Below is a substantial statement sent out by the Green Party's presidential campaign Monday, November 9th, looking at the results of the election and proposing directions for Green and general left organizing over the next four years. Apparently the NC party has again lost its ballot access, meaning time, effort, and resources will again have to be spent to get Green candidates on to the ballot in future elections (where the media can then try to ignore them), rather than focusing on getting Green candidates elected. If the Democrats regain control of the legislature they might try to make the rules for getting on the ballot more onerous (I think it was under the Republicans that the requirements were reduced). The statement mentions the need for a dues-paying mass party, and the North Carolina Green Party uses this model, though members still seem "isolated" (where is the Triangle branch?) and the party could do more between and beyond elections. This statement is similar to the shorter press release posted on their campaign website November 7th: howiehawkins.us/release-hawkins-and-walker-react-to-trumps-defeat/
"We want to express our deepest thanks to all who supported our campaign through a particularly difficult year for Greens and independent socialists. Your encouragement gave us the strength and resolve to give the campaign our all.
We’re not stopping. We are continuing to the fight for our program, to organize our grassroots political base, and to build cooperation across the independent green and socialist left. We have filed for the next election cycle as Howie Hawkins For Our Future so we can continue to raise and spend money on this political organizing.
We invite you to keep working with us.
We are happy to say good riddance to Trump. But we also know that Biden has no solutions. As he said to billionaire donors at a high rollers fundraiser, “Nothing would fundamentally change.”
We know that a lot has to fundamentally change to resolve the life-or-death problems of climate, poverty, racism, and nuclear war. We are running out of time. Real solutions can’t wait!
So we are continuing to speak out and organize to advance our policy demands, to strengthen local parties, to secure state ballot lines, and to help elect thousands to local offices and, on that foundation, to state legislatures and the House of Representatives.
We have just begun to organize and we want you with us in this fight.
What Happened?
This election was simply a referendum on Trump. Biden was Not-Trump, nothing more.
The Green campaign was blanked out in the national corporate media and most of the progressive media. The Green ticket came in fourth again nationally, although our vote was substantially down from 2016. The Green Party was on 30 state ballots, down from 45 in 2015, due to the difficulties of petitioning during Covid-19 pandemic, a competitive primary that delayed petitioning before the nominating convention, and aggressive ballot petition challenges by the Democratic Party. If votes per dollar were the measure, we won in a landslide at around $1.25 per vote compared to over $13 per vote for Biden.
We must face the fact that we largely fell short in our two primary campaign goals.
One goal was to advance our policy demands, including a full-strength Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and ending the endless wars.
Polling shows these policy demands have majority support. Trump and Biden opposed them. Yet the media excluded us.
However, we were able to reach millions through social media, especially young people who are fighting for their futures and want climate, racial, and economic justice – now!
Our second goal was to expand ballot access for the Green Party. Our vote was too low in every state where it might have gained or extended our ballot status. We lost our hard-won ballot status in states like New Mexico, New York, and North Carolina. The Green Party still retains ballot status in many states by other criteria and we plan to help state parties secure ballot access in every state in the next few years.
We should also recognize that the progressive Democrats got clobbered, too – or more accurately, clobbered themselves. Once the corporate Democrats closed ranks with Biden to defeat Bernie Sanders, the progressive Democrats lined up behind Biden without making any policy demands. Their prominent personalities focused on a public smear campaign against the Greens as “spoilers” instead of advancing a progressive agenda. They now have little if any political leverage with the Biden administration. The corporate Democrats are already blaming progressive Democrats for supposedly making the presidential election too close and for the loss of some US Senate races.
The good news is to be found in many local Green campaigns. Emmanuel Estrada was elected mayor of Baldwin Park in east Los Angeles. Franca Mueller Paz finished second with 35% for Baltimore city council, which has been an all-Democratic one-party dictatorship for nearly 80 years. Lisa Savage’s 4% for a Maine US Senate seat in a close race was highlighted her widely appreciated presentation of a positive program in televised debates in contrast to the sour negative sniping by the major party candidates. We had over 200 Green candidates this year and at least 10 won their elections.
What’s Next?
These local campaigns tell us what we need to do next. We need to go back to the Green Party’s roots in organizing local party chapters, leading issue campaigns in our communities, and electing people to local office. We need to rebuild the Green Party from the bottom up.
We want to help local parties get better organized and capable of leading issue campaigns and electing thousands as we go into the 2020s to local office, and, on that foundation, to state legislatures and the House.
We want to help state parties recover or gain ballot lines, starting next year, so our local candidates can more easily get on the ballot and our 2024 presidential campaign will be on the ballot in all 50 states.
We want to keep pushing our program in the social movements – the ecosocialist Green New Deal, the Economic Bill of Rights to end poverty and economic insecurity, community control of the police, peace initiatives, and voting rights and pro-democracy reforms, including ranked-choice voting and proportional representation.
We have low expectations that any significant progressive reforms can be won under a Biden administration. Biden promises a national unity administration, with Republicans in the cabinet and an emphasis on working across the aisle with Republicans in Congress.
A Covid relief package brokered with Republicans in Congress is likely to be crumbs for working people and tax breaks and subsides for the super-rich and the giant corporations. Their bipartisan trickle-down theory assumes the rich will invest this corporate welfare in the real economy to create jobs when the reality is they will invest most of it in financial assets – stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate – which won’t trickle down to the rest of us as living-wage jobs.
The next few years will be a time for us to build popular support for our state and national policy demands and to build a grassroots party power base that can conduct effective state and national issue and electoral campaigns.
We think it is time for the Green Party to re-organize itself as a dues-paying mass-membership party rooted in strong local party chapters. We must face the fact that the Green Party’s 20-year experiment as a national party organized as a federation of state ballot lines has failed. The current Green base largely consists of isolated party registrants and supporters who are not organized into local party chapters or into Green issue and electoral campaigns. The party has not had the funding to provide support staff for effective party field organizing, public communications, and issue and electoral campaigns.
We will also continue to encourage solidarity and cooperation among Green and independent socialist groups in building a major party of the left in US politics. None of us is big enough to be the major party. All of us should work together to build that party.
We hope will you to stay supportive and engaged in our organizing and activities.
We are determined, not defeated.
In solidarity,
Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker"
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