DFA Candidate Forum Wednesday in Glens Falls and More
Hello Everyone;

In this update:

1. A special Candidate Forum Wednesday for Walt Combs
2. Lakoff video to be shown also
3. Social Security & DFA
4. New York State and voting machines
5. FYI links

1. DFA member Walt Combs declared his candidacy for Glens Falls' Third Ward Council seat at another great Meetup held last Wednesday at the Rockhill Bakehouse Cafe.

Accordingly, we will be holding a special DFA Meetup next Wednesday, March 9 at the Rockhill Bakehouse Cafe in downtown Glens Falls at 7pm. All DFA members and the general public, particularly residents of Glens Falls' Third Ward, are cordially invited to attend. Walt will make a presentation on the issues facing the city and his campaign followed by a Q & A peroid.

This will be the second Candidate Forum sponsored by the Glens Falls Democracy for America group. At Wednesday's Meetup a Candidates Committee was formed to handle Candidate Endorsements, Forums and recruitment. There will be another round of Dean Dozen candidates this year and our Committee will be handling our referrals to DFA in Burlington. These forums are open to all Democratic and progressive candidates throughout the Greater Glens Falls area and should contact us if they are interested.

2. After the Candidate Forum there will be an encore showing of the George Lakoff video on framing and language in politics based on his best selling book Don't Think Of An Elephant.

Governor Dean has been a strong advocate of Dr. Lakoff; Lakoff was required reading for every staff member of the Dean campaign. As the Governor points out, one of the biggest reasons Democrats have been loosing is that the Republicans have been more skillful than Democrats at using language. For instance, they successfully reframed Estate Taxes, which were a tax on unearned wealth in super rich families, into the "Death Tax" even though no one has to pay a tax to die. By controlling language they've been able to win the debate before it even started.

3. DFA is also working hard on fighting Bush's effort to destroy Social Security. We are collecting Social Security stories and writing letters resisting changes to this great program because it is basically am example of framing in action. We may talk about other ways we can fight back on SS Wednesday. One thing we all can do online today is sign the Save Social Security Pledge we are asking all our elected officials to sign: Pledge

4. One of the things we talked about at Wednesday's Meetup was the fact that the NYS Legislature is preparing to replace all the voting machines in NY. The Albany Meetup has been doing great work on this issue. They have learned that to prevent ballot fraud, we need optical scanners and not touch screen machines, which can be hacked in any number of ways. I will be sending out a special update on this tomorrow or Tuesday; it's a big issue and there's a lot that we can do!

5. Governor Dean is active on the balloting issue; as the new DNC Chair he just appointed a special expert commission to investigate the vote in Ohio: OHIO

This issue does continue to fester and the lawsuits continue, even though we aren't hearing about it in the national media.
VOTE

For more on what Dean is up to lately:
Dean at Cornell


Dean meets Labor

He also just stormed the South: Dean in South

Also check out a view from Joe Trippi: Trippi on Dean's Importance

In other news Stop Sinclair, which formed to block Sinclair Broadcasting's outrageous attacks on Kerry is now Start Change. They will be working on media reform in the future. Start Change

Finally, another reality check on the horror in Iraq. As this article makes clear, we are watching one of the greatest setbacks to human rights in our time, not a "new birth of freedom" in the middle east, despite the outrageous propaganda being spun and uncritically repeated by the national media. Freedom is not advancing when half or more of the population, that is, ALL the women, are effectively losing ALL their rights. With the Islamist government taking charge there now, our Army is little better than the enforcers for fundamentalist Islamism. It is Iraq's women who will pay the ultimate price of the Bush foreign policy and the neocon lust for "empire."
women's forgotten rights in Iraq

Many thanks! See you Wednesday!

Larry
- posted by Larry Dudley @ 2:57 PM