Green candidate Justin Filip visits with KEPW ‘Talk Is Cheap’

Presenter: Pacific Green Party congressional candidate Justin Filip was tabling at the May Day event, and KEPW’s Curtis Blankinship was there. 

Curtis Blankinship (KEPW, Talk Is Cheap): All right. So I’m here at the May Day Celebration and this is the Green Party table. So what’s the state of the Green Party? You’re Justin? 

Justin Filip (Pacific Green Party, CD4 candidate): Justin Filip, yes, with the Green Party. I’m secretary, but also running for Congress.  

We’re on probably more stable ground than we’ve ever been in my probably like going on six years of organizing the Green Party. We’ve probably never been in a better position than we are right now.

We’re recruiting candidates for governor and other races statewide right now. We’re excited about the Butch Ware campaign, what they’re doing down in California.  

I think there’s a large sentiment out there that says the public is looking for something different. I think there’s polling that shows like 60% of people polled want a third party. And so we’re trying to build one for them. 

Curtis Blankinship: Right. And the Republicans and Democrats have seemed to merged into just one party. They’ve sort of embraced corporatism. 

Justin Filip: Yeah, in a couple of very important ways, we do think they’re the same in they’ve been essentially bought by corporations and billionaires. They’re owned and operated by those people, and those are the interests that they serve.

And so, in those very fundamental ways, they’re both a problem and we need an alternative. They both are imperialist parties. We’ve seen them both support genocide in Gaza, and if that’s not evidence enough that we need a break from that, I’m not sure what is. 

Curtis Blankinship: So what policies does the Green Party have? What will you do to reign in corporations then, by the Green Party? 

Justin Filip: Oh, I mean, that’s such a huge question. I don’t even know where to start with that. But I think we essentially, we just need to shift our priorities. And we talk about putting people, planet, and peace first, and too often that’s not what happens.

Again, they serve the donor class. There’s been studies done that shows that Congress literally doesn’t care what we think. There’s no correlation between policy and public opinion. 

And we’ve seen that again with Gaza, we see that with Health Care For All. We see that in a number of ways where corporations stand in the way of what the people actually want. 

And so we’re left no alternative but to replace those people and take them out of power and replace them. 

Curtis Blankinship: What do you tell people that are worried about the economy and their jobs, that the Greens will overregulate things to the point where it’ll mess up the economy and ruin our jobs. I’m just playing devil’s advocate with you. What is your response? 

Justin Filip: Sure, sure. Again, the evidence shows, I mean, we’ve greater and greater wealth inequality in this country because of who’s controlling and calling the shots. The working class has never been in a worse position. 

You can’t raise a family on one income anymore. Can’t take your family on vacation. You can barely afford health care and like so many other things, you know? So, the buying power of our dollars is not as good as it used to be. It’s harder to put our kids through college. There’s so many challenges.

It’s been a race to the bottom with the two major parties. I think we, again, we’re offering people a way out and we’re here today as part of this May Day event to be that working-class party, to be that party for the workers. 

Curtis Blankinship: You can’t just expect to work in one industry for your entire life there. We have progress. We don’t use whale oil anymore. We don’t. So we need to get off fossil fuels. And we need to get off coal. There’s going to be green jobs. 

Justin Filip: Yes. There’s a green economy out there. There’s lots of, potential out there for creating jobs. You know, we are big proponents of the Green New Deal. We were the original authors of that— a very bold vision to put a lot of people to work doing the things that need to be done to actually help working Americans. 

Curtis Blankinship: And with the war in Iran that has happened, we noticed that , we don’t wanna rely on fossil fuels. So this might be actually better for workers. The green party green policies might be better for workers. 

Justin Filip: Yeah. If we, if we weren’t so reliant on that, we had to diversify our energy, sources and, and get off of the fossil fuels. Obviously there’s the science again there. I don’t think anyone’s really disputing the fact that there’s climate change at this point.

And so like, I think we have a responsibility to future generations to do whatever we can to mitigate those effects. And, the byproduct being that there’s economic stimulus potential there. 

Curtis Blankinship: Right. So you said you’re running for Congress. 

Justin Filip: Yeah. Fourth congressional district. 

Curtis Blankinship: What, what is your platform? What are you going to do differently then? What are you going to advocate for? 

Justin Filip: Oh man, again, this, it’s such a systemic wide failure that, again, it’s hard to know where to start, but we need to start by putting people in power that actually have the people’s best interest in mind. And that’s not what we have right now. We have two major parties that have the corporation’s best interest in mind, right? 

Universal health care, we’d like to see that. We’d like to see us stop spending so much of our tax dollars on war and militarism, you know, more than three out of every $5 we spend goes to war and militarism.

We need definitely a shift in our priorities, a radical shift in our priorities because they’re so radically out of line right now in every way. So, I mean, we could, we could have a sit-down, go interview for two hours talking about that question. Yeah. 

Curtis Blankinship: So again, the Green policies are in favor of labor?

Justin Filip: Yes. Oh, definitely, we talk about our health care, our justice system, our immigration reform, an actual platform to achieve peace. What we are going to do for the 99% what we’re going to do for the working class. And again, it’s all like connected. It’s all rooted in, putting the people, the planet, and peace first—and ahead of profits. 

Curtis Blankinship: And wages?

Justin Filip: Real working wages for people. Yeah. Livable wages, you know, they can— 

Curtis Blankinship: Afford housing.

Justin Filip (Pacific Green Party): Yeah. They can afford housing and, you know, and not have to worry about stuff. And, you know, the health care thing, people always ask like, how we’re going to pay for it, right? Few people ask, ‘How are we going to pay for all these wars?’ first of all.

And second of all, a universal health care system is going to benefit more people. A lot of workers spend a lot of their paycheck on health care already. It’s a huge part of what people have to budget for. So we’re trying to help folks get that worry off their plate at least, so there’s fewer and fewer stressors in their lives. 

Curtis Blankinship: Seems to me a health care pool would be advantageous to businesses too, that they don’t have to, each individual, a bunch of individual insurance companies that they have to deal with. They just have one big insurance company. And that’s not socialism. To me, that’s a co-op. 

Justin Filip: Absolutely.

Curtis Blankinship: That we all belong to.

Justin Filip: It’s a win-win. I think the businesses should be behind it, right? Because right now that they’re, yeah, that’s something that they have to do. That’s how they have to compete for workers is through what kind of benefits they offer them. And that’s a huge burden for a lot of businesses.

Take that off of their plate too. It’s just our health care system as it exists right now, so much like overhead and there’s so much just waste and inefficiency in the way we do things, and we have worse health outcomes. So it’s not even working. So yeah, it would benefit the businesses, it would benefit the consumers, the everyday person.

And we shouldn’t have our health care tied to our employment. It’s inhibiting our freedom. We talk about freedom, but we talk about we’re not free to change jobs without the threat of losing our health care, that’s a really big one. And a lot of people like stay trapped in jobs they hate because strictly because of the health care, you know, they have to have that for their families.

So if it would really free people up to pursue the things that they care about and want to do in their lives. And that’s real freedom. 

Curtis Blankinship: All right, I just went to a lecture with an expert ex-IDF soldier expert on Gaza and Israel. And he literally blamed the United States. He said that it’s the United States that needs to stop that war and get aid to the people in Gaza.

If the Green Party gets power in our government, what will they do?

Justin Filip: Yeah. Well, we just need to start using the leverage that we’re pretending we don’t have.

Curtis Blankinship: Mm. Explain that. 

Justin Filip: Well, you know, Biden would play dumb while the genocide was going on and say like, there’s nothing he could do. This is all Netanyahu’s fault. He can’t control what Israel does while we fund them to the teeth, we refuse to use the leverage we have.

Look at what we’re doing in Iran right now, under this administration. We do whatever we want militarily, we flex our muscle whenever we want to do that.

We choose not to do that in the case of holding Israel accountable, that’s a choice. So if the Green Party had power, we’d use the leverage that we have, that we’re currently pretending we don’t have. 

Curtis Blankinship: Biden could have stopped sending $8 billion a year to Israel that they use solely (Absolutely) for weapons purchases. 

Justin Filip: They’re dependent on our aid. So you have to ask yourself the questions: Why don’t they stop it? Well, then I think you’re starting to get at the truth. The truth is that there’s really no difference in the policy.

At the end of the day, Israel policy is American policy, and it’s bipartisan, it’s consistent between a Democratic administration to a Republican administration. That’s the case for the Green Party, because they’re both rooted in this imperialism, they’re so deeply rooted in it, you can’t reform them. They’re irredeemable. 

Curtis Blankinship: Well, ’cause, and you don’t have to answer this, this is rhetorical, but I would like to see something done about the defense contractors in this country. Why do we have so many defense-based industries? Let’s switch those over. Even if you want to shoot rockets to Mars or whatever, I’d rather you do that than make bombs. 

Justin Filip: Well, Dwight Eisenhower was a Republican president who warned us against the military-industrial complex. And now look at where we are. We’re so far from that. 

Curtis Blankinship: All right, so, and then I’m trying to wrap it up, but the only beef I have on you is when I, when I ask the Green Party about Ukraine. 

Justin Filip: Yeah.

Curtis Blankinship: I mean, we should have taken the Minsk Accords when we had the chance and get— 

Justin Filip: Yes, I’m in favor of diplomacy that’s going to save lives, you know, and I think we have to be honest about the West’s role in that whole thing. It doesn’t make me apologist for Putin or anyone. We seek a cooperative nature with all nations, you know, and I think that’s the way we should approach things.

But that’s not the way our government has typically behaved, right? We typically behave in a global dominance way. Our hegemony is first and foremost globally, that’s what our priorities are, and that’s what guides our behavior. It’s the only way our behavior makes sense, right? 

Curtis Blankinship: We can almost predict it. If you understand that, you can predict our next move. 

Justin Filip: For sure. But we seek a more cooperative spirit with nations globally. We don’t have to be perpetually war with one another. It doesn’t serve the interest of the everyday people. The people of Ukraine are the ones suffering. And so these people are like, a lot of them are abandoning their posts. They don’t want to die for the ruling class.

I think we could have ended it a long time ago. Again, I think it was a choice. We chose not to because we wanted to weaken Russia. That was our goal, not to save lives or not to protect democracy in Ukraine, because we meddle in regime change all the time.  We don’t care about democracy. Can you tell me that the United States government, the way it behaves is truly a concern with that? 

Curtis Blankinship: Well, ultimately it’s for cheap access to resource. And weapons sales is— 

Justin Filip: Ukraine is caught in a tug of war between Russia and the West for its resources and unfortunately it’s the working-class Ukrainians that are paying the price.

Curtis Blankinship: Alright, anything else? How do people support you? 

Justin Filip: Check me out at justin4congress.com with the number ‘4,’ like the district I’m running in—Justin4Congress.com. There you can find links to like social media and stuff like that. Follow us there please.

If you like what I stand for, please, I’m be happy to have your endorsement. There’s a place on the website you can endorse the campaign and yeah, we’re just trying to build something, so we could use some help.

Presenter: Justin Filip from the Pacific Green Party talks with KEPW at the May Day event. You can hear Curtis Blankinship and his show ‘Talk Is Cheap’ every Saturday at 4 right here on 97.3, Eugene PeaceWorks Community Radio.