So i thought i would discuss in a book to raise awareness through a letter to an elected official. Its not to respect it and try to answer, its not that people are under some dark hole. Its a major issue i think. Most young people dont realize that there is far more impact. There are lots of letters, i think think a half a million a week. Heres how it breaks down. A lot of people dont know that relatives go to the white house every morning. Everyone expects the president to answer these letters but he has staff and departments and they should all be acknowledged at least. They have robo letters for bailout that often goes like this. Or they write letters to contributors. President s do right personal letters to a governor or mayor who supports the president so anybody who says the president doesnt sign particular letters to people doesnt know what they are talking about. You said dear mr. President i want you to attend my high school daughters graduation. They have to be polite so they write a letter expressing regret or telling them dear mr. Pres. I want to give you money. Then they wont answer right away. Anyway i have a variety of letters they could have farmed out to the sec. Of energy or transportation but no, they dont even acknowledge my letters. I wrote bush and obama a letter and i said what is your policy on answering letters . They they didnt answer that one either. So by comparison i sent to clinical letters to the Prime Minister of canada. I received a reply saying they received my letter and referred it to the respective minister. Then you at least know a human being answered the letter. If it all it all goes to a dark hole and its not acknowledged, fewer people will write letters. The Postal Service will go. The letter writing is declining not just because of the internet. In canada they have a policy to policy to encourage people to write letters to their members of parliament or the Prime Minister because its free. No stamp is needed. In our in our country, the politicians are free, they send letters to us but we cant do it in reverse. So you said most of the letters were not answered. A couple were. Can you speak about that. I want to make it really easy for president obama. When he is running for reelection i said heres what pres. Carver did wants. He went to a major Hotel Ballroom and we filled it with Community Groups and you name it will have millions of members out there around the country that support these, its called the nonprofit sector. Youve gone to india and you always have to have a little spark in the letter. Youve gone to india to promote Harley Davidson boeing airplanes, this is just three blocks and you can walk across the street. He did walk across the street to pay homage to the group that criticizes him every day. I thought it was good for him and good for the nonprofits to bring visibility to them and they would get more contributions from people. By the way, a lot of jobs are in the nonprofit sector. More contribution, more service for children people in need, et cetera. So i sent the letter with a copy to michelle obama. She writes back and says look, the president is too busy. When you do persist and when you try to get an answer, you get a response that is more interesting. There is another letter that you got from president bush where he actually invited you to contribute to his library. What did he say . This is a letter to me by name and they can do that now. Was that in response to a letter you sent . Was that just a random letter question marks. No, he was out of office from 2012. He was. He was asking me for money because his president ial library i challenged him publicly. The computer is nonpartisan. So anyway, i chided him on his criminal invasion of iraq and how he didnt have the decency to open up to a rocky refugees who werent supportive of the mission and they put their lives at risk. Some lost lost their lives because of that. We would let them in. We let lots of vietnamese refugees in but not a rocky refugees. I decided i wanted to make a contribution so i sent a a book by this main stream think tank and the title of the book was world nation. Did you get a reply to that westmark. No. Im going to check to see if they catalogued it down at the library someday. A lot of letters are funny in some way. You wrote one about a terrorist named e. Coli. There was a bacterial outbreak in europe. They gave it the name e. Coli and some numbers. So ive been trying to get president clinton to redefine terrorism. If youre worried about the loss of innocent civilian life you better worry about viruses and bacteria. Not just the the ones that have come from africa or asia and word dealing with a lot of mutations. You were a scientist, this is a scary thing. If we dont get ready in time, there could be a disaster like in world war i. How do i get to these people . I decide to write a letter and name it e. Coli. The e. Coli is sitting in a petri dish and its life is very limited. They are going to come and get it. Theyve already analyzed it and there is no more use. So i have to do something to redeem myself. The letter in the book it made the case for the president to raise the priority and focus concern to prevent deadly epidemics all over the world. Theres no one better than the United States to confront that if we can get over the restriction of the word terrace. Terrorists. I was at a couple events you have spoken at. I was there at the book launch here in d. C. I was fascinated with how that talk went. It was a great talk talk, obviously. The first question you got was about the election in 2000. Have you ever been to an event where they dont ask you about that . I thought your answers were so spot on and so direct. The audience there seem to be rather skeptical about their democrats, but you got a serious applause. I think its important to know and for people to hear. We can never tolerate political bigotry. Third Party Independent candidates have the right to exercise the rights. If we all have the right to run for election, big guys, third party, we all have a right to get votes from one another. That means were either spoilers of one another or none of us. The pragmatic reply is if you ask al gore why he lost the election he would say one, i won the election, election, i won the popular vote. Electoral college and equated and threw it into florida. Then he will say it was stolen from me in a variety of ways. The florida tech secretary of state, jeb bush and lots of shenanigans. Then the Supreme Court and he also wouldve been president if he just won a single state. He represented to them in the state and his headquarters were there. Everything else being equal would you put him in a lineup . Thousands of democrats voted republican in florida in 2000. How much was the electoral loss by . By 37 votes. Clinton couldve gotten that state for him. Im just just amazed at how many people continue to answer and tran asked that question. I try to tell them if you do that youre losing bargaining power. The cult corporations cult corporations are pulling on two cords. Either you use the progressive wing which is the Democrat Party how do you have any pull . Im not to put any pressure on you in april may june or july. They tell the pollsters exactly what they want to hear which is like support no matter what the democrats will do because the republicans are worse. Every four years that leads the mindset and both parties get worse. Back to the book. Back to the book, did you send a copy . I sent a copy and a letter. Theres no indication it got to the white house. It has to be screened, all packages have to be screened. But now i think i have a contact in the white house and i may give it to her so she can give it to the resident of the overall office. What would would be a victory for you in this . A phone call from the president , and invite . What would be of interest . First of all by the way i send these letters around. You cant put all your eggs in the white house basket. You send send it to white house reporters, members of Congress University professors who are interested in the subject. It has to do with courtesy here. I would like substantive responses. I had the four leading anti Nuclear Groups who have been around for decades and ive never been able to see them. He would just blow us off. I wrote to your secretary to say he is not giving equal time here. No answer and they didnt even respond. I would like the executive to get some of these letters and respond. If they come to the white house they should have more meaning. Now you spoke of two president s, bush and obama. Why did we stick with those two . Are they more egregious than others as far as not replying . Yes its getting worse. Even senators and representatives are getting worse. Is it because of email . They are very secure they have robo letters and they dont want to do it themselves. These robo letters are safer than answering in the wrong way. Yes they are noncontroversial. I would write to jimmy carter and once in a while he would respond or his assistant would respond. I would write to senator Warren Magnuson asking for a congressional hearing and it would be in the Washington Post of the new york time. Now, no matter how fresh a letter is, lets say it comes from missiledefense Ballistic Missile defense, 9 billion a year, suppose he writes a letter. The press just degrades everything. They dont report report them like they used to. I once wrote a letter to a public official on what we call a lung disease. It was killing workers in North Carolina and south carolina. It was in the Washington Post. Its a dying media, we have to revive it and theres no one at the top because no one can stop us from writing letters and send him around. No one can stop us from writing more powerful letters and sending them to different parties. This is going to a reporter, i better write back. You have a podcast and people can go to it on nader. Org. Do you put those letters in the podcast so there are other ways to bring them up . Obviously sending them to the white house, you are not getting a response but certainly there are a lot of people reading alternative media and alternative radio. Aside from the alternative lets talk a little bit about the use of the podcast to get that information out. The ultimate goal is to get the information out, not just to get it answered. Right. Do you do a multitier approach to sending out this information . I should do more of that. The Radio Program interviews people that are on very specific set subjects that are not in the news. I just interviewed still Steve Silverstein who is from San Francisco and a lamp broke the it has happened in American History when he came in first with gore and bush came in second but the Electoral College put bush ahead. Who knows about that. They now have 165 have 165 electoral votes. They have laws passed from maryland new york, illinois, illinois, california, if they go to 270 thats the end. What do these laws say . In maryland or california they will throw the electoral votes completely to the winner of the national. So they redefine the Electoral College. So we had him on. Youre right, i should herald some of the letter and summarize them. Put put the letter out that you send the white house and along with it do some sort of grass roots activism so people can actually write similar letters, focus on the issue, call the white house, whatever. A lot of times from what i hear from people in congress and even the white house, they do respond to the number of calls or letters. When you have the same voices being heard over and over there is a little bit of a tick for them. They count the calls and sometimes letters. Yes thats right. They may not respond but it has an impact if its coming in in larger numbers. If you picked up the phone and called the white house, do house, do you ever get a call back . If i call the central system i would get a call back afterwards. You you have to be quite persistent. When was the last time you are invited to the white house . It was under bill clinton. He would assign a special assistant to handle the meetings. We were invited several times but only to see him. Ic. I understand. You were named named one of the 20 most influential people im just flabbergasted, having run for president , having an impact its just amazing. Theres an old saying bring your friends close and your enemies closer. Why do you think there is this resistance . One i think the 2000 campaign. That produced a lot of shunning by the democrats in congress and the white house. How dare i challenge a mutating Democratic Party that was as shallow as it was in the 1960s. We. We couldnt of gotten through all these bills in the 1960s. I think the second thing is, if you dont get main stream press coverage, they dont think they need to respond to you. If the New York Times was not going to cover certain citizen groups then they say why should we bother responding. Its too bad because these letters often point out things going on in their own government they dont know about. Things going on in the country they dont know about. They dont like the criticism. They like the praise. Its just not good politics. I just want to point out its not good politics to do that. If i was in the chamber of commerce, if i was a National Association manufacture, people would, people would be sure they would respond. They respond to perceived power. In the 60s if you had good knowledge and good information about how it could be made safer that often went over the hurdle and you could get press. If you got press, the senators and press would get attention. Oftentimes they will speak about this idea of legacy. You are 81 years old. You must. You must be thinking about that. You must be thinking about what will the average american who did not know you in a very direct way with the issue of gm and all that what was it like to know you as . More than that we would like to have a big celebration for the 50th anniversary which is in november and then have a series of events that help create new growth and introduce new leaders whose names are not on the evening news. Thats really what legacy is all about. Its not about memory its, its about putting forces in motion and then multiply themselves like we started back in the 70s. There are scientists, lawyers, lobbyists in places like massachusetts, california. They run referendums and they are multiplying them self. I like to give people ideas that they put in place. For example we had a discussion with you on what a great community. Now they have a bookstore with events every night nothings off the limits and the dash you should add that. This came out of the conversation we had. I was talking about it when brown was working on it. In the 1990s he still has a box of full of them. I remember it had a picture of the statue of liberty with scaffolding around it. Yes i have copies of that from originally. Your idea was you really do believe in citizens. Thats the beauty of all this. You believe you believe in citizens and you feel very strongly having known me for so long that if people just knew how much power they have and what it is theyre up against and what they can do so they can bring about change. Has the average american strengthen over time . Have they weekend over time . Is it hard to get your news across . There is a progress factor here and that is people know who are doing them in now. They. They didnt even know that the auto company were selling them less than safe car. They know who is under insuring them and denying healthcare marshaling exclusions. They know all that. Step two is to avoid demoralization. Thats the big problem in this country. We cant fight the big boys so just live pleasant lives as much as you can text message watch tv, watch sports, whatever. Thats the biggest drawback theyve given up even though the constitution says we the people. If you have demoralization, here is my antidote. History shows 1 or less of the people who are seriously engaged throughout the country on redirection and reform that are supported by the majority of the people so people go around and say i just have to get one out of 100 people in my town or in my Congressional District were in my state to put in two or 300 hours a year on on an issue they believe in. Look, people put more than that for their Bowling League or their bridge game whether watching birds. Minimum wage right now is a big issue. Less than the population of the city of connecticut to put this on this political map. People who took a few hours to demonstrate in front of Mcdonalds Burger king to say look there are 30 million workers making less today than in 1968. Its a disgrace. Less than the population, 100,000 100,000 people scattered around getting media and maybe a few think tanks or if you group like ours contacting politicians, writing our beds and putting out reports. Doesnt that encourage people . Thats what made obama Pay Attention. Thats what made cities in town say were not waiting for the government which is still stuck at seven and a quarter per hour. Less than 1 we need to talk about the other one with public sentiment you can do anything. Without it you cant. There is so much majority support for a whole area of improvements in the country. Corporate tax. 90 support the breakup of the big new york banks that are too big. There is huge support. Support against the bloated military budget that is destroying so much abroad while our bridges and sewers and Water Systems and School Crumble here at home. This idea that we are polarized and we are red blue, that is the dividing rule tactic. You wrote a book about that. Yes. How oftentimes we are put into a red or blue situation and its basically going at politics and things that dont necessarily affect our lives in a very direct way but we continue to be very divided and yet we have so much more of interest. So much more. Prison reform juvenile justice reform, the reform of the war on drugs trade its just all over.