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Just watch the video for the story. Then take a minute or two to think of how you will react when an opportunity arises.
As the Democratic Nominating Convention gets underway in Denver, Greens in that city pulled out of the Recreate ‘68 coalition and decided to support the Alliance for Real Democracy coalition instead.
State co-chair Claire Ryder explains why they made this move in two videos. They, and other comments on the topic, can be found at the Metro Denver Greens website.
Green Party Watch uses a “spam catcher” to…well…catch spam. The filter has caught a lot of spam, which is good, but an occasional non-spam post gets caught up in the works. If you have posted a comment and don’t see it, please drop us a note so we will know to look for and release the comment.
Now, on to the news!
Steve Larrick, Green Party candidate for US Senate from Nebraska, got some coverage for his visit to the Nebraska State Fair. While there he debated the Democratic and Republican nominee , and was interrupted by a marching band. And you thought ballot access was our only hurdle!
The full story is available at the Daily Nebraskan and Larrick maintains a blog over here.
You can also listen to the debate via netMebraska and do further reading at The Grand Island Independent.
MLive.com covered Cynthia McKinney’s planned visit to Detroit over the Labor Day weekend.
Whitewater Community TV will broadcast portions of the Democratic, Republican and Green Party national conventions. The Indiana based broadcaster will reportedly broadcast McKinney’s acceptance speech and press conference.
Bunches of media outlets have gotten it wrong. They posted articles explaining that Ralph Nader had submitted signatures to place his name on the ballot as the Green Party nominee. An example of this screw-up is here. One can only hope that tomorrow’s news will tell the truth, that Cynthia McKinney is the Green Party nominee.
The Babylon Beacon of Long Island announced a Green Party gathering on September 3rd.
The Jackson Sun reports on Cynthia McKinney’s visit to Jackson TN, as well as other stops in Western TN. McKinney said
“We are kick-starting a movement so that our values can be reflected in public policy.”
Former Green Party vice-presidential nominee Pat LaMarche has resigned her position as spokesperson for a casino proposed in Maine. A FOX News affiliate in that state posted a brief video in which the reporter explains the reasons LaMarche resigned her post.
According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, some Democrats in that state have started a political action committee to bring the Green nominee for Public Relations Committee some cash, and at least a little bit of news coverage. Apparently some Democrats believe that Rick Lass would be a better public servant than the Democratic nominee.
Lass will get $64,000 in public financing for the campaign, but some Democrats feel so strongly about Lass that they have already held meetings to turn out support for him in November.
Finally, Eugene Platt Green Party nominee for the 115th House District in the South Carolina State Legislature, got some coverage in that city’s free weekly. Platt found out today that the South Carolina Democratic Party has filed to intervene in his federal ballot access case. Represented by the ACLU, Platt and supporters in Charleston held the first of what will be many re-organizing meetings in the South Carolina Lowcountry this past Saturday.
Cynthia McKinney Speaks in Denver Colorado, before DNC
Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney speaks at the R-eCreate ‘68 rally outside the DNC on Sunday, August 24, 2008.
Here is the Denver schedule posted at All Things Cynthia McKinney (all times are Colorado Mountain time):
Sunday, August 24:
9:00 am: End the Occupations March and Rally =97 West Steps of the Colorado State Capitol Building, Sunday, August 24.
7:00 pm: World Can’t Wait Stop the War on Iran – Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater, 119 Park Avenue West.
Monday, August 25:
9:00 am: Rosa Clemente Speaks, Freedom March, Civic Center Park
12:00 noon: Resurrection City Free University, City of Ceurnivaca Park, 20th Street & Little Raven, attend the Lecture of Dr. Vincent Harding.
1:00 pm: McKinney Lecture, Resurrection City Free University,
6:00 pm: Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street, 80205 (303) 294-9258
Wednesday, August 27:
7:00 pm: Rosa Clemente Speaks at the Open the Debates Rally sponsored by Nader/Gonzalez!
(Be sure to keep checking the McKinney Campaign site.)
By Some of All Parts, video to accompany their already popular song:
hat tip to the Wilder Side
Cynthia McKinney gave an online interview with Kate Sheppard that appeared on environmental news website Grist.org today.
Some highlights:
“Right now we’ve got two energy policies in this country,” McKinney told Grist. “One is war, the other is drilling. And neither one of them works.” It’s a message she hopes will win over voters who have tired of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
From the lead-in:
McKinney was a Democrat herself for years, representing Georgia’s 4th district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003, and again from 2005 to 2007. She was the first African-American woman to represent her state on the federal level. During her time in the House, McKinney was active on environmental issues, particularly those related to human health.
Her legislative efforts included lead sponsorship of the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, which would have eliminated commercial logging on federal public lands. In 2001, she introduced a bill that would have suspended use of depleted uranium munitions until their health effects could be studied further. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2006, McKinney was a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s failure to help residents of New Orleans, and she pushed for comprehensive environmental testing of flooded areas.
Published on Vibe Launch
Talk about the platform. What do you think the Green Party has over the other parties?
This is the only party that even has social justice as its core principle. When we say ending the war, we mean all the wars. We need to get all the military out of every country, we need to begin to deal with issues of what peace can look like, how do you sustain that. Obviously, the green party is at the forefront of pushing the environment as a core value, that was innovative then. There should be an end to imprisoning young people, an immediate stop to the death penalty, a livable wage, not a minimum wage. Impeachment for George Bush and them is critical. I think if we don’t hold them accountable as a people, then anybody can do the same shit that they did.
Words are words, but we can make the words into deeds. If people would even open up the platform, they would see that neither the Democrats and Republicans would even talk about young people having rights and that we should be signing some of these international treaties, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The hardest part is to literally get people to open it up and want to be exposed.
Published in the Times-Standard
I am Dr. Carol Wolman and I’m running for Congress in Northern California’s District 1. As a licensed psychiatrist and professional heath care provider, I’d like to explain why I think the incumbent Representative Mike Thompson is not representing our interests and not pushing for a single payer universal health care system.
Fewer American have access to health care each year. While the quality of health care deteriorates the cost of medical care continues to increase substantially. As of the end of 2007, 42 percent of adults (75 million) were either uninsured or seriously underinsured, an increase from 35 percent just four years earlier. While we spend far more for health care than any other industrialized nation, much of this is wasted on administrative costs, or flows as profits into the pockets of the insurance companies that control our medical services. In Canada and Western Europe, where universal single payer health care is the norm, medical costs amounts to between only 9 to 10 percent of GDP, while we spend more than 16 percent.
This weekend Greens from Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and maybe Minnesota will gather at Wyalusing State Park, on the bluffs above the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Wisconsin River. 
The Gathering is mostly to relax, rejuvenate, and have fun, but also we will be talking about issues that impact the upper Midwest and how these four state green parties can build off of each other. Whether it is peak oil or local foods, mass transit or climate change, water quality or fighting new coal plants, regionalism is critical to preparing for the future and we intend to start those discussions now.
20 years ago Greens gathered at Interstate Park in St. Croix Falls, which led to the creation of the Wisconsin Green Party, but prior to that were multi-state Green Gatherings along the Great Lakes, and some of the people involved with both of these are still around. So easily we forget our history!
read more »
The mp3 file below came from http://www.myspace.com/thesomeofallparts forwarded to us today.
I’ve only listened to it five times in the last 20 minutes so I still haven’t decided how much I like it (A lot or a whole bunch, not sure yet). Samples of Cynthia and Rosa mixed in with the Green Party / Power to the People platform put to music.
I think I caught some of these lyrics right:
“You can’t blacklist her
black sister
with the power and the people
and the force of a twister
they tried to kick her out
but she came right back
America blacked out
but she brought the light back…”
Link opens an MP3 file, I hope it works for you:
The Some of All Parts
Or go to: http://www.myspace.com/thesomeofallparts
Tolu Olorunda, who scored one of the better interviews with Cynthia McKinney ealier this month, has a new interview up at Your Black World with Rosa Clemente. I highly recommend both interviews, as they provide more depth into both Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente than most other sources, and it is straight from the source. A sample from the Rosa Clemente interview:
What are the issues of critical mass in this election, and how do you gauge the youth’s lively response to the call for change?
Well, most of those young people are middle-class college students. They (Obama and the DNC) made it pretty clear who their target youth audience is. I’ve been saying that since the beginning, that the young people, who are attracted to Obama, are predominantly white and liberal-leaning. There’s a difference between young people on college campuses – who have the ability to intellectualize, debate and engage in this process – and those who haven’t even graduated from High School, but are being recruited by the military. That clearly is a different demographic, and Obama’s campaign seems to be targeting the former. Young people began this sudden interest in voting, around 2004, and I think part of that has to do with the founding of the Hip-Hop Convention, and how particularly the Hip-Hop community brought a political agenda that spoke to the needs and issues that young people care about in this country. But on the flip-side of that, only 1 out of 14 young people who are not in college are registered to vote. That means, essentially, they see no hope in voting. So I even think the issues among the diverse demographics of young people are different. ‘Obama’s young people’ would say they want an end to the War in Iraq, and young people in the hood would say they want an end to the war of the police. ‘Obama’s young people’ would advocate for the impeachment of George Bush, and young people in the hood are looking for livable jobs and second jobs, just to maintain. So the claim that the youth vote is unilaterally swinging toward Obama is not true. You don’t see Obama going to the Boys and Girls club in Oakland, California; or the Martin Luther King Recreation Center; or a Black and Brown unity forum — which is happening everywhere, since the media is attempting to pit Blacks against Browns. I don’t see him in those spaces, and therefore, their issues are never reflected. Barack Obama couldn’t even articulate a decent statement about the exoneration of Sean Bell’s killers. So the youth vote might be the highest it’s ever been, but there’s still almost 50% of the youth population who are not registered to vote, and who don’t care about this election, because they don’t see any politician willing to do something that would benefit them immediately.
read more »
Roseanne Barr features Cynthia McKinney’s campaign website as a permanent link at the top of her blog, http://www.roseanneworld.com/blog/ The blog has many postings about Cynthia’s campaign. On June 7, 2008, Roseanne said, “I am thinking to vote for cynthia mckinney, green party candidate for president.”
Eugene Platt and the South Carolina Green Party were recently represented by the ACLU who filed suit in federal court seeking to overturn the Election Commission staff decision to subject the Green Party nomination to a second test via the Democratic Primary. To date the judge has not ruled on the injunction.
Even so I will be traveling to Platt’s home base this Saturday to spend several hours with him and his supporters. I will also meet with local folks interested in the McKinney/Clemente campaign and those interested in growing the Green Party. I believe these meetings and others will help establish a working Green Party chapter in Charleston.
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