Nader bashes big business

By Ryan May
Daily Forty-Niner

Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader spoke out against corporate control and promoted workers' rights at the Long Beach Arena Friday in his final appearance on the West Coast before the election Tuesday.

Drawing a crowd of nearly 7,200 to what the Nader campaign dubbed a "Super Rally," Nader was joined by long-time friend and talk-show host Phil Donahue, musicians Patti Smith and Jackson Browne and Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate Medea Benjamin, among others.

"We are positioned to shock the body politic this Tuesday," Donahue said. "The public has finally awakened to the realization that their entire presidential campaign season was bought and paid for by corporate America. They're angry about that and it will never happen again."

Summarizing his campaign as a shift of power from big business to the people, Nader pointed to the control of corporations as a cause for poverty in the United States, despite a booming economy. Further, he said the campaign sought to create a long-range political reform movement and build a viable third party that would act as a watchdog on the two major political parties.

"Our democracy has been hijacked by corporations who, in return for funding both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have received extraordinary power over our government and over our democracy to the disadvantage of the American people," Nader said.

Nader also addressed the disinterest toward politics by younger voters, citing a poll that found young people want nothing to do with politics because they felt it was only about "lying and money."

"Youths have a high level of expectation, a high level of energy," Nader said. "If they're given responsibility and they're given a program that responds to their idealism, and where the country and the world should be heading, they'll get back more into politics, especially when they'll become candidates themselves."

Nader has received a heightened level of interest from the public and the media in the past few weeks as the race between the two major presidential candidates, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, remains separated by only a few percentage points, according to a recent Gallup poll.

Critics charge that Nader, currently holding only 5 percent of the vote, will lure voters away from the major political candidates, a charge he dismisses.

"[People] are going to get politics as usual unless they stop staying at home or stop voting for the least of the worst or lesser of two evils, ensuring that every four years both parties get worse and you've still got evil," Nader said.  "If you don't turn on to politics ... politics will turn on you."