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Throughout the Green Party of Canada, there are many opinions of GPC Organizing Chair Kevin Colton. He is one of the party's most controversial figures.
As part of the defunct GPC ERCT, some considered Colton to be "a major cause of the GPC Council Crisis." Although a member of the ERCT, Colton ceded many former duties of the GPC Organizing Chair to full time staff members.
It has also been said that "He has opposed many significant and necessary initiatives, refused to consider proposals by provincial organizers even where objectives converge." But this is not because Colton accepts the legal independence of provincial Green Parties. Quite the opposite:
In August 2005 he claimed, in a document forward to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario?, to have "reviewed" private GPO CA Elections Ontario return?s , apparently from Nara Manickam who was acting for that CA, for purposes of making a political decision for the GPC (Colton has no background whatsoever in accounting issues).
Colton thus believes that provincial Green Party and CA confidentiality is to be breached on a whim to make GPC decisions, while the needs of those parties and grassroots organizers are to play no role whatsoever in GPC decisions.
Such a power structure where the centre can view every action of the edges, but which is itself invisible to their inquiry, is called a Panopticon, after a prison design by Jeremy Bentham?. Michel Foucault? described this model, when extended to a state, as a carceral state.
Under Colton's plan, the GPC-NS would directly compete for volunteer time and attention with that grassroots organizing effort. Marshall objected so strongly to this that even when offered the job Colton had defined, he refused it to go work in a hotel.
During the GPC Council Crisis, Coltons's actions were approved and facilitated by Jim Harris, John Anderson, Wayne Crookes, Debbie Hartley who ran the party at that time. Colton is widely believed to maintain and manage GPC Leader Jim Harris's enemies list.
Accordingly, these people will protect Colton. One claimed Colton "is one of the most respected members on council and in the entire party; and one of the most important contributors to our election success in 2004. He is fair minded and shows tremendous support for those in the party who contribute to its success. He is not afraid to stand up to major, important issues and is always a fair, calm and rational voice."
Colton does appear to "stand up to major, important issues" by denying them. This is not the same as standing up "on" those issues, of course.
Colton's influence on candidates is obviously overstated and indicative of a single command hierarchy mindset where commanders take all credit for success of their "underlings". While there is evidence to suggest that Colton was an important contributor to the 2004 full slate, it was in circumstances where all Greens in Canada were unified behind that goal. Due to recent conflicts within the party, they are not unified now.
People driven away by Colton (for example, Michael Marshall, Michael Pilling, Kate Holloway, and Craig Hubley) did a great deal of work for the GPC in 2004, including:
The GPC Revenue Sharing agreement? that was worked out by a GPC Committee? was stalled and may not be implemented, after a GPC Council attempt to steer all funds into their own, questionable, activities.
Supporters of Colton have weakened their case the most by suggesting that he is "always a fair, calm and rational voice." This can be easily refuted by referring to several of his posts to both the GPC-GEN? email listserve and GPC-COUN council listserve.
Colton regularly lost his temper in 2004. Several of his cronies contend that he has been much more temperate in 2005, and has become a more subtle smear campaigner. Most likely this is because he had much more pratice in this art in 2005:
Colton directly participated in the suspension of elected Councillor Kate Holloway, the GPC Fundraising Chair. Within weeks of Holloway's suspension, a hiring committee? was struck to hire a full time AFP fundraiser.
Members of the GPC Fundraising Committee were asked to serve on the committee, but none came forward, since the Association of Fundraising Professionals is well known to practice libel and smear campaigning to advance its goal of monopoly over nonprofit fundraising in Canada. Fear of this, and fear that they would be targetted for disagreeing, as Holloway was, kept any members from sitting on any committee with this mandate. The message to members was clear: Harris, not the elected Fundraising Chair, was in charge, and the AFP, not the members, defined the rules.
This entire episode happened with no input from the Fundraising Chair herself, as she had been suspended. Colton's vote to "suspend" Kate Holloway was an obvious breach of the GPC Constitution which allows no such move. This indicts Colton as an irresponsible Council member, but validated him as one of the GPC Bunker.
He also proposed draconian and crippling restrictions of the Green Party of Canada Living Platform. Under a Motion of GPC Council, he proposed that anyone lose their access for any act that offended or aroused the suspicion of any politician or administrator, then forced to go to the GPC Ombuds Committee, a notoriously slow process, to "prove they are not Craig Hubley."
Colton was a leading light of the process to define a GPC Unperson, which status Hubley was the first person to achieve.
While the motion did not pass in Colton's originally proposed form, the "chill" effect of it is very obvious. The GPC-LP has, since his lies and attacks, failed to recover to anywhere near its previous level of traffic.
This has retarded the progress to a viable 2005 platform by months at least, preventing it from ever becoming an acceptable document. In all of the last seven weeks of summer 2006, there were only about fifteen edits, most of them on administrative matters. The chance to practice open politics and participatory democracy in the GPC had passed, and a conventional GPC policy convention? which only cronies would be sponsored to attend, would replace it.
To further this agenda of derailing the platform process, Colton also introduced hearsay? and rumours to GPC-COUN prompting Bruce Abel to issue a warning against libel on GPC-COUN. Colton accordingly bears more than his share of the blame for the crippling of the Platform 2005 project and the atmosphere in which full time staff? usurped the entire platform effort.
Colton has often stated as his motivation to join the Green Party, his disgust and revulsion at the ascendancy, tactics and stated goals of the Bush Administration. His other actions do indeed seem to betray a perception that the world is full of "enemies" who seek to sabotage him.
Colton has apparently described some former GPC supporters' commitment to expose and consistently repeat his failures as "harassment", as if this is somehow different from what his actions bring on others.
His detractors urge him to quit the GPC Council and do something less destructive.
authority without responsibility
As part of the defunct GPC ERCT, some considered Colton to be "a major cause of the GPC Council Crisis." Although a member of the ERCT, Colton ceded many former duties of the GPC Organizing Chair to full time staff members.
It has also been said that "He has opposed many significant and necessary initiatives, refused to consider proposals by provincial organizers even where objectives converge." But this is not because Colton accepts the legal independence of provincial Green Parties. Quite the opposite:
In August 2005 he claimed, in a document forward to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario?, to have "reviewed" private GPO CA Elections Ontario return?s , apparently from Nara Manickam who was acting for that CA, for purposes of making a political decision for the GPC (Colton has no background whatsoever in accounting issues).
Colton thus believes that provincial Green Party and CA confidentiality is to be breached on a whim to make GPC decisions, while the needs of those parties and grassroots organizers are to play no role whatsoever in GPC decisions.
Such a power structure where the centre can view every action of the edges, but which is itself invisible to their inquiry, is called a Panopticon, after a prison design by Jeremy Bentham?. Michel Foucault? described this model, when extended to a state, as a carceral state.
farewell to Nova Scotia
A more anecdotal example cited to support the view that Colton seeks to control the entire Green movement from his own chair, is the decision of Michael Marshall to withdraw from GPC organizing, as a response to Colton's decision to not cooperate with the attempt to organize Nova Scotia Greens into a GPNS.Under Colton's plan, the GPC-NS would directly compete for volunteer time and attention with that grassroots organizing effort. Marshall objected so strongly to this that even when offered the job Colton had defined, he refused it to go work in a hotel.
other opinions
During the GPC Council Crisis, Coltons's actions were approved and facilitated by Jim Harris, John Anderson, Wayne Crookes, Debbie Hartley who ran the party at that time. Colton is widely believed to maintain and manage GPC Leader Jim Harris's enemies list.
Accordingly, these people will protect Colton. One claimed Colton "is one of the most respected members on council and in the entire party; and one of the most important contributors to our election success in 2004. He is fair minded and shows tremendous support for those in the party who contribute to its success. He is not afraid to stand up to major, important issues and is always a fair, calm and rational voice."
Colton does appear to "stand up to major, important issues" by denying them. This is not the same as standing up "on" those issues, of course.
Colton's influence on candidates is obviously overstated and indicative of a single command hierarchy mindset where commanders take all credit for success of their "underlings". While there is evidence to suggest that Colton was an important contributor to the 2004 full slate, it was in circumstances where all Greens in Canada were unified behind that goal. Due to recent conflicts within the party, they are not unified now.
People driven away by Colton (for example, Michael Marshall, Michael Pilling, Kate Holloway, and Craig Hubley) did a great deal of work for the GPC in 2004, including:
- authoring Platform 2004 which had far more to do with the GPC's success than Jim Harris or the ERCT
- managing the Answers to Questionnaires and Policy FAQ and working tirelessly to a GPC position protocol and answer recommendation system
- organizing a viable GPC fundraising scheme with no monopoly granted to a group of smear campaigners
- delivering the full slates in Nova Scotia and Ontario
The GPC Revenue Sharing agreement? that was worked out by a GPC Committee? was stalled and may not be implemented, after a GPC Council attempt to steer all funds into their own, questionable, activities.
smear campaigner
Supporters of Colton have weakened their case the most by suggesting that he is "always a fair, calm and rational voice." This can be easily refuted by referring to several of his posts to both the GPC-GEN? email listserve and GPC-COUN council listserve.
Colton regularly lost his temper in 2004. Several of his cronies contend that he has been much more temperate in 2005, and has become a more subtle smear campaigner. Most likely this is because he had much more pratice in this art in 2005:
Colton directly participated in the suspension of elected Councillor Kate Holloway, the GPC Fundraising Chair. Within weeks of Holloway's suspension, a hiring committee? was struck to hire a full time AFP fundraiser.
Members of the GPC Fundraising Committee were asked to serve on the committee, but none came forward, since the Association of Fundraising Professionals is well known to practice libel and smear campaigning to advance its goal of monopoly over nonprofit fundraising in Canada. Fear of this, and fear that they would be targetted for disagreeing, as Holloway was, kept any members from sitting on any committee with this mandate. The message to members was clear: Harris, not the elected Fundraising Chair, was in charge, and the AFP, not the members, defined the rules.
This entire episode happened with no input from the Fundraising Chair herself, as she had been suspended. Colton's vote to "suspend" Kate Holloway was an obvious breach of the GPC Constitution which allows no such move. This indicts Colton as an irresponsible Council member, but validated him as one of the GPC Bunker.
He also proposed draconian and crippling restrictions of the Green Party of Canada Living Platform. Under a Motion of GPC Council, he proposed that anyone lose their access for any act that offended or aroused the suspicion of any politician or administrator, then forced to go to the GPC Ombuds Committee, a notoriously slow process, to "prove they are not Craig Hubley."
Colton was a leading light of the process to define a GPC Unperson, which status Hubley was the first person to achieve.
While the motion did not pass in Colton's originally proposed form, the "chill" effect of it is very obvious. The GPC-LP has, since his lies and attacks, failed to recover to anywhere near its previous level of traffic.
This has retarded the progress to a viable 2005 platform by months at least, preventing it from ever becoming an acceptable document. In all of the last seven weeks of summer 2006, there were only about fifteen edits, most of them on administrative matters. The chance to practice open politics and participatory democracy in the GPC had passed, and a conventional GPC policy convention? which only cronies would be sponsored to attend, would replace it.
To further this agenda of derailing the platform process, Colton also introduced hearsay? and rumours to GPC-COUN prompting Bruce Abel to issue a warning against libel on GPC-COUN. Colton accordingly bears more than his share of the blame for the crippling of the Platform 2005 project and the atmosphere in which full time staff? usurped the entire platform effort.
motivation?
Colton has often stated as his motivation to join the Green Party, his disgust and revulsion at the ascendancy, tactics and stated goals of the Bush Administration. His other actions do indeed seem to betray a perception that the world is full of "enemies" who seek to sabotage him.
Colton has apparently described some former GPC supporters' commitment to expose and consistently repeat his failures as "harassment", as if this is somehow different from what his actions bring on others.
solutions
His detractors urge him to quit the GPC Council and do something less destructive.
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