Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s explicit critique of Jill Stein and the Green Party several days ago have motivated me to write about my 17 years in that organization and why I do not support it in any way today.

I was a member of the US Green Party from 2000 to 2017. Prior to 2000 I had worked with GP members in support of Ralph Nader’s first Presidential “campaign,” the one where he deliberately raised no more than $5,000 so that he wouldn’t be bound by federal election rules and wouldn’t have to file reports. It was the campaign where he really wasn’t running, more like allowing his name to be used by the nascent US Green Party to help them build themselves.

I went all-in for Nader/LaDuke in 2000. But as is often the fate of US third party efforts, his support eroded toward the end as many voters who liked him realized he had zero chance of winning and instead voted for either Al Gore or Bush. He ended up getting 2.7% of the vote.

In 2004 I played a very active role supporting insurgent David Cobb against Nader’s attempt to do it a third time. After a hard fought, months long campaign leading up to the GP convention in Milwaukee, Cobb won the nomination.

It was during this year that I and others in the GP began to put forward a strategy for how the GP should approach Presidential elections, what was called a “safe states strategy.” It was pretty simple. It was grounded in the belief that it didn’t help the GP to be taking the inaccurate position that there was no difference at all between the Dems and the Reps. They both were corporate-dominated but on a whole list of issues, from racial justice to voting rights to women’s rights and lgbtq rights, supporting unions, etc., the Dems were better.

Because of this fact—a fact which, 20 years later, GP members like Jill Stein continue to deny—the best way to build the GP was NOT to run in battleground states but, instead, to focus the campaign on the 30-35 or more states where it was virtually certain which corporate party was going to win. This would nullify the very real spoiler problem, which would mean more people willing to check out the GP and potentially join it. Instead of getting a vote total in the very low single digits, not exactly a showing of political strength, this focus on the non-battleground states—“don’t waste your vote, vote for the consistently progressive party, since we know who’s likely to win in this state”—would mean many more GP votes.

What has been the concrete result of the GP rejecting this approach and consistently running Presidential campaigns every four years in battleground states?

In 2004 there were about 225 GP members who were in elected office, almost all of them low-level offices like school board, water board, etc. Today Jill Stein says there are 144. There are no GP members who have been elected to a state house or senate seat and, of course, none to Congress. It’s a pretty dismal record for 20 years of existence.

Those of us who took the “safe states” position were in a decided minority then, and today, I am sure, anyone who advocated for it would be very unpopular. The GP has become a narrow, tiny party of true believers, destined to get at most 1% or so of the vote. Of course, that would triple the vote total of their Presidential candidate, Howie Hawkins, in 2020.

I remember when it was that I decided I had had it with the GP. I was at a national People’s Summit conference in Chicago in the summer of 2016 organized by National Nurses United and many other progressive groups and individuals who had come together after active involvement in the historic Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign. I was one of those people. On the second day of this event, attended by thousands, I looked up onto a screen that was projecting tweets about the convention that were being posted. I was shocked to see one from Jill Stein explicitly calling out this event and those who organized it as being “sheepdogs for the duopoly.” These supporters of independent socialist Bernie Sanders were all about corralling progressives into the Democratic Party, Stein was saying.

The GP, and others supporting them, don’t get it on mass politics. They believe in ideological purty before anything else. Unless you’re ideologically pure, they would say, you will never be able to bring about the transformational, revolutionary changes needed. Purity comes before anything else.

Twenty years of this approach have made it clear this is a losing strategy. The national US Green Party is a failure because of its rigid and narrow electoral approach.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com

For the last 21 years, the primary issue I have focused on is the climate crisis. It’s a no-brainer for me: it is a scientific fact that time is running out to prevent ecosystem and societal unraveling unless the world rapidly stops burning coal, oil and gas and shifts onto wind and solar, in particular, as well as geothermal and flowing water as the dominant and ubiquitous sources of energy for transportation, power, heating and cooling. The tipping points, the points after which it will be extremely difficult to prevent that unraveling, are possibly just years, not decades, away.

But there are two other issues that I consider of great urgency right now: Gaza and Israel’s continuing anti-Palestinian crusade to take over all of Palestine, “from the river to the sea,” and the urgent necessity for the strongest possible defeat of Trump and MAGA on November 5.

What specifically am I doing and planning to do for the next two months in those three areas?

GAZA/PALESTINE: I will continue taking part in weekly, pro-ceasefire demonstrations every Friday in downtown Montclair, NJ organized by NJ Peace Action and be open to participating in others and responding to organized call-ins to elected officials. I will follow the news closely on a daily basis as to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, with the ceasefire negotiations, and with the mass movement inside Israel demanding elections to replace the repressive Netanyahu right-wing regime.

THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY: My immediate priority is helping to organize nonviolent direct action at the September 19^th monthly meeting in Washington, DC of the commissioners who run FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC is responsible for the regulation of the US electrical grid, as well as deciding whether to grant permits for the expansion of the methane gas industry, which is today primarily a fracked gas industry.

When it comes to that second task FERC is a proven rubber-stamper: according to a study in 2022 by a House committee chaired by Jamie Raskin, between 2000 and 2020, out of 1,021 gas industry applications for permits to expand, only six were turned down. FERC is the epitomy of a rubber stamp agency.

There was a period of time in 2021 and 2022 when, under the leadership of Richard Glick (no relation), steps were taken to change this reality. In February, 2022, a Glick-led new policy was passed by a 3-2 vote of the FERC commissioners to mandate much stricter review of the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice impacts on local communities of proposed gas projects. In response coal baron Joe Manchin and Republicans on the Senate committee overseeing FERC brought heavy public pressure on the three Democrats who voted for it. Within a month, in March of 2022, one of them, Willie Phillips, changed his vote, no new policy was enacted and ever since, particularly after Manchin used his power to oust Glick at the end of 2022, followed soon after by Willie Phillips being named chair, FERC has continued with its rubber-stamping ways.

However, all is not lost! This summer, between mid-July and mid-August, the federal appeals court in DC which hears appeals of FERC decisions  handed down three separate opinions voiding or remanding to FERC their approvals of permits for three LNG export terminals on the Gulf coast, a Texas pipeline and a pipeline project in NJ.

Why did this happen? Apparently a main reason is a Supreme Court decision on the “Chevron doctrine” earlier this year which weakened a 40-years long policy that courts should generally defer to internal decision-making processes of federal regulatory agencies. The not-so-Supremes said the courts could be more active in their oversight capacity. And the DC Court of Appeals took that decision and ran with it, to the detriment of the gas industry and the benefit of our disrupted climate.

On September 19^th a coalition of climate action groups is organizing a large and visible presence outside and inside the first FERC commissioners meeting since these three decisions came down. A strong turnout will amplify the court decisions and ratchet up the public pressure on the FERC commissioners to finally do the right thing for local communities and the planet. Please learn more and plan to come if you can!

DEFEATING TRUMP/MAGA: What is the key to the defeat of would-be dictator, misogynist, racist and pathological liar Trump? ONE THING: A BIG TURNOUT! All of us who get it on the urgency of this election need to figure out how we can best take part in the phone calling, postcard writing and door knocking in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada from now until November 5.

For myself I’ve begun to drive an hour and a half over to Pennsylvania on Saturdays to take part in door to door canvassing in the Allentown area, and I intend to keep doing so every Saturday that I can, which should be most of them. In addition this week I will start doing organized phone calling one, two or more evenings a week into swing states. I intend to “leave it all out on the field” in my small, one person way—which is all that most of us have!

I’m very glad that Harris and Walz, not Biden and Harris, are the Democratic nominees. That change has set in motion an historic and potentially powerful mass movement in defense of democracy and against the fascist threat. I love to see and hear the many thousands of people at Harris rallies chanting, “We won’t go back” and “When we fight, we win.” Without that fighting spirit on the part of millions, we have little chance of bringing about the transformational changes we need.

I am critical of more than a couple of the positions being taken, and not taken, by the national Democratic Party. I have no illusions that a Harris/Walz victory and Democratic control of the House and Senate will, alone, bring about the change this country and world desperately need, particularly right now on the climate crisis and Palestinian self-determination. But a winning result on November 5 will, in the words of the United Electrical Workers Union, allow us “to live to fight another day” and to do so with the wind at our back.

This result, for sure, is more than worth fighting for. If you are progressive it’s an existential necessity.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com

I became politicized and then radicalized during the 1960’s as a result of two distinct mass movements: the anti-Vietnam war movement and the civil rights/Black Freedom movement. My research while a freshman in college into why the US was in Vietnam and my involvement in a Black history book discussion group eventually led me to leave college after two years to “join the revolution,” and I’ve never regretted it.

As I continued my political activism into the decade of the ‘70s I was exposed to the idea that the struggle for Black Freedom, against racism and white supremacy, was the key to systemic, transformational change in the USA. I was also exposed to the traditional Leftist idea that the working class struggle against capitalist exploitation was the key “contradiction,” as it was called. And then, increasingly, the reborn women’s movement came forward articulating that the struggle of women against sexist patriarchy was the key to such transformation.

Today, decades later, the concept of “intersectionality” seems to be widely accepted among progressives and Leftists as the approach we should be taking. A definition of this term that I like was put forward in the book, “Intersectionality,” by Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge in 2016:

“Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity of the world, in people and in human experiences. . . When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other. Intersectionality as an analytic tool gives people better access to the complexity of the world and themselves.”

However, even if one believes that an intersectional approach is generally the best approach to “understanding and analyzing the complexity of the world,” that should not preclude an objective assessment, based on history and experience, as to which sector or sectors of a country’s population might have the most potential to give the leadership needed for fundamental, revolutionary change.

For many years I have believed that THE sector which fits that description is the African American movement.

It was the civil rights movement in the deep South in the mid-1950’s and into the ‘60s which, via organized campaigns to end brutal Jim Crow segregation, galvanized the country, undercut McCarthyism, kept hope for social change alive and inspired young white and other non-Black students to become dedicated activists. The anti-Vietnam war movement, the second wave women’s movement, the lesbian/gay rights movement, membership-based democratic trade union organizing, the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement, the Chicano movement, the Gray Panthers, environmental activism and more—it is a valid argument that all in part emerged as impactful mass movements as a result of the heroic nonviolent battles for the right to vote and the fight for equality by organized Black people first in the South and then throughout the country.

Other more recent examples would be the Jesse Jackson for President campaigns in 1984 and 1988 and Barack Obama’s successful Presidential campaigns 20 years later.

But the Obama electoral successes did not translate into transformational change. Indeed, an argument could be made that the trajectory of Black-led movements as they entered the electoral arena between the ‘60s and the early 2000’s was more one of cooptation into the two-party, corporate-dominated status quo than a liberatory trajectory.

If Kamala Harris becomes President, which I am working for and which is a clearly realizable goal if enough of us over the next 80 days make this a top priority in our personal lives, will she end up being another Obama: good on a number of things but unwilling to take on the rule of the 1%, of the fossil fuel industry, the war industry, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other billionaire corporatists—the ruling class?

I think it is possible that a Harris/Walz administration could be different than what we experienced with Obama/Biden, and even from Biden/Harris. That is the case because of the massive outpouring of energy, hope and activism that has accompanied Biden’s stepping down and his endorsement of Harris as his replacement as the Democratic Presidential candidate. This historic development on July 21 has led overnight, literally, to the emergence of a massive movement of many hundreds of thousands of people. That is how many have taken part in one of the 20 or so national zoom calls, organized in an intersectional way on the basis of identity or constituency, in support of Harris. And all indications are that for many of those hundreds of thousands it was not a one-off, that they have continued and will continue to work the phones, write the postcards, knock on the doors to bring out what could be an historic turnout of progressive-minded, decent and democracy-loving people by and on November 5^th.

It is an absolute historic truth that, indeed, the masses make history, built upon the dedicated, day-after-day work of those who have the vision and will to keep at it in the down times. Those masses, all of us, need to act right now, and keep acting after November 5th, as if a livable future for our children and grandchildren, for all life forms on the planet, depends on us doing so, because it really does. It really, really does.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com. 

“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. . . [they] were of one heart and soul and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. . . There was not a needy person among them.”   the New Oxford Annotated Bible, the book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 44-45 and chapter 4, verses 32 and 34

These words, written almost 2,000 years ago, reveal one major reason why, after Jesus of Nazareth was killed by the Roman empire, his First Century teachings and life example lived on in the hearts, minds and actions of growing numbers of people in Palestine and, increasingly, beyond. The Christian organization met not just the spiritual needs of the masses of Jewish peasants but their very practical needs.

Here is how European socialist leader Karl Kautsky put it in the early 20^th century in his important book, Foundations of Christianity: “Jesus was not merely a rebel, he was also a representative and a champion, perhaps even the founder of an organization which survived him and continued to increase in numbers and in strength. It was the organization of the congregation [and its practical serving of people’s survival needs] that served as a bond to hold together Jesus’ adherents after his death. It was the vigor and strength of the congregation that created the belief in the continued life of the Messiah.”

Karl Marx did more than any other person to spread the slogan summing up this early Christian philosophy of action, using the phrase, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” He wrote this in his 1875 book, Critique of the Gotha Program. But earlier socialists, Christian socialists, particularly Henri de Saint Simon, had used a similar phrase, using the word “work” instead of “need,” but with the same basic intent, in the 1820’s.

Since 1917 there have been socialist revolutions with the objective of creating societies motivated by this visionary approach. Unfortunately, and to be generous, those efforts have not been too successful. The Russian revolution clearly failed, and China is very far from being anything close to the kind of socialist society hoped for by 19^th century founders of scientific socialism like Marx, Engels and others. Cuba has made heroic efforts to maintain the socialist vision and make it real, but the decades-long US blockade and other difficulties have undercut those efforts. Other smaller countries which have tried to build socialist societies in this world dominated by the ideology and the reality of mega-corporate, militaristic capitalism have had similar problems.

Does this mean this originally Christian, then socialist vision is an anachronism, no longer relevant in today’s world? I say “no,” a very loud “NO!” Indeed, it is just this vision which those of us committed to working for a very different world must hold onto and translate into daily acts and new forms of organization which embody it.

The original thinkers and leaders of scientific socialism in the 19^th and 20^th century—almost all of them men, by the way, a very big problem itself—believed that societies living by the words, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” or “their work,” were on the agenda of history because of the development of industry and technology. With this economic development the conditions were being laid for masses of working people to learn from experience as they were forced into large, oppressive workplaces, learn how to join together to improve their and their families’ lives. Over time, this would lead to a replacement of rule by rich capitalists and their enablers in government with a true democracy of working people, the vast majority.

But the industrial working class was very small in China and Russia, both predominantly peasant societies with much less industry compared to Europe and the US. They therefore had less experience with mass organization, a prerequisite to having any chance of systemic change.

Fortunately today, “a different kind of movement is building in the US and elsewhere for fundamental social change. And because the US is a wealthy society, it is practically possible for that movement, when it wins, to rapidly take steps toward a much more just distribution of wealth and power, much healthier social and economic relationships based on cooperation and higher love instead of individualistic competition, and protection for and healing of our threatened climate and environment as a top level priority.” 2)

What should we be doing right now to advance toward these goals? It’s clear to me that for those of us in the US, we need to be going all out to defeat the fascist threat Trump and MAGA represent by doing all we can to bring out an anti-Trump vote for Kamala Harris in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Our deeply disrupted climate cannot be made even worse by four years of Trump/MAGA domination. Conversely, their electoral defeat will strengthen and expand our building, independent progressive movement.

There is no more important work right now.

1—Foundations of Christianity: A Study in Christian Origins. Monthly Review Press, 1972, pps. 376-378

2—21^st Century Revolution: Through Higher Love, Racial Justice and Democratic Cooperation, by Ted Glick

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.