Ralph Nader wants to ‘break through power’ | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Ralph Nader, who has been on the political sidelines after having run for president four times, is still hepped up about the need for civic activism.

In an interview with McClatchy, the man who founded the consumer movement touched on his favorite anti-corporate, anti-political party “duopoly” themes while touting his upcoming four-day conference, “Breaking Through Power.”

“The biggest gathering of civic leaders who want to make change and have actually done it,” he said, is coming together “in an election year that has put civil society off limits to democracy.”

The Washington conference, Sept. 26 - 29, is designed to motivate people, he said, and show them how to challenge institutional and political barriers.

“The key is there is a barrier that the commercialized candidates and their media have created,” he said. “People like me can’t get on ‘Meet the Press.’ ”

Nader often complains about a media blackout. He is something of a pariah in Democratic circles after what many consider his “spoiler” role in drawing votes from Democratic nominee Al Gore in the 2000 election.

Nader ran for president in 1996 and 2000 as a Green Party candidate and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. He is not supporting any presidential candidate in 2016, although he said he says “good things” about Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson when he agrees with them on such issues as the Libertarian Party’s strong stand on civil liberties or the Green Party’s positions on climate change and regulation.

Nader did not support Bernie Sanders in 2016, although they share many of the same anti-corporate views.

The conference features business critic John Bogle, founder and retired CEO of The Vanguard Group; attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented victims abused by clergy in Boston and was portrayed in the Academy Award-winning “Spotlight”; and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s non-voting delegate to Congress, who will speak out on statehood for the District of Columbia. Half a day is devoted to statehood, an issue important to Nader, a longtime Washington resident.

Nader himself will speak, of course, and he wants to make sure everyone knows that to attend the conference it’s only $10 a day.