Greens and money… an uneasy relationship.
[First, the message. See the end of this posting for my take on this. -Thomas]
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 00:33:57 -0500
From: “Owen Broadhurst”
To: needtoknow@green-rainbow.org, statecom-discuss@green-rainbow.org
For those who might take offense at the posting of this, my most humble
apologies- but a series of questions have now been raised in my mind that I
believe need addressing. Too rich to resist.
Arrive at your very own conclusions. I’m conducting research…
“Reality is what you believe in.”
— Sonia Johnson, “Wildfire”
—-Original Message Follows—-
From: Howie Hawkins
Reply-To: gdi@lists.riseup.net
To: gdi@lists.riseup.net
Subject: Re: [GDI] Selling out pays off — big
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 21:28:58 -0500
Les,
I would be interested in your documentation of Boell Foundation funding of
the Green Institute.
Political parties in Germany get money from their government to set up
affiliated foundations (much like the Republican and Democratic institutes
funded by the National Endowment for Democracy for meddling - and providing
cover for the CIA and military operatives - in the internal affairs of
other countries).
The German Greens’ Boell Foundation is definitely in the hands of realos of
the Joschka Fischer school, who, we should remember, sees the German Greens
as the yuppie’s party, the middle-of-the-road power broker between the
Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, not the extension of the
radical extra-parliamentary movements into the electoral arena as founders
like Rudi Dutscke and Petra Kelly envisioned the Greens.
A few years ago, the Boell Foundation had a joint conference on economic
policy with the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank of the
Democratic Leadership Conference, which featured a number of policy wonks
from the Clinton administration. They published a book of the talks: it was
promoted the neoliberal economic agenda.
It should also be remembered that the realos in Europe publicly sided with
the ASGP realos against the GPUSA fundis in the late 1990s.
Anyway, Les, I would like to see the documentation of Boell Foundation
funding of the Green Institute. It would be consistent with the pattern.
Meanwhile, here is the URL for the whole Ken Sain blog about this:
http://www.kensain.com/2005/02/greens-get-green_11.html
As Sain notes, these “anonymous” donors will become a matter of public
record when the Green Institute and the Liberty Tree Foundation file their
IRS reports.
Sain also says his source told him that this same couple gave “tens of
thousands of dollars to a number of individual state Green parties.”
If that is true, a number of Greens know who they are. All of us should
know — and know how the money was spent.
Ken Sain is a Green and a reporter in DC, currently with The Blade, a gay
newspaper. Pro-Cobb in the Green nomination process, he has his sources and
is reporting internal Green developments before anyone else I know.
Another blog he posted yesterday is about a meeting of Camejo, Cobb, Ross
Mirkarimi, Matt Gonzalez, and Media Benjamin last Saturday. According to
Sain, Green Party officers wanted Cobb and Camejo to sign a “unity” fund
raising letter for the national Green Party. Camejo refused, saying he
could not sign the letter while the party is not organized around the
principle of one green, one vote. Good for Peter.
Today, Sain offers his own critique of one Green, one vote and defense of
the Milwaukee delegation formula. It’s all at http://www.kensain.com/
–Howie Hawkins, Syracuse NY
hhawkins@igc.org
At 01:53 PM 2/12/2005 -0800, les evenchick wrote:
>Can anyone identify who the “midwest couple” referred
>to is and what their politics are?
>
>I recently discovered that an early funder of the
>green institute is a German organization called the
>Boell Institute. Searching the internet also comes up
>with a DC based Boell Foundation.
>
>In German the oe is actually an o with an umlat(..)
>above it.
>
>They are self described as an affiliate of the German
>Green Party and their politics are pro capitalist
>reformist.
>
>Worth looking into because this tells us about the
>behind the scenes power and connections of the
>anti-independence crowd.
>
>Concerning the GPUS finances, the assets were stated
>as in the $40,000 range in the last GPUS accountants
>report.
>
> Les Evenchick
> New orleans
>
>
>— Steve Greenfield
>
>> Cobb et al Collect Thirty Pieces of Silver
>>
>> Here’s what happens when you sell out the Green
>> Party, become an interest-advocacy group trading in
>> a quality-branded endorsement, and take an “adult”
>> approach to accomodating corporatism and militarism
>> in exchange for dropping direct challenge to the
>> duopolistic status quo: you get rich. Very rich.
>>
>> Cobb and his cadre of Green Uncle Toms are
>> millionaires, and the Green Party is bankrupt.
>>
>> With all due respect to honest proponents of the
>> “home rule” approach to endorsements: We either go
>> fully independent or we go home. We flatter
>> ourselves by calling our party “Green” when we have
>> become the FUBAR party. Accomodation is suicide for
>> our Party and homicide for the world. There is no
>> more time to be lost. Terms must be defined.
>> Boundaries must be drawn. The time to make our stand
>> is now.
>>
>> Which side are you on?
>>
>> Steve Greenfield
>>
>> http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/
>>
>> Friday, February 11, 2005
>> GREENS GET BIG DONATIONS
>> KEN SAIN - The Green Party has found its own George
>> Soros and this week raised more money for the party
>> and its think tanks than in any week in the party’s
>> history. . . A midwest couple donated $250,000 to
>> the Green Institute this week. That is the Green
>> think tank started by the party’s former political
>> director Dean Myerson. The three members of the
>> board of directors are longtime Greens who were
>> instrumental to the founding of the party: David
>> Cobb, Linda Martin and Thomas Linzey.
>>
>> The same mid west couple also donated another
>> $250,000 to something called Liberty Tree Foundation
>> for the Democratic Revolution. . . founded by former
>> national Green Party steering committee co-chair Ben
>> Manski and claims as its mission to be radical in
>> its support of democracy in the United States.
>>
>> That’s a half-million dollars in one week for two
>> Green Party think tanks. What about the national
>> party itself? My source tells me they are not doing
>> as well. The party spend $4,000 more than it took in
>> during January.
>
[Now, my take. -Thomas]
Owen,
It public information that the Green Institute has received funding from the Boell Institute - they say so, right on their web site. I also believe I had an exchange with D.M. early on in which he indicated that he was headed to Europe to consult with folks there.
This is on their “about.html” page:
***
Green Institute Financial Supporters
Ongoing program support from the Boell Institute, the Green Network and individual contributors.
***
As for association with the Boell Institute being problematic… what should we make of this item, from the November Green Institute Newsletter?
“The Institute participated in a conference hosted by the German Historical Institute (GHI) and the Boell Foundation. “The Origins of Green Parties in Global Perspective,” convened on May 26, 2004, at the GHI office in Washington, DC, gathered Green Party founders and early activists from the United States, Germany, Australia, Finland, and the United Kingdom. US participants included Charlene Spretnak, John Rensenbrink, Howie Hawkins, Brian Tokar and Lorna Salzman. The GI held a reception for visiting guests the night before the conference and video-taped the conference. In the future, we plan to host excerpts on our website and make the tape available to our readers. Please check www.greeninstitute.net for updates. For a Boell Foundation report on the event, visit http://www.boell.org/ori-gins_and_perspectives_of_th.html.”
Howie Hawkins in the same room with John Rensenbrink? :)
***
With regards to the $250,000 donations, I think folks need a reality check:
0. My local Assemblymember, Democrat John Laird, single handedly managed to raise far more than this when he ran for re-election recently, in a race with a foregone conclusion in his favor. The major parties and their various branches collectively raise more than this every single hour of every single day of the year. They think in the hundreds of millions. Even the “little guys” among them raise hundreds of thousands without breaking a sweat.
1. In case people have forgotten, having a foundation/institute you sit on the board of, manage, or are employed by receive a donation does nothing for your personal wealth - this isn’t money you get to keep for yourself. At best, it might guarantee that you have a job for a little longer. The IRS takes a pretty dim view of personal enrichment via such an institution - so do future donors — and the courts: the board of directors is criminally liable if it is negligent enough to permit this type of behavior.
2. $250,000 is barely enough to keep a very SMALL organization running for a single year. Small meaning two or three employees and a small amount of program activity. As we know, from watching the national Green Party try and struggle through on a budget somewhat larger than that. $250,000 is NOTHING, in the larger scheme of things… even if you spent almost nothing on overhead/travel,etc., and paid everyone $25,000/year, you couldn’t support even six salaries on that. This is NOT “big money”. This is “little” money, especially in the arena of “foundations” and “think tanks”.
3. Ross M. has a $90,000/year job as a newly elected Supervisor in S.F. He’s also been a very successful organizer for numerous very progressive causes in S.F. for the last decade or so. If he wanted to “sell out”, I’m sure there are vastly more lucrative opportunities. My guess is that things are much the same for the other folks involved with these organizations.
Claiming that any individual, let alone a group of individuals, have become “millionaires” via their participation in the Green Party,
then “selling out” is absurd. There are vastly easier ways to get rich.
In that same vein, while I admire Peter Camejo, even though he did a lot of things I believe are just plain stupid and/or wrong during the last presidential election cycle, it seems rather surreal to see people complaining about Greens getting wealthy, then holding him as a role model, when he is one of the few Greens who is independently wealthy enough to spend the time and money it takes to travel all over creation and act as a national political figure, and makes his money as an investment manager.
With regards to George Soros, let’s see:
G.S. - $30 million to the Democrats, bringing along tens of millions from his friends and associates. Pocket change for a billionaire who claims he’s no longer “working for money”, but just wants to make “$300 million a year” to fund his various foundations.
Anonymous - $500,000. One time donation.
Not quite the same thing.
A healthy Green Party is part of a larger ecology of institutions and organizations and associations - the sum of which consists of a “movement”.
Having the people leading our movement deliberately forgo personal wealth and comfort is one thing, but having our institutions take vows of poverty and deliberately forgo the resources necessary to enable the people working within them to be effective is another.
Should we look a gift horse in the mouth? Sure. … and if the teeth aren’t bad, we shouldn’t have any hesistation about taking it. :)
Regards,
Thomas Leavitt
