Knock, knock, who's there?

How? It is a very simple question but i can almost guarantee that you will not have the answer to it. How is an even more difficult question to answer than Why? At least with why things will have happened that you can safely hang the question on, but How doesn't have that luxury. But I still need to know how! For instance I want to know how the Green Party in Norwich is on the verge of taking over the local council and getting a Green MP while the Green Party in North Tyneside is not even close. I asked a member of the Norwich GP the question of how they did it and his answer was very revealing, "We knocked on doors." he said. "We got out there and made our presence felt. We offered a service, ourselves, and people responded to it." But then that brought up the question of how do you motivate GP members to get out there and start knocking on doors? The answer came "You have someone charismatic and enthusiastic as the figurehead." In Norwich that charismatic figurehead is very close to being elected to parliament.

So how do we of the North Tyneside Green Party get our candidate in the Tynemouth constituency, Julia Erskine, elected to parliament? Well, the door knocking has begun. The glad handing will start to take off and hopefully we will mobilise a lot of people who are not as yet GP members to at least vote of the changes we represent and with luck take up the gauntlet that Political Ecology offers and get the door-knocking habit.

The coming General Election is a good opportunity for us smaller Green Parties to get our face out there and present the new Green Way to people who think we are only going to ban cars and flights and hug trees and bunny rabbets. Political Ecology is a powerful took of social change, for social justice, for fairness, but it is also one hell of a challenge to the status quo and there are many powerful interests that want to make sure the Green future is stamped upon hard. Even the media helps. Of course there are pockets of the media, both traditional and new, that supports the Green future and not just in the meaningless cosmetic way the Grey political parties do. But to much of the mainstream media deride Green initiatives. Just this week in the "Metro" newspaper the Eco-home proposed by an ex- footballer was derided as mad, something from "Tele-tubies Land." If the thought that went into that house was applied to the general run-of-the-mill built housing that is thrown up across the country we would not be worrying about carbon footprints and perhaps the banning of flights(?).

We want lots of people to vote Green at the General Election because Green candidate, and of course Green MP and Local Councilors, will be good not only for England, or the UK but for our whole world because they will all be thinking, and asking,

how!