Green Party Convenes Virtually for 2023 Annual National Meeting

Members of the Green Party convened remotely late last week and into the weekend for their 2023 Annual National Meeting. This multi-day event spanned from August 3 to August 6, with each day dedicated to addressing various topics and engaging in discussions relevant to the party’s mission.

The Annual National Meeting officially began on Thursday evening, with ANM co-chairs Dee Taylor and Tamar Yager addressing the attendees. Following the opening remarks, the party facilitated a press conference featuring several Green officeholders and candidate hopefuls each.

Among the officeholders present were Stephen Zollman, a city council member from Sebastopol, California, and Sam Pfeifle, Chair of the Gray-New Gloucester School Board in Maine. On the other hand, the candidate hopefuls included Artis Burney, who is running for the Mississippi State Senate, Jason Call, a Congressional hopeful from Washington, and ChrisTiana ObeySummner, who is running for a seat on the Seattle City Council. The press conference also offered a platform for these representatives to share their perspectives and local aims and accept audience questions.

As the evening progressed, the party conducted discussions on a range of topics, including the comparison between animal rights and animal welfare, strategies for coalition building, and a workshop exploring the concept of the “natural left.” This latter discussion centered on a variation of left political thought derived from psychological principles, contrasting it with prevalent ideologies found in liberal democracies and socialist theory.

On Friday, the Annual National Meeting delved more deeply into workshops and potential advocacy opportunities for the Green Party to explore further. The workshops covered a diverse range of topics, including discussions on men’s contraceptives to expand the conversation on reproductive rights. There were also sessions on utilizing virtual resources and digital organizing to strengthen local parties and explore effective practices for candidates in their press outreach and conferences, among other discussions.

Friday afternoon also featured presentations from different caucuses within the party. A representative from the Youth Caucus shared findings from the recent Global Greens Conference in Incheon, South Korea, providing valuable insights and updates from the international Green community. Additionally, the National Black Caucus engaged in critical discussions on the intersection of Black and Green politics, with a particular focus on examining the Four Pillars of the green political movement from a Black perspective.

During the Saturday afternoon session, climate scientist Peter Kalmus delivered the keynote speech to convention participants from outside his California residence. In his address, he focused on the critical issue of extreme climate and expressed concern about humanity being in the early stages of a mass extinction event, with the damage caused already being irreversible. Kalmus strongly criticized the emphasis on strategies like carbon capturing, dismissing them as distractions from more effective and urgent solutions.

“There’s all of this garbage about carbon capture—pulling carbon out of the atmosphere—which the fossil fuel industry absolutely loves because it’s effectively a distraction against what we actually need to do, which is to end the fossil fuel industry as quickly as possible,” Kalmus stated.

According to Kalmus, who is a data scientist by trade focused on science communication, the future yields more extreme weather disasters and “multiple and simultaneous” crop failures without appropriate and immediate intervention. In his speech, he noted that civilization risks an increased chance of nuclear war due to water shortages and the potential for a global spread of authoritarianism. He also feared that devastating flooding is likely in America’s coastal cities and a gradual increase in heat-induced power outages. Kalmus additionally took questions from meeting organizers.

While acknowledging his audience and their political views, Kalmus stated that his speech was not intended to support or endorse any specific political party. Nonetheless, he strongly criticized the two dominant political parties in the United States during his address. “If the Democrats or Republicans had invited me to speak, it would’ve been much of the same talk but probably a lot angrier because I feel very furious at both parties,” Kalmus said. “Both of them have shown a limitless capacity to expand fossil fuels though with really different flavors of that expansion—the one party through the deepest and most hateful ignorance, the other party through reckless and willful disregard of the science they claim to know.”

The rest of Saturday focused on additional workshops, including examining environmental racism in Texas, organizing fair elections under ranked choice voting and proportional representation, and further conversations centered around ecological priorities, among others.

On the final day of the 2023 Annual Meeting, the focus shifted towards the party’s internal organizing efforts and preparations for the upcoming Green Presidential Nomination Convention. A formal report from the Green Party’s Presidential Campaign Support Committee was presented to attendees, providing insights into the credentialing process, state parties’ involvement, and how they can actively contribute.

During the session, the Committee fielded audience questions regarding the next nominating process and what the process would entail. The Committee also identified several “active” presidential hopefuls, including Randy Toler, Jasmine Sherman, David Daví, and Dr. Cornel West, allowing them to talk if they were in attendance. To help foster conversation between the four current aspirants and the party membership, the Committee announced plans to conduct four forums before the nominating convention.

Green organizers also discussed the GPUS Elections Database, an online platform designed to gather information on Green officeholders and active elections nationwide, and the party’s 50-state ballot access strategy. The almost two-hour-long discussion examined vulnerable states and what party activists must do to qualify a Green presidential hopeful for the ballot. They also further emphasized the importance of training canvassers who could identify registered voters, canvass areas more effectively, and avoid low-validity petitions that could cost the party ballot access.

To close the multi-day event, Dr. Jill Stein, the former Green Party nominee in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, delivered an acoustic performance on guitar centered around themes of unity and the Earth cycle to leave participants on an upbeat note. Readers can find individual video recordings of the 2023 Annual National Meeting on the Green Party’s official YouTube channel.