CAMPAIGN 2006 STRATEGY (California)
Now Playing: part 1 of 10
Topic: Green Party
By Peter Miguel Camejo
September 14, 2005

On August 24, 2005, over thirty Greens from around the state met in
Oakland, California to work on developing a strategy for the 2006
Green Party statewide campaign. This exploratory committee put forth
an innovative vision that could help build the Green Party and
transform it into a more powerful political organization.

OUR VISION

The committee proposed building a statewide campaign that is
integrally linked to the living social movements and our potential
voting base. A campaign that helps builds those movements and turns
the Green Party more directly into the electoral expression of mass
social struggles.

The success of such an approach depends on the development of
strategic alliances with activists and movement leaders that
understand the failure of the two corporate parties to truly defend
and represent their communities or their issues and who are rooted in
mass movements or their communities. Today, there are Green Party
members in organizations fighting for peace, labor rights, social
justice, ecological balance, civil liberties and environmental justice
all over California but often they see these efforts as separate from
their support or involvement with the Green Party.

There is also a race and class divide. Large numbers of people are
voting for us and even registering Green but have no organizational
relationship or contact with us. It is not part of their experience,
especially those that have not been to college, to attend meetings or
get involved in organizational matters.

CAMPAIGN ORGANIZING EVENTS

To understand the concept we are proposing and how it differs from our
previous state wide electoral efforts let me give some examples of
what our 2006 state campaign meetings will be like. In particular,
when we hold a campaign meetings, representatives from select local
organizations such as anti-war activists (like from Cindy Sheehan's
organization), representatives from MAPA, Hermandad Mexicana, Centro
Azteca, CTA, ILWU, Muslim community leaders, environmentalists, etc,
will be asked to speak. In each case they will speak about their
specific community or issues. We do not want too long a list of
speakers but in each case we should have a few such speakers.

We will also encourage groups to table at our meetings and we will
provide people attending the meeting information on how to become
involved in those issue focused organizations.

When our candidates speak to large audiences especially on campuses it
would be so useful to immediately point them to tables where they can
get information on getting involved on specific issues. It immediately
gives a new kind of vision to what the Green Party is, an electoral
expression and organizing center for progressive movements, a party
that tells the truth about our political system and why these issues
exist to begin with.

In this way our campaign meetings become organizing events. They begin
to present the Green Party as an electoral expression of the movements
for peace, social justice, ecological sustainability, civil liberties,
gay and women's rights, labor rights and so on.

THE 2002-03 EXPERIENCE

During the 2002 and 2003 campaigns for Governor and my 2004 VP
campaign we gradually began to take steps to connect with
organizations and communities outside the party. I want to describe
some of those experiences so it becomes clear exactly why we think
this is possible and could be quite effective.