Subject: CHANGE: THE TIME IS NOW. WHO IS GOING TO TAKE US THERE?

A thought…

This is great to have the viewpoint of the Green Party’s young and recent Members.

The new generation is very valuable to our Party. It keeps older people like me younger, I am 48 years old young!. It keeps the older membership awake. It keeps the elders’ mind open. It keeps us alive and on our toes! Yahoo! If I feel a pain it means that I exist!
It challenges us, makes us rethink and reconsider our position. Simply said, they are our wake up call!

For some scientists, the closer you live to the younger generations the older you live! You see? With my two 15 years old and one 14 years old daughters I don’t feel asleep at all in the week time. I do not have time. But, but, at the end of the weekend..? Hum maybe, yes maybe at the end of the weekend I feel a little exhausted!

We have to be challenged in order to reassess our positions. Otherwise, we go asleep and too conformists. The American say: “think out of the box if you want to be successful”. That is precisely the way all the young and old generations have started the first day of their life; “Out of the box” in order to start their life on Earth.

Yes young generations are definitely a full part of us as we are a full part of them; we are all very valuable partners to each other and sometimes a challenge. A challenge which means Survival to all of us!

Long life to the Green Party and with that to the biodiversity on Earth!

Cheers! Bonne nuit Kristen! Bonne nuit John!

Jean-Yves Massenet

Hi Kristen welcome to the club. Barrack inspires me too (although he doesn't seem to be for everyone cause he's not steam rolling over Hillary).

I bet you hadn't even heard of him more than a year ago. Had Barrack tried to run as an independent or as the leader of Green Party USA we might still not have heard of him by now no matter how silver his tongue. For example, can you name the leader of the Green Party USA?

Obama is operating within the machinery of the democratic party and this gives him huge leverage and exposure. Elizabeth is the leader of a party that is still trying to get invited to nationally televised debates for the first time.

I think we first need to build that same kind of party machinery for Elizabeth and leaders who will come after her. That means doing a lot of little things to build the party like knocking on doors, finding a few more supporters, raising some money running a campaign and getting into the media. Getting into the televised debates is probably the single biggest thing we could do to forward the cause.

Considering the starting point we were lucky to attract Elizabeth in the first place and she has done an unbelievable job in building the party since. She's been getting into the media as we never have before, presided over a 2 year period in which we've more than doubled our support in the polls, managed to get the liberals not to run a candidate against her, attracted thousands of new members and spoken at hundreds of events. Arguably she's done relatively more to move the Green Party forward than Barrack has done to move democrats forward.

I think the answer to your question who is going to take us there is simply you, me and all the other people who can pitch in to build the party from the ground up.

Ard Van Leeuwen (Dufferin-Caledon, ON)

"Barack Obama is an example of what the face of change looks like. He does not have decades of political experience and an affiliation with the established politicians."

This is false. Obama is surrounded by Brzezinskis, the now old man progenitor a controller of Jimmy Carter who gave us predecessor policy of what's going on the Middle East now, ie unilateral American intervention, as in Iraq. Obama was a student decades ago under Brzezinski & there is every reason to think he was corralled into his stable of future politically useable stars, being trotted out now by another wing of US establishmenteers to, in a controlled fashion, overtake the bankrupt maniac wing of those now in charge. That control is apparently allied to "colour revolutions" fomented worldwide, some successful, some not, at wedging closed polities open to American exploitive behaviour, even as it piggybacks on some favourable causes.

Do NOT look for political inspiration south of the border, esp. these days, at least the national level. See also http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/3641#comment-3035, "no inspiration for us".

I've been a Barack fan since his '04 Convention speech and was very impressed with how he campaigned on behalf of other candidates in the 2006 midterms.

He is both a brilliant individual as well as a skilled orator. I think he is probably the right person at the right time for the US.

Someone whose election could hold out a lot for a country who needs to reach out to racial divisions made worst by the horrible response to Katrina, someone who can inspire young people who are faced with a failing economy and deep tears over the war in Iraq, and would represent a very interesting opportunity to depart from existing foreign policy and start healing the US's international reputation.

However, since we (Canada) lack executive elections, we also lack the ability to offer Canadians the ability to vote for a leader and as such it is harder to give Canadians a real sense of a movement like they have in the US. Even if we pulled a 'sexy' leader and I guess the last real one in Canada was probably Trudeau, we wouldn't have the chance to trot them out in front of live television audiences or fill football stadiums full of dedicated supporters to the extent they do in the US.

That being said, we don't necessarily need a "Barack Obama" to lead the Green Party. Rather, we need to rather learn from how his campaign has branded him, how his speeches are often textbook perfect (he speech uses repetition, where he repeats the start of a sentence 3 times and usually goes over 5 main points), how his team uses video and the web to reach out to new supporters, how wherever he goes there is a million signs creating buzz and has a ground team ensuring that the venues are packed.

Elizabeth is a great speaker, and probably has a better sense of humour than any of the presidential candidates (although perhaps a close tie with Mike Huckabee). She is someone who can be trusted on the environment, and has the record to speak credibly about our number one issue.

She came out during my campaign and did a few events and most of the time her speeches were great and she had an incredible ability to interact with the audience. She is quick witted and certainly will outshine Dion, Layton, and Harper in the leadership debates.

She has room for improvement certainly.

She would be well off to talk less about how bad Stephen Harper is and focus solely on our vision for Canada.
She needs someone to go into her wardrobe and hide all of those grey scarves.
She, like all of us, can get some fancy bill clinton hand gestures.
She could slow her speech slightly and be more deliberate with words. (Oh, and so could I)
We could get her a teleprompter so she could read a fancy prepared speech like BO does.

However, that being said, the leader is part of a grand presentation. Barack is never just showing up. Every appearance is orchestrated, every speech said 5 times a day, every event is a full scale production.

I'll try to prepare a lengthier response to McKibben's rhetoric (which I think I'd also post after the source piece itself as comment) when I have some time, which unfortunately might not be for a week (we'll see).

Obama himself cannot offer much more than acting as front for one variety of stringpullers. Please read my most recent blog entry (http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/4765), prepared because of a number of things going on among some Greens that indicate a possible undetected ill wind blowing, which I won't enumerate, just here and now anyway. Activist presidency was killed with Kennedy, whatever one thinks of him. If you stop using the political front person as someone of substance, that should incline to searching a bit below the surface, and you should not be comfortable with what you find. There is no doubt whatsoever about the obvious personal talent of Obama & his particular appeal to Americans. But the underlying American political culture at the national level is corrupted beyond imaginable remedy. If all you are out to see is inspiration for dramatic turnabouts at the U.S. national level to "combat" climate change, then I think you are preoccupied with the wrong focus. State by state, locality by locality is where these things should play out in the U.S. more importantly. Even in Canada this is likely to be the case, witness the signal coming together of Canadas Upper & Lower (see my http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/4264#comment-4183, http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/4264#comment-5172). There is a vital role at the Canadian national level to be played, but it's very doubtful that Alberta in particular & those closest to it in spirit & livelihood will go readily along. National enabling policies are to be hoped for, removing or slackening obstacles for closer-to-local action. This is so opposite to centralist war effort (oops -- sliding into the anti-war-talk thing...) and it is definitely opposite to political & media manipulation behind Obama's "timely" ascendance, and how would it not encourage Obama's foreign policy crowd behind the scenes from directing fire in even more dangerous areas worldwide, while they can still get away with it? Today's reports contain tough talk on Iran. No acknowledgement for counterbalance of sorry American past, even American involvement in darkening the Iranian regime (see 2nd paragraph at http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/4081#comment-3802). What is to be feared as much as dangerous factional split in US upper circles, as has been going on for anyone watching this past year or so, is the coming together of warlike strands of those factions. Pakistan is aimed at, Iran as well again now, likely Russia, let alone domestic North American populations data-mined & surveiled &c, the kind of thing that goes along with war abroad, doesn't it now, apart even from the largely fictitious "war on terror"?

What about Obama's organization? Ever consider resemblance to American-exported "color revolutions"? You don't consider clandestine involvement a possiblility? You don't consider that the Green movement itself might have been inspiration for this to a degree, especially taking advantage of young people's innocence & desire to feel a part of something, which colour-identity can work to the detriment of analytical thought, the kind that some left-wing-inclined people tend to excel at relatively better than I see among Greens? What do you think might be lurking behind Obama's "hope", that is well-chosen to prepare a polity for dire imposition? Clinton, as with all three principals, have revolting attachments that they cannot shake because of their context, however fine people any of them might or might not be as non-politicians; Clinton might have been muscled out, in undemocratic fashion, because of the three she had the most potential or inclination to actually attempt to exercise a bit of independence. I'd vote for none of the above. And Canadian Greens should consider whether effective organization purchased at the price done south of the border is any real inspiration for us.