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Friend--
Working toward a future where
people and planet are valued, and our government represents all
of us.
August
2022
PA Nonviolent Direct Action to
Stop Climate Change
On the weekend of June 11-13, the
PA Climate Convergence demonstrated outside the PA Capitol in
Harrisburg. Representatives of 77 organizations called for urgent
legislative and administrative action on climate . . . . On Monday,
June 13, demonstrators presented the PA Governor and General Assembly
with a petition signed by 6,000 citizens demanding that the government
STOP:
- Subsidizing fossil fuel production;
- Ignoring hazards to communities from fossil fuel production;
- Prioritizing jobs in a dying industry rather than training for a
new generation of jobs in clean, renewable energy; and
- Talking about cutting greenhouse gas emissions while ramping up
fracked-gas extraction, production and pipelines.
While those concerned citizens were
lobbying for their environmental rights, which are guaranteed by the
PA Constitution, a smaller group concerned about the environment and
government corruption took direct action to impress the PA General
Assembly with the need for urgent attention to the climate. Below is
the account of one of the ten demonstrators who were arrested because
-- rather than hear the truth -- the PA Legislature chose to arrest
people.
By Michael Bagdes-Canning, Green Party Candidate for PA Lt.
Governor
Monday began with training at 10
am, a healthy mix of the principles of nonviolent direct action and
rehearsing the scenarios. The first action team headed out at 12:55
pm, followed by the non-arrestable team at 1 pm. The first team headed
to the office of Senator Gene Yaw (R-District 23).
Our issue with Yaw was his conflict
of interests. Yaw is handsomely paid as a FULL TIME legislator, but
more to the point, Yaw is chair of the Senate Environmental Resources
and Energy Committee. In that role, he oversees legislation that
impacts the oil and gas industry. Unfittingly, Yaw is also a lawyer
with a firm in Williamsport which says on its website, “With top-to-bottom knowledge of the energy
industry, our attorneys work with the gas companies to advise on all
legal aspects of development and operation.” Moreover, Yaw's top ten donors to his
campaign include eight oil and gas related entities. Because PA allows
gifts to legislators and most of those gifts go unreported, we have no
idea how much money Yaw is raking in from the oil and gas
industry.
The police recognized members of
the first action team, but the team was able to get up to Senator Gene
Yaw's office. When the eight of us went inside this office, we were
told that the Senator wasn't in, that he was already at work in the
Senate. But . . . but . . . but . . . our people on the outside saw
him SPRINTING out of the office when he found out we were there to see
him. Better still, his staff insisted that outside jobs, campaign
contributions, and gifts weren't bribes -- and then they called to
have us arrested . . . . Everybody got out of police custody within an
hour and received summary citations for criminal trespass. These are
the equivalent of traffic tickets.
Our second action team left at 2 pm
. . . . As it turned out, the second action had 11 people willing to
risk arrest while visiting the House chambers. The plan was to “bribe”
the legislators and drop a banner. The money droppers tossed money
over the side, but the banner droppers were unable to unfurl the
banner because of a very quick police response. One of the banner
droppers was Christina “PK” DiGiulio, the Green Party Candidate for PA
Governor. The “bribers” rained
down $203 of real money ($1 for each PA Representative) which had
"BRIBE" or another appropriate message written on it. Their banner read “You Take Bribes, The
Planet Dies.” Unfortunately, the Capitol Police ripped the banner out
of the team’s hands before it fully unfurled. Only two of the 11 were
arrested, issued summary citations, and then released fairly quickly,
while the police issued a simple warning to the other nine to not come
back again within 24 hours.
I would be remiss if I didn't
mention that another, allied group acted boldly throughout the
weekend. Our spirits were lifted with the fruits of their bold action
-- banners were hung from bridges, billboards and fences. They, too,
were giving voice to the urgency of the moment and, in the end, many
of them joined us for the actions described above. Coupled with the
powerful panels, art, marches, projections, and training that made up
the PA Climate Convergence, a powerful message was sent.
There are many tools in the
activist toolbox. Nonviolent direct action is an essential one. This
was a beautiful example of moral-fusion organizing, and together with
our allies we brought out 50 people on a Monday to a nonviolent direct
action. United under the banner
of a new group, Pennsylvanians for Action on Climate (PAC), they
promise to come back again and again until our demands for climate
action and an end to corruption are met.
We put a spotlight on the
intersection of fossil-fueled climate catastrophe and the catastrophic
consequences of money corrupting our politics. Participating with us
were Beyond Extreme Energy, Green Party of Pennsylvania, Marcellus Outreach Butler, March On Harrisburg, Occupy Biden, Ohio Valley Environmental Resistance, Veterans For Peace, XR
Philly, XR Delaware, and others. We successfully made some very
corrupt people think about their corruption, and we also made some of
our friends inside the Capitol feel emboldened . . . .
PA Green News
By Chris Robinson
PA Green Party
Face2Face Meeting of Delegates
On Saturday, September 11, the Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA)
will hold a live meeting in Centre County, PA. This will be the
second, consecutive face2face meeting of state-wide delegates.
Everyone is welcome to attend. The meeting will be hosted by the Green
Party of Centre County, https://www.facebook.com/centrecountygreenparty/, at St. John's Lutheran Church in
Bellefonte, PA. Registration for this event is now open. more
PA Green Party Candidate on
“Boomers & Stickers”
By Michael Bagdes-Canning, Green Party Candidate for
PA Lt. Governor
When I
received the Green Party of PA (GPPA, www.gpofpa.org) endorsement to be their candidate for
Lieutenant Governor, I spent some time thinking about how my life has
changed in the last 40 years and how much I have learned. When my
wife, Karen, and I moved into our homeplace 40 years ago, seven acres
were scarred by an active strip mine. The house had suffered from
years of neglect. The Butler, PA, economy, too, was in tatters: jobs
had been extracted to warmer climes and the exodus of young people had
already begun . . . .
I could
go on and on. In the almost 40 years that I’ve lived in PA, I’ve
watched it hemorrhage jobs and young people. It’s time for that to
end. Our communities are fractured; many of us don't even know our
neighbors, and fewer of us make decisions based on neighborliness
because we don’t have the time. Decisions made by our “leaders”� have
robbed us of community.
Novelist
and environmentalist Wallace Stegner (1909 -- 1993) separated
Americans into two camps: Boomers and Stickers. Boomers (and here he
was not talking about the generation I am part of)
are “those who pillage and run” and want “to make a killing and end up
on Easy Street.” Stickers are “motivated by affection, by such a love
for place and its life that they want to preserve it and remain in
it.”� When I reflect on my life in Pennsylvania, this rings true. Our
legislators have empowered Boomers and punished Stickers. Rather than
rewarding those who cherish their neighbors and the place they live,
they have incentivized extraction of wealth – leaving most
Pennsylvanians struggling and places like Cherry Valley neglected,
impoverished, and shrinking.
For too
long our “leaders”� have promised us the world, only to sell it to the
highest corporate bidder. The corruption of our politicians has been
the millstone around the neck of our once thriving working class
communities. The jobs we have lost are gone, but the grit and love of
place are still here. We Stickers are anxious to build back what is
lost . . . .
Instead
of enriching Wall Street, it’s time to invest in Main St. It’s time to
empower Stickers and to boot the Boomers. We can create a new
generation of high-quality jobs by investing in a Green New Deal that
restores the damage done by extractive Boomer� industry and prepares
our home for the future. It would also provide for an economy where
our young people can stay and raise their families. I believe PA can
be a place where every person can live a dignified life: where every
person who is able to work can work, where every person can
comfortably afford the basic provisions they need to survive, and
where we exist harmoniously with the land we live and rely
on.
If you would like to join Michael
Bagdes-Canning’s campaign for PA Lt. Governor, please contact
724-431-8560 and [email protected]
PA Greens at Festival of the
Arts
Green Party members from Allegheny and
Centre Counties met at the Central PA Festival of the Arts in State
College, PA, on July 16. They gathered voters’ signatures on the Green
Party nomination papers to place three candidates on the General
Election ballot. more
#Reparations on GPOAC Facebook
We commit to full and complete
#Reparations to the African American community of this nation for
the past 400+ years of genocide, slavery, land-loss, destruction of
original identity and the stark disparities which haunt the present
evidenced in unemployment statistics, substandard and inadequate
education, higher levels of mortality including infant and maternal
mortality and the practice of mass incarceration. We recognize that
reparations are a debt (not charity) that is owed by our own and other
nations and by the corporate institutions chartered under our laws to
a collective of people. We believe that the leadership on the question
of what our nation owes to this process of right ought to come from
the African American community, whose right to self-determination and
autonomy to chart the path to healing we fully recognize . . . .
We understand that until significant
steps are taken to reverse the ongoing abuses; to end the
criminalization of the Black and Brown communities, to eradicate
poverty, to invest in education, health care and the restoration and
protection of human rights, that it will be impossible to repair the
continuing damage wrought by the ideology of white supremacy which
permeates the governing institutions of our nation. more
Campaign Updates
Is the PA Nomination
Campaign Too Little Too Late?
By Chris Robinson
It was delightful to see the last-minute
activity by Green Party members to get their state-wide candidates on
the ballot. Faced with a deadline to submit nomination papers no later
than August 1, other Greens began to follow the lead of Pittsburgh’s
Greens (GPOAC) in gathering voter’s signatures. At press time, GPOAC
was still carrying the load, and there was no way to tell if other
Greens would become active enough to save the day.
In 2000, “Barenaked Ladies” sang:
“I
could be good, and I would
If I knew I was understood.
And it'll be great, just wait,
Or is
it too little too late?”
Wiser folk had offered the Green Party
useful advice. “Gathering signatures in April and May is more
comfortable than doing it in June and July,” suggested one experienced
campaigner. “Harvesting 10 signatures/week over five weeks is easier
than collecting 50 signatures on the last day,” another had pointed
out.
When asked what advice he would give
to a Green Party candidate running for office in 2022, Michael
Bagdes-Canning, the Green Party’s candidate for PA Lt. Governor, told
the press in December 2020, “No matter what, I would recommend
starting right now. Start reaching out to the people you need to staff
your campaign. Start raising awareness. Build your network. Build
enthusiasm. Identify important people. Do not wait.”
Please read the September issue of GREEN
STAR to find out if the campaign to get Green Party candidates on the
ballot was successful, or if the effort was too little too late.
National Green News
Edited by Noah Alter
Green Party
Denounces Supreme Court for Siding with Corporate Polluters in Climate
Fight
On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court
delivered yet another blow to the hope of progress, namely our
struggle against the ever-looming peril of climate change. This
shocking, unwarranted ruling has caught the attention of many, who are
rightfully horrified at the probable outcome of further enabling
corporate polluters. Following West Virginia v. EPA, where the Supreme
Court ruled 6-3, siding with coal and other polluters against the
regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, Dylan Parsons, Green candidate
for West Virginia House of Delegates said, “The Supreme Court has been
captured by far-right ideologues who think nothing of overturning a
long-standing legal precedent in order to impose their minority
viewpoints on the rest of society.”
Immediately following the ruling, Greens
across the country reaffirmed their demand for President Biden and the
Democrats to declare and immediately act upon the climate emergency.
Additionally, Greens demanded that Biden take executive action to lead
a swift transition to a clean energy system that offers us a chance of
survival for our and future generations. The implementation of the
Green New Deal in the U.S. would create 20 million jobs by
transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030. This would be
done by investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture,
conservation, and restoration of critical infrastructure, including
our ecosystems.
The Green Party's platform calls for an
emergency Green New Deal to turn the tide on climate change, revive
the economy, and make oil wars obsolete. It’s beyond time that we, as
a country, take the impending catastrophic climate emergency seriously
and put our future and the future of our children first. more
Global Green News
Edited by Hal Brown
Greens in Europe demand action to Fight
Wildfires
Spain, Portugal, and France
are facing fierce wildfires. These countries are experiencing
continuous heat waves as well as hundreds of deaths due to the
record-breaking temperatures. . . . European Green Parties are worried
about the unprecedented number of heat-related casualties.(As high as
45.7C, 114F, in Spain). more
Kenya Presidential
Election: Green Congress Party endorsement
General elections in
Kenya are scheduled for August 9. Voters will elect the President,
members of the National Assembly and Senate, county governors and
members of the 47 county assemblies. The Green Congress of Kenya party
has indicated that it will field candidates to compete for all
elective positions across the country except for the presidency as it
hopes to have meaningful representation in the various seats available
under the constitution. more
A Green Perspective on
Crypto-Currency
Greens in the European Parliament support legislation to
impose order on the world of decentralized finance, especially
cryptocurrency, which is seen by many as a digital “wild west”.
Cryptocurrency transactions involve no central banking authority, are
supported by no government, and assets can be bought and sold
anonymously. . . .
The European Parliament has recently agreed on new measures
known as the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA). Expected to
become law at the end of 2023, these measures would impose new
identity checks to combat money laundering, controls to prevent market
manipulation and abuse, and also disclosure of energy consumption.
This would be the first comprehensive regime governing crypto assets
and a significant benchmark for consideration in other jurisdictions,
like the US and the UK. . . . more
GPPA Meeting Dates:
All State Web Conferences will be
from 12 noon to 4:00pm
- Saturday, September 10, 2022 in Bellafonte, PA
- Sunday, November 13, 2022
Green Party of Pennsylvania
Communications Team Issue Credits
EDITORS: Noah Alter, Hal Brown and Chris
Robinson
CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Bagdes-Canning,
Barenaked Ladies, Chris Robinson and Wallace
Stegner
LAYOUT: Hal Brown, Sheri Miller and David
Ochmanowicz
GRAPHIC ARTS: Kevin
Richardson
Green Party of Pennsylvania
http://www.gpofpa.org/
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