Green Party Watch

The Black Agenda Report has an excellent article this week, Corporate Media Makes Greens Invisible, pointing out that in Washington, DC, the Statehood Green Party, through labor-intensive, grassroots work, has managed to garner more votes in the last several elections than the local Republican Party. As author Glen Ford comments, that’s an amazing accomplishment, given that the Statehood Greens get virtually no coverage from the Washington Post. Ford states that the corporate media withhold coverage from the non-Big Business parties in order to starve the public of alternative choices and ideas, and he quotes our Green Party standard bearers Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente saying, “It is equivalent to rigging an election.”

Read full article here.

Glen Ford’s Black Agenda Radio Commentary takes on the corporate media and their un-democratic control over what parties and candidates the “public” gets to hear about.

“Giant corporations control the political menu in the United States.”

We need to stop using the word “democracy” to describe the every two or four years exercise to fill electoral offices in the United States. The ritual is in fact a commercial enterprise utterly dominated by corporations that control not only which individuals are nominated by the two Big Business parties, but what ideas and political programs are made visible to the public. Citizens cannot possibly make free and informed choices when the only views to which they have access are those fed to them by the giant communications corporations that monopolize the American political conversation. When money and the rich man’s media are the supreme arbiters of which ideas, parties and candidates are permitted to effectively compete in the public arena, then democracy does not exist.

Read the rest here.

Is corporate media “rigging the election”, and if so, what can citizen parties do to change that?

Tony Palmeri, a UW Oshkosh professor of communication and an elected Green Party member on the Oshkosh Common Council, writes a column for the monthly Fox Valley Scene. This month’s Media Rants is titled either “Green Blackout” or “Don’t forget Green Party”. He interviews Ron Hardy (yes, me) about the lack of media coverage of the McKinney nomination in Chicago and the lack of media coverage of the campaign in general, as well as why progressives should vote for McKinney.

The article online is here: http://scenenewspaper.com/mediarants.html

Tony Palmeri’s blog is here: http://talktotony.blogspot.com/

And the Full Text is below the fold:
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Today was “Green Party Day” at the Washington Post, where they posted two stories (one tongue in cheek) in response to a small protest in front of the Post building. The Greens were protesting the lack of coverage the Washington Post provides toward the Green Party, which in DC is virtually the second party after the Democrats.

The tongue in cheek article:

A group of about 15 protestors and candidates from a Certain Political Party That Will Go Unnamed gathered outside the Washington Post building today to protest their belief that the company “routinely ignores or marginalizes the party’s candidates.”

However another article with less wit was also posted:

The protest was partially inspired by a May 29 online discussion with Post congressional reporter Paul Kane, in which he said, “We don’t have enough resources to cover [the Green Party].”

The Post’s executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr., said Kane isn’t the one who makes those decisions.

“What we’ve been covering up until now is the nomination process of the two major parties,” Downie said. Future coverage of third-party candidates, he said, “would be based on the past performance of those candidates, and how much interest we think our readers have in them.”

[Ed. Taken in its entirety from "On the Wilder Side" (with permission), this post by Ian Wilder is worth reading...-rkh]

If NBC keeps this up they might actually stop asking the stupid “spoiler ” question of every non-corporate candidate they meet. They finally got that voter choices are complex, especially in a winner take all system. Voter’s issue both positive and negative votes, i.e. they make preference decision not only among the candidates they like, but also among the candidates they don’t dislike. NBC recognizes this possibility below by lumping the results of the 2nd through 4th place candidates together as an anti-front-runner (Obama) vote. Though this is still a simplification of voter preferences, it is closer to reality than the simple left or right “spoiler” dichotomy most of the corporate media mindlessly repeats.

from NBC/WSJ Poll: Obama keeps lead over McCain

But Obama’s lead over McCain expands to 13 points when third-party candidates Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are added into the mix — with Obama at 48 percent, McCain at 35 percent, Nader at 5 percent and Barr at 2 percent. However, it’s important to note that the pro-Obama vote (48 percent) and anti-Obama vote (adding up to 42 percent) is consistent with the result from the two-way match up. (emphasis added)

Of course this poll ignores Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party Presidential candidate as much of the corporate media and political establishment has. It is interesting how much more coverage the corporate media to gave McKinney’s former Georgia congressional colleague, and now Libertarian Presidential candidate, Bob Barr. Congressman Conyers seems to be following the lead of the corporate media by inviting former Congressman Barr to speak at impeachment hearings. Conyers did not invite McKinney who introduced the first Articles of Impeachment as her last act in Congress in 2005, which was 3 years before Kucinich introduced his.
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A collection of McKinney pieces found around the dubya-dubya-dubya:

Workers World is all over Cynthia McKinney.

Ever sit around wondering if Cynthia McKinney is anything like Ron Paul? Liberty Maven’s Ron Paul Paul-O-Meter gives McKinney a paltry 20 out of 99 in “on how closely they are in agreement with [...the perfection of...] Ron Paul…” This is not a bad thing if you look at the criteria in the article. (For the record, Obama scored 17, McCain 25, Ralph Nader 26, and Bob Barr & Chuck Baldwin 88 each.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece slamming McKinney over the “security guard” incident, focusing on the redacted claim of racial profiling. Don’t read it unless you have a strong stomach.
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Listen to, watch, or read the transcript from Democracy Now! with Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente here.

Here’s a teaser for you:

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think, Rosa Clemente, are the most important issues right now? What are you going to be campaigning on around the country?

ROSA CLEMENTE: For young people right now, the most important issues is a dismantling of the prison-industrial complex; a livable wage; dealing with the AIDS pandemic that is affecting disproportionately African American and Latina young women; a real gender equity movement; a real movement where women, particularly women of color, are not marginalized in the media or at work; and really dealing with no healthcare and a lack of good public education, but also a lack of now higher education. No young person in America who can go to college should be in $100,000 debt. We are supposed to be competing with the best of the best, and we have over a 60 percent, in some cities, dropout rate of African American and Latina/Latino youth. So those are, I think, the most important pressing issues. And, of course, an immediate withdrawal from Iran. And we must not be duped that a troop withdrawal in Iran could also mean a troop transfer in Afghanistan and more young people, particularly white working-class youth, being used as cannon fodder.

An online petition is up and just getting started calling on the Major Media outlets to practice what they preach and provide coverage of ALL the candidates running for President (and especially Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente).

http://www.petitiononline.com/mck79cle/petition.html

Cynthia McKinney was just in North Carolina yesterday, where they filed papers to have McKinney-Clemente listed as official “write in” candidates in November.

Read it all here.

Of course, there’s the perennial third-party candidate question: What do you make of arguments that you’ll pull votes away from the Democrats, thereby ushering into office a Republican who shares even fewer of your views?
That’s not grounded in the facts. As the film “American Blackout” points out very well, there were numerous instruments used in the 2000 and 2004 elections to disfranchise voters. Voter caging and voter ID laws exist to disfranchise voters. The question I believe Newsweek ought to be asking is how can we ensure that people who have the right to vote also have the opportunity to vote. And after their vote is cast, how can we ensure their votes are counted. How can an environment that does not ensure election integrity ensure us that the will of the voter is reflected in the announced outcome?

So it doesn’t concern you that taking even 1 percent away from a major political party could result in four more years of policies that differ even more drastically from those of the Green Party?
That’s your language, not my language. I gave you my take, but you haven’t accepted my take. Maybe you would feel differently if your vote wasn’t counted. In an environment where people vote their values, we must have election integrity where every vote is counted. We didn’t have that in 2000 and 2004 and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans did anything about it. But in 2004, the Green Party did something about it.

Chicago Hosts Green Party Convention (Chicago Public Radio)

Green Party prepares for convention (Chicago Tribune)

Whitney gets his snark on (DailyHerald.com)

Green Party to hold convention, nominate presidential candidate (Chicago Sun Times)

McKinney expected to get Green Party nomination this week (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Pat LaMarche: Chicago a city of political change (Bangor Daily News)

NPR has done a short piece on the Green Party Convention in its headline news today.

As reported earlier here at Green Party Watch, four IL Greens were kicked off the November ballot by lawyers for the Democratic Party. Kinda reminds me of lyrics by Woodie Guthrie.

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Anyway, back to the story.

The Daily Herald of suburban Chicago covered the story, as did the Herald and Review.

The Pentagraph has a few comments at their website worth reading, and I think this comment sums up my feelings:

Our election process in this country makes me sick!!! I guess we only get to vote for candidates the government picks out for us. Some democracy! What a crock!

Over at Politico.com, set up by a variety of corporate media outlets to create their own, self-controlled political content, W. James Antle III writes about smaller party nominees.

While the content is well enough written and doesn’t dismiss out-of-hand the possible impact of third party campaigns, including that of the Green Party, it should be noted that the writer is Associate editor of The American Spectator, a bastion of very corporate thought.

One has to wonder just what we would have to do to get Greens into the “Talking Head” category.

Apparently it’s because they are too poor to do so. This is taken directly from their website.

Belfast, Maine: In the coming weeks there will be many days when there’s little real political news about the Republicans or Democrats to report. Any chance that one of The Post’s political staff might do a piece on what the Green Party, for example, is up to? (I’ve asked this question during six earlier Post political chats and have gotten no response, a fact I find interesting in itself.)

Paul Kane: I’ll happily answer this one, and I’ll be brutally honest. We don’t have enough resources to cover your party. it’s that simple, and if that infuriates you, I’m sorry. But that’s life. The Green Party and Nader got plenty of coverage in ‘00 when, at the least, he had the chance to play a decisive role in some states. So far, there’s little indication that the Greens will have any major impact on the ‘08 election. Until you can demonstrate that there is some level of support for your party, our paper isn’t going to spend precious resources reporting on whatever it is you’re doing. I’m sorry, but we’re a business, and lots of my colleagues are walking out the door under volunteer buyouts. We don’t have the resources to cover you guys.

OK gang…there it is. We can throw the election to Bush and be “responsible” for 8 years of Bush & Co. We can bring vital issues to the debate. We can elect hundreds of people across the nation to office. We can run the nation’s best known consumer rights advocate, and a former SIX TERM congresswoman with a high profile and a history of making news…and the Post can’t find the cash to cover us? Really? For real? Somehow, I think he’s lying.

Oh…if ya wanna, the entire screed can be found here.