Deep Green

Don Fitz has been promoting the Green agenda for nearly two decades. He joined the Greens in the early '90s and coordinated efforts to get Ralph Nader on the Missouri ballot in 2000. He is a leader of Green Party USA and editor of Synthesis/Regeneration, the party's magazine.

And he's been criticized for years for refusing to go along with a Green party that mainly runs candidates. "While I was speaking, someone stood up and yelled, 'You're not Green!' at me," Fitz said in a phone interview. "To them, we don't have a legitimate reason to exist."

The Democratic and Republican parties have various factions within them, and the Green movement is no different. In fact, there are two Green parties in the United States.

GPUSA dates back to 1984 and is more of an advocacy group that runs a few local candidates. It reflects the opinions of the original US Green movement. The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) is a younger, larger party that runs candidates. It's the party that put Ralph Nader on its ticket in 2000. Both have progressive, leftist platforms; GPUSA's stances are typically farther left than those of GPUS.

Jim Hightower once said GPUSA has "damned-near-communistic ideas"; the party's labor platform does call for a 30-hour workweek, double pay for overtime, and a minimum wage of $12 and change. As a former member of socialist groups, Fitz is not offended when people call his party a Marxist group.

"I just think it's inaccurate," he says. Socialism is too limited to encompass GPUSA's platform; environmentalism was not a major issue in Marx's writings, and some GPUSA members don't subscribe to the party's radical labor platform. Everyone supports the party's stance on the environment. The issues they've focused their efforts on include lead poisoning in St. Louis -- where GPUSA is most concentrated -- and global warming.