The Green Party of Minnesota is a

green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

. It is affiliated with the

Green Party of the United States The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) is a federation of Green party, Green state political parties in the United States. The party promotes green politics, specifically environmentalism; nonviolence; social justice; participatory democra ...

History

The Minnesota Greens Confederation, founded 1990–91, fostered the development of local Green Party organizations in the state. The Green Party of Minnesota was organized in December 1993. It was officially established in February and June 1994 at two founding conventions. Twin Cities Greens was organized in 1988. The Green Party of St. Paul was established in 1997 to 1998. The Green Party of Minnesota was founded in 1994 on the Four Pillars of the Green Party: Ecological Wisdom, Social and Economic Justice, Grassroots Democracy, and Nonviolence and Peace. In the 2000 Presidential Election, Green Party presidential nominee

Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the Un ...

and vice presidential nominee

Winona LaDuke Winona LaDuke (born August 18, 1959) is an American economist, environmentalist, writer and industrial hemp grower, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for Vice ...

received 5% of the vote in Minnesota, which earned major party status for the Green Party in Minnesota. But in the election of 2004, neither Green Party presidential nominee David Cobb nor any candidate for statewide office received 5% or more, thus losing major party status in the state. In 2003

Elaine Fleming Elaine Fleming is a former mayor of Cass Lake, Minnesota, a position to which she was elected in 2003. Cass Lake—officially a city, but with a population under 1000—is located within the reservation boundaries of the Leech Lake Band of ...

became the first elected Green mayor in Minnesota. Fleming is mayor of

Cass Lake, Minnesota Cass Lake is a city in Cass County, Minnesota, United States, located within the boundaries of the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. It is surrounded by Pike Bay Township. Cass Lake had a population of 675 in the 2020 census. It is notable as t ...

, and was elected mayor for her first term by seven votes. Fleming was elected mayor for a second term as a write-in candidate. As of 2006, Fleming was serving her second and last term as Mayor. While the party is currently defined as a minor political party, it has had recent success in some city elections, especially in Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2005,

Cam Gordon Cameron A. Gordon (born 1955) is an American politician who was a Green Party of the United States, Green Party member of the Minneapolis City Council from 2006 to 2022. He was a co-founder of the Green Party of Minnesota and was called "the mos ...

, a former chair of the Green Party of Minnesota, was elected in Ward 2 to the

Minneapolis City Council The Minneapolis City Council is the lawmaking body of Minneapolis. It consists of 13 members, elected from separate wards to four-year terms, via a ranked-choice method. The council structure has been in place since the 1950s. In recent elections ...

, winning over DFLer Cara Letofsky in a 51% to 48% vote. Ward 2 is considered one of the most diverse areas of Minneapolis, representing the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

Minneapolis Campus and the

Cedar-Riverside Cedar-Riverside, also referred to as the West Bank, or simply Riverside, is a neighborhood within Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its boundaries are the Mississippi River to the north and east, Interstate 94 to the south, and Hiawatha Avenue and Interst ...

and Seward neighborhoods. Despite this gain on the council, two Green incumbents on the council, Natalie Johnson Lee (Ward 6) and Dean Zimmermann (Ward 7), were unseated during the 2005 election. Redistricting had pitted both against other council incumbents. While initially elected as a Democrat in 1986 to the Minneapolis Park Board,

Annie Young Annie Young (died January 22, 2018, age 75) was an American politician and member of the Green Party of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was an elected at-large member of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Young ran for Minnesota ...

ran as a Green from her third term on, becoming one of the longest serving Park Board Commissioners in Minneapolis history. In 2009 Cam Gordon was re-elected to Minneapolis City Council. In 2011 Green Party endorsed Laura Libby was elected to the Section 1 seat of the City Council of

Crystal, Minnesota Crystal is a first-ring suburban city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States that is about 5 miles from Downtown Minneapolis. The population was 22,151 at the 2010 census. Minnesota State Highway 100 and County Road 81 are two of the mai ...

. Cam Gordon was elected to a third term on the Minneapolis City Council in 2013. In 2014 the Green Party of Minnesota ran former DFL State Representative

Andy Dawkins Andrew J. Dawkins (born July 29, 1950) is an American politician and attorney from Minnesota. Dawkins is a former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from Saint Paul, Minnesota, Saint Paul. Running as a Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Lab ...

for Attorney General receiving 1.49% of the vote statewide and regaining minor party status. Despite restrictive Minnesota ballot access laws, volunteers collected three times the required signatures to place Green endorsed presidential candidate Dr

Jill Stein Jill Ellen Stein (born May 14, 1950) is an American physician, activist, and former political candidate. She was the Green Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 and 2016 elections and the Green-Rainbow Party's candidat ...

on the ballot in 2016. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon refused to replace the ballot petitions stand-in Vice Presidential candidate Howie Hawkins with Ajamu Baraka, the only candidate of color in the race, despite no law denying his ability to do so. Dr Jill Stein went on to receive 1.26% of the vote statewide – double the Green Presidential vote from 2012 – and again securing minor party status for the Green Party of Minnesota until 2020. Three additional Greens were elected in 2016, including the first elected Green in Ramsey County history – Lena Buggs winning a seat on the Ramsey County Soil & Water District Board unseating the incumbent. In Anoka County, Greens Sharon Lemay and Steve Laitinen were both elected to the Anoka County Soil and Water District Board as well.

Current elected officials

City councils *

, Minneapolis City Council, Ward 2 (2006-2022) *Bryce Lange, Lewiston City Council, At-Large Boards and commissions

Ideology

The Green Party of Minnesota follows the ideals of

green politics Green politics, or ecopolitics, is a political ideology that aims to foster an ecologically sustainable society often, but not always, rooted in environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice and grassroots democracy. Wall 2010. p. 12-13. It b ...

, which are based on the Four Pillars of the Green Party:

Ecological wisdom Ecosophy or ecophilosophy (a portmanteau of ecological philosophy) is a philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium. The term was coined by the French post-structuralist philosopher and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari and the Norwegian father ...

Social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fu ...

Grassroots democracy Grassroots democracy is a tendency towards designing political processes that shift as much decision-making authority as practical to the organization's lowest geographic or social level of organization. Grassroots organizations can have a var ...

and

Nonviolence Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...

. The "Ten Key Values," which expand upon the four pillars, are as follows: #

Decentralization Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

Community-based economics Community-based economics or community economics is an economic system that encourages local substitution. It is similar to the lifeways of those practicing voluntary simplicity, including traditional Mennonite, Amish, and modern eco-village commu ...

Women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

# Respect for diversity # Global responsibility # Future focus The Green Party of Minnesota constitution Article XI Section 2 prohibits donations from corporations or political action committees (PACs). The party's platforms and rhetoric harshly criticize any corporate influence and control over government, media, and society at large.

Leadership

The party is led by a 17-member coordinating committee which sets the party's long-range goals, budget, and strategy. These decisions are then implemented by an executive committee made of five party co-chairs, each of whom is responsible for one of five portfolios of party business (membership, political affairs, finances, communications, and internal organization). Each portfolio co-chair oversees a number of committees and party functions. While the coordinating and executive committees handle day-to-day operations of the state party, most organizing, activism, and decision-making is decentralized into a number of autonomous local party organizations (or "seedlings") located throughout the state.

GPMN Coordination Committee

*Trahern Crews – Chair *Darnella Wade *Carol Mellom *Joshua Scheunemann *John Matheson *Gary Blatz

References

External links

* {{Green Party of the United States 1994 establishments in Minnesota Political parties in Minnesota

State and local socialist parties in the United States