On behalf of all Americans who seek a new direction, who yearn for a new birth of freedom to build the just society, who see justice as the great work of human beings on Earth, who understand that community and human fulfillment are mutually reinforcing, who respect the urgent necessity to wage peace, to protect the environment, to end poverty and to preserve values of the spirit for future generations, who wish to build a deep democracy by working hard for a regenerative progressive politics, as if people mattered – to all these citizens and the Green vanguard, I welcome and am honored to accept the Green Party nomination for President of the United States.

–Ralph Nader’s acceptance statement, June, 2000

Despite “pwogressive” criticisms from William Kaufman and Mitchel Cohen in CounterPunch, I think the Green Shadow Cabinet launched earlier this year represents the single most-inspired initiative from Greens in the past decade. Running for office is a boilerplate third-party tactic — critical for building a credible and independent political party, but tired, temporary, constricting, and, too often, distracting. And while Ralph Nader made the case for the Green Party as a vehicle for an independent progressive force in American politics for a few years starting in the late nineties, he quickly changed his tune, muddling his message in the process. What vehicle were we left to organize around, for genuine grassroots democracy? His campaign? His non-profits that had been forced to distance themselves from Nader-the-politician? In his 2000 campaign, Nader made the point that politics — and power — isn’t about what happens on election day, but what happens in between elections, what happens in our communities day in and day out.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship toward ‘a new birth of freedom.’ – Ralph Nader

By the time of Nader’s independent 2004 campaign for President, it was unclear what shape and form that daily citizenship might have looked like, in order to build the progressive third force he spoke of in his 2000 acceptance speech:

It would take about one million Americans, pledging 100 volunteer hours a year and raising $100 a year, advancing a broad and deep agenda for the just society congenial to millions of other Americans, to establish a majority political Party in a few years.

Infighting and navel-gazing plagued the 2004 and 2008 attempts at progressive campaigns for US President, and by 2012, the promise of Nader’s “regenerative progressive politics” on a national scale was virtually dead. Instead of building, national progressive vote totals went from 2.9 million in 2000, to  0.6 million in 2004, 0.9 million in 2008, and 0.6 million in 2012.

But there were some hopeful signs in the 470,000 votes that Green candidate Jill Stein racked up in 2012. First of all, she was a homegrown Green, with little national name recognition, and that has changed. Her campaign’s embrace of social media put her name, face, and ideas — most notably the Green New Deal — out in front of many millions of American voters. Their campaign savvy put Stein, along with her running mate Cheri Honkala, on 38 state ballots — roughly 85% of ballots cast. And their embrace of grassroots fundraising, despite Nader’s past critique of Greens not taking fundraising seriously, made them the first Green campaign to qualify for federal matching funds since Nader’s run in 2000. Focusing on local organizing and chapter-building, Stein’s campaign invigorated Green volunteers old and new, and followed up with Green campaign schools across the country. But the most exciting development has been the drumbeat of great analysis and ideas pouring out of this year’s inaugural Green Shadow Cabinet, headed by Stein and Honkala as President and Vice President.

This refreshing effort, criticized by Kaufman as routine electioneering not visionary, radical, militant, or urgent enough, and by Cohen as hypocritically undemocratic, singlehandedly advances Green ideas by at least an order of magnitude because it gives organized expression to the Green vision. Cohen’s notion that this is being imposed by Green Party leadership, and that rank-and-file Greens should have been included, misses the point that Stein & Co. are rank-and-file Greens, coming from outside the national party leadership. Looking around, the Green Party itself is relatively moribund, and I’m grateful that Dr. Stein seems to have her hands on a defibrillator.

Building on the momentum of a long-shot, no-name candidacy, this Green Shadow Cabinet takes the energy of a single national campaign and breathes life into dozens more efforts in a cohesive, coordinated fashion. Stein’s expertise as a physician, public health advocate, and Green activist and campaigner, and Honkala’s expertise on community organizing, criminal justice and anti-poverty work, can now be multiplied by better national-level organizing from similar local and national activists. Having a Green effort for CounterPunch to criticize is far better than having no Green effort worth mentioning. And if a genuine commitment to grassroots democracy lives on within these efforts, as I believe they do, such criticism will only improve them.

The exciting news that Jill Stein will be keynoting this year’s Left Forum, and will be joined there by dozens of other members of the Green Shadow Cabinet, is surely an outgrowth of this organizing effort. And to me, that’s the best news I’ve heard out of Green organizing in a long time. I’d love to see her joined by Matt Gonzalez and Ralph Nader, to usher in a new era of progressive movement-building, “one that seeks to mobilize independent mass action on a scale and tempo commensurate with the gathering crises of the time, one that views electoral campaigns as an adjunct to political organizing, not a substitute for it,” in William Kaufman’s words.

It’s time to answer the politics of fear with the politics of courage. As those Massachusetts radicals did when they took on the British East Indies Company, dumped tea in the harbor, and declared themselves free of the King’s law. Like the abolitionists did with the Liberty Party, as women’s suffragists did with the Women’s Party, as working people did with the People’s Party, the Socialist Party and Fighting Bob La Follette’s Progressive Party. In each of these cases, independent politics was critical to formulate the political demand – which, as Frederick Douglass said, is essential because “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” By bringing that demand into the presidential election, we can advance the movement for democracy and justice, and drive these solutions into the political agenda.

–Jill Stein’s acceptance speech, July, 2012