written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
(find your bioregion/watershed)
(find your bioregion/watershed)
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written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
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I would agree with all of Mazza's points below. I am for everything 'left' he says as important to greens as well as anyone interested in working democracy. However, I feel Paul's critique of Mazza is just: that Mazza fails to address decentralization issues as important.
So, as for bioregionalist greens instead of only a 'mass-democratic' green, I see bioregionalist greens as including all that Mazza said--plus a bit more.
In a nutshell I see bioregionalist greens as
KEEPING THE SOCIAL AND LEGAL CENTRALIZED AROUND HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSES AND KEEPING THE ECONOMICS DECENTRALIZED
That to me is a bioregionalist green perspective on "what is to be done."
It embraces what I feel has been the best of "modernism" while rejecting what has been the worst. (See Spretnak's book for a description of "modernism" in relation to green thought, _The Resurgence of the Real_.)
Below is a bit of brainstorming of what are 'green bioregionalist' issues and how to translate them into policy on the state/federal/national level.
I feel the key to a bioregionalist green is to balance decentralization ECONOMICALLY, FINANCIALLY, POLITICALLY, AND CONSUMPTIVELY **without** decentralization SOCIALLY OR LEGALLY for social protections against discriminations that would come 'back' into play with localizing "everything."
I'm thinking of Jo Freeman's short 1970 essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness." (Of course structure can be another form of tyranny to be sure, though without the structural option for people to appeal to and to choose between for "redress of grievances" when one aspect is corrupt, they can use the other, or play them off each other. If there was nothing like structure, there is little option for "structureless" locals to be forced to change anything towards bioregionalism in practice.
Thus, the larger state is to keep the "hobgoblin of little minds" from setting up comfortable patriarchal or ethnic regimes simply because in practice "that is the way we do it locally." I'm sure you have heard that before, as a circular argument. Er, right. Forget that.
I feel that for social discriminations of inequalities (which I am defining as gender, ethnic, sexuality, handicap status, age discrimination, religious discrimination, etc.) that the national state has been very progressive and very much positively against the parochial social localisms that have maintained gender, ethnic, sexual, handicap, age, and religious discriminations. Structure has been there to appeal to, to force the hand against unresponsive local governments embedded in particular social practices that are discriminatory.
These social localisms are unfortunately get placed into part of many people's idea of 'decentralization'. At least that has been my experience. "Localism" is treated as a religion--a uniform reactionary knee-jerk solution to everything.
I am arguing that we should be selective in what we consider legitimate on the local level and legitimate on the state/national level. Typically, because in unsustainable fascist contexts, or corporate-state contexts for a more appropriate phrase), a social localism/patriarchy/ethnic regime is just fine with consolidated state economics that demote human rights and demote sustainability, expanding environmental degradation with social inequalities.
This is far from exhaustive--this is only an email, people. ;-)
What particular issues do I see worthy of decentralizing, and other issues worthy of "keeping" consolidated? What changes am I talking about for a Green platform that would facilitate 'structural bioregionalism'? If sustainability is to be institutionalized, then many frameworks in existence are illegitimate and sustaining only environmental degradation.
1. ON THE STATE AND NATIONAL LEVEL FRAMEWORK formal voting representation changes are required for structuring bioregionalism. The majoritarian voting procedure is a big mistake, when durable 40% or more are kept out of formal politics. This is mass disenfranchisement masquerading as 'representation.' The United States is the only place left in the world with this 1700s relic which has been associated with low voter turnout, mired in gridlock of dueling 'majorities' and the demotion and vilification of legitimately democratic third/fourth party representatives, hated for the only rationale that it makes the established parties work to be more representative than they want to be as it becomes an actual 'marketplace' of ideas when there are more parties instead of what America has presently: monopoly parties. When the voter/consumer has more choices in terms of parties, parties buckle to be representative. Without competition, in a monopoly representation context, the representatives pick the people they want to hear, instead of the people pick the representatives. With multiple parties the U.S. Congress becomes actually representative instead of only a monopoly (Repub/Dem) party organ. For instance, with Gallup polls showing only 54% of Americans "for war"--and when Congress shows a 420-1 vote, the Congress is very unrepresentative and illegitimate.
I surmise that any changes formally speaking will only come out of electoral conflict. Thus, I am all for third/fourth parties of any stripe "ruining" and destroying the predictable 'voter management monopolies' of the two parties entirely. Republican/Democrat monopoly parties are illegitimate for sustainability, though they are great facilitators of unsustainability. They are both something defunct, broken, illegitimate, etc., in my opinion. They have both together made NAFTA and FTAA and WTO contexts possible, which have environmentally degradative and human degradative (jobs) effects. They have allowed unsustainable monocropping biotechnologies and pesticides to be imported as GRAS ('generally recognized as safe'--something astounding since the GRAS standards were meant for many 'natural products' instead of products designed to create the very pesticides that require FDA approval! Talk about creating loopholes. The Democratic and the Republican parties, as uncompetitive monopoly parties, have stood by and dismantled the Departments of Natural Resources in Michigan (several years back) and is presently they are teaming up and doing the same in Wisconsin. (It was only a governor's veto, because of popular pressure against this, that stopped this in Wisconsin.) Both the Democrats and the Republicans are sitting idly by twiddling their thumbs, when I know there ARE indeed ecological conservative individuals in the Republicans and Democrats that can be brought into bioregional green frameworks and pitched to. Our pitch is to pull the Democratic and Republican parties apart: to make the two party context more and more indecisive and internally frayed by pulling at these two strands that dislike the corporate/nationalist state frameworks. You know the loose edges of the parties in your states that oppose consolidated corporations, job export, and environmental degradation of their states: contact these loose edges and work on them particularly hard. Ask them how they can support the X or Y party when they are all [whatever]. . . Ask them if they find it hypocritical or why they bother with the X or Y party.
Sadly, Democrats and Republicans have ceased to be a method of political representation and are closer to a method of voter administration and economic administration for TNCs that facilitates ecological degradation. And that makes them illegitimate. They should be broken. Anything that destroys the very land, people, materials unsustainably--what they are elected to protect and represent--is formally and informally an illegitimate framework of politics--green or otherwise.
And since armed uprising only plays into their hands, as much as I "understand" the concerns of militia groups and the thumbscrews on American farmers in the face of consolidated processing operations that anti-trust legislation should have whacked apart long ago, I DO consider militias an important form of anti-corporate power.
Unfortunately, militias are typically part of the social parochial localism as well, that I despise. I have only met two militia members, so that may be a poor sampling. ;-) Please correct me if I am in error in this estimation. I would like to be in error on this actually.
Instead, this requires more and more contentious politics and "ruining" the two party context with these formal and localist aims of representation in mind--and ruining it within an election context. The Dem/Repubs will bend the structure themselves to maintain power, like they already are with promoting frameworks of IRV (on the ballot to see if it passes in Alaska for federal elections in 2002; others working on it in other states). IRV (Instant Runoff Voting) bends this two party context a bit, allowing for formal establishment of third/fourth party contexts where people can vote their conscience and build party choices, as well as vote strategically. IRV leads to further intentional ruining and bending of the monopoly party context, etc. and more formal changes, etc., as more parties come 'on line' teeming for voters. I see this ratcheting representation down to the local level as it becomes more contentious, so we get to choose our leaders instead of having the leaders choose us.
Urban level and county commission administration level greens are the only place where the party or greens in general have been vaguely successful, so I'd work on urban and county level issues of voting representation as well. (Eugene, OR, unfortunately just rejected IRV on a vote there, when a vote for formal change is a vote for sustainability.)
As for the county level, here's an idea for supporters: is it just me or do the bioregionalist and the watershed/rivershed preservation groups have different circles of friends? There is a large movement toward local river monitoring, and River Network has a national plan to 'watershed' community groups for long term politics and sustainability. (www.rivernetwork.org). These would be interested in county level issues of political representation, as well as how a vote for formal voting change influences more local sustainability.
We require many procedural changes that decentralize voting (as described on www.fairvote.org for instance), to construct actual representatives and demote mere monopoly party politicians. This would bring about more localized and pluralized party frameworks of politics--instead of national level clientelism.
National level clientelism is where large parties get to pick and choose whom they represent from different geographic areas. Nowhere should be unrepresented. However, typically with the two party context no where in particular is ever represented or given voice: people are pitched to as a demographic instead of pitched to as a GEOGRAPHIC; the former is divisive, while the later generates actual contacts and local networking. Geographically specific representation, based on environmental features "embeds" representational feedback and risk assessment for or against corporate development in a place, instead of embedding them in a distanciated idealized "party" identity.
Geographically speaking, the United States is hardly represented at all. Compare any watershed map with the tenuous strained district maps.
Demographically, the United States is poured over with a fine tooth comb, or like a military battle map, on how to manipulate each election it to serve existing clientelistic, degradative politics that destroy the very local areas they are supposed to protect. Change the formal structures--both the voting and the districting issues--and sustainability politics is organized. Leaving them as they are is a recipe for environmental and social disaster.
With the Census of 2000, the battles over "restricting" (i.e., the euphemism for establishing unchallengeable demographic incumbencies where people are habitually addicted to voting for particular parties that are against their own local interests) are in full swing. (see www.fairvote.org on this).
I have some suggestions for formal structural "strategy toward sustainability" as well as what a goal of "sustainability would look like formally" at:
http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/bioregionEC.htm
(Site Name: "Toward a Bioregional State: issues for all green politics in ungreen states.)
2. GET TNCs OUT OF UNIVERSITIES OR THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS THERE or make universities less attractive to them. All the mobilizations against the food services and prison industry complicity are a start, particularly campus recycling movements. If they are public land grant colleges, they should be questioned why they are destroying the land, air, and water, (and human nutrition and expanding pollution based diseases) in the service of unsustainable corporations. The practice of unsustainability is tangibly breeding in American universities, and this is exported worldwide.
3. GENDER, ETHNIC, SEXUALITY, HANDICAP, AGE, RELIGION EQUALITY issues. This is what I mentioned above: keeping these social and legal recourses available on the national level against the parochial localisms that demote them, as a sort of legal check and balances of the social against the economic.
4. CONSUMPTION. invest in local food infrastructures, in sustainable organics--that bring in tow sustainable nutrition, sustainable jobs, sustainable farmers, sustainable markets. Two states already have established state level committees/plans on hunger and food security issues, and for facilitating "buy local" sourcing of states. These states are Connecticut and Iowa. That they are both very rural and very urbanized states shows that it is possible to work for sustainable localism in both urban and rural contexts.
Plus, the number of farmers markets has skyrocketed in the past 10 years according to USDA data. People know they are being lied to by voluntary corporate labelling and supermarkets, that typically only make about 1% profit markup, are very sensitive to changing consumer demand and can easily be forced to change their sourcing practices for food items.
If we frame bioregionalist green as a decidedly local green. And I do consider this widening choice as well as stabilizing local economies, instead of as a reduction of choice. People, sure, can (and will) still shop at Walmart if they want. However, the point is stepping up ways and policies for creating more choices, for institutionalizing locality.
5. URBAN PLANNING AND LAND USE.
Sprawl is ecocide. Real estate speculators are the enemy: they overbuild for the rich and underbuild for the middle income or (the expanding) poor. In sociology, there is work on how homelessness has a bit to do with "housing mismatch" instead of strictly poverty--no one builds for them. The United States nearly had some type of federal level mandated land use planning in the 1970s, until Nixon's Watergate demoted some of his more progressive plans--to the relief of the real estate speculators.
So who are our friends? Typically, there are more than a handful of contractors and developers working on green building practices, and they should be encouraged in law, as well as other frameworks should be punished in law (like what is already quite popular, to force developers to provide their own infrastructure and sewerage keeps sprawl down and taxes down). Who else? Land use community trusts, co-housing, and urban gardens are all our friends: part of a consumptive networking solution to both what to do with hollowed out cities as well as what to do for the poor that are marooned in cities.
EPA can be an ally by requiring risk assessment studies of development, and slowing it down legally. Sue developers every chance you get until it gets done is my advice. Change laws. Change voting and districting issues so they accurately reflect ecologically and socially risky development practices.
6. FINANCE
Consolidated finance is the enemy. When the United States allowed interstate banking franchises, the ensuing consolidation was a huge policy mistake if the point of democratic government is to be to insure social, fiscal, democratic, and ecological accountability.
Break up financial conglomerates, for they are the funders of ecological degradation "big projects" almost exclusively. That is only one of the connections I see to the anti-corporate globalization movement I feel here, with green bioregionalism.
I see these six points getting people thinking synergistically about local changes--informal and formal.
Regards,
Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison
At 07:21 PM 9/24/01 -0600, you wrote:
>
> In all fairness, I'd say anybody who calls you [Mazz'a Green platform, below] a socialist is misinformed.
>You're a liberal Democrat hitching a ride on the Greens. Every proposal you
>named has been on the Democratic Party agenda in the past. And they were
>never accused of being Greens.
> Now you have some good points, but you can't connect your proposals in any
>way to bioregionalism. Those liberal proposals are just not stepping stones
>on the way to some ideal bioregional solution. They are statist solutions,
>and do nothing toward the goal of decentralizing anything. They are
>opposite bioregionalism, and green values too, BTW.
> It's a lot like what they say about peace. Peace is not a
>destination--peace is the WAY.
> Bioregionalism is not to be toyed with to recruit for a political party.
> Bioregionalism is the WAY.
> If others have thoughts pro or con on the matter, I'd like to consider
>them.
>
>--paul, webmaster http://globalcircle.net
>networking for ecology, justice, and all our relations
>
>*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>
>On 9/24/01 at 11:31 AM Patrick Mazza wrote:
>
>>In response to Paul, Nader is making a speech on the bombings and
>>connected foreign policy issues Tuesday in Minneapolis.
>>
>>As for the Greens being "centrally planned," as a participant I can tell
>>you that the Greens consist of many autonomous state parties and local
>>chapters. There is an emerging national organization, and it is the
>>product of a democratic process among those autonomous parties.
>>
>>The rhetoric about "socialist fringe" and "tired liberals," frankly, to
>>me, sounds quite Reaganite. Whereas localism can and often does turn
>>quite reactionary. I would, quite honestly, like to see socialized
>>medicine, with a single-payer plan. I would like to see corporations
>>regulated a lot more tighly, with re-regulation in fields ranging from how
>>many flights you can put into an airport at certain hours to how much a
>>credit card company can charge for interest to how much a bank can charge
>>for an overdraft fee. I would like to see publicly funded political
>>campaigns, and media companies charged for use of public airwaves and
>>required to do public service as well. I would like to see the billions
>>in federal subsidies to oil and nuclear devoted to renewables and
>>efficiency. I would like to see the billions in federal and state money
>>that goes to highways be redirected to rail and other alternatives. I
>>would like to see fair taxation so the rich and corporations do not pay at
>>effective rates lower than individuals. I support civil liberties, and
>>the rights of individuals, so I support critical elements of liberalism.
>>I believe property rights are inferior to human rights, and that the
>>common good trumps individual rights. Some would call me a socialist for
>>that (though I think it is good common sense).
>>
>>These are all matters involving the national state, all involve reforms.
>>And all are necessary. They deal with the real systems affecting peoples
>>lives. There is a rule that political structures must operate at level of
>>the economy. And much of our economy is national and global. If you do not
>>deal with these issues, you doom yourself to irrelevance and failure,
>>because local and regional changes take place in the larger context.
>>
>>All that said, I understand the tension -- It is hard to make political
>>space for discussion of fundamental systemic change when the discussion
>>centers around reforming the existing system. At the same time, if those
>>reforms are not made, the chances for systemic change are diminished. For
>>instance, it is difficult to make transitions to sustainable energy and
>>transportation systems at the local and regional level when unsustainable
>>paths are subsidized and encouraged at the national level. If ecology
>>means anything, it means taking into account all the factors,
>>relationships and processes of particular systems. For instance, working
>>on forest issues in the Northwest, as I have, means you must deal with
>>federal policy. Working on global warming, as I do, and understanding its
>>impact on my bioregion's ecosystems, tells me I cannot save my bioregion
>>if I do not address global issues.
>>
>>In other words, a big-tent bioregionalism must deal with all levels, with
>>all the factors that impinge on the bioregion, while fostering a
>>non-sectarian bioregional alternative. Indeed, as I have mulled over the
>>meaning of Sept. 11, never has the contrast been clearer between living
>>regionally and living imperially. It was siting troops on oil in Saudi
>>that turned Osama from one-time CIA asset to the declarer of jihad. By
>>the end of this decade, the majority of the world's oil will come from the
>>Mideast. Even if Sept. 11 had not happened, the drive for increased U.S.
>>military-political involvement in the Mideast is inevitable due to this
>>fact.
>>
>>As the full price of dependence on a global energy system becomes apparent
>in the times to come, there may be more political space to put forward the
>clear alternatives -- energy produced locally and regionally from renewable
>sources, a general shift from long-range transportation of goods to sources
>closer to home -- especially food, with production based on compost and
>renewable energy rather than petroleum. These are messages of systemic,
>bioregional change. I hope we connect with movements at every scale to deal
>with the crisis, including left movements, and bring to these movements our
>developed understandings of the bioregional alternative to the system of
>war and empire.
>
>
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