By DON TERRY

As a boy growing up in the long shadow of the Ida B. Wells public housing development, LeAlan Jones, the Illinois Green Party candidate for the United States Senate, learned at an early age to ignore naysayers.

Bonnie Trafelet/Chicago News Cooperative

LeAlan Jones, center, the Green Party candidate for United States Senate, with delegates at the Illinois party’s convention Aug. 1, where attendees listened to speeches.

Disgruntled California voters have blown up their election system by approving Proposition 14, which tosses out the current political party-based primary system in all but presidential races.

With 48 percent of precincts statewide reported, the measure was ahead with 57 percent of voters in favor of it and 43 percent against.

Although results were not official, California’s main and minor political parties were already talking about a strategy to file a lawsuit against Proposition 14, Cres Velluci, Green Party state press secretary, said late Tuesday night.

Backed strongly by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Proposition 14 calls for a new “open” primary, in which all candidates for an office – except those in presidential primaries – appear on a ballot given to voters regardless of party registration.

Under the system — which Washington state has already adopted — the top-two vote getters who emerge from a primary square off in a general election, even if they are from the same political party.

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[From: The Legislative Gazette]

By Sarah L. Evans

Green Party activist Howie Hawkins declared he will be running for governor during a visit to Albany last week. Hawkins so far is the only contender for the Green Party’s nomination. On May 15, during the party’s statewide convention, an official announcement of the party’s ticket will be unveiled.

According to Peter LaVenia, co-chair of the Green Party of New York State, it’s likely that Hawkins will win the nomination. If Hawkins is able to garner 50,000 votes during the gubernatorial vote, the party will be able to have an official ballot line, which is a goal of the campaign. 

Hawkins’ campaign slogan, “Tax Wall Street, Not Main Street,” echoes the sentiments of the party, which shuns corporate funding and aims for a more grassroots support base. 

“We see the basic issue in this campaign as whether our state government is going to be for the people or continue to serve the super rich and the giant corporations and whether it is going to represent main street and Martin Luther King Boulevard or continue to represent Wall Street,” said Hawkins. “And we are running because we are on the side of the people.”

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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

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[From: Businessweek ]

By Thomas Penny

May 7 (Bloomberg) — The Green Party won its first seat in the House of Commons as leader Caroline Lucas took Brighton Pavilion on England’s south coast from Gordon Brown’s Labour Party.

Lucas, a member of the European Parliament since 1999, won 31.3 percent of the vote, compared with 28.9 percent for Labour’s Nancy Platts and 23.7 percent for Charlotte Vere of the Conservatives. The Green Party, which came third at the 2005 election, overturned a 12-point Labour majority.

“Thank you so much for putting the politics of hope above the politics of fear,” Lucas said after the results were announced.

Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral prevented the Green Party from gaining any seats in previous domestic elections. The party won 1.1 percent of the national vote in 2005 and 8.7 percent in June’s European elections, which use proportional representation.

The party, which was founded as “People” in 1973 and became the Green Party in 1985 to link it to similar movements in Europe, advocated increased taxes for the rich, tighter financial regulation and protection of public services in its manifesto, which described it as “the party of hope and radical change.”