The Greens: In Santa Monica and Freiburg, Germany

Naomi Kresge
Special to the Mirror

   I: BERLIN
   Three thousand German Greens bellowed and stamped their feet when Joschka Fischer stepped on stage Sunday night. The polls had been closed for hours and the general results were far from certain, but the Berliners crowded into the Green election night party knew that, at the very least, they had won over eight percent of the vote, which meant they were the only clear winners at that moment.
   They toasted their beloved foreign minister when he said, “Our election goal was to be the third biggest party, and it’s clear that we’ve reached that.” They cheered when he proclaimed that pragmatism and principles aren’t mutually exclusive, and, as the night lengthened and the result remained uncertain, they overflowed into the galleries outside, where they bought beer and cocktails, wieners, ice cream and cupcakes, and cheered and groaned as the two biggest parties – their liberal Social Democrat allies and the conservative Christian Union – traded a hairline lead back and forth.
But one thing was clear as the neck-and-neck race played out between Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s coalition and the challengers: If he won, the chancellor would owe his position to the Green vote.
   That proved true when the complete results were announced at 3:45 a.m. – the Social Democrats and the Christian Union parties had each polled about 38.5 percent. The Greens’ 8.6 percent had pushed their coalition government into the majority and had also far exceeded the minimum seven or eight percent that observers had called necessary for them to claim victory and political stability. In one Berlin district, they even took a parliamentary seat by majority appointment for the first time.
   The evening also proved Santa Monica Mayor – and U.S. Green Party member – Michael Feinstein correct. “The German Greens are ahead of the whole rest of the planet,” he had said before the election. “Nobody is where they are.”
   In stark contrast to American Greens, the German Greens have helped set the majority agenda since 1998, when they won 6.7 percent of the parliamentary vote and forged their ruling coalition with the Social Democrats.
   Feinstein calls them proof that political change is possible.
   “One of the things Greens gain from looking around the world is the realization that the Green Party appeals to many people and is successful around the world where the voting system is fair,” he wrote in a recent e-mail. “In this country, the left is decidedly self-impotent electorally, not ever expecting to win. That’s why there haven’t been any viable left-of-center third parties until the Greens, because of the type of attitude people bring in. (They are happy to fail‚ fighting the good fight.) So we Greens know we are onto something much bigger and better, and the successes around the planet give us the patience to tackle the highly undemocratic U.S. system.”

   II. FREIBURG
   In the German “enviro-capital“ Freiburg – a city of 200,000 located in the country’s southwest corner – a longtime Green by the name of Dieter Salomon occupies the top office in the centuries-old town hall. As mayor of the largest city in which a Green is mayor, he could be considered Feinstein’s direct counterpart. He pulled off a surprise upset to win his office this summer, and he’s already been in his share of fights with this university town’s radical left.
   “I don’t have any contacts of my own [in America],” he said a few weeks ago during an interview in Freiburg. Of the political activity of the U.S. Green Party, he says, “There are Greens [here] who would have no idea. You’d have to go to Berlin, and there would be three people sitting in an international office who would have a clue. The rest would not.“
   Salomon has been Green his entire political life; at 42, he’s just young enough to have entered politics when the party did, in the early 80s. He dresses to fit a new party stereotype: a suit-clad activist grown older, mindful of the political establishment but still ready to go jogging with Joschka on a stump trip.
   “There’s a time for everything,” he said, discussing the party’s occasionally tumultuous path from a loose coalition of sometimes militant activists to a “normal party,” a party with political goals and increasing appeal to older voters. “The Greens that exist today would never have existed then.”
   German Greens owe their success to two things, according to Freiburg University political scientist Ulrich Eith, the first of which was the inability of the established left to address environmental issues when they became part of the national consciousness in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
   The Social Democrats couldn’t bend left because they were running the government, he suggested, so the way was clear for the Greens to step in.
A quirk of the German electoral system also works in their favor. Proportional representation in the Bundestag is achieved by allowing each district to elect one candidate directly and by a majority vote, while a second vote determines the proportional allocation of parliamentary seats. Parties which win at least five percent of the second vote nationwide or three direct mandates are awarded a proportionate number of parliamentary seats.
   But during their four years as junior partner in the governing coalition, outnumbered more than six-to-one by the Social Democrats in the Bundestag, the Greens have had to deal with the same phenomenon they had exploited a decade-and-a-half earlier: the difficulty of governing and maintaining progressive principles at the same time.
   Most divisive has been the issue of military action. Pacifism is a basic Green principle, and committing German troops to action in Kosovo and then Afghanistan – the first active duty for the Bundeswehr since World War II – drew bitter criticism from the left. When Fischer visited Freiburg three weeks before the vote, for example, it was not the right-wing opposition but left-wing pacifists who protested during his speech.
   Voting for parties instead of individuals can also lead to some campaign choices that might seem a little odd to American eyes, such as when Freiburg Green candidate Kerstin Andreae, in a last-minute strategic move, began urging her Green sympathizers to vote for Social Democrat Gernot Erler instead. The reason? She feared the conservative Christian Democrat candidate could win the district if liberal voters split between Erler and herself, and she knew she’d get a seat in the Bundestag anyway if the Greens could win enough party votes.
   In a meeting a week-and-a-half before the vote, she and her staff tried to figure out how to package the change without making it look like she’d given up on her own race.
   “The second vote is Kerstin’s vote,” one person suggested, mimicking Fischer’s national campaign of “Second vote: Joschka’s vote.” Too long, the campaign manager said, and they eventually settled on the minimalist “second vote: Green.”
   The strategy worked: Erler won Freiburg’s direct vote handily on Sunday with 41.5 percent, while the Greens won 28.7 percent of the second vote, the party vote. Thanks to the strong second-vote showing, Andreae will get her own place in parliament as well.

   III: SANTA MONICA
   “I can say that I think the U.S. Greens have a lot to learn from the German Greens who obviously have been involved in German politics for a lot longer,” Santa Monica Green City Council candidate Josefina Aranda said last week. “I believe that the Green Party in the U.S. needs to learn how to maintain our ideological views and yet still know how to do the fundraising, do the precinct-walking effectively, so that we have more victories.”
   Aranda is trying to break the Santa Monica political mold by becoming the first Green to win a City Council seat without the endorsement of Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights. If she and current Mayor Pro-Tempore Kevin McKeown – who is endorsed by SMRR – both win their races, the Greens will hold three seats on the Santa Monica Council. Aranda would also be the first representative of the Pico neighborhood to sit on the Council in many years.
   As a young Latina, she would add diversity to the Green slate, something Feinstein calls representative of a new, broader appeal for his party.
   “The Green Party platform rang with what I believe in,“ Aranda said. “I was disappointed with the two other parties, especially with respect to issues pertaining to the Latino community, NAFTA being one of them.”
   But Aranda says she’s running an individual campaign, not a Green one. “Santa Monica is a non-partisan race,” she maintained, “and although people make it a big issue, the general public of Santa Monica may not be interested in what party I’m from .... It takes more than Green votes to win an election in Santa Monica. If you’re going to run only on Green Party membership then you won’t get elected in Santa Monica.”

   IV: AMERICA
   Some American Greens argue that their party will never break through in American politics until the political system changes.
   While the current national Green umbrella organization dates only to 1996 and the National Committee was first recognized just over a year ago, a loose American confederation of state and local Green parties is much older – almost as old as the German movement. By their own count, American Greens currently hold 152 offices nationwide (51 in California), almost all of which are at the local level. US Greens sit on city councils, water boards, school boards and supervisory seats, not in Beltway offices and statehouses.
   “The problem is that the Democrats and the Republicans write the rules,” Feinstein said. Like many other American Greens, he supports a move toward proportional representation in the legislature, instant runoff voting for the executive branch, public financing of elections and inclusive television debates.
   But ask him whether he operates as a Green in local politics, and he hedges. “This is a green community, despite people’s party affiliations,” he said.
   “You have to find a place that embodies the philosophy and find common ground,“ he added later. “When you look at the SMRR platform, the platform is a Green platform.”

   V: FREIBURG REDUX
   Back in Freiburg, political expert Eith was no more familiar with the specifics of local American Green party politics than were any of the German Greens, and he expressed a mild bemusement at the idea of a group of renters’ rights activists holding onto political power in a town for two decades.
   But he did have something to say when asked about the importance of identity for a developing party.
   “Of course it’s important,” he said. “You can build coalitions ... but if you want to be successful in the long term you have to have your own identity, and it has to be clear that the party will represent its interests.”