[SfN] Greens office grand opening TOMORROW (10/9), 5 p.m.

[Jim Buell]

Hi friends in Students for Nader,

Please turn out to celebrate the grand opening of our Prairie Greens 
campaign awareness office in Church Street Square, downtown Champaign, 
tomorrow (Monday, 10/9) at 5 p.m. ... and bring a friend or two! The 
address: 206 N. Randolph St. (corner of Church and Randolph).

Why so soon? 1 - generate press to coincide with last day of voter reg 
10/10; we're after the UNlikely voter; 2 - help promote the 10/10/10,000 
Nader super-rally; 3 - we're already paying rent and gotta get those doors 
open; 4 - it's just 4 weeks to Election Day.

Here's a copy of the press release that was faxed to the News-Gazette, 
Octopus, Daily Illini, WILL radio, WCIA 3 TV and WICD 15 TV yesterday. 
We'll follow up during the day tomorrow by dropping in to each of their 
offices.

Jim
390-6368 (mobile)
--------------------
LOCAL GREENS OPEN CAMPAIGN AWARENESS OFFICE WITH 10/9 OPEN HOUSE


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:
Jim Buell, 217-390-6368
Zach Miller, 217-390-1865
Prairie Greens of East Central Illinois
http://www.prairienet.org/greens

The Prairie Greens of East Central Illinois will celebrate the opening of 
their campaign awareness office in downtown Champaign with an Open House on 
Monday, Oct. 9, from 5 to 6 p.m. The office, located on the ground floor of 
Church Street Square, will be open daily through Election Day, Nov. 7. The 
Open House is open to the public and press.

The Prairie Greens are the local branch of the Green Party, which is 
running longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader as its presidential 
candidate. The Greens are taking steps in this election year to become the 
major third party in Illinois and across the nation. This week, Nader and 
his running mate, native American activist Winona LaDuke, won a spot on the 
Illinois ballot after surviving a petition challenge from the state's 
Democratic leadership.

"We're opening this office to help people throughout East Central Illinois 
learn about the Green alternative," said Jim Buell, one of about fifty 
members of the local group. "When people learn about the Greens, they 
realize there's an alternative to politics as usual, and our support grows."

"We have a lot to celebrate in Illinois this week," Buell said. "Ralph 
Nader is drawing over 10,000 people to a super-rally in Chicago on Tuesday 
night, and our recent victory in the ballot fight shows we have what it 
takes to be a strong force for political reform in this state and 
nationally." The Chicago rally, at the UIC Pavilion, will feature Nader, 
filmmaker Michael Moore, author Studs Terkel, 1980 independent presidential 
candidate John B. Anderson, former talk-show host Phil Donahue and musician 
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. Tickets are $10 per person and are available by 
calling the Chicago Nader Campaign office toll-free at 1-866-NADER-4U.

Local Greens scoff when asked whether Nader can win the presidency this 
year. "He certainly could if he had a shot at the debates and at fair media 
time, but that's not the way our political system works," said Zach Miller, 
another Prairie Green. "Money counts for too much, and the Nader campaign 
nationally has about as much of that as the Satterthwaite-Winkel match-up." 
That's by design, Miller stressed: "Nader and the Greens aren't accepting 
any corporate money, any PAC money, any lobbying group money. We believe in 
grassroots, community politics, not mega-money politics."

The Greens scorn the war chests of the Republicans and Democrats, whose 
corporate sponsorship "makes their candidates the mouthpieces for corporate 
policies that are against the people's interests," Miller said.

Even so, he said, the Greens believe their potential support runs far 
deeper than polls of "likely voters" would indicate: "We're after the 
un-likely voter, the half of all voters who sleep in on Election Day 
because they don't think there's anything worth voting for. With the 
Greens, there is." That's one reason the Greens are pushing for everyone to 
update their voter registrations by the deadline this Tuesday: "If you've 
moved since you registered to vote, you aren't registered," Miller noted.

He and other Greens believe this election holds the key to "growing the 
Greens." "If Nader can win just five percent of the presidential votes in 
Illinois next month, we earn the right to run a full slate of statewide 
candidates in 2002," Buell pointed out. "That means we can run Green 
candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, treasurer, secretary of 
state, comptroller, senator, the works," he said. And if Nader wins five 
percent of the votes nationally, the Greens qualify for federal matching 
funds for the 2004 presidential race, Buell said. The larger the number of 
votes cast for Nader, the more seriously all politicians will take the 
issues the Greens support, he added.

Miller characterized the Greens as a progressive, populist movement "such 
as this country hasn't seen for half a century." Unlike many recent third 
party movements, the Greens aren't about "an individual candidate, a single 
issue or just being against something," he said.

Instead, the Green Party is built around local consensus decision-making 
and a set of ideals its supporters refer to as The Ten Key Values: 
ecological wisdom; social justice and equal opportunity; grassroots 
democracy; nonviolence; decentralization; community based economics; gender 
equity and cooperative values; respect for diversity; personal and global 
responsibility; and future focus and sustainability.

"These aren't just words for us," Miller said. "They're the key to who we 
are and what we do, in our politics, our social lives and our place in the 
community."

The key values help explain why the Greens are the only political party 
calling for national health insurance, full public campaign financing, a 
reduction in the military budget, an end to the country's failed "war on 
drugs," a minimum wage above the poverty line, abolition of the death 
penalty, the curtailing of corporate economic power, and the promotion of 
environmental and human values over profit values. "These are core issues 
for our country, and the major parties refuse to even mention them."

The Prairie Greens will use their office in downtown Champaign to plan 
campaign-related events, distribute Nader/LaDuke and Green Party materials, 
and serve as a convenient place for current and new supporters to gather, 
Buell said.

"We invite people from throughout the central Illinois community to come, 
check us out and join with us in the next few weeks," he said. "They'll 
learn that the Greens are here to stay. It's now that we're building the 
energy that will see us into the local elections next spring, the statewide 
elections in 2002, the next presidential elections four years from now, and 
a permanent place in the American political scene."

The Prairie Greens campaign awareness office is accessible from the 
Randolph Street entrance to Church Street Square, 206 N. Randolph St., 
Champaign. After Wednesday, Oct. 11, the telephone number will be 
217-355-5001. The Prairie Greens also maintain an online presence via their 
website, http://www.prairienet.org/greens. They can be reached by mail at 
Post Office Box 184, Urbana, IL 61803-0184.