Category Archives: Uncategorized

Jesse Jackson: Wage War on Poverty, Not Immigrants

Yesterday I wrote a post on student protests against immigration legislation.

Today there is a post by Jesse Jackson on Common Dreams (published in the Chicago Sun Times): Wage War on Poverty, Not Immigrants. I’ve re-posted it here. It speaks for itself.
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Wage War on Poverty, Not Immigrants
by Jesse Jackson

“Sa se puede!” Yes we can. They marched by the hundreds of thousands in Los Angeles, by the tens of thousands in Milwaukee, in Phoenix, in New York. Across the country, Hispanics dramatically entered what has been an increasingly ugly debate about immigration in this country.

Rep. Tom Tancredo is gaining national attention railing against undocumented immigrants. He wants them turned into felons, a wall built along our border to keep them out, police dispatched to send them home. He does not bother to tell us how he plans to transport 11 million estimated undocumented workers out of the country. Nor what will happen to the millions of their children who were born here and are American citizens.
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Today in history

March 29

1626
First American forestry legislation enacted, Plymouth Colony.
1870
African-American men gain right to vote, 15th Amendment.
1925
Black leaders protest the showing of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, scheduled to open at the Rialto Theatre in Charleston on April 1, on the grounds it violated a 1919 state law prohibiting any entertainment which demeaned another race.
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Green Party Conventions and Environmental Responsibility

I serve on the Eco Action Committee of the Green Party of the United States. This committee is developing positions on various ecological issues. This is done via email and monthly conference calls.

One topic that has been discussed lately is the effect on the environment by Greens traveling from all areas of the country to attend the annual convention. It has been conservatively estimated that **41 tons** of carbon dioxide would be emitted from just travel to the meeting.

Since most people see value in face-to-face meetings, some have suggesting imposing “carbon taxes” through a variety of means and other ways of mitigating the effect of the travel. One option that has been discussed is to plant trees in the area in which the convention is held.

Some people see that as a symbolic effort and not one that would necessarily attract media attention. Others see it as, in one delegate’s words, Planting enough trees to counter the pollution this year will have an effect every year the trees exist into the future, mitigating the cost of meeting every year from just this one year’s effort…. Isn’t it also enough to do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do? We will be demonstrating a better and more responsible political stewardship of the environment. Showing what works and doing it are two keys to making change inviting.

I personally like the idea of mitigating the costs of travel with a tree planting campaign. How novel and unique and good for the earth.

Carnival of the Green #20

The 20th edition of Carnival of the Green has hit the blog stands.

Posts this week include these topics:

  • the benefits of bicycling
  • the problem of cats as predators
  • the Evangelical Ecologist
  • an interview with Tony Brown of the Ecosa Institute, the only design program in the US devoted entirely to sustainability
  • population growth
  • The Dictionary of Sustainable Management
  • how to earn money with your toxic trash
  • the recent acquisition of the Body Shop
  • little green things you can do to contribute to saving the planet
  • sustainable living in a midwestern town
  • an interview with a bicyclist as she travels around Miami on a “free transit day”
  • global warming and the pending world water crisis
  • update on the Forest Image Registry.org ,which launched this week. The F.I.R. Project uses interactive Google satellite imaging and user commentary to let you experience America’s great National Forest lands
  • follow-up to a previous post about Ecoist handbags, made from recycled candy wrappers
  • the Veggie Revolution
  • why regular paints are bad for us and the environment
  • Wind Energy in the movies
  • earth friendly landscaping
  • Voting Maching Fraud – Bruce Funk Needs Our Help

    Kathy Dopp is nationally known for her work in exposing voter machine fraud. Kathy is running for Summit County Clerk for the Desert Greens Green Party of Utah. She aims to win and work towardsa more equitable voting system.

    Kathy has been sending out notices on the recent fallout over voting machines in Emery County:

    Help Please if you can. Bruce Funk “really” needs our support right now (see
    http://utahcountvotes.org)

    This DesNews article parrots the disinformation that Diebold is giving to our election officials back to the public. Anyone who has time, please send in a pithy letter to the editor to the DesNews. I’m warn out. Just include the title & author & date of the article plus your name, address and phone number so they’ll print it.

    What a con job Diebold has done to bill $40,000 to Emery County to “fix” the damage that the best security experts in America did by examining two voting machines. Yet our state election director, Michael Cragun, is colluding with Diebold after they sent Utah falling apart, mixture of new and old rejected machines from other states, with printers without paper guides that are designed to fail, and a system that one might imagine is deliberately designed for undetectable tampering! I’m amazed at how many times Diebold has defrauded our election officials who keep colluding with Diebold against the interests of Utah voters! Anyone with a smidgeon of knowledge of computer security understands that the biggest security threat comes from the insiders (i.e. Diebold itself) not a nationally renowned security firm! Our state election director, Michael Cragun is, as we speak, giving Diebold access to the storage facility to tamper with the voting machines at Carr Printing in Bountiful, perhaps so that they can cover up the evidence of their fraudulent sale!

    Costly fallout in Emery over vote machines By Josh Loftin Deseret Morning News

    http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635194949,00.html

    Concerns about potential tampering with electronic machines have come back to those making the accusations: the Emery County clerk and an independent election security firm.

    Now, the county will have to pay to bring in technicians to reinstall the software on approximately 40 electronic voting machines after the clerk let security experts from Black Box Voting, a national elections security watchdog group, test the machines. The cost to the county could be upward of $40,000, according to Joe Demma, the chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert.
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    Hundreds of Utah students walk out of classes – protest House Immigration Bill

    Yesterday about 30 students of West High Schoolwalked out of class and held a demonstration to protest the House Immmigration Bill . The students were able to ultimately attract a crowed of about 400 people, according the Salt Lake Tribune article.

    The walkout was part of a nationwide call for action for students to walk out of classrooms in protest of this legislation. Tens of thousands of students across the country walked out of their classrooms.

    About 300 students walked out of Northwest Middle School and 30 at Kearns High School in addition to the West High School Students.

    The House legislation is designed at “immigration reform”. Here in Utah undocumented immigrants have had their drivers’ licenses taken away and replaced with “driving privelege” cards. Legislation was introduced to eliminate in-state college tuition for undocumented immigrants here, but that failed.

    “They can put barriers on me, but they’re not stopping me,” said Marisela, who declined to give her last name. “The American dream is not a crime.” Marisela is a West High School student who walked out of her classes yeseterday.

    The Deseret News reports the U.S. Senators clears way for illegal aliens. In an obvious election-year move, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has cleared the way for 11 million illegal aliens to seek U.S. citizenship.
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    H.B. 148 could be revived if conservatives are pursuaded….

    The state represenative who introduced H.B. 148, LaVarr Christensen, is planning campaign to override the governor’s veto, according to a Salt Lake Tribune article in today’s news.

    H.B. 148 was a bill designed to block same-sex couples’ ability to legally define their families through custody agreements.

    Christensen, who is also running for U.S. Congress, introduced bills during the 2006 Utah Legislative Session, along with State Senator Chris Buttars, that were aimed at denying rights to gay and lesbian citizens of our state and were what I coined as “morality legislation”.

    Stepparents and grandparents bombarded the governor’s office with phone calls and letters, afraid Christensen’s legislation could end up cutting them out of the lives of children they have raised. And Huntsman responded, rejecting the bill’s “undesirable consequences.”
    Christensen insists the governor’s worries are unfounded. In an e-mail sent to his 103 colleagues last week, he urged lawmakers to remember his stated purpose. “This is a public policy decision regarding marriage, parenthood and family that is most appropriately decided by the legislature,” he wrote.

    The Tribune article also mentions that Christensen did not return phone calls to the media inquiring about the issue.

    This is clearly an attempt by a right-wing conservative to force one set of values on the whole of a population and waste taxpayers dollars by doing so instead of introducing legislation aimed at providing services for citizens.

    What a waste.

    Today in history

    March 28

    1799</b.
    NY State abolished slavery.

    1918
    2,000 in Quebec, Canada, demonstrated against military conscription in the midst of World War I. Four died in the ensuing riot.


    Anti-Conscription Parade in Victoria Square, Montreal, Quebec, May 24, 1917,
    The gathering in this photo looks calm. Riots nearly a year later resulted in the death of four demonstrators in Quebec City.

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    blogging

    I haven’t been blogging much the last couple of days because my entire weekend was spent organizing and holding an estate sale for the peace and justice community.

    The mother of a participant in our peace and justice community bequeathed her estate to our organizations. After her family obtained what they wanted from the estate and our organizations picked out items for use in offices and for events, the rest was put up for sale and the proceeds divided. It was a lot of work but we were able to bring in more far money than we expected. We still have had to haul away enough “stuff” to hold another smaller sale, and we will be ebaying quite a few items.

    This was a great thing for this family to do for our small peace and justice community here in Salt Lake.

    Today in history

    March 27

    1867
    Blacks stage ride-ins on Charleston, SC street cars; 2 months later, railway company integrates.

    1966
    20,000 Buddhists marched silently for peace in Hue, South Vietnam.

    1969
    The first Chicano Youth Liberation Conference is held by the Crusade for Justice; the poet known as Alurista presents his poem on the myth of Aztlán, which captures the imagination of the conference.

    1979
    Nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, PA. (1979)