Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 04.23.09

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R   04.23.09

1. Dissent suppressed 4.24 1pm
2. Facilitation       4.24 4pm

3. Peace walk         4.25 9am Cambridge MN
4. EJAM Founders' Day 4.25 9:30am
5. Energy off the net 4.25 10am
6. Northtown vigil    4.25 2pm
7. Neoliberalism      4.25 9pm

8. Stillwater vigil   4.26 1pm
9. Palestine day      4.26 4pm
10. Renewable energy  4.26 7pm

11. Chris Floyd      - Torture, war and the imperial project
12. Harvey Wasserman - Radioactive lies: Chernobyl could happen here
13. Joel Hirschhorn  - Rule of law vetoed by President Obama
14. ed               - bumpersticker

--------1 of 14--------

From: Meredith Aby <awcmere [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Dissent suppressed 4.24 1pm

The Suppression of Dissent
Friday, April 24, 1-3pm @ the U of M, Minneapolis
Jules Boykoff, author of Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the
United States (AK Press) speaks at the University of Minnesota.  Organized
to support the RNC 8.  http://rnc8.org/2009/04/boykoff/


--------2 of 14--------

From: Lydia Howell <lydiahowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Facilitationn 4.24 4pm

Participatory Facilitation Skills
ALL SESSIONS ARE FREE.

Participatory Facilitation Skills: Application Lab
Friday April 24, 4-8pm
Macalester College, Carnegie 204

Participants will bring ideas for real-life applications of the skills
learned in the previous two sessions. Participants must come with a
particular situation or group in mind. We'll use the meta method to design
the process and specific applications of the tools. Participatory
Facilitation Skills: Meta Method & Focused Conversation and Participatory
Facilitation Skills: Consensus Workshop, or their equivalent are
prerequisites for this course.

This session is intended for community activists and leaders seeking to
build their capacity to authentically engage their stakeholders in
developing community solutions to our community's most pressing problems.
Although these methods are applicable in all human endeavors, we will
focus on community-based applications.

Participants will need to download a free copy of the Participatory Skills
Manual from GoodWorkTools.com prior to the session.

Potluck! Please bring something to share, and your own utensils.

Jonathan Bucki is a partner at the Dendros Group, LLC, author of the
Participatory Skills Manual, a professional facilitator and trainer that
has worked in all sectors in many different kinds of businesses and
communities. His bio can be found at www.dendros.com. This session is
offered through the generous support of GoodWorkIncubator.org


--------3 of 14--------

From: Ken Reine <reine008 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Peace walk 4.25 9am Cambridge MN

every Saturday 9AM to 9:35AM
Peace walk in Cambridge - start at Hwy 95 and Fern Street


--------4 of 14--------

From: ejadvocates [at] yahoogroups.com [mailto:ejadvocates [at] 
yahoogroups.com] On
 Behalf Of Kathleen Schuler
Subject: EJAM Founders' Day 4.25 9:30am

Join Us. as EJAM celebrates and empowers the community with its annual
conference

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ADVOCATES OF MINNESOTA'S
6TH Annual Founders' Day
BUILDING WITH COMMUNITY
CREATING SUSTAINABLE FUTURES
Saturday, April 25th
9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Phyllis Wheatley Community Center
1301 10th Ave. N., Minneapolis
FREE EVENT WITH LUNCH PROVIDED!

Keynote Speaker DR. ROSE BREWER RBrewer.jpg
Rose Brewer, PhD is a Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor at the
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. She has written extensively on
black families; race, gender & class; and public policy. Dr. Brewer serves
as the co-chair of the EJAM Board of Directors.

PARTICIPATE IN WORKSHOPS!
Get the facts on:
 *Green collar jobs
 *Healthy homes
 *Working with Communities
 *Urban farming and
 *Small business models

JOIN OUR PANELISTS' DISCUSSION!
Hear from:
 *HIRE Minnesota - Healthcare, Infrastructure, and Renewable Energy
 *Lydia Women's Empowerment Ministries
 *Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Chicago, IL
 *Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy

There will also be dance, spoken-word and musical performances!

Town Hall Forum
We want to hear from you! At every EJAM event, attendees are encouraged to
empower others by sharing their thoughts and inspiration, making us all
partners for success!

Contact: Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota Karen Monahan,
community organizer 612.302.3100 or karenejam [at] yahoo.com


--------5 of 14--------

From: Leslie Reindl <alteravista [at] usfamily.net>
Subject: Energy off the net 4.25 10am

Wilhelm's second workshop on creative redesign.  It's at the community
center near the university, which is a handy spot with parking.

Designing for a Changing Future:
Collaborating with Materials and Natural Forces

OUTDOOR FURNACE--Using the Technology of DYNAMIC CONTAINMENT
Saturday, April 25, 2009,10 am to noon
Van Cleve Community Center, 901 15th Ave. SE (at corner with Como
Ave.), Minneapolis
(parking available)

A free workshop that examines the current design of our society-enforced
dependence and globalization - and ways to relocalize by developing skills
and using natural forces to accomplish complex work.  This workshop
focuses on the technique of "dynamic containment," invented and patented
by Wilhelm (with the university), that allows use of simple, inexpensive
materials to create a powerful useful machine.

Presented by Wilhelm Reindl, educated in physics at University of Munich,
former researcher at University of Minnesota and with federal Bureau of
Mines, energy consultant to government and industry, independent energy
entrepreneur / inventor.

FFI 651-633-4410, alteravista [at] gmail.com.
Sponsored by Wilderness Connections, Inc., St. Paul


--------6 of 14--------

From: Vanka485 [at] aol.com
Subject: Northtown vigil 4.25 2pm

Peace vigil at Northtown (Old Hwy 10 & University Av), every Saturday
2-3pm


--------7 of 14--------

From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net>
Subject: Neoliberalism 4.25 9pm

Multivalent Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) viewers:

"Our World In Depth" cablecasts on MTN Channel 17 on Saturdays at 9pm and
Tuesdays at 8am, after DemocracyNow!  Households with basic cable may
watch.

Saturday, 4/25, 9pm and Tues, 4/28, 8am
The Crisis of Neoliberalism
guests: Peter Rachleff, history professor at Macalester College, Karen
Redleaf, people's economist.

keywords: economics, history of neoliberalism, Keynesianism, capitalism,
supply-side economics, strikes in the US, class power, David Harvey, Karl
Marx, Noam Chomsky.  hosted by Eric Angell.


--------8 of 14--------

From: scot b <earthmannow [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Stillwater vigil 4.26 1pm

A weekly Vigil for Peace Every Sunday, at the Stillwater bridge from 1- 2
p.m.  Come after Church or after brunch ! All are invited to join in song
and witness to the human desire for peace in our world. Signs need to be
positive.  Sponsored by the St. Croix Valley Peacemakers.

If you have a United Nations flag or a United States flag please bring it.
Be sure to dress for the weather . For more information go to
<http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/>http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/

For more information you could call 651 275 0247 or 651 999 - 9560


--------9 of 14--------

From: Meredith Aby <awcmere [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Palestine day 4.26 4pm

Palestine Day
Sunday April 26, 2009, from 4pm-8pm @ Robbinsdale Middle School. 3730 Toledo
Ave N, Robbinsdale.
Directions: From Hwy 100, take 36th Ave E, turn right onto Regent Ave, turn
left onto 38th Ave then turn left onto Toledo Ave. The school will be on
your left hand side.
Featuring: Allah Made Me Funny, Sanabil-Alquds Dabka Group (Dance troupe
from Milwaukee)m & Speaker: Br. Hussein Khatib.  Refreshments and light
meals will be served.


--------10 of 14--------

From: Kelly O'Brien <kellyobrien [at] visi.com>
Subject: Renewable energy 4.26 7pm

No green without green!  The uphill fight for renewable energy in a recession

Sunday, April 26, 7 p.m.
St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church
3450 Irving Avenue South, Minneapolis

David Morris, Vice-President
Institute for Local Self-Reliance

You're invited to a talk with a man who has been in the forefront of
sustainable, environmentally friendly, and equitable community based
economic development for over three decades.  David Morris' The Homegrown
Economy: A Prescription for Saint Paul&#8217;s Future led to the
development of the Saint Paul District Heating System, the largest hot
water district heating system in the nation.  Author of over 200 books and
articles on rural communities, energy, and sustainability, David Morris
appears regularly on radio and TV.  Download for free Morris' Self-Reliant
Cities:  Energy and the Transformation of Urban America revised in 2008
with a new forward and chapter on "The Ecological City."

Mr. Morris has been an advisor on energy to four U.S. Presidents and is a
nationally known expert on ethanol, wind-generated power, and electric
vehicles.

In "Energy Self-Reliant States:  Homegrown Renewable Power," David Morris
and John Farrell present data suggesting that at least half of the fifty
states could meet all their energy needs from renewable energy generated
inside their borders.  Mark your calendar and let your friends know about
this chance to hear from an outstanding proponent of community based clean
energy.

Sponsors:  This is the first forum in the DFL Education Foundation Series:
Rebuilding the Social Contract.  This forum is sponsored by Senate
District 60 DFL http://sd60dfl.org, the DFLEF
http://www.dfleducationfoundation.org, and the Institute for Local Self
Reliance http://www.ilsr.org.


---------11 of 14--------

Torture, War and the Imperial Project
The Fatal Thread
By CHRIS FLOYD
CounterPunch
April 22, 2009

With the release of the U.S. Senate's report on the Bush Administration
torture program, it is now incontrovertibly clear - and officially
established by the highest, most respectable Establishment institutions -
that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a host of other top
officials deliberately, willingly, and with malice aforethought,
established a system of interrogation using brutal techniques that they
knew were against the law. Hence the need for the torture memos that
attempted to give retroactive legal cover for atrocities that were already
taking place at the orders of the White House and the Pentagon. They were
also told repeatedly that these tortures were ineffective at producing
useful intelligence.

What's more, it is now undeniable that they began this program long before
they had captured even one "high-profile al Qaeda detainee," and that they
were using these heinous techniques not in a desperate bid to save the
nation from further attacks - which has long been their preening,
self-serving claim - but instead to produce spurious data about the
non-existent link between Iraq and al Qaeda. In other words, George Bush,
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ordered their minions to beat and torment
captives in order to get them to say something - anything - that could
then be used to "justify" a war of aggression that these grand statesmen
had been planning long before the September 11 attacks.

You cannot disentangle the torture program from the war of aggression in
Iraq - nor from the illegal wiretapping program, the corrupt war
profiteering, and all the other degradations of liberty and law that have
been so accelerated in the past eight years. They are all of a piece, part
and parcel of a plan to expand and entrench America's "unipolar
domination" of world affairs with a thoroughly militarized state led by an
unaccountable, authoritarian "Unitary Executive."

This is one reason why Barack Obama is so obviously reluctant to tug on
the torture thread too hard. If you tear it out, with full-scale
prosecutions and top officials locked up behind bars, the whole rotten
skein would fall apart. Once you start genuinely subjecting government
officials - including security apparatchiks and military brass - to the
full extent of the law, there would be no end to the unraveling: senators,
contractors, representatives, bureaucrats, generals, lobbyists, judges,
corporate chiefs - the whole edifice of Establishment power would be
shaken to the core as its leading lights went down, one after the other.

Thus the mere act of applying the ordinary, bourgeois laws of the land as
they stand right now would constitute a world-shaking revolution, an
overthrow of the existing order every bit as radical as any ideologue's
dream of mass uprising. It would be, in effect, a re-founding of the
Republic - and the end of the empire, which cannot survive without
continual war, lawless rule and endless corruption.

And that's why we will not see Barack Obama follow such a course. He
might, in the end, have to pull much harder on the torture thread than he
wants to; as we noted yesterday, a few upper-level middlemen might have to
be offered up as scapegoats to quell the PR tempest. But he has already
demonstrated, over and over, that he has no intention or desire to unravel
the skein of imperial power. Indeed, he is trying to strengthen that skein
and bind it more tightly, as we have seen in his various court cases
seeking to uphold or even expand authoritarian powers claimed by Bush, in
his escalation of the Afghan war, in his continual expansion of attacks in
Pakistan, in his servile coddling and protection of the CIA, and in his
celebration of the "success" and "extraordinary achievement" of the war
crime in Iraq.

Ironically, the torture issue that he is so desperately trying to shake
off his hands is in fact the one opportunity for the historical greatness
that Obama - and his ardent fans - obviously yearn for. It holds forth the
best chance - the last chance? - for dismantling the imperial machine of
brutality and corruption, and starting anew. But he would not be where he
is today if he were the kind of man to see - and seize - such an
opportunity.

He will let it go - and all hope for change, for renewal, for a re-founded
Republic, will go with it.

Chris Floyd is an American writer and a frequent contributor to
CounterPunch. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at
www.chris-floyd.com

[I believe the torture et al is also an attack on ethics, sympathy for
others, empathy, community, cooperation, basic humanity. We are to be
ground down to lifeless unfeeling zombies, willing to put up with
anything, do anything, kill, lie, disown - whatever the ruling class wants
in its drive to own EVERYTHING, stealing it from right in front of 99% of
us, with no fear of the justified bloody revolution that would and should
see them all dead. This is where capitalism leads: hell on earth
engineered by the top .01 percent. We are damn fools/cowards to let them
do it to us, posterity, civilization, nature, life, the earth. -ed]


---------12 of 14--------

Radioactive Lies
Chernobyl Could Happen Here
By HARVEY WASSERMAN
CounterPunch
April 22, 2009

A catastrophe like Chernobyl could happen here. It's the radioactive core
of the second biggest lie in US industrial history.

The atomic pushers say such a disaster is "impossible" at a US reactor.
But Chernobyl's explosion spewed radiation all over the world. And
Sunday's tragic 23rd anniversary reminds us that any reactor on this
planet can kill innumerable people anywhere, at any time, by terror, error
and more.

It further clarifies why yet another grab at billions of taxpayer dollars
for new reactor construction must be stopped NOW!

The BIGGEST lie in US industrial history is that "nobody died at Three
Mile Island". Just before last month's 30th anniversary of the central
Pennsylvania melt down, critical new evidence was completely ignored by
the corporate media.

Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, a former industry executive, reported in
Harrisburg that new findings show far more radiation may have been
released than previously estimated. Epidemiologist Stephen Wing of the
University of North Carolina joined in a study indicating human health was
indeed compromised downwind.

To this day neither TMI's owners nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
knows how much radiation escaped, where it went or whom it impacted. The
Gundersen/Wing findings cast new light on the question of building more
reactors.

But they got a Stalinesque blackout from ALL corporate media, which
parroted the official lie that "nobody was harmed" at the 1979 disaster.

This week comes official Radioactive Lie #2: "Chernobyl can't happen
here".

Chernobyl Unit 4 exploded in the wee hours of April 26, 1986. It was of a
different design than US reactors. But its lid was stronger than about a
third of the domes covering plants here. The Soviets who ran it also said
Chernobyl could not explode, and that in any event its lid would hold.

On October 5, 1966, the Fermi I fast breeder reactor nearly delivered a
far worse explosion. Cooled by highly volatile liquid sodium, it teetered
for a month on the brink of a radioactive eruption that could have
cratered much of southeastern Michigan and permanently destroyed the
biggest fresh water bodies on Earth. The accident was kept under
Soviet-style wraps for years.

When TMI melted a potentially explosive hydrogen bubble formed inside the
dome. Officials denied there was a melt-down (there was) but were
privately terrified the trapped gas could rupture the containment. The
escaping cloud would have contaminated millions along the east coast from
Boston to Washington.

Chernobyl's cloud blanketed Europe with deadly isotopes. Some came down in
California within ten days, killing countless birds and possibly, in the
long run, even more people. The radiation then crossed the entire northern
United States, contaminating milk in New England. It returned later for a
second pass.

Reactor backers say Chernobyl "only" killed 31 plant workers. But the
Soviets denied the accident happened, then ran 800,000 drafted "jumpers"
through the radioactive corpse for a futile clean-up. They have been dying
in droves for two decades.

Chernobyl's radiation rained down on a May Day parade among citizens of
Kiev who were told nothing about the catastrophe 80 kilometers away. The
heartbreaking deformities plaguing the children born thereafter are the
starkest reminders of that horrific day. Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former
environmental advisor to the late President Boris Yeltsin, and president
of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, has estimated the known
death toll at 300,000. The financial costs have topped a half-trillion
dollars. The sale of lambs is still banned 2000 miles away in Wales and
Scotland, where radioactive cesium still contaminates sheep farms and
grazing land.

The tidal wave of cancers, miscarriages, sterility and worse that still
washes over the Ukraine and surrounding regions gets ever more horrifying
as time passes. Because Chernobyl 4 was a new "state of the art" unit, its
core spewed far less radiation than might come from older reactors at
Indian Point, New York, or Oyster Creek, New Jersey, which has just been
re-licensed to run twenty years beyond its original design specifications.

Chernobyl's design was peculiar to the Soviets. But to say only it could
explode is to argue that hybrid cars can't run people over, or that since
there are no more World Trade towers, terrorists can no longer kill
Americans.

On January 31, 1986, four months prior to Chernobyl's explosion, an
earthquake shook the Perry reactor east of Cleveland, which thankfully was
not operating at the time. Now it is.

By accident inspectors stumbled onto a football-sized hole eaten by boric
acid to within a fraction of an inch through the pressure vessel at
Davis-Besse near Toledo. A worker using a candle set a $100 million fire
at the Browns Ferry reactor in Alabama. A cooling tower unexpectedly
collapsed to the ground at Vermont Yankee. A basketball wrapped in tape
was used to stop up a pipe at a reactor in Florida. This March 28, on
TMI's 30th anniversary, an unexplained tremor shut Unit Two at Fermi.

And, of course, the first jet that flew into the World Trade Center passed
directly over the two decrepit reactors at Indian Point, as well as the
three spent fuel pools and one dormant core shut for lack of an emergency
cooling system. No reactor on this planet could withstand a similar terror
attack.

Small wonder the reactor industry cannot get private financing or
insurance and has no place to go with its radioactive waste. Or why its
pushers are yet again demanding $50 billion in loan guarantees for new
reactor construction, and still more to perpetrate the myth that nuclear
fuel can be reprocessed (to help stop this madness, see
www.beyondnuclear.org, www.nirs.org and www.nukefree.org).

Chernobyl remains history's worst human-made disaster. Something slightly
different but even worse could be happening as you read this. Building new
reactors, and keeping old ones running, will guarantee it.

The only containment strong enough to make atomic energy truly safe is the
political power YOU exert. Chernobyl "can't happen here" only if the
reactors are turned off before they kill again.

Harvey Wasserman has been writing about atomic energy and the green
alternatives since 1973.  His 1982 assertion to Bryant Gumbel on NBC's
TODAY Show that people were killed at TMI sparked a national mailing from
the reactor industry demanding a retraction. NBC was later bought by
Westinghouse, still a major force pushing atomic power. He is the author
of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at
www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw [at] aol.com


--------13 of 14--------

Rule of Law Vetoed by President Obama
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Dissident Voice
April 22nd, 2009

There are no headlines or pontificating pundits, but the real news that
has become crystal clear to any but the most delusional and distracted
Americans is that President Obama has no commitment to applying the rule
of law where it counts. Certainly, not applying it to the large number of
rich and powerful people that have violated our Constitution and plunged
the nation into economic disaster.

Again and again we hear the flimsy argument from Obama and his top
advisors that he wants to look forward and not backward. This is tortured
logic when it comes to delivering justice in a nation supposedly
cherishing the rule of law.

The fundamental logic of honoring and applying the rule of law fairly to
absolutely everyone is that people who have broken the law in the past
must be held accountable and placed into the justice system after they
have misbehaved. In other words, there is no actionable rule of law other
than by looking backward into past misdeeds. So how can rational and
intelligent people follow the logic of Obama and still believe that he
truly understands and honors the rule of law?

It is not believable when Obama says he will honor the rule of law in the
future. Why should we trust his rhetoric when he refuses to enforce the
rule of law for past actions by some of the most powerful people in
America? [Tho top .01 percent - our ruler gods; let us all ritually kiss
their manicured spotlit butts! Smack! yum yum! -ed]

There is warranted and massive public disapproval of government as
evidenced in the tea parties held across the nation last week. How can
Americans respect government when it is so evident that the president
stubbornly refuses to seek justice and punishment for those that have
violated the public trust? Obama's reluctance to seek justice for those
that have damaged the nation undermines his credibility as an honest
public servant.

All of this has taken on new importance as official documents from the
Bush administration totally support the view that the US tortured
prisoners in violation of international and domestic laws. President
George W. Bush lied to us. And even before the latest events there were
surely incredible amounts of evidence that high Bush administration
officials savaged our Constitution. The constitutional balance of powers
among the three branches of government has become a fiction.

What Americans have every right to see is a large number of former elected
and appointed officials in the Bush administration as well as many in the
financial sector being arrested, indicted and confronted with criminal
trials. Americans want to see aggressive prosecution and punishment. They
want and deserve revenge and retribution, considering the astounding pain
and suffering the vast majority of Americans now experience.

We have every right to see in the public limelight what the world saw
after World War II when Nazi criminals were tried and punished on the
world stage.

This is not happening because Obama seems to have more allegiance to the
plutocracy that brought him to the presidency than to the public that has
seen thousands of Americans killed in the unjust war in Iraq and now see
their families, friends and neighbors suffering loss of jobs, retirement
nest eggs, financial security, personal health and homes. When any
politician does not enforce the rule of law then I worry that he or she
may fear having the rule of law applied to them.

We have witnessed crimes against humanity. We want President Obama to show
complete commitment to the rule of law so that the many lying, corrupt and
criminal Americans from both the public and private sectors that have
caused so much harm are punished. That includes Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and
many, many others in the Bush administration, including those that were
supposed to regulate the financial sector.

Obama and his underlings seem to say that doing this would be a
distraction and a waste of time. Nuts! It is exactly what the nation needs
to rebuild confidence in government and the justice system. On the
positive side, there are some in Congress showing interest in prosecuting
many culprits. But the White House may be exerting pressure behind the
scenes to limit their actions.

Applying the rule of law: If not now, then when? Yes, we can and should.

Joel S. Hirschhorn has a new book, Delusional Democracy: Fixing the
Republic Without Overthrowing the Government, which supports
constitutional conventions and other peaceful ways to restore American
democracy.


--------14 of 14--------

bumpersticker

                              ------------
                               TASTY FECE
                               CLEAN COAL
                               YUMMY SNOT
                              ------------



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   - 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

                          vote third party
                           for president
                           for congress
                          now and forever


                           Socialism YES
                           Capitalism NO


 To GO DIRECTLY to an item, eg
 --------8 of x--------
 do a find on
 --8