As the Boston convention climaxes and the need to usher the Bush occupation out of the White House is drilled into all hybridized Green/Democrats, a word now about election 2006 and local Green candidates running in 2004.

It is my intention to run for congress in 2006 from the fifth district of Connecticut under the Green Party banner. The cut and paste allegiance to the Democratic Party has its limit. The internal qualifying that is necessary to feel confident as a registered Democrat is troubling. To be anti-war; pro-gay marriage; anti-death penalty; pro-alternative energy and anti-special corporate interests is to be Green. As in a holistic approach to insuring prime health I sense a need to move toward the ideal after the experience of relief we hope will come when Bush is voted out of office.

If John Kerry is the beneficiary of this healthy rejection of Bush, then so be it. He will also be the beneficiary of a progressive and Green movement that must follow. There are 400 Green candidates running for mayoral and state representative positions this November. To elect these Green candidates will help Kerry join the evolution that he may even now be tempted to join and lead. If he isn't tempted to, the growing number of elected Green representatives will urge him to do so.

The movement of the Green Party as I read it now is to reconstitute representative government. As Boston is besieged with frantic donors wining and dining future policy makers one can almost hear the weary population calling for political decisions based solely on the common good. That kind of governance we have been deprived of for too long and to our peril. The chance of getting actual and genuine representation at this moment I believe is most likely to be achieved with Green candidates.

The Green Party is a global antidote to a global crisis. It embodies principles and values that have international, national and local resonance. As forces push to privatize and override sovereign rights and resources in many nations, the description of our government being of, by and for the people needs a newer prism through which we Americans can see and trust that description. I believe that prism for the years to come will be and is the Green Party.

The panorama of grassroots democracy, ecological wisdom, economic justice, gender and racial equity, voter reform and nonviolence is the main thrust of the Green Party. Rather than weed through the two major parties and indulge in a litany of excuses, why not Green?

The money that goes in to both major parties is riddled with subtexts and price tags. If government can be defined as the projection of our highest consciousness in the service of the common good then creating a tether of questionable financial allegiances seriously compromises this definition.

Neglect, if not assault, of the common good is evident not only in shabby mass transit, pitiable rail systems, lack of alternative energy incentives, but rather poignantly it is evident in what seems to be an epidemic of degenerative diseases in this country. Why is that? What regulations are being lifted and bought off that allows invisible, insidious and toxic byproducts that give our wives, mothers and sisters breast cancer; our parents - Alzheimer's; our children - Autism. What is the price we the people pay, for a government bought and sold by those looking to be given free reign to make a killing?

One has to wonder if there was even a small percentage of the congress and the senate that was Green, how unanimous would the call to war have been? What kind of questions would an un-tethered Green representative have asked?

Yes - there should be a department of peace as Dennis Kucinich, the Democrat with a Green tinge suggested. Even though the Democratic party, to its credit, allowed Kucinich and Dean to present their visions to us, it won't or can't embrace their most important contributions and ideas.

There is nothing remotely flaky about a department of peace. It is in fact smart and practical as well as ideal.

As the great American artist Laura Nyro paraphrased the Old Testament in her rousing song - Save The Country - "In my mind I can't study war no more." If one can study war, conversely one can study peace - understand it as a way of life - make it a habit - encourage the habit of peace from the top.

Having the greatest military does not mean it needs to be used. In fact, the exquisite irony of having the most powerful military is that it almost makes it impossible to use. And as has been illustrated recently and painfully, using it in this powder keg world for questionable and shifting reasons has the opposite effect of what the military was created to do - protect. The Green party knew that before the vote to go to war.

Our government can be an instrument of peace. It can be a platform from which our consciousness and thinking are expanded. The Green Party makes no apologies for those pursuits.

A caller on C-span this morning said he supported Bush and his military actions because he felt that after 9/11 we needed "to show the world that we can be crazy." I think we need to show the world that we're sane. I believe the Green Party joining and being part of the representative forces of our country, on all levels, right now, will help to invite and restore that sanity.

Bill C. Davis is a playwright – author of 'Mass Appeal', 'Avow' and the upcoming 'The Sex King' - http://www.billcdavis.com/  

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