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
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
This month … it’s just us folks. No special guests, bells or whistles.
Wednesday night please join us for a special evening. We will gather together, share practical information and valuable tools for the activism that calls us forward. Remember, WE are PDA!
Progressive Democrats Sonoma County
PDA Activists Workshop
Summer 2010
Wednesday, August 11
6:30 pm
French Garden Restaurant
8050 Bodega Ave.
Sebastopol, CA
Agenda to include brief report back from the recent PDA Grassroots Leadership Conference in Ohio. The remainder of the evening will be devoted to preparing ourselves to be smarter and more organized for the challenges ahead — on all of our issues. To include break out sessions with local chapter Issue Organizing Teams & Committees.
*Learn more about PDA Issue Organizing Teams and how to be involved with PDA strategy and tactics, inside & outside the Democratic Party. Learn what you can do to help PDSC Committees keep us organized and on track locally.
*And More! Whether you have 30 minutes or several hours a month — something for everyone.
If you have been thinking of getting involved with your local PDA chapter and were not sure how to do so, or if you have been involved for a while and would like to learn how to become more active — now is the time!
The agenda is a full one. We plan to start promptly at 6:30 pm. Please arrive early if you wish to order refreshments. New Members & Visitors Always Welcome!
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Attendees will have the opportunity to support PDA endorsed Congressional Candidate, David Segal – a true progressive running for the open seat of retiring Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Rhode Island. A win for David is a win for ALL of us!
David Segal – “I’m honored to receive the support of the Progressive Democrats of America. The members of PDA are national leaders in the fight for health care for all, for ending the wars, and for making sure that our elected officials represent the will of the people, not the corporations and very wealthy that fund their campaigns.”
Visit David Segal for Congress.
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Visit us on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Progressive-Democrats-North-Bay/289138693740
Congress can End the Wars by NOT funding them. Please join us for the local monthly Brown Bag Lunch Vigil:https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/309/personalopt1.asp?formid=meet&c=1919408
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CLICK HERE to view some great videos from the PDA Grassroots Leadership Conference. Norman Solomon, Jeff Cohen, John Nichols, Daniel Ellsberg, Dennis Kucinich and more!
Ray McGovern
July 29, 2010
See John Nichols interview Daniel Ellsberg at the PDA Grassroots Leadership Conference in Cleveland.
Published by Alternet.org.
Photo: US Army Sergeant Dostal adjusts the scope of his sniper rifle in eastern Afghanistan (AFP – Simon Lim).
The brutality and fecklessness of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan have been laid bare in an indisputable way just days before the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on whether to throw $33.5 billion more into the Afghan quagmire, when that money is badly needed at home.
By David Swanson
Progressive Democrats of America marked the beginning of its seventh year with a three-day conference that brought hundreds of activist leaders from all over the country to a Cleveland, Ohio, hotel this past weekend. Participants heard from and met with star speakers, and split up and strategized in groups organized around issue areas and geography.
PDA activists engaged in similar work in distant states — opposing war funding, promoting single-payer healthcare, protecting civil rights, and advancing progressive candidates’ campaigns — were able to compare their tactics and success rates. Many commented in the closing plenary on how much they’d benefited. Videos of many of the weekend’s events are being posted at PDA’s Blog
Take Action: PDA’s Amend to Suspend Corporate Personhood Conference Call is TONIGHT, Wednesday, July 28.
Learn more here: https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/309/personalopt1.asp?formid=meet&c=387273
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July 26, 2010
Two important war votes this week
Last Saturday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich made the first public announcement about his privileged resolution to remove US forces from Pakistan by December 31, 2010, at PDA’s Grassroots Leadership Conference in Cleveland. After speaking to the more than 125 PDA members, Representative Kucinich spoke with Tim Carpenter in an informal interview. Watch the video of their discussion here. (Read a report on the conference.)
The House is expected to debate and vote on this privileged resolution—HCR 301—tomorrow. Call your representative and ask for a YES vote.
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
July 14, 2010
PDA welcomes Bill Fletcher, Jr. to our Advisory Board
In February 2005 Danny Glover and I published an article in The Nation suggesting a particular approach to electoral politics. Entitled “Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow”, we argued that there was a need for a progressive electoral approach very much grounded in the realities of the US electoral system. This approach, which we called “neo-Rainbow” (drawing, in part, from the experience of the 1980s Jesse Jackson Presidential campaigns and the construction of the National Rainbow Coalition), involved the development of progressive, electoral projects at the local level that operated both inside and outside the Democratic Party. By “inside/outside” of the Democratic Party we meant two things. The first is that efforts needed to include running candidates within the Democratic primaries but also running independently when necessary. The second was that any electoral strategy needed to involve both mass action as well as ballot-box action.
By David Swanson
July 9, 2010
On July 1, the House sent a bill with $33 billion in war escalation funding in it back to the Senate, but with changes the Senate will have to deal with. There is a good chance the Senate will make changes and send it back to the House.
If that happens, we will be in a good position to stop it. Already last week the House was unable to pass war funding without Republican votes, and so passed it without technically voting on it at all. The vote on the Rule to create that crazy procedure, however, nearly failed despite the built-in excuses that (1) it was just a “procedural” vote and (2) it allowed votes on good amendments. This time, we’ll be ready to confront that first excuse, and the second one won’t be there.
Our message to congress members is simple, clear, moral, and urgent: VOTE NO. If good measures are included, VOTE NO. If it’s merely a procedural vote, but the procedure facilitated by it is mass murder, VOTE NO.
We need to keep calling, lobbying, protesting, disrupting, and communicating, whether this bill comes back to the House or not. There will be another one.
Capitol Hill Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
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.
David Swanson
July 9, 2010
Join PDA’s End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .
Published by WarIsACrime.org.
The U.S. corporate media pronounces our nation a “democracy” so frequently that sometimes its spokespeople stumble. They can’t be unaware that virtually every act of Congress diverges significantly from what the majority of Americans favor. Yet the assumption that somehow the government must follow public opinion creeps in, creating this sort of comedy:
Please join us for the next Grassroots Leadership Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, July 23-25.
The conference provides time to meet with and learn from each other, where to find and how to use the tools and resources available to you, and plotting our course for the rest of the year.
Participants will meet with special guests Rep. Dennis Kucinich, John Nichols, Daniel Ellsberg, Wendell Potter, David Cobb and Jo Comerford; Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign co-chairs Norman Solomon and Donna Smith; and current and former Advisory Board members Mimi Kennedy, Michael Lighty, Jeff Cohen, Steve Cobble, Jim Hightower, and Tom Hayden!
Details & Agenda Here: https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/309/donate.asp?formid=meet&c=2114568
STREAMING LIVE ONLINE HERE: http://blog.pdamerica.org/pda-webcast/
edited 7-24-10
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From David Swanson
July 5, 2010
What it means: The Peace Movement’s Progress.
How it worked: Democrats Forced to Cheat to Fund War .
What it looked like: Live Blog of the Vote .
How they voted on the Rule that allowed the war escalation funding to move forward.
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.
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