Turning the Green Party Black
by Donna J. Warren
and Jonathan David Farley
Dissident
Voice
December 18,
2002
My name is Donna,
and I once had an addiction problem. I
was addicted to the Democratic Party.
But then, in 1999, while attending a meeting in South Central Los
Angeles, I met a young man who handed me some dog-eared sheets of paper,
describing the "Green Party" and its platform.
"My
God," I spurted out after I had read what he had given me: "I'm a
Green!"
This has also
been the reaction of other black Greens that I have met as I toured the
country. Dr. Jonathan Farley, a Green
Party activist from Tennessee, became a true believer in 2000, when someone
told hi that the Green Party supported reparations for slavery. Scales fell from his eyes, and Dr. Farley became a Green.
On National
Public Radio's "The Tavis Smiley Show," Dr. Farley and I were asked if Greens weren't just a bunch of
chardonnay-swilling tree-hugging white liberals. Yes, it is true: trees get more than their fair share of love
from Greens. But the Green Party is
about more than the environment. It's
also about social justice.
You see, the
United States of America, with its insatiable appetite for slavery, gives our
children a despicable choice: serve the master in prison for life or serve the
master in war and die. (While Blacks
make up 12% of America's population, we represent more than 40% of the prison
population and 40% of the military. In
combat, we are 60%.) Our country spends more than the rest of the world
combined on "defense." That's
why we can't ensure good homes, good jobs, good schools, and good health care
for all.
The Green Party
says No: no to weapons and yes to people.
The Greens believe that our criminal justice system is criminal, that it
is ineffective, that it is prohibitively expensive, and that it mainly locks up
the poor, the undereducated, the black and the brown.
Greens believe
that the so-called "war on drugs" is actually a war on the poor, a
war on urban ghettos, a war on civil liberties, a war on peasants in faraway
places like Colombia.
Greens oppose
racial profiling.
Only the Greens
stand between Bush and a potential rain of hell on Iraq's children.
But why should
blacks flee the Democratic Party plantation?
Isn't massa's barn warm? Yes,
there is a legitimate fear that breaking away from a mainstream party will only
marginalize us further. But our
participation in the Democratic Party does not guarantee us influence. In the
2000 presidential elections, we were presented with four pro-military,
pro-business candidates from the two mainstream parties, three out of four of
whom opposed affirmative action.
(Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman opposed
affirmative action as late as 1996.) The Democrats want our votes, yet they
ignore our voices. And in the 2002
Florida election, including the race for governor, the same 90,000 voters
erroneously classified as felons in 2000 were again barred. These 90,000 were mostly black.
In California,
especially East LA, the Latino community is coming out of their Democratic
comfort zones: they're starting Green Party chapters. In fact, the 2002 California Green Party slate was led by Peter
Miguel Camejo, a Latino, and myself, an African-American. Camejo marched with Martin
Luther King in Selma, while I am the lead plaintiff in the suit against the CIA
for infesting South Central with crack.
Black Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, a woman of
true courage, has supported Green candidates and was a scheduled speaker at the
2002 Green Party convention. She just
may be the Green Party's presidential candidate in 2004.
"That's all
good," someone asks in the back row, "but isn't the Green Party
white?" Sure it is - just like the
Democratic Party. The difference is,
our party articulates our interests.
It is true,
however, that the party's outreach to communities of color has been awful.
When 2000
presidential candidate Ralph Nader visited Nashville, Dr. Farley asked him why
he didn't schedule a lecture at historically black Tennessee State
University. "They can come to
me," was Nader's reply.
But the Greens
are getting it a little more each day.
Ralph Nader made sure to schedule a speech at Tennessee State the
following year. (It must be said, though, that while Nader spoke at Fisk
University in Nashville in 2000, Al Gore, despite his campaign headquarters
being based in Nashville, refused all invitations to speak at Fisk until near
the very end of his campaign.) And Nader correctly points out that when we
fight to keep toxic waste dumps out of inner city playgrounds, when we struggle
for a living wage, even though these issues are on the surface race-neutral,
communities of color are the winners.
Besides, there's
talk of a new sheriff in town. A powerful
"McKinney for President" movement is growing within the Green
Party. Every Green I've met wants Ms.
McKinney to join our ranks. And though,
like all parties, we must have primaries, many of us already have our
"McKinney
2004" bumper stickers.
In the wake of
the Democratic disaster of November 2002, political commentators agree on one
thing: Today's Democrats are too spineless to stand up for us. They all-too-easily surrendered our civil
rights, our economy, and our children to the molochs of Republican rule (whom
Democrats, and not Greens, placed in office).
Greens will
rescue the money going towards jails and send it back to colleges and
schools. We'll end the public financing
of sports stadiums and use that money to pay for universal health insurance.
Free trade agreements like NAFTA will no longer undercut American workers'
wages and foreign workers' rights. And
corporations will have to pay their fair share in taxes, just like the rest of
us.
The Greens are
the new opposition. We're fighting the
prison-industrial complex and Three Strikes - alone.
We're fighting
for people over profits, for peace instead of war - alone. We are fighting for social justice and
reparations.
Yes, the Green
Party is now white, but when we all join it, it will become the Black Party
that Marcus Garvey longed for. (And,
white or not, a party that supports reparations for slavery and segregation is
the party I want.)
In the past,
African-Americans had two parties to choose from. Now, there is only one choice, the Green Party. From now on, Green is the new black.
Donna Jo Warren is a native of South Central Los Angeles
and a former Green Party candidate for Lt. Governor of California (www.donnawarren.com). She may be reached at cottry@worldnet.att.net. Dr. Jonathan Farley is a former Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at Oxford University
(www.greenpanther.org). He may be
reached at farley@math.vanderbilt.edu.