How Green is our valley?

There are debates which rise to the fore that have not been addressed following elections of Green campaigns and numerous campaigns throughout the country. The question asked in Wes's post: "Who killed the Progressive movement?" should be preceded with the question: "Who created the Progressive movement?" The term progressive, like the term liberal, is the latest whipping boy in the media and was no more then an effort to avoid the label of liberal by substituting words. The strongholds of progressivism are the same strongholds of liberalism. The priorities of progressives are the same as the priorities of liberals.

The self-definition of the Green Party has not recognized the real social forces behind the political priorities of a green party. It has not matured sufficiently to distinguish between Greens and progressives at the political level. This accounts for the constant fusion issue and party jumping of activists, former candidates and elected public officials. This is no small obstacle. There are many who fear openness in this discussion. Acceptance of a third party strategy has to move to the point where we develop language in our campaigns, priorities in our issues work and reconstruct our own strategic political map and vision for the future. Our independence is our ballot line, our Platform, our base of support and our distinct ties to the communities that we live in.

There is a separate discussion to be held as to strategy, vision and priorities. It involves assimilating our electoral experiences, considering the political landscape and mapping out survival tactics in heavily Democratic states. If we see family farmers as a potential base of support in a given campaign, then we need to identify what are the critical issues of concern to them that are not represented by the Republican Party and are consistent with the Green Platform and Key Values. If we are addressing an urban context, we can provide leadership only if we present a distinct agenda of policies that differentiate the Green Party from the urban Democratic Party machines.

This goes back to my post on redefining the politics of bioregionalism. Resource management and renewable energies are critical areas where the Green Party is able to address both urban and rural residents with distinct policy proposals. They are also significant issues on the current political agenda. Our presentations need to be distinct; otherwise, we will be exposed as Bill Richardson did against the Green candidate for Governor. He said: “I am greener then the Green” because of his position of stopping the project on Otero Mesa. The Green Party candidate simply stated his desire to review the issue. On the one hand, this can be dismissed as a gaff that was seized on by Richardson, but on the other hand it demonstrated that Democrats can out-green Greens if we do not distinguish our positions fundamentally.

Today Richardson has been doing things on the state level that present him as a greener then Green and the Green Party of New Mexico has fallen off the ballot. There are windows of opportunity, but the windows are not open for long and there is a need to demonstrate the relevancy of the Green Party in concrete victories. Visibility and viability are based on our real role in politics and not simply our rhetorical flourishes condemning the other parties. Being called spoilers will be neutralized only if we demonstrate our relevancy in decisions being made and show our base on Election Day. You cannot be a spoiler if you are contributing to the decisions being made in demonstrative terms.

Democrats in California are losing a significant base of support in regards to the peripheral canal and the California Delta. But, without the concepts of adaptive governance and regional water planning being incorporated in the debate the distinctions between the Green Party and the Democratic Party will not prove sufficient to engage Delta stakeholders in the local Green Party work. Likewise, failing to distinguish the concerns of farm workers and family farmers in the Central Valley from corporate agribusinesses will only push those stakeholders into the arms of the Republican Party.

All of this requires a party organization much more rooted in our communities than is currently the case. It means seeing our electoral politics as connected to our distinct vision. It means recruiting candidates that have deep roots locally and have the capacity of presenting the need for structural reforms needed to implement a Green agenda. It means being there with the people when they are expressing their anger and frustration, while presenting new options that address the underlying concerns.

We are the only game in town capable of doing this. But, it does mean deciding as an organization how we can do this. Our state Water Planning Platform plank presents the vision, http://www.cagreens.org/platform/platform_ecology.shtml#water but it does not give us a roadmap forward. The window of opportunity is closing and if we cannot act decisively now, we will not be able to do anything when the window is closed and locked.

Fair pay for fair work.

The idea that information is free seems to be a mantra for the Internet. Some ask if that is not just a capitalist scheme to short change those who supply content... for free.

Consider Huffington Post. Paying their writers is "not our financial model" says the founder, Ken Lerer. Yet, time and again the progressives who loudly support Danny Glover and Unite Here, who march with the California Nurses Association when they strike over wages and benefits, have no qualms about using venues that do not pay the writer, or the reporter.

This argument was brought forward by Stephen Smoliar at The Rehearsal Studio. Smoliar is a scientist and writer by trade. The Rehearsal Studio is where he tries on / works out ideas that may or may not find their way into other content. His view is the progressivism has lost touch with the world of work.

Whether or not you agree with that, you have to pay attention to those who he cited in this post, especially Timothy Egan, whose NY Times blog entry, Save the Press, is quoted liberally. Egan is fighting for his job. He wants to be paid for doing what he does, as we all do. However, what he does is to write, and content is a commodity to be acquired and the lowest price and resold for what ever anyone can make out of it.

If any of those guys on the docks heard that I was now part of a profession that asked people to labor for nothing, they’d laugh in their lunch buckets — then probably shut The Huffington Post down. Doesn’t the “progressive” agenda, much touted on their pages, include a living wage?

So what is it about Huffington Post, or OpEdNews that makes them the model to be emulated? Well, it seems to be in the best tradition of the worst of Capitalism, to make money off the labor of someone else.

Is there a Green Solution? What we currently have are venues for private publishing (Green Party Watch or Green Commons if it gets revived???) and an attempt to build a social networking site for Greens. (Green Change.) Yet, I have no answer for my wife when she asks me how much I am making for all the time I spend here and would not my time be better spent completing the very long list of homeowner tasks that we have agreed must be done.

It's the economy....

We are all familiar with the mantra of the first Clinton Campaign. "It's the economy, stupid." According to Wikipedia, it originated with James Carville.

This brings up a point that I think is very valid right now. The next presidential election may well hang on economic issues as much as it does on the war in Iraq. While spending $ Billions on the war, according to a report from UCLA, we are in clear danger of sliding into an economic recession. The central factor being the decline in home prices along with rising interest rates.

The forecast presents a gloomier outlook for jobs and the housing market. The nation's unemployment rate will rise to 5.2% by mid-2008, up from the current 4.6%.

And home values will fall 10% to 15% from their peaks, the forecast says, meaning that sliding prices have yet to hit bottom.

"The small recent minimal declines represent not the end, but rather the beginning of what will be a very painful decline," David Shulman, author of the forecast, said in the report, referring to home prices.

When I look at "progressive activism in recent years, there is little about the economy. The main focus seems to be a protest against globalization, a war with Wal-Mart (globalization run amok) and a general bias against corporate power.

I would challenge the GPCA to come up with an campaign that will challenge both the typical progressive agenda, filled with negativism rather than solutions, and the status quo of Demican / Republicrat politics. What would that look like?

The 10 Key Values of the GPCA include the ideal of Community-Based Economics, yet I almost never hear anyone step up and explain how that would work, what it might mean for the declining middle class in America.

If, as Carville indicated, it really is the economy, then it seems to me that electoral success will not happen unless we have sound set of policies that provide solutions to the economic problems of the American voter.

If you have the solution, let's hear it. What Green Party solution will avoid or mitigate the problems of the current mortgage crisis? What alternatives are there to increased movement of production work away from the US, be it manufacturing or agriculture? What does it say about our country when economists gauge the health of the economy by watching consumer spending rather than manufacturing production?