NGP 2008 Convention Report
ReShape ’08, Nebraska Green Party 2008 convention, was held Saturday, June 7, 2008 at the PS Collective, 6056 Maple Street, Omaha, Nebraska in Historic Benson. Amy Ryan opened her Performance Space and provided a noon buffet without charge for the event. At the heart of Benson’s emerging sustainable urban community, it was a perfect venue, focused on living green and living harmlessly.
Marc Sanson, a National Green Party Steering Committee member from the Illinois State Green Party–Springfield, was keynote speaker. There are sixty Green Party candidates for office in Illinois this year. Marc’s insight to the ups and downs of achieving that number in a state with restrictive ballot access requirements was educational and inspiring.
Green Party presidential candidates will be in Chicago for the National Convention Thursday, July 10 through Sunday, July 13, 2008. The candidates are Jesse Johnson, Cynthia McKinney, Kent Mesplay, and Kat Swift.
Jesse Johnson is the co-chair of the Mountain Party of West Virginia, which became affiliated with the Green Party of the United States at the national meeting in Reading last July. He produced, directed, and acted in many plays and films, and founded Talkback, Children Respond to Violence in the Media, which uses the arts to teach inner-city elementary school students how to combat violence. He was the Mountain Party's candidate for Governor in 2004, and for U.S. Senate in 2006. http://www.jesse08.org/
Cynthia McKinney was elected to the Georgia state legislature as a Democrat in 1988, and to Congress in 1992. She was the first African-American woman from Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving in Congress from 1993 to 2003, and from 2005 to 2007. She filed the first resolution to impeach Bush, Cheney and Rice; has pursued meaningful answers on 9-11; has advocated for those displaced by our government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and for the millions of voters disenfranchised in both the 2000 and 2004 elections. Last year, she left the Democratic Party and registered as a Green. http://www.runcynthiarun.org/
Kent Mesplay has been a registered Green in California since 1995, serving as one of his state's delegates to the Green National Committee since 2004. He has worked as a substitute teacher and an Air Quality Inspector at the Air Pollution Control District, San Diego. He also served as the president of Turtle Island Institute. In 2004, he ran in the Green presidential primaries and caucuses, and in 2006, in the Green primary for U.S. Senate. http://www.mesplay.org/
Kat Swift is a member of the Green Party of Texas, having served on her state party's Executive Committee, and as co-spokesperson for the national party's Women's Caucus. She has served as a facilitator for the Green Party and for several other organizations, groups, and coalitions, including Clean Money San Antonio and SA Democracy Now. She currently works as an accountant. In 2007, she became the first Green to run for the City Council of San Antonio. http://www.voteswift.org/
Nebraska Green Party Candidates in the November 2008 election are as follows:
U.S. Senate: Steven R. Larrick, Lincoln
Omaha Public Service Commission District 2: Doug Paterson
Omaha Douglas County Board District 1: Scott Hoffman
Omaha Douglas County Board District 3: Derek Glaser
Omaha Douglas County Board District 5: Susan Koneck
OPPD Board of Directors Metro District: Laverne N. Thraen
Larrick opened candidate’s remarks highlighting six key points of his campaign focus.
1) Commitment to renewable energy.
2) Immediate end to the occupation in Iraq.
3) Preventing future wars.
4) Universal single pay health care.
5) Restoration of human rights and civil liberties.
6) Promotion of economic health, fair trade and investment in education.
Doug Paterson spoke of putting “public” back in the Public Service Commission.
Susan Koneck, candidate for Douglas County Board District 5, recounted her early political activism as a child in West Virginia where she witnessed strip mining in her home state. Now an Omaha nurse, Susan reported that there are currently an average of five US troop suicides in Iraq per day.
LaVerne, OPPD candidate, emphasized end use efficiency, and suggested that to really make a change, voters should change their political party to Green. The NGP business meeting report is available from CD 2 Council Representative Charles Ostdiek. E-mail iconofcharles at uscellular dot blackberry dot com to request a copy.
There are currently 921 Greens in Nebraska who have either Registered Green or joined NGP as a Supporting Member. There are over 305,000 Registered Greens in more than twenty states in the US.