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| Green Party Enters 65th District Race, Wunsch to Face Two Challengers in Special Election May 20. |
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Ecological Wisdom * Social Justice * Grassroots Democracy * Non-Violence Green Party enters 65th District race, Wunsch to face two challengers in special election May 20. The Green Party of Michigan is thrilled to announce and support the candidacy of long-time Green activist Richard Wunsch for 65th District State Representative. Wunsch is running in the Tuesday, May 20 special election to fill the State House seat left vacant by the death of freshman representative Jerry Kratz. Offering a fresh perspective, Wunsch pledges to run on a platform of peace, labor rights, equality, universal health care, and a clean environment. A lifelong activist, Wunsch is particularly concerned about the current attack on Iraq. "Peace is an attitude. Peace is a process. Peace is a set of values. If we are to have a safe and peaceful country and world, we must select leaders at ALL levels who are committed to peace. Peace is THE overriding issue!" Wunsch says. Wunsch continues, "I am against the Bush Doctrine of 'pre-emptive strikes' (naked aggression) against any nation Washington doesn't like. I am for the American Republic and against the new 'American Empire'!" And he asks: "What will be the next target of Washington's aggression?" Wunsch is also concerned with the way corporations attempt to thwart union organizing and renege on retirement benefits and pensions, foreign trash being trucked into Michigan from Canada and the "intolerable" number of Michigan citizens who do not have health care. To combat these problems, Wunsch proposes stronger union rights and enforcement; stronger environmental protections and the enforcement of existing laws; and universal health care enacted on a state-by-state basis, beginning with Michigan. Wunsch is a retired teacher and a retired skilled tradesman. For the last twenty years, Wunsch has sold used books at Volume I Books in Hillsdale and Wooden Spoon Books in Ann Arbor. Wunsch has already qualified for the Tuesday, May 20 special general election. On that Tuesday, he will face the top vote-getters from a special primary to be held April 22. For more information about the campaign or to make a donation, please contact: Elect Wunsch Green Party of Michigan * 548 S. Main Street * * Ann Arbor, MI 48104 * 734-663-3555 Richard Wunsch RIGHTS OF LABOR: The right of workers to organize is absolute and should be enforced by the government. Employers should not be allowed to renege with impunity on retirement, healthcare, and other contractual agreements. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL: For any to have full freedom and right ALL must have them. That means the Equal Rights Amendment and all that would bring. That means full reproductive rights for all women -- CHOICE! That means affirmative action (NOT the kind that gives 40 points to the children of Yale alums). That means equal rights to the gay and lesbian community; from housing to the right to be a family. That means the civil rights and freedoms the Patriot Act and Patriot II are destroying MUST be defended! HEALTHCARE FOR ALL: To have ANYONE in this country unable to obtain quality healthcare is intolerable. In this country somewhere about 25% of our annual healthcare costs goes to administer the patchwork system of maneuvering and weaseling insurance companies. And that doesn't take into account the excess profits the pharmaceuticals are extorting from us. No other advanced country tolerates this and there is no reason we should. If the Federal Government is unwilling to solve the healthcare crisis, then we must begin the process of solving the problem on a state-to-state basis. A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT: If it is foreign trash coming in by the truckload from Toronto, it is long past time to revisit the NAFTA arrangements that allow such. If it is manure from factory farms going into our waters, it is long past time to revisit the Right to Farm Act that allows the GAAMPs (Generally Accepted Agricultural Management Practices) to rule. Richard Wunsch THE DRUG WARS: We can no longer spend BILLIONS of dollars per year trying to change non-violent personal behavior. We are destroying lives. We are destroying communities. We are destroying the criminal-justice system, making criminal elements rich, and making it more difficult to stop violent crime. EDUCATION: We must take some of the money we have been wasting keeping people in the hands of the Department of Corrections and put it into education. It costs far less to educate than to incarcerate. We should make it easier for public-school districts to work together, right up to consolidation. JOBS AND THE ECONOMY: The biggest solution to the problems of the economy is to take the wasteful expenditures out of the war budget and put the people's money into human services. Military expendi- tures are capital-intensive (that's part of why the corporations love them so much) while human services and the development of alternative energy are both labor-intensive. That adds up to jobs. The State of Michigan should start building wind farms. They could be built at the same cost or less than oil- and gas-fired generation facilities, while running them costs far less. CAFOs (Confined Animal Feedlot Operations): Also known as "factory farms", CAFOs have proliferated to an
unbelievable extent. Dairy CAFOs confine 700 or more cows, often several thousand cows, in
long steel barns, year-round. CAFO cows never graze. CAFOs look like factories, and they are -- animal factories. There
are now ten farms milking 700 to 4,000 cows, each within a few miles of Hudson, Michigan. One cow
produces more than 30 times the waste a human produces. Waste from 10,000 CAFO cows in this small
area = untreated waste of a city of 300,000 people. However, the CAFOs do NOT have to process the waste.
They flush it out of the barns, then spread it on the fields irrespective of weather and other conditions. The
Michigan Department of Agriculture must be forced to stop these irresponsible practices. |
