I am writing today to address my personal experience with the behavior and culture the Green Party has signed on to in the last several months. I have been working with and participating in Green Party activities for about a year now, and I am increasingly becoming disgusted with platforms and conversations regarding the Green Party of Georgia. The rumor is has been the basis of all information exchanged in the Texas party regarding the Georgia Green Party. Well I needed to know what the reality is, the factual parts. Once I took responsibility for doing my own research, all the information I have been easily able to access tells me the U.S. Green Party as a whole is in trouble.
The Green Party in my view is increasingly becoming a driving force, as a threat to the practice of democracy within its ranks, in the oppression of women, in an accelerating backlash to our rights as women. To even bully anyone that stands up to protect women, the female half of the human inhabitants of our planet, is insane and misogynistic. We already have the Democratic and Republican parties; we certainly do not need to build a new party for that.
Advocating for women's rights oppresses no-one, it doesn't rob rights from anyone, and it is not the advocacy of sameness either. Males and females are distinctly different. We live on the same planet together, but definitely not equally. I have to wonder what the end game is here and who is really benefiting? And only a year after being inspired by Green rhetoric, I find myself really questioning this exhibition revealing to me in its observed behavior, the actual values of the Green Party.
I have personally had to stand up against the abuse I have witnessed. I have seen female party members voicing their concerns on issues only to face vicious attacks from those who claim they are green and fighting against oppression. I have witnessed rumors passed off as if facts, name calling passing for debate, and insidious practices within caucuses stemming from this issue of protecting women's rights. But men in the Green Party ain't got no problems. They benefit either way. This is seriously affecting the party's membership, current and prospective. I have personal knowledge of this. Although active with the Texas Green Party for only a year, I already have been engaging potential candidates including sitting office holders looking to me for guidance on changing their affiliations to the Green Party from the parties they currently participate in. They are waiting on the word from me. But what I have experienced around the issues being raised by the Lavender Caucus complaint against the Georgia party has me questioning my own participation; has left me shy about closing the deal on these candidate recruitment conversations which have been underway for months.
Among what I found inspiring about the rhetoric and values of this party was its commitment to feminism. This is how Merriam-Webster defines the term:
feminism: belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests
The Georgia Green Party platform amendment (attached), at the heart of this controversy failed to address the question of impoverished women's bodies being solicited for reproduction by wealthy people. The Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights (also attached), however, does. Now a member of our party, who is unlikely to ever be able to afford the quarter million dollars necessary to access commercial surrogacy for herself, has taken up the cause, advocating that women's bodies in the Global South or from the poor side of town in our own country ought to be commodified as birth vessels for the benefit of those who can afford it. She is using her problematic position on surrogacy to advocate that the Georgia Green Party be expelled from our national party.
As a former labor and delivery nurse, I know what women risk when they bring forth new life in this world. I participated in the care of a 16 year old, who intended all along to give her child up for adoption. It was a harrowing experience for all those involved. While her medical team survived the experience, this young mother did not. None of us will soon forget what happened. Her medical and psychological care became secondary to producing a healthy child for adoption, despite my every effort to make her the center of her own medical treatment.
I want and need a political home for myself, my community, for these prospective Green Party candidates I have been communicating with and for the next pregnant 16 year old who was underserved in my community. But this party seems to have forgotten the values which brought me into its ranks. And this has left me concerned if I am ready to ask my candidates to take this step and join me in a Green Party which seems to have lost its way so soon after I found my way into this conversation.
Please read this as my appeal that you support the Georgia Green Party; and for every woman in the party who remain feminists, who understand that feminism is for women, and understands that feminists need a vehicle for our political indepenence. This is my appeal that each and every member of the National Committee cast a NO vote on #1062.
s/ Tykisha Murphy
member, Texas Green Party
former labor and delivery nurse
and health care technician
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