*The Evergreen Manifesto*

05/11/09
I came across this in the list archives and found it quite interesting, thanks for sharing Paul!

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*The Evergreen Manifesto*

1. *greens define greens in terms of greens*
2. *neither right nor left but forward green*
3. *the pre-Berlin wall toolkit can't fix wto-era problems*
4. *real persons not corporate persons*
5. *matriotism not patriotism*
6. *proactive before reactive*
7. *power-to and power-with before power-over and power-against*
8. *think like a sequoia, not a weed*
9. *empathize with our opponents*
10. *always remember who is not in the room*

*greens define greens in terms of greens*

The first step towards creating a new political reality amidst the
political black hole in which we find ourselves in contemporary corporate
industrialism is to define Greens and Green ideas in our own terms rather
than in terms of our opponents. We compare ourselves favorably to Democrats
and Republicans, pointing out their policy failings, but we always
articulate Green values as good ideas in their own right irrespective of the
position of either face of the duopoly.

When we allow our opponents to define us in their terms, or when we define
ourselves in terms of our opponents, we have lost before we have even begun
the contest. Self-consciousness of ourselves as autonomous political actors
in our own right is an essential precondition to creating the kind of party
that can create a world based on the ten key values. The most effective tool
in the colonizers toolkit is stripping the populations of their self
identity and replacing it with that of the invader. Voters prefer humble
confidence over ideological certainty.

We face a highly organized and financed opposition which thrives in
defining independent political forces out of existence. Greens can't take
the bait when the oscillations of the duopoly shift the center of gravity
either way. Greens articulate ourselves in our terms.

The Black Panthers and Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Movement in South
Africa articulated a narrative of empowerment and autonomy. They
successfully realized the first step to freeing a people is to free their
minds by removing the shame that created the psychological conditions which
sustained the oppression of their people by defining them as less than
others, as bad, as stupid, as not worthy of full personhood and dignity.
Third wave feminism also understood the value of redefining women in their
own terms rather than as adjuncts of men.

We gain nothing by pressuring either aspect of the duopoly with the goal of
extracting policy concessions. When Democrats co-opt and implement watered
down Green ideas, we lose because people have less incentive to leave a
party that is willing to adopt token progressive reforms. The tactic of
spoiling has proven itself ineffective and dangerous for a party the size of
the Greens in several instances because it alienates a substantial portion
of our base. Greens should ignore the precessions of polarity within the
duopoly and put forth our values on their own terms, not reactively but
proactively.

*neither right nor left but forward green*

The Greens were founded as a progressive antidote to the sectarian,
dictatorial, and violent left that had amassed a compendium of failure and
death in the 20th century. Greens reject the binary division of politics
between left and right based on the seating arrangement of parliamentary
factions in eighteenth century Revolutionary France. We also realize that
there has been no successful Leninist revolution ever and see our organizing
model as the antithesis of Lenin's vanguard authoritarianism.

The Left has contributed towards progressive politics in the US but has
been wholly ineffective in connecting with working folks in the global west.
The more sectarian and doctrinaire the leftist ideology, the more strident
the delivery, the greater the disconnect. Over the past half century,
leftists have served as a pilot light more so than a guiding light in
sustaining background resistance to corporate rule and has not offered a
viable alternative to liberalism, conservatism and fascism.

Simply putting working people or the self-designated vanguard worker's
revolutionary party in charge of the factories is not going to stop the
factories from poisoning our planet. The left privileges industrialism by
defining everyday folks in terms of their work, losing the contest by
defining us in terms of our oppressor, while Greens seek socially and
environmentally sustainable economic forms. We define people in terms of
their individuality and autonomous creativity rather than solely in our
social and economic relationship to the rich.

Alienation of our species from nature is a more central to Green values
than alienation of workers from the products of their labor.

Greens welcome leftists individually who would work to further the ten key
values under the proviso that sectarians and cadre respect our consensus
process and defer their democratic centralist marching orders to consensus
negotiation. In the Green Party there are no predetermined outcomes. Power
is often raised highest when people throw their power away.

Green principles of unity are the ten key values which form the basis for
our actions and are sufficient guidance that we do not need to pursue an
ideology that will never be adopted. Greens are radical, not leftist,
certainly not fascist, as we do not fear challenging the fundamental
assumptions of society and proposing creative Green solutions, especially to
those alarming aspects which are in conflict with the ten key values. When
we phrase our politics in terms of a radical critique of the state we are
in, we connect with normal people. When the left makes similar arguments
phrased in doctrinaire language, people balk.

*the pre-Berlin wall toolkit can't fix wto-era problems*

When the political meteor hit in 1989 and the Berlin Wall fell, radicals
either adapted or began dying out. Those whose politics were steeped in the
realities of the Cold War and could not recalibrate their analysis and
practice based on the changing circumstance are becoming increasing
irrelevant in a monopolar world where American capital rules unchallenged.
It has become clear that there are no iron rules of history, no historical
imperative and no vanguard; those ideas have been relegated to the dustbin
of history.

But the precursors of the new political forms became evident during the
popular movements in the decade preceding the fall of the Soviet Union. The
existing advocacy organizations, so often adjuncts to the Democrat Party,
were out-organized by decentralized, autonomous activist groups on issues
such as feminism, LGBTIQ/AIDS activism and radical environmentalism. It was
the clinic defenders who set the agenda on reproductive freedom, not NOW or
NARAL. The Sierra Club took a back seat to Earth First!, ALF and ELF.
ACT/UP, QueerNation and The Lesbian Avengers accomplished more than the
Washington DC based lobbying groups by expanding the bounds of the possible.
The culture of organizing successfully used by these single issue and
identity politics movements forms the core of the current Green Party where
it is effective.

Greens are neither of the left nor the right, but moving forward Green.
Greens are groping towards creating a new reality, breaking new
participatory democratic ground in times which are the climate is both most
fertile and most hostile to such a project. The climate is fertile in that
the conditions are appalling and hostile in that the police state is
prepared to do what it takes to maintain the status quo. We know that we
don't know what we don't know and must be honest with ourselves and the
public on that. The Green Party is an electoral/activist collaborative where
everyday folks can share skills and wisdom in pursuit of furthering the ten
key values, not a vanguard one-size fits-all entity.

*real persons before corporate persons*

The ecological crisis has its roots in the primacy of industrialism which
was enabled by artifices such as limited liability corporations and the
extension of civil rights to corporations. This has been predictably
paralleled by diminishing rights for flesh and blood persons. When corporate
persons enjoy more privileges than human persons, such as the ability to
take tax deductions on the cost of doing business when real persons can't
deduct the cost of living, or protection from criminal law, the civil rights
of real persons are diminished and democracy is threatened.

In reality, corporations exist at the pleasure of the state, exchanging
limited liability for an ostensible public benefit. Human beings exist
irrespective of the will of the state, unless one is poor and of color and
on the wrong side of a cop. The Green key value of "Personal and Global
Responsibility" means that Greens must hold corporations accountable when
they transgress against the public benefit, especially when corporations
externalize "difficult" costs off-the-books in the form of environmental
degradation.

Industrial activity comprises the bulk of negative impact on the
environment and should be the sole point of taxation proportional to the
assessed negative environmental impact of the conduct of an enterprise. The
real environmental costs of doing business must not be socialized, but
pegged to each purchase to establish environmentally incentives for smart
production while penalizing environmentally destructive industrial
practices.

*matriotism before patriotism*

Nation states are expressions of violence, power-over and control. Borders,
armies and political police are aspects of every conventional nation state.
Patriotism in the US is the blind obedience to the imperative of
perpetuating the empire irrespective of its consequences for life, human and
other, at home and elsewhere.

Matriotism is earth-connected pride. Our ecosystems, bioregions and
watersheds are our boundaries, protectorates and habitats. Greens work for
our earth, not for our state against the planet. Cooperative relations
between smaller bioregional entities are the antidote for patriotic,
authoritarian domination.

The violence and authoritarianism required to maintain the petroleum
economy is incongruent with the principle of matriotism. Greens would delink
the economy from reliance on fossil fuels sooner rather than later. We
learned from the fall of the Soviet Union, where the resultant free for all
enriched the brutal and impoverished the rest, that transition strategies
are preferable to a free fall. A feminist party cannot replicate the abusive
power relationships of patriarchal institutions, either internally or
externally. We rise to walk in power-to, power-with rather than fall back
into power-over and power against.

*proactive not reactive*

Protest politics grounds positive energy and allows the failure of our
opponents to define our action. Greens are always better when we raise
energy by speaking positively about Green values to ordinary folks than when
we shriek for the cameras about the horrors of the duopoly. The system has
developed immune responses to all forms of protest and we must be similarly
creative as we adapt our methods and means.

When Greens do protest, we try to take the drudgery and monotony out of the
act of negation. When we point out the absurdity of a situation, folks are
magnetized; when we dwell on our victimhood, we reinforce the inertia that
keeps most people away from participatory politics. Protest as a first
resort ritualizes resistance, reifying rebellion, that is turning an ongoing
story of political self-determination into a transitory episode, and
stripping political action of any vibrancy, vitality and most importantly,
viability.

We empower folks when we speak to Green ideas and aspirations and deflate
people when we only rail against what we perceive as undesirable or bad.
Walking in power means that we comport ourselves as a party that is capable
of governing, that we promote policies based on our principles and values
and only speak of our opponents failures when we contrast our good ideas
with their disastrous practice. When appropriate, Greens prefer nonviolent
direct action against unjust laws to talk after all other means have failed.

*power-to and power-with before power-over and power-against*

Green power is a feminist power which is the power to create, the power to
help, the power to enable. The power of patriarchal, male-identified
institutions such as the church, state, traditional political parties and
the military are of a power-over and power-against, limiting, inhibitory and
vengeful nature.

The radical, revolutionary message of the Green Party is not one of violent
military revolution that sacks the structures of power by force, rather the
complete reconfiguration of the instruments of state into a power-to entity
from its current role as a power-over node on the web of capital, a cudgel
of the elites employed to destroy our planet and impoverish our people while
enriching themselves obscenely.

The bar for taking options off the table for others, restrictive policies,
should be much higher than that required to grant support to or enable a
project that is within Green values. The Green Party is an electoral,
activist collaborative that casts the widest net, not a vehicle for some to
restrict the options of others. Standing aside when you disagree is the
Green way, blocking an initiative should be a rarity.

*think like a sequoia, not a weed*

While the astoundingly quick fall of the Soviet Union might lead us to
believe that the US is similarly structurally unstable, the pillars of
oppression here are much better developed than they were in the USSR. The
media, duopoly and academia are in synergy with the elite consensus state
such that the power-over of each against us is magnified and
self-reinforcing. Most in the US are not uncomfortable.

Greens and progressives find ourselves in a position similar to that of the
conservatives in 1964 when LBJ beat Goldwater. Right wingers plowed down
into local government,winning city council and school board seats. This
provided the base from which they could launch a successful takeover of
literally all aspects of society. They had a helping hand from their
corporate and church allies, but they did analyze the techniques of
progressives and adapted them to their nefarious ends.

Towards that, the key values of decentralization and grassroots democracy
lead us in a similar direction. At this time, Greens should focus on
developing a base at the local level where we can prove ourselves capable of
governing according to the ten key values. From this base and only from a
base, can Greens raise the energy that can be successful at higher levels.
In a situation where we have finite resources and infinite challenges, the
priority must go bottom-up rather than top-down.

It would seem that the ten key values would eschew running national
candidates until we had a base capable of supporting them if the only
candidates capable of increasing registration are celebrities. The inherent
tension between local viability and state/national visibility in a climate
of scarce resources should be resolved in favor of the former rather than
the latter, all things being equal.

Greens are engaged in a marathon not a sprint. In order to build a durable
and sustainable political formation, we will need to be thinking decades
into the future, future focused, rather than just respond knee-jerk to the
immediate acute crisis of the day. This means that we must keep our eyes on
the prize rather than become distracted by where the media, the duopoly or
the state directs us to, as their intent is to neutralize our energy and
power. When power compels our attention to politically vacuous media
spectacles such as the presidential election, we forfeit our power by
mindlessly following the bouncing ball.

*empathize with our opponents*

Frequently our opponents know our weaknesses better than we do. When they
reveal the results of their analysis to us, we would do well to take stock.
Our allies and insiders have little incentive to tell the truth about our
shortcomings, but our opponents have every reason to trumpet them from the
rooftops. Groupthink, where a self-ratifying negative feedback loop develops
amongst like-minded people is a major pitfall that must be avoided and is a
danger of tendencies.

An opponent one day can be an ally the next. The facade of the
liberal/conservative left/right dichotomies is pierced whenever improbable
coalitions form. Increasingly, people are calling questions as they see them
instead of mindlessly toeing the party line. Greens can benefit from these
divisions by working with all sides, even those who oppose us on many issues
we support.

*always remember who is not in the room*

Participation in politics is a luxury for most people who are not rich.
Families with children have almost no avenues into participation. Who wants
to do politics after working a long shift and having to deal with the kids?
People of color and poor folks have been had it beaten into them that the
game is rigged and that they are not welcome at the table. There is no
education on where, when or how to participate and this is intentional.

As such there are built in advantages and privileges that empower some over
others. Money and time are the critical determinants that empower some over
others. Organizing skill and education are others. As members of a party
based on social justice and equity, Greens must ensure that power is not
abused and that the voices of the voiceless are elevated to the level of the
empowered. Greens seek a world where access to money, education, time or
organizing skill does not arbitrarily privilege some over others.

Activism as a lifestyle choice does not scale to society at large and is not
sustainable. When activism is fetishized, that is, when there is a class of
activist subjects and a class of passive objects of that activism, we become
detached from our base and less effective. The key values of grassroots
democracy and decentralization speak to citizen, resident owned government
and advocacy rather than illegitimate representational forms of politics.
Activist is an adjective not a noun.

As we move from a representative indirect republic towards a decentralized
grassroots democracy, Greens take stock of who is in a room making
decisions, acknowledge what communities or groups are not present for
whatever reasons, and ensures that the outcomes do not unfairly further
disadvantage those who are neither served nor present.