Events

The Big Lie: The Annual National Prayer Breakfast (Part 1 of 2)

by Brett Flickr/creative commons

[Following the Breakfast itself] some stay on for days of seminars organized around Christ's messages for particular industries . . . for executives in oil, defense, insurance, and banking. -- from The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (2009) by Jeff Sharlet (emphasis mine) Oh, the National Prayer Breakfast (NPB), are you ready for my exposé? Readers, did you know that the NPB is not a government sponsored event nor has it ever been in its 70+-year history? Did you know the rogue diplomacy practiced there has long been the bane of the U.S. Justice Department? And, although it ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Vote Out The Religious Right

Screen shot from video below

Al Capone didn't go to prison for murder, extortion, or bootlegging. He was sent away for not paying taxes. Likewise, we have at hand a way to eradicate the political religious right, get them out of our government, based on a too-long-ignored paper trail of their ethical and financial misconduct. We just have to be willing to get up and do it. During this month-long series on the religious right, I have exposed the large and secretive christianist cult that drives members of the religious right's science-denying, constitution-free, punishing laws and judicial decisions. It's called The Family (aka The Fellowship) and ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

More Thoughts on July 4 (Part 2 of 2)

by Kevin Bond Flickr/creative commons

Yesterday, Allen Clifton published, You Can't Be Republican and a Patriot, very well enunciating many of the things I have tackled in my month-long series on the dangers of the religious right, including my post earlier today, especially for July 4. It is worth a full read. Republicans think they’re the real “patriots,” but they’re really not. Clifton is not talking about GOP voters because conservatives, the religious right, consider these people as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). He asks how "Republicans (especially tea party Republicans) consider themselves patriots?" They have a general disdain for every liberal in the country. ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Thoughts on July 4 (Part 1 of 2)

by Benjamin Lehman Flickr/creative commons

Independence Day has always been a mixture of emotions for me. While I believe that America may be the world's best hope for universal human rights and peace, its antecedent history is permanently marred, always with an asterisk, because of the geneocide that wiped out 90% of First Peoples and an economy based on slavery, the repercussions of which are damning us to this day. When I was young, I coped with this dissonance by focusing on individual independence: that it should be a day when we each reflect our own liberation from ideas that restrain and diminish our own selves. ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Caitlyn Jenner Kicks Off Pride Month With A Bang

Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair Fair Use

"[O]ur journey is not complete until our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law." President Barack Obama's Pride Month Proclamation, 2015

One thing is for sure, the Jenner-Kardashian clan are synonymous with masters of the media. The former Olympian and Decathlon Champ in particular captured this when she said to Diane Sawyer during their superb interview two months ago (paraphrased), "All along, I've been the one in the family who actually had a story." Today, she appeared in a Vanity Fair magazine cover story; next month ESPN is ...

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in Campaigns / Dan Massey / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Sex Education  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Love Your Earth

Pascal B. for technovore Flickr/creative commons

Earth Peace Listen to the sound of the earth turning (Yoko Ono, Earth Day, April 22, 2015)

We've been promoting the hashtag, #EarthDayIsEveryDay because the impact on climate change is still grossly underestimated. It is one of our key issues because if we ruin our planet, our search for social and economic justice means little. Mass migrations caused by loss of groundwater due to rising seas, extreme weather and earthquake frequency, and loss of bio-diversity are just a few of the results. We can't rely on mainstream media to inform us about the risks of climate change, and climate ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Op-Ed: The Inherent Corruption of US-Israel Relations

Photo by Michael Loadenthal Flickr/creative commons

A complete political perversion of diplomacy is upon us that further illustrates the underlying illogic that cements US-Israel relations. Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, conspired to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address both houses of Congress on March 3, just two weeks before the Israeli leader stands for re-election. An invitation of this magnitude never goes, shouldn't go, to a foreign leader hoping to make his bona fides for an upcoming election at home by addressing our Congress, in this case, allowing Netanyahu to undermine US leadership in nuclear ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

TODAY: Take Action for Net Neutrality

Flickr/creative commons

Last night, President Obama, in his State of the Union speech, made clear that net neutrality is important to everyone throughout the world. "I intend to protect a free and open internet, extend its reach to every classroom, and every community, and help folks build the fastest networks, so that the next generation of digital innovators and entrepreneurs have the platform to keep reshaping our world." We already know that if we don't continue to have unfettered and free access to this most important utility, the voices of so many people will be unnecessarily silenced, bringing us further under the ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Dear Martin

Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 by Caboindex Flickr/creative commons

Dear Martin . . . How happy I am today to see the next generation fully embrace the ideals that identified your short life: the end of poverty, racism, and war, precepts to which I have continued to dedicate my life. With numerous conferences and forums throughout your birthday weekend, before and after, your mass of followers are playing an invigorating and crucial role right now in schooling the mass of newly minted young activists who are fully committed to ending the murder of young black people, and all attempts to erase an entire race through Read More›

in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Silencing Climate Change Deniers

via Oxfam International Flickr/creative commons

According to a new study in the journal Science,"Four boundaries are assessed to have been crossed, placing humanity in a danger zone."   The report defined climate change and loss of species as two core areas of concern. Each "has the potential on its own to drive the Earth System into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed," the authors wrote. It would almost seem absurd at this point to recognize anyone, high or low, who would argue that the human impacts on the environment have not already reached the "danger zone." But it's not absurd, it's a ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments