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
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.
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.
August 8, 2010
Published by Tom Hayden.com.
The White House stepped up its campaign against WikiLeaks [Wednesday] by calling for the whistleblower organization to turn over the secret Pentagon documents still in its possession.
Meanwhile a petition supporting WikiLeaks began national and European circulation. See Defend WikiLeaks—End the Secret Wars at http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38165.html . The petition has been endorsed by Daniel Ellsberg, who was prosecuted by the Nixon administration for releasing the Pentagon Papers a generation ago. Other signers include Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Rev. George Hunsinger of Princeton Theological Seminary, and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink.
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.
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.
David Cobb will be joining us in Cleveland for the PDA Conference, July 23-25. It’s not too late to join us! Agenda details and registration available here: https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/309/donate.asp?formid=meet&c=459338
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
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:
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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.
Progressive Democrats Sonoma County
Monthly General Meeting
Special Guest Speaker!
NORMAN SOLOMON, syndicated columnist & PDA National Board member
Where Do We Go From Here?
Progressive politics this fall and beyond
Wednesday, July 14
6:30 pm
French Garden Restaurant
8050 Bodega Avenue
Sebastopol, CA
Here is a video of a recent interview of Norman Solomon on C-Span’s Washington Journal. He discusses President Obama’s relationship with the progressive & liberal wings of the Democratic Party, unaffiliated liberals, and the Political Left:
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.
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Jam the switchboard on July 1
While President Obama’s debt commission works to undermine Social Security and Medicare as part of the nonsensical austerity measures proposed by neocons to relieve the debt created, in large part, by two wars of choice, Congress is poised to approve another $1 million per troop for a total of more than 33 billion dollars!
The pressure we’ve been applying on Congress to vote against the supplemental funding bill for the war in Afghanistan has made a difference. Forty House members have decided to vote no, and at least 10 more are on the fence.
Our sources are telling us that Congress will vote tomorrow, July 1.
CLICK HERE to learn more about the Cost of War and what that $$$ could be used for instead.
Santa Rosa, CA
June 16, 2010
Dear Representative Woolsey,
It’s like a trick of misdirection, except that instead of a magician distracting an audience from seeing how the legerdemain is accomplished, we’re living through Congress deflecting our attention from important domestic issues over to patches on a system that is ready to burst.
Instead of enacting health insurance reforms that would have been fiscally responsible, ethical, and humane—such as Medicare for All with a single-payer system—we’re faced with the president and Congress telling us that to balance our budget we need to make cuts in two of the only programs in our country that offer protection to those who most need it: Medicare and Social Security.
June 13, 2010
Norman Solomon, Syndicated Columnist & Progressive Democrats of America, National Board Member, discusses President Obama’s relationship with the progressive & liberal wings of the Democratic Party, unaffiliated liberals, and the Political Left.
Washington, DC
Gail Russell Chaddock
June 11, 2010
Take Action: End the Afghanistan war in 10 minutes or less
Published by The Christian Science Monitor
Congress faces a formidable summer agenda on issues ranging from an overhaul of financial regulation to oversight of the Gulf oil spill. But nothing is as wrenching for the Democratic majority as upcoming votes to fund the surge of US forces in Afghanistan.
Most of the more than $1 trillion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan passed the Congress as “emergency” spending–that is, funded off-budget. In the Bush years, these were typically big, bipartisan votes, with Republican votes a given.
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.
Harvey Wasserman
June 9, 2010
Take Action: Tell Congress – End our dependence on dirty energy—we want a carbon tax with revenue returned to households!
Published by Common Dreams
As BP’s ghastly gusher assaults the Gulf of Mexico and so much more, a tornado has forced shut the Fermi2 atomic reactor at the site of a 1966 melt-down that nearly irradiated the entire Great Lakes region.
By Norman Solomon
Published on Friday, June 4, 2010 by the Marin Independent Journal
http://www.marinij.com/marinvoice/ci_15225900
In this state, the Democratic and Republican parties rarely agree on anything — but both oppose Proposition 14. Although its misleading ballot title promises to increase the “right to participate in primary elections,” the measure actually imposes major new limits on voters.
By eliminating party primaries, Proposition 14 would deny all political parties — and their voters — the right to choose a nominee to run in a general election.
Instead, the top two vote-getters on a single all-inclusive primary ballot would square off in the general election, regardless of party affiliation.
In the process, the measure — an amendment to the state constitution — would exclude small parties from the November ballot.
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.
Help elect Winograd — join the virtual phone bank!
Remembering. Learning. Changing the Reality.
Healthcare NOT Warfare
“If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.” Gen. John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic wrote in his general orders prior to the first observance of Memorial Day on May 30, 1868.
Are the words above any less true if spoken about the struggle to stop funding more war, or for healthcare for all, than when spoken about the sacrifice and courage of soldiers? This Memorial Day, let’s pause to recall all of the heroes who fight with every ounce of energy and often with tremendous human suffering to end the great injustices of our day.
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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