Chlorophyll

Day 1: meeting on nuclear power

We started off with a meeting with Argentine ecological NGOs on nuclear power. I came prepared to argue the GPUS position on nuclear power, in case some of them were the kind of "environmentalists" that are pro-nuke simply because it doesn't produce CO2, but happily, that wasn't the case. Every person in the room was anti-nuclear, and many were working actively against it.

There's a lot going on that, frankly, I was unaware of going into this meeting. The governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela are collaborating on a tri-national nuclear energy program, and Chile wants in as well. The Canadian government is selling nuclear technology to Argentina, and apparently the Australian government is going to reprocess the waste. This is no small part of the reason for the founding of the Venezuelan and Argentine Green Parties.

The reps from Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil all emphasized that nuclear energy is symptomatic of the difference between the Greens and the traditional left (the PRI, Chavez, and Lula, respectively), which they characterized as "developmentist" ("desarrollista"). Every coutry (including me, speaking for the US) reported that that the public has little interest or even knowledge about the matter. There are exceptions such as demonstrations in Mexico and a number of municipalities in Argentina that have declared themselves nuclear-free, but they are the exception to the rule.

Marcos Mroz of Brazil discussed the reasons for the resurgence in interest in nuclear power: first, the Left is promoting it, which is a change. Second, the governments feel they can afford it, particularly in Venezuela. Third, the public is apparently sold on the idea that nuclear power is clean, and a viable solution to climate change. Finally, there is the impression that nuclear power is peaceful.

A lot of ideas were tossed out, but the only concrete action agreed upon was to form an email list to continue the discussion and work out specific action items. How this will play out remains to be seen, first because most of what was talked about was specific to South America, and second, because a lot of the NGO folks there were deeply suspicious of political parties of any stripe.

Days 2 and 3: Meeting of the FPVA

We did a go-around of the different nations, which Catherine did a much better job of taking notes on than I did. A common theme to every country except Mexico was that we are all painfully short on money.

Speaking of which, I was somewhat surprised to hear Brazil, Chile, and Canada all take Mexico to task for its actions over the last several years. Paty, the Mexican rep, complained that the other Greens of the Americas weren't showing much solidarity with the Mexican Greens. Several people responded that it was difficult to show solidarity when they change political allies every time the wind shifts, and Marcos from Brazil said gently but clearly that it's time for the Mexican Greens to go it alone, even if that means taking political risks. Paty was clearly not happy, but said she'd take the message home. For my part, I stayed quiet during this part of the meeting, but in the evening, I talked to her one-on-one and was quite blunt that we in the US see their changes in allies as opportunistic. She said they had to do it to get their policies implemented, and insisted it was working, at least somewhat. I made it clear that it was taking a high toll on their reputation internationally, and by extension, other Green Parties' reputations as well.

Back to the meeting. It was good to finally have a Canadian presence at an FPVA meeting. Silvaine talked about how most Canadian Greens aren't so much opposed to participating in the federation as they are simply focused on their local work.

I spoke about our recent elections, and mentioned that Julia had gotten 110,000 votes for Comptroller. I said that we are dealing with a lot of issues, but that the two biggest were climate change and the war in Iraq. They wanted to know how many votes we got this year, grand total. I told them I didn't know, but estimated it at around two million. I hope that's reasonably close.

I also reported for Nicaragua, since Edward Salazar could not afford the trip.

We then talked about the Global Greens meeting in 2008. It will be in Nairobi, Kenya, May 1-4. Two different places have been tentatively reserved, which will eventually be narrowed to one. The topic will be global climate change, with the specific goal of creating a concrete, coordinated action plan for Greens worldwide to participate in.

Leading up to this will be two meetings in 2007. See my earlier message for info on the Global Young Greens, January 16-18th. Overlapping that by one day is the meeting of African Greens, January 18-19th. It has yet to be decided if this will be a formal meeting of the Federation of African Greens, because there are a number of active Green Parties that have not yet joined the federation.

Back on this continent, we decided to hold an international meeting of elected Greens in March. No further details were decided.

There was considerable discussion about the Green Party of the Dominican Republic. It was formally accepted into the federation in the 2002 at the meeting held there. However, it recently merged with another party to form the "Green Party of Democratic Unity." People expressed reservations about the Green nature of this new party, and more to the point, its status within the federation. After talking about it, we concluded the new party was a qualitatively distinct entity from the party that was admitted to the federation, and was therefore not a member. This conclusion required no further action from the federation. The new party will, of course, be free to apply for membership.

Manuel Baquedano of Chile brought up the subject of Green Parties in places that are quasi-independent territories of other nations. Puerto Rico is one example, but there is also Guayana, Guadaloupe, Martinique, and a handful of others. We decided not to create a blanket policy, but take each case one by one. So far, this hasn't been an issue, but it almost certainly will be in the future. [In 2002, several Puerto Ricans came to the Dominican Republic to talk about forming a Puerto Rican Green Party. That effort seems to have fizzled, but in all likelihood, another will come along soon. The GPUS will have to make a decision about whether to treat it as an independent nation, which would merit representation in the FPVA, or as a state, which would not. Naturally, this will depend heavily on what the Puerto Rican Greens themselves want... but it's quite possible it will be a contentious internal issue.]

February 23rd will mark five years of captivity of Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas. There was general agreement that Greens everywhere need to drum up publicity around this. There was also news that there is a Green political prisoner in China, and another in Africa. Details were sketchy.

The last item we got to was deciding the location of the next federation meeting. Several of us pushed hard for Canada (namely, the US, Mexico, and Chile), but it turns out this meeting was originally supposed to have been held in Venezuela, which generously gave up its spot to Argentina to coincide with the public launch of the Green Party of Buenos Aires. That pretty much meant that next year's meeting has to be in Venezuela (in October). However, we agreed that Canada would host the 2008 meeting, city TBA. There will also be a special meeting of the federation in Nairobi just before the Global Greens meeting, on a day for all the federations to meet separately before the big meeting.

I asked to have two US issues put on the agenda -- international support for our Israel divestment policy and our opposition to the war in Iraq -- but discussion was squeezed out for lack of time. I plan to bring them up over email.

Our last activity in the meeting was a press conference. Manuel Baquedano led it by describing what we had talked about in the meeting. He said that many countries had elections this past year, and that the Greens had set a continental goal of five million votes. In fact, the number of votes we got was somewhere in the neighborhood of nine million. We're still small, but we're exceeding everyone's expectations... including our own. Then each party spoke briefly. I touched on the unique history the US has, being the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons in war, plus the troubles we've had with nuclear power. I said we encourage Latin America to learn from our mistakes.

I was too focused on collecting my own thoughts to remember much of what anyone else said -- with the exception of Brazil. Melo Viana got cornered into representing Brazil to the press, even though he arrived very late and wasn't even Brazil's rep to the meeting. So, he fell back on what was clearly a well-worn spiel, but deservedly so. He said he thinks of the Greens as five generations. The first was the first people to whom it originally occurred to organize as political ecologists. The second was the people who were the first recognizable Green Party rank and file. The third is us, as the Greens start to gain traction. The fourth will be when Greens begin to elect majority governments around the world. The fifth will be when everyone is a Green.

After this, we took questions from the press.

My impressions

There was discussion about the general weakness of the federation. Communication is sporadic, and is limited to a handful of people in each member nation. As a result, a lot of ideas get floated in meetings that we aren't prepared to act on. We decided to expand the mailing list to more people. What that means in practice remains to be seen.

The Argentines: I had a good impression of them. Of course, they were on their best behavior to impress the guests, but I think they were sincere in everything they said. They named their party "Green Initiative," because another party registered the name "Green Party," though they don't use it. In Argentina, these sorts of things expire after a while, so the Greens have a good chance of getting it then. Also, the structure of political parties there is something like ours: they have to be established at the provincial level in five provinces to be considered a national party. They now have two with a third close to legal recognition, and solid contacts in several more. Even before they gain national legal recognition, they can run at the state level.

Most of their members come out of other center-left parties. At the individual level, they were discouraged from doing this by the other parties, yet when they announced it on the floor of the Buenos Aires legislature, they were given a round of applause. We had contact primarily with Juan Manuel Velazco, a legislator for the city, and several of his aides and friends. One friend went out of his way to emphasize what a risk Velazco is taking, because he's giving up considerable seniority in his former party to start over. I also had a chance to talk with a woman from another province who is active in an environmental NGO, and has always steered clear of politics. She said it took a lot to convince her the Greens really meant what they said, and was still being cautious, but was on board.

There are several other small Green Parties in Argentina. The only other one to show up was the "Social-Ecological Green Party." Both their speech and their platform (which I read) had the ring of the traditional left – strident tone and lots of big words -- but were very solid, ecologically. The full members of the federation had a 45-minute meeting with them, and all six of us took turns hammering on the importance of Green unity, and working together. They reported having little contact with Green Initiative, which Green Initiative confirmed, but both sides promised to talk more.

The Venezuelans: This was the first time I've gotten to meet the Venezuelans. They are still observers, because federation rules stipulate you must have run candidates for office to be a full member, but they were an active part of both the formal and informal activities.

They were asked repeatedly about their position on Chavez. They were critical of him, but not stridently opposed to him. I would call them non-chavista, but not anti-chavista. Their critique of him was heavily environmental, with little or no social content. They said he was talking the talk ecologically, but not walking the walk. Starting up a nuclear power program would be a good example. They reported that they had tried to work with the government, but that it hadn't shown much interest in them. However, they were more than willing to try again to talk to Chavez about trying to secure Ingrid's freedom.