For IMC






 
 


  






Being Green, in the
 most veritable Capital City of Capital

Hi, 
It\'s refreshing -  and enraging! at the same time - to be reading
the recent updates, letters and articles about the current situation with
the Green Mayoral Campaign for the City of New Yawk. 
Being that New York is the Capital City of the global Empire, what happens
in the Green Movement there, locally, is important to Greens everywhere,
having implications on the  life -and -death struggle for survival
in which all the beings of the natural world and human beings are now waging,
all over the planet. 
There seems to be a shameful entanglement of forces active, which will
probably disable any genuine Green efforts to have a meaningful presence
in the elections. 
I was present at the meeting of the Queens Greens, as a guest from abroad,
where the three Green candidates were invited to present their campaigns
so that the Queens  section of the Greens might decide to whom it
would give its nomination and support for the campaign. I was tickled
to hear the radical Green candidate, Mitchel Cohen, state that if the other
candidate, Julia Willebrand received the nomination, he would support her
candidacy and work for her campaign. This, I believe, is one of the graces
which distinguishes the honesty and directness of the radical Green approach
to politics, as opposed to that of the authoritarian Green (which seeks
to cultivate and accumulate power for itself), and the reformist Green
(which seeks to offer \"managerial options\" to the existing power -structure, 
by painting it with green colors without changing anything). 
I felt at the time, that Mitchel Cohen\'s statement was not only correct
and inspirational for all of us toward a broader sense of Green camaraderie,
it was also a direct manifestation of what fuelled his own perception of
why and how he was participating in the campaign as a candidate: the goal
was to enable the Greens to  use the elections to promote the Green
Movement in general, to build our Green political organisations, and to
promote and expand specific local, national, and global Green projects
and  campaigns, such as the currently very active NoSpray Campaign
(Direct Action and legal opposition campaign to the mass spraying of poisons
in New York City by the authorities); the campaign to save Mumia\'s life
from the executioner\'s hand; the campaign to stop fake Greens (posers)
like  Germany\'s Joschka Fischer from supporting imperialist slaughter
such as the one he supported in Yugoslavia by presenting it as a \"Green\"
war - all these are campaigns on which Mitchel has worked very hard as
the full-time (life -time) committed activist that he is. While working
on these Green campaigns, he was jailed, had his passport confiscated and
was ordered by the Courts to be a gagged \"walkabout prisoner\" inside the
City boundaries,  while specifically prohibited from organising, writing
or speaking on these Green campaigns. 
Mitchel Cohen\'s offer to work on Julia\'s campaign if she were to receive
the Green nomination, is thankfully an irrelevant issue now (-phew!). After
she so disgustingly debased herself and ridiculed any notion of Green unity
and respect for the values of Direct/Grassroots Democracy by her initiatives
to invite governmental forces to interfere with what should have been an
internal Green process on the pre-electoral campaign, I hope that any radical
Green considering co-operating with her or her campaign from here on, will
have at least their eyes open. Of course it\'s not her, as a person, who
is the problem  (she is actually pretty likeable as a person) but
it\'s the politics she represents which are the focus of this article. 
During her presentation at the Queens Greens meeting, Julia answered
questions. She received the following question: 
\"Would you give us your commentary on the following? We all know that
the real positions of power in our society are not open to elections -
for example, one can not run to be elected as a head of a bank or an industry- 
and yet, they are the ones who determine our social reality and the state
of our environment.  Your electoral program contains good positions,
such as legalising marijuana, or making changes in the transportation system
with better fuels, but there is no word about which political forces
are going to make this program a reality, and how. For those of us who
are working for social change, how should we be  addressing the real
sources of environmental and social destruction, meaning the corporations,
the system of profits and authoritarian power which dominate our lives?
A lot of us, feel that the goals we share as Greens can only be actualised
in the efforts to replace the system of profits and authoritarian domination.
What do you think?\" 
The candidate\'s answer: \"I know that many people, especially from other
countries, have concerns about  capitalism, socialism, and other political
systems. It\'s a big subject. We could be here all night talking about it,
but I don\'t have the time right now. I hope you don’t think I\'m avoiding
your question\". 
It\'s true that it\'s a big subject, but it\'s also a simple one, and many
Greens have already made up their minds about it: 
There is no way to by-pass the glaring realities of property ownership,
class politics, forms of government, and the source /exercise of authority-power. 
If we are to succeed in creating a community more tangibly built on
the foundations of  radical Ecology and  Feminism, we have no
option but to seek broad and deep changes in our social structures. There
is the vast power in the hands (and wallets) of private capital, state
capital, and church capital. At all levels of our society, globally, regionally,
locally, these are the forces served by the politicians, the parties, the
machinery of state. It is the source of all misery, exploitation, inequality,
racial, religious, and sexual prejudice, environmental and social destruction. 
What is our position toward the existence of these forms of capital?
How can the power of capital be abolished in our communities, without us
having to look at abolishing its very existence? What will it mean to restore
those resources and wealth back to the ownership and control of the community?
Does radical ecology mean common ownership? 
As Greens, we aim for the re-uniting of all of Humanity’s peoples, aim
for the destruction of all borders and the disarming of  the armies
guarding them, and for the final  overthrow of the governments arming
and training them for that purpose. 
We aim for the overthrow of the system of profits and authoritarian
power, and for its replacement by the simple functions of ecological Direct
Democracy: a system of self-administration and self-government within all
of our communities, which are to be run by voluntary Peoples’ Councils
at all levels, in the schools, the workplace, the neighbourhoods, the villages
and towns. 
We believe that once the influence of the system of profits  and
of authoritarian power is removed from both our external and internal (psychological)
world, people everywhere are capable of living as equals who can respect
and honour each other and our natural environment, and are capable and
willing to make together the major and minor decisions which affect our
everyday lives as neighbours, co-workers, colleagues, friends, lovers,
comrades. 
The campaign for a Green  Mayor of New York, as initiated by Mitchel
Cohen, embraces the principles and truths expressed above, though of course
he would articulate them much better in his straight -to -the -point approach,
especially when his persona is in tune with the street-poet \"hole in my
shoes\" dimension of his personal reality. 
Mitchel\'s campaign was conceived and promoted as an invitation to the
Green movement to use him - yes! - as an instrument for our ends; he is
truly New York City \'s best known Green and for good reasons, and this
could have been used well by our organisers to promote Green values and
politics throughout New York during the electoral campaign, and to improve
the quality and numbers of our political organisations. Plus, Mitchel is
dependable, as he has demonstrated well over the decades that he has no
interest whatsoever in personal gain or a \"career\" out of any of this,
or any other election (except to get a well-deserved new pair of sneakers,
which a supporter of  the campaign donated, since Mitchel stubbornly
gives any and all money he ever gets his hands on for radical causes and
projects, to the degree of  never keeping enough even for his healthcare,
resulting in a near-death hospitalisation after a collapse he suffered
at a Green meeting this year). With Mitchel\'s political skills, if he wanted
to be a \"player\" in the \"big game\" of politics, he would have been a US
Congressperson by now, especially if he totally lacked the political principles
and personal grace and dignity by which we\'ve all come to know him. Being
a well known Green, and one we can depend on to not  change his views
and ways all of a sudden, once a campaign gets going, he was an ideal choice
for our movement to objectify him, use him, exploit him and even abuse
him if we had any brains, as he invited us to do so (\"bend me, shape me,
any way you want me\" he sang),  in order to further the needs of the
Green Movement. 
In contrast, he was opposed by petty candidates who want the reverse,
to use us, the Green movement, to further their own agendas and
personal careers. 
I may have my occasional disagreements with Mitchel, from time to time
- we\'ve argued them almost forever, it seems, and all of our comrades have
been touched by the beauty and the pain of some of them - but I fully endorse
and embrace the campaign for Mitchel Cohen as a Green Candidate for Mayor
of New York, especially in the spirit and honesty which he expressed in
his offer to the Greens to use his name for our needs, and because I trust
him politically, to be resilient and totally trustworthy.  Love born
on the barricades is not easily pissed away. 
How did this campaign come up against such vile and disgusting opposition?
Are the opponents so consciously committed to defending the system of profits
and authoritarian domination? They would have to answer this question themselves,
of course, and we should keep asking them; we should keep asking ourselves
and all of our Green colleagues these questions all the time!
During my moments of self-examination, it\'s my duty as a Green to ask myself
\"is this position I hold, this particular way of doing politics, a service
to the process of Liberation? Is it coming from a platform the oppressors
have erected within me? Are there any other Green colleagues I can discuss
this with, consult with, who would be into finding collective approaches
to the problem?\". It\'s also my duty to the Movement to be asking this of
other Greens, if they are open to this process, or at least ask it of those
who say they are open to it. 
So, is the presence of  vile and disgusting political styles a
new phenomenon in the Green Movement? In fact the answer is clear, but
it\'s interpretation is the tricky part! 
 
I worked with Mitchel in the early years of the Green Movement, before
we had parties or Green locals, even, as our organisations, wings, sections,
caucuses and tendencies were emerging from the anti-nuclear, environmentalist
and anti-war Movement in the very early eighties, and the \"Green Committees
of Correspondence\" as it was called, was the forum through which we were
working to lay the foundations of what would become \"the Greens\". We encountered
that same arrogant resistance, then, as now, to anything life-affirming,
any notion of direct democracy in the Movement. It always comes from the
same sections of the Movement, the authoritarian and the reformist sections
of the Greens. In those days, the issues around which the struggle took
place were very different than what they are today, which shows that we\'ve
won some specific social victories over the decades, even if we haven\'t
yet created a Green Movement totally worthy of its name. In those days,
the conflicts with the authoritarians and reformists among us centered
around issues which today are only characteristic of the most reactionary
politics: for example they didn\'t want to hear anything about lesbian and
gay rights (\"it will discredit our Party\"); about womens\' rights to be
the sole and sovereign authority over womens\' bodies (\"but if we are seen
as baby -killers by supporting abortion, no one will give donations to
the party\"); nor about alliances with national liberation struggles going
on around and within the borders of the US such as the efforts for
the liberation of Puerto Rico, Nicaragua,  and of Native Americans
(\"these people are violent\", was the excuse). 
Later, in the mid-eighties, we encountered the same problem, in our
efforts to build the New York State Green movement as a party. Those of
us working within and around the Greens to legalise marijuana, were raided
by police who were invited by our Green \"colleagues\" to \"cleanse the Party
from  drugs\". Now, legalising marijuana is fashionable among voters,
same as it is to speak (but only speak) about racism and gay rights, and
so those same old political forces of authoritarian and reformist Greens
are now mouthing the \"new\" slogans, to get votes. 
It\'s always the same type of careerists who initiate  these disgusting
conflicts among us, such as the one currently related to the New York Green
mayoral campaign. These are individuals who ride the reformist or authoritarian
Green train, because it\'s a \"good move\" for their career, not because they
are willing to make themselves an instrument of Nature and of the People,
which is what is required of us and nothing less, if we are to engage in
leadership positions in the Green movement. They hardly ever seek to change
themselves to become Green, they never open themselves up to the
process to be shaped by the Green movement so as to serve Nature and Humanity
better, and also in order to find inner peace within themselves. For them,
Green values are there on paper, only to be promoted as slogans to get
votes and power, not to be followed as guidelines on how to operate our
organisations, and as guidelines on where to aim our efforts for social
and personal change and growth. While they will hardly do anything to become
Green, they will do everything to force and shape the Green Movement
to their personal and petty political goals, including the use of State
authority and police power to further their careers. 
In 1986, we held the Mid- Atlantic Greens Conference in Philadelphia,
right after it had been air-bombed by the US government, burning down a
huge chunk of the City during  an active phase of its genocidal racist
war against African -American people.  It was an appropriate place
to be and it was the right time to be there, but our Green Movement was
still too much under the sway of the reformists and authoritarians to see
itself as one of the forces actively working against the Empire,
in alliance with people everywhere who are struggling to survive as the
system tries to keep all of us chained down and exploited. We failed to
make anything useful of that political reality - the subject was \"too hot\"
in the Philadelphia area, we were told, and we were cautioned not to make
inflammatory statements, but instead \"let the wounds of the city heal\". 
One of the Greens attending the conference was Abbie Hoffman, one of
the best known non-violent revolutionaries from the sixties and seventies,
who had just emerged from seven years in the underground, running for his
life from every nazi- minded cop who was looking out to kill him. While
in the underground, Abbie did a lot to build the legal and the public
sections of the Green movement, at great risk to his life and freedom,
with a lot of creativity and limitless love, which characterised everything
he did in the Liberation movement. Abbie Hoffman was a jewel of the Green
Movement, who should have been embraced more deeply by our people and our
organisations. If things had gone according to Green values, with our support,
Abbie might have been today one of the persons comprising  a Green
Collective Presidency of the future Green USA. 
Instead, with the initiatives of the authoritarian and reformist Green
careerist politicians, he was isolated because of his radical politics,
because of his commitment to marijuana liberation (he wrote the book \"Steal
this Urine Test\"), and because he was loved by the people. This political
isolation from the Greens, the only section of the Liberation Movement
which could have understood, and made good use of Abbie\'s creative and
daring Green politics, allowed the death -squads of the system to murder
him, setting it up to look like a \"drug -induced suicide\", which is the
only form of assassination specifically requiring a climate of social
isolation to appear plausible. 
We had to literally drag Green politicians to participate in
the activities of the anti-racist, anti Apartheid solidarity movement which
at some point in the late eighties had culminated in hundreds of almost
simultaneous direct-action occupations of universities and colleges all
over the US, as part of the efforts  to bear pressure upon them 
by their communities to divest their (very large) financial investments
in the South African apartheid regime (\"but these sit-ins are a violation
of the regulations, we might lose our funding if  we appear to be
partisan\"). A combination of blows by the revolutionary base in Africa,
the mass mobilisation of the population there, and the solidarity movement
internationally and in the States, eventually helped that regime crumble.
Now all of a sudden the Green \"leaders\" are champions of the struggle against
apartheid. 
In the early nineties, I worked on the campaign to put  the New
Mexico Greens on the ballot as a third party. We succeeded in doing this,
and - oy, do I regret it! The Green party of New Mexico has spent a lot
of its time since then either directly under the influence of careerists,
or being in the middle of struggles among contending bands of reformist
and authoritarian Greens. I experienced all that directly while it was
happening all the years I was there, being very active in my Green local
and State organisations, and I now observe it from abroad. Every once in
a while, honest grass -roots (and possibly radical) Green forces appear
to rejuvenate it, and they  are forced to spend most of their efforts 
and time dealing with the injuries produced by the friction created by
the opposition, instead of being able to work on real Green campaigns for
freedom and for the defence and restoration of our social and natural environment. 
And the organisers of local grass-roots activities and mobilisations
in New Mexico, especially in poor communities in the areas where Greens
have some relevance, like in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, keep seeing the
Greens with wonder: \"Are these Greens really so naive that they don’t see
the racism, or are they just racist themselves? Do they really believe
that this kind of capitalist development is good for our poor?\". 
Throughout most of the nineties and through to this new decade, I\'ve
been an active member of  the Greens in the tiny island -republic
of Cyprus, since the founding of the Green presence here. Those of us who
are active in the radical section of the Greens in Cyprus, have a presence
in the efforts for lesbian /gay liberation; in the struggle for sexual
and religious
freedom and for the separation of Church and State; in the efforts
for natural and alternative healthcare; for decriminalising
cannabis; for the building of the alternative community, along
with the alternative economy and its alternative independent media; the
efforts for Turko
-Hellenic friendship across cultural, racial and religious barriers
as well as in the efforts against militarism in our region; and in the
efforts for nurturing the wider, global, network of Green minded -radical
activists around the globe, through personal contacts and use of the internet. 
We encounter the same crap: the leadership of the Green movement was
taken over by an alliance of authoritarian and reformist Greens who succeeded
in congealing into a party against the wishes of its entire membership
(there were many expressions of this desire, both in votes and by other
means by the entire membership, and public references to this decision
by all the Green representatives for years, to not become a \"power-broker\"
party). They ran for several elections, manoeuvering alliances with various
corporations (like Coca Cola and Nestle, and with the local corporate media
giant Dias group, whom we succeeded in convicting in court for violating
Mitchel\'s copyrights for stealing and publishihg his work without permission),
and with other political groups, and have now succeeded into getting our
very own Cypriot version of Joschka Fischer (different name, same politics)
elected to Parliament. All this did not happen out of the blue, of course.
Huge political battles had to take place during which the entire radical
wing of the Greens  was expelled and deprived of any access to the
organisational apparatus, including offices, meetings, contacts, positions,
etc. (The radical wing of the Greens is generally known in the movement
as the Oikologia
-group [the hellenic language word for \"Ecology\"],  taken
from the name of a printed publication and also of  site on the internet
with some overlapping membership among the volunteers who staff and operate
them). 
Some of the moves to expel the radicals were direct and honest, some
appeared to be simply \"regulatory\", some \"legalistic\", some of them clear
fraud, and some outright outrageous. There was even a motion officially
passed by the party leadership, which still stands unreversed, banning
the undersigned (the author of this article) from speaking at Green events
and distributing any writings! One wonders what kind of  oppression
we will have to deal with, if these people ascend to more powerful positions
in the governmental machinery - how would a \"Green\" minister of Security
and Internal affairs, or a Green Prosecutor, handle the directing of police
and court powers required to silence another Green who has been banned
from speaking and writing, and keeps on doing it \"against the rules?\" I
guess we\'ll soon find out… 
 
It\'s the same formula everywhere where there are Greens politcally active,
and I  have seen it poisoning Green efforts in the heart of the empire,
the veritable Capital City of Capital, and also in its domestic colonies,
like in New Mexico, as well as its external colonies, like Cyprus. Just
as the system impales our young body-minds from the age of infancy with
oppressive behaviour, installing a platform for the Voice of the Oppressor
within us, in the same way, the system installs its ways and methods within 
our Green political organisations, our campaigns.  Conscious constant
collective effort, and open hearts, are required to keep confronting the
authoritarian and reformist ideologies and methods which are active both
within our selves - whom we keep improving and developing as Greens, in
accordance to the understanding that the personal is political - and also
within our organisations. 
As long as we allow power -brokers, wheeler -dealer party hacks, party
-machine politicos, \"players\", career -oriented Greens to determine things,
we will have the same problems within our Movement. Concrete, practical
political  solutions to this problem are not metaphysical; they do 
exist! The solutions revolve around resolving questions of Membership -
\"who is a valid member of this or that particular Green organisation?\"
- and also revolve around resolving questions of collective activity at
any given point in time/space - \"what is a valid Green activity right now,
within this particular context?\". 
But they are not within the scope of this article. Any one wishing to
correspond with me about these and other similar global and local Green
concerns, please write to me directly at:  petrosarbee@yahoo.com
Thank you, 
Petros 
 http://PetrosEvdokas.cjb.net 
member of the Oikologia group 
 
August, 2001

 
 


 
  


 petrosarbee@yahoo.com