Labor Greens to Meet

We are the Labor Greens. Some of us have been in the Green Party for some time; others have been attracted by recent local organizing or by the presidential campaign of Ralph Nader. To be a little presumptuous, we think we bring a perspective to the Green Party that may serve it well.

Witness the recent and current backlash against our efforts in the last election cycle. Corporate power dominates the two major parties and will not abide any challenge to its monopoly. Well, we have some experience with resisting corporate power. While many have been attracted to the Green Party for its environmental stands, workers and environmentalists need realize that we are often one and the same and, at the very least, we have the same antagonists.

The Labor Greens bring a perspective on worker issues as well as their experience as activists in their own local unions. We wish to make that experience effective in our local chapters and in the Green Party of Michigan. There is the suspicion, on the part of many of us, we bring something that the Green Party is otherwise wanting - the conviction that in the struggle between the powerful and the majority, the primary battleground is the workplace.

Workplace issues ought to be seen as a natural to the Greens. After all, where else but the workplace are exposures to hazardous chemicals more acute? As we were reminded by Ralph Nader during his presidential campaign, we lost more people to workplace fatalities than soldiers lost in battle in the twentieth Century.

Second to the workplace are those residences in close proximity to manufacturing and industrial plants where toxic exposures are most pronounced. Disproportionately victimized are people of color as our society continues its trend to segregate by race and class.

Labor Greens have met only informally. We will ask interested Greens to join us for a luncheon discussion on Saturday, during the GPMI State Quarterly Meeting in Wyandotte (Saturday and Sunday, August 11 & 12, 2001). We need to ask ourselves and other Greens whether we should initiate our own issue-oriented chapter or are we potentially more effective participating in existing locals.

We have refrained from calling ourselves a "caucus" as that sounds insufficiently collaborative. We have been gratified at the early response to Labor Greens as evidenced by the support for our initiative on behalf of living-wage ordinances around the state. economic justice is intrinsic to environmental justice and the Greens understand that.

The blue-green coalition forged in Seattle has not been broken, Jimmy Hoffa's support for drilling for oil in the Arctiv National Wildlife Refuge notwithstanding. That alliance doesn't depend on Hoffa or like-minded bureaucrats - the real alliance is and will continue to be with rank-and file union members and those who resist the further degradation of the environment.