Howie Hawkins Response to Scott McLarty’s “Ten Urgent Questions for Greens”
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 15:01:21 -0500
From: “Owen Broadhurst”
Urgent Questions for Greens”
To: needtoknow@green-rainbow.org
Scott,
These are good questions. But I don’t agree with your premise, which
infuses the first six questions as well as the introduction.
What the Greens did on 2004 DID make difference! There WAS a chance to win
millions of votes if we had been united in an all-out assault on the
pro-war, pro-corporate, anti-environment duopoly.
There was a huge leadership vacuum in the opposition to the war and
corporation domination in 2004. The peace movement and the rest of the
progressive leadership simply surrendered to Kerry and the pro-war,
pro-corporate Democrats.
Yes, the profession liberals in the leadership weren’t going to change
their mind about supporting the lesser evil. They have material class
interest in Democratic administrations; they are tied to the Dems by
culture, social networks, grants, and career opportunities.
But many in the pro-justice, anti-war grassroots were not happy supporting
pro-war Korporate Kerry. The polls clearly show that the majority of
Americans are with us on Out Now, universal health care, and ending
corporate domination in economic, regulatory, and trade issues. The Greens
could have provided an alternative leadership for a real opposition and won
over millions.
By being divided, we did not send a clear message that the Greens are that
opposition.
The corporate media used the Cobb nomination, and the progressive
leadership statements that supported him in safe states only, to show that
even the anti-war movement didn’t support the major anti-war ticket of
Nader/Camejo. And that’s all the people heard from the peace and
progressive leadership: that even they didn’t support the Nader/Camejo
ticket. Anything else they may have said against the war or anything else
wasn’t broadcast. But it wasn’t much anyway because most of them didn’t
want sound off-key with the Kerry campaign message. The biggest event of
sponsored by the progressive leadership was UFPJ’s demo at the Republican
National Convention and it was anti-Bush, not anti-war, in its lead banner,
media releases, and pro-Democratic media spokespeople.
Still, the Democrats certainly knew that what we did mattered. That’s why
they spent $20 million to smear Nader and keep him off state ballots. That
attack on Nader’s ballot access was the biggest assault on a third party
candidate in US presidential history. (The Democrats’ assault on the 1940
Communist candidate, Earl Browder, was more extreme in its legal terrorism
in some states like Illinios, but it did not approach the scale of the
attack on Nader.)
So I think the Greens missed a big opportunity to provide alternative
leadership for the grassroots of the labor, environmental, justice, and,
especially, peace movements, whose leadership has been delivering them to
the Democrats for slaughter for generations.
The Greens need to stop worrying about being the spoiler who would be
responsible for electing the greater evil Republican. The Cobb/LaMarch safe
states or smart states or whatever it was was still a lesser evil strategy
of putting the defeat of Bush ahead of getting all the votes it could for
the Green ticket. Nader, too, was too defensive about being the spoiler and
wanting to defeat Bush. (Camejo was much clearer on this question of
political independence.)
We should embrace the spoiler role. We should say without any apology that
we are going keep spoiling elections until the electoral system gives the
anti-war, anti-corporate, pro-environment voters we represent their fair
share of representation through proportional representation and go all-out
for every anti-war, anti-corporate vote we can get.
We should put the Democrats on the defensive. They are equally responsible
for the spoiler problem of electing Republicans by refusing to support
proportional representation. And I say we lead with PR, not IRV, because we
should stand for getting our fair share of representation, not just for
finessing the spoiler problem in what would remain disproportional
legislatures based on the anti-democratic single-seat-district,
winner-take-all system.
One of the questions you ask is how we should appeal to Democratic voters.
Of course, we don’t denounce them as “traitors or enemies.” We appeal to
them directly with our message.
What we don’t do is try to get them through the “progressive” leadership
that is tied to the Democratic Party. Every lesser evil strategy that looks
for some kind of alliance with the “progressive wing” of the establishment
has been a strategy of self-defeat for progressive insurgents.
It failed with fusion by the 19th century farmer and labor populist parties
and again with fusion by the “progressives” of the American Labor, then
Liberal, and now Working Familes parties in New York State in the 20th
century. It failed with the Communists’ Popular Front with the Democrats in
the US since 1936 and with the liberal capitalist parties in Spain and
France in the 1930s and in Chile in the 1970s. It failed with the
“inside/outside” strategy of independents who went into the Rainbow
Coalition in the 1980s and are now trying to do it again with Progressive
Democrats of America.
In every case, the insurgents were expected to shut up and abide by the
“liberal” corporate line in order to be considered loyal, legitimate parts
of the coalition. In the course of doing so, they silenced their own voice,
did the trench work for their political opponents, and STILL got their ass
kicked by the Right.
All variants of the lesser-evil strategy fail because the liberal wing of
the corporate ruling class has more interests in common with their more
reactionary boardroom colleagues than they do with us. They won’t defend us
from the Right.
We can’t rely on the soft-right Democrats to fight the hard-right
Republicans. Look at the vote on the $81 billion more for the wars this
week. Only 39 Democrats voted against it. Voting for it were “progressives”
like Jesse Jackson Jr. and John Conyers.
The idea that the Greens have anything to gain from some kind of alliance
with Progressive Democrats of America strikes me as particularly dumb. I
mean, it failed with the Rainbow Coalition when Jesse Jackson was getting
significant numbers of delegates in the Democratic primaries. Now they are
trying the same strategy when Kucinich and Sharpton combined got barely 1
percent of the Democratic National Convention delegates last year.
There’s not much there. And PDA leadership is explicit about wanting to
bring the Greens into their effort to reform the Democratic Party! What do
we get out of it except confusion about why we even have a Green Party.
We don’t need the leadership of PDA, the Congressional Progressive Caucus
(half of whom just voted for war again), RollOver.com, UFPJ, the Sierra
Club, or the unions to reach the grassroots voters who agree with us on the
issues. To the contrary, allying with these leaderships only confuses our
message about independent politics being the most effective way to fight
the Right and advance a progressive alternative.
Yes, we can work with Democratic leaders like Jackson and Conyers on
discrete issues where we agree like voter rights. But let’s not forget that
they did vote for war and they don’t want people voting Green.
So our approach should be to appeal directly to Democratic voters and
forget the progressive Democratic leadership because they are competing
with us for those voters…and they, at least, are clear: they want those
voters to vote Democratic, not Green.
Well, that’s my commentary on the issues raised in questions 1-7.
I do agree that questions 8-10 are important, not more but equally
important. I would say an effective electoral strategy and an attractive
movement culture are both necessary conditions for Green Party success.
My one comment on movement culture is that it needs a vessel other than
email lists and state and national committees and conventions. It needs a
local Green organizations.
I think that the Green Party movement’s early focus on developing locals
has lost the priority it deserves as we have moved to putting state Green
parties on the ballot. It is in the local Green organization that people
can have consistent contact needed to develop the relationships that can
sustain the party’s culture.
The level of local organization varies from state to state, but I think it
could be improved in many of them.
And let me throw out an 11th question: How do the Greens carry through
fundamental change when most of the power structure is not up for election?
I’m referring to the power of private capital, which can undermine Green
reforms by moving assets (a capital strike), and the unelected regulatory,
judicial, and police/military/intelligence bureaucracies, which can resist
Green reforms or, in the case of the police/military/intelligence
apparatus, simply “eliminate” the Green reformers.
The short answer is that we can’t rely on elections alone to make social
change. We’ve got to win over the ranks of the police/military/intelligence
apparatus (as we partially did with the draftee army at the end of the
Vietnam occupation) and we’ve got to be prepared to take our own direct
action to defend our reforms when the ruling class undertakes its own
extra-parliamentary direct action in the form of the economic sabotage of
capital flight to defeat our reforms.
– Howie Hawkins, Syracuse NY
