Today the Pinal County Greens, members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County, passed a resolution declaring November 30 "'Think Green' Is The New 'Think Pink' Day," calling on Arizona voters to re-register as Greens.
"'Think pink' had its day back in the 1950s when I was a kid," said Richard Grayson, Pinal County Greens co-chair. "But now voters need to 'think Green' and register as members of the Arizona Green Party if they want real change."
"Green is the new pink," Grayson said. "Our goal for 2012 is to have more than 10,000 registered Arizona Green Party members, all of them fabulously fashionable." He also called upon Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a big fan of Funny Face, to switch from pink underwear to green. "Being Green is never awkward," Grayson said.
Pinal County Greens today joined 2009 Green Party candidate for New York City mayor Reverend Billy Talen and community groups for the takeover of a Bank of America ATM branch in Manhattan to protest the bank's foreclosure policies. Here is a report and photos by Richard Grayson, Pinal County Greens co-chair.
Early this afternoon -- Black Friday to some, Buy Nothing Day to others -- we joined with the New York City community groups Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir and Picture the Homeless for a protest action at the Bank of America branch at the corner of Houston and Lafayette Streets. On this day when so many around us were shopping, we occupied the bank in the heart of chic, fashionable SoHo (okay, technically just over the border of NoHo) to sing and pray and have a dinner, courtesy of the kitchen of Occupy Wall Street, in honor of Kendall Jackman, who just two years ago was living an ordinary life renting a brownstone in Brooklyn but who today is homeless, the victim of one of millions of home foreclosures across the country. We walked over from our organizing point at the corner of Crosby and Jersey Street, across from the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, around 1 p.m. with chairs, a table, dishware, silverware, the delicious dinners, and two nice paintings donated by the late Kurt Vonnegut and Reverend Billy Talen to make Kendall feel at home in the bank which foreclosed on her landlord and forced her to leave the still-unoccupied building that BofA foreclosed upon. For us, the most moving part of the creative protest was when Reverend Billy & The Choir sang their beautiful song "We are the 99%" (as we gather together)." Afterwards the group returned to Zuccotti Park, where a group from Occupy Wall Street remain to fight the good fight. We learned a lot about organizing public demonstrations during the preparations for today's action and were impressed with the dedication and shrewdness of Billy Talen and his New York City community group. We hope to take what we've learned in New York during #OWS actions back to Arizona with us for action in the coming year.
The Pinal County Greens are members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County.
The Pinal County Greens, members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County, today passed a resolution condemning police brutality against City University of New York students protesting tuition hikes and calling on CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein to resign following the unprovoked assault against students and faculty on the Baruch College campus.
"This resolution comes just three days after we voted on a similar resolution condemning the pepper-spraying of students and the beating of students and faculty at the University of California," noted Richard Grayson, Pinal County Greens co-chair, a former instructor at Baruch College and other CUNY schools. "Along with UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, Chancellor Goldstein needs to resign. He sat idly by through the full three and a half hours of the a Board of Trustees meeting while in the same building, students, faculty, and staff of his university engaging in peaceful protest were met with a violent police response and numerous arrests." The Pinal County Greens are members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County and supporters of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Phoenix, Occupy Tucson and other groups in the Occupy movement nationwide.
Pinal County Greens Co-Chair Richard Grayson reported that few protesters from Occupy Wall Street were left at a heavily guarded, heavily barricaded Zuccotti Park this morning in Manhattan's Financial District. "The Occupy movement will go on," Grayson said, "in New York and Phoenix and Tucson and all over America. The 99% will continue their campaign to address the issues of income inequality and the unfair influence of money on the political system."
The Pinal County Greens are members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County. As David Carr wrote in the New York Times:
Occupy Wall Street is animated by a central, galvanizing idea — that the distribution of wealth is unfair. That struck a very live nerve, grabbing something that was in the air and turning it into simple math: 1 percent should not live at the expense of the other 99 percent. Still, Occupy Wall Street left many all revved up with no place to go. In addition to the 5 W’s — who, what, when, where and why — the media are obsessed with a sixth: what’s next? Occupy Wall Street, for all its appeal as a story, is very hard to roll forward. But if Occupy Wall Street seems inchoate and short on answers, it has plenty of company. The president has primed the pump over and over with borrowed federal largess and still jobs refuse to flow. The myriad Republican debates have become a kind of random gaffe generator with little in the way of serious public proposals. And by the way, there’s another term for a gathering of politically committed people who make a lot of speeches and argue endlessly over process without producing much in the way of solutions: Congress. Witness the Congressional supercommittee charged with reducing the nation’s debt, which has spun its wheels to little end as it confronts a partisan divide so wide it would have daunted Evel Knievel. The country has reached the point where things feel so fundamentally wrong that every suggested remedy seems like a media exercise, a kind of nationwide spin cycle. Occupy Wall Street may not have the answers, but we all are coming to realize that no one else does either.
The Pinal County Greens, members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County, today passed a resolution condemning campus police brutality against Occupy protesters at the University of California and calling on UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to resign following the shocking pepper-spray assault against students and faculty.
"Outrageous police brutality at the University of California, including the beating and pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters like faculty member and former poet laureate Robert Haas, his wife and others brings shame on what was once a great institution of higher education," said Richard Grayson, co-chair of the Pinal County Greens. "Following the open letter of UC-Davis English Prof. Nathan Brown, the Pinal County Greens call for the immediate resignation of Chancellor Katehi, who is responsible for this most un-American of barbaric actions."
The Pinal County Greens were represented at Occupy Wall Street's November 17th Day of Action demonstrations in New York City on the two-month anniversary of the protest that has galvanized progressives across the country. Pinal County Greens Co-Chair Richard Grayson took these photos at this afternoon's student strike rally at Union Square.
