The Green Moment

David Baldwin, a New York-based freelance writer, peace activist and Green Party member, has written an article published in ZNet called The Green Moment.
Baldwin provides a brief analysis of the history and current state of the Republican and Democrat Parties and outlines how the Green Party, the only “Peace Party”, can fill the void of instability of the two aforementioned parties.

Baldwin asks readers to consider these facts:

” Though still very small relative to its two main rivals, the Greens are America’s fastest-growing political party. Accurate overall statistics are very difficult to come by. But a website that records Green voter registrations claims that, between 1994 and 2004, such registrations, in the twenty-two states surveyed, increased by nearly 250 percent.
” Despite the formidable barriers the system has set up against alternative political movements, the Greens have been making solid progress with crossover voters, winning local races all across the country. ” In recent years, two party leaders have made headlines. Matt Gonzalez very nearly won the race for mayor of San Francisco in 2003. In the following year, Jason West, mayor of the upstate New York town of New Paltz, led a powerful assault on his state’s ban on marriage licenses for same-sex couples.
” Waiting in the wings is a whole new generation of fresh and unconventional leaders, like Farheen Hakeem of Minnesota, a 29-year-old former math teacher endorsed by the Green Party. Ms. Hakeem recently won an impressive 14 percent of the vote in the runoff primary for mayor of Minneapolis despite the fact that her best-known photo shows her speaking into a bullhorn while wearing a hijab (traditional Muslim head scarf) and a black T-shirt with the legend, “This is what a radical Muslim feminist looks like.”

Baldwin continues with predictions on how the Green Party can be brought into the mainstream of American politics in 2006 through possible scenarios and examples.