|
End the Squabble in the Green Party - A Call For
A Bicameral Legislature in the National Assembly
End the Squabble in the Green Party - A Call For
A Bicameral Legislature in the National Assembly
By Glenn Hopkinss
I first want to thank Ashley, Cat, James and Forrest both for their cogent summation of the Tulsa meeting, and for clearly identifying themselves in the GDI camp rather than the Cobb-liberal camp. Those of us who didn't make it to Tulsa can now get a good overview. As several of my friends and I were groping toward a solution to this split, we noticed that the problem of potential big-state domination because of high population, and little states having only
miniscule input has been addressed for 200 years by the nation's bicameral Congress. I therefore suggest that Greens immediately reframe their national governing body into a Senate of sorts, where each state has two grandfalloon representatives, and a House of Representatives by population in which "one person, one vote" is honored. I suggest we also try to parallel the national government (money bills start in the house, the Senate advises and consents on a shadow cabinet, etc.)
Thus we and our structures will be immediately less arcane and more understandable to the public. We are looking for them to join us in the logic of the ten key values, are we not? I
suppose the "old guard" will be the Senate and our young bucks will campaign for house seats. Fine. It was telling and hurtful to me while camping with a pretty wild bunch of guys in Oregon last summer two weeks before Tulsa when one of them flatly stated, "Oh The Greens. They're crazy." Let's move away from that persona, shall we? A bicameral national body does this.
You'll notice I used Kurt Vonnegut's term for "president of the club who wears the funny hat" - grandfalloon. Maybe if the Green Party's Senators are called the Grandfalloons both we and they will bear in mind that the enemy is patriarchy and an unthinking "herd mentality." For all Ralph's crowing "Go, we go!" there was never any doubt that he was the alpha rooster, after all. Had he departed more significantly from the herd and comitted to a Shadow Cabinet to parallel campaign with him representing Green values in 2000 I firmly believe he'd currently be finishing his second of two terms in a very, very different world right now.
The attention now being given to Warren G. Harding's...err, I mean George W. Bush's disasterous staff appointment to FEMA, the indictment of the Vice Presidents Chief of Staff and the discrepancies between the Bushco story on WMD and the truth, gives us a good window of opportunity to express our belief in a collegial circle of intelligence to run this country, suchas that formed by Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy. (Democrats are our feeder group, not vice versa.) website www.progressivegovernment and www.projectbackbone are working to form such a cirlce of intelligence,"shadow cabinet."
Why have we dropped the ball on this?
I propose that our national coordinators move forward with this. The vote to explore a Green Cabinet has never be rescinded. Only our leadership has dropped the ball. Some of us created a bulletin board on this at the Davis and Elkins College national meeting over a decade ago.
I agree with the writers of "Which Way Forward for the Green Party" if they are implying that "leaders" departing the stage to caucus in the middle of a giant plenary leaving a huge group stranded is totally unacceptable procedure. But I wish I'd been there for the singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." True, the particular song is trivial but there is huge power and focus in group singing and we need a green anthem to begin and end meetings with. I commend Fred Hosea, co-chair of our working group who is searching for one. We could have a national contest.
The thoughts here are my own. No endorsement by my working group is implied.
Glenn Hopkins, Mootney123@aol.com is a member of California Greens International Protocols Working Group
You must be the change you want to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi
> Green Focus Home
> Subscribe to Green Focus
| 
