End of Year Report on GreenAllianceUSA
End of Year Report on GreenAllianceUSA
by Walt Contreras Sheasby
As the end of the year approaches and we enter the 2004 election cycle,
this is a good time to remind ouselves of what GreenAllianceUSA is all
about. This listserve is intended to help build the educational, agitational,
and organizational needs of the Green Alliance organization.
Membership on this list requires agreement with the Vision Statement
which is appended below. Those who have not read the statement should
do so, and those who have read it before may wish to remind themselves
of our goals and values.
This list is moderated, and those who express deep disgreement with the
principles of the GA will be unsubscribed. As political partisans, our views
represent only a part of the political spectrum, not its totality, and not
even the totality of Green Party perspectives. Subscribers are expected to
take an active role in the Greens or in allied social movements, including
other radical organizations.
We have recently re-activated a moderated list open to ALL political
viewpoints and with no requirement of Green activism. In that forum, called
Green_All_Views@yahoogroups.com, no one will be removed for views
that are not compatible with the Green Alliance, such as opposition to
reproductive rights and family planning, support for coercive population
control or restrictive immigration, denying rights based on gender, race,
ethnicity, or sexual preference, or expresions of support for candidates
running in opposition to Greens.
We see this Green_All_Views list as an opportunity to engage the wider
public, particularly progressives who reject the politics of anti-capitalism
and radical economic democracy, or the strategy of building independent
political action against the two major parties controlled by the corporate
rich. Those who disagree with us on any or all issues are invited to freely
participate in this forum, but they will not be given a free ride. Indeed, we
hope that supporters of the Green Alliance will confront those views and
hopefully persuade the proponents.
Please help build the Green_All_Views list among those who are willing
to debate with us and who seem amenable to friendly persuasion. And
please continue to build the GreenAllianceUSA list among those who
share our values and goals. Those who support a strong Nader campaign
should also be on the list RalphNader2004@yahoogroups.com.
The GA National Congress has once again been postponed, this time to
the early Spring in Berkeley, CA, unless other offers to host the meeting
are made. Dues that have been received and hopefully will be received
in greater measure will be used to fund this National Congress. Please
renew your dues and your commitment to building the Green Alliance.
VISION STATEMENT OF THE GREEN ALLIANCE
Approved: January 20, 2002 at the Green Alliance
Founding Convention in New Orleans
To Renew the Spirit of the Green Party,
We Must Build a New Green Movement.
Growing the Green movement and party as the alternative to the politics
of capitalist abuse of humanity and nature is the highest priority we face.
Green politics are different from traditional politics to the extent that our
ballot-line party is in a fruitful relationship with a grassroots movement
from below. In this dialectic, the party is vitalized by the movement, while
the movement is connected to the mainstream by the party. Neither is
absorbed into the other, both work in conjunction to build the vibrancy of
green democracy.
We envision the destiny of the United States Green Party as the
organizational focus of the green movement within this relationship.We
reject the traditional strategy of piecemeal reform of the capitalist power
structure. We wish to challenge the system itself and not merely its
current policy or personnel.We believe that theory and action must grow
in concert; that open debate of ideas is essential if knowledge is to grow;
that theory must serve as a compass to guide our practice; that unity
can only be built if we organize in a way that affirms the value of those
most oppressed and least represented in this capitalist society; and,
that our success must be measured by the advancement of those
oppressed social groups.
We seek an organization in which the leadership is assumed by
representatives of those groups who are especially oppressed and have
the most to gain from the liberation and transformation of this capitalist
social regime. We join with those who say we must focus on grassroots
organizing among our constituencies on the local level, building a deep
as well as a broad base. People of color must play a central leadership
role in building progressive independent politics.
We believe that the politics we project must go beyond liberalism and
populism and openly embrace radical solutions. We must strongly affirm
a commitment to a sustainable economic system and not simply a
negative rejection of capitalism. Criticism must point the way toward a
genuine solution of extremely vexing problems, and not simply move the
focus from one issue to another without illuminating the totality.
In our method of bringing change about and constructing a new world
within the shell of the old, we must strive for a movement that grows and
is sustainable not one that rises and deflates with each protest against
a specific outrage.Action must be based on a clear conception of what
needs to be done, not on isolated gestures of discontent. Nihilism and
cynicism feed off of each other, leading from disillusion to despair.
If we are to succeed, we must be known for the vision that we believe in,
not for what we reject.We wish to rekindle and sustain the radical spirit
of the popular movements of the twentieth century: from the CIO sit-downs
to the ban-the-bomb marches; from the civil rights movement to the anti-war
mobilizations, and the revolutionary feminism and student radicalism of the
1960s and 70s.
On the other hand, we reject the left tendency toward sectarianism, dividing
groups over terminology that often seems arcane to the outside world.We
wish to rally all progressives to our cause, whether they identify most
closely
with anti-racism, feminism, anti-colonialism, anarchism, socialism, social
ecology, economic democracy or other progressive movements.
A common denominator that can be applied to all these movements is the
term RADICAL, for they all seek fundamental change, and we submit this
often abused but still inspiring word as a theme to unite the many into one.
or all these reasons the Green Alliance will take steps to build a vigorous
movement that will strive for grass roots organizing as the key to creating
a new world based on a sustainable economic system. We hope to recruit
all those who see themselves not as dividers but as growers of the overall
movement for social change.The Green Alliance will strive for recognition as
an important social force for change. It will be self-financed by membership
dues so that our members, not corporations, own and control the organization.
The new Green Alliance will be an independent membership organization for
Green Party activists that organizes alongside, and works within a unified
national Green Party and the ballot-line Green Party organizations of each
state and county. It will work to have its perspectives adopted by the Green
Party, while reserving the right to speak and act independently on behalf of
its own members. We will measure our success by the growth of the green
movement.
We envision this Green Alliance as a model of democracy for the Green
Party, with a mass membership of activists, organized into grassroots
affiliates that finance and control the organization democratically from
below.
We reject liberal conceptions of any Party that imply the logic of top-down
decision- making, where politicians and elite cadres, funded by corporations,
dictate the options in party primaries to an atomized mass of unorganized
party voters.
We seek nothing less than a radical movement from below; not an end to
politics, but an end to politics as usual. Not an end to parties, but the
unification of all who want to end the control of the political system by
people of wealth. Our mission also extends to the active defense of nature
from the system of profit and the restoration of ecological integrity to the
planet earth and all the beings on it. For the security of the earth and all
its species, we can demand no less than a new and powerful green
movement, for the radical transformation of the nature of politics and for
the flourishing of the Greens here and everywhere.
Putting the Movement Into the Party! Join the Green Alliance!
The Green Alliance is a national network of Green Party political clubs,
which are local membership organizations for Green activists.
The Green Alliance gets you connected with grassroots Green activists
across the country who share two central goals:
1) building rank-and-file democracy and power in the Green Party so that
it lives up to its principle of grassroots democracy, and 2) educating and
acting for a radical social, ecological, and economic democracy in place of
capitalism’s exploitation and ecological destruction.
Green Alliance National Coordinating Committee:
President: Howie Hawkins, NY, Secretary-Treasurer: Walt Contreras
Sheasby, CA; Co-chairs: Joe Mosely, NJ; Sam Fassbinder, CA
For more information or for a Membership or Affiliation form, please contact
Alliance@greens.org.
If you support rank-and-file democracy in our politics and our economy, build
the Green Alliance. Send $45 dues to P.O. Box 794, Sierra Madre, CA 91024.
