Subject: MAYDAY, MAYDAY AMERICA!
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RADICAL PARTY, THE TRANSNATIONAL TRANSPARTY
ABSTRACT: Insert published on payment on the "New York Times" of 28th
Septembre. The text contains a solicitation to join the radical party.
Lastly, it suggests the creation of an interactive link with the Radical
Party via Internet.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28 september 1993)
We are 618 democratically-elected representatives from 65 countries,
belonging to 80 different Parties and Lists that are often political
opponents. We have decided to send you a call, to cry out: "Mayday, Mayday
America!"
We are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and people who do not belong
to any particular faith, united in a task by political objectives without
precedent in terms of method and content, validity and success. But we are
also 40,000 men and women scattered throughout the world who are in great
need of your help to rediscover America and to finally realize Martin
Luther King's dream for the entire world. In an act of faith and hope, we
have invested $162,500 in these pages, in order to receive your replies,
your contributions, and your membership - even though this is virtually all
the money we had left.
Every day we make a contribution of money and time, according to his own
possibilities. This is the best individual and collective insurance policy
we can take out for each and every one of us to reap the dividends of
freedom, peace, democracy, nonviolence, and a safe environment. We do this
in the form of membership to the Radical Party, the transnational
"transparty" whose symbol evokes the image of Mahatma Gandhi and each one
of our languages; to the Radical Party, whose campaigns, methods and goals
embody the kind of effectiveness and concreteness necessary to create a
right to life and a life of rights in a world that is becoming more and
more dangerous for each and every one of us and is in danger itself; to the
Radical Party, a new political force that is not ideological but completely
libertarian since it does not impose any form of discipline or permanent
consensus, a new instrument already being used to attain important
legislative goals, an instrument capable of combining the methods of
democratic government with those of organized nonviolence, at an individual
and popular level.
We are already mobilized to present and defend identical legislative
proposals simultaneously in as many national Parliaments and supranational
democratic bodies as possible, accompanied by extensive nonviolent action
undertaken by tolerant, democratic activists.
Following America's example, the major regions of the world must federate
in the name of freedom and the rule of law instead of tearing themselves
apart in ideological, religious, nationalist, and ethnic wars that are
barbarizing the world with acts of violence, genocide, massacres, and
dictatorships.
The U.N. must become the place that affirms the fundamental rights of
society and of the individual with the "forces" of law and effective
international jurisdiction. It must use tolerance and rule-of-thumb wisdom
to oppose the forces of intolerance and strictly authoritarian and
conservative beliefs - that only appear revolutionary - which dominate so
many parts of the world.
It is also necessary for the new technologies that are once more
revolutionizing our world, to be organized, controlled and put to the
service of human awareness and science to defend life and the planet Earth
in a productive and democratic way.
At the end of this century, when the defeat of Nazism and Communism gave us
so many reasons to hope, the separation between human awareness and science
one the one hand, and "politics" on the other, is growing ever more serious
and profound. With humility, determination and a great sense of urgency, we
must therefore pursue and bring about important reforms that human
awareness and science desire almost to the same degree but are unable to
realize.
The majority of the world, and the majority of us, know this. To no
purpose, or so it would appear. The Radical Party, or, if you prefer, we -
people like yourselves - have transformed this "knowledge" into a powerful
instrument for obtaining civil rights, with results that confirm the
validity and effectiveness of our aims, our methods, and the instrument
itself. However, it is precisely this success that has precipitated a
dangerous crisis in our Party, that threatens to force us to disband owing
to the dramatic lack of human and financial resources necessary to meet the
growing global and even institutional "demand", a "demand" for the Radical
Party: for the transnational "transparty"; for a Party for the federal
reform of the U.N.; for a Party of organized nonviolence; for a Party of
democratic parliaments; for a Party of tolerance.
We have demonstrated that we have learned form our experience of poverty
and profited by it; that we are able to gain strength from hunger and
thirst strikes; that we can get laws passed by going to prison and
resorting to civil disobedience; but, above all, we have proved that we are
capable of stimulating, developing, and controlling difficult reform
processes that are often slow and unproductive; of creating new laws, new
rights, and new institutions.
In 1993, we launched a similar appeal in Italy. Our honesty and our ability
to get things done resulted in over 35,000 people, including 200 deputies
and senators, from all parties and social conditions, joining the Radical
Party within a few days, with contributions amounting to over nine million
dollars.
Many people came to Italy to support our membership campaign, including the
Mayor of Sarajevo. He is one of us, like the many others in the world, from
Cuba (where they have freed our comrade Pedro Pablo Guzman Cabrera, but
where so many others are still in prison, still oppressed) to the Republics
of the Former Soviet Union, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, who are
battling and suffering for the rule of law, for liberty, peace, tolerance,
democracy, and the environment; to put an end to genocide, massacres,
terrorism, torture, and every kind of violence.
This made it possible for us to conduct an international campaign for the
institution by the U.N., of an International Tribunal for war crimes
committed in the Ex-Yugoslavia (which categorically excludes the death
penalty). With your help, we are counting on the U.N. to adopt the Statute
of a Permanent International Penal Court, during the 49th Session of the
General Assembly opened on September, 20; and on intervening to defend
civil and human rights everywhere - Kosovo, Nagorno Karabak, Haiti and
Latin America - wherever they are abused. We were in Rio de Janeiro and in
Cairo to neutralize every type of fundamentalist campaign, to safeguard the
rights of nature and of all individuals. Now we must implement those
decisions that are so vital for humanity and our planet.
Others were there as well, of course, but we were the only ones to have
created a permanent organization which is neither bureaucratic nor
ideological, composed of men and women who work together for a period to
achieve objectives and reforms that the political world - as you are well
aware - seems incapable of implementing.
Without the immediate help and generous participation of thousands of new
members and supporters, the Radical Party will soon have to face the fact
that it cannot continue to survive. Unless, of course, it gives up its
independence and ceases to be the first, important democratic and
libertarian Party of nonviolence in the world, and the first political
organization prepared to promote a life of rights and the right to life and
freedom, everywhere.
This is why we need you, and we have faith in you.
Emma Bonino
Secretary of the Radical Party
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"(...) I believe the radical thought is one of the most fruitful ways to
confront the future. I believe the transnational approach is one of the
best ways, in our world, to achieve a universal dimension."
U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to the Assembly of
Parliamentarians of the Radical Party (Sofia, Bulgaria, July 14-18, 1993)
