Wed 14 Mar 2007
At an intimate meeting of the Hartford Green party at my house last evening, we agreed to make every effort to put together a full slate of candidates for this year’s municipal elections. So far, the Greens have just one candidate: Dave Ionno, a librarian and outspoken Vietnam vet, is running for City Council. He’s run for office before, and his progressive views are well known. The party has no candidate for mayor, and recruitment initiatives are under way.
The usual suspects were in attendance at the meeting: Mike and Barbara DeRosa, Dave Ionno, Chris Reilly, my wife Ruth and I. The group resolved to put together a questionnaire outlining a Green party agenda for Hartford. The plan is to circulate the questionnaire widely and turn it into a party platform, as part of the effort to assemble a slate for the election. The local party plans to hold a miniconvention late next month–date still to be determined–featuring a candidate recruitment forum.
Among the items under consideration for the questionnaire: Green energy technology for city buildings, peace studies for Hartford public school students, indoor pollution abatement in city buildings, redeployment by the governor of critical first responders from the war zone, free inner-city public transportation, democratization of local voter registration and elections, universal health care, re-regulation of electric rates, landfill cleanup and waste recycling.
Our group also took a critical look at a proposed change to the state party by-laws. The change seems to take away some of the checks and balances built into the current apportionment of authority between individual chapters and the state party. The Hartford delegation plans to oppose the change.
Also on the agenda was a piece of advertising from Representative John Fonfara, who has faced a Green opponent in each of his last three elections. Fonfara’s message to constituents suggests that he is a progressive force in the state senate, where, in fact, he helped engineer the “deregulation” scheme that’s got electric bills spinning out of control. The local party will put together a leaflet rebutting Fonfara’s misleading communique. His corporate owners may wrap him in recycled green paper, but Greens consider him a staunch foe of the public interest.
Since the Hartford Greens no longer have a physical address (for several years until last Fall, we maintained an office on New Britain Avenue), the group will be looking for a place to air a documentary film series. Over the past couple of years, documentaries exposing the corrupt influence of corporate wealth over public policy have been systematically suppressed by the mass media, leaving it to local activists to bring them to the public. In recognition of the upcoming municipal elections, Hartford Greens are determined to take the lead.
March 14th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Good to see there will be an organized Green slate.
I want to throw a simple idea out there that i had some time ago. It would be fairly simple and inexpensive to do. All buildings in Downtown Hartford should be required to have rooftop gardens. Rooftop gardens improve the health of cities by absorbing much of the CO2 and other pollutants. They cool the cities and dispense oxygen, an addiction all humans can agree on. I think rooftop gardens could go a long way to help the Hartford asthma problem.
March 14th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Garden or solar power unit, depending whether it’s flat or sloped.
March 14th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
good point. there’s absolutely no reason why Hartford couldn’t pioneer a solar power initiative. Not a lot of shade up there. Imagine: the whole city off the grid!
March 14th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I found this post sort of ironic since you had just outlined what the Green Party was going to consider addressing.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Yeah, i read that too. I was going to post Steve’s article link to My Left Nutmeg, but since they are comment-tsars over there, you have register just to comment. Way to go “left” bloggers! I’m so glad Undercurrents doesn’t do that.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I’m for hooking up all the exercise machines to generators, but I probably won’t propose it for the Green platform.
Seriously, Hartford’s major resource is waste, and we should be trying to find ways to put it to productive use instead of piling it alongside the river. My heart breaks on trash day when I’m forced to look at the incredible volume of refuse that could be reclaimed and gets burned or thrown on the pile instead.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
How about an ordinance of some kind that declares any abandoned building is safe space for people to freely plant gardens in/on/around, whether the space is structurally sound or not?
March 16th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I need some real information. Saw on a bumper sticker GREENS = KINDER AND GENTLER CAPITALISM. How about it? Is this what one can expect if he/she joins the party? Just asking as I can’t really put time and engery into any political party that does not build an effective resistance to the Capitalist system on all levels of government. I am not going to work my butt off or just pull the level because the candidate isn’t a Demon-crat or has cool ideas. Too old and too many battles for that. I’d rather leave a piece of raw liver in the voting booth. Thanks for the information as it is provided.
March 16th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Hey Richard,
Lemme know when you vote. I loves the raw liver, fry it up with onions, mmmmmgood!
Also, it is my considered opinion that if voting could really change things, it would be against the law
March 17th, 2007 at 10:21 am
A political party should be judged according to the quality of its candidates (and incumbents, if it has any). I’d cast a vote for a mayoral candidate pledged to support (and competent to promote) appropriate technology for city buildings, peace studies for Hartford public school students, indoor pollution abatement in city buildings, pressure on the governor to redeploy the state militia out of the war zone, free inner-city public transportation, democratization of local voter registration and elections, restoration of city parks, inner-city prohibitions on motor vehicles, greening of parking lots and vacant lots, universal health care, re-regulation of electric rates, landfill cleanup and waste recycling.
Or you could vote according to what you read on a bumper sticker.
March 19th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Steve,
Thanks for providing me with a bit more information on where the Hartford Greens stand. Of course I don’t vote off a bumper sticker but that sticker got me thinking so I must continue to ask the questions. And please no paternalistic yardstick needs to be used here. All the ideas that you listed are very excellent but in all reality how can or would any of the proposals work unless the very system that keeps them form being a possibility is overthrown? Because the Green Party doesn’t target capitalism which is the cause of the vicious exploitation of workers,the earth and anything else in its way, voting Green is not going to do any more for working people or the poor than voting democrat. Reformers have tried repeatly to achieve such capitalist make-over’s for more than two centuries and have failed. Just how do the Greens of Hartford plan to make their platform work? Are the Greens just that old “spoonful of sugar”? Don’t get me wrong I would love to go out and beat the street for you guys but give me a bit more than pie in the sky. To quote a dear friend of mine “Candidates on the left have a great opportunity to make a powerful contribution toward bringing down a polluted, poisonous system and charting a new and healthy course.” “I fully believe that we must clearly identify capitalism as the problem and educate the people about why. That is the essential reason for leftists to be in the electoral arena at all.” Perhaps if an anti-capitalist stand was taken political chameleons and opportunists who use your base and ballot status to launch careers as democrats would run in the other direction.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Richard,
I don’t think there’s any such thing as an anti-capitalist stand. Bringing down capitalism is much too big and complicated a set of tasks to be summed up in a convenient phrase. I want us to move together directly to specific strategies–regulation, confiscation, taxation, subsidy, enforcement, construction, democratization–and avoid all-but-meaningless philosophical rhetoric.
All of the items I talked about (they’re not a Green platform, but just a few of commitments I think a candidate for office in Hartford should make) are possible steps on the path away from capitalism. But mainly they’re possible solutions to local problems, which is what local government is supposed to do.
As for the Green party, it’s the closest thing we have to a political organization that promotes the public interest. It’s not a movement, but a group of people. Do they all have the same political beliefs? No. Do they share a commitment to government in the public interest? Yes. Same as you.
That’s something to unite around, isn’t it? Government in the public interest eventually works against capitalism anyway. We may not be able to cure the profit motive, but together we can certainly limit its influence. Disunited we fail altogether.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:58 am
“Government in the public interest eventually works against capitalism anyway.”
I’m not necessarily arguing against other points you made, Steve, but I’m wondering what evidence you would give in support of this statement. In what country has “government in the public interest” posed any serious threat to capitalism, ever?
March 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Cuba. Venezuela.
March 21st, 2007 at 4:51 pm
peter, richard et al,
The Green party is a minority party working against the corporate vested interests. A practical way to have an impact on the corporate vampires is to organize and support unions, run local candidates for office and write and take to the streets with our message. We were succesful in Nov as an anti war party. Some of us Greens are combat veterans and have the will and knowledge to resist.
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:03 am
[…] While the Council is making these resolutions, the Hartford Greens met a few days later to discuss possible candidates, a proposed change in their by-laws, and to craft a questionnaire that would find out what the people really would like to see on the agenda. […]