VP candidate for Nonviolent Resistance/Pacifist Party (2016)
Running mate with nominee: Bradford Lyttle (b. 1927)
Popular vote: 382 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
Bradford Lyttle is a Chicago-based peace activist who has been involved with nonviolent resistance protest of America's militarism since the 1950s, when he served nine months in jail as a conscientious objector. He had been a perennial write-in candidate for President since 1984 but seldom was found on any ballots.
His US Pacifist Party modified the name for the 2016 election to Nonviolent Resistance/Pacifist Party. Lyttle's running-mate was Hannah Walsh also from Chicago, who provided a brief autobiography on the campaign webpage--
My first exposure to nonviolent resistance was doing a sit in at the potential site of a nuclear power plant in Bridgman, Michigan. Since then growing up on the South Side of Chicago exposed me to the impact that day to day violence can have on the human psyche. I didn't revisit the question again until I went to an anti-war demonstration in high school and got involved in an economic conversion leafleting campaign at a weapons manufacturing plant in the state of Michigan. I continued the work my sophomore year in college when I canvassed for the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan and later worked for Greenpeace in Chicago doing fundraising and grassroots organizing. I eventually got involved in the peace movement through work with the Nicaragua Solidarity Committee and the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality. I spent the better part of two years opposing the war in Iraq and working for Environmental and Economic justice in Nicaragua. I later went back to school and completed a degree in Political Science and Northwestern University. Since that time I have been contemplating going to graduate school and in addition to a full time job, working to start a food cooperative in Rogers Park were I live.
Lyttle is also known as the author of the "Apocalypse Equation," a theory that if believed must surely add a sense of urgency to his efforts--
The Apocalypse Equation, (technically called a "stochastic equation," because it describes the relationship of probability to time) shows what nuclear weapons ultimately mean for "civilization." If each of a large number (n) of nuclear missiles existing today has even a small probability (p) of being launched, over time (T) the probability of a launch (APocalypse) approaches certainty. The more missiles, the shorter the time before a launch (T1 is less than T2). Unless nuclear weapons are deactivated, and nonviolent means developed to take the place of military violence for achieving justice and peace, civilization is doomed.
The NR/PP spelled out their platform on the 2016 webpage--
NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE/PACIFIST PARTY
2016 Platform (ver. 083116)
The Nonviolent Resistance/Pacifist Party (NVRPP) rejects military force as a means of resolving international disputes. NVRPP members believe that military force violates the moral principles of the world's great humanitarian religions and philosophies, and is a "Faustian bargain," that may achieve short range political objectives, but only at the cost of long-term catastrophe for the human species. They believe that nonviolent resistance, as developed by Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, and massive economic aid programs to eliminate poverty worldwide, are appropriate and effective ways to resist aggression and tyranny. Major planks of the NVRPP's 2016 platform include:
International Relations
As the huge arsenals of thermonuclear weapons, and drone warfare, show, our “civilization” has developed military force to the limits that our technology allow. Governments claim that these weapons systems are the foundation of “peace,” and are constantly striving to “improve” them. This is an unrealistic understanding of military force. Nuclear deterrence ultimately will break down by producing catastrophic accidents with nuclear weapons and nuclear war. This is because deterrence involves constantly risking the events it is intended to prevent, and, over time, this makes the probability of the events approach certainty. Drone warfare is assassination, and kills many innocent people. It tends to make people throughout the world hate, not respect, us. We claim to value “The rule of law,” but our military programs suggest that we instead believe in the rule of arbitrary violence.
To escape from the suicidal logic of military force, it’s necessary first to abandon the practice of describing attacks on us as “acts of war.” Once they are seen as acts of war, responses to them rapidly become devoid of any moral content or limitation on their violence. Such attacks should be seen as “criminal acts.” As such, our response should be non-lethal, involving, first, apprehending the perpetrators, and then trying them before some court of law. Once in court, they should have the right to an attorney (representation), the trial should be open and fair, and any sentence imposed not “cruel and unusual.” The dependents should have full opportunity to explain their points of view, and even file counter suits. Such a process is accepted as fair by almost everyone, and will not tend to generate hatred for us. It will give us the moral high ground. At the present time, the International Court of Law in the Hague probably is the best place to try cases that involve conflicts seen as between nations. Therefore, the United States should:
Announce that we will never use nuclear weapons, and immediately begin the deactivation of all of our own nuclear weapons, regardless of existing international agreements, and what other nations may do;
Cease all drone operations designed to assassinate “enemy” leaders;
Accelerate the development of non-lethal weapons whose purpose is to capture people trying to harm us. Such weapons might include non-lethal drones and robots, tranquilizers, incapacitating gasses such as nitrous oxide, odiferous agents such as skunk musk, throw nets, gas masks, protective armor capable of stopping at least long gun projectiles, smoke, fogs, and disorienting sound and light sources. People who are willing to risk their lives to maintain peace and justice should be trained to use these non-lethal weapons in the face of lethal ones. Imagine such a defense team capturing, rather than killing, Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden then could have been tried in an international court, which would have been an expression of the Rule of Law. Non- lethal weapons used to capture terrorists would take much of the macho romance out of terrorism.
Set up procedures for bringing those captured before international tribunals, where they will be allowed to have legal representation, plead guilty or not guilty, be tried by a jury of their peers, and have an opportunity to explain their political perspective to an international audience;
Negotiate with Red Crescent medical organizations in Islamic countries to ascertain their needs, and provide them with all of the personnel, equipment, and pharmaceuticals necessary to meet these needs;
Provide clean, fresh, water to all nations. This could be done through the development of large-scale desalination plants;
Prepare for nonviolent resistance against possible invasion and occupation attempts; This would include establishment of a national Department of Peace, and an unarmed service corps trained in strategic nonviolent defense and equipped for mobilization anywhere in the world;
Deactivate all nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons;
Abolish all aspects of the Selective Service System. Participation in the nonviolent defense system would be voluntary;
End all overt and covert military aid operations;
Close Guantanamo;
Repeal the Patriot Act;
Reduce the military budget toward zero;
Immediately end all foreign military aid, including aid to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Humanitarian foreign aid would be directed toward helping the poor meet their basic human needs and become self-sufficient. Aid to foreign governments generally would be contingent upon exemplary human rights records. When serious human rights violations are suspected, any aid given would be distributed by trustworthy agencies;
Establish a massive economic aid program to abolish poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness and ignorance at home and worldwide. The aid would be administered by the United Nations;
Repeal the Helms-Burton Act (a law that strengthens and extends the embargo against Cuba);
Support legitimate, nonviolent, social change movements that are struggling to advance human rights and political freedom;
Support one-person-one-vote democratic world government;
The Environment
Global warning through human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, that can threaten human existence, is a reality supported overwhelmingly by the scientific community. The U.S. should inaugurate a crash program to stop and reverse global warming. This would emphasize promotion of active and passive, decentralized, solar power and other nonpolluting power generating systems that would provide sufficient, free, electrical energy for everyone on earth. It would make only limited and tightly controlled use of fossil fueled plants. Nuclear power plants would be shut down, and all nuclear and fusion energy research would be placed under international control;
Establish a strongly funded program to improve fresh water supplies in this country and throughout the world. This program would include extensive research on desalination techniques, so that the burden of providing fresh water, particularly to metropolitan and industrial areas, can be lifted from sources such as fresh water rivers, lakes, and aquifers;
End private logging, grazing, and oil drilling on public lands;
Place special taxes on polluting industries to provide incentives for reducing pollution, and revenue for funding other environmental protection programs;
Health Care
Create a Canadian-style, single-payer national health care system with universal access, comprehensive coverage, and freedom of choice in the selection of doctors, medical facilities, and methods of treatment;
Investigate for price gouging Mylan,the company that makes EpiPens. EpiPens are as necessary to some people as clean water. Provide free epinephrine auto-injectors to people who need them.
Immigration
Adopt a policy of unrestricted immigration. Health and education needs of immigrants would be paid for from the billions of dollars saved by ending military programs Such a program would produce a labor force of well educated, healthy, people. It would attract people from all over the world, and since these people would return much of their wealth to their families in their home countries, the world economic distribution would steadily improve. The program's long-term effect would be to economically homogenize the world, which, in turn, would reduce feelings of injustice, and violent outbreaks.
Domestic Economy
Adopt a $15/hour minimum wage;
Establish full employment through private enterprises, cooperatives, worker-controlled and managed industries, and federally administered public projects;
Guarantee a minimum income for U.S. citizens through the establishment of a negative income tax (A negative income tax gives checks to people whose income lies below the poverty level);
Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law.
Education
Provide free college education for everyone capable of benefitting from it;
Pay off all student loans, so that young people will not be crippled by debt;
Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
Oppose all forms of racial, sexual, and religious discrimination, and all unjust socio-economic barriers;
Abolish the death penalty;
Abolish torture;
Review all prison sentences, and release, or place on some form of probation, all people convicted of non-violent offenses; Insure that all prisoners have adequate foot, medical care, living space, physical exercise, and educational opportunities. Change the focus of incarceration from punishment to rehabilitation. Abolish solitary confinement. Close all private prisons;
Ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of assault weapons. Require background checks for the purchase of all semi-automatic and automatic weapons. Require the registration of all guns, and notification of a central data base whenever any weapon is sold or otherwise changes hands. Place a high tax on ammunition for all automatic, semi-automatic weapons, long guns and hand guns;;
Strengthen both our commitment to freedom of choice and the right to a full and self-fulfilling life by reaffirming Roe v Wade. Establish high quality, easily accessible, health clinics throughout the county. Support the wide development of adoption agencies that would guarantee that all children at birth would be assured of loving homes. Through education, remove any remaining stigma of birth out of wedlock. Make in-depth sex education a part of high school and college curriculums, both to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and increase the likelihood that children will receive loving care from the onset of their lives;
Support national and international family planning programs to establish control over population growth;
Support a Constitutional amendment banning discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation;
Legalize medicinal and recreational marijuana
Police practices
Arm the police with non-lethal weapons;
Place the police under community control;
Establish truth and reconciliation commissions to help resolve conflicts without violence, and reconcile parties in conflict;
Election Reform
Limit campaign spending. Establish fair and open ballot access laws. Establish public campaign financing and provision of equal access to public television and radio for all ballot-certified candidates;
Support the principle of proportional representation in national elections.
The Lyttle/Walsh ticket made the ballot in Colorado, where they finished 19th out of 33 with 0.01%. It looks like the Party did not participate in the 2020 election.
Election history: none
Other occupations: activist, travel and tourism industry
Notes:
In the event of their victory, there would have a Constitutional problem since both candidates were residents of the same state.
