Voter Registration, Education, and Third Parties
One way for students to exercise power is to vote for progressive candidates. However most students don’t vote because they haven’t registered. So a useful tactic can be to register students to vote, and then educate them about the different candidates’ stances on environmental and social issues. Even better, run your own candidates!


A major shortcoming of our political system is that corporations control both the Democrats and Republicans. Corporations put profit before the environment and people, and so do both major parties. For instance, Clinton supported cutting welfare benefits, the North American Free Trade Agreement (which allows corporations to challenge government environmental regulations as ‘barriers to free trade’), so called ‘salvage’ logging (a disguised successful attempt to double logging on our national forests), and tax cuts for the rich (Ex.: a capital gains cut). If you don’t want to compromise your beliefs working for the Republicrats, then you should consider supporting one of the small, but growing, progressive alternatives. The Greens are most closely linked to the environmental movement, and have an international network of parties. Several SEACers have run as Greens Party candidates. One currently sits on the Santa Fe city council as a Green, and another SEACer was elected in Chapel Hill, NC. Other important progressive parties are the New Party (they often work to supportive progressive Democrats) and the Labor Party (union based).