The Red-Green Bird, etc.

[Tom Condit]

What both Louis and Max are missing is that the term "Green" covers almost
as much territory as "socialist," so if you say the "the Greens" believe
this or that, you'd better say which ones. Specifically, Greens are all over
the map in terms of their positions on what you might call "social justice
issues" other than support for ethnic and gender equality. They embrace
"nonviolence" as one of their sacred principles (or whatever those ten
things are called), but many of them are hesitant about calling for too much
slashing of the military budget. Many of them are socialists. Others are
militantly anti-socialist, and refer to the former as "watermelons" (green
on the outside, red on the inside). On the whole, they have a totally whacky
love of small business and in local politics are sometimes hard to
distinguish from NIMBYs, though they 're getting better.

The New Mexico Greens are very good on a number of things, but are
definitely not on the left end of the Green spectrum. Their program, for
instance, calls for universal single-payer health care -- but then quickly
adds that of course they favor roles for both non-profit and for-profit
HMOs, hospitals and clinics in such a system. They defend public
education--but also private schools and home-schooling. The whole platform
is like this -- a quick reassurance that they aren't all *that* radical
after each proposal which could be attacked as sounding "left wing."

Greens in other areas on this list should be aware that the NM Greens are
proposing their platform as the basis for a national campaign in 2000.

Incidentally, re a remark someone made about "new age bosses." It was
California's former governor Jerry Brown, now mayor-elect of Oakland, who
told state employees that they couldn't have any wage raises in this "era of
lowered expectations",* but they would get a "raise in psychic income."

Tom Condit

* Does anyone know if Brown originated this phrase?