Santa Monica Spearheads California's Green Delegation

By Jorge Casuso

Santa Monica sent the largest California delegation - including two city councilmen - to the Green Party Convention in Boulder, Colorado, where Ralph Nader is expected to be nominated as the party's presidential candidate on Sunday.

Councilmen Michael Feinstein and Kevin McKeown led the city's seven-member delegation, accounting for one-tenth of the state's 68 delegates.

"It's not surprising in a Green-oriented city like Santa Monica where Greens have been active in civic life," said Feinstein, a founding member of the Green Party of California. "I think it's reflective of the involvement of Greens in the city.

A delegate from Delaware (in wheelchair, foreground) calls for the floor during the preliminary meeting of the national committee of the Association of State Green Parties.

"This convention is unique," Feinstein said. "There hasn't been this level of strength for a progressive third party since the 1890s. This is a creation as we speak. It's a living laboratory of how to build a third party."

Santa Monica is California's largest city with two Greens on its City Council and the largest in the nation behind Madison Wisconsin, which has a population of 210,000 more than double Santa Monica's 92,000. Four Green Party members also have been nominated to city boards and commissions.

Two other California cities - Arcata, with a population of 17,000, and Point Arena, with 440, have two Green council members, as does Santa Fe, New Mexico, which has a population of 60,000.

On Friday, the party held a national committee meeting of the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP), followed by a reception for the more than 400 convention delegates.

The delegates are expected to ratify a platform on Saturday and nominate Nader on Sunday afternoon. Feinstein, who was elected to the council in 1996, will address the convention at 10:10 a.m. about his experiences on the council.

(Sunday's proceedings will be televised live and can be seen on C-Span.)

Nader is expected to arrive on Saturday. His first stop as a presidential candidate will be in Los Angeles on Monday.

In addition to Feinstein and McKeown, who was elected to the council in 1998, the other Santa Monica delegates are Tony Avila, a registered nurse at the UCLA Medical Center and a member of the California Nurses Association (the first major labor union to endorse Nader), and Linda Pierra-Avila, a physical therapist at Saint John's Health Center.

The other delegates are Michael Rochmes, a Santa Monica High School graduate who is attending UC-Berkeley; Sophia Rochmes, a Santa Monica High school senior and Bob Seldon, a founder of Northeast Neighbors, the city's newest neighborhood organization.