Actualizing Green Values
In theory the Green Party is a party for the people, a convergence of powerful social movements which can provide an alternative world free of war, capitalism, ecological devastation and white supremacy.
In theory we stand on our “Four Pillars”, Grassroots Democracy, Peace, Social Justice, and Ecological wisdom, and each is equally important to our explanation of what a better world looks like and how we build the power to bring it about. No pillar is more important than the other and we are only as strong as all four of them working together.
Standing on these four pillars we can see clearly the problems and solutions of the world free from the power and profit of the rigged two party system and the capitalist masters it serves. From here we can speak the truths that the powerful media conglomerates suppress. From here we can engage in systemic critique of the powerful injustices meant to divide us and make us complacent. From here we can actualize the power of people to be active participants in a democratic and just society.
That is the theory, and it is a beautiful and prophetic vision of the world we want to live in.
Now we need to actualize it. If we don’t we are no different than the Democrats.
Naming what we are against and naming what we want, then organizing and educating to achieve it, is how we build the power we need to bring about the world we envision.
Social Justice is at the Back of the Bus: A Party of Allies
The Green Party of the United States defines social justice as follows
“All persons should have the rights and opportunity to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment. We must consciously confront in ourselves, our organizations, and society at large, barriers such as racism and class oppression, sexism and homophobia, ageism and disability, which act to deny fair treatment and equal justice under the law.”(Emphasis added)
Baltimore Racial Justice Action, a local anti-racist training organization, offers the following definition:
“A vision of society in which the distribution of resources, opportunity, societal benefits and protection is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. Social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and the society as a whole.”
When combined these definitions of social justice require an unflinching systemic, organizational, and individual critique of the forms of oppression and injustice which shape the world we live in, the organizations we are part of and, the beliefs we hold.
Where they differ and where the Green Party needs to move to is the last line of the BRJA definition “Social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and the society as a whole.” This sentence describes actualization of those principals.
While Greens have long been on the forefront of social justice ideas and policies for the world out there our people and organizations have by and large not reflected sufficiently an internalized commitment to the type of social justice our platform and pillars evoke.
It is a widely held and not inaccurate belief that Greens and the Green Party are whiter, more male, older, wealthier, and more cis-hetero than the policies, values, candidates, and leaders we put forward.
This is not to say that the Green Party is not diverse or inclusive. It is this to a painful degree at points. We have tendency to fixate on the identity politics that the Democrats have retreated to and we think that, combined with radical public stances, makes us radical. At the Annual National Meeting in Newark in which a group of mostly Black and Latinx Greens launched a protest which in part sought to overturn the results of the recently conducted Steering Committee election by seeking the resignation of the elected SC members . Many white Greens long seeking to see a party that lives up to its commitment to social justice, watched live stream video they have become accustomed to seeing at anti-police violence protests, and while choking back tears of joy proclaimed “This is what Democracy looks like”. Bruce Dixon, a long time Green, Co-Chair of the Georgia Green Party and managing editor of the Black Agenda Report offered the following analysis:
“This peculiar kind of solidarity is an artifact of white liberal guilt and the tokenism used to assuage it. White liberals look around and see there are too few blacks, Latinas and queers in their ranks. So they pass a rule that says they should get more. They look around for available black, brown and queer heads to fill the spots. They move over and they make room. That’s called diversity, and the black brown and queer faces recruited in this scheme are tokens. A revolutionary party, a mass based party of the left, which is what some of us are trying to build the Greens into requires something entirely different.”
I want to be clear, I support the protest, I understand the call of Greens who were welcomed to a party we told them would be a home, and the frustration that it may not yet be that. But if the results of the election are valid then no one should be asked to resign and there should be no re-election. The moment in which that was a possibility may have passed, but it is worth examining why many white Greens felt that might have been a good solution, despite the fact that it would be totally out of line with grassroots democracy.
It is fair to say at this point that when it comes to social justice we are more of a party of allies than a party of movements, and that when we white Greens speak about our theories of justice we have a tendency to do so from a disembodied position which our race and the power it confers is invisible (to us).
From here we often play our own form of identity politics which uses the political and philosophical traditions derived from anti-oppression struggles of the majority of the world’s peoples as disposable “cards” to be played in an attempt to lure voters who might be attracted to them. For example white Greens may say “We support reparations” in part to establish their radical credentials and in part to persuade Black voters to join a Green Party with few Black members, and no ongoing political education or organizing effort around actually achieving reparations. (For more on reparations and politics check here, and here)
This is non-actualized social justice. It is the logic of the Democrats, and we can and must do better.
This is but one example; our platform is full of radical calls for liberatory positions that most state, local, and even the national party do little political education or organizing around. We advance these positions often with little buy-in from grassroots social justice movements outside the Green Party, and with less buy-in from the people we are speaking for. Because many of us see social justice as merely inclusion and diversity, we are often eager to pass such things with no plan of actualizing them, or no vision of what actualization means, in the world at large, within our organizations, and within ourselves.
This also is not new. In 2002 Dr. Jonathan Farley, a Green Party congressional candidate for Tennessee’s 5th congressional district, and a Fulbright award winning scientist said the following
“The Green Party is not just an environmental party. While it does support the traditional environmental issues — the abolition of nuclear weapons, the search for renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, the labeling of genetically engineered “Frankenfood” in supermarkets — it also has a social justice agenda that can’t be matched by the Demopublicans. This agenda is so radical that the Greens won’t ever be a majority party; but they can become the party of color. “
What Dr. Farley recognized in 2002 was the same thing that Rosa Clemente and Jared Ball voiced in 2008, and again in 2016, when Clemente gave what should have been an eye opening speech to all Greens demanding that if we want to win we must “center racial justice”.The truth is that the Green Party is the only electoral option with a significant enough commitment to social and racial justice to address the structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, war, and ecological devastation. Farley, Ball, and Clemente all saw a Green Party with the potential to actualize social justice, by actualizing racial justice. Most importantly all three called for the Green Party to be a multiracial party committed to social justice. In this way, by taking the Democrats most important firewall away from them, Greens could transform the political landscape and create a just and survivable future.
The logic of this argument is simple and we are still making the argument today in the aftermath of the 2016 election when young Black and Latinx voters voted in record numbers for Third Parties. Yet, 15 years later after Farley’s campaign and his recognition that “…the Green Party does consist almost entirely of white hippie tree-huggers… While the Green Party, despite its name, has very little color in it, it is still the most pro-Black of the three main parties… “, this still rings true.
We can shout from the mountain tops “open up the borders and tear down the prison walls” but if we don’t transform the mostly accurate perception that we are mostly a party of allies, instead of a party of the people, our calls will ring hollow, and we will be left forever deliberating about the best way to spoil elections.
In fact, if we can not be a party of,by, and for those most affected by social injustice, it is not only social justice which is not actualized, it is all of the pillars. If within our own organizations the majority of the decisions are not made by those most denied the power to participate in democracy, those most affected by wars at home and abroad and those facing the most acute environmental crisis in the present then we can not actualize it in the world out there.
I’m going to say here if this doesn’t apply to your Green Party, so be it. As a Party of people receptive to social justice we need to hear stories and see examples of ways in which the Green Party is a force for social justice. But I would say that all of us have work to do to actualize social justice..
For the Green Party to succeed Social Justice can no longer be at the back of the bus. It must be equal to each of the other pillars. It must be part of our unflinching critique and it must be part of the movement we build.
Restoring Green Values: Backlash in Colorado
The attempt to actualize social justice in a primarily white space is difficult and often confrontational. People of color speak from an embodied space. Their lives are socially constructed by race. White peoples lives are socially constructed to speak from a disembodied space. This antagonism perhaps more than any other in the social justice framework shapes our theories of organization, democracy and justice.
Because of the discomfort of the critique of white supremacy, especially to well meaning white people, and because of the polarizing and divisive nature of the social construct of white supremacy, attempts to actualize social justice will often be met with resistance.
This is the case with Green Party politics in Colorado right now. A group of Greens Calling themselves “The Caucus to Restore Green Values” has created a proposal and a dossier which seeks to permanently expel several elected leaders in the Green Party of Colorado, and barring that seeks the GPUS to remove accreditation from the Green Party of Colorado. One of the primary reasons that this document calls for this action is because they allege that discussions about race have become too prevalent in the state Party. The examples they use to prove that claim speak volumes about the motivation behind this action:
This is combined with tirelessly documented personal grievances against Andrea Mérida Cuéllar, Colorado and GPUS Co-Chair (which she has answered in detail here). Almost all of these grievances are in relation to questions of social justice and the attempt to actualize it in in the Colorado Green Party. There are some about process but the recurring theme is that actualizing social justice has gone too far because embodied individuals are speaking about how white supremacy socially constructs their sense of justice and white people are made uncomfortable. There is also a general inclination that the other pillars matter more, ecological wisdom, peace, and grassroots democracy seem to be shared values, but those positions seem constructed with no sense of social justice. Again the examples are telling:
Now let me say, Andrea is a Latina, veteran, socialist who is strong in her beliefs and does not cede space to people who flinch easily on questions of social justice. She is a good leader and sticks to principles and values, but does not compromise on any of the pillars of the Green Party in favor of another. This uncompromising approach can create intense discomfort for people not used to engaging in such conversations with such strong advocates.
Other supporters, many white, (myself included) often use discomfort as our primary tactic, and we need to do more political education and less browbeating. Social Media has taught many of us some very good and some very bad tendencies.
I think in most cases, most Greens would cringe at some of the suggestions in the “Restore Green Values” proposal, even if they cringe at some of the complaints. I think in such situations, those of us who are white Greens that champion social justice need to separate our personal feelings of discomfort from the systemic problem that RGV creates for Green pillars and Values.
If actualized social justice even when democratically chosen can be undermined by a national social media campaign started by a few disgruntled Greens with an appeal from the national Party to decertify the state Party, well then we will never actualize social justice (or decentralization), our movement will fail.
Bill Bartlett, the former co — chair of the Colorado Green party who resigned before he was recalled, and one of the leaders of the Campaign to Restore Green Values is an advocate of a theory of “Anti-White Racism”. He believes that naming white supremacy as a system of oppression is racist against white people This is antithetical to a social justice approach and by Bartlett’s admission he thinks that Dr King’s famous words in a letter from a Birmingham Jail are a form of this anti-white racism, because white people are being judged by the color of their skin, not the power vested in that skin. Here is what Dr. King said:
“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
The rhetoric of Anti-White racism is a powerful tactic of evasion and deflection from the centrality of race in structural critique and is typical of people who believe that there is too much divisive talk of Racism. Anti-white racism is only possible when we look at race as the color of an individual’s skin as opposed to the position they occupy because of the social construct of white supremacy. You can see examples of this type of thinking throughout the Restoring Green Values document, or you can just look at this screenshot
Actualizing Social Justice
To actualize social justice (and the rest of the pillars), the Green Party needs to become a robustly multiracial movement dedicated to social justice in our organizing, in our communities, in our state and local parties,in ourselves and in the world out there. We need to build power behind those that most need a place to participate in democracy. In the cases in which those are not the people participating in our Green Party work we need to ask, “Why?”. We need to assess what we have done and what we haven’t done, we need to talk to people about what they think of us, and we need to work. We need a national party providing these assessment tools to local and state parties, not a national being asked to remove the certification of a state party trying to actualize social justice.
Racial equity is part of the description the Green Party uses for social justice and we must define what that term means in our organizations and in our approach to policy. Based on the following definition from the Aspen Institute, racial equity is the recognition of the incompleteness of Dr King’s dream, and the envisioning of a society in which it is true:
“Racial equity refers to what a genuinely non-racist society would look like. In a racially equitable society, the distribution of society’s benefits and burdens would not be skewed by race. In other words, racial equity would be a reality in which a person is no more or less likely to experience society’s benefits or burdens just because of the color of their skin. This is in contrast to the current state of affairs in which a person of color is more likely to live in poverty, be imprisoned, drop out of high school, be unemployed and experience poor health outcomes like diabetes, heart disease, depression and other potentially fatal diseases. Racial equity holds society to a higher standard. It demands that we pay attention not just to individual-level discrimination, but to overall social outcomes.”
Social justice, just like ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy and peace is a study and a practice. We must know the long tradition the movement is based on and we must know how it applies today. We must also understand the critical ways in which racialized power shapes the world we live in and the ways that the discomfort of white people can deflect and deny the important discussions about the way we interact with one another and the institutions that shape our society. Dr. David Peterson writes in his 2014 dissertation:
“Post-civil rights American society, despite its expanded commerce in bodies, has seen a historical retreat from critical confrontation over questions of racial power even as the catalogue of criticism and complaint has become more extensive and detailed. Pauline Johnson (2006) argues, following Du Bois, that progress must be conceptualized, not in terms of demographic representation, but rather in the accumulation of insight into social problems and by the capacity to deal with these problems at higher levels of abstraction. However, in the contemporary moment, the discourse of the public sphere has moved away from the structural scale of abstraction toward the individual and domestic scale (Berlant 1997). The public has become generally more averse to structural and institutional analysis of broad social problems and is more likely to avoid contentious, public-spirited issues (Eliasoph 1998; Putnam 2000). This is particularly pronounced concerning questions of racial power. Critical discourses that breach the imposed silence on racial matters and gesture toward the persistent significance of race at a level of abstraction higher than that of the individual bigot are met with, not only outrage and frustration, but also with a sophisticated discursive arsenal of denial, minimization, and evasion. The scale of abstraction on which racial questions are considered has been steadily ratcheted down to the manageable individual realm wherein racists can be separated from non-racists and 4 good-whites can be separated from the bad. In this way, post-civil rights American society has not solved the problem of the colorline, but rather has congratulated itself for ridding itself of the question of the colorline. The consequence is that racial power has become more unintelligible and unspeakable than perhaps ever before (Martinot 2010; Wilderson 2010). “Unintelligibility,” argues Steve Martinot (2010), “does not make a problem go away; indeed, it enhances a social problem’s tenacity, while its tenacity enhances its unintelligibility (10).””
If our organizations are organizations of allies unable to accumulate the insight from lived experience of those in a racially unjust America, we need to know why, and we need to do the work on ourselves to change it. We need political education for our organizations and with our communities, we need resources to de-escalate conflicts so they don’t derail the actualization of social justice.
Social justice cannot be in a separate class from the other pillars and the Values cannot be a buffet. We are united as a party by our shared agreement with the pillars and values. Those can transcend traditional left/right boundaries, only if we honor each of them in our theory, policy and practice
We need a national Party able to coordinate and provide transformative social justice resources to state and local parties so that decentralization does not mean that we are reinventing a thousand wheels.
We need to lift up and elevate those chapters that are actualizing social justice and we need to train others how to do so.
We need to be vigilant when we see fellow Greens discarding actualized social justice and we need to speak up and intervene when white discomfort is turning into white resentment and white power as it is in Colorado
There are models and movements (not just Greens) to study which have succeeded in actualizing the democratic power of social justice and we must look to them as well. A good place to start is the Highlander school, a multiracial movement for social justice that focused on an intense political, social and cultural education program. Highlander helped to launch Fannie Lou Hamer, SNCC, Anne Braden, Rosa Parks and countless other leaders of the civil rights movement.
Braden, a close ally of Dr King poses a challenge and a call useful for white Green’s:
““A new massive thrust toward racial justice will not alone solve all the problems that face us, but I am convinced that unless such a thrust develops — one that is global in its outlook — the other problems will not be solved. Because they are at the bottom of this society, when people of color move, the foundation shifts… In a sense, the battle is and always has been a battle for the hearts and mind of white people in this country. The fight against racism is not something we’re called on to help people of color with. We need to become involved as if our lives depended on it because, in truth, they do.””
We must study, we must learn, and we must organize. And we must do it with a knowledge that to succeed we must be a party of movements from the grassroots, with actualized social justice as a key pillar of our work .
Conclusion
The struggles we face are interconnected. A class struggle without racial equity as a goal will leave white supremacy in tact and will divide the workers and the poor in ways which stifle the power of the people to unite to transform society. A race struggle without a class struggle will ignore the role of the Black misleadership class denying poor people the ability to be full participants in social and civic life. Even with a dual race and class focus a broad based people’s movement will succumb to the divisive power of patriarchy, ableism, settler colonialism, gender conformity.
If we are to win, we must define and actualize social justice,and we must work for it. For several decades we have had this opportunity, but for the most part it has remained just that, an opportunity. Now we must seize that opportunity and turn the Green Party into a revolutionary people’s party. If we remain a party mostly of allies we will be diverse and inclusive but actual justice will be out of our grasp. If we compromise our commitment to justice to have broader appeal, no matter how diverse we are, we will continue to fail.
As Farley reminds us, we may never be a majority party in the United States; our values and pillars are too radical to appeal to most Americans. What we can do is provide a meaningful opportunity to participate in democracy to those who have most systematically been denied the power to be fully actualized citizens. That is the potential and power of the Green Party. System changing electoral, policy, and movement wins emanate from the power of the people. That is how we win.
