Tag Archive for 'politics'
A brilliant campaign bolstered by the grassroots won!
When I was in Ohio with Downtown for Democracy in 2004 with a group called VoteMob (for voter mobilization). The group used new tactics that focused on mobilizing young voters who would not be reached by traditional voter outreach which heretofore reached only settled middle-aged or elderly folks living in the same house for over four years. Evan Hutchinson wrote a recap of the strategy and experience here.
To my surprise, when I was leading trainings for an Obama phonebank in Brooklyn, I learned that the lists we were working with were up-to-date because the campaign had invested heavily in canvassing. I only wish we could have had people bring their laptops to the phonebank to enter the data they were collecting real time and not rely on people to do data entry.
A lot of the lessons we learned from our Ohio strategy had been addressed in this campaign, coupled with the myriad brilliant online organizing and fundraising strategies that enabled peer-to-peer contact. I only wish I had been on the ground much sooner. For now I will know that Obama will not get me health insurance but that it may not be as long until I can afford it. I’m hopeful nonetheless, and here’s something from change.gov “Barack Obama and Joe Biden are committed to ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage by the end of their first term in office.”
I gather that he will be interested in what the online nation has to say. Check out CHANGE.GOV which has been set up for the transition.
Here’s a flickr set from Obama’s personal photog (Thanks to Gideon Yago for the tip)
Here’s a funny Onion article (thanks to Nick Pappas for the tip)
i’ve spent the last few days volunteering at the brooklyn masonic temple making calls for obama. it’s really rewarding and badly needed work. after seeing the election crumble in ohio four years ago it’s the ;east we can do. get out and vote for obama tomorrow and then get on the phones!
if you’re in brooklyn we’re making calls at the brooklyn masonic temple from 9am-9pm. come on down. bring your cell phone and charger.
you can rsvp here to join me, or find a phonebank closer to you
an email from the obama campaign:
Dear A’yen,
Barack’s organization in Pennsylvania is unlike anything I’ve ever seen — but it’s about to be put to the test.
With 11 days until Election Day, the McCain campaign has made its electoral strategy perfectly clear — it all comes down to Pennsylvania. “The election hinges on Pennsylvania,” a top McCain advisor told CNN on Monday.
McCain and the Republican Party are throwing a barrage of misleading “robocalls” and advertisements at the voters of Pennsylvania, and there’s only one way to fight back. We need supporters in neighboring states to take a short trip to come out and give us a hand between now and Election Day.
Organizers here are working day and night to win this crucial battleground state. But to pull it off, they’re counting on the time, energy, and passion of supporters in neighboring states who share their commitment to Barack’s message of change.
That’s where you come in. We’re running strong in Pennsylvania. Our challenge is to keep it that way.
Our strength is due to the hard work of volunteers and organizers on the ground. My family and I have done everything we can — knocking on doors, talking to voters, and even taking a bus trip through Northeastern Pennsylvania last weekend. But the only way to keep it up and take McCain’s last-minute challenge head on is if you get involved.
We’ve come too far and too close to let up now. Our state could be the difference between bringing about the change we need or four more years of the same failed policies. John McCain knows that, and we need to fight back.
Sign up to come to Pennsylvania and take on some volunteer shifts in this final stretch:
http://my.barackobama.com/cometoPA
Thanks,
Senator Bob Casey
I mean, it was just time.
on the bailout:
Monday, September 29th, 2008
The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning …a message from Michael Moore
Friends,
Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.
No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:
“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.
“Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.
“At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.
“Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”
Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to “consult” in the bailout.
The problem is, nobody truly knows what this “collapse” is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn’t know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can’t figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.
And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Falling for whom? NOTHING in this “bailout” package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.
Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What’s this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?
It has everything to do with it. This so-called “collapse” was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people’s home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it’s because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn’t afford. Here’s the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage “crisis” may never have happened.
Anyone up for canvassing swing states? Here’s some info from barackobama.com
wow! finally!
Here’s an article in the post about an email my friend Patrick wrote. I’m glad he did it.
From the Post:
IRAQ GI SALUTES CITY ARAB SCHOOL
By DAVID ANDREATTA Education Reporter
ALMONTASER
Principal gets a boost.
Principal gets a boost.
May 28, 2007 — As resistance in Brooklyn to a public school focused on Arabic language and culture persists, a U.S. soldier has emerged as its unlikely champion.
Army Sgt. Patrick Kowalchuk, 28, who has completed two tours in Iraq, intended only to support Khalil Gibran International Academy’s principal when he wrote her an e-mail early this month.
But it soon evolved into a public-relations tool.
“American society desperately needs this bridge to Arabic language and culture, and I am glad there are visionary and courageous people like yourself who are laying down the framework,” Kowalchuk wrote to the principal, Debbie Almontaser.
Almontaser recently read the e-mail, with Kowlachuk’s permission, at a meeting of 100 parents of kids at Brooklyn HS of the Arts and Math and Science Exploratory School.
The Boerum Hill schools are already housed in the building that will become home to the new academy for the next two years - and the parents overwhelmingly argued that the plan would disrupt their kids’ programs.
Kowalchuk told The Post parents must embrace the academy.
“If it were given a chance to prove itself, it could,” he said by phone from Fort Carson, Colo., where he teaches Arabic to soldiers in his unit.
Kowalchuk said his Arabic proved invaluable in Iraq. He recalled befriending an old fruit farmer who had had no verbal contact with U.S. troops.
“We sat there eating apples and apricots and just talking. There aren’t many people who can connect with Iraqis on that level,” Kowalchuk said. “I became a person with a name to the folks I was speaking to, as opposed to just a presence.”
In his e-mail to Almontaser, Kowalchuk offered to teach at the school. Almontaser will meet with him when he’s discharged this fall, he said.
Similar arguments from parents at PS 282 in Park Slope, the initial site for the school, forced the Department of Education to consider a new venue.
DAY:
1) STREET PARTY May 19 | 1pm-7pm
2nd St at 2nd Ave
Fun bike games other fun events presented by TRACKSTAR.
Footdown, trackstands, and skids for all.
FBM hosts BUNNYHOP CHALLENGE w/ cash prizes. Performance by Ines Brunn.
and BIKE PARADE May 19 | 1pm
Meet at 33 W 17th St. near 5th Ave
Calling all tall bikes, short bikes, long bikes, regular bikes to the streets of New York. Show your colors! Ride your most fun bike: with your team, club or your biker friends. Dress yourself up and your bike.
Go see some films about bikes! Schedule/Tix here also bicyclefilmfestival.com
2) Dance Parade NYC
NYC will finally see, hear, and feel a massive mobile celebration of
dance music and culture in all its forms, from electronic beats to
drum and dance troupes. With 50-plus sound systems, 100s of crews,
over 6,000 registered dancers so far, from Herald Square all the way
to Washington Square Park — followed by a huge getdown in the park
with Kool Herc, Danny Tenaglia, and many many more — all making a
big noise to free the beat and the feet in New York already
Full listings online.
6th Avenue and 32nd Street, Manhattan
1p; $free
team@danceparade.org
http://www.danceparade.org
NOTE: Seems like a great idea — a protest that doesn’t look anything
like a protest.
NIGHT:
This month’s NOW below the belt column reveals some incredibly atrocious laws and their use:
Ancient Laws, Current Consequences
Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy
March 6, 2007
Happy Women’s History Month! And how nice to be celebrating with a female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and a female front-runner for president, Hillary Clinton.
But even with those important firsts, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover to rid our communities of entrenched sexism. The real herstory will be made not when a few women ascend, but when all women are freed from injustice and have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities. Treatment of women in the courts is a good place to start.
NOW has forty fearless years of history with this country’s legal system. From arguing the first sex discrimination case appealed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1969 to years of action and litigation to get rid of sex-segregated employment ads and stop clinic violence, to decades of defending abortion rights and civil rights for all in state and federal courtrooms, NOW activists have demonstrated that the legal system can be a powerful conduit for the advancement of women’s rights.
But recent news shows how easily that same system can still force us backward, with lawyers, judges, and often juries combining forces to undercut justice for women.
You’d think that when it comes to laws that affect women’s rights and, more specifically, women’s bodies, prosecutors would think twice before relying on statutes that pre-date the Emancipation Proclamation.
Exhibit A) In Maryland, advocates are urging the state appeals court to consider a lower court ruling that has angered women across the country. Last fall, the Court of Special Appeals decided the concept of “deflowering” has a legitimate place in the contemporary U.S. legal system when it said that it’s not rape if a woman withdraws consent after penetration and the man continues. The court’s decision actually acknowledges that it’s referring (or rather, deferring), to “ancient” laws:
“The concept … rooted in ancient laws and adopted by the English common-law, views the initial ‘de-flowering’ of a woman as the real harm or insult which must be redressed by compensating, in legal contemplation, the injured party—the father or the husband. This initial violation of the victim also provided the basis for the criminal proceeding against the offender. But, to be sure, it was the act of penetration that was the essence of the crime of rape; after this initial infringement upon the responsible male’s interest in a woman’s sexual and reproductive functions, any further injury was considered to be less consequential. The damage was done.”
Stunning. So as long as she initially consents, even if she regrets it right away and tries to get away from him — he’s within his rights to pin her down, kicking and screaming and sobbing, and take as long as he wants until he decides he’s done with her. Somebody wake me up.
Unbelievably, the appeals court found this ancient sexist precedent compelling. As a result of its decision, first-degree rape convictions were reversed. It’s just bone-chilling to know there are some people — even judges — who believe that consent can never be revoked once given, and would follow a precedent that identifies the “father or the husband” as the real victim in a rape of a woman.
Thankfully, women’s rights advocates in Maryland have been and are still fighting to have this decision reviewed by a higher court, and women legislators are considering a new law. Check out your own state’s rape law, and take action to change it if you find that it is as archaic as Maryland’s.
Exhibit B) Maybe Massachusetts state attorneys were taking their cues from Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals judges when they whipped out an obscure 1840 law to charge a teenage Dominican immigrant with “procuring an illegal miscarriage.”
Amber Abreu was unable to afford a legal abortion, so she did something common in her home country — she took Cytotec, an anti-ulcer medicine, to induce a miscarriage. The drug induced labor, and she delivered a 20 oz. fetus that was not viable, even after four days of extraordinary medical intervention. She was immediately sent to a maximum-security prison, and it took her family several days to raise bail money from the community. Now she may face murder charges as well, for doing something herself that an English-speaking 18-year-old with money could have obtained safely and legally.
“What is clear is that an inner-city teenager who is still studying English made a desperate choice when a safe and legal one proved inaccessible,” said Eileen McNamara in a Boston Globe column.
Of course, little is being made of the fact that Abreu — and many young women like her–face considerable linguistic, cultural, and economic barriers to reproductive health education and care. No, what’s more important is “Abreu’s irresponsibility,” says one editorial in the Massachusetts Eagle-Tribune.
Archaic attitudes, an archaic charge — today’s news. And one more reason that we can’t stop working toward equal justice for women.
Exhibit C) A woman we only know as Lucy from Orange County, California, is another example of the archaic attitudes that threaten women even today. Lucy was stalked and sexually assaulted by a police officer, and then was further victimized by that police officer’s unabashedly sexist lawyer. According to news reports, one night when Lucy left her job at a strip club, a police officer waited for her on a secluded section of highway outside of his jurisdiction, pulled her over and propositioned her, and sexually assaulted her when she refused. No one, not even the defense, disputes that he ejaculated on Lucy — the DNA tests proved it — and the prosecutor (who called him a “predator”) presented a mountain of evidence that he had previously stalked and harassed her.
After Lucy reported what happened and the case went to court, the officer’s attorneys argued that she “got what she wanted. She’s an overtly sexual person.” A jury of 11 men and one woman found the officer not guilty.
Evidently, if you are a stripper, you deserve to be violated and victimized by the very people whose job it is to protect you. It’s not just one beastly police officer who thinks so — but his defense lawyer and a so-called “jury of her peers.”
While it’s scary to contemplate, just imagine: if this kind of unmitigated sexism can happen in California, Massachusetts, and Maryland, what is happening to women in less “enlightened” states? Think about it.
As long as police officers, lawyers, judges and juries take their cues from the nineteenth century, we’ve got to stand on the shoulders of countless women before us who didn’t hesitate to fight for ideals that were far ahead of the curve.
Women’s History Month isn’t just about remembering, it’s about recognizing and making the connections. We have to identify today’s sexists, call them out, and fight them just like our feminist foremothers did.
what they say