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Occupy/Peace Black Friday at Smith Haven Mall

Ian Wilder Green Party of Suffolk Secretary at Black Friday Demonstration

A number of Green Party of Suffolk members participated in a demonstration at Smith Haven Mall on Black Friday. The Green Party of Suffolk endorsed the demonstration, and is an organization in the Suffolk Peace Network which helped organise the action. “[This] is a gathering of the 99 percent,” said Green Bill McNulty. "It’s the 99 percent that has been unable—because of job loss, foreclosures and the collapse of the financial markets and all the rest of it—to satisfy its material needs.” “The beauty of this movement is that it’s uniting people across all sorts of life: those who have been foreclosed, students who graduate with huge loans and no jobs and the working people, whose wages have been flat since the 70s,” he continues. “All of these people are here and we’re acting in a way, we hope, which will keep this movement going—because the politicians aren’t listening. They are elected by us, but don’t serve us, so there has to be another pressure, another force exerted, to promote… systemic change that will promote the well-being of the population, the 99 percent.”

Thanks to Cesar Malaga for his run for Suffolk County Legislator, District 14, on the Green Party line!

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Ongoing Vigils for Peace

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Babylon Town Board asked to pass US Mayors
"Bring the War Dollars Home" resolution

Walter Gafforio

Lindenhurst, NY – Seven Babylon residents attended the Town Board meeting last night to request Babylon to join the other municipalities that have already endorsed the US Conference of Mayors resolution Calling on Congress to Redirect Military Spending to Domestic Priorities. The full text of the resolution is at the bottom of this post.

Not surprisingly, six of the seven residents are Green Party members. The Green Party of Suffolk, the county's largest peace organization, has already endorsed the US Conference of Mayors resolution. The Green Party of Suffolk has called on our villages, towns and the county government to also pass the US Conference of Mayors' resolution. The evening was kicked off by an impassioned plea from Green Party of Suffolk County Legislator candidate Cesar Malaga (District 14) for an end to wasted lives and wasted tax dollars.

Malaga has previously called on all Suffolk residents to:

"Join the Green Party in speaking out at village, town, and county legislative meetings for our local governments to adopt the Mayors' resolution. Demand our local officials go on the record on whether they stand with Wall Street war profiteers or Main Street taxpayers. I respectfully request that my county Legislator Wayne Horsley put the US Conference of Mayors' resolution before the County Legislature for a vote. According to the CostofWar.com, these wars have cost the Suffolk County taxpayers over $12 Billion Dollars. Enough is enough!"

The evening's speakers also included Walter Gafforia who spoke from his experience as a Viet Nam veteran to end the wars immediately and attend to our domestic needs. Gafforia noted that he is a member of the Raheen Tyson Heighter chapter of the Veterans for Peace, which is named in memory of the first Suffolk resident killed in these wars. (Report viia: On the Wilder Side)

We are looking for other peace activists to being it before their local boards.

Green Party of Suffolk Adopts US Conference of Mayors' "Bring the War Dollars Home" Resolution

Challenges the County, Towns, and Villages to Also Adopt It

The Green Party of Suffolk, the county's largest peace organization, has adopted the US Conference of Mayors' resolution "Calling on Congress to Redirect Military Spending to Domestic Priorities." The Green Party of Suffolk calls on our villages, towns and the county government to also pass the US Conference of Mayors' resolution. The website of the Green Party of Suffolk is http://www.gpsuffolk.org

Green Party of Suffolk County Legislator candidate Cesar Malaga (District 14) calls on all Suffolk residents to "Join the Green Party in speaking out at village, town, and county legislative meetings for our local governments to adopt the Mayors' resolution. Demand our local officials go on the record on whether they stand with Wall Street war profiteers or Main Street taxpayers"

Malaga continued: "I respectfully request that my county Legislator Wayne Horsley put the US Conference of Mayors' resolution before the County Legislature for a vote. According to the CostofWar.com, these wars have cost the Suffolk County taxpayers over $12 Billion Dollars. Enough is enough!" The resolution reads as follows:

"WHEREAS, every member of the US Conference of Mayors and the Americans they represent, support our brave men and women in uniform and their families;
WHEREAS, the drawdown of troops should be done in a measured way that does not
destabilize the region and that can accelerate the transfer of responsibility to regional authorities;
WHEREAS, the severity of the ongoing economic crisis has created budget shortfalls at all
levels of government and requires us to re-examine our national spending priorities; and
WHEREAS, the people of the United States are collectively paying approximately $126 billion dollars per year to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan; and
WHEREAS, 6,024 members of the US armed forces have died in these wars; and at least
120,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since the coalition attacks began.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors
supports efforts to speed up the ending of these wars; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors calls on the
President and U.S. Congress to end the wars as soon as strategically possible and bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy and reduce the federal debt"

The Green Party, which is America's peace party, has nearly 1,500 members in Suffolk County. The Green Party has been in the forefront of the peace movement by actively organizing against the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. They have consistently called for the immediate return of our troops, in stark contrast to the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Green Party has always been part of the national peace movement. The Green Party's opposition to these wars has been expressed across the board. The anti-war position has been as local as Green Party members marching in a Smithtown peace vigil while U.S. bombs were first being dropped on innocent Afghanis. National and State Green Party candidates have sepent the last ten years reapeating the call to end these wars immediately. Nonviolence is a core principle of the Green Party and was adopted as part of the party's official principles, along with grassroots democracy; ecology; and social and economic justice.

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Green Party Renews Call for
Moratorium on Tasers in Suffolk

"The Green Party of Suffolk is outraged to discover that Suffolk County has continued using Tasers against its residents," said its chair Roger Snyder. "It is inconceivable that Suffolk has continued to use Tasers given the questions about the Taser-related death of Darryl Bain in 2009."

Snyder repeated the Green Party's plan to protect the lives of Suffolk residents: "In line with our pillar of nonviolence, the Green Party of Suffolk demands Suffolk County seek out ways to avoid the use of easily abused and potentially lethal Tasers. As an immediate step, the Green Party of Suffolk calls on the county to put a moratorium on the use or purchase of any Tasers. In the long term, the Green Party calls on the county to train the police in nonviolent methods of resolving situations."

The renewed call for a moratorium on Taser use in Suffolk County was prompted by the death of Daniel McDonnel after he was tasered twice by the Suffolk Police. According to Newsday, McDonnel is the fifth person to die after being tasered by Suffolk Police. Amnesty International USA has found that at least 350 people died in the United States and Canada after being shot by Tasers since June 2001.

The heavy-handed use of Tasers in Suffolk is striking. According to a 2009 Newsday after the death of Bain, "Suffolk police have 669 Tasers, and supervisors hope to arm most patrol cops with one." The large number of Tasers has created an explosion in their use in Suffolk. Newsday also reports "Tasers were used 44 times in 2006, 53 times in 2007, 65 times in 2008 and 146 times so far this year."

The dangerous nature of Tasers is well-known. Amnesty International released a report on December 16, 2008 that labeled Tasers as "Potentially Lethal and Easy to Abuse." Angela Wright, US researcher at Amnesty International and author of the report said that "Tasers are not the 'non-lethal' weapons they are portrayed to be. They can kill and should only be used as a last resort."

The Amnesty International report showed that abuse of Tasers is widespread. The Amnesty report "found that 90 per cent of those who died after being struck with a Taser were unarmed and many did not appear to present a serious threat. Many were subjected to repeated or prolonged shocks – far more than the five-second "standard" cycle – or by more than one officer at a time. Some people were even shocked for failing to comply with police commands after they had been incapacitated by a first shock." The report found that Tasers were used against persons with "medical conditions such as seizures." It also found that "police officers also used Tasers on schoolchildren, pregnant women and even an elderly person with dementia."

Help the Green Party of Suffolk Reach out to Suffolk Greens

     If you have been an enrolled Green in Suffolk for a while, you know that those of us helping to organize the party in Suffolk try to reach out to all Greens in Suffolk County as much as we can. We use this web site, email (sign up at right if you haven't yet) and other means to keep Greens in Suffolk informed. As a way to reach all of Suffolk's Greens, we mail to every enrolled Green in Suffolk County periodically. (If you haven't received a mailing from us, please check your voting registration address, or contact us.)

     Everyone who registers to vote has a mail address so we can contact and inform them. We believe every Green in Suffolk has the right to know about and participate in their party. The Green Party believes in grassroots democracy. Unfortunately, postal mailings cost money. Just one mailing to all of Suffolk's Greens can cost over $1200.

     If you look in the column at the left, you will see a chart on our fund drive to pay for the GPoS's next mailing. The mailing needs to go out in time to notify Greens of our next countywide meeting, and the April fundraising party. (See below) Hopefully everyone can contribute what they can to push us over the top so the GPoS can continue to reach out.

     To contribute by credit card, just click on the "DONATE" link at the left of this column. (This is a secure transaction.) To contribute by check, please make your check payable to "Green Party of Suffolk County," and mail to 14 Robin Drive, Huntington, NY 11743-4712. Please include your name and address. We are all volunteers, and all money raised goes to Green Party expenses. Thank you. -Roger Snyder, Chair, Green Party of Suffolk

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