Green Party Watch

William Kaufman has an insightful article posted at Dissident Voice called “Ralph Nader, Rocky Anderson, and the Green Party: A Political Un-Love Story.”

The context of the article is Ralph Nader’s recent voice of support for Rocky Anderson’s Independent Presidential Campaign given Anderson’s centrist platform and Jill Stein’s solid progressive campaign. Some excerpts:

Although Nader claims that his backing falls short of a formal endorsement, the Anderson campaign isn’t echoing that semantic hair splitting. After the joint appearance, Rocky Anderson’s Facebook page was updated as follows: “At a press conference in Portland, Oregon today, Ralph Nader officially endorsed Rocky Anderson! It’s been a great day so far, now with everyone’s help let’s raise 10k in just 1 day! We can do it!”

Comparing Anderson to Stein: read more »

From jillstein.org:

In a speech to tens of thousands of marijuana reform advocates at the 420 rally in Denver, Colorado, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein took the Obama administration to task for its continuing assault on medical marijuana clinics in California, Colorado and other states.

Dr. Stein, a physician and public health advocate, noted that hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from chronic pain and cancers are benefiting from the availability of medical marijuana under state laws. She said that one of her first actions as President would be to “order the DEA and the Justice Department to cease and desist all attempts to harass or prosecute medical marijuana clinics or other legitimate marijuana-related businesses that are operating under state laws.”
read more »

From jillstein.org:

Dr. Stein will be a keynote speaker at a huge Denver rally to legalize marajuana. Rally starts mid-afternoon, expected crowds to peak at 4:20pm.

Denver Post coverage of the event here.

From twitter updates at the Denver Post:

Here is the Facebook page for the Event

In a press release issued today, the South Carolina Green Party announced both it’s annual convention and a full list of candidates who will appear on the November ballot. The South Carolina Green Party has been on the ballot since 2002 and has run a diverse slate of candidates since.

PRESS RELEASE
4/20/2012

SOUTH CAROLINA GREEN PARTY TO HOLD NOMINATING CONVENTION IN COLUMBIA 4/28/2012

What: 2012 State Convention of the South Carolina Green Party
Who: Members, supporters, friends and prospective candidates of the South Carolina Green Party
When: 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM Saturday, April 28, 2012
Where: Al-Amir Restaurant, 2930 Devine Street Columbia, SC 29205

The South Carolina Green Party will hold it’s annual state convention in Columbia on Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM in the banquet room of Al-Amir Restaurant on Devine Street.

Nominations will be made at the convention for state, local and national offices, including the Presidential election will be made. Jill Stein, currently the leading contender for the Green Party nomination will be present. Fareen Hakim of Minneapolis will be representing candidate Rosanne Barr. Both campaigns are seeking the eight delegates from South Carolina to the national Green Party convention to be held July 13, 2012 in Baltimore. The nomineee of the Green Party will appear on the South Carolina ballot in the November 6, 2012 election alongside the nominees of other national parties. read more »

The Maggie Phair Institute is hosting an American Third Party Presidential Debate tomorrow (Saturday) April 21 in Los Angeles, CA.

Confirmed Presidential Candidates appearing at the event include the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Roseanne Barr, & Kent Mesplay; Socialist Stewart Alexander; Rocky Anderson (Justice Party); Stephen Durham (Freedom Socialist); Peta Lindsay (Socialism & Liberation) & James Ogle (Libertarian).

This Presidential Debate will be recorded, distributed and broadcast by Pacifica Radio. Current TV and other media are expected to provide television and print coverage of this event.

Date: Saturday, April 21, 2012


Time: 2:00pm until 5:00pm
 (Pacific Time)
Where: Echo Park United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, CA

The North Carolina Green Party is holding their Spring Gathering & Convention next weekend, featuring Presidential Candidate Jill Stein in person and Presidential Candidates Roseanne Barr & Kent Mesplay via Skype. North Carolina will also be selecting their Delegates to the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention. North Carolina has four Delegates.

From the NCGP:

The NC Green Party invites you to the semi-annual gathering of statewide Greens Friday April 27th and Saturday April 28th.

Friday April 27th at 7:00 p.m, national Green Party Presidential Candidate JILL STEIN will be speaking at the home of our own Jan Martell. Ms. Stein will then do a meet and greet/Q&A with our attendees. This will be a POTLUCK EVENT + BYOB, but if you can’t bring anything, bring yourself! All Greens in NC are invited!

Saturday April 28th from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. we will hold our Spring Gathering/Convention. As part of this event, our other two presidential candidates, ROSEANNE BARR and KENT MESPLAY will be making seperate appearances to our members via Skype at the Dan Pollitt Conference Center in Pittsboro. Both will be speaking and taking questions of our membership.

Details:
read more »

“I entered into this race in order to really build an organization for the long haul.”

Joshua Holland interviews Jill Stein on this week’s AlterNet Radio Hour. You can listen to it there or read the transcript.

We’ve been told that we had to be quiet and sort of hold our noses and vote our fear or terrible things would happen. What we find 10 years later is that political silence has not been an effective strategy. The politics of fear has delivered everything that we were afraid of. I think there’s a whole new openness, considering new solutions and acknowledging that the politics of fear leads to more fear. We need to answer that fear with the politics of courage. Look back over history, because while independent parties have been small, they have served a critical role in driving a progressive agenda into the dialogue.

From Jill Stein for President:

Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party presidential frontrunner, called this morning for a concerted national campaign to eliminate hate crimes and racist violence once and for all. On Saturday, five people were randomly shot on the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, allegedly by two men apparently targeting them because they were Black. This follows on weeks of protests following the killing of an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, by George Zimmerman.

Returning from a protest held this weekend in her home state of Massachusetts calling for justice for Trayvon Martin, Dr. Stein said that “This terrible tragedy reflects the dire convergence of injustice and fear in many parts of our society. African American men have been demonized on multiple fronts, by the racist war on drugs, the violence wracking impoverished communities, and the prison-industrial complex. Fears have been intensified by the climate of economic insecurity that makes some people vulnerable to racist ideologies in the first place.” read more »

Environmental website Grist.org has published an interview with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. From the interview:

Q. Your website today says Mitt Romney has invited you to debate him. It’s an April Fools’ joke, right?

A. Well, that part of it is a joke. He did not invite us. But the rest of it is actually true. I have debated him [during the 2002 race for Massachusetts governor], and I was declared winner by more than one objective source.

Q. Did someone really say you were the only adult in the room?

A. Yes, that was an editorial in the Boston Globe, and if you watch the debate you’ll see why.

Q. Doesn’t a sense of humor automatically disqualify you from the presidency?

A. A sense of humor and lack of corporate funding are substantial obstacles. But I think that we’re part of a very large movement to change the way that politics works — so that the joke is no longer on us.

Read the full interview at Grist.org.

At the Green Party of Colorado’s state meeting last weekend, members voted on who to send Presidential Nominating Delegates to represent at the Green Party’s Presidential Nominating Convention in July.

Of Colorado’s seven Delegates, 5 went to Jill Stein, 1 went to Roseanne Barr, and 1 went to Kent Mesplay.

Jill Stein’s release on the Colorado vote:

Another important western state has gone for Jill Stein. Colorado Greens have announced that 5 of their 7 delegates to this summer’s nominating convention in Baltimore will vote for Dr. Jill Stein. The announcement followed a vote at this past weekend’s state party convention in Carbondale.

With the strong support of Colorado, Stein has won 10-of-10 state primaries, caucuses, and conventions, all with at least 2/3rds of the vote. She now has won 59.5 of 80 delegates assigned to date.

According to the Jill Stein Campaign, who partnered with the Green Party of New Mexico to coordinate the petition drive to get the Green Party back on the ballot in New Mexico, volunteers have submitted over 4,500 signatures to surpass the 3,000 signature threshold needed. That puts the Green Party at 21 States, with 11 more currently petitioning. From the Stein Campaign:

This morning, the Stein campaign announced that nearly 4500 signatures of registered New Mexico voters have been collected and submitted to place the Green Party on the ballot in that state. This represents an excess of 50% over the minimum required for ballot status.

The signatures were collected by volunteers and staff organized by the Stein campaign in cooperation with the New Mexico Green Party. The campaign provided a full time field organizer on the ground as well as travel money for volunteers who came from California, Wisconsin, and Connecticut to put New Mexico on the ballot.

On hearing the good news, Dr. Stein said that, “That is terrific work for which we should all congratulate the New Mexico Greens. I’m proud of what they’ve done, and very happy that my campaign could play the role it did in making this happen. New Mexico is back on the Green map.”

The Stein campaign has already put the Utah Greens on the ballot, and assisted the Hawai’i Greens in securing their ballot line. The campaign has also already, sometimes in cooperation with existing parties, sometimes on its own, launched new ballot drives in Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Vermont, with many more to come. Jill Stein is also party to an Alabama lawsuit intended to reform ballot access rules in that state.

With all precincts reporting, Jill Stein won 66% of the DC Statehood Green Party Primary vote. She withstood a write-in campaign by Roseanne Barr, who ran robo-calls to DC voters yesterday. Jill Stein was the only Green Party candidate to collect the required petition signatures to get on the DC primary ballot. Kent Mesplay and Harley Mikkelson are also running for the Green Party nomination, but like Roseanne Barr, did not petition to get on the DC ballot.

According to the DC Board of Elections as of 11 p.m. with all precincts reporting, of the votes cast for a candidate:

• Jill Stein – 199 – 66.77%
• Write-in – 99 – 33.22%

The DC Statehood Green Party has been allotted 4 delegates to the Presidential Nominating Convention of the Green Party in Baltimore in July. The details of the names written in on the ballot should be made public by the DC Board of Elections in the near future.

Also on the DC Statehood Green Party primary ballot, Ann Wilcox defeated G. Lee Aiken 208-80 and will advance to the general election for At-Large member of the DC City Council. She will face Democrat Vincent Orange and Republican Mary Brooks Beatty in November. Lino Stracuzzi running for Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives ran unopposed and will advance to the general election in November against Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton. There is no Republican in that race.

Both candidates skyped into a meeting of the Washington DC Statehood Party this weekend:

.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was recently interviewed by the Real News Network:

Watch the video, read the transcript of the interview, and join the discussion at the Real News Network.

Harriet Rowan of the Center for Media and Democracy recently published an interview with Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein. From the interview:

That’s why we need this party, this election, at this time. We are at a breaking point on the economy, on jobs, on wages, on the right to organize, on student debt, on public institutions, even on private ones that have become increasingly out of reach to ordinary mortals. The price that students pay for the debt, which is the norm and not the exception, is staggering and shameful. It provides an image of a society that’s devouring its youth. In our campaign we talk about generational justice because it’s young people that are bearing the burden of a very unjust education system, an unjust economy and the climate crisis as well as the debt we’ve inflicted on students. This didn’t happen by accident, it’s because students are another defenseless constituency in a political establishment that serves its corporate funders who employ lobbyists. They are on the receiving end of a system of exploitation, an economy and a political establishment that is all about exploitation of the many on behalf of the few.

Read the full article at the Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch.