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Which Way Forward Opinion for the Green Party
GDI Looks at The Outcome of the Tulsa National Convention
A Statement by: Ashley Smith, Forrest Hill, James Leas and Cara Campbell & Cat Woods
At the 2005 National Delegates Meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Green Party arrived at a fork in the road. The delegates voted down resolutions offered by Greens for Democracy and Independence designed to ensure proportionate representation within the party, accountability to the expressed will of the membership, and political independence from the two corporate parties.
This vote seems to fly in the face of everything that the Green Party stands
for.
As Kevin Zeese, Green Party senatorial candidate in Maryland, rightly points out, "the overwhelming majority of Greens support real democracy - based on the principle of one person one vote - and want the Green Party to stand for something different than the Democrats or Republicans."
"The Tulsa decisions exacerbate the already growing rift in the party. The ramifications of these decisions must be reversed if the Greens are to truly challenge the corporate parties. This can
only happen if Greens across the country are willing to fight to take back their party. Only an uprising by the membership will reinvigorate the Green Party," added Zeese.
At Tulsa, two currents came into conflict over the future of the Party, a radical wing embodied by the Greens for Democracy and Independence (GDI), and a liberal wing which is reluctant to pose an electoral threat to the Democratic Party.
GDI argues that the Green Party must become the political expression of the living social movements in order to challenge the corporate duopoly at the ballot box. It came into being to resolve the political and organizational crisis that wreaked havoc in the Green Party during the 2004 election.
The crisis started in the period leading up to the nomination of Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, who argued for a "safe states strategy" in battleground states during the 2004 election campaign. This tactic was viewed by many Greens as a political strategy of capitulation to the Democratic
Party in order to defeat Bush.
The safe states strategy was supported primarily by small state parties, which were disproportionately represented at the 2004 national convention. Based on this unrepresentative and therefore undemocratic apportionment, Cobb won the nomination by riding on the minority political current of lesser evilism.
The Cobb campaign for president garnered only about 120,000 votes, or about 1/3 of the registered Greens in the country. More importantly, there was virtually no support for Cobb from activists outside the party. As a result of this disastrous showing, Green Parties in fifteen stateslost their ballot lines.
Since the election, the division between GDI supporters and the liberal wing of the national Green Party has become more apparent. Many in the liberal wing have aligned themselves with organizations like the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), whose stated aim is to transform the Democratic Party from within. In fact, David Cobb has appeared on many PDA panels and is prominently featured on their
web site.
The PDA is organizing to bring progressive activists into the Democratic Party, with the hope that it can be transformed from within. If the AFL-CIO - heavily integrated into the Democratic Party and backed by millions of members - has failed in this effort, the PDA with its meager forces stands no chance
of succeeding. The PDA has a greater chance of derailing the Green Party's efforts than moving the Democrats to the left.
Greens for Independence and Democracy seek to re-assert the central mission of the Green Party as the political arm of the social movements. GDI has been the driving force in developing proposals to institute democratic reforms and assert the independence of the Green Party from the duopoly. GDI has presented these proposals publicly on its website and at state party meetings, where they have won majority
support from state parties in New York, California, Florida, Vermont, and Utah.
Divisions Intensify in Tulsa
The Tulsa meeting was essentially a contest between the two wings of the party played out through the same unrepresentative apportionment scheme that distorted the outcome of the 2004 Milwaukee Convention. Under the present apportionment scheme, California and New York account for only about 16% of the National Committee, even though more than 2/3 of all Green Party members live within these two states. Liberal delegates to the National Committee overwhelmingly represent smaller state parties - many with less
than a few 100 members - and yet they control almost 2/3 of the vote; delegates from states supporting GDI represent most of the Greens in the country, yet constitute a minority voting block on the National Committee.
Conflict between the two wings erupted early in the convention over which delegates to seat from Utah, a state where two groups claim to be the official Green Party. The original Green Party of Utah split into two factions in 2004 over whether to put David Cobb on their state's ballot line. The Green Party of Utah decided to not put Cobb on the ballot line, so the Cobb supporters, with the support of a few leaders in the GPUS, attempted to purge from the party those who did not support putting Cobb on the ballot line.
The Utah courts upheld the original decision of the Green Party of Utah, and the "purged" group has since regained ballot status and been official recognized by the state of Utah as the GPUT political party. By contrast, the Cobb faction is a non-profit, rather than a political party, basing its legal case on
alleged trademark infringement.
During role call, the "Cobb Party" delegates were automatically seated by the leadership body. GDI delegates later protested this decision, and a pro-GDI delegate from Florida proposed seating one Utah delegate from each faction. This proposal was voted down 57 to 34 (with 4 abstentions).
Following this skirmish, Peter Camejo and David Cobb spoke to the body, each describing a different strategy for the future of the party.
Camejo stressed building the Green Party as the political expression of the mass social movements, advocated tolerance of the many political tendencies within the party, and sought to build unity among them, going so far as to apologize to David Cobb for any misstatements he may have made against
him during the campaign. Finally, he called upon the Green Party to stand up to the Democrats and Republicans, promoting its independent challenge to the two party system as "the spirit of the
future."
Cobb repeated some of Camejo's best points, but then emphasized an exclusionary message. Condemning what he called "sectarianism" - his label for anyone who opposed his safe states strategy or advocated independence of the Green Party from corporate partisan interests. Cobb denounced Counter-Punch's Alexander Cockburn, saying that he "represents why the sectarian left has failed." The not-so-subtle message was that the Green Party should exclude anyone to the left of himself, such as those who oppose supporting liberal Democrats in their election campaigns.
Leaders of the liberal wing on the National Committee made their position clear after the speeches. "I didn't join the Green Party to fight against Democrats and Republicans... I'm not willing to define us as a party independent of the corporate parties," Illinois delegate Phil Huckleberry declared.
Similarly, Jodi Haug, a member of the national Steering Committee (SC), declared her opposition to independence from the two corporate parties by arguing, "We should not paint ourselves into a corner."
The GDI Proposals
The liberal wing did not argue against the content of the proposals. Instead they raised objections concerning bylaws, implementation, and procedure. They repeatedly ignored when the concerns they expressed were pointed out as factually inaccurate or already resolved. They disregarded amendments
which had been accepted to have the proposals simply create working groups to formulate procedures based
on the general principles presented in the proposals. After a long period of debate - during which the governing Steering Committee left the room to caucus (without explanation) and anti-GDI forces led delegates in doing "The Wave" and singing "Oklahoma" and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (with
its refrain of "one, two, three strikes, you're out!") - the National Committee defeated all three proposals by an average vote of 58 to 34 (with 3 abstentions).
The vote on the GDI proposals closely mirrored the vote to seat both Utah delegations and drew a clear delineation between the two factions of the party. There is no question that the undemocratic apportionment scheme has allowed a liberal block of delegates to gain the upper hand in the national
leadership body of the Green Party.
The test now for GDI is to determine how to rally the majority inside the party, and appeal to activists outside the party, in order to build a more democratic structure which reflects the will
to provide a real option for voters. As one GDI member put it, "If the liberal wing is able to maintain its dominance of the party and orient the Greens into subordinating themselves to the Democratic
Party, the Green Party will likely wither away like the Working Families Party and the New Party before them."
The Future of GDI
The opportunity and responsibility for GDI is immense. The Democrats continue to ratify the Bush administration's program and thereby keep stoking frustration with the two party system. The Democrats continue tosupport the occupation of Iraq, voted for the renewal of the Patriot Act, gave the margin of victory for the passage of CAFTA in the Senate, and confirmed the nomination of anti-abortion Reaganite,
John Roberts to the Supreme Court.
Today, millions of workers, women, gays, Latinos, blacks, Arabs, Muslims and other oppressed populations find no electoral expression for their demands and aspirations within the two corporate
parties. Many have grown frustrated with the failure of the lesser-evil strategy of voting for Democrats and are looking for an alternative. In 2004, leaders of all the various social movements suspended their efforts in order to mobilize the vote for Kerry, even though Kerry opposed almost all of
their demands. Nine months after the election, those social movements are still demobilized. Hopefully, upcoming demonstrations will mark the return of mass social movements after the long hiatus.
The Greens have an immense opportunity to give electoral voice to such mobilizations and to grow rapidly in the process. The disenfranchised in America form a large latent electoral force, which GDI and supporting state Green Parties can connect with to renew the Green Party. Such a coalition offers the
hope of galvanizing the Greens and the broader social movements to build a genuine third party, rooted in this country's excluded majority. Unfortunately, the present leadership of the GPUS is set to direct them right back into the arms of the Democratic Party.
The contest between the two visions of the Green party, as expressed by the two wings of the National Committee, is not just a fight for the soul of the Green Party; it is a fight to win the hearts and minds of people to break with lesser evilism and to build an effective challenge to corporate politics.
While many in the current liberal wing of the Green Party are taking the road of surrender to the Democratic Party, the GDI currently is considering how to galvanize individuals and state parties to take the road of democracy and independence."
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