Sunshine Government and Green Neighborhoods: A Green Platform

By Scott McLarty, Green Party candidate for the Ward One Member of the Council of the District of Columbia

Contents:

Platform Summary
The Green Party of the District of Columbia
Candidate’s Profile
A Few Quotes

PLATFORM SUMMARY

(1) We support SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT and POSITIVE GROWTH for DC

• OVERSIGHT: Residents deserve veto power over development in Ward One, not just "input"... For example, development of the 14th Street Corridor near the future Columbia Heights Metro Station must be in accord with the desires and needs of Columbia Heights residents (especially as expressed in the November, 1997 "Design Charrette") instead of developers’ plans for surface parking lots and shopping malls... Let’s preserve Ward One’s diversity — don’t let development displace residents.
• HOMETOWN ECONOMY: We must promote and assist small, locally owned DC shops and businesses — instead of giant corporate chain stores, glass-box office buildings, strip shopping malls, parking lots, huge garages, and freeways.
• CLEAN, SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS: We must immediately implement curbside, school, and office building recycling, neighborhood clean-up, expanded public transportation (especially the Metrobus, which serves DC residents)... We must preserve and expand our parks and green spaces.... We must maintain and strengthen the Environmental Policy Act... 60% of trash processed at DC transfer stations now comes from the suburbs, while the trash transfer industry lobbies to allow stations 200 feet from residences and schools — We must prohibit trash transfer stations nearer than 500 feet from residences and schools, and prohibit their use for suburban trash... We must resist the liquor lobby and pass the Bottle Bill.
• PUBLIC EDUCATION: We support small class (maximum 18 students for elementary school grades) and school size, textbooks, competitive teacher pay (we lose our best teachers to the suburbs), restoration and expansion of UDC... We support public school curricula that include all programs from basic academic skills to college and job preparation to after-school programs (athletics, arts, tutoring, etc.)... Let’s center the social life of young people around schools, and keep public schools and UDC open, public, safe, fully funded, fully supplied and repaired. The money for
  improved public education must come from the current budget surplus, from a progressive tax plan, and from funding diverted away from wasteful multi-million-dollar projects (see below).
• AFFORDABLE HOUSING: We must assist residents in gaining home ownership, and restore funding (from budget surpluses) for tenant assistance and shelters... We would maintain and strengthen rent control and tenants’ rights... We support the Statehood Party’s proposal for renters’
  insurance.
• HUMAN SERVICES: We support full funding and increased hours for clinics, drug treatment on demand, abused women’s shelters, AIDS care... We must OUTLAW reallocation of AIDS and other funding and the failure to disburse such money appropriately... We support medical marijuana and expanded needle exchange... We oppose reform measures to limit damages for tort liability.
• Let’s work for UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE for all DC residents, regardless of income, employment, housing, age, prior medical condition. DC suffers an unacceptably low life expectancy for males and high infant mortality rate, yet public officials and the media rarely mention it. We must continue working and lobbying for guaranteed health care (a Single-Payer system), if not on the national level, then state by state, including DC. Everyone already pays for (inferior) care for the uninsured through higher costs and taxes. A Single-Payer system is the only solution for DC’s health crisis. It’ll take several years to enact — let’s begin educating all DC residents about the necessity and benefits of guaranteed health care now. We would convene a working group of citizens’ organizations and individuals with expertise in health care and its financing to design a DC health plan based on human needs instead of the profit motive. Quality health care should be a human right, not a cash cow for corporate investors.
• INCLUSION: We would bring citizens’ organizations with special knowledge, and expertise, and involvement — groups like the Coalition for Smarter Growth, the Fair Budget Coalition, Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, various human and economic rights organizations, and many others — to the legislative table. We would establish a network of progressive DC organizations to lobby other Council members with the same intensity that business and conservative lobbies push their agenda.

(2) Let’s end multi-million-dollar “free lunch” handouts and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. Instead, let’s reinvest that money — along with DC budget surpluses — in schools, housing, jobs, and human services. Our services, protections, and resources are under fire and in danger of being sold off, privatized, reduced, diverted, or abolished. Council should resist such pressure from the Board of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce, the Federal City Council, the Financial Control Board, and Congress.

• FIGHT the DC Domino Plan! First, they put up the MCI Arena... Soon, the Shaw Convention Center and the Massachusetts Avenue ballpark... Then more freeways, evicting thousands of residents, congesting and polluting DC, draining our economy (Inter-County Connector; Outer Beltway; New York Avenue freeway into DC; a possible revival of the I-95 extension through NW).
• NO arena/convention center/ballpark surtaxes!
• NO privatization of Metrobus, private prisons, private school vouchers, “theme park” on Kingman and Heritage Islands, phone towers in Rock Creek Park.
• NO MORE boarded up, ruined, vacant buildings, which invite crime, garbage, and rats — Let’s penalize negligent owners and reward owners that improve their property through a “split-rate” property tax... We should inventory all such properties in Ward One, and we must also sell unused and unimproved city-owned buildings to local residents and businesses.
• We must LOWER TAXES for middle & low income residents and small DC businesses, instead of corporations... We support the analysis and plan for taxation recommended by the Fair Budget Coalition... We should establish a reciprocal tax plan for nonresident commuters... Let’s lower the sales tax on non-luxury goods to stimulate small DC businesses... In 1995, DC’s richest ($1.8 million plus income) paid only 6.4% in taxes, while lower and middle income folks paid 9.5 to 10.5%... Let’s raise the tax 4% on $100,000 incomes for $150 million more in revenue... It’s time for “tough love for the rich” instead of the poor!

(3) We demand full DEMOCRACY for DC! DC suffers two crises of democracy:

1. We lack representation in Congress, resulting in the takeover by the federal government through the 1997 Revitalization Act, imposition of the Financial Control Board and Emergency Education Board of Trustees, gutting of laws enacted by Council and by ballot initiative;
2. Corporations contribute large sums to political parties and campaigns, hire lobbyists and lawyers and PR firms, run ads, and threaten jobs to get their way. Citizens must spend time and energy organizing, take time off from work to lobby, wait hours to testify at hearings, and suffer other inconveniences to make our voices heard. DC needs people in elected office who are free of corporate, suburban, and other wealthy influences. The Green Party takes no corporate money.
   1. WE DEMAND statehood and representation in Congress for DC, and an end to bureaucratic Financial Control Board rule... NO MORE overpaid consultants.
   2. WE DEMAND that Congress honor its promise to keep FEDERAL JOBS in DC.
   3. WE DEMAND a fair Federal Payment. (currently insufficient) to match the income we’ve lost from not being allowed to tax commuters or collect taxes on federal property.
   4. WE DEMAND that Congress cease tampering with local laws, such as DC’s domestic partnership and adoption rights laws.
   5. WE DEMAND that elected DC government serve the people of DC — instead of corporations, the suburbs, the Board of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce, Federal City Council, the wealthy... We must expand and enforce “sunshine” laws (accountability in government contracting, mandatory public hearings, no secret deals) at every level, from the Mayor’s office to Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs).
   6. WE DEMAND living-wage jobs for DC residents in all projects contracted with or subsidized by District government, with the right of collective bargaining — no job outsourcing.
   7. WE DEMAND full funding for ANCs, with expanded powers: the right of ANCs to authorize ballot measures collectively, the right to sue DC government, supervision of community service sentencing, some authority over the Department of Public Works.
   8. WE DEMAND an end to “zero tolerance” police harassment of immigrants, young African Americans, gay people, vendors, and others... Maintain a strong independent citizen’s oversight board over the police... We should establish community service sentencing for nonviolent offenses instead of jailing more young people.
   9. WE DEMAND proportional representation, with more Council members from more political parties. We support a “mixed” proportional representation system, based on cumulative voting in wards and party representation for at-large seats, similar to systems that have worked in Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa after the fall of apartheid.
   10. WE DEMAND that DC respect the democratic principle that rights adhere to persons, not to collective institutions (corporations). This principle should be applied to everything from the right of workers to control the workplace to the right of people to enjoy quality health care to the right to restrict corporate contributions to campaigns and political parties (which allow the wealthy to exert greater political influence). We believe that, after the fall of totalitarianism in so many countries, the greatest threat to democracy and freedom and equality is now the growing and unchecked power of corporations over every aspect of our lives.

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THE GREEN PARTY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

“There are things happening elsewhere in the world that you don't hear much about in America. Like polls finding the Green Party to be the third most popular party in Germany. Or the news that one of Brazil’s 26 state governors is a Green. Or that the French environmental minister is one also. Or that the Green Party candidate for mayor of Stuttgart came in second with 40% and exit polls showed him the most popular candidate among all voters under 50. Or that there are now Green parties in over 70 countries....’ -- Sam Smith, The Progressive Review (No. 352, December 1997)

The Green Party of the District of Columbia is dedicated to social, environmental, and economic justice. The ten key values of the Greens are: Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, Non-violence, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Feminism, Respect for Diversity, Personal and Global Responsibility, Future Focus.

Part of a national movement with parties throughout the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, the Greens first became visible here in DC in the 1996 national election, through the Ralph Nader presidential campaign. Nader placed third in DC.

With the Ward One election, the Green Party of the District of Columbia broadens its activism to include local electoral efforts. The DC Greens have already been active on various local fronts, doing everything from testimony at public hearings to rallies and demos:

• Opposition to the proposed Convention Center in the Shaw neighborhood, to the placement of a theme park on Kingman's and Heritage Islands, to the Barney Circle Freeway and the Inter-County Connector, to the death penalty, to Metrobus privatization, to the Truth-in-Sentencing federal takeover of the DC Justice System.
• The movement to gain democracy in DC, and opposition to the Financial Control Board takeover. The DC Greens have participated in the Stand Up For Democracy and Democracy for America’s Capital coalition.
• Shelter and affordable housing, tenants’ rights, rent control advocacy, immigrants’ rights: Olive Branch, Emergency Coalition to Save Rent Control, Stand For Our Neighbors
• The ballot petition effort for Measures 57 and 59, protecting physicians and patients from prosecution for use of medical marijuana.
• The DC Independent Progressive Coalition, which Scott McLarty has chaired and which includes members of the Green, Statehood, Umoja, New, and other local “third” parties.
• The campaign to restore recycling; opposition to repeal of the DC Environmental Policy Act.
• The Green Party of the District of Columbia is a member organization of the national Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) formed in Middleburg, Virginia, on November 17 and 18, 1996. ASGP intends to organize a national Green Party, with both electoral and activist ambitions, in the next few years. Here's the ASGP Web site address: http://www.greenparties.org
• Visit the DC Greens Web site at: http://www.dcgreenparty.org

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CANDIDATE’S PROFILE

Scott Thomas McLarty was born 19 April 1958 in Oyster Bay, Long Island. He grew up in Babylon, also on Long Island, and attended college at Yale University (BA, 1980), where he studied music, linguistics, and anthropology.

He pursued his first interest, musical composition (especially for the theater) through doctoral studies and teaching at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, part of the University of Cincinnati. In 1983, his musical The Brooklyn Bridge opened on Off-Broadway in New York. He continued to write and produce original musical theater works in Cincinnati, especially through Diaphanous Features Musical Theater Company, which he founded and for which he received grants from the City of Cincinnati and the Fine Arts Fund.

After membership in several activist organizations in Cincinnati in the late 80s, Scott was elected facilitator (organizer and spokesperson) for Gay & Lesbian March Activists/ACT UP Cincinnati in 1990, as the AIDS crisis began to take a heavy toll on Middle Western cities. Through ACT UP, Scott

• Led a successful citywide community campaign demanding restoration of lost federal funding for the Holmes Hospital AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, with rallies, demonstrations, in 1992.
• Campaigned for universal (Single-payer) health coverage.
• Participated and organized coalition and lobbying work in a successful united effort among several organizations to gain Cincinnati city antidiscrimination ordinances.
• Organized protests over the prosecutions of (1) the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, on charges of obscenity for exhibiting the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, in 1990 (acquitted); (2) a man for attempted murder because his HIV-infected blood stained the shirts of corrections officers after they beat him severely (he had been arrested for jaywalking outside a gay bar), in 1991.
• Engaged in coalition work and various activities with Housing Now!, the National Organization for Women, Peaceworks, the Martin Luther King Coalition, the Rainbow Coalition, and the local resistance to Operation Rescue.

After moving to Washington, DC, in 1993, Scott participated in ACT UP Washington in 1993 and 1994, and worked to promote the AIDS Cure Act and the Single-payer Health Care plan offered by Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota.

In 1995, convinced that progress was no longer possible through the Democratic Party, Scott helped organize Third Parties ’96. Scott served on the Advisory Board for the Ralph Nader/Winona LaDuke national campaign in 1996.

Scott helped reorganize the DC Green Party after the 1996 election, and became a member of the Steering Committee. He has edited and published Green Action, an update of DC Greens’ activities, and has organized successful events to draw new members. (See the section on “The Green Party of the District of Columbia” for a list of activities).

Scott has had articles published in several national publications, including In These Times, Z Magazine, and The Progressive Review, as well as the local and community publications, small press (Nouveau Midwest, The Washington Peace Letter). In 1996 and 1997 he published Pink Noise, a newsletter with articles on politics and the arts. He is a member of the Emergency Coalition to Save Rent Control, the Labor Party, the Alliance For Democracy, and the Washington Peace Center, and has participated in the Economic Human Rights Campaign, Stand For Our Neighbors (a human rights group based in Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights), BiNet (a bisexual social and support group), and weekly recycling pick-up at the Bancroft School in Mount Pleasant.

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A FEW QUOTES

“I am running to win. This is neither a symbolic nor a single issue campaign... We need someone on Council whose party doesn’t kneel before boardrooms or the suburbs. Democratic and Republican leadership has given us years of ineptitude, cronyism, corruption, lack of accountability — and an excuse for Congress to take over DC. Corporate and suburban business interests treat DC like a feeding trough... We’ll find the solution to DC’s crises and Ward One’s problems in our own neighborhoods, citizens’ organizations, unions, and independent political parties. We must rebuild democracy from the ground up!” — Scott McLarty, Green Party candidate for the Ward One DC City Council seat

Who holds power in DC?

“FEEDING FRENZY: The Vichy vultures are already hard at work on the carrion of the city. An outfit that calls itself DC 2000 — along with such usual suspects at the Board of Trade and the Federal City Council — held an ‘emergency conference’ in early September to discuss how to make money out of the federal takeover of the DC. They didn’t quite phrase it like that, but agenda titles included “New Opportunities for Economic Development,’ ‘Making DC More Business-Friendly,’ Capital Gains Cuts and Enterprise Zones.’ Local pols like [Democratic DC Rep. Eleanor Holmes] Norton, [Democratic Mayor Marion] Barry, and [Republican At-Large Council Member Carol] Schwartz turned out to pay homage to the city’s welfare fathers.” — Free DC News Service #27, September 29, 1997, published by
Sam Smith

“Mayoral candidate Jack Evans has raised almost $217,000 in campaign funds, helped by hefty donations from business leaders in his downtown ward and changes to election law that raise the limit on contributions. Evans, who as a member of the D.C. Council proposed the legislation that removed the restrictive cap, is one of [the] first candidates to benefit from the change, which raised the limit on individual contributions to mayoral candidates from $100 to $2,000.... Some downtown business leaders, including lawyers and developers, chipped in the maximum $2,000 contribution for Evans. At the same time, more than $60,000 came from outside Washington, including the Washington suburbs...” -- “Evans Filling War Chest for Mayoral Run,” The Washington Post, Thursday, February 12

“The District is likely to remain firmly under the financial control board’s thumb well beyond the four-year period first envisioned, officials confirm privately. The District must produce four consecutive balanced budgets before it can escape the control board’s rigid oversight. With audits revealing an unexpected surplus for fiscal 1997, many District officials assume that the control board’s four-year phaseout clock has already begun ticking. ‘‘Not so,’ says Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. ‘I think you’ll see this get extended,’ said Davis, chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing District affairs... Davis, who drafted the 1995
law that created the control board, said unless Congress sees a ‘dramatic improvement’ in the city’s day-to-day management and services, the law will likely be amended to extend the control board’s authority indefinitely.” — “Control board may not exit in four years” by Thomas C. Hall, in The Washington Business Journal, February 6-12, 1998

“Some city planners and elected officials erroneously insist that anything happening is better than nothing. Headline-grabbing civic projects, from big cultural centers to new stadiums, always requiring huge capital investments that cost taxpayers dearly, detract attention from complicated fundamental difficulties. Convention centers, stadiums, aquariums, cultural centers, enclosed malls — these are about politics and development profitable for a few, not about developing local economies, enlivening downtowns, or stimulating revitalization. Downtowns compete for these headline-grabbing, budget-straining projects but overlook the actual, complex cities in which they sit.” -- Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown, by Roberta Brandes Gratz with Norman Mintz (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998)

“Why should the city provide support to any corporation that is not locally owned and operated? Shouldn’t community corporations be the exclusive recipients of municipal subsidies, tax breaks, and pension investments? Why should the city lift a finger to help shopping malls that discourage purchasing from local producers? Why not instead underwrite local labeling, import substitution, and currencies that enhance the economic health of local businesses?” -- Going Local, by Michael Shuman (New York: The Free Press, 1998)

“After a year-and-a-half investigation, members fo the DC Tax Revision Commission have reached a startling conclusion: Taxes have little to do with why people cross the District line. ‘Taxes are not a determinant of why people and businesses locate in the city,’ explains commission chairman Robert Ebel. Of the 67,000 tax filers lost since 1989, most have relocated to the suburbs of Maryland, which generally taxes both businesses and individuals at a higher rate than Virginia.” -- City Desk, Washington City Paper, May 8, 1998

“The right of voting for representation is the primary right by which all other rights are protected.” — Thomas Paine

“We need to put proportionality at the center of our concept of representation.” — Lani Guinier

What kind of health care do we need?

[The Five Principles endorsed by the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend Health Care are] (1) Medicine and nursing must not be diverted from their primary tasks: the relief of suffering, the prevention and treatment of illness and the promotion of health. (2) Pursuit of corporate profit and personal fortune have no place in caregiving. (3) Potent financial incentives that reward overcare or undercare should be prohibited, as should business arrangements that allow corporations and employers to control the care of patients. (4) A patient’s right to clinician of choice must not be curtailed. (5) Access to health care must be the right of all... [I]n our state [Massachusetts], more than 10 percent of doctors and 700 nurses have endorsed [Ad Hoc Committee To Defend Health Care’s] founding statement [in favor of statewide universal health coverage]. Titled “For Our Patients, Not for Profits: A Call to Action,” this call appears in the December 3 Journal of the American Medical Association, along with a five-page list of Massachusetts signatories. To mark its publication we’ll dump corporate annual reports and other symbols of profit-driven medicine from the Boston Tea Party boat, and hundreds of nurses and doctors will convene at historic Faneuil Hall, linked by satellite to meetings elsewhere... We aim to spark an uprising that spreads rapidly through the health professions and beyond. Already 16 percent of Rhode Island’s physicians have endorsed the Ad Hoc Committee’s call; in New Mexico, the state’s Medical Society and Nursing Association and the organizations of nurse practitioners, physicians’ assistants and Hispanic physicians have all endorsed it. Leaders of the Illinois group have introduced the Bernardin Amendment, a measure invoking words from the late Cardinal’s October 1995 pastoral letter (“Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity, and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right”) to require the state legislature to enact universal health coverage...” — “For Patients, Not Profits” by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, in The Nation, December 22, 1997

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Paid for by Ward One Citizens for McLarty, Philip Barlow, treasurer.
1852 Columbia Road, NW, Apt 405, Washington, DC 20009. We accept no corporate donations. A copy of our report is filed with the Director of Campaign Finance of the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics.
For further information, call (202) 518-5624.
E-mail addresses: dcgreens98@yahoo.com (and) scottmclarty@yahoo.com