are very lucky to have with us live in the studios this morning rocky anderson rocky anderson served two terms as the thirty third mayor of salt lake city utah between two thousand and two thousand and eight prior to serving as mayor he practiced law for twenty one years in salt lake city and he is executive director of high road for human rights and the two thousand and twelve justice party presidential candidate rocky thank you very much for coming and it's been great to be here and i love being in seattle thanks very much so start out tell us why are you running for president it took a long time for me to decide to do this but it really came to i had when i took a look at what's happened not only during the bush administration but being continued over into the obama administration with the utter disregard for the rule of law for the undermining of our most fundamental constitutional rights with the ramping up of the wars as well as the imperial presidency and then seeing how the republican and democratic parties together the believe that they've built they've created and now thrive from as corrupt and perverse systems this country's ever seen and much of it leading to the greatest disparity in income and wealth between a very small elite narrow financial aristocracy and the rest of americans it's got to stop this there corrupting influence of money in washington this plutocracy government by and for the wealthy rather than for the people and the ramifications are absolutely tragic in terms of the wars of aggression the human rights abuses that accompany them the threats to our freedoms but i never thought growing up and i went to law school because i believe so much in our system i practice law representing people against government agents and agencies against corporate interests that abuse their powers but i always had this firm belief that we have these protections in place with checks and balances of separation of powers and now we see this imperial presidency that has taken upon itself the power and with the complacency and complicity of congress of course the power to do things like target u s citizens for assassination for the first time in our things for which servicemen have been prosecuted in our nation's history during the philippines in one thousand nine hundred during the vietnam war we prosecuted servicemen they were subject to court martial for waterboarding and these agree just offenses violate clear violations not only of our treaty obligations but our domestic laws took place and then what does president obama do when he comes into power speaking as a tyrant and i don't use that word loosely but this is the definition of tyranny when one person can say that there are a class of people that will not be held accountable under the law but there are people who are above the law it really harkens back to richard nixon and david frost during the interview famous interview when this  after nixon was run out of office and nixon said when the president does it that means it's not illegal but i think that was president bush's clear view that he was above the law but we all thought we were getting change with president  a and instead he has institutionalized the imperial presidency saying let's just look forward not backwards and there will be no accountability and not even an investigation not even a  facts and disclosing the american people what happened and then he makes it all the worse by not only engaging in his assassination program c on manned drone program where hundreds of innocent people including one hundred seventy five children have been killed by unmanned drones and then most recently under the n d a assuming the power to point to anyone in the world including u s citizens and say that you can kidnap them haul them away to a military brig hold them incommunicado their families would not even know where they are no right to legal assistance no charges no trial no right of habeas corpus that is absolutely un american it is so incredibly subversive and i think anybody that has any sense of our nation's traditions and at least what we have always aspired for although there have been failings on our nation's part at times we've always speired toward these values and that's what this campaign is all about and that's why i decided to run for president united states and co found the justice party the justice party is all about social economic and environmental justice all right so why do it through the justice party and not through the democratic party which you were a part of well the democratic party and the republican party together have brought us to this point president obama took more money from wall street than any candidate in the history of this country and they got a great return on their money we see this economic disaster and granted it was there when when he came into office but who does he bring in to respond to that disaster the very people who helped pave the way toward it who led the charge for deregulation and now and we know there was massive fraud it would probably only know the tip of the iceberg but we know how these people brought these toxic mortgages together many of them not worth the paper they were written had them ranked as triple a securities sent them out in the marketplace including pension plans upon which working men and women and their families depend trillions of dollars lost in pension plans and our economy because of the economic meltdown and all of this fraud on the part of wall street and not one major player held to account under the law so again this is a two tiered system of justice in this country not only do we have a two  economic system the return to the gilded age but in our justice system it is so clear now that there are those privileged elites that are not held accountable under the law one other laws are applied sometimes with a vengeance against the rest of us we have the highest incarceration rate in the world hundreds of thousands of people behind bars in this country for first time drug  it makes absolutely no sense and we the people are getting shafted every single day well the corporations who byelection zx and who finance with many millions of dollars these lobbying blitzes they have their way with both the white house and with congress so saying that you can get in the democratic party and work from within these folks don't want the changes they thrive from the screw up system not none of them are talking about public financing none of them are talking about a constitutional amendment to overrule the citizens united case in the concept of corporate personhood none of them have ever heard president obama talk about the public's airwaves be logging to the public and that there ought to be free and equal time for candidates and when you he advocate for third party or independent candidates to join with him and mitt romney on the stage during the presidential debates these people are interested in more democracy  everything they can to limit the choices of the american people and not have to confront the arguments that we have about what they've done to this country talk about the hurdles that you have to deal with as a third party you mention the presidential debates and i know in the past the limited few third parties that we had coming forward and getting in on those was nearly impossible w i think exception of ross perot it doesn't happen anymore and the reason is that the presidential debate commission you hear those words you think all this must be a governmental ors quasar governmental or independent commission it was a sole creation of the democratic and republican parties there's a great book called no debate about it it's amazing you read about this you see what's happening to our democracy generally in this country they get together and they say well there are candidates so we're going to hijack these debates away from the league of women voters who used to take control they ran them independently and the way it works now as representatives of the candidates for the two dominant parties this do wop leave the republican democratic party they get together they drive they negotiate and draft a memorandum of understanding they set forth the format how many debates there will be where they'll be held and they turn that over the commission which to to flee salutes and says ok we will go make this happen and it will always include the provision that there be no other parties you won't hear third parties or independent candidates participating on those debates and again it really so emasculates our democracy it emasculates any sense of the people having a real choice for real change in this nation so what do we get we get these boring soundbites that these candidates have and they're the ones that have decided everything from the format to how many debates there will be bill clinton was seventeen points up in the polls over robert dole and robert dole was so adamant about not allowing ross perot on the stage that he got that concession from president bush or president clinton and clinton got to call the rest of the shots so his spokesperson said ok ninety second responses there will only be two debates and we're scheduling them opposite of the world series playoff games that's exactly what happened george stephanopoulos later conceded to chris matthews that they did everything they could to make sure that those debates were non events because president clinton was so high up in the polls and they didn't want anything to go wrong so none of this of course is in the interest of our democracy none of it is in the interest of the public and the public doesn't tune in to these debates anymore they're they're they're the most rapid boring discussions now very on informative and certainly not allowing people like ralph nader ross perot even pat buchanan on the stage look at the loss to the american people from not having those voices and we know third party candidates if they can get their message out even if they don't win elections they can help drive important positive change in this country ross perot did it in terms of the budget nobody was talking about deficits are the cumulated budget until ross perot got involved in that campaign teddy roosevelt  thing when he ran as a third party candidate and with the progressive party almost his entire platform in his campaign was ultimately implemented and law and that's exactly what we intend to do here when we get out to the american public and thank you by the way for giving us the sopper to nitty today because this is real democracy having people here other than this this  from the republican and democratic parties we ought to be talking about the real problems and how to learn how to turn things around in the public interest in this nation ok well let me ask you a question about one of those problems to turn around what might be the single largest one you stand on your your platform or on your website to an end to the stranglehold on our government by the military industrial complex how would you and that stranglehold well as president i did states my budget would reflect a huge decrease in military spending and i never use the word defense spending i think that nomenclature is really fraudulent we haven't engaged in defensive military for probably since world war two it's been aggressive military it's been empire building military spending and it's been a huge boondoggle for the military contractors and they've got it down they know how this game works and congress has been so incredibly pandering to that industry so that they can get votes they know that if they're contractors or subcontractors in their districts or states and they can send home the pork it's the worst kind of pork barrel politics then it's good for them politically but i call it treason and again i don't use that term loosely but it's a total betrayal of our nation when for their own political purposes they're spending billions and billions of dollars to be able to send money back home to their districts and states and then it's everybody scratch and everybody else is backs in congress ok will spend money in my state or district so i'll vote for the program in your district the f twenty two  a perfect example of this outmoded weapons program total waste of money secretary of defense says we need to get rid of the president says we need to get rid of it people were still fighting republicans and democrats alike for billions of dollars of funding for the f twenty two program because they had contractors or sub contractors in their states and so what do these contractors do when they want to continue these programs with  f twenty two program there are contractors or subcontractors in forty four states now you know that's going to be more expensive and far less efficient but that's how they lock in members of congress from both parties to spend our money money that could be going into education money that could be going into infrastructure in this country their meets needs to be a major  do with our nation's resources and in connection with that ending these wars and sending the signal we never again will engage in a war of aggression and when you when you hear the term preemptive war that is war of aggression it's the international crime for which people were tried and convicted at nuremberg so how would you deal with the outcry coming from again  the military industrial complex the two things they would say is a you're leaving us unsafe against all these other countries potential places like north korea or whatever but more importantly they'll be screaming jobs jobs jobs because if you look at let's say washington state here i mean we're in a very militarized corridor here just in the greater seattle area we've got multiple military bases we've got boeing and other military contractors are in between hanford and the banger nuclear sub base largest repository nuclear weapons and all the while our nation's infrastructure is deteriorating we need repairing the nation's infrastructure we need to to repair our roads our bridges our buildings can you imagine if and this is something i absolutely advocate every federal building thirty years or old should be retrofitted so that it meets gold silver platinum lead standards it's an investment in the future it's putting people to work it's great training for people who need to move into the new green economy so that we can catch up with the rest of the civilized world and there would be massive savings and energy over the long term it's a win win win on all levels let's put our resources our people in these productive sectors of society rather than simply building more armaments and we know that the building of armaments leads us in to these empire building wars that have got to end because if you're talking about security when people say all you're going to leave us less safe we are so far less safe now than we were a dozen years ago creating the kind of hatred and hostility that would have been hard to imagine before the response of the bush administration continuation that response by the obama administration to the tragic events on nine eleven we had world support after nine eleven hundreds of thousands of people into iran standing in a candlelight vigil right after nine eleven showing solidarity and sympathy with the american people we botched absolutely blew the opportunity to work with other nations confront the threat of al qaida but all of us coming together to create greater security greater solidarity among the people of our nations  and i urge that the people of this country continue demonstrating solidarity with the people of iran by the way they were candlelight vigils in this country after the last election in iran when there was so much violence by the government toward the people there so it's on both sides so the people have it right it's our leaders that have it so absolutely wrong and we need to focus on what's really going to build a more congenial peaceful world rather than engaging the kinds of atrocities that are guaranteed to create so much hatred more hatred and hostility you don't go around with unmanned drones i mean we we say we're we're pulling our troops out of iraq and still sending unmanned drones over iraq's air space our president says sen drones into pakistan india yemen and other nations there's been no authorization for war by congress there's no authorization for war by congress and went into libya and then people like john mccain were saying well we're doing it for me or we don't have any soldiers on the ground and it's going to be over really quickly so it's not the kind of hostility this is not were making it's absolutely absurd the founders would be outraged that one person the president ited states could take upon himself the decision to send our nation to war send our armed forces into hostilities without the authorization of congress and congress has been derelict because they won't stand up to it and when the decision is placed before them under the gulf of tonkin resolution and then the resolution for the authorization of force against iraq they just passed off the president was an absolutely unconstitutional delegation of power the sole purpose of congress to the president and i submit that in each of those instances of congress and lived up to its constitutional responsibility if they'd undertaken the fact finding they would have found out the lies that were being told by the johnson administration perspective vietnam by the bush administration with respect to iraq and we would not have gone to war in either of those instances had congress lived up to its constitutional responsibility the other large major problem i see is corporations how would you deal with the stranglehold that corporations have over this country when you look at every major public policy failure it's because of the corrupting influence of money from corporations both in the means of dollars they put into campaigns they buy these candidates no question about it and then the lobbying blitzes that they sponsor and the solutions are there but you won't hear them from either the republican or democratic parties because they are both feeding at the same trough of special interest money that's how they thrive that's how they do as well as they do and that's how they've developed this so you put in place a system of public financing for campaigns you over rule even if it takes constitutional moment to do it the citizens united case you get rid of this concept of corporate personhood which is absolutely so perverse when when mitt romney talks about corporations being people they don't have hearts conscience as they don't have souls they don't look out for each other they have one purpose and that is to maximize profits what ever it takes you wouldn't have these arms manufacturers that are sending arms all around the world and creating such havoc if they were people with conscience so and then again the public airwaves like we're doing today there ought to be free and equal time for all candidates if the sandinistas in their garage can do it and they did i was there in hundred three and saw it first hand i was blown away here the reagan administration saying all they've got is soviet style one party sham election in fact they had seven parties across the political spectrum and they each had national free and equal television and radio time there was such a an amazing political dialogue going on something that we never see in this country and their elected officials along with their cabinets appeared before the people at regular televised meetings and had to answer their questions not just these vetted questions by journalists that are posed during the infrequent press conferences that our presidents have so there's a a lot that we can do to enrich our democracy there ought to be very strict limitations on campaign contributions and there's no reason for these campaigns to go on for years in this country mitt romney's been running for president for what six years now and look at the the hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into it this shouldn't just be a rich man's game and it certainly shouldn't be a government that's bought and paid for by the corporate sector about two minutes left so what is the long range goal for the justice party is it just your campaign or is this expanding to other campaigns as well you know that's a great question the justice party was formed to create a long term powerful political force in this country for the people and broad based this isn't just a sliver of the of the left in this country we're talking about the fundamentals that matter to the vast majority of people and there is a private storm brewing in this country in support of a new third party the polls show that people want it the last poll i saw fifty four percent of people said yes we need a major third party or independent candidate and historic eight percent approval rating of congress there's no question that the american people want to see this so the justice party is in there for the and again my candidacy is in very large part to grow the momentum among the people of this country to make it clear to our elected officials and others that we're not going to put up with this sunny more we want our government returned to one that is by and for the people and that we're not going to stand for the corporate control of the united states government any longer we're talking with rocky anderson he is the two thousand and twelve justice party presidential candidate and you are doing several more speaking engagements here in a greater seattle area i believe yeah and it will be the way you've got such a great activist community i've worked a lot over the years with people from this community  we had a fund raising event and i spoke last night at a dinner and today we're kicking off the ballot access campaign washington is one of those states that doesn't have a really high threshold we can get on the ballot will be meeting today at ten o'clock at the market pig place market to get the market and figure out the market place market and actually last time i was here with some people wasn't political event but that seemed to be the one meeting place that everybody knows about so we'll be meeting there at ten o'clock kicking off the ballot access initiative we encourage people come join us we'll have the petition forms and we just need to get people to sign off on these petitions and we will be on the ballot in washington i just received the progressive party nomination in oregon i'll be on the ballot there ralph nader was there to kate his support for me he was the progressive party candidate in oregon last time around and we're picking up a lot of support everywhere in the country we've got volunteers and some thirty states now working hard to get us on the ballot we're on in utah mississippi seeking the peace and freedom party nomination in california and this again is it's a tough battle made it very very difficult for people in this country to have their choice but thank goodness state of washington still makes it very possible and i just prefer everybody who's come out to support this new people's movement and where ever you are you don't have to give up your political affiliation you can stay in whatever party you're with but please come support this campaign support what we're standing for because the message will get through as we build this movement all right well with that we're in for santa time i want to thank you very much for coming and spending time of this a sworn thanks very much and i just urge people go to our web site vote rock dot org you'll see how you can get involved and there's a lot of good substance or about this campaign about the issues so i'm going to speak for about twenty to twenty five minutes and then we'll do breakout groups just like we have in the past with the common good caf basically what i'll talk about tonight is why i got involved with i want to three and how corporations exert power in seattle i'm also going to talk about how things change because one of the most common questions i get is can we do this and so i want to say yes we can in fact we are and then we'll do our breakout groups and then we'll come back from the break out groups and we'll have a group question and answer session so i'm really glad that you're here and with that i'll get started so why am i here how did i end up trying to do this this was a two thousand and four article some of you may have seen bill gates in a gorilla suit on the seattle weekly and this was an article i wrote called citizen microsoft where we were basically asking the question what kind of citizen is microsoft and we determined that at that time microsoft was out there saying that that us taxpayers needed to step up and spend more money on public education and i have been uncovered that at the same time they were saying this they had lobbied to reduce the rate of the royalty tax in washington and also started an office in nevada psystar dodging the royalty tax taxes and so they were being complete hypocrites and over the past fourteen years microsoft has earned five hundred seventy nine billion dollars so if you include lobbying and tax dodging in nevada they've saved four point three seven billion dollars which coincidentally the amount of money we've cut from k through twelve and higher education in washington is about four billion dollars under growth governor gregoire  so a couple of years ago i started blogging about this at microsoft tax dodge dot com and i went to the legislature and i thought that you know there was a two billion dollar deficit at that time and microsoft accounted for over one billion dollars and one point two four billion dollars and i thought this is a no brainer microsoft wants to spend more on education and the legislature is going to be concerned about this tax dodge so here's what happened democratic head chair of the finance committee ross hunter he's a seventeen year x microsoft veteran he led the change to the law so that the royalty tax was redefined and shrunk dramatically so that actually the tax didn't exist in its form anymore and so microsoft essentially wasn't really dodging the tax but just to cover his bases he also added in a clause so that microsoft would have amnesty from their back taxes and if that wasn't enough the governor shortly after appointed one of my former coworkers susan to run the tax department and she still worked at microsoft a few years before and then she's still married to one of my former bosses rick who's the president of the microsoft office division so you can see it's very close quarters between microsoft and the department of revenue and then the governor she went around praising microsoft and boeing for especially microsoft giving five million dollars a year to scholarships for to expand the tech graduate program and of course she didn't mention that the company was saving one hundred million dollars because of the bill she just signed one hundred million dollars annually so you may not have heard of this because the seattle times has never written about it but they do let microsoft's general counsel brad smith write columns from time to time in his february column he talked about again taxpayers need to step up fund education and he specifically talked about he supports the governor's plan to increase the sales tax washington state already has the most regressive tax in the nation and so to increase the sales tax to pay for education the four billion dollars that we've cut when microsoft is saved four billion dollars when it's the most profitable company in the country is just incredible i mean you have to really try hard to be that hypocritical so what i learned from this experience was that nothing was going to happen going to the state legislature and the governor and not much was going to happen going to the media and so i started to look elsewhere for change so before i go into what kind of change i want to talk about how corporations influence things in seattle about two years ago you may remember the american the seattle city council passed a plastic bag tax everybody remember that ok there's a twenty cent fee i think on plastic bags the american chemistry council spent one point four million dollars to launch a referendum campaign to essentially undo what the seattle city council had done and they were successful so that eliminated the plastic bag fee last year you may remember that costco spent twenty two million dollars statewide to privatized the liquor industry so those are two examples of how corporations are influencing power if they have a law that they don't like they'll file a referendum and they'll recall the law if they have a law that they want that they think will help make them more profitable they'll fund initiative  the reason they're able to spend this kind of money is it's very archaic law goes back to eight hundred eighty six santa clara versus southern pacific rade railroad and its corporate personhood which has everyone here heard of corporate personhood so in eight hundred eighty six the court formalized that they believe that corporations should be treated as persons under the law and be granted equal protection rights just like any of us citizens and that  begat a number of problems that are still making themselves felt in our society among them that corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money because that's free speech to them so that's how they're able to pay for this referendum discrimination for the slaves and create more social justice in our country and every legal case where corporations assert personhood today is based on the work of the abolitionists and these laws that were meant to and you know horrible history of slavery and discrimination in our country and so you might be saying well they don't really regularly use these laws or a well i'm going to give you another example this is a present day how many of you have heard about the city of seattle's phonebook opt out ordinance  so i've opted out yeah one fifth of people and businesses in the city have opted out and said that they don't want phone books as soon as the city passed this law the phone book company sued the city and the law has been very popular it's saved three hundred forty tons of waste and stopped four hundred twenty thousand phone books from being delivered the phone book companies lost their lawsuit right away but they've appealed and the appeal has been going on for about a year so it's cost the city well over one hundred thousand dollars already and it continues to drag on and if you read the tea leaves it looks like the city may actually lose the lawsuit which means that they may have to pay the attorneys fees of these companies and penalties to these companies and we may soon be of phone books dropping on our porches again so how is it that these phone book companies can overturn the law well dex media super pages and the yellow pages claim that their corporate persons and that the yellow pages are free speech and that actually the directory listings in the phone books are being transferred across state lines and that it's not the city constitutionally can't regulate the transfer of that information across state lines that only congress can regulate and they're claiming that they're equal protection rights have been violated are you with me ok so you thought that this was just an academic discussion it's actually going on all around us so it's costing taxpayers money and they're trying to overturn popular laws so again let's back up if you don't like the law you can have it referendum you can pass a referendum if you if you want your own law you can file for an initiative and if you don't think that you can get the taxpayers behind recalling a law then you can actually just file a lawsuit and cost the taxpayers a bunch of money so another way to influence the government in seattle is to go behind the scenes and lobby so how many of you have heard about the two hundred million dollars the taxpayers of seattle have offered up for another n b a arena ok now how is it that these plans just are sort of a arrive at the doorstep and are reported in the seattle times as these sort of well packaged things well the mayor has been talking to chris hans this hedge fund investor for months and they've been working out the details and then they sort of drop in our lap hate this cake it tastes good so if you thought we already had an n b a arena like cyrena then you probably were wro the mayor seems happy to suggest the citizens should put two hundred million dollars towards paying for another basketball arena but when it comes to actually training the police to be responsible and to protect us properly he's afraid of spending forty million dollars it's the fact that these corporations can go behind our back and just lobby in private needs to change so we talk about referendums initiatives lawsuits lobbying there's another way basically just the status quo which is that the city's afraid to take on another lawsuit so let's look at the coal train coming to ballard and seattle how many of you heard about the coltrane so peabody energy wants to ship coal to asia f montana for the next fifty years and to do it they're going to send eighteen mile and a half long coltrane's through seattle up to bellingham now this is bad for seattle in so many ways we are a city that cares about climate change the city council has a resolve to do something about climate change and yet we have no power to stop the coal from moving through our city being shipped to china and burned and it will increase climate change and fall back to us acid rain but basically just the threat of a lawsuit if the city were to try to regulate the coal trains they would be slapped with a lawsuit again the commerce clause saying that it regulate interstate commerce so  these are the again the you know the referendum process the initiative process lawsuits and lobbying these are ways that corporations are are impacting our city today so if the idea of corporate personhood isn't bad enough  take it one step further would you be surprised to learn that these companies actually aren't even american so the american chemistry council has members such as japan's mitsubishi chemical corp and germany's of onic and the netherlands the nobel and india's dorf cattle so these companies were able to mount be part of a referendum campaign to overturn our city laws the yellow pages media association represents one of their members which is the yellow pages group of canada which is a canadian corporation peabody energy is owned twelve percent by foreign investors so when we talk about microsoft tax dodging a while ago their own seven percent by foreign investors so when you look at this eight hundred eighty six law granting corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights such as free speech and protections from the commerce clause and equal protection when you grant them to these corporate persons you're not even giving them to americans anymore so there's just no basis in our constitution our declaration of independence or any of our founding documents for this transfer of constitutional rights from americans to these non human beings that are actually not even owned by americans so when we say yes to laws that we want like we want to stop phone book delivery or we want to tax plastic bags because they're harmful to the environment you can see how our laws are getting overturned when we we can't necessarily say no to things like phonebooks or the coal train because then they can sue over the commerce clause and say that only congress can regulate these kinds of industries a new approach is definitely needed would you all agree based on and so for me that approach has been the community environmental legal defense fund which i got involved with actually around the time of that article i showed you and their approach has been to work with communities and say we're no longer going to play on this an even playing field that has been corrupted by corporate money we're no longer going to limit ourselves to the too bad choices of do we go with the republicans or the democrats so what they've started doing in communities all around the country is passing laws that basically ban corporate harms and then strip corporations of these personhood rights and these constitutional rights that were really only granted by judges in the  century that actually never appear in any of our founding documents so is everybody with me ok so what does i want to three do well the first piece of it is that it creates sensible limits on corporate power so what that means is we're eliminating corporate personhood judgment corporate constitutional rights this would stop things like the phone book lawsuit in court i listen to the arguments in the district court appeal case and the arguing over whether yellow pages and white pages are free speech or commercial speech but they never asked the question are these phone companies persons should they be able to file a lawsuit against the city should they have equal protection rights weekend at the fremont parade and i had people coming up to me all weekend saying i want to sign that thing so to me i'm in receive two hundred thousand dollars from b p and conoco phillips and he funnels that into signature gathering with i want to ban on corporate spending he wouldn't be able to use that money to pay signature gathers in seattle he might still be able to do it in other cities but not here in seattle and because we're one of the biggest areas of the state it will be a lot more challenging for him the american chemistry council would never have been able to spend one point four million dollars on a referendum campaign so and another thing one of three does is it restricts lobbying by corporations to public forums so this whole n b a arena deal it would never have been able to happen except in in the broad light of day so that we would all have been a part of the discussion from the beginning the other huge piece of initiative one of three is that it creates a community bill of rights it provides rights for nature so when we're talking about well nature under our legal system is property means that only certain people who have standing that m affected by the property that they own or nearby the property that they own only certain people can sue and there's all sorts of rules about what you can sue for and what kind of damages but the fact is seattle wants to be able to say no to the coltrane the coltrane makes no sense at this day and age with the climate on the brink we have to stop the coltrane and just check in the time here and and state and federal regulations do not provide the power for the city to stop the coltrane so initiatives one of three rights for nature basically says the citizen seattle give the city council the authority to pass laws that protect our community and protect our environment and that's how initiative one of three would be used to just ban the coltra e we also provide citizen oversight of the police department because a lot of us in this room have been at rallies peaceful rallies peaceful protests where the police show up in militarized garb and intimidate people they show up in black of vans lines of gang police the westlake there are mounted police again police it's just a huge overreaction and some of you may have seen this on the news last night some friends and colleagues of mine were out marching against student debt like they had for the two weeks previous peacefully and last week the seattle police escorted them by bike down broadway and were smiling and joking with them and last night the seattle police showed up in police cars and started driving the cars pushing them against the sidewalk and then started grabbing people from the crowd in a way that incited the crowd into more of a violent energy and there was a fight that broke out between the police and the protesters and if you watch the video it's clear that the police were making poor judgments and probably that the march had been peaceful until the police started to intervene so there's clearly problems with the police the entire department of justice in the end is a sign of that and so initiative one of three is trying to make sure that we have the right to protect our democracy to go out into the streets to gather to to rally it also provides neighborhoods the right to prove major zoning changes so the mare's the mayor has proposed zoning changes to capitol hill that would allow first floor retail in areas that today are primarily resit residential the capitol hill council has been against these changes i want to three would require that neighborhoods be able to approve these changes with a fifty percent majority and i know that some people are really concerned about this but if you can't convince fifty percent of a neighborhood that a change is good as a commercial change does owning then you're ramming down the throat these changes and so also in the soto area where the n b a arena would appear  business leaders there are quite concerned about how the n b a arena will affect freight and traffic and so they should also have a say in whether the zoning changes take place and one of three is written smartly and that if this is about transit or public health or safety one of three doesn't apply it doesn't affect changes to zoning that would affect things that are related to the public good another problem the other thing the initial one of three does is it provides rights for workers constitutional rights in the workplace and collective bargaining rights steve lansing was here last week how many of you were here you heard him mention that the biggest challenge to workers in seattle is not getting enough hours so grocery stores like safeway pharmacies like while greens what they're doing is they're putting their employees on these part time schedules that change frequently so you actually can't make enough money to get by you can't get benefits you're dependent on that employer and your schedule changes so much that you actually can't take a second job because you can't coordinate your schedule and so it's important that workers be able to organize that they be able to meet with each other and so they give you a put up a flyer in a coffee break room you're going to get punished or fired and so one of three would provide the kinds of protections that help workers organize safely and to hopefully push back against these these powers that are making really destroying our middle class in seattle i want to three also addresses internet network neutrality so network neutrality is basically it's the way the internet mostly operates today which is that everybody's bits coming from everybody's websites are treated the same and that's important because things like the i want to three blog we don't have the money to pay comcast a premium we don't have really any money so we can't pay anyone a premium to deliver our bit at the same speed that netflix gets there's bits delivered to that microsoft gets there but still living so we rely on network neutrality to make sure that everybody has a fair fair and equal access to our to our website so that's one of the things that i want three would legislate it would make law the status quo of the internet today you may have also heard the city of seattle had these pilot municipal why five projects right here great where we're standing and then also in columbia city those were quietly unplugged a few weeks ago i don't know if you know that because of budget cuts and so the idea that the city of seattle would be a groundbreaking leader in municipal broadband that's been just shelves for now there's just no plans for that so we are now even more dependent on comcast and century link which have the monopolies to our fiber and our cable and so i think it's really important that we that i want to three includes these basic internet protections so how do things change the most common question that i get again is can you actually do this you know they're like the supreme court past citizens united and that's a federal law  well the constitution as written if you know your constitution it indoor slavery it indorsed women couldn't vote and those things have changed over a long period of time and the way that they changed in some cases war and some cases but generally legal battles and the way those legal battles start is somebody passing a law and then someone challenging that law and that's exactly what we're doing with initiative one or three and it's happened in washington state before so for forty years from eight hundred ninety seven to one nine hundred thirty seven at the end of the industrial age the supreme court used to outright overturn minimum wage laws all across the country and then washington state passed its minimum wage law and a woman  named elsie parrish she was a hotel chambermaid in one achey she sued and she actually lost in court and she took it to the state supreme court and she won and then the supreme court upheld that and from then on the supreme court honored labor standards laws and minimum wage laws differently and that was a precedent that had gone on for forty years just like citizens united seems like it's unsurmountable right now but so we know that change like this has happened in washington before and we can look to that as an example that the way we're doing this is correct and the supreme court's approval rating right now is at a twenty five year low fifty four percent i'm sorry sixty five percent of democrats and republicans disapprove of citizens united and the next president is going to get two point three supreme court justices so we believe that we're doing this at the proper time and that popular opinion is on our side so if i want to three passes and makes it to the supreme court one day we will be in good shape so what's important about one of three is that it focuses on structural change we're actually making law that changes the playing field a lot of times i think actions focus on things that don't change like maybe it's petitions where really the purpose is to collect your email address so they can hit you up for money or rallies and protests that don't have a clear focused endgame or ongoing lobbying to the state officials like i was doing to try to get them to fix the tax loophole for microsoft i mean we have to ask ourselves are these actions that we're taking effective and what i want to three is doing is you know forgetting all that and it's saying let's change the law here we have the right to do that in seattle let's do it and let's set an example let's be inspirational for other communities and let's be aspirational i think sometimes that we've created a mental cage around ourselves that we've convinced ourselves that we have to play by the the rules that have been set up and the rules aren't fair and that there's no way around those rules and so what i want to three is doing is it's throwing out the rules and it's just it's following the law that we have which is a citizens we can organize and put an initiative on the ballot and pass it and change the law and that's what we're doing so what's the status well we haven't spent any money on signature gathering we were talking earlier some of you may have heard there's a charter schools initiative where they're paying signature gatherers four to five dollars a signature there's half a million dollars being spent over the next month we haven't spent a cent we are all volunteer we're all grassroots and i have a stack of initiatives signed by seattle voters who went to and signed by that signed by voters who the idea of corporate power resonates and they know that it needs to change and they've signed this that we can't let those people down so in order to qualify for the ballot we need to bring more people into the mix everybody who's done a little need to do a little more and if you haven't been involved or haven't engaged yet i need you to do a little because this is not going to we're not going to succeed in getting this on the ballot without everybody's help to try to do this without any money i know it's i don't know if it's ever been done before  closing i'd like to say that i want to three is really radical change you know we have been immersed in a society that has added these fictional rights to corporations for over a hundred years and we're starting to unwind that with i want to three and challenge what's possible when we live in communities that don't have to subject themselves to corporate personhood and corporate speech and corporate spending in elections and corporate lobbying and so i think i want to three is quite radical and i hope that you're excited about it so with that that's very fast intro into what we're doing we're going to do breakout and the question i would like to leave  as you break into your groups is what do you think i'd like your help brainstorming what do you think we can do in our neighborhoods to raise awareness for some of the issues that i've brought up tonight and for initiative one of three because we need twenty thousand signatures from seattle voters so i would really like your help and ideas about how to make more people aware of this and keep in mind we're in an environment where the media doesn't want to cover this the seattle times hasn't mentioned this to anyone the seattle weekly hasn't mentioned this to anyone i am actually doing an interview tomorrow with the stranger so i'm super excited about that but those are the three big papers in seattle and so i would really like your help in thinking how do we do this the other thing i'd like to do is you're in your breakout is what are you willing to do personally for one or three are you willing to make a personal commitment so there's a couple things on your chairs there's a list that you can take home it's a checklist of how you can help and maybe you can refer to that in your brainstorming and there's a little card and if you're willing to make a personal commitment of some kind of any kind write down that in your email address i can get in touch with you or your phone number and and we would really appreciate that so thank you very much let's split into groups