good evening i'm gonna go see and welcome to open source tonight my guest is seth coverdale who is the green party candidate for governor and said thank you from coming off your very busy schedule to join us here tonight and talk about the issues that affect all new jerseyans lou thank you for this chance that's great now we did extend invitations to the other two candidates major candidates but i've yet to hear from them but i'll start with the most major can i think that while the most major can do the people are watching then you know that you're to get a response of this from green party so before we get into talking about green party and platforms and issues and stances if you could just give our or is a little background about yourself you know and how you got to where you got  i grew up in vermont for the first eighteen years of my life i moved to michigan for college met my wife there and while in college became passionate about liberation theology which is for those who aren't aware of it it's a movement that started in the catholic church in central and south america as a way to respond to the political uprisings really the oppression in those nations and the catholic church to basically seal communities communities of faith shaped by a revolutionary reading of scripture pushed back and i got excited about that in college and it really led me to ministry so my wife and i moved to ecuador we married in college i should say then moved to ecuador to live about liberation theology a little bit that led us then to princeton theological seminary and from there to the reformed church of highland park where we been for sixteen years for workers and yeah so we started as a church where we had thirty five all white people in the church and now we have five hundred in the church with fifty five countries represented the first generation immigrants additionally incredible racial and ethnic diversity of those who've been here for many generations so we're proud of that transformation of the church and there's thirty five hundred people a week in our building and all of that change and growth has come by having a very very fierce social justice agenda believing that the last our first and we say that all the time every sunday the last shall be first of the first shall be last and through that mentality we've created a wellspring from below i call that we've seen community can be remade not just the community within the four walls of the congregation but our whole town of highland park has been impacted by the efforts we've made on behalf of immigrants and refugees and the re entering population and  those who have chronic mental illness we have really made a huge impact on people all that work though locally has made me very frustrated about systems in place that lead to a broken world so often times when we're building housing for youth aging out of foster care or we're building housing for homeless veterans which are things that we've done locally i've wondered why systems are in place that have led to the kinds of brokenness that were then trying to repair so i decided it was time to stop throwing stones at tanks and time to stop cleaning up the damage done by tanks and instead to climb into the tank and beat it into plowshares and pruning hooks that's the only kind of beating that i want to be part of ok so  central message of the green party is people planet and peace over profit if you were to sum it up in a montra that's what the green party is and it has fourteen pillars that are all social justice oriented and i look at the green party pillars and i really believe that these are the things that that i stand for but i'll sum it up in saying people planet and peace over profit a few years ago four years ago i stepped into the booth to vote for either chris christie or barbara bono and at that time chris christie had demoralized public school teachers i had three little girls i still have three slightly larger girls but i had three little girls who could feel it in their school the teachers were operating under an anxiety that came from suddenly being treated horribly and that came from the governor and there were many other groups within the state that were feeling that way different unions and different communities that were seeing their budgets sapped for some very basic things like afterschool programs and other programming so that was chris christie and the other option was barbara bono who was a less tied to corporate wall street than usual democrat and i watch sixty elected democrats in the state of new jersey publicly endorse chris christie that year i watched the democratic bosses the machine throw barbara buono under the bus so when i stepped in to vote that year i really knew that this was not a two horse race it was a one horse race that all of the resources of both corporate parties were behind the reelection of a guy who i thought had operated horribly for the state that was the moment i said i'm going to run for governor at some point and when i do it will not be with either party of the doowop only because really there's not a lot of difference what matters to these folks is that they stay in power and that they keep their little game going on and i didn't want to have anything to do with that anymore when phil murphy this past september was anointed as the the candidate of choice by the party bosses of every county before any other democrat any other progressive democrat had even gotten a chance to enter the race that is when i said ok not only am i going to run for governor someday i'm going to run right now because if the democratic party in new jersey is so out of touch with the pulse of the nation that in the year bernie sanders and in the year of joel stein but bernie in particular you would choose to put a goldman sachs key and a date up as your candidate that's utter foolishness and the democratic party in new jersey is just out of touch with what the american people want so i think i actually have a real chance because the democratic machine in new jersey it is clueless so let me get this straight we have a goldman sachs candidate you running against the bridge gate scandal yeah ok present a viable option to both major party candidates so let's talk about that yes ok so what would you present the people of new jersey that you feel would you know would resonate with them so first of all only thirty nine percent of registered voters came out to vote last time we had a gubernatorial election sixty one percent were so unsure of the choices are the options or worse i felt so disenfranchised that they didn't appear that's who i'm going for so just straight math i believe that the two party system st most of new jersey as a fly over state in the language of you know that the national thing there are fly over states by the democratic party bernie sanders actually entered those places and made some inroads right that's how i feel in new jersey most of new jersey is a fly over state it's a group that isn't sought out because these folks don't come out to vote you hear that kind of thing and we're not actually going to give them any benefits that change the system once reelected so let's not make those promises now that's exactly who we're going to my campaign is called the last or first and i believe most of that sixty one percent are people who identify with having felt last in the state of new jersey so i believe we're a viable option because we have the largest percentage of voters the thirty nine percent i mean to be honest i'm not trying to convert a democrat or convert a republican i don't believe in forced conversion in religion or politics what i believe in is showing folks a real opportunity and a real option and going for the people who want it if you don't think you're sick you don't need a physician so democrats keep voting democrat republican keep voting republican unless you actually want to see that something can happen differently when there's a wellspring from below questions do people want things to change who which people are we talking about people who have established themselves in power over the years would be democrats republicans basically a two party system right now where the chances of a third party you know candidate being elected over time hasn't happened right so i would say that no the people in power don't want things to change which is why i'm spending very little time with them we are on the ground i've been on the ground at least two hundred twenty different times in the last ten months and i would say  hundred fifty of those times it has been on the streets of camden the streets of paterson union city jersey city are newark elizabeth i speak spanish which is helpful so i have been in every community you can think of talking to people who are desperate for a rise in the minimum wage were pushing for fifteen dollars an hour now and that's not an outlandish ask it almost was passed in the last time around you know we're we're pushing for more affordable housing there used to be forty seven million dollars in the s rap voucher fund now we're down to forty it was seventeen years ago that's when there was forty seven million so state rental assistance has gone down and down and down it's very hard for poor  people to be able to afford here so we're pushing for increases in that there's way fewer child care centers within reach of poor communities than there used to be so we're pushing for an increase in child care centers in communities so that people don't have to take two buses to get their child to a licensed child care center there's way fewer afterschool programs all that's twenty first century learning money that was available some years ago it's been reduced dramatically in many communities we have large cities with no recreation department this is a disgrace to be honest and we need to make sure that we change that immediately so those are some of the issues on the ground with the people who aren't voting that we really emphasize there are many others i'm sure will get to them in a secure career but start with one for a lot of people and basically property taxes you know new jersey is seen an outflow of individuals leaving the state because of high property taxes they've seen basically high concerns about their children's children being able to afford homes because of the property taxes as they increasingly you know go up and up up and if elected governor what would you do to implement something where it would be more affordable for people  the property taxes would at least you know cease to have that great increase let me add just to that that property taxes aren't only a concern for homeowners but for those who rent because the the folks who are landlords they pass it on to the granite so in my community you know i worry incredibly about how much it costs for a very poor family that's not going to be able to buy a house any time soon to rent in our community so this property tax issue impacts everyone you're exactly right so we have three major things that we believe can bring down property taxes and i believe i have the most robust ideas of any of the candidates out there for this the first is single payer health care for all new jersey single payer medicare for all and in a community my size approximately twenty percent of the school budget goes toward the for profit health insurance industry so when we have an unregulated for profit health insurance industry that goes up and up and up we see this incredible increase in what we have to pay toward our municipal and school tax because of the insurance piece if we could have a new jersey single payer medicare for all which dramatically reduce the costs while increasing the quality of care we could see property taxes go down for everyone and this would impact all five hundred sixty five municipalities and six hundred however many school districts we would we would see a dramatic change statewide in that the the amount that we're putting in to health care goes down while the quality of care goes up so i don't think people understand the economic benefit of a medicare for all model nationally it would be better than state wide for sure but we believe at the state level it would make a dramatic change to the second thing  is the public bank i'm a huge believer in a public bank right now when new jersey invests a dollar it invests it in the hedge five and where that dollar becomes ten dollars for some hedge fund to dig a new mine in the philippines or to dig a new mine and hundred or us and we get some kickback from the for profit gains of the the land grabbing that are multinational corporations are doing the new jersey gets a little bit of the interest and hedge fund guy gets a lot instead we could have a public bank where we put a dollar and and then ten dollars that's how banking works you put one and you can loan ten it would be ten dollars loaned out to the municipalities in our state to work on the projects that matter to the municipalities we could work with m when when they need to build an addition on their school there would be money in the public bank too to work on that that public bank could be used for road repairs locally that public bank could be used to move to a renewable energy future to help our fleet of buses statewide and it mean a simple level of to become more green we could do a lot of things like that we could help folks in foreclosure crisis through that public bank we could give very low interest school loans to help people with higher education so public bank is a is a big thing that could impact property taxes by creating new revenue streams instead of asking taxpayers to always fund the new things that are needed in town and finally progressive taxation we only have seven brackets in our tax  code after you hit five hundred thousand dollars a year you're taxed at eight point nine seven percent even if you're making twenty million dollars a year i think that's ridiculous new jersey is a place that makes lots of people rich and people who make grotesque amounts of money because of the beauty of being between philadelphia and new york and happening to be in the one or two percent that are really making it like well here they ought to be contributing more to the commons because this commons is the very place that allows them to make the money they make so i would make something more like a nine or eleven bracket tax code and i believe that that would create more revenue and allow us to keep property taxes lower for those in the middle and keep rents down for those who feel bring companies back to new jersey and have them invest in new jersey and new jersey a place that people want to build the factories and and also jobs how do we create jobs especially for younger people looking for jobs as well as  everybody you know job strengths as we go forward so the key to that is single payer medicare for all at the moment one of the things that makes a business most nervous about adding new employees or opening a new plant is that they're going to be saddled with these incredible health insurance costs from for profit companies that are not regulated especially the largest companies right once you hit fifty employees you you're required to be paying health insurance if the state of new jersey comes up with a different way to take care of health care for all instead of health insurance for all which is the obamacare model which never got us where we really need to go it's not about health insurance for all to health care for all then business would flock here because suddenly this he huge wild card piece of opening a business or growing a business is is not a wild card anymore and there's clarity we would look for six percent to come from the employer and two percent from the employee to go into the new jersey health care trust fund that would also be supplemented by medicaid dollars coming from the federal government and from other sources that there's other trickles of money that come in and that would be how health care was taken care of and why wouldn't you come to a state that had real clarity about health insurance and it would also mean that you could offer a better wage to your employees if you're not unsure about your health insurance issues any more you health care issues you can move to fifteen now without stress about that you also have a workforce that's more permanent people won't have to leave for that job that provides them health insurance because you can provide it so that's true for small businesses to folks would have health insurance and that leads to stability from a worker's perspective a lot of workers right now that i talk to especially in poor communities are working part time because nobody wants to take on a full time employee who expects to get a health insurance plan so instead of working twenty eight hours a week at eighty ninety five an hour nine bucks an hour maybe you're working forty hours a week at fifteen an hour and you have health care if you could imagine a new jersey where everyone has more and we all have better health care that's the kind of thing we're proposing and it's not impossible bernie sanders was absolutely right to show that this is a real possibility in the fact that the goldman sachs candidate is not talking about this at the state level really is a sign to me that you know the the health insurance industry is very much tied to the democratic establishment he should be talking about if he wants to claim the word progressive he needs to be talking about it like we are as we're concerned right now in many communities about you know undocumented million of the people in new jersey are undocumented and people aren't here because everything is great in the world and the u s has had nothing to do with it the instability of the world is largely tied to why it is that we have such a large undocumented population in new jersey when folks come here from the philippines that we have gutted and where we have a huge military presence and where we are minding their mines and taking their resources that's on us and when we have miners coming up from the south you know the whole crisis with unaccompanied minors i said well we have unaccompanied minors because we have u s miners m i n e r s digging up the mines and creating havoc in honduras and that's why we have miners flooding to united states new jersey has a huge number of undocumented immigrants because we in this country are part of creating the biggest movement of people because of an unstable world of all time thank god that when people come here they come here in peace and they come here and are glad to be in new jersey we should be saying hey arms are open we're thrilled you're here you're residents of our state let's make you part of who we are and because of that we need to protect folks at all levels we need to be a sanctuary state and i don't just mean that in words i believe that the knicks sell systems that every community uses to say there's a water main break on fifth avenue don't go to fifth avenue should be used when ice is actively breaking up families we should have an excel alert that says ice activity or enforcement removal operations activity on fifth avenue and that will let folks know either to get out there with your cameras to take pictures of the racial and ethnic cleansing that's going on under the guise of immigration reform or it could tell folks don't go outside because you're you have concerns about your family or can tell other people just stay away because you don't want anything to do with us it's just letting people know what's going on and finally driver's licenses any undocumented person who's eighteen or older who qualifies for a driver's license you know they can pass the test ought to get a driver's license because residents of new jersey are part of new jersey and we want them to feed their families we want them to get to places of employment we want them to be able to go places to spend money  contribute to the economy in that way too so driver's licenses for all how do we improve our educational institutions and talking about education let's talk about education from the for both urban districts and suburban districts and also just expanding it into the role of charter schools and whether or not charter schools should be in suburban areas where it's where the school district and the area if the public schools doing their job should a charter school be there right the school question is a huge one good question so the first thing i would say is it bothers me when people say the school funding formula doesn't work when we haven't actually ever funded it even once since it was in two thousand and eight put into place some people say it was funded that first year and then hasn't incense but i don't think we've ever funded the formula since we were told there was a formula and it's very hard for me to critique something that's never actually been done so that's my first response to that we have to come up with the money to fund the formula and to show our deep care for public education secondly i would say that new jersey does have to look critically at the number of school districts that it has when you look at a state like florida and see that there's five times less school districts than there are in new jersey you do have to beg it begs the question like why are we so committed to our fiefdoms and is there a moment when intensely local control is adding a cost that is prohibit and in the same time creating some other things that we don't want for example i often talk about new jersey as having apartheid communities we with all these little enclaves cantons of wealth and poverty and sometimes it feels like the way our school systems are set up bless that and keep us from becoming as diverse as we would be if we had redistricting that allowed us to be a brown versus board of education kind of state instead of a plessy versus ferguson separate but equal we know that separate but equal is never equal and so i think we need to have that kind of a lens when we're when we're questioning things about public education charter schools if i became governor i would want to say first of all thank you to the charter schools that are that are in place and to continue to say you are part of what we are now not looking to threaten what is there and what is serving children but secondly i would start saying that charter schools need to be overseen by in a low school board elected by the community in which they're located and you know i think that that's only fair if if state funding is going to go to charters then let's make sure that they're overseen by an elected school board that may mean electing a whole bunch of school boards and in some districts or it might mean creating those charters as magnets under the school board of an area and that kind of detail could be worked out i also would say that we have to look at this whole the money follows child and how damaging it has been to small districts i know in highland park new jersey where they we have an awesome school district and then you add a couple of charter schools and the money follows the child it's very very painful and it's it's  hurt so i understand where that hurt comes from but i would say that it really bothers me that we're we've had such a reduction in funding for public education that we end up fighting our neighbors over these questions because there's not enough resources and that's really a shame from the state level the state needs to be funding education in such a way that if they want to have charges as an option that there's enough money to try these things without getting the public education system if you're elected governor how are you going to be a champion for the people and resist lobbying it comes down to the first thing i would say is new jersey definitely needs a sabbath they need a day of rest or a four year stretch of rest from the two party craziness that's going on it's a winner takes all game down there right now if you're in it's all you unless you've sold out to the other party in the meantime and you've made all these deals i just think that it would be revolutionary for the state to have a time period where all those old games don't matter where george norcross i don't care who he is and i don't know anything about him other than that he's major kingpin and joe joe di i know the name is another kingpin but i don't know him and he doesn't know me and i frankly don't care i'm not absolutely do and i have to say that as a as a pastor of a church for sixteen years i have not spent a lot of time talking about marijuana it's not something that's ever been important to me personally but as i have looked at why marijuana became illegal in the first place and i read quotes from the attorney general which says this must be made illegal because mexicans and blacks chase white women violently if they smoke a joint when when that is the grounds on which this thing has been made illegal it just ought to be eliminated for that alone when racism is the reason that something has been illegal we have to stop that altogether so i am for the legalization of recreational marijuana i want to make sure that the driver of this isn't big money for the state it really annoys me actually to go from a place where we've been taking huge numbers of dads mainly out of communities because we've said this thing is illegal and now the minute people want to make it legal it's like yeah four hundred million dollars that could fill the budget hole that's so insincere and so painful instead if we're going to say it's legal because it shouldn't have been illegal in the first place and let's responsibly have the money that comes in benefit those very communities that have been destroyed because of it being made illegal in the first place so i would work hard to make sure that goldman sachs or any other major company doesn't find some way to try to turn legal marijuana in new jersey into the the first one hundred days of the car do what somebody else has never done before third party gets to have the governor in new jersey right so i'll have between november and january to get my act together right so we're just talking about generated from january to april april i would start with these things i would start with some what i would call easy wins one i would end solitary confinement in the state of new jersey we already had that before governor christie's desk this year i was part of the team that that helped sen lesniak craft that that legislation and pushed it to get to the desk we will and solitary confinement in new jersey we would say that no human should ever lose the right to vote a vote is a vote it's a vote we would work on the legislation on driver's licenses for undocumented individuals because that legislation is already out there and we need in this moment of a hate crime president to stand firm for undocumented individuals and then we would look at all things around children four hundred thirty thousand kids in the state live in households that bring in under thirty thousand dollars a year which is why even though all of the middle and lower middle class issues matter to me i'm firstly concerned about kids on the verge of not knowing where they're going to lay their head next month because they're not sure mom and dad a going to pay that rent they're not sure the next meal's coming from there they're not sure that they're safe and these are the things that i would focus on in my first one hundred days the last will be first for those first one hundred days and we would begin the process of hitting what i call the big three single payer medicare for all the public bank and progressive taxation and drawing up how it is that those things could help us fund the new new jersey that has to happen if we really believe in a wellspring from below where i thank you very much for coming on i'm glad to hear that you have a platform there and hopefully was true best in the weeks to come as we move toward november seventh and hopefully everybody will have a chance to look at the green party and give it some thought and realize that there's more than two parties in new jersey and there's more than two candidates so if the other candidates who have extended imitations do want to come on the show they're more than welcome they know where i end up until that time