will be successful in place
where so many have gone before her and failed? "As a Greek fatalist," she
notes plaintively, "God willing, I believe we will get a real push and
something that will be done."