Green Party candidate for Congress in Illinois Matt Reichel – who has won his primary since this article was written – was featured in an article by the Sun-Times Media recently.

Like most Greens the onetime antiwar activist and campaigner for Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential run would like to wean the country off of its Middle Eastern-oil addiction in favor of more mass transit and alternative energy sources like wind and solar power, and has no use for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While he sees the danger of groups like Al Qaeda, Reichel says he and many other Greens look at the “War on Terrorism” as a law-enforcement problem rather than a military exercise.

“Our focus should be on the borders. The 9-11 attackers all managed to get through our borders. Why don’t we focus instead on clamping down on those borders?,” he said.

And while he wishes Barack Obama had emulated FDR’s ambitious Depression-era public-works programs, Reichel said he and many other Greens can be fiscal conservatives when necessary.

“I think they should have let the big banks fail. There’s no such thing as a bank too big to fail,” said Reichel, who has been endorsed by former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska.