Ken Brucker's Candidacy Statement for The San Diego County Council of The Green Party
Motivation
I hate politics, I find them completely distasteful. I disliked the
hypocracy that people oozed when I went to Election Central at Golden
Hall years ago. But I hate bad government worse; that's one of the
reasons why I have become so active with the Green Party.
Bona Fides
My Family History
My father's father was active with the Communist Party in the teens of the 20th Century. His biography has a passage in it where he describes an event in his 20s where he was in Greenwich Village with John Reed (Warren Beatty portrayed him in the motion picture Reds) where they ran some riffles to an IRA agent; perhaps these rifles were used in the Easter Rising in 1916.
Following in a similar vein, my aunt, her husbands and her daughters
have been and continued to be involved in center-to-left politics
throughout their lives. If my election to the county council is
affirmed, I will be the second of my cousins that will sit on a county
council of a party.
My History of Activism
I became active protesting the US intervention in Central America as an
undergraduate. During this time, I began my association with The Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).
I organized rallies on campus, marches and protests both on and off
campus, wrote op-ed articles that were published in the campus
newspaper, distributed fliers and posters, set up news conferences and
perhaps a few other activities that I've since forgot.
I continued my participation with CISPES after earning my Bachelor of Arts degree in Los Angeles and San Diego.
I have been a registered member of the Green Party for at least 15
years. I volunteered to walk a precinct with Gary Waayers in his 2004
congressional campaign.
My Objectives of Service
During my term of service on the County Council, I will pursue these objectives:
- Because we are a political party, The Greens (meaning the the
party beyond, the county or state) most important function is to
identify and promote Green candidates for elected offices. For several
reasons, The Greens do not see having the resources to pour in to
campaigns to win the same way the Republicrats do. That makes the
integrity of the electoral process that much more essential to The
Greens and by extension, the nation. It will be a major focus of The
Green Party at all levels.
- The GPSD's administrative capacities are hampered by it's fallow
resources in it's office. The only way that the party will grow is if
it has the effective means to manage data and communications:computer
systems in the office and on the internet are the means needed to
- organize party efforts
- communicate more abundantly and effectively
- conduct e-business
- Planning for the party's future by establishing which goals will
be met on a given date is crucial to being an effective organization.
Placing articulated goals in the context of temporality (with desired
end states when appropriate) is key to realizing any goal.
- Making the Green Party accessible and amenable to the general
public will be crucial to the continued development of the party at all
levels. I see two ways that we can do it:
- The participation of Latinos in progressive politics is
reflective only of the fact that there is no monolithic Latino
Community. That there are few African-Americans involved in
progressive politics reflects a paradigm that there is an
African-American Community. This recalls a critique that Angela Y. Davis
had of organized feminism in the 1970s and since: Feminism has been the
province of white college educated women; NOW never made a continued,
concerted effort to get women high school educations or less and/or of
color to join or participate with the organization. “The Left” (of
which I consider The Green Party to be a subset of) would do well to
make sure that it doesn't fall in to the same trap. I will support
efforts to create outreach to multicultural and multilingual sectors of
San Diego's people.
- The rise of “Neo-Conservatives” and other Bush Administration
supplicants has shown that The Left needs to use many different tactics
to grow and gain support. The protests against the Bush Administration
using military force to build it's vanity have not effectively been
directed articulately towards those parts of the federal government
that set policy. Further, protest is conducted in locations and manners
that do not spread the messages that contradict the Bush
Administration's rhetoric or the norms of the “mainstream media”
effectively. I will support coalition tactics that will engage others
on the topic the status of the United States Department of Defense,
it's personnel and it's actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and near by
regions of Asia
Contact Ken
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