Progressive Calendar 05.15.12 /2 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001umn.edu) | |
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 13:14:22 -0700 (PDT) |
*P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 05.15.12* 1. Nakba 5.15 4:30pm 2. Carlos Montes 5.15 4:30pm 3. Eastside vigil 5.15 5pm 4. Bust public ed 5.15 6:30pm 5. Nick Coleman - State of corruption: How the Vikings stadium deal went down and took honest&open government with It. 6. Phil Willkie - We can still defeat the stadium 7. Steven Higgs - A call to arms for class war: from the top down --------1 of 6-------- karen redleaf vegan14ever [at] yahoo.com Nakba 5.15 4:30pm On Tuesday, May 15th we mark the 64th anniversary of the Nakba We will vigil / banner / protest in Mayday Plaza (outside Mayday Bookstore) from 4:30 to 5:30 pm (during rush hour) Afterwards, we will have a brief potluck inside Mayday books, with an opportunity to hear from activists working on Palestine Solidarity about what they have been up to / what is coming up in the next weeks and months.This will be an opportunity to check in with others active in Palestine Solidarity and network. Bring a dish (not required) and information about what you are working on to share! 4:30 to 6:30 pm, Tuesday May 15th Mayday Plaza and Bookstore 301 Cedar Avenue (West Bank) Minneapolis --------2 of 6-------- WAMM wamm [at] mtn.org via riseup.net Carlos Montes 5.15 4:30pm Stand with Carlos Montes, Tuesday May 15 Bannering on Day 1 of his Trial Tuesday, May 15 4:30 - 6pm Lake & Chicago, Minneapolis Carlos Montes, who got caught up in the FBI investigation against the Anti-War Committee and other Midwest anti-war activists, is scheduled to go to trial on trumped up charges on May 15. The trial of Carlos Montes is designed to suppress our movements for peace, justice, equality, and freedom by attacking leaders with the potential to make fundamental social change in this society. The time to take action is now. Say NO to FBI repression and frame ups. Stand with Carlos Montes as his trial begins in Los Angeles. ===background from: Committee to Stop FBI Repression info [at] stopfbi.net via mail2.us1.mcsv.net Judge orders May 15 trial for Carlos Montes On April 26, Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli ordered a trial to begin on May 15 for Carlos Montes, a longtime Los Angeles Chicano activist in the anti-war, immigrant rights, public education and Chicano liberation movements. The trial will start at 8:00 a.m. at the Criminal Courts Building, 13th floor, Department 100, at 210 West Temple Avenue in Los Angeles. At the court hearing on April 26, Montes said: “Thank you for showing your solidarity here today in the rain.” He is asking people to plan on attending a part of the trial the week of May 15. After long oral arguments, Judge Lomeli denied the motion by civil rights attorney Jorge Gonzalez for discovery and to dismiss charges against Montes on the grounds of selective prosecution. This means that the court will not look at the role of the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force in initiating the case against Montes. That will have to be exposed during the trial. In fact, Montes was singled out for prosecution because of his activism. He is being targeted as part of larger proceedings against anti-war and international solidarity activists. Legal documents show that FBI Special Agent Matt Weber contacted the L.A. County Sheriffs about a 42-year old legal case, the outcome of which is under dispute, and a gun purchase. During his arguments, the district attorney stated that freedom of speech has “limits” for people who are critical of U.S. policy and support oppressed people resisting U.S. wars. At a previous court hearing, two felony charges were dismissed by Judge Lomeli, but four felony charges remain, dealing with the purchase of a gun in 2009. The trial will deal with these four felony charges. If Montes is convicted, he could face up to 12 years in jail. Over 40 supporters and activists held a rally April 26 outside the courthouse, chanting, “What do we want! Drop the charges!” The supporters then packed the court room, to express solidarity with Carlos Montes. The activists and the Committee to Stop FBI Repression are launching a national campaign of letter and email writing to pressure L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley, demanding that the charges against Montes be dropped. Montes was arrested May 17, 2011, in a raid by the FBI and the L.A. Sheriffs as part of an investigation of “material support of terrorism” targeting anti-war and solidarity activists. “The current gun charges are a pretext to attack Carlos for opposing U.S. wars,” said David Cid, a Los Angeles area teacher. Carlos Montes is a nationally respected leader in the Chicano, immigrant rights and anti-war movements. He is a founding member of the Southern California Immigration Coalition, active in East L.A. in support of public education and active in the anti-war movement. Montes helped organize protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota; his name was listed on the FBI search warrant for the Minneapolis Anti-War Committee office raid of September 24, 2010, which was investigating “material support for terrorism.” On May 17, 2011 at 5 a.m., the FBI, along with the L.A. Sheriff's SWAT team, carrying automatic weapons, busted down Montes’ door and raided his home, seizing his computer, cell phones, and files documenting decades of political work. Montes was arrested and released on bail the next morning. --------3 of 6-------- Brad Griffith Brad [at] bradgriffithrealtor.com Eastside vigil 5.15 5pm Join the St. Paul Eastside Neighbors for Peace on Tuesday May 15, 2012 from 5:00 - 6:00 PM at our weekly Peace Vigil. Signs will be provided or bring your own. Peace Vigil Location: http://maps.google.com/ The taxes paid by St. Paul residents alone to the Department of Defense in 2012 could have paid for 1 year of health care for 56,000 children, rent for 17,700 one-bedroom apartments, 14,000 university scholarships, and 3,700 firefighters. War is NOT the Answer. All are Welcome! Brad Griffith Dayton's Bluff/Payne-Phalen, Saint Paul -------4 of 6-------- patty via justcomm.org bust public ed 5.15 6:30pm Tuesday 5.15 we will be showing the film, Waiting for Superman. It is a [pseudo] documentary of America's (failing, according to the film) public school system. You can read about it on the web. It proved to be a very controversial film bringing both praise and negative criticism. Time to discuss it will be limited, so the discussion will continue for the next salon on May 22. [The film is for privatizing the public schools, turning them over to big business pirates to loot and dump. Busting teacher unions; "merit" pay - good pay for ONE "good" teacher; lousy for all the rest. Hidden motive: over the long run, dumb down the 99% to the level of domestic turkeys, so the 1% can loot and enslave them. Right in line with ALEC, the Koch brothers, Scott Walker. Occupy is for moving in the other direction, NOW!; don't let the 1% win this one! -ed] There was another film made after this one which counters the Guggenheim film (the film director) called The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. If anyone knows where we could get a copy of this we could show it on May 22. The last Tuesday of May will be The Little Book of the Odd Month Club and the book to read and discuss is The Devil's Highway by Luis Urrea. He was a guest on Bill Moyers' show a couple weeks ago. I ordered my copy from Common Good Books. The library may have it and also Amazon. Pax Salons ( http://justcomm.org/pax-salon ) are held (unless otherwise noted in advance): Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Mad Hatter's Tea House, 943 W 7th, St Paul, MN Salons are free but donations encouraged for program and treats. Call 651-227-3228 or 651-227-2511 for information. --------5 of 6-------- STATE OF CORRUPTION: How the Vikings Stadium Deal Went Down And Took Honest&Open Government With It. Nick Coleman May 10 The OTHER Occupy Minnesota and the siege of The People's Capitol Room 400 North in the State Office Building was a busy place Wednesday evening. People came and went, lots of them, and all of them were power players in the Vikings Stadium drama. Ostensibly, two or three members of the Legislative Conference Committee were meeting — but never more than that number. The six-member conference committee, appointed Tuesday night by House and Senate leaders to reconcile differences in the two versions of the $1 billion stadium bill that had been passed by both bodies, only needed four legislators for a quorum, and a quorum would trigger the state’s Open Meeting law, requiring that the doors to the deliberations be opened to the press and public. If you thought that was going to happen, you are still clapping for Tinkerbell. Room 400 has a sign on the door saying it can hold up to 80 persons. It is a big room for a six-member committee that couldn’t let more than three of its members inside at any one time. But it needed to be large. Here is a partial list of the VIPs who came and went: Minneapolis Mayor Raymond Rybak; Gov. Dayton’s stadium point man Ted Mondale; Dayton’s chief of staff, Tina Smith; at least two of his commissioners in charge of budgets and revenues; lobbyists for the Vikings, including Vikings VP and CFO Steve Poppen; House GOP Majority Leader Kurt (I’m against it!) Zellers; House DFL Minority Leader Paul (I’m a liberal!) Thissen; several other senators and representatives not on the committee; staffers, secretaries and hangers-on galore. But not one member of the unwashed public or the Capitol press corps. And get this: There was another, adjacent meeting room, with a connecting door, so that if a quorum-inducing 4th member of the conference committee should inadvertently (or deliberately) walk in, one of the others could quickly slip through the door into the adjoining room – thus preserving the sanctity of the Open Meeting Laws! (Although, truly, there was no way for anyone to know how many of the committee members were present at any time as no outsider — meaning taxpayer or reporter — could see what was happening or be certain who was present.) Notes left in Room 400 after secret stadium negotiations: Nothing about fishing. The Room 400 meeting, known as a “pre-conferencing” meeting — was not publicly scheduled or posted. But it is where the deal went down. The farcical and official conference committee meeting was scheduled in Room 15 of the Capitol for 9 p.m. and did not begin until 11. There you are, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer. Don’t blame us! You missed the public meeting!!! The “pre-conferencing” — an obscenity intended to provide ass-cover — went on for several hours. All the while, the wise-guys going in and out cracked jokes about how it wasn’t a meeting; they were just talking about the fishing opener. Someone should have barged in and, if necessary, got themselves arrested to defend the public interest. But that didn’t happen: The state’s non-profit pubic interest groups, the “progressive” organizations still dizzy with glee at being FOD’s (friends of Dayton), the churches, the advocacy groups for the poor, the civil liberties and good-government groups — all have stayed silent during a lengthy, furtive, closed-door giveaway of hundreds of millions in scarce public dollars to the NFL and Zygi Stardust. None of them even made a peep when Dayton, who campaigned on a promise to keep his calendar available to the public, reneged on that promise – at exactly the time he started dancing with Zygi, (sometimes even neglecting other duties). You can call it the Silence of the Sheep. After the shenanigans in Room 400 finally were done, I went into the room, strewn with sandwich wrappers, empty coffee cups and abandoned notes on what had been worked out in the crowded meeting: I found no notes about how many walleyes you can have in possession. Instead, there were a series of numbers and calculations about sales tax rates and charter amendments and counter-offers and pro-stadium headcounts, including a list of DFL representatives, with 37 of their names highlighted in yellow markers — the ones who had pledged to vote YES on the stadium — and another three names circled in red, apparently as possible Yes votes. In the end, in the wee hours of this morning, 38 DFLers voted for the stadium– providing 54 percent of the votes for passage. Other clues in the notes closely predicted the exact amount the Vikings would be asked to put up for the stadium and exactly what time the final House vote would come. Is there anyone, anywhere, who believes government should turn the keys over to monopoly businesses in secret meetings? If so, I will meet you at dawn, with revolvers. Here’s what one vote tally sheet looked like: [see this on-line for the picture of the names - ed] Rounding up the usual suspects: Is your DFL "representative" here? By the way, this billion-for-billionaires Wilfare handout is a DFL deal, now. The Democrats own it, lock, stock and backroom deal. After leaving Room 400, the legislators said they were going out to get something to eat. That was just one of the plethora of lies. It turned out the secret meeting just moved to an inner office in the trooper-protected warren of Gov. Dayton’s offices, where no one knows who attended an hours-long negotiation Mazola Party that lasted until, finally, late at night, they were ready to let the “public” part of the charade begin. There were reporters and photographers and lobbyists and grinning polls in the public meeting room when the “conference committee” finally convened. But other than a handful of insomniac Vikings fans, I couldn’t find one damn member of the general public. As outrageous a travesty as this might be, it has become SOP at our Capitol, which is falling down. The only different thing about it — and this is a huge difference — is that this charade was not an attempt to fund public education or to reach a budget agreement between parties. This was a naked transfer of wealth — from the people to the plutocrats. And it was done — despite some 11th-hour lying by Sen. Julie Rosen, the chief author — entirely behind closed doors, from start to finish. Rosen herself admitted that the deal had been put together in secret at a press conference I attended in March, the one at which Dayton refused to respond to Ralph Nader’s criticism that the stadium deal was a “reverse Robin Hood.” The Open Meeting laws, passed in the 1970s and which once gave Minnesota the reputation of having clean government, are as obsolete as a hat rack. They are so routinely flouted that the Center For Public Integrity gives the state a failing grade for openness in government and criticizes Minnesota’s increasingly secretive practices. Long story short: Yes, as we all learned in school, the corrupt days of smoke-filled rooms are gone. But that’s only because smoking is no longer permitted. Everything else is as corrupt as it used to be, and I don’t even rule out the bags of cash from the equation. There is no way to know what is going on, or whom is diddling who, and that’s the way that is preferred by politicians who have contempt for the public and the process that they are supposed to follow. And the Democrats, whose party pushed for Open Meeting laws in the 1970s, are as bad as the Republicans. Or, actually, worse. Let me paint a picture of what it looked like this week at the Capitol, which it was under siege from raggedy-ass Occupy Minnesota protesters, no doubt would have quickly been cleared by security. Instead, it was under siege from purple-painted Vikings fans, few of whom seem to hold day jobs, who squatted on the Capitol steps, clustered in the Rotunda and sat around looking like tired Visigoths who had just discovered chairs after an exhausting year of sacking and plundering someone’s state treasury. Ours. The Vikings arm-twisting operation was given a headquarters inside the building, near the old Supreme Court chambers. Operatives, lobbyists and Vikings officials infested the ante-rooms near the Senate chambers, standing in the shadows and summoning weak-spined lawmakers to one-on-one meetings where they were browbeaten, cajoled and whipped into shape. If I could have somehow gotten Jesus to come, I would have asked him to bring his whip. In 40 years of Capitol watching, I’ve never seen anything so nakedly corrupt. Give credit to a handful of courageous, truth-telling lawmakers — most of them Republicans — who dared to say what was happening. I think it was Sen. Sean Nienow, a Republican from Cambridge, who openly discussed the lobbying pressure and the den of Vikings who had been given offices in the Capitol, and who said during Tuesday night’s voting that the public would be shocked if it “could see what is going on here.” It’s time, Minnesota, to open your eyes. The only thing open about it was the open contempt for the people who will pay for Mark Dayton’s absurdly named “People’s Stadium. Where the deal went down. Along with Democracy. COMING NEXT on The State I’m In: The Corruption of Media in the Stadium Deal. –30– comment by John Kolstad / May 10, 2012 Thanks so Much Nick for revealing what really happened and we only guessed. Clearly a crime was committed with enthusiastic inclusion of the Leadership of both Corrupt parties. However, Let’s be clear, this did not happen by itself. This was organized, funded, produced and directed by a sports monopoly, The Vikings. We have to realize that pro-sports are a pack of thieves and none of us are safe until they are all gone. All of them. The question is, is there anything we can do about it. John Kolstad/Mpls – now we’ll be $3 billion in debt with the Twin and vikngs Palaces. But this will put Rybak in the Gov’s office after Dayton and President after Obama, at least that is his plan --------6 of 6-------- philwillkie [at] earthlink.net We can still defeat the stadium We can still DEFEAT the STADIUM. We need one more Council member of the seven supporting it, to move toward respecting the city charter and voting for a public referendum. I hear NE Ward 1 Council member Kevin Reich Phone 673-2201 might be our best hope. Also Meg Tuthill, the Uptown 10th ward Council member Phone 673-2210 could switch. The State Legislators in her district Sen Scott Dibble and Rep Frank Hornstein voted aganist the bill. Best to call after hours to clog their voice mail with messages. Please send this appeal to every one you know particularly Minneapolis residents. The Coucil votes on Friday May 25. thanks Phil --------7 of x-------- The Powell Memo: a Roadmap for the One Per Cent Revolution A Call to Arms for Class War: From the Top Down by STEVEN HIGGS CounterPunch May 11-13, 2012 Lewis F. Powell’s 1971 memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — “Attack on American Free Enterprise System” — may or may not have been the first shot fired in the nation’s late-20th-century right-wing revolution. But from the document’s title to its ominous conclusion — “Business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late” — it was a literal call to the political arms that have subsequently driven the nation’s devolution from democracy to oligarchy. While the then-Richmond, Va., lawyer couched his message in noble-sounding calls for openness, balance, truth and fairness, his overall tone was doomsday and militant. Referring to the enemies that Powell said were arrayed against the Chamber — largely on campuses, in the media and in the courts — he used the term attack 18 times; revolt / revolution / revolutionaries five; war / warfare four; assault four; hostility two; destruction two; and shotgun attack and rifle shot one each. The stakes, he said, were tantamount to life and death. “The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival — survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people,” he wrote just two months before being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Richard M. Nixon. Powell submitted the 6,400-word treatise on Aug. 23, 1971, at the request of Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., chairman of the U.S. Chamber’s Education Committee. The purpose, he wrote, was to identify the problem and suggest possible avenues of action for consideration at a discussion the next day between Sydnor, Chamber Executive Vice President Arch Booth and others. Sydnor was a Richmond businessman who served one term each in the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate from 1953 to 1959. Upon his death in 2003, the House passed a joint resolutionhonoring his service. According to Booth’s July 10, 1985, obituary from the Associated Press, he was a Wichita native who served as the Chamber’s chief spokesman for two decades. Between 1947 and 1973, he served as the organization’s manager, executive vice president and chief operating officer. He was named its president in 1974 before retiring the next year. As described by PBS’s Primary Sources website, the Powell Memo called for business in general and the Chamber in particular to play more aggressive roles in politics. And while there is disagreement about how influential the memo actually was, its perceived impact has assumed the scope of legend. In a brief introduction to the document itself, the Primary Sources website declares, “The memo is credited with inspiring the founding of many conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute.” In an October 2011 speech at Public Citizens’ 40th anniversary gala in New York City, journalist Bill Moyers pinpointed its submission as the moment today’s ruling oligarchy began taking form. An excerpt titled “How Wall Street Occupied America” was published in the Nov. 2, 2011, issue of The Nation. “The rise of the money power in our time goes back 40 years,” he said. “We can pinpoint the date. On Aug. 23, 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell — a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giant Philip Morris and a future justice of the Supreme Court — released a confidential memorandum for his friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the top down.” - A Suffolk, Va., native, Powell was a partner in the Richmond law firm of Hunton, Williams, Anderson, Gay and Moore when he wrote the 1971 memo, according to a biography posted on the website of his alma mater, Washington and Lee University. He received bachelor’s of science and law degrees from WLU in 1929 and 1931. He earned a master’s of law from Harvard Law school in 1932. Rising to the rank of colonel, Powell spent four years in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Europe and North Africa during World War II, the bio says. As a “special branch ultra officer,” he helped break “the highest level German codes.” He returned to his old firm after the war and became a partner in 1958. Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Powell to the National Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, where he served from 1965 to 1967. Also a member of the National Advisory Committee on Legal Services to the Poor, he was appointed by Republican President Richard M. Nixon in 1969 to the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, which studied the Department of Defense. On Oct. 21, 1971, Nixon nominated Powell as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed him on Dec. 7, 1971. He took office on Jan. 7, 1972, and retired from active service as a justice on June 26, 1987. Powell died at his home in Richmond on Aug. 25, 1998, just a month shy of his 91st birthday. At the end of an Aug. 27 editorial tribute, the WLU bio says, The Washington Post cited his “role as a bridge-builder between opposing visions. … Justice Powell’s moderation — born of principles, not their absence — has much to teach the federal courts today.” *** A 2005 article in The American Prospect, written by its former executive editor Mark Schmitt, said Powell and Sydnor were neighbors when the memo was written. Powell, he noted, was a conservative Democrat and moderate jurist, not a Goldwater Republican. In the article titled “The Legend of the Powell Memo,” Schmitt disputes the notion that the document represented a turning point in American political history, doubted its transformative role and traced its history. “The memo was circulated within Chamber of Commerce circles and became public after Powell’s confirmation to the court, when journalist Jack Anderson unearthed it to question Powell’s judicial temperament,” he wrote. “After that, it seems to have been forgotten.” Schmitt credited the Alliance for Justice’s 1993 report “Justice for Sale” with reviving interest in the Powell Memo. He termed the report “a superb and still-relevant analysis of the use of corporate and right-wing foundation funds to reshape the legal academy, to introduce judges to ‘law and economics’ dogma, to promote tort reform and to build right-wing public-interest law firms.” Two books in the early 2000s cite the memo, he wrote. John B. Judis’s The Paradox of American Democracy, published in 2000, credits it with convincing businessmen that they should be more active politically. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s 2004 book The Right Nation devoted a single paragraph to it, in reference to the history of the Heritage Foundation. Schmitt said the most likely source of the renewed, 21st-century interest in the Powell Memo was a 2002 article by Jerry Landay on the website mediatransparency.org, which tracked conservative funding. The website was acquired in 2008 by the Media Matter Action Network, where a search for “Powell Memo” returned no results. “While the Landay article contains everything there is to know about the memo, including the specific newspaper clippings that Powell attached to personal letters that he sent to friends accompanying the memo, it falls short of establishing its premise that the memo ‘changed America,’” he wrote. A biography of Powell, which Schmitt did not name, never mentions it, he wrote. Nor do several books on the right, including The Conservative Revolution, by Lee Edwards; The Idea Brokers, by James A. Smith; The Rise of the Counterestablishment, by Sidney Blumenthal; A World Turned Right-Side Up, by Godfrey Hodgson; or the authoritative The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, by George Nash. Still, Schmitt said, the Powell Memo has been “routinely invoked as the blueprint for virtually all of the conservative intellectual infrastructure built in the 1970s and 1980s – ‘a memo that changed the course of history,’ in the words of one analysis of the anti-environmental movement, ‘the attack memo that changed America,’ in another account.” As evidence of the consensus that the Powell Memo was indeed the first rifle shot in the neoconservative counterrevolution, Schmitt, who worked for former Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley in the late 1990s, quoted an op ed his former boss wrote for the New York Times on March 30, 2005. “In 1971 he wrote a landmark memo for the United States Chamber of Commerce in which he advocated a sweeping, coordinated and long-term effort to spread conservative ideas on college campuses, in academic journals and in the news media,” Bradley wrote. *** The 34-page, 16-subsection memo is a comprehensive analysis of what Powell saw as an all-out war on American business from liberals, leftists, socialists and communists. He mentioned four by name — consumer advocate Ralph Nader, UC-San Diego Professor Herbert Marcuse, Yale Professor Charles Reich and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. The memo details the dimensions, sources and tone of the attack; the apathy and default of business, responsibility of business executives and possible role for the Chamber of Commerce; and analyses and strategies for reaching the campus, the public, and the “neglected” political, judicial and stockholder arenas. He ends by casting the conflict as an apocalyptic struggle for economic and individual freedom. “As the experience of the socialist and totalitarian states demonstrates, the contraction and denial of economic freedom is followed inevitably by governmental restrictions on other cherished rights,” he wrote. “It is this message, above all others, that must be carried home to the American people.” Steven Higgs can be reached at editor [at] BloomingtonAlternartive.com. [The rich allow themselves class war, but forbid it to its targets - us - and we let them. How clueless are we? -ed] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shove Clove
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