Help Aimee Allison's Campaign for Oakland City Council

It looks to me that Aimee's increasingly negative and shrill rhetoric, with no endorsement from Dellums or even Desley Brooks (or any city councilmember but Nadel), is making her sound desperate. She's losing, and it's because her lack of involvement in the district and extremist positions give nobody any reason to vote for her.

Well, where do I begin. Jonah Zern is basically all over the place.. wow. What a guy.. from Cornell Student activist a couple of years ago, to Berkeley activist, to now Oakland activist. I will confess that I have personally lived in Oakland for 30 years.. and don't get around to other areas as much as I used to, so I can't keep up with Jonah. However, I do know Oakland. I am a lesbian, a conservationist, an activist, a feral cat worker, and a former carpenter's union person. I am someone who is invested in this community being vibrant, remaining diverse, and in improving.. for ALL. Being as that I am almost 50, excuse the need to "cut to the chase and get results". I can't afford "pie in the sky" and idealism any more. Aimee Allison is in fact nothing but hot air and idealistic values without the heart and soul of the sixties or REAL> Get what I mean? Aimee may have been Stanford class president, and inspired youth and been a good consultant, but she has had no hands on experience in the day to day affairs of managing the city and council budget and compromising, coming to consensus on important issues. Pat Kernighan HAS. She is totally progressive and creative! She is the one to get it done! All of her former "opponents" , from the teacher's union guy Kakashiba to the others, gay, straight, liberal and moderate all support Pat now

Aimee Allison is a total newcomer and opportunist... a bit like Jonah Zern.. move on in and start complaining and screaming about "THE EXISTING POLITICS AS USUAL!!!" Aimee groans: "the Pat machine, the usual stuff".. and all Aimee offers is rhetoric, dirty politics. Pat has managed to get things done.. met with EVERY neighborhood group that requested her to attend.. she has been a feminist and anti war advocate for decades.. she holds the true spirit of "green" and works for that .. and for the existence and creation of small business and art places. You know about The Prism Cafe in Oakland, close to Parkway Theater? it would not be there if not for Pat, who helped them overcome bureacracy to get here. . She is real, she is beyond show. Get real folks. Get to know what is going on. Aimee Allison is turning out to be a disgrace. I got a call from her union flunkies today, "please vote for Phil Angelides and Aimee Allison".. I said, "WHAT???" The poor guy did not even know who Allison WAS! He said, "my union told me to do this'.

Aimee Allison is new here, she is NOT a representative of District Two in Oakland. Her people are NOT Oaklanders, and they are full of shit. Take your priveledged Cornell educated asses out of here, and get down to earth with a real job with some experience, Jonah. Aimee:: learn humility and get some real life experience before you think you can come in here and represent the people who live here. You don't know jack about this district. We have someone who knows what the hell is going on. "Green" is just another political name.

Ellen Lynch
Oakland, district two

Maybe you feel strongly about your district or whatever, but you don't have to conduct a bunch of personal attacks on people.

Remember that the US population is one of the groups in the world that moves the most frequently. Jonah is allowed to go to college on the east coast (it's called freedom of movement) and then move to the Bay Area. You are allowed to move someplace else. Cities aren't built in a way that encourages community.

There is a movement called the Intentional Communities movement (see http://www.ic.org). There are all different ways that people can choose to live together with people they want to live with. (a lot of these require money) They can make decisions together about how to run their communities. America's democracy isn't really like that. The population is just too big, and there's too much corruption, etc, etc.

People in the US, especially when they are just starting out as young people, tend to move to where either "the jobs are," or "the excitement is." That's a fact, and there is nothing wrong with Jonah or me having done that. (I could not have afforded to stay in the area of eastern Mass. where i grew up, because of the dot-com boom having caused a housing crisis there before it did here.)

Yes, I can understand that it feels bad when people stay in their apartments as their neighborhoods change and they then feel all alone. There are a lot of different factors that influence people's moving or staying put. A lot are bad (ie, gentrification forcing people to move out of SF, Oakland, Berkeley to god knows where further east of the bay area, or people wanting a safer neighborhood in which to raise their kids), but you're not complaining about them. Jonah and the kinds of people he supports are. I am not defending the green party or its candidates- i have never really cared for them. Or "democracy." But that's just my politics, and my opinions. You're entitled to yours, but all of the readers of this site, and its poor overburdened volunteer editors such as me, deserve to read and participate in a civil debate.