C a l i f o r n i a A c t i o n N e t w o r k
Videos & Information
Here is a bit more information for you to consider. The videos start with the edited clip we used on our landing page. There are three more. These three full clips are what we used to produce that 14:38 minute edited clip. There is more information on each of the raw videos that you may find interesting.
The remainder of this written statement should answer many of the additional questions you may have at this point. On December 10th, 2010, we will post all these videos and this text in our archive blog. Our welcome video and written message will change weekly from that point on. We will post our 2009 Slate For Change web-archive pages soon, so you can see what we did in January of 2009. C.A.N. ran a State Slate of about 950 Candidates for the 960 possible CADEM Slots, which were open at the California Caucus that year. Over 500 of our Slate For Change were elected. Our January 2011 goal is to secure 900 of the 960 open slots. In January of 2009, we wanted to get Obama Supporters elected as voting delegates to the two year terms. This January of 2011, we want to get our C.A.N. Leaders elected as voting delegates for the next two year terms. We want the State CADEM Party endorsements for our Initiatives. This will take 60% of the vote of all the Party Delegates. If you want to restore the cuts to education, and change the priorities of our State, this is how we all do exactly that together. On a grassroots level, this is really totally up to you alone. All we each need to know is that we all act in unity now, with everyone else everywhere, as we all work our asses off. This is not going to be easy.
Our 2010 - 2011 Calendar:
- December 9th is the deadline to sign up as a Candidate for your 2 year term as a California State Democratic Party Delegate
- December 11th is the first weekly Weekend Morning Meeting of your local Assembly District CAN Group. Some one has to create the Event on Facebook and Invite all your Group Members to attend. After you passed your sign-in sheet around to collect everyone's contact information you will hold your first meeting, followed by your first group "Jelly". Ask everyone to bring their laptops to the meeting, and make sure your spot has WiFi for all. You will find the information on what a Jelly is on the Organizer Training Page. Our suggested meeting formats, and other Community Organizer Training Tools, that all the Camp Obama Veterans who founded the original Community Action Network voted on in November of 2008, all these will be posted for your use before December 7th. You will have to click on the links in the Organizer Training page for those resources. You can use them or not. How you chose to work as a group is up to you. Our suggestion that you create and use Jelly's is because 10 of you doing one to one invitations to your friends on Facebook should be a fun social activity and far more effective than any phone bank ever was.
- December 18th will be your second local Assembly District CAN Group Meeting. You are building your Slate For Change and you will need these weekly meetings thru the Caucus. After the California Caucus, you can set your meetings for one per month or as needs be. Each AD CAN Group Meeting will have a 2 hour Jelly after your meeting for business. The business meeting should last no more than an hour. Open with one minute introductions, or break into 10 person groups for one minute introductions, just like at Camp Obama. Please vote on your final team selection of your Members for your Slate of 12 Candidates. Each Group will have only 12 Candidates per Slate.
- December 19th, your list of your 12 Member Slate needs to be in our hands for preparation of your electioneering materials, which you will need for the California Caucus, that will take place either January 8th or 9th, 2011, depending on the Democratic Party List. Your AD CAN Facebook Group Goal is to have 100 to 300 members by this Monday the 19th.
- Thru these weeks, everyone should be recruiting friends, family, supporters and other Registered Democratic Party voters to join your Local AD CAN Facebook Group. You will need to make your own Google Group to be able to share the contact data on your members and empower your team Admins to send email to all your supporters. We will recruit others to recruit others also.
- December 21st, 2010, we should have our CAN Citizen Manual posted ready for you to use as you see fit. We will post our schedules, budgets, general announcements and we will update that document as we go.
- Sunday December 26th, 2010: Your Goal is to have 500 to 1,000 members in your AD CAN FB Group. Others can and should set up home meetings for Jelly's and to build working friendships, as we move into the California Caucus Events.
- Please try to focus all your AD CAN FB Group Members on recruiting their friends into your AD CAN FB Group, as we move into the last week. If 500 people recruit 10 each, that is 5,000 people who you will want to come vote for your Slate at the Caucus. If you have 100 and they all recruit 10, that is 1,000 who will show up to vote at the caucus site. Voting takes 5 to 10 minutes. None of your voters has to stick around, but all 12 of your Slate For Change should be there to meet and greet and ask for votes from all who show up. This is old fashioned grassroot politics. This is also how you meet the people you will work with to help organize petition circulation. If you get more than 2,500 FB Group Members - you will need to set up a FB Page. FB Groups have size limits.
- January 8th and 9th, 2011: The CADEM California Caucus will take place at the locations the CADEM will announce according to their Calendar. Your goals are to have commitments of more than 2,000 voters to show up. In some Districts, 50 Voters will elect you. As a Slate of 12, your 500 to 5,000 voters should elect your total 12 Members. Some Districts will need over 1,000 voters to elect your Slate, and other Slates will be running.
- Sometime in January 2011, the State Attorney General's Office should issue our Titles and Summaries again, as is, and we will have new Initiative Numbers from the Secretary of State to put on our Petitions. Within 72 hours of our Certification to collect signatures, we will post our New Petition PDF Files for all to arrange for local printing. The information on our Legal Requirements will follow the New Year and State Certification.
- February, March and April, we are circulating petitions all over the 58 Counties in the State, from Del Norte County in the North to Imperial County in the South.
- We will organize regional Citizens' Congresses throughout California for late March 2011. This is to allow our Elected CADEM Delegates the chance to meet our supporters in each region as well as continue to become acquainted across District Boundaries. We will have new State Assembly District and State Senate District Boundaries and it matters to build our strength across our regions no matter what. We will poll our membership to see if everyone wants to demonstrate at the CADEM Annual Convention for the California State Democratic Party Endorsement.
- May, June, July, August of 2011, our teams will be growing house meetings across our State in all our Communities. We will hold monthly meetings focused on local issues as well as Statewide Actions in support of our efforts, as voted on per each group. There is not top down OFA, or Moveon.org or PDA, or DFA leadership structure to C.A.N. What you and your groups make of this is what it becomes.
- We suggest that by the end of August or the beginning of September 2011, each Assembly District CAN Team Change Group (these should be 1,000 to 5,000 people big) should vote for five of you, who will become your local Slate For Change group of Candidates for Constitutional Convention Delegates. This will allow those running to get to know the issues that matter to your membership.
- September and October 2011, we should have our teams assigned and working down into all 24,835 precincts in California for Get Out The Vote.
- November 1st, 2011 is the Statewide Vote.
- Within 15 days after our Victory, all 80 AD CAN Groups will individually host our own CAN California Caucus to vote on the final Five CAN Candidates for Constitutional Convention Delegates.
- The schedule in the Initiatives will kick in as our new State Law and the Convention Process will begin.
- After the Constitutional Convention is complete, we will all read and study our new Constitution. CAN will re-assemble up and down California to discuss and then vote for agreement on ratification in home meetings, town halls and community presentations. Based on our group votes - the whole State of California CAN Team Change will kick in as the hundreds of thousands of us together to work thru our home meetings and town halls into all the precincts of California and campaign for the ratification of our new State Constitution of our State of California.
Our two Constitutional Initiatives grant the People of California the right to: (1) call our "California Citizens Constitutional Convention" by Initiative; and (2) calls for the CCC Convention with our elected delegates to convene in Monterey. Our elected delegates will Draft our New State Constitution, to present back to us, the people of California, for our Ratification or rejection, by our majority vote. This will take three statewide elections. After we qualify our Initiatives for the November 2011 ballot, with all the signatures the Secretary of State says we need, we first need to pass both Initiatives. That is election one. After we pass our Constitutional Amendments in November of 2011, we will have to break into 80 small groups, organized by Assembly District, to elect the Assembly District Slates of Five Candidates each, for our Convention Delegates. This is election number two. After we win the passage of our two Constitutional Propositions, and before election number two, we anticipate we will call for a CAN Caucus again in all 80 Assembly Districts, so study what the Democratic Party does this January 8th and 9th in the CADEM California Caucus, as we will possibly need to repeat that process to hold our political power together. When the Delegates are done and the Convention is over and the new State Constitution is drafted, we will need to come together as one huge State Team again, and push for ratification by simple majority. That will be election number three. There is more, but that is what gets us a New State Constitution.
I originally filed both Constitutional Initiative Propositions with our State Attorney General on June 24th, 2009. I will personally re-file again, and my target date is Monday December 6th.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown issued the first clear "Titles and Summaries" for both of our Initiatives on August 14, 2009. We hope for these same Titles and Summaries, word for word. Please read and carefully consider the exact Language of both Initiatives in the link labeled "TEXT OF BOTH INITIATIVES", which you will find to your right. We are not changing one word. As we get closer to the new year, we will post a set of pages with videos that explain the text of each Section of Law and what each does and why. You can study these in home meetings or in small groups.
Our Proposed Article 36 grants us as the owners of our State to call a "California Citizens Constitutional Convention". This is required as our State Constitution does not grant us the power to call a Constitutional Convention, but we do have the power of our voters Initiative, so we can boot-strap our ability to call for our Convention.
Our Proposed Article 37 takes all the power granted to us, as voters, by Article 36, and then calls for our "California Citizens Constitutional Convention". Article 37 specifies the scope, powers, for election of delegates, and the campaign specifics of the campaign for convention delegates. Article 37 also specifies, the other participants, everyone's duties, site-location, term of duration, delegate compensation, convention security, sequestration to remove corporate influence, provision for public records and record keeping of all actions and decisions of the Convention, the ratification procedures, and requirements to be included to assure the succession and transfer of power from our current old State to our new State Government.
In early January of 2010, as the Author and Primary Proponent of both Initiatives, I pulled both Proposed Articles 36, and 37, as is, for resubmission later. That act allows me personally to re-file now, and request the State Government re-issue the Propositions exact "Titles and Summaries" as is. In 2009, we passed thru the 45 to 60 day waiting period. The process should be smooth, as we are not changing a word. We will ask for the re-issue now, to re-set all the calendar deadlines for 2011. Our original deadlines were set by the Secretary of State for 2009-2010, according to law. Both Initiatives, as is, have been thru the Governors Office of the State Director of Finance, as well as the Joint Finance Committee of the State Senate and State Assembly, as is. Since all those persons are still in office, we will ask for a simple re-issue of the Titles and Summaries already published in the PDF files you will find in the link for TEXT OF BOTH INITIATIVES. There will be some new number of signatures needed, as that is set as a percentage of voters who voted for Governor in the last election where we picked a new Governor. That number changed as of November 2nd, 2010, when we elected Jerry Brown Governor.
We begin anew. We must re-group, to secure the strong support of the pubic, grassroots and broad financial sponsorship as well as the individual and organizational endorsements required to build our Statewide Volunteer Team(s) necessary to circulate our petitions during the Spring of 2011. We must Organize California for the November 2011 Statewide Campaign to pass our Initiatives, and we must remain organized as we then work to elect our five Candidates for Convention Delegates, in every one of all 80 local Assembly Districts. We can rest when our elected delegates convene to draft our new California Constitution, but we again need to get to work to push hard for the ratification vote. At that point, we will have a new State government. Sure, we will elect all new Constitutional Officers and this CAN Organization may choose to continue on, but my work will be done. When I was a child in the 1950's, California worked. I have a dream. My dream is to leave this world with the knowledge that I did all I could to restore the California Dream and pass our collective California Dream on to as many as possible. We can change the world.
You are the grassroots campaign that will achieve well over one million voter signatures to qualify our Initiatives for the November 2011 Statewide Ballot. C.A.N. will post our CAMPAIGN MANUAL shortly, before December 21st 2010. Our Campaign Manual will contain our budgets, campaign plans, and scheduled goals for what we can and intend to accomplish. Just now, we started our fundraising, and operations. Our strategy would have to have been totally different had the Republican District Attorney from Los Angeles won the State Attorney General Election. Had Cooley won, we would have had to postpone re-filing, and we would have lost the opportunity to organize our Slate For Change in January of 2011. Now that Kamala Harris is the newly elected State Attorney General, we can resume with a "full speed ahead" ! ! !
We anticipate the California and National Republican Parties will deliver strong Corporate and Prison Industry opposition thru their GOP. The Republicans are the Political Party of the Global Corporations and Money Trusts, the Global Banks, and the Private and Public Sector Prison Industry Complex. Our whole grassroots effort strongly opposes the Corporate takeover of our State and Federal Governments by the Military Industrial Political Complex. The face of this Corporate control of political power is a "Global Banking Elite", which we see no government even attempt control. The power of this Money Trust, coupled with their International Corporations and their Private and Pubic Sector Prison Industries, clearly abuses and breaches all the federal limits on government established in the American Bill of Rights. A State Constitutional Convention is our last line of defense in the USA, due to the 10th Amendment, and already recognized States Rights. No other nation has this tool to reverse the current trajectory of history. It is up to us here in California, or we can admit the defeat of our Constitutional American Political Economic system and accept our return to feudalism.
There is no place in the United States Constitution that allows for a Federal War on Drugs. There is no 18th Amendment to set up the current Prohibition on all five classes of controlled substances. As such, a new California Constitution can end this war on the citizens of America, at least within our State's borders. As a State, we can end the financial bankruptcy this crazy Nixon Administration policy created. California now spends over $30 billion per year to surveil, arrest, prosecute, convict, warehouse, often torture, and repeatedly incarcerate human beings, who suffer a medical disease of alcoholic addiction. This is failed public policy on steroids. The financial cost to California of the failed War on Drugs? State Fiscal Bankruptcy. The moral cost of criminalizing a disease? Repugnant. Who pays the price? Ultimately, our children pay. We can no longer meet the Constitutional Right in California of all our State Residents to receive free top quality public education thru graduate school. This must change now.
We support a non-partisan plurality effort to pass both Initiatives. At this time, we are actively Organizing California as the California Action Network, within the California Democratic Party only. One critical goal is to attain the endorsement of the California Democratic Party (aka CADEM), in April of 2011. We now organize our Slate For Change to secure the CADEM endorsement at the Annual State Party Convention. This is how we now organize to push back - hard.
Our community organizing within CADEM is clearly focused within the millions of college and university students of California, who will be our new Political and Business Leaders in the future. This is one clear opportunity for all of you who are California's future owners to redesign the "California" you will call your home for the next 50 to 80 years. We must empower our Students, and all the future Businesses Owners, and all our social, economic Classes to rise to the responsibility of our ownership of our California Republic. We must have the courage and wisdom to start anew. We call for a clean sheet of paper approach to re-design and re-structure our current State Charter. Our current Constitution was drafted in the era of horses and wagons in 1879. Our 130 year old State Constitution was drafted before electrical power, before automobiles, before radio and television, and before the internet. The old document was written before tractors, the antique State Water Project, and Spaceflight. We can do better. We must. The only people who say California is not broken are those with vested special interests in not changing our deformed State Political System.
We support the free election of ALL C.C.C. Convention Delegates based on the principle of One Person/One Vote. This process delivers the core three democratic principles clearly spelled out in our Federalist Papers: (1) political equality; (2) majority rule; and (3) personal liberty. If you are a California Citizen and you are registered to vote, you will be eligible to run to become a Constitutional Convention Delegate. Everyone is included. Our Initiatives provide restricted and full public finance of all the Convention Delegate campaigns. This will keep the process fair.
We must open up all the current 35 Articles of our current Constitution to a "clean sheet of paper approach" to real solutions. This is called a full scope Convention. Once any Constitutional Convention convenes, history shows us that body always opens everything up anyway. We simply recognize this fact and empower our elected delegates to do exactly that. Please read what California uses as our State Constitution now. Google it and read for a while. Clearly it's no wonder that our State is broken, with all the cross-references, and all the cross-Article language. Our State Constitution is not clear and straight forward. Our United States Constitution is short, clear to read and easy to understand. Our current California State Constitution is a confusing, convoluted, Winchester Mystery House of language. It's a mess. The American Constitution has Seven Clear Articles. California has Thirty-five. We challenge any one to expose the clarity in our State Charter as is. No wonder lawyers love it.
We need to redesign California so it works for us now, and will continue to work into our 21st Century and beyond. What we have now may have served well the Robber Barons, Railroad Titans, and Lords of New York Banking and Wall Street Industries, from 1879 to now, but it does not work for our Public Interest, our Commonwealth nor our Commonweal.
We are certain that we must redesign and reframe Our State Government based on new blueprints. As you look at the structure of our campaign, it should be clear that this is your Grassroots Campaign. You and your friends will be the team in your local area. Our work together can only succeed with a movement behind it. We are all going to have to work from Del Norte in the North to Imperial in the South. We are all going to have to work hard, as this will take everybody!
Too much of California is structurally broken to address by single issue Initiatives. These single issue "Tune-up Propositions" are useless. What is worse, none of the special interest-big-money organizations, which promoted these single issues ever fully reveals their hidden agenda(s). Will a "Complete Engine Overhaul" approach work? What if we elect all new people? Will both the major Political Parties, who got us into this mess, fix anything, even with all new people? Clearly they can not, nor will not. Where is there any cooperation and focus on our public interests? Our politicians have learned to profit from how things are. Listen to them all argue against structural reform done by the people who own our State.
We need to start over and draw up new blueprints and design a new California Republic. Our State Government in Sacramento is structurally deformed. Our politicians are unable to address even our most basic needs as the Citizen Owners of California. Even with "one party rule" the State does not work. The needs of the many have Constitutionally disenfranchised by the special interests of the few.
Just over 30 years ago, California worked. One little known fact is that in 1978, Corporations paid 2/3rds of California's annual property taxes, and our Natural Citizens (the people) paid 1/3. In 2009, Corporations paid 1/3rd of California's annual property taxes, and our Natural Citizens paid 2/3rds. The corporation bought both political parties and got what they paid for from both Democrats and Republicans. Both our political parties gave us 26 huge new State Prisons in 27 years. In that same time frame, the politicians gave us one new University of California Campus in Merced.
Free top quality public education is a Right in California. How do we expect to compete in the global economy of the future with third world and third grade levels of comprehension from our high school graduates? Our public schools now graduate kids who can't deal with simple arithmetic let alone math. All our students today are the foundation of our economy in the future. We must compete with China, India, Russia, and Brazil, as well as with New York. California always led the United States. What are our schools doing ranked 50th out of 50? We must reject what our politicians have allowed. Generations of public school students indebted for life to the largest Privately owned New York Banks is not our State Master Plan for Education. All these student loans to New York Banks are not in our Constitution as how we do business. What were we thinking? We would do better to set up a State Bank and loan money for education to our own residents if our decision is to force children to pay to learn how to participate in our society when they grow up. My personal opinion is that the adults are supposed to pay for the kids and not the other way around, but I am only one vote.
As the Author of both Initiatives, I will post what I can here - but I need your help if we are going to pull this off. We are all going to have to help each other. I am doing all I can. Now it's up to you.
You each only have from now until December 8th 2010, to talk with your friends and decide if you personally will volunteer to run as one Candidate in you local Slate. C.A.N. will build one 960 member Slate For Change out of our Eighty "Slates of 12 Candidates for CADEM Delegate, in each of your local State Assembly Districts".
We need you to volunteer and recruit into 80 SLATE 4 CHANGE GROUPS. We need to elect our new Democratic Party Voters - we need to elect "our people" to the open 960 delegate CADEM slots. Here is where you sign up now: CADEM: SIGNUP BY 12/9/10.
I call on you to step up and move into our New California Democratic Party. We need 12 volunteers now, to declare to run in the little known California Caucus in each Assembly District.
We need your friends and your fellow activists to join YOU in our 80 Facebook Groups. Make these your groups, and your teams. You and your friends will then build your teams, and recruit 10 to 20 of your friends each. When 10 members each bring in 10, there is another 100. As you work your area, know that hundreds of others are working their areas also. Ask your friends and colleagues to show up and vote for you. Ask for your family and community members to vote for your SLATE 4 CHANGE on January 8th or 9th (it takes each voter 10 minutes to vote the Slate). If they vote for you now, they may vote for you later as a State Assembly Member in our New State Government. Why not you?
The Caucus Elections are on either January 8th or 9th, 2011. 40 Assembly Districts will vote on January 8th and 40 will vote on January 9th, 2011.
You personally have just 10 days from Monday November 29th to make up your mind and sign up. The sign up process takes 5 minutes. The deadline to sign up for CADEM is December 9th, and you must sign up "EXACTLY" as you are registered as a voter. You can call your County Department of Elections to check on you spelling and address. Once you have signed up, you will have one month to work with your team to collect your selves, and present your Slate. We will post all the slates for the general public to see.
In our 80 SLATE 4 CHANGE GROUPS, We will only include the CADEM Candidates, who support Public Education as a Right, and support Ending the War on Drugs. This is about real change. We support Majority Rule, constitutionally preserving Equal Rights, and establishing Single Payer and more. The videos and text will change on December 10th. We will archive all our statements and videos in our CAN Group Blog. The work has started. It's on. Join us. If not you - who? If not now - when?
We can do this - and this is up to all the Students of California now. Spread the word. Be the change you were waiting for. Obama is not going to do it for you. It's up to you to step up to the plate and try your best. We ask all those who support Single Payer to join in. If you support Equal Marriage Rights, join us. If your rank and file in your Unions, join in and become your link to your union's membership. Please share this site with all your California friends, Student Activists, Student Groups and Teacher Groups that are Organizing Locally. Please link up with all the 78 California Community College District Students and Teachers. LET'S MAKE THIS VIRAL IN CALIFORNIA !
To be a Candidate - is free, but you have to be a Registered Democrat in that Assembly District and have voted both last June 8th and November 2nd. If we as the organizing leadership team raise the $100,000 to fund everyone, we will fund your printed Slate Cards to use, and Buttons to hand out along with Coffee and Treats for your Supporter/Voters for when they show up to vote. If 12 of you sign up, and call a meeting - you can all bring your laptops and host a Jelly, to do Social Network Organizing. You can read on that in the"ORGANIZER TRAINING" page - the links are in the upper right.
Fire it up! Let's GO!
