[Peace-discuss] Re: AWARE on Candidates

[Matthew Reichel]

	I think that it is valid for AWARE to further point out that
Kucinich, as head of the Progressive Caucus, effectively led Congressional
Opposition to the war. He has actual experience at the federal level as a
peace leader.
	Meanwhile, it is fairly easy for a moderate Governor from Vermont
to CLAIM to have been anti-war when it seems like a popular position to
take on behalf of his organizational apparatus.
	Furthermore, it is important to note that Kucinich is the only
candidate to have endorsed (Dr. Quentin Young's) single payer universal
health care plan.
	The whole issue of whether the Left should support any Democratic
candidate or not is an immensely complicated issue that I believe is well
beyond the scope of a fact sheet on how the current field resonates with
AWARE's agenda. Suddenly, you have a fact sheet that turns into a 40 page
treatise on the virtues and vices of presidentialism as compared
to parliamentarism, and majoritarianism as compared to proportional
representation. Perhaps you can mention that majoritarian
presidentialism is problematic. But so are all of the other systems!! so
it seems like a waste of time... If anything, AWARE and similar groups
embrace a radical democracy that is way better than any of these systems
of liberal democracy. That is what the anti-globalization etc movements
are all about! No one party or candidate can possibly take on the power of
global capitalism alone. Only a radically open democratic movement of all
the world's oppressed peoples can do that.

	I definitely recommend Neomi Klein's latest dispatch which appears
in the latest Nation and at COmmon Dreams as far as that goes...

	Good work with everything!! P4P, Kathy Kelly, Engineering Expo
protest! Fantastic.


	-
	matt