[SFGP] Greens Now Hiring! / Legalize Gay / Endorsement Meeting Wed, Feb 24 / Run for Green County Council! / RIP Joe

[Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly]

Green Greetings,
In this edition of the SFGP Newsletter:
*-Legalize Gay Marriage / Endorsement Meeting - Wed, Feb 24
-Greens Now Hiring- help us grow and get paid!
-Run for Green County Council!
-Remembering Joe Lynn - Sat, Feb 20*

*Legalize Gay Marriage/ Endorsement Meeting
** Wed, Feb 24*
Time:
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:
SF LGBT Community Center (The Center)
Street:
1800 Market St

View Map<http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=1800+Market+St%2C+San+Francisco%2C+CA>
Join us at the SF LGBT Community Center (The Center) for a discussion about
our participation in the ballot drive to overturn Prop 8 and restore
equality to all!

*Agenda*
Sign for Equality - 30 min. - Presentation and Q&A about efforts to put an
initiative on the ballot to overturn Prop 8 and legalize Gay Marriage once
again!  Guest Speakers: Wendy Aragon and others.

Endorsements - 30 min. - Some state party props on June ballot: top-2
primary, anti-public power, and insurance.

Barry Hermanson on State Plenary - 30 min. - State party update; discussion
of agenda and choosing delegates to San Jose Plenary on March 6th and 7th.

*==========================*
*Paid contractor wanted:  SF Green Party Fundraiser/volunteer coordinator*
Part time independent contractor (1099) position
Approximately 10 hrs/week, working from your home
Earn $10-20/hr, based on commission

The SF Green Party (SFGP) is seeking a part-time contractor to help us
raise money for voter outreach (primarily, booth fees and costs of our
voter guide), as well as to help coordinate volunteers.

*Duties*:
* Raise funds for the SFGP by calling registered Green Party members
 in SF.  This will include "cold calling" as well as contacting our
 previous donors.  Lists will be provided.

* Update the SFGP's database with phonebanking results, including
 people who wish to volunteer, have moved or changed phone numbers.

* Provide information to members about current SFGP activities,
 including volunteer opportunities, events, and meetings.
 Coordinate members wishing to volunteer via follow-up phone calls
 and/or email.

*Requirements*:
* Prior phone canvassing experience (e.g., either volunteer or paid
 progressive work for a progressive campaign).

* Knowledge of SFGP activities.  The contractor must remain aware of
 upcoming tabling opportunities and meetings, as well as party
 strategy, in order to answer questions from members.

* Professional and discreet with sensitive personal and financial
 information.  Enthusiasm and strong personal communication skills
 are also necessary.

* Personal values consistent with the Green Party's 10 Key Values:
 http://www.gp.org/tenkey.shtml

The contractor will use their own telephone to contact SFGP members
from the voter file, and will solicit donations by credit card or
check.  The contractor will also coordinate members wishing to
volunteer for SFGP activities.  Results of phonebanking will be
entered into an online database.  The initial contract will be for 100
hrs of work (approximately 10 weeks), and may be extended depending on
how successful the fundraising is.  Pay will be commission-based: 50%
of donations received, with a minimum rate of $10/hr and a maximum
rate of $20/hr.  The contractor will be responsible for all federal
and state income and employment taxes, including self-employment
taxes.

This position is available immediately and will remain open until
filled.  Women, people of color, LGBT persons, and people with
disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.  We will interview
qualified applicants starting in mid-February.  Please submit cover
letter and CV to the SF Green Party county council, cc at sfgreens.org.

*==========================*

*Run for Green County Council*
The nomination period for CC candidates started Tues, Feb 16.
Anybody who wants to help us out on the CC for the next 2 years should
go to the Department of Elections (in the basement of City Hall) to
pick up the required paperwork.  You then have until March 12 to
gather 20+ signatures from SF Green Party registered voters and return
the forms to City Hall.  You will also have to file paperwork with the
Ethics Commission--this is explained in more detail in the guides below,
and people at the DOE can also answer questions.

For more info, see:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/elections/candidates/CentralComm2010Draft2.pdf
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/elections/candidates/Final3JunePrimaryCalendar.pdf

*==========================

**Celebrate Joe Lynn's Life*
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
3-5:30 PM, Celebration, The San Francisco LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street
Dance - Drums - Food - Friends - Words - Drink - Smoke
5:30 - 6:30, After the Memorial, Disgruntled Villagers, Latter Day Citizens
United, March to Ethics Commission HQ, 25 Van Ness

* Pitchforks - Torches - Progressive Populist Outrage - Joe  Lynn's Agenda*
Joseph Michael Lynn died at 5:45PM on Wednesday, December 9th, after a six
month fight against acute leukemia against the backdrop of a longer struggle
with HIV, in the care of his boys at Maitri hospice in San Francisco. Joe is
best known in San Francisco for his later life's work at the San Francisco
Ethics Commission, first as the Campaign Finance Officer from 1998 to 2003,
and then as an Ethics Commissioner from 2003 to 2006.

Deeply committed to the values of democracy, Joe fought unflinchingly for
open government, campaign finance disclosure, public campaign financing, and
the public's right to know what interests were spending money to influence
the outcomes of the public process. Always ready to help any member of the
political community or public, be them highly-paid advisers to the powerful
development and tourism lobbies or grassroots activists seeking to know who
was funding a particular campaign, he took his charge as a public servant
seriously and fought consciously against the stereotype of the unhelpful,
disinterested bureaucrat. Indeed, the vigor with which he served the public
brought him into conflict with his superiors, who in their roles managing
the government agency charged with fostering public trust all too often
found themselves persuaded by private interests to drop complaints, rewrite
rules, and hide "smoking guns" in window-office desk drawers. When, for
example, Joe discovered an illegal, $800,000 campaign contribution made by
PG & E, his superiors ordered him to suppress the discovery. Unswayed by the
potential for reprisal, Joe released the information and initiated a process
that would result in the largest fine ever levied by the Ethics Commission.
For this and other exemplary service as a staff member, he was honored by
the Society of Professional Journalists, then-president of the Board of
Supervisors Matt Gonzalez, then-Supervisor Gavin Newsom, and other local
media.

Despite his excellent professional reputation, the work environment became
increasingly hostile, and Joe left his position on staff when then-District
Attorney Terrence Hallinan appointed him to become a Commissioner in 2003.
After serving three productive years in which he helped to usher in mayoral
public financing, expand supervisorial public financing, and strengthen the
Campaign Finance Reform Act, he resigned in order to take a job as a
Consumer Rights Advocate for the HIV Health Services Planning Council.
There, he was charged with making a vast and often-difficult bureaucracy of
social service providers work for marginalized people living with HIV and
AIDS. He performed with the same passion for public service and rejoiced in
the many meaningful victories he won. And, freed from the priestly
abstinence from politics required by his work at the Ethics
Commission, Joewas able to embrace more fully the activist in him.

The fundamental belief in the ability of ordinary folks to govern
themselves, the commitment to treating everyone with dignity and grace, and
the impassioned pursuit of progressive causes embodied a hard-won wisdom for
a man now so easily regarded as a sage. Born to a mother who did not much
like being one and a father who abandoned the family when Joe was
four, Joeoften moved from one house to another, carried through places
of relative
privilege upon the strength of his mother's charms. Always regarded as
brilliant scholastically, he won a scholarship to the University of Redlands
in southern California, where he gained the start of the classical education
that would later allow him to hold forth with a quotation from the Bible,
translate the works of the Roman poet Catellus from the original Latin, and
answer a pressing question from a friend by telling a long story about the
ancient Greeks. He was drafted into the military during the Vietnam War, but
was spared the battlefront and served as a medic in San Francisco while also
earning his law degree from Hastings. At the same time, his youth was marked
by an internalized shame and hatred for his homosexuality. He married Martha
Drexler, whom he loved, but the marriage ended amicably after seven years as
Joe eventually came to favorable terms with his sexuality and came out in
1978, at the age of 32.

Joe was fortunate to come out as a gay man at a moment that was unique both
for San Francisco and for gay men nationwide, and he was determined to make
up for lost time, as so many have. In 1980 he met the first of his male
loves, Dana, whose strikingly beautiful body would form the basis of
comparison for 30 years of trysts. They stayed together until 1983 and Dana
died in 1997 of HIV/AIDS. But the last real love of his life was Bruce, a
hospital architect with a thick Alabaman accent who called Joe "sweeeeetie",
whom he met in 1988 and remained with until Bruce's death from HIV/AIDS in
1991. Right around the same time, the number of Joe's acquaintances who died
of HIV/AIDS reached 500, and he decided to stop counting. Distraught,
Joeturned to more and more crystal methamphetamine to fill the void,
again like
so many other gay men have and do. Quite the tweaker party animal in the
early 1990s, as Joe's taste for decadent epicurean indulgence rose along
with his newly seroconverted viral load, his attention to his legal practice
declined, culminating in his disbarment in 1997 for abandoning a client
while on a speed binge.

By 1997, Joe had lost almost everything and was sharing space with a growing
pile of rat feces while living in a drug house with splintered wooden
floors. Tired of the monotony of his life and shamed by the waste of his
privileges, he turned his enormous will towards the redemptive second act of
life so often spoken of in America. As part of his recovery, Joe was
referred to the San Francisco Ethics Commission, where an appointment as an
intern turned into a job and an outlet for his passion to give something to
a world from which he felt he had mostly taken. Joe had learned something of
compassion, and he would live the rest of his life nurturing his capacity to
care for others.

Possessing a remarkable eye for talent, he befriended and mentored a cadre
of younger men who would form his latter day family. With them he shared his
rare accumulation of knowledge, interests, and talents, inviting them to
dine luxuriously with food exquisitely prepared on a prohibited 2-burner
stove in his tiny SRO, reading them poetry, playing them pieces of classical
music that made him cry, visiting the SF Opera or SF-MOMA, indulging in the
varied cuisine of the City's restaurants and his innovative chef friends,
seeking thoughts on the newest film from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami,
listening to ideas of his own filmmaking and artist friends, or strategizing
about the latest turn in Ethics happenings and SF politics. Thus, it was
befitting that, in the last week of life, he said goodbye with Strauss's
(Richard, certainly not Johann) Four Last Songs, a meal of Dungeness crab
cracked with his own teeth, and the company of his beloved boys.

Death was an unpredictably late visitor, as Joe was, in this case, an
uncharacteristically unwelcoming host. Two years ago, Joe survived anal
cancer. This time around, he wrung several more months than expected from
the leukemia. And, predating all this, Joe had lived with HIV for well over
a decade, outliving most of his peers, becoming a poster-boy for meds, and
inventing a spirited way of life for an older gay man. Emotionally, he found
nurturing relationships as a wizened elder, older brother, and surrogate
father. Physically, he trained his body into the best shape of his life.
Sexually, he "fucked everything that moved" as long as he could. And,
politically, he battled the current fixation on same-sex marriage, seeing
the drive to "be like the straights" as a negation of the benefits of being
a gay male, a repudiation of distinguished gay male history, a perpetuation
of self-hate, and a loss of a set of values that challenge those of the
consumeristic, patriarchal, and inequitable mainstream. He did not want to
see his culture subsumed.

Thus gifted with exceptional talents and a rather lucky star, yet having
lived such widely shared stories, Joe learned the talents of the shaman. He
would travel through time to harvest lessons from sources long forgotten, as
the botanist seeks to recapture older strains of maize to fit changing
growing conditions. He would bend reality to reveal doors through walls
that, to normal eyes, had none. He would walk the streets of the City and
see ghosts in buildings no longer standing and alleys filled with stories
unwritten. And, he would treat the wounds of our all-too-mortal souls with
incantations of a sacred, Franciscan gentleness.

Joe was survived by Eileen Hansen, Ethics Commissioner, and his boys, Kevin
De Liban, j.d, mentee, currently of Cochabamba, Bolivia, Oliver Luby, j.d.
former colleague at the Ethics Commission, David Waggoner, attorney at law,
Tae-Wol Stanley, Nurse Practitioner, Dr. Bill Hsu, professor of Computer
Science at SFSU, Joe Graham, filmmaker, Larry Bush, HUD spokesperson, Ben
Rosenfeld, attorney at law, Marc Powell, chef, and Marc Salomon and George
Aluska, Joe's prophet and the prophet's husband, respectively.

Much of Joe's Ethics advocacy, sadly, remains undone, although over the past
few years, he helped us find a path towards success. The best memorial we
might offer for Joe is to organize to bring Joe's ideas to bear on public
policy instead of allowing business as usual to continue.

In addition to your company, you are welcome to share your various libations
respectfully, along with those provided.

Friends of Joe Lynn will meet the day before the celebration to prepare
gastronomic delights.  Please contact Marc Salomon marc [at] cybre [dot] net
for more information.

*==========================*
*
*http://www.sfgreenparty.org
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=62534706497
Feel free to submit any feedback or ideas to us at news at sfgreens.org.
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