Green candidate Justin Filip promotes Measures 117, 118, looks to build a working-class movement

He doesn’t get invited to many candidate events. Facebook and Instagram locked down his social media campaign. But the Green Party candidate continues stumping throughout the 4th Congressional District, speaking wherever he’s invited. At the Southwest Hills neighborhood meeting Oct. 15:

Justin Filip (Green Party candidate, 4th Congressional District): We already have a win as the Green Party in this campaign, in that we’ve got Val Hoyle to go on record supporting ranked choice voting. As far as I know, that’s the first time she’s ever gone on record on this topic whatsoever. And that was on stage at the WOW Hall, she vocally supported ranked choice voting.

[00:00:33] We support ranked choice voting. So even if you’re not going to vote for me, I hope that if you are a Democrat or Val Hoyle supporter, that you will follow her lead and also vote yes on Measure 117. It’ll give us more choices. It’ll be more democratic. And for those that like to consider Greens to be spoilers, this would reduce that spoiler effect.

[00:00:53] And what I said in the candidate forum on Friday about Measure 118 is that if you’re seeing the corporations spend this much money on TV ads and yard signs and everything else to beat the ballot measure that’s intended to tax them, I think that’s a pretty good indication that it’s a good ballot measure. They’re scared of it. They’re trying to convince people that we’re the ones that are going to pay.

[00:01:17] But do we think that corporations really care about us? I don’t think so. I think they care about themselves and their profit margins, and that’s why they’re spending so much money trying to defeat that ballot measure.

[00:01:29] So 117 and 118 wouldn’t be on your ballot without Greens working on those things. Greens put in a lot of the work on the petitions to get ranked choice voting on the ballot, to get the Oregon rebate on the ballot. So we do those things in between elections.

[00:01:44] We could always do more. But again, we need more help, you know, like we’re having conversations for 2026 already and what that’s going to look like and trying to really build on this movement.

[00:01:53] I think the root of the problem in a lot of ways is, is money and money in politics. And I just think that the two major parties are really rooted in that money. They’re controlled, literally owned and operated by billionaires and corporations. And at the end of the day, I think their interests are just different from the interests of working-class and middle-class Americans. They just have a different agenda at the end of the day. I think the Bernie campaign was good evidence of that. He offered people something different, got the base excited about more of a working-class agenda.

[00:02:25] Presidential elections, quite frankly, are what gets the base energized. So it’s important for us as a party and for us trying to build a Green movement to have those conversations and those bigger platforms like CNN. That inspires people to want to run it in a more local level. We saw that with the Berniecrats.

[00:02:41] We saw his candidacy inspire a lot more progressive Democrats to run. So I think there’s a place for us in all levels of government and those big ones serve a purpose of getting the message out.

[00:02:52] And I’m running for Congress specifically because I just felt that Val Hoyle was, you know, very insufficient or inadequate on addressing the issues to me that are the two biggest moral issues of our time, which is Palestine and our U.S. militarism and here at home, the unhoused and the housing crisis. Eugene leads the country in the number of unhoused per capita.

[00:03:15] Now they’re getting swept. This is the reality of the situation right now. There’s like nowhere for them to go. And you know, in certain places the police will come and sweep them, make them get all their stuff. They’ll give them like 15 minutes. Because I’ve been there, I’ve watched it happen and helped them move their stuff so it doesn’t get stolen by the city, getting like 15 minutes to move. And if you haven’t moved your stuff into the street, we’re going to bring city workers. We’re just going to throw it in the trash and then good luck. And then so what’s the logical next step there?

[00:03:44] Well, they still don’t have a house. They still don’t have a roof over their head. They’re just forced to go find another place, now with fewer survival possessions. Now they’ve had things taken from them that they rely on to survive, and they’re just going to get swept again and swept again. And these are not real solutions. And it’s just cruel, quite frankly. It’s just cruel to these people. Like imagine the stress.

[00:04:06] So yeah, I mean the Green Party supports a Housing First strategy which has been shown to be successful. You know, we get a lot of criticism that we have these pie-in-the-sky ideas. But I think the Green Party, honestly, is the most realistic about what needs to be done.

[00:04:21] We do need a Housing First strategy. And it would be, like, on a financial level, makes more sense. How much money do we spend on sweeps and criminalizing people? We could instead be spending that money and investing people and getting a roof over their head. You have to have your basic needs met first before you can start thinking about higher needs, right?

[00:04:39] So, yeah, Housing First strategy will save money and it’ll be more humane. Let’s invest in people instead of just being reactive, because people in poverty are desperate people. Crimes of survival happen from people that are desperate.

[00:04:55] I was a founding member of the U of O Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine when the student encampment began on campus. Faculty and staff banded together to sort of support that and also protect them just to make sure nothing happened.

[00:05:10] And I was very involved in the Palestinian movement. I did the same thing at the University of Oregon to divest, just like we asked the city to divest, and basically the answer was, ‘Well, sorry, it makes us a lot of money, so, No.’

[00:05:23] I got fired because they honestly got they care more about their investments than they do about the ethics of their investments.

[00:05:29] And the root of it all is the money, you know, and Palestine is like just another example of the money. It’s the arms manufacturers that are getting rich off of all of this.

[00:05:39] Am I going to accept this as a citizen of this country, from my country, in my name, with my tax dollars? Send bombs—50,000 tons reported by Democracy Now! since October—we’ve sent them 50,000 tons of bombs.

[00:05:53] This is crazy. This is crazy. And it’s happening under a Democratic administration who likes to think that they’re the good guys. And I think we’ve seen enough since the Iraq War to know that a lot of our military interventions have to do with those resources, and in making rich people richer in the oil industry.

[00:06:13] And there’s an element at play of that in Israel as well… Israel exists to serve the imperialist interests of the West. And if you listen to Netanyahu talk about his plans and what he wants to do over there, I mean, he wants a Greater Israel. He wants to take over Lebanon and Syria and part of Egypt. He wants to send pipelines through there.

[00:06:34] Israel is a colonialist, imperialist experiment, and in order for them to create that country, they had to displace Palestinians and kill them and murder them. And that’s still going on today. That’s what we continue to see. Not that different from the Native American experience here in our country and what we did to Native Americans here—displaced them, murdered them.

[00:06:56] There’s a lot of Jewish people, like Jewish Voice for Peace, who stand up against what’s happening over there. But a cruel irony, that the oppressed have now become the oppressors. It’s really mind-blowing.

[00:07:07] And there will always be a Hamas. Let me say that, too. Like this idea that, ‘Well, there’ll be a cease-fire if Hamas just gave up.’ As long as there’s occupation and apartheid, there will always be a Hamas. It might not be called Hamas, or be called something else next time. But there will always be people resisting occupation, apartheid, as long as that exists.

[00:07:28] The Green Party, I feel like, has been on the right side of history a lot of times. We’ve supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement on Israel. We tried a more peaceful approach.

[00:07:37] And lately I’ve learned just in this week, I think (Kamala) Harris just released an attack ad on us against Jill Stein. So that’s exciting for us, quite frankly, as a Green Party. I think it shows that we are a threat to their power, that they have to pay attention to us. And they’ve done that by attacking Jill so that we can’t truly build a working-class movement in this country, we can’t build people power outside of the corporate interest. They don’t want that. I think that scares them. And I think that’s why they’re attacking Jill.

[00:08:08] I’ve had my Instagram taken down inexplicably on Oct. 1. I don’t really dabble in conspiracy theories. But I can’t deny what has happened. And they took my Instagram away from me, and I understand, my Facebook congressional account page. You can still view it, but I don’t have access to it.

[00:08:26] I’m at a loss as to explain why that happened, other than I just feel like there was some maybe underhanded things at play there. They said I violated community guidelines. I appealed it immediately on Oct. 1 when I found out that happened. And I’m still without those. So I mean, that’s all just to me evidence that the Democrats are threatened by us.

[00:08:46] And they are trying to sue us so that we’re not even on the ballot, so that we’re not even an option. I don’t see how the party that’s trying to sell themselves as the party that’s going to save the democracy from Trump and these extremists, when they themselves are not very democratic.

[00:09:02] I think that the people have the right to vote for the people that most closely match their values. And when you take the Green Party off the ballot, you’re taking that away from people. In effect, that’s voter suppression. In effect, that’s voter disenfranchisement, because you’re taking that option off the table. And it’s resulted in, I think, in the last presidential election, one out of every three eligible voters did not vote.

[00:09:27] So you’ve got one-third of eligible voters who aren’t even participating in the process. And I think a lot a big part of that is because the two major parties have failed them and they just don’t see the point in it anymore. They’ve just checked out. So that’s why the Green Party exists. We exist to build people power that’s outside of the two major corporate parties.

[00:09:48] But vote ‘Yes’ on (Measure) 117, please. And I think (Measure) 118 is also worth your support. I would vote ‘Yes’ on that too.

[00:09:56] John Q: Green Party candidate Justin Filip meets with a Eugene neighborhood association, as the Greens hope to pick up where Bernie Sanders left off.

Image courtesy KEPW 97.3 Whole Community News: Justin Filip waits to speak at the Wayne Morse Farm Oct. 15 during the general meeting of the Southwest Hills Neighborhood Association.