Where There’s Work, There’s Worth

 

I’ve just gone to a funeral of someone I love dearly, and the process is a lot more demanding for the community in Kotzebue than it is in other places. From building the casket to cleaning up after the potluck. I didn’t realize how different the process was until I went to a funeral in Nome. While I was certainly grateful that someone took care of the digging and burial for us, I appreciate it when a community gets together to help each other out. I feel like community is something a lot of people are missing out in the modern world.

 

Like a funeral in rural Alaska, Labor Day is also a community effort. The holiday was created to advocate for worker’s rights. Unions fought for and won the weekend, along with the 40-hour work week. Workers fought against child labor, with kids getting paid cheaply for their work, stunting their intellectual development. Though the days of parades and advocacy on Labor Day seem to be a thing of the past, just like community involvement in funerals outside Rural Alaska.

 

Organized labor has lost a great amount of power in the United States, and that came with the decline of union membership, from a high of 40 percent of the workforce being a member of a union down to 11 percent today. As much as we celebrate democracy we mainly participate by choosing who represents us in government, while many workplaces operate like monarchies. People want a psychologically safe workplace, not one where they are viewed as replaceable tools.

 

Capitalism has disrupted our traditional way of life, and that’s true for everyone around the world. We didn’t always have jobs that kept us away from our families. Culture requires sacrifice, the workplace having a culture all its own, and it’s different from company to company. Before Inupiat people would give seals a drink of water after a successful hunt, appreciating a being, who is spiritually on the same level as themselves, who is being sacrificed for the well-being their community. Now people are expected to go to work, and sacrifice time with their family, and perhaps even the ability to make their own.

 

Solidarity is something missing in our culture today, with rampant hyper individualism, algorithms keeping people hooked on applications, and nihilism. But humans have not climbed to the top of the food chain because we’re the strongest or fastest animal. Rather, we are where we’re at today because of our ability to work together to solve problems. And that’s what Labor Day is all about, everyday people working together to keep our world going.

 

The Green Party celebrates solidarity and wants to be involved in facilitating that this year, organizing Labor Day events in Kotzebue, Alaska. While we understand there’s a lot to be angry about, we feel the climate and democratic crisis is even more reason we need to come together this year, and every year going forward. We recognize there are issues that we can only solve by working together, like climate devastation or replacing this economic system that is past its sell by date, there are more ways to measure how well we are doing than with financial capital alone, like human, social and resource capital.

 

Labor Day isn’t a Green Party holiday, and we’re excited to do our part in helping to make these events happen. We’re looking to work in solidarity with other organizations like NW Arctic Takes Action, a local group who oppose the growing authoritarianism in this country. And we’d like to thank The City of Kotzebue for weaving the fee for The Youth Center. We’re visiting everyone in town this August to let people know that Labor Day is going to be different this year. The workers in Kotzebue are worth investing in, and I’m looking forward to showing appreciation for them.

 

Our way of life is in danger, as Kotzebue has been impacted greatly so far by climate devastation, and more is to come. Humanity needs to look at our limits of separation with Earth, and how our actions impact the environment. Unfortunately, our leadership fails to see how we are parts within a whole. How often do we measure only financial capital, ignoring human or social capital? We have several cable television channels that are looking at how well DOW Jones or S&P 500 are doing. Our economic system didn’t get where it’s at because it was driven by people looking for short-term gains.

 

People are worth investing in, and we feel that they should be considered more in our economic system. Democracy shouldn’t just happen in ads and on election day but also needs to be extended into the workplace. We need an economic system that considers human capital along with financial capital. Labor is not a pillar of our society that we should ignore. Workers have built this world, and we’re going to need them to save this one as well. Who knows what the damage to Kotzebue would have been if someone hadn’t built our sea wall. What kind of society would we become if there wasn’t someone out there getting their hands dirty every day?

Green For Life Season 1 Episode 1 Robert Sheilds

 

I return to podcasting to host Green For Life with Jon Olson! For our first episode we're joined by The Chairman of The Green Party of Alaska Robert Sheilds.

Next Sunday, January 13th, The Green Party of Alaska will hold its first general assembly meeting of the year. Anyone interested in being involved be sure to check back on this website for more details.

A call for Greens to work together

Last Sunday on November 12th I participated in my first Green Party meetings in a long time, and my first two as an office holder. I found myself being volunteered into the position of treasurer of the state party. If you find yourself asking the question which green party in Alaska I’m referring to then you know all too well about the nonsensical drama that has surrounded The Green Party of The United States. Most people and voters don’t dabble into this party’s inner drama, and look for good candidates to vote for by the time election season rolls along.

Tonight I look forward to going to a city council meeting where important topics like The Ambler Road Project is going to be brought up. Before that, I’m going to participate in a Green Resistance meeting, with the discussion being around The Green Party’s new candidate for President of The United States, Dr. Jill Stein, and the party’s inability to manage itself to be political opposition to either The Democratic or Republican Parties. In a time when voters find themselves not aligned with what The Democrats or Republicans are doing with our government you think that voters would be happy with a party that offers them something different, like The Green Party. But when we look at The Green Party now what we see is a mess.

We can ask ourselves who is to blame for the state in which The Green Party is in today. I attempted to work with The Co-Chairman of The Green Party of Alaska and the national party’s nominee for president Howie Hawkins to get him on the ballot in Alaska in 2020. But I found myself being threatened with a lawsuit because I refused to submit paperwork without Chairman Shields’ signature. The Green Party’s presidential primary in 2020 was very controversial, with Alaska's votes not being counted during the candidate selection process at the national convention. Chairman Shields wanted to talk to Hawkins before agreeing to have him be our candidate and on the ballot, a call Hawkins never made. After donating hundreds of dollars to his campaign I had to cut myself off from Hawkins’ campaign. A vote was held and The Green Party of Alaska put Jesse Ventura on the ballot as our presidential nominee instead of Hawkins. The Green Party of The United States understandably unrecognized us as their state affiliate. We now have this confusing situation where there are two “Green” parties in Alaska, one with the name and the other with the recognition of being affiliated with The Green Party of The United States, whatever good that does.

I wish to state now that I don’t want to waste my time with continuing this drama. How does The Green Party expect to win anything when it fails right now to work with each other? When this situation is explained to voters how do we expect them to think of us as anything more than a joke? While many people think of Greens as “Democrat lite” I’d compare this situation more like what’s happening with The Republican Party over the debt limit and the house speakership. They have made themselves look like fools because the extreme wing of their party with their small numbers took control, while Republicans broke their deal with Democrats to keep the government going. The only saving grace for The Green Party is this mess has led them to irrelevance, allowing candidates to be viewed by voters with a clean slate.

The Green Party of Alaska (GPAK) holds weekly meetings on Zoom on Sunday afternoons, and in the last one Co-Chairman Robert Shields and I discussed what it means to be a Green, and how that makes us different from the other parties. We agreed that to say you’re a Green means that you believe that humans should be good stewards of this planet, with everything else being secondary. Is that the reason we’re dividing ourselves right now? No! We’re embroiled in a struggle over party politics, with people telling each other it’s going to be my way or the highway. That didn’t work well for us in 2020, and it’s not going to work well for us in 2024. I’m going to invite the members of The Aurora Party to a future GPAK meeting where I believe we should hash this out. Because if we can’t make this work The Green Party as brand will be garbage to the voters.

https://x.com/greenren_srm/status/1724380611958153493?t=x7VaCPiWAEy6OF11IxtkPA&s=09

On Top of The World Episode 32 William Pounds

 This week on the show we interview William Pounds, who is running for governor of Arizona. He has exciting ideas including using the power the governor has to create renewable energy farms, sell the excess energy, and pay dividends from those sales to the citizens in the form of "Billy Bucks", somewhat like Alaska's PFD.

Top of The World Episode 20 Shocker, Even More Mass Shootings

This week on the podcast Justin tells us about the AEW pay per view, we talk about mass shootings, and what's going on with The Green Party of Alaska.

Notes from The Green Party of Alaska’s September general meeting

The meeting began with discussion over The GPAK breaking ranks with the national party when we nominated Jesse Ventura as our presidential nominee. We have been threatened by people in The Hawkins Campaign saying we’d lose accreditation with the national party and we simply do not care. We have had little to no relationship with the nation party and being recognized by them or not changes nothing with what we’ve been doing or what we have planned. Officers in our party have had talks and dealings with The Hawkins Campaign and we simply could not deal with their terrible behavior and their intimidation tactics. Bowing down towards bad actors like that simply goes against The Alaskan Spirit and instead we nominated Jesse Ventura who better represents what Alaskans want from their government. With the Hawkins people taking over the national party we feel it may be necessary to form a new coalition within The Green Party. Several state parties have expressed interest in leaving the national party as well.

People who claim to be the founders of the environmental movement have blamed The Green Party for this nation’s failure to fight climate devastation and we find that absolutely ridicules! These people have been involved far longer in the movement than we have with probably a higher profile than us and where is the country now? We feel this is more “vote blue no matter who” nonsense and they’re making a bad faith argument. Instead of voter shaming these people should push The Democratic Party toward good climate policy but as we seen in the recent presidential debate Joe Biden can’t even be bothered to support The Green New Deal. The truth is The Greens are interested in results and that means either pushing one of the two major parties towards good policy or even winning elections ourselves.

The GPAK believes in community empowerment with us becoming independent by growing our own food and recycling and reusing our waste. While so far Alaska has been mostly isolated from the chaos happening in The Lower 48 States becoming more independent would help us in doing that more so. A long winter is coming where The Federal Government is going to become weak, less effective and we need to do what we can to make sure we can take care of ourselves. And seeing this as a top goal of The GPAK we were happy to nominate Jesse Ventura as our presidential nominee. Governor Ventura truly believes in a government that leaves the population alone to live their best lives that they can. Governor Ventura and we believe you have the right to own a gun, worship any god, love and marry who you want and be who you are as long as you don’t hurt others without government interference.

The next scheduled general meeting is October 6^th at 6:00 PM.

For more information on The GPAK contact party Co-Chairman Joshua Hadley by phone by email at josh_hadley1991@yahoo.com

For more information on The Draft Jesse Ventura campaign visit www.peopleforjesse.com 

2020 Green National Convention Day 1

Today was the first day of The Green Party's National Convention and because of the pandemic it's being done virtually online. I downloaded Zoom and sat through several workshops. I decided to listen though the ones where they talked about running campaigns because I plan on doing that. The first one was Running for Office 101 by Hillary Kane and she brought up very good strategies and getting exposure and making yourself known as a third party candidate. Campaigning In Rural Communities by AJ Reed and that was very good as well. I was in and out of What is a Resource? Digital Organizing Tools for Parties because I had several chores to do. I'm looking forward to joining more of the workshops tomorrow and I'll try to get some questions in next time.