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Green Party Holds Plenary Session at Stanford
by Bob Sensenbrenner
Contributing Writer

The Green Party of California held its plenary session at Stanford on the weekend of January 11th and 12th. The event, which was held in the history corner, drew a crowd of approximately 120 delegates representing areas of California from Los Angelos to the local San Mateo county chapter. The Plenary session, hosted by the San Mateo Green Party and cosponsored by the Stanford Green Party, included seminars on Communications, Outreach and Chapter development, as well as a discussion of funding and a new member orientation which approximately 40 people attended.

The meeting, prefaced with a reading of the Gary Snyder Poem "Mother Earth: Her Whales," had a rocky start at the beginning as there was difficulty electing, or even finding a voluntary person to be timekeeper for a short period of time. The timekeeper, along with the "vibes" watcher, whose job it was to cease debate if the arguments became too heated, was present throughout the introduction of the officers and the budgeting approval.

The budgeting presentation detailed some of the tactics and specifics of the Green Party's fundraising. Refusing to take any campaign money from corporations, the California Green Party currently has a 58,000 dollar balance and revenue of 127,000 dollars from last year. Approximately 45,000 dollars of that was raised in a single visit by Ralph Nader last year. Coupled with the budgeting presentation was an explanation of the filing requirements for fundraising disclosure with the California Fair Political Practice Commission (FPPC). In this explanation, Treasurer Michael S. Wyman explained how he had received several letters from the FPPC saying he was in non-compliance and should be fined, but avoided the fine by using excuses about confusion with the forms, a method that he advocated others who must file adopt.

When questioned about what the Green Party proposed to do over the approximately 35 billion dollar state budget deficit, Green Party Spokesperson Beth Moore Haines stated that the Green Party advocated such measures as "Taxes on emissions," specifically Carbon Taxes, and further taxation of businesses. According to the Green Party Platform, the goals of the Party are: Ecological Wisdom, Grassroots Democracy, such as the retention of franchise for felons, Social Justice and Personal Responsibility, Nonviolence, Decentralizations, Community Based Economics, including increasing capital gains taxes.

The expansion of the Green Party was also a primary goal of the conference with the group seeking to establish Green Party chapters at every university and high school in California. Spokewoman Moore Haines stated that "Young people needed to get reinvolved in political activism." In attendance at the session were 2002 Green Party Gubernatorial Candidate Peter Camejo and Matt Gonzalez, recently elected as President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Page last modified on Wednesday, 01-Mar-2006 23:51:15 MST.