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Al Gore: Can a grass roots movement compel him to run in 2008?

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 2 December 2006
8 comments

Environment USA Mary MacElveen

Al Gore: Can a grass roots movement compel him to run in 2008?
By Mary MacElveen
December 2, 2006

In watching this YouTube.com video feed titled, Al Gore on stopping global warming in which he was interviewed by Larry King there is a comparison to what Al Gore has been doing to that of Newt Gingrich’s tactics to reach out to the grass roots level. Before you deck me for even comparing the two, please take note of Gingrich’s quote made the other night concerning freedom of speech as it relates to terrorism, “I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen." Before he stated this, he also said that he was not running for president.

While Gingrich’s tactics are one of hate and fear which gives us very little as he makes his way around the country, Al Gore has also been traveling around not only our country but the world. He has not only been discussing his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” but also his book. Could he be enlisting a grass roots movement similar to Gingrich’s that will have the people compel him into office?

Like Gingrich, Al Gore has as he said that he is “focused on changing the minds of the American people” But unlike Gingrich he is offering positive solutions instead of taking our liberties away via the Internet.

As many feel that terrorism is our number one crisis, Al Gore states, “This crisis has to be seen as the number one crisis” and I believe that to be true, because global warming affects the world in its entirety. In fact, I would say through the crisis of global warming we all have bull’s eye painted on us unless we are willing as a people to affect change as Gore stated. As we witnessed Katrina’s wrath, it was just as devastating as the terrorist attacks that befell this nation. Nature knows no difference at who will be the next target. It is an equal opportunity destructive force. He wants all of us to reach out not only to our elected officials in Washington, D.C. but those at the state and local levels.

Within the Republican Party the evangelical movement has been their bed rock in electing their candidates, but as I have been monitoring Al Gore through articles on the Internet, he is doing something incredibly smart. He is taking his film out to the churches across America.

In this Time article written on February 8th, 2006, the sub-title reads, “A group of notable Christian leaders are defying Bush on global warming” It also goes onto say, “A group of 86 evangelical Christian leaders launched a campaign today to educate Christians about climate change and urged the U.S. Congress to enact legislation to curb global warming. The initiative marks the first time that influential evangelicals have defied the White House on an environmental issue, going so far as to equate stopping global warming to their commitment to "protect unborn life."

In his interview with Larry King, Al Gore mentions the grass roots and this evangelical base is also seen as a grass roots campaign and perhaps can be the compelling factor for a possible Al Gore run. There will always be differences in philosophy when it comes to the evangelical’s pro-life stance, but here is where they are reaching across the great divide and one that all of us must meet at the grass roots level in order to find solutions.

Newt Gingrich stated, "It will lead us to learn, how to close down every website that is dangerous,”that he feels “advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear and biological weapons." What Gingrich is doing yet again is using fear to scare us all into giving up our essential rights as Americans. In Al Gore, I see someone that has acted as a teacher, helping us find solutions to this crisis and is in fact breaking down walls that have separated us for far too long.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I visited a video store and was pleasantly surprised to see that all copies of “An Inconvenient Truth” had been checked out. They had two shelves relegated for this movie. We have heard when the movie first came out that at the end when most folks would leave a movie, people were staying to read the credits and to discuss the film. In essence our theaters and homes have become our class rooms.

I was not at all surprised at Al Gore’s absence from this past mid-term election since there was a far bigger issue that looms large out there. Was he stealthy and intelligently staying out of the political mix in order for the people at the grass roots level to compel him to run for president in 2008? Is he in essence bringing two polarizing sides together in which both will work on making the issue of global warming our most important issue beyond 2008?

Just the other night I was discussing with someone that I have had enough of the iron-fist mentality that has gripped our country and it is at some point that I feel that the American people need to breathe and to relax. Basically, we need a chill pill.

What I found ironic was reading a ‘Letter to the Editor’ in Newsday this past week in which someone who voted for Rudi Giuliani as mayor of New York City stated this in his letter, “We’ve had a chest-beating manifestation of macho mentality for the last six-plus years, and we’ve lived to rue that day in 2000 when the Supreme Court burdened us with that hair-shirt diplomacy. No more George W. Bush or Giuliani types. We must once again require brains in those most important of offices.”

Years ago, I coined a phrase as it relates to Al Gore in which I said, “I thirst to drink from the cup of intelligence” and I suspect that many Americans do feel that way.

http://www.marymacelveen.com/blog/_archives/2006/12/2/2543032.html

* Please go to the link above in order to view the video feed that inspired this column.

Forum posts

  • Can a grass roots movement compel him to run in 2008? I hope NOT. Global warming is not from the burning of hydrocarbons as some suggest.

    • Here here! Just what we need. Yet another globalist asshole in the WH. That would be peachy.

  • Mary, Are you waxing all warm and fuzzy about THE Al Gore who served as Bill Clinton’s vice president? You are? I thought so. As far as my memory serves - fortified by an internet search to prove me wrong - Big Al, that tree-hugging teddy bear, apparently didn’t raise any objections when his boss ordered the irradiation of Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia with DU munitions. Maybe he was out of the loop on that one. Why do I doubt it. Nevertheless, he’s had plenty of time since then to point a finger of shame at Slick Willy for having polluted those environments for - what is it? - 4.5 billion years.

    Nonetheless, political naifs like yourself trot out this shill for the US capitalist party - the ONLY party in town - and offer him up as The Saviour of the environment. Did you know that Pappy Gore - a senator from Tennessee - had recommended in the 50’s that North Korea be irradiated with radiological munitions. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

    Reflecting on your coined phrase, "I thirst to drink from the cup of intelligence," I would like to help slake your thirst with the following excerpt from a Counterpunch editorial. You may even want to draw from it for your continuing series on DU. (Is that project still in the works?)

    "After the Gulf War, Pentagon war planners were so delighted with the performance of their radioactive weapons that ordered a new arsenal and under Bill Clinton’s orders fired them at Serb positions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia. More than a 100 of the DU bombs have been used in the Balkans over the last six years.

    Already medical teams in the region have detected cancer clusters near the bomb sites. The leukemia rate in Sarajevo, pummeled by American bombs in 1996, has tripled in the last five years. But it’s not just the Serbs who are ill and dying. NATO and UN peacekeepers in the region are also coming down with cancer. As of January 23, eight Italian soldiers who served in the region have died of leukemia." - Counterpunch editorial

    http://www.counterpunch.org/du.html

    On a more important note, have you considered signing Bellaciao’s petition? You should, since its very existence is now threatened by dark forces in France, not unlike the Newt Gingrichs in this country, who are working to silence its electronic pages - the very same pages that give you the opportunity to expose your work to a very big audience. I hope you do. The Bellaciao Collective is fighting THE GOOD FIGHT and it needs the support of genuine progressives. A few bucks in donations wouldn’t hurt either.

    PS: Didn’t you mean to write that your local video store had "DEDICATED" two shelves to Big Al’s DVD, rather than "RELEGATED" two shelves? I thought so, since the latter term implies the sense of consigning something to obscurity and that was not the case. After all Big Al’s DVD was clearly a popular item, as evidenced by the empty shelves.

  • You had your chance in 2000, buddy. But then you conceded DEFEAT to bushie balls, which is why we are in the situation we are in Iraq today.

    Just GIVE IT UP.

    :)

  • Al Gore is the only CANDIDATE for the USA now. What the nation needs is somebody who is a scholar and can persuade people.

    Hillary voted to often for Bush and Obama - sorry America will not vote for a black presidency.

    • "sorry America will not vote for a black presidency." - Don’t be so sure. After bush, I’d be willing to vote for a little green man from Mars.

  • Al Gore is just another greedy Goyim’ shill "put up"by the Zionist Israeli controllers of this nation...Bear in mind one of his daughters married a SCHIFF son a year or so ago(Rothschild/Schiff/Warburg World Bank- Federal Reserve Cartel)!!! Wake up and realize that NO ONE is allowed to rise to ANY position of power in this puppet nation unless they have been "vetted" by the Zionists !!!.....AIPAC,ADL, control and manipulate all political activities..
    Get off of this site for a few days and RESEARCH the above 2 outfits as well as PNAC ,Mossad,etc..
    Also consider how many Zionist advisors,think tankers,analyists,authors,commentators,editorialists.. are "packed in" and hiding behind the fools that we think we elect .remember: Donkey Shit/Elephant Shit...it’s all SHIT!!
    Our fakeass 2 party system is a 2 headed monster playing the "Good cop/Bad cop" game with you and your children’s lives....The next move will be the passing of the "hate speech act" The Dems are famous for this kind of phoney ,warm and fuzzy,peace,love,dove, crap. Under the pretense of protecting gays and minorities(yeh right!),the REAL goal is to make it a phelony to make ANY negative comments about Zionism..Israel....Watch and learn for once in your lives!!!

  • We live in a nation of nearly 300 million people of diverse backgrounds and talents, a nation that still has the largest pool of talent and innovative thinkers in the world and yet Ms. MacElveen’s choice for President in 2008 is another has-been from the same, stale, pathetically moribund political class that has kept our country down for so many decades.

    What we need is new blood, new minds, new balls; characteristics you will never find in any Dimocrat or Repukable. If we are truly a great nation we should be able to find tens of thousands of Americans from every profession and background who can do the job.
    If we cannot find leaders of real virtue and worth then we cannot call our nation great any longer.

    Constantly going back to the same, old slimy set of has-beens, failures and shysters for leadership is a tremendous failure of the popular imagination, a failure of the imagination that contributes enormously to the root cause of virtually all the problems we have as a nation.