Pubdate: Mon, 31 Jul 2000
Source: Nation, The (US)
Copyright: 2000, The Nation Company
Contact:  http://www.thenation.com/
Author: Arianna Huffington
Note: Syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington is the author of eight books. 
Her most recent is titled How to Overthrow the Government (HarperCollins).
Note: the Shadow Convention websites are at http://www.drugpolicy.org/
  and http://www.shadowconventions.com/
Bookmark: additional articles on the Shadow Conventions are available at 
http://www.mapinc.org/shadow.htm

ME AND MY SHADOWS:

Convention Notes From A Recovering Republican

It's true, I haven't been a reliable Republican. For quite some time now, 
my newspaper columns have been peppered with shots at George W. and other 
GOP big-wigs. I've even taken to calling myself a "recovering Republican." 
But while I knew that some of my Grand Old Party pals were downright irked 
with me, I never thought I'd end up being persona non grata at next week's 
Republican National Convention.

Let me explain.

It was all Betty Currie's fault.

I'm kidding, of course.

Actually, I was at a friend's birthday party in Los Angeles back in May 
when I started chatting with Brad Freeman--a good buddya of Dubya and also 
his campaign's powerful California state finance chairman.

After bemoaning the fact that the RNC had already locked up all the 
available real estate in Philadelphia for convention week, I asked Brad if 
he could do me a small favor and help me land a decent hotel reservation. 
"No problem, Arianna," he answered graciously. "Anything you want."

Well, as it turns out, not quite anything.

A month later, I was still roomless--and hadn't heard one word from Brad. 
When I gave him a call to check on things, he began to tap dance faster 
than Savion Glover. "Let me see what I can do," was the gist of his 
time-step. After another few weeks of silence, Brad and I happened to find 
ourselves co-hosting a book party for a friend.

Cornered as he was--in his own house, no less--he finally came clean. 
"Austin," he told me, "knows about your plans.

I should have put your room under my name." My first thought was, why would 
a perpetually horny fictional spy care about my room search?

Then I realized that he meant Austin, Texas, not Austin Powers, and that my 
"plans" referred to the Shadow Conventions that will parallel the party 
fetes in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. "There's just nothing they'll any 
longer let me do for you," he told me.

Apparently, the Republican nomenklatura is no longer amused by me. Well, 
you know what, guys? The feeling is mutual.

As a GOP outcast (now I know how those people on Survivor feel when they 
get voted off the island), I guess I won't be attending the convention's 
opening-night gala on the newly renovated waterfront in Camden--just across 
the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Celebrating conventioneers will be 
treated to fireworks, a laser show and a parade of lighted boats.

But they probably won't be seeing much of the rest of Camden--the 
fifth-poorest city in America. While in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago, 
I was given a tour of these decidedly not-newly-renovated parts of Camden 
by its former mayor, Randy Primas. Much of it seemed like a Third World 
country--filled with crumbling neighborhoods and dilapidated buildings.

Pick any criterion for a troubled community--plummeting graduation rates, 
skyrocketing teen pregnancies, rampant drug use--and Camden fits the bill.

Yet that is where the RNC has decided to hold its welcoming ceremony.

And it will no doubt do so without even a nod to the ugly reality behind 
the opulent front.

That unthinking gesture is both a symbol of why I'm in Republican rehab and 
the raison d'90tre for the Shadow Conventions. In fact, one of the things 
we'll be doing at the GOP shadow is making a van available to the media for 
a guided tour of the "other Camden."

In his first speech as Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich said there was 
greater "moral urgency" in "coming to grips with what's happening to the 
poorest Americans" than in balancing the budget.

But it didn't take long to recognize that this was only empty rhetoric.

Becoming disillusioned with the Republicans didn't mean falling into the 
arms of the Democrats--not with their $26.5 million fundraising barbecues 
and their "everything must go, even our most sacred priorities" fire sale 
of public policy.

Sadly, both parties are in deep--but well-funded--denial about the state of 
modern America. Their addiction to ever greater doses of campaign cash 
clouds their ability to discern the true crises of the society they claim 
to lead. And while both Republicans and Democrats pay focus-group-tested 
lip service to campaign finance reform, they collude and conspire not only 
to defend the corrupt status quo but to break new records in gobbling up 
hard money, soft money, PAC payoffs and the spirit of our democracy.

Even as less than 1 percent of the population, the very wealthiest among 
us, now provide nearly all campaign contributions, our mainstream 
politicians continue to deny that a leveraged buyout of our political 
system is under way. The truth is that our representative Republic is being 
supplanted by a permanent and unaccountable government of powerful special 
interests.

We all know this is true. Our politicians know it too. But mention it to 
them, and it is as if you've committed some horrible breach of 
etiquette--sort of like not clapping politely for the band as the Titanic 
goes down.

The indisputable fact that America has become two nations is brought home 
every day that politicians celebrate our unprecedented prosperity while one 
in four children live below the poverty line and people with full-time jobs 
sleep on buses because of the lack of affordable housing.

And it is no less obvious every day the same politicians fail to do, or 
even say, anything about our disastrous Drug War. Though it remains hugely 
popular with helicopter manufacturers and prison contractors, the war on 
drugs has turned into a War on Blacks--with mandatory-minimum sentences, 
powder and crack cocaine differentials, and 46 percent more black than 
white young people incarcerated on drug charges.

Yet both parties deny that the drug war has not only failed to stem the 
tide of drug use but it is also driving America into an ever-tightening 
state of lockdown--with 2 million behind bars. And both nominees remain 
shamefully complicit in this onslaught that targets those who are most 
vulnerable and have the fewest resources to fight it.

Against this dispiriting backdrop, I share with a growing number of 
Americans a growing frustration with politics as usual.

The new politics will not be more left or more right, but more real. More 
about what works and less about who paid for it. More about where the 
crises are and less about where the pressure comes from. More populist than 
corporatist. More about the future than the past.

The symptoms of political restlessness are inchoate but bubbling all around 
us. They glimmered in the protests in Seattle. The flashed in the 
excitement that drove John McCain's primary crusade.

They surfaced when the immigrant janitors of Los Angeles touched the soul 
of the city in their fight for a living wage. And every day they simmer on 
scores of college campuses where United Students Against Sweatshops fight 
against child labor and inhuman sweatshops and demand that fair rules be 
written for the emerging global economy.

Indeed, more and more, the new economy is putting into stark relief the 
need for a new politics.

So, in the end, I don't really need that special hotel room in 
Philadelphia. I've made other arrangements--together with my fellow Shadow 
Convention conveners.

For the four days and four nights of each party's convention, as our 
cash-addicted politicians preen and posture and pander, we--and thousands 
like us--will join with our best thinkers, our best advocates and our best 
activists to put the spotlight on three critical issues frozen out of the 
officially sanctioned debate: the corrupting influence of money in 
politics, poverty and the growing inequalities, and the failed drug war.

These Shadow Conventions won't feature any lighted boat parades, but I 
guarantee there will be plenty of fireworks.

See you in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. And in Camden.
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MAP posted-by: Thunder