Category: Green Party

Green New Democrats

15/11/2018

Since yesterday, I've seen some grumbling on Green Party Facebook pages about this recent development. Greens are not complaining so much about A. Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and the Sunrise Movement staging a protest rally in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office at the Capitol. What rankles them is that progressive Democrats are misappropriating the "Green New Deal" language that Jill Stein made the centerpiece of her presidential campaigns.

Best birthday present a Greenie could hope for! #GreenNewDeal arrives in Congress wearing its ass-kicking boots. https://t.co/x2IZJJdtxA by @ryangrim @briebriejoy
— David Bruce Collins (@dbcgreentx) November 14, 2018

Also seen: Democrats wringing their hands about AOC and Tlaib upsetting the party establishment, virtually assuring that they won't get any committee assignments, let alone the ones they might want. If Pelosi et al. are that invested in bipartisanship and that petty about Progressives trying to shake things up a bit, that will reveal them as the Republicans in Democrat clothing they really are. Are the establishment Democrats smart enough to recognize that, though?

Sure, I would love to see these Democrats give full credit where it's due, tipping their hats to Stein and the Green Movement. If Green New Deal policies actually get implemented in full, without acknowledgment of their architects, I for one won't complain. We need to move forward on averting climate catastrophe with all due haste. Even if the Democratic Caucus adopts it but cannot get it past the Senate, I'll salute them for trying.

However, if the Democrats in Congress propose a watered-down version of the Green New Deal, fuck 'em. If they even try to include Cap & Trade language, fuck 'em harder.

Starting with a compromise, rather than battling toward one, is exactly why Democrats lose, both on Capitol Hill and in our polling places. On the issue of anthropomorphic climate disruption, science tells us that we have no space or time for compromise.

Mejia Closing In on 26%

11/11/2018

Here's an update on the CA-34 top-two Congressional race mentioned on this blog a few days ago. The turnout is a little less appalling, up over 100,000 total votes at this point. Green candidate Kenneth Mejia's count is at 25.98% and rising as the absentee tally continues.

In case anyone needs reminding, to most of the voting world, a 74-26 margin looks like a slaughter. For a minor-party apparatchik, a 26% showing against a corporate-party incumbent is pretty damn impressive.

Our vote count increased to 26,160 votes!

26,160 & counting people voted GREEN, to break the status-quo!

Btw, we got the HIGHEST % of votes (26%) for ANY GREEN running for US Congress against a Democrat in the history of the @GreenPartyUS!

In Los Angeles, it's Blue v Green! □ pic.twitter.com/TS3Ftb7obE
— Kenneth Mejia (@25forcongress) November 10, 2018

As a bonus, a little ways down the San Diego Freeway, the Blue Wave appears to have wiped out Republican former surfer Dana Rohrabacher in CA-48. Once upon a time back in the 1990s, Rohrabacher was something of a moderate, at least on social issues, but he has moved rightward with the rest of his party. Apparently his Orange County district hasn't kept pace with that rightward migration. In 2016, he won re-election by a comfortable 58-42 margin, even while Hillary Clinton won it with 48% to 46% for What's-His-Face.

Intrigue Afoot in Arizona, Florida, Maine

9/11/2018

Arizona
While the Democratic Hate Brigade has been raining toxic Tweets upon Angela Green for "spoiling" the Senate race in Arizona, they may be missing the real story. Late vote tallies now put Democrat Kyrsten Sinema ahead by 9,000 votes, 0.5%.

Green, the Democrat-turned-Green, a week before Election Day, halfway through early voting and after she had already bagged about 30,000 votes. Sinema, the Green-turned-Democrat, may just hang on to flip John McCain's long-held Senate seat.

Meanwhile, AZ Central has posted another article about Green's not-entirely-by-the-book run, from her switching party affiliation last year to her write-in primary campaign to the headline-grabbing belated withdrawal and endorsement of Sinema. It contains a little more detail than last week's piece.

Colorado Green activist Gary Swing, now the avatar of the Boiling Frog Party, has posted a lengthy Facebook status about the Angela Green kerfuffle, with a link to a lengthier blog post of his from 2015.

Arizona Dropout: Not Very Green, Angela

2/11/2018

This morning's news from Arizona sure was a waker-upper: several sources reporting that US Senate nominee Angela Green had abruptly dropped out of the race and thrown her support behind Democrat Krysten Sinema.

Aw, hell no! Bad call, Ms. Green. Given that the sources on the first page of Duck Duck Go results are almost all right-leaning outlets—Fox News, Daily Caller, Politicus USA, NewMax—I wasn't sure whether to believe it. (Not gonna link to those.) The Hill (center-right pretending to be objective) also posted an item. I had to see this video clip on an interview with Green, from Phoenix's NBC affiliate, before I was convinced.

As of this writing, neither Green's website nor that of the Arizona Green Party have any news about her withdrawing from the race. In fact, Green's home page specifically mentions that she has resisted calls from "those who have requested, asked, demanded, harassed, and bullied me to remove myself from the ballot in order for their major party candidate to win."

A Lonely Time to Be a Green

23/10/2018

Thus quoth the prophet Kermit: "It's not easy being Green." Certainly, to be marginalized or persecuted for things you can't help—ethnicity, gender, orientation, age—is a far heavier burden. But, as with atheism, what with atheists' poll numbers lower than used car salespeople, persecution on matters of conscience or philosophical orientation is still persecution. It's un-American, but it still happens in America.

This year in Texas, for the first time since 2008, we of the Green persuasion have no candidates politically aligned with us. There may be a few Democrats with progressive reputations and policy positions, except for those one or two positions that are deal-breakers. It's difficult to find anyone on the ballot, at any level, who explicitly favors

swift and decisive action to combat climate change
not funding or supporting the genocide in Yemen, Palestine, and elsewhere
Medicare for All
ending capital punishment and mass incarceration
free in-state college tuition and forgiveness of student debt

Yeah, most of these are issues that candidates for Land Commissioner or Justice of the Peace would find outside their purview. Candidates for any office in Texas can still take a soundly progressive position on matters germane to that office. Whether they can expect to win the nomination in a Democratic Party with those positions is another matter.

Speaking of positions on issues, this would be a good time to remind folks heading to the polls the peek at the League of Women Voters guide, available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Repeat after Me: "I Don't Vote for Warmongers"

8/10/2018

Ho-hum. Kayleen and I have lost another friend, both on Facebook and in real life, due to his advanced Trump Derangement Syndrome. He wasn't a close friend, but I'll miss his humor-laden political posts and his keen insight on soccer for someone who's relatively new to the game. I wish him well in the new, improved life he is currently undertaking. His occasional post-midnight drunken rants, however, I shall not miss.

In this man's mind, all of us who voted for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in 2016 are responsible for throwing the presidential race to the Republicans. We purposefully ignored Democrats' warnings about how a Trump presidency would alter the Supreme Court irreparably, now giving us Justice Brett "Devil's Triangle" Kavanaugh and possible lifetime appointments for more accused pussy-grabbers.

When reminded that a) those votes weren't stolen from Hillary Clinton because they didn't belong to her in the first place, and b) third-party votes in Texas did not affect who won the state's 38 electoral votes, this fellow busted out some hyperbole about Stein "getting the 0.000001% of the vote that she deserved" or words to that effect, thus defeating his own argument.

It's rather startling how this little episode has brought certain things into sharper focus:

To the delight of Democrats in Texas, I am now convinced that our state Green Party will not make a magical come-back in 2020 unless the situation changes drastically in the next year or so.
I've determined that there's only one proper and concise response when people ask me why I didn't just fall into line behind Clinton: "I don't vote for warmongers*."

More on both of these later in this post.

Ventura 2020?

5/10/2018

Wow. I'm kinda conflicted about this, and not for the reasons you might think.

Through Arlington school board candidate Hunter Crow's post on the GPTX Facebook page, I learned this morning that apparently Jesse Ventura wants to run for president as a Green. The key word is "apparently," because it isn't self-evident that Ventura had anything to do with the creation of the website.

Still, The Governing Body has recently spoken in speculative terms about a presidential run.

As of now, the Jesse Ventura 2020 site is a bit rudimentary:

The title of the main and only page doesn't even get his name right: my browser tab says Jesse Venture 2020.
It has space reserved for the Green Party Banner, but the webmaster has not added the banner image yet.
There are representations of his top three issues: stopping US military madness, ending the war on drugs, and truly reforming campaign finance. If your pet issue or litmus test for voting is Medicare for All, you may have to wait for the site to be fully fleshed out.
The page's main feature, found near the bottom, is a clunkily edited video collage of some of Ventura's media appearances that illustrate his evolution into a Green supporter.

This Facebook page looks even less legitimate.

Being in the Database Does Not Equal Membership

9/7/2018

This is all I have left to say about last week's WTF—I hope. (In this case, WTF stands for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.)

There was a healthy diversity of opinion among Texas Green insiders on how (or whether) the Green Party of Texas should respond to the shower of toxicity from right-wingers on the Party's Facebook page. Some saw Kino Jiménez as an anti-racist comrade in need of solidarity; others, as just some dude who unwisely crossed a line and assaulted a juvenile in a public place. In the end, co-chair Wes Gaige opted for a middle-ground approach that seemed to pacify the critics.
Almost everybody involved in the controversy, including yours truly, was speaking and acting from incomplete or inaccurate information through most of it, which is kind of sad. It certainly didn't help that San Antonio's CBS affiliate posted an unverified witness account, which it later retracted, and that Raw Story propagated it.

Anybody, regardless of political affinity or physical location, can sign up on the GPTX website to get email updates, to volunteer, or to donate. When you sign up, your name and any contact information you share go into the database. Being listed in the database does not make you a member; according to the GPTX Bylaws, you have to show up and participate in your local county party's meetings and activities, and attest that you are in general agreement with the Ten Key Values to be considered a member.

Voting Green also does not make one a member of any Green Party organization. Hundreds of thousands of Texas residents have voted for Green candidates just in the past few election cycles; however, are actual membership statewide runs in the low three digits.

Kino Update

5/7/2018

I'm not vouching for the accuracy of either of these sources. I merely present them for your consideration, and to illustrate how acting on incomplete or unverified information can be destructive.

Right now, I'm really glad that I did not publish the damage-control article that I wrote for txgreens.org after my blog post from earlier today, because I did not have all the necessary facts. More information may yet spill out on this matter.

If it's true that Harris County Green Party Secretary Gavino Zárate spoke to Heavy on behalf of the entire state party, he committed a grievous no-no that can get him removed from office. Zarate. Per by-laws, only co-chairs are permitted to speak for the party as a whole.

If it's true that Kino Jiménez was responding angrily to some ugly racist talk about celebrating Independence Day with lynchings, as Raw Story reports, and it wasn't just some kid wearing an inflammatory ball cap, I can certainly understand his motivation without condoning his actions.

Dueling narratives and big-big drama. Regardless of who's right, Jiménez's name has been removed from the GPTX contact list. All he gave when he signed (or when he was signed up) was his name and a bogus email address, according to GPTX co-chair Wes Gaige.

Kino Crisis

5/7/2018

This was my unofficial heads-up/statement on Facebook about the Kino Jiménez kerfuffle.

Some FB accounts (I'd say "some people" but I can't verify whether they are actual people or bots) are lighting up the Green Party of Texas page with accusatory comments about an incident at San Antonio Whataburger. A guy whose name appears in a GPTX NationBuilder contact list allegedly beat up a teenager & stole the young man's MAGA cap.

I've been involved with the Texas Greens in varying degrees since 2000, and I don't know any Kino Jiménez. I'm trying to find out if any of my Green comrades do know him. The object of these comments is to accuse the Green Party of endorsing such violent conduct and guilt by association. One comment reads (and I quote verbatim), "Yubare fucking terrorists!"

If you're in the GPTX contact list, it DOES NOT mean that you're a member of the Party. It may mean something as minor as having Liked one of our Facebook posts. That gives us your name & whatever contact info you share via FB.

If Kino is in fact a member of the Bexar County Greens, and if the Bexar County Greens are in fact functioning, then there is a process for them to remove him for violent conduct.

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