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Which
Horse to Ride? So, as long as we're talking regime change in Washington,
D.C., I guess we need a candidate, huh? Beyond that, we've got a pretty decent field of eight men and women. Like 1992, one of these candidates will emerge from the slashing and burning of the primary season — tan, tested and ready to beat Bush. Remember that Bill Clinton, at this time 12 years ago, was just a small state governor with big hair. Now he's The Big Guy. So, for those of you just starting to engage, let me offer a few candidate selection criteria I often use. Maybe it can help in your initial siftings. Hope vs. fear: I like candidates who offer up big ideas and big dreams, with confidence. George w. Bush, by contrast, will be selling fear and Homeland Insecurity. Our nominee has to offer a different formula, and if you've ever read this space before you know I am a big fan of a moon mission/crash energy independence program (www.apolloalliance.orgis one). Of the current field and campaign so far, special mentions go out to Howard Dean for his new college tuition plan, John Edwards for his spin on the American Dream (he's the son of a textile worker) and Dick Gephardt for getting the ball rolling with a big ambition, expensive health care proposal. To litmus or not? Lots of people like to use issue litmus tests to make their choice. Since all the candidates are pro-choice, the key litmus testers out there are probably going to be gun control, tax policy and Iraq. Me, I am gonna give Gephardt, Edwards and John Kerry a pass for voting for the Iraq war resolution and still heartily support them if they get the Democratic nomination (hey, I have witnesses whom I grumbled to at the time but done is done). Similarly, I also understand why Dean has positioned himself pro-guns, as Vermont is a rural state, and think the brouhaha about his anti-Medicare comments was overblown. I'm fine with Dennis Kucinich finally coming around to a pro-choice view after years as pro-life. So my litmus test on litmus tests is simple: No litmus tests! We can reinstate them after Bush is back in Texas. Foreign policy credentials: After 9/11 — and with two unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — national security know-how matters. Give an edge to Gen. Wesley Clark and Vietnam veteran Kerry; they both wore a military uniform. Those are some nice colors to flash at Bush come the time for face-to-face debates. Dean loses points here against some of the field — he's been bragging a lot that he is the commander of the Vermont National Guard — and that doesn't quite have the right ring to it. But hey, you never know — four of the last five presidents were governors. Extreme makeover needed? Sorry to my Kucinich-loving friends, but the guy literally looks like Mo from The Three Stooges. Gephardt is no better off: a solid citizen he, but a new voter's first impression is "no eyebrows." Do these things really matter? You bet they do. Because (get over it already) surface impressions are what this country is all about! So Dennis and Dick have serious image work ahead before I think they can snare the affections of the average, marginal, disinterested, surface-minded voter. A related note to Kerry: Lose the "I know how to ride a motorcycle" schtick. Work on your smile instead. Don't forget likeability: Is your candidate someone most voters would like to hang out with at their kitchen table or have a beer with? Likeability is huge — it explains why conservative Ronald Reagan and liberal Paul Wellstone both won political office against the odds. Among the current crop: Carol Moseley Braun is smart — and sweet. Edwards has a bit of that Kennedy charm. Al Sharpton has the best one-liners. And Bob Graham? Uh, well he dropped out last month cuz no one liked him. Sorry Bob. Ready to dig in for a more in-depth look at all the candidates? Check out www.vote-smart.orgfor a comparison shopping guide. If you feel passionate about one, get busy. The primary season is around the corner. If you're like me and just want to beat Bush, check out www.JoinTheBushwhackers.com.We're always cooking up stuff and could use the support. Dan Carol is a Democratic political strategist and a founding partner of CTSG (www.ctsg.com),a progressive consulting firm based in Eugene, Ore., and Washington, D.C.
Auto-Destruction This fall marks the 30th Anniversary of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. The occasion should give us reason to ask ourselves, "Is our auto-centric transportation culture serving us well?" The average American driver sits behind the wheel 450 hours per year. Increasingly, our cities and states are unable to afford highway infrastructure. Meanwhile, schools and social services go underfunded. Land use patterns dedicated to the automobile contribute greatly to near epidemic levels of obesity, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Cars and suburban sprawl pollute our water and air, ruin farm land, and its big box companions have put many local merchants out of business. In lives and treasure, we are paying a heavy price by way of an oil-at-any cost foreign policy. Many of these problems are unnecessary. Government studies conclude U.S. consumers have spent some $7 trillion dollars over the past 30 years on OPEC oil. Add to that the costs of state and federal highways, auto damage to the environment, public health and community well-being. We have squandered trillions while degrading our quality of life and national security to indulge an auto-centric transportation system. Meanwhile, cars and oil are this county's two leading imports. Thirty years after the embargo, the U.S. is more dependent on foreign oil than ever, importing 60 percent of what we use. Oil's future is the increasingly unstable Mideast, location of two thirds of known global reserves as other sources decline. In context, ANWAR in Alaska is "insignificant" in the words of the respected British weekly, The Economist.
More basic, we should ask ourselves, do we really want to be held hostage to the auto even if there were unlimited oil or even if hydrogen, electricity and vegetable oil could replace it? No matter what fuels a vehicle, many of the economic, community and environmental costs remain the same. Being slammed by a ton of steel feels the same whether it moves by gasoline or biodiesel. Sprawling suburbia and its numbing ugliness is still a poor land use choice regardless of gasoline or hydrogen. A go-go junk-food lifestyle is still the same in a hybrid car. Parks and schools too far away to walk to, paved-over farmland, pedestrian and bike fatalities, oily parking lot runoff remain the product of any auto-centered transportation system. By far the smartest choice we can make for the environment, public health, national security and community well-being is to move away from the auto-centric transportation model. Our first priority should be to redesign and retrofit our urban areas so where we work, play, worship, go to school and shop are closer to where we live, and for longer trips, in town and out, develop convenient public transportation.
Smart urban redesign would dramatically expand residential opportunities downtown. Infill projects, on vacant land, brownfields and existing parking lots should combine increasing residential density with locating more of our commercial needs and services within walking or biking distance of where we live. Real citizen participation and a new Local Culture are vital for this redesign. With increasing density, public transportation becomes more viable. A tax on gasoline and poor land use design, increasing over time, makes great sense. Creative strategies can mitigate such taxes. The revenue would be used to help pay for citywide land use and transportation changes. The oil embargo of 1973 provided us a relatively benign opportunity to reconsider how we organize our cities and how we transport ourselves. We have not made the best use of that opportunity. A distracted public and governments at all levels controlled by status quo economic interests are proving to be challenging obstacles to overcome. We will either prevail over those obstacles or wish we had. Jan Spencer is a muralist and neighborhood activist who lives in the River Road area. He can be contacted at spencerj@efn.org
Thankfulness
Feast Before I start peeling my Thanksgiving yams, let me pause and consider what I'm thankful for. While other Americans ready their turkey basters for their other use, I step back from life's chaos and appreciate the miracle of being here. Considering all the wild motorcycle rides, hitchhiking adventures and potent psychedelics I've survived — not to mention the mercury, lead and red dye #3 — I'm thrilled to be alive at all. I wake up every day to the warm cuddly body of my true love — how lucky is that? Thank you to the cosmos or the divine or whatever brought her to me, and to the encouragement, wherewithal, and restraining orders that saved me from my many previous bad choices. I thank Alix Dobkin, Meg Christian and Margie Adam and every dyke musician who provided the soundtrack for my early coming out and coming to my senses years. Thanks to the DJs who played women's music on obscure FM stations before Melissa and kd and the Indigo Girls proved you don't have to be in the closet to make a living. I am thankful for Ellen and Martina and Rosie and every out lesbian who ever stood in front of a cheering crowd, and for every soft, strong hand I've held. I am grateful for women's land and woman-only space and women's festivals and healing circles of bare-breasted witchy wisdom. Thank you to rennetless cheese, tofu and brown rice, and the organic food movement. Thanks for the feminist natural foods collective where I learned about whole grains and sustainable agriculture, even if — or maybe especially after — I occasionally lose my convictions and pull into a Burger King. For every dyke who ever drove a truck or a tractor or a nail and showed me how. For lesbian moms raising kids with a new idea of what women can be. Thank you to Shadow on a Tightrope, Fat Lip Readers Theater, Radiance magazine, Camryn Manheim and everyone who ever stood up for the fat girls and challenged this diet-obsessed, cellulite-hating culture and showed me I can be big and beautiful. In which case, thank you for chocolate and crème brûlée and Julia Child. Thank you to the wonderful women of the women's health movement who taught me about my clitoris and showed me how to look at my own cervix and how to get unsweetened yogurt up my vagina to cure a yeast infection. To the reproductive freedom fighters for putting their lives on the line so I could get a legal abortion at a Feminist Women's Health Center in 1973, and a good job there 20 years later.
Thank you to the sex outlaws and the feminist erotica writers and publishers and to Annie Sprinkle, Susie Bright and Carol Queen and to every woman who preaches pleasure and challenges Puritanism and patriarchy. Thank you to Good Vibrations and the Hitachi Magic Wand and especially to EWEB for keeping the juice flowing to my house. I am thankful for Sappho and Gertrude & Alice and all the lesbian lovers who came before me (in both senses of the word.) To the dykes and drag queens at Stonewall who fought the riot police in the streets of 1969 New York and gave birth to the Gay Pride movement. To every lesbian, gay, bi, trans, intersexed, two-spirited, and queer person and to every ally who has marched, lobbied, canvassed, voted, or spoken out for freedom, justice and equality. Here's to Harvey Milk. And to everyone who takes his advice and braves sweaty palms and nausea — not to mention disinheritance, excommunication, and violence — to come out to parents, children, students, teachers, and the person next to them on the airplane. Thank you to every peace-loving person. To strong women and gentle men and everyone in between for questioning authority and challenging gender stereotypes and being your whole magnificent creative self. Whew. Now, on with those candied yams. Writer Sally Sheklow of Eugene is thankful to have her work published in alternative, women's, and LGBTQ publications across the U.S. and internationally. Sally's teaching writing this winter term at LCC, see www.lanecc.edu |
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