POLITICS | By Jennifer Lynne Ziemann & Michael O’ McCarthy

Dennis Kucinich tells it like it is.

Dennis Kucinich is a remarkable human being. He was born to Cleveland, Ohio’s working class poor. He was a sickly, undersized child who suffered from asthma, stuttering and agonizing stomach pains. His extended family was plagued with poverty, cruelty, insanity and alcoholism.

“Mind over matter” was his childhood mantra.

As he says in his new autobiography, The Courage to Survive , his passage from pain to joy has come through love, hope, friendship and a spiritual awakening.

By age 13, Dennis had become a 97 lb. third string high school varsity quarterback. By age 30, he was the mayor of Cleveland, disparagingly referred to as “Dennis the Menace” due to his refusal to sell Cleveland’s publicly owned electric utility. In 1996, he became Congressman Kucinich. In 2004 he would first run for President of the United States. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, this American working class hero is again the most progressive candidate running

On November 11, Kucinich joined folk singer/activist Ani Defranco at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville, NC, where he demonstrated his extraordinary appeal with this era’s counter cultural generation as he took the stage to speak. His speech was an eye-opener considering that in all of the Democratic presidential debates he is marginalized - as was the case a few nights later in the Nevada debate on CNN. After the concert the candidate sat down for a candid interview that proved quite revealing.

M- Tonight’s concert with Ani Defranco was an amazing experience… How do you convert that fervor and that movement into a voting block for you?

From a practical standpoint we signed up several hundred volunteers tonight and many more who did not sign up will go to our website and join the effort. These are individuals who will canvas for us in North Carolina and other states. The people will help us work the internet and people who will do research for us and who will set up rallies for us and become not just a part of this campaign but a movement to take this country in another direction.

J- You originally started with impeachment of Cheney and that has expanded to impeachment of Bush and Cheney. How do you see that playing out? Do you think there will be hearings?

I think there will be hearings, because the American people are demanding them. The idea of Democratic leaders saying that impeachment is off the table is not where the American people are… The minute that Congress, the House of Representatives, says under no circumstances will there be an impeachment, you not only forgo accountability in the part of the Executive but you license further abuses. It is a very dangerous thing for our leadership to have said that.

J- Do you believe there will be a war crimes trial?

It is a separate issue. Let’s take it a step at a time in terms of the various remedies. One is impeachment, when someone is removed from office, there can be no greater punishment if you happen to be a high elected official, president or vice president and you’re removed from office. That may settle it. On the other hand if the president or vice president for whatever reason will not be removed from office, I believe they should be subject to criminal prosecution. If we can’t get criminal prosecution in this country, there are international laws that they violated. But there is a basis for prosecution under the laws of the United States.

J-What do you feel about the statement “The US does not torture”?

Well, its an obvious lie and the US does not wage aggressive war, and the US does not exploit the natural resources of other countries, and the history of the US is a story of a righteous nation that wars with the forces of evil. There are a lot of mythologies that percolate kind of like methane bubbles up from certain landfills. The mythologies lend themselves to critical inspection, critical thinking. Any critical thinking applied to the issue of torture easily discards the notion that our government has not been involved in torture - of course it has. I do not know if the President saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib. I don’t know if the President saw the pictures out of Guatanamo, but unless he is talking of America in abstraction, government people acting upon the orders of government officials have in fact tortured. Period.

M- You’re the only candidate that believes in a true non-profit health care system. Why do you think the people don’t get it that the Senate, Congress and the White House have exactly that?

We’re for it for ourselves, every public official in Washington is for a public health care in which they are covered. But Washington isn’t everywhere. One of the grand deceptions of the 2008 campaign involves candidates for president - they are all doing it - speaking about universal healthcare, as though universal healthcare was a goal that once achieved will provide affordable accessible health care to all Americans. While the other candidates advocate continuation of the for profit system, they want government to provide more subsidy to the insurance companies. People would still under those circumstances and be stuck with high premiums, some of which will be subsidized by the government. People will still be stuck with copays and deductibles, which are sinking the budgets of many American families. Half the bankruptcies in America are tied directly to people not being able to pay their hospital bills. So the plan that I am talking about, that I am co-author of, is a single payer not-for-profit system, Medicare for all… The current system provides that 1 out of every $3 is spent for the activities of the for profit, corporate profit, stock options, salaries, etc, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork. According to Harvard University study that over 700 billion dollars a year goes just for the for profit system. I want to take that money and put it back into health spending and direct care and suddenly we will have enough.

J- No, its not. My Dad had quadruple by-pass surgery and when he went back to the hospital because they thought he had a blood clot and he is laying their with all of this stuff going in him, they are asking for his co-pay.

Check it out - so the emphasis there is not on wellness, the emphasis there is on money. And there is money there but the money is being directed by the insurance company. The system is upside down. So what I ‘m talking about is sensitive to what people go through. Families are losing their homes over the cost of health care. They are losing opportunities for kids to go to college due to illness in the family. Their whole way of life is organized around paying hospitals and doctor bills. And why should we be driven to poverty over issues of ill health?

M- Why do you think that more of the progressive community is not out there on your bandwagon and working to get you elected as the next president of the United States?

I think that is changing, I think we saw a glimmer of the change that is coming. A few days ago when Democracy For America announced the results for their grass roots Internet poll of Democratic activists, it turns out the largest poll that was taken this year on the internet and I came up first in the poll, ahead of Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton. And I think that symbolizes the potential of this campaign to be able to tap the Democratic activist. And people have had a chance to see all of the candidates now, and they see, by now they understand that I am the only one running that voted against the war and voted against funding the war.

All (the other Democratic candidates) on health care, they’re all wrong, they’re all with the insurance companies. On trade, they’re all wrong, and again none of them will say as I say it - cancel NAFTA and get out of the WTO. No one wants to say that

M- Or cancel CAFTA

Or CAFTA. See what we have, the Democratic party has been wrong on trade, horribly wrong since Bill Clinton pushed NAFTA through with the help of Bill Richardson for example. Then there is the issue of accountability on impeachment; the first debate we had, every one of the candidates said no, no impeachment. Well, the question is raised - what would be their standard for conduct in the Oval Office? Does anything go? Can the President do anything? Can he or she use the armed forces of the United States to kill an unarmed people, which is what George Bush did? It’s dirty.

There is a moral equation here, which history, morality and human decency requires that we look at. What gives the United States of America or our leaders the right to wage war against innocent people? By what law do we assume the right to attack Iraq, a nation that did not attack us and had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda’s role in 9/11 and neither the intention or the capability of attacking us? In what right do we assume the ability to launch a grandiose attack against Iran, using 30,000 lb. bunker busters dropping them down on nuclear research labs, which will create Chernobyl in effect? What right do we have to do this? What right do we have to even think about it? There is a moral dimension to this that needs to be looked at because it characterizes our times. Leaders that feel they are not bound by the law, that proceed in a way that is unconscionable, who is licensed by the media that becomes complicit in their lack of straightforward analysis and criticism, our nation is being stained by this. As a result we are losing our democracy.

None of these other candidates see it; they don’t get it. They don’t get that the Patriot Acts took away our rights, they all voted for it, everyone in the Senate voted for it. Edwards was a co-author. They don’t get that eavesdropping and wiretapping is against the very fiber of this country.

J- You’re vegan and I am vegan myself. It affects the way I look at a lot of things, so what I am wondering how does that affect your view of the ecology of humans and other natural life forms?

Well, it’s a compassionate approach because you realize the choices that you make and what you eat affect other beings, other species, which do not exist for our utility but have an inherent right to exist apart from us. Now people can make the choice about whatever they want to eat. I’m not running for president to tell people they have to eat their veggies, ok? But I will share my story which is when I changed my diet my health changed dramatically. I was a meat and potatoes kind of guy and I was also someone who had Crohn’s disease… Finally I meant someone who was a vegan and for the sake of love I changed my diet just like that (snaps fingers). It was a very unusual experience because I would go into a super market and it was like learning a new language. However, when I did that, when I got away from all processed foods. I got away from sugar; I stopped eating meat, chicken, fish, dairy products. I stopped having a lot of the symptoms that went with the Crohn’s and when I was able to get rid of almost everything, the medication I was taking, like the box, just throw it away literally. Then a couple of years late, I discovered Chinese medicine and when that happened the symptoms were gone. Ten years and I have not had a symptom. I basically don’t have it anymore. But when you go through that journey, you realize that your choice of food can be connected directly to your health.

J- I am a survivor of domestic violence so I would like to know what your position is on this issue especially the plague of domestic violence and gender apartheid that’s running rampant in the US.

Well, yeah, absolutely, it has been. It starts with particularly men’s attitudes about women, which begin at a very early age. The notion of patriarch helps lend itself to violence. Violence is learned, and healthy peaceful responses can also be learned. The idea behind the Department of Peace and Nonviolence is to look at the range of incidences of violence, violence in America as exemplified by domestic violence. Any kind of violence at all - spousal abuse, child abuse, elderly violence - and to look at it passionately but with an eye towards dealing with it as a social, economical, and political phenomenon through application of principles of education. It can be changed. You know Margaret Mead when she studied the islands - I think it was in the South Seas - she found cultures that were non-violent. We learn violence; we can learn non-violent responses.

The Department of Peace would through education teach children healthy attitudes about how to respond when someone says something about you that isn’t nice, how to respond when someone hits you. I would encourage healthy interaction between people. This creation of this entity would fund programs that deal with domestic violence in terms of educating young men, you know, in proper treatment of women, boys and girls and visa versa because some of the violence is the other way as well. Violence can be a two-way street but we know the prevalence is much greater, male against female. In trying to deal with spousal abuse, it’s a little too late when it is in the courtroom or worse than that in the hospital or the morgue. The time to deal with it is with the attitudes. In families where that’s a problem, families need access to counseling. I know what people go through. There was plenty of violence in my home, when I grew up, of all kinds. And yet as you go through life you find out, you know, there are all kind of forces that can tear people apart. So if you take a compassionate approach and you have available counseling then you can do something. And it should be something that is not so stigmatized. It should be something where people are given the chance to come together and work out their difficulties because if you don’t solve it in one relationship you end up being the victim or the victimizer in the next relationship. It never ends… but domestic violence is just one symptom to a society that is unhinged. And our society has the potential to change dramatically but we have to stop our addiction to violence as a society and that touches every aspect of our life including media, our homes, our government policies. How can you tell people not to be violent when the nation in which they are a part wages war against innocent people?

J- How do you hope to make a change when basically you have the entire corporate state against you?

You have to show people that acceleration of wealth upwards is not in their interest. Various Americans have lost their homes because of the corruption on Wall Street and the indifference of the Federal Reserve. They lost it through sub prime loans that shouldn’t have been written in the first place… Oil companies are ripping off the American people; the government is pocketing profits. We’re at war for oil. My responsibility is to help people make the connections to the reality of how this affects their own life. Sons and daughters of America are dying in a war based on lies, a war that is being fought for oil. That’s the wealth of the nation accelerating upwards.

You have to be able make the case to the American people. I have the ability to do that because of my life experience. Because of the way I grew up, because I understand what people go through, because I know that for most people having a roof over your head is what’s important… So I look at this from a practical standpoint and I can make the case, I am the candidate of the mainstream. The rest of these people are candidates of a radical corporate structure that takes the wealth of the nation and puts it in the hands of a few.

Click here to read entire transcript of the interview with Rep. Dennis Kucinich

(c) 2007, National Picture Company