Former Alaska U.S. Senator Mike Gravel is in Alaska this week. The outspoken Democrat is known for being fiercely independent, famously reading the Pentagon papers on the floor of the Senate in 1971 at a time when President Richard Nixon refused to release them to reporters. He also attempted a run for President in 2008.
Gravel will be speaking tonight at the University of Alaska Anchorage about Alaska’s place in the world and what he sees as a failure of representative government. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1969 and says everything that happened in Alaska in the decade of the 70’s had national and global implications.
GRAVEL: The discovery of oil. The adjudication of Native claims legislation. The environmental legislation with respect to ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act). All of that happened within that tenure, and I just happened to have been involved in the leadership capacity and all of the issues, both the plus and minus.
TOWNSEND: Senator Gravel. You’ve been described in the past as a maverick, as a radical. Do you feel that you are?
GRAVEL: Rather than being a radical or what have you, I’m a visionary. I can look ahead and look too far ahead and then fight for that and then realize I’ve left my constituency way behind me, and they don’t understand what I’m doing. Here’s a classic which affects Alaska. When I was in office, i reasoned and came to the conclusion that oil is going to be temporary. Whether it lasts 50 years, 100 years, it’s still temporary. And so if you really wanna look at down the road at what the future of Alaska should be from an economic point of view, you come away with the simple conclusion that, ‘what is it we have an abundance that will never go away?’ It’s our beauty. Alaska is absolutely beautiful. And so then ladies of the night selling their beauty and retaining their beauty the next day, well Alaska’s the same way. We could sell our beauty and in doing so, we would have to build luxury activities so that people would come and see the beauty and enjoy it. Now we have a summer tourist business. What I tried to do, which was obvious, was to try to see if we couldn’t expand our tourist activity into the winter. I tell people a lot of times, “You wanna see the beauty of Alaska, go in the summer time, but if you want to understand the Arctic, go there in the winter time.”
TOWNSEND: You jumped into the 2008 presidential race. What do you think about what’s happening currently in the current contest in the country and the front-runner candidates, both on the Democratic and the Republican side?
GRAVEL: If it weren’t for the fact that our political system is so corrupt, Bernie Sanders would walk away with this election. I will be approaching Sanders shortly, asking him to look to the possibility of going forward with direct democracy meaning that he can realize this revolution if the people have the power to make laws at the federal level. And I have a plan to do that. And so if I can sell him on that, then it won’t matter who gets elected President of the United States. We’ll be able to take our agenda that’s so interesting to the people directly. Now, you have an initiative process here in Alaska. I’ve used it when I was a senator. And so, if it’s okay for an Alaskan to vote to make laws in Alaska, what’s so long with having Alaska be able to vote on laws at the federal level? Is there some magic where we become dumb when we move from the state to the federal level? Of course not. We don’t have the power to do it at the federal level because the government won’t let us do it. But Bernie has the troops in the field and the money to turn around and enact the National Citizens Initiative. And if the United States were to empower its citizens to make laws, that would go around the world like wildfire.
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel will be speaking at the University of Alaska Anchorage at 7 pm this evening.
Lori Townsend is the chief editor, senior vice president of journalism and senior host for Alaska Public Media. You can send her news tips and program ideas for Talk of Alaska and Alaska Insight at ltownsend@alaskapublic.org or call 907-550-8452. Read more about Lori here.
