To the Editor:

Matt Funiciello, the Green Party candidate for Congress in NY-21 which includes all of St. Lawrence County and most of Northern New York spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of approximately twenty people at the New Jernabi Coffeehouse on Wednesday evening.

Following his speech the candidate answered questions from voters.

Funiciello discussed the centerpiece issues of his campaign, single payer healthcare, the fifteen dollar per hour federal minimum wage, a Green New Deal to transition from fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy via a WPA style jobs program that would employ twenty million Americans, the need to address the agricultural components of climate change, and a transition to a more peace focused economy.

Funiciello stated that as a Green he did not take corporate money, and belonged to a party that does not take corporate money. He stated that we must eliminate the influence of corporate money in politics.

He urged voters that they must elect candidates that will work to amend the Constitution to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court case.

Funiciello fielded a voter's question about how he could change the current gridlock in Washington. He stated that if he were elected, it was likely that he would be the lone Green in Congress.

He would use that unique position to inspire other alternative party candidates to run for higher office around the country and change the conversation.

Funiciello went on to explain that NY-21 was home to several of the first Republican members of Congress elected in 1856 when the party was still a single issue anti-slavery party, and not the major party it became.

He stated that four years later those early principled actions in the North Country helped lay the groundwork for the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, which brought an end to slavery in America less than a decade later.

He told the audience that he believes the same stubborn streak that allowed their ancestors to elect the first anti-slavery Republicans exists in the district's voters today, and their actions may begin to end the corporate influence in Washington that exists now.

Jeremy Barlow

Herrings