Re: Analysis of US Greens

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks, Howie, for your comments.  It would be interesting to hear from you
about what happened to the Left Green Network and what the organizational
state is today of the Reds to be found among the U.S. Greens.

best wishes,
jay


----- Original Message -----
From: Howie Hawkins <hhawkins@xxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: Analysis of US Greens


> 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
>
>
>
>