Ralph Nader

On a swing through his native state, Ralph Nader addressed a cheering crowd at Lincoln Theater on Oct. 4. "There aren't many presidential candidates who can say that they taught at the University of Hartford," he said. The Green Party candidate taught Far Eastern politics at the University in the early '60s.

His campaign rally and press conference at the University took place on the day after he had been turned away from a debate-viewing site at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Speaking to an audience of students, faculty, and staff, as well as community and Green Party members, Nader promised to launch a "people's debate commission" to counter the Commission on Presidential Debates. The Commission, a private, corporate-sponsored organization, had barred from participation all presidential and vice-presidential candidates except those of the Democratic and Republican parties. In Boston, organizers and state police had waited for Nader, who legally held a ticket, and told him he would not be permitted to enter the hall to watch the debate.

Nader urged those in his UofH audience to vote for him, whether or not they expected him to win. A substantial vote for the Green Party, he said, would provide validation for the causes he continues to promote on behalf of "ordinary Americans." Of the choice between Al Gore and George W. Bush, Nader stated, "There comes a time when the least of the worst is not the best of the political system."

Continuing his advocacy for decent wages, universal health care, affordable housing, campaign finance reform, and his opposition to excessive military spending and corporate greed, Nader said that both major candidates had forgotten the poor and people of color and overridden the sovereignty of the American people.

Corporate power, including that of multinational corporations, has wrested control from taxpayers, who are the actual owners of land, water, air, and airwaves, Nader said. "Cheap politicians…are selling our political birthrights for a mess of fund-raising."

For greater democracy and as a counterbalance to corporate media domination, Nader advocates an alternative, independent media system, or "new news."

Nader brought his message home to Hartford by citing the "gleaming office buildings side by side with abysmal poverty," as he reiterated his determination "to abolish child poverty." He cited the health concerns of Connecticut's cities, notably a 40 percent level of asthma among the children of Hartford, the highest children's asthma rate of any municipality in the country. To activists in Connecticut, he recalled the successful opposition to the Patriots' stadium and urged continued questioning of both Adriaen's Landing and the Long Wharf Mall project. To young people present, he warned, "If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you."

"In pursuit of justice you discover happiness," Nader told the UofH audience - a reference to his long-held belief in each person's committing to activism rather than waiting for a leader. In such engagement, he said, is found a "politics of joy and justice."