Nader Launches New Nationwide Effort with
Mass Rally in Portland

AUG 06, 2001
The New York Times

An Unrepentant Nader Unveils a New Grass-Roots Project
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 5 - "We've got to raise our expectation level, folks!"
Ralph Nader shouted to a thunderous ovation here on Saturday night at what
he billed as the first major rally to kick off a new "grass-roots movement"
that he calls Democracy Rising. "We've got to raise our expectations!

"Our elections are not for sale!" said Mr. Nader, applause from the crowd of
7,500 people nearly drowning him out. "Our democracy is not for sale! Our
government is not for sale! Our children are not for sale! Our environment,
not for sale!"

Plenty of people may still be furious with Mr. Nader, believing that his
Green Party presidential candidacy did little more than tip the 2000
election to George W. Bush. At least two dozen of them showed up outside
Portland's professional basketball arena, the Rose Garden, to protest Mr.
Nader's speech.

They carried satirical placards, all depicting Mr. Nader, the 67-year-old
consumer advocate, as a pawn and a dupe: "Right-wing freaks coalition for
Nader." "Back-alley abortionists for Nader." "Defense contractors for
Nader." "Citizens against tundra." "Unelectable at any speed." They handed
out leaflets pleading with people going inside to persuade Mr. Nader not to
run for president again, but instead to use his influence to move the
Democratic Party to the left.

But in the 20,000-seat arena, which was curtained off, giving the illusion
of being packed, it was hard to find anyone with a negative word for Mr.
Nader or his candidacy. Nearly all in attendance had paid $10 to hear him
speak, and others contributed even more in the "democracyrising.org"
cardboard boxes that were passed among the crowd.

Though Mr. Nader made virtually no mention of presidential campaigns
past or future in his 57-minute speech and declared that the rally was "not
a political or Green Party event," he remained unrepentant at a news
conference just before about any corollary effects of his candidacy last
year. He reiterated that his sole regret was that he had not received more
votes. (He got about 3 percent nationwide, ranging from 10 percent in Alaska
down to zero in the five states where he was kept off the ballot.)

Mr. Nader brushed aside a question about all those self-identified
progressives who believe his campaign helped nudge Mr. Bush into the White
House. These included protesters outside the arena like Marty Smith, 34, a
Web site developer who said progressives should strive to be "that `nutso,'
must-placate faction of the Democratic Party in the same way the religious
right is something the Republicans have to deal with," and those who took
note of the Nader trip to Portland with a letter to the editor in The
Oregonian, the state's biggest newspapers, urging him to "be an organizer
and evangelizer, not a candidate."

Mr. Nader snapped: "They're getting over it - I mean, it takes a few months.
I was under the impression that Al Gore won the election. I thought that's
what they believe." He depicted his candidacy as having ultimately helped
tip the Senate to Democratic control because, he said, Green Party voters
were clearly a factor in the razor-thin victory of Maria Cantwell, the
Democratic candidate in Washington state.

In any event, he added: "All this talk really comes down to one issue. They
don't think the Democrats should be challenged by any party of the
progressive wing. They haven't been challenged since 1948, with the Henry
Wallace progressive party. They've gotten used to not being challenged.
They've gotten used to telling progressives they have no place to go."

For a man who disdains professional politicians, Mr. Nader has gotten one
trick of the trade down pat, the standard assertion that he is "not even
thinking" about whether to run next time.

"I don't believe in long campaigns," he said, "it's far too early."

And in his depiction, he never really wanted to run in the first place but
saw no other choice. "I'm a civic advocate; I have been for 40 years," he
said. "When the doors are closed on citizen groups in Washington, you've got
to go into the political arena, but that's just a means to a broader
strengthening of the citizenry. I read my Jefferson early."

Mr. Nader said he was hoping that the Portland rally would be the first of
several in big cities that were ultimately designed to spark a
"million-hundred-hundred" movement of the citizenry: one million people
devoting at least 100 hours a year and $100 to a variety of causes like
economic and environmental justice, universal health care, campaign finance
revisions, union organizing, solar energy and better public transportation.

He received prolonged applause during an attack on genetic engineering. "The
new slavery," he said, "is the ownership and control of the genetic
inheritance of the world - the flora, the fauna and the human genes."

The "Nader Rocks the Rose Garden" Portland rally included speeches and
singing by a variety of Green Party figures and professional entertainers
like Danny Glover, Jello Biafra and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. Mr. Nader
declared it all a big success.

"You just have to ask yourself, is anyone else doing this, is anybody else
bringing out thousands of people?" he said. "That's really the comparative
measure. There's a lot of empty arenas in this country, built by taxpayer
money, I might add, and they need to be filled."