In an open letter to the leaders of the Philadelphia labor movement, the young and energetic organizer for UFCW Local 152 Hugh Giordano has challenged the city's unions to have the courage to support the Green Party. Giordano ran an exceptionally strong campaign as a Green for state legislature this year, raising almost $30,000 from unions and individuals and capturing over 18 percent of the vote in a three way race. Now he would like to spread the same movement for honest politics, workers' rights, and a clean environment (among other things) to the rest of Philadelphia, beyond his single district.
As the members of the party, which I am aiding in every way I can, build the organization for the 2011 local elections, Giordano has seized the opportunity make the area's union leadership reconsider the popular path of supporting corporate Democrats. In his words, "Why are we, the strong men and women of the labor movement, bowing down to the corporate bosses and politicians...Union brothers and sisters, when any one of us becomes 'fearful' or 'controlled' by a political party - it's time to step down and pass the torch on."
The full letter is printed, with Hugh Giordano's permission, below the fold.
The Illinois Greens are very much an up and coming state Green Party. In 2006 they got over 10% of the gubernatorial vote and this year they're poised to win one or two seats in the state legislature (for some perspective, nationally the Greens have had 4 state legislators ever), along with having some strong statewide candidates.
And Chicago is, from what I've gathered, the center of Green activity in Illinois. Their Senate candidate LeAlan Jones - you may remember him as the producer of the radio piece "Ghetto Life 101" when he was just 13 - is from the South Side of the city and when I interviewed the co-chair of the state party he thought their gubernatorial candidate would do best in Chicago, as well.
And now Rahm Emanuel's running for mayor in that same exact city. I think you know what I'm getting at.
Dan Hamburg, LeAlan Jones, and Jill Stein are running three races that are very important to the Green Party this year. In California, Hamburg is a former Democratic Congressman hoping to be elected as a Green to Mendocino County Supervisor. In Illinois, Jones is the only African American in the Senate race and has polled as high as 14%, in a state where the Green candidate for governor got over 10% in 2006. In Massachusetts, Stein is less than $1,000 away from qualifying for the rest of the debates, and about $38,000 away from qualifying for matching funds.
I'll make this as simple as possible. Here's what each one needs from you:
There comes a time when it is necessary to re-evaluate failed strategies. Insulting the left by calling us "Naderites" if we fail to show up to vote for a right-wing candidate to replace the late Ted Kennedy didn't cause swarms of invigorated Democrats to vote Martha Coakley into office. Insulting us as "poorly informed" about things we already knew doesn't work, nor does self-congratulatory back-patting. And frankly, up and joining with the very gatekeepers we're supposed to be fighting isn't going to cut it either.
It's long past time for the left to publicly acknowledge that tying its meager fortunes to the Democrats is a lost cause. You cannot fight a beast from within its belly. You can only be digested and shat out.
You may not like the suggestion I'm about to make.
But I'll make it anyway: Vote third party, a LEFT-wing third party. MAKE the Democrats' self-inflicted losses in November be because they were too right-wing and the public, having been lied to for too long, chose to leave for a party that represents its interests over those of Big Business.
You must do this not only to send the right message, but because it is the ONLY way any Democrat will be made to realize just why he or she lost and what the party needs to do to win and keep power. That's not going to happen by sitting out elections, which is what the powerful want us to do anyway and only allows the far right to keep shaping the narrative that Democrats lose because they're perceived as being too liberal.
I've been gone all summer - traveling, gardening, volunteering a bit, and doing some other things - and as much as I had a lot of fun, it is nice to be back. In all that time, some interesting things have happened with what I consider to be one of the better Green campaigns in the nation this year, and one that I'm very involved with, Hugh Giordano's campaign for state legislature as a Green.
In case you don't know who Hugh is, he's a 25 year old union organizer running as a Green in PA's 194th district, which is mostly in Philadelphia and also a bit in Montgomery County (for locals, it encompasses Roxborough, Manayunk, parts of Lower Merion, and some surrounding areas). He's been running a great campaign, knocking on doors, holding fun fundraisers, getting in the newspaper, and raising as much money as a typical Green congressional candidate.
Anyway, below the fold is some news from the campaign, including an endorsement from a fairly prominent local Democrat.
Apparently inspired by certain Democrats voting against the health insurance reform, the Service Employees International Union - a union representing over 2 million workers - is surprisingly planning to work against Democrats this election season.
Perhaps the strongest challenge to Democrats, if not the Democratic establishment itself, will be in North Carolina. The national SEIU is working with the State Employees Association of North Carolina, its state affiliate, to form the North Carolina First Party.
I'm not going to pull any punches here. I detest the two party system. I believe that it undermines representative government. It makes our government more responsive to corporations than to citizens. It decreases the chances of progress and it results in many good ideas being shut out of the national political debate.
This piece was written as part of GreenChange Blog Action Day. Learn more here.
At what point do progressives stop being Democrats' whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama's latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.
How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.
My political activities now are focusing on the building of a viable third party as a tool of a reinvigorated and independent progressive movement. No efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within can succeed so long as the upper-level of the party establishment is able to crush dissent from within, as is explained here.
[T]the Democratic primaries will be where the action is ... Maybe someone like Kucinich, Feingold ... It will be a "good liberal," not a radical, advocating positions that are reasonable but declared "unrealistic." ("You'll throw the race to the Republicans, we can't have that!") The basis of the campaign will not be a sudden embrace of Bolshevism, but rather Obama's embrace of Wall Street. It will be a mix of angry rank-and-file and disgruntled party machine.
The insurgent candidate will lose. The candidate will not call for a 3rd party, will support Obama after the primaries -- will make a concession speech that would shame the Moscow Show Trials. Many of her or his followers will follow suit. The candidate will not personally work to create an independent infrastructure within the Democratic Party. Obama will probably win, not because of his impressive performance but because the foaming-at-the-mouth Republicans will be splitting. After the election, the Democratic challenger will not lead a 3rd party.
This has been the pattern for decades. There is no one within the Democratic Party willing to lead a progressive breakoff. The day Dennis Kucinich kisses all party support for his re-election to Congress goodbye is the day I will rejoice, but it's not going to happen. So it's on lay progressives to take charge, organize from the ground up, and lead the way to building both the movement and the political organization that will bring it to power within the halls of our nation's capital.
This won't happen overnight; it will take decades for a fully functional progressive political organization to be built, and we will be opposed every step of the way by Democrats, Republicans, and corporations now empowered to spend as much money as their executives want to sway public opinion against us. But we have got to start sometime, and now is as good a time as any.
Those who claim this isn't the right time will not tell us that the "right time" is never going to come -- there will always be the enxt election cycle to worry about, too much at stake to "risk throwing it to the GOP." Never mind that all Democrats ever do is throw elections to Republicans simply by behaving like they're members of their counterpart political party. We must ignore such admonitions and press on. There is no such thing as perfection in politics, to be the enemy of good things that will never come to fruition so long as the existing political structure continues. And there is nothing more to be lost by doing what is right and necessary to take back our country.
The good news is that a Progressive Party already exists in some states. In Missouri, Vermont, and Washington, progressives began rebuilding the political party that bears their name from the ground up, and they used smart strategies and tactics to gain power first at the local level and then at the state level. They are now starting to branch out into national-level politics by running candidates for the House of Representatives, with a Vermont Progressive having run for the House of Representatives in 2008 on a platform that included calling for Bush's impeachment. And David Sirota has written previously about New York's Working Families Party, which has gotten results at the local and state levels.
So the foundation exists for progressives to rebuild our movement. The will is there. What's lacking is leadership. If no one in the 'netroots is willing to assume vital leadership roles, then it is up to each and every one of us to take charge and lead. Enough is enough. Progressives must stand up to the far right, which dominates both major political parties, and end its rule. No more excuses, no more capitulations, no more waiting. Let's get it done.
Let's side step the issue of populism
since the groups that dislike it aren't going to change by knowing more about it, and since, by your own admissiion, they have an interest in maintaining their hatred of it. I just would like the country to be governed in everyone's best interests and not just the interest of business. Do the tea baggers offer this. Nope. They are dogmatic free market fundamentalists in most cases so I am not interested in them.
I know third parties cannot do anything more than spoil, but the spoiler affect can be used strategically against bad democrats. If the 10 percent nader affect were utilized against the worst corporatists,in 5 years, the corporatists will be exercised from the democratic party. Let's start something like a "strategic liberalism party" and use the spoiler affect to purge the democrats of corporatist candidates. The problem with the greens is that they ran even against good dems like Paul Wellstone! A "strategic liberalism party" or a "real democratic party" wouldn't make that mistake.
I read a docudharma diary over the weekend that illustrated the dilemma facing progressives who have had it with the Democratic Party. There are, of course, good reasons for progressives to take the 'leave it' option, as well as good reasons to take the 'fix it' option. Reading the diary made me think about another element missing from the Progressive political eco-system that can deal more constructively with this dilemma.
Most American voters could do with putting a little more thought into how they vote, in my opinion :) Of course, most American voters are not having the time, energy or informational resources, let alone the level of obsessiveness, required to actually get to the point of having a fully thought through voting strategy to meet their personal aims and values. Probably with good reason. However, since I have done it, I will tell you how to go about it.
First, the values that I am interested in, the order of which I'm not clear on:
Having the best of the two options presented in office;
Increasing the capacity for a diversity of opinions to proliferate;
Shifting national discourse towards the values above
The objectives for 2008:
A Republican loss;
The first Black President;
Promoting nuanced class politics that intersects with other kinds of hierarchy;
Planting seeds for radical democracy;
Send a message to the Democratic establishment that they're still part of the problem and likely will be as long as there is hegemony. If they weren't, they'd be pursuing strategies like this.
The method:
1. Just before you vote, go to Pollster.com, Five Thirty Eight, or some other site you trust.
2A. If you live in a "tipping-point" state, vote for Obama.
2B. If you live in a non "tipping-point" state, research third party candidates and vote for a third party candidate (strategy memo on how to pick one coming :).
As the Obama-Clinton battle winds down and Obama's magic number gets lower, some national polls are out there for the general election that are actually polling some of the other names on the ballot, or at least 'other' as an option.
While the Libertarian and Green Party nominations are not wrapped up yet either (Cynthia McKinney will almost certainly be the Green candidate, the 17 candidate battle royale in the Libertarian Party continues), the Constitution Party has nominated unknown Chuck Baldwin over better known but equally irrelevant Alan Keyes.
Of course, the three major party candidates get all the press attention, but it is interesting to take a look at possible 3rd party impact on the GE. Poll numbers after the jump:
The Connecticut for Lieberman Party is holding a statewide party meeting to nominate candidates for office on March 6, 2008 at 6:30 PM at 243 Zion Street in Hartford, Connecticut.
I had a political epiphany a while back, and someone said I should post it in a diary. It will follow after the jump, but first, some caveats. This was written before the Iraq vote occurred, so that has not been factored in. To be honest, I don't know how to factor it in just yet. Second, it was written while I was in the hospital and merely transcribed afterwards. As such, please excuse any minor historical mistakes I may have made in my theorizing. I would appreciate any corrections people might like to offer. Third, in no way do I want this to weaken the principles of the Democratic Party. It is merely a way of viewing the current system and what I believe to be its coming change. I still stand behind the plan of action detailed below and will do so until the Democratic Party fails to support progressive values entirely. I pray to God that today is not that day.
P.S. Sorry about the length, and I assure you, I'm not a Naderite.
