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GREENS PLOT STRATEGY, PLAN TO TAKE OVER MORE CITIES AND STATES, WIN MORE ELECTIONS.

Ralph Nader is not the only show in Denver.


DENVER, COLORADO -- The presidential candidate Ralph Nader and his campaign have been the main topic of conversation and coverage at the Green Party National Nominating Convention, but Mr. Nader hasn't quite eclipsed all the local Green officeholders and candidates who have also gathered in Denver, Colorado this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, June 24 and 25).

Several Greens currently holding office all over the U.S. spoke to reporters on Saturday afternoon about the successes and frustrations of running local third party campaigns, winning office, and advancing a whole range of Green issues.

Santa Monica City Council member and long-time Green organizer Mike Feinstein noted that in 1996, there were 43 elected Greens; in 1998, the number was 63; and there are now 79 Greens in office around the U.S. 

He also said that 33 out of 36 Greens were reelected in the last election, an excellent incumbency rate.  This year, nearly 150 Greens have declared their candidacies, and many more are expected.  Mr. Feinstein is running for reelection in November.

Elizabeth Horton-Sheff, a member of the Hartford City Council in Connecticut and a long time activist for civil rights, stressed how the needs of urban centers are readily addressed in Green values, especially in questions of inner-city land use and in the involvement of citizens hitherto alienated by politics.  Local successes include the establishment of a citizens' police review board and defeat of a proposed medical waste facility in a city already cluttered with waste facilities.

Art Goodtimes was elected in 1996 as a Democrat to the San Miguel County Commission in southwest Colorado, but converted to Green in 1998.  He continues to lead efforts to preserve public land and limit development in areas like the Alpine Basins, an important water source for much of Colorado.  Mr. Goodtimes sees the Green agenda as an effort to honor "what the people want, not what liberals think is good for 'em..  Being Green is not about being far left or right, but about balancing energy."

Julie Jacobson, who sits on a County Council in a rural district of Hawaii, talked about her victory, in cooperation with native Hawaiians, in blocking a plan to pave over a local beach, and discussed other efforts to preserve threatened beaches, especially Punalu'u Beach Park, and local species, including the hawksbill turtle, and maintain and increase services for the county's large number of poor constituents.

Ms. Jacobson is sponsoring a local measure, now under consideration, which would force elected officials to recuse themselves from any decision on issues that involve campaign donors of more than $100.

Gail Dixon serves as At-Large Member of the Washington, DC Board of Education and is a long-time activist in the DC Statehood Party (founded by Julius Hobson in 1971 to lead the movement for statehood and democracy for the District of Columbia), which merged last year with the local Green Party to become the DC Statehood Green Party.  Ms. Dixon addressed the second-class citizenship of DC residents, whose locally enacted legislation is subject to the federal government's veto power and who enjoy no voting representation in Congress.

Ms. Dixon especially blasted a referendum advanced by the DC City Council, Mayor Anthony Williams, and the DC Control Board (imposed by Congress and the Clinton White House and overseeing District government), which would reduce the number of School Board members from 11 to 9 and have 4 of them appointed by the Mayor. 

The DC Statehood Green Party calls the referendum an assault on DC voters' already compromised democratic rights, especially those of local parents, and a power grab which will lead to patronage and cronyism.  DC voters will decide on the referendum on Tuesday, June 27.

Ms. Dixon noted the failure of DC's last educational bureaucracy, the Control Board's Educational Board of Trustees, which closed 16 public schools, and Mayor Williams' desire to divert funding from necessary school curricula over to his own pet projects. 

The DC Statehood Green Party has campaigned with parents groups, including local PTAs, to defeat the referendum.  Ms. Dixon predicted that the referendum, if passed, would turn DC's educational system into a low-level job training program, referring to recent scandals like the Marriott Hospitality School, a taxpayer-funded charter school which prepares students for hotel jobs and offers minimal education and uses no
books.

"We are considered dispensible by those in power, but NOT dispensable by those who elect us," said Ms. Dixon, referring to the Green Party nationally and the Statehood Green Party in DC. 

Ms. Dixon spent under $2,000 to be elected in a city-wide race in 1998. Ms. Dixon anticipates a surge in the ethnic diversity of the national Green Party.  Both Ms. Dixon and Elizabeth Horton Sheff are African American Greens elected by urban voters.

Kevin McKeown, a member (along with Mike Feinstein) of what he calls the Council of the "People's Republic of Santa Monica," predicts that, because of the range of "kitchen sink" issues raised by Ralph Nader and other Green candidates, "a lot of people in this country are going to find out they're Green."
Several Green officeholders called themselves "recovering Democrats" who have "found their home" in the Green Party.  Ms. Horton-Sheff, Ms. Dixon, Ms. Jacobson, Mr. Goodtimes, and Mr. Feinstein are all featured speakers at the convention. 

The Green Party convention was organized by the Association of State Green Parties. 
For more information, visit the following web
sites:
* National Green Convention:
http://www.greens.org/colorado/convention.html
* Association of State Green Parties:
http://www.greenparties.org (which displays links
to state and local Green Parties)
* Nader campaign: http://www.votenader.org

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