Naked City

"I want to greatly broaden the range of debate," said Rahul Mahajan, who kicked off his campaign last week as the Green Party candidate for governor. "There's a lot of issues not being talked about: global warming, the war on terrorism, the increasing corporate takeover of the political process. I want to broaden the issues discussed as well as the range of analysis."

A graduate student in physics at UT, Mahajan described the current major-party campaigns as extremely limited in addressing the issues: "They're not even talking about the death penalty or the criminal injustice system." He hopes his candidacy during a "critical time for the Green Party and the progressive movement in Texas" can reach out to progressive Democrats and convince them of the importance of alternative parties beyond the question of electing any particular candidate. "We need to shift the debate, beyond what the existing candidates will consider or say in public, and thereby shift the entire range of available political discussion."

Mahajan's campaign is not his only means of expanding the conversation. A national board member of Peace Action, he's just written a new book called The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism (Monthly Review Press), which will be in book stores in April. Mahajan describes the book as an analysis of the U.S. government's official version of post-Sept. 11 events versus the political and military reality. He says the U.S. government, just as it did in the Gulf War and then in Bosnia, did whatever it could to prevent peaceful resolutions early on in the crisis, preferring an inevitable military response. "My argument is that it's not a war on terrorism at all, but a war for imperial expansion abroad and for greater corporate power at home."