This strikes me as poorly thought-out. While I can understand that in Rhode Island, the majority of voters are likely to vote Democratic, and thus many feel that it’s not a risk to vote Green (and are likely right) this is a problem of a collective action like voting: we only know the outcome when we know the outcome. Polling can tell us a probability of how our votes will be divided, but often that information is erroneously reported. Everyone works blindly, in a sort of prisoner’s dilemma; if enough people vote a certain way, they could throw the election to a person who would would be even worse.

This has been a factor in U.S. Presidential elections for a long time. Starting in 1828, Henry Clay and John Crawford made the results of that election inconclusive, Martin Van Buren could’ve prevented Lewis Cass from becoming President in 1848, Millard Fillmore likely spoiled the election for John Fremont in 1856, in 1912 William H. Taft spoiled it for Teddy Roosevelt (or possibly vice versa), in 1968 George Wallace arguably did in Hubert Humphrey, just as Ross Perot might’ve done to George H. W. Bush in 1992, and in 2000 Ralph Nader helped make George W. Bush president.

All of these took place in specific circumstances. 1828 was a breakdown of the dominance of the Democratic-Republican Party, and the emergence of true political parties in the United States. 1848 saw the rise of an explicitly anti-slavery party with a former president at its head, whereas in 1856 the former president was leading a nativist party that sought to ignore the issue of slavery. Taft and Roosevelt were both the sitting and the previous president, striving against one another as the Progressive movement sought to move out from merely being a cross-party group. 1968 was the breakdown of the New Deal coalition and the “party switch” that transferred segregationist white southerners into the Republican Party. And 1992 and 2000 were eras of relative prosperity where the presidency simply wasn’t too important.

Majorly, the thing to notice is that except for recently, almost all of these featured establishment politicians making plays for power. Only Perot and Nader are exceptional in lacking political office on that list, and the impact of their parties have been negligible. Clay helped establish the Whigs soon after 1828, Van Buren’s Free Soilers joined the Whigs to become the Republican Party within a decade, Fillmore’s American Party was already on the decline in 1856 after having achieved control of the U.S. House, but was absorbed into the Republicans. The Progressive movement basically had all three major candidates in support of its goals in 1912. Wallace’s pro-segregation supporters have been dog-whistled to for the last fifty years until Donald Trump put down the whistle and starting yelling things at the top of his lungs.

Meanwhile, Perot and Nader’s efforts have come to naught. The Reform Party is spent, and 16 years later, the Green Party is as much of a joke as it’s ever been. Their efforts for the presidency are not turning points in American political history, but rather quixotic ends to otherwise fine careers.

Now, I’ve been highly focused on presidential elections, and I think this highlights the issue of third parties. In the way things are structured in most states, third parties simultaneously must contest the highest possible office. This constantly forces them into the position of spoiler for other candidates more likely to win, making voters resistant to casting their ballot for the third party. This Duverger’s law in action – a system like the United States’, with plurality voting and single-member districts, forces there to be mainly two parties.

What’s the current most successful third party in the United States? It’s not the Greens or the Libertarian Party. It’s the Vermont Progressive Party. The Progressives there have two things going for them: fusion balloting, which allows candidates to run as both a Progressive and a Democrat, and multi-member districts, which means there’s a level of proportionality in how many seats a party gets based on its vote in the districts. Also, there are fairly relaxed rules to establish a political party. It’s a highly local party that was mainly established to support Bernie Sanders as mayor of Burlington, VT; the party’s main power base continues to be located there.

The other major thing the Vermont Progressives have is that they don’t need to contest major offices. As a result, they can persist beyond being a personality-driven organization. And let’s face it, third parties are mostly vehicles for specific individuals’ megalomania.

Take Rhode Island. I have long said that the Moderate Party lacks an identity beyond being the party of Ken Block or Bob Healey. With the former abandoning it, and the latter deceased, it’s now got to find someone new to be its standard-bearer for governor. It’s forced into this position because RI’s ballot access laws require a political party to win more than 5% of the vote for governor or president every four years, depending on when you collected ballots.

This is intentional, and it prevents third parties from spending resources in more easily-winnable races, such as at the school committee level or town council. It means a third party has to exhaust a lot of manpower or cash on a big race it can’t win to achieve ballot access every four years, or else face being dissolved. So they lose, they might cost someone else the election, and drive potential supporters away. Meanwhile, they are unable to conduct meaningful candidate recruitment, unable to attract potential candidates because they appear frivolous, and unable to establish any sort of meaningful governing record.

This drives an incentive to simply be some individual’s ego trip. And that’s exactly what’s happening in the Green Party and its nominee Jill Stein.

You might think this is hypocritical to focus on Stein’s ego when this is an election of egos. But let’s be frank: Stein’s ego far outstrips her actual accomplishments. Her highest office to date is Lexington Town Meeting Representative. And yet, she says her aim is to win “at least a plurality” of votes in November (anything more than a plurality would be a majority). Her current Real Clear Politics polling average is 3.8%.

No other presidential candidate with ballot access to a potential majority of electoral votes is this delusional. Donald Trump actually won a major party’s nomination, despite his ego making him think lying about his success is the same as “sacrifice.” Gary Johnson actually has run a state as a governor – and won reelection. And there’s a strong case that Hilary Clinton is as egotistical as anyone, but then again, she’s earned it. We can definitely criticize her arrogance, but she actually has been U.S. senator and secretary of state. She actually has had to craft and shepherd policy that effected millions of people’s lives. And more importantly, she actually has a political organization that can support and help pass her agenda should she reach the White House. Trump has the latter, and Johnson has done the former, but Stein can’t claim either.

No third party will take the presidency this way. The only way so-called third parties have ever managed to do so is by stepping over the bodies of their predecessors. The next major party of the United States won’t be from the edges of the political system; it will follow Clay and Van Buren, and Lincoln – it will arise from the heart of the establishment, lead by a figures who were once partisans in some deceased major party.

There are, at least, political movements that understand that change happens through political power, not at its fringes. Say what you like about the Progressive Democrats and the Working Families Party – at least they are attempting to shift the dynamics locally of one of the parties, and with a greater potential for impact than all the Greens put together.

South Providence, at the port, is one of the heaviest concentrations of toxic chemical storage in New England, and not coincidentally, those who live in the area suffer the highest rates of asthma. Sherrie Anne Andre of the FANG Collective and Julian Rodríguez-Drix of the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island lead a tour of over 60 people, including Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, along Allens Avenue, pointing out some of the worst polluters in our state.

The Rhode Island Recycled Metals facility was the first stop. In 2015 the US Coast Guard revealed that the site was operating without proper permits. As a result the facility was not in compliance with laws regarding oil spillage and storm water run-off. In general, recycling is a good and positive thing. But when done without concern for the health and safety of residents and the environment, the losses can outweigh the gains.

Motiva Enterprises LLC occupies both sides of Allens Avenue. Chemical piping actually runs underneath the road. Motiva is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Shell Oil. Here in Providence the facility is the largest of many fuel terminals in the port and a major importer of petroleum products. It receives regular shipments via tanker ship and exports via truck. The Port of Providence is the entry point for the majority of fuels that power southern New England. In 2014 Motiva managed 34,425 pounds of toxic waste products. Over 1000 pounds of toxic waste was emitted into the air, making Motiva the largest air emitter in the City of Providence.

Ethanol trains come through the port every week. Known as “bomb trains” elsewhere in the United States, similar trains were banned in Boston because of safety and toxic concerns. The ethanol is mixed at the Motiva facility and transported out.

Univar is the largest facility in the area. It is a wholesale chemical distributor and chlorine manufacturer. As far as is known, though Univar produces chemicals used in fracking, they are not manufactured or stored in Rhode Island. There are 3.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals stored at the Univar facility. It is the most dangerous facility in all of Rhode Island, with a 14 mile hazard radius. Stored here are 1.4 million pounds of chlorine gas, 1.2 million pounds of anhydrous ammonia, 626,400 pounds of ammonium and 35,000 pounds of formaldehyde. each one requires a chemical risk assessment plan from the Environmental Protection Agency.

National Grid wants to upgrade its facilities at the Port of Providence by installing a liquefaction plant on the premises. This would allow the company to supercool LNG so that it becomes more compact, allowing the company to store much more LNG on the premises. Note that LNG is fracked methane, imported through pipelines to the facility. These pipelines, owned by Spectra Energy, run through Burrillville, through Cumberland, and across the bay from East Providence.

The existing storage tank is filled by truck. It takes about 2600 trucks to fill the 24.2 million gallon tank, said Andre.

The proposed LNG liquefaction facility will cost $180 million. These costs will most likely be passed on to consumers. The facility will be located between National Grid’s existing storage tank and the Univar facility. The energy required to power the liquefaction is equivalent to half of the energy generated by Deepwater Wind, the first offshore wind farm in the United States, presently under construction off the coast of Rhode Island.

One more concern: National Grid is located on the former site of a manufactured gas plant. The soil in the area is soaked with chemicals from when a company squeezed gas from coal, a toxic process that permanently contaminated the land. The RI Department of Environmental Management has records of dozens of other leaking, underground tanks in this area. “The soil we are walking on is known to be toxic,” said Rodríguez-Drix.

On the National Grid site, some of the chemical contaminants have been capped with the intention of keeping the contamination from further spreading, but this capping will be disturbed when construction begins, allowing the wind to carry the toxins into the air and into the bay for the two years of construction.

Below is video of the tour:

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein attended the Toxic Tour, and talked about the Green New Deal.

Raymond Two-Hawks spoke about the aboriginal response to the continued denigration of his ancestral lands.

Laura Perez is running for House District 11 against incumbent state Representative Grace Diaz.

Sheila Calderone is a resident of South providence and a member of the Environmental Justice League who suspects that illnesses she has suffered are a result of the pollutants she has been exposed to while growing up in the area.

“Sometimes you have to lose elections to build your power,” Stein told RI Future in a wide-ranging, 35-minute interview Wednesday. “Because we don’t get out of this hole unless we build our power. We don’t change this system unless we challenge it. In the words of Frederick Douglass ‘power concedes nothing without a demand.’ It never has, it never will. We’ve been doing this lesser evil thing for quite a while right now and this politics of fear has brought us everything we are afraid of. All those things we didn’t want we’ve gotten by the droves because the lesser evil essentially silences us.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgZoxHfz_w

But what about all the Supreme Court justices Trump would appoint, I asked her.

“As opposed to having Hillary Clinton in power starting an air war with Russia over Syria because she wants a no-fly zone,” Stein responded. “She’s all about challenging Russia and provoking Russia and surrounding Russia with nuclear weapons and missiles and troops. Do we really want an aggressive war hawk in the White House who has a proven track record of actually doing the things that Donald Trump says?”

Clinton and Trump are “different,” she conceded, “but not different enough to save your life, your job or the planet.” She asked if America would be better served by “an advocate for billionaires in the White House instead of a billionaire himself?”

Fair enough. But Trump’s alleged wealth doesn’t even register on the list of things that would make him a terrible president. What about the hate and distrust his presidency would breed into America, I said.

“And think about where that came from,” Stein retorted. “Why does Donald Trump have support now? Because working people have been subjected to a miserable economy. And where did that miserable economy come from? Well, we had NAFTA, who gave us that? This was a policy of the Clintons, supported by Hillary. We had the Wall Street meltdown, which disappeared 9 million jobs and stole 5 million homes.”

Stein added, “I would feel horrible if Trump gets elected and I would feel horrible if Hillary gets elected but I feel most horrible about a political system that says we have two lethal choices, now pick your weapon of self destruction.”

Instant run-off voting, which allows voters to rank candidates, would allow people to vote for their preferred candidate without risk of aiding a political enemy, she said. But she was also clear to point out, there’s no reason to think she can’t win.

“In my view we don’t even have to lose this election,” she said, noting that there are 42 million people who are “trapped in predatory student loan debt. I’m the only candidate who will cancel that debt like we did for the crooks on Wall Street.”

Stein said Cornell West, Michelle Alexander and Seattle City Councilor Kshama Sawant are potential vice presidential candidates. She said Bernie Sanders could have “just about any” position in her administration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgZoxHfz_w

Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, isn’t coming to Rhode Island on July 20 to hob-nob with the political elite. She’s coming to stand with grassroots activists who are trying to implement bottom-up change in the Ocean State.

“Dr. Stein will join NoLNGinPVD activists for a toxic tour of the Port of Providence and demonstration against National Grid’s proposed Fields Point LNG liquefaction facility,” according to a news release from the Green Party of Rhode Island.

The event will take place at 4pm, Wednesday July 20 on the corner of Allens Ave. and Ernest St. outside of Providence Public Works Department.

The RI Green Party, along with the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, the FANG Collective and others, have been fighting against a proposed liquefied natural gas facility near Fields Point on the Providence waterfront.

“The event will consist of a tour of existing toxic and polluting infrastructure in South Providence with regards to the effect and dangers of National Grid’s planned expansion at Fields Point followed by a demonstration and public address by affiliated groups and Dr. Stein,” according to the news release. “The Green Party of Rhode Island has been actively resisting the growth of fossil fuel facilities of all kinds and is actively supporting NoLNGinPVD and other community groups in their struggle to stop the further development of fossil fuel facilities in Rhode Island including the Burrillville power plant, various pipelines, and the Compressor station along the Providence waterfront.

Members of the Green Party will also be collecting signatures to ensure Stein is on the ballot in Rhode Island, as well.

At 6pm on Wednesday, there is a clambake fundraiser for Stein in Providence, details here. Read a RI Future interview with Stein here.

“We are Plan B for Bernie,” she said, “As Bernie himself said, it’s a movement, not a man!”

Stein, who will be in Rhode Island on July 20, explained, “The 99 percent is being thrown under the bus by Democrats as well as Republicans. That’s not to say there’s no difference but the differences are not enough to save your job, to save your life, or to save the planet. People growing up today see two parties that have bailed out Wall Street, including a Democratic White House with two Democratic houses of Congress. The two parties, including the Democrats, led the way on the bail-outs for Wall Street, the offshoring of our jobs, and again, thank you to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton leading the charge on the rigged corporate trade agreements, the expanding wars, the attack on immigrant rights, the massive prison-industrial complex and the militarization of our police. For young people looking at this world today it’s not working for them,” she said.

“So, Bernie’s campaign,” she added, “we owe them a great debt of gratitude for standing up and showing how the American people are ready to mobilize and say ‘let’s keep this going, let’s bring that energy and that momentum into our campaign. We deserve a future where we’re calling the shots, where we’re in charge, we are the 99 percent, we are the majority, and Bernie’s campaign showed that there can be majority support for this kind of campaign.” Stein is adamant that, if every student debtor alone in America were to vote for her, the only candidate who is promising student loan forgiveness for all borrowers via executive action, she would have a plurality and win the election.

A medical doctor by trade and a resident of nearby Lexington, Massachusetts, Stein was 18 and raised in Highland Park, Illinois, less than 30 miles away from the site of the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that broke down into street riots, something some Baby Boomers have told me they are getting reminded of quite often this week.

“In the events of the last week, between the police murders in St. Paul, in Baton Rouge,” she said, “and then the assassinations of five police in Dallas, and then the revelations of yet another police murder in New York, it’s really I think forced us to stop and really feel the moment here, that we cannot go on like this. This is just a devastating, heartbreaking tragedy, especially to have seen these videos up close and personal.”

She added, “We really need to look at the roots of this disaster, we had both racism playing out and then we had blowback against racism in the shooting of the Dallas police, so we’re all kind of in the crossfire right now of this crisis of racism. And racism and violence really go hand in hand. We’ve got to deal with them both in order to deal with either one of them. So we call for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to understand the origins of this ongoing problem of police violence. It’s roots are in racism that you can trace back to the institution of slavery. Out of slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t put an end to it, then it was lynching, then it was Jim Crow, then it was segregation and red-lining and deficient schools and the War on Drugs and the prison system and then it was police violence.”

The idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is based on a system that was created after the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa to confront the deep wounds caused by the apartheid system.

“There’s a history here that we really have to come to terms with,” she explained. “We need to have less reliance on weapons. We need to take a look at police forces around the world that in fact have done away with their weapons.” She goes on to explain “It’s actually police forces that are far safer when they’re not armed because so much of the shooting is defensive and it’s out of fear. So actually police turn out to be far safer when they are not armed as well.”

Stein has previously run for a variety of offices on the Green Party ticket, including its 2012 presidential candidate. She also ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010. She served as member of the Lexington Town Meeting from 2005-2011.

Her medical practice began with internal medicine before it very quickly spurred her towards environmental activism, writing reports titled In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging. She has worked alongside  Clean Water Action, Toxic Action Center, Global Climate Convergence, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Massachusetts Medical Society while co-founding the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities. Yet this did not stop her from developing a side-project as vocalist in a folk-rock band called Somebody’s Sister.

Listen to the full interview:

Stein wants to get rid of Common Core and all corporate education deform efforts that bust teacher unions.

“The problem here is that our education system has been bought out again by the highest bidder and that includes the likes of Bill Gates and Arne Duncan, who’s not an educator but is a basketball player, so we have an education system that’s kind of been held hostage by non-educators who are applying really a business model to education,” she told me. “So we really need to put educators back in charge of our school system and of our education. That means having small classroom sizes, it means having well-paid teachers, respecting teachers unions as being critical for high-quality education. And it means doing away with the high-stakes testing which has been used as an excuse to beat up on teachers, to attack teachers unions, and to privatize our schools and to declare them failing.”

One of the major electoral forces in Rhode Island is the union movement. Right now a growth industry in Rhode Island is developing around the construction of wind farms to generate electricity. We quickly get into a conversation about her jobs program called the Green New Deal.

“The Green New Deal would mean an explosion of jobs,” Stein told me. “The Green New Deal would basically create 20,000,000 jobs. And that’s enough jobs to give everyone a full-time, good-waged job transforming our economy on an emergency basis to a sustainable and healthy economy that’s good for workers, that’s good for communities, good for our water supply, our air, and our food and all that. So it’s kind of a transformational package. It’s based on the New Deal that got us out of the Great Depression but in this case it not only solves the economic emergency, which we definitely have, in spite of what they say, we have an economic emergency for millions upon millions of workers who are not represented because they are not actively looking for work, they’re discouraged, or they’ve been forced into part-time work so we don’t see this invisible epidemic of joblessness and under-employment. We need a lot of jobs. We have an economic emergency and we can solve it at the same time we can solve our climate and environmental emergency. So specifically we call for jobs that will green our energy system, that is build wind, water, and sun energy, that will transform our transportation and will create light-rail as well as high-speed rail and restore our bridges and the infrastructure for transportation. And we call also for a healthy and sustainable food system that makes people healthy as well as the planet. And overall it will revive the economy, it will turn the tide on climate change, and it will make wars for oil obsolete. We don’t need to be fighting wars for oil when we have 100% renewable energy right here at home and that’s part of how we fund this. It also funds itself because we get much healthier by getting rid of the pollution and also frankly the dangerous jobs that make people sick. Workers especially pay the price here for a dangerous and toxic energy system where workers are really on the front lines actually have a seven-fold, that is 700% increased risk of dying on the job!”

Stein’s program is a job program, meaning it pays to re-train labor and promises them steady work.

“Workers have been forced into this position of hoping for, begging for job training and then hoping that the right job will come along,” she said. “Well this is a series of basically guaranteed jobs. And they are a combination of independent businesses, and these are largely local businesses so that the profits aren’t going overseas and into corporate pockets. Instead those profits get re-circulated within the communities and help to build a truly healthy economy. So we’re talking about small businesses, about worker cooperatives, and also direct government jobs. And the decisions are made by the community… So for many communities that need housing, that really have a housing emergency, one of the key priorities is actually housing because we’re looking at making communities sustainable, not only economically and environmentally but also sustainable socially. So if housing is the need the community most urgently wants to fill, those are the jobs that are created. It’s nationally funded but locally controlled in order to meet the needs of everyday people and it focuses people’s needs rather than big corporations or the billionaires because this is a one person-one vote process through something called participatory budgeting that actually allows communities to decide without being bought out by the big developers who have a way of buying their way into the decisions that benefit them but leave the communities without the housing we need or the transportation we need or the affordable and healthy energy supply.”

Now the choice lies in the hands of the voters. Stein will be visiting the Ocean State later this month, an event we will be bringing you coverage and updates on as they emerge.

To volunteer with the Stein campaign, e-mail the Rhode Island Green Party at StateCommittee@rigreens.org! And be sure to ask about signing a petition for your town to get Dr. Stein on the ballot!

Sources from within the Rhode Island Green Party have indicated that Dr. Jill Stein, presumptive nominee for the party’s presidential bid in November, is going to be visiting Rhode Island on July 20. Time and locations of various events are still being planned.

“I’m voting Jill Stein because she’s our best hope for peace and climate stabilization,” said Nadya Bedford, of Bristol. “Jill Stein understands how important it is to keep fossil fuels in the ground, both to end wars for oil and to keep our major cities dry. She’s willing to stand up to corrupt financiers, ensure access to education, forgive student debt, and empower oppressed groups. She’s condemned torture, cluster bombs, and aggressive occupation efforts. A Jill Stein presidency is only part of a larger effort, and it’s up to all of us who can to make things better, but with Stein as president, and congresspeople like her, we can pivot from the country with the strongest military to the country with the strongest human rights record.”

To volunteer with the Stein campaign, e-mail the Rhode Island Green Party at StateCommittee@rigreens.org! And be sure to ask about signing a petition for your town to get Dr. Stein on the ballot!

Progressives in the Ocean State should take note of the overwhelming primary results. The results were astounding. After the state was proclaimed “Clinton Country”, the results were:

Total Democratic Votes: 122,458
Bernie Sanders: 66,993
Hillary Clinton: 52,749
Uncommitted: 1,662
Write-in: 673

Total Republican Votes: 61,614
Donald Trump: 39,221
John Kasich: 14,963
Ted Cruz: 6,416

There are two points that seem obvious from these results.

First, by a significant margin, the winners of both races have, in their own way, based their campaigns this year around a populist rebellion against neoliberal economic policies that have defined consensus politics for the last quarter century. Since the end of the Cold War, both political parties have embraced these economic doctrines as an agenda while creating political differences based around identity as opposed to class politics. The Rhode Island primary was a massive referendum against this economic system. This is part of a wider global trend we are seeing now. Right populism emphasizes demonization of migrant and refugee populations while Left populism emphasizes class struggle. The instance of Trump and Sanders is roughly akin to what happened in Greece with the rise of Syriza, a social democratic party, and the openly neo-fascist Golden Dawn, though Trump is closer to the center than his Greek counterparts.

Second, the margin of difference is so significant that there is no way Rhode Island would be a swing state. Every politician in the Ocean State understands very well that every unionized worker is worth three votes and they keep that as a holy tenet of the State House, held higher than anything else. Within the next few months we will see a Democratic Party pandering to the union vote in this state with a combination of fear tactics about helping to elect the Donald (even though that flies in the face of everything we learned in 2000 about the electoral college) and pillow talk about how wonderful a Clinton administration will be for unions (even though organized labor suffered significant defeats under Bubba, epitomized in NAFTA, and will continue to do so under Hillary, who has been a strong advocate of the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, describing it as a “gold standard” before the Sanders campaign forced her to pivot to the left).

This is simply phooey, Rhode Island only went for Republicans in the two Eisenhower elections (back when the GOP was anti-Communist but pro-union), the 1972 Nixon re-election (the last time a Republican made an honest bid for the union vote), and the 1984 Reagan re-election (when a majority of the country thought that Reagan was managing the economy better than what the Democrats were offering).

In other words, a vote for Stein, whose campaign features as a central plank the roll-out of a pro-union Green New Deal to rebuild and repurpose our national infrastructure on a basis of renewable as opposed to fossil fuels, would send a clear message to the Rhode Island Democratic Party who is in charge in this state and what they expect, making Nicholas Mattiello tremble with fear. The 52,749 people who voted for Clinton are almost assured to stay with her and a section of the Sanders vote will go to her also. But it seems obvious, with the level of disgust at the Clinton machine on the grassroots level compounding daily due to the corrupt nature of the primary process as well as the preposterous handling of the e-mail scandal that there is a safe way to express this populist progressive sentiment in the ballot box come November even if Sanders is not the nominee.

Glen Bennett, who will be going to his first Green Party nominating convention this summer, noted “I am excited to start petitioning and we have seen an influx of volunteers as the time approaches to begin the effort. Dr. Jill Stein seeks to heal the ailing politics of the United States and is inspiring voters with a message of ecological healing, justice, and an economy that works in our communities, not just for the 1%.”

Dr. Stein, a native of Chicago who hails from Lexington, MA, has over a quarter-century experience in the medical field and is co-founder of the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities. She has previously run for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010, State Representative in 2004, Secretary of State in 2006, and was a candidate in the 2012 presidential election. She is currently, with Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, bringing lawsuit under anti-trust laws against the Commission on Presidential Debates. Stein is currently already appearing on the ballot in 21 states and in the District of Columbia. According to Rhode Island state law, all those who desire to appear on the ballot must submit a petition with signatures to the Secretary of State to appear on the November ballot by September 9 at 4 pm. In May the Rhode Island Green Party nominated Dr. Stein out of a selection of candidates that were made available.

“I’m real excited and we’re looking to start petitioning here in Rhode Island very soon. We’re getting a constant stream of new volunteers. A lot of people who were supporting Bernie [Sanders] are starting to look at Jill very seriously. There was a national conference and it was all about Bernie but, as soon as you got outside of the main auditorium, into any of the little discussion groups, there was a lot of people talking about Jill! I think this is going to be a very interesting year politically and the Greens really have the opportunity to do something different,” says Gerritt, who previously ran for Mayor of Providence as a Green. “Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, is running at about 7% in recent polls and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, is running about 11% in some polls. That is huge! Between the two of them, they’re equal to Ross Perot in the election!”

In a June ABC News/Washington Post poll, 70% of Americans viewed Donald Trump unfavorably and 55% viewed Hillary Clinton unfavorably. “More and more Rhode Islanders are rejecting the most unpopular and untrustworthy big party candidates for president ever,” says Gerritt.

In a May Data Targeting poll, 55% of Americans said they would favor an independent challenger to Clinton and Trump. It is obvious that a serious crisis of leadership has occurred within the two-party system. “The Republicans really have to wake up and change,”  says Gerritt. “There is something wrong with the political philosophy of the party that controls Congress. So they have to implode! Of course the Democrats aren’t doing much better! They’re basically saying to all of their energized base ‘uh, go away or get co-opted‘ and this year people really have a place to go. Jill has done this before so she knows how to run a campaign and she’s got a great campaign on the ground.”

For more information or to get involved in the Stein petition drive or other Green Party efforts, email StateCommittee@rigreens.org.

[From a press release]

Most observers today are of the opinion that, while Bernie Sanders ran an admirable campaign and certainly mobilized a mass of people, it is obvious after the California primary that the senator from Vermont is not going to win the nomination. In response, the voices in the progressive media, such as Juan Gonzalez at Democracy Now! radio, are saying that a vote for Clinton is necessary.

But not all the democratic socialists in the room are ready to give up on the revolution and settle for lesser evils. On June 17, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s campaign issued a public letter, signed by Kshama Sawant of the Seattle City Council, Chris Hedges of Truth Dig, Professor Emeritus Richard Wolff of UMass Amherst, Marc Lamont Hill of Morehouse College and The Huffington Post, Medea Benjamin of the peace group Code Pink, and many others urging Sanders supporters to “keep the revolution going”.

The letter said “Jill Stein’s Power to the People agenda reflects many of the domestic policies of the Sanders campaign – income equality, climate justice, free public higher education, Medicare for All, immigrant rights, racial justice and an end to mass incarceration. In other areas, Stein goes much further than Sanders, calling for the cancellation of student debt, full public financing of elections, and the creation of public banks. Her rapid transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030 makes wars for oil obsolete, enabling a 50% cut in the dangerously bloated military budget which has made us less safe, not more safe. Stein offers a foreign policy based on international law and human rights, not economic and military domination that has proven so catastrophic.”

There have recently been some major events that have created fantastic results for the Greens. The Stein campaign just passed a major benchmark that qualified them in April for federal matching funds, a major first. Then, a case decision in Georgia upended a historic gerrymandering law that had effectively prevented third party candidates from getting on the ballot for decades. Stein is now on the ballot in 21 states and petition drives across the country will soon start to collect signatures in many more states, including Rhode Island. Finally, the lawsuit filed by the Greens and Libertarians against the Commission on Presidential Debates based on anti-trust laws is making its way through the courts and could be ruled on in time to impact the presidential race. In international news, Alexander Van der Bellen won the Austrian presidency in a close race against a far-right opponent, a first in European history.

The collapse of the Republican Party seems almost imminent, with political columnist Thomas Friedman recently writing of the need for a “Grand New Party” and strategist Mary Matalin publicly declaring herself a member of the Libertarian Party. Whether a complimentary schism might occur within the Democrats depends very much on how local Sanders supporters feel about signing a petition to put Stein on the ballot.

Greg Gerritt of the Rhode Island Green Party is helping lead the petition drive in the Ocean State once it begins on June 27. We sat down for a conversation wherein he described Green positions on local issues, how Stein’s Green New Deal would put cranes in the air across the state while retraining the workforce to work in a variety of sustainable fields of labor, and even talked about the myth of Ralph Nader causing Al Gore to lose key votes in 2000 that inadvertently elected George W. Bush.

Why vote Green in 2016: “If you really believe in the things that Bernie’s talking about like peace, justice, an economy that works for community, end fracking, stopping climate change, you’re never going to get there from the Democratic Party. You’re never going to get there from the Republican Party. The Green Party is the only party that has been consistent on these issues for a long time with the views that actually move us forward, that actually deal with climate change, that help communities prepare and get us to zero carbon emissions faster. It’s clear that climate issue is going faster and faster all the time and you have to do something right then to stop it!”

“Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, is running at about 7% in recent polls and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, is running about 11% in some polls. That is huge! Between the two of them, they’re equal to Ross Perot in the election!”

“The Republicans really have to wake up and change because when your candidate basically insults the fastest-growing segment of the population, when your core base is dying at younger and younger ages because the economy and their society has made them so crazy that they are killing themselves in record numbers, when life expectancies are going down, you know there is something wrong with the political philosophy of the party that controls Congress. They’re essentially killing people in their own country. So they have to implode!”

“Of course the Democrats aren’t doing much better! They’re basically saying to all of their energized base ‘uh, go away or get co-opted‘ and this year people really have a place to go. Jill has done this before so she knows how to run a campaign and she’s got a great campaign on the ground. We’re getting on the ballot almost everywhere and it’s really going to be interesting to see what happens. So I’m real excited and we’re looking to start petitioning here in Rhode Island very soon. We’re getting a constant stream of new volunteers. A lot of people who were supporting Bernie are starting to look at Jill very seriously. There was a national conference and it was all about Bernie but, as soon as you got outside of the main auditorium, into any of the little discussion groups, there was a lot of people talking about Jill! I think this is going to be a very interesting year politically and the Greens really have the opportunity to do something different. The Democrats keep blaming us but when they come up with Hillary, they can’t blame us anymore.”

On the state subsidizing the Pawtucket Red Sox: “[My own personal opinion is] they should never get taxpayer monies!”

On the fracked gas power plant in Burrillville: “A number of us have gone to rallies, we have spoken at rallies, we have testified at hearings… We have been very active. We’ve actually been active enough to help organize resistance to pipelines up and down the corridors because this problem with these power plants isn’t just ours, we’ve got to fight in our own neighborhood for democracy and for clean energy but we are trying to help everyone along the pipeline routes to get themselves organized as well.”

On transitioning to a pro-union green economy: “Already there are more people working in renewable energy than in fossil fuels. It’s time for us to make that complete transition. So instead of building things that the communities don’t want and that bad for them, the construction unions are going to have to figure out they need to build things that communities want that are good for them. And they’re going to have to start questioning this total obedience to the corporate order as to what they will build. They need to start working with communities better. We can make this entire transition. The number of solar jobs is going up fast, the number of wind-powered jobs is going up fast, we get this wind field up off of Block Island and that’s supposed to be done this year. Next year you start thinking about the big field out in the North Atlantic. They’re just going to start building these things and these construction unions could have more work there than building things that communities don’t want… Rhode Island needs to grow 20x as much food as it does now. Twenty times! Two thousand percent more! California is not going to be able to supply it, the midwest is not going to be able to supply it, we are going to have to grow 20x as much food!… How you going to do that without creating a whole heck of a lot of jobs?”

For more information or to get involved in the Stein petition drive or other Green Party efforts, email StateCommittee@rigreens.org.

First, Sanders has mobilized a mass of people that have fundamentally been radicalized away from consensus neoliberal politics, even if they have a huge level of variety in their own political visions. It is worth remembering here also that, unlike notable sheep dog candidacies like Jackson, Kucinich, and Dean, we are dealing with an election that is not a referendum on a Republican presidency but a Democratic one. When Jackson ran it was against Reagan. Kucinich and Dean were against the W. Bush presidency. This election, despite the efforts of the mainstream media to say otherwise, is in reality a referendum on the failure of the Obama administration in a fashion similar to how 2008 was a repudiation of Bush. And considering that The Atlantic was recently floating the as a potential Vice President Governor Raimondo, it also seems an obvious rebuke to the Democrats as a whole.

The reason Sanders has done so well and lasted this long is to be attributed to a populist rejection of neoclassical economics, something also to be seen in the Trump constituency. For instance, both sides of the populist upsurge reject various manifestations of these economic doctrines, be it Common Core education policy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Monsanto and genetically modified food, the Pentagon eating up over half of the federal discretionary budget, the rigged nature of the primary system, the Federal Reserve, or any number of other elements of post-Cold War politics. Bob Plain was onto something recently when he asked if there is common ground between the two. I would in fact argue that, excepting the extremists in both constituencies that are absolutist in nature, something I referred to in a previous piece here, there is possibility for an anti-war/anti-austerity united front from below to be formed after this election between the Sanders and Trump supporters. Such a coalition could take on things in the community hated by both groups, such as the union-busting Wal-Mart that chases every small business out of a town.

That the Democrats have not cut Sanders off already is demonstrative of a false impression they have about being able to channel this into votes for Clinton, perhaps reinforced by the promise from Sanders he will support Clinton. I highly doubt these folks are that easily swayed, hence the development of a new term, “Bernie or Bust”, and a response that demonizes those who refuse to vote for the Queen of Chaos. I have already been brow-beaten by some who tell me that women’s rights are not important to me because I refuse to vote for Clinton. But then again, Clinton has shown women’s rights are not important to her with the support she has shown for those blessed souls in the Saudi monarchy. Sheikh, Sheikh, Sheikh señora, Sheikh your oil pipeline!

Second, despite the pleas of the Sanders supporters, he has absolutely zero chance of getting the nomination. When Obama beat Hillary, it was a public and frankly hilarious spat between two of the running dogs of capital. Those two personally hate each other but they both have the same masters at Goldman Sachs, hence why the Obama Justice Department has refused to prosecute Clinton over the e-mail scandal.

For those who are unclear still, Clinton committed a series of crimes by using this email server that were far more egregious and illegal than those she and Obama claimed were committed by Manning, Assange, Snowden, and so many other whistleblowers they have prosecuted and ruined over the past eight years. The highest crime in a moral universe was obviously in the text of the emails with their plans for Libya and Syria. But in the immoral universe we occupy, it was the lack of moral cause. Snowden and Manning blew whistles about illegal and immoral behavior by the United States government while Assange published materials as a press agency in the name of his Libertarian philosophy that informs his morality. Even if one disagrees with the motivation, it remains irrefutable that they did it for moral reasons.

By contrast, Clinton risked exposing intelligence to genuine security threats in the name of either petty convenience regarding a BlackBerry, something I find dubious as her official explanation, or perhaps, in my own view, so to avoid creating a paper trail akin to the Nixon tapes that would document her criminal behavior in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. That is a very immoral cause in comparison to the aforementioned heroes of our generation. Obama is protecting her and she knows this very well, hence her relative level of self assurance in this campaign.

So what I want to suggest is something rather unorthodox but also the only way Sanders and Jill Stein would get into the White House. Sanders needs to drop out of the race after the super-delegate count is reached by Clinton and become Stein’s Vice Presidential candidate. The Greens have already made such overtures to Sanders, including a recent invitation for Sanders to collaborate with Stein on her presidential campaign webpage and another invitation from the Green Party to Sanders supporters emphasizing that there is a Green welcome mat waiting for them to join the campaign.

I admit this is going against almost every rule in the playbook involving the politics of both the Green Party and the Democratic Socialists. The Greens are in the midst of their own primary schedule in seventeen different states. The Democrats are in the midst of a similar situation in all fifty (for those of you who missed this point, there is no independent Democratic Socialist party in America, it is a progressive caucus of the Democratic Party). The only thing that can make Sanders reach the White House is getting out of this failing Democratic Party and embrace the future, a third party candidacy. Even The Donald agrees with me! This could be YUGE!

I say the future because it is quite obvious that, should the Sanders supporters not be placated properly, they could split the Democrats in two and create the prospect for a genuine third party. This dynamic is also at play with Trump, though the genuine third party option for the Right is far more fragmented and it is difficult to envision the Trump followers all joining the Libertarian Party as the Sanders people might join the Greens. Nevertheless, the failure of Sanders opens up the possibility of, after a century of state-enforced consolidation, the collapse of the duopoly system in America. That is something I am far more enthusiastic about and yearn for than Bernie Sanders hands down. If votes for the Green Party were to take progressive votes away from the Democrats, a common element of the Nader baiter agenda, the fact is that an elected Green would stand up for working class values more reliably than a Democrat that could be bought by the special interest lobby class in Washington.

So Sanders should seriously consider this option of becoming a Green vice president and therefore undermining the identity politics dynamic of Hillary Clinton’s neoliberal corporatized feminism. Whereas the Democrats would be as intransigent to a Sanders Democratic administration as the Republicans have been in the past eight years, the Greens have the infrastructure to get elected at the 2018 midterms to make the Sanders agenda a reality. When FDR got his Keynesian programs passed in the New Deal, it was because he had the Solid South in his coalition. And thirty years later, LBJ’s similar programs were scuttled precisely because that coalition had been fractured by the civil rights movement and the rise of Barry Goldwater. The Greens are the coalition Sanders needs to make his presidency not just a symbolic gesture wherein the Congress, who are bought and paid for by Wall Street, scuttles his efforts.

Think that is a bit utopian? Not as utopian as the idea that Sanders will be nominated at the convention!

Stein, a doctor from Massachusetts and the Green Party’s standard bearer for the second election in a row, will visit the CCRI campus in Warwick on Saturday, August 22. She’s the keynote speaker at the Green Gathering, an annual meeting of local Green Party members and supporters.

Unlike even Sanders, Stein offers a real alternative to mainstream political candidates. She endorses a $15 federal minimum wage, ending poverty by creating a job for everyone through a “Green New Deal.” And she’s been critical of campaigns like Sanders’ which seeks to change the party from within.

“What Bernie is doing, speaking truth to power, is a wonderful thing,” Stein said, according to ThinkProgress in June. “It’s been done many times before within the Democratic Party. But one only has to look at the inspired campaign of Jesse Jackson to see where that goes. It’s a wonderful flourish, but when it’s over, it’s over. And the party continues to march to the right. These reform efforts within the Democratic Party feel good for those who participate, but at the end of the day, they have not built a foundation for the future.”

Stein will be joined by Sherrie Anne Andre, one of the FANG activists who have been fighting the expansion of methane gas in Rhode Island and David Fisher, a former Green Party candidate for mayor of Woonsocket, who will speak about local elections.

Here are the details of the Green Gathering, from Greg Gerritt: