AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to go from culture to politics right now. And how often they do blend. But as more and more U.S. voters become alienated by the current two-party electoral system, this week hundreds of third-party activists are converging on Madison, Wisconsin. They’re attending the fifth National Independent Politics Summit at the University of Wisconsin. This national conference is being organized by the Independent Progressive Politics Network, which brings together 35 groups from around the country working on a variety of issues. And today we’re going to talk about where the Green Party is, the New Party, the Labor Party, but also go back in time to some of the parties, like the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the 1960s, the La Raza Unida Party and the Populist Party, to talk about where these independent parties today have come from.

And we’re joined by a range of people who are going to be in Wisconsin, or had hoped to be, except for some terrible weather conditions. We want to start, though, with Winona LaDuke. She is an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of the White Earth Anishinaabeg. She resides on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. And she is hoping to be, planning to be, the vice-presidential candidate for the Green Party. Ralph Nader, Jello Biafra, Stephen Gaskin are vying for the presidential spot. The big Green Party convention will be held in Boulder in a few weeks. As we look today at where these parties are, Winona LaDuke of the Green Party; Baldemar Velásquez, co-chair of the Labor Party; Suzanne Wall of the New Party will talk a little about what they’re doing.

Winona LaDuke, the Green Party, as we are in the 2000 presidential race, how are you situated?

WINONA LADUKE: Hi there.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. It’s good to have you with us.

WINONA LADUKE: Well, thank you for calling.

AMY GOODMAN: This is a very bad line. Is there a way you could come right to the phone?

WINONA LADUKE: I am right to the phone.

AMY GOODMAN: Great, terrific.

WINONA LADUKE: Is that better?

AMY GOODMAN: Yeah, perfect.

WINONA LADUKE: You know, the issues that we’re looking at are the issues that are not covered by the major parties, issues like the environment, issues like social justice, issues like, you know, whether it is a living wage, reparations and reconciliation, nuclear waste policy. And those are all things that my partner there, Ralph, is out actively campaigning on right now. He’s been out there in about 42, 43 states, really actively working on these issues and trying to bring them to the attention and into the debate, and working on getting on the ballot in a lot of those states. Last election, we were on the ballot in about 28 states. We’re looking at being on the ballot in about 44, 45 states this time. As you know, and I’m sure other people will tell you, it’s very difficult as a third party to get on the ballot in some of these states. It’s pretty much exclusive and prohibitive. And that’s one of the questions we have about this democracy, is how people who do not feel that they are within the folds of those parties are supposed to participate in the electoral process.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Winona LaDuke, the Green Party in Europe has been a very important, critical force. But here in the United States, it’s had, as you say, a lot of difficulty even getting on the ballot. How do you respond to those people who, having been raised in the public schools of this country, are told constantly that we have a two-party system? How do you get them to concede or to consider the possibility of voting for the Green Party and not seeing it as a vote that is either a wasted vote or a vote that, in essence, hurts a party that is considered by some to be more oriented toward working people, the Democratic Party, versus the Republican Party?

WINONA LADUKE: Good question. Well, first of all, you know, what I’d say is that people died for the right to vote in this country. And you should be able to go to the polls and not vote for the lesser of two evils, not vote for someone because you don’t want someone else to win, which is what a good portion of Americans do right now, or they just don’t vote. What we should be able to do is to cast our vote for things we believe in, so that we can actualize a democracy that represents our values, that represents the things that you and I, the common people, are trying to look at. And that is the underlying principle. And in order to achieve that, it takes time. You know, it’s unfortunate that we’ve got to this situation now where basically big business has so much influence over politics that you and I are excluded from it.

But you have to take a perspective of, you know, the broader context. As you said, the Green Party is active, for instance, in over 80 countries, and there’s over 200 members of the European Parliament who are members of the Green Party. That gives you a little bit of context that this same wellspring of desire to talk about the environment, to talk about social justice, to talk about nonviolence, that those issues are issues which resonate with people around the world. And that did not happen overnight. You know, what we are hoping to do is to recover that process. It’s the same thing a lot of alternative parties are looking at.

And we may not have the money that George Bush Jr. has or that Al Gore has, but what we want to see is we want to see a million people get out there and either contribute 100 bucks or 100 hours, and begin that process of you and I recovering that civic responsibility, that relationship to the electoral process, which right now, you know, instead we’re watching TV, you know, to get out there and to say this matters. Bad people get elected, and we need to unelect those bad people. We need to have people that we believe in in there, and we need to engage in recovering democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Baldemar Velásquez, co-chair of the Labor Party Interim National Council and president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO in Ohio, you have been working with the Labor Party. Are there differences with the Green Party? And how are you positioning yourself in this year? Are you running candidates?

BALDEMAR VELÁSQUEZ: No, not running candidates. I think that we’re in the process of building a party, putting together the infrastructure, requirements to be able to figure out a way to sort out the fundraising so we don’t get in problems with the government and all of that. I mean, you know, the infrastructure of a party is going to be very, very critical if you’re going to mobilize masses of blue-collar people, working people around the country in an electoral race.

And I think Winona’s comments resonate with myself. You know, many of the people in the Labor Party, members of different unions are going to — and other progressive organizations are going to support whatever candidate at this point that best fits their needs. And I think that this is the question that we have to figure out how to reconcile the present interests of the people on the ground to promoting and supporting an alternative candidate to the Republicans and the Democrats, because it’s obviously that those two parties have primarily the concern of the very wealthy people in mind, and they’re not going to depart from that strategy. That’s just been shown over and over again with these international trade agreements. And I think that it’s causing many of the blue-collar rank-and-file people to look elsewhere.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Baldemar, within the labor movement, obviously, there has been debate over this for quite a while, but very few unions — I know I can think of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, obviously, who have always favored a third-party direction. Very few unions have left the fold of the Democratic Party, except a couple of them to go into the Republican Party on different occasions. What do you think is happening? Do you think the resurgence within the labor movement now, in terms of organizing, will have some impact on the political choices that the unions make?

BALDEMAR VELÁSQUEZ: Well, I think that, first of all, we have to understand, with all third parties, whether it’s the Greens or the Labor Party or the New Party, whoever they may be, that we’re dealing with a population of people, our people, whose fate is really tied to the wealthy people in control of the economic institutions of our society, and therefore it causes many people to have to participate in electoral politics, many times on the local and state and the regional levels. That’s going to happen for some time.

The question is: Can third parties, whether it’s the Labor Party or anybody else, come up with an economic program that’s going to challenge the powers that are to turn this and focus this nation around on opening up the democracy and the participatory processes in these economic and social institutions? That’s not going to happen overnight. But I really believe that the more initiatives that there are for local candidates, statewide candidates, run as an alternative, that somehow, down the road, that we’ll come to a crossroad and say, “Hey, it just makes more sense to coalesce and join forces and have an economic strategy of how we’re going to approach these financial interests that really control us all the time.”

I mean, insurance companies, multinational corporations, you talk about, they’re the ones that are driving the policies, the economic and political policies, of our country. And our foreign policy all gets mixed into the bag. When are we going to have an analysis and have an independent political direction that’s going to question and challenge these financial interests, that’s going to be able to figure out a way that makes a distinction between those who are in the upper classes of control and the financial interests and those of us who are not? And that’s the majority of us.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you mount a serious opposition if everyone is divided into small, little third parties? I’m going to put that question to Suzanne Wall, secretary of the New Party and a member of Seattle Union Now. Now, like Baldemar Velásquez, you are part of the AFL-CIO. You’re working with Seattle Union Now, which is the AFL-CIO’s organizing project in Seattle. You worked with Labor for Jackson in 1988. Why the New Party, Suzanne, the Labor Party, the Green Party?

SUZANNE WALL: Well, certainly, the idea of building a new party in America is not a new idea, and we take a lot of, really, inspiration from the Mississippi Freedom Democrats, who I understand we’re going to be talking about later. I want to say good morning to Brother Velásquez. The first picket line I ever walked was FLOC in Ohio, so great to be on the same program with you.

BALDEMAR VELÁSQUEZ: Hallelujah!

AMY GOODMAN: And FLOC is the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

SUZANNE WALL: And thanks to Winona LaDuke for —

BALDEMAR VELÁSQUEZ: Thank you.

SUZANNE WALL: That’s right. And to thank Winona LaDuke for coming to Portland, Oregon, when we were fighting to raise the minimum wage. That was some really important direct actions that we did to show support for raising the minimum wage.

And I think that’s what ties us together, all of the efforts to build new parties, to revive democracy, really to get back to the hope of democracy, is what we have in common, is really based on our values, as Winona said, and driven by our issues. I think the different strategies that the third parties are using, I think, have important differences. The New Party strategy really is to start from the bottom up, to start from the local level, running people for school board, county commissioner, city council, which is where we really think that the power has devolved to in America, as the federal government kind of got out of the business of helping folks.

And part of what we do in the New Party is we helped start the movement for a living wage campaign. And embedded in those living wage campaigns is, as Brother Velásquez said, a real way to challenge the economic institutions. But also, importantly, we’ve incorporated in those measures real ways to respect workers’ right to organize. Dr. King said the best anti-poverty program is a union contract. And we believe that. And we think that it should be part of the party’s mission to really help the blue-collar institutions, the institutions of working people, get stronger. So we think increasing our ability to organize into unions to give workers, really, freedom of choice to choose unions —

AMY GOODMAN: Is New Party fielding candidates anywhere in the country?

SUZANNE WALL: Yes, we’ve run over 300 candidates, and we’ve elected over 200. So we’re winning about two-thirds of our races.

AMY GOODMAN: Where? What level?

SUZANNE WALL: It started with the local level, so that’s county commissions, city councils, school boards, educational service districts. In our eight years of existence, since about 1992, we’ve also started participating in some congressional races. We elected our first alderman kind of in the belly of the beast. In Chicago, Illinois, we elected an alderman in the 15th Ward. And we helped elect Danny Davis, who’s the congressman from the South Side of Chicago.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Winona LaDuke, in terms of the strategy of the New Party to concentrate from the bottom up, I know the Green Party has run many folks in statewide races and, clearly now, at the presidential level. What do you see as the strengths of your approach?

WINONA LADUKE: Well, I think that the way that we believe is that you have to kind of work on all levels. And obviously, for instance, having Ralph decide to run as a Green Party candidate, Ralph is not a local organizer or a state organizer. Ralph is a national figure. And, you know, in terms of when we’re talking about whether it’s issues of corporate welfare or the fact that, you know, we have a federal budget where we spend a third of our money on the military, these are national issues. And we have to somehow engage in a public debate on what is right about the decisions that are made by, presently, the two-party system. And so, you know, I support all aspects of all the strategies, because you have to work on a multitude of levels in order to regain some kind of control over democracy in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve got some very serious power now, the Green Party. Ralph Nader, in a number of states, is polling now in double digits, ahead of Pat Buchanan, who gets a hundred times more, or more, press attention. And yet Ralph Nader is ahead of him. And when he was on Russert’s show, Meet the Press, on Sunday morning, he really went after Gore, which I would assume will mean that Gore’s people are going to start dealing with him behind the scenes, because the race for president is expected to be so close. And he is plugging away at his environmental label, Gore’s, talking about how he was such an instrumental force pushing through NAFTA, etc. How do you deal with the press, I mean, this very clear-cut bias, when he’s ahead of Buchanan, and yet Buchanan is getting all the attention?

WINONA LADUKE: We need to challenge who controls the press in this country and how decisions are made, you know, as to what gets on in terms of the press in this country, because that is the reality, is that a lot of us are excluded from that whole process. And we need to keep hammering on these same set of issues, because, of course, I echo what Ralph says about Gore. I mean, he represents himself as the environmental president, but, for instance, his stock in Occidental Petroleum and the fact that there’s these Indian people down in Colombia that are getting killed in order so that his company can develop oil down there, and the U.S. military policy for Colombia, I mean, it’s the third-largest recipient of military aid. You know, the fact is, is that it’s one piece on top of another piece on top of another piece about whether it is corporate privilege or whether it — you know, and it’s all about something which disempowers the common people.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, when you talk about disempowering, one of the things that I’ve noted in terms of the development of political parties in this country is that, in essence, even the established two corporate parties have basically disintegrated because the political parties now are largely campaign operations with huge media budgets. They no longer have campaign workers or structures throughout the different precincts and wards as they once used to that deliver the vote. They basically depend on their ability to take up the airwaves and get voters out that way. How do you break through this increasing sort of nonparticipation of the American people in — not just in politics, but in civic life in general?

WINONA LADUKE: I think we each do it in our own way. I mean, I come from an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota, and I work for a nonprofit. And what I find is that we tried to get the federal government to take care of it, we tried to get the state or the tribal government to take care of it, and, you know, it was the same thing: Nothing happened. And so, what we realized is that we were the people who live there and that if something was going to happen that was going to better the conditions of our community, it was probably going to be us that was going to have to take care of that. But, in fact, we’re responsible adults. And so we built kind of a model based on that, which is just in order for us to make a better future for our community.

And I think that that is true all across this country. There are people who are trying to make a difference in this way. And so you encourage people with those models. You say, “Look, there are people who are making a difference,” and you remind people that change is made by the hands of individuals. You know, people were not given the right to — women were not given the right to vote in this country. You know, women had to go out and organize to get the right to the vote. Anything that has happened to this country has happened because people engaged in the process.

AMY GOODMAN: Winona LaDuke, Baldemar Velásquez, Suzanne Wall, we have to move on now and actually go back in time to look at parties that were set up earlier in the century. But if people want to get in touch with the Green Party, which is having its national convention in Colorado, in Boulder, Colorado, in three weeks; Baldemar Velásquez, if they want to get in touch with the Labor Party; and, Suzanne Wall, with the New Party, where can they call or go on the web? Let’s start with you, Winona.

WINONA LADUKE: Well, you can — as far as the Nader campaign, you can go to VoteNader.com.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s VoteNader.com. And I can see your 4-month-old baby is already dialing the phone. Maybe he’s —

WINONA LADUKE: That’s exactly right.

AMY GOODMAN: So, thanks for being with us, Winona LaDuke —

WINONA LADUKE: Thank you for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: — with the White Earth Reservation, northern Minnesota, vice-presidential candidate for the Green Party, they expect in the next few weeks. Baldemar Velásquez, the Labor Party, speaking to us from Ohio?

BALDEMAR VELÁSQUEZ: Yes, you can get a hold of the LaborParty.org. And you can reference anything to the Labor Party through our office here at 1221 Broadway, Toledo, 43609.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’ll have this on our website. And, Suzanne Wall, secretary of the New Party?

SUZANNE WALL: Yes. We’re at NewParty.org. That’s our website. And that’s linked back to chapter websites. And the regular old phone number is 800-200-1294.

AMY GOODMAN: 800-200-1294. I want to thank you all for being with us. You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! When we come back, the Mississippi Freedom Party, La Raza and populist moment. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. As we talk about independent politics in the year 2000, we also go back to the 1800s, to the Populist Movement in the United States. Lawrence Goodwyn joins us in the studios of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written the book, The Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America. Tell us about the Populists. What was their moment?

LAWRENCE GOODWYN: Well, their moment was in the 1890s. They approached this problem, that your guests today have spelled out pretty clearly, in a slightly different way. The essential dilemma that every party faces, a third party, is whether to start trying to build a party by building the party or trying to start a party by recruiting people to an ongoing institution and then later, after a number of people have been recruited, politicizing them or converting them to the third party. That’s — the Populists did the latter.

For years prior to the emergence of the People’s Party in 1892, they recruited people to the Farmers’ Alliance, the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union. It was in the South and the West, very strong in about 15 states. And it turned out that when the efforts of these farmers to build a cooperative movement encountered various corporate difficulties and corporate opposition, they decided to form a third party and run against the Democratic and Republican parties on the grounds that both were controlled by business and they were, in fact, corporate parties, which in fact they were. And the task then became to convert members of the Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union from their prior loyalties to either one of the two parties, the old parties, to the new party.

And they were able to — it’s interesting that about 95%, somewhere between — there’s never been a statistical study of this, but based on my anecdotal evidence from my own laborers, I would estimate that somewhere between 85 and 95% of all the people who voted for the People’s Party in the 1890s had, prior to that time of walking into the booth and casting the vote, had been members of the Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union, 85 to 95%. So that was their strategy, to recruit people to an institution where they could talk to each other, find a — create an environment in which they could analyze the political system, locally, regionally and nationally, and, after a passage of time, find a way to create a third party. That’s the route they went.

It has liabilities, as everybody on our program today has spelled out. One of your guests said she supports all aspects of all efforts of the New Party and the Labor Party and the Green Party, and well that that’s said that way, because there are many, many problems in creating a third party in the United States. The laws of the country do not easily facilitate the appearance of a third party.

In Europe, if a new party appears on the scene and runs for office and its candidates, say, for the national parliament get 6% of the vote, in many countries they are entitled — that party is then entitled to 6% of the representation in the national house of representatives, whatever it may be called. And that gives a new party visibility. They have human beings visibly in office who advocate the particular issues that that third party is attempting to get on the national agenda of that country.

That doesn’t happen in the United States. You have to — 6% of the vote means you lose. And there’s no national representation, not a single person. So, that, the laws of the United States — it’s not just ballot access, which is a huge problem. Many states have laws so stringent that new parties, such as the Greens or the Labor Party or the New Party, have immense difficulty getting on the ballot. So that’s a problem. But then the basic laws of the country regarding how a new party can achieve some degree of national visibility through human beings — one of your guests mentioned that in the modern era, there are very few human beings who spend their time in the Democratic or Republican parties. We don’t have campaign workers anymore. These parties are shells, don’t have people in them. They’re engines of national campaign — they’re really engines of advertising agencies and political consultants who formulate strategies and media.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Lawrence Goodwyn, I’d like to ask you, in terms of the — many people are not aware of the enormous influence of the Populists at the turn of the century. My understanding is, in places like Texas, they went up to about 40% of the vote, and that, in fact, that the Democrats in Texas then backed all of the poll taxes and other — and establishing of literacy tests that, in essence, dropped the voter participation in Texas and other states way down compared to voter participation at the height of the Populists.

LAWRENCE GOODWYN: Yes, actually, in Kansas, the third party actually came to power, to some extent. They elected governors and had heavy representation in the House and Senate in Kansas. And they had a large presence in Texas and across the South and West. And it is also true, as you just said, that when the Populist effort was repelled in the South, classic Southern Democrats took some steps to make it more difficult in the future for this to ever happen again. And, effectively, the disfranchisement of Black Southerners effectively began in response to the Populist effort. And the very first disfranchisement was in Mississippi in 1890. It continued in other states through the first decade of the 20th century. Those laws not only succeeded in disfranchising Black Southerners, but also poor white Southerners, so that the electorate was radically reduced in state after state.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring Victoria Gray Adams into the conversation, co-founder, with Fannie Lou Hamer, of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. How did you do it?

VICTORIA GRAY ADAMS: Well, excellent question.

AMY GOODMAN: I should say that Victoria Gray Adams is speaking to us from Mississippi.

VICTORIA GRAY ADAMS: From Petersburg, Virginia, as a matter of fact, this morning. But anyway, you know, someone, I think, just recently really hit on it. The parties are no longer composed of the people. The structures are no longer composed of the people, you know? And I think that the key to the formation and development of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was around the organizing of the people in the local communities and involving them in the process of developing the MFDP every step of the way. So, we were organizing, but we were also educating, you know, [inaudible], if you will, because so many of us in Mississippi, we just didn’t have a clue about political participation and organizing.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did you decide to break with the Democratic Party in Mississippi? And what was its significance? Talk about exactly how you formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

VICTORIA GRAY ADAMS: We broke because we weren’t a part of the party in the first place, as the previous speaker just pointed out. We were totally, totally excluded from the Democratic Party in Mississippi for all practical purposes, OK? And so we began with, first of all, securing the right to become registered voters, OK? We had to start from the very beginning, from the very beginning. We had to become registered to vote. And that was an unbelievable struggle in Mississippi in the ’60s, was getting, securing that right to become registered voters. And, of course, if we had continued to attempt to abide by the process as it was laid out there, we may have gotten registered by 20,000 — you know, 2050 or something of the sort, but no time in the near future. And so, we began with the right to register to vote, and then we organized the people as we went.

As people made efforts to get registered to vote, they were, first of all, taught the importance of that vote. So, it’s about education, it’s about organization, it’s about participation of the people. And that is what we really and truly don’t have right now. You know, I get so tired of receiving these requests for money to get out the vote, etc., etc., etc., when the fact of the matter is, you know, we’re doing the same thing here that they are talking about doing up there, except we’re not talking about the same thing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Victoria Gray Adams, I’d like to bring in one final guest, Daniel Osuna, who was a member and a leader of La Raza Unida Party. La Raza Unida, of course, in the ’60s, had an enormous impact in the West and the Southwest, coming out of the roots of the old — the famous Crystal City battles in Texas and spreading throughout Texas and Colorado. Daniel Osuna, what can you draw from that experience of La Raza Unida to the present day? And welcome, first, to Democracy Now!

DANIEL OSUNA: Oh, thank you. Can you hear me all right?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, we can hear you fine.

DANIEL OSUNA: OK. What can I draw from the experience? You know, well, first off, let’s start from the point that this is the illusion that most people — because we look at media and we look at history, but we look at it in a compartmentalized manner. In other words, we look at everything in a section. And we don’t realize that La Raza Unida started in 1848, when Mexico had the war with the United States. And I’m drawing from the history at this point and my experiences.

And what I remember reading about Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, or Cheno Cortina, at that period of time, who started La Raza Unida way back when against the war with the United — the United States started the war with Mexico, and he started that defense. And it created an organization that was probably unseen in anything that we can imagine in today’s — if we had an organization as effective as that organization, we would literally be an organized group of people. But we never learn that, because it’s always hidden from us. It’s compartmentalized. It’s separated from the rest of history. So, when we look at history, we look at the late 1960s, and we think that La Raza Unida started then, when it started really a long time ago. It just went, so to speak, underground. In other words, it didn’t literally sit there and kindle, but the essence of it kindled around in the minds. And all we need to do is ask our grandfathers and grandmothers what happened before we came, see? But every generation thinks that they started the organization or the organizing process.

And that’s what we need to understand, that everything historically — if we look at history, we can understand the process of how we’ve gotten to where we’re at. So, looking at the late 1960s, when La Raza Unida reemerged, then what I draw from that experience is who I am today and where I’m going. And that experience has taught me so much. But I remember one specific thing that I believe that Victoria spoke about briefly. And she said —

AMY GOODMAN: We just have about 10 seconds.

DANIEL OSUNA: OK. She basically said that — I lost my thought. But anyway, the bottom line is, is that La Raza Unida isn’t around right now. It’s in that rekindling stage. But it is going to reemerge, in that standpoint.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all very much for being with us, a very brief discussion, and we will certainly flesh it out in these weeks to come, and months, as we lead into the presidential race, and we’re already there, but Election Day. Daniel Osuna, member and leader of La Raza Unida Party; Victoria Gray Adams, co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; and Lawrence Goodwyn, author of the Democratic Promise, looking at the Populist Movement in America, starting in the 1800s.

That does it for the program. Democracy Now! is produced by David Love and Jeremy Scahill. Matthew Finch is our engineer. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!