Isabel Pie
We as local Greens are part of a worldwide movement which was first organized politically in the early 1970s. The first political party formed with Green principles as its basis was the United Tasmania Group. This group was formed in the city of Hobart in the Australian province of Tasmania in March 1972 to campaign against the flooding of a local lake. Members of the United Tasmania Group worked as activists but also ran candidates in local elections.
Just two months after the Tasmanian group was founded, the Values Party was established across the Tasman Sea in Wellington, New Zealand. Although not yet using the term “Green,” this party also was based on values which today are associated with the Green Party. In 1973, the PEOPLE party was formed in Great Britain to offer an ecological, grassroots alternative to the two major parties in the British elections of 1974. This group became the Ecology Party in 1975 and later joined other progressive groups to form an alliance to keep the Tories and Labour on their toes.
The green-oriented group with the greatest political success, and the one
which first used the color green in its name, is the Greens of West Germany, die
Grünen.
The green movement in the US was first organized in August 1984, when
activists meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota developed a network of Green Committees
of Correspondence, a system inspired by the Committees of Correspondence
organized by American revolutionaries in the 1770s. Such committees were
formed in many states, and the first Green Congress, the next step in tightening
the organization, was held in Eugene, Oregon in 1989. This Congress
drafted the first US Green Party program, including the Ten Key Values.
The Greens/Green Party USA (G/GPUSA) was thus formed, and this group has held
annual congresses ever since, the most recent this past July in Carbondale,
Illinois.
After the US elections of 1996, a separate national green group was formed,
the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP), with the goal of focusing on
electoral politics on the state and national level. Unlike G/GPUSA, which
is comprised of individual members, ASGP was comprised of state Green parties.
ASGP held the nominating convention which selected Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke
as the Green candidates for president and vice-president in 2000. At the
ASGP annual meeting in Santa Barbara in late July 2001, the group decided to
change its name to the Green Party of the US (GP of US) and file with the
Federal Election Commission (FEC) to be recognized as the official Green Party
in federal elections. On November 8, the FEC recognized the GP of US as
the National Committee of the Green Party in the United States.
G/GPUSA and ASGP tried for over a year to come to an agreement to unify and
present a united Green front to work for change in America. A unification
agreement was drafted in Boston in October 2000 and came to be known as the
Boston Proposal. This proposal was hotly debated among Green activists and
was finally rejected by G/GPUSA at their Carbondale conference this year.
Now that GP of US has received recognition from the FEC it seems to no longer
need the support of G/GPUSA. However, many Greens hope that G/GPUSA can
still come to an agreement with GP of US so that the animosity generated through
discussion of the Boston Proposal can be buried and both groups can focus on our
common goals. I am one of those who hope such a resolution is possible.