Democracy for New Mexico

Special Preview Screening of New Documentary on Free Speech at Rio Rancho High

According to SWOPblogger the documentary Word: Committing Poetry in Time of War will be shown one time only, at The Guild Cinema in Albuquerque at Noon, Saturday, July 15, 2006.

This film depicts a well known story about free speech, poetry and war that took place at Rio Rancho High School. It is an important story in today's cultural and political climate. Here's a post by Bill Nevins that describes what happened and how he lost his teaching job at Rio Rancho High School over free speech issues around the time of the start of the Iraq war. Bill Nevins is definitely one of the heroes in an era of almost unprecedented threats to our First Amendement rights.

From a bio produced in connection with an event held by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Jouranlism: Bill Nevins teaches journalism, writing and literature at Horizon Academy Northwest in Albuquerque. Nevins is an editor and publishing journalist who has helped start newspapers, journalism and performance poetry programs at Horizon Academy, Nuestros Valores, Rio Rancho and other New Mexico schools. He is a graduate of Iona College and the University of Connecticut, with additional graduate work at the University of New Mexico.

In 2004, he was nominated for the PEN International Freedom to Write Award and he received the Courageous Resister Award from the Artists Network of Refuse and Resist. His work defending educational freedom of expression is the focus of the forthcoming documentary film, Word: Committing Poetry in Time of War. His recent publications include a profile of This Revolution filmmaker Stephen Marshall, and articles on contemporary rock music. A proud grandfather, Nevins enjoys traveling, hiking, poetry slams and Ozomatli.

DISLOYALTY ON DISPLAY: Colorado's Sen. Salazar Gives Middle Finger to Democratic Voters & Democracy

Must read: The entire article below by David Sirota about Colorado's U.S. Senator Ken Salazar. Sirota responds angrily to Salazar's shocking statement that he'll support Sen. Joe Lieberman even if he loses his Connecticut Democratic primary race with Ned Lamont and runs as an "independent." Since when do Democratic Senators get away with refusing to honor the democratic process set up by their Party to allow registered Democrats to choose their nominees? In essence, is Salazar saying he isn't really a Democrat and that his loyalty is given to individuals of his choice rather than to his Party's candidates selected by its voting members? Shamefully, it seems clear that he is.

Sen. Lieberman announced the other day that he would be to run as an "independent" if he doesn't win his primary. However, it seems that even "centrist" Dems are starting to pull away from Lieberman in response. Reportedly, Sen. Hillary Clinton and DSCC honcho, Sen. Chuck Schumer, both indicated they would support the Dem winner in this race whether or not that person is Lieberman. As well they should. All Democratic elected officials should be required to support duly selected Democratic candidates, or at least be prohibited from supporting their non-Democratic competitors. What's telling is the kind of support Lieberman is getting. According to an article on Common Dreams, "Lieberman has already gotten endorsements from Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and financial backing from major Republican lobbyists." Salazar joins a wacky and thoroughly right-wing bunch with his position on Joementum, doesn't he?

Give It Up - Give It Back
So where does that leave Sen. Salazar? I suggest that if he wants to support "independent" candidates, he should change his Party registration and become one. I also suggest he return all the money he has received from the Democratic Party of Colorado, the DNC, the DCCC and individual Democrats who contributed to his campaign because he professed loyalty to the Democratic Party and ran as a Democrat.

I know that many Democrats around the nation, including here in New Mexico, donated money to Salazar's campaign in 2004. Especially in Northern New Mexico, where Democratic candidates have little competition, many Democrats turned their attention to Salazar's senate race in Colorado and gave significant amounts of money and time to his victory. They thought they were supporting a Democrat, not someone who would work to elect a non-Democratic candidate in a key race that's become a referendum about the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Even many progressives supported Salazar despite his conservative bent because they believed, at a minimum, he would support core Democratic positions and duly nominated Democratic candidates. I guess they were wrong.

I also suggest that if others in the Democratic Senator's club attempt to pull the same disloyal scam, they be confronted and penalized in the same way. I know for a fact that State Central Committee members and others who hold positions of power within the NM Dem Party are specifically prohibited from supporting candidates who don't run officially as Democratics. Should our Senators be held to a lower standard? I think not.

Call him and let him know how you feel about his defection:
Kenneth Salazar, U.S. Senator
Democratic Party of Colorado
202-224-5852

Contact New Mexico's Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman and warn him there will be a heavy price to pay if he follows in Salazar's footsteps: https://bingaman.senate.gov/contact/.

I From David Sirota:
In an explosive story, the Rocky Mountain News reports that freshman Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) has become the first Democrat to publicly say he will ignore the will of Connecticut Democratic primary voters and support Sen. Joe Lieberman even if Lieberman loses the primary, leaves the Democratic Party and runs as an independent. Before this, only Sens. Chuck Schumer and Chris Dodd indicated they might do this - now we have a Democratic U.S. Senator officially on record saying he will use his power to thwart both the Democratic Party and the small “d” democratic process, undermining his party and giving a big middle finger to voters.

As I told the Rocky Mountain News reporter, this behavior really lays bare what’s going on: Democratic candidates are more than happy to use the democratic process to obtain elected office, but once they are in, many of them show an open disdain for that same democratic process. They are so focused on protecting their own, preserving the Senate club, and preventing the public from weilding power they are willing to sell out their party and the democratic principles this country was founded on. It is, in a word, disgusting.

Matt Stoller at MyDD has a very simple question in light of the Salazar announcement: what other Democratic U.S. Senators will support Lieberman if Lieberman loses the primary? The question is not what Senators will support Lieberman in his primary - incumbents tend to support incumbents. The question, again, is what other Democrats will support Lieberman if he loses the primary? Will, for instance, Barack Obama support Lieberman if he loses the primary? It was Obama, after all, who specifically timed his primary endorsement of Lieberman to try to crush Lamont’s entire candidacy. What about other Democrats? Which of them will join Salazar in giving the big middle finger to voters and to the Democratic Party?

It’s time we get an answer to that - so go ahead, contact your Democratic U.S. Senators and ask them what their position is.

COMMENTS: Go to Sirota's Working Assets site to comment on this entry.

POSTED BY DAVID SIROTA @ 6:59 PM | PERMALINK

Lamont vs. Lieberman Debate: Watch Live on CSPAN

C-SPAN will be carrying the debate between incumbent Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman and Dem primary challenger Ned Lamont LIVE tonight, starting at 5:00 PM Mountain Time. Since we're having our DFA-DFNM Meetup tonight as well and I'll be busy preparing for that, I'm hoping CSPAN online will have a video after the fact and/or that CSPAN will repeat the event, as it often does. Should be quite a spectacle!

Earth to America

Blue Man Group does some clever and powerful stuff amidst its more commercial ventures. This video is one example. Chalk it up as a short take on the main point of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Have you found the emergency exits yet? Can you hear?

DFA-DFNM MEETUP THURSDAY: Politics & Ice Cream

Our regular monthly DFA-Democracy for NM Meetup is set for this Thursday, July 6th, at 7:00 PM, at the First Unitarian Church Social Hall at Carlisle and Comanche in Albuquerque. Click to RSVP or join our group.

This month's agenda includes Democratic Party of Bernalillo County Chair Marvin Moss, who'll update us on coming rules changes and other Party news and take your questions.

Our featured segment will be a compelling talk by Bill and Anne Kass, who just returned from a Global Exchange "reality tour" of Bolivia. They'll have all kinds of fascinating news and anecdotes about the changing political and social situation there with the election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Activism and democracy are on the march with Bolivians working hard to take control of their water, energy and natural resources, and struggling to benefit the disenfranchized and indigenous populations via their socialist movement.

Afterwards, stay for our FREE ICE CREAM SOCIAL. Savor a refreshing ice cream sundae while you hang out and chat with other participants. We'll provide the ice cream, whipped cream, syrup, nuts and maraschino cherries. You provide the bon appetit.

Hope to see you there! Many of our members are on vacation or out of town this week, so our Meetup should be intimate and afford plenty of opportunity for questions and interaction.

Iraq Occupation, Not Iraq War

The always compelling analysis of George Lakoff is applied here to what's really going on in Iraq:

Occupation: The Inconvenient Truth About Iraq: It is time to tell an inconvenient truth about Iraq: it is an occupation, not a war. In wars, armies fight to dominate land. The US won the war three years ago when Bush said, “Mission Accomplished”. Then the occupation started, and our troops were not trained or equipped for an occupation under predictably hostile circumstances. Finally getting the courage to tell the truth that the US is an occupying force drastically changes the picture in Iraq. You cannot “win” an occupation. “Cut and run” does not apply to an occupation. Occupiers have to leave; the only question is when and how. Progressive Democrats agree that it should be soon; they only disagree on details. Political courage is called for. Truth now!

Question: if this is an occupation and no longer a war, does Bush have a leg to stand on when he claims he has extensive and unprecedented "war powers"? Read the rest of his article.

(Click on image for larger version)

Meanwhile, numerous peace activists and ordinary citizens are participating in the Troops Home Fast, coordinated by CodePINK. You can join the fast in front of the White House until August 14, when it will move to Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, or organize or participate personally in your own hunger strike locally. Long-term fasters include:

Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange and CODEPINK co-founder
Tiffany Burns, CODEPINK
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon whistleblower
Dede Miller, Gold Star Families for Peace
Jodie Evans, CODEPINK co-founder
Dick Gregory, comedian/civil rights activist
Raed Jarrar, Iraqi analyst, Global Exchange
Maggie LeBlanc, CODEPINK Wichita
Geoffrey Millard, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Gael Murphy, CODEPINK co-founder
Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Families for Peace
Father Louie Vitale, Franciscan priest
Diane Wilson, environmental activist
Ann Wright, Colonel and former US Diplomat

The list of those pledging to do at least a 24-hour fast for peace grows daily, including those listed here and many more:

Willie Nelson
Alice Walker
Danny Glover
Dolores Huerta
Susan Sarandon
Sean Penn
Ed Asner
Michael Franti
Graham Nash
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
Michael Berg, Father of Nicolas Berg, who was killed in Iraq
Rev. Al Sharpton
Arun Gandhi, President, Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence
Jim Hightower, Writer
Howard Zinn, Author
Greg Palast, Author
Marianne Williamson, Author
Julia Butterfly Hill, environmentalist
Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women
Dr. E. Faye Williams, National Congress of Black Women
Laura Flanders, Air America talk show host
Peter Yarrow, Musician
Jonathon Tasini, U.S. Senate candidate, New York challenging Hillary Clinton

Independence Day: Liberty, Truth, Justice

(Fascism is a radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, extreme nationalism, militarism, anti-rationalism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism. ~Wikipedia)

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. ~Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. ~Abraham Lincoln

Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader. ~Aristotle

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either rods or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ~Frederick Douglass

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed persons can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead

Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past, while we silence the rebels of the present. ~Henry Steele Commager

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. ~George Washington

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.  ~William Faulkner

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation ~Jimmy Carter

Where liberty is, there is my country. ~Benjamin Franklin

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. ~Cesar Chavez

... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. ~Voltairine de Cleyre

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers - and before it can be his, it is hers alone.  ~Margaret Sanger

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. ~James Madison

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness. ~H.L. Mencken

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation. ~Coretta Scott King

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retributions. ~Justice Louis Brandeis

America's adventure in free government [is threatened by a] military industrial complex. . . We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. ~ Susan B. Anthony

... it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds ... ~Samuel Adams

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. ~Thomas Jefferson

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. ~Katherine Hepburn

Checking The Decider

(Click image for larger version.)

I've been enjoying Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson's musings of late. He has a terrific take on the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision against the Guantanamo military tribunals, which also lays down the law generally on Bush's claims that because we are "at war" he can do anything he damn well pleases. Robinson begins his latest column this way:

Finally.

It seemed almost too much to hope for, but the Supreme Court finally called George W. Bush onto the carpet yesterday and asked him the obvious question: What part of "rule of law" do you not understand?

... the fundamental message is clear: Despite his outrageous claims of virtually unlimited presidential power, the self-proclaimed Decider doesn't get to decide everything.

This decision strongly insists that, despite the eternal "war on terrorism," the executive branch must work in tandem with the congressional branch, and the judicial branch retains its oversight powers -- thus trimming Bush's sails as he continues his quest to become emperor, clothed or not. It also limits BushCo's ability to claim that the president's "war powers" allow him to circumvent FISA court approvals for such things as wiretaps. Blogging attorney Glenn Greenwald provides a detailed legal analysis of the decision that includes this gem:

... the President "may not disregard limitations that Congress . . . in proper exercise of its own war powers" imposes. That principle is based upon "the powers granted jointly to the President and Congress in time of war." Thus, even if the President possesses the power "absent congressional authorization" to, for instance, eavesdrop (or torture people), "he may not disregard limitations that Congress" imposes on such powers.

Chalk one up for the rule of law and against the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Gonzales all-powerful executive branch cabal. I notice that AG Alberto Gonzales is already whining about the decision, so it will be interesting to see how BushCo responds to the new limitations on its "inherent" powers. Perhaps the neocons and their media cronies can accuse the Supreme Court of "treason," as they are with the New York Times because of its story about Bush's financial tracking program. After all, anything that doesn't signal blind acceptance of Bush's deeds is treason in their eyes. Seekers of unbridled power are like that.

Saturday Music Hall: 4th of July Weekend Edition

This is Neil Young's video to honor our fallen troops featuring the song America the Beautiful sung by a large choir. It's the last song on Neil's Living With War album. Even though the video was created for Memorial Day this year, I think it's appropriate for this Independence Day weekend as well. Since Memorial Day 2006, about 75 more American troops have been killed (through the end of June). The carnage continues, whether American or Iraqi, military or civilian, man, woman or child.

The hundreds of billions of dollars (now projected to be almost a half a TRILLION) being spent on this unnecessary and illegal war remain mostly unaccounted for. Not one elected official has so far been able to explain to me exactly where the $2 billion a week is going. We''ll be paying for this neocon nightmare with human lives and limbs for as long as it lasts. And for generations fiscally, emotionally, morally and spiritually. Only we can force our elected officials to stop it. We the people. For after all:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. -- The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Here's another video that lays out the case that what we are really experiencing is the start of the Third World War -- a corporatist war hatched right out in the open by the Project for the New American Century. They should have called it the Project for the New Corporatist Fascism in my opinion. You may consider this is an alarmist point of view, but think about it in terms of what Bush and his cronies have been doing with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, almost from day one of their administration. Plenty of food for thought on this 230th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence....