Green Party of California

Application for Member, Delegation to Green Party of the United States
(job description)
received March 26th, 2007

Name: Henry Duke
City: Fountain Valley
County: Orange
Contact information - (714) 235-6083
henryduke2004@yahoo.com
_____________________________________________________________


I am an active member in good standing with the GP of Orange County. I was formerly elected to the county council of the same organization.

1) I have served as an activist in the GPCA GROW WG, on the National GPAX representing Alabama, and as an alternate NC delegate from Alabama.

I have coordinated outreach and many events that broadened the GPOC and green party’s appeal to Spanish speaking and immigrant labor.

I have broadened outreach in the spectrum of PDA to Direct Action folks not traditionally given to trusting electoral politics. I have consistently advocated on behalf of veterans and immigrant rights, while guarding against pandering to chauvinism or giving into erroneous ideas that the leadership or base of the green party is beyond racism, sexism, or self-criticism and improvement.

My personal and professional skills allow me to juggle many different people, ideas, and tendencies so that the outcome can be of the greatest benefit to the overall project of the ten key values.

2) My background in union, community, and campaign organizing in the United Domestic Workers, the 1980’s anti-intervention and solidarity movement, and in the apartheid divestment campaigns form my basic organizing skills and frameworks. As a doctor and movement agitator, I bring a unique perspective to some of our key values like non-violence, and working alongside and complementary to, the broader movements for social change, peace and justice.

3) My vision for being a member of the California delegation to the GPUS is to help facilitate a broader more tolerant of diverse opinions policy, thus decreasing the threshold necessary to allow people to act and endorse in our name. Key to this is degree and there must be accountability. We must be able to more timely act and get our name our so that voters will see real leadership not some extreme form of the democratic party. I feel strongly that we must deadicate more resources to leadership development, professional student organizers, and that all our leadership development needs to emphasize and subsidize people of color and womyn. This can only be accomplished if we actively and collectively take up the issues important to these oppressed groups. Ultimately we will have to more effectively handle the tension between emergent caucuses in our orgs and the need to struggle for consensus and against “winning questions” and forcing them onto a minority. I generally favor setting up more representational distributions of delegate voters so that the results of our endorsement will unify rather than divide.