Green Party Watch

The Colorado Green Party is running Bob Kinsey for US Senate in a four way race. The Constitution Party is also putting a candidate up in the race along with the two corporate parties. To find out more about this race, visit this site.

In a decidedly more local race, John Anthony La Pietra, Green Party candidate for Calhoun County Clerk and Register of Deeds has announced that he will make webspace available for towns in the county which don’t have websites of their own. The same story makes mention of Green Party candidate Lynn Meadows. She’s running for Michigan’s 7th congressional district.

Over in Virginia, the Green Party has announced support for a county bond issue. Interestingly enough, both the Democrats and Republicans are opposed to the bond issue.

Finally, both Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader have signed a pledge to, in essence, raise holy hell in the event this fall’s election is stolen as the last two were. To get those details from Yahoo!, just click here

That’s all folks! For now at any rate.

The Rocky Mountain News profiles Bob Kinsey today, Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate. Kinsey, 71, is challenging Democrat Mark Udall over his continued votes to fund Bush’s war of occupation in Iraq.

The war, he said, is diverting funds from the faltering domestic economy, driving our dependence on foreign oil and, in doing so, contributing to global warming, he said.

“You can’t separate what’s going on,” he said. “My main campaign piece says: ‘Unlimited growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.’ ”

A lifelong peace-and-justice activist, Kinsey moved to Colorado in 1967 to take a clergy position at First United Church in Arvada, later becoming a public school teacher. He moved West after getting fired from a church in Ohio – for letting youthful congregants speak out against the war in Vietnam.

The Bob Kinsey for Senate Website here.

Kinsey is polling at 2% in Colorado, and was included in this four way debate with Republican, Democrat and Constitution Party candidates on the ballot along side him.

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.

Colorado Greens threaten ballot line over McKinney and Clemente’s participation in DNC Protests

Planned protests and demonstrations in Denver surrounding the Democratic National Convention have been plagued by strife pretty much from the beginning. The tension appears to be between one planning group called “Recreate 68″ (a reference to the Chicago 68 riots at the DNC) and a variety of other peace and justice organizations including the Colorado Green Party. The divide may be related to tactics – as when Recreate 68 lost the bid to demonstrate in Civic Center Park to Democrats the organizer vaguely threatened (as published in the media at the time):

“We’re having our protest at Civic Center,” said … Glenn Spagnuolo, a lead organizer for the group Re-create 68. “We’re not going to give up Civic Center park to the Democrats. . . . They are creating a very dangerous situation.”

Spagnuolo stood by the group’s intention to march from the Civic Center Park to the Pepsi Center and the DNC:

“When things blow up because the police have to enforce a permit that the Democrats got, don’t blame us for that,” said Glenn Spagnuolo, an organizer for the Re-create 68 Alliance.

Keep in mind that the Colorado National Guard is moving 400 troops to Denver “as part of its work at the National Convention…” The Colorado Green Party, having separated itself from Recreate ‘68, urged Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente to pull out of speaking and participating at events in Denver.
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