United States Greens Found A National Party


Santa Monica, California, July 31, 2001 (ENS) - Green Party leaders Monday celebrated the formation of the Green Party of the United States and announced their application to the Federal Election Commission for national committee status, opening a new era for the country's third strongest political party.

State Green parties voted unanimously to form the new national party at their recent convention in Santa Barbara, California.

The first Green Party national presidential and vice presidential candidates ran in 1996. Attorney and author Ralph Nader ran for president and Native American activist Winona LaDuke ran for vice president. They ran again for the same offices in November 2000.

"The Green Party has grown an estimated 35 percent since the historic Nader/LaDuke 2000 presidential campaign," said Jo Chamberlain, co-chair of the newly elected Green Party Steering Committee. "Already this year, more than half of our Greens candidates for office have been elected. There is no stopping the Green movement," she exulted.

"The new Green Party of the United States is the political framework from which we will fuel the momentum against corporate power that is building on a global scale," she said.

The announcement was made in Santa Monica, where, under the leadership of Green Mayor Mike Feinstein and Green Councilmember Kevin McKeown, the city council recently passed the first living wage ordinance in the country to apply to the private sector. The law raises wages to $10.50 an hour and provides benefits to some 2,000 low wage workers. Nationally, the minimum wage is $5.15 an hour.

"The Green Party is working for the things that will make a positive difference in the lives of average people," Mayor Feinstein said. "We are working for universal health care coverage, a living wage, a safe and healthy environment, an end to the inhumane and racist death penalty and war on drugs, and reforms to put power back into the hands of the people - the issues Americans care most about."

Feinstein announced a three-part strategy to build the party in the coming years. "The Greens will win more campaigns by recruiting and supporting viable candidates who will challenge Democrats and Republicans at every level of government. We will aggressively register new party members to vote for our candidates. And we will work to change our undemocratic, winner-take-all electoral system to a fair and inclusive system of proportional representation," he said.

Greens are organizing at colleges and universities across the country with the help of the newly formed Campus Greens, which holds its founding convention August 9 to 12 at the University of Illinois-Chicago. More than 200 Campus Greens chapters will be active by the fall.

The Green Party has been building in the United States since 1984 and now has 91 elected officials in 21 states.

The Green Party's U.S. roots can be traced back to 1984, when a group of American citizens formed the "New Committees of Correspondence," in reference to the original Committees of Correspondence of the American Revolution.

The new Green Committees adopted the Ten Key Values, which are the core of Green Party politics. These Ten Key Values are: Ecological Wisdom, Grassroots Democracy, Personal and Social Responsibility, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Community-Based Economics, Post-patriarchal Values, Respect for Diversity, Global Responsibility, and Future Focus/Sustainability.

Find out more from the Association of State Green Parties: http://www.green-party.org

Information on ASGP filing with FEC: http://www.greenparties.org/fec/fec.html


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