The Naked City: The Antidote to Corruption is Democracy

"There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is one million of them."

No, it's not the celebrated 1948 film noir... or *is* it???.....

The New York City Independence Party, which represents the nearly one million independent voters in the City, has endorsed Adolfo Carrion for Mayor in 2013 (see NYC independent strategist Jacqueline Salit's delightful and passionate introduction before the NYC IP City-wide County Committee here), released a comprehensive political reform package last week in the wake of the current political scandals (which apparently has moved Gov Cuomo to "Call for 'Open Primaries'") in New York, and which according the the IPNYC "expose structural weaknesses in the system that need to be addressed, but not in ways that entrench the powerful and preclude a more nonpartisan process."

Nonpartisan municipal elections, or open primaries at the state level, is a central tenent of the reform package and IP General Counsel Harry Kresky made a very succinct case in his recent amNewYork oped: Kresky: Nonpartisan voting would make NYC elections fairer:  "But if you eliminate the "gateway," then no "gatekeeper" can charge a candidate to pass through it. That's what nonpartisan municipal elections would do."

The New York City Independence Party Political Reform Package - The Antidote to Corruption is Democracy (PRESS RELEASE NYC Independence Party) From the release:

The Independence Party (IP) was first created in 1994 to bring political reform to New York. Unlike other minor parties, its purpose was not to influence the electoral process on the basis of ideology, but rather to influence the political process itself; to make it more open, less partisan and less corruptible. For nearly 20 years, the Independence Party built on that vision, using fusion and the appeal of political independence to push nonpartisan reforms.

Over the last few weeks, it has become evident that such reform is desperately needed. The current political scandals expose structural weaknesses in the system that need to be addressed, but not in ways that entrench the powerful and preclude a more nonpartisan process....

The reform agenda includes: 1) Nonpartisan Elections and Fusion, 2) Initiative and Referendum, 3) Term Limits for State Legislators, 4) Voter Mobility, 5) Nonpartisan Administration of Elections, 6) Campaign Finance Reform, 7) Nonpartisan Redistricting Reform, 8) Full Public Hearings on All Reforms. For the full statement go here.

And if you are one of the million, let us know!
Email TheHankster or catch us on Twitter or Facebook at The-Hankster.

See you in the streets!!
NH

Independents Rising - National Conference of Independents

On February 16th, 2013, IndependentVoting.org hosted the seventh biennial national conference of independents in New York City. Over 400 activists from across the country gathered to take stock of their growing movement. Currently 40% of Americans consider themselves independent. Jacqueline Salit, president of IndependentVoting.org, hosted the event.

Enjoy this slide show from the event!

Independent Super Bowl Saturday Feb 16!

Ok, ok yes I am watching the Super Bowl (Baltimore just scored the first touchdown...) Some have noted that the Super Bowl is becoming an American national holiday! What excitement in New Orleans, the heart and home of jazz...

Makes me think about the upcoming independent super bowl in NYC on Saturday February 16th (an all day event) sponsored by IndependentVoting.org.  The 7th annual national conference will draw independent voters and activists from across the country to discuss, debate, expound and educate -- and organize our national independent movement.

Building from the bottom up around structural political reform -- open primaries, non-partisan redistricting -- electoral reform that challenges the partisan control of our political process, that's our game.

Got game? Sign up for the National Conference of Independents on Saturday Feb. 16. See you there!!

NH

independents shelved!

PHOTO: Bryan Puertas

Jackie Salit's Independents Rising hit the book store shelves today! Congrats JS!!

Book Review: Independents Rising by Jacqueline Salit

From the first words of Jackie Salit's upcoming book Independents Rising: Outsider Movements, Third Parties and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan America (out in stores on August 7, pre-order from Amazon) "For Sema/ Fiercely Independent" to the last "...George Washington warned that political parties can 'become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.' The American people want that power back. That's why independents are rising," this intimate, open and powerful portrait of the past two decades of the American independent political movement struck a deep chord with me.

Maybe that's because I've been working with Jackie since 1984 when I came on board the independent political train. Literally!  And while many of the stories were familiar to me, Salit locates them in the historical immediacy of 2012 making them thrilling while, in the process, helping to demystify a movement that has suffered from much punditry, speculation and conjecture.  Finally! An independent, an insider in a movement of outsiders, has spoken!

In the summer of 1984 I traveled with  my two very young daughters, Lucy and Rena from our home in Fieldsboro New Jersey, to the Big Apple, they to camp out at the offices of the New Alliance Party, then located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, while I went out with a team of professional grassroots organizers to promote the independent movement and sell the National Alliance newspaper on the New York City subway.  I loved it and with my NAP outreach partner, Rich Sokolow, we raised a helluva lot of money that day! Maybe $35 in quarters, dimes and singles?

In Independents Rising, Salit, President of IndependentVoting.org, a long-time grassroots organizer, thought leader and troublemaker, details the shift in the American political landscape that independents have been creating over the last two decades. In doing so, she speaks to us and with us--the activists, the politicians, the big shots, the middle shots--and most importantly us ordinary people who are fed up with politics as usual, feel betrayed by our political process and its exclusion of regular people.

Salit begins her story not in 1984 but in 1992, “a year of awkward contradictions.” Against a backdrop of growing economic globalism, an increasingly irrelevant left, and a calcified and about to become thoroughly centrist Democratic Party, a voter rebellion was gathering force. A journalist by trade, Salit treats us to a “You Are There” blow-by-blow account of the confrontations, conversations and actions that produced the current independent movement.

...Presidential candidate Bill Clinton hunkers down in the back seat as his car crosses a picketline of 400 independents protesting the exclusion of two candidates from the primary debate in Manchester, New Hampshire on a frigid February night in 1992...  Michael Bloomberg faces a heated 90-member Executive Committee of the NYC Independence Party organizations to ask support for a controversial third term in 2009... The wildfire expansion of a new anti-party movement, a national network of activists organizing on the ground and working for structural political reforms such as open primaries and independent citizen-controlled redistricting, brings to the stage grassroots leaders like Utah League of Independent Voters founder Randy Miller and Independent Kentucky founder Michael Lewis, and many more.

I highly recommend this book -- which you can pre-order from your favorite online bookseller. Independents Rising will hit the shelves on August 7.

In the meantime, Randy Miller, Michael Lewis and I will share some chapter reviews in the next several weeks.

Stay tuned, and hang onto your seat -- you are in for a great ride!

Cathy L. Stewart Hosts Jackie Salit and Mickey Edwards at Politics for the People Event April 27

 

Jackie Salit is president of IndependentVoting.org, the country's leading strategy and organizing center for independents.  She ran all three of Michael Bloomberg's campaigns on the Independence Party line, and is the author of the forthcoming book Independents Rising which explores how independents are not only deciding elections, but reshaping the political landscape. 

  

Mickey Edwards is the Director of the Aspen Institute Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership and was a  member of Congress from Oklahoma from 1977 to 1992.  He has written critically about the partisanship embedded in both our electoral system and in Congress itself, issues he explores in his upcoming book The Parties vs. the People. 


        The Parties vs. The People  

Friday, April 27, 2012

6:30pm 

 

Baruch College

William and Anita Newman Conference Center

151 East 25th Street, 7th Floor

Manhattan

to Register:  Click here

Train: 6 Train to 23rd Street

For more information, please call (212) 962-1699   

or visit www.ipnyc.org