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  • From: John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Re: Green Party
  • Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 00:06:12 -0700 (PDT)

Aloha,

One case study - Keiko Bonk was elected to Hawai'i County Council (Ka'u
district) in 1992, the first (I think) Green elected to anything that
level or higher in the whole bloody country. She got re-elected in
1996, then resigned partway through that term to run for Mayor. Lost
mayor's race by only 3% - 36% for her, 39% for the incumbent
sleazeball, and I do mean sleazeball.

She won it because she was a local girl, went to NY and made it as an
artist/musician for a while but came back home, family well-known &
appreciated, was married to a farmer at the time too, so she had chunks
of all kine stuff: haole hippie appeal, most kine local appeal, farmer
(and wannabe farmer) appeal, new-age/artsy-fartsy appeal, intellectual
appeal, local girl done good appeal, sex appeal too...enough of lots of
pieces to win her district (and win it a second term - the Dem
challenger spent buckets 'o money trying to beat her reelection but
never really had a chance and the Repub was never a contender - few are
in Hawai'i...).

While on the council, she was chair for a while even. Mostly, she got
abused by the rest of the council on a steady basis (Demo majority,
male majority, but Dems and Repubs alike abused her - understand that
in Hawai'i what you think you know about Dems and Repubs doesn't apply
- Dems are completely entrenched and ossified, conservative, even
reactionary, and operate like back-room Chicago boys of decades past -
they've owned the state for decades and they ain't about to give it
up).

While a member, she couldn't get enough support to get much Green done.
While chair, she had deciding vote in splits but given the nature of
the beast(s) there were few splits, especially on Green stuff. "The
Boys" would whine about how she "just wouldn't play ball" (meaning go
along with their little and big schemes), give her beef (hassles,
verbal fights, deprecations, whatevah), etc. Her constituents loved
her but that didn't help with the power broker boyz.

So about 6-7 years of hell and precious little progress
Green-agenda-wise in the political arena, despite trying her damndest
against pretty stiff odds. Even if she'd won mayor she'd have had to
deal with the same council (but without her on it to help herself
out...).

Not that I'm trying to discourage anyone from running for the Greens...
;-) But in reality that I've seen, winning the election is the easy
part compared to what follows.


=====
John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net

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