Immigrants: A Shot in the Arm for Our Ailing Democracy by David Andersson - Room Eight

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I think this is a wonderful idea and urge Speaker Quinn to bring it up for a vote in the City Council ASAP... 

We are about to witness a new and a rather unconventional contribution of the immigrant community in New York. This time, it will not be with work and cheap labor, or with cultural art and entertainment, or even with food. It will be by resuscitating our old and paralyzed democracy.

The state of affairs of our democracy is in general pathetic, and even worse at the local level. Only about 15% of the registered voters participate in local elections. The elections are already decided days before the voting booths open; the parties and lobbies place their candidates, make deals and control the outcome on Election Day. People are not stupid - they don't want to waste their precious time doing something useless! Everyone knows that voting in local New York elections is meaningless.

For the well being of the majority of the New York's residents, the situation has to change. We need to increase the representation and participation of everyone; we need to destabilize the political status quo and to form a dynamic multicultural voting community. The rights to affordable housing, to a decent minimum wage, to quality public education, and to adequate social services are possible, but only if our democracy changes, and represents everyone.

We are not just in an economic crisis. Everywhere we look, we can see that violence is gaining ground, the tensions between groups and communities is increasing, and the situation is getting crazier by the day.

This is a difficult but opportune moment to come forward with real and sincere proposals - proposals that will unite and reconcile - proposals that will have as their central tenet nonviolence, both as a personal attitude and as a social form of action. We need to come up with proposals that are coherent, and open to the future.

This past November, a bill was introduced to the New York City Council that is designed to do just that. The bill, Intro 410, proposes the right to immigrants, who are lawfully present in New York City, to vote in municipal elections. This legislation would grant voting right to over 1.3 million New Yorkers (for more details, see www.ivotenyc.org).

The legislation, proposed by the Chair of the City Council Immigration Committee, Daniel Dromm (D-25), has already received endorsement from 21 Council Members. According to Mr. Dromm, “…It is time for our evolving democracy to embrace voting rights in local elections for all residents. We are all stakeholders in our community and should have a say in important local issues. In the words of the Revolutionary patriots who put their lives on the line for the freedoms we enjoy today, 'No taxation without representation.' ”

Of course, this is not the magic bullet that will resolve all our problems. However, it is a step in the right direction. This legislation is something that could change the political map of the City, and give representation to a larger percentage of the New York's population.

If we have to remember just one thing from our history, it is that we have no democracy without participation. Our rights depend on our democracy. And our democracy depends on our participation. Without you, I lose my power and my ability to choose the conditions under which I live. Are we willing to give that power away?

David Andersson
Director of NYC Chapter of the Humanist Party and the coordinator of the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights (iVote NYC).

New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights - Meeting & Event at the New School

NYC 2011: WHAT DOES OUR DEMOCRACY LOOK LIKE?

Come learn about the history of immigrant voting rights, start a dialogue about the state of our democracy in New York City, and help spread the word about the most recent legislation (Intro. 410) to bring the newest New Yorkers into the local democratic process.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23RD 6:30 PM – 8 PM
Wollman Hall at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts
Enter at 66 W. 12th Street, walk across courtyard and take elevator to 5th Floor of 65 W. 11th Street.

Guest Speakers

Daniel Dromm (D-25), Chair of the City Council Immigration Committee, he introduced the legislation that will allow residents lawfully present in New York City to vote in municipal elections.

Ron Hayduk, Political Science Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), Co-founder of the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights and author of Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the U.S.

Followed by a Panel Discussion and Q & A

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC (2011) - The Story of Stuff

Season Two launches on March 1st with The Story of Citizens United v. FEC, an exploration of the inordinate power that corporations exercise in our democracy.

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC, released on March 1st, 2011 at storyofcitizensunited.org, explores the history of the American corporation and corporate political spending, the appropriate roles of citizens and for-profit corporations in a democracy and the toxic impact the Citizens United decision is already having on our political process. It ends with a call to amend the U.S. constitution to confirm that people—not corporations—make the decisions in a democracy.

Join the movement and our community: Please consider a tax-deductible gift to support the distribution of The Story of Citizens United v. FEC.
 You can make a secure contribution HERE.

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC - The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard

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http://storyofcitizensunited.org ---- Season Two launches on March 1st with The Story of Citizens United v. FEC , also our first film for 2011, and it's an exploration of the inordinate power that corporations exercise in our democracy.

I know you are but what am I?

by Annie Leonard

I’m a person.

Chances are if you’re reading this you’re a person too.

Exxon? Not a person.

But one year ago today, five members of the U.S. Supreme Court got this simple truth all wrong.

In the case Citizens United v. FEC they ruled that the limited existing restrictions on corporate spending on U.S. elections were unconstitutional because corporations are entitled to the same first amendment speech protections that individual citizens–people–enjoy in our democracy.

And boy did corporations put this ruling to good use:

According to a new report by our friends at Public Citizen, spending by outside groups during the 2010 midterm elections in the United States jumped to $294.2 million, up from just $68.9 million in the 2006 cycle. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce alone spent $31.2 million to influence election outcomes.

That means that unless we act, our concerns–from good jobs to clean air to safe products–will take even more of a backseat to the concerns of Walmart, Exxon, and Dow than they do now.
Which is why on March 1st we’re launching Season Two of our on-line movie series with The Story of Citizens United v. FEC: Why Democracy Only Works When People are in Charge.

I made The Story of Stuff back in 2007 because I wanted people to understand that there’s a system behind the way we make, use and throw away Stuff. Many of us spend so much time feeling guilty about the consumer choices we make in life that we sometimes forget an important truth: the choices that got us into our current environmental and economic mess had very little to do with which light bulb or shampoo we buy.

It wasn’t you or I who decided to gut public transportation funding in favor of the interstate highway system, or to turn a blind eye to oil rig safety, or to put carcinogens in our products. At least, I didn’t!

I founded The Story of Stuff Project because I knew we’d never be able to take on and change this system unless people got engaged–not only as conscious consumers, but also as active citizens. Unfortunately, there’s a big obstacle in our way: corporations have way too much influence in our democracy.

Our team believes that getting corporations out of our democracy (and getting people back in) is critical to making progress on a huge range of issues that we Americans, and many others around the world, care about.

So on March 1st, we’re jumping in.

New York Takes Bold Step on Cash in Judicial Races by William Glaberson - NYTimes.com

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New York’s top court officials will bar the state’s hundreds of elected judges from hearing cases involving lawyers and others who make significant contributions to their campaigns, a move that will change the political culture of courts and transform judicial elections by removing an important incentive lawyers have for contributing.

Campaign fund-raising of the more than 700 trial-level judges around the state who are elected has been a persistent source of complaints and allegations of corruption, with some judges doling out lucrative assignments to lawyers who were political contributors.

The decision takes the form of a new rule of the state court system and will be announced on Tuesday by Jonathan Lippman, the state’s chief judge. It is believed to be the most restrictive in the country, bluntly tackling an issue —money in judicial politics — that has drawn widespread attention.

The rule is more restrictive than similar measures adopted recently in Washington, Oklahoma, Michigan and other states, and would take the question of disqualification entirely out of judges’ hands. It flatly states that “no case shall be assigned” by court administrators to a judge when the lawyers or any of the participants involved donated $2,500 or more in the preceding two years, court officials said.

Judge Lippman, who promoted the adoption of the measure by a statewide judicial board, said in an interview that the rule was critical to preserve the integrity of the state’s courts. “Nothing could be more important for the judiciary than to have the public see that we’re neutral arbiters of disputes,” he said. “If we don’t have that, we don’t have anything.”

Judge Lippman will make the announcement and detail specifics of the rule at his annual State of the Judiciary speech in Albany on Tuesday. It was adopted on Feb. 1 by the Administrative Board of the Courts, a five-judge body that has broad rule-making authority. Court officials said that, to permit comment, the rule would not become final for 60 days.

One of the recent campaigns that drew attention to the issue was a 2008 three-way Democratic race for Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan in which the candidates raised nearly $900,000. The winner, Nora S. Anderson, was indicted and then acquitted of campaign finance violations after taking $250,000 from a Brooklyn lawyer for whom she had worked.

The issue has been less intense in New York than in many states that have had multimillion-dollar political campaigns for top courts because the judges on New York’s highest court are appointed rather than elected.

Judicial politics in New York State and New York City are byzantine, with the political parties often controlling the nomination process. But even uncontested elections in the city can cost $25,000 or more, with judges hiring campaign consultants and paying for campaign events and mailings. Of about 1,140 full-time trial judges in the state, about 730 are elected, including judges in the powerful Surrogate’s Court and the highest-level trial court, the State Supreme Court, which can hear cases worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Primary contests for judicial positions that pay $136,000 or less have cost $250,000 or more. In some upstate counties it is routine for candidates for the bench to raise $100,000 or more, partly to pay for television advertisements to create name recognition.

In New York City there have been widespread allegations that the political consultants in judicial races are so closely tied to political organizations in some boroughs that their fees have essentially become the price of a judgeship. But a series of judicial scandals in Brooklyn and a challenge to New York’s method of judicial selection that failed in theUnited States Supreme Court left the system of financing judicial campaigns largely untouched.

In 2005, a Surrogate’s Court judge in Brooklyn, Michael H. Feinberg, was removed partly for awarding $9 million in legal fees from estates to a friend who was a political contributor. In 2008, a Rochester City Court judge who was running for State Supreme Court was admonished for asking a lawyer who appeared before her for political backing from the bench, though she did not ask for a contribution.

There have been disputes, including one that reached the Supreme Court, over the influence of political contributors in multimillion-dollar judicial races in West Virginia, Illinois, Alabama, Pennsylvania and other states.

In New York, for much of the last decade there have been calls for change, including in 2003 from a commission appointed by the previous chief judge, Judith S. Kaye. Its report described “the problematic nature of having judges raise money from the lawyers that appear before them.”

Lawyers have long been the main contributors in judicial campaigns in New York, and, in some instances, the reasons were evident. One study in 1998 of two powerful Surrogate’s Court judges in the city who are no longer in office showed that lucrative appointments for legal work went to campaign contributors in 66 percent of one judge’s cases and in 54 percent of the other’s.

The national drive for scrutiny of contributions to judicial campaigns gained momentum after a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that said the chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court had wrongly ruled in the $50 million case of a coal company whose chief executive had spent $3 million to help elect him.

But the New York rule is more stringent than even what many critics of the judiciary have proposed. Court officials said they planned to use computer programs to compare the names of lawyers and other people involved in cases against public records of contributions to judicial candidates. If contributions of more than $2,500 over two years are found, the case would be assigned to a different judge.

It could be a disciplinary offense or create a ground to appeal if a judge were to handle a case involving a contributor.

The statewide judiciary board consists of the chief judge and the presiding justices of each of the state’s four intermediate appeals courts, and it has the authority to adopt rules without public comment.

Around the country, some judges have defeated efforts to force them to disqualify themselves over political contributions, saying it is a precept of judicial independence that judges decide whether they can rule fairly. In New York State that argument has had special resonance among some judges who say that the court system’s administration has increasingly encroached on their powers.

But critics of the judicial campaign finance system have been saying that the courts have been tainted by a political culture that permits lawyers to try to gain influence with judges by contributing to their campaigns. Sandy Galef, a Westchester County Democrat in the State Assembly, said she had been frustrated about the fate of a bill she has filed for years to require judges to recuse themselves in cases involving political contributors, including lawyers.

The bill never attracted much interest in the Legislature, said Ms. Galef, a former schoolteacher. “Maybe,” she added, “one of the problems is we have a lot of attorneys.”

¡WAKE-UP LATINOS!: by Roberto Perez and Howard Jordan - QueensLatino.com

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Queens must fight the political machinery in court and streets to get into ‘redistricting process.’

When discussing issues important to Latinos in New York one topic that often gets overlooked is “redistricting.” Redistricting is the process in which census data is used to redraw the lines and physical boundaries of electoral districts within a state. The way in which these lines are redrawn affects districts and what elected officials will represent us at all levels of government.


Unfortunately this is a highly politicized, and polarizing topic and some elected leaders prefer to keep the community “in the dark” about this subject. For some of our politicians the process is used as an incumbent protection program designed to keep them in office rather than to change these lines to increase Latino representation. As a result the people that are hurt by these back-room deals by elected officials are Latinos.


Moreover, some of these opportunists use a corrupt practice called ”gerrymandering” – attempting to get a political advantage by creating boundaries that favor incumbents or that keep emerging ethnic groups out of power. So that in many cases despite the growing number of Latinos where we may be able to create two Latino districts they will divide the boundaries of a district in half to protect an incumbent or their own position. As a result Latinos, the group with the fewest representatives in elected office in proportion to its numbers in the population are maneuvered out of power.


What some may consider a saving grace for Latinos is the redistricting process is covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits discrimination in the drawing of political districts. But unfortunately the only districts covered under the Act are the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Queens, which has the lowest number of Latino elected officials besides Staten Island and has an ever-growing Latino community, is not covered.


The only way for the Latino residents of Queens to gain political representation is to unite behind organizations like Latino Justice, the National Institute for Latino Policy (NILP) and the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) in the fight for equality of political representation. We must hold educational forums to inform our community, sue in court, and visit the politicians in Albany and insist redistricting reflect the growing number of Latinos in New York State. Our community must learn that political power is earned through struggle not given!!!

NY Man Charged With Putting Fake Addresses On Election Petition for GOP | TPMMuckraker

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Please note that this alleged criminal is not a member of ACORN but a regular rank & file Republican working at the Nassau County Board of Elections...

Election fraud alert!

An employee of the Nassau County Board of Elections has been accused of writing eight fake addresses on campaign forms in 2009, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice's office announced Tuesday. Imtiaz Insanally, 27, of Valley Stream, is alleged to have used the fake addresses on a petition to add Republican Christian Browne to the ballot on the Tax Revolt Party line. Browne was running for County Legislator in the Fifth Legislative District.

Insanally was arrested Tuesday, and charged with one felony count of offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree and one misdemeanor count of misconduct in relation to petitions.

Insanally, who the DA says was working as a campaign volunteer for Browne, allegedly wrote the fake addresses next to names that were illegible. The addresses he wrote do not exist. Insanally is currently employed as a part-time clerk for the Nassau County Board of Elections, in the election machine department, a job he's held since 2006.

"Whether you're talking about a highly sophisticated case of systemic corruption or something as simple as this case, they are both violations of the public's trust and of our democratic process, and my office will continue to have no tolerance for that," Rice said.

In 2009, county Republicans withdrew the petition to add Browne to the Tax Revolt Party line after Democrats challenged the petition's validity in court, according to The Long Island Herald. Democrats claimed that that more than half of the 1,300 signatures were fraudulent. County Democrats later withdrew a lawsuit that accused Browne himself of fraud, citing the fact that Browne did not sign the petition in question. Browne then withdrew a defamation lawsuit against the Democratic election worker who had brought the charges. Browne lost the election to Democrat Joseph Scannell.

"He was not affiliated with my campaign," Browne told the Herald after news of Insanally's arrest. "I don't really know him. He was working for the Republican committee. I hope he didn't do anything wrong. If he did and the district attorney has evidence of any wrongdoing, then he will have to bear the consequences of his actions."

Claims of widespread voter fraud were en vogue in conservative circles before the election, even if actual examples of fraud turned out to be hard to come by.

Insanally faces up to four years in prison.

(h/t Long Island Business News)