From capeconn at comcast.net Fri Jul 1 15:19:24 2005 From: capeconn at comcast.net (Tom Sevigny) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 15:19:24 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: Green Line June 2005 Message-ID: <00b201c57e71$eaca5520$a3970218@sevigny8wcbjrd> reenLine: The E-Newsletter of the Green Party ----- Original Message ----- From: Green Party of the United States To: capeconn at comcast.net Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 3:51 PM Subject: Green Line June 2005 June 2005 News Headlines IMPEACH BUSH 2 NOW! Green leaders reiterated the Party's July 2003 call for impeachment of Bush, and called on all Americans outraged by the Bush Administration's list of deceptions, violations of the U.S. Constitution, the disastrous Iraq occupation, and policies that have disgraced the U.S. to demand that Congress begin the impeachment process. "The invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused the deaths of over 1,700 U.S. military personnel, as well as untold suffering and tens of thousands of civilian dead in Iraq," said David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 candidate for President of the United States. "The Downing Street Memo confirms what we already knew--that a conspiracy to deceive the American people led us into the war, and that this conspiracy constitutes 'high crimes and misdemeanors' according to the U.S. Constitution." The Green Party of the United States called for the impeachment of George W. Bush during the Party's 2003 national meeting . Greens have organized and participated in numerous protests against the war since early 2003, and have called for an immediate end to the occupation, cancellation of further war spending, and removal of military recruiters from schools as U.S. troops continue to face death and injury in Iraq. JASON WEST FACES CHARGES After having performed 25 same-sex civil weddings on February 26, 2004, Jason West (G), Mayor of New Paltz, NY, faces 19 misdemeanor counts of "solemnizing marriages without a license" by Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams. According to Williams, West was not charged for all 25 ceremonies because police only witnessed 19 of them. Later that year, on June 10, Jonathan Katz, Town Court Justice, dismissed the misdemeanor charges against Mayor West, ruling that the New Paltz district attorney failed to prove that the law under which Mayor West was charged was constitutional. Now, West faces prosecution for 24 violations of "domestic relations law," as defined by the New York State Supreme Court on May 27, 2005. Mayor West faces a maximum of 24 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines for multiple misdemeanor counts if convicted. "By performing same-sex marriages, we are upholding the U.S. and New York State constitutions, as well as our [Green] Party platform which defends human and civil rights," says New Paltz's Deputy Mayor Rebecca Rotzler (G). Rotzler also solemnized a civil marriage of a same-sex couple. The coordinators for Chicago's Pride Parade have invited Mayor West to be featured as a champion for equal civil rights in their June 26 parade. TULSA 2005 Green Country Greens and the Green Party of Oklahoma invite Greens to gather at the GP-US Annual National Meeting this year in Tulsa, Oklahoma. "Be bold," they say, "and come South, and a little bit West, to a state that produced Will Rogers and Woody Guthrie, Ralph Ellison and Wilma Mankiller, a state whose populist, progressive history is largely unknown but whose people can, with time and hard work, reclaim that proud tradition. "Join us in Tulsa July 21-24." More info is available at http://www.gp.org/meeting2005/index.html. Those of you planning to attend the national convention are asked to bring your spirit of volunteering with you. It will take your cooperation and help to make this meeting a success. SUMMER ISSUE OF GREEN PAGES COMING SOON Green Pages, our quarterly newspaper, goes to press shortly. Hot stories include an in-depth feature on Green Panther Elaine Brown, QA with rocker and Green activist Patti Smith, and election success stories in the US, Italy, and UK. Pre-order a bundle of 100 for just 25 bucks at http://www.gp.org/greenpages.html, or order any quantity by phone at 202-319-7191 or toll free, 866-41GREEN. GREENTERNS NEEDED FOR FALL SEMESTER The Green Party is thrilled to announce that we've filled our summer internships--but we're looking now to to fill a couple of spots for this fall at national headquarters in Washington, DC. Interns will assist with daily office operations, provide administrative support for campaigns, research, and help with convention planning and fundraising events. Qualified applicants should be computer savvy. Activist experience and/or Green Party membership preferred. Women and people of color are strongly encouraged to apply. Internships are unpaid, although many colleges and universities offer college credit for internships. To apply, please e-mail your resume and cover letter to Emily Citkowski, Green Party Operations Director, at emily at gp.org. Make your friends GREEN with envy. Become a card-carrying Green today! Buy Your Green Party Card Online (or download a PDF order form). The latest, coolest item in the wallets of progressives is the personalized Green Party Card. For $36.00 a year* you can be a card-carrying Green. When you become an active supporter of the Green Party of the United States, you'll receive our spanking-new card, which shows the world that you stand committed to time-honored progressive values like liberty, equality, democracy, social justice, personal responsibility and focus on the future. In addition, you will receive a Green Party button and bumper sticker, a one-year subscription to Green Pages, plus all of the information you need to get involved and active as a Green. Half of your contribution will be shared with your state's Green Party. The Future is Green! Order Your Green Party Card Online Today ------------- Federal law requires political committees to use their best effort to collect and report the name, mailing address, occupation and employer for each individual whose contributions exceed $200 in a calendar year. Contributions form the following individuals and entities are prohibited: corporations, labor organizations, national banks, government contractors, people under 18 years of age, and foreign nationals. *$36.00 is roughly equivalent to the $1.00 paid for a one-year membership in the Populist Party of the 1890s. The Populist Party was a multiracial, progressive, grassroots third party of working people which agitated for many popular progressive reforms. The Green Party of the 21st century continues the Populist's fight for citizen empowerment and progressive reforms at all levels today. Register Green. Vote Green. Give Green. The Green Party does not accept corporate donations and we depend entirely on donations from people who are committed to building a powerful and progressive alternative to the two corporate parties. We ask you to challenge corporate influence in politics by supporting the Green Party of the United States! Show your resistance to the status quo by enabling us to continue organizing and mobilizing for real change. Please help us get out our positive, progressive values to new communities, and to deepen our involvement where we're already anchored. Support us today and please consider becoming a sustainer (look for the recurring donation option). Green Party online shopping just got easier! Visit our improved online store. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = All comments, feedback and content suggestions should be sent to: office at gp.org. You've been reading Green Line, the monthly e-newsletter of the Green Party of the United States. Subscribe for free at gp.org. Click here to unsubscribe. Paid for by the Green Party of the United States -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Fri Jul 1 16:11:05 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 16:11:05 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: Reminder: Memorial service Saturday 10 AM, Hamden for peace activist Ali Hebshi Message-ID: <0a5b01c57e79$03799750$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> Reminder: Memorial service Saturday 10 AM, Unitarian Universalist Church, 700 Hartford Turnpike in Hamden, (please forward) Ali Hebshi of Bethany, Connecticut passed away at home on June 7, 2005 at the age of 65 from pancreatic cancer. His wife, Carol Lambiase, and son, Aaron Hebshi were by his side. Ali was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the oldest of seven children of Hussein and Maimona Hebshi. He attended the University of Texas in Austin and received a BA in Political Science from San Diego State University. He did post graduate work in sociology at UCSD. A committed activist for peace and social justice, Ali worked as a union organizer for various labor organizations for twenty-five years, most recently for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). His warmth and passion for life were contagious as was his belief that a more just and peaceful world is possible. To him, justice and peace were practices of daily life and not abstract principles. He cared deeply about the environment and was active in the struggle against pollution and the privatization of public water. He worked to end the war in Iraq and in support of the rights of Palestinians. He leaves his wife, Carol Lambiase, and his three children: Leila Hebshi, her husband, Peter Udovch and their son Frank, of Tucson Arizona; Aaron Hebshi and his wife Sandi Hebshi of Honolulu, Hawaii; Shoshana Hebshi-Holt and her husband Kurt Hebshi-Holt of Oakland, California. He leaves three brothers, Mohsin, Ahmed and Alowi and three sisters, Heriya, Fadeela and Amal and their families in Saudi Arabia. A private burial service was held Thursday June 9, 2005. A Celebration of Ali's life will be held on July 2, 2005 at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 700 Hartford Turnpike in Hamden, Connecticut and on the West Coast on July 17 at 11 a.m. in Roberts Park in the Oakland Hills. In honor of Ali's life and commitment to justice the family shares his favorite quote "philosophers interpret the world, however the point is to change it" and urges that others continue Ali's work through activism on behalf of social justice and the environment. (In lieu of flowers) Donations can be made to the American Friends Service Committee for the "Ali Hebshi Water for Life Memorial Fund" (send to AFSC, 4 Park Street, Ste 209, Concord NH 03301) or Connecticut United for Peace through CTUnitedforPeace.org, or to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund through PCRF.net From karinlee1 at mindspring.com Sat Jul 2 13:25:10 2005 From: karinlee1 at mindspring.com (Karin Lee Norton) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 13:25:10 -0400 Subject: {news} Fwd: Tonight in New London, Concert To Advocate Closing Of Millstone Message-ID: Status: U X-Comment: AT&T Maillennium special handling code - c X-Comment: AT&T Maillennium special handling code - c Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 12:29:07 -0400 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: CT Citizens Awareness Network Subject: Concert To Advocate Closing Of Millstone X-ELNK-AV: 0 Come down to the Garde Arts Center in New London for a concert and speeches aimed at raising awareness around the issue of Millstone discharging rad and chemical waste into the area known as the "blending area". This area is also known as Jordan Cove and Niantic Bay which are lined with beaches. Do you get that....people are swimming, parents are taking their babies to swim at the local town beaches known in the nuclear industry as the "blending area". It is where the radioactive and chemical waste "blend" with sea water. Join us for music, speakers and some fun and to show your support to having this issue addressed in the light of public scrutiny instead of behind closed doors with heavy influence from the nuclear industry. Oh...by the way....did you see or hear about the National Academy Of Science's new BEIR VII report. BEIR stands for Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, and they finally came out saying that there in NO safe dose of radiation. Every dose no matter how small increases the chances of cancer. Hummmmmmmm...I guess we shouldn't swim in blending areas. Come to the concert, do your share, contribute to this cause for all of us. sal $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ 7 p.m. Saturday at the . >From: NancyBurtonEsq at aol.com >Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 06:32:51 EDT >Subject: Concert - Today's New London Day > > > >Featured in Region > >Concert To Advocate Closing Of Millstone > >Published on 7/1/2005 > >New London? The Connecticut Coalition Against >Millstone and the Connecticut Chapter of the >Sierra Club will sponsor a concert by Emma's >Revolution and Stefko, a New York City-based >acoustic folk-rock singer-songwriter, at 7 p.m. >Saturday at the Garde Arts Center. > >The concert is to promote the organizations' >campaign for Clean Beaches ? Close Millstone and >to create a cleann energy future for Connecticut. > >Emma's Revolution includes Pat Humphries and >Sandy O, whose music has been featured on >National Public Radio's All Things Considered >and Pacifica's Democracy Now! and whose songs >Peace, Salaam, Shalom and Keep on Moving Forward >are sung at vigils and demonstrations around the >world. > >The evening also will feature other performers and speakers. > >Tickets are $20 for adults. Children under 12 >are free. Adults accompanied by a child under 12 >may buy a half-price ticket at the box office >the night of the concert. > > >?? The Day Publishing Co., 2005 >For home delivery, please call 1-800-542-3354 Ext. 4700 > Rosemary Bassilakis & Sal Mangiagli Citizens Awareness Network 54 Old Turnpike Road Haddam, CT 06438 Ph/fax 860 345-2157 ctcan at comcast.net www.nukebusters.org -- Karin L. Norton-O'Connor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 8a600d8.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 19470 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 8a60150.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 680 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 8a601af.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 635 bytes Desc: not available URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Sun Jul 3 14:22:38 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 14:22:38 -0400 Subject: {news} "What Other People Say May Change What You See" Message-ID: <0d3301c57ffc$32710140$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> Dear All, FYI, NYT report of interesting study last week that may help understand peer/group pressure and conformity in behavior--including voting. This study showed that under social pressure to conform with something that was incorrect, people's perception--rather than conscious decision-making--actually changed to conform to the incorrect answer. Pretty scary. See the fully study: Berns GS, Chappelow JC, Zink CF, Pagnoni G, Martin-Skurski ME, Richards R: Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation. Biol. Psychiatry, in press. Preprint. Regards, Justine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/science/28brai.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- June 28, 2005 What Other People Say May Change What You See By SANDRA BLAKESLEE A new study uses advanced brain-scanning technology to cast light on a topic that psychologists have puzzled over for more than half a century: social conformity. The study was based on a famous series of laboratory experiments from the 1950's by a social psychologist, Dr. Solomon Asch. In those early studies, the subjects were shown two cards. On the first was a vertical line. On the second were three lines, one of them the same length as that on the first card. Then the subjects were asked to say which two lines were alike, something that most 5-year-olds could answer correctly. But Dr. Asch added a twist. Seven other people, in cahoots with the researchers, also examined the lines and gave their answers before the subjects did. And sometimes these confederates intentionally gave the wrong answer. Dr. Asch was astonished at what happened next. After thinking hard, three out of four subjects agreed with the incorrect answers given by the confederates at least once. And one in four conformed 50 percent of the time. Dr. Asch, who died in 1996, always wondered about the findings. Did the people who gave in to group do so knowing that their answers was wrong? Or did the social pressure actually change their perceptions? The new study tried to find an answer by using functional M.R.I. scanners that can peer into the working brain, a technology not available to Dr. Asch. The researchers found that social conformity showed up in the brain as activity in regions that are entirely devoted to perception. But independence of judgment - standing up for one's beliefs - showed up as activity in brain areas involved in emotion, the study found, suggesting that there is a cost for going against the group. "We like to think that seeing is believing," said Dr. Gregory Berns, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta who led the study. But the study's findings, he said, show that seeing is believing what the group tells you to believe. The research was published June 22 in the online edition of Biological Psychiatry. "It's a very important piece of work," said Dr. Dan Ariely, a professor of management and decision making at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study. "It suggests that information from other people may color our perception at a very deep level." Dr. Brian Knutson, a neuroscientist at Stanford and an expert on perception, called the study "extremely clever." "It had all the right controls and is a new contribution, the first to look at social conformity inside a brain magnet," he said. Functional M.R.I. scanners detect which brain regions are active when people carry out various mental tasks. The new study involved 32 volunteers who agreed to participate in a study on perception. "We told them others will be doing the same task, but you're the only one who will be in the scanner," Dr. Berns said. The subjects were asked to mentally rotate images of three-dimensional objects to determine if the objects were the same or different. In the waiting room, the subjects met four people who they thought were other volunteers, but who in fact were actors, ready to fake their responses. To encourage cohesiveness in the group, the participant and the four actors played practice rounds on laptop computers, took pictures of one another and chatted. Then the participant went into the M.R.I. machine. The participant was told that the others would look at the objects first as a group and then decide if they were same or different. As planned, the actors gave unanimously wrong answers in some instances and unanimously correct answers in others. Mixed answers were sometimes thrown in to make the test more believable but they were not included in the analysis. Next, the participant was shown the answer given by the others and asked to judge the objects. Were they the same or different? The brain scanner captured a picture of the judgment process. In some trials, instead of being told that the other volunteers had given an answer, they were told that a computer had made the decision. Dr. Berns said this was done to make sure it was social pressure that was having an effect. As in Dr. Asch's experiments, many of the subjects caved in to group pressure. On average, Dr. Berns said, they went along with the group on wrong answers 41 percent of the time. The researchers had two hypotheses about what was happening. If social conformity was a result of conscious decision making, they reasoned, they should see changes in areas of the forebrain that deal with monitoring conflicts, planning and other higher-order mental activities. But if the subjects' social conformity stemmed from changes in perception, there should be changes in posterior brain areas dedicated to vision and spatial perception. In fact, the researchers found that when people went along with the group on wrong answers, activity increased in the right intraparietal sulcus, an area devoted to spatial awareness, Dr. Berns said. There was no activity in brain areas that make conscious decisions, the researchers found. But the people who made independent judgments that went against the group showed activation in the right amygdala and right caudate nucleus - regions associated with emotional salience. The implications of the study's findings are huge, Dr. Berns said. In many areas of society - elections, for example, or jury trials - the accepted way to resolve conflicts between an individual and a group is to invoke the "rule of the majority." There is a sound reason for this: A majority represents the collective wisdom of many people, rather than the judgment of a single person. But the superiority of the group can disappear when the group exerts pressure on individuals, Dr. Berns said. The unpleasantness of standing alone can make a majority opinion seem more appealing than sticking to one's own beliefs. If other people's views can actually affect how someone perceives the external world, then truth itself is called into question. There is no way out of this problem, Dr. Ariely said. But if people are made aware of their vulnerability, they may be able to avoid conforming to social pressure when it is not in their self-interest. a.. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company b.. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: logoprinter.gif Type: image/gif Size: 1810 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: kinsey_pf.gif Type: image/gif Size: 1481 bytes Desc: not available URL: From greenpartyct at sbcglobal.net Thu Jul 7 10:24:37 2005 From: greenpartyct at sbcglobal.net (Green Party-CT) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 07:24:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} (Hartford Courant)"Reckless With Wrecking Ball" (New London Greens quoted) Message-ID: <20050707142437.38630.qmail@web81410.mail.yahoo.com> "The idea that you would tear more stuff down when you haven't yet filled in from your last round of taking, to me doesn't make sense," said Chris Nelson, a local boat builder who ran some Green Party municipal campaigns. It is, he said, "bipartisanship at its worst --------------------------------- http://www.courant.com/business/hc-haar0707.artjul07,0,5788980.column?coll=hc-headlines-custom-specials Reckless With Wrecking Ball Dan Haar ADVERTISERS --------------------------------- Advertise on ctnow --> July 7 2005 There is blight at Fort Trumbull in New London, where the U.S. Supreme Court said it's OK for the city's redevelopment agency to take 15 old, small properties to make way for a private developer's scheme. The blight isn't at Susette Kelo's pink, mid-18th-century wood-frame house, which offers a breathtaking view of the lower Thames River with its m?lange of Naval history, scenic beauty, commerce and industry. The blight isn't at the Dery complex just up East Street from Kelo, in the family for 100 years, where a couple of houses and a storefront huddle together like circled stagecoaches under siege. The blight isn't around the corner, where a shirtless James Guretsky skipped a protest at city hall Tuesday evening so he could act as a neighborhood sentry from the long front porch of his side-by-side-by-side three-family house on Smith Street. No, the blight is up the block, across an open field, in the form of a modern, four-story brick office building - vacant except for the weeds that surround it. The 90,000-square-foot building arose in the late 1980s for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which abandoned ship by the mid-90s and cruised up the coast to Newport, R.I. It is blight, not only because it's slowly sinking from a decade of disuse, though that's certainly true. More to the point, the building stands for the failure of a big idea in urban development. The big idea is that in places such as New London, the city - or, worse, an appointed agency removed from accountability - can tear out the countless beating hearts, the countless household dreams that form a neighborhood, and replace all that with a grand collection of oversized concrete constructs. It didn't work two generations ago at Hartford's disastrous Constitution Plaza. It has failed virtually everywhere it has been tried across America where mid-size cities have sacrificed thriving neighborhoods. And it won't work in New London. Since the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling on June 23, we've seen lots of hand-wringing about why a city should be allowed to take private property to advance private development. A blend of property-rights conservatives, anti-government libertarians and anti-corporate progressives have held their noses to join in protest, as we saw colorfully Tuesday on the steps of New London City Hall. I toured Fort Trumbull with a Republican and a trio of Green Party activists, all speaking in one voice. It's a noble fight, and the idea that a city can uproot whole neighborhoods to make way for private gain is distasteful, at best. But it's maddening that we should even get to that debate. Most of the time - and New London is shaping up as no exception - the vision of progress is shortsighted, based on a dangerous mix: the addictive high of construction dollars, with money thrown blindly from some seat of government far away. The old undersea warfare building is part of the proof. The Navy built it, then left. If there were demand for commercial and office space, we'd see it here. If there isn't demand, then why build more? Remember, this isn't just near the development site - it's the heart of it. Arguments about the need for critical mass don't wash. Grand scale development might work in some places, but it can't rise up where demand is weak to begin with. For more proof about Fort Trumbull, walk a few hundred yards to the corner of Bank and Howard streets. There, at the gateway to Fort Trumbull, prime real estate in this old whaling city - a three-acre field stands vacant save for a sign advertising that it's available. Whither that field? It, too, was a collection of old buildings back in the Nixon era, until someone back then got the bright idea to clear the area and fill it with large-scale, modern commerce, known as Shaw's Cove. Some office buildings were built along Howard Street, but they are ugly, underused and detract from the life of the city more than they add in property taxes. The rest were never built. Across Howard Street, in a commercial building called Columbus Corner, the first-floor retail space is vacant. And this, Connecticut state taxpayers, is the neighborhood where 72 million of your dollars have poured in - to advance a year-2000 version of the failed vision. "The idea that you would tear more stuff down when you haven't yet filled in from your last round of taking, to me doesn't make sense," said Chris Nelson, a local boat builder who ran some Green Party municipal campaigns. It is, he said, "bipartisanship at its worst." On Wednesday, David Goebel, chief operating officer of the New London Development Corporation said the agency will not amend the plan even though Shaw's Cove remains under-built. The Fort Trumbull plan - which has a developer on board - comprises 300,000 square feet of office space, including the old Navy building; a 134-room hotel with conference facilities, expandable to 250 rooms; 80 units of housing, preferably upscale condos; and a Coast Guard museum. "If there were people interested in building Shaw's Cove," Goebel said, "we would welcome that. ... You don't tell somebody where to build. This is a market-driven economy." Market-driven, that is, except where the "market" requires tens of millions of public dollars and the awesome power of eminent domain. Tom Picinich, a self-described Republican, pro-development son of a homebuilder, wore a bumper sticker on his back Tuesday night, which said, "New London seized my home and all I got was this lousy sticker." His house was on Howard Street - taken five years ago to widen the road leading to the new Pfizer complex - was also in the redevelopment zone. Picinich's hands follow the sweep of destruction. "There were houses going around the block," he said, standing on his former property. The property rights side of the argument - that government should deploy eminent domain only for truly public amenities such as schools and highways - has hope in Fort Trumbull. State Rep. Robert M. Ward, R-North Branford, the House Republican leader, has introduced a law that would strip municipalities' of the right to take property for private development. But, again, it shouldn't come to that. Saving the remaining homes in Fort Trumbull is not a lost cause even though the redevelopment agency has already razed most of the houses and small buildings on the 90-acre site, about 75 in all. Contrary to the image most people might have, the 15 that remain are not a hopeless gathering of isolated, dilapidated outposts. Each of these 15 structures has character of the sort that's hard to rebuild, and most, to this untrained eye at least, appear to be in decent shape, even the few that are vacant. As a group, they form the potential core of a human-scale redevelopment that now must happen if the project is to succeed in the long run. The issue is not an abstract battle over legal concepts and it's certainly not just a matter of principle for the teary-eyed lead plaintiff, Susette Kelo, a nurse, and her husband, Tim LeBlanc, a relaxed former merchant mariner. "I come out here and have coffee in the morning and it is fantastic," LeBlanc said, both sides of the river in full view at sunset Tuesday. And so this small remaining band of neighbors stand, a slice in time between destruction and memory. What would we give to still have some of this in our grasp in Hartford, where the same moment passed barely noticed decades ago, as Front Street gave way to Constitution Plaza? Dan Haar can be reached at dhaar at courant.com. Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Thu Jul 7 17:21:23 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 14:21:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} (New Haven Advocate)Joyce Chen has left the Greens for the Dems Message-ID: <20050707212123.93669.qmail@web81407.mail.yahoo.com> It Ain't Easy Being Green Joyce Chen has left the Greens for the Dems who are none too thrilled. by Ryan Kearney - July 7, 2005 KATHLEEN CEI PHOTO Joyce Chen Joyce Chen has jumped ship. But no one on deck is throwing her a line, and no one below is swimming over to help. The young Ward 2 alderwoman has renounced the Green Party and, barring a change of heart, will officially become a Democrat on July 19, when a mandatory three-month waiting period expires, according to the registrar of voters. The move will leave the 30-member Board of Aldermen without a Green and with just one Republican. Why the switch? It's anyone's guess. According to her home answering machine, Chen is in India "doing some community development work" and won't be back until July 13. She did not respond Thursday to an e-mail or to phone messages left at her home and office. Her former party is at a loss--though not for words. "To me it's evidence of some immaturity, both political and personal," says Charlie Pillsbury, co-chair of the New Haven Green Party. Both he and co-chair Allan Brison say Chen never informed them of her decision. "We've been very disappointed to hear of it second-hand rather than directly," says Pillsbury. "It's kind of coming out of the blue, you might say--or out of the green." When the switch was still just a rumor, says Pillsbury, he e-mailed Chen in India to ask if it was true. "She didn't confirm or deny," he says. "She just said she'd talk when she got back." Chen was the local Greens' rising star, surprising many by upsetting a Democratic incumbent in 2001at the age of 22and then retaining her seat in 2003. That year, however, she also rankled party officials by voting against a domestic partnership resolution. Now that she's ditched the Greens without so much as an explanation, it's safe to say they want nothing to do with her. Thing is, her soon-to-be peers in the Democratic Party are equally unhappy. "I do not see her being embraced by the Democratic Party," says Democratic town chair Susan Voigt, who blasted Chen for not informing the Board of her decision. "It's either a lack of respect for your colleagues or a very cynical view of the political process." Chen also angered many donkeys last year by running againstand losing tostate rep Toni Walker, a Democrat. "In challenging one of our newer and more effective assemblypeople, Toni Walker, she certainly burned her bridges before she even tried to come across," Voigt says. In fact, the Democratic Party already had a challenger to Chen lined up for the Nov. 8 general election: Gina Calder, a 24-year-old health-care consultant and Yale alum who only recently started campaigning. Now that Chen has switched to the Dems, the two will face off in the Sept. 13 primary instead. Asked about Chen's change of heart, Calder says, "I don't know if it helps or hinders me. All I know is I have a lot less time than I originally thought." Did Chen fear Calder, a political novice, enough to switch parties, thereby shortening Calder's window of campaign time? It's unlikely. Voigt says the switch might hint at grander political ambitions. "Perhaps she thinks being a Democrat would allow her to make another run and be more successful" than she was against Walker, says Voigt. Chen's switch means that lone Republican alder Arlene DePino will have a lot of work cut out for her. The board is required to have minority-party representation on all of its 12 committees, a duty that Chen and DePino have split down the middle (while the board's Dems sit on only three committees each). But come July 19, DePino will be alone on the other side the aisle. "It would mean that all of the committees really would need to be represented by Arlene DePino," says Karen Dubois-Walton, the mayor's chief of staff, adding that she can't remember the last time the board had just one minority-party candidate. Chen's defection, meanwhile, brings the New Haven Green Party back to square one: looking for a candidateany candidateto represent the party on the board. "It's certainly not a step forward," says Brison. But, he adds, "We will continue to be an effective force in the community." How? By running more candidates, according to Pillsbury, who says he will contend for the Ward 19 seat if incumbent Alfreda Edwards steps down, as some have speculated she will. Meanwhile, he says he wishes Chen "the best" in the Democratic Party. But those sentiments may change this fall, when the Green Party looks to field its own Ward 2 candidate. "We do have some [candidates] in mind," Brison says. Perhaps he should make any candidates sign a loyalty oath first. kearney_ryan at yahoo.com =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From capeconn at comcast.net Fri Jul 8 15:12:26 2005 From: capeconn at comcast.net (Tom Sevigny) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 15:12:26 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: GREEN RELEASE Greens condemn attacks on London Message-ID: <020801c583f0$fab62d40$a3970218@sevigny8wcbjrd> ----- Original Message ----- From: "DC Statehood Green Party" To: Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 3:05 PM Subject: GREEN RELEASE Greens condemn attacks on London > GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES > http://www.gp.org > > For Immediate Release: > Friday, July 8, 2005 > > Contacts: > Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, > mclarty at greens.org > Nancy Allen, Media Coordinator, 207-326-4576, > nallen at prexar.com > > > GREENS CONDEMN ATTACKS ON LONDON > > The July 7 bombings were consistent with warnings that > the invasion of Iraq would fuel anti-West anger and > make the world less secure from terrorism, say Greens. > > > WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders condemned the > July 7 attacks on the London transit system, and > expressed sympathy for the families of the murdered, > for the hundreds of people injured, and for all those > shaken by the bombings. > > "We deplore all violence -- even more so when directed > against civilians," said Jody Grage Haug, co-chair of > the Green Party of the United States and a member of > the Green Party's Peace Action Committee. "Greens > reject the use of violence for political ends. Green > Party members who live in the New York City and > Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas and who acutely > remember the pain of 9/11 know the terrible sense of > sadness, loss, and disruption that the British people > feel right now. All Greens share the same sense of > tragedy, outrage, and compassion for the victims and > their loved ones." > > Greens called Thursday's attacks consistent with > predictions -- from CIA analysts as well as opponents > of the war -- that the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan > and especially Iraq, which had no connection with 9/11 > and virtually no al-Qaeda presence before 2003, would > lead to further terrorism. > > "The invasion of Iraq didn't impede terrorism. On the > contrary, it fueled resentment in the Muslim world > against western nations, increased support for > fundamentalist Islamic leaders who seek to turn their > nations into repressive theocracies, converted Iraq > into a training ground for groups like al-Qaeda, and > distracted from the need to bring Osama bin Laden and > the kind of thugs who struck in London to justice," > said Peggy Lewis, co-chair of the Green Party of the > United States. "Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair have made the > world less, not more, secure from terrorism." > > Greens drew a connection between the civilians killed > in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, > Bali, Madrid, and now London and the civilians killed > in the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq -- tens of > thousands who were supposed to be liberated, but were > instead killed by American bombs and bullets. > > "Let us not forget that what Londoners experienced on > Thursday morning is being experienced by Iraqi > citizens on a daily basis," said Joe Lombardo, New > York Green, member of the Green Peace Action > Committee, and co-founder of Bethlehem Neighbors for > Peace. "It's time to end the military occupation of > Iraq, not because we're intimidated by threats from > violent religious militants, but because the invasion > of Iraq was wrong and was based on oil, empire, and > Bush and Blair administration deception. The murder > of innocents always deserves our revulsion and > condemnation." > > > MORE INFORMATION > > Green Party of the United States > http://www.gp.org > 1700 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 404 > Washington, DC 20009. > 202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN > Fax 202-319-7193 > > Green Party Peace Action Committee > http://www.gp.org/committees/peace > > > ~ END ~ > > > > > > > > > ____________________________________________________ > Sell on Yahoo! Auctions - no fees. Bid on great items. > http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From edubrule at sbcglobal.net Fri Jul 8 23:21:19 2005 From: edubrule at sbcglobal.net (edubrule) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 23:21:19 -0400 Subject: {news} public discussion of Patriot Act; did your community pass anti-Patriot Act legislation? Message-ID: <000001c58442$f7aaefd0$61fbf504@edgn2b574u14bi> ----- Original Message ----- From: Don Marks To: greens at ctgreens.org Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 12:14 AM Subject: Patriot Action Dear CT Green Party, The Connecticut Chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America is sponsoring a public discussion of the Patriot Act on July 18 at Buckman Theater, Quinnipiac University. Our featured speakers include Emanuel Margolis, the former Head of the CT ACLU, and C. William Michaels, author of No Greater Threat. We also hope to include representatives of CT communities who have successfully passed Patriot Act-free Zone legislation in their cities, as an example to attendees of action that can be undertaken. Additional information, including directions, may be found online at http://www.ctprogressives.org . Whether you plan to attend the event or not, please check out the statewide petition online at http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/protexct . Thank you very much, Don Marks 30 Ballaro Drive Shelton, CT 06484 203-685-2155 donmarks at snet.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From edubrule at sbcglobal.net Sat Jul 9 00:14:14 2005 From: edubrule at sbcglobal.net (edubrule) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 00:14:14 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: AFSC Community Calendar 7-6-05 Message-ID: <000601c58443$0056a200$61fbf504@edgn2b574u14bi> 1-Image Promotional Template ----- Original Message ----- From: AFSC Connecticut To: edubrule at sbcglobal.net Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 4:01 PM Subject: AFSC Community Calendar 7-6-05 American Friends Service Committee Connecticut Community Calendar 7-6-05 Friends, Please find our regular CT Area Community Calendar of events below. We have the opportunity this Thursday, July 7th, to meet with Congressman John Larson to discuss the Iraq War. At this time we are finally begining to see some political winds shift against the continued war and occupation of Iraq (see Medea Benjamin's article at bottom), this is an important opportunity to make our voices heard to Bring Our Troops Home Now. The public forum will be held at West Hartford Town Hall, 50 South Main Street from 7-9pm. I am pasting Congressman Larson's invitation below. I hope you can make it. ------------------------------------------------------- Dear Constituent: As frustration with our present course in Iraq increases, I am writing to invite you to another town hall meeting on Thursday evening, July 7. The meeting will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. at the West Hartford Town Hall. Recent polls have revealed that public support for the war in Iraq is eroding and that the majority of Americans support withdrawing some or all of our 140,000 troops. Meanwhile, members of Congress have stepped up calls for a timetable or a clearly-defined exit strategy. In response, I wish to talk about the direction we should be taking in Iraq with residents of the First District. The effects and costs of our establishing a free and democratic state in Iraq will reverberate well into future, not only for the soldiers fighting there and their families but our nation as a whole. So please join me to share your thoughts on this critical issue. For more information, please call (860) 278-8888. Sincerely, John Larson ---------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, July 6th Friendship Caravan to Cuba Comes to Hartford Fundraising event 6-8:30pm Central Baptist Church 457 Main St., Hartford, CT Come to a special evening of food, music, fun, solidarity and fellowship as the Greater Hartford Coalition on Cuba welcomes the 16th Friendshipment Caravanistas on their trip from Canada to Mexico, and then on to Cuba. The US embargo of Cuba causes shortages of food, medicine and other important supplies for eleven million people. This embargo is an immoral policy that uses hunger and disease as political weapons. This will be the sixteenth time that Pastors for Peace has organized a Friendshipment challenge to this attack upon the people of Cuba. Admission: $10/ children $5 $25 sponsor/$100 patron/$400 caravanista Material aid will be collected at the event. Please consider bringing school supplies, vitamins, or powdered milk. For more information call: 860.688.5418 or email: ecoalitiononcuba at yahoo.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- THURSDAY, JULY 7 7 - 9 p.m. The War in IRAQ A Town Hall Forum With CONGRESSMAN JOHN LARSON Town Hall Auditorium 50 South Main Street, West Hartford ---------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, July 12th Support Immigrant Rights Waterbury, 6:00pm Exact location TBA At 6:30 PM at the American Legion (62 Bunker Hill Road) in Oakville (Watertown-Waterbury) the CT Citizens for Immigration Control group will be having their third meeting. Their guest speaker will be Michael Cutler, a former INS agent. It is essential that supporters of immigrant rights mobilize against the CCIC at their third "public meeting." They have chosen a location -- Oakville -- where they expect to draw more support AND less opposition. Labor, immigrant and civil rights activists in that neck of the woods will need to consider how best to respond. July 12 could be the strongest turnout yet to oppose the CCIC. Marshals Training Sunday, July 10th 6pm Waterbury (place TBA) For more information contact The American Friends Service Committee at 860.523.1534 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Hartbeat Ensemble: Hartford's Theater For Active Change Presents: Middle School Summer Theater Program For Youth Ages 11-13 This five-day summer program will teach youth the exciting art of playmaking in the spirit of Augusto Boal's "Forum" and "Playback" Theater. Two Sessions Session One: July 11th - 15th Session Two: August 22nd - 26th Scholarships Available Call for more information 860-548-9144 Also - Overnight Summer Theater Program For Youth Ages 14-19 This five-day program is designed to give teenagers the best theatrical training available through ensemble building games, movement exercises, and improvisation. Participants will live on a 56-acre farm in Voluntown, CT while creating and producing a one-act play, in the spirit of Augusto Boal's social change theater. August 1st - 5th Scholarships Available Call for more information 860-548-9144 ------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, July 14th Hartford Stage "Rose" 7:30pm show 9:oopm Post-show discussion (free) "Rose," showing at Hartford Stage from July 7-17th, is the story of a Holocaust survivor. A panel discussion will follow the July 14th show with Rabbi Robert Sternberg, Director of the Hatikvah Holocaust Resource and Education Center in Springfield, Massachusetts and Holocaust survivor Agnes Vertes, a Weston Connecticut documentary filmmaker and President of Child Survivors of Connecticut. The discussion will be free and open to the public. Rush tickets for the performance are available 2 hours before the show for 1/2 price, if mentioned at the Box Office. Standing room only tickets are also available for 1/2 price if the show is sold-out. Regular tickets are $25-$45. Tickets are not needed for the afterwards discussion. For more info about the performance or the discussion contact the Hartford Stage box office at 860-527-5151 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Monday, July 18th 6:00pm Good Jobs and Living Wages in Manchester St. Bridget's Church Cafeteria 80 Main Street Manchester, CT Meet the candidates, raise issues about good jobs and living wages, hold our elected officials accountable. For more information, please call Erin at Working Families at 860-456-1170. --------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, July 23 7:30 p.m. Bolivia - Venezuela - Cuba Charter Oak Cultural Center Hartford, CT The possibility of revolutionary change is under discussion all over Latin America. Join us for a discussion of these exciting events and their meaning for socialist activists in the United States. In Bolivia, a general strike and popular upsurge demanding the nationalization of hydrocarbons without indemnification has toppled the Mesas government. Tin workers have raised the idea that only a workers and farmers government can solve Bolivia's crisis. In Venezuela, the Chavez government has begun a program of worker self-management of sectors threatened with de-capitalization by runaway owners. Chavez is openly talking of a socialist future for his country. Cuban leader Celia Hart has opened a continent-wide discussion of the Stalinist betrayals that led to the destruction of workers democracy and the reintroduction of capitalism in the Soviet Union and China. Her theoretical contributions to the new stage of struggle in Latin America are shaking up political thought from Venezuela to New York. Speakers: George Saunders, Labor Standard Gerry Foley, Socialist Action Sponsored by CT Friends of Socialist Action, Socialist Action, and Labor Standard. For more information, call 860-478-5300. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, July 29 7:15 to 9:30 PM Art Space Gallery Hope Out Loud Coffeehouse 555 Asylum Avenue, Hartford (Diagonally across from Union Place bus and train station) Good music, performance and spoken word - good company. Free speech encouraged. Children bring your parents. The Fourth Annual HOPE OUT LOUD Peace and Music Festival is coming to Hartford on September 11th, 2005. Begin the celebration early with an evening providing inspiration for renewal and recommitment as we all HOPE OUT LOUD that a peaceful world is possible. Come to the Coffeehouse on July 29th to learn more about HOPE OUT LOUD IV - how to volunteer, have a table or discover what the Festival is all about. Suggested donation $ 5 - everyone is welcome. Directions and more information - call (860) 523-1534. Free parking in rear. ---------------------------------------------------------------- SAVE THE DATE: Wednesday, August 3rd 7 p.m., New Haven Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Voters' Right Act This is sponsored by a broad based coalition including ACLU, CT AFL-CIO 35, COUNCIL, AMISTAD COMMMITTEE, CORD, DEMOCRACY WORKS, LOCALS 34-35, HERE-UNITE, and others. Venue will be announced shortly. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, August 6th Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembrance Day Riverside Park 5:00pm Potluck Picnic 7:00pm Speakers and Vigil This August join us to support an end to nuclear war in honor of those who suffered from U.S. nuclear attacks sixty years ago. This remembrance will take place the evening of August 6th, at Riverside Park, off of Jennings road. More detailed information to come soon. For more information contact: Joseph Wasserman: 860.561.1897 ---------------------------------------------------------------- August 27th Alternatives to Military Recruitment Workshop Free and Open to the Public Hartford Area Place/Time TBA Light refreshments served The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 contains a little-known provision that threatens the federal funding of any school refusing to turn over all students' personal contact information to military recruiters upon demand. Students and parents have complained of multiple, harassing phone calls from recruiters as well as uninvited recruiters who come to their houses. For many young people in our community, military service is offered as the only viable opportunity for financial aid and job training. We seek to provide students with information about additional opportunities to further their educational and career goals by offering Alternatives to the Military. As we have seen by the military's inability to meet recruitment goals this year, more and more young people are seeking opportunities outside of military service. This workshop will provide skills training and resources for participants to provide Alternatives to Military Service to students in local Connecticut schools. For more information contact: American Friends Service Committee at 860.523.1534 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, September 11th Hope Out Loud IV 1pm at Bushnell Park Hartford, CT Free and open to the public A rally, a concert, a festival, a playground, a celebration, a remembrance, a day providing inspiration for renewal and recommitment. Now in its 4th Year, the Hope Out Loud Peace and Music Festival began as a response to 9/11: a shared call for peaceful, sustainable resolution of conflict in our towns and in our world through equity and social justice. We invite you as an individual and/or organization to join us - we are currently seeking organizational sponsors and volunteers. If you are interested in having an organization table at the event, or would like to lend a hand prior to or on the day of the event please call AFSC for more information. For more information, or to reserve a table call AFSC, 860.523.1534 ---------------------------------------------------------------- SEPTEMBER 24-26 Sat., 9/24 - Massive March, Rally & Festival Sun., 9/25 - Interfaith Service, Grassroots Training Mon., 9/26 - Lobby Day, Mass Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Disobedience END THE WAR ON IRAQ - BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! Leave no bases behind - End the corporate occupation of Iraq Stop bankrupting our communities - No military recruitment in our schools We will be organizing transportation from Connecticut to Washington D.C. Call AFSC for more information 860.523.1534 ------------------------------------------------------ Published on Monday, June 20, 2005 by CommonDreams.org June 2005: Phase II of the Anti-War Movement by Medea Benjamin For the history books, mark down June 2005 as the moment the US movement against the occupation of Iraq got its second wind. In June, the US public became solidly anti-war, Bush's approval rating took a nosedive, and a significant number of Congresspeople started to call for an exit strategy. This marks a seismic shift from just one month ago, when Congress overwhelmingly passed another $82 billion for war-with only 44 members of the House and not one Senator dissenting. The continued violence in Iraq, the daily deaths of US soldiers, and the non-stop drain of financial resources has finally moved the anti-war sentiment from a much-maligned minority position to a mainstream one. A Gallup poll June 6-8 found that 6 in 10 Americans advocated a partial or full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and for the first time, a majority said they would be upset with the president if he decided to send more troops. An Associated Press poll showed only 41% approved of Bush's handling of Iraq. With such negative perceptions of the war and 2006 midterm elections approaching, an increasing number of elected officials have finally started to listen to the public and push for an exit strategy. Thursday, June 16 was a snapshot of just how much the ground has shifted. The day started off with a press conference of strange bedfellows announcing the first bi-partisan Congressional resolution calling for an exit strategy. Appearing together before the press were two liberal Democrats-Dennis Kucinich from Ohio and Neil Abercrombie from Hawaii-with Republican libertarian Ron Paul from Texas and even more astonishing, conservative Republican Walter Jones from North Carolina-the very same congressman who pushed the House cafeterias to scrap "French fries" from the menu and serve up "freedom fries." Their new resolution, with a counterpart in the Senate introduced by Russ Feingold, calls on George Bush to announce a withdrawal timetable by the end of the year and start bringing American troops home by October 1, 2006. It has no end date for full withdrawal, and has a longer timeline for initiating the pull-out than many of us would have liked, but it's as far as the Republicans were willing to go and it's certainly a step in the right direction. Rep. Kucinich called it "the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq." Giving Rep. Kucinich's remark more punch is the fact that on the very same day, Congresswoman Maxine Waters from California announced the formation of a new Congressional Caucus succinctly labeled the "Out of Iraq" Caucus, with 41 members already signed on. "We can no longer keep quiet waiting for our Party to speak out against this war," she said in her press release. "The American people are expecting us to provide leadership to end this war and bring our troops home." The Caucus plans to coordinate Congressional anti-war activities, including legislative strategies, press events, liaison with national peace groups, and support for families and veterans against the war. Thursday also marked a step forward for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who represents the solidly anti-war district of San Francisco but has refused to take leadership against the war. On Thursday she introduced an amendment to the 2006 defense spending measure that would require Bush to report to Congress within 30 days on his criteria for bringing troops home. While defeated, it got an impressive 200 votes. But the real hero of the day was Rep. John Conyers Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who made history on Thursday by holding a hearing on the scandalous Downing Street memo and then hand-delivering to the White House over 560,000 signatures of American citizens demanding answers to critical questions raised by the memo. The Republicans forced Rep. Conyers to hold the hearing in a cramped basement room, and much of the mainstream press either ignored or belittled his efforts. But Rep. Conyers has tapped a wellspring of support from an angry public that sees the Downing Street memo as the smoking gun proving that the Bush administration was determined to go to war back in July 2002 and "fixed" the intelligence to fit the policy. The witnesses at the hearing included constitutional lawyer John C. Bonifaz, who said that if the documents were proven to be true, the president may have violated a federal law against misleading Congress, and his actions would be grounds for impeachment. Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, said the memo confirmed that "the leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence." She chided Congress for handing its responsibility to declare war over to the president, and said that a full investigation into the Downing Street Memo would be a "good beginning for Congress to redeem itself for abandoning the Constitution and the American people." Two dozen Congresspeople showed up at various times during the hearing to show their support. Afterwards, Conyers and seven other representatives hand-delivered two huge stacks of petitions to the White House, and then joined a spirited rally organized by Code Pink and Progressive Democrats of American on behalf of the coalition AfterDowningStreet.org. Before an enthusiastic crowd of about 800 people, Rep. Conyers and the other representatives vowed to continue to push for the truth, for accountability and for an end to the war. It was quite a day, and all of us left with a renewed sense of possibilities and responsibilities. The peace movement, demoralized after the unsuccessful efforts to both stop the war and get George Bush out of office, must lift itself out of the doldrums and into the streets and the corridors of power. We must push our representatives to sign on to the new legislation, keep demanding an investigation into the Downing Street Memo, and pressure the media to cover these new developments in a serious, respectful way. We should march in July 4 parades with the "Bring the Troops Home" message, reinvigorate our local vigils, step up the counter-recruitment efforts that are making it so difficult for the military to get enough new soldiers for this war. And the next big anti-war mobilization scheduled for September 24 in Washington DC, coupled with lobbying on September 26, must be huge. We've got new momentum. Now let's ride the wave. Medea Benjamin (medea at globalexchange.org), cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange, is co-editor of the new book Stop the Next War Now. AFSC Connecticut 56 Arbor Street Hartford, CT 06106 tel: 860.523.1534 fax: 860.523.1705 kho at afsc.org Visit AFSC CT Online Update Profile | Unsubscribe | Confirm | Forward -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From roseberry3 at cox.net Sat Jul 9 18:39:38 2005 From: roseberry3 at cox.net (B Barry) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 18:39:38 -0400 Subject: {news} EC July 11, 2005 meeting at 7:15pm to 9:15pm Message-ID: <20050709223936.FTPF14731.lakermmtao02.cox.net@BarbaraBarry> Executive Committee meeting of the Green Party of CT will be at: Greater Hartford Green Party's office at: 418 A New Britain Avenue Hartford, CT Date: Monday, 7-11-05 Time: 7:15pm to 9:15pm Open to Green Party of CT members and open to the public. Barbara Barry, Secretary of Green Party of CT Directions: www.mapquest.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Sun Jul 10 07:25:43 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 07:25:43 -0400 Subject: {news} eminent domain: "Your Land is My Land" Message-ID: <17d301c58542$1c96ae60$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> Dear all, FYI: Article describes the sad case of Pittsburgh. Justine -------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/opinion/05tierney.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- July 5, 2005 Your Land Is My Land By JOHN TIERNEY PITTSBURGH - Two questions I'd like to ask candidates for Sandra Day O'Connor's job: 1. Does the Constitution forbid the government from seizing your home and giving it to someone else? 2. If you're not sure, would you be willing to tour Pittsburgh before taking this job? Justice O'Connor had no problem with the first question. Noting that the Fifth Amendment allows property to be taken only for a "public use" like a road, she rejected arguments that it could be given to a developer just because the public could benefit from new jobs and tax revenues. By that logic, she argued in one of her last opinions, no one's home or business would be safe from anyone with a better use in mind for it. But her side was outvoted, 5 to 4, by justices not inclined to be too literal about the Bill of Rights. They were pragmatists, arguing that land grabs like this had previously been allowed, which is quite right. And that's why I recommend a trip to my hometown to see the long-term effects. Pittsburgh has been the great pioneer in eminent domain ever since its leaders razed 80 buildings in the 1950's near the riverfront park downtown. They replaced a bustling business district with Gateway Center, an array of bland corporate towers surrounded by the sort of empty plazas that are now considered hopelessly retrograde by urban planners trying to create street life. At the time, though, the towers and plazas seemed wonderfully modern. Viewed from across the river, the new skyline was a panoramic advertisement for the Pittsburgh Renaissance, which became a national model and inspired Pittsburgh's leaders to go on finding better uses for private land, especially land occupied by blacks. Bulldozers razed the Lower Hill District, the black neighborhood next to downtown that was famous for its jazz scene (and now famous mostly as a memory in August Wilson's plays). The city built a domed arena that was supposed to be part of a cultural "acropolis," but the rest of the project died. Today, having belatedly realized that downtown would benefit from people living nearby, the city is trying to entice them back to the Hill by building homes there. In the 1960's, the bulldozers moved into East Liberty, until then the busiest shopping district outside downtown. Some of the leading businessmen there wanted to upgrade the neighborhood, so hundreds of small businesses and thousands of people were moved to make room for upscale apartment buildings, parking lots, housing projects, roads and a pedestrian mall. I was working there in a drugstore whose owners cursed the project, and at first I thought they were just behind the times. But their worst fears were confirmed. The shopping district was destroyed. The drugstore closed, along with the department stores, movie theaters, office buildings and most other businesses. You'd think a fiasco like that would have humbled Pittsburgh's planners, but they just went on. They kicked out a small company to give H. J. Heinz more room. Mayor Tom Murphy has attracted national attention for his grand designs - and fights - to replace thriving small businesses downtown and on the North Side with more upscale tenants. The city managed to clear out shops and an office building to make room for a new Lazarus department store, built with $50 million in public funds, but Lazarus did not live up to its name. It has shut down and left a vacant building. Meanwhile, the city's finances are in ruins, and businesses and residents have been fleeing the high taxes required to pay off decades of urban renewal projects and corporate subsidies. Yet the mayor still yearns for more acquisitions. He welcomed the Supreme Court decision, telling The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that eminent domain "is a great equalizer when you're having a conversation with people." Well, that's one way to describe the power to take people's property. But I think a future Supreme Court justice would have a different view of eminent domain after touring Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, especially those that escaped urban renewal: the old-fashioned business districts with crowded sidewalks and the newly gentrified neighborhoods with renovated homes and converted warehouses. The future justice would quickly see what sets the success stories apart from Gateway Center and East Liberty. No politicians ever seized those homes and businesses for a "better use." E-mail: tierney at nytimes.com For Further Reading: Private Property Rights, Institute for Justice. Death by Wrecking Ball: Pittsburgh and the Politics of Eminent Domain by Bill Steigerwald, Reason Magazine, June 2000. Witness to the Fifties: The Pittsburgh Photographic Library, 1950-53, edited by Constance B. Bchultz and Steven W. Plattner, narrative by Clarke M. Thomas, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999. a.. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: logoprinter.gif Type: image/gif Size: 1810 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: kinsey_pf.gif Type: image/gif Size: 1481 bytes Desc: not available URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Sun Jul 10 08:43:13 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 08:43:13 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: Tues. Rally for Immigrant Rights Message-ID: <181701c5854c$f017d6b0$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> FYI Greens-- Please try to attend. Justine ----- Original Message ----- From: Stan H To: ctpeace ctpeace ; awda awda Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 3:06 PM Subject: [al-awda-CT] Tues. Rally for Immigrant Rights [It is very important that Middle East human rights activists organize and show up for this! - Stanley Heller] Pro worker and immigrant rally organized by the Committee to Protect and Preserve Immigrant Rights Tuesday July 12, 2005 5:30 pm Naugatuck Savings Bank parking lot, Straits Turnpike (Route 84 to Exit 17 Route 63 (Straits Turnpike) towards Watertown and in same parking lot as the KMART) English flyer attached. Please forward to all your contacts. Text of the flyer: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore; send these, the homeless . I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" November 2,1883 The Statue of Liberty sends a clear signal that all are welcome here who have come to build a better life. Real wages are not going up because of corporations investing outside of the US, trade agreements, outsourcing and corporations looking to cut corners at the expense of workers, not because of new immigrants come here looking for a better life just like all of us or our family before us. The Connecticut Committee for Immigration Control who has organized anti-immigrant and anti-worker meetings in Danbury and West Hartford is going to meet at the American Legion Hall, 62 Bunker Hill Road Watertown, CT. They blame immigrants instead of corporations for he bad economy. Let's send a clear message that we will not be fooled by their words. They do not represent what is best for all workers and for the United States and what they really want to do is to divide us using fear to achieve their political ends. "It was really miserable in Italy. But in America, when you worked, you earned money and could eat and drink what you wanted. I hate injustice and prejudice. So I said to myself, when I get old enough to marry, I'm going to marry the first man who promises to take me to America." Clementina Todesco, (around 1900) Committee to Protect and Preserve Immigrant Rights -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Mon Jul 11 11:04:37 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 08:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} National Guard SPIES ON WAR PROTESTORS Message-ID: <20050711150437.35403.qmail@web81401.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sfbayview.com/070605/guardspies070605.shtmlhttp://www.sfbayview.com/070605/guardspies070605.shtml California National Guard spies on protesters Sacramento ? The Green Party of California says it has ?grave concerns? over the recent revelation that the California National Guard has admitted setting up a new unit to spy on California citizens ? especially those engaging in free speech activities in opposition to the war in Iraq. The Greens called on the Legislature to start an immediate investigation, praising Sen. Joseph Dunn, D-Garden Grove, who Wednesday also said he wanted hearings. In a published report in the San Jose Mercury-News Sunday, the Guard confessed ? confirmed by Guard upper-echelon emails ? that it had tracked at least one anti-war rally held on Mother?s Day in May at the State Capitol that included Gold Star Families for Peace, Raging Grannies and CodePink. In those emails, the Guard said its ?folks? continued to ?monitor? the rally, which included parents of American soldiers killed in Iraq. These kinds of activities by the military ? tracking civilians? constitutionally-protected activities ? are illegal under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the U.S. military from participating in domestic law enforcement. ?We have grave concerns that the First Amendment rights of Californians have been violated, in spirit and in practice, by overzealous National Guard leaders. It?s something our elected lawmakers in Sacramento should investigate immediately,? said Tom Bolema, GPCA Coordinating Committee representative from Los Angeles. Noting that the Guard exists to protect Californians in times of natural disasters, the Greens added that the Guard is already being misused because it is sending large numbers of its personnel to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. ?There is no place in a free society for military spying on its citizenry, especially those who are expressing their constitutionally-protected rights. The Guard has violated that trust, and we expect a full investigation,? said Bolema. To contact or learn more about the California Green Party, visit www.cagreens.org. San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper 4917 Third Street San Francisco California 94124 Phone: (415) 671-0789 Fax: (415) 671-0316 Email: editor at sfbayview.com =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Mon Jul 11 22:55:15 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 22:55:15 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: Voting Rights Act Renewal Message-ID: <1eee01c5868d$21e406f0$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> Voting Rights Act Renewal Connecticut Voting Rights Coalition Working Together to Protect Our Democratic Right to Vote June 30, 2005 Dear Sisters & Brothers: We are inviting you to a Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. in Room 127, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street, New Haven. This is not only to mark the event, but to rally for the defense of its enforcement provisions that will sunset January 1, 2007. There are calls to do away with those clauses preventing 16 designated States from changing election laws or redistricting without review by the Department of Justice or Federal Court to prevent gerrymandering eliminating minority representation; language other than English requirements and Federal investigation of voting complaints. WE MUST COME TOGETHER TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY! We have not forgotten the lynchings, the killings, the dogs, the demonstrations, petitions and marches. Just 40 years ago, after hundreds of years, the right to vote for everyone was finally written into legislation. Now after the elections of 2000 and 2004, still fresh in our minds, we cannot allow an assault on the Voting Rights Act! This is not isolated from all the issues: jobs, housing, the environment, civil rights and social security. It is cut from the same cloth, all threads in the coat of democratic rights. We are a coalition that has come together to work to make sure our Congressional delegation, all seven, vote to protect democracy. We are encouraging other organizations and the community at large to join us in our efforts to ensure that our right to vote is not taken away. Attached is more information on the Voting Rights Act. For more information, please call Roger Vann of the ACLU of CT at (860) 247-9823, ext. 219. Or log on to www.aclu.org/votingrightsact. We need you! We urge your attendance! CT AFL-CIO State Council Community Organized for Responsible Development (CORD) American Civil Liberties Union of CT CT Center for a New Economy Democracy Works Amistad Committee, Inc. Greater New Haven Peace Council City of New Haven Peace Commission Descendants of the 29th Colored Infantry Regiment UNITE-HERE Locals 34-35 Greater New Haven Labor Council New Haven People's Center Coalition of Black Trade Unionists CT Chapter (CBTU) A. Philip Randolph Institute CT Chapter (APRI) Labor Council of Latin American Advancement CT Chapter (LCLAA) Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) Pride @ Work CT Communist Party Labor Donated Bloody Sunday: "Wrong, Deadly Wrong" On a cold day in early March 1965, more than 500 peaceful demonstrators set off from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery. They marched to protest the continued disfranchisement of blacks in the South and the murder of a young unarmed black man, shot by police while trying to protect his mother and grandfather from being beaten by state troopers after a civil rights meeting. As the marchers began to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, they were assaulted by a phalanx of state and local police in riot gear. The peaceful demonstrators were beaten with billy clubs and sprayed with tear gas in full view of national television cameras. The brutality sparked national outrage, and marked a turning point in the American civil rights movement. President Lyndon Johnson called the attack "wrong, deadly wrong." Five months after this "Bloody Sunday," a united Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has become one of the most successful civil rights laws in America's history. Forty Years of Progress In the 40 years since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has guaranteed millions of minority voters a chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted. The number of black elected officials has increased from just 300 nationwide in 1964 to more than 9,100 today, and the poll taxes, literacy tests and other discriminatory barriers that once closed the ballot box to blacks and other minorities have been dismantled. The act also opened the political process for many of the nearly 5,000 Latinos who now hold public office, including more than 250 who serve at the state or federal level. The 2007 Reauthorization The 1965 law was never meant as a quick fix. Recognizing that many states, counties and cities continued to erect barriers to minority political participation, no fewer than four presidents - Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush -- supported the expansion of key parts of the law. Notably, each time the law has been renewed by Congress, a Republican president has ratified the bill. On signing the 1982 extension, which passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 389 to 24, President Reagan called the right to vote the "crown-jewel" of American liberties. In 2007, however, three crucial sections of the Voting Rights Act will expire unless Congress votes to renew them. These include: ? A requirement that states with a documented history of discriminatory voting practices submit planned changes in their election laws or procedures to federal officials or judges for preclearance. A bipartisan Congressional report in 1982 warned that without this section, discrimination would reappear "overnight." ? Provisions that guarantee access to bilingual election materials for some Native Americans who have limited English proficiency and new citizens trying to learn the language. ? The authority to send federal examiners and observers to monitor elections. A Continuing Need The expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act remain essential to ensure fairness in our political process and equal opportunity for minorities in American politics. Although great strides have been made in reducing discrimination, the ideal of "one person, one vote," is still just that - an ideal. In South Dakota, for example, a recent court decision detailed two decades of systematic voting rights abuses against Native Americans. In the South, every redistricting plan submitted by Louisiana legislators for federal preclearance has been rejected by both Democratic and Republican attorneys general. In places like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, voters with limited English proficiency continue to face resistance, unfair practices and poll workers who don't follow the law. At a time when America has staked so much of its international reputation on the need to spread democracy around the world, we must ensure its vitality here at home. FREEDOM IS WHY WE'RE HERE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: %CVRC LTR-6_ 1.doc Type: application/msword Size: 127 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CVRC LTR-6_ 1.doc Type: application/msword Size: 38912 bytes Desc: not available URL: From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Tue Jul 12 09:05:52 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 06:05:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} New List Serve and yahoo group for Greater Hartford Green Party Message-ID: <20050712130552.19215.qmail@web81402.mail.yahoo.com> Folks, We have just created a new yahoo group for the Greater Hartford Area Green Party. We can exchange emails, take polls of current issues and concerns and many other features are available. A new web site will soon be up. So please subscribe by clicking here: Hartford_Greens-subscribe at yahoogroups.com or by email to the above address Many great events are planned for the Hartford Greens, so be one of the first to sign and get involved! Please pass this email along to anyone who may wish to subscribe! =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Tue Jul 12 13:13:16 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 13:13:16 -0400 Subject: {news} FYI: The Best Corporate Health Plan Message-ID: <1fe401c58704$fee226a0$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> "And here's a prediction: A serious campaign based on single-payer national health insurance could propel someone to the White House in 2008." The Best Corporate Health Plan By Jonathan Tasini June 30, 2005, tompaine.com http://www.tompaine.com/ The imploding health care system is finally making one thing crystal clear: Corporate America is shredding its own global competitiveness because it can't shake the death grip of an anti-government ideology. This short-sighted ideology leads big business to shun single-payer national health insurance, which could save businesses hundreds of billions of dollars. The simple fact is that private-sector insurance has failed. According to the 30-member-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2003, 'the United States spent $5,635 per person on health, more than twice the OECD average and around ten times more than the lowest-spending countries, Mexico and Turkey.' According to the National Coalition on Health Care, 'Health insurance premiums will rise to an average of more than $14,500 for family coverage in 2006.' The United States devotes 15 percent of its gross domestic product to health spending. Because health care expenditures come either out of business profits or get passed on to consumers as higher prices, U.S. companies put themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared, at least, to every other country in the industrialized world. And that doesn't even touch the issue of China. Though the China competitive issue is bigger than health care, The New York Times reported this week that a Chinese auto worker earns $1.50 an hour in wages and benefits, compared to $55 an hour at General Motors. There are two responses that the business community has to this crisis: eliminate health coverage altogether or shift the costs of health care to workers. You want a headache, check this out: according to the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, the annual premium that a health insurer charges an employer for a health plan covering a family of four averaged $9,950, or $829 a month in 2004; workers contributed $2,661, or 10 percent more than they spent in 2003; and, for single coverage, workers contributed an average of $558 toward the $3,695 annual premium. I'm not here to argue the moral imperative for single-payer national health care. Instead, progressives need to turn their rhetoric to hard-core, good 'ole patriotic, rally 'round the flag' American business interests. In a 'Working in America' column six months ago , I wrote that 'companies that don't advocate for a single-payer system are endangering shareholder value, throwing money into a system that is dragging down profits and competitiveness.' That has become clearer as time passes. What better example can one give than GM, the once-proud gold standard of American industry whose bonds' credit rating has plummeted to junk status? GM will spend $5.6 billion this year on health care for its employees and retirees-more money than it shells out for steel for its cars-which means every GM car we buy costs $1,500 more because of health care. Speaking to GM shareholders recently, GM's CEO Rick Waggoner said, 'Our $1,500-per-unit health care expense represents a significant disadvantage versus our foreign-based competitors. Left unaddressed, this will make a big difference in our ability to compete in investment, technology and other key contributors to our future success.' Now don't get me wrong: GM has an obligation to its workers. And its saber-rattling threats that the United Auto Workers must agree by today to health care benefit cuts for auto workers is outrageous, and perhaps illegal (full disclosure: I am a UAW member). But the problem is unavoidable. Even that poster child for corporate malfeasance, Wal-Mart, would have good reason to get behind a single-payer plan, if only to get some good press. Wal-Mart workers, who make an average of $14,000 a year, are forced to pay a $1,000 deductible-when they qualify at all for the company's stingy lan. Since most workers can't foot that bill, taxpayers already subsidize Wal-Mart: 13 percent of its 91,000 workers in Florida are enrolled in the state Medicaid program, 10,000 children of Wal-Mart workers in Georgia rely on state-funded health care and the company leads the pack in this dubious category in other states such as Iowa, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arkansas and New Hampshire. Some executives are starting to see the light. I recently had an exchange with a senior executive from a national employer lobbying group who said, 'You're right that some are thinking, 'How much worse can it be?' Thus far, though, national health care is a bridge too far.' Instead, companies are fiddling around the edges, engaging in discussions with various health care advocacy groups-but always falling short of the single-payer option. So we have to build that bridge and lead-or kick-corporate America across it. Only a single-payer national plan will work. All the other gimmicks relying on market-based, employer-centered insurance have failed. The premiums for employer-based health insurance rose by 11.2 percent in 2004, the fourth consecutive year of double-digit increases-and every single type of plan (health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations, and point-of-service plans) registered double-digit increases. And, ultimately, state-based single-payer plans, while admirable, can't survive in the long term because they will lack the economies of scale only a sweeping national plan can make possible. We need to put the real onus on corporate executives with a carrot-and-stick approach that is based on a clear principle: your ability to compete depends on single-payer health care. For those who refuse, it's time to mount an aggressive corporate and public relations campaign. One shareholder approach might be to cut back executive pay and benefits each year by the same percentage total health care costs amount to in the corporate bottom-line. If that doesn't work, a more serious step would call for divesting from companies that oppose single-payer. Organized labor and their allies in the huge public employee pension funds should lead the fight. If unions represented the same proportion of the workforce they did in the 1950s-35 percent-40 million people would not be without health insurance because more people would be under unionized, employer-based health plans. And we'd end up with a different system because unions-whose main fight at the bargaining table today is over health care costs-would have a stronger hand to play in lobbying for single-payer. But even in its smaller state, unions need to take the fight on for the public good. Pension funds, representing hundreds of thousands of current and retired workers who face health care cost pressure, have a significant financial interest in seeing the system changed; the California Public Employees Retirement System alone has $177 billion that it could use as leverage. When I first broached this notion with colleagues, they snorted, 'Yeah, but how do you pass this kind of thing with Republicans controlling the government?' That's a fair point-if your thought process is driven solely through a 'red state, blue state' prism. But I'd wager that the wind could shift dramatically, driven by a population of all colors that can coax or bludgeon the business community into doing what's in its best economic self-interest. And here's a prediction: A serious campaign based on single-payer national health insurance could propel someone to the White House in 2008. [Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.] > _______________________________________________________ > From kelly.mccarthy at aya.yale.edu Wed Jul 13 09:33:56 2005 From: kelly.mccarthy at aya.yale.edu (Kelly McCarthy) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 09:33:56 -0400 Subject: {news} Important--Chapter Reps Please Read! Message-ID: <200507131334.j6DDY6S31051@easy-designs.net> 11 July 2005 Green Party of Connecticut Chapters, We need you! After our second consecutive quorum-less meeting, it has come to our attention that some of our Chapters may be inactive at this time and others may just be failing to understand the importance of their participation at the SCC. The Party is in a state of flux, and we have a good many exciting developments eagerly waiting in the wings for their chance to shine. But, in order for the GPC to accomplish any of these great plans, Chapter Reps must attend the SCC meetings and our membership must be involved in proposals, committees, campaigns and events. It has been our general operating procedure to assume a Chapter is inactive if they fail to represent themselves at two consecutive SCC meetings (although our current by-laws are much more vague regarding participation and require inactivity for a period of six months). We have two options here: 1) either Chapters become more diligent, if they are indeed still active, or 2) we adjust the number of active Chapters in their absence, in order to achieve quorum (2/3 representation), and continue with business. Not sure if your Chapter is active? Below you will find the complete list of our Chapters and their current status. If your Chapter is on "probation" and you are still an active Green Chapter, then please send a Rep to the next SCC meeting to reinstate your Chapter to active status. Thanks for your time. We hope to see you soon! Cheers, Kelly McCarthy - Co-Chair GPC Executive Committee 83 Treadwell St. Hamden, CT 06517 203.230.9726 - kelly.mccarthy at aya.yale.edu GP of CT Chapter Status / Voting Reps Central - Active Vic Lancia Vincent Maruffi Fairfield - Probation Ed Friend David Bedell Hamden - Active Francis Braunlich Aaron Gustafson Kelly McCarthy Hartford - Active Mike DeRosa Barbara Barry DeRosa Rob Pandolfo Albert Marceau New Britain - Probation Miguel Nieves New Haven - Active Charlie Pillsbury David Eliscu Ralph Ferrucci New London - Active Chris Nelson Andy Derr Northeast - Probation Jean deSmet Chris Demorit Northwest - Active Tom Sevigny Kim Herkimer Judy Herkimer Shoreline - Active Lindsay Mathews David Adams Colin Bennett Tolland - Active Karin Norton Tim McKee Western - Active John Battista Justine McCabe Women's Caucus - Active Liz Brancato Lynah Linwood -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Thu Jul 14 09:41:42 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 06:41:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} GREENSWEEK July 13, 2005 - are you signed up? Message-ID: <20050714134142.78933.qmail@web81405.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Greens, I am forwarding this NATIONAL Greens email. I hope you will sign up with the contact information near the bottom. PS this is a great format for local chapters to send out inofrmation too. Please copy the format for your local use!*** Tim Mckee GREENSWEEK A national Green bulletin Vol. 3, No. 8 Wednesday, July 13, 2005 http://www.gp.org/greensweek/ Join the Greensweek mailing list at http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/greensweek Green Party of the United States: http://www.gp.org Contribute to the Green Party: http://www.gp.org/donate Contents: - Green news - Upcoming events - Green Action - Resources - Good reads //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\// G R E E N N E W S NATIONAL GREEN PARTY MEETING Green Country Greens and the Green Party of Oklahoma will host the annual meeting of the Green Party of then United States in Tulsa, Oklahoma, July 21-24. State Green Party delegates to the National Committee, party leaders and staff, and other Greens will gather at the University of Tulsa. Highlights include Campaign School workshops for candidates and other Greens involved in campaigns, election of national officers, organizing meetings of Campus Greens and the Youth Caucus, workshop on White Privilege and the proposed Right-to-Vote Act, and a speech by Cherokee Chief Chad Smith. Visit the web site for information about registration, lodging, and the location. http://www.gp.org/meeting2005/ http://www.campusgreens.org CHARGES AGAINST MAYOR JASON WEST DROPPED On July 12, the district attorney of Ulster County, New York dropped charges against Mayor Jason West of New Paltz for marrying same-sex couples, saying that a trial would be needless and divisive. Mayor West, a member of the Green Party, had been charged with 24 misdemeanor counts of violating the state's domestic relations law when he performed public marriage ceremonies for two dozen gay and lesbian couples in February 2004. Mayor West had been expected to stand trial in the fall, and if convicted, he could have faced fines and up to a year in prison. His lawyer, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, said the district attorney's decision was a "total and complete vindication." The original charges were dismissed by a town justice in June 2004, but were reinstated by a county judge in February. Mayor West appealed that decision, but the State Court of Appeals declined to hear the case. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/nyregion/13gay.html? NATIONAL The Green Party's Strategic Planning Working Group has completed the Verification Phase of the National Shared Vision Survey. Forty-seven states participated (including some that aren't Green Party affiliates), and 538 total surveys were received. The surveys will be analyzed according to four areas: Internal/Financial, Visibility, Electoral, and Issues. The survey results will be published during the Green Party's annual meeting in Tulsa, June 21-24 (see item above). CALIFORNIA (1) 2003 Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo said on June 20 that the "Christian Taliban" is responsible for attacks on the civil liberties of all Americans, and the harassment of the Muslim community of Lodi during an ongoing probe of alleged terrorist links there. (2) The Green Party of California expressed relief that "bogus" charges against San Francisco Green Party activist June Brashares were found to be false by a New York jury late Thursday night in her trial stemming from an arrest during President Bush's speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention. (3) The Oakland Green Party announced its support for the Measure Y Coalition, councilmember Desley Brooks, and other city officials seeking to develop alternative venues for sideshows participants. (4) The Green Party of California said it had "grave concerns" over the recent revelation that the California National Guard has admitted setting up a new unit to spy on California citizens ? especially those engaging in free speech activities in opposition to the war in Iraq. (5) Citing the health of all Californians, California Greens praised the passage by a key Assembly committee of legislation to create a universal health care system, but warned that "greedy" special interests are trying to kill the bill. SB 840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles), survived the Assembly Health Committee on a 9-4 vote and now moves to the full Assembly for a vote. It earlier passed the Senate. http://www.cagreens.org/ DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (1) Several members of the DC Statehood Green Party participated in rallies at a Washington, DC meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The stated purpose of the rallies was to encourage European parliamentarians to issue a statement supporting voting rights in Congress for DC, but Statehood Greens emphasized that voting rights did not confer democracy on the District, and instead demanded DC statehood. (2) Statehood Greens helped raise money for peace and justice activist Damu Smith, who is suffering from cancer. Smith is founder of Black Voices for Peace. (3) Statehood Green Party leaders Jared Ball and Rick Tingling-Clemmons spoke at the Juneteenth Celebration and DC Music Festival on June 19 at the African American Civil War Memorial. The event commemorated the 140th anniversary of the day, June 19, 1865, when Union troops reached Galveston, Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation in the last state of Confederate rebellion -- 2? years after the date of the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863). http://www.dcstatehoodgreen.org//press/press.php?annc_id=91?ion_id=2 http://www.dcstatehoodgreen.org//press/press.php?annc_id=88?ion_id=2 http://www.dcstatehoodgreen.org/ FLORIDA The Green Party of Pinellas County announced that it stands in firm solidarity with the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual community during this time of struggle, declaring they stand in pride and with vision for a more inclusive, accepting society for all. http://www.pinellasgreens.org/ http://www.floridagreens.org/ GEORGIA The Elaine Brown, Green candidate for Mayor of Brunswick, Georgia invites supporters to send a contribution for some important campaign equipment: http://www.elainebrown.org/ HAWAI'I The Green Party of Hawai'i has announced the results of its state elections: Co-Chair Mary Stone, Co-Chair Jill Sadoyama; Recorder/Alternate Delegate Lanny Sinkin; Treasurer and Delegate Julie Jacobson; Membership and Delegate Claire Mortimer; Alternate Delegate Jeff Turner. http://www.greenhawaii.org/ MASSACHUSETTS At their state convention on June 4 and 5, the Green-Rainbow Party passed these statements: (1) The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts calls for the end of all American military and economic aid to Israel. (2) The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts calls for an ecologically sound commitment to equitably sharing and conserving all water and other natural resources among all peoples of the region. (3) The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts supports full implementation of the Right of Return for each Palestinian refugee, which means each Palestinian has the right to choose to return to his or her home and lands. This right is a fundamental human right and is enshrined in international law for all peoples of the world. (4) The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts rejects all apartheid-based governmental systems and calls for a secular, democratic governing entity for all people in the geographic region of historic Palestine (today referred to by some people as Israel, the West Bank and Gaza). We support a democratic system with equal rights for all in which the peoples of the region democratically decide their future. (5) The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts recognizes the right of Palestinians to self-defense as well as nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and the Israeli project of forced displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population which has been ongoing since 1948. The right to resist occupation is guaranteed to all peoples of the world by international law. http://www.massgreens.org/ MICHIGAN (1) The Green Party of Michigan joined the national Green Party of the United States in citing the Downing Street memo as further evidence of the deceit of the Bush Administration in its rush to invade Iraq, and as reason for citizens of all parties (or none) to call for the end of the occupation and the impeachment of George W. Bush. (2) Michigan Greens endorsed grassroots activist Maureen D. Taylor in her campaign for a seat on Detroit City Council, at the party's quarterly state membership meeting in Dearborn. (3) Greens heard from Grassroots Activist Maureen D. Taylor, then endorsed her candidacy for Detroit City Council. (4) Michigan Greens demanded for justice for Rev. Pinkney, BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization) from Berrien County Legal System over Benton Harbor recall. http://michiganpeaceworks.org/sigad_July4_05.html http://bhbanco.blogspot.com/ http://michiganimc.org/newswire/display/11036/index.php http://www.migreens.org MINNESOTA The St. Paul Green Party?s endorsed candidate, Elizabeth Dickinson, is drawing lots of press coverage and wide interest in her race for city council in the last city election in St. Paul. Ms. Dickinson is widely known for efforts to get coal fired power plants in the inner city switched over to natural gas to reduce air pollution. She stepped down as political director of the Minnesota AIDS Project to run. http://www.elizabethdickinson.org/sp06-28-05.php NEW YORK The Green Party of Onondaga County made its final round of candidate designations at a county convention on Monday, June 27. The Greens designated Cosmo Fanizzi for the 16th County Legislature District seat. Fanizzi is a carpenter and a longtime resident of the north side of Syracuse. David Linton was designated for the 17th County Legislature District seat. Linton grew up on the near west side, is a longtime resident of Syracuse, a retired Syracuse Fireman and US Postal worker, a veteran, and a Little League coach at Skiddy Park. Finally the Greens voted to designate Howie Hawkins for Mayor. Hawkins is a Teamster truck unloader at UPS and a long-time Green Party activist. Previously, the Greens had designated Hawkins for the Councilor At-Large seat vacated by Beth Brownson, but they decided to shift Hawkins to the race for mayor. Gary Bonaparte completes the field of Green candidates. Bonaparte was designated for the 2nd District Common Council seat at the Green?s May 28th meeting. Bonaparte is a Mohawk ironworker who is active in the Partnership for Onondaga Creek and the Syracuse Peace Council. http://www.syracusegreens.org http://www.gpnys.org/ NEW YORK (1) Region 2 State Committee members of the Green Party of New York State have endorsed the following campaigns for New York City: Jerry Kann for City Council, District 22 in Queens; Gloria Mattera for Borough President of Brooklyn; Robyn Sklar for City Council, District 26 in Queens. (2) Civil rights activist Alice Green announced her bid for mayor on the Green Party line Monday, saying she would consider the effort a success if she draws public debate to the plight of struggling families. Green will focus on creating jobs and affordable housing for the poor. http://www.gpnys.org/county/?page_id=7 http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=378364 OKLAHOMA The Green Party of Oklahoma held its 4th annual state convention June 24-26 and has elected new delegates to the national committee. The new national representatives are Delegates: Joni LeViness of Tulsa, and Huti Reynolds of Porum. Alternate Delegates: James M. Branum, of Oklahoma City; one alternative spot yet to be named. http://www.okgreens.org/ PENNSYLVANIA Greens led by Carl Romanelli in Wilkes-Barre persuaded their City Council to pass a resolution in support of Ingrid Betancourt: "... The City Council of Wilkes-Barre bestows honorary citizenship to the city of Wilkes-Barre on Ingrid Betancourt and Yolanda Pulecio, and that the City Council of Wilkes-Barre calls upon the government of the United States of America to join the City Council of Wilkes-Barre, the Luzerne County Green Party, the United States Green Party and the International Green Party in requesting Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe appoint a negotiator for resumption of the Colombian peace process." http://www.gpofpa.org http://www.greens.org/ingrid RHODE ISLAND (1) In response to growing homelessness rates and proposed cuts to several housing programs by the Bush administration, the Green Party of Rhode Island has taken on the issue of affordable housing as one of its primary campaigns. (2) The Green Party of Rhode Island demanded an end to the use of Depleted Uranium. Rhode Island Greens urged local and national elected officials to take action to end the use of Depleted Uranium. http://www.greens.org/ri WISCONSIN (1) The Green Institute, the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution, and the Havens Center sponsored a Green Policy Conference at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, June 24-26, to discuss officeholder coordination, education and assistance. The meeting was attended by 13 officeholders, seven from Wisconsin, two from California, and one each from Illinois, Oregon, Washington, DC, and Wyoming. (2) Read the latest news out of Dane County, (Madison): http://www.fourlakesgreenparty.org/ http://www.wisconsingreenparty.org/ GREEN INSTITUTE The Green Institute and GP360 have announced the publication of "Strategic Demands of the 21st Century: A New Global Vision for a New World" by Roger Morris & Steven Schmidt, on June 30, 2005. http://www.gp360.net/publications/NewVision.pdf NATIONAL Recent Green Party press releases: -- Greens urged state and municipal governments to maintain access to medical marijuana, in accord with democratically enacted local laws, despite theSupreme Court's ruling on June 6 in favor of federal prosecution. "Numerous cities have passed resolutions condemning the USA Patriot Act for violating basic constitutional rights and condemning the invasion of Iraq" said Maya O'Connor, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States, who noted that many of these resolutions were passed through the efforts of Green elected officials and lobbying efforts led by Greens. "We urge city and state legislatures to adopt similar resolutions defending locally enacted laws allowing medical marijuana." http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_15.shtml -- Greens urged the Senate to reject the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, calling the bill an effort to subsidize nuclear energy as a way to combat global warming. The bill repeats earlier failed legislation that would combine mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions with a credit-trading system modeled after the Clean Air Act, and adds incentives for nuclear development ($6.1 billion in the recently passed House version; $4.3 billion in the Senate bill). http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_23.shtml http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062105EB.shtml -- Greens criticized the Supreme Court's June 23 decision in the Kelo v. City of New London case, calling it a "legalization of theft." The decision expands the power of government to condemn private property ('eminent domain'), permitting officials to transfer property from one private owner to another. "Working class and low income homeowners will be at special risk, since they provide less tax revenue, and the Court now gives permission for city councils and statehouses to evict and replace them with commercial and residential development for the sake of a wealthier tax base," said Steve Kramer, Green Party co-chair. "In the wake of the New London decision, the choice between voting for a Green and voting for a Democrat or Republican in some races might spell the difference between keeping and losing one's home," said Green Party co-chair Peggy Lewis. Many local Green candidates, such as Elaine Brown (running for Mayor of Brunswick, Georgia) and Gloria Mattera (running for Brookly, New York, Borough President) are fighting eminent domain battles. http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_28.shtml http://www.elainebrown.org/Brunswick%20Factsheet.php http://www.electgloria.org/news/campaign/20050624.php -- Greens accused Democratic Party elected officials of failing to hold President Bush sufficiently responsible for betraying the trust of the American people, after the President used the 9/11 attacks to justify the administration's planned invasion and occupation of Iraq during his speech on Tuesday, June 28. "What the President told America in his speech wasn't grounds for cautious criticism -- it was grounds for impeachment," said Elena Everett, chair of the North Carolina Green Party and Co-chair of the Green Party's Peace Action Committee. "None of the Democratic leaders who criticized Mr. Bush are willing to admit that the enormity of his deception deserves impeachment. None of them are willing to demand a halt to the slaughter of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops by ending the occupation." The Green Party supports impeachment of President Bush. http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_07_01.shtml -- Greens condemned the July 7 attacks on the London transit system, and expressed sympathy for the families of the murdered, for the hundreds of people injured, and for all those shaken by the bombings. Greens also called July 7 bombings consistent with warnings that the invasion of Iraq would fuel anti-West anger and make the world less secure from terrorism. http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_07_08.shtml NATIONAL Brent McMillan, political director of the Green Party of the United States, attended the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform hearings at Rice University in Houston, Texas on June 30. Mr. McMillan submitted a brief on behalf of the Green Party challenging commission members to support numerous systematic reforms. Greens have led numerous efforts across the U.S. for election reforms, demanding 'clean elections' plans, Instant Runoff Voting, and other proposals, and have criticized the failure of the 'Help America Vote Act of 2002' to ensure accurate vote counts through new technology. http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_27.shtml NATIONAL (May through October) The Green Party Task Force on Haiti continues to urge Greens and Green Parties to join its campaign to support Haitian democracy and justice, titled "Season of Solidarity with Haiti." The Task Force invites Green Party members and friends to plan solidarity actions and events from May throught October, 2005 (May is Haitian Heritage Month), and encourages state Green Parties to endorse the eason of Solidarity with Haiti. The Task Force on Haiti is organized by members of the Green Party's Peace Action Committee, Black Caucus, and International Committee and is currently seeking members. Individual Greens are encouraged to sign on to the endorsement list. http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_02_07.html Contact: Logan Martinez, loganmartinez at hotmail.com NATIONAL Listen to an interview with national Green Party Media Coordinator Scott McLarty,on the Lizz Brown Show, WGNU in St. Louis. Scott discussed the Downing Street Memo & impeachment movement at length, and urged listeners to read the text of the memo itself at gp.org on our 'impeach' page. http://server2.whiterosesociety.org/content/brown/LizzBrownShow-(23-06-2005).mp3 NATIONAL Richard Scott has accepted the position of On-Line Fundraising and Outreach Coordinator. Along with his dedication to the Green Party and progressive politics Richard has an extensive Information Technology background. The On-Line Fundraising and Outreach Coordinator will work with committees and staff to develop our internet fundraising and outreach systems. We were pleased to have had a number of excellent applicants for this job and we are glad that Richard has accepted the position. Richard is the newest member of the Green Party fundraising team. HELP WANTED (1) The Green Party of the United States is looking for Legal Counsel. This is a volunteer position. Counsel will primarily advise the Steering Committee. Send resumes and contact information to Maya O'Connor . HELP WANTED (2) Coordinated Campaign Coordinator needed in the 5th Congressional District Green Party of Minnesota. Application deadline: July 18, 2005. In 2005, the 5th CD Greens have endorsed 6 candidates who are running for office in the City of Minneapolis, and are seeking a person with energy and enthusiasm to serve as part-time Coordinated Campaign Coordinator. The primary responsibility of this position is providing support services to the Minneapolis City candidates. Send a cover letter and a resume along with a writing sample to: 5th Congressional District Green Party, PO Box 582763, Minneapolis, MN 55458, or by e-mail to <5cd at mngreens.org>. More details about the job: http://www.mngreens.org/news.php?action=fullnews&id=337 READ ABOUT and get involved in your state Green Party http://www.gp.org/states.html Read about and get involved in a national Green Party caucus Lavender Greens Caucus (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex Greens) http://www.lavendergreens.org/ Women's Caucus http://www.gp.org/committees/women/index.html Black Caucus http://www.gpblackcaucus.us/ Youth Caucus discussion list http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youth-caucus Latino Caucus (site to be announced) Disability Caucus http://immuneweb.org/dg/ MORE GREEN PARTY NEWS: http://web.greens.org/news/ SIGN UP FOR GREENLINE.... Stay informed! http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/Greens/signUp.jsp //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\// U P C O M I N G E V E N T S JULY 21-24 2005 Annual Green Party National Committee Meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma. See item above. The Tulsa Meeting registration form has been updated. Greens can reserve lodging on Wednesday night, June 20, and sign-up to volunteer at the meeting. A field has been added to allow registrants to specify a roommate. Coed rooms are also available. Greens who sign-up for a double room but do not specify a roommate will be placed with someone of the same gender. https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/Greens/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=40 SEPTEMBER 24-26 United For Peace and Justice: End the war on Iraq; Bring the troops home now; Leave no bases behind; End the corporate occupation of Iraq; Stop bankrupting our communities; No military recruitment in our schools. Various events: Saturday, September 24 - Massive March, Rally & Festival Sunday, September 25 - Interfaith Service, Grassroots Training Monday, September 26 - Lobby Day, Mass Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Disobedience Leaflets and more information will be available soon at http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2854 //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\// G R E E N A C T I O N CALL CONGRESS * Call, fax, write a letter, or pay a visit * Contact information: Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 US House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/ US Senate: http://www.senate.gov * Write a letter to the editor, a guest op-ed column, essay, or article ==> Tell Congress to roll back the USA Patriot Act's antidemocratic and anticonstitutional measures, and resist Bush Administration attempt to expand it. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/678505594?z00m=25162&z00m=25162 ==> Tell your Senators to oppose any Supreme Court justice who does not support the rights of all Americans. http://www.kintera.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=dsJSK2PFJrH&b=843807&action=2791&template=x.ascx ==> Visit the Vote Hemp web site to send a letter to US Repsurging them to cosponsor the first-ever hemp farming bill, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2005 (HR 3037). http://capwiz.com/votehemp/issues/alert/?alertid=7762501&type=CO http://www.votehemp.com ==> Bipartisan bills have again been introduced in both houses of Congress calling for lifting the archaic, counterproductive restrictions on contacts with Cuba. More than 40 years of harsh US boycotts and restrictions have done nothing to weaken the Castro regime, but have created hardships for Cubans and Americans alike. Urge the House and Senate to support a more realistic and humane Cuban policy, and pass these bills to allow free travel from the US to Cuba. http://www.lawg.org/countries/cuba/tlking_pts_04_05.htm http://www.lawg.org/tools/petition.htm ==> Outraged by the brutalities and barbaric treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other US detention centers in the 'war on terror'? Tell Congress to shut down Guantanamo and similar centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and demand that the US government declare that henceforth it will ensure that all prisoners get basic protections such as humane treatment, access to a lawyer and a court, the right to know the government's charge against them, and a meaningful right to prove their innocence. Urge Congress to insist that the Administration close down these shameful detention centers and assure the world that Americans will treat detainees with decency http://action.aclu.org/lawlessprisons /\\//\\//\\//\\//\\// GOOD READS Recommended articles, books, web sites: Excerpts from a remarkable speech by Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who place the full prestige of his office and party behind passage of same-sex marriage legislation in Spain. http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/07/when_the_spanis.html "The Vice Lords of the Replacement Economies: How the Drug War and the Prison-Industrial Complex connect in a vicious cycle of violence, vice, and profit." By Charles Shaw, Guerrilla News Network, June 28, 2005. Shaw, editor-in-chief of the Chicago-based Newtopia Magazine and former co-chair of the Green Party's Peace Action Committee, entered the Illinois state penitentiary recently to begin a one year sentence for possession of less than ? ounce of marijuana and 1.4 grams of MDMA (or about a dozen pills). http://www.gnn.tv/articles/1500/The_Vice_Lords_of_the_Replacement_Economies More about Charles Shaw: http://newtopiamagazine.net/articles/58 "Born Again Economics: Putting the money changers back in the temple." Sam Smith on the Talibanic cult of the free market. The Progressive Review, July 2005. http://prorev.com/temple.htm "The Great American Pork Barrel: Washington streamlines the means of corruption." By Ken Silverstein, in Harper's Magazine, July 25 (in print only). How Congress and corporations conspire, with no public oversight, to provide billions in handouts to powerful corporate campaign contributors in the appropriations process. //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\// RESOURCES SPRING 2005 GREEN PAGES The Green Party is now accepting pre-orders for the Summer 2005 issue of Green Pages. Pre-order a bundle now to qualify for the bulk discount, and the printers will ship the papers straight to you via UPS. The Summer issue is longer than recent editions (20 pages), with a sharp new design and super content. Green Pages is a great outreach tool for the Green curious. Place a standing offer now, and get a further discount throughout 2005: $25 for 100 issues instead of $30. You'll be billed quarterly, and will always be the first to receive news about Greens across the country and in your state. Order your bundle now to help defray shipping costs and ensure that you get copies as soon as possible! * Order a bundle online: https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/shop/Greens/shop.jsp?id=54. * Order an individual annual subscription online: https://secure.democracyinaction.org/Greens/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=251 * Download a mail-in form: http://gp.org/downloads/greenpages_bundles.pdf * Order a different quantity or order by phone: 202-319-7191 or toll-free (US) 866-41GREEN E-mail: office at gp.org Phone: 202-319-7191 or toll-free (US) 866-41GREEN //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\// GREENSWEEK is edited and issued by the Media Committee (co-chairs: Nancy Allen, Scott McLarty; administrator: Starlene Rankin) of the Green Party of the United States. Please forward Greensweek widely to friends, Green Parties, organizations, lists: JOIN the Greensweek mailing list by signing up at . You can also read Greensweek at . CONTRIBUTE! Every dollar you donate to the Green Party counts! Please make a contribution today: http://www.gp.org/donate.html https://secure.gpus.org/ BE AN E-MAIL BUDDY: Not everyone is on line, but you can keep help offline friends, family, and neighbors stay in touch by printing out Greensweek and other important national, state, and local Green messages for them. IF YOU HAVE AN announcement or some Green news that might be of national interest, an action alert, or an article recommendation for Greensweek, send it to . Please make it brief: 3 or 4 sentences at most, a web page, contact information. The Green Party of the United States http://gpus.org National office: 1700 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 404 Washington, DC 20009. 202-319-7191, 202-319-7192, 866-41GREEN Fax 202-319-7193 Visit the web page of your state and local Green Party: click on the map at http://www.gp.org/states.html Green elections and candidates http://www.greens.org/elections/ Green Party Platform http://www.gp.org/platform.html Cobb/LaMarche 2004 campaign & Ohio/New Mexico recount news http://www.votecobb.org Greens in the media http://web.greens.org/news Green Party News Circulator http://www.gp.org/circ/circulator.html Green ballot status & voter registration http://web.greens.org/stats The Real Difference http://www.therealdifference.org/ Who REALLY spoiled in 2000? http://www.gp.org/organize/spoiled.html Greens World Wide http://www.greens.org Campus Greens http://www.campusgreens.org Global Greens http://www.globalgreens.info REGISTER GREEN VOTE GREEN _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Greensweek mailing list Greensweek at green.gpus.org http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/greensweek =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Sat Jul 16 11:54:18 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 08:54:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} Call for Fall national Green Pages submission Message-ID: <20050716155418.85791.qmail@web81402.mail.yahoo.com> Green Pages call for op-eds and state/caucus/committee reports Green Pages, the national newspaper of the Green Party of the United States, is looking for concise opinion pieces (op-eds) for the Fall issue, as well as timely reports from states, caucuses, and committees. (Please see reports guidelines below.) Opinion submissions are evaluated by the entire editorial board on the basis of relevance, timeliness, writing quality, research quality and diversity. DEADLINES AND WHERE TO SEND YOUR GREEN NEWS -Op-eds (max 800 words) and letters to the editor (max 200 words) should be sent by August 15 to cvar at oregonvos.net. -Unsolicited news briefs (max 350 words) should also be sent by August 15 to cvar at oregonvos.net. -Cartoons, illustrations, and charts should be sent by August 15 to estereditor at mosquitonet.com. -Photos for op-eds, photos of Greens in action for unsolicited news briefs, with captions and photographer credits should be sent by August 15 to danielstarling at hotmail.com. -Head shots for op-eds should be sent by August 21 to danielstarling at hotmail.com. -State reports (max 300 words) should be sent by August 25 to thom at adamscountygreens.org -Caucus and committee reports (max 300 words) should be sent by August 25 to schlorff at sbcglobal.net. -Photos for state/caucus/committee reports, with captions and photographer credits, should be sent by August 25 to danielstarling at hotmail.com, ***If you have story ideas that don't fall into the above categories, get in touch with us at greenpages at greens.org. ***All text should be sent as an attached Word document. Word counts will be strictly enforced. Submissions that are longer than the word counts suggested above or that are received after the due date will not be considered.*** REPORTS GUIDELINES Whenever possible, we strongly encourage you to identify Greens from your state/caucus/committee with a journalism/media background to prepare the state report and photos. In most cases, the person/s who have knowledge about what has happened in the past couple of months would best be used as a source for the reporter rather than actually writing the report. Here are some tips to keep in mind: -Reports should be kept to a maximum of 300 words. If you have a longer feature in mind about major events in your state, or a profile of a Green officeholder or activist who has accomplished something of note that would make a good feature story for Green Pages, please contact Joanne Cvar at cvar at oregonvos.net as soon as possible with a brief query. -Reports should have an emphasis on newsworthiness. Some examples: accomplishments, recognitions, trends, major plans (e.g., the state plans to run a full slate of candidates next year), new projects in the works, etc. -Think about your piece visually and find out early on who can provide a photograph to run with the text. If you need any assistance obtaining photos, or any kind of guidance with photos, please contact Daniel Starling at danielstarling at hotmail.com. -Reports are news briefs and should follow basic journalism standards. In general we suggest that reports follow traditional inverted pyramid format (i.e. the most important information should be at the top?if the editors need to cut the report due to space constraints, they should be able to cut the last paragraph first, then the second-to-last paragraph, etc.) -Use the third person ("they"), not first person ("we") in reporting about your states/caucus/committee activities. Avoid editorializing in the reports?just report on the facts about what's happening in the state/caucus/committee. Stick to the basics: what, when, where, why, who, and how. -Consider using brief quotes to give voice to Greens, to offer different viewpoints and perspectives, and for reader interest. -Be concise! Edit out any extra words or phrases. Identify somebody ahead of time who can edit your piece to cut out the fat. -Avoid cliches. We get a lot of reports that include lines like, "It isn't easy being Green in XX state," or "XX state is working hard and is Green and growing," or other generalizations. While we appreciate the sentiments, space for reports is limited, and we ask that you focus on issues and actions. -Avoid long lists and other information that make for dull reading. -Plan accordingly. Identify one or more writers, photographers, and editor/coordinators early on. We really appreciate early submissions. Late submissions cannot be accepted. -Submit text as a Word document. Include a byline indicating the reporter's Green affiliation (i.e. what state, if any, they are registered in). -Photos should be JPGs, 200 dpi. Include who should be credited for the photo, and the photographer's Green affiliation (i.e. what state, if any, they are registered in). Be sure to include a one-sentence caption with the photo to explain the content of the photo to readers. For complete submission guidelines, the Green Pages editorial policy, and a style sheet, visit: http://www.gp.org/greenpages/submissions.php Still have questions? Reach us at greenpages at greens.org. =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dbedellgreen at hotmail.com Mon Jul 18 00:05:34 2005 From: dbedellgreen at hotmail.com (David Bedell) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 04:05:34 +0000 Subject: {news} In Willimantic, free speech can be tricky In-Reply-To: <20050717050607.55454.qmail@web81803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Jean de Smet, Mike Westerfield, and Juan Perez made the July 17 Norwich Bulletin for challenging military recruiters: http://www.norwichbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050717/OPINION/507170318/1014 In Willimantic, free speech can be tricky >From a legal standpoint, there is no constitutional right clearer than the right to distribute leaflets on a public street. Unless, of course, you live in Willimantic. Several citizens found out the hard way that legal standpoints can collapse in the face of power. The boss on the job, the cop on the beat, the teacher in the classroom -- all of these people with position power and/or force -- can bust legal standpoints to smithereens if they are allowed to operate unchecked. It began simply enough during the Third Thursday Street Festival on May 19. Michael Westerfield, a peace activist and local government official, delivered some fliers about a bicycle ride to one of the exhibitors. Westerfield then learned that National Guard recruiters had set up their wares including a machine gun and a grenade launcher. This bothered Westerfield, philosophically and because the festival does not allow weapons to be displayed. "We don't allow the display or sales of even water guns or silly string," explained Jean de Smet, a festival organizer. The National Guard has a right to show its tools, despite objections about the seduction of youth by the cool weapons and uniforms. The appropriate remedy for offensive speech is more free speech. Those who object to the weapons, etc., might present a photo display showing the results of those kinds of weapons inflicted on many thousands of American service personnel and Iraqi civilians. But Sgt. Edy Torres of the National Guard relented and removed the weapons from his display. Score one for censorship here. In this context, what followed is not surprising. Torres was angry. He and Westerfield confronted each other verbally. That Torres had to call in backup -- Willimantic police officers -- has been the subject of amusement and ridicule in local letters to the editor and conversations around town. If a soldier can't handle a discussion about a vital issue of the day, that doesn't say much for his disposition and training. Told to move on Willimantic police officer Ian Brown told Westerfield to move on. Westerfield avoided more trouble but reported to a police lieutenant and the chief that he had almost been arrested for talking to recruiters. The same night, Eastern Connecticut State University history professor Jim Russell and his daughter, Magdalena, a union organizer, also risked arrest. Their alleged crime: handing out leaflets near the National Guard booth. Police threatened them with arrest for breach of peace. "The recruiter was the verbal aggressor, but the police wrote the report on his behalf without even talking to the two persons passing out anti-recruiting literature," said Juan Perez, a poet, boxing coach and well-known community activist. In the local press, those who confronted military recruiters were accused by police of "crossing the bounds of decorum." Who knew? Willimantic police also run a charm school. Must be something new in the Constitution. The next Third Thursday Street Festival is scheduled for July 21. Festival organizers have scheduled a meeting with the police chief to make sure everyone's rights are protected. Peace activists, noting the recruitment is down nationwide, have asked for more leaftletters to make a "stronger statement of opposition to targeting economically depressed towns for recruitment in this illegal war." Thibault, a former Norwich Bulletin reporter, writes for the Connecticut Law Tribune from which this is reprinted with permission. He is author of "Law & Justice In Everyday Life,"a mentor in the MFA writing program at Western Connecticut State University, and managing partner of Maltese Investigative Group LLC. Originally published July 17, 2005 From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Mon Jul 18 11:30:45 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:30:45 -0400 Subject: {news} washington post: Iraq War Hasn't Made United States Safer, Author Says Message-ID: <083e01c58bad$ab680050$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> "Meanwhile, Iraq has surged ahead of "economy and growth" as the leading concern among Americans. And approval of the president's handling of Iraq has dropped five points from an already low 44 percent a month ago, compared to 55 percent disapproval, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071500050.html?referrer=email washingtonpost.com Iraq War Hasn't Made United States Safer, Author Says Polls Indicate Americans Agree By Terry M. Neal washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Monday, July 18, 2005; 8:00 AM Americans are willing to spare no expense to ensure their safety. Thus the bill for the war in Iraq, which is soaring well into the $200 billions, would not be an issue at all if most people felt the essential policy -- making America safer -- was being met. But apparently, fewer and fewer Americans believe this is the case. And this is becoming an even greater problem for President Bush, whose reputation has taken a hit. In the latest Gallup poll, taken shortly after terrorists struck London this month, the number of people who say the war in Iraq was not worth it climbed to 53 percent (compared to 44 percent who believe it was). Perhaps more significantly, only 40 percent of Americans think the war has made the United States safer from terrorism, compared to 52 percent who believe it has made America less safe. These numbers represent an astonishing turn of events from the days leading up to the war through the president's battleship photo-op declaration of victory more than two years ago. The president was only partly correct that day. America and its allies had won the battle to remove Saddam Hussein. But the war was just getting started. Meanwhile, Iraq has surged ahead of "economy and growth" as the leading concern among Americans. And approval of the president's handling of Iraq has dropped five points from an already low 44 percent a month ago, compared to 55 percent disapproval, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. The war in Iraq was billed as a war of necessity, an effort to make the nation safer. Even after the justification for war evaporated, many of the president's supporters argued that it accomplished its purpose -- the United States had not been attacked again after 9/11. The terrorist attacks in London shattered some of that argument. While the United States wasn't attacked, its closest ally, Great Britain, was. And it was attacked in a way that struck home to many Americans, a fact evidenced by the jump in poll numbers of people who say they believe America will be attacked by terrorists in the near future. So the question is, did Iraq make us safer? In his best-selling book "America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us From Terrorism," Stephen Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. Coast Guard commander, argues essentially that Iraq was a "phony war" based on the president's oft-repeated assertion that America is "fighting the terrorists abroad so we don't have to face them at home." Every nation, even one as rich as the United States, has finite resources. And America is spending large portions of its resources, both in terms of human and economic capital, fighting a conventional war against a nation-state that does not address America's biggest vulnerability -- its openness to unconventional attacks by terrorists who don't respect borders. America remains astonishingly vulnerable to attacks from al Qaeda, which has morphed under Bush's watch, from an organization to a worldwide movement, Flynn argues. "The degree to which the Bush administration is willing to invest in conventional national security spending relative to basic domestic security measures is considerable," Flynn argues in an article he wrote for Foreign Affairs magazine based on his book. "Although the CIA has concluded that the most likely way weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would enter the United States is by sea, the federal government is spending more every three days to finance the war in Iraq than it has provided over the past three years to prop up the security of all 361 U.S. commercial seaports." Flynn accuses the administration of a "myopic" focus on conventional military forces at the expense of domestic security. He draws this comparison: "In fiscal year 2005, Congress will give the Pentagon $7.6 billion to improve security at military bases. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security will receive just $2.6 billion to protect all the vital systems throughout the country that sustain a modern society." I called Flynn this week to ask him if the nation's priorities were so horribly skewed, why hadn't America been attacked again? And perhaps couldn't it be surmised that the terrorists attacked Madrid and London instead of, say Washington or New York, because it was easier to do so? Flynn argues that this would be an improper conclusion to draw. Here's the gist of the argument he gave me: Al Qaeda and al Qaeda-inspired terrorists are patient. They seek maximum bang for the buck, so to speak. As they did in Madrid and London, the terrorists build a three-cell unit. The first is the leadership or operations cell. The second is the reconnaissance team, which scouts potential targets for risk and reward. And the third is the action cell, which carries out the attack. Building this sort of operation can take many years, and the risks are high. And once the action unit attacks, it creates an instant forensics trail that "creates an operational security problem. If you use it for a relatively low-end thing, you put your organization at risk for little gain and you have to start over again." In London, investigators learned much about the attackers quickly, just as American investigators did after 9/11. It could take the terrorists years to recover in London, as it has in America. But they will be back, Flynn argues, because there will always be enough "angry young men who can possess powerful weapons of destruction" to target a nearly endless supply of soft-targets. Iraq has not changed that equation one bit, Flynn argues. It has only diverted resources from the more pragmatic approach of targeting and hunting down terrorists around the world and, even more important, bolstering domestic security. Flynn does not argue that every soft target could ever be protected by the government. But he does say that the administration has done shockingly little to prioritize threats and protect such resources as nuclear plants, domestic military bases, the electric grid, the water supply and private-industry chemical plants near major metropolitan areas. Flynn is not anti-war. Afghanistan was a proper target, he said, because terrorists were running their operations there and the government was protecting them. The U.S. administration and its hawks are stuck in a "state-centric perspective, cold war idea that deterrence is about overwhelming power and offense. But that has nothing to do with the overwhelming reality of this threat." In his Foreign Affairs article, Flynn wrote that "the United States is fighting the war it prepared for in the twentieth century, rather than the one that is being waged upon it by al Qaeda ... the Pentagon is executing its long-standing forward defense strategy, which involves leapfrogging ahead of U.S. borders and waging combat on the turf of U.S. enemies or allies. Meanwhile, protecting the rear -- the American nation itself -- remains largely outside the scope of national security even though the September 11 attacks were launched from the United States on targets within the United States." Bush's critics argue that Iraq was made politically possible by the natural urge to punish someone for the travesty of 9/11. Iraq might have sated an emotional response, but it did little to address the pragmatic problem of how to make America safer. For a long time, many Americans believed that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11, and that the war was a part of the effort to vanquish the terrorists who attacked us that day. The fact that few people believe that today may have much to do with the president's declining popularity and the declining confidence in his honesty. ? 2005 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: wpni_t3_ctxt.gif?36130 Type: application/octet-stream Size: 43 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: uc.GIF?1.13&wpost&wpost&noscript Type: application/octet-stream Size: 43 bytes Desc: not available URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Wed Jul 20 08:52:33 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 08:52:33 -0400 Subject: {news} Green Congressional Candidate/Playwright Bill C. Davis opens "Green Dialogues" in Kent, August 6 Message-ID: <007b01c58d29$e6028eb0$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> BILL C. DAVIS/CONGRESS 2006 CAMPAIGN http://www.votebillc.org For Immediate Release: July 19, 2005 Contacts: Justine McCabe, 860-354-1822,justinemccabe at earthlink.net Tom Sevigny, 860-693-8344, capeconn at comcast.net PLAYWRIGHT BILL C. DAVIS OPENS "DIALOGUES" IN KENT Green Congressional Candidate Begins Citizen Conversations in the 5th District Bill C. Davis opens Green Campaign for Democracy with a public reading of "Green Dialogues," invites fellow citizens to "step in and step up" to work for the common good. Kent, CT - Litchfield County playwright Bill C. Davis invites the public to a reading of his "Green Dialogues" on Saturday, August 6, 8:00 P.M., at the Kent Community House, Main St., Kent. Using the "Dialogues" as a signature campaign tool, Green Party Congressional Candidate Davis calls on fellow citizens to take back their government from unrestrained corporate interests that finance elections and increasingly determine policy. "Representative government is on the auction and chopping block." Mr. Davis said. "If we tell the world and ourselves that we are government of, by and for the people, then that's what we have to be." Mr. Davis, well-known for plays like "Avow," "Dancing in the End Zone," "Wrestlers" and the Broadway hit, "Mass Appeal," which became a film starring Jack Lemmon, regularly writes political and cultural essays for the internet news service CommonDreams.org. Dissatisfied with the growing merger and hidden agendas of the two main political parties, Mr. Davis joined the Green Party. "The campaign will take no corporate money. We oppose the current electoral system that underwrites reckless policies motivated by corporate dictates rather than the needs of the people. We urge voters in the 2006 election for our national representatives to be guided by the voting records of incumbents and sources of campaign contributions of all candidates. We also ask citizens to participate in helping to frame and promote the priorities for the infrastructure of the Fifth District - priorities that will improve the health and well-being of ourselves, our environment and our neighbors." Mr. Davis wrote his "Dialogues" to encourage ongoing conversation and debate among citizens as a way to enliven and transform a system that seems to have lost active citizen participation. "Is the bounty of this country dedicated to the common good? It's a question we need to ask daily," he said. "We've chosen August 6-Hiroshima Day-to initiate these conversations. Our Green Campaign seeks to transform this day from symbolizing the destructiveness of human invention into one marking a reach for the opposite--for life in every sense." Mr. Davis continued, "Instead of military violence, insults to the environment and short-sighted expansion, we seek peaceful conflict resolution, promotion of wellness, safe water, air and food-federal support of mass transit and renewable energy, publicly-funded health insurance and a sustainable environment for everyone now and for future generations. We look to engage American creativity into the political process. If we see government as an art form as well as a business, the rewards for all citizens will be self-evident and energizing. " The Bill C. Davis Campaign invites others to gather with him under the banner of the Green Party to begin the protracted and difficult grassroots effort of taking back government from those who have appropriated it for purposes that increasingly marginalize and jeopardize the people they are meant to serve: "We are a group of American citizens who feel we've lost contact with our government, our future and the future of all children. Standing on the sideline is not possible anymore." -END- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Wed Jul 20 09:04:54 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:04:54 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: Constitutional lawyer John C. Bonifaz on the Downing Street memo FRIDAY, 7/22, in Great Barrington Message-ID: <00a401c58d2b$9fe767a0$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> Constitutional lawyer to discuss Downing Street Memo > GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. - John C. Bonifaz, a constitutional and >>public-interest lawyer, will be speaking on Friday, July 22 at 7:30 >>PM in the sanctuary of the First Congregational Church, 251 Main Street in >>Great Barrington. The subject of his talk will be: The Downing Street >>minutes and the Iraq war: Has the President committed impeachable >>offenses? >> >>Mr. Bonifaz is a 1992 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. In >>February >>and March 2003, he served as plaintiffs' lead counsel in John Doe I vs. >>President Bush, a constitutional challenge to President Bush's authority >>to >>wage war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or >>equivalent action. Mr. Bonifaz >>represented a coalition of US soldiers, parents of US soldiers, and >>Members >>of Congress, arguing that the president's planned first-strike invasion of >>Iraq violated the War Powers Clause of the US Constitution. >> >>Mr. Bonifaz is the author of "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George >>Bush" (NationBooks - NY, foreword by Rep. John Conyers, Jan. 2004) on the >>illegality of the Iraq war. The book presents an accounting of the >>aforementioned lawsuit, and its meaning for the United States >>Constitution. >>He is also a co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, a national coalition of >>veterans groups, peace groups and public interest organizations seeking a >>formal congressional investigation into whether President Bush has >>committed >>impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq War. He recently >>appeared >>on the panel at the hearings in Washington DC led by Rep. John Conyers to >>receive testimony concerning the Downing Street memos. >> >>Mr.Bonifaz will be interviewed by Susan Arbetter on the public radio >>station >>WAMC 90.3 FM on Monday, July 18th at 9:48 AM >> >>There is no fee to attend the talk, but donations to defray expenses will >>be >>gratefully accepted. For any further information, contact 413 528-0248. >> >>Directions to Great Barrington, Mass. >> >>From the Waterbury area: >> >>Take Rt 8 north to Torrington, Ext 44. Take Rt 4 from Torrington to Rt 63 >>in Goshen. Turn right on Rt. 63, Continue on Rt. 63 to where it merges >>with >>Rt. 7 in Falls Village. Take Rt 7 North to Great Barrington. >> >>From the Hartford area: >> >>Take Rt 84 toward Waterbury, but exit at the Farmington exit. Take Rt 4 >>through Torrington and Goshen to Rt. 63. Turn right on Rt 63 to Rt. 7 >>North. >>Continue on Rt 7 north to Great Barrington. >> >> >> > > > From chapillsbury at igc.org Wed Jul 20 10:25:51 2005 From: chapillsbury at igc.org (Charlie Pillsbury) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 10:25:51 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: AfterDowningStreet Update Message-ID: <003501c58d36$ee5ed570$6901a8c0@EXDIR04> OVER 300 EVENTS PLANNED FOR SATURDAY On July 23, over 300 events around the United States will mark the three-year anniversary of the meeting at #10 Downing Street in London, England, that was recorded in the now infamous minutes known as the "Downing Street Memo." Sign up to attend an event: http://heh.pl/&tm Get resources (including sample press advisories) and sign up to host a house party: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/526 Read about the largest of the planned events hosted by members of Congress: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/863 ASK C-SPAN TO COVER Email, fax, and phone C-span to request coverage of the major events above: http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=7852366&type=CU NEW DVD: ROVE's WAR Do you want to see video evidence of what they said two years ago, side by side with what they said last week? Do you want to see the Rove Scandal painted clearly with no punches pulled? This is a brilliant DVD. It's been mailed, for free, to everyone who signed up to host an event on July 23rd (courtesy of TakeBacktheMedia, which is providing the DVDs, and AfterDowningStreet.org volunteer Ben Slade who is paying for the postage). You can get a copy by making a donation to TakeBackTheMedia. You can do that and watch a preview here: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/869 DONATE We're doing great things, but they all cost money. Please contribute: http://elandslide.org/elandslide/edonate.cfm?campaign=ads FORWARD THIS EMAIL -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Wed Jul 20 16:49:08 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:49:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} Fwd: [media-states] Green Party of the U.S. News Circulator for 7/11/05-7/18/05 Message-ID: <20050720204908.3240.qmail@web81409.mail.yahoo.com> Andy Parx wrote:From: Andy Parx To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: [media-states] Green Party of the U.S. News Circulator for 7/11/05-7/18/05 Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:42:17 -1000 Green Party of the U.S. News Circulator for 7/11/05-7/18/05 For more Green Party news go to http://web.greens.org/news/ **************************************************************************** 1) NEW ZEALAND: ZIMBABWE CRICKETER TO JOIN NEW ZEALAND ANTI-TOUR PROTEST 2) GERMANY: GERMAN GREENS, SPD SHIFT ELECTION CAMPAIGN INTO HIGH GEAR 3) NEBRASKA: GREEN PARTY'S LARRICK FINDS OLD POSTCARDS FROM WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN; NEBRASKALAND FEATURE 4) NEW ZEALAND: TOUR SHOULD BE CALLED OFF, OLONGA SAYS 5) NEW ZEALAND: EMBASSY STAFF CRITICISED 6) NEW ZEALAND: GREENS LAUNCH POSTCARDS TO HELEN' ANTI-TOUR CAMPAIGN 7) ALASKA: VOICE OF THE TIMES; ON THE HOMEFRONT, WE HAVE . . . ECO-TERRORISM 8) NEW ZEALAND: PAC: ICC GIVES NZ POSSIBLE WAY OUT OF ZIMBABWE CRICKET TOUR 9) CONNECTICUT: EMINENT DOMAIN LAW CONTROVERSIAL, BUT NOT NEW 10) IRELAND: BITTER PILL; GREEN FURY AS EU BANS VITAMINS & MINERALS 11) AUSTRIA: VIENNA COURT REJECTS COMPLAINT AGAINST MOCHOVCE NUCLEAR PLANT 12) NEW ZEALAND: ELSEN SELECTED AS AORAKI CANDIDATE 13) NEW ZEALAND: FITZSIMONS CALLS FOR CHANGES TO FARM PRACTICES 14) MAINE: EX-AIDE TO LAWMAKER CLEARED IN VOTE FRAUD; BEN CHIPMAN, ACCUSED IN A BIDDEFORD SPECIAL ELECTION, CALLS THE VERDICT A VICTORY FOR THE GREEN PARTY. 15) IRELAND: GREEN PARTY COUNCILLOR BRIAN WILSON CONGRATULATES FRIENDS OF THE EARTH FOR DRAWING EUROPE'S ATTENTION TO THE DISREGARD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DIRECTIVES. 16) NEW ZEALAND: EXCEPTION TAKEN AT FITZSIMONS' COMMENTS 17) CALIFORNIA: BOHEMIAN GROVE; GREEN PARTY TO LEAD PROTEST AT GATHERING OF RICH AND POWERFUL 18) CANADA: FIXING LEPREAU WILL COST TAXPAYERS: GREEN PARTY 19) MAINE: EX-SPEAKER DEFENDS SUSPENSION OF GREEN PARTY STAFFER LAST YEAR 20) CANADA: GREENS SHOW SURPRISING STRENGTH IN POLL: PARTY GETS 43 PER CENT SUPPORT, BUT UVIC POLITICAL SCIENTIST PREDICTS SURGE WILL EVAPORATE **************************************************************************** 1) Agence France Presse ? English; July 10, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: ZIMBABWE CRICKETER TO JOIN NEW ZEALAND ANTI-TOUR PROTEST WELLINGTON -- Zimbabwe's first black Test cricketer, Henry Olonga, is to join a campaign here aimed at stopping New Zealand's cricket tour of his homeland, Greens Party co-leader Rod Donald said Sunday. Olonga fled Zimbabwe in 2003 after wearing a black armband during a World Cup match to mourn what he called the death of democracy in his country. Donald said he would take Olonga on a speaking tour to "turn up the heat" on the government. "We want Henry to give the government, New Zealand Cricket (NZC) and the people, the message loud and clear that the Black Caps should not be touring Zimbabwe," he said. "The Government should be doing everything in its power to get the Black Caps off the hook, and needs to match its tough talk with decisive action." The government's position is that it does not want the team to tour, but will not stop it because that would need legislation authorising the removal of passports. Foreign Minister Phil Goff last week announced a diplomatic offensive against all sporting contacts with Zimbabwe, and is urging the International Cricket Council to waive financial penalties that would be imposed if the tour does not go ahead. Goff has said the government will refuse to issue visas to the Zimbabwe team for a return tour to New Zealand scheduled in December. NZC's chief executive Martin Snedden said his association has no alternative but to go on tour or face crippling fines believed to be at least two million US dollars. Donald drafted a bill that would allow the government to stop the tour, but it has been vetoed on the grounds that it would cut across New Zealand's human rights laws. "We hope Henry's visit will lead to public pressure increasing on the Government to stop the tour," he said. The Greens are bringing Olonga to New Zealand, and he will speak at public meetings in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland this week. President Mugabe's order to destroy thousands of homes and businesses triggered the Green's protest. The demolitions campaign has left between 200,000 and 1.5 million people homeless according to the United Nations and the Zimbabwe the opposition respectively. ************************************************************************** 2) Deutsche Presse-Agentur; July 10, 2005 GERMANY: GERMAN GREENS, SPD SHIFT ELECTION CAMPAIGN INTO HIGH GEAR Berlin -- Berlin's embattled centre-left coalition leaders shifted their re-election campaign into high gear over the weekend with blistering attacks on front-running conservatives as well as leftwing challengers. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose Social Democrats are trailing in the public opinion surveys in the run-up to the planned September general election, lashed out at conservative Christian Democrats who hope to reinstall themselves after a six-year hiatus. "It is absolutely absurd that the hoboes from yesteryear seriously expect to become the bosses of tomorrow," Schroeder told a cheering crowd of Social Democrats at a statewide party congress in his native state of Lower Saxony. His foreign minister, meanwhile, issued a blistering attack on conservatives and liberals. "There is absolutely no reason for us to cower in fear or shame," Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the Green Party's standard-bearer, said in a keynote address during a two-day party congress in Berlin. "We have an admirable and in fact outstanding record, built in two decades of hard work in the German Bundestag," he said. "We have nothing to fear from anybody as we go into an election campaign from which I am confident we will emerge victorious." Germany's Greens, facing a strong challenge from the political left for the first time in their history, wrapped up their party congress on Sunday with an election platform aimed at defusing the threat from the left. The congress was convened as opinion surveys show a new far-left alliance of former East German communists and disenchanted Social Democrats and Greens has the backing of 11 per cent of the voters, compared to just 8 per cent for the Greens. The new far-left alliance is headed by former Schroeder cabinet member Oscar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi, 57, long the most charismatic figure in the far-leftist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the reconstituted East German Communist Party. Lafontaine heads the new leftist party called the Labour and Social Election Alternative (WASG). Fired on by Fischer, the Greens party congress hammered out leftist and environmentalist stances in clear demarcation to the new far-left grouping who are rallying around Lafontaine. Platform planks included higher taxes on the rich, better day-care programmes for double-earner families and tax breaks for future-oriented, environmentally friendly technologies. Over Fischer's objections, the party also adopted a plank calling for an increase in VAT tax nationwide from the current 16 per cent to 18 per cent. Fischer and other top Greens officials say it would constitute an added tax on the poor... ************************************************************************** 3) The Associated Press State & Local Wire; July 10, 2005 NEBRASKA: GREEN PARTY'S LARRICK FINDS OLD POSTCARDS FROM WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN; NEBRASKALAND FEATURE by Don Walton LINCOLN -- One hundred years ago this September, William Jennings Bryan left his home in Lincoln to embark on a trip around the world. It would be a year's journey devoted to the quest for world peace, building the foundation for Bryan's third and final presidential bid. Two years ago, Steve Larrick wandered into the Q Street Antique Market in Lincoln. Larrick drops in at antique shops occasionally to browse and see what's there. He's especially attracted to old postcards and the stories they tell. "I recognized the handwriting instantly," Larrick said. "I knew it was him." Sorting through a pile, Larrick discovered a postcard mailed to Lincoln from Japan with this message scrawled atop the painted picture: "Compliments of the Bryans." And then he found another. "The last of Europe," read the message on the card next to the photo of the Rock of Gibraltar. It was mailed on Aug. 20, 1906, and signed: "The Bryans." By now, the adrenaline had kicked in. Larrick rushed through the stack, uncovering three more prizes mailed from Asia and Europe, with brief greetings written in ink by Bryan. Even today, Larrick's eyes light up as he recalls the moment of discovery. "Out of the blue," he said, "here were these cards from Bryan" mailed to Lincoln a century ago in the midst of a journey seeking peace around the globe. Larrick was the Green Party's congressional nominee in the 1st District last November. Through all the debates about health care, farm policy and Social Security reform, he made the case for peace and argued passionately against the war. The cards were addressed to Miss Leah Westhafer at the Commoner in Lincoln, Nebraska. That's all. No street address. No post office box. No need for any of that 100 years ago. The Commoner was a weekly newspaper published by Bryan, who already had won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination twice. He'd win it again in 1908. Amazed by his good fortune, Larrick paid the going rate for postcards in the pile. One dollar each. After discovering the postcards, Larrick purchased a well-worn copy of "The Old World and Its Ways," Bryan's book about his travels published in 1907. Another Larrick bargain at $15. *************************************************************************** 4) New Zealand Press Association; July 12, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: TOUR SHOULD BE CALLED OFF, OLONGA SAYS Wellington, July 12 NZPA - Zimbabwe's first black test cricketer, Henry Olonga, said today the situation in his country should be seen in the same light as apartheid was in South Africa. Olonga arrived in New Zealand today to support the Green Party's campaign to stop the Black Caps tour of Zimbabwe, due to start early next month. I personally believe it shouldn't go ahead simply because what is happening to people in Zimbabwe is just terrible,'' he said. This is a government that has consistently abused its own people.'' Olonga left Zimbabwe in 2003 after wearing a black armband during a World Cup match to mourn the end of democracy in his country. He acknowledged the difficulties faced by New Zealand cricketers, and New Zealand Cricket (NZC), which faces heavy fines and financial penalties if it does not tour. I'm disappointed the ICC (International Cricket Council) hasn't shown more compassion with regard to what's happening in Zimbabwe,'' he said on National Radio. We believed that sporting sanctions made some kind of difference when South Africa was isolated. We believed that people who went on rebel tours were somehow crossing a line that we didn't accept... that they were showing no concern for the people who were suffering under that oppressive regime.'' Olonga said he believed it was time the world started to take notice of what was happening in Zimbabwe. It is immoral and the world somehow has to take a stance... possibly, probably even treat this as a situation as abnormal as apartheid.'' The New Zealand Government's position is that it does not have the power to stop the tour, and it has vetoed legislation drafted by Green Party co-leader Rod Donald. Foreign Minister Phil Goff says stopping people leaving New Zealand would cut across human rights, and the Government would be committing the same sort of abuses that were happening in Zimbabwe. The Government is instead launching an international diplomatic offensive against sporting contacts with Zimbabwe, and has written to the ICC asking it to waive penalties. Olonga said he was sure the Government could step in and possibly indemnify the tour in some way. It all depends on how strong the sentiment is.'' Olonga is due to speak at three public meetings this week, and will meet NZC representatives and ministers. *************************************************************************** 5) The Nelson Mail (New Zealand); July 13, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: EMBASSY STAFF CRITICISED The New Zealand Embassy failed a Motueka man detained in the United States and the Government must take steps to ensure shortcomings from the Washington-based staff are not repeated, the Greens say. Green Party foreign affairs spokesman Keith Locke said the embassy had made no direct contact with James Kirkwood, who spent seven weeks in a detention centre for a minor visa violation. The 26-year-old aircraft engineer returned to New Zealand on Friday night after being released from the Louisiana centre. Mr Kirkwood and eight British colleagues working for Merchant Aviation were arrested in May for working without the correct visa after the British company pulled out of its US project. New Zealand consular staff ''went no further'' than talking to a lawyer assigned to Mr Kirkwood, Mr Locke said today. ''That is inexcusable, especially when his British workmates were quickly talked to by British authorities and were then on a plane out within two weeks. ''After speaking to James Kirkwood today, it is clear to me that our embassy staff failed him.'' Foreign Minister Phil Goff had been asked in writing to look into the apparent mishandling of Mr Kirkwood's case, he said. ''I have also requested that his ministry engage the American authorities to put in place a system to ensure that no more New Zealanders are treated so dreadfully. ''We should point out to them that Americans guilty of such minor irregularities would not be jailed and their cases would be dealt with fairly and promptly.'' New Zealand officials had accepted US ''excuses'' that Mr Kirkwood couldn't be transferred out of detention earlier because of transport problems, he said. ''It is now clear that there was regular prison transport to Atlanta airport, which Mr Kirkwood was finally put on after seven weeks in atrocious conditions.'' *************************************************************************** 6) New Zealand Press Association; July 13, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: GREENS LAUNCH POSTCARDS TO HELEN' ANTI-TOUR CAMPAIGN Wellington, July 13 NZPA - The Green Party is hoping Prime Minister Helen Clark will be deluged with postcards urging her to stop the Black Caps tour of Zimbabwe. Party co-leader Rod Donald said today that thousands of postcards had been printed for distribution. Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders are opposed to the Black Caps tour of Zimbabwe,'' he said. So far the Government has lacked the confidence to do the right thing. We're hoping public pressure will lead to the Government matching its tough talk on Zimbabwe with decisive action.'' The postcard carries the message: For the sake of the people in Zimbabwe who are being oppressed by the Mugabe regime, for the sake of all New Zealanders who want you to take decisive action on our behalf, and for the sake of NZ Cricket who need you to declare the tour illegal to avoid financial penalty, please rule this tour out.'' Mr Donald said there was still time to legislate to stop the tour -- a step the Government is refusing to take. We hope the public will flood Helen with postcards,'' he said. *************************************************************************** 7) Anchorage Daily News (Alaska); July 13, 2005 ALASKA: VOICE OF THE TIMES; ON THE HOMEFRONT, WE HAVE . . . ECO-TERRORISM A SUPREME COURT judge in British Columbia has provided a reminder that there are other forms of terrorism than bombs blowing up in London subways. The judge, Kristi Gill, has ruled that there is enough evidence against an accused American to permit his extradition from Canada to face charges in Portland, Ore. Her ruling held that a fugitive known as Tre Arrow, a Green Party candidate for Congress in 2002, should stand trial in connection with the firebombing of logging and cement trucks in Oregon in 2002. Three others have pleaded guilty of participating in the crimes, and identified Tre Arrow as an accomplice. He denies it, of course, and says he will appeal the extradition order -- a move that could take months to be resolved. He claims he is being targeted by the U.S. government and the FBI. The FBI identifies the 30-year-old Arrow as a member of the Earth Liberation Front, an organization that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks on forestry industry firms. He faces a possible life term if convicted of charges of using fire to commit a felony, destroying vehicles used in interstate commerce and using incendiary devices in a crime of violence. Those charged in this case were accused of blowing up three trucks owned by the Ross Island Gravel Co., causing $200,000 in damages, and burning three vehicles belonging to a Mount Hood logging company, at a lost of $50,000. The U.S. attorney in Portland said the four had intended to firebomb a U.S. Forest Service office, but changed targets after the federal security system frightened them away. One of those who admitted participating in the attacks said the gravel company was targeted "because it was guilty of stealing soil from the earth." As an indication of how nutty some of these extremists are, Arrow says the trees told him to change his name. Before acting on the advice, he was named Michael Scarpitti. No matter what they call themselves, these people have earned the name by which the rest of us know them: eco-terrorists. They war against society in the same fashion as the Islamic zealots who hate the U.S. and all of western civilization -- less deadly, perhaps, but nonetheless practitioners of terrorism. *************************************************************************** 8) AAP NEWSFEED; July 13, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: PAC: ICC GIVES NZ POSSIBLE WAY OUT OF ZIMBABWE CRICKET TOUR by Peter Williams AUCKLAND -- The International Cricket Council (ICC) appears to have given New Zealand the chance to stop its cricketers touring Zimbabwe next month without its cricketing body incurring a financial penalty. New Zealand Cricket has so far refused to call off the tour over Zimbabwe's human rights abuses because it would cost it millions of dollars in breach-of-contract penalties. While continuing to reject cancelling the tour, ICC president Ehsan Mani said in a letter to the New Zealand government that it recognised a nation's right to impose sporting sanctions. "In short, the board recognises that issues of the relationships between countries are driven by politicians and governments that are elected by the people to deal with these political issues," Mani said. "It is also recognised that governments will, from time to time, elect to use sporting sanctions as a tool in their foreign policy programs. "Our members accept and respect that where this clear directive is given by a national government, the obligations of the future tours program will not apply." New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff was urgently seeking clarification from the ICC about what it meant by a clear directive. "If the International Cricket Council is saying ... that a parliamentary motion would be adequate, saying to New Zealand Cricket that they should not go then that is something that could be readily achieved," Goff told National Radio. New Zealand's Green Party said the government could now stop the tour. "It's only argument for not doing so is that it doesn't have the power. However, the ICC has now made it abundantly clear that it recognises the right of national governments to impose sporting sanctions," party co-leader Rod Green said. "This is a win-win-win situation." The Greens have brought former Zimbabwe cricket player Henry Olonga to New Zealand to lobby against the tour. Olonga had talks today with New Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden, who welcomed the fresh perspective but said there was no change to his organisation's position. *************************************************************************** 9) The Journal Inquirer; July 13, 2005 CONNECTICUT: EMINENT DOMAIN LAW CONTROVERSIAL, BUT NOT NEW For nearly 40 years, state law has allowed the seizure of property for private economic development under the principle of eminent domain. But only in the last month has the law become a central focus of state politics -- ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London can take homes in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood for a private development project.... ...While eminent domain may yet break along party lines in the legislature, outside it already has made for some strange political bedfellows. "I think it's the first time I've found myself on the same side as Clarence Thomas," says Thomas Sevigny, a state Green Party leader who has been active in development controversies since at least the proposal to build an NFL stadium for the New England Patriots in Hartford. Sevigny, like the Republicans, opposes the law allowing property to be seized for private development, but doesn't find anything odd in the fact that opposition has only now reached critical mass. "The Supreme Court decision has obviously brought this to light," he said. "Especially when you have people who are saying, "No, we aren't moving.' It provides something for people to rally around." When two legislative committees do convene their hearings into the question, they will have more than just the Home Rule Act to consider: According to the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Research, eminent domain is referenced in at least 80 statutes. *************************************************************************** 10) The Mirror; July 13, 2005 IRELAND: BITTER PILL; GREEN FURY AS EU BANS VITAMINS & MINERALS by Pat Flanagan MORE than 300 vitamin and mineral supplements are to be banned from the end of this month after a dramatic European Court ruling. Close to 80 per cent of all health pills will be taken off the shelves by the start of August. The Association of Irish Health Stores has said the ban affects most of the top vitamin and mineral brands sold here. The decision follows a European Court ruling that has upheld an EU directive on changes in the law controlling the sale of health vitamins. The Green Party said the decision will give consumers less choice when buying vitamins. Green TD Paul Gogarty said: "This is less about consumer safety and more about commercialisation and harmonisation. "Diversity and choice are being replaced in the name of harmonisation. The decision may be well-intentioned but the priorities are wrong. "Consumers who purchase vitamins are making a conscious choice, whereas much of the food in our supermarkets contains unnecessary, undesirable chemicals. "The Green Party would prefer if the EU prioritised the tightening of food additive regulations first. "Large pharmaceutical companies have lobbied to have the vitamin supplements area tightly regulated and licensed for many years now. "Many will see this as a cynical ploy on the part of the pharmaceutical companies to wrest control of the market away from the smaller players." According to the Commission, the main aim of this directive was to enable food supplements "to be marketed freely across the EU while ensuring the safety of consumers". But many supplements have been reprieved until the end of 2009 and firms, including Boots, say they have already changed their products to avoid the ban. *************************************************************************** 11) CTK National News Wire; July 14, 2005 AUSTRIA: VIENNA COURT REJECTS COMPLAINT AGAINST MOCHOVCE NUCLEAR PLANT KEYWORD: Austria Slovakia energy nuclear Mochovce VIENNA -- The Vienna Land Court has rejected a complaint against the Slovak nuclear power station in Mochovce, west Slovakia, which was lodged by the Austrian Green Party, the Austrian news agency APA reports today. The Land Court civilian legal panel verdict points out that the safety shortcomings to which the party pointed have not been proved with specific facts. The complaint was lodged against the Slovenske elektrarne power utility, which operates Mochovce, by opposition Greens spokeswoman Eva Glawischnig in summer 1998. She said in it that the power plant, situated 160 km east of Vienna, threatens Vienna and its inhabitants due to its insufficient safety and technological equipment. However, even Austrian legal experts are not united in the view whether the verdict of an Austrian court could be binding for the operators of the station. The District Court of Vienna's Hernals district accepted the complaint in February. It said in its verdict that the operators of the Slovak nuclear power plant should take appropriate measures to prevent radioactive emissions. It also stated that the Mochovce operator neglected its safety. However, the Land Court arrived at the conclusion that the "plaintiff should have proved the pre-conditions for such preliminary accusations of negligence but she has failed to do so." According to its verdict, the "nuclear power station would not be allowed to operate, for instance in Germany, due to less strict Slovak safety regulations. However, even according to the stricter German regulations, concrete conclusions about the insufficient safety of its reactor cannot be made." The construction of the reactor gives no reasons for such fears, the court said, adding that fire regulations at Mochovce correspond to Western standards and bigger shortcomings were not found in its alert system and in its anti-earthquake system. *************************************************************************** 12) The Timaru Herald (New Zealand); July 15, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: ELSEN SELECTED AS AORAKI CANDIDATE Timaru woman Kate Elsen is now the official Aoraki Green Party candidate for this year's general election after being selected at a meeting in Geraldine last evening. The meeting was chaired by Greens co- leader Jeanette Fitzsimons. Mrs Elsen has lived in Timaru most of her life, and is a daughter of Wynne and Nan Raymond, former mayor and mayoress of Timaru Aoraki Greens campaign manager Cliff Jefferson said Kate was well known and active in the Timaru community. "Kate is a registered nurse who established and ran the Terrace Rest Home and now works at the Mountainview Retirement Village. "She is a trustee of the Timaru Festival of Roses, Aoraki Organic Co-op and the Aoraki Wastebusters Charitable Trust, and has had a pivotal role in organising several community initiatives and events, such as the Peace Rally in 2003, and the Tsunami International Dinner in February this year." Mrs Elsen is married to Horst and they have three school-age sons. For two years the couple and their children lived in Germany where Mrs Elsen said she was most influenced by the green movement, in particular the management of recycling. Mrs Elsen said, in particular, what prompted her recent decision to stand was learning of the Green Party's commitment to eliminating child poverty in New Zealand and reducing this country's horrific rates of child abuse and neglect. "It is outrageous that up to one in three Auckland children live in poverty and that the New Zealand child poverty rate is the fourth worst in the developed world, with over 25,000 overcrowded houses." She will be campaigning for the party vote with a view to increasing the Green's percentage of Aoraki votes and increasing the number of Green MPs elected to Parliament. *************************************************************************** 13) The Timaru Herald (New Zealand); July 15, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: FITZSIMONS CALLS FOR CHANGES TO FARM PRACTICES South Canterbury farms are among those that will need to work within a farm plan to ensure that local rivers do not become any more degraded and start to repair, Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said yesterday. Ms Fitzsimons was in South Canterbury to see for herself the state of the rivers and hear from locals about what they thought the problems were, and said it was a well accepted fact that 95 per cent of low land rivers in South Canterbury were degraded. That is, not up to the standard required for contact through activities such as swimming or drinking. "There are three main contaminants, nitrates, bacteria like ecoli, and runoff from urban areas and roads. "With roads there is the danger of heavy metals and those sorts of things." But she said it was farming activities that did the most damage and the increase in dairying was a real concern, particularly in areas of fragile and unsuitable soils. "There are parts of South Canterbury that would be in that category but I do not have a soil map of the area and probably couldn't read it if I did, so I am not saying every farm would be in that category. "But the prevalence of dairying and the intensity of farming are causing the most concern. "Fertilisers enable intensive farming practices and we would like to see farmers on nitrate budgets. "Federated Farmers have asked for a $ 50 million fund to help farmers change to more sustainable practices and we agree with that. "We would like to see it well funded and we would fund it 50 per cent through a fertiliser tax and 50 per cent from the taxpayer." Ms Fitzsimons also wants to see wide riparian strips, or narrow forestry strips, along river sides that would be selectively milled over a period of time. She said there would also be serious implications for South Canterbury with the forecast climate change and soaring oil prices and it was necessary for people to act now, to soften the impact. "The east coast will become drier and the west wetter and neither is beneficial. "The cost of petrol will also skyrocket and become scarce and we need to be finding sustainable options such as bio fuel and diesel, energy from ethanol and wood; those sorts of things. "We won't be able to produce it in the quantities we use now but it will help to supplement it." Ms Fitzsimons said transport was one of the biggest causes of carbon gases and was growing rapidly. She said there needed to be firm controls on the vehicles we brought into the country. "We are still importing cars that take 15 litres to go 100 kilometres, I have just bought one that takes five litres to go 100 kilometres." Ms Fitzsimons said there were some things the Green Party would like the Government to do but she would not call them bottom lines. "It's a silly term really. The Labour Government has bottom lines but no one asks them what they are, but there are some things it would not agree to going into a coalition. "And we are not going to support a government that tells us to go away we're not listening to you." Ms Fitzsimons said changes that had been proposed by Labour to the Resource Management Act had been toned down, for example, and she expected it to be passed in Parliament. "The RMA is a good piece of legislation and does not need much changed." She said it was important that people from all around the country were able to have a say on resource consents and not just those on whose property the activity would take place. "We all share the environment, it's only fair we all get a say on it," she said. *************************************************************************** 14) Portland Press Herald (Maine); July 14, 2005 MAINE: EX-AIDE TO LAWMAKER CLEARED IN VOTE FRAUD; BEN CHIPMAN, ACCUSED IN A BIDDEFORD SPECIAL ELECTION, CALLS THE VERDICT A VICTORY FOR THE GREEN PARTY. by Jen Fish A former legislative aide to Portland Rep. John Eder of the Green Independent Party hopes to return to politics after being cleared of charges of campaign fraud. Ben Chipman, 29, was suspended without pay from his position in October when he was charged with attempting to influence a voter casting an absentee ballot, a misdemeanor. A York County jury acquitted him of the charge Tuesday, delivering a verdict Chipman called a victory for himself and for the Greens. "It's clear there was an attempt to paint the party in a negative light, to indict the entire Green party," said Chipman. "I'm just glad the whole thing is finally over. The charge was a false allegation that couldn't be proven because it wasn't true." Chipman and three other people were charged in connection with a special legislative election held in Biddeford in February 2004. Dorothy Lafortune, who fought a long and heated battle with the city over the ownership of her house, ran as the Green Independent Party candidate in the three-way race. Lafortune finished second in the race, which was won by Democrat Steve Beaudette. Soon after the election, Biddeford police and city officials received complaints about Green party volunteers. Indictments issued by the state Attorney General's Office alleged that Chipman and three other volunteers delivered absentee ballots to elderly voters and then either urged them to vote for Lafortune or marked the ballots themselves. In Chipman's case, an elderly woman told police Chipman gave her an absentee ballot and told her to vote for Lafortune. Attorney Leonard Sharon, who represents all four volunteers, said the woman's allegations were disproved by several witnesses at the trial. Her complaint, he added, was not even in the original calls to police and city officials. She became a witness, he said, when police conducted interviews beyond the first complainants. "If you listened to the tapes, the way the police questioned them, it was somewhat suggestive," Sharon said. Assistant Attorney General Leanne Robbin, who is prosecuting the cases, said the woman had no motive to make up stories. "This campaign was rife with problems," she said, adding that one of the witnesses called to discredit Chipman's accuser was a Lafortune supporter. While the investigation of the Green party volunteers began in February 2004, charges against Chipman and the others were filed less than a month before the November elections. "The timing was an effort to derail the campaigns of Green party candidates, including John Eder," Chipman said. "Why did that amount of time have to go by before the charges could be filed?" Eder could not be reached for comment Wednesday. He testified as a character witness for Chipman. Robbin said the case was treated like any other criminal matter, and that in cases where there are elderly victims and witnesses, there is nothing to be gained by waiting to file the case. So far one of the four volunteers has been convicted of wrongdoing. Fred Dolgon of Old Orchard Beach was found guilty earlier this summer of two counts of attempting to influence a voter. He was acquitted of aggravated forgery and delivering absentee ballots for compensation. Dolgon was sentenced to community service. In that case, Sharon said, Dolgon believed he was helping a person who was already committed to voting for Lafortune. Philip Castora, a longtime friend of Lafortune's, was charged with four felony counts of aggravated forgery, three counts of attempting to influence a voter and one count of delivering absentee ballots for compensation. Castora is very ill, Sharon said, and his case has been postponed indefinitely. Wayne Whitten of Biddeford faces one count of interfering with a voter attempting to cast a vote and one count of delivering an absentee ballot for com- pensation. His trial is expected to be held in August, said Sharon. Staff Writer Jen Fish can be contacted at 282-8229 or at: jfish at pressherald.com *************************************************************************** 15) Press Association; July 15, 2005 IRELAND: GREEN PARTY COUNCILLOR BRIAN WILSON CONGRATULATES FRIENDS OF THE EARTH FOR DRAWING EUROPE'S ATTENTION TO THE DISREGARD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DIRECTIVES. Northern Ireland Green Party councillor Brian Wilson congratulated Friends of the Earth for drawing Europe's attention to the disregard for environmental directives. The North Down councillor, who is his party's environment spokesman, said it was regrettable that taxpayers would probably have the burden placed on them to pay fines imposed because of the inaction of Northern Ireland Office ministers. "It was only a matter of time before the 'Direct Misrule' ministers ended up in the dock at the European Court following the expert finding by the QC, Robert McCracken that policy on sewage 'hotspots' did not comply with the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and was unlawful," Mr Wilson observed. He described the policy pursued by Northern Ireland Office ministers as: "irrational and a breach of Article 10 of the EC Treaty and in conflict with the Northern Ireland Act 1998". He added: "My only regret is that local taxpayers will bear the brunt of the cost of fines imposed for the inaction of London's caretaker ministers." *************************************************************************** 16) The Timaru Herald (New Zealand); July 16, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: EXCEPTION TAKEN AT FITZSIMONS' COMMENTS Future proofing rivers and districts should be supported by the Green Party not ignored, South Canterbury Farmers Irrigation Society chairman Tom Henderson said yesterday. He said comments by Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons had his blood boiling and if she wanted to look over projects such as the Opuha dam, she should at least speak to people who knew how the system worked and see the advantages of it. "Opuha dam is about future proofing. Ms Fitzsimons needs to look at the benefits of the dam. "Timaru City benefits from it, irrigators, the environment, and business. "Water storage is the way of the future." Mr Henderson said the Green Party admits that with climate change the east coast and South Canterbury would become drier which was not good. He said without water storage South Canterbury would become a dustbowl. Mr Henderson also took exceptions to remarks by Ms Fitzsimons that people who lived well away from the community could make submissions on resource consent applications. "There is no reason why someone who lives a 1000 miles away should be able to make a submission on something that happens here. "No one was interested in 1980 when we went for the Opuha dam. But that was what the community wanted. Environmentalists, Maori, all parts of the community had a say and we had scientific backing to guide us," he said. *************************************************************************** 17) The Press Democrat; July 15, 2005 CALIFORNIA: BOHEMIAN GROVE; GREEN PARTY TO LEAD PROTEST AT GATHERING OF RICH AND POWERFUL by Carol Benfell The Green Party is taking the lead in the annual protest of corporate and governmental decision-makers who gather again this weekend at Bohemian Grove near Monte Rio. Members of the all-male San Francisco Bohemian Club have been coming to the tightly guarded grove for relaxation and camaraderie for 123 years. The membership includes many of the nation's rich and powerful, including former U.S. presidents and Cabinet officials. The guest list remains secret to all but club members and employees who help stage the event. Protesters accuse the club of using the secrecy of the grove to cut deals outside the public view, but club members say that doesn't happen. The Green Party took on the protest this year as a way of networking with like-minded groups and expanding the party's role in the community, said Paul Encimer, a Garberville-area businessman and a member of the Green Party's statewide coordinating committee. "The Green Party is a party focused on action," Encimer said. "We think coalition-building and being involved in the movement is part of our task." Hosting the protest could help the Green Party solidify its base among Sonoma County activists, while costing it little in terms of mainstream voter support, political analysts said. The Greens are California's fourth largest political party. But with only 150,000 registered voters, it pales in comparison to state Democrats, with more than 7.1 million members, and Republicans, with more than 5.7 million members. The American Independent Party has twice the numbers of the Green Party with 330,000 member. Still, Greens maintain a majority on the Sebastopol City Council and have more than 6,800 registered voters in Sonoma County. "Sonoma County has always had a core group of activists who have driven third, anti-establishment parties," said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. "This is a way to appease the activists, and it doesn't cost them much. If it turns voters off, it's so early in the game (before the 2006 elections) that it won't be sustained," McCuan said. Over the next three days, there will be signs, banners, rallies, speeches, information booths and a march to the grove's entrance. "This small group of men probably controls 80 percent of the wealth in this country. This needs to be talked about," said Don Eichelberger, a member of the state Green Party's working issues group. "They want to maximize profits and maximize benefits to their shareholders, but what does that do to the rest of us? What does that do to our schools? Our health care?" Eichelberger said. Anti-draft and anti-nuclear-weapon protests began at the grove in 1980, led by the Bohemian Grove Action Network and organized by local activist Mary Moore. When Moore stepped down after more than 20 years, the local chapter of Not in Our Name, a group opposed to the war in Iraq, picked up the torch. But the organization did not want to do it again this year, said Susan Lamont, a founding member. "It's a matter of time and energy. We're a very small group and it's an awful lot of work for us," Lamont said. "We've also taken on a number of other projects, including getting trained to do counter-recruiting." The Green Party picked up the protest this year, renaming it "Green Party of California Convergence for Peace and Justice" and paying the $500 costs of the event. Some 200 activists are expected to show up, about the same as last year. The media coverage of Bohemian Grove protests will help the Greens stay in the news during the dry spell between elections, said Shaun Bowler, an analyst of third party movements and a political science professor at UC Riverside. "It's a hard time to get a story written about you," Bowler said. "That can be pretty disheartening. This is a cheap and easy way for them to be seen as relevant." *************************************************************************** 18) The Guardian (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island); July 15, 2005 CANADA: FIXING LEPREAU WILL COST TAXPAYERS: GREEN PARTY If the P.E.I. and New Brunswick Liberals had done their homework, they wouldn't be lobbying the federal government to refurbish the Point Lepreau nuclear plant, said Green Party of Canada environment critic Sharon Labchuk. Labchuk was reacting to a news conference held by the provincial Liberal parties in Charlottetown on Tuesday. "Refurbishing the Point Lepreau nuclear plant will cost Canadian taxpayers dearly and slow the adoption of cleaner more sustainable alternatives to nuclear energy and fossil fuel," Labchuk said in a news release Thursday. "Federal taxpayers should not be forced to pick up the tab for NB Power's bungling. The company, overseen by New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord, has under-collected the costs of operations and waste management from consumers giving the impression that nuclear power is cheap, and now wants a federal bailout." Refurbishing Point Lepreau will cost about $1.4 billion. Mothballing the facility will cost $500 million. Either way, the P.E.I. government will be on the hook for part of the costs. The Island's bill could be about $75 million if the nuclear reactor is refurbished. But Liberal leaders from the two provinces say the reactor must be refurbished to ensure an adequate, cost-effective electricity supply in the region. Labchuk said 17 reactors in Quebec and Ontario all face the same renovations as Lepreau and it will be difficult for the federal government to refuse subsidies to these provinces if it gives in to New Brunswick's demands. "The Green Party would end all subsidies to the nuclear and fossil fuel industries and phase out reactors as they become unsafe or reach the end of their useful lives." *************************************************************************** 19) Bangor Daily News (Maine); July 16, 2005 MAINE: EX-SPEAKER DEFENDS SUSPENSION OF GREEN PARTY STAFFER LAST YEAR by A. J. Higgins AUGUSTA -- Former Maine House Speaker Patrick Colwell has defended his decision to suspend a legislative Green party staffer last year and denied there was any attempt to tarnish the image of the state's burgeoning third party just before a statewide election. Colwell, who now serves as executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, made his remarks Friday in the aftermath of Tuesday's acquittal of former Maine Green Independent Party campaign worker Ben Chipman by a York County Superior Court jury. The panel deliberated for about an hour before concluding the one-time legislative aide to Green party state Rep. John Eder of Portland was not guilty of attempting to influence a voter before a special election last year. Eder and other Greens were suspicious of Colwell's decision to suspend Chipman after Democratic Attorney General Steven Rowe decided to bring criminal charges against Chipman and three others. The group was working on a February 2004 special election campaign for Green party House candidate Dorothy Lafortune of Biddeford. Chipman said the publicity ensuing from Colwell's press release regarding his suspension and Rowe's indictments - both of which took place within a month of the November general election - may have cast a shadow over several other legislative Green campaigns across the state. "We certainly believe that the timing of those indictments was no coincidence and was certainly politically motivated," Chipman said. The Maine Attorney General's Office has rejected the notion of any effort to time the development of its case with the pending November election. Colwell agreed, saying his decision to suspend Chipman was motivated by his responsibility to protect the integrity of the institution as the presiding officer of the House. "The idea of anyone being a victim here is purely political posturing," Colwell said. "There was none of that political gamesmanship that occurred. We were all very concerned about making sure that the people of the state of Maine have absolute certainty that when they vote, their vote counts and that they will not be coerced into voting one way or the other. He's had his day in court and the jury deemed him innocent. It's a new day for Mr. Chipman and I wish him well." Chipman said Friday he hopes to regain his position for Eder at the State House, but will never accept the suggestion that Maine's Democratic leaders did not pursue the indictments for the purposes of embarrassing the Green party. "The Democratic Attorney General's Office put an awful lot of time and effort into trying to contact some 200 voters," he said. "I wonder how much of the taxpayers' money was spent trying to prosecute me as an innocent person for something I didn't do." One of Chipman's three associates in the Lafortune campaign, however, has not fared as well. According to an Associated Press report, Fred Dolgon of Old Orchard Beach was found guilty in May of two counts of trying to influence a voter and acquitted on three others. Wayne Whitten of Biddeford is awaiting trial on an identical charge, and Philip Castora of Arundel is scheduled to go to trial in September on a forgery charge in connection with the same incident. *************************************************************************** 20) Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia); July 16, 2005 CANADA: GREENS SHOW SURPRISING STRENGTH IN POLL: PARTY GETS 43 PER CENT SUPPORT, BUT UVIC POLITICAL SCIENTIST PREDICTS SURGE WILL EVAPORATE OTTAWA (CP) -- It may not be burning up the summer airwaves, but the federal Green party is quietly amassing a large pool of soft support that some believe could make it a player in the next federal election, a new poll suggests. Some 43 per cent of respondents in a Decima Research survey said they could be induced to vote Green under some circumstances, giving the upstart party the kind of broad recognition on which foundations survive. While only nine per cent of those polled said they are certain or likely to support the Green Party, pollster Bruce Anderson nonetheless called the results intriguing. "One can't help but note the potential to affect an already unpredictable electoral contest," the Decima CEO said Friday in releasing the survey to The Canadian Press. The poll asked respondents whether they were "unlikely to vote Green but willing to consider" doing so -- and found 34 per cent of respondents agreed. The survey of more than 1,000 Canadians taken the last week of June is considered accurate within plus or minus 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The results were made public as the Green party began a weekend executive meeting in Ottawa, where among other business they were interviewing for a new executive director. As Conservative Leader Stephen Harper loudly works the summer barbecue circuit and New Democrat Jack Layton hobnobs with aboriginal groups and provincial premiers, Green party Leader Jim Harris said his party has been quietly building. "While you may be saying, 'where's the air campaign?' we are busy organizing the ground campaign," Harris said in an interview. "And let me tell you, the ground campaign will come out in full force during the election campaign. I'm just saying we're going to surprise people." But the Green surprise may cut any number of ways, suggests the Decima poll. A quarter of those kicking the Green tires said it was because none of the alternatives are appealing. And the main reason for ultimately not voting Green, said the tire-kickers, was fear of throwing away their vote (30 per cent), weakening the NDP (14 per cent), and fear of electing a Conservative (11 per cent) or a Liberal (10 per cent). The poll, said Anderson, suggests strategic voters could bleed away from the Greens when it comes time to actually cast ballots. "Many voters today are anxious to avoid the outcome they want least . . . and will hesitate to cast a vote that might contribute to that outcome," he said. That's been the experience in B.C., where the Greens have their strongest support and field both provincial and federal candidates, said political scientist Michael Prince of the University of Victoria. Green support in some B.C. ridings has polled as high as 25 per cent in the last couple of elections. That all melted at the ballot box, said Prince. "Under the old first-past-the-post system, people backed away. They went back to: 'I either want to throw this rascal out or make sure I get my guy in."' Prince called the Decima poll "a nice little summer gift for Jim Harris but it will be ancient history by winter . . . . I think they've got another generation to go," before electoral success. The Greens didn't come close to winning a seat in the June 2004 federal election but their 582,000 votes earned them $1 million a year in public funding until the next campaign. That's allowed the party to "professionalize and organize," said Harris. *************************************************************************** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more Green Party news go to http://web.greens.org/news/ _______________________________________________ media-states mailing list media-states at lists.gp-us.org http://lists.gp-us.org/mailman/listinfo/media-states =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kelly.mccarthy at aya.yale.edu Wed Jul 20 17:17:11 2005 From: kelly.mccarthy at aya.yale.edu (Kelly McCarthy) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:17:11 -0400 Subject: {news} Register coverage of Green for Hamden's 5th District Message-ID: <200507202117.j6KLHEN00603@easy-designs.net> Surprised and delighted that the NH Register is taking our little campaign for the 5th District Legislative Council so seriously this early! Cheers, Kelly Greens make bid in Hamden Michael Gannon, Register Staff 07/18/2005 HAMDEN - The Hamden Green Party has put forth the town's first official nomination for local office this fall, tapping Kelly McCarthy to run for the Legislative Council in the 5th District. "I know we're the third party, that we're the underdogs," McCarthy said recently at the party convention. "I know we get blamed for everything from (Ralph) Nader to (President) Bush. But I'm serious about the issues." Some blamed Nader's Green Party candidacy in 2000 for drawing votes from Democrat Al Gore and giving Bush the presidency. McCarthy, 27, has a personal tutoring business and is a graduate of the Yale Divinity School. An Oregon native, she has lived in Hamden for nearly four years. She and her husband, Aaron Gustafson, are two of the three co-chairmen of the Connecticut Green Party. McCarthy said the issues she would fight for are little different from those she is active with in the Whitneyville Civic Association. She said there are numerous things such as road improvements, sidewalks and other quality-of-life issues that are very real ones for the district's residents. Mark Sanders, her campaign manager, said the district is a diverse one, with the contamination cleanup in the Newhall section, lower and middle working class, middle class and pockets of fairly wealthy residents. "It is those wealthy streets that sometimes hurt us," Sanders said. "Other areas that don't have those qualify for some types of state and federal funds (for improvement projects) that we don't get." At last week's convention, the town party had six of its committee members present, enough for a quorum. They left their local chairman and secretary positions vacant. McCarthy remains as Hamden party treasurer, and Gustafson will stay on as Hamden liaison to the state central committee. Gustafson said there are about 2,000 registered Green members in the state. Sanders said there are 57 in Hamden. Without an automatic slot on the November ballot, McCarthy will need 15 signatures - 1 percent of the 1,500 district voters who turned out in the last municipal election - by Aug. 10 to place her name on the ballot. It would take 25 to allow her to claim a Green Party line. "This is going to be a grass-roots campaign," McCarthy said. Sanders said they would like to court liberal and moderate Democrats as well as Republicans who have seen McCarthy in action in regard to neighborhood affairs. Sanders said the breakdown of registered voters in the 5th District is roughly 45 percent Democratic, 10 percent Republican and 45 percent unaffiliated. "If I were to change my party affiliation to Democratic, I'm sure it would be easier," McCarthy said. _____ Michael Gannon can be reached at mgannon at nhregister.com or at 789-5710. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: spacer.gif Type: image/gif Size: 43 bytes Desc: not available URL: From roseberry3 at cox.net Wed Jul 20 19:21:04 2005 From: roseberry3 at cox.net (B Barry) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:21:04 -0400 Subject: {news} 7-26-05 SCC meeting at Portland Public Library Message-ID: <20050720232105.NRWE16480.lakermmtao12.cox.net@BarbaraBarry> 7-26-05 SCC meeting of the Green Party of CT Time: 7 to 9pm, 7-26-05 Location: Portland Public Library, 20 Freestone Avenue, Portland, CT Phone: 860-342-6770 Facilitator: Thomas Sevigny A. Preliminaries: 1. (2 minutes): Introductions/identify chapters, recruit timekeeper and stacker. 2. (1 minute): Identify people present who are NOT voting representatives. 3. (1 minute): Adopt ground rules. 4. (2 minutes): Approval of tonight's proposed agenda, additions and deletions. 5. (2 minutes): Comments and approval of May 31,2005 SCC minutes. 6. (2 minutes): Comments and approval of April 26, 2005 SCC minutes. 7. (2 minutes): Comments and approval of March 2005 SCC minutes. 8. (15 minutes): Presentation of Treasurer's monthly report. B. Reports: 1. (2 minutes each): Chapter reports. 2. (10 minutes): U.S. Green Party representatives' reports by Tim McKee and Thomas Sevigny. 3. (5 minutes): Women's Caucus report. 4. (5 minutes): V.O.T.E.R. report from Mike DeRosa. 5. (2 minutes): legislative report from Mike DeRosa. 6. (5 minutes): 6-13-05 and 7-11-05 EC meetings from Barbara Barry. 7. (2 minutes): Strategy Committee. C. Presentation: 1. (20 minutes): Green Party of CT Restructuring Plan and Goals for 2005/2006: working draft by Kelly McCarthy and Aaron Gustafson. D. Proposal: 1: EC proposal: What: Have voting members sign-in on a sheet at each SCC meeting. Goal: To assist the Secretary with a count of voters, if votes are taken during the SCC meeting. 2: Shoreline Chapter proposal: PROPOSAL PRESENTER Shoreline Chapter CONTACT SHORELINE CHAPTER Lindsay Mathews, CO-CHAIR, 256 Shore Drive, Branford, CT 06405 (203) 488-3044 SUBJECT Request for funding for mailing to Shoreline constituents. BACKGROUND and PURPOSE As a result of the information provided to us by the speaker from CCAG at our June, SCC meeting, we would like to do a mailing and fundraising letter to our constituents to update them on the struggle for publicly financed elections in CT and to also use this mailing as a fundraiser. PROPOSAL We propose that the CT GP support this effort by funding this mailing. The mailing to 250 people would include: Copies: $44.73 (includes tax) a double sided flyer of facts/info given to us by CCAG a cover letter from our Chair Envelopes: $23.90 250, #10 envelopes $7.36 250, #6/3/4" envelopes 7.58 Tax @ 6% 8.96 Labels: $17.57 250, 2" x 4" $10.98 Tax @ 6.59 Postage: $150.60 250 at 60 cents each $150.60 Total Cost of Mailing: $236.77 Directions: www.mapquest.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smderosa at cox.net Wed Jul 20 22:05:39 2005 From: smderosa at cox.net (smderosa) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:05:39 -0400 Subject: {news} Hear Greg Palast Interview On Downing Street Memos and Karl Rove(mp3 files) Message-ID: <20050721020442.OLAI14388.lakermmtao10.cox.net@userb649154f63> Just double click to hear Greg Palast Interview(you will need Real Audio and sound card). Very interesting and censored news and History: _____ _____ New Focus: free speech radio from Connecticut. We the People HOME AUDIO JOURNAL LINKS CONTACT US WWUH 91.3 FM Fri Noon-12:30pm and Wed at 8:30 PM 91.3 FM Hartford, CT July 15, 2005 Greg Palast Greg Palast on the Rove scandal, the Downing St. Memo and why most of the mass media are incapable of real journalism. Listen now _____ June 17, 2005 Steve Ellner Professor Steve Ellner talks about Hugo Chavez and politics inside and outside Venezuela. Listen now _____ June 03, 2005 Robert Parry The reporter who helped break the Iran-Contra story. Parry talks about the Iraq War controversies and why mainstream journalism ignores real stories in exchange for officially acceptable news and history. Listen now _____ April 06, 2005 James Galbraith Professor James Galbraith, from the University of Texas, Austin, talks about the fraudulent election and subsequent recount fiasco in Ohio in 2004. Listen now _____ www.newfocusradio.org Mike's Journal Latest Installment: July 18, 2004 Senator Dodd Kills Voter Paper Trail Journal Archive NOTE: Opinions expressed on New Focus are not necessarily shared by the host, producers or broadcasters. All opinions presented on New Focus are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Contact the show: mderosa at newfocusradio.org Home | Audio | Journal | Links | Contacts counter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: nf1.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 7516 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: nf2.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3563 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: counter.php_sc_project=357220&java=0&invisible=1 Type: application/octet-stream Size: 49 bytes Desc: not available URL: From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Fri Jul 22 09:03:23 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 06:03:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} GP candidate for Mayor in Stamford, CT Message-ID: <20050722130323.65526.qmail@web81406.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-greens3jul22,0,479553.story?coll=stam-news-local-headlines Green Party hopeful would be 4th candidate in mayor's race By Donna Porstner Staff Writer July 22, 2005 STAMFORD -- The Connecticut Green Party plans to put up a mayoral candidate in November, bringing the total number of people seeking the city's highest elected office to four. While the other hopefuls are talking about the rising cost of government and public education, North Stamford resident and environmentalist Darek Shapiro said the No. 1 issue facing Stamford is rising energy costs. "The main issue everybody's discussing is high taxes, but that is not the problem, that's a symptom of the problem," he said. If something isn't done to lower energy costs, businesses and middle-class residents are going to flee and Stamford is "going to be a bedroom town for high-cost homes," he said. Shapiro, 52, of Surrey Road, said the way to make the city more affordable is to reduce energy consumption. He said the solution can be as simple as replacing traditional light bulbs with more efficient ones. "I'm a progressive thinker. I'm an idea man. That's how I make a living," said Shapiro, who specializes in green architecture -- a term in the industry for designing energy-efficient buildings with renewable or recycled materials. Shapiro is the founder of the 2010 Clean Energy Committee, which lobbied the Board of Representatives to recently pass legislation agreeing to purchase 20 percent of the municipality's energy from clean sources by 2010. Since the Green Party did not put up a candidate for Stamford's last mayoral race in 2001, Shapiro has to petition his way onto the ballot the same as an unaffiliated candidate. He needs to get 182 signatures from Stamford voters representing 1 percent of the votes cast during the last municipal election in 2003, said Pearl Williams, who is in charge of nominating petitions for the secretary of the state's office in Hartford. Shapiro is jointly petitioning along with David Bedell of Glenbrook, a Green Party member running for constable, the Board of Education and the Board of Representatives. While he is putting his name in for all three races, Bedell said he only plans to run for constable. He plans to be a placeholder and find other Green Party members to run for those seats. Bedell, who was a write-in candidate for registrar of voters last year, is secretary of the Fairfield County Chapter of the Connecticut Green Party. Shapiro and Bedell have until the Aug. 10 deadline to file their nominating petition. "Our eventual hope is to get someone on every single board," said John Amarilios of New Canaan, chairman of the Fairfield County Chapter of the Connecticut Green Party. The Green Party has elected candidates in Hartford, New Haven and small towns in the northwestern and northeastern corners of the state but does not have anyone in office in lower Fairfield County, Amarilios said. Last fall, Amarilios ran unsuccessfully against incumbent state Sen. William Nickerson, R-Greenwich, for the 36th District seat. "One of the biggest problems we have as a third party is the hurdles we have to go though to get candidates on the ballot," Amarilios said. The problem, he said, is that the people who have the power to change state election law are Democrats and Republicans who have no incentive to entice competition from minor party candidates and unaffiliated voters. Even when petitioning candidates get on the ballot, their names appear at the bottom under state law. If there is more than one petitioning candidate, state Elections Officer Arthur Champagne said, "whoever filed first gets the upper line." Shapiro is one of two petitioning candidates challenging Democratic incumbent Dannel Malloy, who has been mayor since 1995. The other is Achille Fiore, an Oaklawn Avenue resident with no political affiliation. Malloy's third challenger, Republican Christopher Munger, is a former FBI agent who lives on Elaine Drive. Neither Fiore nor the Republicans see Shapiro as a threat. "My support is growing," Fiore said. "I am not worried about the competition whatsoever." Republican Town Committee Chairman Daniel McCabe said odds are slim Shapiro will take away votes from Munger. "We're absolutely, totally not worried about him because the Green Party tends to attract a fringe voter and those people do not vote Republican," McCabe said. "He will not be a factor in the overall race." The Green Party has 46 voters registered as members in Stamford, compared with 21,574 Democrats and 13,964 Republicans. There are 19,744 unaffiliated voters in the city, 251 members of the Independent Party, 46 Libertarians, 10 members of the Connecticut Party, seven members of the Reform Party and six members of the Concerned Citizens Party. "I look forward to the campaign and engaging all of the candidates in a discussion about their visions for the city," Malloy said. Copyright ? 2005, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dbedellgreen at hotmail.com Fri Jul 22 15:06:36 2005 From: dbedellgreen at hotmail.com (David Bedell) Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 19:06:36 +0000 Subject: {news} Darek Shapiro for Stamford Mayor Message-ID: Front page of today's Stamford Advocate: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-greens3jul22,0,479553.story?coll=stam-news-local-headlines Green Party hopeful would be 4th candidate in mayor's race By Donna Porstner Staff Writer July 22, 2005 STAMFORD -- The Connecticut Green Party plans to put up a mayoral candidate in November, bringing the total number of people seeking the city's highest elected office to four. While the other hopefuls are talking about the rising cost of government and public education, North Stamford resident and environmentalist Darek Shapiro said the No. 1 issue facing Stamford is rising energy costs. "The main issue everybody's discussing is high taxes, but that is not the problem, that's a symptom of the problem," he said. If something isn't done to lower energy costs, businesses and middle-class residents are going to flee and Stamford is "going to be a bedroom town for high-cost homes," he said. Shapiro, 52, of Surrey Road, said the way to make the city more affordable is to reduce energy consumption. He said the solution can be as simple as replacing traditional light bulbs with more efficient ones. "I'm a progressive thinker. I'm an idea man. That's how I make a living," said Shapiro, who specializes in green architecture -- a term in the industry for designing energy-efficient buildings with renewable or recycled materials. Shapiro is the founder of the 2010 Clean Energy Committee, which lobbied the Board of Representatives to recently pass legislation agreeing to purchase 20 percent of the municipality's energy from clean sources by 2010. Since the Green Party did not put up a candidate for Stamford's last mayoral race in 2001, Shapiro has to petition his way onto the ballot the same as an unaffiliated candidate. He needs to get 182 signatures from Stamford voters representing 1 percent of the votes cast during the last municipal election in 2003, said Pearl Williams, who is in charge of nominating petitions for the secretary of the state's office in Hartford. Shapiro is jointly petitioning along with David Bedell of Glenbrook, a Green Party member running for constable, the Board of Education and the Board of Representatives. While he is putting his name in for all three races, Bedell said he only plans to run for constable. He plans to be a placeholder and find other Green Party members to run for those seats. Bedell, who was a write-in candidate for registrar of voters last year, is secretary of the Fairfield County Chapter of the Connecticut Green Party. Shapiro and Bedell have until the Aug. 10 deadline to file their nominating petition. "Our eventual hope is to get someone on every single board," said John Amarilios of New Canaan, chairman of the Fairfield County Chapter of the Connecticut Green Party. The Green Party has elected candidates in Hartford, New Haven and small towns in the northwestern and northeastern corners of the state but does not have anyone in office in lower Fairfield County, Amarilios said. Last fall, Amarilios ran unsuccessfully against incumbent state Sen. William Nickerson, R-Greenwich, for the 36th District seat. "One of the biggest problems we have as a third party is the hurdles we have to go though to get candidates on the ballot," Amarilios said. The problem, he said, is that the people who have the power to change state election law are Democrats and Republicans who have no incentive to entice competition from minor party candidates and unaffiliated voters. Even when petitioning candidates get on the ballot, their names appear at the bottom under state law. If there is more than one petitioning candidate, state Elections Officer Arthur Champagne said, "whoever filed first gets the upper line." Shapiro is one of two petitioning candidates challenging Democratic incumbent Dannel Malloy, who has been mayor since 1995. The other is Achille Fiore, an Oaklawn Avenue resident with no political affiliation. Malloy's third challenger, Republican Christopher Munger, is a former FBI agent who lives on Elaine Drive. Neither Fiore nor the Republicans see Shapiro as a threat. "My support is growing," Fiore said. "I am not worried about the competition whatsoever." Republican Town Committee Chairman Daniel McCabe said odds are slim Shapiro will take away votes from Munger. "We're absolutely, totally not worried about him because the Green Party tends to attract a fringe voter and those people do not vote Republican," McCabe said. "He will not be a factor in the overall race." The Green Party has 46 voters registered as members in Stamford, compared with 21,574 Democrats and 13,964 Republicans. There are 19,744 unaffiliated voters in the city, 251 members of the Independent Party, 46 Libertarians, 10 members of the Connecticut Party, seven members of the Reform Party and six members of the Concerned Citizens Party. "I look forward to the campaign and engaging all of the candidates in a discussion about their visions for the city," Malloy said. Copyright ? 2005, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc. From greenpartyct at yahoo.com Tue Jul 26 10:56:15 2005 From: greenpartyct at yahoo.com (Green Party-CT) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 07:56:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {news} Green Party of the U.S. News Circulator for 7/18/05-7/25/05-NOTE: Maine money problems Message-ID: <20050726145615.87931.qmail@web81401.mail.yahoo.com> Note the LAST STORY as one of the largest GP groups in a large state is having money problems too! Andy Parx wrote:From: Andy Parx To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: [media-states] Green Party of the U.S. News Circulator for 7/18/05-7/25/05 Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 13:02:08 -1000 Green Party of the U.S. News Circulator for 7/18/05-7/25/05 For more Green Party news go to http://web.greens.org/news/ ********************************************************************* 1) NEW ZEALAND: GREENS ADAMANT NZ DOES NOT WANT TOUR 2) NEW ZEALAND: MANA CANDIDATE 3) GERMANY: NEW GERMAN LEFT PARTY SUPPLANTS GREENS AS CAMPAIGN HEATS UP 4) MAINE: EX-SPEAKER DEFENDS SUSPENSION OF GREEN PARTY STAFFER LAST YEAR 5) NEW ZEALAND: NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT URGED TO CONSIDER PACIFIC PASSPORT PROPOSAL 6) ENGLAND: GREENS TO KEEP TRACK OF BIDS FOR LATE LICENCES 7) OKLAHOMA: PARTY LOOKS TO PLACE GREENS ON THE MENU 8) CONNECTICUT: GREEN PARTY HOPEFUL WOULD BE 4TH CANDIDATE IN MAYOR'S RACE 9) NEW ZEALAND: BLACK CAPS 'MAY BE STRANDED' 10) MAINE: NUMBERS OF GREENS GROWING IN MAINE; THIRD PARTY BOOSTS ROLLS, BUT LACKS CASH ********************************************************************* 1) The New Zealand Herald; July 18, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: GREENS ADAMANT NZ DOES NOT WANT TOUR The Green Party has rejected the claim of NZ Cricket boss Martin Snedden that public opinion has swung in behind the tour of Zimbabwe, saying the mood is the opposite. Mr Snedden made the comments after a protest march against the tour by about 1000 people in Auckland on Saturday. He said the small size of the march was "an indication that the view taken a few weeks ago by most of the media is not reflective of what the public think". Green co-leader Rod Donald said the comments were "misguided". A TVNZ/Colmar Brunton poll taken on June 30 found 77 per cent of New Zealanders opposed the tour. Only 14 per cent of those interviewed thought it should go ahead. Mr Donald said he believed that opposition to the tour was even stronger now. The Greens will continue their campaign to prevent the team going, bringing Judith Todd - the daughter of Sir Garfield Todd, the New Zealand-born former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia - to Wellington this week to speak with union, church and political leaders. Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff has conceded the tour is now likely to go ahead in a fortnight unless safety issues arise. The International Cricket Council reiterated on Friday that the Government would have to make the tour illegal to prevent NZ Cricket suffering multi-million dollar penalties if it cancelled the tour. The Government has refused to legislate to prevent the team from going, saying that would be an infringement of civil rights. "The Green Party's bill has been drafted so that it doesn't prevent individual Kiwis from travelling to Zimbabwe," Mr Donald said. "Right-thinking New Zealanders recognise that stopping Mugabe and not giving him the pleasure of seeing the Black Caps in his country is far more important than the tour." ********************************************************************* 2) The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand); July 18, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: MANA CANDIDATE THE Green Party's youngest candidate, Nikki Harvey, 29, will contest Mana in the general election. The occupational therapist has worked at Porirua Psychiatric Hospital and Mana Community Enterprises Vocational Rehabilitation Centre. ********************************************************************* 3) Deutsche Presse-Agentur; July 17, 2005 GERMANY: NEW GERMAN LEFT PARTY SUPPLANTS GREENS AS CAMPAIGN HEATS UP Berlin-- A far-left alliance of dissatisfied Social Democrats and former East German communists rallied in Berlin Sunday with polls showing their newly christened Left Party has overtaken the Greens in voter support. The developments coincided with an unconfirmed report that President Horst Koehler plans this coming week to dissolve the Bundestag parliament and call for a general election on September 18. With just two months to go, opinion surveys showed the Left Party garnering 10 per cent of the vote, compared to just 7 per cent for the Greens, junior partners in embattled Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's fragile centre-left coalition government. That would make the Left Party the third-strongest political force in Germany, behind front-runner Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) at 43 per cent and Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) at 27 per cent. In the five states constituting former communist East Germany, the Left Party has the support of a whopping 29 per cent of the electorate, according to an Emnid Institute poll. In the west, support is running at under 10 per cent -- head-and-head with the Greens in most places. The new far-left alliance is headed by former Schroeder cabinet member Oscar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi, long the most charismatic figure in the far-leftist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the reconstituted East German Communist Party. Lafontaine heads the new leftist grouping called the Labour and Social Election Alternative (WASG). In Berlin Sunday, the PDS met in a national convention to change the party's name formally to Linkspartei (Left Party), thus paving the way for a merger with the WASG under a common campaign banner. "This is a second beginning for us," 57-year-old Gysi told delegates in Berlin. "Fifteen years after our first beginning we are now poised to take on more political power than ever before." Schroeder, whose Social Democrats are trailing in the public opinion surveys in the run-up to the planned September general election, continued to lash out at dissenters in his own party who have gone over to the new Left Party, as well as at his conservative challenger Merkel. "I am confident that we can turn this campaign around and emerge victorious," Schroeder said. "And if the federal president should decide against calling a new election, then I have every intention of remaining in office and filling out my full term for another year." According to an unconfirmed report in Monday's editions of Der Spiegel news magazine, Koehler viewed Schroeder's remarks as a threat to him. The magazine said Koehler had told his aides he now had no choice but to call for a new election in order to prevent political chaos in Germany. Schroeder decided to push to bring forward the country's election by one year in the wake of a humiliating defeat for his party last month in a poll in the SPD's traditional heartland of North Rhine Westphalia. His foreign minister, meanwhile, issued a blistering attack on the new Left Party. "There is absolutely no reason for us to cower in fear or shame," Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the Green Party's standard-bearer, said in published remarks. "We have an admirable and in fact outstanding record, built in two decades of hard work in the German Bundestag," said Fischer, who was in New York over the weekend for deliberations at the United Nations on Germany's bid to gain a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. "We have nothing to fear from anybody as we go into an election campaign from which I am confident we will emerge victorious." Germany's Greens, facing a strong challenge from the political left for the first time in their history, held their own party congress last weekend, hammering out an election platform aimed at defusing the threat from the left. Fired on by Fischer, the Greens party congress hammered out leftist and environmentalist stances in clear demarcation to the new far-left grouping who are rallying around Lafontaine. Platform planks included higher taxes on the rich, better day-care programmes for double-earner families and tax breaks for future- oriented, environmentally friendly technologies. But Fischer's remarks come as opinion surveys show that the Left Party could garner more than 10 per cent in the election. Political analysts say that would doom any chance of Schroeder's SPD remaining in power with its junior coalition partners, the Greens. Analysts predict meanwhile that such a development in the general election might well result in the formation of a grand coalition headed by Christian Democrats with Schroeder's SPD as junior members. dpa eg sr ********************************************************************* 4) Bangor Daily News; July 16, 2005 MAINE: EX-SPEAKER DEFENDS SUSPENSION OF GREEN PARTY STAFFER LAST YEAR by A. J. Higgins AUGUSTA - Former Maine House Speaker Patrick Colwell has defended his decision to suspend a legislative Green party staffer last year and denied there was any attempt to tarnish the image of the state's burgeoning third party just before a statewide election. Colwell, who now serves as executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, made his remarks Friday in the aftermath of Tuesday's acquittal of former Maine Green Independent Party campaign worker Ben Chipman by a York County Superior Court jury. The panel deliberated for about an hour before concluding the one-time legislative aide to Green party state Rep. John Eder of Portland was not guilty of attempting to influence a voter before a special election last year. Eder and other Greens were suspicious of Colwell's decision to suspend Chipman after Democratic Attorney General Steven Rowe decided to bring criminal charges against Chipman and three others. The group was working on a February 2004 special election campaign for Green party House candidate Dorothy Lafortune of Biddeford. Chipman said the publicity ensuing from Colwell's press release regarding his suspension and Rowe's indictments - both of which took place within a month of the November general election - may have cast a shadow over several other legislative Green campaigns across the state. "We certainly believe that the timing of those indictments was no coincidence and was certainly politically motivated," Chipman said. The Maine Attorney General's Office has rejected the notion of any effort to time the development of its case with the pending November election. Colwell agreed, saying his decision to suspend Chipman was motivated by his responsibility to protect the integrity of the institution as the presiding officer of the House. "The idea of anyone being a victim here is purely political posturing," Colwell said. "There was none of that political gamesmanship that occurred. We were all very concerned about making sure that the people of the state of Maine have absolute certainty that when they vote, their vote counts and that they will not be coerced into voting one way or the other. He's had his day in court and the jury deemed him innocent. It's a new day for Mr. Chipman and I wish him well." Chipman said Friday he hopes to regain his position for Eder at the State House, but will never accept the suggestion that Maine's Democratic leaders did not pursue the indictments for the purposes of embarrassing the Green party. "The Democratic Attorney General's Office put an awful lot of time and effort into trying to contact some 200 voters," he said. "I wonder how much of the taxpayers' money was spent trying to prosecute me as an innocent person for something I didn't do." One of Chipman's three associates in the Lafortune campaign, however, has not fared as well. According to an Associated Press report, Fred Dolgon of Old Orchard Beach was found guilty in May of two counts of trying to influence a voter and acquitted on three others. Wayne Whitten of Biddeford is awaiting trial on an identical charge, and Philip Castora of Arundel is scheduled to go to trial in September on a forgery charge in connection with the same incident. ********************************************************************* 5) PacNews (Pacific Island News Service); July 19, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT URGED TO CONSIDER PACIFIC PASSPORT PROPOSAL AUCKLAND-- New Zealand's Green Party has urged the government to give serious consideration to the idea of a "Pacific passport" floated by visiting French Polynesia President Oscar Temaru. "This suggestion is a welcome sign that French Polynesia is starting to see itself as part of the Pacific region, rather than as an outpost of France," Green Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Keith Locke says. "The Government should embrace this friendly overture, and explore with Mr Temaru how we can free up movement between Pacific nations and create a stronger Pacific identity. Mr Locke said French Polynesia is not included in the Pacific Access quotas enjoyed by other Pacific countries like Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Fiji. "However, immigration rights are not the main thrust of what Mr Temaru is proposing. Essentially he is proposing a common travel document, which leaves people's citizenship intact, but enables them to live and work in whichever Pacific nation they choose. ?Such an arrangement already exists between Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Tokelau and Niue. "Recently, Samoan people have been pressing for a similar type of access to New Zealand, and Mr Temaru is signalling that French Polynesia also wants to be considered. Both Samoa and French Polynesia have viable economies, which mean it is unlikely there would be a flood of migrants from either country. ?To prevent freer movement destabilising any of the poorer island economies, New Zealand should up its development aid, and include incentives for Pacific peoples who come to NZ for work and education to take their experience back home. Commendably, most of our aid does go to the Pacific, but the overall aid budget is still pitifully low, at 0.27 percent of Gross National Income, when the international standard is 0.7 percent." Mr Locke said. Mr Locke said opening up borders in the Pacific region could bring benefits to both New Zealand and peoples of Pacific islands. ?In one respect, New Zealanders already have a Pacific passport, in that we have visa-free entry to Pacific Island states. Unfortunately, the reverse doesn't apply, with Samoans and other Pacific Islanders often finding it difficult to even get visitor's visas. ?Providing Pacific Islanders with visa-free entry to New Zealand for short stays might be a good place to start in addressing Mr Temaru's concerns," the Green Party leader said. ********************************************************************* 6) UK Newsquest Regional Press - This is Brighton and Hove; July 19, 2005 ENGLAND: GREENS TO KEEP TRACK OF BIDS FOR LATE LICENCES Green activists are piloting a new service to inform people living near pubs if the landlord has applied to stay open into the early hours. The Brighton and Hove Green Party has already put the service into action in some areas of the city where applications have been made by pubs in sensitive areas of central Brighton such as residential neighbourhoods. Under new regulations licensed premises can apply to stay open for longer hours and many local pubs have applied to remain open until 2am and 3am. Currently premises only have to display a notice of intention to apply for longer hours in the window and advertise in local newspapers. The Greens said this level of communication was not effective enough and residents should be informed of pub and club plans in the same way they would be informed of any planning applications made in their neighbourhoods. When planning applications are received notices are placed on lamp posts and letters sent to nearby homes with details of the plans. The Green Party's licensed premises information service works in a similar way with the party sending residents a letter telling them of their local pub or club's plans. Brighton and Hove city councillor Keith Taylor the Green Party's convenor said: "We've had lots of thank yous and a few moans. It's important to understand we are simply letting people know what's happening in their own neighbourhood. We don't think the Government's consultation guidelines are adequate. We're not saying any particular application is right or wrong rather that residents need to know what's going on. We are in favour of liberalising the licensing laws but extensions tohours should not unduly disrupt neighbourhoods. ********************************************************************* 7) Tulsa World; July 20, 2005 OKLAHOMA: PARTY LOOKS TO PLACE GREENS ON THE MENU by April Marciszewski When the Green Party of the United States meets in Tulsa this week, members hope to offer a new view. In a state where their party isn't recognized on the ballot, 250 or more Green Party of the United States members will meet in Tulsa this week and take on war, nuclear weapons, diversity and peace. Oklahoma, Louisiana and California applied to host the annual national meeting; the party's national committee chose Oklahoma, mostly to help the state chapter grow, said state and national party members. The 3-year-old Green Party of Oklahoma was accredited by the national party in May. It has at least 200 Green Party members and potentially more Green "thinkers and doers" statewide, said Rachel Jackson, co-chairwoman of the state party. Party leaders and the Web site www.gp.org say the group stands for grass-roots interests, for the environment and for social justice, and stands against violence and democracy supported by corporations. Its Web site advocates impeaching President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. "We consider ourselves a party for the left out," such as ethnic groups and low-income people excluded from politics, said Scott McLarty, Green Party media coordinator. McLarty hopes the annual meeting, set for Thursday through Sunday at the University of Tulsa, will show Americans that Green Party groups are starting throughout the country. The university does not endorse any political party, representatives said. Marc Sanson, a co-chairman of the committee that chose Oklahoma for the conference location, said the committee liked the idea of the hosts, Green Party of Oklahoma and Green Country Greens, using local vendors for such items as food. A fundraising dinner at 7 p.m. Friday at Woodward Park will include Oklahoma-grown food and will be open to the public. It will cost $10 a person. The committee also liked the idea of meeting at a local university in the "heartland," far from the coasts, where more political activity usually takes place, Sanson said. The local Green groups hope to recruit more members and raise interest enough to get on Oklahoma's ballots, Jackson said. Oklahomans can't register as Green Party voters and the party can't have Oklahoma candidates because the party isn't recognized by the state. For a party to be recognized, it has to get signatures from a number of people equal to 5 percent of those who voted in the last general election. Currently, a political party would have to get 73,188 signatures because of the high turnout for last year's presidential election, said Michael Clingman, state election board secretary. Most third parties wait until after lower-turnout elections to try to get on the ballot, he said. To keep state recognition, a party has to garner 10 percent of the vote in the next election. Libertarian and Ross Perot's Reform parties have been recognized in the state at various times, Clingman said. House Bill 1429, introduced in February, would have made it easier for third parties to get recognized in Oklahoma, but the bill didn't advance in the Legislature. Oklahomans who register for a party other than Republican or Democrat are considered independent and cannot vote in primary elections without the permission of one of the two major parties. "I think Oklahoma is a home of a broader range of thinking than what's reflected on the ballot with the two parties currently," Jackson, of the state Green Party, said. "If we're a truly democratic society, we need to choose representatives that reflect our thinking." ********************************************************************* 8) Stamford Advocate: July 22, 2005 CONNECTICUT: GREEN PARTY HOPEFUL WOULD BE 4TH CANDIDATE IN MAYOR'S RACE by Donna Porstner STAMFORD -- The Connecticut Green Party plans to put up a mayoral candidate in November, bringing the total number of people seeking the city's highest elected office to four. While the other hopefuls are talking about the rising cost of government and public education, North Stamford resident and environmentalist Darek Shapiro said the No. 1 issue facing Stamford is rising energy costs. "The main issue everybody's discussing is high taxes, but that is not the problem, that's a symptom of the problem," he said. If something isn't done to lower energy costs, businesses and middle-class residents are going to flee and Stamford is "going to be a bedroom town for high-cost homes," he said. Shapiro, 52, of Surrey Road, said the way to make the city more affordable is to reduce energy consumption. He said the solution can be as simple as replacing traditional light bulbs with more efficient ones. "I'm a progressive thinker. I'm an idea man. That's how I make a living," said Shapiro, who specializes in green architecture -- a term in the industry for designing energy-efficient buildings with renewable or recycled materials. Shapiro is the founder of the 2010 Clean Energy Committee, which lobbied the Board of Representatives to recently pass legislation agreeing to purchase 20 percent of the municipality's energy from clean sources by 2010. Since the Green Party did not put up a candidate for Stamford's last mayoral race in 2001, Shapiro has to petition his way onto the ballot the same as an unaffiliated candidate. He needs to get 182 signatures from Stamford voters representing 1 percent of the votes cast during the last municipal election in 2003, said Pearl Williams, who is in charge of nominating petitions for the secretary of the state's office in Hartford. Shapiro is jointly petitioning along with David Bedell of Glenbrook, a Green Party member running for constable, the Board of Education and the Board of Representatives. While he is putting his name in for all three races, Bedell said he only plans to run for constable. He plans to be a placeholder and find other Green Party members to run for those seats. Bedell, who was a write-in candidate for registrar of voters last year, is secretary of the Fairfield County Chapter of the Connecticut Green Party. Shapiro and Bedell have until the Aug. 10 deadline to file their nominating petition. "Our eventual hope is to get someone on every single board," said John Amarilios of New Canaan, chairman of the Fairfield County Chapter of the Connecticut Green Party. The Green Party has elected candidates in Hartford, New Haven and small towns in the northwestern and northeastern corners of the state but does not have anyone in office in lower Fairfield County, Amarilios said. Last fall, Amarilios ran unsuccessfully against incumbent state Sen. William Nickerson, R-Greenwich, for the 36th District seat. "One of the biggest problems we have as a third party is the hurdles we have to go though to get candidates on the ballot," Amarilios said. The problem, he said, is that the people who have the power to change state election law are Democrats and Republicans who have no incentive to entice competition from minor party candidates and unaffiliated voters. Even when petitioning candidates get on the ballot, their names appear at the bottom under state law. If there is more than one petitioning candidate, state Elections Officer Arthur Champagne said, "whoever filed first gets the upper line." Shapiro is one of two petitioning candidates challenging Democratic incumbent Dannel Malloy, who has been mayor since 1995. The other is Achille Fiore, an Oaklawn Avenue resident with no political affiliation. Malloy's third challenger, Republican Christopher Munger, is a former FBI agent who lives on Elaine Drive. Neither Fiore nor the Republicans see Shapiro as a threat. "My support is growing," Fiore said. "I am not worried about the competition whatsoever." Republican Town Committee Chairman Daniel McCabe said odds are slim Shapiro will take away votes from Munger. "We're absolutely, totally not worried about him because the Green Party tends to attract a fringe voter and those people do not vote Republican," McCabe said. "He will not be a factor in the overall race." The Green Party has 46 voters registered as members in Stamford, compared with 21,574 Democrats and 13,964 Republicans. There are 19,744 unaffiliated voters in the city, 251 members of the Independent Party, 46 Libertarians, 10 members of the Connecticut Party, seven members of the Reform Party and six members of the Concerned Citizens Party. ********************************************************************* 9) The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand); July 23, 2005 NEW ZEALAND: BLACK CAPS 'MAY BE STRANDED' NEW ZEALAND'S cricketers could be stranded in Zimbabwe because the country is running out of fuel, the Green Party said last night in a last-ditch attempt to stop the tour. The Black Caps are due to start a tour of Zimbabwe early next month, and the Greens are leading a campaign to stop them going in protest against President Robert Mugabe's human rights abuses. The Government has refused to legislate to stop the tour, which would be the only way for the team to avoid heavy fines imposed by the International Cricket Council. Greens co-leader Rod Donald cited British media reports saying fuel shortages had grounded Air Zimbabwe flights, and the cost of petrol had rocketed to Z$ 120,000 a litre (NZ$ 16.23). "If the Black Caps do end up in Zimbabwe, they could find themselves trying to hitch rides to their games," he said. ********************************************************************* 10) Bangor Daily News; July 23, 2005 MAINE: NUMBERS OF GREENS GROWING IN MAINE; THIRD PARTY BOOSTS ROLLS, BUT LACKS CASH BANGOR - While the grass might be greener elsewhere, voting lists in Maine are as Green as they come, according to the most recent voter registration totals from the Secretary of State's Office. Statewide figures, released last week, found that as of November 2004 there were 24,155 registered Green Party voters in Maine - the highest percentage of any state and a 27 percent increase over the Maine party's January 2004 enrollment. Matt Tilley, co-chairman of the Maine Green Independent Party, on Friday was enthusiastic but a bit wary of the new total - a surprising jump of more than 5,000 registered Greens in less than a year. "It's remarkable in a way, but we'll take it," said Tilley, of Bangor, who attributed at least part of the increase to more younger voters entering the party and some likely duplication among town voting lists. Tilley also credited the presence of Mainer Pat LaMarche on the national party's 2004 presidential ticket, even though that ticket received less than 1 percent of the statewide vote. "It seems like she raised some interest and enthusiasm," Tilley said of LaMarche, who is considering a run for governor in 2006. Nancy Allen, a spokeswoman for the Green Party of the United States, the national affiliate of the Maine Green Independent Party, offered a more philosophical reason for the increase. "It's a negative reaction to major parties," said Allen, who lives in Castine. "People want a party that represents values." While Green membership remains a fraction of that of the major parties, as a percentage, the Maine Greens fared well. As of November 2004, there were 319,198 Democrats - a 7 percent increase over January 2004 - and 287,452 Republicans, a 5 percent increase. Independents, or so-called "unenrolled" voters, again composed the largest group with 393,151 voters - a 7 percent increase. Maine Greens, at 2.3 percent of the statewide electorate, boasted the highest percentage of Green voters anywhere in the country. That distinction, however, is not surprising, Tilley said, considering Maine's relatively small electorate - only about 1 million people - particularly compared with places such as California, which has about 158,000 Greens among the state's nearly 17 million registered voters. Ranked in terms of total Green voters, Maine places third behind California and New York, the latter of which has about 38,000 Greens. But even as the Maine Greens appear to increase their rolls, the party continues its financial struggle, recently finding itself homeless in a sense. The party already has shut down its Portland office and is in the process of closing its Augusta office, said Tilley, predicting the move will save the party about $5,000 a year. Without a headquarters, the party - which last year operated on about $15,000 - will hold its meetings at different locations throughout the state, he said. "We're going to take the show on the road," Tilley said. ********************************************************************* NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more Green Party news go to http://web.greens.org/news/ _______________________________________________ media-states mailing list media-states at lists.gp-us.org http://lists.gp-us.org/mailman/listinfo/media-states =========================================================== THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member. =========================================================== National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Tue Jul 26 13:07:56 2005 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:07:56 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: [GPUS-PAX] Teen Journo Draws Fire After Army Sting Message-ID: <023201c59204$91d902d0$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000991306 Teen Journo Draws Fire After Army Sting By Graham Webster Published: July 25, 2005 4:23 PM ET NEW YORK David McSwane had seen the military recruiters around town. He had seen them at the high school. And he knew that with recruitment rates down due to the Iraq war, they were working hard to attract new cadets. And it gave him an idea. "I wanted to see how far they'd go to get another soldier," says McSwane, a reporter for the Westwind at Arvada West High School in Arvada, Colo. So he set up a sting investigation, posing as a high school dropout with a marijuana habit and went down to his local Colorado Army recruitment station to enlist. McSwane, 17, knew he would have to document his conversations with the recruiters, so he taped the telephone conversations, enlisted his sister to pose as a proud sibling so she could photograph parts of the process, and asked a friend to operate a video camera across from a local head shop. But how did McSwane get an recruiter to visit a head shop with him? Simple. The honor student, pretending to have a ganja habit he couldn't kick, went there to score a detoxifying kit the Army office claimed had helped two previous recruits pass drug tests, according to a taped phone conversation broadcast on local TV. McSwane told his recruiter he didn't know what the detox formula looked like, so the man agreed to go to the store with him. Aside from his drug problem, McSwane said he had no high school diploma - which at that time was true, as he graduated about two months later - and that he had dropped out of high school. No problem, the recruiters told him. There are Web sites where anyone can order a diploma from a school they make up. "It can be like Faith Hill Baptist School or whatever you choose," one recruiter can be heard saying on one of the taped exchanges. After the fruits of his investigation ran in the Westwind, there was a brief lull. Then a Denver TV station picked up the story and ran with it, first airing McSwane's findings on April 28. Within a few days the boy's sting had made national headlines, and the U.S. Army froze recruiting operations nationwide for a day. (His two would-be recruiters were suspended.) "It's been kind of cool to see a reaction from the Pentagon on a story done in a high school paper," the teen reporter says. He has appeared on local and national TV, and articles on his investigation have appeared in the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and The New York Times. One could understand if the school was a bit unaccustomed to all the media attention. Rick Kaufman, a spokesman for Jefferson County Public Schools, said that after the initial report ran in Westwind, "the principal was very clear with David that the articles could not go any further into his undercover actions." Because the school paper is produced as part of a class, the principal reviews the paper prior to publication and has the power to spike any story. McSwane says his scrupulous documentation has for the most part prevented naysayers from calling his investigation false. Still, he says, some have questioned the ethics involved in a deceptive operation like the one he orchestrated: "Any undercover investigation, you're going in there as a lie. And a lot of people don't like it." In the fall McSwane plans to start on a journalism degree at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. But he's not taking it easy in the meantime. "I work retail graveyard shifts right now, because I've got to make money for college," he says, upon waking in the mid-afternoon. On his days off, he interns at the Arvada (Colo.) Press. Like any good romance, McSwane's love of journalism started with something of an accident. "I guess I've always had a knack for writing," he says. "One day one of my English teachers just put me in newspaper class without my permission." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.gp-us.org http://lists.gp-us.org/mailman/listinfo/peace From dbedellgreen at hotmail.com Wed Jul 27 16:43:55 2005 From: dbedellgreen at hotmail.com (David Bedell) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 20:43:55 +0000 Subject: {news} Oct 1 event: Civil Union today, Marriage tomorrow! Message-ID: http://www.lmfct.org/site/PageServer?pagename=celebratethelove Party with Love Makes A Family on October 1 as we commemorate a step towards full equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people across Connecticut. On the day that the Civil Union law is enacted, we?ll celebrate the love and commitment of same-sex couples, and shine a spotlight on our ultimate goal?MARRIAGE EQUALITY! Saturday, October 1 8pm to Midnight at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel 275 Research Parkway, Meriden Join us in the ballroom of the Sheraton for dancing, cash bar, and mouth-watering hors d'oeuvres and desserts. Dance the night away to benefit Love Makes A Family?s continued campaign for full marriage equality for same-sex couples! This fabulously festive occasion is not to be missed!