Letter to the Missouri Green Party (Mitch Cohen)
July 9, 2004
THE BROOKLYN GREENS
388 Atlantic Avenue, 3rd fl., Brooklyn, NY 11217 ______________________________________________________________Dear Missouri Green Party,
Greetings from the People’s Republic of Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn Greens. My name is Mitchel Cohen and I am writing in my capacity as elected representative of the NY State Greens/Green Party of New York to the Greens/GPUSA, and as acting clearinghouse coordinator of that organization – duties I share with DayStar Chou of the Flushing Greens.
It’s been an extremely hectic month, first participating in the protests against the G-8 summit in Savannah Georgia, traveling to Chicago for the GPUSA annual Congress and Green National Committee meeting, and then up to Milwaukee as a delegate to the Greens Presidential Nominating Convention. We are also gearing up for the protests here in New York City against the Republican National Convention at the end of August, and later in July in Boston against the Democrats. And the No Spray Coalition’s lawsuit against New York City for the indiscriminate spraying of toxic pesticides in relation to West Nile Virus will finally be heard in federal court on July 28th. (The Brooklyn, Manhattan, Flushing, and Central Nassau Green locals established the No Spray Coalition 4-1/2 years ago, and supply the coordination and people-power in the fight against pesticides.)
I am mostly writing – besides saying HULLO to the Greens in Missouri – to register my sadness and anger at the extremely abusive and manipulative way the delegates from the Gateway Greens Alliance, primarily Don Fitz, conducted themselves for months before and during the Green Party USA meetings in June. Kellie Gasink (Chair of the Green Party of Chatham County), Cathryn S. (of the Brooklyn Greens and creator of the RecycleThis! group), and I had been singled out for month after month of personal attacks and abusive behavior by so-called leaders of the Greens/GPUSA. During one illegitimate GNC phone meeting, Don Fitz even called Kellie Gasink – the main organizer for GPUSA in the South -- a “sociopath who should be expelled” from the organization.
Please consider this letter a formal request to the Missouri Green Party to examine these abuses and manipulations, which have led to what I believe to be the intentional destruction of the Greens/Green Party USA by Don Fitz, in collaboration with several others, rather than allow it to become more democratic and possibly make decisions not to Don’s liking.
Given the disgusting behavior by, among others, Missouri’s representatives to the June GPUSA Congress in Chicago, it is likely that the NY Greens/Green Party of NY will disassociate from GPUSA come our next statewide Assembly. It has become increasingly clear to many of the key organizers here in New York that what is needed nationally is a coordinated network of Green locals that respect and support each other, and not a top-down cadre-based sect of non-representative individuals who base their claims to national representation status on lies, increasingly substitute themselves for the real work of the locals and ram their decisions down the throats of everyone else.
This is the sentiment of all of the NYers – from three different locals (Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Flushing Greens) – who attended the GPUSA “congress,” as well as from my co-representative from NY, Maria Kuriloff, of the Central Nassau Greens. It is likely that these four locals – GPUSA’s most active locals in New York -- will soon be disaffiliating from GPUSA as well.
Willie Marshall’s Statements
I have also heard statements presented to the GPUSA Green National Committee by Willie Marshall of the Gateway Greens Alliance, who, in explaining why he would not attempt to bring Black people into GPUSA until we “cleaned up the mess,” said the following which bares some of the manipulations that occurred in the Gateway Greens itself. Mr. Marshall said that he could not bring Black people into GPUSA because of all the fighting over rules, bylaws and personalities. He then went on to say: “The same thing happened at the Gateway Greens meeting in February. I brought a number of people to that meeting all set to sign them up into the Gateway Greens. But after all the crazyness there, I could not sign them up and they never came back.”
Please note that these are the same individuals that Don Fitz has claimed as members of the Gateway Greens, relying upon their votes at that meeting to remove a number of officers of that local. They were not members then and, according to Willie Marshall, they are not members today. This, too, bears investigating by the Missouri Green Party.
The Removal of the Coordinating Committee
As soon as the coordinating committee of GPUSA – at that time made up of Cathryn S., Robert Gold, and (in dissent) Nancy Oden – decided to begin a process of investigating what had happened with the Gateway Greens (that organization being an important local of GPUSA) – Don Fitz took that to be an attack on him, and all the gloves came off. He and other Gateway Greens members orchestrated the calling of an illegal Green National Committee meetings by telephone, imposed their agenda which had been clearly worked out in secret (contrary to the bylaws), began a slander campaign against those of us who opposed such maneuvers, REMOVED the coordinating committee that had been concerned with establishing due process and not with taking sides in any disputes, and misrepresented that and other decisions in the minutes of the meeting.
Those individuals – heavily dominated on the phone call by people from St. Louis -- then appointed Don Fitz, Nancy Oden and Robert Gold (who declined), and so Cathryn S. replaced Robert as the third cc’er on the new and illegitimate coordinating committee. Over Cathryn’s dissent, they stopped all attempts at creating a fair process to investigate complaints (such as the one brought against Don Fitz by Michael Allen and Bob Fisch) and began taking measures to centralize their power. They booted me off the internal organization’s listserve in disregard for the process already established by the previous coordinating committee and then suspended the dozens of complaints against THEM until the GPUSA congress – which of course never discussed them, there. (Don Fitz chaired that meeting.)
The cc then voted to shut down the Chicago Clearinghouse office, and began transferring responsibilities to Elizabeth Eytchison in California, a member who had quit GPUSA a year ago and who had only recently rejoined without ever explaining her actions to the organization. She and her husband, Patrick Eytchison, had also withdrawn their local, the Redwood Greens, from membership in GPUSA, and that local had never rejoined. (The bylaws say that only members of locals of GPUSA may serve as national officers.) The closing of the Clearinghouse is clearly the kind of decision that is not within the authority of the 3-member coordinating committee; in fact, it is a decision of such magnitude that the organization should have involved the rank-and-file members or at least a wider grouping of GPUSA leaders in making that decision. But this centralized top-down manner is the way numerous decisions were and continue to be made, and it has strangled the organization.
Decision-Making at the Congress
As a result of our repeated calls for fair process in the Green Party USA to hear complaints from members as outlined in the bylaws – particularly a fair process for Michael Allen, Kim Jayne, Bob Fisch and other GPUSA members who had filed a complaint against the way the Gateway Greens local was functioning – those of us who raised these concerns have been treated with extreme animus by Don Fitz, Nancy Oden and several others. The coordinating committee – this time of Don Fitz and Nancy Oden, with Cathryn S. strenuously objecting – voted to over-ride the decision of the preceding Congress held last November in New York, which had appointed a balanced committee to organize the new Congress. The cc had no authority to take that assignment away from the committee that had been elected by the preceding Congress. But the cc illegally took control.
Then Fitz, Oden and Fattah decided that Don Fitz should chair the entire two-day Congress and GNC meeting.
Don Fitz and Elizabeth Fattah then appointed themselves to oversee the all-important credentialing committee for the Congress. Earlier, Fitz and Fattah spurned attempts by myself and others to join that committee and at least give it a semblance of balance, and at the Congress we saw why they had spurned us. This committee awards the votes to different regions. First, Fitz and Fattah denied NY – the only state party represented in Chicago and along with Missouri the only Green state PARTY still affiliated with GPUSA – ALL of its 92 votes (later modified to 1/2 its votes once the “representatives” from the other areas voted to approve their own vote totals).
Fitz and Fattah next awarded California’s 168 votes to the Eytchisons, who – I repeat -- had last year withdrawn their affiliation and that of their local, the Redwood Greens from GPUSA and never officially re-affiliated it. The basis for Missouri voting to give them all of California’s votes? They had pledged to vote with Don Fitz, in secret discussions they’d held. But that could not be cited as the real reason, so they held up a sign-up sheet from what was purported to be a meeting of the California State caucus of 168 GPUSA members – 5 people attended that meeting, and only one from outside of their immediate local area!
Fitz and Fattah awarded 8 votes to Arizona on the basis of a statewide GPUSA meeting attended by TWO PERSONS – Alva d’Orgeix and her roommate. (The bylaws, in addition, state that a state caucus must elect two persons – at least one female – to represent that state. This was ignored in certifying Arizona, Maine, and Pennsylvania.)
Nancy Oden, in Maine, said she represented a "state caucus" after claiming she had held a statewide meeting -- five people came, she said -- in her living room. But she refused to allow us to inspect her documents, claiming that “Mitchel Cohen is a known thief and might steal them.”
This statement was not only allowed but approved by the chair, Don Fitz. Fitz had been “approved,” over NY’s objections, by a vote taken by the very people who had not yet been certified as being permitted to vote, let alone with the vote totals handed out by Fitz and Fattah.
Instead of censuring her comments or ruling them out of order, Fitz added malignant comments of the same sort to Nancy Oden’s, and when I strenuously objected, Patrick Eytchison moved that I be “censured” for disrupting the meeting. (A few minutes later they voted to censure me for protesting NY’s disenfranchisement.)
Nancy Oden then agreed to hold the documents while we read them, but pulled them away when I began taking notes, claiming that she didn’t want us “bothering her people” – contacting those whose names she’d written down to confirm via email if Nancy’s claims were indeed true. (We have good reason to believe she fabricated the meeting and the documents.) Fitz and Fattah handed Nancy 26 votes nonetheless, over our objections.
We objected to every vote total awarded by Fitz and Fattah.
And Fitz and Fattah awarded the Gateway Greens 104 votes, based on a claim of 52 paid-up voting members in the Gateway Greens – more than double the membership of what the Gateway Greens had ever before claimed.
Later, the Congress was asked to select a new Green National Committee. But instead of open nominations from the body, Don Fitz (as chair!) proposed a slate, which took precedence (he ruled). Anyone who wanted to nominate anyone else had to then say which person would be replaced on the slate by the new nominee. The Missouri delegation voted for this anti-democratic “process”.
The Missouri delegation also voted to uphold a decision by Don Fitz to refuse to allow a vote on Paul Gilman's motion for roll call votes. As Paul explained it, he wanted the constituencies that these stalinoids claim to represent to be able to review for themselves the voting records of their "representatives". Paul's motion is guaranteed in the bylaws. But Don Fitz denied Paul's simple and democratic motion, and his denial was upheld by the same "representatives," so no one could see who stood in opposition to this coup and who voted for it.
One independent observer at the Congress, Paul Stephens – Secretary of the Montana Green Party – noted as he left the meeting in a huff, “This is the most undemocratic organization I have ever seen.”
It is their manipulative and abusive behavior and refusal to follow GPUSA’s own bylaws that has destroyed GPUSA. Don Fitz has done so, first, as a representative of the Missouri Green Party and (at the current Congress) as leader of the Gateway Greens (a member organization of the Missouri Green Party). After the GNC closed, Don Fitz stood outside on the steps of the building facing the street as Barb Chicherio and I sat there quietly talking. In what I could only portray as a demented anti-Semitic moment (the four NYers present at the Congress – myself, Robert Gold, Roy Felshin and Paul Gilman -- are Jewish), Fitz began to loudly “Sig Heil” 4 or 5 times. These actions require investigation and oversight by the Missouri Green Party.
The Twistory of History
Having experienced Fitz’s lies first hand, I urge folks to not believe a single assertion made by Don Fitz or his allies about us without checking with Cathryn or myself, regardless of how straightforward the claim might at first seem.
Let me give you two examples of such Twistories of History:
It is being said that I, as editor of the national newspaper Green Politix, sabotaged the newspaper by refusing to put out another issue for the past 1-1/2 years. In actuality, I was one of the few people in the organizational leadership who treated seriously the need to publish the paper on a frequent and regular basis. It was the coordinating committee, as Barb Chicherio herself told the Congress towards the end of that supposedly “national” meeting of 16 people, that had blocked publication of editions that I had prepared because they decided that there was not enough money to publish it – over my objections when I served on the cc, until I resigned in protest last January, I believe.
I then wrote a separate fundraising letter solely for Green Politix and asked Jeff St. Clair (co-editor of Counterpunch) to write a cover-letter for it. He wrote a terrific letter, and I emailed our fundraising letters for Green Politix to thousands of people. Rita at the Clearinghouse in Chicago mailed them to hundreds more.
Jeff’s and my letters raised over $2,000 solely for the printing of Green Politix. That money was supposed to go into a “locked box” – a separate bank account solely for the publication of Green Politix. However, the new cc then MISAPPROPRIATED those funds to pay for other organizational expenses – again, over my strenuous objections, after which I resigned as Treasurer of the Greens/GPUSA. THAT is why the paper has not come out – the cc refused to allocate funds to print it and misappropriated the thousands of dollars raised for that purpose! It is supremely ironic that Don Fitz, who knows better, and his ally Nancy Oden have blamed ME for their inexcusable decisions.
Second, rather than accept the obvious fact that many members of GPUSA are extremely saddened by the Stalinist takeover of the organization and continue to fight for internal democracy and basic fairness, Don Fitz is insisting that I am “out to destroy GPUSA” in order to bring everyone into GPUS. This, too, is nonsense.
What I have fought for in GPUSA – and what the authoritarians now running the show cannot abide and refuse to implement (Nancy Oden even stated at the Congress that the bylaws are wrong and she will refuse to go by them!) – is that GPUSA attempt to negotiate with GPUS in a SERIOUS way, as each of our Congresses has authorized. We need to find areas in which the two national Green organizations could work together. This represents a break from the sectarian “vision” of Don Fitz, Nancy Oden, Elizabeth Fattah, Patrick Eytchison and a few others. It is a call for grassroots democracy in the Greens, and for a different way of conceptualizing our “mission” – what we are about.
Last November, the GPUSA Congress in New York decided to hold the next GPUSA Congress at or near the GPUS Presidential Nominating Convention. We would ask the Convention to provide us with rooms to meet, and hold a workshop on “Our vision for the Greens.” We were to invite David Schweikart, a Chicago-based author, to keynote one of the sessions on post-globalization economics.
Wes Wagar of Chicago and Cathryn S. of New York searched for housing for the Congress in Milwaukee, as well as alternative spaces in case GPUS turned us down. Elizabeth Fattah and Nancy Oden opposed this effort, but Elizabeth was outvoted at last year’s Congress and Nancy Oden was not there. The point was for GPUSA to play an important and constructive role at the Milwaukee convention when it came to NON-ELECTORAL Green movement building. There otherwise was no reason to hold the GPUSA Congress at that time.
Nancy Oden had argued that we needed to hold it at the same time as the Greens Presidential Nominating Convention because many GPUSA “leaders” would be going to Milwaukee, and she didn’t want us to go. But finally, a month before the Congress and under pressure from other areas, particularly Chicago delegates, the rump GNC made the GPUSA Congress two days earlier, so people could attend both.
However, it soon became clear that none of the “leaders” of GPUSA would participate in Milwaukee despite the workshop ideas passed by the previous Congress. Oden and Fattah argued that “they will never give us a room, they hate us.” Well, hate us or not, Cathryn S. and I managed to procure a room at the Convention for GPUSA! This just made Oden and Fattah angrier. They allowed their sectarianism to overwhelm their political judgment and came to a terrible conclusion -- they refused to implement the Congress’s own strategy. None of the cabal now running GPUSA -- Don Fitz, Nancy Oden, Patrick Eytchison, Elizabeth Fattah; and to a lesser extent Alvad'Orgeix, Barb Chicherio, Willie Marshall and Elizabeth Eytchison – even WENT to Milwaukee, despite prior assurances that that would indeed be the case. (That was their whole rationale for holding the GPUSA meeting at this time, to which many of us objected).
At any rate, GPUS printed the workshop title in its schedule, and I ran a terrific workshop in that timeslot on pesticides and 9-11! What a missed opportunity for GPUSA! We had a lovely turnout and an excellent discussion. This is yet another example – one of many – in which GPUSA leaders’ sectarian knee-jerk reaction to everything GPUS does only ends up with them shooting themselves – and the organization -- in the head.
I believe that the future of the Greens – all of us – lies in rejecting the sectarian politics in which many of the national leaders of both GPUSA and GPUS – and their epigones at the state and sometimes at the local levels -- have become proficient, and in returning to an effort to cohere regional and eventually national networks of activist Green locals from the bottom up, as THE MAIN WORK THAT WE DO AS A NATIONAL PARTY.
We need to support each other’s work, and kick up some of that work to the national level in the form of real national campaigns (such as the CocaCola boycott or anti-pesticide/genetic engineering campaigns) INITIATED BY THE LOCALS. This is a very different conception from that now “guiding” the GPUSA (to its death) and the GPUS, which at best gives lipservice to this work by locals but does not prioritize or materially support that work.
My vision, the one that the NYers, along with the Green Party of Chatham County, Georgia, and other Greens are trying to project, is based on direct action/grassroots democracy; it provides a new beginning for Greens to re-envision what our work is all about and what kind of world we want to live in – including how our own organizations operate. (I had proposed this topic for the agenda of the GPUSA Congress; as with all issues that NY proposed, the Missouri delegation voted against even placing a discussion of “What Is Our Vision? Why Do We Exist?” on the agenda.)
That, in a nutshell, is what the horrible fighting in GPUSA and in the Gateway Greens is all about. A different vision for what it means to be “Green,” a different way of reaching decisions, of supporting each other, of mediating differences rather than using national meetings as a pretext for inquisitions, and of respecting the earth.
I think I’ve provided more than enough details to get you to question what is going on, and to not accept Don Fitz’s assertions on their face value. I will not burden you with additional details here, but I am certainly willing to supply written documents and verbal accounts to any fair investigating team that the Missouri Green Party selects, as well as to others. Anyone interested may contact me directly at mitchelcohen@mindspring.com , phone: (718) 449-0037; and Cathryn S. at cathrynbe@earthlink.net (718) 499-3497.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and the attached document, “Silent Terror,” which came out of a meeting of Green National Committee members and other GPUSAers in New York in May, prior to the Chicago GPUSA Congress. Many of us are hoping that the Green Party of Missouri, as a member state party of GPUSA, is able to examine what is happening and take measures to repair the damage.
I still remain hopeful. The future will be what we the people struggle to make it.
The Dialectic works in mysterious ways …..
Thanx again,Mitchel Cohen
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