Go Green 2026

Electoral Reforms, Governing Coalitions, and the Importance of Political Parties With Jack Santucci

One of the main themes of this campaign is that the two party system is insufficient to represent the diversity of political perspectives that exist in Maryland. Thus our work is  to grow the movement for multiparty democracy at the state and local level. 

 

One of the main themes of this podcast is to talk to the people whose ideas, scholarship and advocacy influence and inspire my campaign.

 

This episode is a great convergence of those two themes. Jack Santucci is a political scientist, educator, and author of More Parties or No Parties: The Politics of Electoral Reform in America(Oxford UP, 2022). His research centers on electoral systems and voting behavior in the United States.

 

In this show we will cover the history of electoral reforms and the push and pull between party based reforms and anti-party reforms.

 

Then we will talk about the imitations possibilities and limits of some different electoral systems that could replace the current one

Research And Resources:

 

Democracy Works Podcast

https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/santucci/

 

Democracy Journal Avoiding the PR Mistakes of the Past

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/70/avoiding-the-pr-mistakes-of-the-past/

 

More Parties or No Parties: The Politics of Electoral Reform in America

https://academic.oup.com/book/43846?login=false

 

Toward a Different Kind of Party Government: Proportional Representation for Federal Elections

https://www.jacksantucci.com/docs/papers/santucci-shugart-latner_2023_apsa-pd-parties-report.pdf

 

"Can Electoral Reform Break the Two-Party Hegemony in America?" APSA 2023 Roundtable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRvbU7tT_bA

 

2022 Maryland General Assembly  Results By Party and District

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l_wEU2BddiLHF8UscHu4xIlXL8B2ambd-sZc5DV1vvY/edit?usp=sharing

Universities, Communities, and the Struggle for Justice with Davarian Baldwin

Tonight’s guest  Davarian L. Baldwin is an internationally recognized scholar, author, and public advocate. He currently serves as the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His academic and political commitments have focused on global cities and particularly the diverse and marginalized communities that struggle to maintain sustainable lives in urban locales.

 

Baldwin is the award-winning author of several books, most recently, In The Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (2021) and served as the consultant and text author for The World of the Harlem Renaissance: A Jigsaw Puzzle (2022). His commentaries and opinions have been featured in numerous outlets from NBC News, BBC, and PBS to USA Today, the Washington Post, and TIME magazine. Baldwin was a featured guest on the HULU series, The Conversations Project and in 2022 he was named a Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation for his work.

On tonight’s show we talked about the extractive relationship Universities have with the communities they are in. We started by exploring the history of  political and economic forces at play that led these institutions to the place of dominance they are in now. Then we explored an interconnected network of movements that are rising up in confrontations with universities to demand they contribute their fair share.

 

Then we explored what an abolition university looks like and the policy and organizing steps we can take to get there. 

 

Resources

Upenn Talk Mentioned in the Show
Davarian L. Baldwin | 2023 Gordon S. Bodek Lecture | Penn Urban Studies

 

May 1st event at UB 

https://umbc.edu/event/humanities-forum-with-davarian-l-baldwin/

 

In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/davarian-l-baldwin/in-the-shadow-of-the-ivory-tower/9781568588919/

 

Article from Non-Profit Quarterly

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/educational-purposes-nonprofit-land-as-a-vital-site-of-struggle/

 

Davarian Baldwin on X

https://twitter.com/DavarianBaldwin

 

School Boards, Grassroots Democracy and pushing power out with Ashley Esposito

Ashley "Ash" Esposito, a working mom, artist, and advocate for educational equity and social justice, was elected to the Board of School Commissioners for Baltimore City Public Schools in 2022.. Ash is deeply committed to addressing systemic issues affecting marginalized communities and is passionate about community engagement, ethical data usage, grassroots democracy, voting rights, and inclusive campaigning in politics.

 

On this show Ash and I discuss how she approached her campaign for school board, why she didn’t follow the conventional wisdom about who to talk to, and what it was like to run for and win a position that never existed before. 

 

Then we talked about the Student Members of the Board, why giving young people power changes  everything, and what this means for movements and organizing. 

 

Finally Ash gave us three great book recommendations, links are below!

Links

Local Progress School Board Statement of Values

https://localprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/School-Board-Cohort-Statement-of-Values-2024.pdf

 

Ashley’s Website

https://ashleyesposito.com/

 

Resmaa Menakem’s Website (Author of My Grandmother’s Hands)

https://resmaa.com/

 

Professional Troublemaker

https://luvvie.org/books/professional-troublemaker/

 

Unbossed and Unbought

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/unbought-and-unbossed-shirley-chisholm?variant=40152567545890

Labor Organizing in Higher Education, Johns Hopkins University and a potential strike on the horizon- With Andrew Eneim

Andrew Eneim is a PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins University and worker organizer with Teachers and Researchers United(TRU), the Hopkins graduate worker union. He is also a member of the Baltimore Green Party Steering Committee.

 

In this episode Andrew and I discuss labor organizing in higher education generally, with a specific focus on the the ongoing effort by TRU to win a good contract for PhD graduate students at Johns Hopkins University. 

 

As we recorded this episode the bargaining effort has made a lot of progress but the Hopkins administration is still dragging their feet and TRU is considering a strike. We talk about what issues are on the table, why strikes work, and what it looks like for graduate students to strike. 

 

We also talk about what it looks like to build power at big private universities and how this can connect with community led movements for justice, peace, and democracy. 

 

Links

 

TRU Website

https://trujhu.org/

 

TRU Strike Fund

https://tinyurl.com/tru-strike-fund

 

Coverage of the Practice Picket

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWswcGlpTLo

 

TRU Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/teachersandresearchersunited/

 

TRU X

https://twitter.com/TRUhopkins

 

TRU Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/teachersandresearchersunited/

Cop Cities, Democracy, and Reimaging Community Safety With Renee Johnston

Renee Johnston has been an educator and union member for over 2 decades. She currently serves as a committee chair of the Global Pan-African Movement, North America and the Green Party of New Jersey, for which she is a registered member; Renee can be found on Black Power Media on the I Mix What I Like show, "Saturdays with Renee". She is also a new member of Black Alliance for Peace, a rabbit hole researcher, political education event organizer and budding writer.

 

The concept of cop city has been thrust into the national discussion in the last year, as private, public, and non profit forces have lined up to build a massive police training facility in Atlanta. The community opposition to this project and the lengths elected Democrats and Republicans will go in order to repress and crush the movement against this has once again shown the way both parties are invested in policing as their main mechanism to envision public safety and to protect property.

 

On this Show Renee and I discuss proposed police training facilities all over the country and explore the ways that these become yet another way to increase funding and built infrastructure designed to secure policing. We also talk about the ways that communities are resisting these facilities and ways that we can begin to reimagine safety, by redistributing political power and economic resources to the communities that are most heavily policed today.

--Resources--

Public Square Amplified Article-Prisons, policing, and cop cities: They cannot exist in a democratic society https://www.publicsq.org/democracy-politics/prisons-policing-and-cop-cities

Renee’s Research, Map, and Spreadsheet of Cop Cities Around The Country https://isyourlifebetter.net/cop-cities-usa/

National Lawyers Guild Webinar Stop All Cop Cities: Lessons For a National Struggle https://vimeo.com/914852334

Funding Report on Baltimore Public Safety Training Facility https://mdstad.com/sites/default/files/Appendix%20H%20-%20Funding%20Sources.pdf

Black Power Media https://www.blackpowermedia.org/

Saturday’s With Renee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOgJ9yBwVs4

 

Reparations and Economic Justice In Maryland Policy With Dayvon Love

Dayvon Love is a Baltimore-based political organizer and the Director of Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), a grassroots think-tank that advances the public policy interests of Black people. In 2010, Love co-founded Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), one of many organizations that successfully pressured the state of Maryland to disband its plans to build a juvenile jail downtown. LBS has also led legislative efforts and advocacy efforts regarding criminal justice reform, youth and community empowerment. Dayvon is also the author of “Worse than Trump: The American Plantation”, a book that offers an important critique of the American political left and a political alternative to the exploitative relationship that Black people have to white institutions. Dayvon is also the author of “When Baltimore Awakes” which is a comprehensive critique of the way the white supremacy is embedded in the Human/Social Service Sector in Baltimore.

 

The Movement for Reparations for African Descended people in the United States has a long history, and has been a significant part of many Black and Pan African political movements. It has also long been  a point of division and fracture  on the American left, because to many white, non-Black people of color, (and some Black) socialists and progressives the idea of reparations disrupts an analysis that sees the problems in the US primarily based on class difference and economic inequality.

 

In this episode Dayvon Love and I talk about the history of the movement for reparations, the work to create policy mechanisms for reparations in Maryland, and the confrontation with  conservative, neoliberal and progressive political forces that oppose these policies of repair and reinvestment. 

 

In 2022, Dayvon and LBS advocated for the creation of  a Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund, meant to use recreational cannabis tax revenue to provide resources to communities disproportionately affected by the war on drugs. Thirty-five percent of tax revenue from the sale of cannabis currently goes into this fund and  each county in Maryland will need to establish a local mechanism for allocating the monies in this fund. 

 

We talk about two pieces of legislation before the General Assembly, The Maryland Fair Share Act and The Maryland Reparations Act. Both start with progressive taxation, but they differ in how they spend that additional revenue. The Maryland Fair Share Act puts more money into the General Fund, controlled by the governor. The Maryland Reparations Act puts more money into the Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund, controlled by local governments. 

 

We use these differences to talk through differing approaches to economic justice and redistribution of resources. 

 

Our hope is that this conversation breaks down the binary between economic justice policy and racial justice policy and starts to show how reparations policy can be a means of starting the conversation about economic justice and the redistribution of power and wealth. 

Resources

 

Legislation

SB 622, Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund - Funding- Maryland Reparations Act of 2024

https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/sb0622

 

SB 766, Maryland Fair Share Act

https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/sb0766?ys=2024RS

 

Videos

Reparations In Maryland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NES2eN1xWYY

 

Articles

Cracker Democracy- The Emergence of the Progressive Mainstream-Dayvon Love

https://lbsbaltimore.com/cracker-democracy/

Campaign Materials

GoGreen 2026- Andy Ellis For Governor-Agenda For A Solidarity Economy

https://www.gogreen2026.com/solidarity-econ

The Fight For Criminal Justice Reform in Maryland With Dayvon Love

Dayvon Love is a Baltimore-based political organizer and the Director of Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), a grassroots think-tank that advances the public policy interests of Black people. In 2010, Love co-founded Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), one of many organizations that successfully pressured the state of Maryland to disband its plans to build a juvenile jail downtown. LBS has also led legislative efforts and advocacy efforts regarding criminal justice reform, youth and community empowerment. Dayvon is also the author of “Worse than Trump: The American Plantation”, a book that offers an important critique of the American political left and a political alternative to the exploitative relationship that Black people have to white institutions. Dayvon is also the author of “When Baltimore Awakes” which is a comprehensive critique of the way the white supremacy is embedded in the Human/Social Service Sector in Baltimore.

In this episode Dayvon and I talk about the struggle for criminal justice reform in Maryland from the 2010 fight against the Baltimore City Youth Detention Center, through the tough on crime bills and sentence enhancements that came in the wake of the Baltimore Uprising, the criminal justice elements of the cannabis legalization effort in Maryland, up to the current fights against Democratic sponsored Juvenile Crime Bills in the General Assembly which seek to bring more children into the criminal justice system.

Throughout this discussion Dayvon challenges the narratives, the political forces, and the media framing of Black people's inherent criminality and explains how this notion helps those that would push tough on crime bills, but also those who want to be allies, but may not understand how to navigate that space. We are using a framework for this discussion which requires an understanding of history, an aggressive confrontation of the current political order, a vision for the future, and a strategy for using the time between now and the future to build the institutions and ecosystems which will make the future.

In this context that means while rejecting the expansion of the criminal justice system and the criminalization of Black Youth, we must also envision strengthening and investing in the community based institutions which can help children and communities to avoid crime and violence, and to redefine accountability so that the default is not the criminal justice system. We use that as a jumping off point for discussing the radical political activity between now and the future and for discussing what a liberatory future looks like in which Black people can practice freedom.

Black Grassroots & Community-Based Approaches to Violence Prevention

Lawrence Grandpre is Director of Research for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. His focuses include drug policy, criminal justice, police accountability, and community-based economic/educational development. He is the co-author of “The Black Book” and his work has been featured in The Guardian, The Baltimore Sun, Time Magazine and Black Agenda Report. He is also the co-host of the In Search of Black Power Podcast. In this episode Lawrence and I discuss the foundations of intercommunal violence in Black communities and the limits of a public health model of Community Violence Intervention. Lawrence provides a critique of the way that clinical "best practices" and "evidence based solutions" offered by the public health academy and non-profit industrial complex displace Black community efforts to address interpersonal violence. Lawrence calls for a methodology which situates the interpersonal violence as part of a political economy of anti-blackness, and discusses the importance of policy solutions that give Black people the power, resources and sovereignty to solve the problems that capitalism, white supremacy and over policing have created in Black communities. We filmed this episode one day after attending the funeral of our friend Anthony Day, who was murdered while on his lunch break at his job. The emotion is raw, but so is the necessity to have a sharp critique of the problems and solutions on offer by the current political order, and to provide an alternative vision of the way that interpersonal and structural violence can be ended, by the people most targeted by it.

Black Communal Responses to Drug Criminalization, Addiction, an Treatment with Lawrence Grandpre

Lawrence Grandpre is Director of Research for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. His focuses include drug policy, criminal justice, police accountability, and community-based economic/educational development. He is the co-author of “The Black Book” and his work has been featured in The Guardian, The Baltimore Sun, Time Magazine and Black Agenda Report.

 

He is also the co-host of the In Search of Black Power Podcast. During this episode we discuss the communal impacts and communal responses to drug criminalization, addiction, and harm reduction. We focus on Baltimore and Maryland, but the lessons are applicable beyond that.

 

Reparations are a large part of the framework Lawrence advocates, but he has a definition that challenges the typical way that reparations are defined arguing: "The definition of reparations presented by the interview subjects did not center on repairing the divide between oppressed and oppressor by granting the oppressed increased access to existing political and social service infrastructure, but instead on using public investment to build up the infrastructural capacity of the oppressed, so they were no longer dependent on the goodwill of the oppressor for their survival."

Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties with Bernard Tamas

Dr Bernard Tamas is an Associate Professor at Valdosta State University. He is an expert on elections, electoral bias and US Third Parties. His 2018 Book  The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties: Poised for Political Revival? is an excellent exploration of the History of Third Parties in American Elections. He provides a deep dive into the historical and comparative data about third parties and offers a laser focused analysis on what needs to happen for third parties to be a meaningful factor in american politics. In this hour we discuss his book, some third parties in the news right now and some advice for Greens and for my campaign