Green Party of Washington State  (GPoWS)

The Green Party of Washington State (GPoWS) welcomes you to our new website.  Please use the links at the left to navigate both on and off the site.

Note:  Our obsolete websites, www.wagreens.org and www.wagreens.us are currently owned by corporate interests (domain name squatters hoping to make a fast buck).  Cease and desist letters have been sent to the registered owners of those domain names demanding that they remove our copyrighted materials.  Please disregard any information you find on those other websites.  The products they are selling are NOT authorized by the GPoWS.

The GPoWS 2010 Spring Convention will be held in Seattle on Saturday, 17 April 2010.  Click on this paragraph for details.

On 21 January 2010, the United States Supreme Court unleashed another “Dred Scott” type of decision ... this one establishing “corporate personhood”.  Click on this paragraph to download a pdf of the decision document.

The majority of justices (5) write:

This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech.  Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection “simply because its source is a corporation.”  The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not “natural persons.” 

Justice Stevens, writing in his dissenting opinion, argues:

If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions.  Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by “Tokyo Rose” during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders.  More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could “ ‘enhance the relative voice’ ” of some (i.e., humans) over others (i.e., nonhumans).  Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech. 

If this decision offends and outrages you (AND IT SHOULD!) click on this paragraph to link with a grassroots effort to amend the United States Constitution to establish that “money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights”.

Scott McLarty, the Media Coordinator for the Green Party of the United States, wrote a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times on 22 January 2010 commenting on the editorial they wrote expressing grave concerns over the U.S. Supreme Court decision.  Click on this paragraph to view the content of that letter.