Tuesday was a tremendously important day for our nation, after all, Barack Obama’s election was something that many people thought wasn’t possible even after he announced his candidacy. That’s terrific, but the results at home were far from joyous.  You know, it turns out that I’m pretty bummed about getting divorced.

We have a few options: get really pissed and withdraw from the system, or get motivated to chart our own future.  Personally, I think we should go for the latter.

Yesterday, thousands of Californians, gay and straight, came together in Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco to note a sad day in our state’s history. A day that we defaced our constitution with tacky discrimination.  Yet, the very fact that so many turned out, despite the pain of losing is critical.  We cannot allow the pain of this moment to simply subside, we need to convert this pain into positive energy for building a true grassroots movement for the LGBT community and the greater progressive movement.

From this fight, we have learned who our friends are. From this fight, we have gained new tools and learned new strategies. We have learned what works and what doesn’t. And despite whatever failures of a top-down campaign structure to utilize volunteers, the fact is that the campaign had thousands upon thousands of volunteers.

How powerful could we be if we each committed to taking a few hours each month for our community? How powerful would a walk in a neighborhood to talk about these issues be when we aren’t in the context of heated campaign?

We have other battles to fight as well. We should hold President-elect Obama to his word of repealing DOMA. What could be more symbolic of the change that we need and the change that we could truly believe in than ending the discrimination against a minority? Ending the forced separation of married couples of differing immigration status and moving us one step closer to real equality.

Or how about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act? Or right here in California, assuring that our next governor is a Democrat that supports marriage equality, not another wishy-washy “post-partisan” or a faux-moderate Republican like Poizner.  

This is on us. This is our charge. We needn’t rely on a top-down model to pre-select our message. The message is us and we are the message. We cannot separate that. So, let’s use the tools of our infrastructure that are effective, and scrap the ones that aren’t.

But no matter what happens in the courts, let’s not let what happened on Tuesday be for nought.   (image courtesy Sacramento Bee)

I’ve been watching the circular firing squad begin to form in the blogs and, frankly, I’m rather disappointed.

The simple fact is that the people who are at fault are the 52% of California voters who voted for irrational and baseless discrimination.  That’s where fault lies, and any claims that anyone else is to “blame” is the equivalent of the 1960s police detective telling an abused spouse to go home and talk it out.

I’ll preface it by saying this – I’m one of those people who are apparently at fault for Proposition 8 failing.  I stayed up late last night in my friend’s apartment in Arlington, VA, after hearing the car horns along Clarendon and Wilson Boulevards celebrating the election of Barack Obama and getting second-hand reports of impromptu gatherings on U Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in the District, waiting for a glimmer of hope that Prop 8 would flip over.  It didn’t, and that made this morning’s flight back to Los Angeles rather bittersweet.

I stand by the decision to go to Virginia.  This election was historic.

No fight comes without its setback, and this one is a large one.  We now need to re-group and identify both a tactic to overturn Prop. 8 as well as an underlying tactic to either get rid of or severely curtail this absurd system of propositions.

Here are some of the problems that I saw with the last year, with the above caveat in mind that the only people who are at fault for this are the people who voted for Proposition 8.

1) The No on 8 campaign.  It was the worst campaign I’d ever seen, short of Diane Wilkerson’s State Senate campaigns in Massachusetts.  I attempted to volunteer by phonebanking, but received a condescending e-mail, sent weeks if not months after I had requested to volunteer, that explained the unnecessarily complex training process that appeared to conclude that anyone who phonebanked for the No on 8 campaign was plainly an idiot and needed hand-holding.  I hoped to volunteer through an office instead, but the offices were all too far away from where I live in LA (I can’t drive) and they kept obscene hours.  I finally reluctantly gave up, and because of the fact that the economy has kept me from obtaining a full-time position, have donated a total of $30 this election cycle.  So, bluntly, despite the fact that the No on 8 campaign was so important to me, I found myself locked out of it.  I wish 8 had failed, but I stand by my choices of how I allocated my time – it became plainly clear that any time spent on the No on 8 campaign would just be spinning a hamster wheel.

2) Not only did the No on 8 campaign not allow individual Californians to get involved in any meaningful fashion, but they ran, as I said above, an astonishingly bad campaign.  They were unable to get in front of any attacks, the TV ads were sparse and ineffective (whatever happened to the Let California Ring campaign of last year?  Those ads were plainly effective).  No on 8 allowed the Mormon Church to come in and buy a California law, and their opposition to this was paltry at best.

3) Gavin Newsom’s inflammatory remarks didn’t make the job easier.  They just weren’t helpful.  There’s no better way to put it.  The first time I saw them in an ad I was shocked and appalled that he had said something so inflammatory and unnecessary – you don’t win supporters by saying that their laws (however wrong the laws are) are overturned “whether you like it or not” in that tone.  He’s a politician, he should’ve known right where it would’ve ended up.  He’s not exactly going to find himself as an example of how to win friends and influence people, and immediately after seeing that ad, said “If 8 passes, Newsom will be blamed.”

4) Very few politicians wanted to get in front of this issue.  People try to be angry at Obama for the fact that, at one point, Obama said that marriage should be between a man and a woman.  But he also came out in clear opposition to Prop 8 and his statements on equal marriage sure look mighty close to supporting equal marriage, much closer than Bill Clinton ever did.  Obama had his own job to do, and by ushering in a progressive Presidency and Congress, our job in California gets a whole hell of a lot easier.  The fact that he won Virginia last night and will probably win North Carolina shows how a Democratic progressive candidate can win a mandate.  He now has the ability to translate that mandate into true progress.  Don’t blame Obama, and don’t blame his supporters.  But where was Mayor Villaraigosa?  Where was Arnold and his alleged opposition?  Where were all of the California leaders who ostensibly opposed 8?

I will say this: we now have an opportunity to turn this lemon into lemonade:

1) We could re-focus our efforts to identify a way that we could pass a law, through the Legislature or the defective proposition system, to “re-legalize” equal marriage.  This would show that it can, in fact, be done, and may trigger a tidal wave of similar laws.

2) We could instead re-focus our efforts to demolishing this outrageous proposition system, whereby we can take away civil rights with fewer votes than which we can tax ourselves.  Our proposition system has long made California into a laughingstock, and it’s time to outright abolish it.  We elect legislators to legislate, and propositions should be inherently difficult to pass; our current system allows the Legislature to pass on the tough issues and promotes gridlock and corruption in Sacramento.

Yesterday, the Yes on 8 gave their somewhat premature victory speech. While I think the odds are tough for us to come back in the absentees, it doesn’t look good. Either way, it is what it us. They have the numbers right now on their side. Say what you will about discrimination being written into our constitution, or the threshhold necessary for said constitutional graffiti, we only have this from a statement from the No on 8 campaign:

Based on turnout estimates reported yesterday, we expect that there are more than 3 million and possibly as many as 4 million absentee and provisional ballots yet to be counted.

Here’s hoping for a Dewey defeats Truman moment, but I think they are a bit optimistic about those numbers.  Turnout cratered after the polls closed on the east coast and people started learning about Obama’s success. My guess is that turnout will end up around, or slightly below, the 2004 total of 12.6 million. That’s substantially less than Field’s estimates of 13.6 million, but still much more than the 10.3 million votes currently counted in the presidential election.  So, the fat lady has yet to sing on Prop 8, despite the AP and the Yes campaign.

That being said, the legal response to any prospective Prop 8 victory has already begun. First, there’s the issue of retroactivity.  Jerry Brown said over the summer that he thinks it isn’t retroactive, and the ACLU is backing that position. We probably won’t see a challenge to that until we have some real-life facts to challenge that on. I’m not sure when that will happen, but I can’t imagine the right-wing will want to just leave this hanging for too long.

Then there’s the bigger question of whether Prop 8 is valid at all.  Back in June/July, ACLU, EQCA, NCLR, etc, filed a lawsuit regarding whether Prop 8 was a revision or an amendment.  There is a big difference there. Revisions can only be accomplished through a constitutional convention and lots of 2/3 votes, while amendments require a bare majority at the polls.  Yeah, it’s a big deal.  

Before I go on, I’ll say this.  It’s at best a 50-50 shot, and that might be generous.  Not that we have a weak case, but what is critical here is that this will take monumental courage from our Supreme Court.  As you probably know, our Court faces election, and a decision in favor of marriage here will open them up to even more electoral challenges. Rose Bird is your big case there. However, the Justices should know that if they follow their convictions, and the case law set down before them, the LGBT community, as well as the greater progressive community, will come out in force in support of these Republican judges. We will give them money, and we will support their reelection to the Court.  Rose Bird was a lesson that we shouldn’t forget.

Let’s review the law, over the flip…

I’m just going to bring back my analysis from my previous post, with a few edits here and there. But there is a new Petition to the court.

What’s the deal with this revision argument?

Alrighty, this really goes to the heart of the matter. So, what is a “revision”? Basically a revision is a change to the “underlying principles” of the Constitution. If the Court determines that the question at issue affects the underlying principles of the California Constitution, the initiative must go through a different process. A revision requires a 2/3 vote of both houses of the Legislature or the convening of a Constitutional Convention (a process that I won’t go into here). The revision then must be ratified by the people. Obviously this initiative hasn’t gone through either process.

But what is an “underlying principle”, you ask? Well, good freaking question! There have been only a few cases which have actually dealt with this.  A few months back Killer of Sacred Cows wrote a recommended diary at dKos and crossposted here about an article by Kevin Norte (and a follow-up), a research attorney in the LA Superior Court.

In other breaking news, there is no such thing as a free lunch. This will be a tough case for Chief Justice George and the California Supreme Court.  While he did give a hint in the questioning all the way back in March, it’s not clear by any stretch that there are 4 votes for this, either before or after the election.

The EQCA brief cite several cases where amendments have been tossed. The most notable amongst the amendments that were tossed was at issue in Raven v Deukmijian (52 Cal 3d 336). In that case, Stephen Bomse (the same attorney at Heller Ehrman that field the case on behalf of the voters and orgs in the marriage case) argued that a proposed initiative that would have limited California criminal rights to the extent of the US Constitution.  The CA Sup Ct ruled that such an amendment would so change the structure of the California system of government as to amount to a revision of the Constitution.

The Court stated a rather nebulous standard in Raven:

As explained in Amador, and confirmed in Brosnahan, our revision/amendment analysis has a dual aspect, requiring us to examine both the quantitative and qualitative effects of the measure on our constitutional scheme. Substantial changes in either respect could amount to a revision. Before examining the applicable authorities in greater depth, we first set forth the nature of petitioners’ revision challenge.

So, the Court goes through a two-pronged analysis when dealing with revisions. Quantitative goes to scope of changes in the Constitution, quite literally. That looks to the actual number of additions, deletions, and amendments to the California Constitution (Raven , III, B, 2).  As to the qualitative aspect, the Court states that “even a relatively simple enactment may accomplish such far reaching changes in the nature of our basic governmental plan as to amount to a revision.”

Clearly, the marriage issue is looking towards qualitative aspects. And again, Raven is the case to look at:

Even under respondent Attorney General’s “limited” construction of new article I, section 24, fundamental constitutional rights are implicated, including the rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, assistance of counsel, and avoidance of cruel and unusual punishment. As to these rights, as well as the other important rights listed in new section 24, California courts in criminal cases would no longer have authority to interpret the state Constitution in a manner more protective of defendants’ rights than extended by the federal Constitution, as construed by the United States Supreme Court.

This is where the case is headed, where the controversy lies. The EQCA attorneys argue that marriage is now a fundamental right. It is implicated under equal protection of the law, as orientation is now a suspect class under In re Marriage Cases.  From the brief:

Equal protection is not merely a discrete constitutional guarantee; it is a trascendent principle that is deeply woven into the fabric of our entire Constitution. (Brief at 17)

There is a substantive argument to be made here. But, there is no case law on the definition of fundamental rights.  This would be the Court going out on a limb and expanding the scope of the revision doctrine.  Now, this is the same court that decided In re Marriage Cases, so it’s not entirely unthinkable.  

But, as the writ points out, the Courts were specifically formed to protect the rights of minorities.  This is the very definition of a majority trampling on the fundamental rights of a minority.

And the court, in In Re Marriage Cases defined the right to marry as exactly that: fundamental.

we conclude that … the differential treatment at issue impinges upon a same-sex couple’s fundamental interest in having their family relationship accorded the same respect and dignity enjoyed by an opposite-sex couple. In Re Marriage Cases at 10

And the word fundamental is spread liberally throughout In Re Marriage Cases.  But, like I said, this isn’t a question of law, the precedent is there. This is merely a question of courage. Does our justice system allow for the curtailing of fundamental rights by a bare majority? It certainly wasn’t designed to do so…but the jury is still out.

I wrote much of this as a comment in Paul’s post, but wanted to expand some on it and make sure these questions don’t go down the rabbit hole.  There will be a lot of introspection about this campaign, how we lost and why we lost.

I was proud to work along side many wonderful hard working staffers on the campaign down this final stretch.  This post is not directed at them.  They did a commendable job with what they were asked to do.  And for those feeling the if only I volunteered a little earlier, or a little longer I say this.  Prop 8’s passage is not about any one person’s failure at the grassroots level to get involved.  With this margin of loss, the blame has to go to the top.

But who is the top?  That is indeed part of the problem.  Today, I am left with a lot of questions about the strategic decisions the campaign made.  This is not a comprehensive list and is mostly focused on what I saw from within the campaign this past week.  I was not around at a deep enough level earlier to see what happened from the minute they started circulating the petitions to get this on the ballot.  Those who know more about earlier time periods, or have strategic decision questions of your own, please chime in the comments.

These are my thoughts, not that of my employer and I offer them now as part of an effort not to assign blame, as much as figure out how we fix it for the next fight.  What we did this time did not work.  Today we wake up to discrimination being written into our state constitution.  We must figure out a way to take it out, one way or another.  Most likely, that will involve another initiative campaign.

My 16 questions are below the fold:

1) How many campaign managers were there?  

2) How many times did they restructure the decision making tree?  

3) How many different strategies did they have?  

4)How did they only plan for a max budget of $20 million when they ended up with closer to $40M?  

5) Why did they not anticipate and better counter the opposition’s messaging?  

6) Who really thought it would be a good idea to run a No campaign with green check marks and “Equality for All” as the slogan?  

7) Who made the decision not to strongly make the argument that Obama opposes 8 to his supporters?  

8) Who decided that not having a true ground game was a path to victory?  

9) Who thought that paid phones to voters were more effective than grassroots supporters making calls?  

10) Who put together an out of state phone banking program and then never really effectively launched it.  

11) Who thought it was a good idea to have the only ask of volunteers election weekend (Sat-Mon) to come in for a one hour training?

12) Who thought it was a good idea on election day to have the main volunteer ask to stand in front of polling locations, which are mostly churches and schools and pass out cards for a campaign where churches and schools were the main contentious issues?

13) Who thought that waving signs brings a significant amount of voters to the polls?

14) Who never came up with a legal strategy to counter people being kicked away from those locations?

15) How did the campaign really think that they would have the legal right to stand on church property with No on 8 signs?

16) Why was the campaign complacent with just having labor endorsements, instead of getting their advice on how to run a field campaign, use their field resources like phone banks, encourage them to communicate with their members and just generally be a major presence in the campaign?

As you can tell, I have a lot more questions than I have answers.  And right now, I am incapable of writing much more.

This is a terrible terrible day to be GLBT and a Californian.

From today’s Beyond Chron.

Proposition 8 is still “too close to call,” but the initiative to ban marriage equality led all night – with the measure ahead 52-48 at 3:00 a.m.  It pains me to describe it this way, but “No on 8” – like Michael Dukakis – blew a seventeen-point lead.  Progressives were lulled into complacency by early poll numbers, and distracted by the Barack Obama campaign – even after it became apparent he would win.

But “No on 8” was also a reactive campaign that did not anticipate the opposition’s arguments to sway swing voters.  Bloggers were effective at pushing memes to define the opposition, but it failed to define much of the race.  And “No on 8” did not push a simple and compelling message – “Obama Opposes Prop 8” – to the African-American community until the other side beat them to it, forcing them to play catch-up.  This is no time for making excuses, or inspiring words that we’re part of a greater struggle.  Our right to marry just got taken away from us, and we’ve got to be smart if we’re going to get it back.

I’ll freely admit I was one of many progressives distracted by the presidential race and lulled into a false sense of security about Prop 8.  But in early October, after returning from a week in Wisconsin to help Obama, it became apparent that Barack was going to win by a landslide-and that Bay Area activists were wasting their time driving to Reno while there was important work to be done at home.  New poll numbers on Prop 8 jolted me out of complacency (one could say I “reacted” to bad news), but my pleas about the presidential race fell on deaf ears.  Somehow, progressives still shell-shocked from 2004 were afraid that simply believing Obama was going to win would “jinx” the outcome.

I heard a lot from marriage equality activists last night about “how far” we have come since the days of the Knight Initiative-Proposition 22, where 61% of California voters in March 2000 voted to add discrimination in the marriage code.  But we forget how incredibly conservative that particular election’s turnout was-and we simply don’t have the same excuse for Prop 8’s recent fate. California voters who narrowly supported Prop 8 also rejected the anti-choice Proposition 4 (despite it also being neck-and-neck in the polls), approved a bond for high-speed rail (Proposition 1A), and crushed Proposition 6 (the Runner Initiative) despite the state’s general “law and order” reputation.

We need to face the fact that Prop 8 passed because a lot of liberal people voted for it-swing voters who should have known better, if only they had the right message.

These swing voters like to think of themselves as “tolerant.”  They believe they support gay rights, but are not always comfortable thinking much about the issue.  They have a “live-and-let-live” approach, and don’t appreciate any group of people indoctrinating their worldview on the rest of society.  For a while, the “No on 8” message worked well with this crowd: it is morally wrong to have religious extremists impose their definition of marriage on the rest of society, singling out groups of people who don’t apply and depriving them of a basic right.  Telling them the Mormons were funneling $20 million into the Prop 8 campaign was an especially effective message for this group.

The problem happened when the Prop 8 campaign-through blatant lies and deceit-changed the subject into gays and lesbians imposing their agenda on our elementary school children.  Suddenly, the people who were “indoctrinating” people who have a “live and let live” attitude was the homosexual agenda.  It became apparent to me a few weeks ago when I was phone-banking for “No on 8.” I spoke to a black woman in San Francisco’s Western Addition who was dead-set against gay marriage now that she had been scared into believing we were imposing our lifestyle on her.  And when people are afraid, it’s hard to make them listen to facts-especially if they don’t know you.

One of the basic lessons in activism is to not react to a problem when it comes up, but to be pro-active and frame the agenda.  It’s not like right-wing extremists haven’t used the “gay marriage will be taught in our schools” line before, and the campaign should have been ready to anticipate such attacks.  As far back as 1998, the first ballot proposition to ban marriage equality in Hawaii had a TV spot with a small child reading a book about two fathers-and he then gets confused.  The message back then for swing voters was the same message California swing voters got now-“will my kids have to learn about it?”

Another basic rule is to anticipate what strategies the opposition will come up with to lure voters, and to preempt them with your own overtures.  Gay marriage supporters were not happy that Barack Obama said he believes marriage is “between a man and a woman,” but he rarely got credit for going further than any presidential candidate had gone before.  He supports fully repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, and – more importantly – he came out against California’s Proposition 8.  Knowing that Obama was going to win the state comfortably, “No on 8” should have stressed Obama’s opposition from Day One.

They did not, and it allowed the Prop 8 campaign to get African-American voters on their side by leading them to believe that Obama supports Prop 8.  As I’ve written before, the black vote was critical in this race.  Polls showing Prop 8 either ahead or behind hinged almost completely on whether African-Americans strongly supported it-or barely supported it.  Aggressive overtures needed to be made to that community, and there was no better messenger in this election for this group of voters than Barack Obama.

Instead, “No on 8” waited until the other side made their own hit piece that implied an Obama endorsement of Prop 8.  By then, we were being reactive.

Finally, I did go to the “No on 8” campaign office in the Castro as often as I could-but quickly became frustrated at what they were asking volunteers to do.  I was happy talking on the phone with swing voters-which was useful and effective-but they seemed more interested in having us do visibility in San Francisco, going to strongly liberal (even gay) parts of town to make sure our base knew they had to vote “no.”  Rather than preaching to the choir, we were told this was useful because much of our base was confused-that some supporters think they’re supposed to vote “yes” on Prop 8 to affirm gay marriage.

I don’t doubt there were a few cases of gay people in San Francisco who were confused, and accidentally voted for Prop 8.  But this appeared excessively anecdotal and reactive, when I was far more interested in being pro-active and effective in getting work done.  Ironically, it turns out that a percentage of our opposition was equally confused-if not more so, which made the issue a wash.  When I dropped “No on 8” literature in East Oakland, I ran into an African-American woman-who said she would vote “no” on Prop 8 because she “really didn’t want” gay marriage being taught in public schools.

It is now 4:22 a.m. on Wednesday morning, and Prop 8 is still up 52-48 with 90% of precincts reporting.  Now that discrimination has been enshrined in our Constitution, it will require another vote of the people to have it repealed.  I don’t doubt that with the state getting younger, future efforts at marriage equality will be successful.  But I can’t help believing we have seriously blown an opportunity in this election to give the right wing a stunning defeat-one that would forever leave them on the ash heap of history.

We need to start now to organize … and this time, let’s do it right.

Inside the No on 8 boiler room the phones are ringing.  The most common issue is volunteers being challenged for being 100 feet away from polling locations as required by law.

The first problem to crop up was schools, where principals were shooing them away.  This is a pretty typical issue and generally not worth fighting.  In those situations, volunteers can still wave signs by the public entrance on public property.

Now we are starting to get calls from volunteers in front of churches.  Unsurprisingly, the churches are not happy with people urging voters to vote No on Prop 8 and are wielding whatever power they have to try and drive our people away.  In several locations the police were called.  

The No on 8 campaign is armed with a statement from the Secretary of State with a legal interpretation that polling locations are public spaces for the election day and people are allowed to be on property at least 100 feet away.  Each of the volunteers is armed with this letter.  I am trying to get a copy of it and will post it when I have it, but that is my understanding of what it says.

In at least one location our people were shooed away from a Catholic Church, but were letting Yes people to stay.

Elected Officials – straight party line this time, all good candidates.

Barack Obama for President of the United States of America

Mike Thompson for US Congress, first district

Lois Wolk for California State Senate, fifth district

Mariko Yamada for State Assembly, eighth district

California Propositions and Initiatives on the flip…

California Propositions and Initiatives

YES on Prop 1A

High speed rail is good for Yolo County, good for California, a good investment for the future. Click the link for the detailed argument.

YES on Prop 2

While I have friends who are moved to support 2 by the whole cruelty to animals aspect of this bill, the bottom line for me is the issue of safe food production. Right now, the crowded conditions in factory farms lead to stressed animal immune systems, a disease-prone environment, massive pollution problems because of the waste issues with that densely packed cage farm environment, higher use of antibiotics to try and control resulting diseases, and thus a much higher risk to the general human population of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Bills similar to prop 2 have been passed in several Western states, and their ag economies have not collapsed as some of the no on 2 ads have claimed. While this would have been a stronger bill had it also held imported eggs and meat to the same standards so as to avoid a race to the bottom undercutting CA farms, as well as some funding to ease the cost of transition, the fact of the matter is that the status quo is a health risk, and giving the animals enough room in their cages to turn around should make things better, both for the animals and (most importantly IMO) the people of California who eat them.

And if you haven’t read any of Michael Pollan’s books on the subject (Omnivore’s Dillemma for the in-depth take, In Defense of Food for the Cliff’s Notes version), I strongly recommend them. This is not like the sentimental “don’t eat horses” prop a few years back (which I opposed on grounds of absurdity – meat is meat), this has implications for the quality of the food we eat, and ultimately of whether we want to further the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by giving them a perfect environment in our crowded factory farms. When those antibiotics stop working because we bred superbugs in those cramped cages, the cages will have to get a lot bigger anyway (if not outright abandoned), and it’ll hurt our ag economy a hell of a lot more.

Meh on Prop 3 – no recommendation

I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, it’s a vote for local pork, as one of the children’s hospitals the funds would be used for is the UCD med center hospital. And who could vote against sick children? On the other hand, I’m edgy about bonds, given how bad the credit situation is right now, and am less than pleased that public bond money would be used – 80% – to finance private children’s hospitals. Taxpayer money ought to be used for public goods.

NO on Prop 4

I am so sick and tired of having to beat back this stupid anti-abortion trojan horse every other election. Once again, this prop would force teenaged girls to ask their parents for permission to have an abortion, unless they ran through an intimidating and no doubt complex bureaucratic gauntlet by going to a judge and pleading their case. As with the last several times the fundamentalists threw this one up against the wall, the problem here is that the teens who are afraid to tell their parents about being pregnant in the first place often have reason to be, whether it’s because they were victims of incest, or are afraid of being physically beaten by their parents, are afraid of being thrown out on the street in punishment for their “sin,” or are just afraid of their parents forbidding the abortion and forcing the teenager to carry their child to term. Life is not perfect, and while many of us have happy families and adequate communication between parents and children, one does not write laws based on the best case scenario.

Rather, the law needs to be written with an awareness of the complexity of life and difficult situations that people – and yes, even minors – find themselves in. Prop 4, like its predecessors, is so fixated on the questionable “right” of parental authority over their children that it completely ignores the cruel way that this bill would heap suffering on vulnerable people in an already painfully difficult situation. Do we really want to be forcing pregnant teenagers in abusive or disfunctional families, possibly in an incest case, to be reporting their choice to have an abortion to those same people, being forced against their will to carry a fetus to term in their own body?

Prop 4 plays upon the anxieties of parents with teenage daughters, but gives little concern for the well being of those daughters themselves. It is wrong headed and cruel, and should be rejected just as the past two tries were.

YES on Prop 5

The drug war has been a colossal failure on all fronts. We have thrown so many people in prison that the courts have found California to be in violation of basic constitutional standards. Many of those prisoners committed no violent crime, but are in there as part of the “warehouse ’em all and forget about ’em” mentality that has sadly been a part of the fabric of California politics since at least the “law and order” Reagan Governorship. We pay more for prisons than universities in Calfiornia, even though it is far cheaper to send a kid to college than lock them away. Rates of drug use have not fallen, and drug use is common throughout all racial and economic classes, but rates of prosecution are highly racially biased all the same. Locking up nonviolent drug users is a failed solution to what was never a legal problem in the first place. Countries where drugs are not dealt with in this ham-fisted and draconian manner have far lower rates of drug use, ironically enough. Notably, those countries also have far better treatment options than California.

It isn’t working.

Prop 5 seeks to reverse that trend by diverting nonviolent drug offenders into treatment programs instead of prisons. The law and order industry, from police unions to prison workers unions to Yolo County’s very own ignore-state-law-when-he-disagrees-with-it DA Jeff Reisig is adamantly opposed to this because it cuts at their source of funding. That is to be expected, everyone fights for their meal ticket after all, and a lot of people make a lot of money off this costly and counterproductive war against the citizens of California.

But as a taxpayer and a human being, anything that dials back the use of incarceration as a dumb hammer to deal with complex social problems (and some that aren’t problems at all; in my opinion, drug use without antisocial behavior should not even be a crime, although prop 5 does not push things that far) is a good thing, and long overdue. No people that believe that they are, at heart, their brother’s and sister’s keeper have any business locking people away for petty offenses and leaving them to rot in prison.

The “law and order” incarceration-mad approach of the drug war has incontrovertibly failed, in California and nationwide. Prop 5 is a step away from a fiscal and moral abyss. Take it.

NO on Prop 6

The converse of prop 5, prop 6 is yet another in a long line of “tough on crime” initiatives locking in ever-expanding public funds for an ever-more draconian war against the poor and the nonwhite in this state under the guise of fighting crime. This time it’s gangs, with prop 6 increasing the penalty for any crime if the person who did it has been labeled as a gang member (which, as we saw in West Sac not too long ago, can be abused by ambitious DAs to label whole communities as “gangs” and then persecute them collectively for whatever crimes are committed in their midst). This whole “tough” mentality does not work, and is wrecking our budget while producing nothing of value to the state except fat payrolls for the prison workers union. Enough, no more money thrown down that hole, let’s try something different.

YES on Prop 7

Prop 7 would require that all utilities – public as well as private – get a large and expanding % of their power generated by big renewable power projects in the decades to come. The only problem with this proposition is that they stepped on some environmental groups’ toes by not consulting them before they put it on the ballot, so the Sierra Club and others decided to fight against it out of pique. We desperately need big solar and wind projects in this state ASAP, if we are going to turn ourselves around on global warming and insulate us from what looks to be a rise in the price of natural gas in the decades to come. This will not solve all problems – there needs to be a place for small projects, especially solar roofs, in any comprehensive solution – and is not intended as such, but what it does do is serve as one big silver BB that can be used to get us closer to where we need to be with big power projects.

I have read all the criticisms, and they strike me as not particularly valid. We need to think big, and prop 7 does that by gibving us both needed regulation and funding to make it happen.

NO on Prop 8

My marriage and family have been a bedrock in my life. I cannot imagine trying to weather life’s storms alone, without that companionship, trust, and love. How could I ever tell two people in love that they aren’t as good as me, that they should not be treated equally under the law, that their marriage, their companionship, trust and love are inferior to my own, and that they should either divorce or not marry?

Please do the right thing and vote no on 8. Marriage is too precious, too important to be used as a cynical pawn in the culture wars. If you want to protect marriage, work on your own, Lord knows none of ours are perfect anyways.

No on Hate. No on 8. (Click the link for the full argument)

NO on Prop 9

This is yet another of these “law and order” bills, this time sold as a “victim’s rights” initiative. It would give the families of crime victims more grounds to object at parole hearings, make parole harder to get, and generally keep more people in jail for longer period of time.

It’s an effective emotional argument, but it cloaks the very dire financial consequences of continuing to put more and more people in jail for longer and longer periods of time. Something has got to give. If it had a tax hike connected to pay for the damn thing, at least it would be honest, but it doesn’t even go that far. Just another unfunded mandate that doesn’t make anything better for the money spent, except if you’re a prison guard.

NO on Prop 10

This is something that sounds pretty good until you read the fine print. Texas oil zillionaire T. Boone PIckens has funded this one in hopes of making a mint off of the natural gas market by subsidizing a fleet of natural gas-burning cars. This does nothing for global warming or carbon emissions, plays into our unsustainable suburban low density development model, will create a competitor with power plants for natural gas (thus bidding the price up and making electricity and heating more expensive), does little for the common good, and makes a rich Texan oilman even richer. While I have some grudging respect for T. Boone’s efforts to give visibility to the huge issue of Peak OIl, this prop is a total non-starter.

NO on Prop 11

It’s a scam to protect the Republican party and conservative democrats cloaked in good government nonpartisan “reform” language. While there might be a better way to draw districts, prop 11 isn’t it. Don’t fall for it. (Click the link for the extended argument)

YES on Prop 12

CalVet has been around forever, it works, it costs the state next to nothing, and it has helped out generations of Calfiornia veterans. Given the huge number of vets that Bush’s little imperial adventures have produced, and the economic strains the Bush administration’s VA cutbacks, miserly pay, stoploss backdoor draft, and extended tours of duty has posed to veterans and their families, we owe it to them to make it easier for them and their families to buy houses, farms and start businesses. It’s good for California, and it’s the right thing to do. The only way this could be improved as a bill is if it was expanded to the population at large, but even as is, it’s a no-brainer.

Local Ballot Measures

YES on Measure N

Measure N would give Davis an essentially blank city charter that could be amended in the future to adapt city law to whatever sorts of thing we as a community wanted to do. Right now, Davis is a common law city, which means that what we can do on a variety of issues is constrained by whatever the state legislature says we can. Personally, I think the Davis electorate is intelligent, educated and engaged enough to make a charter work, and have not found any of the arguments against a charter to be compelling at all. Besides, just think of all the fun letters to the editor battles in the Enterprise a charter could create!

Seriously, though, from choice voting to district elections to financing solar panels on roofs like Berkeley did to creating a Davis Public Utility to broadening our tax base beyond just property and sales tax, to all other sorts of stuff, the freedom this would give Davis to choose its own path and experiment without asking permission from the utterly useless state government (thanks in no small part to prop 13) makes it a good idea in my opinion.

YES on Measure W

In short, as I say with with every election with a school bond on the ballot, you’re a bad person if you vote against a school bond. This bond would fund a whole bunch of teachers in the Davis Joint Unified School District that will otherwise be cut for a pittance, given the kind of money that flies aroiund this town. If you have the money to buy a house, if you have the money to drive a nice car, if you have a kid in Davis schools, if you plan on getting old and want talented educated doctors and nurses taking care of you, or a thriving knowledge economy keeping those tax coffers full so that you can retire in security with Social Security or your 401K, you have no excuse not to vote for W.

It reality is that simple. If you vote against this thing, your neighbors will be justifiably mad at you for wrecking their kids’ education and property values. Do the right thing, public schools are at the very foundation of modern society, and deliver tremendous value at a very low taxpayer cost.

originally at surf putah

(full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign and this post is part of a live series from the No on 8 SF offices)

I dunno about you, but I am nervously tapping my foot, counting down the hours until the polls open.  It is storming outside here, rain is pouring down, but volunteers warm and toasty inside phoning voters and inputting data.

To my left is Shumway from the web team and is scrambling to create the graphics and content for the the last push emails going out today and tomorrow. Lilia is to my right and constantly on the phone and email figuring out the logistics of getting a presence up on 167 campuses across the state.

Stanford deserves some mad props.  They not only had close to 200 phone bankers on Saturday, but they just pulled together teams of 3 or 4 students to take a boatload of material to dozens of colleges across NorCal and plaster them with No on Prop 8 literature all through the night.  Fricken awesome!

Here are a few volunteer tidbits reported in from yesterday’s activities.

This is from a couple who walked door-to-door talking to their neighbors about why it was so important to them that we defeat Prop 8.  This scene was repeated all over California today.

“We had what I think are two success stories.  In both cases we were talking to African American women.  The first one hadn’t made up her mind yet and we didn’t speak for long, but at the end she invited us in to dinner!  (We regretfully declined and continued our walking.)  The second one told us that she had already made up her mind to vote yes.  We asked her why and then had a very heartfelt conversation where we talked about marrying the person we love, the difference between civil and religious marriage, and that schools wouldn’t be teaching anything about marriage, same sex or otherwise.  At the end, I think she came around!”

This is such a wonderful story.

My wife, Pepper and I have started a grass roots effort here in our hugely populated Mormon “Yes on 8” neighborhood (Rancho Bernardo, CA).  After weeks of having to drive through their signs morning and night, we finally stopped feeling depressed and angry and decided to do something productive.  We got as many signs as they had at the No on 8 headquarters in Hillcrest and then went to Kinko’s and made our own signs.  My wife stood on the corner by herself (shaking!) with her one sign.  Soon she was joined by about a dozen others–gay, straight, whatever!–Now, we have grown to about 50 staunch supporters.  They bring their children, their mothers, husbands.  It’s absolutely empowering and life-affirming.

Keep up the hard work everyone.  I hope everyone has their staging locations for tomorrow and is fired up and ready to go.  Let’s bring this one home.