I know there’s more than a few Green Party voters among Agonist readers, and even more who are interested in what the Greens might have to say. So here’s an interview with Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein, conducted last Tuesday – the night before she was arrested at an Occupy protest in Philadelphia. A snippet:
It’s really important to say that under the democrats the ship won’t go down quite as fast, but a sinking ship is still a sinking ship. Your objective is not to get onto another ship which is going down a little bit less quickly, this doesn’t get us out of there alive. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are offering strategies for the crisis we are in, none of them have an exit strategy and yet Democrats are asking us won’t we please use our votes as weapons against ourselves? Our successes historically have always come from a social movement on the ground. It’s time to stand with the politics of courage, not fear, and take our political life back from our political abusers.
It happened in Egypt and Tunisia, and they had a much bigger hill to climb. I think we have already won the hard battle, which is for the hearts and minds of the American public – they have checked out from establishment politics. It doesn’t end in November. By launching a new voice, by political courage, there is no going home. It’s about engaging the battle that has already come to our streets.
“The American public…have checked out from establishment politics. It doesn’t end in November.” Sounds like Stein has no illusions either about the underlying political current or about how long it might take to build a true party of the Left in the US.
I really, really want to vote for this woman.
But, I suppose I will cave into the politics of fear and vote Obama.
Sometimes I am so troubled by American politics that I can’t even think about it.
Absolutely to the aftermath of the 2012 election. Obama has done little of significance for working people. No mortgage relief, no real health care reform, no jobs, etc. Romney is simply dreadful, worse than Obama. But they’re both sinking ships, sure to go down. It doesn’t matter who I vote for. Obama will win because Romney is so hapless. That’s when the screw turns – the point at which enough people realize it’s going to be four more years of the Obama-Bush doctrine – nothing for the USA, lots for endless war to enrich the national defense/intelligence establishment. I believe that will start to smolder in a serious way in October and come to a peak around February. Obama is constitutionally incapable of any thought of helping the people or the smart politics derived from that. He’s a paid flunky.
The ‘say what’ is aimed at the Egypt, Tunisia reference. Arab Spring was captured by the US and Saudis. It never had a chance, a false start. How about something appealing like, We’re going to clean out Washington and the state capitol buildings and make sure the guilty do some serious time.
The Money Party RSS
secretary-treasurer of the Cascadia Chapter of the Pacific Green Party here in Portland, Oregon. We meet every Thursday night at the Bipartisan Cafe on S.E. Stark Street from 6:30 to about 8:30 (or until everybody gets tired of talking and goes home).
Last week the Pacific Green Party (the unusual name came about because of the fusion, back in the day, of the Peace Party and the Green Party, both of Oregon) secured ballot access for Dr Jill Stein on the November ballot in our state. We’re set to have at least 30 states in a similar situation and the Party has qualified for federal matching funds, for the first time.
That kicks your teeth in, just because the truncheon that breaks your skull is worse. It’s a false choice. At election time, opt out of the false choice and instead devote your energies towards making positive change possible in a system where elections are corrupted beyond repair.
Work around your enemy, not with him on his terms.
…vote for the least worst. That’s the insane directive from the two party drones.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them,and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows,or with both~FDouglas
Is it a bad sign that the first thing I think of when I read this is Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth” ?
All ships sink. It’s just how fast.
Jill Stein is not going to be the answer either. If anything, a third party candidate will simply add to the gridlock in DC. Nothing will ever get done, which means the conservatives win.
QED
me in for Jill the lesser of 2 evils isn’t working for me any more
Cthulu in ’92!
‘Cause the conservatives still win that way.
The third party candidate won’t win, so it won’t add any gridlock … which is by design (though i concede that when the Dems have Congress and the Reps have the WH, the Dems pass whatever the Reps want passed).
You’re right, i shouldn’t have responded. It’s about time for me to stop visiting blogs so i don’t have to listen to the whining about how i have to vote for Obama or the right wing wins. It won a long time ago, Clinton and Obama are the proof of that, not the opposition.
All ships sink, just a matter of how fast.
The answer for America IMHO is something like Occupy. Everyone will have some skin in the game, everyone will sacrifice something dear. Not an “Obama sacrifice” where the elite give up almost nothing and the rest shoulder the burden – a real sacrifice, like the Civil War or civil rIghts movement. Lots of people in the streets demanding change, one way o the other.
Electing someone new before then will do exactly two things: jack and squat.
A dead fictional possum would be an improvement over 99% of the current national and state politicians. Now that we’re all agreed on that, let’s get serious.
When the Whig party broke apart over the slavery issue, the structure was in place to be taken over by the fledgling Republican party. Even so, the fragmentation of political power left things rather chaotic for decades with minor and single-issue groups until eventually GOP and Dem emerged as the only viable parties at a national level and in most state politics. Now they have merged to become different wings of the MoneyPower Party.
We couldn’t get a socialist party going with Debs et al during the Great Depression, WWII and the heyday of union power.
We couldn’t populate a decent third party from the 1960s radicals, civil rights crowd and environmentalists.
A third party will NEVER challenge the Establishment successfully in America. They may make their adherents feel warm and fuzzy (and superior) but have not been effective in practical terms.
My gut says me the public refuses to take any third party seriously. (My head has been wrong over the years but my gut has been pretty reliable).
The best a third party can do is raise the general awareness and support for issues and get them co-opted by a major party looking for more votes. Notice how support for GLBT, feminism, civil rights, etc moved moved from outliers to mainstream?. Looked at from that angle, I do think (call me a cock-eyed optimist) that we might be able to infiltrate the Democrats and challenge the existing power structure much the way the tea-baggers influenced the GOP power structure. Controlling the agenda for the Democratic Party could present the voters with a genuine choice for the first time in decades. While the GOP would control MSM, the Dems – with the right focus – could control the ‘Net-based information stream. (That’s probably why the PTB want tighter control of the Internet, you think?)
Ergo I will indeed hold my nose and vote for the lesser evil while I continue to attempt to subvert the existing system.
If you want to destroy a windmill, you pour sand in the gears; you don’t couch your lance and whip up your charger, no matter how much more dramatic and satisfying the latter may be.
Poetry is the only way we can talk about what is beyond language.
Don’t vote for the less competent of your enemies. Thwart him.
all join the GOP and gum up their agenda. Kinda like crossing party lines to vote for the opponent least likely to beat yours in states with open primaries.
It may be considered ‘dirty politics’ but it has been known to work and who says only the bastards are allowed to play dirty?
Poetry is the only way we can talk about what is beyond language.
It’s clearly all about teh pithy slogans and moral vanity.
doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
So let’s go for the least worst again! With enough Hope, maybe this time we’ll get Change!
but it would take a lot of folks with the stomach to keep company with moral retards all the time, and the tenacity to continually work the party’s rules to interfere with its agenda. To me, it sounds a little like robbing Fort Knox by tunneling from your house. (If, you know, Fort Knox was on fire and the gold was radioactive.)
I’d rather they just all woke up one day to find that the limit of their influence was that of their own walled encampment.
Another glib couplet or three and Ralph Nader will personally Skype with you for 15 minutes as part of the Purity Troll reward package. Think of it as Airmiles for the insufferable (Who sez moral vanity never pays off?).
If its other than a way of saying “you stick to your principles better than I do” that makes you feel better about yourself, then definition please.
when the other side constantly takes (and effectively utilizes) power to keep shifting the centre further and further to the right. Our principles as progressives should be a key part of our toolbox, not just an end unto themselves, regardless of outcome — yet the Left in numerous countries has been hard-pressed for decades to find a way to utilize them effectively. And don’t expect me to magically pull an immediate solution from the sunless realms down south because god knows I’m no bareback Black Jesus unicorn rider.
Look, you want to talk about dog’s vomit? The piss-and-moan method whenever a Dem disappoints (oh noes!) hasn’t done much good to impart progressive change either, despite its longstanding pedigree. Sometimes feels as if everyone who identifies as NOT WINGNUT needs collective CBT to finally divest ourselves of bad habits accrued after several long decades of lateral post-Reagan survival tactics. It’s going to take, as previously said, a lot of time, organization, and a shit-tonne of unlearning before anything starts to happen.
Or we could keep using the same teeth-itching lefty slogans as a crutch to compensate for the lack of vision. YMMV. [edited because my damn finger slipped before I was done. Dammit.]
When the thing that is broken actively resists your attempts to fix it, it’s time to try a different thing.
But do check back in with us from time to time, to let us know how your attempts to address the problem according to its own terms are working out.
with the caveat that one needs strategy, tactics, organization to transform that different (and diffuse) ‘thing’ into a tangible reality (while at the same time playing defense against an active, well-financed corporatist movement to dismantle the New Deal).
And pithy slogans, obvs.
when the other side moves right is fallacious, no matter how successful they are at doing so. I believe, as a utilitarian, that ethics trumps politics, that the public begins from the personal and that if you don’t live by how you want to be treated then you are gaming the system to the inherent detriment of both yourself and everyone else (insert long discussion of game theory and the supremacy of the tit-for-tat strategy here). I’m going to willingly Godwin myself here to illustrate the reductio ad absurdum of the notion that politics allows ethical compromise of principles: the reductio there is that Hitler’s opponents in germany would have been ok for a progressive to support if they’d only moved as far to the fascist right as, say Spain’s Franco. That’s so obviously untrue I’m not even going to bother arguing the case further.
On to substantial issues. There’s no doubt been a fair bit of sloganeering of the kind that brought me to ask my question – but if you’re honest, matt, you’ve been doing a lot of that sloganeering and glib couplet-ing too. I’d prefer we all left that kind of thing alone, to be honest, but I realise people tend to follow their party with the same kind of kneejerk chanting as they do their sports teams so that may be impossible given human nature. At that point, the only thing to do imho is recognise it as the “us and them” demarcation hooting of inherently tribal primates and move on.
that treating the symptoms does nothing to halt the progression of this disease.
We shall develop a new way that makes the masters of the old way irrelevant. There is no easier alternative at this point. The politics of the past only engage the system of the past, which is broken beyond repair and now resists all efforts to fix it.
If we reinvent value in a way that makes dollars worthless, for instance, would that not break the current stranglehold of those who are rich in dollars?
Does that not seem much more plausible than taking power by means of the electoral system that has been co-opted by the powerful, or by defeating them in war?
I’d love to see a detailed diary from you on how we could do that, Chalo. I’ve seen some excellent work co-ops for example, in Glasgow, but I’m by no means convinced they’re scaleable to a national level in Scotland, let alone the USA.
to the degree necessary. But can you imagine how wealthy little Mitt Mormney would be in a gift economy? It makes me chuckle just to think about it.
We can either separate value from the dollar ourselves, on our terms, or else circumstances and/or our economic rivals will do it for us. As an economy, we don’t command net value any more. We only master dollars, borrowing and consumption. How much less plausible is a gift economy than this, where the world’s putative economic superpower society runs at a continuous loss? How much does the social order have to change when value becomes coupled to, you know, actual value?
What can the dollar-rich do in the case of the Chinese and the Saudis combining forces to destroy the dollar? It ain’t “buy more campaign ads”. And those who are rich in US equities are not going to be prospering under that scenario, either.
The end game of the rich seems to be all the money for them, and none for us. But it’s fiat money. When there isn’t enough for us to use, we switch our medium of exchange, or maybe even our means of exchange, and then they’re fscked. In that event I will shed no tears for them.