Byron --

I applaud your energy and hustle in researching your argument. You've sold me on it. But as anybody who's buzzed around the LA Greens local during my tenure as co-faciliator would know, I am a bylaws stickler. In that spirit, I'd advise using the existing GPCA framework, which I'm sure has a mechanism for amending the bylaws, to change the voting threshhold and add some leadership posts. Or bolster the existing posts somehow. In any case, I support yor proposal.

I also support the idea of Greens who seem to be perceiving one another as enemies of some kind to, uhm, how do I put this gracefully ... stop it. Stop hurting America. You fools. For those Greens holding grudges against other Greens, please keep in mind that you are doing the work of Repugnocrats FOR them, and when they're not busy thanking you, they're laughing at you. It is time to evaluate that negative baggage you're carrying and sincerely ask yourself, "What is this accomplishing?" (It's a rhetorical question, by the way, to which the answer is, "Nothing.")

I think it might be instructive to end this post with a reminder of what organized activists can do when they unite in purpose to do something other than trample each other. Please visit the URL below for some good ol' lefty encouragement. and peace to you all:

http://de.indymedia.org/en/

-- Derek

I joined the California Green Party prior to the last election because I agree with its points but, moreso, because I am deeply disgusted with our current Representative in Washington, D.C.--Howard Berman. And so I actively worked to get Byron elected. I guess by some people's definition I'm probably not a "real" green, just tangentially so. Yet, as someone who recently received a Masters Degree in Conflict Resolution, I am taken with this internal conflict of GPCA.

What I have been reading in these posts primarily is not a constructive conversation about what actions need to be taken to revitalize a desperately needed third party. Rather, I am reading identity defenses of "I am right and you are wrong," of how important my position is to me and how your position is a threat to what I believe thereby making you the enemy and me the victim of your actions. While there has been little name calling on the scale of the Red vs. Blue political debate (and for this the posters deserve a lot of credit), I still interpret the discussion as an "identity conversation." This is classic conflict attitudes and attributions which focus not on solutions but defending each side's position.

Another thing I have been reading in these postings is a phenomenon called "representative heuristics." Simply put, this means my experience is representative of "the truth" and so I am clearly in the right when I say, based on my experience, this is how something truly is. I saw this all the time when I was the ritual chair in a synagogue. New attendees would come up to me following services and tell me that the synagogue was not really Jewish. When I asked "why" they would invariably begin by saying, "In my old synagogue..." In other words, their experience in their previous synagogue was the definition of Judaism. And so it is with the Green Party. Whatever someone's previous experiences were, so it should be with GPCA.

I do not know if having a leader is the solution or if lowering the number of votes needed will solve the organization's intenal problems. (Although common sense dictates that 80% is a rather high hurdle given that, for example, at the height of the support for the Iraq War 30% of Americans were still against it. If you don't already do this, I highly recommend not using a "yes/no" up or down vote but replace it with Sam Kaner's "Gradients of Agreement" which more accurately reflects voters' opinions.) But when I read how having a leader is not desirable and certainly "not Green" in the face of Byron's list of Green Parties internationally that have leaders, I am left to wonder what is really going on here.

Is this about the desirability of having meaningful, responsive, effective leadership or is this about something else? Is this about finding the best, most representative way to move an agenda forward (or even to create that agenda) or are there other, underlying concerns at work such as identity issues and representative heuristics? Only the people who are holding to their positions can answer these questions.

Also, it is important to note that recent research shows that when we stick to our positions and reconfirm them in the face of perceived attacks, our brain rewards us chemically. This is not to say that we don't believe what we are saying. At the same time, doing so gets reinforced chemically and leads to more reconfirmation. If meaningful discussions are to take place, we have to recognize that "sticking to our guns" is partially a positive chemically induced reaction and then side-step this natural process in order to move forward. This begins by recognizing what we hold in common and then building on this foundation. The problem at the moment seems to be that those holding contrary positions tend to see what separates them, forgetting for the moment that we are all united in an effort to see America be a better place than it currently is. This common goal, accompanied by agreed upon objectives and actions, should lift us out of the current morass GPCA appears to be in.

I understand that Bryon's concerns arise, in part, from what happened during the last election. This could be an example of representative heuristics, that he sees his experiences during his campaign as defining what is wrong with GPCA. Or it could be that his campaign exposed existing problems. He impresses me with being able to see beyond his own experience and so I accept the second explanation. But that's my opinion. Meanwhile, I support Byron's attempts to be objective by looking at other GPs worldwide and to see how they have been able to function and then apply these "best practices" to GPCA. I think this is a valuable first step toward resolving this situation. Until everyone is working from the same set of assumptions based on objective information, this discussion will become an endless loop going nowhere while exhausting the participants and alienating the rest of us standing on the sidelines who are paying attention.

Research tells us that conflict is resolved either when it is first starting or after the parties become exhausted. After nearly 60 years, that is what appears to be happening with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where people--mostly citizens and not their leaders--are saying "Enough killing. Let's find a solution and move on." GPCA's disagreements are not that complicated. Let's pray that a solution doesn't take 60+ years or worse, a breakup of the organization. I hope that those who are clearly in leadership positions in GPCA (and you know who you are) will come together and create a vital and active agenda. Because the Green Party is so desperately needed at this time and I want to get Berman out of office in his next election.

Byron and Fellow US Green Party Members,

Certainly your encyclopedic examples of effective GP procedural structures currently in place across the globe, and which are being successfully employed transculturally, stands on its own as a testament to the clarity and inherent integrity of the 10KV. Whew! I'm glad that's settled. After reading some of the previous posts replying to your initial letter that you penned in an attempt at outlining reforms that would work to assuage some of the factionalist gridlock that plagues not only the GPCA, but the entire GPUS, it looked as though there was going to be trouble in paradise.

The time and industry that so many of us here have devoted to examining and succinctly delineating the apparent well worn examples of the GPCA's particular dysfunctional party mechanisms needs to be taken very seriously. That said, I believe that we have much to gain by taking a long hard look at what Green Parties around the world are doing RIGHT and glean from their experiential know-how what it is that we can use to empower and enrich our own failing body politic. If not now, when?

Now that the notion of the benefits that party chairpersons, or coordinators can bring to our table is no longer an idea that seems so foreign to us, (and yes the pun was intended), let's try to best comprehend what elements of governance successful international GP actors are employing which clearly are facilitating their electoral successes. This is where my 'cross-cultural psychology hat' comes down from the closet shelf. In looking harder and deeper into what does work, OVER THERE. (Insert the country of your choice from Byron's list above). I believe that internationally the Green Party has enjoyed a healthy, albeit an anemic existence, due to a primary difference in the preponderance of collective thinking that permeates these cultures resulting in a more unified directed intention which invites a level of trust that citizens of these nations feel comfortable sharing with one another.

Conversely, here in the US, it is the short-sighted, fearful, ego driven good old fashioned rugged individualism that's making consensus building and its resulting collaboration problematic. Then you add an 80% threshold to the mix and you've cooked up a recipe for perpetual stalemate. Any card carrying political scientist worth his or her salt will be the first to tell you that making collaboration work in effectively individualistic cultures is exceedingly difficult. Stay with me here folks, this observation seems abundantly clear to me when I read that the notion of delegating the stewardship of the US Party to a chairperson is seen by some as not only an abdication of personal responsibility, but a threat to the guiding 10KV of decentralization. Nothing could be farther from the truth, here's why~ what we as Greens take for granted in our acceptance and commitment to the 10KV is totally unknown to most of the citizens if the United States. We Greens are outsiders, strangers in a strange land... Surrounded on all sides by a nation of self aggrandizing plebiscites driven by consumer capitalism. Once we do get down to actually achieving effective outreach and explaining the core principles of the 10KV to most, we are looked upon as naïve idealists whose goals are unachievable in the current cultural climate.

This leaves us hawking an ideology that asks its conscripts to learn to live with LESS? Wonder why it is that the party has not grown significantly over the past decade? What we offer Americans is a concerted affront to their ingrained sense of entitlement. We are asking people to undertake and exercise counter-cultural values. That my friend, is a hell of a hard sell. It will take high profile party leaders, models of propriety and restraint, ready, willing and able to lead lifestyles that actively promote our ideals of environmental sustainability and future focus. How can we even begin to achieve this if we cannot get ourselves into the televised debates, let alone into elected office? Until people know who we are and what we are about, we will remain marginalized in the current political milieu. Chairpersons, coordinators, party speakers need to be cultivated for the sake our very survival.

We must take this leap of faith and trust that the didactic value of GREEN sustainable living can only be achieved at first, by forwarding models of the counter-cultural values that we support and hold dear.

Last year's April 'Vanity Fair' magazine featured 50 'Eco-Heroes' examples of individuals, foundations and corporations that are engaged in 'green' living. The cover sported Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Al Gore, poised in a grotto bathed in green light, calling for a "New American Revolution." America identifies with these icons of celebrity. None of them are Greens~or members of the GPUS. Hec, not even one of the 50 featured article 'Eco-Heroes' had any affiliation with the Green Party. NONE!

Then there's Thomas Friedman and his coterie of green democrats to contend with, oh please, don't get me started…We are in dire straights. Now is the time to act.

In an answer to Byron's call for a 'Straw Poll' I advocate that we earnestly pursue as many high profile party leaders, speakers, chairpersons that will act in our collective best interest within a well defined party structure. That once we come to some livable solution as to what would be acceptable among us to replace the arcane 80% consensus threshold.. hang on to your hats folks, 'cause I'm about to utter the unthinkable here...we may need to ratify a by-law or two.

If I may be so bold, here is a concrete example of what's wrong with this picture, The following attempts to illustrate what Byron touched upon in his post to Drew when he quipped that his NEEDS were unmet by the GPCA due to its currently ineffective process of communicating within the present constructs of its own membership. When it became my turn to directly interface with the tattered infrastructure of the GPCA while acting as the Campaign Coordinator of DeLearforCongress during the last election cycle, I experienced what I deemed to be quite a unique exercise in futility. While in Tucson at the National GPUS meeting, Brent McMillan encouraged Byron and I to appeal to the GPCA for the California state Green donor list. This seemed like a simple request, considering that we had spent almost as much money on promoting the Green Party in Southern California than had been spent by the GPUS media committee for the entire nation by that time last year.

Oh, the school of hard knocks, I know it all too well. By summer it was clear that our campaign was at a place where the rubber met the road. DeLearforCongress made its formal appeal for the GPCA donor list through proper channels of protocol. After a week or two of wrangling we were turned down. Why? Because there was no precedent for giving a candidate the list. A lack of party procedure kept it out of our hands. Donor lists, volunteers, PR etc. these are examples of what one would expect when asking for PARTY SUPPORT. Wanna be let in on a little known secret? There is no infrastructure in place within the GPCA to support candidates running for office. No, really.

The DeLearforCongress campaign made its request in August 2006. Since that time, has this very issue been addressed by GPCA leadership? What will happen when some other up and coming candidate who runs the gauntlet asks the GPCA for the list of donors? Will they meet the same fate? Keep in mind that it is these donors who go out of their way to give money, time, and effort to the Green Party because it is in their interest to see the Green Party succeed. That means GET CANDIDATES ELECTED TO OFFICE.

Anyone with a functioning frontal cortex who reads this undeniably needs to face the fact that the GPCA with its intrinsic internal failings and factionalism(s) functions in ways that impede Green candidates from entering the political mainstream... Our campaign was left feeling like an unwanted stepchild sitting out on the porch stoop gazing longingly into the window of the elected office that we were seeking. Some solidarity would have assuaged that perception. Please spare me the lip service about the 'feel good' part of the equation. Shipwrecked in the desert without sound mechanisms to arrive at true consensus, continuously eludes our party membership, we find ourselves tied to the mast and lingering.

Then along comes some wide-eyed, smart alec Green candidate from California's 28th who takes it upon himself to pen a detailed outline as to how to meet some of the glaring challenges that plague not only the GPCA, but the GPUS as a whole, surprise~ surprise more than a handful of others have come out from under rocks and into the light to voice the same conclusion(s)--we all seem to "get it" all of a sudden.

The present dialogue that we are now engaged in would have inevitably been set in motion as it needed to be framed, freed and spread out into the Green universe. This moment has been long overdue.

Memes have fitness. Timing and synchronicity insure their successful fruition. By honing our sense of what we know will truly expedite positive change, lo and behold we will find ourselves moving consciously, (and consequently unconsciously as well), toward realizing the electoral viability we seek.

Rebecca Tobias
Program Director
Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics
www.RaoulWallenbergInstitute.org
Malibu, California
310-916-8888

This is a bit off topic, but to reply to Rebecca's post where she mentions Last year's April 'Vanity Fair' magazine featured 50 'Eco-Heroes', non of which where associated with Green Party in any way.

Byron,

Every political party has its internal debates, not to say squabbles, disputes and blood feuds. And it often seems, as somebody said about faculty politics at universities, that the fight is particularly vicious because the stakes are so low.

So it's hardly surprising that Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has been having some trying times lately. Others in her party, concerned about balancing the books, have suggested May should step down from the party's budget review committee. In a somewhat emotional email response, May described her job as "gruelling" and herself as "bone-weary" and "broke." In short, she hinted, she could not take much more frustration. If the party's 23-member governing council dumped her from the budget group, the party might have to look for another leader.

These things happen in the best of political families. But the party's apparatchiks should take note that while she's far from ideal, May is the best thing the party has ever had going for it. It would be foolish and damaging to chase her away.

Not to cause more trouble, but I thought the experience of someone who has been 'on the outside (virtually) looking in' might be helpful.

My name is Matt Sellwood, I am an Oxford City Councillor for the Green Party, and a former member of the National Executive of the Green Party of England and Wales. I will likely be moving to California in late 2008 - and so I've been reading up on the political situation, putting out 'feelers' as to what is going on and what I might want to get involved in, and so on.

To be brutally honest, I am, at the moment, pretty unlikely to get involved in GPCA. This is despite my extremely deep involvement in the Green Party of England and Wales over the last six years. Why? Because the GPCA seems to be pretty much riven by internal faction fighting, disputes over procedure, and (at worst) name-calling and insults. As someone potentially 'coming in' from outside, I have no desire to put myself in the middle of such a situation. I want to work for a more sustainable, socially just world - not spend hours trying to work out 'who is who' in terms of factions, and trying not to mortally offend one 'side' or another.

That, at the moment, is the kind of image that the GPCA is largely projecting to someone looking at getting involved (at least someone who can only view things online, and can't as yet meet people in the GPCA face to face). Clearly this is a bad thing!

Sorry to be so gloomy, but I think its worth making the point.

Best wishes,

Cllr Matt Sellwood

Drew and Byron,

I take both your points to heart. Byron, about the need for party representation; and Drew, about the need for decentralization. I believe that for our party to have a few fixed speakers and to also be decentralized are not mutually exclusive. Speakers and leaders play two very different roles, in my view. To me, the essence of decentralization is community-based politics and local party leadership:

That the County X Green Party knows best how to implement Green 10 Key Values and principles in county X. Same for state Y and country Z. My guess is that no one in the national office has ever heard of the SOS Alliance in Austin. My guess you haven't. But we were right there on the ground floor at its founding and have been ardent supporters ever since. We know our environmental issues here better than someone in Louisiana or Washington.

We will not accept interference ("leadership") in Austin by the Green Parties of Texas or Houston. We know our city and our county. We know the peculiar in's and out's of Austin politics, how to relate to the community leaders here, how to relate to the county commissioners, how to relate to our diverse population. We know best what criteria we should set for being a party member in our county. We know our county party's history and culture. We know what works here. And we will gladly, at any time, advise anyone who would like to know more about Green-ness in Austin, and on how things are going here. We all make decisions together here, by consensus.

Therefore, we accept "leadership" only from our own ranks on how to manage our efforts and relationships in this city and county.

In return, we also trust the Houston Greens to know Houston and Harris County, and the Los Angeles Greens to know LA. I would not for a minute presume to exercise any expertise there. In my respect for community-based politics, I would not for a minute presume to exercise "leadership" there.

We also recognize that we are a political party, seeking public recognition. And we have studied the sciences of public relations. We know the importance of putting a human face on public efforts. We know the importance of that face being as consistent as possible, as articulate, and informed as possible. And our public speakers (our county co-chairs) stress the decentralized nature of our leadership. To me it's a matter of the very practical reality of human psychology that the effective (if misguided) political parties and the media have learned.

While we choose decentralized leadership, we need centralized representatives to speak for (not lead) us -- two for each county. two for each state. And two for the nation. IMHO.

Respectfully,
Bill in Austin.