Some of you may have noticed I've been very quiet online for the past month or so. The reason for that is that my Internet service was down for several weeks. (For those who don't care about the details of this, feel free to skip the rest of this long paragraph). As best I can determine, what happened is that AT&T decided to "upgrade" their lines in my area, knocking out my DSL, without notifying either me or my Internet Service Provider, Earthlink. This may or may not have been triggered by someone in my building ordering their upgraded "Uverse" service. I was variously told this, and that AT&T was simply getting out of the business of providing DSL. AT&T is the local monopoly phone service provider in my area, so other companies wanting to provide DSL or dial-up service have to go through them. My understanding was that in consideration of their monopoly on local phone lines they were legally required to share these lines with other ISPs, but it appears it may not be that simple. Both AT&T and Earthlink are big, bureaucratic, dysfunctional companies. When you call them as a customer, you typically waste a lot of time sitting on hold, going through voicemail menus, and explaining information that you've already explained multiple times to other representatives who couldn't help you either. Despite automatically recording incoming calls from customers and not sharing their recordings with those customers -- a practice I've complained about to them among other companies -- they are very disorganized and often seem incapable of tracking and following up on any non-routine customer service issue. One department may have access to your information, but not be empowered to do anything about the issue you're calling about; another department may have the correct area of responsibility but lack access to the information that would allow them to meaningfully address the issue. Many of their people work in call centers where they cannot (or will not) make outgoing return calls. It took many hours on the phone to both companies over a period of weeks just to find out what was going on. Earthlink submitted at least two separate orders for service restoration on my behalf, after I'd gotten a new phone number from AT&T and been told by them it was ready for service, only to discover upon following up that each order was internally rejected by AT&T. The eventual resolution was that Earthlink agreed to give me a refund for three months of service (although my service was only disrupted for about a month), and to let me have free forwarding to my existing Earthlink email addresses for a year, even though as best I can determine it was AT&T that was responsible for causing the situation, and Earthlink diligently tried (albeit in their slow, dysfunctional way) to fix the problem caused by the other company. I didn't get this resolution, or an even semi-clear understanding of what had caused the outage and was preventing service restoration, until I started regularly calling the corporate headquarters offices of both companies and finally got them talking to each other at that level. Most of the people I spoke to at both companies were nice and patient, but hampered by their employers' internal bureaucracy, but some of the AT&T higher-ups were the most unpleasant and condescending individuals at either firm. They seemed to suspect that Earthlink had incited me to call and bother them, and kept trying to get me to stop calling AT&T and simply bug Earthlink about the situation, saying there were industry standards that Earthlink needed to follow to have their "back office" people contact AT&T's "back office" people (this "back office" term and other terms like it are nothing but euphemisms for employees and information that they want to keep secret from their customers and deny customers the ability to talk to). In the end, even though I believe AT&T was mainly if not solely responsible for the mess, they refused to acknowledge any responsibility or provide any compensation or redress whatsoever. Needless to say they are not my favorite company at this point, and I am going to file a complaint about them with the Public Utilities Commission, although I doubt it will do any good.
Anyway, my Internet was down -- disrupting my online activism at a most inconvenient time in the election cycle -- I have remained quite busy with activism at the local level. Much of this activism has revolved around representing the Libertarian Party of San Francisco's opposition to several local ballot measures.
Thanks to the hard work of local LPSF activists Aubrey Freedman, Marcy Barry, Les Mangus, and Mike Denny, along with myself, we secured official opponent status in August to four out of the seven local measures on the November ballot in San Francisco (the most that the LPSF has ever had): Proposition A (a parcel tax increase of $79/year to fund the local community college), Proposition C (an attempt to bring back SF's redevelopment agency), Proposition E (a tax increase associated with replacing the local parcel tax with a gross receipts tax and business registration fee), and Proposition G (a non-binding policy declaration opposing the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and asserting the corporations do not have the rights of people). These arguments can be viewed along with the rest of the SF Voter Handbook, which is mailed out to several hundred thousand San Francisco voters, at http://www.sfgov2.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/elections/ElectionsArchives/2012/November/Nov2012_VIP_Web_EN.pdf . The two of the four that I personally wrote list my name along with that of the LPSF, since I figured that increased name recognition could help me in future runs for office. As a result, we have been contacted by a number of organizations holding forums on the local candidates and ballot measures.
Specifically my recent activism has included the following:
• Spoke against local Proposition's A, C, E, and/or G, and/or California's statewide Proposition 35 (an attempt to ramp up criminal penalties on people associated with prostitution, under the guise of going after "human trafficking") to a number of local groups including the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, Potrero Hill Democratic Club, SF Young Democrats, Richmond District Democratic Club, Noe Valley Democratic Club, New Mission Terrace Neighborhood Improvement Association, etc.
• Distributed and put up many stickers, posters and fliers promoting Gary Johnson and other pro-freedom causes, primarily in my neighborhood in the Castro district as well as occasional other SF and Bay Area locations
• Did some door-to-door canvassing to distribute LPSF ballot recommendations along with literature for the LP, Gary Johnson campaign, and John Dennis (local libertarian Republican running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi)
• Designed a newspaper ad (see attachment) which the LPSF paid to run in three local newspapers I recommended: (1) the Xpress, San Francisco State University's student paper (college outreach is always high-value for us, imho), (2) El Reportero, a bilingual English-Spanish newspaper distributed in SF's Mission neighborhood (I'm quite enthused about this paper I discovered and look forward to cultivating an ongoing working relationship with them, as the editor who to the best of my knowledge runs it almost single-handedly is quite libertarian and regularly publishes strongly libertarian content -- including even Gary Johnson's recent letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, at http://www.elreporterosf.com/editions/?q=node/695 ), and (3) the local Chinese-language version of the Epoch Times, an international publication founded by dissidents associated with the Falun Gong (aka Falun Dafa) movement which has been repressed in China. The Epoch Times editors translated most of the latter ad into Mandarin for us. Being strongly anti-communist where China is concerned, they may be open to taking a more libertarian stance on other topics as well, and toward that end I hope to soon organize a sit-down meeting between some of their staff and local Libertarians.
• Participated in and spoke at the Gary Johnson rally on Sept. 25 at University of California, Berkeley, seen and heard by hundreds of students and in addition to the governor featuring other speakers including Dr. Marty Nemko, Richard Lee and Dale Sky Jones of Oaksterdam University, Dale Gieringer of NORML, and Michael Pickens and Jim Eyer of the Libertarian Party of California.
• Debated the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, David Chiu, on local Proposition E, and two other supporters of local Propositions A and C, for the League of Women Voters public access TV segments (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKuZv2nKgDo&feature=relmfu , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fiHpxn4m84 ).
• Was interviewed by Spanish language TV station Univision (SF cable channel 14) against local Propositions A ( http://univision14.univision.com/videos/video/2012-10-09/destino2012-medida-a-san-francisco-beatriz-ferrari-city-colleges ) and E ( http://univision14.univision.com/videos/video/2012-10-01/proposicion-e-y-los-impuestos ), and also gave them a pitch for Gary Johnson (which they have not aired anything from as far as I know). Unfortunately I don't yet feel fluent enough to risk doing the interview in Spanish, or perhaps I could've gotten a little more time than the obligatory few seconds. Then again it might have made no difference.
• Appeared on "The Political Vixen" radio show on the TradioV.com network with Chris Miller to talk about decriminalization of prostitution and Proposition 35 (I didn't realize in advance this was going to be on video as well as radio, which is why I'm looking around like a goofball for the camera at the beginning when I realized they were filming -- http://tradiov.com/sf/political-vixen-10-18-12/ ).
• Tabled at a student fair at San Francisco State University with a Prop. 35 opponent (distributed LP literature/materials as well)
• Attended two rallies in support of suspended SF sheriff Ross Mirkarimi (see attachment relating to next item for more background on this)
• Wrote an op-ed piece about Ross Mirkarimi and Proposition 35 which I sent to numerous California and local publications; no definite word yet on whether any of them will run it
• Attended and spoke at the East Bay LP's annual "Wine And Liberty" fundraising event at the libertarian-owned Westover Vineyard in Castro Valley.
• Got a letter to the editor published with my LP title in the California State University East Bay's student paper, the Pioneer, criticizing the paper's stance on gun control (this actually predates my Internet outage, but I didn't see it published until later -- http://thepioneeronline.com/editorials/2012/09/letter-to-the-editor-“us-lawmakers-must-reexamine-alter-gun-control-laws”/ )
• Attended and spoke at SF Planning Commission hearings in support of a marijuana clinic's attempt to open in the city's Ingleside neighborhood, and in opposition to a Recreation and Park District attempt to push through a project tearing out a bunch of grass and trees in Golden Gate Park to install an artificial turf soccer field with stadium lighting.
• Participated in a demonstration celebrating the SFPD's recent decision to stop using condoms as evidence in prostitution cases, and opposing Proposition 35.
• Tabled for the LPSF at the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing with LPSF activists Aubrey Freedman and Les Mangus
I may be forgetting something notable, but I think that's at least the bulk of my recent activism. As I hope many of you reading this likewise do, I also engage in a fair amount of low-level day-to-day activism, from bringing up libertarian issues and such in conversation, to rubber-stamping libertarian messaging on U.S. currency, to (when I'm online) commenting in Internet forums, etc.
Anyway, I'm glad to be back, and look forward to continuing to work together to promote the Gary Johnson campaign and those of our other candidates and ballot measures from now until the election, and always to advance the cause of freedom. ¡Viva Libertad!
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
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