Green Party Watch

Modern Times Magazine has an interesting piece out on third parties in the US, focusing on the Green Party, the Constitution Party and the Libertarians. It is a nice overview of the challenges of a third party in the US political system, and the strategies that these three parties are taking. Green Party (US) Executive Director Brent McMillan is quoted throughout. Read the entire thing here, but here are some excerpts:

The Green Party is similarly bent on winning elections, influencing political power, and building its infrastructure. “Our long-term goal here is to win elections. Last year we won about 40 percent of our municipal elections. We obviously struggle at this point with some of the larger races. In the long haul, hopefully, we want to start winning those races,” McMillan said.

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“We have to get corporate money out of these elections,” McMillan said. “We clearly oppose this legal fiction of corporate personhood. The 14th Amendment was supposed to be used for the repatriation of the slaves (via incorporation of its Due Process clause to the U.S. Bill of Rights); now it’s being used to justify corporate personhood.”

Further, McMillan said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is essentially acting as a political action committee and has become so powerful toward that end that they don’t even need the Republican or Democratic national conventions to push their well-heeled agenda.

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“We need to stop thinking of this as a left-right or liberal-conservative battle,” McMillan said. “If you’re pro-democracy then you need to be opposed to the current two-party system that we have. Those parties are controlled or heavily influenced by the multinational corporations. So vote third party. If not the Greens, then check out one of the other third parties. Otherwise we’re done as a democracy or a republic. We’re done if we don’t mount an effective challenge to that in our lifetime.”