Help Progressives Win is a WEEKLY column,
posting at 9 am Pacific Standard Time each Saturday.
There are thousands of Progressive candidates running for office across America in 2016, and they need your help to win.
Please don’t forget those running for office in your city and county this coming year — those down-ballot races make a big difference in your daily life, from deciding which Traffic Engineer to hire this spring which translates into which potholes get fixed on your daily commute to work; to which Port Commissioner gets elected and has a massive amount of influence determining if a foreign corporation wins a bid to build and maintain a new Oil Terminal at the port in your town, putting the safety and health of your family and those of all your fellow residents at risk, just to line the pockets of investors on another continent!
So please step up and make some time in your busy schedule to help local candidates, who often have no resources or staff. You can find a local candidate by contacting your Local County Democratic Party. If you don’t know how to find yours, start at at the website of the DNC and their link to State Parties.
Click on your state and look for a Get Local link, like this:
The Washington State Democratic Party website at www.wa-democrats.orgIt begins right at home in our towns and cities and with our own family, friends and circle of acquaintances. Far too many of our fellow citizens refuse or forget to vote regularly. They tell themselves “it just doesn’t matter if I vote, no one listens to me anyway. Besides, I HATE politics. None of those politicians know what my life is like and they don’t really care about my family or our problems.”
The following candidates for office in 2016 DO CARE and they are espousing the policies and ideas which will help those dejected non-voters. But they need your help to be successful, to reach out to the millions who just can’t be bothered to be participants in their own democracy. So please, consider helping these candidates in any of the following ways…
VOLUNTEER DONATE SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIAAll three of these actions are helpful to a candidate trying to reach a larger audience or promote an event or action. Candidates need money to put on events and to pay salaries for staff and to buy the signs and ads which help to spread the messages they are putting out to the prospective voters in their city, county or state.
We need to start banging the drum for next year’s Progressive candidates today in order to have enough victories next November to stave off or even undo the advancement of the conservative lunatics who inhabit the current version of what’s left of the Republican Party.
Here are this week’s PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATES They need your help TODAY, to win next November Eric KingsonCandidate for US House
State of New York
24th Congressional District
Campaign website: www.EricKingson.com
URL Facebook page: Facebook.com/EricKingsonNY
Campaign Twitter: @EricKingsonNY
Where is the District?
Full Scale US Census Map of the District/State
The 24th Congressional District of New York includes all of Cayuga, Onondaga, and Wayne counties, and the western part of Oswego County. Its largest city is Syracuse. we can build the future we want for ourselves, our children and grandchildrenEric is running because he shares the anger and disappointment of many Central New Yorkers who see themselves working longer and harder, but not getting ahead and, for many, actually falling behind. He’s fed up seeing government resources squandered by tax giveaways to corporations that park their profits offshore. Eric has had enough of politics that are dominated by wealthy and powerful interests that put profit ahead of the environment, ahead of building the nation’s infrastructure; and ahead of investing in the education of everyone’s children not just their own.
Eric is guided by respect for the dignity of every person, from his involvement in civil rights back in his college years, to his current work in protecting and expanding our nation’s Social Security system. In his role as educator, researcher, policy expert, author, and nationally-known Social Security advocate, Eric has worked to improve the economic situation of older people; to strengthen health care protections for all; to end employment and housing discrimination; to find ways to keep people in their homes when severe disability strikes; to support those giving care to family and friends; to maintain the reproductive health and rights of all women. He’s served as advisor to two presidential commissions addressing Social Security policy.
Concerned that Social Security benefits would be cut for today’s seniors, middle-aged workers and the young, in 2009 he co-founded Social Security Works and became founding co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition. Located in the national headquarters of the AFL-CIO, Social Security Works and the coalition are credited with derailing efforts to raise the retirement age, reduce annual cost of living adjustments and cut other earned benefits. These organizations are recognized as the driving force behind the growing movement to address the retirement income crisis and other needs of working families by expanding Social Security, increasing benefit amounts, and adding paid family leave.
Eric rejects the politics of fear, anger and disparagement. He believes our communities and country prosper best when we build on the ingenuity of Americans and the nation’s great diversity of race, religion, ethnicity…
Most of all, he believes that we can build the future we want for ourselves, our children and grandchildren.
John S. WisniewskiCandidate for Governor (2017 Election)
State of New Jersey
Campaign website: WisniewskiForNJ.com
URL Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/wisniewskiforNJ
Campaign Twitter: @AssemblymanWiz
Where is the District?
Full Scale US Census Map of the District/State
Meet the New Jersey pol who got the Bridgegate scandal rollingJohn Wisniewski is the reason the world knows about the political disaster that is Bridgegate. As chair of the state assembly’s transportation committee, he was the one who unearthed the smoking gun email from Governor Chris Christie’s fired Deputy Chief of Staff, Bridget Kelly—“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”—to Christie’s Port Authority appointee David Wildstein. It was a discovery that would turn lives upside down, Wisniewski’s among them.
John’s story is a real New Jersey story. Brought up in a middle class family in Sayreville, John was encouraged at a young age to adopt the same values espoused by his parents and neighbors – the values of all working families.
Raised by his father Felix, a local millwright at the National Lead factory, and his mother Cecelia, John was taught at an early age that working hard is not just about enriching yourself, but about improving your community. This was a lesson John learned well while helping his father run for and win a seat on the Sayreville Borough Council, and watching him serve as a union official for the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union. Encouraged by his family and friends, John became deeply involved in his community. He would often be seen around town organizing a charity drive, raising the public awareness of an important local issue, or mobilizing the youth to get involved in the political process.
John was first elected to the New Jersey General Assembly in 1995. Although he has been overwhelmingly re-elected nine times by the voters in the 19th Legislative District, he’s never forgotten where he came from or the countless people who helped him along the way. His personal experiences are the driving force behind his most meaningful legislation.
Making smart fiscal decisions. Standing up for working families. Promoting public safety. Those are the values that shaped John, and those are the values that shape his work representing us.
Please note: John Wisniewski is the New Jersey State Chair for the Bernie Sanders for President campaign
Tim CanovaCandidate for US House
State of Florida
Campaign website: TimCanova.com
URL Facebook page: Facebook.com//TimCanovaForCongress
Campaign Twitter: @Tim_Canova
Where is the District?
Full Scale US Census Map of the District/State
The 23rd Congressional District of Florida State contains parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, encompassing the cities of Miami Beach, Weston, Cooper City, Hollywood and Surfside. Politician (but not politics as usual)Tim Canova has been challenging Wall Street banks and political corruption for most of his adult life.
As an activist, attorney, educator, and frequent commentator on the rigged economic and political systems that put Wall Street and multinational corporations first while leaving ordinary Americans behind, Tim is uniquely positioned to shake up Congress.
Tim attended public schools K-12, completed his undergraduate studies in government and economics at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, earned a law degree, with honors, at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., and was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar at the University of Stockholm.
As a legislative aide to the late U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas (Democrat, Massachusetts), Tim worked on a range of regulatory and human rights issues. While working on Capitol Hill, Tim began warning about the rise of Wall Street special interests and the assault on working families. In the early 1980s, he wrote critically about the deregulation of interest rates and lending standards and the rise of subprime and predatory lending. These practices would eventually have a devastating effect on the people of Florida when real estate markets crashed in 2008. To this day, Florida still has the highest rate of foreclosure in the country, with over 300,000 open foreclosure cases in state courts.
In the 1990s, while an associate attorney at a prominent law firm and then as a visiting professor at the University of Miami, Tim opposed efforts to weaken the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act firewalls that had separated commercial banking from the risky securities markets. He also cautioned about the rise of complex derivative financial instruments that were turning the United States into a “casino” economy. In the early 2000s, Tim warned about the growing bubble in housing prices and called for increased supervision of Wall Street banks and financial markets. He was one of the few law professors in the country who consistently opposed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, including a 1996 op-ed in the New York Times opposing Greenspan’s reappointment.
Tim taught at Chapman University in Southern California, became an endowed professor in International Economic Law, and served as the academic associate dean. He was critical of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other corporate giveaways, and today is a fierce opponent of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
In 2011, Tim took part in the Occupy Wall Street movement, teaching a workshop on the Federal Reserve at the Occupy Los Angeles encampment. At that time, he was also selected by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders to serve on an advisory committee on Federal Reserve reform along with such leading economists as James Galbraith, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Tim moved back to South Florida in 2012 for a teaching position at the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law where he is a professor of law and public finance. He lives in Hollywood, and in his spare time he enjoys cooking, movies, Pilates and yoga, as well as running and bicycling on the boardwalk.
Tim remains a leading critic of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, opposes the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics, and is a strong advocate for programs to help students, working families, and lower- and middle-income folks. He will bring formidable energy, focus, experience, and integrity to Washington on your behalf, providing representation in the true sense of the word for the needs of the local constituents in South Florida’s 23rd Congressional District. Rather than doing the bidding of giant corporations like too many professional politicians these days, Tim asks you to join him to work for the interests of the actual, real people who reside here.
Finally, your host, who is also running for office. You can see my full entry at this link
Angela MarxCandidate for US House
State of Washington
3rd Congressional District
Campaign website: www.Angie4Congress.com Facebook page: Facebook.com/Angie4Congress Twitter: @AngieinWAState
TOGETHER, WE CAN DO GREAT THINGS!If you have a favorite progressive candidate who should be featured here, please leave me a name and a race (State/County/City) in a comment, so that I can feature them in a future edition of Help Progressives Win.