Isn't the point of politics on the left to change the world we live in, pushing against legal and institutional constraints?
Absolutely. But you've got to understand what you're up against. Non-party (since Nadder isn't running on a party ticket) campaigns for president are essentially doomed. They're a delusion, a waste of time. If you want to make change through electoral politics, you've got to organize a proper party, which takes a long time. It can be done, but don't pretend that your 1% base is up to the task.
I'm sure organizing a political party takes a long time. The Green Party started running candidates in 1985, fielding just three candidates in local elections: Joel Schecter for Alderman and Richard Wolff for Mayor in Connecticut, Wes Hare for Mayor in North Carolina (<http://www206.pair.com/calgreen/elections/index.php?year=1985>). Back then, the party didn't have the support of even 1% of the voting-age population. Very few Americans even knew that such a thing as the Green Party existed.
As I mentioned, Peter Camejo is recruiting new activists who come to Nader's and Camejo's campaign appearances to the Green Party and building a caucus of Greens on the left to democratize the party's structure, strengthen its independence from the Democratic Party, and make the party active in social movements, so that the Green Party won't be divided in 2008 and it will be able to become a political force to reckon with. All of us who support independent political action on electoral and social movement fronts are not just thinking about this year; we are thinking about using campaigns this year to network for the future.
At 11:22 AM -0400 10/22/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
Slavery, genocide of American Indians, disenfranchisement of women, Jim Crow, etc. were once perfectly legal and institutional.
The genocide never really stopped, and it took a civil war to end slavery, but the vote for women and ending Jim Crow were all done through large-scale organization that mostly worked within the existing structures of the U.S. legal system.
Most of the first wave of women's rights activists began accumulating their political experiences and honing their organizing skills through the abolitionist movement. And actions against Jim Crow often took the form of civil disobedience, the point of which is to break unjust laws to make injustice visible to all. And no large-scale organization began large from the get-go -- everything at the beginning was small. Nothing would have grown larger if activist had said in the initial stage, "Well, our numbers are small, so we can't do anything now." -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
