State Green Party to Meet in Westwood

Four Public Workshops Feature Santa Monicans

   The first Green Party state meeting since Greens received official recognition as a national party from the Federal Elections Commission will take place on the UCLA campus January 18-20.
   A Saturday evening candidate’s forum will introduce the Green Party’s full slate of statewide candidates, including Peter Camejo for Governor and Donna Warren for Lieutenant Governor. Antonio Gonzales, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, will be the featured speaker.
   Business items that will be discussed at the meeting include the party platform and a proposed letter supporting the reelection bid of Barbara Lee, the lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted against the resolution allowing the use of military force after the September 11 attacks.
   During the weekend, the Green Party of Los Angeles County will present four workshops of interest to the general public:
   Amend Three Strikes: Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes (FACTS) will hold a workshop at UCLA’s Haines Hall from 9:50 to 10:45 a.m. FACTS is dedicated to amending the California Three Strikes Law so that it applies only to violent felonies. Nearly 75 percent of second-strike and 50 percent of third-strike imprisonments are for non-violent offenses – resulting in inequalities such as a 27-year sentence for stealing a tire.
   The Grassroots organization, whose members have lost families and friends in the drug wars, will detail how Three-Strikes brutalizes poor people, especially people of color, costs Californians billions every year, and benefits no one but the prison-industrial complex.
   Living Wage: National and local living wage advocates will present a workshop on economic justice, following the FACTS workshop, from 10:45 to noon in Haines Hall. Nationally known living wage expert, Madeline Janis-Aparicio of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and members of Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART) will discuss the successful campaigns for living wage ordinances in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Santa Monica Mayor pro tem Kevin McKeown, a green party leader, will participate in the workshop.
   Renters’ Rights: Tenant organizers from Santa Monica and Los Angeles will participate in a Renters’ Rights workshop on Sunday, January 20 from 10:45 a.m. to 12 noon in Haines Hall.
   Former Santa Monica Mayor Dennis Zane and renter activist Nancy Greenstein will be featured speakers. Zane and Greenstein co-chair Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR), which was created 23 years ago to pass Santa Monica’s historic 1979 rent control charter amendment. Amy Schur of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) will also participate.
   Kinetic Consensus (Theater of the Oppressed): On Sunday, January 20, from 1 to 3 p.m., the Green Party will “explore the playful, intuitive side of issues and organizing” with a workshop using “theater of the oppressed” techniques at UCLA’s Kerckhoff Hall Grand Salon.
   Green Party policy is to reach decisions whenever possible by consensus. Instead of verbal debate, party issues and concerns will be acted out in a “participatory drama where meanings [take] motion and debate [turns] to dance.”
   Local “theater of the oppressed” practitioner, Zoey Zimmerman, a fulltime faculty member at Crossroads school, and an activist, actor writer and director, will lead the workshop.
   Participants are invited to dress casually and comfortably.
   The Green Party has over 140,000 registered voters in California, and “stands for the basic values of social justice, grassroots democracy, non-violence and ecological wisdom.” Suggested donation for all workshops is $10. For more information about the state meeting or the workshops, call (310) 449-1882, or visit www.cagreens.org.