Trouble in Tuscon

For reference regarding the issue in this post, see my report of last year’s disruption of the Green Party convention in Tulsa here.

Sun Tzu, author of the oldest mlitary Tteatise in the world, The Art of War,states
Attack him [opponent] where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

This is the tactic employed by the other registered green party in Utah and members of the California Green Party Delegation.

As had been anticipated, 5 members of the other registered green party in Utah showed up in Tuscon Thursday. While Tom and I were in workshops, volunteering with logisitics of the convention and giving speeches, these 5 people were doing their very best to snag as many delegates as they could to lobby them to support the seating of their delegation at the convention, by telling lies about the Utah situation (fortuantely many delegates have taken it upon themselves to approach us to hear what we had to say about the innaccuracies being publicized through the lobbying and through a pamphlet full of them.)

One of the inaccuracies, for example, is being spread that the “founders” of the Utah Green Party were “kicked out”. False. The founders of the original party left after the first split in 2003 to join theo Progressive Democrats in Utah. Additionally, several members were suspended, per the gput bylaws process (records can be provided to prove this), for their part in telling the elections office that our party wanted “no candidate” on its 2004 ballot when, in fact, a majority of the party members wanted David Cobb on the ballot (even though some of them were going to vote for Nader). Again, records are available upon request with all the numbers.
Another inaccuracy is the posting of minutes which declared a decision was made at the August 22, 2005 meeting. According to the bylaws, no decision can be made without a quorum. At the time of the supposed “decision”, there was not a quorum as people had left in disgust. Yet, the people who remained justified making a decision since there had been a quorum a the beginning of the meeting, twisting the spirit of consensus to make a decision to their favor, a violation of the gput bylaws. Further, these same folks had claimed in a previous meeting, as they walked out of a meeting, that since they were leaving we had no quorum and could not make a decision.

There are many, many more faleshoods being spread and published in writing – all of which can be countered not only verbally but with written documents.

Additionally, they engaged in these disruptive activities:

– hanging of a political campaign banner of one their one candidate in the center front of the plenary room (which was apparently taken down by SC members)
– display of a table of literature and the same banner in the tabling area, which was left up during the conference
– as part of their literature, displayed a pamphlet about their grievance with the GPUS, filled with inaccuaracies and myths that Tom and I have found ourselves in a position to have to set the record straight with many other delegates new to the situation.

This group has the support of the California delegation who had planned to disrupt the roll call yesterday.

The Steering Committee had voted this week to not permit any such disruption and agreed to inform these people that the proper process had to be followed. Merely showing up at the convention unannounced, circumventing the appropriate process for filing a grievance (the accreditation’s next meeting isn’t until next month) is yet another attempt to keep the party from moving forward and to waste valuable face to face plenary time.

Not only that, as a result of last year’s disruption, both Utah parties agreed to participate in Dispute Resolution with the GPUS DR Committee. We followed through on our part of the agreement,
submitting the appropriate information to the committee on August 11, 2005. When it came time for the other group to follow through on their agreement to participate, they refused, via a letter on August 17, 2005 stating as such and that they would be filing a complaint with the GPUS.

The next step for them, if they truly wanted to be part of the national party, would be to file a grievance with the accreditation committee. The months passed with no such grievance. Until last week. Now, it’s been how many days since August 17, 2005?

Instead of adhering to the proper process, these people showed up and demanded plenary time.

At first they wanted an hour. They were pursuaded to accept 10 minutes of time in today’s late morning session. They stated that if time was not granted, they would purposely disrupt the roll call. Disappointingly, a few members of the steering committee backed down on the steering committee’s decision to not permit this to happen this year, instead allowing the compromise stated above, feaing the threat of a higher degree of disruption by the California delegation.

Because the accreditation committee does not meet until after the convention, this group just couldn’t wait and had to handle this in a highly disruptive way.

This is a purposely planned strategy to disrupt the national meeting. It is rude and disrespectful to not follow the already established process for these things.

The Desert Greens Delegation fully supports an investigation by the GPUS Accreditation Committee now that a grievance has been filed, according to the established procedural guidelines. The Desert Greens Green Party of Utah is completely prepared to participate in such an investigation and provide whatever information is necessary to help in that process.

I will be posting the status of this situation after today’s activities.

A complete summary of the 2004 Utah situation can be read at 2004.