What Matt Gonzalez should do now?

Gonzalez running for the Vice-Presidency under Ralph Nader. Why not?

I can see the pundits having a hey-day. They would laugh: "He has no national or international experience... he was never even a mayor!"

Of course the laughter would be the laughter of awareness: that there is no law in this country that precludes him from running.

Nader's campaign is realistic enough to know that winning the presidential election would require a miracle....

As his campaign is more about keeping the duopoly's unaddressed issues visible to the public, Matt Gonzalez would be an excellent choice as a running mate for Ralph Nader.

Gonzalez has the maturity and intellect that all the other 2004 contenders lack (save Dennis Kucinich). Gonzalez would be able to field questions with conviction, authority, and aplomb.

By running, Gonzalez would reenergize the Nader campaign which is being "starved out" by the media and its opponents. The Green Party would reconsider its own endorsement of Nader and regroup its own scattered energies.

Last year, the Democratic Party and rogue politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger were very successful at dividing the Greens for their own benefit.

While 2003 looked like a year of progress for the Greens, 2004 shows a party rift by division over the prejudice of "Anybody But Bush" and the widespread erroneous belief of many that Nader spoiled the 2000 election.

The Nation, Noam Chomsky, and populists like Jim Hightower, Molly Ivans, and Michael Moore seem to have all turned to the Democratic Party because of an overriding fear of four more years of Bush. (I would submit that the Democratic Party has been successful at fielding red-herring candidates like Dean, Sharpton, Lieberman (and Kucinich?) while meantime pushing the candidates that uphold the status quo.)

If, nothing more significant, a Gonzalez announcement of running with Nader would be like a cock-crow at dawn.

Young people especially would be energized to pay attention to the issues and challenges that really confront our country's future. The older folks would pay attention to be sure. Now, they mostly tune out the progressive left as inconsequential "static".

Gonzalez is flexible enough and self-sufficient enough to take on the attention-- although he has stated that he prefers to move away from political office for now. (But who is saying-- and I am not-- that Nader will actually win political office in 2004!)

As mentioned elsewhere by Ralph Nader (whose resume of accomplishment far exceeds those of his opponents): Abraham Lincoln came to the office of the presidency with little more credential than being a small-town lawyer.

The qualities that made Lincoln our finest president were much more ineffable. I sense similar qualities in Matt Gonzalez.

matt should put on a mask and join us at the next black bloc. then he should tell his sheep-like followers that electoral politics is the equivelent of mass murder, and that there won't be positive change until business as usual is stopped.

I'm glad to see that "anarchist" below by putting on his mask for the "black bloc" helped stop Prop. J., a give-away to the upper class in San Francisco.

Good to see that "anarchist" helped raise the minimum wage in San Francisco, a bit of (gasp!) legislation which has a REAL beneficial effect on the daily existence of the poorest working people in the city.

Good to see all of those anarchists who are really concerned about the pending gentrification/ethnic cleansing on the horizon in the Bayview/Hunters Point.

Yeah, your fashion sense has overthrown the system and now we are all free!

Have you every considered that by now your tactics are expected and so now serve as much a part of continuing the system as any other form of symbolic protest? Hey, let's break-away from the March 20th protest and RUSH 6th St. so that we can just get arrested! How lame. You just provide some sweet footage for the corporate media to prove their case as to why we need the police state.

i know lots of anarchists and other revolutionaries who are active on those same issues, both inside and outside of electoral politics. many of them marched in the breakaway.

anyhow, its nice to know that your conception of protesting the war includes renting your own streets from the city and being as non-disruptive (read: invisible) as possible.