Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs
From: shetterl@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Will Shetterly)
Subject: Grassroots Party Newsletter v.4 #1
Message-ID: <shetterl-0402951938130001@dialup-4-43.gw.umn.edu>
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 01:38:13 GMT

The Canvas
The Newsletter of the Grassroots Party of Minnesota
Vol. IV No. 1 ´ Winter 1995 ´ Will Shetterly, Editor

ñA wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one
another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement.î
„Thomas Jefferson


GRP 1994 Election Results

The Grassroots Party had candidates on the Minnesota ballot for every
statewide office this November. WeÍre the first third party to accomplish
that since the Farmer-Labor Party in 1942. In the election, our candidates
got more votes than any other small-party candidate except for Dean
Barkley of the Independence Party.
   Here are our numbers:

U.S. Senate: Candy Sjostrom,15,920 votes
Governor & Lt. Governor: Will Shetterly/Tim Davis, 20,785 votes
Secretary of State: Dale Wilkinson, 54,009 votes
Attorney General: Dean Amundson, 69,776 votes
Auditor: Steve Anderson, 80,811 votes
Treasurer: Colleen Bonniwell, 84,486 votes
U.S. Representative, Dist. 4: Dan Vacek, 6,211 votes

   The total of votes cast state-wide was 1,770,315; in District Four,
210,193 votes were cast. We did much better in the Twin Cities area than
we did in the rest of the state. In the races for governor and senator,
Will and Tim finished third in a field of six, and Candy finished fourth.
SteveÍs presence in the auditorÍs race may have swung the victory to
Republican Judi Dutcher. Colleen, Steve, and Dan all got about 5% of the
vote in their races, but to qualify in Minnesota for major party status, a
candidate must get 5% of all votes cast in a state-wide race; we fell a
few thousand votes short of that. Though we are disappointed, we did
qualify for check-off status on the 1995 tax form, which may be more
useful to us now.


GRP Wins Check-off Status on 1995 MN Tax Form

When you get your 1995 Minnesota tax form next year, you will be able to
check off a $5 donation to the Grassroots Party that will not add a penny
to what you pay the state. ThereÍs no way to know how much money the party
might receive, but if the votes for Candy Sjostrom indicate our hard-core
support, that could mean $70,000 next year for us to spread the word that
there are more solutions than the Democrats and the Republicans have been
offering.


Can Third Parties Work Together?

The Grassroots Party has been meeting with members of other small parties
to learn what we might accomplish together in a loosely organized
coalition.
   The New Party wants to restore the principle of fusion candidacy, which
was permitted in Minnesota elections until about fifty years ago, when the
Farmer-Labor Party merged with the Democrats and Minnesota became a
two-party state. A fusion candidate is one who is officially endorsed by
more than one party.
   The Independence Party recently won major party status, but there are
rumors that the state legislature may make it harder for small parties to
get candidates on the ballot, to win major party status, or to get tax
check-off status. The Grassroots Party supports easy access to the ballot
in order to guarantee real choice to the voters.
   The Libertarian Party supports individual liberty. We could work
together to pass a privacy amendment to the Minnesota constitution
guaranteeing that the government could not use force to limit the personal
choices of adult citizens.
   The Green Party and the Nutritional Rights Alliance believe the
government must protect MinnesotaÍs air, land, and water. We do, too.
   ItÍs too early to tell whether anything will come from these
discussions, but weÍre glad that theyÍre happening. The Grassroots Party
will be holding a conference on May 6 (see upcoming events) as part of the
process of deciding our future course.


News Notes: Prisons, Prostitution, and the GRP

Articles about our tax status appeared in the Washington Post and the
Minneapolis Star Tribune. Steve SackÍs editorial cartoon in the Star
Tribune (at right) may present our 84,000 supporters in Minnesota as aging
hippie cliches, but being ridiculed is the second step in every partyÍs
progress from being ignored to being victorious. The Star Tribune ran a
letter from GRP Secretary Steve Anderson,who pointed out, ñTo the best of
my knowledge, weÍve never used campaign money for food; nor, unlike the
DFL and IR parties, do we have any paid staff. Every dollar that goes into
our war chest is spent on campaign advertising and informational flyers
designed to educate voters on the issues we feel strongly about. We
believe this is the highest calling of political parties in a
representative democracy: to educate the electorate so the popular mood
supports the wisest course of action.î
   The Powderhorn PaperÍs January issue had an article about the South
Side Prostitution Task ForceÍs ñFlush the Johnsî protest. A dozen
counter-protesters associated with the Grassroots Party appeared carrying
signs with slogans like ñHonk If You Like Sex.î As you might expect, there
was a lot of honking along Lake Street that night.
   The Heidi Fleiss trial prompted former New York Times columnist Anna
Quindlen to write ñWhy should law treat the sale of sex as a crime?î (Star
Tribune, 11/29/94). She says, ñOnce prostitution was blamed for spreading
syphilis, today for passing on the AIDS virus. Condoms, not
criminalization, are solutions to both. Of all the public campaigns
against street crime, probably the most unsuccessful, over time, has been
the one to drive people out of the business of selling sex. Police,
judges, court officials: Hours of law enforcement time are wasted on a
practice that shows no signs of abating, either in supply or demand.î
   Doug GrowÍs Sept. 25, 1994 Star Tribune column, ñBuilding additional
prisons wonÍt curb MinnesotaÍs crime problemî points out the expense and
folly of AmericaÍs love affair with incarceration. A new high-security
state prison scheduled to open in 1999 will cost $80 million. The Hennepin
County Jail will cost ñanywhere from $120 million to $170 million.î The
Carver County jail will cost $8 million. The Dakota County juvenile
detention center will cost $4 million. This yearÍs legislative crime bill
appropriates $20 million dollars. Will that $282 million expense make
Minnesotans any safer?
   Jim Bruton, a deputy commissioner in the corrections department,
doesnÍt think so. ñWeÍre adding 2000 beds, but theyÍd laugh at that number
in Texas or California. CaliforniaÍs got something like 120,000 inmates
right now, a need for 50,000 more beds and tougher laws that will create a
need for 80,000 more beds. But you canÍt build yourself out of this [the
crime problem]. Every state thatÍs tried has seen no reduction in crime.î


About the Grassroots Party

AmericaÍs frontier past gave birth to two ideas that all Americans value:
You should help people who want help, and you should leave people alone
who arenÍt hurting anyone. Most political parties choose to focus on one
of these principles, but, like AmericaÍs founders, the Grassroots Party
believes social responsibility and individual liberty are equally
important in a free society.
   The traditional political divisions of conservative and liberal cannot
describe us. We see contemporary political thought as divided between
tolerance and repression: we share the goals of tolerant members of the
right and left. Like Republicans such as William F. Buckley, we believe
itÍs time to apply the lessons of alcohol prohibition to drug prohibition
and legalize, tax, and regulate hemp (a.k.a. marijuana). Like Democrats
such as Paul Wellstone, we believe Americans deserve a single-payer health
insurance plan similar to those already enjoyed by Canadians, Japanese,
Germans, and Australians, all of whom live longer, have lower infant
mortality rates, and pay less for health care than Americans.
   The Grassroots Party began in 1986 when several Minnesotans saw the
inevitable consequences of mandatory minimum drug sentences. Today, our
federal prisons are over 60% full of non-violent drug offenders, and
America has a greater percentage of its citizens in prison than any other
nation in the world. Our politicians continue to throw additional billions
of tax dollars into building more prisons, hiring more police, and
expanding the military while the national debt grows and education, health
care, the environment, workersÍ rights, and consumersÍ rights are all
neglected.
   But America is ready for change. In the last election, 60% of the
eligible voters did not choose to support any of the current political
options. The Republican claim of a mandate comes from winning the support
of 20% of the eligible voters in close-fought races. Someone needs to
restore AmericaÍs faith in democracy. The Grassroots Party is willing to
try, but we can only do it with your help.


PRT: Personal Rapid Transit
Copyright: Citizens for PRT/Ground Zero

In the Twin Cities, all the options being presented for the I-35W, I-94,
and I-494 expansions are 100-year-old technologies. TodayÍs transportation
problems need solutions for today and the 21st century. We donÍt need to
destroy our homes and businesses and the economic vitality they bring our
cities. Using old technology like cars and streetcars requires massive
amounts of land. Almost 50% of our land is used for transportation. We can
have efficient, attractive transportation systems without taking down one
more house. The answer is Personal Rapid Transit.
        PRT systems use small, computer-controlled electric vehicles. The
vehicles ride in elevated guideways mounted on small poles that can be
placed along curbs or existing freeway medians. When a passenger buys a
ticket, a vehicle is summoned to the station and takes the passenger
directly to the destination, bypassing all intermediate stops. Each
station is on a bypass track so everyone can have a fast trip. Passengers
have their own cars, but in a public system. One elevated guideway can
carry as many vehicles as four freeway lanes, at half the cost of Light
Rail Transit (LRT).
        The Raytheon Company is developing PRT systems for the City of
Chicago. Chicago will have a PRT system running in 1998, the same year
Minneapolis is supposed to start ripping up homes to put in more freeway
lanes and LRT.
        For more information, call (612) 335-1025 or write Citizens for
PRT, PO Box 39692, Edina, MN 55439-0692.


The Capitalist ñFree Pressî
by Aldous Huxley (written in 1958, true today)

Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have
disappeared. The cost of wood-pulp, of modern printing machinery and of
syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East
there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are
controlled by the state. In the democratic West there is economic
censorship and the media of mass communication power in the hands of a few
big concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government
propaganda; but certainly it is not something of which a Jeffersonian
democrat could possibly approve.
        In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy
and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be
true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has
happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies„the development
of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with
the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally
irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account manÍs almost
infinite appetite for distractions.
        Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who
are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves
effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members
spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now in the
calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of
sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it
hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control
it.
        In their propaganda todayÍs dictators rely for the most part on
repetition, suppression, and rationalization„the repetition of catchwords
which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which
they wish to be ignored, and the arousal and rationalization of passions
which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art
and science of manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators of
the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the
non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in
a sea of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the maintenance
of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions.


WWW Hemp page: If you have access to the World Wide Web, thereÍs a new
page thatÍs worth a look: http://www.hempbc.com/HEMPWEB/HEMPMAIN.HTML


Make a Difference! Join the Grassroots Party!

If you received this paper in the mail and you would like to receive
future issues of The Canvas, join us. If you found a copy of The Canvas
with other free literature or were e-mailed a copy through the Internet
and you think information like this should continue to be available, join
us. To spread the word in the U.S. that there is a party that knows the
government can spend less and accomplish more, we need your help.

Do you believe:
 ´ The U.S. should legalize, tax, and regulate hemp? (Over 60% of our
federal prisoners are non-violent drug offenders.)
 ´ Americans deserve a single-payer universal health insurance plan?
(Every other major industrialized nation provides universal health care.)
 ´ America should spend less money on prisons and the military? (We have a
larger percentage of our population in prison than any other nation in the
world, and we spend more money on our military than all other nations
combined.)
 ´ Your state should pass a privacy amendment to guarantee your right to
do whatever you choose, so long as it does not hurt anyone else?

If so:
   Can you contribute time? We need people to help organize chapters of
the Grassroots Party throughout the U.S. We plan to hold at least two
conventions in the Twin Cities this year; we need volunteers who can help
plan and run them.
   Can you contribute office furniture or equipment? Every organization
needs tools to do its work.
   Can you contribute money? Politics in the U.S. is expensive. To be
noticed by the commercial media, you must spend money. The Grassroots
Party has produced a few commercials for cable TV and local radio and
newspapers, but we have not been able to advertise through broadcast
television networks or national radio or magazines. Mounting petition
campaigns and printing our literature is a constant drain of our
resources. We can only be as efficient as our supporters. Please, help us
continue the two-hundred year struggle to build America into a land of
liberty, opportunity, and justice for all.


Grassroots Party of Minnesota, PO Box 8011, St. Paul 55108
Phone 612 722-4477

Yes! I want to help the Grassroots Party and receive future issues of The
Canvas.

Contribution enclosed: $_____________

Full membership*:  $25.00

Basic membership*: $15.00

Hard-times membership*: Free for prisoners and anyone else going through
economic hard times.

I would like to volunteer time or equipment.___________


Name: ___________________________________________

Phone:___________________________

Address:

____________________________________________________________________________
       
____________________________________________________________________________

* Full membership, basic membership, and hard times membership are exactly
the same except for the price you choose to pay.

-- 
Will Shetterly
shetterl@maroon.tc.umn.edu * Box 7253, Minneapolis, MN 55407