Saturday: Letters from readers
Published Aug 3, 2002 ELET03
Greens are here to stay
Unfortunately, Liza Featherstone must have been more interested in creating a rhetorical blast than a thoughtful analysis in her July 28 commentary ("A political gesture instead of a movement").
Her Opinion page diatribe is more of the same sarcastic father-knows-best schlock that gets thrown around every time a Green Party candidate makes a serious run in a so-called "high stakes" race.
She basically asserts that the Green Party of Minnesota is an illegitimate group of airheaded folks who don't care about making political change as much as making an impotent political gesture.
Featherstone's thinking implicitly defends two-party domination by equating a meaningful movement with large numbers (whether in money or votes). By this logic, small parties are to be ridiculed -- stopping them, Catch-22 style, before they can gain substantial support.
Consider this: What is a movement, but a gesture without regard to immediate consequences, slowly amplified by folks with principles?
If the Green Party of Minnesota were merely a gesture, would it not have fallen away with the echoes of Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential bid?
Yet here we are, with more support, candidates and visibility than ever.
How many elections will it take before this argument is completely unmasked as an attempt to protect the dominance of the Democratic and Republican parties, which have given our world to corporate control?
-- Jesse Mortenson, Stillwater.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/563/3137328.html
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