Friday, August 18, 2000

• Al Gore Accepts Presidential Nomination From the Dem’s

  
  

  Al Gore launched his fall quest for the White House last night, pledging a "better, fairer, more prosperous America’’ in the climactic speech of the Democratic National Convention. He officially accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Gore pledged to fight for expanded health care, environmental protection, better education, targeted tax cuts, campaign finance reform, prescription drugs for Medicare recipients, and more. In remarks that seem to have been written for a different person, Gore said, "We’re for the people. Big tobacco, big oil, the big polluters, the pharmaceutical companies, the HMOs. Sometimes you have to be willing to stand up and say no, so families can have a better life.'’ We go now to an excerpt of Al Gore's acceptance speech.

• Democracy Now! Confronts Police Over Internal Document

  
  

  Earlier this week, Democracy Now! Producer Jeremy Scahill reported on an internal police document entitled "Emergency Preparedness Bulletin: DNC 2000 Planning Group." Dated August 2000. According to a source that saw the document, it was distributed as a brief for Los Angeles Police Officers to prepare themselves for protesters at the Democratic Convention. The source said the document characterizes protesters as extremists and anarchists and details what it calls Methods for disobedience and disruption.

• The Resistance: Where Do We Go From Here?

  
  

  It has been quite a week here in Los Angeles; a week that has seen riot police in the streets beat demonstrators, trample them with horses. Police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds. And it’s not just demonstrators that have been targets. Journalists, legal observers and ordinary people have been pelted with rubber bullets or clubbed with batons. It has also been a week that has seen an enormous amount of corporate influence and money flowing through hotel suites and the convention itself. But this contrast between the protests rallies and marches in the streets and a gathering of officialdom is no new phenomenon. The past year has truly been a year of resistance. From the thousands that took to the streets to shut down the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle to the mass protests at the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington DC. More recently, the Republican Convention in Philadelphia and the Democratic Convention here in Los Angeles. In a little more than a month, there will be large demonstrations at the IMF/World Bank meetings in Prague in the Czech Republic.