Berkeley Against ELECTION LIES from Chamber of Commerce (save Kriss and Dona...) PHOTOS

In San Francisco and Berkeley, progressive incumbents are under siege by heavily-funded campaigns for being “soft on crime.” In San Francisco, Supervisor Chris Daly has been barraged with hit-pieces by the Police Officers Association and challenger Rob Black. In Berkeley, City Councilman Kriss Worthington is on the receiving end of the most expensive campaign in that city’s history. Like Black, Worthington’s challenger (George Beier) has blamed the incumbent for a high crime rate in the District, filthy streets and a struggling economy. By making crime and quality-of-life issues a central theme of their campaigns, Black and Beier have both attacked the incumbents on an issue where any individual Supervisor or City Councilmember has little control. Beier has already spent $72,000 of his own money on mail pieces and free beer for Cal students, and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce has kicked in an extra $9,000 in independent expenditures. All of this in a race where you need just 2,000 votes to win an election.

Berkeley’s District 7 includes the UC-Berkeley campus and the Southside neighborhood -- including Telegraph Avenue, People’s Park and the three largest undergraduate dorms. Like Daly’s district in San Francisco, it has consistently elected and re-elected progressive candidates who strongly support rent control. But like Daly’s district, the neighborhood also has very high turnover – and the electorate is largely disengaged from local politics. More than half of District 7 is Cal students who graduate every four years, and Election Day on the Berkeley campus is eerily similar to Election Day in the Tenderloin. You literally have to remind people that there’s an election going on and you have to make voting extremely easy for them, or else they simply won’t show up.

Both Kriss Worthington and Chris Daly have a strong progressive record in their respective legislative bodies. They were also first elected because they engaged their district’s most disenfranchised population. In 1996, Worthington defeated an incumbent who had only appointed one student out of 35 to Berkeley’s various city commissions, and ran an aggressive campaign that mobilized student voters. In 2000, Daly was elected with overwhelming support from the District’s residential hotel tenants – on a campaign platform that promised to make visitor fees illegal and put sprinklers in every room to prevent the rash of hotel fires.

More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3851#more

check it out, download the pdf from the website to get all the details.

GREEN VOTER CARD - Nov. 7, 2006
http://acgreens.org/images/stories/GPAC-VG1106.pdf
http://acgreens.org/

State Executive Offices
--------------------------
Governor - Peter Camejo
Lieutenant Governor - Donna Warren
Secretary of State - Forrest Hill
Controller - Laura Wells
Treasurer - Mehul Thakker
Attorney General - Michael Wyman
Insurance Commissioner - Larry Cafiero

Federal Offices
--------------------------
U.S. Senator - Todd Chretien
U.S. Representative, Dist. 9 - No endorsement, see write-up
U.S. Representative, Dist. 11- Vote out Pombo; see write-up

Other State Offices
--------------------------
State Board of Equalization, District 1 - David Campbell
State Assembly, District 16 - Eddie Ytuarte

Judicial Offices
--------------------------
State Supreme Court, Carol Corrigan - No
State Supreme Court, Joyce Kennard - Yes, with reservations
State Courts of Appeal, First District - No Endorsement, see write-up
Superior Court Judge, Seat 21 - Dennis Hayashi

Special School Districts
--------------------------
Peralta Community College, Area 7 - Abel Guillen

City Offices

Alameda
--------------------------
Mayor - Doug de Haan
City Council - No Endorsements, see write-up
School Board - Tracy Lynn Jensen and Mike McMahon

Albany
--------------------------
City Attorney - No Endorsement, see write-up
City Council - Marjorie Atkinson and Joanne Wile
School Board - Jamie Calloway and Miriam Walden, Don't vote for John Kindle

Berkeley
--------------------------
Mayor: Don’t vote for Tom Bates, see write-up
Auditor - No Endorsement, see write-up
City Council, District 1 - No Endorsement, see write-up
City Council, District 4 - Dona Spring
City Council, District 7- Kriss Worthington
City Council, District 8 - Jason Overman
School Board - Karen Hemphill, Shirley Issel, and Nancy Riddle
Rent Board - Dave Blake, Howard Chong,
Chris Kavanagh, Lisa Stephens, and Pam Webster

Oakland
--------------------------
City Auditor - No Endorsement, see write-up
City Council, District 2 - Aimee Allison

Special Districts
--------------------------
A.C. Transit, At-large - Rebecca Kaplan
A.C. Transit, Ward 3 - No Endorsement, see write-up
A.C. Transit, Ward 5 - No Endorsement, see write-up
EBMUD, Ward 3 - No Endorsement, see write-up
EBMUD, Ward 4 - Andy Katz
EBMUD, Ward 7 - Oppose incumbent Frank Mellon
East Bay Regional Parks, Ward 1 - Nancy Skinner
East Bay Regional Parks, Ward 5 - No Endorsement, see write-up

State Propositions
--------------------------
1A - Transportation Funding Protection - Yes
1B - Highway Bond - No
1C - Housing & Emergency Shelter Trust Fund - Yes, with standard bond reservations
1D - Kindergarten-University Public Education Bond - Yes, with standard bond reservations
1E - Disaster Preparedness & Flood Prevention Bond - No Endorsement, see write-up
83 - Residence Restrictions & Monitoring of Sex Offenders - No
84 - Water and Parks Bond - Yes, with standard bond reservations
85 - Termination of Pregnancy / Parental Notification - No
86 - Tax on Cigarettes - Yes
87 - Alternative Energy Research, Production, & Incentives - Yes
88 - Regressive Statewide Education Parcel Tax - No
89 - Public Campaign Financing - Yes
90 - Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property - No

Local Measures
--------------------------
A - Berkeley: Renewal of Berkeley Schools Educational Excellence Act (BSEP) - Yes
C - Albany: Fire Station Renovation & Expansion Bond - No Endorsement, see write-up
D - Albany: Medical Marijuana Dispensary - Yes
E - Berkeley: Rent Board Vacancies - Yes
F - Berkeley: Waterfront Plan & Gilman St. Playing Fields - Yes
G - Berkeley: Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Yes
H - Berkeley: Impeach President Bush and Vice-President Cheney -Yes
I - Berkeley: Conversion of Rental Units into Condos - No, No, No
J - Berkeley: Landmark Preservation Ordinance - Yes
M - Oakland: Police and Fire Retirement System - No Endorsement, see write-up
N - Oakland: Library sleight-of-hand Bond - No
O - Oakland: Instant Runoff Voting - Yes

Print and bring with you to the polls
(and photocopy for your friends!)

http://acgreens.org/
http://acgreens.org/images/stories/GPAC-VG...

Thank you for showing what the mainstream media needs to be covering! Shut down the liars! Hold those pigs accountable!

http://jasonoverman.com/

Another tight race against another well-funded anti-progressive.

"While the incumbent was sitting in a meeting cutting the services most critical to our neighborhoods, I was keeping our streets safe patrolling our community in a UCPD car and on foot, as a Community Service Officer." Jason says

Haven't seen him down here in the hood, with the speeding and the drunk drivers and the hos and the johns and the shootings over drug dealing territory...we're not so close to campus here. He's probably never been to the real southside.

UCPD is known for being more brutal than the city police-- at the Copwatch training I went to, they talked about how UC and Berkeley police worked together- the Berkeley cop might finds something going on and then let the UC cops deal with it.

Hey Luci,

That does sound pretty bad if you know anything about the dark side of the police. But. If you take a look at the politics of District 8, someone who is so goody two shoes that he works with local police has a much better chance of winning the election. District 8 is largely rich homeowners and wealthier students, especially fraternities. (This in no small part due to the massive rent increases.) Take a look at the monster that is Gordon Wozniak and I think you will agree that someone who walks comfortably among those groups yet cares about basic human rights is probably the best anyone could hope for.

By the way, my understanding is that a Communty Service Officer basically escorts people who are scared to go out at night. This is a service provided primarily because of safety concerns many women have. You see them walking people at night.

Even if you loathe Jason Overman as the lesser of two evils, you can still support Kriss in another District! Or otherwise get involved in the elections on any level. Local elections is where it's at, folks, where you can make the most difference in your lives. Please don't let the right wing nightmare turn the tide completely in Berkeley, too.

Of course, there are other ways to make more difference in our lives as anarchists.

But I participate in the local elections because I agree, it's very important.

Anarchism doesn't have to preclude us from engaging the problem we face, even if
we disagree about its structure. That's always going to be core to anarchism unless
we reach some lovely steady state where everyone agrees all the time. Anarchism
at core is only successful if we do engage and work to transform things. The efforts
in Berkeley to create third-party IRV voting, and the efforts to give younger people
the vote, are examples of this. Keep pushing to give everyone a voice and break
up the monopoly!