Ralph Nader This Is His Life
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by the press for his fussy eating standards, and for Speed (1965) and has co-authored or edited many RALPH NADER THIS IS HIS LIFE his assualt on the All-American Hot Dog as "a deadly books, including: Action for a Change, pink missile." His father, it should be noted, had 1972 Whistle-Blowing: The Report on the [ This is a short unofficial biography independently opened one of the first health food stores in the Conference of Professional Responsibility, produced and not approved by Mr. Nader or United States even before Ralph was even born. 1972 You and Your Pension, disapproved.] Ralph graduated from the Gilbert School in 1973 Corporate Power in America, Ralph Nader, the youngest of four children of his hometown in 1951 and entered Princeton. His first 1973 Taming the Giant Corporation, Lebanese immigrants Nathra and Rose Nader, was born protest came about when the sophomore noticed 1976 Verdicts on Lawyers, in tiny Winsted, Connecticut, on February 27, 1934. His dead birds on their backs around the trunks of DDT- 1976 The Menace of Atomic Energy, father, a reformer with strong democratic beliefs, had sprayed trees: "Shouldn't people know that DDT kills 1976 The Lemon Book, fled penniless in 1912 to escape Turkish oppression. birds and it can harm people too?" he demanded of 1980 Who's Poisoning America, Nader says "My father took the Statue of Liberty the Daily Princetonian, taking a number of the dead 1981 The Big Boys, seriously." His sister Laura, now a professor at UC birds to the news office. Nader says, "They didn't 1989 Winning the Insurance Game, Berkeley, says that Nathra taught the children activism know at the time that DDT was dangerous to more 1993 Collision Course: The Truth About as well as critical thinking: "We couldn't just complain. than just insects. And I said, `Maybe there's a Airline Safety, If we didn't like something, we were told to do connection.'" 1996 No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and something about it." Nathra used to say, "Problems are In 1955 he graduated magna cum laude and the Perversion of Justice in America, to solve. A good system is here. But it will not work by went on to Harvard Law School for three years ("a Nader's agitation bore fruit when Congress passed and itself. We have to make it work." Ralph says. "I once high-priced tool factory," he called it) and then did a Lyndon Johnson signed the Vehicle Safety and said to my father when I was a boy, `Dad, we need a short hitch in the Army. In 1959 Ralph set up his law Highway Safety Acts on Sept. 9, 1966. A month later third political party.' He said, `I'll settle for a second.'" In practice in Hartford and published his first article on Nader successfully sued General Motors for invasion later life he told Ralph that if he ran for president, it auto safety in The Nation. He became a consultant on of privacy for spying on him. should not be as a Democrat or Republican, "Because this subject for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel In 1968 his new reputation and the $280,000 both parties sell the country very cheap." Patrick Moynihan in 1964, and the next year his book financial settlement enabled him to establish a Center Nader has been very critical of the two major parties, Unsafe at Any Speed was published. for the Study of Responsive Law in Washington, the especially in their handling of health, environmental, Throughout the 1970s, 80's, and 90's, and up to the first of more than 50 non-profit organizations staffed by and ecological issues. Over twenty years ago he present time, Nader gathered the evidence and thousands of mostly young Nader's Raiders, as the complained, "The Democrats have got to get rid of the alerted the public, Congress, and the media to many Washington Post dubbed them. "The function of idea that because a couple of them have staked out issues related to health,safety, economics, leadership," he says, "is to produce more leaders." claims, ecology is their exclusive issue. Everybody has environmental pollution, worker rights, andexcessive A list of the reforms Nader is credited with got to get involved." corporate influence. Nader and his colleagues have initiating includes the Environmental Protection His interest in civic action came at an early proposed many constructive reforms, and have Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the age. Ralph's older brother, Shafik, who had pushed the prompted theenactment of laws and regulations to Freedom of Information Act, the Safe Drinking Water townsfolk into creating a community college, started correct the problems, to Act, the Meat and Poultry Inspection Laws, the the younger boy on reading the Congressional Record the benefit of the public. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the at age eleven. One of the boy's favorite authors was In his career as a consumer advocate, he Coal Mine Health and Safety Act and many others. Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle (1906), one of the founded many organizations including the Public In May 1968 he startled the media with the earliest muckraking exposes of the meat industry. Nader Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto charge that African-Americans were routinely given ultimately met the octagenerian crusader on December Safety, Public Citizen, Center for Women's Policy higher radiation doses in hospital X-rays, based on the 15, 1967 when Pres. Lyndon Johnson signed the Studies, Connecticut Citizen's Action Group, the racist belief that they had tougher skins and harder landmark Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 in a ceremony, Disability Rights Center, the Pension Rights Center, bones. General Electric, the major manufacturer, was Nader said, "where two historic consumer ages were and the Multinational Monitor, a monthly magazine. forced to admit that its radiology textbook did meeting." A vegetarian himself, Nader has been ribbed Ralph Nader is the author of Unsafe at Any recommend higher doses for Blacks. Nader was rarely deflected from his anti-corporate focus by protest were absolutely wrong in the way they evaluated the marches: "What is more intimately involved with civil consequences of a new technology. I remember when rights and poverty than the invisible violence of the they told us nuclear power would be too cheap to corporations?" Today he says that the climate for the meter. Nuclear power would replace all fossil fuels and progressive legislation he helped create in the we'd have a totally clean environment. They never Johnson and Nixon years arose "because of the wave told us about radioactive waste....They never told us of demonstrations out of the sixties, which lapped about plutonium and national security hazards [or] over into the early seventies." about the taxpayer subsidy of these plants [or that] According to Nader's ecological vision, this was the only fuel system producing electricity "We've got to do what past generations never had to that had to have an elaborate evacuation plan. So we do....Man-made hazards are transcending our have to always ask these scientists to, in effect, stick traditional physiological alert system. We can't taste to their science, and the broader democracy must the mercury in swordfish, we can't smell carbon develop the consequences, the probabilities, and the dioxide, we can't see hydrocarbons or feel value system." radioactivity from the nuclear plants. We've got to rely Nader says, "With the collapse of on our minds, less on our bodies, to signal pain or communism and with the absence of any alternative anger or fear. We have to do something." way of ordering private property and using public The issue of "new technologies" is a major assets, we are entering into a generation of global concern for Nader these days: "The whole ethical power of the multinational corporations. There's no question and safety question of genetic engineering, society that is able to withstand the commercial the question of artificial intelligence and human western culture that is moving in on it." The challenge privacy, the question of new kinds of chemicals, the now, he argues, is "whether democracy is going to be question of global pollution from countries that affect up to it. Whether these giant corporations are going to all the rest of the world...as China, India, Indonesia be able to respect instead of erode and control and other counties repeat our technological mistakes." democratic processes...these new trade agreements Genetic engineering, Nader says, has to be like GATT and the World Trade Organization are not "more than 99% safe, and we just don't know that encouraging." much about the flora and the fauna and cellular Nader has a high regard for the individual's structure. And when we're starting to bio-engineer ability to understand and impact politics: "Let me tell watermelons in order to make them smaller and more you what will help. First of all, if we know our history, convenient to carry, when we bio-engineer fruits and that almost all things we love about this country vegetables for shelf-life maintenance for the benefit of started with just one or two people — whether it was the sellers and the processors rather than the the women's right to vote (remember the six women in CONTACT: consumers, do we really know...how it affects the free an upstate farmhouse in 1846), the trade union radicals, how it affects nutrition, how it affects movement (giving workers a chance to bargain with vulnerability to disease on the part of these new these big companies), consumers, environmental bio-engineered systems.