Camejo's Vision

I just recieved a forward of an essay by Peter Camejo outlining in further detail his campaign plans for 2006. I am looking for a link to it online (votecamejo.org is down at the moment), but in the meantime, here are some key exerpts:

OUR SLATE

Some of this reach out work is obviously facilitated by the composition of our slate. We want it to be gender balanced. We are also considering running, Forrest Hill, who will be the first openly Gay person to run for a state position. Forrest has been an organizer for the Green Party for years. He has worked as an environmental consultant and has a PHD from MIT. He is extremely articulate and knowledgeable on key issues around IRV, Gay rights, tax issue, economics, the environment and social issues.

Our thought is to have our ticket headed once again by myself (Spanish speaking Latino) and Donna Warren (African American woman). This slate offers us a man and women for Governor and LT Governor. We want to have a California Teachers Association (CTA) union activist as our candidate for Superintendent of Schools. We want some younger people on our slate. Larry Cafiero a Green leader and activist from Santa Cruz has offered to be a candidate but has also very modestly offered to step aside if it turns out to be the best for the party. The truth is Larry would make a great candidate. Many Greens need to step forward to run for office both in campaigns whose goal is to try and win and others to build the Party.

There is nothing wrong with there being two candidates until our primary for a position. It gives us two or more voices during the primaries to talk to people about our ten key values. Don’t forget we had four Greens running for the same office during the recall election. I was proud of all of them. Kent Mesplay from San Diego is preparing to run for Senate. Kent ran as a candidate for president during our primaries. There may be others I do not know about that have already indicated an interest in running. The Green Party membership will decide at our primary in June of 2006 exactly who our candidates will be. We hope you will support the candidates committed to the vision outlined in this report.

We are all thinking through who we should run for the United States Senate. We see this as one of our key positions. We have had discussions with Muslim leaders seeing if we could find a Green in that community to run against Feinstein. We have not yet been successful. As I mentioned above Kent Mesplay has decided to enter the race others may also.

CAMPAIGN ORGANIZING EVENTS

To understand the concept we are proposing and how it differs from our previous state wide electoral efforts let me give some examples of what our 2006 state campaign meetings will be like. In particular, when we hold a campaign meetings, representatives from select local organizations such as anti-war activists (like from Cindy Sheehan’s organization), representatives from MAPA, Hermandad Mexicana, Centro Azteca, CTA, ILWU, Muslim community leaders, environmentalists, etc, will be asked to speak. In each case they will speak about their specific community or issues. We do not want too long a list of speakers but in each case we should have a few such speakers.

We will also encourage groups to table at our meetings and we will provide people attending the meeting information on how to become involved in those issue focused organizations.

When our candidates speak to large audiences especially on campuses it would be so useful to immediately point them to tables where they can get information on getting involved on specific issues. It immediately gives a new kind of vision to what the Green Party is, an electoral _expression and organizing center for progressive movements, a party that tells the truth about our political system and why these issues exist to begin with.

In this way our campaign meetings become organizing events. They begin to present the Green Party as an electoral _expression of the movements for peace, social justice, ecological sustainability, civil liberties, gay and women’s rights, labor rights and so on.

Camejo is set to debate campaign strategy with former Santa Monica Mayor Michael Feinstein at the state gathering next weekend in Oakland. I plan to be there if I can find a ride.