Progressive Calendar 01.31.08 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001![]() |
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Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:24:03 -0800 (PST) |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 01.31.08 1. Will Steger 1.31 6pm 2. Feminist event 1.31 6:30pm 3. StP human rights 1.31 6:30pm 4. Palestine 1.31 7pm 5. Dave Lindorff - The usual suspects once again --------1 of 5-------- From: PRO826 [at] aol.com Subject: Will Steger 1.31 6pm Focus the Nation - Focus Minnesota An evening with Will Steger, live music & special guests Thursday, January 31, 6-9 p.m. First Avenue Main Room, Downtown Minneapolis All Ages. Free. On January 30-31st young people across the country will focus their collective energy on finding solutions to global warming through Focus the Nation, a non-partisan national teach-in that will inspire us all to become informed and to take action. At First Avenue Main Room, Focus Minnesota will bring together students, young adults, environmental advocates and politicians for a public conversation about Minnesota's changing climate. This free all ages event will feature an illustrated presentation by arctic explorer Will Steger, appearances by politicians and young environmental leaders, as well as live music from local hip-hop collective Doomtree. Focus Minnesota is a chance to learn more about global warming, to seek solutions as a community and to network with local environmental advocates and organizers. Sponsored by The Will Steger Foundation, The Bell Museum of Natural History, Focus the U, Focus the Nation, other University of Minnesota Collegiate Partners and Metro Transit. To learn how to Go Greener with a free bus ride to Focus Minnesota, visit: _http://www.bellmuseum.org_ (http://www.bellmuseum.org/) --------2 of 5-------- From: "wamm [at] mtn.org" <wamm [at] mtn.org> Subject: Feminist event 1.31 6:30pm Minnesota Women's Consortium Celebration 28 Thursday, January 31, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Science Museum of Minnesota, 120 West Kellogg Boulevard, St. Paul. Minnesota feminists will gather in St. Paul to celebrate the Minnesota Women's Consortium 28th anniversary. Celebration 28 is a festive gala honoring the accomplishments of Minnesota women working for equality for women and girls. This year the Minnesota Women's Consortium will honor ten "Dreamers and Doers," including WAMM founder Polly Mann, who have brought us this far in the struggle for women's equality. The program for the evening, emceed by "MPR Morning Edition" host Cathy Wurzer, will include: hors d'oeuvres and cash bar, networking, and recognition of honorees. The evening will also include an excerpt from the chamber opera, "Meeting at Seneca Falls" by composer Carol Barnett and librettist Marisha Chamberlain which chronicles Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott's plot for the first women's rights meeting in America. Admission: $40.00 or "Pay Your Age." Open to the public. FFI: Call Minnesota Women's Consortium, 651-228-0338 or visit <www.mnwomen.org>. --------3 of 5-------- From: Lonnie Ellis <ellis.lonnie [at] gmail.com> Subject: StP human rights 1.31 6:30pm The City of St. Paul is holding a community briefing after results of a compliance audit shows deep problems in compliance and enforcement of human rights laws. I am the contact person on the response of ISAIAH and the Community Stakeholders Coalition. We are prepared to lay out the case for the city's lack of compliance with its own laws, and make key demands for change. January 31, 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Hallie Q. Brown / MLK Community Center - Club Room C 270 North Kent Street Saint Paul, MN 55102 Thank you. Lonnie Ellis Director of Social Justice Ministry St. Thomas More Catholic Community o: 651-227-7669 ext. 310 c: 612-205-5184 --------4 of 5-------- From: "wamm [at] mtn.org" <wamm [at] mtn.org> Subject: Palestine 1.31 7pm Reportback Palestine Thursday, January 31, 7:00 p.m. Mayday Books, 301 Cedar Avenue, Minneapolis. Susanne Waldorf will share her recent experiences in organizing joint speaking tours for Palestinian and Israeli women on the most recent "Jerusalem Women Speak" tour. She will also discuss her observations on how the climate toward the issue has changed over the past 5 years. Trish Kanous recently traveled to the West Bank with Peace for Life, a global faith-based movement resisting militarized globalization and creating life-enhancing alternatives. Sponsored by: Coalition for Palestinian Rights. FFI: 612-379-4716. --------5 of 5-------- This Campaign is a B-Movie with a B-List of Characters The Usual Suspects Once Again By DAVE LINDORFF CounterPunch January 31, 2008 With the presidential race now effectively pared down to four candidates, thanks to the departure of John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani, we're left with a really "B-grade" contest: a bomber (John McCain), a bummer (Hillary Clinton), a betrayer (Mitt Romney) and Obama (that's Barack with a B). McCain, the bomber, wants to "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," ensuring not just mayhem in Persia, but chaos, bloodshed and disaster across the Middle East and surely retaliation here at home for a generation to come. Here's a guy who made his name by getting himself shot down while committing war crimes against the people of a backward nation in Southeast Asia, who glommed onto Sen. Russ Feingold's clean government initiative after carting off wheelbarrows of cash from Charles Keating in the savings and loan scandal (McCain was one of the infamous Keating Five), and who claimed to be a renegade Republican and "straight talker" until he decided in 2004 to cling tightly to President Bush and become the mad Texan's biggest apologist during his second benighted term. And, after months of pandering to the Christian right and the neocon loonies, he now wants us to believe he's a maverick and "middle-of-the-roader." Hillary Clinton, the bummer, wants to bring her "experience" - that's the eight years of her so-called "co-presidency" with hubby Bill - to the White House again. That "experience," for the benefit of those suffering short-term memory loss, includes kicking off the first term by caving in to inappropriate criticism from the generals and backing down on a promise to end the ban on gays in the military, undermining habeas corpus with the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, gutting welfare benefits for the nation's hard-pressed poor, locking up millions of black and Hispanic Americans on non-violent drug charges, allowing the clearcutting of original growth forests on national lands, giving away mineral rights to mining companies, establishing the precedent for unilaterally attacking other nations (Sudan and Afghanistan), expanding the military budget in peacetime, failing to defend abortion rights, appointing hacks to federal court posts, failing to stand by good appointments to those courts in the face of right-wing attacks, and of course, in Hillary's own case specifically, throwing away for a generation a unique chance to establish a nationalized health care system in America. The very idea of re-"experiencing" any of that eight-year national disaster is my definition of a bummer. Mitt Romney, the betrayer, spent his years in Massachusetts at least pretending to be a New England liberal. He introduced a kind of state-based health insurance plan that at least had the potential of making health insurance available to every person in the state, but has since been running away from it in practice, for fear of sounding too liberal. As governor he supported a woman's right to control her own body, and to seek and obtain an abortion if she wanted one, but when it came time to run for president, he claimed to have undergone a miraculous conversion to the view of the hard right: that a woman is nothing but a vessel for growing and delivering babies. Claiming to care about the workingman, Romney, as a venture capitalist, actually betrayed workers, eliminating their jobs in the interest of his own and his partners' personal profits. And then there is Barack Obama, a man who is trying to gain the presidency on sheer sophistry. "Change" is his mantra, but change to what? He doesn't really say. His whole campaign is a feel-good exercise in ducking the issues. The United States has been pillaged relentlessly since at least the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon paved the way, with his recognition of China, for the wholesale offshoring of American industry to Asia. Administrations since then, Democratic and Republican, have been competing with each hasten the hollowing out of the American economy. Will Obama "change" this? No. He has no plan to undo the North American Free Trade Act, or to demand changes in the World Trade Organization rules. American labor unions are dying. Does Obama plan to "change" that by undoing decades of one-sided laws and regulations making it easy for employers to crush unions? No. He hasn't said a word about defending, much less expanding the rights of workers. Health care is in crisis. Does Obama have a solution? No. He is wedded to the same approach as Hillary Clinton, which leaves the blood-sucking insurance industry in charge of financing (and denying) care. The US is being bled to death by military expenditures, which in total account for more than half of the US budget when honestly accounted for in full. Does Obama plan to slash that spending, which is greater than all the military budgets of the rest of the world's nations combined? No. He has not said a word about cutting military spending (nor is he committed to ending the Iraq occupation). The Constitution has been undermined, particularly over the last six years, to the point that it is unrecognizable, with the presidency now more appropriately called an elected dictator, and Congress now little more than a talk shop. Does Obama plan to "change" that by voluntarily restoring the presidency to what it is supposed to be: just on co-equal branch of a tripartite government? He hasn't said a word about restoring checks and balances. Obama's "change" rhetoric is as empty as was Ronald Reagan's talk about America's being a "shining city on a hill." In the choice between a bomber, a bummer, a betrayer and Obama, it hardly matters who comes out on top. My guess is whoever wins, we get more military spending, more war, fewer jobs and fewer rights. Rep. Ron Paul, for all his flaws (and they are many, including a racist attitude on immigration, a sexist attitude on abortion, and a doctinaire view of primacy of the rights of property), is looking better and better. At least he would end the Iraq War, cut the military budget significantly, and restore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Let's hope he quits this B-rated presidential campaign and runs as an independent or Libertarian. [I say None of the Above. All are a waste of 9 months time and energy. A waste of a vote in November. Time to begin the many-year task of building choices outside corporate control. We're not going to get big national change for several elections. Let's mobilize outside the box to fight back and eventually win. Kick the corporate habit. -ed] Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment", co-authored by Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at: dlindorff [at] yahoo.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- - David Shove shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu rhymes with clove Progressive Calendar over 2225 subscribers as of 12.19.02 please send all messages in plain text no attachments To GO DIRECTLY to an item, eg --------8 of x-------- do a find on --8 impeach bush & cheney impeach bush & cheney impeach bush & cheney impeach bush & cheney
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