Joint Proposal of Negotiating Committees of the Association of State Green Parties and the Greens/Green Party USA.

• Position: Brief Article

The Negotiating Committees of the Association of State Green Parties and the Greens/Green Party USA, meeting on October 1-2, 2000, have agreed unanimously to recommend to their respective organizations the following proposal for the creation of a new national Green Party, to be called "Green Party of the United States," and a National Committee of the Green Party, which will apply to the Federal Election Commission for official recognition as a national political party.

1. The Greens/Green Party USA may continue as an independent organization but will cease functioning as a political party and will adopt a new name that will omit the word, "party." It will relinquish the domain name, "www.greenparty.org" to the new party.

2. The Green Party shall leave the question of state dues entirely to the state parties and shall neither encourage state parties to collect dues nor discourage state parties from collecting dues.

3. The new Green Party shall have a paid "sustaining members" category of membership and shall encourage members of all state parties to become sustaining members of the national organization.

4. State parties in the new Green Party shall have written democratic by-laws and at least one convention a year (whether it be a general membership assembly or a delegate assembly elected by locals and members-at-large).

5. State Green Parties shall make a good faith effort, where reasonable, to have delegates to the National Committee elected by clusters of local groups. The basis of representation to the National Committee shall be one person, one vote, and in the United States, Congressional Districts are a reasonable approximation of equal population areas. Local groups within a Congressional District or Districts shall come together for the purpose of electing delegates. (Statement of intent: The exact number of delegates and the size of the areas to be used for selecting these delegates is currently under study and will be determined by the ASGP.)

6. Representation to the National Committee shall be based on the principle of one delegate per specified number of Congressional Districts, provided that there is a requisite level of Green Party activity, electoral and/or non-electoral, being conducted in those Congressional Districts.

7. The Accreditation Criteria of the Green Party National Committee shall include the following in addition to the criteria currently used by the ASGP:

   1. Evidence of commitment to, and good faith efforts to...