Chlorophyll

In which Peter has difficulty with numbers and fails to substantiate his statements.

A message to GDI supporters from Peter Miguel Camejo

Many Green members want to know when the infighting is going to end. When will people recognize there is nothing wrong when Greens have differences?

Why can't we respect each other and figure out how to work together? This sentiment is wide spread in the Green Party, especially since many members do not have a hard opinion about some of the differences within the party.

Respecting each other entails speaking honestly to each other and listening carefully to each other. Let's see how Peter does on these two counts.

They are still listening to both points of view. They want peace,understanding, tolerance and unity in action where there is agreement.

Most Greens are not involved in the day by day or even month by month debate that is now under way in the Green Party. Over time however the issues being raised will reach all Greens and they will express their views in a variety of ways. We must all be patient and understand that it is normal for there to be differences and that our internal debates are themselves part of building a party that can be effective in its opposition to the two party dictatorship. We must learn to allow the differing points of view the freedom to try and convince all of us through example that what they propose will really work. In that way we generate respect between greens who differ.

It was precisely in that spirit that I proposed a unified approach at the Milwaukee convention. I proposed we accept that there is a sharp difference in the party,recognize both currents, show respect for each other by endorsing Cobb and Nader, then let Greens in each state use their ballot line in the way they thought best. But that vision was rejected by the Cobb supporters at the convention.

A "unified approach" is one that sets every state party on a different course? This was nothing but an attempt to derail the nomination of David Cobb. This was exactly the opposite of a "unified approach."

When I speak of Cobb supporters I mean precisely those who are in the leadership of that current. Many of the Greens who voted for or supported Cobb are not in agreement with many of the views being projected by what I call the "Lesser Evil" current. I define that current based on the statement by 18 Green leader supporters of Cobb that refer to themselves as supporters of voting for the Lesser Evil (their word).

This makes no sense if taken together - as it appears it should be - with the last sentence of Peter's preceding paragraph. He said that his "vision" was rejected by Cobb supporters, but then he says that he only means the leaders of the Cobb supporters, and then he says the followers of the leaders don't agree with the leaders. So, who did the rejecting at the convention? As it happens, most Greens. Both sides were confident they would win, and saw no reason to make such a politically inept move.

As for the idea of the "Lesser Evil," it's safe to say that very few people agreed with that idea, as Peter defines it. He defines it, as his piece describes at length, as a desire to run so as not to obstruct Kerry from defeating Bush - he goes so far as to say believing in voting for Democrats and even "endors[ing] Democrats." I can count the Greens who fit this description on one hand with fingers left over, and I know an awful lot of Cobb supporters. Peter has blown this vastly out of proportion, treating untypical Greens as typical.

They wanted to "win", to defeat Nader.

Are we meant to draw a contrast from this sentence - that he did not want to "win," to defeat David Cobb?

Looking back we can now see clearly that after being crushed in the primaries (they received 12%)

In how many states? Five? Nothing like cherry-picking your statistics...

How is it that David arrived in Milwaukee with the highest single number of delegates? (http://www.gp.org/convention/process.html) Peter might answer this by saying that several of the other delegate numbers should be added together, because the candidates were proxies for Nader. But, it cannot be assumed that anyone anywhere was voting for a candidate who was not on the ballot. It's simply undemocratic to arbitrarily reassign a person's vote that way, regardless of anything the proxy might say.

In case anyone was still inclined to interpret a vote for candidate A as a vote for candidate B, remember that several California delgates were explicitly clear - clear enough to write it in a letter to Peter - that their vote was very much for whom they had voted (in this case, him), and was under no circumstances to be transferred to Nader.

and in most state conventions, the Cobb supporters could not win unless they stacked the convention. By stacking I mean something quite simple. Regardless of the vote in a state convention or primary the Lesser Evil current set out to get as many of their supporters to become delegates. An example would be if in a State Cobb got 26% of the vote instead of only 26% of the delegates from among those who voted for Cobb going to the convention and 74% of those who voted for another candidate going the majority of delegates going to the convention were Greens who voted for Cobb. To do this is not only anti-democratic it is a conscious effort to over turn the will of the membership.

Folks familiar with this on-going debate will want to congratulate Peter on his ecological sensitivity in choosing this example, which is Maine, as it is recycled from the Hill-Miller piece, all the way back in September (here is a detailed analysis of it (http://greensrespond.org/?q=node/6)). In fact, when problems at the state level are discussed, this is generally the only example used (Utah is in another category).

So, let's take a closer look at it. First off, David's 26% was 42 votes out of 160 cast (out of 20,000 Greens in Maine). Peter and his supporters have complained that some of the caucuses/primaries that elected David were lightly attended, but this doesn't seem to be an issue to them if David lost. Nader received 52 votes, and the rest were split 13 ways. Many of those other 13 potential candidates did not make it onto the ballot in Milwaukee, so their percentages needed to be reallocated.

Second, the people Peter loves to excoriate as "ABB" had largely defected from the Greens to vote for Kucinich or Dean in the Democratic caucuses. They could not vote for Cobb (in marked contrast to Peter's thesis).

Third, the process of apportioning delegates in Maine had three steps, of which the caucuses were only one. The final tally for the Maine delegation was seven delegates for David, six for Ralph, two for no candidate, and four not committed to any particular vote.

Fourth - and this is the crux of the matter - the Maine delegation voted in strict conformity to its mandate in the first round. It was only on the second round that David's count leapt to 76%.

The implication that I hear in what Peter says is that the 26% David got in one step of the delegate selection process in Maine represents his support there, and the other 74% is a sort of Anybody-But-Cobb vote. Those votes were not so much cast for other candidates as they were against David; ergo, 76% of Maine's delegate vote should have gone to the-candidate-that-is-not-Cobb, which is to say, Nader. Such an implication would, of course, have no merit whatsoever, as the facts that Peter leaves out demonstrate. I would welcome someone telling me that I'm wrong, and that Peter believes that David's count should have been well higher than 26%.

By doing this "packing" they refused to accept the wishes of the membership.

The fourth point above proves conclusively that the wishes of the membership (in his strongest example) were accepted and faithfully represented.

This fact more than anything else is what threatens the Green Party today.

I submit that it's lies that most threaten the Green Party today.

If democracy is not respected within the Green Party then what exactly is the Party? Internal democracy is not a negotiable issue. When the membership votes, its collective will must be respected and recognized.

This paragraph can stand on its own... but only on its own, not in connection to any of Peter's other paragraphs.

I thought after the election maybe the Cobb supporters would step back, take a deep breath and reconsider their approach within the Green Party. I hoped that some of them might have some remorse over what they had done.

Condescending as this paragraph is, it looks a tad foolish at this point.

I reached out to David Cobb even before the election was over in an attempt to find common ground and see if we could get the party working together. After the elections I called David three times but received no reply.

Dean Myerson reports that Peter and David were playing phone tag just before and after the election. They had a hard time touching base, but it wasn't because David didn't reply to Peter.

Months went by until one day Matt Gonzalez called me to say he was having David over ford inner and would I like to be there. I changed my schedule cut short a visit and flew in from Chicago for this opportunity to meet with David. A little further on I will explain what happened at that meeting.

THE 2004 ELECTIONS

I think all Greens recognize that something rather peculiar has happened in our history. The formal Green Party vote for President dropped 95% in 2004 as compared to 2000, quite unusual even for a third party. We came in sixth not third like in 2000. We also lost ballot status in seven states and are now down to 15 (Ballot Access News). In many states the party has declined.

And in some, it has grown.

To be fair, 2004 was, as Ted Glick put it, the perfect storm. We had a catastrophic sitting President who somehow still had a large base of support. We had a Democratic base whose mood could best be described as grimly desperate. And we had plenty of pressure on us from mainstream liberals and quasi-progressives not to run. The simple fact of the matter is that we would have lost most of our vote from 2000 in 2004 regardless of who our candidate was. And if we'd followed Peter's so-called "unity proposal," we would have gotten less than a tenth of what we did, because no one would have taken us the least bit seriously.

Two important exceptions stand out at least partially, California and New York. In both states our large registration has held or increased (NY went from 36,000 to 41,000and California remains above 150,000).

True, though California dipped by 5,000 between 9/2003 and 10/2004. (http://cagreens.org/voterreg/)

In California we hit a new record of elected officials. Nationwide our total number of elected officials also increased. So while we have declined in some areas in others we have held our own or increased.

And which Presidential candidate was going around the country promoting local Green candidates and local Green parties?

The pro-Cobb leadership needs to recognize reality and note that most greens who did not vote corporate voted for Nader overwhelmingly.

This isn't "reality," this is speculation. Just as the Nader vote in 2000 came mostly from non-Greens (our total vote was multiple times our size), it's perfectly logical to conclude that the Nader vote in 2004 did as well. There's no way to separate out which votes were Greens and which were independents, and so it's impossible to say that most Greens voted one way or another.

Most Greens who actually participated actively for Cobb or Nader were overwhelmingly involved pro Nader.

More speculation. Certainly Nader had more people, but how many of them were Greens is unknown.

Nader was only on the ballot in states with half the population of the country, and nonetheless he received almost 500,000votes. If you assume in the other states his vote would have been just half of that, Nader would have received some 750,000 votes in spite of the massive ABB campaign. If you calculate Cobb's vote and also project what he might have gotten being on the ballot in all states, you end up with a combined total of both Nader and Cobb of close to 1 million people who refused to vote for either pro-corporate party.

Amazingly, the ratio between Nader and Cobb's vote followed pretty closely the ratios in the Green primaries and state conventions: about 6 votes for Nader to 1 for Cobb.

This is flat wrong. Coming into Milwaukee, David had 240.5 delegates (the aggregate manifestation of state elections), and Ralph had 64.5. The only way to come anywhere near this figure is to add up the proxy candidates. But the proxy candidates cannot be counted as Nader votes. What would Peter say - what would anyone with a shred of common sense say - if Kerry announced just before Election Day that he was really just a stand-in for Zell Miller? It would be a massive abrogation of democracy and betrayal of the grassroots Democrats' trust in the Democratic Party. Likewise, proxy candidates have no place in our party.

We didn't accept the argument that a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush - why should we accept the argument that a vote for Camejo/Salzman/Miller was a vote for Nader? It's nonsense.

Peter's 6:1 ratio, which he claims happened a second time, never happened a first time. It is a figment of his imagination. There were 2.2 votes for everyone else (proxies, non-proxies, uncommitteds) to one for David going into Milwaukee , 1.3 votes for everyone else to one for David in the first round, 0.89 votes for everyone else to one for David in the second round, and 3.5 votes for Nader to one for David in the general population (despite Nader spending 15 times what David did).

With the one exception of the year 2000, this is the largest progressive vote for President in more than 50 years (according to Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News). So rather than draw pessimistic conclusions,

I'm sorry, it's too late for Peter to say this.

let's recognize that the Green Party is still here. In great part, this is due to Nader's courageous stand against the two corporate parties. It is clear that a large number of people accept being outside of the corporate-controlled parties.

Let me make sure I understand this: Nader did not seek and would not accept our nomination. Nader did not get our nomination or endorsement. Nader did not campaign for or with Green candidates, nor promote the party in any way. In fact, he called us "weird," if memory serves. But he's part of the reason we're still here?

It is imperative that we look towards organizing and unifying these forces in a growing independent political movement.

Well, there's a thought.

And from there we reach out to the broad layers of millions of people betrayed by the two parties. We need to reach out to those who either do not vote at all or vote Democrat because they are political prisoners in the two party dictatorship that we live under.

If only we'd figured this out 20 years ago. Oh, wait... we did.

CRISES GROWING IN THE GREEN PARTY

Unfortunately, the current that has organized behind Cobb's campaign after the elections is moving in another direction. It has become quite clear to me that they have shown little interest in trying to reach out to the majority current in the Green Party or the hundreds of thousands who voted for Nader. Instead, they have become quite attracted to the Democratic Party's latest "progressive" wing, the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). They seem to feel threatened by the existence of a militant pro-independence current in the Green Party.

This certainly makes for an entertaining argument, but it has no connection to reality. What Peter does here is take one or two comments people have made, strip them of their context, and then blow them vastly out of proportion.

Instead of seeing the danger of co-option by Democrats John Rensenbrink recently warned of the danger of the infiltration of socialists into the Green Party. This red baiting approach is another way to say the left in the Green Party is the problem and we need to get them out.

John went too far - or so it would seem, not having the whole message to provide context. But, I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and speculate that he was not speaking of ideologies per se, but the rigid, dogmatic, top-down tendencies of many tiny socialist parties.

To Rensenbrink, calling for a vote for Kerry is not the problem, the problem is those"socialists" that won't vote Kerry.

To call this baseless would only scratch the surface.

Of course he never mentions that both the Communist Party and many of the Democratic Socialist of America members were solid backers of Kerry. For those socialists to be in the Green Party, I guess, might be okay with Rensenbrink. His problems are with other "socialists" like the ISO that refuse to vote pro-war, and are helping to build the Green Party.

This is the purest speculation, bordering on fantasy. Or, as Peter himself says, guesswork.

Since the Nader/LaDuke campaign of 2000, the ISO has worked alongside the Green Party in electoral campaigns (endorsing our candidates, walking precincts, organizing campaign meetings, etc.) and many members of the ISO are registered Greens. The ISO also works in various places with Green Party members in non-electoral coalitions against the war, for immigrant rights, against the death penalty, etc. Other socialist groups, like Solidarity, have had members helping to build the Green Party since its founding. In New York we ran a leader of the Socialist Party for Senate.

The facts are exactly the opposite of what Rensenbrink states.

The reader would do well to think carefully about Peter's evaluations of facts.

It is a hopeful sign for the Green Party that many of the ISO members and Solidarity are helping the Green Party. The ISO has developed a large following, especially among young people. The Green Party is not socialist or capitalist, it welcomes all who are willing to stand by the ten key values and respect internal democracy. The danger to the Green Party is from the Democratic Party,from pro corporate forces, not from people supportive of our party.

THE ISSUE OF CONTROL

In their desire to cozy up to the "new" Progressive Democrats of America(PDA),

In statements like this, Peter takes a shortcut past making his own case, and simply takes it for granted that his point has been established. In fact, he has offered one piece of evidence (a paraphrased statement from John Rensenbrink), which was neither pertinent to his argument nor convincing in its own right. Yet everything that follows assumes that he has proved that there are Greens who are "cozy" with elements of the Democratic Party. He has not. He has merely made the accusation, and treated that as sufficient.

the Lesser Evil current wants to keep their control of the Green Party. They feel they must stop the membership from being able to alter the present minority control. The fact is the PDA is watching to see if the Lesser Evil wing of the Greens can keep their minority control and help deliver the Greens towards a fusion strategy with the Democrats.

Again, Peter offers no shred of evidence for anything in this paragraph. It's merely a string of accusations. Note the way he uses "minority" as if he had somehow established this point earlier.

That is why we are now seeing the first signs of Cobb supporters openly speaking out against one Green one vote.

Wrong. What people are speaking out against is the bizarre way Camejo supporters purport to implement "One Green, one vote." They cannot let go of the idea of "registered Greens," which is a fundamentally undemocratic way of counting Greens. It holds Greens to two (or more) different standards, which is unacceptable. A democratic system must hold its participants to a single standard.

They are trying to sow confusion over the issue. They try to claim our call for democracy is somehow hostility to smaller Green Party states. They accuse California of wanting to "take over". The truth is the exact opposite. Everything we achieve in California we hope will help build the smaller Green Party units. We respect, admire and want to help those states. Rejecting democracy and trying to create a non-existent inter-state conflict is not a way to help the smaller states.

The way to avoid inter-state conflict is to have a universal method of counting Greens. Any method that considers "registered Greens" must be discarded. Period.

Continue on to part 2