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Green Party candidate visits UA

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who is seeking nomination for the Green Party's 2000 presidential candidate, is running against corporations.

"I think we've got to break the complacency of corporate America," he said.

Yesterday, the packed Physics and Atmospheric Sciences auditorium filled more than its capacity of 400 with a crowd of UA students and Tucson community members waiting to hear Nader speak.

The speech was sponsored by UA Student Against Sweatshops.

The Arizona Green Party started Earth Day - April 22 - 1990. There are 5,000 members in the state.

Nader, who was greeted with a standing ovation, addressed environmental, business and children's issues.

He listed off the problems with corporate welfare, industries and taxes.

"Now do I fell the temperature of indignation going up in this room?" he asked the crowd.

The Green Party began in Germany in the late 1970s, electing its first member to the German Parliament in 1983. The party got on the 1992 ballot, with several Arizona Green members running for state and county positions. The party did not have a presidential candidate that year.

Nader has written and co-written more than 10 books that include environmental issues, corporate businesses and the auto industry.

He is known for authoring "Unsafe At Any Speed," a book that discussed the danger of American automobiles in the 1960s.

The Green Party needs 15,000 signatures to get on the primary ballot in September, so far it has around 4,000 signatures, according to Carolyn Campbell, the co-chair of the Pima County's Green Party.

The Green Party will decide its candidate at its national nomination convention in Colorado at the beginning of June.

Avery Kolers, a philosophy graduate student and Green Party supporter, said he strongly agreed with Nader.

He said he concurred with Nader's thoughts on not following the terms used by those in power. Kolers said powerful people sometimes use the "globalization," and say it is inevitable.

"That's just ideological mumbo-jumbo," Kolers said.

"I really like that he's not only talking about the issues, but the way we understand them," he added. "My biggest hope of his candidacy is people of the system feel threatened."