State Green Party Holds Assembly at UCLA

Kevin McKeown
Special to the Mirror

   Elected officials, delegates and members representing the over 140,000 registered Greens in California convened on the UCLA campus in Westwood on January 19 and 20.
   Celebrating the party’s tenth anniversary statewide meeting and its first full slate of candidates for state office, Greens dined on a vegan buffet in Kerckhoff Hall’s Grand Salon and heard from Peter Camejo, Green candidate for Governor.
   “Gray Davis wasted your money with bad timing worthy of the Guinness Book of Records,” said Camejo an investment fund manager, pointing to a graph of how natural gas prices spiked at the very moment the current governor signed long-term contracts. “No corporate CEO could make a deal like this and expect to keep his job.”
   Running with Camejo for Lieutenant Governor is Los Angeles native Donna Warren of the South Central Greens. A former Defense Department and Metropolitan Transit Authority auditor, Warren pledged to campaign for amending California’s Three Strikes law, because “this abhorrent policy disproportionately imprisons people of color for non-violent crimes.”
   Other candidates endorsed by the Green Party at the gathering include certified public accountant Jeanne Marie Rosenmeier for Treasurer, former Oakland Rent Arbitration Board member Larry Shoup for Secretary of State, Santa Barbara Public Defender Glen Mowrer for Attorney General, and bank executive David Sheidlower for Insurance Commissioner.
   The State Controller’s race in the March 7 Green primary is contested so the assembly delayed an endorsement until after the primary vote. But candidate Laura Wells, an Alameda County financial systems analyst, attended the assembly to campaign for support. “The basic job of the Controller is to follow the money and report to the boss, and I know that the public is the boss,” she told Hendees.
   In other business, the plenary approved a new education plank for the Green Party state platform and reapportioned decade-old regional boundaries for more equitable representation among districts.
   Santa Monica issues of renters’ rights and the living wage were spotlighted at workshops that featured local non-Green activists. Santa Monica resident Vivian Rothstein told Greens interested in starting local living wage movements, “Build coalitions within your communities.” Longtime Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights leader Nancy Greenstein encouraged Green tenant activists, “Don’t underestimate your power.”
   The next Green Party state meeting will be in Fresno the weekend of May 4 and 5.
   Ed. Note: McKeown is Mayor Pro Tem of Santa Monica and a Green Party member.