Chose the target, make a plan, then act.

The following is a slight expansion of a post that I sent to the national Eco-Action Committee today. I have expanded it to give a bit more information, added some additional links for better navigation, etc. I would like to suggest that the plan I mention here is very much applicable to California and the GPCA. I am sure that it is quite in line with what OneSoCalGreen says.

I have just finished watching a teach-in hosted by the NY Academy of Scientces and sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, the Green Buildings Council and the Home Depot Foundation and a large group of other traditional funders, Rockefeller Foundation, etc.

The presenters were:
Dr. James Hansen, NASA Climatologist renowned for being muzzles by the Bush Administration.
Edward Mazria, American Institute of Architects and the Architecture 2030 project.
Chris Luebkeman. Director and leader of Arup’s global Foresight and Innovation initiative. Arup is a Consulting Engineering firm specializing in sustainable design.

You can find a list of the people from California who participated in the teach in here. If you want to read the presentations / materials, you can do so from this page:


I came away from this with the following observations.

1. Putting the primary focus of our global warming / climate change efforts on transportation is missing the biggest target. While transportation accounts for 27% of our energy usage, with corresponding CO2 emissions, the building sector accounts for 40% from building operations and another 8% from embedded energy load. Maybe we are picking the wrong target and should focus instead on sustainable buildings / sustainable cities.

2. Per Dr. Hansen, 25% of our ghg emissions will still be in the atmosphere for 500 years, no matter what we do now. From this, he had a chart that shows we can not afford to wait 20 years before we start taking actions.

3. Edward Mazria presented some very concrete things that the architectural design industry should be doing in order to bring the CO2 footprint of our buildings below 1990 levels by 2030. That is possible when you consider that 75% of the world-wide sq ft space will either be constructed or remodeled between now and then. That is called the 2030 Challenge. The goal is....

That all new buildings, developments and major renovations be designed to meet a fossil
fuel, greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting, energy consumption performance standard of 50%
of the regional (or country) average for that building type.

4. Dr. Hansen made the case that acting now is a moral imperative... that we are responsible for the world in which our children and grand-children will live. Part of this is to stretch the oil and gas reserves that we have to make them last as long as we can. We are on a track to use them up even faster.

5. While some of the suggested solution tasks are particular to the design industry (develop new tools that provide for instant analysis of the energy impact of design alternatives) there are a number which involve local approaches and regulations. What would the world be like if the performance standard quoted above were to be required before any local building permit was issued? If so, we would go a long way toward meeting the goal of pre-1990 levels of fossil fuel use.

Since I have joined this group, I have been a bit frustrated that what we do is in many ways totally disconnected from the things that really matter. The Green Party exists in order to be able to take political action. There are a number of scientists and intellectuals who can churn the numbers on carbon emissions and forecast what various levels of carbon taxes might achieve in reducing those emissions. When I ask myself what we can do that they can not, the list is very short, but points the way toward increased effectiveness as a political party.

I am asking that everyone on the Eco-Action Committee review the charts from Dr. Hansen and Edward Mazria. Following that, I would like to see the Eco-Action Committee confirm the goals of the 2030 Challenge.

If we can agree on that, then I want to see the Green Party take the following steps.

- Act to place a Green Party Member on the Planning Commission of every city and town where we have an organization. While many locals, county councils, etc. are focusing their energy on impeaching Bush, getting of Iraq and Immigration, acting on the local level begins with understanding our place in the environment and, more specifically how to create sustainable communities (click About Cities & Urbanism).

- Provide the materials and support that will guide that member in getting the 2030 Challenge Goals inserted into local building codes. This already exists. It should be a no - brainer for those communities that have signed on to the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

When our CoCo, Mike Ewall, was looking for success stories from Green Office Holders, we had a nearly resounding silence. As part of what we do regarding the 2030 Challenge, we must...

- Provide a clearinghouse of what is working and what is not working for Greens across America. This is intended to augment what I linked from the Green Institute above and should focus on environmental concerns.

At a minimum, I want to put this on the agenda for our next telecon. Between now and then, I also want to turn this into a proposal, to accept or reject. I would also ask that this belongs in the Green Issues WG 2 year plan.

Getting Ready for the future

One of the heroes of the environmental movement has been NASA's James Hansen. Now, Hansen is involved with the 2010 Imperative, an effort by the American Institute of Architects and the NY Academy of Sciences to educate the public about global warming. This is a web cast "teach in" that takes place tomorrow. It should be worth viewing.

The very way that the ask their primary question "Are you being trained for the world you will inherit?" would indicate that they answer is "no' and that they have an alternative.

Is it mainstream to be green?

I was a bit surprised by the prevalence of environmental material that I have received in the last 24 hours. Some of it came from the internet, where Sen. Boxer's newsletter to her public was headlined "Improving Fuel Economy to Reduce Greenhouse Gases". It is what you would expect from the Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

But, I also live in the small "edge city" of Morgan Hill. We have a local newpaper (Morgan Hill Times) that published only twice a week: Tuesday and Friday. This week, it had the following environmental stories:

• a guest column by the Environmental Programs Administrator, City of Morgan Hill.
• editorial regarding the cleanup of a spill into Uvas Creek.
• announcement that the local Chamber of Commerce is seeking nominations for it 2nd annual Sustainable Quality Award.
• a story on the fact that the City of San Jose will address climate change in its draft EIR for a major expansion into Coyote Valley.

I mention all of this because, if we are beginning to let our guard down, to focus on other issues just now, we are creating an opening for those who would distort environmental concerns for their own advantage. As it becomes politically necessary for a candidate to establish their "green" credentials, these distortions become easy to enact into policy. For example:

• two presidential candidates, McCain and Obama, make an issue of alternative fuels, meaning ethanol from corn. Ethanol from corn is neither cost effective nor is it moving us toward a long term solution to our oil dependencies.
  
• California's central valley congressional delegation is lining up behind a "deal" to transfer responsibility for the operation of a major irrigation project from the Bureau of Reclamation to the Westlands Water District. (other links to this story: Fresno Bee, LA Times, Sacramento Bee, Contra Costa Times. ) I know the work of a number of the authors of these stories (Martin, Doyle, Whitney, Taugher) and they are good journalists with an environmental conscience.
  
• Westlands Irrigation District has a history of exploiting resources and avoiding responsibility. Their current plans for circumventing regulation include the purchase of a private fishing club on Shasta Lake to clear the way for raising the level of Shasta and providing more water for irrigation.

Getting to real solutions to problems such as I just outlined require us to continue to pay attention to what is happening to our environment and to not allow organizations like Westlands to corrupt the process through their ability to control the election of candidates to Congress, or even to elect a president. These battles are have not been won and turning away will only mean that we allow the likes of Westlands or Archer-Daniels-Midland to control the political process.

Going to Sonoma...

There are a number of us who will not be in Sonoma next weekend. Many of us would like to feel that we have some input into the process that will take place there. Whether we do or not will be a test of how much the GPCA believes in Grassroots Democracy. So far, I have seen grassroots reaching down as far as a County Council, but that is still the leadership. Some County Councils are very much in touch with their members. Others may not be.

One SoCal Green who, like me, will not be there, has offered his input. Not to steal Roger's words, since his are better than mine would have been, I can say that I agree with his three major points.

1. Speak to America in plan American-speak -- not political-cant nor activist rant.
2. Politely educate on the 10KV
3. Go Local

Orval Osborne had previously posted here about "Why the Green Party and our Priorities." I would consider that this too, should be an input to the Sonoma session.

I have posted previously about the difference between trying to be the political embodiment of the progressive movement and being Green. As Roger pointed out, they are not the same.

To all of this I would only add that, if we want people to vote Green, then we must live Green.

Greens 4 Democracy

I tried to visit the GDI web site this week and found that it requires a password to look at it. That makes me wonder about the status of this group. At one time, Greens for Democracy and Independence made a lot of noise about the future of the Green Party. Now, it seems to be silent, either no longer having a web site to maintain or having gone underground.

My curiosity was aroused because one of the features of the Strategic Retreat being held in Sonoma Feb. 24-25 is a speech by Cynthia McKinney. This would once have set off a firestorm of protest about "fusion" efforts in the GPCA.

What is going on with GDI as an organization? The originally stated goals were attractive but now I wonder if anyone cares. I wonder to what extent the members of the "Million Votes of Peace" slate will participate in the retreat and, if they do, whether it will be constructive or confrontational.

Budget time

I listened to Ted Kennedy talk to Charlie Rose today. I had not done the math before, but Kennedy is the 3rd longest serving Senator in history. (longest was Strom Thurmond). But I digress.

Kennedy made the comment to Rose that the Government's budget was a moral document. It defined our priorities. I wonder if you could consider the budget of a political party to be a moral document as well. Does it not defined what is important enough to spend our scant resources trying to accomplish?

With Committee and Working Group budgets due now, how well do we live up to our own moral code?

Re-envisioning the Delta again.

I always come back to the issues surrounding water in California and the problems of the Sacramento / San Joaquin Delta. There are two reasons to bring this up again.

One is the publication of a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California entitled "Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta"

The second is a related editorial in the Sacramento Bee yesterday, February 11, 2007. The conclude...

Several government reviews of the Delta are under way. A bill to build
the Peripheral Canal is before the California Legislature, but even proponents are waiting for more facts and studies before any big push begins. The environmental community, in general, is holding fire. Contra Costa County and Delta farming interests reject the premise that today's system can't be fixed in a way to protect their interests. If only the Earth were flat, or not warming.

Beware of anything feeling like a timid tinkering with a troubled system. The Delta's problems demand state leaders to go way beyond the comfort zone. At this point, everything uncomfortable should be on the table. PPIC and UC Davis, to their great credit, may have just shaken the water world to its senses.

I just hope to hell that some of you are paying attention to this. If there is any political organization that should be standing up and helping to define the objectives here, it is the Green Party. The Republicans of the Central Valley are totally beholden to the interests of big agriculture and big developers. The Democrats are themselves so concerned about development (after all a developer named Tsakopoulos funds a lot of them) that you should question everything that comes out of the mouths of their leaders, like Perata, though his latest moves have the appearances of being positive.

Perata, D-Oakland, has been reorganizing Senate committees and announcing new committee leaders in recent days. Earlier this week, he caused a stir among water experts when he tapped Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, to head the newly formed Natural Resources and Water Committee.

Perata's move strips water legislation from (State Sen. Michael - Linden) Machado's old agriculture committee and places it under the purview of a panel with more environmentalists than farmers. The two groups often bicker about how best to allocate California's scarce water supply.

Green Party Rising?

There are several recent developments that indicate the Green Party is getting the increased stature that we all would like to see.

The Federal Elections Commission has recognized that Green Senate Campaign Committee. Comments by commoner1.

Chlorophyll discussion of the 2008 Presidential Race.

The Huffington Post political blog site has a Green Party section on it.

I note that Cynthia McKinney has been announced as a speaker for the Green Party California Strategic Retreat, February 23-25. I know that she has been approached before, but has consistently ended up by staying in the Democratic Party. I would think that she would have to be totally convinced that she has no future as a Democrat before she would make this jump. Still this meeting is being sponsored by the GPCA Campaign and Candidates Working Group, so that might mean something. California has the largest Green Party registration and has a large influence on the ultimate choice.

There is also the perennial discussion as to whether or not Nader will run yet again. Nothing said or not but a Nader 2008 tee shirts and coffee mugs are all over the internet.

The Green Party of the United State will hold it's national meeting in Reading, PA this coming July. The big question will be the one of what to do about a Presidential Campaign in 2008.

With Pete Camejo undergoing treatment for cancer and David Cobb having said that he is not running again this time the field is wide open for someone if the Party chooses to have a candidate. I might support a Cynthia McKinney or a Dennis Kucinich, but only if they were to renounce the Democratic Party and register as a Green in their home state.

Report from Monterey County

One of the more active voter registration leaders within the GPCA, Tim Smith, has posted a Report from Monterey County on several of the GP email lists (full text below).

I see two things here. The first is that this voter registration happened along with a signature gathering effort for a very contentious local issue. I believe that a major reason for it's success stems from that fact.

That begs the question as to why the registration was skewed so solidly to the Green Party. There are two factors at work here. The first is the fact that those who signed the Initiative were probably more inclined to think about government in a manner similar to what the Green Party is all about. The second is the fact that there is a profound dis-satisfaction with both major parties in the nation and specifically in California. Schwarzenegger, presumably the standard bearer for the Republican Party, seeks to distance himself from its more ideological positions and is as frequently criticized by his own party members as he is by the opposition Democrats.

The dissatisfaction of the electorate has been well documented by the Public Policy Institute of California. p. 5

Political party membership has also declined over the past 16 years. The percentage of California adults registered as major party voters has dropped from 54 percent to 43 percent. There were 12 million voters registered as Democrats and Republicans in 1990; there are 12 million today. Almost all the growth in registration rolls has been in “decline to state”—independent voters who choose not to declare membership in one of the two major parties. For the first time in modern California history, the majority of adults do not belong to one of the major parties.

It is our challenge as to what we will do about it. Tim has suggest one course of action.

A Report From Monterey

Last month, January '07, the Land Watch organization in Salinas, filed a referendum on the pro-developer, Monterey County General Plan passed by the Board of Supes, 4 - 1, at its Jan 3rd Meeting... This General Plan approves major development throughout the Salinas Valley, which will create, (critics charge) a southern extension of Silicon Valley and San Jose, which is about an hour north... Obviously, billions of dollars are at stake in the developement of this plan...

To contest the vision of such an environmental nightmare, (where water is scarce, where roads and schools are lacking, where prime farm land, in the heart of "America's Salad Bowl", is being swallowed up by urban sprawl) Land Watch and it's allies hired a crew of about 15 signature gatherers, who collected 15,000 sigs in about 11 days, or 6,000 more than the required 9,000... and my crew, including 8 Greens, were significant contributors to this effort...

I bring this up because, in the process of collecting signatures for this issue, we were also able to talk to Monterey county voters about broader political issues, and at times register them into the GPCA... We also collected the names and contact information of about 15 new Greens who are interested in being involved, in one way or the other, with GP discussions, meetings and/or potential action -- and hopefully to revitalize Monterey's GP local...

From my personal experience, i found voters still fed up with both the Democrats and the Republicans, and either willing to give a 3rd party a try, or wanting to register in some form, independently of the current 2-party duopoly. The following are the registration figures from my personal efforts, and i find they continue to speak eloquently about the true political aspirations and values of average voters and citizens statewide...:

Total Registered	52
Greens	24	(46.2%)
Democrats	13	(25.0%)
Decline to State	9	(17.3%)
Republicans	4	( 7.7%)
Other	2	( 3.8%)

Overall, we registered about 40 Greens, and Monterey's Green Registrations jumped from 1,323 to 1,355, for a net gain of 32 Greens, in the time between the county's 12/19/06 registration report to the 1/23/07 report...

Imagine if we could sustain a spirited registration drive statewide!


"I am well aware that there is no revolutionary action without revolutionary theory, but I am essentially a man of action. Since my student days I have always been in the front line of the struggle, and this has taught me a lot" -- Salvador Allende

What are they trying to do with the Delta?

Periodically, I come back to the question of the Delta and try to hammer home the fact that what happens in the Delta does not stay in the Delta. It affects all of us in California in ways that most don't even realize. So, we the people continue to ignore the situation, just as those in New Orleans ignored the status of their levees, until a catastrophe happened. And, just like in New Orleans, when it happens, and it will, we will all ask why didn't "they" do anything.

To paraphrase Walt Kelly's Pogo, "We have met the "they" and they is us."

Loss of faith in our political leadership

This is a busy morning, three posts and I may not be done. Let me give a top of the morning hat tip to Lisa Taylor for alerting me to the latest Steven Hill OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Hill tries to answer the question "Why have Californians lost so much faith in their political leadership?" He does a pretty good job of marshalling the statistics to support the fact of such a loss. His references to the Public Policy Institute of California surveys. From them, he extracts the following facts:

There is a widening breach between most of the 35 million people residing in California and the fewer than 9 million who actually vote. Today, the California adult population is approximately 46 percent white, 32 percent Latino, 12 percent Asian and 6 percent black. Yet, 7 in 10 likely voters are white while only 1 in 6 is Latino. A third of California adults are foreign-born, but 9 in 10 who frequently vote are native born.

It is not much of a stretch to say that Hill is not wrong to ascribe a cause - effect relationship to this.

I do not have any such statistics, but rather just a gut feel, that there profile of the likely voter is nearly exactly the profile of the Green Party and that just maybe this is a reason why the Green Party is not benefiting from the disillusionment with the Rumpocracy.

Like Hill concludes concerning electoral reform...

The population of California is changing before our eyes, and so must our antiquated political institutions and practices. We should avoid timidity and act now. Our state can ill-afford any delay.

I would only substitue "party" for "state" above.

Where will new leaders come from?

As those in this party age, like myself, we have to ask where the new leadership will come from. I see two things happening that are positive. One is the practice advocated by Pasadena Green, Roger Gray.

Roger is developing his own political resume by serving on the various boards and commissions that help run the Pasadena City Government. He seems to have served on everything except the Rose Bowl. At the same time, as Roger moves from one commission to another (currently on the Environmental Advisory Commission), he has worked to ensure that there is another Green in position to take his place.

Another approach is to utilize interns in a meaningful manner. I don't see this happening very much at all. We are pretty good at taking volunteers and working them as hard as they are willing to work, but having some sort of official internships may be a way to continue attracting young people to the party and keeping them involved.

Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County, headed by Green David Cobb, has advertised for interns to work with them in the summer and fall of 2007 and to develop new skills in community organizing.

It would seem to me that there are other areas where we could do something similar. For example, one might be to establish an internship to work with the Media Commitee. Our Press Secretary, Cres Vellucci, is very experienced as an editor and PR creator. So is Media Commitee member, Larry Cafiero.

Something to think about.

New ways of reaching out.

I love pottery, make some myself, a so I belong to two email lists related to clay. There were some surprising exchanges about Greens on one of them (ClayCraft) this week.

The owner of Claycraft is a Green from Mingeisota, now living and working in Mashiko, Japan. However, he was an active Green when living in Minneapolis and that shows in his posts to his own group.

Another potter posted the following to ClayCraft.

I've been wary of the Greens since Republican money was accepted by them back east. On the political compass I came out just below Gandhi. Economic Left/Right -5.00. Social Libertarian/Authoritarian -6.82. I'm still a Democrat. In my book, the Minnesota Democrats are real Democrats. The kind that inhabit DailyKos

The list owner replied by posting the 10 KV and elicited the following response.

Holy Cow! I'm a Green! Well, I actually knew that. My dad was a died in the wool Democrat, hobnobbed with the likes of Henry Jackson, Warren Magnusson, and Tom Foley. That's the kind of politics I grew up with.

Well, that discussion ranged far from clay. Yet that we do as people becomes part of what we do as artists, a fact that does not exempt politics.

I think that we do ourselves no good when we ignore the full range of all ten values and focus on just the hot button issue of the day. If that happens to be your hot button issue (Iraq, impeachment) then OK. But, to do so as a "progressive strategy" is only a way to try and change the Democratic Party, not to build the Green Party.

Day of Remembrance

I copied the following as the result of an event notification from the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. It would seem to me that the subject of this session is of particular interest in that Greens do not trust this administration (who does?). While I will not be in Los Angeles to attend, perhaps some of you there might find it interesting. The rhetoric is much the same.

Day of Remembrance: "Military Necessity" to "National Security" ... The Use of Executive Power from WWII to Iraq

FREE ADMISSION

The Day of Remembrance is held each year to commemorate President Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. Roosevelt proclaimed "military necessity" and set into motion the removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans with little or no challenge from congress or the nation.

The program for Day of Remembrance 2007 examines the use of Executive Power from both a historical and present-day perspective and explores the ways in which challenges to this presidential authority have been enacted. This year's program will serve as a catalyst for all Americans to evaluate governmental authority and ensure that elected officials adopt policies that uphold the constitution. Panelists will discuss the role of other branches of the federal government and the importance of activism in safeguarding civil liberties for all.

Participants include: Helga Aguayo, wife of Agustin Aguayo, the first U.S. soldier stationed in Germany to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq; Laila Al Marayati, spokesperson for Muslim Women's League; Honorable Xavier Becerra, Congressman of the 31st District of California and Assistant to the Speaker of the House; Lane Hirabayashi, George and Sakaye Aratani Professor of the Japanese American Internment, Redress, and Community, UCLA; Tadashi Nakamura, Filmmaker, Pilgrimage (2006); Cedrick Shimo, Private, 1800th Engineering Batallion (WWII).

For reservations, please call 213.625.0414.

A Change in the Political Climate

There is no longer any doubt in the mainstream media about Global Warming, or Climate Change, or whatever one wants to call it. The subject was even the headline story on the Nightly News with Brian Williams (NBC) twice this week.

The first hit came from Rep. Waxman's hearings on the political control of science information in the current administration. The second time was with the report today from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I don't think that there is any real doubt about what is happening and why. The real question is one of what we are going to do about it. It is not just a matter of reducing the carbon footprint of our daily lives, as some viewers of Inconvenient Truth imply. It will affect everything we do. Areas now being farmed may become too arid to support agriculture. Coastal areas will inevitably become inundated. It is how we react to the crisis that will determine if we are really fit to be the survivors. It is time to reread Jared Diamond's "Collapse."

I have little faith in the current political process in the US being able to deal the extreme severity of the dislocations in society. The only political solutions will by necessity be Green.

The stench of sewage

When Carl Pope talked about the stench of sewage in S. California, he was not talking about the New River, though that is bad enough. This was about the connections between Republican politicians and business interests and where soon to be fired US Attorney Carol Lam was responsible for investigating and convicting "Duke" Cunningham.

Pope was particularly interested in the connections between Dick Cheney, Duncan Hunter and a project called Bajagua. This looks like another Dick Cheney no-bid contract waste of tax payer money. It would be more than interesting to know exactly how much money changed hands here.

It would also be a good thing to see the Green Party take a position in support of Carol Lam. Lam is just getting too close to too many Republican Politicians. After Cunningham, she has been investigating Jerry Lewis, once Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation and very much connected to the same people who were bribing Cunningham.

I ran in to the back story here while working against Richard Pombo last fall. When checking Pombo's actions in Congress connections appears to Jerrry Lewis, Duncan Hunter and John Doolittle (CA-4). All of us working on this campaign became familiar with those connections and shared our information as we found it. Then, downwithtyranny was very helpful to us as he continued his own fight against Cunningham's Republican successor, Brian Bilbray. He is now actively working to help continue Lam's work.

Warren Buffett and the Klamath Dams

Most people would not know how much Warren Buffett affect the economy of California. He is one of the major stockholders in Midwestern Energy Holdings Co. which in turn recently purchased Pacific Power, an electric company that owns and operates four private dams on the Klamath River. They primarily serve the very Northern California and Southern Oregon.

There dams are now the center of a major controversy. Their license to operate these dams is up for renewal (every 50 years) and the US Government has ordered Pacific Power to make major changes in the manner in which these dams are operated.

I bring up this subject because there are many separate issues that come together and they are all political.

• With the dams blocking the river, salmon have limited access to spawning grounds.
• Were that not enough, the US Government had cut off much of the Klamath flow in 2002 to provide additional irrigation capability for Klamath basin farms.
• The result is a shortage of salmon and a curb on commercial salmon fishing this year.
• Removal of the dams would make a significant difference in the cost of electricity generation for Pacific Power.
• Alternative to this hydro-electric power may have a high carbon cost.

As I said, it is not simple. The opponent to the dams include Indian Tribes with treaty rights to salmon, fishermen (both sports and commercial), environmentalists, all joined together in a Klamath Basic Coalition.

The only Green I know of who has opened their mouth about this effort is David Cobb. Back in October, he contributed an OpEd column for the Eureka Times-Standard in which he called for the removal of the dams.

We need more outspoken Greens, getting their commentary into the local papers. It is one additional way to build the party and we need not rely on some Media Committee to do it for us because too many media producers consign Green Party press releases to the round file.

Do polls tell us where to spend our energy?

• The GPCA has only a limited amount of energy to expend and that means we can give the highest level of attention only to a limited number of issues. Are public opinion polls of value in determining where that energy is best spent?

The most recent survey from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has released a new study entitled Californians and their Government: January 2007. Given that the aim of the PPIC is to improve public policy in California, this is about as good as any survey will be.

One of the more interesting facts out of this survey is that the number on issue for people in the State of California is "immigration / illegal immigration". I note that the wording of the question (pg. 27) uses exactly that terminology, both the positive "immigration" and the negative "illegal immigration". The question asked the responder to select "which one issue facing California today do you think is the most important for the governor and state legislature to work on in 2007?". The ranking of the responses was:

• 22% immigration / illegal immigration
• 18% education / schools
• 13% health care / health costs
• 10% other
• everything else was less than 10%.

The immigration issue has not gone away after the demonstration of 2006 and that is both a challenge and an opportunity for the GPCA. It is our choice. While Greens have been very much involved in some of the immigration demonstrations, it appears to me that we have not followed through with organizational action, a curious lapse when the President of the Mexican American Political Association is a Green. There is an open question as to how we should proceed and I don't hear much discussion. If this is truly the most important issue, we probably should be doing more.

The Tahoe GA approved an update to the platform regarding immigration. A translation of that platform by Rocío Guido-Ferns (09-2006) can be found here. At the very least, we should have this translation available for distribution when tabling.

SOTU

While most of the media attention given Bush's SOTU speech was focused on Iraq and the position of Nancy Pelosi, environmentalists had their own take, based mainly on the expectation that some had over the possibility of a new position on Auto Emissions and Global Warming. Seed Magazine's Chris Mooney dispels any notion as to whether that happened.

In California, the Governator has staked a position much closer to what environmentalists want. He has championed new emissions standards in his State of the State Speech. In reality, he has assigned the task of defining those standards over to the University of California (Davis and Berkeley) experts.

There is a GPCA Energy email list with 42 members ids, but 15 of those are bouncing. The rate of activity on the list is low. It exists mainly for sharing information, not for providing any organized GPCA action regarding global warming, energy policy or any other related subject. It would appear that there is not enough energy in the GPCA itself for organized activism on more than a couple of issues and energy is not on the list of issues this year (Iraq war, immigration, health care, IRV).

There are a lot of Greens who are taking specific personal action to cut down on their own carbon footprint, but I wonder if that is enough.

Ending Racism

The following content originated with Kevin Zeese and has been circulated on a number of Green Party email lists.

If you think we've come a long way on race issues, look at these two
links below and you will think again. Very brief reports, but very
disturbing.

http://www.komotv.com/home/video/5001856.html?video=YHI&t=ao

Kiri Davis' film, reviewed in the above link is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjy9q8VekmE

She says a lot in 7:15 minutes. More than many say in a lifetime.

If there is any political party that should be above this, you would think that it would be the Green Party. We pride ourselves as being above all of that. When reading some email's about the Democratic Party, I can almost see the sneer curling the lips of the writer. But still, there is a need to act. There was even a proposal to "end racism, sexism and classism in the GPCA". That anyone would feel the need to do this in the 21st Century is almost incomprehensible.

When I read Hunter Bear's recounting of Arizona life in the 1950's, it jogged my memory. Living through those events as a teen, I sensed that this was a time of change. I guess I was too optimistic.