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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.
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.
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.
KOWS 107.3FM ( streaming at www.KOWS.fm ) , Voices and Vision, Tu. 5/25, 6-8 pm presents an election commentary program with analysis and recommendations for candidates and propositions. It will feature Stan Gold from Progressive Democrats of America, Sonoma County, and Victoria Brandon, Political chairperson of Redwood Chapter, Sierra Club. Health and schedule permitting, we could be joined by feisty West County pol women, Alice Chan and/or Lynn Hamilton. There’s a slim chance a mystery election expert from SSU could join the commentary party. In any event, it should be an informative and interesting time.
You’re invited to join our conversation by calling the studio, (707) 874-1073. Join us and explore Sonoma, north coast and California politics with your own questions/statements/ideas. We even hope to talk about Republican Gubernatorial and Senatorial candidates. Maybe some Greens and tea partiers will call.
Hear Voices and Vision on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, 6-8 pm. KOWS 107.3 FM , Occidental, is a community station serving west Sonoma County and much of Santa Rosa. It can also be heard by going to www.KOWS.fm and clicking on the link under community radio project.
Norman Solomon
May 24, 2010
Visit Winograd for Congress
Many are familiar with the adage, “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.” But what happens when people enable leaders to follow the dictates of the powerful?
These days, the answers are arriving in the form of a news drumbeat that’s apt to seem like a dirge.
From Afghanistan to Wall Street to the Gulf of Mexico, policies of military action and regulatory inaction are exacting terrible costs: in human life, economic resources and irreplaceable nature. Silence and inaction enable the destructive policies to continue.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You’re invited to an April 26th benefit for Truthout.org and Marin Peace & Justice Coalition.
Monday, April 26, 2010
7:00pm – 9:30pm
San Rafael Community Center
618 B Street
San Rafael, CA
George Lakoff, Cynthia Boaz, Rose Aguilar and Norman Solomon will be participating in a public discussion about the challenges facing progressives and the strategies which can help progressives organize for democracy.
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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.
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.
Chris Hedges
April 7, 2010
Take Action: Fight corporate personhood!
Sign the motion to amend | Get involved at FreeSpeechforPeople
Published by Truthdig.
Ralph Nader’s descent from being one of the most respected and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup. Nader’s marginalization was not accidental. It was orchestrated to thwart the legislation that Nader and his allies—who once consisted of many in the Democratic Party—enacted to prevent corporate abuse, fraud and control. He was targeted to be destroyed. And by the time he was shut out of the political process with the election of Ronald Reagan, the government was in the hands of corporations. Nader’s fate mirrors our own.
Dan Murphy
April 6, 2010
Take Action: Tell Congress – No Money for War
Published by Christian Science Monitor.
A video released on the Internet Monday by WikiLeaks, a small nonprofit dedicated to publishing classified information from the US and other governments, appears to show the killing of two Iraqi journalists with Reuters and about nine other Iraqis in a Baghdad suburb in 2007 that is sharply at odds of the official US account of the incident.
By Norman Solomon
April 3, 2010
Democracy is dangerous — for those who are eager to concentrate power in the hands of a few.
For many years, in California’s legislature, a minority of lawmakers — Republicans enjoying an inordinate proportion of corporate backing — have thwarted moves to boost state revenues with more progressive taxation. The conservative legislators have been able to send the state budget into a tailspin.
April 1, 2010
Hello Sonoma County volunteers,
Our deadline comes up soon. Please broadcast this to all your friends…...
73% of Californians support restoring Democracy to Sacramento.
A remarkable seventy-three percent of California likely voters support majority rule in the legislature for both revenue and budget, a new poll by David Binder of DB-Research shows. This is overwhelming support for the California Democracy Act, a November 2010 ballot initiative that states,
“All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.”
But first we must collect enough signatures to qualify George Lakoff’s initiative for the November ballot, and we need your help. Please take these steps TODAY:
Californians for Democracy has a new look!
Help us reach our goal of 1 million signatures to place the California Democracy Act on the November 2010 ballot. Sign our Petition or better yet … become a Petition Circulator Today!!!
THE CALIFORNIA DEMOCRACY ACT “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote”Also known as the CA Majority Rule Campaign, it changes two words in the California Constitution: “Two-thirds” becomes “a majority” in two places. That’s all it takes to make California sane and solvent again.
Ann Wright
March 20, 2010
Take Action: Eat lunch for peace—become a brown-bagger.
Published by CommonDreams.org.
Seven years ago today I resigned from the U.S. government in opposition to the Bush administration’s war on Iraq.
I had worked for the State Department for sixteen years and had been in the Army and Army Reserves for 29 years. I was one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned over the Bush administration’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq and one of tens if not hundreds of thousands of government employees that knew the war on Iraq would jeopardize our national security, not improve it.
While I was in the process of making my decision to resign, millions of Americans and tens of millions of people from around the world took to the streets to protest the pending invasion and occupation of Iraq and the inevitable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Dublin, New Hampshire, March 14, 2010
By Dennis Burke
Thousands of news services, from Peterborough to Bangkok, from personal diaries to the New York Times, have reported these last few days on the life and death of Doris Haddock. In her life, she did not cure a disease or end a war. She did not write ten symphonies or do whatever normally occasions such notice. So what did she do? It is worth thinking about in this moment.
If people no longer spoke aloud, or if they no longer looked at things with their own eyes or through their own thoughts, if they let others do those things for them, then they would take it as unusual if one among them suddenly spoke up and dared see the world independently, describing without filter or permission the vivid colors and true conditions of the world.
It is difficult to understand why a lady from New Hampshire who did little more than take morning walks—though she sometimes did so without coming back for several years—should be so lionized in death, unless we also consider what has become of the world around her that made her exceptional by comparison. She is seen as exceptional perhaps because the rest of us have become a little too reticent, a little too slow-moving, in response to these times of high challenge.
A thousand people have told me that, when they reach her age, they want to be like Granny D. I have always agreed with them, but we have had it a little wrong. We must not wait until we are 90 or 100; we have to be, even today, a little more like Granny D. Our challenges will not wait for us to age.
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).
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.
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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