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VOTE THIS TUESDAY: (Arizona Edition)

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6th is election day. If progressives want a solid voice in American politics we gotta influence elections. And off-year, low voter turnout elections like what is coming up TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6TH are the best chances for progressives to affect the outcome.

Continuing my push to get out the progressive grassroots for the 2007 election on TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6th, I now turn to Arizona.

Here are two endorsements by Progressive Majority, one of the most effective progressive grassroots organization in the country, for Arizona voters:

Marie Lopez Rogers, Candidate for Mayor of Avondale (Incumbent)

Mayor Marie Lopez Rogers of Avondale is running for reelection as the only Latina in a Latino/a city. She was appointed Mayor in January 2006, has lived in the district for 50 of her 57 years, and is a former member of CWA. She is endorsed by the police, firefighters, AFL-CIO and SEIU. Marie is a strong progressive, and she is the key to halting or slowing legislation from a city council that is dominated by conservatives.

This was previously an agricultural town that is rapidly growing with scores of subdivisions along Interstate-10 west of Phoenix. It also includes Phoenix International Race Way that attracts tens of thousands of people to NASCAR races. Marie wants to preserve the quality of life in Avondale by working for safer streets and neighborhoods, providing efficient cost-effective city services, and ensuring a vital economy through an appropriate balance of residential, commercial and recreational development.

Also endorsed by Governor Janet Napolitano, the Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona, and others.

Click here to support and learn more about Marie.

John Williams, Candidate for Surprise City Council - District 3 (Challenger)

John is a first-time candidate running for the Surprise City Council, District 3. He is a high school teacher, husband, father of three, and member of the Peoria Education Association. John has been endorsed by The Arizona Republic and the police association. This is a rapidly growing city whose Council's actions have been very controversial on a number of issues. One of the more blatant council votes was when they increased their pensions retroactively to the date they first took office. Despite the public outcry, John's opponent continues to defend his vote on the measure. The council has also been accused of violating the open meeting law on a number of occasions, increasing their own personal car allowances and inappropriate use of discretionary district allowances. At a June council meeting, the city manager said the council was the most dysfunction group of adults he had ever worked with and they had threatened his job if he did not fire certain department heads. The city manager's charges are being investigated by the Arizona Attorney General. The city has hired an independent investigator regarding the violations of the open meeting law. John is one of five candidates running in the September 11 primary election, and a strong voice for labor rights.

John wants to bring quality jobs to Surprise so people can live and work there. In addition, he hopes to attract health care facilities to the town. Currently, the nearest 24-hour pharmacy is 20 minutes away. John wants Surprise to be a city with services and opportunities where the children being raised there now will ultimately to able to live and raise their children.

Click here to support and learn more about John.

So get out and vote on TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6th!

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Words to live by

These new-found tensions which are present at all stages in the real nature of colonialism have their repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature, for example, there is relative over-production. From being a reply on a minor scale to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism. The intelligentsia, which during the period of repression was essentially a consuming public, now themselves become producers. This literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style; but later on novels, short stories and essays are attempted. It is as if a kind of internal organisation or law of expression existed which wills that poetic expression become less frequent in proportion as the objectives and the methods of the struggle for liberation become more precise. Themes are completely altered; in fact, we find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the occupying power. The colonialists have in former times encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions which find their outlet in expression are in fact assimilated by the occupying power in a cathartic process. To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere. But such a situation can only be transitory. In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal. In the period that follows, the words of command are heard. The crystallisation of the national consciousness will both disrupt literary styles and themes, and also create a completely new public. While at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor, whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.