The History of the Green Party

The Green Party is a United States political party. It has its origins dating back to 1984, when 62 people from around the U.S. came to St. Paul, MN to found the first national Green organization - the Committees of Correspondence. Since then, U.S. Greens have gone through several evolutions, from debating theory and praxis in the 1980s, to starting state parties in the 1990s, to the founding of a national political party (recognized by the Federal Elections Commission) in the 2000s.

At the first North American Bio-regional Congress in May 1984, (convened by David Haenke of the Ozark Area Community Congress and in Missouri), a group met to discuss the need for a green movement in the U.S.. They approved a Green Movement Committee statement "concerning the formation of a Green political organization in the USA."From this initial gathering, a larger meeting was planned for August 1984.

In August 1984, 62 people met at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota and founded the Committees of Correspondence (or CoC, so named after the Committees of Correspondence of the American Revolutionary War).

The three-day meeting included activists from peace, ecology and justice groups; veterans of the women's, civil rights, and community movements; and farmers, community leaders, church activists and teachers. There were social ecologists, deep ecologists, eco-feminists, anarchists, socialists and more.

The organizing committee was made up of professor Charlene Spretnak of California, Harry Boyte, Catherine Burton, Gloria Goldberg and David Haenke; and they invited 200 people from 27 issues areas. These are the founders of the Green Party.

The Greens/Green Party USA (Greens/GPUSA) was founded at the August 1991 Green Gathering in Elkins, West Virginia restructuring the Green Committees of Correspondence with the idea that the Green movement and Green Party would operate as part of a single organization. This split between the grassroots movement, and a move to political party proved a hard task and hampered the party to gain any real traction until the reorganization, and political network of Ralph Nader, who would become the eventual party's first Presidential candidate in 1995.

At the 1995 national Green Gathering in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a proposal to put a candidate for president on 40 states was adopted. A significant minority of Greens voiced strong ideological objections (based on the principle of decentralization) to the proposal to become involved in such a large-scale political arena for the first time.Those who wished to run a candidate for president continued to pursue the possibility. Working within their state parties, as well as through an independent organization called Third Parties '96,they convinced Ralph Nader to accept placement on the Green Party of California's March 1996 primary ballot. Eventually he accepted placement on more ballots, but ran a limited campaign with a self-imposed campaign spending limit of $5,000 (which allowed him to avoid being subject to the obligation to file campaign finance statements with the FEC). He chose Winona LaDuke as his vice-presidential candidate. A convention was held at UCLA in Los Angeles on August 20, 1996 where Nader accepted the nomination.

Political policy always happens from the "grassroots" on up, but political party politics always happens from the top down, so the Green Party ran a candidate for President for the next 20 years. Below is how the party did in all of their Presidential elections.

1996- Ralph Nader (Green Party)

Ballot access 22 States /Votes 685,297

2000- Ralph Nader (Green Party)

Ballot access 43 States /Votes 2,882,995

There was a split in the Green Party between Nader and Cobb

That split lasted until Jill Stein was nominated in 2012. This is why the voter registration had to be built back up.

2004- David Cobb (Green Party)

Ballot access 43 States /Votes 119,859

2008- Cynthia McKinney (Green Party)

Ballot access 43 States /Votes 161,603

2012- Jill Stein (Green Party)

Ballot access 43 States /Votes 469,501

2016- Jill Stein (Green Party)

Ballot access 48 States /Projected Votes 23,000,000 /Goal 50,000,000