They are like the proper green and peasant parties should be - green on the outside and red on the inside.
Not brown inside like the current european ones, especially german.
They are like the proper green and peasant parties should be - green on the outside and red on the inside.
Not brown inside like the current european ones, especially german.
god damn it now I have to deconstruct some of what I feel is common propaganda against the greens
Jill Stein is not anti-vax. In a reddit AMA a long time ago she replied to a question about vaccines saying that she believed that corporate oversight on shit that goes in our body is not ok and that we need civilian oversight into vaccine production and distribution. Redditors took this to mean she was anti-science instead of, you know, aware of the way vaccines have been weaponized by the U.S. state and corporations historically. Do we suddenly believe that the corporate dominated healthcare industry in the U.S. has the peoples’ best interests in mind simply because anti-science reactionaries distrust them too, for different reasons?
Ajamu Baraka is a communist. I personally saw him shut down a libertarian dweeb weaponizing Stalin’s legacy against socialism. Is his engagement in electoralism incorrect? Is the praxis he engages in indicative of liberalism? Perhaps. But he himself is a comrade, and the green party is not the only vehicle for action he participate(s/d) in.
Green Party has problems. Its pan-leftist approach is evidently incorrect as it has led to massive infighting and no democratic centralism to speak of. It is mainly a vehicle for “awareness”, whether you think that is a worthwhile endeavor or not. And a lot of the membership hold batshit ideas and only support the party because it’s a break from the duopoly. I merely would suggest that we don’t discount every member or leader as a lost cause - I’ve met far more radical Greens than I have DSA members. End lukewarm defense rant.
Wait what
Also thank you for posts about US greens.
It was at a college event my group hosted, we had dinner with Baraka beforehand and we got the pleasure to hear about his start in organizing and about him being a black draftee. He was stationed in Germany and helped organize a strike at his base. The experience radicalized him, iirc.
But he gave a talk afterwards, small university so maybe to 30 or so people. The Libertarian group on campus (Young Americans for Liberty) arrived in full force and peppered him with bad faith questions after his speech about the necessity for socialism and an end to war. One of the kids asked him “but how you can say Socialism needs to come to America when Stalin killed tens of millions of his own people?”
I turned to a comrade and said “picturing Stalin in the back of a pickup just absolutely mowing people down on the street for shits and giggles”. Baraka had a much more dignified way of shutting it down, something like “I’m not talking about Georgia, I’m not talking about Russia, I’m talking about here and now. With climate catastrophe coming, we adopt socialism or we die.” Little dork might well have melted into his seat.
This would be nice sticker material:
Wait I thought Jill Stein was libertarian or something? At least that’s what I heard
“Ecosocialist”, whatever that means. I believe she stays a little vague and focuses more on what a proposed “green socialist” policy would look like so as to not alienate potential members/voters with too-radical language as it were. Having Baraka as her running mate instilled in me some amount of confidence that she is at least sympathetic to communists - I told her outright I was a communist and she pointed me in the direction of Socialist Alternative (Trotskyists) who had a booth at the rally and signature collection event I attended. I fucking hate Socialist Alternative for a plethora of reasons but idk, she was obviously welcoming of communists and knew that we have common enemies.
This is all anecdotal of course. But I’ve met em and I liked em. Stein also got black-bagged by the feds and dragged to an undisclosed location and interrogated for hours once for her actions in support of the Dakota Pipeline protests (picturing this sweet older woman handcuffed and ruthlessly interrogated, fucking animals). So something she was doing was scaring the powers that be.
Thank you for your insight!