{"id":666,"date":"2007-07-20T15:15:44","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T15:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=99"},"modified":"2007-07-20T15:15:44","modified_gmt":"2007-07-20T15:15:44","slug":"71507","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=666","title":{"rendered":"7\/15\/07"},"content":{"rendered":"

We traveled from the debate in D.C. to the Green Party National Convention in Reading, Pennsylvania. \u00a0 The three days at the Convention were a whirlwind for us. \u00a0 I had declared to vy for the Green Party nomination among a field of some 10 (or more) candidates. \u00a0 Our platform (with a few exceptions) lines up closely with such Green Party “Values” as: grassroots democracy, social justice, decentralization, community-based economics, diversity… \u00a0 Another value is ecological wisdom, which we believe, in the face of the mounting global warming crisis is key \u00a0to making it \u00a0through \u00a0this stage of history. \u00a0 And the Green Party, by far<\/em>, has the sanest plan for reversing global warming, in my belief… The first day of the Convention, our family was interviewed by Reading’s newspaper. \u00a0 The next day a story appeared saying that this “family from Cleveland” strongly backed many of these values. \u00a0 What’s more, the story carried a cute picture of our four-year-old Jonathan passing out information… \u00a0 Later in a press conference, I said that \u00a0our administration \u00a0would not only push for Americans to cut back dramatically on their fossil fuel use (in tandem with phasing in much more clean, renewable — wind, sun, geothermal… — energy; but I would turn the White House “green,” with solar panels, a wind turbine and a perma-culture in the front yard. \u00a0 “I would then sell organic tomatoes through the fence to spend down the national debt,” I joked (sort of)… \u00a0 The Convention was replete with a number of good workshops. \u00a0 Of the ones I attended, I particularly liked Greg Gerritt’s: Green Economy Primer for Candidates<\/em>. \u00a0 The premise is that “prosperity is only possible in a world in which ecostystems are being restored to health, violence is being eliminated, and justice and democracy are real rather than phony.” \u00a0 Gerritt said we have to think “holistically,” as opposed to our currrent rather myopic system that, for the most part, revolves around money and ideas. \u00a0 There must be a tangible “greening” of the economy, he said. \u00a0 One of the participants \u00a0explained some 60 towns in Sweden have gone to ‘green economies’ where there is, for instance, friendly competition in “who can cut their carbon dioxide emissions the most…” \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 During the Candidate’s Forum Friday evening, I said I was your “average Joe concerned Midwestern parent.” \u00a0 And what I was most concerned about was, in the face of catastrophic Climate Change, whether our children would even have a world to live in in the very<\/em> near future. \u00a0 That \u00a0is starting to \u00a0‘play well in Peioria these days.’ \u00a0 As it should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We traveled from the debate in D.C. to the Green Party National Convention in Reading, Pennsylvania. \u00a0 The three days at the Convention were a whirlwind for us. \u00a0 I had declared to vy for the Green Party nomination among …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}