blood of to me
marika
From: Michael Givel (mgi...@earthlink.net)
Subject: Green Party Grows Roots
This is the only article in this thread
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Date: 2004-10-20 07:10:19 PST
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/12/opinion/main648809.shtml
Green Party Grows Roots
Oct. 12, 2004
(The Nation) This column from The Nation was written by William Greider.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember when politics used to be unscripted and fun? David Cobb,
presidential nominee of the Green Party, is having fun this year. "I find it
exhilarating," he says, notwithstanding the likelihood he will finish behind
even independent Ralph Nader, the Green candidate in 2000. Cobb is a
41-year-old lawyer and community organizer who ran for Texas attorney
general before moving to Humboldt County, California, ground zero for
green-thinking politics. Cobb playfully ridicules campaign stereotypes with
his biographical equivalent of being born in a log cabin.
"I'm proud to say I'm the only presidential candidate in this election who
grew up in a house without a flush toilet," he declares. "I don't
say that
to get a pat on the head but to underscore that I grew up in poverty -- real
poverty -- and my running mate [Pat LaMarche of Maine] grew up in a public
housing project in Providence, Rhode Island. So when I rail against the
corporate capitalist system that oppresses workers, I'm speaking from my own
experience. I've seen it up close and personal."
In Houston, where Cobb came of age, he was a dishwasher, construction
worker, deckhand on shrimp boats and waiter, working his way through college
and law school. "The constant refrain is that Greens are nothing more than
upper-middle-class environmentalists, but you know what, that's the Sierra
Club, not the Green Party," he says. "The Green Party is actually composed
of working-class people."
The Greens' sensibility is still counterculture, but they've become far more
inclusive, recruiting union members and urban minorities while also talking
about governing issues with less froth, more substance. Double the minimum
wage to $10 an hour. Repeal the NAFTA and WTO agreements, also the
Taft-Hartley Act. End poverty -- literally -- with a new system to guarantee
"sustainable livelihoods" for all, worthy work and living wages,
decentralized economics and politics, an economy transformed to sustain
nature rather than destroy it. "There are no good-paying jobs on a dead
planet," Cobb observes.
The electoral reality is that, without the celebrity of Ralph Nader on the
ticket, the Green Party will likely finish in asterisk territory with other
minor parties. Indeed, a rump group is out working for Nader instead of
Cobb. That's ok with Green Party organizers, who demonstrated party control
by nominating Cobb over Nader at the June convention. Their objective is
long-term party-building, registering more members, recruiting more
candidates for local offices, organizing more state parties. By those terms,
they see themselves winning by growing this year, while Democrats and major
media direct the heavy fire at Nader.
The Greens in 2004 do not say, as Nader did four years ago, that there's no
difference between Democrats and Republicans -- just not enough difference.
A provocative comparison of party positions on the Greens' website lists
what Greens oppose and both major parties support: war in Afghanistan and
Iraq, the Patriot Act, Israeli occupation of the West Bank, corporate
agriculture, corporate welfare, corporate rules for global trade, bank
deregulation, increasing military spending, the death penalty. Greens
support and Democrats and Republicans oppose: national health insurance,
doubling the minimum wage, full public financing for candidates, strict
controls on genetically modified organisms, the landmine-ban treaty, real
action on global warming, a new legal doctrine of workers' rights for
Americans, electoral reforms that create the political space for a
multiparty democracy.
Indeed, reading their literature and listening to Cobb, it seems more that
the Greens are co-opting Democrats than the other way around -- adopting
reform convictions Democrats have abandoned. Cobb used to be a Democrat
himself and was a campaign organizer for Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Jerry
Brown in 1992. "That is actually the year I became so disgusted by the
corporate money and realized the kind of progressive politics I wanted to do
really couldn't be done by the Democratic Party, because the corporate money
was like a cancer that had metastasized within that body," he says. "Even
though there were great progressive Democrats, ultimately the money ruled
the day." Most rank-and-file Democrats know this, he thinks, but don't
know
what to do about it. But, he says, "there is a growing awareness in a
segment of the American population...that we do not have a democracy in this
country. Democracy means the people rule. Today unelected, unaccountable
CEOs are not just exercising power over us, they are literally ruling us.
They are making the public policy decisions for us."
The radical edge in Green politics is small-d democratic -- the Greens'
conviction that "grassroots democracy" and "community-based economics"
are
still possible in America, that "workplace democracy" is a smart fit with
"ecological wisdom." Their textbook is Lawrence Goodwyn's history
of the
agrarian revolt, The Populist Moment, which describes how ordinary citizens
in the 1880s built an autonomous, self-educating social movement to
challenge the dominant culture.
Cobb believes the Greens are working on the early stages of
movement-building. In 1996, when Cobb first got involved, the party had 40
elected officeholders and ten organized state parties, only five of those
recognized with a ballot line. By 2000, it had 21 state parties, ten with
ballot lines and 81 elected officials. Despite the hostile aftermath of
2000, when they were accused of tipping the election to Bush, Greens grew
from 21 to 44 state organizations, 28 with ballot lines and 207 elected
officials. If this keeps up, Democrats might want to check it out.
"Every time a progressive Democrat laments to me or wails or screams at me,
I very calmly say, 'I appreciate where you're coming from, but you know
what, we're going to keep doing what we're doing and we're growing,'"
Cobb
relates. "We are getting larger and stronger and better organized with every
election cycle. If you really think that our growing strength is a problem,
then the solution is to work together to change the voting system."
The future of Green power remains a fantasy until the legal barriers that
face all minor parties are overcome -- the winner-take-all election system
that leads citizens to vote for the lesser of two evils rather than someone
who genuinely represents their views. Despite history and tradition, Cobb
believes this will occur when major parties eventually feel threatened by
their internal decay. "Principled liberals have clearly been sold out and
lied to by the Democratic Party leadership, but so too have principled
conservatives by the Republican leadership," he explains. As disgust deepens
for the two-party duopoly and party faithful drop away, the pressure for
instant-runoff voting and larger reforms will accelerate. San Francisco
launches IRV City Council elections this fall.
What might the Democrats learn from the Green Party? The leadership is
hopeless, Cobb believes, "like a huge statue, but it's completely hollow
and
only the corporate cash is keeping it upright." However, Cobb suggests, what
rank-and-file Democrats "could crib from us is that they have a helluva lot
more power than they realize -- if only they would exercise it.... When you
unleash the democratic spirit for individual members and encourage them to
act autonomously and individually, it is nothing short of staggering." It
might also be more fun.
William Greider is a National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation.