File:Jerry Brown 92 Presidential Platform We the People.jpg

From Green Policy
Revision as of 21:16, 18 December 2016 by Siterunner (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Jerry_Brown_92_Presidential_Platform_We_the_People.jpg(448 × 586 pixels, file size: 40 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

<addthis />


Brown Campaign Statement to the Democratic Party Platform Committee



Environmental Excerpts from Jerry Brown's "We the People - Take Back America" Platform of 1992



SJS / GreenPolicy Siterunner

From a memoir published by the Green Institute including personal recollections of the 1992 Brown presidential campaign ...

Recollections of the 1992 Presidential Campaign


An Insurgent Campaign

The Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton became the voice of the national Democratic Party, but not before fending off an unexpectedly strong challenge in 1992 by the Jerry Brown for President campaign. Having worked with Governor Brown earlier, I joined up with the national campaign and went about helping organize the national headquarters operations, as well as coordinating the campaign in New Mexico and assisting in Colorado. Most important to me were my efforts with Jerry to put together our campaign’s platform.

The Brown campaign, which would finish a close second to Bill Clinton’s "Comeback Kid" campaign, started on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Brown announced an “insurgent” campaign to “Take Back America.” The campaign’s message from the first speech had a steady beat – there had been “a hostile takeover” of American democracy by big money and corporate interests. It was a historic moment, an attempt to breathe new life into America’s democratic experiment. The speech set out a political landscape we were entering: “In reality there is only one party: It’s the Incumbent Party. There are, of course, two major political organizations with different names, but at their core they are the same. They share the same worldview and they serve the power of the same private interests which, in return, finance the campaigns of both. When there are no substantial differences, there is no choice to be made. Without choices, there is no democracy and when there is no democracy there is no freedom; only a system which entertains us with illusions.”

Governor Jerry Brown quoted Thomas Paine from the Revolutionary pamphlet The Crisis. “These are the times that try men’s souls.” He quoted General Washington and the ‘dark hour before the dawn’ when Washington’s winter soldiers rallied when faced with imminent defeat. “I run for President because I believe America is at a crossroads… For 200 hundred years, each generation has earned the title ‘American’ by following a simple moral command: that we give our children better than we received; that we pass on a greater future with more freedom and more opportunity… If we, right now, are prepared in the spirit of our ancestors to join in common cause, putting principle before party and patriotism before profits, then we can reclaim for ourselves and our children the idea and promise of America. The hour has rung for us, we the people, to rise up and take back our democracy and our country!”


by Steven Schmidt
Published by the Green Institute, 2004


File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current16:58, 4 September 2016Thumbnail for version as of 16:58, 4 September 2016448 × 586 (40 KB)Siterunner (talk | contribs)