Lecture: Ralph Nader
Consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent in 2004 and 2008, will be visiting the UMass campus as part of his his national campaign for president.
Nader said in an interview that his speech will focus on the recent Wall Street bailout plan, single-payer health care and the presidential campaign, among other things.
Nader said that his campaign is in full-swing and that he is already on 45 of the 51 ballots. He said that in 2004, Democrats sued his campaign "24 times in 18 states in 12 days" to keep him off the ballot, and his support in Amherst suffered a "precipitous decline" in 2004 as a result of being a write-in candidate.
Nader began his career as a consumer advocate in 1965 with his book "Unsafe at Any Speed," which uncovered safety defects in American automobiles and was critical of the industry's safety standards.
He became an outspoken and high-profile advocate for consumer and citizen rights, starting the first Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) in the early 1970s. Since then, PIRGs have been founded across the nation, including MassPIRG, a Massachusetts-based public interest group active on the UMass campus.