Some didn't like my style. ("He seems like a loud-voiced, dominant-,male type.") Some felt threatened at Mendocino Coun ty's aggressive activist posture in party affairs and wanted to diminish the county's influence. They wanted the weight of power in the party to go to the counties where the most members lived -- instead of here, where the issues are so nakedly exposed. Some felt they were railroaded at the February convention that nominated me. Some didn't know me. Some had worked hard and gathered a lot of signatures to get the party on the ballot and wanted to be rewarded with power for their efforts. Some had gotten power and did not want to share it, Some wanted Dan Hamburg to have the support of the Green Party in the congressional race. Some felt the new party was not ready to enter the lists. Some felt I was an opportunity trying to use the Green Party to advance my personal ambitions. Some felt I was Democrat in Green clothing. Some felt the convention was an "abuse of process," about which I'll say more in a minute.
These were all reasons I heard discussed and argued. I've probably forgotten some, am probably unaware of others. Many motives in politics are personal and irrational. I sniffed a good sprinkling of those.
None of these reasons was sufficient to close the race and end my candidacy. At the last count quoted to me by a member in Lake County, the party has entered 16 of 161 political races in this election year. This is a pathetic way to at a new party, particularly one that rushed to get qualified in time for the primary election, and a betrayal of the more than 100,000 people who joined in hopes of new Green choices in an otherwise desolate political landscape.
These various objections to my candidacy were muttered -- never formally made. I could have answered them, but I was never given a hearing. There was much dispute about my candidacy, but none of it was directed to me, probably because I was innocent of the serious charges and qualified for the candidacy. I provided position papers and a biography. They were never mentioned except by a couple of party members who thought they showed I was exceptionally well qualified.
The lack of substantive discussion of my nomination and candidacy was a sign of the dysfunction and immaturity of the Green Party of California. I was the victim and so were the people of this congressional district, who never got to hear me, and the members of the party, who did not sign on for the same old kind of corrupt, stupid, ego-dominated behavior as the old parties offered.
There are words that are hateful to me. They are "process" and "consensus." In Webster's Unabridged, the first definition, 1a, says process is "the action of moving forward progressively from one point to another on the way to completion." I like that, but the Greens have long used definition 1e: "a particular method or system of doing something." Notice that the emphasis changes from "progress" and "completion" to "method" and "system." The Greens' wry expression describes it when progress stops and only method is left -- "process hell." Nothing is accomplished but frustration.
In this country, we have entire crops of children being sacrificed to abuse, neglect, ignorance and early destruction. In the world we have whole societies being consigned to starvation, hideous oppression and death. We are giving most of the world's wealth to a tiny minority and ourselves to a tightening downward spiral of decay. All the non-human parts of earth's creation are similarly at risk. In light of this, our misuse of an invention that was intended to address these catastrophes -- a political party with sane principles -- and our delay in using this tool, is immoral.
Not just the Greens -- the Left itself -- habitually confuses leadership with hegemony, which is leadership by dominant groups. They are not the same. But this anti-authoritarian bias produces an unwillingness to confer legitimate leadership on anybody. Instead, there is to be empowerment of all through consensus. This happen sometimes. More often it does not. More often there is paralysis, and a vacuum of leadership, and into that vacuum come undesignated leaders. This, in turn, causes suspicion, compromise of party principles, a general loss of trust and breakdown and dysfunction of the Left community. This is what's happening -- already -- in the Green Party.
Consensus is a good -- maybe the only good -- way to arrive at bedrock goals and the policies to reach them, but in the normal hurry of events, any political process that mandates consensus will guarantee failure, except in small, polite, homogeneous groups. It will guarantee that ecosystems will be savaged and human beings brutalized. Without constituting itself so that it can function in the daily world -- democratically in many actions rather than consensually in all actions, unless it nominates and elects leaders -- call them servants, if you want, and give them no rewards but the service itself -- the party will fail in its mission of being a revolutionary statewide (and greater) force.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
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