I’m running for the United States Senate in Illinois—and have just filed with the FEC—because I think that genuine self-government flows from love, belonging, and respect for the sacredness of all life. We are far from that now. But we have been far from that since before our country was founded. My question for you is how do we get from where we are to where we want and ought to be? I have some ideas—that’s why I’m running—but I am interested in hearing yours.
We, the American people, still have the opportunity to learn from the peoples of the Native Nations of Turtle Island (this continent), and from listening together to the Earth. If we are to free ourselves from a corrupt billionaire class, its fascist allies in the Republican Party, and its neoliberal enablers in the Democratic Party, we must do so. There is no other way for us to live as a free people: to live peacefully “with the Earth,” as Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota) puts it, rather than abusively “on the earth” in what remains of an increasingly broken democracy.
My basic, if still partial and inadequate answer, to the question of how we get to where we want and ought to be, is to begin by caring for others first, and then for the poor among us, and then for all of us who at some point in our lives will need medical care.
These three fundamental social democratic commitments of this campaign are intended to win solid majority support by appealing to what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature and—by so doing—to show how a grounding in natural spiritual truth can help redeem our nation. These three commitments are:
- Justice for the Native Nations
- A Twenty-first Century version of A. Philip Randolph’s “Freedom Budget” to Abolish Poverty for All Americans, and
- Abundant Care for All (Medicare for All with an emphasis on home health, “proximal health,” and wellness).
When I say caring for others comes first, I mean to suggest that the “America First” crowd has it exactly backwards. When you put love and respect out into the world it eventually comes back to you. When you put brutality and greed out into the world, what eventually comes back to you is not pretty. You may acquire a lot of money with brutality and greed; money with which to try to purchase things to cover the aching holes in your soul. But, if so, all you are really doing is numbing the pain of what you know at some level is your own wrongdoing. Once one has gone down such a path, one has to open oneself to grief at the suffering one has inflicted on others if one wants to change the way one is in the world — if one wants to realign one’s heart and mind and free oneself from the numbness of selfishness and lack of connection.
And here I want to particularly stress the first issue on which I am campaigning: justice for the peoples of the Native Nations whom our country has wronged so severely for so many centuries. These are peoples whose national rights have been ignored and trampled upon by Republicans and Democrats alike. These are peoples whom the Supreme Court—dishonestly and in violation of our Constitution—claims are “completely under the sovereignty and dominion of the United States” when, in fact, the constitutional convention deliberately sought to make sure that treaties with the Native Nations were part of our supreme law so that the national rights of these nations would be guaranteed as a matter of our own honor, peace, and prosperity.
I joined the Young People’s Socialist League in the late 1970s when the great civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin was the National Chairman of the adult organization, the Social Democrats, USA, and became active in politics again in 2016 knocking on doors for Bernie Sanders in Iowa and Wisconsin. I am a former director of undergraduate studies for international studies at Yale University and the author of Arguments over Genocide: The War of Words in the Congress and the Supreme Court over Cherokee Removal.
I ran for Congress in 2018 and received 4% of the vote! In 2018, I called for a twenty-first century version of A. Philip Randolph's “Freedom Budget” to abolish poverty. Such a budget would not only guarantee employment for all those able and willing to work, and a universal basic income, it would help to restore natural waterways and wetlands in both rural and urban settings, to increase and rewild our forests and restore mangroves and mangrove islands along our coasts, to fix our shipping locks and roads and bridges, and our railways and mass transit systems, to transform our agricultural and educational and housing and childcare practices with wise public investments, and to fundamentally revise our whole healthcare system so that insurance bureaucrats and “squeeze” artists concerned with “efficiency” rather than medicine are removed from the provision of what I call Abundant Care for All (M4A+).
Rather than pursue tax cuts for the rich, we will pay for what we need with a restoration of American top tax rates as they existed during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s and also by pooling our resources and borrowing in order to invest. If the investments are prudent, they will in time earn enough to pay for themselves many times over. Pooling our resources will enable us to do what we could not do separately.
The approach here is the exact opposite of what has been tried—and what has been found wanting since Ronald Reagan—what has been tried and failed for two whole generations in which average real wages have stagnated. The approach here is to water the tree of our economy at its roots rather than its branches or top leaves; and to support union organizing and collective bargaining. Any other approach—such as one focused on tariffs (even if not pursued with a stupid and bullying incivility)—is, at best, just a smokescreen for a continued concentration of wealth in the hands of the 1%.
A similarly bad public policy has hollowed out American foreign relations to the point of tolerance for the genocide in Gaza and, more recently, tolerance for the genocide in Ukraine as well, and for brutal U.S. assaults on Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba. Far from the “soft peace” towards Japan with which the United States—after the war crimes of the fire bombings of Tokyo and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—sought to take into account something of the interests of the Japanese people as a path to a lasting peace, the United States has pursued its foreign policy with ever greater incivility. The days of the Marshall Plan and the foundation of NATO—the days when we sought a common well-being and a common security with a measure of civility, at least with regard to Europe—are gone.
Only if we begin our public policy from a position of natural spiritual truth—a position of respect, love, and gratitude towards all life—will recovery for our society, and right relations with all our relations, be possible.
I’m running for the United States Senate in Illinois—and have just filed with the FEC—because I think that genuine self-government flows from love, belonging, and respect for the sacredness of all life. We are far from that now. But we have been far from that since before our country was founded. My question for you is how do we get from where we are to where we want and ought to be? I have some ideas—that’s why I’m running—but I am interested in hearing yours.
We, the American people, still have the opportunity to learn from the peoples of the Native Nations of Turtle Island (this continent), and from listening together to the Earth. If we are to free ourselves from a corrupt billionaire class, its fascist allies in the Republican Party, and its neoliberal enablers in the Democratic Party, we must do so. There is no other way for us to live as a free people: to live peacefully “with the Earth,” as Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota) puts it, rather than abusively “on the earth” in what remains of an increasingly broken democracy.
My basic, if still partial and inadequate answer, to the question of how we get to where we want and ought to be, is to begin by caring for others first, and then for the poor among us, and then for all of us who at some point in our lives will need medical care.
These three fundamental social democratic commitments of this campaign are intended to win solid majority support by appealing to what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature and—by so doing—to show how a grounding in natural spiritual truth can help redeem our nation. These three commitments are:
- Justice for the Native Nations
- A Twenty-first Century version of A. Philip Randolph’s “Freedom Budget” to Abolish Poverty for All Americans, and
- Abundant Care for All (Medicare for All with an emphasis on home health, “proximal health,” and wellness).
When I say caring for others comes first, I mean to suggest that the “America First” crowd has it exactly backwards. When you put love and respect out into the world it eventually comes back to you. When you put brutality and greed out into the world, what eventually comes back to you is not pretty. You may acquire a lot of money with brutality and greed; money with which to try to purchase things to cover the aching holes in your soul. But, if so, all you are really doing is numbing the pain of what you know at some level is your own wrongdoing. Once one has gone down such a path, one has to open oneself to grief at the suffering one has inflicted on others if one wants to change the way one is in the world — if one wants to realign one’s heart and mind and free oneself from the numbness of selfishness and lack of connection.
And here I want to particularly stress the first issue on which I am campaigning: justice for the peoples of the Native Nations whom our country has wronged so severely for so many centuries. These are peoples whose national rights have been ignored and trampled upon by Republicans and Democrats alike. These are peoples whom the Supreme Court—dishonestly and in violation of our Constitution—claims are “completely under the sovereignty and dominion of the United States” when, in fact, the constitutional convention deliberately sought to make sure that treaties with the Native Nations were part of our supreme law so that the national rights of these nations would be guaranteed as a matter of our own honor, peace, and prosperity.
I joined the Young People’s Socialist League in the late 1970s when the great civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin was the National Chairman of the adult organization, the Social Democrats, USA, and became active in politics again in 2016 knocking on doors for Bernie Sanders in Iowa and Wisconsin. I am a former director of undergraduate studies for international studies at Yale University and the author of Arguments over Genocide: The War of Words in the Congress and the Supreme Court over Cherokee Removal.
I ran for Congress in 2018 and received 4% of the vote! In 2018, I called for a twenty-first century version of A. Philip Randolph's “Freedom Budget” to abolish poverty. Such a budget would not only guarantee employment for all those able and willing to work, and a universal basic income, it would help to restore natural waterways and wetlands in both rural and urban settings, to increase and rewild our forests and restore mangroves and mangrove islands along our coasts, to fix our shipping locks and roads and bridges, and our railways and mass transit systems, to transform our agricultural and educational and housing and childcare practices with wise public investments, and to fundamentally revise our whole healthcare system so that insurance bureaucrats and “squeeze” artists concerned with “efficiency” rather than medicine are removed from the provision of what I call Abundant Care for All (M4A+).
Rather than pursue tax cuts for the rich, we will pay for what we need with a restoration of American top tax rates as they existed during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s and also by pooling our resources and borrowing in order to invest. If the investments are prudent, they will in time earn enough to pay for themselves many times over. Pooling our resources will enable us to do what we could not do separately.
The approach here is the exact opposite of what has been tried—and what has been found wanting since Ronald Reagan—what has been tried and failed for two whole generations in which average real wages have stagnated. The approach here is to water the tree of our economy at its roots rather than its branches or top leaves; and to support union organizing and collective bargaining. Any other approach—such as one focused on tariffs (even if not pursued with a stupid and bullying incivility)—is, at best, just a smokescreen for a continued concentration of wealth in the hands of the 1%.
A similarly bad public policy has hollowed out American foreign relations to the point of tolerance for the genocide in Gaza and, more recently, tolerance for the genocide in Ukraine as well, and for brutal U.S. assaults on Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba. Far from the “soft peace” towards Japan with which the United States—after the war crimes of the fire bombings of Tokyo and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—sought to take into account something of the interests of the Japanese people as a path to a lasting peace, the United States has pursued its foreign policy with ever greater incivility. The days of the Marshall Plan and the foundation of NATO—the days when we sought a common well-being and a common security with a measure of civility, at least with regard to Europe—are gone.
Only if we begin our public policy from a position of natural spiritual truth—a position of respect, love, and gratitude towards all life—will recovery for our society, and right relations with all our relations, be possible.
