The Food, Water and Energy Work Group was formed during the Annual National Meeting of the Green Party of the USA (GPUS) in Durham, NC, on Saturday, 25 July, 2009. It was formed as one of three “Messaging” work groups charged with working with other GPUS committees and groups to develop simple messages and tools that state and local parties and their candidates can use for campaigning, fundraising, and organizing. The other three groups were Human Rights and Single Payer (health care).

The title, Food, Water and Energy, grew out of the need for simple language in messaging. We recognized that everything was interrelated and that economy and ecology, global warming, climate change and peak oil were all relevant and important and that election reform and the reduction of corporate influence were necessary, but Food, Water and Energy were readily understandable to the voters we must engage outside the circle of Greens and their friends.

This group was self-organized by an open space exercise beginning with writing issues on post-it-notes, grouping those issues into 8 larger issue sheets with the post-it-notes on them, “voting with your feet” by choosing and standing by the issue sheets, and then further voting by moving to form the three main umbrella issue working groups.

Discussions focused on resources and sustainability and how human rights, ecology, pollution and climate change, agriculture and the economy were interrelated along with election reform and corporate control. We recognized that change through policy and legislation would come only through resilient and sustainable communities with grassroots participation and movements for local self government control of resources.

Products we envisioned that states parties and candidates could use for campaigning, fundraising, and organizing included Green Papers from local, state, and national levels supported by Policy and Legislation papers, bibliographies on useful stuff that exists now, the resultant messages and “The Message Hook” needed for print and sound bites. Other resources talked about were lists of well known issue speakers who could draw large crowds as well as smaller issue house parties and movie nights.

We will issue a call for Green Papers at the local, state and national levels. We will make sure they are in agreement with the platform and ask the other work groups and committees to look at them for coordination and collaboration.

One tool for our internal communication is at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GPUS_Food-Water-Energy/

This group is listed in the Yahoo Groups directory. Members can post messages without moderation and use all the features provided (message archive, files, photos, calendar, etc.). At least initially, we are working with the following rules about membership:

To be a member of the Food-Water-Energy working group, each individual needs to be a staff worker for the GPUS or a member of an affillliated state Green Party who is either a delegate or alternate delagate to the NC, or is approved by their state party specifically to participate in this group. Members of the Eco-action Committee, having already been approved by their state parties to work on these issues, are automatically accepted in this working group.

Another tool for communication is this Wiki. Anyone can view the pages here. Writers (those members of the working group who have also joined the site) can modify the pages and can create new pages.

This is our process to develop useful products for state and local parties and their candidates.