Gregor Knauer

for
Arizona House of Representatives
Legislative District 17

Arizona Green Party

Ideas, Issues, Concerns


Frugality and fraternity.

Reduce our hyper-consumption. Fiscal restraint makes sense at a household level and at the government level; balancing a budget eases anxiety. The rainy day fund means real planning. We’re an industrious and generous people. As such, noblesse oblige mandates that the affluent help to end poverty. Furthermore, workers’ health and safety must be bolstered, and their right to unionize facilitated with ‘card check.’ Vote ‘No’ on prop. 113. (The wording references ‘secret ballots,’ but doesn't mention the likelihood of mandatory propaganda meetings to intimidate workers, nor does it mention threats of job loss or wage cuts.) Job growth relies on access to capital. We must demand that banks loosen up lending. Some coordination with the Small Business Administration can help out. Let's promote cooperative and community ventures, and especially encourage locally-owned businesses. Also, vote ‘No’ on prop. 107 to preserve Affirmative Action. This noble program may be a flawed experiment, but let's allow it to play out: it's too early to tell. (Reparations may be a good idea, to boot.) And how about equal pay for equal work? Let's get on it.

Learning.

A sensible and caring legislature will fully fund schools, libraries and state parks. These are fundamental and integral components of civilized society. Vote ‘No’ on Prop. 302, to protect the early childhood development funding. Instead of sweeping ‘First Things First,’ funded with an 80 cent/pack cigarette ‘sin’ tax, why not double the tax? Or triple it? (Another ‘sin’ tax we could very well exploit is a whopping surcharge on gasoline.) "Is our children learning?" Arizona ranks at the bottom in per-pupil spending. This too can change. And it's high time we gave all our children the opportunity to learn Spanish!

Mobility.

For commerce, tourism, quality-of-life, we must enhance our public transportation. Go multi-modal and efficient. Buses, light rail, commuter and passenger rail, hi-speed trains, all these should be subsidized. We’ve got to get away from the automobile: it’s wasteful, polluting, alienating us one from another. Reduce the number of lanes on city streets, and reduce speed limits. Block any and all further urban freeways. (Freeways induce traffic.) Encourage biking with real trails. Walking! (In fact, home prices didn’t collapse so severely in walking neighborhoods—they’re more desirable than those far-flung fringe communities accessible only by car.) Jobs do come with construction projects, and infrastructure is the responsibility of government. Public transportation is a good ‘cosmopolitan umbrella,’ meaning it creates community. We must anticipate, sometime, relocating Sky Harbor away from the megapolitan center. (Maybe Luke AFB will do.) Let's take a look at Davis-Monthan and Tucson International Airport too.

Prison reform.

Dismantle prisons-for-profit. Evidently, private prisons cost more than state-run institutions. Eliminate the death penalty. (Vengeance is not a virtue.) Capital punishment is no deterrent, and it is a big drain on the budget. And there are altogether too many instances of innocents convicted. Review sentencing laws. Alternatives like electronic monitoring, halfway houses, community service and restitution should supplant incarceration, except for violent offenders. Money poured into the Prison Industrial Complex can be redirected to beneficial programs like vocational training. All inmates, including felons, even while incarcerated, should be allowed to vote: participation is a step toward rehabilitation. Is there any doubt that improved nutrition would manifest in healthier inmate populations? Also, in fairness, let's increase compensation for jurors.

Health = productivity.

Single-payer is desirable and possible, and HR 676, introduced by John Conyers in Congress, would save billions by cutting the insurance carbuncle out of the medical megastructure. At the state level we can do our share by generously funding Kids' Care and AHCCCS. In good conscience we must vote a resounding ‘No’ on Prop. 106. The Arizona legislature must not hijack access to healthcare. What are they thinking? Let's rejoice at the 45th anniversary of Medicare, and accept the middling reforms that our U.S. Congress managed to pass as an interim measure. The legislature has no business determining a woman's right to choose abortion options: this is a private medical decision. On the other hand, I salute the insurance companies for declining to cover the brutal practice of circumcision. It's unconscionable that insurance pays Pfizer for that little blue aphrodisiac.

Legalize drugs.

Addiction must be treated as a health issue, not criminal. (Prisons are jammed disproportionately with people of color, mostly for drug apprehensions, caught up in a system which is not designed for rehabilitation.) The ‘medical’ marijuana angle may bring us closer to a regulated and taxed commerce in recreational drugs, but isn’t it a shame to encourage people to see themselves as sick? (Medical claims for moderate use of alcohol I find similarly discomfiting. Imagine ‘medical’ tobacco.) Still, I’m encouraging a vote ‘Yes’ on Prop. 203 in November. This is a clear instance of people participating in, and limiting, government. A ‘No’ vote on prop. 112 would maintain the current guidelines for allowing citizens to get initiatives on the ballot.

Family freedom and inclusion.

Sooner than the soonest we must recognize full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered sisters and brothers. DOMA, ‘Defense of Marriage,’ is a cruel joke. Ironically, the military in certain instances can lead in changing the norm. Did not Truman racially integrate the armed forces, bringing us closer to an egalitarian society? In repealing DADT, ‘Don't Ask Don't Tell,’ the military will help shift our standards regarding same-sex marriage and survivor benefits and all the ramifications of equality before the law. In decency and fairness, protection from discrimination against LGBT's must be guaranteed also in the workplace and at school. On the national level there's ENDA, the ‘Employment Non-Discrimination Act,’ coming along for us to support. The majority will acknowledge and accept the rights of the minority, and if the legislative branch of government can't lead the way, the Court can.

Electoral reform.

Electoral reform can bring us closer to genuine representation in our government. Experiments are already underway in other state and local governments: unicameral legislatures; nonpartisan primaries; redistricting and consolidations; at-large, proportional and ranked-choice voting; innovating for the sake of fair representation in addition to responding to budget constraints. Ranked-choice voting means combining the primary and general elections. Eliminating runoffs reduces a burden on the budget. Then, of course, there’s campaign reform, too. Corporate strength is overwhelming. How much longer will the law consider corporations ‘persons’? Not too much longer, I hope. Now is a good time to renew democracy, to challenge assumptions about authority and ‘leadership’. Full public funding of campaigns would eliminate undue influences. Special thanks to the Clean Elections Commission for the public panels and the candidates’ statement pamphlet which is sent out to all registered voters! There’s no reason that TV and radio cannot offer spots free or at a nominal cost.

Integrate & assimilate immigrants.

Integrate immigrants with a legitimate pathway into the marketplace and residency and even citizenship. Since our economy pulls workers from across the frontier, let’s expeditiously provide permanent border crossing cards for all Mexicans (and Canadians.) If NAFTA, after all, allows free passage of money and goods, why not people? Our attention should be directed from the high-stakes scramble at the border to economic and law enforcement cooperation with Sonora state. A military response to a disorderly state-of-things creates more disorder (and resentment.) Why all this saber-rattling? It's looking as if, with Iraq winding down, there's a great bloodlust to perpetrate a new war against our southern neighbor. For God’s sake, no drones! They are a huge waste of treasure and of questionable efficacy. And, they are a symbol of the corporate takeover of our ‘defense.’ The fence is an abomination. (We are not Korea, Palestine, Berlin.) Also, gun shops along the border must be regulated. Our right to bear arms does not preclude sensible oversight. (The new concealed carry liberalization, by the way, is downright licentious.) Gunrunning fuels violence. Surely it behooves us to preclude container ships of weapons from making their way to Mexico.

Environment.

Air, water, public & private lands must be protected from the depredations of pollution and careless stewardship. We will have an opportunity to make State Trust Land swaps more transparent with a ‘Yes’ vote on prop. 110. A ‘No’ vote on prop. 301 will prevent the legislature from sweeping land conservation monies. And for goodness' sake, vote ‘No’ on prop. 109. How in Heaven's name can hunting and fishing be the preferred way to manage wildlife? Establish a Civilian Conservation Corps for public education, habitat restoration, reforestation, and cleaning of polluted waterways. Limit sprawl. Unrestrained suburban growth, gobbling up agricultural land and pristine desert, can be reversed. Infilling with vertical and multi-use density is an enlivening alternative to impractical and unsustainable fringe development. (Vid: arcology.) End uranium mining, and phase out nuclear power. (There is no responsible disposal of nuclear waste.) We must mightily tax oil and coal and natural gas, and seek alternatives. New sun, wind, temperature differential, maybe small-scale hydrogen, technology development and adoption, with electric transmission corridors, can be state infrastructure projects. End military exemptions from anti-pollution standards. Work with the Corporation Commission to reduce consumption of water, fuel, and electricity through conservation measures. Renewable Energy Standards are a terrific leap forward. Our state’s resources are a shared heritage.

Reverence.

I value teamwork, oneness: we’re all in this together. Let’s approach problems in a civil and moderate manner, not from intractable ideological extremes. Adopting an environmentally sound, steady-state economy will ensure that we live in equilibrium with the natural world. God bless Arizona.

 

"I pledge allegiance to Turtle Island
And to the creatures who thereon dwell,
One ecosystem, under the sun,
With joyful interpenetration for all."
--Gary Snyder

 

Sailing my Life-Boat

     During Reagan’s dirty wars against the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua I fled to India.  I had intended to settle in Tamil Nadu, at Auroville, the international township founded by the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.  I was seeking peace and inner progress.  In my haste I had secured the wrong visa.  To get a residential permit I was to return to the U.S., save up travel fare again, and return with an entry visa.  For a short while I slept in parks, crashed in a squat on E. 13th St. in Manhattan, shared a tiny tenement apartment with a photographer I met at a famous circle garden that the city was bulldozing, then found a tremendous affinity at the Uranian Phalanstery 1st New York Gnostic Lyceum & Temple on E. 4th St., where I moved in as sexton.

     In the meantime a friend invited me to the weekly public meditations offered by Sri Chinmoy (who happened to have grown up at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry.)  Within a year I had become a disciple.  By his grace and the grace of the Supreme, I wound up in Arizona.  Eventually I came to accept that living here in the U.S. was my birthright, and that it was here that I must make a stand for self-transcendence and also for the transformation of the world. In this ‘laboratory of liberty’ over the last couple hundred years, we have been expanding the rights and the inclusion of previously despised or excluded minorities and individuals. Thomas Jefferson and the other founders started this cultural revolution within the evolution of human consciousness. My commitment to Arizona in particular is for the long term. 

     In a home movie that I saw after my father’s funeral, I repeatedly rejected, as a 3-yr.-old or so, an Xmas gun, insisting instead in embracing my sister’s new doll.  I grew up in Maracaibo, Venezuela, privileged in circumstances, aware of extreme inequalities and resentments, but satisfied with the hand that was dealt me.  Only when I’d gone off to Choate, a boarding school in Connecticut, did I begin to question my place in the order of things.  These days I’m trying to live in harmony with my own nature, integrating my spiritual life with the demands of living in the social and political world.  I am celibate. I am vegetarian.

     Education is a wonderful thing.  Whether at school, on the jobsite or in social intercourse, exercising our imagination we challenge those in control, learn about ourselves and discover something about Reality.  Learning does not necessarily mean fitting neatly into the Education Industrial Complex. My own life-long learning has been rather non-traditional.

     Pretty much oblivious to the atrocities of the ‘American War’ against Vietnam as I approached draft age in the late 60's and early 70's, still I was sensible to the disquietude in the air.  Things came into sharper relief for me when I took an American history elective in minority groups.  Even today I’m struggling to reconcile our purported democratic ideals with our historical actions.  We must do plenty self-examination. 

     Peering at our national character, I see an abundance of sincere generosity and genuine oneness.  But sometimes in the hustling bustling jangle we can get caught up in emotional eddies like the hysteria over immigration and ethnic studies, and lose our footing.  Prayer and meditation help sort out the distractions so that we can pick up and fly right.

     After Choate I took a year off before matriculating at Rice U. in Houston, studying for a career in architecture with a double major in fine arts.  After second year studio I dropped out and worked as a welder’s helper, then bullcook in the galley of a jack-up drilling barge under repair in Katchemak Bay, Alaska.  Then I worked in a small jewelry factory in San Francisco and studied Latin at Cal Berkeley for a semester before enrolling in the Radio-TV-Film program at University of Texas.  In Austin I met my wife.  We married in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I had taken her to meet my folks.  After a couple years I dropped out to be househusband and stay-at-home dad.  It was at this time that I honed my signature painting method. My wife finished law school, and we divorced.  Ten years of drifting brought me to Paolo Soleri’s prototype arcology where I made bronze windbells, managed the foundry briefly, and worked in the gardens and in landscaping.  In between stints at Arcosanti I groomed in boarding stables and show barns in L.A., at the racetrack on Long Island, at a hacking stable on the Upper West Side, and at another boarding stable in Staten Island; also I worked in restaurants, a bakery, a print shop and bindery, and in visitor services and on the lawn crew at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.  Before returning to the Arizona high desert, I traveled with the Big Apple Circus.  In 2002 I moved from Arcosanti down to Tempe.  I commute by bus and bicycle to Cosanti in Paradise Valley, where I’m groundskeeper and occasional interpretative tour guide.  Mostly I sweep and irrigate, and listen to National Pentagon Radio.

     It was at a Howard Zinn tribute film extravaganza that I learned that the Green Party had achieved ballot status through diligent and herculean petition-circulating (yet again.)  Thanks to Howard Zinn and the encouragement of Linda Macias, who is running for the statehouse in LD21, I put my name forward as a candidate for representative from Legislative District 17.

 

Green Party: gp.org

Arizona Green Party: AZGP.org

Maricopa Green Party: MaricopaGreens.org

contact me gregorknauer@gmail.com


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  VOTE on 2 November, 2010, Día de los Muertos.


Revised Friday, 20 August, 2010.