Sponsors: Lois Gagnon  & Dan Kontoff

Vetting: AdCom

Floor Manager: Lois Gagnon Contact information: [email protected]

Shepherd: Lois Gagnon

Summary: The purpose of this proposal is to state the official party position on the ongoing Israeli assault on the Palestinians in Gaza. The implications of not publicly stating our extreme dissatisfaction with the Massachusetts delegation in Washington on what can only be described as genocide would convey an attitude of acceptance of the Biden administration's policy of unconditional support of Israel's actions. The death toll of Palestinians killed is estimated at over 10,800, almost half of them children. This is not to diminish the Israeli deaths from the October 7 attack by Hamas. Collective punishment, however, is a war crime under international law.

Background: The root cause of the current crisis goes way back. Israel's Apartheid policy towards the Palestinians is greatly to blame. This is clearly a settler colonial government committing ethnic cleansing, no different in objectives than the same system that removed the indigenous populations of the Americas and elsewhere. The current violence would not have occurred if the Palestinians had not been locked inside an overcrowded concentration camp with no equal rights, restricted movements, and little access to the necessities of life. The US has financed this illegal project in Gaza and the occupied territories in the West Bank and The Golan Heights to the tune of 3.8 billion dollars a year. It now wants to send more. Israel would not be in possession of its large arsenal of sophisticated military weapons without Washington's continual largesse.

Text of Proposal: In keeping with our Four Pillars of Peace, Ecology, Social Justice, and Democracy, The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts demands our congressional delegation in Washington call for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian political prisoners which number in the thousands, many of them children. We demand the lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the return of stolen Palestinian land back to the 1967 borers. We demand that reparations be made to rebuild the devastation in Gaza to livable conditions for all Palestinians. We demand an end to US funding to Israel that has allowed it to violate Palestinian human rights with impunity. We also demand the US refrain from blocking the passage of UN Security Council Resolutions and respect the enforcement of international law. The Green-Rainbow Party will join with other organizations calling for an immediate ceasefire and the self-determination of the Palestinian people.

Implementation: AdCom, ComCom.

Time frame: ASAP

Financial implications: none

References: https://balfourproject.org

TITLE: Establish 2024 Presidential Campaign Working Group (with options to Provisionally Endorse PEP and DSP documents)

SPONSORS: John Andrews, David Spanagel, and Jamie Guerin

VETTING COMMITTEES: AdCom, CDLC

FLOOR MANAGER: David Spanagel CONTACT INFO FOR FLOOR MANAGER: [email protected] ; cell 978-837-8868

SHEPHERD: John Andrews

SUMMARY: If Massachusetts voters are to have any chance of voting in 2024 for people who will articulate and advocate national policies that reflect the Ten Key Values, we need to establish a working group that can effectively participate in the processes that will nominate a GPUS President/Vice President ticket while also working to get those candidates’ names onto the November general election ballot in our state.

TEXT OF PROPOSAL: Establish 2024 Presidential Campaign Working Group Several of the existing working committees of the GRP must be involved in the presidential effort. In order to monitor and coordinate the various committees and to handle communications with candidates, a special working group called the Presidential Campaign Working Group (PCWG) will be created. This is a working group that will be active from the fall of 2023 until the 2024 campaign wraps up at the end of 2024. Delegates from the PCWG will keep the Candidate Development and Legal Committee (CDLC) and the GRP Administrative Committee (AdCom) regularly informed about its activities. Initially, the working membership of the PCWG shall consist of one or two members from CDLC plus at least one member each from the Communications Committee, the Fundraising Committee, and the Membership and Diversity Committee. All of these Working Committees shall select and appoint their PCWG working members before the end of December 2023. Additional “volunteer” members may subsequently be appointed to join the PCWG by a two-thirds vote of approval from existing group members. Such additional members may be removed by a two-thirds vote of the Administrative Committee.

PCWG’s Key Responsibilities and Goals include:

• Finalizing the Presidential Election Plan (PEP) document and presenting it for State Committee endorsement at (or before) the Winter 2024 quarterly State Committee meeting (OPTION 1 for State Committee to provisionally endorse* the PEP immediately as a part of approving this proposal)
• Finalizing the Delegate Selection Plan (DSP) document and presenting it for State Committee endorsement at (or before) the Winter 2024 quarterly State Committee meeting (OPTION 2 for State Committee to provisionally endorse* the DSP immediately as a part of approving this proposal)
• Working alongside (and in concert with) a separate working group (to be appointed by AdCom) who will conduct a GRP Presidential Preference Poll accessible to eligible Massachusetts Green-Rainbow voters, featuring the names of all candidates who are officially recognized by the GPUS (this poll to be completed hopefully before the end of February 2024)
• Soliciting and vetting applications to serve as Massachusetts delegates to the GPUS Presidential Nominating Convention and publishing a delegate selection report no later than 10 days prior to the State Committee meeting at which the report is to be approved
• Working alongside (and with assistance from the GPUS Ballot Access Committee) to guide and oversee GRP volunteer efforts to pursue a ballot access strategy so that Massachusetts voters will be able to cast votes for GPUS nominees for President and Vice President on the November general election ballot in our state

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: no immediate ones, though implementation of the PEP certainly will entail some financial consequences for the party

REFERENCES AND ATTACHMENTS: Current working draft Presidential Election Plan (PEP) document. Current working draft Delegate Selection Plan (DSP) document * “Provisional endorsement” of either document by State Committee signals general agreement with the direction and intentions articulated within the document(s), but also authorizes AdCom (in consultation with the PCWG) to fine-tune specific recommendations contained therein, to respond to the rush of events and calendar compression as the campaign season rapidly proceeds. Providing this StateCom endorsement up front enables PCWG to focus all its energies on initiating implementation, rather than having to spend precious organizing time finalizing the documents and hesitating before securing StateCom approval to go forward. If AdCom determines that the PCWG’s plans need to shift fundamentally toward a course of action that is substantially contrary to these guidelines, AdCom can then bring the altered course of action back to StateCom in a timely manner for review and approval.