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Wednesday, October 4,
2000
Green
Party founded on values
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How to submit a letter
The Press-Citizen
is always interested in the thoughts and views of its
readers.
To express your views,
drop us a line in the mail, addressed to opinion editor
Chuck
Baldwin at P.O. Box 2480, Iowa City, Iowa, 52244,
or fax us at (319) 834-1083, or e-mail us at mailto:cbaldwin@press-citizen.com
You can also drop a
letter by the office at 1725 N. Dodge St., Iowa City.
Letters must be signed
and include the writer's daytime phone number for verification.
Letters might be edited for length.
If you have any questions,
call opinion editor Chuck Baldwin at (319) 337-3181, extension
678.
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Are you fed up with the tired rhetoric of the presidential
campaign?
Are
you thinking about staying away from the polls on Nov. 7 because
you don't want to have to vote for the lesser of two evils?
Are
you totally fed up with politics as usual?
Ralph
Nader and Winona LaDuke are the Green Party candidates for president
and vice president.
Both
candidates have an impressive record of public service. Nader
and LaDuke are running on a platform that advocates universal
health care, restraining corporate power and protecting the
environment.
Ralph
Nader has made his name as a consumer advocate. In his book
Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader attacked the American auto industry
for producing unsafe cars. In 1971, Nader founded Public Citizen,
a leading national consumer-advocacy group. Since then he has
helped start many public-interest organizations and written
several other books.
Winona
LaDuke has been active in Native American rights and environmental
advocacy for many years. In the mid-'80s, LaDuke founded the
White Earth Land Recovery Project, an organization that seeks
to regain land stolen from the Anishinabeg (Ojibwe) people.
LaDuke has also advocated for Native American uranium miners
and restoring buffalo to the Midwest.
The
Green Party is very different from other political parties because
it was founded on 10 key values: ecological wisdom, social justice,
grassroots democracy, nonviolence, decentralization, community-based
economics, feminism, respect for diversity, personal and global
responsibility, and future focus.
The
Green Party chose Nader and LaDuke as its candidates because
their life's work has been very much in line with the Green
Party values of ecological wisdom, social justice and future
focus.
The
key value of grass-roots democracy is a major difference between
the Green Party and the Democrats or Republicans. The Green
Party shuns corporate influence; and no major "soft money" contributions
are being accepted for Nader's campaign.
Nader
and LaDuke are running on a wide-ranging platform that includes
universal national health care coverage, reigning in corporate
influence and preserving the environment. Although the United
States leads the world in availability of medical technology,
44 million Americans lack health insurance and, therefore, lack
access to even basic medical care.
Private
corporations wield nearly unlimited influence over our government
and society. Agribusiness corporations develop genetically engineered
strains of crops and place them in the food supply without having
to provide evidence of the safety of long-term exposure.
These
issues are just a few of the many covered in the Green Party
platform.
Many
readers have probably already made up their minds about the
election. If you haven't, or you're not sure, please vote for
Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke.
A
vote for them is a vote for the Green Party.
And
a vote for the Green Party is a vote for government "of the
people, by the people, and for the people."
Daniel
Eccher and
Michele Kenyon
Coordinating Committee
Iowa City Green Party
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