-----Original Message-----
From: owner-newsletter@greenparty.org
[mailto:owner-newsletter@greenparty.org]On Behalf Of Nancy Oden
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 9:14 PM
To: newsletter@greenparty.org
Subject: [Green_Party_USA] RISING UP GREEN, July 19, 2004

RISING UP GREEN e-Newsletter
July 19, 2004

Green Party USA
PO Box 3568
Eureka, California 95502
1-866-GREENS2 (1-866-473-3672)
greenpartyusa@igc.org
http://www.greenparty.org (You can join online. New issue of magazine "Synthesis/Regeneration: Green Social Thought" out shortly - free to members.)

Friends:

GPUSA's annual Congress met last month in Chicago.

The Congress was delegated so that each elected representative had votes equal to the number of verified GPUSA members in their local or state caucus. Some individual members attended and were given a vote, too.

This Congress was particularly contentious and difficult, as you can read below, since a small grouplet was intent on keeping the Congress from getting its work done.

In this report, we discuss what happened, as well as whether we did the best we could, or what we might have done differently.

A major question for all of us as we strive to be democratic and fair in our organizations is:

--How to deal with shouting, bullying, vicious name-calling disrupters in our meetings? It's especially difficult when they're members we've worked with who have decided they want to take over the group, or they will keep it from functioning.

The question of physical removal comes up, but that is not a desirable solution, so the below account (which is a bit long, but important) tells what happened, how we coped with it - and got our work done as well.

We'd like to hear your ideas on this rather delicate but important matter, since it's likely we will all be facing this sort of thing as the movements grow.

What would you have done?

Please send your thoughts/ideas to editor@greenparty.org. We'll print some of your comments for further discussion.

- Nancy Oden, Ed. (Personal Note - Without the strong and fair facilitation of Don Fitz of St. Louis, Missouri [ed. of S/R magazine], the Congress would have gotten much less work done. He used Roberts' Rules and tested for consensus before taking votes.

More of us should probably learn to use Roberts' Rules of Order which, while they needn't be followed slavishly, do allow for most situations to keep a meeting moving democratically. Roberts' Rules are used in Town Meetings here in New England.)

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GPUSA CONGRESS 2004 - LOOKING AT OURSELVES

1. Accomplishments
2. Interruptions
3. I-Win-if-I-Win-and-I-Win-if-I-Lose
4. Distractions
5. Credentialing - Was NY Disenfranchised?
6. Sanctions Committee
7. Green Publications
8. Boycott
9. Common themes
10. Looking Back - Looking Forward

GPUSA CONGRESS 2004 - LOOKING AT OURSELVES

1. Accomplishments

The Congress of the Greens/Green Party USA (GPUSA) that met June 21-22, 2004 in Chicago accomplished some tremendous work.

* After a discussion of the massive amounts of waste and toxins transported from cities to rural areas and dumped into the environment, the Green Party endorsed the concept of "Zero Waste" and made plans to prepare literature for total recycling and the removal of dangerous substances from production.

* The Green Party endorsed the boycott of Coca-Cola and decided to distribute its own statement explaining the harm production of Coca-Cola causes from perspectives of human health, union organizing and environmental protection.

* The Congress heard from Willie Marshall, an organizer with the Green Party of St. Louis and Universal African People's Organization, as he explained concepts behind a consumers' union for Black Americans and how to forge a Black-Green alliance.

* The Congress initiated a Publications Collective to coordinate production of the Green Politics newspaper, Rising Up Green electronic newsletter, and flyers and brochures to get the Green message out.

In addition to discussing the 2004 presidential race and "Local resistance to corporate power," the Congress dealt with details of relocating the Clearinghouse to California, updating the by-laws, managing Green electronic communications, and examining Green publications.

2. Interruptions

These accomplishments were difficult because the Congress was marred by some of the worst incidents of disruption and nastiness that has ever occurred at a national Greens meeting.

As soon as the facilitator welcomed delegates and observers, Mitchel Cohen from Brooklyn, New York declared that he did not recognize the facilitator. Delegates explained that the facilitator had been asked by the national Coordinating Committee to open the meeting and, as soon as there was a credentialing report, a new facilitator could be elected.

Mitchel Cohen talked non-stop over the facilitator, as if he did not want the Congress to begin. When asked by Nancy Oden to allow the meeting to continue, Mitchel Cohen yelled at her to "Sit down and shut up" and called her and others "Stalinist dogs."

As Elizabeth Fattah tried to read the credentialing report, Robert Gold and Paul Gilman (both from New York City) joined Mitchel Cohen in trying to shout her down. They finally bullied her into leaving the room for a few minutes to calm herself. They said over and over that they did not recognize the facilitator, did not recognize the credentialing committee and that the whole meeting was illegitimate.

Their behavior stunned those who had come to a Green meeting assuming we would respect the contributions of everyone present. Since that June Congress, people have thought deeply about how we should cope with someone who has worked to build an organization, but who changes over time and begins working to keep the group from functioning.

Had someone who had recently joined the Greens begun acting like this, GPUSA probably would have voted to remove the person. But Mitchel Cohen has worked to build the Greens for several years and delegates were reluctant to respond to him in such a fashion. After Mitchel Cohen prevented significant work from being done for two hours, Patrick Eytchison introduced a motion to censure him for his abusive and bullying behavior. It passed by a vote of 284 yes, 0 no and 94 abstain.

The Congress had been set by the previous Congress, confirmed by the Green National Committee and arranged by the national Coordinating Committee. During many of the steps of preparation, Mitchel Cohen had demanded that it be changed to another city or another date or done a different way. Though there had been many attempts to accommodate his concerns (such as altering the date of the Congress), the majority usually voted against Mitchel Cohen's demands.

Mitchel Cohen accepted every vote that went his way but insisted every time a national body voted differently from his demands that the vote was "illegitimate." By the time the Congress opened, he was very angry over having lost more votes than he had won.

Mitchel Cohen went from the GPUSA meeting of June 21-22 in Chicago to the presidential nominating convention of GPUS (Green Party of the United States) in Milwaukee, June 23-28. There is no report that he attempted to scream at the facilitator, talk over other delegates, call people names, or otherwise disrupt the meeting. Had he done so, it is very likely that the more conservative Green group would have ejected him from the meeting immediately.

It is an irony of progressive politics that those organizations which allow the greatest latitude for political opposition to express itself are often vilified the most as "undemocratic" by those who do not get their way.

3. I-Win-if-I-Win-and-I-Win-if-I-Lose

Clearly, there was a small group bent on stopping the Congress from accomplishing its goals, and they did not really believe that it was "illegitimate." Otherwise they would have been content to ask that their procedural concerns be noted in the minutes rather than continuously trying to shout others down.

Even more revealing was the fact that Mitchel Cohen voted and argued incessantly that he should have more votes at the same time he fulminating that he did not recognize the vote.

Claiming a meeting is not legitimate while voting during it is playing games. If the group playing this game wins the vote, they say "We won!" But if they lose the vote, they say "We won because the vote was not legitimate." This is the "I-Win-if-I-Win-and-I-Win-if-I-Lose" game.

4. Distractions

Following the vote to censure him, Mitchel Cohen reduced his yelling. But he continued name-calling, at one point calling the facilitator a "fascist." He interrupted and attempted to talk over others several hundred times during the two-day event.

Paul Gilman introduced many frivolous motions such as one to give New York 500 votes for no apparent reason. As the Congress fell behind schedule because the Mitchel Cohen group was introducing numerous resolutions (which failed by large margins), Paul Gilman demanded a roll call vote on every resolution.

Had this been done, it would have meant the Congress would have accomplished little. It made people wonder if that were the intent of the motion.

There was similar factional rancor inspired by Mitchel Cohen's motion to end the incorporation of GPUSA so that it would "not be sanctified by the State." This was seen as using "ultra left" rhetoric to prevent GPUSA from functioning, as was his extensive argument that by-laws changes could not be brought up at the Congress, despite the fact that this is done at almost every GPUSA Congress.

The Congress passed by-laws changes allowing emergency GNC meetings with a five-day notice if approved by two-thirds of its members, a requirement that reports be distributed 4 weeks (instead of 8 weeks) before the Congress, a procedure for the Congress and GNC to approve or deny applications for membership renewal and reinstatement, simplification of review of charges against members, and clarification that membership lists of their constituencies are to be released only to elected representatives.

Three of the thorniest topics of the Congress were credentialing of delegates, sanctions for misbehavior, and publications.

5. Credentialing - Was NY Disenfranchised?

One of the ugliest disruptions at the 2004 GPUSA Congress was over credentialing delegates from New York. An individual is not allowed to simply show up, declare, "I am from such-and-such state," and then receive votes for that state. "Credentialing" means that delegates must show evidence that the members of their Green local, state party or state caucus elected them as representatives.

Groups were asked to show evidence of a local or state election by June 14, a week before the Congress. By that date, delegates from Arizona, California, Maine, Pennsylvania, and St. Louis had submitted documentation that there had been a membership meeting which elected them.

When the Congress began on June 21, Mitchel Cohen presented an undated letter from the Coordinating Committee of New York Greens that it had appointed him and Maria Kuriloff as delegates. He did not have any evidence that members of the New York Green Party had elected him or wished him to represent them.

Therefore the Credentialing Committee recommended giving Mitchel Cohen half the votes he would have had if he had been elected as NY's representative: 46 instead of 92. Over Mitchel Cohen's interrupting, yelling, and attempting to prevent others from speaking, the Congress agreed with the Credentialing Committee by a vote of 314 to 30.

Part of the reason that over 90% of the votes favored this compromise was that it follows GPUSA precedents. By-laws require delegations to be gender balanced. At a 2001 meeting, when Wisconsin showed up with an all-male delegation, it received half of its potential votes.

New York was not the only state to receive less than its potential votes at the 2004 GPUSA Congress. Missouri did not elect delegates at a state-wide meeting; consequently, delegates from Missouri either represented the Gateway Green Alliance (GGA, which did have a membership meeting) or non-GGA members had 1vote each.

Similarly, Chicago Greens asked if they could represent Illinois. But they acknowledged that they were not elected at a state-wide meeting. Since they did produce documentation that they were elected at a Chicago Greens meeting, they received votes for their local.

During and after the Congress, the Mitchel Cohen group thundered that the process "disenfranchised" their state. This is odd, since Mitchel Cohen's vote went from 1 as an individual to 46 as a (dubious) state delegate. It is ironic that the "disenfranchisement" claim came from New York, which received 46 of a potential 92 votes, while Chicago's representatives, who received 12 votes instead of 60 potential Illinois votes, accepted the rules of the Congress in good faith.

If the Congress acted inappropriately in assigning delegate votes, it was in giving Mitchel Cohen 46 votes instead of 1 vote when he presented no evidence that rank and file New York members wished him to vote on their behalf.

A final mention should be made regarding a complaint that the Congress had been too strict in asking that Mitchel Cohen be held to GPUSA's by-laws.

Mitchel Cohen understands the Roberts' Rules and GPUSA's by-laws quite well, but uses them selectively. For example, during a heated debate on by-laws changes, the facilitator said, "I call the question." Mitchel Cohen responded, "According to Roberts Rules of Order, the facilitator cannot call the question." The facilitator backed down and another delegate called for a vote.

Mitchel Cohen knows rules of procedure. Since he has been to several national GPUSA meetings, he is well aware that state delegates must be elected by members rather than appointed by a committee.

6. Sanctions Committee

Prior to the 2004 GPUSA Congress, the Mitchel Cohen group began declaring that votes of the Green National Committee they disagreed with were "illegitimate" and that people who voted in ways he did not like should be expelled. Mitchel Cohen controls many e-mail listserves and began throwing people off of them without notification, due process, or right of appeal.

Once the Congress began and it was obvious that there was not even 10% support for his claiming that he was New York's delegate by right of appointment, Mitchel Cohen changed tactics. Instead of expulsion, he called for censure of the Coordinating Committee for "misappropriation of funds" supposedly targeted to publish Green Politics, GPUSA's print newspaper.

Mitchel Cohen had been editor of Green Politics, but had not produced an issue for a year and a half. He claimed that it was because money had been misspent, even though people had offered to loan GPUSA the money to publish the newspaper when GPUSA's funds were low.

Though Clearinghouse Coordinator Rita Bogolub explained that it was not clear that donors wished their money to go to Green Politics rather than GPUSA membership or for GPUSA's office and staff, Mitchel Cohen insisted on an investigation.

The Congress set up a Sanctions Committee that would investigate Mitchel Cohen's charges, as well as charges other might bring to it. The Sanctions Committee consensed that the request for censure of the Coordinating Committee for "misappropriation of funds" did not have a significant foundation in fact.

Elizabeth Fattah submitted a resolution that Mitchel Cohen be censured for a January 14, 2004 e-mail he sent to numerous political lists, citing his positions as editor of the GPUSA newspaper as a reason why people should donate money to him for a family vacation.

GPUSA received multiple complaints from people who said they did not know Mitchel Cohen, and said that he could only have gotten their e-mail address from GPUSA. Many strongly suspected that Mitchel Cohen had abused his privilege of coordinating GPUSA lists and used those lists for his personal money solicitation.

On Tuesday, the Congress followed the recommendation of the Sanctions Committee and voted to censure Mitchel Cohen for the personal solicitation.

Don Fitz submitted a motion that Mitchel Cohen be censured for theft of a GPUSA electronic listserve. A year earlier, Don had been approved as moderator of a new listserve, GPUSA-Strategy, and Mitchel Cohen agreed to set it up on Yahoogroups.

In April 2004, the Coordinating Committee decided that all GPUSA listserves should be under its own domain, greenparty.org, rather than Yahoogroups, and had the web manager set up a new Strategy listserve.

After the new listserve was functioning, Don tried to remove names from the old Yahoogroups version and take it down, only to discover that Mitchel Cohen had installed himself as moderator on that old listserve, had expelled Don Fitz and several others from the list, and was managing it as his own personal listserve.

When the Coordinating Committee instructed him to return the stolen listserve, Mitchel Cohen replied that he would "not respond." On Tuesday, the Congress voted to uphold the recommendations of the Sanctions Committee and voted by large margins to censure Mitchel Cohen for his actions, ask him to restore the listserve to GPUSA and that he would not be allowed to set up future listserves for GPUSA.

There was also a motion to censure Mitchel Cohen for falsely identifying someone as being on the Green National Committee (GNC) after the individual told him he was not. The motion is still under review by the Sanctions Committee which will make a recommendation to the GNC.

All of the sanctions which the Congress approved were milder than those requested in the original motions of censure. While the Sanctions Committee and the Congress considered Mitchel Cohen's actions serious enough to require a response, they felt that a person being censured needed an opportunity to change his or her behavior and return to the next Congress with a clean slate.

7. Green Publications

GPUSA publishes the print newspaper Green Politics (GP) and purchases the independently published Synthesis/Regeneration (SR) magazine for its members. SR has come out regularly; but GP has not been published for a year and a half.

Though he was editor, Mitchel Cohen blamed the Coordinating Committee (CC) for the failure of GP to be published. Some felt that Mitchel Cohen used an authoritarian style as editor of GP. Elizabeth Fattah (co-editor) said that she did not receive articles under consideration for publication until the Coordinating Committee instructed Mitchel to send them to the editorial board. A symptom of the way GP had been run was Mitchel's changing the spelling of "Politics" to "Politix" in the title without consulting editorial board members. The Congress voted by 324 to 104 to restore the spelling to "Green Politics."

Most important, the Congress voted to set up a Publications Collective that will coordinate production of Green Politics, the Rising Up Green electronic newsletter, pamphlets, flyers and media releases, and to act as liaison between GPUSA and Synthesis/Regeneration. The Collective will submit its recommendations to the Coordinating Committee for oversight.

After these votes, Mitchel Cohen moved that SR be asked to forego its independent status and submit itself to control by GPUSA. Most felt that the relationship between GPUSA and SR is good as is, and there was no reason to change it from a magazine produced regularly to one that might suffer the fate of Green Politics, which had been rarely published. The motion failed, 47 to 352.

Mitchel Cohen then proposed that other locals be encouraged to publish magazines. This appeared to be a motion to undermine SR by creating multiple publications, none of which would be able to survive financially. This motion was also defeated.

SR selects which articles to publish by a system of "blind" ratings by editorial board members which are then combined. This is a transparent and democratic method which prevents any single individual from deciding unilaterally which articles are published and which are not published.

This contrasts with the process of selection of articles for GP, which appeared to have been done secretly by the editor. Many who work on SR saw Mitchel Cohen's motions as a non-transparent maneuver to undermine a publication which he did not control.

8. Boycott

Coca-Cola was not the only thing boycotted at the Congress. There was a boycott of the discussion for boycotting Coca-Cola.

The high point of the two-day event was the discussion of action plans on Monday evening. As typical at Green meetings, the most unifying discussion addressed action plans such as boycotting Coca-Cola, zero waste, and a Black-Green alliance.

People who disagree all day on procedure issues often pull together on organizing issues. Unfortunately, the action planning sessions were boycotted by the Mitchel Cohen group.

They were present during the most contentious portions of the Congress; they were all absent for discussions of Green work on Monday evening. They returned Tuesday morning to continue factional disputes.

Except for Roy Felshin, none of those who showed up to support Mitchel Cohen had ever been to a national GPUSA meeting out of their own city before. Though unable to travel to meetings to build unified Green Party actions, they were able to find time and money to attend one of the most divisive GPUSA meetings in its history.

9. Common themes

Conflicts within GPUSA during the first part of 2004 bring up themes which have recurred at least since the Green movement began in the US 20 years ago.

The first theme is a "crisis in confidence," or the difficulty of building an organization of the victimized.

Progressive groups are particularly vulnerable to a belief that no one should ever have restrictions put on their behavior no matter how destructive the person becomes. This great reluctance to impose sanctions makes groups vulnerable to those who try to take over by bullying or ignoring rules set by the group.

Right-wing groups of the wealthy rarely have this problem. The Republican Party and cohort organizations are comprised of people whose life work is dominating other people. They spend all day manipulating people and getting rid of those who stand in the way of their grabbing more wealth and power. If someone tries to destroy a meeting they have, they feel no remorse in ousting the individual or group.

Organizations of the oppressed have a fundamentally different dynamic. They are composed of people on the receiving end of the whip at work, in the community, in the military and elsewhere. Huge numbers think, "If I get power in a group, I will never discipline others as I have been disciplined."

In the counterculture which has evolved since the 1960s, this attitude often has a quasi-religious fanaticism to it. Many groups have been so reluctant to tell a destructive person "No" that they collapse rather than pass a simple motion of censure. One of the greatest challenges of the Left is creating a culture that puts limits on excessive behavior in non-oppressive ways.

A second common theme is that many progressives cannot accept losing a vote. The move towards "consensus decision-making" reflects a belief that a group's decision should reflect the contribution of everyone involved. This has been the goal of the US Green movement since its founding in 1984.

But choices in direction often have to be made and this means voting one proposal up and another proposal down. Greens try to use consensus first and then move to a vote if it is not possible.

One of the greatest sources of potential conflict over Green beliefs is between seeking consensus and the Key Value of "grassroots democracy." This conflict can explode when members feel a need to elect new officers or recall those in office. A fundamental aspect of "grassroots democracy" is that members have the right to select their own officers. But those who put consensus above all else can become outraged if officers they support are asked to step down.

This happened when the April 2004 GNC meeting felt the Coordinating Committee had not been acting fairly and elected a new one. Mitchel Cohen and his supporters were furious, despite the fact that the CC is a subcommittee of the GNC, which frequently elects new CC members to act on its behalf.

A third common theme happens when a group of people attacks others and then denounces their victims for doing what has actually been done to them. This tends to disorient and confuse those not intimately acquainted with the conflict, who most likely perceive it as two groups squabbling that "He did it. No, he did it first."

Rather than spend time finding out what really happened, people are likely to reject both the abuser and the victim. This greatly strengthens the attacker and weakens the larger group. This happened in early 2004, when Mitchel Cohen called for Nancy Oden to be thrown off the CC, illegally removed from the GNC, banned from listerves and then Mitchel Cohen called for those who disagreed with him to be expelled from GPUSA.

He then started carrying out the plan to get rid of those disagreeing with him by stealing GPUSA's Strategy listserve, expelling from the list those he labeled "enemies," as well as expelling from ACTIONGREENS and NOSPRAY listserves (which he controls) those who disagree with him. As this was happening, the Mitchel Cohen group was busily accusing GPUSA's leadership of trying to get rid of him.

The outside observer is likely to say "I don't want anything to do with any of those people," rather than taking the time to find out that the majority repeatedly asked Mitchel Cohen to change his behavior, pleaded for an end to his abuse of others, and voted to censure rather than expel him.

The pattern recurred when Mitchel Cohen attempted to post personal attacks on the new, moderated STRATEGY listserve, even though he knew that such attacks were not allowed. When his personal attacks were not posted, he denounced GPUSA leaders for "suppressing" him, never mentioning to his audience that those he was denouncing could not respond because he had removed them from the listserve. While carrying out this secretive behavior, Mitchel Cohen accused those he was victimizing of acting secretively or not being "transparent."

The fourth common theme actually goes back to 1992, when a national group of Greens lost a series of votes at the annual GPUSA Congress and left to form the Green Politics Network (GPN). That group took the position that the only true Green activity was running candidates in elections, and that day-to-day organizing was a secondary or unimportant activity for a political party.

When they left GPUSA they denounced it as "undemocratic" because the majority would not vote as they wanted. Over the next few years, others took up the "elections only" view of the GPN and tried unsuccessfully to win over GPUSA.

When they lost votes, they denounced GPUSA as "undemocratic" and stormed out to join the GPN and form the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) in 1996.

The new people who joined GPUSA in the late 1990s were divided between those wanting a "movement party" and those for an "elections only" party. At this point ASGP became insistent that it wanted total control of the "Green Party" name and demanded that GPUSA surrender it.

Several ASGP supporters joined GPUSA in an attempt to wrest GPUSA's name and website Domain name, greenparty.org, away at the contentious 2001 Congress.

With the influx of bogus "members" they actually had about 55% of the vote at that Congress. But the by-laws require a two-thirds majority for something like giving the organization's name to another group. When they failed to win critical votes, they stormed out of the 2001 meeting and declared GPUSA was "undemocratic."

When GPUSA would not surrender its name to them, they decided the next best thing was to imitate it. They changed themselves from ASGP to "Green Party of the United States," or GPUS, which is confusingly similar to GPUSA.

Due to the success of the 2000 Nader/Laduke campaign, GPUS grew rapidly. Mitchel Cohen seemed impressed by their growth in size and began working actively in both GPUSA and its impersonation, GPUS. It was not totally original for Mitchel Cohen to discover that, in 2004, he could gain an audience from GPN/ASGP/GPUS by chastising GPUSA as "undemocratic" when it did not vote as he demanded.

10. Looking Back - Looking Forward

The question that the 2004 GPUSA Congress had to continuously grapple with was, "How do you deal with a small group of people who repeatedly act to undermine a meeting?" Some find the question so painful that they prefer not to discuss it at all. Unfortunately, problems which recur time after time will only grow worse if we do not address them.

When the Chicago Congress began with some people trying to shout others down and constantly interrupting the proceedings, what should the Green Party have done?

Should the Congress have simply allowed the yelling to go on, hoping that people would get tired and stop it?

Did the Congress make a mistake by permitting it to go on for two days, and should it have voted to have people leave as soon as they started behaving in that way? Or, did the Congress do the best it could by voting to censure with a warning of possible removal?

What should an organization do when a grouplet uses its democratic rights to intimidate others by continuously calling for people to be thrown off of committees and expelled from the organization? Though the Green Party allowed it to go on, it was incredibly demoralizing, and basically allowed a few to bully others out of the group. It becomes very difficult to grow, as not many people want to join a group in which a few vocal individuals dominate electronic communication and do not let others speak at meetings.

Far more difficult to cope with are those who use rules of democratic procedure to bog work down and prevent goals from being accomplished. Since people have a right to make motions, the 2004 Congress permitted motions to give 500 votes to New York, unincorporate GPUSA and undermine Synthesis/Regeneration, among others.

It is deliberate time-wasting for an individual to make motion after motion, none of which have any hope of passing, and which are clearly designed to prevent the Congress from functioning.

Similarly troublesome are process motions. A meeting can be killed by a tiny group saying "point of order" every 3 or 4 minutes. This is why the Congress would not allow roll call votes on the many motions introduced.

Despite or perhaps because of such events, the Green Party accomplished a lot in Chicago. The predominant attitude toward attempts at impugning the Congress was reflected in the report of the Sanctions Committee which affirmed that there had been unacceptable behavior, but recommended milder consequences than requested.

The Green Party recognizes that living in an oppressive society often drives people to do things that are regrettable. But if they work to overcome their difficulties they should be welcomed back. Each sanction had a specific request which will hopefully be followed so that GPUSA members can see the difficulties of 2004 as something they overcame in order to work together.

Looking at ourselves and how we relate to each other is not a diversion from meaningful work. In reality, finding ways to cope with conflict in a just way is the very essence of creating a new society.

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Until next time,

- Nancy Oden, for GPUSA's Coordinating Committee & Publications Collective

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