Green Parties

The first green party was established in Tasmania, Australia, in 1972, emanating from a clean water conservation campaign. Green parties were founded in New Zealand (the Values Party) in 1972 and in the United Kingdom (the Ecology Party) in 1973. The German Greens or Die Grünen were also established in 1979 and ran candidates in the 1980 national election. By the mid-1980s, a Green Party had been established in the United States in the aftermath of wider campaigns by environmental movement participants around issues such as conservation and preservation, opposition to nuclear power, and campaigns against toxic industries.

The first green group in the United States was known as The Green Committees of Correspondence, and they organized in local confederations until 1991. These groups organized under the principle of decentralization and maintained local structures. An interesting facet of the Green Committees is their organizational structure, which was based on bioregional rather than political considerations. The group was focused on local politics and was initially opposed to involvement in national politics.

The Green Committees of Correspondence was renamed the Greens/Green Party in 1991. This group continued to organize at the substate level; national politics were seen as [Page 211]outside the local ethos of green politics. The Association of Autonomous State Green Parties emerged with an agenda to participate in national elections in the 1990s. The Association of Autonomous State Green Parties put forward consumer activist Ralph Nader as a candidate in the 1996 presidential campaign. This move led to a nationally based party called the Green Party of the United States (GPUS) being formed in 2001. The GPUS became the third party in U.S. politics at this time and organized on a political platform similar to the established green parties operating in Europe. GPUS set out “10 key values” as guiding principles for their activists:

• 1.
  Grassroots democracy
• 2.
  Social justice and equal opportunity
• 3.
  Ecological wisdom
• 4.
  Nonviolence
• 5.
  Decentralization
• 6.
  Community-based economics and economic justice
• 7.
  Feminism and gender equity
• 8.
  Respect for diversity
• 9.
  Personal and global responsibility
• 10.
  Future focus and sustainability

This Green Party of Canada campaign sign appeared in Montreal in October 2008. Green parties have spread throughout the world and have gathered small but growing numbers of votes in North America.

Source: Flickr/Sweet One

Another group known as the Association of State Green Parties worked to develop the electoral capacity of local green organizations, often in tandem with GPUS. In the 2000 presidential election, the Green Party again nominated Ralph Nader and Native American activist Winona LaDuke for president and vice president. The Green Party was on the ballot in 44 of the 50 U.S. states and received 2.7 percent of the vote. The candidacy of Nader was criticized in the aftermath of George W. Bush's marginal success over green-minded Democratic candidate Al Gore. The Green's response was that it represented a platform for change from the policies of both mainstream parties. The Association of State Green Parties took the name “Green Party of the United States” in 2001 and successfully applied for recognition from the Federal Electoral Commission.

In 2002, John Eder became the first Green Party candidate to win a seat in a state legislature, winning in the Maine House of Representatives—a seat that Eder successfully defended in 2004. The 2004 presidential campaign was marked by Ralph Nader seeking an endorsement rather than a nomination from the Green Party, although prominent party member Peter Camejo would run as Nader's vice presidential candidate. The Green's nominated candidate was David Cobb. The controversy between supporters over the endorsement and the nomination approaches again divided the Greens. The greens experienced electoral successes in 2006 for Green Party candidates at the local level, although [Page 212]the removal of candidate Carl Romanelli from the Pennsylvania ballot created further problems for the party, including the loss of their third-party status in that state. The Green's presidential candidate in 2008 was former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, with Rosa Clemente nominated for vice president. They received 0.5 percent of the national vote. Ralph Nader declined the Green Party endorsement as part of his Independent campaign.

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