Who are we in this room? You know who we are–you know who the Nader/Camejo campaign is. On the most crucial issue of this campaign–the war in Iraq–we are the overwhelming majority in world. The Democratic and Republican parties represent an isolated minority in this world. There is not a single country where polls were taken–in all of the Arab world, Africa, Asia, Latin America–even our two neighbors, Mexico and Canada–where the majority favor the war. And in not a single European country. So here is the majority point of view in the world, and people say that point of view should not be on the ballot and not allowed to be heard. What a concept of democracy–what a conception of what free elections are supposed to be.

Now, I want to thank Nader–Ralph Nader–for there is no one else in this nation like him. There is no one with the standing he has before the public who has stood up to say to the American people, "We are losing our democracy; these two parties represent money, not people; and we have to fight for what other countries have." In America we do not have free elections. We have manipulated elections. The point of view we are presenting in this campaign is what Nader calls the "solution revolution."

Take the George Bush tax cut: We could have taken one-third of that money and put solar power on every home in the United States. We could have created jobs; lowered the price of energy; stimulated the solar industry to the point that it could have become competitive with the grid, and then solar could grow by itself. That could be done.

You know when you saw "9/11" the movie, remember how they showed the Saudi dictatorship? Notice how they never called them "dictators." They have funny names for them in the Arab world. The call them emirs–they call them all kinds of names. Until they turn anti-American, then they are dictators. So long as they are pro-American, they have some other little fancy name for them. But the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia has one trillion dollars invested in the United States. I believe that is stolen money. They, as a dictatorship, have made a partnership with American corporations and European corporations to steal the oil and leave the masses of Arab people in poverty. That trillion dollars belongs to the people of the Arab world. We could confiscate that money and return it to its proper owners. We could use that money to build schools and hospitals and to create jobs in the Arab world. We do that and the danger of terrorist attacks against the United States from Arabs would come to an end. In fact, if Ralph Nader were elected president, you know that color alert thing, it would go to bright green.

The Patriot Act outlaws the Fourth Amendment [the right to be "secure" against "unreasonable searches and seizures"] But the Congress, Senate, and the president cannot change the Constitution. That power belongs to you and me. It belongs to the people of America. And the founders of this nation made it very difficult to change to protect us. This is a conspiracy against the people by the Democratic and Republican parties. You cannot excuse a Paul Wellstone, a Barbara Boxer, or liberals–who we agree with on many, many things–for having voted to take away the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution. Don’t think for one second they did not fully understand what they were doing. And that what they were doing was an illegal act. None of them had the courage to stand up.

We are fighting for affordable housing; for women’s choice–to raise the standard of living of women everywhere in the world, a women’s rights movement. That’s the only way–by improving the conditions of women–that we can ever stop the population explosion that is endangering our species.

We are for gay marriage. We are for instant run-off voting. These are things that we are trying to fight for. Look, we know where Bush stands. Bush is peculiar. You know, the people that say that we have to get rid of Bush have a point. Bush is peculiar. When you have a president who walks around with a two thousand-year-old book and believes the world was made in seven days and dinosaurs never existed, you have got a problem. You got a president who thinks he is communicating with extra terrestrials telling him to go to war. This is serious. He needs psychiatric help. Whenever you hear someone talking about war and God in the same phrase, that person needs help. It has nothing to do with religion.

The so-called Religious Right in America is a political movement that uses religion as a cover. It is not a religious movement. It is a movement against progress–people who worship ignorance in the past and want to take us back. They want homophobia and they want to re-enslave women. That’s what they want. The problem we’ve got is that Kerry and Edwards have no plan to do anything about this. They are for the war, for the Patriot Act; they want to send more soldiers over there. They voted in a motion that said, "Unequivocal support for George Bush and his conduct in the war."

But let me tell you something else they did: They gave George Bush, in January–when he gave his State of the Union address–they gave him eighteen standing ovations. These are the people who tell us to shut up and not run because they are trying to get rid of Bush. They gave him eighteen standing ovations.

You know what an opposition party would have done? When George Bush got up in 2002 and announced that he was going to violate all international laws and invade a sovereign nation, without the UN or anyone else’s approval? If the Democrats had gotten up and walked out of the State of the Union address in protest–called on the American people to demonstrate in every single city, in respect for our Constitution and for the rule of law in the world–Bush could never have done what he’s done. Everything Bush has done, that you in this room and the people of San Francisco have opposed, has been done because the Democratic Party has allowed it to be done and has supported it.

Kerry is for taking driver’s licenses away from all of the undocumented. He’s for lowering corporate taxes. You know, corporate profits are the largest margins now in our history? Corporations used to pay 33 percent of federal taxes, now they pay 7.8 percent. We have regressive taxes growing all over the country, and Kerry announces his plan is to lower the taxes further, when we have information that thousands–literally thousands–of corporations are not paying any taxes. And the estimate is that $300 billion is not being collected every year, while we are running a half a trillion deficit. And what Kerry is talking about is lowering their taxes further.

But do you remember in the movie "9/11?" I presume most of you have seen it; if you haven’t, please go see it. The movie begins with African American Congress people getting up and saying they want to investigate the denial of the right of African Americans to vote in Florida. The reason they could not get the motions to get the investigations started was because not a single senator would join them. Now look, I want to tell you something: I respect Michael Moore–it’s a great movie. But I wish that right there he had shown the faces of Paul Wellstone, of Barbara Boxer, of all these people that claim they are for peace–that they are for us or for the people. Not one of them would stand for free elections and the rights of African Americans. Not one. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party denied the African American people for ninety years the right to vote, in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, and neither party has ever apologized for what they did.

Now, there is a big mystery in this election and I want to end with this. You want to know what the biggest mystery of this campaign is? It’s that the overwhelming majority of the people who say they are going to vote for Kerry and Edwards do not agree with them. Let me repeat that. The polls show that 40 to 50 percent of people of the United States oppose the war. Most of those people say they are going to vote for Kerry and Edwards, who are for the war. That is, we don’t have elections where people are free to vote for what they believe in.

Tom Paine once said, "When things are going wrong for a long time it appears like it is right." There is a great crime being committed right now in this nation. That these two parties have formed a methodology so that people think they are making decisions–that they are having an election–when, in fact, this whole thing is contrived, manipulated, and paid for. Does the Democratic Party believe in democracy? In the last three-and-a-half years…"they have done nothing to end the spoiler system. They don’t care if Republicans get elected. The one thing they are not going to permit is for third parties to be allowed in America and voices that are for peace and social justice be heard. They want to keep us out of the debates, and they want to keep us off the ballot.

The Democratic Party is running a massive operation trying to prevent Ralph Nader from being heard in America and to prevent people from having the right to vote for him. And people say that we are going to throw the election. Let me tell you something, Ralph Nader and I control two votes. My vote and his vote. You are all free to vote whichever way you want. We say the people make that decision, you don’t make it for them. The Democratic campaign to keep us off the ballot, all of the those in the Nation, Mother Jones, MoveOn.org–whatever its name is–all of these organizations that tell us to shut up and go away–who they really are against is the people’s right to decide how they are going to vote. But it is not for them to decide it. They ask us to join in a conspiracy with them against the people’s right.

The polls show 12 percent of the youth are going to vote Nader/Camejo. Look, I am an old guy–I am a sixties person. And I want to tell you something. Generation after generation, we have fought the good fight. We won the fight for civil rights for African Americans, to a certain degree. We stopped the war in Vietnam by demonstrating massively in the streets. We didn’t win any of this because the Democratic Party gave it to us. They were the ones who went to Vietnam and killed two million innocent people. And their candidate for president has a silver medal that he is very proud of because he killed a teenage Vietnamese defending his nation against foreign aggressors.

Why is it that the American media will not find out who this teenager was and talk to his family and put them on TV, so that we can see them? Because they don’t want to humanize the people we kill. They don’t want us to see the crimes they have committed. And we should be ashamed of that medal. When I ask you to join with Nader and myself, we will not betray that 12 percent of the youth. That’s one of every eight who say I have the courage to stand up for the truth. Like Matt [former Green Party candidate for mayor of San Francisco] said at the big antiwar demonstration: Matt Gonzalez says, "Kerry’s voted. He’s for war, he voted for the Patriot Act–I cannot vote for him."

This concept–this concept that we have ideals, that we actually have opinions, and that we are willing to act on them. Twelve percent of the youth say that, and what is it that people are asking them to do? To teach that new generation, "No, learn how to get on your knees. Submit! Vote for war, vote for the Patriot Act! Vote against the undocumented workers. Vote against working people. Vote against your own rights. Vote against democracy. You have to learn that in America we have no rights. And you have to learn because your parents learned."

The generation of the sixties desperately went into the Democratic Party. And what do we end up with? We end up with Bush. We end up with a Democratic Party far to the right. It is time for us to declare our independence, like Tom Jefferson and the founders of this nation did against tyranny. We are living under tyranny. We have a two-party dictatorship funded and controlled by money. That is against the people.

In fact, the majority who are going to vote for Kerry do not agree with him. They agree with Ralph Nader. If we had run-off elections–if we had free elections in America–there is no question Nader would receive tens of millions of votes in the first round, maybe more than Kerry. Because the people who vote for Kerry only vote for him because they want to get rid of Bush.... If you really got down to the people that say, "You know what, I love Kerry. This is super! He’s going to send more troops, yay!"

The Democrats are already proposing the draft in the Senate and the House of Congress. Kerry says not one word. No, the people who vote for Kerry don’t agree with him–they agree with you and me. Our job is to make the jailbreak, to liberate these people, so that one day they will vote. Because the one day when twenty million–thirty million–Americans vote for Ralph Nader, or his equivalent, we will become a free people; we will have the right to run America; we will establish democracy; we will have free elections; we will not allow money to control us; and we will struggle to save the world from self-destruction, to have crash programs for alternative energy and anything else that needs to be done.

Let’s be like the abolitionists in America. Let’s look to them. They had the courage to stand up. Many gave their lives for principle. It is time that we stood up in America, and as citizens said, "We want free elections, so we’ll never vote for you." The time has come. We are now free–free yourself from them. Vote against them, stand up against them. It is the only way you will ever break this monolithic hold money has over our society.