[Peace-discuss] Re: Fwd: Did the Green Party Betray Black America?
Alfred Kagan
akagan at uiuc.edu
Thu Jul 18 09:22:53 CDT 2002
I think this is an important article.
At 2:01 PM +0000 7/18/02, Amira Nuha wrote:
>----Original Message Follows----
>From: Pan-African News Wire <ac6123 at wayne.edu>
>Subject: Did the Green Party Betray Black America?
>Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 11:50:15 -0400
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Distributed By: THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER
> 211 SCB BOX 47, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY
> DETROIT, MI 48202-- E MAIL: ac6123 at wayne.edu
>======================================================================
>********* Related Web Sites
>**************
>http://www.africahomepage.org/tips.html
>http://talkingafrica.szs.net/news/
>http://www.freemumia.org
>http://www.afrikan.net
>http://theherald.mweb.co.zw
>http://www.zbc.co.zw
>http://www.anc.org.za/index.html
>http://www.panafbooks.com
>http://www.amebo.com
>http://www.wbai.org
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
>//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\///\\//\\//\\///\\//\\//\\/
>Amira Nuha
>www.staff.uiuc.edu/~mgdavis
>
>"Educate a man & you educate an individual. Educate a woman & you
>educate a nation."
>Ghanaian Proverb
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
>http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
>
>
>Return-Path:
><sentto-2011211-2388-1026911544-ac6123=wayne.edu at returns.groups.yahoo.com>
>Received: from mirapointmr3.wayne.edu (mirapointmr3.wayne.edu [141.217.1.113])
> by mirapointms1.wayne.edu (Mirapoint Messaging Server MOS 3.1.0.58-GA)
> with ESMTP id ABX83810;
> Wed, 17 Jul 2002 09:12:33 -0400 (EDT)
>Received: from n6.grp.scd.yahoo.com (n6.grp.scd.yahoo.com [66.218.66.90])
> by mirapointmr3.wayne.edu (Mirapoint Messaging Server MOS 3.1.0.58-GA)
> with SMTP id ACR62033;
> Wed, 17 Jul 2002 09:12:33 -0400 (EDT)
>X-eGroups-Return:
>sentto-2011211-2388-1026911544-ac6123=wayne.edu at returns.groups.yahoo.com
>Received: from [66.218.67.198] by n6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with NNFMP;
>17 Jul 2002 13:12:24 -0000
>X-Sender: lmn at lppals.com
>X-Apparently-To: CPRDetroit at yahoogroups.com
>Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_7_4); 17 Jul 2002 13:12:22 -0000
>Received: (qmail 3837 invoked from network); 17 Jul 2002 13:12:21 -0000
>Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217)
> by m5.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 17 Jul 2002 13:12:21 -0000
>Received: from unknown (HELO glatton.cnchost.com) (207.155.248.47)
> by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 17 Jul 2002 13:12:21 -0000
>Received: from lppals.com
>(adsl-66-73-178-99.dsl.sfldmi.ameritech.net [66.73.178.99])
> by glatton.cnchost.com
> id JAA04788; Wed, 17 Jul 2002 09:12:18 -0400 (EDT)
> [ConcentricHost SMTP Relay 1.14]
>Errors-To: <lmn at lppals.com>
>Sender: lmn at cnchost.com
>Message-ID: <3D356F02.18D15529 at lppals.com>
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.18-4GB i686)
>X-Accept-Language: en
>To: Metro Detroit Greens <metrodetroitgreens at yahoogroups.com>,
> Detroit Greens <detroitgreens at topica.com>,
> greendiscussion at yahoogroups.com,
> "CPRDetroit at yahoogroups.com" <CPRDetroit at yahoogroups.com>
>From: Lou Novak <lmn at lppals.com>
>X-Yahoo-Profile: lmnwwnetcom
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Mailing-List: list CPRDetroit at yahoogroups.com; contact
>CPRDetroit-owner at yahoogroups.com
>Delivered-To: mailing list CPRDetroit at yahoogroups.com
>Precedence: bulk
>List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:CPRDetroit-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com>
>Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 09:20:02 -0400
>Subject: [CPRDetroit] Did the Green Party Betray Black America?
>Reply-To: CPRDetroit at yahoogroups.com
>Content-Type: text/plain
>
>Did the Green Party Betray Black America?
>
> by Jonathan David Farley, D.Phil., Guest Commentator
>
>
> Dr. Jonathan David Farley, Green Party candidate for U.S.
> Congress from Tennessee's 5th district (
> http://www.votefarley2002.org ), is a Fulbright Distinguished
> Scholar at Oxford University and assistant professor of
> mathematics at Vanderbilt University, Nashville. He graduated
> summa cum laude with an A.B. in Mathematics from Harvard
> University in 1991. He received his doctorate in Mathematics
> from Oxford University in 1995.
>
> In 1994 he was awarded Oxford University's Senior
> Mathematical Prize and Johnson Prize for his research
> (Oxford's highest mathematics awards). From 1995 to 1997,
> he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mathematical Sciences
> Research Institute in Berkeley, California.
>
> Research Interests: Lattice Theory, Theory of Ordered Sets,
> Discrete Mathematics
>
> -0-
>
> I was at a house party in Murfreesboro, just south of Nashville, a
> town known primarily for being the home of professional
> wrestler Hulk Hogan. It was just before the presidential
> elections, but I had nothing on my mind except having fun.
>
> I was the only African-American in the house, and I figured
> that, since everyone there was a liberal, I wouldn't hear
> anything shocking. I was dead wrong. This is what I heard-and
> when I did hear it, I had to sit up and take notice:
>
> "The Green Party," someone said, in another conversation, "is
> the first party since the Black Panthers to support reparations
> for slavery."
>
> I was floored. Immediately I was energized, excited, and
> determined to do what I could to build the Green Party. I had
> missed the Sixties (by five months); but this was the
> organization, the Movement, that I had been waiting for.
>
> Nevertheless, given the disaster that has been the Bush
> presidency-given his rejection of the Kyoto accords, his flouting
> of the UN Conference on Racism, his catastrophic war against
> Afghanistan, his saber-rattling with China, his threat of a
> renewed arms race with Star Wars, his shredding of the
> Constitution and the subordination of the people's interests to
> those of the oil lobby-how could any rational being support the
> Green Party? Didn't the Green Party, by tipping the balance in
> favor of Bush, hand the Republicans a noose to put around our
> necks?
>
> Reparations Now!
>
> Before the party in Nashville, I had already been drifting
> Greenward for a couple of weeks. I decided not to vote for Gore
> after I learned of his running mate's hostility towards
> affirmative action, and I gave the Green Party a look when I
> learned that Dr. Ray Winbush, director of the prestigious Race
> Relations Institute at Fisk University, had attended the Green
> Party convention.
>
> Still, I didn't think much of the Greens. They seemed to be just
> another group of alienated white hippies primarily concerned
> with the environment, but ignorant (perhaps willfully so) of the
> issues that affected black people specifically.
>
> I remembered the lesson of black communists and socialists in
> the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. Eminent scholars like W.E.B.
> DuBois realized that white socialists, though in principle
> opposed to racism, remained embedded in America's racial
> matrix. By playing down the importance of race in history, the
> white socialists were essentially relegating black political issues
> to the back of the bus.
>
> When I heard Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader speak
> in Nashville, he only confirmed my views, dismissing a question
> about police brutality with the glib response, "Not all policemen
> are bad."
>
> That was before the party in Nashville.
>
> Historically, many black political movements have demanded
> reparations, of course, but they have always been small, and too
> radical even for most African-Americans. The Green
> Party-yes, to a large extent because it is white-may succeed
> where these fringe parties have failed: It has a larger base of
> support, international connections, and, as its presidential
> candidate, Ralph Nader, a universally respected champion of
> consumer rights, occupational safety, and the environment.
> (The Green candidate for Senate in Tennessee was Tom
> Burrell, an African-American.)
>
> The Green Party platform reads: "We recognize that people of
> color have legitimate claims in this country to reparations in
> the form of monetary compensation for these centuries of
> discrimination. We also uphold the right of the descendants of
> the African slaves to self-determination."
>
> What other issues do Greens and blacks support?
>
> 1. The removal of the Confederate flag from all
> public spaces.
>
> 2. A reappraisal of Third World debt.
>
> 3. Community control of the police.
>
> 4. An end to the war on drugs, Three Strikes, and
> the prison-industrial complex (which has left over a
> million blacks in prison).
>
> 5. Abolition of the death penalty.
>
> 6. Statehood for the District of Columbia (so
> blacks can get in the Senate-crack addicts who have
> been caught on film need not apply).
>
> 7. Free public education through college or
> vocational school.
>
> 8. Universal health insurance.
>
> 9. A living wage (so minimum wage workers can
> afford to raise a family).
>
> 10. The granting of new trials to political prisoners
> like Native American activist Leonard Peltier and
> former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal.
>
> 11. An end to corporate welfare and the surrender
> of our government to big business.
>
> 12. Electoral reform, including making Election
> Day a holiday, and the abolition of the Electoral
> College.
>
> The list goes on. The full platform can be found at
> http://www.gp.org. (Readers beware: there is a tiny organization
> masquerading as "the Green Party" which also has a web site,
> leading to endless confusion.)
>
> When people ask me why I support the Green Party, I say that I
> will support a party that supports me, that supports us, that
> supports reparations. This is not mere idealism. We are taking
> the struggle for reparations to another level, that of electoral
> politics.
>
> Yes, a Bush administration and Supreme Court may repeal our
> hard-won freedoms, but we must remember that the Supreme
> Court did not grant us those freedoms: the people, united and
> organized, demanded and won them. We must stop wishing
> that a white-led administration-Democratic or Republican-will
> throw us a few crumbs, such as affirmative action. After all, we
> got affirmative action because, in the Sixties, organizations like
> the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam were demanding
> reparations, even a separate nation. We got affirmative action
> because they were strident, uncompromising, and organized. In
> the Eighties we stopped demanding and started petitioning.
> And that's when the Right, sensing weakness, began to turn the
> clock back.
>
> We've gotten too used to the warm bed of straw that the
> Democrats have laid out for us in the barn. So afraid are we of
> the cold night air, that we are unwilling to leave them-when in
> fact, the Big House and all that's inside it belong to us by right.
> The owners will not yield it to us willingly. They won't give it
> up even if we ask with sugar on top. A thousand disparate
> voices, dispersed among a thousand fledgling organizations,
> won't make them surrender. But they will run for the hills if we
> shout with one voice.
>
> One of Our Candidates Is Missing
>
> A major concern African-Americans had in the last election
> was this: a vote for the Greens seemed to be a vote for Bush.
>
> Unfortunately, the flip side is that a vote for Al Gore was a vote
> for Al Gore. Since the Democrats lost the race anyhow, it was,
> ironically, Gore supporters who wasted their votes.
>
> Let's set the record straight: No one in the Green Party
> expected Ralph Nader to win. What we were hoping for-and,
> yes, it was a gamble-was 5% of the vote. Indeed, if it hadn't
> been for the millions of "yellow Greens" who chickened out at
> the last minute and voted Democratic, the Green Party might
> have gotten its 5%, and hence might have become eligible for
> federal election matching funds, which we need to win the
> battle for democracy. This would bring with it publicity, with
> which we could pressure the media to cover real issues. Green
> issues-not tissue issues (like whether rap CDs should have
> warning labels)-would begin to occupy their rightful place on
> the center stage of political debate. The fact that (it seems) we
> lost the gamble does not mean we were wrong to make it.
>
> Liberal Democrats often charge Ralph Nader with saying that
> "there's no difference between the Democrats and
> Republicans." I personally have never heard him say that. I
> believe there is a marked difference between Al Gore and
> George Bush, as the last 15 months have proven: Al Gore grew
> a beard, and George Bush didn't.
>
> But seriously, don't be fooled by the rhetoric. We have little
> reason to believe that the Democrats, long-term, would have
> been any better than they have been in the past. Don't take it
> from me: take it from Bev, a woman I corresponded with. Bev
> was angry.
>
> Those Democrats take our vote for granted, she complained:
> They come around begging for our votes once every four years,
> and then they ignore us until the next election.
>
> But what's a girl to do? Vote for the Republicans, who, aside
> from sprinkling Spanish into speeches here and there and
> showcasing four-star generals, are openly hostile to minorities?
> Heck, no. So the Democrats keep us in their corner, expecting
> us to help them win the prizefight, but giving us nothing in
> return but their sweaty towels.
>
> Take Bill Clinton, hailed by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison as
> "the first black president." When Clinton was choking on cigar
> smoke at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, his greatest
> defenders were the members of the Congressional Black
> Caucus. But this is the Clinton who, in 1992, dissed Jesse
> Jackson (the Democratic Party's election-year "minority whip"
> and whipping boy) in front of the entire country. This is the
> Clinton who, his first week in office, blockaded Haiti to keep
> black political refugees from coming to America.
>
> This is the Clinton who got my vote, twice.
>
> Take Montgomery, Alabama. The white Democratic mayor,
> elected by a narrow margin thanks to the black vote, showed his
> gratitude by refusing to discipline police officers who bullishly
> beat a black man.
>
> So what's a people to do?
>
> African-American political leaders have failed to put into
> practice a saying everybody else understands: You scratch my
> back, I'll scratch yours. Or, fool me once, shame on you; fool
> me twice, shame on me. Instead, we seem to think the saying
> goes: I'll scratch your back, you shovel *** in my face, and I'll
> scratch your back again, with a smile!
>
> Dr. Lenora Fulani, one-time leader of the now-fratricidal
> Reform Party, says we need a third party. But it can't be a party
> that focuses on black interests, she argues, because we're only
> 12% of the population. We have to assimilate, merge with
> whites, even if they are anti-Semites like Pat Buchanan.
>
> The good doctor is partly right. We do need a third party. But
> she's also partly wrong. A Black Bloc Party (call it what you
> will) is viable. In Europe, minority parties, such as the Ulster
> Unionists in Britain, do have influence precisely because the
> major parties are almost evenly balanced. They let the major
> parties know what it will take to garner their support; and the
> major parties had better deliver.
>
> But, one might argue, wouldn't such a third party only hurt the
> Democrats? You bet it would. They would have to make a
> choice: Continue the slide towards the right, or address our
> issues. They might call our bluff, or decide that they would
> rather lose the White House than lose white votes, but it's all
> good: At least we'd finally see that the "liberals" we've trusted
> for decades are, at the end of the day, nothing but a bunch of
> good ol' boys in white sheets.
>
> For too long, African-Americans have been living off the
> Democratic Party the way a lamprey lives off a shark; and we all
> know that the Replutocrats are no alternative. What we need is
> a Black Bloc Party-because the roof is on fire. I believe the
> Greens can be the vehicle we need to reach that party. We need
> candidates who will represent us, and not merely black skins in
> white masks who will sell us out. The Green Party and the
> black agenda are going in the same direction. So let's join.
>
> Election 2000, Ground Zero
>
> Don't get me wrong: I felt unwell the morning after the
> presidential elections. I live in Nashville, Tennessee-Gore
> Country, Ground Zero of the campaign. I had woken up at 3
> a.m. on November 8 to turn on the TV and see who won, only
> to learn that it was "too close to call."
>
> And when I learned how close-500 votes in Florida-I became
> positively sick. The Green Party had won more than enough
> votes there-90,000-to put Al Gore over the top, even if just
> 0.5% of those Nader supporters had voted for Gore instead.
>
> "Ralph Nader is at the bottom of the moral scale," angry
> Democrats told me. "I'll never vote for him, ever!"
>
> But I felt better when I realized who was really to blame for
> Gore's (apparent) defeat: Gore himself.
>
> The way politics works is, if you want my vote, you have to do
> something for it. Gore had months to court the Green vote; but
> even two weeks before the election, he explicitly said he would
> not.
>
> Of course, if Gore had catered to the Greens, and instead
> conservative Democrats had defected from the party and voted
> for Bush, no one would be blaming the conservatives. Instead,
> they would be asking themselves how they could win those
> voters back. This is not speculation-it is what actually
> happened in 1984 and 1988. That's why Gore helped found the
> Democratic Leadership Council.
>
> Despite African-Americans' record turnout at the polls, Gore
> even ran from blacks, up until the last few weeks: He chose an
> anti-affirmative action running mate. He refused to speak at
> Fisk University, despite repeated invitations (until the last
> week, when the race was close). Even when it could have won
> him the White House, Gore did not back up Jesse Jackson and
> the NAACP in their investigations of voter intimidation in
> Florida.
>
> Gore's campaign staff was incompetent. He could have crushed
> Bush in a landslide. Gore lost because his supporters lacked the
> fire of the Republicans.
>
> Gore lost because of Gore.
>
> Unipolar Disorder: The World after September 11
>
> While I agree that there is a significant difference between Al
> Bush and George Gore, we can't blame Greens for what
> happened post-September 11: the emergence of the United
> States as a global behemoth, a bull in a china shop,
> unencumbered by treaties, diplomacy, or human rights. After
> all, no Greens are in Congress, and it's Congress that has
> surrendered completely to the madness of King George.
>
> And let's not paint too rosy a picture about America under
> President Gore: One girl I met claimed that we had to support
> Gore for president, because then-Governor Bush was executing
> so many people. She seemed to forget that Bush, Cheney,
> Lieberman and Gore all support the death penalty.
>
> A white man I met claimed that Gore would have pursued a
> radically different course in the Middle East than Bush has. He
> ignored Lieberman's recent resolution supporting Israel's
> military attacks in Jenin, and Al Gore's own statement, during
> the second presidential debate, that without question, "we stand
> with Israel."
>
> Bush is proceeding madly towards drilling in Alaska, but
> Occidental Oil, a company closely linked with the Gore family,
> was, until recently, determined to drill in Colombia, despite the
> fact that the U'wa people (whose ancestral lands would have
> been desecrated by the drilling) were determined to commit
> mass suicide rather than allow that to happen. Incidentally, it
> was the Clinton-Gore administration that approved $1.3 billion
> in military aid for the Colombian government, with Clinton
> even demanding that the aid not be dependent on Colombia's
> improving its human rights record. As is well known, the
> Colombian military works closely with paramilitary death
> squads, who together kill about 80% of the 3,000 people who are
> massacred each year in Colombia's civil war.
>
> And most importantly, we must recall that, despite Bush's
> horrific record, all the media pundits claimed that the winner of
> the election would be the loser, a four-year lame duck president,
> facing gridlock at every juncture. That it did not turn out this
> way should shame the pundits, the papers, the political
> scientists, and, most of all, the party of Gore.
>
> This is not to say that a Gore presidency would have been
> isomorphic to Bush's; it is merely acknowledging reality: To call
> Albert a prince is to believe in fairy tales. It is the Greens, not
> the Democrats and certainly not Al Gore, who are the
> opposition in America today.
>
> The Color Blind Spot
>
> One objection many African-Americans have to the Green
> Party is that it is a white party. To which I respond:
>
> "Oh, and the Democratic Party isn't?"
>
> Indeed, of the three main presidential candidates in 2000, Ralph
> Nader is the only one who could be considered non-white. (His
> parents are from Lebanon.) His 2000 running mate, Winona
> LaDuke, is a Native American.
>
> So when I hear people say that the Green Party consists almost
> entirely of white hippie tree-huggers, I always laugh. To be
> honest, the Green Party does consist almost entirely of white
> hippie tree-huggers, but I laugh anyway. While the Green Party,
> despite its name, has very little color in it, it is still the most
> pro-black of the three main parties.
>
> Nonetheless, Grady, a student at Fisk University, told me that
> he believed Nader and Bush were conspiring together to
> undermine blacks. Other blacks have told me that the Green
> Party only takes the positions it does to "trick" blacks into
> voting for them.
>
> So basically, these blacks are saying that they won't support a
> party that claims it supports reparations; they will only support
> a party (like the Democrats) that has proven that it won't.
> Someone please explain the logic here?
>
> As to the Green Party's secret agenda to undermine Black
> America: I only wish the Green Party were that well organized.
> But the fact is, the Green Party was not trying to trick blacks
> into supporting them by adopting its amazing pro-reparations
> platform. I know this-because the Green Party made no effort
> whatsoever to recruit people of color!
>
> Colorlines Magazine accused Nader of having a "racial blind
> spot." But as Nader himself has pointed out, when we fight big
> polluters, when we fight for a living wage and better schools, it's
> people of color who benefit. But if that's not a convincing
> defense, let me add that the Green Party is not your average
> bear (or elephant or donkey): It is not a top-down party, led by
> Ralph Nader. It is a grass-roots party. The Green Party of the
> United States does not tell the Green Party of Tennessee what
> to do; the Green Party of Tennessee calls the shots in
> Tennessee.
>
> This is why blacks who want to start chapters of the Green
> Party need not be concerned that their party will be co-opted or
> taken over by whites. What they (the blacks) say, goes. This
> makes the Green Party more democratic than a lot of black
> organizations, the church and the NAACP included.
>
> This bottom-up structure is a strength and a weakness. Many
> local Green Party chapters are not ready for prime time. In
> Nashville, for instance, when Ralph Nader came to speak, the
> local Green Party did not even have a literature table set up at
> his talk, so that people who wanted to join the party could find
> out more. Despite the Green Party's lack of organization, I
> want to be a part of it. It is African-Americans who can help
> build it.
>
> Of course, we must remember the lesson of DuBois and still be
> wary of majority white parties: Soon after I started campaigning
> for the Greens, instructing party officials that they would bring
> thousands of blacks into their ranks by publicizing the
> reparations issue, I got this message from a Green activist:
>
> "Dear Professor: Reparations on slavery? Get over it, it's time
> to move on!" (This man soon stepped down from his position
> after other Greens chastised him.)
>
> When I decided to run for US Congress as a Green, despite my
> getting the endorsement of the Green Party, some of the
> officers of the Green Party of Tennessee conspired to keep
> information about my campaign off the party website. Their
> fear was that reparations would be "destructive to the Green
> Party and its relations with both the black and white
> communities." This is classic white liberal paternalism: they
> know better than we do about what we should ask for, and
> when.
>
> Having said this, the Green Party of the United States is
> progressive-at the national level. The national co-chairs "get
> it," people like Anita Rios (a Latina) and Ben Manski (a-well, a
> white guy). It is just some local chapters that need to be
> brought in line. And I am proud to be in the same party as
> people like Donna Jo Warren of California (who has been
> investigating the crack-CIA connection), candidate for
> Lieutenant Governor. So when people ask me if I am still
> running under the Green banner, I reply, "Yes!" I will not let
> the reactionaries chase me out of the party. Instead, I will rout
> them.
>
> To the Spoiler Goes the Victory?
>
> An NAACP official said recently that he won't work with
> Greens because "Greens aren't winners." But Greens can win.
> We're part of the government in France and Germany. And in
> Nashville, where I am running for Congress, we've even gotten
> international publicity. The congressional elections will see a
> conservative Democrat (old, white, male) and an almost
> identical conservative Republican (old, white, male) split the
> vote. Given that Nashville is 25% black and our agenda is
> 100% black, we might just slip into office with 34%. I'm
> working on my professional wrestling moves even as I write.
>
> More is true. The Green Party can shift the terms of
> debate-without a major electoral victory-so that the Democrats
> adopt our main platform issues. Already, former president
> Jimmy Carter is suggesting an Election Day holiday.
> Municipalities and universities across the country are adopting
> the living wage. Rapprochement with Cuba is around the
> corner. And of course, the degradation of our rivers, woods and
> air is a problem that won't go away.
>
> The Green Party is not just an environmental party. While it
> does support the traditional environmental issues-the abolition
> of nuclear weapons, the search for renewable energy sources
> like solar and wind power, the labeling of genetically engineered
> "Frankenfood" in supermarkets-it also has a social justice
> agenda that can't be matched by the Demopublicans. This
> agenda is so radical that the Greens won't ever be a majority
> party; but they can become the party of color.
>
> Towards a Politics of the Future
>
> My vote for the Green Party was not a protest vote. I did not
> vote Green because I am a naïve idealist: It was a pragmatic
> choice. While I am cognizant of the dangers of a Bush Supreme
> Court, I know that, every election, we will be presented with the
> same choice between a conservative Democrat and a
> Republican bogeyman. That cycle must be broken.
>
> The Green Party is not perfect, but, as one former Black
> Panther recently told me, it's all we have. The whiteness of the
> Green Party does not prevent it from having the most pro-black
> platform of the three major parties; and the best way to keep
> the Greens from betraying us is to join them.
>
> African-Americans must start thinking about long-term
> political objectives, about building a true opposition. Green
> should be in the middle of our rainbow coalition. If blacks join
> the Green Party en masse, it will become our party. And, with
> that base, we can begin to build the nation that Marcus Garvey
> and Malcolm X only dreamed about. After all, black and Green
> make gold-the colors of African liberation.
>
> The Democrats and Republicans are like Siamese twins, joined
> at the wallet. At some point, we must break the stranglehold
> they have on electoral politics. Someone once said that, if we'd
> begun building a third party in 1980, we would have had a viable
> alternative by now. With two parties, we only have two
> choices. With three parties, we have only one.
>
> Everything-nations, movements, universes-must have a
> beginning. For us to have a future worth having, there must be
> a change in the political order. The world is relying on us to
> effect that change-we, who live in the belly of the beast. So let
> us take up our tools, makeshift as they are; let us assemble our
> armies, and sail to meet the foe. The beach is before us, our
> ships eager to reach it. There are enemy cannons there,
> exploding with thunder and light. Many fall away. But this we
> know: the freedom or servitude of an entire continent, of future
> generations, is in our hands. We alight...
>
>--
>Lou Novak | Suffering from pronoia, the sneaking
>www.lppals.com/lmn | feeling that someone is conspiring behind
> | my back to help me. How can I help you?
>
>------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
>Save on REALTOR Fees
>http://us.click.yahoo.com/Xw80LD/h1ZEAA/Ey.GAA/YgSolB/TM
>---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
>
>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>CPRDetroit-unsubscribe at egroups.com
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
--
Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
More information about the Peace-discuss
mailing list