The Progressive Dilemma and the Green Party

I think it’s probably past time I delve into the ultimate progressive dilemma: keep voting for Democrats that sell out our interests in order to beat the greatest threat this country has ever seen (the GOP), or, start voting for a party that actually stands for solutions to the multi-pronged crises our nation and world faces?

There is no easy answer to this question. The fact is our corrupt two party system is RUN by those two parties, and therefore, it’s nearly impossible for a third party to compete. By the least, we would need Green Party access to the debates, proportional representation (as they have in much of Europe) AND ranked choice voting (so you could vote for Green party first, Democratic Party second…and friggin Charles Manson third before a Republican) for there to be even an inkling of a chance to build this party and challenge the current disgraced duopoly.

Many of you know that I, of all people, know this topic VERY WELL….as I was the Communications Director for the enormously successful grassroots, web based “Greens for Kerry” campaign back in 2004. Here’s what’s left of our site (some pages don’t work, most do).

The case made then, applies now…with the caveat that the Democratic Party has only proven itself more inept and pathetic since we ran that campaign (myself and two Green Party members began it)…and, the current Green Party likely candidate for President, Jill Stein, is exceptional…and built her reputation fighting for public financing of elections, single payer health care, and environmental health/toxics issues. Now, I still believe, though less passionately than in the past, that in swing states, it’s worth voting for Obama over any of the three headed demon fascists: Romney, Gingrich, or Santorum.

With that said, I’ve come to the conclusion since 2004 that presidential elections, now that corporations run our country and world, are FAR LESS important than they once were, and that, in fact, it will take a massive SOCIAL MOVEMENT to truly change things, not a candidate, nor a party.

With that said, there are plenty of reasons, and differences, that making voting both worthwhile, and necessary. I won’t go into the LONG laundry list of differences between Obama and say Romney…but the Supreme Court alone (think citizens united) makes the point.

However, and this is a big one…we have also learned that when it comes to truly challenging the Matrix, on core issue after core issue, be it the banks, the military industrial complex, to climate change to income inequality to civil liberties (and the list goes on), Obama, and the vast majority of the Democratic Party (excluding people like Kucinich, Lee, Sanders (Independent), Brown, Woolsey, Donna Edwards, etc.), are not just unable, but unwilling.

This failure, systemic really, of our two party system, is in contrast to EVERYTHING the Green Party represents. And, for this reason, because California is not a swing state, and because Obama will win it by 10-20 points, I will be voting for Jill Stein.

I would also point out, that Marcy Winograd, the Democrat who I gave a speech for (and here’s part 2 of that speech) that you can watch on youtube two years ago as she sought to unseat corporate, war monger Democrat Jane Harman, has recently switched to the Green Party. But, she’s done so in a very pragmatic way, in that she still advocates support for PROGRESSIVE Democrats and for Greens to focus on winning SMALLER races first, where they have a chance…and build reputations, name recognition, and party membership…while voting strategically.

This is in fact, what Greens for Kerry advocated all along too: Register Green, Vote Kerry, Defeat Bush. I will say, we have gotten to a time that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is so corrupt, and so in the pocket of the Matrix, that even while they are moderately better than the GOP, they only serve as an ILLUSION of choice, and an ILLUSION of an opportunity to truly change this paradigm. And, when ANY issue of real consequence comes up, they will join the GOP to defeat it (even if its only a minority of the party).

Thus, it has come to the point that it simply is not worth supporting this illusion any longer…and if that means voting Green in more elections, then so be it. Now yes, it is true, the way our two party system is set up, the Green party is not a viable power…and that’s why I say that we must not view elections as the end all…it’s simply a strategic choice, in that moment, based on many factors we each must weigh, in terms of facts, pragmatism and conscience. Then, we focus on building social movements, be it Occupy or others…and FORCE democrats to represent us…or vote them out…run more  progressive candidates…fund alternative media…protest…organize…and the list goes on.

This is all VERY nuanced I realize…but that is the world we now live in. 

With that, let me point you to a few passages from an article by Marcy Winograd that explains what she calls “building a blue green coalition” that I recently published on the California Progress Report:

Building a Blue-Green Coalition in California

Unfortunately, too many corporate Democrats, beholden to big-money donors or to a jobs sector dependent on militarism, vote for perpetual war and the surveillance state, replete with secret wiretaps, black hole prisons, and targeted assassinations. Far too many who are fearful or bought by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee vote for legislation that relegates Palestinians to second-class citizenship and threatens to take our country to the brink of an unthinkable war on Iran.  

President Obama, despite his eloquence and initial popularity, has continued, and in some cases, expanded Republican Party policies under George Bush by escalating drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia; hiring deregulators from predatory banks to craft economic policy; repeatedly putting Social Security cuts on the table; lifting a 20-year moratorium on new nuclear power plants; signing NDAA legislation that eviscerates due process; increasing U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests of undocumented workers.

As the US empire crashes on the shores of rapacious greed, as power shifts from the federal to the local level, the Green Party can play a crucial role in creating and promoting local economies, worker or consumer-owned cooperatives, model municipal policy and participatory democracy. The time is ripe for municipal federalism with its emphasis on cities sharing expertise, policies, and strategies for community building in a sustainable world. I want to be part of that movement to create a post-empire future that rejects perpetual war, addictive consumerism and vulture capitalism to embrace a life-affirming vision of sustainability with measurable goals for energy, water and food independence.

SNIP

In Richmond, California, the working class city’s Green Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, representing more than 100,000 residents, took on Chevron, resulting in a 115-million dollar pollution settlement, enacted a waiver on residential solar power fee installation; and spearheaded one of the nation’s toughest anti-foreclosure ordinances that exacts a $1,000 a day fine on banks who fail to maintain foreclosed property. McLaughlin was one of several Green Mayors to publicly oppose the dirty tar sands project, signing on to a letter to President Obama urging him to reject, as he recently announced, the XL pipeline that would carry the dirtiest crude from Canada across the United States to the Gulf of Mexico.

In the city of Fairfax in Marin County, Green Mayor Pam Hartwell-Herrero and a majority Green city council has banned intrusive Smart Meters, and authored successful ballot initiatives to ban plastic bags and the cultivation of genetically modified organisms. Fairfax is the third California city to have a Green majority on its town council, joining Sebastopol in Sonoma County from 2000 to 2008 and Arcata in Humboldt County, which had the world's first Green majority on any legislative body between 1996 and 1998 and then again from 2000 to 2002.  

While water board races are not often high-profile races, water board seats may be the front line defense against corporate privatization of our increasingly-scarce water supply. Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, President of the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, understands this. The youngest Green elected to local office, Soppoci-Belknap is working to stop the sale of the county’s watershed to keep water in the public domain.

In Los Angeles, LA Community College District (LACCD) trustee Nancy Pearlman, elected first as a Green before becoming a Democrat (something that happens too often to avoid Democratic Party rival candidates), advocated for tough sustainability standards which resulted  in the LACCD becoming the first community college district in the nation to adopt a LEED environmental building certification standards. Under Pearlman’s Green leadership, all nine LA community colleges developed green jobs training programs. 

SNIP

Greens are also spearheading efforts to pass city ordinances embracing a Sustainability Bill of Rights, which would set measurable goals for energy independence, local food production, and clean air, land, and water. While Pittsburgh became the first city in the nation to pass a law protecting the rights of nature against corporate exploitation, Santa Monica could be next in line, thanks to the work of a coalition called Santa Monica Neighbors Unite! led by urban gardener Cris Gutierrez and Green Party urban forest advocate Linda Piera-Avila. Greens in the city of Santa Monica, which previously elected one of the first Green mayors - Michael Feinstein, a co-founder of the Green Party in the U.S. - are in the forefront of this effort to pass a Sustainability Bill of Rights ordinance that would recognize “the fundament rights of natural communities and ecosystems to exist, thrive, and evolve” - and set a goal of 100% local water use by 2020.

Throughout the US, Greens and allies are at the fulcrum of the occupy movement, defending homeowners facing foreclosure, practicing participatory democracy in the street, and successfully altering the national discourse from deficits and taxes to wealth inequality and privilege. In Oakland, Green Samsarah Morgan helped start the Children’s Village at Occupy Oakland, where children can play and protest peacefully. 

Former LA County Council Co-Chair of the Green Party Rachel Brunkhe mobilizes marches on Bank of America in San Pedro, home to the largest port in the country; former Green assembly candidate Peter Thottam organizes thousands at Occupy the Rose Parade, where Wells Fargo, one of the most notorious banks for robo-siging illegal foreclosures, was one of the parade’s chief sponsors; Al Shantz, Green Vice President of Napa Valley College’s Student Senate, launches Occupy rallies downtown and on the Napa Valley College campus; Harrison Wills, a Green President of the Santa Monica College Associated Student Body tells an Occupy crowd at his campus, “There's socialism for corporations and capitalism for the rest of us." 

Rather than running candidates for every state and federal office, Greens can invest their energy in campaigning for local non-partisan offices, in electing Greens to neighborhood councils  and city councils; union leadership positions, pension and credit union boards, associated student bodies – and to movement-building and media messaging that injects and accentuates a Green anti-consumerist pro-sustainability vision into the economic discourse.

Read more here.

Similarly, I’d point you to this comprehensive interview of Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for President (will be anyway). Of course, as all Green candidates, she knows that her votes will come from Democrats, and thus, she tends to blur the differences between the parties more than what I think is completely accurate…but this is politics…and she still makes very, very good points, and her policy proposals are IN-ARGUABLY right on.

I do also realize that none of these policies could ever get through Congress…hell, NOTHING GOOD CAN….the GOP is a fascist block that exists to stifle all advancements for people in order to protect corporate and religious power. So, I realize we can’t actually implement this stuff…but how do we ever achieve anything if someone doesn’t start demanding it first? See what you think...

Jill Stein For President?

Here’s that interview and a couple choice clips from Stein:

Jill Stein: I've been fighting as a third party candidate for ten years. I stepped up to the plate for this election, basically. I stepped up to the plate because it is a perfect storm for really organizing a political alternative, a politics of integrity that our lives depend on - and more and more people are seeing that. Specifically, it was the debt ceiling debacle last spring when President Obama put Social Security and Medicare on the table: it really felt like, "How could we not put an opposition voice up against this? This is outrageous!"

Between the Keystone XL Pipeline debacle, the ozone regulation roll-back; expanding war - multiple wars, drones and drone surrogate wars -  our "pull out of Iraq"; only to establish a new base in Kuwait, that we now have a new front in the war for oil in Central Africa; and the tripling of the troop presence in Afghanistan, it just felt like "How can we not have a voice of opposition here? This is nuts!"

SNIP

JS: I have always been involved in issue-based politics, not party politics - I was never really originally drawn to party politics. I'm trained as a medical doctor - that's my field: I've been practicing long enough to see how extremely broken our health care system is, how broken our health is, the link between that and the environment. I had become very active in the world of health care advocacy, advocating for single payer, but also in the world of environmental politics, and advocating for being a community provider of health. That's really the way to do it. If you really want people to remain healthy, you can't just throw pills at people once they become sick, which I feel like I was doing as a medical doctor, so I began working on more upstream thinking.

I began thinking, "If only our elected officials knew that there were all of these cost-saving solutions ..." So, I went into advocacy of this sort for about five years before I really knew what it was all about, and it was really a treadmill moving backward and that if you really want to fix any political problems, you also have to fix the political system. I was reaching the end of that rope after we passed campaign finance reform in Massachusetts, thinking when I was working on that issue, "Oh, it's the money that stops us from shutting down our incinerators ..."

SNIP

JS: This is another reason why we're running the campaign now - because if you follow the science there we don't have four years to wait. I mean, we don't; we really have to start tackling this now. It's really important for the climate and it's time that people put their politics where their values and science argue they ought to be. I think Obama supporters are really having a rude awakening right now.

The Green New Deal is an emergency jobs creation plan that really addresses the crisis in our economy, in unemployment, and likewise, in the climate. And truth be told, it has enormous potential to address health issues, as well. It's a win-win on all those fronts and is modeled after the New Deal that helped us get out of the Great Depression, and would help us through direct and indirect means, ways to create scores of new jobs and really attack this problem with all of the inspiration and force that it deserves, not just a little two million job creation hit that comes and goes, but to really tackle the crisis head on. In doing so, it would do away with the recession and put people back to work, jumpstarting the economy as a green economy, instead of going back and going back to the same old economy that isn't going to work. It goes green and also relocalizes, and it jumpstarts, in particular, small businesses and co-operatives. And in so doing, it puts a stop to escalating climate change.

The US, as you know, is the largest per capita contributor to climate change and the direction the US pushes goes a long way toward determining what the rest of the world does, and from that perspective, dramatically downscaling carbon emissions goes a long way toward determining the global carbon budget and helps move global policy that way. Typically, the jobs it would create are in the green area of the economy. We're talking about green manufacturing, sustainable local agriculture, public transportation and clean renewable energy that has the added benefit of making wars for oil obsolete. This would be felt immediately, as the millions of dollars spent on the military-industrial-complex on an annual basis would be put into creating these jobs.

The numbers we've worked out - we look at various models for doing this, and we looked at a report by an economist named Phillip Harvey out of Rutgers Law School, and according to his model, the cost of creating these jobs - the costs of creating these jobs would be less than what was spent in the Obama stimulus package, which essentially created two million jobs, which were good and probably blunted a worse catastrophe and did add some jobs in the area of the green economy, but ultimately wasn't of sufficient magnitude to really fix the problem. So, this will do a whole lot more. The cost for the stimulus package worked out to be about $220,000 per job created, because the mechanisms were indirect and relied a lot on tax incentives, which don't always get used to create jobs. This, instead, would be money used directly to create jobs and would be more like $20,000 per job created.

SNIP

JS: Our strategy has a lot to do with alternative media and selectively engaging with groups who have been screwed over by both parties. They don't need much convincing. Students, for one, they're there. We launched our campaign at Western Illinois University. Students are on the receiving end, and when you're talking about an issue of generational injustice, because everything we're discussing will end up falling into the hands of the youth and young people - unfairness in jobs, a climate catastrophe - and we have to ask ourselves what kind of world we're making for them, how we're going to clean up this mess we've left for them. I mean, students and young people are really on the receiving end. What civilization devours its young? 

Because that's what we're doing. The profiteers are going after the young as a population to exploit. That's why the loans are so high; that's why young people have been put at the bottom of the priority list. They are victims of profiteering. We are all about fighting that. We think green jobs will help with this fight; we will forgive student debt. They must be engaged because they bring creativity and fresh life into our economy, and we need them badly. We will provide tuition-free higher education, since it's comparable to a high school education in the 20th century - you need a higher education degree in the 21st century economy and it should be provided as a basic right.

I also support legalization of marijuana, ending war, and other bread-and-butter concerns for young people. This is a constituency that is just itching for a platform of this sort. After that, the Occupy movement is a key constituency. UC-Davis, for example, the night before I came there, said they disavow the Democratic and Republican Party, so that's a great opportunity. The antiwar movement, the civil liberties movement - in fact, I've met Republicans and Ron Paul supporters who have told me, who have said that when Ron Paul doesn't make it in the Republican Party they're supporting us in our campaign because we are the only voice in the race for our assaulted civil liberties. This has been completely different than my experiences with campaigns. This one seems to have a life of its own. Running in other campaigns as a Green, outreach is a big part of the job. This one has been different.

Read more here.

I realize there will be Greens that read what I write here today that will consider it blasphemy…that I’m not pure enough. Just as there will be Democrats that will start blathering about Nader causing Gore’s defeat in 2000 (which is a truly myopic viewpoint) and that I am selling out the party and helping Republicans. All of this, of course, is Matrix nonsense.

What I am trying to do is take a step back and view our predicament in as honest, objective, and moral view as possible…from someone who works on the inside and outside. I can tell you, I SEE the differences, real differences, between the parties in law after law I work on. To say differently is to be either ignorant or intellectually dishonest. But, I also see, firsthand, how corrupted the Democratic Party has also become, and how unable and unwilling it is any longer (for a host of reasons) to take on the Matrix and the crises we face…which is only exacerbated by a Republican Party that is the greatest threat to the world we’ve seen since WW2.

So, before you go register Green and vote against all Democrats, or, say vote Green in Ohio this Presidential election (remember, as many as two supreme court justices could be appointed next term), here’s something I wrote in 2004 for Greens for Kerry (and just substitute Obama for Kerry and Santorum/Romney for Bush...but...remember...I will be voting Green in CA this year...and if you're in a swing state, perhaps "vote pairing" will be offered again...or try it with someone you know from a non-swing state):

Only Progressive Unity Can Defeat Bush (or now Romney/Santorum) - My Op-Ed from 2004 (this just a clip of it)

Like so many progressives, we are wholly unsatisfied with our current, money-driven, corporate dominated political system and the limited options that a two party democracy provides. But, given our current political reality, we believe it is our civic duty to help unseat George W. Bush, the mandatory first step if a larger progressive movement is to ever take shape. After November 2nd, and Kerry is elected, we must continue on with phase two of the long-term goal that most progressive share: building a political movement in America from the grassroots up. In less than four years this administration has weakened milestone environmental protection laws like the Clean Air Act (400 environmental rollback attempts); eliminated key labor rights fought and won by those before us; dismantled what once were considered unassailable constitutional rights; appointed extremist judges to our country's federal courts; and established a new military doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear war. 

As progressives we recognize that John Kerry (OR NOW OBAMA) is not an ideal choice. However, to deny the significant differences between the two candidates on issues ranging from environmental protection, nuclear proliferation, women's rights, the Supreme Court, and labor rights, is intellectually dishonest. 

We ask that when you enter that voting booth you consider the worker making minimum wage who won't be receiving a $1.85 an hour raise ($3,848 more a year, Kerry proposes $7.00 minimum wage) if Bush is re-elected; remember the single mother who's childcare services will be cut; remember the women who's reproductive rights will be jeopardized; remember the effect that Bush's policies will have on the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Then tell yourself it doesn't matter how you vote.

This election is not an academic exercise - lives are at stake. But don't just take our word for it: Noam Chomsky recently remarked, "Anyone who says 'I don't care if Bush gets elected' is basically telling poor and working people in the country, 'I don't care if your lives are destroyed.'" He also quite rightly stated, "... Then there is another choice: electing Bush or seeking to prevent his election." 

Winona LaDuke, Nader's running mate in 2000, stated just his week, "I love this land, and I know that we need to make drastic changes in Washington if we are going to protect our land and our communities... I'm voting my conscience on Nov. 2; I'm voting for John Kerry."

In fact, 75 members of the Nader 2000 Citizens Committee recently signed a letter calling on swing state voters to support Kerry, which included such progressive legends as Jim Hightower, Studs Terkel, Cornel West and Howard Zinn. Are these individuals, who have dedicated their lives to strengthening our democracy and speaking truth to power all just sellouts? Or do they recognize something larger, something that we believe all of us feel on the deepest of levels Ð that our democracy, freedom, future, and past are under assault, and it is our job to put an end to it. 

If you still aren't convinced, please consider using a key tool GFK and other progressive organizations are promoting this election year to both help defeat Bush and support third party candidates like Ralph Nader and David Cobb called "vote pairing" (www.votepair.org). Vote pairing allows would-be Nader or Green Party voters in swing states to swap their votes with Kerry supporters in non-swing states. This allows you to vote your conscience, vote out Bush, and begin to turn our country around.

The world community, and the millions of Americans whose lives will be hurt by four more years of this administration are pleading that we help put an end to this imperial regime. We need to heed their call. Voting for John Kerry in swing states is our only realistic response."

Conclusion

But let me also be clear…we have seen first hand how far the Democratic Party is from taking on the powers that be…Obama’s first term has shown us this in truly gruesome detail. So, let us move on to increased social activism, more third party strategic voting, increased efforts to institute public financing of elections, fund alternative media, pass ranked choice voting, and get to the streets.