|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Anti-Green With Envy |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith
(No verified email address) |
22 Jul 2002
Modified: 05:59:09 PM |
|
As a starting point, Democrats should treat Greens at least as well as they treat soccer moms. Democrats have to realize that Greens are not going to go away. |
America's moribund liberal-left can't stand the idea that there is actually a federally qualified, lively progressive political party that refuses to pay it any mind. While the Green Party is doing so well that both parties tried to cut deals with it in New Mexico, the archaic left continues to assume that the way to attract Greens back to its brownfields is to hector them.
Latest case in point was a piece in the Washington Post by Liza Featherstone in which she took the Minnesota Greens to task for daring to run a candidate against Paul Wellstone, including this absurdity:
"So why are the Minnesota Greens opposing him? Well, because the Minnesota Green Party, like many third-party efforts these days, is not so much about building a political movement as making a political gesture. It has no realistic strategy for achieving a set of policy goals, and its platform has become secondary to its attitude toward politics. And that attitude is not one of participation in the political process so much as alienation from it."
In fact, the Minnesota Greens seem to some (including this writer) to have made a major tactical mistake, but not unlike those that frequently happen in politics. To turn such an error into a philosophical dysfunction is roughly the same as declaring a stolen base to be a sign of spiritual vision on the part of a ballplayer.
Besides, Featherstone is only able to come up with the Minnesota example to support her prejudices about third parties. In fact, Greens are doing better than ever around the country and are so threatening to the ancient regime that papers like the Washington Post feel compelled to go on the attack. When the Post gets scared enough to stop blacklisting you and criticizes you by name, you are making headway. And anyone who knows anything about Greens would rank alienation near the bottom of their faults.
This is, of course, a messy business. I would, for example, much prefer the Greens be far stronger on populist and civil liberties issues. And I do not deny that the problem of when one runs candidates and against whom is a complicated and tricky one.
But Featherstone and other voices of the archaic left are really in no position to tell the Greens how to stage their revolution. It's a little like George Bush lecturing on corporate ethics. And if the liberal-left had done its own job right, folks like the Greens wouldn't be such a threat to it.
Fortunately, the common scold approach to the problem isn't the only one. A number of Democrats - including Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee and Maine Democratic senatorial candidate Chellie Pingree - have managed to work out a fair accommodation with the Greens. McKinney even videotaped remarks for the Greens' recent convention. And Steve Cobble, writing on the Tom Paine web site, offers a far more reasonable approach to Green-Democratic relations.
As a starting point, Democrats should treat Greens at least as well as they treat soccer moms. Democrats have to realize that Greens are not going to go away. And they certainly are not going to be scared off by arrogant attacks by loyalists of a party that has all but destroyed itself through its own cowardice, lack of imagination, and willingness to play the submissive in the great S&M game of the Democrats' conservative leadership. |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
|
|
Corporate Scandals May Help Greens Party to R |
by Michael Walcher
solaraycer (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
22 Jul 2002
|
 |
Corporate Scandals May Help Greens Party to Run in 39 States
by Tom Squitieri
PHILADELPHIA -- Two years after its warnings about corporate greed helped decide the outcome of the presidential race, the Green Party gathered here this weekend with the goal of not just being spoilers, but winners.
With 146 elected officials nationwide, the Greens are running 362 candidates in 39 states this fall. Among them are 16 running for governor, eight for the U.S. Senate, 59 for the House of Representatives, 109 for state legislatures and 38 for other statewide offices.
During a four-day convention that ended Sunday, candidates and delegates listened to prominent speakers such as 2000 presidential nominee Ralph Nader and learned practical skills such as fundraising and publicity.
''We realize that marching in the streets is no longer enough,'' said David Cobb, the Green candidate for attorney general in Texas.
Nader's run for the White House in 2000 may have cost Democrat Al Gore the election, but it also brought the Greens new members, visibility, funding and ballot status across the country. Now, helped by the public furor over corporate financial fallouts, some of this year's candidates are poised to have a major impact in more than a dozen states.
Among the documents party members were given to use in this fall's campaigns was a ''nine-step program for recovering democracy from corporate rule.'' It included calls for ''vigorous criminal prosecution'' of corporate executives who violate the law, stronger protections for employees who blow the whistle on misconduct and public financing of elections to reduce the influence of special-interest money.
''It's hard not to keep saying we told you so'' Cobb said.
Nader, who has not ruled out another run for the White House in 2004, said the corporate scandals have given the party its greatest opportunity. ''Until a few months ago, it was 'white collar' crime. Now, even the Republicans in Congress refer to it as corporate crime, and even those in Congress who were in cahoots with the crooks are now denouncing them,'' he said.
The recent spate of corporate misconduct gives the party a high-profile national issue. But behind the scenes, Greens are building coalitions and trying to elect candidates on local issues such as water conservation, transportation, urban sprawl and workers' rights.
Since 2000, the party has followed a strategy aimed at building itself from the local level, through statehouses, and into Congress by 2008. Party officials have set up field operations, improved communications among state chapters and begun training candidates in basic campaign skills. They also have abandoned their traditional aversion to raising large amounts of money. Though still shunning corporate and political action committee contributions, party leaders quietly remind candidates that it ''takes green to elect Greens.''
Analysts say the Greens appear to be doing the right things to build the foundations of a viable national party.
''A third party cannot be built around a single personality and survive,'' said Jo Streit, producer of the documentary Flirting With Power, about Ross Perot's 1992 independent presidential campaign. ''The Greens' approach to running candidates in local elections and schooling them in the art of campaigning is crucial to their long-term viability.''
In recent years, the Greens have evolved from a loose network of community activists concerned about the environment to a nationally recognized political party with positions on health care, education, energy, human rights and foreign affairs. Last summer, they ended a potentially destructive squabble with another Green organization by melding the other group into the party.
This year, they have learned the value of pragmatic politics. In New Mexico, the Greens decided not to run candidates for two seats in Congress, choosing to concentrate on state races. They spurned an offer of $250,000 from the Republicans to run House candidates who the GOP hoped would drain votes from Democrats.
About 100 of the 362 Green Party candidates -- triple the number from 2000 -- came to Philadelphia to learn campaign skills. More than half were women, more than a dozen minorities -- a sharp rise from two years ago. Reading glasses and bifocals mixed with the usual array of sandals, colorful shirts and graying ponytails.
And for the first time, delegates confronted the need to broaden their image beyond that of a leftist party dominated by whites. Said one: ''We've got to stop planning events that just have folk singing.''
|
