Greens Don't Care Who They Hurt! They're Right!

Editors,
    Michael Ventura fails to address the central point of why so many folks voted for Nader and the Green Party in 2000 ["Letters @ 3AM," Aug. 8] and why the Green Party has continued to grow and grow and grow, winning the loyalties of more and more activists and voters, obtaining more votes and more endorsements than ever before, despite the relentless drumbeat of articles like his own that blame the Greens for all the troubles of the world, and don't bother to question why in God's name the Democrats have failed to muster even the most pitiful amount of resistance imaginable in response to the Bush regime.
    Simply put: Al Gore did not earn our votes, and the Democratic Party did not earn our votes, and they still have yet to do so. Like Gray Davis in California, they have relentlessly pursued the negative politics of fear and offered no compelling vision of why we should vote for them. The continuing growth of the Green Party is solid evidence of the abysmal failure of this strategy.
    As Greens, we vote for our candidates, because they express the values we hold and pursue policies we feel will make a fundamental difference in whether or not we (and the plants and animals who live and die at our whim) survive another century. The Four Pillars and 10 Key Values of the Greens offer a compelling vision of a world that operates on a fundamentally different set of priorities. We are not simply pissed off liberal Democrats, we are Greens.
    And we are willing to vote for a Democrat when they offer a compelling vision that is largely compatible with our values – Kucinich's popularity among the Greens is evidence enough of that, as is our local party's willingness to endorse a quality Democrat with a long track record in the community for the state Legislature.
    In all likelihood, I will be casting my vote for the Green nominee for president in the fall of 2004 – why? Because avoiding four more years of Bush is not worth putting up with 40 more years of Bushism. We need real change, not the faux alternative offered by the corporate-dominated Democratic Party. The survival of the planet, humanity, and all that lives on it depends on this, nothing less is at stake.