A leading member of the Green Party of California, HANK CHAPOT, says the that the pendulum of debate in the United States has swung away from the far right of the political spectrum, where it had rested under former presidents Reagan and Bush. Interviewed for Green Left Weekly by FRANK NOAKES and ALEX CHIS in San Francisco, Chapot talks of the Green Party and its role in US politics today.
Business was self-justified by just doing in the past, whereas the left, green and progressive movements had to justify every deviation from accepted wisdom, not just on environmental matters but in respect to most social issues, says Chapot.
"On environmental issues the debate has shifted from, 'Are environmental laws necessary, or even right?' to 'How are we going to implement these laws?'." But regardless of this, he says, 1993 was the worst year ever for environmental destruction and 1994 is shaping up to be worse again.
"The lip service you get from [US President] Bill Clinton and [Vice President] Al Gore doesn't address this reality. So the debate has shifted, but I don't have any faith in the Democrats, because if you look at Clinton, he's already protecting his right flank and he's going along with what business wants on every decision."
The US, like most "western democracies", has a two-party system. In the US, however, it is harder than most for an alternative party to break into the electoral arena. This has made difficult the process of forming a national campaigning green party. Although a national organisation, the Green Party USA, exists and has members in every state, it is largely restricted to circulating position papers and other literature — it is a long way short of being a party.
In California, as elsewhere in the US, the state has to recognise a political party before it can stand candidates under the party's name. The California Greens had a choice of three ways of achieving state recognition.
"In 1990 we had the opportunity to run someone for governor and get a certain percentage of the vote, or we could circulate a petition and get 800,000 signatures, or we could ask voters to change their party registration from whatever party [in the US when you register to vote you have to nominate a party] and get non-registered voters to nominate the Greens.
"We chose the third option because it helped us organise around the state. We now have small groups in every city and in a lot of the rural counties because we did the work in the communities."
The campaign for recognition took two years, at the end of which the Greens had 110,000 registered voters, including many young people registering to vote for the first time. Eighty thousand switched party allegiance. Green parties are registered in five western states.
But the 110,000 figure doesn't reflect membership. Green parties in the US are quite small; the California Green Party, formed in 1988, has about 400-600 committed activists. But as Chapot explains, this smallness is not peculiar to the greens:
"American political parties are weak, they are small. The Democrats and Republicans are not mass movements. The Democrats in California have a couple of offices with a skeleton crew between elections. The candidates become 10 times the size of the party through fundraising and volunteers, employees and phone banks. The major parties in the US are candidate driven, not people driven; they are basically clubs where candidates find their shorthand label for who they are."
The California Greens have a different approach. One benefit of the state registration system is that parties are entitled to receive a print-out of all registered voters. This list is used by the Greens to contact people and involve them in a range of actions supported by the party. Chapot describes the Greens as "a convenient label to reach out and build an activist party".
Having adopted as their own the four principles of the German Greens, "peace, social justice, grassroots democracy and ecology", the California Greens don't narrow the scope of their political concern and action to only, or even mainly, the natural environment.
The party is currently campaigning for the closure of an incinerator for burning medical waste which is situated in east Oakland, a poor, predominantly black and Latino area. Increasingly, heavily polluting industries are being relocated into such areas, combining very directly social and environmental issues. The Greens have opened an office in downtown Oakland which, among other things, plays a networking role in the community.
The Green Party is committed to a campaign opposing proposals for the introduction of a voucher system in education, whereby parents wanting to send children to private schools would get a cash payment. This would deprive the public education system of much-needed funds.
Gay greens, known in California as lavender greens, use the Green Party to approach the press on issues.
But an important role and major function of the Green Party is electoral work. Under the undemocratic US electoral system, it is very difficult for an alternative voice to be heard at election time. With only right-wing Democrats and Republicans running, the political spectrum of ideas is not well served.
The Peace and Freedom Party, a socialist grouping coming out of the antiwar demonstrations of the '70s, has contested elections, without success, for 20 years. According to Chapot, they fly in under the radar of the media, which readily dismiss and ignore them. Some of their former candidates may in future contest elections under the banner of the Greens.
"The Green Party aspires to give people easier access to the ballot. It's expensive to run as an independent, and it's impossible to run as a Democrat for most progressives in the United States. The Democrats have gone so far to the right that you can't really approach them unless you're well dressed and corporate. The richest politicians in the country are Democrats", comments Chapot.
The Green Party of California is composed predominantly of white, middle-class people in the 20-40 year age bracket, but it does have some strong activists from other communities. It is well represented at colleges, holding 15 presidencies. Many in the black movement, as in the labour movement, have traditionally looked to the Democrats for representation. Chapot feels that many fear leaving the Democrats, and see the Greens as marginal.
The Green Party is not accepted by the large environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, and is only peripherally acknowledged by them. "The big 10 environmental organisations know about us, but probably seven of them we wouldn't have anything in common with. They reject a class analysis of society and basically just want to buy nice pieces of national property. We have no formal affiliation with most of them. They stay out of the electoral process. I think Greenpeace agrees with the analysis of race and class."
Chapot says, "Green politics is a wave of the future; it's the largest world-wide political movement today". The Green Party of California is open to people coming from different political backgrounds and groups, recognising that it has integrated a number of ideologies. Within the Green Party USA there is some "red-baiting" of socialists, reports Chapot.
Chapot hopes to be a candidate for the party this year, but it is unlikely to be a long or glamorous career. "We can expect to be attacked and vilified for green polices that cost money, because this culture converts everything into dollars and cents. So when we say, 'Put people into ecologically sustainable jobs, shift from poisonous agriculture to sustainable farming', then we get: 'That costs money, you guys are nuts, it'll never work'."
But Chapot and the Green Party are determined to get the message out, even though "there's a lot of fear that this system is going to try and chew us up".