A Reminiscence Due to Local Politics

I was reading the local free paper (well, one of three), the New Haven Advocate, and saw a blurb about one Ralph Ferucci, and then a printed speech of his from May day (speaking, for your Brandeis folks about the socialist workers' holiday, not the SCA event). The blurb talked about his political past as having run for Mayor of New Haven with the Guilty Party, a group that had previously run only one candidate, and at that someone who'd been considered a joke candidate- I forget why, something about cross dressing and something else. It also mentioned some politically tasteless illustrations (he's also an artist). The point of the blurb was that he was running now for the local seat in the House of Representatives, with the Green Party.

This sounds out of the blue, except that I heard this man speak- in fact, I helped coordinate his visit at my high school my senior year of high school- as a representative of the Green Party, who was planning I thought on running for New Haven alderman or something of the sort. We had all sorts of scheduling issues, but he ended up coming and talking to just a few of us- and he was very honest, and gave me a pretty positive image of the Green party for very local politics. (In that same bunch of "teach-ins" Jeff, out adult outside contact, thanks to qianian , and I brought in a speaker from an anti-war group, and one from the American Islamic COuncil.) I also saw the same guy tabling for the Green Party at May Day that year- I registered to vote then- I think he brought my registration to the post office for me, in fact. So now I'm more than a little curious about perceived events and alliances.

THis is all reminding me of how involved I was (ok, for me) in action-y stuff at that point. Ok, I was motivated some by how involved my friends were, and really all I organized was a not-terribly-successful fundraiser ($11 the first year, $33 the second), a food bank drive, and a bunch of educational speakers that almost no one came to. OH, and I took a lot of minutes of the meetings, wrote a few articles for the newsletter that rarely came out, and tried to get people to actually talk about something and get things done rather than senslessly arguing, although that worked quite poorly. But it was a humorous bunch of weirdos, and occasionally I miss it. It's hard to stay involved without the peer motivation, sadly enough, and I never quite could deal with the folks in that circle at Brandeis, and feel bad for it. Possibly because they actually did things, and were also more academically committed to it. I guess I need a group of just better than politically apathetic students? Certainly I enjoyed that social circle, with all its crises, of which there were certainly many. Folks at college have, if anything, less crises, I think. Sometimes that's hard to imagine.

A Reminiscence Due to Local Politics

I was reading the local free paper (well, one of three), the New Haven Advocate, and saw a blurb about one Ralph Ferucci, and then a printed speech of his from May day (speaking, for your Brandeis folks about the socialist workers' holiday, not the SCA event). The blurb talked about his political past as having run for Mayor of New Haven with the Guilty Party, a group that had previously run only one candidate, and at that someone who'd been considered a joke candidate- I forget why, something about cross dressing and something else. It also mentioned some politically tasteless illustrations (he's also an artist). The point of the blurb was that he was running now for the local seat in the House of Representatives, with the Green Party.

This sounds out of the blue, except that I heard this man speak- in fact, I helped coordinate his visit at my high school my senior year of high school- as a representative of the Green Party, who was planning I thought on running for New Haven alderman or something of the sort. We had all sorts of scheduling issues, but he ended up coming and talking to just a few of us- and he was very honest, and gave me a pretty positive image of the Green party for very local politics. (In that same bunch of "teach-ins" Jeff, out adult outside contact, thanks to qianian , and I brought in a speaker from an anti-war group, and one from the American Islamic COuncil.) I also saw the same guy tabling for the Green Party at May Day that year- I registered to vote then- I think he brought my registration to the post office for me, in fact. So now I'm more than a little curious about perceived events and alliances.

THis is all reminding me of how involved I was (ok, for me) in action-y stuff at that point. Ok, I was motivated some by how involved my friends were, and really all I organized was a not-terribly-successful fundraiser ($11 the first year, $33 the second), a food bank drive, and a bunch of educational speakers that almost no one came to. OH, and I took a lot of minutes of the meetings, wrote a few articles for the newsletter that rarely came out, and tried to get people to actually talk about something and get things done rather than senslessly arguing, although that worked quite poorly. But it was a humorous bunch of weirdos, and occasionally I miss it. It's hard to stay involved without the peer motivation, sadly enough, and I never quite could deal with the folks in that circle at Brandeis, and feel bad for it. Possibly because they actually did things, and were also more academically committed to it. I guess I need a group of just better than politically apathetic students? Certainly I enjoyed that social circle, with all its crises, of which there were certainly many. Folks at college have, if anything, less crises, I think. Sometimes that's hard to imagine.