{news} (Hartford Courant) Green Party Has A Slate

[Green Party-CT]

Green Party Has A Slate 

Ticket Leaders Say Drug War Wrong 

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       -->By FRANCES GRANDY TAYLOR
Courant Staff Writer

April 23 2006

NEW HAVEN -- While announcing his candidacy for governor Saturday, Cliff Thornton called for an end to the drug war, which he said was "designed to be waged, but never to be won." Thornton topped the Connecticut Green Party's first slate of candidates to run for statewide election. 

The retired businessman, who said he supports the legalization of marijuana, spoke to about 50 delegates crammed into a room at the Greater New Haven Labor Council, where the party's first convention took place. The room was dotted with green balloons and green-and-white Green Party flags. Behind the podium hung an American flag with logos of U.S. corporations in place of the stars. 

Thornton is a founder of Efficacy, a drug-reform group that calls the government's war on drugs ineffective. He said the money that government spends to fight drugs would be better spent on a crumbling infrastructure and social problems that have been swept under the rug.

"I decided to run for office because I can no longer support candidates with progressive rhetoric who never talk about the dinosaur in the room, which is the war on drugs," he said.

The Green Party also nominated Nancy Burton for attorney general, Mike DeRosa for secretary of the state, David Bue for treasurer and Ralph A. Ferrucci for U.S. senator.

DeRosa, a Green Party co-founder, announced Saturday that the party had joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and would prepare on Monday to file suit against the state because of campaign financial reform legislation that he said blocked ballot access for third parties, making them jump hurdles that were not required of the two major political parties.

If elected, DeRosa said, he would push for proportional representation, which would give seats to parties based on the percentage of the votes they received.

"Clean elections are more than limiting the amount of money that flows into campaigns, campaigns are about issues, and ideas," DeRosa said. 

"Political campaigns are about the future and building alternatives," he said. "The problem with the two major parties is that they are just mirror images of each other. First and foremost, we want campaigns to be campaigns. Right now, they are just auctions." 

The Connecticut Green Party has 15 state chapters, and about a dozen candidates holding office in cities and towns. The national Green Party has about 200 members who hold public office. The Connecticut Green Party supports universal health care and opposes the war in Iraq, among other issues. 

Thornton, who said he is running on a platform for a "sustainable society," called on cities and states Saturday to dismantle their war on drugs and to divert those funds to education and health care. 

"The drug war has done nothing but exacerbate the problems connected to drugs," he said. "Our children have unlimited access to these drugs and little information that they trust about them. America is becoming a police state where the bureaucracy which monitors, controls and arrests people outnumbers those that support people."

Ralph A. Ferrucci, a Green Party activist who once ran against John DeStefano for mayor of New Haven, announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. He criticized the billions of dollars spent and lives lost on the Iraq war.

"We have spent over $270 billion; we could have put 36 million children into Head Start or have sent 13 million students to a public university for four years," he said. "We could have funded a health-care system that would cover all Americans. We're one of the only industrialized nations in the world that does not do this." 

Ferrucci said that as an independent truck driver, he has not been able to afford health insurance for years.

"Most of the other candidates are millionaires," he said. "I know what the working men and women in this country go through everyday, because I am one of them." 
  Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant 
  
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