David Korten's Keynote Presentation Now Online

Agenda for a Green Economy

David Korten's keynote presentation at Green Fest, August 5, 2011, is posted on his website at
http://livingeconomiesforum.org/agenda-for-a-green-economy

Greetings to those gathered at Alfred University and those watching via live streaming across the country. Special greetings to Michael Greenman and my friends in Columbus, Ohio. It is wonderful to join you by Skype for this important conversation.

As you all know, this timely event is an interesting combination of a local New York Green Fest conversation on Building a Green Economy and the annual conference of the Green Party US. My assignment for this session is to spell out an Agenda for creating a Green Economy based on living system principles that is rooted in and serves the needs of people and the human and natural communities in which we live. I want to begin, however, by setting a context and spelling out the connection between the New Green Economy and the work of New York Green Fest, Transition Towns, and the Green Party US.

Economic Failure

Our nation remains in the midst of a deep economic crisis. Official unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent. If you factor in both short-term and long-term discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time, because they can’t find full-time jobs, the total of unemployed and under employed in the United States runs near 23%. The worst hit are people of color, young people in general, and young to middle aged men.On top of that, over 11 million homes in America are vacant and one out of every 46 homes is in foreclosure.

There is no hope for a Main Street recovery on the horizon. And those in charge haven’t a clue what to do about it.

The only recovery since the 2008 crash has been on Wall Street. Thanks to massive bailout funding from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, the folks who brought down the economy are doing splendidly. They enjoy record share prices, corporate profits, and executive bonuses. The financial assets of America's billionaires and the idle cash reserves of the most profitable corporations are at historic highs. Their biggest challenge is figuring out where to park all their cash.

The glaring disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street creates an unprecedented moment of opportunity for a deep rethinking of the economy.

The reality that returning to pre-2008 business as usual is not an option seems totally to escape the awareness of those in power. It is, however, evident to an ever growing segment of a deeply frightened electorate increasingly susceptible to the siren call of political demagogues of the far right.

We in America have come to the end of the road for an economy that assumes America’s global economic role is to live beyond our own means by consuming the products and resources of the rest of the world, while running up an international credit card bill we have no plan ever to repay.

We have become masters of gaming the international system to live ever further beyond our own means, while running up ever more massive environmental, social, and financial deficits. We know in our hearts that the party is over.

The day of reckoning has arrived. We need a radical redirection of the economy. There is, however, no national political voice framing the real issues and articulating a compelling positive vision of the America that can be.

Why America Needs the Green Party

Both major parties are in the pocket of Wall Street interests. The Republicans push their standard agenda of tax cuts for the rich, a rollback of regulations on predatory corporations, andelimination of the social safety net—a well proven prescription for further job loss and devastation of the middle class.The Democrats put up a feeble, but ineffective and unconvincing show of resistance. Neither has a credible vision or program for America.

America’s political future belongs to the party or movement that can provide a credible positive vision and program for America’s future. Among America’s political parties, only the Green Party is positioned to frame and build support for the missing vision and agenda. We desperately need a strong Green Party voice to help define the upcoming 2012 cycle political debates.

Most of the essential elements of a New Economy based on living system principles are already included in the Green US party platform. It remains only to pull it all together into a coherent, credible, compelling, and easily understood vision for America’s future.

And we are fortunate to have within our ranks a number of strong, politically and emotionally mature leaders with the potential to function as a strong politically savvy and publicly credible leadership team. America needs the Green Party and it is time to step up to the challenge of building a broad political base and mobilizing the funding required to make this party a coherent and effective national political force.

One of our leaders, David Cobb, in his role as the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate, defined and demonstrated what I consider to be a sophisticated political strategy for the Green Party consistent with America’s political reality. We demonstrated in the 2000 election the potential of the Green Party to play the electoral spoiler role at the national level by helping to put George Bush in office. I know this is a controversial issue within the party, but I clearly recall how that experience led me, and many of my friends and colleagues, to back away from the Green Party.

I was later drawn back to the Green Party by David Cobb and his nuanced strategy of being a Presidential candidate who used his national platform to outline the Green Party's principles and values and to focus attention and resources on local Green Party candidates. I hope and trust that the Green Party will present a similarly strong candidate with a similarly sophisticated strategy for 2012.

Beyond Traditional Left Right Politics

We can and must work for rule changes that open real space for third parties at the national level. In the meantime, we should build on the party’s past success electing hundreds of Greens to local offices in which they have played an important role in building green communities and economies. I believe we only do harm to both ourselves and the country if we take the Tea Party path of “My way or the highway.”

Much of the appeal of the Green Party resides in the fact that it offers solutions beyond conventional left-right political ideologies that present voters with a presumed choice between rule by big business or rule by big government.Greens know that this is a false frame that fails to address the reality that America is ruled by an oligarchy that that has achieved a seamless consolidation of economic and political power through its control of a Wall Street-Washington axis. This oligarchy will continue to rule the country in its own interests at the expense of the wishes and interests of the majority so long as we the people remain divided by a false debate about whether big business or big government is the problem.

We the people are not supposed to notice the real story that the obvious alternative to rule by an unaccountable oligarchy is what capitalism promises, but fails to deliver: real democracy and real market economies responsive to the needs and values of ordinary people.

The Green Party presents a real alternative of locally rooted, rule-based markets and democracy within a framework of community values and mutual caring. This is the economy envisioned by the Green Party values statement and policy platform. We seek the real, locally rooted markets of Adam Smith and the real locally rooted democracy of Thomas Jefferson.

We start from a set of values that define America at its best, align with the needs of our time, and frame a vision of the world of peace, justice, and environmental vibrancy for which most psychologically healthy humans have longed for millennia. We offer real solutions grounded in local control and popular sovereignty.

Which brings us to the theme of local green economies.

Living with the Biosphere

The significance of the national and global drive to rebuild local economies comprised of local businesses owned and managed by local people to serve local needs in harmonious partnership with natural systems goes well beyond what some may dismiss as merely a nostalgic longing for a return to the small and local.

We humans are confronting the reality of our nature as living beings—the reality that living beings, because of the way life manages energy, exist only in active relationships to other living beings—life exists only in community.

In a fit of adolescent hubris, we humans have been engaged for the past 5,000 years in an effort to liberate ourselves from the responsibilities of life in community. During the time of this misadventure, we have so confused individual autonomy with personal liberty that we have created economies that reduce caring human relationships to soulless financial exchange. We have structured our physical space around buildings and auto-dependent transportation systems that wall us off from one another and nature. In isolation from nature we rely on a nonrenewable and fast depleting fossil fuel subsidy to dominate and control rather than to work with nature’s life serving generative processes.

Blinded to the realities of a living planet by a seemingly unquenchable thirst for corporate profits, we have created a global economy that uses Earth’s finite store of fossil fuels to isolate people and communities from the sources of their food, energy, water, materials, manufactured goods and leave them dependent on corporate controlled global supply chains that are wasteful, unstable, unaccountable, and environmentally and social destructive. Working in opposition to nature, the global economy is maintained only by unsustainable dependence on a non-renewable fossil fuels subsidy.

The institutions of the old economy are by design, extremely efficient, but only at converting the real wealth of people and nature into the financial assets of the already richest members of the society. The result is an economic system that in an act of collective suicide self-organizes toward environmental collapse, social disintegration, and political corruption. So let’s call it what it is: a suicide economy supported by the theories of a suicide economics propagated by legions of suicide economists.

The future of humanity depends on navigating a transition to the culture and institutions of a planetary system of local living economies, green economies that work in cooperative integral partnership with nature. Properly designed, they will self-organize toward:

Ecological Balance between aggregate human consumption and the regenerative capacity of Earth’s biosphere.

Equitable Distribution of real wealth to meet the needs of all.

Living Democracy to secure the accountability of our governing economic and political institutions to people and community through active citizen participation.These outcomes align well with the 10 Green Party values.

Basics of a Green Economy

Realization of the Green Party values depends on restructuring our economic institutions to align and partner with the structure and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere. This requires segmenting the borderless global economy into a planetary system of interlinked self-reliant bio-regional living-economies, each rooted in a community of place and organized to optimize the lives of all who live within the community’s borders.

Each bioregional economy will meet most of its needs with local production using local resources in the manner of local ecosystems. Rather than gearing their economies to export, they will benefit from trading their surplus with their neighbors in return for that which they cannot reasonably produce for themselves.

Millions of people around the world are already engaged in living this new reality into being through an emergent local living economies movement. Transitions towns and the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies are at the forefront of this movement.

There is an emerging parallel living buildings movement that is dealing with the physical/spatial dimension of this transformation. It is designing buildings to eliminate waste, feature natural lighting, and provide for onsite capture of rainwater, energy (wind, solar, and thermal) and organic matter (food scraps and human waste) for recycling and reuse, including for urban gardens (edible roofs and walls and built-in greenhouses). It requires a capacity to adapt to local micro-environments in the manner of healthy ecosystems.

Water is used in the first cycle for drinking, dish washing, and showering; recycled for laundry and micro-flush composting toilets, and directed from there to onsite gardens from which it filters into the local aquifer. Hot water, cooking, and space heating are integrated to optimize overall energy efficiency.

Integrating multi-purpose buildings into larger multi-building neighborhood and district systems adds opportunities to develop public green spaces, community gardens, edible landscaping, small-scale poultry and livestock production, natural wetlands and living machine water purification to continuously recycle nutrients, water and energy at a micro-local level.

Integrative projects also create opportunities to balance the utility loads of businesses, which generally have greater energy needs during the day, and residences, which have greater needs during evening and early morning. Bringing residences, employment, shopping, and recreation together in close proximity minimizes transportation requirements and facilitates the sharing of autos, bicycles, appliances, and tools, and community connections to mass transit, bike trails, and other transportation alternatives.

These are very practical dimensions of the human transformation now underway. Every aspect rebuilds active relationships of community between people and between people & nature. The only political party in a position to translate this into a coherent political agenda is the Green Party.

For the remainder of the presentation, visit http://livingeconomiesforum.org/agenda-for-a-green-economy

Video of Protest Songs Concert by Helene Williams and Leonard Lehrman

Nine selections from the concert by Helene Williams, soprano and Leonard Lehrman, composer/pianist of Songs of Protest, Naturism and Broadway at Green Fest on Sat., Aug. 6, 2011, are posted on YouTube. Check out the links at http://ljlehrman.artists-in-residence.com/ljlehrmanvideos.html

Darin Robbins' Presentation on Courting the Anarchist Vote

COURTING THE ANARCHIST VOTE: FINDING THE COMMON DENOMINATOR OF AUTONOMY

Summary of presentation by Darin Robbins, Aug. 6, 2011 at NY Green Fest in Alfred, NY.

This presentation has two goals: proposing that if placed on a chart of political ideology the Green Party would be closest to anarchism, and through a generalized analysis of anarchism demonstrating that those who identify as anarchist should be approached by the Green Party for coalitions or direct support. These two goals will be achieved by concentrating on such issues as the resistance to hierarchy, the distinction between liberty and autonomy, and the role of power in an anarchist or Green vision.

1. All forms of anarchism, despite particular differences, are a general opposition to hierarchy in political, cultural, and economic terms. This arises in the distinction between centralization and decentralization, transcendence and immanence, as well as vertical and horizontal systems.

anarchism as opposition to authority rather than the state
anarchism as premodern, modern, and postmodern
anarchism as convergence of theory and practice through ethics

2. Anarchism brings into the foreground basic conflicts that have been continuous in human social history, and supplies an overall structural critique that is always coupled to direct action.

original political conflict between centralization and decentralization
original cultural conflict between the past and the future
original economic conflict between freedom and equality

3. Anarchism is separate from libertarianism through the proposition of a fuller sensibility of freedom that does not foreclose the relationship between individual desire and collective action.

liberty, autonomy, and authority
liberty as power from
autonomy as power to
authority as power over
freedom as resistance and creation
freedom as ownership through participation
freedom as equality of power

4. An anarchist critique is a direct opposition to the state and the market. The state and the market are separate but primary forms of power through hierarchy within society. The anarchist critique is accompanied by an alternative social form.

from the state and the market to community and the commons
autonomy as internal control and equality of power
autonomy through community and the commons
community as use of the commons

5. Libertarianism is a limited critique of the state without a critique of the market, and therefore fails at offering alternatives to hierarchy.

appearance of self ownership that obscures autonomy
self ownership as divergence of subjective mind and objective body
subjective mind as desire and objective body as expression of desire
autonomy as convergence of subjective unconscious and objective reality
participation in public power through political decentralization
participation in private power through economic decentralization
democracy as political and economic decentralization of public and private power

6. The opposition to representative democracy, and the electoral politics that occur within it, by anarchists must be analyzed not as a rejection of democracy but a rejection of political hierarchy.

representation as abstraction of choice
representation as alienation of participation
representation as alienation of power through abstraction
representation as formation of majority and minority
representation as use of the public
democracy as vanishing mediator between individuals and collectives
democracy as experience of ownership through participation
democracy as equality of power through autonomy
democracy as the voice option and the refusal option
democracy as participation and ownership of the commons

7. The importance of democracy lies in the vital distinction between constituent power and constituted power. This distinction is a correlation to the critique of the hierarchy in political representation.

from constituent power to constituted power
from the multitude to the people
change in the state as change in identity
change in identity as alienation of power
appearance of social contract that obscures the event
social contract as retroactive causality of transcendent structures
the event as space for creation of immanent structures
appearance of constituted power that obscures class formation
constituted power as universal identity of the people
class formation as the multitude and sovereign position of authority
constituent power and constituted power as simultaneous
constituent power as surplus of constituted power
subsumption of constituent power by constituted power
constituent power as disruption of constituted power

8. The critique of power through hierarchy must exist side-by-side with the advocacy for power through desire.

power as relationship between forces
power as many and unique
power as expression of desire
power as equality through deterritorialization
authority as hierarchy of power
authority as one and uniform
authority as mediation of desire
authority as inequality through reterritorialization

9. Political action, as an expression of desire, must be willing to enact change that takes apart previous political, cultural, and economic structures without reproducing those previous structures.

the event as structural rupture
structural rupture as expression of desire
expression of desire as collective action
collective action as immanent structures

10. If choice is intrinsic to a conception of freedom as well as political power, then it must be more than a precluded economic choice and be more of an original democratic choice.

choice as internal to structural formation
choice as parts in differential relationships
choice as scarcity in constituted power
choice as external to structural rupture
choice as creation of immanent structures
choice as abundance in constituent power

11. The basic method of anarchism, in all its manifestations, is the creation of horizontal systems as both a disruption and alternative to vertical systems through the practice of prefiguration.

collectives in horizontal systems
individuals in vertical systems
from horizontal systems to vertical systems as alienation of participation
from vertical systems to horizontal systems as distribution of participation
from experience of content to experience of form
from experience of form to control of form
countercultures as prefiguration rather than revolution or reform
countercultures as both libertarian and communitarian

12. The ultimate goal of anarchism and other movements for decentralization is the development of mutuality within the entire social sphere, the eradication of hierarchy in all its forms.

from reciprocity to mutuality through the commons
from reciprocity to finite debt through the market
from reciprocity to infinite debt through the state

13. Anarchism in its generalized state not only reflects the more specific Green Party values of decentralization, grassroots democracy, and community economics but points to an underground spirit of America that has been continually suppressed for the sake of hierarchy in the political, the cultural, and the economic.

convergence of anarchism and small businesses (G8 summit at Pittsburgh in 2009)
finite collective as experience of community
from individual creation of natural rights to collective use through law
appearance of collective use through law as transcendent source

1. opposition to hierarchy
2. critique of the state and capitalism
3. autonomy versus liberty
4. alternative of the commons and community
5. anarchism more comprehensive than libertarianism
6. democracy versus republic
7. constituent power versus constituted power
8. power and freedom through desire
9. avoidance of structural reproduction
10. original choice versus precluded choice
11. horizontal systems versus vertical systems
12. mutuality as goal
13. decentralization, grassroots democracy, and community economics

Change The World Without Taking Power by John Holloway
Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm
For All The People by John Curl
Gramsci Is Dead by Richard J.F. Day
Insurgencies by Antonio Negri

Videos of the Presentations

Many thanks to our presenters for the great panels and workshops and to those who video-taped many of the presentations so that the presentations are available to a wider audience: Wilton Vought, Sanda Everette, Lou Novak, Michael O'Neill, Barry Miller, Claudia Flanagan and Sonya Cady. We will be posting these videos shortly, so please check back. Lou Novak has posted videos he took of the weekend on his YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/lounovak

We also thank the livestreaming team of Craig Seeman, Starlene Rankin, Sanda Everette and Michael O'Neill who livestreamed events through the weekend at http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus . The videos that were livestreamed during the weekend may be downloaded from the site's ON-DEMAND archive.
Finally, we thank Wilton Vought for editing some of the videos from Green Fest 2009, including Cyril Michalejko on the Rights of Nature, Tony Gronowicz on the History of Rights for Nature in the US , Viginia Rasmussen on Who Has the Power to Implement Sustainability, and Joel Kovel on Revitalizing the Relationship Between Humans and Nature, which can be viewed at http://blip.tv/nygreenfest/

Media Coverage

Two presidential candidates visit Steuben County on Monday, Andrew Poole, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 9, 2011
Green Party members debate political strategy at Green Fest in Alfred, Angela Sutfin, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 7, 2011
Green Fest this weekend at Alfred University campus, Angela Sutfin, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 3, 2011

It is not enough to just say no— What's the alternative?

Join us for New York Green Fest/GP-US ANM
Fri., Aug. 5 to Sun., Aug. 7 in Alfred, NY
on the campus of Alfred University

It is not enough to oppose toxic drilling and injustice, we need alternatives. The most difficult questions of sustainability are not about technology; they are about implementing our values. Implementation is achieved in the political arena. At NY Green Fest we explore the politics that enable us to live in a sustainable world.

For NY Green Fest 2011, we return to the beautiful campus of Alfred University in Alfred, NY. We are joined by Greens from across the country and Canada coming to the 2011 Green Annual National Meeting (ANM), which is being held in conjunction with Green Fest this year.

Our program features more than 30 great workshops on politics, energy, media and ecology (check out the list on the right), four forums and great music on our solar stage. Presenters include Elizabeth May, Canada's first elected Green Party member of Parliament, David Korten, author of Corporations will Rule the World and co-founder of YES! Magazine, Tina Clarke from the Transition Towns Movement, David Cobb, 2004 Green nominee for President, Virginia Rasmussen from the Program for Corporations Law and Democracy (POCLAD), Gay Nicholson from Sustainable Tompkins, Richard Grossman from Frack Free Catskills and Jack Ossont and Kate Bartholomew from the Coalition to Protect New York among many. Several Green Party candidates and officeholders from New York and other states will attend. At least one candidate for the Green presidential nomination, Kent Mesplay, will be present.

Four excellent forums will be held during the event:

Building Local Economies, Fri., Aug. 5, 6:45 pm

David Korten (via Skype) on "Agenda for a Local Economy," Tina Clarke (via Skype) and David Doonan on the Transistion Town Movement, Opening music: Woven Green Band, Location: Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center

Asserting Local Sovereignty over Fossil Fuel Extraction, Sat., Aug. 6, 1:15 pm

Richard Grossman, Virginia Rasmussen, Mary Jo Long, Jack Ossont, Gary Abraham, Opening poetry: Michael Czarnecki, Location: Solar Stage on Campus Quad

Campaigning for Local Economies and Clean Energy, Sat., Aug. 6, 6:45 pm

Elizabeth May (via Skype), Kent Mesplay, Colia Clark, Bill Belitskus, Jay Sweeney, Green Candidates and Office Holders, Opening music: Crow Weaver, Moderator: David Cobb, Location: Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center

The Future of Sustainable Politics, Sun., Aug. 7, 11:15 am

John Resenbrinck, Greg Gerritt, Howie Hawkins, Cecile Lawrence, Opening music: Carl Lundgren, Location: Solar Stage on Campus Quad

Check out http://nygreenfest.or/2011schedule.html for the workshop schedule. Bios of our 55 presenters are at http://nygreenfest.org/presenterbios11.html

Dorm rooms, camping and the Saxon Inn are available for lodging on campus at reasonable cost. Swimming is available at the Foster Lake campground this year from 11 am to 7 pm. Meals prepared from locally-grown food will be served at the Alfred University dining hall. You may register and reserve a camping space, dorm room or meals, online at http://nygreenfest.org/registration.html.

If you need a ride, or can offer a ride, visit our ride board, http://nygreenfest.org/rideshare.html. Public transportation is available to Alfred by bus and to Rochester and Buffalo by train. Bus service to Alfred is available through Shortline or Trailways. Bus service between New York City and Alfred is available three times a day. See schedule. Train service to Rochester or Buffalo is provided by Amtrak

We look forward to seeing you in three weeks!

Green Party Nat'l Meeting in Alfred, NY, Aug. 5-7

WASHINGTON, DC -- The Green Party of the United States will feature an array of candidates and guest speakers at its 2011 Annual National Meeting at Alfred University in Alfred in western New York, from Friday, August 5 to Sunday, August 7.

The meeting will take place at the fourth biennial New York Green Fest, "a gathering of folks interested in exploring the politics and practices that will help enable us to live in a sustainable world, and sharing a weekend of good discussions, good food, and good music."

Among the speakers will be leaders in the campaign to ban hydrofracking (hydraulic fracturing), an environmentally destructive and dangerous technique for accessing gas in the Marcellus Shale beneath Pennsylvania, New York, and other states. David Cobb, 2004 Green nominee for President, will speak on the need to abolish corporate 'personhood' and restrict the political power of corporations.

Elizabeth May, Canada's first elected Green Party member of Parliament, will speak to Greens at the meeting by Skype. David C. Korten, economist, co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, and author of 'When Corporations Rule the World' and other books, will also address the meeting by Skype.

"There are many people throughout the US, including Green elected officials and community activists, who are thinking, talking, planning, and working for a sustainable energy economy despite lack of broader government engagement," said Peter LaVenia, co-chair of the Green Party of New York State. "Many of them will be coming to the meeting in Alfred or will speak to meeting participants via Skype. Alfred is the perfect place for Green Fest."

Several Green candidates from New York and other states will attend the meeting, speak at press conferences, and be available for interview. At least one candidate for the Green presidential nomination, Kent Mesplay, will be present. A preliminary list of candidates who plan to attend the meeting is appended below. David Doonan, Green Party member and mayor of Greenwich, New York, will also be at the meeting.

Green Party leaders at the meeting will begin organizing for the 2012 election season, including the presidential race. The party will nominate a candidate for the White House at its 2012 national convention. The 2011 meeting in Alfred will also feature Green Party panels, workshops, meetings of the Green National Committee, and other events.

The meeting is open to the media and public. Press conferences will feature Green candidates for public office from across the US, with a special press conference on Friday, August 6, for women candidates hosted by the party's Women Caucus. Journalists are encouraged to register ahead of time, at the Green Party's media credentialing page. Registration for media will also take place on site during the meeting.

GREEN CANDIDATES who will attend the Green Party's 2011 Annual National Meeting:

* Mike Bernhard, for Town Board member in Afton, New York.
* Audrey Clement, for Arlington County Board, Virginia, in the 2011 general election, http://www.AudreyClement.org. Ms. Clement is a member of the Green Party's national steering committee.
* Joe Duffy, for City Alderman in Hornell, New York. Mr. Duffy is chair of the Steuben County Green Party.
* Howie Hawkins for Common Councillor of Syracuse, New York. The Green Party of New York State regained ballot status in 2010 as a result of Mr. Hawkin's Green campaign for Governor.
* Cheri Honkala, for Sheriff of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (http://www.cherihonkala.com) in the 2011 general election. Ms. Honkala founded the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the national Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign. She was included in Philadelphia Magazine’s list of 100 Most Powerful Philadelphians and was named Philadelphia Weekly’s “Woman of the Year” in 1997.
* Cecile Lawrence, candidate for the Tioga County Legislature (District 3), New York,  in the 2011 general election. Ms. Lawrence, who will conduct a workshop at the meeting, was the Green Party's candidate for US Senate from New York in 2010. A member of Tioga Peace and Justice, she testified at hearings towards the passage of the New York State Managed Care Bill of Rights.
* Kent Mesplay, candidate for the Green Party's nomination for President, http://www.mesplay.org. Dr. Mesplay also sought the nomination in 2008.
* Anita Rios, candidate for City Council in Toledo (District 4), Ohio, in the 2011 general election. Ms. Rios ran for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio in 2006 and 2010 and is former of the Green Party's national steering committee.
* Jay Sweeney, for Supervisor in Falls Township, Pennsylvania, in the 2011 general election, http://www.jaysweeney.org. Mr. Sweeney currently serves as Auditor in Falls Township.

Building A State-wide Mass Movement to Criminalize Corporate+Government Hydrofracking

Richard Grossman will lead a series of three workshops on Building A State-wide Mass Movement to Criminalize Corporate+Government Hydrofracking in New York …While Asserting People’s Authority to Define and Control Our Energy Futures)...[While Sowing Seeds To Govern Our Communities and Our State]; that is, opening multiple organizing fronts and building-in 2nd, 3rd, 4th steps towards dethroning institutional, cultural, educational, financial, constitutional, legal and cultural mechanics of our disembodiment & disempowerment.

Workshop I: Liberation via Reality

What groundwork has been laid for such business+ government as usual?

That is, what happened in the past that keeps people divided, disabled, subordinated, indoctrinated, disembodied, mangled & handled?

USA’s and NY State’s designs of governance, laws, jurisprudential theories & precedents, regulatory agencies, the USA’s federal structure, with regard to:

(1) the Earth; (2) human labor; (3) laws of the land defining decisionmaking on money, investment & production as “ private;” (4) industrial, financial, utility, media,
insurance, lawyer, accounting, propaganda and etc., corporations; (5) the corporate class’ non-profit corporations; (6) our municipal and non-profit corporations; (7) access to remedy; (8) speech, assembly and petition; (9) consent of the governed, majority rule, self-governance; (10) Earth law & cosmic imperatives; (11) History...

In current USA political and societal contexts, what is: “ Energy”?

“Energy & the Economy?” Energy and Jobs?” “Alternative Energy?”

“Energy & E*N*D*L*E*S*S M*O*R*E?”

What can we learn from past people’s struggles against business + government as usual?

Workshop II: Conceptualizing Commensurate Campaigns

Who are WE? What is our base?

The nature, structure, collective memories, inherited ideologies, language, jubilations, melancholias, hopes, apprehensions, goals, struggles of anti-fracking people in NY
& beyond, summer 2011.

What does it mean to ban corporate+government hydrofracking in New York State?

When is a “ban” not a ban? What seeds have people sown for banning corporate hydrofracking? What educating, what trainings, have taken place within our base? What are relations with State and National environmental, social justice and related groups?

What changes in power relationships, structures of governance, law, habits of thought, can we forge to ban fracking in ways that assert people’s authority to make ALL
energy decisions? To make all GOVERNING decisions....? What changes in ourselves will be necessary (for example, in how WE see, think, speak, write, talk, educate, organize)? What tools do we have? What tools don’t we have?

What legitimacy do we claim for our demands: where -- in history, culture, law, science, morality, solidarity, etc., -- do we plant our feet?

Realizing short-term, mid-term, long-term, goals & strategies; opening creative offensives & multiple fronts.

Building-in 2nd, 3rd, & 4th steps.

Reaching beyond single issue struggles and out to diverse constituencies.

Training ourselves to:

* Design campaigns to reveal and contest constitutional, legal and cultural barriers denying remedy, denying authority to govern;

* Sow counter-histories, counter-ideologies, counterconsciousness;

* Adjust the state -- especially its institutions of ideology, education and rule -- to Earth’s and our values, experiences, imperatives;

* Undermine NY State Government kingly prerogatives & Federal monarchical preemptions;

* Sabotage corporate job and royalty and tax carrots, along with corporate and politician threats to freeze and starve us, jobless, in the dark;

* Subvert “legal” violence by sheriffs, police, National Guard;

* Engage in escalating civil disobedience targeting illegitimate law and constitutional doctrine, perverted culture, pillars of the Corporate State, and Lally columns of liberalism.

* Escalate the costs of governance-by-the-few.

Workshop III: Solidifying Our Base

Establish basic principles and goals in context of long range visions of public law and public governing authority; Design campaigns to ban fracking in ways which teach public decisionmaking on energy investment, technology and policy; Lay out commensurate strategies, tactics, arenas of struggle, language...

Proposed educating/organizing vehicles:

We write, and oblige state legislators to enact:

* laws criminalizing corporate+government hydrofracking;

* laws correcting people’s disembodiment at work, & which provide a Workers’ Guarantee of Education & Income a la Tony Mazzocchi’s concept of 25 years ago;

* laws nullifying corporate contracts for land, gas, oil, and water;

* laws banning incorporation;

* (for starters).

Framing multiple offensives;

Building-in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., steps;

Designing & implementing internal education and training;

Expanding our base by creating state-wide (multi-state?) anti-fracking confederation(s), We compel legislators to enact, and governors to sign, our law criminalizing corporate hydrofracking. With our tapestry of next steps on “energy” investment, technology, use -- and on “public governance” -- embedded in the consciousness of our base, we present State officials with a new list of demands.

Solidifying our base.
About Richard Grossman

The lead presenter for the workshops will be Richard L. Grossman. A native New Yorker back home after 35 years of wandering, Richard co-founded and taught ‘Stop the Poisoning’ Schools in the ‘80s; ‘Rethinking The Corporation, Rethinking Strategy’ Schools in the ‘90s; and ‘Democracy Schools’ in the ‘00s. He is co-author of the books: Energy, Jobs & The Economy (1979); Fear At Work: Job Blackmail, Labor & The Environment (1982; 1991); Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy (2001); and author of the pamphlets: On the First Day We Bulldozed it: Building the Rainforest Movement (1987); Taking Care of Business: Citizenship & the Charter of Incorporation (1993); Revoking the Corporation (1996); and The WTO, the US Constitution and Self-Government (1999), along with scores of articles. Richard is active with Frack Free Catskills in Ulster and Green counties, NY. For more information about the workshops, contact Richard at (845) 338-6857 or rgrossman@riseup.net

Top Green Theorists Offer Political Workshops at Green Fest

A number of our top Green theorists are offering ten outstanding workshops on political topics during the weekend of Green Fest.  For the complete Green Fest schedule, click here.

• Abolish Corporate "Personhood,", David Cobb and Virginia Rasmussen
Building Unity, Colia Clark and Ken Gale
• The Bias of Temperament in American Politics, William Kreml
• Courting the Anarchist Vote: Finding the Common Denominator of Autonomy, Darin Robbins
• Ecological Socialism vs. Capitalist Exterminism, Howie Hawkins
• Leveraging Privilege to Transform Oppression & Build Power, George Friday and David Cobb
• The Malapportionment Penalty Initiative to Democratize the Electoral College, Asa Gordon
• The Principle of Green Political Independence, or Why Progressive Democrats Reinforce Corporate Rule, Howie Hawkins
• Third Parties as Real Change, Anthony Gronowicz
• Welcoming Muslims to the Green Movement: Fighting Islamophobia, Farheen Hakeem
• What would a Green Non-Violent Foreign Policy Look Like?, John Rensenbrinck

Woven Green to Open Friday Plenary

Woven Green will open Friday night's plenary session with David Korten and Tina Clarke, and will perform on the Solar Stage during the weekend. The six musicians that comprise Woven Green have created an original sound with elements of rock, folk, funk, fusion, and world music addressing themes of nature, love, awakening, and empowerment. Wildy's World says, "Woven Green is a bit off the beaten path; creating wonderfully addictive Pop/Folk/Rock songs with highly unusual subject matter. . . The band sings their beliefs and is obviously looking to change the world through their music. . . Ashley Cash is going to get comparisons to Grace Slick, among others, and her voice is well-deserving of praise. Jim Cash's songwriting is also superb; nuanced and complex without ever overdoing on either quality." The band's debut album has been nominated for a Washington Area Music Award (“Wammie”) in the pop-rock category. Their song "Sixth Sun" received first prize in the Relix Magazine 2010 Jam Off Competition and was awarded honorable mention in the 27th Annual Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest. Visit their website at http://www.wovengreenmusic.com/. Woven Green is from northern Virginia.

Share a Ride to Green Fest

If you need a ride for all or part of your trip to Green Fest or the Green Party annual national meeting, go to the 2011 Green Party ANM page on rideshare.us, http://www.rideshare.us/page.php?next=eventdisplay&event=1164  To find the event after you register on the site, use the lookup code "Green Party." Enter the state you need a ride from, e.g., NY if you are flying into NY and need a ride from the airport.

Public transportation is available to Alfred by bus and to Rochester and Buffalo by train. Bus service to Alfred is available through Shortline (1.800.631.8405) or Trailways (1.800.858.8555). Bus service between New York City and Alfred is available three times a day. See schedule. Train service to Rochester or Buffalo is provided by Amtrak (1.800.872.7245). If you fly into the Elmira/Corning airport, you can take the bus to Alfred  from Corning. The Elmira/ Corning airport is served by Northwest Airlines/Delta.

Click here for a list of Alfred/Southern Tier area, Buffalo and Rochester taxi services.

Hydrofracking Activists Join Green Party Gathering

A series of workshops, presentations and strategic planning sessions on the political steps needed to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power with reduced energy usage and alternative energy sources is attracting hydrofracking activists to Green Fest. The program features four forums and 30 workshops on a wide range of ecological, peace and justice topics (see workshop list below).

Confirmed speakers include Richard Grossman, David Cobb, Virginia Rasmussen, Howie Hawkins, Cecile Lawrence, Tony Gronowicz, Farheen Hakeem, Ursula Rozum, John Rensenbrinck, Bill Belitskus, Jay Sweeney, Mary Jo Long, Mike Bernhard, Ken Gale, David Doonan, Jack Ossont, Kate Bartholomew, Barry Miller and Dianne Roe. Elizabeth May, the first Green elected to the Canadian parliament, David Korten, author of Agenda for a Local Economy and Tina Clarke from the transition towns movement will address the gathering by Skype.

Building Local Economies, Fri., Aug. 5, 6:45 pm — 8:45 pm

Presenters: David Korten on "Agenda for a Local Economy," Tina Clarke and David Doonan on the Transistion Town Movement, Opening music: Woven Green Band, Moderator: Tim Bancroft, Location: Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center

Local Sovereignty over Fossil Fuel Extraction, Sat., Aug. 6, 1:15 pm - 2:30 pm

Presenters: Richard Grossman, Virginia Rasmussen, Mary Jo Long, Jack Ossont, Gary Abraham, Opening music: Carl Lundgren, Moderator: Kate Bartholomew, Location: Solar Stage on Campus Quad

Campaigning for Local Economies and Clean Energ, Sat., Aug. 6, 6:45 pm — 8:45 pm

Presenters: Elizabeth May, Kent Mesplay, Colia Clark, Bill Belitskus, Jay Sweeney, Green Candidates and Office Holders, Opening music: Crow Weaver, Moderator: David Cobb, Location: Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center

The Future of Sustainable Politics, Sun., Aug. 7, 11:15 am — 12:45 pm

Presenters: John Resenbrinck, Greg Gerritt, Howie Hawkins, Cecile Lawrence, Opening poetry: Michael Czarnecki, Moderator: Jason Nabewaniec, Location: Solar Stage on Campus Quad

For more information about the presenters, click here. Outstanding musicians will perform throughout the weekend on our solar stage and for the evening programs:  including Crow Weaver, Carl Lundgren, Leonard Lehrman and Helene Williams, the Woven Green band from northern Virginia, and the Lucky Pluckers.The Bloodthirsty Vegans from Buffalo will return with their great dance music for the Saturday evening fundraiser.

Ecology Workshops

• Environmental Impacts of Pottery Production, Elaine Hardman
• Hazelnut and Chestnut Trees for Permaculture and Reforestation in the Northeast, Tom Potts
• The Health of Bees and the Implications of Their Decline, Bob Brachmann
• Poetry in Place Workshop, Mike Czarnecki
• Real Food Workshop, Tim Koegel

Energy Workshops

• Build Your Own Wind Turbine, Barry Miller
• Building a Mass Movement to Criminalize Corporate Hydrofracking: Workshops 1, 2 and 3, Richard Grossman
• Building a National Anti-Fracking Campaign, David Doonan
• Finger Lakes Energy Challenge -- Working to Reduce Our Fossil Fuel Consumption, Gay Nicholson
• Free Energy Solutions, Barry Miller
• Harms of Gas Drilling Caused by Poor Energy Policies, Bill Belitskus
• Inconvenient Truths about Wind Energy, Gary Abraham
• Low-Cost Solar DIY, Dave Fagan and Mary Joy Cady-Fagan
• Rekindling the Anti-Nuclear Movement after Fukushima, Ken Gale, Carl Lundgren
  
• Renewable Energy Solutions, Ken Gale
  
• Solar Water Heating Basics, Barry Miller
  
• Talk, Write, Connect, Change, Cecile Lawrence
  

Media Workshops

• How to be an Effective Media Activist through Video, Wilton Vought
• Media Workshops 1 and 2, Scott McLarty
• Planning and Facilitating Public Rituals for Turbulent Times, Jil St. Ledger-Roty

Political Workshops

• Abolish Corporate "Personhood,", David Cobb and Virginia Rasmussen
• The Bias of Temperament in American Politics, William Kreml
• Courting the Anarchist Vote: Finding the Common Denominator of Autonomy, Darin Robbins
• Ecological Socialism vs. Capitalist Exterminism, Howie Hawkins
• Leveraging Privilege to Transform Oppression & Build Power, George Friday and David Cobb
• Malapportionment vs. The National Popular Vote: Initiatives to Reform the Electoral College, Asa Gordon
• The Principle of Green Political Independence, or Why Progressive Democrats Reinforce Corporate Rule, Howie Hawkins
  Resisting Neoliberalism and Organizing for Eco-Justice in the Americas, Ursula Rozum
• Third Parties as Real Change, Anthony Gronowicz
• Welcoming Muslims to the Green Movement: Fighting Islamophobia, Farheen Hakeem
• What would a Green Non-Violent Foreign Policy Look Like?, John Rensenbrinck

Draft Green Fest Schedule

Fri.-Sun., Aug. 5-7, 2011
Alfred University, Alfred, New York

Thursday, August 4, 2011
5:00 pm — Registration opens — Powell Campus Center
6:00-7:00 pm — Dinner in Dining Hall

Friday, August 5, 2011
8:00-9:00 am — Breakfast, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center
8:00 am — Registration opens, Welcome Tent on Campus Green
11:30 am — Exhibits open, Campus Green
11:30-12:30 pm — Workshop Session 1
12:30-1:30 pm — Lunch, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center
1:30-2:30 pm — Workshop Session 2
2:45-3:45 pm — Workshop Session 3
4:00-5:00 pm — Workshop Session 4
5:30-6:30 pm — Dinner, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center
6:45-8:45 pm — Forum 1, Nevins Theater in Powell Campus Center
9:00-11:00 pm — Jam session/get together, Knight Club in Powell Campus Center

Saturday, August 6, 2011
7:45-8:45 am — Breakfast, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center
8:45-9:45 am — Workshop Session 5
10:00-11:00 am — Workshop Session 6
11:15-12:15 pm — Workshop Session 7
12:15-1:15 pm — Lunch, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center
1:15-2:30 pm — Forum 2, Solar Stage
2:45-3:45 pm — Workshop Session 8
4:00-5:00 pm — Workshop Session 9
5:30-6:30 pm — Dinner, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center
6:45-8:45 pm — Forum 3, Nevins Theater in Powell Campus Center
9:00-11:00 pm — Dance Party/Fundraiser, Knight Club in Powell Campus Center

Sunday, August 7, 2011
7:45-8:45 am — Breakfast, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center
8:45-9:45 am — Workshop Session 10
10:00-11:00 am — Workshop Session 11
11:15-12:45 pm — Forum 4, Solar Stage
12:45-1:45 pm — Lunch, Dining Hall in Powell Campus Center

Check for updates at http://nygreenfest.org/2011schedule.html

Swimming Available at Foster Lake

Swimming will be available for campers at NY Green Fest this summer.  Green Fest offers tent camping at Foster Lake, a 25-acre lake owned by Alfred University 2 miles from the central Green Fest location, Alfred University's Powell Campus Center,  in Alfred, NY. Swimming is allowed in the lake while a life guard is on duty: from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm. Boating is also available. For more information about camping at Green Fest, visit our registration page.

Registration Now Open for 2011

Registration is now open for Green Fest 2011.  The registration fee for Green Fest attendees, presenters and exhibitors is $45 for the weekend, $25 for a single day. The teen rates are $25 for the weekend, $15 for a single day. Children 12 and under are free. Delicious meals and attractive lodging options are available on-campus for reasonable rates.  To see details and to register, please visit our registration page, http://nygreenfest.org/registration.html

ANM Comes to Green Fest

We are delighted to have the national Green Party join us in Alfred this year, Aug. 5-7, 2011. Green Fest is being held in conjunction with the 2011 Green Annual National Meeting (ANM). Greens and supporters from across the country will participate in Green Fest workshops, perform and exhibit in our Green Fair.

We welcome participation in Green Fest 2011 as a panelist, musician or workshop presenter. Our panels, performances and workshops enable the Green community to grow and pass on vital knowledge and skills. Musicians will perform throughout the weekend on our solar stage. For more information about presenting or performing at Green Fest 2011, click here.

For more information about exhibiting in our Green Fair, click here. We welcome five types of exhibitors:

1. Activist organizations displaying information about their work on Green issues
2. Craftspeople and artists selling their own crafts and art
3. Local farmers and local food producers selling their own food items
4. Authors, booksellers and publishers selling books on sustainable living and sustainable politics
5. Producers and distributors selling renewable energy systems and zero emission vehicles.

 Registration will be available soon. Click here for the draft 2011 schedule.

Green Fest 2011 in Alfred, NY, Aug. 5-7, 2011

Mark Your Calendars!

NY Green Fest 2011, the 4th biennial NY Green Fest, will be held the first weekend in August, Aug. 5-7 in Alfred, NY.

Green Fest Panel on WNED

An edited version of the Aug. 8th Green Fest panel on sovereignty and sustainability aired August 27th on Buffalo's WNED-AM 970 “Forum” program. Selections from the talks by Bill Kauffman, Peter Jemison, Mike Czarnecki, and Lynn Gerry appear in that order on the one hour program hosted by Jay Moran. Click here to listen to the program.

We Demand Transparency, NYC Sept. 12-13

Sander Hicks, one of our Green Fest presenters, is organizing the We Demand Transparency Conference, a three-day conference for peace, truth, new economics, independent journalism, and the latest breakthroughs in the 9/11 cover-up.

Saturday, September 12th, 10 AM – 7 PM
Sunday, September 13th, 2 PM – 10 PM
St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery, NYC
East 10th St. and 2nd Ave, NYC

The 30 authors, filmmakers, scientists, musicians, revolutionaries, and peace-makers. presenting at the conference seek to unite the peace and truth movements for real change in the USA.

The presenters include the author of “Web of Debt,” L.A. attorney Ellen Brown, who will be the lead presenter on September 13th. Maryland peace activist (and attorney) Barry Kissin will address the FBI's anthrax investigation. William Pepper, counsel to the NYC Coalition for Accountability Now (NYC CAN), which has gathered over 70,000 signatures to get a referendum on a new 9/11 investigation on the ballot this Fall in NYC, will discuss the initiative.

For more information, contact Sander Hicks, Producer, at 347-627-4705 or visit
http://www.WeDemandTransparency.com/

What Do We Face?

By Steve Welzer (Green Party of New Jersey)
Talk given at Green Fest, August 9, 2009, Alfred, NY

The Green Party of New York State has some great energy! It looks like Rev. Billy and the Green candidates for City Council are going to rock New York City this fall. We've been encouraging Greens from the northern part of New Jersey to cross the Hudson and help out with the petition drive to get Billy on the ballot.

Unfortunately, from what I'm hearing based on my participation on the National Committee, the vitality in New York is kind of the exception rather than the rule these days among state Green parties. It would be hard to characterize the activity in my own state as energetic. Odd-numbered years are actually major electoral years in New Jersey, so this year there's a gubernatorial race plus races for 80 State Assembly seats and 40 State Senate seats in addition to hundreds of municipal- and county-level offices. With all of those opportunities, the Greens have two candidates in New Jersey - one for Assembly and one for council in a small town.

I'm aware that individual state parties have their ups and downs. One year in New Jersey we ran almost a full slate for the Congressional races -- we fielded candidates in something like eleven of the thirteen races. I remember how the New Mexico Greens were so dynamic during the nineties, but have been much less so recently. On the other hand, the Illinois party was not much to speak about ten years ago, but has really blossomed since the breakthrough campaign of Rich Whitney for Governor in 2006.

But I think an overall assessment would have to acknowledge a degree of disappointment that the Green Party, generally ... nationwide ... is much farther from breaking through -- from breaking out of the shadows of marginalism -- than many of us had hoped would be the case at this point -- as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the movement.

It was on August 10, 1984 -- 25 years ago tomorrow -- that 62 people came together on the campus of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota to establish the Green Committees of Correspondence. That was the initiation of the Green politics movement in the United States. It followed in the wake of the successes of Die Grunen in Germany after they became the first Green Party to enter a national parliament in 1983.

By the latter part of the '80s, in the U.S., Green Party candidates had started to appear on some ballots in a few states. During the '90s permanent ballot status became the goal of the growing number of state parties. Then we had that great shot-in-the-arm from the Nader campaign in 2000. That put us on the map; it enabled us to increase our media coverage, ramp up our membership, recruit more candidates.

The impacts of the Reform Party campaign of 1996 and the Green Party campaign of 2000 generated some hopeful talk about the development of a four-party system in this country. The idea was that there could be a major party of the left, the Democrats, and a minor party of the left, the Greens; alongside a major party of the right, the Republicans, and a minor party of the right, either the Libertarians or the Reform Party.

If there was ever any real momentum in that direction, it didn't last. The Reform Party just faded away, as had so many others in recent memory: the Labor Party, the New Party, the Citizens Party, the 21st Century Party. It's actually something of a tribute to us that we've endured for 25 years. The Libertarian Party was founded in 1972 and thus has endured for even longer, 37 years.

But it's 25 years or 37 years of enduring at the margins of American political life.

We know that third party politics in a winner-take-all system is excruciatingly hard. Nonetheless, an argument can be made that we, the Greens here in the U.S., ought to be doing better. They have a winner-take-all system in Canada, but the Canadian Green Party has been growing impressively in the last couple of years and is anticipating electing their first Member of Parliament in a coming national election.

They have a winner-take-all system in England, but the Green Party there just garnered 8.7% of the national vote in June's European Parliament elections. That's up from 6.1% in 2004. Two of their candidates were elected to the parliament and the Greens polled the *highest* vote totals in three cities, receiving 31% of the vote in Brighton, 26% in Oxford, and 25% in Norwich.

When we look at countries with proportional representation systems the reports are even more encouraging. The Green Party of Germany now has a solid, consistent base of 10-12% of the electorate. In those European Parliament elections in June the big story across the continent was the surge in the Green vote. A story from Reuters on June 7 quoted Thomas Klau at the Center for European Reform saying: "The rise of the Green Party has been striking. The Greens are the one political force in the European Union that has been closest to creating a true European party, a true European political movement ... with a political message that is strong and plausible."

In France, where Sarkozy's center-right party won with about 28% of the vote, the Socialists received 16.5% and the Greens were right behind them with 16.2%. This resulted in the Socialists and the Greens each getting 14 seats in the European Parliament. In greater Paris and in the south-east region of the country the Greens were the second most popular party. A couple of days after the election, Sarkozy invited Daniel Cohn-Bendit and several other Green leaders to the Elysee Palace for a chat. According to the New York Times, after the meeting Cohn-Bendit said: "Sarkozy realizes there's a green wave in France and he wants to surf it."

Well, there's a green wave just about everywhere these days. I think I'm justified in saying that nothing has more mojo in our culture right now than the concept of greening. Everything is going green, right? ... buildings and homes, appliances, foods, cars ... college campuses ... mutual funds ... Goldman Sachs says the atrium of its corporate headquarters in Manhattan has gone green with organic plants and VOC-free finishes and a micro-porous bioceramic filtration system in its water coolers!

We know that there's an enormous amount of greenwashing going on, an enormous amount of hype and opportunism associated with this trend, but we shouldn't discount its genuine significance and energy. Greening is clearly becoming a major phenomenon, one that can potentially, at least, change lifeways. I see it as the beginning - just the beginning - of a long-term transformation of human consciousness, one that's happening globally and ultimately involves nothing less than the trajectory of our civilization ... which must be re-directed onto a path of sustainability. This is *starting* to become understood; younger generations grow up now very aware of what Earth Day means.

It would seem logical that the political parties that give electoral expression to this phenomenon - the Green parties - would thrive. And what's happening in Europe bears this out.

So the question has to be asked: What's wrong with Kansas? What's wrong with New Jersey? Why are so many of our state parties and the US Green Party suffering from lethargy or arrested development ... and from an ongoing, frustrating consignment to the margins?

We need to understand where we're at, and why. We need to be able to explain it ... to ourselves and to others.

Some of the factors are clearcut. Any analysis of the situation has to start off mentioning that inescapable bane-of-existence for all third parties operating within a winner-take-all system, namely: the so-called "spoiler" problem. This issue hangs over our heads at all times, but it became a front-and-center source of division among Greens, in particular, after the very prominent and controversial impact we had during what was essentially our very first full national campaign in 2000.

The division in our ranks about this - whether to care about spoiling or not - was surely one factor, if not the primary factor, that resulted in the dissolution of the alliance between the Greens and Ralph Nader after the 2000 campaign. Whether viewed as Nader abandoning us, or our failure to sustain the alliance; whether his mistake or our mistake ... the bottom line was that it was a bad situation for us. His competing candidacies as an independent in 2004 and 2008 hurt our campaigns. Some of the electorate continued to blame *us* for the 2000 Bush/Gore fiasco, while some people chastised us for "losing Nader." The whole thing ended up being dispiriting for many Greens and disheartening for potential supporters who had been intrigued by the idea that a Nader/Green alliance might become a serious new political force.

Another ongoing factor contributing to our marginalization - another constant of third party political life - is cooptation. The lettering or background on the campaign signs of Democratic Party candidates in local races in my state often is ... emerald green. The signs shout: "If you care about the environment, vote Democrat." If Nader's vote-total really did make any difference in terms of Al Gore being denied the presidency in 2000, then a case can be made that he did the Democrats a great favor. Out of office Gore was liberated to take a strong environmentalist stance he never would have taken as president. Subsequently Gore's books and his movie very much helped the Dems to co-opt the greening issue.

We also have to understand that a party like ours will always tend to be subject to the vagaries of the power cycle in Washington. No surprise that it was the Democrats who were the primary beneficiaries of the revulsion engendered by the Bush II Republican administration. When they - the Democrats - were in power during the 1990s, the inevitable disillusionment and dissatisfaction with them helped us to make the case that we are the real progressive alternative. It made sense, then, that our best showing in a national campaign, in 2000, came after the eight years of Clinton-Gore, and our weakest national vote total, in 2008, came after the eight years of Bush-Cheney.

Cynthia McKinney was a terrific candidate for us last year. She had to be disappointed to wind up with under 200,000 votes in the whole country and the lowest total among the minor party candidates.

Are we the least viable among the third parties? No ... to the contrary, I think we have the most potential among them. But we could get discouraged with results like we saw nationally last year. Unless - again - we're clear about where we're at, where we've been, and what we face.

After being down for the last so many years - three, four, five years - on account of the factors I've mentioned, and others, most of us are *not* discouraged, it seems to me - and I think the main reason is that we see the growth of the sustainability movement all around us - and we feel it should mean that it's just a question of time and continued effort and the confluence of the right set of circumstances until we break through -- in the way that the Canadian Greens seem to be on the verge of doing. They also languished for many years until recently when a couple of fortuitous things happened. First of all, with Canada having stronger cultural ties to Europe than America has, the successes of the European Green parties have had more influence on the electorate there than here. Second of all, the well-known, well-respected, and dynamic longstanding executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada made the growth of the Green Party her passion three or four years ago. Elizabeth May has been helping enormously to transform that party into a serious force in Canadian politics, and their time seems to have arrived.

And now, here in the U.S., the Democrats are in power again, giving us the chance to better make the case that we're the real alternative. There are a lot of positives suggesting that the time for our breakthrough may be nearer at hand than our recent frustrations would otherwise indicate.

But ...

I want to finish with a kind of cautionary projection regarding what we might be facing as activists working for social and political change in this particular time and place.

I think there is a *possibility* that neither the Green Party nor any other third party will ever break through here in the United States.

The microcosmic feeling we've had of being kind of stuck-in-place may be a function of operating within a society which is, in fact and indeed, stuck-in-place at a macro level.

This is the so-called cradle of democracy, yet progress toward multi-party democracy, evident in country after county all over the world, has been notably absent here. It is not inconceivable that America may never replace its archaic winner-take-all electoral system. Or, to put it the other way, as grotesque, outlandish, and morbid as it may sound, America may pass into oblivion still mesmerized by the sorry spectacle of Republican vs. Democrat.

Why? Well, there is an historical pattern whereby the most dominant and ostensibly successful empires can just atrophy over time into a stupor of inertia, complacency, and stasis. Things that are going in a direction deemed to be successful tend to keep going in that direction ... beyond the point where they've maxxed out their potential ... and then they ossify, unable to resolve festering problems or to even recognize them: consumption rather than production; intractable inequality; breakdown of community; disregard for limits.

Egypt, Rome, Spain, England ... America ...

Those of us who came of age during the sixties know how clearly the imperative for fundamental social change in this country was articulated at that time. Well, a full adult lifetime has passed since then, over 40 years, and the extent of significant social change has been extremely disappointing . . .

. This country just can't seem to get anywhere in terms of significantly resolving its healthcare crisis. Try after try after half-hearted try.
. This country is on a track leading to bankruptcy - entitlement obligations, as well as social programs, are way underfunded - yet the United States just can't find a way to reduce its insanely bloated and unnecessary military expenditures - whether the administration is Republican or Democratic.
. The American suburban middle class lifestyle paradigm is unsustainable and spiritually bankrupt, but efforts to transform it - like the cohousing, relocalization, and new urbanism movements - remain marginal.
. The two establishment parties command less and less loyalty as the decades pass, but electoral alternatives like the Green Party just can't get any traction.

These are signs of atrophy. The folly of aspiring to dominance and imperial expansion is so persistent, so ingrained at this point, that the United States of America, as a nation-state and a society, could conceivably be beyond redemption.

Maybe the onset of what Richard Heinberg calls Peak Everything will jolt this country out of its imperialist, materialist rut ... and in that case pathways toward the Greening of America might open up, and the prospects for the Green Party here might become as bright as they are in most other advanced democracies.

But we need to be aware of the possibility that this country, uniquely suffering from having its head in the clouds of grandiosity and dominance, will just simply fail to see the light that everyone else can see.

***

We need to keep trying even if there is a chance that that's what we face. The opening up of the electoral system in this country would be beneficial to the entire global geopolitical landscape. America is currently the great cultural trendsetter, so a breakthrough for Green politics in this country would advance our movement immeasurably worldwide.

As especially hard as it might be to accomplish our goals in this country, we also have a special responsibility to work as hard as we can to try to do so. Real hope for our country (as opposed to Obama's vacuous and now fading hope) ... real hope lies with the prospect that we might succeed in our efforts. (By "we" I don't mean just members or supporters of the Green Party ... grandiosity is the problem, certainly not the solution! By "we" I mean all those who understand, support, or work for eco-communitarian, socially just alternative politics and lifeways.)

But if it comes to pass that America goes into terminal decline while still offering only two choices on its ballots ... so be it ... our focus as Greens will have to shift toward building the new society -- locality by locality, region by region -- within the shell of the old imperial center as it crumbles away.

In fact, we can and ought to be doing both at the same time: trying to open up the electoral system, trying to grow the Green Party; and also building up alternative institutions ... constructing lifeboats ...

Clearly, there's lots of work to be done.

We need to be realistic about our situation and have a long-term perspective in regard to our prospects. We undoubtedly face our share of ups and downs ... including periodic bouts of malaise. But we need to shrug those off. Discouragement can't be an option.

We need to find ways to encourage each other, energize each other and sustain the energy of our movement. Turning to the Rev. Billy's of the world for re-spiritization - and fun - helps a lot. Events like this wonderful Green Fest help a lot. It's been a great couple of days - thanks again to the organizers - and I look forward to seeing everyone again at the next Green Fest ... maybe our breakthrough will then be at hand, or at least a couple of steps closer ...

Steve Welzer is a founder of the Green Party of New Jersey and a member of the National Committee of the Green Party of the United States. He is the editor of the GreenGram, the newsletter of Green Party of New Jersey, and is a co-editor of Green Horizon magazine. He also writes for Synthesis/Regeneration, a magazine of Green social thought. Steve was a Green Party candidate for US Congress from New Jersey in 2008, and this year he is running for State Assembly. He lives in East Windsor, New Jersey.

The Importance of Theory in Independent Progressive Politics

Presentation by Darin Robbins at Green Fest, Aug. 8, 2009

We are gathered together, both here and within the Green Party overall, because we want to engage in the great political work of the day. It is a day that is truly benighted where peace, civil liberties, communities, and our own environment is threatened by a comprehensive system of power. If we are to fight this power then there is the necessity to understand its operation, how it functions and consolidates its influence to such a degree that at first blush it seems impossible to oppose it. This is where theory comes in as a supplement to political action. I will give some examples of what theory can do to enrich our work, and illustrate that theory is not only an embellishment or flavoring to action, but a vital binding agent that makes our actions sensible.

Theory can basically be defined as the way to explain how something works. In science we have various theories on how the universe operates, not only explaining how it works but why it works as opposed to another possible method. And in the larger debate concerning evolution versus creationism, we can see that the use of the word theory should not discourage one from believing that a well-formed theory that can be proven through perception can be an accurate description of reality. The same can be said of theories that apply to the social, political, cultural, and economic as well. Theory does not have to be relegated to the ethereal domain of highly abstract metaphysics that have no relationship to everyday experiences for human beings. Georg Lukacs proposed that as practice can be the objective expression of theory, theory can be the subjective understanding and consciousness of practice. In fact, since a theory can be considered an explanation, it has a structural aspect that directly impacts reality in much the same way as other structures. The system of a language as an example of a structure shows that there is a general background and particular actions. For language, humans find themselves always already within a system that has a vocabulary and grammar, but it is human speech that makes various combinations of words and sentences that is not specifically predetermined. In comparison, those who engage in progressive activism and electoral politics can take up what others have already studied in order to find new applications of theory. This theoretical background and application can work in tandem in order to promote an understanding of power, meaning, and production as well as a self-awareness of the human role in these systems. In other words, the immediate goal of theory is to advance knowledge, and that is a very important factor in political action.

It goes without saying that the old adage "knowledge is power" is as true today as it ever was. Incorporating theory into action is something that is more of a necessity for our goals than just a slight supplement to the Green Party. If we are willing to see political action as a material manifestation of what we want to achieve, then we must also conclude that political theory is the immaterial manifestation, the other side of the proverbial coin. And like a coin, it can be very difficult to observe both sides at the same time. But they are most definitely connected, with theory and practice supporting each other. The inability to readily perceive both at the same time can be problematic. The appearance of theory in itself can be too abstract for everyday comprehension, while the appearance of action in itself can be easily assimilated into the two-party system. In other words, theory can look as if it is unrelated to human needs and action can be defined as a side project within the dominant two major parties that will weaken such action and take away its significance for real change. Therefore, the relationship between theory and action must be understood as reciprocal despite the hardship of viewing them together. Theory is the general background for particular political actions. Theory is also the ability to communicate a general viewpoint that is also a worldview, and for us would be a Green perspective on reality. Political action is the ability to practice a transformation of the social, political, cultural, and economic fields of reality. A successful transformation requires the interaction of theory and practice. The vital aspect to point out is that action without a theoretical foundation can be disbursed into isolated things by the structure of power, and theory without its expression into concrete action can be seen simply as academic conversation. In either case, the transformation that we would seek would be harder to accomplish if not outright impossible. Frankly, we had elements of this phenomenon already occurring during the 1990's. The various cases of activism, and even the significant work of Ralph Nader, were ignored by both the Clinton administration and the Republican Congress as they moved forward with the neoliberal capitalist agenda. Theory was exiled to the universities under the overarching term of "Cultural Studies" where some valid critiques of the relationship between power and meaning were conducted, but in most cases it became an easy target for the conservative offensive in the culture wars. It was assumed that activists would automatically vote Democrat regardless of the collaboration on policy between the White House and Congress. The theorists were relegated to a straw man misinterpretation in order to illustrate the failings of being a "liberal" regardless of what Democrats actually did in government. In fact, these superficial accusations maintained the appearance that there was a divergence between Democrats and Republicans that obscured the reality of a convergence in terms of policy and perpetuating the status quo. Those in power were able to diminish both theory and practice by keeping them separate. And this was the political reality that the 21st century inherited. There was the possibility of a realization of theory and practice joined together in the emerging anti-globalization movement at that time. Unfortunately, September 11th of 2001 was used to weaken that movement and recalibrate the political landscape in favor of the existing structures of power. But the fact that the anti-globalization movement grew outside of the two-party system is significant. It demonstrated that theory and practice can find fertile ground, and this is a characteristic which the Green Party can handily emulate. Outside of the Democrats and Republicans, there is the presentation of the Green Party as not only new but more than what has been assumed in political parties. This presentation is the strongest way to influence modern politics at a time where business as usual has seemed to run into its inevitable dead end. And we must use theory and action together to insure our status as an alternative that, to paraphrase our 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Rosa Clemente, is also an imperative.

For the sake of clarification on what theory would look like, I will summarize the ideas of three philosophers. Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, and Gilles Deleuze all arise from poststructuralism. As structuralism was a school of philosophy that proposed that reality was determined by various structures, poststructuralism holds that these structures have limitations and therefore they can be taken apart and analyzed. The work of poststructuralism can be a rich resource for our political work since we as the Green Party obviously struggle against various forms of power on a daily basis. I would argue that our activities, through poststructuralism, can also look at the influence of structures of meaning and production on the lives of citizens alongside structures of power. Our struggle can make these structures apparent and immanent, rather than having them remain in an appearance of naturalness and timelessness as transcendent figures. By looking at the three examples of Foucault, Badiou, and Deleuze we will not only have a sense of how to begin theory. We will also begin to see a new definition of progressive politics as the work of immanence against transcendence in public life.

Michel Foucault's work can be seen as a development through the three stages or ideas of knowledge, power, and the self. Early in his career he looked at how knowledge was organized through various academic discourses in his book "The Order Of Things" and later "The Archeology Of Knowledge". He then transitioned into how discourses worked in conjunction with systems of power by looking at the various social institutions of the hospital, the insane asylum, and the prison in the books "The Birth Of The Clinic", "Madness And Civilization", and "Discipline and Punish" respectively. Along with numerous essays and transcribed lectures, Foucault's philosophical work came to the apex with his three volumes of "The History Of Sexuality" where he explored the possibility of an ethics to deal with knowledge and power. In this work he proposed that ethics must begin as an acknowledgement and attitude toward the self before it can be an attitude toward others. Unfortunately, his untimely death in 1984 prevented this trilogy from being completed. The flow of his work is comprehensive in nature, each stage incorporating the previous stage while also illustrating how each stage is interconnected. As his work progressed, Foucault emerged from being a mere sociologist to being someone directly engaged in the political sphere and what it entails. I contend that his work can be seen as a model of how theory can be applied to practice, and will also put forth the idea that the stages of his work can be used to organize the relevant relationship between himself and Badiou and Deleuze. In other words, the three stages of knowledge, power, and the self can be used as examples of describing how things were, how things change, and how they could be.

Since Foucault was never able to finish the articulation of his final stage, I will present his work as the description of how things were. Human knowledge is shaped by sets of discourse, and these discourses act as the determination of truth and facts. A discourse is a system of meaning used to explain reality. However, the appearance of truth as reality obscures the visibility of the system of meaning. The structure of the discourse recedes into the background as reality is explained to humans. Therefore, it seems that finding truth is just a matter of a direct perception of reality, but what actually occurs is an active exclusion of the false from the true as facts are organized within discourses. Discourses are the invisible mediation of reality that contain and limit the expression of reality. As one moves from one discourse to another, the change in emphasis can hint at how reality is actively sorted and classified by structures of meaning that build human knowledge. We might have hints as to a reality external to any human discourse, but it is never complete and we are unable to understand it. In order to understand reality, a discourse must always be there and these discourses are never completely neutral or objective. In the examination of power, one finds structures of meaning forming and operating in a simultaneous way with structures of power. Power in reality is a potential expressed by all individuals through choices and actions. But this form of power as simple force can be consolidated through institutions. Inequalities of power can develop and manifest themselves as what we usually recognize as the power of government or military might. However, the institutions that collect power do not necessarily need brute force. These institutions initiate the same process of containment and limitation that one would see in discourses. What emerges from the structures of power is discipline and regulation. The discipline of individuals creates the identity of the subject, and the regulation of groups creates the identity of the population. In this new attitude of power, the role of government becomes that of a control that is not motivated by a self interest of a ruler, but a system that preserves life to such a degree that it intercedes on the ability of individuals to make their own choices. In other words, this continuous control seeks to increase a bodily and biological productivity while decreasing any transgression or resistance from this system. With a system of control that becomes more impersonal, and some would argue scientific, the issue of ethics becomes more important as a response. Ethics is the care of the self which can be a resistance to both discourse and discipline. Tracing the history of ethics, one finds that in the ancient world there was the question of how one should live. In the early modern era the question was how one should act. There can thus follow the potential for the question of how one might live. This final question requires the need for individuals to make choices in order to shape their future and be an active participant in their own being. Here is where Foucault saw the chance to escape the expansion of power that occurred through a system of control, spreading out from the prisons, hospitals, schools, and barracks of a society. The exact details of this ethics is still open to interpretation.

Alain Badiou, in contrast, has devoted most of his career to the examination of the event. He uses this term, the event, specifically as the point of change from a structured reality to a new opportunity for truth that is free of any bindings. The event can be a revolution, and Badiou has used the French Revolution as an example of a past event, but it is not restricted solely to revolutions. Another characteristic of his work is his use of set theory from mathematics to explain being, even going so far as to say that “mathematics is ontology”. In the 1980's he wrote his master work “Being And Event” which is the starting point of his philosophy, and most recently completed his sequel “Logique Des Mondes” which has just been translated into English as “Logics Of Worlds”. Badiou begins with things as they are and he uses set theory to show how various structures organize reality. The advantage to set theory is that it is a branch of mathematics that does not require complex equations and can be visualized as things contained within boxes. How they are contained in these proverbial boxes is based on some arbitrary grouping rather than a common trait they all share. And there can be boxes within boxes as the things are subdivided into smaller groups. It should be noted that the things in these boxes can be members of different subsets simultaneously according to the multiple ways they can be organized. There are various permutations of how these things can be grouped together. Using this basic understanding of set theory can illustrate how Badiou explains reality and its structuration, as well as prepare the stage for how the event can disrupt this situation.

Reality in itself is a multiplicity of differences, where each part that exists is absolutely different from all other parts. Each attempt to fathom reality is an arbitrary grouping together within one set. This set, where reality is contained in one general term in order to understand it, is called the counting as one. Even though this set tries to unify reality, reality will always exceed the counting as one. The counting as one is a finite snapshot of an infinite reality as a starting point for an understanding of that reality. There is always a surplus or excess that will be a factor during the event later on. The structuring of reality therefore appears to be universal but is only one particular attempt among many structures. In this process, a structure can be complete and inconsistent or incomplete and consistent, but it can never be both. Each structure, as it takes on the appearance of a universal knowledge of reality, will develop internal contradictions. These internal contradictions reflect the surplus of reality that is still not contained by these various structures. This instability of structural formations allows for reality to impose itself into what is structured through the event. The relationship of structures to the event is that of an established knowledge of reality as it is ruptured by the reality that can not be included by this knowledge. For humans, this knowledge is always preexisting and ubiquitous. The mediation of structures is the inclusion and exclusion of specific parts of reality. However, the event is a sudden occurrence that can not be predicted, is unique each time it occurs, and has a universal affect. The change it enacts is total and sudden. The event, as a disruption of existing structures, is also the introduction of an infinite reality into these structures. We get a glimpse into reality as an absolute multiplicity. The event changes what is considered natural and eternal. After the event, everything is at stake and everything becomes apparent to humans. Its consequences is referred to as the fidelity to the event, which is the exploration of the truth by individuals without recourse to the structures that were taken apart by the event. Badiou would theorize that truth could be discovered through the four procedures of politics, science, art, and love. The event is the space of opportunity for this fidelity where decisions can be made that would have been limited within structures. In other words, the event allows for the full participation of freedom and its responsibilities. The event is revolutionary without being defined solely as a physical or political revolution. Since there are no longer predeterminations in the aftermath of the event, the practice of freedom directed toward truth is a decision on whether new methods for truth are created or whether new restricting structures develop. Structures that are formed after the event can either be instruments for truth and freedom or a return to the seemingly universal containment of reality where individuals are denied direct participation. How this truth is found is up to individuals as free individuals who are committed to the discovery.

Gilles Deleuze, a contemporary of both Foucault and Badiou, developed a theory of being that would later be elaborated into a precise political theory. His career began with works on various thinkers such as Hume, Nietzsche, and Bergson that would interpret their theories in a direction that could produce new ideas. His own ontology began with his works “Difference And Repetition” and “Logic Of Sense” that attempted to explain how the new was produced in reality in terms of subjects, objects, and systems. He described a process where the virtual, defined as infinite possibilities within reality, was actualized into specific combinations that would produce both living and nonliving things. This perpetual construction of reality that could be experienced was the foundation for an interaction between the virtual and the actual that defined being as a process of becoming. Becoming would occur as a process starting from the virtual as the general state of existence to the actual as the particular case of being. This analysis of being and how it operates was given a new application when he collaborated with psychoanalyst Felix Guattari on the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, known respectively as “Anti-Oedipus” and “A Thousand Plateaus”. For Deleuze, political activity and theory must be based on a sense of being and existence, and his political work with Guattari expresses this sentiment clearly. In other words, how political systems are formed is similar to how any system is formed in reality, whether it is biological, economic, cultural, or mechanical.

Deleuze shares with Badiou a conceptualization of reality in itself as a multiplicity of absolute difference. For Deleuze, this is an adaptation from Spinoza, who posited reality as one single substance from which characteristics divide up reality. Deleuze's sense of being is a transition from the difference of quality in itself to a difference of quantity within distinct elements such as subjects, objects, and systems. Humans experience this difference within the repetition of time, where each repetition within a different moment in time produces something different regardless of other similar traits. For example, one chair can be built at one time period, and one hour later another chair that is a perfect copy can be built. Despite the same physical properties, the change in time determines that there can never be an exact repetition of the same chair. For Deleuze, this change in time is expressed through three dimensional space. The movement, from reality in itself with its one substance and differences in quality to various things with differences in quantity that make up experienced reality, is referred to as the movement from the virtual to the actual. Both the virtual and the actual are real and exist simultaneously to each other. The virtual as possibility becomes the actual as material and ideal reality. The virtual is all nascent combinations of parts of reality that are manifested into particular things through the formation of structures. Structures are constructed through innate difference, and difference can be seen as the engine for this construction. Structures themselves are also the products of actualization. This actualization process occurs within a human context, making it easier to be perceived by humans, but it also occurs in the world among matter independent of human intervention. For our discussion, we will concentrate on the human sphere of actualization. The question that now emerges is whether these structural formations out of the virtual are eternal or constantly changing. Because the virtual is never exhausted by the actualization process, the actual can always dissipate back into the virtual in order to be actualized again in a different way. Deleuze uses the three terms territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization when describing this process. A territorialization is a formation of a structure, deterritorialization is the breaking up of a structure into its parts, and reterritorialization is the formation of a new structure from these parts. What appears, disappears, and reappears in this transition is the relationships among parts rather than the parts themselves. The parts are reality in itself that exist in the virtual and are shaped in the actual. The political ramification is whether the movement through these three terms result in transcendence or immanence. Transcendence is the formation of absolute structures from particular formations and can be seen in a territorialization that never deterritorializes. The actualization in this case becomes static and the structure in question appears to be a universal and top-down kind of truth. On the other hand, immanence is the recognition that parts in a structure exist on the same level to each other, and the structure itself is on the same level as the reality it organizes. After a deterritorialization, the new emerging structures can either be transcendent or immanent depending on how dynamic is the actualization. In the context of the Green Party, and independent progressive politics, it is clear that immanence is the side that we are on as it resembles grassroots democracy and decentralization. In his political analysis, immanence is also the position supported by Deleuze.

As can be seen, a productive process occurs in reality. Humans participate in this process by actively creating structures alongside structures forming in nature. The slight distinction is that humans create structures for specific purposes, and the starting point is human desire. Deleuze, in his work with Guattari, rejects the common held opinion that desire is based on a lack within individual humans that motivates them to need something external to them to fulfill their need. Passive consumerism is an example of desire as lack, and this can be part of the restrictive characteristic of capitalism overall. Human desire is described as desiring-production that engages with a process of absolute deterritorialization and relative reterritorialization. Instead of having monolithic structures where humans are embedded within them and controlled by them, desiring-production is the creation of small structures that can be practical tools. Overall there is a breaking apart of large universal structures which in turn is the space for particular structures to emerge and fade away when no longer needed. These small structures are called molecular while top-down impositions of structures are referred to as molar. The importance of this large open space for small and local creativity, what Deleuze has called a body without organs, is the ability for a becoming on a molecular scale and a micropolitics within transcendent and molar reality. The small immanent structures are the organs that form for molecular uses, that serve a purpose without expanding beyond the power and control of human desire. The real stage for political action is not universal and centralized methods, that can inadvertently recreate domination, but the particular and decentralized structures which are expressions of desire. The desiring-production within a body without organs is this very expression of freedom through desire, and for Deleuze it is the epicenter of revolutionary political potential. It should be noted that the idea of desiring-production, as the creation of immanent structures, is not entirely an abstract endeavor relegated to the production of consumer goods or art. In light of what has been described as immanent structures, it is important to point out that these immanent structures can be directly applied to what Greens do on an almost daily basis. In other words, examples of immanent structures can be solar panels for home-use, a food coop in the local community, or a series of specific laws that would repeal the entire War On Drugs in favor of realistic classifications of chemical effects and consequences.

Michel Foucault delved deep into how structures shape the human experience of reality as a way to control humans. Alain Badiou explored the possibilities that would emerge from the sudden disruption of these kind of structures. Gilles Deleuze proposed the needed attitude toward recreating the world after this disruption. They are all relevant to each other as well as to the greater political implications and applications that we are interested in. The ability to be used in conjunction has demonstrated that these three philosophers are useful for an overall project of theory. We can see the close relationship between control, change, and desire through Foucault, Badiou, and Deleuze and how one moves into the other. The transition from control to change to desire is inherently a political issue, and can be one of the many ways theory illuminates as it is seriously engaged.

These three examples are not completely exclusive. There is great potential in other examples such as Giorgio Agamben, Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, and Slavoj Zizek among others. I recommended all of them as a wonderful source of thought for further personal exploration. The important point to address is that theses theorists create a foundation for a cohesive political action. Because these theorists deal specifically with issues of power, meaning, and production, they are just as important in our work as running candidates in elections, staging protests, and addressing our grievances to democratically elected governments that is supposedly insured by our Constitution. It can be said that our melding of theory and action is an implementation of populism in a more progressive and radical fashion. Reform populism can be defined as people coming together to form collectives of opposition because they feel that there are elements or persons in the government and society that is going against the original purpose of a democracy. They are limited in that they feel that the system overall naturally works and can be fixed by removing specific parts. There is only so much they can do to enact change. On the other hand, our form of radical populism seeks to use these collectives of opposition to begin an analysis and transformation of not only the government, not only the society, but perhaps all of reality.

In conclusion, and in summation, the words of Foucault and Deleuze can best describe the importance of theory. In his essay "What Is Enlightenment?", Foucault states that "The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.". This quote fits in well with the following quote by Deleuze, that states “A theory is exactly like a tool-box. It must be useful, it must work. And not for itself. If there are no people to use it, including the theoretician himself who thereby ceases to be a theoretician, then either the theory is worthless or else the time is not ripe.”. Our use of theory can fulfill this function of transformation as Foucault poses it, and be a tool for political action as described by Deleuze. This transformation must begin with personal empowerment and the actions of people through real democracy, but it will always require a language. Theory can be that language in which we as the Green Party can write a new narrative for this nation and this world.

Foucault:
discourse=structure of meaning
discipline=creation and control of subjects
regulation=creation and control of populations

Badiou:
counting as one=structuring of reality
the event=disruption of structures
fidelity to the event=commitment to truth after the event

Deleuze:
body without organs=reality without structures
territorialization=formation of structures
deterritorialization=dissolution of structures
reterritorialization=reformation of structures
molecular=bottom-up resistance
molar=top-down enforcement

the virtual: x+y*y=z
actualization: 2+3*3=11, 3+2*2=7
the actual: 11, 7

http://www.michel-foucault.com/

http://www.lacan.com/frameabad.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze

Darin Robbins is a Green Party candidate for Corning City Council in 2009, and is a founder and regular contributor to the green theory blog, A Green State of Mind.