The Green Party will hold a presidential debate in San Francisco on Jan. 13.  The announcement is today on the Alameda County Green Party web site as well as having been posted at Third Party Watch.  

Five of the seven (7) candidates who will appear on the Green Party primary ballot will be in attendance.  They are Jared Ball, Elaine Brown, Kent Mesplay, Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader.  The other two on the California ballot, Kat Swift (CoChair Texas Green Party) and Jesse Johnson (CoChair Mountain Party of West Virgina… affiliated with the Green Party) have been invited and either can not make it or have not yet confirmed.

According to the post at Third Party Watch:

California, which will likely control between 20 and 25 percent of the delegates at the national convention, is the big prize and the race to watch.

I am working with the event organizers to try and establish a live blogging feed from there as well as a live audio feed.   If nothing else, we will have someone blogging from there and posted to California Greening.

In a recent email exchange with Brian, I said that I was going to become a bit more partisan as a member of the Green Party.  Today, I want introduce you to one of the Green Party Candidates that are NOT named Nader.

Kent Mesplay was interviewed by Indian Country Today and that interview resulted in a front page (at least on the web site) placement (at least today). It is worth a read by all because Kent is a very unique individual.  

It is not often to find someone who grew up with stone aged people in Papua New Guinea, where Jared Diamond was a family friend, and then completed a Ph. D. in the sciences.  

‘So I grew up with Stone Age people in the middle of the rain forest. We didn’t have television or even telephones. We captured rainwater for drinking and had a garden. There was a small air strip where we had provisions flown in, but we were largely self-reliant and that’s part of who I am as a person.’

Sustainability and self reliance are crucial to security, Mesplay said.

“As a nation, we’re really living outside our needs. We import 80 percent of the food we eat. We import energy. In some parts of the country, we import water. In the time of any crunch – be it environmental or from terrorists – people are better off if they have their needs met in the community or in the region.”

But the government and large businesses don’t like that, he added.

”They act more in terms of stripping away wealth and breaking down people who are largely independent. That’s what they’ve done with the tribes and the nations over the years. That’s what they’re doing internationally now.”

While I support Mesplay, I have not idea how the Green Party nomination will play out.  I have heard that a Bay Area debate is tentatively scheduled for January 13,2008.  I am sure it will NOT be covered on Fox News.