I'm a staunch Libertarian, but I attended the Green Party rally in Austin Texas on October 18th. About 5,000 other folks also decided to attend and show their support for Ralph Nader and his party. There were plenty of hippie types, including some pretty hot women, especially if you're into BO and dreadlocks. I watched these hippie types put money on the plate, or in this case into the plastic pumpkin, and I knew that they really believed what they were hearing.

Several party candidates spoke, including Charlie Mauch and Gary Dugger running for seats on the Texas Railroad Commission, and Doug Sandage who is the Green candidate for the US Senate from Texas.

The political speeches were interspersed with local music acts, of the folk variety. Two celebrities spoke as well -- Jim Hightower, author of If the Gods had Meant Us to Vote They Would have Given Us Candidates and Tom Tomorrow, author of the cartoon This Modern World. Jim was pretty amusing and in talking about giving power to the people and how the "major party" candidates can not fool the masses. He mentioned that us common folk can, "tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit." Tom Tomorrow showed us a video where Sparky the penguin and Ralph Nader fight back against the Debate commission, titled "Flippers of Fury". It is amusing and worth checking out.

Ralph Nader came onstage amid much fanfare and quickly said, "I don't know what Bush has against Texas." This gave us Texans a good laugh. Mr. Nader had lots of good things to say and was wholly interesting for the entire hour and a half that he spoke (this is quite a compliment from someone who tired of the last presidential debate after the first five minutes). He talked about health care and the budget surplus, but he didn't spend all of his time on those topics, he also mentioned corporate responsibility, farmers, personal privacy, the environment and the War on Drugs.

Ralph pointed out that both of the "major" candidates have used illegal drugs, yet both have received their party's nomination and one will probably wind up being the next President of the United States. Neither one has much to say about the War on Drugs, particularly how ineffective it is. Ralph declared that drugs should be decriminalized, drug abuse should be treated as a health problem and the money being spent on the War on Drugs should go back to the community.

He spoke about how much personal information is gathered and stored, analyzed and tracked. He said that Orwell and Huxley couldn't possible imagine where we would be today, in this regard. He stated that invasion of privacy is "invasion of self." He made me hearken back to my anarchist days and almost made me want to vote for him.

He told us that we have an apartheid economy, where one in three workers who are working full time can not earn a living wage. He talked about coal minors dying in droves and farmers getting pushed out of business by giant agricultural corporations. Corporations, he preached, just want to sell us more chemicals. He mentioned traffic, and specifically the traffic jam that occurred outside of the rally - this was a segue for him to support a local Austin issue, and he got behind light rail.

He made an interesting comment about auto advertising, asking if anyone had ever seen a car ad where the car being sold was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. He pointed out that we are the only Western country with the death penalty and we also have the highest homicide rate.

Ralph asserted that we own the airwaves; the electro-magnetic spectrum belongs to the people and we should not only be able to use it, but big companies that run TV and radio stations should be paying us rent. Some of this rent could be used to finance public access and community programming.

Ralph contends that we should vote for our hopes, not our fears, and not just pick the lesser of two evils.

The bottom line is that there is not a whole lot of choice between W and Bore - vote for what you believe, and you won't be "throwing your vote away."

Whatever you decide, get out and vote on Nov. 7!

Green Party
www.greenparty.org or www.greens.org

Jim Hightower
www.jimhightower.com

Flippers of Fury

This Modern World
www.thismodernworld.com