Stand Up! Take Action! Vote!
Linda Milazzo
May 24, 2010
Take Action: Join Marcy’s virtual phone bank!
Americans spoke out loudly this past Tuesday. In two of the nation’s most anticipated primaries, the Sestak vs. Specter Democratic primary in Pennsylvania and the Paul vs. Greyson Republican primary in Kentucky, the party underlings defeated their party leaders’ choices and demolished the status quo. On the Democratic side, despite the full throttle barrage for Specter by Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey and Governor Ed Rendell, Congressional upstart Joe Sestak beat three decade incumbent Arlen Specter by 54 to 46 percent.
In Kentucky, political neophyte, libertarian extremist, and tea party enthusiast, Rand Paul, clobbered the hand picked candidate of Senator Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in D.C. The results of both elections send an earsplitting message to the leadership of America’s two dominant parties, that warns: ‘Your choices, endorsements and power don’t matter. We’re electing who WE want.’
A discussion of the Kerry-Lieberman climate legislation discussion draft took place as well as the politics of its passage. In addition, Kathy Callan and James Handley reported on their recent visits to the Hill where they attended sixteen meetings, including meeting with the staff from Senate Majority Leader Reid, Speaker of the House Pelosi, and Rep. John Larsen, sponsor of HR 1337: America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act of 2009, which PDA has endorsed. A discussion about the Deep Horizon oil gusher in the Gulf also occurred. The team voted on and passed their Legislative Advocacy Plan.
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It was like Grand Central Station in Washington, D.C., last week when PDA teams of citizen-lobbyists took to three different tracks on Capitol Hill.
The Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issues Organizing Team has been focusing most of its energy on passing a good climate/energy bill, which actually addresses the problem. Frustrated by the many flaws in the bills under serious consideration, this IOT decided it was time to start the push for Plan B—the carbon tax with revenue returned to households.
May 19, 2010
Dear Friend,
Official Washington may be good at spinning rhetoric in murky fog, but there’s no way around this fact: War can only continue if Congress votes to pay for it.
A year ago, the Obama administration was able to get what it said would be the last supplemental war appropriation. Now, the Obama administration wants to push another war supplemental through Congress.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 18, 2010
Local PDA Chapter Joins Nationwide Protests in Opposition to $33 Billion War Supplemental
Progressive Democrats Sonoma County, the local chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), to hold noon hour “Brown Bag Lunch Vigil” in front of Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s Santa Rosa office to stop the escalation and funding for war.
We thank Rep. Woolsey for signing on to support HR 2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan & HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan.
Further, we call on Rep. Woolsey to publicly commit to voting “No” on any bills that fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen, and to publicly urge her colleagues and the House leadership to make the same commitment.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
12 PM – 1 PM
Office of Rep. Lynn Woolsey
1101 College Avenue
Santa Rosa , CA 95404
At this critical moment, we’re launching the PDA virtual phone bank for one of our own — Marcy Winograd, the founder of Progressive Democrats of America’s Los Angeles chapter, who is challenging Blue Dog Jane Harman in the 36th congressional district (West LA to San Pedro).
Help Marcy phone bank into her district. Be part of the action. Click here for a message from Marcy . Help elect Marcy Winograd, a true progressive to Congress! Contact Marcy@pdamerica.org to find out how you can make phone calls to help.
Now is the time for action. Absentee voting begins May 10th; voting at the polls begins June 8th. We are days away from victory, provided you get involved.
Tom Hayden
May 11, 2010
Take Action: Eat lunch for peace — become a brown-bagger
Published by the Peace and Resource Center
American antiwar sentiment is consolidating, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll, despite months of official fanfare promoting the US military offensive in Afghanistan.
The news comes as the US military prepares its summer offensive in Kandahar, as Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai is welcomed to the White House, and Congress considers $33 billion for the troop escalation on top of $159 billion for another year of war.
Jeffrey Blankfort
May 11, 2010
Join Marcy’s virtual phone bank!
Published by CounterPunch.org
What may be the last Democratic primary race worth paying attention to is taking place in the 36th Congressional District along the Southern California coastline where incumbent Jane Harman is facing a serious challenge from Los Angeles school teacher, Marcy Winograd, with the candidates’ widely separated positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict dominating a critical section of the political landscape.
Harman is the second richest member of the House of Representatives with estimated assets between $112 and $377 million dollars. Whether it was her money or her Israeli connections that kept the Southern California Democrat from being indicted as a foreign agent five years ago or a combination of both is something the public is never likely to know.
Tom Hayden
May 7, 2010
Connect the dots — Join a Brown Bag Lunch Vigil
Published by The Nation.
The need for greater linkages between the environmental, peace and Wall Street reform movements grow by the day in the face of the epic oil spill caused by British Petroleum, a multinational firm tied to Goldman Sachs and Halliburton in oil wars from the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf.
Why is progressive Lynn Woolsey working so hard for center-right Jane Harman?
By Norman Solomon
bohemian.com
May 5, 2010
This is a grim story about the care and feeding of a Blue Dog.
Right now, Southern California congresswoman Jane Harman is facing a serious primary challenge from a genuine progressive. Harman is a member of the center-right caucus of House Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition. She has chosen not to join the Progressive Caucus.
In sharp contrast, her opponent, Marcy Winograd, is calling for the government “to invest in housing, education, healthcare, transportation—not to perpetuate a war economy that is draining us, robbing us of money that we desperately need.” And Winograd adds: “I challenge my opponent to stop voting for this war machine.”
While belonging to the largest caucus on Capitol Hill (with a membership now above 80), some members of the Progressive Caucus often say that they need more colleagues who’ll be willing to vote against war and in favor of a truly progressive legislative agenda. But if Progressive Caucus members want to move the House of Representatives in a progressive direction, you’d never know it when there’s a real chance to replace a Blue Dog with a progressive.
I spent a weekend with my PDA buddies in California, as we organized around the State Democratic Party Convention in Los Angeles. It was a great weekend, full of close friends, good beer, great speeches, and feisty agitation.
And it reminded me, once again, how important an organization PDA is to progressive populism.
Mary Nichols-Rhodes, PDA-OH state coordinator, started the discussion by describing the planning for both the US Social Forum in June and the National Peace Conference in July. PDA participation in both will be strong, because PDA is in alliance with a number of peace groups in the country. David Swanson, PDA Advisory Board member and founder of After Downing Street and DefundWar.org, gave his blunt assessment of the behind-the-scenes waiting game around the war supplemental being played by our members of Congress.
Who Let the Blue Dogs Out?
By Norman Solomon
Pt. Reyes Lighthouse
April 29, 2010
“What’s propelling the Winograd campaign— with its passion, commitment,fearlessness and antipathy toward the corporate warfare state—is exactly what Congress and the country need.” — Norman Solomon.
TAKE LOCAL ACTION: Contact bill@winogradforcongress.com to receive instructions for easy, virtual phone-banking from home. A few hours of your time or a few calls every day can make a big difference!
Randy Shannon
May 2, 2010, Pittsburgh, PA
Join PDA’s Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.
Published by Beaver County Blue.
The Deep Horizons ultra-deepwater dynamic positioned semi-submersible oil drilling rig, lying upside down a mile below sea level, was built and owned by Transocean Limited of Vernier, Switzerland. This rig was the most technologically advanced drilling machine on earth, designed to tap oil reserves miles below the ocean’s surface. It was completed in 2001 by Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea. British Petroleum was leasing the rig at a cost of one-half million dollars per day to exploit oil and gas trapped under tremendous pressure miles below.
April’s Healthcare for All call focused more intensely than usual on the actions PDA members and all supporters of Medicare for All can take individually and as a group.
PDA national director Tim Carpenter interviews PDA advisory board member Rep. Jim McGovern from Massachusetts’ third congressional district on the upcoming Afghanisatn supplemental appropriation bill, Medcare for all and state efforts to pass single-payer healthcare, and the contributions of grassroots activists. In the second portion of the show, U.S. Sentate candidate Jonathan Tasini is interviewed. Tasini has twice been endorsed by PDA: in his race against Hilary Clinton in 2006 and earlier this year in his race against Kisten Gillibrand.
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Please join us for the next Grassroots Leadership Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.
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.
CLICK HERE for Draft Agenda, to register for the Early Bird Special and to reserve your room. Hope to see you there!
http://roselandearthday.shutterfly.com/
PDSC supports this event and will have a table there.
Come visit us! and show your support for this community event by coming out on Sunday.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
1:00pm – 4:00pm
Roseland Elementary School
950 Sebastopol Road
Santa Rosa, CA
http://blog.pdamerica.org/2010/04/earth-day-and-climate-crisis/
Join the PDA Stop Global Warming Issue Organizing Team (IOT)!
http://pdsonoma.org/article/join-pda-issue-organizing-team
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April 21, 2010
Earth, Taxes, and a Supplement à la carte
March saw the seventh anniversary of the Iraq invasion, and many Brown Bag Lunch Vigils (BBLV) commemorated that. This month, over one hundred vigils across the country will remind our elected representatives and neighbors that our tax money goes in the wrong direction when it goes to military spending.
Jo Comerford
April 13, 2010
Take Action: Eat lunch for peace—become a brown-bagger.
We don’t just have a revenue problem in this country—we have a values and priorities problem.
Published by Alternet.org.
Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.
The 2010 California Democratic Convention is almost upon us.
On April 16th Democrats from all over the state will converge at the Los Angeles Convention Center .
Mark your calendars and be there!
April 16th – 19th
The Progressive Caucus will meet on:
Saturday, April 17th
4 – 6 pm
At The JW Marriott Hotel
across the street from the Convention Center
Sonoma County PDA’ers, both Convention delegates and those who are not, will be attending the Convention. We’d love to see you there! You do not need to be a delegate in order to attend the Caucus meetings.
We are an affiliated chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
MOVIE NIGHT!
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
NOTE: Early start time for Wednesday’s meeting. Agenda to include brief updates on PDA & PDSonoma campaigns, actions and announcements, followed by our featured movie!
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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