2nd Joint Statement from Green Presidential Candidates —
We Demand the Green Party Ensure a Fair Primary Election
The 6 Undersigned Green Party Candidates Demand the Green Party Allocate Equal Time at the Green Annual National Meeting for all Candidates
The Ian Schlakman campaign happily signs onto this important letter and calls for all campaigns that have yet to sign to do so immediately.
To the Green Party National Committee and all other Green Party committees,
We are deeply concerned about the overall lack of action taken by the Green Party to ensure a fair primary election, including the disregard for ongoing conflicts of interest and the apparent disregard for fundamental fairness in composing the schedule for the upcoming Annual National Meeting (ANM). We’ve previously written a joint statement demanding equal access for all campaigns. (That statement can be found at the following link: https://www.gp.org/equal_access_for_all_candidates). Unfortunately, there has been little meaningful improvement in equal access since the release of that letter.
In the past several months we have observed members of committees of the Green Party violate ethical standards regarding conflicts of interest by taking simultaneous leadership roles in the Howie Hawkins campaign for president. It is our understanding that his campaign currently has its Campaign Manager on the Green Party’s Steering Committee and its Press Secretary / Media Contact on the Media Committee. Instead of acting to make a clear distinction between our values and that of the broken ‘two-party system,’ the failure of our party’s leadership to act decisively to address such conflicts of interest frames the basis for embarrassing comparisons with our corporate-minded competitors. In order to properly reflect our key value of Grassroots Democracy, high-level leaders of our national party, such as those on the Steering and Media Committees, must not be able to engineer the result in a primary that ought to be determined by the entire party membership. Those who determine how to promote our candidates as well as the programming for both national and state Green Party conventions must be free of conflicts of interest with presidential campaigns and held accountable for allocating speaking time and press exposure to candidates equally. We call for the party to temporarily suspend the position of any member of the Steering and Media Committees of the National Green Party who also has a staff role in a Green Presidential campaign or is listed on a presidential campaign committee until the presidential primary has concluded.
The draft schedule for the upcoming 2019 Green Party Annual National Meeting (available at https://salem.gp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Draft-Schedule-V2.pdf) indicates that the above mentioned campaign has been given two speaking opportunities through the ANM’s workshops in addition to an opportunity for exposure through the ANM’s Presidential Candidate Forum. While we certainly do not oppose the idea of candidates engaging in an opportunity to collaborate with and help inform fellow Greens through the ANMs workshops, no other presidential candidate has been afforded this same opportunity. In fact, three presidential candidates proposed workshops and were refused ( Dennis Lambert, Sedinam Kinamo Moyowasifza- Curry, David Rolde). We find this to be blatantly preferential treatment and we call upon those responsible to ensure that all candidates who have submitted a letter of intent to the Presidential Campaign Support Committee (PCSC) will be given equal time at the ANM.
We call upon leadership in the Green Party to act with due haste to pursue practical measures reflecting our party’s values that will remedy the exclusion and preferential treatment, providing Greens with the fair and transparent election that they deserve.
Signed,
Roland G. Aranjo
Dario Hunter
Dennis Lambert
Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry
David Rolde
Ian Schlakman
