IN: Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation and marine conservation activism. He is a citizen of Canada and the United States. The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was an early and influential member of Greenpeace, crewed and skippered for it and a founding board member in 1972.

Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.  During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.  In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.  Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach."  In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Did he win that election?

OUT: He received less than 100 votes.


IN: Ryuichi Sakamoto (Ban Ben  Long Yi , Sakamoto Ryuichi, born January 17, 1952) (Japanese pronunciation: [sakamoto rjW:itci]) is a Japanese musician, singer, composer, record producer, activist, writer, actor and dancer, based in Tokyo and New York. He began his career while at university in the 1970s, as a session musician, producer, and arranger.

Throughout the latter part of the 2000s, Sakamoto collaborated on several projects with visual artist Shiro Takatani, including the installations LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible... (2007-2013), commissioned by YCAM, Yamaguchi, collapsed and silence spins at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2012 and 2013 Sharjah Biennial (U.A.E.), LIFE-WELL in 2013 and a special version for Park Hyatt Tokyo's 20th anniversary in 2014, and he did music for the joint performance LIFE-WELL featuring the actor Noh/Kyogen Mansai Nomura, and for Shiro Takatani's performance ST/LL in 2015.  In 2013, Sakamoto was a jury member at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. The jury viewed 20 films and was chaired by filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.  In 2014, Sakamoto became the first Guest Artistic Director of The Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 (SIAF2014). On July 10, Sakamoto released a statement indicating that he had been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer in late June of the same year. He announced a break from his work while he sought treatment and recovery. On August 3, 2015, Sakamoto posted on his website that he was "in great shape ... I am thinking about returning to work" and announced that he would be providing music for Yoji Yamada's Haha to Kuraseba (Living with My Mother). In 2015, Sakamoto also composed the score for the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film, The Revenant.  In January 2017 it was announced that Sakamoto would release a solo album in April 2017 through Milan Records; the new album, titled async, was released on March 29, 2017 to critical acclaim. In February 2018, he was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.

Did he get any awards

OUT: In 2014, Sakamoto became the first Guest Artistic Director of The Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 (SIAF2014).


IN: Joseph Fidler Walsh (born November 20, 1947) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. In a career spanning more than forty years, he has been a member of five successful rock bands: James Gang, Barnstorm, Eagles, the Party Boys, and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. In the 1990s, he was also a member of the short-lived supergroup the Best. Walsh has also experienced success both as a solo artist and prolific session musician, being featured on a wide array of other artists' recordings.

Walsh is active in charity work and has performed in a number of concerts to raise money for charitable causes. He has also been a personal contributor to a number of charity causes including halfway houses for displaced adult women in Wichita, Kansas. Walsh funded the first talent-based scholarship at Kent State University in 2008.  Walsh's love of Santa Cruz Island grew into a lifelong commitment to conserve the environment there, and he has been active in preserving the island's parks. He is President of the Santa Cruz Island Foundation, and has served on the Foundation's board since the 1980s.  Walsh had often joked about running for office, announcing a mock presidential campaign in 1980 and a vice presidential campaign in 1992. Walsh ran for President of the United States in 1980, promising to make "Life's Been Good" the new national anthem if he won, and ran on a platform of "Free Gas For Everyone". Though Walsh was only 32 at the time of the election and thus would not have met the 35-year-old requirement to actually assume office, he said that he wanted to raise public awareness of the election. In 1992 Walsh ran for vice president with Rev. Goat Carson under the slogan "We Want Our Money Back!"  In an interview to promote his album Analog Man in 2012, Walsh revealed he was considering a serious bid for political office. "I think I would run seriously, and I think I would run for Congress," Walsh told WASH in Washington, D.C. "The root of the problem is that Congress is so dysfunctional. We're dead in the water until Congress gets to work and passes some new legislation to change things."  In 2017, Walsh contacted others in the music industry Zac Brown Band, Gary Clark Jr., Keith Urban to try to organize and perform what became VetsAid  - a concert series along the lines of the Farm Aid program spearheaded by country entertainer Willie Nelson.

Did he work with anyone of note within these charities?

OUT:
In 2017, Walsh contacted others in the music industry Zac Brown Band, Gary Clark Jr., Keith Urban to