Tabling Today

Both Hunger and Homelessness and Climate are tabling today.

HH - Guess how much all this food costs! Table. From 11am-1pm on Trousdale

CCC - Thank you administrators for making a sustainability committee! Table. Same time? On Trousdale as well.

VOTE in the USG Elections!

Vote tomorrow, Tuesday the 19th until Thursday the 21st for your upcoming USG Senators (Res/Greek/Commuter) and also for the next President and Vice President of USG!

You don't matter if you don't vote, so go and do it, get some free food, and then get a coupon so you can get some free In-N-Out. Seriously, it takes like 5 minutes of your time max.

Why yes, Nelson, I love voting!

Also, I'll take this space to announce that I (as an individual obviously, and not on behalf of USC Calpirg) am endorsing Rachel Smith for Senator. Still undecided for the Presidential ticket.

Spring 08 Statewide Retreat Agenda

SATURDAY 02/23/08

10am: Intros

10:45am: Recent campaign updates:

* NVP – youth vote turns out in record numbers, candidates recognize PIRG – Danny
* Global warming – where are we going from here – AB 32 implementation, clean cars, high speed rail, more solar, etc.) – Jason

11:15am: Issue Briefings from our Experts – the problems we're tackling.

* What's Wrong with Our Health Care System and How to Fix it (Mike)
* Protecting Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and other State/National Parks (Gina)
* How to Reduce Global Warming Pollution 80% by 2050 (Jason)
* Solar: The Next Frontier (Bernadette)
* Protecting Our Oceans From Trash and Other Nasty Stuff (Dan)
* How to Make Textbooks Free (Danny/Laura)
* High Speed Rail for California (Emily)
* Mortgage Lending – Preventing the Next Crisis (Pedro)

12pm: The Summer Canvass

* Start out with a little context – Elana

* Campaigns under consideration by Environment California/CALPIRG

1pm: LUNCH

2:00pm: Skills Sessions

* Lobbying 101 (Steve with Gina and Jeremy)
* Public Speaking – Delivering a Statement at a News Conference (there's a transit report release coming up on March 6th that campuses will help release.
* Leading a CALPIRG Campus Chapter – (Danny)
o Skills 2: Coordinating a Statewide Campaign – (Danny)
* Visibility: How to make your campaign known on campus (Tara)
* Working with Student Government (Laura)
o Skills 2: Recruitment/Leadership Development (Laura)
* Knowing the Target of Your Campaign (powermapping) (Dan)
* Planning a News Conference (Jason)
* Building a Coalition for Your Campaign (Bernadette)
* Leadership Training for the Summer Canvass – basic FM skills
* How to bump up your average
* How to run a kick-ass petition gathering event?
* Something on interviewing

2:45pm: Skills Sessions 2 (Repeat)

* Lobbying 101 (Steve with Gina and Jeremy)
* Public Speaking – Delivering a Statement at a News Conference (Pedro and Mike)
* Skills 2: Coordinating a Statewide Campaign – (Danny)
* Digital Organizing: Using Facebook, Youtube, and your chapter website for victory (James)
* Visibility: How to make your campaign known on campus (Tara)
* Recruitment/Leadership Development (Laura)
* Time Management (Amy)
* Knowing the Target of Your Campaign (powermapping) (Dan)
* Planning a News Conference (Jason)
* Building a Coalition for Your Campaign (Bernadette)
* How to be a Great Campaign Coordinator (Sujatha)

3:30pm: Break

3:45pm: Campaign Breakouts – planning the next couple of months.

* High speed rail (campus and canvass) Dan/Emily
* Hunger and homelessness (students) Ramneek/Laura
* Oceans (students and canvas) ?
* Global warming (students and maybe canvass) Ruchika Maybe Jason
* Textbooks (students) Tessa/Tara
* NVP (students) Danny/Sujatha/Nelson
* Healthcare Mike
* Maybe Democracy Now Dallas?

5pm: Each group will pick a spokesperson to present their goals/top priorities to the rest of the group.

Wrap-up at 5:30pm. Dinner at USC.

Sunday 02/24/08

9:00 AM Intros. Personal highlights for the semester

9:10 Budget Discussion. Danny provides general overview of the F08-09 Budget

9:30 AM How to raise more revenue to cut the deficit down. The 5 Ways

10:00 AM Begin discussion of line-items, what we may have to cut and why. Increase in supplies/copies.

10:30 AM Budget discussion end. Roll Call. Begin process of granting provisional board members to LACC. LACC Reps present case

10:35 AM Bring to vote.

10:45 AM Danny provides intro to Elections, function of EC, rules, format

10:50 AM Mike provides what we're looking for in the EC, what an EC can do and what is has done

10:55 AM Chair nominations (5 min.). Each candidate will have a 2 minute speech (5 candidates x 2 minutes = 10 total). After all have gone, a 5 minute Q & A session. 10 minutes of discussion

11:25 AM Vice Chair nominations (5 min.). Each candidate will have a 2 minute speech (5 candidates x 2 minutes = 10 total). After all have gone, a 5 minute Q & A session. 10 minutes of discussion

11:55 AM Break (5 minutes)

12:00 PM At large nominations (5 min.). Each candidate will have a 1.5 minute speech (6 candidates x 1.5 minutes = 9 total). After all have gone, a 5 minute Q & A session. 10 minutes of discussion

12:30 PM end

CONTROVERSY: Oil vs. Alternative Energy

(Click the pic for the facebook event)

The Academic Honors Assembly (AHA, not to be confused with the Grammy nominated Norwegian group A-Ha whose hit single "Take On Me" stormed the charts in 1985) is hosting an event on Oil vs. Alternative Energy with some leading professors in the subject. Here are the details:

CONTROVERSY: Oil vs. Alternative Energy
Doheny Intellectual Commons
Wednesday, 02/20/08
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM

And a description:

The need for alternative energy sources is more evident than ever before, but how feasibly can we implement them? Can biofuels actually sustain us? Are there merits in continuing to tap petroleum and fossil fuels? Join us for a debate on these discussions and more, led by:

Professor GK Surya Prakash, USC College Chemistry:
His work on non-combusting methanol fuel cells may be revolutionary for the energy industry.

Professor Muhammad Sahimi, Viterbi Chemical Engineering:
With a multifaceted background in chem. engineering and materials science, he has published numerous articles advocating the political and social dimensions of energy policy.

Professor Anupam Madhukar, Viterbi Chemical/Materials Engineering
Working with solar energy, his research and advocacy also seek to change the landscape of energy supply.

FREE FOOD!

2/16 Saturday Beach Clean Up - Deets

Forwarded from Luisa:

Hey everyone,

So our very first beach clean up is this Saturday at Venice Beach, this is the address given on the site:
Venice Beach Pier @ Washington Blvd.
3100 Ocean Front Walk
Venice Beach, CA

It starts at 10am and goes till noon (and maybe lunch afterwards) so let's meet at the Subway parking lot in the UV at 9:30. We might be meeting people from E1 there as well.

Nelson, Trimaine and Jen are driving and i think pretty much all the seats will be full =)

Alright, thank you all for volunteering, see you on saturday!!

Luisa

Unrelated - OMG Indiana Jones

Sorry, as a child of the 80's and a complete freak for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, I am legally obligated to post this. FIRST TRAILER FOR INDY IV OMG! (click to enjoy)

Unrelated - I Kidd, I Kidd

I just wanted to say...Jason Kidd, DON'T DO IT! That and Mark Cuban is a sly fox.

The West is strong enough as it is with the family expanding to include, in the past few weeks, Gasol, O'Neil, and now probably Kidd. Hoo boy, this does not bode well for my Golden State Warriors and our playoff chances. Not one bit.


For those of you keeping score at home, Obama and McCain swept the Potomac/Chesapeake/Crabcake Primaries yesterday. Obama quite convincingly by 2:1 margins in VA and MD, and by 3:1 in the District. McCain I'm sure had the scare of his life for an hour or so when a zombie (i.e. refuses to go away and die) Huckabee breathed down his neck in VA, but McCain eventually pulled away in all three.

Next up is Hawaii(DEM) and Wisconsin next Tuesday, and then the "No Similarities to Each Other At All" Primaries on March 4 with Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island.

One more thing...

I think that about pretty much sums it up. Warriors win 120-118 over PHX. Beeeeautiful. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

(A note of public disclosure, this author is an Obama contributor and supporter. Also, one of those obnoxious/annoying avid sports fans and team loyalists. In this case, Don Nelson's Crazy Ball Club Up in Norcal)

Second DT article in just as many days

You can read that right here.

I count it because we're mentioned once by name.

Hunger Cleanup

So I'm talking to my roommate Dan, and I've just discovered that yet AGAIN, Hunger Cleanup and Relay for Life happen to be on the same day.

This being a CalPIRG blog I'm going to advocate Hunger Cleanup more...but there's absolutely nothing stopping you or preventing you from doing both. In fact, you SHOULD do both and raise twice the amount of money for both of these worthy charities.

Then, do a day of community service and cap it off with a night chilling with friends in the middle of a track field. Win-win.

Sign up for HC here:

Relay for Life here:

Why don't we have this yet?

So an update on the Public Transit campaign. We had an aspiring filmmaker named Marietta come in to talk about CA HSR and the documentary she's making on it to educate the public. (Especially for the upcoming November ballot measure: 10 billion dollars in bonds to break ground on the first leg of the project from LA to San Francisco.)

She showed us this 10 minute video made by the California High Speed Rail Authority (seen below)



Then she stuck around to take questions and ask for suggestions on how to proceed. We told her about the Spring Break road trip down the route. I'm excited to see what she comes out with. She's aiming for a late-March release online, or maybe a persistent episodic deal (suggested by moi).

Commuting and traffic make me all the more angrier now, knowing the potential alternative.

DT article

We're in the DT again. you can read that right here, with quotes from yours truly.

Also, Ruchika and I spoke to Brian Brett, USG Treasurer about the viability of a new Environmental/Sustainability Board with E1 and others. More on this coming soon

Discuss.

(Image credit Joshua Sy | Daily Trojan)

Upcoming Events February

02/12 Public Transit screening event, 7:00 PM, VKC

02/13 Textbooks event, Shining the Spotlight on the Textbook Industry. Trousdale, 10 am - 5 pm

02/16 Venice Beach, Beach Clean Up. And there will be volleyball. 10 am - 1 pm. Contact Luisa for details.

02/23-24 CalPIRG Statewide Retreat hosted by USC

Spring Semester 2008

So it has been almost a year since the last post...

I'll be the first to admit that I've been a horrible updater and blogger. If anyone even reads this thing, I apologize for the lapse. Hopefully Isabelle can reverse that trend though. She will be the new internet helper/blog maven for USC CalPIRG.

Some quick updates:
-We've had a ton of media hits since Super Tuesday, and we hit our goal of 1000 contacts for GOTV. Apparently there were a lot of problems though (click here and here to learn more), and we're waiting on a DT article on that. Any and all voting "problems" aren't unique to USC though, they were endemic to all of the LA County. Not to be all defensive, but the registrar's errors have nothing to do with us.

-Had our S08 GIM, and 92-3 people (depending on who you ask) came to attend. That's one or two behind the current CA leader UC Berkeley with 94. Definitely ahead of UCSB (30s), UC Davis (55), and UCSD (82). Thank you Sujatha again for being the keynote.

-Campaigns are up and running and the first events are starting to pop up everywhere. Public Transit (i.e. Jon and Andrew) could use some help guys, so if you're interested, give em a shout on facebook.

-Virginia, our new organizer, has arrived. Make sure to give her a warm welcome as she adjusts to the wonderful weather of SoCal and the awesomeness (read: eccentricity) of this chapter