A Congressional Campaign for Peace in 2008

Statement

A Congressional Campaign for Peace in 2008

Running for Congress is my way of honoring the memory of such martyrs of the Civil Rights movement as Martin Luther King, Medgar Evars, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and countless others who have given so much to win our right to vote. People should not only have the right to vote, but also the right to vote for peace and socialism.

I see my campaign as educational, designed to raise issues of peace, justice, and sustainability within the electoral process, issues which are unlikely to be raised otherwise. I am running on the Platform of the Peace and Freedom Party, but I also support the Ten Key Values of the Green Movement. I see myself as socialist, feminist, environmentalist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist. I participated in the WTO protests in Seattle and want to bring the spirit of Seattle and the global peace and justice movement into the 2008 elections.

For a variety of reasons, I decided to run in the 10th Congressional District (El Cerrito, Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, Livermore, Antioch, Fairfield & part of Concord) currently held by Ellen Tauscher, a conservative Democrat. Congressional candidates are required to live in the state they plan to represent, but not necessarily the district. I live in Oakland, but do not want to run in the 9th CD against Barbara Lee, who I consider one of the few decent members of Congress. I support the independent candidacy of Cindy Sheehan against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and therefore do not want to run in the 8th CD in San Francisco. I also support the Peace & Freedom candidacy of my friend, William Callison, in the 7th District (Richmond, Martinez, Concord) currently occupied by George Miller. Many people consider Miller to be progressive and anti-war, but he continues to fund the war and has never challenged U.S. imperialism nor the corporate dominated two-party system, and the same is true of Ellen Tauscher.

I am not asking for any financial support, but I do urge people to contribute to the Peace & Freedom Party, which you can do though our web site, listed below.

BACKGROUND AND QUALIFICATIONS: I was born and raised in Concord, California and graduated from Mt. Diablo High and UC, Berkeley. I served in the US Marine Corps from 1957-1960. I retired from Cal State Long Beach in December 2006 after a 35 year career teaching Anthropology and Marxism. I helped found the Peace Studies Program at CSULB, was active in the Peter Carr Peace Center and our faculty union, and worked closely with the Native American community in their struggle to save Puvungna, the sacred creation center on the Cal State Long Beach campus. I was a Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Congress in Long Beach in 1982. I am currently affiliated with the Institute for the Critical Study of Society at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland.

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