A modest proposal: lose the "Green".

• Author: Belvadi, Melissa
• Position: Thinking Politically

I would like to propose a serious discussion about changing the name of the Green Party. Quite a few things have come together to make me realize that such a drastic action is necessary.

Ralph Nader and the 2000 debacle

We Greens all know it isn't fair to blame Nader for Gore's loss in 2000, but this is a losing battle. It is time to face the fact that, among liberal Democrats, one of our best recruiting grounds, the name "Green Party" will forever be tied emotionally to the claim that we cost Gore the election in 2000. We have so few resources to begin with that to use them trying to undo that public relations damage, rather than moving forward with our agenda, is a waste.

A "single issue" party

The few people I speak with who don't associate the Green Party with Nader assume we're only about radical environmental issues. While I certainly support the position of the Green Party on environmental issues, we're about so much more than that. In particular, this image also makes us an immediate turn-off for many people of color, who often perceive environmental issues as white middle-class concerns. Again, we have to waste valuable resources undoing the misimpression that our very name gives.

It's time we acknowledge that our name has become a liability, not a strength. The associations are all wrong for what we're trying to accomplish, unless our real goal is to continue to be a fringe political voice. At this point, it would likely take far fewer resources for us to start to build a new image, with a new name, than to undo all the misinformation that the larger liberal community now connects to the old one.

A voice speaking to the power of labels during this past election cycle has been that of George Lakoff, UC Berkeley linguistics professor. He tried throughout the last year to warn the Democrats that they weren't appropriately countering the Republicans' sophisticated use of language to frame the issues--advice which fell on the deaf ears of the Democratic leadership. Surely, Greens are more intelligent and will pay closer attention to his analysis of the political use of words, applying them to our own rhetoric, including our name.

How much trouble we are in was made evident in Professor Lakoff's address to a Green Festival audience in early November. He talked about the "seven basic types of progressives" and listed one as "Greens--those of you who are here, who talk about the sustainability of the earth and the sacredness of the...