Speaking to an audience in the almost-empty Page Auditorium last night, Lenora Fulani-a two-time presidential candidate on the independent ticket-discussed the necessity of breaking away from a bipartisan political system.
"Multiparty democracy breaks us out of the constraints of a gridlocked system," she said. "The serious question is how we go forward. We have to change how we practice democracy in order to get there."
In her own words, Fulani was "about as far away from a slam dunk as I could get" in her 1988 and 1992 presidential attempts. Still, Fulani said, the purpose behind her candidacies was not to win.
Instead, she said she hoped to illuminate the structural inequities that prevent independent politicians from being viable candidates.
Independents' progress, Fulani said, is severely hampered by states that require high numbers of signatures and deny access to presidential debates.
"The barriers were not just structural, they were attitudinal," she said. "The inequalities enforce fringe organizations' status."
Minnesota is a model for effective reform, Fulani said.
The state's election regulations allow same-day registration as well as other mechanisms that give independent politicians a "more level playing field."
These reforms yielded results last November, Fulani said, when independent candidate Jesse Ventura was elected governor. The turnout was one of the highest in the nation.
Fulani noted that although the bipartisan system may have worked in the past, it has "reached the limits of its capacity to move the country forward.
"Neither organized labor or organized capital-the Democratic and Republican parties-can project a vision. Social-political debate is only about getting elected and reelected," said Fulani, who co-founded for the Committee for a Unified Independent Party, a national think tank for the independent movement.
"It's about marketing a candidate to consumers who can choose one out of two products," she added.
Fulani, a strong advocate for political independence among blacks, criticized prominent black leaders for their tight affiliation with the Democratic Party:
"The black leadership gets more power," she said. "The black community does not."
She also lambasted Democrats-particularly President Bill Clinton-for trying to find "quick-fix recipes" for racist mentalities in the United States.
"These are gestures, symbolic acts, that create the appearance of social action but maintain the status quo," she said.
She also maintained that although the civil rights movement prompted some institutional change in American government, the current national climate is not yet conducive to a thorough attitude revision.
"The question is how to address the rifts that cannot be legislated out of existence," she said.
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