Civil Rights

Civil Rights, Death Penalty, Green Party, New York, Race, Social Justice November 7, 2017

3 years at Rikers Island pushed his brother to suicide. Now he’s running for mayor to shut it down.

circa By Reed Dunlea November 7, 2017 On June 16, 2015, Akeem Browder lost his younger brother. Kalief Browder was arrested in the Bronx in 2010, when he was 16 years old. He was accused of stealing a backpack that contained cash, a credit card, a camera and an iPod. For the next three years, Kalief was locked up at Rikers Island, a 400-acre jail complex in the East River between Queens and the Bronx. Approximately 10,000 inmates sit on Rikers every day; most have not been convicted of a crime, but are awaiting trial. Kalief was routinely beaten by…

Civil Rights, Green Party, Health Care Reform, Racial Equality, Single Payer, Social Justice, State Politics October 11, 2017

Notes on a Green Gubernatorial Campaign

Grounded in a ‘Last Are First’ Worldview By Seth Kaper-Dale (adapted from an article appearing in the Summer/Fall 2017 issue of Green Horizon Magazine) I’m running for Governor of New Jersey on the Green Party ticket and I’m running to win. Here’s my story. My wife and I have been co-pastors of a church in Highland Park, NJ since 2001. When we arrived, our church had 35 members. Today it has grown to approximately 500 congregants. We have also gone from being a primarily white congregation to being a congregation that has over 50 nationalities represented through first generation immigrants…

Civil Rights, Green Party, Race, Social Justice October 5, 2017

Any White Cop Can Kill a Black Man at Any Time

by Don Fitz And the cop will not go to jail. This is what has sparked protests by thousands in St. Louis from September 15 through today (September 21). In 2011, St. Louis cop Jason Stockley fired 5-7 shots at Anthony Lamar Smith, killing him. Stockley claimed that Smith was selling drugs and chased him at high speed and shot him to defend himself. The story was briefly reported as another drug deal gone bad, and it was just incidental that the cop was white and the victim was black. But the case turned out to be a lot more…

Civil Rights, Democracy, International, Social Justice April 9, 2017

An inalienable right that can not be renounced

By Hector Lopez Independence is an inalienable right, which means that it is a right that cannot be renounced. The Declaration of Independence inspires not only U.S. people but everybody in the world, including Puerto Rican patriots, who take it very seriously, to the point that many have given their freedom and their lives for the cause of our independence. Elections held under military occupation are undemocratic and illegitimate. The United States is a signatory to both these documents and is in violation of them in regards to Puerto Rico and in regards to Iraq, for example, and in many…

Civil Rights, Democracy, Green Party, Racial Equality February 9, 2017

The Case for Sanctuary Cities

Green Party of the Pikes Peak Region I. The concept of sanctuary cities is rooted in the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980’s where churches spearheaded efforts to provide refuge to Central Americans fleeing civil wars in their home countries. We seek to uphold this spirit and reaffirm immigrant and human rights in face of repressive immigration proposals that threaten to separate families and destabilize our diverse communities. II. Immigrants’ rights are human rights: In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which, for the first time, codified the basic human rights of…