The following document was submitted by the undersigned to the GPUSA "Congress" on June 21, 2004 in Chicago. Most of the signers were then removed from their positions of responsibility inside GPUSA.

Silent Terror:
Which Way Forward for the Greens?

The beauty that is this world lies shattered by terror. We are speaking here not primarily of isolated and periodic events, however horrifying their consequences, but of the systematic state terror employed daily as standard operating procedure by the governments of the leading "civilized" countries, including the United States of America. 

We are also talking about the corporate terror that passes as "normal," a terror that pollutes and privatizes all life, including our genetic codes, plants, air, soil and water - the “global commons” - as well as our work, and reduces them to commodities to be bought and sold, a "silent terror" that eats at the soul and devastates the ecology of the planet. 

We exist in a world in which the corporate media's tentacles extend into every home, school, restaurant, and now even many workplaces. The hourly notices about "evil doers" and terrifying new, beyond-our-control "diseases" (whether real or imaginary) create mass hysteria, and allow those in power to manipulate our fears in order to achieve, in Noam Chomsky's terms, "the manufacturing of consent" for the system, its ways of seeing, its ruling ideas, policies, prisons, and wars. 

The fact that almost all of the "terrorists" in the news are products of the CIA, funded, trained and armed at one time or another by the US government in collaboration with such ruling elites as exist in Saudi Arabia and Israel, goes unmentioned. 

The fact that the wave of new diseases they tell us we are being subjected to every few months - West Nile, Anthrax, Smallpox, SARS, you name it - are NOT natural occurrences in their current form but are manufactured, WITHOUT our consent, at the US Army Biological Warfare facilities in Fort Detrick, Maryland and at Plum Island, New York, passes by the corporate media without comment. They seem all-powerful, can do and say whatever they want, and manipulate our fears so that we accede to their decisions, their wars, if not actively support them. And yet, despite their power, their governments, their corporations, their media, their trillions of dollars, their control of oil, resistance is fertile! 

Hope indeed springs eternal, and resistance blossoms everywhere against the globalization of capital, the colonization of space and the girding of the heavens with nuclear missiles and the machinery of holocausts, the nightmare of endless and illegitimate wars, the theft and decimation of the Bill of Rights, and the destruction of the "commons" - our shared environment. We cry out against War, Fascism, and global Ecological devastation. We build the alternatives within the belly of the old. Another world is not only possible, it is necessary. It is our only hope. 

Where is the organization that unites these movements, that reveals the many ways in which each aspect of domination is a nuanced reflection of the totality of Domination in general, and that consequently each act of resistance is made to light the way for the Resistance of all? We believe that the Green movement has that crucial unifying role to play, and that in its attempts to enact its vision of an ecologically sustainable and healing world lie the potential for achieving human freedom, restoring the global commons, and saving the planet. 

That is why we, the undersigned members of the Greens/Green Party USA, are deeply troubled by what we consider to be extremely anti-democratic and destructive decisions by a number of leaders of GPUSA who are undermining this potential by entrenching themselves in various bodies and centralizing their control of what we had hoped would be a transparent, democratic, diverse and accountable network of Green activists and locals. Instead, we find an increasingly self-defeating and unaccountable hierarchy, which has been making numerous decisions to the detriment of the crucial anti-fascist, anti-war and ecologically conscious resistance. 

We understand the pressures the Green Party is facing; our response to them must be to become MORE democratic, more transparent, more inclusive, if we are to be effective in the many social, economic and environmental justice movements through which we hope to transform the world. 
___________________________ 
*Titled in homage to Rachel Carson's great work, "Silent Spring."

Mitchel Cohen, co-editor, Green Politix, NY Greens clearinghouse co-coordinator, and elected representative from NY to the Greens/Green Party USA.

Robert Gold, Chair, International Committee, former coordinating committee member, and member of the Green National Committee, Green Party USA.

Cathryn Sw, coordinating committee member, and member of the Green National Committee, Green Party USA.

Roy Felshin, Manhattan Greens / Green Party USA.

Maria Kuriloff, elected representative from NY to the Greens/Green Party USA, and member of the Green National Committee, Green Party USA.

Paul Gilman, alternate member of the Green National Committee, Green Party USA.

Howard Brandstein, GPUSA member, and coordinator of Save Organic Standards.

Kellie Gasink, Chair, Green Party of Chatham County, Savannah Georgia, GPUSA.

Michael Allen, treasurer, Two Rivers Greens (St. Louis), and alternate member of the Green National Committee, GPUSA.

Kim Jayne, St. Louis GPUSA

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The Congress -- all of 9 people claiming to represent 500 Green Party USA members (nonsense!), -- took the following actions, among others:

Removed Mitchel Cohen as co-editor of Green Politics, set up a kangaroo court to "courtmartial" Mitchel for various phony offenses, and denied NY's legitimate 92 votes by order of Don Fitz. (New York has been the only state green party that remained officially affiliated with GPUSA. Most of the others signed up with GPUS -- the other, electoral-based national Green party.) 

Removed Robert Gold from the Green National Committee.

Removed C.S. from the coordinating committee and from the Green National Committee, amidst charges that she had "abused" Don Fitz and Nancy Oden (meaning: she refused to be badgered into submission by them) on the coordinating committee calls.

Removed Paul Gilman as an alternate from the Green National Committee.

Denied Kellie Gasink recognition as the chair of the Green Party of Chatham County Green Party (Georgia), and removed the GPCC -- GPUSA's only local in the South -- from its list of member locals.

Removed Michael Allen as an alternate member of the Green National Committee, GPUSA.

Denied Kim Jayne a vote at the Congress under the ludicrous claim that the hundreds of dollars she'd donated to the Gateway Green Alliance "was not specifically earmarked to include membership dues" according to Don Fitz, and that therefore she was "not a member."