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A Brief History of the Green Party (Continued)

The roots of the Green Party and Green movement started to coalesce in the 1970's with the Values Party in New Zealand and other similar movements. They combined environmental sensibilities and non-violent anarchism into a broader philosophy that refuses the allure of single-issue politics.

Although not the first Green Party to be formed, the German Greens put us on the map when they were the first to win seats in a national parliament in the early 1980's while focusing on issues of nuclear missiles and nuclear power.

Greens first met in the United States in 1984 in St. Paul, Minnesota, adopting the 10 Key Values, that all Greens in the United States now use as our basic definition.

Although there were some early campaigns for office, most early efforts ranged from philosophical discussions to non-electoral activism to alternative institution-building. These efforts fueled the growth in Green chapters, with many hundreds in existence in the late 1980's.

Alaska was the first state to achieve a recognized ballot line for the Green Party in 1990. But the growing focus on a political party and electoral efforts resulted in dissension regarding how and whether to use the political system in the United States. Was it too corrupt? Would we be corrupted in the process? If it's okay to participate, at what level? How should the political party relate to the rest of the Green movement?

These arguments resulted in a split in 1991 as the then-existing Green Committees of Correspondence voted to change into The Greens/Green Party USA, with a structure focused on individual dues membership without a separate political party. Some state parties, many of whose activists were not dues paying members at the national level, felt that this structure undermined their activities and retreated to working within their state parties.

The G/GPUSA continued to organize during the 1990's, but a variety of problems and disputes prevented any continuation of the growth seen in the 1980's. Recent efforts to merge the disputed groups have failed.

After the 1996 elections, state Greens formed the Association of State Green Parties. Four years later the ASGP became the Green Party of the United States. We filed for national party status with the FEC in August of 2001.

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"The Green Party is no longer the alternative, the Green Party is the imperative" ~ Rosa Clemente
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