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About Jill Stein

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

Mother, doctor and Green presidential candidate

Jill Stein sees herself as a mother and a physician. She never thought of herself as a politician.

“I was not political,” she said. “It was too corrupt to be politically involved.”

But there was a point when she could no longer ignore what was happening. And now Stein is running for president of the United States.

“I am an activist because, as a mother and M.D., I am trying to fix the causes that make our children sick, find solutions that save our lives, jobs—the world,” she said.

Stein said her political tipping point was when Massachusetts’ voters passed a campaign finance reform bill, but Democrats in state legislature repealed it. “I realized I could not change it from the outside,” she said. Shortly after that, in 2002, Stein was asked to run for Massachusetts governor with the Green-Rainbow Party against Mitt Romney, and she accepted.

Stein represented the Green-Rainbow Party in two additional races—one for state representative in 2004 and one for secretary of state in 2006. In 2006, she won the votes of more than 350,000 Massachu­setts citizens—the greatest vote total ever for a Green-Rainbow candidate. She has also been elected two times to town meeting in Lexington, Mass., and founded and co-chaired a local recycling committee ap­pointed by the Lexington Board of Select­men.

Another motivating moment occurred when President Barack Obama put Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block a year ago. Shortly after that, Stein was asked to run for president as a Green, and again she ac­cepted. “I felt I had a responsibility to challenge the current president. … I had always worked at the grassroots level but the party was coming out with a unified campaign, and I became involved at the national level,” she said.

Stein began advocating for the environment as a human health issue in 1998 when she saw government was not protecting children from toxic threats. She offered her services to parents, teachers, community groups and Native Americans seeking to protect their communities. She co-authored two widely praised reports, In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, published in 2000, and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, published in 2009. The first of these is used worldwide and promotes green local economies, sustainable agriculture, clean power, and freedom from toxic threats. In 2003, Stein co-founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, a non-profit organization addressing issues important to the health and well being of Massachusetts communities, including health care, local green economies, and grassroots democracy.

She has testified before numerous legislative panels as well as local and state governmental bodies on environmental health. She also has appeared as an environmental health expert on the Today show, 20/20, Fox News and other programs. She was a member of the national and Massa­chu­setts boards of directors of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her efforts to protect public health have won her several awards, including: Clean Water Action’s “Not in Anyone’s Backyard” Award, the Children’s Health Hero Award, and the Toxic Action Center’s Citizen Award.

In 2008, Stein helped formulate a “Secure Green Future” ballot initiative urging legislators to accelerate efforts to move the Massachusetts economy to renewable energy and make development of green jobs a priority. The measure won more than 81 percent of the vote in the 11 districts in which it was on the ballot.

Stein was born in Chicago and raised in suburban Highland Park, Ill. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973, and from Harvard Medical School in 1979. Stein has been in a folk rock band, Somebody’s Sister, for many years and has released four albums. Stein enjoys long walks with her great Dane, Bandita and lives in Lex­ington, Mass. with her husband, Richard Rohrer, also a physician. She has two sons, Ben and Noah.

As Stein said in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, “To silence the only hope of an opposition voice in this election, when so much is at stake, I think would be just a terrible loss for the American people.”

More information at www.jillstein.org

To silence the only hope of an opposition voice in this election, when so much is at stake, I think would be just a terrible loss for the American people.

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Solutions for a country in trouble

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

Jill Stein’s summary of the Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is a four-part program for moving America quickly out of crisis into a secure, sustainable future. Inspired by the New Deal programs that helped us out of the Great Depres­sion of the 1930s, the Green New Deal will provide similar relief and create an economy that makes our communities sustainable, healthy and just.

The Four Pillars of the Green New Deal

I. The Economic Bill Of Rights

Our country cannot truly move forward until the roots of inequality are pulled up, and the seeds of a new, healthier economy are planted. Thus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens:

1. The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded but locally controlled direct em­ployment initiative—replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which are “stored” in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.

  • Local communities will use a process of broad stakeholder input and democratic decisionmaking to fairly implement these programs.
  • Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying favors do not impact decision-making.
  • We will end unemployment in Amer­ica once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.

2. Worker’s rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.

3. The right to quality healthcare, which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.

4. The right to tuition-free, high quality, federally funded, locally controlled public education from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.

5. The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:

  • create a federal bank with local bran­ches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure mortgages to affordable levels, or if occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to occupants;
  • expand rental and home ownership assistance;
  • create ample public housing; and,
  • offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25 percent of their income.

6. The right to accessible and affordable utilities — heat, electricity, phone, Inter­net, and public transportation—through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.

7. The right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.

II. A GREEN TRANSITION

The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:

1. Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.

2. Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.

3. Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and “complete streets” that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.

III – REAL FINANCIAL REFORM

The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It’s time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:

1. Relieve debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.

2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.

3. Break up oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”

4. End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.

5. Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.

6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.

7. Establish a 90 percent tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.

8. Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.

Under the Green New Deal we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.

IV – A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY

We won’t get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to re­store the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:

1. Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings—not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.

2. Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” to clarify to the Su­preme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.

3. Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:

  • guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting;
  • require that all votes are counted before election results are released;
  • replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions;
  • celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday;
  • bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls;
  • do away with so-called “winner take all” elections in which the “winner” does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect;
  • replace big money control of election campaigns with full public financing and free and equal access to the airwaves;
  • guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates;
  • abolish the Electoral College and im­plement direct election of the President;
  • restore the vote to ex-offenders who’ve paid their debt to society; and,
  • enact Statehood for the District of Col­umbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.

4. Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This review will put at its center the “democracy question”—that is, what level of government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.

5. Create a Corporation for Economic Democ­racy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcast­ing) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.

6. Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.

7. Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:

  • repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties;
  • prohibiting the Department of Home­land Security and the FBI from conspiring with local police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech;
  • ending the war on immigrants—in­cluding the cruel, so-called Secure Com­munities program.

8. Rein in the military-industrial complex by

  • reducing military spending by 50 percent and closing U.S. military bases around the world;
  • restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national de­fense;
  • creating a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.

Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.

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The candidates speak

April 18, 2012 in 2012 Spring

By Jim Witters, Green Party of Delaware

As the presidential primary season whip­ped through the nation during the winter and early spring, the Party’s candidates found themselves battling a plethora of Republican races for the attention of the media.

Celebrity Roseanne Barr, of course, garnered immediate reaction when she officially announced her Green candidacy in February. But San Diego County air quality engineer Kent Mesplay and Dr. Jill Stein of Massachusetts found the battle much tougher.

Stein, for her part, toured the country, touting her “Green New Deal” and visiting Occupy sites wherever she went. Ac­cording to Stein’s website, as of March 23, the candidate had won all nine Green Party presidential primaries held.

Here are the candidates’ responses to Green Pages:

Jill Stein

What are your top two or three issues?

I will work to deliver a Green New Deal for America—an integrated package of emergency reforms that will put 25 million people to work, end unemployment in America, halt the recession, jumpstart the Green economy for the 21st Century, and combat climate change. The Green New Deal includes reforms to the economy, financial system, and to our democracy—and is inspired by the New Deal that got us out of the last Great Depression of the 1930s.

Our economic reforms will create living wage, community-based jobs that meet needs of communities and make them sustainable ecologically, economically and socially. It will create jobs in the traditionally green areas of the economy, in clean manufacturing, local organic agriculture, public transportation, and clean renewable energy—which also provide for real national security by making wars for oil obsolete.

Let me be clear: The Green New Deal will end unemployment in America. Of course, such a thing as ending unemployment would never occur to Washington politicians because their corporate backers depend on the threat of unemployment to keep wages down. But ending unemployment, and more, is front and center on the minds of Greens.

As Greens we are committed to im­proving the conditions of working people by an immediate halt to home foreclosures and evictions, and guarantying health care for everyone as a human right through Medicare for All.

Through the Green New Deal, we will forgive the crushing student debt burden and liberate an entire generation of young people who are being turned into indentured servants. And we will provide tuition-free public education from pre-kindergarten through college. This is an investment in our future that will pay off enormously, like the GI Bill after World War II that provided seven dollars in economic activity and increased tax revenue for every dollar that Congress invested.

Speaking of investments, the takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. The Green New Deal will end the bailouts and corporate giveaways, and ensure that re­sources are available for investments in our communities, for consumers, cooperatives and small business.

Of course, we cannot hope to secure the economic reforms of the Green New Deal without enacting political reforms. We don’t have that in America today. For this reason, we urgently need to amend our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech.

The Green New Deal also strengthens democracy supporting economic cooperatives and participatory democracy at the local and state levels. And it strengthens media democracy by expanding federal support for locally owned broadcast media and local print media.

How do you feel your campaign will help to build the Green Party and independent politics?

In these early months of the campaign, we have already succeeded in getting a Green Party ballot line established in Utah, and our campaign has launched Green Party ballot drives in New Hampshire, Indi­ana, and New Mexico, and has already assisted Vermont, Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, and Hawai’i in getting their efforts going. We are litigating for the ballot in Alabama and hiring staff for ballot access drives in Pennsylvania, Illi­nois, Indiana and, eventually, other states.

No other presidential campaign is do­ing this work, and the Green Party of the United States is relying on our campaign team to help get our party on the ballot across the country this year. We are aiming for 48 ballot lines, with a minimum of 40, and at the rate we are going, we expect to get there.

Let me add that we are attracting thousands of new people to the Green Party. We estimate that at least half of our supporters are people who have not supported Green Party candidates in the past. For these people, our campaign is an accessible and effective way to have a positive impact in the 2012 elections.

Finally, we have launched efforts to build support within organized labor, with students, the immigrant rights movement, and the climate justice and environmental justice movements for using the Green Party as an electoral bullhorn for their demands. We have visited Occupy sites in two dozen cities, as well as student hunger strikers in Virginia, striking workers in Massachusetts, and of course the Wis­con­sin uprising in Madison, where my national headquarters is now based.

We are uniting and growing our party as never before. In my 12 years as a Green Party activist, I have never seen the kind of energy and enthusiasm we are seeing now, and I am honored to have the opportunity to represent our courageous membership in the 2012 elections.

Roseanne Barr

What are your top two or three issues?

1. Legalize Weed: Listen, the fact that I’m not a politician isn’t a drawback; it’s an advantage. Do I need to know every micro-detail about a failed policy like our ridiculous “War on Drugs” to know that anyone who wants to buy some recreational drugs can probably do it, and that all we’re doing is making money for dangerous drug dealers and locking up users at a cost higher than a college education! The drug laws are written for the benefit of drug lords! And it’s a war on Marijuana smokers, mostly! YES THE EMPEROR IS NAKED AS A JAY BIRD-HE NEEDS TO PUT SOME DAMN PANTS ON!

2. Operation Slingshot: I will obliterate the “Two Party” System by becoming the first Green Party president of these United States as a result of our victory in the 2012 general election—with 99 percent of the votes. I also believe it’s essential to do away with the Electoral College, a system created by the 1 percent of the 1 percent—the super 1 percent—to enslave us all.

How do you feel your campaign will help to build the Green Party and independent politics?

The goal of any political party should be to grow. I’m throwing open the doors to the Green Party to a whole new generation of activists. Tough girls and boys who lived on the street so other people didn’t have to are beginning to attend Green Party meetings at the state level. To the youth of America I say, “The Green Party is ours to Occupy. The greater our numbers, the more ballots we Occupy. The more ballots we Occupy, the more offices we Occupy. The door stays open until the last one’s in. Occupy the Green Party!”

Kent Mesplay

What are your top two or three issues?

A hybrid economy is best. My main rival touts a federal jobs program that is dependent upon raising corporate taxes and slashing military spending. This will take time to implement, and lacks legislative support. My approach is more workable:

  • Focus on security arguments favorable to transforming our military into being trained to address the emergency conditions associated with drastic climate change (essential climate-related concerns include health care, emergency food production, the housing of masses of displaced citizens).
  • Provide tax incentives for businesses providing goods and services that help us be more sustainable.
  • Generate trustworthy bonds to stimulate investment in several key areas: re­newable energy, energy efficiency and conservation in housing and transportation.
  • Small-scale organic agriculture.

The top-down approach must be complemented by a ground-up approach that works with market forces (such as true, full-cycle cost pricing), allays skeptical, fearful people who learn to appreciate the security-enhancing properties of sustainability, and that looks beyond standard economic models to recognize that consumption outside our means is harmful and misguided.

The global economic and environmental catastrophe has solutions rooted in local action: scrip, time-banking, volunteerism, trade-and-barter, sharing and even philanthropy. Federal recognition of our state of emergency may clear the way for local governments to be more tolerant of citizen-driven solutions. We need to think beyond consumption and jobs and be allowed to meet more of our needs locally and directly and quickly.

Climate change matters. Climate change has long been a dire issue with me, as this threat to public health and safety and biodiversity, including human native biodiversity, is real. The solutions to climate change, in mitigation and preparation, are steps that reduce over-consumption of limited resources and that point the way to using less, needing fewer consumables, saving more, being more connected to earth, family and friends, and having an inherent “built in” baseline of living that is more secure, in terms of water, food and energy.

Sustainability is a key, core issue. Sus­tainability reflects ecological wisdom and concern for other species and those who are to come. At the base of the dominant culture must be recognition of the essential value of living sustainably. Sustain­a­bility is security: Especially with instability in climate, it is important to enact policies and behaviors encouraging less consumption, promoting local, independence-enhancing solutions and affording people of all levels of training and education to have basic economic well-being.

I am also an advocate of Native perspectives (including warnings about climate change), cultures, sovereignty and regained self-reliance.

How do you feel your campaign will help to build the Green Party and independent politics?

We grow the Green Party and the green movement by pointing out the security-enhancing features of sustainable living: better emergency preparedness, better ex­tended-emergency preparedness, less need for others to come to our rescue, once we learn better to care for ourselves and each other, locally.

When we talk, seriously, about living sustainably we demonstrate that this feature of decentralization is one that enhances and supports independence and diversity. The green movement is an independence movement, built upon recognition of our interdependence. By removing the corrupting influence of money in politics, such as through “Move to Amend,” good governance will bloom at all levels and independence will flourish.

In short, we need good governance, we need Green values and we need to get the influence of money out of politics. And we certainly need to cut bloated Penta­gon spending and waste and enact an independent, trusted system to audit military spending.

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About Roseanne Barr

April 18, 2012 in 2012 Spring

Roseanne Barr
Los Angeles, California
Born Nov. 3, 1952

Roseanne Barr is an actress, comedian, writer, television producer and director. She began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the television sitcom “Roseanne.” Barr also hosted a television talk show, “The Roseanne Show,” from 1998 to 2000. In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy with a world tour. In 2011, she began starring in an unscripted TV show, “Roseanne’s Nuts,” about her life on a Hawaiian farm.

Aside from being an Emmy-award winning actress and New York Times bestselling author, Barr is an advocate for social justice. From her hardscrabble days in Denver, Colorado, where she launched her stand-up career, Barr has always looked out for the least among us.

She also is no stranger to politics. During the 2004 election cycle, Barr spent time working with ACORN in Florida and Ohio registering voters and handing out bottles of water at polling places. This was not for the cameras. She was doing it on her own dime to reach out to disenfranchised voters, welcoming them into an electoral process that typically cast them aside.

In 2008, Barr endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKin­ney. On August 4th, 2011, Roseanne Barr announced her candidacy for president of the United States on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, declaring that she would not run as a Democrat or a Republican “because they both suck, and they’re both a bunch of criminals.”

She has since decided to seek the nomination of the Green Party of the United States. On September 17, 2011, which was Day 1 of Occupy Wall Street, Barr became the first public figure to stand with the occupiers in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, delivering a speech before the very first General Assembly.

On February 2nd, Barr publicly an­nounced her candidacy for the Green Party presidential nomination. “I am pleased to announce that I am seeking the Green Party’s nomination for president of these United States of America. The Democrats and Republi­cans have proven that they are servants—bought and paid for by the 1 percent—who are not doing what’s in the best interest of the American people. As a long time supporter of the Green Party, I look forward to working with people who share my values. Behold the greening of America!”

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About Jill Stein

April 18, 2012 in 2012 Spring

Jill Stein, MD
Lexington, Mass.
Born 1950
JillStein.org

Stein was born in Chicago and raised in suburban Highland Park, Ill. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973, and from Harvard Medical School in 1979.

She is the co-author of two widely praised reports, “In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development,” published in 2000, and “Envi­ronmental Threats to Healthy Aging,” published in 2009. The reports promote green local economies, sustainable agriculture, clean power, and freedom from toxic threats. Stein’s “Healthy People, Healthy Planet” teaching program reveals the links between human health, climate security, and green economic revitalization. This body of work has been presented at government, public health and medical conferences, and has been used to improve public policy.

Stein began to advocate for the environment as a human health issue in 1998 when she realized politicians were simply not acting to protect children from the toxic threats emerging from current science. She offered her services to parents, teachers, community groups and Native Ameri­cans seeking to protect their communities from toxic exposure. Stein has testified before numerous legislative panels, as well as local and state governmental bodies.

She played a key role in the effort to get the Massachusetts fish advisories updated to better protect women and children from mercury contamination. She also helped lead the successful campaign to clean up the “Filthy Five” coal plants in Massachu­setts. Her testimony on the effects of mercury and dioxin contamination from the burning of waste helped preserve the Massachu­setts moratorium on new trash incinerator construction in the state.

Stein has appeared as an environmental health expert on the Today Show, 20/20, Fox News, and other programs. She was also a member of the national and Massa­chusetts boards of directors of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her efforts to protect public health has won her several awards including: Clean Water Action’s “Not in Any­one’s Backyard” Award, the Children’s Health Hero Award, and the Toxic Action Center’s Citizen Award. She has twice been elected to town meeting in Lexington, Mass. She is the founder and past co-chair of a local recycling committee appointed by the Lexington Board of Selectmen. In 2003, Stein co-founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Com­munities, a non-profit organization that addresses a variety of issues that are important to the health and well-being of Massa­chusetts communities, including health care, local green economies, and grassroots democracy.

Stein became an advocate for campaign finance reform and worked to help pass the Clean Election Law. This law was approved by the voters by a 2-1 margin, but was later repealed by the Massachusetts Legislature on an unrecorded voice vote. In 2002 activ­ists in the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party approached Stein to run for governor. She accepted.

Stein represented the Green-Rainbow Party in two additional races—one for State Representative in 2004 and one for Secretary of State in 2006. In 2006 she won the votes of over 350,000 Massachusetts citizens—which represented the greatest vote total ever for a Green-Rainbow candidate.

In 2008, Stein helped formulate a “Secure Green Future” ballot initiative that called upon legislators to accelerate efforts to move the Massachusetts economy to renewable energy and make development of green jobs a priority. The measure won over 81 percent of the vote in the 11 districts in which it was on the ballot.

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About Kent Mesplay

April 18, 2012 in 2012 Spring

Kent Mesplay, PhD
San Diego, California
Born July 19, 1962
Mesplay.org

Mesplay spent the first 10 years of his life in New Guinea, where his parents were Lutheran missionaries. He was home-schooled for the first three years of school, later attending a British-style boarding school at Wau. At boarding school he was influenced by the international student body and by tales of World War II, as Wau had been one of the busiest airstrips in the world during the war. His closest friends at school were German and Australian, with teachers from around the planet.

After coming to the United States, the family moved to Mira Mesa, California, in 1977, following his father’s acceptance into graduate school for clinical psychology. Mesplay graduated in 1980 as valedictorian from Mira Mesa High School, where he had captained and lettered on the track team and received a Bank of America Achievement Award in Liberal Arts for his debating skills. Mesplay studied engineering at Harvey Mudd College and went on to earn a PhD in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University, with empha­sis on prosthetic design and function. Mesplay now works for San Diego County as an air quality inspector with the Air Pollution Control District.

Regarding Green Party involvement, Mesplay is active locally and on the state and national levels. He registered with the Green Party of California in 1995. In 1996, he was a Nader delegate to the Green Party’s national convention. He was elected Treasurer of the Green Party County Council, San Diego, where he served from 1996 to 1997. During the same period, he was the co-chair of the Communications Committee, Green Party County Council, San Diego. Mesplay has served numerous times as a delegate to the Green Party of California General Assembly.

In 2004 Mesplay became a Green Party of California delegate to the Green National Committee and has served continuously since. In 2006, he was again elected to the Green Party County Council, San Diego.

Mesplay sought the Green Party presidential nomination in 2004, announcing at a State Green Party meeting in Chula Vista, CA, in September of 2003. Entering the 2004 Green Convention in Milwaukee, WI with a count of 10 (1.3 percent) committed delegates, Mesplay more than doubled his delegate count in Round 1 of the presidential nomination voting, earning 24 (3.1 percent) delegates.

After a number of candidates withdrew 
or were eliminated Mesplay entered the second and final round, where he again nearly doubled his count, finishing third with 43 (5.6 percent) of the delegate votes. David Cobb received the nomination with 408 (53 percent) delegate votes.

In 2006, Mesplay ran for U.S. Senate in California. This was the first time the Green Party had a contested senatorial primary in California. With very little organizing and minimal voter outreach, Mesplay received one sixth of the Green votes in the primary.

In 2007, Mesplay began his run for the 2008 Green Party presidential nomination and partnered with another Green Party candidate, Kat Swift of Texas. This unique partnering allowed both candidates to share resources and make common arrangements for debates and events. Mesplay placed third at the Chicago convention in 2008 behind Kat Swift and party nominee Cynthia McKinney.

In 2011, Mesplay was the first Green Party presidential candidate to announce.

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