>On patience and the Green Party:
>
>I think some of us are not inclined to be patient with the GP
>because it doesn't look as though it is going anywhere, and we'd
>rather be patient with other things. You can patiently sit beside a
>dead patch of grass forever, waiting for it to revive, but one might
>think that one's time might be better spent doing other things.
<snip>
>We who judge the brown patch of grass to be unrevivable would
>suggest: how long are we expected to be patient until the GP is
>really capable of "shifting the relationship of forces and the
>center of political debate," even if we do pour our drops of water
>on it?
That's why I said that "building such a party takes a long time, and, frankly, I don't think that LBO-talk (where patience is in short supply) is the right place to discuss it, much less advocate for it" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040216/003760.html>). If you want to make a plant grow, you can't just sit and watch and sprinkle drops of water every four years -- you need to tend to it regularly, watering and fertilizing it. If you expect the Green Party to grow without lending a hand and doing your share, you are either a political mystic, to use your term, or "a free rider -- desiring to enjoy the benefits of party-building without doing anything for it," as I said to Doug: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040216/003928.html>.
>It takes something more than the average amount of religious faith
>to swallow not only the idea that the Green Party is going to end up
>eventually with those tens of millions of votes ("Ye have been
>naught, ye shall be all!"), but even that it is a power that can
>"force a shift" in the direction of history *in the short term*!
Take a look at San Francisco, where Matt Gonzalez of the Green Party "spent one-tenth as much as Newsom but got 47 percent of the vote," receiving "10,000 more votes than Newsom on election day" but losing "when the absentee ballots were counted" (at George F. Will, "The Left Bank," January 25, 2004, <http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/16450.htm>):
***** Mayor delivers change in first weeks in office Newsom keeps word with policy shifts, bold appointments
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, January 25, 2004 San Francisco Chronicle Chronicle Sections Click to View
In his inaugural address this month, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said he wanted to be an agent for change at City Hall and bridge political differences between the city's warring factions -- establishment Democrats versus progressives.
It was bold rhetoric.
Newsom, after all, was the anointed successor to former Mayor Willie Brown, whose ways of governing he was pledging to undo. On top of that, his policy initiatives on the homeless had politically polarized the city for more than a year.
But during his first two weeks on the job, Newsom moved aggressively to live up to his words with a series of new policy initiatives and departmental and political appointments.
"He's certainly been aggressive in promoting his agenda coming out of the gate,'' said Corey Cook, a San Francisco State University political scientist. Consider the highlights:
-- He promised to appoint a special monitor to investigate charges of favoritism at the city Department of Building Inspection, which issues permits for most construction and demolition projects in San Francisco.
-- He called for an overhaul of city contracting practices, promising close scrutiny of business deals that have been awarded by City Hall without competitive bidding.
-- He sent the controversial police chief packing [appointing "a woman as acting police chief" and giving "her free rein to run the department," <http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/8007916.htm>] and broke tradition by naming a woman to head the Fire Department [" the first woman in the nation to head a major city's fire department," <http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/8007916.htm>].
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/25/BAGL94HF491.DTL> *****
***** Mayor's gay marriage stance surprises former foes Friday, February 20, 2004 Posted: 9:25 PM EST (0225 GMT) SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters)
. . .As a city supervisor, Newsom waged a high-profile battle to rename a city playground after baseball legend Joe DiMaggio and led the opposition to a plan to install a waterfront attraction with scaled-down replicas of San Francisco's famous landmarks.
But it was his push to transform the city's homeless policy that brought him front page headlines in San Francisco newspapers and made him enemy No. 1 for liberal and progressive voters who charged it was immoral to end a controversial monthly cash allowance paid to indigents.
That issue also energized supporters of Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez, who put up a surprisingly tough challenge to Newsom in the last mayoral election.
Now, however, many of those same critics are singing Newsom's praises after he took a leading role in the national debate over gay marriage by authorizing city hall last week to issue marriage licenses to gays and lesbians. He has cast the fight over same-sex marriage as similar to the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
Since then, more than 3,000 same-sex couples have applied for the certificates. "This is way better than anything that I could have ever expected," said San Francisco writer Suzan Revah, who voted for Gonzalez in the last election. . . .
<http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/02/20/mayor.newsom.profile.reut/> *****
Matt Gonzalez, the Green Party, and their rank-and-file supporters -- especially in the queer communities -- forced the shift.
>Very few Americans vote for somebody just for the hell of it. If
>they think they can't get anything out of voting, they don't bother.
>That's why the non-voting percentage of the population is so high.
Exactly, and 54.7 % of the voting-age population who refused to vote in the elections in 2000 should be the target of the Green Party voter registration drives.
>Neither does the GP offer anti-capitalist radicals anything, few as
>we are. As I said the other day, if you look at the actual positions
>Greens on issues, they don't seem to be too far from the left wing
>of the DP -- the Kucinich people, for example. The GP certainly
>doesn't aim at overthrowing capitalism.
From the Platform of the Green Party USA at <http://www.greenparty.org/Platform.doc>:
***** An Economic Bill of Rights * Universal Social Security: Taxable Basic Income Grants for all, structured into the progressive income tax, that guarantee an adequate income sufficient to maintain a modest standard of living. Start at $500/week ($26,000/year) for a family of four, with $62.50/week ($3,250/year) adjustments for more or fewer household members in 2000 and index to the cost of living. * Jobs for All: A guaranteed right to job. Full employment through community-based public works and community service jobs programs, federally financed and community controlled. * Living Wages: A family-supporting minimum wage. Start at $12.50 per hour in 2000 and index to the cost of living. * 30-Hour Work Week: A 6-hour day with no cut in pay for the bottom 80% of the pay scale. * Social Dividends: A "second paycheck" for workers enabling them to receive 40 hours pay for 30 hours work. Paid by the government out of progressive taxes so that social productivity gains are shared equitably. * Universal Health Care: A single-payer National Health Program to provide free medical and dental care for all, federally financed and controlled by democratically elected local boards. * Free Child Care: Available voluntarily and free for all who need it, modeled after Head Start, federally financed, and community controlled. * Lifelong Public Education: Free, quality public education from pre-school through graduate school at public institutions. * Affordable Housing: Expand rental and home ownership assistance, fair housing enforcement, public housing, and capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income. Democratic community control of publicly funded housing programs. *****
Dennis Kucinich's position is to the right of the Green Party's, but Kucinich's is closer to the Green Party's than to John Kerry's -- _nevertheless_, he will endorse Kerry at the Democratic National Convention, if not sooner, making his own position moot.
>For example, there doesn't seem to be any GP activity in a city like
>Philly at all, but there are certainly many folks with serious needs
>that the Democratic administration isn't satisfying, and that the
>Repubs wouldn't have either, if they had won the last election.
>Maybe the GP could step in and do something helpful. But I'm talking
>about doing things that are really useful, that would take a lot of
>resources and work, and would attract supporters who would be really
>grateful and willing to form a strong organization -- not just
>issuing position papers and making speeches, which is what Greens
>apparently are best at. A rough model for what I'm talking about
>might be, for example, the old Black Panther Party, of the
>breakfast programs rather than the guns.)
If you have any concrete political projects that you would like to implement, attend the meetings of the Green Party of Philadelphia <http://www.gpop.org/index.html> and the local Democratic Party, pitch your proposals to them, and see which party will take them up and implement them sooner. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * 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/>