Media activist runs for Congress.

• Author: Bernstein, Dennis
• Position: Norman Solomon

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED NORMAN Solomon nearly thirty years ago, when I was teaching writing to prisoners in a conservative community of upstate New York. One day, I opened up a local newspaper and saw an op-ed he had penned on the murder of a young engineer named Ben Linder by U.S.-supported counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua. It was a time when very few in the mainstream were questioning President Reagan's policies, and it meant a great deal to me.

"As the glare of publicity fades, those of us with personal memories of Ben Linder are left to ponder the meaning of his death," Solomon wrote. "Why would anyone want to kill a gentle helpful man for working to provide electricity to a small village in an impoverished country?"

Since those early Reagan days, Solomon has been a biting media critic, a syndicated columnist, and the author of a number of books. And for more than a dozen years, he has directed the Institute for Public Accuracy, which he founded to present a wider range of voices that mainstream and alternative journalists can tap into.

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Early this year, Solomon announced he was setting aside his distinguished career to become a Democratic candidate for Congress. He is vying for the seat soon to be vacated by the retiring Representative Lynn Woolsey, in the new gerrymandered District 2 that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge hundreds of miles north to the California-Oregon border.

I caught up with candidate Solomon at a recent house party and fundraiser, in Mill Valley, an affluent suburb about fifteen miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. I asked him why he decided to make such a drastic move.

"For more than forty years, I've been writing to change the system; now I'm running to change the system," he said. "For decades, we've seen one disaster after another as progressives have routinely left the electoral field to corporate Democrats and their Republican colleagues. We desperately need to go beyond the false choice between staying true to ideals and winning public office. Progressives can--and must--do both."

Writer and social historian Martin Lee co-authored Solomon's second book, Unreliable Sources. Lee, who lives in Healdsburg, right in the heart of the new Congressional district, says Solomon's bid was a natural evolution.

"For Norman, media criticism was always a vehicle for promoting social justice," says Lee.

On Labor Day weekend at California's state capitol in Sacramento, Solomon was one of a few...