ThinkLady

Please, just call me Ed

I'm voting for Ed because when I met him, he firmly shook my hand, took the time to look me in the eye and said, "Please, just call me Ed, just like you would any of your friends." He had me with "please" on that one!

As we talked, he was in no hurry to move to the next person waiting to speak with him. He was cordial, he patiently listened and responded to what I said (rather than using campaign talking points or speaking in vague generalities), and I watched him take that kind of time, pay that kind of personal attention, to each person he spoke with.

I'm voting for Ed Shadid, candidate for Ward 2 councilman in Oklahoma City, because he's pledged to bring openness, accountability and transparency to the MAPS projects and to push for all the projects the people voted for (not just for those the Chamber of Commerce wants). Ed believes in innovation and has great ideas for continuing the momentum in OKC in a way that benefits all of us.

I'm voting for Ed because he's an advocate for healthy, sustainable and resilient communities, for a strong local economy grounded in encouraging and supporting lots of local entrepreneurs and small and mid-sized businesses, and keeping more of our money here, in our community, where it can circulate and provide more and better paying jobs.

I'm voting for Ed because he's pledged to be an advocate for neighborhoods, for health, for senior citizens, for school kids, and because he's accessible. I've seen him out and about in our neighborhoods, making the rounds at all kinds of events, talking one-on-one to everyday people versus hobnobbing at high-dollar fundraisers.

I'm voting for Ed because he is not a professional bank lobbyist like his opponent Charlie Swinton, who I've yet to meet or see anywhere but on a cheesy billboard and in those disgusting mailers that have made me sick to my stomach with their hateful vitriol.

I'm voting for Ed because Swinton's very profession, bank lobbyist, means his loyalty and first responsibility is to the banking industry. This is deeply concerning to me, and in my opinion carries immense potential for numerous conflicts of interest.

I'm voting for Ed because while I appreciate all the good that the Chamber of Commerce, Chesapeake, Devon and Sandridge do for our community and am supportive of them in many ways, I don't feel that gives them the right to run our city and call the shots behind closed doors. I think we need at least one city councilman who will openly question the maneuvering of these power players in a civil, logical and fact-based manner. From what I've seen and heard from Ed, he's has the courage and wisdom to do just that.

I'm voting for Ed because he accepted no money from the Political Action Committees (PACs) that are making a sham of democracy. A half a million dollars spent on city council races is ridiculously wasteful. One in four children in Oklahoma are going to bed hungry every day -- what would have happened if these same cowardly PAC donors hiding behind a nonprofit organization set up to launder dollars for them instead spent that money on reducing childhood hunger? This is an opportunity to resoundingly repudiate the notion that he/she/it who spends the most money buys the office, to take back our democracy at the most local level from the insidious poison of money and the hideously undemocratic influence of special interests.

I'm voting for Ed because our democracy was founded on "we the people." That's not "we the people with a lot of money and power," but "we the people" with no regard for how much money any of us have. "We the people" is working families just barely scraping by. It's the just-out-of-college young adults who can't find decent jobs, and lonely seniors who can no longer drive and have no safe place to walk or a grocery store to walk to. It's moms and dads working multiple minimum-wage jobs just to make ends meet. It's people living in neighborhoods with bars on their windows and doors where it takes 45 minutes or more for the police to respond to an incident.

“We the people” is kids who go to schools without working kitchens, where the lunch menu is high-fat, high-sodium, processed foods; kids who -- unless we change the school food system -- are far more likely to become the first generation to die at a younger age than their parents. It's the poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to get a decent, well-rounded education, make a living wage, take care of themselves and their families, be happy. “We the people” is me, you, us.

I'm voting for Ed because for the first time in a very long time someone tore down my wall of cynicism and dared me to believe that not only will my voice be heard, but that it matters.

You matter! Please consider voting for Ed Shadid for Oklahoma City Ward 2 councilman tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5th.

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Chemical panty twist and honest growth

Couple of highlights from recent readings:

Organic White House Garden Puts Some Conventional Panties in a Twist

La Vida Locavore highlights Mid America CropLife Association's (MACA) miff fit and their Orwellian letter to our First Lady about her organic garden. MACA is another thread in the tightly woven web of big corporate ag machinations. A sampling of the corporations

represented on MACA's board of directors: Monsanto, Dupont, Bayer CropScience, Nufarm. According to SourceWatch, CropLife America

is:

" ... a trade association representing the manufacturers of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. It was formerly known as the American Crop Protection Association, and before that as the National Agricultural Chemicals Association.

CropLife America's rhetoric, and its name, indicates a shift in the pesticide industry's rhetoric and approach to public relations in the last decade. "CropLife America's mission," says its Web site, "is to foster the interests of the general public and CropLife America member companies by promoting innovation and the environmentally sound manufacture, distribution and use of crop protection and production technologies for safe, high-quality, affordable and abundant food, fiber and other crops."

The pesticide industry hopes to be know as the "crop protection" industry. The image it presents is one of a hi-tech, efficient, responsible, and green industry that is already thoroughly regulated to assure the safety of its products. While the industry quietly pursues an anti-regulatory agenda to assure no pesticides would be removed from the market, its trade association claims its aim is to "promote increasingly responsible, science-driven legislation and regulation."

and

"CropLife shares office space with Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE), a lobbying and public relations trade organization for the pesticide and fertilizer industry."

In "(No) Drill, Baby, Drill," New York Times columnist Tom Friedman riffs on Costa Rica's holistic approach to environmentalism and economic growth. I liked this:

" ... if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

That bit about honest growth - brilliant! Thank you Tom Friedman! Any bets on how long will it take for our state legislators to understand this concept?