Dear friend, pacifist, socialist, relative, cat lover, joke teller, or bromeliad fancier,
This post begins with an explanation and apology. Over the years I've stored some 30 pages of email addresses so I could write to people. This post goes to those of you on those 30 pages - from Moscow to Tokyo to Santa Barbara, from Chicago to Boston, London, Paris, Poughkeepsie and St. Paul. At some point all of you have had some correspondence with me or been on some list where I noted your name. I think most of you will find this of interest - if not, delete now and no time wasted. If you are totally nonpolitical, accept my genuine apologies - I turned my list over to those working on the campaign for this "shot in the dark", with no time to weed people out.
Last September the Socialist Party nominated me to run for President on their ticket. I had run once before, in 1980. I accepted the nomination. Mary Cal Hollis, who ran for President on this ticket four years ago, was drafted for the Vice Presidential slot this time.
While many of you know me primarily from work with the War Resisters League, I have been a dues paying member of the Socialist Party since 1951 when I joined while a student at UCLA. In January of last year I retired from my staff job at War Resisters League and planned to find out, at age 70, what retirement was like. I had not counted on running for President.
I need your help. Before explaining a bit about the campaign, I want to say that the first way you can help me is to send this letter to those friends you think may be interested, or to those lists you are on - political, religious, labor, student, gay/lesbian, feminist - that you think should see it.
The Socialist Party has very little money. This campaign will be a stealth campaign, relying on the trips and apperances Mary Cal and I make, and on things such as this email - and your passing it on, and urging friends to pass it on. Email is vital to our hope of breaking into the media, and getting speaking dates - and using the internet itself as a kind of media to which we have access without great funds.
If you live abroad and have contacts with any left, labor, or peace press, tell them to do a story about the struggling Socialist Party in the heartland of Capitalism, and its candidate in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
I think you may want to give an address to your friends - and try it yourself. It is a fascinating test to see who your candidate might be. I had nothing to do with setting it up - someone in Oregon did. Over 200,000 people have tried it thus far. My name is on the list of candidates. Turn to the web and type in: Selectsmart.com and try the Presidential test. You answer fifteen or so questions, and then you find out which candidate is close to your views. If it is me, then you've got a candidate!
And of course make sure you keep a record of our own campaign web site:
www.votesocialist.org It has pictures, speeches, biography. You can let your local alternative paper know about the campaign or suggest they do an interview. We are also building up a special "campaign mailing list" which will have campaign udates and, about once a week, an opinion piece from me which can be used in any local paper. If you want to be on this list to stay informed, please write ShaunRichman at sp-usa.org
Yes, we need money - rather badly. Let me correct that - we need money very badly. To find out where and how to send checks, check the web site - www.votesocialist.org where you will find that information. (Or just make out a check to McReynolds Campaign Committee and send it to: Campaign 2000, 339 Lafayette St., NYC 10012)
I think it is novel and rather wonderful to have a Presidental slate which demands: a 50% cut in military spending, an end of all arms trading by this country, closing the CIA, closing all US military bases abroad, ending all sanctions on countries such as Iraq, Cuba, etc. (the Iraqi sanctions alone have already caused the death of well over a half million children and elderly there).
A candidate who favors full medical care with a single payer plan similar to that in Canada. Funding low income public housing rather than the Pentagon. Civilian review boards for the police in every city and an end of police brutality. A defense of affirmative action. Ending the drug war - medical treatment for heroin addicts, and decriminalization of marijuana. Increase the minimum wage. Ending the "prison industrial complex" which has given the United States the largest number of prisoners in the entire world - our own Gulag. Gun registration and outlawing assault weapons. High progressive tax rates on the wealthy and the corporations. Defend labor's right to organize. Oppose the WTO.
One will ask, "can he seriously believe that in a time of prosperity beyond measure, when the nation basks in wealth undreamed of by Solomon, that anyone will listen?" Yes, because while the rich have been getting much much richer during this prosperity, labor's share of the economic pie has shrunk. And for the underclass there has been no improvement. The rich are more than satisfied. The working poor are worse off.
I want to see a foreign policy which, in the words of the late A.J. Muste, is based on what is good for children, not corporations. I am shamed that we have allowed the President to go to war without the assent of Congress - from Vietnam to Panama, from the Gulf to Kosova. Presidential wars must end.
I believe a great many Americans - including some who have done very well in this prosperous period - are uneasy, and ask, in the words of that grand old song of Peggy Lee's, "Is that all there is?" Is life only a process of more? Listen to the two major parties compete in appealing to the middle class - and ignoring the poor, those who are "working poor" (what an obscene term, when Donald Trump can be courted for the Reform Party nomination with his vast sums, and Steve Forbes can literally try to buy the GOP nomination, while ANYONE who works for a living is "poor" - how is it possible in a land of such wealth that we can even have "working poor"?).
And yes, I believe in the long march to a different society. Far in the distance, a time where the great corporations will be socially owned, decentralized, and managed by workers and by the community. This seems so contrary to American values . . . or is it? Look back on those great Americans who have shared the dream of deep social change - Eugene Victor Debs, A. Philip Randolph, Helen Keller, A. J. Muste, Norman Thomas, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Harrington, >> WE HAVE TO FIND AT LEAST ONE MORE WOMAN - I DON'T CARE IF IT IS ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN AS A BACKSTOP, NOT SURE HOW TO SPELL HER NAME <<- and believed America was yet to be, that we had a long road ahead of us, where life would be better in ways not measured by cash or credit card, where air would be sweet, waters clear, and the terrorisms, petty or real, that haunt our lives now will be only a memory.
Who wants an America of prosperity but with an armed guard at the door of every store? Prosperous but with metal detectors and students killing students at the High Schools. America is a great work unfinished. Socialists are dreamers - join us in daring not only to dream, but to take the present in our own hands and to help shape it, to make ourselves masters of our future rather than victims of it.
We say to the Fortune 500 - this nation and its people are not for sale to the highest bidder. Our dreams count for more than your corporate logos. If we are passive, then our future, and that of our children, will be written in your boards rooms. We prefer to write that future with our lives, in our community work, and at the ballot box.
I know many of you getting this belong to some socialist organization - Democratic Socialists of America, Committees of Correspondence, Solidarity, Freedom Road Socialists, or the Socialist Party. While my own work is primarily within the Socialist Party I am also a member of DSA and CoC. I deeply hope that a serious Presidential campaign will bring new people, young people, into our movement. Sure - I hope many will join the Socialist Party. But no single organization has the secret key to unlock the door to the future. Be assured, this campaign is about much more than building the Socialist Party - it is about helping to build the movement for democratic socialism. While I would not want to create tensions within groups such as CoC or DSA or Solidarity by pressing for endorsement, I do genuinely ask for the help and support of individual members of these groups wherever possible.
(Last - and a personal note to over a hundred of you from whom I got holiday cards. I know my "annual letter" is now over two years late and some of you may have had dire assumptions as to my fate! I appreciated every note and hope to get my own letter off perhaps this spring. It is as we get older than friends count more and I regret that I have not been able to be in personal touch. Please count this email as a down payment).
If any of this makes sense, help now.
Fraternally,
David McReynolds
relevant email addresses again:
www.votesocialist.org
ShaunRichman at sp-usa.org (for the campaign list)
SelectSmart.com (to take the Presidental preference test!)