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Your financial support is necessary to the work we do to build an independent political party to advance our work for a just and sustainable future. Please share with others that you know and urge them to match your support for this important work.
We are yours for a just and sustainable future.
Kweku Lumumba, Co-Chair
Denice Traina, Co-Chair
LeRoy Bartell, Treasurer
Hugh Esco, Secretary
With the opening week of the 2020 legislative session, local media have been reporting daily on public statements and events involving Georgia Governor Brian Kemp urging increased state action to protect Georgians from the exploitation of sex-trafficking.
The officers of the Georgia Green Party responded by delivering a letter Wednesday morning to the Governor’s office urging a comprehensive approach with the aim of abolishing prostitution, with the adoption of Nordic Model inspired reforms.
But we urge a more comprehensive approach, specifically that you look to the Nordic Model for the abolition of prostitution and to craft a more comprehensive approach to shutting down the operation in Georgia of this exploitative industry estimated at $100 billion in global annual revenues, fueled by a carnage measured in the exploitation of the lives of women and children. Key to doing so is to enlist in this effort our most obvious allies, the mostly women exploited for the profit of the pimps, the very ones who endure daily rape by the panderers.
You can read the entire letter here:
[download id=”1308″]
Notice is given of, and Greens from across Georgia are urged to gather for, the 2020 Nominating Convention of the Georgia Green Party. We will convene on Saturday, February 22d, at 10am, with plans to adjourn at 4pm that afternoon. Greens from unorganized counties are urged to gather at 9:30 am to caucus to name their delegates to the state convention. The event will be hosted at the Ted Wright Park building, 2841 Moody Road, Bonaire, GA 31005. Bonaire is an unincorporated community in Houston County, six miles from the center of Warner Robins, Georgia. It is accessible from I-75, perhaps an hour South of Macon.
This meeting will consider nominations for partisan offices and endorsements for non-partisan offices, as well as proposed amendments to the state party platform.
The recognized candidates have confirmed their ability to participate, and pending confirmation of the technical requirements, we anticipate soon being able to confirm a virtual candidate forum for those present, where we can hear from the candidates seeking our support for their Presidential nomination at the Detroit Convention in July. As discussed below we anticipate holding a subsequent convention likely on Saturday, June 6th, 2020, and now await confirmation of an Athens-Clarke County venue for that purpose. While this convention will focus on nominations for publicly elected offices and work on our Platform; the June Convention will provide us an opportunity for internal elections (state committee, our Delegation to the Green National Committee) and naming and instructing with a Presidential Preference ballot, our Delegates to the Presidential Nominating Convention, July 10th through 12th, Detroit Michigan.
Our Party has traditionally held its nominating convention on the first Saturday of June in each election year. But the 2017 session adopted HB-268 ignoring case law finding that an early qualifying deadline for emerging political parties is unconstitutional in order to align for the convenience of the office of the Secretary of State, the qualifying period for candidates of a political body (like the Green Party, who nominate by convention and petition) with the qualifying period for candidates of the political parties (Republicans and Democrats which nominate by Primary). This calendar change has cost our party 130 days or more for its candidate recruitment efforts. The officers of the Georgia Green Party welcome queries from Georgia attorneys willing to help us litigate this and other issues related to ballot access for Green Party candidates in Georgia.
Members of the state committee are agreed to hold a subsequent 2020 convention to elect members of the state committee and our delegation to the Green National Committee, to name delegates to the 2020 Quadrennial Presidential Nominating Convention of the Green Party of the United States (scheduled for the weekend of July 9-12, 2020 in Detroit Michigan). This subsequent state convention will also consider changes proposed to the state party bylaws and additional changes to the platforms of the state party and for the national party’s 2022 Platform cycle.
Already, 2018 state party nominee for the U.S. Congress in Georgia’s 8th Congressional District, Jimmy Cooper, has announced his intention to again seek the nomination of the Georgia Party for 2020. We are in communication with a handful of other possible candidates considering a run for partisan office in this election cycle. By the time we get to the Bonaire Convention we will need sixteen candidates for Presidential Elector as a part of the process for qualifying our Presidential slate to be nominated at the Detroit Convention. Party officers remain eager to speak with you about opportunities to run for public office in your community as well.
Participants are urged to review the Platform_Report_2020_Bonaire_Convention_v0.30, ahead of time.
To: Womens Human Rights Campaign
It is my distinct privilege and pleasure to report the action of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party on its phone conference this evening, to endorse the Declaration on the Sex-Based Rights of Women.
I have attached a copy of the resolution, in the form in which it was adopted by the state committee, along with a copy of our state party logo for your use in publicizing our state party’s support for your efforts.
If I may answer any questions you may have about our party’s support for your work, please do not hesitate to write or call.
Thank you for the important leadership you have shown on these questions. Please let us know how we can work with you further to advance this vital work.
— Hugh Esco, Secretary
Georgia Green Party
https://www.womensdeclaration.com/
Declaration_on_Sex_Based_Rights_of_Women-provide_for_party_endorsement-as_passed
You are encouraged to test this form, but not to rely on it to actually process a contribution to the party. It is currently wired to a test credit card processor, and will not process a real debit card. I would appreciate hearing from folks about how this works for you. If you have any feedback on the user experience provided by this service, please send an email.
For your tests, please use as your debit card, 4242-4242-4242-4242 (only without the hyphens). Choose any card expiration date in the future and any three or four digit cvc code.
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In the last meeting of the state committee, called by Bruce Dixon in his capacity as Co-Chair of the Georgia Green Party, its members were unanimously agreed in his absence, on the adoption of a Dixon resolution to call this year’s annual meeting of the party. By the time we gathered a quorum of the state committee to hear the proposal, Bruce had been sedated for two days, and would make his departure early the next afternoon.
Greens from across the state are urged to gather, Saturday, August 17th, from 10:00 am until 4:00 pm at the Arts Xchange in East Point Georgia, 2148 Newnan Street; 30344. We will meet in the Ebon Dooley Studio, elect members of the state committee and our national delegation and consider proposed changes to the state party bylaws and the platforms of the state and national parties.
Claudia Ellquist, a delegate to the National Committee and two time Green Party candidate for County Attorney in Pima County Arizona, died Sunday, November 18th, 2018 at the age of 70. Party activists were alerted by a forwarded email from her husband of twenty-four years, John Yoakum.
She is remembered by her colleagues among the national party leadership as thoughtful, as ‘a great leader, penetrating in her analysis, caring about others, and a pillar of strength for the Green Party’, as ‘(o)ne of the wisest, (most) intelligent and compassionate people I have had the opportunity to know’, as ‘a voice of reason and kindness (who) will be missed by all’, for ‘her personal calm’ and reasonableness, for her insight and compassion.
Claudia Ellquist was a member of the National Women’s Caucus of the Green Party of the United States, and served as a Delegate for the Arizona Green Party to the Green National Committee. She served at the time of her death, as the First Vice Chair of the Arizona Green Party. Ellquist ran four times for Pima County Attorney, twice as a Green, in 2004 receiving 23,028 votes for 7.64% of the total vote and in 2008 earning 22,747 votes for 6.31% of the total. Her campaigns supported her work to abolish the death penalty.
She led the host committee which brought the Annual Meeting of the Green Party of the United States to Tuscon Arizona in 2006. During the event she organized a tour of her church which was a center for organizing in solidarity with immigrants risking a desert crossing on their journey North. She described the battles between her congregation, which stages in the desert, water for migrants and the vigilantes who would poison the water or just as deadly, puncture the containers, wasting the water into the desert sand.
Writing of Kavanaugh, in a recent op-ed (and here) meant to convey the appreciation of the National Women’s Caucus of the Green Party of the United States for the testimony before the Senate Judiciary by Professor Christine Blasey Ford, Claudia Ellquist wrote:
“If he had Come to Jesus decades ago, confessing himself — not waiting, closeted, for an accusation — about what he almost did, and, as significantly, what he did. Then he would have had time to turn his life around, to see women as real human beings, and to see fear and hurt and harm for what they are. But our society abandoned him too, not teaching him to take responsibility, or even believe that there was responsibility to take.”
Delegates to the Green National Committee from both Delaware and Kansas report that this quote of Claudia, hangs on their walls.
“People who disagree with you are not your enemies. Only people who try to dominate you are your enemies. Learning the difference can make us all so much more effective.”
– Claudia Ellquist
Quoting from her obituary, “(Claudia Ellquist) was born in Duluth, Minnesota . . . then mov(ed) extensively with her military family to numerous places including Japan. She moved to Tucson (Arizona) in 1962. Claudia graduated from Palo Verde High School, University of Arizona and University of Arizona Law School in 1976. That time included a two year church stay in San Francisco for a Lutheran and Episcopal church mission. Claudia spent a brief time practicing law and 40+ years on community activism, including church activities, women’s organization and the Green Party. . . . She ran for Pima County Attorney four times in order to highlight the elimination of the death penalty as a public issue. . . . She organized NOW chapters at the city, county and state levels and served on the national board of directors for NOW. Claudia was an original member of the Arizona Clean Elections Commission, first appointed by the Arizona Legislature in 1999. She has worked tirelessly with Church Women United (CWU), Disciples Women’s Fellowship, and First Christian Church. She has received a cash award from the Tucson Festival of Books or her writing in the category of non-fiction memoir. She successfully organized the county-wide effort to recall the Pima County Tax Assessor in 1994. Claudia subsequently organized volunteer efforts to pass Healthy Arizona I (Prop 203) and Healthy Arizona II (Prop 204) which successfully brought Medicaid to the state after 30 years without it. . . . In lieu of flowers, people are encouraged to work for passage of the ERA or (to make) a charitable donation to NOW or to the charity of their choice. A memorial Service will be held at First Christian Church, 740 E Speedway, on Saturday, December 1st at 11am.”
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
Congratulations to Jimmy Cooper are in order for an excellent write-in showing. He showed stronger results than our entire 1998 slate, or if memory serves, any other of our candidates except Nan Garrett and our Presidential slates.
http://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/2018_votes_cast_for_certified_write-in_candidates
‘Legislated off the ballot’, as Party Chairman Bruce Dixon often puts it, the Georgia Green Party was left to run the two candidates of its 2018 slate as write-ins. John Fortuin turned his attention elsewhere, to media work and research (see his report on cronyism in Georgia election policy, mentioned in the previous issue). But Jimmy Cooper was undeterred by the ballot access barriers and proceeded with his Fall campaign. His work was visible in the results.
To summarize, the Secretary certified results including a total of 564 votes for Green Party nominee Jimmy Cooper for Georgia’s 8th Congressional District. Those numbers include: 244 votes from Bibb County, 108 votes from Lowndes County, 134 votes from Houston County and 78 votes from the other nineteen counties combined.
Only one write-in candidate showed a stronger finish in this year’s results, Emily Leslie delivered 600 write-ins in her bid for House District #106.
2020 is a Presidential Election year, and the Georgia Green Party will have the opportunity to nominate 16 candidates for the Electoral College. But to do so it must deliver 54,431 valid signatures. Signature collection can begin on April 15th 2019, three and a half months from now.
Contested primaries build parties.
If we had 100 Green candidates across the state contesting for sixteen seats in the Electoral College, each committed to collecting 1,000 signatures before December 31st, 2019, we’d have secured the ability of our state party’s 2020 convention to nominate its candidates for statewide office by convention; and geared up to work for the ballot access of a slate of local candidates starting January 9th, 2020. A successful petition drive will also permit us to nominate candidates in the state-wide US Senate and PSC races scheduled for 2020.
If you’d be interested in participating in this ballot access strategy, to put Green candidates for public office on Georgia’s ballot in 2020, please let our state party officers know, by writing the address below, and watch for announcements of upcoming materials and programs designed to support those actions you take to create a visible presence for the Green Party in your own community.
Please write: ggp@georgiagreenparty.org
Get ready a crude awakning as energy companies get the regs relaxed to ship oil by rail (bomb trains) almost everywhere.
While a second oil-by-rail boom is well underway in North America, both the U.S. and Canada are taking steps that ignore or undermine the lessons and regulatory measures to improve safety since the oil train explosions and spills of years past.
Canadian oil-by-rail now is operating at record levels, which are predicted to double by 2019. Favorable economics have led to a recent rise in oil-by-rail movements in the U.S. as well, with more Bakken oil moving by train to East Coast refineries.
Meanwhile, in September the Trump administration finalized its rollback of a regulation requiring an updated braking system for oil trains, known as modern electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes, in a highly questionable regulatory process detailed on DeSmog last year.
In North Dakota, the Department of Mineral Resources now plans to reverse a regulation which required even the minimal stabilization of oil transported by train, with “stabilization” referring to a process that removes some of the natural gas liquids that make Bakken oil so explosive. That move doesn’t bode well for avoiding earlier scenarios in which rail operators dubbed oil trains as “bomb trains.”
In September Canada committed to phasing out some of the unsafe older rail tank cars ahead of schedule, but a derailment earlier this year shows that this step is far from foolproof. On June 22, a train carrying Canadian oil that derailed in northwestern Iowa was using the newer DOT-117R tank cars, the same ones being phased in as the new standard. The derailment still resulted in the release of an estimated 230,000 gallons of tar sands oil into local floodwaters.
And while track defects are the leading cause of train derailments (which, of course, lead to fires, explosions, and spills), the Trump administration has hit pause on efforts to regulate rail wear, which makes unlikely the possibility of new rules on this issue while Trump is in office.
On September 24, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the regulatory agency that oversees the transport of oil by rail, announced its final decision to undo the regulation requiring modern ECP braking systems for oil trains. But its statement explaining the rationale for the rollback was misleading.
First, however, it should be noted that the current head of PHMSA is Howard “Skip” Elliott, who retired from his position as a rail executive at CSX before taking the job as federal regulator of the industry he just left.
This line from the agency’s announcement gives the appearance that new research provided justification for the decision:
“The updated RIA [Regulatory Impact Analysis] incorporated new findings from ECP brake testing conducted by the Federal Railroad Administration, which were reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences.”
However, as detailed on DeSmog, the entire process used to justify this regulatory reversal was deeply flawed. This was simply a case of the rail industry not wanting to pay for the safety that upgrading its fleet to ECP brakes would provide. It was not a decision based on “new findings” that somehow reversed the many years of research proving ECP brakes are superior to the current air brake system (which dates back to the 1860s).
All of this should come as no surprise. As DeSmog reported in 2015, shortly after PHMSA proposed these regulations, Mathew Rose, CEO of oil-by-rail giant BNSF, said that “this rule [ECP braking requirement] will have to be changed in the future.”
To review why the Trump administration’s repeal of an important oil train safety measure is a political, rather than evidence-based, decision, just turn to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), but under previous presidents.
As DeSmog reported, in 2006, Joseph Boardman, FRA administrator under George W. Bush, explained why updating trains with ECP brakes makes perfect sense: “ECP brakes are to trains what antilock brakes are to automobiles — they provide better control.” Boardman also is on the record saying that ECP braking “offers a quantum improvement in rail safety.”
In 2015, under Barack Obama’s administration — when the rail industry began its push to repeal the new ECP braking rule — Matt Lehner, FRA communications director at the time, told DeSmog:
“ECP brakes are a proven technology that will reduce the number of train derailments and keep more tank cars on the track if a train does derail. Delaying the adoption of ECP brakes seriously jeopardizes the citizens and communities along our nation’s freight network.”
North Dakota’s move, which would undo a vapor pressure requirement for Bakken oil prior to rail transport, demonstrates how much sway the rail industry has in the state at this point.
This vapor pressure standard, nominally intended to stabilize volatile oil on trains, requires the transported oil to have a Reid Vapor Pressure lower than 13.7 pounds per square inch (psi). Higher vapor pressure in a rail tank car, like in an aerosol can, increases the likelihood of explosion if the unit is damaged or punctured during a derailment or crash.
However, as I wrote in 2014, North Dakota’s rule was essentially meaningless.
The majority of oil train accidents — including the one in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people — have involved oil with a vapor pressure lower than the North Dakota standard of 13.7 psi. Therefore, the state’s regulation did very little to improve safety for oil trains in the first place.
But now the rail industry is saying that oil vapor pressures usually only exceed 13.7 psi in the winter, and because of that, vapor pressure testing shouldn’t be required year round.
Yet the industry has always maintained that the volatility of Bakken oil was never a problem. In May 2014, The Wall Street Journal ran a story with the headline: “Bakken Shale Oil Safe for Rails, Industry Group Says.”
And while a half dozen state attorneys general and a coalition of environmental groups separately have called for a national standard for vapor pressure on oil trains, the Trump administration has done nothing on this issue.
What North Dakota is doing now won’t change oil train safety one way or the other. But, again, the move highlights the complete lack of industry consideration for stabilizing oil, a trend DeSmog has documented many times over the years.
As a result, the second oil-by-rail boom now ramping up will occur with the same void of safety rules as the first and with the same dangerously volatile oil — from Texas to North Dakota to Canada — filling the mile-long “bomb” trains crossing the continent.
Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is a vocal advocate for improving rail safety and earlier this year put the final nail in the coffin of what would have been the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal, proposed for Vancouver, Washington. When Inslee commented on the recent rollback of the ECP braking regulations for oil trains, he told Oregon Public Broadcasting:
“One thing you can trust about this administration, they’re going to sell out your safety for special interests.”
Considering the string of fiery, explosive, and deadly incidents during the first oil-by-rail rush, North America should expect the same performance from the oil and rail industries the second time around.
Main image: An empty westbound oil train rounds Horseshoe Curve, near Altoona, Pennsylvania. Credit: Roy Luck, CC BY 2.0
Originally published by our friends at DeSmogBlog.com.