Green Commons has an article posted which contains Michigan Green Sylvia Inwood’s Address to the State Nominating Convention in Shaftsburg MI on 8/5/06 Sylvia specifically speaks to the key value of non-violence and how, in the spectrum of world history, non-violence is a “radical” idea. She quotes Gandhi and gives some personal history. Her overlying message: The Green Party is the only Peace Party. Here are a couple of portions from her speech:
While there are specific local issues for each candidate to address, I believe it is important, in this election cycle, to see the big picture, to keep making the connection between the wars being waged here at home and those waged abroad. While our government ignores or punishes the working poor, the unemployed, women, children, the elderly and the dispossessed, Bush and his cronies are waging corporate imperialist wars throughout the planet. State and city funds are tithed yearly to the federal government. These are funds urgently needed in our state and in our cities and rural areas to repair school buildings, to provide textbooks, for healthcare, for transportation, to create jobs, to feed and house people. Instead our money is going to Washington to fund Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; to provide military aid to Israel so they can murder Lebanese civilians; and to pay for all the other dirty little wars and dirty big wars this government has its blood-stained hands in.
One way to work toward social change is to elect individuals to public office who truly speak for the people and who are committed to Green values. I urge all delegates here today to listen carefully to all those seeking nomination. Hear what they have to say, read their statements, consider their presence and choose the ones you think will best represent Green values and who will best be able to reach out beyond this small group assembled here to the great number of disaffected voters. We need to let Americans know they don’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils. There is an alternative.
It’s called the Green Party.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 