Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

prologue August 30, 2013 or less than a year before the campaign:
HE KNEW HIM WHEN … Palo Alto developer Jim Baer said he was inspired to help organize Monday night’s “I Have a Dream” commemoration in front of City Hall because of his lifelong friendship with the brother of Andrew Goodman, one of three young civil-rights workers murdered in Mississippi on June 21, 1964. Baer said he had roomed with Goodman’s brother at Stanford and — though personally not an activist in the civil-rights movement — felt it was important to hold the Palo Alto commemoration, which highlighted the work of Stanford University Professor Clayborne Carson, editor of the papers of Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s not just that you don’t cover me but you sit around and scheme up ways to undermine me. “the Agitator“? Sounds like Andrew Goodman in Mississippi in 1964, which by the way you did write about recently.

You are not actually The Fourth Estate. You are just another special interest group. Ever since the move to 450 Cambridge surely; it is hard to date the sell-by expiration.

When I become mayor, we will take that building by eminent domain and let the police dog shit there.

And for the record — soon to be deleted from Palo Alto online like so many other posts of mine — in 2012 I told your photog that I would not turn in your survey but she convinced me to pose nonetheless. Then she ran a photo of me staring into space — one of 30 takes, and the other five candidates you pictured looking into the camera. This time you run an outtake from same session of me scowling or blank-faced and the other 11 candidates you have smiling. And I strictly did not sit for you or your condescending taped sessions, which you film or edit in such a way to make me look like a dick, reflection in my glasses to darken them, uneven lighting et cetera.

ok, so I resisted posting under the article per se, and turned it into the basis for a selfie style post. I went next door to David of Menalto Cleaners, who works with Gary the owner and he took this basic current shot. It’s not whether I am handsomer or heavier than in 2012 but just that this basic look, smiling for a camera, even shot by a virtual stranger, I look as I normally am: I am basically a friendly person. Moon in cancer, type O Positive, whatever. I was student body president at Terman and Editor in Chief at Gunn –and on the literary board at The Dartmouth — and no one has ever mistaken me for an “agitator”. Except at the Palo Alto Weekly.

This is just one element of my “Analysis” phase post election. Like Bobby Fisher going thru the 50 moves of a chess match for hours the next few days or weeks later, I may take thru the spring to figure out what to make of the 100 day experience running for Palo Alto City Council. It certainly generates a lot of information, just what to do with it.

What is also never covered:

a) the fact that in addition to my campaign I also wrote close to 100 article about the campaign or policy for Plastic Alto, plus a bunch of posts to the Weekly and probably 20 talks at public hearings and council and commission meeting. I would think the 1,000 articles as Plastic Alto is relevant background for imagining my impact as Council or my general qualifications, but it is never discussed or analyzed. I was trained as a reporter, to cover local government, as far back as 1984 — and was a public policy fellow for the Nelson Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth to do so, in 1984, plus whatever life experience the ensuing 30 years. And the blog is informed by that rigor. Even the arts and culture and non-policy (non-“Plato’s Republic”) — and some are goofs or larks — tells you something, something positive about who I am. Not that someone could not comb thru the nearly 500,000 words and pick out a handful of clams, if they so chose. But the nature of the internet is in fact that I can revise if I need to. There may be limits, as Molly Stump said to somebody recently, on what a seated official might say in public during term, not sure.

b) second part, that I left corporate America in 1992 and came back to Palo Alto, from San Francisco, to start something grass-roots and social action oriented. That is never mentioned. That is, my actual work, over a period of 20 years is consistent with someone claiming plausibly that he wants to serve. Earthwise Productions is or was an engine or change, and community building and good. Not that I made a bundle in industry and want to give back or some such cliche. Or sometimes I say I was tapped by Palo Alto in 1977, when Cheryl Preising my classmate and Jean White my teacher asked me to run for ASB at Terman. But generally it is barely glossed over: “concert promoter”; GS had me as “former concert promoter” very dismissive. My ballot statement says: Small business owner CEO slash activist slash writer. They just play up the “small”.

The main question is: how is it that the one who was here the second longest, 1974 to JF’s 1970, and one of only two as products of PAUSD, like Cory but with twice the life experience, does not lead with 12,000 votes to scorched and marred incumbent Karen Holman’s 11,000? Where are the missing 10,000 Weiss votes?

I will leave the headline intact but this has pivoted: I am not asking Bill the second question. But he should have to explain or rebut that he is not trying to torpedo me. Someone who really knows Sullivan v. New York Times might have to advise me here. Jocelyn Dong wrote back privately a weak rebuttal that GS use of “anti-government” is a secondary use meaning “anti-incumbent” which would be too obvious to state more plainly. It is not that I was vowing to resign in protest if elected. No I am saying very directly that Palo Alto deserves and can have better than: Pat Burt, Larry Klein, Liz Kniss and Marc Berman.

And yes, I think in a fair race Palo Altans would rank me as offering everything that Eric Filseth and Tom Dubois offer. Only in the most superficial “horse-race” atmosphere, totally manipulated, would you class them ahead of me. Sure, they are more useful to military/industrial/information/computer/games complex. And still are.

and1: here is the exchange with Jocelyn:
Hi Mark,

I wanted to respond to your concern over the phrase “anti-government” in the profile Gennady wrote about you, as I think you might be attributing an extreme interpretation that wasn’t intended. A pretty straightforward definition is:

an·ti·gov·ern·ment -ˌantēˈɡəvər(n)mənt,ˌantī-/
adjective
adjective: anti-government
against a government or the administration in office

If your stance is NOT that the current council has done a poor job, sided with developers at the expense of residents, approved a “pork project” in the Highway 101 Bridge, etc., then let us know. (But if that’s not your opinion, then why would you use rhetoric such as, “There are more of us so in the end we will take back the city”??). I would think you would wear the adjective with pride, but in any case, no offense was intended. I hope, with this email, that none is lingering.

Best regards,
~Jocelyn

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 11:52 PM, mark weiss wrote:
the Weiss campaign is filled with anti-government (rhetoric)

This is untrue.
Please prove this or retract it.

Mark Weiss
650.305.XXXX

i’ve written close to 500,000 words on my own blog, Plastic Alto, in 950 posts since 2010 and probably 10,000 words on your site — please cite one example of “anti-government (rhetoric)” let alone that my campaign is “filled with” such.

I am anti-Despot and critical of current leadership, true enough. But I actually stress being “we the people” and government is a we not a they.