It's Not Easy Being Green - Green Party convention

Progressive, The, August, 2000 by Ruth Conniff

It ain't Hollywood, where celebrities are making the rounds of glitzy parties for the Democrats. It's sure not Philadelphia, where the Republicans are putting on a corporate-sponsored elephant parade. No, the Green Party convention, which took place June 24-25 in Denver at a strip of cheap hotels by the old airport, was more like a political open-mike night. A hodgepodge of activists and hippies with a peculiar focus on legalizing hemp, the Greens beat drums to call meetings to order, giggled at their friends in ponytails and neckties, and generally appeared not quite ready for prime time.

Still, with Ralph Nader as their Presidential candidate, the Greens are attracting major media attention and giving the professionals over at Democratic Party headquarters a scare. Nader hit 7 percent in a recent national poll, prompting The New York Times editorial page to scold him for being a potential spoiler for Al Gore. In Denver, when reporters asked Nader if he was worried about throwing the election to Bush, he replied: "Not at all."

The two parties have become nearly identical fundraising machines, Nader argues. "The only difference is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when big business comes knocking on the door," he says. On issues ranging from fair trade to product safety to the environment and workers' rights, "only an aroused citizenry can change politics," he contends. Nader has a very specific formula for how it might be done: "A million people, putting in 100 hours a year, and raising $100 each, could form a party to challenge the major parties."

With folk-hero status and decades of consumer activism behind him, Nader is a uniquely credible candidate to try to revive civic participation and democracy. Traveling across the country this summer, he is addressing big crowds who are turned off by corporate-dominated politics and receptive to his broad populist message. He appeals not only to lefties but to the same people who cast primary ballots for John McCain.

Wherever he goes, people run up to him--from state senators and newspaper editors to students and radicals--to tell him how he's changed their lives by getting them involved in grassroots activism. He has built hundreds of citizen action groups that took on corporate power and made lasting regulatory reforms, bringing us seatbelts, air bags, nonflammable pajamas, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Freedom of Information Act, to name just a few of his groups' accomplishments. (All of this was summed up nicely at the Denver convention in an MTV-style biographical video, to the driving beat of electric drums. The video was produced by adman Bill Hillsman, who also devised clever populist campaign messages for Paul Wellstone and Jesse Ventura. Stay tuned for Hillsman's ads for the Nader campaign.)

The $12 million question is, can the Nader campaign give the Green cause a big shot in the arm and establish the "genuine, grassroots, citizens' movement" the candidate says he wants to build? If Nader wins 5 percent of the vote in November, the Green Party will qualify for millions of dollars in federal funds, just as Perot's Reform Party has done in the last two elections. This could make the Greens a much more significant political force, or it could lead to the chaos and dissolution the Reform Party has experienced after Perot did well enough in 1996 to earn $12.6 million for the election contest this year.

Which brings me back to the scene at the convention. As I stood next to Jim Pinkerton, the conservative columnist from Newsday, it was hard for this progressive journalist not to feel like I was at a family reunion, surrounded by my kooky relatives.

Basking in the spotlight of television cameras from CNN and ABC, and addressing reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post, Nader's fellow Presidential nominees Stephen Gaskin, founder of The Farm commune in Tennessee, and Jello Biafra, former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, took the opportunity to deliver speeches on the issue that seemed to top the agenda of many Green Party conventioneers--the legalization of hemp. "I haven't made so many new friends since I first became a hippie," said Gaskin, who looked like Colonel Sanders with his white beard and stars-and-stripes hat. "I wasn't a very good motorcycle rider. I kept falling off. And I don't have the vision for basketball," he told the assembled delegates and reporters. "But I happen to enjoy playing with my mind."

Jello Biafra brought the house down when he called the war on drugs "ethnic cleansing, American style," and he listed the people he'd like to include in a Green Administration, including Secretary of Education Madonna, and, as head of the NEA, Marilyn Manson.

Between the speeches and platform meetings, a doctor who is running as a Green Party candidate for Congress in New Mexico approached a knot of reporters, including representatives from The Nation and Time magazine, to hand out campaign literature--and offer sample bottles of prescription drugs. Hard on his heels came another Green Party member from New Mexico to hand out opposition research on the doctor and explain that the state party has denounced his campaign. There were more opposition papers from members of the Green Party USA, a separate sect from the Association of State Green Parties and, according to its literature, a more genuinely radical group. A Green Party USA rep explained that Nader is far too soft on the marijuana issue--he favors medical marijuana and legalization of industrial hemp, but he doesn't go all the way on unmolested dope smoking.