Colin "No Impact Man" Beavan, Green Party Candidate for Congress in Brooklyn's CD 8, was featured in Yes! magazine and the Treehugger.com blog in the past week, both important outlets in the progressive mediasphere.

Treehugger: No Impact Man Colin Beavan: Running for Congress, the Future of Green (Interview)

TH: How does the Green Party become more relevant in the United States? Is it just that enough people start running on the local level, and start putting those views forward? It's a perennial problem: People don't want to vote for the Green candidate because they don't think that person is ever going to win or will be a spoiler. How do we get beyond that?

CB: Let's put it this way: How do we actually get the Democrats to listen to us, if we've got no other place to go? In this constituency, here in central Brooklyn, the Democratic candidate has been campaigning around the country, helping other candidates. He doesn't need to campaign here, because he could be Charles Manson on the Democratic ticket and he'd get elected. This community has no where else to go.

So, social activists of various kinds who have been praying, wishing and scraping, and having meetings with Democratic politicians need to start to be prepared to let the Democrats know that there is somewhere else to go—and that they will go somewhere else, even if they won't win.

Yes! Magazine: Why “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan Is Running for Congress

Ostrander: You’re running against somebody with a lot more money and political party support than you. What’s your strategy for reaching voters?

Beavan: I’m talking to people. I have weekly campaign meetings, which are open to everybody, where volunteers can show up. The two campaign managers think about what tasks need to be done before we talk to people at the meetings. The tasks are assigned by show of hands, and we ask questions like “Who can do this?” and “Who can print some fliers on a photocopier?” By the way, we’re only using paper recovered from the waste stream. So that means that our fliers are free. So that’s saving us a lot of money.

So, just the very idea that a campaign can be run by the people, for the people instead of by the corporations, for the corporations to me means that we’re already winning, regardless of what happens on Election Day.