Author Hugh Esco

Here Robin Harris of the Florida Green Party, and cochair of the party’s National Black Caucus interviews Georgia Green Party co-chairman David Josue.  For further information be sure to checkout materials being posted regularly on the state party’s profile on… Continue Reading →

The FBI’s COINTELPRO remains one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history. For decades, the FBI carried out covert actions and dirty tricks against social movements. COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) included among the program’s many targets, organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr, as well as local, state, and federal elected officials.

There’s a bill in Congress that will open up the FBI’s files.  HR 2998 would require full, public release of the FBI’s COINTELPRO files. This historic bill is an important step to reconciling with the FBI’s continued legacy of undemocratic abuses of power.

Please help us make history and expose FBI dirty tricks. Please write your member of Congress today to ask them to support this bill and to support efforts to broaden it to cover the full scope of FBI files.

The Green Party of the United States Black Caucus (GP-BC) has announced its support for the Freedom Convoy, an educational effort to help the public learn more about vaccine mandates and the best way to respond to government overreach.

Notice is given of, and Greens from across Georgia are urged to gather for, the 2022 Nominating Convention of the Georgia Green Party. We will convene on Saturday, February 19th, 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. This virtual event will be hosted on an online conferencing platform and pre-registration is required.

This meeting will consider nominations for partisan offices and endorsements for non-partisan offices, as well as proposed amendments to the state party platform.

(Washington D.C., January 17, 2022) On this King Day holiday, over 30 organizations and individuals announce the formation of a wide coalition to offer critical support for HR-2998, the COINTELPRO Full Disclosure Act. The bill, introduced in the House by Representative Bobby Rush (D-Ill, 1st), in May 2021, has been co-signed by twenty-four members of Congress. The bill was assigned to the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and concurrently to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Coalition partners will initially prioritize urging Congressional Representatives to join the list of cosponsors.

COINTELPRO refers to a directive of J. Edgar Hoover, who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1924 to1972. The program remained an active operation from 1957 to 1971. As a 1967 memo put it, the program was intended “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black nationalist, hate-type organizations and their groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder.

In practice, neither hate and violence nor even criminal activity were necessary to attract the attention of Hoover’s FBI. This operation built on his work as an FBI agent dating back to the Palmer Raids during World War I and the persecution of the United Negro Improvement Association, including the deportation of its leader, Marcus Garvey, whom Hoover would later acknowledge had broken no federal laws. Hoover had spent his early days at the Bureau building an index of community organizers who opposed US foreign and domestic policies.

Two time Congressional candidate of the Georgia Green Party announces the launch of a new Coalition of Independent Progressives. In this video he lays out a strategy for building a slate of candidates to flip the federal and state governments across the nation.

High Profile Party Leaders Resign from Green Party
Cite: “mob of dogmatic, self-righteous authoritarians” within ranks

also published here

Paula Bradshaw and Rich Whitney, active in building the Shawnee Green Party in Carbondale Illinois since at least 1996, have released their letter of resignation from the national, state and local Green Parties. They tendered their resignation through official party channels in mid-June, 2021. In their letter of resignation, released this week, they wrote.

” . . . recent actions and statements of the GPUS Accreditation Committee, Steering Committee, National Committee Forum Managers, National Committee and the Lavender Caucus — all taken in support of the Lavender Caucus’s proposal to suspend the affiliation of the Georgia Green Party – betray the democratic principles and precepts upon which the party was founded and evince a clear intention by the party majority to suppress dissent, elevate policy positions to the status of inviolable “principles,” and rule by decree rather than by democratic process. It has become increasingly apparent that the GPUS is determined to become a rigid dogmatic sect rather than a political party in which policy questions and interpretations of the Ten Key Values can be freely discussed and debated, and in which minority viewpoints are tolerated.”

Paula Bradshaw is a podcast producer and three time candidate for the U.S. Congress, running with the nomination of the Illinois Green Party. At the time of her resignation, she served as a Delegate to the Green National Committee for the Illinois Green Party. Rich Whitney is an attorney who ran for Governor of Illinois taking 10% of the state-wide vote and leaving the Illinois Green Party with a state-wide ballot line. Rich Whitney served until this resignation as the co-chair of the Illinois Green Party.

Their resignation is likely the highest profile public fallout to date within the U.S. Green Party resulting from the tactics of what their letter characterizes as “a mob of dogmatic, self-righteous authoritarians” within its ranks.

In their heavily footnoted 13 page letter, the Central Illinois grandparents who have devoted 25 years to building the Green party while raising their family, cite a broad range of offenses by various members of party leadership which they assert violate the founding values of the party, including:

Notice is given of the intention of the Georgia Green Party to convene as its Annual Convention on Saturday, July 24th, from 10am until 4pm, for the purposes of conducting elections for internal party offices, considering a proposed amendment to… Continue Reading →

An authoritarian coup is afoot within the National Committee to purge the party of independent and critical thinking. Among other evidence of this is the complaint of the National Lavender Caucus filed with the Accreditation Committee seeking the revocation of this state party’s accreditation as a member of the national party. The Georgia Green Party has filed its response. Included in those pleadings was a witness list and a request that the committee schedule a hearing to take the testimony of our expert witnesses. The Accreditation Committee has failed to respond to our request for a hearing, and our allies on that committee have indicated that they are unlikely to do so. This weekend the party’s defense team is hosting depositions to take the testimony of its witnesses. And observers are welcome to join the call to observe the testimony live. Seats are limited and you can register here.

Resolved, that the Quick Decision Council on behalf of the Georgia Green Party, here endorses the Women Picket DC action and encourages Greens in Georgia and elsewhere to participate in these events.

The Coalition for the Feminist Amendments (“CoFA”) discuss the Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act. This event was organized by Feminists in Struggle (FIST), the original authors of these amendments, as well as the LGB Alliance USA, XX Amazons, and the Georgia Green Party, each an early endorser of this FAEA approach. The four speakers, Ann Menasche (FIST member and co-author of the FAEA), Tina Minkowitz (FAEA co-author), Callie Burt (Associate Professor, Georgia State University), and M. Lynette Hartsell (LGB Alliance USA), give an in-depth analysis of the Feminist Amendments and make a compelling case for joining this effort.