Code Pink: Yes We Can Live in Peace.

March 19, 2009.

Dear American Citizens,

In December of last year an Iraqi reporter, Muntadar al-Zaidi, was launched into the spotlight for hurling his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad press conference. As the shoes sailed through the air, he shouted, "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is a farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." He has been in custody since the incident and reportedly tortured. Last week, he was sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a foreign dignitary.

On the sixth anniversary of the disastrous Iraq War, Al-Zaidi's story highlights the reality of the US-imposed democracy in Iraq. One of Bush's false justifications for the invasion was the need to save Iraqis from a repressive regime and give them the freedom of expression they deserved. Six years later, expressing yourself freely will still get you tortured and imprisoned in Iraq. This is the democracy that over 4,000 US soldiers and over 1 million Iraqis have lost their lives for?

Obama promised to end the war and bring the troops home in 2009 and we will continue to hold him to his word. He deserves to be pushed, we deserve to have our troops home and the Iraqis deserve peace, respect and to have their country back. This morning, in solidarity with our Iraqi friends, we gathered outside the Iraqi embassy in Washington, DC and call for Al-Zaidi's release. Read Medea's piece, "Is Shoe Throwing A Crime?"

Join our Obama's Promises Action Team today in honor of the 6th Anniversary and you will receive action updates on how you can act boldly in 2009!

Join or organize a march, rally or other event in your community this week to mark and mourn the sixth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq. See if there's an event planned in your area or create your own by clicking here. Let's use this grim anniversary to highlight how military spending has crippled our failing economy.

Join us in Washington, DC May 9th and 10th for a 24 hour Mother's Day peace vigil. We'll surround the White House with pink and reclaim Mother's Day as a time to gather as women and work together to end war.

Thank you for refusing to be silent,
Audrey, Blaine, Dana, Deidra, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Medea, Nancy, Paris, and Rae

PS - Check out our pink presence in yesterday's AIG hearing in Congress! (As you can see, we are never silent…)

Join our Obama Keep Your Promises Action Team

Mark the 6th anniversary of the war at a march or rally this Thursday, March 19

CODEPINK connects with the hip-hop community on the 6th anniversary

Join us for Mother's Day in DC, May 9-10!

LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!

Thanks for all you do!
Live your values. Love your country.
And, remember: TOGETHER, We can make a DIFFERENCE!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

URGENT: Next steps on single-payer healthcare.

February 20, 2009.

Healthcare NOT Warfare Pushes Forward

Dear Americans,

This Wednesday, February 25, will be an historic day for single payer advocates. And there will be something for everyone to participate in, whether you are in D.C. or at home!

In the morning, if you can make it, you are invited to walk the halls of Congress for single-payer healthcare legislation. On behalf of our friends in Massachusetts, we will deliver to every office a copy of the letter to Senator Kennedy signed by over 500 Massachusetts Physicians, urging him to introduce single payer legislation in the Senate; a copy of the letter signed by over 40 Massachusetts labor leaders urging President Obama to support 'Medicare for All'; and a copy of the just released report on the Massachusetts Plan, which eloquently outlines the many failures of the model.

Click here to RSVP.

But that's not all; we'll also encourage members and health staff to attend the Congressional forum hosted by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care which will take place the same afternoon, from 2pm-4pm, "National Lessons from State Health Reform: The Massachusetts Case Study," in the Rayburn House Office building, Room 2226. If you can’t make it, please invite your representative to join the committee of Congress members overseeing the forum, click here.

Yours in the movement,

Tim Carpenter, National Director, and
Conor Boylan, Field Coordinator

Progressive Democrats of America is a grassroots PAC that works both inside the Democratic Party and outside in movements for peace and justice. Our goal in 2009: Work with and increase the progressive majority in Congress as we build on our 2008 electoral successes. PDA's advisory board includes seven members of Congress and activist leaders such as Tom Hayden, Medea Benjamin, Thom Hartmann, Jim Hightower, and Rev. Lennox Yearwood.

More info | Find Chapters

LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!

Thanks for all you do!
Live your values. Love your country.
And, remember: TOGETHER, We can make a DIFFERENCE!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

January 12, 2009 3:41 PM

NYS in line for $6B in education funds

Sen. Charles Schumer and Gov. David Paterson say the money is coming from the federal economic stimulus bill.

Matthew Sollars
Photograher: A. Golden, eyewash design, c. 2008.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Gov. David Paterson on Monday said New York could receive about $6 billion for education from an economic stimulus bill that President-elect Barack Obama is making his first order of business after taking office next week.

Out of a possible $800 billion stimulus package, Mr. Schumer said there is a “very strong likelihood” that it will include $80 billion in education grants for states. That will put New York in line to receive between $5 billion and $7 billion, depending on the formula used to distribute money.

“This isn’t going to solve the education funding problems in the state,” Mr. Schumer said Monday, during an Albany press conference. “But this should alleviate the severity of the crisis, and it’s a shot in the arm that the states need.”

In his budget proposal released last month, Mr. Paterson called for roughly $2 billion in education cuts. He said he would not be willing to back down from those cuts, even if the federal money arrives.

“We have got to learn that our spending cannot exceed our revenues,” Mr. Paterson said. “Even with the addition of resources from the federal government, what we are going to have to do is change the culture of spending in the state.”

Instead, the governor said he would look to eliminate more than $2 billion in new taxes and fees he had proposed to help close a projected $10.5 billion budget gap.

Mr. Schumer said that C, was making “great progress” toward the meeting a self-imposed deadline of Feb. 13 for finishing the stimulus bill, before adjourning for the President’s Day holiday.

LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!

Thanks for all you do!
Live your values. Love your country.
And, remember: TOGETHER, We can make a DIFFERENCE!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise.

With the economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise.
By Jordy Yager
Posted: 12/17/08 05:41 PM
Photographer: A. Golden, eyewash design, c. 2008.

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.

Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.

“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.

Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.

In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.

In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.

Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.

Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.

“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”

LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!

Thanks for all you do!
Live your values. Love your country.
And, remember: TOGETHER, We can make a DIFFERENCE!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.