Local elections are an excellent training ground - however 'nonpartisan' - for the organization of an independent progressive left. Once an experienced cadre comes into existence, it can then direct itself towards the more "partisan" arenas.
In the US, the junction of the local and the national is the Congressional district. Therefore it is crucial that independent political organization especially target those districts with a large "natural progressive" constituency. There are a few of them scattered about the US, and this would demand a simultaneous targeting cooridnated by a nationwide organization. The aim would to be to capture some 5 of these to create an anti-regime Congressional fraction that could act as a national bullhorn for our politics, with the exposure of the daily venality and corruption of this institution as well as the legislated assaults on our natural constituencies as its red meat.
An example is Barbara Lee's district in Oakland, CA. It's a veritable Red Fiefdom: Lee inherited it as a result of her long organizational vassalage to Lord Dellums, who had the new Federal building downtown named in his honor. It is home to both a large petit-bourgeois progressive millieu (hey, I have nothing against them, except when they flip-flop in the wrong direction as they are doing now) and also, N.B., for the very ILWU local that initiated the call for the upcoming MWM.
I'm sure you can hear the howls of the Nathan Newmans now: "What a 'destructive' waste of energy it would be to run against good progressives like Lee", etc., blah, whine. (And it would hard to argue that the Democratic Party is "more liberal" now - really a strategic argument that the progressive Democrats will eventually "capture" the whole party. Listen up Nathan, Doug: stop dreaming, that will NEVER HAPPEN) But the very idea is to run against them as _Democrats_, not progressives, as that would be the only real difference in play in a contest. It is the whole point of an independent progressive politics to describe to the progressive constituency of that district how allegience to the Democratic Party renders progressives like Lee impotent (as we also say to ourselves that it also performs the positive harm of sucking activists into the regime apparatus).
Of course, the above is exactly what the Greeens have in practice refused to do. But that is exactly what is needed to revive a moribund American Left. The question of political independence is URGENT and IMMEDIATE. It is at the top of the agenda. Especially if Kerry wins. Doug promises us a War Against Kerry should he win; Well, Yoshie, I and others should promise a war against progressive Democrats from there on out, to make sure they "fight Kerry" starting Nov. 4th. We don't want to hear, "Give them a chance". That will pull the plug on the music of the permahack Democrats like Newman - no more of their bullshit!
The message to Lee, Conyers (just what is the strategic point of pushing the draft?) and others is: Leave the Democrats, or lose your fiefdoms.
The question of political independence is the only immediate issue worth discussing with dissident trade unionists at the MWM.
-Brad
>b) the best (and perhaps only) way to make third-parties and their
>candidates viable is to start at the state/county/town/city level,
>both in terms of growing such parties, and fighting the practices
>(winner-take-all, lack of runoffs in elections, etc) that make them
>infeasible.
Here's a paradox: it is difficult to put left-wing candidates on the ballots in the general elections, to say nothing of electing them, for the highest offices, whether they are members of the Green Party (who need to overcome restrictive ballot access), the Democratic Party (who need to raise a lot of money to win in party caucuses and primaries), or something else; and it is much easier to elect left-wing candidates, whether they are members of the Green Party, the Democratic Party, or something else, for lower-level offices, but lots of lower-level elections are non-partisan elections, so it matters much less to voters of which parties candidates are members.
In any case, though, if you want to aim only for good and clean government at local levels, it is indeed advisable to focus on lower-level elections, but if that's your only goal, it doesn't seem to me to be absolutely necessary to build a third party.
The difference between the programs of the Democratic Party and the Green Party (or the Labor Party or any other party on the left that existed in the past and may come into being in the future) is the clearest at the level of national politics, not at the levels of school boards and city councils.
So, it all depends on what you want the Green Party (or any other third-party on the left) to do. If your sole aim is good and clean local government, by all means focus on local elections, though I'm not sure why you need a third party for that purpose. If your aim is to build a political party that is an electoral arm of social movements such as an anti-war movement, a Green movement, etc. that have political agendas for social change at the national level (which cannot be addressed, much less achieved, at local levels), it doesn't make sense to run candidates only for school boards and city councils. -- Yoshie