Category: Green Party

What Has the Green Party Ever Done?

5/8/2021

This train of thought began with Briahna Joy Gray's observations (below) on the OH-11 special election about which I blogged earlier this week. The replies were full of Democratic loyalist trolling, which is typical for one of Briahna's Tweets. After all, she has actively campaigned to get Senator Not a Real Democrat (I-VT) nominated for the presidency. Normally I avoid wading into such an environment; however, the trolling included some abuse of the term "progressive" that I could not leave unanswered.

It chaps my whole nether region when I see centrist, incrementalist Democrats referred to as "progressive." It irks me even more deeply when that leads to McCarthyite tropes hurled at anyone to the left of Nancy Pelosi, as happened later in the thread.

The question in my reply had a twofold purpose:

to set the parameters, via hashtags, of what "progressive" even means; and
to point out that most of the self-identified Progressives in Congress don't check those policy boxes (perhaps they used to, in their younger days, but don't any more).

Personally, I believe that if you're not at least anti-war (including the Drug War), anti-corporatocracy, pro-worker, pro-choice, pro–universal health care, and pro–swift strong action to thwart climate change (yes, all of these), you have no business calling yourself "progressive." Maybe the label worked for Teddy Roosevelt 100-plus years ago, but the boundaries of progressivism have, well, progressed a lot since then.

My reply made no reference to the Green Party itself. But of course my Twitter bio is quite candid regarding my partisan affiliation. So, relevant to nothing in particular, up came the "What Has the Green Party Ever Done?" line of argument. To that I replied (not shown below), "Far more than a single Tweet can encapsulate" and promised to put a complete answer on this site later. Well, more complete anyway, because I'm sure that my bulleted list below leaves out some important achievements.

There are 95 House Members of the Progressive Caucus. Progressives have a huge seat at the table in the Democratic party.

But it doesn't make you entitled to voters choosing your candidates just because you think you're owed them.
— What Biden Has Done (@What46HasDone) August 4, 2021

What has the Green Party ever done?
— It’s *A* Bible (@FDTProgressive) August 4, 2021

The Temptation to Give Up

17/6/2021

For several weeks now, I've been intending to post something along these lines. The wording may come out all wrong, and it may be subject to some gross misinterpretations, but...here goes nothin'.

That notion of the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice—credited to Dr. M.L. King, Jr., inspired by Theodore Parker—is one in which I truly, firmly believe. Even when there are periodic setbacks and backlashes, the momentum toward justice is re-established, like a scrambling quarterback who is chased toward his own endzone makes a rapid turn at just the right moment and ends up gaining yardage.

In using the term "justice," I mean a really big-picture, long-term connotation: justice for the disadvantaged people(s) of the human world and for the natural world, conditions that allow both to flourish.

But here's the problem: We're running out of time. The bending of that moral arc may soon come to mean nothing if the global corporatocracy continues to drive us toward an uninhabitable future. Make no mistake: The corporatocracy is at the wheel, or at least in the shotgun seat shouting navigational instructions to the leaders of nations, elected or not. We're just along for the ride. We can back-seat drive all we want to, but our directions will not be heard, much less heeded.

That's one of several reasons why, with increasing frequency these days, I'm tempted to just give up and pursue a hedonistic life, occasionally peeking out at the collapse of civilization for the sake of additional amusement. Hedonism ain't cheap, though, and I ain't exactly flush with cash.

Green Maps Project Is Dizzyingly Impressive

10/12/2020

Today my @dbcgreentx Twitter account has had more notifications than I typically get in a month. Most of these concern likes and retweets of a tweet in which I was mentioned. What got the whole thing started was the unveiling of the Green Maps Project.

If you want to know the entire story of how this project got started, and who-all contributed to it, that's something you'll have to ask Christopher Lozinski. Lozinski isn't even living in the United States at present; he's in Poland. But through his connections in the US he is deeply committed to helping US Greens organize—or, in some cases, reorganize—toward becoming a bigger player in 2022 and beyond.

There's a particular variety of artwork of which I am fond and which I could never produce because I lack the patience. My term for it is Obsessive Art: It's the kind in which the detail-work is so intense even the details have details, and you can look at those details and say, holy shit whoever made this must have spent hours doing this one part. You can stare at the details until the room starts to spin around you.

I have the same kind of reverence for application developers who sweat the details. Lozinski is one such developer.

Updates Added to "Life As a Green" Page

7/11/2020

Every once in a while, I have to look over a certain page on this website and be embarrassed at how out of date it is. Whether anyone reads it or not, I cringe when I see something that may have been true when I wrote it a few years ago but is no longer reality.

This morning, after waking up far too early for a Saturday, I gave this page an overhaul to include events up through the 2020 general election. If you've never read it, or haven't read it lately, I recommend giving it a good long look. It contains some historical observations that will some day be used when somebody writes a dissertation about the history of the US Green Movement in the early 21st century.

I also tweaked the Index page a bit, now that my run for US Senate is over and I can get back to being just a blogger for a while. Those tweaks may require further tweaks, but that's the nature of the WWW, ain't it?

Irish Greens Quadruple Dáil Seats, Join Ruling Coalition

29/6/2020

Sometimes, after wading through the stories of natural and man-made disasters in remote corners of the globe, one can actually find good news in the World and Nation subsections of one's local daily newspaper. Yesterday's Houston Chronicle had a brief wire service article about the Republic of Ireland's new coalition government, in which the Green Party will be a partner. (Couldn't find the article in the Chronicle's online edition.)

It's not unadulterated good news. As too often happens when the Greens are invited into a ruling coalition, they will govern alongside two centrist to center-right parties: in this instance, the two most major of the nation's major parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

The main angle of the article is that, on Saturday, the Daíl Éireann (Irish parliament) officially elected Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin to be the new Taoiseach (prime minister), succeeding Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar. But from another angle, in particular from the left, this is not only burying the lede but straight-up omitting it.

The article does not mention that, following February's Daíl (parliamentary) elections, the Green delegation jumped from three seats to twelve of the 160 total. GP will be the fourth-largest in the 33rd Daíl. Other parliaments in Europe have recently experienced a Green surge.

Apart from that, it also misses the point of why the two major parties must coalesce in the first place: Sinn Fein's leap from 22 seats to 37. Sinn Fein, a center-left party that was once the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, has more seats that Finn Gael and nearly as many as Fianna Fáil. Unlike some other parliamentary democracies in Europe, where disenchantment with mainstream parties has led to right-populist victories, the Irish electorate has veered left.

This Guardian article from two weeks ago hints that SF might end up at the head of a governing coalition for the first time in the Republic's 100-year history; the GP's acceptance of Fáil & Gael's invitation to join them thwarted that.

Also worth noting while we're here is that Ireland elects its parliament from multi-member districts of three to five seats each, with proportional representation, via a single-transferrable preferential voting system. This assures that "minor" parties are represented in the nation's law-making body. And it's not some recent innovation: It dates back to the first general election following independence from Great Britain in 1922.

GP Keeps on Truckin': We Have a Presumptive Nominee

21/6/2020

Head-on portrait photo of Green presidential candidate Howie Hawkins

By GreenIn2010 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87716286

Nothing will be official until 11 July, but Howie Hawkins of New York has amassed a simple majority of the 350 delegates apportioned for the Green Party's Presidential Nominating Convention. There are fewer than 50 delegates still to be selected.

This news is hardly unexpected given how the quest for the nomination has played out. Hawkins entered the race with an actual track record of running for high offices in New York State, and he is considered a co-founder of the Party. (Second-place candidate Dario Hunter has actually been elected to a school board in Youngstown, Ohio.) The Green New Deal on which Dr. Jill Stein ran in 2012 and 2016 started with Hawkins, whether or not he actually coined the term.

In case you haven't caught the news, Teamster activist Hawkins has selected long-haul truck driver and activist Angela N. Walker as his running mate. For those of you keeping identity politics scoresheets, Walker checks off not only the African American and Woman boxes, but also the LGBT+ box. An Armed Forces veteran like Hawkins, Walker also has electoral experience, including a run for sheriff of Milwaukee County (Wisconsin) in 2014. They have also both worked with Socialist Party USA, which has endorsed their ticket; Hawkins-Walker will likely appear on the ballot lines for SPUSA and GPUS in New York, which allows fusion candidacies.

On a personal note, I have donated to the Hawkins and Hunter campaigns, and I did not have a stated preference between them. My habit is never to presume anyone's nomination until it's signed, sealed, and delivered; I'm not happy about the way he has acted in public appearances as if his nomination was in the bag, appearing on programs such as Redacted Tonight VIP without more than an indirect reference to the other Green presidential candidates. However, I will be glad to be able to answer the inevitable question from the mis- and underinformed, "Who's your (y'all's) candidate?" without saying, "Well, the nomination hasn't been determined yet, and we have about six candidates contesting for it..." by which the asker has fallen asleep.

Johnstone's Truth Hits Close to Home

19/5/2020

She's right, y'know. Right as in POW!! Right in the ol' truth gland!!

Fellow lefties, Greenies, Progressives of every stripe, please read the entire article, two excerpts of which appear below. It's not very long. I'll wait.

pic.twitter.com/x7P6eFouTO
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 19, 2020

Updated List of Green Candidates for 2020

20/12/2019

We have an update to last week's entry on candidates for nomination by the Green Party of Texas in 2020. (Actually, we had it several days ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting the information.) There are two more names on the list, bringing the total to four:

Dan Lyon, State Representative, HD-45 (Hays and Blanco Counties)
Forrest John Hampton, State Representative, HD-66 (SW Collin County)
Brody Mulligan, State Representative, HD-92 (Eastern Tarrant County)
Hal Ridley, Jr., US Representative, TX-36 (SE corner of the state)

Apart from Ridley, I don't recall ever meeting these guys. I may have met them, but the names are not familiar. But then, I haven't been to a state meeting or convention since 2017. Mulligan has participated in discussions on the GPTX Slack channel.

In recent Slack discussions, former GPTX co-chair Laura Palmer and others have observed that the paucity of paying candidates strongly illustrates the dampening effect of filing fees. This is useful information to present in the pending lawsuit against the Secretary of State's Office.

Meanwhile, Texas Libertarians have considerably more candidates, putting their fundraising apparatus to good use and making sure money was available to cover fees. Sadly, lptexas.org does not have a list of candidates online where I can find it—but then, neither does txgreens.org yet. No candidate listings really became official, vis-a-vis the state, until yesterday (19 December).

Months ago I noted (somewhere in this blog) that the Greens need to start devoting more time and energy to active fundraising, via NationBuilder or other means. We cannot count on a favorable outcome to the lawsuit. If I had any fundraising acumen at all, I would be among the first to get the effort underway.

More to follow, I'm sure.

Shortest. Candidacy. Ever.

9/12/2019

Hi y'all. This blog is back in business, although its proprietor may have to return it full strength gradually.

Two months ago, I put this thing on hold. A week before that, I was making noise about running as a Green for the US Senate currently occupied by Texas's senior senator John Cornyn. The plan was to run on the standard Green platform but make a lot of noise about Instant Runoff Voting and Move to Amend's proposed "We the People" Amendment.

Today, 9 December, is Texas's deadline to submit to the Secretary of State's Office (or the various County Clerks' offices) applications to run in the 2020 elections. Last Wednesday I gave mine to Green Party of Texas co-chair Alfred Molison, so that he could take it to Austin today. However, unless something changes very dramatically and very soon, my candidacy will be over before it has even begun. Click the Read More link to get the details.

Alert the Prog Blog Squad, We're In for 2020

2/10/2019

Greenings, y'all! Sorry it's been a while since I last had time just to sit & blog. There has been plenty to keep me busy lately, between health issues, computer issues, & occasional gigs. Amid all that, I am trying to get my candidate muscles working again, starting a campaign for US Senate from Texas in 2020. This is the seat that John Corny currently occupies.

Consider this a soft opening for the campaign. We'll have a louder opening soon, after dbcgreentx.org undergoes some refurbishment.

Please Understand the Following

I need to submit 5,000 petition signatures or $5,000 by 9 December, the deadline for candidate filing.
I don't have $5,000. Sometimes even $5 is hard to come up with.
I'm not good at asking people for money. If you are, I could use some help in that department. But I'd rather get on the ballot via petition.
Very important: Those who sign the petition will be ineligible to vote in the big-party primaries or be delegates to any other party's conventions. That's the law. They also may not sign petitions for any other Green candidates for Senate.
About 70% of registered voters in Texas typically don't vote in primaries anyway. The trick is finding them.
If a stronger Green candidate emerges between now and December, I will end my campaign & help that candidate instead. There's no reason to try collecting 10,000 or more valid signatures for the same office.
If Sema Hernández wins the Democratic nomination in March 2020, I do not plan to campaign against her, but will instead use my position as Green nominee to campaign for Instant Runoff Voting in Texas.

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