Greens for Greens ™

[From David on Formosa]

Green Party candidate for the Taipei City No. 6 District by-election, Calvin Wen (溫炳原), spent 26 hours in a camphor tree on the site of the Old Songshan Tobacco Factory (松山菸廠) in Taipei to protest and prevent its removal.

The protest began on Friday afternoon as Green Party Taiwan members discovered the last tree was about to be removed. Calvin was able to climb the tree with assistance from several other Green Party members who were  then removed from the site by police.

[From Independent Political Report]

Today is the day for the Green Party in Chicago – the special primary taking place to fill the fifth district congressional seat vacated by current White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel includes four Green candidates. Turnout is expected to be very low, probably not topping ten percent, with only about 4,400 voters taking advantage of early voting, according to Congressional Quarterly. There are over 300,000 registered voters in the district.

In the past few days the Green Party primary has received considerable coverage in the local press, and Greens have attended a few candidate forums alongside the heavily favored Democrats and the Republicans. On television, the local ABC affiliate took a look at the Green Party field last night. The Chicago Sun-Times focused on the “oustider” Republicans and Greens here and they wrote a piece about a recent candidate forum here. In the latter piece, the Sun-Times mistakes Jon Stewart for a Green; he is actually a Republican candidate. CBS2 Chicago has an online article about all of the candidates in the race, including links to their websites, here. The Chicago Journal has responses to a number of questions from a number of candidates. The Greens that responded were Matt Reichel and Deb Gordils.

For those of you in the Chicago area, Matt Reichel is hosting an election night party:

Then, come and celebrate with us at our Election Night Party this evening, beginning at 6:30 PM at the Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark. We will be collecting $20 per person to go towards covering the open bar for the evening.

[From Rupert's Read]

Radiohead star Thom Yorke backs Juniper to be “a great Green Party MP”

The Green Party today announces that Tony Juniper, recent Director of Friends of the Earth, has been selected as General Election candidate for Cambridge. There will be a press launch at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, starting at 11.30am Wednesday 21st January (please see below for further details).

Tony Juniper has lived in the city for 20 years and has campaigned on green issues for more than 25 years. As Campaigns Director and later Director of Friends of the Earth he led many successful initiatives on a wide range of issues from wildlife protection to organic food and from recycling to fuel poverty. He stepped down from leading Friends of the Earth in July 2008 following the success of the Big Ask campaign which led to the world’s first national legislation on reducing greenhouse gas emissions – the 2008 Climate Change Act.

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