2005 Green-Rainbow Party State Convention Workshops

Addressing Race and Class Bias in the Party

Workshop Leaders:  Jennifer Yanco and Damon Harrison

This workshop will employ hands-on activities, multi-media, and small and large group discussion. We will look at structures of white privilege (race and class) in US society and its institutions and the implications for our party and its potential for success.

Does the Right to Vote Matter?

Workshop Leader:  Grace Ross

If our elected officials know they cannot be voted out of office, then they become untouchable in their capacity as elected representatives (we may still be able to impact them morally or economically).

Given the slow perfecting of voting suppression techniques and election reform, we may already be approaching this reality.

On the other hand, David Cobb used his ballot presence in Ohio to fight to expose the voting rights violations there and ally himself and the National Green Party publically with those traditionally most disenfranchised - people of color, low income and younger voters.

This visibility has opened the door especially with certain activists and leaders of color to the importance of a third party - especially one significantly lead by people of color. How do we continue this struggle and can we become the third party for all of these constituencies?

Peace Movement Paralysis: The Failure of the American Peace Movement

The American peace movement, which mobilized hundreds of thousands of Americans in the run-up to the Second Iraq War, has been since largely quiescent since then. Groups that worked together before the start of the war are now at odds. Many activist leaders are now openly saying that we are now obliged to stay in Iraq until the situation is normalized or that we should only support those in the Iraqi resistance who are certifiably "democratic" or "progressive". The city of Fallujah was utterly and brutally destroyed in a manner not unlike Dresden or Jenin and yet nary a word of protest was uttered by peace activists. What happened to the enormous energy that was generated in 2002-2003?

The format of this workshop will be open and lively discussion of these issues and will include a brainstorming session to identify causes and solutions. We hope the discussion and brainstorming will produce some effective recommendations for the direction GRP antiwar work should be taking. We will publish to the GRP website and the GRP newsletter the results of our discussion. The workshop will provide several handouts for attendees, comprising copies of original, progressive analysis of the current peace movement paralysis.

Rights-Based Organizing: Establishing Democracy in Massachusetts

Workshop leader: Adam Sacks

Rights-based organizing is a new approach to challenging the established law and precedent that destroys democracy, people and planet. Rather than continue to fight on a thousand different fronts such as pollution, housing, labor, peace -- which divide and weaken our collective efforts -- we can confront the oligarchy on powerful and unifying basic human and constitutional rights, using single issues as levers.

Learn about the principles of rights-based organizing, and the remarkable ways over the past seven years that it has protected communities in Pennsylvania threatened with factory farms and toxic sludge. Discuss how we might build on those experiences to turn our Massachusetts corporatocracy upside-down and establish a people's democracy (finally) in the Commonwealth.

Workshop leader Adam Sacks is a member of the GRP and director of the Center for Democracy and the Constitution in Lexington, whose mission is to build rights-based organizing in Massachusetts.