Diving Into The Campaign High Seas

Satire By Deyva Arthur, Political Idealist And Sticking To It

A ship sank in the ocean and there were only three people left on a lifeboat. The first one was a Republican, the second a Democrat, and the third person a Green.

The Republican said, “We’ll call this mission Operation Freedom Flight. I will be the leader keeping you safe from terrorist attacks. I am sure we have plenty of supplies.” He saw no reason to worry and just sat there.

The Democrat yelled, “What are you crazy? There is nothing to eat or drink, sharks are circling and we are all certainly going to die! But I’ll follow whatever you say.” He saw everything was hopeless and just sat there.

The Green said, “Why don’t we use these oars and start rowing!” And she headed for the nearby shore.

I’ve been in the Green Party for a number of years and decided—it was time. It was time to run for political office.

Why any Green would run for office is a mystery. There is not much money in it. Power is an almighty struggle. Nope, we Greens do it because we must, like breathing or folding laundry. And running for government is so—not fun. It is long, long hours of putting myself out there while trying to stay above the morass of political muck. Even if I did win, my prize is to go to lots and lots of meetings. Oh, how I love meetings. Robert’s Rules of Order are such a turn on.

But all that is not important to any member of the Green Party. Thinking long and hard, I take a deep breath. Right… I will do this. I will run for Assistant Vice Secretary to the Village Planning Board. Trumpets sound and I step into the sunshine.

Once I have made my decision, I have to figure out a way to get my family on board. A fellow Green once told me: above anything else he saw more campaigns come to an abrupt demise by a hostile spouse. It seemed I had three choices:

1. Start the marriage counseling now.
2. File for temporary divorce.
3. Figure out a way for my husband to want me to win.

I went for the third option. I made him my campaign manager. We actually spend more time together than before.

Now comes petitioning. As a Green we have to prove our worthiness for the right to be a choice at the voting booth. It is kind of like pulling the sword from the stone only to get the chance to muck the stables. Asking enough registered voters to sign a piece of paper, which states, “Yeah, she can have her name on the invite list, I guess” does all this. Republicans and Dem ocrats don’t have to do nearly half of any of this rigmarole. They do not have to work as hard to run for office, while at the same time be a lot more wacko. But I digress.

Petitioning is also tricky because I have to figure out how many signatures I need to qualify for the ballot. The Board of Elections people like to play their numbers close to their chest. Pick a number and they answer me with a firm “maybe.” Finally, through a suppressed giggle they tell me I have to get 18 gazillion and 12 signatures. On top of this there is the —Date Game. This means like a relay race, I have something like a couple of weekends to get all this done. A trip to the BOE often leads to confusion, panic, and sometimes, irritable bowels.

Next comes withstanding the petition challenge. Every Green has to accept this as part of the campaign. In Democratic Party offices all over the country, Greens are on their “most wanted list.” Democrats have made it a priority, over health care reform, over labor issues and world hunger, to bring down Greens. They do this best through challenging our ballot petitions in court.

If I need 50,000 signatures, a Democrat will whine to a judge that 49,999 are fraudulent. It would be likely that the one legitimate signature would be my own. How ever, in other challenges, the petitioner’s own signature was often crossed off as invalid. It makes me wonder, which one was okay? Many a Green has fallen off the campaign cliff by losing a petition challenge, and owing tens of thousands of dollars in fines. All this for the privilege of having a small spot in the far corner under the donut smudge on the ballot.

Okay, I have gotten this far and I am ready to start campaigning. My next big hurdle is dressing for success. For many Greens it is tie-dye versus business suit—what’s a politician to do?

In many a Green campaign, it becomes a philosophical dilemma of fashion. If I dress true to myself, showing that I am not playing the games of the establishment, people might think I am knocking on their door because I plan to mug them. This is typically not good for getting votes. On the other hand, do I really want to look like a Republican? Umm, maybe just until I have secured a seat.

So I compromise and come to find out that Birkenstocks don’t look half-bad with the right suit jacket. Also, I limit my political buttons to five and ask my volunteer to not let his beard go too far below his Adam’s apple.

After asking all my distant relatives, every neighbor, every friend silly enough to answer the phone, I put together a rag tag team of volunteers. It’s kind of like trying to catch a school of fish with one finger. Despite a few clumps of hair missing from my husband/campaign manager’s head, he is able to fit people into a schedule. We are organized, we are pumped with coffee, and we all have clipboards with extra pens. Yes, we are ready to go door knocking!

I ring the doorbell and a sweet little old voter in curlers slowly opens the door.

“Hi, I am Deyva. I am running for office in your district. Let me tell you some of my plans. They are very different to my opponent Jane who may not have your best interests at heart.”

And she says, ” Oh, come in. I certainly would like to hear all about it. I started voting the first chance I got and I haven’t missed an election since.”

Half an hour later I say, “Again my name is Deyva. I am very glad to have met you.”

She gives me a resounding handshake, “I’m very impressed with what you have to say young lady and I will definitely vote for you this election—Jane.”

Right. And I bet she always votes Democrat anyway.

Still, going out and meeting the constituency is my favorite part of campaigning. An experienced candidate learns to read a voter like a tabloid magazine—never really thinking they are being up front with you, but then again you never know. Actually most people are very nice and will lend a sympathetic ear and offer cookies. Some actually like the platform and say if they ever did vote, surely they would vote for me.

On occasion, there is the hostile voter and then I just back away slowly. Although the Green Party is probably on the far left, the greatest amount of hatred comes from our own kind—progressives. Like Judas and Darth Vader, Greens are THE SPOILERS. For anything gone terribly wrong in politics, progressives can trace it back to Greens running a decent presidential campaign where people actually voted for someone they believed in. Now voters are too frightened to do anything like that again.

Deep into the campaign, every Green discovers they need a bit more money. Well okay, we realize we need a lot more money, or even just some money at all. Greens have employed many different and creative ways of putting forth financially viable campaigns. Most work really well if it was say… the 1800s, when a television ad didn’t cost your child’s college tuition fund, or the opponent wasn’t a billionaire with nothing better to spend his money on. Oh, for a billionaire that supported the Green Party. Faced with a billionaire, a Green would have a real problem. We don’t accept donations over five dollars for fear we would be beholden to the donor. No matter, I didn’t need my life savings anyway.

Since Greens are treated like travelers with the bird flu when it comes to participating in televised debates, we have to figure out how to get the media to cover our campaign. After presenting provocative press releases, action-packed proposals, and go on a 30-day hunger strike, the media give us a sympathetic pat on the back and walk away. Even if there was a newspaper interested in the Green Party, many Greens are uncomfortable blowing their own horn. A fellow Green took time off from his campaign to plant tulip bulbs throughout the city, but refused to let the newspapers know. He didn’t want his motivations misinterpreted. I am sure they won’t be, as nobody knows about it.

Well, Election Day is never far away. I really, really hope I win. Winning is mighty fine. The great thing about us Greens is no matter what happens on Election Day, it is always a win for us. Like the wave lapping against the dam, the Green Party slowly and surely will get on through. The Green Party is all about making history.

 

New Forum For Greens On The Internet

www.greenchange.com Shows Green Is A Way Of Life
By Pat LaMarche, Maine Green Independent Party

As Marnie Glickman, executive director of Green Change puts it, “We are finding new ways to have fun being Green, be creative being Green, and providing a place for others with values that are Green.” Green Change is a new organization and cyber meeting place for folks all across the country that share Green values. The address is www.greenchange.com.

People with Green values want to make a difference, but can’t always volunteer for the party or candidate campaigns; Green Change is an alternative. Glickman, a former co-chair of the Green Party of the United States, is a new mom. She said, “When my daughter is older, I will run for office. Until then, I want to help encourage people with Green values to act on them.” Glickman believes that political action is generated not just in political campaigns or party activities but also in “Green poetry, music, writing, parenting, business, humanitarian efforts and even Green recipes.”

Green Change builds a more vibrant Green culture that will fuel the Green political movement. It’s not that a person only writes Green poetry; it’s thank goodness for Green poetry. It’s not that a person only has an organic farm; it”s thank goodness for organic farming. It”s not that an employer pays a living wage and provides heath benefits; it’s thank goodness for living wages and health benefits. And it’s not just that a person runs for office as a Green; it’s thank goodness for green candidates.

Although hundreds of thousands of people live essentially a Green culture, many are disconnected from the rest of the Green community. If the connection can be made between these individuals and their communities, growth will occur exponentially.

Sam Smith, political writer and a Green Change board member, explained the desired mingling of politics with lifestyle. “People only get involved in politics in large numbers when it becomes more than politics, when it is more than a logical, thoughtful and well constructed process, when it is more even than a ideology. They get involved when politics becomes a normal, convivial, exciting and satisfying part of their social existence.”

Green Change is not just a “meeting of the minds” for Green Party members, but also is meant to encourage new people to join. According to comscore.com, an online think tank that measures global Internet usage, approximately 152 million Americans use the Internet regularly. That is 152 million potentially like-minded souls who can be included and feel like participation in the Green cultural movement is doable.

Glickman believes a pervasive need exists, especially disenfranchised or disconnected folks, to have a cultural resting, reconnection and recuperation place for all aspects of their Green identity. Green Change endeavors to meet that need.

Green Change needs participation. Glickman is asking for “your poetry, your cartoons, your photographs, your fiction and your non-fiction. We need your music, your ballads and your protest songs. We need stories about your actions, your candidates, stories about folks in your area making a difference. We need your tales of Green culture, about anyone and everyone who does Green things, whether they call them that or not.” Glickman adds chuckling, “Oh, yeah, and we need your recipes.”

Most importantly, Green Change is a political organization that believes “all politics is local. With the Internet we are all next-door neighbors and with Green Change we never need to feel alone in our beliefs and cultural identity again.” Or as Sam Smith puts it, “we need each other, we need sources of courage, and we need the music and the art to carry use through until the laws and policies make sense.”

Marnie Glickman with her daughter Calliope Ruskin, is one of the founders of Green Change. 

 

The Value of Decentralization

A book review getting to the roots
By Rhoda Gilman, Green Party of Minnesota

Rick Whaley reflects on the Green Party’s past and the direction it has taken in a slim volume of collected essays, poetry, and artwork How Green Is The Green Party? Stories From The Margins, Beech River Books, 2007. The author, a long-time Milwaukee Green, identifies himself on the cover as “a Green founder.”

Whaley is best known for his work with the late Walt Bressette on the award-winning book Walleye Warriors (1994), an account of the struggle over Native Ameri can hunting and fishing rights in Wis con sin from l983 to 1992. Those were precisely the years in which the Green movement was taking shape throughout the country and especially in the Upper Midwest. Whaley’s orientation reflects this. It can best be summed up in a few quotations:

“If we don’t reach beyond narrow proletarian ideology and outdated rhetoric, Greens will only be the Left talking to the Left.”

“Green politics without Green living is soulless.”

“Native American spirituality, politics, and practice … are the germinating core of the Greens, in simple and profound ways.”

“Cities, no matter the form of government in a country, exist in a colonial relationship to rural areas, especially small farms and Native reserves and to wilderness (mineral, energy, water, and timber resources).”

My own history with the Greens in this region goes back as far as Rick Whaley’s. His words recall vivid memories of roots in alternative lifestyles and the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Biore gionalism, home schooling, ap propriate (read “Luddite”) technology, and intentional community were the watchwords of the day. For Whaley most of them still are. In his view the key Green Party value is decentralization.

It was a rich cultural seedbed, and today’s political Greens would do well to remember. We may need to re-learn some of its lessons. Ecologists then were already prophesying the current crises of global warming and peak oil, but almost no one was listening. Without access to mass media, politics seemed the only way to draw the country’s attention, so bioregional networks like the Lake Superior Greens, organized by Walt Bressette, were gradually turned into state political parties.

The change did not come without pain and conflict—but it came. A national association of Green Parties (now the Green Party of the United States) was formed, and in 1996 the Greens nominated Ralph Nader as their first presidential candidate. The Native American influence that Whaley cites was still there, however. Nader’s running mate, Winona La Duke, is an Anishi nabe woman who had joined Bresette in proposing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ensure the environmental rights of our descendants to the seventh generation.

Working within the electoral system not only required organization by electoral units, but also operation on political lines. Greens had to address current issues along with ideological principles and visionary hopes. Alliances had to be made and candidates cultivated. They had to convince voters that Greens were up to managing the business of government for everyone, not only for the counter-culture.

The wave of national politics crested with Nader’s campaign in 2000, which brought to the Green Party a new generation of young activists. Despite the retreating tide in the next years, the party continues to gain a beachhead in city councils, county commissions, and school boards across the country.

Greens have also become active in reclaiming city neighborhoods and in suburbs opposing developer-inspired sprawl. Decentralism has come full circle, but it now has a wholly different flavor from the lifestyle movement that Whaley recalls. Compact fluorescent bulbs have replaced getting off the power grid.

Political decentralism still, however, confronts what Whaley sees as a persistent red tinge in the Green Party. He implicitly accepts it when he concludes: “My counsel is that independent Greens should work with those candidates and activists who reciprocate respect on issues of concern and on community building. A sunflower can grow almost anywhere. But it still has to follow the sun.”