Tricounty DFA Update: Meeting Wednesday Reminder, Trust, Vigils
Hello Everyone;

In this update for June 2nd, 2008:

1. Greater Glens Falls DFA Meeting Wednesday With Special Guest Robert Muller
2. Primaries Ending & Trust
3. Vigil Saturday
4. All Seeing Eye? By Naomi Klein
5. Water & Privatization
6. Friday Night Progressive Film Festival



1. Greater Glens Falls DFA Meeting Wednesday With Special Guest Robert Muller

We will be having our Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area Link-up or "meetup" Wednesday, June 4th, at 7pm, at the Rockhill Bakehouse Cafe in downtown Glens Falls. The Cafe is located on the corners of Exchange and Elm Streets and Hudson Avenue, just west of the Roundabout.

We will be hosting a special guest: Attorney Robert Muller, who is running as a Democrat for New York State Supreme Court, 4th Judicial District. Bob is presently Queensbury Town Justice, and has been a well known area attorney for nearly 30 years. He will be talking about his race and his extensive qualifications for the bench.


2. Primaries Ending & Trust

By the time we will be meeting, the primary season will be over (hopefully). We may know by then what prospect Democrats will have of retaking the White House in the Fall. I am sure many will want to discuss that as well, as well as whether or not Congress is going to fund the war for another entire year.

If the Clinton campaign is to continue, it can only do so by soliciting pledged delegates for Obama to switch to Clinton. Legally, they can do this. But to do so would be an unprecedented breach of faith with the people who elected those delegates.

That means the big issue now is trust. All political parties, campaigns and movements are, on a fundamental level, about trust. If the people in them violate each other's trust, then those parties, movements, campaigns will simply fly apart. Trust is the glue of politics, it makes political life possible.

Let's hope our political fabric is not further sundered by any candidate's rationale for the violation of trust, which is what asking a pledged delegate to vote for someone other than they are pledged to would do: shatter the trust that holds our party together.


3. Vigil Saturday

There will be another weekly vigil for peace and to bring our troops home this Saturday, June 7th at 11am at the corner of Glen, Bay and South Streets in downtown Glens Falls, in front of the Civil War Monument. The vigil will last one hour. Please come and bring a sign and a friend, although we have some signs if you can't get one.


4. All Seeing Eye? By Naomi Klein

Frank Grassia sends along this remarkable piece in Rolling Stone by one of the great writers of the hour, Naomi Klein of Shock Capitalism fame. U.S. high tech firms are helping create what's been called "police state 2.0" and Market Stalinism in China. Klein argues a new type of high-tech police state is being created there, and that the technology could be exported back to the United States and other democracies. This is a truly frightening "must read." http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye


5. Water & Privatization

On a local level, water issues seem to be cropping up in our area with some regularity, of late in the City of Glens Falls. Wenonah Hauter writes in The American Prospect on how schemes, and that's they are, schemes to privatize water systems and resources around the world are not only a potential violation of basic human rights, but virtually always backfire in practical terms, never, ever delivering on their promises. For some reason it's a lesson that seems to need relearning again and again, but one we need to remember as the area confronts its complex water problems. http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_perils_of_privatization


6. Friday Night Progressive Film Festival

The Rockhill Bakehouse Cafe continues its Friday Night Progressive Film Festival with:

Fri Jun 6 7:30 pm Progressive Film Forum
PROMISES (2001) Justine Shapiro & B.Z. Goldberg 106 min. RT Rating = 96 %
Rather than focusing on political events, the seven children featured in Promises offer a compelling human portrait of the Israeli & Palestinian conflict. The film draws viewers into the hearts and minds of Jerusalem’s children by giving voice to those captured by the region's hatreds as well as those able to transcend them. These seven children are between the ages of 9-13, an age group that rarely has the opportunity to speak for itself. They are less self-conscious and polite than teenagers and adults. They speak directly and without self-censorship and are both true mirrors of their cultures and spokespeople for future generations of Israelis and Palestinians.

Thanks, everyone! See you Wednesday (and Saturday)

Larry

Labels: 4th Judicial District, Democracy For America, Democracy For The Greater Glens Falls Area, DFA, Iraq War, Naomi Klein, New York Supreme Court, Robert Muller, Rockhill Bakehouse Cafe

- posted by Larry Dudley @ 11:24 PM