Mike Moore: Greens raise both voices, awareness

By Mike Moore

Sunday, June 27, 2004 11:00 PM CDT

Having spent a couple of days at last week's Green Party's national convention in Milwaukee, I'm convinced the supporters there wanted to do one of two things: 1) Win my vote or 2) Eat my liver.

For all of the shirts with peace symbols floating around, the place sure was full of anger. Even if I hadn't talked to anyone, I would've gotten that much. Nasty bumper stickers sold for a buck or two at several tables.

Isn't this the nice party? These are the people who are supposed to love everyone and everything, even the turtles. (One group posted a flyer in the lobby advertising a caucus to represent the rights of animals).

Love has its limits. Name an issue and you could find papers and workshops railing against the current policy. NAFTA? Abolish it. Electronic voting? Rife with possibilities for fraud, so keep it in check.

Some of the issues were below the average person's radar screen. While I stocked up on snack bars made from hemp seeds, a young woman filled me in on the wonders of industrial hemp.

The biggest target of those negative vibes was predictable. Had President George W. Bush stopped by the Midwest Airlines Center, he might have felt all of the warmth of a parade down the streets of Fallujah.

Some of that came out at a poetry reading I attended on Thursday, where the Greens did their hissing in verse form. One poem titled "Civilization" read in part: We are the civilized ones We can rule the world We are working on it one oil-producing country at a time.

Besides the war, the environment was a popular topic. The moderator of the session, Madison-area resident Jeannie Bergmann, read one on global warming called "End of the World Grill." It included lines like these: Everybody talks about the weather But somebody didn't sign the Kyoto

Protocol.

If you need a refresher, the world leaders who signed that paper were agreeing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bush wasn't one of them.

Don't worry, the poets were equal-opportunity bashers. Kimberly Wilder, a Green candidate for state Senate in New York, took a few shots at former President Bill Clinton and Democrats in her poem, "A Place Called Hope." Here's an excerpt: They have shiny literature.

They make really good movies.

You can't say you won't fall for it, you already did that once.

We all did.

The Greens strode around wearing buttons dedicating their support to different candidates. It was a bit confusing, because they were all the same color - three guesses which one.

Despite being divided, the party managed to choose a presidential candidate while in Milwaukee: David Cobb. You might remember I interviewed him a couple of months back when he came through Racine.

This weekend he was angry, too. In his press conference, he vowed to elbow his way into the presidential debates - even if he has to get arrested. His running mate, a woman named Pat LaMarche, referred to Bush as the country's worst president ever. That's what you get when you don't have professional speech writers to fog things up with vague patriotic garble.

I'm sure some of the mojo I felt was a mix of sincerity, passion and a little too much caffeine. Everybody gets fired up when they meet people who share their beliefs and see that they can change their circumstances. Still, the anger is unmistakable.

I could tell the Green delegates were sick of answering the tired questions about spoiling elections and wasting votes. The party's Web site offers instructions on how to steer the responses back to the issues they're trying to promote, and to do that they're willing to chat for an extra half-hour - even if you're not.

Besides, some of the issues might be obscure to us, but these activists have been hammering at them for years. I'd yell, too, if it were the only way to get people to listen.

The difference is, I'd even yell at the turtles.

Mike Moore is the associate editor of The Journal Times. He can be reached at (262) 631-1724 or by e-mail at: mmoore@journaltimes.com

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