MECAWI Initiated Camp Casey Detroit, August 2005 (WW Photo)
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Nov. 9, 2006
‘Stop the War’ Slate picks up steam
By kris Hamel
detroit
The David Sole for U.S. Senate campaign in Michigan
continues to gain momentum as it enters the final days
leading to the Nov. 7 election. Sole, a member of Workers World Party, is running on the Green Party ticket as the lead candidate on the Stop the War Slate. He has brought his anti-war message to cities and towns throughout the
state.
Due to the persistent media work by his campaign, Sole has done several interviews around Michigan. A 12-minute interview
was recently aired on WDET public radio in Detroit. The Metro Times, a free weekly, featured Sole in a full-page article on the Green Party campaign. The candidate also taped a 15-minute interview on public television and radio in the mid-Michigan city of Mt. Pleasant. The broadcast area covers half of the northern Lower Peninsula.
Sole did a live interview at a Kalamazoo radio station as well as a taped interview on Kalamazoo public radio, and with the student newspaper at Western Michigan University in that city. While in Mt. Pleasant, Sole campaigned with Lauren Spencer on the campus of Central Michigan University. Spencer is the Green Party candidate for Michigan State University Board of Trustees. Sole learned from an African American student there that the Nazis held a rally on campus
earlier this year. Sole is writing a letter to the university’s president demanding immediate measures to combat racism on campus.
Both Spencer and Sole received the endorsement of the Lansing Association for Human Rights, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) advocacy group. Spencer has been actively campaigning in the Lansing area and recently spoke to a political science class about her campaign.
Michael Merriweather, Stop the War Slate candidate for Wayne State University Board of Governors, traveled with Sole to Kalamazoo and did campaigning en route at the community college in Jackson, Mich. The candidates were introduced by Leslie Feinberg, author and LGBT leader, at a standing-room-only meeting at Kalamazoo College. Merriweather took part in a “meet the candidates” event at WSU on Oct. 23.
Sole distributed 500 leaflets to faculty and staff of Wayne County Community College at a daylong program at Cobo Hall. That same evening, he took part in a successful house meeting and fundraiser at the home of immigrant rights leader
Elena Herrada.
On Oct. 28 Sole took his campaign to the Latino community in southwest Detroit. A sound car and leafleting got his pro-immigrant, anti-racist message to hundreds in the community. Ignacio Meneses, leader of the Justice for Cuba Coalition and U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange, assisted with Spanish translation of Sole’s program. Donations from supporters have enabled the campaign to place advertisements in several newspapers. El Central, a free Spanish-language weekly, published a multi-color full-page ad, prominently featured on its second page. Quarterpage ads have also been placed in the Arab American News and the Michigan Citizen.
Small ads are being run in dozens of newspapers throughout the state. On the campaign trail Leslie Feinberg did a five-event speaking tour in Michigan in late October. As in Kalamazoo and at Michigan State University, Feinberg urged her audiences at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and WSU in Detroit to support the Stop the War Slate on the Green Party ticket. Lauren Spencer took the stage with Feinberg at MSU and WSU and spoke briefly on her campaign for MSU trustee.
Spencer’s platform pays particular attention to issues facing LGBT students and campus workers. Kevin Carey, Stop the War Slate candidate for State Board of Education, participated in a candidates’ forum at Grace Fellowship Chapel, one of the largest African-American churches in Detroit, where he blasted the distribution of state educational funding as “an apartheid system that perpetuates racism and poverty.”
Fred Vitale, candidate for District 3 State Representative, recently placed more than two dozen billboards in high visibility areas in Detroit’s east side. His “Money for Detroit, not for war!” message is read by hundreds of motorists daily. Every day during the last full week of October, cable television in the Grosse Pointes and Harper Woods aired the recent candidates’ forum.
The Sole for U.S. Senate campaign issued an Oct. 29 media release that charged: “The last couple of weeks have made clear that the war in Iraq is the critical issue in the elections nationwide. With 65 percent of the population opposed to the war, the Democrats are demagogically trying to divert this opposition to the war into support for their candidates. ...
“The Democrats have consistently supported Bush’s war in Iraq. The last Senate vote on the military budget and appropriations for the war was 100-0. To this date, the Democrats stand opposed to the only real solution to the war—to end it now by withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq
immediately.
“Debbie Stabenow, incumbent Democrat for Senate, has voted for every appropriation for the war. “The bulk of the media has shown its subservience to big business and the Pentagon by refusing to cover the David Sole for U.S. Senate campaign, the only anti-war voice in the Michigan Senate
race.
In contrast, last week the Michigan Citizen, Detroit’s largest and most progressive African American weekly newspaper, endorsed David Sole for U.S. Senate.” Sole concludes, “I call for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. I call for using the billions wasted on the Pentagon’s wars to fund health care, housing, jobs at living wages and to rebuild our cities. I am for amnesty and legalization for undocumented workers, not the racist fence to keep out immigrants supported by Stabenow and [Republican Senate candidate Mike] Bouchard. I am for protecting civil liberties and for repeal of the Patriot Act and Military Commission Bill, in contrast to Stabenow and Bouchard’s support for torture and detention without due process.
And I am for genuinely protecting workers’ pensions by not allowing corporations to use the bankruptcy process to eliminate the pensions and benefits of the workers, unlike Stabenow and Bouchard who both supported last year’s anti-worker bankruptcy act.”
David Sole is available for media interviews in Michigan and challenges media to cover the only anti-war platform in
the campaign. Supporters attended a Green Party election rally on Nov. 4, at 6:00 p.m., Central Methodist Church, Woodward at Adams at Grand Circus Park in downtown Detroit.
For more information on the Sole for U.S. Senate campaign and all Stop the War Slate and Green Party candidates, visit http://www.stopthewarslate.org and www.migreens.org or e-mail campaign@stopthewarslate.org. Much-needed donations
can be made payable to: Sole for Senate Campaign, 5922 Second Ave., Detroit, Mich. 48202.
Kristen Hamel is the Stop the War Slate candidate for District 1 State Representative on Detroit’s east side.
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