Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> John Halle wrote:
>
> >You, at least, have proposed a strategy: reading more books by
> >authors you like.
>
> Huh? I said I liked the idea of building the Green Party through
> local candidacies, among other things. Why be so nasty & dismissive?
To run local candidates one needs a local organization to run them. To build a local organization one needs some sort of substantive link to a national movement of some kind. The most obvious such link, which helped in the 1910s and in the 1960s is anti-war activity. Lacking a high level of anti-war activity, the most obvious link is a presidential campaign. In 1988, after all local activity of any kind had ceased here, we (Jan & I) came very near to establishing an enduring black/white progressive core by engaging in the Jackson campaign. If somehow that campaign had been able to endure after the election (but the Democratic National Committee, with the willing aid of Jackson himself made sure that didn't happen) and there had been a Jackson campaign in 1992 . . . .
A party that doesn't run a national candidate (and senatorial candidates, no matter how progressive the DP candidate) isn't serious, and its local victories (if there are any) will be pointless.
You have to commit yourself to working outside of (and in opposition to) the DP all down the line, or remain a prisoner of the DP, no matter how "critical" that support. This is a binary, and either/or and not a both/and.
Justin contains a wild enough mixture of perspectives so he can almost certainly maintain his course, but it really seems to me that this thread has shown that all or nearly all the other ABDs on this list will continue to have an umbilical cord link to the DP. Only an apology for attacks on the Greens running a candidate against Wellstone would change that opinion on my part. I doubt that half a dozen Wellstones would make a difference in the Senate, but a vigorous Green candidate, supported by all progressives, in Minnesota would have gone far to establish that the Greens, unlike the Labor Party, were serious. (No offense I hope to those who have made effective local use of Labor Party organizations.)
Carrol