September, 06 2017, 11:45am EDT

Green Party To "Draft Bernie" Organizers Hoping To Launch A New Party: Go Green
"Why reinvent the wheel? Come home to the Green Party" say Greens as the People's Convergence conference begins in Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON
Green Party leaders are challenging organizers and voters convening in Washington, D.C., to discuss founding a new progressive party centered around Bernie Sanders to recognize that such a party already exists and to "Go Green."
The "People's Convergence" is meeting from September 8 through 10 at American University and will present a "Draft Bernie" petition to Sen. Bernie Sanders that asks him to lead a new People's Party.
"The Draft Bernie movement is right when they say that the two ruling parties have failed the American people and that 'We the People' need an alternative party. The new party must be committed to social and economic justice, peace, and the health of our planet. It must be a working people's party that rejects corporate money and influence. Greens have already established that party," said Darryl! L.C. Moch, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States.
"We invite the People's Convergence to come home to the Green Party," said Mr. Moch.
Greens plan to attend the People's Convergence and let participants know that the Green Party has FEC recognition, ballot status in most states, a grassroots base of voters and elected officials, and a strong platform.
"48,000 signatures on the Draft Bernie petition is a great display of support. Greens gathered far more and got them notarized for ballot access in 2016. Illinois Greens collected 53,000 signatures on paper petitions within 90 days. 110,000 people signed Jill Stein's online petition for Open Debates," said Michael Dennis, co-chair of the Green Party. Dr. Stein was the Green nominee in 2016.
"Bernie has said he's unwilling to be a 'spoiler'. Deadlines are approaching for ballot status in 2018, which is essential for preparing a party for participation in the 2020 national election. Saddled with these challenges -- and with a prospective candidate who'd probably withdraw rather than interfere with the next Democratic nominee's ability to win the White House -- it might be too late for a new People's Party to compete effectively in 2020," said Mr. Dennis.
Greens urged the People's Convergence to consider the following three points:
(1) Bernie Sanders isn't interested. He has said so repeatedly.
Mr. Sanders has ignored attempts by the Green Party to communicate with him over the years, including inquiries about his interest in running for president as a Green. His continuing rebuff of both the Green Party and the Draft Bernie movement indicate that he has no interest in overturning the two-party status quo.
If Mr. Sanders changes his mind in 2018 or 2019, it'll be too late for the Draft Bernie timeline's plan for a campaign with 50-state ballot access.
(2) Why reinvent the wheel? The Green Party already exists, has a strong progressive platform and FEC recognition, has experience and expertise in party organizing, and is established in most states. Greens have won hundreds of local elected races and hold "campaign schools" to help Green candidates win elections.
"It takes years to win ballot access across the country and it's equally difficult to maintain ballot status in many states. Greens have already accomplished the hard groundwork. It's naive to believe that a new party will avoid the internal and external obstacles, including the inevitable controversies and temporary setbacks that are part of organizing, that the Green Party has already weathered," said Jody Grage, secretary of the Green Party and co-chair of the party's Ballot Access Committee.
(3) New parties centered around a single national figure are short-lived, as the history of third parties from Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party to H. Ross Perot's Reform Party has shown.
"You don't sustain a national party on charismatic leaders who run for the White House," said Adrian Boutureira, who serves as national political organizer for the Green Party. "You build a party's foundation at the grassroots level, with state and local parties that run candidates for state and local office and with local political activism. Presidential campaigns are a necessary part of that effort, but any party that makes involvement in the presidential election spectacle the measure of its success is doomed to fail."
The Green Party's presidential candidates help state Green Parties achieve and maintain ballot access, which is necessary for down-ticket candidates to compete with Democrats and Republicans. Some states require national candidates on the ballot for a party to be recognized. Green presidential candidates also promote Green ideas and solutions in front of a national audience.
Greens have won races for local office even when Green presidential contenders have drawn very small percentages on Election Day, assuring permanence for the party as it grows nationally. At least 136 Greens currently hold elected office in 18 states. In 2016, Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka were on the ballot in 45 states, with three more states giving them write-in status.
"A new party's presidential candidate will face all the same barriers that our Green nominees have dealt with, beginning with ballot access laws designed by Democratic and Republican state legislators to hinder alternative parties. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the two major parties, will bar Bernie Sanders from the post-convention debates," said Green Party co-chair Gloria Mattera.
"If he runs a well-organized campaign, Bernie will face the Democrats' penchant for smearing anyone who doesn't back their frontrunner. Jill Stein has been the target of evidence-free McCarthyite allegations by some Dems who want to link her campaign with Vladimir Putin. Bernie himself came under fire merely for competing with Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination -- which turned out to be rigged against him by the DNC," said Ms. Mattera.
"Here in Colorado, many former Sanders supporters are now enthusiastically involved in our state Green Party, holding leadership roles and building locals. They've moved beyond the need to draft Bernie," said Andrea Merida Cuellar, co-chair of the Green Party of Colorado and co-chair of the national party.
Greens are also wondering how a new Sanders-based party would handle their leader's retreats from progressivism, especially on foreign policy and military spending. Mr. Sanders has faced criticism recently for incorporating copays into his Single-Payer national health care legislation.
See also:
"Thoughts on why a stand-alone DraftBernie strategy doesn't make sense even if one really did want to DraftBernie"
Michael Dennis, Green Party steering committee member
The People's Convergence Conference
Green Party: Hurricane Harvey is the latest alarm bell on climate change
Press release: Green Party of the United States, August 31, 2017
Videos from the Green Party's 2017 Annual National Meeting in Newark, N.J., July 13-16:
Press conferences, plenary speeches, and more
The Green Party of the United States is a grassroots national party. We're the party for "We The People," the health of our planet, and future generations instead of the One Percent.
(202) 319-7191LATEST NEWS
'Yes, You Are,' Tlaib Tells Lawmaker Who Said Republicans Aren't 'Little Bitches' Doing Trump's Bidding
"This budget betrayal is the largest cut to Medicaid and food assistance in history to give billionaires a tax break," said the Michigan Democrat.
Jul 02, 2025
Progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday clapped back at one of her Republican colleagues who suggested that the GOP effort to pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill this week isn't in response to a directive from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has set a July 4 deadline.
“The president of the United States didn't give us an assignment. We're not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites," Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) told journalists near the back entrance to the House of Representatives chamber, according toPunchbowl News' Kenzie Nguyen.
Responding to Van Orden's claims on the social media platform X, Tlaib (D-Mich.) simply said, "Yes, he did, and yes, you are."
The Michigan Democrat also released a video explaining to constituents why she is voting "hell no" on the package, which would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and strip an estimated 17 million Americans of their health insurance over the next decade while giving trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the ultrarich and corporations.
Tlaib wasn't the only House Democrat to notice the Republican's remarks. A fellow Wisconsinite, Congressman Mark Pocan, asked his followers on X, "Do you think Derrick Van Orden is right... that Congress is not a bunch of 'little bitches'?"
According toPolitico's Samuel Benson and Mike DeBonis, Van Orden's comment came in the context of confirming he would vote for the budget reconciliation package, despite some critiques. The congressman reportedly said: "So this bill will pass. Am I happy about everything? No, but there's a difference between compromise and capitulation. We're not capitulating. We're compromising."
His remarks to reporters, and the backlash, came as the House considered a version of the megabill passed by the Senate on Tuesday, with help from Vice President JD Vance. GOP leaders in the lower chamber are struggling to get it past a procedural hurdle due to opposition from Republican fiscal hawks—plus all Democrats, who oppose steep cuts to the social safety net.
To protest the Republican effort to send the bill to Trump's desk by Independence Day, House Democrats on Wednesday formed a procedural conga line offering an amendment that would block cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
Multiple Democrats also took to the House floor to rail against the package, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who declared that "this bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt, it militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people. For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires the greedy taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it, and we will not support it."
"You should be ashamed," Ocasio-Cortez told the chamber's Republicans.
As Common Dreamsreported earlier Wednesday, progressives outside of Congress are also working to block the bill. Advocacy organizations, including Indivisible, are urging Americans to call and email House Republicans and pressure them to oppose the package. The phone number for the House switchboard is 202-224-3121.
Keep ReadingShow Less
All Likud Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex Entire West Bank This Month
The 15 ministers said that Israel's "strategic partnership, backing, and support of the U.S. and President Donald Trump" make this a "propitious time" to formally steal most of Palestine.
Jul 02, 2025
All 15 Israeli government members representing Likud on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who leads the right-wing party—to annex the entire West Bank of Palestine before the end of the Knesset's summer session on July 27, citing support from U.S. President Donald Trump.
The ministers, along with Likud Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, sent a letter to Netanyahu asserting that "this is the time to approve in government a decision to apply sovereignty" over Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem.
"Following the state of Israel's historic achievements in the face of Iran's Axis of Evil and its sympathizers, the task must be completed and the existential threat from within must be eliminated, to prevent another massacre in the heart of the country," the letter argues, referring to the recent 12-day war between Israel and Iran, in which the United States intervened by bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
"The strategic partnership, backing, and support of the U.S. and President Donald Trump have made it a propitious time to move forward with it now, and ensure Israel's security for generations," the ministers said. "The October 7 massacre proved that the doctrine of settlement blocs and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the remaining territory is an existential danger to Israel. It's time for sovereignty."
Asked during a Wednesday press briefing for reaction on the ministers' call to annex the West Bank, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce replied, "I think that is specifically something that the White House would be able to answer for you, but I also know that our position regarding Israel... is that we stand with Israel and its decisions and how it views its own internal security."
Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, D.C. next week to meet with Trump, despite an International Criminal Court warrant for the Israeli leader's arrest for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and forced starvation.
I asked State Dept spox Bruce about Israeli minister’s call to annex the occupied West Bank — she referred me to the WH, saying the US "stand with Israel and its decisions.”
I followed up asking if the two-state solution remains US policy, she said Trump is “realistic… Gaza is… pic.twitter.com/GdtN0tTDdy
— Rabia İclal Turan (@iclalturan) July 2, 2025
Palestinians and their defenders warned during the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle that a victoriousTrump might lift the few guardrails the Biden administration had placed on Israel and unleash Netanyahu to seize all of Palestine. The goal of Israel's far right is expansion of Israeli territory to include what proponents call "Greater Israel," which is based on biblical boundaries that stretched from Africa to Turkey to Mesopotamia.
Netanyahu has repeatedly displayed maps showing the Middle East without Palestine, all of whose territory is shown as part of Israel. However, annexation had previously been most closely associated with far-right figures outside Likud like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of Jewish Power.
Following Trump's reelection last November, Smotrich said that "the year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
"The only way to remove the threat of a Palestinian state from the agenda is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria," he continued. "I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move."
Smotrich praised Wednesday's letter, declaring he'll be ready to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank as soon as Netanyahu "gives the order," according toThe Times of Israel.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin, one of the Likud members who signed the letter, said Wednesday: "I think that this period, beyond the current issues, is a time of historic opportunity that we must not miss. The time for sovereignty has come, the time to apply sovereignty. My position on this matter is firm, it is clear."
Israel occupied the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel eventually withdrew from the Sinai but unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 while keeping control of the rest of the West Bank and Golan Heights. Although Israel dismantled settlements and withdrew troops from Gaza in 2005, it is still considered an occupier under international law and its conduct during the current invasion, bombardment, and siege of the coastal enclave is the subject of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case.
Since 1967, Israel has steadily seized more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while building and expanding Jewish-only settlements there. Settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to around 770,000 today. Settlers often attack Palestinians and their property, including in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. In recent weeks, Israeli settlers have attacked Israel Defense Forces soldiers they view as standing in their way and Palestinians alike in the West Bank.
From 1978 until new guidelines were announced by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the first Trump administration, the U.S. State Department also considered Israel's settlements to be "inconsistent with international law."
In July 2024, the ICJ found Israel's occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The tribunal also said that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an "occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed upward of 950 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 2023, including at least 200 children, while wounding thousands more, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Will Organize Those People,' Anti-Poverty Crusader William Barber Says of Millions Set to Lose Medicaid
"They will not kill us and our communities without a fight."
Jul 02, 2025
Armed with 51 caskets and a new federal analysis, faith leaders and people who would be directly impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill got arrested protesting in Washington, D.C. this week and pledged to organize the millions of Americans set to lose their health insurance under the package.
Citing Capitol Police, The Hill reported Monday that "a total of 38 protestors were arrested, including 24 detained at the intersection of First and East Capitol streets northeast and another 14 arrested in the Capitol Rotunda. Those taken into custody were charged with crowding, obstructing, and incommoding."
The "Moral Monday" action was organized because of the "dangerous and deadly cuts" in the budget reconciliation package, which U.S. Senate Republicans—with help from Vice President JD Vance—sent to the House of Representatives Tuesday and which the lower chamber took up for consideration Wednesday.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the megabill would result in an estimated 17 million Americans becoming uninsured over the next decade: 11.8 million due to the Medicaid cuts, 4.2 million people due to expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, and another 1 million due to other policies.
"This is policy violence. This is policy murder," Bishop William Barber said at Monday's action, which began outside the U.S. Supreme Court followed by a march to the Capitol. "That's why we brought these caskets today—because in the first year of this bill, as it is, the estimates are that 51,000 people will die."
"If you know that, and still pass it, that's not a mistake," added Barber, noting that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—one of three Republican senators who ultimately opposed the bill—had said before the vote that his party was making a mistake on healthcare.
Moral Mondays originated in Tillis' state a dozen years ago, to protest North Carolina Republicans' state-level policymaking, led by Barber, who is not only a bishop but also president of the organization Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
This past Monday, Barber vowed that if federal lawmakers kick millions of Americans off their healthcare with this megabill, "we will organize those people," according to Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In partnership with IPS and the Economic Policy Institute, Repairers of the Breach on Monday published The High Moral Stakes of Budget Reconciliation fact sheet, which examines the version of the budget bill previously passed by the House. The document highlights cuts to health coverage, funding for rural hospitals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The fact sheet also points out that while slashing programs for the poor, the bill would give tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations, plus billions of dollars to the Pentagon and Trump's mass deportation effort.
"Instead of inflicting policy violence on the most vulnerable, Congress should harness America's abundant wealth to create a moral economy that works for all of us," the publication asserts. "By fairly taxing the wealthy and big corporations, reducing our bloated military budget, and demilitarizing immigration policy, we could free up more than enough public funds to ensure we can all survive and thrive."
"As our country approaches its 250th anniversary," it concludes, "we have no excuse for not investing our national resources in ways that reflect our Constitutional values: to establish justice, domestic tranquility, real security, and the general welfare for all."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular