Where to go? How about Fresno.

I have been told that it is a waste of time for Greens to try and organize in the Central Valley, that we need to build on the areas where we have the most electoral success, already have some recognized politicians and are more likely to be be able to tap local money.

I want you to read the complete picture of Fresno in this Alternet published piece by Mark Ames. It will give you a very different view of the Central Valley than you get from Coastal megalopolis TV news. Ames manages to combine the background of a workplace shooting and the appearance of Sean Hannity and make sense of it… well as much sense as the two situations allowed.

Although the connection is tenuous between the site of the workplace shooting -- a dealer in agricultural machines -- and the larger issues in Fresno -- agribusiness and water -- nevertheless, as in so many other shootings, by digging into the Fresno Equipment killing, I started to get a taste of just how rotten and corrupt Fresno is these days, and the larger context in which the shooting took place.

This is the same Hannity exploitation that I referenced here and with this link to the Daily Show.

By now, you should be getting the picture, it is all a show.

"In reality, this is not a farmworker march," said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers of America, the 27,000-member union founded by Cesar Chavez, which did not participate in the march. "This is a farmer march orchestrated and financed by growers."

And in July, a couple thousand Latino farmhands were pressed into marching on Fresno City Hall to demand the repeal of the Endangered Species Act, opening up more cheap water, and ultimately, building the loathed Peripheral Canal, which would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and deliver enormous amounts of cheap water from Northern California to the Central Valley, converting their farm land into much more valuable suburban tract-home development land.

Tell me again why the Green Party should not be organizing in the Central Valley. It would be a return to the gut issue of ecology and social justice that was the foundation of this party in the first place. If we want to GROW this party, then we had better start in Fresno County.