Half of eligible voters stay home, not due to apathy, but because corporate politicians have alienated them. Come meet the Green Party candidates ready to offer a reason to vote for us, instead of voting against their opponent. Our future matters!
Every Tuesday at 8:00 pm, every Saturday at 2:00 pm. Please register here for details. Hope to see you there.
For those wanting to vote early and in person, know that the polls are already open. To learn the details on polling locations relevant for your county, use this form to get a phone number for your county county’s superintendent of elections.
Georgia’s registered voters should apply for an absentee ballot now to avoid expected election day snafus. Click here to request your Absentee Ballot from Georgia’s Secretary of State.
If you have yet to register to vote in Georgia, or you have moved since voting previously, you have until October 5th, 2020 to do so. Simply click here to register to vote with your current information.
The AJC has reported only eighteen days before the October 5th deadline for voter registration, that: “Georgians who have completed their felony sentences but still owe money for restitution, fees and court costs are eligible to vote, according to a notice recently posted on the secretary of state’s website. Felons still must pay off fines that are part of their court-ordered sentences before they can re-register to vote.” The announcement was made to comply with a recent Georgia Supreme Court order in a case litigating the meaning of the Georgia Constitution’s prohibition of voting by convicted felons who have not completed their sentence.
To be clear, when we urge Greens to vote often, this is not an incitement to violate any laws. Rather we are urging that you be vocal about how you intend to vote. Voters may guard the privacy of their ballot. But as party activists it is left to us to help others understand that their vote is their own. Our votes belong to no party, politician or political operative who would try to vote-shame or otherwise bully us to support at the polls candidates who have done nothing to earn our vote.
Most election cycles, a primary concern in our qualifying question recommendations is with not wasting our own time and energy. This year, compelled by the Courts and state law to conduct this activity under pandemic conditions, we have an added concern of limiting our exposure, and the exposure of our family and friends and the exposure of the large number of the general public this process requires that we interact with, to viral infections.
We are taking a calculated risk that the cost of our inaction, of leaving the field yet again to the corporate parties is greater than the risk of taking the actions necessary to offer Georgia voters an opportunity to vote for Green Party candidates.
These are the corporate parties which defunded our nation’s capacity to respond effectively to global pandemics. These are the corporate parties which ignored the threat of catastrophic climate change. We are talking about the same corporate parties which created the policies which gave us mass incarceration. These are the very same corporate beholden parties which told us they were reforming health care only to enrich the insurance industry at our expense. These corporate parties shifted the tax burden from those with onto the backs of those without. We discuss here those who have ignored the rising rates of homeless. These are the corporate parties which undermined democracy in multiple ways including with international so-called free-trade agreements. These are the same corporate parties which in this election campaign project no intention to change the suicidal direction of this nation’s public policy.
Its true we argued in court that petitioning under pandemic conditions poses a threat to public health. Judge Ross made noises as if she agreed with us while crafting a remedy making it clear that either she did not, or that she was indifferent to the risk.
Its also true that Greens not getting on the ballot poses a larger long-term threat.
In any other year, the qualifying questions we recommend are intended to improve the efficiency of our work. In 2020, they are also intended, along with our personal protective equipment, to limit our exposure and to protect the health of ourselves, our families and of everyone we interact with.
Experienced petition circulators from other states are advising us that besides losing our best petitioning opportunities altogether (fairs and street festivals and other large public gatherings in traditional public fora are not happening at all), that even when they do find opportunities to petition, they are collecting signatures at 40% of the rate they have in years past.
Those engaged in the petition drive in other states are also telling us that they get much better response when they suit up and take seriously the fears instilled by our government’s response to the pandemic. Volunteers wearing face shields, masks and gloves, who carry and visibly use hand-santizer, offering it to folks who interact with their pens and clipboards are getting much better responses than those who flaunt the risks we are told we face.
CDC: Using Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
FDA: Personal Protective Equipment for Infection Control
What the health care professionals are telling us is that when they return home from the hospital, they avoid interactions with their family, take a disposable plastic bag to the shower, strip off their clothes, seal them in the plastic bag and shower before getting dressed, laundering their work clothes and practicing social distancing inside their homes.
Of course, the paragraph above describes health care workers who are are providing care to covid19-infected patients. Already, many of us, including some who interact regularly face-to-face with presumably un-infected customers have already returned to work. Not all of us work jobs conducive to remote work from home arrangements. With proper precautions, as described elsewhere on this page, it is possible to limit our risks, even if, out of an abundance of caution, we adapt health-care worker like protocols before hugging our kids.
Our petition drive ends on August 14th. We are not asking of our petition circulators the long term sacrifice that our health care system asks of its workers.
But for many reasons, some of which are listed above, we do think these are risks it is necessary for us to take.
If your family includes members who are particularly at risk (infants, the elderly, the immuno-compromised); and you are not in a position to quarantine yourself from your family for the duration of the petition drive plus two or three weeks afterwards, you can still contribute to the effort in the following ways:
1. None of the petition signatures you collect will be validated unless you as the circulator swear an oath before a notary public to the affidavit which should be printed on the back of each page. Read carefully the affidavit and the instructions on the back of the petition before you collect your first signature. Every word there has legal significance, and understanding what they mean translates directly into fewer signatures invalidated after we file, and protection from legal liability for you as the circulator.
2. The ‘disinterested notary rule’ means that your notary public can neither sign nor circulate our petition. It is up to you to qualify each notary you use to ensure that using them won’t cost you the invalidation of every signature on the front of each sheet of an affidavit they have notarized.
3. People who sign the petition must be registered voters in the state of Georgia, and their name on the petition will be used to match them to their voter registration record; before their voter registration card is pulled by election workers in their county to match against the signature you collect.
4. Since the petition we file will be broken up by county and sent to the county of registration for each page, it is important to use a distinct page for each county. Each petition page is only valid for people in one county. You need a different sheet for each county where you gather signatures, and everyone who signs must be registered in that specific county. In case you missed it, and just to be clear, ‘one county per page’, please.
In this post you are offered two questions to quickly qualify potential petition signers; plus some simple instructions for the voter, with which to coach them to provide you valid signatures.
Collecting signatures is hard work. Do not get distracted by conversation just because a voter has already said yes, they will sign. The other part of the job is to supervise every signature to ensure you are collecting the validatable signatures which will put our candidates on the Georgia ballot.
Look below for guidance on how best to introduce yourself if you are canvassing door-to-door. Where that script leaves off, these questions pick up. If you have positioned yourself in the flow of traffic, skip the introduction and launch directly into the ask, before a prospective signer walks by you.
1. Would you please sign a petition to put Green Party candidates on the Georgia ballot?
With this question you have satisfied your oath on the Circulator’s Affidavit that “each signer manually signed his or her own name on this sheet with full knowledge of the contents of such petition“.
2. In what county are you registered to vote?
Their response to this question allows you to comply with the ‘one-county-per-page‘ rule, to choose the correct page for the voter to sign. That is your responsibility as the trained circulator, not their job as the voter. This question improves our validation rates and satisfies your oath on the Circulator’s Affidavit, “to the best of (your) knowledge and belief” both “that such signers are registered electors of the State of Georgia qualified to sign such petition” and also “that they all reside in the county named in the caption of this affidavit“.
. . . and, then before you hand over the pen, . . .
3.(a) They ask that you first sign your name on line #___, then legibly print your name underneath your signature;
. . . ok, hand them the pen, but continue to watch as they sign, offering course corrections as needed (voters will acknowledge your instructions without them registering or being reflected in their actions) interjecting as they make progress across the page; . . .
3.(b) the next box asks for your date of birth; then your residential address where you are registered to vote;
Again, referencing your oath on the Circulator’s Affidavit, you will be asked to swear “that their respective residences are correctly stated in the petition“.
3.(c) in the next space, please write: ____________ County; and finally today’s date is: ____________.
To confidently get us to 5,250 valid signatures, we need to work our way through this entire script with 10,500 voters. This means, if two of three of those willing to sign are eligible to sign, that we are likely to have asked that second question of 15,750 or more potential signers qualified by the first question as willing to help put Green Party candidates on the Georgia ballot. If one person in three whom we ask to help are willing to sign, we are looking to for 47,250 people in Georgia of whom to ask that first question.
Its a numbers game. The purpose of these qualifying questions is to whittle down those nearly 48k conversations to the 10.5k we need to have to put Green Party candidates on the Georgia ballot.
Every no we hear to our first qualifying question can be politely answered:
Thank you for your time.
Our job is not to argue or convince anyone, but to quickly qualify each person as willing to help, or not; and to help those willing to help to give us the help we need.
If you are canvassing a crowd on the street, or the foot traffic in a traditional public forum, the key is to qualify prospective signers before they walk by the opportunity to help you are offering them. The expectations for polite interactions are different when you are canvassing door-to-door.
When you are door-knocking, the person answering the door expects you to introduce yourself. This is the formula developed years ago by canvassers and used to train each succeeding generation of political activists in the craft. Its simple, and only requires four elements:
(1) I am . . .
Good evening, my name is: _______________________.
(2) We are . . .
I am a volunteer with the Georgia Green Party and the Hawkins-Walker Presidential campaign.
(3) We do . . .
Our party offers a political alternative grounded in our values for peace and non-violence, social justice, grassroots democracy and ecological wisdom. The Hawkins campaign stands for urgent action on the catastrophic climate crisis, universal access to health care, nuclear disarmament and an end to our nation’s imperial wars of foreign aggression.
(4) We want . . .
Tonight, we are here to ask if you’d sign a petition so that Green Party candidates may appear on the Georgia ballot in the November 3rd election.
The fourth element of this formula is used to pose our first qualifying question, and an affirmative answer should lead directly into the conversation as scripted above.
The goal is to use this formula to hone a message in your own words, one you can deliver sincerely and authentically, perhaps one adapted from the sample message above, which you repeat to every voting age person who answers the door. Say it all without interruption, pose your (we want) question, then be quiet and listen. Let the person answering the door indicate where the conversation should go next.
Political canvassing is a skill all-its-own. There is much more we can share to help you do this effectively. When going door-to-door, adapt this formula to our purposes and prefix it to the qualifying questions and instructions explained above and you have 85% of what you need to get the job done. The rest is common courtesy, experience, common sense.
Please call our Party officers or our candidates if you feel the need for training or have something to share. If we are going to build this party effectively, we need you to benefit from the best practices we have garnered from our experience and to share your experience to inform our future work on this effort. None of us have ever done this work under pandemic conditions before. Your experience can inform how we train the next volunteer.
The rules related to ballot access in Georgia are shifting. This article is intended to share a bit of background to help readers understand some of the history which brought us to this moment, focusing on the litigation and legislation which have moved this story along.
On the way to the 2012 Presidential Nominating Convention which named Jill Stein as our nominee (for the first time), and at the urging of our 2008 Presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney, the Georgia Green Party
became a plaintiff in a lawsuit which finally cracked a logjam which is rooted in the state’s’ Jim Crow history of suppressing and excluding black voters from the process.
The barriers we face to our participation in Georgia elections were adopted in 1943. The Texas (Smith v Alright, 131 F.2d 593, 321 U.S. 649 (1944)) and Georgia (King v Chapman, 62 F. Supp. 639 (M.D. Ga. 1945), 154 F.2d 460 (5th Cir. 1946), 327 U.S. 800 (1946)) cases used by the Courts to strike down the all-white primaries were already being formulated as part of a litigation strategy to challenge black voters exclusion. Heading into the war years the black press across the country were agitating on a Double-V-for-Victory campaign, advocating victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism here at home. It was not until the 1944 Primary before Primus King, president of the Muscogee Branch of the NAACP, would bring suit against Joseph Chapman, then chair of the Muscogee County Democratic Party Executive Committee for denying him an opportunity to participate in their party’s primary. But it was already well known that such a challenge was coming when the Georgia Assembly, intent on creating new ways to keep Communists and Republicans (black voters) off of the Georgia ballot, adopted the 5% signature requirement now known as 21-2-170.
During the 60’s the Republicans, supported by a national apparatus, worked to comply with the requirement and finally qualified under Georgia law as a political party, eligible for state financed primaries.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in a case now known as Jenness v Fortson (403 U.S. 431 (1973)) (oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court). Ben W. Fortson was then the Secretary of State of Georgia. Jenness (a candidate for Governor of Georgia) was one of three candidates (the others for the US House) named by the Socialist Workers Party who had brought this case in 1970. Their suit sought a court finding that the 14th Amendment’s ‘Equal Protection’ clause prohibits the disparate treatment around access to the ballot faced by emerging political parties, known as political bodies under Georgia law, as compared to the corporate parties.
The U.S. Supreme Court found that it was constitutional to require a showing of a ‘modicum of support’ by a new political party, as a condition for being listed on the ballot. Further, without any evidentiary record, they found that the 5% signature did not “freeze the political status quo”, and that the requirement was not an unconstitutional barrier to ballot access. The SWP candidates had never attempted a petition drive, but had sought a declaration that the challenged statute was unconstitutional on its face.
The Johnson Administration’s Voting Rights Act and the Poll Tax amendment to the US Constitution made strides against the voter suppression of the Jim Crow era without ever touching the ballot access barriers which had been enacted across the old Confederate South.
In the 1980’s the Libertarians spent plenty of money to demonstrate that collecting the signatures of 5% of the voters statewide was, even then at half our population, a prohibitive hurdle to overcome. They took a preliminary victory in court to the General Assembly where they used it to leverage the first substantive change since the ballot access barriers were adopted in 1943. The 1986 change was to ‘bifurcate’ the statute (OCGA 21-2-170) preserving the 5% rule for all other offices, but setting a new standard of 1% for candidates seeking statewide office. They also won enactment of a new statute (OCGA 21-2-180 et seq), providing that a political ‘body’ can circulate a unified petition for the signatures of 1% of Georgia voters state-wide, and by doing so run a slate of all candidates for all state-wide offices. Section 180 also created a ballot retention rule used to determine when a political body’s showing at the polls would mean they would be relieved of a requirement to circulate petitions for a subsequent election cycle.
The case law governing ballot access for U.S. elections continued to evolve in significant ways, just not in Georgia or in the 11th District. Ballot access litigation brought by Georgia parties and candidates in the 90’s was decided to preserve the ballot access barriers we face.
It took four years for the 2012 case initiated on the state party’s behalf by former Congresswoman McKinney, to reach a final resolution. First the case had to be dismissed by the trial court, appealed to the 11th Circuit, remanded back to the District Court, undergo nearly a year of discovery (affidavits and depositions) and oral arguments before Judge Richard Story issued his 80 page Order on March 17th, 2016. Even still the state took an appeal back to the 11th, before finally giving up on this case.
It was St. Patrick’s Day and Cynthia McKinney’s birthday, and a joyous day for the Georgia Greens. Judge Story ruled that the 1% signature barrier was, both on its face, and as applied, an unconstitutional barrier to the right of Georgia voters disposed to vote Green to seeing our candidate for President of the United States on the Georgia ballot. Pending further action by the state Assembly, he ordered as an interim remedy that instead of the 65k+ signatures required under the 1% rule, we would be required to file 7,500 signatures instead.
The case is published as Georgia Green Party v Kemp (who was still Secretary of State at the time). 171 F.Supp.3d 1340 (2016).
In 2020 we again brought litigation, this time to challenge the barriers as they manifest under pandemic conditions. The night before the Judge heard oral arguments on our case, the Governor extended his executive order related to the Public Health State of Emergency to run until August 11th, 2020, only three days before our filing deadline.
Although the covid / ballot access litigation in Georgia was the first of its kind filed nationwide, political parties and candidates in many other states won relief earlier with decisions which gave us hope with their orders allowing online petitions and significant relief in the required signature count. Our pleadings and attorney had argued that Judge Ross should enjoin enforcement altogether, or at least pro-rate the signatures required based on the number of days we had to petition without posing a public health risk. She agreed with us that the public health crisis entitled us to relief, but otherwise ignored our proposed remedy. She accepted the position of the Secretary or State, that no more than a 30% reduction could be justified under the “state’s interest” in avoiding an “over-crowded ballot” or the inclusion on the ballot of “frivolous candidates”.
A 30% reduction of a 7,500 signatures threshold to put our Presidential slate on the ballot in 2020 means that this year it will take only 5,250 signatures to meet our goal.
[[ EDITOR’S NOTE: this summary represents an incomplete look at this fascinating and complex history. I hope to return to this article and flesh out what I have learned about these questions, adding links to source material in the weeks and years to come. ]]
Quick Decision Council (2020/2021)
J.Kweku Lumumba, co-chair, (2021)
David Josue, co-chair (2022)
+ Denice Traina, treasurer, (2022)
Hugh Esco, secretary, (2022)
Additional members of the state committee:
LeRoy Bartell, (2021)
Steve Carr (2021)
+ James Cooper (2022)
+ John Fortuin (2022)
Connie Johnson (2022)
Thano Paris (2021)
+ Joshua Pritchett (2021)
—–other servants of the Party—-
+ signifies members of the Delegation on National Green Party Affairs
Thursday, June 25th, 2020
7:00 pm Convention is called to order by the Convention Conveners
7:10 pm welcoming remarks by Party Officers
7:20 pm Credentials committee report, consideration and adoption
7:30 pm Nominating Convention selects and approves a facilitator and clerk 7:40 pm discuss, amend and approve the proposed Nominating Convention agenda
7:50 pm hear reading of proposals to amend the platform
8:10 pm Report on ballot access strategy and litigation
8:20 pm open nominations for all open seats members of the Coordinating Council (8 two year seats, 2 one year seats) to succeed Denice Traina, Hugh Esco, Jimmy Cooper, Al Herman and Qadija Tatum-Aamir members of the Delegation on National Green Party Affairs (2 two year seats) to succeed Wasiuddin Ahmed and Jimmy Cooper Delegation to the 2020 Quadrennial Presidential Nominating Convention (4 delegates, 4 alternates) Presidential Preference Ballot
9:00 pm Adjournment
Friday, June 26th, 2020
7:00 – 8:30 pm Presidential Candidates Forum
8:30 pm Fundraiser featuring music by Thistle Pettersen John Fortuin, 2020 Georgia Green Party Nominee for the U.S. Senate Jimmy Cooper, 2020 Georgia Green Party Nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives, 8th Congressional District
9:30 pm close out for evening
Saturday, June 27th, 2020
10:00 am polls open, election by secret ballot tabulated by preference voting review budget for 2020-2021 consideration of platform proposals consideration of non-platform proposals announcements
12:00 noon recess for lunch
1:00 pm polls close announcement of vote results consideration of rules suspension to fill vacancies on state committee vacancy election: nominations, conduct of election (as needed) continued consideration of platform proposals as necessary
3:30 pm close of polls for vacancy election (as needed) announcement of vote results (as needed)
4:00 pm Adjournment
—
Denice Traina, Co Chair
Kweku Lumumba Co Chair
Georgia Green Party
On the initiative of Thano Paris, state committee member and a former co-chair of the Georgia Party, members of the Georgia Party leadership sought to engage with and support the #IRunWithAhmaud effort to demand justice for the lynching death of Ahmaud Arberey, murdered in the streets of Brunswick Georgia on February 23rd.
After consultation with a meeting of the state committee, current state committee members Thano Paris and Hugh Esco, along with former state party chairman Rev. Zack Lyde, of Brunswick Georgia, have been participating in regular conference calls with local organizers in Georgia’s Waycross Judicial Circuit. Green party participants have been providing technical assistance and support to the Recall Barnhill campaign which seeks to give voters of the six-county district an opportunity to remove their district attorney from office.
Barnhill is one of the three District Attornies (from the Waycross, Brunswick and Atlantic Judicial Circuits) who abused their prosecutorial discretion to deny the family of Mr. Abrbery the equal protection of the law, leaving it to the Georgia Attorney General to assign prosecutors from Northwest Georgia to step in and prosecute the case being braught now against Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan Jr (who shot the video documenting the crime).
Early meetings of the coalition organized to perfect and refile the recall application earlier rejected. These meetings also engaged Decatur based election attorney Bryan Sells, particularly on an effort to overturn the district residency requirement restricting who is eligible to circulate a recall petition. The Georgia Recall Act required residency in the district the subject of a recall among recall petitition circulators. Last week, Sells filed litigation to overturn that requirement (motion for temporary restraining order). In a Federal Court Order signed Friday, June 19th, Judge Lee Martin May struck down the provision in a Consent Judgement among the parties.
While Party officers continue to urge Georgia Greens willing to travel to invest time and energy in Georgia’s Eighth Congressional District to help put our nominee Jimmy Cooper on the Congressional ballot before the August 14th filing deadline, we also encourage those inclined to help with this recall effort in the Waycross Judicial Circuit. The forty-five day petitioning window opens today, June 22nd, 2020. A successful petition will require 21,998 valid petitions (30% of those registered and qualified to vote in the last election in 2018).
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” (Frederick Douglass, 1857)
On the occasion of the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth, the struggle which is being broadcast before the world today is against police brutality . This brutality, which is looped within 24/7 ratings-driven news cycles, is presented to us as the killing of unarmed people of African descent by police officers. This is not a struggle that we shy away from because not only do we believe that black lives matter, but we understand that the lives of Afrodescendant people have been disregarded for centuries, and that there must be revolutionary changes in American society to rectify this. Piecemeal reforms are insufficient; body cameras have not ended the trend of police killing unarmed civilians. Training certificates are insufficient; the officers who commit these offences routinely pass their peace officer standards and training (POST) and cultural awareness classes. Racism is an American problem that extends beyond any particular police department, and police brutality is broader in scope than the killing of unarmed civilians by police officers.
Police brutality is a microcosm of the history of brutal policies imposed on black lives globally. The United States exports this brutality by way of a military industrial complex that has facilitated coups and coup attempts across the African continent (i.e. Libya 2011, Ghana 1966, Congo 1961, et al.), and throughout the Americas (i.e. Venezuela 2019, Honduras 2009, Haiti 1991, Panama 1989, Grenada 1983, Brazil 1964, Cuba 1961, et al.) where black lives are most adversely affected by political and economic instability. The policy of exporting the brutality of war is represented by the hundreds of billions in annual international weapons revenue brought in through the US State Department Foreign Military Sales process, and the rapid expansion of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) by establishing dozens of US military bases, conducting routine pre-emptive military operations, and stationing thousands of US soldiers across the continent of Africa since 2007. All of this is done at the expense of American tax-payers, whose interests are not represented by these policies of brutality that enrich an ofttimes unelected oligarchy.
Since the arrival of European invaders and the launch of the transatlantic slave trade, Afrodescendant people have not made progress in this land without the shedding of our blood – that fact is enmeshed within the foundation of the United States of America. This was the case in the 16th century, during the San Miguel de Gualdape Rebellion of 1526. This was the case in the 17th century, during the Gloucester County Conspiracy of 1663. This was the case in the 18th century, during the Stono Rebellion of 1739. This was the case in the 19th century, during the American Civil War. This was the case in the 20th century, during the Civil Rights Movement. And, in addition to many more cases over the past half a millennium, this continues to be the case in the 21st century, during our struggle against the police killings of thousands and the prison enslavement of millions.
This is why the Green Party platform is imperative for Afrodescendant people in the 21st century, as a means of radically transforming the foundation of this country from one that feasts upon our blood into a foundation that will sustain us. We invite all people of African descent, and all people, to join us in this struggle.