WINONA SPEAKS

[Guest guest]

Sorry if I'm cross-posting. Best regards from France. Bernard Blanc.

 

HEADLINE: WINONA SPEAKS;

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE GREEN PARTY VP CANDIDATE

 

BYLINE: By Kristin Kolb-Angelbeck

 

BODY:

While Al Gore and George W. Bush were coming down from their

convention-infomercial

highs, Ralph Nader and his running mate, Winona LaDuke, were

barnstorming their way across

the country and gaining the attention of independent-minded voters. On

August 25, a Portland,

Oregon rally for the Green Party ticket drew more than 10,000 people --

larger than any public

event for Bush or Gore this year.

 

Nader may be a familiar name. But who's Winona LaDuke? The 40-year-old

economist, writer

and mother of three is also a leading voice for American Indian rights.

She lives with her family in

White Earth, an Anishinaabeg reservation in northern Minnesota, where

she heads the White Earth

Land Recovery Project. LaDuke also co-chairs the Indigenous Women's

Network and acts as

program director for Honor the Earth, a national American Indian

foundation.

 

Kristin Kolb-Angelbeck caught up with LaDuke before she left for

Portland, during a pit-stop at

her White Earth home.

 

What does your campaign offer to voters dissatisfied with Gore and Bush?

 

Ralph and I are saying: Let's cut to the quick of the dilemma we are

facing in this society, which is

the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few and the

growing disenfranchisement

of the vast majority of the American people. Al Gore never speaks to the

issue of the disparity of

wealth in this society. He never speaks to the issue of the growing

corporate concentration of

power, the increasing disenfranchisement of the working class in this

country, or how hard it is to

unionize.

 

Most job growth in the past few years has been in temp jobs and low-wage

jobs. More people

are working at places like Wal-Mart for minimum wage. All those people

" happily " moving off

welfare may be employed, but they still are living at or below poverty

level. Bush and Gore do not

speak to these people.

 

What do you want to bring to the national political agenda?

 

First and foremost, we need to move the budget out of a military

economy. A third of the federal

budget is spent on the military right now -- 10 times what we spend on

education. I have two

children in school and one of them had class in a trailer all last year.

But instead of education, they

spend money on new missile systems. We need to transform this military

economy into a

peacetime economy. That transformation would drive not only economic and

social justice, but it

would also do a lot for the environment. The military is the single

largest toxic producer in the

country.

 

We also need to talk about demilitarizing our foreign policy. We're the

single largest purveyor of

small weapons in the world. Today most of the conflicts around the world

are not fought with

ICBMs or F-16s, they're fought with small guns -- if that's what you

want to call an M-16. During

World War I, 95 percent of the people killed were combatants. Today 90

percent of people

killed in wars are women and children. You do not sell guns to people

who violate human rights,

who are going to use those guns to mow down women and children. You

don't give them guns

with my tax dollars.

 

Do you think Bush would do more harm to your community than Gore?

 

Actually, Republican presidents have not been that bad for Indians.

They've returned more land.

Nixon was the best president for Indian people, isn't that interesting?

He gave back more land and

he supported more legislation benefiting Indian people than any other

president of the past 30

years.

 

Indians are suing the federal government for mismanagement of Indian

funds. It's the largest

class-action lawsuit in history. Now why do we have to sue them? Why

couldn't they just say,

" We're going to fix it. " Meanwhile, the Republicans say they will tidy

that up right away: It's on the

Republican Indian platform.

 

What's on your Indian platform?

 

Oh, I've got a big Indian platform. Invest in an alternative energy

policy. One of my big things is

that the Great Plains is considered the " Saudi Arabia of wind power. " We

need heavy investment

there. Plains tribes have all the potential in the world for wind

energy, but they don't have any

money. Meanwhile, 65 percent of research and development money in the

Department of Energy

over the past 40 years has gone to nuclear power and coal. Wouldn't it

be great if we spent it

researching and developing wind and solar power?

 

Also, set a living wage. Offer economic justice for poor communities.

Create economic enterprise

zones based on a localized model. Begin reconciliation and restitution

programs similar to what

[slave reparations advocate] Randall Robinson talks about. Basically,

good countries should

honor their treaties and good countries should not steal.

 

What are the biggest obstacles facing your campaign?

 

One is lack of access to the public forum, especially the debates, and

the other is fear. The vast

majority of the American electorate that is progressive bases their

[political] decisions on fear, not

on principle, and that's a shame. They're like, " Oh no, I can't vote for

him, this might happen. "

We've got to get past that.

 

Is there really no difference for you between Gore and Bush?

 

I lost one of my best friends last year because of Al Gore. Her name was

Ingrid Washinawatok,

and she was killed in Colombia in March 1999. She went down there to

help the U'wa [fight

Occidental Petroleum's plans to drill on their ancestral land] and was

assassinated by the FARC.

Meanwhile, Gore has $ 500,000 worth of Occidental stock and the U.S.

government just gave $

1.3 billion in military aid to Colombia. They are the second largest

recipient of U.S. military aid,

and basically it's used to blow away civilians.

 

What Bill Clinton and Al Gore do is insidious. They let Occidental

executives stay in the Lincoln

Bedroom, and then they give military aid to Colombia to help support

their little oil developments

down there. I cannot support that man. I didn't even vote until 1996. If

I didn't have Ralph to vote

for, I wouldn't vote.

 

Why didn't you vote?

 

Because I just didn't believe in it. I wanted to vote for what I believe

in. Also because of my

circumstances -- a lot of Indian people don't vote because they consider

the United States a

foreign government.

 

Do you think more American Indians are going to vote in this election?

 

Yes. We have the lowest voter turnout of anybody. If I can convince

another 5 to 10 percent to

vote, I'll feel really great. Did you know there are 600,000 Indian

voters in Oklahoma? And there

are 60,000 in Montana. Indians would be a pivotal voting group if we

would get out and vote.

 

What do you think of the media coverage of your campaign? All anybody

really

knows about you is that you're a Native American woman and you're

running with

Ralph Nader.

 

That illustrates how trivialized our campaign is. What do they say about

Dick Cheney? They don't

just say he's a rich white guy. In my case, I got a degree [in

economics] from Harvard; I got a

master's in world development from Antioch. I'm a rural economist by

training. I wrote a couple of

books. I wrote a novel [Last Standing Woman]. I have spent most of my

life working on

energy policy issues for different Indian communities who are being

dammed or flooded or

radiated or torn up for utilities in the East. I'm also the only

candidate whose annual income is

under six digits.

 

Looking at the protests against the WTO and the IMF, what do you see as

a positive

economic alternative to globalization?

 

Localization -- investing in local economies. Remember the rise of the

microbreweries a few years

ago? We need to return to micro-cheeseries, small farms. We need to

value local markets. The

government needs to finance small businesses and stop corporate mergers.

I lost track after AOL

bought Time Warner. It's like a woman with 19 hyphenated last names. I

have no idea who's who

anymore. Keep your own names, ladies.

 

You can't just exist on your island of political correctness. You have

to fight bad guys and make

good. Strengthen your communities. And you've got to vote.

 

[baby cries.]

 

I have three children. I have a six-month-old here that I'm nursing.

 

How do you juggle campaigning and being a mom?

 

Wildly. I always bring the baby with me when I'm travelling. I really

had to trade in my family [to

do this campaign]. So I try to demand family time as much as I can. I

also realize that to ensure a

good life for my kids, I have to retain my political activism.

 

To be honest with you, as a woman, campaigning strikes me as a male

privilege. Guys can walk

away from childcare. All those politicians have someone else take care

of their kids. But I'd rather

be with my kids than out shaking hands.

 

As a woman and a mother, how do you see yourself bringing a different

perspective

to politics?

 

I see the back end of all the laws the Washington guys write. Living in

a poor community, as a

woman and as a mother, I feel the absence of good education programming,

of funding for

daycare and health programs for kids. Every four years, I see these guys

talking about what to do

with women's bodies. But you don't hear them talking about the quality

of women's lives in

between campaigns.

 

I think I bring a much more holistic perspective. If you care about the

quality of life for future

generations, you better care about the quality of life for women and

children. And that better mean

clean air, clean water, good health care, good education. That's your

future. Your future is not in

how many guns you have. Your future is in the well-being of your kids.