I'm Alex Shantz. A young Green, age 29, former St. Helena school board member, past co-chair for the Green Party of California, and current acting co-chair for the Napa County Green Party.

I want to discuss two ideas, anti-capitalism, why it's important, and local electoral insurrection.

The Green Party of the United States is the hugest explicitly anti-capitalist political party.

On June 12, 2016, the Green Party of the United States national committiee, co-sponsored by the Young Greens, adopted the 2016 Platform Amendment Proposal Ecological Economics. The amendment states that the Green Party rejects both the capitalist system and the state-socialist system. Instead, Greens advocate for a decentralized system of eco-socialism.

Greens play a crucial role in terms of challenging community capitalists, through community municipalization and workplace democracy, by encouraging workers to take back control in their own work places, running Greens against local neo-liberal politicians, beating them and their corporate partners, and seizing sovereignty away from them.

All Greens, not just the watermelons among us, need to take anti-capitalist struggle seriously, and I argue that, Greens are best positioned to build duel power in local communities by becoming fifth columns in local municipalities, filling wedges on city councils along the pressure points between capital interests and the people.

We do this by being explicitly anti-capitalist and winning elections.

Dr. Micah White, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street and author of The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution, under the shadow of late-capitalism, says we can either win wars or win elections. Earth dies, America falls into neo-fascist despotism, and the rich fill their faces. The choices before us are between armed resistance or electoral insurrection.

The Green Party of the United States, the USA's hugest explicitly anti-capitalist party, has the ballot access, infrastructure, and history of winning local elections. Greens, in my opinion, are the most pragmatic vehicle for waging electoral insurrection against community capitalists and local neo-liberal politicians.