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By: Farzad Karimi for Payvand |
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Sara Amir has been an active resident of Los Angeles for 17 years, the past 13 years working for the State in the environmental protection field. She is urrently a Supervising Hazardous Substances Scientist, at the Department of Toxic Substances Control, Site Mitigation Program, in Glendale, overseeing that toxic cleanups meet state and federal regulations for soil and ground water. After earning a B.S. in biology from Teheran University in 1970, Sara worked for the Teheran Regional Water Board as a microbiologist. Four years later, she left Iran to continue her studies in the United States. In 1976, she received a master's
degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Southern
California. Meanwhile in Iran, the Shah's escalated repression
of the labor and student movements continued. The monarchy crumbled,
and Sara felt compelled to return and take part in the social
and political struggle that ensued. She provoked the new regime
of Ayatollah Khomeini by her refusal to wear the Muslim cover
"hejab", becoming a leader among her female coworkers.
"When the situation became brutally repressive, resulting
in the torture and killing of many people, I ran for my life."
Sara returned to Los Angeles and went to work for the California
Air Resources Board as an environmental engineer. She was also appointed to the Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Committee, ensuring the state's compliance with affirmative action law. In May of 1990, Sara started working at the Department of Toxic Substances Control. A US citizen since 1987, Sara takes her citizenship seriously. She led sexual harassment workshops at UCLA, and as Women's Program Coordinator, led similar workshops for state employees. Following the LA uprising in 1992, Sara established a process to assist area businesses to obtain environmental and other permits through the Office of Revitalization. From 1992-94, Sara represented her co-workers in the Professional Scientists Union in contract negotiations with the state. Sara is married and has been a registered Green since 1994. She is pro-choice, pro-public education, pro-affirmative action, for gun control, universal health care and against the death penalty. She subscribes to the 10 key values and the platform of the Green Party of California.
"As the Green Lt. Governor
candidate, I'm committed to grass-roots, common Advocate more money for education,
including expanded developmental Support long-term, sustainable economic development by stimulating small business, shifting taxes from working families to corporate polluters, and encouraging community-based economies that would provide a living wage for all working Californians.
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Q: What motivated you to get involved with the Green Party, and why did you decide to run? A: I have been involved with the Green Party since 94. I knew from the Green Party from Germany during the 80s, and I really liked their platform and what they had to say. I was always wondering why we don't have a Green Party here. It was 1992 the first time the Green Party got the party status in California, and in 94 I joined it and ever since have been a member. The Green Party is based on four basic principles: non-violence, social justice, grassroots democracy and ecological respect, and I really believe in all these principles. When I read the platform and read what they had to say, I thought this is my party. What motivated me to run is I had three major goals. One is to bring out the issues that I believe that California people care about, instead of all these major issues that the government candidates are talking about like abortion, or death penalty. So I want to bring out the issues, and the second goal is to div up the progressive movement. Dan Hamburg who is the former congressman of Democratic Party who joined the Green Party in 96 and myself are going around California talking to different groups of people and talking about the issues and trying to get more people involved. This is real basic grass roots campaign and we are talking to the people, real people instead of having all this big fundraising that only people who can afford can come. The third is actually to win the election. In order to win, we need to do a lot of different things. One of the issues that is really important and Dan and I talk about is the campaign finance reform, which means that right now the laws don't have any limit to campaign spending. Anybody who is a millionaire or is a billionaire can come and declare themselves candidate and spend their own money, unlimited money, like Al Checki what he did 45 million Dollars. But what we are saying is public financing of campaign which means no personal money, no contributions from corporations, instead equal access to the media for all candidates. Q: As you know in the last election, both Democrats and Republicans were talking about the same issues, campaign finance reforms, and they didn't do much about it even though they got elected. How is the Green Party any different? A: They never talked about public financing of campaign. They talked about putting some limits on the campaign, but never public financing. What we are saying is that just cut all those campaign contributions. Instead, you and I, if we decide to contribute to any campaign, just have like a $50 limit or $100 limit, and if we want we can contribute to anybody that we like and it would be tax deductible. So this kind of campaign finance reform. But nobody was talking about that. There was actually a campaign finance reform that went through , 203, but the court challenged it and so it didn't go through. But this is very different. This is like Eauropean countries like Germany. The reason the Green Party in Germany got so much power and now is in coalition is because of the laws that they have about campaign financing and the other one is electoral reform that we are talking about, proportional resegmentation, We don't have it here, It has winner take all. Even if a candidate gets 21% of the vote, if it's the majority, that candidate gets elected. But what we are talking about is proportional resegmentation. For the legislation it's like if the Green Party gets 5% of the vote, 5% of the legislators would be represented by the Green. But right now this is too radical for California. So right now in the interim we are suggesting that you can rank your candidates 1, 2, 3. Then if none of the candidates gets more than 50% of the votes, the one that has the least number of the votest would be eliminated. The second choice for that candidate will be distributed. But if it's instantaneous, so it's computerized. Now this voting system in this country is 200 years old. Things have changed. This is electronic era. So we can do a lot of different things and when we talk about it, people are actually very receptive to these ideas that Dan and I bring out. Q: You mention four issues that your platform is based on. Can you talk briefly about each one of them. A: Under non-violence we are against death penalty. And I think it's very barbaric to have state execution. In most western European countries they don't have state execution, but in the United States specially recently when you hear the debates between the Government candidates is like there is an election for a cheap executioner of the state. It's really appalling what they have to say. So that's one. The other one is the number of prisoners in this state is going up so much. Since 1980 we have built 21 prisons compared to only one university. The number of prisoners is now 150,000 in this state and it's gone up so high and the amount of money that we are spending is so much and a lot of them are the ones that are victims of these crimes. They are in prison because of victim's acts which is mostly drug related. What we are saying is we should our money into rehabilitation, into treatment. Drug use is a tough issue, it's not a criminal issue and we need to really get the message out. It's like cigarette use or alcohol or anything else. So that under non-violence. And also gun control. Here you can buy ten guns if you want and there should be limit, specially to the assault weapons. There should be a limit and that means right now it doesn't exist. Under social justice right now 7 million Californians don't have health insurance. While all of us who are driving cars are required to have car insurance, but we are not required to have health insurance, and the state doesn't provide any health insurance. So what we are talking about is health reform actually so that every body, every person in this state can benefit from health care instead of not having any preventive health care, not having anything. And a lot of people don't go to doctor until it's too late and who pays for it. All the tax-payers are going to be paying for it. So that's real issue. The other point is welfare reform. Under that a lot of women, actually a lot of women with children have gone hungry. Right now one out of every three children are living under poverty and also 20% are very close to poverty. So in California that is the seventh largest economy in the world, it is really absurd that we have so many children hungry. And these children are usually children of single mothers. So that's the social justice that we talk about. Under grass root democracy, I talk about the voting system and campaign finance reform and also public participation. In these days all the regulatory agencies they decide on their own. There supposed to be public participation, but really there is none. It's a formality. So we are saying that citizens should have control of their own lives. Lot of these toxic sites, people see what's happened to their neighborhood, but really they don't have anything to say. I work for the department of toxic substances control and you see how difficult we make it for people to participate. So from inside of the government I can see that we need to do much much more work. Under ecological respect and environmental protection, Greens are talking about seven generations. Instead of planning about just now based on our greed and how much money we can make, we are saying that we should have our plans for seven generations, and this is actually from native Americans. But Iranians have this, seven is kind of a sacred number if Iran too. So we talk about that, we talk about pollution prevention instead of pollution control. Industrial countries are very good at making the pollution, and also trying to control it which you cannot so a lot of it escapes. But instead of that, we say we have the technology, let's control the pollution, let's prevent it. Instead of using all these chemicals we can use a lot of non-hazardous chemicals... Q: As you know in Germany the Greens joining the Social Democrats to form a coalition to take power. What do you think takes here in the U.S. to reach that goal, to become a major power? A: I think it would take many years and it would take electoral reform. If we don't have proportional representation, if we don't change the voting system, it would be very hard for any third party to become powerful. Also campaign finance reform. If we have these two major reforms, then the green party can make a lot of difference, but right now I tell you as a woman I have been excluded a lot, but as a candidate I could never even guess that the media just ignores you. It's like you don't exist. They make up their mind that you are not a viable candidate and this is it. Q: That was my next question which I wanted to ask As a Green Party candidate are you receiving fair coverage compared to the Republicans and Democrats? A: Not at all. As I said, they decide, the major media. I'm not talking about alternative media, because there are like Century Cable. They are very fair, they try to take everybody on board. I've had two interviews with the panel that they have on Century Cable. I also had a 5-minute speech for primary and a 5-minute interview for the final election on California channel. So these cable companies have been really good. Of course KPFA has been great. But other than alternative media, Los Angeles Times is the worst. So many Iranians live in Los Angeles, but they haven't covered me at all. Just they mentioned me when I got the votes, they had to. They didn't have any other choice, but there have been events that I attended that they didn't even cover. They covered other people, but they didn't even mention my name. I'm really resentful and I want to ask any body who is reading this, I want to ask them they should call LA Times or by email and really tell them that we have an Iranian-American candidate, why aren't you covering her, why aren't we hearing from this so many Iranians who are living in LA, why not? Q: Who are some of your major supporters? A: Our major supporters of course there is Green Party and members. We have like 100,000 members throughout California. But also minority groups. Right now you know we have the issue of Indian gambling, the casinos over there, proposition 5. We supported proposition 5 because we think that native Americans should have their independence and be a sovereign nation and we should not really do anything to stop that. We don't go to other countries and tell them what to do and shouldn't tell the native Americans what to do in their own land. So we are supporting them and they are supporting us. Also, environmentalists, the main stream environmentalists groups they are very much conservative. They are not into supporting somebody who is way down getting elected and later on supporting them, instead of really supporting the right issues. I thought actually they would be very supportive of our candidacy. Really, who else? But they are sell-outs. Q: As a woman I assume you have faced many difficulties in Iran. Can you talk about your experience here in this country and what you had to go through to overcome those both in Iran and here as a political candidate? A: As I said, even though we are going through 21th century, we still don't have a lot of women representation. Only 12% national representation. We are still far behind. In Iran of course, after the revolution that I went back to Iran, I had a lot of problems because I was in charge of a big laboratory and there were 18 men who were working for me. Many of them didn't want to do something that I asked them. They would say why should a woman be my boss? Why should I listen to a woman. So they made it very difficult for me, and of course as you know things got very difficult and impossible about 81 and that's when I came back. But here things are more subtle. They are not that obvious. But I had such experiences and when I talk about it to other people they won't believe it. They think I'm making it up. But very typical and male chauvinist approach at work. So I have been very involved in women's movement. Also, I have taught many workshops at work and outside of work. And I have been involved with Iranian women organizations here in LA, the Society of Iranian Women in Los Angeles. I think we have a lot to learn from each other, from American women's movements, and we can also contribute a lot to the movement. But As I said we are still far behind. Feminists are unfortunately, recently with what's going on in the White House, in the oral office, these are a lot of confusion and I think feminists instead of coming out and supporting Clinton they need to really think about the issues, power and control, and bring out those kind of issues, instead of just falling behind Clinton. Q: What did you have to do to overcome the disadvantages of being an immigrant, specially an immigrant who is trying to take office and represent others? A: The Green party actually were looking for a candidate who is a woman and minority. Dan Hamburg in the beginning said that he wasn't going to run if there was another white male candidate basically. He said he wasn't going to run. So that's why the Green Party people came to me and they really encouraged me to run. I didn't want to, because it's very hard. I'm working full-time and I don't have the money and resources like the other candidates. So working full-time and trying to do the best job I can with my candidacy is a lot work, it's like I have two full-time jobs. I've had it for 9 months, and it's tremendous amount of time and energy. I'm very committed, but I had to think about it a lot, and the reason I decided to run was when I met with Dan Hamburg I had a very good meeting with him. I really liked his ideas, his energy and his commitment, and he and I ever since have been like friends and we really complement each other, and we can really bring out the issues both of us believe in and very passionately. Which is great, I love it! Q: But do you think this is disadvantage of being an immigrant, not just a woman or a minority immigrant? A: Disadvantage of being an immigrant? You know what, and tell you the truth, you asked me this question a couple of times and I didn't respond, because I have never felt that way. I had never felt it like an immigrant, but as a woman I felt it a lot, disadvantage of a woman, but as an immigrant I haven't felt it. Q: You are constantly confronted with that proposition 187. It's always everything from drugs to crime, it's always blamed on Latinos and immigrants and we are always confronted with this wall between Tiuana and San Diego and so forth. A: I know, I know, I know what you are talking about. And I feel that, I see that, but for myself I haven't felt that. You know what I mean? I see the immigrant bashing. I can hear it and I can see what the right wing is trying to do to blame everything on the immigrants, specially Latino Americans. I can see that, but the personal experience I haven't felt it, and that's what I want to say. I'm not saying it's not there, but maybe I'm aware of the women issues and I identify that way instead of being an immigrant. I feel this is my home. I feel very belonged. Somebody said you are complaining about this state, so why you don't you go somewhere else? I said this is my home, excuse me. If I don't like something in my home, I'm going to change things and fix things. So that's how I feel. that's why I couldn't really relate to your question. Q: A lot of people feel that, about you know about progressive people, that by voting for the Green Party they are throwing away their votes, and taking away from the liberal candidates like the Democratic Party. Can you talk about that and what you have to say to them to change their minds? A: What I say is that if you always vote for the lesser of two evils, what you get is the evil of the two lessers. If we keep voting for our fears, then we get what we have right now. We get Pete Wilson, all the people like him. So people need to vote with their conscious, with their hope, not for their fears. And if they fear that they are throwing their votes away or out because they are voting for me, I would say that at least in their conscious they can feel good that they are voting for their own issues. If everybody feels that way, if everybody votes with their hopes then we don't have the comparison of the lesser of two evils. You know the reason that we have all this is because 60% of California's eligible voters don't vote, and a lot of right wing and Republicans love that. They want us to stay home and don't vote. Every time that a lot of people vote, that's when progressive people get elected. What I tell people is vote and vote for your hopes. Q: I like to wrap this up by going back to the Iranian community. Let me ask a few questions regarding that. Have you enjoyed the support of the Iranians here in California? Have they met your expectations and what else can they do to support you? A: I have been very surprised by all the support that I'm getting from the Iranian community. There are people that I haven't met, I don't even know, they call and they offer to do whatever they can. But at the same time I see that the Iranian community, they are not used to this democratic system. So they think that well, ok, we support her in our heart, you know in their heart, which is great but we need fundraising, we need to do a lot of things. But they are not used to it. So a lot of times even though I know the people who come to events, to fundraising events, that I know they have a lot of money but they haven't been really forward to contribute to the campaign. Unless there is a contribution right at the door, but they don't offer, and what I want to tell people, if at the community we don't come forward and support in any way we can our candidate, we are not going to get anywhere. Our voice are not going to be heard. So I really want to encourage people, not just because I'm the candidate, but for the progressive Iranian community, that first all really participate in the political process. Second, if you had any candidates, any local or state-wide office, support them because they really need both emotional and monetary support. Because if there is no monetary support candidate cannot get anywhere. And for the rest of the campaign, we have till November 3rd, I really want to ask people if they can send checks to my address (P.O.Box 691932 West Hollywood, Ca. 90069). That would be really appreciated. And the telephone number of the campaign headquarters in Los Angeles is 310-473-4146 and is located at 11310 Santa Monica Boulevard. And we have an event on the 15th. I encourage all the Iranians who hear about this to come to that event because we are inviting the media and we are telling them that the Iranian are very supportive. In that event, if the news media see that there are so many Iranians they will probably cover us. Q: Are there other events in Northern California, because there are quite a few progressive Iranians up north? A: Up north I'm having a debate on radio KQED on the 19th at 9:30 am. That's going to be live. For other events they can go to our web sites. Q: Do you still follow the events in Iran? What do you see in the horizon for the Iran-U.S. relations? I know this has nothing to do with California!! A: I know! I do actually. I'm very interested, and I think it's great that we have president Khatami there. But at the same time I see that he doesn't have the power that he needs to have. The right wings all time, whatever he says, the right wing comes out and really negates him. So like Salman Rushdie, he said we are through with Salman Rushdie, the other one says oh what are you talking about. This is a fatwa, you cannot take a fatwa away. So I think the U.S. should do whatever they can to normalize the relationship and help the Iranian people. That's the most important thing. Farzad: Thank you so much for your time. You are a great role model for the future of the Iranian women and men! And hopefully more people will follow up your role. Sara: Thank you very much!
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