little known facts in history

Gail Elberg and Lorraine Stevens organizing the unorganized on January 28, 1972 in response to Fred Newman saying -- in an intense collective meeting of diverse (and contentious) collective sixties types who sound off on any given topic - as they please! - AND have the (correct) (and incorrect) positions up the wazoo, as it were:

"I don't care who you are (or what you think about or how you are feeling today)... Go out there and organize the people."

So far, so good!

NH

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Are they Dems or are they indies? Only their community organizer knows for sure....

• Trying to get the Obama army out of its foxholes (By MARY SANCHEZ, The Kansas City Star)

BLOOMBERG 09

Mayoral control of schools is a political issue this year, not only in NYC, but in other cities:

• President Obama takes on local control of schools--and its impact on Houston school reform (Examiner - Houston, Author: Jesse Alred)

NY STATE POLITICS

NY State Senator Pedro Espada from the Bronx might well be the first actual reformer to walk the halls of the NY State legislature. He's now the Senate Majority Leader and was instrumental in revising the rules pertaining to bringing legislation to the floor, changing decades-old practices that required the majority leader's permission to advance legislation, lawmakers said. Now any 38 senators, or three-fifths of the 62 total, can petition to bring a bill to the Senate floor.

• Senate Passes Major Rules Reform (By David King, Gotham Gazette)
• Early Morning Reform On Tap In The Senate (Elizabeth Benjamin, Daily News/Daily Politics)
• Liars and bullies: State Senate Democrats become ever more disgraceful (EDITORIAL, Daily News)
• Rules changes headed for passage (or so they say) (Capitol Confidential, Albany Times Union)

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

INDEPENDENT VOTERS
More comments on polls showing drop in support for Obama among indies -- depends on what polls when...

• Indies shifting, or not (Ben Smith, Politico)


• Daily Kos/Research 2000 Oregon Poll (Research 2000)


• Obama Job Approval Drifts Down to 58% So Far in July -- Approval rating of 53% among independents reflects six-point drop from June average (by Frank Newport, Gallup)

CALIFORNIA OPEN PRIMARY
Support for this year's top reform demand

• How To Rescue the Golden State from the Junk Heap (By Gloria Penner, KPBS)

NEW YORK POLITICS
NY State Senator Pedro Espada (photo above) should get the Reform Award of the Century in NY State politics!

• NY Senate gets to work after resolving roadblock (By MICHAEL GORMLEY, AP)


• Prodigal son returns - Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. becomes majority leader; Senate back on job (by JAMES M. ODATO, Albany Times Union)


• Stalemate In N.Y. Appears Resolved-Democratic Senator Rejoins His Caucus (By Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post)


• Albany Impasse Ends as Defector Rejoins Caucus (By DANNY HAKIM, NY Times)

LAST WORD
Notes from a community organizer:

• The Myth of "Obama's Army" and the Reality of Organizing for Healthcare (by Femlaw, Daily Kos) Yep, that's right. We're telling stories. We're knocking doors. We're making phone calls. We're engaging in local activism. That's exactly what we did during the campaign - for two years. And it worked pretty well, the last time. . .

NOTE:

Unfortunately there won't be a Friday Nite Hankster Chat tonight -- my Hewlett Packard laptop computer with Windows Vista is in the shop... again. The one that had a defective hard drive that was replaced during the winter.... hmmm.... Will an Apple a day keep the doctor away???

Obama and The Movement

Retooling Obama's campaign machine for the long haul (By Peter Wallsten, LA Times) The organization, known internally as "Barack Obama 2.0," is being designed to sustain a grass-roots network of millions that was mobilized last year to elect Obama and now is widely considered the country's most potent political machine.

Be sure to read this article. And if you haven't already, be sure to read The New Politics: Barack Obama, Party of One

by John Heilemann in New York magazine: Without entirely realizing it, America elected its first Independent president. The implications for how the country will be governed are profound, exhilarating, and loaded with risk.

And while you're at it, you definitely should not miss Jacqueline Salit's "How the Independent Movement Went Left by Going Right"...

Happy reading!

That Hankster

Talk Talk: Out of Chaos Comes...

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Out of Chaos Comes... .  Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, December 21, 2008 after watching "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", several Charlie Rose Interviews" and "The Chris Matthews Show".   Newman: I'm the world's most outspoken advocate for that position. That's been true for nearly the entirety of my life. But it doesn't follow that opportunity will win out. You have to appreciate that chaos might win in different cases.   Salit: That chaos might win out over the creation of a new system which is stable and progressive?   Newman: Yes. It might prove that no such system is creatable. History might tell us that.   Salit: But, we don't know.   Newman: Right. Is this a situation that is ultimately unmanageable or is it one of those manageable dialectical situations Kissinger is so fond of? I don't know. I don't think he knows. I don't think anybody knows.   Salit: So, progress and development can emerge out of chaos but are not a necessary outcome of chaos.   Newman: Yes. But, I would go so far as to say that it's only possible out of chaos.   Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

POST ELECTION ANALYSIS

• GOP must reinvent itself after trouncing (Hendersonville Times News/BlueRidgeNow - NC) So what is to be done? Lenin said, “in order to make an omelet you have to break eggs.”
• The Christian Party (by Jeffrey Hart, The Daily Beast) George W. Bush transformed the center-right party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and his father, George H.W. Bush, into the political instrument of the religious right, tying the party to the evangelical protestants and to such Catholics as made the culture war central to their politics.
• AT LARGE: Hume says U.S. is still ‘center right country’ (Tuscaloosa News) In his jumbled syntax, Hume, the most pontifical of the television pundits, was trying to advance some sort of theory about how despite the election of Barack Obama, who you will remember was branded as the “most liberal senator in Congress” by the Republicans, we are still a “center right country.”
• A Shift In Direction (The Tampa Tribune) Nonetheless, many people are now advising Barack Obama to "govern from the center."
• Mark Green: 7 Days: FDR = Obama? Alter, Huffington, vanden Heuvel & Green Discuss and Compare Their Transitions (Huffington Post) Jonathan Alter: It's a bit of an oversimplification to think that we're going to move left in lock step across the board, but as a general proposition there's no question that the country is moving left, the last line of my piece was "leftward ho".
• Can Obama Truly Deliver? (CBS News) "The country must be governed from the middle," Pelosi told reporters on November 5. One reason, Democratic advisers say, is that so many new members of Congress are centrists that the party won't be able to hold its majority in 2010 if it lurches left with meddlesome social programs and vast new spending schemes.
• Obama's community-organizing skills valuable in presidency (The Morning Sentinel) The CEO says, "Hire me and I will fix this company." The community organizer says, "Let me help you fix this community."

POLITICAL THEATER Bread and Puppet livens gathering of pro-secession advocates at Statehouse (Burlington Free Press) "We think the empire is going down," Naylor said. "Everyday it gets worse and worse and the leaders are clueless."

brooklyn rocks

and performs..... and builds community

Blogging the World: An Online Stage for Activists (Or Performatory Blogging for Everyone)

"Blogging the World" is a panel discussion by bloggers and alternative media journalists and activists at the upcoming Performing The World international conference to be held in New York City October 2-5.

"Blogging the World" will address the themes of community-building, performance and development, as well as issues of technology, democracy, and activism. We will also be a performance within a performance--a “happening within a happening”, broadcast throughout the stratosblog.

Begun in the mid-1990s, blogs have been so successful as outlets for alternative news and opinions of ordinary voices and alternative journalists that Technorati now tracks more than 112 million blogs. Mainstream media has taken up blogging – every online newspaper has one.

The influence of the “netroots” in political campaigns over the past several years has been notable. From Howard Dean to Ned Lamont to the Ron Paul Revolution and the Barack Obama “phenomenon”, the advance of social-networking tools and online campaigning are helping to transform politics.

Blogging is the performance of ordinary people as media personalities, pundits commentators and newsmakers—actors in the political arena, insurgents speaking out and impacting our political culture.

“Blogging The World” will involve an introductory session where bloggers and new media/ alternative media journalists and activists come together to share experiences and discuss questions such as: Do you as a blogger or new/alternative media journalist consider yourself part of a community? What is community? Is the internet a form of radical democracy in action, or simply technology being used by anyone who has a computer? How are you using your blog to build connections and relationships that strengthen grassroots democratic action?

“Blogging the World“ will also fan out to cover the various workshops, panels, speeches and performances by live-blogging, video-taping and broadcasting Performing The World. Bloggers will attend other sessions and report on them, interview presenters, and give our audiences a sense of this important grassroots conference.

For more information about the conference, please go to PerformingTheWorld.org

About Blogging the World's host: Nancy Hanks is a long-time activist in independent politics and the author of The Hankster, a blog/news source for independent voters. The Hankster was started in April 2006, during the midterm elections when independent voters led a successful anti-war electoral revolution. Nancy is a grant-writer for an international homeless youth program and volunteers as a fundraiser for the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (independentvoting.org). She is on the research staff of the Neo-Independent magazine. Nancy has been a guest commentator on SIRIUS Satellite Radio's Indie Talk Blog Bunker with Joe Salzone.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

REFORM
After closing commission primary, GOP write-in drops out (Ocala Star-Banner) Libertarian Damien Ober compared his campaign to "a piece of art or a song."

CAMPAIGN

• Where Does the GOP Go From Here? (Wall Street Journal) But the party's problems are not confined to disaffected Republicans. The GOP has a problem with independent voters. As one analyst told me privately at the convention on Monday, in 2004 President Bush became the first president in the history of polling to win the White House without winning Independents. The bottom line is this: With the changes in party identification in the last few years, if Republicans, Democrats and Independents vote by party with 2004 proportions in 2008, Barack Obama will win.
• Republicans Are Mean (OpEdNews) Let’s see, how to appeal to all those wavering independents and disaffected Hillary supporters? Let’s insult those stupid Democrats and Obama people reeeel good and kick ‘em in the teeth, sneer at their efforts to be inclusive, to work toward unity and rehabilitate America’s damaged image around the world, or to help people in great need, and then make a shameless plea for their support at the polls. Scoff, especially rudely, at their community organizing efforts – the ultimate and most effective hands-on grassroots outreach programs that help people in need directly where they live – especially if government has turned its back.

THIRD PARTY NEWS

• More Choices for Voters in November-Third-Party, Unaffiliated Candidates on Ballot (Washington Post)
• Taking on the War Machine: An Interview with Cindy Sheehan (by Joshua Frank, Dissident Voice) "I became only the sixth non-partisan candidate in California history to qualify for ballot status, and the first Congressional Candidate since 1996!"
• Free Paulistine! Brother Ron's travelling salvation show (David Weigel, reason magazine)