Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 12.02.06

[David Shove (shove001]

            P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R     12.02.06

1. Homeless vets   12.02 10am
2. Organizing      12.02 10am
3. Knollwood/army  12.02 10:30am
4. NW N4P vigil    12.02 11am
5. Mayors/peace    12.02 11:30am
6. GreenParty StP  12.02 12noon
7. Northtown vigil 12.02 1pm
8. Palestine       12.02 2:30pm
9. Race            12.02 4pm
10. MortensonParty 12.02 6pm
11. Arabian arts   12.02 6pm
12. Mayors/peace   12.02 7:30pm

13. Greg Grandin - Calderon's closed-door midnight inauguration

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From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Homeless Vets 12.02 10am

Saturday, 12/2 (and each 1st Saturday), 10 to 11:30 am, Homeless Veterans
for Peace meeting, Peacehouse, 510 E Franklin Ave, Mpls.  Bob Heberle at
612-789-9020


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From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Organizing 12.02 10am

Saturday, 12/2, 10 am to 4 pm, Ricardo Levins Morales and Deborah Rosenstein
give class on "Creative Organizing" involving music, visual arts, theater
and chants, $50, Labor Education Service, 3-300 Carlson School of
Management, U of M, 321 - 19th Ave S, Mpls.  www.laboreducation.org


--------3 of 13--------

From: "Murphy, Cathy" <CMurphy [at] analysts.com>
Subject: Knollwood/army 12.02 10:30am

Army opening "Career Center" in Knollwood Mall
Knollwood is a community meeting place. Our kids spend time there,
sometimes alone or with friends. Army recruiters, who are increasingly
desperate, aggressively target them, using lies & coercive tactics.

What can we do about it?

ProtectAction is a group of local folks working to protect our kids. You
can help.

Raise awareness in the community:
Join us - Every Saturday  -  10:30 a.m.
Meet under the large Knollwood Mall sign (Hwy7 & Aquila), where we put
on white shirts with ProtectAction on the back.
We walk into the mall via several entrances and meet at the recruiting
center, each carrying a sign with the name of a Minnesotan killed in
Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 (49 so far)
We stand briefly in front of the recruiting center and then depart
(total time commitment = 20 minutes)

www.ProtectAction.blogspot.com <http://www.protectaction.blogspot.com/>


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From: Carole Rydberg <carydberg [at] comcast.net>
Subject: NW N4P vigil 12.02 11am

NW Neighbors for Peace weekly demonstrations every Saturday between 11 AM
and noon along Vinewood, near Rockford Rd. (also known as 42nd Avenue or
Cty. Rd. 9) and just east of 494.  This is the entrance to Target,
Rainbow, and other stores.


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From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Mayors/peace 12.02 11:30am

Saturday, 12/2, 11:30 am to 2 pm, luncheon & visit to Lyndale Park Peace
Garden with sponsored by Mpls-Hiroshima Friendship Cities Committee with US
rep for Mayors for Peace Steve Leeper, home of Lionel & JoAnn Blatchley,
7432 Shore Dr, Edina. (Visit to  Sculpture across from Rose Garden near Lake
Harriet at 2 pm.)  952-922-0308.


--------6 of 13--------

From: Andy Hamerlinck <iamandy [at] riseup.net>
Subject: GreenParty StP 12.02 12noon

A quick reminder: we've got our regularly scheduled GP StP membership
meeting tomorrow, 12-2, at Mississippi Market (Selby & Dale). On the
agenda:  strategic planning, IRV, fundraising, and much, much more!


--------7 of 13--------

From: Lennie <major18 [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Northtown vigil 12.02 1pm

The Mounds View peace vigil group. EVERY SATURDAY from 1-2pm at the at the
southeast corner of the intersection of Co. Hwy 10 and University Ave NE
in Blaine, which is the northwest most corner of the Northtown Mall area.
This is a MUCH better location.

We'll have extra signs.  Communities situated near the Northtown Mall
include: Blaine, Mounds View, New Brighton, Roseville, Shoreview, Arden
Hills, Spring Lake Park, Fridley, and Coon Rapids.

For further information, email major18 [at] comcast.net or call Lennie at
763-717-9168


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From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Palsetine 12.02 2:30pm

Protest: End the Siege of Gaza and U.S. Funding of Atrocities on
Palestinians

Saturday, December 2, 2:30 p.m. Walker Library, Hennepin and Lagoon
Avenues, Minneapolis. Protest the immoral and indefensible bi-partisan
U.S. support of state-sponsored terror in Palestine/Israel. Between 2000
and 2006, Israel, the largest U.S. recipient of foreign (mostly military)
aid, has killed 2,300 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 300 in the
months since Palestinian fighters captured an Israeli soldier on June 25,
2006. Humanitarian Crisis: Israel's military offensive on Gaza compounds
the humanitarian crisis crippling Gazan livelihoods. According to the
World Bank, "Palestinians are currently experiencing the worst economic
depression in modern history." As of April 2006, 79% of Gazan households
were living in poverty. The humanitarian crisis is a result of an economic
boycott called by the U.S. and E.U. in response to the democratic election
of Hamas in Jan '06. On June 28, Israel shelled Gaza's main electric power
generator, imperiling Palestinian access to vaccines, dairy products,
fresh foods and clean water. Hamas has repeatedly called for a cease-fire
this year. In response to Hamas' repeated calls, Israel has chosen to
continue its indiscriminate military attacks. In solidarity with
international protests. (See also:
<<http://www.endtheoccupation.org>http://www.endtheoccupation.org> and
Coalition of Women of Peace (Israel)
<<http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english/activities/open_gaza_gates>http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english/activities/open_gaza_gates>).
Sponsored by: the Coalition for Palestinian Rights. FFI: Email
<eric-angell [at] riseup.net>.


--------9 of 13--------

From: william mcgaughey <2wmcg [at] earthlink.net>
Subject: Race 12.02 4pm

Chris Stewart, newly elected member of the Minneapolis School Board, will
be on hand to participate in a general discussion of racial issues in the
community room of the Washburn public library (5244 Lyndale Ave. S.) in
Minneapolis on Saturday, December 2, between 4 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.  The
meeting is sponsored by Metro Property Rights Action Committee.  All
interested persons are invited to attend.


--------10 of 13--------

From: Jesse Mortenson <jesse [at] jessemortenson.com>
Subject: Mortenson party 12.02 6pm

Don't forget - coming up this Saturday! Our last celebration for the campaign.

Retire the Debt Party
Saturday, Dec. 2, from 6 - 10pm
at the home of Mary Petrie and John Thompson
852 Mound Street
http://www.jessemortenson.com/party/retirethedebt

Come and enjoy good food, good drink, and good conversations about what
comes next for us in St. Paul.

With your help, we raised enough money to reach all of our
get-out-the-vote goals, including sending a mailing to everybody in the
district. Unfortunately, we haven't raised enough yet to totally cancel
the debt. We're about 45% on the way there.

December is your last chance to donate FOR FREE using the Minnesota
Political Contribution Refund program (if you haven't used it yet this
year). Make sure your friends know about it!
http://www.jessemortenson.com/contribute


--------11 of 13--------

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Arabian arts 12.02 6pm

Arabian Arts and Culture Evening

Saturday December 2, 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. Center for Independent Artists,
4137 Bloomington Avenue South, Minneapolis. Join us for an exciting
evening of Arabic entertainment and bazaar of arts: Live music, henna
artist, portraiture artist, hors d'oeuvres, holiday boutique. See unique
items from the Arab region and beyond: luscious kuftans, one-of-a-kind
rugs, exotic textiles, hand-made items and beautiful art pieces by local
Arab artists and more. Entrance to the event is free and open to the
public. Bring a friend or two and come enjoy an evening out of the
ordinary! Endorsed by: WAMM Middle East Committee. FFI: Call 612-709-1734.


--------12 of 13--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Mayors/peace 12.02 7:30pm

Saturday, 12/2, 7:30 pm, storytellers Larry Johnson and Elaine Wynne (plus
musician Barb Tilsen) welcome Mayors for Peace director Steve Leeper from
Hiroshima, Dunn Bros Coffee, 329 W 15th St (by Loring Park), Mpls.
612-737-3904.


--------13 of 13--------

Calderon's Inauguration Behind Closed Doors
Midnight in Mexico
By GREG GRANDIN
CounterPunch
December 1, 2006

This is how the Washington Consensus ends: With the president-elect of
Mexico Felipe Calderon sneaking off with outgoing Vicente Fox Thursday
night to hold a midnight, locked-door inauguration. Fait accompli, the
next day the videotaped ceremony was broadcast to the nation. "How now,
you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is't you do?" "A deed without a
Name," they answered.

Over the last two decades, the Washington Consensus was more than just a
set of economic policies that opened up Latin America's economies to US
corporations and banks. It was a political directive as well, aimed at
redefining the meaning of Latin American democracy.

Once US-backed Cold War military regimes and death squads had violently
severed the ties between socialist and nationalist political parties and
their working-class and peasant base and allowed a return to
constitutional rule, an army of corporate and government-funded U.S.
social scientists descended upon Latin America. They advised politicians
to move the fulcrum of politics away from mass rallies in the central
plaza to televised campaign ads and back-room elite negotiations. They
also sold a new brand of democracy, one defined exclusively as the
protection of political and economic freedom and the defense of property
rights, rather than the achievement of social justice. Such advice was
aimed at putting to rest Latin America's populist, egalitarian tradition,
which had deep roots in the region's political culture, drawing from
Catholic humanism, Rousseauean notions of participatory democracy, and
indigenous conceptions of justice and solidarity. "Political democracy,"
Samuel Huntington lectured Latin Americans in one transitology handbook,
"is clearly compatible with inequality in both wealth and income, and in
some measure, it may be dependent upon such inequality."

It depends on what you mean by democracy. The success of such a campaign
to turn Latin Americans into passive consumers of electoral politics was
dependent on the success of the Washington Consensus's economic policies.
But the 1990s were a disaster for a majority of Latin Americans.
Inequality increased at a stunning pace and millions were thrown into not
just poverty but extreme destitution, leading activists across the
continent to rebuild alliances between grassroots social movements and
political parties and lay the groundwork for today's left resurgence.
Popular protests brought down governments in Bolivia and Ecuador, and
restored one in Venezuela. Poor people increasingly became involved in
politics (Evo Morales is the first Bolivian president to win more than
fifty percent in a first-round vote since the country returned to
democratic rule in the 1980s, drawing the bulk of support from
impoverished rural communities). What is more, a majority of Latin
Americans continued to believe that democracy should entail some form of
equity and wealth redistribution.

The conflict between these visions of democracy were brought into sharp
relief in last summer's presidential election, which pitted Calderon
against Manuel Lopez Obrador, a center-leftist with a strong grassroots
base of support. Lopez Obrador built his campaign around old-style rallies
and marches. In fact, it took a massive social movement just to get him
into the game, with hundreds of thousands filling Mexico City's Zocolo to
protest Vicente Fox's bogus attempt to use a legal technicality to block
his candidacy. He even refused to visit the US to glad-hand bankers and
think-tank pundits who watched his early large lead with alarm.

Calderon, in contrast, might as well as have set up his headquarters in
Washington for all the personal contact he had with actual Mexicans. With
an enormous corporate-funded war chest, he relied heavily on TV
commercials to sell himself. In an effort to whittle away at what seemed
like an insurmountable Lopez Obrador lead, he turned to US political
consultants, who micro-polled, product-tested, perception-managed, and
focused-grouped to roll out the most relentlessly negative political
campaign in Mexican history.

It worked, at least enough to equalize the playing field just enough for
Calderon to squeak in with a victory that millions and millions of
Mexicans believe to be illegitimate. So what better way to inaugurate the
fruit of such a consumer-driven campaign than to abandon the
pomp-and-circumstance that usually mark of Mexico's transfers of
presidential power and hold a closed-door, midnight rite later broadcast
on the country's corporate-controlled airwaves?

But maybe Macbeth's conspiring witches are not the best image to invoke to
capture the significance of Calderon's nighttime ritual. Facing hundreds
of thousands swearing allegiance to Lopez Obrador, Oaxaca on the brink,
and politicians brawling on the floor of Congress, Calderon just announced
that he was naming Francisco Javier Ramrez Acua as his Interior Minister,
in charge of domestic security. While governor of the state of Jalisco,
Ramrez was accused by Amnesty International and others of serious human
rights violations, including ordering a brutal crackdown on anti-corporate
globalization protesters. A more appropriate way to mark Calderon's
inauguration is perhaps Henry V's Dauphin, as he prepares for battle: "Tis
midnight; I'll go arm myself."

Greg Grandin teaches Latin American history at NYU and is the author of
the Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and The Rise of
the New Imperialism, from which this essay has been excerpted. He can be
reached at: gjg4 [at] nyu.edu

[Calderon - an example of the gangrenous flesh that rules Mexico and the
US. This is Kakocracy - rule by the worst. Or perhaps Kakacracy - rule by
kaka. How bad does it have to get before we say, Enough? We have every
moral reason to disrespect and disobey them in everything. -ed]


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
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