Cross-posted at GreenChange.org, part of the Green Change Blog Action Day
From internal feuds and co-optation of the Tea Party movement to copycat “movements” like the Coffee Party, or Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s silly yearning for a “Tea Party of the radical center“, it is clear that the tax day teabags have made their mark on the United States.
Taking a good look at the pictures from the April 15, 2009 Tea “coming out” Party, I can’t help but think that many of the grievances are valid and even accurate criticisms of the US federal government today (e.g. “Stop Spending $$$ Our Grandkids’ Future” or “Obama’s Hockey Stick” showing exponentially rising federal debt). Of course, the pictures also make it clear that jumping into bed with the Tea Partiers could make for a nasty relationship. “Taxes Kill Freedom”, “Taxation Is Just Piracy With Paperwork”, “Taxes Destroy Ambition”, and lots of mistaking corporatist Obama as a socialist.
So what exactly is this political moment? And what is the role of the Greens?
It’s notable that Friedman, in 2006, was yearning for a “Geo-Green Party” while completely ignoring the fact that a global Green political movement was well underway. But more recently, another NY Times columnist, David Brooks, had a more thoughtful insight, more in tune with the political moment before us:
This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in general. Even beyond their ranks, there is a corrosive cynicism about public action. But there is another way to respond to these problems that is more communitarian and less libertarian.
Brooks then goes on to outline British writer Phillip Blond’s 3 ideas for reform:
Remoralize the market, relocalize the economy and recapitalize the poor. This would mean passing zoning legislation to give small shopkeepers a shot against the retail giants, reducing barriers to entry for new businesses, revitalizing local banks, encouraging employee share ownership, setting up local capital funds so community associations could invest in local enterprises, rewarding savings, cutting regulations that socialize risk and privatize profit, and reducing the subsidies that flow from big government and big business.
In other words, both David Brooks AND Thomas Friedman are turning a wee bit Green, whether they’ll admit it or not. The utter failures of our economic system and its social, political and ecological ravages are leaving the establishment pundits grasping for new stories. Raging and escalating war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is almost entirely ignored by the anti-government Tea Party, yet is a large part of the federal deficit they seem so concerned about. Meanwhile, the anti-war movement seems to have dwindled into more of a social network than a political movement. One lone disruptor injected some moral outrage into this week’s Congressional investigations into its use of drones, at a hearing that took place on the same day that at least 6 people were killed by drone attacks in Pakistan.
Closer to home, I am thrilled to see that the peace movement is starting to challenge Obama’s continuation of bipartisan warfare. With President Obama coming to Boston on April 1st for a $500/plate fundraiser for the DNC, I’m ecstatic to see protests mounting. I’m also thrilled that my friends in Somerville-Medford United for Justice with Peace are making an anti-war tax-day case, showing the film Why We Fight on April 15th, and making the connections to the hundreds of billions of dollars we are pouring each year into death and destruction in the service of our deadly oil addiction. But how much of that will appeal to the earnest Tea Partiers who are simply fed up with our badly dysfunctional government and thirst for good-government, self-governance, and for fundamental rights like sovereignty and indeed, liberty? Is asking for liberty and justice for all so extreme? Would the Tea Partiers really challenge “justice for all”? I kind of doubt it.
As for me, looking at the anti-democratic nature of our political system over the course of my adult life as well as over the nation’s life, I quite like the idea of dumping boxes of green tea into the Boston Harbor, holding Don’t Tread On Me flags and signs that read “No Taxation Without Representation”. This is a time for the truly justice-oriented patriotism of Thomas Paine, who told us:
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Our policies are broken and wholly irrational except through the lens of boosting private profits. Our tax dollars are furnishing the means by which we, the people, and the planet alike, suffer.
These are indeed times that try our souls. It is time for a Green Tea Revolution for People, Peace, and the Planet!
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But I’m disgusted beyond belief with the Teabaggers. I don’t even consider them a “political” movement–they’re a mob, and I think you give them far too much credit in implying that all they “thirst for is good government” and “liberty.” What they thirst for is basically no government and no federal regulations. The fact that the Obama administration is injecting SOME slight degree of regulation into yet another private industry (yeah, I think that’s a good thing) is driving them batshit crazy–so much as murmur “single payer” around them and I have no doubt but that they’ll start reaching for the Brownings they keep threatening to. I’ve suggested on here before that we might make some common cause, but I’ve decided no freaking way. I’m adamantly opposed to damn near everything they stand for. I’d rather talk to a LaRouche-ite or a Spartakist. Some folks have suggest that the ‘baggers are in the wrong party. I disagree–that they share a seeming visceral hatred of the Democrats with some folks in the Green Party doesn’t warm the cockles of my heart. I want them to disappear along with their idols Rush, Beck, and Palin. They’re the living incarnation of “the paranoid style in American politics,” scared shitless that “government” is some vast, incredibly well-organized conspiracy determined to take away their guns and their rights. I really don’t think that’s why Barney Frank is in politics, myself.
You’re right about the antiwar movement having become a social network. I’m less than ecstatic, myself, about what’s coming up; I was really disillusioned by the attendance at the March 20 commemorations. Obama really defanged the slightly-left of center “liberals” on that score. I have zero idea how to resurrect it. Disappoints me more than anything. Maybe showing a movie will help. Yeah. My guess is that none but the choir show up. Sorry to be so dismal about this, but the wars drive me infinitely crazier than the healthcare bill, and I can’t seem to spark any damn interest in it at all–I’m happy, too, to hear about Somerville, but it just seems woefully ineffective–like everything I’ve done and am doing. I’d give my left nut to hear 1/10 as much national conversation about the wars as I did healthcare, but as you note, the media have decided they doesn’t even freaking exist. Like I said, so far as I’m concerned, a country that doesn’t give a shit about the wars it’s fighting doesn’t deserve healthcare.
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But I think a more targeted demonstration is apt to be more effective–combining all those different slogans can make us look kinda like the teabaggers. While I tend to agree with you that everything-is-wrong with-everything, I don’t think that’s going to register with the major parts of the electorate, who will be pay more heed when there’s a single issue being addressed per-rally, and, perhaps a serious plan that can be advanced for reforming it (I think we have that in some areas–healthcare, and to a lesser extent energy; less so in many others). These slogans don’t resonate with me, though, admittedly, five seconds is about all the media is gonna give us. But if there is gonna be an anti-Obama demo, I think focusing on something specific gets more traction. WE may recognize the ecological connections between military spending, healthcare funding, and environmental destruction, but sloganeering around all these issues is going to be confusing for the average viewer. What would you focus on, and what’s your sound bite?
But the most important thing is, yes!, that we at least start showing up. Whatever anyone’s opinion of the baggers, they whooped us last summer–a conversation that should HAVE been about the differences between single-payer and the Democrat plan became instead an argument–if you can dignify the baggers’ approach with that label–between the Democrat plan and “keep government out of healthcare altogether” advocates. Which may not have done the Dems any favors in the long-run, but it at least prevented them from having to consider S-P in public forums. I don’t blame the Dems or the baggers–I blame single-payer advocates for not making as strong a show at the town halls etc that got so much coverage.
Could be I overestimate the rationality of my fellow Americans.
And I’m not sure about taxation without representation. Polls are currently showing support for the healthcare bill roughly approximating the support reflected by the vote in the House.
The electorate will have every opportunity to express their displeasure with recent actions come November. I truly hope they don’t vote against Democrats and replace them with Republicans–I’m still aghast at the Brown win–but there will be any number of independents running, along with, nationally, a few Greens.
But I still think that real representation only comes with a parliamentary system–IRV is a start, but it’s an incremental step. An essential and meaningful one nonetheless.
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Is your disgust of the tea baggers based on media reports on them or on in-person dialogue you have had with individual members? The public picture and the personal stories of “tea baggers” may be quite different.
There are many areas of disagreement between the two movements, of course, but knowing how the media will often mis-characterize Greens, when it deigns to decovers us at all, I treat all media reports about any group with a degree of skepticism. The media is more interested in stoking prejudices than it is about informing the public, probably to the benefit of ratings.
On the campaign trail I have met with people who self-identify as tea party members who are not at all like what is presented in the media. They often have valid concerns about where their tax money is going. I often find common ground with them. Some may even vote for me. By accepting that the movement exists and entering into dialogue with its rank and file, we do the Green political movement a service. They probably know less about us than we do about them, and we can’t count on the media to correct that.
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I’m talking about seizing upon the moment for a Green Tea Party based on the palpable outrage against corporate tyranny. We don’t need the hateful, racist, and scared-shitless ‘baggers to join us, and I’m sure they’ll counter protest. I think we can help redirect people’s despair, hopelessness, fear and anger into a visible and growing movement for people, peace, and the planet. I’m talking about the peace movement, the un- and under-employed, people facing foreclosure, the environmental movement, the immigrant rights movement, etc.
We should have been organizing along these lines as soon as the Tea Partiers started getting organized. The tragedy is that the Right is doing a better, more honest job of pointing to the unsustainable federal budget, state budgets, etc. than the Left.
Obama coming to town is yet one more opportunity for us to step into the political vacuum and change the conversation. Surely the teabaggers will show up to protest Obama, but if we Greens show up with a protest of our own, the conversation gets a bit more interesting. Don’t Tread On We. No Taxation Without Representation! Liberty and Justice FOR ALL. Healthcare Not Warfare. System Change Not Climate Change.
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I’ve believed for years that neighbors helping neighbors live more efficiently and ecologically is the way to build real social and political change in this country. “Mr Franklin’s Folks” was written years ago, based upon my own experience demonstrating renewables and energy efficiency throughout the Northeast to over a quarter of a million people. Unfortunately, I have been a failure at starting a parade of less talk and more practical action.
http://www.greenmassgroup.com/…
Weatherization and solar barnraisings aren’t bad examples either:
http://www.greenmassgroup.com/…
The Leadership Campaign plans more Boston Common sleep-outs and encampments. I’ve talked to them about making their solar encampments and put them together with other students and groups that might help. Perhaps that will result in something but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I’ve emailed Jill Stein about campaigning by doing practical things and offered her some solar PSAs I did, again, years ago as models of the kind of information that might have some impact (go to youtube and search for “gmoke” if you want to see what I mean). So far the response has been, “I’ll talk to you later” and then silence.
I will continue my own meager activities, writing, thinking, tinkering. I have no expectation that anyone will listen but, what the hey, I’m amusing myself.
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I actually had a brief e-mail exchange with one woman who was profiled in the NYT as one of the movement’s “leaders” (in both the article and her e-mail she disclaimed any such title). She wrote well, and I was actually impressed that she bothered to respond (even funnier were the comments I rec’d from other folks when I mentioned this: “you were e-mailing a TEABAGGER?,” as though I had somehow defiled myself). I wanted to learn more–and from the source–and, too, trying to do exactly what you suggest in introducing ourselves). It was a mutually respectful conversation.
But the stuff she posted on her blog was akin to reading Howie Carr, and EVERY comment that followed (and man, she had a lot) was brimming over with a visceral disgust for “the left.” Not the Democrats–the left. I did point out that she explained to the NYT reporter that she was tired of the ‘baggers being called names, but that a couple of posts of hers consisted of nothing but the same–she half-apologized, but I’ve seen more of the same since.
In any case, even disregarding the vitriol, I honestly don’t see how Teabaggers could support a Green candidate. Nearly every element in the Green program implies expanded government powers (albeit by a government that is in fact of, by, for the people, a rather different matter than what we have now); the Tea Party, as I understand it–reading their own words, and those whom they regard as their spiritual and philosophical forbears and guides (from Ayn Rand to David Horowitz), seems to me–correct me if you have a different impression–to promote precisely the opposite. It goes beyond the simple matter of the deficit and taxes–they’d dismantle the entire New Deal. The poll released today does not fill me with renewed interest. confidence.
So I’m confused as how they could vote for a Green. Can you think of any of their ideal candidates for whom you’d consider voting?
I was much taken with the romantic notion of a populist uprising, and tried to identify what good I could–yes, I know how the mainstream media will mischaracterize (though the left wing alterna press has been universally damning as well), and I ordinarily have no problem making common cause where we can to topple a system (of such alliances are revolutions made–as the French and various communist revolutions show, you, uh, sort it all out after you’ve killed the czar).
But unhappiness with the current government (not the regime-in-power, but the System) doesn’t seem to me to hold much promise when that dissatisfaction springs from diametrically opposed interests. The “Tea Party” gets/takes some credit for electing a Republican as an MA Senator–that’s bad enough–but plenty of them decried Brown as “not sufficiently conservative.” Does that frighten me? You bet.
I know the “movement” isn’t monolithic (in the same week, various elements issued two competing manifestos at big-time conventions [and I couldn’t discover an item in either with which I agreed in the least]), any more than the Greens are, and that they’re in an ongoing process of ideological evolution too (it IS interesting to me that so many, while rejecting the GOP, don’t want form a “party,” but prefer remaining an independent movement, and they may in fact be on to something there). But even so, knowing how passionate you are about single-payer, I wonder what their reaction is to that, because if they DO support it, then I don’t see how, under any definition, they could identify as Teabaggers. Whoops, Tea Partiers.
In reading their own words, looking at their own videos, talking with (admittedly few) whom I have … I see a whole lot of emotion, but when it comes to ideas, most strike me as half-baked, dangerous, and determinedly antithetical to my own.
Tea Party Patriots
From the “1776 Tea Party, here’s a list of “Non-Negotiable Core Beliefs.” You can understand, perhaps, why I see NO common ground whatsoever.
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Illegal Aliens Are Here illegally.
Pro-Domestic Employment Is Indispensable.
Stronger Military Is Essential.
Special Interests Eliminated.
Gun Ownership Is Sacred.
Government Must Be Downsized.
National Budget Must Be Balanced.
Deficit Spending Will End.
Bail-out And Stimulus Plans Are Illegal.
Reduce Personal Income Taxes A Must.
Reduce Business Income Taxes Is Mandatory.
Political Offices Available To Average Citizens.
Intrusive Government Stopped.
English As Core Language Is Required.
Traditional Family Values Are Encouraged.
Granted, no one formal group or web site can be said to speak for a “movement,” but I think this provides a general flavor. And their strategy is as dangerous as their ideas–they’re working in particular against Alan Grayson, a Democrat I actually dig and one they particular abhor, bringing that dipshit Palin into the fray. Grayson–whom I respect as much for his willingess to speak plainly as I do his campaign-funding style and ideas–summed up Palin–and her Tea Party supporters–with his usual directness: “I look forward to an honest debate with Governor Palin on the issues, in the unlikely event that she ever learns anything about them.”
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By the way, I don’t think they like to be called “tea baggers”… so if you’re looking to make inroads, “tea partiers” is less likely to provoke 🙂
The tea party phenomenon has some valuable lessons for us, if you skip the hype and think about why people respond. People feel government doesn’t represent them. They think politicians are bought and paid for. They are paying taxes and not seeing the benefits (as you said, Michael, we rarely get to see the results of all the bombs we’re paying for). Politicians ignore the people (clean elections, anyone?). Our rights and liberties are disappearing (read Glenn Greenwald’s blog).
Follow the money. Talk about how Green policies save you money – and save your kids’ health, and your favorite fishin’ hole, and the water you drink.
If someone asks about illegal immigration, talk about NAFTA and how it has hurt working people both in the US and Mexico.
I’m not saying we should tailor the Green message exclusively to tea partiers. But we can definitely learn something by trying to convince tea partiers to vote Green.
By the way, on GreenChange.org we’ve been talking for months about organizing “Green Tea Parties” where Green activists would gather their neighbors to discuss pressing issues and ideas for action. Check it out:
http://network.greenchange.org…
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Among tea partiers, you’ll find lots of allies on civil liberties and peace issues. The loudest applause line at the July 4th Boston Tea Party last year seemed to be for “bringing home the troops.” I think a Green Party speaker would have been well received.
Government transparency is another issue that should unite tea partiers and progressives. Kamal Jain, a libertarian friend of mine, joined the GOP to run for State Auditor in 2010. His main issue is putting every penny of state spending on the web (including every bid and contract) and making it fully searchable. He is the only candidate who proposes doing this. Thirty-one states already have such online databases – it’s a no-brainer. Only in Massachusetts is transparency such a radical concept.
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Just went over the benefits of cloches in my farming class–I’ll admit to having never heard of them prior to your post, but having read it last week, ya made me look smart.
Still scares me in light of our temperatures. I’m starting my seeds indoors. Ever use hoop row covers? Want to get my tomatoes in the ground prior to Memorial Day this year and thinking about experimenting with them.
You reach more than few people via your distributed posts. I suspect you’re having an effect.
@RRRR: Republicans GROW things? (I mean east of the Mississippi, anyway).Who knew? Maybe victory gardens can be the great bipartisan movement of the next half century.
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I hope that people will listen and know that some have done something because of what I’ve written. Yet I can’t have that expectation and will never know the extent of the ripples that come from the pebbles I throw into the pond of public discourse. That’s OK.
Good luck with your cloches. I’ve got one ready for planting some cucumber seeds over the next few days.