My 2022 Vote-USA Questionnaire
MICHAEL ERNEST KERR
GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE FOR 2022 CALIFORNIA CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 10
MICHAEL KERR FOR CONGRESS WITH PEACE AND JUSTICE
“CENSORSHIP AND THE TRUTH ARE NOT COMPATIBLE”
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Why I Am Running for Public Office
We have a government and mainstream media under the control of the military-industrial-prison complex and a few hundred powerful and rich people who comprise the Deep State. They are real and too be feared. They act to smear and frame those who might successfully oppose them. When that fails, they have orchestrated the deaths of outspoken leaders such as JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X. They attack imprison, exterminate whistleblowers and activists like Karen Silkwood, Brian Willson, Judi Bari, Mumia Abu Jamal, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsberg, Ralph Nader, among others. They conspire to keep or remove from political office those who would defy them publicly, such as Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Bernie Sanders since 2015.
The Deep State relentlessly promotes racial, religious, and social issues to divide, control and conquer us. The Republican and Democratic Parties along with the Corporate Media have become the Deep State tools to subvert us. Only when we understand this will we have a chance to unite and slay this demon that would willingly destroy us and the world for power and wealth.
With the Corporate Media long censoring opposing viewpoints of the government narrative on important issues, now we are seeing massive flagrant censorship in social media platforms at a level only seen in the most authoritative of governments.
I will be a bullhorn exposing the corruption in Congress and all our government agencies!
Personal and Family
Since I bought the Peace House in 1989, many people have shared my home. I currently have 8 roommates. One is my supportive partner.
I was first married to Un Chong Oh who was my Korean language teacher in Seoul Korea. Although separated for 1 1/2 years after my sudden removal from Korea, we were married in February 1977 in SF at a Mormon woman’s house by a United Methodist minister with best man and woman provided by good Quaker Friends. A professional burglar did amazing magic tricks. He was notorious as the SFGate (like Water Gate) burglar who broke into a number of peace activist groups during the Vietnam war at the request of the FBI and then exposed his activities to those same groups when he felt he might be on a FBI hitlist for knowing too much! Of course, that never happens in America!
As explained elsewhere, my wife died in 1985 after undergoing kidney dialysis for 5 years and after a year and half of severe sexual harassment by her director at her job with the SF Alemany ESL college District. While this trauma helped destroy her physical heath, along with supporters and myself we were, at least, able to help her recover most of her dignity and spirit.
In 1989, I met a young mother of 3 children while on a caravan trip to El Salvador. Long story, but because of death threats from the Death Squad government of El Salvador I helped smuggle her, a brother, a sister, and a cousin into the U.S. that December. Actually, 3 were captured by U.S. immigration when abandoned by “coyotes”. Back then immigration laws were more humane and profitable. I was able to bail them out of detention quickly for about $2000 which the government eventually kept. We were married in February 1990 and the 3 relatives all obtained legal refugee status. A year and half later we were able to legally bring her three young children to the U.S. The children are now all grown. I had a cordial divorce with my wife about 20 years ago. However, I am still close with everyone.
My parents are both deceased. My dad was a construction engineer and served as a bomber navigator during WWII in the Pacific. My mom was a “Rosie Riveter” during WWII and later was an accountant. My brother is a retired wildlife forest ranger in Montana and my sister is a retired judge in Minnesota. My older half-sister lives in Minnesota and the younger one is a veteran and nurse in Fairfield.
Professional Experience
I delivered local newspapers while in Junior High School.
I worked as a student Engineer at International Harvester while attending Northwestern University in the field of Science Engineering.
I was the last of the draftees and served 3 years in the U.S. Army Signal Corp while mostly stationed in South Korea from October 1972 to October 1975. I was honorably discharged along with a Good Conduct Metal. But one of my greatest honors was when I was secretly removed from Korea by the U.S. Military at the demand of the Korean dictatorship! While under guard for 24 hours before I was on a plane home, my removal orders stating that, “I was a discredit and embarrassment to the United States of America”. Writing letters to Congress and the President sometimes gets rewarded in strange ways! A progressive activist was born!
I worked at National Semiconductor in Sunnyvale for almost 7 years in the early days of computers in the Silicon Valley, mostly as the lead computer technician in the computer repair department. Back then we had to repair computers down to the basic simple IC gates, now of which are thousands in a single IC. We were told back then that someday all the information in the world would be available on our watches. So, it has come to pass, however now this wide unlimited access to information is threatened by governments and corporate interests that would censor, distort and literally ban individuals and viewpoints that contradict the official narratives!
Besides a number of jobs at various pizza restaurants, I was a self-trained organic gardener and home maintenance person for many years.
Civic Involvement
I have been a Peace and Social Justice Advocate most all of my adult life. This has been my vocation, my purpose in life. I have never been paid for my vocation. I have contributed my own money and time to my vocation. I have primarily acted independently, but often in coordination with other groups or organizations. I have been official members of some groups, but also so closely active with some that I would qualify as an active member.
Primarily, I am currently mostly active with 3 groups: Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, Oscar Grant Committee. I have been active less recently or in the in past with Diablo Greens, Mt. Diablo Peace & Justice Center, Crosses of Lafayette, Our Revolution Contra Costa, ACCE, Bay Point Residence Association, Bay Point Garden Club, Injured Workers United, San Jose NOW, Sunnyvale Renters Association, Korea Link – Human Rights Korea, Un Chong Sexual Harassment Support Team and Nuremberg Actions.
When a rent control initiative was put on the ballot in Sunnyvale, I joined in that effort which involved a joint effort between young liberal activists and conservative senior citizens from the many mobile home parks. More people voted for the initiative than had voted in the previous off year election, but the landlords and real estate backed by corporate media spent millions to get homeowners to believe rent control would destroy the city and we loss by a narrow margin.
A year and a half later, when I couldn’t get anyone else to, I ran in a short special election to fill a vacant City Council seat. I actually thought I could win as I was the only candidate in favor of rent control out of six candidates. Unfortunately, the city had earlier agreed to some rent control on mobile home parks, so the conservative seniors abandoned me, and apartment renters didn’t vote in mass. When the reporter called me to say I had finished only a few votes behind the landlord candidate, I exclaimed “you mean she won”. Actually, I had finished 4th behind the Democrat and Republican Party candidates.
In 2020 I ran for Congress as the Green Party candidate in the current District 11 which comprised most of Contra Costa County.
My campaign website http://www.CreatingBetterWorld.org is meant to be a public resource to access various alternative news, opinions and information that is ignored, censored or distorted by the Military industrial Prison Media complex! When an important and serious issue arises don’t just trust your corporate media for the whole story or even the truth. Please refer to my website resources! Personally, I would rather you use my website resource than just vote for me. My website will be there long after any election!
Political Experience
I have been a Peace and Social Justice Advocate most all of my adult life. This has been my vocation, my purpose in life. I have never been paid for my vocation. I have contributed my own money and time to my vocation. I have primarily acted independently, but often in coordination with other groups or organizations. I have been official members of some groups, but also so closely active with some that I would qualify as an active member.
I ran for Sunnyvale city council in 1985 and finished a close 4th to a landlord candidate, a year after I was involved in a losing but highly successful rent control campaign. While apartment renters did not win any concessions from the existing city council, the mostly senior citizen and family mobile home parks did obtain some relief from increasing renter space rents.
I am again running for U.S. Congress as the Green Party candidate in the new CA 10th District. I thank the nearly 15,697 voters (7.4%) who supported me in 2020 in the current CA District 11. I intend to be a bullhorn on issues that corporate politicians and media don’t want you to either know & talk about. You may not always agree with me on every issue, but I do try to base my opinions on serious research while always keeping an open critical mind to additional facts and information.
My campaign website http://www.CreatingBetterWorld.org is dedicated to providing extensive alternative political resources and viewpoints on most every issue confronting society today. My website is an ongoing education resource that will continue and improve long after this election. To be honest your regular use of my website is more important than your vote.
Religious Beliefs
I am agnostic and I respect all religions. I, however, find that most people do not really practice the most sacred values of their religions as to peace and loving thy neighbor and doing no harm to others. This is particularly evident in the way people blindly believe corporate media and then vote for government officials that promote war and violence, destroy the environment, and ignore the needs of the people that could make everyone’s lives so much better.
Accomplishments and Awards
I take pride in the many things I have done to help make this a better world. For example:
In late 2007, I learned that Loaves and Fishes had closed down its food operation for the homeless and needy. Using my home equity funds, I personally fed a community of some 20-40 people at a local park Monday thru Friday. We affectionately became the Anuta Park Picknickers. We sent a petition to Loaves & Fishes pleading them to return to Bay Point and fortunately they did finally return later in 2008. We also sent a letter to the Bill Gates Foundation signed by about 35 of us asking that they consider the possibility of financing a high school in Bay Point whose teens had to travel many miles to another town’s High School. The Gates Foundation rudely rejected our plea!
In a fruitless effort due to liability concerns to grow some of our own homeless community food in one of the numerous vacant lots in Bay Point, I was informed that the Ambrose Park District might offer the vacant lot next to the community center for a garden.
After a lot of effort, I was able to secure permission to build a community garden by a 5-0 vote as long as the district was not financially responsible or otherwise involved. With my home equity money and a loan from the District, I and many of my homeless community friends built the garden in just over a month. For 5 years, I financed and managed the garden with help from friends and community volunteers. Without notice, the garden was taken away from me by the Park District in a 5-0 vote. This was clearly done in retaliation for my successful efforts in saving the community pool from destruction. The Pool has since been remodeled but sadly the community garden was neglected and ignored by the Park District for many years until recently.
I have been involved with the Crosses of Lafayette project since its founding in 2006. I built, painted and erected 75 of the first 300 crosses. That first New Year’s Eve, I helped lead a candlelight vigil display by each of the then 1000 crosses. The Crosses of Lafayette represents the now over 8000 American young men and women who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both clearly illegal according to our Constitution and International Law. When the hillside across from the Lafayette Bart Station reached 4000 crosses, it became too full for additional crosses, but a sign there reflects the number of service people killed to date. Unfortunately, the City Council of Lafayette refused other signs to address the much larger number of service people seriously injured or the many hundreds of thousands of civilians needlessly killed and the millions forced into refugee status or terrorized on the ground in at least 5 other countries.
Over the years, I have been arrested about 40 times and risked arrest many other times to help publicize immoral and illegal activities by our government and multinational corporations.
Educational Background
I somehow managed to be accepted into the elite Northwestern University after High School. I suspect this happen because of a convergence of two new situations. First, I had chosen a new field Science Engineering desperate for student majors. Secondly, this was the first year Blacks were accepted as students in the school’s 100 plus years of existence. Much later, I realized that I had also benefitted from Affirmative Action. I and a high school classmate were the first students, in anyone’s memory, from our poor working-class neighborhood who had been accepted into Northwestern.
I was in college during the height of the anti-Vietnam war movement with a low draft number staring me in the face. I was mostly clueless and never got really involved against the war. I was working off campus as a student engineer when Kent State happened. Students tore up all the iron wrought fencing and block the road in front of the campus for weeks with bond fires. The road was a major commuter route into Chicago. I missed all that, or maybe I might have become an anti-war activist sooner. Certainly, I had thought, my country wouldn’t attack Vietnam unless it was necessary and the right thing to do! I would learn better! Of course, I probably did do some small things in college that were signs of my activism to come. I actually completed my 5-year Science Engineering program, but never graduated or ever practiced Engineering. Never had any regrets about that.
After my military service using the GI Education program, I did obtain an AS in Computer Technology from Heald College in San Francisco.
After I bought my Peace House in 1989, I self-taught myself skills in home maintenance and gardening.
Of course, for some 50 years now, I have self-taught myself and become actively involved in many political issues confronting society and the world.
Military Service
My activist days actually began in earnest when I was the last of the draftees in October 1972. After training at Ft. Polk, LA and Ft. Gordon, GA, I was assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corp in South Korea. It was Christmas Day 1973, when I traveled from Seoul to Pusan to meet the Korean orphan whom I had been sponsoring through a magazine ad. Later stationed in Wonju, I also became involved with a nearby World Vision orphanage. My two visits to Pusan orphanage led me to investigate corruption in the Korean orphan situation.
This would eventually lead me on a path of investigating the U.S. support of the South Korean dictatorship of Park Chung Hee. In 1974, I extended my time in the Army for another year time to stay in Korea. I then began exposing the U.S. support of the Park Chong Hee dictatorship in letters to Congress and President Gerald Ford. My letters were usually signed by 5-6 other soldiers. On my 4-page letter to the President, I collected over 100 signatures from my base.
I was also applying to stay in Korea to both marry my Korean Language teacher Un Chong and travel around Korea as a civilian. After a long delay in approval, I arranged to meet with the base Inspector General. The Major had me meet him alone after normal hours. Upon arrival he immediately stated that whatever it was that I was doing, the Korean Government was not going to let me stay in the country. I told him I had been writing letters to Congress and would he like to see my letters and responses. I then asked how the Korean government would know about my mail to Congress when I was never involved with Korean activists and had been using the military mail system. He immediately refused to review my letters and abruptly ended the meeting.
A week or two later under disguise of a fake military exercise with most of my base personnel scattered across distant Korean hillsides, I was abruptly and secretly removed from Korea by the U.S. Military command at the demands of the Korean Government. Under the Freedom of Information Act requests, I discovered that the Korean Foreign Minister was actually demanding the U.S. Military command do something about me. Article 15, Court Marshal and sending me back to the States were all considered. But it was determined that I was of a martyr disposition, so in order to please the Korean dictatorship and prevent any embarrassing incidents by me, the U.S. High Command finally decided to send me back to the U.S. illegally with no advanced notice. I was put under arrest and in less than 24 hours I was on a plane to Travis AFB in the U.S. My official removal orders stated that I was a discredit and embarrassment to the United States of America. My proudest award ever, this was like being given a Ph.D. in Korean Human Rights study all certified by U.S. Military and the Korean dictatorship.
During my removal processing, I was to publicly disobey my First Sargent numerous times always forcing him to allow Un Chong to be with me. In the back of a jeep on that two-hour ride to Seoul that night we exchanged vows with rubber band rings.
It was October 1975 when I was released from the military at Ft. Lewis, WA. I went on a 4-month hitch hike and bus journey across the Northwest speaking at churches and colleges. I spent much of the next 3 years, working on Korean Human Rights.
General Philosophy My Bio
I have been a Peace and Social Justice Advocate most all of my adult life. This has been my vocation, my purpose in life. I have never been paid for my vocation. I have contributed my own money and time to my vocation. I have primarily acted independently, but often in coordination with other groups or organizations. I have been official members of some groups, but also so closely active with some that I would qualify as an active member.
I am currently mostly active with 3 groups: Veterans For Peace, Code Pink , Oscar Grant Committee. I have also been involved with Our Revolution, Diablo Greens, Mt. Diablo Peace & Justice Center, Crosses of Lafayette and ACCE of Bay Point.
With VFP and Code Pink I have protested against my country’s illegal immoral Drone Assassination Program with vigils and arrests at both Beale AFB and Creech AFB, Nevada.
I was involved with Our Revolution Contra Costa as a founder and Board member from 2017 until I ran for Congress in 2020. I was among thousands active outside the 2016 Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia in support of Bernie Sanders.
I am active with the Oscar Grant Committee especially these past 3-4 years. The OGC works with and on behalf of families who have had their loved ones senselessly murdered or attacked by police.
In late 2007, when Loaves and Fishes temporarily closed I personally fed 20-40 people for several months. Later I and the homeless community built a community garden which I managed for 5 years.
In 2006, I became involved with the Crosses of Lafayette which represents the now over 8000 American young men and women who have died in the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan according to our Constitution and International Law.
I have been involved in several environmental actions concerning the approaching Climate Catastrophe including an arrest at Monsanto Headquarters concerning Round-up’s Glyphosate poison and their GMO terminator seeds.
When the Veterans for Peace made a call for veterans to gather at Standing Rock, South Dakota in late November 2016 in support of the Sioux and other Native Americans fighting to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), I made the journey with two other fellow activists.
(NA) on September 1, 1987, when Peace activist Brian Willson and two others were run over and assaulted by an ammunition train at the Concord Naval Weapons Station. I soon became a full-time member of Nuremberg Actions and Peace House manager of the two-year 24/7 vigil action in front of the Naval base. With over 500 hundred arrests, we blocked every military ammunition train for 2 years along with countless weapons trucks. Weapons were mostly destined for right wing dictatorships oppressing their own people in Central America. I currently own and live in that Peace House ever since the action wound down in late 1989.
I was accepted into elite Northwestern University after High School. I realized later that I had probably benefitted from Affirmative Action. I and another classmate were the first students from our poor working-class neighborhood who had been accepted into Northwestern.
I was in college during the height of the anti-Vietnam war movement with a low draft number staring me in the face and never got really involved against the war.
My activist days began in earnest when I was the last of the draftees in October 1972. After training, I was assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corp in South Korea. There I became involved with Korean orphanages and investigated some corruption.
Eventually I was investigating the U.S. support of the South Korean dictatorship of Park Chung Hee. In 1974, I began exposing the dictatorship in letters to Congress and President Gerald Ford. In July 1975, I was secretly removed from Korea by the U.S. Military at request of Korean Government. My official orders stated that I was a discredit and embarrassment to the United States of America.
During my removal processing, I was to publicly disobey my First Sargent numerous times always forcing him to allow Un Chong to be with me. In the back of a jeep on that two-hour ride to Seoul that night we exchanged vows with rubber band rings. Separated for 1½ years, my Korean love, Un Chong was finally able to come to the U.S. and married in February 1977 in SF.
My wife was sexually harassed by her Director at the SF Community College ESL Division. During a long a 6-year lawsuit, SF Radical Woman and WOASH (Woman Organized Against Sexual Harassment) helped my wife. These were the early years of the sexual harassment movement. We were involved with the San Jose NOW.
During this time, I joined a rent control initiative on the ballot in Sunnyvale, and later unsuccessfully ran for City Council seat.
According to many lawyers who became aware of my wife’s case, it was considered one of the worst sexual harassment incidents they had ever heard. My wife’s health declined eventually requiring Kidney Dialysis. In September 1985, she died from the severe emotional stress that had aggravated and damaged her health.
I was slowly recovering from the loss of my wife when Brian Wilson was attacked by the train at the Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS).
In March of 1989, I joined a caravan to El Salvador. When I returned the Peace House was for sale and Nuremberg Actions had mostly ended. With money from Un Chong’s Lawsuit, I was able to purchase the Peace House.
I had lived with a large family in El Salvador and had developed a romantic relationship with the eldest daughter. With a friend who spoke Spanish and after two harrowing weeks I helped bring her and 3 relatives into the U.S in December 1989. I married Felicita and a year later she brought her 3 young children to the U.S. The children are now all grown. I had a cordial divorce with my wife 20 years ago. However, I am still close with everyone.
I am a 9/11 truther! Since the release of the 9/11 Commission report in 2005 I have offered a reward of $100,000 to the first person who can demonstrate to my satisfaction that my government did not plan, manage, execute and cover-up the events around the September 11, 2001 attacks. My website is http://www.911reward.org.
I joined millions across the globe protesting the impending invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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My 2022 Campaign Questionnaires & Issues
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