Tag: Green Party

Sep 22 2010

Take action for 3 important Green candidates

Dan Hamburg, LeAlan Jones, and Jill Stein are running three races that are very important to the Green Party this year.  In California, Hamburg is a former Democratic Congressman hoping to be elected as a Green to Mendocino County Supervisor.  In Illinois, Jones is the only African American in the Senate race and has polled as high as 14%, in a state where the Green candidate for governor got over 10% in 2006.  In Massachusetts, Stein is less than $1,000 away from qualifying for the rest of the debates, and about $38,000 away from qualifying for matching funds.

I’ll make this as simple as possible.  Here’s what each one needs from you:

Sep 22 2010

Dennis Spisak for Ohio Governor

In Ohio, Green Party candidates are organizing to hold politicians in the Democrat and Republican Parties accountable for decades of right-wing misrule.  For the office of governor, Dennis Spisak is running on a platform to increase revenue, pushing for single-payer health care, creating jobs through green energy policies, and boosting education.

http://www.votespisak.org/gove…

Spisak for Governor

548 Poland Ave.

Struthers,Ohio 44471

Donate the full amount and receive the full tax credit. Remember to file this donation with your 2010 Ohio Income Tax to receive the 2010 credit. Act now. Don’t let these funds go unused!

Ohio law mandates that your check must have your full name and address on it – PO boxes are not allowed. Contributions over $100 must include your employer’s name.

On a more local level, Green Party candidate David Ellison is running for the county executive position that was ostensibly created in response to the huge corruption scandal now plaguing Democrat Party leaders.

http://www.electdavidellison.com

The above link is to the main campaign web site.  To volunteer or donate, see below.

http://www.electdavidellison.c…

http://www.electdavidellison.c…

Make checks payable to:

The Committee to Elect David Ellison

6403 Detroit Avenue

Cleveland, OH 44102

If you want a look at Ellison’s plans for Cuyahoga, here is the link to read them.

http://www.electdavidellison.c…

Also, Green Party candidate Alan Crossman is running for a seat on the county council in Cuyahogs.

http://alancrossman.us

For statewide office, in addition to the governor’s race, Dennis Lambert is running for the position of State Representative, District 89.

http://www.newmenu.org/dennisl…

Others have dishonestly claimed that the non-Democrat left is not organized.  But the fact of these and other candidacies from left-wing activists shows that, yes, we are indeed organized.  One can make legitimate criticisms as to the level and quality of that organization, but it does exist.  

Sep 12 2010

Green Jesse Johnson picks up major Democratic endorsement in WV US Senate race

After losing the race to represent the Democrats in a special US Senate election, former Democratic politician (and arguably, institution as far as West Virginia is concerned) Ken Hechler has endorsed Jesse Johnson.  Johnson is the nominee for US Senate of the Mountain Party, West Virginia’s affiliate of the Green Party.

Salon describes Hechler and his motivation for, at 95, running for Senate:

In his 95 years, Ken Hechler has recorded history from the front lines in World War II, debriefed Hitler’s top commanders before the Nuremberg Trials, advised Harry Truman, marched with Martin Luther King, published several books, been the subject of a documentary, and — somewhere between all of this — served nine terms in Congress and four as West Virginia’s secretary of state…

    You say that you aren’t running anyone and that you want to use this race to raise awareness of mountaintop removal from strip mining. Why single out this issue?  

             I’m not really running for the Senate, I’m running to enable the people of West Virginia to register at the polls their opposition to this devastating practice, which hurts so many people in the valleys when they dump the rocks in the soil and all the things that they’re blasting out of the mountains into people’s front yards.

Hechler received about 17 percent of the vote in the primary.  Now Johnson is the only candidate in the race who opposes mountaintop removal, a situation he was also in when he ran for governor in 2008.

The following video was posted on the front page of Johnson’s website:

Aug 23 2010

Some news from Hugh Giordano’s Green campaign for state legislature in Philadelphia

I’ve been gone all summer – traveling, gardening, volunteering a bit, and doing some other things – and as much as I had a lot of fun, it is nice to be back.  In all that time, some interesting things have happened with what I consider to be one of the better Green campaigns in the nation this year, and one that I’m very involved with, Hugh Giordano’s campaign for state legislature as a Green.

In case you don’t know who Hugh is, he’s a 25 year old union organizer running as a Green in PA’s 194th district, which is mostly in Philadelphia and also a bit in Montgomery County (for locals, it encompasses Roxborough, Manayunk, parts of Lower Merion, and some surrounding areas).  He’s been running a great campaign, knocking on doors, holding fun fundraisers, getting in the newspaper, and raising as much money as a typical Green congressional candidate.

Anyway, below the fold is some news from the campaign, including an endorsement from a fairly prominent local Democrat.

Aug 21 2010

The Green Party: Part 1, Local Leadership

Liberals and the progressive left have long been slandered, ridiculed, and misrepresented by the rightwing. Fox News and the radicals on talk radio have made careers for themselves distorting what liberals believe. As political parties go, the Green Party is the third largest party in the country. However, rarely do we see Green Party representatives or prominent members of the so called “professional left” on the air waves. This three part series on the Green Party will look at the 10 Key Values of the party and interview current elected Green Party government office holders. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a member of the Green Party for twenty years.

May 31 2010

James Carville’s shameful hypocrisy on the oil spill, and his ties to South America

James Carville has been all over the news lashing out at Obama for not being strong enough in his response to the BP oil disaster.  And with the news that the oil geyser will continue spewing its stuff until August, I don’t blame the man.  He is, after all, from Louisiana.

But for some reason I’m not convinced he’s being completely sincere.  In fact, Colombia held a presidential election yesterday and (this may seem somewhat bizarre if you don’t know much about him) Carville actually helped the establishment candidate who wants to encourage “foreign investment,” at a time when BP is considering offshore drilling in Colombia’s waters.

A political guru, frequent CNN pundit and a personality who was featured in the well known documentary The War Room, Carville moves in powerful circles in the U.S.  What’s less commonly known, however, is that Carville is also a virtual kingmaker in Latin America — indeed, his professional contacts have ranged from Mexico’s Ernesto Zedillo to Brazil’s Fernando Enrique Cardoso to many others.

Crossposted at DKos and other blogs

May 25 2010

NY Green Party nominates Howie Hawkins for Governor, Colia Clark and Cecile Lawrence for US Senate

On May 15th the Green Party of New York met in Albany to nominate candidates for statewide office. The Greens nominated Howie Hawkins for Governor, Gloria Mattera for Lieutenant Governor, Colia Clark and Cecile Lawrence for US Senate, and Julia Willebrand for Comptroller, as well as a number of candidates for state legislature.

Howie Hawkins, the Green candidate for Governor of New York, has been an organizer in movements for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and independent politics since the late 1960s. Hawkins is running on a Green platform with planks including: Progressive Taxes; Reform Albany; Full Employment; Health Care for All; Clean Energy (ban hydrofracking, support public power); Good Schools for All Communities; Economic Democracy for Economic Renewal (establish a state bank); Sustainable Green Economy; Organic Food and Agriculture; Affordable Housing; Retirement Security; Workers Rights; Fair Elections (proportional representation, instant runoff voting, public campaign financing); End the “War on Drugs”; Reproductive Freedom; Gay Marriage; Peace (recall the NY national guard); Criminal Justice Reform (abolish the death penalty); Regional Planning; and Local Government and Grassroots Democracy. Emerging details can be found at HowieHawkins.com/2010.

At his website, Hawkins elaborates on why he is running and his campaign goals:

The basic issue in this campaign is: Will our state government be for the people, or continue to serve the super-rich and the giant corporations?

We are running because we are on the side of the people.

We are running – we, not me – because I cannot win the goals of our campaign alone. I will not have the tens of millions of dollars for media advertising that the corporate-financed Democratic and Republican candidates will have. But organized people can beat organized money…

We are running to offer a real alternative to the two-party system of corporate rule. The Democrats have replaced the Republicans in the State House and the Governor’s Mansion, and in Congress and the White House, but little has changed. The two-party system is a very sophisticated scheme for presenting the illusion of real choice when both major parties are funded by the same corporate, financial, and real estate interests. Whether the A Team of Republicans or the B Team of Democrats are in the majority, it is still corporate power dictating policy.

The ongoing Wall Street bailout is the greatest transfer of wealth in world history. If our schools were banks, they would have been bailed out. Instead the creditor class of wealthy elites is making the borrower class of working and middle class taxpayers pay for the whole bailout for their bad investments through higher taxes, lower wages and benefits, and cuts in public services. The catastrophic destruction of our climate and oceans is accelerating, but the incumbent fossil fuel and nuclear corporations still capture far more government subsidies than clean, renewable energy. Whether it is job creation, health care, housing, or the environment, the government sides with the corporate vested interests against the broad public interest.

The progressives and independents who voted the Republicans out and the Democrats in are now taken for granted by the Democrats in power, because these voters have no where else to take their votes. We are running to give these voters a place to go.

50,000 Votes Wins a Green Party Ballot Line

One key goal of our campaign is to build the Green Party as a powerful, well-organized alternative to the corporate state’s two-party system. With 50,000+ votes for the Green gubernatorial ticket – a very achievable goal – the Green Party wins a permanent ballot line and reasonable ballot petitioning requirements for the next four years, enabling us to contest elections at every level as we continue to build our movement. We are building this campaign county by county to leave in place a grassroots party organization that can carry on the movement for our policy platform after the November 2 election.

Putting Our Solutions into Public Debate

A second goal of our campaign is to move the policy debate in New York. We are going to present before the public – and make the mass media and corporate candidates deal with – our platform of solutions to the problems we face: progressive taxation and revenue sharing, fully funded schools, full employment, single-payer health care, renewable energy, a state bank to finance a sustainable green economic revival, clean government, proportional representation, and more.

Building Independent Power

We won’t be completely satisfied unless we win the office. But if that turns out to be beyond our reach in this election, every vote we win and every person we recruit to the movement builds our power. Our power is based on our political independence from the corporate interests and their political representatives in both corporate parties. Our votes cannot be taken for granted. We will make the politicians and the policy debate in the media and in our communities deal with our solutions. We will lay the foundation for winning future elections.

Gloria Mattera, a Brooklyn health care worker and activist who ran for Brooklyn Borough President in 2005 to oppose the incumbent’s abuse of eminent domain to benefit private corporations, received the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor.

Colia Clark, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement who worked with Medgar Evers and SNCC, was nominated as the Green candidate for the US Senate seat currently held by Charles Schumer. Immigration reform will be a key focus of the Clark candidacy.

“As US Senator from New York, I will work tirelessly with my colleagues in the Senate and on Capitol Hill to address the failing economy, failing schools, failing infrastructure, crisis in energy, health care, food production and other areas of the USA socio-political economy,” said Ms. Clark.

“The right of immigrants to live, work and have their families visit is a human right. NAFTA, CAFTA, Project Hope and other infringements on the right of workers in other nations is unacceptable and as Senator from NYS I will work on all fronts to cancel these hideous instruments of corporate power,” added Clark.

Clark said she was strongly opposed to Sen. Schumer’s proposal to require a new social security card that includes bio-metric information like finger prints for every U.S. citizen. Clarke compared this to the slave passes that Africans in USA enslavement carried up to 1865.

“The right to privacy, the right to move about the nation freely without police intrusion is quickly becoming an endangered right. Any remnant of slave pass laws/ Apartheid pass laws must be challenged and defeated in the interest of freedom for NYS and the nation,” Clark added.

Cecile Lawrence, a resident of Apalachin in Tioga County who has been active in the movement against hydrofracking and other health issues, will run for the Senate seat to fill out the term of Hillary Clinton.

Lawrence said that “We need to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan now and return the troops home in early 2011. The U.S. must cease its drive for empire and domination of the planet including the embeddedness of its military forces with corporations whose drive for access to the resources of other countries lead to the destruction of their environmental and socio-economic health. Corporations must be stripped of the artificial personhood granted them by an accident of the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting not in human personhood but in god-like status, since they never get sick, and can never die. Reform Wall Street, getting rid of the practices that led to the idea of ‘too big to fail.”

Active in the fight against hydrofracking for natural gas in the Southern Tier, Lawrence added that “the focus of my campaign will be on health in all forms, the health of individuals, the health of the soil, air and water, the health of all life forms, the health of society. This goal cannot be met without the elimination of for-profit health insurance companies, the complete renovation of our food system, which has led to astronomical rates of obesity nationwide, and the elimination of this country’s attitude of control over other countries.”

“We need to cancel all subsidies to CAFO’s (concentrated animal feeding operations) and rapidly phase out their existence nationwide. Transfer those subsidies to the development of small scale organic, permaculture, or biodynamic methods of farming at the state level. We should transfer all current federal subsidies to coal, gas, oil and nuclear to the development and installation of solar, small-scale wind farms disconnected from each other, ground source heat pumps and yet to be invented methods. We must ban all offshore drilling for gas and oil in U.S. waters,” stated Lawrence.

Julia Willebrand, a long time environmental leader from Manhattan, was nominated to run for State Comptroller, a position she received 117,908 votes for 4 years ago.

Other candidates petitioning to be on the Green Party ballot include Anthony Gronowicz (NY-7) and Hank Bardel (NY-13) for US House of Representatives, John Reynolds for State Senate (NY-33), and 5 candidates for State Assembly: Walter Nestler (NY-76), Carl Lundgren (NY-82), Trevor Archer (NY-83), Daniel Zuger (NY-85), and Mike Donelly (NY-119).

Like all Green Party candidates, the New York Green Party’s 2010 candidates pledge not to accept money from corporations and corporate-sponsored PACs.

You can learn more about the Green Party of New York’s 2010 campaigns and how you can get involved at the GPNY website, http://www.gpny.org/ .

May 23 2010

It’s Deja vu all over again, from the Timor Sea

History is full of “flashbulb moments” — when FLASH!

the course of History, changes instantly, on a dime,

as the result of some collective common experience.

This is not one of those tales.

Rather it’s another kind of story entirely,

when we all collectively sense something’s wrong,

but no one can really pin it down, to …

Exactly what the problem is.

Deja vu

Déjà vu [Deja vu] is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the recent past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain.

[…]

The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of “eeriness,” “strangeness,” “weirdness,” or what Sigmund Freud and other psychologists call “the uncanny.” The “previous” experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.

May 07 2010

UK Greens win historic first seat in parliament

Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, won a hotly-contested race in Brighton Pavilion to become the Greens’ first-ever member of parliament. Lucas thanked supporters for “putting the politics of hope above the politics of fear.” In the election at large, Labour and the Liberal Democrats lost seats while the Conservatives gained; however, the Conservatives failed to win a majority, making it possible that Labour and the Liberal Democrats will form a governing coalition.

In the second constituency targeted by the Greens, Norwich South, Adrian Ramsay came in fourth despite doubling the Green vote from 2005 to 14.9%. Despite the loss, Greens pointed to recent local victories as evidence that they’re on track to take power in Norwich by 2011, which would mark another first for the party. In the third targeted seat, Lewisham Deptford, Darren Johnson took 11.1%, and Tony Juniper managed 7.6% in Cambridge.

At The Guardian, George Monbiot commented on Lucas’ election to parliament:

It’s a massive breakthrough, not only because she’s a brilliant, charismatic, humane politican who will enrich parliamentary life, but also because it proves it can be done, even under our antiquated political system.

Unlike many European countries that elect their parliaments using proportional representation, UK elections use first-past-the-post voting, contributing to electoral chaos. From The Guardian’s live election coverage:

A hung parliament is virtually inevitable. With more than 500 seats counted, the BBC is predicting that the Conservatives will end up with 306 seats, Labour 262 seats and the Lib Dems 55 seats [325 seats are needed for a majority]. The Conservatives are currently on 37% of the vote, Labour on 28% and the Lib Dems on 23%.

The Guardian reports that the Liberal Democrats may demand a switch to proportional representation as a condition for supporting one of the larger parties in coalition. The Greens, who won 8.7% of the vote in last year’s European elections, also support proportional representation.

After learning of her historic victory, Caroline Lucas gave the following statement:

“The emphatic support of voters in Brighton Pavilion show that they do want to support a party whose values represent fairness, social justice and environmental well-being. They have shown that they are prepared to put their trust in the Greens, despite the overwhelming national media focus on the three largest parties and a voting system that is fundamentally undemocratic. I feel humbled by their trust in me, and I am excited by this vote of confidence and I’m looking forward to the challenging task of fully representing the voters of Brighton.

“This victory is no accident: it is the result of the hard work and commitment of thousands of Green Party members and supporters not only in Brighton but from right across the country over the past months and years. It is their work and support that has helped deliver this win, and the victory is as much theirs as it is mine.

“Thanks to the confidence that the voters of Brighton Pavilion have shown, Green principles and policies will now have a voice in Parliament. Policies such as responding to climate change with a million new ‘green’ jobs in low-carbon industries, fair pensions and care for older people, and stronger regulation of the banks will be heard in the House of Commons. I will also use my influence as an MP in the city of Brighton & Hove to push for affordable housing for the city, a new secondary school for the city, and greater backing for the city’s creative industries.

“Finally, as this election shows, the first-past-the post voting system used for general elections is utterly discredited. I will be strongly backing calls for a referendum to replace it with a form of proportional representation that properly reflects the needs and views of 21st century voters. If a form of proportional representation is introduced, the Green Party is confident that its true level of support nationally can be represented properly.”

Originally posted on Green Party Watch

May 05 2010

Howie Hawkins announces Green bid for NY Governor

 Howie Hawkins of Syracuse announced his campaign for Governor of New York as a Green Party candidate in an Albany press conference on May 4th. The Green Party of New York will officially nominate candidates for statewide office at its May 15th nominating convention in Albany. If the Green Party candidate for governor earns at least 50,000 votes this year, the party will regain ballot status for the next four years, making it significantly easier to run candidates at all levels.

You can watch the video of Howie Hawkins’ campaign announcement:

Hawkins for Governor from david doonan on Vimeo.

Time Warner’s YNN network also covered the announcement.

Here is Hawkins’ statement “Why We Are Running” from his website www.HowieHawkins.com/2010 :

Why We Are Running

The basic issue in this campaign is: Will our state government be for the people, or continue to serve the super-rich and the giant corporations?

We are running because we are on the side of the people.

We are running – we, not me – because I cannot win the goals of our campaign alone. I will not have the tens of millions of dollars for media advertising that the corporate-financed Democratic and Republican candidates will have. But organized people can beat organized money. As the candidate, I am one spokesperson for this campaign. But we all need to be organizers and spokespeople for this campaign with our family, friends, co-workers, and neighborhood and internet communities.

We are running because only a grassroots movement of people reaching people by word of mouth can swell to the critical mass we need to achieve our goals. Personal contact is far more influential and persuasive than 30-second TV and radio spots. Every one of us can win over tens or hundreds or thousands of voters by consistent, persistent activity over the course of the campaign.

We are running to offer a real alternative to the two-party system of corporate rule. The Democrats have replaced the Republicans in the State House and the Governor’s Mansion, and in Congress and the White House, but little has changed. The two-party system is a very sophisticated scheme for presenting the illusion of real choice when both major parties are funded by the same corporate, financial, and real estate interests. Whether the A Team of Republicans or the B Team of Democrats are in the majority, it is still corporate power dictating policy.

The ongoing Wall Street bailout is the greatest transfer of wealth in world history. If our schools were banks, they would have been bailed out. Instead the creditor class of wealthy elites is making the borrower class of working and middle class taxpayers pay for the whole bailout for their bad investments through higher taxes, lower wages and benefits, and cuts in public services. The catastrophic destruction of our climate and oceans is accelerating, but the incumbent fossil fuel and nuclear corporations still capture far more government subsidies than clean, renewable energy. Whether it is job creation, health care, housing, or the environment, the government sides with the corporate vested interests against the broad public interest.

The progressives and independents who voted the Republicans out and the Democrats in are now taken for granted by the Democrats in power, because these voters have no where else to take their votes. We are running to give these voters a place to go.

50,000 Votes Wins a Green Party Ballot Line

One key goal of our campaign is to build the Green Party as a powerful, well-organized alternative to the corporate state’s two-party system. With 50,000+ votes for the Green gubernatorial ticket – a very achievable goal – the Green Party wins a permanent ballot line and reasonable ballot petitioning requirements for the next four years, enabling us to contest elections at every level as we continue to build our movement. We are building this campaign county by county to leave in place a grassroots party organization that can carry on the movement for our policy platform after the November 2 election.

Putting Our Solutions into Public Debate

A second goal of our campaign is to move the policy debate in New York. We are going to present before the public – and make the mass media and corporate candidates deal with – our platform of solutions to the problems we face: progressive taxation and revenue sharing, fully funded schools, full employment, single-payer health care, renewable energy, a state bank to finance a sustainable green economic revival, clean government, proportional representation, and more.

Building Independent Power

We won’t be completely satisfied unless we win the office. But if that turns out to be beyond our reach in this election, every vote we win and every person we recruit to the movement builds our power. Our power is based on our political independence from the corporate interests and their political representatives in both corporate parties. Our votes cannot be taken for granted. We will make the politicians and the policy debate in the media and in our communities deal with our solutions. We will lay the foundation for winning future elections.

Join Us: Donate, Volunteer, Vote

This website is your resource to find out about campaign activities and our policy positions as they develop. Much more information and interactive features will be added as the campaign develops.

But before you leave this website today, however, please visit the three links that will connect you with the campaign:

Donate: Even a grassroots campaign needs money to print literature, mail fundraising appeals, pay organizers, and, yes, do some media advertising. We can go a long way if we can reach our minimum goal of $100,000. It will give us credibility with the media and debate organizers as well as fund an effective grassroots campaign. That will take a lot of small contributors, including you. Please contribute what you can and consider the recurring donation option for the course of the campaign.

Volunteer: Sign up and indicate your interests. We will get back to you and help you.

Green Voter Pledge: We are taking names. We want at least 50,000 voters pledged to vote the Green ticket by the election on November 2. We will remind them and help them get to the polls on Election Day. Sign the voter pledge and ask other supporters you identify to sign the voter pledge.

It’s up to us. Millions of New Yorkers are angry about the corruption and incompetence in Albany that is assaulting our standard of living to pay for the Wall Street bailout. The anti-incumbent mood is palpable. We can reach those New Yorkers. The people have enormous power if they use their political rights and votes. If each of us joins in to do our own part, we can build a powerful movement to put our government on the people’s side.

I look forward to campaigning with you. Together we will make a difference for the better.

Howie Hawkins
May 3, 2010

Learn more about Howie Hawkins’ campaign and how you can help at www.HowieHawkins.com/2010

Originally posted on Green Party Watch

May 03 2010

Progressive Dream Candidate: Jill Stein for MA Governor

Dr. Jill Stein is a pioneering environmental health advocate, as well as a mother, physician, teacher, and community leader. Her record of public service and passionate advocacy for healthy communities makes her an exceptional candidate for governor.

For years, Jill Stein has been a leader in drawing the connection between clean environments and healthy communities. She is the author of two widely acclaimed reports, “In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development” and “Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging,” which promote green local economies, sustainable agriculture, clean power, and freedom from harmful chemical exposures. She has presented her teaching program “Health People, Healthy Planet,” to numerous government, public health and medical conferences. It links human health, climate security and green economic revitalization.

Jill Stein began advocating for the environment as a human health issue when she realized that politicians were failing to protect children from toxic threats revealed by current science. She played a key role in efforts to protect women and children from mercury contamination by helping to pass tighter regulations on the dirtiest coal plants in Massachusetts, and helping to preserve the state’s moratorium on new trash incinerators. Having seen firsthand the power of big money to prevent critical health protection, Stein advocated for the Clean Elections Law to establish publicly-funded elections. Massachusetts voters passed the Clean Elections Law by a 2-1 margin, but the state legislature later repealed it in an unrecorded voice vote.

Jill Stein’s first foray into electoral politics was in 2002, when the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party recruited her to run for governor. In a five-way debate that year, she was widely acknowledged as the winner for her clarity and knowledge of the issues. In a 2004 three-way race for state representative, she garnered more votes than the Republican candidate. She ran for statewide office again in 2006, earning over 350,000 votes for Secretary of State. In 2008, she helped formulate the “Secure Green Future” ballot initiative calling for renewable energy and green jobs, which won 81% of the vote in the districts where it appeared on the ballot. She has been elected twice as a town meeting representative in Lexington.

This year, Jill Stein is running for governor on a platform of pragmatic Green solutions to problems like unemployment, unfair taxes, faltering schools, and a broken health care system. As governor, she would seek alternatives to her predecessors’ failed attempts to attract big business by sacrificing labor and environmental standards. She would create incentives for small, locally owned businesses to thrive, especially in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energy. She would take action to fix an unfair tax system that makes lower- and middle-income people in Massachusetts pay at twice the rate of the highest income bracket.

As a teacher, Jill Stein understands the importance of quality public education. She would fight the privatization schemes and bureaucratic power grabs that threaten public education, and work to ensure that all public schools are fully funded and accountable to their communities. She would also reverse the escalation of fees and tuition at public universities, which has threatened to price higher education out of reach for young people from low-income families.

Massachusetts’ health care system is still plagued with problems, despite its vaunted 2006 reform package that foreshadowed the 2010 national health insurance reform. The state’s healthcare mandate forces people to buy expensive, stripped-down insurance plans that don’t protect health or financial security when serious health problems occur. As governor, Jill Stein would extend affordable coverage to all by moving Massachusetts to a Medicare-For-All system, which would save billions by cutting out the insurance companies’ red tape. She would also help people lead healthier lifestyles by supporting urban agriculture, farm-to-school programs, local organic farming, and other programs to reduce health threats and ensure clean air, clean water, and nutritious food for all. Her plan to encourage healthy living would not only improve quality of life, it would also save billions on health care annually.

The November, 2010 race is shaping up to make Jill the sole challenger to three candidates widely regarded as business-as-usual insiders — in an anti-incumbent year. Specifically she is likely to face Democratic Governor Deval Patrick, Democrat-turned-independent Tim Cahill, and Republican Charlie Baker, three candidates who share very similar positions on most key issues. (Both the Democrat and Republican are likely to rout lesser known and relatively unfunded primary election rivals.) In a four-way race, Jill Stein could potentially be elected governor with as little as 26% of the vote, which translates to roughly 800,000 votes. This is not beyond reach considering the 18% of the vote she won in her race for Secretary of the Commonwealth in 2006. Stein refuses to take lobbyist money, and vows to end the “pay-to-play” politics that dominates the state legislature. Her campaign is eligible for 1-to-1 public matching funds for every dollar raised over $125,000, meaning that as soon as she raises $250,000 from supporters, she’ll be able to mount a half-million-dollar campaign. Along with her running mate, community activist and veterans advocate Rick Purcell, she plans to mobilize thousands of grassroots volunteers across the state to bring their message of a healthy green future to the people of Massachusetts.

To find out more about Jill Stein’s campaign and how you can help, check out her website at JillStein.org.

Originally posted on GreenChange.org

Apr 23 2010

No fracking way!

This Earth Day, while an oil rig was burning and sinking and spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico, I joined a small band of protesters during my lunch break to tell the government to stop a similar crime against nature, one that is taking place in my home state of Pennsylvania.  There are no offshore oil rigs here, of course, but the new and dangerous method of extracting natural gas through fracking is becoming a larger and larger threat to our water, our land, and our climate.  And Pennsylvania is ground zero.

So I took to the streets at a Green Party-organized protest.  We stood outside the regional Department of Environmental Protection and made our voices heard.

(Go below the fold for more info on the protest, fracking, and what you can do, including upcoming actions.)

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