Gary Swing elected as second co-chair
HATE AND LOATHING FROM THE GREEN PARTY OF COLORADO
Following is the statement I made as a candidate for Green Party of Colorado State Co-Chair at the party’s state assembly on August 12, 2017.
I agreed to stand as a candidate for state co-chair at the last minute, with the understanding that it was a rigged election that would be impossible to win.
Andrea Merida Cuellar controlled the meeting. She and her supporters refused to allow the introduction of bylaws amendments proposed by the Caucus to Restore Green Values. They also refused to allow any discussion of our proposal to adopt the Friends of the Earth’s statement of anti-oppression principles.
Andrea only allowed ninety seconds for each candidate to speak. At the end of the meeting, I was shocked to learn that I had been elected as a co-chair, alongside Andrea, who was re-elected.
This was the text of my 90-second speech:
RESTORING SANITY TO THE GREEN PARTY
Maya Angelou has said that Hate… has caused a lot of problems in the world, but it has not solved one yet.”
Nelson Mandela said: “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
I first learned about the Green Party in the summer of 1984 when I read an article that described Europe’s Green Parties as a much-needed alliance between environmental activists and peace activists. I joined the Green Committees of Correspondence in 1985. Between 1996 and 2016, I was a Green candidate six times.
In my experience, the Green Party has always been an ineffective and dysfunctional organization with too much infighting. The Green Party should be a hate-free zone.
Over the years, I have felt more and more that the Green Party has lost its way, that the values the Green Party claims to stand for are just empty words, and that the Green Party has lost sight of the big picture. I believe that what is missing from the Green Party’s message is the Green Party’s message.
I don’t want to be a co-chair of the state Green Party. The people whom I would prefer to see in that role have either been expelled from the party or they have been driven away from it through bullying, intimidation, character assassination, and authoritarianism. I am standing for co-chair to take the place of people who have been driven away. I don’t aspire to hold this office myself.
I want the Green Party to be a voice for sanity in an insane world. If the Green Party becomes the voice of maximum insanity, then why are we even here?
Subsequent Events:
Andrea and her supporters obstructed me from functioning in the role of state co-chair from the moment I was elected. I was blocked from posting or commenting on official Green Party of Colorado media before, during, and after the time that I was supposedly “state co-chair” in name only. Meanwhile, Andrea and her supporters waged a vicious defamation of character campaign against me and other people who had co-signed the complaint against Andrea Merida Cuellar, Dave Bell, and Jason Justice. My experience with Andrea Merida Cuellar and her supporters drove me into a severe long term depression.
I resigned from the post of Green Party of Colorado State Co-Chair in December, 2017 — four months after I was elected.
Andrea Merida and her supporters introduced resolutions to ban me and seven other people who had signed the “Restore Green Values” complaint from the right to participate in the Green Party of Colorado. These resolutions were passed by the GPOC online council between January 15-18, 2018.