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A Green Vision for Oakland City Politics
In Oakland we need to face some facts.
We have many crises in our city.
There is as three prong crisis facing our youth of education, crime and employment.
We need schools up, crime down and jobs in.
There is a crisis that is our city budget. We need to hold a budget convention and issue a new, comprehensive budget. On the one hand we need to deal with the pension’s entitlement problems and have a stable, reliable budget for basic operations from parks to police stations and on the other hand we need to incorporate all the measures, such as Measure Y (or BB) into the body of our budget and law. We need a budget that has a clear plan for up and down times in the economy.
There is a crisis in our democracy. Council districts should look like neighborhoods, (not gerrymandered districts that cut them up) All Oaklanders need to be represented in our government. We need the money out of our local election process and; we need to formalize the relationship with our grass roots neighborhood groups devolving part of the city authority and budget to the local communities.
We propose to make these and other changes only with the citizens of Oakland stepping up and becoming producers, not consumers, of the politics in our own communities. That means we have to get involved with voting, even when we all know the system is rigged in favor of paid political advertising and the status quo.
The public is the solution. The running of money free grass roots campaigns, the energy behind a reform of the City Charter and budget, the will to deal with our most intractable social problems all can find their solution in an active public. We need to say NO to money politics by not voting for it, helping spread the word without the corporate media and paid advertizing and by VOTING FOR REAL ALTERNATIVES.
Now in the Oakland Green Party, a group of known local progressives with a long track record dedicated to real change, are putting together a slate of candidates to be your voice for your and the city’s real needs such as: Schools with vocational training. Schools with arts and sports with healthy food for our. Safe public services. Community Policing. Restorative Justice. Local employment. Stable economic environment. Environmental retrofitting. And many, many other basic practical things that our city should be doing, but is currently only doing for show, if at all.
We signatories are stepping forward to be four of those candidates, committed to a reform of our city from top to bottom, from police practices to budget policies with our faith in a democracy that includes all of us.
Please help by registering to vote yourselves and getting those who have rightly been put off by the voting, voter marketing, process to register as well. There are thousands of registered Greens in Alameda County glad to have you join us. But no matter how you register, do so. Otherwise someone else is voting for you.
We encourage other progressives to put up candidates and join us.
Theresa Anderson At-Large, planning to run for City Council
Don Macleay, Dist 1, planning to run for City Council,
Randy Menjivar Dist 7, planning to run for City Council,
Vicente Cruz II Dist 3, planning to run for school board
Oakland Green Party
contact@oaklandgreens.org (510) 866-7488 P.O. Box 20299, Oakland, CA 94620
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