Thursday, September 29, 2011

Street Theater Politics

In his post here yesterday, Martin Zehr wrote the following:
Street theatre has become all too often a justification for avoiding electoral politics. Slogans too often replace sound policies.
I could not avoid commenting that this was so true.

Yesterday evening, I was watching Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC. His Last Word segment regarding the ongoing protest on and against Wall Street is a good example. He was interviewing a master of street theater, Michael Moore and they both managed to get the story wrong.

It is truly good theater and I support the idea that we need to call Wall Street to account. If they had stopped at the first segment with MM, I might have agreed. However, they didn't and ended up trying to solve the problem of income income equality. There they made the same mistake that the Obama administration has done, expecting that a magical application of growth will be the elixir that gets us out of trouble. Growth is what will give hope to the masses. Unfortunately, such growth is no longer a rational prescription for what ails this country.

Even more ironically in-appropriate to the situation is the fact that you had to watch a commercial from Exxon-Mobil (2X) before getting to see the segment through to the end.

Growth is going to be forever limited by resource constraints. The first area of concern in to be found in the energy / water / climate change nexus. These three areas will be tightly linked, if not forever, at least for the lifespan of the next generation. Energy will be increasingly expensive. Fresh water will arrive in floods where we don't need more or not at all where we do need it. The extraction of new energy, especially from sources like fracking the Marcellus Shale or tapping Canada's Alberta Tar Sands, is going to take more and more fresh water leaving it unusable for anything else, contaminated and too expensive to clean up. And when we get done, all we will have done is exacerbate the problem of global warming, pushing the cycle even further beyond tolerable.

If Michael Moore, given his taking over the media regarding the Occupy Wall Street event, can not make this point, then Greens damn well need to be the one to tell these truths:
  • that the world has changed so much we can not longer grow our way out of trouble,
  • that we must not purchase buy economic ease by condemning our children to live in a sweat-box, 
  • that corporations are not citizens,
Lawrence, rather than give MM yet another soap box for his feel good populism, try once to put a real Green in front of your camera: Howie Hawkins, D.r Jill Stein, Dr. Kent Mesplay. Or would that offend your Wall Street Corporate Sponsors.

For another view of Occupy Wall Street, read that of Green John Halle here:

Today’s NYT’s coverage of the protestors, predictably contemptuous and dismissive, sets the stage perfectly for this crackdown-and provides grounds for all the right thinking people who are the Times’ primary demographic to avert their eyes.  The few decent people who find out about this may get on the subway and head to Wall Street to bear witness, and maybe even act.

But I can’t say I’m in the least optimistic that anything like this is in the cards-certainly nothing approximating the display of force which we must marshall  to make a difference.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Regional Planning for urban brownfields

Co-Author Martin Zehr was not able to log in and post this himself. He sent it to me via email.
___
Urban reconstruction of brownfields is a Green agenda and the more we say it the more we can develop policies that address education, housing, public transit, violence, renewable energy and homelessness. How long are people willing to accept the failures of public education? No liberal here. No radical trying to promote government spending. We have failed to develop the programs that are up to the task.

Decentralization and grassroots democracy means Greens are willing to engage all communities in the tasks and develop the input they can provide. Regional planning is not always pretty and may not always look the same, but it provides real perceptions, important science and economic data and the opportunity to let the people decide.

We face tough times ahead. Many of us have endured tough times for years. To succeed we need to play on the field that's there and build towards a new one that empowers people and addresses our real problems together. We need to build real leaders in our communities by really listening, by incorporating sound input and not simply posturing. Street theatre has become all too often a justification for avoiding electoral politics. Slogans too often replace sound policies.

We need to be as critical of our own role as we are of the Democratic Urban Machines that dominate too many metropolitan regions. Fiscal accountability needs to be incorporated so that we do not simply rob Peter to pay Paul, or drive municipal governments into bankruptcy. We know Dems will not simply rollover as we gain support. We have to anticipate that and develop long term strategies. The third way is not to simply up the ante of the liberal agenda, but to rigorously engage our communities in real debates and present real alternatives.

As things stand now, the Green Party will simply be another experiment in liberal third parties that rises and then falls from the weight of their own preoccupation to “do the right thing”. Configuring a new political landscape inherently means that we are willing to establish new priorities and cut up existing constituencies consistent with our goals and objectives as a political party. A Green New Deal fails to do this. It attempts to maintain the historical coalition of the Great Society. It does not incorporate the reality of the economic and fiscal crises in the context of our solutions. It projects the federal government as the employer of last resort as a solution. It fundamentally negates the Key Values of Decentralization, Grassroots Democracy and Community-Based Economics.

The answers do not lie in what I write here. They lie in our communities by working diligently and developing support from the people where they are. Over the years I have had several significant organizing efforts based on the principal that the people teach us. I helped to organize a city-wide coalition of industrial workers against plant closings. I built support for prison reform with the families of prisoners and correction employees that confronted an armed state Secretary of Corrections in a mass demonstration with the simple message of improving visitation and ending super-max facilities. I engaged in a regional water planning process with farmers, water managers, hydrologists, developers and environmentalists that developed a sound 50 year plan through stakeholder input. In each case, there were victories as well as challenges. The point is that if we stick to our Key Values, we really can unite with others who have not been engaged in the past. In each case, the failures were rooted in the inability to translate public support into political action.

We are novices in this regard. Despite our numerous campaigns and elections of public officials, we still let the basics of change slip through our fingers. When our votes are large, we miss using the results as political capital capable of winning concessions that will benefit those who supported us. When we elect officials they become disconnected from the party in developing policy priorities, increasing public education and projecting our unique vision in concrete ways. We let Democrats take the stage from us and undermine our ballot access. But our window of opportunity is closing. Our influence and our role in elections are endangered in most states. Too many “activists” have presumed to know what is good for people without listening to them. Too many friends have been alienated by leadership that only wants to control our political work and are not willing to incorporate the input of others.

Our relevance in the future is not predetermined. It is based on our relevance to the people who we represent. Changing the political culture of our state parties means that we are willing to recognize new voices. It means that we establish priorities that are consistent with public needs and concerns. It means not being afraid of change when it is indicated.


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Help Wanted! Green California Graphics Artist


Dear Green Friends,
The time has come for Green Party activists to get ready for the 2012 California elections. One thing we will need are good cartoons, caricatures, graphics expressing the issues in California highlighting the contrast between the Green Party and the 2 Titanic Parties.

The graphic below is from the lead story of the Black Agenda Report, America's leading web site for news, commentary, and analysis from the Black Left. I think this graphic exquisitely expresses the growing revulsion among many African-Americans like me, with the smugness of Democratic Party "Obamamaniacs."

Posted on The Black Agenda Report, September 21, 2001
Barack Obama VS Those Craaaazy Republicans: Is He the Lesser Evil, or the More Effective Evil?
By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor and a state committee member in the Georgia Green Party



Of course, Bruce Dixon is writing for a national audience. In my opinion the most important mission of the California Green Party is to build an independent progressive force at the state and local level -- especially in the One-Party Democratic coastal cities.

What we need for inner-city Los Angeles campaigns are the services of a graphics artist to produce a similar graphic substituting images for Governor Jerry Brown, Senator Diane Feinstein, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for the image of President Obama.


See sample images of the California Democratic Party Hacks:

Governor Jerry Brown


Senator Diane Feinstein


Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

If you can help me. Please leave a comment here or e-mail me directly at:
AlexCathy@aol.com.


Sunday, September 18, 2011

2 Cal Democrat Scandals - Why Have a Green Party?


Consider the Los Angeles Times front page below. Not one, but two major scandals rocked the California Democratic Party in the same week.
UPDATE: SCROLL DOWN TO SEE LIST OF DURKEE CAMPAIGNS

Both scandals involve big bucks from the Democrats' fat cat campaign donors. Moreover, the scandal of the bankrupt Solyndra solar energy company helps retro Republicans attack Green Energy.

Thanks a lot Democrats. Why have a Green Party? Tell me again how we don't need Greens, Peace & Freedom, Libertarians, and the A.I.P. because we have this great "choice" between "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans.

Published by The Los Angeles Times
Audits Detailed Mishandling of Campaign Funds
By Abby Sewell

When state Sen. Ted Lieu (D- Torrance) learned a few months ago that a state audit had found irregularities in his campaign finances, staffers immediately called Lieu's longtime treasurer, Kinde Durkee.

Durkee assured them that everything was fine, Lieu said, and he took her word for it. He forgot about the incident until this month, when Durkee was arrested in a sweeping federal fraud case that is sending shock waves across the Democratic Party establishment.

Durkee is accused of stealing perhaps millions of dollars from her clients, who include dozens of prominent California Democrats. Authorities have not laid out the full scale of the alleged crime, but clients including Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Los Angeles) have said that that they believe Durkee wiped out their campaign funds. Feinstein announced Friday that she plans to put $5 million of her own money into her reelection campaign to make up for funds that may have been taken.
. . .
"Politics in both parties is an old boys and old girls club, and most of the candidates … figure if everyone else is using Durkee, she must be all right," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "If you were the only campaign thinking about hiring a person with this record, you might think twice about it, but there's safety in numbers."

In Lieu's case, an audit by the State Franchise Tax Board found that $186,190 in credit card contributions to his unsuccessful 2010 race for attorney general had not been deposited in the campaign bank account, in some cases for well over a year. An additional $161,964 that was reported as having been transferred from Lieu's Assembly committee to his attorney general campaign in December 2008 was not deposited until two years later.
. . .

And This
Published by The Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2011
Solar Firm's Obama Links Probed

By Matea Gold and Stuart Pfeifer

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles—
The White House faced mounting political complications as a second top fundraiser for President Obama was linked to a federal loan guarantee program that backed a now-bankrupt Silicon Valley solar energy company, and as two California lawmakers called for investigations of a state tax break granted to the firm.

Steve Spinner, who helped monitor the Energy Department's issuance of $25 billion in government loan guarantees to renewable energy projects, was one of Obama's top fundraisers in 2008 and is raising money for the president's 2012 reelection campaign.

Spinner did not have any role in the selection of applicants for the loan program and, in fact, was recused from the decision to grant a $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc. because his wife's law firm represented the company, administration officials said Friday.

But Spinner's role as a top official in the Energy Department program, which had not been previously revealed, is likely to spur new inquiries into whether political influence played a role in the handling of the "green" energy fund. Solyndra faces a congressional probe, a criminal investigation and separate internal inquiries at the Energy and Treasury departments.

. . .

The largest investments in Solyndra were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, another major fundraiser for Obama in 2008. Kaiser has denied personally investing in the solar energy company or talking to White House officials about the loan.

Some Republicans in Congress charge that the White House pushed to get the loan approved for political reasons, which the White House denies.

Before its collapse, Solyndra was a showcase of the White House initiative to develop clean-energy alternatives. Obama visited the factory in May and praised Solyndra as a green technology company that would create jobs and help lead the country's economic recovery.
. . .

The point is this. Even when so-called liberal Democrats in California want to do the right thing, such as promote alternative green energy, the implementation is all wrong. They just cannot help turning it into something that can feed the Democratic Party Machines and its rich campaign contributors.

It is instructive that one of the Democrats biggest campaign contributors is billionaire George Kaiser, with a direct interest in the national healthcare debate. Our Green Party candidates in Assembly District 53 strongly advocated universal, single-payer heathcare. But they didn't have to get permission slips from fat cat campaign contributors.

UPDATE: LIST OF DURKEE CAMPAIGNS


Posted on the Web Site for the Sacramento Bee, September 4, 2011
'I've been robbed,' California Lawmaker Says
By Dan Smith

See a list of all the state campaign committee reports Durkee filed in 2011, according to Secretary of State's office data.

KindeDurkee


Cluelessness and Courage in AD 53

Democrat Ted Lieu in 2006

No Taxes! No Worries! Be Happy!

Green Peter Thottam in 2006

Warning! Tough times are coming!

Green Lisa Green in 2010

Clean Money! Clean Politics! Universal health care!




Thursday, September 08, 2011

3D Politics - Why Dem-GOP 'Moderate' Greens Will Fail


Why register Green? Why leave the Republican and Democratic houses of our fathers? Why not nudge good Republicans and Democrats to "Go Green?" The short answer is the old parties are hung up on old debates between so-called conservatives "on the Right" and so-called liberals "on the Left." to "Go Green" for them is, at best, an afterthought pasted onto their primary one-dimensional pantomime.

See below an Op-Ed by Gernot Wagner grimly warning that while our "action bias" makes us feel good about "doing something" about the environment in small individual gestures, at the end of the day "the planet" will hardly notice.

New York Times
September 7, 2011
Going Green but Getting Nowhere
By Gernot Wagner

YOU reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.

Good.

Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.

You refuse the plastic bag at the register, believing this one gesture somehow makes a difference, and then carry your takeout meal back to your car for a carbon-emitting trip home.

Say you’re willing to make real sacrifices. Sell your car. Forsake your air-conditioner in the summer, turn down the heat in the winter. Try to become no-impact man. You would, in fact, have no impact on the planet. Americans would continue to emit an average of 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year; Europeans, about 10 tons.


What about going bigger? You are the pope with a billion followers, and let’s say all of them take your advice to heart. If all Catholics decreased their emissions to zero overnight, the planet would surely notice, but pollution would still be rising. Of course, a billion people, whether they’re Catholic or adherents of any other religion or creed, will do no such thing. Two weeks of silence in a Buddhist yoga retreat in the Himalayas with your BlackBerry checked at the door? Sure. An entire life voluntarily lived off the grid? No thanks.

And that focuses only on those who can decrease their emissions. When your average is 20 tons per year, going down to 18 tons is as easy as taking a staycation. But if you are among the four billion on the planet who each emit one ton a year, you have nowhere to go but up.

Leading scientific groups and most climate scientists say we need to decrease global annual greenhouse gas emissions by at least half of current levels by 2050 and much further by the end of the century. And that will still mean rising temperatures and sea levels for generations.

So why bother recycling or riding your bike to the store? Because we all want to do something, anything. Call it “action bias.” But, sadly, individual action does not work. It distracts us from the need for collective action, and it doesn’t add up to enough. Self-interest, not self-sacrifice, is what induces noticeable change. Only the right economic policies will enable us as individuals to be guided by self-interest and still do the right thing for the planet.

Every ton of carbon dioxide pollution causes around $20 of damage to economies, ecosystems and human health. That sum times 20 implies $400 worth of damage per American per year. That’s not damage you’re going to do in the distant future; that’s damage each of us is doing right now. Who pays for it?

We pay as a society. My cross-country flight adds fractions of a penny to everyone else’s cost. That knowledge leads some of us to voluntarily chip in a few bucks to “offset” our emissions. But none of these payments motivate anyone to fly less. It doesn’t lead airlines to switch to more fuel-efficient planes or routes. If anything, airlines by now use voluntary offsets as a marketing ploy to make green-conscious passengers feel better. The result is planetary socialism at its worst: we all pay the price because individuals don’t.

It won’t change until a regulatory system compels us to pay our fair share to limit pollution accordingly. Limit, of course, is code for “cap and trade,” the system that helped phase out lead in gasoline in the 1980s, slashed acid rain pollution in the 1990s and is now bringing entire fisheries back from the brink. “Cap and trade” for carbon is beginning to decrease carbon pollution in Europe, and similar models are slated to do the same from California to China.

Alas, this approach has been declared dead in Washington, ironically by self-styled free-marketers. Another solution, a carbon tax, is also off the table because, well, it’s a tax.

Never mind that markets are truly free only when everyone pays the full price for his or her actions. Anything else is socialism. The reality is that we cannot overcome the global threats posed by greenhouse gases without speaking the ultimate inconvenient truth: getting people excited about making individual environmental sacrifices is doomed to fail.

High school science tells us that global warming is real. And economics teaches us that humanity must have the right incentives if it is to stop this terrible trend.

Don’t stop recycling. Don’t stop buying local. But add mastering some basic economics to your to-do list. Our future will be largely determined by our ability to admit the need to end planetary socialism. That’s the most fundamental of economics lessons and one any serious environmentalist ought to heed.


Think about it. As I write this Republicans are saying we can gain "energy independence" by drilling for more oil. Democrats are saying we can create new jobs by spending more money on "infrastructure" (read: highways, bridges, tunnels, and big buildings in the cities). In California both parties promise to "restore the California Dream" -- a way of life based on cheap land, cheap energy, and cheap water. Finally, notice how even in this essay Gernot Wagner, like the good all-American boy that he is, cannot resist framing the debate by genuflecting to the notion: "free market" capitalism good; "socialism" bad.

Friday, September 02, 2011

3D Politics - Die Grünen

UPDATE: GERMAN GREENS GAIN IN ANOTHER STATE ELECTION -- Parties on the German left prevailed in a regional election in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday... Perhaps the biggest winner of the day was the Green Party, which won 8.5 percent of the vote, more than double the 3.4 percent it received in 2006. See("State Election Adds to Gains by Social Democrats in Germany", The New York Times, September 4, 2011)


The United States may be stuck on stupid with our ridiculous permanent presidential campaign between so-called conservative Republicans and so-called liberal Democrats, but everywhere else Green Parties are on the move. The Alliance 90/The Greens party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) in Germany is the world's strongest Green Party. Founded in 1980 and merging in 1993 with the civil rights movement Bündnis 90 of the former German Democratic Republic (a.k.a. East Germany), Greens have been represented in the German Bundestag for nearly thirty years. In our time of global crisis, even the old gray New York Times has at last grudgingly admitted that Greens are on the move in disparate countries like Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Colombia, and Sweden.

GP
Screen shot from a web site for the German Greens

I am reposting the article from the NYT because it is a perfect follow-up to my earlier post on 3D politics.

Published in The New York Times, September 1, 2011
Greens Gain in Germany, and the World Takes Notice
By Nicholas Kulish

BERLIN — A string of Green Party victories and strong electoral showings across Germany, from the conservative south to the port cities of the north, are helping to redefine politics among voters who are increasingly losing faith in the more established parties.

The Green Party is poised to extend its march into the mainstream on Sunday when voters go to the polls in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The Greens could, for the first time, win seats in the State Parliament and demonstrate their ability to sustain political momentum.

"Nothing in our political science books has prepared us for this kind of party," said Josef Joffe, publisher of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, who noted that the Greens have won the culture war on the left over the rusty Social Democrats on issues like gay rights and the integration of immigrants. "I bet if you had a party like this in America, all my rich friends on both coasts would vote for it."


Although their roots are on the left, the Greens are being increasingly embraced by voters on the right, successfully tapping into a German strain of conservationist conservatism by opposing highways and the demolition of old buildings. It has benefited both from the slow collapse of European socialism and the rising awareness of renewable technologies that have brought even once-skeptical businesspeople into the fold.

With this potent coalition of voters, the Greens surprised Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party when it took control of the affluent southern state of Baden-Württemberg this spring, which is akin to capturing the Texas statehouse. In the process, the party proved it was a force to be reckoned with in German politics, where one in five voters now say they support the Greens.

The German Greens also have served as the spearhead of a global coming out for other Green parties. In Brazil’s presidential election last year, the Green Party candidate won nearly 20 million votes to place third in the first round. The Green Party in Colombia was founded just two years ago, but in 2010 saw its candidate for president place second.

Britain’s House of Commons welcomed its first Green Party member after last year’s election, and Australia’s Greens won their first seat in the lower house in 2010. More significantly, the Greens hold nine out of 76 seats in the Australian Senate, giving the party a swing vote and powerful leverage over legislation in the upper house, where no party holds a majority.

The global surge has remained under the radar in the United States, for many reasons. In a system dominated by two parties, the Greens have no representatives in Congress or, for that matter, in a single state legislature. The party’s image and electoral success in the United States has been tightly bound to the ultimately doomed presidential bids of Ralph Nader rather than depending on the grass-roots methods used to build the Greens in Germany. The German Greens even have their own local chapter in Washington, and they have served as a model for their political cousins abroad.

Gustav Fridolin, one of two leaders of the Swedish Green Party, said he kept a poster from the German Greens’ 2009 parliamentary campaign in his office as inspiration. It reads, "Jobs, jobs, jobs: Only Green helps escape the crisis."

"That important step away from the idea of threatening jobs, threatening development, has been taken in Germany," Mr. Fridolin said in a recent interview. "The party is a more interesting alternative for larger groups in society, not just for people studying environmental policy at university."

The mass killings in Norway in July riveted attention on the strength of right-wing populist parties across Europe, but particularly in Scandinavia. Yet with far fewer headlines, the Green Party in Sweden won more votes in last year’s parliamentary election than the far-right Sweden Democrats, taking 7.3 percent of the vote compared with 5.7 percent for the nationalists.

In Germany, the question is now whether the Greens sustain, or even build, on their recent advances. The party was buoyed by outrage over the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, but it has fallen slightly in polls since. Still, the party could serve as a model for the postindustrial left in Europe and, perhaps, around the world.

It is a long way from the German party’s founding in 1980, when middle-class voters saw the Greens as radicals, heirs to the 1968 student protest movement or even the left-wing terrorists of the Red Army Faction. "People spat on my father when he went door to door," said Milena Oschmann, the daughter of leading party members in the city of Kiel, Germany. She now works for the party, splitting her time between Parliament and the local office in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood.

Ms. Oschmann, 27, described how the party had played host in Berlin to visiting Greens from Greece, Taiwan and Japan as well as Sweden and Australia. In her sports jacket and ballet slippers, a Sony Vaio laptop balanced on her knees during a local meeting in Neukölln, Ms. Oschmann would be right at home on Capitol Hill. She studied politics in Bremen, Germany, and in London before moving to Berlin, a representative of the new generation of Green politicians who have left the beard-and-sandals stereotype behind.

While the Fukushima disaster is often credited with helping the Greens’ surge in Germany, their initial jolt in support in Baden-Württemberg came from the party’s opposition to a multibillion-dollar rail project known as Stuttgart 21 that involved tearing down portions of an old station and downing hundreds of old trees. “They’re covering both sides of the street, serving the deep conservative instincts of Germany for no change,” said Mr. Joffe, the newspaper publisher. “Protecting nature, slowing down growth, slowing down industrialization, is actually a conservative agenda.”

In most reliable scientific opinion surveys, the Greens are polling around 20 percent of the vote, nearly twice the 10.7 percent of the votes they won in the 2009 parliamentary election.

"In former times I always said the Green Party is the party of dentists’ wives," said Reinhard Schlinkert, one of the most established political pollsters in Germany. "Now many of the dentists have started voting for them."

But polls are not votes, and opinions can be fickle. The Greens surprised the political establishment by polling ahead of the center-left Social Democrats in some surveys this past spring — and appeared poised to win the Berlin mayoral race, one of the top prizes of German politics. But as the nuclear crisis receded, attention turned to whether they had the personnel and policy credentials to govern a big state like Baden-Württemberg.

"Once you’re No. 1, you’re in charge of everything," Cem Özdemir, one of the party’s two national leaders, said in an interview recently, "and you’re held accountable."



More on Bündnis 90/Die Grünen:

A green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir. In the 2009 federal elections, the party won 10.7% of the votes and 68 out of 622 seats in the Bundestag.

January 13, 1980 - Foundation congress

In the 1970s, environmentalists and peace activists politically organised amongst thousands of action groups. The political party The Greens (German: Die Grünen) was founded January 13, 1980 in Karlsruhe to give this movement political and parliamentary representation. Opposition to pollution, use of nuclear power, NATO military action, and certain aspects of industrialised society were principal campaign issues. The Greens originated from civil initiatives, new social movements of the protests of 1968, but also from the conservative spectrum. Important figures in the first years were – among others – Joschka Fischer, Antje Vollmer, Petra Kelly, Rudi Dutschke, Undine von Blottnitz[1] and Herbert Gruhl.

GP Campaign
Milena Oschmann, right, campaigned for the party last month in Berlin. She said Greens from Greece and Japan had visited to study the Germans' success.


Four Pillars:
  • Ecological wisdom
  • Grassroots democracy
  • Nonviolence
  • Social justice


English Language Web Site:

http://www.gruene-bundestag.de/cms/english/rubrik/12/12034.english.html