Late Friday Afternoon at Brooklyn College: BC Alum Senator Barbara Boxer Brick in Front of Brooklyn College Library

This afternoon we were walking on the Brooklyn College campus in front of the library (which we still, after all these years, continue to think of as LaGuardia Hall, in whose lobby or second floor we were probably hanging out forty years ago today) and looked down and saw a brick honoring Senator Barbara Boxer, who graduated here in 1962.

Congratulations to Senator Boxer on this past Tuesday's victory in her hard re-election fight in California.

Just to the east, in Arizona, we didn't fare as well. Running for the House of Representatives in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District on the Green Party ticket, we finished fourth, with a miserable 1.33% of the vote.

Muchas gracias to the more than 3,400 people who voted for us. Since our absentee ballot never arrived, we couldn't even vote for ourselves as we did in our September primary, which we won with only six write-in votes (and then we had to win a case in federal court to stay on the November ballot!). As we wrote on our campaign blog, Cactus State voters won't have Dick Grayson to kick around anymore. But don't cry for us, Arizona.

Cheer for Senator Barbara Boxer and the other good liberal who survived the tsunami election of 2010.

Thursday Afternoon on the Lower East Side: Adult Themes and La Sera at AAM CMJ Assembly Showcase at Arlene's Grocery

We had some precious free time this afternoon in our hectic work schedule and our campaign for Congress (we're on the ballot in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District, where early voting began last week, and where we were today endorsed by the Arizona Is Too Damn Hot Party), and we were lucky enough to catch the bands Adult Themes and La Sera at the Advanced Alternative Media (AAM) CMJ Assembly

showcase at Arlene's Grocery, a really nice venue on Stanton Street on the Lower East Side.

The time was good for us and the price -- free -- was even better for someone like us, who normally doesn't get to CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival events. (As an attorney, we need to note that this was an unofficial one.)

Adult Themes, a Brooklyn-based band featuring Eleanor Logan, Thomas Martin and Jeff Ottenbacher,

came on soon after 2 p.m. to a small crowd downstairs, but it grew as they played wonderfully aggressive, quirky, dissonant songs like "High Above" and "1000 Eyes."

It was a nice set: noisy and busy but at times simply bouncy young pop music. We especially liked "Slow Decay."

La Sera, from L.A., performed an astonishing set which had the room, and us, pretty impressed. Katy Goodman of Vivian Girls/All Saints Day fame, has such a lush, vivid sound, and joined by Brady Hall and Jennifer Prince, approached the hypnotic on songs like "Never Come Around" and "Left This World."

It may just be senile dementia, but we thought of Dusty Springfield in a song like "Sleeptalking."

La Sera will be at Shea Stadium tonight, and we'd go back to see them again if not for work. Katy said that last they night they played on a yacht and got to see Kim Kardashian. If Kim got to see La Sera, she was luckier than usual.

We had to leave, so we didn't get to see the rest of the bands at AAM CMJ Assembly: True Womanhood, Kitten (who we've heard good stuff about), and Chapel Club. But we're grateful we were able to catch La Sera and Adult Themes at Arlene's Grocery along with the crowd of around thirty or forty younger, cooler, more knowledgeable and better dressed people.

Thursday Afternoon in Battery Park: Flags of Heroes by The Sphere from the World Trade Center

On a day when it was confirmed by a judge that I am the official candidate of the Green Party for Congress in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District,

on a day when I took advantage of a friend's spare ticket to attend some of the day's Rosh Hashona services at an Upper East Side synagogue (Mort Zuckerman and some of the Sulzbergers were there, too)

only to discover I'd been called a Nazi supporter by my own party's lawyer in a Phoenix courtroom -- I found myself in Battery Park in the afternoon, watching people take photographs with the field of Flags of Heroes

by The Sphere from the World Trade Center. It was a nice Rosh Hashona respite.

L'shanah tovah!

Arizona Republic article discusses Richard Grayson's Green Party campaign for Congress in AZ-06

Today's Arizona Republic has an article that discusses our campaign for Congress in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District. Relevant portions highlighted:

Green Party is opposing 12 primary
write-in hopefuls

by Mary Jo Pitzl


Green Party candidates who won their party's primary last week say they don't want to be confused with a slate of write-in candidates being dismissed as "sham" candidates.

The Green Party is actively opposing 12 write-in candidates from last week's ballot. They include candidates for secretary of state and treasurer as well as seven legislative candidates. These candidates switched their party registration just before the filing deadline for the primary and have been called out by the Arizona Democratic Party in a complaint seeking a voter-fraud investigation. Many of the candidates were Republicans until mid-July; one was a Democrat, another was a Libertarian and two others were not registered.


Democrats argue that the candidates are not standard-bearers for the Green Party and could attract the support of Democrat-leaning voters.

"We strongly advise all registered Arizona voters to not waste their votes on these individuals," party co-chairman Claudia Ellquist wrote on the Green Party's blog.

But the party has backed a slate of candidates, including Leonard Clark, who won a spot on the Congressional District 5 ballot as a write-in candidate.

Clark said he switched his voter registration from Democrat to Green at the beginning of the year, disenchanted with the Democratic Party, and does not want to be confused with the so-called "sham" candidates.

Richard Grayson, a write-in candidate for Congressional District 6, might still win the Green Party's seal of approval. Party officials said they vetted him but decided to withhold an endorsement decision until they see if he qualifies for the Nov. 2 election. It took only one vote to qualify, under a provision of Arizona election law, so if Grayson voted for himself, his name will be on the November ballot. Candidates are not certified for the general-election ballot until the state does its canvass Tuesday.

The Arizona Republican Party ridiculed the Democrats' request, claiming the party is trying to limit voter choice.

How Conservative Republicans Played the Inept, Bumbling Arizona Green Party and Took It Over

The Arizona Green Party today issued this press release:
Arizona Green Party (AZGP) announces endorsed candidates for 2010 elections

The following Green Party candidates have been endorsed by AZGP. We encourage registered voters in Arizona to vote for, support, volunteer, and donate to their campaigns:

1.Jerry Joslyn: U.S. Senate; http://joslynforsenate.com
2.William Crum: U.S. Congress (CD 2); write-in candidate for General Election; http://www.newmenu.org/williamcrum
3.Leonard Clark: U.S. Congress (CD 3); write-in candidate; http://www.newmenu.org/leonardclark
4.Rebecca DeWitt: U.S. Congress (CD 4); http://www.dewitt4congress.com
5.Deborah O'Dowd: State Representative (LD 6); write-in candidate; http://www.newmenu.org/deborahodowd
6.Justin Dahl: State Representative (LD 12); http://www.newmenu.org/justindahl
7.Luisa Valdez: State Representative (LD 15); http://www.luisavaldez.com
8.Angel Torres: State Representative (LD 16); http://www.newmenu.org/angel_torres
9.Gregor Knauer: State Representative (LD 17); http://www.gregorknauer.com
10.Linda Macias: State Representative (LD 21); http://www.newmenu.org/lindamacias
11.Kent Solberg: State Representative (LD 27); http://www.kent4house.org

The following Green Party candidate has been vetted, but remains non-endorsed by AZGP. If he is successful in the Primary Election, we may reconsider endorsing him for the General Election.


1.Richard Grayson: U.S. Congress (CD 6); write-in candidate; http://grayson-green.blogspot.com

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

There are several Green Party candidates that are actively opposed. We strongly advise all registered Arizona voters to not waste their votes on these individuals during the August 24th Primary Election or the November 2nd General Election (assuming they advance). The offices include: Governor, Secretary of State (write-in), Treasurer (write-in), Corporation Commission (2 write-in candidates), U.S. Congress (CD 5, write-in), State Senate (LD 10, 2 write-in candidates), State Representative (LD 17, write-in), State Senate (LD 17, write-in), State Representative (LD 20, write-in), State Representative (LD 22, write-in), and State Senate (LD 23, write-in).

If you don't understand why a political party would actively oppose so many of its own candidates, including its candidate for Governor, upon whose vote totals the party is dependent for maintaining continued ballot presence in Arizona, perhaps this memo to Green Party candidates from a week ago will explain what happened:

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010

Green Party candidates:

At yesterday's skype meeting I gave a report about the current status of the carpetbagger candidate situation. I just sent you the first of two parts of that report, and this is the second. The part below contains information from the perspective of the Arizona Green Party, and some of it is confidential, so please do not share it except talking among AzGP SC members or endorsed candidates.

But we particularly need input from candidates about where to go next, so please respond. Time is short before we have to either act, or not act, so think it through, but give your input in the next day or two.

claudia

As you know, a number of candidates who have signed-up to be write-ins in our August 24 AzGP primary are strangers to us. But there are three things about them that we DO know:

1. None of them has anything Google can uncover about them [no paper trail],
2. They were all Rs the day before, and
3. Derek Lee, who gathered signatures, through his professional company, for Larry Gist [the pirate who is on the ballot as our candidate for governor], is now the campaign manager for Gist, AND for at least some, and possibly all, of the others. It is unclear whether Derek organized all this at his own behest, in the hopes of raking in Clean Elections monies for advising their various campaigns, or by somebody who is paying him to do this mischief, or -- well, whatever else would explain it.

Regarding Gist, we had hoped to field a write-in against him, and defeat him in the primary, replacing him with someone who would use that megaphone to really run a Green campaign, and provide some coat tail for our other candidates, or at least not embarrass the party in the way that we are fearful Mr Gist will. It didn't happen. We approached a number of possibles, and they all had good personal reasons why it could not be.

But the problem with Mr Gist has been eclipsed by the staggering number of similar unknowns who are now pirating our ballot line, by filing on July 15, at the last minute, so that we would have no chance to oppose them. If Arizona law were even-handed [read that as "constitutional"], we could still remove them, by the simple expedient of contacting Geen Party registrants, and telling them NOT to write these guys in. The Democrats had the same idea, and even contacted us offering to pay for such a mailing, since these pirates will be spoiling races which their candidates might otherwise win.

However, ARS § 16-645 D would make such a letter, by itself, merely symbolic, because this statute allows, in our Party and only in our Party, for a person to become a Green the day before, submit write-in documents on the last possible day and minute, and then, unopposed, elect himself to the November 2 ballot. All by the expedient of having a single vote-- his own-- cast in the form of a write-in, on the August 24th ballot.

We have been silent about this statute, which is tucked away in a section of the statute book about 200 pages from the sections dealing with write-ins, candidates, signatures, etc. It is in the section that has bureaucratic formulas for the process that county election officials follow in canvassing the vote, and reporting the results to the SoS, who then puts them on the November ballot.

Some of you have asked why we didn't tell you all about this provision, to save you having to get signatures. The answer is three-fold. One is that we did not want the information publicized, because we did not want the very problem we now confront-- pirates.

Second is that it would have made it impossible for the candidates who are going to be Clean Elections qualified to do so in time. Third is that we don't think it is constitutional, and if we had used it, all acting at the last minute, all of our candidates could have been challenged in court, and bumped off the ballot, making all our ballot access signature gathering worthless.

So we've been looking for an attorney with federal court election experience, to see if we can make the challenge ourselves, and bump the pirates. NOTE: If we talk about this, the pirates will know that they have to get more votes than just their own, and will set about to do so-- a quick mailing to all the registered Greens in the state. Derek Lee is easily set up to pull that off. So DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT, except among ourselves.

Ten talks have been:
1. To the law firm that represented us Arizona Green Party v Bennett. They agreed about the law, but they only have 4 lawyers, and only one is an election lawyer, and they are already committed to a case elsewhere, that is going to take all his time for the next two months.
2. To a contact in the Arizona Libertarian Party. They pursued a successful lawsuit a few years back, to overturn the law about open primaries, as it regarded to them. They won. The bad news is that they had to pay the lawyers up front.
3. To contacts within the Arizona Democratic Party, including their lawyer, pointing out that they cannot achieve their stated desire -- to protect their candidates from a spoiler effect by persons who are not even serious candidates, unless we join them in a lawsuit, funded by them, to overturn this statute. Waiting for a response.

We are not adverse to spoiling races in order to run our candidates, as that is what makes democracy work, unless a run-off or instant/same ballot run-off is used to tally votes. But the Arizona Green party does not spoil races for the sport of it. So we offered, instead, to be plaintiffs in a federal suit to toss this law out.

So here are the choices:
1. If we get a lawyer, we go forward. We may or may not win [I'd call our odds 60-40]. The downside is that we might lose our own, endorsed write-ins, if they don't get enough Greens to write them in under the rule that applies to all other political parties. The upside is that we won't have to deal with these carpetbaggers again, and any pirates trying to board the Green ship in the future will know that we can stop them.

2. If we don't get a lawyer, we call a press conference as soon as these turkeys become official, and we denounce them, denounce those who sent them our way, denounce those who wrote the law, denounce derk lee, denounce the Ds for not caring enough about their own candidates to fight this. We'll feel better, and it will at least not be the press ferreting it out with their own spin on it. But the downside is that we will be in the position, in November, of asking the average voter to remember which Green Party candidates are the endorsed candidates, and which the pirates. We end up hurting our own, endorsed candidates. It's kind of like when a weed grows to closely to the crop that you can't pull the one without getting the other. So you wait til the harvest, when you can better deal with it.

3. We do as little as possible now on the negative side, and just work doubly hard for our endorsed candidates. And we challenge the law later, when we have the time.

Candidates, what are your comments?

claudia ellquist
AzGP

=======
ARS § 16-645 D "Except as provided in subsection C of this section
[about precinct committeemen --ce], a certificate of nomination shall not
be issued to a write in candidate of a party which has not qualified for
continued representation on the official ballot pursuant to ARS 16-804
[this would be us --ce] unless he receives a plurality of the votes of
the party for the office for which he is a candidate."

Thursday Morning in Downtown Brooklyn: "We Are All Arizona" March over Brooklyn Bridge gathers at Cadman Plaza

Along with an enormous crowd of people from all walks of life, we gathered early this morning at Cadman Plaza in downtown Brooklyn for the "We Are All Arizona" march over the Brooklyn Bridge and rally at Foley Square.

Here are some of the pics we took in Brooklyn

before our cell phone memory gave out just before we were about to get on the bridge.


Yesterday, in what was no surprise to anyone familiar with constitutional law, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction to halt today's implementation of the xenophobic, racist, and hateful Arizona immigration law,

SB 1070, from going into effect. (We turned on the news at 3 p.m. expecting to hear about the injunction, and we were not disappointed.)

But today is a nationwide protest against Arizona,

which is appealing the ruling to the Ninth Circuit

and no doubt the final decision will come from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Demonstrations still went on all over the Cactus State and the entire nation in a National Day of Action Against SB 1070,

including our protest starting in downtown Brooklyn this morning.

Luckily the rain cleared up about an hour before.

We waited for about half an hour for everyone to arrive before the march began.

It was great to see so many people of all ages turn out, both individuals with homemade signs and members of religious, political, and social action organizations.





We'll let the news media give the coverage of today's event,

but it really made us feel good to see so many folks come out and support Arizona's beleaguered immigrant community and stand up for justice and the American way of doing things.

Our event today in New York was organized by the New Sanctuary Movement, Families for Freedom, Immigrant Defense Project,

Churches United to Save & Heal, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights,

DRUM-Desis Rising Up & Moving, Black Institute, VAMOS Unidos,

American Friends Service Committee, and Wind of the Spirit (New Jersey).

It was sponsored by, among others, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition,

Damayan, Sistas and Brothas United, NY Immigration Coalition, World Can’t Wait, Sikh Coalition,

Urban Youth Collaborative, Immigrant Communities in Action, Center for Immigrant Families,

United for Peace and Justice, South Asian Americans Leading Together,

Boycott Arizona Coalition, Muslim Consultative Network, New Immigrant Community Empowerment,

CAAAV, Center for Constitutional Rights, Peekskill Area Pastors Association, La Union,

National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, Coney Island Avenue Project, Youth on the Move,

South Asian Bar Association of NY, Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund, Adhikaar, NYS Youth Leadership Council

- and that list isn't comprehensive, as you can tell by glancing at some of the banners here.

We are a part-time Arizona resident and we vote and have a house and car in Apache Junction.

Currently we're running for the as the only candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the August 24 Green Party primary in Arizona's Sixth Congressional Distict

in the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area. We support comprehensive reform and amnesty and obviously we oppose the odious SB 1070 and are always really happy to be in this city, but today we were especially glad and proud, to be in Brooklyn, a place we've loved since we were a boy.