[Sosfbay-discuss] A Green Senate Campaign

[Tian Harter]

 >
 >Tian Harter
 >
 >A Green Senate Campaign
 >
 >
 >The Green Party is an international party with strong positions 
against pollution,
 >war, and many colonial behaviors. Silicon Valley, being where many 
forms of
 >exploitation meet the limits imposed on oversight by the laws of 
physics, is the
 >ideal background to examine the political implications of such old 
sayings as
 >"think globally act locally." This is particularly true in light of 
the fact that
 >Corporations got human rights starting with a Supreme Court opinion on 
Santa
 >Clara County vs. Pacific railroad, and the remarkably well trained 
workforce here
 >that continues to innovate in many fields of endeavor.
 >
 >Tian Harter has been a Green Party activist since 1991, when the Party 
was
 >working on getting on the ballot in California. He has been involved with
 >Technology and Society groups since the mid 1980s, and will talk about 
the
 >relationship between changing technology, climate change, and his 
political
 >campaign.
 >

Tian began by talking about the summer before the first Gulf War, when
he had talked the IEEE-SSIT society (Silicon Valley Chapter) into holding
a conference on how to make the Bay Area economy more energy efficient,
and his father into holding a conference on Oil and Foreign Affairs at the
State Department in Washington, DC. It had been pure beginners luck that
the Gulf War had come along at that moment. Even so, it was quite a thrill
to be in the audience at an event on the top floor of the State Department
where government and industry wonks were talking to each other about
oil thinking "I had something to do with making this happen" while bombs
were falling in Iraq just before the invasion of Kuwait.

Highlights from that conference included one consultants recommendation
that we think in terms of the structural linkages between "energy, the
environment, and the economy", and a steady drumbeat that our energy
supplies are going to continue to be imported from volatile regions for the
foreseeable future. The fact that domestic oil production in the lower 48
states of the USA has been in decline since the 1970s and will continue
to decline was also discussed.

Because of the excellent program put together by David Arctur, at the
SSIT event we learned about hybrid cars and telecommuting for the first
time Tian could remember. The benefits of urban planning at the density of
San Francisco's Mission District were also explained in some detail, as 
were
synchronizing train and bus schedules so commuters don't have to spend
much time waiting. The many ways we subsidize the use of cars through
paying for roads and bridges via taxes on land and income that could be
used for other things were also discussed.

Tian's other anti war project that year was pushing stickers that said MEND
YOUR FUELISH WAYS at public events. He made a thousand of the things,
and by the time he took a job in Sacramento at System Integrators he still
had 700 left. Since there wasn't any group like the SSIT in Sacramento to
put his hobby time into, he joined the group working to put the Green Party
on the ballot. When they succeeded nobody wanted to be a Green Party
Candidate, but Tian was opposed to political parties without Candidates, so
he put his name in the hat as a Candidate in the 5th Congressional 
district.
His main job qualification was that he had a pile of stickers to make 
oil use
into an issue with.

System Integrators is a company that sells newspaper publishing systems
to major metro dailies like the Sacramento Bee, Washington Post, and
San Jose Mercury News. Tian's day job was further automating the news
business, and his hobby was learning about the social implications of this
process as a Green Party activist. What he learned was that large staffs of
reporters were being (or had been) replaced by small staffs of editors
pasting wire service copy into the newshole. The net effect was that the
Bee didn't cover local interest stories like his campaign. It was much 
easier
for them to just print AP stories about Presidential news conferences or
whatever the New York Times was putting on its front page.

Later in the '90s Tian worked at AOL in their information compression lab
in Orange County. When he joined the company its main revenue stream
was the subscription fees it got from users, and the focus was on giving
them an experience so good they would bring in their friends. 
Unfortunately,
during that time a new management team was brought in, and they shifted
to more of an advertiser based revenue stream. This had the net effect
of making the company a lot more like newspapers, as far as whose opinion
they cared about went.

During that time his hobby was helping Christina Avalos campaign for
Congress in the 47th District, a safe Republican seat. She was running as
a Democrat. What he learned from that was that she generated about as
much interest '98 as he had in '92, but because of the large institutional
inertia of the Democratic Party she got many more votes (about 30%
instead of about 2%).

Since coming back to Santa Clara County in '99, Tian has continued to
work on the role of media in change. He has a photo blog where he
"shares the reality he sees." His main goal in this Senate campaign is to
get as many people as possible to think about buying gas as a democracy
issue. Since the oil companies paid good money for the Republican Party,
he asks that we "stop voting for oil companies at the gas pump."

During Q&A the following came up:

Q: What message to you want the Democrats to take mainstream from
your Campaign?

Tian replied he thought that "if they had wanted to steal his thunder they
would have done it by now. They have had plenty of opportunity. I would
rather see green politics to become a "per capita" thing. After all, 
it's not
much you get for turning off the lights, but it's better than thinking 
there
is nothing you can do. Also, if you really want to vote against climate
change and nuclear waste, that is the way to do it."

Q: Around here we put a lot of thought into saving water. In Sacramento
they don't even seem to care at all. It's disgusting.

Tian: When I met Rod Donald, who at the time was co-leader of the
New Zealand Green Party and an elected member of their Parliament
I gave him a Tennessee quarter. You know that old saying "politics stops
at the waters edge?" Please notice I got through that whole anecdote
without saying "water." One of the things I learned in my travels was
that the kind of people that work on legislation in Washington, DC work
on product placements in Hollywood. You can have just as much impact
on tofu sales getting Sandra Bullock to eat the stuff in a restaurant
scene as you can getting a tax break for soybean producers. We need to
let justice go through us like water (as water?) on a per captia basis.

Is the Green Party doing anything about their own primary?

Tian: So far I've been to a candidate forum in San Francisco put on by
the San Francisco Green Party. Upcoming next week is one in Santa Cruz.
The Fresno Greens are doing something on April 19th. I expect there will
be more later.

Tian Harter

-- 
Tian
http://tianharter.org
I'm seeking endorsements for my campaign. Please let me know if
you want your name on my list! I would be honored to add you..
Tian Harter for Senate, P.O. Box 391854, Mtn View CA 94039-1854