Haryaksha Gregor Knauer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Haryaksha Gregor Knauer ran as a Green for State Representative in AZ.
| Job History: | |
 | Registered Green Party since 1998.
Age: 58 Foundryman & artist. Multiday runner, member of Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team. Arizona Coordinator of biennial World Harmony Run. Have run with the WHR team in 48 states, Mexico, Venezuela, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya. Bilingual boardworker, Maricopa County elections. (Hablo espanol. Tambien escucho. Quiero representar a mis hermanas y hermanos latinos igualmente como a todos los demas.) Lifelong peace-lover. Advocate of frugality, fairness, oneness, participatory democracy and stewardship. Inspired by Sri Chinmoy, Paolo Soleri, Thomas Jefferson, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., A. J. Muste, Emma Goldman, Edward Abbey, Walt Whitman, John Muir, Cindy Sherman, Jane Fonda, Ai Wei Wei, Howard Zinn, Dave Dellinger, Yayoi Kusama, Sri Ramakrishna, Ralph Ellison, Bayard Rustin, Willa Cather, Gore Vidal, Judith Butler, Petra Kelly and my parents. Currently I work at Cosanti Originals, molding, casting and assembling bronze windbells. I came down to Cosanti in Paradise Valley from Arcosanti in 2002, worked as groundskeeper for a few years, and now am back in the foundry full-time. I am a little man, leading a simple life. I want to represent the little women and men, workers, the poor, people of conscience, all my sisters and brothers who believe that we can make Arizona a better place. Member of War Resisters League (striving to eliminate the causes of war); Sierra Club; ACLU; Green Party Lavender Caucus; Oneness-Rainbow-Tribe (Sri Chinmoy Centres throughout Africa). Supporter of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World). Occasionally I help replenish the water stations with Humane Borders/Fronteras Compasivas down in southern AZ. |
| Important Issues: | |
| The legislature's bills should be formulated in the public interest, not for the benefit of the powerful and well-connected few. There was a time, in 1789, when the U.S. Constitution did guarantee protections for only the privileged white male landholders. Over time we as a nation have carried on the revolution and embraced the notion that freedom is for all. Sure, we accept personal constraints for the greater common good. Charles Krauthammer in a column wrote, "Since forever, infrastructure has been consensually understood to be a core function of government."
Here are some issues and concerns balancing the needs of individuals with the needs of the community. What is in the state's best interest? ALTERNATIVE ENERGY; EDUCATION; HEALTHCARE; PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION +AHCCCS for all (universal health care for all, regardless of pre-existing conditions or income, circumventing the insurance companies and their mandates altogether. With the Affordable Care Act upheld by the Supreme Court, here in Arizona those of us with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty level will be expected to subscribe to an HIX, a health insurance exchange. The legislature will decide if it's run at our state level, or if we default to the federal program.) Might as well start with free vaccinations for all. KidsCare must be restored, without premium payments, and the waiting list brought down to naught. +End routine infant circumcision. "It shouldn't hurt to be a child." +Petition the U.S. Congress for realistic worker visa quotas; bury SB1070; expedite unequivocal 100% amnesty for undocumented immigrants. (Other names for amnesty are comprehensive, sensible, practical, humane immigration reform.) +Reinstate full funding for state parks. Emphasis should be on our heritage. (No land swap for copper mining! Short-term profit for extractive corporations, domestic or foreign, should not trump preservation of our water table.) +Provide the Hopi with the pipeline they need for safe water. Peabody has mined their acquifer to the degree that their springs and wells have too high a concentration of arsenic for drinking. +Abolish the death penalty. +Call on President Obama to pardon Leonard Peltier, Mumia abu Jamal, Bradley Manning, and all U.S. political prisoners. +Institute and defend full LGBT equality in the workplace and out. +Bring sex-education in our public schools up to date, and guarantee secularism. Institute ethnic studies in our public high schools, and be sure to include anarchist studies in the U.S. history curriculum. +End prisons-for-profit, and closely monitor and enforce contracts within the prisons, such as health and food and laundry services. Enhance oversight to make our prisons humane: rehabilitation means proper nutrition and exercise, skills-training, addiction-treatment and attention to all physical and mental health needs, freedom from violence. +End mandatory sentencing. +Restore voting rights to all inmates of Arizona prisons. In fact, the right to vote really should be amended to the U. S. constitution. +Legalize, regulate and tax recreational drugs. Addictions are a public health issue, and we should not funnel the vulnerable into the prison-industrial complex. Provide intervention and adequate treatment for alcohol and other drug abuse. +Tax the churches. (And please, enough with all the politicking from the pulpit.) +Improve services and shelters for the homeless population. +Repeal what the last legislature dubbed a "jobs bill" (tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations.) +Encourage workers to organize and create models for a greater share of profits from their labor: reduce the vast pay discrepancy betweeen workers and business management. +Create greater access to capital for start-ups. Banks must be responsive to community needs, not just to stockholders. Coordinate with the Small Business Administration to loosen conditions for borrowing. It's not too late to move your money out of the global banks and into the credit unions and small community banks. +Reward entrepreneurialism. It's especially the new small businesses that create new jobs. Duplicative permitting and regulations surely can be streamlined. +Affirm affirmative action. +Provide job-training for displaced workers. +End foreclosures. +Generously fund the arts in our communities, and restore music and art programs in our public schools. +Expedite worker cooperatives and collectives, perhaps with financial incentives. Workers must be at the business roundtable. +Encourage creation of projects like Arcosanti (Paolo Soleri's arcology-in-progress up at Cordes Junction. Arcosanti is an institution of international importance.) +Experiment with an alternate currency, as they're doing in Greece, with credits tracked through a non-governmental network, bypassing big banks, which are not treating people fairly. +Generate real direct jobs in infrastructure, as in a latter-day Civilian Conservation Corps. (The Four Forests initiative seems to be a good example of job coordination. It is intended to improve the health of Rim forests and employ workers in thinning, as well as in corollaries like milling and inventive new uses for logged trees up to 16" diameter.) +Expand bus, rail and other transit/commuter service statewide. Public transportation improves quality of life for all, stimulates commercial activity, helps build community and reduces pollution. +Consult with educators to improve our schools. This also is a direct generator of jobs, and it'll prepare our students for productive and rewarding lives. We must stop siphoning monies from our public school, stop channeling it to the parochial and internet and other private entities. Lest we forget, education is not a business. +Protect our schoolchildren from bullying: enlist parents or grandparents to get involved as bus and hall monitors. +Universities should be as nearly free as possible. Financial aid and in-state tuition should be extended to the undocumented. ASU occupies a big chunk of LD26. I'd like to say that Dr. Michael Crow, ASU's president, is an Atlas in our state. He has done a humongous build-out, he speaks out as an advocate on relevant issues, etc. But on the AZlab over in Mesa's Polytechnic he's endorsing/promoting drones. On this I must say whoa! +Make AZ a drone-free zone. Research into, and manufacturing of UAV's, unmanned aerial vehicles, should not find a foothold in our communities. (This Trojan Horse is an instance of direct job-creation that we must eschew. Advocates tout their nonmilitary applications, but drones are essentially surveillance instruments for subjugation and oppression. Vid: current use in Syria. Furthermore, they're easily hacked. Even the Republican platform demands warrants for drones over private property.) +Work toward making AZ a nuclear-free zone. End subsidies. +Cooperate with and encourage the AZ Corporation Commission in their Renewable Energy Standards drive toward alternative energy as substitutes for fossil fuels and nuclear. ("If you don't have a solar system, git one.") +Tax extractive industries mightily. Polluters must pay. +Conserve, and use judiciously, the state's water. ("Peak water" is a current term offering perspective on drought and judicious use of available sources.) +Protect the Big Chino aquifer and the San Pedro River from reckless development. +Bolster standards for cleaning up our air, water and soil. +Preserve open space from wanton development. +Block the I-11, proposed to plow through the desert from Wickenburg south, and over to Casa Grande. Why should Las Vegas sprawl across our state? The Canada-Mexico commerce corridor should be rail anyway, not highway at all, and should follow existing routes. Commercial trucking should be banned from the Interstate highways. (One train potentially can take 300 trucks off the road.) Block the 202 freeway extension, and halt all new highway construction through virgin desert. +A long-term, inevitable, project for us to start planning is to shut down Sky Harbor. Maybe it could be repurposed as a commercial rail hub. But commercial aviation should be far from an urban center: planes are exceedingly dirty, they're noisy, and they present a real danger. +Plant native trees all along pedestrian circulation routes for shade in all our cities to encourage walking and cycling. Reduce pavement. +Establish a statewide energy-efficiency building code. +Label all GMO foods produced and sold in the state. +In deference to all the sovereign tribes that consider the San Francisco Peaks sacred, block Snowbowl from spraying the slopes with effluent piped up from Flagstaff. +Disband the new AZ Commerce Authority. (To eliminate our state's structural deficit we cannot give away millions of dollars in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Besides, our state constitution forbids deal-closing-type gifts.) +To maintain funding at levels necessary to uphold minimum standards for running the state, taxes will have to be raised. Besides raising gasoline tax (and other sin taxes), we must charge a whopping surcharge on the sale of cars. The wealthy will pay higher taxes on capital gains and all other unearned income. Corporations will have to pay a greater share too, especially polluters and war-profiteers. +No more sweeping funds that are designated for schools, infrastructure, state parks, health and other services. +In campaign finance, we should disallow contributions from corporations and PAC's, and limit those from individuals. Radio and tv spots should be provided free to candidates, as a condition of FCC licensing. +Historic designations and preservation. +I abhor mendacity,...and leaf blowers. In November there will be 9 initiatives on the ballot for an informed electorate to vote on. We must prevent the governor and senate from meddling in the election of judges (Prop. 115). The initiative farcically called "Open Government" is about narrowing the field of candidates in the general election to only the "top 2" winners from an open primary. This would effectively guarantee elections for the incumbents, the moneyed, and the candidates with the name recognition. In other words, it's an anti-democratic ploy to make the competition go away. Instead, we should be lowering the bar for alternative political parties to acquire permanent ballot status. And to encourage Independent candidates, their required number of nominating signatures should be reduced for getting onto the general election ballot. Ranked-Choice-Voting, also called Instant-Runoff, would go a long way in advancing civility, because candidates would not want to alienate voters who might list them as their 2nd choice. (More on ballot initiatives later.) |
| Why Vote For Haryaksha Gregor Knauer: | |
| QUALITY OF LIFE; COMMON SENSE; FAIRNESS
Greens are perennially challenged on viability. Dare to rebel! Vote your conscience. It's a free country. Disenchantment with the legacy parties (Dems and Repubs) is no reason to stay home from the polls. The Green Party is not beholden to entrenched interests. We are the real alternative to imperial over-reach. Above all, we exalt peace, justice and love. Ai Wei Wei, Chinese activist, Tweeter, artist, said, "If you don't act, the danger is stronger." Bayard Rustin: "The time is so late, the danger is so great, that I call upon all the forces which believe in Peace to take a lesson from the labour movement, the women's movement, and the civil rights movement, and stop staying indoors. Go into these streets until we get peace!" Special thanks to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission for the scheduled candidate debates and the Candidate Statement Pamphlet, and to all the outfits that publish voter guides. An informed and engaged electorate is imperative. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." Please challenge me with burning questions on issues that I haven't touched on here. I'm running to represent all of LD26, not just the working poor, tree-huggers and social justice activists. Lucian Freud, the British figurative painter, said that it was his job to work the frisky horses so that others could ride them later: unruly, unpopular, unusual ideas that first come out tentatively may be fully embraced in time. Answerphone is always on; it's a landline, and I don't get to it every day: 480-966-0649. Email: haryaksha.knauer@gmail.com. PO Box 7931, Apache Station, Tempe, AZ 85281 |
| Endorsed by David Cobb; Cochair, "MovetoAmend" Coalition; 2004 Green Party candidate for U.S. president.
"I pledge allegiance to Turtle Island And to the creatures who thereon dwell, One ecosystem, under the sun, With joyful interpenetration by all." --Gary Snyder |
Contact Haryaksha Gregor Knauer
| Phone: | (480) 966-0649 |
| Mail: | Knauer, Haryaksha Gregor for State Representative |
| PO Box 7931, Apache Station | |
| Tempe, AZ 85281 |
Please feel free to learn more about all my campaigns:
2010 2012
Candidates who are running as endorsed Greens or actively seeking the party endorsement or running non-partisan campaigns that are supported by the Green Party, from local to national office, may have a free listing through this page.
Green and Green-friendly campaigns that already have a web site, may still be listed in our directory with a link to their official election site. Green candidates with little or no campaign budgets and no technical support can still have their qualifications, issues, and contact information available online.