Candidates for Steering Committee

There are 7 candidates for 3 Steering Committee seats, and one candidate for party Treasurer.

Anita Rios

Brief Bio and some reasons that I am running for Co-Chair.

Whenever I seek to provide a political context for myself I always start with the fact that I was born into the American Third World. That is, I was born and raised in deep poverty. I know what it feels like to be a hungry child in this wealthy nation and I know what it feels like to be discarded by society. I will always share this not for myself but for the many millions of Americans trapped in some variation of the American Third World who are the focus of my political activity.

My parents, both born in Texas, came to the Midwest as migrant farmworkers. I have six sisters and a brother, half of us did not graduate from high-school. All of us who dropped out of high-school graduated from University. While this is an a-typical story it is not unheard of among Latinx raised in poverty in this country. The American educational system routinely discards youth of color.

I have shared a bit about my personal journey out of poverty on the NC list during the discussion regarding de-criminalization of sex work. As a young person I worked many difficult demeaning jobs, but eventually graduated from the University of Toledo. Afterwards I worked in several social service jobs, monitoring child care providers, finding non-agricultural jobs for migrant farmworkers, and in case management for the severely mentally ill. I was elected the to lead the Union at my last Job and became an executive delegate for SEIU/1199. I was then appointed as a delegate representing SEIU/1199 on the Regional Labor Council of the AFL-CIO.

What these experiences taught me was that all the good works we do in communities is important but if our government does not provide an adequate infrastructure for education, health care, criminal justice, housing, and energy there will always be people who fall through the cracks. Government determines the quality of our infrastructure and politics determines the quality of our government. Throughout my lifetime neither democrat nor republican governments addressed the needs of my community so I started seeking alternative political parties and came to the Green Party.

I joined the GP in 2000 and worked to get Nader on the ballot in Ohio. In 2001 I was elected one of three co-chairs of the entity that would become the Green Party National Committee. I was part of the leadership team that obtained National Committee status for the Green Party.

Building the Green Party and in particular the Ohio Green Party has been an almost full-time job for me since 2000. Since that time I have been on the central committee of the Ohio Green Party and have served as Co-Chair for several years. I was recently elected to a two year term as Co-chair. In 2004 I helped with the Ohio recount and was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Ohio Secretary of State to prevent the certification of that election. In 2008 I participated in the legal action that gained Party status for the Ohio GP. In 2014 I ran for Governor of Ohio and by receiving over 3% (over 100,000 votes) of the votes maintained political party status for the Ohio Green Party for four years. I was the Green Party candidate for Toledo city council in 2011 got over 30% of the vote. In 2006 and 2010 I was the GP candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio.

I have been married for 37 years to Robert Hannon who is a letter carrier. We have two grown sons. I decided to retire last year due the difficulty in finding a job. I lost my part time job as a patient advocate in 2013 when Ohio's TRAP laws caused the closure of the abortion clinic where I was working. I continue to work as an activist on numerous issues including serving as the President of the Agnes Reynolds Jackson Fund which raises money to pay for abortions for low income women.

Poverty is not a lifestyle choice it is imposed by an economic system that picks winners and losers and by a society that has failed its most vulnerable members. Now in the 21st century poverty is a global man-made disaster. Despite the tremendous wealth of this nation we are not immune because our government is indifferent to the need of poor people. The same greed that is behind America's ability to accept poverty as inevitable is also behind our indifference to climate change and the destruction of the natural world. It is my belief that the Green Party is the right tool for fighting both social and ecological injustice. In 2014 I was the Green candidate for governor of Ohio. I received over 100,000 votes and secured the Green Party's ballot line for four years.

The Green Party has the potential to create a political revolution. To reach that potential my focus as co-chair would be fundraising and organizing. This year without adequate funds we had to lay off staff and cutback on our assistance to help members come to our convention. While the hard work and dedication of our activists is our most valuable resource we must prioritize fundraising to be able to maintain our operations and our organizing. I believe that our organizing efforts require us to do extensive outreach to disenfranchised communities. To be effective in doing that our leadership must be diverse. I hope that we will prioritize diversity in this election for co-chair.

Anita Rios, Alternate Delegate Ohio
Co-chair of the Green Party of Ohio
Co-Chair of the Latinx Caucus

David Gerry

The position of co-chair is primarily administrative as described in various GPUS documents. To this end I am fully prepared being familiar with the GPUS bylaws, rules and procedures having served as a NC delegate and member of the Bylaws, Rules, Policies and Procedures Committee. I am also  acquainted with the Steering Committee rules and internal procedures since I have been observing on the SC teleconferences for the past one and a half years and facilitating for the past six months.

Joy Davis

Hello everyone! My name is Joy Davis and I am from Texas. I believe the Green Party is the party that welcomes all voters disappointed with the Democrats, Republicans, those from different political ideologies, and new voters. I joined the Green Party because the Green Party continues to offer hope when other political parties seek to destroy our planet and humanity due to greed and profits. The political climate and the atrocities plaguing us now is not what I envision for future generations.

Here is a partial listing of the events I have been involved with since I have joined the National Green Party: Philly Greenfest; Democracy Convention; Convergence Convention; InBloom Music Festival; Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign: March for Our Lives; School of the Americas Watch Working Group which included members across various caucuses working together on a project.

I currently hold the following positions within the Green Party: GP US National Outreach Committee Co-chair; GP US National Women’s Caucus Co-chair; GP US Black Caucus Delegate; Green Party of Texas Co-Chair; Harris County Green Party Steering Committee Member

I am also a member of the various national committees including the Diversity Committee; Media Committee; Merchandise Committee; Annual National Committee and more.

My Current Activities outside of the Green Party:

I am a current steering committee member for the Women’s March on the Pentagon: https://www.marchonpentagon.com/team

I put forth a proposal to sponsor the first-ever March for Black Women in Houston. Our local party was listed as sponsors and we were able to flyer, outreach, recruit, and promote the Green Party.

I was invited to attend the 2018 ACLU Membership Conference and I reached out to the organizers to see if additional youth could attend as well. Why? Because our youths are our future and the more they are involved in opportunities like these the better. We need to listen to them and make sure they are heard.

I recently worked with other allies to help prevent a charter takeover of 10 HISD Schools that were majority African-American and LatinX schools here in Texas by attending and speaking at the board meetings.

I have coordinated with other organizations for Greens to be able to travel to Brownsville, Texas to the detention centers regarding the family separations happening to families legally seeking asylum.

I am currently organizing an immigration forum with immigration rights activists and organizations to educate the public about immigration and the processes you have to go through to seek citizenship. This will also give us a chance to discuss the Green Party’s platform on immigration.

I am planning various Get Out the Vote campaigns and Outreach events across the state to register and also interact with voters who may be unaware of the Green Party. We are also going into the neighborhoods to outreach where unfortunately some people are too afraid to visit. These are the people we should be targeting because they are on the frontlines and experience gentrification, racism, poverty, police brutality, have unsafe drinking water and more. We want a diverse party so we should be going into these neighborhoods and interacting with the people we would like to attract to the party. These efforts also contribute to growing the party as well as developing relationships with your community.

I have worked in the accounting field for many years. I was responsible for the payment of invoices, taxes, salaries, wire transfers, vendor maintenance, and employee expense reports. I also served as an SAP Beta Tester and have worked with various accounting programs. I am a team player and look forward to working with everyone I work on a project with.

Joy Davis
GPUS National Delegate
GPUS Black Caucus
GPUS Co-Chair National Women's Caucus
GPUS Co-Chair Outreach Committee
GPUS Accreditation Committee

Margaret Flowers

Biography:

Margaret Flowers is a mother of three young adults and a Maryland pediatrician who practiced medicine for 17 years, first as director of pediatrics at a rural hospital and then in private practice. In 2007, Margaret left practice to advocate full time for National Improved Medicare for All single payer healthcare. She is an adviser to the board of Physicians for a National Health Program, volunteered as a Congressional Fellow during the health reform process in 2009-10 and is co-chair of the state chapter. She co-founded the Maryland Healthcare is a Human Right campaign, where she serves on the administrative committee and leadership council. Margaret is also the national coordinator of the Health Over Profit for Everyone (HOPE) campaign.

In 2011, Margaret was a core organizer of the Occupy Movement in Washington, DC. That work developed into Popular Resistance in 2013, which she co-directs. Popular Resistance is a daily movement news website that also organizes issue campaigns and participates in coalitions for economic, social and environmental justice and peace. Popular Resistance hosts an online free school. Margaret’s articles are frequently published in TruthDig, TruthOut, Dissident Voice and other online outlets. She co-hosts Clearing the FOG Radio and is interviewed on other radio and television programs. She was featured on Bill Moyers’ Journal twice.

Margaret first became active in Green politics on 2006 as a volunteer of Kevin Zeese’s campaign for US Senate against Ben Cardin and Michael Steele. She supported Jill Stein’s campaigns in 2012 and 2016 and helped to create the Green Shadow Cabinet. Margaret ran for US Senate against Chris Van Hollen and Kathy Szeliga in 2016, receiving 90,000 votes (ten times the number of registered Greens in the state and over two times more than the Stein-Baraka campaign).

Margaret is active in the local Baltimore City Green Party, where she helped to rewrite the by-laws to create a dues-paying structure and write a bylaw amendment ensuring political independence. She advises candidates on policy and electoral strategy and supports local campaigns. She helped to form the Green Party Power Project, a platform for Greens to discuss issues to build a unified party, e.g. dues-paying membership, representing the working class, independence from the Democratic Party,  single payer healthcare, and opposing US imperialism and war. 

Margaret is also active at the Maryland state party through the electoral committee, which vets and assists candidates, and as a member of the coordinating committee. This year, the Maryland Green Party is running a record number of candidates for local, state and federal positions. The Maryland Green Party also increased the number of Green locals from three to eleven over the past two years and aims to have an active local in every county. Margaret was just elected to her second term as a national committee delegate for the state. She was nominated to run for the steering committee by Tim Willard, a Maryland representative on the national committee and Hunt Hobbs, an alternate delegate to the national committee.

Statement:

I view the next decade as a critical time full of potential for transformational changes. Many crises, such as wealth inequality, racism, housing, health care, environmental damage, climate change and imperialism, are worsening and the current power structure is unable to respond to them in any meaningful way. If we are prepared and organized, we could have significant victories that change the current systems.

Social movements are growing in the United States and are taking effective action. The call for a political party that represents the values of the social movements is also growing. The Green Party should be that political party, but the reality is that we have more work to do to earn that status.

I seek to be more involved at the national level to do what I can to build the Green Party. As a member of the steering committee, I will fulfill the administrative duties. As co-director of Popular Resistance, I hire and oversee our staff, manage the budget and do other necessary administrative work. I will also bring my experience with strategy, social movements, and media to the steering committee.

My priorities:

1.       Creating greater visibility for the Green Party on issues such as single-payer health care, wealth inequality, racism, human rights and imperialism. For example, health care is the number one issue for voters and national consensus for single payer is developing. As the party that has always advocated for single payer, we ought to be out front in this movement. To do that, we need to educate Greens on policy, so they are comfortable speaking and writing about it, and we need to have a social media strategy to promote it. I will work with the media committee on this and work to create a single-payer committee.

2.       Increasing the resources of the party. It is critical that we raise funds to support existing staff, hire more staff and provide resources to grow the party and support candidates. I have experience fundraising for Popular Resistance and various campaigns. I will work with the fundraising committee. I also support putting in place a form of dues-paying structure to benefit the national party as well as state and local parties.

3.       Growing the party. We need a strategy to grow membership in the party. This includes promoting the party platform and how it relates to current social movements and presenting a positive vision of who we are as Greens. This also includes working with state and local parties on best practices for identifying and retaining new members, organizing meetings, strengthening bylaws and starting new locals as well as expanding existing state and local parties.

4.       Running campaigns to win. In Maryland, we reject the idea of putting placeholders on ballots and are running candidates to win. Our candidates are participating in candidate forums, touring their districts, knocking on doors and taking action with their local communities. I will work with the Campaign Coordinating Committee to support the work to identify and meet the needs of state and local parties for campaign infrastructure and to recruit volunteers to support high priority candidates.

5.       Supporting committees. To fulfill our mission and strategy, our committees need to be operating at their highest potential. I look forward to working with various committees to support them in whatever ways are needed, including recruitment of members for the committees and advice on organizing and strategy.

6.    Connecting the party to the mass political movement. My work over more than ten years has primarily been in building a mass political movement. Every day Popular Resistance reports on activities of the and each week I write an article about the state of the movement as well as interview movement leaders and analysts for our podcast. I will bring my movement work to the steering committee of the Green Party of the United States to help make the Green Party of the United States the party of the mass political movement.

Montigue Trent Magruder

I am pleased to be nominated for a seat on the Steering Committee. My experiences as a political candidate and local issues activist will contribute greatly to bringing about the positive peace within our party.