Green on the outside, with a hard brown core.
No, I don't refer to PETA people; also not to pro-environmentalists (how the heck can one consciously be "anti-environment" anyway!) and I don't mean the honest and principled Green Party-leaning progressives, certainly well-represented here on DU, either.
I mean this ilk:
http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2004/02/18/news/nation/wednat02.txtThere are a few pertinent links to the two sides involved in the issue described in that article, about the upcoming election of five seats in the 15-member board of the Sierra Club.
Immigration as a wedge issue, peddled by those "avocado greens" in an unholy alliance of the far-right and radical animal rightists.
Here's their argument in a nutshell: Earth is suffering from overpopulation, and the US has a disproportional environmental footprint, disproportionally depleting the resources of this planet, which combined with the fact that immigration is the largest contributor to the US population growth, leads to an imperative need to stop immigration.
There's just an itsy bitsy problem with that logic: immigrants don't appear out of nowhere. They don't create a "new" environmental footprint; at best, they enlarge their (small) current one. Just as their fellow country people aspire to do in the long run, but their aspiration is often sabotaged by Western "values and principles" reflected in unfair trade, export of noxious industries (or export of pollution under the shameless guise of "buying emission rights") wrecking the self-reliance of national economies (courtesy the savage "free-traders" who believe state sovereignty is a commercial commodity) and a host of other barbaric outrages, including but not limited to warfare, genocide and corrupt arm sales.
Most immigrants move from an underprivileged background into another, more wealthy country. And that's not unique to the US, either: Western Europe also exerts a strong attraction over people who decide to move away from their family, in desperate search of justified hope.
As a wonderful case in point for the universality of the avocado green, how about this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3494627.stmThe anti-immigrant stance that is manifest in a few "outsiders" desiring to put their grubby hands on an environmental organization denies the progressive principle of solidarity:
- external solidarity -- which at the very least ignores the right of developing countries to advance, if not the moral obligation to help ensure that they develop with less toxicity;
- internal solidarity -- no pity with the grievous conditions in which most immigrants live, upon arrival in their "new home" (think "environmental justice" for another shameless irony)
There's just too much wrong with that picture, the far right joining hands with the far left.
And here comes why I think it's relevant for the general elections. In 2000, a nation-wide total of 2,883,064 people cast their vote, I venture mostly in anger at the Democratic party, for the Green Party. Looking back -- completely ignoring what happened on and after that November 7, 2000 -- I can understand the frustration with a party that hasn't been extraordinarily successful in casting itself as the "people party." However, since then, a few things have happened that in my opinion have completely changed the electoral stage.
Now we all know what that "plain, folksy guy from Texas" really is about. Now we know what he has done to the environment, to civil liberties, to other countries, to many things that are near and dear to us progressives. I am positive that a very substantial number of those who in 2000 voted for Ralph Nader will now unite, teeth gritted and seething with anger, to oust the Supremely Appointed President.
But I see, as illustrated in the case of the Sierra Club, how there is an organized effort underway to wedge progressives apart, on bogus premises and with an even more despicable prospect: to have another four years of Bush in power as "a lesser evil" compared to the "corrupt" Democrat that runs to defeat him and his ilk.
This year, it's not an election: it's a national reality show called Survival, with 290 million contestants barely hanging on to the edge of the abyss. This year, there is a realistic opportunity to choose from within the Democratic party candidates.
I think the Sierra Club needs help; moreover, I think this country deserves better than fraudulent charades cross-dressed as a "progressive alternative" which is really nothing less than a mutilating ticket, back to the unwashed past that we are supposed to
progress from.
What say you?