Ralph Nader Challenges Rochester to Build a Civic Society that combats Corporate Control

[March 25,2004] While most of Ralph Nader’s recent notoriety is focused around his 2004 independent campaign for the presidency, his talk at the University of Rochester Wednesday evening dealt primarily with the need for continued work in the field of consumer empowerment and stemming corporate crime. In fact, Nader only addressed his candidacy when members of the audience and press specifically asked questions about it. Nader was invited by the Outside Speakers Committee of the University of Rochester, and spoke to a packed audience of students, faculty and community members at Strong Auditorium. Underlying his entire discussion, including his challenge to the two party “duopoly” of American electoral politics, is a prophetic cry for a civic society that combats the model of “Growing up corporate.”

In an interview with Rochester Indymedia before the speaking event, Nader summed up his call for a healthy civic society;

“We’re trying to trying to fight that system (of entrenched corporate power), so that we have a peoples’ media, we have peoples’ government, we have peoples’ elections, we have a peoples’ marketplace, and we have workers that have rights to form trade unions, we have a peoples’ foreign policy. Instead we just have ‘corporate’ instead of ‘peoples’. Corporations were never designed to be our masters, they were designed to be our servants and we have to get back to that.”

Nader gave numerous of examples of how an informed populace can and should dictate the terms of the public good. In the areas of public and private transportation, food and drug safety, and health insurance; Nader defined the battle lines between consumers and corporations.

“Have any of you ever seen a new car ad on television in congested traffic? Have we ever seen ads for Modern public transit showing people going to work, reading the paper, chatting, snoozing, as the modern transit vehicle sped by a parallel highway bumper to bumper, almost coming to a halt with vans, SUVs, cars and trucks?” Nader queried. He went on to discuss the massive publicity campaigns of the auto industry with the resulting wasted time, energy and money for consumers. “This is what you have with manufacturers and vendors organized to the teeth, both in terms of political influence in Washington or Albany. And on the other side you have passive unorganized consumers who have to sweat it out, waste so much of their lives…., breathing the pollution, engaging in road rage, coming home fatigued.”

With regard to food safety, Nader discussed the evolution of what is considered a healthy diet. In spite of widespread public understanding of the need for whole grains and fruits and vegetables, the processed food and soft drink industry continue to aggressively market their products to young people. “When you’re eight years old or ten years old, your easy pickins for the processed food industry….. More and more we see the ballooning of America, child obesity doubled since 1980.”

Nader also discussed in detail the need to preserve the right to sue corporations, hospitals, and government for negligence and abuse. There are written agreements consumers are regularly told to sign that waive rights to sue. He described how Medical malpractice insurers pit doctors against patients, and the public relations campaign to stem opposition to Tort reform (or rewriting laws to diminish the ability to sue.) Nader pointed out that there were more lawsuits per capita in the mid 1800s than there are now.

In regards to his work to fight corporate control over public life, Nader mentioned the Public Interest Research Groups, such as NYPIRG which have been a major vehicle for consumer organizing. He asked and then answered the question, “Why is NYPIRG not on the University of Rochester campus? Need I tell you? For years this university was known as one of the most corporate dominated universities in the country. The board of trustees would never allow the students to have their own referendum, to charge themselves for what is effectively a civic education which was not provided in the regular curriculum. The trustees at a number of these Universities say’ No! We’re not going to let you do it.” When he told students to demand that Trustees serve student interests and not corporate interests, the crowd responded with rousing applause.

Nader ended his talk by impressing upon the youth and students the importance using creativity and imagination to burst through the indoctrination of “Growing up corporate.” “Have a higher sense of your own significance.” He urged. “So when you are 65 or 70 you can look back and not have to say that you missed the ‘great work of human beings’.