LET THE GREEN GRASSROOTS REBELLION BEGIN
LET THE GREEN GRASSROOTS REBELLION BEGIN by Carl Mayer
For more than a year, various misleaders of the Green Party have done everything they can to stop a second serious presidential bid by the party. This effort has focused on using procedural mechanisms to thwart the will of the grassroots majority, on working to ensure that Ralph Nader does not get the nomination, and on concocting an illogical “safe states” strategy to accommodate the Democratic Party.
The actions and writings of David Cobb, Ted Glick and others have been problematic, to say the least. Case in point: read Ted Glick’s December 16 column at dissidentvoice.org. In it, he calls Nader “disingenuous” and says: “I just don’t think that Ralph fully ‘gets it’ when it comes to the issues particular to African Americans, Latinos, women and other key constituencies.” Yet Nader had a Native-American woman as his VP candidate in 2000 and has worked tirelessly for minority constituencies his entire career, publishing exposes on how women are ripped-off and how African-Americans are denied credit through discriminatory practices and fighting for legislative measures too numerous to mention that benefit all minority constituencies. His platform in 2000 was the only one to adopt in toto the NOW platform. I personally watched Nader campaign in torn down inner cities like Camden, New Jersey that other candidates would never visit. Meanwhile, Nader campaigned for Glick when Gli
ck ran for Senate in 2002, raised money for him, endorsed him and spoke on his behalf.
The actions of Glick, Cobb and their allies risk thwarting a 2004 Nader/Green campaign and fracturing the Green Party. Just how out of touch they are with the membership of the party was revealed yesterday, December 20, when the leadership of the New Jersey Green Party met in New Brunswick and voted 26-4 to run an all out presidential race in 2004 with Ralph Nader as the nominee. They also voted to poll the membership on this issue and everyone knows what the result will be: I am certain a vast majority - maybe 90% - of the Party wants an all out Green run with Nader at the head of the ticket.
I don’t know if it is possible to persuade Nader to run on the Green ticket in 2004. After running the greatest grassroots progressive campaign in fifty years as the nominee of the Green Party in 2000 and after working tirelessly raising money for the party since then, Nader has had to endure endless rounds of apparatchik machinations and unsubstantiated attacks.
Misleadership threatens to destroy the eight-year alliance between the Greens and Ralph Nader. I say to the membership of the Green Party: take your party back. Tell Glick, Cobb, Rensenbrink et al. to stop trying to thwart the will of the majority to run all out with Ralph Nader.
And if it is too late to have Nader as the Green nominee, the membership of the Green Party should endorse Nader if he runs as an Independent rather than further divide the progressive vote or face the prospect of a Green candidate running a weak campaign in the shadow of a strong and effective Nader campaign.
Carl Mayer served on the Princeton Township Committee from 1995 to 1998 and ran on the Green Party ticket for Congress. He is the author of the book: “Shakedown: The Fleecing Of The Garden State”
