Word: nader
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What you'd have had to look very hard to see in Washington was anyone resembling a leader. Because there isn't one, in the usual sense. No Abbie Hoffman. No Pat Robertson. Sure, Ralph Nader is wandering around (see accompanying story), and so is satirical filmmaker Michael Moore, but they're not calling the shots or giving marching orders. The Mobilization for Global Justice isn't a top-down affair. Like the Internet itself, and unlike the coalition's corporate enemies, the antiglobalist movement is a body that manages to survive, and even thrive, without a head...
...buckles his seat belt, of course. Ralph Nader gets into the car at Washington's Reagan National Airport. It's 10:30 p.m. and it's a safe bet that his fellow passengers are heading home or at least out for a nightcap. At 66, though, Nader is going to the office. On the ride he talks about the IMF and other global economic bodies: "How can we sign on to something that subordinates democracy to corporate power...
...Nader's crusade against "corporate abuse" isn't new. For two generations, the Harvard-trained lawyer turned activist has been an American icon. There are children's books about him. His 1965 polemic on auto safety, Unsafe at Any Speed, led to taken-for-granted items like seat belts in every car and shatter-resistant glass. Since then, he's toiled on unglamorous issues like electric-utility rates. And he's inveighed against global-trade deals. It was Nader-founded groups that helped lead the Seattle WTO protests and who are shaping the IMF protests. "This is what a robust...
Throughout his career, Nader has robustly worked democracy as a gadfly--a public activist infamous for his dated suits and worn shoes, lampooned for wanting to put airbags on tricycles. Now Nader is a politician. After two half-hearted campaigns for President, he is running hard. Why? The big money in politics, he says, is stymieing the process. "We cannot get through today what we remotely got through in the '60s and '70s," Nader declares. He'll almost certainly get the Green Party nod. His strongest rival is Jello Biafra, once lead singer of the Dead Kennedys...
...understatement to say Nader's not likely to sit in the Oval Office, but his campaign could be important. Last week a poll showed Nader getting 5.7%--versus 3.6% for likely Reform Party nominee Pat Buchanan. Nader scored close to 10% in the West--an omen for Democrats who fear that he could siphon California votes from Al Gore and throw the state to George W. Bush. Nader plays especially well with the elderly over 70--worried about prescription-drug benefits--and with the young. "He's retro cool," says John Zogby, who conducted the poll. "The same...