"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.
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