Massachusetts could get automatic voter registration this year

5/17/2017 10:12 AM

RootsAction Team

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Oregon, California, West Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, Alaska, and D.C. have made voter registration automatic. Massachusetts can do the same.  Share this action on Facebook  Share this action on Twitter Oregon was first to make voter registration automatic. It has now seen higher gains than any other state in actual voting by young people and by racial minorities. How many stories have you seen on how young people vote for better candidates, but fewer young people vote? More young people vote if you make registration automatic (require that people opt out, rather than requiring that they jump through hoops to opt in). Six states and the District of Columbia have now made voter registration automatic. Massachusetts could be state number 7. Thirty states are already expected to take up bills to create this reform in 2017. Click here to quickly email your Massachusetts legislators. Thirty-nine states automatically register men who get a driver's license for a military draft. They could easily allow people to register to vote. Shouldn't actual democracy be as high a priority as signing up people to kill in the name of "democracy"? Every election season, thousands of volunteers toil endless hours on a task that need not exist at all: registering voters. And people are denied the right to vote when told they are not registered. Oregon, California, West Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, Alaska, and D.C. have made voter registration automatic, and Massachusetts is 100% capable of easily taking the same step. Click here to urge your state legislators to make voter registration automatic. With automatic voter registration, nobody is required to vote or even be registered. Rather, a government that already knows who we are through motor vehicle and other departments simply allows us to vote. (And the DMV in many states requires stricter proof of identity and citizenship than does traditional registration; and traditional registration remains available.) As a result, more people vote and candidates have to win the votes of more people. Quite possibly more candidates gain traction. It becomes easier to place initiatives on the ballot by gathering the signatures of registered voters. The state government saves the expense of the existing ridiculous system of "registering" people it already knows. "Let's get [people] on the rolls automatically and put all the resources and energy we've put into voter registration into voter education," says California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Volunteers could set aside the endless work of voter registration and instead promote the policy positions they care about. Click here to send an email to your state legislators and governor letting them know you want voter registration to be automatic. After doing this action, please forward this message to your friends. You can also share it from the webpage after taking the action yourself. -- The RootsAction.org Team P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others. P.P.S. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please donate. Background: > Huffington Post: One State Shows Just How Easy It Is to Get More Americans to Vote > Oregonian: Arrival of Automatic Voter Registration > Sacramento Bee: Automatic Voter Registration Sought in California > The Nation: Oregon's Radical Innovation: Make Democracy Easy > Thirty-Nine States Do Automatic Registration . . . for a Draft > Connecticut to Automatically Register 400,000 Voters    www.RootsAction.org Click here to unsubscribe and stop ALL email from RootsAction.

The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The G.I. Project

The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The G.I. Project   

 

By Frank Jackman

The late Peter Paul Markin had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace the hard way. Had before that baptism accepted half-knowingly (his term) against his better judgment induction into the Army when his “friends and neighbors” at his local draft board in North Adamsville called him up for military service back in hard-shell hell-hole Vietnam War days when the country was coming asunder, was bleeding from all pores around 1968. Markin had had some qualms about going into the service not only because the reasoning given by the government and its civilian hangers-on for the tremendous waste of human and material resources had long seemed preposterous but because he had an abstract idea that war was bad, bad for individuals, bad for countries, bad for civilization in the late 20^th century. Was a half-assed pacifist if he had though deeply about the question, which he had not.

But everything in his blessed forsaken scatter-shot life pushed and pushed hard against his joining the ranks of the draft resisters whom he would hear about and see every day then as he passed on his truck route which allowed him to pay his way through college the Boston sanctuary for that cohort, the Arlington Street Church. Markin had assumed that since he was not a Quaker, Shaker, Mennonite, Brethren of the Common Life adherent but rather a bloody high-nosed Roman Catholic with their slimy “just war” theory that seemed to justify every American war courtesy of their leading American Cardinal, France Spellman, that he could not qualify for conscientious objector status on that basis. And at the time that he entered the Army that was probably true even if he had attempted to do so. Later, as happened with his friend, Jack Callahan, he could at least made the case based on the common Catholic upbringing.  Right then though he was not a total objector to war but only of what he saw in front of him, the unjustness of the Vietnam War.

That was not the least of his situation though. That half-knowingly mentioned above had been overridden by his whole college Joe lifestyle where he was more interested in sex, drink, and rock and roll (the drugs would not come until later), more interested in bedding women than thinking through what he half-knew would be his fate once he graduated from college as the war slowly dragged on and his number was coming up. Moreover there was not one damn thing in his background that would have given pause about his future course. A son of the working-class, really even lower than that the working poor a notch below, there was nobody if he had bothered to seek some support for resistance who would have done so. Certainly not his quiet but proud ex-World War II Marine father, not his mother whose brother was a rising career Army senior NCO, not his older brothers who had signed up as a way to get out of hell-hole North Adamsville, and certainly not his friends from high school half of whom had enlisted and a couple from his street who had been killed in action over there. So no way was an Acre boy with the years of Acre mentality cast like iron in his head about servicing if called going to tip the cart that way toward straight out resistance.         

Maybe he should have, at least according to guys he met in college like Brad Fox and Fritz Tylor, or guys who he met on the hitchhike road going west like Josh Breslin and Captain Crunch (his moniker not real name which Josh could not remember). The way they heard the story from Markin after he got out of the Army, after he had done his hell-hole thirteen months in Vietnam as an infantryman, twice wounded, and after he had come back to the “real” world was that on about the third day in basis training down in Fort Jackson in South Carolina he knew that he had made a mistake by accepting induction. But maybe there was some fate-driven reason, maybe as he received training as an infantryman and he and a group of other trainees talked about but did not refuse to take machine-gun training, maybe once he received orders for Vietnam and maybe once he got “in-country” he sensed that something had gone wrong in his short, sweet life but he never attempted to get any help, put in any applications, sought any relief from what was to finally crack him. That, despite tons of barracks anti-war blather on his part from Fort Jackson to Danang.     

Here’s the reason though why the late Peter Paul Markin’s story accompanies this information about G.I. rights even for those who nowadays enter the military voluntarily, as voluntarily as any such decision can be without direct governmental coercion. Markin, and this part is from Josh Breslin the guy he was closest to toward the end, the guy who had last seen him in the States before that fateful trip to Mexico, to Sonora when it all fell apart one day, had a very difficult time coming back to what all the returnees called the “real” world after Vietnam service. Had drifted to drug, sex and rock and roll out on the West Coast where Josh had first met him in San Francisco until he tired of that, had started to have some bad nights.

Despite the bad nights though he did have a real talent for writing, for journalism. Got caught up in writing a series about what would be later called the “brothers under the bridge” about guys like him down in Southern California who could not adjust to the real world after ‘Nam and had tried to keep body and soul together by banding together in the arroyos, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges and creating what would today be called a “safe space.”

Markin’s demons though were never far from the surface. Got worse when he sensed that the great wash that had come over the land during the counter-cultural 1960s that he had just caught the tail-end had run its course, had hit ebb tide. Then in the mid-1970s to relieve whatever inner pains were disturbing him he immersed himself in the cocaine culture that was just rearing its head in the States. That addiction would lead him into the drug trade, would eventually lead him as if by the fateful numbers to sunny Mexico, to lovely Sonora way where he met his end. Josh never found out all the details about Markin’s end although a few friends had raised money to send a detective down to investigate. Apparently Markin got mixed up with some local bad boys in the drug trade. Tried to cut corners, or cut into their market. One day he was found in a dusty back street with two slugs in his head. He lies down there in some unknown potter’s field mourned, moaned and missed until this very day.  

In Honor Of May Day 2017-From The American Left History Blog Archives -From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

In Honor Of May Day 2017-From The American Left History Blog Archives -From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2^nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12^th, Occupy Foreclosures, and other actions including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.

Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the

current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor

(paid and unpaid) of the 99%-, we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.

This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over side without worrying for a minute about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ourselves. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.

Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on the broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.

The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capital profit driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces to fight for our interests. This must include a forthright rejection of their attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly, a rejection of attempts by their electoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well, powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.

The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover they highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.

Show Power

We demand:

*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!

* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!

*End the endless wars!

* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!

* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!

* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!

* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!

*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!

To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizinga wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:

*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.

*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”

*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.

*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.

These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take it as a wakeup call by a risen people.

And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says–“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.

Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.

All out in Boston on May Day 2012.

17 May - Celebrate Chelsea Manning Freedom!

4/29/2017 3:20 AM

Payday men's network

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	CHELSEA MANNING International Victory Day! 17 May 2017 DEFEND ALL WHISTLEBLOWERS
Chelsea Manning is going to be free! Celebrate with us! On International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, Chelsea will come out of prison after seven years.  Her 35-year sentence was commuted by Obama. It was a victory for Chelsea of course, but also for all of us in many countries who supported her and benefited from her courageous whistleblowing: the international women and lgbtq movements, the anti-war and anti-racist movements, the movements of whistleblowers, war veterans, refuseniks and everyone who stands for justice. On 17 May, we celebrate Chelsea’s freedom in many cities: ·       In London we will have a celebration vigil on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields (Trafalgar Sq. WC2 N 4JJ) from 5.30 – 7 pm.   And Peace News is having  a party at Housmans bookshop from 7pm. ·       So far events that we know of are also planned in Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Details to be confirmed soon. ·       WE INVITE YOU TO ORGANISE AN EVENT, no matter how small: a protest, a vigil, a party.  Please send us news of your event and we’ll help publicise it. In February, Chelsea wrote an extraordinary article thanking her mates in prison (below). ·        So tweet her (@xychelsea), send her a card or a photo to give her strength in these last days of her imprisonment. We must remain vigilant against any further persecution. ·        Send money to the Go home fund to help Chelsea reconstruct her life when she goes home.
Defend all whistleblowers This is also an occasion to defend the thousands of whistleblowers who are persecuted for disclosing abuse and corruption in every institution. Wikileaks, who made public Chelsea’s disclosures, is now in greater danger after the US attorney general just declared the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was a “priority”, at a time when Trump has made torture “legal*.		Protest in London organised by Compassion in Care & The Whistler, 22 March 2017 to demand Edna’s law to protect whistleblowers. Another action is planned in June.
*According to Jean Ziegler from the Consultative Committee of the UN Human Rights Council, ‘Trump has ratified the 2002 Bush’s executive order legalising  torture’ against ‘terror suspects’. See video (at 1h 5m).
Queer Strike  queerstrike@queerstrike.net UK: +44 (0) 20 7482 2496  US: 001 415-626 4114		Payday   www.refusingtokill.net   payday@paydaynet.org UK: +44 (0)20 7267 8698 US: 001 215 848 1120
Letter from Chelsea - 13 February 2017 To those who have kept me alive for the past six years: minutes after President Obama announced the commutation of my sentence, the prison quickly moved me out of general population and into the restrictive housing unit where I am now held. I know that we are now physically separated, but we will never be apart and we are not alone. Recently, one of you asked me “Will you remember me?” I will remember you. How could I possibly forget? You taught me lessons I would have never learned otherwise. When I was afraid, you taught me how to keep going. When I was lost, you showed me the way. When I was numb, you taught me how to feel. When I was angry, you taught me how to chill out. When I was hateful, you taught me how to be compassionate. When I was distant, you taught me how to be close. When I was selfish, you taught me how to share. Sometimes, it took me a while to learn many things. Other times, I would forget, and you would remind me. We were friends in a way few will ever understand. There was no room to be superficial. Instead, we bared it all. We could hide from our families and from the world outside, but we could never hide from each other. We argued, we bickered and we fought with each other. Sometimes, over absolutely nothing. But, we were always a family. We were always united. When the prison tried to break one of us, we all stood up. We looked out for each other. When they tried to divide us, and systematically discriminated against us, we embraced our diversity and pushed back. But, I also learned from all of you when to pick my battles. I grew up and grew connected because of the community you provided Those outside of prison may not believe that we act like human beings under these conditions. But of course we do. And we build our own networks of survival. I never would have made it without you. Not only did you teach me these important lessons, but you made sure I felt cared for. You were the people who helped me to deal with the trauma of my regular haircuts. You were the people who checked on me after I tried to end my life. You were the people that played fun games with me. Who wished me a Happy Birthday. We shared the holidays together. You were and will always be family. For many of you, you are already free and living outside of the prison walls. Many of you will come home soon. Some of you still have many years to go. The most important thing that you taught me was how to write and how to speak in my own voice. I used to only know how to write memos. Now, I write like a human being, with dreams, desires and connections. I could not have done it without you. From where I am now, I still think of all of you. When I leave this place in May, I will still think of all of you. And to anyone who finds themselves feeling alone behind bars, know that there is a network of us who are thinking of you. You will never be forgotten. SOURCE The Guardian To contact Chelsea: Tweet  @xychelsea  By post: details here.

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Veterans For Peace In D.C To Struggle Against The War Machine -Can You Help Us Get the Word Out?

5/16/2017 5:20 PM

Veterans For Peace

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Can you help us get the word out?  We have a TV advertisement, which we will run in the Washington, DC area on MSNBC.   Can you help us let as many people know as possible that veterans are gathering against war, against militarism and against the system that is destroying our society, our future and our planet? Click On Image to See Video "If you can give $5, $20 or more we can let millions of people know we will be there, in DC, the heart of the Empire, so they can join us and so they, thousands of them, may join us outside the Lincoln Memorial, march to the White House and fight for Peace and against war; for Life and against death; for Love and against hate; for those things we need and we cherish in our society; and against the greed and the destruction that we have too much already in our society." -Matt Hoh, Veteran, Member of Veterans For Peace You contribution no matter how small or large will help us make a difference. As veterans who took an oath to defend the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic” We cannot stand by and let this happen. More Information on VFP's Memorial Day Action "Stop Endless War! Build For Peace!" Veterans For Peace is a 501c3 nonprofit veterans organization. Your donation well help us make this a significant stand for Peace. Please give what you can and share this with your family and friends. Veterans For Peace appreciates your generous donations. We also encourage you to join our ranks. Click to no longer receive updates from Veterans For Peace

5/18 Reception for Afro Cuban Activist Artist Mirna Padrón Dickson at Encuentro 5

5/16/2017 4:06 PM

Charlie Welch

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*Reception for Afro Cuban Activist Artist /Mirna Padrón Dickson/*

***Encuentro 59A Hamilton Place (Near Park St.)*

***/Th/ursday, May 18^th 7 PM*

*Black cuban women, feminists, cultural promoters, Popular educators,
/Mirna Padrón Dickson and Diarenis Rosa Calderon Tartabull direct an
/Independent artistic-social project MirArte Diadia (2009-present). *

**

*Agents of change and social transformation,* *they travel with
Political Education in Human Rights and the Culture of Peace, with a
gender perspective, differential and intersectional approach.*

*They operate in community spaces, to demonstrate dissimilar patriarchal
attitudes, racism and sexism.They want* to *break* up *the relationship
between the various communities that represent the status quo and their
relationship of solidarity with all affirmative practices.*

*Goals:*

* *Curatorial work processes, exhibition management, to lesser known
artists and creators who demonstrate through visual anthropology the
influence of Africa and its diaspora in folk / traditional culture
of Cuba, its relationship with the Caribbean and the Americas.*
* *To use the concepts and methodology of popular education to achieve
these goals.*

*Link to flyer with picture of the artist and her work. *
*https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmnd4elom3iz8iw/Reception%20for%20Afro%20Cuban%20Activist%20Artist.doc?dl=0*

*www.july26.org*

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