Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

San Francisco Labor Council Resolution – Adopted unanimously March 28, 2011

Support April 9-10 Rallies and Marches:
Oppose the Wars against Working People
at Home and Abroad

Whereas, the wealthy and corporations now in control of our country continue to take more, while we get less, continue to destroy our environment, exploit our labor and reduce our services for ever-increasing profits, using half of our Federal tax dollars for military purposes, and our youth, under an economic draft, as cannon fodder to invade and occupy other countries, and

Whereas, the price of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya is creating a permanent war economy draining the US of trillions of dollars that could be used for jobs, education, and social services, draining funds at the state and local level, while providing a convenient excuse for draconian cuts in services and extreme austerity measures resulting in the decimation of collective bargaining agreements now being carried out in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and other states.

Therefore be it resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council join the Bay Area Chapter of US Labor Against the War, and hundreds of social justice organizations, nation-wide, calling for an immediate end to these wars, and endorsing the bi-coastal marches and rallies occurring on April 9th in New York City and April 10th in San Francisco, sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee.

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For a schedule of all of the upcoming PDA IOT calls, click here

Pacific Sun
March 4, 2010

by Norman Solomon

Why does the U.S. government still put the ‘me’ into megalomaniacs?

A standard zigzag of political rhetoric went for a jaunt along Pennsylvania Avenue last month with a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at George Washington University. “Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people,” she declared. During the last few weeks much has changed in the politics of the Middle East—but not much has changed in the politics of Washington, where policymakers turn phrases on a dime.

The currency is doublespeak, antithetical to a single standard of human rights.

Read the Full Story Here

by Norman Solomon
February 19, 2011

A standard zigzag of political rhetoric went for a jaunt along Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday (Feb. 15) with a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at George Washington University. “Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people,” she declared. During the last few weeks, much has changed in the politics of the Middle East — but not much has changed in the politics of Washington, where policymakers turn phrases on a dime.

The currency is doublespeak, antithetical to a single standard of human rights.

Read the Rest Here

Thursday, Oct. 14, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
The Glaser Center, 547 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa

Col. Ann Wright, one of three State Dept. officials to publicly resign in direct protest to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, traveled on the Freedom Flotilla bringing emergency supplies to Gaza and drawing international attention to the plight of the Palestinian people. She will tell her compelling story and her reasons for opposing U.S. policy regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

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AGENDA

1) Urge Local Chapters to Discuss/Embrace BDS – Boycott, Divestiture, Sanctions against Israel for apartheid policies.

2) Support One Nation Together March on Washington/PDA Lobbying Efforts:

3) Support for PDA 2010 Endorsed Anti-War Candidates.

4) Support Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s (CA-09) H.R. 6045

5) War Made Easy/The End of War

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO, including call in # & to register for the conference call

The Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County will be dedicating the next peace vigil – Friday, June 4th, 5:30 to 6:30, Courthouse Square, Santa Rosa – to condemning Israel’s killing of international human rights activists who were trying to deliver aid to the imprisoned people of Gaza. Israel sent armed commandos onto a civilian ship in international waters – an illegal act which culminated in civilian deaths.* The Center, while condemning all acts of violence, takes particular issue with violent acts committed in our names and with our tax dollars. The United States, in both word and deed, through Republican and Democratic administrations, continues to fund and support extreme and disproportionate acts of violence from Israel, of which the current action is but one. Come tell Obama that “regret” is not enough. Hold Israel accountable.

Here’s the link for live streaming of KPFK Radio, which will air an interview with Marcy Winograd and Norman Solomon on Wednesday at 8 a.m. (West Coast time). The focus: policy toward Israel/Palestine, the killing of people on the Gaza aid flotilla and the record of Congresswoman Jane Harman (who was invited but declined).

http://www.kpfk.org/listen-live.html

Norman Solomon
June 1, 2010

When Israel attacked the Gaza aid flotilla, Congresswoman Jane Harman was engaged in a parallel assault. Israel’s government relied on the efficacy of violence; Harman’s campaign was counting on the power of paid media. In both cases, the targets were advocates of human rights for Palestinian people.

Brandishing guns and stun grenades, in international waters, Israeli commandos rappelled from a helicopter and boarded from a fast-moving boat onto the flotilla’s largest ship. The mission was to halt a Gaza-bound expedition carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid.

The mission of Harman’s campaign strategists—targeting her progressive opponent with a slick TV commercial—was to achieve a related goal in California’s 36th congressional district. Stopping the Gaza flotilla and stopping the congressional campaign of Marcy Winograd are similar agenda items.

Read the Rest Here

Help elect Winograd — join the virtual phone bank!

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.

Thursday, May 27, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Dr. Dorothy Naor lives in Herzliah, near Tel Aviv. An activist with New Profile, an Israeli feminist and anti-militarist group, she participates in virtually all activities having to do with occupation policy and civil rights in Israel. Most recently, she has become involved in the Israeli Committee for Residency Rights (ICRR), an ad hoc committee working on residency rights for Palestinians and for allowing entry to the West Bank. Dorothy takes people on informal tours to the West Bank and is one of those who responds to the many calls of distress from people in the West Bank who are stuck at checkpoints, need medical care in Israel, are in villages where the IDF comes in, etc.

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.

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

Linda Milazzo
March 23, 2010, Los Angeles, CA

This article is based on one that will appear in the upcoming May/June 2010 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: http://www.wrmea.com

Published by AlterNet.org.

Sunday, March 14, 2010, ushered in two welcome events to Southern California: the inauguration of the headquarters of the bustling Winograd For Congress primary campaign, and an extra hour of daylight to help Marcy Winograd’s swarm of supporters evict Jane Harman, the wealthiest Democrat in Congress, from her eight-term seat in the House.

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.

MORE CALLS NEEDED RIGHT NOW! (Leave messages at any hour!) Use the virtual phonebank. Watch the whip list. Vote is planned for Tuesday morning.

Read: McGovern: Reporter Made It Up, I’m Voting NO

Read: An Exit Strategy That Keeps Wars Going.

June 16th: Catch Bob Fertik on Democracy Now! at 8:45 a.m. ET. Then catch the vote on C-Span if it happens. It IS on the schedule for late morning. Emanuel is still trying to bribe Republicans to fund war (odd as that may sound) by including funding for the flu (bizarre as that may sound, and they were going to include it anyway) in an attempt to somehow overcome the Republicans’ opposition to the IMF’s doing things Republicans support if only it were with someone else’s money. Clear? The San Francisco Chronicle has an article quoting Sam Farr putting the question of whether Obama is embarassed above the question of whether people in Iraq or Afghanistan are killed, and George Miller professing his blind obedience to the President. The same article reports that Jackie Speier and Lynn Woolsey will vote No.

Read the Rest Here, including frequent updates

By Norman Solomon
June 8, 2009

Take Action: Tell Congress We want Healthcare NOT Warfare

It takes at least tacit faith in massive violence to believe that after three decades of horrendous violence in Afghanistan, upping the violence there will improve the situation.

Despite the pronouncements from high Washington places that the problems of Afghanistan can’t be solved by military means, 90 percent of the spending for Afghanistan in the Obama administration’s current supplemental bill is military.

Often it seems that lofty words about war hopes are boilerplate efforts to make us feel better about an endless warfare state. Oratory and punditry laud the Pentagon’s fallen as noble victims of war, while enveloping its other victims in a haze of ambiguity or virtual nonexistence.

Read the Rest Here

SIGN THE PETITION!

by Tom Hayden
The Nation.com – May 26, 2009

The most powerful grassroots organization of the peace
movement, MoveOn, remains silent as the American wars
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simmer or escalate.

Norman Solomon
May 21, 2009

To understand what’s up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. “The March of Folly,” by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things—how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession—and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a “process of self-hypnosis,” Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of “The March of Folly” to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.

Free Gaza Movement boat breaking the siege of Gaza, October 2008

What happened and why? What roles have the U.S. and the media played?

What can we hope for in an Obama administration?

What can WE do?

Tuesday February 10, 2009
7:30 PM
Dance Palace, 503 B Street,
Point Reyes Station

Free Admission
Sponsored by West Marin Alliance
For more information, contact Susan at syscott@prodigy.net or 669-1745.

From the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County:

Tuesday, Dec. 30: 5:00pm
Candlelight vigil at Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa:
To protest the violent actions & bombing of Gaza.

Gaza is a 40km by 5km (25-mile by three-mile) ribbon of land along the south-east corner of the Mediterranean Sea, home to some 1.3 million Palestinians and 8,000 Jewish settlers (Nov. ’04 statistics). According to the media, “the fiercest attacks in the last 60 years” have been onleashed on the people of Gaza by Israel.

This is done with US sanction, and by US made bombs and jet fighters. Attention must be drawn in order to stop the bloodshed, insist on a ceasefire and return to negotiations.

A demonstration is called by Peace organizations on Dec 30th.
All people who think violence is not the answer and those who care about humanitarian issues are asked to take part.

Tell Congress to enforce the law

Gaza —The Israeli Air Force attacked the occupied Gaza Strip killing an estimated 200 or more people and injuring hundreds more, yesterday. (See video) These Israeli attacks come on top of a brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, which has created a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions for Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian residents by restricting the provision of food, fuel, medicine, electricity, and other necessities of life. A virtually unarmed and starving people, the Palestinians of Gaza have been living under an illegal blockade and lock down for the past six months.

As Bill Fletcher warned on this site less than two weeks ago, silence toward human rights abuses against the Palestinian people means the removal or elimination of a people, a stated objective of a segment of the Israeli ruling class.