[NV Greens] GPUS proposal for Immediate Withdrawal Fw letter

[charleslaws at att.net]

Phil H. has made several observations in his post to the national committee. 
I think they're worth contemplation.. and action!

/charles laws

Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 12:47:46 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Phil Huckelberry" <phil at mcleancountygreens.org>
Subject: [usgp-coo] Immediate Withdrawal
To: natlcomvotes at green.gpus.org

At first I did not even understand why this matter came up.  It seemed
like a poor word choice in a proposal, not a whole lot more.

Confession:  I have all but stopped paying attention to the corporate
media.  I installed Firefox at work to replace IE and now my home page is
Google, not Yahoo!, so I'm not even getting news that way.  The entire
Sheehan story has not made a whole lot of sense to me in a lot of ways;
the extent of the news I've gotten has either come via Green lists or from
my local paper, where the news is pretty much limited to the usual suspect
op-ed pieces from the likes of George Will.

I am not reading a lot of the lengthy articles posted on our discussion
list, either.  I am burnt out, overwhelmed and overloaded from what I feel
has been a remarkably unrewarding past few months.  I can't think of a
time when so much energy was put into party affairs with so little
party-building to show for it.  The onslaught of personal attacks within
our party hasn't helped, either; it's bad enough to work so hard for so
little, but getting roasted for it is kind of the arsenic icing on the
cyanide cake.  I don't know why we seem to be willing to allow this kind
of an environment to pervade our party.  But I do know that these sorts of
things happen far more when there are voids to fill - voids left by
confusion over party strategy, which often actually has less to do with
strategy than with lack of meaningful work to do, by which I mean not that
there aren't things that we can do, but that it's been so very hard to
divine how/where/why we should best apply our time.

This brings me back to Immediate Withdrawal.

The Cindy Sheehan demonstration has had what I feel is an unintended
consequence - it has much more clearly opened up a divide between people
who are opposing this war because it is wrong and evil, and people who are
opposing this war as a partisan act against George W. Bush.  The real
anti-war protesters are being separated much more pronouncedly from the
latent ABB crowd; these people are not only showing their true colors, but
it's easier for a lot of people who haven't otherwise seen to see that
those colors aren't really the colors of peace and non-violence.  They are
the colors of the Democratic Party - faded and decayed.

Locally, there is nothing happening.  The two primary peace groups in town
- one a community group, one a campus group - are moribund.  There's
little to no discussion of the September 24 convergence, little to no
perceived interest.  I pretty much gave up on the community group because
I just couldn't handle it; it was a glorified feel-good club, people who
felt that watching moveon.org videos together was a profound act.  And
let's be honest:  for many of these people, that *is* a profound act; they
are legitimately our friends and allies, but they are not the leaders of
the anti-war movement, and they need real leadership.  The story of the
campus group is more mundane; as with so many others, most of the active
leadership has graduated.

The time is now ripe for the Green Party to step in and be the leading
organization locally in opposing the war.  Not just here in Normal,
Illinois, either.

But our local is small.  And again, I am burnt out.  The others who would
be interested in doing something are also burnt out, though not for the
same reasons.  It's not just a local thing; I brought up with our state
party the idea of following Wisconsin's lead with local referenda and got
*zero* response.  The word "petitioning" was probably enough to scare
everyone off.

The party needs a kick in the ass, and here we have the issue that makes
for a perfect steel-toed boot, but where's the leg going to come from?

Well... isn't this why we have a national party?

We need more than just one good press release and a couple of good
statements from GPAX right now.  We need some organizational assistance. 
We need a framework, some unified talking points so that those of us not
going to DC on September 24 can put together local support rallies and put
the GP out in front of those rallies.  The lynchpin needs to be Immediate
Withdrawal.  We need our ribbon magnets all over the country.  I'm not
asking for top-down direction, but I am asking for top-down coordination -
there's a big difference there.  All of our locals across the country can
reinvent the wheel if they want, but why should they have to if there's a
better way?

This is a major initiative that I think can help the party snap out of its
malaise.  It might be good enough to get Greens in other states to work
the referendum approach; it also might provide the kind of kick-off Greens
in some states need to start fielding candidates for Congress in 2006.  I
see a lot of opportunities for meaningful cooperation and coordination
here but the help has got to come from the top.  It's not just my local
and it's not just my state party that feels listless and directionless,
especially regarding leadership in the anti-war movement.  The key thing
is that this can change... fast.  Our "extreme" position is not only the
correct one but increasingly a popular one with the general public.

Is this something that we can do?  Is this something GPAX can coordinate? 
Can the National Committee actually rally around something and get the
state parties and locals on board with a major initiative, even on
relatively short notice?  We _better_ be able to; why else are we here?

Phil Huckelberry
Illinois Green Party