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Special environmental issue The
First Stone David
Brower's Last Chance Down
the Drain Water
War Zone Rivers
of Cyanide Spliced
and Diced How
to Deal with Gore Editorial Appall-O-Meter A Terry Laban Cartoon Left
Out Who's
the Boss? Devil
Inside What
Women Want Sunburn
With
Friends Like These David
vs. Goliath Full
Metal Racket Horror
Show Spinning
Wheels Scary
Kid Stuff |
David vs. Goliath
By Kari Lydersen
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David
McReynolds. Credit: Socialist Party USA
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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. Born 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, McReynolds 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."
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."
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In These Times ©
2000
Vol. 24, No. 10 |
Election 2000 Coverage
Never
Mind the Bollocks
BY BILL
BOISVERT
Here's
the new Republican Party
September
4 , 2000
The
Battle of Philadelphia
BY DAVE LINDORFF
September
4 , 2000
Working
It
BY DAVID MOBERG
Will unions go all out for Gore?
September
4 , 2000
Editorial
BY DAVID MOBERG
Big money problems.
September
4 , 2000
Cleaning
Up
BY HANS JOHNSON
Missouri, Oregon consider campaign finance initiatives
September
4 , 2000
Why
I'm Voting for Nader ...
BY ROBERT McCHESNEY
August 21,
2000
...
And Why I'm Not
BY JAMES WEINSTEIN
August 21,
2000
Dumped
BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
August 7,
2000
Bush's
dirty politics turn an Texas town into a sewer.
An
Environmental President
BY GUY SAPERSTEIN
August 7,
2000
Three's
Company
BY JOHN NICHOLS
July 10, 2000
Third parties strategize for the November elections.
Editorial
BY JOEL BLEIFUSS
June 12, 2000
Memo to third parties: Face Reality.
Marching
On
BY DAVE LINDORFF
June 12, 2000
Unity 2000 plans to disrupt this summer's GOP convention
Party
Palace
BY NATHANIEL HELLER
May 1, 2000
George W. Bush's lucrative sleepovers
Stupid
Tuesday
BY HANS JOHNSON
April 17, 2000
After Super Tuesday,
progressives mull over missed opportunities
What
Women Want
BY DAVID MOBERG
April 17, 2000
Working women's votes
could seal Al Gore's fate. But is he listening to them?
David
vs. Goliath
BY KARI LYDERSEN
April 17, 2000
Socialist presidential
candidate David McReynolds
How
to Deal with Gore
BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
and LOIS GIBBS
April 17, 2000
Love him or leave him?
Ralph
Really Runs
BY DOUG IRELAND
April 3, 2000
Nader kicks off his
second bid for president
Editorial
March 20, 2000
Flub watch.
On
the Fence
BY MATTHEW KNOESTER
March 20, 2000
Human rights or big oil for Al Gore?
The
First Stone
BY JOEL BLEIFUSS
March 6, 2000
Vanishing voters.
Gush
vs. Bore
BY DOUG IRELAND
March 6, 2000
Free
Ride
BY PAT MURPHY
March 6, 2000
Meet the real John McCain.
Cash and
Carry
BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
March 6, 2000
George W. Bush's environmental menace.
Fair
Weather Friends
BY JUAN GONZALEZ
March 6, 2000
Candidates court the Latino vote.
More
Marketplace Medicine
BY DAVID MOBERG
March 6, 2000
Neither Democrats' health plan will fix the system.
New
Labor, Old Politics
BY DAVID MOBERG
November 14, 1999
Bradley
Courts the Black Vote
BY SALIM MUWAKKIL
October 31, 1999
Changing
Primary Colors
BY DAVID DYSSEGAARD KALLICK
June 13, 1999
The
Great Right Hope
BY RUSSELL CONTRERAS
Who is George W. Bush?
May 30, 1999
Money
Money Money!
BY NEIL SWANSON
Al Gore and Bill Bradley go one-on-one.
May 30, 1999