Green Party Watch

Two State Green Parties are currently working on petition drives to maintain ballot access.

The Green Party of Hawaii, which has had continuous ballot status since 1992, needs 663 signatures to retain ballot access for 2010. They recently got press for this effort here and here

The Arizona Green Party has a stiffer requirement but they are pounding away at it. They need over 20,000 signatures to win full party recognition, and have supposedly already secured over 12,000. They still need help, so if Greens are looking for warm and sunny vacation ideas contact the Arizona Green Party.

GREEN BEAT

NEWSLETTER OF THE GREEN PARTY OF OHIO
NOVEMBER 25, 2009
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State Convention Saturday, January 23, 2010.
Save the Date! The Green Party of Ohio state convention will be held in Columbus on Saturday, January 23, 2010 from 10am- 4pm . The day-long event will be in Room 100 of the Northwood Building, 2231 North High Street. There is ample parking behind the building and public transportation serves the area. http://www.universitydistrict.org/room100.php
Join us for grassroots democracy, camaraderie, political activism, potluck lunch and an immediate opportunity to effect real change in Ohio.
More details will be forthcoming in this newsletter and at the Ohio Greens web site. Stay tuned!

Sign The Petition In Support of National Jobs Legislation
The National Jobs For All Coalition is organizing a campaign for jobs. The campaign supports several pieces of legislation in the U.S. Congress; bills that will make a wide range of improvements to our society and at the same time create millions of needed jobs. Print out, sign and circulate the petition at http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/2719966/1993193480/name/Petition%20Oct.%20.doc Find out more about the National Jobs For All Coalition at http://www.njfac.org/

Run For Office in 2010!
If you, or someone you know would like to run for office in Ohio as a Green Party candidate contact Logan Martinez at loganmartinez@hotmail.com, (937) 275-7259. Join those Greens who have run for Governor/Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, US Congress, Ohio House and Senate, City Council, Township Trustee and Board of Education. More and more Green candidates qualify for the ballot every year and you could be the next Green to be elected!

Want Real Health Care Reform? Join SPANOhio.
SPANOhio, The Single Payer Action Network Of Ohio is a non-profit coalition of labor, political, health care provider, business and citizen groups and individuals working for universal healthcare in Ohio and The Health Care For All Ohioans Act. Now, more than ever it is apparent that the job of fixing our broken system and guaranteeing health care rights for everyone will fall to the states and Ohio is at the forefront of the struggle. Find out how you can be a part of this important effort at http://spanohio.org/

As Always,
Peace

As part of the Green Change Blog Local Action Day, I am contributing by posting what Greens in my local chapter are doing to bring change to our local community. (By the way, if you are a Green that is looking to network with other Greens I highly encourage you to get involved with the Green Change Network – register an account and get started.)

As part of the Green Change Blog Local Action Day, I am contributing by posting what Greens in my local chapter are doing to bring change to our local community.

The Lake Winnebago Green Party is a regional local chapter centered in Oshkosh on Lake Winnebago in NE Wisconsin. Our local used to raise a lot of hell, organize vigils, protests, and petition drives, especially with the local UW Oshkosh Campus Greens. But in the last two years we haven’t been meeting as often, or organizing local events. What happened?

In my opinion, too much success is what happened!

At this moment, we have two elected Greens on the 7 member all at-large Oshkosh City Council, and four Greens on the nine member City of Oshkosh Sustainability Advisory Board. Beginning with Tony Palmeri’s election to the City Council in 2007 we have been steadily becoming a part of the city government that we are more used to challenging from the outside. This has provided both challenges and opportunities for us.

Since I am the Chair of the City of Oshkosh Sustainability Advisory Board, that is what I am most comfortable talking about. Our board is made of up nine members, many of whom were “activists” before board members. Four of our current members are Greens, several others are very green-friendly. After a rocky start with city staff, we have finally met staff half way and started making some progress towards local sustainability. Our accomplishments to date:
read more »

Dennis Spisak, a Green Party member who was recently re-elected to the Struthers City Board of Education this past November, has announced he will seek the Green Party Nomination for Governor for Ohio in 2010.

Spisak plans on running a highly Progressive Green campaign.

His new web-site is up at www.votespisak.org/governor/

Inspired by the global day of blog action on climate change, Green Change is holding its own blog action day. The topic is local action.

We’re organizing Green bloggers to write about local action this Tuesday. Want to share an idea for local action? Have you run for local office or worked on a campaign? Publish your blog post on the Green Change network, then discuss it with other Green Change members.

Even if you don’t normally blog, come join the discussion on Tuesday, November 24th!

In the challenge filed against Green Party Congressional Candidate Dan Kairis’ signatures, the challenger suggests that his own mother’s signature is a forgery. Kairis was only required to file 38 signatures to get on the ballot. He filed 62, mostly friends and family he admits.

Christina Tobin of Free and Equal are defending Kairis in the challenge. The Daily Herald:

Tobin said the lawyers for Cattron’s challenge are well-connected to the Illinois Democratic Party and represent “frivolous objections.”

“This is literally an objection in bad faith,” Tobin said. “The voters deserve voices and choices. There’s no limit to how far these (party) leaders will go to ensure voice and choice stays off the ballot.”

More about Dan Kairis here.

More Illinois Green Party Candidates here!

In a special primary election California Green Jane Rands received 1,067 votes, or 2.8% in special primary election for State Assembly. She will advance to the run off election with the Democrat and the top vote getting Republican since no candidate received over 50% of the vote. The runoff election will be held January 12, 2010.

This district trends Republican: Republican (42.9%), Democrat (34.1%), American Independent (2.22 ), Libertarian (0.64%), Green (0.46%), Peace & Freedom (0.31%), Miscellaneous ( ) and Decline-to-State (19.0%).

Jane Rands’ Website is here (feel welcome to donate to her campaign!)

The OC Register has an article on the results.

Sent in from RNA (Rwanda News Agency)

Friday, 20 November 2009

Kigali: The scheduled founding conference of the troubled Green Party did not take place Friday as the group wait for a Police certificate from the new Commissioner-General, Brig. Emmanuel Gasana. But not without new allegations, RNA reports.

A man by the names Gaston Bihibindi is claiming that he was detained for three days without food at the magnificent multi-million dollar Ministry of Defense building known locally as “Pentagon”. Mr. Bihibindi is not the only one accusing unknown individuals driving tinted double cabin Toyota pickup trucks of snatching them from their homes or as they walked.

The local weekly UMUSESO details ordeals of eight people identifying themselves as Green Party activists, who were apparently arrested on October 30 after the failed conference which police halted citing insecurity. The men were apparently detained at an infamous but not gazetted facility in Kimironko, an outskirt of Kigali.
read more »

GREEN-RAINBOW RISING

2009 Green-Rainbow Party State Convention
A day of inspiration, action, and traction!

Join us to jumpstart a Healthy, Green Massachusetts!
Speakers! Workshops! Tabling! Good Food! Great Music!

WHEN: Saturday, November 21, 9AM – 5:30PM

WHERE: Clark University — Tilton Hall
950 Main Street, Worcester, MA

REGISTER NOW!
www.greenrainbow.org read more »

Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report has an intriguing article about the future plans of the Georgia Green Party to address the issue of the high rate of incarceration among African-Americans. The article is entitled “Why Democrats and Republicans won’t confront the issue of black mass incarceration, and why the Green Party will”. Some excerpts:

With less than 5% of the world’s population, the US accounts for a quarter of the world’s prisoners. While African Americans are only an eighth the population, we account for almost half the locked down… An astounding three percent of all black Americans are in prisons and jails, the majority for drug charges, although black and white rates of drug use have been virtually identical for decades…

Georgia’s Green Party, BAR has learned, will announce tomorrow that its major focus for the coming two years, including the 2010 election cycle, will be making a political issue out of black mass incarceration. The Green Party of GA intends to do this by running candidates for the state legislature and for district attorney and sheriff, not just in metro Atlanta, but in Augusta, Macon, Columbus, Savannah and elsewhere. read more »

This just in from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network:

Maine’s largest city has a new mayor. The Portland City Council yesterday chose Nicholas Mavodones Jr., 49, to serve in the post. It’s Mavodones third stint in the job, according to the Portland Press Herald. In the past, councilors took turns being mayor, based on seniority. But for the second year in a row, the council overlooked Green party members who were next in line, the paper reports, choosing Mavodones instead. read more »

GP US Release:

WASHINGTON, DC — Green Party leaders today called the Stupak Amendment in the recently passed US House bill on health care reform a disaster for women’s reproductive rights and a betrayal of the Democrats’ stated support for women’s rights and well-being.

Many Greens foresee growing anger among Democratic voters, especially women, and possible defections from the Democratic Party over the amendment.

The Stupak Amendment to HR 3962 states that any health care plan purchased with any federal subsidy cannot cover abortion services, even with private funds, and prohibits the public plan from covering abortion care. The amendment will make it more difficult and expensive for anyone to purchase a plan with abortion coverage and discourages insurers and employers who provide health care benefits from affording such coverage.
read more »

Hi folks, from time to time I will post some Green or political thing that I think is funny to lighten the mood around here.. Here’s a real good cartoon from Troubletown.

Enjoy your Monday!

On Thursday, 11/12, Politico asked “Will Nader challenge Dodd?” Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, is a Connecticut native and eligible to run for US Senate there.

The consumer crusader, perennial presidential aspirant and Winsted, Connecticut native says lots of people are asking him to run for the Senate against Dodd in 2010 — and he isn’t saying no just yet. read more »

Scoop daily carried a story entitled “Growth of Independents could Bolster Green Party” on Nov. 9th:

Voters have increasingly re-registering as independents in recent years, growing from 30 percent of all registered voters in 2007 to 39 percent of all registered voters in April 2009, according to the most recent Pew Research Center surveys.

Already established in European parliaments, the Green Party of the United States ran 158 candidates in local and state races last Tuesday. Many of their successes were small local positions like school boards or common council in states like Maine, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Maryland and Illinois.

Read the full story at Scoop Daily.