The Green way to jumpstart the presidential campaign 

Leadership, Democracy, and effectiveness in the Green Party.

Greens in the United States have long been engaged in the pursuit of perfect democracy in the world and in the party.  We are primarily in agreement about the nature of democracy in the larger world, proportional representation, transparency, ranked choice voting, one person one vote. 

Internally we are much less in agreement about what our perfect union would look like. Greens demand an apportionment of their representative bodies based on a variety of systems, none of which really work all that well in the varied terrain in which we find ourselves.

Sitting on the committee charged with exploring this for the Green party national committee, I could provide endless hours on who wants what and why.  But for my purposes here today it is irrelevant.  The key factor is that the internal arguments over structure are an ideological walk that wastes all of our time.

The key factor is how do we run an effective organization when the legislative body is tied up in ideological bickering and the executive body has been beaten for so long that it has forgotten how to take the initiative and solve problems. 

Rome burns while we fiddle, so more and more Greens, but never enough, have figured out how to move the party forward without getting tied up in the bureaucratic and political infighting.  They are taking initiative and making things happen below the radar screen of the national and state committees, with results popping up all over.

Currently the Green Party is hogtied around how to move on the presidential campaign. We have a variety of things that need to be done.  We need a rules committee, to develop convention rules.  We need to know how to apportion the convention to the delegations from the various states.  We need to prepare for petitioning and ballot access, We need to set up systems to help state parties negotiate the process.  And we need to insure that when a candidate calls up a state party to set up a local campaign, that there is someone helpful at home on the other end of the call. 

The Green Party has some committees who are supposed to take care of these things, but they for the most part share the knots of the National Committee. 

So how do we prepare for 2008 without waiting for Godot and the votes and committee processes that may or may not ever happen.  Can Greens legitimately take initiative on all or most of these tasks prior to action by various committees and what are the reasonable limits on what actions Greens can take while waiting for the mess to unravel. 

I ponder these things both on a theoretical and on a practical basis as I am a member of the I am always in trouble anyway school, so why not make something happen and have some. 

The other day I sent out a note to the GPUS discussion list.  I said that I was itching to get active on the presidential campaign, both to campaign, and to speed up the process by which Greens prepared themselves and their state parties for the campaign.  I wrote that if you or anyone you know are interested in jump starting things, get in touch.  I suppose I could wait for the proper committees to move on these things, I serve on some of them, but the reality is that the committees will only move under pressure and if individual Greens accept responsibility, that changes the dynamic and creates some of the pressure. 

No one Green can implement the rules of the convention or decide how delegates to the convention shall be apportioned, Those things require votes of the GPUS National Committee.  But most of the work leading to the NC vote is less defined.  It is legitimate for one Green, or a small independent group to decide the time to start writing convention rules is now and just start and present their work on their own schedule, and there does not really seem to be any other way to move that forward. The NC still gets to vote on them, so why worry how they got there if they make sense.  Just do it.

I am not into writing rules this year, been there, done that. I think what we need, and what will much more fun, is to create some presidential campaign buzz in every state and to find actual humans who are willing to take some initiative so that when the circus is ready to come to town, they are ready to open the doors, turn on the lights, and fill the room. Should I wait until everyone is ready for that work to begin, until a questionnaire goes out, until there is a consensus?  Or can I start actually talking to people , building networks for people taking action.  I think you know where I stand.

The question for some is where are the limits of individual initiative in the democracy of the Green Party.  But for most of the public the question is why would you even ask, free people do interesting things. 

I have a vision in my head of what would be good for the Green Party in 2008.  Not sure I can completely articulate it, and some of it is to be flexible and respond to actions beyond your control in agile fashion.  but it involves getting a good Green campaign running in just about every state and community talking about real issues, the ecological crisis, peace, global warming, and economic transformation to a Green economy. I believe a strong camapign can bring Greens together, and can appeal to many who are not hardcore Greens.  I have a tactic for making it happen, mostly phone calls and letters, combined with talking to and helping every candidate I can.  Do i first have to wait for a vote and channels, or should I just go out and make it happen?  In 2004, I did what i could to make my vision happen.  My vision of what to do was not all that far off from what happened, so I get blamed for what some would call a debacle, what others would call making lemonade out of lemons. 

Leadership is being willing to make things happen, being willing to stand up and shoulder a load when times are tough and the slogging slow.  Some Greens think of leadership as antithetical to democracy, that only mass movements, the will of the people, count.  I do not buy this last argument.  I think the only way forward for the Green Party is for activists to take initiative and move us forward.  Democracy in this case works by people flocking to what is working, not by a vote.  Real action happens when folks vote with their feet, vote with their time and attention. 

If this grabs your attention, and you are willing to take action, make something happen, I want to know so we can plot and plan together.

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