Ending racism, sexism and classism

Green Party of California Proposal (July 1, 2006)

Ending Racism, Sexism And Classism In The Green Party By 2010

SPONSOR: GREEN ISSUES WORKING GROUP

PRESENTER/CONTACT: S.KCM Curry, kcmcurry43@yahoo.com, info@green247.org

SUBJECT: Ending racism, sexism and classism in the Green Party of California by the year 2010. Grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, feminism and gender equity, respect for diversity, and personal and global responsibility are the involved Key Values of the GP.

BACKGROUND: When the General Assembly consents to an agenda, that means it wants to consider every item on the agenda. There is no provision in the bylaws for a white man preempting a presentation by a woman of color. There is no section in the bylaws on buying time to extend his consensus process, so that her consensus process must be cut short.
There is no bylaw that permits the Coordinating Committee to greenwash an agenda by sprinkling female and minority presenters among the white male presenters, then coercing the women and minorities off of the agenda. There is no bylaw that permits the Coordinating Committee to coerce the women, disabled and minorities from being placed on the agenda because their proposal does not meet their Eurocentric expectations.
There is, however, a bylaw that the spirit of the plenary is women and minorities first on the "stack" of presenters bringing proposals to the General Assembly.

PURPOSE: The General Assembly is an equal opportunity meeting. Since the past dozen or more plenaries have been dominated by leisure-class white men, an equal number of future plenaries will be dominated by each and every minority, gender and class, until the General Assembly has experienced a wide range of the cultures present in the Green Party of California.

PROPOSAL: 7 SEPARATE PROPOSALS FOLLOW (placed together in the agenda package to save time and resources) The General Assembly may engage in an instant runoff vote among the following 7 proposals to determine which will be presented for consensus decision, later in the same plenary. The GPCA shall practice the following way to end racism, sexism and classism in the Green Party of California by the year 2010.

A. For the instant and next dozen plenaries, the Agenda Committee shall place, in the following order, on the agenda all proposals authored or presented by:
1. minority disabled veteran women;
2. disabled female or minority veterans, and women of color;
3. disabled, elderly, working-class, veteran or transgender minorities or women;
4. disabled veterans, elderly or transgender, and women and minorities;
5. disabled, elderly, veteran, transgender or working-class white men;
6. leisure-class white men.

B. For the next dozen plenaries, the Agenda Committee shall place on the agenda registered Greens in order according to how many points they have. That means, registered Greens with the most points first; and, registered Greens with the fewest points last.
One point is assigned to each presenter/author for each of the following traits:
disabled, elderly, veteran, working-class, transgender, women, racial minority.

C. The Green Party of California shall permit the host local to influence the order of presenters so that a plenary is an experience of the local culture.

D. The Green Party of California shall assist leisure-class white men in conducting their own negotiation, mediation, conflict-resolution, non-violent communication, and violence de-escalation processes. Meanwhile, the rest of the Agenda Committee and the Coordinating Committee shall use these processes to wrangle out an agenda that appeases all personalities not just bully personalities.

E. The Agenda Committee shall place ten items on each agenda for the instant and next dozen years. Each item will foster one of the Ten Key Values, and will move the Green Party of California in that direction. Each item will be presented by a recognized authority in that field.

F. The Coordinating Committee shall bring together appropriate volunteers and paid staff to develop proposals. Funding in the form of stipends and salaries shall be allocated in the same order as in A or B above.

G. The Green Party of California shall fund a judiciary (professional mediators) budget for outreach to the disenfranchised and bullies alike to inform them of how to greenly approach the General Assembly.

COMMITTEE DECISION: The gist of this proposal was discussed and sponsored during the Green Issues Working Group Meeting at the Ventura Plenary of June 2006. Several items were brainstormed through caucus and local discussions and from an older version. TIMELINE: The winning proposal shall be implemented immediately following that General Assembly for practice starting at the following General Assembly.

RESOURCES: A. operating expenses are in the SC/WG budget proposal; B. operating expenses are in the SC/WG budget proposal; C. $1,500 grants are in the CC budget proposal; D. $200/hour for each mediator; E. $200/hour for each speaker/presenter; F. $7,000 for paid staff organization development specialist, $300/year to each volunteer; G. $200/hour for each mediator.