.
Filed under: activism, Anti-War, events, local, long island, Long Island Music, Long Island Politics, music, News, Peace, poetry, politics, progressive politics, US Politics, video, war | Tagged: Bill Breitenbach, ceremony, Gerry McKeveny, Ken Krumenacker, Long Island Music, peacesmiths, poetry, Sister Jeanne Clark, sonny meadows, Susan Blake, video, World March for Peace | 1 Comment »
GP NYC Mayor cand Rev. Billy Talen: Third Meditation on Pittsburgh G-20
Posted on October 4, 2009 by iwilder
We face a wall of riot police, standing there in the street. Of course, they create the absence of a safe passage through their wall. We can’t march that way. There is no soft door in their ranks. None of these folks want to talk, and as we try to engage their eyes somewhere deep in their Darth Vader helmets, we don’t know where their eyes are focusing. Meanwhile, as they slap their hands with their clubs, they accuse us of violence while we shout about Peace.
They are in the foreground but at the same time they are in the distance, as vast as a landscape. Their body armor has the repeating edges and shapes, the lines from body to body that dominate the visual – like the façade of an office building. We forget about the bodies underneath and see the structural overlay. These repeating lines give off the same inscrutability as a suburban Wal Mart. Oh yes, this is very familiar. We Americans know the forced absence of meaning in the enclosures of social control. We silently rope-a-dope with the mono-culture throughout our day.
In the USA, our “Sea of Identical Details,” is so dully omnipresent that some of us will go into a chain store like Starbucks and put our hands on the cash register and shout to God – Read more »
Filed under: 3rd party, Election 2009, grassroots democracy, Green Party, New York State Politics | Leave a Comment »
For Those of You on Your Way to Church This Morning …a note from Michael Moore
Posted on October 4, 2009 by iwilder
Friends,
I’d like to have a word with those of you who call yourselves Christians (Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bill Maherists, etc. can read along, too, as much of what I have to say, I’m sure, can be applied to your own spiritual/ethical values).
In my new film I speak for the first time in one of my movies about my own spiritual beliefs. I have always believed that one’s religious leanings are deeply personal and should be kept private. After all, we’ve heard enough yammerin’ in the past three decades about how one should “behave,” and I have to say I’m pretty burned out on pieties and platitudes considering we are a violent nation who invades other countries and punishes our own for having the audacity to fall on hard times.
I’m also against any proselytizing; I certainly don’t want you to join anything I belong to. Also, as a Catholic, I have much to say about the Church as an institution, but I’ll leave that for another day (or movie).
Amidst all the Wall Street bad guys and corrupt members of Congress exposed in “Capitalism: A Love Story,” I pose a simple question in the movie: “Is capitalism a sin?” I go on to ask, Read more »
Filed under: economy, film, Spiritual Study | Leave a Comment »
Jeff Curtis and Sonny Meadows play To See You Again
Posted on October 3, 2009 by iwilder
Jeff Curtis http://www.jeffcurtismusic.com and Sonny Meadows http://www.sonnymeadows.com played their song ” To See You Again ” at the PeaceSmiths 2009 Dinner/Concert. http://www.peacesmiths.org The event was hosted by Sonny Meadows. Video by Wilderside Media (Ian and Kimberly Wilder) http://www.onthewilderside.com
Filed under: local, long island, Long Island Music, music, original music, video | Leave a Comment »
Don’t Blame Cindy Sheehan, she voted for Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney
Posted on October 3, 2009 by iwilder
“My only wish is that the energy we had at Camp Casey would not have been wasted. All we did is elect Democrats,” she said. “Our energy was co-opted.”
Sheehan, who in 2008 voted for Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney for president, said she is not disappointed by President Obama’s performance in office, for she never had any expectations for him in the first place.
“It’s been change in the wrong direction,” said the one-time youth minister at a Catholic church in Vacaville, California. “Many people thought that since George Bush is gone, all of our problems are gone, too. Well, he (Obama) is still sending troops to Afghanistan. He didn’t fulfill his promises in Iraq. We still have the military industrial complex and the ‘robber class’ on Wall Street that we’ve given permission to to send our children to be killed in wars.“
Filed under: 3rd party, Action Alert!, activism, afghanistan, Anti-War, Cindy Sheehan, cynthia mckinney, election, Election 2008, elections, grassroots democracy, Green Party | Leave a Comment »
Fri. October 16th: Lori Berenson update
Posted on October 3, 2009 by kwilder
May 25, 2010 Update: Lori Berenson granted parole! Story with links at onthewilderside: here.
__________
Thanks to the WBAI Wake Up Call e-mail for this reminder…
Five Towns Forum: Lori Berenson
October 16, 8 PM
Hewlett Woodmere Library, 1125 Broadway, Hewlett.
“ The Continued Plight of Lori Berenson”.
Rhoda Berenson author of
My Daughter Wrongfully Imprisoned in Peru
Filed under: activism, international politics, local, long island, Long Island Politics, News, politics, progressive politics, US Politics | Tagged: long island, Lori Berenson, Peru, Rhoda Berenson | Leave a Comment »
Obama bought off by Insurance Co’s & Big Pharm
Posted on October 3, 2009 by iwilder
from DemocracyNow.org
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Reich, former secretary under Clinton, wrote, “The White House made a Faustian bargain with Big Pharma and Big Insurance, essentially scuttling both of these profit-squeezing mechanisms in return for [these] industries’ agreement not to oppose healthcare legislation with platoons of lobbyists and millions of dollars [of] TV ads, and Pharma’s willingness to cut drug prices by some $80 billion over the next ten years.” He says, “The White House promised these industries they’d come out way ahead—getting tens of millions of new customers who’d be buying private health insurance policies and thereby paying [for] an almost endless supply of new drugs. Healthcare reform would be, in short, a bonanza.”
Is that why, for example, your companies, Wendell Potter, and the other insurance companies have not launched the kind of massive campaign that they did against the ’93 and ’94 Clinton healthcare reform?
WENDELL POTTER: That’s right. And they have worked very closely with the White House. Some of the executives I know have been to the White House multiple times from the insurance industry. So they’ve been cutting their own deals, undoubtedly, or making their own assurances to the White House.
But the thing that the White House must not be taking into consideration is that while they will say things publicly, that they’re working as good faith partners for the—with the President and with Congress, behind the scenes they’re doing all that they can to cut the heart out of legislation, including the public option, and to preserve what would benefit them. That’s the way they operate. That’s what’s going on here.
[Wendell Potter, the former chief spokesperson at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest private insurers, and now one of the health insurance industry’s most prominent whistleblowers.]
Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, Healthcare, News, politics, US Politics | Leave a Comment »
CIGNA’s “Death Panel” Denies Coverage to Cancer-Stricken Twin Girls
Posted on October 2, 2009 by iwilder
Mother Speaks Out on Insurance Giant CIGNA’s Denial of Healthcare to Cancer-Stricken Twin Daughters
Stacie Ritter’s twin daughters were diagnosed with cancer at the age of four. Their insurance provider, CIGNA, denied them coverage even though they had been covered by the family’s former insurer. The incident marked just the latest chapter in the family’s ongoing troubles with the health insurance industry. A few years ago, the Ritters filed for bankruptcy due to their high medical expenses—even though they had health insurance at the time. Stacie Ritter joins us to tell her story.
Read entire transcript at DemocracyNow.org
Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, health, Healthcare, politics, US Politics | Leave a Comment »
Green Party Working for Better Election Laws
Posted on October 1, 2009 by iwilder
Members of the Green Party work daily recruiting candidates, educating voters, lobbying their local and state governments, serving on local boards and city councils, and lately, challenging obstructive and unequal election and campaigning laws in court. Below is a round-up of some the latest legal moves and victories won by state Green Parties across the country.
Connecticut
The Connecticut Green Party recently won a significant decision against Connecticut’s public campaign finance system, which the court ruled was unfairly awarding public finances to major party candidates while burdening the Green Party and other parties with inordinate obstacles to public funds.
A U.S. District Court judge ruled that Connecticut’s public financing scheme had created a “discriminatory burden” for minor parties and had unfairly inflated the public campaign funds that major parties were awarded. “We’re very pleased”, said Mike DeRosa, co-chair of the Connecticut Green Party, that “the court ruled that real campaign finance reform requires a level playing field.”
Arkansas
The Green Party of Arkansas, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court against the Secretary of State of Arkansas. Even though the party elected a member to the state legislature and won more than 20% in several federal races, the state has moved to decertify the party for lack of support. The lawsuit states that the “state’s decertification statute violates rights guaranteed to [the Green Party of Arkansas] by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution”.
Mark Swaney, Coordinator of the Green Party of Arkansas, emphasized the importance of ballot access for the Green Party in Democrat-dominated Arkansas, noting that “we are quite literally fighting for freedom and democracy against a conservative Democratic party machine that can, and usually does, see to it that the people of Arkansas have no say whatsoever on election day”. Read more »
Filed under: Ballot issues, election, Election 2008, Election 2009, elections, grassroots democracy, Green Party | Leave a Comment »
Green Party joins mid-October protests against US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Posted on October 1, 2009 by iwilder
Green Party leaders, activists, and members across the US plan to participate in mass rallies, marches, coordinated local and regional demonstrations, and other forms of protest to take place on and around Saturday, October 17 calling for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The National Assembly to End the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars (https://www.natassembly.org/Home_Page.html) is coordinating the nationwide mid-October protests. October 2009 marks the eighth year of the US war in Afghanistan and seven years since Congress passed a resolution authorizing an invasion of Iraq.
“While a majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress lined up behind President Bush’s call for an invasion of Iraq based on a litany of deceptions, the Green Party opposed and protested the war from the beginning. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought no real change — America is still waging war against Afghanistan and Iraq, with attacks on Pakistan and threats to attack Iran,” said Rosa Clemente, the Green Party’s 2008 nominee for Vice President, Hip Hop activist, journalist, and community organizer (http://www.rosaclemente.com).
“The Green Party continues to challenge the monopoly on power held by the two parties of war — the Democratic and Republican parties. We also challenge the delusion that led so many people who opposed the war to vote for Mr. Obama and other warhawk Democrats. The only hope for an end to America’s policies of military aggression remains the emergence of a real peace party — the Green Party,” added Ms. Clemente, who is about to embark on a 14-state speaking tour. Read more »
Filed under: 3rd party, Action Alert!, activism, afghanistan, Anti-War, Election 2008, elections, grassroots democracy, Green Party, politics, US Politics | Tagged: afghanistan, Green Party, Iraq, iraq war, October 17 | Leave a Comment »