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Santa Monica, Calif. -- Green Party leaders
today celebrated the formation of the Green Party of the United States
and announced their application to the Federal Election Commission for
national committee status, heralding a new era for the country's third
strongest political party.
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Kevin
McKeown, Green Party member of the Santa Monica City Council, sits
far left. McKeown announced the Council's passage of the nation's
first-ever private-sector living wage law, more than doubling
minimum wage for the city's thousands of tourism and hospitality
workers. Other Green Party speakers included (left to right) Nancy
Pearlman, recently elected to the Los Angeles Community College
board; congressional candidate Donna Warren, from South Central
Los Angeles; Santa Monica's mayor, Michael Feinstein; Jo
Chamberlain (California), newly-elected member of the party's
national Steering Committee; and Tom Adkins, director of the
Campus Greens. Click here for more
photos of the press event.
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"The Green Party has grown an estimated 35%
since the historic Nader/LaDuke 2000 presidential campaign. Already this
year, more than half of our Greens candidates for office have been
elected. There is no stopping the Green movement," said Jo
Chamberlain, co-chair of the newly elected Green Party Steering
Committee.
"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. State Green parties
voted unanimously to form the new national party at their recent
convention in Santa Barbara, Calif.
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 a groundbreaking living wage ordinance. 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.
"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 also organizing on colleges and universities across the
country with the help of the newly formed Campus Greens, which holds its
founding convention August 9-12 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.
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