Jordan Blake announces candidacy for Salem mayor

I received this email from Jordan Blake through the Locavores group on his stepping into the race for mayor. To be fair, I will post emails from any candidate that decides to join the race or is already in the race for Salem's mayor. Right now, there are two other names in the contest, Chuck Bennett and Anna Peterson.


Hi, please take this moment and hear me ROAR! My name is Jordan Blake
and I am beginning my journey into the now of community, as we
approach a race that needs to be won. It is a race that we enter into
everyday, to get to work, to feed the family, to go to church, to find
that meeting, to take up that hobby, and to co-evolve in the
transition toward transporting one self sustainably. This is the
topic I present with a view from a balancing perch, as I share in
kindness, " I am entering the race for Mayor of Salem to ride a wave
of intentional acceleration." In this partnership I bring to the
table my pole position which is third. It is through a story about a
vehicle whose name is GEARZ, a food share dump truck that runs on
donated bio-fuel from Puentes Bros, that drives my world. I drive
GEARZ and SOUTHPAW, my 99 Jetta, a car that was given to me by my dad,
and that I plan on donating to Marion Polk Food Share. SOUTHPAW is my
contribution to the craft(cap) and trade of my food share that is
ending hunger, a strategy that will hopefully land MPFS another
vechicle (which needs to be a mid-sized bio-deisel garden truck.) As
mayor, I am going to committ to making and breaking my reccord for the
least # of VMT's (vehicle miles traveled) in 2010. My goal will be to
shake up the mindset of the system to get us all co-opting to get our
numbers down. With 34% of Oregon's CO2 coming from the transportation
grid, we need to learn how to get off of it.

As Mayor, I will focus on learning to be a city of peace and healing,
and this will be part of my practice, my principle, and my policy. I
hope that STIR will help me in setting the table, as it is going to be
a community feast! My plan is to hold 4 events with reflections of
the possible studio strategies that I am proposing, with the goal of
instituting "I CHANGE", a program that we can believe in. I believe
that for each neighborhood and country setting, we need a design
studio that models permaculture. How are we going to design our
neighborhood of the future? I plan to work with Salem City Repair and
some major grant funding to take us into the midst of community
building convergences. It is happing. Has been and always will. It
just needs to be bridged. This is what I hope to build with all of
you. I especially want to thank 1000 Friends of Oregon for bringing
the Salem-Keizer Livability talk to our town last night. It was in a
crowed room with some key, heavy weight players, and we discussed
things 40 years out. It is the root of sustainability and the health
of our gut that steers me. I will strive to improve our over all
nutrion this way.

As Mayor of Salem, I want to seriously support the downtown culture of
food, dancing, art, peace and communiation. I will do this by
supporting kiosks that allow us as community organizing agents to
work. As Mayor of Salem, I will support C.I.T.Y. Chickens in the
Yard. Let us bring about change, my goodness. I am, as are so many
of us ready to catalyst the system. I say bring it on, and to do it
in balance with the system, as it has to be a holistic, interdependent
yet personal approach, as we are each human. I plan to support my
candidacy with healing events of community fun(d) raising. I plan on
co-facilitating the display/production and promotion of visionary
sustainable culture. This process has me co-creating a LIFT OFF event
in the new year, which I am planning for January 2010. This and a
slingshot of internet and community canvasing will be where I will be
in the evenings and nights ahead. I hope this finds you well as we
nestle in to fall, with an aim toward Spring. I do plan on winning,
as I hope you do too! I will be referencing this book from now on
and would like to see Transition Salem bring the author, Tom Atlee, a
fellow who resides in Eugene. Check it out...The Tow of Democracy!
http://www.taoofdemocracy.com/

Sincerely,

Jordan Blake