Hello everybody.
You know, it has been forty years, almost to the day, since August 10 to 12 in 1984 in St. Paul, Minnesota, since we had our first national organizing meeting to build a Green Party in the United States.
I was the one of the 60 participants in that meeting and I think I’m the only one who is still alive and still active in the Green Party today. So let me offer some perspective from an old head on what we’ve accomplished and what we should focus on now.
The Green Party is the only party that still survives among several attempts to build a progressive third party in the late 1980s and the 1990s. When we began organizing in 1984, we were swimming against the current. Most progressive activists were going into the Democratic Party with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
But after the 1988 presidential election, when the Democrats failed to defeat George H.W. Bush, a number of other third party efforts were initiated. There was the New Party, the 21st Century Party, the Campaign for a New Tomorrow, and the Labor Party. But all of those efforts failed and disappeared, while the Green Party persisted and survives. That alone is something to celebrate today on our 40th anniversary.
A big reason why the Green Party survived is that we focused on local organizing and running our own candidates for local office. We elected our first Green candidate in 1986 and kept electing more and more into the 1990s.
By 1996, the Greens had organized a strong enough grassroots base to put Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot in 23 states. And Ralph didn’t raise money and campaign actively, but he let us use his name for ballot petitioning. Ralph ran an active campaign in 2000 and we got him on the ballot in 44 states. And Nader’s campaign in 2000 put the Green Party on the national political map.
And since then the Greens have continued to successfully run and elect more local candidates. In fact, we have elected more candidates to public office than any third party on the left since the since the Socialist Party of the early 20th century.
Greens have had less success in impacting national politics. And the last eight years have been particularly tough for the Green Party between the push of the fascistic Donald Trump and the pull of the progressive Bernie Sanders into the Democratic Party. But that difficult political climate is now changing.
People are disgusted with the miserable choices the two major parties are giving us. 63% of Americans say they want a third major party in the most recent Gallup poll on that question, a record high.
So how can the Green Party fill this political vacuum? And how can we begin to have a major impact on national politics? I would like to suggest two practical approaches.
The first is that we should recommit to building from below until we can run and win with competitive Green candidates for the US House of Representatives. We’ve had hundreds of Greens in local office and about a dozen in state legislatures. We should be now electing thousands, not just hundreds, in the coming period.
Doing that will build our bench of experienced candidates, elected officials, and campaign organizers. And that will create the foundation for running competitive Green candidates and electing them to state legislatures and the House of Representatives.
The House is where Greens can have leverage on national policy. Presidential and Senate races in most states are just too big and dominated by big money for us to have much of an impact. But we can have a major impact in our local congressional districts.
Congressional campaigns are where we have the opportunity and the capacity to force our policy demands into the campaign debate.
Where do the candidates stand on …
… Medicare for All?
… The Green New Deal?
… Cutting military aid to Israel until apartheid, occupation, and the genocidal war on Gaza ends?
Where do they stand on …
… A ranked choice national popular vote for President?
… and proportional representation in Congress?
We can make our issues the issues in congressional elections and have a major impact on national politics.
So my first suggestion is that Green locals should develop a plan for running and electing local candidates with the goal of building up to running competitive Green candidates and winning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The second practical approach I want to suggest is that we prioritize campaigns for ranked choice voting and proportional representation.
The predominant single-member-district, winner-take-all election system produces the exclusive two-party duopoly under which we suffer. It generates the spoiler problem that produces the two-party system.
But we have the answer to the spoiler problem: it’s ranked choice voting. We need to flip the script when we are told we are spoilers and say our to opponents, you are perpetuating the spoiler problem if you don’t join us in supporting ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting is a reform we are winning. In 2000, we had it in only two municipalities. By 2020, we had ranked choice voting in two dozen municipalities and two states. Today in 2024, we have it in over 60 political jurisdictions. And it’s on the ballot in six states in this year’s election.
For legislative bodies like city councils, county boards, state legislatures, and Congress, we should be fighting for proportional ranked choice voting in multi-member districts to create proportional representation. We are winning this ranked choice form of proportional representation all across the country, from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.
It is a game-changing, transformational reform. It will transform our exclusive two-party dictatorship into an inclusive multi-party democracy. With proportional representation, Greens will get their fair share of representation and power in government.
So let’s not be demoralized by the miserable choices the two corporate parties are giving us. We have survived 40 years because the Green Party is needed. People keep turning to us because we have real solutions to the crises of climate, health care, housing, militarism, the exclusionary two-party system, and so many other pressing social problems. And real solutions can’t wait.
Today is a time when masses of people are disgusted with major parties and open to alternatives if they look viable. Let’s be confident that the Green policy agenda is what majorities of people will support. And let’s be confident that our organizing efforts will demonstrate to masses of people that the Green Party is the credible alternative they are hoping for.
Let’s get to work.
