By Samuel Letchworth

The Green Party is aptly named: Green is the color of grass. Not that kind of grass, although the Greens do support marijuana reform. The Green Party is “grass” as in “grass-roots.”

“There are three parties in the United States,” explained Jacob Holloway, president of the Campus Greens. “There is Corporate Division ‘R’ and Corporate Division ‘D.’ Then there is the people’s party: the Green Party.

“The philosophy of the Green Party is bringing politics back into the local arena and working to fix broken and corrupt systems from the bottom up,” said Holloway, who converted from the Democratic Party to the Green Party when he became disillusioned by “the inability of the Democrats to change and progress.”

The American system, insist Holloway and other Greens, is broken and corrupted.

“America is a corporocracy” is the phrase former Green Party congressional candidate Abel Tomlinson turns for the current system.

“This is evinced by the candidate who has more money winning elections over 90 percent of the time,” Tomlinson said. “This money comes from the wealthy and from corporations who want their interests protected.”

Greens generally identify themselves politically as being liberal-progressive. Their major criticism of Democrats in Arkansas is that their actions in Congress are more along Republican lines than Democratic ones. Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s opposition to a public health insurance option, for example, is an indication to liberals that Arkansas Democrats have moved farther to the right.

“Mike Ross, Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor – these are all Democrats who actively work against the people of the state in the interest of large corporations,” Holloway said. “If this is how we’re going to do things, then let’s just have a real Republican instead of a Democrat acting like a Republican.”

The goal of the Green Party is to represent progressive values and throw a proverbial wrench into the extant political system. By challenging all federal and state-wide offices, the Greens hope to remind America of what it means to be liberal.

The problem with third parties like the Greens is that thousands of signatures are required to get candidates on ballots.

“We have the money to get signatures,” Holloway said, “but that money would be better spent on candidate campaigns. If the Democrats and Republicans had to spend money and time to get signatures for their candidates there might be a more even playing field.”

Part of what the Green Party does, these representatives said, is hold institutions accountable. One of the issues concerning the Greens of late is the new coal plant in Hipstead County, right next to a place called Hope, Bill Clinton’s hometown.

“It’s dirty energy,” Holloway said. “The energy from the plant doesn’t even go to Arkansas, anyway. The plant is near a nature reserve, a place frequented by duck hunters and naturalists. Arkansas is supposed to be ‘The Natural State,’ but no one in Congress or the governor’s office did anything to question it.”

The distinction between liberals and conservatives, according to Abel Tomlinson, is protecting public interest over special interest, respectively.

“This country is funded by special interest groups who have put Republicans and Democrats in their pockets,” said Tomlinson, who is considering running again as a Green for Congress but has not yet announced his candidacy. “There are too many politicians in those parties. There’s a big difference between a leader and politician.”

Bernard Sulliban, one of the founders of the Campus Greens, put it like this: “The idea is inclusion, tolerance and action instead of passivity.”