[Sosfbay-discuss] Why I Joined the Green Party on California Greening

[alexcathy at aol.com]

  Dear Green Friends, 
 
 Okay. I've done it. This is something I've want to do for a long time. 
 
 I posted a long rant on the Blog "California Greening" titled "Why I joined the Green Party." 
 
 I confess. It is not one of my better writings. It's kind of a rant based on three separate pieces I've written before, including something that I published back in 2000 about why I supported Ralph Nader. 
 
 It's a 2,000-word rant and even that leaves out a lot of stuff. For example, I didn't write anything about the horror show I trying to be a "good Democrat" in New York. But I am sort of baring my soul here, trying to explain why I've passed a point where there's no going back. 
 
 
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 Posted on http://cagreening.blogspot.com 
 Why I Joined the Green Party 
 by Alex Walker 
 
 
 Los Angeles, California -- How can a fifty-something man summarize a lifetime of political education in less than many thousands of words? In earlier drafts of this post I went on for about seven thousand words and even that was not enough. My word processor says this essay is exactly 2,137 words long. No editor of a journal would accept this for publication but one nice thing about having your own blog is setting up the rules. And so, 2,137 words it shall be.
 
 Between the two of us, my dear wife, Cathy Deppe, and I have lived and worked in Alabama, California, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
 
 Some of these places were run by “conservative.” Some by “liberals.” They all have problems, but “liberal” places are consistently better (it’s not for nothing that “conservative” Condolezza Rice from “conservative” Alabama settled in “liberal” California). Cathy and I have both been involved in the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women’s movement, the labor movement, and the environmental movement.
 
 Some politicians are very good at making speeches, but God (and the devil) is in the details. High-minded speeches and deliberately vague legislation aside, on issue after issue, that Republicans and Democrats are indeed the “One Corporate Party with Two Names.”
 
 . . . 
 
 Everything the Republican conservative clique says about African-Americans is based on prejudice and stereotypes. And everything they’ve recently done brings back bad memories of why I originally came to detest their "conservatism." Today, so-called conservative "chicken hawks" say "we" have to send "our" sons and daughters (but not their privileged sons and daughters) and spend $3,000 a second (but not their tax dollars) in Iraq even while those same demagogues rant and foam about being taxed "to support those people" at home. On immigration, the rhetoric of California college-educated, pseudo-sophisticated "conservatives" about "illegal aliens" is as ugly and crude as anything I heard by southern segregationist "rednecks" in old Virginny. They piously preach little sermons about a crusade for "freedom" in the Middle East, but under stress, they’ll launch into a tirade on Arab "sand n*****s" and "ragheads." Indeed, the new Washington consensus is those bad brown Iraqis are the ones who have failed The Great White Empire. 
 
 Hence, my dilemma. I have a hundred grievances against the Democrats, but for a lot of self-respecting people of color like me, supporting Republicans is simply not an option. Telling me we don’t need third parties because I can "choose" between Republicans and Democrats is telling me I have no choice at all. And telling me that if I want "education reform" or "campaign reform" or "environmental reform" then I have to "join Arnold" and those sicko Republicans is telling me that you don't really want reform at all and all your bitchin' about "reform" is just another way of saying "Why should I be taxed to support those people?"
   * * *  I have traveled a long road since I grew up in a 100% segregated community in Hampton, Virginia. We call ourselves African-American, but my people are not Africans. We really are not even if it is "politically incorrect" to say so. For better or for worse (and a lot of times it's for the worse), my people are as American as apple pie. When I left the East Coast in 1998 I drove across this vast nation all the way to San Francisco. I drove across Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. I took plenty of time to observe what was going on, reading local papers, and talking to all kinds of folks. I am deeply troubled that America -- the country my ancestors built and fought for -- has too much inequality, ugliness, pollution, and violence.
 
 All my life I have been told that African-Americans like me should stop thinking so much about racism. We are told over and over to forget about slavery; forget about segregation; forget those who died in my lifetime just to secure the right to vote. Pompous hypocrites who hated Martin Luther King and everything he stood for self-righteously throw his noble words in our faces:
 
  “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
  
 Very well. I have judged Republicans and Democrats by the content of their character.
 
 I reject them both.  
 
 (for the full rambling text goto http://cagreening.blogspot.com)
 
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