The Pirate Free Soil Presidential Candidate

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Douglas S. Van Raam is registered with the Federal Election Commission and Vote Smart as a Free Soil Party Presidential candidate. My best friend and co-founder of the party in 1977 stumbled upon him while trying searches to see how hard it would be to find Cheryl Seelhoff, the official (as opposed to pirate) Free Soil Party Presidential candidate. She announced her candidacy July 4, 2007 (see Independence Day Announcement http://www.womensspace.org/phpBB2/?p=1542), though we had been actively discussing it since October 2005. Mr. Van Raam claimed he had done Internet searches, but freesoil.org had never come up. I attempted to negotiate with him, but in my judgment, this man is a pirate with no honor, so his word is worthless. The following is our correspondence, posted to show just what this man is all about.

This was my initial request to cease and desist, sent the evening of June 15, titled Shoddy Research or Piracy?:

The Free Soil Party hereby requests you to cease and desist using our name for your campaign. We revived the party over 30 years ago, when you were a little boy. The Free Soil Party home site, freesoil.org, has been on the web since before 2000. You should have done some research before claiming the party for your own purposes. If you do not comply, we will feel free to denounce your piracy, and to take any other steps necessary to prevent you from interfering with our efforts. I am referring to your myspace page, http://www.myspace.com/freesoilparty2008 and your bio on VoteSmart, http://www.votesmart.org/bio.php?can_id=103464.

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This was the initial response, sent to me on the evening of June 17, 2008:
To whom it may concern;
I am not going to quit my campaign. Are you out of your mind? I have done internet searches and your page has never once come up. There are no other Free Soilers on Project Vote Smart. I have been campaigning the west pretty hard for a long time. You have no idea with whom you are dealing. I am registered Free Soil Party and I am running for the office of President of the United States of America and nobody can stop that. If you really cared about the party you would help me choose a running mate. I am hoping to find a woman of African American desent. Do you know of a good one? I believe I can pull more votes for the party than anyone else you have and you will have to have faith in that. I know more musicians, music industry people and people involved with motorcycle rights across the entire planet than you could ever imagine. I would love to connect with you and work together with the other Free Soilers that you know. But I will not give up or lose this campaign. I am going to be the 44th President of the United States of America!

Douglas S. Van Raam
2008 Free Soil Party Presidential Candidate
www.myspace.com/freesoilparty2008

FREE SOIL PARTY, "....we inscribe on our banner `Free Soil, Free Speech,Free Labor and Free Man,' and under it we will fight on and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions." In America today the illegal alien is compromising the dignity of labor for Americans while more and more jobs are sent beyond our borders. Iraq is the new frontier that America has decided to challenge for administrative reasons while countries like Tibet are begging for our help in liberation. Just say NO to getting your bar code in the global economy! Say yes to re-legalizing the United States Constitution! Vote Free Soil Party 2008!
Will you be a part in VICTORY????

[admin]

My response, also on the evening of June 17:

Douglas,

Nobody asked you to quit your campaign. We requested you stop using our party name, since it does not belong to you and has nothing to do with your campaign. What searches have you done? Try googling Free Soil candidate President 2008. You will see our candidate, Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, listed three times on the first page, from three different sources. You are also there, between her second and third listing. She and I are conferring over what to do about you. We do not care if you run for President, but if you insist on hijacking our party, prepare to face the consequences.

Aletha

Co-founder, Free Soil Party, since 1977

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His next response, on the morning of June 18, 2008, now using the name Martin Van Buren:

Dear Aletha,

I am still not sure about what part of Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Man that you represent. I use Free Soil computers at the library so I only get one hour a day and cannot possibly research your entire platform. I have labored in soil my whole life. How much labor do you women do? How often are your hands in the soil? The Free Soil Party will support feminism but the party was never designed to be a feminist movement. I will contact my two lawyers, Joey Tulley (CA) and Chuck Franklin (AZ) and see what they have to say. Why is you candidate not on the Free Soil home page or on votesmart.org? That doesn't make any sense. Where are your campaign headquarters because mine are at the Gorge in George, Washington. I current work for a staging, rigging and event solution company called Rhino Staging based in Tempe, AZ. We have offices nationwide. I have a lot of untapped potential and I need your help. Ron Paul hasn't dropped out of the race for the Republicans even though he is not the party candidate and I will not drop out either. I cannot help the fact that you were put on this Earth before I was but I will not deny my destiny. We need to fight together and not against eachother. That only makes the party look bad. Have a phenomenal day!

Douglas

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My next response, on the evening of June 30, 2008:

Douglas,

I am curious what you lawyers told you. Wait for developments? I see no developments, so perhaps I should give you a friendly history lesson. You seem to model your candidacy on Abraham Lincoln, citing him as a famous Free Soiler. This is news to me. Lincoln was an antislavery Whig. He was never active in Free Soil, as far as I have been able to ascertain. He went back to his law practice, keeping out of politics, after his first term in Congress as a Whig, until the Republican Party formed in 1854.

Your anti-immigrant rhetoric seems more suited to the Know-Nothing Party, which existed about the same time. Some members of the Free Soil Party in 1852 called themselves Free Democrats. The political landscape was shifting rapidly, alliances forming and breaking all over. Of course Martin van Buren was originally elected President as a Democrat. You could call yourself a Free Democrat; then you could still base your campaign loosely on the old Free Soil Party. However, if you insist on usurping our intellectual property, I will have no choice but to denounce you and make whatever trouble I can for you. Our candidate for President recently started a new Fight the Lies blog. I will probably start something similar soon. If you refuse to do the honorable thing, recognize that others had the idea of reviving Free Soil long before you did, you will be prominently featured there. People searching for your name might well find it there instead of your pages. As you have noted, this kind of fighting would make the party look bad. Free Soil has fought off interference before. Last summer a group of Internet hoodlums, Legion/Anonymous, took offense at something a friend of our candidate posted on her bulletin board, so they hacked it, then forced off the Internet her site and the sites of a bunch of her friends, including freesoil.org. We all had to move to different service providers and rebuild.

Our candidate is mentioned and linked at the bottom of the freesoil.org home page, and in the Candidate Announcement on the blog. She will be on Vote Smart soon enough. She was endorsed last summer by the Feminist Peace Network, soon after she announced her candidacy last July 4. By the way, her hands are often in the soil, in her big organic garden. Ron Paul is a bad example for you to cite; he has no more claim to being the Republican standard-bearer than you do to being the Free Soil standard-bearer. He could have kept up his campaign, but he knew he had no chance to be the candidate. It was worth it to him to stimulate discussion within the Republican ranks, since he thinks the party has gone astray. He is more attuned to the Libertarians anyway. Perhaps you ought to consider joining them.

Aletha

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He sent me three responses on the evening of July 1, 2008.

As far as I have read about the Free Soil Party, Lincoln was never a Whig. But I am not researching Lincoln I am researching the Free Soilers and I have looked it up in at least twenty books. So he may have been in Congress as a Whig but that is not my concern. I have done landscaping in AZ and CA for over 25 years and some of my best friends are immigrants. But that is the reason why I can't earn a descent wage doing the work I love. My employers only want me to drive mexicans around to do the work for me but that is not what I am about or what I want to do. Who do you think is picking the tomatos for John Kerry's wifes ketsup company? We all love our immigrants so your "know nothing" remark was completely uncalled for and immature. I only have 2 minutes left to say that I didn't fill out my FEC Form 2 to be a quitter. Slander me all you want, my skin is thick. Now I must fill out my quarterly report.

FREE SOIL PARTY, "....we inscribe on our banner `Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men,' and under it we will fight on and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions." In America today the illegal alien is compromising the dignity of labor for Americans while more and more jobs are sent beyond our borders. Iraq is the new frontier that America has decided to challenge for administrative reasons while countries like Tibet are begging for our help in liberation. Just say NO to getting your bar code in the global economy! Say yes to re-legalizing the United States Constitution! Vote Free Soil Party 2008!
Will you be a part in VICTORY????

[admin]

And the next:

Yes, Lincoln was a Whig in Congress, but FREE SOIL was a MOVEMENT which became the Republican Party. Abe Lincoln gave his life for the Thirteenth Amendmedment to be ratified. For you to say that Lincoln was not a Free Soiler is absolutely disgusting and ignorant!

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And the last for July 1:

http://www.w3f.com/patriots/13/13th-01.html

FREE SOIL PARTY, "....we inscribe on our banner `Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men,' and under it we will fight on and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions." In America today the illegal alien is compromising the dignity of labor for Americans while more and more jobs are sent beyond our borders. Iraq is the new frontier that America has decided to challenge for administrative reasons while countries like Tibet are begging for our help in liberation. Just say NO to getting your bar code in the global economy! Say yes to re-legalizing the United States Constitution! Vote Free Soil Party 2008!
Will you be a part in VICTORY????

[admin]

My response, also on the evening of July 1, 2008:

OK, Douglas. You asked for it. The antislavery movement was bigger than any party, ranging from the most radical abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison and his female allies, who refused to participate in party politics, to those who found it morally offensive or questionable. Lincoln was not even an abolitionist. If he was, it would not have taken until Jan. 1, 1863 for him to announce his intention to free the slaves. See http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/almintr.html

"Almost from the beginning of his administration, Lincoln was pressured by abolitionists and radical Republicans to issue an Emancipation Proclamation."

That implies Lincoln was neither an abolitionist nor a radical Republican. Those were the former Free Soilers, mostly. Lincoln was merely against slavery. There were a great many relatively moderate people opposed to slavery, like Lincoln, that feared the consequences of abolishing it outright. Also, your list of famous Free Soilers neglects one of the most famous, Julia Ward Howe, writer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the original Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870. The Know-Nothing Party was a real party, primarily organized around opposition to immigrants. Eventually it changed its name to the American Party. Are you implying your references to immigrants are some kind of tough love?

There is no need to slander you. The truth will make you look bad enough. I will say once more, nobody is asking you to quit, just to change your registration. Since you refuse to listen to reason, you will soon be revealed as a pirate with no respect for intellectual property or the truth, who tried to steal a party that had been building its network since you were a little boy. Try explaining that to your friends.

Aletha

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His next response, on the afternoon of July 3, 2008:

That's what I like about you Aletha, I ask for it and you give it to me! Julia Ward Howe was added to my list of Free Soilers and I added her home to my list of lucky 13s, seeing how The Samuel Gridley and Julia Ward Howe House, a National Historic Landmark, is located at 13 Chestnut St. in Boston, MA. The property is a private residence and not open to the public.

Now about immigration, I am against ILLEGAL immigration. ILLEGAL being the key word. I have always wanted to leave this country, move to Holland, get a job for a few years while I learn to speak the Dutch language. My country will not allow that. I can leave for three months but must return unless I get a visa. Even then I would not be hireable when I get there by Dutch law. So why should I support the right for any person to walk across the border into my country and take work from me, and given how many immigrants (illegal or not) there truely are, reduce the wages I should be earning because an illegal will do it for less? If that is the view of your Free Soil Party then yes, I am with the wrong party.

May I ask you one question and I would like an honest answer, please. I think you are the brains of the party so why do you support Cheryl when you should be the Free Soil Candidate?

I am not claiming to be of high intellengece, or morally impeccable, I just want to be the change I want to see in the world like Mahatma Ghandi wants me to be. The President just needs to represent the people and I have never seen a President that I feel represents me and my friends. It is too late to change my party for this election. If you still hate me (because I was born with a penis) after this election, I will disappear and you will not be burdened by me ever again. But I like you and wish you would keep educating me and informing me. This Free Soil Presidential campaign I have originated from a court order. I lived in a five bedroom house with a recording studioin the basement in Tempe, AZ. It was raided by the police when I was on tour with Iron Maiden in 2000, because somebody who didn't even live there allegedly sold some cocaine to an informant. None of us sold drugs but we are all cannabis users and five paraphrenalia citations were issued. Two stuck, the one guy who was home at the time and me because my bedroom door was locked. I returned from tour and had to get my things out and be homeless because the landlord got scared and decided to sell the place. I had to attend 36 hours of school to get the charge dropped. I took my Emperor Wears No Cloths book by Jack Herer to school with me and used it for reference up until I was gagged there and not allowed to speak in class. I swore I was going to run for President when I was old enough and that time is now. So basically I feel I am court ordered to run for President since I will not go back on my word that I gave to my fellow classmates and instructor.

I wish you were my mom. Maybe then I would have had a chance at a descent life.