Celebrities [to me] and Prop 23 on TV . . .

"Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of their black-oil hearts, are really spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs? It's not about jobs at all. It's about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits." -Arnold Schwarzenegger in a radio interview about Prop 23 yesterday.

Coming from a republican, the Governator's words mean a lot. AB32, California's Global Warming Solutions Act, was his baby after all. I think his progressive ideas about the future of energy production stem from his European upbringing, and it will be sad to see him go this November.

Surprisingly, the Republican that could take his place is now also supporting NO on 23. "Megabucks" Whitman (as the tabloids call her, and rightly so) announced her position on Prop 23 last Thursday after Democratic candidate Jerry Brown criticized her for not taking a stand. It's a mixed blessing.

We're hoping that her announcement will draw more NO votes from California republicans, but it's quite apparent that she did it as a political ploy. Coming out "yes" on 23 would have labeled her totally anti-environment, which is a death sentence in California politics. If Prop 23 fails and she becomes governor however, she has said that she will still suspend AB32 for at least a year because she thinks AB32 "is not perfect." I would say that no comprehensive law addressing climate change will ever be perfect, and that this is simply another political ploy to please her conservative supporters. She wants to have her cake and eat it too, and after spending over $119 million dollars of her own money on her campaign it will be interesting to see if she gets to in the end. She and Jerry are roughly split in the polls right now.

There are mixed polling results on Prop 23 right now, all of which indicate that we still have a lot of work to do. One poll shows the yes side winning by a small margin, one shows roughly a 50/50 split, and the most promising shows us winning with 45%, yes with 34%, and 21% of folks undecided. The media here has been very kind to us though, with the LA Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle all endorsing the NO on Prop 23 side this past week.

Here's a great (and long!) radio report too from our last rally, where we had an amazing 70 people turn out (go to 10:18): http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/64235 It features my co-organizer Claire this time, and a bunch of our great volunteers.

The women singing at the beginning are volunteers that I recruited! One of them is Nancy Schimmel, who's the daughter of Malvina Reynolds. Malvina Reynolds was a famous folk singer who wrote the song "Little Boxes" in 1962, which is a satire of the suburban American life. Mum and Dad (and others of that generation) may remember it from your childhood! For those of my generation, it's the theme song from the Showcase TV show Weeds. So yes, Nancy Schimmel comes from a great family of folk singers, and she's written a great (and very cute) song for our campaign with the help of her friend Bonnie Lockhart. Here's a good-quality video of the song but unfortunately it's not the whole thing, so the second (which I may have posted before) is a grainy video from a smaller rally with more lyrics:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=632403221714&ref=mf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7CrRNuIx_8

The Ad Battle Begins

In my opinion this is really coming down to a vote-off between the informed and the uninformed. Anyone who remotely believes that climate change exists and knows that Prop 23's "suspension" effectively kills AB32 will vote No. The problem is the millions of Californians don't know that unemployment will never fall to 5.5% for a full year in the near or distant future, and thus see Prop 23 as perhaps a positive precautionary measure. The oil companies are preying upon this ignorance, as seen in their newest TV ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUXoqnb4SlU

The NO on 23 campaign has countered with their own ads:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpbYmOVFdSo&feature=player_embedded

 I must admit that I cringed a little bit when I saw them. They're ok, but they really need to have a person in them like the Yes ads do. I feel like people would relate more to a "typical Californian" than a disembodied voice; hopefully our No side has some better ads in their back pocket that they're waiting to release.

Celebrities (to the young science and environment folks)

I went to a party for the Union of Concerned Scientist's NO on 23 campaign at the Chabot Space Center last Thursday. The space center is really cool; it's a science center and observatory perched amongst the redwoods on a hill overlooking the entire bay. The keynote speaker was a scientist who headed the cleanup of the Exon Valdez disaster, and is now a climate scientist who does educational lectures across the country. His names escapes me regrettably, but he was very good. I especially liked his simplistic metaphor of climate change as a kettle on a stove; if you don't turn off the stove, the water will keep getting hotter. The grim thing about it is that we're inside the kettle, and therefore need to work hard to turn the stove off and can't walk away from the problem.

It's too bad climate change isn't as simple as us being inside a giant kettle. I feel like if that were the case, we would have long silenced those who thought turning off the stove was a silly idea :p

Anyway, the party was all very nice but I was 300 miles away from another UCS party happening in LA that my teammate Alex attended, where he got to meet none other than Bill Nye the Science Guy! I was pretty jealous. . . but I still feel very lucky to now be one degree of separation away from the man who taught me basic science as a child via TV Ontario. Bill Nye's actually opening "Bill Nye's Climate Lab" - an interactive exhibit about climate change for kids - at the Chabot Space Center where I was at the party. I would love to go to the gala opening to actually meet him, but tickets are $500 a pop so that's definitely out of the question!

In other celebrity news Claire and I have been tasked with hosting Van Jones this Sunday night at a venue here in Berkeley. Van Jones is the founder of Green for All, an environmental justice organization that advocates for green jobs for people of colour and low socioeconomic status. He's also the author of The Green Collar Economy, and advises Obama on green jobs. He's going to speak to 100 or so people about Prop 23 and then get them all phonebanking voters! It's going to be a great event - I'm excited to meet him and even more excited to see that many people getting involved at once.

Life in the Bay


Well that about sums up my campaign updates for now! I can't believe there's only 5 weeks left until the election . . . we're working even harder than before to inform as many voters as possible. We're now solely focusing on phonebanking voters and having them sign pledges to vote No.

I have had a bit of time to enjoy living in this absolutely groovy place though! A week ago I went to a great bar in San Francisco called the "Elbo Room," where they have dance parties to 50s and 60s motown! It took a while to get used to dancing to it, but once we did we danced our feet off for three hours - it was fantastic! It's music you can actually dance to.

Last Saturday night I saw my favorite band, Vampire Weekend, here at the amphitheater on UC Berkeley's campus. They were amazing! I know they play hundreds of shows a year, but they looked like they were having a great time and kept the special effects to a minimum while letting their awesome live music do the talking. I got to be right down in front too - it was pretty surreal seeing the people who've made music that has made me incredibly happy over the last three years make it in person.

Even more surreal was the fact that when I announced where I was going to my host parents before the concert, they said, "Wait, Vampire Weekend? Don't we know one of the kids in that band?"

Turns out when Larry lived in New York, he was best friends with Ezra Koenig's (the lead singer's) mother! He gave Ezra a present for his 3rd birthday. I'm now one degree of separation away from my favorite band; people in Berkeley really are some of the grooviest around.

I've also had a chance to enjoy some of downtown San Francisco. I joined Aunt Florine there Saturday afternoon while she was there with her girlfriends. It was so nice to see her! It made me miss the family very much. I'm very excited for Mum & Dad to come down in November, and wish I could share my experiences here with all my friends and family in person.

View of San Francisco and the Bay from the top of Lombard Street, with the famous Coit Tower at right.

Sign-off

The Bay Area is a lot of fun, and a great place to be for someone at my stage in life, but I must admit that it's not all wonderful. I could never live here long-term. There are 9 million people packed in around the Bay and thus there are people and cars everywhere, and it's so dry and sunny all the time that the seasons blurr together and time passes at lightning speed. As I've found, it attracts some of the most interesting and ambitious people, but like Vancouver it also attracts many people who have slipped through the cracks of society. When many of volunteers find out that I'm Canadian, they say "Oh you come from such a beautiful country!"

I don't think I've ever taken my home for granted, but I appreciate it all the more now and agree with my volunteers; it truly is a beautiful and special place. Before I come back I have this campaign to win, then recruitment for Green Corps at Stanford, and then I'm off to a new placement for the month before Christmas! I'll be finding out where this is in the next few weeks, and I'm up for anything after having the opportunity to live here in Berkeley.

Thanks again to everyone who's been reading this over the past two months, it means a lot. I hope I've been able to shed some light on the rather insane world of American politics and culture, or that you've at least found these posts entertaining. I love hearing about life at home and miss you all very much, so please write a letter or send me an email whenever the mood strikes :) I hope all your work, school, and festivities have been rewarding and fun thus far.

Turning up the heat. . .

The beautiful Zoology building at UC Berkeley - after this week, it is my firm belief that the world would be much better off if everyone had a science degree.

Sorry it's been a little while everyone; I fear my posts will become more widely spaced now that things are really picking up. Although the quantity of posts will be lower, my hope is that the quality of each will be better as things get more exciting with each passing week. I should post a disclaimer though: this particular entry is a garbled mix of political and cultural observations. I've had lots of great thoughts today, but I've struggled to make them cohesive at this late hour.

The Front Page

This campaign is becoming a real nail-biter. . . which, for those who know me well, spells disaster for the appearance of my hands. Proposition 23 made the front page of the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17pollute.html

I think it's a great article, and it's already received over 200 comments. One of the most interesting came from a man here in San Francisco:

California faces a dilemma: Should it behave like an advanced first world nation, which it is, or should it join the third worldish, retrograde culture of the rest of the US, an emerging third world nation? While Stanford and Berkeley jointly are host to over 50 Nobel Prize winners (an astonishing contradiction in a nation where most people can’t find England on the map), the rest of the US ponders whether global warming exists or evolution has any validity (while at the same time benefiting from the advances in medicine that would not have been possible without a fundamental understanding of evolution). Unless northern California, Oregon and Washington state secede and become independent, they will be dragged down into misery by the rest of the US, whose culture, outside a few islands of enlightenment on the east coast, differs little from that of the most retrograde Islamic countries of the Middle East.


- Dominga Travella, San Francisco

This is perhaps a little melodramatic, but he makes several points that aren't too far off the mark.

Tea Parties and Retrograde Motion

The left and right of the U.S. political spectrum become more distant from one another by the day. The country still leads the world in innovation because of the masses of money available for research and development, however this money is still sourced from a pocket of American society where capitalism and fundamental religious beliefs are inextricably linked. In this poor economic climate, these right-wing, old money communities have the power to rally strongly and thus the Tea Party Movement is stronger than ever before.

Case and point: Christine O'Donnell just won the Republican primary election for the open Delaware senate seat. She wasn't expected to, but Tea Partiers rallied hard and won. Ms. O'Donnell didn't complete her undergraduate degree in the early 1990s because she defaulted on her tuition payments, which her University sued her for and won. Following that, she became the president of a religious organization that advocated against masturbation, biblically equating it with adultery. She has argued that the sexual revolution of the 1960s led to the AIDS epidemic, and that a literal interpretation of The Bible's Book of Genesis should be taught in schools.

I would hope that we have no one in the House of Commons with this background, however I'm not so up-to-date on my Canadian politics! The bottom line is that fundamentalism is gaining ground in Republican circles down here, and it is a very, very scary thing.

I had an adorable older lady come into the office the other day to pick up a yard sign, and she said, "It's a pity we have to work so hard to keep things from getting worse, when there's so many other things that we need to fix already." Coming from a woman who has lived through World War II, the civil rights movement, and the digital revolution, this comment really resonated with me. Change can happen, but it is slow, and often times things get much worse before they get better.

Talking to Americans


In that vein, being down here has gotten me really excited to go back to Canada and create change there where things aren't nearly so messy. From Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans, I had the inkling that our country registers pretty low on the horizon of the average Yank, but I've been slightly horrified to discover the extent to which this is true. My supervisor - an educated, aware 27-year-old - had no idea what Canada's political situation was, let alone who our prime minister is. The more unsettling thing is that this ignorance not only applies to us, their northern neighbor and biggest trading partner, but to every other country in the world. The most I've discussed global issues in the past two months has been with my visiting Canadian friends.

We had twenty people come in to the office this evening for an information session about the campaign and to phonebank with us. They were all shocked to learn that AB32, the global warming law threatened by Prop 23, is the most aggressive law of its kind in the world.

As part of the information session, Claire and I shared our "personal stories" as they're called by organizers; these are just little anecdotes about why we're doing this work. You'll see politicians use these all the time to connect with their audience and show that they're real people, and by golly they work! Mine starts like this: "I come from a country that won't take any serious steps towards addressing climate change until the U.S. does, and this is the reality in many other countries around the world."

At this, the Californians sitting around me looked at me with wide eyes. A few nodded in agreement, but most said, "Really? Well why are you taking a lead from us, things are so screwed up down here!" or "Oh that's so depressing!" The reality is that most Californians don't understand the power that their state has both within their country and the world. Most of them are just regular people living regular lives, with too little time or energy to be active in political and environmental realms. This has certainly been a sobering realization, and has shrunken my world view immensely. Although it will be challenging, perhaps through this campaign some Californian's will become more aware of their role as global leaders.

Talking Business

In a pleasant surprise, the oil industry has come out somewhat divided on Proposition 23. Although many companies are supporting it with millions of dollars, Shell is actually opposing the Prop. As I recall from a giant advertisement in the Queen's University athletics center depicting a futuristic city full of alternative energy sources, Shell is working to rebrand themselves as environmentally conscious and progressive much as BP was endeavoring to do with their Beyond Petroleum ad campaign. Chevron has also decided to remain neutral on the issue, likely because they've already gotten lots of bad press in the last few years in California over pollution law violations.

This divide is exciting; it's exposing those corporations who are truly invested in maintaining the status quo to secure profits. It's all laid bare in this "leaked email" from the National Petroleum Refiners Association to its members:

http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=4512&ptid=9

As a science student I am a perennial skeptic, and don't know if this is real or not. Several lines are utterly ridiculous and pretty funny, such as:

"We’ve raised about $6 million so far, but unfortunately in California’s expensive media market this is not enough to win the fight against environmental zealots led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who seems hell-bent on becoming the real-life Terminator of our industry."


If this is real, I find it mind-boggling that these are the billionaires controlling U.S. politics. But, going back to Ms. O'Donnell's win, I guess these people are alive and kicking out there. I have yet to figure out how to interact with them when I meet them, as I'm sure I will at some point this year.


That will be a life-changing experience in itself.


Sign-Off


If my observations or rambling commentary bored anyone this entry I apologize! Stay tuned for the next post, it's guaranteed to be more exciting. I'm attending a big party at the Chabot Space Center next Thursday for the Union of Concerned Scientist's campaign against Prop 23, and we're holding a massive rally at the Berkeley Valero station next weekend where two local government candidates will be our featured speakers. We're expecting TV news stations to cover it which is exciting. 


I better work on my TV smile. . . the last time I was on camera was for a high school quiz show.


Happy back to school and back to work; the weather's wonderful here but I do miss those chilly autumn breezes - they always signaled months of great potential. 

Sound bites and late nights . . .

"Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stone, and good in everything." 

                                                                                -William Shakespeare 

That quote isn't particularly pertinent to the contents of this entry, but I had to put it down because I believe that it's my favorite quote to date. I found it at the beginning of "Swampwalker's Journal: A Wetlands Year," by David M. Carroll, which I picked up at a book giveaway. Nerdy, I know, but the biologist in me is still very much alive. It won the John Burrough's Medal and seems like it will be a wonderfully serene read. It's a pity I'll have to shelve it until November.

Racing Time

Although tall, the waterfall I likened this campaign to in the last entry flows extremely quickly. My work is like trying to construct some sort of device on the way down in order to make sure that you aren't dashed across the rocks, ending your journey. You're endeavoring to land safely and float on down the river to new victories. That's a bit dramatic - but like the bottom of the waterfall there is no question that November 2nd will come, and so every moment until then is extremely precious.

My precious time this week was spent calling people. In 20 hours of my week I contacted over 100 people, and had almost 90 pledge to vote no on Prop 23. Of those people, two came out to phonebank with me, and about fifteen made it to our rally on Saturday. With Claire my partner in crime doing the same, we had over 30 people at our kickoff rally, which was a great success. After learning about how this whole grassroots organizing thing is supposed to work, it was wonderful to see it work in reality. Our job now is to set some of these volunteers up as leaders, so that they can activate their own groups of people and thereby amplify the message exponentially.

The Berkeley campaign's kickoff rally crew!

We have great support from our employers, which has been awesome. We were invited to have beers on CREDO's tab along the water on Friday, and got to meet the whole team as well as the president, Michael. He's the kindest (and I think only) CEO I've ever met; he went to Spencer and John's (fellow organizers) rally on Saturday in Palo Alto and is going to make his way round to each of ours over the coming weeks.

CREDO also set us up with ten Blackberry phones per office for our volunteers to phonebank with. While we can't help feel spiffy with all of them, teaching my first retired volunteer how to use one was a bit of a challenge! We now have some great signs, buttons and bumper stickers for the campaign as well, which cover the walls of our rudimentary office. It's small and a bit dilapidated, but I found a print of a Group of Seven painting at Goodwill which has improved things a bit. One of the Environment California staff Lindsey from our office keeps her two little turtles in there too; their terrarium is a bit too small for them, but they are terribly cute and seem happy as far as I can tell.

Oh right, and check out how legit our website is! You can see the shining faces of my fellow organizers: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/stop_texas_oil/contact.html

Air Time

One of the big lessons for me this week was about the media. I managed to secure some airtime on a local radio station and a reporter came down to our rally on Saturday to take quotes from people. She asked me lots of questions, and I gabbed on and on. Being on the radio for the first time is exciting, until you listen to the clip yourself.

I found that hearing yourself on the radio is a bit like getting a new haircut. When you first see (or hear) yourself, you think "Uggh. . is that really me?" Bet then, after looking in the mirror (or listening to the recording) a few times you realize that it's perhaps not as bad as you thought. I learned so much from those little bits of airtime though, such as: never say "like" - you sound rediculous, talk slower than you think is normal because you'll always quicken your pace, don't yell into the mic - it can pick up a conversational tone perfectly well, and finally, make sure to pronounce your own name clearly to the host prior to the show. Listen to the clips if you want - one from Andra Borg and one from Angela Boag - they're entertaining one way or the other :p Next to the link are the minutes that my story's on.

Saturday Morning Talkies

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/63750

Minutes 8:20 - 11:40

Evening News

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/63759

Minutes 18:55 - 22:10

These are all things I'll work on for next time. The most important thing I learned however is that you must make sure that you stick to your message when you talk to the media. My science degree taught me to answer questions as honestly and thoroughly as possible, but here in the world of biased and sensationalized media, what you don't say is just as important as what you do say.

I was taken aside by my bosses after we listened to it and they congratulated me on getting media coverage, but said that they should have given us better media training. They don't want us discussing the nuances of the jobs arguments - as I did in both these pieces - because it gives the opposition's talking points more coverage. They stressed that we are solely to focus on the issues of global warming, corporate influence in politics, and on the more general fact that California is currently well positioned as a leader in the green economy. 

This sat uneasily with me at first, as I strongly believe that to be constructive the whole truth of an issue must be discussed in a balanced way. I maintain this belief, but my superiors have been organizing for years now and certainly know the lay of the land better than I do. We're in the midst of coming up with media talking points for ourselves and our volunteers to ensure that the best things get said in the airtime that we have.


Taking Time


I should say that although I'm working more than I ever have in my life, I still have the time to make my lunches, do my laundry, go on a run every so often, and write these entries. The Bay Area has no shortage of entertainment on Saturday nights either. Last weekend I went to "Booty," an apparently famous pirate-themed club in the Mission district. It specializes in mash-ups (songs that go well together smushed into one, for those who don't know i.e. parents), and on this, the evening of Michael Jackson's Birthday, a live band was combining MJ's hits with every groovy song in the world. It was great.

Hanging out in San Fran with (L-->R) my supervisor Lucy, classmate John, office partner Claire, and classmate Spencer (working with John in Palo Alto).

The event I'm most excited for is coming up September 25th. My friend Christa told me that my favorite band had just been in Vancouver, while I thought they were touring in Europe all summer and fall. I jumped on their website and lo and behold, Vampire Weekend is coming to Berkeley's Greek Theatre. I've never been so happy to spend $50 on a ticket for something in all my life.

Sign-off


For the very first time in 18 years I'm not going back to school this week. I thought it would feel weird, but it doesn't; I was definitely ready to graduate. To be fair, my internship is a bit school-ish (we get taught theory and skills, marked, and debriefed), but I've already learned a great deal about the "working world." Walking Berkeley's incredible campus makes me miss the academic life a bit, but also makes me really excited. I know I'm not done with ivory towers, and when I go back the world outside of them will be a whole lot less mysterious to me.