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Why It Matters

Written by: Franco Caliz-Aguilar on Aug 15, 2008 12:30 PM EDT

Linked to groups: Democracy for America Miami-Dade (DFAM), Coral Park Young Democrats, GenDFA Student Leaders, DFA-Link Organizers, Florida Trained Activists, DFA Interns, FIU Campus Corps, Democracy for America Miami-Dade (DFAM)

For those who received Democracy For America's email on Wednesday, with the subject line: "Whose side are they on?," and thought "why does this matter?", take a look at this youtube video of Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart at a fundraiser talking about his "dear friends" Democratic congresspeople Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Kendrick Meek:

That's right, the "Democrats" that have not publicly backed DFA-list candidates Joe Garcia or Annette Taddeo.

Why does this matter? I've seen Mario claim that it's his ability to draw bipartisan support, such as these two congressional folks, for his policies of "centrism and realism" that makes him such an effective representative. Mario-Diaz Balart is a right wing thug, who voted against S-CHIP and then lied about it when his office told constituents that he voted for it.

He's the very definition of a Republican Rubber Stamp Congressman. He follows the party line blindly -- right off the cliff. Mario regularly calls in to Spanish talk radio and spews discredited right-wing talking points bashing and demonizing Democrats. Here's someone who drank up all the Bush/Cheney/McCain kool-aid and asked for seconds. Mario still believes that terrorism sponsored by Saddam Hussein was the reason we went into Iraq and, no matter the facts on the ground, we must stay the course.

If the activist base, the DFA members, don't put pressure on shameful "Democrats" like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Kendrick Meek, who will? It's time for Democrats to act like Democrats and grow a backbone. It's time for us to knock out of Congress fools who are beholden to special interests like Mario Diaz-Balart, and to elect people of true good character and integrity, like Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo. And, it's also time for us to hold Democrats accountable when they fail to assume their duties or mistakingly align themselves with knuckle-dragging, reactionary Republicans.

I have no hope for either of the Diaz-Balart brothers or Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, but Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Kendrick Meek should know better. They should know who their friends are...and it ain't Mario, Lincoln, and Ileana.

Discuss

Live Blog with Roy Carter - Tonight at 6pm Eastern Time

Written by: Mike Cooper on Aug 12, 2008 1:43 PM EDT

Linked to groups: Hendersonville Democracy for America Group, Asheville Democracy for America, DFA Blog Network, Democracy for the High Country, Raleigh DFA Group, GenDFA Student Leaders, Bloggers, Blog For America, blog for America Test and Poll Group, Netroots Activism!, Blogs United

DFA endorsed U.S. Congressional candidate, Roy Carter, will be taking part in a Live Blog on BFA tonight, Tuesday August 12, at 6:00pm est.

Roy will be giving updates from his historic campaign, which has pitted a lifetime teacher, coach and farmer and a man who built his own house four different times, against a millionare who lives in a gated resort community and has all the CEOs of Big Oil in her phone's "Fav Five."

Questions and comments are welcome from anyone who drops by, and Roy will be discussing his landmark statements on mountain-top removal, gas prices, energy, environmental protection, education, and fiscal responsibility, and ending the war and preventing any others.

He will talk about how this campaign has affected him and shaped him as a person already, how it's tunred him into an activist, the excitement of being endorsed by DFA and getting Jim Dean to personally come down to a rally, and what he'll have to do to to see it through to victory.

All DFA members are invited to drop in and ask whaterver is on their mind.

What's truly amazing about Roy, is that by running as a progressive Yellow Dog Democrat, in rural NC, he is now poised to win and is in a statistical dead heat in the polls.

His former students and players swear by him and many have volunteered to canvass, phone bank and work the polls for him.

Wish you could see his 250+ pound former offensive linemen going door to door for their coach.

So, let's put a high school science teacher and farmer in Congress, one who will not back down, because he never has.

And let's start by joining him here, on tonight at 6pm for a little Live Blog fun.

http://democracyforamerica.com/events/30174-roy-carter-live-blog-on-bfa

Discuss

Oil Crisis: Oil Industry's method of raising prices and cutting their own taxes

Written by: James Dunn on Jul 8, 2008 11:15 AM EDT

Regarding opening environmentally protected areas for mining and pumping oil:

There is over 200 years of oil in the 48 contiguous States that are capped up by oil companies to monopolize world energy. There is no need to violate our environmentally protected areas, just to allow oil companies to further monopolize their strangle hold over our lives.

They are creating a media frenzy just to increase the price of oil; very successfully I might add. However, there is no immediate threat for an oil shortage !!! The oil companies have ONLY created the perception that there is a shortage !!!!

I personally believe that ALL mineral rights belong to the American People, NOT souless corporations!!!

I applaud Venezuela for nationalizing the oil assets in their country!!!!

We should be doing the same thing here in the United States !!!!

Ethically Eliminate ALL Political Corruption

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/jamesbdunn?p=57

Discuss

World Can't Wait Protests / NetrootsNetwork

Written by: Kim Grant on Oct 5, 2006 4:38 AM EDT

Linked to groups: GenDFA Student Leaders

October 5, 2006

Today, we prepare to protest, united, against the Bush Regime.

But first, we need directions to the protests.

Visit www.NetrootsNetwork.com... to View and download Google Map directions to protests across the 50 United States, and parts of Canada and Mexico.

Also, Netroots Network wants to see you guys at the protests! Send a photo text message to text@netrootsnetwork.com .

How to Share Your Protest via your cellphone:
1. Take a picture of yourself with friends at the protests, of protesters, or of fascist Republicans with your cellphone camera.
2. Insert the photo into a text message, just like you would send a photo text message (or MMS) to a friend's phone.
3. Instead of a phone number, enter text@netrootsnetwork.com
4. SEND

Your photo will instantly appear on the www.NetrootsNetwork.com... website.

You can also include TEXT with your message. Be sure to include the city from which you are protesting somewhere in your text message! Your photos will be added to a Netroots Network Map of the Mass Resistance, kind of a like a digital time capsule. If your phone has no camera, you can still send a text message to text@netrootsnetwork.com, please add a subject line to your text message!

This is just ONE MORE WAY to show the Bush Administration/Debacle, NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"

Looking forward to seeing you!
Kim
Founder, www.NetrootsNetwork.com

Discuss

Bounce out those republican rubber stamps!

Written by: Kevin Caridad on Jun 28, 2006 7:12 AM EDT

Linked to groups: GenDFA Student Leaders

Lets defeat the culture of coruption! Support Jason Altmire

Jason Altmire is a Democrat running against a powerful Republican that sits on the ethics committee. Jason had a recent poll showing that even with low name recognition he is in a dead heat with her. The majority of voters in the 4th district are Democrats!! Now all we need to do is get his name known and he will. Jason can only do it with your support. Jason is a great friend of mine and I ask all of my fellow DFA brothers and sisters to support Jason's candidacy. Please support Jason by becoming one of his grassroots supporters. Together we will have victory on Election Day and take back our country from the culture of corruption.

Discuss

Beyond Vietnam: 2006 Netroots Remix (MLK, JR Speech)

Written by: Kim Grant on Jun 24, 2006 12:09 AM EDT

Linked to groups: GenDFA Student Leaders

I'm making a Netroots documentary of a 2006 Remix of Martin Luther King Jr's 1967 speech against the Vietnam War.

Here's how you can get involved:

1. Reply To this Post/Email expressing your interest in reading a part6 of this speech on video.
2. I'll reply to your email with the specific portion of the speech that you will be recording.
3. Use a digital video camera that records in .avi or .mpeg format to record yourself reading that portion out loud.*
4. Email your clip back to me with a copy of the text, your name, and city/state info in the email body.
5. I will be stitching everyone's video clips together into one long group reading of the speech.

*If you choose not to go on camera, but want to contribute your voice in .mp3 or .wav format, let me know in your email expressing interest in this project.

Everyone is encouraged to contribute. If you have a strong accent, or want to read your portion of the MLK speech in your native language (or even a different language), FELL FREE!

What's the point of this project?
This Netroots video will be a updating of MLK Jr's 1967 speech against wars of aggression, poverty, corruption, and injustice at the hands of the US government. Although a lot of people claim the Iraq War on Terror/'Long War' is nothing like Vietnam, it is important to understand the timelessness of this speech.

So, come on! Pick up a camera and get to it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Copy of Speech
www.informationclearinghouse.inf...

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

Discuss

Netroots ACTION: Stop the Fake News!

Written by: Kim Grant on Jun 23, 2006 5:35 PM EDT

Linked to groups: GenDFA Student Leaders

Wow, this has been going on for quite a long time, unchecked.

Quote: "By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A02

Television broadcasters must disclose to viewers the origin of video news releases produced by the government or corporations when the material runs on the public airwaves, the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday.

The FCC's ruling comes as video news releases produced by the Bush administration and aired as part of local television news reports have come under attack from critics who call them unlabeled Republican propaganda. "

To read more, click here: www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy...%20language=printer

To stop this practice, click here: action.truemajority.org/campaign...

Discuss

Netroots Cinema: Video of the Week June 5- 11th

Written by: Kim Grant on Jun 10, 2006 10:20 PM EDT

Linked to groups: GenDFA Student Leaders

9/11 Loose Change: 2nd Edition is Netroots Activism's Video of the Week for June 5 - 11th, 2006.

WATCH this documentary.

Here's the link: video.google.com/videoplay?docid...

Obviously, this video is about 9/11. It is a documentary that covers the events and rationale. It does not include much "emotional" footage of survivors, nor was it produced for others to gawk at the destruction or suffering. You will be educated, not marketed to.

Do you have a favorite video? If you do, I strongly encourage you to promote it on Netroots. Just blog and add a link. I'll be happy to make it a featured blog to increase exposure.

Here's an excerpt from the website about the video:

"This is the best damn 9-11 documentary out there." -Dave vonKleist, Producer of "911:In Plane Site" Loose Change is an extremely hard hitting, heavily referenced documentary. It has the best footage that I have seen to date, of all the bombs and explosions going off at the World Trade Center. He covers each individual aspect of 9/11 in keen detail, and after watching 'Loose Change' it is almost impossible to walk away and not believe that 9/11 was engineered, not by Osama, but by our own Government.

Heres a quote from Tom Flocco regarding Dylan Avery's brand new 911 documentary;

"...The best packaged DVD footage for sharing actual TV coverage & interviews shown only once during WTC / Pentagon attacks--evidence strangely removed from repeat broadcasts ...striking visual and narrative analysis--shown frame by frame--pointing to government-linked mass murder and a new Pearl Harbor ...every school class should see !

"Loose Change 2nd Edition" is the follow-up to the most provocative 9-11 documentary on the market today.

This film shows direct connection between the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the United States government.

Evidence is derived from news footage, scientific fact, and most important, Americans who suffered through that tragic day.

Discuss

Rate My Rep Report: The Abominable List for June!!

Written by: Kim Grant on Jun 6, 2006 4:33 AM EDT

Linked to groups: GenDFA Student Leaders

You guys rated your elected representatives using RateMyRep.blogspot.com... . Now, here is the First EVER "Abominable List" for June 6, 2006.

What is the "Abominable List, Kim?

RateMyRep participants are asked to evaluate their elected officials using a sliding scale on how well their elected official compares to the House Ethics Code of Conduct for Government Service, which can be found at... www.house.gov/ethics/Ethicforwar...

One of the items in this Code is,

"Put loyalty to the highest moral principals and to country above loyalty to Government persons, party, or department."

Available options for Ratings were (decending from best to worst),

Excellent, Really Good, OK, Adequate, Terrible, and.... you guessed it! ABOMINABLE.

YOUR NEXT QUESTION: "What does the word abominable really mean, Kim?"

According to m-w.com:
Main Entry: abom·i·na·ble
Pronunciation: &-'bäm-n&-b&l, -'bä-m&-
Function: adjective
1 : worthy of or causing disgust or hatred : DETESTABLE
2 : quite disagreeable or unpleasant
- abom·i·na·bly /-blE/ adverb

Add it all together and whaddaya get?

The Abominable List! Here we go, in no particular order:

Barbara Cubin www.house.gov/cubin/index.shtml... (Repub.)

Cathy McMorris www.mcmorris.house.gov/... (Repub.)

Tom Feeney www.house.gov/feeney/... (Repub.)

Kenny Hulshof hulshof.house.gov/... (Repub)

Congressman William Jefferson www.house.gov/jefferson/... (Dem)

Kay Granger kaygranger.house.gov/... (Repub.)

Discuss

War of Words: Regarding the Illegal War on Iraq

Written by: Benjamin Oldham on May 24, 2006 3:52 PM EDT

Linked to groups: GenDFA Student Leaders

I must admit, I am not as well informed about politics as I would like to be at times, but I am well enough aware to know that there are two key terms that Democrats need to take away from the Republicans in order to enhance any hoped for success in the November election.

The first term is 'Patriotism.' Right now, the Republicans have taken over this term and defined it basically as supporting the administration and government of this country in whatever they do. This allows them to paint Democrats and other objecters as 'unpatriotic' or even 'traitors,' in order to make themselves look good. The Republicans have translated the word into basically supporting everything your country does at all times, at least for the time being.
However, is that really the case? Is it showing a love of your nation to allow it to blindly stumble along a course that causes other nations to abandon it? What about when the nation starts attacking the very principle upon which it was founded, that being freedom? I personally don't think it is very patriotic to support the nation heading down such a treacherous course.
Democrats need to voice that and redefine patriotism. Patriotism needs to be used as a love of the country, but NOT necessarily supporting everything it does. Patriotism is supporting your country when it is right, and trying to set it straight when it wrong. So if Bush has deliberately waged an unjustified war for his own personal gain, he would be the opposite of patriotism in that he purposely sent our nation down the wrong path in in order to fulfill his own personal agenda.

Secondly, there is the phrase, "Support our troops." The problem with this, is that apparently, according to the Radical Right, you cannot support our troops without supporting the war on Iraq. At least that is true according to the way this term is being used, or rather, misused.
However, supporting our troops doesn't necessarily mean supporting war, but supporting them, in order that they should come home from any war alive rather than in a body bag. So the Democratic Party needs to do, not only here, but everywhere, is seperate support for our troops from supporting the war. This is a goal that will not only require words, but action. I think it would be an excellent idea for the Democratic Party to become active in gathering food, toothbrushes, and other essential items from the general public in order to be sent to our soldiers overseas. Make sure, of course, that the public is aware that it is the DEMOCRATIC party that is supporting our soldiers in this manner. This is a real and tangible action that would send the message clearly that the Democrats support our troops.
In the meantime, if one wished, it could also be argued that the Bush administration does NOT support our troops. The reason being, that they sent our young men and women to fight and possibly die for an unjustified war in Iraq. These soldiers did not CHOOSE to wage this war, but were forced into it by the leaders of this country, the ones who are giving orders. The Republicans sent our armed forces overseas with the knowledge that many of them would come back in body bags, and have failed to properly plan this war and plan for an exit strategy to try and prevent many of our soldiers from coming home dead. Meanwhile, the Democrats maintain supporting our troops by not supporting the war that they are fighting, but doing whatever they can to aid our soldiers and make sure that they come home to their loved ones ALIVE.
This one is also very important, as there are many bumper stickers in our area that say, "Support our Troops," and the Right has this phrase in their arsenal, along with unpatriotic, to use against progressives running for office. It is essential to redefine these words on OUR OWN terms, and in doing so, not only take them away from the Right, but add them as weapons to our own arsenal.

In the meantime, thank you for reading this message, and I would be pleased to hear any feedback you have regarding my thoughts regarding the war of words outlined in this message. I hope you have a great day, and I wish you the best of luck. Thank you very much.

Discuss

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