Jerry Brown’s vision for California
Interview by Abigail Lewis
(This interview was first published in 1991)
Having served two terms as governor of California, followed by stints as chairman of the Democratic party, mayor of the city of Oakland and Attorney General, Jerry Brown definitely understands the California political system. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was swept in on the heels of the recall of Gray Davis seven years ago, the battle cry was in support of a political outsider who wouldn’t be indebted to “special interests.” You can judge for yourself whether or not that turned out to be true.
Brown is now seeking another term as governor of our state.
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Brown in 1991, when he ran against Bill Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary. The issues have changed, of course, but his philosophy is consistent.
Brown’s campaign contributions at that time were limited to $100, something that is inconceivable today. Nonetheless, he is being outspent by his opponent by more than 10 to 1, with millions of Meg Whitman’s campaign financing coming from her personal fortune.
In any case, their combined spending could have resolved many of California’s financial woes handily, fixed all our roads, saved our dolphins, invested heavily in our school system, or a million other things. Now that the Supreme Court has eliminated restrictions on corporate donations, it’s more important than ever that we keep pushing for campaign finance reform.
WLT: Californians are supposedly pro-environment, yet the Big Green initiative was defeated. How do you interpret that?
Jerry Brown: Big Green came amidst a number of bond issues and controversial ballot measures, most of which were defeated. Had it been on the earlier June primary ballot, it would have had a better chance. But still, by having so many subjects and by restricting the pesticide industry in particular, it generated a lot of opposition. With that opposition came a tremendous amount of money for the “no” side, which was able to overwhelm, through advertising, the “yes” side. A number of the newspapers were not for it, and there was a feeling on the part of a lot of more established business people, newspaper types, that it encompassed more than it should have.
I supported Big Green. It was needed, it was reasonable, and it would have been a benefit for the long-term interests in the state. But it does show that you have to bite off the right amount if you want people to accept it. For example, the Forestry Forever initiative, Proposition 130, which was a very thoroughgoing reform and restriction on logging practices in many ways, at least for that industry, was more drastic than Big Green. But it got many more votes and came very close. I think that’s because it was a specific subject; people care about forests, and the logging industry is small relative to the number of people who are voting. Whereas the opposition to Big Green was able to create the impression that jobs would be affected, that bureaucracy would be increased, and that somehow a lot of negative consequences would follow.
It seemed as if the media aligned itself with financial interests. Their biggest concern was the number of jobs that would be affected if clear-cutting of forests were to be curtailed.
People in forestry are understanding a lot better, as they are in many fields, that living things are in relationship to other living things. It isn’t just a tree. It’s a tree embedded in a complex web of life, forming very specific ecological patterns that are disrupted by clear-cutting, by the logging practices that chew up the soil, that expose to sunlight areas that over the last thousands of years have not had that kind of impact from the external environment.
Consequences are set in motion that people can’t predict, one of which is the erosion of soil, the silting of the streams. There is a difficulty—perhaps in many cases an impossibility—of restoring the original ecology. The microorganisms in the soil, what happens within the trees when they grow old and then fall, the debris . . . All that is living matter, and it’s all interacting in ways that we’re just beginning to understand. So when 95 percent of the ancient redwoods have already been cut down, it seems completely reasonable to say, “Let’s keep the last 5 percent.” That’s what Proposition 130 said, and it went way beyond that in a restriction on logging to maintain and protect the productivity of the soil, to make sure that it’s a truly sustainable yield. That will always go against the short-term economic interests of certain companies. And it goes against the interests of politicians and bureaucrats who align themselves with those particular industrial interests.
That really is just another example of juxtaposing the long-term viability of our living systems with the short-term profitability of various companies or owners. That’s a continuing battle and the political system can’t respond effectively unless people integrate and deepen their own commitment to the long-term sustainability of the natural systems on which we depend.
Particularly when we’re concerning ourselves with the destruction of the tropical rainforest, we ought to take responsiblity for the temperate rainforest, which we have in California. Over the years there’s been negligence by governors, and complicity with negligent practices.
How does control of the media relate to the distribution of wealth in this country?
There’s no question that the media reinforces the pattern of privilege, the power of economic interests, the resistance to change that a strong and vibrant America really needs. The media works, in most cases, on the basis of selling their time. It’s a business. One of the national networks, NBC, is owned by General Electric. The networks are run to return profit, as any other investment. The airwaves are limited, but they belong to the public. They’re licensed in the public interest, and there is a tension there that requires a vigilant and imaginative Federal Communications Commission, and a commitment on the part of Congress to make sure the channels of communication are preserving and enhancing the values that this country stands for. Today that responsibility is certainly not being discharged, either by Congress or certainly by the FCC, who under the guise of deregulation is letting the media run rampant, driven by the economic forces. This society is more than that. This society has to protect the children. It has to allow the political debate to take place without turning the politicians into prostitutes and beggars and people who just spend most of their time asking powerful people or corporations for their money, to get on television to communicate about the issues that a free society has to decide. If we’re going to have free speech, which the First Amendment protects, and if we’re going to have a democracy wherein the citizens decide, the citizens need the information. That information cannot be so subjected to the profit imperative that drives the television stations. We need an FCC that begins to provide a regulation in the public interest. We had doctrines like the Fairness Doctrine to create a balance, and that has been eroded.
Over the last 30 years television has begun to occupy the central place in major campaigns. The people have an interest in making sure that the candidates are allowed, at no charge, adequate exposure. Instead, what we have today is a contest of creating unequal access to the voter. This is achieved through money. We know that commercials are based on how many people see it, and how many times. That’s a function of money. One could make a commercial for somebody who had no experience or had the greatest wisdom since Solomon, but when it comes to making a commercial, it still costs the same amount of money. It’s constricting and distorting the public right of our democracy, and it can only be changed by a president and a congress that is committed to insuring that the public airwaves are truly functioning in the public interest, as the Federal Communication Act requires.
This seems like a Catch 22. In order to get into a position where you are able to do something about it, don’t you have to get elected?
I’m trying to do something very different. I’m trying to create a broader-based effort of literally hundreds of thousands of people who will give whatever they can to a maximum of $100. And with that I hope, through all the channels I can, to communicate the message. What I’m basing it on is not a restricted number of political action committees or the wealthiest 1 percent who write out thousand dollar checks, but rather on a broad base of support from the citizens at large in the context of a challenge to politics as usual. The usual way it works is by making, say, a senator in California raise 18 million dollars during his or her six-year term in order to buy the television and pay the people to raise the money to communicate the message. Only someone who has been the governor and party chairman as I have knows full well how debased the process has become in this ceaseless quest for money to buy media to attempt to persuade people to vote. And of course half of them don’t vote anyway. And of the half that do vote, a substantial number are either cynical or skeptical because of this corrupt process that now is increasingly dominating American life.
Why aren’t more people expected to be voting in this election?
A huge number of people don’t feel they count—it may even be a majority. Certainly the ones who aren’t voting don’t feel they count. So there’s a real challenge, which I am attempting to respond to, of speaking directly and truthfully so that those who hear me or read me can sense that there is a commitment that I have. I am asking them to join me so that together we can challenge the system and change it. And I’m setting up this campaign in such a way that the emphasis is not on the candidate but on the candidacy, and not a campaign but a cause. Because unless it’s owned by and supported by the citizens, then it can’t work, even if I were to be elected. Because I know, having been elected, that the power of special interests, the power of money concentrated in the top percent of income earners and corporate lobbyists can’t be overcome unless there is a countervailing movement. I am trying to do my best to be a catalyst for people to sense that they can now make a difference, and as we join together we can challenge not only President Bush, we can challenge the corrupt system under which congress is functioning, in which our institutions are being undermined.
That’s the invitation I’m making to people, and I believe it is possible because it is the people who have the votes. What the money in politics does is to buy media time or computer letters to get votes. But the people themselves have the votes, and the perversity of the system is that there’s a disempowerment—it has the qualities of so influencing the minds of people that they don’t believe they can really take the government back into their own hands. They don’t believe that they can control the destiny of the nation. Based on that, the government is devolving into the hands of fewer and fewer people who have narrower and narrower objectives. Given the numbers in the country, that doesn’t have to be. People need to wake up to the fact that it is their country that our forebears all spoke about—”Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”—it’s the people who actually control, and not kings or political actions committees or career politicians. This is an idea that has burst forth in Poland and Czechoslovakia and East Germany and Russia, and that idea began in this country 200 years ago. It’s our turn to throw off not the KGB, but the gridlock of corruption and the emptiness of political talk and action that does very little except spend money on the military, and interest on the debt, and argue about bogus little partisan issues.
In the last 13 years, analysts have said that those in the top 1 percent have increased their share of American income anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent. Whereas 80 percent of the American people have declined or stagnated in terms of their income. Those who have suffered the greatest economic reduction vote the least. Those who have enjoyed the greatest benefit—and some of those at the very top have tripled their net worth—are voting almost 100 percent. Forbes magazine said that the 400 richest people in America increased their net worth from 90 billion to 270 billion.
When you look to an institution like a political party, you find they don’t mobilize ordinary people any more. The party now is more of a name, a postal discount. But it is not a living presence. So I am trying to create this myself. And I’m confident that if I clearly speak the truth, enough people will join to not only win the Democratic nomination, but even to triumph over George Bush. And that already is the beginning of a more just society.
You talked about a national health insurance plan. Is that feasible?
A health insurance program for everyone in this society is being held back by political resistance from all of the people who fight national health insurance, who have their own health insurance. If you eliminate the insurance companies as the intermediary, that will save enough money to cover everyone. So if the single payer gets universal access, and if we emphasize prevention, which is crucial, and if we recognize and include the diversity of healing practices, then we get a true improvement in that very important part of people’s lives, access to healing.
What are your thoughts about the rising problem of unemployment in this country?
We need to make the commitment to make sure people have jobs, and there’s plenty of things to do, whether it be building the infrastructure for high speed trains, or creating things like the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps—this is to get young people out of adverse circumstances and give them an opportunity, as the California Conservation Corps has done for over 50,000 kids in the last 15 years. Then there’s income, there’s hope, there’s self-esteem and we begin to create a community that works for everyone. We now have a community that doesn’t work for millions of people. There are 13 million kids in poverty, there are older people who are abandoned, there are families under tremendous stress, there’s crime, and of course the toxins in the environment. There are too many people who have been passed over, who are not enjoying the American Dream, while those at the top are doing extraordinarily well, and their taxes have been reduced to boot. But taxes have increased for the people at the bottom and at the middle. Social Security taxes have increased five times. The whole nation is suffering in our lack of ability to produce goods of quality, in excessive insecurity because of crime. The courts and the prisons are locking up more people than any other country in the world. Our freedom and the quality of our life are being diminished by the inequality and the neglect that the present political leadership is either creating or complicit in. All of that has to be challenged.
Do you think you’re carrying any liabilities from your earlier political career?
Any time you’ve been governor of California and you’ve tried to introduce change, as I did, in terms of appointing women and blacks and Hispanics and Asians and gays, as I did — I appointed people based on the fact that they were human beings and they wanted to serve and they could make a contribution — and I stressed environmental protection, I supported lay midwifery and acupuncture, and challenged polluters and others who wanted to make a profit irrespective of the public interest. This is controversial. But if people look at my record, they’re going to find one of frugality, of respect for the diversity of the people in the state, a commitment to the future, innovation…there was no administration as innovative in terms of alternative energy, co-generation, wind, solar, conservation, efficiency standards…all these ideas are being picked up by other states, and the federal government still hasn’t caught up. If you look to what was done in California, I think you’re going to find a good, solid case for a national campaign, and the things that people make fun of, or criticize, have very little weight. Even the famous name “Moonbeam” has been rescinded by Mike Ryoko who invented it in the first place, who thought it was inappropriate and was sorry he ever said it. I thought government should not be all dreary and boring politicians talking to one another in their cliches and performing empty rituals. I tried to make government interesting and I brought interesting people to government. It was a time of possibility.
We have to encourage imagination as well as rigor and order. We have to make space and encourage the human mind to create and unfold. And I did that. And whenever you do that, the pomposity of the corrupt status quo reacts with indignation and “howls of execration,” to quote from Albert Camus. So what?
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