Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

Filmmaker Saul Landau & journalist Norman Solomon in Person. Monday, April 25, 7:15 p.m. San Rafael.

Filmmaker Saul Landau will present a special screening of his award-winning 1980 documentary Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang and participate in a discussion with author and activist Norman Solomon. Winner of a television Emmy and the George Polk Award for investigative journalism, this poignant and potent political documentary followed an investigative reporter as he exposed the health hazards that our government had suppressed after the nuclear tests of the 1950s and 60s. Camera: Haskell Wexler, Zack Krieger. Directors: Saul Landau, Jack Willis. (US 1980) Film 60 min. plus discussion.

In response to the Japanese nuclear disaster and our own community needs, this forum will feature these expert panelists: Robert Gould, MD, President SF Physicians for Social Responsibility; Barbara Rose Johnston, PhD, and Senior Fellow, Center for Political Ecology; and Norman Solomon, activist and author.

When and where:
Monday, April 18, 7-9 p.m.
Guzman Hall, Dominican University
50 Acacia Avenue, San Rafael
Campus Host: Green MBA Program

This event is free and open to the public.

More Info Here

October 7, 2010
by Alice Chan and Anna Givens

Santa Rosa, CA — Progressive Democrats Sonoma County partnered with Sonoma County’s Living Wage Coalition, the Sonoma County Democratic Party, the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County, and the North Bay Labor Council, and held our October 2 rally at the Federal Building in Santa Rosa, California. Over 100 enthusiastic and responsive people turned out to rally in solidarity with the major One Nation March & Rally in D.C. and to take action locally for good jobs, peace, education and justice.

Speakers at the rally, which was Emceed by Lisa Maldonado of the North Bay Labor Council, included Davin Cardenas of the Graton Day Labor Center and North Bay Organizing Project, Susan Gorin, Mayor of Santa Rosa, Michael Allen, candidate for California’s Assembly in the 7th District, Marty Bennett of the Living Wage Coalition, Assembly Member Noreen Evans, who is running for California State Senate, and PDA’s own Norman Solomon.

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.

Read the Rest Here

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.

Read the Rest Here

Michael Kunzelman
July 9, 2010, New Orleans, LA

Take Action on July 21, the three-month anniversary of the BP blowout .

Published by Associated Press.

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the federal government’s effort to restore an offshore deep-water drilling moratorium, opening the door to resumed drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while the legal fight continues.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled soon after an afternoon hearing in a lawsuit filed by companies that oppose the drilling ban. The moratorium was struck down June 22 by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman.

Read the Rest Here

May 19, 2010

Dear Representative Woolsey,

May should be a time of celebrating the beauty of living, with spring in full bloom and the recognition of our mothers as our source of life. But there have been too many events that make celebration difficult, if not impossible, for the members of Progressive Democrats of America.

May 11, 2010

Forest conversion project threatens watershed, ecosystem

SANTA ROSA, CA – The Sonoma County Democratic Party has opposed a plan by Napa-based land development company, Premier Pacific Vineyards, LLC (d.b.a. Preservation Ranch) to convert 1,600 acres of coastal Sonoma County redwood and douglas fir forestland to vineyards and luxury estates. CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, is a significant investor in the project.

From Sonoma County PDA supporter and singer-songwriter, Gale Mead:

I’ve been watching the BP oil well disaster with growing horror, and it finally motivated me to do something with the footage I shot eight years ago when I worked with my mother on the Sustainable Seas Expeditions. I’ve compiled some images from a dive I did near the site of the blowout, with my song, “Where I Go” as the soundtrack. Here’s the video, and below that, what I wrote about it:

Carpets of crinoids – cousins of the sea-star – stretched their long limbs languidly into the current for morsels of planktonic food. Colorful tropical fish drifted among gracefully spiraling wire corals. Somber-faced grouper hovered warily while jacks and sharks cruised by, curious about the submersible’s lights. Fifty miles south of Mississippi, I was the first human ever to lay eyes on the teeming, thriving, dazzling undersea metropolis that was Salt Dome Mountain. As rich and diverse as Texas’ Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary to the west, or Florida’s coral reefs to the south, but a little deeper, and totally unexplored.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Join PDA’s Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Connect the dots — Join a Brown Bag Lunch Vigil

Join PDA and our many partners in the Campaign to Legalize Democracy — Click here and sign the motion .

“Free Speech Rights Are For People, Not Corporations”

A coalition of public interest organizations strongly condemned today’s ruling by the US Supreme Court allowing unlimited corporate money in US elections and announced that it is launching a campaign to amend the United States Constitution to overturn the ruling. The groups, Voter Action, Public Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance, say the Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC poses a serious and direct threat to democracy. They aim, through their constitutional amendment campaign, to correct the judiciary’s creation of corporate rights under the First Amendment over the past three decades. Immediately following the Court’s ruling, the groups unveiled a new website – http://www.freespeechforpeople.org – devoted to this campaign.

Read the Full Story Here

An all-day series of activities:

• Have Fun ** Connect with our community ** Find ways to be more effective ** Ask How Low Can We Go to reduce our carbon footprint **

Join in one or all of the day’s activities.

SCHEDULE:

9 AM – 9:15 AM — Bike Ride on the Greenway to City Hall
Meet at the benches in front of Aroma Roasters near 5th St. and Wilson in Railroad Square at 9 AM.

We will ride a loop around the block at City Hall to get a message out to the community encouraging biking and walking. Dress in fun and noticeable attire and display signs encouraging anything green!

9:30 AM – Noon — Safe & Green

Learn how to stay alert and safe when walking, cycling, taking the bus or train. Experienced Safety instructor Marty Callahan of Academy of Shotokan Karate.

They’re Baaaack …..
The Dutra Asphalt plant proposal will come before the Board of Supervisors again, possibly in December.

CLICK HERE to sign the petition to Save Shollenberger Park

June 17, 2009

Sonoma County Democratic Party opposes proposal to close California state parks
Closures will devastate local economies dependent on park tourism

Santa Rosa, CA ­– The Sonoma County Democratic Party passed a resolution at their June meeting opposing Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposal to close 220 California state parks at the end of the summer to help cut California’s budget deficit.

PUBLIC FORUM:

Thursday May 28, 7:15 – 9:30 PM
Sonoma Community Center
276 East Napa Street

sponsored by Sonoma mothers and farmers:
Paul Wirtz (Oakhill Farm), Scott Mathieson (Laguna Farm),
Mothers Advocating for Children’s Health (MACH-Sonoma) and Mothers of Marin Against the Spray (MOMAS).

Come listen to a group of panelists and ask questions during an hour of Q&A.

Moderators:
Ken Brown, Sonoma mayor
Frank Egger, former Fairfax mayor

By Norman Solomon
truthout
May 6, 2009

In the Arctic, sea ice is melting. In the United States, houses are foreclosing.

And in Washington, the Senate is becoming a real-life Bermuda Triangle for progressive agendas.

Proposals for major limits on carbon emissions aren’t getting far in the Senate, where the corporate war on the environment has an abundance of powerful allies.

Full Story Here

By Norman Solomon
May 5, 2009

In an era of job insecurities, progressive calls for civic engagement and public investment are desperately needed, but insufficient. For our age calls for economic security that’s sustainable for the planet. It calls for a “Green New Deal.”

Read the Rest Here

By Josh Richman
Oakland Tribune
April 22, 2009

A former Oakland activist now serving as President Barack Obama’s “green jobs czar” said this week’s Earth Day observance is special because of the new administration.

“As we move forward, one of the big differences is that we recognize now that the debate over whether we can do right by the environment and right by the economy at the same time is over,” said Van Jones, appointed in March as special adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Read the Full Story Here

Members of the ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club—2,500 of America’s richest, most conservative men, including Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, and a passel of Bechtels, Basses, and Rockefellers—are known to urinate freely against the ancient redwoods that cover their 2,700-acre property. Have they been chopping down the trees as well? According to one former member turned whistle-blower, the San Francisco–based society may have logged some of its old-growth forest. Drawing on his own Ivy League ties, the author investigates, with a daring sortie into the ceremonial kickoff of the Bohemians’ annual encampment.

by Alex Shoumatoff
Vanity Fair
May 2009

Is this really what I want to be doing? Sneaking into the exclusive Bohemian Grove, on the Saturday night when roughly 2,500 of America’s richest, mostly right-wing Republicans are kicking off their annual July “encampment”? .......

Read the Full Story Here

The Bohemian
December 24, 2008

Who says that the light brown apple moth is such a big threat?
By Yannick A. Phillips

Last year, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) waltzed into Monterey and Santa Cruz counties and announced to its citizens that the government needed to spray pesticides above their homes, neighborhoods, playgrounds, businesses and schools. The CDFA had a mandate from the USDA. Not to worry, they said. The spray is safe for you, your babies, your children and your pets. The real danger, the CDFA claimed, was a moth the size of a child’s pinky nail, the light brown apple moth (LBAM). The CDFA told them it was a moth of mass plant destruction.

The CDFA proceeded to spray. The people trusted. Soon after, hundreds of people reported being ill. Children experienced anaphylaxis or severe allergic reactions. Over 600 dead birds washed up on the shores of Monterey Bay. Dogs and cats accidentally left outside during the spray died. Fish in private ponds died. A thick yellow foam appeared in local streams. Bees were disoriented or completely disappeared.

Read the Rest Here