Ed note: The following response to the 2026 version of the Green Mass Group “Is the Green Party the Imperative?” writing challenge was submitted by Gary Swing, a Green candidate for U.S. House in Arizona. Gary had previously shared his piece on the topic of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, 250 is Enough. In full honesty, I am conflicted about posting Gary’s writing challenge response because a) it does not feel like a direct response to the challenge and b) I don’t find these kinds of grievances compelling for a public conversation about the value of the Green Party. One of the biggest problems I have found in the Green Party is the ability of small numbers of disruptors to hijack the goodwill and commitment of volunteers and create suffocating internal debate, steeped in navel gazing, and incredibly off-putting to any would-be newcomers. Digging deep into grievance politics is not the kind of forward-thinking, participatory grassroots democracy that invites people in. My conclusions from my experiences like these was that certain behaviors were likely attributable to either mental health struggles or paid sabotage, and that in the end it didn’t matter all that much which was the case because the effect was the same. I was part of a group in the Green-Rainbow Party that took away the power of a few to commandeer the whole party and make it about them. This felt like a maturation event where the party moved towards health and away from dysfunction. I do believe that a truly healthy party would have sophisticated and compassionate mechanisms to go further and discern the difference between well-meaning folks finding themselves in deep disagreement, and bad faith actors trying to undermine the party.
But Gary’s thoughtfulness and care to articulate his conclusions in good faith is clear, and the heartbeat of this writing challenge is to accept all manner of responses, pro and con, to get closer to clarity on the matter. Additionally I think Gary’s young age of engagement with the early efforts of building a Green Party in the United States, together with just how long he has stuck with the project through many bumps along the way, might help the rest of us better understand the promise, potential, and purpose of the Green Party from a unique vantage point, even one who sees the Green Party as a hopeless and dangerous trainwreck. There’s much I disagree with here, and I think he could further spell out how the party or its leaders has done anything to align with hate. Cynthia McKinney’s run was controversial within the party for many different reasons, and as someone who straddled that debate and ultimately supported her as our presidential nominee, it was clear at the time that the bad faith attacks against her were more propaganda than substantive concerns. Since that time, I largely agree she has gone “off the deep end.” I would say the best antidote to hate is love, the kind of universal love that Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, and Boston’s Mel King were powerful emissaries for. Ultimately, I deeply appreciate Gary’s contribution to the conversation and his many contributions to the party. -Eli
THE GREEN PARTY SHOULD NOT BE A HATE GROUP
Gary Swing, 15 July 2026
In 2008, Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Rosa Clemente said, “The Green Party is no longer the alternative; the Green Party is the imperative.” That’s a catchy line of propaganda, but it’s simply false. It was a false assertion then, and it remains a false assertion today.
The Green Party began as a political alliance of environmentalists and peace activists that advocated nonviolence, ecology, grassroots democracy, and social justice. In practice, the Green Party of the United States failed to live up to those values.
Political parties tend to become corrupt and authoritarian.
My experience with the Green Party has primarily been in Colorado.
Colorado’s Green Party became absolutely corrupt and authoritarian. It was taken over by a totalitarian faction that operated through hate speech, character assassination, bullying, intimidation, suppression of dissent, and concentration of authority.
Five members of Colorado’s Green Party who were concerned about creeping authoritarianism, hate speech, and systematic violation of bylaws within the state Green Party compiled an extensive complaint which they submitted to the national Green Party, seeking a redress of grievances. About two dozen Green Party members co-signed the complaint. Fifteen of the Colorado Green Party members who signed this complaint were subsequently banned from participating in the state Green Party. (See http://www.restoregreenvalues.org for documentation.)
Sixteen months after this complaint was submitted to the Green Party’s national Accreditation Committee, a subcommittee consisting of all members who were on the committee at the time the complaint was filed ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. However, in the meantime, supporters of the hostile takeover of Colorado’s Green Party had packed the committee, increasing the number of committee members from 8 to 49. They blocked any action to redress the grievances of Colorado Green Party members.
A subcommittee of the eight original members issued a report. It stated:
“The GPCO/Respondents dealt with the RGV complaint by revoking the rights of participation of RGV-associated GPCO members, stating that the reason for the revocations was because they filed a grievance. This is a violation of the key value of grassroots democracy. In a democracy, many ideas and stances are entertained and considered. The substance of the complaint is immaterial to this concern. We use 10 key values to guide our work. These values may inform our platform, but they do not completely eliminate differences. The value of respecting diversity refers to respecting a diversity of ethnic and class backgrounds and experiences, as well as the ideas associated with these experiences. The members who were ousted from participation in the GPCO were recognized GP candidates, they had served the party in leadership roles, and one was voted state party co-chair by fellow members. The revocations were clearly personal attacks in retaliation to their raising the points of concern regarding bylaws violations and exclusionary practices.”
“Escalation of actions by GPCO/Respondents have resulted in alienation of a significant group of experienced and active members, exclusion of members from state meetings, abusive control of access to the state website discussion boards, concentration of state offices in a small group, manipulation of locals allowed to vote, violation of the letter and spirit of state bylaws, silencing and purging of members, and refusal to participate in conflict resolution in good faith. The manner and scale are unprecedented in the history of the GPUS, and will result in further difficulties and embarrassment for the national party.”
Eric Maisel, writing in Psychology Today, described “What You Can Expect From An Authoritarian.” The following excerpts quoted from that article typify the cabal that hijacked the Green Party of Colorado in 2017 and purged Green Party members:
“The central truth about an authoritarian is that he or she is coming from a place of hatred.”
“Because they are full of hatred, authoritarians need to punish others.”
“Authoritarians want their victims to fear them.”
“Authoritarians, who may or may not have any personal interest in abiding by rules, love rules for other people. The more quixotic and unclear the rules, the better, since quixotic, unclear rules are the least possible to follow. Such rules are inevitably broken, opening the door to punishment for the rule-breaker. For an authoritarian, the rules are there to be broken, so that punishment can follow.”
“Authoritarians, in part to explain to themselves their bottomless reservoir of hate, act as if they’re being continually threatened and endangered. They see enemies everywhere, including (and often especially) in former friends.”
“Authoritarians have little regard for the truth. If your agenda is to punish others because you are filled with hatred and anger, the truth of any particular matter is a mere inconvenience.”
“The hatred-and-punishment authoritarian agenda produces a person who takes pleasure in cruelty and who regularly shames, derides, and ridicules his current targets. To control is not enough; to win is not enough; to dominate is not enough: none of that is experienced as enough. The authoritarian wants you harmed and diminished. Since nothing feels quite as bad as shame, it is shame especially that the authoritarian wants you to feel.”
On April 22, 2018, I created a public Facebook group titled “The Green Party Should Not Be a Hate Group.” The original members were mostly people who had been banned from participating in the Green Party of Colorado in 2017 and early 2018. The totalitarian faction that hijacked the state party organization in 2017 systematically purged many long-time Green Party activists, organizers, and former candidates from the right to participate in the state party. They ultimately disaffiliated most local Green Party chapters from the state party and rewrote party bylaws to make reforming the state party practically impossible.
The new Facebook group was immediately flooded with hateful, insane messages. Ten days after I created the group, I essentially shut it down, changing the access from public to private. I removed everything except for four quotations:
“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but it has not stopped one yet.” – Maya Angelou
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love must come more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” – Nelson Mandela
And of course, Kermit the Frog: “It’s not easy being Green.”
By April 2018, it was clear to me that the Green Party of the United States was a toxic, dysfunctional organization that was beyond hope of redemption or reform.
I wasn’t one of the five authors of the 2017 grievance about authoritarianism and corruption within Colorado’s Green Party, but I was one of the people who co-signed it. I felt ambivalent about the strategy of asking the national party organization to address problems with the state party. The Green Party has always been deeply problematic.
I was involved in various Green Party and Green movement organizations off and on since 1984 or 1985, when I first joined the Green Committees of Correspondence as a high school student. In the late 1980s, I joined the Potomac Green Alliance in Washington, DC. When I transferred from American University to the University of Colorado, I was actively involved in the Campus Greens and the Boulder Green Alliance. I was a founding member of the Green Party of Colorado. The Green Party of Colorado ran its first campaign in 1994 for Phil Hufford for Governor and Krista Paradise for Lieutenant Governor. I was the campaign treasurer for that first Colorado Green Party campaign.
Between 1994 and 1997, I represented the Green Party of Colorado as the Vice Chairman of the Colorado Coalition for Fair and Open Elections, a coalition of eight alternative parties from across the political spectrum. I found sponsors for two ballot access reform bills. We successfully lobbied for their passage, haggling with legislators over the details. The first bill reduced petition signature requirements for independent candidates. That ballot access reform stood from 1995 until 2019, when “Democratic” Party legislators vastly increased petition signature requirements.
The second bill created a process for alternative parties to qualify as recognized political parties with automatic ballot access to nominate candidates by party assembly. That ballot access reform enabled the Green Party of Colorado to qualify as a recognized political party with automatic ballot access in 1998. It still retains that legal status today, although the state party organization itself was deliberately destroyed from within in 2017. It never recovered any semblance of legitimacy.
When I was involved in volunteer lobbying for ballot access reform, I often described the experience as begging to replace the windshield wipers on a car with a dead engine. We were lobbying for an essentially cosmetic improvement to a rotten political system. The engine of any political system is the voting method used to elect representatives. Winner-take-all voting in single-member districts keeps the two cartel parties deeply entrenched in power.
The Green Party is a global political movement that has had a presence in at least ninety countries around the world. The Green Party has elected members of at least thirty national parliaments due mostly to the use of proportional representation voting systems – especially party list systems of proportional representation. Each party elects members of parliament in proportion to the party’s share of the vote.
I think it’s important to note that the Green Party remains a small minority party everywhere. The first “Green” Parties formed around 1972. These included the Values Party in New Zealand, the United Tasmania Group in Australia, and the Popular Movement for the Environment in Switzerland. Fifty-four years later – in 2026 – the Green Parties with the most representation in national parliaments are in Germany and Australia. Germany’s Green Party won 13.5% of the seats in the Bundestag in 2025 with 11.6% of the party list vote.
I find Australia to be an interesting case. Australia’s election system is a hodgepodge of different things – some good and some bad. The lower house of Australia’s parliament is elected by instant runoff voting, a winner-take-all form of ranked choice voting that Green Party activists in the United States have promoted for decades. Under that system, Australia’s Green Party has only elected one out of 150 House members – 0.67% of the seats. Meanwhile, the same voter base has elected Green Party members to ten out of 76 seats in the Senate – 13.2%. Australia’s Senate is elected by a proportional form of ranked choice voting. This gives the Green Party twenty times as much representation as instant runoff voting does.
Another interesting thing about Australia’s Senate elections is that voters are given a choice. They can either rank individual candidates in their order of preference or they can cast a simple vote for their favorite party. Given the choice, more than 95% of voters choose not to rank individual candidates. They just vote for their favorite party. This suggests to me that, in practice, most voters don’t actually want to rank individual candidates.
Looking at the history of the Green Party globally, under the best possible conditions, it only represents a maximum of about one-eighth of the voting population. It is nowhere near representing a majority or a plurality in any country. The Green Party cannot accomplish anything through electoral politics without working in coalition with other political parties.
The Green Party has been running candidates for various offices in the United States for more than forty years. How successful has it been? The Green Party has never elected anyone to Congress or to any statewide office. In fact, no candidate representing any party other than the Democrats or Republicans has been elected to any seat in Congress since 1970.
There are 7,383 state legislature seats in the United States. Only four Green Party members have ever been elected to seats in state legislatures. Three of them were elected practically as an accident of fate when their only opponent was disqualified or discredited by a scandal. The other candidate, John Eder, was narrowly elected in a small population district in Maine with public campaign financing. Audie Bock, Fred Smith, and Richard Carroll changed their party affiliation after they were elected as Greens. Smith and Carroll became Democrats. Audie Bock became unaffiliated, then Republican. Eder completed two terms as a Green. He was later elected as a Republican.
There are more than 519,000 elected officials in the United States. As of July 1, 2026, the GPUS Elections Database lists 140 Green Party members who hold elected office in the United States – about 0.027% of all elected offices. The offices that Green Party members hold in the United States are mostly tiny, local non-partisan offices where the label “Green Party” doesn’t appear on the ballot. Some of these are uncontested elections.
Green Party leadership has been misleading party supporters about the importance of presidential campaigns since at least 1996. The unrealistic goal of trying to break five percent of the popular vote for president has been held out as a strategic objective to Green Party voters for thirty years, in the supposed hope of securing federal funding for future unsuccessful campaigns.
Anybody who bothered to look at the history of progressive alternative party presidential campaigns can see that no such candidate has broken five percent of the popular vote for President of the United States since 1924. No “third-party” progressive presidential candidate has broken 5% of the popular vote since Robert La Follette ran as the Progressive Party nominee for President in 1924. He was a former Republican US Senator, US Representative, and Governor from Wisconsin. The Progressive Party was a short-lived vehicle for La Follette’s presidential campaign, not an organized party with down-ballot candidates. The notion of the Green Party getting five percent of the vote for President is a delusion. It’s a distraction that feeds personality cults.
Nor is it true that the Green Party needs to run presidential campaigns to maintain state-level political party ballot status. Richard Winger from Ballot Access News reported that only three states require political parties to run presidential campaigns to maintain party status: New York, Iowa, and Kentucky. The Green Party doesn’t have current ballot status in those states under existing ballot access laws.
The Green Party, as an organization, is not an “imperative.” It could serve as one platform for advocating progressive reform. I would be hard-pressed to make a case that the Green Party has accomplished anything positive of significance. In the United States, the Green Party has been a consistent failure. It sometimes provides a statistically insignificant protest vote. It will never play a significant role in the existing US political system.
The Green Party was founded upon values that are positive for people to aspire to. Surely, everyone fails to live up to these principles consistently in practice. In a world threatened by catastrophic wars without end, genocide, and ecological overshoot, nonviolence, ecology, social justice, and respect for diversity are imperative for our collective survival. But we are nowhere near there.
I think of the scene from Terminator 2 when a young John Connor says, “We’re not going to make it, are we? People, I mean.” The Terminator replies: “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.”
The Global Greens movement was founded upon Four Pillars: Nonviolence, Ecology, Grassroots Democracy, and Social Justice. The Green Party of the United States expanded this to “Ten Key Values.” The US Greens added Decentralization, Community-Based Economics, Feminism and Gender Equity, Respect for Diversity, Personal and Global Responsibility, and Future Focus/Sustainability.
Does the Green Party represent these values? Most of my personal experience with the Green Party was local activism in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. Recently, I’ve become actively involved in the Arizona Green Party. I was on the ballot as a Green Party candidate seven times between 1996 and 2018. I have known some good, sincere, and principled people in the Green Party. However, the most toxic, most hateful people I have ever known personally were Green Party activists – often in positions where they were relentlessly abusive towards other Green Party members.
I think that the Green Party’s professed values are mostly used as empty words for insincere propaganda.
In 2017, I described the Green Party of the United States as a never-ending trainwreck crashing through a toxic wasteland of bullshit and insanity. Today, I would say that’s an unfair analogy. Statistically speaking, trains provide a relatively safe and efficient mode of travel, very unlike the Green Party.
Recently, in the local Green Party, I have found a small core group of good, dedicated, and principled people surrounded by a tornado of insanity. Sincere Greens are under constant attack from other people who also call themselves Greens – people who use the Green Party as a vehicle for their hatred, corruption, or self-aggrandizement.
In the absence of any meaningful role in governance, I think the practical reality is that alternative political parties in the United States act as magnets for people with severe personality disorders who are incapable of treating other people with basic respect and dignity.
Earlier this month, I returned to the Green Party of the United States Facebook group. What I see there gives me no hope for the Green Party.
Rosa Clemente ran for office once as a Green Party candidate. Eighteen years ago, former US Representative Cynthia McKinney asked Rosa Clemente to be her running mate for Vice President. Cynthia McKinney may have had the most impressive resume of any Green Party candidate in US history.
Cynthia McKinney was the first black woman to be elected to Congress from Georgia. She served six terms as a U.S. Representative. At the end of her final term in office, she introduced articles of impeachment against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleza Rice. McKinney received just 0.12% of the popular vote as the Green Party nominee for President in 2008 (sixth place).
Rosa Clemente often claims (incorrectly) that she and Cynthia McKinney were the first US presidential ticket consisting of two women of color. In fact, New Alliance Party candidates Lenora Fulani and Maria Elizabeth Munoz were likely the first presidential ticket consisting of two women of color in 1992, sixteen years earlier. They received just 0.07% of the national popular vote. Monica Morehead and Gloria La Riva were two other women of color who ran as the Workers World Party presidential ticket in 1996 and 2000.
Sadly, Cynthia McKinney went off the deep end. To this day, many people in the Green Party of the United States still embrace or deny her obvious bigotry and disconnection from reality.
In 2005, Cynthia McKinney claimed that the Department of Defense executed five thousand people and used Hurricane Katrina to hide the bodies in swampland. McKinney has spread false narratives about chemtrails and weather modification technology, claimed that the Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax, and opposed mask-wearing and vaccinations. She edited a book of anti-vaccination disinformation. McKinney claimed that Jews were using the pandemic to control the population. She has associated with Holocaust deniers and publicly questioned whether the Nazis killed six million Jews. She praised Adolph Hitler for “saving Germany” by banning pornography and usury. She recently blamed Jews for spreading “transgenderism.” She promoted a podcast between former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon David Duke and Ayo Kimathi, author of the book “Jews Are the Problem.” The topic was: “Can white people and black people work together against our common enemy – the Jews.” She claimed that Jews co-opted Black Lives Matter. In 2024, Cynthia McKinney was the opening speaker at the “Jewish Problem Conference,” which brought together Judeophobic conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and Nazis.
To their credit, the state Green Parties of Washington, Wisconsin, and Ohio denounced Cynthia McKinney’s virulent bigotry. Yet, even today, several Green Party candidates proudly display endorsements from Cynthia McKinney. Some Green Party leaders openly support her bigotry.
Rosa Clemente has recently been posting about running as a Green Party candidate in 2028, while touting her past association with Cynthia McKinney. Has she ever disavowed McKinney’s extremism? Is it really too much to expect a party that claims to advocate nonviolence and social justice to recognize that Nazis are bad? Just how low can the Green Party go?
Gary Swing is a 2026 Green Party candidate for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District. This will be his 8th time on a ballot as a Green Party candidate.
Eric Maisel, Ph.D. “What You Can Expect From An Authoritarian,” Psychology Today, 11/8/17: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-health/201711/what-you-can-expect-authoritarian#=
References to the history of hostile takeover and purges of Colorado’s Green Party in 2017-2018:
Green Party of Colorado Purges, 2017-2018. Gary Swing’s personal account of the hostile takeover and membership purges:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1H3DRiAX1a/
Westword newspaper article, “Ex-Green Party Members Say Andrea Merida Takeover Destroyed the Party,” with clarification and correction of incorrect details:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ceD3e37Gp/
373-page Grievance filed with the GPUS Accreditation Committee by Green Party of Colorado members concerning authoritarianism and corruption within the state Green Party in 2017. I was not one of the five primary authors of this document, but I was one of about two dozen people who co-signed it:
www.restoregreenvalues.org
“Restoring Sanity to the Green Party” – Gary Swing’s nomination speech for Green Party of Colorado Co-Chair. 5-minute prepared statement and 90-second statement that I was allowed to give:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18jy8cnHuK/