|
CounterPunch
November
16, 2002
Never Separate the Lives You Live from
the Words You Speak
by RALPH NADER
The memorial service for Senator Wellstone, his
wife Sheila and daughter Marcia at the Washington Hebrew Congregation
in Washington, DC on November 13, 2002 was a fitting and diverse
tribute from their two sons, Mark and David, Senatorial colleagues,
staff and friends.
With each heartfelt expression, the assemblage
understood what Senator Tom Daschle meant when he said "so
much was lost in that crash."
Paul and Sheila Wellstone were there
always for the poor, the homeless, the sick and the defenseless.
They championed justice for millions of people and traveled to
their places of distress to see their plight first-hand. Senator
Wellstone always wanted to see situations for himself--in Bosnia,
Thailand, Columbia, American prisons.
Yesterday the Associated Press called
me to ask who would take the place of Paul Wellstone in the U.S.
Senate. I had no answer because now there is no one with his
sense of consistent, determined energy on so many issues, so
many networks, so many strategies.
Anyone who visited him in his Senate
offices was greeted so warmly and authentically that it was like
coming home. His phrase -- "Never separate the lives you
live from the words you speak" is one for the book of quotations.
it is also a self-description of Paul and Sheila.
In the Senate, Wellstone was identified
by his support for raising the frozen minimum wage, for renewable
energy and for opposition to corporate lobbyists who demand corporate
welfare, tax escapes (to Bermuda tax havens), and lax enforcement
of the corporate crime laws. He took on the tobacco companies,
the drug companies and the health insurance giants.
But perhaps Paul and Sheila Wellstone's
greatest passion was legislation which would give mental health
patients health insurance parity with those suffering from physical
illness. At the memorial service, Republican Senator Pete Domenici,
tossed aside his prepared remarks to speak about how he met Paul
Wellstone at a meeting of mental health advocates. His affection
for the Minnesota Senator was apparent when he vowed that the
parity bill he and Wellstone have co-authored would be enacted
by the Congress next year and would be known as "the Paul
Wellstone memorial mental health parity law."
Senator Wellstone's desk in the Senate
is now shrouded in black. His Senate colleagues unanimously passed
legislation to apply $10 million to establish the Paul and Sheila
Wellstone Center for Community Building in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Wellstones understood to their core the meaning of Jean Monnet's
words -- "Without people nothing is possible, but without
institutions nothing is lasting." The essence of community
is the banding together of people to do for themselves and posterity
what they could not do alone -- both in the civic society and
in government.
The last bill Paul Wellstone introduced
was S.3143, known as the consumer and shareholder protection
association. It was legislation that would facilitate through
inserts in mailings of large publicly traded corporations, including
financial institutions, invitations to their customers to join
together voluntarily in non-profit associations that would defend
their interests. (for full text see essential.org).
The corporate crime wave and the looting
of the pensions and 401ks of millions of Americans losing trillions
of dollars worried Wellstone. He wanted to help build institutions
of investor and consumer influence to prevent recurrences in
the future.
After the fatal airplane crash, commentators
were awed by the outpouring of praise for Wellstone by friends
and adversaries alike.
What was it about this politician that
led his strongest opponents in the Congress to weep when they
heard the news? Certainly, it was his friendly personality and
his personal interest in their own family tragedies. They all
had a Paul Wellstone story dear to their heart. But it was mainly
what Senator Daschle called the rarest of traits -- "his
moral courage." Something maybe they had wished on themselves
long ago.
Garrison Keillor commemorated Wellstone
in his nationally syndicated public radio program with these
words: "Paul Wellstone identified passionately with people
at the bottom, people in trouble, people in the rough. He was
an old-fashioned Democrat who felt more at home with the rank
and file than with the rich and famous."
At the short end of some 99 to 1 of 95
to 5 votes in the Senate, Wellstone's problem was that he did
not have enough "old-fashioned Democrats" with him
in the Senate. There may come a time when his statement that
"politics is not about power; it is about people" will
attract many more dedicated adherents throughout the land.
Yesterday's Features
Anthony Gancarski
Disarming
Christian Soldiers
Kurt Nimmo
Crimes
Plotted in Windowless Rooms:
Into the Bush Imperium
Tom Barry
Frontier
Justice
From TR to Bush
Robert Fisk
Bin Laden:
Back and in Saudi Arabia?
Chris Floyd
Taking
the Fifth
Bush's Extremist Agenda Goes into Overdrive
Tarif Abboushi
The Political Theology of Tom Delay:
Advocating Crimes Against Humanity?
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|