From the Mercury News in California:
Five years ago, there were 158,000 registered Greens, or 0.95 percent of California voters. By January this year, the number had shrunk to 111,000, or 0.66 percent of the electorate.
The party knows of just 33 Greens holding elective office, ranging from members of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board to a San Francisco supervisor to the mayors of Richmond and Sebastopol. Its official list includes no elected Greens in Santa Clara County and just two in San Mateo County, both on the Montara water board…
“A 17th-century electoral system keeps minor parties minor,” Stauffer said.
With its agenda embracing universal health care, public financing of elections, legalization of undocumented immigrants and free birth control, the party promotes far more than environmentalism. The weekend meeting was partially devoted to hammering out party planks, but some remained unfinished.
Delegates supported downsizing the requirement for passing the state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority but couldn’t agree on tax reform, term limits or whether the rights of people to control use of their DNA and body parts belonged in the human rights or health-care plank, said delegate Cres Vellucci, 61, of Sacramento.
At a gathering that appeared to have few nonwhite members, delegates acknowledged that the party ought to strive harder to reflect the ethnic makeup of California.
The party is trying to capitalize on liberals disenchanted with President Obama and the Democrats. It will spend some of its $35,000 budget for 2010-11 on a television ad campaign inviting voters to join the party.
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think that Global Warming is not only real but already way out of control and not healed by human activity and inactivity either way in the intermediate future ………..
By NIRMALA GEORGE, Associated Press Writer – Wed Mar 24, 2010
NEW DELHI – For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island’s gone.
New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.
“What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Hazra …………
Michael Cavlan RN // Mar 9, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Green Party Fan
You can see other reason[s] that so many have approached and then stayed away from the GP.
Man, I do not miss that inertness at all.
If you can find folks working with folks who are on the same page, Citizens For A Better Veterans Home would like to know.
The Democans and Republicrats are unpatriotic, unethical, and just horrible, horrible keepers of the keys!
Greens, as their sun flower icon hints, are effeminate gardeners, glassie eyed laid back non workers, probably stoked out on a large doubie!
Libs are uber selfish, white male small business types whom have sooooooooooo little in common with the average American!
Bible thumpers are, well, Bible thumpers!
Wanna clear the average American meeting room via citizens running out the door and jumping out the window[s] ???????? Just yell ‘Socialist’ and or ‘Communist’ and stand out of the way!
The Duopoly Establishment is smirking all the way to the final resting place [2085 ??????] of the American Experient!
Green Party Fan
You can see the other reason that so many have left the GP.
Man, I do not miss that nastiness at all.
Kinda nice, working with folks who are on the same page.
Green Party of California has had a record of spectacular dysacheivements ………
And so ‘interesting’ that [so called] Green Party fan is not even a member of a recognized green partisan group. *sniff sniff* he does not, and has not even began to be qualified in that category …….
“On the upside though, all those activists who are committed to building a real, honest and unafraid opposition to the current system are finding each other.”
When you were on the Green National Committee, you attacked Phil Huckelberry for getting into a two-way race with a Republican, because it was a form of a “safe states” strategy. Since your opposition to the duopoly is “real, honest, and unafraid”, does that mean that your party will turn down candidates who want to run in two-way races with Republicans, or will it recruit Democrats to run against them so that there’s no “safe states”?
Green Party Fan
You seem like a nice enough person. So lets be frank without being cutting.
Putting on a happy face about how peachy keen the Green Party are, in the face of evidence by the many who have left the GP, as exemplified by this article as well as the testimonials of those who have left is, well kind of polly-anna-ish.
Which, ironically is one of the reasons that some of us left.
The Green Party has some very deep structural and political problems. Putting on a happy face and remaining in denial of those problems just ensures that more activists will leave the GP.
As for the basic premise of the article, first yes it is the corporate media and so is not usually a trustworthy article. However, in this case it is right.
As I tried to warn the National GP Delegates and others, when you deliberately disenfranchise those folks who are actually doing the work, you guarentee that those activists who are committed to building an actual opposition to the pro-war, corporate corrupted two party system will leave.
Leaving behind those who do nothing but sit around and chat on list serves. Which sadly is what has happened to the Green Party.
On the upside though, all those activists who are committed to building a real, honest and unafraid opposition to the current system are finding each other.
We are organizing, building and working together.
The Green Party of California has had a record of spectacular acheivements.
The key in 2010 is to put a full slate of Green Party candidates on the ballot for local, state, and federal office.
The Green Party is the solution.
@Straight…….. “they talk, then balk, then fade into the wood work!”
i was a GP member in another stte for several yeres in the 2000’s.
@ Don,
That seems to be the trend with all state Greens.
The Progressive Party is permanently crippled. It is split between right & left AT ANARCHISM. Right-libertarianism. Left-leftist anarchism & socialism. Split from the time of Teddy Roosevelt into the Libertarian(right) party and Green(left) party. The solution is PLAS/FET/FDS.
from inaction central!
California greens also do not do any thing. Not only are there less of them, but they don’t follow up on any thing! *personal experience* they talk, then balk, then fade into the wood work!
Don Lake, trying to establish a state and national ‘working group’ on disabled military veteran in 2005!