First, the Green Party e-mail.
As politically active and knowledgeable Texans who aren’t Republicans or Democrats know, Texas has what may be the most two-party duopolistic ballot restriction laws of any state in the country.
In plain English, Repugs and Dims in the Lege conspired together to make it almost impossible for Greens, or Libertarians, or anybody else, to get on the ballot, leaving their candidates to write-in status.
The way you can try to get off write-in status is, starting shortly after the duopoly primaries, getting people to sign a ballot access petition for your third party to appear on the general election.
But, there’s a huge catch. In addition to signatories needing to be registered voters, they cannot have voted in either MSP (“mainstream” party, riffing on MSM) primary election. And, the petition requires about 45,000 signatures statewide.
I’m not a registered Green, but I am an independent left-liberal who voted Green in 2004.
So, I went to the website of Dallas County Greens and e-mailed county Green officials to ask where they might have volunteers out and about seeking petition signatures. Now, I recognize there may not be as many dollars or as much organization behind this as connected with California initiative drives, but, nonetheless, I would expect them to say something like, “We will have volunteers at the Northwest Highway location of Half Price Books from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, April 12-13.”
But they haven’t. In fact, I haven’t heard Word One yet.
Then, the Lone Star Chapter, Sierra Club
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ve seen my takedown of Sierra HQ over the Clorox branding sellout and Project Renewal in the last week. If you’re not a regular reader, then start!
Anyway, I received a solicitation mailing from the Lone Star Chapter a couple of days ago. I went to the chapter’s website and politely but straightforwardly said that, due to those two issues above, I likely would let my Sierra membership lapse and therefore could not in good conscience support the state chapter either.
No response there, either.
And, that’s not all. Neither the Lone Star Chapter’s latest newsletter, received earlier this month, nor the Dallas local’s newsletter, mentioned either one of these issues, nor have they mentioned them in the past.
Yeah, I know, in a state as big as Texas, “like a whole ’nuther country” (gag me with a spoon) a lot of members at the local/state level may not be interested in national issues anyway. But, if they are local level activists, Project Renewal is designed to squash them. And, activist or not, the Clorox deal gives an across-the-board black eye to Sierra.
But, I guess they don’t care. If that is the case, that’s another reason to not send any money to Austin.
And, in one more shot at the national level. Neither the Sierra Club official blog, Compass, nor Carl Pope’s blog, are stellar on these issues.
A search of Compass with the word “Clorox” doesn’t return a single hit, for doorknob’s sake. Pope’s blog is mainly greenwash. His blog just has board election responses for the only links about Project Renewal.
Finally, the Audubon Society
I’ve been mulling over becoming a basic-level member of Audubon for some time. And, obviously, I’ll have money freed from the Sierra Club to send somewhere else.
Well, same day as the Texas Sierra mailing, I got a membership solicitation from the National Audubon Society. Great.
I was even getting offered a free fleece for joining.
Not so great. WWF’s tchotchkes are regularly from China. When Sierrans questioned a backpack giveaway a couple of years ago, Sierra HQ said “trust us” on the country of origin.
So, I went to Audubon’s website, found the e-mail link for membership issues, and asked them, “Whence the blanket?”
So far, no response.
While I don’t dismiss people who are single-issue liberals, I can’t support environmental groups who don’t care about jobs, let alone foreign labor rights and human rights.
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