Just got back from listening to Kucinich at UMass/Amherst

Mairead

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Wed Feb-25-04 04:18 PM
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Just got back from listening to Kucinich at UMass/Amherst

Edited on Wed Feb-25-04 05:01 PM by Mairead

He had an SRO crowd in the Campus Center auditorium, about 400+ people ranging from very young students to a 90-y.o. retired professor in an electric wheelchair. This follows getting a crowd of 2000 at Smith College last night.

He entered to a thunderous standing ovation and spoke for a half-hour, largely about the war, and then took questions for a half-hour.

One of the questions was from a guy who was practically writhing in agony at having to ask it: you probably aren't going to get the nom, so what can we do to keep progressing anyway. Dennis's response practically got the roof off the place: nobody gets the nom without having 2xxx (he knew the number, but I don't remember it) delegates, and nobody's got anywhere near that today. So there's no reason to believe we can't win--despite the claims that resistance is useless, everything is still completely open.

(edit; forgot this: Then someone asked him about Nader coming in. He grinned and said he was quite sure that once he (DK) had the nomination, Nader would immediately re-assess his candidacy. It was pretty clear that they have a deal on that.)

The retired professor rolled up and asked for his mike, and he gave it her. She got a bit lost and rambly while trying to make her point, so after 5 mins or so the state campaign chairman started to make a move to cut her off and take the mike back. But Dennis, who seemed quite enchanted by her, immediately waved him off. Eventually she collected herself and reminded us that her generation did its best in the '30s and were now almost all gone, and that if there's to be a good tomorrow it's mostly up to the uni students of today, since they're the ones with the time and energy and faith. 'And you can make a good start by helping elect this guy behind me here'. Huge applause and cheers.

Someone else noted that Chomsky, who apparently had spoken there last night, believes there won't be a draft because the PNACers don't want mid/upper civilian conscripts, they want what amounts to a mercenary army of the optionless poor and are trashing the US economy to create a reservoir of such cannon fodder. DK responded by saying that despite his enormous respect for Chomsky, he disagrees that there won't be a draft: US military resources are being depleted at a rate that makes continued imperialism impossible without replenishment, and both the PNACers and the DLC are committed to imperialism. Add to that the recent warning by the leading Iraqi religious leader that unless the US mends its ways by summer he'll issue a fatwa and light off a major intifada against the occupation forces, and a draft will be the only way to get enough bodies in a short enough time to prevent the US being driven out of the Semitic Region altogether.

In response to another question I don't now recall, he said that he's known and liked Kerry for a long time, but has many severe political disagreements with him. That what we're facing is the prospect not of any meaningful improvement by replacing BushCo, but a mere relabeling--that there are no clear and believable differences between the GOP and the DLC on the really major issues of today: imperialism, healthcare, world trade and our jobs, and the stripping away of our constitutional rights. He noted something that the WTO et al are (apparently) trying to keep below the radar: a change that would give multinational corps the right to legally import undocumented foreign work crews to take, for less than minimum wage, even the low-level service and retail jobs such as janitor, burger flipper and WalMart 'associate' that teenagers and poor adults try to subsist on now.

He left to another thunderous standing ovation. I was on the wrong side of the aisle, so I didn't get to shake his hand. When I got out into the lobby, heading for the parking garage, I saw him standing there completely engaged in conversation with several students while his roadies looked frantic (he was running out of time to make it to his next gig in Cambridge, a hundred twenty miles away across the state).

Regretably, I overheard a couple students working a table for some student organisation reveal that plenty people, even at a nominally-progressive school like UM/A, still haven't heard of him ('What's with the crowd there?' 'That's Kucinich' 'Who's he?' 'Dennis Kucinich. He's running for prez and just gave a speech in the auditorium' 'Oh yeah? Which one is he?' 'He's the short guy in the middle there with his back to us')