PORTSMOUTH, N.H. ? On Octo-ber 24, nearly 30 students from college media and lobbying organizations at UNH, Plymouth, and St. Anselm?s gathered at The Press Room Bar in downtown Portsmouth to meet with democratic presidential hopeful, Con-gressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).
At fifty-seven years old, Kucinich still has that rebellious spirit from his youth which seemed to appeal to many of the students at the interview, including those from CHOICE, a women?s right group, and SEEK, another lobbying organiza-tion on UNH?s campus.
?If you have a commitment and a passion you can change your neighbor-hood, your city, your community, your state, your nation. You can change the world,? Kucinich said.
While matriculating at Cleveland State University, Kucinich ran and was elected to the City Council in his home-town with a platform of environmental and public transportation issues. ?I saw that people weren?t really being represented, so I tried to be their voice. Nobody asked me to do it. I just kept showing up at meetings and saying what I thought.?
According to Kucinich, the City Coun-cil was not necessarily all that accepting of his youth-based ideas, especially as he was taking twelve credit hours and working two jobs. Regardless of others perceptions of him, he says he took him-self less seriously and focused more on the seriousness of the issues.
He proclaims himself as the ?voice of the people,? whose vision, not unlike his democratic opponents, deals with creat-ing safe social and economic conditions, peace, and ending the United States in-volvement in Iraq, but also withdrawing from North American Free Trade Agree-ment (NAFTA) and the World Trade Or-ganization (WTO) as well as advocating for a woman?s right to choose, creating a Peace Department, and refocusing the priorities of government spending.
Kucinich stated, ?I view the world as interdependent and interconnected what you could call holistic. It sees the claims of all people, in general, in society and how we need to work to create conditions for people. And that peace is possible, and war is inevitable. And that we have, within the power of our hearts, great transformative capacity.?
Like so many presidential hopefuls, Kucinich wants to make changes in all aspects of America. But Kucinich is run-ning on a slightly more liberal platform, knowing that many progressive ideas brought to the forefront get crushed by policy or poor perceptions of what seems best for the nation. ?We have to make resources available and not just on the basis of whether people agree on policies or not.?
Kucinich broke with a long-stand-ing record and voted for the Baldwin Amendment, which Kucinich would cure the unconstitutionality of an abortion bill passed in Congress He saw the bill as attacking a woman?s right and equality in society, as well as not providing for women?s health. Though agreeing with a woman?s right to choose, he believe that society needs to make abortions less necessary by educating all young people through sex education and advocating for the value of birth control.
?We can approach it without pitting people against each other, without judg-ment, and we can work to create a culture where we do everything we can to make [abortions] less likely.?
Kucinich continued, saying, ?I really do understand how all Americans feel and can be a president who can help depolarize what is a very heartbreaking issue in this country. I clearly favor sex education. Abstinence is one way, but it is hardly the only way. There is a certain moral metric that comes with that.?
As for NAFTA and the WTO, Ku-cinich stands firm on canceling both if elected president. He claims NAFTA has institutionalized abuses such as slave, imprisoned, and child labor as well as abuses to the environment; all exploited by corporate globalization. Because NAFTA and the WTO has provisions making it unchangeable, Kucinich wants to withdraw from both, returning to a bilateral trade that provides for workers rights, human rights and environmental safety, and allow the United States to its own rules.
?We put into our agreements work-ers rights: the right to organize, collect bargaining, strike, decent wages and benefits, a safe work place, secure retire-ment, and to participate in political pro-cesses?rights that are denied to workers all over the world. We put into our trade agreements prohibitions on child labor, slave labor, prison labor and thereby lift workers up everywhere. We put into our trade agreements protection of the air and water so that corporations cannot exploit indigenous people.?
Although the threat of repercussions for pulling out of NAFTA is apparent, Kucinich wants to end the exploitation of workers at any cost. Having marched with students in Seattle in 1999 protesting the WTO and spoken at an IMF protes-tor rally?s in Washington, if elected, he would send a six-month notice, as stated in provi-sions of NAFTA and the WTO, to with-draw from each treaty and in the meantime develop a structure strong enough to challenge globalization on the corporate level.
?This is an era where we?re ready for new thinking and we have to usher in that new thinking and that means chal-lenging politics as it is.?
For Kucinich, running for president is not simply to hand over the White House back to the democrats. ?My candidacy is to try to, not just uplift a nation, but to cause America to relate more effectively to the world. Because this is about the world. It?s about people all over the world who are looking for a more sustainable world, where we can renew our energies and renew ourselves[?]to have the authenticity of our dreams.?
Kucinich states that the ambitions of the Bush administration made it much more difficult to have peace anywhere else in the world. ?War is like a virus. If you promote it, it can pop up every-where.? In addition, Kucinich, a ranking democrat on an investigative sub-com-mittee for national security, said that at no point was any evidence given to support the United States attacking Iraq, further stating that we must bring our men and women serving overseas home. ?It was wrong to go in there. It is wrong to stay there.?
?We cannot put our foot on the accel-erator of war and then simultaneously try to apply the brakes for peace.?
His idea for a De-part-ment of Peace, on a more do-mestic level, is an aim to inspire NGO?s to become involved in communities and create programs that support community activists for domestic violence, school violence, racial violence, violence against gays, and spousal and child abuse. His stance is to focus on the home front, fixing the disruptive societal problems and making non-violence an ?organiz-ing principle.?
If elected as president, Kucinich plans to sign the Biological Weapons Conven-tion, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Small Arms Treaty, the Land Mine Treaty, the Kyoto Treaty, and join the In-ternational Criminal Court. In addition, he plans on reducing the Pentagon?s $400 billion by fifty percent (50%) in order to provide $48 billion to the more than 12 million young American students going to public colleges and universities with free tuition, as well as providing $60 bil-lion a year for free five day-a-week child care complete with reading, social, and other educational skills.
?The question is, what shall be the cause of our nation? What is our nation about? ?We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union??how does build-ing the military up create a more perfect union? How does giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans create a more perfect union? How does war create a more perfect union??
For more information on Senator Dennis Kucinich and his presidential campaign tour stops, visit his website at http://kucinich.us or visit his new Portsmouth, NH campaign office.