Re: Analysis of US Greens

[Howie Hawkins <hhawkins@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:37 PM 09/02/2000 -0400, Jay Moore wrote:
>
> FYI.  Here is an article on the U.S. Greens from the World Socialists.  ...
> You still have some leftists among the Greens, like Joel Kovel
> and Howie Hawkins (both of whom I know).  But as far as I can tell -- I left
> direct contact with the scene some time ago -- they are pretty much lone
> voices crying in the wilderness. ... I think Green politics
> today are pretty pathetic and are characterized pretty accurately, if a bit
> dogmatically, by the WSWS article below. 
>
> Jay
> <http://www.neravt.com/left/>http://www.neravt.com/left/
>
>
> **********
>
> Extolling the politics of expediency: an interview with US Green Party
> leaders
> By Jerry White
> World Socialist Web Site
> 2 September 2000


Jay, you left the Greens too early. The New Agers are gone and now its the
inevitable fundi/realo, radical/liberal debate that every electoral party of
the left faces.

Don't confuse the views of a couple of leaders of the Association of State
Green Parties (ASGP) with where the base of the Green Party movement is at. If
the responses of the delegates at the convention to speeches by me, Joel
Kovel,
and Manning Marable, compared to speakers from the moderate wing, are any
indication, the base is way to the left of the current ASGP leadership, which
is not very popular b ut bureaucratically entrenched at this point because the
base is not well-organized and dispersed across a big country. Jerry White
interviewed me at the convention, too, but it seems I didn't fit into the mold
he has for the Green Party.

In my experience, the base of the Greens has more working class members than
most socialist groups in the US, which tend to have more people from the
universities. The Geens certainly don't have a shared perspective on class,
but
ironically one of Nader's positive contributions has been to more effectively
bring class issues into the Greens than the Left Greens were ever able to do.

Where the Greens in the US go politically is up for grabs. And given the
decentralized political structure of the US electoral regulations, with state
and county party committees with substantial autonomy on nominations, the
Greens are going to be diverse -- radical in some places and liberal in
others.


As long as the Greens are independent of corporate funding and the two
corporate parties, there is a certain logic to their confrontation with the
corporate parties that leads toward radicalization. Because the Green Party is
spoiling the two-party game, it will be treated badly by the corporate
parties,
the courts, and the legislatures in terms of access to ballot lines, debates,
fair media coverage, etc. Opportunists in the Greens are not going to last
long
if getting into office is really what they are about. They will become
Democrats, as many ex-Green politicians have already done.

Now is the time for the US left to come into the Green Party. After the 2000
election, the Greens will be ballot qualified in 30-40 states and looking for
candidates to run at every level. They will be debating what the program
should
be. Are ecological sustainability, social justice, peace, and democracy
compatible with capitalism? That's what the Greens are debating and socialists
should be part of that discussion.

--Howie Hawkins