Historic Green Election: Contested Primary in Rahm's Old Seat

On March 3rd, Chicago will once again be at the forefront of history: conducting a contested Green primary for an office other than the presidency. Rahmbo’s old seat is up for grabs, and 5 of the 25 filed candidates are running Green.
After having initially filed as a Democrat, I changed over to the party with which I am more ideologically resonant after realizing that the Democratic primary is a moot point: the winner there has already been decided. Don’t believe me? Listen to what the “lakefront liberal” Justin Oberman said upon dropping out last Friday:
"When we started, the field was wide open and the prospects for a successful campaign were promising. But in the past week, that landscape has changed substantially. It is now clear that most regular Democratic ward organizations across the district will be united behind one of my opponents; when viewed in the context of the short time until Election Day and the exceptionally low turnout expected in this special election, we have determined there isn't enough time to earn the votes we need to win."


Oberman knew that his paltry $160,000 wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he decided to stop wasting people’s money and send their donations back.
Gracious of him.
That narrows the Democratic field to 14, however the politically connected candidates will continue to drop like flies because the backroom deal is done. It’s only a matter of time until the rest of us find out if it’s Alderman Patrick O’Connor or State Rep. John Fritchey.
That will leave a handful of vanity lawyers who are presumably using the election to promote their respective law firms, a doctor who is doing the same for his medical office (Victor Forys), and Tom Geoghegan, a genuine progressive on social issues who is probably only half using the election to promote his books and legal practice.
When I attempted to contact Geoghegan about signing onto my pledges to oppose military aid to Israel and to refuse corporate donations in this election, he failed to respond. When I asked for elaboration on his Iraq stance (his website includes a mere two lines quoted from 2003), there was also no response.
He did, however, update his website to include a more elaborate position on Israel/Palestine, presumably in response to a slew of emails. He says:
“In the long run there will be no peace between Israel and Palestinians without some kind of two-state solution. The urgent question is how to get Hamas (or the leading part of Hamas) to renounce violence just as part of the IRA in Northern Ireland finally did – that is, how to pull at least the “political” people in Hamas into the peace process, and peel them off from those who will never give up their guns. I would press the Administration to rely on those who can tell us how to bring about this result.”

This progressive superstar manages to offend the left on two issues here. Firstly,
he trivializes the peace process in Northern Ireland and assumes that the current arrangement is acceptable to the IRA, while treating them as the indisputable bad boys on the block. Likewise, Hamas is perceived as the source of all problems in the Middle East, and predictably no mention is made of the need to combat Zionism as an ideology. Here’s my memo from the left to Tom Geoghegan: “If you’re on the left, you usually support those fighting for self-determination against an occupying power and not the other way around.”
At a candidate forum held by the Progressive Democrats of America, the group recently made infamous by throwing an endorsement at Jesse Jackson Jr in the Illinois senate seat selection fiasco, he condescendingly approached me after our respective speeches (mine available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIl39UVGHY&feature=channel_page), and said “I’m against the war, too, you know.” He was probably feeling slightly shamed to be shown up in oratory skill by a campaign novice of half his age, though this hardly excuses such a childish remark.
My conclusion is that he continues with the American tradition of progressivism: fairly reasonable on labor, environmental and health issues, while wholly apologetic to the tradition of American Exceptionalism. He goes so far as to applaud Obama’s imperialist presidency on his website, while stating that he finds it important for the United States to remain a superpower: “In the long run, if we’re going to survive as a superpower, as I hope we do, we’ll need a smidgeon of [international] law to check and balance us.” Just a smidgeon, eh?
This is as far left as the Democrats go: another do-good lawyer who found his niche fighting the man, though is unwilling to critique the over-arching superstructure of greed and Empire. He has, of course, attracted the support of the usual suspects within the progressive industrial complex: Thomas Frank and Katha Pollit publishing endorsements that sent thousands of users parachuting into his website to make contributions. It’s political big business of another sort, a nudge to the left of President Obama.
If you want a real election, the Greens offer progressives a genuine political race rooted in intelligent discourse and exchange of ideas. I will be opposing Alan Augustson, a respected Green activist who just ran for this same seat in November, amassing 4% of the vote against Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Republican challenger Tom Hanson. The Greens recruited me to the race because 4% is unacceptable in a district as progressive as this one. There is no reason that the working and immigrant majority of the district won’t support a candidacy built upon themes of non-violence and the defense of civil liberties. A contested primary will force all involved to actively campaign and recruit support at the doors, on the phones and at community functions.
I, for one, am a fan of campaigning in bowling alleys, and they are thankfully plenty in the 5th district. From Waveland Bowl on Western and Waveland to Habetler Bowl on Foster and Central, I will be finding support where Greens would normally not think to look.
The American left too often suffers from a snob complex, and I’ve admittedly been stricken with the ailment myself at times. We feel that, because we’ve read a book or two, we are unequivocally correct in our political convictions and so we deserve this air of superiority that we carry on. This is what we use as an excuse to put down the rest of our compatriots: the supposedly vile sorts that take pleasure in such crude activity as bowling.
I say, “If you don’t like it, get out of the Midwest!”
The puritan tendency vibrant within the American left must be vanquished, lest we continue to live under the rule of one mass murderer after another. If the left is going to ever rise from the pits of irrelevancy, it must stop looking down upon the would-be subjects of their purported movement. The culture of politically-correct must be dropped, if not outright combated. We must embrace liberty as our uniting principle, stop being fearful of entering into alliance with paleo-conservatives, who, after all, are the most organized amongst principled anti-war activists, and not be afraid to ask the “disgusting” majority to help.
Meanwhile, my generation, the new young professionals, must get organized. While I accept the challenge given to me by the Green party, to help organize young people, I want to make it clear that young people need to also accept working with their parents’ generation. Sure, the baby boomers’ record is atrocious: they have given us everything from a savage health care industry, declining unionism, increasing anti-intellectualism, an explosion in the practice of pop-spirituality, unsustainable levels of superficiality and loads of other undesirable traditions. However, some of them mean well, and others can provide the energy and resources we need to build winning coalitions. As such, the generation gap chatter ought be left with the coat check lady.
If we can accept that winning means embracing the greater Chicago community and becoming a genuine cultural member of this fantastic city, then we will help organize the Greens to victory in the April 7th general election, and that will be a momentous and historic victory for progressives and liberty loving people throughout the country.

Stop American Aid to Israel

Since I announced my election bid in Illinois’s 5th Congressional District, former home of Rahmbo Emanuel, I have heard every brand of “you’re insane” imaginable, often from my closest friends and confidants. People are curious as to why an “un-experienced” peace activist/ French teacher would find himself qualified to serve in the United States House of Representatives.
The first and most cogent response is: We’d be better off with a 435-long pack of hounds than what we currently have. I am insulted that anyone would dear compare my moral fabric to the corrupt lawyers and businessmen who pretend to represent us in Washington. To even reduce my credentials to the point of uttering my name in the same breathe as these foul and disingenuous people is demeaning and unsettling.
The “Other America” has been rapidly gravitating to my campaign: everyone from Progressives to Paleos knows that it’s not worth a second of their time to consider the usual establishment crooks. When I challenged the other candidates to rise to a level of moral decency by refusing checks from corporate interests, they all sloughed me off as crazy. Luckily, from an early age, my dear parents prepared me for the plight faced by functioning minds in the United States, so I am quite used to being considered crazy for my rational pursuits. I thought I would at least convince one of the other minor candidates, or someone posturing as a progressive, to take up the cause. But, alas, it will be just Matt Reichel refusing those corporate donors.
My next step is to make the other candidates, 19 and counting, commit to cutting off aid to Israel.
Oops! Did I just say that? I should probably be sent off to the nearest nut house and loaded full of big pharma drugs, sucked of all ambition, and planted in front of a television. Maybe then, after a few months of visual bombardment by Murdoch’s pawns, I’ll come around to understanding why the American taxpayer need fund Israeli atrocities year in and year out.
Instead, I gave AIPAC their couple hours of lobby action a few weeks before Christmas. I can imagine that it would be one hellish nightmare for the organization to go from Rahm Emanuel to me, so I at least wanted them to see that I am a real, breathing ambitious human being.
We met at a Starbucks downstairs from their office on LaSalle St in Chicago, just upwind from the brooding Board of Trade. The place was packed with important looking people, as we sat there leisurely chatting about the recent history of Israeli murder and the military benefits brought thus to the United States.
My rapidly moving eyeballs bounced back and forth between Vladimir’s eyes and his lapel pin (the one with the Israeli and American flags in union). I pressed him on what he thought of the numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel that have been singly stamped out by American vetoes. Firstly, he explained, you have to understand that the United Nations General Assembly is made up of people who are a small step above pirates on the evolutionary latter. There is a reason that the Security Council exists, he assured me, and it is to give a heightened voice to the respectful people of the world.
I responded: “I can’t believe you think so highly of Stalin!”
Vladimir continued (I paraphrase): “The other thing you have to remember is that France would veto those stupid resolutions as well, but they prefer to have the U.S. take the lead so as to not disturb their leverage in the Arab world.”
I couldn’t come up with any quick witticism, because I had just heard one of the most ridiculous assertions ever from someone sitting in a Starbuck’s next to a bunch of important looking people.
We then stopped shootin’ the bull and started moving on to business. Actually, I would have been content to continue chewin’ the ol’ rag all day, but AIPAC came to accomplish something. And that something, accompanied by an attractive glossy brochure, was convincing me of all of the benefits that come to Americans as a result of our investment in Israel.
One example is the Bradley Reactive Armor Tile, currently being used by American tanks in Iraq. Unsurprisingly, Israel is at the forefront of the development of military hardware, and, thanks to their experience in bulldozing through civilian neighborhoods in the occupied territories, they have made it safer for American troops doing the same in Iraq.
They are also particularly skilled in the domain of security and law enforcement, a fetish they hold in common with the United States. Increasingly since 9/11, various state, federal and municipal law enforcement bodies have regularly visited Israel to gain priceless tutelage on how to manage an Apartheid state. Among other things, this training has focused on “urban combat,” which has paid enormous dividends in our efforts to target civilians in our convoluted Empire building in Iraq.
American aid to Israel is an investment that just keeps paying off. Since they don’t accept any of that wasteful, socialistic humanitarian aid, and instead take only military handouts, the money comes boomeranging back to Americans in the form of contracts for our wonderful merchants of death i.e. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
Meanwhile, voting against aid to Israel is made purposely difficult by our friends in Washington. The Congress stuffs this figure into the larger foreign aid bill, so that you have to vote against real humanitarian aid in order to vote against military support to Israel. Even if you were a man or woman of principle on Capital Hill, the crooked lawyers and bankers who run the Big House would never make life simple on you.
However, they prefer to not let you get there at all by rigging the electoral charade. The easiest and most time tested way to get elected is to convince all of your investment banker friends to shoot you a quick 2 g-notes, while your boys involved in the big media swindle trumpet your run as something monumental.
So say you don’t have any wealthy and powerful friends? Your interest is running a campaign rooted in principles of peace, internationalism and workers’ rights. You seek to re-frame the nation’s understanding of the American dream by re-focusing our cultural energies on communing with the world, re-committing ourselves to a liberal arts based education so as to re-invigorate the national discourse, while urging the citizenry to respect and live foreign cultures and languages. In this case, your only option is to challenge the other candidates on their moral credentials until they crack.
Despite living in an era where our political system is in shambles due mostly to the disastrous effects of corporate lobbies, none of the other candidates in Illinois’s 5th district are interested in raising the moral bar. Absolutely none of them expressed any readiness to pledge with me against the acceptance of corporate donations.
And despite living through another humanitarian crisis brought on by an over-zealous outpost to the American empire, I’m sure that I will be the only candidate in this race ready to rise to the challenge of ending these crimes being committed in our names with our tax dollar.
Anyone in the Congress with a moral backbone should be pledging to immediately cease American aid to Israel. Likewise, anyone running for federal office at this hour should do the same. You can call me insane all you want, but I call myself the only man running in this primary that is willing to question Israel and corporate financed elections.
With a little luck and a lot of public pressure, we can get the mainstream crooks to crack.

The Race is On

We now have a race on our hands for the 5th Congressional seat in Illinois, as Rahm Emanuel has officially resigned, and the Governor has given us a date: Tuesday March 3rd for the primary!



1) Press Coverage in Chicago Journal Papers.

2) Volunteer Opportunities.

3) Wine-Tasting/ Fund-raiser/ Volunteer Meet-up. Friday January 30th, 6pm, 1728 W. Carmen 3, Chicago



1) In this week's Chicago Journal papers, Jessica Pupovac has written an excellent article about the "outsiders" in this race, including a lengthy portion devoted to my candidacy. Please read this article here.

2) We are under 8 weeks to go until the election: a major challenge to a grassroots campaign like this one. It is for this reason that we will begin canvassing EVERY DAY, so as to cover the district prior to Election Day.

If you are interested in helping to canvass and/or man the office, please add your name to our volunteers' list, and our volunteer coordinator will be in touch with you shortly.

3) Most importantly, you can help this monumental effort by donating to our campaign, and/or attending our official fund-raiser/wine taster:

Friday, January 30th, beginning at 6pm, 1728 W. Carmen, 3, Chicago.

Pre-Pay the suggested donation of $25 today to reserve your spot. And do not be shy about stretching your giving capacity! Each individual donor is legally allowed to go as high as $2,300: an amount that would single-handedly allow us to knock on over 20,000 doors, in an election where 20,000 votes will get us into the congress!

We shall push forward with this grassroots effort in spite of all of the challenges naturally faced by a candidacy of principle operating in the heart of the machine. While we will not match the top candidates dollar for dollar, we can take comfort in knowing that we will raise our money more honestly than they will.

I have sent a pledge to all of the other candidates, published here, demanding that they refuse corporate donations in this election. In an hour where the nation is waist deep in political scandal and concurrently drowned in financial scandal, the political elite of the nation can no longer be trusted with funding coming from corporations. This dirty money drains the integrity out of the political process, consistently leaving Americans with poor choices at the ballot box.

While none of the other candidates have signed my pledge to date, the people of the 5th district can take comfort in knowing that there is at least one candidate who will stand up for people before profit and principle before politics.



Thanks and Solidarity!