Happy birthday, Mike Gravel! (May 13, 1930)

US Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981, Mike Gravel occupied an odd position in mainstream American politics. Raised in Massachusetts, he moved to Alaska in 1956 and became politically active starting in the 1960s, eventually becoming Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives before arriving in the Senate. There, he emerged as a forceful left-wing voice opposed to American militarism and the War in Vietnam. In 1971, he read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. Gravel lost his Senate seat in the 1980 primary, but remained politically active as a campaigner for direct democracy. Gravel ran for President in 2008 on an anti-war and pro-direct democracy platform as part of the Democratic Primary, gaining attention for his denunciation of his opponents on the debate stage. In the 2020 election Gravel ran again, his campaign run by young people seeking to promote left-wing positions in the Democratic primary race. Gravel died in 2021, but his campaign transformed into the Gravel Institute, a think tank and advocacy group which works to promote left-wing causes through online content.

“The military-industrial complex not only controls our government lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture.”