{news} Is Green Party Ready for a McKinney Campaign?

[Clifford Thornton]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Hugh Esco<mailto:hesco at greens.org> 
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 11:43 PM
Subject: Is Green Party Ready for a McKinney Campaign?


>From hesco Sat Sep  1 12:53:29 2007
To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org<mailto:natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org>
Subject: Is the Green Party ready for a McKinney Campaign?
Status: RO

Dear Greens:

I write this to our Party's leadership to ask whether the Green
Party is ready to serve as a vehicle for a Cynthia McKinney
Presidential bid.

I write this from the road on the way back to Atlanta from
New Orleans Louisiana.  I traveled to NOLA with Congresswoman
McKinney to honor her commitment as a Convenor of the Peoples
International Tribunal for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

While there, she was approached by International Delegates
from multiple nations often speaking through interpreters,
expressing broadly held hopes from their home countries that
she might lead an electoral challenge to transform our rogue
nation into an honest broker for peace in the world.

We traveled to New Orleans in a twenty-two hour overnight drive
from a Delaware event which ended a thirteen stop speaking
and fundraising tour, largely organized and hosted by Green
Party activists, of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.
Our intent was to retire what was left of the $50,000 debt
left from her 2006 Congressional Campaign where, for the
second time, a malicious cross-over vote in Georgia's open
primaries served to turn her out of Congress where for six
terms she had provided authentic representation to Georgia's
Fourth District.  When we started we still had more to go.
As we return home, although having made a serious dent in
the balance, that debt is not yet retired, but we thank those
contributors who are helping us get where we need her to be
for her full consideration of her options for 2008.

Having worked in her Congressional office on Capitol Hill, I can
say that her constituency stretches across 435 Congressional
districts and that the phones never stopped ringing with
people across this nation seeking a sympathetic ear on the
Hill in spite of their own elected Congressmembers failure to
represent their interests.

A few of you are already aware that I have for much of the
past year, worked quietly in the background to prepare the way
for a Green Party McKinney campaign.  Early in that process
it became clear that there would be no such Green Party
campaign unless there were also a Black, Brown and Green,
Green Party McKinney campaign.  No declaration would be made
by Congresswoman McKinney for our nomination, unless it could
be a part of a larger effort which was prepared to ride the
momentum being created by the Black-Brown Unity organizing
already under way, led by the Black Liberation Movement and the
Immigrant community.  No such effort would materialize unless
it was a part of a larger effort to involve and engage Native
and Asian and African and Latino/a communities in a central
and meaningful way.

The biggest obstacle we as the Green Party face, to having
a role in such an historic and seminal campaign is the white
culture which so dominates our Party.  Our biggest obstacle
is the impression among community activists of color that the
Green Party has no place for them at the center of decision
making within the Green Party.

While understanding the historic imperative for urgent action
which we face, Cynthia McKinney also could look back with
pride on sixteen years of service in publicly elected office.
She could choose to retire to complete her long postponed
Doctoral Dissertation.  She could choose to have a private
life for nearly the first time in her adult life.

First in the Georgia General Assembly, and later in the
U.S. Congress, McKinney offered herself as a vehicle for the
aspirations of communities struggling for justice against the
corporate and public institutions which continue to undermine
democracy and the living and working conditions we face.  It was
the poorest of voters in the Central Georgia Black Belt which
first sent her to Congress on a $25,000 campaign in the three
way 1992 Primary where we defeated the two Black candidates
chosen to represent the predominently Black folks of the old
Eleventh by Georgia's most powerful competing white politicians,
then Governor Zell Miller and then Speaker Tom Murphy.  These
were people without running water in their homes.  These were
people who faced Klan violence for their support of her.

As former Georgia Green Party Chairman, the Reverend Zack
Lyde often reminded us, the work we do is serious business,
a matter of life and death.

And as Ms. McKinney often reminds people, she is a student
of COINTELPRO, which she asserts did more to shape the
on-the-ground conditions faced today in the Black community
than any other single factor.

It was building black and white unity to challenge racism,
poverty and war which got Dr. King assassinated.  And our
own tax dollars had a hand in that, just as they did in the
assassinations of George Jackson, Chairman Fred Hampton,
the Kennedy brothers and Malcolm X.

It is important that we not be naive about the barriers we
face, nor the risks we would ask her to assume.  Even so,
the future of our nation and our communities demands that
we not shirk from this historic responsibility to offer the
Party we've spent twenty years building as a vehicle for such
an important campaign.

But to do so we can not sit on our laurels.  Having forty or
even fifty-one ballot lines to offer will not be sufficient
if we fail to offer a place at the table for our partners in
such an alliance.  And that will require that we step outside
our comfort zones, that we learn to operate effectively and
respectfully in the very communities we seek to represent.

As we were checking out this morning, in the hotel lobby we ran
into a former Green who currently serves in a leadership role
within the California Federation of Labor.  Back in the day,
he worked in early efforts to build Labor Party Advocates.
He has remained in communication with those labor activists
who became frustrated by the LPA's refusal to challenge
its financial base's relationship with the Democrat Party
by engaging in electoral politics, and their resistence to
challenging the comfort levels of its predominently white base
by responding to the legitimate demands of its Black supporters.

In organizing now under way which has grown from last year's
Katrina Survivors People's Assembly held in Mississippi, and as
work proceeds for the Second Survivors Assembly scheduled for
New Orleans, December 8th and 9th of this year, growing momentum
has developed for a Reconstruction Party as an electoral
vehicle, described by Kali Akuno, Executive Director of the
People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition, as:
    a strategic instrument that will enable the Gulf Coast
    Self-Determination and Reconstruction Movement to implement
    the restorative measures called for by the Tribunal through
    the institution of the state.
        http://www.peopleshurricane.org/ed-blog/<http://www.peopleshurricane.org/ed-blog/>
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Reconstruction+Party%22+Hurricane&btnG=Search<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Reconstruction+Party%22+Hurricane&btnG=Search>

As reported that morning by that former California Green we
met in the lobby, the Reconstruction movement, and the old
Labor Party Advocates and a broad range of other independent
political forces have already issued a broadly supported letter
to Congresswoman McKinney asking that she consider carrying
their banner in an electoral effort for 2008.

I was brought into this conversation to hear his concerns that
the Green Party is not a suitable vehicle for such a run.
Even aware of the tremendous heavy lifting it has taken for
us to have our ballot lines to offer, he was of the mind that
autonomy and self-determination for a Black and Brown led
political movement was too important to risk for the short
term gains to be enjoyed by subsuming such an effort in a
predominently white Green Party.

>From my past work with the Congresswoman, it is clear that
she has no interest in serving as the titular head of a Party
not ready to embrace its role of providing a vehicle for such
participation.

Ms. McKinney was clear, that the only reason she would
participate in a Green campaign was to support such a
Reconstruction agenda, including the agenda of creating
a framework which would honor the need for autonomy and
self-determination by communities of color.

Clinton ran on a Platform of naming a Cabinet which looked
like America.  But images are not enough.  We must do more than
colorize our Board photos.  We must go further and build a Party
which at every level involves and engages, not just those Greens
of color that those of us who are white might be comfortable
working with, but those community activists who legitimately
represent the authentic leadership of communities of color.
We must be ready to operate in our discomfort zone.  We must
recreate this Party so that these authentic leaders are offered
a seat at the table of decision making within the Green Party.

So I return to the question with which I opened this letter: Are
we ready as a Party to be a vehicle for such an effort?  Are we
ready to open our Platform development process, leadership
bodies and slates to the leadership which would emanate from
those communities ready to coalesce around a McKinney campaign?

Because if we are not yet ready to do our internal work to
create a safe place where we can struggle together toward such
an outcome, I would rather tell my old friend not to bother
with next week's deadline for the California Presidential
Preference Primary.  I would rather protect her from the abuse
and disappointment, than try to pretend that our state Parties
were ready for something we are not yet prepared to engage in,
as principled allies.

That question is left to us.  And with the California Green
Party General Assembly setting their Primary ballot on the
weekend of September 8th and 9th, the window for responding
to that question is quickly closing.

Cynthia McKinney has offered a contact form on her website
where she welcomes feedback from Greens on these concerns and
regarding folks' thoughts on possibilities for 2008 in general.
Please reply at:
        http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/TalkBack2008<http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/TalkBack2008>

-- Hugh Esco, Delegate
Georgia Green Party

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