Statement by Gwen Marshall of Hamilton County

By Gwen Marshall

Why I am running for the Ohio Green Party Central Committee

As to how I came to be a Green Party member, my story is as follows: I was raised Republican and worked with more Democrats than Republicans in the 1990's when I was actively working on forest preservation and fair trade issues, but I never felt like I fit in with either party. The Green Party is the first political party I've joined where I actually fit in belief wise and have only voted for Green Party candidates for President in the general election since 1996. I had learned that I could work with a wide diversity of people from both of the major parties on the things we agreed on but also found there was much where we disagreed. I was also tired of being told that we need to vote based on a choice of "the lesser of two evils." I believe that when told to choose between two evils, one needs to find a better choice and that is why I started the campaign in southwest Ohio in 2000 to get Ralph Nader on the ballot. The outpouring of interest and activity in southwest Ohio made me know that we were headed in the correct direction with founding a new Green Party here. I worked on getting David Cobb on the ballot in 2004 as the official Green Party candidate and I was sorry to see Ralph Nader go off in his own direction away from his 2000 goal to form a viable US Green Party. I also worked on the 2008 Ohio campaign to get Cynthia McKinney on the ballot as well as on Tim Kettler's 2006 Secretary of State and 2008 Ohio Senate campaigns. I am the current treasurer of the Southwest Ohio Green Pac, work on the web page http://www.swohgp.org as well as often host meetings at my house for the Green Party. email address swohgp@fuse.net