Day 2: Greens take a hard look at themselves in Durham
Day Two of the Green Party’s 2009 National Meeting in Durham featured a forum on single-payer health care (though “forum” may be a stretch; the consensus was that single-payer is the best, and only, option) and press conferences introducing Green Party elected officials, and candidates, to the world.
But the real action happened in workshops, where local Green Party leaders, seated in N.C. Central University classroom chairs, licked the wounds of a contentious 2008 convention in Chicago, and pondered whether the Green Party had lost its relevance in the eyes of the public.
“As I look across this room, we’re old,” said George Martin, former co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party and a founder of the Green Party Black Caucus. “Not to mention [a lack of] people of color.”
Martin said the Green Party had lost its “feeder system” when Campus Greens, a national student organization, folded due to organizational mishaps, including tax trouble and having no official ties to the national party.
“We’ve got to go back to our roots, and we’ve got to go young,” he said. “Let’s get back to our basic organization. We are activists. We are activists because we weren’t satisfied with the political system.” Continue reading »
