The Color Of Green

The Color Of Green
Getting To Know People Of Color Across The Country Active In The Green Party

Ms. Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry
“From a long-term view, Greens will have to deal openly and honestly with white privilege.”

Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry (SKCM Curry) is currently a vice presidential nominee for the 2008 Green Party of the United States national slate. She has five years of involvement in the Green Party at the local, state and national level. SKCM Curry believes the way forward must be for Greens to emphasize tactics and traditional electoral politics to women, peo ple of color, and progres sives in a clear and measurable manner.

SKCM Curry wants to ensure that the Green Party of the United States’ 12th Anniversary in 2008 will be declared the year of the Green Women. She said, “the goal is to encourage and seek 50 Green women in each state to lead campaigns for public office. We Greens can all help make our July 2008 Annual National Meeting be Green Sister Time!”

“I shared with folks that I was born, ëraised’ and ërose’ in the Pueblo Del Rio Hous ing Project, South Central Los Angeles, and given my family’s strong involvement in ensuring that justice and peace prevailed in our village, I have never “not’ been active in politics.”

Green Pages asked SKCM Curry why she joined the Green Party, what issues of diversity need to be addressed and how the party can accomplish that.

“When former Vice President Al Gore back in 2000 did not take the blatant cases of voter fraud occurring in the Florida elections to the International Court of Justice, I could no longer depend on political parties who accept corporate money to lead our nation; the GP does not and will not accept corporate money. Given both parties are really one party, my objective in joining the GP was and is about establishing a permanent non-corporate funded second political party in the United States of America.

“From a long-term view, Greens will have to deal openly and honestly with white privilege and build on all the workshops we have had in the past toward dismantling all “ism’s” within our leadership and ranks. I have observed that because we Greens have not yet figured out a clear long term vision for ourselves, folks of color have not joined our political party on a massive basis on any level (national, state and local.)

“Also, I am working to ensure we ëGreens’ become major sponsors of next year’s 9th Annual White Privilege Conference (www. uccs.edu/~wpc/index.htm). Thus we Greens are a real part of the solution. Having European Americans speak to their own experience in a real, personal, political awareness can do more then any person of color can to move our nation, given the numbers of voters who are of European ancestry. From my own observations, the work is difficult because whites (Euro Americans) are so brainwashed by our ism-filled society that they are in denial of their own ism’s. Yes, even here in the Green Party.”

Theresa El-Amin
“I look forward to building the North Carolina Green Party and other expressions of progressive independent politics.”
Theresa El-Amin began her journey as an activist in 1966 with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Tuskegee and Atlanta and from there she never stopped. Since then she has accumulated over 40 years experience in labor and community organizing. El-Amin has now committed to mentoring a new generation of social justice activists.

Before El-Amin moved to North Carolina, she was a union organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in the Midwest and Northeast, organizing clerical and health care workers into democratic unions. In 1998 she came to Durham to work for Southerners for Economic Justice (SEJ) as program organizer.

A year later, El-Amin became founding director of the Southern Anti-Racism Net work (SARN), which among a long list, organizes low-income families and trains them in many aspects of education. From 2002 to 2007, they reached 264 low-income families with basic computer literacy training and provided all families with home computers. In addition, SARN is credited with organizing the coalition that successfully passed the Durham anti-sweatshop ordinance in August 2000.

El-Amin is organizing the Ella Baker Tour and Retreat to bring together veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com mittee (SNCC) with young activists in a 30-month campaign to support organizing projects for labor rights, health care, in dependent political action and other social justice causes.

Green Pages asked El-Amin why she joined the Green Party.

“I joined the Greens in fall 2006. I teased the chair of the meeting that it was so hard getting in the Greens. No one asked me to join. I asked, what does it take to get in the Greens? I find that many white-led formations have low organizational self-esteem based on the whiteness of their groups. There is an assumption that people of color will be reluctant or not interested in being in a nearly all white group. I joined for the politics.”

“I first worked with members of the Green Party in Rhode Island in the late ’90s. I support independent political action and have been a registered independent for years. I look forward to building the North Carolina Green Party and other expressions of progressive independent politics.”

Contact theresaelamin@aol.com or (919) 824-0659