Conscious Choice: It’s Not Easy Being Green

October 2004 | Election 2004 Special

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Julie Samuels may be the lone local Green on the ballot

by Peter Bernard

WITH A POLITICAL platform based on values that include grassroots democracy, social justice and non-violence, one might expect Chicago-area Green Party members to be above factional quarrels and election-year power struggles.

But it’s for exactly these reasons that Julie Samuels of Oak Park may be the last Green standing for election on local ballots this November.

Samuels is running for state representative from the 8th District as a Green Party candidate because its principles match her own, and, according to her, 11-year Democratic incumbent Calvin Giles is completely out of touch with the needs of his constituents.

“I love the fact that the Green Party is community-based,” Samuels said. “And it really irks me that our government is structured to allow only the two-party system.”

Samuels said she frequently encounters young Democratic volunteers on Wabash Avenue on her way to the train station. “They ask ‘Don’t you want to see Bush out of office?’ and I say ‘No, I want to see the best person possible for the job in office, regardless of what party they’re from. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say that Thou Must be a Democrat or a Republican.‘ “

As for her own House district, which runs through parts of Austin, Galewood, Oak Park and Riverside, she has more immediate concerns.

“We have a huge contaminated area at Barrie Park that Mr. Giles refuses to address, as well as rapidly growing and changing neighborhoods where the impact of sprawl and the expansion of the Eisenhower Expressway needs to be looked at much more critically,” Samuels said.

An employee of the Open Lands Project, Samuels wants to see more protection for urban forest preserves and the creation of community gardens to support local farmers’ markets.

Meanwhile Chicago resident Marc Loveless is fighting to regain his Green Party place on the ballot for state representative from the 14th District. A faction that Loveless and other local longtime Greens call “the Campus Greens” reported Loveless to the state elections board for a violation of residency rules. The board then removed Loveless from the race, but the legal assistant for Rainbow Push and longtime Green has been waging a court battle to get back on the ballot. A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied the party’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Illinois Board of Elections, a move that would have allowed Loveless back on the ballot.

“We’re going to either take this to the federal court of appeals or decide to run this as a writer-in campaign,” Loveless said.

Peter Bernard is a freelance writer who lives in Evanston, Ill.

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