A Message to the Grassroots Greens

A Response to the Greens/GPUSA
"RISING UP GREEN e-Newsletter" of July 19, 2004

July 26, 2004



Dear Members and Supporters of the Greens/Green Party USA,


We are saddened that the internal struggle over the political direction of the Greens/Green Party USA has degenerated into an all out personal attack against long-term Green activists from New York: Mitchel Cohen, Robert Gold and Paul Gilman. The current management of GPUSA, Inc. has published these lies, misrepresentations and personal attacks in its national newsletter which is being widely distributed in the Green community.

The GPUSA newsletter should never be used to publish one-sided and sectarian attacks against fellow members of the Green Party. In fact, the newsletter’s purpose was being discussed on GPUSA’s listserves prior to the Chicago GPUSA Congress on June 21 & 22.. Our view is that the newsletter should be used to serve the membership, ALL the membership, by providing a vehicle for green locals to communicate the work that they are doing and solicit support for that work.

The recent e-newsletter — edited by Nancy Oden (under the supervision of the coordinating committee) — does not speak to the needs of the grassroots. Greens in New York are deeply involved in organizing the upcoming huge antiwar protests at the Republican National Convention. Our lawsuit against the spraying of toxic pesticides is finally being heard in Federal court on July 28. Massachusetts Greens are organizing antiwar actions this week at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. You would think that non-sectarian reports on these efforts and similar projects would be the main focus of the newsletter, or at least be mentioned in it.

Unfortunately, narrow sectarian thinking has become the main interest of the Greens/Green Party USA. The organization has basically destroyed itself as a result.

Political Issues Hidden from the Membership

The GPUSA newsletter misrepresents what occurred at the Chicago GPUSA Congress and Green National Committee meeting, where a small clique seized control of the organization and denied votes to major Green Party USA organizers, regions and, indeed, entire states. Meanwhile, they padded the vote totals of those who agreed with them. It was this clique that published the slanderous newsletter, under the guise of an “objective” report and termed as “disruptors” those who refused to acquiesce to this theft of the organization.

In the past, the Green Party of New York State had always been one of the largest voting blocs at GPUSA Congresses. Yet as the June 2004 Congress began, New York was arbitrarily denied recognition by the Credentials Committee, and its voting strength reduced from 92 to 3! Meanwhile, allies of Don Fitz claimed the right to represent all GPUSA members in the states of California, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Arizona, even though the "statewide" meetings they had held in those states consisted of no more than 2 to 6 people meeting around their kitchen tables. On the basis of these crass manipulations, they succeeded in awarding themselves more than 98 percent of the votes distributed to start the meeting.

The New York Greens/Green Party of NY State is the only state Green party that had not yet been fully driven out of GPUSA by the time of the Chicago GPUSA Congress. Along with a number of other GPUSA members and locals around the country, they had made a number of proposals over the past year that hoped to unify the rank-and-file membership of GPUSA and GPUS around common eco-political struggles that would greatly advance the Green movement, help build GPUSA, and promote a campaign of Unity of all Green activists on the grassroots level regardless of organizational affiliation.

However, the faction now running GPUSA kept the membership in the dark about the debate over how best to fight against the Patriot Act and the curtailment of civil liberties, support projects initiated by the locals such as the protests against the G-8 summit in Savannah, Georgia, work constructively with Greens in other organizations, establish democratic processes within GPUSA, and a number of other proposals..

For months, those who issued the recent newsletter had ridiculed these proposals and subjected their proponents to incessant personal attacks. Months ago the tiny grouping that runs the GPUSA coordinating committee had maneuvered a coup d'état within the organization. They fired the majority of the coordinating committee at the time (New Yorkers Cathryn S. and Robert Gold, along with many alternates from the grassroots) for daring to treat those locally initiated proposals with the care and seriousness they deserved.

This same grouping illegally shut down the national clearinghouse in Chicago, cut all funds for publishing the excellent and inclusive "Green Politix" (edited by Mitchel Cohen) and misappropriated more than $2,000 that Mitchel and others had raised in a special effort specifically for publication of the newspaper, claiming that those funds were needed for other organizational expenses. They took all of these actions without apprising the general membership or their representatives of what was going on (over our strong objections), and engaged in vile and undemocratic maneuvers to thwart the calls for democracy, transparency and accountability in GPUSA.

Padding the Votes of Supporters, Disenfranchising those who Disagree

The GPUSA newsletter gives the impression that more than 400 hundred Greens were present and voting at the GPUSA Chicago Congress. This was not true. Just nine people cast those “hundreds of votes” that were used to deny the New York State Greens its legitimate representation and to censure Mitchel Cohen, among other decisions. Four of the nine were from a single local, the Gateway Greens Alliance in St. Louis, which is itself in disarray because its leaders have made similar attacks on local green activists. The other 12 people present at the Chicago meeting did not support these motions; but those who were there at the start were awarded only one individual vote each. Nor were they allowed any influence over the agenda, despite a number of important proposals they had submitted well in advance of the meeting. One of these was proposed by New Yorker Cathryn S. who asked that the meeting focus around "What is our vision for the Greens, and what are we trying to accomplish?” That proposal was rejected.

These decisions were rammed through the meeting because the majority of people present were denied any say over the awarding of vote totals by the “credentialing committee.” As they came into the room, the "Nine" were handed cards, each with a large number of votes written on them, and they voted those votes, incredibly, to accredit themselves and deny others! Yes, you read that right. A grand total of 9 people -- not the 400-500 that the newsletter implies -- rammed through these proposals. They also voted to impose St. Louis's Don Fitz as chair, over substantial objections, instead of seeking a neutral party as facilitator, and to set up a “sanctions committee” to punish “transgressors” – some members termed it a “kangaroo court” -- instead of seeking to mediate differences in the organization.

The previous Congress in New York had chosen a “gathering committee” to plan all aspects of the Congress, but the coordinating committee majority (Don Fitz and Elizabeth Fattah) overstepped their authority by a longshot, overruled the Congress and substituted themselves for that committee (over Cathryn S.’s objections). In addition, they appointed themselves to the Agenda Committee and the Credentialing Committee, and refused to allow others to join them. Cathryn had proposed weeks in advance that, in the interest of transparency and accountability (let alone plain old fairness), someone besides Don Fitz facilitate his own committee’s credentialing report (Cathryn had suggested Lionel Trepanier of Chicago), but Fitz and Fattah rejected this motion.

During the opening part of the Chicago meeting, which was crucial to all that was to follow, the same nine people (including Nancy Oden) approved Fitz and Fattah’s credentialing committee recommendations and awarded themselves the hundreds of votes that would be used to crush the proposals for democracy, transparency and accountability in the organization. Of course all of this was met with opposition from those of us who had been disenfranchised and several allies. The newsletter portrays that opposition as "disruption".

Substantive Organizational Decisions Not Reported

The vote distribution was so loaded, and the agenda and processes they voted upon so un-Green, that Montana Green Party Secretary Paul Stephens -- one of the few present who had not participated in the prior internal debates -- termed the whole meeting "the Court Martial of Mitchel Cohen," as opposed to a national party meeting with important work to do. After seven people -- holding 80 percent of the votes -- decided not to allow open nominations for the Green National Committee from the floor, in violation of GPUSA’s own bylaws, Paul Stephens walked out of the meeting, calling GPUSA "the most undemocratic organization I have ever seen."

It was at this point that New Yorker Paul Gilman called for a roll call vote, so that the general membership could see how their “delegates” actually voted. This call was ruled “out of order” by Chairman Don Fitz, who termed it “obstructive.” Strange that none of this made it into the newsletter's "objective report".

The same nine people installed the new national leadership, removed Mitchel Cohen as newspaper and newsletter editor, approved the cc’s decision to shut down the Chicago clearinghouse, and changed the bylaws to give themselves new and sweeping powers to expel members and/or prevent them from renewing their membership. Omitted from the newsletter’s “objective report” was any mention that a surplus of $2,000 was suddenly discovered. These funds could have been used to keep the clearinghouse open and publish the national newspaper. But this was not even considered. The fix was in.

Perhaps the tenor of the meeting is best summed up by the following anti-Semitic attack (the four New Yorkers present at the Congress -- Mitchel Cohen, Robert Gold, Roy Felshin and Paul Gilman -- are Jewish). As Mitchel Cohen sat on the stairs outside the building quietly talking with another Green after the meeting ended, Gateway Greens representative and coordinating committee member Don Fitz stood in the doorway and barked loudly "Sieg Heil" 4 or 5 times. Nancy Oden stood next to him shouting: "We are not Stalinists."

You can draw your own conclusions.



If you are interested in a more detailed account of the meeting, the struggle to democratize the Greens/Green Party USA, or our views on the way to move forward and advance the Greens, please review the documents at http://greens.org/~jsutter/ggpusa/ . You may also write to TheGreens-owner@yahoogroups.com.

*All organizational affiliations listed for identification only. Not all of the people who signed this letter were present at the Chicago meetings. If you would like this re-sent as a formatted RTF document, please let us know.



[back to index page]