| Progressive Calendar 04.28.11 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001 tc.umn.edu)
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| Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 03:23:54 -0700 (PDT) | |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 04.28.11
1. Shoot First/Leg 4.28 10am
2. Eagan peace vigil 4.28 4:30pm
3. Northtown vigil 4.28 5pm
4. StP/historic 4.28 6pm
5. Save the frogs 4.29 9am
6. Pack the hearing 4.29 12noon
7. Palestine vigil 4.29 4:15pm
8. Workers 4.29 7pm
9. Ian/Paxton 4.29 8pm
10. Jesse Jackson - The takeover of Benton Harbor - time for an uprising
11. Glen Ford - MI's "emergency" financial regime: what fascism looks like
--------1 of 11--------
From: Jim Ivey <james.ivey [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Shoot First/Leg 4.28 10am
The public hearing for HF 1467 ("Shoot First") is this Thursday April 28th
at 10 am in Room 10 of the State Office Building. We showed up in force
to protest HF 161, and now we need to be even stronger with this new
challenge. Rep. Tony Cornish and his friends are trying to gut
Minnesota's gun control laws, and it's important that we make a strong
statement against this bill.
Please consider joining us at the State Office Building on Thursday. You
can read more about the bill in the enclosed PDF attachment, and you can
send letters to your representatives using the following link:
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5610/c/237/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6553
--------2 of 11--------
From: Greg and Sue Skog <family4peace [at] msn.com>
Subject: Eagan peace vigil 4.28 4:30pm
PEACE VIGIL EVERY THURSDAY from 4:30-5:30pm on the Northwest corner of
Pilot Knob Road and Yankee Doodle Road in Eagan. We have signs and
candles. Say "NO to war!" The weekly vigil is sponsored by: Friends south
of the river speaking out against war.
--------3 of 11--------
From: EKalamboki [at] aol.com
Subject: Northtown vigil 4.28 5pm
NORTHTOWN Peace Vigil every Thursday 5-6pm, at the intersection of Co. Hwy
10 and University Ave NE (SE corner across from Denny's), in Blaine.
Communities situated near the Northtown Mall include: Blaine, Mounds View,
New Brighton, Roseville, Shoreview, Arden Hills, Spring Lake Park,
Fridley, and Coon Rapids. We'll have extra signs.
For more information people can contact Evangelos Kalambokidis by phone or
email: (763)574-9615, ekalamboki [at] aol.com.
--------4 of 11--------
From: Carol Carey <cmcarey [at] earthlink.net>
Subject: StP/historic 4.28 6pm
What historic sites, people and events are important to the community?
Your insights are needed to help complete research on historic resources
in three neighborhoods: Frogtown, Payne-Phalen and Uppertown. Survey work
is underway that will allow neighborhood residents and the city to better
understand what buildings and sites should be considered for preservation
and planning in the years ahead.
How to Help
Neighbors and others interested in the city's history are invited to share
their ideas and comments by May 5.
Attend a community meeting:
Payne-Phalen: Thursday, April 28, 6:00-8:00 p.m. | Arlington Hills
Lutheran Church, 115 Greenbrier Street
Frogtown: Monday, May 2, 6:00-8:00 p.m. | West Minnehaha Rec. Center, 685
Minnehaha Ave.
Uppertown: Wednesday, May 4, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. | Mississippi Market
Co-op, 1500 West 7th Street
Submit information online Visit
www.historicsaintpaul.org/saintpaulsurveystory to share information,
stories and photos.
Researchers are especially interested in receiving public responses to the
following questions:
What neighborhood sites are important to you?
What places have historic significance?
Who are the important people in history who lived and/or worked in these
communities?
The Saint Paul Survey project is a partnership of Historic Saint Paul, the
Saint Paul Heritage Preservation Commission and the Ramsey County
Historical Society; it is made possible with funding provided by the State
of Minnesota through the Minnesota Historical Society from the Arts and
Cultural Heritage Fund and the City of Saint Paul. The research focuses on
the history, visual character, defining features and historic resources of
the neighborhoods, with the results to be used in planning and community
development efforts.
BACKGROUND The 2010 Saint Paul Survey project is the most ambitious survey
work completed in Saint Paul in over 27 years. The last extensive survey
of Saint Paul neighborhoods was completed in 1983. The areas chosen for
the research overlap three of the City of Saint Paul's Invest Saint Paul
neighborhoods. An immediate and tangible use for the information garnered
through these renewed survey efforts will be to aid the City of Saint
Paul, Heritage Preservation Commission, and community development
organizations, with determinations related to the acquisition,
rehabilitation and/or demolition of properties funded with $18 million
from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), a federally funded
program to combat the negative impacts of the foreclosure and vacant
housing crisis facing many urban areas.
you have questions or information to provide you may email
ccarey [at] historicsaintpaul.org or call 651-222-3049. St. Paul Announcements
now contains the following files or photos
--------5 of 11--------
From: Kathy Ahlers <ahler002 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Save the frogs 4.29 9am
Meet up to walk the park, hear the chorusing frogs, and discuss the
petition to ban atrazine. Smooth one-mile paved path at Silverwood Park in
St. Anthony Village (Northeast Minneapolis area) is accessible for
wheelchairs, though some places are a bit steep.
We'll meet at the park bench where the walking path crosses the road by
the main park entrance road at 9 am (we'll wait until 9:15 to start), and
walk the loop once (or twice) from there.
Silverwood Park, 2500 County Road E West, St. Anthony, MN (About one-
quarter mile west of Silver Lake Road on County Road E.)
--------6 of 11--------
From: kim defranco <kimdefranco [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Pack the hearing 4.29 12noon
UGH.... The Republicans aren't stopping their attacks. I am fowarding this
for people who are interested. Please forward as you seeĀ fit. (forwarding
onĀ behalf of Outfront MN)
Here's the details of the hearing.... ugh they have 3 bills:
Friday, April 29, 2011
Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety
Chair: Sen. Warren Limmer
12 Noon
Room 15 Capitol
Supporters and opposition will each be given one hour to present testimony
with the third hour reserved for discussion and final vote.
Committee will break at 3:00 pm and return at 4:00 pm for other bills that
will be added to the agenda.
Agenda:
S.F. 1307 Hann Constitutional amendment to recognize marriage as union
between a man and a woman.
S.F. 1308 Limmer Constitutional amendment to recognize marriage as union
between a man and a woman.
S.F. 1309 Gazelka Constitutional amendment to recognize marriage as union
between a man and a woman. http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/
If you can't go, there's a petiton to sign.
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: OutFront Minnesota <news [at] outfront.org>
Leading Minnesota Toward LGBT Equality
Take Action: Pack the Hearing
Friday, April 29
12:00pm
Senate Judiciary Committee
Minnesota State Capitol
RSVP on Facebook
Tuesday Minnesota Senate Republicans lead by Warren Limmer (R - Maple
Grove) introduced a plan to place the constitutional rights of their
fellow Minnesotans on the ballot in 2012. The proposed constitutional
amendment - which would ban marriage for same-sex couples - will have its
first hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee this Friday at noon.
We need you to pack the hearing in opposition to this amendment. Our
elected officials need to know that this amendment is wrong for Minnesota.
There will be screens for everyone who cannot fit into the hearing room
itself to watch the proceedings at the Capitol. OutFront Minnesota and our
community partners are coordinating committee testimony in opposition to
the amendment.
We encourage those attending to bring letters (two copies: one for your
senator and one for your representative) sharing your story and why you
oppose the constitutional amendment. Photocopies of family photos and
photocopies of marriage certificates make powerful additions to your
letters for legislators. If you bring signs, please keep them supportive
of fairness and equality and do not attach them to sticks because sticks
are banned at the Capitol.
Make your opposition known! Have you signed the petition against the
amendment and called your Senator? Forward this email to your friends and
share it on Facebook and Twitter using the buttons at the top of the page!
310 E 38th Street, #204 | Minneapolis, MN 55409-1337 US
--------7 of 11--------
From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net>
Subject: Palestine vigil 4.29 4:15pm
The weekly vigil for the liberation of Palestine continues at the
intersection of Snelling and Summit Aves in St. Paul. The Friday demo
starts at 4:15 and ends around 5:30. There are usually extra signs
available.
--------8 of 11--------
From: Meredith Aby <riot369 [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Workers 4.29 7pm
EVENT TO CELEBRATE MAY DAY: Standing Up In the Face of Repression!
Friday, April 29 @ 7:00pm @ Walker Community Church @ 3104 16th Ave S, Mpls
Join us for a forum celebrating and supporting workers standing up and
fighting back against state repression and hear first hand stories of
those standing up for justice!
Speakers include: Jess Sundin, Dave Riehle, Mel Reeves, Jennie Eisert from
the Anti-War Committee and leaders from groups fighting for justice in the
Twin Cities. Children's program will include the youngsters making signs
and banners for the upcoming May Day events on the coming Sunday. Snacks
and Childcare Provided. Donations requested.
This year is the 125th Anniversary of International Workers Day, or May
Day, which began with the struggle of the Chicago working class in May of
1886. Workers there fought and died for the 8-hour work-day. This battle
gave rise to the tradition of demonstrations, strikes and celebrations by
working people around the globe on May 1st. From the Haymarket martyrs
who gave their lives fighting for the eight hour workday and decent
...working conditions, to Martin Luther King Jr. who was assassinated
while protesting with sanitation workers in Tennessee, to Malcolm X, the
Black Panthers, and other revolutionary movements that faced harsh
repression in the 1960s, and now to 23 subpoenaed anti-war and
international solidarity activists; state repression has been used against
people fighting for justice. HOSTED BY: Freedom Road Socialist
Organization, frso.org
--------9 of 11---------
From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Ian/Paxton 4.29 8pm
Call to Action for Peace and Social Justice: Janis Ian and Tom Paxton
Concert
Friday, April 29, 8:00 p.m. The Fitzgerald Theatre, 10 East Exchange
Street, St. Paul. Call to Action for Peace and Social Justice: Workers
Rights, Women's Rights, Civil Rights, Union Rights, LGBT Rights,
Health Care for All, Mental Health Parity. Grammy Hall Of Fame member
and Grammy winner Janis Ian joins Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
winner Tom Paxton for a performance at the Fitzgerald Theatre. Joining
Janis and Tom is Natalia Zukerman. "Call to Action Concert" will honor
local organizations working for Peace and Social Justice. "Call to
Action Concert" will honor local organizations working for Peace and
Social Justice. Brigid McDonald, self described "Peaceniks, life time
Peace and Social Justice activist, and Member of Sisters of St Joseph
of Carondelet St Paul will host "War is Not the Answer Reception" in
the lobby following performance. Tickets available in person at The
Fitzgerald Box Office or by calling 651-290-1200. Sponsored by: KFAI,
Fresh Air Radio. FFI: Call Arlana 612-408-6781.
--------10 of 11--------
Time for an Uprising
The Takeover of Benton Harbor
By Rev. JESSE JACKSON
April 27, 2011
CounterPunch
Benton Harbor, Mich., is a town of nearly 11,000 people, about 90 percent
of whom are African American. It is a catalogue of the misery of the
industrial Midwest. It was the headquarters and manufacturing center of
Whirlpool, but the last Whirlpool plant closed years ago. Now Benton
Harbor has a per capita income of about $10,000 a year. And it is plagued
by the ills that accompany poverty in today's America: high unemployment,
broke government, failing schools, crime, drugs and despair.
Everything has been stripped from Benton Harbor's residents. The
industrial jobs that used to provide a ladder into the middle class have
been shipped abroad. The call center jobs that replaced them employ few at
a poverty wage. The failing tax base means that public services are
starved. The schools struggle to educate children from mean streets; these
children are often hungry and without adequate health care or stable
homes. The good teachers flee; the schools fail or are taken over, a
shuffle that substitutes motion for real action on poverty.
But Benton Harbor may become to economic justice what the small town of
Selma was to civil rights. For in Benton Harbor, the powers that be now
are wreaking the final indignities on the town's beleaguered residents -
stripping them not only of their schools, but of their democracy, taking
away not only their jobs, but their public parks.
Benton Harbor's finances are a mess. How could they not be in a town
stripped of jobs and hope? So, the state has stripped its residents of
their democracy. In what is accurately termed "fiscal martial law," the
state has named a czar to run the city. That appointee, Joseph Harris, has
issued an order essentially stripping the elected city council of all
powers. No money can be spent, no taxes raised or lowered, no bonds
issued, no regulations changed without his approval. Benton Harbor's
residents now live in a dictatorship imposed by a Republican governor
famous for his belief that the poor should be punished and the rich
rewarded.
This appointed dictator claims breathtaking powers. He can sell public
assets, dismiss pension boards and take control of public pension funds
and revoke labor contracts. What triggers this takeover? The law is
remarkably vague. The governor may act if a payroll is missed, if there
are complaints of late bill payment, if pensions are underfunded, if there
is a significant budget deficit, a term that goes undefined.
This takeover is a recipe for the worst abuses of oppression, cronyism and
corruption. And here, too, Benton Harbor is the example. One of the few
citizen treasures in Benton Harbor is the Jean Klock Park, a half-mile of
sandy dunes on the edge of Lake Michigan. It was bequeathed to the
children of Benton Harbor by the Klock family in 1917 in memory of their
daughter.
But developers backed by Whirlpool now want to appropriate a large portion
of the park to turn it into a Harbor Shores golf resort with a 350-room
hotel, two marinas, a 60,000-foot indoor water park (for members only),
and a fancy golf course open to all who can afford a $5,000 entry fee and
be approved by the club. The town's citizens have resisted this
development, which is under litigation.
But the new czar's first act was to take over the Brownfield Redevelopment
Authority, most likely as a way to proceed with the development and
sidestep the lawsuits. Why be suspicious? Because the law that the new
czar is operating under was introduced by Republican state Rep. Al
Pscholka, former staff aide to U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, an heir to the
Whirlpool fortune.
They've shut down the jobs, and taken over the schools. Now they want to
shut down the democracy and turn the public parks into a rich man's
playground. But in Benton Harbor, as in Selma and Montgomery, they forget
even the poorest people have a sense of dignity. Dr. King wrote, "the
ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but
the silence over that by the good people." In Benton Harbor, it is time
for the good people to make themselves heard.
--------11 of 11--------
Michigan's "Emergency" Financial Regime: What Fascism Looks Like
by Glen Ford
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
A Black Agenda Radio commentary
Fascism is not all about jack-boots and guys with mustaches. It is a
system of economic and social control. The particularities of fascism in
any given nation grow out of the special dynamics of that country. Fascism
in the United States will be blow-dried. And its legal and bureaucratic
form will take shape in places like Michigan, where an innocuous sounding
piece of legislation called the Local Government and School District
Fiscal Accountability Act is the prototype for a host of laws designed to
make government - the state - a compliant tool for the dictatorial rule of
the most predatory sections of the ruling class. In 2011 America, that's
Wall Street, finance capital.
Michigan's law allows the state to appoint emergency managers to nullify
contracts, including labor agreements - which is what has unions upset.
But the scope and intention of the law is much deeper and wider than
simply anti-union. The legislation allows emergency managers to nullify
the powers and authority of local governments of all kinds. One of its
supporters gave the game away when he spoke of the need to impose a kind
of "financial martial law" in which all pretense of democracy would be
abolished in targeted communities. The community the Republican politician
had in mind was Detroit, the Black metropolis, where the public schools
were promptly put under emergency state control. But there is nothing to
stop the state from abolishing democratic governance in any of Michigan's
cities, if an emergency can be declared or created. On April 15, the
mostly Black city of Benton Harbor, the poorest jurisdiction in the state,
was placed under total financial martial law, its citizens suddenly made
more powerless than Blacks in Selma, Alabama, prior to the civil rights
movement.
Fascism always requires an "emergency," a "crisis," to justify the
surrender of whatever citizen liberties previously existed. Its mass
organizing principle revolves the "Other" - the scapegoating of a hated
group that can be blamed for the emergency. Historically, in the United
States, that "Other" has been Black people - although other "Others" have
been added to the list. The U.S. has always been fertile ground for
fascist politicking - in fact, I have long maintained that White Terror
under southern Jim Crow was a peculiar form of American fascism.
Fascism is also associated with militarism and the national security
state, which are certainly famiiar aspects of modern Americana. More
importantly, the militarization of the inner cities has been an
established fact since the mid-1960s. The proof is in the one million
African Americans behind bars.
The "crisis" that justifies the outright abolition of democracy -
beginning, of course, in Black America - is the crisis afflicting finance
capitalism. Wall Street then imposes instant emergencies on the larger
society by starving cities and schools and the public sector in general,
in order to strip down, privatize and commodify every asset in sight.
Michigan's fascist model will doubtless be duplicated across the nation,
as Wall Street moves to rule directly, through its emergency managers, by
one name or another. The permanent emergency has begun.
[Meanwhile lesser-evil liberals will do nothing from now until the 2012
election, then vote for Obama, who will continue his sell-out to the
corporate fascists. This do-nothingism will give the corpofascists another
unrestricted two or more years to secure vast tracts of evil. But god
forbid a lesser-evil liberal should ever *fight* (ooh what a rough word!)
for anything. Better to be stripped, chained, enserfed, perhaps bulldozed
into a mass grave... -ed]
2011 Black Agenda Report
Back Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford [at] BlackAgendaReport.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- David Shove shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
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