I just got back from Boston, where I participated in the Second
Boston Tea Party organized by We, the People. We not only commemorated
the First Boston Tea Party but staged a new one 227 years later. This
one dumped TVs — instead of tea — into the harbor, symbols of
two-party special interest control over our system of election and
government.
We all learned in school about the Boston Tea Party, the first sign
that an insurrection was brewing — so to speak — against the British
Crown. But what is less known about the Boston Tea Party is that it was
not a protest over the price of imported tea. The Tea Act of 1773
imposed a tea tax on the American colonies, but because the British
government was bailing out the British East India Company with
subsidies, the price of English tea was actually cheaper than the
competition’s tea — imported by the Dutch. Parliament and the King
expected that the colonists would accept the taxation because their tea
was so inexpensive.
But Parliament was wrong. The colonists objected not merely to the
tax, but to the process by which the tax was imposed — by an
undemocratic authoritarian fiat over which the American colonies had no
control and in which they had no representation. And so “No Taxation
Without Representation” became the battle cry of the American
Revolution. The political repression which followed the Boston Tea Party
spurred the convening of the Continental Congress in 1774. There the
colonists were strongly united and it was Patrick Henry who put those
sentiments of solidarity into words. He said, “The distinctions between
Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more.
I am not a Virginian — but an American.”
Today, the usurpers of democracy are not the British Crown and
Parliament — but the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Commission
on Presidential Debates, the Federal Election Commission and the
television networks and news media who perpetuate the might of the
two-party system. It is that tyranny that we, the people — most
especially, we, the independents — seek to overthrow.
However, we have some problems of our own. Unlike the days of the
Continental Congress and Patrick Henry — there are many barriers and
boundaries that separate us within our own movement. One is the barrier
of what I like to call “Big-Shotism.” Some independents like to be big
shots. They only want to show up where the Democrats and Republicans
are. They only want to show up where the TV cameras are — where they
can feel close to the centers of power.
Ralph Nader is one of those big shots. He’s been out protesting his
exclusion from the televised presidential debates — as well he should
be. It’s an outrage that he has been excluded. It was an outrage when I
was excluded in 1988, when I was the first woman and first African
American in history to be on the presidential ballot in all 50 states.
I’m proud to raise my voice in protest on his behalf and on behalf of
Dr. John Hagelin and Nat Goldhaber, who are running an independent
presidential campaign for political reform and social unity.
But Ralph Nader won’t show up with the other independents. He didn’t
show up at a debate to which all the independents were invited, hosted
by Gov. Jesse Ventura in Minnesota last week. He would only go on Meet
the Press with the other supposed “big shot” — Pat Buchanan. But with
big shots Nader and Buchanan at less than 5 percent in the polls
combined, we “little shots” have to be concerned that public support for
independent politics has dwindled. Their Big-Shotism has reduced our
vote to less than a quarter of
what it was eight years ago.
But Nader is not only a big shot. He is narrow. He won’t go to the
black community to campaign because people will say, “Why aren’t you
here with Dr. Fulani? She’s America’s leading black independent!” But
Ralph won’t go with me, even though I invited him to, because he’s more
interested in being “legitimate” than in being with black folks. And he
doesn’t show up at the Second Boston Tea Party — even though he was
invited — because,
well, it’s too coalitional and there are too many “little shots.”
Ralph Nader is interested in getting the Greens 5 percent. I applaud
that and I hope they get it. But to be a genuine independent leader
Ralph Nader has to be interested in more than that — he has to be
interested in unifying the independent movement, speaking out for all
the independent candidates, including the “little shots,” and going
anywhere and everywhere the opportunity to build bridges exists.
That’s what I’m about. The little shots. We’re holding the CPD, the
FEC and the networks accountable. And we’re building a broad-based
inclusionary, independent movement for all the American people.
