> Note: David McReynolds is on the ballot in Florida.
>
> David vs. Goliath
> By Kari Lydersen
>
> (from In These Times, April 17, 2000, http://www.inthesetimes.com
>
> Pitting himself against George W. Bush and Al Gore, David
> McReynolds might as well be fighting Goliath. But such odds
> have never stopped him before.
>
> McReynolds is the Socialist Party USA's candidate for president,
> following in the footsteps of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas.
> Though he readily admits he has absolutely no chance of winning
> the election, McReynolds thinks he can stir things up and show that
> hope for a just, non-capitalist society isn't dead.
>
> At age 70, McReynolds has been an activist for more than half a
> century. He was no red diaper baby, however. Bom in Los Angeles
> a few days before the 1929 stock market crash to religious Republican
> parents, as a fresh-faced teen-ager, the energy he now devotes to
> pacifism, socialism and human rights was instead poured into
> church and the temperance movement. At age 17, he went to
> Garden City, Kansas to organize for the Prohibition Party.
>
> But as a student at UCLA during the late '40s, McReynolds "fell in
> with the bohemian socialists," as he tells it, and started to question
> his beliefs. "During World War II we thought we were fighting for a
> better world," he says. "So then the Cold War was a terrible shock
> to us. How do you explain that that was what we were fighting for?"
>
> In 1951 he traveled by ocean liner to a pacifist youth conference in
> Denmark; he broke with the Protestant Church when he returned
> and joined the Socialist Party. He left L.A. for New York in 1956 to
> take a job at Liberation magazine, working with A.J. Muste, Bayard
> Rustin, Dave Dellinger, Sid Lens and Roy Finch, getting what he
> calls "an education not available at any university."
>
> He ran for Congress in 1958 as a write-in candidate in Lower
> Manhattan. In 1960, he joined the pacifist War Resisters League,
> and worked for the organization until his retirement last year, traveling
> the world speaking and demonstrating against war and militarization.
> He was a leading figure in many anti-Vietnam War coalitions, traveling
> to Vietnam in 1966 and 1971 to meet with dissident groups. He also
> photographed Pol Pot's death pits in Cambodia and spoke out
> against U.S. support of the brutal regime.
>
> He was trapped in Czechoslovakia as Soviet tanks rolled in during
> Prague Spring of 1968. Later that year, he ran for Congress again
> on Eldridge Cleaver's Peace and Freedom ticket, managing to get
> 5 percent of the vote.
>
> He was among the first openly gay political candidates, having come
> out in WIN magazine in 1969, and though he doesn't see himself as
> a "gay and lesbian candidate," he has continued to work for gay rights.
>
> While so many activists faded away after the '60s and '70s, McReynolds
> has continued going strong. He ran for president in 1980, calling for the
> dissolution of NATO. In 1989, he went to Libya to help establish contact
> with that country, and after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, he went to
> Baghdad to help negotiate the release of several hostages.
>
> As a presidential candidate again, he hopes to provoke a dialogue among
> both voters and the mainstream candidates on the issues too often ignored.
> "There are issues that are never addressed by Gore and Bush that need to
> be talked about," says McReynolds, who now lives on Manhattan's Lower
> East Side. "Things like the failure of the drug war, the growth of the prison
> system, the Iraqi sanctions, the military budget, the fact that we don't have
> any serious affordable housing. These are not exactly radical issues "
>
> His official platform calls for universal, publicly funded health care,
> renewable energy, ecologically safe food, equal human rights for all
> and an immediate 50 percent cut in the U.S. military budget.
>
> While he says there is a limit to how much change can come through
> electoral politics, McReynolds still thinks it is worth participating.
> "Having spent a lifetime in the movement, I know electoral politics is
> a small part of it," he says. "Most civil rights, gay rights, feminist rights
> were not won through electoral politics but through education and
> direct action. But the electoral arena is a very legitimate way to raise
> these issues."
>
> McReynolds isn't worrying about getting on the ballot in every state, but
> is focusing on key states like Illinois, where demographics and election
> rules mean he has a better chance to become an official candidate. And
> while he doesn't particularly care how many votes he gets, he hopes to
> leave people talking about his ideas for the future.
>
> McReynolds' vision for third party politics is a coalition of labor, gay and
> lesbian, feminist, socialist, pacifist and other progressive groups.
> Ultimately, he'd just like to get people to actually consider alternatives
> to capitalism, instead of just highlighting its faults. "I'm tired of hearing
> about everything the left is against," he says. "We need to start talking
> about what we are for."