This convention was an extraordinarily emotional event from beginning to end, thanks to an abundance of death and injustice at this historical moment. The convention was dedicated to Peter McWilliams, and opened with a replay of part of his speech to the 1998 convention in DC. McWilliams had in fact been selected as the recipient of the Champion of Liberty award, to have been presented at the Sunday evening banquet, but the call reached his answering machine the day after he died. The award was accepted by the mother of Todd McCormick, who had been sent to prison with McWilliams, having used marijuana for cancer which he had had since childhood. McCormick gave a beautifully articulate, impassioned speech on their behalf. Throughout the convention, speakers who had known McWilliams choked up in paying tribute to him--starting with Barbara Goushaw, who delivered an outstanding keynote address, notable for the inclusiveness of its welcome to all who might find a home in the Libertarian Party.

The luncheon address on Friday was by David Thibodeau, one of the four Waco survivors who is not in jail. Many people, evidently carrying certain expectations about followers of David Koresh, have expressed surprise at what an "ordinary" person Thibodeau is. But there is nothing ordinary about his honesty and courage. He confronts a rather delicate task in explaining how a nonreligious person like himself, who initially avoided Koresh because of his religious zeal, could have come to

For the first time in a number of years, the LPSF had a contingent marching in the Gay Freedom Day parade on June 25. Many volunteers helped to make this day a success. Special thanks to Jawj Greenwald and Dave Eriqat for attending the monitor training session and serving as contingent monitors in the parade. Special thanks also to Chikako Suzuki for a huge, beautiful banner. She and Starchild deliberately made the rainbow motif subtle enough--a border along the top and bottom--that the banner can be used for other events. Gail Lightfoot made the trip up from San Luis Obispo to march with us and distribute literature for her Senate race. And thanks, finally, to all of those who marched--in addition to those already listed, Mike Acree, Erik Bauman, Michael Denny, Starchild, Bill Tomasek, and Richard Winger. It actually took all of us to carry that big banner down the wind tunnel of Market Street!

Denny set an inspiring example for all of us, smiling and waving energetically throughout. (It took some energy to wave while carrying the banner and holding a sign aloft against the wind.) Anyone watching would have gotten the impression that Libertarians were nice, friendly people--perhaps contrary to everything they had ever heard.

Mike Acree wrote a gay rights brochure targeted especially to San Francisco liberals and printed 1000 copies, along with 500 copies of the brochure of the Outright Libertarians in Atlanta. (He and Michael Denny together defrayed two-thirds of the cost of photocopying.) Starchild, in a smashing butterfly outfit made by his wife Chikako, complete with wings and antennae, skated around distributing brochures to people along the route. Everyone wanted a copy of whatever it was he was handing out.

Michael Denny opined that the parade was perhaps the most effective outreach we had ever done. The crowd was estimated at 500,000, and we had their attention for approximately a minute. There is reason to believe that it was the "Pro-Choice on Everything Peaceful" sign which drew most of the applause, so we should be sure in the future to carry plenty of signs with catchy slogans appealing to liberals. For next year, in fact, we may want to consider building a float. The Pride Committee offers a lot of helpful instructional materials for that purpose.

Meanwhile back at the ranch: Kelly Russell Simpson worked from 9 to 6 staffing an Operation Politically Homeless booth. She was assisted during the parade--most of the day--by Naomi Lopez and afterward by Chikako Suzuki (who was photocopying during the parade) and members of the parade contingent. Kelly reports that of the 55 completed quizzes, 12 women and 17 men scored libertarian, 2 women and 3 men scored borderline libertarian/liberal, 7 women and 16 men scored liberal, 1 man scored borderline/centrist, 3 women and 4 men scored centrist, 1 man scored conservative, and 1 man scored authoritarian. (That makes 67, so we’re not sure where the other 12 dots came from.) Many people took literature, including the new gay rights pamphlet, and 14 signed up to be mailed information. Kelly will send these people postcards, and will send their names to the Advocates for Self-Government, which will share them with the national LP and the Foundation for Economic Education.

Before leaving for the parade, Mike Acree set up two pairs of jars as he did last year, a jar labeled "Less" and one labeled "More" for each of the questions "How much do you want the government to control your life?" and "How much do you want the government to control other people’s lives?" A sign directed people to answer by tossing pennies into the proper jars, using "larger amounts to register greater intensity of feeling." With fewer people this year staffing the booth through most of the day, however, the jars were somewhat neglected, and the total take was only $18.42. The booth could clearly benefit from a larger number of workers to deal with all the passers-by.

We are still struggling with the best way to use the 10’ ´ 10’ space--securing banners, signs, and lots of brochures in high winds while making them all legible and accessible. Gail Lightfoot had many helpful suggestions involving PVC pipes, but your expertise would also be welcome.

be associated so closely with him; but his remarkable

account carries no trace of defensiveness. In person as well as in his book, he comes across as genuine, centered, and humane.

Thibodeau was also present for the screening of the new video, "Waco: A New Revelation." The film plays a tape made inside the building, by a device smuggled in by the FBI. On the tape, now being used as evidence by the government, some Davidians appear to be making plans for burning the building. Thibodeau strongly challenged the authenticity of this recording.

One of the new revelations in the video was that the concrete bunker where the women and children had gathered was bombed. The flash shows up on the infrared (FLIR) film, and there are photos of a large hole in the ceiling of the bunker, with the rebar bent in. Autopsy evidence from bodies found in that area was also consistent with death from an explosion. Interestingly, however, when the producers returned to the site to excavate the bunker, the ceiling portion was missing--misfiled, presumably, like the bullet-ridden front door.

Perhaps the most interesting developments, though, were those since the making of the second film. Many libertarians by now have heard that John Ghigliotti, the FLIR expert hired by the Danforth investigatory committee, was found dead in his apartment shortly before he was to deliver his report; the death was ruled a heart attack. At about the same time, Edwin Allard, who speaks about the FLIR evidence in "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," also suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Worse yet, two other FLIR experts--there aren't that many--have narrowly escaped death, one of them from blood poisoning. If they hadn't collapsed in public places, they would have died.

In another moving convention presentation Dean Ahmad discussed the little-known "secret evidence" provision of the 1998 Anti-Terrorist Act, which allows people to be arrested and jailed without any charges being filed against them. Neither they nor their lawyers are permitted access to the evidence against them. Currently 20 persons are so incarcerated. The House is considering Resolution 2121, which would repeal the secret evidence provision, but your support would help.

With the help of three horror stories from the War on Drugs, Harry Browne delivered probably his most impassioned speech ever in accepting the nomination on

Sunday afternoon. He had replaced his theme of "Government doesn't work" with the message that "We believe in you; we want you to be free." The four one-minute commercials produced by his campaign brought a range of emotional responses. The sight of a wrecking ball slamming into the wall of (supposedly) the IRS building packed a particularly visceral punch.

For those who were still around on Monday evening, "The Patriot" brought the weekend to a fittingly emotional close. Some libertarians thought the film called for a sequel showing the erosion of all the liberties the patriots fought for. In the scene where a whole village is rounded up and forced into the church, which is then torched, Starchild urges us to yell out, "Remember Waco!" He also suggests handing gun rights leaflets to exiting theater patrons.

There are many criteria by which the convention might be judged a success. The Sunday evening banquet, for example, raised over $137,000 for the start of the Browne-Olivier campaign. The dance following the banquet was a success in a different sort of way. Libertarian dances have traditionally been very pathetic events, with gender ratios of 10:1 or 20:1. This time the ratio was more like 2:1, with women being very much in evidence throughout the convention, on the podium as well as on the floor. Perhaps my favorite indicator of the success of the convention, however, was the two CSPAN crew members who came forward on Sunday and said, "You know, we’ve been listening to what you guys have been saying, and it makes a lot of sense. Where do we sign up?" They joined the Party right there on the podium.

As in all contested nominations, internal Party politics was an issue, though not prominently during the convention itself. There were, in fact, a number of gestures of conciliation and magnanimity. Harry Browne praised those competitors for the nomination who had often shared the platform with him at state conventions (particularly Gorman and Hess); and Gorman, having lost the nomination for President, declined the nomination for Vice President, out of deference to those who had actively campaigned for that office. (He also declined the nomination for the Libertarian National Committee.) As expected, Jacob Hornberger's name was placed in nomination; and, in a brief appearance at that time, he declined to participate in the candidates' debate, contending--belatedly, thought some observers--that his charges against the Browne campaign and the national office staff would come up and it would be detrimental to the Party to air them in public. Although his supporters were much in evidence, Hornberger got only 120 votes on the first ballot, as against Browne's 493. (Gorman got 166, Hess 53, and Hollist 8.)

The contest for the top of the ticket has often brought into alignment a number of axes of difference.

1. Most obviously, Browne's victory over Gorman, like his victory over Rick Tompkins in 1996, was nominally a victory for supporters of the "top-down" over the "grass-roots" approach. I say "nominally" because the distinction, perhaps inevitably, tends to be drawn most sharply by the grass-roots challengers, who sometimes go so far as to claim that the Presidential race is a waste of time. And some local candidates voiced their resentment at the implication that they were unable to run a credible race without help from the national office. There have been few allegations, from the other side, that local races were a waste of time. David Nolan argued for Congressional races as most intrinsically worthwhile for Libertarians, inasmuch as Congressional districts are often quite small and homogeneous, allowing candidates to be in direct touch with voters; yet the issues are national. On a more local level, pet Libertarian issues like Social Security or the income tax are irrelevant. Libertarians are free, in any event, to allocate their contributions to races at the various levels as they see fit.

2. Browne has often been criticized, by "purists," as representing the "pragmatist" arm of the Party. This charge is based mainly on his endorsement of excise taxes and tariffs (and, for awhile in the 1996 campaign, a sales tax). In one of his current ads, he points out that, after the abolition of the IRS, the Constitutionally authorized functions of government could be financed by the Constitutionally authorized means of tariffs and excise taxes. There is no question that tariffs and excise taxes violate Libertarian principles, so the purists have legitimate concerns here about the coherence of the message that is being communicated. On the other hand, Harry’s proposal to abolish the IRS is radical compared with Ed Clark’s characterization of libertarianism, on national TV during the 1980 campaign, as "low-tax liberalism," and his campaign White Paper calling for a reduction of the federal budget to the level of the Kennedy Administration. So far as I know, Harry has not taken a public stand on the viability of either anarchy or voluntary government financing. What he has done is to

ask that Libertarians set these questions aside until we have reduced government to its Constitutional level. In this, he is following the strategy which saved the Libertarian Party from a fatal split between the minarchists and anarchists at the 1974 convention.

3. Contested nominations have typically pitted an early and strong favorite against a dark-horse challenger, and these races have commonly involved ethical charges of conflict of interest in the National Office staff. The implication of Hornberger's charges, that some people go into Libertarian politics for the money, is surely far-fetched. But the potential for conflict of interest, especially in a small party, between campaign and office staffs is not. My own sense is that the most serious concerns have to do, not with money, but with the use of power. In 1987, for example, Russell Means went to the convention thinking, with some justification, that he had a lock on the nomination. What he failed to appreciate was how many of his supporters, including the three delegates from his home state of South Dakota, were too poor to attend the convention. Ron Paul was also a newcomer to the Party that year, but his supporters in the Party Establishment were aware, as Means supporters were not, that the bylaws permitted those vacant delegate slots to be filled by people from other states--in the case of South Dakota, three members of the Paul family. Means lost by one vote. Such moves are not unethical, but they can be fairly disparaged as "political." The situation is made more delicate by the fact that the same faction has remained in power throughout the history of the Party. Repeated instances like this thus contribute to the impression that certain people within the Party are simply corrupt. I rather doubt, on the other hand, whether the campaign staff for any candidate would decline to avail themselves of such perfectly legal opportunities for helping to insure victory for their candidate. That remains a conjecture, of course, until the Party Establishment loses a few.

4. In principle, the Party likes to boast, it draws from both left and right, and Party gatherings have always manifested a marvelous mix of suits and tie-dyes. But it is probably no accident that the Party elite have always represented the socially conservative wing of the Party: Typically ex-Republicans and successful businessmen, they have the money; the counterculture types attracted from the left are more often starving students. This dominance by social conservatives is evident in the literature published by the Party, most of which deals with economic issues. The War on Drugs represents the only personal liberties issue, and the last gay rights pamphlet was published in 1975. Popular perception of the Party is also affected: I regard George Lakoff as a fair-minded liberal, but he was not easily to be persuaded that he was mistaken in characterizing libertarianism, in his book Moral Politics, as a species of conservatism: He had done his homework, having read a reasonable sampling of libertarian literature from various sources.

The left-right split was more apparent this year in the Vice Presidential than in the Presidential race. The "Establishment candidate," Art Olivier, mayor of Bellflower, is articulate as well as politically experienced; the only "criticism" that could be leveled against him is simply that he is another Harry Browne. The other candidate who had declared in advance, Ken Krawchuk of Pennsylvania, was more identified with the Gorman faction, and came in a distant third on the first ballot. Meanwhile Steve Kubby, 1998 LP gubernatorial candidate in California and the driving force behind Proposition 215, announced that he was running on behalf of Peter McWilliams; he lost to Olivier by a wide margin on the second ballot. Kubby, a "respectable" family man whom, like Harry Browne, one never sees except in a suit, would not easily fit the mold of counterculture candidate. Yet one prominent Libertarian privately compared his candidacy to that of Norma Jean ("Cop to Call Girl") Almodovar, who ran for Lieutenant Governor of California in 1986. He had had hopes of recruiting his Republican friends and neighbors into the Party, but having an ex-hooker on the ticket blew that dream all to hell. Never mind that the LP opposes the pandering law on which Norma Jean was arrested, or that Kubby wasn't even violating California law; sex and drugs must not be a known part of any candidates' lives.

San Francisco's very own Starchild serves as the LP canary, whose task it is to let us know when the conservative atmosphere of the Party is becoming too oppressive. He appeared in his butterfly costume on Saturday and in drag on Sunday, reminding everyone of the hopelessness of our quest for respectability.

I ran into Russell Means in the hall on Friday evening, and, having worked on his campaign in 1987, stopped to chat. I had thought that his experiences then might have left him rather bitter about the Party; so I was a little surprised, when I asked him whether he would consider running for President in 2004, that he seemed enthusiastic about the idea. With the help of Sylvia and Ben Olson of

Iowa, who also supported him in 1987, I distributed 1000 flyers Saturday morning announcing an organizational meeting that evening. Russell's speech that afternoon electrified many of those in attendance, and over 100 showed up to the meeting, and donated about $700. Ben and Sylvia subsequently gathered contact information for another hundred who couldn't make the meeting.

A paramount reason for starting early--apart from capitalizing on the unique opportunity provided by everyone's having assembled for the convention--is that there will be lot of opposition to a Means candidacy within the Party. Ironically, Means is likely to be much more popular with the American people in general than within his own Party. We're all familiar with the phenomenon of Christians who know the Bible backward and forward, but whose practice of Christianity doesn't seem to go much farther than attending church every Sunday. Conversely, there are those who may know nothing of the Bible and espouse no particular belief system, yet whose lives could fairly be said to exemplify Christian ideals. These are not exhaustive types, of course; but they are about as applicable to libertarianism as to other belief systems. Russell is not an intellectual; he is not an economist or a philosopher; he did not come to the Party as a result of reading Atlas Shrugged in high school. But, as he would put it, he lives libertarianism. A self-described street fighter, he has gone to the barricades for liberty. As he often remarked during the 1987 campaign, he committed his felony before he got to the "Red House"--his refusal to stand as the judge entered the courtroom in the Wounded Knee trial. But this real-life approach to libertarianism will sit uneasily with the many libertarians for whom the world is essentially made up of words.

Having come to libertarianism, as an explicit philosophy, in his maturity, Russell has a world-view which he experiences as integrated, and which, as for many of us, contains elements which are not specifically libertarian. As he speaks extemporaneously, he sometimes gives voice to these other values. In his speech to the convention, for example, he deplored the "consumerism" of modern American society, especially the materialism of young people. One prominent Libertarian lawyer privately nailed him afterward on his definition of consumerism, and came away from the exchange convinced that Means was a socialist. Russell later insisted, credibly, that he had been misunderstood; but, given that he is unlikely to limit himself to prepared scripts, incidents like this will surely recur, and will give plenty of fuel to those who oppose his nomination. That will likely include many Party purists, even though there is no issue here of soft-pedaling stands to make them more palatable.

There are other reasons why Russell may be opposed which have nothing to do with him personally. In 1987, some Party members expressed the concern about his creating a "one-issue campaign." This was precisely the reason Roger MacBride gave for rejecting John Vernon as his running mate in 1976--Vernon was gay. I heard other Party members questioning whether Means could represent the interests of white people--though I had never heard them express any doubts about their ability to represent the interests of red people. The implication that only white heterosexuals are universal in their outlook--or worse, that they are the only people who count--is offensive in the extreme. I don’t know how prevalent that attitude may be, but I mention it in case it hasn’t completely disappeared.

Those who support a Means candidacy, on the other hand, also span a range of motives. Some, inevitably, look to him as an effective challenge to the Party elite. Certainly his contacts in the entertainment industry raise a realistic possibility of transcending the epsilontics of traditional Libertarian campaign budgets. My own enthusiasm for Russell, however, springs from no dissatisfaction with Harry Browne. In terms of intelligence and articulateness, his ability to think on his feet, his constant self-scrutiny and striving tirelessly to improve his delivery of the message, his humanity and his communication of compassion and concern, Browne has set a standard I don’t ever expect to see surpassed. But it is also my view that the Party needs to broaden its image, and its appeal. Before he ever steps up to the podium, Russell Means as our standard bearer speaks to a whole crowd of people who might otherwise never pay us any attention. It’s time for a little diversity in our portfolio.

(Reminder: This column does not reflect an endorsement of Means by the LPSF.)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

David Molony

chair@lpsf.org

(415) 516-3151

Kelly Russell Simpson

KellySimpson@pacbell.net

(415) 487-9325

Vince Grubbs

vwg@sirius.com

(415) 682-9482

Mike Acree

macree@psg.ucsf.edu

(415) 668-5794

Jerry Cullen

gtcullen@slip.net

(415) 567-9642

Mike Denny

mfd@MichaelDenny.net

(415) 616-0643

Starchild

dreamer@ziplink.net

(415) 626-3036

Jerry Pico

picoman@mindspring.com

(415) 885-5350

Opinions expressed in unsigned columns of the Golden Gate Libertarian do not necessarily represent those of anyone but the Editor.

Submissions are encouraged. The deadline (including agenda and calendar items) is the first Thursday of the month. Text sent by e-mail should be put in the body of the message (no attachments) and sent to Mike Acree at <macree@psg.ucsf.edu>. Photos and artwork should be mailed to Mike Acree, 859 45th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94121-3223. Please let us know if you want your item returned.

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