Tricounty DFA Update: May Meeting, More
Hello Everyone!

In This Update:

1. DFA-Link/Meetup Next Week: New "Letters To Iowa" Campaign
2. A Keehn Announcement
3. Join The DFA Rapid Response List
4. DFNY Conference May 5th
5. Must See: Bill Moyers Returns: Scalds Media On War
6. Must Read: Globalization, France,The Death of Democracy
7. Friday Night Film Fest

1. DFA-Link/Meetup Next Week: New "Letters To Iowa" Campaign

Next week, Wednesday, May 2nd, we'll be holding our monthly DFA Linkup or Meetup at the Rockhill Bakehouse Cafe in downtown Glens Falls at 7pm. There'll be a lot on the agenda (more in a few days) but we'll see a return of something those of us who began with Dean For America will remember fondly: a new "Letters To Iowa" campaign.

Only we won't be writing to Iowa, but rather the winners of the current DFA All Stars Poll ( If you haven't voted, or know what this is about, go to: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/allstars ). This is a vote to select a few early Congressional races Democrats are looking to take from the Republicans in 2008. The winners will be known later this week, and, just the way we wrote to people in Iowa asking them to support Governor Dean, we will write to Democrats in those districts asking them to support the winners of the DFA All Stars Poll. It will be fun.

2. A Keehn Announcement

A special invitation in tonight:

"Please join the Mayor of the City of Saratoga Springs, The Honorable Valerie Keehn on Wednesday, April 25th at 4:30 PM at the Spirit of Life monument in Congress Park for some important announcements!"

"In case of rain, we will meet at the Farmers' Market on High Rock Ave."

3. Join The DFA Rapid Response List

DFA in Burlington has a new initiative we'll be talking about at the next meeting: a alert list. Our DFA leaders in Burlington sometimes make blog postings with interesting information or calls to action. If you want to be alerted to when these are going up, so you don't miss them, and so you also can join in the comments, send a message to field@democracyforamerica.com . (It's helpful if you also register with blogs like http://www.dailykos.com/ or http://www.mydd.com/ so you can participate, too.) The comment lines also give you a change to interact with our DFA staff in Burlington, which is always fun.

4. DFNY Conference May 5th

Democracy For New York had a great annual conference at the SEIU hall in Albany last year. This year's looks to be even better, so put May 5th and 6th on your calendar for this year's event.

Included on the speaker list are Jim Dean, Chair of DFA, Eric Massa, Democratic Candidate for the NY-29th CD, Amy Little, Campaign Manager of the successful John Hall for Congress campaign and Brian Keeler, NYBri, candidate for the New York State Senate and founder of The Albany Project blog, and Bo Lipari, Director and Founder of New Yorkers for Verified Voting. Saturday evening will featuring a showing of the film "Taking the Hill" a documentary about five veterans who ran for Congress in 2006.

If you are interested, RSVP, or get more details at: http://www.dfalink.com/event.php?id=17019

I will have more details this weekend and at next week's meeting.

5. Must See: Bill Moyers Returns: Scalds Media On War

Lisa sends this along, and I think this is going to be the television event of the year.

"Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq war to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge... Watch PBS from 9:00 to 10:30 PM on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes will actually save you time because you'll never watch television news again--" and

"The Washington Post editorialized in favor of the war 27 times, and published in 2002 about 1,000 articles and columns on the war. But the Post gave a huge anti-war march a total of 36 words. "What got even less ink," Moyers says, "was the release of the National Intelligence Estimate." http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041207D.shtml

6. Must Read: France, Globalization, The Rise of Fascism?

There has been an extraordinary amount of news in the lat 72 hours or so, but the most under reported story of the week was clearly the presidential elections in France.

The French election will have enormous impact on people all around the world because the root issue is how a modern democracy is to respond to the exploding crisis of Globalization. Multinational corporations are playing nations off against one another, destroying worker rights, living standards, the rule of law, representative government and the environment. But more and more voices are being raised against the neoliberal "Washington Consensus" and shadowy anti-worker, anti-progressive groups like the Hamilton Project.

This extraordinary article in the Nation-- the most important article I have seen in some time on almost any subject-- covers a new theory proving what people all over the world have seen for some time, that the theory underlying Globalization is based on inherent contradictions and is doomed to disaster: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/042407LA.shtml

This other piece in the Nation documents how a right wing victory in France will be used to rationalize the destruction of worker rights and standards of living even in communities like our own: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070430/stancil

If anyone doubts this, check out this account of the last Davos conference, a forum so favored by our corporate elite-- 40 million American jobs to be exported: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003668844_harrop17.html

This piece by Jerome on dKos shows what a real healthcare systems looks like, what the French have to lose, and we to gain: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/20/1179/27363

And what comes out at the end? The historical record is that when economies are destroyed, and democracy undermined, what you get is something like the Weimar Republic in Germany, and fascism.

I saw this remarkable article by Naomi Wolf, "Fascist America In Ten Easy Step" earlier in the day, but Phil sent it to me, too, and it is the coda to all of the above. If you consciously set out to destroy American Democracy, you would do exactly what Bush has been doing. And the globalizers have been playing a role, too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

7. Friday Night Film Fest

The Rockhill Bakehouse Cafe Friday Night Progressive Film Fest continues at 7:30 with a video that could not possibly more appropriate to the article on fascism in ten easy steps above:

Apr 27 THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO (2006) Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross 95 min.
The post-9/11 climate found the U.S. government resorting to many unorthodox methods to quash the perceived threat from further terrorist attacks. None was more controversial or more headline-grabbing than the detainment camp set up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which was constructed to imprison and interrogate Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives captured by U.S. soldiers. Prolific British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (9 SONGS) turns his cameras on the camp with this true story of three innocent British 20-something Muslims who were captured and held at Guantanamo for two years. Winterbottom cleverly marries extensive interview footage with the three men--Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed, and Shafiq Rasifknown, collectively known as the Tipton Three--with nerve-jarring reconstructive footage of what happened to them.

Labels: DFA, DFNY, DFNY Conference, Glens Falls, Globalization, Keehn, Larry Dudley

- posted by Larry Dudley @ 11:48 PM