Ali to speak about politics

by Karlie Dunsky
The Associated Press

Omar Ali, professor of history at Fordham University, will speak about independent politics and encourage student involvement in politics at 7 p.m. tonight in the 1804 Lounge at Baker University Center. The Black Graduate Council and Lindley Cultural Center will sponsor the event.

Ali's tour is essentially an effort to share how independent voters in New York came together to build a vehicle for political reform and succeeded, said Sarah Lyons, Committee for a Unified Independent Party media director.He will discuss building local independent clubs and invite students to a conference in New York on Jan. 19 to strategize for the 2004 presidential election.

His tour of U.S. college campuses, initiated by CUIP, began last week.

“I’m trying to talk about the independent phenomenon in the country and show how the country has been taken over by the two major political parties. People get fixated on corporate powers, but in terms of social policy, the political parties are much more powerful. In many ways they are the most powerful special interest. So if we want to in some way change in terms of domestic policy, we have to go after the two-party structure of the government,” Ali said.

The United States has the second lowest voter turnout of all Western democracies. Ali said 71 percent of people ages 18 to 29 are asking for more political options. Gung-ho democrats or republicans are a minority now in the U.S as 41 percent of Americans have identified themselves as independent.

“Research has shown in the last couple years that people in our age group aren’t particularly liberal or conservative. A lot of people also feel that politicians are out for themselves. Young people want their voices to be heard, but we don’t really see the face of youth in other parties,” said Nichole Griffin, co-president of the Black Graduate Council and second-year grad student studying public administration.

Griffin said the council’s goal is to bring in speakers that represent different viewpoints of interest to all students on campus. She said the independent politics could be a vehicle for students to get their voices heard.

Independents have led every major reform movement in history, Ali said. Often, certain third party issues are co-opted by major parties.

For example, the Democratic Party claimed the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Ali said. The civil rights movement was led by students, independents and young people ­ not by Democratic politicians. Democrats passed the acts, but it was pressured from below.

“There is a movement for young people to join and help build and young people will decide the direction of that movement by their participation in it. Independents today are like African Americans living under Jim Crow or women living prior to the 19th Amendment. Independents are structurally discriminated against by the major parties,” Ali said.

Independents have the power to prevent parties from co-opting their ideas by changing the rules of politics, Ali said.

As a district leader of the Independent party in New York, Ali has been advocated change, he said. Ali also is the director of research for the CUIP, which began in 1994 to bring together Americans across political spectrum.

CUIP has worked on a variety of political reform issues, including ballot access reform, same-day voter registration and initiative and referendum. These issues are all structural reforms to open up the political process to all Americans, said Ali. Independent voters in New York also helped to elect their current mayor Michael Bloomberg, who received 60,000 votes on independent line.

 “The way that we’re taught to do politics is to do along the spectrum, left to right,” Ali said. “The major parties are really centrist. The American people are beginning to demand a top-down model, which brings together people from left, center and right. It’s more of a vertical model.”

For more information look up the CUIP Web site (http://www.cuip.org) or by calling 1-800-288-3201.