E-Newsletter, May 14, 2007

The Alliance for Democracy
E-Newsletter, May 14, 2007

Dear AfD members and supporters,
Please share this e-newsletter with your friends to let them know about the Alliance and our work. We hope you and others will take the time and respond to some of the actions below. Momentum is building for peace, holding the administration accountable, and building a people’s movement in this country.

Please invite your friends and family to look at our website, and let Barbara Clancy, our office manager, know if she might send them an invitation to join the Alliance.

Thank you, Lou Hammann and Nancy Price, Co-chairs

Alliance News:

Justice Rising to be mailed soon!
Getting ready for the US Social Forum
Colonel Ann Wright speaks in Mendocino on ending war
Ohio updates at AfD website

Action Alerts for Corporate Globalization and Honest Election Campaigns

Allied Actions and Events:

Climate Crisis Coalition organizer says "Time Is Short"
Beyond the gas boycott
California democrats pass impeachment resolution
Bring back COOL for informed consumer choice

Alliance News
Justice Rising to be mailed soon
The upcoming issue of Justice Rising, titled "Corporate Destruction of the Environment and Grassroots Solutions to Save the Planet," will be mailed out in the next few weeks. Don't miss this issue--please join AfD or renew your membership today. You can renew online quickly and securely. Please e-mail the office if you have questions about your membership.

Getting ready for the US Social Forum
The US Social Forum takes place in Atlanta from Wednesday, June 27 to Sunday, July 1. Everything you need to know about attending (and more) is online at www.USSF2007.org Click on workshops and marvel at the diversity of organizations submitting proposals and topics. We are building a people's movement right here at home.

Main events, plenaries, concerts, etc., will take place at the Convention Center. Over 600 workshops will talk place in many venues in and around the center as well. There will be 12 large tents set up, dedicated to specific themes, and many different organizations that focus on these themes will have tables in those tents. AfD is taking part in the Democracy Tent and the Water Tent. The Alliance has submitted four workshop proposals and is the co-sponsor of two others. To date, two have been accepted, and we will post the complete list in the June eNewsletter.

The full schedule of events will be up on the forum website soon. Here's the basic schedule:
Wednesday, June 27: registration; 2-4 pm, Opening March; 6-10 pm, Opening Ceremony with welcome, purpose, speeches, performances.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday: Workshops. Every morning there will be a Opening Plenary at the Civic Center from 8:30-10 am; workshops from 10 am on; and an Evening Plenary at the Civic Center from 6 to 9 pm.
Sunday: July 1: People's Assembly to focus on next stages and building alliances, and Closing Plenary until 3 p.m.

Look for our Spring appeal letter, coming to you soon, and please respond generously to help us start a "growing season" of organizing, beginning at the US Social Forum. You may also make a secure donation online as well.

Colonel Ann Wright on Ending the War
Colonel Wright, who resigned from a 29-year career in the army to protest Bush's plans to attack Iraq, spoke in Fort Bragg, California on April 27, sponsored by the Alliance for Democracy. Her talk was inspiring and full of news about progress to end the war and throw the liars who dragged us into it out of office. She told everyone to keep the pressure on their Congressional representatives. They are listening and responding.
Thanks for all who helped produce the event, donated funds and attended.
Tom Wodetzki, Alliance for Democracy, Mendocino CA

To end the war and corporate rule, Col. Wright suggests:

E-mail or call your congressional delegation

If you want a topic investigated, contact House Oversight chief Henry Waxman

Come to Washington DC and lobby with us (contact Ann at microann@yahoo.com)

If you can't come to D.C., donate your frequent flier miles to someone who can. Groups like Codepink, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and Gold Star Families for Peace all have members with time, but no funds to get to DC

Pick a topic of concern and make it your personal focus by organizing panels about it, hearings, campaigns, signs, weekly vigils, etc. Possible topics: end war funding, stop torture, close Guantanamo, end extraordinary rendition, stop eavesdropping, prevent war against Iran, support military resisters, and impeachment.

The Alliance for Democracy asks you to seize this opportunity to really change America by taking more action. Get involved with local organizations, including your local Alliance chapter. Start a local AfD chapter. Begin with just one issue, but do pick one and start working on it!

Ohio Updates at AfD website
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of The Free Press write on the possibility that Karl Rove's missing e-mails may relate not just to the firing of eight federal prosecutors, but to vote manipulation in the Ohio presidential election. The same web-hosting firm that handled the Republican National Committee site also hosted former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's official site, used to report the Ohio vote count. Could that have been where totals were cooked to hand the state and the election to Bush? Under whose order?

Thanks to a suit brought by Ohio civil rights activists, the ballots and other records from the election, which Blackwell sought to destroy, have been preserved. Fitrakis and Wasserman write that exhaustive recount could show who really did win the presidential election of 2004. And, they add, it may also be possible to learn what roles--electronic or otherwise--Karl Rove and J. Kenneth Blackwell really did play "during those crucial 90 minutes in the deep night, when the presidency somehow slipped from John Kerry to George W. Bush."

You can read about the missing emails, and other articles on the Ohio election and its aftermath, from links at the top of our website home page, www.thealliancefordemocracy.org .

Action Alerts: Urgent action needed
Don't be Fooled: "The Trade Deal" is a bad deal!
Activists who have worked for trade reform were shocked when last Thursday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans in charge of trade to announce a deal to facilitate passage of Bush's NAFTA expansions for Peru and Panama, a move that could lead to more bad trade deals passing soon.

According to Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, this deal involves adding stronger labor and environmental standards to the Peru and Panama agreements, but falls way short of de-NAFTA-fying them by removing bans on anti-offshoring and Buy American policies, or the outrageous foreign investor rights that facilitate attacks on health and environmental laws.

Public Citizen says that if members of Congress are tricked into this deal it would pave the way for later passage of Colombian and South Korea trade agreements, and even Fast Track authority renewal.

This deal is already being applauded by corporate lobbyists, including the president of the US Chamber of Commerce, who said he is pleased that new labor provisions seem toothless. Unions, environmental groups, small businesses and most congress members were excluded from negotiations and had no notice on the deal, and the final text of the agreement is still being held secret.

Take action now: send a letter to your Representative and two Senators to voice your concerns at http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11354

Honest Election Campaign: Ask your senators to back S.1285
“We need to buy back our democracy by replacing special interest funded elections with publicly funded elections.” Thus did Senator Richard Durbin paraphrase President Teddy Roosevelt’s 1907 State of the Union address when he introduced the Fair Elections Now Act (S.1285) to the US senate in March. Senators Specter, Feingold and Obama are co-sponsors. (Listen to Sen. Durbin's speech on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBrr-t-5Jvo ) A public funding proposal by Rep. John Tierney has also been presented to the House of Representatives (HR 1614).

Sen. Durbin noted that the average cost of running a Senate election went up 80% between 2002 and 2006. For the 10 most expensive races, costs averaged $34 million. Such spending is unsustainable, unfair and anti-democratic. The public is shut out and turned off when our political leaders are determined by big money special interests.

The Fair Elections Now Act would provide senatorial candidates limited public funds once they show wide public support by receiving a specific number of $5 contributions, based on state population. Candidates would also promise not to accept any private funds.

Ending the money chase means Senate candidates would belong to “We the People” and not to big money special interests. Programs in Arizona, Maine, and Portland OR already show that this legislation can work.

Please also ask that the bills be changed so that all political party candidates are treated equally. In the current bills, third and minor party candidates must meet a more difficult standard before receiving public funds. Such discrimination is unneeded and undemocratic.

Allied Actions:
Climate Crisis Coalition organizer says "Time Is Short"
Beginning in early September, Ted Glick writes, activists will undertake a weeks-long, water-only Climate Fast. He hopes many others will join the fast, either in Washington D.C. or in their home community or state capitol. If we're facing a planetary emergency, he writes, "our actions need to match that reality. We must drastically reduce emissions, enact a moratorium on any new coal plants, and provide at least $25 billion annually, for energy conservation, efficiencies, and clean and safe renewables."

The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) targets a range of between 450 to 650 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to stabilize the climate, even though some scientists say accepting anything higher than 400 ppm means a high risk of runaway global heating. And the current level of greenhouse gasses, using the IPCC's formula, is already 459 ppm. Read this and Glick's previous columns at www.ippn.org , and contact him at usajointheworld@igc.org.

The Alliance for Democracy is a member of the Climate Crisis Coalition.

May 15: One-day "Gas Out"
There's some internet buzz for a one-day "gas out" on May 15. With a gallon of gas running $3 and way up, a one-day boycott could cost the oil companies almost $3 billion dollars.

Unfortunately, most of us will, at some point, need gas, so the oil companies will get that $3 billion sooner or later.
So don't fill up on the 15th. But don't stop there. We need grassroots advocacy for policies that will help get us off our oil addiction - funds for renewables, research, and public transportation at the federal level; and smart growth, planning and localized economies for our own towns and cities.

AfD's "Other Voices" media campaign recommends a DVD by Community Solutions, featuring a talk by Michael Shuman, author of Going Local, on the benefits of local economies versus globalization - a call for building alternatives to export-oriented and oil-hungry economies. For more information, e-mail the office

California Democrats Pass Impeachment Resolution
The California Democratic Party recently passed a resolution calling on Congress to use its subpoena power to investigate misdeeds of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to hold the administration accountable "with appropriate remedies and punishment, including impeachment." For more info on the California vote, see http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050107L.shtml

The California resolution is one of several calls for impeachment investigations, including the Vermont Senate's and Rep. Dennis Kucinich's introduction of Articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney.

Now you can vote in a national poll on impeachment of Dick Cheney at www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php . You can also send a message to Congress on impeachment as you vote.

Bring back COOL labels for informed consumer choice
Polls indicate that 80% of American consumers want to know where their food is coming from. Concerns over long distance food transportation, global warming, and recent pet food poisoning scandals have taken away many Americans' appetites for cheap imported foods. Shocked at media reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is inspecting approximately one percent of all imported food, consumers are demanding that Congress implement mandatory Country of Origin Labels (COOL) labels on food.

Federal farm policy theoretically requires Country of Origin Labeling for food. COOL was incorporated into the 2002 Farm Bill and was to go into effect in September 2004. But, corporate agribusiness, Wal-Mart, and the supermarket chains bribed an ethically-impaired Congress with millions of dollars to block implementation of COOL labels. As a result, Americans are buying billions of dollars of imported foods without knowing it.

To promote health and sustainability, and save North American family farms, we need to restore our right to know where our food is coming from. Tell Congress we want COOL "Country of Origin" labels for both conventional and organic food. For more info, see http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd/cool.htm

Monday, May 14, 2007