Joel Kovel's

PRESIDENTIAL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
at the Green Party of New York State Nominating Convention,

DECEMBER 12, 1999,
where Kovel, Ralph Nader, Steven Gaskin, and Jello Biafra
were placed on that state's March 7 ballot:

Yes, there are times I've felt discouraged--who wouldn't feel that way now and then, when you consider what we're up against? But I've come back again and again--because I believe that the greens can help save this world and build a better one.

We're embarking on our greatest challenge yet. I want to take on that challenge, and help build a presidential campaign worthy of our faith and ideals. Now, in case you haven't realized it, the next president of the U.S. is not going to be green. That's the bad news. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but we're all grownups here and can take it: this country is not yet ready for the green transformation. But the good news is that we can help it get ready. That's what the next green presidential candidate can achieve: to bring the green vision onto the national stage, to inspire the people of this country to become green, and to inspire the people who are green to build our party into a mighty force for transformation.

But first, we have to be clear about what we stand for. And here is where I see my main role: to help articulate that vision which will realize our ideals. I've had to learn to be succinct in doing this--though as our long-suffering Clearinghouse Coordinator knows, this is an acquired habit. Let me share with you something I wrote recently on this subject. I was asked by the California Voter's Guide, where as you know I am on the ballot, to prepare a statement in 35 words or less on the basic beliefs which qualified me for the Presidency stood. I came up with the following, which I'm pleased to say clocks in at 34 words:

"I am a green-socialist, outside of and against the corporate system of greed. I will work for a society that gives power to all people and cares for the earth that gives us life."

1. Universal health care for all Americans as a basic human right,br>

2. Defending workers and the environment from global capitalism


3. Conquering global warming by rebuilding our economy along ecological lines.

If we are to be a movement and not just a reformist party, in what direction do we move? Is this to be the aimlessness of the "Brownian movement" we learned about in high school physics--are we to be as molecules aimlessly bumping against resistance of the system, and against ourselves? Or are we to be focussed and directed? Do we have a way of bringing our green values into relationship with all the groups, the people of color, the prisoners, the alienated youth, the migrant workers, the whole world of suffering humanity and nature for whose cause we strive? Do we have a way of uniting the conjoined calls for social justice and ecological wisdom that are our sustaining principles?

I ask you, to what door does our critique, our attack lead? How, to reconsider the priorities I just listed, do the criminal denial of universal health care, the worldwide assault on working people, the gathering disaster of global warming, come together?
Where do all the threads converge, and into what fabric? Where are all the injuries to humanity and nature, the crooked politicians and the slick Willies, the mind-destroying media, the generals and NATO bombers, the prison wardens, the real estate barons, the bioengineers, the oil companies and the banks and the IMF, and yes, the newly identified supreme villian, the WTO - - - where are they brought together? Under whose aegis are the attacks on minorities, on gays, on homeless mothers, on so-called illegal aliens (though no human being can be an alien) and on so-called political prisoners, or on the sweatshop victims of the new slavery around the world? Can it be other than that of the monster which eats the world, the global capitalist system? And if so, then find a better word to identify the supercession of that system than socialism--or failing in that, let us use the term, socialism, and let us give it new, green content.

We are living in a precious time, a truly transformative moment. Seattle showed that this was upon us--that the forces of capitalist globalization have engendered global resistance. And this resistance is global, not just because it arises from around the world, but because for the first time, the representatives of labor and those of the environment came together in a mighty surge of humanity and nature rising against capital. But this is precisely the conjuncture that brought the greens into existence as the political reaction to the global ecological crisis.

We must not betray the hopes of transformation by sinking into a morass of reformism. And yet, to remain radical requires a transformative, unified vision. This is the green moment: it is the time for our movement and party to answer the challenge and come into its own being.
For a whole generation the world has been ruled by an evil despair. We have lived under the spell cast by "TINA"--the deadly spirit of resignation, which requires accepting the notion, which all the forces of the ideological apparatus work to force down our throat, that There Is No Alternative to the rule of capital. Now the world may be awakening from this bad dream. Let the green movement be the trumpet that awakens us; and let this presidential campaign be the occasion when it finds its true voice.

Thank you.

Build an Ecological Society beyond Capitalism
Universal socialized health care
Abolish the WTO, IMF and replace with democractic institutions
Stop global warming
Justice for all peoples
Moratorium on genetic engineering
Moratorium on prison construction
Abolish death penalty
Abolish NATO and the arms trade
End sweatshops

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OCIAL JUSTICE