Two long time activists - Julia Williams and Sondra Miller - suggest a path forward.
1. The Path Forward
The path forward where we get the most bang for our buck is in the state legislature and the US House of Representatives. See Where are Progressives for State Legislative Districts and the US House of Representatives?
2. Obstacles
An obstacle is that third parties have significantly harder obstacles than the two party duopoly.
See:
In 2012 Julia Williams – a courageous woman unafraid to run for office to help our republic – ran for the US HOR District 9 in Michigan. Here is her response to this double standard.
"DAMNIT! When I ran as a Green for Congress, I and my husband waded through reams of rules and regulations, even called the FEC for clarification, but THIS was crystal clear:
"According to Federal Election law, once an exploratory candidate spends more than $5,000 for campaign purposes, that individual is considered a functioning candidate for office under the law and is required to promptly file a Statement of Candidacy and Statement of Organization and begin filing regular donor and expense reports."
As Lambert says at NC today:
" From the Podesta emails, a layperson might think the Clinton operation — and Robbie Mook, in particular — didn’t break this law; they smashed it to smithereens, and then ground the smithereens to powder."The sheer impunity, the corruption, the bloody damn mocking of us proles while EVERY POSSIBLE law is being broken is outrageous!"
3. Where do we go from here?
The first thing we all need to do – including the Green Party - is to stop giving the Democratic Party one more one last chance. See The Democratic Party is the More Effective of Two Evils.
For better or worse, right now the Green Party is the strongest party on the left. It certainly is not perfect, but if you don’t like it your alternatives are to build the Green Party or start to build an alternative. This requires far more than complaining in Facebook. It requires candidates other than tokens for President once every four years.
It also requires people such as Julia Williams with courage enough to actually run. That is how you start to gather strength. We need younger people we can pass the torch to as many of us are getting too old to run effectively.
The New Progressive Alliance can help. For suggestions see Elections.
