Conniff wrong about Greens.

When I helped found the Wisconsin Green Party in 1988, I had already been a Progressive reader for at least a decade. For some reason, I thought that the establishment and growth of a progressive third party would be something The Progressive would celebrate--that your editors and reporters would take our budding movement seriously. How wrong I was, and how disappointed I am.

I attended the Green Party's national convention in Denver in 2000 and afterward read Ruth Conniff's condescending depiction of us as a "hodgepodge of activists and hippies with a peculiar focus on legalizing hemp." Her reporting on this year's convention in Milwaukee ("Greens at a Crossroads," August issue) was only slightly less disrespectful. She still managed to quote someone who referred to us as "kooky"--the same descriptor she used four years ago.

The cartoon accompanying Conniff's latest column was in the style of posters one sees advertising lost dogs, with the hand-lettered words "last seen November 2000" under a sketch of a forlorn-looking David Cobb. If I get your gist, the Green Party without Nader is nothing.

In 1996, there were only ten organized state Green parties--five with a ballot line--and we had elected forty people to office. In 2000, there were twenty-one organized state Green parties--ten with a ballot line--and we had elected eighty-seven Greens to office. Today, there are forty-four organized state Green parties--twenty-three guaranteed ballot lines--and we've elected 205 people to office. We have more than 400 Greens running for office this year, all on a platform emphasizing the same things your magazine stands for: social justice, grassroots democracy, ecological wisdom, and nonviolence.

At what point can we expect to be taken seriously by The Progressive?

Jeff Peterson, co-chair

St. Croix Valley Green Party

Luck, Wisconsin