A letter to my neighbors

Hi.  I’m Bill Shireman.  I live nearby, on Cortland, and I have a favor to ask. I’m trying to protect our community of San Francisco from a $10 billion threat.  To succeed, I’d like to borrow your vote.  I promise to pay you back!  Let me explain how. 

I’m running for California Assembly for one reason: to undermine the Power Brokers who profit by dividing us into hate groups, then capturing our $280 billion state budget.

You’ve never heard of me, likely.  But I’ve had an impact on your life.  I’ve had two trillion positive little impacts, benefiting millions of people, in California and around the world. I do it by quietly motivating powerful political enemies - people who often hate each other - to solve big problems together.

I’ve spent my life fighting for “impossible” causes that way. And usually, winning. Against the odds.  Typically after a decade of trying.

Now I’m tackling the biggest challenge yet: the political power broker industry, which has always been with us, pitting America’s voters against each other.  But today, social media and Big Data have turned the dark art of political warfare into a nearly-exact science.  

This “amorphous blob” of political influence-peddlers and media strategists do it because hate is profitable - for them.  

Because they divert taxpayer dollars to vested interests, California is no longer a Golden State where prosperity is broadly shared.  We’re more a tale of two cities, with more billionaires per capita but the highest poverty rate of all states, at 18%.  Four great universities but the worst-performing public schools - now 43rd and struggling to beat Mississippi.  Rising murders and rampant smash-and-grab - while we mass incarcerate homeless drug addicts and young men of color, who watch from behind bars while real criminals go free.

We can change that for the better.  In fact, seven in ten Californians can agree on how.  But the Power Brokers won’t let us.  They grow wealthy by exploiting our problems, not solving them.  

It’s hard to believe, but most influence-peddlers are good people just doing their jobs.  They’re caught up in a business model that keeps their clients in need and voters at war.  Many good lobbyists are in quiet rebellion.  But remember, there are hundreds of them - they’re an amorphous blob, with no one in full control, and it’s high-risk for any to openly buck the system.

But you and I can.  San Franciscans have the power.  If just one-in-five of us voters say “no” to the amorphous blob, we have the electoral power to disrupt the machine and take back real democracy, starting here in California.