After the interview at the immigration rally yesterday in Flagstaff, Channel 3 News out of Phoenix caught up with us again to do a piece on the campaign. The reporter asked why I was running for president. I said because I was a concerned parent who, among a long list of things, didn’t want my children inheriting a world of “global warming.” Later in the day, I picked up the Arizona Daily Sun and there was a front page article about a Northern Arizona University (NAU) professor who now says plant life alone is not enough to counteract the carbon dioxide we’re pumping into the air, and the earth could actually be warming up faster than we thought. NAU is one of four universities nationwide that is recognized as “an institute for research on climate change.” Professor Bruce Hungate and colleagues found in a recent study that forests and jungles around the world can’t process the world’s carbon dioxide nearly as fast as civilization is emmitting it, according to the article. The professor said this is a “wake up call” that we can’t expect nature to fix the problem and we ought to get serious about emission reduction. Translated: In the face of all this alarming news, if you’re still driving to the local market or shunning taking the bus to work — you are demonstrating absolutely unconscionable environmental stewardship practices… We also did a whistle-stop event in downtown Flagstaff yesterday, meeting people on the streets, passing out literature, listening to ideas… NAU’s campus TV News station came out to do a story. Right in the middle of the interview, a guy pulled up on his mountain bike. I passed on a flyer to him and said we had a friend back in Ohio who had a similar bicycle, only with a bike sticker that reads: QUESTION INTERNAL COMBUSTION! I then said to the reporter that we had met with Dan Burden in High Springs, Florida, earlier in the campaign. (Time Magazine called him one of the top environmentalists in the nation.) Burden travels the country trying to inspire his “Walkable Community” model, which includes widening bicycle lanes, slowing speed limits, locating senior living facilities above downtown mercantile sections, creating diagonal paths to the center of town to shorten walking distances… It only makes sense, common sense, that if we make a town much more walking and bicycling friendly, people will, well, walk and bicycle more… Last night I talked at the Holy Trinity Newman Center on NAU’s campus. I said I couldn’t help but notice, as the rest of the nation has, the phenomenal numbers of people taking to the streets to promote social justice for illegal immigrants. (And our campaign is right on board with that.) What’s more, it’s having a tremendous influence on current immigrant legislation, as bill provisions are being changed to be more accomodating as a result. I also said at the Newman Center that wouldn’t it be heartening if we could mobilize the same kind of consistent, sustained (on the street, from town to town, in the country’s face) protest — against abortion. Isn’t it time? Note: The reporter from Channel 3 News said he’d recently done a story on a mayoral election in nearby Williams, Arizona. The current mayor had been running for another term uncontested. That is, he was uncontested until people started to informally suggest that “Buff,” a town dog, run for mayor as well. Although Buff never officially declared — as a write in he got 24% of the vote in Williams. And now you know the rest of the story…
4/10/06
I talked to some 500 people at an Immigration Rally in Flagstaff, Arizona, today. Through a bull horn, I said several years ago we went to the dusty streets of Juarez, Mexico, to research the conditions there. I graphically talked about 200,000 people living in cobbled together shacks made of scrap wood and rusty tin on the city’s westside. There was no electricity, no running water and little food, I continued. At one point in the tour, I explained I stood on a ridge with a vantage of both Juarez and El Paso, Texas, to the north — which looked like OZ in comparison to Juarez. The priest who was giving us the tour (and who ran an orphanage in Juarez) pointed to the face of poverty (slums) in Juarez, then to the face of relative affluence (suburbia) of El Paso. Then he pointed to the fence on the border and asked: “If you were Jesus, what would you do with the fence?” The crowd this day in Flagstaff didn’t have to wait for an answer. They just cheered, loudly… After I finished talking, I was interviewed by Channel 3 News out of Phoenix. I said we would push for an immigration policy that would provide amnesty and family reunification for the some 12 million illegal immigrants in this country… In an interview with a reporter from the Northern Arizona University’s newspaper, I said besides pushing for amnesty and family reunification, our administration would also push to get as much humanitarian aid in the form of more funds, more Peace Corps help and private citizen initiatives to Latin America to help people there become as sustainable as possible. I told the reporter our platform hinged on “common sense.” And we believe common sense would say a lot of people in Latin America don’t want to leave their countries, their families, their friends, their culture… to come here. It’s just, well, in most cases their kids are hungry… Then during an interview with Flagstaff’s Channel 33 News (Spanish TV), I said that ultimately we’d like to see the fence come down and we’d like to see a move toward a ‘North and South American Union’ (like the evolving European Union). By opening the borders and encouraging much more interconnectdedness between countries, we believe we’d increase rapport between countries tremendously as we got to know each other better. We think this would pave the way to much more cultural exchange, joint environmental conservation projects, more of a flow of humanitarian aid help. It’s the type of globalization that doesn’t hinge primarily on economics (read: NAFTA), but rather a multi-dimensional focus aimed at the common good for, well, everyone.
4/5/06
I was interviewed by the Kingman (AZ) Daily Miner newspaper today. In relation to Hispanic immigration, I said this is a tremendous spiritual opportunity for us to help some 12 million people by not only offering amnesty, but doing everything possible to make sure these people receive a living wage, have adequate housing, equal opportunity… It is the essence of the Gospel message, I said… After the interview, the reporter told me if I was interested in seeing more of the ‘essence of the Gospel message,’ I should call Pastor Kelly Fallis here. So I did… Pastor Kelly Fallis is the executive director of the Cornerstone Mission Project in Kingman. Cornerstone is a 30-bed homeless shelter. It is a Christian faith-based project that relies solely on donations. Cornerstone provides shelter, food, job training, education help… It’s a holistic approach to helping someone get back on their feet in a solid way, said Pastor Kelly. One dimension that is missing with Cornerstone is a drug and alcohol rehab option. So Pastor Kelly has set out to do something about that. One of Cornerstone’s board members had connections to the local Taco Bell. And last summer, Pastor Kelly took up residence on the restaurant’s roof with a bull horn and a mission. He never left the roof for the next 15 days, no shower, a lengthening beard, the whole thing. What’s more, this was in August and in 110 degree heat. CNN did a naitonal story. Part of their footage showed Pastor Kelly continually called from the roof for people to donate for a rehab. And they did. He raised $60,000 — and lost 30 lbs. (Well, I’d imagine after awhile practically anyone would get tired of just tacos.) What’s more, Pastor Kelly told me he would have stayed up longer — but Hurricane Katrina hit. His motto is we must be as “proactive” as possible for the Lord… And this motto, Pastor Kelly believes, should be translated into our nation’s general policies as well. As an example, he noted there are scores of people regularly starving in Africa, in large part because of drought and lack of water for irrigation in general. Pastor Kelly wondered why America couldn’t build a trans-oceanic pipeline(s) [just as we built the Alaska pipeline] to carry fresh water to Africa for irrigation and other needs. Note: Money, indeed, could be spent on this pipeline; or for that matter, it could be spent on desalinization plants to convert ocean water to fresh water. (Africa is surrounded by water.) At the end of our last tour, there was a front page article in the Monterey Herald explaining the Monterey Bay area was just about to start a desalinization project to convert some of the water from the Pacific there to fresh water for the Monterey Peninsula. Inother words, we have the technology — and we have the money… A couple weeks ago I noted that the Bush Administration is on the verge of proposing we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next couple decades to update our nuclear arsenal, including new plutonium for many of the warheads we already have. I, on the other hand, believe it would make more (spiritual) sense to move the focus away from trying to protect ourselves even more here in America — while all these people are starving in Africa. I believe the Bible verse most apt in this case would be: ‘…he who is willing to lose his life for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’
4/4/06
We stopped at Holy Resurrection, a Byzantine Catholic Monastery out in the desert in Newberry Springs, California. After attending early evening prayers with the Fathers here, we were invited to dinner. It was a simple fare of spinach sandwhiches, salad and rice. We sat in a rectangle with a podium positioned in the middle of the tables. The whole time we ate, one of the Fathers read from the book The Ladder of Ascent by John Climacus (a Lenten ritual at the Monastery). This particular night the essay was: “On Gluttony.” Some excerpts included: “Gluttony thinks up seasonings and creates sweet recipes… If a visitor calls, then the slave of gluttony engages in charitable acts — but for the reasons associated with his love of food… So let us restrain our appetites with the thought of the fire [read: Hell] to come… What we ought to do is to deny ourselves fattening foods, then foods that warm us up, then whatever happens to make our food especially pleasant… Fight as hard as you can against the stomach. The man who fights his stomach causes it to shrink… You should remember a demon can take up residence in your belly and keep a man from being satisfied, even after devouring all of Egypt and after having drunk all of the Nile…” Now while I had been oscillating, it was after this last one that I decided not to ask for seconds… On a more serious side: Several years ago during a campaign stop in Vermont, I interviewed Fr. James Noonan who has been a Maryknoll priest in Cambodia — amidst extreme poverty and hunger. He said to me that we in America are “food terrorists.” That is, we take the abundance God has given us and waste tremendous amounts of money on non-nutritional junk food or spice up (“…make food especially pleasant”) and then overeat it — while scores of little children starve daily in the Third World. Yet from the pulpit (unless it’s a small Monestary in a California desert) do we seldom, if ever, hear this called what it is. The sin of: gluttony. Note: In a case of interesting timing, the next day after the monestary experience, the Arizona Republic newspaper ran an AP story saying the US Center for Disease Control just released an updated report saying a larger portion of Americans, than ever before, are overweight — and we were now one of the most overweight populaces in the world. A phenomenal 30.5% of all American adults are now considered obese and a staggering 64.5% are overweight. And one-third of U.S. kids are now overweight as well… Meanwhile, 17 million people stand on the brink of mass starvation in drought stricken East Africa.
4/3/06
We have finished the Farm Worker Tour leg in California, which was phase four of a four and a half month campaign tour at this point. And we are now headed back across the country… Today on Rte 46 West in California, we came across a large, free standing mural of: the late actor James Dean. It stood 50 yards from Michael’s Corner General Store in the middle of practically nowhere. Michael’s Corner, it turns out, was the last stop James Dean made before his fatal car crash 25 miles west of here in Cholame, California, on Sept. 30, 1955. He was traveling to an auto race in Salinas, California, in his Porsch Spyder sports car when he crashed into a tree… In Michael’s corner, which has a whole section on James Dean memorabilia, were a number of newspaper articles on the walls about the actor. Part of one read: “For better or worse, Dean changed the world… He encouraged a generation to rebel against authority…” Now, I personally believe it’s good to rebel against authority, if the authority is wrong. In the middle part of last century, the American society was moving more and more toward rampant materialism, with little regard for the environment. Television was starting to replace consistent quality parenting time. Both parents were now increasingly starting to move into the workplace, moving on an accelerating treadmill to make more to buy more. And with this dynamic (as with television), kids were getting even more shorted emotionally and growing up empty, confused, angry… Youth of that time, of course, didn’t understand the emotional and psychological dynamics of why they were feeling empty, confused, angry. They just were. So they took their teenage angst, if you will, and tried to express the anger, and fill the emptiness, with alcohol, drugs, sex, fast cars… [read: “rebellion”]. They were thumbing their noses at “the establishment.” An establisment, or ‘authority,’ which was leaving them empty, confused and angry. The problem was that much of this rebellion took the form of self-destructive behavior. Which, when you analyze it psycholigicaly, made sense. That is, these youth didn’t have much self-esteem because of the lack of quality parental attention. And consequently, if someone doesn’t feel good about themselves internally, they have a tendency to do things that are abusive to themselves… James Dean’s most famous movie was Rebel Without a Cause. That title should speak volumes. Note: I left a campaign flyer with the store clerk at Michael’s Corner. I signed it: “Joe Schriner …a Presidential Candidate With a Cause.” –And we continue to do all this without paid political consultants.
3/31/06
In honor of Cezar Chavez Day today, I worked on a position paper about farm worker issues this morning. One of the points I make in the paper is that our administration would push to make this a National Holiday because of the social justice importance of what Chavez accomplished… I also interviewed Jennifer and Ruben De Anda today. They live on the Monterey Penninsula in California. Jennifer was born in America. Ruben comes from Lago de Moreno in the State of Jalisco, Mexico. (He is now an American citizen.)… Ruben proposes a fascinating concept. He pointed to the coming together of countries to form the European Union and wondered why we couldn’t form, say, an “Americas’ Union,” involving as many countries as possible in North and South America. With this Union would come a unified monetary system (like the Euro), open borders, more idea and investment exchanges… In other words, undertaking things together might well create more of a common bond, more conduits for mutual aid, and better camaraderie in general between nations… The De Andas have three young children. The children are learning to speak both English and Spanish. Jennifer explained they get the children bilingual books, attend bilingual church services and are also taught a lot about their father’s country and culture. “Just learning the language doesn’t tell you how people think, or about their customs and social standards,” said Ruben… The couple is also quite concerned about the recent immigration policy debate in the U.S. They said some of the extended family is legal, some not. If the policies enacted are quite stringent, the De Andas are worried about deportation and the havoc that could cause in splitting some of their extended family, and so on… Note: We came across a group of some 50 Hispanic men congregated around a 7-Eleven store parking lot in Seaside, California, yesterday. They were trying to hawk their services. One of the men, Oscar Domingus, said he had arrived at 5 a.m. (it was now 10:30 a.m. and he still hadn’t been hired). Domingus, who moved here from El Salvador four years ago, told me the men gather here every day early in hopes of being hired to do day land scaping, or mechanical work, or contruction work, or farm work. Some get hired. Some don’t. These guys live in quiet desperation on the margins of society, day in and day out. How many of us (spiritually) turn our backs because, well, we’re already ‘hired?’
3/30/06
The kids and I went to a talk last night by Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) with Cesar Chavez. To about 350 people at the University of California at Monterey Bay World Theatre, Ms. Huerta said with the pressing immigration debate today, the issues are very much the same as when she helped start the UFW in the late ’60s. That is, some of the nation continues to be fraught with with prejudice toward Latinos. “We have a new Civil Rights Movement,” said Ms. Huerta, pointing to the recent, and dramatic, mobilization of Latino protests across the country. She also said that she believes this issue has actually become a convenient distraction from the Iraq War. What’s more, Ms. Huerta said when you look at history, the Hispanic people are “indigenous” to this part of America. “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” she said… Speaking on farm worker issues, Ms. Huerta said farm workers have always been considered second class citizens. And a refrain that’s often heard in Hispanic families is: “You better go to college, or you’ll end up being a farm worker.” She said the irony is that farm workers do some of the “most precious work in the world.” That is, they help provide us with one of the most essential things of life: food. As an addendum, she said if there were a “Survivor” show where you were to be taken to a deserted island and could bring only one person with you: “Would you take a lawyer or a farm worker?” Note: During the Q&A period after the talk, I noted what I saw as a rather glaring irony. I said I couldn’t help but notice that many of the college students in the audience were Latinos who have been urged to go on to get a “better” education so they can go on to become lawyers and other white collar professionals, with all the pay, benefits and status that comes with this. I wondered out loud that if we want an egalitarian society where the farm workers are on a same par (in every respect) as these white collar professionals: “Shouldn’t we be looking toward changing the whole pre-dominant paradigm in our country?” [It is our belief we should return to an agrarian base in America, with a tremendous resurgence of the small family farm. In tandem, we should move back toward decentralism, with local food production for local consumption. And we should also return to non-polluting, small technology (horse and plow, sickle, hand seeders, hoes…) — many of the same methods the Old Order Amish utilize today. This should all revolve around organic growing again. There should be regular school classes taught by local farmers on farming techniques. And through Community Sponsored Agriculture projects, and the like, all children should have the chance to regularly work on farms, putting them more in touch with the land, natural growing cycles, and so on. In this paradigm, farmers and farm workers would be much more valued in the society. (And there would be more of a need for farm workers because of the shift back in technology.) Also, the work on farms would be much more in line with the way we believe God intended it to be (before huge computerized combines and corporate greed-driven farming): a sacred vocation.]
3/29/06
I picked up a Time Magazine in Seaside, California, yesterday. There was a “Special Report” on global warming. It was titled: BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED. And after I read the articles, I was. (That is, even more than I already was.) The crux of the article is that a host of scientists believe that, not only is global warming real, but that the earth stands at an alarming “tipping point.” Glaciers at the North and South poles are turning to slush at a highly accelerated rate, Greenland is also going through a major meltdown. Global warming is also causing wide spread (and rapidly increasing) drought now. It is playing tremendous havoc with plant and animal species. Cyclones and hurricanes are increasing in intensity… It’s as if the earth is trying to “shake off a fever,” reporter Jeffrey Kluger wrote. The article also noted the question anymore isn’t whether global warming is real, but rather: Are we capable of reversing it in time?… This morning at St. Francis Xavier Church in Seaside there was somewhat of a roundtable discussion. I said I believe a big part of the answer to global warming is for the churches to take the lead in teaching that the environment is, indeed, a hugely significant moral issue. And each of us have a major personal responsibility (and spiritual culpability) in all this by the lifestyles we lead. [Hint: The U.S. has 5% of the world population and emits 25% of the greenhouse gasses. Read: gluttony.] And I also prayed this morning that the church members (and the church as an institution) would develop the charism St. Francis had for the environment — “so the next generation, including our children, has a world to live in.” Note: For more on the specifics of what we can tangibly do to reverse global warming in a dramatic way, see our “Energy Policy” position paper under “what joe stands for” on this site.
3/28/06
I talked with Chuck Carter in Sand City, California yesterday. He ran for the House of Representatives three times in the 17th District here. He ran as a Republican in a heavily liberal (Santa Cruz is in the District) area. He, understandably, lost three times. His campaign slogan: “More Chuck and Less Pork.” But it wasn’t enough to go with the slogan. He and his wife also got a pet, 20 lb baby pig that they would bring with them everywhere (on a leash no less, and it did tricks). The pig even slept with them. “It was kind of cudly,” Chuch smiled — although I noticed Mrs. Carter wasn’t smiling as much… Back in the campaign vehicle, my wife (and campaign manager) Liz — who would never go for the pig — said we should try and come up with some “fun” angle for the campaign like the Carters did. Her initial suggestion was to put a megaphone atop the “average Joe” mobile and play the “average Joe” theme song as we passed through towns. Note: To hear the “average Joe” theme song, go to the bottom right hand section of the home page and click.
3/27/08
Our family stood in solidarity with a group of Latinos on a downtown square in Hollister, California, yesterday. They were there to protest current, hot-button proposed new immigration policies that, among other things, would: make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant; entail stepped up deportation of illegal immigrants; significanlty increase fines to employers hiring illegal immigrants; add more secure fencing and stronger “virtual fences” (more border patrol in the air, on the ground…). The group in Hollister comprised one of numerous protests around the country over the weekend, including a phenomenal 500,000 person turn-out in Los Angeles… Hollister’s Cynthia Lee told me she believed Latinos do jobs Whites won’t do, especially in the fields. “You don’t see White farm workers in the fields, period,” she said. (Adding emphasis to Ms. Lee’s statement, more than 100 farm groups have joined together as the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform and are rallying for change that acknowledges a reliance on immigration labor, according to a Sacramento Bee newspaper article.)… Hollister’s Gabriella Recollos told me her people work, raise families, go to church and pay taxes. “And all we want is peace and equal rights,” she said. Ms. Recillos held a sign that read: “I’m not illegal, if you check the history — I’m in my territory.” This is a reference to a time when a good part of California (Texas, Arizona…) was Mexican territory. [I said to my wife Liz that given what we did to the Native Americans “…we’re actually all illegals.”]… Fernando Perez, a Hollister website designer, was also protesting at the square. He said Americans sometimes look at immigration through a rather myopic lens. That is, “they seldom put themselves in our shoes.” Mr. Perez said he was referring to all those who risk everything to come to this country, barely being able to scrape by in taking care of their families (both here and in Mexico), and so on. This is not an issue of criminality, it’s an issue of human rights, he said. “We don’t want pity,” Mr. Perez continued. “We want justice.” He added that he believed if an illegal immigrant has been in America for a time and has been a law abiding citizen who is a contributing member to his community, there should be a provision where he is allowed to become a citizen. Our administration would believes this too, and would push for amnesty. (See our position paper on Hispanic immigration.) Note: Mr. Perez said Mexicans, for instance, often come to America because of poverty in Mexico. We saw this abject poverty first-hand on a research trip to Juarez, Mexico, several years ago. Some 200,000 people in Juarez were living in cobbled together shacks, no running water, no electricity. Parents were working in multi-national factories for $3 a shift and children were going hungry. Our administration would acknowledge this for what it is: a monumental human rights tragedy, and work stridently to try to help Hispanics in as many ways as possible here, while working just as stridently to help (more humanitarian aid, more Peace Corp help…) Hispanics be as sustainable as possible in their own countries. It’s our belief many people would rather not leave their home, family, community, culture. But when your children are hungry… To get tough on all this, to turn our backs on this tremendous human need: flies directly in the face of sound, spiritual judgement.
