I’m Boycotting the National Green Party
The Green Party Presidential Primary is Fundamentally Unfair and Biased
For months I’ve been speaking up and sounding the alarm at every level of the Green Party (GP) US about the rigging of the presidential race to favor Howie Hawkins. Earlier I joined my fellow GP candidates in denouncing this rigging https://link.medium.com/KxR8pOMnQ0 in our 3rd joint letter about this. This is the 3rd time we’ve jointly written to the party about the problems with the primary.
Today I’m announcing that my campaign is boycotting the national Green Party. I will not work or participate in national GP events or activities until there’s a simple, clear, transparent, and fair GP presidential primary process that includes all 7 candidates. All 7 candidates must be given equal access to all party and primary activities and media.
As it stands right now, the GPUS, both the Steering Committee, but more so the Presidential Campaign Support Committee (PCSC), are not enforcing the Green Party’s Rules on candidate Howie Hawkins. In fact, I’m being told that at the next PCSC meeting they’ll be officially giving Hawkins a pass on a blatant rules violation that would disqualify any other candidate.
From the beginning of the primary the PCSC has designed a ridiculous system. They have created two classes of candidates, “qualified” candidates and second class non-qualifying candidates. How does a candidate become a qualified candidate? Well the PCSC has literally taken a page out of the corporate party playbook and is forcing each candidate to collect signatures and raise a certain amount of money all in a previously unspecified amount of time. It’s shameful that a political party that’s known for wanting to get money out of politics has taken this set of actions.
Now the PCSC is doing the unthinkable as they’re about to delete the names of all the non-qualified candidates off the GPUS website. They announced this with less than a months notice and did not give a good reason other than they’ve suddenly decided to create a deadline. This small maneuver ensures that anyone checking the GP website to see who’s running won’t know about all, but only two candidates. 5 Current candidates and all new candidates that must collect more signatures or raise more money will now be at a further disadvantage ensuring their obscurity.
It’s been suggested to me that since the PCSC is about to give Hawkins a pass on a blatant rules violation that now would be a good time for me to use my clout in the Green Party to push the PCSC to give me a pass as well for not yet qualifying. While I appreciate the supporters and allies who have suggested this, I will assuredly not do this. This primary should certainly not be about candidates having enough clout to get a free pass to the top of the ticket. Rules must be fair and applied evenly or there’s no sense in even having them.
I will personally continue to speak up, show up and fight against empire, war, colonialism, and capitalism. But I won’t waste my supporters and my own energy and resources on a clearly rigged GP primary until there’s a fair primary process.
I will however make myself available to activists in the GP who care about democracy, fair elections, and getting money out of the GP primary if they want my help unrigging this primary. I look forward to the day I can proudly participate in a fair GP primary.
The National Green Party should be doing all it can to ensure that every single person who wants to take the time to vote in our primary is able to do so for all our candidates. We should stand by the principle of one person one vote and stop emulating the corrupt two-party system. We should embrace our full slate of candidates and make sure they get equal recognition and a spot on the primary ballot in every state. After all, we’re talking about 7 total candidates running for the GP primary. That’s far less than are running for the Democratic Primary. Why work so hard to kick folks off the ballot? It’s undemocratic and unfair and until it’s fixed I’m boycotting the Green Party.
