"There's always some external enemy that masks the _fundamental contradiction_ that we have a society that is ruled by the rich and the super-rich. A dictatorship of the corporations, that are saying to American workers --- and Caterpillar reinforced it --- You will either work for us for the wages and benefits we tell you, or you will not have a job.
-Presidential Candidate Ron Daniels
CANDIDATES FORUM, 21 MAY 1992
OAKES COLLEGE, UC SANTA CRUZ
LARRY AGRAN (DEMOCRAT), RON DANIELS (PEACE & FREEDOM)

" [..] I'm not so sure that I would agree with Larry [Agran] that it's a matter of _rediscovering_ our democracy. I think it's a question of _refashioning_ our democracy. [..] that which was, was never adequate in the first place..[..] The struggle therefore is to *finish* the unfinished democracy. To *perfect* the imperfect union [...] in this country. And so even *before* the cold war it was not perfect. [..] The intervention in the affairs of Central America didn't begin with the cold war."
"Africans in this country, brought to this country in chains, 100 million Africans brought not because people thought they were inferior, not because of racism, but because of *economic exploitation* [...] But not for the first 50 years could all white *men* vote, only *white men with property*. Why? Because from the very beginning, this union, the assumption was, if this country could be put in the hands of the propertied classes, if *they* are secure, everybody in America is supposed to be secure.
" [..] you know, if you look at the founding fathers sitting around that table, they were all fathers, no mothers sitting around --- [...] there were no people there with buckskin britches and coonskin caps there. There were no *workers* sitting at that table. It was a revolution for the aristocracy and for the monied classes from the very beginning."
-Presidential Candidate Ron Daniels
CANDIDATES FORUM, 21 MAY 1992
OAKES COLLEGE, UC SANTA CRUZ
LARRY AGRAN (DEMOCRAT), RON DANIELS (PEACE & FREEDOM)

Transcribed by Don Fong