2004 DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM

This past Friday and Saturday, July 9-10, I spent in Hollywood, Florida, trying to impact the 2004 Democratic Platform.

Most of you know that I was anti-Iraq War in January-March, 2003, and I’ve seen nothing since to change my mind. You might expect, therefore, that I’m disappointed by what the July 11 Miami Herald, at p. 8A, described in a sub-headline as a platform in which “Democrats stressed national security and declined to call the Iraq war wrong”.

To my own surprise, after some reflection on July 11 and thereafter, ecstatic I’m not, but slitting my wrists I’m not either. I arrived at Hollywood, Florida’s Westin Diplomat Hotel, on Thursday night, July 8. Friday morning, I went to the only site in the hotel where there was any publicized political activity at all, and that was at the conference room of the Progressive Caucus (essentially a group of Kucinich supporters led by platform committee members, middle-aged John Sherman of Minnesota, and young Ana Dias of Hawaii). They and some 50-60 others worked feverishly on Friday and Saturday, and, mostly as guests like myself, they worked the lobby immediately outside the platform committee meeting room, flashing handwritten signs decrying the Iraq War and its Iraqi aftermath. Unlike Republican meetings, the anti-war group enjoyed up close and personal access to platform committee action.

On Friday night, with cheap wine and cheap hors d’ouvres, my buddy Scott Maddox and the Florida Democratic Party, on the phone with Florida Kerry guru Jon Ausman, hosted a cheap cocktail party for platform committee members who included the Chairperson of the DNC, the Secretary-Treasurer of the national AFL-CIO and other distinguished labor leaders including the President of the IAFF and Bill Lucy, Secretary-Treasurer of AFSCME. (Never before, I’m sure, had such distinguished guests been subjected to such a cheap cocktail party, such as we working stiffs in the FDP are so subjected all the time.)

After the cheap cocktail party, and before the actual Saturday, formal Platform Committee meeting, Dean supporter Marla Camp of Austin, Texas, reported as follows on www.platform.smartcampaigns.com.. Friday afternoon, we had all been provided with the draft of the 2004 Platform, 35 pages on letter size paper. Ms. Camp reported that there were late night meetings in the hotel between the Kerry and Dean/Kucinich people. Those meetings, until the not so wee hours of the morning, resulted, she said, in “well over 100 amendments incorporated” into the Platform draft. A few more amendments were adopted during Saturday debate. After platform adoption at 3:45 PM on Saturday, Kucinich himself had a telephone conference with his supporters at the Westin, and was reported to have told them that he was pleased with the amended platform and that “now instead of having hundreds of people at the national convention holding up signs in support of a minority report, we will have thousands of people approving a platform that calls for reduction of troops in Iraq and the first steps toward an exit.”

Dean supporter, platform committee member and former Vermont Secretary of State Don Hooper had submitted some 15-20 formal, proposed Platform amendments. Hooper expressed similar sentiments as Ms. Camp, and as did Hue Beattie of Bellingham, Washington, i.e. their proposed amendments were accepted by the Kerry team and largely incorporated into the Platform.

Harken back for a moment. Was the original July 1 draft of the Platform an awful document? Not hardly. There was a 16-person drafting committee, headed by Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. Ms. DeLauro was Executive Director of EMILY’S List; she’s a Vice-President of ADA (Americans for Democratic Action, co-founded by Eleanor Roosevelt); she voted “no” on the War Empowerment Resolution. Also a member of the 16-person drafting committee and a powerful proponent of the platform draft was Tallahassee, Florida Mayor John Marks, an exceptional and youthful African-American.

Look at the 186-member Platform Committee itself, which met and adopted the Platform on July 10. Its 3 co-chairs were Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, Ohio congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa. Vilsack, of course, like Florida’s Bob Graham, was on the short list for the Vice-Presidential nomination. Tubbs Jones is a vibrant African-American, former Cleveland county prosecutor and municipal judge. Villaraigosa is the son of Mexican immigrants; former Speaker of the California Assembly and finalist in the 2001 race to be Mayor of Los Angeles. Previously known as Tony Villar, his new name combines the surnames of himself and his wife as a demonstration of his commitment to women’s equality. Strong proponents of the final Platform document included Palm Beach, Florida’s Dwain Wall who had submitted several proposed amendments which he believed incorporated in the final Platform; also there was Miami’s Millie Herrera who worked for and accomplished incorporation of platform language for the benefit of Cuban-Americans and Caribbean-Americans.

There’s plenty of language in the final Platform which even this cynical writer can embrace. As some might recall, less than 30 years ago I commanded the Army Reserve’s 309th Civil Affairs Group. In the new Platform, under the caption “Strengthening Our Military”, it’s pledged that “We will increase our civil affairs personnel – those who arrive on the scene after the major conflict ends to work with local leaders and officials to get the schools back in shape, the hospitals reopened, and the banks up and running.”

Is the final platform all that I would like it to be? No, but consider the words of Platform Co-chair Villaraigosa in urging its adoption. He noted that he’d been a high school dropout, coming from a home of domestic violence and alcohol abuse. The civil rights movement and affirmative action enabled him to move forward; to graduate from UCLA; to work for the federal EEOC; to attain remarkable achievements; to win endorsements from the GLBT community (from whence one of the less than 20 dais speakers was chosen to speak in support of the Platform on July 11); to successfully raise 4 children, 11 to 29 years of age. Villaraigosa acknowledged that the Platform is not necessarily created solely in his image, and that it’s a consensus document, a roadmap and not a blueprint, a guidepost. It promotes strong federal laws against hate crimes; promotes independently auditable voting systems; promotes choice and abortions that are safe, rare and legal; promotes real immigration reform with pathways to citizenship and family reunification; targets pollution from corporate farms and environmental abusers; promotes funded educational reform and universal health care; etc., etc..

This writer embraces that Platform not merely because of the words in it (to a few of which I can’t subscribe and others of which I believe unfortunately missing), but more because it is a genuine consensus document from the loins of a distinguished, simpatico and diverse group of Americans of whom we can all be extraordinarily proud. A group who, particularly in their diversity, will not even be closely matched by their counterparts in the other political party. July 9-11 once again made be proud to be a Democrat.