Third Party Watch

interviews

Cameron Spitzer

 

John Krumm: You manage various Green Party discussion groups....

 

Cameron Spitzer: I manage their infrastructure. Currently, nobody facilitates or moderates their content.

 

...as well as an extensive web site for Green Party information and home pages. Can you tell us about your hopes and plans for these endeavors?

 

Well, for better or worse, I happened to be in the right place at the right time. My career is in designing the electronic information systems which are becoming the primary media for political discourse, commerce, and communications within organizations. I've got a "view from the trenches" of the monumental battles for control of those systems, an appreciation of the power and potential of technology-intensive media to transform and invigorate not just progressive organizing but the entire global political dynamic. I also happen to believe that it's the engineering profession's responsibility to interpret both the battles and the potential in terms that the public can understand, and to debunk (or at least identify) the most harmful industrial propaganda about these issues.

My hope is that the Greens catch this wave and ride it to new levels of effectiveness.

My plan is to make appropriate new information technologies as available and accessible as possible, both for internal organizing and public outreach, in the form of a series of experiments. Some of these experiments have been a spectacular success, such as our decentralized referral system. Some have been less successful, notably the Web-based conferences, and the Internet Relay Chat experiments last summer.

Three years ago, starting a Green Parties of North America Web "site" was one of those experiments. Today, the sub-$1000 personal computer and a $20/month ISP account comes with all the tools you need to do a great Web site (and there are cheaper ways), so that experiment is done. My current challenge on the Web front is decentralizing the content production. Producing a simple, effective Web site is now easier than getting out a printed newsletter, and I want Green organizations of every size to recognize that and *take responsibility* for keeping their own online material up to date. So I'm reasserting my original stance that I am providing "interim" Web pages for Green groups that are not yet sufficiently organized to handle it themselves.

I picked "North America" because it will be many years before the Greens organize on the continental level. If three years from now I only maintain that one index page (http://www.greens.org) because all the Green organizations it points to are running their own pages, I will consider myself wildly successful.

There is also a unique opportunity for the Greens on the Web. The medium is the message, and the appropriateness of the technological choices we make in desiging our Web content can say as much about us as the words on our pages do. So I am jawboning everyone about making our pages accessible to the broadest possible audience, which usually means avoiding proprietary technologies, huge files, images that can't be displayed on low-cost equipment, etc. The result is an appearance that captures the original, academic spirit of the Web, before it was hijacked by commercial exploiters. People who care about that kind of thing notice it.

I get a lot of fan mail, believe it or not, and one of the most frequent comments is that the Greens' Web pages tend to cause less trouble for people with older, less capacious computers than typical, commerce-oriented pages do. It tells people who don't happen to own "the latest" equipment that we care about them, before they read a word. And it tells people who *do* own big, fast equipment that we really mean it about that "respect for diversity" stuff. Likewise, we demonstrate a commitment to the consensus-democracy-oriented values that still drive a lot of the technical decisionmaking about how the Internet runs, when we avoid relying on technologies that are the intellectual property of a certain rapacious and oppressive transnational corporation. When we say, "look, we did all this without *any* Microsoft technology," it's as dramatic as having the candidate arrive at the press conference by bicycle, looking sharp in a stylish, hempen suit, or feeding the reporters really good organic vegan cuisine.

 

 One of the problems that the Greens have--and any grassroots organization for that matter-- is that the various local groups have a difficult time providing steady input to their state party. That's how it is in my state, at least. People don't have time to drive several hours to state meetings, they can't afford it sometimes, so decisions get made with very little input from outside the usual group of folks who already participate at the state level. Do you see any solutions to this problem, maybe using computers or other methods?

 

I think there are two distinct problems there. The first is a well-intentioned but tragically ill-informed Luddism, that assumes all technological advance is for no other purpose but to move industry toward more capital-intensive production processes. That may have been true of the *first* "industrial revolution," but it's dead wrong now. The computer networking business is beginning to compete head to head with the business travel industry. If you compare the environmental impacts and the social accessibility of networked computers to jet airliners, airports, rental cars, and hotels, it's pretty clear which is "greener." (There may still be a handful of progressive activists who hitchhike from one meeting to the next. But most of us fly or drive to statewide and national Green Party meetings.) So I think the people who claim computerized conferences are "elitist" need to evaluate their assumptions. *Travel* is elitist. For that matter, so is bulk mail. We need to get over our preference for older, more expensive communications technologies. Yes, we need face to face meetings. But much of the business I see transacted on the floor of the state Plenaries could have been debated and prepared in advance in an on-line forum, with *increased* participation, and a complete record of the debate.

The second problem is more important. There are folks in this movement, as in any other, who think their judgement or knowledge is better than their peers', who actively seek to exclude their peers from decisionmaking venues. Such people will prefer inaccessible venues, refuse to publish minutes, contact info, etc., and generally resist open communication within the movement. We need to recognize that such behavior is more destructive than whatever it is they're trying to prevent by it. In a few cases, I think it would be constructive for the organizations they're seen to represent to disclaim their actions in public, or even ask them to leave until they're ready to work respectfully with others.

 

What is your take on the widely reported "split" between the ASGP and the Greens/GPUSA?

 

I think the "split" that currently manifests in competition between ASGP and Greens/GPUSA is a tragedy. I don't know what happened in Elkins, West Virginia, in 1991, but it is obvious from the results that terrible mistakes were made there. I also believe that hardly any Greens these days are interested in rehashing it, or in acting on grudges from that period. It's pretty clear that only a handful of people are still putting energy into it. I don't think there are differences between the two groups too big to work out.

I'd also like to say something about "Mars Energy." There is a very small group of men who seem to believe it is not possible to debate an issue without insulting and libeling one's opponent. This strange position seems to be a misinterpretation of cultures where a dispassionate argument is considered dishonest, where one must display emotion to be believed. I disagree. I've been working the Greens' forums for three years, and I've had Usenet access since about 1985, and in all that time I've never seen a personal insult on-line that advanced anyone's argument. You're free to call someone a poo-poo head on grns.usa.forum, but don't kid yourself that you're convincing anyone of anything. It just makes you look inarticulate.

 

Do you hope that Greens will run a candidate for president in 2000, and if so what type of nomination process would work well? The Nader nomination left some people feeling left out, obviously.

 

It doesn't matter what I hope. Someone *will* run for President on the Green ballot line. The question is whether they will be running on Green values, or less. We'll probably see some dangerous "counterfeits," opportunists with more talent than the ones we've seen before, and they'll hurt us if we're not united enough to defend our party name from them.

I'd like to see a nominating process, restricted to registered Greens in states where that is an option, but otherwise open. Once a large list of candidates is drawn, I'd like to see the candidates given fair access to us to make their pitches, and the winner chosen by single-transferrable preference voting. Preference voting will eliminate any spurious candidates who get nominated because that process was too open to outsiders. I'd like to see all of the existing Green organizations participate, and not try to exclude or marginalize one another. People felt left out in '96, not because one organization or another did one part of the work or another. People felt left out because the operation was closed, a "done deal" before they found out about it. I know most of the people who were involved, and I believe the "closedness" of that effort was the result of a lot of honest mistakes by well-intentioned people. I believe almost all of them are smart enough not to repeat those mistakes.

Personally, I belive I can contribute more to the process by being a neutral, "honest broker," than by advocating for any particular side. I will aggressively resist any attempt to polarize, impair, or capture the forums I administer. There will not be a GPUSA-oriented grns.usa.forum competing with an ASGP-oriented grns.usa.forum elsewhere. There is one grns.usa.forum equally accessible to all Greens. I will deal with the inevitable network abusers as fairly as I can, whether they are newcomers or hallowed old-timers. I have a solid track record of fighting network abusers. The "abuse desk" person at your Internet Service Provider has probably heard of me. The Greens' forums will remain open and usable. Spammers, kooks, and jammers are advised to seek victims elsewhere.

 

What degree of cooperation would you like to see between the Greens and other left political parties and organizations? I've talked to many people who would like to see more unity on the left. Some, if fact, are dismayed that parties like the Greens and The New Party can't just join forces since they share so many of the same values.

 

That question relies on a false premise and is therefore nonsensical.

We all want to classify things. For example, the question of "who shot JFK" is one of a class of equally valid "conspiracy theories." "Who shot JFK" must always be considered simultaneously with crop circles, the Air Force's UFO coverups, The Masons, Sasquatch, and whether Elvis Presley is really dead. Right? Well, anyone with common sense recognizes that all-too-frequent claim as a propagandistic attempt to marginalize a significant political issue by juxtaposing it with a lot of baloney.

You suggest the Greens are just one of a big class of equally valid "left political parties." Okay, name three others! Please restrict your list to "left political parties" that are actively organizing. Omit "parties" that campaigned for Democrats in 99% of the races they entered in their history, "parties" with ballot lines in less than two states, and those that have shrunk over the last twenty years. (The last, on the grounds that to be taken seriously, a political party must offer an analysis or agenda with enough popular appeal that it grows.) Omit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit corporations that happen to have the word "party" in their names, because 501(c)(3)s are barred from electoral work.

My list is down to the Socialists and the Greens. I have no idea what the Socialists are up to in the US, so I can't say whether the Greens "joining forces" with the Socialists makes any sense.

I think the suggestion that the Greens are just one of many equivalent "left" parties is insulting, and is most often offered by Democratic Party die-hards who can't accept the fact that the Democratic Party is on the political right and doesn't have any use for "progressive" ideas. Read our platforms. Read the many "Ten Key Values" essays. Green Politics is unique. You may disagree with us, but don't trivialize us.

 

Have you heard of the IPPN andtheir efforts at forging some degree of cooperation among progressive organizations? Do you see much value in what they are trying to do?

 

I've seen their tabloid and their Web material. I don't understand their plan, though. It seems to me you get cooperation among organizations by finding a common interest and working on a *project* together to advance that interest. To the people working a real issue or cause, someone who comes along and offers to "coordinate" isn't being constructive. We need people to work phone banks and the media, walk precincts, staff literature tables, register voters, speak at meetings, design and produce effective literature. Not "coordinators." The successful progressive operations *deliver services* to activists. "Coordination," control, and oversight is very seldom the service that's required. What services does IPPN deliver?

 

 One of the ten key values is diversity, yet some folks see Greens in the U.S. as being mostly white and middle class. Is this just an image problem, or do Greens need to do some serious work in recruiting underrepresented minorities?

 

Just as activists need service organizations, oppressed communities need activists. Where the Greens have built functional organizations, they're as culturally and ethnically diverse as the communities they're in. For example, the Greens don't have much of a diversity problem in New Mexico, or Louisiana. But in places where we haven't attracted enough energetic volunteers to be a presence in the community, we tend to find more "armchair activists," and they tend to be white and middle class. So I think if we go about the job of building the kind of political organizations described in the Green literature, the diversity thing will take care of itself pretty much.

And I think the "progressive" and liberal pundits have been a real impediment here. Every time some writer in The Nation or Mother Jones or Pacifica pidgeonholes the Greens as "environmentalist," portraying us as one of thousands of redundant, single issue interest groups, it sets us back. That's because people know they're getting corporate propaganda from the New York Times and the Jim Lehrer News Hour, but they trust the so-called "alternative" press. So when our natural constituents and allies read in In These Times that the Greens are "environmentalists" they lose all interest.

 

 What does the term "decentralization," another key value, mean to you? It hardly seems like a value in itself, rather more like a possible strategy that might be used to meet some values.

 

Decentralization is a value. It means pushing power down the hierarchy, towards workers and consumers, away from transnational corporations and the super-rich. It means designing systems so they are subject to local control. It overlaps Grassroots Democracy and Community Based Economics quite a lot. It's a tendency in decisionmaking. That's what values *are*.

 

What might a Green economy look like? Would it be radically different from the one we have now?

 

It would be utterly different. Much more service oriented, craftsmanship oriented. The appliances and vehicles in a Green economy would be built to last, repairable. Imagine how much different your life would be if just that one thing were changed. Housing would be more comfortable. Without a permanent, desparate underclass, and a cycle of violence against children and women fomented by a corporate media, there would be practically no violent crime. With comfortable, safe cities designed around effective mass transit and friendly to cyclists and pedestrians, most people wouldn't need cars, and wouldn't need the income it takes to support cars. That one thing would take a day off the work week. And with most people not needing cars, our nation wouldn't be politically compelled to fight wars over terms of access to foreign oil. Do you know anyone with chronic pain, or AIDS, or cancer? How much better would their lives be if there were no War on Some Drugs and their physicians weren't afraid to prescribe really effective medication?

 

Are their any countries or regions in the world we can look at today and say, 'there's a Green economy?"

 

The most impressive demonstration of Green values in a large scale economic activity was the design and construction of the Internet. It was so radical that there is now a major effort to cover up that history, flush it down the "memory hole," and replace it with a false mythology of innovative "entrepreneurship." The technology of the Internet was begun as a corporate welfare boondoggle defense contract (Bolt Baranek and Neumann, and Ungerman Bass) but it took off when the schools got a hold of it. Unix was another corporate welfare program (AT&T) but it became the OS of the Internet when the Berkeley hackers opened it up.

The standards-setting process and the Internet Engineering Task Force are probably the most significant demonstration of consensus-oriented grassroots democracy in human history. That process was so robust and so *popular* that Microsoft has been trying to buy it out or take it over for ten years and hasn't made a dent. Did you know that the most popular Web server, the most popular programs for transporting internet email and Netnews, the software of the distributed Domain Names Service, *all* of the major internet services, is freeware? The people who make the Internet work figured out twenty years ago that open freeware is the most reliable, the most robust, because it's a cooperative, community effort. Microsoft (who still hasn't shipped a reliable operating system!) doesn't want you to know that.

The freeware that runs the Internet exists in a gift culture, where people are esteemed by what they share, not by what they grab and lock away. And it's more decentralized and diverse than most people realize. So I think the core software, the *community-owned intellectual property* of the Internet is a Green economic arena. Wanna read a Green contract? Here's the "Copyleft" covering the operating system on the computer where I'm writing this essay: ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/COPYING-2.0 "The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. ..."

Aside from that, I think the pre-EU agrarian economy of the French countryside was pretty Green. Listen to Julia Child sometime, when she goes on about how much better locally grown organic veggies are than the industrial garbage they sell at Safeway. That's the tradition of rural French cuisine, where you bring back your bottle to the local mom & pop grocery store and refill it with the house red, for a buck, that's better than most wines you can buy here. Locally made inexpensive good wine is Green. Microbreweries are Green. As are high quality cannabis flowers.

Now look at what the internet software work and the French countryside had in common. People work just as hard at those as they would in some corporate job, but they turn out much better stuff and suffer much less job-related stress; there's no burn-out when you're working for love and your income is a side effect of it. The every day lives of ordinary people are far more humane in a decentralized, locally oriented economy. That's what makes the whole Green idea so radical and dangerous, and it's why we are so universally marginalized. If we ever figure out how to get the word out to the general population, the corporate New World Order will not be able to stop us.