Green Party of the United States

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The Green Party of the United States follows the ideals of green politics, which are based on the Four Pillars, namely:

1. Ecological wisdom,
2. Social justice,
3. Grassroots democracy, and
4. Nonviolence.[16]

The Ten Key Values, which expand upon the Four Pillars, are as follows:[2]

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

Peter Camejo was quoted in 2002 as claiming that he was a watermelon—green on the outside, but red on the inside.[17] In January 2004, he initiated the Avocado Declaration, which compares Greens to avocados. "An avocado is Green on the outside and Green on the inside".[18] The Declaration goes on to explain that Greens have a vital role in bringing democracy to the otherwise undemocratic two party system of the United States; that the Greens have a unique and independent identity as a third party, which cannot be subsumed into the Republican or Democratic parties; and that they cannot be dismissed by Republican or Democratic critics by implying that they are merely socialists or communists.

In 2016, the Green Party passed a motion in favor of rejecting both capitalism and state socialism, and instead supporting "alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power".[2] The motion states the change that the party says could be described as promoting "'ecological socialism,' 'communalism,' or the 'cooperative commonwealth'".[2]

The Green Party does not accept donations from corporations, political action committees (PACs), 527(c) organizations or soft money. The party's platforms and rhetoric harshly criticize corporate influence and control over government, media, and society at large.[19]

The Green Party has its strongest popular support on the Pacific Coast, Upper Great Lakes, and Northeast, as reflected in the geographical distribution of Green candidates elected.[40] As of June 2007, Californians have elected 55 of the 226 office-holding Greens nationwide. Other states with high numbers of Green elected officials include Pennsylvania (31), Wisconsin (23), Massachusetts (18) and Maine (17). Maine has the highest per capita number of Green elected officials in the country and the largest Green registration percentage with more than 29,273 Greens comprising 2.95% of the electorate as of November 2006.[41] Madison, Wisconsin is the city with the most Green elected officials (8), followed by Portland, Maine (7).

The 2016 presidential campaign of Jill Stein got substantive support from counties and precincts with a high percentage of Native American population. For instance, in Sioux County (North Dakota, 84,1% Native American), Stein gained her best county-wide result: 10.4% of the votes. In Rolette County (also North Dakota, 77% Native American), she got 4.7% of the votes. Other majority Native American counties where Stein did above state average are Menominee (WI), Roosevelt (MT) and several precincts in Alaska.[42][43]

In 2005, the Green Party had 305,000 registered members in states allowing party registration and tens of thousands of members and contributors in the rest of the country.[44] One challenge that the Green Party (as well as other third parties) faces is the difficulty of overcoming ballot access laws in many states, yet the Green Party has active state parties in all but a few states.

Musician Jello Biafra ran for several offices with the Green Party, including for President in 2000

Malik Rahim, former Black Panther Party activist, ran for Congress in 2008 with the Green Party

Psychiatrist Joel Kovel ran for the Green Party's presidential nomination in 2000

2012 and 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein

As of October 2016, 143 officeholders in the United States were affiliated with the Green Party, the majority of them in California, several in Illinois, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, with five or fewer in ten other states.[45] These included one mayor and one deputy mayor and fourteen county or city commissioners (or equivalent). The remainder were members of school boards, clerks and other local administrative bodies and positions.[45]

Several Green Party members have been elected to state-level office, though not always as affiliates of the party. John Eder was elected to the Maine House of Representatives, re-elected in 2004, but defeated in 2006. Audie Bock was elected to the California State Assembly in 1999, but switched her registration to independent seven months later[46] running as such in the 2000 election.[47] Richard Carroll was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2008, but switched parties to become a Democrat five months after his election.[48] Fred Smith was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2012,[49] but re-registered as a Democrat in 2014.[50] In 2010, former Green Party leader Ben Chipman was elected to the Maine House of Representatives as an unenrolled candidate and was re-elected in 2012 and 2014. He has since registered as a Democrat, and is serving in the Maine Senate.[51] [52]

Gayle McLaughlin was twice elected mayor of Richmond, California, defeating two Democrats in 2006[53] and then reelected in 2010; and elected to City Council in 2014 after completing her second term as mayor.[54] With a population of over 100,000 people, it was the largest American city with a Green mayor. Fairfax, California; Arcata, California; Sebastopol, California; and New Paltz, New York are the only towns in the United States to have had a Green Party majority in their town councils. Twin Ridges Elementary in Nevada County, California held the first Green Party majority school board in the United States.[55]

On September 21, 2017, Ralph Chapman, a member of the Maine House of Representatives, switched his party registration from unaffiliated to Green, providing the Green Party with their first state-level representative since 2014.[56] Henry John Bear became a member of the Green Party in the same year as Chapman, giving the Maine Green Independent Party and GPUS its second currently-serving state representative, though Bear is a nonvoting tribal member of the Maine House of Representatives.

Though several Green congressional candidates have topped 20%, no nominee of the Green Party has been elected to office in the federal government. In 2016, Mark Salazar set a new record for a Green Party nominee for Congress. Running in the Arizona 8th district against incumbent Republican Congressman Trent Franks, Salazar received 93,954 votes or 31.43%.[57]

The Green National Convention is scheduled in presidential election years and the Annual National Meeting is scheduled in other years. The Green National Committee conducts business online between these in-person meetings.

• 1996 – Los Angeles, California
• 2000 – Denver, Colorado
• 2001 – Santa Barbara, California
• 2002 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• 2003 – Washington, D.C.
• 2004 – Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• 2005 – Tulsa, Oklahoma
• 2006 – Tucson, Arizona
• 2007 – Reading, Pennsylvania
• 2008 – Chicago, Illinois
• 2009 – Durham, North Carolina
• 2010 – Detroit, Michigan
• 2011 – Alfred, New York
• 2012 – Baltimore, Maryland
• 2013 – Iowa City, Iowa
• 2014 – Saint Paul, Minnesota
• 2015 – St. Louis, Missouri
• 2016 – Houston, Texas
• 2017 – Newark, New Jersey
• 2018 – Salt Lake City, Utah
• 2019 – Salem, Massachusetts
• 2020 – Detroit, Michigan

In the early decades of Green organizing in the United States, the prevailing American system of money-dominated elections was universally rejected by Greens, so that some Greens were reluctant to have Greens participate in the election system at all because they deemed the campaign finance system inherently corrupt. Other Greens felt strongly that the Green Party should develop in the electoral arena and many of these Greens felt that adopting an alternative model of campaign finance, emphasizing self-imposed contribution limits, would present a wholesome and attractive contrast to the odious campaign finance practices of the money-dominated major parties.

Over the years, some state Green parties have come to place less emphasis on the principle of self-imposed limits than they did in the past. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that Green Party fundraising (for candidates' campaigns and for the party itself) still tends to rely on relatively small contributions and that Greens generally decry not only the rise of the Super PACs, but also the big-money system, which some Greens criticize as plutocracy.

Some Greens feel that the Green Party's position should be simply to follow the laws and regulations of campaign finance.[80] Other Greens argue that it would injure the Green Party not to practice a principled stand against the anti-democratic influence of money in the political process. Candidates for office, like Jill Stein, the 2012 and 2016 Green Party nominee for the President of the United States, typically rely on smaller donations to fund their campaigns.[81]

The following is a list of accredited state parties which comprise the Green Party of the United States.[82]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Green Party of the United States.

• Official website
• Green Party U.S. National Committee
• Green Party of the United States at Curlie
• Green Party Archives Project