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As the party-building momentum continued to grow after Elkins, many of those Greens felt the need to create a structural home for this effort. Feeling their passion for a state-based Green Party stymied and deflected, their organ Green Party Organizing Committee (GPOC) summarily dissolved, and smarting from verbal assaults from Left Green partisans, many former GPOC members and others gathered in March 1992 to found the Green Politics Network (GPN).
Meeting over six days at the Hartland Center in Kansas City, GPN founders included Mindy Lorenz (CA), John Rensenbrink (ME) Barbara Rodgers Hendricks (FL), Suleiman Mahdi, (Georgia), Betty Zisk (MA), Dee Berry and Ben Kjelshus (MO), Tony Affigne and Greg Gerritt (RI), Blair Bobier (OR), Annie Goeke and Tom Linzey (PA), and Sue Conti (VA).
The founders identified four major themes for action: (1) to facilitate as rapidly as possible the creation of a citizen/voter-based Green Party of autonomous state Green Parties (calling it the Confederation of Independent State Green Parties); (2) to pioneer a Third Party Coalition Project (or “Third Force”), a goal that stemmed from the presence during the last two days of the conference of many kindred groups and organizations who had been invited to attend; (3) to create a protection zone against abusive behavior based on the principle and conviction that “how we treat each other is as important as achieving our goals”; and (4) to “create space for people to connect with the spiritual universe.”
Between 1994 and 1996 GPN members organized a series of conferences designed to lead to a 1996 presidential candidacy: Third Parties ’94 (Oakland, June 1994); Third Parties ’96 (Washington, DC, June 1995); Third Parties ’96 (Boulder, October 1995); and Third Parties ’96 (Washington, DC, January 1996). GPN members would play key organizing roles in establishing the Draft Nader Clearinghouse in 1996 under the leadership of Linda Martin.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- First Stirrings of a Green Political Party in the United States
- Green Politics: The Global Promise
- Early Outreach to the Bioregional Movement
- The Founding of U.S. Greens – St. Paul, MN, August 1984
- Creation of the Ten Key Values
- National Clearinghouse
- Early Debates About Green Issues
- First National Green Gathering – Amherst, MA, 1987
- Strategy & Policy Approaches in Key Areas (SPAKA)
- Greening the West Gathering – near San Francisco, 1988
- Second National Green Gathering – Eugene, OR, 1989
- Early State Party Ballot Qualification Efforts and Candidacies
- Third National Green Gathering – Estes Park, CO, 1990
- Green Party Organizing Committee – Boston, 1991
- Fourth National Green Gathering – Elkins, WV, 1991
- Green Politics Network – 1992
- Fifth National Green Gathering – Minneapolis, 1992
- Electoral Success in 1992 and Post-Election Conferences in Santa Monica and at Bowdoin College, February 1993
- 1995 – A Watershed Year for Green Party Development: The Third Parties ’96 Conference, and the Nader Factor
- National Green Gathering ’95 – Albuquerque, NM 36
- First Green Presidential Nominating Convention – UCLA, 1996; Nader’s 1996 Campaign for President as the Green Party Candidate
- Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) – 1996
- 2000 Presidential Candidate Outreach
- Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention 2000 and Nader 2000
- The Boston Proposal – October 2000
- Founding of the Green Party of the United States – July 2001
- National Committee Status Granted to the Green Party of the United States by the Federal Election Commission, 2001
Green Party Elders 