Hightower Lowdown

Since last year's election, there's been a plethora of analyzers and pontificators asking this question: "What's wrong with the Democrats?"

The party has to move to the right, or get more religious, or change its rhetoric, they say. Hogwash. What the Democratic Party has to do is learn how to be Democrats again. This means standing up unequivocally for working families, the middle-class, and the poor, as well as standing forthrightly against the corporate powers running roughshod over this workaday majority of Americans.

Unfortunately, too many Dems profess to be for the folks while siding with the big money interests. For example, look at the "Cafta 15."

Cafta is yet another free trade scam written by and for global corporations (Lowdown June, 2005). Even with presidential arm twisting, the Republicans could only squeeze this atrocity out of Congress by one slim vote—but the real story is that 15 wimpy Democrats sold out America's working people and cast their votes with the multinational corporations.

Now a coalition of community groups in New York City is challenging the two local Congress Critters who were a part of the Cafta 15, Greg Meeks and Ed Towns; to learn more, call the Working Families Party: (718) 222-3796.