Harvest Time

The Green Party Snubs Nader And Picks One of Its Own

MILWAUKEE

There is no summer in Milwaukee this week; it's freezing and drizzly and gray. But then summer is not the ideal season for the Green Party National Convention. On a bright sunny day, one's thoughts might be distracted from the critical issues: corporate control, toxic air, racial injustice and the right of any animal not to be treated as property.

Lost would be the many innovations of one Claude Vander Veen, local bicycle enthusiast and a man for all seasons.

Vander Veen's helmet is not that spiffy aerodynamic kind, but a solid metal contraption taped up with a string of red lights reminiscent of Marvin the Martian. His gloves are big, thick, orange things, more like oven mitts. In general he prefers coveralls like the kind airline mechanics wear in the dead of winter when working for long hours in open hangars.

The handful of Greens who've gathered for his session on alternative forms of commuting agree on the general principles: Keep those "Hummers" rotting in the garage. But as always with Greens, the strength of commitment lies in the purity of the details.

"Sixty-five percent polyester?" asks Bruce Hunter, eyeing the coverall tag with suspicion. "Why is that?" Then they drift into discussion of a future of 12-foot-wide lanes reserved for "human powered only."

Theoretically this could be a big breakout moment for the Greens. In the past four years the party has doubled in size. It has seeded a crop of scrappy local candidates with no money but big dreams who are running for city council-type seats and are actually winning. It has an administration hostile to one of its central concerns -- the environment. And it has a spiffy new logo!

But deep at their core Greens are still Greens, the aging grad students who never left campus, earnest and agitated, endlessly fine-tuning among themselves. The big decision this year -- whether to endorse Ralph Nader for president -- is debated endlessly as the weekend progresses, in the elevators, in the bathroom, down the escalator, long after midnight. But so is everything else, whether to drive or walk to the Kinko's, order for here or to go, whether to sleep at the corporate hotel.

"You're taking the elevator?" Janice Moore asks her friend. "Do you know who owns Otis stock?"

What counts is the tribe and all its intricate unspoken rules: Ethnic food is always better, and leftovers are never thrown away. People should carry their own silverware. Bags are cloth, preferably obtained free at museums or libraries. Hair is pure, no coloring, no blow-dry. Braids are cool.

Men should cede the microphone to women whenever possible. Women should cede it to lesbians. Lesbians to women from Third World countries, etc.

Women who are not Palestinian dress like Palestinians down to the head scarves, known as "solidarity kaffiyehs." Head scarves used to symbolize female oppression but no longer do -- chiefly, it seems, because Laura Bush said the women in Afghanistan were oppressed and we had to liberate them, and everything Laura Bush says is wrong.

Homeland is the Bay Area -- a place where true summer is also elusive.

Convention organizers Adam Benedetto and Tim Condon are recent college graduates and emissaries from the MTV generation. Benedetto ran for sheriff in Dane County, Wis., two years ago on the Green ticket, shooting his own highly ironic ads involving Puff Daddy and Britney Spears. He lost to a Republican but made his point.