Portland AfD's "Populist Dialogues" looks at OREP, Hanford

"Populist Dialogues" most recent show features guest Judy Barnes of Oregonians for Renewable Energy Policy (OREP) who explains how feed-in-tariffs have created big increases in production of renewable energy and in good paying jobs in Germany, Gainesville FL, and elsewhere. Judy answers frequently asked questions on this means of financing renewable solar energy which OREP is spearheading in Oregon. Read their brochure here.

The series' next show focuses on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, campaign finance, and Portland's radical history. Featured are Gerry Pollet of Heart of America NW speaking on Hanford, the most contaminated nuclear site in the country and the focus of needed environmental clear-up due to long-term contamination of the surrounding area and eco-systems; Steve Cowan, director of PriceLess,the Movie on the problem of money and lobbyists in our political system and the role of public election financing; and Michael Munk, author of Portland Red Guide, a history of people and places in Portland's radical history.

No cable? Not in Portland? Watch the show from the AfD-Portland website. Or get "Populist Dialogues" on your local cable access station—contact David Delk for further information.

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"Populist Dialogues" on PEGMedia

Looking for good progressive programming for your local community access station? AfD's Portland chapter has put its show, "Populist Dialogues" on PEGMedia, a service available to all public access cable television stations which allows them to download and play video programs.

Let your local public access television station know that the shows are available. Programmers can watch and download the programs for broadcast. It's a great way to spread the progressive populist word, and thanks to Portland AfD, it's free.

Here is how it works: Go to PEGMedia.org. Click on "Quick List of All Shows" and select "Alliance for Democracy - Populist Dialogues." If you scroll down, you will see a list of the shows available at this time--bookmark the site and check back because there will be more shows posted next week.

Click on one of the shows and you will get a bit more detail on the show content. If you have registered with PEGMedia (anyone can register for free), you can log-in and then watch the first 10 minutes of any episode. Enjoy, be inspired, and pass the show onto your local community access cable station. Thanks for spreading the word about progressive populist alternatives to corporate rule!

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Portland (OR) presents "Alliance for Democracy--Populist Dialogues"

The Portland Chapter will be screening the first two editions of its new cable TV program, "Alliance for Democracy--Populist Dialogues," in early December. The schedule's at the end of this post.

The half-hour program features David Delk, AfD co-chair and Portland chapter president, as host, with chapter members as crew and tech support.

The first program is on single payer healthcare with one of the Mad As Hell Doctors (Samuel Metz). On the second, Barbara Dudley (former head of Greenpeace USA and National Lawyers Guild and currently co-chair of the Oregon Working Families Party) talks about fusion voting, State Bank of Oregon and Korea Free Trade Agreement.

The program will be on a regular schedule on Portland community access cable starting in January, and will also screen in suburban communities.

If you're not in Portland, you can request a copy of the show to view locally or to screen at your local community access station. The programs will have some content specific to Portland or Oregon but will be general enough to be of interest around the nation.

You can also watch online on the Portland chapter website's Populist Dialogues video page, or on blip.tv. The single payer program with Samuel Metz is here and David talks to Barbara Dudley here.

We are all very excited about this project, so I hope everyone likes them. Your comments are welcome!

Schedule for Barbara Dudley show:

• Thursday 12/2/2010, 8:00 PM, Channel 22
• Monday 12/6/2010, 10:30 PM, Channel 11
• Tuesday 12/7/2010, 7:30 PM, Channel 22
• Wednesday 12/8/2010, 10:00 PM, Channel 23
• Thursday 12/9/2010, 8:00 PM, Channel 23

Schedule for Samuel Metz Single Payer program

• Wednesday 12/1/2010, 7:30 PM, Channel 22
• Friday 12/3/2010, 4:30 PM, Channel 22
• Monday 12/6/2010, 10:00 PM, Channel 11
• Wednesday 12/8/2010, 9:00 PM, Channel 23
• Monday 12/13/2010, 5:00 PM, Channel 23

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Corporation-funded referenda and signature fraud on "Corporations and Democracy"

This Friday on KZYX and Z's "Corporations and Democracy", Annie Esposito and Alliance for Democracy council member Steve Scalmanini will discuss the growing trend of corporation funded initiative campaigns like the one currently underway in Mendocino County (read Steve's article on the campaign here). Was April's signature drive, funded by Developers Diversified Realty of Ohio, fraudulent? Were you misled, or even lied to, to entice you to sign their petition? Are California's voters protected from fraudulent petition circulators? What are some other states doing to prevent fraudulent initiatives? Steve and Annie's guest will be Joel Foster, Deputy Director for Programs at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, that sponsors the Web site www.stopballotfraud.org. The show airs this Friday, July 3rd, from 1:00 to 2:00 pm Pacific time, on KZYX and Z - 90.7, 91.5, and 88.1 FM, and streams at www.kzyx.org.

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April 11 in Massachusetts! Maintaining Democracy: Undermining the Corporate Agenda from the Bottom Up

More information on this event!

A conference for Northeast region AfD members, supporters, and allied activists! Join us!

SATURDAY APRIL 11, 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Walker Center, 144 Hancock Street at Grove Street
Newton, Massachusetts
(Exit 22 off Rt I-95, or a 0.5 mile walk from Riverside Green Line station)

Registration ($15, early-bird rate of $5 by April 4)
Lunch and dinner available, with vegetarian option. Lunch $12, dinner $14.

CALL 781-894-1179 (AfD National Office, Waltham) to REGISTER NOW, or email afd@thealliancefordemocracy.org

We look forward to seeing you there!

Speakers/presenters include:

• NANCY LEE WOOD (Bristol Community College): Overview and Resource Depletion
• JILL STEIN (MCHC: Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities): Taking on the Climate Crisis -- Local, State, and National
• GARRET WHITNEY (Concord Climate Action Network) The 350ppm Campaign
• Sustainable Community Initiatives: Reports from Aperion and Green Drinks of Rhode Island
• MARY ROSSBOROUGH (Salem State College Lifelong Learning Institute): The Economy -- Pitfalls and New Directions
• DAVID LEWIT (Dispatch): Participatory Budgeting & Trade Issues
• PAT McSWEENEY (Citizens for an Informed Community): Militarism as a Tool for the Corporate Agenda
• Radio hosts STAN ROBINSON & JOHN GREBE: The Local and Larger Independent-Media Presence
• KATIE ROBBINS (Healthcare-NOW!): State Legislative Initiatives
• BARBARA CLANCY (AfD Health Care Campaign): Action Tools
• TONI SERAFINI (AfD) & SHERYL CRAWFORD (Mass Vote): Electoral Issues

Additional Media Initiatives:

• COMMUNITY SHOWINGS/ACTIONS: David Whitty (Town of Ashland), Joan Ecklein (Women's International League for Peace & Freedom: WILPF), Sue Gracey (Boston Bio-Weapons Lab, WILPF), The Raging Grannies
• COMMUNITY CABLE PROJECT: "OTHER VOICES": Ruth Weizenbaum (Overview with distribution team), Jane Lynn (Marlboro), Michael Bleiweiss (Methuen), Charlie Phillips (Concord), Bob Datz (Brimfield), Cornelia Sullivan (Boston), Joanna Herlihy (Cambridge & Somerville): editing & filming work, Leo Immonen (Wrentham)
• LETTER-WRITING
• WEB OPTIONS
• NEWSLETTERS

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Support low-power FM radio

The Local Community Radio Act of 2009 (HR 1147) has recently been introduced in the House. The Act nearly passed in the last Congress with the support of more than 100 members.

HR 1147 would open up the airwaves to more Low Power FM (LPFM) radio stations (including a proposed station in Washington state supported by AfD's South Puget Sound chapter). These stations have the potential to bring local news and information, non-commercial music and art, and alternative points of view to the public airwaves, to increase media access among traditionally-underserved communities, rural and urban, and to allow more people to get experience in broadcasting.

Visit this advocacy page at Freepress.net to send a message to your representative in support of the bill!

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Call-in day for Lincoln's Birthday, District visits, and "Houseparties for Healthcare"

Here are three actions you can take over the next few weeks to support single payer health care and encourage others in your community to do the same:

Thursday, February 12, 2009: National Call-in Day for HR 676
Celebrate Lincoln's birthday by speaking out for single-payer health care! The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare is encouraging everyone to participate in the upcoming National Call-in Day for HR 676. If you have not yet called your representative and asked for his or her support on HR 676, do not miss this opportunity to add your voice to the hundreds of thousands who are supporting health care for people, not for profit!

The Congressional switchboard number is 202-225-3121, or you can find links to representatives' websites, with direct-dial numbers, here.

In a letter to Col. William F. Elkins written November 21, 1864, Lincoln wrote:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

In celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, remind your member of Congress to honor his words and heed his warning as we look to reform his precious nation's healthcare system.

A list of current HR 676 sponsors can be found here, and past sponsors here. Thank current co-sponsors and ask them to stand firm and actively seek additional congressional support. If your member was a co-sponsor in the last Congress, ask him or her to sign on immediately as a co-sponsor now.

If your member has yet to co-sponsor HR 676, ask him or her to please do so. Share your story as a constituent, or select one or two talking points from this list.

Please also urge your member to learn more about the serious flaws in the Massachusetts health plan and examine why it cannot serve as a national model for providing universal and comprehensive care, at a special briefing on Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 2:00-4:00pm, 2226 Rayburn House Office Building.

Lastly, don't forget to call (202-456-1414) or fax (202-456-2461) the White House to make sure our current President recalls how very troubled another young lawyer from Illinois was as he viewed the future of the nation under the control of the monied and corporate interests just like those swirling in the for-profit health insurance industry.

Plan a district visit for single payer during the Presidents' Day recess
From Monday, February 16 through Friday, February 20, legislators will be working back in their districts for the Presidents' Day recess. Now is the time to make an appointment with your member of Congress to directly urge him or her to support single payer healthcare by co-sponsoring HR 676.

See this handy "how to" on setting up a visit at your Congress member's district office. Information sources online include our posts and downloads on single payer, Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare-Now, and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care.

Houseparties for Healthcare
We're in the process of putting together activist packs for houseparty screenings of "Health, Money, and Fear," a dvd on the healthcare crisis produced by Dr. Paul Hochfeld. Dr. Hochfeld is an emergency room physician in Oregon and his film is a comprehensive look at how healthcare is funded and distributed in the US. You can preview the film online at www.ourailinghealthcare.com . Links to packet materials will be available on this blog.

Several AfD members in Massachusetts will be submitting "Health, Money, and Fear" to local community access cable stations. You don't have to live in Massachusetts to participate in AfD's "Other Voices" Community Media Project. Find out more by contacting AfD council member Ruth Weizenbaum at rweiz@theworld.com.

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Ukiah Valley chapter organizers host "Corporations and Democracy"

On October 3rd Steve Scalmanini and his wife Annie Esposito of the Ukiah Valley Chapter began hosting the first of the two monthly "Corporations and Democracy" radio programs on KZYX that covers Mendocino County, CA (100 miles north of San Francisco.)

Their first broadcast addressed what has been done in swing states to try to steal the 2008 presidential election, explained live by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of Columbus, Ohio, who are still involved with exposing the fraud in the 2004 election there.

Steve and Annie's program will be on 1st Fridays from 1-2 pm pacific time. On 3rd Fridays the hosts will continue to be Tom Wodetzki and Toni Rizzo of the Mendocino Coast Chapter, who for 10 years have been hosting both monthly shows with a few other members from the coast chapter. (Their guest on October 17th will be Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine.) Webcasts of the programs can be heard live at www.kzyx.org or locally at 90.7, 91.5, or 88.1 FM depending on where you are in the County.

Steve has been active in the Ukiah Valley Chapter (previously known as the Russian River Chapter) since 2003, helping host many speakers and video showings in the area, being semiretired after a career in the electronics business in Silicon Valley from 1973 to 2001. Annie retired in December after ten years as news director at radio station KZYX.

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Get involved in "Other Voices"

The "Other Voices" Community Cable Project is now screening progressive political videos on community access cable in 9 towns in Massachusetts. Wherever you live, you may use this program to bring news about grassroots resistance to corporate rule to your neighbors.

"Other Voices" can provide you with DVDs or VHS tapes of programming on a variety of topics, as well as the release forms you need for community access cable broadcast. Our "Other Voices" programmers report that community stations are glad to have the material. The "Other Voices" library has recently acquired DVDs of interviews conducted by Jacqui Brown Miller, South Puget Sound chapter. The "Reclaiming Democracy" TV show features interviews with Antonia Juhasz, John Perkins, and David Korten, among others.

You can preview several of the shows, including some filmed at the US Social Forum, here.

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Alternative Media Project

Listen live to “Corporations & Democracy” on KZYX & Z

KZYX & Z is the Community non-commercial radio station of several northern California counties including Mendocino – home to several AfD Chapters and many AfD members.


Listen live to AfD hosts as they interview the authors, activists, and pundits that you’ve always wanted to hear.
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Plan your day and tune in from 1:00 to 2:00 pm PST to “streaming radio” on your computer or lap-top where ever you are. Call-in to ask a question or comment.
Take this opportunity to have your voice heard and to talk about community democratic rights vs. corporate rights.

Listen live and follow directions to tune in and on the first Friday join Linda Perry and Jim Tarbell and the third Friday, Jan Edwards and Tom Wodetski.

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