Ten Key Values – Grassroots Democracy

Dorothy H. Engel, North Carolina Green Party

“Grassroots democracy” often is the first value in our Green Party list of ten. However, there is little doubt of its importance to the over all beliefs of the party.

The voting apparatus in this country is based on the Electoral College—a group of selected persons who are charged with the responsibility of casting their particular state’s electoral votes. The candidate with the most electoral votes wins the election. As we saw in the fiasco of the 2000 election, the candidate with the most votes did not win the election, but the candidate with the most electoral votes won. How did we get saddled with this system in the first place?

Our founding fathers were concerned the method of selecting the president must be independent of state legislatures, Congress and popular majorities. They formed the Electoral College—whereby each state was to appoint as many electors as it had members of Congress, and the electors were then to elect a president to serve for four years. The appointment of the electors is driven by party politics, and thus became a part of the machinery of each political party. Ordinary citizens only had a voice through their vote, but the electors who made up the Electoral College determined who was elected.

The grassroots movement began in an effort to bring the concerns of ordinary people into mainstream politics. Candidates with a populist message began speaking about the needs of ordinary people, often organizing their campaigns in the kitchens and backrooms of their communities. Many of them made speeches on soapboxes in the town square, promising to bring the needs of common citizens, farmers, minorities, and laborers to Washington. Today, grassroots democracy means empowering individuals to organize locally in order to bring about changes. Some examples of grassroots organizing include distributing literature door-to-door or in public gathering spots such as supermarkets and festivals, letter writing campaigns, and attendance at city or county council meetings. The Internet is the most recent addition to grassroots organizing.

Top-down election control is the antithesis of grassroots organizing. This is the use of money or power or both to manipulate elections and place candidates in office that will carry out the agenda of the perpetrators. Corporate powerbrokers simply pour enough money into a campaign so their candidates subvert the wishes of the populace when they get in office. One primary reason George Bush is in the White House is he had more money at his disposal than any other political candidate in history.

The Green Party itself was formed as a part of a grassroots effort and continues to use those organizing principles to carry its message. Greens should not despair, because all the money and resources of the big political parties only buys media manipulation and the willingness to cast a vote for a particular candidate.

Grassroots organizing means involving people in a much greater level of activity—citizens becoming activists. By using those ideas at all levels—locally, statewide, and nationally—the party will grow and bring its values into mainstream politics.

 

Green Plate Tectonics

Brent McMillan, Political Director, Green Party of the United States

My inspiration for this article was a confrontation last fall I had with a couple of apoplectic Democrats that could barely get the words out of their collective mouths, “You’re not going to run Nader again for President are you?” At first I was taken aback, but by the time I ran into them a couple of days later I was ready to let them have it with both barrels blazing.

What if I were to suggest to you it’s not the Democrats that the Greens have been replacing but the Republicans?

In 2006 the Green Party saw a new phenomenon with our federal-level campaigns. Some of our best-run campaigns, in which the candidates were clearly articulate, with a strong message and media attention, did not do that well at the ballot box. It was a hard thing to accept at the time. Scott McLarty, GPUS media director had a theory about what happened. Perhaps there was a kind of message transference. Voters agreed with the Green candidate, but what they thought was, “I agree with the Green, therefore I’m going to vote for the Democrat, to defeat the Republican.” In other words, the Green had the courage to say what the Democrat wouldn’t. Ugh! I’m out to build the Green Party not reform the Democratic Party. (Then again it could have been voter fraud.) That said, we ran fewer campaigns for Con gress in 2006 than in 2004 but got more overall votes. Our candidates and campaigns are clearly getting stronger and it shows.

In Washington, D.C., the Greens are now the second party. We have twice the voting strength as the Republicans. Have you seen any articles in the Washington Post about this? You probably won’t. Following the 2004 election cycle, Greens in D.C. held a strategic planning retreat in early 2005. We set out to deliberately establish the D.C. Statehood Greens as the second party or opposition party and replace the Republicans.

The D.C. Statehood Greens ran five candidates in partisan races and the Republicans did the same. We matched up in three of those races and got more votes in two out of three. Our United States Representative candidate (remember that D.C. is a colony) Keith Ware beat the Republican candidate. Ware received 13,511 votes or 12.65 percent. The Republican candidate received 9,700 votes or 9.08 percent. Yet the Washington Post refused to identify Ware as a Green.

Other areas where the Greens are now the second party include Seattle, WA, (See “Seattle Turns Green”, The Seattle Times, June 22, 2000), Madison, WI, Port land, ME and Portland, OR. In Califor nia, it includes San Francisco, Sebastapol, Arcata and Los Angeles, to name a few.

If I may make a sweeping observation, strategically, the Greens are becoming the second party to Democrats in urban areas, and the second party to Republicans in rural areas. We are the ones positioned to set the opposition agenda. In rural areas, Greens speak a progressive populist language that still has resonance in communities, which would have been active in the Farmers Alliance years ago. This is not a liberal language, it’s a progressive populist one, and it’s not the same. That’s why liberal Democrats would fall flat on their face trying to do the same thing.

Evidence of this can be found with three candidates that ran for Ellensburg City Council in the tri-cities area in Wash ington State in 2003. Although none of them won, two got a respectable 40 percent of the vote. What is significant is Dem o crats don’t really even bother to run east of the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington State. Right after this race, the Democratic Party held a meeting in one of the tri-cities to reconsider whether they should be putting resources into races in this area.

The evidence would indicate Greens are replacing Republicans, not Democrats. Otherwise why would the Democratic Leadership Council find it so important to stop the Greens from advancing, that they would send Howard Dean himself to Portland, Maine to make sure John Eder did not get re-elected to the Maine State Legislature in 2006? This is very curious. Of all of the things they could have put resources into, this was made a national priority!

The Republicans may be feeling the heat though. A recent cover of the American Conservative has “A righter shade of green” printed on it in big letters.

 

Why I’m Green

Jim Coplen, Co-chair Green Party of the United States

In 2002 I read Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men, in which he praised Ralph Nader and recommended his book, Crashing the Party. That book was, of course, about Nader’s 2000 run for the U.S. Presidency on the Green Party ticket. Shortly after reading that, I found the Indiana Green Party’s web site and emailed an inquiry. I have, essentially, never looked back.

I had always voted Independent, but like others found ballot choices increasingly less diverse. The Democrats and Republicans offered little real difference between them. There no longer seemed a “lesser evil,” just more evil everywhere.

Some of us from the Midwest who came of age in the ’60s grew up complacent and conservative, following the lead of our elders. Only later did we find that many of the values upon which we’d based our lives were false, naïve assumptions (Nixon and the Vietnam War helped bring us to that point). We learned to think more carefully about our decisions, both political and personal, and looked to see if they were based on honest analysis, or something we had been spoon-fed by a manipulated media and our own government.

We have largely come to believe this country is being controlled and sold, by and to, big business. Basic fairness has been lost. Cheap power goes to big corporations as the cost for poor families trying to heat their homes goes higher. People die of cancer because manufacturing wastes ex hausted into their neighborhoods has poisoned them. Forests and farmlands are being swallowed at an alarming rate; much of our well water is too tainted to drink. The list of abuses is nearly endless.

Citizens’ freedoms and rights which once made America great are being lost, trampled beneath the feet of right-wing armies of self-promotion. From Teddy Roosevelt’s, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” we’ve progressed to, “Might makes right.” Americans much less honored and ad mired by foreign countries than we once were.

We also have the grinding unfairness of bigotry and sexism cutting short the life and capability of so many women, blacks, and people who just don’t meet the wasp male profile. No matter their basic abilities, they may never get a chance. Brilliant minds are lost to early death, forgotten in the ghetto, or swallowed by poverty, never to realize the promise that might have been.

Our young people continue to be lost to wars we deplore and protest against. They and innocent foreigners die at the whim of entrenched neoconservatives. Has nothing changed in the halls of power in all those years?

The natural beauty of Mother Earth is being destroyed and, along with it, the sustainability of the planet. We’ve used her and abused her. No argument there among Greens, though we disagree about other, seemingly less important things. I believe that strife too will pass, along with the public malaise, by making our government accountable to the people who are, after all, its electors.

I have faith in the Green cause. One of the main things that drew me to it is the shining example of the forthright, intelligent members I’ve met. They’re certainly not perfect, as none of us are, but most of those comrades in belief have made a real effort to elevate their ideals, and make an honest struggle to live up to them. Their values shine through and make them warm and wonderful people to be with and learn from.

There is a way and we are it. The Green Party can light the path for those not strong enough as individuals. But we must work together. As Abraham Lincoln said, “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

I await the future with hope.