SEPTEMBER 1999 Green Bulletin - E-mail version
Published by: The Greens/Green Party USA
P. O. Box 1134, Lawrence, MA 01842
(978) 682 4353, gpusa@igc.org
http://www.greens.org/gpusa/
Green Appeasement Politics Dash Hopes of Unity
by Don Fitz, Green Party of St. Louis/Gateway Green Alliance
Actions taken by the July 1999 National Congress of the Greens/Green Party USA (GPUSA) in Washington DC virtually ensure that there will be no unity with the rival Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) in the foreseeable future. The GPUSA gave up its negotiating card as it indicated its willingness to grant unlimited concessions to the ASGP. The retreat was a shot-in-the-arm to those Green Parties around the world who put getting elected to office above upholding Green values.
Left Vs. Right
Ever since the Greens formed in Germany 20 years ago, there has been tension between the radical "fundis" (fundamentalists) and the conservative "realos" (realists). The left wing fundis have sought to transcend (include and go beyond) those labor and socialist traditions which have advocated fundamental changes in society. Open opponents of capitalism, left Greens advocate challenges to corporate rule which include many fronts-strikes, demonstration, community-building, and, of course, running candidates for office. Left Greens have been less concerned with being elected to office than with cohering a movement which can self-govern a post-capitalist society.
This sort of thinking has always been anathema to right wing realos who want to get elected to office in order to tame corporate abuses. With no intention of dismantling capitalist institutions, the realos see electability as the most important goal, and compromise as necessary for winning elections. From the beginning, they have disliked the term "right wing." They claimed the term was "name calling" and insisted that they were "Neither Left nor Right."
The left responded that, in a world steeped in consumerism, failure to call openly for ending corporate power is supporting the status quo. The left also says the term "right wing" is accurate for a tendency which is hostile to internal democracy, opposes discussion of creating a new system to replace capitalism, and restricts itself to critiquing a part of a social system rather than the system itself. However, most lefts agree that the term describes a political tendency more than personalities and acknowledge that many "right wing" Greens are in fact torn between a desire for election to office and the values which originally brought them to the Green movement.
When the Green Committees of Correspondence began to grow in the US during the beginning of the 1990s, they experienced an intense division. Of the many political spectrums which flocked to the Green fold, the most prominent were radicals proclaiming that protecting the environment requires a new social system and realos arguing that the sole work of a Green Party was to participate in elections.
The electoral-only wing was insistent that the radical voice be silenced. They held meetings without notifying radicals, prevented radicals from entering when they showed up anyway, and split into separate Green groups if the radicals persisted. The electoral-only group was particularly vexed at Greens who publicly defined themselves as "anti-capitalist," "anarchist," or "socialist." In response to continual exclusion and harassment, radicals formed the Left Green Network (LGN) in the early 1990s. After the LGN was formed, many who wanted to disassociate the Greens from them founded the Green Politics Network (GPN).
This bit of history is critical for understanding the current conflict between the GPUSA and the ASGP. The LGN and GPN did not just evolve from different study groups. Nor did they arise from some sort of "mutual antagonism," "unwillingness to work together," or "failure to mediate." It was the systematic campaign of red-baiting and exclusion that lead to the formation of the LGN. The Left NEVER attempted to exclude the Right. The radicals always opened the door to those who wanted to limit their work to electoral activity. But they insisted on their right to discuss and criticize that approach. The right wing demanded that the criticism cease.
Early Divisions
The 1991 national Gathering at Elkins, W. Virginia saw the first coherent attempt to create a separate electoral arm of the Greens. The realos argued for a dichotomy between "the movement" and "the party." They argued that just as people working on abolishing nuclear power should not be told by other activists what they should do, those wishing to run for office as Greens should not be hampered by control from others. The left strongly opposed this reasoning. They argued that elections were the most public manifestation of unified Green activity and that candidates should be bound to support positions of the group. Using an analogy from the labor movement, lefts said that Green office holders who voted as they pleased would be like a union negotiator who could sign a contract without taking it to members for ratification.
Though both sides had candidates elected to leadership positions at Elkins, the left won a few more. The GPN-oriented wing showed themselves profoundly unwilling to work in coalition with Left Greens. They began abandoning positions they had been elected to within the Greens, dropping out of the national organization and urging others to do the same.
With a clear goal of undermining the financial basis of the Greens, the right wing began spreading the rumor that state Green Parties could not charge dues. Since they could not quote any state laws prohibiting dues, few took them seriously. But any idea repeated enough will gain some support; so, during the next few years, a number of people actually started believing the claim.
Of course, dues have been the basis of parties since the old Progressive through dozens of Socialist groups and the current Labor Party. All groups who want fundamental change in society base their political parties on dues. Failure to finance themselves would ultimately force them to go to those with wealth and power to receive funding.
An interesting paradox arose in the Missouri Green Party, which was sharply divided between a right wing in Kansas City and a left wing in St. Louis. During the middle 1990s, when national dues were $15, the Missouri GP charged an additional $20 dues as a way to force those from St. Louis to pay twice. This occurred at the same time that the right wing was arguing for elimination of dues at the national level. To many, the "no dues" argument appeared bogus from the day it was fabricated. When the right could use high dues to keep out the left, dues were fine; but, if it could undermine the GPUSA by demanding the abolition of dues, it seemed to be talking out of both sides of its mouth at once.
Another attack against the GPUSA charged that its decision-making was slow and ineffective. This conveniently ignored that fact that it was the realo wing which, in the early 1990s, instituted the very procedures it denounced the GPUSA for having in the middle 1990s.
A prime example is high majorities required for winning a vote. The original GPUSA bylaws were a compromise between two sides. The lefts advocated using a simple majority vote on most issues. The right wing argued for "consensus," or total agreement before a change could be made. Realizing that they were in the minority in the early 1990s, the right wing used the ideology of consensus decision-making to ensure themselves a veto over anything which they thought might be too radical. Pointing out that consensus is best used in intimate groups where people have highly similar views (i.e., households, intentional communities, affinity groups at demonstrations), the left felt that consensus was not appropriate for a diversified political party. The compromise required 75-80% majorities for decisions. When the right wing began its anti-GPUSA campaign in the middle 1990s, one of its attacks was that the GPUSA was ineffective because high majority votes meant that it took too long to get anything passed.
A Presidential Split
In 1996 the California Green Party nominated Ralph Nader for President. Ignoring national votes to not have a Presidential campaign, the realos went full steam making the campaign their own. They exploited the Nader for President campaign for their own purposes, refusing to put new contacts in touch the GPUSA and even setting up their own rival Clearinghouse.
Though Nader's politics-for-other were some of the most progressive on the Presidential scene, his politics-for-self were somewhere to the right of the major parties. Greens lauded his attack on corporate power. But one group after another criticized his refusal to listen to or even meet with local organizers, his refusal to abide by the national Green program, his public contempt for basic Green issues (i.e. "gonadal politics"), and his unwillingness to be interviewed by or even talk to national Green press. The top-down approach people saw in the 1996 Presidential campaign was the essence of condescending liberalism which seeks to do good deeds for the masses while remaining contemptuous of their ability for self- empowerment.
The Nader campaign was hog heaven for many realo leaders. His elitist style fit perfectly with an authoritarian outlook on political life. Using the campaign to again split the Greens, the right wing climaxed its efforts by establishing a rival organization the same month as the November 1996 elections. Continuing their well-practiced exclusionism, Greens they considered thought-criminals were prevented from speaking, and in one case, even prevented from entering the ASGP founding convention.
Undecided
The GPUSA found itself divided over how to approach the split. Some were horrified at the thought of having two national organizations calling themselves "Green" and immediately sought to bring the groups back together. As they were rebuffed by the ASGP, other Greens told them, "Let them have their split. Sometimes two sides need to live apart for a while." But those who named their efforts "unity" would not let the split be. The faster they ran after the ASGP, the more determined the ASGP leadership was to ignore them.
Many saw the constant effort to court the divisive ASGP as destructive to both organizations. They felt that the GPUSA should concentrate on charting its own course and leave reunification as a possibility for the future. By building up its own projects, membership base and alliances, the GPUSA could make itself an organization with which rank-and-file ASGPers would themselves seek affiliation. For example, they proposed that the GPUSA put a major national effort into building the 1998 "Grassroots Gathering on Biodevastation: Genetic Engineering," which was timed to coincide with the 1998 Congress of the GPUSA. With biotechnology becoming a major issue in the late 1990s, a major leadership role by the GPUSA could help both it and the rising movement.
Those insisting on "unity" developed a new tactic: Join the ASGP and create a group of "dually affiliated State Parties." It soon became clear that this was a tactic designed for those who had the time and money to fly to national meetings of both organizations. It is hard enough to persuade the average member to participate in any national meeting. It is far more difficult to persuade members to attend two sets of national political meetings. It is virtually impossible to convince people that, in addition to national gatherings of their own issue area, they should go to two sets of national political meetings.
The tactic of "dually affiliated State Parties" detracted from activities more likely to yield results. Far more people are interested in joining a national organization that offers a multifaceted educational/action/election approach to food contamination or police brutality than are attracted to an organization that devotes enormous energy to ill-fated efforts to manipulate a rival group.
GPUSA members joining the ASGP found three broadly defined attitudes:
1. Those who hate the GPUSA and will do everything they can to block working with it;
2. Those new to the Greens with few attitudes about the competing camps; and,
3. Those friendly to the GPUSA (that is, themselves).
The large size of the second group is what motivates the third group to continue its efforts. The problem is that the first group heavily dominates the ASGP and is in turn dominated by the GPN. Thus, a handful of extreme right wingers calls the shots in the ASGP and is about as likely to surrender power as the Democratic Party is to urge people to become Green. The ASGP power elite sets the meeting agenda, prohibits the ASGP rank-and-file from reviewing the agenda, and will not tolerate nominations for officers during meetings.
The GPNers at the apex of the ASGP now have several years of experience manipulating meetings and orchestrating hate campaigns against the GPUSA. In order to unseat them, support would have to be overwhelming from the rank-and-file of the ASGP.
Undoing Green Values
Seeking to win a large base of support, several "dually affiliated" Greens have tried to carry the demands of the ASGP leadership into the GPUSA itself. The strategy is to show the rank- and-file of the ASGP that they have changed everything about the GPUSA that has been a target of criticism. Thus, in the interest of "unity," they have proposed several policies that would weaken the fundamental political orientation of the GPUSA. Some of the proposals include:
1. Abolishing or depleting the GPUSA dues structure;
2. Abolishing a decision-making body of the GPUSA (i.e., the Congress);
3. Removing the word "Party" from the GPUSA (to cede all electoral activity to the ASGP);
4. Excluding leftists from leadership within the GPUSA.
The following point is absolutely critical to understanding what happened to the dues structure of the GPUSA at the 1999 Congress: the dues issue is not and never has been an isolated issue - it has been part of an overall campaign to destroy the GPUSA. Dues are merely one facet of the effort to purge all "leftism" from the Greens. The dues issue both manifests this broader strategy and is a core element of the strategy because dues abolition can undermine the GPUSA's financial self-sufficiency.
The 1999 Congress began with the same agenda debate which has occurred since the ASGP split. On one side was the "official" agenda which scheduled zero Congress time for dealing with the recent participation of the German Greens in the bombing of Yugoslavia or developing an action plan on police brutality in the US. Instead, a huge amount of time would be devoted to the never-ending "structure debate"--the GPUSA would devote the major portion of its own Congress to debating how to accommodate to those who wish to destroy it. On the other side were those who proposed devoting considerable time to addressing urgent questions of violence in Yugoslavia and the US and far less time on what has become known as "structurbation." Structurbation won. It received many hours and the Congress tossed a crumb to the discussion of critical questions.
Obfuscation As Disempowerment
Proposals to weaken the dues base of the GPUSA have been presented as incredibly complicated formulas which would allow the selection of some delegates on the basis of dues and others on the basis of people who sign papers saying they want to be a Green or people registered as Green in their state or the number of votes received by Green candidates. The proposal presented in 1999 began as virtually incomprehensible and became more complex as it was changed during the course of the Congress. In the interest of explaining in a way that a sane person has some hope of understanding, I will not describe the many bizarre formulations that have been paraded before national Green meetings and will cover only the particular bizarre formulation which passed in 1999.
The newly adopted rules for Congress delegations are that (1) locals receive 1 vote for every 10 dues paid members; and (2 ) state parties receive 1 vote for every 10 dues paid members or 1 vote for every 100 "signed-up" members (who sign a card or sheet affirming they are joining the state Green Party), or 1 vote for every 5000 "enrolled" members (defined as people on the party enrollment list). Representatives for the Green Council (i.e., Green National Committee, which meets three times per year) is based on each state party, state caucus, region, and anti-oppression caucus receiving 2 votes, with state parties and caucuses receiving 1 additional vote for every 50 dues paid members, 500 "signed-up" members, or 25,000 "enrolled" members.
The above description is the best explanation I can give. I could well have misunderstood it because it seems written, like rules of the Environmental Protection Agency, to confuse and bewilder so that the ordinary person feels excluded from the process of decision-making.
As people tried to figure out what the formula meant, I asked for clarification of the provision concerning delegations from locals and state parties. I suggested that its wording specifically state that members could be represented either through a local or a state party but not both. The author explained that there was no mis-wording, that it was intended so people would be represented both ways. I was dumbfounded. Since I try to follow this stuff fairly closely and I could not figure out what was meant, it is a good bet that only those who can understand the complications will know that they can get a second set of delegates. Greens who live in states with either locals and no state party or a state party without locals will be punished by not being eligible for double representation. I made a motion to remove the complexities of double representation so that the GPUSA would uphold the principle of 1 person, 1 vote. The amendment failed. Greens are now officially encouraged to scam the system for additional votes. Those who join the Greens and expect to work towards social justice will be rudely awakened to the fact that their votes will be cut in half unless they wade through a complex delegation formula.
No Compromise With Compromise
When the rewritten dues formula was presented to the Congress during its second day, the author gave a rationale similar to the following: "Many state parties do not have individual members; but they should be represented at national Green meetings. This proposal attempts to equate delegations based on various ways state Green Parties may choose to be represented." Both times the proposal was made, I offered a friendly amendment that would require state parties wishing to be delegated in ways other than individual dues be required to pay state dues. The total state dues would equal the amount owed by groups paying on the basis of individual dues. Both times I offered the friendly amendment, the author rejected it. So I offered it as a regular amendment and waited to see if someone would suggest that state parties pay something, though less than the 100% parity I proposed. No modification to my amendment was offered. The Congress just dumped it and passed the original motion with no modifications. The sentiment was not to require state parties to pay their fare share to be delegated. The sentiment was not to require state parties to pay half as much as individual dues-based groups. State parties would not have to pay a tenth as much. The motion that passed allowed state parties to receive votes at national Green meetings (Congress and Green Council) while paying nothing whatsoever.
As a sop to the request that state parties make financial contributions, the author of the "dues reform" changed it to request that they make a "voluntary contribution" of 2% of their budget to the GPUSA. Again seeking parity, I requested a change for locals which pay individual dues-they would similarly pay 2% of their local's budget. The author and the Congress rejected the amendment. There was absolutely no ambiguity. There would be two classes of members of the GPUSA. First class members can come to the next Congress with fistfulls of votes even though the group they represent has made no financial contribution to the organization. Second class members do the work to finance the organization while watching themselves outvoted by first class members.
When the Congress rejected any attempt to establish financial equality between representation based on individual dues and "signed- up registrants" of state parties, I said, "Okay, if we let delegations be based on registrants, could we at least make sure they are currently registered?" I then introduced an amendment saying that registration would have to be dated and occur within the last year. I pointed out that those who pay dues must do so within the last year to be counted. Yearly registration would insure that we are not giving delegations to registration-based organizations according to those who signed up 5 or 6 years ago and have since moved out of state, changed their political affiliation, or died.
Someone quipped, "I'm from Chicago where dead people vote all the time." The amendment failed. If a group wants a delegation at a national Green Gathering, not only does it not have to give the organization any financial support-it can be based on "registrants" who died years ago. In fact, state parties are free to base their delegations on people who have never existed. There is nothing to prevent someone from writing down 10,000 fictitious names on "registration" lists, demanding 100 delegate votes, and voting to give the entire account of the GPUSA to the ASGP Nader 2000 campaign.
Unity Out The Window
One group that will not be excluded form making decisions about the future of the GPUSA will be the right wing of the ASGP which wants to obstruct unity. The 1999 "reforms" both remove any reason for the ASGP to negotiate for unity and vastly ease the process of disrupting it.
The power elite of the ASGP perceive themselves as infinitely superior to the GPUSA because they seem to be getting more votes (much as Corporate Earth Day leaders around the US imagine themselves very important because the financing they receive from big business allows them to attract larger crowds than Grassroots Earth Day events). They are envious that the GPUSA has a national Green Party name but they want to avoid negotiating at all costs. Thus, they tell rank-and-file ASGPers that before negotiations can began, the GPUSA must jump through this or that hoop.
Several "dually affiliated" Greens confuse this excuse for stonewalling negotiation as a reason. They seek to accommodate the GPUSA to the various right wing demands. By doing so, they only encourage them to make even more demands on the GPUSA. The obvious logic of this policy of appeasement is for the ASGP right wing to insist on more and more until the word "unity" becomes indistinguishable from unconditional surrender and complete transformation of the GPUSA.
The GPUSA has already compromised its belief in self-funding by turning over a huge number of votes to those who refuse to participate in financing the organization. This was done through a set of obfuscatory rules that make it more difficult to understand GPUSA bylaws. It only makes sense for the ASGP realos to point out this confusion and demand that GPUSA bylaws be simplified so the average person can figure them out. And what will be the best way to simplify GPUSA bylaws? By eliminating the category of dues paid members! Since those GPUSA members working for "unity-at-any-price" have already accepted the premise that the ASGP will not change and all accommodation must be from the GPUSA, a demand for total dues abolition could soon appear on the horizon.
From the early 1990s, "election only" Greens have argued for a separation between "party" and "movement." The current form of the continual effort to have candidates independent from grassroots control is the demand that the GPUSA remove the word "Party" from its name. This would reduce the GPUSA to irrelevancy as it ceded all electoral work to the ASGP. A few years ago it would have been ridiculous even to ask the GPUSA to do this. No more. ASGP hardliners may now believe that an organization which is so contemptuous of itself as to destroy a large portion of its own financial basis may well exhibit enough self-deprecation to remove its reason for existence.
We can also anticipate some in the GPUSA adopting the right wing tactic of seeking to exclude the left. One of the most basic reasons for the left/right schism of US Greens has been the right wing's dragging in McCarthy era red-baiting. Just as many unions drove out socialist and communist members in the 1950s, right wing Greens have wanted to make themselves more electable by disassociating themselves from the left. It would not be surprising to learn that ASGP hardliners privately hinted to those who are "dually affiliated" that they would have to silence the left if unity were to proceed.
A self-cleansing of the GPUSA would be unlikely to take the form of expulsions of the McCarthy era. It would more likely take the form of refusing to print articles by left Greens or not acknowledging their work. It might surface as attempts to keep lefts off of e-mail discussions. Or as efforts to deny lefts the right to represent the GPUSA or sit on national bodies. Whatever else happens, it is almost certain to include the legitimization of hate campaigns against individual lefts while doublespeaking the need for "respect" whenever there are discussions of right wing Greens.
Elimination of Green values won't arrive as a single whack. It is more likely to happen like a liberal cutting off a puppy's tail-- guilty over unnecessary mutilation yet craving a blue ribbon, the liberal cannot decide what to do and ends up cutting off a quarter inch each day until the tail is gone. As the right wing demands increasing compromises from the GPUSA, the longing for "unity" could lead some to consider the most absurd ideas for self-destruction. Most will be aghast the first time suggestions are made. Proposals will seem less outrageous if they are repeatedly brought up and basic principles are compromised away. If this occurs, some would leave out of disgust at what others had done and some would slip away due to shame over their own distasteful behavior.
Destruction And Self-Destruction
As long-time Greens agonize over their tail, it becomes easier for those bent on destroying the GPUSA to enter it for that purpose. All they need do is produce 100 names on a piece of paper for each delegate vote. Receiving more delegate votes than were used to pass the 1999 "reforms" would not require the participation of a large number of ASGP hardliners. Fewer than half a dozen people spread across several states could create enough fictitious names to stop the GPUSA from functioning.
For a few years, most will probably continue to send in dues out of habit. But it will not be hard to figure out that it is a lot easier to get people to sign a paper than pay dues. If Green groups who pay dues lose votes to those who do not pay dues, they might well ask themselves "Why should we send in money for undemocratic representation when we could keep the money in our local Green group and do some good?" No one has to be a genius to figure out that an organization that undercuts its own dues basis of finances will have to look to other sources for money. Perhaps the Monsanto Fund?
What is most distressing is that the "dues reforms" were not the worst thing that Greens did to themselves in 1999.
Bielefeld will long be remembered as the city where the German Green Party upheld Joschka Fischer's participation in the bombing of Yugoslavia. Europeans and Americans alike were hoodwinked by public relations firms that exaggerated Serb atrocities to the point of portraying them as a modern holocaust. As huge numbers of people believed what TV told them, the German Greens had to choose between losing support if they exposed the charade or endorsing a military adventure that would kill far more people than the Serbs had ever done. The word "Bielefeld" epitomizes the willingness of Green Party realos to capitulate to a popular right wing mood, even if it means playing a role in mass murder.
Joschka Fischer's encouragement of the war was the logical outcome of years of making electoral victories the all-encompassing goal of a Green Party. Germany manifested a more intense form of the same contradiction occurring within US Greens.
Overturning its politics of a self-financing dues system, the GPUSA rushed to the right, fantasizing that it had given the ASGP the final concession. Rebuffing the self-effacing courtesan on its left, the ASGP turned its adoring eyes to the German Greens who are its model of success--a party with an actual seat in the government. Having little time for minor players in a US system of exclusion, the German Greens crawled on their bellies to the Social Democrats, begging to continue as junior partners in whatever state crimes were being committed in the Balkans. This is not the image of an anti- party party that proudly projects the vision of a new society without exploitation of people or domination of nature.
As we move beyond the 2000 elections, the Green Party has the ability to win and lose simultaneously. It may well win more votes and get more people into government positions. But it can simultaneously lose the ability to ignite the moral flame of social transformation. If Green Parties tolerate a thoroughly corrupt elite, as people join the Greens, only the power hungry will stay and those dedicated to social change will drop out when they see through the farce.
Germany prefigures a Green Party managing environmental destruction much as the Social Democrats willingly managed the destruction of the moral fiber of the labor movement. Traversing the path of the Social Democrats, Greens could well recruit many who were militant in their youth and used their experiences to skillfully serve the corporations they once challenged. As scum bubbles to the top of a cauldron, those who rise to be the elite of the Green Party may prove to be those who can stir crowds with emotional speeches as a way to advance their personal power. Such a demagogue would demand that no incinerator be built while whispering "...unless it is equipped with the best available control technology." They would rush to the front of a demonstration screaming "No nukes!" while mumbling "...unless they emit only safe levels of radiation." They would pontificate "No killing for profit!" while winking to the in-group "...unless we join a coalition government and then we will have to be realists."
Is It Over?
For this to occur, the right wing needs to break any control grassroots movements have over Green Party leadership. The 1999 dues "reforms" were an important step in this direction. A vaguely defined membership with an obtuse systems of representation by those who make no financial commitment fits in perfectly with keeping people out of meetings because they are too far to the left or preventing members from determining an agenda. But it ain't over. Just as many German Greens opposed the despicable acts of Joschka Fischer, there was a solid core opposed to what happened to US Greens in 1999 and a far greater number who have yet to realize the significance of the act or even that it was done.
A first step in changing the course of the US Green movement is issuing a wake up call. It is necessary to expose not only the absurdity of the "dues reforms" but how they fit into an overall drive to destroy the GPUSA, to undermine grassroots democracy for all Greens, and to turn our movement over to the corporate forces we should be fighting. It is not enough to halt the new stream of concessions which will flow from recent efforts at appeasement. We must advocate a complete reversal from the destructive road of 1999. Greens need to abolish the voting mockery by delegates of fictitious "members." We must replace the run-after-the-right pathos with a campaign to make the GPUSA the integration of grassroots activism and electoral democracy-a campaign which is focused not on those who want nothing to do with the GPUSA but rather seeks out those with heartfelt dedication to abolishing police brutality, nuclear power, incineration, genetic engineering and the hundreds of other atrocities visited upon the world by an economic system of profit.
Greens must bring these diverse struggles of opposition to a common understanding that the issue is empowerment. Greens need to project the vision of a post-capitalist era when society rather than corporations decide economic priorities. Greens need to explain that democracy is a fiction if it is limited to a once-every-four-years exercise and that true democracy means workers voting on how to organize their jobs and communities voting on how to share their wealth. Above all, Greens need to understand that no party can project a vision of a democratic society unless it prefigures that democracy in its own everyday practice. If US Greens can be confident enough to cohere our own struggle, we can look for allies to reverse the treason of Bielefeld.
The author would like to thank Barbara Chicherio, Edith Gbur, Mary Jo Maroney, Nancy Oden, Ed Shackett, Susan Lee Solar and Mark Weber for comments on an earlier version of this essay.