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Every state is a battleground
Howie Hawkins' Response to "An Open Letter to the Green Party About 2020 Election Strategy"

Hawkins, Howie
http://solidarity-us.org/every-state-is-a-battleground/

Publisher:  Solidarity
Date Written:  27/02/2020
Year Published:  2020  
Resource Type:  Article

It is condescending and disrespectful to say that Greens are political dilettantes who cast votes just to feel good. We vote to advance a program of system change. We don't waste our votes affirming Democrats like Clinton who personified the elite consensus for the neoliberal economics and neoconservative imperialism that has given us unabated global warming, growing economic insecurity, and endless wars.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The climate crisis is a prime reason why Greens don’t support Democrats. The last Democratic administration’s “all of the above” energy policy was a euphemism for fracking the hell out of the country. Obama still brags about how the US became the world’s largest oil and gas producer under his administration. Clinton as Secretary of State promoted fracking globally. She had her delegates to the Democratic Platform Committee vote against all the climate policies proposed by Bill McKibben on behalf of the Sanders campaign. The one Sanders plank that was adopted was later reversed by the Democratic National Committee in August 2018 when it re-committed the party to taking fossil fuel industry money and went back on the record for the “all of the above” energy policy, the language that Sanders and McKibben got removed from the 2016 Democratic platform. Trump calls climate change a hoax, but the Democrats act as if it is a hoax.

The signers continue, saying “Real solutions require Trump out of office. Real solutions will become far more probable with Sanders or Warren in office. And real solutions will become somewhat more probable even with the likes of Biden in office.”

Yes, let's be realistic. The Democrats are not going to bring us Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, deep cuts in the war budget, nuclear disarmament initiatives, or a national popular vote for president with ranked-choice voting.

...

Green New Deal? The Democrats have already killed this signature issue of the Green Party over the last decade. They took the brand and diluted the content. The non-binding resolution for a Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) eliminated the crucial ban on fracking and new fossil fuel infrastructure. It deleted the phase-out of nuclear power and the deep cuts in military spending to help fund the Green New Deal. It extended the deadline for zero greenhouse gas emissions by 20 years, from 2030 to 2050. Even that non-binding, watered-down Green New Deal went nowhere in the House, where the Democratic leadership won’t bring it up for a vote.

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