Boston Proposal
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The Boston Proposal was an attempt to organize and assign functions to the various elements of the United States Green Party during the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign. The proposal was negotiated in Boston during October 2000, a few days before the first presidential debate. It focused on the two primary existing national Green Party organizations, the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) and the Greens/Green Party USA (GPUSA). To deal with the problem of overlapping functions, the Boston Proposal intended for ASGP and GPUSA to be complementary organizations, with the ASGP focusing on electoral politics and the GPUSA focusing on issue advocacy.
The proposal was passed by the ASGP at its next annual gathering, but did not pass at the GPUSA Congress, causing a schism in membership among the GPUSA from which they never recovered. The ASGP then changed its name to "The Green Party of the United States" and was granted status as the official National Committee of the Green Party by the FEC in 2001.
Complete text of the Boston Proposal can be found at http://www.greens.org/~jsutter/boston.html