It Feels Like One Big Business Party

Monday is the first day of the Democratic National Convention in
Los Angeles, where thousands of environmental, human rights, labor and
campaign finance reform advocates will gather both in the streets and at
the Shadow Convention hosted by Arianna Huffington. We of Rainforest are
not gathering to show our support for the Democratic Party. In fact, a
large number of us were in Philadelphia for the Republican National
Convention at the end of July. Rather, we come to express our deep
concern about the state of our democracy.

Candidates for national offices are expected to spend about $3 billion
on campaigns for Election 2000, raising far too much of this money from
giant corporations with legislative agendas that often go against the
public interest. These corporations are pouring record amounts of money
into both major parties' coffers in order to purchase influence, no
matter what the outcome on election day. Despite this multimillion-dollar
corporate buy-off of our lawmakers, corporations would still like us to
believe we have a democracy in America and that our votes count more than
their money.

Sadly, politicians and corporate "leaders" have merged, reducing our
political system to a democracy theme park. This leaves us with the
Republican side and the Democratic side of the Big Business Party, two
sides of the same coin. It feels that way, at least, on global economic
policy such as the World Trade Organization.

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, citizens concerned about clear air,
clean water and healthy food have voted, signed petitions, written or
called on members of Congress and even worked to build some productive
alliances with business groups in the hopes of reversing the trend of
ecological destruction. With some success, we vote "one dollar, one vote"
in the marketplace to pressure companies such as Home Depot to agree, for
example, to not sell old-growth wood. But on most counts, the situation
continues to worsen.

Much of the pressure that is tearing apart nature and remote rain
forest tribes around the world stems from the runaway consumption in the
U.S. of oil, forests and other natural resources. The U.S.-led economic
model of endless growth is at the core of our ecological problems.

Writer Edward Abbey stated that growth for the sake of growth is the
ideology of a cancer cell, killing entire ecological systems and entire
species. Instead, our economy should work within the limits of nature,
since nature cannot work in an economy without limits.

The most important environmental policy is economic policy. Whether
talking about Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore or
George W. Bush, none of the corporate-sponsored leaders have embraced
this truism.

Why? In the 1998 elections, individuals and political action
committees representing the energy and mining industries outspent
environmental interest groups by 50 to 1. National priorities in this
country are being set by billion-dollar environmental pariahs and
multimillion-dollar campaign contributors such as Occidental Petroleum,
Archer-Daniels-Midland, Enron, Lockheed Martin, Philip Morris and
Citigroup. In elections, the voices of the people are no longer decisive.
Is this the spirit of our Constitution?

Citizens from labor unions and social-change groups came together in
Washington, D.C., Seattle and Philadelphia for protests against the WTO,
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Republican Party.
Those citizens are working to build the public pressure needed for real
democracy within our national political system. Our elected officials
have shown us that they will not change by themselves. People power is
needed to force a change.

Americans do care about our democracy, our Constitution and ending
campaign finance corruption. Whether it's saving the rain forest,
improving health care systems or maintaining a sound economy, rebuilding
a democracy of the people -- and not big business -- is key.

Randy Hayes is President of Rainforest Action Network.

• 106 Money & Politics
• 183 Environment