I met with Councilman Yeager last week, and introduced him to the Relocalization Platform. We also discussed several of the "big issues" facing San Jose's government, as framed (primarily) by the Mercury News, our local daily. He is, in my judgement, a good person, and a dedicated public servant. I hope he wins election to the County Board of Supervisors, as one of his rivals has made a 180 flip on land use and development issues since being elected to public office -- thanks to Linda for that tip. Yeager has a record of working with the Greenbelt Alliance, a conservation group, and other groups advocating for affordable housing.

Unfortunately, Councilman Yeager suffers from the same lack of imagination and urgency that plagues 99.9 percent of our nation's elected officials. So I have decided to do something I've been thinking about for a few months now. Soon (hopefully August 19th), I plan to annouce my candidacy for mayor of San Jose. In the mean time, I'm looking to assemble a slate (not party), with candidates running for as many local offices as possible in San Jose (perhaps in conjunction with other slates in the Bay Area). The primary foundation of the slate is the Relocalization Platform, with ammendments and specific policy references as dictacted by local need. Ideally, there would be one slate agreed upon for each jurisdiction (i.e.: every municipality, every county), so there exists a cohesive message and list of priorities for each government body.

I invite anyone interested in running for office in the south bay to contact me so we can start working together. I am currently waiting for an upgrade to my webhosting account, which I will be using for a number of projects in addition to our campaigns, and as soon as that happens, I'll be installing Drupal (the same CMS which powers postcarbon.org). I gave up the idea of designing from scratch, as is evidenced by the site's current pathetic state: www.itribe.org). The basic plan for the site is similar to postcarbon.org (and a number of other drupal communities), but in comparison it will be more general topically, and more specific geographically. It will cover local sustainability issues, politics, culture, economics and activism/advocacy. I look forward to working with PCI to learn about Drupal's inter-site connectivity features.

Once again, it's on like Donkey Kong.

-Jeremy