WILKES-BARRE – Luzerne County’s Green Party on Saturday nominated former six-term Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney as the party’s choice for president.

The vote of support came at the local party’s caucus, held at the Northeastern Pennsylvania Organizing Center on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre.

Times-Standard: So why the Green Party and why now?

McKinney: Why now is the obvious one: Because of the condition of our country, the failure of the Democrats -- particularly now that they are in the majority -- to even live up to the expectations of their voters, I won't say their campaign promises, but I will certainly say the expectations of their voters.

Of course, I do believe that in November of 2006 the American people went to the polls and voted, and they voted for peace. We don't have peace yet. I do believe that a significant chunk of the American people would also like to see justice in this country. The Sean Bell verdict is an example of many examples that are possible. Of course, the Mumia (Abu-Jamal) verdict is another example that we don't yet have justice in this country.

I believe in November 2006 the American people went to the polls and they voted for respect for our constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, and we don't yet have that either.

The American people expect health care, a single payer form of health care such as Medicare for all, and we don't have that either.

We desperately need a livable wage -- well, we haven't got that yet either. And, if the minimum wage had kept pace with CEO remuneration, according to United for a Fair Economy, the minimum wage would be $22 an hour. We don't have that yet either.

Ms. McKinney is a towering figure in the progressive community. She was the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Georgia, and served six terms before quitting the Democratic Party and joining the Green Party.

While in Congress, she introduced articles of impeachment against George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice. She has actively participated in international war crimes tribunals designed to bring the Bush-Cheney administration to justice. She also bucked the Democratic Party leadership and consistently voted against every regular and supplemental appropriation bill to fund the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

She co-sponsored legislation for universal health care, for a living wage, and for publicly funded elections. She voted to implement the Kyoto protocols to end global warming, to abolish the federal death penalty, to repeal NAFTA and to abolish the World Trade Organization.

The corporate media has refused to cover Cynthia McKinney's campaign for president. Perhaps it is because she has been such an outspoken voice for the people.

In Congress, Cynthia McKinney noted the similarity between the food aid packages and cluster bombs dropped by the U.S. on Afghanistan in 2001.

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Credit:Pan-African News Wire

"There needs to be room for a lot of policy threads in American discourse. But the corporate media is not informing the people," Cynthia McKinney, the front-runner for the Green Party presidential nomination, told IPS during a rare 90-minute interview.

. . .

"The Green Party participated in the coalition that led in Germany and in Ireland and in the Kenyan Parliament," McKinney said. "The Green Party is international."

"We have a winner-take-all system in the U.S. that pushes conformity," she added. "Regressive ballot access laws in Georgia [and other states] prevent candidates from getting on the ballot."

"The Green Party is a political entity that deserves to be built," she said.

*This is the first of two articles about the U.S. Green Party and the 2008 elections.

Former Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney looks to be the front-runner for the party nomination at this stage, primarily because of her high name recognition and national reputation. On her web site, McKinney says bluntly, "We want to end the war on drugs now!"

In addition to targeting communities of color, "the War on Drugs has become a war on truth, taxpayers, civil liberties, and higher education for the poor and middle class, and sadly, it has also become a war on treatment, addicts, and reason," says her statement. It also "provides cover for US military intervention in foreign countries, particularly to our south, and that this increased militarization is used to put down all social protest movements in countries like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and elsewhere."

"This is a big issue for Cynthia, especially as it impacts communities of color and regarding the prison industrial complex," said John Judge, a McKinney press spokesman.

Oh, when they WANT to, they FIGHT: They fight to keep the war funding going. They fight to stop impeachment. They fight to prevent more democratically-minded dissenters from blocking Alito and Roberts and Bolton and Negroponte and Mukasey. They fight to keep people like Kucinich or McKinney marginalized or out of office. They fight to keep progressives from leadership positions. They fight to keep Greens . . . off the ballots.

Thirty-six members of Rhode Island’s Green Party gathered yesterday afternoon and picked a slate of delegates that favors a former Georgia congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, for the party’s presidential nomination.

McKinney, an ardent opponent of the U.S. military presence in Iraq, is among a group of presidential hopefuls angling for the Green nomination in advance of the party’s national convention in Chicago in July.

The Rhode Islanders voted to support McKinney with six delegates and to align the state’s two remaining delegate votes behind another candidate, Jesse Johnson of West Virginia.

That was the outcome of a two-hour caucus in which 27 party members supported McKinney and nine members backed Johnson, said Eric Siegel, the party’s cochairman and one of the eight delegates. The caucus was held at the William Hall Library in Cranston.

Supporters of Cynthia McKinney, an African-American who served 12 years in Congress as a Georgia Democrat, say that choosing a presidential nominee doesn’t have to mean selecting between a black and a female candidate.

McKinney is one of four people seeking the Green Party presidential nomination.

Some say the committee ignored evidence or drew the wrong conclusions.

John Judge, founder of the Coalition on Political Assassinations and one who believes, like some in King's family, that Ray did not pull the trigger, scoffs at the panel's work. "Look at what they call conclusions," said Judge. "They can't determine anything except that Ray did it."

. . .

Over the years, efforts to make those sealed records available have been attempted through Freedom of Information Act requests and federal legislation. In 2005, then-Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) picked up 64 co-sponsors, including many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, for a measure that would have opened the King files as well as sealed court files and grand jury records, too.

[Neither Representatives Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tennessee) nor Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi) signed on as co-sponsors, records show.]

The McKinney legislation, with an identical Senate bill sponsored by John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), died in committee.

Cynthia McKinney received a majority of the votes cast in the Wisconsin Green Party Presidential Preference Primary Saturday at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

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Green Party members chose a total of 24 delegates to go to the national convention on behalf of Wisconsin – 19 for Cynthia McKinney, two to Kent Mesplay, one to Ralph Nader, one to Kat Swift, and one for uncommitted.

The Green Party of the United States Presidential Nominating Convention is July 10-13 in Chicago. There, 836 delegates from around the country will determine the Green Party's nominee for President of the United States.