Alberta Greens

There is alot of support pouring into the Alberta Greens website. Comments like the one below by Ron Ayotte really support our grassroots party check out the Alberta Greens website for further comments:

This morning's Calgary Herald wrote up this conflict as a leadership struggle.I suppose it may have been described in those terms to the folks from Wetaskiwin way when they agreed to attend the meeting at Morningside.It would seem likely, from the comments above.If that's the case, Cameron's hopeful and positive comments above may well be prescient. So, for all the well meaning folks from the area who came to Morningside to see the right thing done, here are a few things to think about.Our Party Leader's job has a lot of baggage attached to it including an opinionated membership, and of course the larger Green community. There are Tax Department and Elections Alberta expectations, an individually elected executive, a lengthy constitution, some Key Principles that every action must be measured against, and a Justice and Fairness Committee to ensure those Key Principles are respected. I know, that part sounds naive and idealistic but what do you expect from an organization that has less protection from hostile takeover than my Gardening Club?So the plan as I heard it at the Morningside meeting is to get rid of the baggage. Replace the executive with a hand-picked slate, redo the constitution, and take the party in a different direction from the larger Green movement. It follows that there was little attempt to bring the general membership along this path. Some, busy with the Federal Election, are just now hearing that there has been a problem.So whats left of interest to hijackers?Our Key Principles? Ummm, No. Into the garbage with the constitution. Truth to tell I would have hung around longer for the show if I thought they were actually going to elect a Justice and Fairness Committee. I could have dined out on that story forever. Damn. Someone please tell me they didn't do that.Anyway all that's left worth taking is the relationship with Elections Alberta and the tax people. Our Official Party Status means contributions are partially tax deductibe. A group seeking status in Alberta in 2008 would need 7,050 registered voters to support the application. A lot of work.The thing is these weren't evil people in that Meeting Hall.I don't think anyone, however persuasive, could have got them out on Saturday with "Hey let's go steal thousands of hours of work by hundreds of volunteers, so we don't have to do it." I just can't picture it.Someone with more information help me out with this, but I'm thinking it had to have been presented as a somehow justified attack on George Read and the executive of the party.So my friends, get your heads around this. The Green Party of Alberta and the official party status you're after does not belong to George Read or to the Executive Committee. It belongs to the membership.For better or worse, we are your neighbours. Some of us got together and over the space of many years we built a political vehicle. A Green one.Very few of those from the beginning are still around, people come and go, but the work goes on.We carelessly left it unlocked.It seems that someone with a grievance convinced his friends that the vehicle belongs to a real creep (or creeps) and it would be ok to take it away from them. They share this plan between themselves by e-mail a few days before the meeting by e-mail and then tell us that the hijacking was justified by our executives refusal to hang around and watch them do it. If you think that's a little twisted remember that this vehicle doesn't even have any parts they want, they intend to use the license plate, and discard the rest. They aren't shy about that.Oh yeah, and apparently George Read is bad.
A proud moment.I stopped in for a little while on a room full of Greens on the way home. A room full of people determined to not turn in to the opposition. Grant Neufeld read from the 10 key Values.We are going to be all right.
Ron Ayotte