Lily Benavides: The Life or Death Implications of My Write-In Effort and Our Fight to Keep NJ Names Off the NSPM-7 Harm LIst
The fact that in the United States we are not free to express what we want to say is ironic, given that it is called the land of the free. Even more ironic is that the Democratic Party isn’t coming out to defend its own constituents who elected them, and who, when it comes to democracy, are only democratic in name. Trump’s illegaly National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM7) puts all activists at risk, especially if we are immigrants, have accents, and are dark-skinned. Ultimately, all of us who believe in freedom of expression will be at risk for criticizing the government and, above all, for opposing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
At this point I would like to explain how I ended up with a write-in campaign for Governor as opposed to being on the ballot. The Green Party’s original Gubernatorial candidate Steven Zielinski had submitted a robust petition and he fully achieved ballot status. His petition went unchallenged. However due to personal reasons he had to quit his candidacy. In order to replace him on the ballot I had to quickly petition for 2000 signatures. I handed in 2500 signatures (more or less) before the deadline for candidate replacement which it was three weeks. However, Democratic Party candidate Mikie Sherrill’s attorney Rajiv Parikh challenged over 500 signaures as “not matching” the signatures on file. Most of the challenged signatures were those with Arab or Spanish names. The judge Tama B. Hughes accepted the challenges – all of them – and ignored the point that someone’s signature at one point in time might not match exactly a signature provided years later in the field on a clipboard. After the unfair and possibly illegal striking of my petition I decided to stay in the race as a write-in candidate.
Some have criticized the decision as an exercise in futility. Obviously it is impossible really to prevail but as always when I get into a campaign there are two motivations: One to get as many votes as I can and build momentum – to try to educate the voters about the fact that the only way we can struggle forward and survive is to break the stranglehold of the two party system that serves our oppression.
The other reason I run is to raise the issues that the duopoly will not address because they answer to their corporate and wealthy backers. This campaign season the most critical issue to NJ – I believe among the most important has been ignored by both candidates. My campaign effectively used my candidacy to communicate about the silence of the Mikie Sherrill campaign to speak one word at all about NSPM7 – literally a Trump plan to use our opinions on 10 topics as a metric to falsely decide – not with evidence or a trial but by an AI determination from churning millions of on-line postings, images and videos from protected free speech activity including protest activity, to falsely determine that we are “domestic terrorists” and to place us on a secret list.
It is obvious to me as a candidate that Jack Ciattarelli is captive to Trump. He will be a snitch and a tool for Trump’s bringing NSPM7. The hope was that I could convince MIkie Sherrill as a Congresswoman and a Democrat -same as the current NJ administation, to take a stand against NSPM-7. That could help her win. But it can also protect us from being falsely added to the secret list of “domestic terrorist” over our point of view.
I raised this issue and with Bob Witanek, we launched the non-partisan “NO COMPLICITY NJ” Committee and we have called upon NJ OAG Matthew Platkin to immediately bar any and all NJ police from adding the names of NJ residents and citizens to the list. The police of NJ and across the nation are being requested / demanded to provide social media and protest monitoring data and other police data to the US Department of Justice. The data will be processed by Palantir and other high tech and well paid companies using AI and other predictive processing to decide whose names are placed on a secret false “domestic terrorist” list. There is no trial, judge, jury or a right to question the accuser – the Palantir determinations will put a proverbial crosshair across the backs of our heads for repressive attack.
We who are raising this issue as of right now – about 30 of us across NJ who have joined No Complicity NJ Committee are all that is standing as of now to keep NJ residents and citizens off of a phony secret terrorist list based upon determinations made by AI churning through millions of social media postings and videos and pictures and police reports about protest activities – based upon our protected free speech activites. I made a good faith effort to communicate the dangers to my opponent Mikie Sherrill. She still has some time to heed the call before elections and I believe it can help her win. It would have been better to do so sooner – but at this point she should do so not only so she can win – but so she can show NJ that she intends to protect us from the harms that Trump is planning to bring to NJ under NSPM-7. Right now I have no evidence at all that she will lift a finger to do so.
My campaign helped launch the No Complicity NJ Committee that is fighting to protect NJ citizens and residents from harm – an effort that will continue after elections regardless of Sherrill or Ciattarelli will be the facilitators of police participation In our own lethal, legal, reputational. professional and every other harm over our protected free speech activity. I am proud that we have leveraged our campaign – as we in the GPNJ tend to do when we run – to identify and raise important issues that the two major parties would prefer to stay out of the narrative. Nonetheless it is a daunting thought that after all of our efforts to communicate to Sherrill, she did not utter one word to validate our concerns and to even suggest that she will do anything to protect us – during her campaign which is usually when politicians gush about everything they are going to do for the people. Her silence – during her campaign is a sign of complicity and if elected and that silence continues on NSPM-7 it is suggestive that she is united with Trump in the endeavor of bringing us harm over our protected speech views.
On Wednesday, Nov 12, at 4pm in Newark NJ we will protest the NSPM-7 threat to NJ and call upon Gov. MUrphy. OAG Platkin and whoever wins the election to take immediate action to prevent NJ police participation in the NSPM-7 repressive efforts. The event will take the form of a public hearing and participants are invited to prepare 3-5 minute presentations which we will record and publish calling upon the state not to cooperate. Use the form at this link to offer support, participation and to represent.
