Williams makes formal announcement as Green Independent candidate

On July 15, 2009. Lynne Williams made a formal announcement of her candidacy for Governor of the state of Maine, on the Maine Green Independent Party ticket. The announcement was made at press conferences held at the Portland Public Market, in Monument Square, Portland, and at Nonesuch Farm, an agri-tourism bed & breakfast farm in Bangor. Her statement was as follows:

We are at a point in time that presents a challenge, but also an opportunity to create a sustainable Maine.

It is time to move away from a quantitative definition of growth and progress, towards the qualitative. Clean air, adequate and safe water, fertile soil, universal access to single payer health care, chemical-free food and renewable non-polluting energy sources must be considered basic human rights, and growth in those areas is sustainable.

Yet out-of-scale industrial projects are being forced on communities where they are not welcome. Rather than simply accept this as the cost of economic development, we must be very clear that these projects have costs, and we must force these companies to externalize those costs. If a company seeks to extract value from our natural resources, resources that are the birthright of the people of Maine, then they must be told that the cost of nature is no longer zero.

The businesses that are most compatible with our state, and with our people, are entrepreneurial, creative and self-sustaining. Economic initiatives should percolate from the ground up, not from the top down, and people and communities must have the power to make their own economic decisions.

We need a governor with a vision of how every town and city in this state can come together to meet all of the challenges that are on the horizon over the next decade.  As governor, I would be a gardener, not an architect, planting seeds throughout the state and letting them grow, rather than designing a master plan and imposing it on the landscape.

This will be an on-the-ground campaign – we will meet the people in every town and city, will hear what they want and need and will respond accordingly. I want this to be about all of us and all of our communities. I believe that we have a small window of opportunity during which we can get a hearing for an alternative vision that rejects multi-national capitalism and instead proposes a system based on social and ecological justice and community empowerment.

I have chosen to make my formal campaign announcement in locations that highlight the intersection of food, agriculture, tourism and small business, because that is the backbone of Maine. We must begin creating a holistic economic model that recognizes the interconnection of elements. Creating facilities for in-state processing of dairy products and seafood, increasing the infrastructure that the creative economy needs, providing seed capital for start-up businesses, supporting our traditional industries, such as boatbuilding, and funding the research and development which is the basis for technological growth in alternative energy will do much more for all of us than turning the entire state into one big Pine Tree Zone. Tax increment financing might be a boon to industrial wind, but it does nothing for the local boat builder.

My goal is to bring this message to every corner of this state, and to challenge our citizens to embrace it and work towards what I believe is the only way to turn things around. A sustainable Maine is within reach if we just extend our arms towards it.