The Green Party's Future

I served as a national representative to the US Green Party in 2005 and I remember when I first questioned a mysterious $25,000 donation made by a Mr. and Mrs. Mazzes. I was not casting aspersions or insulting anyone to ask the question; "What did the Mazzes get or expect in return for such a huge donation." I was attacked, nonetheless.

The Mazzes are obviously NOT people working towards independent politics. These are people working with the (un)Democratic Party and PDA and DFA and other gateway groups who regularly use their resource to shut down our grassroots organizing. The Mazzes are not Greens. They are upper middle class faux progressive Democrats and they obviously were paying off some type of favor. I wonder who in our party most directly benefited from this donation (and the $12,000 dollar one that they also made). Would we accept money from George Soros if he came to us? Is he a Green or a "progressive" from this lists' perspective? I know that Dems see Soros as a rich progressive but any half awake Green knows the less than subtle differences between "blood money" or payola and a simple donation. I suggested in 2005 that we should no longer accept bribes this large and obvious. If we only accepted smaller donations, no one would ever again have to suspect that a donation was the cause of any undue influence.

The way to prevent this from happening in the future is simple - cap all donations annually. I suggest we apply a "tithing formula". Lets cap donations to the party at 10% of the annual full time salary of a federal minimum wage earner. This provides a scale that limits undue influence but doesn't stop many of us from "maxing out" with our yearly contributions. Those who wish to give more can give to individual races and candidates as they should. It would also allow for growth if we are successful in raising the minimum wage. It would be an assurance that Democrats and other such war criminals can't simply buy their way into our party. We could also set up a Green Card system where every party member donates a minimum amount of money (say, $36 a year minimum unless there is a hardship declaration - thats 10 cent a day, people). Based on this "tithing", the maximum individual donation would be the federal minimum wage x 2080 hours x 10%.

Currently, that formula yields us a max donation of about $1200 a year ($5.85 x 2080 hrs / 10 = $1216.80 dollars). This is what I currently give and that is exactly how I decided to give that amount.

Pat LaMarche said to me in an email earlier this year that she estimated Green numbers were somewhere "between half a million and 3 million". Lets say for the sake of argument that we might have about 400,000 active Greens in the U.S. If only 75% of that very low estimate are honest and decent people who would pay their $36 bucks (10 cents a day) and not falsely claim hardship, we would collect well over $1 million dollars annually from this program! Imagine how many campaigns we could effectively run with that kind of resource! How many more senate and congressional and mayoral campaigns would get checks for $1,000 dollars or $5,000 instead of the $100 or $200 they currently get? We could use that money to set up printing templates and services and help paper states run their own papers and organize the grassroots. We could set up ballot databases to help states organize to attain ballot status. We could help campaigns with professionally designed templates for brochures and web hosting, campaign co-ordinators and advisors! We would no longer need to beg rich Democrats for little chunks of "big money" as we would have already raised it ourselves. More importantly, we would have done so while remaining true to our ideals. We would never again need to worry about whether those "big donations" come from saboteurs with strings attached because there wouldn't be any "big donors".

The two arguments I most often hear against a Green Card program are, at best, ridiculous. Correct me if I am wrong. No one has yet.

1 - Poor people would be excluded from such a system.

I don't often use words like "Bullshit" in print but it would seem quite apropos here. These "poor people" we always hear so much about are already excluded from our party as it does 99.9% of its business ONLINE! Do "poor people" have $1,000 to buy a computer and $65 a month for DSL? Do "poor people" have thousands of dollars to travel to conventions? The "rich elitist scum" in our party already exclude "poor people" if $36 dollars is really to be used as any kind of yardstick. The current Green Card Plan only asks $36 a year and allows for hardship unlike our own current operating procedures. Get Real! We are talking about 10 cents a day - the equivalent of returning two bottles to the store. Get a grip, people! I've never heard an actual "poor person" make this argument, EVER, just the usual posers. It always seems to be middle class white people pretending to know something about poverty who wish to disparage low income workers by spreading crap like this. Is there anyone reading this who is worried that 10 cents a day might separate them from the Green Party because they just couldn't come up with it? Is there anyone truly unwilling to collect two bottles or cans a day to support the only party that works for peace, single-payer health care and a livable wage? Do we really want anyone working with us who is unwilling to do this, the absolute very least anyone could possibly do?

2 - Most states don't allow political parties to be dues paying mechanisms.

Fine. Then, we set this up as a Green "group" or PAC or fundraising mechanism, whatever name it is legally necessary to define it as. These semantics are largely irrelevant. We can use this group to organize our ballot drives and each state's own unique political organization. Duh! I would say that with only 18 ballot lines, we're pretty much a bad joke as far as political parties go, anyway. Wouldn't we be much better off organizing people around ballot access and local issues and actual campaigns that really matter than steering them towards the dysfunctional and irrelevant mess we have created for them at national? We could use this new organization to keep track of all Greens anywhere in the country regardless of their individual state's ballot status. This group would become an incredible organizing tool for the vast majority of states (which don't have ballot lines and therefore don't have BOE records to use to reach out to their Greens). We would have money and a centralized list of all those who support us and wish to work with us on issues and races.

The benefits of setting up such a system would be overwhelming but it seems that it is the same old "position, not mission" people who attack the Green Card most venomously. Is it really all that surprising that these people are often in positions of power within our party? They probably would have been run out of any other organization for incompetence or sabotage. A benevolent organization might perhaps ask people who are "helpful" on this level to set up the tables and chairs or help sweep up after. We have gone to the insane extreme of allowing these people to RUN our party (into the ground). Big mistake.

We need to revisit the Green Card idea and make it happen. It is the single most logical answer to so many of our collective problems;

- It basically eliminates worry about any specific group "owning" us (especially Democrats).

- It creates a brilliant fundraising tool, empowering us financially.

- It facilitates a grassroots voting mechanism that puts power into the hands of those who show they are capable of handling it responsibly.
- It eliminates the need for our overly-complicated and dysfunctional hierarchy.

- It will reward good organizers/organizations by eliminating the need for apportionment arguments and formulas because each state would be based on actual paid membership.

- A system like this would mesh perfectly with our core tenets, unlike the convoluted horsecrap that currently passes for policy within our very sick, near dead, political party.

Where's the down side?

Walking The (Green) Walk

Living up to all of the tenets of the Green Party would be a tall order. We are friends of the environment and alternative energy. As such, we should all be living in small, ecologically-sound, passive solar homes. Are we? I would hazard a guess that most of us aren’t. We preach about global warming and vastly decreasing our country’s insane energy consumption. While many of us do own hybrids, walk, ride our bikes or take alternative transportation, as a group, we are still burning plenty of fossil fuels. We talk about the need for local food and the building of local economies. We talk about the need to fight corporate power and agribusiness. As such, we should all feel massive twinges of guilt at the supermarket even while filling our carts with “faux organic” produce often produced thousands of miles away on factory farms. In short, while it seems that most Greens make an effort we are probably still falling far short of really changing the landscape. That puts us in the same boat as everyone else in this country.

Green business owners are an interesting sub-group within the party. We are in a unique situation to act as Green representatives as the public may be more likely to see our efforts to push forward new thought processes about lifestyle and new alternatives to corporate politics. As a Green business owner myself, I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating this subject. Am I uniquely positioned as a Green business owner (if at all) to help grow awareness of the party and to help foment Green change? How can I best serve the interests of our party? How can I use my heightened prominence in our community to “walk the Green walk” and help represent the party’s ideals and vision?

Since first registering as a Green over a decade ago, I’ve struggled with the lonely feeling that I am the only Green business owner in America. I know that this is far from true. I’m sure there are actually many of us but we are not the sort to be too candid about our business dealings. We are untrusting of this bureaucratic and somewhat dysfunctional group that serves as our political home. When Peter Camejo ran for VP in 2004, I was thrilled. I immediately read his book on SRI (socially responsible investing and saw that one can be a successful capitalist (albeit a socially conscious one) and also be openly Green. Peter’s example was truly an inspiration to me.

I own and run Rock Hill Bakehouse, a wholesale bread bakery in upstate New York. We pay everyone who works for us a living wage and we do our level best to provide the best benefits that can be afforded in our market. We use local and organic ingredients in our breads and foods whenever possible and have been instrumental in creating a demand for locally-grown and milled grains and flours. We use fair trade coffees roasted locally. We use organic teas from our local self-titled “Tea Maven“. The majority of our produce is local and we sell our breads at over a dozen farmer’s markets (many in new York City). My father raises free range chickens on his farm and we use their meat to make our popular curried chicken salad. We use beef from a small farm about twenty minutes away as often as it is available. Ingredients that cannot regularly be sourced locally are purchased from local distributors who have made a commitment to paying their employees a living wage and to buying local wherever possible. In short, we try really hard and we are always trying to build more and better relationships to tweak the formula.

As with most good Greens, I am also an activist. I have been very outspoken on important issues in our area and have become somewhat of a spokesperson for the Greens locally (letters to the editor, Indy media booster and protest and event organizer). Contrary to conventional wisdom, I have found that the cost of being outspoken has been minimal (if there is really any “cost” at all).

I did once have a Vietnam Vet come to my café from the area VFW to let my customers know from the bed of his pickup with a bullhorn that I “didn’t support the troops”. A handshake and an hour spent in conversation was all it took for this man to see that my problem with our occupation of Iraq is a problem with war in general and the military industrial complex and not with our economically-conscripted, working class, soldiers.

I have hosted visits by Ralph Nader twice to our area in the last three years and while some people have shaken their heads at me for doing do, they usually do it while ordering food. A larger number have thanked me and a larger number still couldn’t care less (its them I need to work on). I advertise in local Indy papers, usually putting controversial comments and political advice in my print ads). Only a few times have callers left messages that they would “never buy bread from a commie” or other such anonymous venom. My business has grown every year for the last ten years and, as such, I can’t believe that my being Green has ever hurt my business in any way.

David Doonan, a good friend of mine, runs Mohill Design, a freelance web design company in Greenwich. He has worked for himself since August of 2001. He does a lot of pro bono work for the Green Party and has also designed more than a few web sites for our candidates (including Howie Hawkins when he ran against Hillary Clinton last year). David writes for several Indy media papers and is a photographer who has faithfully chronicled many peace actions and protests against this war and others.

I asked Dave what its like to be a Green business owner in small town America. He relates that when he and his wife first moved up from New Jersey fifteen years ago, “If you wanted anything done, you had to be a Republican. You had to be quiet. You couldn’t put your name and your politics out there. I don’t know that this is the case now because when the town needed a website, I was the guy who got the job.”

Doonan recently accepted a board position with the local Chamber of Commerce. He says that things can seem somewhat “schizophrenic” being involved in activist and social justice circles and at the same time being involved in fairly conservative business circles. I am the same way and I know what he means. We also talked about using foreign goods in our businesses. It is often difficult to buy products that are domestic and that truly support proper labor practices and environmental law. I asked David if its possible to get around the cheap (almost exclusively foreign) hardware and technology that drives the internet boom his business so depends on. He says that if it weren‘t for said equipment he “would probably be working 40 or 50 hours a week for someone else instead of for myself.” Rather than feeling like a hypocrite, he simply uses that knowledge as fuel that drives him to offset that somewhat mandatory compromise by doing good progressive work to make up for it, primarily his photographic record of activist activity in an ever- increasing radius.

Mohill Design “recycles paper and turns the lights off.” The client list is almost entirely made up of local people and businesses that are within walking distance of his modest home office. I ask if he has ever seen any “blowback” as a result of his political work. He relates that he did have one client who was deeply offended by a link David sent out showing photos he had taken of an anti-war march in Washington. That’s probably the only client he feels he’s lost, though.

High Peaks Java is a small coffee roasting company and café run by Derek Java (that is his real name). He uses only fair trade, organic coffee beans and offers soy and organic dairy products. Java says that he “held most of his ‘Green’ opinions and values prior to becoming a Green about a year ago”. Derek says that he doesn’t really know if being a Green affects his standing in the business community because he doesn’t really get much feedback about it. He doesn’t hide who he is but he also says that he doesn’t necessarily project it either. “If anybody were to come into my shop, they would see a poster of Ralph Nader on the wall and … they can draw their own conclusions or they can ask me a question. Most of them draw their own conclusions.”

Java says that prior to becoming an enrolled Green, he was already trying to “walk the green walk”, as he puts it. Now that he is enrolled he says he does feel that its even more important to set the standard for others to follow. While “greening” his business was not an unwieldy task, as it was pretty much already done before he registered, but he now sees the need to help others see how they can do the same.

We discuss our mutual awareness of how limited financial resources are within the party and I ask him if he thinks that we (as Green business owners) should focus on becoming a better, more organized force within the party so that we can help financially support party growth on a state and national level.

“I think its absolutely the way Greens should go. The problem comes when you start thinking about levels of donation per individual and how to compete on a national basis against two players (the corporate parties). They set the playing field ridiculously high. I mean the major forerunners in this election will raise a half a billion dollars! 500 million dollars in eighteen months! I won’t raise that in my life. To compete at that level … the way to reach those people is through advertisement and … advertisement’s expensive, perhaps more expensive than can be managed with a maximum donor value.”

We talk about Green business changing the perception of what it is to be a business person. Green businesses can help get the message out by showing people who come into contact with them an alternative to modern corporate behavior and structure. Java says he is interested in seeing Green businesses throughout the country help get the message out by advertising directly about Green candidates and issues.

There seems to be agreement that, as a caucus within the party, it would be good to start a meaningful discussion about how best to utilize the unique skills and resources we bring to the Green table. We all seem to share the hope that, over time and with our assistance, the party can attract other entrepreneurs and business owners into the fold. We feel a new example can be set as to what “business” is and what it looks like when a moral compass and a little vision are added to the mix. We all talked about our desire to see a network form that would take stock of Green business owners nationwide and help Greens with resource network with each other to help grow the party.

If you are interested in helping to form such a group or caucus please contact me at the email address below and we‘ll get to work. mattfuniciello@earthlink.net