Forum Post: Happy birthday America , I just made the ballot!
Posted 11 years ago on July 5, 2012, 1:45 a.m. EST by lancealotlink
(147)
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To run for U.S. Congress in Texas as an independent candidate you must obtain 500 signatures from your district in order to qualify.I was awarded with 830 signatures from the wonderful people of my precinct who show me that they overwhelmingly approved of my candidacy.
I live in one of the fewest blue districts in my state and will easily be on the ballot in November. The signatures were brought to me by independent voters all through my district. as far as I know I am very proud to say I am the first occupier to run for U.S. Congress in this state of Texas and perhaps the whole country.
There is also even better news as I know definitely one other occupier has made it on the to the ballot for November's election. That would be Mark Lawson district 19 of Texas is running against a very corrupt Republican that even has a bank embezzlement charge on his record. Ha HA.
I am sticking my neck out a little bit on this one but the Democrats would have to challenge all the signatures and right now they are in a bitter primary fight. Being LuLac supporting one candidate and the unions supporting the other candidate. Their party will be split.
And the Republican that is running in my district does not have the money to challenge my petitions. We have formed an alliance and are going to be debating at three different colleges in my district this fall. So things are looking up.The tea party has given us a blueprint for success and all we have to do is follow what they have done good {which is run their own candidates} and what they have done bad which is trying to run them in the Republican Party. Please visit my site if you haven't already employmentforthe99.com
I have a suggestion that you could campaign on and implement if elected. Have a system where your constituents can register (and be verified) with your office. Once email addresses are collected, contact your constituents on the issues, and ask them to vote on them. Vow to vote how the majority of your people decide; no matter how you 'feel' about the issue. To me, this would be a true form of representation and could be very appealing to everyone.
Cheers and good luck
Thats an excellent suggestion
Thanx Pete :)
Sparky that's an excellent suggestion. Put polls right on the website. I will look into this. Right now one single Congressman is not going to really make a big difference but this to let them know that were coming after them and will take our fight to Washington dammit.
But actually what I think we really need are occupy mayors, I think it could be a real possibility that we could actually elect occupy mayors and perhaps Los Angeles Portland maybe Washington, Philadelphia, New York Baltimore and maybe other smaller cities.
This is where we could actually implement ideas and receive federal funding of projects.Yes having a US representative in your back pocket is nice but having mayors in your city would even be better.
Then maybe we could implement your ideas Sparky and Peter.we should have every occupy member on the ballot to run for mayor this next election run for mayor in every city we would win!
Love it when politicians gather opinion openly from the people. Good idea as a campaign item. But I don't think email is very managable.
A regular vbulletin forum would do better, actually both would work together just fine. The forum is easier to manage for the candidate and the email is easier for the constituent.
In case there is interest in something hyper functional, here is a concept for a "Poll_to_Post" software that keeps the heart of the agreement between users as the most visible aspect of the forum.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/t8vmce
The candidate that impliments that is going to stimulate something new and unique in the formation of opinion and education into issues.
One single congressman could set an example and a precedent. You'd be the only one willing to to it, and would probably attract a lot of media attention. You would stand out from the crowd. Not on your website, but direct email to your constituents.
I'm glad to see you run as an independent. If you get in there; don't let them corrupt you. I know how easy it can happen, because I saw the movie "The Distinguished Gentleman". :)
Good luck to you - Cheers
Ive never seen that one before ,I ll have to put that on my must see list hehe.
Hey I'm not trying to be a dick I just wanted to bring to your attention that you have some grammer errors in your bio on the site
yes I really need to work on that my dragon software has a hard time with my east texas accent . I will try to correct that by tomorrow.
How many people are in that district?
I am going to say that the population is about 900,000 but remember only 10% actually vote. This year in the Democratic primaries 14,000 people voted and the Republicans had 2000 people voting in their primary.
I'm going to take that number of 14,000 and double it for the November election and you will have the winner of my district winning by 34,000 votes.
If we were in Australia and everybody had to vote or be subject to a fine I would overwhelmingly win the district I mean overwhelmingly. It's just a matter of getting the independents out to vote. That's what I have to do to win.
Well good luck to you and make sure you checkout that coop think.
I completely agree with you on the co-op thing . As a matter of fact we're really going to win this thing by going local and not federal in the long run. There are many ideas being bandied around about community gardening and relying more on the community not the federal government. This is how we will win.
Running for Congress is more symbolic than actually trying to get things done because you are right the community is what will win over the federal government.
That is why one of my projects will be to bring greenhouse gardening into the high schools.
Good luck to you.
Luck is very good to have but I have something that is a whole lot better then luck or even money for that matter.
I have a movement that's behind me I have a number of hard-core activists in Occupy Dallas who stand with me and this is way better then any corporation can buy.
I find that occupy is made up of three hierarchical groups right now. At the top of the group are the hippies, the hard-core feminist, communist the school teachers and even libertarians.
In the second tier are the military veterans and Peta activist which have formed an alliance with us they are predominantly made up of women where the veterans like me are dominantly made up of men.
At the bottom tier are the twentysomethings these are the kids who see this more as a social movement rather then a political one. They would rather smoke weed and party then really become serious activists.
But they make up the majority of this movement and can be used as our foot soldiers as they are ready to march as much as we are so it is really exciting to be a part of this movement
If you get ellected you should see about getting a coop started in your district. Are there alot of poor people there?
oh yes, 50% unemployment between the ages of 18 and 25. And 50% underemployment in the rest of my district. My number one goal is to bring 100,000 high-paying jobs building high-speed rail and government day care services. And I'll take all the appropriations from the God damned tea parties districts if they want to reduce government then let them reduce it in their freaking district and not mine. My promise to my district is I will bring 50,000 jobs into it through public works projects or I will not run again.
Well check this kind of idea, running and enterprise where the workers get to decide and vote on whats next and run it like a buisness exept the workers own it and have a vote in what happens to it. Here's a few links.
this is an article about a really successful coop in Spain http://rdwolff.com/content/yes-there-alternative-capitalism-mondragon-shows-way
Then check out this short movie.
http://shiftchange.org/
Then mabey you could contatct these people if you have made up your mind and this is what you want to do.
http://www.garalperovitz.com/
If you can get one of those coops going and make last a while you can grow it into a diverse little enterprise that is rooted to the community and could provide jobs for your constituents for decades to come
Completely,yes.
Good man