Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Michael Hoover wrote:
> responses to my initial post conveyed, by and large, varying degrees
> of maximalism, making quantitative leap from my modest suggestion
> all the way to presidential electoral politics (by such measures
> *all" attempts will fail), pervasive problem imo...

The questions of what we can do to improve local governance and what
we can do to change national politics shouldn't be put in terms of
minimalist vs. maximalist programs, I believe, because it is not the
case that you can make even minimal changes in foreign policy by
taking the city halls.  Even if the Green Party were to succeed in
electing Green mayors in all cities in the United States, for
instance, an impact of such a dramatic change in local politics on US
foreign policy won't be even minimalist -- it will be practically
zero.

The thing is that it is possible for us to make a lot more changes
for better at the local level either by building the Green Party, or
taking over local Democratic parties, or pursuing some other measures
(we have viable tactics and successful models of various sorts here,
lacking only in enough activists willing to put in time and energy),
and we should be doing what we can, but taking on national politics
is qualitatively (rather than quantitatively) different from working
on local politics, and here we can use some innovative ideas.

Yoshie