The Politics of the Boston Proposal.

• Author: Hawkins, Howie
• Position: Green Party

I think that the way to approach the Boston proposal is politically, not from the perspective of ASGP or GPUSA organizational interests. We should think first about what the independent left and the Green Party movement need organizationally at this time. I think four things are crucial.

1. United Electoral Front

   As long as we have winner-take-all election rules, the left needs a united electoral front of everyone who is independent of corporate money and control and to the left of the Democratic Party. Our core support is too small to divide our vote among different independent left parties. It just marginalizes the left. Coming off the 3 million votes for Nader and with 22 ballot-qualified state Green parties, the Green Party is the vehicle to keep building for that united electoral front.

2. A Single Green Party

   Two feuding Green Parties is not helping either GPUSA or ASGP. People don't join sectarian fights. The general public doesn't take seriously a Green Party movement that can't overcome its division. We just need one ballot line Green Party for a united electoral front of the independent left.

   In the whole world, only in the US does the privilege of ballot access require political parties to surrender control of their power to bestow their party label on nominees for public office, and even to elect internal party officers, to government-conducted elections called primary elections. That makes political parties in the US merely agencies of the state.

   Let ASGP become this empty vessel: the statutory Green Party. Let GPUSA continue (with a different name) as the membership organization of Green Party activists that fills that empty vessel with radical democratic politics.

3. Grassroots Organization

   If US political parties are agencies of the state, they are also empty vessels which different organizations compete to fill with their own people. In the corporate parties, these extra-governmental organizations are mainly corporate-sponsored candidates' committees and corporate-sponsored PACs. There are also popular organizations competing for influence--e.g., the AFL-CIO in the Democrats, the NRA in the Republicans--but they are grossly outmatched by the corporate interests.

   The Green Party (as long as it refuses corporate money) is different. Popular organizations and candidate committees will compete to have their members elected to its statutory local, state, and national committees and for nominations for public office. GPUSA, as the biggest membership organization in the Green Party movement, can readily elect its people to the Green Party committees and get its members nominated on the Green Party line for public office if it stays organized.

   The power of these statutory committees is quite limited. Their candidate designations and nominations can be overturned in primaries. They are nearly as limited in raising and spending money on behalf of their candidates as PACs are. But under FEC regulation of federal election campaigns, the soft money loopholes for "party building activities" and "issue advocacy" make all these limits meaningless anyway for all practical purposes. And for...