It’s in our names! That’s probably the simplest answer to the question of “How do these two political parties survive, despite the two Titanic Parties trying to kill us since the day we were born?”
Values people hold dear are in our names: Green Party and Peace and Freedom Party. Add Justice to the list, because it’s an intrinsic value of our platforms.
Also, we take no corporate money. Fortunately, there’s a growing understanding that candidates who take corporate and billionaire money — or belong to political parties who take it — will find a way to talk about Green, Peace, Freedom and Justice, but they will not find a way to act on these values.
Peace and Freedom began in 1967 and they are still alive 55 years later. The Green Party got on the ballot in 1992, and we are still alive 30 years later. This year the two parties cooperated to make our political efforts more effective and the movements we represent stronger. For the California “top-two” primary on June 7, 2022, we focused not on running statewide candidates separately against each other, but rather together in a Left Unity Slate..
There are even more reasons why we have successfully sustained ourselves, despite the ever-increasing fees and other hurdles, the closed debates, and the increasingly closed media. As a national party, the Green Party has been the strongest progressive independent party for three decades. Here are some reasons why.
(1) The Green Party is international, and that gives us staying power.
(2) The Green Party is national and has fought for and achieved ballot access in almost all states — which is a tough thing to do. The two Titanic Parties are automatically on all state ballots for presidential elections. Parties like the Greens or Libertarians, however, have to jump hurdles each time to achieve ballot access in order for our candidates to even get listed on a state’s ballot. By the way, it’s not generally understood that the Green Party must run for president, to strengthen our ability to survive and to run locally.
(3) We are decentralized which means we have no leader or figurehead, who could get vilified and marginalized. (Remember that Democratic Party leadership tried to kill off the Greens by vilifying Ralph Nader, an independent who ran for president as a Green. The 2000 election is a long story, as you may know (!), but Al Gore not only won the popular vote, he also won Florida. However, Gore did not choose to investigate the purging of thousands of black voters from voter rolls when they were erroneously treated as felons.)
(4) Greens cooperate with other organizations and groups, such as the Peace and Freedom Party, and with no-corporate-money progressive candidates from Bernie Sanders on down.
(5) The Green Party is probably the most successful progressive think tank in the country, because as a political party we get the word out about solutions by running candidates. Some laws have passed that seemed like wishful thinking when we first advocated for them, like marriage equality and legalization of marijuana.
(6) As a progressive think tank, we continue to advance policies which may seem like pipe dreams now, but which also might happen. The list includes a real Green New Deal with effective climate action rather than denial or weak rhetorical support; public banking at all levels; meaningful reparations; stopping the unhealthy concentration of wealth and power; and making major corrections in policing, prison, and Pentagon policies to ensure the safety of all lives and justice for all.
Finally, probably the main reason we’re still alive is that
WE WILL NOT STOP!
Persistence that is the key to survival and Educating more people as to what’s going on and coming over to thinking green and voting green