Activism

Two anti-war activists were convicted in federal court Monday of trespassing at central Missouri's Whiteman Air Force Base to protest the use of unmanned military drones.  A four-hour U.S. District Court hearing in Jefferson City ended with Magistrate Judge Matt Whitworth finding the pair guilty. Sentencing will occur at a later date.

 Obama expanded the U.S. war on the people of Afghanistan begun 11 years ago by the Bush regime, now the longest war in U.S. history. The U.S. occupation is fought not only with military personnel, and mercenaries for hire, but increasingly by Special Forces and unmanned drones.  The U.S. continues to imprison and indefinitely detain people without charges, conducting night house raids that terrorize innocent people, and conditions leave women worse off than when the U.S. invaded.

                                                        NOT IN OUR NAME

On October 5, 2012, don't miss NH Peace Action's 30th Anniversary Event and Fall Fundraiser, at The Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 South Main Street, Concord, NH. 

Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Featuring Author/Activist and RootsAction.org Campaign Coordinator David Swanson.

And featuring Singer/Songwriter David Rovics. 

$30 for tickets in advance, $35 at the door, $10 for students or limited income.

Please be in touch about sponsorship opportunities, silent and live auctions, and ads in our program book!

http://nhpeaceaction.org

NH Peace Action
4 Park Street, Suite 210
Concord, NH 03301
(603) 228-0559

info@nhpeaceaction.org

Most people understand that war is destructive, but few know that it is illegal.  On August 27, 1928 many countries signed a treaty called the Kellogg-Briand Pact which outlawed war.  After ratification by the U.S. Senate the following year this Pact became the supreme law of the land in the United States and sixty five other countries.  How can we respect the law if most of us are ignorant of its existence?  Members of the Peace Community have decided to: (1) educate the population on why this law was passed and (2) encourage insight and creative expression on how we can bring our country into compliance.

Peace Essay Rules:
Although we are focusing on the student population, anyone can enter the Peace Essay Contest.  In 800 words or less answer the question: How can we Obey the Law against War?  Send your Peace Essay to:

Peace Desk
213 S. Wheaton Ave.
Wheaton, IL 60187

Please include: (1) Your Name, (2) Age, (3) Mailing Address, (4) Email Address or Phone Number, and (5) Year and school that you first learned about the Kellogg-Briand Pact.  Peace Essays will be judged by members of the West Suburban Faith-based Peace Coalition (www.FaithPeace.org) based on: (1) Knowledge of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, (2) Insight into how the Pact influences U.S. foreign policy, (3) Creativity in recommendations regarding compliance, and (4) Quality of the Peace Essay prose. 

Age-appropriate prizes will be awarded for the top 25 Peace Essays received by November 1, 2012.   Also, if the award winner identifies the school where she/he learned about the Pact, a book – “When the World Outlawed War” by David Swanson - will be donated to the school library.  The WSFPC will also send the best Peace Essays to key members of the U.S. Congress.  For more information please contact Frank Goetz at frankgoetz@comcast.net.

Events in South Korea are putting U.S. and international environmental groups into coalition with antiwar groups, and in rare opposition to one of the most environmentally destructive forces on earth: the military industrial complex. 

Normally, this doesn't happen.  Typically, civil liberties groups oppose the detention and torture and assassination that come with military spending, but not the spending and not the wars.  Typically, anti-poverty and pro-education groups lament the supposed lack of funding, but avoid all mention of our dumping 57% of federal discretionary funds into war preparation and war.  Typically, for environmental groups, our top consumer of oil, producer of superfund sites, and poisoner of the earth is off-limits.  We oppose pollution, but not pollution in the cause of killing people more quickly.

Jeju Island, South Korea, is changing this.  A coordinated international campaign is trying to save this beautiful island from destruction.  The World Conservation Congress 2012 is being held on Jeju Island -- while just four miles away, in the island's Gangjeong Village, construction is beginning on a massive new naval base to be used by the United States.  Dredging of the seabed and coral has already begun.  94% of the residents of Gangjeong Village have voted against construction of the base.

The extraordinary biological diversity, unique volcanic topography, and the culture of Jeju Island attract many tourists. The Sea of Gangjeong is a national cultural treasure adjacent to a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Only 114 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins remain in Korea, and they live here -- one of many species threatened by base construction. The damage will be devastating.

If the base is constructed, it will host nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, as well as Aegis missile-carrying warships. U.S. taxpayers will pay the cost of the Obama administration "pivot" into the Asia-Pacific, while Jeju Islanders pay with a damaged home. Ultimately, the cost to the earth and the risk of war will belong to all of us.

Villagers have been arrested during nonviolent protests. Police and construction workers have assaulted elderly members of the community, who represent a large portion of the activists.  Raising our voices in solidarity is the least we can do.  But Samsung, the primary contractor for base construction, is sponsoring the World Conservation Congress (WCC), which opened pretending all was well.  That pretense is crumbling.

From afar, we are flooding the WCC and Samsung with emails.  You can help" Let them know we aren't fooled. Demand that Samsung halt construction and the WCC oppose the base.

On location, activists have made every single participant in the World Conservation Congress aware of the destruction underway on the island where the WCC is meeting. And a resolution is being introduced by 34 organizations from around the world calling for a halt to the military base construction.

Please take the time to read this resolution, and check out the list of signers.  This is how the military industrial complex will eventually do itself in.

World Appeal to Protect the People, Nature, Culture and Heritage of Gangjeong Village

UNDERSTANDING that Gangjeong Village, also known as the Village of Water, on the island of Jeju, also known as Peace Island, is a coastal area home to thousands of species of plants and animals, lava rock freshwater tide pools (“Gureombi”), endangered soft coral reefs, freshwater springs, sacred natural sites, historic burial grounds, and nearly 2,000 indigenous villagers, including farmers, fishermen, and Haenyo women divers, that have lived sustainably with the surrounding marine and terrestrial environment for nearly 4000 years;
 
NOTING that Gangjeong Village is an Ecological Excellent Village (Ministry of Environment, ROK) of global, regional, national and local significance, sharing the island with a UNESCO designated Biosphere Reserve and Global Geological Park, and is in close proximity to three World Heritage Sites and numerous other protected areas;

NOTING that numerous endangered species live in and around Gangjeong Village, including the Boreal Digging Frog (Kaloula borealis) listed on IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species; the red-footed crab (Sesarma intermedium); the endemic Jeju fresh water shrimp (Caridina denticulate keunbaei); and the nearly extinct Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins;

NOTING the global uniqueness of the Jeju Soft Coral habitats, designated as Natural Monument 422 of Korea: the only location in the world known to have temperate octocoral species forming a flourishing ecosystem on a substrate of andesite, providing ecological balance to the Jeju marine environment and the development of the human culture of Gangjeong Village for thousands of years;

UNDERSCORING that of the 50 coral species found in the Soft Coral habitats near Gangjeong, 27 are indigenous species, and at least 16 are endangered species and protected according to national and international law, including Dendronephthya suensoni, D. putteri, Tubastraea coccinea, Myriopathes japonica, and M. lata;

THEREFORE CONCERNED of the Civilian-Military Complex Tour Beauty project, a 50-hectare naval installation, being constructed within and adjacent to Gangjeong Village, estimated to house more than 8,000 marines, up to 20 warships, several submarines, and cruise liners;

NOTING the referendum of Gangjeong Village on August 20, 2007, in which 725 villagers participated and 94% opposed the construction;

ACKNOWLEDGING that the construction of the military installation is directly and irreparably harming not only the biodiversity, but the culture, economy and general welfare of Gangjeong Village, one of the last living remnants of traditional Jeju culture;

NOTING the Absolute Preservation Act, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province (1991) and that Gangjeong Village was named an Absolute Preservation Area on October 27, 2004: a permanent designation to conserve the original characteristics of an environment from the surge in development, therefore prohibiting construction, the alteration of form and quality of land, and the reclamation of public water areas;

CONCERNED that this title was removed in 2010 to allow for the Naval installation, and that this step backwards in environmental protection violates the Principle of Non-Regression;

RECALLING the numerous IUCN Resolutions and Recommendations that note, recognize, promote and call for the appropriate implementation of conservation policies and practices that respect the human rights, roles, cultural diversity, and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples in accordance with international agreements;

CONCERNED of reports that the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) for the naval construction was inaccurate and incomplete and may have violated well-known principles of international law concerning EIAs, transparency, public and indigenous participation, right to know, and free, prior and informed consent;

CONCERNED of the destruction of sacred natural sites in and near Gangjeong Village, noting that the protection of sacred natural sites is one of the oldest forms of culture based conservation (Res. 4.038 recognition and conservation of sacred natural sites in Protected Areas);

ACKNOWLEDGING that IUCN’s Mission is “To influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable;” and that “equity cannot be achieved without the promotion, protection and guarantee of human rights.”;

NOTING Resolution 3.022 Endorsement of the Earth Charter (Bangkok, 2004) that endorsed the Earth Charter as “the ethical guide for IUCN policy and programme,” and that the military installation is contrary to every principle of the Earth Charter;

NOTING the U.N. World Charter for Nature (1982), and that the military installation is contrary to each of its five principles of conservation by which all human conduct affecting nature is to be guided and judged;

AND ALARMED by reports of political prisoners, deportations, and restrictions on freedom of assembly and speech, including the arrests of religious leaders, for speaking against the naval installation and for speaking in promotion of local, national, regional and world conservation and human rights protections;

NOTING Res. 2.37 Support for environmental defenders, “UNDERSTANDING that the participation of non-governmental organizations and individual advocates is essential to the fundamentals of civil society to assure the accountability of governments and multinational corporations; and AWARE that a nation’s environment is only truly protected when concerned citizens are involved in the process;”

NOTING principles enshrined in the Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development such as those concerning military and hostile activities (Art. 36), culture and natural heritage (Art. 26), and the collective rights of indigenous peoples (Art. 15);

FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGING that militarization does not justify the destruction of a community, a culture, endangered species or fragile ecosystems;

AND UNDERSCORING that IUCN’s aim is to promote a just world that values and conserves nature, and the organization sees itself as nature’s representative and patrons of nature;

The IUCN World Conservation Congress at its 5th session in Jeju, Republic of Korea, 6-15 September 2012:

1. REAFFIRMS its commitment to the UN World Charter for Nature and the Earth Charter;
2. CALLS ON the Republic of Korea to:
(a) immediately stop the construction of the Civilian-Military Complex Tour Beauty;
(b) invite an independent body, to prepare a fully transparent scientific, cultural, and legal assessment of the biodiversity and cultural heritage of the area and make it available to the public; and
(c) fully restore the damaged areas.

Sponsor – Center for Humans and Nature
Co-Sponsors
-Chicago Zoological Society (USA)
-International Council of Environmental Law (Germany)
-El Centro Ecuatoriano de Derecho Ambiental, CEDA (Ecuador)
-Sierra Club (USA)
-Fundacion Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Argentina)
-Center for Sustainable Development CENESTA (Iran)
-Asociación Preserve Planet (Costa Rica)
-The Christensen Fund (USA)
-Terra Lingua (Canada)
-Ecological Society of the Philippines (Philippines)
-Citizen’s Institute Environmental Studies (Korea)
-Departamento de Ambiente, Paz y Seguridad, Universidad para la Paz (Costa Rica)
-Coastal Area Resource Development and Management Association (Bangladesh)
-Fundação Vitória Amazônica (Brazil)
-Fundación para el Desarrollo de Alternativas Comunitarias de Conservación del Trópico, ALTROPICO Foundation (Ecuador)
-Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano (Ecuador)
-EcoCiencia (Ecuador)
-Fundación Hábitat y Desarrollo de Argentina (Argentina)
-Instituto de Montaña (Peru)
-Asociación Peruana para la Conservación de la Naturaleza, APECO (Peru)
-Coordinadora de Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica, COICA (Ecuador)
-Fundación Biodiversidad (Argentina)
-Fundacao Vitoria Amazonica (Brazil)
-Fundación Urundei (Brazil)
-Dipartimento Interateneo Territorio Politecnico e Università di Torino (Italy)
-Programa Restauración de Tortugas Marinas (Costa Rica)
-Corporación Grupo Randi Randi (Ecuador)
-Living Oceans Society (Canada)
-Instituto de Derecho y Economía Ambiental (Paraguay)
-Korean Society of Restoration Ecology (Korea)
-Ramsar Network Japan (Japan)
-The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (Isreal)
-Chimbo Foundation (Netherlands)
-Endangered Wildlife Trust (South Africa)

Add your voice.

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• I can't tell you who to vote for.
  

 On Sunday September 2nd the World Can’t Wait hit the streets of Charlotte, NC. A small but determined crew participated in the March On Wall Street South. World Can’t Wait was there to protest Obama’s drone wars and challenge the “lesser of two evils” argument.  The crew of activists had a drone replica which they wheeled through the streets of Charlotte. The drone replica drew much attention, press, and conversation.

Sign up on FaceBook.

Did you know that drones . . .

·      can cost $28 million? The Airforce has 60 and hopes to have 330.

·      are used for targeted killing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Pakistan with no legal basis for defining the scope of the area where drones can and cannot be used, no rigorous criteria for deciding which people will be targeted for killing, no procedural safeguards to ensure the legality and accuracy of the killings, and no mechanisms of accountability.

·      are killing civilians, Americans, non-Americans, adults, children.

·      are being produced to spy on U.S. citizens.

Nick Mottern is a journalist and member of Knowdrones. He is currently on tour with a model drone, having conversations with folks across the country about the financial or moral costs of drones.

FLYER: PDF.

For every Obama supporter who posts as a comment below that they will protest his wars on October 5-7, I promise to try to find someone in the swing state of Virginia to vote for him.

If you'd like to propose your own swap of election campaigning for serious activism, please do so as a comment below.

 On September 6,protesters will gather in support of the soldier accused of leaking classified records to WikiLeaks, Pfc Manning.

 On Sunday September 2nd the World Can’t Wait hit the streets of Charlotte, NC. A small but determined crew participated in the March On Wall Street South. World Can’t Wait was there to protest Obama’s drone wars and challenge the “lesser of two evils” argument. The crew of activists had a drone replica which they wheeled through the streets of Charlotte. The drone replica drew much attention, press, and conversation. The activists chanted “When Drones Fly, Children Die!” and “Obama, Romney, All the Same, No More War Crimes in Our Name!” For a time a group of young people marched along with the World Can’t Wait crew and on the spot came up with the chant “Drone Strikes Are War Crimes, Obama Should Do Prison Time!”

Check out whether U.S. war criminals are speaking and promoting themselves in your area this September.  Let us know how we may help with any demonstrations you might be organizing.Take a look at our website visual materials for your flyers. Send us photos and a story that we may put up on our Facebook page.

To mark the beginning of the next phase of accused whistle-blower
Bradley Manning's pre-trial hearings and noting that he has spent 825
days in prison, some under torturous conditions, World Can't Wait
organized an activity on August 27, 2012 at Grand Central Station in NYC.                                                           

By Stephen McKeown and Coleen Rowley

On July 28th 2012, Michael Wali, Megan Rice, and Greg Boertje-Obed entered the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the pre-dawn hours by cutting a fence.  They hoisted banners, spray painted messages, and poured their blood on the nation's only storage facility for weapons grade highly enriched uranium.  They were arrested and immediately charged with misdemeanor trespass.  Several days later, charges were raised to felony level, so the trio is now facing up to a $600,000 fine and 16 years in prison. 

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Engineer: Christiane Brown.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Charlottesville Right Now: 8-27-12 David Swanson
David Swanson, renowned activist and author joins the show to discuss the President's upcoming visit in Charlottesville.

Go here.

Amy Goodman,

host of Democracy Now!

to speak at University of Virginia

Sign up on FaceBook.

Friday, September 28, 2012
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

South Lawn Commons
Nau Auditorium (Nau 101)
1550 Jefferson Park Ave.
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Free and open to public.

Sponsored by

Democracy Now! is on the road for a 2-month, 100-city tour, starting with the Republican National Convention in Tampa and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, running up to Election Day, holding public events to help raise critical funds for the public broadcasters that carry Democracy Now!. The tour route covers many of the electoral swing states, going beyond the mainstream media's obsessive focus on the latest poll numbers and candidate gaffes, to see on the ground how people are organizing, the impacts of restrictive voter ID laws that are making it harder to vote, and how the massive influx of campaign cash following the Citizens United decision is changing how our democracy works.

Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan will sign copies of their new book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope.

Nonpartisan organizations are invited to table at the event. Contact: David Swanson david@davidswanson.org 202-329-7847.

Please print this flyer (PDF), make copies, post and hand out everywhere.

In a few places around the country groups are working to make August 27th a local or national holiday as a result of reading "When the World Outlawed War."  

“Last night I had the strangest dream I’d ever dreamed before,” wrote Ed McCurdy in 1950 in what became a popular folk song. “I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war. I dreamed I saw a mighty room, and the room was filled with men. And the paper they were signing said they’d never fight again.” (Here are a few videos: Johnny Cash - Pete Seeger - Simon and Garfunkel - John Denver - Serena Ryder.) 

That scene had happened in reality on August 27, 1928, in Paris, France. The treaty that was signed that day, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, was subsequently ratified by the United States Senate in a vote of 85 to 1 and remains on the books (and on the U.S. State Department’s website) to this day as part of what Article VI of the U.S. Constitution calls “the supreme Law of the Land.”  Frank Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State who made this treaty happen, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and saw his public reputation soar — so much so that the United States named a ship after him, one of the “Liberty ships” that carried war supplies to Europe during World War II. Kellogg was dead at the time. So, many believed, were prospects for world peace. But following World War II, for the first time ever people were prosecuted for the brand new crime of making war -- these charges explicitly justified by the Kellogg-Briand Pact.  And the wealthy nations have not gone to war with each other since.  War continues against and among poor nations only, much to our shame.  But the possibility of eliminating war entirely if we choose has been well established.

IMAGE: the author at Frank Kellogg's house in St. Paul, Minn. Photo by Coleen Rowley.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact and its renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy is something we might want to revive. This treaty gathered the adherence of the world’s nations swiftly and publicly, driven by fervent public demand. We might think about how public opinion of that sort might be created anew, what insights it possessed that have yet to be realized, and what systems of communication, education, and elections would allow the public again to influence government policy, as the ongoing campaign to eliminate war — understood by its originators to be an undertaking of generations — continues to develop.

We might begin by remembering what the Kellogg-Briand Pact is and where it came from. Perhaps, in between celebrating Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Yellow Ribbon Day, Patriots Day, Independence Day, Flag Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, and the Iraq-Afghanistan Wars Day legislated by Congress in 2011, not to mention the militaristic festival that bombards us every September 11th, we could squeeze in a day marking a step toward peace. I propose we do so every August 27th. Perhaps a national focus for Kellogg-Briand Day might be on an event in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., (if it safely reopens following the recent earthquake) where the inscription below the Kellogg Window gives Kellogg, who is buried there, credit for having “sought equity and peace among the nations of the world.”

We would be celebrating a step toward peace, not its achievement. We celebrate steps taken toward establishing civil rights, despite that remaining a work in progress. By marking partial achievements we help build the momentum that will achieve more. We also, of course, respect and celebrate the ancient establishment of laws banning murder and theft, although murder and theft are still with us. The earliest laws making war into a crime, something it had not been before, are just as significant and will long be remembered if the movement for the Outlawry of war succeeds. If it does not, and if the nuclear proliferation, economic exploitation, and environmental degradation that come with our wars continue, then before long there may be nobody remembering anything at all.

Another way to revive a treaty that in fact remains law would, of course, be to begin complying with it. When lawyers, politicians, and judges want to bestow human rights on corporations, they do so largely on the basis of a court reporter’s note added to, but not actually part of, a Supreme Court ruling from over a century back. When the Department of Justice wants to “legalize” torture or, for that matter, war, it reaches back to a twisted reading of one of the Federalist Papers or a court decision from some long forgotten era. If anyone in power today favored peace, there would be every justification for recalling and making use of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It is actually law. And it is far more recent law than the U.S. Constitution itself, which our elected officials still claim, mostly unconvincingly, to support. The Pact, excluding formalities and procedural matters, reads in full,

The High Contracting Parties solemly [sic] declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

The French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, whose initiative had led to the Pact and whose previous work for peace had already earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, remarked at the signing ceremony,

For the first time, on a scale as absolute as it is vast, a treaty has been truly devoted to the very establishment of  peace, and has laid down laws that are new and free from all political considerations. Such a treaty means a beginning and not an end. . . . [S]elfish and willful war which has been regarded from of old as springing from divine right, and has remained in international ethics as an attribute of sovereignty, has been at last deprived by law of what constituted its most serious danger, its legitimacy. For the future, branded with illegality, it is by mutual accord truly and regularly outlawed so that a culprit must incur the unconditional condemnation and probably the hostility of all his co-signatories.

Please sign up on FaceBook:
http://facebook.com/events/278485415586563

Please bring signs, banners, posters!

1 p.m. at the Free Speech Wall.

Please print lots of these flyers to hand out:
http://warisacrime.org/downloads/obamaflyercville.pdf

Here's what the flyers say:

Go, Obama, Go! 

While you wait . . .

It's important that we remind ourselves why we're here, and what we're cheering for!

Accomplishment Highlights
President Obama keeps a list of "nominees" for murder and holds meetings on Tuesdays to pick the winners.  We can ask him who got the nod yesterday.  The list includes adults and children, men and women, boys and girls, Americans and non-Americans.   See: New York Times, May 29, 2012.

President Obama has enlarged the U.S. military three years in a row, deployed it to more nations, engaged it in more secret wars, and invented a new form of warfare using drones.  The drone wars are killing large numbers of people and creating vastly greater numbers of refugees.  Their illegality is not a concern, following Obama's war in Libya conducted despite the opposition of Congress, and the current U.S. role in a civil war in Syria unilaterally announced by the White House.  These are on top of a war in Afghanistan that Obama tripled in size and intends to continue for two-and-a-half more years before continuing at an unspecified smaller scale for 10 more years after that, despite 70 percent public opposition now.

In fact, legality has been removed from all discussion, as President Obama has publicly instructed the Attorney General of the United States not to prosecute any members of the Central Intelligence Agency for torture.  President Obama, together with Congress, has "legalized" imprisonment without trial for Americans or non-Americans (something Obama's Justice Department is currently struggling to uphold in court), as well as rendition, and torture (now a policy choice rather than a crime). 

The Obama administration has engaged in an unprecedented assault on whistleblowers, charging more than all previous administrations combined under the Espionage Act, creating a climate of secrecy and fear, torturing Bradley Manning, and maneuvering in an extensive effort to gain custody of Julian Assange and try or at least punish him for journalism.

This unprecedented militarism was the inevitable result of our failure to hold Bush and Cheney responsible for their crimes.  It carries with it the inevitable trade-off on the domestic side.  Over half of federal discretionary spending (and rising) now goes to war preparation.  Obama's major complaint with the U.S. media is that, "He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security" (New York Times, Aug. 7, 2012). The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few has advanced faster under Obama than under Bush.  Corporate trade agreements have been created at a faster pace.  The destruction of the earth's atmosphere has continued at a faster pace. 

The Horrible Romney Alternative
OF COURSE you should not vote for Romney.  But civil rights were not gained by avoiding the responsibilities of citizenship in order to pretend that every day is election day.  Today is not election day.  Today is an opportunity to communicate a message to the holder of an office that has been given unprecedented power (again, by allowing Bush to walk free).  Women did not vote themselves the right to vote.  The labor movement was not built by the current strategy of funding a corporate political party with working people's hard-earned pay.  In that moment of voting, vote as you see fit.  But censoring your criticism of your government, cheering as a spectator for one half of a corrupt government, treating government of the people as a spectator sport is working against what has always done the good you are intending to do here.  We don't need well-meaning props in electoral commercials so much as we need activists, organizers, mobilizers, educators.  If we reject any cuts to our Social Security and Medicare, if we insist on an end to all the killing, we will move the culture of the country and with it all the politicians.  That's what's worked for centuries.  Avoiding ugly facts has never gotten us anywhere.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Six out of seven protesters were arrested Thursday night after they held a peaceful sit-in inside President Obama's campaign headquarters and refused to leave.

The protesters marched to the headquarters after a 5 p.m. rally in Frank Ogawa Plaza in support of Bradley Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

By Dave Lindorff

Click HERE to sign

Click HERE to sign and send a message to the Charlotte City Council, the Obama administration, the Democratic National Convention Committee and others, telling them you support the City of Charlotte workers' demands for a city ordinance enacting a City Workers Bill of Rights.

Support the City of Charlotte Workers' Demands for a city ordinance inacting a City Workers Bill of Rights calling for:

By Kathy Kelly

At Maryhouse Catholic Worker, in New York City, word arrived, on a hot August day that, due to street construction, the water would be cut off for four hours the following day.  The Catholic Worker community serves scores of guests each day, and the water shortage would have to be dealt with practically.  Catholic Workers are legend for being practical in their approach toward problem solving, and in this matter a decision was quickly made:  fill the bathtubs on each floor with water, post a sign that none of the toilets could be used, and quickly make one hundred or so egg salad sandwiches which could be served to guests at the door since it wouldn’t be practical to invite people indoors when there wouldn’t be any running water.  How could they wash the dishes?  What about the women who were accustomed to coming in and taking a shower?  And how could you close off the toilets to the usual flow of guests?

From InterOccupy