I’m looking forward to finding out where my “tree” will be “planted” in downtown DC. I should know sometime next month!

Please look for additional information regarding the exhibition date, online gallery and reception in a couple of months. In the meantime visit ufp-dc.com to see where the banners will be exhibited.

This project, conceived by Worldstudio, is being presented in Washington, DC by the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), in collaboration with the Corcoran College of Art and Design, AIGA DC and Downtown DC Business Improvement District. Seed funding for the project was provided through a grant from the USDA Forest Service with corporate sponsorship being sought to support implementation.

+Visit the DC Urban Forest Project Website

I was at a friends house two weeks ago and snapped these two photos when I was in their bathroom. I was intrigued because after my first glance at the bottle I thought the circular logo was from the USDA’s National Organic Program. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the designers of the product used a similar design in order to give the appearance that it was organic– specifically the use of boldface type for USDA within a circle. I wonder if people purchasing the product thought it was organic? Or if they might have equated the official organic seal with “Meets USDA Food And Safety Standards” like I did? No matter what, due to the popularity of the organic products and the USDA Organic Seal, I except to see similar uses of this type of deceitful labeling on other products.

Earlier today I attended the Capitol Climate Action on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Organized by Greenpeace and the Rain Forest Action Network for the Powershift09 conference, the demonstration was billed as a “mass civil disobedience” designed to shut down the Washington, DC’s biggest polluter, the Capitol Power Plant. Although I wasn’t able to stay for the entire demonstration, I was able to slice together some of the video clips I took from around 1pm to 3pm:

Last month I snail mailed a letter to YouTube citing the fact that their political page was being explicitly partisan and did not include any third party politicians running for president. I have yet to receive a written reply. Instead YouTube gave the page’s layout a makeover, but still left out 3rd party presidential candidates. To document this flagrant bipartisanship, I decided to take a screen shot every day I was on-line this month.

Below you’ll see the candidates YouTube has tacitly endorsed during the month of June:

If you haven’t been to Capitol Hemp yet, come & check it out tonight!

Today I wrote YouTube, LLC (owned by Google, Inc) the following letter:

Dear YouTube, LLC,

Your “Face the Candidates” section ( http://youtube.com/youchoose ) needs to be updated to include all presidential candidates. Currently American voters are not being shown all the candidates for president of the United States of America and this prevents your users from making an informed decision on what presidential candidate to vote for in November.

As a member of the Green Party of the United States, I find your explicit bipartisanship to be counter to your parent company’s corporate philosophy. The link to the “Face the Candidates” page is titled “YouChoose” but in reality it could be written “We’ve chosen for you,” because the web editors have unfairly excluded a presidential candidate.

Please include Cynthia McKinney’s campaign channel ( http://www.youtube.com/runcynthiarun ) to your “Face the Candidates” page because she is running for president and deserves the same placement as her democratic & republican party counterparts.

Sincerely,
Nikolas R. Schiller

I wrote this out of general frustration regarding how controlled the American political system is. Even though I voted for Cynthia McKinney in the Washington, DC primary and she’s now acquired the majority of Green Party delegates, there has been absolutely no national media coverage of her campaign (don’t believe me, check the Washington Post & New York Times websites). This type of American Blackout is unpatriotic, nondemocratic, and downright wrong and with Google’s “do no evil” corporate philosophy in place, this letter is an attempt to challenge their web editors to do the right thing and include all presidential candidates regardless of political affiliation. Will they change the page? I doubt it, but I know that I’ve made an effort, albeit a small one.

At the Artomatic opening night I spoke with someone close to Mark Jenkins about his #000000 POWER t-shirt concept that uses Hexadecimal Color Codes to reference the word’s color (aka BLACK POWER). In this geeky context I thought it would be funny to follow-up this meme by making my own HTML-based t-shirt.

After thinking through a bunch of different permutations, I came up with #006900 Party to represent the Green Party of the United States. I could have chosen from quite a few different combinations for the color Green, but I thought that the number 69 was the most widely understood numerical reference out of the possible permutations, with the exception of the number 42, a favorite number of mine that I found to be too dark.

I will be donating this design to the Green Party of the United States if they want to use it for their official merchandise.

This Earth Day I am calling out corporate greenwashing being employed by NBC Universal . The calculated lie (below) is that they are not forming a new “Green Party,” rather they are subverting the existence of one of the few 3rd parties in American politics.

When this week is over, I sincerely wonder how many times will NBC Universal feature the Green Party’s presidential candidate on any of it’s stations? That is less of a question and more of a challenge. My null hypothesis is that there will be no mention of the Green Party of the United States, rather lots of tips on living green instead of empowering people that they have the option to vote Green in November.

NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and this type of greenwashing is designed to help distance people’s concerns about General Electric’s nuclear reactor business operations. It’s ironic that it was protests against nuclear energy that helped propel the German Green Party into the political spotlight.

View the modified screen grab:

Photograph by Gerald Martineau of The Washington Post. Mosaic by Jill Blankespoor

I’ve known about the store for some time now so it’s nice that it’s is getting some great exposure in today’s Washington Post article. The store is located near the intersection of 18th & Columbia NW below the Starbucks and should open soon. I’ve written about my antics & activism with Adam over the years- from working on his last campaign for U.S. Shadow Representative to staging the first ever DC democracy lobbying effort on the Potomac and I’m looking forward to shopping at Capitol Hemp.

An infographic showing how to hack a Diebold Accuvote-TS unit

So yesterday I participated in the DC Statehood Green Party Primary. This election cycle I was offered the opportunity to keep the tab from my ballot. Compared to those generic “I VOTED” stickers, the paper ballot is a much better souvenir because it shows that not only did I vote, I was voter number 2 at the precinct. Here’s the scanned proof:

Judging by the DC Board of Elections and Ethics results for my precinct (below), I can verify that the ballot above was the second and last DC Statehood Green Party ballot given out yesterday. If you scroll down to the bottom of the image, it shows that there were 2 people who voted for Cynthia McKinney and since the ballot above is market 00002, I can only infer that the other voter has 00001.

Page 137 of the Pre-Certified Presidential Preference Primary Election Results – Precinct Report

It looks like Cynthia McKinney beat Ron Paul in my precinct (2 votes to 1 one). Only nine people voted republican compared to the two Statehood Green (one being me). Thats some hyperlocal politix.

Related 2008 Election Entries:

• Bird's Eye views of Big Diomede, Russia
• Uncertified Election Results from Precinct #137 in Washington, DC
• Jason Linkins 2008 Election Recap is up on the Huffington Post
• Video of my vote at Precinct #137 in Washington, DC
• Spam from presidential candidate John McCain: Make History Tomorrow
• New videos are up on the Huffington Post - Foreign Correspondents Edition
• Bird's Eye View of Little Diomede, Alaska
• The microphone flag I designed makes an appearance
• The newest Vlogorrhea with Jason Linkins & Ana Marie Cox is now up on the Huffington Post
• Change in America by Head-Roc featuring GODISHEUS International Funk Train aka The G.I.F.T
• YouTube Video of Cynthia McKinney on Al Jazeera's Riz Extra show
• Illegal Popup Advertisement featuring John McCain
• Stickering Shepard Fairey's "The Duality of Humanity" in Washington, DC
• Third Party Presidential Ballot Access in the United States of America [updated]
• Interviews with Alex Jones at the DNC in Denver and other videos
• Empirically demonstrating how voting can prove uniqueness
• Wasilla, Alaska is literally off the map, the Google Map that is
• Third Party Presidential Ballot Access in the United States of America
• Protest videos from the first day of the RNC in St. Paul, Minnesota
• Iraq Veterans Against the War Concert & March at the 2008 DNC
• Two Huffington Post Interviews are up - Tim Daly, Rufus Wainwright, and Margaret Cho
• A Polar Bear In Denver
• Democratic National Convention 2008 - Photos from Day Three
• Democratic National Convention 2008 - Photos from Day Two
• Democratic National Convention 2008 - Photos from Day One
• Obama's vice presidential selection is a slap in the face to every progressive American
• La Bruja recites her poem "Be Who You Are"
• Al Franken draws a pretty good map of the United States; then sells it for $200
• YouTube Has Chosen For You! - Digital Scrapbooking Explicit Bipartisanship
• Dalai Lama: "If you have a Green Party I want to join it"
• CurrentTV: Green On Green [feat. the 2008 Green Party Presidential Candidates]
• Face the (Corporate) Candidates on YouTube
• My vote verified by a paper ballot
• The M&M's of Australia say Vote Green
• 2008 Green Party Debate [tonight on KPFA]

An ad agency’s portrayal of the Green M&M

This subvertisement is from an Australian M&M advertisement campaign. I’ve seen the same type of campaign done in America, however this campaign employs revolutionary iconography to sell the colors.

Today, however, I didn’t vote for a corporation, instead I voted in the D.C. Statehood Green Party Primary for Cynthia McKinney.

I am going to make every attempt to call in.

I haven’t posted much Green Party information in a long time. In December I stepped down from the steering committee of the DC Statehood Green Party. For the last two years I helped run Washington, DC’s official third political party (about 5,000 registered voters). My biggest accomplishment was helping the DC Statehood Green Party candidates receive more votes than the Republican Party’s canidates in the 2006 election by almost 2 to 1.

Lately, however, I’ve become completely disillusioned by the dog & pony show that is American corporate politics. The Washington Post has not even written one story this election cycle on my favorite Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney, instead they’ve run only one AP story, and it has already been removed (less than one month old!). By not mentioning other candidates or entire political parties it ensures that debate is silenced and alternative viewpoints do not become a threat to the electoral plutocracy. Frankly, I am quite sickened by it all. The American electoral process is controlled to the point where it’s become meaningless. However, I must remain hopeful.

I am going to work a poll this morning on behalf of Renee Bowser. Should be fun!

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update

She placed 4th. I am looking forward to seeing the price breakdown of votes per dollar. She didn’t spend nearly the amount that corporate contenders had. This election showed me how democracy is really all about the amount of money one can spend, not about issues…..

As one of the few people on the Steering Committee and a National Delegate, I am proud of this small election victory.

via NBC4’s Tom Sherman’s Notebook
source: http://www.nbc4.com/politics/10416500/detail.html

Going Green
The D.C. Statehood Green Party is patting itself on the back over the November election returns. The small party came in way behind Democratic winners in the big elections, but the party has gleaned a few nuggets of hope from Board of Election tallies.

Of five partisan races on the ballot Nov. 7, the party says there were 44,580 overall votes for Statehood Green candidates while there were only 29,776 Republican votes.
In the race for the city’s statehood lobbyist (Shadow Representative), the party says standard-bearer Keith Ware got 13 percent of the votes with 12,762 ballots while the Republican candidate got 8,839 or 9 percent.

Even mayoral candidate Chris Otten received 4 percent of the vote behind 6 percent for Republican David Kranich. Of course, Democrat Fenty got most of the rest.

I’d like to map the locations of where the 44,580 D.C. Statehood Green votes were cast. It would also be quite interesting to see where the 29,776 Republican votes were cast. I have a feeling the Republican votes would be found mostly in Wards 2 & 3. Sadly, I do not have the required software (ArcMap) needed to make these two maps :( Maybe I can get a friend to make it for me…

Image links to the Netscape Celebrity Page

I found this last night while looking through my ip analysis… It looks like the D.C. Colonist is going places these days. But still he has no voice in Congress.

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Link is now dead…

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This photo was used in the Washington Post on November 19th, 2009.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Much of Thursday’s hearing focused on the district’s fight for representation in the House, and several people in the audience wore stickers with the number “51,” referring to their hopes to make Washington the 51st state.

One resident even donned a Revolutionary period costume, complete with tri-corner hat, to protest the district’s lack of representation. Nikolas Schiller said he wore the purple garb to “highlight the fact that D.C. residents are still living in a colony,” because they are being taxed by the government without representation.

read the rest of the article:

albeit for a brief moment outside with the largest DC flag…

it’s so annoying when they have 30 minutes of footage, but cut it down to 5 seconds. I wish I could have that footage. It’s not like the footage will be used anytime soon….Sam and his camerawoman were the only news crew to cover the antics outside two hours before the hearing began.

I wish the Washington Post would have used the picture of me shaking Fenty’s hand…

Nikolas R. Schiller, co-chair of the D.C. Statehood Green Party, dressed as a colonist – complete with purple coat, ruffled blouse and three-cornered hat – to demonstrate how “D.C. residents are essentially colonists.”

Schiller said he considered H.R. 5388 “inherently flawed” because it did not grant representation in the Senate. “It would make residents of D.C. one-third of a citizen,” he said, “and I’d rather be 100 percent.”

Read the entire article:

Tonight’s creation….

Jon Q. Voter: “What does the Green Party stand for?”
Me: “Well there are 10 Key Values…”
Jon Q. Voter: “Environment right?”
Me: “Well, I prefer ‘ecologicial wisdom,’ but that is one of them.”
Jon Q. Voter: “What are the rest?”
Me: “Well I made a nifty google map to help you.”

“10 Key Value Google Map” – click image to be taken to the map

Since Wednesday I’ve been in lovely Tuscon, AZ for the Green Party National Convention. I was the elected delegate from the D.C. Statehood Green Party and represented roughly 5,000 registered D.C. Statehood Greens. I didn’t have access to MySpace while there, so this posting is a condensed recap. Suffice it say, I had an absolute blast.

Here are some highlights:

— Liberated a lonely bicycle that had the same sticker as my own bicycle in DC: “Please don’t steal my bicycle. Thanks” and drove it around the town- all around town. You know how I roll. the bike is now rests in the same place i found it, waiting for a new rider

— Went to a restraurant owned by the family of one of my good friends 3 times- ate stewed cactus, spinach & pine nut tacos, and an amazing chimichanga. La Indita – Young Indian Woman…

— Walked across the border into Mexico at Nogales for the last time before a Visa is required to leave America (starting 2007 yo) and had a few beers and walked back. Customs only asked what country I reside in and in a Fruedian slip I said “Washington, DC.” – no documentation was ever made by either government of my departure and my return to the United States. And to think I walked back over with a person who has an FBI file related counter-recruitment. Well maybe I do too. I digress.

— Went to a Casino on the way back from Mexico and won $30 at Blackjack. Walked in with $30 and left with $60 but all the while knew that gambling is a tax on people who do not know math. The next day I met a Green Party mayoral candidate who for 30 years has been a slot machine repairman in Reno, NV.

— Made it to about 12 different bars on the historic 4th Ave strip of Tucson, AZ and figured out where I would have spent my Friday nights if I were to have gone to the University of Arizona. I went to Buzz instead…

— Saw MXPX, Whole Wheat Bread, Arlington View, and Transition (not my scene, but ethnographically intriquing) at the Rialto Theatre. The irony of an Arlington View in DC and Texas abounds.

— Went to the Saguaro National Park – West

— Went to Catalina State Park and saw a roadrunner — meep meep. Oh yeah, I saw a lot of cactus- but for the first time realized the beautiful biodiversity of the desert.

— Discovered how dangerous intermittent streams can be when you are in the desert’s rainy season. think desert tsunami, seriously

— Made a cameo in the Tucson, AZ Fox News affiliate’s segment on the Green Party National Meeting:

http://www.fox11az.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=78277&catId=142

(click the image to be taken to the page)

— Met a lot of great lawyers from around the country who specialize in a quite a few different legal arenas

— Came up with a few gimmicks using google maps for Green candidates around the country

— After reading thousands of e-mails from over 150 leaders scattered around the country, I finally got to make the human connection with a conversation. Made a lot of friends, mostly older in age, and considerably wiser.
Now it’s time to get back to the work that I missed out on….