Update on Tuscon

As stated in my previous posts, I will be providing accounts of each days’ activities at the Green Party National Committee Meeting in Tuscon, along with photos, upon my return to Utah in a few days.

Yesterday the California Delegation was instrumental in getting time on the agenda to allow both the unaffiliated Utah Green group and the affiliated Desert Greens delegation to “present their side” of the Utah situation.

The unaffiliated group spoke first, via their spokesperson (Jeff Beardall) who was not even known, let alone participating, in the Utah party until after the split when his services were secured to represent their group. Mr. Beardall presented a myriad of erroneous facts, coupled with contradictions to statements he made at last year’s National Meeting – all of which is on videotape.

The affiliated Desert Greens spokesperson, Tom King, provided some history of what happened in Utah to refute the myths that Mr. Beardall was portraying as truth.

After a comment period to hear from other delegates on the issue, it was left with a proposal that California will have to present into the appropriate format that an independent investigation via an “impartial” committee be conducted, which the Desert Greens fully supports. We have reservations, however, about the committee being truly “fair and impartial” and hope that the process will insure that. We feel that California is not being impartial by virtue of the fact that they and the unaffiliated Utah group produced a document and distributed it at the NC meeting filled with fallacies about the situation, without allowing for any other information from the affiliated group. If these folks really and truly wanted an impartial view, why did they do this? And why did they choose the national meeting and plenary time to put delegates on the spot to try to make an informed decision about the situation without time to fully examine ALL the facts? In my opinion, that is NOT a display of fairness and impartiality.

Finally, the Steering Committee Elections were held yesterday, in which Tom King was a candidate. He ran to help with the election process and also because our party supported him running for such an office, being supported as a vital addition to that committee. We have informally learned the results of the election, which will be announced in plenary today (I’ll publish the results then), but I have this to say: The unaffiliated group disrespectfully worked themselves around the plenary room all day yesterday, even during when speakers were talking, lobbying hard to get folks to be swayed to their position. We are fairly certain that they were telling delegates to not vote for Tom. We think this, although do not have hard evidence, due to the fact that some delegates told us that they wanted to vote for Tom but couldn’t because they were dictated by their states to not vote for him – state delegations which had just the day before indicated they would support him in the SC election, even after informally hearing both sides of the Utah situation.

Understand that we did not initiate or engage in any lobbying efforts to get people to be “on our side”. Instead, we waited for those astute enough to come to us and ask for our story, which we then provided.

Fair and impartial? I don’t think so.

The Desert Greens is in the process of producing a document with all supporting papers and other materials about the Utah situation and The document has been produced for individuals in the past who had the sense enough to find out for themselves what really happened. Since there are additions to the document, it will be announced when it’s revision is complete and available. We plan to make it available to each state party affiliated with the GPUS.