> >
> > A couple of comments for now- instead of saying that I have been involved
> > with Food Not Bombs, would you just say that I have been a community
> > activist in Columbus and worked on community food issues. Also, please
> > don’t refer to me as an actual anarchist, but you can keep my comments
> > about
> > anarchism or anarchists, or about being against oppression.
> >
> > I will try to answer your other questions. What is your deadline?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Connie
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:09 AM,
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Connie,
> >>
> >> (1 ) Could you say, via email, a little more about the work you and Bob
> >> did in ’08 regarding ballot access for Cynthia McKinney, or least refer
> >> me
> >> to an article or other info about it?
> >>
> >> (2) How does HB-194 invalidate minor parties such as the Green Party and
> >> the Libertarian Party ?
> >>
> >> (3) Please comment via email in response to the idea that the GP should
> >> start by getting their candidates into various city and county positions
> >> and then build up to state level positions and then federal positions,
> >> including the presidency, instead of investing energy into fielding
> >> candidates who have little chance of being elected president.
> >>
> >> Some say the GP keeps putting the cart before the horse, seeking the
> >> presidency while still having a relatively small number of victories in
> >> municipal and state governments. What do you think ?
> >>
> >> I wrote more questions in caps within brackets in various parts of the
> >> textual rendering of our talk which is included below. Please make
> >> whatever changes you’d like and additions where indicated. Thanks, Tom
> >>
> >> ********begin written material from our talk**********
> >>
> >> Connie Gadell-Newton is an attorney specializing in ____________. Her
> >> recent cases have involved (that which is activism-related if possible )
> >> ____________. She is the secretary of the Ohio Green Party and has been
> >> involved with Food Not Bombs as well as _______,__________, and
> >> ____________.
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton is skeptical about Obama’s recent stimulus proposals,
> >> though
> >> likely not for the reasons motivating the president’s Republican
> >> opponents.
> >>
> >> “The Cash-for-Clunkers program was really bad, because instead of trying
> >> to stimulate the economy, maybe we should conserve our resources. Why
> >> don’t we fix our old cars instead of encouraging people to buy new cars.
> >> Junking all of those old cars probably caused a lot of environmental
> >> waste.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton intentionally drives an old car instead of buying a new
> >> one.
> >> “It’s becoming a lot harder to find a used car that’s affordable. The
> >> prices of used cars is actually going up, because there are more new
> >> cars
> >> on the market because of that program.”
> >>
> >> She said increasing the amount of wealth for middle, working class, and
> >> poor people is a better way to stimulate the economy.
> >>
> >> “Instead of giving the banks a lot of money because there was a housing
> >> crisis or whatever, he (Obama) could have created a program to give
> >> people
> >> vouchers to pay their mortgages.”
> >>
> >> She said the banks still would have made money , but the difference
> >> would
> >> have been a lot more people being able to keep their homes.
> >>
> >> “A lot of those homes that are now vacant could have had people in them.
> >> When houses are vacant, the property values go down. There is nobody
> >> maintaining them, so the property value crashes even though the bank
> >> owns
> >> it.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton said there is a lot of criticism of minor parties for
> >> various reasons.
> >>
> >> “Democrats want people on the left to vote Democrat, which makes sense.
> >> There are a lot of arguments about picking the lesser of two evils. And
> >> there are probably some people in the Green Party who will spend a lot
> >> of
> >> time building the Green Party and when they get into the voting booth,
> >> they vote for Democrats because they’re falling into the
> >> lesser-of-two-evils trap.”
> >>
> >> She said having minor party status gives them standing to file
> >> lawsuits.[[[IN WHAT WAYS HAS THIS BEEN USEFUL ? I’M GUESSING IT’S
> >> USEFULNESS WAS EVIDENT DURING THE WORK YOU AND BOB DID ON THE CASE
> >> INVOLVING CYNTHIA MCKINNEY]]]
> >>
> >> ” A lot of running a candidate is to just kind of build a
> >> counter-movement
> >> and build a dialogue that doesn’t exist in politics. So, we’d be
> >> promoting
> >> progressive, Green Party ideas on the political platform, getting those
> >> ideas out. Hopefully, we’d also win some elections as well, but that’s
> >> kind of a second tactic.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton said minor parties such as the Greens help build a
> >> dialogue
> >> on ideas Republicans and Democrats are not talking about.
> >>
> >> “Republicans and Democrats are opposite sides of the same coin. They’re
> >> tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum. If you get minor parties out there, you get
> >> a
> >> broader spectrum of ideas and choices. So, I think the idea is offer
> >> people choices, not just limited to what they vote for but what they
> >> think
> >> about politically.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton said even when the Green Party doesn’t win, Republicans
> >> and
> >> Democrats may adopt some of the issues they raised during campaigns.
> >>
> >> Her ties to the modern progressive movement in Columbus are strong, but
> >> she said she probably would choose a different word to describe that
> >> movement.
> >>
> >> “I think there is this myth of progress, that you’re always moving
> >> forward
> >> and building up. We’ve had this mythology of progress in
> >> capitalism–always building and exploiting the Earth. So I actually
> >> think
> >> ‘progressive’ is kind of a misnomer. But that’s personal to me.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton said the Green Party has a lot in common with socialist
> >> parties in that environmentalism meshes well with movements for social
> >> justice.
> >>
> >> “Some people perceive there’s tension between workers’ rights and
> >> environmentalism. I really think that’s a divide-and-conquer (approach)
> >> from the corporate side. Basically, the corporatists are pretty much
> >> pitting environmentalists and workers against each other, saying ‘we
> >> need
> >> to exploit the environment for people to have jobs.'”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton said with harmony between environmental and workers’
> >> issues
> >> progressives can avoid this type of fragmentation.
> >>
> >> “There is a lot of potential for green jobs out there. If we exploit the
> >> Earth, we’re not going to have access to that wealth or to natural
> >> resources. With nature and the environment, if you exploit it to the
> >> point
> >> where it can’t give anymore, we’re not going to have anything to live
> >> off
> >> of.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton agreed there is opportunity for building a mass movement
> >> based on the apparent fact that most, if not all environmental and
> >> social
> >> justice causes require solving the problem of excessive corporate power
> >> over our lives.
> >>
> >> But she said a lot of people, if they haven’t thought about it before,
> >> might not think corporate power is a problem. Instead they might think
> >> big
> >> corporations give us many things we ought to appreciate such as food or
> >> electricity.
> >>
> >> “But if you spread out the power a little bit, you don’t have to go to
> >> the
> >> corporations to get your resources necessarily, and they don’t have it
> >> on
> >> lock-down. We can actually do things for ourselves.”
> >>
> >> She said building a mass movement depends on, among other things, seeing
> >> how a wide variety of issues may be connected.
> >>
> >> “At the same time that SB 5 passed, there has also been a lot of
> >> anti-choice legislation…If we overturn SB 5 but women can’t have
> >> abortions, we’re still going to be in trouble. It’s part of the packaged
> >> deal Republicans are trying to push through.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton agreed that independent media can be a tool for movement
> >> building.
> >>
> >> “When people are bombarded with corporate media, they’re not taking
> >> control of their lives. They’re not exercising as much or talking to
> >> their
> >> neighbors [[[Is it ok if I change ‘they’ to ‘we’ so as to reduce risk of
> >> coming across as preachy?] or reading books. If you’re only watching
> >> television and playing video games, you’re pretty easy to control.”
> >>
> >> Getting more control over our lives also involves some separatism,
> >> Gadell-Newton said, referring to aspects of this in Black power and
> >> feminism.
> >>
> >> “The way I think about separatism is that you withdraw your energy and
> >> your support from your oppressor. If mass media is oppressing us, we
> >> should withdraw our support for it. Turn off the boob tube.”
> >>
> >> She agreed there are a variety of tactics for activists to use.
> >>
> >> “Every person has within them some ways in which they’re empowered and
> >> some ways in which they’re not. There may be people that don’t have
> >> access
> >> to the same tools as I do. I’m a lawyer. There may be people that don’t
> >> have access to the justice system. There are tons of people without
> >> access
> >> to justice. There are people who are not as literate, but I still think
> >> they have the power to resist and to have influence and a positive
> >> impact.”
> >>
> >> She said there is not one right way to engage in activism.
> >>
> >> “Civil disobedience is important. The lawyers who defend people who use
> >> civil disobedience are important too. There is a place for everybody in
> >> movement building.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton describes herself as a type of anarchist in the sense of
> >> taking a comprehensive approach to fighting oppression. But she said
> >> people can misuse anarchism by appealing to popular misconceptions about
> >> it. [[[[IS THAT STATEMENT AN ACCURATE REP OF YOUR VIEW ? ]]
> >>
> >> “You see a lot of people on the (political) right saying how awful
> >> government is. They’re almost playing on an anarchist theme. If you
> >> would
> >> talk to people who actually consider themselves anarchists–instead of
> >> Tea
> >> Party people—they would probably say corporate power is also
> >> oppressive.
> >> It’s not just the government that’s oppressive.”
> >>
> >> Gadell-Newton said the goal is to avoid oppression, whether it’s
> >> governmental, corporate, or in some other form.
> >>
> >> “People on the right are taking some of those sentiments and turning it
> >> against the government in a way that actually is going to be
> >> counter-productive to people who are fighting oppression. [[SO THEN WHAT
> >> DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THERE BEING AT LEAST SOME APPROPRIATENESS FOR
> >> ACTIVISTS PARTNERING WITH GOVERNMENTS SO AS TO PROMOTE JUSTICE,
> >> FAIRNESS,
> >> AND COMPASSION ? AFTER ALL, YOU’RE A LAWYER AND ACTIVE IN A POLITICAL
> >> PARTY FIELDING CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNMENTAL POSITIONS. ]]]
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