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A complete list of the Green Party of Colorado Candidates can be viewed on the 2012 Candidates page.

Art Goodtimes for County Commissioner, San Miguel County

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Art Goodtimes
commish3@sanmiguelcounty.org
970-728-3844

Named Poet Laureate of the Western Slope last year [1] and continuing as weekly columnist for various Telluride newspapers for the past 30 years [2], Art Goodtimes is seeking his fifth term as a San Miguel County Commissioner in southwestern Colorado [3] — the only Green Party county commissioner in the inner basin West and the only partisan elected Green official in Colorado.He has been involved in a number of community collaborative processes, including the Public Land Partnership [4] and the Burn Canyon Monitoring Task Force [5], for which he has received several national awards from the U.S. Dept. of Interior and the U.S. Forest Service. In 2010 he was named a Fellow for the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University and is working on a Payment for Ecosystem Services Pilot Project in San Miguel County [6].  He recently served as chair of the National Association of Counties Gateway Communities Subcommittee and Colorado Counties, Inc. representative on NACo’s Public Lands Steering Committee [7]. He was twice appointed to the BLM’s Southwestern Colorado Resource Advisory Council and has won several regional awards for his work at bridge-building among diverse constituencies.Having first run as a Democrat, Goodtimes switched to the Green Party in 1998 when the party achieved ballot status in Colorado as a minor party, and founded the San Miguel Greens. He has been re-elected for three terms as a Green in San Miguel County, and has served as on-line Council founder and first facilitator as well as chair of the Accreditation Committee of the National Green party. He is currently state party co-chair.In terms of putting the Ten Key Values into effect locally, he is proudest of having established San Miguel County’s Environmental Health Department, having spearheaded the San Juan Fens longitudinal study in Prospect Basin (the first of its kind in the country), as well as the Burn Canyon project – another longitudinal study — on the effects of salvage logging in ponderosa pine — and having adopted a High County Zone District that protects the alpine lands surrounding Telluride from future trophy home development.His personal blog features his columns, freelance articles and poetry.
1 / http://www.tellurideinside.com/2011/04/telluride-regions-art-goodtimes-named-western-slope-poet-laureate.html
2 / http://www.watchnewspapers.com/pages/news_commentary
3 / http://www.sanmiguelcounty.org/departments/commissioners/district3.html
4 / http://www.publiclandspartnership.org
5 / http://www.publiclandspartnership.org/plp/burn_canyon/burn_canyon.htm
6 / http://www.collaborativeconservation.org/2nd_ccc_fellows_cohort
7 / http://www.watchnewspapers.com/bookmark/22499-Making-the-Congressional-Rounds


Karyna Lemus for County Commissioner, El Paso County

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My name is Karyna Lemus and it is with great enthusiasm and humility that I ask the Green Party of Colorado to endorse my candidacy for El Paso County Commissioner District Two. I was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1987 to Latin American immigrants who moved to the United States to escape poverty and have better opportunities than they would have had at home. I have been fortunate to live in numerous different environments – from urban California to rural Arkansas and Colorado – which I believe is essential to understanding and representing the diverse character of El Paso County District two. I attended the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs from 2004-2009 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science with emphasis in Global Politics. I was also Co-Founder and President of the American Association of University Women – UCCS chapter which focused on advocacy for women and girls through education, activism, and research. We were able to plan a few successful events on campus which raised awareness on the wage gap between women and men. I was also a member of Americans for Informed Democracy (AID) and attended their Global Leaders Summit in 2007 as well as the Peace and Security Conference in Washington, DC in 2008. I fully support the Green Party’s Ten Key Values and the grassroots process that is central to our commitment for a sustainable, non-violent and empowered world free from the control of corporations and power-brokers. As a representative of Green values I will seek to identify the most important issues facing District Two and offer ideas for responsible action to solve them. I look forward to working together with you all and fulfill our vision for participatory democracy, social justice & opportunity, and ecological & economic sustainability.


Gary Swing for US Congress, CD-1

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http://www.newmenu.org/swingvoter
http://www.facebook.com/RunFromCongress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGf8gXlVfYU

Gary Swing is a cultural events promoter who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Gary grew up in Woodbury, New Jersey in 1968 and moved to Colorado in 1990. Gary worked previously as a public policy researcher. He has a BA in Political Science and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the University of Colorado. Gary is a bicycle commuter, a vegetarian, and childfree by choice.

In 2007, Gary became the sixteenth person to climb all of Colorado’s 637 mountains over 13,000 feet. He was interviewed by Fourteenerworld:
http://fourteenerworld.com/ClimbersCorner/HTML/GarySwingInterview.htm 

In 2008, Gary thru hiked the Appalachian Trail, which runs 2,175 miles from Georgia to Maine. In 2009, he finished walking the 481 mile long Colorado Trail. In 2011, Gary backpacked the length of the Pacific Crest Trail, 2,660 miles from Mexico to Canada, through California, Oregon and Washington. He has also section hiked about 900 miles of the 3,100 mile long Continental Divide Trail.

Gary Swing was a Green Party candidate for state representative in Denver in 1996 and a Green Party candidate for US Representative in 2010.


Misha Luzov for US Congress, CD-5

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My name is Misha Luzov. I ask for your endorsement of my candidacy as I seek to represent Green Party values for the 5th congressional district of Colorado.  I offer myself as a candidate out of a sense of duty, for the social, political, economic and environmental circumstances before us are dire, their consequences continue to mount both locally and globally, and the status quo that is being perpetuated by incumbents like Doug Lamborn is not only failing to adequately address these challenges, it actively suppresses progress toward their resolution.

Born in Minsk, 3 months after and 250 miles away from the Chernobyl meltdown, I have lived in Colorado Springs since 1995 after moving to the United States with my immediate family at the age of 8. A great deal of my time here has been spent growing up amid the magnificent, mountainous landscapes and rich wildlife throughout Colorado, which have left a lasting impression and helped to foster a deep appreciation for nature in me.

The contrast between the dystopian images that industrial events like Chernobyl tend to conjure, and the beautiful and vital features of thriving ecosystems, point to one of the widespread relationships within and between human communities and collective human activities on the one hand, and the complex, diverse, robust but fragile ecosystems that sustain us and make everything we do possible on the other hand. Such relationships have repeatedly thrown the relevance of political affairs into sharp relief for me, compelling an ongoing interest in local, national and global affairs.

A more general curiosity and critical disposition have characterized my personality, leading me toward my current occupation as an undergraduate student of psychology and philosophy at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Despite commonly held opinions to the contrary, I believe these disciplines are highly relevant to governance and political engagement, and their contribution to my ability to think about and work within these domains has been invaluable.

Like many others seem to do, I mistakenly associated the Green Party with the environmental movement when first hearing about it, but since I have learned that its focus is not so narrow and the values that make up its foundation are closely aligned with my own.

In the face of current events it is clear that the status quo is deprived of the core values that the Green Party stands for. Having been deemed persons, the free speech corporations are exercising with their enormous financial power has infiltrated and undermined our democracy, making it apparent that grassroots democracy is a value that must be restored. Guided by this value in the formation of its platform, the Green Party offers an alternative to those who share the growing sentiment that our two-party system is failing us. The grassroots democratic process engaged in defining values and positions sets the Green Party apart in a crucial way: candidates are primarily representatives of a collective vision rather than individual salesmen soliciting support to gain popularity and allowing their financiers to set their agenda.

I offer myself as a candidate and vow to challenge Doug Lamborn with Green Party values, so that we can change the discourse and make the representation of our common concerns a priority again. If together we raise our voices for the health and future of our communities, for non-violence, for socioeconomic equality and ethnic and gender equity, for cultural diversity, for biodiversity and protection of crucial but fragile ecological systems, no amount of money will silence us.