Todd Chretien announces for U.S. Senate

While Todd Chretien is a dedicated and thoughtful activist and a candidate who deserves some consideration, he is not the only anti-war candidate in the race. The Peace and Freedom Party's Marsha Feinland is also a strong anti-war candidate with some statewide name recognition as a candidate against Barbara Boxer.

It seems a shame that P&F and GP can't back each other's candidates or pick and choose races where one party might field a candidate and the other doesn't. And with all due respect to Chretien and the Green Party, their slate so far is mostly male, mostly white. Why not back Feinland and help elect another woman? Why didn't Chretien run against Pelosi instead?

And while Camejo is OK, Janice Jordan of the P&F Party is also a strong candidate for Gov with a track record as an activist for women's rights, prisoner's rights and for freedom for Leonard Peltier. She's based in San Diego so not as known in Bay Area as Camejo but worth supporting.

In the interest of true democracy, and multi-party democracy, the P&F and GP should cooperate to push for inclusion of all ballot-qualified candidates in debates (something Camejo failed to do as a candidate in 2003, when he should have advocated that the P&F candidate be in the debates, rather than making alliances with the sell-out Artiana Huffington [who showed her true colors by dropping the progressive mask and backing the corrupt Gray Davis..]....)

It's also worth remembering that many in the labor movement are pissed that Feinstein voted for CAFTA. But its unlikely labor will back Feinland or Chretien over Feinstein, who has an otherwise pro-labor voting record.
Will Chretien's campaign catch on as an anti-war protest vote? Possibly, and especially if there is no credible Republican candidate against Feinstein. Then there'll be no BS about the 'spoiler' issue.

If only Feinstein would drop out and we could have a debate between the best candidates - Feinland and Chretien - over the real issues facing Cali and the US. (Not to mention an interesting discussion of differing views of socialism and its relevance in the 21st Century)

Isn't Todd Chretien a spokesman for the International Socialists ? If so , and if he hasn't resigned , why no mention of that ? I understand that even among progressives a form of redbaiting does occur , but can you fight redbaiting by pretending you aren't a red ? Please don't misunderstand . I welcome his candidacy and will vote either for him or Marsha Feinland . But this bothers me .

yeah, todd is a trot and the green party is not.

why is it that every time independent radicals raise power and energy that the socialists glom onto it? this has been going on for me since the antiapartheid movement in the 1980s.

no support for private property here or even of revolution when the time is ripe, but this leninist crap of mindless newspaper peddling drones using the green party as their revolutionary vehicle is just bizarre.

the greens are a radical reformist political party that is neither left nor right. we are not leninist nor trotskyite.

that we see two straight (peter camejo) white self selected trotskyites heading our ticket and neither the green party's constituency nor california at large is straight, white, male or trotskyite, this promises to saddle the green party with the failures of the sectarian left.

this is pure substitutionism on the part of the iso aided and abetted by camejo who is still smarting from his 2004 humiliation and lashing out at anyone who challenges him.

where is my socialist repellant when i need it?

no opposition to revolution when it is ripe is what i meant to say.

and why is todd a red but hiding his socialism running as a green?

todd should run in the p&f party primary where he is more at home politically rather than opportunistically merging the iso into the greens.

Wake up, marc. Red-baiting is not going to help us stop Bush's horrible war in Iraq. There is a fine tradition of socialists in this country running for office-- including Eugene Debs. Peter Camejo is a socialist who ran as a green and
was the only 3rd party candidate from the left to ever get into the California governor's race's nationally televised debates.

The ISO does a lot of good work, even if you disagree with some of the things they have to say. They worked very hard for Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo's campaign. They worked very hard to stop Schwarzenegger killing Tookie. Stop and think before you just resort to ad-hominem attacks. McCarthyism is bad enough when it's done by the stooges in the FBI. We don't need redbaiting in the movement!

Look, its 2005 not 1955. Red Baiting was used by those in power to attack a political thought that was, history now shows, aiding and abetting an enemy of the US. Say what you will, but the nation state treats deviance as an infection and uses force against it. The concept of the state, not of any choice the state makes, is the real problem.

Red Baiting of the 1950s had the highest levels of the state and its corporate allies combining to keep people from their jobs, families, freedom and lives for their politics.

Those if us who in the Green Party are not in any way availed of the power of the state. If we affiliate amongst ourselves based on the 10 key values, which include decentralized grassroots democracy, then there is a problem when a trotskyite who has a democratic centralist relationship to a politburo (Center) in Chicago plays substitutionism with the Green Party.

Had the left enjoyed success over the say, oh, past 80 years, then you might have a point. But the left has failed to make traction with americans universally in the interim. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the number of sectarian leftists is dwindling annually, and will hopefully be put out of our misery as the next generation swamps the one that came before me.

The Green Party has broken the mold, with its tradition of "neither left, nor right but forward Green." For a socialist organization that arises out of a tradition of utter failure to make change to use the Green Party as a vehicle for distinctly non-Green politics is disgusting.

In the end, the Soviet Union fortunately no longer exists. The framework upon which Red Baiting existed and was dangerous and powerful is no longer. Reds have no built in immunity against criticism of their politics yet they argue for this by shreiking "red baiting!" every time someone calls them on their shit. It reminds me of a sexist man dismissing a woman who calls him on it as a "bitch."

Indeed, Todd is refusing to run as a socialist even though he is bound by his democratic centralist relationship to the ISO Center. If he is afraid of his own socialism within a Green context, then I get to be afraid of it as well.

Yet reds, leninists, trotskyites all expect some sort of pass on criticism of their politics although the extraordinary circumstances upon which that happened were long ago and relegated to the dustbin of history.

It is time to face the fact that sectarian leftism has failed wherever applied. The Green Party formed in Europe precisely because of the dead end of socialism and as an antidote to its sectarianism and violence.

How can a Green Party tolerate a candidate whose first allegience is not to the 10 Key Values of the Green Party rather to the trots at the ISO?

And what does it mean that Green candidacy is being worked by ISO peons? It reminds me of Chinese prison labor and has no place in the Green Party.

Todd is not running for the P&F ballot line because the lefties have ran that vehicle into the ground. No, the Green Party, which was given energy by non-leftists is viewed as a convenient vessel into which every loser leftie can pour what remains of their cadre and hope to use the brand name created as an antidote to their failures to advance their limited ideology.

-marc

Further, Camejo ran 2 times. The first time, he got 375K or so votes before 50% of the electorate. The second time, after he was in the debates, he got about 100K votes fewer, this time before 60% of an electorate hungry for change.

Camejo has proven himself too unstable to serve as a leader for the Green Party, preferring to use his SWP tactics to try to dominate a decentralized party.

Nader/Camejo was a sham as the voters were not supportive in any way of an independent campaign in 2004. Perhaps this was because ABB was ascendant, perhaps it was because Nader never dealt with 2000 and his role in spoiling.

Nader/Camejo did not work.

Irrespective the work Todd did to support Tookie WIlliams, the state prevailed and he is dead after being tortured during his last 1/2 hour on the gurney.

Support for Tookie did not work.

The left believes that simply because people try something that they've accomplished something. Is it some perverse reading of the labor theory of value? Or is it worshipping disempowerment and protest over empowerment and success?

I don't remember seeing Todd at the Gonzalez campaign and I was in the back office there for 18 hours a day from August to December. We came within 12.5K votes out of 250K of winning that one.

Medea Benjamin's campaign, likewise only got 3% of the vote and she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So Todd has a record of protest and in general of failed protest.

Prop I was not low hanging fruit. It was fruit that had fallen to the ground and rotted. Asking 15,000 San Franciscans to sign an antiwar petition is like shooting fish in a barrel, Any time anything antiwar is put on the ballot, it wins. The difference here was that Todd used the petitions for Prop I as inputs to his campaign. I do not believe that this is legal under SF law.

This is nothing new. Sectarian leftists frequently create fronts to hide their true politics as they are availed of "the knowledge" that the ignorant proles can never know. And as the vanguard, they are on a mission from "no god" to do what they must to implement their sclerotic views.

-marc

It is not Bush's war on Iraq. It is the duopoly's war on Iraq. It is Fienstien's war on Iraq. It is Pelosi's war on Iraq.

Nothing we do will stop that war.

The only thing that will in this racist, classist country is when too many white kids from red states come back in a box.

One is left but to question the sanity of candidates who believe that running quixotic campaigns that are all but invisible to the voters will change anything.

That two straight white trotskyite self selected males top our ticket is embarassing and not representative--all indicative opportunists who are taking advantage of a growing party.

My posting was simply to register my disagreement with a Very open local Socialist not being open about his poliitcal affilation . Aside from everything else it's not going to work because he's spoken publicly too often under his organization's banner . He might actually make himself more vulnerable to redbaiting by giving the impression he is trying to hide his idelogy . But having said that i do not oppose his campaign . I will vote for either him or Marsha Feinland , the Peace and Freedom candidate . I also reject the ''left'' redbaiting by Marc . What's wrong with open anti-capitalist candidates running in the Green primary ? And when some progressive activist says they're ''neither left or right '' that usually means they're moving to the right !

the problem is not chretien's anticapitalism. the green party is not a capitalist party. neither is it a socialist party. there are many radical visions that can flourish under the 10 key values. we are a nonviolent radical reformist party, so there might be contradictions on revolution.

we admittedly set out sights low because many of us are tired of protesting and always losing because the sights were set unrealistically high.

no, the problem for me is that a group that organizes under democratic centralist principles is incongruent with a consensus based party. the idea of a party line is anathema to most greens outside a small core of obvious issues--opposing the death penalty and war, for instance.

in the case of todd and the iso, the democratic centralist thing goes a step farther. since todd's primary committment is to the iso, their 'center' or politburo in chicago is where he gets his primary marching orders. he cannot contradict the center.

how does this individual who is on remote control to a faceless politburo expect to represent the green party and our key values?

now we can expect for an influx of college age iso cadre who will vote whatever party line they're told to. combine that with an increasingly wacked peter camejo and we've got a slew of straight white self selected male trotskyites representing a party that is anything but that.

and my criticisms are not from the left. nor are they from the right. many anarchists do not consider themselves leftists. leftists can't get that because they believe that anyone who shares similar views at this time must come from the left.

the green ideal is neither left nor right but forward green.

chretien and camejo representing the green party looks like we're careening headlong forward into the past.

It seems that the political work the ISO engages in, for the most part is superficial in the sense that the members really dont throw themselves in the campaigns or struggles that they claim to be fostering. It didnt seem to be quite the case with the Tookie campaign, but for the most part, I see them very peripheral to the actual hard work of the struggle and more invested in pushing its papers and literature at the political events that are a product of these struggles. Todd could have a strong campaign against Feinstein, but most will think, "is this leftist full of talk? What does he really have to propose?"

I remember going to a "mass" UFCW meeting (grocery workers) when they were kicking off their contract campaign against Safeway, and Feinstein talked for about an hour. If their was agitation amongst the ranks of these workers, pushing for Todds candidancy and braking with Feinstein, would seriously threaten Feinstein's political base. Most locals are going to endorse her in the Bay Area. The members of these locals have the power to get their leadership to break from her and support Todd, but the left doesnt really have any relationship with this sector. The ISO is included and doesnt really have expierence, training, or an orientation to do this type of work. Which, in my opinion, makes the campaign more of an electoral symbolic move, rather than some "expression" of this or that struggle.

I also agree that some of the anti-leninist hysteria that has been conjured up against the ISO is not any real framework for critiqing Todd's campaign and easily slips into an irrational anti-communist prejudice.

Javier