Green Party Watch

We’re Greens, and as Greens we will likely always be several steps ahead of the Democratic Party establishment on the road to true progress for America. Still, an opportunity has arisen for Green bloggers like you and me to help Democratic bloggers pressure the establishment to move in a more progressive direction. The recent Netroots Nation gathering of progressive, largely Democratic bloggers is planning to submit a platform to the Democratic National Convention later this summer, and it is inviting the progressive netroots to contribute.

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July 21:

First All-Women-of-Color Presidential Ticket in US History: Green Party Nominee Cynthia McKinney and Running Mate Rosa Clemente on War, Democracy and Hip Hop

The Green Party made history last week when it nominated the first all-women-of-color presidential ticket in US history. Former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was the first African American woman elected to Congress in Georgia, won the Green Party’s nomination last Monday. She named longtime community organizer, journalist and former director of the Hip Hop Caucus, Rosa Clemente, as her running mate earlier this month. They both join us for a wide-ranging discussion on the 2008 race, the media, the impact of the hip hop generation and more.

Hear it, watch it, read it, here on Democracy Now!

(ht:Dean K in WI)

Getting McKinney & Clemente on as many ballot lines as possible is the number one priority right now for the Green Party. Finding out where we are at with 51 separate ballot access laws, dozens of state parties and action committees on the ground, etc., is a challenge.

This is where we are at right now coming from documents and emails from the GP Ballot Access Committee:

McKinney-Clemente on the ballot now (22 states):

• From West to East: Hawaii, California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, , District of Columbia, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine;

States that are past the deadline that the Green Party can not get on the ballot (5 states):

• Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas

States that are in the process of petitioning to get McKinney on the ballot, in order of deadlines:

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First 100 Days Energy and Environmental Policy
The Green Party Platform:
Ecological and Energy Sustainability.

The human community is an element of the Earth community, not the other way around.

All human endeavors are situated within the dynamics of the biosphere. If we wish to have sustainable institutions and enterprises, they must fit well with the processes of the Earth. The ideology of industrialism, in both capitalist and communist countries, insists that modern society lives on top of nature and should rightly use and despoil the rest of the natural world as we desire—because any loss of the ecosystems is merely an “externality” in economic thought and read more »

If you do, you might want to join digg.com and push her to the top of the polls. Here, taken from Greens who are working for Cynthia McKinney independently of party efforts and the campaign (I think), is one heck of a good idea.

This is an e-mail from ‘McKinney 2008 -Cynthia McKinney for President | POWER TO THE PEOPLE’

Message:
Help Cynthia McKinney place number one on the Digg.com elections ‘08 page and place her profile at the top where it belongs. Simply…

Register free here
http://digg.com/register

then add her as your friend
http://digg.com/invitefrom/CynthiaMcKinney

see the results
http://digg.com/elections/

what is digg?
Digg is the number one user-submitted social news site online.
Digg the articles you like and bury the articles you dont like. SUBMIT positive articles about Cynthia. DIGG positive articles. The articles with the most diggs/popularity for the day (avg. +1000 diggs) gets placed on their front page and sometimes makes it to the media newspapers and tv.
When Cynthia has +1000 friends and everyone diggs her articles at once, we will be able to send the latest article about her to the front page for review that day by all the megamedia outlets in the world.

my favorite, watch in realtime
http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/
http://labs.digg.com/swarm/

Mato Ska sent me a link to a video recorded in 1992. In this video, a 12 year old girl named Severn Suzuki is speaking to the UN Earth Summit straight from her heart. One can’t help but wonder how different the world would be today if her words had been heeded over the past 16 years.

At the age of nine, she founded the Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO), a group of children dedicated to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues.

The video is a bit grainy, but her words are clear as a bell.

According to Ballot Access News, the Arkansas Democratic Party adopted a new policy on the 19th which would dis-allow anyone who had resigned a public office as part of a plea bargain from running as the Democratic nominee in a general election. This is a boost to the Green nominee, Richard Carroll, because his only competition on the November ballot is a former member of the legislature who resigned his post as part of a plea bargain in his prosecution for sexually assaulting a 17 year old girl.

Carroll, who is a boilermaker and has been a leader in the boilermaker’s union for 30 years, still faces opposition from a write-in campaign being run by the Democratic leadership, but with Carroll’s name being the only one on the ballot, he has a better than average shot at victory.

Green Party Watch will continue to report on progress in Carroll’s race.

While she was in New York City recently, Cynthia McKinney held a press conference. In a comment here, Sherman Young suggested putting the video here, and that’s a wonderful idea. The video is produced and was posted by Craig Seeman This is but one of several videos. The rest can be seen by clicking on the on the “Read more” link or the article headline. Enjoy!

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This is essentially little more than a series of links to stories about Greens running for Congress.

Wanda Sabir writes about New Orleans based Green Malik Rahim and his campaign for Congress from his New Orleans district.

Perhaps candidates like Rahim who believe in a sustainable economy and true social justice will change the tenets of a party that is more on the page than the other two, which aren’t even in the right chapter.

Christine Anne Piesyk writes about Tennessee Green John Miglietta who is running for Congress from the 5th District. She writes at Clarkesville Online about his fundraising to date, and his campaign plans in general.

Campaigns must focus on issues. Miglietta and the Green Party call for the public financing of elections and an end to corporate special interest funding of elections.

Over at PolitickerMD the Green Party candidate for Congress from that state’s 8th District lays out his case against burning more oil. The candidate, Gordon Clark says that changing the climate in Washington must come before saving the global climate.

“The last thing we need now is a debate between the President and Congress about where to do more oil drilling.”

This post was written by Wes over at the old Green Party Watch site and I just moved it here. The text is all his.

The most recent newsletter from the Center for Rural Affairs references two studies on life expectancy, both published in April, 2008.

The first study, from the Congressional Budget Office finds that “those at lower levels of income and educational attainment experiencing declining or stagnant life expectancies.”

The second, A Harvard School of Public Health study – The Reversal of Fortunes: Trends in County Mortality and Cross-County Mortality Disparities in the United States, finds that life expectancy for women is declining or stagnant in 1000 mostly rural counties.

It seems to me that there is in this a great opportunity for Green Party activism, addressing the issue on multiple fronts: is it environmental? is it a question of social / economic justice? is there truly gender bias in medicine? is it a cultural (including in the Green Party) bias toward urban affairs?

I have heard it said by Green Activists that the party don’t need various caucuses, especially the rural caucus. There is a strong reaction against the use of identity politics. I have also heard it said that trying to organize in rural California (nominally Red State Country) is a waste of our resources.

If we don’t focus on providing solutions to the problems that exist, then why should we bother?

Apparently confusing a willingness to write and communicate with an unwillingness to run for office, some believe that Greens and other activists spend all our time online rather than in the streets.

I’ll not deny that there are “armchair activists” in the Green Party and all other parties. That said, just because one writes online doesn’t mean we don’t hit the streets too.

Gail’s Tails links to an article at one of the planet’s great newspapers, the Christian Science Monitor. The article by Sally Kohn is titled “Real change happens off-line”, and Gail Tails seems to agree.

We do too.

Roger Snyder of The Green Party of New York State is credited by MS Magazine for an online piece at the magazine’s website about Cynthia McKinney’s nomination. Snyder, a long time Green Party member and activist and leader at both the state and national level, also runs the site News for Greens.

As a convenience to readers the full text of the article is under the fold. read more »

At 24 years old, it disheartens me that 18-29 year olds make up 1/5 of the voting eligible population and yet only 47% of 18-24 year olds voted in the 2004 elections. It should be noted that this was up 11% from the previous election, but it still meant that less than half of young voters turned out. Young, progressively minded voters could have a greater say at the table of public policy making if voting turnout were higher, for yielding 1/5 of the nation’s electoral power is a powerful bargaining tool.

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As I seen the Green movement grow, I’m continually puzzled about how we don’t seem to be well represented in today’s music. In era’s past, the music scene was the mouthpiece for the progressive movement. If anyone is a regular visitor to my blog, Cottage Home Grown, you’ll know that I’m very fond of posting videos of Peter, Paul, and Mary as well as many other folk artists who were singing great music with a great message. But up until now, I don’t see Greens making much of a connection with any genre in today’s music. I’m hoping Rosa Clemente’s Vice-Presidential candidacy will be what changes that, and that the Green and hip-hop movements will merge and amplify our message as Clemente declared at the Chicago Convention. I also hope that we can reach out to old friends of progressive politics and bring them into our movement. Where are Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and all the others from progressive history? Regardless of who’s song we sing, it’s time that we make some noise. We have a message that won’t sway most Democrats and Republicans, but that’s OK, as most people don’t identify as either of those two things. Most people don’t even vote period! Now they have a reason to re-engage in the political process. Let’s use our song to reach these folks, and let them know we’re saving their place at the table!

Ya know how sometimes you are sure you got it right, and then you checked again and you had the wrong date? Maybe it was a missed doctor’s appointment, a friend you were supposed to visit, or a ball game you were going to see, but what if it were more important that that?

Well, in this case the mix up could have been more serious than that, but sharp eyes from a McKinney supporter kept things from going too far awry. That is a good thing too, for if she had missed it too, Cynthia McKinney’s votes in North Carolina might not have been counted in November.

What happened was the state party thought the filing deadline to submit petitions read more »