Speaking gigs this week

This week I spoke as a candidate at two Meet the Candidates Nights:

Millcreek Fidos (a group advocating for more open recreation space for people with companion dogs)
and
The City of West Jordan.

The Millcreek Fidos event was set up as a panel – each candidate got 3 minutes to make an introduction. While all the other candidates relayed personal stories about themselves and their dogs, I chose to make a broader statement about the Green Party and the values it represents, including preservation of open space and implementation of sustainable, walkable communities.

My good friend Eileen filled in for me at the West Jordan event until I could arrive after my parent-student-teacher conferences at my school. She made my statement for me and touched upon Green Party values also and told the audience that I advocated use of Wind Power for energy, and also touched upon my commitment to organic farming and local control of communities.

Eileen also spoke for me on the issue of the media ignoring any candidate who isn’t republican or democrat, especially in light of the recent omission of me in the article about the district 5 Salt Lake County Council race. (I have since learned from the reporter that, unbeknownst to her, the Tribune had not been covering other candidates and pulled me from the article she wrote.) After a couple of the candidates spoke of the “liberal media” tainting the elections, Eileen pointed out, on my behalf, that the “liberal media” has policies against covering candidates not in the two largest political parties (radio stations, for example, have policies that dictate that a party’s candidates will not be covered unless they garnered 5% or more of the vote in the previous election cycle – this cuts out candidates in any new party….), thereby DENYING the voters information on ALL THE CANDIDATES. Folks in the audience seemed to agree by the nods of their heads when this was addressed.

When I arrived, I was able to speak to a lot of folks in the more informal mingling and talke to this issue and other issues on my platform. It was very pleasant, positive experience.