Showing posts tagged “green party”
Matt Saldaña ·
27 Jul 2009, 3:46 PM ·
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2008 Green Party presidential nominee, and former U.S. Representative (D-GA), Cynthia McKinney was scheduled to deliver a keynote speech to the roughly 100 Green Party members who attended last week’s convention in Durham. Due to health issues, she instead spoke to the group about her recent brush with the Israeli Navy, and her involvement with the “Free Gaza” movement, via online video.
Audience members lined up to ask McKinney questions, but because of a communications mishap, McKinney only referred to Gaza-related questions from the video stream’s live chat. One question involved Hurricane Katrina, though she responded by talking about Palestine. In fact, other than a brief reference to her 2008 run (disparaging those who didn’t understand it), and general praise for the Green Party candidates who spoke at a live-streamed news conference Friday, McKinney made almost no mention of her party’s gathering in Durham.
Last month, McKinney and 20 others were seized by the Israeli Navy after attempting to sail through a blockade to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Consulate has said McKinney’s group could have delivered humanitarian supplies by land, and accused the group of making a “reckless political stunt.”
McKinney was scheduled to be deported immediately, but refused to sign deportation papers and spent a week in jail, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I spent seven days in prison because I wanted the children in Gaza to have crayons,” McKinney said in her video address. Continue reading »
national, politics Cynthia McKinney, Gaza Strip, green party, Israel, Jesse Johnson, mountaintop removal, Palestine
Matt Saldaña ·
25 Jul 2009, 3:23 PM ·
4 Comments
“Live longer; pay less.”
That was the mantra offered by 2004 vice-presidential nominee Pat LaMarche during the Green Party’s single-payer health care forum, held on Friday at N.C. Central University in Durham.
The former talk-radio host, and Maine gubernatorial candidate, got the crowd of roughly 100 to chant along for single-payer systems throughout the world that provide better health care, at cheaper costs, than the United States. The World Health Organization found the United States spends more per capita on health care than any country in the world, but ranks 37th in quality of care. Universal single-payer systems ranking higher include Canada and Australia, while most developed countries provide some element of single-payer insurance.
To assuage opponents of so-called “socialized medicine, LaMarche said that patients could always “opt-out,” like choosing FedEx over the U.S. Postal Service.
“You can still do all the fancy rich-people stuff,” she said. Continue reading »
Durham County, media, national, politics green party, health care reform, pat lamarche, single-payer health care
Matt Saldaña ·
25 Jul 2009, 1:51 PM ·
5 Comments
Day Two of the Green Party’s 2009 National Meeting in Durham featured a forum on single-payer health care (though “forum” may be a stretch; the consensus was that single-payer is the best, and only, option) and press conferences introducing Green Party elected officials, and candidates, to the world.
But the real action happened in workshops, where local Green Party leaders, seated in N.C. Central University classroom chairs, licked the wounds of a contentious 2008 convention in Chicago, and pondered whether the Green Party had lost its relevance in the eyes of the public.
“As I look across this room, we’re old,” said George Martin, former co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party and a founder of the Green Party Black Caucus. “Not to mention [a lack of] people of color.”
Martin said the Green Party had lost its “feeder system” when Campus Greens, a national student organization, folded due to organizational mishaps, including tax trouble and having no official ties to the national party.
“We’ve got to go back to our roots, and we’ve got to go young,” he said. “Let’s get back to our basic organization. We are activists. We are activists because we weren’t satisfied with the political system.” Continue reading »
national, politics Barack Obama, George Martin, green jobs, green party, John Rensenbrink, Kat Swift, Ralph Nader
Matt Saldaña ·
24 Jul 2009, 9:09 AM ·
3 Comments
At first glance, the Green Party’s agenda for its 2009 National Meeting in Durham is a bit, well, all over the map. Major topics include single-payer health care, mountaintop removal mining, a former presidential candidate’s excursions into the Gaza Strip, and–in the words of steering committee member Holly Hart–”strategic messaging workshops and planning.”
“We wanted to talk about strategy, and what messages are really resonating with the American people,” Hart explained.
2009 is an off-year, so the Greens can afford to try out different strategies and see what’s working–and what isn’t.
On the national level, last year did not work so well. Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney finished sixth, behind Barack Obama, John McCain, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin, at roughly 153,000 votes (roughly one-tenth of one percent). By contrast Ralph Nader received more than 2.8 million votes (or, 2.7 percent) as a Green Party candidate in 2000.
Green Party candidates were elected to 22 local offices throughout the country in November 2008, though most of those elections were non-partisan, according to Phil Huckleberry, chair of the Illinois Green Party.
This year, Huckleberry said 132 Greens are running for office, including “What Would Jesus Buy?” author and comic preacher Rev. Billy Talen, who is running for mayor of New York City.
In Illinois, Huckleberry said no one had ever been elected to a partisan office as a Green but “we fully intend to do that in 2010.”
“Just about anything can happen,” he said.
Update (7/25/09): The spelling of Rev. Billy Talen’s name has been corrected.
national, politics 2008 election, Billy Talen, Cynthia McKinney, green party
