Frank Moore Email Interview
In your early campaign address for the New York Foundation of the Arts you stated, āI am a real, serious candidate.ā How do you intend to compete with the major contenders of the 2008 election without comparable finances?
Realistically/practically a write-in candidate can not āwinā the presidency because the odds are stacked against such an independent candidate in various ways. The lack of money is the least of it. Almost half of the states either outright do not allow their people to write somebody in or make it virtually impossible for somebody to become an officially sanctioned write-in candidate. You canāt āwinā when half of the states are off limits to you no matter how much money you have. Add to this the freezing out of both independent and third-party candidates by the mainstream (and most of the āalternativeā) media coverage and so on, it becomes obvious āwinningā is not a sane goal for someone in my position to have. Historically independent and third-party candidates have induced new possibilities, expanded our freedoms, and introduced fresh concepts into the society, which the mainstream then absorbs. The process is very similar to that of the artist in society. I have operated within the process of an artist in society focused on inducing change in society for 40 years. So Iām use to, and comfortable in, the process, operating with little/no money, getting the message [the dream/vision] out despite the blocks, getting things done in new ways, etc. This interview with you shows the campaign is working! The European mainstream press has given our campaign serious respectful coverage. It now looks like we will qualify in most states where that is a possibility. That is amazing for a campaign that has no money or an army of operatives! But the real fuel for me is seeing people fill up with hope when they read my platform.
Obviously, the odds are not stacked in your favor this election. Why even run?
Well, it gives me a powerful position to outline our dreams in a direct, clear, practical way, thereby exposing who is blocking those dreams, and how and why they have been blocked. In the late 90ās Sen. Jesse Helms provided me a similar position when he targeted/blacklisted me and four other performance artists. When you are given such a position, I think it is your responsibility to take the ride, to fully use it to expand freedom for everyone.
I never know when something appearing to be trivial will bloom into an important channel for changeā¦be it a show, a magazine, a web station, a series, a political project, or whateverā¦which takes years to realize its potential. This has always been how my life has unfolded. This campaign started with a Three Stooges shirt! Mikee, one of the 5 people who I live tribally with, had a Curly for President shirt. For Christmas two years ago they made me a Frank Moore for President shirt. Fun. But when I wore the shirt, people started seriously asking me what my platform was. So I wrote up a blueprint of how we can create the society we have been dreaming of. The platform was clear, direct, practical. When people read itā¦even people who at first thought it was an arty jokeā¦changed right before our eyes, filling up with hopeā¦.saying things like āTHIS WOULD WORK!ā āFINALLY!ā and āSO WHY DONāT WE HAVE THIS NOW?ā Their reactionsā¦and their deep seriousness and longingsā¦placed on me the responsibility to put on a real campaign. This set up a feed back cycle, attracting European coverage, support of a wide range of people, opportunities to address the issues in ways candidates rarely, if ever, do. I always follow openings! Who knows, we may even win this sucker! We have already forced a few states to refine their election procedures.
Do you consider yourself a hippie?
What do mean by āa hippieā? Define that, please.
For about 40 years, I have lived tribally/communally. Now the 6 of us live together in two houses [one of which we built] on a street in Berkeley with 4 cats. Linda and I have been together for over 35 years. Michael has been with us for 20 yearsā¦as have Corey and Alexi. Erika joined us 6 years ago. We live as a tribal body. This tells you that I will expand concepts such as a family and family values. My relationships have always been what I am about. So we put our personal relationships and one another first. This opens up possibilities and expands our ability to use opportunities.
In her essay āHookergate` IIā your running mate Dr. Susan M. Block writes that war is āporn for journalists.ā Quite obviously her open sexuality has political motivations. Upon visiting her āBloggamyā, however, my first impression was that it was about a step away from a porno site. The American public has a long history of lambasting open sexuality whilest consuming it privately. How closely does sexual freedom tie into your platform?
Both Suzy and I use sex in our art, our work, and our lives as a tool for political and cultural changeā¦among other things! When you talk about sexual freedom, what you are really talking about is personal freedomā¦which is basic to my political philosophy. During the Helmsā attack on artistsā¦which is generally considered the first battle in The Cultural Warsā¦it was always framed in terms of sex. But in reality all of us targeted artists were doing politically motivated art from suppressed groups [gays, women, etc.]. The real aim of the attack was to kill this political art.
Suzy and I donāt hide in closets! Funny, sex rarely has come up in the campaignā¦and when it does come up, it is positive! This speak volumes about this
campaign!
Supposing you actually became the President of the United States of America, how do you think congress would react to your extensive cuts in the military budget? How would you convince them to support a 50% military budget cut?
Well, as the commander in chief, I wouldnāt spend what they budgeted! But to answer the core of your questionā¦true, Iād be facing a congress full of people in both of the parties who are still operating in the old limiting boxes. However the fact that I had gotten into The White House would mean the people are tired of wasting money on a bloated, wasteful military designed for an era that has long passed, a military that is used primarily to promote the corporate interest, rather than the real national interest. I will work directly with the people to āconvinceā Congress to invest the money into rebuilding our society rather than in insanity.
With a weakened military, how will America defend itself?
First a smaller military is not a weakened military. Our bloated military is out of date by at least 40 years in terms of the actual kinds of threats we are or may be in the future facing. This has been true since World War Two. In the real world that we live in, we need a much smaller, more flexible military, based primarily in this country. I would cut the pork and the waste out of the military.
To answer the question of how will America defend itself, you first need to define what we are defending ourselves from. Our military couldnāt defend against 9/11. Good police work could have.
How would you deal with another attack such as 9/11?
You need a lot more details about such an attack to responsibly answer this question. I would not give up our freedoms and our principles for a myth of security. I wouldnāt invade a third country that had nothing to do with the attack. I wouldnāt wage a war of which the goals canāt be explained, a war which has taken thousands of lives, left us much more vulnerable in various ways, left us in debt billions upon billions to China and Japan, placing our financial/economical future at risk.
If we remove our forces from Iraq, what do you see in its near future? Do you feel they need our military support to maintain at least some semblance of stability in such a volatile region?
Funny, they asked the same question about Viet Nam. The fact is we need to withdraw. Whenever we do, there will be a chaotic period. That is no reason to put our leaving off. We should work through the U.N. to ease this period. But to put off our leaving would like putting off getting out of a failed/violent marriage just to avoid the admitting of the ugly reality.
You propose a 75% flat tax for all businesses with earnings over 5 million dollars. This is certainly not appealing to larger corporations. What would you do to prevent the flight of corporations (and their money) from the United States?
Let me be clear. One of my main aims is the breaking up of the big corporations and their negative distorting influence and control over every aspect of our society. We have to break the addiction of going after obscenely huge profits. This addiction is the root cause of most of the problems we face today. I will go after the greed culture.
So the tax is only one aspect one of my platform aimed at the corporations!
Where are the corporations moving to? China? Donāt think so! Europe has similar taxes. It hard to see the corporations moving from the U.S., especially if to sell their products in this country they will have to certify that their products were manufactured in accordance with this countryās labor, wage, environmental, and safety laws … that they meet or exceed these … no matter where they were produced.
Your health care plan seeks to eliminate private monopolies of new drugs and health products. These monopolies provide the current private health care providers with the wealth and resources to invest vast quantities of money into further product development and enable them to pay professionals much more than they are paid in other countries for their drug development knowledge and expertise. How would you keep incentive for a strong product development strong in the switchover from private to public healthcare?
Today, because of those monopolies, we pay much more for drugs and have less access to drugs than most Western nations. The drug companies are searching for what will generate the largest profits, and that dictates the research. This means many problems that are deemed unprofitable are left unexplored. Under my policies, companies that develop drugs based on research done at universities, government labs or other public institutions will pay royalities to those public institutions, thereby making future research possible.
Franklin D. Roosevelt hid his disability from the American public. Do you think that the American public will see your paralysis as a weakness or as strength?
Well, first I am spastic, not paralyzed. I move, dance! That saidā¦most people see that Iām somebody who gets things done, no matter whatā¦using my body as an asset. So they see me as a strong person. I have always been dumb to what is impossible. So I just figure how to do the āimpossible.ā I have been doing this all my life! I am 61. I was born with cerebral palsy. I communicate using a laser-pointer and a board of letters, numbers and commonly-used words. But I am a host of a popular public access TALK show. Go figure it! So now I am setting my sights, as president, on eliminating poverty, hunger, war, etc. Impossible, eh?
When I was born, doctors told my parents that I had no intelligence, that I had no future, that I would be best put into an institution and be forgotten. This was a powerful expectation with all the force of western science and medicine as well as social influences, behind it. It would have been easy for my parents to be swept up into this expectation. Then that expectation would have created my reality. I would have long ago died without any other possibilities.
Instead, my parents rejected this expectation for the possibility they saw in my eyes, for what for them should have been true. This rejection of the cultural expectation of reality could not be a one time choice. They had to passionately live their choice everyday, every minute, or the cultural expectation would have sucked them and me into it. It fought them at every new possibility they opened to me. Their passionate commitment to how they thought things should be attracted people to me who kept opening new possibilities for me. Of course, these were in the minority. But I focused on them, making them how people should be, how I wanted to be. So I expected people and myself to be like that. So people were for the most part that way…at least I saw them that way. This opened up to me what is called luck. It also gave me the ability to trust and the ability to use opportunities.
So the struggle for freedom, and against the powers-that-be has been my life. And it has been a continuous struggle, struggling with schools to let me in, etc. I have always been a radical. But that became obvious when I was 18 and invented my head pointer with which I type and communicateā¦I started writing political columns for the high school paperā¦as well as putting out an underground paper. I was in the first special class placed on a regular high school campus so that the disabled students could be in regular classes and be a part of campus life. I was involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements. This was 1965ā¦before it was popular to be against the Vietnam War. In the school paper I got into a debate with a GI in Vietnam. I was sat down and told that, because of my political philosophy and activities, I was hurting the chances of the disabled students who would come after me. I replied that the goal was to get the rights for the disabled [and for all people] to be complete and equalā¦and that included the right to be political. I would not surrender that, or any other, right.
Most of your views and actions do not quiteā¦coincide with the conservative republican political stances most Americans choose to align themselves with. Do you have any plan to convince these voters that they should vote for you?
Hey! Aināt I doing that now? I never sell people shortā¦or sell them out! If they read my platform, they can see if it is what they desire!
Dorothy Jesse Beagle wrote:
Dear Frank,
This Interview with your informative, clear and intelligent answers revealing that your Presidential candidacy is your life as you have lived it, should be required reading for younger Americans, informative and apt to stimulate progress for the human species, and in a period of history where millions of truth seekers are working 24/7 to turn the ‘ship around’ and head for mountains of solutions that are humane and that work. You only need look at the Internet to know how many earnest truth seekers are looking for answers, getting opinions from wide sources, and seeking the leader(s) who can boldly (don’t take no for an answer) and quickly, discard the boxes intended to confine us, and as if by the ‘releasing of a beautiful butterfly from a cage’ illustrate as your platform does, the end of greed and the birth of co-existence.
Jesse deBeagle
Frank Moore wrote:
extremely well said, jesse!
