Green Rainbows and Quakers

Green Rainbows and the Quakers

On March 5, 2016 the Green Rainbow Party of Massachusetts held its regional convention to select state committee members. The state committee sets the policies for the Green Rainbows.

At the convention the presenter from the Society of Friends (Quakers) Anti Mass Incarceration Network stole the show with his strong condemnation of the unnecessary and unfair incarcerations of millions of people in the United States.

Phil said that the USA has five percent of the world’s population, but twenty five percent of the world’s prisoners. More than any so called authoritarian country or feudal country on Earth.

He also condemned indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement as counterproductive and torture. He referred to a United Nation protocol that solitary confinement for greater than 15 days is torture.

Phil also said that most of the arrests are for non violent “crimes” such as drug possession. He pointed out that for decades many of the so called drug crimes were no crimes at all. Before the early 20^th Century there was no prohibition on any drug.  Each of the drug laws prohibition had at least a partial basis in race. 

 The presenter pointed out that the modern drug laws are a continuation of the slave plantation mentality of the majority society. After Reconstruction Period in US history the vagrancy laws were enacted to prevent Black people who had little or no resources from travelling to look for work. These laws were a means to repopulate the prison labor system, especially in the southern Untied States. 

The modern day drug laws and anti panhandling laws to some extent are a continuation of the system to keep the prisons full.

Eileen, an activist from the Northern Worcester County, spoke about gas pipelines being built in Massachusetts. Her message was that new gas pipelines are not needed and that they would be environmentally harmful.

What she said was not entirely encouraging as it seems to be a done deal that the pipelines in the Boston area are a done deal. However the pipeline in Northern Worcester County was likely going to be diverted through New Hampshire.

Brian, a town representative form Shrewsbury, spoke on the use of citizen petitions to have issues placed on the Town agenda.

                             

Dave, a co chair of the Nashua River Green Rainbows Chapter, reported that Jill Stein got fifty percent of the primary vote in the March 1, 2016 state election. She will get half of the ten delegates from Massachusetts committed to her at the Green Party US national convention in Houston TX.

This will be Dr. Stein’s second run for President of the United States. She, in the 2012 presidential election, received the higher number of popular votes that any woman had received in any previous Presidential election.  I wish her well this time around, although she will be overshadowed by Clinton and Trump.