MADISON, Wisconsin — On an oppressively hot August day in downtown Madison, the signs of this famously liberal city’s progressive activism are everywhere. Buildings are draped in pride flags and Black Lives Matter signs are prominently displayed on storefronts. A musty bookstore advertises revolutionary titles and newspaper clippings of rallies against Donald Trump. A fancy restaurant features a graphic of a raised Black fist in its window, with chalk outside on the sidewalk reading “solidarity forever.”
Yet the Green Party, which bills itself as an independent political party that has the best interests of self-described leftists at heart, is nowhere to be found. It has no storefronts, no candidates running for local office, no relationship with the politically active UW-Madison campus, which has almost 50,000 students.
Where it does have purchase is in the nightmares of local Democrats, who are deeply afraid of the effect the third party might have here in November. As one of the seven presidential battleground states, Wisconsin is a critical brick in the so-called Blue Wall, the term for the run of Rust Belt states that are essential to Kamala Harris’ chances of winning the presidency. It’s a deeply divided state that’s become notorious for its razor-thin margins of victory — a place where statewide elections are so close that even tenths of a percentage point matter. Against that backdrop, the Green Party looms very large this year.
i’m noticing that you’re refusing to engage with the points i’m making describing all the ways in which the Green Party–in contravention of your assertion that they “have to actually work to live”–fails to be a vessel for any sort of serious political action, electoral success, or winning radical demands that would help avert the worst effects of climate change.
anyways, did you know that one of those socialists in office i’m talking about in New York–Jabari Brisport, a guy i know pretty well and who really walks the walk (devout environmentalist and vegan)–ran as a Green Party candidate in 2017 with the backing of New York City Democratic Socialists of America? because he lost 70-30 when he did that (that was a “respectable performance” for a Green Party candidate) and the Greens reaped exactly nothing from him running besides a “moral victory” that they haven’t improved on or built off of since.
and strangely, when we ran Jabari again as a Democrat in 2020, he actually won. and because he won, he’s a big reason we got the Build Public Renewables Act passed–and a reason why bills such as the Clean Futures Act and the All-Electric Building Act get introduced and debated at all (because he helps introduce them and fight for them on behalf of the chapter). thanks to him, there are now material, working class victories that socialists can point to for why people should elect us over moderate Democrats who don’t care about any of this. if he just kept running as a Green, we probably wouldn’t have been able to do any of that. running as a Green was a quixotic strategy that accomplished nothing for the working class, and he’d be the first to admit that.
Thank you for your opinion.