Hello Maine

May 10, 2009

As you know, I have made the commitment to run as a candidate for governor of Maine in 2010. I am proud to be running as a Maine Green Independent candidate, since our party is the only viable alternative to the corporate parties. Through our campaign, we can create a transformative political movement in order to advance our Ten Key Values in civil society.

About a year or so ago I was interviewed by a reporter for the Ellsworth American and he asked me what I would like Mainers to know about the Greens. I responded that I would like people to understand that we are more than just environmentalists, that we understand economics and that most of all we understand the natural interconnection between the economy and ecology.

It is revealing that both words – economy and ecology – have the same Greek root, “oikos” which means house. Ecology means the study of our house, and economy means the management of our house, house being mother earth.

We are transitioning into a difficult period of reduced resources and the necessary reduced expectations. The Green Party platform, and my own values, are particularly suited to guiding a state through this period. We need to create a new definition of progress as well as an understanding that traditional growth is by its very definition unsustainable. Given these limits, it is time to begin moving away from the quantitative definition of growth and progress and towards the qualitative. Clean air, adequate and safe water, fertile soil, universal access to single payer health care, chemical-free food and renewable non-polluting energy sources must be considered basic human rights and growth in those areas is sustainable. Yet what we as a society call growth typically has little to do with improving quality of life, but rather with production that is wasteful, luxurious, dangerous, intentionally obsolescent unnecessary, or all of the above. Even the “green movement” is all about production not reduction, where increased production of so-called green products, from energy saving light bulbs to wind turbines, is encouraged.

However, the problem is not the nature of the product but the expansion of production. It is not the products that must change but the process that must change. For example, we do need radical transformation in our energy systems, but that transformation – whether to wind, solar, geothermal – must be community created, owned and operated. We need communities to determine their transportation needs, devise solutions to meet those needs and then the state must provide necessary support. We must produce only sustainable and recyclable goods and encourage green architecture through incentives. We need to transform food production and distribution by defending local food sovereignty, eliminating polluting industrial agribusiness, and creating sustainable agricultural systems. We must also financially support the sustainability of dairy production in the state and create in-state processing opportunities for our dairy and shellfish industries.

The key to this is democratic decision-making about economic development. We need a participatory model, where initiatives percolate from the ground up, not from the top down. Liberalism is about social management, but we are about social liberation. Monopoly capitalism derives profit from exploitive extraction of surplus value from natural resources and human resources. This is the intersection of labor and ecology, which is a natural partnership that we must pursue, by working closely with labor to defeat monopoly capitalism. Most importantly, we must halt the plantation mentality, whereby Maine becomes the recipient of that which other states reject, such as out of state waste, and inappropriately-sited water mining, industrial wind farms and LNG facilities.

It is time we take back the power in our state. It is time we put the brakes on the voracious appetites of Nestle/Poland Spring, Plum Creek, First Wind, TransCanada, and the like. Even the smallest town is powerful when the people organize, and towns have shown this to be true in recent struggles. I believe in local control and decentralization, unlike the current administration.

What we need from a governor is not a series of statist power grabs, but rather a grand vision of how every town and city in this state can come together to meet all of the challenges that are on the horizon over the next decade. As governor, I would be a gardener, not an architect, planting seeds throughout the state and letting them grow, rather than designing the master plan and imposing it on the landscape.

I have shown that I truly care about the people of this state. My attitude towards my clients has always been that I work for them, and while I may advise them on certain matters, the ultimate plan is always the decision of the client. This is why it has been appalling to me to witness an administration that pursues a completely centralized mode of governing. “We know what’s best and we are so sure of it that we will forgo public hearings and community input and we will twist arms in the closing days of the session and take the final vote in the dead of night when those pesky reporters are not around. And what are you gonna do about it?”

A year ago we had forced school consolidation, but the response showed that the administration had greatly underestimated the response of the school districts, particularly those in rural Maine. Resistance emerged along with anger that without any input whatsoever Augusta was mandating what local communities needed to do with their local schools.

Not to be deterred from its apparent goal of eliminating any semblance of home rule, the administration passed – once more without public hearings throughout the state – the expedited wind power ordinance, which benefits corporate development of industrial wind farms, rather than community consensus-based projects whereby benefits accrue to the community and its residents.

Towns throughout the state, including Lincoln, Roxbury, Dixmont, and Freedom, only a few examples, immediately rose up to resist the actual, or possible, unwelcome intrusion of massive industrial wind farms into their communities.

As I said earlier, we do need to move towards the utilization of renewable energy sources. But as I also said, such energy projects must be community initiated and controlled. Vinalhaven, for example, has begun developing one such project. The community – not some out of state corporation – decided to erect wind turbines on the island. The electricity produced by the turbines will power the island. Any surplus power will be credited to the accounts of the island residents. These are the types of projects that we must support.

In Fall 2008, the movement against Nestlé’s water mining exploded. Southern Maine water districts put negotiations with Nestle on hold and the towns of Shapleigh and Newfield passed rights based ordinances that essentially prevent Nestle from mining the aquifer that those towns share.

These struggles are representative of the party’s core values – the Ten Key Values – that are the foundation of necessary programmatic initiatives. I intend to make this campaign a vehicle for developing those initiatives that can bring the Ten Key Values to life. Listen to how these resonate with our times – grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, non-violence, decentralization, community-based economics and economic justice, feminism and gender equity, respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility and future focus and sustainability.

Those of you involved in the water wars, the industrial wind farm resistance, repeal of school consolidation and jail reform, to mention just a few of the many struggles that receive our time and energy, have shown me the path this campaign must take. This will be an on-the-ground campaign -we will meet the people in every town and city, will hear what they want and need and will respond accordingly. I want this to be about all of us and all of our communities. I believe that we have a small window of opportunity during which we can get a hearing for an alternative vision that rejects multi-national capitalism and instead proposes a system based on social and ecological justice.

And we can win if we focus our energy on transmitting our message, raise the tough questions during the campaign and not let other candidates get away with espousing the usual platitudes. We are in the right place at the right time. More than 30 years ago, when I was working in politics in California, and Harvey Milk was organizing support for gay and lesbian civil rights in San Francisco, none of us ever thought about the possibility of marriage equality. I never thought I would see marriage equality in my lifetime. When Hilary Clinton’s proposal for health care reform was summarily dismissed in 1993, I thought universal health care, much less a single payer plan, was dead for a generation at least. And I truly never thought I would live to see an African American president. Yet these events have come to pass or, I believe, are imminent.

As you will see when my web site goes live, my logo is the compass rose, and the sentiment is steering the course for a new Maine. A new Maine necessarily involves a new way of thinking about Maine. A campaign must be much more than just a listing of issues and policies that the candidate supports and opposes. I think holistically about issues in this state, and recognize the interconnection between the many elements of state governance. Only through recognizing that interdependence can we create policies that will protect our communities, protect our residents and make Maine what it should – and can – be. This will be a rough road to travel, with much turbulence. However, as 18th century historian Edward Gibbon stated, “The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” And I think we’ve all shown that we’re very able navigators.