State Assembly Q&A: Green Party Candidate

Linda Piera-Avila is running for the California State Assembly Seat in the 41st district.

Her name will appear on the ballot along with incumbent Julie Brownley (D) and Republican challenger Terry Rathbun.

Piera-Avila was raised in Agoura Hills, attended college at nearby California Lutheran University, and has lived and worked in Santa Monica for

In 2009, Linda was appointed by the Santa Monica City Council to serve on the newly-formed Santa Monica Urban Forest Task Force. She also serves as a Board Member of the Pico Neighborhood Association. In 2008, Linda ran as a candidate for City Council in Santa Monica.

Why are you the best choice for the job over the two other candidates?

As a member of the Green Party, I would bring a holistic perspective to the legislature based upon ecological wisdom, social justice, grassroots democracy and non-violence. This interconnected, value-based approach is common to Greens in 90 countries around the world in which the Green Party exists.

Our state legislature clearly needs more voices than just Democrats and Republicans. Electing a Green would be important on a policy level, because on issues like climate change, we have been decades ahead of the establishment parties. But more broadly, electing a Green would help expand the horizons of the politically possible for all voters, empowering them to believe they can really make change. Perhaps that is what our democracy is about as much as anything.

Personally, I have lived in the district almost my entire life (having grown up in Agoura!) and am familiar with the issues of the region. I have spent a number of those years working on environmental and social justice issues that affect our quality of life. Currently I serve on the City of Santa Monica Urban Forest Task Force.
Incumbent Julie Brownley claims her status on the education committee and budget committees puts her in a unique position to spend more money in our district. How do you respond?

What are Ms. Brownley’s proposals to address the systemic problems of ongoing statewide education underfunding and budget impasses? Clearly we have a huge structural deficit, we have controversial and Prop 13 and Prop 98 and a broken relationship between the state and the cities. We need a constitutional convention to re-boot our state government so that, among other things, revenue sharing between the state and local governments is fair and doesn’t become an object of ongoing deal making.

But to have a budget process that is truly responsive to the people, we need to change the electoral system so that we can more accurately express our preferences at the ballot box. California’s first-past-the-post, winner-take-all electoral system is archaic and unrepresentative and needs to be scrapped. Greens favor a system of proportional representation where we have multi-seat districts and seats are awarded according to the percentage of the vote received. So if a party got 40% of the vote, it would get 40% of the seats and so on with each party and their percentage of the vote. This makes elections far more representative, because voters are represented in proportion to the extent their views are held in the electorate. Under our current system, you can make up 49% of the vote and get no representation.

By empowering choice and giving more voters a chance to elect someone who more directly represents their views, we’d truly change the power dynamic of our elections towards the voters. This would be a great improvement compared to the Top Two Primary trojan horse passed in Proposition 14 this past June, which actually reduces political voice and voter choice and ultimately will be thrown out in the courts based upon its unconstitutionality.

What is your opinion of the Tea Party movement?

I see a movement that does not understand that the political party they are part of, i.e., the Republican Party, is, in large part responsible for the problems they decry. I also believe that while there are many people in it that have genuine concerns, it is being distorted by the massive big-money funding behind it and the role of the Fox Network in promoting it.

What would you do to reduce the unemployment rate?

We need to invest in green jobs in the alternative/renewable energy field like solar and wind, and retrofit our existing buildings for energy efficiency and conservation. This would create local jobs across the state and help cut energy use and greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy costs. The creation of a state bank would allow for this local investment, keeping the money in the state and having a local multiplier effect to recharge the economy, rather than paying exorbitant interest rates to Wall Street. Community based feed in tariffs for wind and solar would also provide municipalities with much needed revenue. In addition to the energy sector, I also support creating jobs through expanding the state’s public transportation infrastructure.

By lowering energy demand and decentralizing energy production through distributed generation, we also decrease the political power of energy companies. It was less than a decade ago that energy deregulation sponsored by the industry brought the state to its knees and helped recall a governor. Green jobs can mean power to the people in more ways than one.

If elected, what programs would you cut and what regulations would you eliminate?

I would amend the three strikes law to apply to violent felons only, thereby saving the state millions by not needing to incarcerate so many people. We need to shift our economic priorities from incarceration toward education and spend that money on higher education. Not adequately educating our residents is a ticking time bomb. I cannot think of any regulations I would eliminate. Lack of regulations and their enforcement has gotten us into the home foreclosure debacle, among other problems.

Other priorities of mine include:

- oppose prop 23 and support AB 32. We have no more decades left to reverse the life threatening disasters of global warming.
- call for a state wide task force to offer solutions to halt the growing crime of human trafficking which enslaves millions of women and children.
- passionately fight to keep our state parks open and accessible to all.
- protect and preserve our remaining old growth forests, open spaces and wildlife habitats.
- promote organic, urban and community farms, community supported agriculture and food co-ops.