{news} Fw: GreenLine October Newsletter
Tom Sevigny
capeconn at comcast.net
Sat Oct 23 10:29:30 EDT 2004
GreenLine: The E-Newsletter of the Green Party
----- Original Message -----
From: Kara Mullen, Green Party of the US
To: capeconn at attbi.com
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 8:44 PM
Subject: GreenLine October Newsletter
OCTOBER 2004
News Headlines
Green Wins Nobel Peace Prize - George Bush and Tony Blair are losers.
2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai (Photo: AFP)
"Many wars in the world are actually fought over natural resources. We plant the seeds of peace now and in the future." ~ Wangari Maathai
Not that anyone thought George Bush or Tony Blair would win this year's Nobel Peace Prize, but odd things like this happen these days. But in light of their nomination, something more strange did happen - a true beacon of peace and a shining hope for the future won the Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2004 Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. The Kenyan Green Party founder will accept the Prize this year in Stockholm -she is the first African women to win the prize, which is the first awarded to an environmentalist. But then again, being the first at something is par for the Maathai course.
Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya and went to college in the United States, where she earned her Master's at the University of Pittsburgh. Maathai was the first East African woman to earn a Ph.D at the University of Wairobi and has since continued to pave the way for African women with her many accomplishments. Maathai founded "The Greenbelt Movement," an environmental lobby in 1977. The group helped mobilize thousands of poor women to plant 30 million trees in an organized effort to stop soil erosion and the desertification of Africa. Under the regime of President Daniel Arap Moi, Maathai was imprisoned several times and violently attacked for demanding multi-party elections and an end to corruption and tribal politics (And we thought the "anyone but bush" crowd was rough).
Affectionately known as the "tree woman," Maathai was elected to parliament in 2002 as a representative of the Mazingira Green Party of Kenya, which she founded. The party was a small, but important alliance partner in the coalition that ousted the Moi regime's designated successor in that election.
Maathai was appointed Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife in January, 2003.
According the Nobel Committee, Maathai "has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women's rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally."
"Maathai stood up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya" the Norwegian Nobel Committee said when they announced her as the recipient of the Prize. "Her unique forms of action have contributed to drawing attention to political oppression - nationally and internationally. She has served as inspiration for many in the fight for democratic rights and has especially encouraged women to better their situation."
The media has portrayed Maathai as an environmentalist, but this is simply because they don't understand Green politics. In fact, they completely ignored the fact that Maathai is the founding member of the Green Party or that she was a Green Party member elected to parliament. The media apparently didn't understand what it means to be Green and what environmentalism has to do with peace.
The simple truth is that most all wars are about natural resources, such as land, water, minerals. One need not look further than the U.S. invasion of Iraq to be reminded of the many wars steeped in oil. Conflict and violence are deeply embedded in the environment. Along with that violence comes oppression, social injustice, environmental degradation, economic instability and longlasting bitterness. This is why Greens are tireless advocates for peace.
Maathai's work planting trees and taking on a dictatorship reflects the essence of Green values. Her work empowering women to take control of their economic destiny and their power is a reflection of the Green value of feminism. Planting millions of trees demonstrates the vision of ecological wisdom and economic sustainability. Her fight to end the dictatorship encompassed nearly all the 10 key Green values and the Nobel committee recognizes the wisdom of these values in Maathai's work.
Perhaps the goal of the Nobel committee was to augment some balance in the world. In order to counteract the foolish and weak destructiveness of the ignorant warmonger Mr. Bush, they chose to honor the wise, constructive, powerful Kenyan Green, Wangari Maathai.
Maathai will accept a gold medal, diploma and 1.3 million dollars on December 10.
Congratulations Wangari Maathai!
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Green House Parties
Green Action Center
Keep sending those letters to editors and representatives about IRV, proportional allocation of electoral votes and third party inclusion in debates. Just since the last GreenLine, there have been a number of articles printed about these subjects, including an article on ranked voting in the Washington Post, and an article in the Boston Globe about Colorado's ballot to amend their state's electoral college to proportional allocation of electoral votes. Just because the presidential debates are over, doesn't mean we still can't insist on inclusion in the debates. Let's keep the debate about debates going!
Did your letter get printed? Let us know! Want to send more letters, go to the Green Party Action Center
Well folks, it's time to have some fun! Greens know how to party, so it's time to party Green!
Yes, you are exhausted, you've worked hard, you've campaigned hard. But there will be no other time in the next 4 years where people will be so awake and engaged than the time near this election. Let's reserve some energy so that we can celebrate in the week following the election.
The Greens will be celebrating many election victories. We can celebrate our survival through all the nasty things that happened to us this year. We can make up with Democrat friends and fellow Greens that we fought with. Let's get our Nader, Cobb and Kerry supporters under one roof to celebrate going forward. I suppose you can invite your Bush supporter friends if you have any.
If you threw a house party in your neighborhood and invited your neighbors to just party and have fun, it would be a great start to renewing friendships and building relationships with current and future Greens. You can raise a few hundred bucks or a few thousand. You can give some to your local and some with the national.
We have set up a place on the website where you can sign up to host a Green House Party. People can sign up to attend a green house party near them. We will help you with ideas about how to raise money and make it an easy fun event to host.
There will be a special grand prize to the Green House Party that raises the most money for the GP-US.
Please forward this to as many lists that you can and to all your fellow Greens. Not everybody has worked on campaigns or other party stuff, but they might be interested in throwing a party.
Let's get this party started right!
SIGN UP NOW TO HOST OR JOIN A GREEN HOUSE PARTY
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Morning After Advertising Campaign
Take Our Surveys
We have one fun survey, one serious survey.
Choose which October surprise the Bush campaign will pop on us.
And tell us whether or not you think the troops need to come home from Iraq.
Thanks to many of you for your support for our ad campaign in recent weeks. It's official, we're running the ad campaign starting on November 3rd, the day after the election. But we need more support urgently because we must purchase the space at the beginning of next week. While we have not been able to raise anything close to the $200,000, we are only $15,000 shy of an effective campaign and a $5,000 matching pledge. Please spread the word to your friends to ask for their help getting this ad to run.
On November 3rd, we will either know which man won the presidential election, or we will be watching the chaos of voting chads, purged voters and lawsuits galore with no known election outcome. And it will be thoroughly clear to Americans how much the two major parties have made a mess of our electoral system. This ad campaign will focus on the mess they've made while the Green Party has been busy implementing solutions all over the country. The Greens are cleaning house.
The message will be an effective way to reach millions of citizens and give further legitimacy to the Green Party while reminding voters about the positive forward-thinking Green message.
We need to purchase the ad at the end of this week - please send support today.
GREEN SPOTLIGHT:
Maine State Representative John Eder
Lone Green Ranger
John Eder, State Representative.
When you have a conversation with Representative John Eder, it doesn't take too long to understand how he won a seat in Maine's state legislature. Thoughtful, perceptive and patient, Eder gives you his undivided attention, doesn't rush you and clearly articulates his position. It is obvious that he cares about his constituents and takes a deep interest in the political process.
In 1996, Eder moved to Alfred, Maine, a peaceful and pretty town in southern Maine. At that point he had a passing awareness of the Green Party and knew enough about Green values to be attracted to them.
Maine is a pretty strong Green state. Eder might not have heard anything more about the Green Party had it not been for its presence on the ballot and a strong showing of Green candidates running for office. He is certain that these two factors have been key to raising awareness about the party.
At the time that Eder moved to the state, Maine Green Party founder John Rensenbrink was running for Senate and Eder saw his signs posted at an intersection in town. He then noted that after the signs were stolen, they did not get replaced. So Eder bought some supplies and painted new signs and put them out at the intersection. This was the first step on his Green Party journey.
When Eder moved to nearby Portland to attend massage school, he had the opportunity to meet many prominent local Greens. He started volunteering for the party in small ways. During the 2000 Nader campaign, he got more involved. At the same time he was involved in a local race for a district legislative seat. Remarkably, the Green won 35% of the vote without actively campaigning. This phenomenon sparked the interest of some Green leaders, and they started talking about winning the 2002 race.
Meanwhile Eder won the Portland Greens' co-chair position which he held for a couple of years. Eder was then approached to run for the afore-mentioned legislative seat. As he began to consider the opportunity, he started making more of an effort to show up at local meetings and getting involved in local issues. He was actively involved with a single-payer initiative which passed. Eder was then invited to a press conference and began to gain media coverage in local weeklies. Concerned about sidewalk pesticide spraying, he helped form a Pesticide Watch Group. The group was able to defeat the application of the Monsanto spray and its use was suspended.
Eder's biggest hurdle in making his decision to run was a personal one. Often mistrustful of the egos of leaders, he had a hard time thinking of himself in a position of leadership. "I wasn't a confident person. I had difficulty blowing my own horn," he recalls.
Nevertheless, about a year before the election, Eder started meeting with some Greens to plan and to develop a campaign strategy. Eder feels that the groundbreaking event was when he decided to study campaign strategy by working on the senate campaign of a local progressive Democrat. He became a student of campaigning and worked hard to learn standard campaign methodology.
This experience was pivotal for Eder and he feels Greens could benefit from using tried and true campaign methods rather than trying to do everything differently just to differentiate themselves from the two major parties. "There is a reluctance to use standard methodology to succeed," he said, "and I don't mean the dirty stuff. I'm an anti two-party system activist and 100% supportive of people-driven movements, but this doesn't mean you ignore conventional wisdom," he explained in his quiet and calm voice. "It's like when you bake bread," he continued, "there's room for creativity, but you still use the same key ingredients."
Once he studied campaigning, he found it's methodology to be "kind of easy." And he feels that because Greens work so hard, they could be very successful campaigning with tried and true strategies. He also emphasized that you can use these methods without ever having to compromise your ideals.
Eder and local Greens register voters all year long, not just around election time (Democrats took note and have been copying this strategy this year). "We need to talk to voters on the voter list and not just registered Greens or unregistered voters. Eder would visit the homes of registered voters and if they'd moved, he would help the new occupant register to vote.
Eder also feels that it's important to stay in touch with young voters. He recommends that local parties dedicate a couple people to meet with young people. He recently spoke at a local middle school. They liked him immediately because he not only showed up, but was the only one that didn't wear a suit. When he asked the group of kids if they'd ever heard of the Green Party, all of the kids raised their hand. "I thought I was going to cry," he said. He talked to the young students about the symbol of the donkey and the elephant, and he presented them with a sunflower. "It's very important to plant seeds for the future," he said.
Eder has done well because he has worked with all people, not just Greens. Eder mentioned that Maine voters have a huge independent streak, they "vote the person, not the party." When Eder was amazed that he not only won a seat in the legislature, but that he won by such a large margin. "We had no idea that we'd win so big," he marveled. He also finds it remarkable how people have taken ownership of this win. "They love this. They are proud that their district voted in the highest elected Green in the United States."
Eder feels his biggest accomplishment in the legislature was when his bill to protect children from cancer-causing chemicals was passed. Stockpiles of mercury were unearthed on a local school grounds. The emergency measure, his first bill to pass, won by a 2/3 majority.
Eder thinks that his success has been his ability to build relationships and "connect with people on a personal level." This has been crucial in the legislature where Eder doesn't have the strength of his party to back measures.
Eder tried to pass a bio-diesel bill. While a bill wasn't passed, the legislature passed a statute defining bio-diesel. His opponent went on to get a bio-diesel bill passed. Eder sees the relevance in this. "Our opponents think that Greens are about the environment so they try to compete on this level." But Eder's constituents know better, because they know that John is as focused on housing, health care and wages.
He has also learned that there are only a few bright bulbs running things and that "being in the legislature is often like high school." He noted that Greens are often criticized for not being qualified or competent to run for office, and that we should be more careful about who we invite to run for office. He said the other two parties invite people of all levels of competence and that "they're no better qualified to lead than we are." Most of the time, the main difference is that Greens just don't have the power of the machine to back them.
Eder doesn't want Greens to be discouraged by the fact that only the same few people show up to get things done. He said that it's like this with the other major parties as well, and it's not just a Green phenomenon. Eder feels that well-laid plans can compensate for this.
Eder is in the homestretch of his re-election campaign and seems to feel that his support is pretty solid. Of course it hasn't hurt that Democrat dirty tricks designed to harm Eder's campaign have backfired. When the Democrats re-districted Eder, voters saw through the ruse and were very angry. The ploy was blatantly done against the will of voters and disenfranchised them. The move augmented the support for Eder as well as their disgust for the Democrat party.
Eder decided that he would stick with the constituents for whom he served. He moved into his "new" district, and is now running against the Democrat "incumbent." It makes for an interesting race when you have two "incumbents" running against each other.
Eder received the highest score (100% rating) from the AFL-CIO, although he didn't receive their endorsement. They chose not to endorse anyone this year. Interestingly enough, they have never "not endorsed" a Democrat in his region.
In a second move that may backfire, the Attorney General (AG) announced a few weeks ago that some Green campaign volunteers are under indictment for an incident earlier in the year in Biddeford, Maine. The charges are that the volunteers mentioned the candidate's name while the voter was filling out the absentee ballot. While the incident had nothing to do with Eder, the opposition appears to be making the link because one of the volunteers in question is Eder's legislative aide. Interestingly enough, the AG was on the case 7 months ago, but waited until a few weeks before the election to make the announcement. Eder speculates that the charges will be dropped - after the election. While the announcement might not bode well for Eder, the move appears to have further angered voters who see it as another campaign dirty trick.
It is also worth noting that Maine has cleans elections laws, making the playing field more level. Eder doesn't have to spend time fundraising against the well-greased Democrat machine. People interested in supporting John Eder's campaign can do so by helping the local Green Independent Party in their organization efforts. For more information, see www.mainegreens.org.
News In Brief:
Greens joined thousands of workers at the October 17th Million Worker March in Washington DC, which was endorsed by the Green Party - the only political party to do so. The AFL-CIO was not compelled to endorse this march or ask its members to participate.
____
David Cobb was arrested on October 8th while protesting third party's exclusion from the presidential debates. Not only was Cobb prohibited from participating, he was not allowed to purchase a ticket to the town hall style debate in St. Louis. The three other presidential candidates that share Cobb's view to end the Iraq War and bring the troops home were also excluded from the debates. David described his arrest in an article he wrote shortly after the event:
"I was promptly arrested but not before a number of police converged on me with their shields which they used as offensive weapons. Some of the police seemed to enjoy hitting me; others seemed to be mortified.
At this time, Badnarik (Libertarian Party Presidential candidate) and I were surrounded by over a dozen members of the media-cameras, photographers and reporters. Although AP and a number of papers and websites carried the news of my civil disobedience and subsequent arrest, the national media was silent. Apparently, the corporate media decides for the people what is important and the arrest of two presidential candidates trying to exercise their rights to free speech doesn't qualify as important. It is one more example of how the corporate-owned media manufactures consent."
____
Green Case May be Reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court
Only in an election year. The U.S. Supreme Court, who recently appointed George Bush as president, thinks it's significant that San Francisco elections officials might not be looking out for voters' interests. Nevertheless, it's a break we are happy to get (should it happen). The U.S. Supreme Court, which rejects 95% of the 8000 cases submitted each year, considered accepting an appeal by Green Party congressional candidate Terry Baum and ordered San Francisco elections officials to explain why they did not count hundreds of Primary Election write-in votes and place Baum on the November ballot.
SF has until October 27th to respond. If Baum wins, the city may have to reprint hundreds of thousands of ballots to include Baum as a candidate in the 8th District (San Francisco), currently held by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Elections officials threw out hundreds of write-in votes based on a minor technicality. Baum claims that the technicality, which is comparable to a literacy test, is in clear violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Unfortunately for Baum, the laws regarding issuing a stay are even more confusing than the ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court won't issue a stay until they see proof that California wouldn't issue a stay, not realizing that California doesn't have to issue a stay and is done with the case. Confused? Don't worry, we are too, and so is the highest court in the land. That's why we said they "may" review Baum's case. Meanwhile, Baum was endorsed by the SF Bay Guardian and the League of Pissed Off Voters, for what it's worth.
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Homeland Security
Lawmakers, in their deep concern for the safety of Americans are anxious to make sure that we can carry assault weapons. Gun lobbies are busily trying to push bills through the states which would allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons in their homes and businesses without a license. (Remember how we got the expression "going postal"?) One such bill, the "Personal Protection Act" is currently being discussed in Wisconsin.
But in an historic precedent, Racine alderman Pete Karas initiated a resolution opposing the Personal Protection Act before it has even passed in Wisconsin. Karas, a Green, feels that his resolution will help spur opposition before the Personal Protection act can pass. The Racine common council passed the resolution in September.
Greens elsewhere are passing local resolutions to help make citizens feel more safe, including local measures to prevent police from enforcing the Patriot Act.
____
Iowa City Paper Endorses a Green for Senate
At least one newspaper understands the value of a Green in the Senate. The Iowa City Press Citizen recently endorsed Green candidate Daryl Northrup for Senate. Even if you don't live in Iowa, you might find this opinion piece worth reading as it highlights some of the election choices we all face in our country. http://www.press-citizen.com/...
Check out Cool Calvin
Calvin Nicholson is running for Registrar of Voters in New Haven Connecticut. It's a win-win situation for voters. He's running against a Republican and a Democrat - both have held office for 15 years. If Calvin beats either of the candidates, he gets to be a Registrar and so do they. Let's see if New Haven voters can figure out that they benefit from voting for Calvin. Read an article about Calvin (newhavenadvocate.com/...).
Join the
Sustainer Program!
Please consider joining our "Sustainer Program." Your monthly donation to the GP-US means that we don't have to focus on fundraising for operating costs and can turn our attention to the crucial matters of building the fabulous Green Party. Please take this opportunity to show your love for the Greens every month!
Top GP Accomplishments
a.. Mexican American Political Association endorses the Green Party.
b.. Green Party wins the American Muslim Alliance 2004 Humanitarian Award.
c.. Green candidates have won 37% of their races in 2004
d.. Newly- formed GP-US Peace Action Committee and the Manhattan Greens sponsored a Green festival to kick off the RNC protests in Manhattan.
e.. Largest official gathering of Greens in America at the June nominating convention in Milwaukee.
f.. Ballot access now in 23 states.
Green Stats to Share with Friends:
a.. Number of Greens in office: 213
b.. 350+ Greens filed to run on November 2nd
c.. Registered Greens: 300,476
d.. Total campaigns in 2004: 415
e.. Highest office now held by elected Green: Rep. John Eder, Maine State House
Campaigns are kicking up! These great candidates need your support. Check out our elections database, and contact the candidates in your area to volunteer or support their campaigns.
Support us today! The "Anyone But Bush" fever has siphoned support from the Green Party. We need your financial support more than ever before!
Green Party online shopping just got easier! Visit our improved online store.
Comments? Feedback? Want to submit an item to Greenline?
Send your comments to: kara at gp.org.
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