Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

Guests: Tim Carpenter, John Nichols, Jim Hightower, Ariel Dorfman
Tim Carpenter (Progressive Democrats of America National Chairman), John Nichols and Jim Hightower on the unstoppable Occupy movement; Ariel Dorfman on his new memoir, “Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile” — about his exiles, returns, and vanquishing silence.

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PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS OF AMERICA presents an evening with:

JOHN NICHOLS, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine,

MICHAEL LIGHTY, Policy Director of the California Nurses Association,

and NORMAN SOLOMON, Co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare Campaign.

Doors open at 7:30 pm.

Go here for a campus map

This is a rare opportunity to see these three dynamic leaders and speakers together in one room. Join us for an evening of community and celebration in support of Healthcare NOT Warfare!

No entry charge. Donations accepted. Wheel-chair accessible.

Cosponsored by the Expressions Program of the Humanities Department, Dominican University.

Location

PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS OF AMERICA presents an evening with:

JOHN NICHOLS, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine,

MICHAEL LIGHTY, Policy Director of the California Nurses Association,

and NORMAN SOLOMON, Co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare Campaign.

WHEN: Saturday, October 15, 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. Doors open at 7:30.

WHERE: Guzman Hall, Dominican University; 50 Acacia Ave., San Rafael, CA 94901.

Go here for a campus map

This is a rare opportunity to see these three dynamic leaders and speakers together in one room. Join us for an evening of community and celebration in support of Healthcare NOT Warfare!

No entry charge. Donations accepted. Wheel-chair accessible.

Cosponsored by the Expressions Program of the Humanities Department, Dominican University.

An Evening with:

JOHN NICHOLS
Washington correspondent for
The Nation Magazine

MICHAEL LIGHTY
Policy Director of the California
Nurses Association

and
NORMAN SOLOMON
Co-Chair of the national
Healthcare Not Warfare Campaign

John Nichols
December 15, 2010

Published by The Nation. See related by John Nichols: Michael Moore on Why Posting Bail for Julian Assange is a ‘True Act of Patriotism’

Leading Australian journalists have stepped up in a big way to defend WikiLeaks, with the head of the nation’s major media union arguing that “attacks on WikiLeaks can also be seen as attacks on the Australian media outlets which have worked with the organisation to publish leaked material.”

In response to calls for the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (an Australian) and attempts to block the distribution of leaked US diplomatic cables, Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren says: “Allegations that the work of WikiLeaks is somehow illegal are yet to be proven in Australia, or in any other country. The Alliance and (the International Federation of Journalists Asia-Pacific section) calls on governments to refrain from prejudicial speculation that risks harming our democratic system.”

Read the Rest Here

John Nichols
December 4, 2010

Published by The Nation.

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform failed to produce a mandate for assaulting Social Security, undermining Medicare and Medicaid and generally balancing the budget on the backs of working Americans.

Read the Rest Here

Now that the dust has settled following Election Day, PDA presents a two-part election analysis podast. In this episode, PDA National Director Tim Carpenter interviews author and journalist John Nichols and PDA field coordinator Conor Boylan. Produced by David Pakman of Midweek Politics.

CLICK HERE to listen.

Tim Carpenter, Jim Hightower, Donna Smith, John Nichols, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Laura Flanders, Sen. Russ Feingold, Thom Hartmann!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

John Nichols
July 3, 2010

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

Published by The Nation

An additional $33 billion in spending for President Obama’s occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—and they are now his occupations as much as they once were George Bush’s—was approved by the House Thursday night as part of a broad “emergency” supplemental spending bill.

Read the Rest Here

John Nichols
May 25, 2010

URGENT Action: Supplemental war funding vote this week — Tell Congress: No Money for War!

Published by The Nation

Congressman Alan Grayson is at it again. This time, the Florida Democrat who shook up the health-care debate by saying Republicans were the real death-panel party and who shook up the bank reform debate by leading (with Texas Congressman Ron Paul) the “Audit the Fed” fight, is shaking up the debate about so-called “emergency” supplemental spending to fund the occupations of foreign lands.

Read the Rest Here

John Nichols
April 6, 2010

Published by The Nation.

The video is clear, and devastating.

It shows a U.S. military helicopter targeting, shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in Baghdad.

The U.S. pilots are heard reveling in their “kills.”

Read the Rest Here

John Nichols
March 11, 2010

Join PDA’s Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .

Local Focus: Join the IOT above & then Help get the CA Fair Elections Act passed in June election!; learn more here

Published by The Nation.

Doris “Granny D” Haddock, whose 3,200-mile walk across the United States at the age of 90 drew thousands of activists into the movement for political reform, has died Tuesday evening at the age of 100.

The Dublin, New Hampshire, grandmother’s death came ten years and ten days after she finished the remarkable two-year walk, which she undertook to promote the passage of campaign finance reform legislation (in particular the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform law).

Read the Rest Here

John Nichols
December 2, 2009

Published by The Nation.

President Obama delivered a carefully-constructed and nuanced call Tuesday night for the extension of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Obama came to the wrong conclusion about a military adventure that should be coming to a conclusion, rather than ramping up. But Obama’s attempt to find a middle ground between anti-war forces and supporters of a Iraq-style occupation at least recognized that the debate over Afghanistan has many sides and many players.

At times, Obama seemed so tortured in his attempt to placate both those who want to send more troops (he’s dispatching an additional 30,000) and those who want a bring-the-troops-home exit strategy (he says they will start coming home in 2011) that his speech had the ring of Greek tragedy—or, perhaps, “fall of the Roman Empire” history.

Read the Full Story Here

John Nichols
November 30, 2009

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

Published by The Nation.

“I know that Obama’s election has brought great hopes to peace-loving people in the United States. But for Afghans, Obama’s military buildup will only bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians…” — Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya

The only humane and proper response to the mess in Afghanistan is the rapid withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from that country.

The makers of the brilliant documentary Rethink Afghanistan” have after interviewing savvy diplomats, honest intelligence operatives and frustrated military men and women—as well as human rights activists, feminists and sincere reformers in Afghanistan—concluded that:

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John Nichols
The Nation
September 21, 2009

By adopting the CPC line with regard to the public option, Obama could energize the base that elected him and turn this into a real fight, bringing savvy inside-outside political operations like that of Progressive Democrats of America into the thick of the struggle and activating the crowds that turned out in cities across the country last week for the “Mad As Hell Doctors” tour on behalf of “Medicare for All.”

President Obama did all the Sunday morning talk shows, as part of a ramped-up campaign to promote his sincere if ill-defined belief that health care should be reformed, and he continued to argue, albeit tepidly, that this reform probably needs to include a public option.

Obama was smooth and smart and presidential and the appearances on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and on the Spanish-language Univision network will undoubtedly aid his personal approval ratings.

But these exercises in pulled punches and anti-government apologia will do little to advance the cause of genuine health care reform.

Read the Full Story Here

By John Nichols
The Nation
September 7, 2009

The decision of Van Jones to resign as President Obama’s “green jobs” czar is not a victory for Republicans who griped about the White House environmental aide’s willingness to call them out on their extreme partisanship.

Nor was it a victory for right-wing nuts like Glenn Beck—who waged a bitter campaign against Jones, highlighting his history of activism on behalf of environmental justice, racial reconciliation, global solidarity and an inquiry into events leading up to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Read the rest here

By John Nichols
The Nation
June 16, 2009

Thirty-two Democrats broke with the Obama administration and House Democratic leaders Tuesday to oppose a $106 billion supplemental appropriation to maintain the occupation of Iraq, surge more troops into the quagmire that is Afghanistan and fund the International Monetary Funds anti-social policies of forcing developing countries to sacrifice programs for the poor in order to bail out big banks.

by John Nichols
The Nation

Progressives had more to celebrate in 2008 than in any year since the Supreme Court got into the business of stealing elections. The jubilant mood is dampened, of course, by the fact of a country is stuck in two military quagmires, ravaged by the most fearsome economic downturn in at least a half century and suffering from a serious case of Constitutional degeneration. Perhaps we have not yet reached an ideal champagne moment. But there is still good reason to toast the year’s MVPs – Most Valuable Progressives.

Here they are: .....

MOST VALUABLE POLITICAL GROUP: Progressive Democrats of America

Paul Wellstone’s “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party” finally has a functional voice, in the form of PDA, a national group that has over the past several years struggled mightily – and often effectively – to pull the party to the left on issues of war and peace, health-care reform, economic justice and presidential accountability.