ABRIDGED (personal, amateur) version of Dr. Jill Stein’s remarks on the steps of the Massachusetts State House this morning:
Also: a PHOTO SLIDESHOW of the morning’s events.
ABRIDGED (personal, amateur) version of Dr. Jill Stein’s remarks on the steps of the Massachusetts State House this morning:
Also: a PHOTO SLIDESHOW of the morning’s events.
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Jill Stein’s announcement is getting some decent play in the media. Now it’s on us to support her and the Green-Rainbow party in the comment sections and blogs where people are talking about her. Even tho most readers don’t leave comments, they still gauge the candidate’s level of support by the general tone of the comments, which psychologists call ‘social proof’ or ‘the bandwagon effect’. If we want others to join us in supporting Jill Stein, we have to be out there from the get-go vocally supporting her and helping her make her case.
I’ve compiled some links to the campaign launch story here:
http://www.greenpartywatch.org…
By the way, some people will be nasty – it’s the internet, after all. It’s best to stay positive and cool-headed, and win over the innocent bystanders. Let’s do this!
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You can Astroturf blogs all you want but it will do little to advance the greens. You need to reach people who otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to Jill, and these people are not surfing Greenmassgroup or any of the other green blogs. I think you should look for the people who are not already looking/google-ing/surfing around the net for green party candidates.
One place that would be good is North Station. Thousands of commuters in and out of that place all day. I’m one of them. Every morning I take one MBTA train from Salem to North Station, and a second from North Station to Waltham. That’s right I take 4 trains a day, to and from work, otherwise I drive route 128 for over an hour each way (BTW – That’s about $350 per month in gasoline … and over $500/month during the gas spike from Katrina in 2008). And I’m not the only one that has to put up with this.
QUESTION: Would Jill Stein push for better public transportation? Will she push for more trains or more direct trains? I bet all you guys could make a case for her…. Maybe even in front of a train car filled with tired commuters many of them like me looking for better train service. I bet the MBTA workers themselves may find it interesting too.
There are a lot of places you could go besides blogs already dedicated to reds, blues, and greens. Those places a filled with people who have already decided.
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which I’d say, by definition, means that there’s money involved funding a fake grassroots effort, kinda like, well, our new gas-burnin’ Republican Senator. By joining the existing conversation on places like Boston.com and elsewhere, we help to frame the issues and better get our message out.
Now, you’re absolutely right about needing to hit the places where people are NOT tuned in to Massachusetts politics, and I’d argue that’s our greatest opportunity. Millions of people don’t pay attention to these elections because it’s political theater, and rarely anything more.
If the Greens aren’t going to take the time to listen to people and to work on issues that are relevant to people’s lives, then the Green Parties globally will be a flash-in-the-pan political endeavor fizzling out after about 3 decades, relegated to a paragraph in the history books at best. What’s exciting is the extent to which the Greens want to rewrite the whole damn textbook. We see the long-term consequences of our actions as a society, and we’re alarmed as hell at what the textbooks might say without some kind of political, social, and economic intervention. That message will be a hard sell at North Station except to a tiny fraction of people.
SO, on to making ourselves relevant, to the concern you highlighted. First of all, you mentioned gas price hikes due to Katrina. Katrina had very little to do with rising gas prices and only had a temporary impact. The longer-term rise-and-fall of gas prices, ignoring spikes like Katrina, have been and are going to be dictated by a) the economy, b) the depletion of oil (or “peak oil”), and c) the geopolitics of oil. Check out The Oil Drum for more background.
NOW, our federal and state policy has almost entirely thrown support (read: subsidies in the form of YOUR tax dollars) into car-based infrastructure and development. And it continues. The $787 B I L L I O N stimulus package is trying to pass itself off as green, and yet it’s mostly going to highway projects. The Big Dig and its corrupt contracting and its shortsighted financing scheme (THANKS CHARLIE BAKER!) has sopped us with a $22 B I L L I O N bill… for car-based infrastructure. And they took a solid chunk of Big Dig debt and heaped it onto the MBTA, which has had to hike its rates and neglect its own infrastructure maintenance (let alone improvements!).
Ecologically speaking, we cannot afford to be propping up Wall Street with trillions of dollars, and propping up the failing fossil-fueled economy with trillions of dollars, and propping up the military-industrial complex with trillions of dollars. We absolutely have to be putting any such spending into a rapid transition to a secure, green economy, which doesn’t necessarily mean a growing economy. What ever happened to long-term planning? If we put off the transition, we will practically ensure runaway climate change and cede Boston and the Cape and the whole damn coast to the rising sea.
Not only would Jill support a massive improvement of our public transit system, but she’d help create much more livable/walkable/bikeable streets and paths that are integrated into that transit system, and she’d help create local economies that could have you working closer to home in the first place. All of this would be part of the solution to climate change, oil depletion, and economic unraveling… and at the same time it would make Massachusetts residents a heck of a lot healthier and happier, which in the end, should be the basic common goal… It would also save us lots of money on healthcare, on misguided development, on fossil fuels… and it would save us the lives we’re sending to fight our wars for this stuff, the money we’re spending to do it, and of course, the countless lives we’re taking in the process.
The Republicans and the Democrats alike have shaken hands and signed off on this madness… and we sit by like idiots and let them sink our future, our children’s future, and on and on. Whether you’re John McCain, Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, Martha Coakley, Deval Patrick, or Barack Obama… you’ve accepted this shortsighted and tragic, even criminal approach. How to say this at North Station, on the other hand, is beyond me! One thing we have to do is to build and support independent media…
Curious to hear your response!
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I think something like a commuter outreach would be great. What you’re saying here is true – the issues are larger than local train service and the green party wants substantial changes across all areas to make life more sustainable, but most people just aren’t that interested in hearing all that.
First, you can win people on desired local changes that provide a direct benefit. Once you’ve got them there, they’ll start to listen to the bigger picture themes.
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I commuted via train in NY, in Philly, and, for years, up here. But whether we advocate transitioning or not, the fact is that a serious web of rail is still a long way off–and most of us don’t have the luxury of working or going to school close to home–or eating food that’s grown nearby and not …. trucked in. (I’m looking forward, of course, to hearing about how local economies are going to develop over the next four years). We’ve all read reports about the very serious shape the transportation infrastructure is in–spending on highways isn’t pure pork. That said, I was getting crucified by MBTA rate increases, along with jacked up parking fees at stations, and I saw a number of train-communtin co-workers opt for their cars instead as a result. Fucking stupid policy that leads in that direction, we’d doubtless all agree.
Unfair to single out Scott Brown as gas-burnin’. We’re all as dependent as he is on fossil fuels, unless we have managed to get off the grid successfully. We’re gonna kill ourselves if we start criticizing truck owners.
RRR, amen to your statement about the need to get beyond the leftie blogosphere–or the political blogs in general. Many of us–myself included–whose idea of great Saturday night involves moving from Daily Kos to Red MassGroup and stopping at more than a few sites along the way forget that it’s a very small fraction of Americans who share our idea of fun. Any why would they? I’d rather listen to Jon Stewart than to wade through my prose myself.
“…look for the people who are not already looking/google-ing/surfing around the net for green party candidates.” YES.
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In that regard, Dubya was right.
I only single out Scott Brown for the symbolism, bragging about it like it’s not a fatal addiction. Truck owners are feeling the brunt of misguided policies and a short-lived car/truck culture that made truck driving something macho when it should have been about the sheer USEFULNESS of being able to get stuff around. Bill Clinton and Al Gore are at fault for taking this to extremes, making Sport UTILITY Vehicles the new new thing, and a critical piece of the American auto industry. Then came the ads marketing SUVs to women as a means to prove their strength and independence, Mother Nature cringing all throughout, not to mention our lungs and the inflammation caused by these toxic beasts. SUV owners are feeling it now. And it will only get worse. The trucking industry is in for an ugly, crumbling road ahead. And this?????
There’s a great piece from the Bangor Daily News by John Buell up on Common Dreams, on the need to confront the realities of American car culture: