It was nice to finally make it to one of these. No one else came, so I
didn't do a table, just circulated petitions and passed out
literature, but it was very worthwhile.
The first thing I noticed when I arrived outside the Masonic Temple
was I had lots of company. A knot of SFSOS people were holding their
press conference with a couple TV cameras. Didn't see Feinstein or any
other notorieties (to use a word that ought to be in the language but
apparently isn't). There were five or six groups out there tabling,
some with two or more tables apiece. It wasn't clear whether all the
people there for Kerry/Edwards were part of the same group as the other
Democrats, nor whether the people with the Bush/Cheney stickers and
banners were with the other Republicans. I got there about 8:45 am, and
almost all the people coming to be naturalized were inside.
Meanwhile I got signatures for my School Board race and chatted with
various folks. I asked the GOP's Chris Bowman whether anything has been
done to stop Terence Faulkner from doing his usual trick of filing a
ton of separate arguments on each ballot measure, thereby monopolizing
most of the slots in the opposition ballot argument lottery. Chris said
he is not aware of any changes. He thinks the Board of Supervisors
likes things the way they are, because they would prefer to have some
fringe guy be the official opposition to the measures they put on the
ballot than to face more credible opponents. I'm sure this is true. I
think we ought to plan on submitting a large number of arguments
ourselves. I'd like to find out how many arguments he has submitted in
the past in order to see what we're up against; perhaps the Elections
Department will be able to tell me.
Most notably I met a Lowell High School student who was working at the
Republican table. He wants to start up a conservative/libertarian group
at Lowell, and seems very smart, libertarian-leaning and a good
prospect for us. He recently saw Stephen Moore of Club for Growth and
the Cato Institute talk, and said Moore was great. His contact info:
Jeffrey Kwong
1754 Hyde St., SF, 94109
phone: (866) 206-9068x9570
email: go_cardinal@hotmail.com
Found out from him that John Ryland, a former LPSF chair from back in
the '70s who came to one or two meetings since I've been involved,
teaches Spanish at Lowell, and Jeffrey says he's known as a "hardcore
libertarian."
I was interviewed by Felicity Lan, a reporter with Sing Tao Daily
newspaper, about the issue of non-citizens voting that has been
proposed by the Board. She seemed like an honest reporter genuinely
concerned with getting both sides of the story, and indicated she'd
like to interview me more later.
Also briefly met the Examiner's J.K. Dineen, who knew who I was from
being on my email media distribution list, and was given a very cold
brush-off by a camera guy with Channel 7 who would not even take one of
my fliers.
Sometime around 9:30 am, a big rush of new citizens started coming out
of the building. I'm sure there were more of them then there were of
us, but sometimes it hardly seemed that way! They also had a voter
registration table set up inside the building, so a number were already
registered by the time they came out. I went into the building myself,
but was soon asked by a guard to leave. Apparently the political
parties and other groups were not even allowed into the lobby area.
In the end, I only registered two voters, one Democrat and one
Libertarian (a middle-aged guy from Australia now living in Oakland). I
heard the Republicans talking about their count afterward, and it
sounded like they got 14 or so registered to vote GOP, but they had at
least four or five volunteers present.
Finally, I got the schedule of upcoming naturalization ceremonies for
August. There are two:
Tuesday, August 3
Tuesday, August 15
Apparently people are supposed to arrive at 745 am, so we'd need to be
there before then to catch them on the way in. Otherwise we can catch
them when they exit sometime after 9 am.
Yours in liberty,
<<< Starchild >>>
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