Bexar Greens
With the “major party” primaries underway, as people go to the polls to vote for their favorite players on the Red and Blue teams, why do so many ignore the other parties? The Green Party of Texas is fielding as many candidates for office as the rest of the United States combined. I’ll skip the primaries this year.
The Green Party has been traditionally skeptical of so-called “Straight-Party” or “Straight-Ticket” voting in general elections. True, while it makes the voting process seem easier, it also makes voters lazy while keeping the two-party system in power. The Green Party isn’t big enough yet to have active chapters in every corner of the massive state of Texas; thus an appeal to voters to fill out the entire ballot & hopefully Go Green in some races.
However, some counties have more Green candidates. I, myself, will VOTE ONLY GREEN from the Presidential to Justice of the Peace. No, there are no “good guys” among the corporate offerings sufficiently compelling for me to take the time to work them in. I will not foreclose the option of voters in Bexar & Harris Counties who have the good fortune to vote Straight Green should they choose to.
Greens in San Antonio and Houston have a more robust vision than to constrain our activity to a routine four-year 3rd Presidential ticket bid–containable and castrated. Among broad outreach already underway, when Occupy took to the streets, we immediately back-burned preconceived electoral agenda and placed ourselves at the disposal of the new movement.
Thanks to the collaboration of Occupiers in Houston & San Antonio, Green Party has helped to enable an Occupy political voice. NOT off in 2014 or 2016, but RIGHT-NOW for the 2012 electoral cycle. Whatcha gonna do in Nov? Vote for corporates against Occupiers? Look at all the Occupy candidates at bexargreens.org.
The corporate parties have a division of labor: Republicans work to deny the vote to as many Americans as possible (i.e. gerrymandering, unreasonable voter ID, calculated confusion of districts at every level). Their Democrat partners exert themselves to deny you any substantive choice (devoting as much attention to lawsuits, spying & false-flag gambits against the tiny Green Party as on their putative “competition” with Republicans).
Jack London wrote a century ago: “There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel.’”
MORE true today than when London wrote in 1906. “Major party” is a misnomer. There are no such parties. Most “precinct chairs” sit empty. Activist orgs like Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, etc. together might field “party loyalists” comparable to the few in the paper shells of the “majors”. The Republican-Democrat primary election machinery, funded by corporations & wedded like retail banking to the government, ARE NOT PARTIES by any conventional definition.
It’s a huge shell-game, run by masters of the short con. And it’s never going to change until YOU begin to vote differently.
COLORS: it’s not about the Presidential–it never was. We’re in Texas, duh? You can mix Green & Blue whatever way you want & not balance out the Red. The winner takes all those electoral votes. In Texas, this year, it’s not a third party, but the Democrat vote that is a “wasted ballot”, accomplishing nothing–nothing at all. You want to make a statement for politics independent of corporate corruption, TEXAS IS THE PLACE, and GREEN IS THE LINE.
–Paul Pipkin lives in San Antonio, Texas and is active with Occupy Bexar and the Bexar County Green Party, standing for Bexar Co. Tax Assessor–Collector
With the “major party” primaries underway, as people go to the polls to vote for their favorite players on the Red and Blue teams, why do so many ignore the other parties? The Green Party of Texas is fielding as many candidates for office as the rest of the United States combined. I’ll skip the primaries this year.
The Green Party has been traditionally skeptical of so-called “Straight-Party” or “Straight-Ticket” voting in general elections. True, while it makes the voting process seem easier, it also makes voters lazy while keeping the two-party system in power. The Green Party isn’t big enough yet to have active chapters in every corner of the massive state of Texas; thus an appeal to voters to fill out the entire ballot & hopefully Go Green in some races.
However, some counties have more Green candidates. I, myself, will VOTE ONLY GREEN from the Presidential to Justice of the Peace. No, there are no “good guys” among the corporate offerings sufficiently compelling for me to take the time to work them in. I will not foreclose the option of voters in Bexar & Harris Counties who have the good fortune to vote Straight Green should they choose to.
Greens in San Antonio and Houston have a more robust vision than to constrain our activity to a routine four-year 3rd Presidential ticket bid–containable and castrated. Among broad outreach already underway, when Occupy took to the streets, we immediately back-burned preconceived electoral agenda and placed ourselves at the disposal of the new movement.
Thanks to the collaboration of Occupiers in Houston & San Antonio, Green Party has helped to enable an Occupy political voice. NOT off in 2014 or 2016, but RIGHT-NOW for the 2012 electoral cycle. Whatcha gonna do in Nov? Vote for corporates against Occupiers? Look at all the Occupy candidates at bexargreens.org.
The corporate parties have a division of labor: Republicans work to deny the vote to as many Americans as possible (i.e. gerrymandering, unreasonable voter ID, calculated confusion of districts at every level). Their Democrat partners exert themselves to deny you any substantive choice (devoting as much attention to lawsuits, spying & false-flag gambits against the tiny Green Party as on their putative “competition” with Republicans).
Jack London wrote a century ago: “There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel.’”
MORE true today than when London wrote in 1906. “Major party” is a misnomer. There are no such parties. Most “precinct chairs” sit empty. Activist orgs like Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, etc. together might field “party loyalists” comparable to the few in the paper shells of the “majors”. The Republican-Democrat primary election machinery, funded by corporations & wedded like retail banking to the government, ARE NOT PARTIES by any conventional definition.
It’s a huge shell-game, run by masters of the short con. And it’s never going to change until YOU begin to vote differently.
COLORS: it’s not about the Presidential–it never was. We’re in Texas, duh? You can mix Green & Blue whatever way you want & not balance out the Red. The winner takes all those electoral votes. In Texas, this year, it’s not a third party, but the Democrat vote that is a “wasted ballot”, accomplishing nothing–nothing at all. You want to make a statement for politics independent of corporate corruption, TEXAS IS THE PLACE, and GREEN IS THE LINE.
–Paul Pipkin lives in San Antonio, Texas and is active with Occupy Bexar and the Bexar County Green Party, standing for Bexar Co. Tax Assessor–Collector
