MEDIA RELEASE For immediate release: Friday, September 13, 2002
Contacts: Dean Myerson, Political Coordinator, 202-296-7755, 301-651-5168 (cell) political.coor at verizon.net Nancy Allen, Media Coordinator, 207-326-4576, nallen at acadia.net Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, scottmclarty at yahoo.com
GREEN PARTY CHALLENGES AMERICANS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION ON WEBSITE
Southern California ADA chapter rebukes national ADA; Green Party challenges ADA to link pages
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Green Party of the United States today launched a website <http://www.therealdifference.com> in response to "Damned Big Difference," a site hosted by Americans for Democratic Action (ADA).
The ADA site criticizes the claim of Greens that the Democratic and Republican parties have largely converged on many major issues. The Green site demonstrates that the claim is correct, that bipartisan consensus between the two major parties (especially between Gore and Bush in 2000) shows the need for a noncorporate third party like the Greens, and that ADA's own progressive positions have more in common with the Greens than with mainstream Democrats.
"The ADA site says we claimed there was no difference at all between candidates Gore and Bush, which is not true, and then goes on to cherry-pick a few issues," said Jane Hunter, Vice Chair of the Green Party of NJ and candidate for Bound Brook Borough Council. "Todd Gitlin made the same incorrect assertion in a September 5 guest column in The New York Times. But ADA and Gitlin also ignore the many critical issues where most Democratic candidates don't agree with ADA, but with Republican positions. Voters need the whole picture, so we're challenging ADA to provide a link to our webpage if we display a link to theirs. Let voters compare -- let them get both sides of this debate, and see the full story."
The Green site lists numerous points on which Democrats and Republicans largely agree, from environmentally destructive, antidemocratic free trade pacts, to national missile defense, to the USA PATRIOT Act, to the maintenance of corporate HMO and insurance control over health care. Under Clinton and Gore, the Democratic Party abandoned its promise since 1948 of national health insurance -- which both the Green Party and ADA strongly support.
In a recent development, the Southern California ADA chapter voted on September 9 to write a letter to the national organization criticizing the ADA web site.
"The Democrats who dominate ADA picked this fight by setting up a web site and sending out a fundraising letter to its membership attacking the Green Party, ignoring the fact that ADA has many Greens as members," said Mark Dunlea, Vice-Chair of the Green Party of New York State.
"By posting such a site, the national ADA reveals its own hypocrisy and true allegiance -- to a Democratic Party that has largely abandoned the principles and positions ADA claims to support," said Donna Jo Warren, Green candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California and a board member of the Southern California ADA, which endorsed her candidacy. "When progressives ignore and provide cover for bad Democratic positions, it helps push the Democratic Party farther to the right. The result is that Democrats have adopted more and more Republican positions, and many core Democratic voters have stopped voting. The Clinton-Gore White House was more conservative than Nixon."
Greens note that the Democratic drift to the right has given the Republicans license to move to even greater rightwing extremes, as we're seeing now in the Bush Administration. For example, after the Clinton Administration obstructed enactment of Kyoto measures against global warming, under pressure from fossil fuel lobbies during the international Hague conference in November, 2000, it was just one more step to Bush's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Accord altogether.
"Many Democrats see the existence of the Green Party as something to be eradicated by any means, rather than a reason to consider why at-large elections don't function well when more than two parties run candidates," added Holly Hart, Green candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Iowa. "Democrats in San Francisco helped pass IRV [Instant Run-off Voting] there, which lets voters rank their choices, ensures that the winner of the election has the support of a voting majority, and welcomes the presence of third parties. But most Dems have either failed to push for IRV, or opposed it, as in a recent ballot initiative in Alaska. Apparently, they're more comfortable losing to Republicans than accommodating the presence of Greens. The ADA web site says nothing about IRV; it just wishes we'd go away, and does so without regard for the truth about what Greens say or for democratic values."
MORE INFORMATION
The Green Party of the United States http://www.greenpartyus.org National office: 1314 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20036 202-296-7755, 866-41GREEN
Green Party Issues vs. Democrats, Republicans and the ADA http://www.therealdifference.com
The Center for Voting and Democracy (information on Instant Run-off Voting and other electoral reforms) http://www.fairvote.org
Index of Green Party candidates in 2002 http://www.greens.org/elections
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