The Warm Sunny Day of the KI EcoCEnter vs. the Dark Frigid Night of the IPJC

 

The contrast between these two Indianapolis groups couldn’t be starker: on the one hand the KI EcoCenter, a vibrant community meeting place and advocacy/dialogue center in Indianapolis’ Near North Side neighborhood that is multi-racial, regularly schedules interesting events that are open to the public (and attract that public), and actively promotes programs that benefit the Near North Side community and actually empower youth, who make up much of its activist backbone; and on the other hand, the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC), a hoary, moribund, top-down group of mostly septuagenarian and even octogenarian religious pacifists concentrated in a Board of Directors which makes all decisions without allowing anything but the most token participation or input from its “grassroots” members, hosts public events so rarely that they only occur once in a decade (the IPJC sponsored a forum on mental health in February 2001; its next event, aside from regular meetings, was co-sponsored with the local Veterans for Peace and a few others was in August 2012), holds dry-as-dust monthly meetings that are almost farcical, and whose only public face is the eight-page quarterly “newspaper,” the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, which is a disgrace to journalism.  I know—I’ve attended meetings of, participated in, both organizations, and even wrote for the Journal, which never could ever muster what it took to actually be a real newspaper.

Another contrast: the KI EcoCenter actually tries to do what its program says it is about, and succeeds; the IPJC only tries half-heartedly at best to implement its program, and almost never succeeds—and when it does technically succeed, such as in publishing the Journal approximately on time every quarter (when once it published monthly except for the summer issue, which was bimonthly), the ensuing product is so bad it is not to be taken seriously.

In fact, publishing the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal is now the IPJC’s only raison d’être; it long ago gave up serious outreach to the broader Indianapolis community on peace and justice issues, chiefly because it only talked to those who were already committed religious pacifists—no secularists, atheist or agnostics allowed, please; and certainly no one who only opposed certain wars of the U.S. that lacked justification, such as Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan either, please.  If you thought World War II might have been necessary to stop Hitler, or that the Civil War was perhaps the only way to end the plague of slavery, get out now!

And also, be sure to uncritically embrace Martin Luther King and Gandhi; but stop sharply right there, don’t go on to see merit in Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, or Fidel Castro, and don’t even consider that Marxism might have more relevance to today’s problems than pacifist theology!

Ah, but such is the official stance of the IPJC—never stated as bluntly as this, of course, because the IPJC like vagueness in words and action, and would rather engage in a soporific symbolic action that shows just how pure it is, and would never even consider doing something that might upset a good churchman or churchwoman.  With the IPJC in action well represented directly in all its “activity” every Friday afternoon in Indianapolis across from the new federal building—by three or maybe four lonesome pacifists standing on the corner holding Peace signs, and never going beyond that.  And it’s been that way now for well over two decades, as what was once fresh grew moribund and moss-covered due to lack of imagination and fear of “contamination” by those non-religious and non-pacifist, no matter how committed they might be to actually achieving peace with social justice.  But if they wished to do so through action that that was direct and forceful, and not confined merely to symbolic “witnessing,” the dominant religious pacifist claque of mutual admirers made sure they were not welcomed or accepted.

It wasn’t always this way in the IPJC, as there was diversity and ferment in Indianapolis in the 1980s, a willingness to experiment, stretch boundaries and destroy Indianapolis’ image as the place where nothing happened outside of the big Indy 500 race.  But that changed when Jane Haldeman, so devoted a Quaker pacifist she was blind to anything and everything else, gained paramount influence in the organization and quickly turned the IPJC into a rest home for her fellow Quakers and Quaker co-thinkers, with no dissent or difference allowed lest it disturb the Quaker notion of “consensus.”  That “consensus,” enforced by the iron hand of ostracism toward all who thought differently, became the norm among Indianapolis “progressives,” as it naturally fit their already-existing timidity.  And so, from the early 1990s on, interrupted only by a flurry of activity at the new millennium that soon petered out, hidebound religious-oriented “consensus” laid its stifling hand on everything else that might have otherwise emerged.  When a group of feisty young anarchists founded an independent left bookstore, Solidarity Books, the “respectable progressives” moved to stanch it by hook or crook.  A longstanding rumor has it that the anonymous phone call that brought a police raid on the Solidarity Books collective house in search of a nonexistent cache of weapons had been placed by a certain leading member of the IPJC.  This person gets indignant over the accusation, but has never denied it, even privately.  As it was, the Solidarity Books was forced to totally disband by 2005, with its members dispersing in chagrin and disgust, and a youth movement of radical activists never again emerging in Indianapolis until the Occupy movements swept the nation.  From which the old “progressives” were all conspicuous by their absence across the board—socialists, pacifists, labor people, all noticeably absent except for a few token people who never stayed around too long.  Such is the legacy of the IPJC.

By contrast, the KI EcoCenter has only been around since 2005, in contradistinction to the IPJC’s being around since 1986.  In 2009 it founded the 317 Media Café and public space in a former grocery store that abandoned the neighborhood, and continued to build from this ever on.  The Media Café now houses an alternative school that serves more than just “special needs” children, has a regular program menu of community forums, films and even a monthly open mic talent night; in all of which youth play a prominent and self-directing role, not being mere “fronts” for the adults controlling things from behind.  I’ve been to four of the KI EcoCenter’s events to date, and can attest to the enthusiasm and vitality that permeates the Center, and to the high quality of its programs.  Though little-known, the KI EcoCenter represents that positive direction which this veteran activist of peace and social justice movements would like to see permeate Indianapolis.  I discovered it through serendipity, a chance invitation by a friend on Facebook to a forum on community job creation, and once present, was immediately and enthusiastically hooked.  This was the vibrancy I had once briefly seen in Indianapolis in the 1980s, and again, also briefly, in the Solidarity Books collective of the early new millennium.  But the KI EcoCenter has had a staying power now for seven years, and seems to be not only well established, but also having lost none of its vigor over time.  It is just an exciting place to visit, and the earnestness of the Near North Side neighborhood participants, overwhelmingly young and great-majority black, rubs off on me every time I attend a function there.  It is as addicting as heroin, as sweet as chocolate, and far healthier than either: for who would ever have thought that, this far removed from the synergistic 1960s, such movement and energy was still going on!

Each time I’ve visited the EcoCenter I’ve noticed the active participation of two older adults—Paulette, the Director, and M., both appearing to be in their late fifties.  But the vast majority of the other participants are young people from late childhood into their twenties, overwhelmingly black residents of the neighborhood, and they do the key work and run the show.  Paulette and M. guide and encourage, offer lead at times but never dominate, but draw out from the young participants instead.  So when the KI EcoCenter says it is about youth empowerment, it’s not jivin’!  It is a powerful living example of the best in Black Nationalism, a real adherence to and practicing of its motto, “Self-empowerment through self-mastery,” and is the kind of community-focused self-help that Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, or the young Black Power activists of SNCC in the 1960s would see as living embodiments of their social philosophy.  Not that persons of other races don’t participate, or are not encouraged to—quite the opposite.  The KI EcoCenter, situated in a mixed-race neighborhood that is predominantly black, is foremost about the empowerment of the whole community, not just of some within it.  The first time I attended a KI EcoCenter event, a community jobs forum, the four panelists were comprised of two white persons and two black persons, all residents and activists in the Near North Side neighborhood.  And following the showing the presentation of the PBS documentary, “So Goes Janesville,” on the economic devastation and search for development alternatives following the closing of the GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, was one of the most impressive panels I’ve ever seen—one comprised entirely of black youth aged 16, 13, and even as young as 10, all of whom spoke intelligently on the film and ably fielded probing questions from the adults in the audience.  Even the ten-year-old girl displayed knowledge and self-confidence!  The KI Eco Center is truly an exciting find for me, and I am hoping it can serve as a model that will spread to other Indianapolis neighborhoods.  I hope I am indeed seeing the future of positive social justice empowerment there, just as I hope that in the IPJC I see the dying gasps of an all-too-moribund past that lived far, far beyond its usefulness and appropriateness.  (The KI EcoCenter also has a website, www.kiecocenter.org.)

A couple of weeks ago the Fall 2012 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal came out, the first under its new editor, old IPJC hand Carl Rising-Moore; and though I am used by now to seeing dismal issues of this paper, this is the worst issue yet.  Under rising-Moore’s aegis, the Journal shifted from being a forum which provided space for developing local writers to being a compendium of articles already on the Internet, striking a blow both against relevancy and for redundancy.  With a layout designed by another IPJC old hand, Jim Wolfe, it’s also the worst-appearing issue of the Journal yet, with an eye-averting appearance that’s as attractive and enticing as the prospect of sitting in the hot August sun watching paint dry!  Cronyism dominated the editorial selections by Rising-Moore, who posted two pieces by Jim Wolfe, in addition to having Wolfe do the layout—for which he also received credit.  Both the Wolfe pieces were silly: there was a sentimental poem about his wife, and a horrible article about gender and diversity that begins with a description of Jim Wolfe actually teaching his university class on Gender Day dressed up drag in traditional woman’s garb and mincing like a cartoon caricature of that “traditional” woman.  If I had been in Wolfe’s class as a student when he pulled such a shenanigan, I would’ve walked out in disgust and headed immediately to his department chairman’s office insistently demanding he be fired!  For some reason Jim Wolfe is proud of such a gross display of conduct unbecoming a true university professor (Wolfe regularly teaches at a local university).

Another bad article by a local author in the Journal is Ed Towne’s on guns in Indianapolis, which aside from relating a shooting incident in Indianapolis that demonstrates more stupidity than gun violence—a man actually attempted an armed robbery at gunpoint of Don’s Guns!—had no other local content whatsoever, just generalities on guns and gun control of a generic nature.  Except for one glaring error—Towne’s article has George Zimmerman fatally shooting Trayvon Martin in Indianapolis, not in Sanford, Florida, where this nationally-notorious shooting actually occurred!  Why Rising-Moore or someone else who was putting together the issue didn’t notice this blatant typo is beyond me; or perhaps it’s not—the Journal has always displayed such troubling unprofessionalism that it’s regularly referred to (and all these are comments I’ve actually received concerning the Journal) as “lame,” a “boring rag” and “looks like middle school.”

Despite my active career as a freelance writer who regularly publishes at the national level, Carl Rising-Moore has seen fit to bar me permanently from contributing to the Journal because an article I submitted was an alleged “personal attack” on one of his cronies, local Veterans for Peace President Ken Barger.  But of course, given his sanctimonious pacifism, Rising-Moore can’t just turn down a submission, he has to personalize my very submitting of the article in the first place—a sure-fire demonstration of personal pique triumphing over any notion of professionalism. So bad it’s even worse than amateurishness—it’s downright childish!  But again, that’s the IPJC and the way it actually is.  As for my “personal attack,” what I actually wrote was a scathing critique not of Barger himself, but of his truly naïve and childish notion of the “peaceful society” that was published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Journal—where somehow Barger’s idea of the “peaceful society” is akin to that of AT&T or a credit card company; i.e., one of compulsory arbitration to “benefit all parties concerned…where protest is not even needed[.]”  Indeed!  Well, I’ll let the reader of “Politically Incorrect Leftist” judge for himself whether I’ve personally attacked Barger or merely his ideas.  The piece in question, “The ‘Peaceful Society’ and Social Reality” is posted as another blog entry directly below this one.

The “Peaceful Society” and Social Reality

This entry was originally submitted to the new editor of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, Carl Rising-Moore, who not only rejected it but called it a “personal attack” on Indianapolis Veterans for Peace President Ken Barger, barred me from ever writing for the Journal under his watch, and said further that he would never, ever, answer an e-mail from me!  Geez, Carl!  A really professional editor would’ve written back that the piece was simply not deemed acceptable for publication, and left it at that.  But of course, Carl Rising-Moore is not a professional editor, nor even anyone with extensive editing or writing experience.  He’s written perhaps two or three articles for the Journal in the last couple of years, all of them accepted for publication because the editors in charge were all his personal friends and fellow members of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC) Board; to say the relationship was incestuous and self-serving from the beginning might be a severe understatement!  But I will let the reader judge for him/herself whether I am personally attacking Barger, or merely sharply critiquing a horribly bad notion of a “peaceful society” that Barger developed and published as “What is a Peaceful Society?” in the Summer 2012 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal.   

 

Ken Barger, President of the Indianapolis Veterans for Peace, wrote in the lead article of the Summer 2012 Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal the following on what a “peaceful society” supposedly is:

What kind of society automatically looks for solutions to disagreements and conflicts that benefit all parties concerned…where protest is not even needed? [Emphasis added; otherwise, text is as originally written.]

 

Only a pacifist utopia would fit that bill, and it will never be realized.  Won’t be realized because of what Karl Marx, simply noting and profoundly elaborating on what had already been observed by others going back to Adam Smith and even before, already knew and thoroughly demonstrated—that there was (and still is) an irreconcilable class conflict between the workers (those who actually produce the goods and services that constitute societal wealth, who constitute the vast majority of us) and the capitalists (the tiny minority who expropriate those goods and services to themselves for sale for profit because of “ownership of the means of production”), with the workers given only a measly portion of this wealth through wages.   As to “benefit” to “all parties concerned,” the Preamble to the Industrial Workers of the World (the famed IWW) Constitution said it succinctly:  “The working class and the employer class have nothing in common.”

Barger is back to the Book of Isaiah, where “the lion shall lie down with the lamb;” but such lying down, let’s admit realistically, won’t prevent the lamb from becoming the lion’s dinner!  Yet, according to Barger, we can create a world of “solutions to disagreements and conflicts” where Occupy activists will sit at the table and politely discuss matters of disagreement with Wall Street bankers;  protestors from the left can amicably work things out with Tea Partiers; unemployed African Americans and low-wage Hispanics can be considered equals by John Boehner and Eric Cantor; and hard-pressed union members and other workers, not to mention the unemployed, can talk things over with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and agree to disagree on matters of “disagreement and conflict” such as Right to Work, the 25% cut in unemployment benefits, and defunding Planned Parenthood! [Daniels signed all the above into law.]

This could go even further.  Gay rights activists and feminist women, not to mention all women who use birth control or even had abortions, can come to mutual agreement with the Catholic bishops!  So, of course, can the victims of priest-pedophilia; and of course, in the spirit of “Christian charity” the victims of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual predation will all say to him, “That’s alright, Jerry, it’s all over now.  Forget it.”!!!

As for a “society where protest is not even needed,” that’s just what the Southern crackers told Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights marchers and sit-downers:  “protest isn’t needed” to resolve the matter of race and “state’s rights” because the status quo is just fine!  The Republicans said the same thing to Occupy Wall Street, and such a luminary as Herman Cain, “successful” philanderer as well as successful businessman, even said to Occupy Wall Streeters, don’t protest, “take a bath” and “get a job” instead!

All this that Barger envisions as the “peaceful society” flows so nicely from pacifist theology, all those nice nostrums of “harmony” that Quakers, Brethren and Mennonites so eloquently preach!  Only trouble is, pacifism doesn’t work so well.  Just ask the veterans of World War II, who had to fight Hitler for years in fierce combat because all those pacifist actions (or rather, inactions), from not responding to Nazi Germany’s building up its military all the way up to Neville Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler at Munich, only emboldened, not mollified or pacified, the Führer.  At least 217 Civil Rights workers were killed by the racists during the “nonviolent” attempt to end segregation and Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s.  From India to Sharpeville in South Africa, nonviolent protestors were mowed down by the forces of the repressive state.  That nonviolent action gained what it did is a testimony to the firmness, courage and strength of the nonviolent activists, not to some supposed benevolence or “warming of the heart” of the rulers and their satraps in the state apparatus.  (See in particular on this George Fish’s “Slandering Nonviolence” in New Politics online, http://newpol.org/node/510, an updated version of the article that originally appeared in the October 2008 Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal.)

What Ken Barger, whether he’s religious or not, denotes so well above is really that “heart of a heartless world” nature of religion that was acutely recognized by—yes, none other than Karl Marx himself!  (In “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.”)  But the same Marx who noted this also noted that this “heart of a heartless world” was also the “opium of the people,” that it comforted and quieted the oppressed, same as opium, with soporific dreams that had nothing to do with reality, but only offered temporary escape from it.  Which is precisely the rub when it comes to Ken Barger’s vision of the “peaceful society”: it is just too unsubstantial to be real, and thus is not realizable, no matter how hard we may try.

That was brought out forcefully in Fran Quigley’s speech on “What Is the Peaceful Society?” of August 4, 2012.  Quigley, Clinical Professor of Law at the Health & Human Rights Clinic, Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Indiana University-Indianapolis, delivered his speech at an event co-sponsored by the IPJC and Veterans for Peace for which Barger’s article was an advertisement and a preface.  I originally attended this event with trepidation; but to my joyous surprise, Quigley’s speech was not only far, far better than Barger’s article, it was also noteworthy and memorable in itself, and made for an enlightening evening. Quigley took John Lennon’s song “Imagine” as his starting point in defining what a “peaceful society” is, and went through the song line by line drawing parallels between Lennon’s imagery and the actual criteria for such a society. Further, Quigley pointedly noted that all we would regard as de rigueur for a “peaceful society”—an end to racial and gender discrimination, equal rights to voting and political participation, rights for labor—came not through the end of protest, but through protest itself, because of, as a result of, protest. So that achieving a modicum of the “peaceful society” in the first place belies the very notion of Barger’s “protest not even needed” from the beginning—though the proponents of the status quo would agree with Barger’s notion that “protest”was indeed “not…needed”! In other words, the social gains needed for the “peaceful society” all had to be fought for. Further, as was directly said by Fran Quigley, “There is no peaceful society without economic justice!” Which is to say, there is no possibility of a“peaceful society” without overthrowing, drastically changing, the status quo of oppression, which has certain strong supporters with power, for oppression is to their advantage. If this seems to be Marx’s idea of the ruling class, so be it; history and the present have taught us well that that is the social, political and economic reality. The great 19^th Century abolitionist and supporter of women’s suffrage (who lived in a time when both slavery and the denial of the right to vote to women were the “law of the land”in the U.S.), Frederick Douglass, put it definitively: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will.” But demands must be realized—and that happens only through the process of confronting power, i.e., struggle. Struggle in which nonviolence can be an effective tool in the arsenal of those who challenge such power, but struggle nonetheless. It moves beyond simply “Speaking truth to power” to say, “The social truth demands we take power from you, supporters and satraps of the oppressive status quo.” 

The way to the "peaceful society" is through empowerment of the oppressed, through the realization of tehir demands for justice, equality and self-determination.  Not through vision alone, but through praxis that bears fruit, gives positive results, makes the world more just, more equal, more empowering of the disempowered.  Perhaps an endless process, but ever and always, a necessary one. 

 

Conundrums for the Left in the 2012 Elections--the Presidential Vote

“American exceptionalism” is a bad word on the left, but it is the reality—in many ways the U.S. is different from Europe, and nowhere does that difference show up than in the political systems. Unlike European (and Canadian, Israeli) parliamentary systems, there is no coalition building in U.S. politics—it’s winner-take-all, and losers or also-rans are just not recognized; in fact, they can be ignored when it is not convenient to recognize them, even if they represent 49% of the vote. Also, thanks to the “genius” of the Founding Fathers, who feared direct democracy, there is the Electoral College to consider, because the Electoral College actually elects the President, not the voting public. The Bush-Gore contest of 2000 made this abundantly clear: while Al Gore defeated George W. Bush by 543,895 votes, with 50,999,897 voters, or 48.38% of the total electorate, casting votes for him, to 50,456,002 voters, or 47.87% of the electorate, casting votes for George W. Bush, Bush won the Presidency because he was awarded the disputed Florida Electoral College votes, giving him 277 Electoral College votes to Gore’s 266. And, as we know from his record in office, George W. Bush paid no mind to the 48.38% of the electorate that wanted Gore instead of Bush; and certainly not to the 2,882,955 voters, or 2.74% of the electorate, who voted for Ralph Nader, showing clearly that they wanted neither Bush nor Gore. That’s the nice thing about winner-take-all for the winner—you can absolutely ignore your opposition and essentially do whatever you can get away with, and smirk at those who protest, “Tough beanies, losers!”

Ralph Nader, of course, was sullied as a “spoiler,” and not just by Gore-supporting Democrats and liberals, but by elements of the left also. They claimed that the Nader vote put Bush in office because, had not been for Nader, the 2.74% of the electorate that voted for him would’ve voted for Gore, thus clearly giving Gore the Electoral College votes he needed. Of course this ignores that at least some of those who voted for Nader might not have voted at all in 2000, but rationalizations and recriminations have no room for logical subtleties. I voted for Nader in 2000 because I had no Gorillusions, and certainly not because I wanted to see George W. Bush in office. Nader addressed well the “spoiler” issue in an interview then on CNN, dismissing it with “Only Al Gore can defeat Al Gore.” If anything, Nader might’ve gained votes for Gore because, with a sharp-tongued opposition to his left, Al Gore got bolder on the campaign trail than he’d been initially. I received the same criticism from some labor Democrats who claimed that I’d really voted for Reagan when I told them I voted for Barry Commoner of the Citizens Party in 1980. No, not so in either case—I voted for Barry Commoner in 1980 because I wanted to support the politics and platform of Barry Commoner, and the same with voting for Nader in 2000. I didn’t want to buy into the “lesser evil trap” in either election.

But in looking back on it, while realizing that Al Gore would not have been either an effective President, as such things go, or a consistent champion of progressive politics and truly-needed social change, he certainly would’ve been better than George W. Bush, and perhaps better for the left as well had he won the Presidency. George W. Bush’s harshly rightist policies and practices in office did not galvanize the broad left—ranging from those mildly left of center to committed radical socialists—into sustained protest, resistance and concerted action; rather, it demoralized vastly, and drove many to eschew independent and third-party politics altogether and always vote for the Democrat as the only “realistic” alternative. And actively urge others to do so as well.

In 2004 I formally voted for John Kerry; but actually I didn’t vote for Kerry, I voted against Bush. In Indiana where I live, neither Nader nor the Green Party made it onto the ballot, and the only way to cast any kind of third-party protest vote was to go through the onerous process of casting a write-in vote for the Socialist Party candidate, a process which, at least in Indiana, meant filling out paper ballots for all races up for grabs, even if one leaves them blank—one just had to go through all those pieces of paper. In 2008 I voted for Obama, not because I had any particular Obamillusions, but mainly because at the time he was an unknown quantity who spoke well and seemed to be saying, albeit vaguely, all the right things; also because, like many Americans, I was scared to death of John McCain and especially of Sarah Palin, having that queasy feeling in my stomach that, because of McCain’s advanced age, I might wake up some morning and have President Palin to contend with! (Should this have come to pass I would’ve much preferred President Tina Fey—a clear case where the copy was far superior to the original.) Further, and once again, there was no Nader or Green Party candidate on the ballot, due to Indiana’s ballot access laws being among the most restrictive in the nation. As for the Socialist Party write-in option, the numbers tell the general futility of that—in 2008 the Socialist Party candidate got a total of 12 votes statewide.

Now it’s 2012, and I have even fewer Obamillusions than I had in 2008. I need not dwell on all the flip-flops, rotten compromises, broken promises, and even dangerous moves Obama has made since he became President—just pointing out his support of NDAA, use of lethal drones in Pakistan, compiling a “hit list” of persons targeted for assassination, advancing no serious jobs or economic recovery program, and the refusal to even consider single-payer in the healthcare debate will suffice. As has now long been pointed out, Obama, far from being even a liberal, is a pro-business centrist who clearly supports Pax Americana and regards the Wall Street crooks and big business CEOs as “savvy businessmen” (as he once stated) whom he wants on his team; and of course, surrounding himself with Wall Street types, Clintonites and Democratic Party flacks as advisors, key aides, and cabinet members while driving out, or forcing out, all those of a more progressive bent who originally came on board. But on the positive side, such as it is, he is ending active US military presence in Iraq and has set a deadline for US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And though there is strong and concerted opposition to Obama’s policies from the left, the overwhelming opposition comes from the right, especially from the hard right, and has often been overtly racist in character.

Mitt Romney’s opposition to Obama is not at all based on Obamacare not going far enough (though it is clearly modeled on the healthcare program Romney supported as “moderate” Governor of Massachusetts), or because Romney sees the NDAA as a threat to civil liberties, or because he opposes drone warfare or official assassination lists as fundamentally unethical and disregarding of innocent lives—no, Romney’s stated opposition to Obama’s policies is all from the hard right, as his campaign rhetoric, overt appeals to the Tea Party, and choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate have amply shown. Further, very similar arguments apply to Democrats in House of Representatives and Senate races against Tea Party-supported Republicans (which is, all Republicans).

Simply put, while Obama and almost all Democrats are bad, very bad, the Republicans are worse, even much, much worse. And that’s a good part of the rub in terms of how leftists should vote in the 2012 elections, and whether it’s better, simply as a tactical measure that has some chance of effectiveness, to hold one’s nose and vote for Obama or other Democrats; or whether it’s better as a matter of principle to vote for Jill Stein and the Green Party, or Rocky Anderson and the Justice Party, or Roseanne Barr and the Peace and Freedom Party, or the Socialist Party, as possible. (Jill Stein, Presidential candidate of the Green Party, is on all state ballots except Oklahoma’s, but only as a write-in in Indiana and Georgia; the Justice Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Socialist Party are on even fewer state ballots, though they may be write-in options wherever not formally listed.)

Socialists have stated it well both ways: Eugene Debs said famously, “Better to vote for what you want and not to get it than to vote for what you don’t want and to get it;” while Greg King, union activist in SEIU Local 888 and New Politics online contributor, said to me in an e-mail on October 24, “Those Democrats aren't much better than the Republicans in Indiana or nationally, but the Republicans, especially the Tea Party aligned ones, are SO bad that it's worth voting for the Democrats.” (King’s remarks were part of a comment on an article I’d written for the online Examiner.com newspaper, “The Tea Party and the 2102 Indiana elections,” where conservative Democratic candidates for Governor and Senator are running against openly Tea Party-backed Republicans, http://www.examiner.com/article/the-tea-party-and-the-2012-indiana-elections?cid=db_articles.)

Further, it isn’t only the left that has third-party movements attempting to appeal to those disaffected with both the Democrats and the Republicans. The Libertarians, and further right that the Libertarians (yes, it is possible), the Constitution Party, as well as a gaggle of openly racist and neo-Nazi splinter parties, are all trying to build opposition parties of the right that oppose the Republican Party, the right’s traditional home.

There is also the practical matter that no third party or independent Presidential electoral challenge since early in the 20th Century has ever broken through the magic 3% barrier, i.e., getting 3% or more of the total national vote; most of the time it’s been less than 2% and often less than 1%. That was true of Nader in 2000, as noted above with 2.74% of the vote, and even the actively-organized and widely-publicized run of Henry Wallace as the Progressive Party’s Presidential candidate in 1948, which garnered 2.4% of the vote—same percentage of the vote as the segregationist States Rights Party Presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, garnered that year, but with fewer votes than the States Rights Party. The last third party to become a major party in the US was the Republican Party in 1860, but only because the two major opposition parties in the traditionally two-party American system, the Whigs and the Democrats, had either disintegrated (Whigs) or split (Democrats, with one Presidential candidate in the North, and another in the South), due to the highly divisive issue of slavery. Another aspect of that much-maligned on the left, but factually true, “American exceptionalism.”

As it is, the case on the left for voting for Obama has been compellingly, but not fully convincingly, advanced in three important articles seen by many who consider themselves left-of-center. The most forcefully pro-Obama one was by Tom Hayden, September 4’s “Saving Obama, Saving Ourselves,” http://tomhayden.com/elections/saving-obama-saving-ourselves.html; less sanguine, but still urging a vote for Obama from the left, were Achy Obejas’ “Voting Obama with no illusions” in the November 2012 In These Times (not available online until November 5) and Daniel Ellsberg’s October 18 “Progressives: In Swing States, Vote for Obama,” http://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/534-progressives-in-swing-states-vote-for-obama, also reprinted in the Huffington Post and carried by the left news listserve Portside. All three articles raised the specter of a Romney/Ryan victory as a tremendous setback for the left and enshrinement in practice of far right policies: a refrain of my argument stated above, that while Obama may be bad, Romney would be far worse. Hayden further brings up an interesting point for the overwhelmingly white anti-Obama left to consider, that persons of color, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, are for Obama by margins of 70% or greater. These are not arguments easily slighted, especially in our highly polarized winner-take-all, damn-all-those-who-didn’t-vote-for –us American political system we of the left face in 2012, and will face beyond 2012.

 And while it is true that there is little difference of substance between the Democrats and Republicans, it is sheer hyperbole to say there is no difference, especially given the open support of the Tea Party and corporate money for the Republicans; and it is accurate to say that, on all issues of concern to the left, while the Democrats usually waffle and often strongly disappoint, the Republicans advance a clear far right political and social agenda on all these issues, from civil liberties to foreign policy, economic and jobs issues to gay and women’s rights, that we of the left can consider truly dangerous, especially if enacted. And also, that too many of the anti-Obama left not only cavalierly dismiss the threat of Romney and the Tea Party-backed Republicans, they actually portray Obama as somehow worse than Romney, a greater danger to the left and to meaningful progressive social change than Romney. This smacks me as indulging in a blind ultraleftism reminiscent of Germany in 1932, when the Communist Party denounced the Social-Democrats as “social fascists” worse than the Nazis, were openly dismissive of Hitler and the Nazis as a mere flash in the pan, and advanced as their chief political slogan, “After Hitler, our turn!”

No, not after George W. Bush can we of the left categorically say there is no real threat from a corporate-supported hard right in public office; and we certainly can’t say that in light of the deadlock imposed on all progressive legislation and political appointments, no matter how tepid or unsatisfactory, by the victory of Tea Party-backed House Republicans in 2010. I don’t much like the slogan advanced for years by the Communist Party, “Defeat the ultraright,” and the strategy flowing from that, elect Democrats no matter what they are; yet I can’t categorically dismiss it either. There is some realism embodied in it, especially in view of the US’s winner-take-all political system and, in terms of the Presidency, the paramount role of the Electoral College, not the popular vote, in determining who becomes President.

Still, I can’t say that definitely rules out voting for third-party candidates of the left in protest, even though, as a matter of practicality, voting for them will have no discernible political impact in the short term. (Though it might serve as a base from which to launch an independent left electoral movement at a later date, if the left can reach out effectively to all those disaffected who voted for left third-party candidates.) But when I raised the question of who I would vote for in 2012, saying I might hold my nose and vote for Obama, or I might vote for Jill Stein as a write-in, I was excoriated by one Ed Griffith of the New Progressive Alliance, a pro-third party of the left group that does consider Obama a greater threat than Romney and talks only of the Democratic and Republican “uniparty.” Griffith, with whom I had become friends due to his support of my short-lived independent candidacy for Lt. Governor in Indiana (more on that in Part II), turned viciously against me after I’d posted an anti-Romney (but not pro-Obama) video on Facebook excoriating Bain Capital’s role in the outsourcing of jobs from a business in Freeport, Illinois to China. Griffith wrote me this final livid e-mail:

You have chosen to openly support evil and the very people who are oppressing you. You may not have the mental capacity to chose, but I am through making excuses for you. I believe we all have free will and you have made the cowardly choice to support evil even though it goes against your interest. The blood of all the innocents that Obama is killing in his many wars is on your hands. No relationship with you is possible. I will ignore all future communication.

New Politics online editor Stephen Shalom commented trenchantly on Griffith’s vitriol and its political import, "I guess Ed G. has just broken off all communication with 99% of the American population: a real good strategy for achieving social change!" Because on November 7, no matter what the outcome, we of the left will need to talk to those at the grassroots who supported Obama if we are serious about building a significant third-party electoral force. Because on November 7 we are going to wake up either to a re-elected President Obama, or a President-elect Romney, period, and not even remotely to a President-elect Stein, or a President-elect Anderson, or a President-elect Barr, or the Socialist Party nonentity as President-elect—and that alone will impact what we of the left do, and can do, for at least the next four years.

I still haven’t decided who I am going to vote for as President on November 6: whether it will be reluctantly for Obama; whether it will be futilely for Jill Stein, who advocates what I really believe in; or whether I will just ignore the Presidential race entirely here in a state that is considered a shoo-in for Romney; nor does my one vote make much difference in Indiana or nationally. So all I would advise my fellow leftists is simply and rather vacuously, “Vote whatever you think is best.” But I do know that the left is going to have to do more than dabble inconsistently in electoral politics, as it is doing now and had done for decades, if it wishes to be a serious political force; and that if serious independent left electoral third parties are to be built, they will have to be truly grassroots-based and be able to command considerable support and be able to actually win, or have a realistic chance of winning, at least some elections, even if at present only at the local level (not even statewide, because presently that simply is not possible, despite the visible, yet small, presence of the Peace and Freedom Party in California). I will be addressing how to seriously build left third-party electoral movements in a later post.