David Collins

Born in Stillwater OK, 1962 BA, Classical Studies, Rice University, 1984 Instructional technology and training specialist in Houston TX Green Party of Texas nominee for US Senate, 2012 and 2020 Harris County Green Party nominee for County Judge, 2014 Early Green Party organizer in Harris County Musician, bicycle commuter and cycling activist Houston Dynamo (MLS) and Dash (NWSL) fan

• The Green Party calls for Medicare for All, free public college tuition, ending endless wars including the Drug War, and preventing climate catastrophe.
• If you cannot vote for warmongers and still live with yourself, vote Green.
• The two-party system needs to be destroyed. It keeps imperialism & capitalism alive because they are profitable. Imperialism & capitalism need to stoke racism & xenophobia to stay in business.

The original Green New Deal, not the watered-down Democratic version
Getting corporate money out of electoral politics
Getting capitalism and profit out of health care
A comprehensive plan for providing universal mental health care
Full reproductive choice for women
Full civil, housing, and employment rights for LGBTQ+ Americans
Urban agriculture and regional food webs
Complete Streets urban infrastructure and encouraging people-powered transportation

All five GPUS nominees for president: Nader, Cobb, McKinney, Stein, and Hawkins.
All six GPUS nominees for vice president: LaDuke, LaMarche, Clemente, Honkala, Barak, and Walker
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Paul Wellstone
Dr. Cornel West
Prof. Noam Chomsky
Arundhati Roy
Wangari Maathai
Petra Kelly
Extinction Rebellion leaders and activists worldwide

My aspiration and ambition is to keep people's movements active, because every system needs constant improvement, and governments can always do better by their citizens and visitors. I identify with movement leaders who question conventional wisdom and accept "we've always done it this way" as an answer.

1. Any book by Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, John Rensenbrink, or the essays of Arundhati Roy.
2. My website, dbcgreentx.net.

See my answers to previous questions.

"Successful" has different definitions for different people. My refusal to meet with corporate lobbyists or accept corporate campaign contributions would probably set me up for failure, as would my refusal to caucus with the Democrats. However, even standing alone, I would do my best to undertake every action in consideration of people, planet, and peace; I would let constituents know when their Senators privilege profit over people.

1. Represent, through legislation and appropriations, the interests of the people of one's state, including those who cannot vote or make campaign contributions.
2. Protect and preserve that natural environment.
3. Confirm or reject presidential appointees based on #1 and #2 above.

Just being among the first cohort of Green US Senators and showing the world that Greens can do right by the people, which should then result in more Greens getting in.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy happened when I was five.

If I had to name just one, it would be "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. CAUTION: Reading this novel can take over your life and change you in unexpected ways. DFW's bold experimentations with characters and dialog, his explorations of mental illness, and the messed-up world he imagined (messed up in far funnier ways than the "real" world) win the post-modernist sweepstakes.

Fictional characters who are even partly interesting are interesting because of their suffering. But at least their suffering is more entertaining than real-life suffering. My favorite sufferer is Jamie Fraser from the "Outlander" series, something of a proto-feminist peaceful warrior who just wants to make life safe and comfortable for his family and friends but who is constantly beset by the circumstances of 18th-century life.

"Leeds United" by Amanda Palmer, mostly because Leeds United FC have just clinched promotion to the Premier League sixteen years after their last relegation from the top division.

In my blog, I have been fairly candid about my chronic depression, a condition I supposedly share with some revered politicians including Abraham Lincoln. For years I thought it was something people just had to work through, but then discovered that many (including my spouse at the time) cannot without medical help. I have also had friends with various types of mental illness, which has helped me empathize with them and include mental health care as a large and visible part of my platform.

The gravest existential threat to the human and natural world is anthropogenic climate disruption. This nation needs to catch up with other post-industrial nations in crafting and enacting policies that reign in the excesses of capitalism, such as business interests that deny climate science because it is inconvenient for their bottom lines.

Apart from that, we have appalling levels of poverty, wealth disparity, health disparity, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and lifestyle diseases. We need to make it easier for people of limited means to purchase healthy foods and live in healthy environments. That means more and better public transportation. It means changing housing policies and stopping gentrification (which is really more like urban colonialism). And it certainly means a single-payer, nationwide health system to replace the profit-driven "system" we have at present.

The U.S. Senate is one of the most undemocratic institutions of government in the so-called free world, even before you factor in the influence of corporate money on policy-making. I hope that I live to see a constitutional amendment that changes the composition of the Senate. You don't find many legislative bodies in which each state, province, region, or territory gets the same amount of delegates irrespective of population. Direct popular election of Senators didn't even start until 1913.

If the Senate were a truly deliberative body tasked with considering the consequences of legislation upon generations to come, as with the Iroquois councils, that would be a welcome change.

For some. I don't believe it should be a requirement. Experience in government too often puts legislators in the mindset of always having to please the donors, rather than considering the welfare of the people at large. I would say that it helps to have some education in the realm of public policy. Parliamentarians in Europe are often trained in the arts of governance, whereas in the US too many of them are attorneys trained in the arts of bullshittery.

Ambivalent. I'm somewhat grateful that senators usually avoid filibusters by going straight to cloture votes, but it feels equivalent to plea bargaining to avoid a trial. Used correctly, the filibuster is an important tool in stopping wrongheaded legislation from passing, including repeals of existing laws.

Ideally, cabinet candidates and judicial appointees should have no ties to the corporate world. Beyond that, I am interested in judicial appointees' willingness to interpret statutes and litigation in ways that benefit people and planet. However, I have no criteria for how far "left" an appointee's record might be: Evenhanded interpretations are more important than ideology on federal benches.

It can be. Some of these relationships are based strictly on forming a flying wedge to ram corporate-sponsored legislation through Congress. Congressmembers with friends across the aisle can sometimes influence each other, for good or ill, but it puts the lie to the public and media perception of partisan divisiveness when Senators from both major parties vote the same most of the time, especially on defense expenditures. "Bipartisan" has become a code word for "both sides screwing the workers."

1. Foreign Relations
2. Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

If I were elected, I would be one of very few Greens in the Senate, perhaps the only one. That would make me a party leader by default.

Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Paul Wellstone (DFL-MN) come quickly to mind. There are two past House members I would like to emulate as well: Barbara Jordan (D-TX) and Jeannette Rankin (R-MT).