Tilting at Windmills--A View from the Grassroots.

• Author: Prior, Paul

The election is behind us and it's time to reevaluate the campaign in terms of its original goals. With the Great Crusader heading the ticket, Greens planned to gain the support of many voter blocs that were taken for granted by the Democrats, go over the 5% mark for matching funds, and build a "new mainstream." We all cheered his speeches.

Nader staffers and party leaders have tried to put a positive spin on their failure to reach the 5% for matching funds, as well as their poor showing in most states for future ballot access. Yes, they have thousands of names in the database for party building. But even before the election, some questioned whether another Nader campaign would build the grassroots, admitting that local success stories "don't add up to successful bids for state or federal office and mainstream media coverage" and "Maybe we are not meant to rule, but rather to remain in opposition to government...Until we adopt a fair electoral system, US Greens will probably be denied state and federal office... Without big campaign war chests, we remain invisible to the electorate." [1]

Back in 1995 party leader Howie Hawkins in Z Magazine called for all-out local organizing: "Instead of the 100 or 200 independent left candidacies we had in 1994, we should have 1,000 or 2,000 in 1995", and called for an "ecological populism...economic justice, political democratization and decentralization, and ecological reconstruction.." [2] But now we still have 200 local candidates and it's five years later. Now we're hearing from Party leaders "we gotta get organized." Neglecting to build the base first, what we got in the Nader campaign was the Populism without the ecology.

The real problem with trying to build the base with national elections is the winner-take-all system that makes enemies of the other groups needed to become a major party. You can't run a separate progressive party like the Greens without taking more votes from the Democrats, and that makes mortal enemies of the progressive Democrats you need to grow the Party. Yes, electoral work is needed along with activism, but a third party in national elections is the politics of defeat, and there's plenty of work in local organizing and state legislatures that comes first.

The Democrats' "spoiler" charge forced the Greens into a strategy of "no friends on the Left." And Nader's harshest attacks came from traditionally liberal or progressive blocs, labor, minorities, women's groups, and...