Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

March 8, 2011

Ben Ferencz, the last living Nuremberg prosecutor, spoke at a PDA event in Boca Raton, Florida, on February 26th with David Swanson and Sandy Davies.

Read the Rest Here

David Swanson
November 18, 2010

Donate $75 or more and receive War Is A Lie
Enter War Is A Lie in the “special fund” box

I am about to publish a new book called War Is A Lie that takes on the lies that launch and prolong wars, and the lies that drive our war economy.

This is perfect timing, as PDA pressures Congress to end wars, cut military spending, invest in jobs and green energy, and leave our Social Security savings alone.

Read the Rest Here

On This Call…

David Swanson: 1. Don’t use the term “Defense” spending when referring to military spending. 2. No one lost any of their elections because they failed to support the wars. 3. Warned about the “Cat Food Commission” and 4. Made the good point that the best way to fix the budget is to shift expenditures from the military to the civilian side.

Read the Rest Here

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

Read the Rest Here

David Swanson
July 28, 2010

Published by WarIsaCrime.org.

On Tuesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill already passed by the Senate that funds a $33 billion, 30,000-troop escalation in Afghanistan. The vote was 308 to 114. What could the good news possibly be?

The first good news is that, while we had no more than 35 congress members who would vote against war funding a year ago, or perhaps 55 when it was an easy vote with no pressure, we’ve now got 114. That’s serious progress. That’s a far more dramatic increase than we’ve seen in the number of congress members willing to vote for a non-binding unspecified timetable for a withdrawal. That number rose from 138 last year to 162 on July 1st (although the legislation was somewhat stronger this year). In other words, willingness to express mild interest in ending the war has reached a plateau. Willingness to take serious action to end the war is rapidly catching up. Of course, both have to top 218 before we win.

Read the Rest Here

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

Resources that may help you

Link to Original

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:

Read the Full Story Here

_

From David Swanson
July 5, 2010

WarIsACrime.org

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.

By David Swanson
July 3, 2010

Take Local Action: Cost of War to Sonoma County

The peace movement has made significant progress in the United States since its low point of late 2008, and just about everything anyone in it has done has been a contribution. If everyone keeps doing what they’re doing, and more of it, we might just end some wars, eventually. But I think some techniques are working better than others, and that pursuing the most strategic approaches would make victory likelier sooner and longer-lasting when it comes.

Read the Full Story Here

By David Swanson
July 2, 2010

The Democratic leadership in the House had to resort to an unusual and underhanded tactic to pass war funding Thursday night.

Read the full story here

By David Swanson
WarIsACrime.org
June 29, 2010

Whether an organization opposes a war is not simply a yes or no question. Does it profess opposition when cornered and asked, or does it go all out organizing events, phone calls, press conferences, and civil disobedience? Is the organization a media outlet with multiple views? Does it oppose wars but muddle the issue with unhelpful amendments and rhetoric? How much opposition amounts to opposition?

Nonetheless, it has become clear that many groups opposed wars in significant ways when Bush was president and have not done so since. Additionally, the coalition that opposed the “emergency” war funding bill last year seems to have shrunk considerably by the time this year’s “emergency” war escalation bill came around. It’s not too late to change that, and most of last year’s war opponents jumped on with a statement at the last moment. That may happen again in the coming days.

Read the Rest Here

David Swanson
June 29, 2010

Published by AfterDowningStreet.org.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who will openly tell you he does whatever President Obama and Speaker Pelosi instruct, can bring the war escalation funding to the House floor despite the opposition of Appropriations Chairman David Obey. This is because the House passed the bill without the war escalation funding and sent it to the Senate, which has now sent it back to the House.

Read the Rest Here

By David Swanson
June 23, 2010
WarIsACrime.org

The video embeded at the bottom of this article and posted on the frontpage of http://congressmanwithguts.com may be the best corporate television interview ever. Not the funniest or most entertaining, but the most willing to directly and clearly expose the most forbidden topics and insist on the most needed changes in perspective.

The CongressmanWithGuts website is Congressman Alan Grayson’s public and participatory demonstration of a simple fact that should be made known to a few hundred congress members who have not grasped it: If you do what the public wants and reach out to the public, you can raise your own funds and not depend on the Party Leadership to fund your campaigns. This, of course, is what allows you to do what the public, and not the Party Leadership, wants.

Read the Rest Here and View the Video

David Swanson
June 11, 2010, Charlottesville, NC

Take Action: Eat lunch for peace—become a brown-bagger

Local Focus: Cost of War to Sonoma County

During the past five years since I moved back to Charlottesville, Virginia, I had yet to observe the slightest violent incident, prior to the recent spree of horrific mass murders. There was crime, but I hadn’t ever seen it. I had only heard about it in the local media. First there was a young woman picked up hitch hiking and murdered. That was many months ago now. Then there was a man from Charlottesville attacked out of the blue up in the mountains, not actually in Charlottesville. Most recently, a University of Virginia student was alleged to have killed his girlfriend; this made national news, apparently because they were both Lacrosse players.

Read the Rest Here

David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org
May 29, 2010

Take Action: Tell Congress: No Money for War

Published by AfterDowningStreet.org

Sixty-six congressional candidates and 24 national organizations are opposing any more funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, no matter what unrelated measures are packaged into the same bill, and no matter whether the bill appears likely to pass or not. This position contrasts strongly with that of most incumbent congress members who “oppose” and “criticize” the wars.

Read the Rest Here

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.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

David Swanson
April 7, 2010

Add Jim McGovern to the list. That makes 15! See whip list: http://defundwar.org

And three have told PDA they will speak out and whip their colleagues: Kucinich, McGovern, and Conyers. The latter is forming an Out of Afghanistan Caucus.

Link to Original

David Swanson
March 11, 2010

Take Action: Eat lunch for peace—become a “brown-bagger”; learn more here .

Published by AfterDowningStreet.org.

Sixty-five congress members, including 60 Democrats and 5 Republicans, voted to end the occupation of Afghanistan on Wednesday. But 356 congress members, including 189 Democrats and 167 Republicans voted to keep the war going. The vote followed three hours of debate created by Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s introduction of a privileged resolution.

Read the Rest Here

This IOT conference call had its usual stellar lineup of guests, including last-minute guest Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

PDA Conference Call Guests: David Swanson, Cole Harrison of UFPJ, PDA Field Director Conor Boylan,

Brown Bag Lunch Vigils (BBLV) partner David Swanson started the call off with comments on and advice for the BBLVs, to move the vigils to a higher degree of action, and he spoke about the legislation to halt Afghanistan funding.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN & to read more

Join PDA’s End War & Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

By David Swanson
February 21, 2010

Everything you’re reading about torture lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee getting off the hook is wrong. They are not torture lawyers, they are not off the hook, there never was any hook, they may not be lawyers for long, impeachment and indictment are on the agenda, and you have a role to play.

Read the Story Here

David Swanson
January 31, 2010, New Brunswick, NJ

Take Action: Tell Congress Stop funding war

My encounter with Congressman Payne at the PDA-NJ Statewide Conference

Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said “Sure!” and he did it.

Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he’d given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.

Read the Full Story Here

Let’s combine forces to form the Brownbagger Movement!
Here’s a suggestion for what we should call ourselves— us ordinary people, progressives, ethnic groups, students, labor unions, other workers, environmentalists, conservationists and poor and middle class people: …

Read the Rest Here

Ed. Note: Author Rick Massell is an active member of Progressive Democrats Sonoma County. PDSonoma County hosted David Swanson in Santa Rosa on January 13.

__

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

__

PDA Board member David Swanson speaking about his new book DAYBREAk: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union on Jan. 13 as part of a nationwide book tour.

More info about the book can be found here: http://davidswanson.org/book

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to David’s Jan. 13 talk