The 2001 Congress of the Greens/Green Party USA, held at Carbondale, Illinois, was a critical event in the history of the Green Party in the United States. At the Congress, occuring July 20th to July 23rd, at which the G/GPUSA was to consider the Boston Proposal, a tentative "merger" agreement between it and the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP). After an intense internal organizational struggle, most of which revolved around whether or not to "accredit" various delegations (and thus grant the individuals within them voting privileges), the proposal was rejected; although 55% of the members in attendance voted to approve it (99 in favor, 81 against), the organization's bylaws required yes votes from a "super-majority" of 66.7% of the delegates in attendance to pass. 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... It is not unusual in the United States to hear people speak generally of the Green Party, but there is actually more than one national-level Green political organization in the United States. ... Carbondale is a city in extreme south central Illinois in the midwestern United States, about an hour north of Cairo. ... 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. ...

This result was very controversial, as many Carbondale participants who supported the Boston Proposal felt that a portion of the national G/GPUSA leadership who opposed it had illegitimately manipulated the accreditation process to reduce the level of support for the proposal and thus ensure it's failure. This (and other subsequent events[1]) ultimately led to the exodus of a large number of G/GPUSA activists, many of whom later went on to found [2] and/or participate in The Green Alliance (an organization intended to bring "movement" politics in the style of the G/GPUSA into the Green Party of the United States, which they felt was overly focused on "electoral" politics, and relatively conservative).[3] The Green Alliance is a national network of Green Party political clubs in the United States, which are local membership organizations for Green activists. ...