Author Archives: GPSCC

Millions can “SAFELY” vote for Jill Stein!

First published July 3, 2024 by Laura Wells

Yes, you and millions of people in the United States — who oppose death and destruction, and who want real policies that help people and benefit the planet and peace — can safely vote for Jill Stein in November, and have NO WORRIES that your votes will help a candidate you oppose! 

Here’s what Ralph Nader said in his book, Crashing the Party. It’s found in the chapter “The Super Rallies” which describes how Nader’s presidential campaign in 2000 filled Madison Square Garden and other arenas around the country, though media like this New York Times article buried the story on inside pages. Nader wrote:

“One woman, Carol Herwitz of Fall River, hit the perfect electoral note
that we hoped – in vain as it turned out –  millions of people would do also, 
when she said, ‘I like Ralph Nader a lot, I like what he stands for.
I don’t want to see the world run by corporations.
I think if it seems clear that Al Gore will take Massachusetts,
I’ll vote for Ralph Nader.’
There were forty states where either Gore or Bush was the foregone victor.
But few voters thought like Ms. Herwitz.” 

To this day the made-up “spoiler” argument has continued to damage the hopes of a majority of people who want more than two big, deteriorating, corporate-and-billionaire funded political parties. Please tell me if you have changed your mind about the “Nader spoiler” issue. It will give me hope! “Spoiler” has proven to be a major piece of party propaganda that is at the level of Trump and Biden shamelessly declaring Cuba a “State Sponsor of Terrorism.” 

A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for … Jill Stein! And for the values of people, planet and peace. Even if you disagree with the idea that you should always vote for the best candidate no matter what, still, especially in the states that are not “swing states” — red or blue — millions of people can vote for Jill Stein. In California, for example, whether a person votes for Jill Stein or even for Trump, 100% of California’s votes, in the form of electoral college votes, will go to one candidate, and the likelihood is overwhelming that they will go to the Democrat.

In all three presidential years, 2012,  2016, and 2020, in California two million voters could have “safely” voted for people, planet and peace — rather than war and Wall Street — by casting their votes for the Green Party candidate. The Democratic candidate still would have received all of California’s electoral college votes. 

A vote for the “lesser of two evils” weakens the movement toward a better multi-party democracy that is more responsive to voters’ wishes. Over the years lesser-evil voting has enabled the two parties to keep getting worse, more aligned with the super rich billionaires and corporations than with the rest of us. On the other hand, when you vote for Jill Stein, you as an individual strengthen the movement toward the multi-party Proportional Representation system that more than 90 countries in the world already have. (To join the movement in California, see Pro-Rep Coalition.)

The United States is the richest country the world has ever known. Why does the US lack basic benefits that other nations provide? Especially other wealthy, industrialized nations (even others not as wealthy!) provide healthcare, free higher education, better mass transit, available housing, and the list goes on. The two parties and their candidates are unfortunately too easily bought out by big money, and those corporations and billionaires become their bosses. The number of votes Jill Stein receives across the country matters greatly.

Consider casting your vote for Jill Stein, to move us toward a better democracy, and a better world. 

Related to Nader in 2000, to me the strongest argument against that oft-repeated “spoiler” charge is that the 2000 recount in Florida was showing that Gore would likely win the state (even more likely if Gore had fought on behalf of the huge number of Florida voters designated falsely as “felons” and prevented from even casting their votes). However, the Supreme Court took over, stopped the recount, and decided with a 5-4 vote along ideological lines that Bush would take the presidency. 

GPSCC Endorses Dr. Jill Stein for Green Party Presidential Nomination in 2024

November 17, 2023 – The Green Party of Santa Clara County has enthusiastically endorsed Dr. Jill Stein for Green Party Presidential Nomination in 2024, and we are proud to support her campaign.

Jill launched her 2024 presidential bid as a Green Party candidate on November 9th, a few weeks after Dr. Cornel West announced he was switching from running for president as a Green to running as an independent.

Dr. Jill Stein is well known to Santa Clara County Greens who supported her presidential run in both 2012 and 2016 and widely supported her campaigns that championed the Green New Deal, addressing income inequity, reducing the war budget, canceling student debt, universal healthcare, and strengthening social safety nets.

As a committed Green, Jill has been a strong voice in growing the Green Party by highlighting the role of Greens in challenging empire and demanding that our government serve US, the people, and not the corporations that own our so-called representatives from the parties of war and Wall Street.

As a Harvard-educated doctor, a pioneering environmental health advocate, and an organizer for people, planet, and peace, Jill has helped lead initiatives to fight environmental racism and injustice, to promote healthy communities, and to revitalize democracy in her 30-year span of activism and political career.

Jill has also helped win victories in campaign finance reform, racially-just redistricting, and the clean-up of incinerators, coal plants, and other toxic threats. She was a principal organizer for the Global Climate Convergence for People, Planet, and Peace over Profit. She lead the “Secure Green Future” ballot initiative in Massachusetts to move subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy and to create green jobs. The measure won over 81 percent of the vote in the 11 districts in which it was on the ballot.

Please contact us if you are interested in supporting and campaigning for Jill Stein for President 2024.

GPSCC Withdraws its Endorsement of Dr. Cornel West for GP Presidential Nomination

October 26, 2023 – the membership of the Green Party of Santa Clara County made the decision to reverse their endorsement of Dr. Cornel West for the Green Party’s Presidential Nomination. The decision was a result of Dr. West announcing that he is no longer seeking the Green Party nomination for President of the United States and has decided to run as an independent candidate. By forgoing the Green Party’s nation wide Ballot Access infrastructure, Dr. West’s campaign has significantly diminished its potential impact on electoral politics in the 2024 election.

We wish Dr. West well and believe that his much-needed voice on the struggles of everyday people adds to the global movement of communities rising against oppression.

Previously published GPSCC Endorses Dr. Cornel West for the Green Party’s Presidential Nomination

August 1, 2023 – The Green Party of Santa Clara County has proudly endorsed Dr. Cornel West for the Green Party’s Presidential Nomination by unanimous consensus at our July General membership meeting.

Dr. Cornel West has been a political activist for over five decades and was the first Black person to earn a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University. He has held professorships at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Union Theological Seminary, and has received more than 20 honorary degrees and an American Book Award.

Dr. West has written 20 books and edited many more, and is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters. He has also produced three music albums, has collaborated and appeared on other albums, and has made appearances in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions movies.

His political views align quite naturally with the Green Party’s values: abolishing poverty, meeting the material needs of people, ending the climate catastrophe, dismantling the empire, and unleashing democracy here and abroad. 

Dr. West is a champion of poor and working class people, compassionate to those of other beliefs, and intent on uniting politically-diverse people through dialogue, understanding, and solidarity.

His campaign centered on truth, justice, and peace will fight the bipartisan corporate-fueled stranglehold on our democracy, strive to abolish systemic inequities that divide our communities, and reintroduce our country to the best of itself – the dignity, courage, and creativity of its precious everyday people.

We sincerely believe Dr. West’s candidacy with the Green Party will be a pivotal moment in the political landscape of our country, and we are honored to support his campaign for the Green Party’s presidential nomination. 

Please contact us if you are interested in joining our efforts in supporting Dr. West. 

(It’s Not Easy) Bein’ Green

Alex C., July 23, 2023 –

It’s been over 50 years since Kermit the Frog sang his lament Bein’ Green, expressing sadness about being plain, common and invisible. Being Green politically isn’t easy, either, but for quite the opposite reason. We stick out like a sore thumb, albeit a green one, on the landscape of American politics. And we’re not the only ones. As of last year’s stats, the  Libertarian Party has about three times the number of registered voters as us Greens do. And the two-party duopoly do their same old “better us than them” song and dance, invoking their derogatory blanket term third parties. After all, how many “thirds” are they referring to, as if we’re all the same?

Yes, we already know the tune because it’s the same tune every election. The Democratic Party will try to vilify us for voting our conscience, disregarding our fundamental disagreements about climate change response, prison reform, education privatization, immigration, wars and military intervention, healthcare, campaign funding, foreign policy, tax structure, ballot access, proportional representation, redistricting, and other mere details. In their corrupt sense of democracy, the Democratic Party views these differences as not being important enough for us to refuse to support them, playing the “lesser of two evils” card while moving further right to capture those fence-sitters in the middle. Meanwhile, the Republican Party hopes our values resonate with enough “woke extremists” to indirectly help them defeat their fellow neo-liberal  competitor.

And it’s easy to get distracted by the racist, homophobic, jingoist, bigoted and hateful rhetoric that almost exclusively comes from the political right – the de facto territory of the Republican Party. But the arrogance of the duopoly, continuously working together to keep American politics a two-player game, is similar to the mentality of Manifest Destiny. These two corporate-sponsored parties act as if they have a divine right to the entire American political landscape. No voting for our own President, no proportional representation, no campaign financing reform to stop the obvious corruption of big-money politics. They could easily change these antiquated undemocratic practices in a heartbeat. But they never will. They are content to fight over a small slice of voters in the middle in a handful of states, and continue to turn their backs on obvious reforms commonly accepted by other democracies worldwide. The best they can do is reach across the aisle to each other, while no one else has a seat in the room. This is their routine, their same old song and dance, and us “third parties” are the spoilers, the misfits, the outliers not fit for democracy, naive because we just don’t understand how things work.

But we understand exactly how things work, and we want to change all that. Eating away at their thin margin, at their right to dominate with their undemocratic rules and multinational corporate funding, is the only way to truly influence their behavior. And we can only achieve this in the aggregate, as a cohesive group of dissatisfied citizens, unwilling to bow to their claims on political power by voting for them, or supporting them in any way whatsoever.