By Pete Hybertsen For the first time in too long, Portland voters have a viable, independent candidate to support in this election. Nicholas Caleb’s campaign has tapped into a well of discontent with Portland’s current leadership. In just a few weeks, his campaign has turned a few thousand dollars and the energy of volunteers into…
Tag: Voting
Populist Newcomer in Commissioner Race Insists City Work for Its Citizens
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Story by Pete Shaw With Election Day less than two weeks away, one of Portland’s most interesting races is City Commissioner Position 3 featuring Nick Caleb and incumbent Dan Saltzman. Caleb, a Concordia University professor of law and government, is running an upstart campaign against Saltzman, who is seeking a fifth term. Caleb’s campaign is…
Fighting for the Soul of the Carpenter’s Union
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by Shamus Cooke All working people should pay attention to the egregious assault on union democracy happening in the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of the Carpenters Union, covering all Carpenter’s Locals in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, and Montana. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters has a proud history and should take immediate action to overturn a…
We Need A Third Option
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by Chris Bergsten I have a radical proposal for Occupiers: let’s support a Presidential candidate. Barack Obama rose to the presidency by appealing to the nation’s desire for progress and change. In a time when eight years under President George W. Bush saw us embroiled in illegitimate wars, belligerent foreign policy, a growing police state…
A Few Good Democrats are Not Enough
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This piece is from the Occupied News Wire. It originally appeared in the Occupied Wall Street Journal. by Max Berger As long as there has been a thing called Occupy Wall Street, there have been people who’ve suggested it should become the left’s version of the Tea Party. Josh Harkinson’s piece is a notable contribution to the…
An Open Letter to the Reformists Within Occupy Portland
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David “Däv” O’Bryant “The notion of “policy” presumes a state or governing apparatus which imposes its will on others. ‘Policy’ is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates,…
Radical/Anti-Capitalist Caucus Rejects Legitimacy of Elections
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by the Radical Anti-Capitalist Caucus With state primaries on the horizon, the Radical/Anti-Capitalist Caucus of Occupy Portland rejects the legitimacy of this year’s elections. We believe city problems are inadequately addressed by local elected officials. These problems can only be addressed by a politics of popular liberation and direct community empowerment. Regardless of who wins…
(Only a Few) Candidates Gone Wild
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By Elona Trogub “Candidates Gone Wild”, an event organized by the Bus Project, was not only an exercise in democracy, it was a blatant slap in democracy’s face–a reminder that our democracy only goes as far as the thickness of a candidate’s checkbook. Although poignant questions about racism and equity were raised–for example, why only…
Practicing the Politics of the Impossible
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This story is from the Occupied News Wire. It was originally published in the Boston Occupier. by Doug Enaa Greene The U.S. electoral system is all about what the system deems possible. During each election season we are given the choice between a few politicians who promise change; we vote and then things remain the…
Citizens and Candidates Participate in Democracy
By Christina Schüll I walked into Portland’s 2012 Town Hall “Voices of the City” meeting in Hoffman Hall at PSU, expecting to see half a dozen candidates in the middle of discussing their grand ideas of how they promise to make our city a better one. What I found was the soft buzzing of people…
