HISTORIES of the GREENS in AMERICA Compiled by A. Allen Butcher, August, 2000, from various email posts. From: Ron Stanchfield To: Greens Discussion Forum Date: 14 Aug 2000 Timeline (Bold indicates organizations that exist today: LGN, G/GPUSA, GPN, ASGP) Committees of Correspondence (1984) | Green Committees of Correspondence (1985) | | | Left Green | Greens Political Organizing Committee (1989) Network | | | (1988) | | Restructuring Committee (1991) | | | | Greens/Green Party USA Green Political Network (1992) (1992) | | | Association of State Green Parties (1997) | | Greens USA (?) United States Green Party (2001?) 1984 - Committees of Correspondence was founded in 1984 by Charlene Spretnak, David Haenke and others. It was originally just the Committees of Correspondence. Renamed. 1985 - CoC was renamed Green Committees of Correspondence and consisted of local groups, which were organized into bioregional networks supported by Dee Berry, the Clearinghouse Coordinator. Retired. 1988 - Left Green Network was constituted under the leadership of Howie Hawkins, Brian Tokar and others. It was formed, as Hawkins reassured at the time, "to Green the left and to left the Greens." It established its own Clearinghouse Coordinator. [From the LGN Webpage: The LGN was founded in response to a call by members of the Social Ecology Project, a libertarian municipalist group founded by Murray Bookchin. The Left Green Network P. O. Box 913 Lyons, Colorado 80540 e-mail: mesrod@juno.com http://patriot.net/~cnc/lgn.htm ] 1989 - Green Party Organizing Committee formed as a subgroup within the Green Committees of Correspondence. This was formed by Greens oriented toward electoral politics, Mindy Lorenz and John Rensenbrink being primary organizers. Retired. 1991 - Restructuring Committee formed and proposed bicameral structure defeated by participating locals. Greens USA formed. Retired. 1992 - Greens/Green Party USA established after Restructuring Committee's proposal failed and the Green Committees of Correspondence was dissolved lead by Howard Hawkins, Don Fitz, Brian Tokar, Betty Wood, Lloyd Strecker, and Dan Coleman. Structure provided for an annual Green Congress composed of delegates representing locals and regions. Currently composed of locals, regions, state regions, state caucuses and state Green parties. 1992 - Green Political Network established by John Rensenbrink, Lorna Salzman, Dee Berry and Tony Affigne. GPN supported a state-based structure wherein locals send representatives to the state party and the state party is the unit that sends representatives to the national Congress. The internal organizational structure would vary state to state; states would be treated as autonomous units under GPN. Currently active. 1997 - Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) founded at meeting proposed by the Green Parties of Maine and Connecticut. Representatives from 11 states had been authorized by their state organizations to form and join the ASGP. Currently (Aug. 2000) there are approximately 30 state Green parties as members of ASGP. For Green Party electoral history in the US, see: http://www.greens.org/elections ******************** From: Lloyd Strecker, dnrvr@verio.com To: post-grns-usa-forum@greens.org Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 I don't intend it to be absolutely "objective," but I will make every effort to be even-handed, try to reasonably state both positions, and I will not (a) attack any individuals or (b) knowingly distort the truth. Take what you can use and weigh it with what others may have to say. I am not trying to re-kindle any old antagonisms and will not engage in distended arguing with the "usual players" (We all know who we are, folks...) Let's gently exchange our perspectives with as little rancor as possible and agree to do it constructively. FIRST: If one wants to understand this rather ponderous question, the first thing is to get the respective _names_ right: "The Greens/Green Party USA" & the "Association of State Green Parties" (there is a tendency now to drop the "TG/" from GPUSA, but this is still the organization's legal name). One has conceived of itself as a "movement" driven political organization, and this is reflected in the name; the other is also what it's name denotes, an association of partisan organizations (initially touted as a "confederation," a serious misuse of that term). I don't think it should be seen as an inappropriate "value judgement" to point out the obvious: ASGP inherently answers questions which TG/GPUSA leaves open. One fair statement might be that there is a fundamental difference in point of view regarding the relative importance of electoral work, particularly Presidential campaigns, and what some (myself included) refer to as "movement" work. It was once true that TG/GPUSA's majority position was against Presidential campaigns as such, but that's no longer the case, and hasn't been for a long, long time. TG/GPUSA people have been important activists in Nader's campaigns, both '96 and now. This was one of the core issues in the "split," and I can't be the only one to notice that it has become moot over time..? It's also true that TG/GPUSA is the older of the two organizations, and that most of the leadership involved in forming ASGP came out of the older organization. This was the infamous "split" which led us to where we are now. The "split" was primarily about differing views regarding leadership, participation, hierarchy, and reformism, though it was largely expressed in endless "structural" debates, debates which go on to this minute, after 16 years...). While I was actively involved, the majority in TG/GPUSA, many fresh from direct action movements like nuke occupations and stopping troop trains, were comitted to "remaking society" with non-violent strategies (including electoral work), from the "grassroots" outward; ASGP concepts of social change are more firmly attached to the existing political and economic structures, processes and institutions. ASGP would call the TG/GPUSA "utopian," and many in TG/GPUSA would be fine with that. (fair?) Metaphorically, this could be seen as two different ideas around the once popular Green slogan "Overgrow the State." One sees "overgrowning" like vines negating the irrelevant structures of the "old regime," others see "overgrowing" as a synonym for "inhabiting." (Yes, that is opinionated, but it is still accurate.) The question of "who was involved" should only be relevant to the extent that it helps one find documents (in searches-by-author) which express the various points of view. I'm not saying you're doing this, but I am frequently angered by those who try to reduce this discussion to "personalities." Of course it is always true that who we are personally is reflected in our politics (and in every other aspect of our lives), but the issues are now, and always have been, issues of profound political importance. Don't get bogged down in the personality conflicts because you'll miss the IDEAS. (Names? Start with Rensinbrink, Spretnak, Starhawk, Bookchin, Hawkins, Kovell and Tokar. There are many others, but this will get you started, and they're all published writers on the subject. I should note that Tokar's Book -- The Green Alternative -- is the best of all starting points. Next, read Rensinbrink.) Somewhere in the cybor-universe, there is a mass of direct discussion of the earlier periods. All the national Gatherings were chronicled in the econet (IGC) conferences. I'm sure Cameron can direct you to them; they were linked on one of our webpages during Nader's last run, I believe. Don't get lost there, but I encourage some thumbing through for "reality checks." As to what they do differently, that's getting harder to tell all the time. TG/GPUSA's majority was once comitted to organizing at the community scale and growing outward through confederations of community-based locals. At the national scale, that comittment may still be there -- (I have disconnected, but it's still in the Charter), but it is a model which has been overwhelmed where I live (N. California) by the more traditional and less "threatening" model of State Party organizing (which generally favors, often requires, County-level centers, not community/neighborhood scales). This is a literally "radical" (ie., "at the root") mode of organizing, intended to radically transform social, economic and political reality in a non-violent, democratic fashion. I see the potential for a sort of "political osmosis" as a means of rendering large-scale institutions of authority and control eventually irrelevant and powerless. (I'm reminded of Dugger's '96 speech calling for a "non-violent democratic revolution." If Dugger can use the term "revolution" at a thoroughly public Green Party event -- a national nominating convention, why can't anybody else use the term without getting our knuckles rapped..? But I won't...) Structurally, TG/GPUSA has membership at the level of locals and individuals, with only locals of three or more having voting rights at the National Green Congress, and a system of proportional representation based on the size of an active local. State Parties have a status under the old category of "regions," but this is precisely the structural level of the arguments. This is being proposed for modification all the time, but that's my understanding of the most current Charter structure (and I worked in the committee for a year or so). There was once a setup of "regions" which had effectively dissolved into State Parties by 1995 or so. In that process, from regions to State Parties, the "split" was made concrete and no longer only ideological. One thing which needs to be noticed is that even without specific Party recognition at the National Congress, any State could send delegations from all of their locals directly to the Congress. This would mean that locals would have to exist and be real in numbers resembling voter registration numbers for the Parties to have the level of national representation they have traditionally asked for. (Now, as I get it, ASGP is NOT structured in that proportional manner, btw.) TG/GPUSA's point is equally ASGP's point: it is EASIER to get voter-registrants on a list than to get lots of active people into a participatory organization. One mode "gets out the vote," the other builds a political *culture of participation. Obviously, as/if the decentralist model succeeded, authentic "regions" would need to develop their own delegated bodies, and the national level might even disappear over time into a horizontal, continental matrix; the error, in my view, was in abandoning the idea for Parties rather than fleshing the Idea out. It short-circuited something with a marvelous potential... ASGP, as they will tell you, is a fundamentally different sort of organization. It is a national conflab with a limited agenda of coordination on national campaigns and mutual aid in developing State Parties. Parties, not locals, County Councils, or individuals, are members in ASGP. Again my knowledge of the particulars is rusty (I was at Portland), but I believe ASGP is a delegation of two individuals from each State Party. Given a strict adherence to a truly "limited mandate" (and assuming "mandate" to mean what it *means), the ASGP Coordinating Committee isn't unlike TG/GPUSA's Green Council (what's legally, in the Charter, called the National Committee). Both are standing bodies, put there by their respective organizations to carry out day to day business and achieve the stated goals of their membership; but that "membership" is made up of Parties in ASGP, locals in TG/GPUSA. TG/GPUSA's concern with ASGP lies largely in this distinction, and it has always been the sticking point (once the fog of personality clashes and rhetoric, from both sides, is lifted). Goals? That's probably the toughest question of all because it is always speculative. Would a Nader presidency really move society discernibly toward a Green future? Would it even if he had a Green majority in Congress, real control of the military and police apparatus, and carte blanche on court appointments? That's a reasonable question, in my view. It obviously depends a great deal on what one's idea of a "Green future" is. Can such a future include social, economic and political hierarchies? If so, then populating the existing institutions with Greens solves the problem. If not, do we imagine "Greened" hierarchies taking power only to dissolve it? If that happened, it would be an historical first, without precedent in the human saga. But maybe the dissolution of hierarchical relationships isn't a "Green" agenda at all. Many, if not most, of those who have historically claimed this as a cornerstone of Green politics is no longer involved with capital "G" Green organizations at all. Notably, this is common ground with Bookchin and Starhawk. Maybe it is "human nature" that societies are comprised of disempowered majorities and strongly empowered commanding elites. That's what liberalism believes, and that idea is inherent in ASGP's structure (rather like a Senate). (I'm trying to define terms, not take shots. Even Chris Moore, a long-time opponent of TG/GPUSA is clear that ASGP itself is not a participatory democratic organization, and is content that the State Parties of which it is comprised are, presumably, organized that way -- this is a "federal" model, precisely the way the American nation-state is organized now, only without the "other half" of a Congress.) On the other hand, all that withstanding, there is no reason to consider ASGP's less radical approach as inherently antagonistic to a "grassroots democratic" long term goal. If ASGP's member-Parties can really maintain a "grassroots democratic" structure at the local and State levels, and concurrently maintain hard limitations on any National body's mandate, then a more authentic form of internal democracy still has the possibility to emerge within the Greens. I don't think presidential politics is where Green energies ought to be focused, but I am certainly glad that SOMEONE might have an opportunity to openly talk about corporate power, and to do that from a "progressive" (a hard term to clearly define...) point of view. It's the "progress not perfection" mode, and as long as those with more radical visions are not shut out of Green discussions, I for one support anything which really is heading in the right direction. … I can say that the conflict is vastly less evident in this conference than it was only a year or so ago. It's my "sense" of this that the issue of presidential campaigns no longer being a large bone of contention is itself something of a "reconciliation," though I don't think either organization sees it that way... … Some of us raised this [Federal election funds] issue at the GP California's State nominating convention in '96, and only a few of the more sophisticated players present seemed even to understand the issue, while most were just enthralled by Nader's decision to run his non-campaign and gave back blank stares as if to say "what money?" The reason we raised it, and what we wanted to see was that such money would be distributed to locals for the express purpose of developing REAL local-locals, of devolving County "locals" to community scales, per the Green vision we signed on with in the first place. It has since been stated, probably correctly, that such money "can't" be used that way, but only for national campaigns and Party infrastructure at the national scale. If nobody thinks this is wrong, it will go unchallenged. … Where am I on all this? I personally am much less directly involved than I once was and therefore feel a lot less pressure to be "uncompromising." What I once hoped the Greens would become has faded almost completely from possibility; TG/GPUSA is theoretically closer to my ideals than ASGP, but neither is on the course I prefer. I'm not neutral on the basic issues, but neither am I an organizational partisan. The confederal grassroots politics I advocate are happening outside any Green venue (because that's the way the Party has *structured it in California), and I am a part of that "Green Movement," a founder of the GP in Sonoma County, two-term Council member, and still a registered Green. What's been lost is the opportunity to have a national, even continental, network of these now-scattered efforts, but that doesn't mean the Green Party, as currently conceived, is a "bad thing" to me. I support Green politics in all forms, but I hope that presidential illusions do not override everything else. I would have preferred to see the development of a really strong grassroots organization (and I mean in neighborhoods and small towns, face-to-face scales) before even State, let alone National, structures and campaigns were even thought about. That didn't happen, and now it can't. Lloyd Strecker, dnrvr@verio.com To: post-grns-usa-forum@greens.org Wed, 26 Apr 2000 **************************** From: Dee Berry To: Allen Butcher allenbutcher@juno.com Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 18:58:16 EDT Subject: Green Network This organization is called the Green Network and has been in existence since 1992. … We call ourselves a virtual community of green activists. … I became aware of the Greens in 1984, went to my first national Green meeting in the fall of that year. This was about the second meeting of the Interregional Committee of the Committees of Correspondence. The following meeting of the IC of the CoC was held in Kansas City. I pretty much organized that meeting and as a result I was asked to assume the role of Coordinator for the Clearinghouse which was moved to Kansas City. I requested a salary of $100 per month so that it would have more of an official designation. I remained in that position for almost four years. During that entire time, the CoC was pretty much the kind of organization you described. It was movement oriented and organized along bioregional lines with a strong emphasis on local green groups. When I started there were very few locals, and when I left we had grown to over 350. In the beginning there was very little interest in electoral politics but this was beginning to change by the end of 1988. Many of us had begun to think it was about time for the Greens in the US to move toward the electoral arena as Greens were doing in all other countries on the planet. We began discussing the differing needs of the movement and the party and were thinking about the kinds of organizational patterns that could accommodate both. There was no split in the Green movement during these early years, although the differences that eventually led to the split were always there and had reared it's ugly head many times. About this time, we had also started to work on a National Program, (not called a platform yet) which we called SPAKA. This was spearheaded by John Rensenbrink and later by Christa Slayton. We worked on it for over a year, getting grassroots participation at all phases. It was to be approved at the Estes Park Green Gathering in 1990. However, the SPAKA process and the Estes Park Gathering was co-opted by a group of Left Greens, mostly men, who were intent on rewriting the economic section to fit their anarchist/socialist philosophy. The gathering in Estes Park was pretty ugly and Christa Slayton, who was coordinating the adoption of SPAKA at the meeting left the podium in tears never to return to the Green movement. (In keeping with your notion of groups spitting off from the larger movement, the Left Greens had been organizing for over a year and a had adopted a slightly different set of 14 key values as well as philosophy. However, they were never as interested in splitting off as they were in taking over the Green movement and recreating it in their image. I believe this is still their intent today.) Just before the Estes Park meeting, Howard Hawkins had presented a new structural "constitution" for the Greens in which he called for a "Unified" organization. I personally felt it was completely out of line for one person to reorganize the greens according to only his ideas. During the Gathering in Estes, I managed to get through a proposal to create reorganization working group to get input from the entire movement, including Howard's, after which we would meet together and draw up an organizational scheme. A group of very fantastic and knowledgeable people were elected to serve on that working group and I became the convenor. We asked for and got input from many locals and met later in Kansas City. We designed what I think was one of the most creative organizational schemes ever considered by a national organization. It provided for a bicameral organization or what we in the Working Group thought of as a yin/yang structure. There would be a movement arm and a political arm. The movement arm would remain much as the CoC was at the time, organized along bioregional lines and concerned with creating the alternative institutions of the new society, much like you described. It would also be the home for protest movements. Its thrust would be more toward the long-term future and could be more idealistic and pure than is possible for a political organization. The political arm, on the other hand, would be organized much like the ASGP is today, as a confederation of state green parties. Because of the way the political system operates in the US, state organizations are absolutely necessary. This arm would be more practical and would put into effect and test out the ideas that came from the movement arm. Both would work together and enhance each other. These two arms would be joined at the local and national level, but organized differently in between. We on the Working Group thought it was a brilliant idea. It may not have worked, we will never know. But we do know that the Unified structure that beat this one out, certainly did not work and only managed to split the Green organization into the warring factions that exist today. Unfortunately, when our final plan was submitted to the body for approval, Howard Hawkin's plan was submitted as an equal alternative even though it was devised by one person. Our plan, on the other hand, was created by an official and duly elected working group and included input and feedback from the entire organization. (Much like the two platforms that are out there now. They too are presented as equal even though one was approved by over 350 delegates again after much input and feedback from the entire Green movement, while Howard's platform was written pretty much by him and was approved by only 35 people present of meeting of GPUSA in which 47% of it is controlled by two men.) In the process of choosing between the two plans (actually there were three for some unknown reason), I now suspect there was a lot of disinformation circulated together with lobbying by Howard Hawkins and friends for his Unified Structure and it won by a small margin. In the meantime another working group was forming within Greens to explore electoral politics, called the Green Politics Organizing Committee. It became an official working group at the San Diego IC meeting. As I said earlier, many Greens were beginning to realize that it was time for us to move into the political arena. Alaska and Hawaii, states that were never part of the Green CoC, were running their first green campaigns and were gaining both notoriety and ballot status. They were leading the way. A meeting of the Green Politics Working Group was held in Boston in preparation for the upcoming Green Gathering in West Virginia. Everyone present felt there was solid backing for electoral politics. But the new masters of the unified structure would have none of it. This split played out in Elkins with many attempts at compromise; but in spite of the appearance of unity, it was not really healed. And has not been healed to this day. What prevailed was a unity without diversity which could never contain all of the vast and rich interests and needs of the growing Green movement. As time went on it became apparent to many of us that this Unified Structure provided for a hierarchical, rule-oriented organization easily manipulated by those who wrote and understood the complex rules. More and more people began to realize that this was not the kind of Green organization they wanted to put their time and energy into and simply walked away. This of course made those who remained and controlled the organization mad as hell. (They are still trying to get it back together now under the guise of UNITY. But it's still the same old drive to that unified structure portrayed as THE Green party of the US. Many of us who walked away soon realized that we did not want to lose the friendships that we had nurtured over the years nor did we want to walk away from the Green vision that had become so important in our lives. We also believed that the Greens needed a political presence in the US. In March of 1992, some of us convened our first "Third Force Conference" and out of that conference came the Green Politics Network. Our declaration reads as follows: "We declare our intent to form a national network of local and state activists in the United States who are devoted to a caring and public spirited politics rooted in guiding principles of ecology, social justice, spirituality, feminism, multicultural society, democracy, decentralization, non-violence, and community." For the first several years, The Politics Network was primarily interested in being a catalyst for the formation of a confederation of state green parties. Three third force conferences followed this first one, the fourth one leading to the Nader 96 campaign. Shortly after the '96 campaign, the Association of State Green Parties was formed and we take a great deal of pride in the role we played in that. But with the successful launching of the Association one of our most important reasons for being ended and we began looking at other ways to enhance the Green movement. From the beginning we were an organization of autonomous working groups, which included food circles, a community presidency, publishing the journal, Green Horizon. But none were given quite the same amount of organizational energy as did our political activity. In November of '98, at an Ecotreat in Kansas City, the Green Politics Network was renamed and restructured in a Network of Autonomous Centers. These include: A Green Network Center for Information and Communication, A Green Center for Alternative Economics, Education and a Green Civil Society. A Green Network Center for Protocol and Information, a Green Network Center for Women's Development, A GN Center for Development of Green Nations, A GN/Alliance Center for an Alternative Food System, A GN Center for Alternative Currency, A Green Center for Grassroots Organizing, A Green Center for Campus Crusaders, and an American Eco Institute. Two new centers are in the offing: one to develop and manage the methods and materials necessary for providing people new to the Greens with an understanding of how the Greens function and for providing them with the skills needed to be more effective at consensus decision making and meeting process, and one to provide new greens with materials to introduce them to green philosophy. We are even considering going into the publishing business. After the election, we hope to become a catalyst for building the communitarian-decentralist system you so elequently decribe in your paper, "How about three Green Parties." The groundwork has been laid for enhancing and networking the movement arm of the Greens. Now we need to figure out how best to make it work and how to provide the organizational support necessary. We do hope to include Greens from other countries in our scheme although we are not organized along bioregional lines. This pretty much disappeared along with the Green CoC. I have always personally regretted that with the ending of the old Green CoC, much of the good movement organizing went by the wayside. Many of the locals that were engaged in building alternative Green organizations simply disappeared and especially those that were not interested in political activity. … In community, Dee Berry. **************************** From: Fitzdon@aol.com To: Date: Mon Jul 03 10:06:25 2000 When I first got involved with the Greens in 1990, Howie had already experienced attempts to exclude him and attacks on his character. When I saw how loose things were at the national level on issues like being assured that locals had actually chosen representatives, I was attacked for trying to impose the rigid doctrinaire socialist patterns which I had on the more easy-going free-flowing Green way of doing things. In particular, at the 1990 Gathering in Colorado, St. Louis decided NOT to send a voting delegate because we had not sufficiently studied the issues. After the event, we learned that Terri Williams had attended, obtained our credential papers, selected herself to be our delegate, and voted on our behalf. (She had never attended a meeting of the Gateway Greens.) We suspect that this could have had something to do with her friend Dee Berry from Kansas City, who was Clearinghouse Coordinator at the time. When we learned what Terri had done, several people confronted her at a Coordinating Committee meeting. Soon, she was denouncing me in the Green Bulletin, with signed statements from 8 or 9 individuals saying that Don Fitz did not represent the Gateway Greens. One of Terri' supporters was so enthusiastic to denounce me that he misspelled his name when signing it. This was only the first part of the first chapter of events that have lasted for 10 years and would take a very thick book to document. The points are: 1. The parties which came out of this eventually became the GPUSA and the ASGP, which split off when it could not win the votes to get its way. 2. These ASGP-leader types have pulled undemocratic maneuvers non-stop for 10 years. 3. After victimizing us, they condemn us for the crime of being their victims. I ask that those who condemn the "looseness" of the GPUSA and give the inference that it could be due to the machinations of Hawkins and Fitz to grab votes, consider that Howie and me were some of the first people to challenge it, and that many of those who instituted it are currently in the right wing of the ASGP.… Don Fitz ************************ From: Ron Stanchfield To: Green Forum Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 … [The ASGP's] is a developed Platform over almost four years by many, many contributors. GPUSA's Platform was less than a month old at the [Denver] Convention. GPUSA never had a Platform, instead using the old GCoC Program. The timing of the transition has harmed all Greens, GPUSA because it will be seen as opportunistic and non-GPUSA Greens because it clearly shows the division and thus harms our candidate's chances. If Nader does not receive the 5% the fault will lay directly at the doorstep of GPUSA. … Howie is using many of the thousands of honest and hardworking Greens to further his own private and sectarian political agenda. There is and was no democratic process. 47%, the whole thing signed sealed and delivered by HH, his highness, Howie Hawkins. … The only good news is that most Greens will see the actions by the GPUSA for what they were, opportunistic and with no respect for the grassroots. Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 Subject: G/GPUSA Green Congress: Power Distribution I was struck just now by this failed proposal at the [G/GPUSA] Green Congress in Chicago a few weekends ago: "A Motion to approve the Feinstein "Unity Plan" was made by Don Fitz and seconded by Howie Hawkins. It FAILED: 3 in Favor; 66.5 Against; 7 Abstentions" I decided to look at the distribution of power to see how this failed and who was responsible. What of course troubles me is that there is no way the New York vote represents the true feelings of the GPoNYS since Howie and Julia never polled the membership, indeed, never even took us into consideration. New York 23 of 83 Votes = 28% - Main Power Broker - Howie Hawkins Missouri 16 of 83 Votes = 19% - Main Power Broker - Don Fitz NY & MO equals 39 of 83 Votes = 47%