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San Francisco Bay Guardian
June 11, 1997
About 15 minutes into the California
Green Party's recent fund-raiser on the S.S. Santa Rosa, I realized
the ship wasn't leaving the dock. The historic ferryboat, it seems, is permanently
anchored at San Francisco's Pier 3.
The deep-pocketed supporters who attended the May 23 eventalong with
singer Bonnie Raitt, actor Ed Begley Jr., and former Democratic Congress
member Dan Hamburghad gathered to make sure the Green Party doesn't
become anchored in political irrelevance.
The $125-a-head floating shindig was a tribute to eminent environmentalist
David Brower, who was being honored "for his political courage to break
with the Democratic Party and endorse the candidacy of Ralph Nader of the
Green Party," according to the invite.
While $125 won't come close to buying coffee with the Clintons, it is a
big ticket by Green standards, and it represents a shift from the party's
traditional grassroots approach.
The event kicked off the Green Awareness Campaign, which is being organized
by the V.O.T.E. Action Committee, a statewide organization
that supports progressive politics. Former U.S. representative Hamburg,
now a Green Party member and executive director of V.O.T.E., gave a speech
that hinted at a new tenacity in the party's electoral strategy.
"If the Democratic Party is going to continue to put up candidates
that do not in any way deserve our support, we are going to put up Greens,
and we are going to make [Democrats'] lives miserable," he said.
Hamburg told me that leaving the Democratic Party was one of the easiest
decisions he has ever made, and he joked in his speech that there was a
sign-up sheet for "a support group for recovering Democrats" at
the back of the room.
While most people associate Greens with environmentalism, the party's platform
addresses everything from foreign policy to health care.
"We are almost on a collision course with the dominant philosophy in
politics today, which is privatization, withdrawing support for the poor,
promoting consumerism and consumption, and supporting the globalization
of capital," Betty Traynor, a member of the party's San Francisco county
committee, told the Bay Guardian.
Traynor pointed to the planned 49ers stadium and mall in San Francisco,
which the Greens oppose, as an example. "The Green way of looking at
that [proposal] would be community-based economics," she said. "If
we have money to spend, why not spend it to help the small businesses in
the Bayview instead of building a mall which will create mostly minimum-wage
jobs?"
The Greens have celebrated some Green_Home_Page.htmsignificant victories
over the past year, with a record 16 candidates gaining office around the
country in 1996. They attained a majority on the city council in Arcata, Calif.
the first Green majority in U.S. history. In Berkeley, city council member
Dona Spring became the first U.S. Green to be elected to a third term, and
in Santa Monica, Green Mike Feinstein was elected to the city council. Critics
such as top Democratic strategist Bob Mulholland say the Green Party has
gone downhill since it qualified for the California ballot in 1992.
"The Green Party has recently been placed on the side of a milk carton,"
Mulholland said. "They have had big ideas and hopes and not much else.
Last year they thought Ralph Nader would salvage them; in fact, they did
nothing for each other."
Mulholland blames the Greens for undermining Democrat Tony Miller's run
for Secretary of State in 1994; entering a Green candidate in the race only
diverted would-be Democratic votes, he says, allowing Republican Bill Jones
to win handily. Ross Mirkarimi, a founder of the state Green Party, dismisses
the allegation that the Greens only act as spoilers. "How can we be
spoilers in a system that already stinks?" he asked.
But Mirkarimi believes that the Greens should be focusing on races they
actually have a chance of winning, rather than running candidates just to
send a message. That's why the state party is putting together a new strategy,
one focused on winning local, nonpartisan races. The "Greening City
Councils 2000" plan is modeled after the Christian Right's strategy
of focusing on local elections. "Don't be surprised in the next three
to four years that you start to see a wave of Greens winning local city
council races, as well as school board and other local races," Mirkarimi
said.
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