Mission Statement
The Green Party of South Puget Sound is dedicated to promoting grassroots democracy at our local level. We demonstrate what a real party, dedicated to the common good, looks like. It won't look much like either the Democratic or the Republican party. While those parties will pay lip service to peace, environmental values and the community good, their platform won't challenge the status quo.
And our commitment to a community-based economy is unique among American parties. We believe people should produce what they need out of local resources if possible, keeping the benefits (in products and profits) right there in the community. The two major parties think the bigger a corporation is, the better for the US; strong corporations equal a strong America. Their biggest wish is corporations big enough to straddle the nation and extend into other nations. We think those large corporations simply suck the life's blood out of communities where they put their tentacles.
Our platform shows what we think "the common good" is, right here in the Olympia, Lacey, and Tumwater area. Check it out!
We conduct ongoing community education in the form of events and displays (public presentations, testimony, drama, even civil disobedience) to make our concept of the common good real and tangible.
We also try to elect candidates who stand for those values and would act on them if elected. Our candidates give form and substance to the platform we have constructed.
We have a lot on our plate. Third parties must struggle for recognition in a two-party system, so running a candidate is not as simple as for the D's or the R's. We constantly juggle our ongoing projects (the Community Rights Ordinance, CopWatch, support for the Climate Crisis group) with ongoing community education about our values.
If you think you might like to help with this project of grassroots democracy, please get in touch with us at 360-232-6165.
Scheduled Meetings
Our Annual Meeting will generally be held in May. If the weather is nice it is a picnic at Bigelow Park; otherwise . . . TBA.
At Annual Meetings we decide who if anyone to endorse; approve bylaws changes; and decide other matters of interest to the entire membership.
Monthly meetings are held on the first Thursday of the month, at the Eagles Club (social room), at 7:00 PM. These are working meetings to plan for the next few months. We expect our Chair, Treasurer, Secretary and Directors to attend, but other members are of course welcome as well.
Highlights
Highlights of 2015
In February we had a presentation on the history & legality of the CIA in February, followed by Q and A. It featured Steve Niva from Evergreen State College and David Price from St Martins University. It was enjoyed by about 40 people at Traditions Fair Trade Café.
From July 2013 through summer 2015, we led a group planning for a local CRO (Community Rights Ordinance) for Olympia, or possibly for Thurston County (depending on the subject). Several draft ordinances have been written: on GMO foods, on the health of the waters of the Sound, on coal and oil trains running through the County, on citizen control of zoning and other topics. (Go to http://communityrightssouthsound.org/ to see the drafts.) For each topic, a group appears that seems to want that ordinance very much, but vanishes during the next few months; so the draft ordinances remain just drafts and we are no longer meeting. We are ready to move if and when the community wants to go forward.
We joined forces this year with Olympia’s CopWatch (Terren Zander) in efforts to establish a Citizens Review Board for Olympia’s police force (and possibly Lacey’s and Tumwater’s as well). Every Thursday from 4 to 5 one of us occupies a table at Traditions Café and listens to stories from any citizen who wants to tell us about their interactions with the police. We are building a database of such stories and we hope it will help us establish the Review Board.
We would have welcomed the chance to conduct an electoral campaign for a good candidate. We held informal interviews with Port Commissioner candidates in Bigelow Park in June, and later on with George Barner for the same office. None wanted to run as a Green. (The Port is a key facility for displaying our values: will we allow military shipments (no), will we allow fracking supplies? (trying to say no!) We need a Commissioner who will carry out the people's wishes!)
We also held an interview in Bigelow Park with Marco Rubio, a radical populist candidate for City Council. In October, we held a forum for all the City Council candidates, partly to showcase Marco’s difference from the others, and partly to learn how council member candidates would solve land use questions (a key responsibility for City Council members). After the forum, Marco’s followers asked several questions designed to bring out his radical proposals.
Videos
Our latest video is How To Get the Congress You Want, found here. We also produced Electoral Reform (How To Get the President You Want), here.
Highlights from 2014
We are always looking for opportunities to educate about the problems with our voting system, which falls far short of real democracy. We participated in the Earth Day to May Day celebration in 2014 by hosting an event on Why We Can't Have the Congress We Want.
In the fall we held a Third Party Forum, a panel with representatives of the Green Party (Tom Nogler), the Socialist Party, the Libertarian Party, and finally an Anarchist who represented, not a party, but a vast array of young people who are disillusioned with parties and politics.
Highlights From 2013
Our first quarterly public forum was a Skype conference with Charles Komanoff, director of the Carbon Tax Institute in Washington, DC. In July we launched the CRO project. Work continued on a presentation to City Council asking for more accountability for the police force. However, monthly meetings were suspended in September due to low participation.
Highlights From 2012
Working to Get A Great Candidate On the Ballot
We worked our tails off to get the required signatures, and scheduling appearances, so Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala could be on the ballot representing the Green Party. They got only 0.3% of votes but many more people knew of them and understood that their programs were more in line with their wishes than those of the two major candidates. Maybe in 2013 we can start to expand people's awareness of better electoral systems.
Thurston Public Power Initiative
This community-wide initiative was in perfect consonance with our values. Community-owned power returns "profits" to the community in lower rates or improved infrastructure, rather than siphoning it to foreign owners and investors. Local management does a better job than centralized management based at a distance from our community, and hires more local workers. An elected board is more responsive to citizen wishes, such as the wish for a larger percentage of clean energy sources.
We invested major amounts of time in this effort even though it was not something the Green Party could lead (it absorbed the efforts of large sectors of the community). We collected signatures, held rallies, walked the streets handing out leaflets, and kept each other encouraged. We got 40% in the election, meaning we only need 11% more, so we anticipate be starting in again in the next year or two.
A Constitutional Amendment Against Corporate Personhood
We worked equally hard on this effort which was led by Move To Amend, and was joined by the remnants of our local Occupation. Our City Council did pass a Resolution in October which, while imperfect, will help the nationwide effort.
We held a Police Accountability Day with a candlelight vigil, during which we walked from the site of one fatality or loss after another in downtown Olympia and read descriptions of what happened at each site.
Finally, a PSA ran most of the year on Thurston Community TV concerning Scott Yoos, our friend who faced brutal disregard for his disability and was tried on a bogus charge of attacking the police.
Highlights of 2011
In April of 2011, in cooperation with Media Island, we sponsored a panel discussion of Libya's history and the reasons for the U.S. invasion. We will have more of such events as needed. We wanted the presentation on Libya because we saw a lack of information on that topic, and were able to find speakers to fill us in.
In the fall we worked with Occupy Olympia to pass on the insights we got in 2010 (see below) and to help them identify some way they could engage in the political life of our community. However, they remained a-political like so many other occupations. We helped out with food and laundry.
Also in 2011, we tried a new website with information on candidates for City Council and the Olympia Board of Education, hoping to have information from various sources collected in one spot for easy reference. That site was too vulnerable to hacking and was discontinued; now this current site is being developed for the same purpose. "Wikivoter" will be the name of a forum on the main menu. This site cannot be hacked.
We sponsored Moving Planet Day on September 24, 2011, in cooperation with Transition Olympia-Climate Action; this was a demonstration that life works, and works better, without cars. We hope to be annual sponsors of this event, but we skipped 2012 since other initiatives were so all-absorbing.
Highlights of 2010
Our series of community events allowed community members to think deeply about various topics in the economy – see the tab for Economics Course if you want to dig into the background readings.
This year was also the last year we produced our TV show 'Green Issues Forum.' This was a highly successful program featuring interviews with local people doing things of interest to Greens. We hope to pick it up again when our numbers increase.