Re: [Marxism] WHY NADER? by Peter Miguel Camejo

["Dayne Goodwin" <daynegoodwin@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 29, 2007 7:03 PM, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I have no fucking idea what is going on here. After I wrote "Hurray" to
> the news that Cynthia McKinney intended to run for President, Erik Toren
> sent a cautionary note about divisions within the Greens, but not the
> typical radical Green versus Demogreen ones. I still have no idea what
> that was about. Now we have Peter Camejo, who has never been shy about
> drawing lines, write this thing on Nader without even mentioning her.
> What the fuck?!?


the "Demo-Greens" took over the Green Party (U.S) during the last
2003-2004 presidential election cycle and have successfully maintained
their control against the efforts of Camejo/Greens for Democracy and
Independence to open up the party to democratic one-person, one-vote
decision-making.

John Murphy, an independent GDI-type Green and an opponent of the
Demogreens, describes McKinney as an instrument of the Demogreens in a
recent Counterpunch column:

http://counterpunch.org/murphy12282007.html

In his column Murphy tells how Green Party Political Director Brent
McMillan attacked Elizabeth Arnone - the only non-Demogreen on the
Green Party steering committee (apparently for trying to find out how
McMillan got hired for his $60,000 a year job, where the $60,000 comes
from and the job description of "political director") - and Elaine
Brown, the former Black Panther Party leader who was running for the
Green Party presidential nomination.  Yesterday Elaine Brown publicly
renounced the Green Party, see below.  Next below is an excerpt from
Murphy's column where he explains who the Demo-Greens are:

"The Demogreens

Every party has factions. The Green Party is no exception but the
factions in every other party, especially the Democrat and Republican
Parties manage to put their differences aside in favor of one key
value "party unity". Neither the Democrat Party nor the Republican
Party has a faction which actually wants to bring about the end of
that party in favor of strengthening some other political party. Not
so the Green Party.

One of the major factions in the Green Party is called the "demogreen
faction". It is also referred to as the "lesser-evil-greens faction".
A more lengthy but rather more descriptive title would be "Democrat
Party Accommodationists". These are the people in the Green Party who
believe that the function of the Green Party is to improve the
Democrat Party and by all means to avoid hurting Democrat Party
candidates. Phil Huckleberry, one of the leaders of this faction, made
this demonstrably clear at the 2005 Green Party convention when he
stood up and screamed while pounding the table: "I did not join an
independent party, I joined the Green Party; I did not join the Green
Party to fight the Democrat Party". Huckleberry continues to warn
Green Party members not to criticize "progressive" Democrats."

______________________
Brunswick, Georgia,
December 28, 2007

ELAINE BROWN WITHDRAWS
FROM GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL RACE

Renounces Green Party Membership

OPEN STATEMENT TO THE GREEN PARTY

          As of today, I am no longer a candidate for the Green Party
nomination for president of the United States, and I hereby resign
from all affiliation with the Green Party.  I believe the leadership
of the Green Party of the United States has been seized by neo-liberal
men who entrench the Party in internecine antagonisms so as to
compromise its stated principles and frustrate its electoral and other
goals.  They have made it impossible to advance any truly progressive
ideals or objectives under the umbrella of the Green Party, and, thus,
rendered it counterproductive for me to go forward as a Green Party
candidate or member.

           I believe this small clique that has captured control of
the Party has transformed it into a repository for erstwhile,
disgruntled Democrats, who would violate the Party's own vision and
sabotage the good will and genuine commitment of the general
membership.  Indeed, these usurpers foster a reactionary agenda,
supporting partisans in and backers of the Bush wars and disavowing
the Party's more progressive tenets in favor of promoting high-profile
participation in the politics of the establishment.

           This became clear to me almost from the moment I announced
my candidacy in February of 2007.  I intended using my campaign to
bring large numbers of blacks and browns into the Party, particularly
from the hood and the barrio—as would come to be reflected in the
lists of supporters and delegates I've submitted in connection with my
candidacy.  As I asserted I would use the respect I enjoyed as a
former leader of the Black Panther Party to do so, some in the
hierarchy seemed utterly fearful of the prospect of a massive influx
of blacks and browns into the Green Party.  Soon, there was wide
circulation of false rumors that I was a one-time "government agent,"
which was intended to discredit my history in the Black Panther Party
so as to undermine my potential influence.—And, since then, I have had
to devote significant time and energy to addressing these lies.—What
this effort revealed, though, was how the Green Party, while
advocating "diversity," remains dominated by whites.  Indeed, the
Party is able to count less blacks, browns and natives in its
membership than our national population percentages and certainly less
than the Democrats themselves.

           In effect, the present Green Party leadership promotes a
kinder, gentler capitalism, a moderated racism, an
environmentally-sustainable globalism, which I cannot support.  They
are dedicated to the underside of the Party's platform, which falls
short of repudiating the capitalist state, source of all the social
ills the Party would address.  They equivocate by promoting "an
economic alternative to corporate capitalism and a socialist state,"
advocate a "re-formulation" of the IMF, NAFTA, so forth, and advance
the institution of "stakeholder capitalism."

           On the other hand, they demonstrate a willingness to
override the best of the Party's platform.  My sharp criticism of
high-profile Party members' support for the "three-strikes" crime
laws, the sole basis for the inhumane mass incarceration of people in
the United States, particularly blacks—the repeal of which the Party's
platform advocates—has been met with outright enmity.  And, to divert
attention from this and other critical issues, the leadership has
employed chicanery in their promulgation of defamatory lies about
me—which they finally extended to character assaults on my supporters
and critics of their unscrupulousness.

           It is my sincere belief that the Green Party as it now
exists has no intention of using the ballot to actualize real social
progress, and will aggressively repel attempts to do so.  To remain in
the fray or in the Party, then, would require a betrayal of my
lifelong and ongoing commitment to serving the interests of black and
other oppressed people by advancing revolutionary change in America.

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