Return of the blog!

As you can see from the date of the post below, we've gone a while without updating this blog, mostly because we got more active on Facebook and Twitter--and, of course, we encourage you to follow the links and connect with us there too! But from time to time we have a little more to say than can comfortably fit in a Facebook post or in 140 characters, so we'll be posting longer news items here, and linking to them there. Yes, we're being a little retro here, but if it gets the job done quick and easily, that's what we care about most.

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Our 2013 activity report online!

Read our 2013 report online and learn how our work this year helped preserve the commons, block corporate rule, create alternative media, and promote public banking. Thanks to everyone who contributed to these successes, whether through activism or membership.

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Tethys Enterprises withdraws plans for Anacortes bottling plant!

Tethys Enterprises has given up efforts to build a massive water bottling plan in Anacortes. Kudos to Sandra Spargo for years of diligent watchdogging and organizing through Defending Water in the Skagit River Basin. Sandra brought in some of the area's most outstanding experts on siting, transportation, and water supply issues. Thanks and congratulations to all the Defending Water board members in Anacortes, and to the many people in the community who attended hearings and events, and raised questions about the environmental and community impacts of this project. You can read press releases from Steve Winter, CEO of Tethys Enterprises, and the mayor of Anacortes here.

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Create a TPP-Free Zone where you live!

Taking to the streets in
Madison WI to derail fast-track
and the TPP

Don’t let the Trans-Pacific Partnership take away our democratic rights as individuals and as a community. Now is the time to organize to create a "TPP-Free Zone" in your town, city, or county.

If you are not yet familiar with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), now is the time to find out. TPP is a massive trade pact being negotiated between the United States and 12 or more Pacific Rim countries including Japan. It is being written by and for the transnational corporate elite and is cloaked in extreme secrecy. No member of Congress has been allowed to participate in the negotiations, yet President Obama wants Congress to approve the TPP under Fast Track authority which would only allow for an up or down vote on this corporate-negotiated trade deal.

Like other free trade agreements, TPP’s provisions will trump local, state and federal laws and regulations whenever they interfere with “free” trade—free, that is, for corporations, but very costly for the rest of us. Like with NAFTA and CAFTA, the TPP’s investor provisions would privilege the “right” to profit—even the right to anticipated future profits—over democratic decision-making.

From leaked text and previous trade agreements, it is clear that the TPP would --
•  Undermine financial industry regulations needed to prevent another meltdown
•  Restrict free use of the internet
•  Greatly expand copyright protection
•  Dismantle “Buy Local” and “Buy American” preferences which promote local business
•  Restrict use of cheaper generic drugs
•  Challenge food safety regulations including GMO labeling
•  Delay action on climate change, if not prevent it outright
•  Prevent government limits on the export of fracked natural gas, as well as coal and water
•  Allow the U.S. and countries to be sued by foreign corporations for lost profits as a result of laws and regulations, even those protecting health and the environment

Yet, labor, environmental, health care, internet/free press, climate justice, green energy and democracy organizations have been excluded from the negotiations. They cannot see the text, nor comment on it despite the impact of the TPP on all these issues.

We know that most members of Congress are bought lock, stock and barrel by the corporations and Wall Street. So while we must  raise our voices against Congress agreeing to  fast track the TPP,  we must not end our advocacy at their doorstep. We must take our resistance to a world ruled of,  for and by the corporations right to our doorstep, right to where we live. We must assert our right to self-governance, to a nation of, for and by the people.

How can we do this? Many communities across the country have passed rights-based laws, establishing their right to self-governance, asserting their right to a clean and safe environment, establishing the rights of nature to thrive as ecosystems, and denying corporations the right to use the US Constitution or state constitutions to challenge these fundamental rights.

Now it is time to assert our right to a local economy, free of rules negotiated in secret, without our consent, by transnational corporations for their own benefit.  It is time to say we will not abide by decisions reached by secret trade tribunals which will impact our health and safety when we do not even have a right to be represented. It is time to pass local laws to create TPP Free Zones.

It is time to build a democratic movement of resistance.  It is time to start right where we live, in our own community.  It is time to say to President Obama and to the corporations which are sitting at the negotiating table

“If you, our unelected representatives, create this corporate-driven monstrosity and then go to Congress and get a rubber stamp, WE WILL NOT OBEY.”

We will be following in the footsteps of the successful resistance to an earlier trade agreement, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. This was the first global mobilization against a proposed trade agreement and an important part of the campaign was organizing locally.  In the U.S. and Canada, some municipalities declared themselves to be MAI Free Zones.  The MAI was defeated in 1998.

We must organize to defeat the TPP and if it is not defeated, then we can do no other than say “We will not obey.”

For information on creating a TPP-Free Zone, see this page on the AfD website.

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"Corporations and Democracy" looks at disarmament and the defense industry

On the July 9 edition of "Corporations and Democracy" radio, hosts Steve Scalmanini and Annie Esposito talked about nuclear disarmament with Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland, and an internationally-known expert on nuclear disarmament. Jacqueline deconstructed Obama's recent statements on nuclear weapons, discussed the corporatization of nukes and warned that while progress has been made on reducing numbers of weapons, there are still more than enough of them out there to destroy civilization.

You can listen or download the show on our radio page, here.

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Come to the Earth Democracy Conference at the Democracy Convention, August 7-11, in Madison

National and international policies based on neoliberal economics, corporate globalization, and "free" trade which aim to commodify, privatize and profit from almost every aspect of nature are destroying local communities and cultures, and the ecosystems on which all life depends. Earth Democracy is juxtaposed to this system and is grounded in the inherent rights of living beings and Mother Earth.

The Earth Democracy Conference will be one of several tracks at this year's Democracy Convention, to be held August 7 through 11 at Madison College, Madison Wisconsin. Earth Democracy  builds on the declaration adopted by the Ecojustice People's Movement Assembly at the 2010 US Social Forum which states: "We support the conclusion that only by 'living well', in harmony with each other and with Mother Earth, rather than 'living better,' based on an economic system of unlimited growth, dominance and exploitation, will the people of this planet not only survive but thrive."

The Earth Democracy Conference will bring together people who are working on the frontlines of the ecojustice movement to:

• democratize the electric grid and finance local renewable energy
• expose the corporatization of the "green" economy agenda
• recognize water as a fundamental right of people and nature
• combat global warming through creative action
• overcome corporate influence on school curricula and pursue earth-friendly curricula

Sessions include (full descriptions coming soon!): 
Thursday, August 8th- Sunday, August 11th
Awakening the Dreamer Symposium with The Pachamama Alliance Community

Action Tool Kit for Earth Democracy with Randa Solick and Ellen Murtha, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Guardianship of Future Generations & Rights and Responsibilities of Present Generations/Writing Earth Rights into Law with Carolyn Raffensperger, Science and Environmental Health Network and Linda Sheehan, Earth Law Center Energy

Injustice & Environmental Racism: How Dirty Energy Impacts Communities with Mike Ewall Energy Justice Network

Teaching Earth Democracy with Erica Krug, Dan Walkner, and Susan Friess, Madison Public School Teachers

Powering up for People, Peace and the Planet: Re-envisioning the Climate Movement: Building Resistance, Collaboration, Transformation with Victor Wallis, writer on ecology and politics, Sherri Mitchell, Land Peace Foundation (Maine), Stephanie Kimball, 350.org-Madison, and Jill Stein

The Climate of Justice: Asserting our Human, Civil and Earth Rights with Lauren Regan, Civil Liberties Defense Center, Sherri Mitchell, and Jill Stein

Activist Training: Know Your Rights with Lauren Regan

Big Extraction/Big Pollution/Bigger Resistance with representatives from frontline Indigenous and local communities fighting the XL and Enbridge pipelines, sand pits, Penokee Hills Taconite Mine, Rio Tinto Eagle Mine and high capacity water pumping and David Cobb on community rights vs. corporate rights

Re-Envisioning the Climate Movement: Building Resistance, Collaboration, Transformation with Victor Wallis, Sherri Mitchell, and Jill Stein

Water for Life: Local Ordinances to Protect Water, Springs and Rivers with Jane Goddard Center for Earth Jurisprudence and Linda Sheehan

Contours of an Ecologically Sound Economy with Chris Wallace, writer on the ecological crisis and the commons, Rachel Smolker Biofuelwatch, and Mike Ewall

Stop the World’s Largest Trade Agreement’s Harm to the Earth, Agriculture and Food Systems with Jim Goodman, Family Farm Defenders, George Naylor, National Family Farm Coalition and others to be announced

Next Stage: Building the Movement for People, Peace and the Planet – From #Fearless Summer to Fearless All Year Round – dynamic group participant discussion

Alliance for Democracy, Green Action, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom thare the principal conveners of the Earth Democracy Conference. Contact Nancy Price at nancytprice39@gmail.com for more info.

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A postcard call to action on TPP

The Alliance's Portland chapter has produced a short and to-the-point postcard handout with info and actions to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If you're organizing on this issue, you will want to have these to encourage people to take action against any upcoming attempt to reauthorize Fast Track, and to demand that the text of the agreement be made public.

The ultimate goal? Democratically-determined trade policies that protect local economies and the rights of people and nature.

There is more info on TPP, including video and other printable resources, on our website.

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News and photos from Portland OR AfD

Portland AfD brings an anti-corporate rule
 message to Portland's Gay Pride Parade

First, the good news: The Oregon House Rules Committee took a major step to end corporate domination by voting HJM6-3 out of their committee. HJM6-3 is the revised Joint Memorial calling on Oregon's congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment to end the court-created doctrines that money is speech and that corporations are people.  The committee voted unanimously to send the resolution to a vote of the full House. Here's the text.

 Portland AfD is now calling on supporters to advocate for its passage by calling or emailing state reps to express support for HJM6-3 and inform legislators of their expectation that the House will approve it and move it on to the Senate. Calls to state senators are needed too. If you're an Oregonian who needs info on how to contact your state legislators, click here.

If Oregon passes HJM6-3, the state will join 15 others which have called on Congress to amend the constitution. And Oregon will join an elite group of states (Vermont and Illinois) in making clear that we need to do more than just overturn Citizens United or enact an amendment to allow limitations on campaign contributions--we need to eliminate the twin court-created doctrines that money is speech and that corporations are people with constitutional rights.

Now, the other good news: Alliance for Democracy and its Portland Move to Amend project joined the Portland Gay Pride parade on Sunday in downtown Portland.  Afd was one of a small number of marchers to bring a specific political agenda to the parade, and it was well received, thanks to chapter US Supreme "Corporate" Court justices and sign holders.  Check out the Portland website for pictures here.  Read the latest Portland AfD chapter e-newsletter here.

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What's wrong with privatization?

The audio from Tuesday's edition of "Corporation's and Democracy" is now up on our radio page. The show, as promised, features two takes on privatization, both from speakers at this year's Public Banking Institute national conference.

Steve and Annie's first guest, Darwin BondGraham, is a sociologist and journalist (and occasional "Corporations and Democracy" listener) who now covers political economy for print and web publications. He explains some of the history and thinking behind his conference talk, titled "Public-Private Partnerships--Highway to Ruin." He's followed by chief of staff of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Jim Sauber. There are lots of privatization pressures on the US Postal Service, but Jim discusses ways that the post office could add services that would benefit workers and the public alike.

Callers give their points of view, and Steve's look at the headlines features some good news on the fight against GMOs.

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Thom Hartmann on "Populist Dialogues"

This week's show features Thom Hartmann, progressive political commentator and author of many books, including Unequal Protection, Screwed: the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It, and Rebooting the American Dream. Thom recently spoke at the First Unitarian Church in Portland, OR. In his talk, he addresses the need for a 28th constitutional amendment to end the legal fictions that artificial entities are people and that money is speech.  He calls America's governing structure a "constitutional monarchy," and relates how the US Supreme Court's use of judicial review undermines democracy, and how we can regain the power of the people from the court's and corporate dominance.

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Earth Democracy at the Democracy Convention!

Alliance for Democracy is convening the Earth Democracy Conference at this year's Democracy Convention, and you're invited!

The Earth Democracy Conference is one of nine conferences taking place at this year's Democracy Convention, August 7-11 in Madison, Wisconsin.

 Registration is open now, and early registration is a great way to get on the list for first news about convention logistics.


The Earth Democracy Conference builds on the declaration adopted by the Ecojustice People's Movement Assembly at the 2010 US Social Forum: "We support the conclusion that only by 'living well', in harmony with each other and with Mother Earth, rather than 'living better,' based on an economic system of unlimited growth, dominance and exploitation, will the people of this planet not only survive but thrive, and the ecosystems on which all life depends will flourish."



The Earth Democracy Conference is a place to discuss, debate and strategize to ensure that the growing US democracy movement includes those working on the frontlines of eco-justice. 

Join confirmed speakers at the Earth Democracy Conference who are working to make the declaration a reality:



• Arthur Stamoulis, Citizens Trade Campaign
• 
Michael Vickerman, Renew Wisconsin

• David Newby, Pres. Emeritus, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO and Pres. Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition

• Linda Sheehan, Earth Law Center

• Jane M. Goddard, Center for Earth Jurisprudence, Barry School of Law

• Carolyn Raffensperger, Science and Environmental Health Network

• Jill Stein, Green Party Presidential Candidate

• The Pachamama Alliance
• 
John Peck, Family Farm Defenders

• Speakers from Indigenous tribal and local communities on the front lines of resistance to Big Energy, Industry and Ag, and from the Sierra Club John Muir Chapter (Madison)
• others to be announced as confirmed.



These are just some of our planned workshops and sessions:

• Climate and Planet Earth Emergency: Big Energy and Industry/ Big Pollution/Big Resistance: learn the issues and non violent resistance strategies from Indigenous tribal and local communities on the front lines in the fights against the XL Pipeline, fracking sand pits, the Penokee Hills Taconite Mine, and high-capacity water pumping.
• The Pachamama’s Alliance Awakening the Dreamer Symposium: a transformational educational workshop to “change the dream of the modern world" and empower participants to investigate their unique role in transforming humanity’s future.


• Earth Democracy Workshop: Teach-In/Teach-Back: interactive discussion of  community initiatives to protect public health and ecosystems: the Precautionary Principle, rights of nature, guardianship, and more. 
• 

Bees, Butterflies and GMO Crops: Say No to Monsanto and Dow Chemical: challenging corporate-controlled agriculture/creating healthy farmer-controlled food systems, including ordinances to protect local food. 
• 

Hands off Mother Earth: Writing Earth Rights into Law: local, national, and international movements and success stories. Local initiatives to protect springs and rivers.
• 

Declare your Community a TPP-Free Zone to establish local democracy and nature’s rights.  The Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement will accelerate plunder of the earth and seriously harm the health of all beings. Learn the TPP basics; how the TPP protects corporate wealth and property, and why the TPP must be stopped.

In our plenary session we'll debunk carbon markets and the neo-liberal “green” economy and discuss how to create a true green economy grounded in climate and environmental justice for all.

Special activities include a food fair featuring produce and products from local farmers, an urban agriculture bike tour, act activism for children, and more.

About the 2013 Democracy Convention
If you want to strengthen democracy where it matters to you… in your community, school, workplace, economy, military, government, media or the Constitution… you will find inspiration in Madison this August at the second national Democracy Convention.
 
The Democracy Convention houses at least nine conferences under one roof, recognizing the importance of each of these separate struggles, as well as the need to unite them all in a common, deeply rooted, broad based democracy movement.

Please register, sign up your organization, business or union as a sponsor, and spread the word by sharing this post on social media and posting this convention button on your website.

Thank you, and see you in Madison!
Nancy Price, Co-Chair
Alliance for Democracy

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Corporate personhood: don't regulate, eliminate!

Bonnie Preston, one of the Alliance's vice co-chairs, was one of the resource speakers at a recent teach-in at the University of Maine-Orono. Bonnie has been an active organizer for local food and self-governance ordinances in her part of Maine. She spoke alongside BJ McAllister, of Maine Clean Elections. Maine's governor is no fan of the state's clean election system, and has attempted to defund it. 

Here's what Bonnie said to the group:

Good afternoon! My name is Bonnie Preston, and I am a member of the Alliance for Democracy, which believes that the overarching task of our time is to get our democratic republic out of the hands of the mega-corporations and back into the hands of We the People.

Money in politics is not just about elections and how they are financed. More insidiously, it is about the two arms of the revolving door--lobbying and corporate capture of the agencies of government. It’s hard to pin down the number of lobbyists in Washington DC right now, but it is certainly dozens for each of our elected representatives in Congress. Many of these are former elected officials. For example, Billy Tauzin led the fight to pass a Medicare prescription drug plan that forbade negotiating prices with the drug manufacturers. After that signature achievement, he went to work for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing of America (PhRMA), the lobbying arm of the drug industry, where he became the highest paid health-law lobbyist in the country.

The flip side of people leaving government for lobbying is leaving the private sector to work for a government agency, temporarily of course. Exhibit A is Michael Taylor, who has moved back and forth from Monsanto to either the FDA or USDA for decades. He is now in charge of writing the regulations that will support the Food Safety Modernization Act, now in final draft form. If implemented, these rules could put an end to small farms in the US.

These two forces are driving the complete take-over of government by the private sector, and no campaign finance reform will touch this.

So what can we do to get the government back in our hands? The Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court galvanized people so dramatically that it has opened a door to a possibility that many of us who have worked for years on this issue have seen as a distant hope, if not a pipe dream. Since 1886, the Supreme Court has granted corporations more and more specific constitutional rights; corporations have used these to increase their political power.

The founders kept corporations under control. Corporate charters, required to show how the corporation would serve the public interest, had to be approved by state legislatures. They were limited in time and scope, had to be extended if desired by the legislatures, and could be revoked if the corporation failed to serve the public. A corporation could not buy another corporation, so they must stay small and competitive.

Today, monopolistic corporations, which include the too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks, are preventing progress on everything we need to do if we are going to continue to live on this planet. The rights we have given them are even being enshrined in international law through the World Trade Organization and the NAFTA-style trade agreements. This trade regime is culminating in the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement with all the powers of NAFTA, but with a significant difference. Once in place, countries will not have to negotiate a trade deal; they will simply sign on to the TPP. The multi-national corporations, with the enforcement powers of the trade organizations backed by the military might of supposedly democratic governments, are growing into a force that will totally destroy our ability to govern ourselves in a humane and environmentally sound way.

We must directly confront corporations and the concept of corporate personhood. A Constitutional amendment that ends corporate personhood as well as the concept that money is not speech is necessary. Abraham Lincoln did not try to regulate slavery, or end it in steps, or disclose its evils. He backed the 13th amendment, which freed the slaves. We are still cleaning up the mess created by slavery, and we will have a lot of work to do to clean up the messes that corporations have made as well, but a Constitution that says that corporations are not persons with constitutional rights will provide the solid ground we can stand on as we do that work. AfD, a founding partner of the Move to Amend coalition, is committed to this type of systemic change.

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Did you know...

...that protesting corporate rule is at least as old as our own American Revolution? Move to Amend's Ashley Sanders brought the history of the early days of corporate domination of politics and economies to this edition of Populist Dialogues.

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Justice Rising author index online!

Want to see who's written for our newsletter? Check out the new author index to Justice Rising: Grassroots Solutions to Corporate Domination, here. Got a favorite author-activist? She might also be a contributor! Each link goes to a single-page pdf of the article, suitable for printing for tabling, events, or info packets. Members get a subscription.

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Water work in Maine: State agencies may bypass the bottle, and opposition to the E/W Corridor continues

Even in Maine where Nestle seems to reign supreme with its Poland Spring bottled water brand topping all spring water brand sales in the country, there has been legislative pushback against bottled water. In late February, Chris Buchanan, AfD’s Maine coordinator for Defending Water for Life, testified at a state legislative hearing on LD 315: An Act to Ban the Purchase of Bottled Water by State Agencies. Her testimony in favor of the bill was very well received and she has been asked to return for the work session on the bill. It would still be very surprising if the bill becomes law, but having the discussion is an important step forward.

Meanwhile, organizing against the East/West SuperCorridor continues full steam ahead. On March 2, the town of Dexter held a forum on the Corridor with two hundred people in attendance. Chris and others with Stop the E/W Corridor were on the panel. Once again, Cianbro, the corporation proposing the Corridor, declined an invitation to attend.

The proposed corridor is generating strong local opposition, with interest growing in taking a rights-based approach for local self-governance which denies corporations court-conferred constitutional rights and protects the rights of nature. Defending Water helped with scholarships so local activists could attend two 2-day Democracy Schools in early March where they are delving deeply into this approach. The Alliance set a national precedent when we worked with Barnstead NH which passed the first rights-based ordinance to protect their water from corporate takings. We hope to see this approach expand in Maine which already has two Barnstead-style local laws in Shapleigh and Newfield.

For more information go to www.defendingwater.net/maine and www.stopthecorridor.org.

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Gearing up to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership

President Obama proposed some intriguing and positive programs in the State of the Union speech--public preschool, a hike in the minimum wage, and measures to prevent gun violence. In a country where policy is democratically determined by representatives who truly act on behalf of the common good and the wishes of their constituents, those kind of ideas could really go somewhere.

Unfortunately, it would be irresponsibly optimistic to think that new laws on public safety will be determined out of reach of the gun lobby, or we'll see anything close to a national living wage when big-box retail, fast food, and other low-wage employers remain politically powerful.

That's why it was very disappointing to hear Obama call for a renewed push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. We've written a lot about TPP and the damage it could do to local and national sovereignty and laws that protect workers' rights, the environment, public health, and jobs. That's why on either side of the Pacific, citizens' groups of all kinds are opposed to instituting this compact.

It takes some work to mine profit out of universal background checks and preschools, but TPP is one thing that multinationals can get behind in a big way. And they will. Why not? They already have a much better idea of what's in the agreement, thanks to access to the negotiating process that even members of Congress lack.

We need to stop TPP and one way to start is to get our communities informed about what's wrong with so-called "free trade." Please take a look at this latest edition of Populist Dialogues, featuring Arthur Stamoulis of the Citizens Trade Campaign, and consider sharing it with friends online and with your local community access cable station.

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Catching up with Populist Dialogues: Oregon as a center for fuel and water export

What are the latest plans for Cascade Locks, coal terminals, LNG pipelines, and fracking in Oregon?  David Delk talks with Bethany Cotton of Greenpeace and FLOW, and Julia DeGraw of Food and Water Watch.

Bethany discusses plans to turn the Pacific Northwest into a fossil fuel export epicenter, with national and multinational corporations lining up to build coal and liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals in both Oregon and Washington. She details some of the environmental and economic consequences of these plans, as well the shape of local resistance.

Julia gives an update on Nestlé's planned bottled water plant in Cascade Locks, and asks who has the right to water--a private corporation, or the people of Oregon?

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Updating the end of year update!

Did you recently read our end-of-year 2012 report? It’s already time for an update! In the last few weeks...

• Our Defending Water in Maine campaign has held four “Stop the East/West Corridor” presenter trainings and raised the alert on using this eastern route to send tar-sands oil to the coast for export.
• Vice Co-chair Bonnie Preston presented a workshop at the Pennsylvania Women in Agriculture conference on using local ordinances to protect farm-to-table sales, traditional foodways and local economies from pro-corporate federal regulations, as successfully done in Maine.
• The Populist Dialogues team has produced new shows on wage theft and workers’ rights, access to public transit as a social justice issue, and money in Oregon politics.
• Co-chair Nancy Price met with other members of the Move to Amend executive committee to shape coalition policy for the upcoming year.
• Members continued to lay the groundwork for public banking in Washington DC and Massachusetts.
• In Portland, OR, chapter members and allies scheduled a hearing on a county resolution calling for our Congressional delegation to send a constitutional amendment to the states to end the twin doctrines of corporate personhood and money equals speech.
• In California, Mendocino chapter members and their allies are discussing an ambitious plan to qualify a state ballot initiative to end corporate personhood and money equals speech. Monterey County members are also laying the groundwork for a county-level resolution.

These are reasons to celebrate. An even better reason is that there's more good work coming in 2013. We hope you'll join with us. We also wish you and your communities a happy, peaceful, and fruitful New Year.

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Join Alliance for Democracy in 2013

As we build for 2013, we welcome your member support! Check out our 2012 report, and then please consider supporting the upcoming year's organizing by joining Alliance for Democracy. Members receive a subscription to our newsletter, Justice Rising, and the satisfaction of helping end corporate rule from the grassroots up.

If you can make a larger contribution, we'll thank you by sending you a dvd of one of the following Populist Dialogues programs. Select one dvd for a donation of $50, two for $100 or all three for $150. When you give online you'll be able to select the show you'd like. If you have questions, or want to learn more about sharing the show on your local community cable station, please contact us in the office--email or call 781-894-1179.

12-46: Escaping the Great Recession with Public Banking
Guest Ellen Hodgson Brown, author of The Web of Debt and founder of the Public Banking Institute,  discusses the advantages of public banking in the United States and around the world. She reviews how money is created, how the Federal Reserve was created, various types of public banks and how their are structured, why some nations have escaped the Great Recession, how America could save its postal service, and how public banking institution could be used as a land bank to address the under-water property and foreclosure problems. First broadcast 11-11-12

12-44: Capitalism of the Olympic Games
Jules Boykoff, associate professor of political science at Pacific University, discusses the recent London Summer Olympics in terms of what he calls Celebration Capitalism. He also talks about the origins of the International Olympic Committee, costs for host cities (both economic and political), who sponsors and benefits from the games, the opposition which develops, media response to that opposition, and the militarization of public spaces including the concept of “Total Policing.” First broadcast 10-28-12

12-41: TransPacific Partnership and "Free Trade"
Guest Elizabeth Swager is Asst Director of Oregon Fair Trade Campaign. She talks about her role in the enactment of Portland Oregon's sweat-free procurement ordinance, designed to protect foreign factory workers. She goes on to review past "free-trade agreements" (NAFTA, Panama, Columbia and South Korea) and their effects on American jobs losses, tax havens and challenges to laws and regulations as a result of investor protection clauses. The TransPacific Partnership is then discussed as a "NAFTA on steroids." This agreement is being negotiated in super secrecy, except for a leaked chapter, which give us a look at how corporate-driven the TPP is. The show includes a petition calling for transparency in the TPP negotiations. First broadcast date:  Oct. 7, 2012      

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New "Populist Dialogues" on wage theft and winning paid sick days

If you're not one of the 41% of Americans who don't get paid time off when sick, then you probably know someone who falls into that category--maybe they just passed you your change in the coffee shop. Throat feeling a little sore? Wondering about whether or not you should go to church tomorrow? Now you know why this is a social, family and public health issue!

It's also the topic of the latest edition of "Populist Dialogues." Host David Delk talks to Lisa Frack with Family Forward Oregon about their campaign to get paid sick day benefits for all workers. Following that, he talks with Marco Mejia of Portland Jobs with Justice about their campaign to end wage theft, and to protect workers from employers who don't pay minimum wage, overtime, tips, or for every hour worked.

You can see the show below or subscribe on YouTube here. And if this is an issue in your community, share it on community access tv. Email us at Alliance for Democracy for more info (afd {at} thealliancefordemocracy {dot} org.}

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