Letter from Mike Gillis, State of Washington Green Party

2/29/08
My Letter of Resignation: Why I am Leaving the Green Party

Everyone,

While the catalyst for this announcement is Ralph Nader's declaration that he would not be seeking the Green Party nomination yesterday, this is a decision that I had made a long time ago.

Over the last three years, I have worked my ass off for the Green Party. I've served in countless elected and appointed positions, served on committees, done research and data entry, organized events and nominating conventions, petitioned for several campaigns and have gathered thousands of signatures, donated hundreds of dollars (and I'm poor), spent countless weekends tabling, attended two national conventions and at least nine state conventions, and given incalculable hours of my life to build and reform the Green Party into the premier progressive political party in this country.

And like my involvement in the Democrats before this, I have come to the same conclusion. That my political goals and aspirations and those of the Green Party are just as irreconcilable and incompatible. In short I've found the leadership and structure of the Green Party to be politically unserious, rigidly sectarian, wholly unrealistic and at its worst, both unethical and hypocritical.

This is a decision I've kept close to the vest for well over six months now and by last fall I knew that I couldn't stay, the only question was when I could leave. I had decided that I would eventually leave, regardless of the outcome of our presidential primary. I stuck with it this past this because I saw a strong, visible and powerful campaign by the most prominent candidate to be the only way to keep the progressive third party movement going, and perhaps be a segue into what comes after the Greens die.

I've fought for years to keep this party alive and vibrant and I saw it dying. And I saw the leadership not caring. I saw a group of people who saw this party not as a means to an end - as a way to pushing a progressive agenda and electing Greens to office, getting as many votes as possible, growing our membership rolls - but instead treating the party as the end itself - a sectarian social club that cares little for election results or whether it has any tangible effect on elections or policy at all.

This is "Special Olympics" politics. Because it's not about winning, it's about "feeling good about ourselves" and cheerleading the party and telling ourselves that we're important and growing and relevant, whether we are or not. It is this mentality that still prevents so many people from seeing what an utter disaster that the 2004 election was for the Greens and why a repeat of it will put this party down for good.

And I'm saying this as a person who joined the Green Party as a safe stater that voted for David Cobb. One would have to be a lunatic or an idiot to look at the results of that election or the effect it had on our party and see that as anything other than botched political suicide.

Because too many Greens I've met don't seem to care about reality. When they do something and fail, they don't change course. They get mad at reality. They rationalize. When Nader gets coverage and McKinney doesn't, blame Nader. When the rank and file overwhelmingly backs Nader or even "Uncommitted" over the candidate they have selected for them, they blame everyone but themselves.

Too often, I've seen the Greens as a party all too willing to shoot itself in the head to spite its face.

We sure showed Ralph in 2004, didn't we? Just like we're showing him right now, by making demands that he register into our party or kiss the asses of 20 Greens in Greg Gerritt's basement at a caucus. Because the leadership I've met all too often doesn't care if we're political relevant or not.

Because, let's be totally honest, aside from our ballot lines, we have nothing real to offer a candidate. No machine. No elected officials. No hereditary voters. No money. Little organizational competence. But we have the audacity to demand that the few decent candidates we do have willing to be seen with us to kiss our ring and repeat the doctrinare jargon about "growing the Green Party", the Ten Key Values and IRV.... Things only a party insider could give one-tenth of 1% of a shit about.

In this party, I've seen people who were far more interested in putting on workshops, conventions and fighting over internal processes than they were in seeing that we acted internally what we preached externally and in being the strongest and most effective party we could be , by running candidates hard for every office, by running the sorts of campaigns that get our values out to as many people as possible without watering them down.

And in this I saw what I've come to privately call the Great Koobayyah Center, the majority of our national party that cares little about substance or logic, but votes entirely based on what faction doesn't sound mean or negative. Because as I've learned in two years on the GNC, the worst crime a Green can commit isn't manipulating process or being dishonest or acting in a way antithetical to our stated values or subverting democracy.... the worst crime one can commit is to hurt someone's oversensitive feelings.

I've had members of the GNC and the SCC lie to my face, been caught at it and had nothing come of it. I've seen one state party pass a rule aimed specifically at Nader so that even if he were to win their caucus, he wouldn't be able to receive any delegates -- the same state party that has an elected Democrat as their GNC rep.

And I've seen far too many Greens that continue to rationalize that the McKinney campaign is anything other than Cobb Redux. An under-the-radar campaign that only Greens are aware of and only Greens care about. A campaign that actually hangs up on the rare media that actually tries to contact them and as far as I know seems to think that word of mouth, Democracy Now! and tiny lefty blogs are a path to 5%.

In as blunt a way as I can put it: Outside of the Green Party and our little lefty sewing circle, nobody knows about or cares about the McKinney campaign.

Yes, I realize how much of an asshole I must look like right now, but even within the Green Party, McKinney isn't exactly setting the world on fire with her campaign. Beaten by more than 2-1 in CA in two separate primaries. Even in the Peace and Freedom primary, she came only 1% ahead of the crazy lady that started ANSWER. Clobbered by Uncommitted in Arkansas - 55% to 20%. But let's not let reality rain on our parade. Clearly those unwashed rabble aren't REAL Greens. Or wait! It's the fact that Nader has more name recognition.

Nevermind that Ron Paul started from the same level of recognition as McKinney and by running a real campaign has built a political following. And nevermind that McKinney's people did robo-calls in CA and had been campaigning for nearly 6 months and that Nader hadn't done jackshit at that point other than hint that he might run.

To paraphrase what Trey said earlier of Ralph. The opposite is true of Cynthia McKinney. She's indeed running hard for the Green Party nomination, but she isn't running for president. I recently asked an ex-girlfriend if she would have known that McKinney was running for president, if I hadn't told her. Her response: "If you hadn't told me, I wouldn't know who Cynthia McKinney was."

But let's not let actual reality get in the way of your preferred reality.

So I'm done. Gone. I'm walking out. Clearly the party isn't going to be what I want it to be, or what this country desperately needs it to be. And I'm tired of fighting with my own party over email and the phone on what should be utter no-brainers, when I should be fighting the Democratic and Republican parties.

I'm tired of trying to talk this party down from the ledge while it's screaming like a lunatic that it can fly.

And the oddest thing about Nader's announcement yesterday is this: I expected to be really frustrated after Ralph changed his mind after over a year of work with him. After six months of fighting an uphill battle for support for him as a candidate within party. I expected to be mad, and to be honest... a tiny part of me was.

But mostly what I felt was relief. Because I no longer have to battle over the internet with people who compare proportional representation to "Jim Crow", because I've no longer have to watch people who I had considered close friends and allies act contrary to their values in the name of sectarian partisanship, because I no longer have to be in a party where I have to expect the worst of too many people and where see people who miraculously survived after being brought to the precipice of destruction in 2004 and who have learned absolutely nothing.

Please consider this my resignation from the state party, the Seattle party, the Green National Committee, any committees I serve on, and any list servs I currently have clogging my inbox with mountains of pointless bickering.

Goodbye,

Mike Gillis
Outgoing GNC delegate for Washington State and new political independent

 

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