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On the Stein/Honkala Campaign Trail

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

Philadelphia Police Captain Stephen Glenn, speaks with Cheri Honkala and Jill Stein in the Market Street bank lobby

“This has been such an easy campaign. It’s like giving out candy,” said Jill Stein, 2012 Green Party presidential candidate, who was recently nominated at the Green National Con­ven­tion in July. “There is a rebellion going on out here and we [Stein/Honkala campaign] are the political platform for that rebellion. It is absolutely breathtaking.”

Stein said the troubled condition of the country and the lack of democratic politics is giving her Green agenda a rousing welcome from the public.

With neither the campaign of Repub­li­can Mitt Romney nor Democrat Barak Obama appearing willing to discuss the growing poverty rate, diminishing civil liberties, or looming environmental catastrophe, more and more are planning to vote Green this election. Jill Stein, who ran against Romney as a Green for Massachusetts governor, and running mate, Cheri Honkala directly address the needs of people— homeowners whose houses have been taken from them, young people indentured to student loans, and people of color sitting in jail purely because of their race.

“There is a storm surge we are riding. I never expected this” said Stein, a medical doctor and long time activist, who added that there has been a strong response to the campaign, not only from people under 30 and the unemployed, but also from loyal Democrats and Republicans who are persuaded by Stein’s pragmatic plan for fixing the future.

I would see myself more as “organizer-in-chief” where you the public are the driver of the country and I put it in place. ~ Jill Stein, candidate for President of the United States

She tells the story of giving an interview for National Public Radio in Oregon, which she said is not a “bastion of the Green up­rising.” After talking for some time, the first caller said that as a “lifelong Demo­crat it was so wonderful to hear a platform that used to be like the Demo­cra­tic platform 30 years ago.” Stein goes on to say the interviewer asked with surprise why the caller didn’t mention the spoiler effect, as was planned in the screening. “The caller then said that after hearing what I had to say he was voting Green. That is what it has been like the whole campaign.” She added that the next two callers, a retired navy pilot and a longtime Republican both were voting for her.

“Bringing the grassroots struggle into electoral politics and challenging the hi­jack of our electoral system and Wall Street gives me the liberty to talk about what we need and how we are going to fix these things. We need a green economy if we are going to survive. The public is aware that we need to bring the troops home now. It’s so exciting to me that there is a kind of real focusing now of the public voice, and the public mindset, and to my mind it’s very exciting to be able to provide a political vehicle for that consensus that has begun to really come into focus,” Stein said in an interview for Truthout.com with Yana Kunichoff on Aug. 9.

Ben Manski, Stein’s campaign manager since its beginning last fall, who has previously run for office as a Green himself, said that the campaign team is a winning coalition that appeals to a diverse population in the country. “The spirit of the campaign shows that Jill Stein is 110 percent committed to the struggle. She is walking picket lines and is deeply a part of the Occupy movement,” he said.

The Green Platform

The main component of this campaign that is appealing to so many is the Green New Deal (for an abridged summary of the Green New Deal, see page 4). It proposes a jobs program organized at the community level, and free health care and education. Many of the jobs would focus on transitioning to an environmentally sustainable economy. It would be funded in a number of ways, the first of which is to eliminate the massive tax breaks for multinational corporations and the ex­treme wealthy.

The New Deal program of the Great Depres­sion in the 1930s inspired the Green New Deal. Stein said it worked then, and it could work now. She added that the 2009 federal stimulus package totaling a little more than $700 billion could have easily jumpstarted this program if it had been directed towards communities for growing their own food, creating renewable energy, and funding needed social jobs, such as those in education and healthcare.

Civil Disobedience

Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala at a sit-in in August 2012 at the Fannie Mae offices in Philadelphia to call for a halt to foreclosures. Of the 50 people protesting, four were arrested, including Stein and Honkala.

Both Honkala and Stein have been act­ively engaged with the Occupy movement, calling for economic justice. Honkala is an activist for the homeless and disenfranchised. She has been a strong voice for those who are rarely represented. Their campaign includes provisions for creat­ing equality in pol­itical repre­sentation and giving communities a stronger voice. Hon­kala and Stein were recently arrested in Phila­del­phia for pro­testing unfair foreclosures by the lending organization Fannie Mae.

“The laws and budgets and procedures are designed to protect the lenders and to extract as much money as possible from their victims,” Honkala explained. “This isn’t the way it would be if we really had a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The first priorities of government should be keeping families in their homes, and providing restitution for the deception and fraud that has robbed millions of Americans of financial security.”

Stein and Honkala were part of a sit-in at the Fannie Mae offices to call for a halt to foreclosures by the government-sponsored mortgage company of the homes of two residents who have lived in their homes for decades, and now face homelessness. Of the 50 people protesting, four were arrested, including Stein and Honkala. The candidates said the protest brought attention to the staggering fact that 8 million Americans face eviction and more than half of people in the country live in poverty. Of the monies set aside by Con­gress to aid homeowners in keeping their homes, only ten10 percent of those funds have been distributed.

“There is much more interest in Wash­ing­ton in protecting the profits of banks than in getting this aid out to the families whose lives are falling apart. President Obama held a big press conference to an­nounce a program that would supposedly help 1.5 million homeowners, and, so far, it has actually helped only 1 percent of that number. Real help goes to the CEOs who play golf with the President, and the people get lip service. This will change only if the people stand up and say, ‘We’re not going to put up with it anymore,’” Stein said.

To address the mortgage crisis, under the Green New Deal, Stein would issue an executive order establishing a moratorium on foreclosures of occupied dwellings. Municipalities governed by Greens would get homeowners out of underwater mort­gages by seizing mortgages through eminent domain and letting non-profit community development organizations—not Wall Street banks—reissue the mortgages.

Creating an American Democracy

In addition to dramatically reducing military spending, providing for a cleaner, safer environment, and addressing the per­vasive culture of violence in this country, especially toward people of color, the Stein/ Honkala campaign is about bringing democ­racy to government.

The United States has become like the em­peror without any clothes. Stein’s campaign is signaling loud and clear that the country is naked—of anything resembling a democratic society. But Stein says it is not impossible to get it back. As an example, she points out that when the public got wind of the imminent passing of the anti-Internet piracy act (SOPA), it was stopped in its tracks. “This is how politics can work,” Stein said. As president, she said, she would be in the perfect position to act as a whistleblower on any miscreance by Congress. “I would see myself more as ‘organizer-in-chief’ where you the public are the driver of the country and I put it in place.”

Successes on the campaign trail

People across the country are putting their money behind their convictions, as the campaign was able to raise enough funds to qualify for federal matching funds. To secure matching funds, the campaign needed to raise at least $5,000 from individual donations of no higher than $250 in at least 20 states. As of July, the Stein/Honkala campaign was able to qualify in 22 states. This is the first time a nominated Green Party candidate (Nader was endorsed) has qualified for the federal funds. This feat was possible despite the present economic crisis, due to the concerted effort early in the campaign by local Greens within each state, and the campaign team.

Stein and Honkala are planning to raise $1 million for this campaign. Green Party candidates do not accept corporate donations, and Stein is no different. All funds are raised from individual Americans and this way Stein is not beholden to anyone but the public. “As we take money out of politics, we take back our democracy,” she said.

Manski, the campaign’s manager, said early in the campaign, which started in the fall of 2011, that they tried to be methodical and focus on accomplishable goals. Fundraising and getting ballot status were top priorities and the team made sure that each step was made at the appropriate time.

As a result, not only was Stein able to get matching federal funds, but also to work with state Greens to secure ballot status in more than 30 states so far. The plan is to have a Green Party ballot line in a total of 40 states. The campaign is currently seeking ballot status in Alabama, Con­nec­ti­cut, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.

A campaign of the 99 percent?

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks to reporters in front of the National Museum of the American Indian at Occupy Wall Street. Photo by Alex Jung.

Stein has been active in the Occupy Move­ment and is finding a broad base of support as people see the Green Party as representing the 99 percent. “At Occupy events, they used to have nothing to do with Greens. Now they have realized they have to fight the fight for the voting booth. … We have majority support in the issues— the numbers clearly show this,” Stein said.

Also Stein is finding strong support especially from young Americans. She said the younger generation is “unstoppable” and will be giving the Stein/Honkala campaign their votes. A favorite story of Stein’s is from her first event in the campaign. It was at a mock election at Western Illinois University. Apparently this event is notorious for accurately predicting the outcome of actual presidential elections. Before her speech, Stein had three percent of the votes but after speaking for six minutes, 26 percent of these Midwestern students were voting Green. After that event Stein said she knew the country is at a pivotal moment. “This is like the perfect storm for taking back Democracy.”

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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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About Cheri Honkala

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

Cheri Honkala at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August, 2012 Photo: Roberto Ortiz Feliciano

 

Activist goes political running for vice president on the Green Party line

In 2011, Cheri Honkala ran for Phila­del­phia sheriff on the Green Party ticket. Her platform wasn’t about enforcing foreclosures, but rather as sheriff she planned to refuse to evict people from their homes. As Honkala has dedicated the past 25 years to protecting the poor and homeless, it became clear to her that running for sheriff seemed the thing to do to stop foreclosures, particularly as big banks were given bailouts while little was done to help the 6 million Americans who faced the loss of their homes. Hon­kala received more than 10,000 votes in Philadelphia that election, demonstrating how her mission rang true for many in the city.

Now she is the Green Party running mate to Jill Stein in the 2012 presidential campaign.

“It’s very exciting. I think I’m prepared to take on this challenge. I was absolutely shocked when I was chosen, but I think it’s a real statement about the Stein campaign. And it meant so much to people across the entire country. Once the an­nouncement was made, I literally received hundreds of letters, not just from people in this country but from folks around the entire world,” Honkala said in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

At the age of 17, she was a single mother living out of her car and spent years in and out of homelessness . . . by 1997 she was named Philadelphia Weekly’s “Woman of the Year”.

Honkala has spoken for the rights of Amer­icans living in poverty and has helped in numerous ways to secure them a better life, including creating a network for them to live in abandoned houses. She said that sometimes she has broken the rules be­cause—as in the case of slavery, when it was legal—”at times the laws are wrong.”

She was recently arrested with Jill Stein at a protest in front of the office of Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage company, in an effort to get executives to meet with two homeowners who were about to lose their homes. Honkala also confronted politicians at the Repub­lican National Convention in Florida in an encampment called Romneyville. She voiced the concerns of the 99 percent on issues of home ownership, education and health care.

At the age of 17, Honkala was a single mother living out of her car and spent years in and out of homelessness. After she moved into an abandoned HUD home to keep her family from freezing, she be­came a pioneer in the housing takeover movement. She has since co-founded the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. Honkala has organized tens of thousands of people, holding marches, demonstrations and setting up tent cities.

By 1997, she was named Philadelphia Weekly’s “Woman of the Year,” and, in 2001, Ms. Magazine awarded her that same title.

Honkala’s activism, dedication and astute solutions to rectify devastating poverty in the country have brought her even more recognition. She has since been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bread and Roses Human Rights Award, Public Citizen of the Year by the Penn­syl­vania Association of Social Workers, and the prestigious Letelier-Moffitt award from the Washington Institute for Policy Studies. In April 2005, Mother Jones magazine named her Hellraiser of the Month. Front Line Defenders has named Honkala one of the 12 most endangered activists in America.

In 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Zucchino chronicled Honkala and the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign for six months in his book The Myth of the Welfare Queen. He de­tailed how she organized 70 homeless families, setting up two encampments. At that time, she was arrested and charged for attempting to set up a tent city in front of the Liberty Bell. Honkala faced more than 10 years in prison, but was absolved of any crime. In 2000, at the Republican National Convention, Honkala led a march of more than 100,000 people, and at the United Nations addressed representatives of 148 governments on poverty.

Honkala grew up in Minneapolis, Minn. She has two sons. Her son Mark Web­ber is an actor and director. Honkala has played herself in Explicit Ills, Webber’s drama about poverty in Philadelphia.

Democracy Now! interview

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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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Reducing global warming

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

Greens score high on the political scorecard for climate change
By Mark Dunlea, Green Party of New York State

The severe weather patterns throughout the U.S. and the world—drought, floods, heat waves, forest fires—seem to be finally waking up the American public to the fact climate change is not only real, but is already happening.

Presidential candidate Jill Stein’s Green New Deal is part of the worldwide effort by the Green Party to take immediate action to confront climate change while also creating a full-employment economy.

The Green New Deal would provide jobs to everyone who needs them, starting with a massive investment in energy efficiency, conservation, and clean renewable energy. It would be paid for by fees on carbon use, a massive cut in the military tax, and making the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes. The Greens also call for an end to tax subsidies to carbon fuels (oil, gas, coal) and nuclear power.

Green solutions include the creation of millions of new jobs in energy conservation projects such as retrofitting homes and other buildings for energy efficiency, innovative technologies for safe and clean energy that don’t rely on nuc­lear or petroleum-based sour­ces, planning and new construction for cities and towns that will free them from reliance on car traffic, and ex­panding public transportation.

In many countries across the planet, the Green Party has been able to use the seats they win in proportional elections to make climate change the key demand in their joining any coalition government. This struggle has most recently been seen in New Zealand.

Our neighbors to the north, the Canada Greens, who now have Elizabeth May as their first member of Parliament, are calling for a smart economy: “It turns old-industry blue-collar jobs into new-industry green-collar jobs. It focuses on value-added production and generates green products that will be in demand in tomorrow’s markets. A smart economy is efficient. It relies on non-polluting systems and energy sources. It ends waste. It reuses and recycles.”

In the U.S., while many environmental groups attack the Republicans for being climate change deniers, the reality is that the Democrats’ lack of action leads us to the same fate.

graphic courtesy of gp.org

Stein points out that “President Obama has adopted the ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ platform of the Republican Party. He has embraced the energy industry position that our public lands and our environment should be sacrificed for the goal of increasing domestic production. This spin ignores the fact that our most pressing problem isn’t foreign oil—it’s what fossil fuels, both foreign and domestic, are doing to our planet. The President’s ‘all of the above’ approach is an alarming denial of the climate emergency we face and the urgent need to substantially reduce the amount of carbon we exhaust into the atmosphere.”

The Democrats are climate change evaders and enablers, prompted by enormous campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. Clinton-Gore failed to even bring Kyoto up for a ratification vote in Con­gress. President Obama did little to try to get Congress to pass a climate change program even though Democrats controlled both houses. The Waxman-Markey carbon-trading scheme that did pass the House was weak and nothing happened in the Senate. Further Obama refused to engage in the political debate. Meanwhile he has provided lip service to renewable energy while saying that his energy plan is to promote all energy choices—including offshore oil and the dan­ger­ous hy­dro­fracking of natural gas.

The Democrats’ big excuse —besides blaming everything on the Republicans even though the Demo­crats have a 20-vote majority—is that the economy is so bad we first have to fix it to create jobs rather than make an unaffordable investment in transitioning to a carbon free economy. The reality is the amount of money wasted on the bailouts of Wall Street would have been a major down payment on a carbon-free economy.

In addition to being in the forefront of climate change, the Green Party has also been leading the fight across the country for a full ban on the hydrofracking of natural gas. The Obama administration has only promoted it. In New York State, the Green Party, including Howie Hawkins, 2010 Green gubernatorial candidate, called for an outright ban on hydrofracking while Democrats, the Working Families Party, and many national environmental groups only want a moratorium or better regulation. The Greens point out that instead of investing more resources into natural gas, we should focus on renewable energy.

The recently updated national Green Party platform calls for a carbon fee and dividend program. A carbon fee or tax is a direct tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). A carbon tax is the most economically efficient means to convey crucial price signals that spur carbon-reducing investment. Carbon taxes should be phased in so businesses and households have time to adapt and can be structured to soften the impacts of added costs by distributing tax revenues to households (“dividends”) or reducing other taxes (“tax-shifting”).

The Green platform calls for these carbon fees to be applied as far upstream as possible, either when fuel passes from extraction to refining, distribution or consumption; or when it first enters the United States’ jurisdiction. The carbon fee will initially be small, a dime per kilogram of carbon, to avoid creating a shock to the economy. The fee would be increased by 10 percent each year global atmospheric carbon dioxide content is greater than 350 ppm, decreased 10 percent each year it’s less than 300 ppm, and repealed entirely when it falls below 250 ppm.

Some Greens are beginning to call for the nationalization of the oil companies and fossil fuels so the public controls their future use. A recent article by Bill McKib­ben of 350.org pointed out that the amount of fossil fuels owned by such companies is at least five times greater than the amount of carbon that we can release into the at­mosphere. Greens think something so dangerous should be put under lock and key.

German Green Party photo courtesy of Der Spiegel / dpa

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Scores of Greens on the ballot line

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

A highlight of 2012 Green candidates from across the country
By David McCorquodale, Green Party of Delaware

This election cycle has brought forward a new group of Green candidates in several states. In total, hundreds of candidates will be running for positions— from seats in the U.S. Congress, to state legislatures, to city, county and township positions, to seats on boards, such as water commissions and school boards. Some of the numbers, as of late August: 10 candidates for U. S. Senate, 67 for U.S. House, 11 state senate candidates, and 50 candidates for state house (or assembly or representative).

Some states are putting up about the same numbers as in the past: Colorado (8), Con­necticut (11), Maine (9), Michigan (23) and New York (20). But the Illinois party has only a handful of candidates, compared to dozens four years ago. California has 21, which is a relatively small number, considering that the registered Greens from that state comprise about one-fourth of all registered Greens. Meanwhile, Greens in southern states seem to be coming on strong. Arkansas is fielding 14 candidates. Relatively new parties in Tennessee (12) and South Carolina (7) are doing well. But the state party to have the most candidates is Texas with 51, including six U.S. House candidates, 16 Texas House candidates, and two each for the State Board of Education, Texas Supreme Court, and Texas Railroad Commission.

Below are profiles for some of the Green candidates from around the nation

Remington Alessi

Remington Alessi
Sheriff, Harris County, Texas

Alessi is a young man who has a degree in criminal justice. He has studied professional standards files and thought about scientific ways of approaching criminal justice. He believes a “small minority of peace officers act cavalier with regard to accountability” and become “bullies with badges and guns.” He believes problem officers need to be dealt with before “they spoil the whole bunch.” He also notes that the newest officers are often assigned the least desirable work shifts—in the middle of the night—where they encounter “drunks and other bad elements. Such experiences harden their outlook and lead them to treat ordinary citizens with the same ap­proach as criminals.

Having been in the Occupy movement in the past year, Alessi believes this outlook gives him an advantage over his more ex­perienced opponents, who have not been trained in such a perspective. He opposes private prisons for profit, enforcing “vice crime” and drug laws, rounding up undocumented workers who contribute “more tax revenue” than would come from a person with full citizenship and the idea of “being tough on crime.” He advocates for more mental health services for those encountering the criminal justice system.

remingtonforsheriff.com

Colin Beavan

Colin Beavan
8th Congressional District, New York

Beavan is a long-time activist on climate crisis, who rose to prominence as a spokesman after making the documentary No Impact Man, which followed the yearlong experiment of his family in extreme environmental living. Previous media ex­posure of No Impact Man has given Beavan more coverage than most Green candidates—he has even appeared on the Colbert Report on Comedy Central.

Beavan addressed the 2012 Green Presi­dential Convention, detailing his reasons why Greens should run for office.

In his campaign Beavan expresses not only concern for urgent work on climate change, but also the importance of involving citizens again in the political process. He believes that people must act based on their ideals, bringing civility back into politics. He talks about issues that the Dem­ocrats and Republicans ignore. He spends time on weekends in subway stations, trying to encourage more people to register to vote. He hopes his campaign will promote community involvement and lead to community self-determination.

votecolin.com

Carol Brouillet

Carol Brouillet
18th congressional District, California

Brouillet is a long-time media activist working to raise consciousness about critical issues that are ignored or censored by the corporate media. Much of this work has focused in recent years on the cover-up of facts behind the events of 9/11. She co-sponsored the first Local Currency Con­ference and printed various demonstration currencies, such as the “Perception Dollar,” and speaks frequently about the topic on her show on the Progressive Radio Network. Brouillet ran for Congress in 2008, but that attempt was hampered by health concerns.

Brouillet has created a platform that clearly explains her positions on the issues, but also frames her larger vision: Truth before profit in the media; Peace—ending the bogus war on terror and replacing global militarism with a peacetime economy; Justice—human rights above corporate greed; Ecological Wisdom; and Time for the 99 percent to organize and Occupy Congress.

Brouillet has challenged the positions of Democratic incumbent Anna Eschoo, claiming that she does not support making banks accountable for their misdeeds, that Eschoo supports bills that favor the pharmaceutical industry instead of health care for all, and that she is more concerned with allowing Israel to project its power in the region than bringing peace to the Middle East. Brouillet was arrested this spring on Good Friday in front of a Lock­heed Martin building in a protest against military spending and U.S. military combat overseas. She pointed out that the in­cumbent has repeatedly supported the funding of military spending and “has chosen war over peace.”

www.carol4congress.org

Colia Clark

Colia Clark
U.S. Senate, New York

Colia Clark grew up in Jackson, Miss., and was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Over a lifetime, she has been fighting for human rights, women’s rights, worker rights and the rights of the homeless and youth. More recently, she has been involved in Haitian relief efforts, but unlike most charitable organizations, she draws attention to the culpability of U.S. policies toward Haiti for almost 100 years in creating the current situation. Clark ran against Chuck Schumer in 2010, receiving almost 1 percent of the vote.

This year Clark is running against Kirstin Gillibrand, who was elected to the senate in a special election in 2010. With Repub­lican challenger Wendy Long only poll­ing about 25 percent, perhaps more voters will be persuaded to vote their conscience this time.

While taking positions on numerous issues that Greens espouse, Clark’s top issue is education. She believes that America’s youth is its treasure and that educating them is a national priority. She would:

  • Support the creation of Independent Parent Advocacy Boards in each school district;
  • Oppose the use of any public funds for charter schools;
  • Advocate for a more rounded curriculum, including arts, music, sports and agriculture; and
  • Fund those programs by deeply cutting the military budget.

www.coliaclark.org

Henry Cooper

Henry Cooper
148th State Representative District, Texas

Cooper is a native Houstonian, married, with two children. He’s a machinist who has worked for more than 20 years in the gas and oil manufacturing industry.

“I’ve seen how oil companies have grown and profited through the years, and yet the good old jobs have vanished, outsourced, or transferred to subcontractors to lower the cost of labor,” he said.

Cooper, who is Hispanic, recently was re-districted into the area served by the chairwoman of the House Democratic Caucus, Jessica Farrar, who faces no Republican op­ponent in the solidly Democratic district.

So why would Cooper run against her? As he points out, Farrar has revealed through her actions that she doesn’t represent the best interests of her constituents. While Cooper, even though employed in the resource extraction industry, is pushing for alternative technologies to carbon based fuels, Farrar supports the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring “dirty” oil into the Houston area for refining. Farrar also supported Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia and his vigorous efforts to execute the Obama administration’s controversial Secure Communities program, which has been termed a “backdoor effort at a National ID.”

Cooper and his wife Alma are conducting a low-budget campaign of walking sections of the district to meet people and attending any public forum. Regardless of his chances, it will be interesting to see how much support Cooper receives through his efforts against a powerful nine-term incumbent, but with no other election opponent.

brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2012/08/brainy-endorsements-henry-cooper.html

Bob Fitrakis, second from left, with Ohio Greens , Earth Day 2012

Bob Fitrakis
3rd Congressional District, Ohio

Bob Fitrakis is a political science professor, journalist and radio talk-show host. He is also co-chair of the Ohio Green Party and ran for governor in 2006. Fitrakis co-authored What Happened in Ohio?, a documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election, and has authored or co-authored eleven other books. Fitrakis recently co-authored an article detailing the ways Republicans are planning to control the 2012 election in Ohio, “The Ohio GOP has already moved 3 ways to steal America’s 2012 election.”

As a candidate, Fitrakis plans to advocate for:

  • Full employment through a Green Jobs Initiative that creates manufacturing jobs in Ohio in renewable technology;
  • Single-payer health care;
  • A constitutional amendment making voting a universal right and the overturning of Citizens United;
  • Supporting the Occupy movement and adopting policies which expose the power and privileges of the 1 percent; and
  • The closing of Ohio’s nuclear power plants and halting all hydrofracking practices in the United States.

Fitrakis’s website also makes a strong appeal to the working-class tradition in Ohio by detailing the position of the Green Party on unions and workers’ rights. It lists the PAC contributions that incumbent Joyce Beatty (D) has received and asks, “Who do you think she’ll represent in Congress?”

fitrakisforcongress.org

Andrew Groff

Andrew Groff
U.S. Senate, Delaware

Groff is a recent convert to the Green Party. A former employee for several shoe companies, including Nike, he says his ex­perience as an executive informed him about the exploitation of workers in Asia and the way international corporations hide profits by transferring them overseas.

Having moved back to his home state of Delaware several years ago, Groff became involved in the Occupy Delaware movement last fall. That movement constantly made the point that “Banks got bailed out; we got sold out!” Delaware is the corporate home to several of those bailed out banks, including Bank of America, which bought the credit card operations of MBNA, Citi­bank, and Citizen’s, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Delaware’s congressional delegation is highly supportive of legislation favorable to banks. With Sen. Tom Carper (D) up for election, “Andy” took the next steps, deciding to run against Carper and join the Green Party. Through his efforts, along with those of Green U.S. Rep. candidate Bernard August, more than 100 new members of the Green Party of Delaware were registered to meet new ballot access requirements.

Since a few key members of the Liber­tar­ian Party of Delaware were also involved in Occupy Delaware and had become familiar with Andy, and the LPDE was not running its own candidate for senate, the LPDE endorsed Groff for the office. Groff be­lieves the distinctions between the political left and right set up false divisions among people. He believes that being able to speak as a small businessperson can help to break the barriers and garner votes from a constituency that has not considered the Green Party in the past. An alliance of small parties in Delaware may be helpful in opposing restrictive debate forum rules, which act to keep ballot-qualified candidates from smaller parties from participating.

www.andrewgroffforsenate.us

Anthony Gronowicz

Anthony Gronowicz
14th Congressional District, New York

Gronowicz teaches and has headed institutes at several colleges in the New York City area. He is an author of scholarly works, including what has been termed a “classic” study: Race and Class Politics in New York City Before the Civil War (1998). He has previously run for State Assembly, for mayor of NYC, and for the same congressional seat in 2010 against the same opponent, Joseph Crowley (D), who supported the Iraq war.

Gronowicz supports the Green New Deal, first proposed by the Stein presidential campaign. He cites what he terms the shortest campaign speech on record: “I believe in the five-finger exercise: jobs, the environment, health care, housing and education” which he reels off on each finger of his right hand. “Together they spell, ‘Power to the people,’ ” and he raises his right hand in a clenched-fist. He runs for office to give people a meaningful choice on the ballot.

votegronowicz.info

 

Rebekah Kennedy

Rebekah Kennedy
3rd Congressional Distric, Arkansas

Kennedy has been active in the Arkansas Green Party since 2002 and serves as co-chair. A practicing attorney, she has run previous campaigns for State Attorney General (2006, 2010) and U.S. Senate (2008). In the 2008 senate race she received more than 206,000 votes, more than any other third-party candidate in the nation. In the 2010 AG race, she got 197,000 votes or 26.8 percent. Unlike that race, when the incumbent Democrat had the support of the AFL-CIO, in this congressional race the umbrella union group is supporting her. In this race the Democrat withdrew amid questions about his claims of being in the special forces in the military.

Given the fact that Kennedy has had little money to spend on her campaigns, the number of votes she has received is testament to the need of Arkansans to have democratic choices at the polls. This time is no different, with the campaign still developing a website and looking for a volunteer tech person who will help create a contribution link.

Kennedy commented at a recent interview that she couldn’t believe that the topic of cutting Social Security is a campaign issue. “Cutting it or privatizing it shouldn’t even be on the table.” Meanwhile, cutting any of the 752 overseas military bases never comes up. Her staff member, Mark Swaney, adds that issues like global warming are still considered fringe topics “when 80 percent of the U.S. is in a drought.”

votesmart.org/candidate/biography/104896/rebekah-kennedy

Martin Pleasant

Martin Pleasant
U.S. Senate, Tennessee

With two degrees in engineering, Martin lives in South Knoxville and is an employee of Knox County Engineering & Public Works department, which solves drainage problems and restores unhealthy creeks. His service includes working to craft new ordinances, which will foster a new era of green practices in the development of communities. He and his wife Virginia, along with their children, put these principles to action at home, operating a small organic farm and community garden space near the community of Vestal.

The most important reason Pleasant is running for Senate is that the restrictive ballot access laws of Tennessee require a party to receive at least 2.5 percent of the vote in a state-wide election in one cycle in order to automatically be on the ballot the next cycle. Pleasant’s presence as a candidate doubles the Green Party of Ten­nessee’s chances, with presidential candidate Stein also on the ballot. With incumbent Bob Corker (R) a seeming shoo-in and the Democrats apparently only putting up a sacrificial candidate, the chances that Pleasant’s appearance on the ballot will help the Green Party of Tennessee gain ballot access are good.

The party had to sue the state of Ten­nes­see to force it to accept the Green candidates on the ballot this year. But the state is still refusing to list the Green candidates on its website, which also means that they won’t be receiving candidate questionnaires or getting invited to forums, making it difficult to connect with people who pay attention to politics.

www.facebook.com/martinpleasnt

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New Green Party formed in Japan

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

Group seeks to reflect anti-nuclear, environmental, pro-democracy movements
By Mike Feinstein, member, GPUS International Committee

Ms. Nao Suguro spoke at press conference

In the aftermath of the nuclear meltdown catastrophe at Fukushima, a new Green Party has arisen in Japan. Hop­ing to harness record public opposition to nuclear power, over 400 concerned Jap­anese citizens, and anti-nuclear and environmental groups gathered in Tokyo on July 28th to launch Midori no Tou (Greens Japan).

The new party plans to field candidates in the Upper House (House of Council­ors) election scheduled for mid-2013, and in the proportional representation bloc in Tokyo for the Lower House (House of Rep­resentatives) election, which must be held by August 2013.

“We seek to become a party that reflects the public’s desire to abolish nuclear power. We want to create a broad network to ac­commodate calls for the abolition of nuclear power plants,” said Ms. Nao Suguro, 33, a Green member of the Suginami Ward Assembly in Tokyo, at the press conference announcing the party’s founding.

“We need to change the nation’s industry and its reliance on atomic energy,” added Mr. Hitoshi Nakayama, 53, a Niigata municipal assemblyman and also one of the new Green Party’s co-representatives.

Party Program

Greens Japan Kick-off event on 29th July at Seiyou Hall

Drawing upon its roots in the Global Greens Charter, the core policy of Midori no Tou is to substantially increase the use of renewable energy sources, to end Japan’s dependence on nuclear power and to greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The new party also opposes the export of nuclear power technology, and Japan’s possible entry into the Trans-Pacific Partner­ship free-trade negotiations—both policies, the sitting Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, argues are crucial to generate economic growth. Instead, Greens Japan calls for an economy centered on local production and consumption, improved social security programs through fair sharing of tax burdens and increased participation in democratic processes.

Election Prospects

New opinion polls have not yet been taken to gauge Greens’ support. But existing polls suggest that voters disenchanted with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) are not automatically flocking to the established opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), under whose watch more than 50 reactors were built across this earthquake-prone country.

Instead, more than sixty percent of Japa­nese voters identify themselves as non-affiliated, and recent anti-nuclear dem­on­strations in Tokyo have also included many younger people who are protesting —and potentially voting—for the first time. Several civic groups and non-governmental organizations are also looking for new electoral alternatives.

“As the ruling party and the largest op­position party have both approved the re­start of nuclear reactors, voters are deprived of the option to realize the stance ‘breakaway from nuclear power and objection to the resumption’,” said Mr. Akira Miyabe, 59, the Greens Japan deputy head.

Already Japanese Greens have been successful on the municipal and prefectural level. Today there are over 70 Greens elected in cities and prefectures nationwide, including Ms. Kazumi Inamura, who in November 2010 became the first Green and the youngest female mayor (at age 38) in the history of Japan, in the City of Amagasaki (population 460,000). Unfor­tunately, the barriers to participation in elections to Japanese parliament are much higher than for local elections.

Perhaps the major challenge to Greens Japan is the restrictive nature of the Japanese national electoral system, which features mostly single-seat, winner-take-all districts, combined with required election deposits and a minimum number of candidates just to participate. Then there are the costs of conducting a national campaign, in order to achieve a high enough percentage of the vote to actually win seats and not lose the deposits. In addition, unless and until a party has five members in parliament, its candidates have to run as unaffiliated.

On the positive side, 96 out of 242 House of Councilors seats are elected by proportional representation from a single national list, with half elected every three years. It is from these seats that the Greens Japan have their best hope of electing their members, when these seats are contested in 2013.

Yet to even contest these seats, a party is required to at least run 10 candidates and put down a deposit of 6 million Yen (US $76,260) for each, meaning it will require more than three quarters of a million dollars (US $762,600) just to get on the ballot —and unless the party receives enough votes to win seats, it will lose this deposit entirely. Raising these funds is something Japanese Greens have not done in the past, but are now prepared to do, according to co-deputy leader of International Affairs, Mr. Rikiya Adachi, 39. “This time,” he says, “Greens Japan has set an overall campaign goal of 100 million yen, of which we have already raised more than 10 million.”

Party Origins

The new Green Party Midori no Tou sprang from a political organization called Midori no Mirai (Green Future), which was formed in 2008, and included among its members about 70 Green lawmakers in municipal and prefecture assemblies. The organization was disbanded in 2012 to form Greens Japan, with 1,000 members of Green Future joining the new party.

This is not the first time there have been attempts to start a Green Party in Japan— efforts date back to the 1990s and even the late 1980s. But all have faced the restrictive Japanese national electoral system.

Perhaps the first successful national Greens effort was the Rainbow and Greens Japan. Founded in 1998, it began as a network of 250 active, Green-thinking citizens longing for political reform, including 120 local legislators, and the former Mayor of Hiro­shima as an honorary member. Many then attended the 2001 Global Greens meeting in Canberra, Australia. Their positive experience led them to host the Asia Pacific Green Network (APGN) founding meeting in Kyoto in February 2005, held just days before the effective start of the Kyoto Protocol Climate Change Treaty. The meeting’s lead organizer Ms. Satoko Watanabe, was a three-term Green member of the Kagawa Prefecture assembly and is a two-term APGN representative on the Global Greens Coordination.

In 2002, a second group was founded by Mr. Atsuo Nakamura—a famous actor and writer who was already elected to the House of Councilors as a member of Sakigake, the Pioneer Party. Before he faced re-election in 2004, Nakamura formed the Environ­mental Party Greens out of the Pioneer Party, and drafted nine others to run on his party list. Together they received about 900,000 votes (1.62 percent)—just short of the 2 percent needed to win seats and be certified as an official political party for the next national election. As a result, Nakamura lost his seat. Despite this, the network that grew around the campaign resulted in the founding of the first incarnation of Greens Japan.

As they did not have official party status, in 2007 Greens Japan ran internationally known Mr. Ryuhei Kawada as an independent candidate for the House of Council­ors. A 31-year-old HIV-positive human rights activist who had recently attended the Global Young Greens meeting in Kenya, Kawada was elected to the fifth seat in a five-seat, winner-take-all district in Tokyo . His spirited campaign included inspirational speeches about his experiences as a victim of an HIV-infected blood product, and his fight against the government and the company that infected him.

Spurred by this success, the Rainbow and Greens merged with the Greens Japan after the election, with the new organization Midori no Mirai, with over 600 members and 60 elected local officials at that time. Ironically, Kawada left to join a new center-right party in 2009 that split from the LDP.

Movement for Change

Checking the contamination level of radiation by a Geiger counter

On the evening of July 29th, Greens joined thousands of anti-nuclear protesters to form a human chain around the Japanese Diet (parliament), protesting the reopening of nuclear power plants following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The “Encircle the Diet” rally was organized by a coalition of citizen groups and helped prompt the Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s leading daily newspaper (circulation eight million), to write an editorial the next day, stating:

  • At the root of the [anti-nuclear] protest movement is strong distrust of the way indirect democracy is practiced in this country.
  • Indirect democracy should allow voters to realize the policies they favor through their elected representatives, or legislators. Many Jap­anese seem to feel that the nation’s system of indirect democracy is not functioning properly in that their voices are rarely heeded by policymakers.
  • This sense of frustration appears to have been driving people into actions that seem closer to direct democracy.
  • The Fukushima nuclear disaster was clearly the last straw.
  • People are not just distrustful of politics. They are also critical of newspapers and TV networks, which they regard as part of the establishment.
  • The trend toward direct democracy will only accelerate in coming years.
  • Direct democracy is an effective means to ensure that people’s voices are reflected in policymaking during periods between elections.
  • It is the job of political parties and politicians to incorporate their views into actual policies.
  • A group of local assembly members have formed a new environmentalist party, Midori no Tou (Greens Japan), under the banner of immediate abolition of all nuclear power plants.
  • there is no denying that people’s voices are beginning to influence politics.”

For more information: www.greens.gr.jp

And a special thanks to Masaya Koriyama for his help in researching this article

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Is the Green Party evolving through its presidential campaign?

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

An editorial by David McCorquodale, Green Party of Delaware

Jill Stein & Cheri Honkala

I have been stunned by the strength and successes of the Stein-Honkala ticket! Re­gardless of the electoral outcome, make no mistake about it: this campaign is an improvement over our past presidential campaigns.

Here’s a brief review. In 1996 and 2000 Ralph Nader was the party’s standard-bearer. At neither time was Nader chosen through a primary pro­cess. Rather, he was an endorsed candidate. His candidacy showed both the benefits and the limitations of a campaign centered on an almost mythical personality figure. While he could personally draw in millions in contributions, the commitment was more to him than the party.

The focus of the current campaign is clearly about building the party and has largely taken over the ballot access duties from the national party.

When Nader decided to forego primary campaigning in 2004, instead hoping for another endorsement, even though he wasn’t a registered Green, the Party nominated an actual Green, David Cobb. When Nader formed his own independent campaign, the contributions left with him. The Cobb-Lamarche campaign was run on a shoestring-budget, but I understood that a number of state Green Parties would lose ballot access if we did not put up an actual Green as a candidate. Contrary to the accusations that the campaign would only go into “safe states,” the real limitation was that the candidates could only campaign when a state party could raise the money for transportation and come up with a place for a candidate to sleep.

Cynthia McKinney

When former six-term Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia began to participate in Green state party primary debates for the nomination in 2008, there was justifiable excitement. Someone who had actually been elected to the highest legislative body in the country was running for the Green Party. During the now expanding primary and debate season, it was clear that the other candidates knew McKinney would be the nominee. How­ever, after the McKinney-Clemente ticket was formed in Chicago, things started to unravel. The campaign obviously expected much greater support from the party. The party members expected a much stronger campaign organization. Neither side could deliver.

Between 2008 and the beginning of 2012, numerous state party organizations got even weaker. That weakness was reflected in the lower numbers of active participants in the National Committee and other GPUS committees, which had gone dormant for lack of members. Who would want to run a presidential campaign in such a situation? How could it possibly work?

I don’t know the inner details, but into the breach stepped the pairing of Dr. Jill Stein as candidate and Ben Manski as campaign manager. Dr. Stein had taken her activism on health issues to a higher level when she ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002 (against Mitt Romney). By all accounts she presented herself as the best candidate in that race. Since then Stein has run in several other Massachusetts races and was twice an elected representative of the town meeting of Lexington. Seasoned through a half dozen campaigns, the former singer in a folk band knows how to address a crowd and to focus discussion on the issues.

Ben Manski, though young compared to the typical nationally involved Green, has a long history of participation in the party. An attorney and the editor of Liberty Tree Journal, Manski has been both a candidate (for state assembly in 2010), a member of the Steering Committee of GPUS, and in­volved in fundraising as Chair of the Co­ordinated Campaign Committee of GPUS. I believe Manski saw the strengths and weaknesses of the national party and formulated a vision of what a presidential campaign had to accomplish in order to move the Green Party forward.

Green Party at OWS

From its’ beginning the Stein campaign began to seek out Occupy groups to address. With the addition of Cheri Honkala, long-time advocate for the homeless and of those who are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure, as the vice-presidential candidate the identification of the campaign with the dispossessed has be­come even stronger. This is changing the stereotypical view that Greens are only concerned about the environment. In formulating the plan for a Green New Deal, the campaign has created a ready set of discussion points which can help to change the focus of any debate toward our vision that all issues are interconnected and of the proper role of government in implementing such a vision.

Early in 2012, with Greens viewing Stein as a viable candidate and with a constantly updated campaign website, contributions started to flow. Already the campaign has achieved a historic first for a nominated Green presidential candidate of raising enough money ($5,000) in enough states (20) during primary season to receive federal matching funds. The campaign may not reach the level of money that Nader could raise, but it will certainly outpace the last two Green presidential campaigns’ fundraising.

Once it became clear that Stein would win the nomination, something remarkable happened! The campaign began to assume a role that we might expect the National Party to fill, but which it currently can’t do for lack of money and volunteers. It began to lead efforts to secure ballot access in various states, starting with Illinois, which was a huge task, but was ac­comp­lished. After the presidential convention, focus shifted to other states and ballot lines were se­cured in Pennsylvania, Mary­land, New Jersey, Oregon, Kan­sas, Iowa, Wash­ington and Wis­consin. The ticket will be on the ballot in at least 34 states (as of mid-August) and continues to work.

So what is going on here? I believe we are seeing the evolution of the way the Green Party must operate in order to move forward. The presidential campaign, being the only electoral campaign of the national party, must have a bigger role in that process. The focus of the current campaign is clearly about building the party and has largely taken over the ballot access duties from the national party. People are not easily motivated to give money to support abstract principles and ideals. There is an apparent need to provide faces and personalities as the literal embodiments of those ideas. It takes special people to step into such a role without being caught up in ego. The Stein-Honkala campaign has raised the bar and shown us where we must start to continue growing as a party.

David McCorquodale is Treasurer of the Green Party of Delaware, and co-chair of Green Pages.

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The color of Green

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

An interview with Theresa Anderson, candidate for Oakland City Council

Theresa Anderson

Why have you joined the Green Party?

I joined the Green Party because I liked their progressive alliance, and the platform they stood for. I like their policies. Dem­ocrats and Republicans have made a mess of what we have today. Something different and refreshing is inviting, and that’s why I joined.

What do you think are the most pressing issues of the country?

I believe our most pressing issues are with our youth, the police, and the high rate of joblessness. I feel like we need to meet our youth where they are in order to get them to where they need to be. And it wouldn’t take much for us to start implementing policy or programs for our youth to give them something to do. Something small and easy could be to start off with a turf dance program*, where they would go and do their dances, and that way we could develop and form relationships with them, and we can take it from there to help them with the needs that they have. I feel like we need to implement policy to control the police. We need a panel that has the power to discipline the police and oversee what they do here, and how they work.

What do you think the Green Party should focus on?

I think they should focus on housing the homeless, and on implementing a minimum-wage policy nationwide. We need transparency for our budgets so that people can understand it more. I think that we should also work on banning the box nationwide. Banning the box means this: once people from our prison system have done their time and paid their debt to society, that box on job applications that asks if you’ve been arrested—that box should be taken off of those applications. It will give these people an equal chance with everyone else to find employment, which will help them stay out of jail and become productive citizens.

What do you think Greens can do to enhance diversity within the party and in general?

I believe that to enhance diversity, once again you need to meet people where they are. Everyone in every culture is different, and they have different needs. To do that, you need to meet them where they are in order to understand where they need to be.

With what race or culture do you identify?

I would want to say that I would mostly identify with the African-American culture because that’s what I am: African-Ameri­can. But deep down inside, I identify with all races, because I don’t see color.

Could you please give a brief bio of yourself?

I’m a 50-year-old woman. I’ve lived in Oak­land all my life. I worked for attorney John Burris for five or six years. After going to school and getting a business degree, I started my own company, Dandell Enter­tainment. I’ve been really active in the last 11 years, in my community in the North Oakland area: advocating, mediating, and being a liaison for my community to help them with a lot of the problems they have in life—just everyday problems. You can help them and make a big difference just by doing that.

To help Theresa Anderson’s campaign for Oak­land City Council, please send PayPal donations to anderson4citycouncil@gmail.com.

* Note: Turf dance is a form of art developing in Oakland and other cities across the US.

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Let Obama lose — and open the door for a third party

September 25, 2012 in 2012 Fall

An editorial by Paul Boerger, Green Party of California

For liberals and progressives, it has become painfully obvious that Barak Obama has betrayed the voters who elected him; those who actually believed he would bring change, fairly represent the interests of the people and uphold the ideals of the Democratic Party. The question arises whether they should, by either not voting or voting for a third party such as the Green Party, allow Obama to lose. A look at the voting demographics clearly shows that they can.

Obama beat John McCain in 2008 by seven percent of the vote, not exactly an unbeatable margin. The youth vote ages 18 to 29 went for Obama at 66 percent. As evidenced by the Occupy movement, the youth disenchantment with Obama is profound and wide. Obama won the youth vote on the basis of the young harkening to his call for change and fairness. They are not buying it this time around. Many of those young voters simply won’t bother to cast a ballot because they just don’t believe in him anymore. Many will vote third party. First time voters went 68 percent for Obama and a majority were among the young.

The heart of Obama’s support came from 89 percent of liberal voters. That would include a huge number of baby boomer Democrats who felt they had finally found a candidate who would have the courage and conviction to right the wrongs of the Bush administration. That hope, of course, has been utterly destroyed and it is this group, combined with the youth and first time voters, that could defeat Obama if they simply do not vote or cast ballots for an alternative party like Green. Note that, as a matter of conscience, voting for a de­structive fool like Mitt Romney is simply out of the question.

So why take the chance of allowing a Re­publican to become president? Below are 10 reasons why Obama should not be re-elected and is evidence that such an outcome might just be the lesser of two evils. An Obama loss has the potential to shake the electorate so hard that third party candidates and their ideals, such as the Green Party, become not only viable, but also their platforms vault into the political mainstream.

10. Obama has taken the Democratic party so far to the right it is not even recognizable as the liberal, progressive party it used to be.

9. Obama has institutionalized torture as an instrument of American policy by refusing to prosecute, or even meaningfully in­vestigate, those who promoted, ordered and carried it out.

8. Despite Roe v. Wade being the law of the land, Obama has done virtually nothing to contest the unconstitutional state laws that are amending and restricting the landmark Supreme Court decision that gave women the right to choose. Obama signed an executive order that forbids any federal funding for abortion.

Congress refuses to punish financial fraud

7. There has not been a single criminal prosecution of any Wall Street executive for the unconscionable fraud that brought down the entire world economy.

6. Despite clear pronouncements to the contrary, Obama has not eased the unjust and counterproductive drug war, but has intensified the federal assault on medical marijuana with doctors and practitioners serving years in prison.

5. Instead of acknowledging that the Iraq war was based on lies, should never have been fought and immediately begin pulling troops out, Obama prolonged that agony to the last minute, pulling troops out only when the Iraqi’s refused to renegotiate the Status of Force Agreement and demanded we leave.

4. The president has sold massive amounts of arms to egregious human rights violators such as Saudi Arabia that beheaded two people for witchcraft last year and Bahrain that violently suppressed a democratic movement in 2011.

3. Despite a majority of Americans op­posing the war in Afghanistan, Obama ordered 50,000 additional troops to a conflict that is not winnable, sustainable or capable of being turned over to a corrupt, incompetent Afghan government.

2. Despite his opposition to Bush Patriot Act policies during the campaign, Obama has greatly expanded the Act’s most in­trusive and unconstitutional surveillance, arrest and warrantless provisions.

1. Barak Obama signed a Defense Auth­or­ization Act that allows the government to arrest American citizens and hold them without charge or trial for an indefinite period without any protections of the Bill of Rights.

The case against Obama is clear. By any measure, he does not deserve a second term. What can be debated, however, are the consequences of allowing Obama to lose. On the obvious down side, we would have to endure a Republican president for four years. That might not be as bad as may ap­pear. I suspect, and hope, that a Republi­can president will see such obstruction from progressive Representatives and Senators that in comparison the Tea Party will look positively cooperative. In addition, Obama has moved so far right that there is not much further damage a Republican president could do.

On the positive side, by allowing Obama to lose we teach the Democratic Party, in­cluding those senators and represen­tatives who have mindlessly supported the president, that if they ignore campaign promises, progressive and liberal voters, the law and the Constitution, they are out of here.

Or better yet, an Obama loss could open the door for massive support for a third party that has the integrity and courage to bring social and economic justice to America. Is there such an alternative? There is and it’s called the Green Party. So, vote your conscience, vote your ideals, vote Green.

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