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Former Georgia Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is seriously eyeing a run for president on the Green Party ticket - and local and state Greens are enthusiastically rooting for her.

About 30 activists gathered at the Ronan Street home of Charlie Pillsbury, who represents Connecticut in the national Green Party structure. They came to help McKinney retire the $50,000 debt from her 2006 campaign (in which she was unseated in Georgia's open primary, which lets voters cross party lines) so she can focus on an even bigger race. They also came out to support Green mayoral candidate Ralph Ferrucci (pictured).

McKinney has been vilified by her political opponents and the major media since she arrived in Congress in 1992, and became an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention abroad, specifically the war in Iraq. She also questioned the Bush administration's actions leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11 - a line of questioning that was misrepresented by the Republicans (and parroted by some powerful media outlets) as accusing Bush of knowing about the terror attack in advance. That helped lead to her defeat in 2002. She was re-elected in 2004 and defeated again last year, partly as a result of unflattering reports of an altercation with a security guard in Congress, which she also claims misrepresented the facts. She was also portrayed as anti-Jewish by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, for her criticism of Israel.