Caught beneath the landslide: Lessons from the 1983 general election

May 8, 2013: It was 30 years ago today that the British general election campaign got under way, the one that produced a landslide for the governing Conservatives, a rout for the Labour Party, and a serious reduction in the ranks of the party that I supported back then: the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Although Britain's political terrain has changed dramatically since 1983, that year's election has a few valuable lessons, some of which apply to the United States. 

Card-carrying member

Lesson 1: Leveraging Small Numbers

At the start of the 1983 campaign the parliamentary SDP consisted of 27 members. When the House of Commons reassembled after the election, the number had fallen to just six. Losing three-quarters of our MPs did not diminish the enthusiasm of ordinary SDP members in the country. Even with a parliamentary presence so small it could caucus in the back of a black cab, the Social Democrats in the House of Commons managed to project an image of the SDP as an effective political force with more competence and box-office appeal -- though fewer MPs -- than their Liberal allies.

David Owen, who became leader after the general election, used Parliament as a device for amplifying the party's voice. Although the Conservative landslide meant the SDP and Liberals had negligible influence inside the Commons, Owen's parliamentary performances and TV interviews made the SDP seem not only relevant but also sometimes more effective at opposing the government than the Labour Party, which enjoyed the title of Her Majesty's Official Opposition. Without a foothold in Parliament -- and with only six MPs it really was no more than a foothold -- this  would have been impossible. 

Owen also exploited the SDP's minuscule number of seats by relentlessly presenting it as Exhibit 1 in the case for a referendum on proportional representation. After all, a proportional system would have awarded seats to the Liberals and Social Democrats roughly corresponding to their share of the national vote, i.e. about 23%, instead of the 4% they ended up with. Perversely, therefore, the 1983 election instilled even greater enthusiasm among some members in that it generated a sense of outrage (or its SDP equivalent) about the first-past-the-post electoral system. 

Lesson 2: Room for one more

That grievance, that feeling of having been cheated, smoldered. Two years after the election SDP members gathered in Torquay for the party's annual conference, where a group of loyal young Social Democrats, myself included, posed for a photo-op with party leader David Owen to launch the SDP's youth campaign (below). Have You Got the Guts, asked the campaign's rhetorical question. My question was "Can I keep the sweatshirt?" to which the answer was an awkward and apologetic "No."

We had the guts. But not enough sweatshirts.

Another valid question would have been why the organizers chose to call the campaign, of all things, the Youth Blitz. Distributing fliers next to a large sign announcing the Youth Blitz in my native Swansea, whose downtown the Luftwaffe had so comprehensively and unforgivingly redesigned, I met with some frosty stares, particularly from older passers-by.

Clunky slogans aside, what mattered was that the party had at least survived. In hindsight, more surprising than the party's failure to win a larger number of seats was its ability to retain any at all. What the SDP's experience in the 1983 election proved was that British politics could comfortably accommodate four national parties: Conservatives, Labour, Liberals, and Social Democrats. Of course, after the 1987 election when the SDP managed to hold on to five seats despite Labour's long march back toward the center ground, several leading Social Democrats claimed the exact opposite and successfully worked for a merger with the Liberals.

3. Minor Party Magnetism

The SDP's performance in the 1983 general election helped pull the Labour Party away from left-wing extremism back toward the center. When the SDP formed in 1981 it was as a response to Labour's sudden lurch to the left: its commitment to nationalize the major industries and banks, to unilaterally surrender Britain's nuclear deterrent, and to withdraw from the European Community (as the EU was then known). By the time Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1995, the party had already thrown those policies overboard. The party Blair inherited had transformed itself, in large part because of the SDP, which exerted a kind of magnetic force that drew Labour toward it.  

In alliance with the Liberals, the SDP gave alienated Labour voters a powerful way to express their rejection of Labour's dogmatic socialism. In 1983, Labour polled only two percentage points more than the SDP/Liberal Alliance. Following the election, Labour's new leader, Neil Kinnock, realized that his party's only hope of regaining power was to win back those voters who had fled to the SDP, and that the only way to win them back was to re-morph into a genuinely social democratic party. This effort, which Kinnock's adherents called modernization, continued under John Smith, albeit at a slower pace, and sped up again under Blair, whose coterie dubbed the project New Labour.

Without the willingness of social democrats to defect from Labour to form the SDP and then fight against Labour in the 1983 general election, it seems unlikely that Labour would have detoxified itself so thoroughly and (by the standards of British electoral politics) so quickly. By breaking away and continuing the fight outside the Labour Party, the Social Democrats strengthened the hand of those inside Labour who wanted to return the party to its more traditional, centrist, catch-all position.

Conclusion

From alliance to merger

The SDP's policies (e.g. incomes policies and industrial partnership) are now out of date, reminders of the Cold War and the ideological argument over free markets versus the planned economy. But the party's enduring lesson is that fourth parties can have an influence out of proportion to their size. So sometimes, even within the constraints of the plurality voting system, it is worthwhile breaking away if your goal is to force one of the two large parties to change. Progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans should take note.

Those who pressed for the SDP to merge with the Liberals argued that British politics had room for no more than three national parties. Ironically, they included some who had helped found the SDP in the first place when they could, instead, have simply joined the existing third party, the Liberals. Even more ironically, almost as soon as their argument prevailed and the SDP vanished into a merger, another force emerged as a strong fourth party: the Greens. 

In the 1989 European Parliament elections, with the Liberal-SDP merger feud still going strong, the Greens won 15% of the votes. At that stage, a rump party of anti-merger Social Democrats under Owen's leadership was still clinging to life. But when their party came last in a by-election (special election) behind a joke candidate, Owen and his allies opted for swift dissolution rather than protracted humiliation. They thought that with fewer than 20,000 dues-paying members the SDP could no longer hold itself out as a viable national party. If the Internet age had already dawned in 1990, their decision might well have been different.

Perhaps, then, the final lesson from the 1983 election and, more generally, from the short life of the SDP, is this: even in the hostile conditions that plurality voting systems create, small parties can survive, sometimes even long enough to effect lasting change.

Margaret Thatcher: Dangerous Progressive

Margaret Thatcher was a conservative. She saw socialism (even in its democratic, parliamentary form) as a threat to individual freedom. My stating of the obvious has a purpose, which is to make clear that, headline notwithstanding, I am not about to diminish the late British prime minister by treating her as my personal Rorschach test, imputing to her principles that she did not, in fact, espouse.

But, that said, by contemporary American standards the Margaret Thatcher of the 1980s was a progressive: on the environment, on healthcare, and on market regulation she was quite liberal (in the U.S. sense of the word). Thatcher’s stances on these three issues show how far to the Right the center of political gravity has shifted. Nowadays, a candidate with her principles and policy positions would have a hard time winning the Democratic nomination for President, let alone the Republican one.

Climate Change

“[F]ree markets are a means to an end,” Thatcher said in a speech to the United Nations in 1989, which she commenced with praise for Charles Darwin. “They would defeat their object if by their output they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the well-being they achieve by the production of goods and services.” She then demanded international action on climate change, saying “[i]t is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay,” adding that while environmental protection requires economic growth “it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.” 

The expression "inter-generational responsibility" was not one that likely ever passed her lips, but that is exactly what Thatcher was propounding. Any Republican candidates with the courage to voice to such sensible thoughts today, with or without a laudatory reference to Charles Darwin, would have to brace themselves for the Tea Party hordes, torches and pitchforks in hand.

Healthcare

Margaret Thatcher accepted the need for the National Health Service (NHS) and, while ever hopeful of establishing “internal markets” within the NHS, never questioned the legitimacy of a publicly-funded healthcare system. In 1982 she told the Conservative Party conference “[t]he principle that adequate health care should be provided for all, regardless of ability to pay, must be the foundation of any arrangements for financing the Health Service.” The following year in Edinburgh she declared, “I have no more intention of dismantling the National Health Service than I have of dismantling Britain’s defenses.” And it wasn’t all talk.  Margaret Thatcher’s governments devoted an increasing share of public spending to the NHS, rising from approximately 10% in 1980 to around 12% in 1989, tracking the percentages that went to defense in the same period.

It is hard to imagine even a moderate Republican (something that is, in itself, increasingly hard to imagine) proclaiming fealty to the principle of publicly-funded healthcare for all. What more flamboyant form of hari kiri could there be than for a contemporary conservative in the United States to stand before the Republican party faithful and not only equate healthcare with the national defense, but also to agree that a civilized society should fund both through taxation?

Markets

Margaret Thatcher deregulated the financial sector, most famously via the Big Bang reforms of 1986, thereby creating the conditions that gave rise to the subprime debacle and meltdown 20-odd years later. That may be a truism, but is it true? In a recent article, Philip Booth, program director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, reminds us what really happened during Thatcher's premiership:

"[I]n general, the 1980s was not a period of financial deregulation. Insider trading was made illegal in 1980. The life insurance industry, which had been almost free of regulation for over 100 years from 1870, was re-regulated from 1980 to 1982. Bank deposit insurance was introduced in 1979. The sale of investment and insurance products came under statutory regulation from 1986. Further, the first ever regulation of UK bank capital took place under Basel I, agreed while Thatcher was Prime Minister."

Failing as they do to align with the myth, perhaps the facts as Booth presents them are so discomfiting to Left and Right alike that they will remain conveniently out of sight and mind. Margaret Thatcher exercising oversight and setting limits on the financial sector is an image that triggers cognitive dissonance among both her supporters and detractors. Far easier, for current purposes, to remember Thatcher as a cartoon conservative, a free-market buccaneer hacking and slashing at the remains of the welfare state while dancing around a bonfire of regulatory red tape. If we choose to remember her a laissez-faire warrior, the scourge of the public sector, then the cabal that currently controls the congressional Republican Party looks comfortingly normal.

How much more challenging and chilling to recall the reality of Margaret Thatcher's policies -- her respect for climate science, commitment to universal public healthcare, and refusal to give speculators free rein -- that would mark her out to today's Republicans as an unelectable outcast. For that matter, how well would Thatcher's policy statements play in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, sounding as they do more like Bernie Sanders than Barack Obama? It is a measure of how narrow the political spectrum has become when we can ponder the Iron Lady's legacy and say, "Margaret Thatcher: dangerous progressive."

Out of the frying pan, etc.

Goodbye coal, and hello natural gas. Consistent with a nationwide trend, the Pioneer Valley looks set to replace one fossil-fueled power station with another. GDF Suez's coal-burning plant at Mount Tom in Holyoke seems poised to close in the next few years, by which point a 400 megawatt natural-gas-fired facility will have come online 15 miles to the southwest in Westfield.

When GDF Suez finally stops burning coal at Mount Tom, we will all breathe more easily (literally). But there are two reasons to hold in that sigh of relief for the time being: water and the climate. A new natural-gas plant would have big implications for drinking water in the area. And it would do nothing to reduce the state's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while increasing our dependence on fracking.

The company proposing the Westfield power station -- Pioneer Valley Energy Center -- expects that the new plant's cooling towers will need up to two million gallons of water per day. Where will it find all that water? From the Tighe-Carmody Reservoir in Southampton, which is owned and operated by the City of Holyoke. How much wastewater will the plant expel? About a quarter of a million gallons per day.

To put those amounts in context, the average family in the U.S. uses about 300 gallons of water per day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. So every day of the week, the new power station would withdraw as much water as 6,600 families would use and discharge enough to account for about 800 families. In addition to wasting water, building yet another gas-fired plant will exacerbate the climate crisis.

About half of the electricity we generate in Massachusetts comes from natural gas, and because we don't extract it here (not yet, anyway) the power companies have to pipe it in from other parts of the country and Canada. For an overview of the pipeline network click here. Over the next 25 years or so, the Energy Information Administration is projecting that a steadily increasing proportion of our natural gas will come from shale formations. Extracting natural gas from shale requires hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.

So what is the alternative to the Westfield gas-fired plant? One option is to keep generating energy at Mount Tom: clean energy.

Saying goodbye to coal should not mean bidding farewell to GDF Suez. If we can keep the company here, we will have a unique opportunity to transform Mount Tom site into a showcase for renewable-energy innovation. At a recent public meeting in Holyoke, Senator Michael Knapik said his legislative task force would welcome ideas to present to GDF Suez. Spending some of the company's €231 million research-and-innovation budget in the Pioneer Valley would be a good start. Located on the Connecticut River, surrounded by farmland, and in the heart of the Five College Area, the Mount Tom site would make an ideal home for a renewable-energy research facility focusing on hydro power, micro-hydro, and anaerobic digestion.  

Thanks to the current pause in global temperature rises, policymakers in Massachusetts and across the world may have just enough time to make the changes necessary to stave off climate catastrophe. But if we replace the coal-burning plant at Mount Tom with a gas-fired plant in Westfield, our regional CO2e emissions will remain constant or even rise while our methane emissions will increase. Electricity users in the Pioneer Valley may no longer feel quite so complicit in the disregard that Colombian mine-owners show for the lives of the miners who dig the coal (see blog post January 26, 2011); instead we can shoulder more responsibility for the fracking that makes projects like Westfield economically feasible. 

A group called Westfield Concerned Citizens has been leading the fight against the new gas-fired plant. On Thursday, May 23, at 7:00 p.m., they and local Greens are hosting a public meeting at the Westfield Athenaeum to rally opposition and present practical, clean-energy alternatives including solar, net-metering, and opting in to the Green Communities Act. So if you live in Western Massachusetts, please mark your calendar and come along.

Which company had to pay an EPA fine?

Houston, Texas, is home to Cabot Oil & Gas and to Strategic Minerals, Inc. Both of these companies have a connection to Massachusetts. One of them extracts the fossil fuel that generates about half our state's electricity and, according to this search tool run by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was responsible for emitting about 611,000 metric tons of CO2e in 2011. The other operates a glass recycling facility in the town of Franklin, about 40 miles southeast of Boston. Read on if you want to find out which of these two companies had to pay a big fine to the EPA.

The company paying the fine was Strategic Minerals, which runs the Franklin recycling site. A couple of months ago, it agreed to pay a fine of $159,000 for failing to have an adequate stormwater pollution prevention plan and for other stormwater discharge violations. Why was Strategic Minerals obliged to take care of its stormwater discharges? Because it has a duty to comply with the federal Clean Water Act, including Section 402(p) which requires permits for "discharges associated with industrial activities."

Flooding in Pennsylvania, 2011 (AP photo)

Not so Cabot Oil & Gas. Whereas oil-and-gas exploration fall under the Clean Water Act, natural gas production does not. Although subject to regulation by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) the frack pads that dot the state do not have to comply with the provisions of the Clean Drinking Water Act.

So any stormwater that might flow over any of Cabot's Marcellus Shale fracking sites -- picking up pollutants along the way -- would enter the waterways of Pennsylvania free from EPA meddling. Pennsylvania has experienced devastating floods in recent years, and climate change may increase the intensity of extreme weather events in the state according to this report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The source of the statutory exemption is the infamous Energy Act of 2005, which exempted hydraulic fracturing from several important environmental laws. As a result, some industrial activities (glass recycling, for example) require permits under the Clean Water Act's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). But not fracking.

If you would like to take action to help Massachusetts make the switch away from fracked natural gas toward clean energy, visit beatbackfracking.org.

Beat Back Fracking

According to the Office of the State Geologist, fracking is "probably not" coming to Massachusetts. You can read all the FAQs about the Hartford Basin here, but in the meantime, here's the answer to the question "Is hydraulic fracturing for shale gas coming to Massachusetts?":

Probably not.  Based on a survey of all available scientific data, the geologic conditions in the Connecticut Valley in western Massachusetts are not optimum for shale gas development.  Black shale units in the Hartford Basin are generally too thin, laterally discontinuous, and are cut by too many pre-existing natural fractures and extinct faults. This makes extraction of hydrocarbons economically not feasible with today’s technology at current market prices (see below). However, more data need to be collected to completely rule out that possibility. 

In addition, oil and gas wells used for conventional or enhanced hydrocarbon recovery are defined as Class 2 wells under the Massachusetts Underground Injection Control Regulations (310 CMR 27.00).  Class 2 wells are currently prohibited in the Commonwealth.

This is good news, and I was relieved to read it. But while Massachusetts itself is likely to remain frack-free, we are still complicit in the practice. After all, most of the electricity we generate in Massachusetts comes from natural gas. So every time we switch on the light (or type a blog post, for that matter) we can be sure that it's because somebody somewhere is having their land fracked. Massachusetts could use its market power to require that any company selling natural-gas based electricity in Massachusetts has to certify that the extraction process did not pollute anyone's drinking water.

That was the idea behind a bill the Sierra Club promoted in the last legislative session, and that deserves more support in the next session. The bill won the support of the Massachusetts Democratic Party's state convention in 2011. If you'd like to help the bill become law, please let me know.

3 tips for creating your campaign message

Tony Blair taught me a lesson I will never forget. One day toward the end of the 1997 general election campaign he put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. "The most important thing in politics," he said, "is sincerity." Blair flashed his notorious grin. "Once you can fake that, you've got it made."

Tony Blair on sincerity

Admittedly, only one part of the foregoing is truthful. I have never had a deep and meaningful conversation with Tony Blair (although we did meet once, for all of five minutes) and the ability to feign sincerity will not lead ineluctably to political success. Which leaves the assertion that the most important thing in politics is sincerity. That, I believe, is true.

It is not, however, the first in the promised list of three tips for creating your campaign message (see below). The tips come after my shameless pitch for the upcoming Green Campaign School in Worcester on  Saturday, February 23. If you think you might want to run for office, this event is for you.

If you plan on attending, please take a few minutes to watch these campaign commercials from Greens in other parts of the world. I'll be running two workshops at the conference, Campaign Basics and A Green Electoral Presence. We will draw lessons from the videos in Campaign Basics.

Sian Berry

The first, called Make History Melbourne, features Adam Bandt, a Green who is now a Member of Parliament in Australia. Sian Berry, stars in the second video. Sian was the Green candidate for mayor of London in 2008.

Video number three is from Europe Ecologie and it's in French. The Greens in the German state of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) produced the fourth video, a 30-second spot in party's package of single-issue ads for the 2010 elections. As the junior partner in NRW's coalition government, the Greens seem to know a thing or two about winning elections and holding on to power. Closer to home, California's Ross D. Frankel's 2010 campaign video is four minutes long, a painfully long time in politics. Just watch the first 30 seconds and I guarantee that you will agree it's worth discussing in a workshop.

We will analyze the videos (or at least some of them), focusing mainly on audience, emotion, and imagery. By talking about what works well versus what falls flat we will learn to develop our own messages more carefully and deliberately.

Why would we cover this in a workshop called Campaign Basics? Because nothing is more basic to a campaign that its purpose, and nothing reveals the purpose -- or purposelessness -- of a campaign like its fundamental message. Constructing the message starts with asking yourself this simple question: "Why am I running?"

Tip #1: Know why you are running

Answering this question honestly and thoughtfully will uncover your authentic vision, which will shape your message. It may take a while. But unless and until you have the answer, you should devote your time, energy, and other valuable resources to something other than running for office. I do not mean that you should swear off politics. I merely suggest that you should wait until you can give a sincere answer. After all, if not even you know why you are running how can you expect others to entrust you with their vote?

For many of us, having to explain why we are running forces us to ponder issues that go to the very heart of who we are. Our passion for politics is like a pilot light, always burning away in the background. Why do you care about politics? "Why do you breathe?" might be easier for us to answer. If you have not wrestled with these matters since Existentialism 101, you should do so before you commit to running. Otherwise you risk not only being stymied in the manner of the late Senator Ted Kennedy in this 1979 interview, but also you rob yourself of the opportunity to develop a genuinely compelling message that connects with the people who matter most, i.e. the voters.

Tip #2: Know where you are running

Narrowing that broader question of why you are running, you need to ask yourself why you are seeking this particular office. Remember, you are not running in the abstract: Your goal is to win a specific election in a specific district. Your campaign can certainly educate people about the big subjects, the ones you care about so much that you decided to run (see Tip #1). But as any teacher will tell you: "It's not what you say, it's what they hear." So you need to meet people where they are, and introduce the global and national subjects through local issues.

How? Let's say climate change is the reason you devote yourself to electoral politics and that you are running for state representative in a district where the front-page stories are about job losses. You will be tempted to repeat the phrase "green jobs" over and over again until you ride an electoral tidal wave to Beacon Hill. After all, no progressive campaign seems complete nowadays without that mantra. Resist the temptation.

What you need to remember is that jobs gains are general, whereas job losses are specific. So start acting like a state representative, or rather like a state representative should act. Do your research and find out what kind of clean-energy businesses might come to your district -- and which local businesses would hire more workers-- if the conditions were right. Then reach out to the people in your district who are already trying to grow green jobs. Learn from them, and show them that you respect the voters enough to have done your homework.

At that point you can start connecting the dots in a very clear way between climate change and job growth in your district, and you will be better prepared to ask the human beings who live there to trust you with the task of representing them.

Tip #3: Know who to ask

So who do you want to vote for you (bearing in mind that "everybody" is not an acceptable response)? To answer the question realistically you should calculate how many votes you will need in order to win. Happily, you will discover that your universe of potential voters is relatively small.

For example, in 2012, a presidential election year, approximately 20,000 people voted in some House district but in many others the turnout was closer to 15,000 (click here for the official results). In 2010, the numbers were lower. Assuming a two-way race in a district where the likely turnout is 16,000, your target number of votes should be no less than 8,000.

It is very likely that there are 8,000 people in your district who would vote for you if (a) they knew you were running; and (b) they believed that you would represent them well. Who are they and how do you find them? Start with the most up-to-date list of registered voters, which your town/city clerk will provide. Next create smaller lists arranged by neighborhood so that you can go from door to door in an efficient way (the GRP's NationBuilder capability can help with this). When you have these walk-sheets, start canvassing your district in a systematic way for several hours every day, recording the voting intentions of the voters you meet.

After a day or two, you will have a reliable sense of how your target voters are responding to your message, which is the subject of next week's more detailed post. If the responses consist mainly of glazed eyes and bemused expressions, you will need to adapt your message, your delivery, or both. But you will be building on a solid foundation, the why, where, and who of your campaign.

What's wrong with fracking?

Why am I against fracking? That was the question Benjamin Coleman, a student at Boston University, posed when he interviewed me for his film project. My short answer: climate change. For my slightly longer answer (about two minutes) please check out this video.

Good News in the Fight to Beat Back Fracking

Today some very welcome news emerged from the State Geologist. According to the FAQs posted on the office's website, which you can read in full here, fracking is “probably not” coming to Massachusetts:

Based on a survey of all available scientific data, the geologic conditions in the Connecticut Valley in western Massachusetts are not optimum for shale gas development.  Black shale units in the Hartford Basin are generally too thin, laterally discontinuous, and are cut by too many pre-existing natural fractures and extinct faults. This makes extraction of hydrocarbons economically not feasible with today’s technology at current market prices... However, more data need to be collected to completely rule out that possibility.  

In addition, oil and gas wells used for conventional or enhanced hydrocarbon recovery are defined as Class 2 wells under the Massachusetts Underground Injection Control Regulations (310 CMR 27.00).  Class 2 wells are currently prohibited in the Commonwealth.

This is certainly worth at least one sigh of relief. But even if Massachusetts itself stays frack-free, the state is still complicit in the practice. After all, most of the electricity we use here comes from natural gas. So every time we turn on a light (or type a blog post) we can be sure it’s because somebody somewhere in the country is having their land fracked. By the way, the effect of fracking on one American community is the subject of the new feature film Promised Land, starring Matt Damon. To see a two-minute trailer, just click here.

As well as ensuring that we stay frack-free, there is something we can do right here in Massachusetts to stop fracking elsewhere in the United States. By using our market power, we can force energy companies to certify that the natural-gas they burned to generate electricity they are selling us did not pollute anybody’s drinking water. That is the idea behind a bill the Sierra Club promoted in the last legislative session, with the support of the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s state convention.

If you would like to learn more about this bill and other legislative proposals to speed up the switch from fossil fuels to renewables, please come along to the next meeting of the Pioneer Valley GRP, which is at the forefront of the fight to Beat Back Fracking. The meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 21, 7:00 p.m. in Agawam Public Library.

Pioneer Valley GRP October Meeting

Here's the agenda for the next meeting of Pioneer Valley Green-Rainbow Party, scheduled for Thursday, October 18, 2012, 7:00 p.m. at Treehouse, Easthampton.

1.         Introductions

2.         Additional agenda items

3.         Minutes of last meeting

4.         GRP Fundamental Platform

                        Action: Suggest ideas to platform committee

5.         Budget for All ballot question

                        Action: Volunteers                                       

6.         Organizing a public meeting on fracking

                        Action: Volunteers

7.         Emergency response committees: update regarding local vacancies

8.         GRP Farmers: update from convenors

9.         Scott Laugenour 4^th Berkshire campaign update

                        Action: Volunteers to canvass and make calls

10.       Facebook and e-communication update

11.       Any other business

12.       Close: 8:30 p.m.

□          Next meeting 7:20 p.m., Thursday, December 6^th

            Unitarian Universalist Society, 220 Main Street, Northampton

Guest Book Review: Public Meltdown

By Ben Plotzker, Guest Reviewer

Public Meltdown: The Story of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, by Richard Watts.

The science behind nuclear energy is one thing, but the management of a nuclear plant is another. This book outlines the management of a nuclear power plant owner in the United States. 

You will learn so much from this book. It is very important to understand what is allowing my night light to be on or my laptop to charge. There are usually mixed sources of sources for electricity, but which sources are more controversial?

In 2010, Vermont legislators voted to shutter a nuclear power plant, putting the state at odds with the federal government and the plant’s owner—the Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation.  Public Meltdown explores the debate that roiled Vermont, including the lawsuits and court action that followed. The story starts out with the early days of the plant back in the 1970’s and how it developed since then. The intriguing use of more than 1,000 news articles, approaches the highly controversial issue with non-bias towards nuclear energy. It is hard to find a book out there that does so like Public Meltdown. As an American citizen that consumes electricity from nuclear means, every person should read this and understand what is going on with that nuclear power plant. Energy is a big issue in the future of the U.S. and the rest of the world, so the question about using nuclear is still in debate.

In rich, well-researched detail, Dr. Watts tells a story that spotlights the role of state governments, citizens and activists in decisions about the nation’s aging nuclear power fleet.  A story that continues today as both Entergy, the nation’s second largest nuclear operator, and the state of Vermont have appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals.Entergy owns 10 plants in the U.S., so it should be known by all U.S. citizens how this controversial energy production is handled in our borders. Nuclear plants are usually very quietly controlled, but all people should know who is patrolling and how they are doing so.

The book details a series of missteps by the Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation which owns Vermont Yankee, from inadequate follow-up after one of the plant’s cooling towers collapsed to misleading statements to state regulators about tritium leaks from underground pipes.Each chapter outlines the important aspects of Entergy’s fight to keep the plant open, even though many speed bumps arise. This non fiction book has some cliffhangers of its own because of how history played out. 

Anyone interested in energy issues or state’s rights is highly recommended to read this book.The noticeable characteristics that put this book aside from any other nuclear energy book is the absence of pro or anti-nuclear positions, no focus on scientific aspects of the plant, just the public’s view of Entergy, and that this is the only book that highlights one nuclear plant’s journey through history. 

The book can be found on Amazon. Look up Public Meltdown: The Story of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Written by Richard Watts.

More info at www.publicmeltdown.org. 

Great response in Great Barrington

Something is hatching in the 4th Berkshire District, where Scott Laugenour is the GRP candidate for State Representative. Scott and I hit the sidewalks earlier today in Great Barrington and met with a response that was, indeed, great. 

Ready to hatch?

As usual, most of the doors I knocked belonged to people who were not home (or simply hiding from me) but of those who were at home and planning to vote for a particular state rep in November most said they were voting for Scott. With more than four months until election day and little media attention, I found the level of name recognition and early commitment very encouraging.


Going door-to-door and focusing on core GRP themes like Medicare for All, green jobs, renewable energy, and transparency in government, Scott is running a strong grassroots campaign.


When you have a couple of hours to invest in party-building this summer, please spend them campaigning with Scott in the Berkshires. I'm eager to get back out there soon, and hope you can join me. In the meantime, check out Scott's website www.scottlaugenour.org.

Scott campaigning (photo by Susan Geller)

Greening the Law

Do you think the time has come for Green lawyers in Massachusetts to help build the party by forming their own group? If so, please read on; this post is for you.

Establishing a forum within the GRP for attorneys, law professors, and law students could (1) boost party membership in the legal profession; and (2) help the party develop state-level policies that promote greater environmental, social, and economic justice.

Time to organize?

We would not be breaking new ground. The Democrats have been organizing lawyers as lawyers for years. Consequently there are several state chapters of the Democratic Lawyers Council around the country, such as the Utah DLC.  

Political parties in several other jurisdictions also have organizations specifically for lawyers. For example, in the United Kingdom legal professionals and law students who support the left-of-center Labour Party can join the Society of Labour Lawyers.  Similarly, Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) has the Associationfor Social Democratic Lawyers. These organizations provide a two-way conduit, bringing legal issues to the party and representing the party to the legal community.

So what value would GRP Lawyers/Abogados GRP add?  I believe the organization could offer two strong benefits that the GRP currently lacks. 

First, as a form of outreach it would give lawyers a new point of entry into the party. Both academic and practicing lawyers are in short supply in the ranks of the GRP, compared with the Democratic and Republican parties. Of course, some will say that's no bad thing! But putting anti-lawyer prejudices to one side and acknowledging the important role lawyers play in fashioning public policy, it seems wise to recruit more legal professionals. By hosting networking and educational events, GRP Lawyers could help draw sympathetic professionals, professors, and law students into the party.

Second, in the 2014 legislative elections we should be prepared to present the voters with a raft of legislative proposals that our House and Senate candidates would promote if elected. Similarly, our statewide candidates should have a resource to help them explain the powers and duties of the offices they are running for and what they would actually do should they win.  Attorneys and law professors could ensure that those proposals are legally and constitutionally watertight.

Legal practitioners and academics enjoy a unique vantage point for reviewing legislation, and for monitoring and critiquing the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the officers of state government responsible for writing many of the regulations that put flesh on statutory bones. By organizing ourselves within the party, we could help generate policy proposals tailor-made for Massachusetts that are both imaginative and practical. 

From environmental policies and voting rights to banking, corporate law, and consumer affairs, GRP Lawyers could serve as a sounding board and think tank for the party. If the party is serious about achieving greater diversity on the bench as part of our mission to build a more equal, just, and sustainable society, lawyers have an invaluable perspective to share. And through occasional social events and panel discussions the organization could also help like-minded lawyers from different parts of the state connect with one another. We might even have fun.

If you think the time has come to set up Abogados GRP/GRP Lawyers, please add your comment below.

Segregation in the Pioneer Valley

Introduction

Greens in the Pioneer Valley have to acknowledge and address a shameful fact: Our communities and our schools are segregated. In 2010, the Harvard School of Public Health issued a report that identified the levels of segregation in schools across the United States. For Hispanic students, Springfield, Massachusetts, ranked second, meaning it had the second-most segregated schools in the country. For African-American students, the city ranked ninth. Quite simply, some of the most racially segregated schools in the United States of America are here in the Pioneer Valley. As a political party founded on the principles of social justice and equal opportunity, we have a duty to tackle this unconscionable state of affairs.

Segregation is unjust, unconstitutional, and morally wrong. It is also unsustainable. If we are sincere about building a society that is truly sustainable, we have to move quickly to integrate our communities and schools and undo generations of inequity. Here in the Pioneer Valley, that will mean developing an approach to land use, transportation, and education that is regional rather than local.

The Soiling of Old Glory, Stanley Forman, 1976

Segregation in the Pioneer Valley

Our commonwealth has a policy, embodied in Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 76, Section 5, of basing school assignment on residence.  As a result, where there is residential segregation, there will be racially segregated schools. One example of this phenomenon is Springfield, the largest city in the Pioneer Valley, a racially segregated city within a racially segregated region.

In the United States as a whole, “residential segregation that exists in metropolitan areas does not typically occur within the same towns, but rather occurs between municipalities” James E. Ryan, “Schools, Race, and Money,” 109 Yale L.J. 249, 277 (1999).  The pattern of residential segregation between Springfield and the surrounding communities is consistent with this trend.  The city is 51.8% White and 22.3% African-American, with 38.8% of the total population identifying as Hispanic/Latino.  In 2000, the US Census Bureau’s Housing and Household Economics Statistics Division ascribed Springfield a Gini index value of 0.816 for African-American residents and 0.813 for Hispanic residents, with 1.0 indicating maximum segregation.

In contrast, the eight communities that abut Springfield are overwhelmingly White, with only two of them having populations that are less than 90% White.  For example, East Longmeadow is 94.5% White with African Americans making up 1.4% of the town’s population, and only 2.3% identifying as Hispanic/Latino.

As a result of residential segregation, the public schools in and around Springfield are also segregated.  In the Springfield school district, 13.7% of the students are White, 20.7% are African-American, and 59.8% are Hispanic.  In Springfield Central High School, only 18% of the students are White, while 25.1% are African-American, and 46.1% are Hispanic. In East Longmeadow, by way of contrast, 89.9% of the students are White, 3.1% are African-American, and 3.1% are Hispanic.  Similarly, in Longmeadow, 86.3% of the students are White, 2.8% are African-American, and 2.7% are Hispanic.

In short, in the heart of the Pioneer Valley we have some schools for Whites and other schools for non-Whites. Although litigation – McDuffy v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Education, 415 Mass. 545, 615 N.E.2d 516 (1993) and Hancock v. Commissioner of Education, 443 Mass. 428 (2005) – and so-called education reform did much to remedy the inequity of school funding, the last real effort to tackle educational segregation was in the 1960s and 70s.

METCO and the Racial Imbalance Act

Back in 1966, in order to reduce racial isolation Massachusetts created the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or METCO program, which covers Springfield as well as Boston. Students travel by bus from their homes in Springfield to predominantly White schools in neighboring towns, called receiving or host communities. Approximately 75% of METCO students are African-American and about 17% are Hispanic.

At present, only four school districts around Springfield receive METCO students, namely East Longmeadow, Longmeadow, Hampden-Wilbraham, and Southwick-Tolland. According to the director of the Springfield public schools this is because of “limitations of the transportation provided by the host communities.”  There are approximately 25,000 students in the Springfield school district. But in 2010-11 the number of students from Springfield attending schools in neighboring communities via the METCO program was just 141, or 0.5% of the total number of the city’s students. Clearly, METCO alone is not going to integrate our schools.

Without question the situation in and around Springfield violates the state constitution as well as the applicable state statute. Where more than fifty percent of the pupils attending a public school are non-White, Massachusetts law defines the situation as one of “racial imbalance” (M.G.L. c. 71, §37D, the Racial Imbalance Act).  Like METCO, this statute dates from the mid-1960s and its purpose is clear:

“It is hereby declared to be the policy of the commonwealth to encourage all school committees to adopt as educational objectives the promotion of racial balance and the correction of existing racial imbalance in the public schools. The prevention or elimination of racial imbalance shall be an objective in all decisions involving the drawing or altering of school attendance lines, establishing of grade levels, and the selection of new school sites.”

Despite having been on the statute books for 47 years, the Racial Imbalance Act has not produced racially balanced schools. Because Springfield and the surrounding communities are residentially segregated according to race, Chapter 76, Section 5, has the effect of assigning students of color in Springfield to segregated schools. This is an outrage. It is also a violation of our state constitution.

Article 1 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights provides that “[e]quality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin.”  The Supreme Judicial Court considered this provision in the context of efforts to desegregate the public schools in Boston and Springfield during the early 1970s.  As a result of those decisions, there is no doubt that in Massachusetts it unconstitutional to use “[s]tate power to promote and entrench racial separation in all those schools whose communities have segregated residential patterns,” Opinion of the Justices, 363 Mass. 899, 906 (1973).  

By continuing to operate an education system that both reflects and perpetuates residential segregation, the Commonwealth is violating Article 1. Enforcing the local-schools policy but not the Racial Imbalance Act means that we are denying students of color in and around Springfield their right to equality under the law.

The Commonwealth’s practice of confining students of color to schools in their racially segregated neighborhoods – unless those students successfully opt en masse into the inter-district school choice program – entrenches both educational and residential segregation.  The fact that Springfield Central High School, for example, remains racially imbalanced demonstrates that the Racial Imbalance Act, METCO, and the school choice program are inadequate responses to the ongoing violation of constitutional rights.

Regional Approach

Segregation becomes self-perpetuating. As the Supreme Court of the United States observed in a landmark desegregation case: “People gravitate toward school facilities, just as schools are located in response to the needs of people. The location of schools may thus influence the patterns of residential development of a metropolitan area and have important impact on composition of inner-city neighborhood,” Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 20-21 (1971). The Pioneer Valley’s experience demonstrates how, over the years, patterns of residential and educational segregation in and around metropolitan Springfield have become mutually reinforcing.

How do we open the padlock of segregation? I believe that the key is identifying those decisions that have a regional impact, and putting power over those decisions into the hands of a democratic, accountable regional body. Ceding power upward from the municipal to regional level may strike some Greens as counter-intuitive, to say the least, and inconsistent with our goal of greater decentralization. But I believe that it is completely consistent with our commitment to grassroots democracy, the first of our party’s Ten Key Values, ensuring that people have a say in the decisions that affect their lives and creating political forms that directly include people in the decision-making process.

Here in Massachusetts, where “local” has often served as codeword for White, local control and local schools have worked together to perpetuate racial inequality. We need to break with the past, and design policies that promote regional equity. Here is a link to a video featuring Professor john a. powell (he uses lower-case only in his name) of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University. Professor powell explains that racial and economic segregation segregates people of color not just from White people but from opportunity. He argues that we need to address the “opportunity structure at the regional level” rather than trying to tackle segregation at the local level.

If we are to follow this advice and ensure that the opportunity structure in the Pioneer Valley is accessible, inclusive, and equitable, we will have to design a new governmental structure with the authority to make decisions about fair and affordable housing, public transportation, commercial development, and school assignments. In a state that effectively abolished county government, relishes local control over zoning, and amended its constitution to prevent "forced busing" there will be plenty of resistance. 

On the other hand, Massachusetts also created the Cape Cod Commission, a regional authority which manages growth and promotes environmental protection on Cape Cod. Fifteen towns in Barnstable County ceded zoning power to the commission in order to protect the scenic value, water supply, and quality of life on the Cape. Clearly, Bay Staters are quite capable of surrendering some local control to a supra-municipal body when we realize that the stakes are high. 

Conclusion

Although policymakers in Massachusetts have devised a variety of programs over the past 50 years, our society remains a segregated one. Programs such as METCO and school choice are still alive and produce positive results for the participants, but do little to bring about genuine integration. The Racial Imbalance Act and the law enshrining local assignment work against each other, and display the inadequacy of an exclusively local – as opposed to regional – approach to building social cohesion. 

As the site of some of the most racially segregated schools in the country we have to change the way we distribute decision-making power and other resources, and we have to do so urgently and effectively. In order to achieve an increasingly just, equal, sustainable, and democratic society, Greens in the Pioneer Valley should put regional equity at the top of our list of policy priorities.

A new approach to phasing out fossil fuels

In November and December of last year, coal’s share of US electricity generation fell below 40% for the first time since 1978, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). While that sounds like good news, coal's relative decline is not so much about the rise of renewable energy but rather about the boom in shale gas. Advances in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) are making it much easier for drillers to extract gas from deep underground, so that by 2035 almost half of the natural gas we use in the United States will be shale gas.

Natural gas emits less CO₂ than coal, but one of its components is methane. Emissions of methane from the extraction and distribution of natural gas are a potent driver of climate change. Why? Because in terms of heat-trapping potential, methane is 21 times more effective than carbon dioxide.

If we are going to tackle climate change, we need a realistic, integrated approach to coal and natural gas. And, as you will have noticed, we do not have much time.

The year 2010 was the warmest year on record, says the World Meteorological Organization. Last year, 2011, was the warmest for a year that experienced a La Niña event, which is supposed to cool the atmosphere. In the US, only six states had a near-normal December. Arctic sea ice extent for 2011 was the fifth lowest on record opening up the Northwest Passage for the second consecutive year, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. The pressing, global nature of the problem is why we have a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

At Cancun, our government pledged to reduce GHG emissions significantly, so that by 2020 they would be 17% below 2005 levels. But in fact our GHG emissions have gone up, and they continue to rise. In 1990 we emitted approximately 6,000 million tons. In 2006, the figure was about 7,075 million tons. This year, we will probably reach 7,700 million tons, i.e. 25% more than in 1990. That should put the good news about coal in context.

Power companies are using less coal and more natural gas because the latter is cheaper than the former. Why is natural gas cheaper? Because of advances in fracking technology. But how can fossil-fuel companies afford to invest in fracking technology when the price is dropping? The EIA explains: "high crude oil prices... significantly improve the economics of natural gas plays that have high concentrations of crude oil, condensates, or natural gas liquids." This interplay of oil, coal, and natural gas prices is an important factor that we need to take into account as we devise policies for reducing fossil-fuel use.


As we fashion those policies, we need to understand the scale and urgency of the problem. Together, coal and natural gas make up 50% of the country’s energy consumption. This year they will account for about 3,000 million tons of CO₂ equivalents. Last year, the federal government projected that 23 years from now that figure will have climbed to 3,738 million tons. This year, the projection for 2035 is lower but still predicts that our country's total electricity-related carbon dioxide output will grow by 4.9% from 2012 to 2035. 

We cannot slow down climate change if our CO₂ and other GHG emissions increase. Yes, natural gas is supplanting coal in the electricity sector and, arguably, natural gas produces less CO₂ than coal. At the point of use (i.e. excluding the carbon cost of extracting it) natural gas is cleaner than coal. Another supposedly redeeming feature of natural-gas power stations is the possibility of re-powering them to run on hydrogen. After all, hydrogen is not a climate change culprit. 


However, the Fusina hydrogen plant in Italy currently relies on fossil fuels from a neighboring petrochemical facility for feedstock.  The petrochemical facility captures the carbon dioxide but, to make the whole process cost-effective, the owners then pump it underground to help extract more oil. A power plant that not only requires fossil fuels to operate but also facilitates the extraction of even more fossil fuels is hardly a model of sustainability.


The current trend from coal to natural gas is not reducing our CO₂ emissions in any meaningful way. In the past, subsidies may have encouraged the renewable energy industry to come up with new products, but as Richard Kauffman, Senior Adviser to the Secretary of Energy, points out: "Without financial mechanisms to encourage creation of a domestic market, there’s no domestic demand for developing these products in the United States." This is a market failure that we need to fix, and fix fast.


As a nation we need a coherent, integrated policy that encourages the market for renewables. A starting point could be the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, which requires electricity providers to increase the proportion of renewable energy they use by one per cent every year. Scaling this policy up to the national level -- and upping the annual increase from one per cent to five percent -- would help renewables take the place of fossil fuels over the course of ten years. 


Given the political complexion of Congress, we are not likely to see a national renewable-energy mandate in the next few years. But we cannot wait in the hope that the Republicans lose their majority at the next congressional elections. And a state-by-state approach has not borne fruit so far. Instead I believe that we need to look at regional, multi-state responses. Again, Massachusetts helps point the way.


Massachusetts is a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which in 2005 established a market for carbon trading. Despite the fact that it comprises nine different states RGGI is not an interstate compact, which would require congressional approval, but simply an agreement between the signatories. Whatever the merits of RGGI in terms of actually reducing emissions, it provides a precedent for an interstate agreement that bypasses Congress entirely.


Based on the renewable energy portfolio standard and RGGI, I believe that it is both necessary and feasible to set up a multi-state renewable energy agreement. Using their combined market power, a dozen or so states could require all power utilities in their jurisdiction to provide an increasing percentage of electricity from non-fossil, non-nuclear sources so that by, say, 2035, at least 50% of the electricity in the region would come from renewables. 


With the economic and political power of the fossil-fuel industry, a collective approach makes sense. If Vermont, for example, tried to adopt a 50%-by-2035 rule, the big utilities might well be able to push the state into changing its mind (although Vermont's determination to adopt single-payer healthcare despite heavy lobbying by the insurance industry might give them pause). By joining together with the others, each state would be punching above its weight. 


If you agree that it is time for an interstate agreement requiring 50% of our electricity to come from renewables by 2035, please let me know.