Greens endorse Occupy SF

The SF Green Party endorses the "Occupy San Francisco" movement and the expression of direct democracy that it represents.  The New York City Green Party has also issued a statement in support of Occupy Wall Street.

For more information, see their website, http://www.occupysf.com, and you can get live updates on Twitter at #OccupySF.  OccupySF holds general assemblies (a means of making decisions through Consensus, similar to the way we make decisions in the Green Party) Sunday-Friday at 6 PM at the occupation site in front of the Federal Reserve Building downtown. All are welcome to participate, speak, and vote on Assembly proceedings.  On Saturdays, they plan to hold general assemblies at noon in Union Square.  Be sure to check the website for any updates.

Questionnaires posted for 9/13 candidate forum

The SF Green Party will host a candidate forum this Tuesday. 9/13--come ask questions to candidates in the races for Mayor, DA, and Sheriff.  The forum will take place from 6-8:45 pm at the Park Branch Library in the Haight.  The event is open to the public and all are invited!  We've already endorsed Terry Baum for Mayor, and a number of propositions, but we will also consider making ranked endorsements for all 3 contests.

Please read candidates' answers to our questionnaires in advance, so we don't ask them questions they've already answered on the record.  We received the following responses from candidates:

Mayoral candidates: Jeff Adachi, Cesar Ascarrunz, John Avalos, Paul Currier, Tony Hall, Phil Ting

DA candidate: David Onek

Sheriff candidates: Chris Cunnie, Ross Mirkarimi, Paul Miyamoto

3rd Party Needed to Save America

Social Security after ObamaJeffrey Sachs is a well-known economist, not considered to be especially radical.  But earlier this week, he told it like it is about the Obama administration:

There has been no change, but rather more of the same: the Wall-Street-owned Democratic Party as we have come to know it.

Sachs concludes:

America needs a third-party movement to break the hammerlock of the financial elites. Until that happens, the political class and the media conglomerates will continue to spew lies, American militarism will continue to destabilize a growing swath of the world, and the country will continue its economic decline.

The whole article is worth reading.

Van Back on Obama's Bus

Two years after the SF Green Party defended Van Jones when Obama threw him under the bus, Van is (sadly) up and shilling again for the latest corporate-funded makeover of the Democratic Party.  Georgia Green Party leader Bruce Dixon writes insightful analysis in the Black Agenda Report:

Rebuilding the Dream seems set to follow in MoveOn's footsteps. Jones has lots to say about budget cuts at home, but nothing to say about ending the $3 billion a week drain caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, and less than nothing about the bombing of black civilians in Libya and Somalia or brown ones in Pakistan.

Read the whole article here.

Cat Food Commission is Back

Social Security after ObamaGlenn Greenwald posted a really insightful article today about Obama's continuing attempts to kill off Social Security and Medicare.

While Pelosi and other liberal Democrats have immediately gone into damage control mode, Greenwald points out that although the liberal wing of the Democratic Party will make noise, they will ultimately fall in line, just like those congresspeople who flip-flopped on the mandatory health insurance bill after signing a pledge not to support it.

Greenwald effectively busts the myth of the "spineless Democrat:"

When I first began writing about politics in late 2005, the standard liberal blogosphere critique -- one I naively believed back then -- was that Democrats were capitulating so continuously to the Bush agenda because they "lacked spine" and were inept political strategists: i.e., they found those policies so very offensive but were simply unwilling or unable to resist them.  It became apparent to me that this was little more than a self-soothing conceit: Democrats continuously voted for Bush policies because they were either indifferent to their enactment or actively supported them, and were owned and controlled by the same factions as the GOP.

Greenwald also makes the point that the Democratosphere (e.g., MoveOn, Daily Kos, FDL) will also predictably fall in line after a token protest:

Similarly, those progressive commentators who are first and foremost Democratic loyalists -- who rose up in angry and effective unison (along with actual progressives) to prevent George Bush from privatizing Social Security in 2005 -- will mount no meaningful opposition out of fear of weakening the President's political prospects.

Their ability to neuter opposition to deeply regressive ideas has led other insightful bloggers to conclude that Democrats are worse than Republicans.  While Greenwald doesn't go that far, the results may, unfortunately, speak for themselves.

(We expressed some of the same thoughts in our 2010 Green Voter Guide as well, although not as eloquently as GG.)

Greens Celebrate Pride, Launch New Website!

Pride 2011Greens celebrated Pride and launched our new website on June 25!

In this picture, Terry Baum is collecting signatures to get on the ballot in front of the SF Green Party's booth at Pride, while several volunteers talk to voters.  We gathered hundreds of signatures for Terry and registered over 50 new Green Party members from around the state!

Thanks to the many volunteers who helped out this weekend, and also to those who designed and built our new website.