[lbo-talk] California, Take Back the Green Party!

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun Aug 8 18:20:09 PDT 2004



>Who take back what?
>
>I'm not crazy about the Greens, but it seems like Nader basically
>exploited them in '00, which goes to my critique that he is not
>inclined to organize a democratic movement, one that has the ability
>to grow and live beyond him.
>
>max

It's not up to one individual, even one as well known as Ralph Nader, "to organize a democratic movement." It's up to all activists and organizers to do so.

It matters more to me what rank-and-file Greens on the left, as well as left-wing Green leaders like Peter Camejo, Donna Warren, Matt Gonzalez, Jason West, etc., think _what they can do with_ Ralph Nader (or anything else, for that matter) than what Nader thinks what he can do with them.

I think of any electoral campaign on the left in this way: we -- i.e., organizers and activists on the left -- are the producers, and our candidate's public persona is our product of social labor. Ralph Nader's own private persona, left to his own devices, is a Connecticut Yankee populist and skilled political entrepreneur. That's not bad, relative to the ruling-class candidates, but that's not good enough for us, so we need to become capable of remaking Nader or any other candidate we support now or in the future in a way we want. -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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