Progressive Calendar 10.12.10 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001tc.umn.edu) | |
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:00:59 -0700 (PDT) |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 10.12.10 1. Alliant vigil 10.13 7am 2. Great blogging 10.13 6:30pm 3. Ramsey cty atty 10.13 7pm 4. Eagan peace vigil 10.14 4:30pm 5. Northtown vigil 10.14 5pm 6. Do we need cops? 10.14 6:30pm 7. Labor party 10.14 7pm 8. White/war costs 10.14 7pm 9. Palestine vigil 10.15 4:15pm 10. Vs monoculture 10.15 6pm 11. Nicaragua 10.15 6pm? 12. Walden Bello - Lessons of the Obama debacle 13. ed - Poster --------1 of 13-------- From: AlliantACTION <alliantaction [at] circlevision.org> Subject: Alliant vigil 10.13 7am Join us Wednesday morning, 7-8 am Now in our 14th year of consecutive Wednesday morning vigils outside Alliant Techsystems, 7480 Flying Cloud Drive Eden Prairie. We ask Who Profit$? Who Dies? directions and lots of info: alliantACTION.org --------2 of 13-------- From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org> Subject: Great blogging 10.13 6:30pm The Difference Between Blogging and Great Blogging Wednesday, October 13, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. Twin Cities Daily Planet Offices, 2600 East Franklin, #2, Minneapolis (enter from rear). So you're blogging, or you want to start blogging...but you want to do it well, and hopefully attract some readers. The key to good blogging is to write well. Jay Gabler, associate editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet and author of the Front Row Seat blog, offers a class on writing, etiquette, and promotional tips for bloggers. What information should you offer? How much of "yourself" should you put in your blog? How long should blog entries be? How do you connect with other bloggers and share your blog with people who might be interested? Free will donations accepted. Sponsored by: the Twin Cities Daily Planet and the Twin Cities Media Alliance. Endorsed by: the WAMM Media Committee. FFI and to Register: Email jeremy [at] tcmediaalliance.org or call 612-436-9186. --------3 of 13-------- From: Karen Cole <krcole18 [at] msn.com> Subject: Ramsey cty atty 10.13 7pm RAMSEY COUNTY ATTORNEY CANDIDATE FORUM Wednesday, October 13 7:00 8:00 pm Hamline University School of Law Moot Court Room Ramsey County Attorney candidates John Choi and David Schultz will participate in a forum sponsored by the RCBA and Hamline University School of Law. The forum will be moderated by RCBA President Paul Godfrey. This event is free and open to the public. --------4 of 13-------- From: Greg and Sue Skog <family4peace [at] msn.com> Subject: Eagan peace vigil 10.14 4:30pm PEACE VIGIL EVERY THURSDAY from 4:30-5:30pm on the Northwest corner of Pilot Knob Road and Yankee Doodle Road in Eagan. We have signs and candles. Say "NO to war!" The weekly vigil is sponsored by: Friends south of the river speaking out against war. --------5 of 13-------- From: EKalamboki [at] aol.com Subject: Northtown vigil 10.14 5pm NORTHTOWN Peace Vigil every Thursday 5-6pm, at the intersection of Co. Hwy 10 and University Ave NE (SE corner across from Denny's), in Blaine. Communities situated near the Northtown Mall include: Blaine, Mounds View, New Brighton, Roseville, Shoreview, Arden Hills, Spring Lake Park, Fridley, and Coon Rapids. We'll have extra signs. For more information people can contact Evangelos Kalambokidis by phone or email: (763)574-9615, ekalamboki [at] aol.com. --------6 of 13-------- From: Michelle Gross <mgresist [at] visi.com> Subject: Do we need cops? 10.14 6:30pm UPCOMING WORKSHOP ESPECIALLY RELEVANT IN LIGHT OF FBI RAIDS Panel Discussion on the Role of Police in Society Thursday, October 14 at 6:30 p.m. Walker Church, 3100 16th Ave S, Minneapolis In light of the recent Metro Gang Task Force debacle, the recent death after tasing of David Smith, several high profile incidents and lawsuits, and the second firing of MPD cop Jason Andersen, CUAPB will hold a panel discussion that takes us back to the root question: what role, if any, does policing have in our society. In the lead up to October 22 National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality, panelists representing a wide range of political views will present on this highly relevant topic. There will be plenty of time for questions and comments from the public. Please join us for what will be a fascinating discussion. --------7 of 13-------- From: CMPL <info [at] masspartyoflabor.org> Subject: Labor party 10.14 7pm EVENT TODAY: STL Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor Launch Meeting Next Minneapolis Meeting of the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor October 14th, 2010 May Day Books Thursday, October 14th, 2010 at 7:00 pm. This is a local CMPL committee meeting, so if you are interested in helping us build this campaign, please join us! Stay tuned for more details. For more information or to get involved, please contact us at info [at] masspartyoflabor.org or call 612-568-2675 and leave a message. CMPL Website: www.masspartyoflabor.org Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor PO Box 18173 Minneapolis, MN 55418 -- From: Susan Leskela <sleskela [at] comcast.net> To: Mpls Greens <Mpls-5thDistrictGreenParty [at] yahoogroups.com>, gpsp-list [at] lists.mngreens.org There is another gathering of the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor on Thursday night. I understand they want to talk about local elections. They realized a lot of Greens were there last time and would be good if Greens were there for the discussion about local elections and speak up for our candidates. Greens Win Big Union Endorsements! Green candidates for Congress and other public offices have drawn important endorsements from unions and labor organizations, as well as union leaders and rank and file members throughout the US. "Unions and working people are waking up to the fact that they have a party willing to fight for them - the Green Party," said Howie Hawkins, Green candidate for Governor of New York and a member of Teamsters Local 317. "While Democratic politicians take labor votes for granted, Greens are pushing for the creation of millions of Green jobs, public works programs, and the right to organize in the nation's workplaces", said Mr. Hawkins. "While Democrats cave in to wealthy corporate lobbies and campaign contributors, Greens are promoting Medicare For All and opposing plans to cut Social Security. When Democrats and Republicans sent Wall Street billions in bailouts, Greens demanded help for working people."Other candidates who have earned major union endorsements recently include: Tom Clements, South Carolina Green candidate for the US Senate, has been endorsed by the Greater Columbia Central Labor Council of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, comprised of 17 local unions and affiliate organizations. Ben Manski, candidate for Wisconsin State Assembly in District 77, won the endorsement of the Madison Teachers Inc. in the progressive college town of Madison. Mr. Manski is emerging as a strong contender for a seat traditionally held by a progressive Democrat. Lynne Williams, running for the Maine State Senate, was endorsed by the 25,000-member Maine Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association. Jeremy Karpen, running for Illinois State Representative in the 39th District was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Mark Swaney, Green Party nominee for Arkansas State Representative in the 90th district, was endorsed by the Arkansas AFL-CIO. His sole rival in the race is a Republican. --------8 of 13-------- From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org> Subject: White/war costs 10.14 7pm Tom White: "The Financial and Human Costs of War: A Spiritual Perspective" Thursday, October 14, 7:00 p.m. The Parish Community of St. Joseph, 8701 36th Avenue North, New Hope. White is a graduate of St. John's University (economics), recently retired from a corporate career, is a management consultant, and a member of Veterans for Peace, Minnesota Peace Project, Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, and the Interfaith Peacemakers of Edina. He also served as an International Election Observer in El Salvador and has created and distributed thousands of cards which provide facts about our national budget and military spending. White will share why his spirituality is a key component of his peace and justice involvement and explore the growing disparity between U.S. military spending and money spent on infrastructure, schools, health care, and other domestic needs. He will focus on the trade-offs being made in the Third and Fifth Congressional Districts to cover the costs of war and how the war economy is impacting our families. Free and open to all. Sponsored by: by the Northwest Neighbors for Peace. Endorsed by: WAMM. FFI: Call 763-546-5368. --------9 of 13-------- From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net> Subject: Palestine vigil 10.15 4:15pm The weekly vigil for the liberation of Palestine continues at the intersection of Snelling and Summit Aves in St. Paul. The Friday demo starts at 4:15 and ends around 5:30. There are usually extra signs available. --------10 of 13-------- From: "Jaime (Brian) Hokanson" <bjhokanson [at] gmail.com> Subject: Vs NAFTA monoculture 10.15 6pm Dismantling Monoculture Tales of Ants & Economies in the Americas Blegen Hall Room 130 U of M West Bank--269 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis map: http://www.umn.edu/twincities/maps/BlegH/ Friday, October 15, 6pm presented by MARS (Minneapolis Autonomous Radical Space) help us create a new radical resource center for the TC! http://radspacetc.wordpress.com Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the resulting Zapatista uprising in 1994, the Western Hemisphere has been a battle ground between worldviews. As our world is being transformed by globalization, what the future holds will be determined by the struggles of traditional land-based communities throughout the Global South against neo-colonial models of capitalist development. We are living in the moment when we decide if the rich and powerful hold the keys to our lives and planet or if we, the people of the grassroots, hold our own right to self-determination. Featuring the Beehive's first two works in our trilogy about globalization in the Americas- THE FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS and PLAN COLOMBIA graphic campaigns- the DISMANTLING MONOCULTURE picture-lecture weaves together images and stories from the past 10 years of our work. With two giant illustrated portable murals, a six foot tall fabric storybook, and an engaging narrative, the Bees take audiences on an interactive VISUAL tour of the connections between COLONIZATION, MILITARIZATION, and RESOURCE EXTRACTION disguised as "industrial development." The result is a compelling and inspirational tale of struggle and resistance in this era immense change. DISMANTLING MONOCULTURE grows and evolves with each telling, as we all carry these histories within our own lived experience. The Bees hope to share and seek stories about how these themes manifest in our daily lives and what people do to resist and regenerate. The 2011 version will also include previews and updates from MESOAMERICA RESISTE <http://www.beehivecollective.org/english/ppp.htm>, the final epic chapter in the trilogy, our most ambitious and elaborate illustration to date...7 YEARS in the making and nearly hatched! For more information about the Hive's work on globalization in the Americas, visit FTAA <http://www.beehivecollective.org/english/ftaa.htm> and PLAN COLOMBIA <http://www.beehivecollective.org/english/plancolombia.htm> in the Graphics Campaign section of http://www.beehivecollective.org. --------11 of 13-------- From: Jason Stone <jason.stone [at] yahoo.com> Subject: Nicaragua 10.15 6pm? Fundraiser: Project MN/Leon 10/15/10 Friday, October 15th will be a perfect Friday night for the family. Enjoy a typical Central American meal, music by Nicaraguan singer and guitarist Carlos Lumbi, and a brief update on current events in Nicaragua while the kids are busy at the craft table! The Project Minnesota-Leon Fiesta Fundraiser will raise proceeds to support educational and health projects in the state of Leon, Nicaragua. $25 per person / $45 per couple / $15 student and low income. Event will be held at: First Unitarian-Universalist Church, 34th and Dupont S., Minneapolis. Please RSVP today to Rachel Ackland at 612-825-7436 or email her at ackla001 [at] tc.umn.edu. --------12 of 13-------- Lessons of the Obama Debacle by Walden Bello Tuesday, October 12, 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus The problem with us progressives as this time of crisis is not that we lack an alternative paradigm to pit against the discredited neoliberal paradigm. No, the elements of the alternative based on the values of democracy, justice, equality, and environmental sustainability are there and have been there for sometime, the product of collective intellectual and activist work over the last few decades. The key problem is the failure of progressives to translate their vision and values into a program that is convincing and connects with the people trapped in the terrible existential conditions created by the global financial crisis. This fluid process is preeminently political. It requires translating a strategic perspective into a tactical program that takes advantage of the opportunities, ambiguities, and contradictions of the present moment to construct a critical mass for progressive change from diverse class and social forces. We must look at the political experience of the global progressive movement in order to understand why our side has been derailed and how we can fight back to political relevance. The experience of the Obama presidency is rich in this regard. In the U.S. political context, Obama is a social democrat, and the broad left supported his candidacy. Although he was no anti-capitalist, still we expected that he would initiate a program of recovery and reform similar in ambition to Roosevelt's New Deal. The electoral base that brought him to power, which cut across class, color, gender, and generational lines - was full of potential. Obama's ability to bring this base together on a message of change achieved what was then thought impossible - the election of an Afro-American as president of the United States - and showed how smart political leadership can shape social and political structures. Two years after his spectacular electoral victory, President Obama and the Democrats face a rout in the U.S. polls in early November. Indeed, Obama and his party are like a rabbit on the railroad track that is hypnotized by the light of an oncoming train. Whereas Obama seemed to do all the right things in his quest for the presidency, he seemed to make all the wrong moves as chief executive. His prioritizing of health care reform, a massively complex task, has been identified as a key blunder. This decision certainly contributed to the debacle. But other important factors related mainly to his handling of the economic crisis, a primary concern of the electorate, were perhaps more critical. Six Reasons behind the Debacle Obama's first mistake was to take responsibility for the economic crisis. In his quixotic quest for a bipartisan solution, he made George W. Bush's problem his own. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan never made this mistake. They took no responsibility for the economic problems of the 1970s, heaping the blame entirely on their liberal predecessors and eschewing any bipartisan alliance with those they considered their ideological enemies. Roosevelt, too, slammed - and slammed hard - his ideological foes, those he termed "economic royalists." Insofar as Obama and his lieutenants identified villains, this was Wall Street. Yet saying the financial elite brought on the crisis, while bailing out key Wall Street financial institutions such as Citigroup and AIG on the grounds that they were "too big to fail," involved Obama in a terrible contradiction. The least that he could have done was to remove the existing boards and top managers of these organizations as a condition for government funds. Instead, unlike the case of General Motors, the top dogs stayed on board and continued to collect sky-high bonuses to boot. The strong sense of disconnect between word and deed was exacerbated rather than alleviated by the Democrats' financial reform. The measure did not have the minimum conditions for a reform with real teeth: the banning of derivatives, a Glass-Steagall provision preventing commercial banks from doubling as investment banks; the imposition of a financial transactions tax or Tobin tax; and a strong lid on executive pay, bonuses, and stock options. Third, Obama had a tremendous opportunity to educate and mobilize people against the neoliberal or market fundamentalist approach that deregulated the financial sector and caused the crisis. Although Obama did allude to unregulated financial markets as the key problem during the campaign, he refrained from demonizing neoliberalism after he took office, thus presenting an ideological vacuum that the resurgent neoliberals did not hesitate to fill. No doubt he failed to launch a full-scale ideological offensive because his key lieutenants for economic policy, National Economic Council head Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, had not broken with neoliberal thinking. Fourth, the stimulus package of $787 billion was simply too small to bring down or hold the line on unemployment. Here, Obama cannot say he lacked good advice. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate, and a whole host of Keynesian economists were telling him this from the very start. For comparison, the Chinese stimulus package of $580 billion was much bigger relative to the size of the economy than the Obama package. For the White House now to say that the employment situation would now be worse had it not been for the stimulus is, to say the least, politically naive. People operate not with wishful counterfactual scenarios but with the facts on the ground, and the facts have been rising unemployment with no relief in sight. Politics in a time of crisis is not for the fainthearted. The middle-of-the road approach represented by the size of the stimulus was the wrong response to a crisis that called for a political gamble: the deployment of the massive fiscal firepower of the government against the predictable howls of anger from the right. Fifth, Obama and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke deployed mainly Keynesian technocratic tools - deficit spending and monetary easing - to deal with the consequences of the massive failure of market fundamentalism. During a normal downturn these countercyclical tools may suffice to reverse the downturn. But standard Keynesianism could address such a serious collapse only in a very limited way. Besides, people were looking not only for relief in the short term but for a new direction that would enable them to master their fears and insecurities and give them reason to hope. In other words, Obama failed to locate his Keynesian technocratic initiatives within a larger political and economic agenda that could have fired up a fairly large section of American society. Such a larger agenda could have had three pillars: the democratization of economic decision-making, from the enterprise level to the heights of macro-policymaking; an income and asset redistribution strategy that went beyond increasing taxes on the top two percent of the population; and the promotion of a more cooperative rather than competitive approach to production, distribution, and the management of resources. This agenda of social transformation, which was not too left, could have been accommodated within a classical social democratic framework. People were simply looking for an alternative to the Brave New Dog-Eat-Dog World that neo-liberalism had bequeathed them. Instead, Obama offered a bloodless technocratic approach to cure a political and ideological debacle. Related to this absence of a program of transformation was the sixth reason for the Obama debacle: his failure to mobilize the grassroots base that brought him to power. This base was diverse in terms of class, generation, and ethnicity. But it was united by palpable enthusiasm, which was so evident in Washington, DC, and the rest of the country on Inauguration Day in 2009. With his preference for a technocratic approach and a bipartisan solution to the crisis, Obama allowed this base to wither away instead of exploiting the explosive momentum it possessed in the aftermath of the elections. At the eleventh hour, Obama and the Democrats are talking about firing up and resurrecting this base. But the dispirited and skeptical troops that have long been disbanded and left by the wayside rightfully ask: around what? The Right Makes the Right Moves In contrast to Obama, the right wing understood the demands and dynamics of politics at a time of crisis, as opposed to politics in normal times. While Obama persisted in his quest for bipartisanship, the Republicans adopted a posture of hard-line opposition to practically all of his initiatives. Unlike Obama and the Democrats, the right posed the conflict in stark political and ideological terms: between left and right, between "socialism" and "freedom," between the oppressive state and the liberating market. The Republican opposition used all the catchwords and mantras they could dredge up from bourgeois U.S. ideology. Finally, in contrast to Obama's neglect of the Democratic base, the right eschewed Republican interest-group politics. Fox News, Sarah Palin, and the tea party movement stirred up the right-wing base to challenge the Republican Party elite and drive a no-compromise, take-no-prisoners politics. To understand what has happened to the Republican Party in the last few weeks with the string of tea party successes in the primaries, historian Arno Mayer's distinction among conservatives, reactionaries, and counterrevolutionaries is useful. In Mayer's terms, the counterrevolutionaries, with their populist, anti-insider, and grassroots-driven politics are displacing the conservative elites that have long held sway in the Republican Party. With their anti-spending platform, the Republicans and tea partiers that might capture the House and the Senate in November will probably bring about a worse situation than today. As such, Obama and the Democrats might repeat Bill Clinton's political trajectory when he scored a victory at the polls in 1996 because the Republicans led by Newt Gingrich overreached politically after their triumph in the midterm elections of 1994. But this is a desperate illusion. The current counterrevolutionaries and their backers are skilled in the politics of blame, and they will likely be successful in painting the worsening situation as a result of Obama's "socialist policies," not of drastic cuts in government spending. Lessons for the Left The problem lies not so much in our lack of a strategic alternative as in our failure to translate our strategic vision or paradigm into a credible and viable political program. Politics in a period of crisis is different from politics in a period of normality, being more fluid and marked by the volatility of class, political, and intellectual attachments. We should remember that politics is the art of creating and sustaining a political movement from diverse class and social forces through a flexible but principled political program that can adapt to changing circumstances. Finally, there is no such thing as an objectively determined situation. The art of politics is using the contradictions, spaces, and ambiguities of the current moment to shape structures and institutions and create a critical mass for change. Class, economic, and political structures may condition political outcomes; they do not determine them. Who will ultimately emerge the victor from this period of prolonged capitalist crisis will depend on smart and skilled political leadership. This work is licensed under Creative Commons. Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines and a senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South. He can be reached at waldenbello [at] yahoo.com --------13 of 13-------- ------------------------------ Draft the rich Put 'em in the front lines ------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 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 for governor now and forever Socialism YES Capitalism NO To GO DIRECTLY to an item, eg --------8 of x-------- do a find on --8 Research almost any topic raised here at: CounterPunch http://counterpunch.org Dissident Voice http://dissidentvoice.org Common Dreams http://commondreams.org Once you're there, do a search on your topic, eg obama drones
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