The grass-roots effort to force the Anaheim Union High School District Board of Trustees to rescind Harald Martin's appointment and fill the board vacancy with a special election continues to build momentum. There was a press conference/kick-off event this morning at an achingly early 7:30 a.m. at Jagerhaus in Anaheim.

I rolled in about 7:50 a.m. but hadn't missed much.

It was part of a Los Amigos of Orange County meeting, so the avuncular Amin David presided, along with Al Amezcua and Jesse Araujo.

There was quite a range of personages and politics present:

Sen. Lou Correa (who had at least three cups of coffee and introduced his new field rep Laura Cervantes); Assemblyman Jose Solorio; Anaheim Councilwoman Lorri Galloway; OC Board of Education Trustee Alexandria Coronado; North Orange County Community College District Trustee Leonard Lahtinen; former OUSD Trustee Russ Barrios; a Loretta Sanchez field rep (her name escapes me); Orange juice bloggers Art Pedroza and Claudio Gallegos; Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana honcho Nativo Lopez (I don't think I've ever seen a wrinkle on that man's clothes); former AUHSD candidate Jordan Brandman. And I'm sure I missed a few.

This is a fired up group that is rapidly organizing to meet the August 20 deadline for turning in 2,300 valid signatures. Amin David said they are negotiating with a professional circulator outfit to buttress the volunteers efforts and ensure they meet their goal of turning in 5,000 signatures (consultant Dennis Desnoo said they've collected about 300 signatures thus far).

David said their goal is to collect $15,000 for the petition drive, and stated they'd collected approximately $3,000 already and held up another check for $2,000 (I don't know from whom). A cattle call went up after Assemblyman Solorio pledged $1,000, which was followed by a flurry of pledges that my aging mind guesstimated totaled another $2,500.

I gathered that Barrios (below) is the person setting up and serving as treasurer of the Los Amigos PAC, since attendees were instructed to send donations to Barrios at his home address.

Any readers who'd like to join in donating to this effort:

235 E. Maple Street
Orange, CA 92866

Consultant Dennis Desnoo briefed the crowd on how the petition drives needs to unfold while Alexandria Coronado said a few words about Harald Martin...

Amin David handed out petition packets, and Nativo Lopez pledged to gather at least 500 signatures...

This polyglot coalition has a tall mountain to climb to gather the requisite number of signatures in such a compact time frame, but my gut tells me they'll do it.