GREEN PARTY
The Green Party blossomed as an outgrowth of the environmental and conservation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1970, Charles Reich
published The Greening of America, a popular
extended essay that effectively inserted environ-
mentalism into politics. Reich, along with anar-
chist Murray Bookchin, helped inspire a
worldwide environmental movement. Through-
out the 1970s and 1980s, environmental
activists, calling themselves Greens, began to
work within the political system to advance
environmental causes around the globe.
The Green party first achieved electoral suc-
cess in Germany in the early 1980s. German
Green party candidates were elected to public
office on platforms that stressed four basic val-
ues: ecology, social justice, grassroots democ-
racy, and nonviolence. In the mid-1990s, the
Green party was established in over 50 coun-
tries, and Green party politicians held seats in
approximately nine European parliaments.
In the United States, Greens originally were
reluctant to move into electoral politics.
Throughout the 1970s and most of the 1980s,
they teamed with military and NUCLEAR POWER
protesters to promote their agendas from out-
side the formal political system. In 1984, the
Greens began to discuss the organization of a
political party and, in 1985, the organization
fielded its first candidates for elective office in
North Carolina and Connecticut. The U.S.
Greens became known as the Association of
State Green Parties.
In 1996, in response to the need for a
national Green presence, the organization’s
name changed to the Green party of the United
States. The U.S. Green party also expanded the
European platform to forge its own identity.
According to its Website, the party offers a
proactive approach to government based on ten
key values: ecological wisdom; grassroots
democracy; social justice and equal opportu-
nity; nonviolence; decentralization; small-scale,
community-based economics and economic
justice; feminism and gender EQUITY; respect
for diversity; personal and global responsibility;
and future focus and sustainability. Each state
and local chapter of the party adapts these goals
to fit its needs.
The Green party of the United States also
extended its reach in the 1990s and into the
2000s. In 1996, the party fielded candidates in 17
states and in the District of Columbia. It
increased its national profile the same year by
nominating RALPH NADER as its candidate for
president. Nader accepted the nomination, but
stipulated that he would not become a member
