Progressive Calendar 03.01.12 /2 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001umn.edu) | |
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 06:04:48 -0800 (PST) |
*P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 03.01.12* 1. Stop Israel 3.01 9am 2. UoM rally/ed rights 3.01 12noon 3. UoM clean energy 3.01 7pm 4. Nobel peace forum 3.01-03 5. Chris Hedges - Nader to Occupy: Help raise the minimum wge 6. Common Dreams staff - White House vows to 'expedite' new pipeline proposal 7. ed - bumpersticker --------1 of 7-------- From: lydiahowell [at] comcast.net Stop Israel 3.01 9am THUR.MAR 1, KFAI Radio, 9am: KAREN REDLEAF, TC activist and spokesperson for Stop the JNF Campaign in the U.S. The JNF/Jewish National Fund has been known for decades for planting trees in Israel. Those trees have acted as cover for Israel's massive land theft, ethnic cleansing of Palestineans and ecological destruction. Hosted by Lydia Howell, CATALYST:politics & culture, Thursdays, 9am on KFAI Radio 90.3fm Mpls/106.7fm St.Paul ONLINE:archived for 2 weeks after broadcast on CATALYST page at www.kfai.org --------2 of 7-------- From: Steff Yorek yosteff [at] gmail.com UoM rally/ed rights 3.01 12noon With increasing tuition, bloated administration, and continued staff and faculty layoffs, it is time to stand up for education rights! Students, Staff, and Faculty unite in solidarity on this national day of action on campuses nationwide! We demand the University to FUND EDUCATION NOT ADMINISTRATION. Anna Egelhoff, student at the U of M and member of SDS says, "It's time that students speak their mind against inaccessible education and rising tuition. As students paying our way through college, we have the right to demand affordable education! Our tuition should be used for the students, not administrators who get paid so much already!" Join us Thursday, March 1st from 12:00-1:00 at Morrill Hall near Northrup Plaza at the U of M for a rally and march! Initiated by: Students for a Democratic Society Endorsed by: Women's Student Activist Collective, AFSCME Local 3800, La Raza [Applicants for Admin jobs have found that the fatter more bloated they look in their application photos, the more likely they are to be hired. "It's a simple matter to alter the photo" says Steve McSwiney: "I am quite porky, but my photo makes it look like I'd have to be lifted out of my chair with a derrick! Needless to say, I got hired just from that photo! Advice to other applicants: Look like you're so rotund you'd never be able to do a stitch of work if your life depended on it, and you've got a life-time admin slot at U of M Admin (under me, by the way)! "When we're all together in the oversize Admin Room, we play bumper bangers in our rolling Admin dicto-chairs! It's a ball! We're raising tuition by $2000 a year to pay for enhanced dicto-chairs and improvements to the Admin Room walls and floor so it's like pin-ball! Bumpers, bells, spinners, flashing lights, you name it - we spare no expense! "Next - we're tripling the number of Admin Room Nearly Nude food-server co-eds on roller skates! Just place your order!" - document recovered by ed toward the back of the oven of tenuous existence] --------3 of 7--------- From: lydiahowell [at] comcast.net UoM clean energy 3.01 7pm Join Us for "Making the Switch" More than 1400 people have called on Xcel Energy to replace Minnesota's largest global warming polluter, the Sherco coal plant, with clean energy. Now you have a chance to ask a senior Xcel representative about their future plans in person. Join Sierra Club and Campus Beyond Coal for "Making the Switch: A Discussion about Minnesota's Clean Energy Future." A Discussion about Minnesota's Clean Energy Future Thursday, March 1st, 7:00 p.m. Akerman Hall, Room 319, University of Minnesota East Bank Minneapolis (<http://action.sierraclub.org/site/R?i=n_eBKY1eC5XEY2MPfczGRg>map). Nearest parking garage on Church St and Transit Accessible: Questions: Joshua Low, 612-659-9124, --------4 of 7-------- From: WAMM Nobel peace forum 3.01-03 The Nobel Peace Prize Forum: The Price of Peace March 1 through 3 Augsburg College and the University of Minnesota West Bank Campus, Minneapolis. The Nobel Peace Prize Forum is a premier international event (open to the public) that brings Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, civic leaders, scholars, and business visionaries together with students and other citizens to discuss and learn about peacemaking, in all its forms. For 23 years it has been the Norwegian Nobel Institute’s only such program outside of Norway. Speakers Include: F.W. de Klerk, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former President of South Africa; Dessa, writer, rapper, and singer; Naomi Tutu, human rights activist; Andrew Slack, founder. Sponsored by: the Nobel Peace Prize Forum. FFI and Registration: Visit www.nobelpeaceprizeforum.org. [You can ask them why they gave the prize to warmonger Obama. Did someone hold a gun to their heads? - ed] --------5 of 7-------- Nader to Occupy: Help Raise the Minimum Wage by Chris Hedges Published on Monday, February 27, 2012 by TruthDig The Occupy movement may be able to forge a powerful alliance with millions of working men and women around a national call to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour. The drive to establish new encampments, while important, is going to be long and difficult. The ongoing efforts to stand up to the foreclosure and mortgage crisis, the marches to hold Wall Street accountable, the protests against stop-and-frisk policies in New York City or police brutality in Oakland, while vital, do not draw the numbers into the streets across the country needed to loosen the grip of the corporate state. Some 70 percent of the public supports raising the minimum wage. This is an issue that resonates across political, ethnic, religious and cultural lines. It exposes the vast disparities in wealth and the gross inequalities imposed by our corporate oligarchy. The political elite during this election year, which needs to toss a few scraps to the voting public, might be pressured to respond. The two leading Republican candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, say they support the minimum wage (although only Romney has called for indexing the minimum wage). Barack Obama promised during his 2008 election campaign to press to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011, a promise that, like many others, he has ignored. But the ground is fertile. “The 24-hour encampments, largely on public property, broke through,” Ralph Nader told me when we spoke of the Occupy movement a few days ago. “These encampments jolted the consciousness of the nation. But people began asking after a number of weeks what’s next. Once the movement lost the encampments it did not have a second-strike readiness, which should be the raising of the minimum wage to $10 an hour.” The federal minimum wage of $7.25, adjusted for inflation, is $2.75 lower than it was in 1968 when worker productivity was about half of what it is today. There has been a steady decline in real wages for low-income workers. Meanwhile, corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s, whose workforce earns the minimum wage or slightly above it, have enjoyed massive profits. Executive salaries, along with prices, have soared even as worker salaries have stagnated or declined. But the call to raise the minimum wage is not only a matter of economic justice. The infusion of tens of billions of dollars into the hands of the working class would increase tax revenue, open up new jobs and lift consumer spending. There are numerous groups, including the AFL-CIO, whose leaders dutifully pay lip service to raising the minimum wage but have refused to mobilize to fight for it. Rank-and-file workers, once they had a place and a movement willing to agitate on their behalf, would shame union bosses into joining them. There are 535 congressional offices scattered throughout the country. These congressional offices, Nader suggests, could provide the focal point for sustained local protests. “You could get leading think tanks, like the Economic Policy Institute, the AFL-CIO, member unions, especially unions like the California Nurses Association, which has been very aggressive on this, and a bevy of academics such as Dean Baker and professor Robert Pollin, along with groups such as the NAACP and La Raza, to back this,” Nader said. “There is potential for huge synergy. But it needs the jolt that can only come from the Occupy movement.” “The Occupy movement arose by embracing a rejectionist attitude toward politics, but in the end that is lethal,” Nader said. “It is a form of ideological immolation. If they won’t turn on politics, politics will continue to turn on them. Politics means the power of government—local, state and national—and the ability of corporations to control departments and agencies and turn government against its own people. Not engaging in politics might have been a good preliminary tactic to gain credibility so they could avoid being tagged with some ‘-ism’ or some party, but it has worn out its purpose. The movement needs to become a champion for millions of low-income workers. This does not mean the Occupy movement should support a political party. It means it should go after both parties. It is only by going after the two main political parties that raising the minimum wage will get through Congress.” Nader believes that the call to raise the minimum wage has the potential to divide the Republican Party, which has not been split on any major issue in Congress since Obama took office. He says that the economic suffering of low-income Americans is so severe that some Republican candidates running for office would be loath to ignore a groundswell in their districts calling for an increase in the minimum wage. But the pressure has to be exerted between now and the November elections. Once the elections are concluded, nothing will be passed that is not orchestrated, funded and authored by corporate lobbyists. Past campaigns to raise the minimum wage have proved very popular. ACORN, in 2004, organized a statewide referendum in Florida to raise the minimum wage by a dollar. Once the proposal was on the ballot, corporate forces launched a lavishly funded assault against the initiative. The battle to defeat the measure was spearheaded by fast food corporations such as McDonald’s and Burger King as well as chain stores such as Walmart and Kmart. There was no money to fund ads to counter the corporate propaganda or support the proposal. The initiative, despite the public relations onslaught, won by 71 percent. To placate his corporate backers, the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, refused to support the ballot initiative although he desperately needed Florida to win the election. “How much political courage does it take to stand up for guys making $7.25 an hour while the head of Walmart is making $11,000 an hour?” Nader asked. “What medieval period had that kind of wealth disparity?” “This campaign, if successful, would make the Occupy movement the chief movement in the country,” Nader said. “It would be a movement that got something done. It could build on this.” “The end of the encampments could be an unintended blessing,” Nader went on. “The movement no longer has to deal with daily housekeeping, sanitation, the occasional fights and bickering and the poor and homeless who were urged to go there by police. It can develop a laser-beam focus on the first stage of the recovery of the American worker.” “To be able to spearhead a coalition that includes the AFL-CIO, minority groups and local community groups will show that the movement can leverage power,” Nader said. “It has not shown this so far. The most accessible bastion of corporate power, the most sensitive of the three branches of government, is the legislature, and not just Congress, but state legislatures. This is a winnable issue. It fulfills the 99 percent motto. And the movement can be very effective because it has developed a unique ability to carry out daily demonstrations. If the movement can get the minimum wage raised it will gain enormous power. Who has gotten anything on the progressive agenda through Congress in the last few years? A victory would permit the Occupy movement to fill this power vacuum. Once you win a battle in Congress you produce a penumbra of power. This penumbra stops bad things from happening. It curtails the arrogance of the Republican Party. It empowers new and fresh leadership.” © 2012 TruthDig Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. --------6 of 7-------- [Now I wouldn't vote for Obama even if the GOP were to run Hitler Jr (which they probably will). We're here because of 30 years of lesser-evil-Democrat voting and screaming, of letting the country slide a bit further right each election, no more progress only regress, peace in their time, sitting on their comfortable gradually expanding asses - and now here we are, it will be bad, and they are to blame. So when they rant bug-eyed at us "Well what about the Supreme Court??" , we know where they can put it. -ed] White House Vows to 'Expedite' New Pipeline Proposal - Common Dreams staff Published on Monday, February 27, 2012 by Common Dreams A proposal by Canadian oil firm TransCanada to seek new approval for segments of its Keystone XL pipeline project was greeted warmly by the Obama White House today. In a letter sent to the US State Department, the company said it would seek a 'Presidential Permit application (cross border permit) in the near future for the Keystone XL Project from the U.S./Canada border in Montana to Steele City, Nebraska. TransCanada would supplement that application with an alternative route in Nebraska as soon as that route is selected.' In effect, TransCanada is using a divide-and-conquer method by splitting up the original Keystone route in two. The lower half of the pipeline would now start in Oklahoma and travel to Texas, but because it does not cross an international border it would not require the special cross-border permit. The northern half would still need federal approval, but TransCanada would begin building the lower half even without it. The company would apply separately to the various federal and state permits for the southern portion of the pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to the company's letter by saying, "We look forward to working with TransCanada to ensure that it is built in a safe, responsible and timely manner, and we commit to take every step possible to expedite the necessary Federal permits." The Hill reports: The administration said Obama's decision last month to reject the permit was made because of a 60-day, GOP-backed deadline included in a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. TransCanada said it expects the new application for the cross-border permit to be dealt with quickly. "The over three year environmental review for Keystone XL completed last summer was the most comprehensive process ever for a cross border pipeline," TransCanada President Russ Girling said in a statement. "Based on that work, we would expect our cross border permit should be processed expeditiously and a decision made once a new route in Nebraska is determined." TransCanada said Monday that it would continue working with Nebraska officials to identify an alternative route for Keystone around the state's ecologically sensitive Sand Hill's region. The Obama administration had delayed a final decision on the project until 2013 in order to identify and analyze the alternative route. But the 60-day deadline forced the administration to weigh in on the project sooner. Groups that have worked hard to prevent these pipelines, however, were not pleased with the developments. "Any attempt to move forward with any segment of the pipeline will be met with the same fierce grassroots opposition that stopped the pipeline the first time. We know that Big Oil will stop at nothing to further its profits, but it can't hide the dirty reality that importing more tar sands oil through our heartland endangers our land, water and climate." -- Kim Huynh, FOE Kim Huynh, dirty fuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth, had the following statement in response: TransCanada is grasping at straws. The permit for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline was rejected. Desperate to placate shareholders, TransCanada is trying to dodge a robust environmental review process. No matter how TransCanada tries to slice and dice it, the Keystone XL pipeline would be an environmental disaster. The administration must stop trying to have it both ways. President Obama cannot expect to protect the climate and to put the country on a path toward 21st-century clean energy while simultaneously shilling for one of the dirtiest industries on Earth. What the administration seems to be missing is that the southern segment of this pipeline would exacerbate air pollution in refinery communities along the Gulf Coast and threaten our heartland with costly spills — all for oil that likely won't make it to Americans' gas tanks. Any attempt to move forward with any segment of the pipeline will be met with the same fierce grassroots opposition that stopped the pipeline the first time. We know that Big Oil will stop at nothing to further its profits, but it can't hide the dirty reality that importing more tar sands oil through our heartland endangers our land, water and climate. And 350.org founder Bill McKibben, who has led protests against Keystone XL, focused on the impact of farmers and landowners along the southern section of the proposed pipeline, with this response to the news: Transcanada's decision to build its pipe from Oklahoma to Texas is a nifty excuse to steal some land by eminent domain. It doesn't increase tar sands mining because there's still no pipe across the Canadian border, but it's the usual ugly power grab and land grab by the fossil fuel industry -- we'll do what we can to stand by our allies in that arid and beautiful land. NRDC's Susan Casey-Lefkowitz called TransCanada's plan "a ploy" designed to "avoid a review that will show how the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will raise U.S. oil prices, send tar sands overseas, endanger U.S. homes and waters, and contribute to worsening climate change." And continued: What part of “no” does TransCanada not understand? Texans, Nebraskans, and folks all across the country are saying that whether in a hundred pieces or one piece, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in the national interest. [...] TransCanada is clearly trying to circumvent the process that we have in place for approving international pipelines by now going around the presidential permit national interest determination requirement for the part of this pipeline that will hurt the U.S. economy. Whether in pieces or as a whole, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in the national interest. --------7 of 7-------- *---------------------------------------- * * Sterilize the ruling class * * ----------------------------------------* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ShoveTrove
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