To the Editor:

John Halle’s column (“City progressives should no longer trust Dems,” 1/28) reveals a misconception that he and the Green Party hold regarding social change through radical politics.

Clearly, we share many concerns and priorities with Halle and the Green Party — we simply choose the mechanism for change which we see as the most viable. Millions of working class Americans support the Democratic Party. These people are the Democratic Party and must force party leaders to reconnect to their base.

Electing middle and upper class liberal white Greens who are alienated from working class America will not change the way power and wealth are distributed. It is no different from electing a small number of “well-intentioned Ivy League liberals” to power.

The problem with American democracy today is the distance which exists from those representing and those represented — this is a problem that has nothing to do with a specific party and everything to do with a radicalizing movement, which we can most effectively spread through the party embraced by working class America.

In New Haven, we are beginning to win the fight to build a radical party.

But we are losing this fight nationally, partly because we lose some of our most progressive allies to the Green Party. The Greens remain at the fringes, far from the real, everyday battles waged between the two parties that comprise the American political system.

Our battles are difficult and sometimes murky, but they are the battles that matter.

Benjamin Healey ’04 and Shonu Gandhi ’03

January 29, 2002

Benjamin Healey is Ward 1 alderman on the Board of Aldermen and Shonu Gandhi is running for co-chair of the Ward 1 Democratic committee.