Platform 2010: A Voice Against Violence

I intentionally started my campaign for the U.S. House in Illinois’s 5th District early so as to address some of the deficiencies from my effort earlier this year.

My friends, volunteers, supporters and dissuaders have given sharp praise in some domains and offered prescient criticism in others. For both, I am deeply grateful.

Among the praise I have received are compliments on my ability to articulate my message elegantly and understandably, to not waver or panic in front of a microphone or television camera, and to stand firm on the issues that mean most to me. I have also been told that I have broad appeal for someone who is unequivocally to the left, as is attested by my concerted effort to reach out to anti-war conservatives, for example.

The criticisms I have received are that often I can come off as too negative or angry. In reviewing video and images from the campaign earlier this year, I must admit that I have given off a negative aura on several occasions. I whole-heartedly agree that it is important that I don’t allow my valid criticisms of mainstream politics affect my personal demeanor: that I don’t let my anger at greedy bankers affect my overall composure.

Another criticism is that I get too caught up in the individual issues and fail to package them into a coherent vision for the future of this country. In this realm, I must admit that I too often assume that people know where I am coming from. Many activists in my midst have read many of the same authors and tend to get their news from similar sources and have generally supported similar candidates and political movements. However, in running for Congress, it is necessary that I reach outside of my base and appeal to the vast majority of Americans who are not political junkies.

Rather than merely trash mainstream politicians for being shills for banks, insurance companies and military contractors, I should explain precisely what sets me apart, and what values I will espouse as an elected member of Congress:

First and foremost, I will stand for liberty and democracy, those two heralded values of the western liberal tradition. I do not believe that the western tradition was built purely around empire and conquest. While the preeminent powers most certainly committed heinous crimes in the developing world and elsewhere, I also believe they invaluable contributed social, cultural and political ideals. I believe the former was inconsistent with the latter.

In this spirit, I will stand as an ambassador of peace. I believe that it is inconsistent with the Western liberal tradition to take peoples’ lives as part of our foreign policy. I am also appalled by the seeming lack of appreciation for human life in our political elite, and increasingly throughout society. Martin Luther King Jr correctly observed that “my country is the greatest perpetrator of violence in the world.” For making this observation, he was vilified and branded a “radical.” In my mind, there is no clearer demonstration that our country suffers from a serious ailment of violence than when a great leader is disparaged for admonishing his country for its violent ways.

We must recognize violence as the great American epidemic. From the streets of Baghdad to the streets of Chicago, violence is a problem that is tearing this nation apart at the seams. If we do not usher in a new generation of leadership ready and willing to tackle this epidemic, we will rapidly descend into a state of thorough irrelevance.

I ask that we all take the time to reflect on this problem and internalize it: to address the inner violence, that desire to bring emotional or physical harm to others regardless of any provocation, and to conquer it, so that together we can overcome the overarching problem of our nation’s domestic and military violence.

I reiterate: violence is the great American epidemic. Violence is the problem behind so many of our other problems. Violence was the problem when we attempted to repress Communism by fighting doomed proxy wars throughout the globe. Violence was so vividly the problem when we thoroughly devastated Vietnam and lost over 50,000 of our own in a useless war of aggression and Empire. Violence, too, was the problem when we attempted to expand that ill by invading Cambodia and Laos.

Violence was the problem when we decided to dictate the future of Latin America by installing murderous dictators in Chile and Guatemala, while fighting and funding violent civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Columbia. Violence has been the American mark left on Latin America: a tradition of violence rooted in this misguided sense of superiority by our political and economic Elite.

Violence, too, was the problem on 9-11, when authoritarian religious zealots brought their backward sense of vengeance down on 3,000 innocent civilians. This act continued a cycle of violence in our relationship to the Arab world, with whom the American Empire had intertwined in dangerously injurious military and economic relations for decades. In the weeks after that horrific moment in American history, we could have risen to a new level of clarity and given power to a new movement to rescind violence in all of its forms.

Instead, the cycle continued and it perpetuates today. In 2001, we were told that the terrorists would have been defeated by now, and that we would be basking in the serenity of a perpetual peace. This is the same lie that war propagandists have shuffled around for time immemorial: that once we fight this last war, an era of peace will arrive. I see no difference between this sickly way of thinking and that of an alcoholic who assures his loved ones that tonight will be his final drink.

In order to rid our society of this malady, we must see the primary function of our lives as peace-makers. Surely, everyone must work to pay the bills, and they should undoubtedly be content in their careers. However, your prime human function on this planet is not as a paid servant of this or that employer. Your primary function is as a fellow ambassador of peace. Your essential duty is to wage peace at all opportunities, to expose and reprimand the war-makers, and to remain confident and adamant in even the most trying times. As a peace maker, you will be almost perpetually challenged: like Martin Luther King Jr, being branded a radical, you will be accused of anti-American sentiment, you will be called a coward or a Communist, and you will be disparaged and belittled.

This is why I suggested that we all cleanse the inner violence before attempting to address the outer violence. It is essential that you demonstrate your capacity to remain non-violent even when violently provoked. I have often struggled with this myself, and continue to work to overcome the internal angst.

As Congressman, I will not only oppose all wars of aggression and Empire, but will also address the causes of our domestic violence. Depending on where one resides on the political spectrum, everyone has their hypothesis as to the cause of our society‘s violence: guns, video games, movies, poverty, drug use and so on. All of these enablers more so than causes. For the primary cause, again we must look inward. We must ask ourselves where the vicious cycle originates, so that we can gradually put the brakes on this violence with time.

Just as a kid who was abused is more likely to become an abuser, so too will an abused people be more likely to abuse in turn. I am suggesting that our society is violently provoked. I am saying that our country has developed a loathsome attraction to violent control and domination. We have police officers that are hired solely to run a muck in our poor communities: to flex the muscle of the state and throw the population into a state of shock, fear and despair. The rule of the street becomes violence, and so the most backward and violent elements in society take undisputed control of the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, we have an education system geared towards teaching subservience and a narrow view of morality rather than the great Western values of freedom and democracy. As a small “d” democrat first and foremost, I always look forward to dissent in my ranks. I have great admiration for those that are willing to challenge my convictions with intelligent and rigorous argument. This should be the desire of all Americans, and these values should be instilled from an early age. Instead, we wage war on youth by attempting to control what they wear, they hear and what they should fear. We attempt to mold them into “good Americans” by ignoring the core western values and instead emphasizing the malady that is ripping this nation apart.

If the relative freedom of the University years ever makes an American too upright, then surely the career years will send them hunched over again. Among developed Western nations, we are the worst, or near the worst, in all of the following indicators: amount of vacation time, health coverage, life expectancy, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, poverty and inequality. While other nations have progressed to be more healthy, affluent, equal and free, we have been pummeled into regression by the ever-violent ruling elite, whose determination to control the masses is absolutely relentless.

In order to survive, one must work. Unfortunately, in order to work in this country, one must be shackled. In some cases, one is granted reasonable and affordable health care. In others, one is dumped square into the racket that is the dastard American health insurance market. Often, one must work a year without vacation or sick time, without any union representation or recourse to file complaint, before one is “rewarded” with inadequate health insurance. Of course, the CEOs, bankers and violent militarists who manage this country wouldn’t know: most of them have never had to toil through the wreckage like the rest of us.

People are made to toil so that they will remain feebly dependent and subservient. They won’t dare question because questioning might lead to retribution and bastardization. While not physical violence necessarily, this amounts to a severe emotional violence. People’s soul, their human essence, is savagely beaten to the point that all of their precious human faculties quit functioning: their ambition, their confidence, their rationality.

Unfortunately, people replicate this behavior in their interactions with others. They seek to control and dominate, to belittle and conquer, to be the king or queen: not through merit, but by pure emotional force.

Instead of conquering others, we should all conquer the need to conquer. Instead of installing our metaphorical flag anywhere and everywhere, let us be guided by principle and reason. Let us discover those vanquished traits of ambition, confidence, and rationality, and use them to help navigate this nation back in the direction of greatness.

I believe we can stop failing by most demographic measures and instead institute a culture of success. I know that once we have overcome the epidemic of violence, we will be as capable as any of the great civilizations through time.

What separates me from the sitting Congressman, the Honorable Mike Quigley, is that I am an activist. I am not entering the electoral arena as a career move: I am doing it so as to give voice to my belief in the power of non-violence and in the valor of this fantastic Western tradition that we have inherited. I met Mike several times during the last campaign, and sincerely believe that he is an amicable person and an appreciable political leader. What’s more, he is a considerable improvement over his predecessor. However, he has not demonstrated that he is going to address the principal problem of violence in this nation. He had two chances to vote against continued war funding for these illegal and immoral wars, and he voted for the funding both times. He has had several months to rise on the floor of the Congress, or at a rally or public forum, and rally this nation to an end to these monstrous wars, but instead he has been silent. He has also been silent or near-silent on the other major issues facing the working majority of this country: ending the banker bailouts and reforming our monetary system, auditing and ultimately abolishing the federal reserve, instituting a single-payer national health care system (the only workable system), and instituting a new Workers’ Bill of Rights, to guarantee the right to unionize and collective bargain and to secure protection from out-sourcing and other ill effects’ of the neo-liberal trade regime.

I am not running to be a nice guy that might give you a listen once in a while. This campaign is about defending the core values at the backbone of this country from encroachment by the inane, objectionable and violent ruling elite.

A Revered President; A Non-Existent Society

Watching President Obama’s press conference on Wednesday evening, one couldn’t help sensing certain hopelessness in his delivery: an understanding that he was advocating a continuation of the same old insurance company racket. Obama is first and foremost a politician and not an academic: an inherently reactionary personality-type without a significant and principled national health care movement to react to.

This nation’s prime dysfunction is the lack of a genuine social movement for anything substantive. The last movement died somewhere in 2003-2004: drowned in a sea of Democratic propaganda about changing the Emperor’s clothes. I was busily organizing the peace movement throughout Illinois at the time. We were turning out thousands of protestors on a regular basis, and backing the street manifestations with a frontal grassroots blitz of letters and calls to congresspeople, followed by the occasional sit-ins at their offices. To all involved, it was clear that the anti-war movement would shut down the war after a few years of persistence.

But alas, the movement completely discombobulated right before us. I watched willing volunteers start spending their time working for an “exciting” new senate candidate in Illinois, and others join the Howard Dean campaign and ultimately the John Kerry campaign. By the time the “exciting” Illinois senator rose to national prominence, based primarily on his capacity to string multiple coherent sentences together in a forceful manner (what low standards we have come to possess), the social movement had become the man himself. When this happens, the social movement stops existing: it is trumped by the ambitions of one man and the party that supports him. Wall Street, the banking industry, the health insurance racket, and the military industrial complex had not-so-cleverly beaten this nation’s last great movement.

According to many sociologists, the Frenchman Alain Touraine prime among them, a society is defined by conflict among social movements. As such, a nation without social movements is also void of society. As in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and other authoritarian systems, society has become thoroughly entrenched by the ruling elite in the Land of the (buy one get one) Free. The uniquely American brand of government is particularly trying and burdensome insofar as a significant portion of the population is convinced that we have a functioning democracy.

I would argue that we are governed by a bureaucratic plutocracy: a system that intentionally drowns the populace in trivial details so as to guard against independent thought. Social interaction is frequently driven by promotion rather than genuine amicability. Since no one in my generation seems to be gainfully employed, everyone is an independent contractor: peddling some sort of pseudo-art or music, or their graphic design or website design “business,” and so on. Even those supposedly working for grassroots political movements operate on a business model of consuming all who stand in their path. To them, you are a name on a list and a potential donor. The message becomes nothing but a tool to procure sustenance for the organization: to the point that the movement gets engulfed in the organization.

For six years, we have been functioning as a nation without society. We have the skeletons of society: people bustling around doing stuff, newspapers printing stuff, televisions broadcasting stuff, and a couple political parties advocating stuff. But the stuff is primarily noise and irrelevant sound bytes.
The closest thing to a genuine social movement today is the inspiring conservative anti-war movement, as evidenced in the appreciable success of the Ron Paul presidential campaign and the succeeding Campaign for Liberty movement. In addition to offering a principled opposition to war, this movement raises prescient criticisms of this nation’s monetary system and an essential reform: abolishing the Federal Reserve.

Unfortunately the Left has been more hesitant than the right to critique its mainstream party, though there are notable exceptions. Two of them are right here in Illinois. Firstly, the sit-in at Republic Windows last winter demonstrated that Chicago might still be the labor movement capital of the universe, and that not all workers have been consumed by the ravenous Democratic Party. Secondly, the Illinois Green Party, through persistent and painstaking grassroots work, has become an established party on par with the two corporate parties. Their Gubernatorial candidate, Rich Whitney, won greater than 10% of the vote in 2006 and looks to build on that atop an eclectic slate of seasoned activists in 2010.

Nonetheless, a significant portion of the largely dormant left has been looking to the president for guidance. He is undoubtedly a brilliant man insofar as he navigated the confusing legal, bureaucratic jungle that is our political system and achieved a historic feat last November. However, his accomplishment was not, as is widely regarded, the result of some social movement. In fact, he shunned the remaining minute traces of social movements at every opportunity. He said he would fight to end the war, and then expanded it, said he would fight to restore civil liberties and take a principled stand against warrant-less wiretapping, and then reversed his decision. And most recently he said he was for “universal health care,” and yet echoes the same drivel of bygone years.

People must stop looking to the president for solutions to this nation’s numerous problems: unending wars of empire, avarice throughout the banking industry, a political class that is a mere shill for said banking industry, and a national discourse that has become incredibly trivialized by the saturation of corporate-controlled media. Addressing these deficiencies, re-instituting a democracy and reconstructing civil society will require arduous labor over the course of many years. I invite all concerned citizens to join a local anti-war group, or create one if there isn’t one already, and be as visible and intelligently provocative as possible. Do the same with alternative political parties that build off of local involvement, such as the Greens or Libertarians. Join one of the local movements for single-payer health care, or any other movement built upon substance rather than noise. We need people of courage to take on the duty of lifting Americans above this feeble reverence of Wall Street’s latest White House implant.

Of course, you can also help our efforts here in the 5th Congressional District by giving any size donation in order to help build the momentum we need to seriously challenge the Chicago Democratic establishment in 2010. You can donate online at www.mattreichel.us or by sending a check to:
Elect Matt Reichel to Congress
1726 W. Carmen
Chicago, IL 60640

Thank you for your continued Support!

Reichel Launches 2010 Campaign Bid

I have been emailed, called and approached on the streets by numerous supporters over the last three months about my plans for the 2010 campaign season. How will I follow my impressive 7% score in the special election to replace Rahm Emanuel in Illinois’s 5th Congressional District?
After much consideration and reflection, I have decided to officially announce my candidacy for the same seat in 2010.

The primary issue of my campaign will remain “ending the American wars of aggression against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” These are no longer Republican wars; upon assuming power, President Obama asked for an additional $100 billion of funny money to expand this imperial bloodbath and the Democratic Congress obliged. When the “Emergency Supplemental” passed the U.S. House the first time, 51 Democrats cast an “anti-war” vote against the spending. When an even worse bill returned with funding included to bailout foreign banks through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these 51 Democrats could have killed the war funding. However, 21 of them changed their mind amidst intense pressure from former 5th district rep Rahm Emanuel. Among them were local reps Jan Schakowsky and Luis Gutierrez. Current 5th District Rep Mike Quigley voted for the funding both times.

And so the wars go on.

The Democrats were brought to power in Congress and the White House on promises of changing the disastrous foreign policy posture implemented under the far-right rule of President George W Bush. Instead, they have elected to continue these wars, whilst also continuing to bailout the criminal financial institutions whose avidity has sent the international economic system teetering towards its most fantastic collapse since the Great Depression. We were promised change we could believe in, and instead have gotten short changed. All the hope in the world isn’t going to bring Americans the peace and justice they so deserve and have so stridently demanded: not while we are stuck with the same two parties of Empire and Wall Street.

In addition to addressing the issues of war, the banker bailouts and greed on Wall Street, I will campaign in support of single-payer universal health care. I’m not talking about a public option; I am talking about a public system. Everybody in, nobody out!

I was fortunate enough to have completed my Masters’ studies in France, where I was provided world-class health care in a timely, efficient and affordable manner. I then returned to the United States and have had to live without any coverage as I have searched for full-time work, or worked through one of the increasingly common temp agencies that people must endure in our backward system of industrial relations.

I sincerely believe we can change this ailing country by rising to the occasion, holding our heads high and remaining passionate and confident in our pursuits. We shall not let the goons and thugs that govern this city, this state and this country bully us around. They are remnants of an authoritarian past that is rapidly vanishing from view, while we are part of a vibrant future.

The Green Party vastly expanded its share of the European Parliament in this year’s EU elections, with the French contingent winning as many seats as the Socialist Party, which has long been the principal party of the French left. Citizens of the world are increasingly identifying the Greens as the party most adept at addressing our planet’s most pressing issues: global warming, banker greed, addiction to war, savage inequalities, urban violence, and rampant superficiality.
Here in Illinois, Green Party Gubernatorial Candidate Rich Whitney finished with greater than 10% of the vote state-wide in 2006. In 2008, the Greens followed this success by running an expansive slate, with some candidates reaching into the 30% range in two-way races. In the high-profile special election to replace Rahm Emanuel in the machine-operated 5th district of Illinois, I won 7% of the vote despite just five weeks of general election campaign time.

In 2010, I will have a full 9 months between the primary and general election. What’s more, I have not stopped campaigning and have continued promoting our movement and our ideals of peace, liberty and social justice.

I do believe we can make history in 2010, and it begins with you: the supporters who propelled me to an outstanding showing in this years’ special election. Please help jump-start this campaign by contributing $10,20,50, up to $2400 on the website at www.mattreichel.us or by sending a check to:
Matt Reichel for Congress
1726 W. Carmen
Chicago, IL 60640