Hello Friend,

We are pleased to present the agenda and our speakers for the 2021 Maryland Green Party Assembly, taking place this Saturday June 26.

REGISTER FOR ASSEMBLY

2021 State Assembly Agenda

1-1:10 p.m. Opening and Welcome

1:15-2:30 p.m. Opening Plenary: Solidarity and Pride 

2:40-3:45 p.m. Building the Party: Strategy and Tactics

3:45-4:30 p.m. Closing Rally: Green Socialists Organizing

4:30 p.m. Announcement of Election Results

As we celebrate Pride 2021, we are honored to welcome Laura Miles and Angela Walker as the keynote speakers for our Opening Plenary.

1:15-2:30 p.m. Opening Plenary: Solidarity and Pride 

Laura Miles is a former Senior Lecturer in social science, having taught for 35 years in colleges in West Yorkshire, in the UK. She is also a member of the University and College Union and served as a member of the union's National Executive Committee for a number of years, first as an LGBT rep and then as one of the union's Trustees. 

She is a long-standing socialist and LGBT activist, working to encourage employers to adopt trans-supportive policies and promoting trans rights in general. She is also a writer, contributing articles and reviews to various journals and publications. Most recently she was a co-author of the pamphlet Pride, Politics and Protest: A Revolutionary Guide to LGBT liberation, and in 2020 authored the book Transgender Resistance: Socialism and the fight for trans liberation.

Laura lives with her partner and dogs in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

Angela Walker is a socialist, born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a working class Black family.  Angela became a member of the Army Reserve in August 1992, and began classes at the Milwaukee Area Technical College in 1993, after the birth of her daughter. The need for extra income in college led Angela to take a job driving a school bus in 2001, and she left college to drive full time because she loved the work. 

In South Carolina, Angela worked as a substitute secondary education teacher. During the summer break of 2017, she began work as a dump truck driver which she continues to this day. 

Angela Walker is the mother of one, and the grandmother of five. She is a fierce advocate for the rights of Black, Brown and Indigenous people, the LGBTQIA community, Labor and the Earth itself. 

2:40-3:45 p.m. Building the Party: Strategy and Tactics

The Maryland Green Party is fortunate to have two leading Green strategists and organizers leading our workshop on how to help build our party. Join this important nuts and bolts discussion on best practices and challenges we face as Greens working to build a better world.

Andrea Mérida Cuéllar (she/ella) is a political organizer in Denver, CO. She was Denver's first Green in elected office, having served on the Denver Board of Education. She was elected three times as a National Co-Chair for the Green Party US, currently serves as a co-chair of the Green Party of Colorado, and was the campaign manager for the Howie Hawkins 2020 presidential campaign.

Chris Blankenhorn (he/him) is a political organizer and Montessori educator from Springfield, IL. Chris is a former National Co-Chair for the Green Party US (2016-2018), the Secretary of the Illinois Green Party, and served as the Social Media and Tech Director for the Howie Hawkins 2020 presidential campaign.

3:45-4:30 p.m. Closing Rally: Green Socialists Organizing

The Maryland Green Party is pleased to announce Howie Hawkins as our final speaker for our Assembly. 

Howie Hawkins (he/him) is one of the original Greens in the United States, having participated in the first national meeting to organize a US Green Party in St. Paul, Minnesota in August 1984. He ran with Angela Walker as the 2020 Presidential/VP candidates for the Green Party of the United States.

Howie has always been committed to independent working-class politics for a democratic, socialist, and ecological society. He supported the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968, the People’s Party in 1972 and 1976, and the Citizens Party in 1980. Since its first national meeting in 1984, Howie has been a Green Party organizer.

Outside of electoral politics, Howie has been a constant organizer in peace, justice, union, and environmental campaigns.

Howie became active in the Civil Rights movement and against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area. Repelled by the racism and warmongering he saw in both major parties, he asked, “Where is my party?” When his draft number was called in 1972, Howie enlisted in the Marine Corps while continuing to organize against the Vietnam War. He remains a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War as well as a member of the American Legion Dunbar Post 1642 in Syracuse.

After studying at Dartmouth College, Howie worked in construction in New England in the 1970s and 1980s. He helped organize a worker cooperative that specialized in energy efficiency and solar and wind installations.

When the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs, A. Philip Randolph, Helen Keller, and Norman Thomas re-established itself as an independent party in 1973, Howie joined and remains a member. He is also a member of Solidarity, which promotes “socialism from below” and international solidarity because the fight for freedom against all dictators and imperialisms is worldwide and indivisible.

Howie was a co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was also a leader in the anti-apartheid divestment movement to end US corporate investment in the racist system of oppression and labor exploitation in South Africa.

Howie moved to Syracuse in 1991 to develop cooperatives for CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives that promoted cooperative ownership, democratic control, and ecological sustainability in the local economy.

We hope you plan to participate in this annual event!

Maryland Green Party
http://www.mdgreens.org/