OPENING ADDRESS

BY JIM MANGIA, PRESIDENT, COALITION FOR POLITICAL REFORM (CPR)
CONVENOR

"CHOOSING AN INDEPENDENT PRESIDENT" CONFERENCE
NEW YORK CITY - JANUARY 19, 2003

Hi everyone. It's a real honor to be here. Thank you all so much for coming. Before I begin, I have to say something about Los Angeles. L.A. is a very hard place to organize, everyone's in their car, it's very segregated and there are basically five rich people who control the whole city. I direct a network of free medical and dental clinics for children and their families in some of the poorest areas of Los Angeles - south central, Compton, East LA. But even with close to half our residents living in dire poverty, L.A. has recently become more chic as a world class city and a lot of outside money is coming into the city and attempting to gentrify downtown and south central LA, where many of the poor in our city live. They are turning L.A.'s poorest neighborhoods into a Sports and Entertainment District, with sports stadiums and upscale shopping while they displace tens of thousands of poor Black and Latino families. Last year I was reading the Wall Street Journal, and it described this woman who had brought Rubert Murdoch to his knees and prevented large scale displacement of poor residents by organizing the poorest of the poor to build an organization that could fight back. Her name is Gilda Hass, she is the Executive Director of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and I am so grateful that she is with us today. Also with us today from Los Angeles is Karina Samala, Renato Roque and Rob Strong - national leaders of the transgender civil rights movement. As many of you know, drag queens, as they used to be called, were purged from the gay movement in the 80's as the movement sold its revolutionary soul and became an identity group for the Democratic Party. These activists have supported this independent movement in all of our manifestations in California over the last ten years - from the New Alliance Party, to the Peace & Freedom Party, to the Patriot Party, to the Reform Party and now, to the Coalition for Political Reform. Thank you for being here.

For the last fifteen years - you could say - the independent movement has had a rough time of it. In 1992, Ross Perot shocked the world when he got 19% of the vote. Eight years later, his political legacy, the Reform Party, polled less than a half a percentage of the vote. But here's something you should know about the independents. When we fall off of our horse, we get right back up and start riding again. Or, to give an old cliché a post-modern twist -- we get back up again, and in the process, we create a new kind of horse.

As Omar mentioned, I was national secretary of the Reform Party, and I was honored to play a leading role in bringing together Reform's very diverse constituencies. This was a movement that included all sectors of society, all geographic areas of our country, and all political viewpoints, left, center and right. And it wasn't easy being who I am to work with people who had such different political and social experiences from me. But we fumbled and we grew together. In fact, I got to know Ross Perot pretty well, but the first time I met him, he took one look at my earring (I had an earring at the time) and refused to speak to me. But this kind of coalition which for a short time, we were able to build, raised a lot of eyebrows. When I first took office, many of my liberal, progressive and left-wing friends asked me, "How can you participate in a movement with people like that?" And I replied, "You mean a movement of Americans?"

It always amazes me when people question whether folks with different
ideologies can work together and build together in politics. I find that question astonishing. After all we built this country together. We've fought wars together. We shop at the same shopping malls and send our kids to the same schools. Why can't we
practice politics together? Particularly if the politics are non-ideological and built upon a shared vision for changing our political culture and reinvigorating our democracy!

The Reform Party ultimately failed. Much has been said about this and more will undoubtedly be said. There's something from my experience that I want to share with you. We learned how to build off of failure. Those of us in this room today have gone about building brick by brick, signature by signature to connect with that part of the movement that did not fail to inspire and train other Americans who are independents. The dialogues that I personally have been engaged in around this conference with people like Ralph Nader, Arianna Huffington and Gary Hart and dozens and dozens of people across California, have strengthened my resolve that America needs an independent movement just like this. An ultra-inclusive, ultra-democratic movement of Americans from all walks of life and from across the political spectrum that can come together to take back our democracy!

I believe in the spirit of political independence. I can't tell you how much it means to me to see you all, to be here with 900 people who represent millions of people from across America. Together, we will go forward and make America a humane and decent and prosperous country that we can all be proud of. We are going forward, whether that means building a party or not, we will decide how to structure ourselves. We are going to go forward and make America the humane and decent and prosperous country that we can be proud of. It is my pleasure to introduce another of our co-conveners, someone who has inspired me from the very beginning. She was the first woman and first African American during a presidential campaign on the ballot in all 50 states. She is a member of the state Executive Committee of the Independence Party of New York and also serves as chair of the Committee for a Unified Independent Party. She is a developmental psychologist and co-founder of the All Stars Project which sponsors the country's leading supplementary education programs for inner city youth. Please welcome Dr. Lenora Fulani.