Chlorophyll

...not that this failed, because I confess to not knowing enough about it to form an opinion. Rather, it pains me that we weren't able to write a proposal that could generate more support. To hear that California would even entertain the notion of leaving the national party tells me just how bad things have gotten.

Have the last 30 years of building been for nothing? Do we still have such swelled heads that we can't fit in one party? Have we learned nothing from the decline and fall of the GPUSA?

We cannot let the Green Party be torn apart. Whatever the hell this is all about, let's sort it out. If people's egos are blocking the way, maybe they should take a back seat for a while. If we fail now, alternative politics in the US will vanish for a generation, and nobody can afford to see that happen.

The history of progressive movements in the US is strewn with the smoldering carcasses of one organization after another that fell not to government oppression, but to petty infighting. If the Green Party has ever stood for anything, let us stand together now. Our ideas are too good to sacrifice them on the altar of personal pride.

Those of us with twelve step program experience may know that early on in AA a decision had to be made about leadership. The men who had gotten AA off the ground in various locations found that the "new commers" had their own plans and ideas. The "old timers" resisted, and one of the two founders of AA had to explain to all the other "old timers" that they did not own the program. No one does.

The same is true for the Green Party in my humble opinion.

I saw, for example, a message from Hugh Esco of Georgia. In it he said that he has been building the Green Party in Georgia for 17 years. I suggested to him that maybe the time has come to let someone else build the party.

Many of the people on the Green National Committee should seriously consider taking a year or two off and let someone else run the show for a while.

You can see it in the spirit of the new delegates. "Hi! My name is Sue Smith and I'm the new delegate from MyState. I love the Green Party and hope that everyone is ready to make things happen!"

That's their first message. After reading the vitrol on the list and seeing the disrespectful way others are treated they either shut up, leave the list, or get angry themselves.

I left.

We need new leadership across the board. There is nothing spectacular about our current leaders. There is nothing terribly complicated about serving on the GNC. We just need leaders who want to promote, not control, the Green Party.