Green Party Nominates Jill Stein for President
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Saturday, July 14, 2012
The Green Party holds their 2012 convention, where they nominated environmentalist Jill Stein as their presidential candidate in the first round of voting with 193.5 delegates out of a possible 292.
On Saturday morning, the delegates approved the party platform. They then proceeded to the nomination of presidential and vice presidential candidates. Jill Stein, a physician and environmental activist, began her work in the green movement from a public health perspective. She and other candidates for president will speak to the delegates before the official nomination.
Comedian and activist Rosanne Barr also ran for the nomination, coming in second, and was considered a strong possibility to run for vice president. She was scheduled to address the delegates Saturday morning, but instead a surrogate made a statement on her behalf.
On Wednesday, Dr. Stein announced that anti-poverty advocate Cheri Honkala was her choice for the second-in-command spot.
In the past, the Green Party has run candidates who had prior run for office or served as Democrats. Dr. Stein will be the first nominee to come directly from the environmental movement.
A Green party or ecologist party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of Green politics. These principles usually include social justice, reliance on grassroots democracy, nonviolence, and an emphasis on environmentalism. "Greens" believe that the exercise of these principles leads to world health. The platform of a green party can run from the centre to the far-left, however most run to the centre-left, embracing social-democratic economic policies and forming coalitions with leftists.
The name 'Green' derives from the 'Green Bans': an Australian movement of building workers who refused to build on sites of cultural and environmental significance. The first green party in Europe was the Popular Movement for the Environment, founded in 1972 in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. The first national green party in Europe was PEOPLE, founded in Britain in February 1973, which turned eventually into the Ecology Party, and then the Green Party.
The first Green Party to achieve national prominence was the German Green Party, famous for their opposition to nuclear power, as well as an expression of anti-centralist and pacifist values traditional to greens. They were founded in 1980 and have been in coalition governments at state level for some years. They were in federal government with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in a so-called Red-Green alliance from 1998 to 2005. In 2001, they reached an agreement to end reliance on nuclear power in Germany, and agreed to remain in coalition and support the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the 2001 Afghan War. This put them at odds with many Greens worldwide but demonstrated also that they were capable of difficult political tradeoffs.
In Finland, in 1995, the Finnish Green Party was the first European Green party to be part of a national Cabinet. Other Green parties that have participated in government at national level include the Groen! (formerly Agalev) and Ecolo in Belgium, Les Verts in France and the Green Party in Ireland. In the Netherlands GroenLinks ("GreenLeft") was founded in 1990 from four small left-wing parties and is now a stable faction in the Dutch parliament.
Around the world, individuals have formed many Green parties over the last thirty years. Green parties now exist in most countries with democratic systems: from Canada to Peru; from Norway to South Africa; from Ireland to Mongolia. There is Green representation at national, regional and local levels in many countries around the world.
Most of the Green parties are formed to win elections, and so organize themselves by the presented electoral or political districts. But that does not apply universally: The Green Party of Alaska is organized along bioregional lines to practice bioregional democracy.
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