Report from the G/GPUSA Negotiating Committee.

• Author: Whitney, Richard J.
• Position: Green Party

At the Green Congress, May 28, 2000, we were elected as the new negotiating team charged with attempting to negotiate a proposed agreement to create a unified national Green Party, in accordance with the "Proposal for Genuine Unity"--which stated that "genuine unity should be based on the Negotiating Committee of the G/GPUSA advocating" the points described therein.

Our Team had several planning meetings via conference call, during August and September and met in person the evening of September 30, the day before our negotiations with the ASGP team began in Boston on Sunday, October 1.

We reviewed our guidelines for the negotiations, our "Points of Genuine Unity" and we reviewed the "Feinstein Plan for a Single National Green Party," the document that the ASGP CC approved earlier this year.

Planning the Meeting:

Letters between our two groups were exchanged during August and September. (attachment) In those communications, we agreed to meet all day Sunday, October 1 and all day Monday, October 2. Later, after finding out that there would be a big Nader rally in Boston on Sunday afternoon on October 1, we suggested to the ASGP that we meet in the morning and the evening on October 1st, with a break in the afternoon to attend and/or work the rally. Later the ASGP told us they didn't want to meet Sunday night--so we didn't.

During September, Starlene Rankin and Greg Gerritt interviewed two mediators, Gabrielle Gropman and Michael Moffitt from Harvard Law School, and recommended to our two teams to hire them-which we did.

Gabrielle is the administrator of the Harvard Mediation Program and has a background in mediation. Michael is a Mediation Prof and does mediations with other groups. Both Gabrielle and Michael were paid $500 each for the two days of work. We paid $500 and ASGP paid $500. We felt the mediators did an excellent job and they wrote to us after the meetings to tell us that it was a positive experience for them too.

The Meeting:

The mediators suggested their own agenda and used their own process and exercises to identify conflict areas and possible solutions. The ASGP team never did a point-by-point critique of the Points of Genuine Unity and we never did a point-by-point critique of the Feinstein plan but the areas of conflict were sufficiently identified and we put together a compromise by breaking down into working groups to attack them.

The Proposal:

By their very nature, negotiations that attempt to settle differences, if they are to succeed, presuppose that there will be some compromising on the part of both of the parties doing the negotiating. The Joint Proposal that emerged from this meeting reflects that. There was give-and-take from both sides and the Joint Proposal, to put it crudely, is a product that reveals the most "give" that we were going to get from ASGP and the most "give" that they were going to get out of us. From our perspective, it could have been better and it could have been worse. What must be kept in mind is that their negotiators are probably saying the same thing.

We did not address any "merger," per se. The negotiators recognized that ASGP filing for National Committee status is a certainty and will likely happen soon, that there exist two major national Green organizations that claim the mantle of being a Green "party," that most Greens nationally want a unified national...