Stand Up! Take Action! Vote!
Learn the Cost of War to Sonoma County. And see what this $$$ could have been spent on instead — what are the trade-offs?
CLICK HERE
Take Action: Attend the monthly Sonoma Co. PDA Brown Bag Lunch Vigil at Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s Santa Rosa office.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE AND JOIN THE BBLV
August’s Healthcare for All/Single Payer Issue Organizing Team conference call welcomed Healthcare NOT Warfare co-chair Donna Smith into the role of the coordinator for this IOT. In addition to facilitating the call, Donna spoke in detail about the many actions recognizing the 75th anniversary of Social Security. She also addressed the attacks on Social Security and Medicare funding from the administration and the Congress, as specious and misrepresented methods of reducing the federal budget deficit.
We fell short in Florida during the last Tuesday with our endorsed candidates – Marleine Bastien and Doug Tudor. It’s now time to focus our attentions to Rhode Island and New York. In Rhode Island we have David Segal and in New York we have Jonathan Tasini. Both of these elections are on September 14th. Shoot me an email if you or your chapter want to help out with these candidates.
August 28, 2010, Washington, DC
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) today called on former Senator Alan Simpson to resign his position as co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in light of Simpson’s recent remarks regarding Social Security. Woolsey issued the following statement:
“Former Senator Alan Simpson’s latest attack on Social Security demonstrates that he is too biased to serve as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which will likely recommend changes to the Social Security program.“
Describing Social Security as a ‘milk cow with 310 million tits,’ and complaining about ‘people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree,’ Simpson illustrates that he does not have an open mind about the program and doesn’t understand it either.
Brad Friedman
August 21, 2010
Same systems to be used by millions of voters this November…
... The Pac-Man hack onto the Sequoia/Dominion voting machine was revealed this week. It was accomplished without breaking any of the “tamper-evident” seals that voting machine companies and election officials claim are used to ensure nobody can physically hack into them without being discovered.
By Conor Boylan
PDA Field Director
It’s time to focus all our attention to Florida as two of our nationally endorsed candidates Doug Tudor (FL-12) and Marleine Bastien (FL17) have Primaries this coming Tuesday, August 24th. We need everyone to get on the phones for these candidates. I am on the ground in Florida through Tuesday for both of these candidates and I promise you all we have a great shot here.
Read the full report here Includes review of highlights of the past week & a preview of the week ahead in PDA land.
Dear Friend,
On August 24, two of PDA’s endorsed candidates are facing primary elections. Each of these candidates represents PDA’s core values and embraces PDA’s positions. And each of these races can be won if we all step up and donate an hour or two to make phone calls into their districts.
August 20, 2010
Norman Solomon was interviewed yesterday on FAIR’s national radio program “CounterSpin”.
CLICK HERE to listen.
August 18, 2010
Dear Representative Woolsey,
Things are changing fast for this world, but many of these things are headed in the wrong direction. You are in a unique position — at least in regard to most of the world’s population — to put some very important things on a positive track. And these are things that will reverberate around the planet.
To do so, however, you might need to disabuse yourself and your colleagues of some pervasive and destructive notions. The first of these is that Americans are more valuable than other people in the world.
Andrew Markoff
August 17, 2010, Broward, FL
URGENT: Make calls to elect Marleine Bastien
Published by BlueBroward.org.
Marleine Bastien’s campaign for Congress to replace Kendrick Meek representing District 17 first came to my attention when she was being considered for endorsement by the Miami chapter of Progressive Democrats of America. PDA is an activist group that focuses on endorsements, rallies and protests that involve the like-minded: those who focus on progressive causes within the structure of the Democratic Party. Marleine Bastien has been a community organizer as well as an activist, however. Organizing communities means reaching out to and involving groups and individuals in a wide spectrum of knowledge and beliefs and getting them focused on how they can effect improvements in their daily lives through social programs and political participation.
Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld
August 17, 2010
Take Action: Tell Congress: Tax Dirty Energy—Carbon Tax Now!
Published by t r u t h o u t.
The rampant use of toxic dispersants, out-of-state private contractors being brought in to spray them and US Coast Guard complicity are common stories now in the four states most affected by BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.
Commercial and charter fishermen, residents and members of BP’s Vessels Of Opportunity (VOO) program in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana have spoken with Truthout about their witnessing all of these incidents.
Guests: Tim Carpenter-PDA, John Amato-CrooksandLiars.com and Jane Hamsher-Firedoglake.com.
Tim discusses the upcoming election season for PDA and reviews the recent National PDA Conference in Cleveland, OH.
CLICK HERE to listen.
CLICK HERE to read the letter.
Norman Solomon
August 16, 2010
Take Action: Eat lunch for peace—become a brown-bagger
It’s already history. In mid-August 2010, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan launched a huge media campaign to prevent any substantial withdrawal of military forces the next summer.
The morning after Gen. David Petraeus appeared in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to promote the war effort, the New York Times front-paged news of its own interview with him—reporting that the general “suggested that he would resist any large-scale or rapid withdrawal of American forces.”
Julia Davis
August 15, 2010
Join PDA’s Immigration Reform Action Group
Published by The Examiner.com.
Mexican drug cartels and smuggling organizations use the old Soviet principles, summarized by the cold war acronym MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego) in their approach to recruiting border agents. Oftentimes, the smugglers don’t have to swim, run or climb a fence. All they need is a corrupt border official on the take—and the numbers of crooked law enforcement officials are simply staggering.
On August 12, 2010 Congress passed the Border Security Appropriations Bill, providing $196 million for the Department of Justice to surge federal law enforcement efforts in high crime areas in the Southwest Border region.
On August 10th, the Economic and Social Justice IOT resumed monthly conference calls. The Issue Organizing Team was re-organized and energized at the July PDA Grassroots Conference in Cleveland. Alice Chan, a leader of the new team from CA welcomed over seventy people to the call. IOT leader Randy Shannon discussed ‘full employment,’ a major goal of the IOT and urged members to make plans to attend the October 10th March for Jobs and Justice in Washington.
On this call we introduced the new co-chairs of this IOT – Marcy Winograd and Steve Carlson. We apologize for the poor quality of this recording.
1. We reviewed both the Cleveland and Albany conferences.
2. Discussed Accountability & Transparency for War Voting (BBLV’s)
3. Wikileaks/Bradley Manning Defense Committee
4. Iran, House Res. 1553 (46 Republican co-sponsors pledging US support to Israel for attack on Iran)
5. Why are 46 US warships being sent to Costa Rica? Venezuela connection.
7. BDS/Israel/Palestine
Craig Aaron Managing Director, Free Press
August 10, 2010
Take Action: Save the free Internet!
Published by The Huffington Post.
So Google and Verizon went public today with their “policy framework“—better known as the pact to end the Internet as we know it.
News of this deal broke this week, sparking a public outcry that’s seen hundreds of thousands of Internet users calling on Google to live up to its “Don’t Be Evil” pledge.
Norman Solomon
August 9, 2010
Six scary words: Governor Whitman. Senator Fiorina. Speaker Boehner.
Defeating the GOP is essential. And insufficient. We also need to move public policy in progressive directions .
From Sacramento to Washington, the political anatomy of elected officials is crucial: Republicans are heartless. Disaster follows when Democrats are spineless.
Celebrate with Pam at Tresch Family Dairy!
Please join us at
Tresch Family Dairy
Saturday, August 28th
3:30 pm to 6 pm
RSVP to Holly at Holly@Vote4Pam.net or 707.763.6825
Check this out:
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
It is a sequence (quarterly since 2007), graphically displaying unemployment percentages by county across all 50-states. The “time lapse” view of the problem is sobering. You can really see what’s happening — the trickle of the financial scandal is best illustrated by this 15-second slice of unemployment in America.
Join PDA’s Economic and Social Justice Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .
Robert Naiman
August 9, 2010
Join PDA’s End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .
Published by ZNet.
Is there a man or woman in America today who is willing to stand at noon in the public square and claim that demands to bomb, invade, and occupy other people’s countries have anything to do with human liberation?
If such people can be found, let them answer a few simple questions about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
August 8, 2010
Published by Tom Hayden.com.
The White House stepped up its campaign against WikiLeaks [Wednesday] by calling for the whistleblower organization to turn over the secret Pentagon documents still in its possession.
Meanwhile a petition supporting WikiLeaks began national and European circulation. See Defend WikiLeaks—End the Secret Wars at http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38165.html . The petition has been endorsed by Daniel Ellsberg, who was prosecuted by the Nixon administration for releasing the Pentagon Papers a generation ago. Other signers include Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Rev. George Hunsinger of Princeton Theological Seminary, and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink.
Norman Solomon
August 6, 2010
How the University of California is helping to blow up the world
Published by Bohemian.com.
On my way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory a few years ago, I found it listed in a New Mexico phone book—under “University of California.”
Since the early 1940s, UC has managed the nation’s top laboratories for designing nuclear bombs. Today, California’s public university system is still immersed in the nuclear weapons business.
We are an affiliated chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
STAY TUNED FOR PROGRAM DETAILS!
PDSonoma meets the 2nd Wednesday of every month except December.
New Members and Guests Always Welcome!
Refreshments can be ordered and enjoyed in our meeting room. Please arrive early if you wish to order refreshments.
Healthcare advocates from fourteen states met in Wayne, Penn., April 10, 2010. The following Declaration is a result of the meeting. Add your name to the Declaration! PDA is planning actions around the country when our goal of 25,000 signatures is met.
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