Molly Ivins November 26

AUSTIN, Texas — I was considering a portentous lead, along the lines of "A new dawning" or "Hope reborn in the limestone hills of Texas." Danged if I know what to call it, but there was more energy, enthusiasm and plain old willingness to work at the Alliance for Democracy convention in the Hill Country this weekend than I've seen in an age or two.

The idea, like all the great ones, is pretty simple. Taking off from the 19th century populist movement, the notion is that the only way to fix this country is for the people to do it. And further, the people who want to fix it, who want it to work the way the Founders set it up, are isolated from one another and sometimes even working at cross purposes. The Alliance is not a new political party — it's a movement. The call to the convention stated its modest purpose: to take back our country from the corporations:

"We are ruled by Big Business and Big Government as its paid hireling, and we know it. Corporate money is wrecking popular government in the United States. The big corporations and the hundred millionaires and billionaires have taken daily control of our work, our pay, our housing, our health, our pension funds, our banks and savings deposits, our public lands, our airwaves, our elections and our very government. It's as if American democracy had been bombed."

Everywhere I've been for the past few years, people are disgusted and depressed about politics. Some even engage in the sin of despair. It occurs to me that I've been looking at this the wrong way around. What we have here actually is a movement waiting to be born. It's in the Zeitgeist (a word that I couldn't even spell before I just now used it; it's a German word for "the spirit of the times").

Look at what we've seen here lately: the Reform Party, the Green Party, the New Party, the Labor Party, the Million Man March, the Christian right, the militia movement. So, you're wondering, "Whoa, how did the Christian right and the militia movement get into this here Zeitgeist?" Because they know something is wrong. We may be confused about how to define it, but we all know it's there.

Another question: OK, but even if we agreed on what's wrong, what could we do about it?

Answer: Let the people decide.

Sounds hokey, doesn't it? But, in fact, it was the core of the most democratic movement this country has ever known. The old-time populist movement didn't start with an agenda; it never had some radical program for reform dreamed up by a bunch of political scientists or intellectuals.

It never had a 14-point program or 97 theses or anything like that. It was just a system for getting people together and letting them decide what they needed in their lives and wanted from their government.

It used to be that every little Hicksville in the South and the West had an Alliance hall where folks met to educate themselves and to talk with one another. There was nothing elitist about it — populism was started by dirt farmers who were getting the short end of the stick from the banks and the railroads. According to historian Larry Goodwyn, the populist speakers bureau had 41,000 speakers working at one time — people who traveled around to get folks thinking and talking. Then, they came up with their own solutions.

All the solutions came from the local level, and the Alliance for Democracy is starting new local alliances almost every hour. Twenty-eight states were represented at the convention, and people all over the country are just up and starting these things on their own.

And what kind of solutions do they come with? Well, Jim Hightower, the Texas populist who now has a radio talk show, suggested that we might get faster action on the problem of toxic dumps if we passed a law saying that the top managers and the board of directors of every corporation that creates a toxic dump all have to live within 100 yards of it. Now wait a minute, you say — wouldn't that be a violation of their constitutional rights, making them live next to a toxic dump? Well, if it's a violation of their constitutional rights, how come it's not a violation of ours?

The Youth Caucus at the Alliance convention came up with a proposal for a National Food Fight Day. It said that in 23 states, various food processing companies have filed lawsuits claiming that they no longer have to tell us what is in the food they sell us because it is a violation of their (the corporations') First Amendment rights. The purpose of National Food Fight Day would be to let people know about this novel interpretation of freedom of speech.

Ideas were popping like popcorn at the Alliance convention. If corporations have rights (one of the worst and silliest decisions ever made by the Supreme Court), why don't they have responsibilities? If a corporation is a recidivist, if it continually violates anti-pollution laws, continually engages in price-fixing, continually defrauds its customers (most of the major defense contractors have been convicted of fraud more than once), why don't we yank its charter? Or replace its top officers and board of directors with honest, experienced people so the workers and stockholders don't get hurt? Why not three-strikes-and-you're-out for corporations? Why not have an environmental representative and a consumer representative and a worker representative on every board of directors? They do that in Europe; it works.

More anon.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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