POLITICS : Brown Seeks ‘an America That Works for All of Us’

You’ve heard about our campaign--we call it “We the People;” it’s the first presidential campaign that I know about that committed itself from Day 1 not to take the large contributions but to live on the shoulders of ordinary Americans--small donations, never more than $100, and when all the candidates have dropped out, we’re still here.

. . . In April, 32,000 people donated to our campaign money for . . . federal matching funds. We collected $1.7 million, more than (Bill) Clinton, more than (President) Bush, and more people gave to us than gave to both of them. That’s a people power.

. . . I’ve been in politics, I’ve raised money, I understand how the system works. . . .

And what we have here is a fundamental contradiction--less and less connection to grass-roots people, to ordinary citizens and more and more dependency on that few, the top 1%, who are getting more of the nation’s treasure and assets and are controlling and buying politicians like selling bars of soap.

Now that is the challenge that we have to find a way to overcome. . . . It’s going to take a group of people sustaining a commitment to take back the country, because what is going on here is an unraveling and undermining of democracy itself.

Two weeks ago, George Bush had a party, and at that party he would stand and have his picture taken for $92,000 apiece. . . . You’ve heard about the second-oldest profession? Yeah, that is the prostitution of the public trust. I will promise you, if George Bush wasn’t President, no one would pay $92,000 to get their picture with him. . . .

Politics is the only business where perfect strangers come and give you $1,000. And when you’re in this business, pretty soon you think: “Gee, people really like me.” They want something, and they want something in a way that if you see what is happening, they’ve been getting it.

The Federal Reserve Board in the last week has put out a report that shows that the top 1% now have more wealth and assets than 90% of the American people put together. One percent, that’s 2.5 million people, have more money and more assets than 225 million. . . . It’s beginning to look like a Third World distribution of income. . . .

How many people here in this audience have never given a $1,000 check to a politician? Right there, raise your hand. All right, there it is, so you are not the kind of people that anyone can spend time with if they’re running for President, or for governor or for senator--because you don’t count. You are mere extras in a bad political movie.

OK. So we have started a movement, a cause to challenge that status quo that’s not working. And it’s not working because what is happening is that the government has allowed the pressure of multinational companies to increasingly globalize the economy in this sense: The jobs are being exported and wages are being depressed, the standard of living is going down. . . .

When the multinational companies traveling under the doctrine that absolute, unfettered free trade is what you need, then you move to Mexico, to Ciudad Juarez, to Tijuana, where people are living in shacks, making a couple of bucks an hour and sometimes much less, no health benefits.

And those jobs used to be here, they used to be in South-Central Los Angeles. Seventy thousand factory jobs were taken out of South-Central Los Angeles in the last 15 years, leaving about 20,000. . . . When you take a $10-an-hour job out and you bring back a $2 sub-minimum-wage, garment-industry-exploited, sweatshop job . . . you create the kind of despair and injustice that we saw the results of last week (the Los Angeles riots). . . .

You see what’s happening is that your fate is being measured, your potential, your wage-earning capacity is now in competition with the lowest possible wage in the world. And that’s after a factory in Michigan is closed down and then it goes to Mexico. After Mexico then to Malaysia, seeking the lowest possible standard.

And when they say lowest possible standard they mean wages, health, working conditions, environmental--look at the pollution down in Tijuana and Juarez. See, what’s happening is corporate leadership has found a way to increase profits by destroying communities, weakening living standards and moving out to other countries where they’re defenseless. . . .

The big issue now is, are we going to intervene to create an economic plan and strategy to shape investments to create . . . a living family wage and a respect for the environment? Or, are we going to do nothing, deregulate, export jobs and then send the Army in later to clean up and protect the order against the despair and the hatred and the bitterness that comes out of absolute economic wasteland? . . .

It is sad, it is very sad, when in the United States of America, when you’ve got 1% of the people owning more money than 90%. We can’t find the money to invest in our schools, in our child care, in the kind of things that make this a civilization, even though the Cold War is over. . . .

(Ronald) Reagan came in ’80 and he had this big idea. The big idea was that Russia was going to get us and we had to defend and it would cost a trillion dollars to do it. . . .

Anything less than that kind of large commitment, a commitment to invest in our own cities, to protect against the real threat . . . inequality, illiteracy, poverty, systematic injustice in this country. That’s where we’ve got to put the investment. That’s a much bigger threat than Russia ever was. . . .

When I went to the University of California, tuition the first semester was $125. OK, now it has gone up. Every year course offerings are going down. Loans, student loans, are propping up the entire university system. Students are being made into indentured servants and piling up so much debt that their paychecks compiled over the next 10 to 20 years will be reduced.

And for many, it’s not worth it, and the pressure to lower the wage standard means that the taxes collected are lower, and they’re all saying: “Isn’t this great that General Motors can move 75,000 jobs off to some other country?” It doesn’t make sense. . . .

Germany pays $22 an hour for their average factory wage, they have universal health insurance. . . . They have figured out a way to have high wages, high productivity by investing in research and technological innovation without having to carry this enormous burden of military defense against nonexistent adversaries. . . .

We’re either going to wake up and find out the crisis is right here, we’re either going to have military soldiers guarding us against the despair and the anger of those who’ve been systematically screwed, or we’re going to change and reallocate for a new world order, for a new urban order to a post-Cold War renaissance. . . .

We call it liberty and justice for all, but that’s not true. And that’s what we have to make true. That’s why I’m asking you to help me and this campaign. Send them a message. Wake those people up. They’re not going to change unless they hear from you.

. . . And if you want to look at the larger theme in this, Bush right now is torpedoing the treaty to reduce (carbon dioxide emissions.) . . . Our future is at stake. And we have to look at the fact that, yeah, . . . socialism didn’t make it, but that doesn’t mean what we’re doing is so perfect.

Because it is leading to the reinforcement of greed and the destruction of not only the ozone layer, the rain forest, but even in our own country--creating the cancers and respiratory diseases by the millions and millions of pounds of poison that are put in the air and the soil and the water.

The ineffective packaging, a lack of high-speed transit, behold the lack of alternative energy. We have the potential, but what we don’t have is the political power to make it happen. . . . You’ve got to mobilize against environmental destruction and . . . injustice in the inner cities--bring it all together for a new civil rights movement, a new urban strategy.

An America that works for all of us--that’s what’s at stake in this campaign. . . .

One final aspect that I didn’t mention--and that is the erosion of civil liberties. The Supreme Court now has made it OK to beat prisoners, denying the right to habeas corpus, searching buses without probable cause. More and more invasion--urine tests, blood tests, wiretapping, sting operations. . . .

We got the military standing guard, and yet it doesn’t deal with the problem because we’re not committing this country to a full employment economy, whatever it takes, at a wage that can sustain a family. That’s got to be the moral principle that stands higher than any economic rationale. And unless we conquer the fear through hope and economic justice, you’re going to see all these civil liberties continue to be eroded.

And in that context, you notice how Wade vs. Roe is going under attack. This is another example of how an arrogant government can presume to tell women what they do with their bodies. What a big wrong. Examine what that is--that is a government, a police, a politician, a bureaucrat, whatever, telling a woman what she does with her body. How greater an invasion of someone’s personal liberties can one imagine? . . .

What we have to do is seek the connection between all these different threats to our economy, to our democracy, to our individual freedom, to our community. . . . End of the Cold War, new renaissance, rebuild this country in accordance with the ideals and the beliefs that started it in the first place. That’s our commitment; we will stick with it if it’s a month, a year or the next 10 years. Help us.

THE CANDIDATES’ KEY THEMES / Campaign Clipboard

Limits contributions to $100

Big money corrupts the political process

Jobs are being exported, wages depressed

We need a commitment to invest in our cities

We need to combat environmental destruction

We literally have to revolutionize education

We need to mobilize against injustice

Our civil liberties are being eroded

Roe vs. Wade is under attack