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Ballot Statement sent to Sacramento
Tuesday July 20th, 2010
You – and every California household with registered voters – will get an official voter pamphlet before the November 2 election.
Candidates may “purchase space” for a ballot statement if we agree that between the primary and general elections we will not spend more than $12,946,000. That’s me!
We know that the Birthright and Billionaire candidates have agreed to spend much more than that. Mega-bucks Whitman has spent more than – whatever, it always seems to be $10 million more than I heard the last time – $80,000,000?
The cost of the ballot statement, which was free in 2002, jumped to $20 a word in 2006, and to $25 a word now. The limit is 250 words, but my team and I tried very hard to keep it short for two reasons: so people would read it, and so it wouldn’t cost so much! If you are able to purchase a word or two, or a sentence or paragraph, your help will be most appreciated. But don’t contribute too much, Along with agreeing to the voluntary spending limit of $12.9 million, I have agreed to accept no more from each person than $25,900.
Please, only donate if you are a real person; the Green Party is doing everything we can to counteract the power and influence of “corporate persons.” We refuse corporate campaign contributions. They come with strings, and should be called what they are: bribes.
Here’s my ballot statement. Feel free to tell me what you think - we’re having a debate about how strongly to state the case for both spending wisely, and taxing people fairly for a change. And, if you are a real person who is able to contribute, tell me which words you’d like to be yours!
BALLOT STATEMENT
There are solutions! For great schools, health, environment, jobs, and justice. We can stop coddling mega-corporations and billionaires. They’ve gotten filthy rich, and left California flat broke and unemployment sky high.
We can create a State Bank and invest in California not Wall Street.
Let’s expand the good parts of old Prop 13 to keep people in their homes, and fix rotten parts like the 1/3 minority that has veto power over taxing the rich. Let’s implement fair taxes, and give ourselves and our kids a chance. See LauraWells.org.
Building a Movement
Sunday July 18th, 2010
Those three words are in my mind every day. We are living in times of powerful movements.
The persons in one movement are corporations, and those who profit mightily from them. Through a twisted path, corporations got themselves categorized legally as persons. This year the Supreme Court (which we might rename the Abysmal Court) opined that these “persons” had a right to free speech, and that money spent on elections equaled free speech. The vast majority of living, breathing persons in the U.S. curled their lips and said, “I disagree!”
The persons in our movement are living breathing people. This people’s movement has a wide variety of focuses. Not everyone in the movement agrees with everyone else, but the different parts of the movement are unified by the will toward living and breathing! Toward more fairness, toward more health, toward a sense of more fulfillment in life, toward a better future for ourselves and the next generations.
And the movements are taking to the streets (and to the tweets!). If anyone knows of any big shift in power in the history of the world where people did not gather and take to the streets, please email me to let me know.
This constructive people’s movement is building, and it is what is needed to counteract the destructive corporate movement. Corporations are good for making profits (for some folks) and that’s why they were created: so that groups of people could have an enterprise and have limited liability. While corporations are good at making profit, they’ve been bad at increasing fairness, health, fulfillment, and a better future for ourselves and our kids. People’s movements are good at those things, and this people’s movement is building power to take back our state and country.
When I consider the Green Party’s role in this movement, I see three important contributions: values, no corporate funding, and a ballot line. To be specific:
Values: the Green Party is an international political party with values that are explicitly stated and based in Grassroots Democracy, Social Justice, Ecological Wisdom, and Nonviolence.
No corporate funding: this affords Green Party candidates and elected officials the good fortune of being to keep our “people values” intact since we do not accept corporate campaign contributions and don’t have to behave like the Titanic Parties. At the end of the day, the Titanic Parties cannot alienate their corporate sponsors.
Ballot line: Even with the passage of the devious party-pooper Prop 14, the Greens still have a ballot line. Sooner or later – and in these times the sooner the better – this people’s movement will build into a force that will take political power. We will have a people’s ballot line, and we will retain our positive values as we build a better world.
Thanks for reading, and for being a part of the movement.
Laura
Name that complex! And build that movement.
Monday July 12th, 2010
Eisenhower said "military industrial complex" more than 50 years ago. He wanted to add "congressional" but held back. Since then we know we should add "media" – meaning the mainstream not community media, and the deciders not individual reporters.
So Ike, how about simply the "corporate complex" ?
I'm seeing more and more signs of a movement that's building to counteract that destructive corporate complex. Whether it's books not bars, healthcare not warfare, or real persons not corporate persons, it's all part of the movement, and it's growing.
Personal and Political
Friday July 2nd, 2010
THE PERSONAL
I realized early on in this campaign that I need to take very good care of myself to make it through to November 2nd in one piece.
Eat right, sleep right, exercise, and take my vitamins. A couple months into the campaign I realized that wasn’t enough. I needed to get back to a formal meditation. Sit, breathe, spend 20 minutes not running as a Green Party candidate for Governor!
I realized that – and there are a lot of ways to phrase this – I needed to listen to wisdom, follow my heart, be guided by the universe, by the ancestors, by God. Check in with my inner wisdom, and act on it. Realize that I am part of a movement with millions of people working to understand what’s going on locally and globally, and doing something about it, toward a better world.
Today in meditation I received the simple message that the job is to:
“Understand the situation, do what I can about it, and come up happy!”
Why not?
THE POLITICAL
In my previous blog I said I’d say more about the US Social Forum, but now my inner wisdom – or the clock – is telling me I need to get to work. More than 14,000 people attended the US Social Forum in Detroit last week with idea that “Another world is possible. Another US is necessary.” Things will eventually turn toward constructive change rather than destructive change, and when that happens, everything that everyone is doing now and has been doing all this time will be of use. I’m hearing, “Have fun, and get to work!”
U.S. Social Forum – returning home
Monday June 28th, 2010
I am on a flight back from Detroit where I spent an inspiring five days with lots of young people – and people of all ages – who beautifully reflected the diversity of our country. It was the second U.S. Social Forum, and we were focused on the world we want.
We are building a strong Populist Movement to counteract the “Corporate Movement” aiming to take control of our country.
To get to the world we want, we needed to look at what we’ve got.
- People across the country are outraged at the Supreme Court’s decision to take all limits off corporate campaign contributions and to label them “free speech” rather than “bribes.”
- We are appalled at Wall Street bailouts followed by retention bonuses to the very people who should have been fired – if not jailed – for not only picking our pockets through the bailout, but foreclosing our homes, closing down our small businesses, and buying up local banks.
- We have seen the disdainful lack of concern for the “little people” by executives of BP and their allies as their shoddy wellhead gushed oil and severely damaged both economy and ecology. BP is Beyond Pathetic.
The good news is that people are rising to the challenge. That will be my next blog. I’ve now returned to Oakland. It was great to be in Detroit at the U.S. Social Forum with 14,000 other folks, and now it’s great to be back in California.
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