Green Party of California
   

Founding of the
Green Party of California
1985- 1992

By Mike Feinstein, Santa Monica

The Green Party of California (GPCA) was founded on February 4th, 1990. It achievedballot status as of January 1st, 1992. It has maintained ballot status ever since.

The Founding Meeting (2/90)

The founding meeting of the GPCA occurred on February 4th 1990, at Cal State Sacramento. Approximately 65 Green delegates and observers from 30 Green locals gathered from across California and debated whether to start a new political party.

Reports were given by Kent Smith (Nevada County Greens) and RogerPicklum (Oakland, East Bay Green Alliance) on what would be involved in qualifying the party for the ballot. MikeFeinstein (Santa Monica, Westside Greens) and Mindy Lorenz (Oxnard, Santa Clara River Greens) were co-facilitators.

The vote to found the GPCA and go for ballot status was 27 locals in favor, 0 against and 3 stand-asides (East Bay, Fresno, and Ojai). Concerns expressed about the decision to go forward mostly centered upon whether Greens were ready to start a political party and whether electoral work would take energy away from non-electoral Green movement activity.

There were several other decisions made that day (reached by consensus), included establishing committees to begin the platform and by-law drafting process, appointing Lorenz, DannyMoses (Half Moon Bay Greens) and Dan Tarr (San DiegoGreens) as empowered press contacts; accepting a pro bono lobbyist for the statecapital, MichaelTwombley (Sacramento Greens).

At 3pm, reporters from local network affiliates came by and interviewed Lorenz and Smith. Later delegates paused during their nine-hour meeting to watch themselves on the six o'clock news. The party had arrived.

The Ballot Drive (1/90 - 12/91)

To qualify for an ongoing place on the ballot, California Greens needed to gather a number of registrants equal to 1% of the number of people who had last voted for Governor (in 1988) - that number amounted to 78,992.

People began to register Green right at the beginning of 1990, even before California Greens officially voted to start the party. The first big registration push came on Earth Day 1990 - Greens tabled across the state at Earth Day events, registering new voters by the hundreds. San Diego did the best that day among all counties, registering approximately 1,000 new Greens that day.

By November 1990 however, only about 13,000 Greens had been registered, far short of the halfway mark needed to reach the required 78,992 by the end of 1991. Doing voter registration was still a relatively new task for many California Greens. With this inexperience and without the intensity of an immediately impending deadline, counties were not undertaking the registration task in a well-organized, systematic manner. Also, the young state GPCA was an even more decentralized body than it is today, and lacked the statewide organization and structure to coordinate the ballot drive. That would all change at the beginning of 1991, with a push from inside and outside of the party.

Inside (the Q Group) - with the ballot drive destined to fail by all indications, several Bay Area Greens took the initiative to form the "Q Group" at the beginning of 1991 - an ad hoc grouping to draft and implement a focused registration plan. Led by RossMirkarimi (San Francisco Greens), it also originally included ReginaEndrizzi (San Francisco Greens) and Greg Jan, Picklumand Steve Bloom (all Oakland and East Bay Green Alliance). Othersaround thestate played an advisory role, including Moses,John and Eleanor Lewallen (Mendocino CountyGreens), GerryGray (Humboldt CountyGreens), Genevieve Marcus and Bob Smith (LosAngeles) and the aforementionedLorenz, Smith and Feinstein.

The Q Group sought to bring together people who had organizing prior experience, including hiring someone to coordinate the effort. JoeLouis Hoffman, an organizer with a history of union organizing Chicago, was hired and over the course of early 1991, a plan took shape that included combining the registration drive with a party newsletter (Green Consensus) and a fundraising plan (which included raising money from each newly registered Green).

Outside (the Gulf War) - at the same time the Q Group was getting off of the ground, bombs were beginning to be dropped on the ground in the Gulf War. The GPCA had an already planned state meeting scheduled for San Francisco in January 1991, which turned out to be held just days after the U.S. bombing started. Suddenly the progressive movement was mobilized and focused, and with both Congressional Democrats and Republicans voting to go to war, the desire among progressives for a progressive electoral alternative became more clear, and people began looking for the Greens instead of just the Greens looking for them.

On the Saturday afternoon of the January 1991 San Francisco state meeting, Greens left the meeting to take to the streets and join the estimated 150,000 people marching in the streets that day protesting the bombing. With clipboards and voter registration forms in hand, Greens registered approximately 700 people in about an hour and a half before returning back to the meeting. This highly energized event helped get many party members 'over the hump' in terms of asking for registrations and created a broader cadre of Greens ready and able to do voter registration.

By August 1991, the registration total had reached 35,000, almost double the mount of new registrants achieved since November 1990, as had been achieved in the first 10 months before then, but still not even halfway to the needed 78,992 total.

With the goal starting to become within reach, and with the Q Group's plan beginning to kick in for the stretch drive, help came from an unexpected place - the Democrats. California Democratic Party state political director Bob Mulholland made news across Northern California when he was caught returning newly registered Greens their registration cards with a letter asking them to 'unregister Green' and return to the Democratic Party. The negative publicity the Democrats received by trying to keep the Greens off the ballot sent people looking for Green Party registration totals in droves. The GPCA matched that intensity with a now well-organized statewide registration campaign with hundreds of Greens out registering new voters every weekend (and many weekdays) in high visibility locations.

By December 1st 1991, registration had reached 60,000 and the goal was near. Then a large, last minute large donation came in that would help pay to hire some professional registration gatherers. The arrival of the donation spurred Greens on even more furiously, with the added confidence that the needed total would be achieved. After only registering 60,000 people in the preceding 23 months, Greens registered 43,000 people in December to 'go over the top' and reach 100,897 as of December 31st, 1991, securing a place on the ballot for the GPCA. About 65,000 came from Northern California, evidencing the strength of Hoffman and the Q Group's efforts there, as well as reflecting the strengh of the Green movement in Northern California.

Pre-Ballot Drive: The Early Years 1985-1989

The Green Committees of Correspondence are Formed, California Greens Beging to Meet in Locals Around the State

The national Green organizational meeting in the United States began in August 1984, when 60-odd people gathered in at Macalaster College in Minneapolis to found the Committees of Correspondence (named after the small grassroots groups of the U.S Revolutionary War) and adopt the Green Ten Key Values (which exist and unite U.S. Greens to this day). Among those in attendance was California Green Charlene Spretnak (Half Moon Bay Greens), co-author of several books on Green philosophy and spirituality, including Green Politics: The Global Promise, with Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics), the definitive English lanuage study of the German Green Party's early years.

Soon afterwards Greens began to meet in the San Francisco Bay Area in late 1984 and early 1985, with the San Francisco Greens and the East Bay Green Alliance being founded as bookend Green locals across the Bay. The East Bay Green Alliance's founding meeting came in Berkeley in May 1985, with Spretnak, Moses, and British Green spokesperson Jonathan Porritt, making presentations. In Southern California, a group began meeting around Los Angeles at the same time, including Marcus and Smith, Marc Sharon, John Stein and others.

Greening of the West

By the 1988, there were Green locals spread across California and many were meeting on a regional basis as well. At one regional meeting in Northern California, came the idea (and sponsorship) of the Greening the West gathering (it was "officially" called a gathering, rather than a conference). Greening the West would be the second large scale Greens Gathering ever in the U.S. The first was held in 1987, in Amherst, Massachusetts and drew approximately 1,000 people. Greg Jan spearheaded the organizing, along with dozens of Greens from around Northern California.

Greening the West was held in San Mateo County at the Jones Gulch YMCA camp, near La Honda, from Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, 1988. Over 1,000 people attended the event. Speakers included FritjofCapra, Charlene Spretnak, Earnest Callenbach, Starhawk, DavidBrower, Bill Devall, Patricia Ellsberg, HaroldGilliam, Susan Griffin, Joanna Macy, JerryMander and Brian Swimme. Greening the West was one the first places where widespread discussion of starting a Green Party in California took place. Although no formal decisions were made, seeds of change were planted.

California Greens meet in Eugene, Oregon at Green Gathering 1989 (6/89)

The first formal caucus of California Greens took place in 1989, but not in California. Rather it took place in Eugene, Oregon, at the 1989 national Green Gathering. Approximately 50 Greens met for the first time on a statewide basis, representing a partial mix of the California Green movement - including existing Greens from already established national Green Committees of Correspondence of GcoC (the then national Green organization), as well as more loosely affiliated Bioregionalists, Earth Firsters, members of the Abalone Alliance members and others,

Attendees found they had more in common with each other than some of them had expected. There had been the perception of both a Northern California/Southern California cultural/political divide, including on the issue of the day in Green organizing at that time: 'social ecology' vs. 'deep ecology.'

The caucus voted in Eugene to propose to the existing California GCoC regions, that the first ever state meeting of California Greens be held in the fall. A small working group was set up that would convene the first ever formal state meeting of California Greens, to take place in the fall in Fresno (a location in the middle of the state.) Working group members were Smith, Tarr and Feinstein. The host organizer was Scott Werner (Fresno Greens)

Fresno - First Ever Formal Meeting of California Greens (11/89)

California Greens held their first ever statewide conference in November 1989 at Cal State Fresno, with about 25 Greens from across California in attendance. Most of Saturday was devoted to a discussion of issues that Greens from across the state might coordinate around.

On Saturday night, discussion about whether to start the party began. California Greens were facing an identity crisis. Between 1988 and 1990, an imposter Green group called 'Green Futures' or 'the Humanists' had applied for and received the right to the Green Party name as part of a two-year window to try and qualify the Green Party for the ballot in California. Since the Green Futures had not qualified the party (they achieved only about 800 voter registrations in two years), the right to the name would be coming up again for contest in early 1990.

At the same time, Democrats in California were drafted an unprecedented statewide environmental ballot iniatiative, "Big Green", which would ultimately go on the ballot as Proposition 128. Also at the same time, the Green movement in general was beginning to receive unprecedented attention, including from the media, with the coming of the first nationally celebrated Earth Day in twenty year - Earth Day 1990. The dilemma facing California Greens was that with all the attention upon 'Green', the idea that there was a distinct politically-minded organization called the Greens, would be lost in the Green Futures/Big Green/no separate Green Party confusion.

The decision that came out of the Fresno meeting was to send Smith and Picklum to Sacramento to talk to Ed Arnold, head of the Elections Division of the Secretary of State's office. Arnold would inform the Greens about what would be involved in both securing the Green Party name and achieving ballot status. Smith and Picklum would then send a report of their findings and recommendations to Green locals across the state, which would meet and discuss the findings and recommendations, and send delegates to the February 1990 meeting in Sacramento, to decide whether to found the Green Party of California.

Early Electoral Successes

The first Green to be elected in California was Bob Ornelas in November 1990, winning the first of what would be three City Council victories for him in Arcata between 1990 and 2000. Ornelas however, was not the first Green City Councilmember - Raven Earlygrow was appointed in tiny (pop. 440) Point Arena in Mendocino County. Like Ornelas, Earlygrow would serve for many years, remaining on the council through November 1998, serving as mayor for four years. On the partisan race level in 1990, Lorenz qualified for the ballot as a write-in candidate for U.S. Congress in her Oxnard/Ventura/San Barbara district. She received an amazing 1% of the vote as a write-in, one of the highest for a write-in candidate on that level.

National Green Publications Coming Out of California

Several important national Green publications began out of California in the mid 1980s. In San Francisco, Jerry Gwathney published The Green Letter, a national Green newsletter, which later became Green Letter/Greener Times, with San Francisco Green Margo Adair and others joining the editorial collective. In Southern California, Bob Long renamed his long-running journal of economic democracy as Green Synthesis, which became the national journal of the U.S. Greens. Both ran from the mid 1980s throught the early 1990s. From 1996 to 2002, the national Green Party newsletter GreenPages was published out of Santa Monica by Feinstein.

Western and National Green Meetings and Conferences held in California

Last updated: 12/10/2006 (BH)