Jill: /
Crash everyday practically. Yeah, what's that?
Rob: I
want to ask you one kind of basic question.
Jill: Sure.
Rob: Maybe
I should've done that right at the beginning. What is the Green Party? Who are
the members of the Green Party? What is it about? You're running as the
presidential candidate for the Green Party. Now, before we started recording, I
mentioned that I call this the Bottom up
Radio Show. So, I mentioned it and you said, "Well, the Green Party's all
about bottom up," so I would like you to give our listeners and readers an idea
of what the Green Party is and talk a little bit about that.
Jill: Great.
Terrific. The Green Party approached me 12 years ago. I was an activist working
as a medical doctor, working on health care as a human right; true Medicare for
all and also on environment and health in particular. Trying to close down our
polluting incinerators and instead create jobs in recycling which is good for
people, good for our health, creates jobs and saves the environment and stops
the pollution of our fish supply and all kinds of nasty things. It's win-win
solutions all the way. And basically the Green Party came to me and said, "Why
don't you just keep doing what you're doing, but just call it a political
campaign?" And I had never been a member of a political party. I had never gone
to a political meeting. I just didn't see reason to stoop to that level and
when I was approached by the Green Party, it sounded like they were talking
about the same things as I was talking about as just an activist for peace,
justice and democracy and sustainability. So, I said, "Sure, let's enlarge
this." And at the time I had sort of hit the wall and tried to go through the
system and do the usual things and discovered that it was so many distractions
it's intended to tie you up, keep you very busy going nowhere. So, I was ready
to do that and I discovered, "Gee, there is this party which is basically about
the public interest.
And what defines the party for me is that it's a party of, by and for the
people, and we define it. We make it what we want. It does not accept corporate
money. It does not accept money from the usual suspects. In our campaign, we've
expanded that a bit to include not accepting money from lobbyists or pacts or
from anyone who hires a lobbyist, who is part of a for-profit endeavor, so that
we don't take money that comes with "strings attached" that carries certain
obligations for pay back. So, the Green Party the one political structure that's
out there that's really insolated from the power of money.
So, what does it reflect? In this country the Green Party is a broad
coalition of activists for social and economic and racial justice and the
environment and peace and democracy. It's all of the movements that have been
shut out of the establishment of political parties. They have found their way
into the Green Party and the myth is out there that Green's are well off, sort
of green liberals. Nothing could further than the truth. The liberals have long
since abandoned the Green Party. I think they were in it for awhile until they
discovered that it's not a peace of cake. You really do have to stand up and
fight.
Shall we say there are other causes that retreat into very small goals
and fringe issues and they just sort of keep their blinders on and they fight
that one issue and that's it. The Green Party has a very broad perspective and
gets that you can't save the environment unless you save the people. And you
can't save the people unless you save the environment. Maybe if there's one
things that characterizes the Green's is that we take the picture to heart and
we believe in a unified, broad coalition that addresses the needs of people
which are fundamentally broad.
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