• Help Wanted: Candidate to Run for U.S. Senate!

• The Illinois Green Party is looking for a well-qualified candidate to run for U.S. Senate in 2020.

Instead of waiting for someone to come to us and then seeing if that person is a good fit, we have decided to set out our qualifications first, and then see if you, or anyone you know, would like to apply for the role.

Here are the principal things we are looking for:

• You must be legally qualified for the office (30 years of age or older, a U.S. resident for at least 9 years, and a resident of Illinois).
  
  
• You should be friendly, outgoing, cooperative, have good communication and “people” skills and an ability to clearly articulate Green Party positions on the issues. You should have a suitable work and political activism background, with no “skeletons in the closet.” Prior campaign experience not essential but would certainly be a plus.
  
  
• You and your campaign must be committed to helping the Green Party grow. You would be expected to build your own campaign organization, but the party and the campaign would each help the other. This would include sharing of contact and donor lists, etc.
  
  
• You do not have to agree with every position in the Illinois Green Party platform or the Green Party of the United States platform. However, you should have a basic familiarity with the platforms and be in substantial agreement with them. In particular, substantial agreement with the following positions would be considered essential:
  
  
• Addressing the human-created climate crisis and other assaults on the planetary eco-system needs to be a top priority. You should be an advocate for a Green New Deal or a similar major commitment of federal resources aimed at addressing these crises, restoring health to our eco-system, while also creating millions of new job opportunities at a living wage or better. You should be an advocate for sustainable agriculture, sustainable transportation, and sustainable energy policies, including an immediate ban on fracking and rapid phase-out of other fossil fuel extraction and use.
  
  
• You should support the goal of making good quality health care available to all, either through an “improved Medicare for All” single-payer health insurance system or a fully socialized, government funded health-care system.
  
  
• You should support the goal of tuition-free higher education or completely free higher education, available to all who have completed high school. “Higher education” would include vocational and technical training to develop specific skills, as well as four-year college education. You should support improved funding and support for education at all levels, from pre-K to graduate level, and remedial/adult education.
  
  
• You should be committed to the goal of overcoming all forms of bigotry and oppression based on race/color, sex, sexual orientation and identity, national origin, age or ability, and should support federal policies aimed at addressing these social ills. This should include a commitment to some form of reparations for African-American descendants of slaves and Native Americans, and ending environmental racism, employment discrimination, housing discrimination and police oppression. You should also support a more humane and non-racist criminal justice system, and a more humane and welcoming immigration policy.
  
  
• You should be an uncompromising opponent of U.S. military aggression and war, willing to sign the Green Party Peace Action Committee Peace Pledge for U.S. Senate candidates.
  
  
• As the Green Party now identifies as an eco-socialist party, you should at least be comfortable with that association even if you do not personally utilize that label. You should be willing to identify as an advocate for the working class, against corporate domination of our economy and political system, a supporter of a minimum wage that is a living wage, the right to a basic income, and a supporter of worker-owned cooperatives and/or other forms of social ownership of productive facilities as an alternative to the corporate economic model.
  
  
• Whatever your personal views on the subject, you should be willing to support every woman’s right to full reproductive choice, and meaningful access to safe and legal abortion as one of the choices available to women.
  
  
• You should have no reservations about running to win. This does not mean that you necessarily expect to win, but you should be willing and able to run an aggressive campaign, ask people to donate to the campaign and win as many votes as possible. You should not have any reservations about running against incumbent Dick Durbin despite his reputation as a “liberal,” especially given that he has been a staunch supporter of U.S. wars and the military-industrial complex. You should have a thick enough skin to be able to weather some criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

If you or someone you know can meet these qualifications, please contact the Illinois Green Party at [email protected] and [email protected].

Upcoming Events and Calls for Action:

Saturday, September 28: Save your space now for a conference on Eco-Socialism: A Strategic Session By Greens, For Greens! 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., Conference Chicago at the University Center, 525 S. State Street, downtown Chicago. Please register here.

Young Ecosocialists Organizer Call Series
Info and call-in details are available here.

Grassroots Campaign Success with Rodolfo Cortes, Kenneth Mejia, and Francisco Pierre-Louis
August, 26, 2019

Embassy Protection Collective with Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese.
September 9, 2019

Ballot Access Repression with Richard Winger of Ballot Access News.
September 23, 2019

Upcoming public presentations on Single Payer Health Care

August 27 in Carbondale:
Presentation by Dr. Pam Gronemeyer, Vice-President of the Illinois Single-Payer Coalition, on Why We Need Single Payer Healthcare, 6:30 – 9 p.m., Varsity Center, 418 S. Illinois Ave., Carbondale. Facebook Event page here.

November 21 in Peoria:
Universal Health Care: Why It’s Needed and How We Pay. Presentations by David Pittman, RN, Sheldon Schafer, and Dr. Martha Willi, PNHP. 6:30 pm, North Branch - Peoria Public Library, 3001 West Grand Parkway in Peoria. More information here.

Ban fracking!

Please sign and share this petition calling upon Governor Pritzker “to use his authority as governor of Illinois to impose an immediate ban on the granting of all new drilling permits for oil and natural gas that use any and all forms of hydraulic fracturing.”

Support the Greens who stood up for Venezuela's rights to self-determination against an attempted U.S. coup. Please support the Embassy Protectors Defense Committee.

Illinois Green Party Outreach
http://www.ilgp.org/