{news} Political Maturity: On phantom candidates, pre-determined outcomes and fan clubs

[Clifford Thornton]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Hugh Esco<mailto:hesco at greens.org> 
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 11:43 PM
Subject: Political Maturity: On phantom candidates, pre-determined outcomes and fan clubs


>From hesco Mon Sep 17 02:28:01 2007
To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org<mailto:natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org>
Subject: Political Maturity: On phantom candidates, pre-determined outcomes and fan clubs
Reply-To: hesco at greens.org<mailto:hesco at greens.org>
Status: R

Dear Members of the Green National Committee:

I write to ask when we might find the political maturity
necessary to be taken seriously by those candidates we might
seek to recruit to our slate?

In my more frustrated moments I have often mused that one
day I hope to work with a political party which has a modiucm
of self-respect.

Any organization which has been around long enough for the
ink to dry on its governing documents has already begun to
develop and institutionalize its own organizational culture.
The term 'culture' (according to wikipedia) 'generally refers
to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures
that give such activity significant importance,' and as 'the
universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate
their experiences symbolically.'

Some aspects of the organizational culture of the Green Party
of the United States we inherit from the broader context
of the society we operate in, and the life experiences of
the participants who's involvement makes possible our work.
The fact that our organization evolved for instance within a
social culture grounded in the ideology of white-male supremacy
leaves us with that same foundation as the larger society we
are a part of.

The fact that some of our members are not white or male does not
insulate those members, nor our organizational culture from the
taint of an ideology which organizes power, control and access
to resources along those binary determinants.  In general,
Black and Brown folks are acculturated with internalized
racial inferiority to no less an extent than white folks are
brought up early to possess a belief in the internalized myth
of our own racial superiority.  Its the same societal clues
which inculcate these beliefs in all of us.  Just as we are
'racialized' by our acculturation, so too are we 'gendered' by
that process as well.  Gender here is seen as no less a social
construction than is race and is distinct from sex, anatomy
and reproduction (just as race has nothing to do with melanin
content), but refers to the ways our society has conditioned
us to behave and believe in ways deemed appropriate for our
anatomy, and our culture's place for us.

I wanted to address three aspects of the Green Party culture I
have observed which I feel work against our stated intention
of serving as a vehicle for the democratic organization of
the political power necessary to effect a Green-Justice agenda.

phantom candidates

We expect flesh and blood Green Party candidates, at least for
President of the United States, to participate in a nominating
process which pits them against phantom candidates, persons
who have not declared their intention to seek the nomination
of the Green Party of the United States.

For evidence of this phenomena, we do not have to revisit the
absurdity of the Milwaulkee Presidential Nominating Convention
for which we provided rules permitting us to 'endorse' a
candidate who refused to seek or accept our nomination.

The far more recent Riverside General Assembly of the California
Green Party will serve as a case in point.  Candidate campaigns
were informed of rules expressing a consensus that favors
the inclusion of 'announced candidates', and where the
'recommended candidates list' included only those candidates
who had 'affirmatively expressed an interest in seeking the
GPUS nomination for U.S. President'.  Those rules further
provided that 'In the absence of consensus for inclusion of
any additional candidate(s), the question of additional names
will be decided by a written ballot.  A candidate receiving
2/3rds or more of the total votes cast will be included on
the list to the California Secretary of State.'

There are conflicting stories coming out of California as to
whether the document from which this language was quoted had
been adopted / was binding on the ballot setting process that
occurred in the September 8th Plenary.  So either we believe
that no rule existed and their ballot was set by something
closer to mob rule, than to a process in which the participants
were duly notified of the ground rules; or we believe that
the rule was adopted and then ignored.

In either instance the six Green Party members who had
'affirmatively expressed an interest in seeking the GPUS
nomination for U.S.  President', were subjected to disparate
treatment in the ballot setting process when compared to the
treatment experienced by a seventh candidate who presumably
reported third hand in an oral phone message that he was
'flattered' to be considered, had made no decisions about his
intentions for 2008 but had 'no objection' to being included
on the Primary ballot.

Six candidates and Green Party members complied with the
'affirmatively expressed interest' rule required to assure them
a place on the 'recommended candidates list'.  One wealthy
attorney from Connecticut with a dead-daddy story about why
he won't join our Party did not.

At that point the rule, whether it existed or not, whether it
had been adopted, or had merely been explained to candidates'
representatives as if it did govern, was thrown out the window.
The rule was less important than our organization's cultural
commitment to setting our Presidential Preference ballot to
include its very own 'phantom candidate'.

pre-determined outcomes

We have an organizational culture which favors pre-determined
outcomes over the messiness of democratic engagement with its
unpredictable outcomes.

This cultural predisposition of ours expresses itself in
multiple ways.  The phantom candidate practice is only one
manifestation of this aspect of our cultural makeup.

Another way this trait exhibits itself in our Party's culture
is the ongoing speculation about whether we ought to run a
Nader-McKinney ticket or a McKinney-Nader ticket.  I wonder
how many folks who have engaged in such speculation have
actually had a conversation with either or both of the players
in their fantasy team.  Are either of these candidates willing
to have the other as a running mate?  Based on what evidence?
And given the interest each has expressed in the past (if
not now) in our Presidential nomination, what makes any of us
think they would want that 'one heartbeat away' job, instead?

Speaking from my own experience, I will say that my work
to bring Ms.  McKinney to our Party's slate has focused on
negotiating the conditions under which she might be willing
to seek our nomination for President of the United States.
And on September 8th, her letter stating her intent to do
just that was read on the floor of the California Plenary.
I see the question of her running mate as a question for her
to answer, sometime next year.  But for the next nine months,
long before she needs to make a decision on running mates,
there are many other questions our potential campaign must
answer: mostly dealing with matters of fundraising, messaging,
scheduling, staffing, primary and general ballot access,
and delegate counts.

The question of pre-determining outcomes grows from a sense of
entitlement many of us may choose to exercise from time to time.
Entitlement refers to a 'guarantee of access to benefits'.
The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights would assert that we are
entitled to family, language, political rights, economic rights,
food, water, shelter, security in our old age and related
benefits of living in a civilized world.  But I'm not talking
here about those sort of entitlements, the ones guaranteed
by law.  I refer here to the entitlements we would presume to
exercise on behalf of others: the entitlement say to choose our
nominee's running mates for them, or a person's future for them.

While we may all at one time or another find ourselves seeking
to exercise an inappropriate sense of entitlement, the dynamics
of life in a culture based on the supremacy of white males
generally reserves the effective exercise of such power to,
you guessed it, white males.  Women and people of color are
welcome to go along and expected to permit others to plan
their lives for them in this way.

The democratic process is antithetical to our cultural
predisposition to pre-determine outcomes.  Democracy is messy.
You put those sorts of decisions in the hands of a collective
of ordinary people and we lose control over the final result.
Which is precisely why an institution, even one espousing
grassroots democracy as a key value, must create and support
cultural norms like the 'phantom candidate' and 'predetermined
outcomes' so it can maintain control over the result; you know,
after the rabble have had their say.

party or fan club 

Our Party made a tactical choice in 1996 and in 2000 which has
colored our development ever since.  That choice was to recruit
to our ranks as its standard bearer, a cultural icon who had
never joined our Party.  As a part of the negotiations which
made that campaign possible, apparently we were willing to
offer not so much a nomination (won in a contested process),
but more of a coronation provided as a fait-accompli, a
pre-determined outcome.  The rest of those campaigns were
essentially scripted drama for the folks who did not broker
those deals, did not negotiate the final outcome, and whose
votes were seen as props for the inevitable result we all knew
would come of the exercise.

Those were useful tactics in our early days.  But we seem
to have mistaken our tactics for our goals.  We now face
within the leadership bodies of this organization folks
who comport themselves more as members of a fan club than as
voters belonging to a political party.  Their words, votes and
deeds seem more appropriate to the obsessive adulation of the
target of their fandom, than the strategic building of the
capacity required to harness political power in service of a
Green-Justice agenda.

That candidate in 2000 told us all that he was working with
us to build the Green Party because we needed a viable vehicle
with which to organize for political power.  That same candidate
in 2004 declined to seek our nomination and instead began the
process of building a new political party, the Populist Party,
but also worked with the Reform Party and others to secure
ballot lines and went so far as to permit his paid campaign
staff to interfere with the ballot lines our Party had secured
for the use of our nominated slate.

At the Milwaulkee Convention I had hope that our Party had
grown up; that we had pushed through the soil and matured to
the point of leaving coronations behind us.  I was hopeful
that our Party was beginning to show the political maturity
necessary to build capacity for the long term.

But the Riverside Plenary suggested otherwise.  

The California Party at the Riverside Plenary ignored the rules
its officers had advertised to prospective candidates and sought
to exercise its cultural entitlement to pre-determine outcomes
by running a phantom candidate against the flesh and blood Party
members who have taken the personal risks necessary to put
themselves out there as seeking our nomination for President
of the United States.  In doing so they acted more like a fan
club than a political party and cost us a candidate many feel
is capable of uniting our Party for the 2008 election cycle.

--

In conversations with Ms. McKinney about the sort of campaign
which would be possible were she to seek and win the Green Party
nomination for President of the United States, she pointed out
to me recently that all the Black folks who had tried to do
what we were discussing -- uniting people nationally across
lines of race in support of economic justice -- had died
a premature death of unnatural causes.  Besides postponing
her own personal priorities, sending her letter of intent to
the Riverside Plenary also involved embarking on a course of
action involving actual risks to her personal safety, evoking
the concerns of her family and friends.  She has lived under
death threats before and understands the impact that has on
one's life.  I'm not the candidate here, but my own partner
has expressed concerns for the risks I assume for being in
proximity to her.

But it would seem that our Party has not matured sufficiently
to honor those risks with an open and democratic process for
determining its nominee.

If we are to offer Green voters a Presidential nominating
process contested by multiple viable candidates, we must
learn to take ourselves seriously enough to demand that our
candidates actually seek our nomination.  We must insulate our
nominating process from trivial candidates who are not seeking
our nomination.  While we might choose in each of our state
parties to permit our members to initiate efforts to draft
reluctant candidates to our slate, we ought to distinguish in
our rules, as was done by the California CCWG's ballot setting
process, the candidates who seek our nomination from those who
do not.  And when we draw those distinctions in our rules, we
ought to honor those flesh and blood Green Party members who
seek our nomination by having the integrity to enforce those
distinctions and permit our members to decide for themselves
whether they belong to a fan club or a political party.

The question now is will we grow up and stand up for what we
have to offer the voters of this nation?  Or will we remain
in the fetal position, convinced of our unworthiness to lead
our nation from the abyss and that we are dependent on some
outside savior to make us relevant?  Are we ready to muster
a modicum of self-respect for the work that we do and the
opportunities we are prepared to offer the American people?
Are we ready to field Party members who have declared their
intention to seek our nomination?  Or will we content ourselves
with playing fan club in the midst of public elections?  

This is serious business we are engaged in.  Our work is a
matter of life or death.  How we answer these questions in the
coming days and months may very well determine whether we have
any future worth building for.

-- Hugh Esco, Delegate
Georgia Green Party


Efficacy
PO Box 1234
860 657 8438
Hartford, CT 06143
efficacy at msn.com<mailto:efficacy at msn.com>
www.Efficacy-online.org<http://www.efficacy-online.org/>
 
"THE DRUG WAR IS MEANT TO BE WAGED NOT WON"

Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit
501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax
deductible

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/private/ctgp-news/attachments/20070918/3f384e75/attachment.html>