[GPRI] FW:Sam Smith on the Green Party

[Greg Gerritt]

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From: SAM SMITH <news at prorev.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:33:18 -0400



My feeling is the answer is not to be found so much in strategy,
systems and structure but in the culture and community that Greens
create among themselves and with others.

The most successful organizations with which I have been involved
tended to have cultures more than rules, a sense of community more
than precise organization,  and involved strong individuals who
treated their compatriots with respect and expected the same.

My sense is that the Greens try a bit too hard to get everyone on the
same page. That's not a good organizing strategy and causes far too
many internal arguments. A little more friendly anarchy headed in the
same general direction is the best goal.

For example, it would be neat if the Greens thought of themselves as
having two informal groupings: call them the national Greens and the
backyard Greens. Anyone could affiliate with either or both.  The
national Greens could then obsess over the presidency to their
hearts' content while the backyard Greens were busy finding
candidates for every uncontested state legislative seat. It doesn't
have to be in any by-laws, people can just come to think of it that
way. And they don't have to argue about which is best; they just pick
for themselves.

You want more ethnic minorities? Forget about caucuses which tend to
merely increase internal debate to nobody's benefit. Instead name
minority chairs of issues areas like urban affairs, education and
health and let them have considerable autonomy not only as regards
actions but also in naming members. Sure, it won't be as neat and as
antiseptically consensual as many Greens will like but it will make a
livelier, better party with more minorities involved. And the power
will be real rather than symbolic.

The important thing is to make the Greens a happy, hospitable
community and not a stuffy, unwelcoming church.

Here's from a talk I gave in 2005 to the Montgomery County Greens:

My feeling is that the Greens should follow the path of the
Socialists and the Populists and infuse themselves into every
possible pore and precinct of this country and in every possible way.
This can be called viral politics although, in truth, it predates
such postmodern terminology with deep roots in traditional political
behavior.

We must bear in mind that most politics today is largely based on
acceptance of the tyranny of television and other forms of mass
media. This is, among other things, extremely costly and a game
Greens can't afford to play even if they wished to. It is also
inevitably top down politics. You can't have a decentralized
democratic movement run by TV.

But viral politics - whether done through traditional local
organizing or through more modern tools such as the Internet - has
not been eliminated by the media but merely obscured. It is widely
used, for example, by the Christian right. And Howard Dean didn't do
badly with it, either.

It could be used far more by the Greens as well. Consider that in
recent years as many as 95 congressional races and 40% of all state
legislative races have been uncontested. What if Greens all over the
country had been as diligent as Maine's John Eder who not only won a
seat in the legislature but won it again after being redistricted?

And while the San Francisco mayoralty may not seem as important as a
Green presidential run, a few days after the election it suddenly
dawned on me that Gonzalez' race was not just local; for me it meant
that there somewhere in America there was a city roughly the size of
my own in which 47% of the voters agreed with me. That was a
remarkably cheering revelation.

If we had Matt Gonzalezes and John Eders all over America people
would start talking and thinking about Greens in a different way.
Whatever our results in a presidential race they would know that
Greens really do matter in the 'hood.

How do we get to this point? A good place to start is to stop
thinking of the Greens so much as an ideological grouping with a
literal agenda and more as a community of common spirits. Listen to
how the Socialists' own history describes their roots: "From the
beginning the Socialist Party was the ecumenical organization for
American radicals. Its membership included Marxists of various kinds,
Christian socialists, Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish socialists,
foreign-language speaking sections, single-taxers and virtually every
variety of American radical."

It can happen without even planning. At one point the majority of the
steering committee of the DC Statehood Green Party consisted of three
young staffers of labor unions. This is certainly not the image the
Green Party projects. I believe they had come in part seeking a
community that expressed their ideals better than their jobs did. In
fact, in almost every once great progressive movement one finds a
restlessness among the young. Many of these groups - civil rights,
women's, environmental - have become more bureaucratic, less
imaginative, and less brave with time. The Green Party - if it
thought of itself as a safe house for the idealistic, the rebellious
and the active - might be surprised at how many would like to drop in.

The problem is one of style and tone as much as policy and
pronouncements. Are the Greens fun to be around? Do they make my work
more useful? Am I strengthened by the affirmation I feel even if we
may disagree on some issues?

If, on the other hand, we take a formalistic and bureaucratic
approach to our efforts we will be rewarded with formalistic and
bureaucratic results. One of these results will be to signal some
that they won't feel all that comfortable amongst us.

But if the feeling is that of a community or a home, our work can be
more productive, more pleasing and more inviting. . .

Finally, one external factor has dramatically altered things for the
Greens as well as everyone else: the end of the First American
Republic following September 11. Besides all its other horrors, the
developments make it even more difficult for a third party. But the
war on terror is in many ways a war to protect a tiny percentage of
the American elite and their capitals of politics and business. When
the White House went on red alert the other day, the mayor of
Washington - just a few blocks away - wasn't even notified.

Our situation is not unlike Orwell's 1984, in which only ten percent
of the population were actually members of the party; the rest lived
in a countryside with relatively normal lives.

Oddly, however, this presents an unusual opportunity for the Greens.
What if the Green Party declared itself the party of the countryside,
of free America, and set its sights on organizing not just the
survival, resistance, and rebellion of the unoccupied homeland, but
its revival, its discovery of self-reliance, and its energetic
practice of democracy and decency? There is a logic to the Greens
becoming the party of free America. After all Greens are the party
most in the American tradition of decentralization, democracy, and
cooperative communities. And they have ample precedent in the
grassroots Populist Party which took on robber barons of startling
similarity to those now served by the Bush regime.

The important thing, however, in discussing all these matters is for
Greens to remember that they are members of the same team, selecting
the next play not to prove their virtue but to improve their mutual
position. The virtue they can take for granted; the position will be
determined by each day's practical choices. If there is any virtue to
be consciously observed during these difficult decisions it is that
of kindness towards each other.

As for the rest of America let us proceed on a course both radical
and gentle, determined and patient, critical of those in power yet
kind to those they have misled, and, most of all, serious in our
intent, yet joyous in our manifestations of that intent, spreading
the message that a green world is not only a better one, but a
happier one as well.




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