No dialog with your hate, Tancredo

Colorado’s own Tom Tancredo wants the media to portray him as a victim of hate, but it’s the other way around. He simply hates Mexicans that try to immigrate to the US after busting their butts off doing all the crap jobs this country gives them. He wants to deny their kids lower tuition rates that the Lily Whiters get no problem getting, Senor. Tancredo speech at UNC draws protests

With all the problems in our world, Tom Tancredo with his heart full of hate wants all of us to think that at the top of that list is Mexican immigration to the US. No, at the top of the list is our country having so many asshole leaders like himself that have been foisted off on us by the Big Money interests. Tom Tancredo has no solutions to anything so he simply makes up a false problem to pester us with, as he advocates doing all the wrong things possible.

Sadly, the district in Colorado that elected a Tom Tancredo is a hopelessly ugly one… literally… you would see as you drive by. The nature is pretty enough YES, but what man has done with it in his ‘developments’ is totally NOT. So what we have is an ugly man for an ugly District (most of Denver’s southern suburbs). Tom Tancredo would have us all in America living in a district like he represents. UGH! We’d rather not.

The supposedly civilized world’s ‘Sewer rat children’

deported-children.jpg Roman police find sewer children but the USA leads the way in having ‘sewer rat children’ in its fields, jails, and other nooks and crannies. Thousands of Deported Children Abandoned at Mexican Border, and that’s just the Mexican-US Border, but the US also has Mexico doing its dirty work for them at the Mexican-Guatemalan Border, too.

The following is a youtube video of al jazeera’s coverage of the problem …Mexico’s deported children

Four conflicted images of Costa Rica

Beware of dogCARATE, COSTA RICA- Even on the less beaten paths of the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rican residences were preoccupied with security. Ticos, as locals call themselves, were uniformly welcoming, but every property was protected by locked gates.

The Bienvenidos flier you are handed at immigration includes among its cautions: “If you are lost and in need of checking your map, look for a public and safe place to do it, or recur to the police authorities to help.” and “Avoid stopping when a stranger asks you for a ride.”

It is difficult to visualize a Costa Rica as it used to be, completely forested. Today ranch lands abut rain forest. Both look “natural.” The reason perhaps that eco-tourism has adopted the mantra “biodiversity.”
costa-rica-cattle-ranching

Skinny Costa Rican cows are grown for the North American fast food market. Their beef does not meet anyone’s standard for steak, but mixed 50/50 with the fat byproduct of American Holsteins, the result passes for fast food hamburger patties.

Clearing the land has the benefit of yielding timber for construction. Jungle preservation brings more eco-tourism to Costa Rica. Here the conflicting land uses meet. On the edge of the road past a timber mill, reads a sign advertising CANOPY TOURS.
costa-rica-canopy-tours

In the lee of Vulcan Arenal, Rancho Margot is a model of sustainable farming. Its gardeners are going to great lengths to try to meet all their lodge needs in-house. Some plants such as tomatoes, require a less tropical climate and so must be grown in green houses, where also they require dry soil. When we asked our guide what this ranch worker was doing, his answer was: “He’s trying to do the impossible.” He was heating dirt over a fire, careful to dry it without cooking it.
rancho-margot-arenal-vulcano

Cheyenne Mtn white-flight or white lie?

cheyenne mountain footballThere is an aspect about the Cheyenne Mountain High School drug bust story that most interests me. An insider aught to be able to confirm it: Did the student who narc’d on his druggie friends really have to move –siblings, household and all– straight out of town? That weekend, the rumor goes, so terrified was his/her family of the wrath of the “¡MEXICAN NATIONALS!”

No need to reveal the student’s name, and I’m certainly not going suggest the Xanax-stowaway did anything wrong to break the silence, of apparent consent, on the Cheyenne Black Tar Breakfast Club.

But someone who knew the student’s name, could look up his/her address –in the school directory if the address in unlisted, then go straight to the spot, or talk to the neighbors, or of course consult friends you might have in common, to confirm or debunk the hysteria.

Did Family Xanax pull up and go, moving van and all, to parts unknown, protected by the same White Mountain keep-our-troubles-to-ourselves White Witness Protection Program which kept a lid on its untroubled heroin trendies?

I’d like to know, who is it the family thinks is after them, the so-called “Mexican National” devils? Weren’t the two suppliers arrested? Is there a Mexican drug cartel that must avenge what happened? That must keep rich kid students cow-towed in fear, lest the next frightened Xanax-abuser, think little enough to squeal on the next Mexican foot soldiers to take on the rich-kid-malaise HS gold mine?

Why do I doubt it?

Could it be instead, the other white rich parents of whom the Xanax-parental-gardians are more afraid?

It occurs to me now, thinking of a past acquaintance with another local high school, two in fact: Manitou and Coronado, to name them, that their chief drug supplier, a few years ago, lived in the Cheyenne Mountain school district! I visited his house, actually. It was quite spacious, and his father was in on the action, also ran a chop-shop, as I recall.

Now that’s someone the neighbors would know to fear. Is that guy still around? Probably there’s some kind of expiration date for how long a recent HS grad can hang around school without becoming conspicuous.

Am I the only one who thinks there’s a story here? Violence between dealers is commonplace; are customers also kept terrorized? If User X and family did have to skip out of town, who did they flee? Brown-skinned outsiders? Or white skinned bad boys still here?

It’s one thing for affluent Cheyenne Mountain families to keep mum and take their substance-abuse challenge lumps. It’s another to acquiess to drug use like it’s their child’s rite-of-passage, spelled “right.” I’m not sure they don’t think it’s spelled the same. For some privileged folk, it seems a person’s ability to afford something is the only determinant of whether it’s right. Laws do not apply to freedoms they will not be denied.

And of course, the chief benefit derived from propagating the urban-mythic Family Hightails It Out-of-Town story, is that it reinforces a code of silence. We don’t betray our own.

And it slams shut the barn door. There’s nothing further to talk about, they’re gone. Don’t re-ignite the issue lest you invite the attention of the bogiemen out for revenge.

Bearing False Witness
Worse, to me, might be to let the storytellers lay the whole mess at the feet of the White Mountain non-whites. Cheyenne Mountain households are the same conservatives crying for blood at our southern border. They support harsher measures to stem illegal immigration, yet they rely on the undocumented workforce for their domestics. Those who are rich developers, builders and car dealers hire an enormous share of the local illegals. This disparate attitude is not contradictory. Unforgiving immigration policies keep wages low.

And then the opportunist-hypocrites want to blame their children’s drug problems on the same victims.

Let’s find out the truth to that white-flight story. What good is served –to amplify the potentially false stigma– by remaining un-skeptical about such a salacious rumor?

Papieren Bitte? Just your shoes please

mens shoesMost people can easily conjure the cinematic image of Gestapo officers blocking train passengers, demanding “Your papers please.” That such a scene could ever develop in America, haunts citizens opposed to national identity cards or embedded microchips. But with modern surveillance methods as pervasive as cellphones, perhaps today’s state security services have less need to verify who we are. I’ll assert the US Department of Homeland Security is charged more with making Americans feel the heavy boot print of authoritarianism.

I think that in the wake of 9/11, this nation has indeed mobilized a “papers please” law enforcement policy.

The proof is there in black and white in the Patriot Act; you can see it in the Civil Liberties-free zone which immigration officers have been empowered to enforce to 100 miles inland from our borders; and you can see it at our airports. Last night’s 60-Minutes questioned the punitive aspects of the TSA measures to which today’s airline passengers are subjected. Less surprisingly, CBS also suggested their probable ineffectiveness.

Having just paid a holiday visit to DIA, I was inclined to see more. Yes, this is another holiday post.

Credit where credit is due? It’s no coincidence this is about shoes.

Papieren Bitte
First, I’d like to deconstruct the film mythology, which originated in wartime, from Hollywood Home Front propaganda meant to demonize the Hun. Certainly the trench-coated SS officer, or leather-jacketed Gestapo detective, asking for your documents, cut a villainous figure. But they were, in reality, as out of the ordinary as today’s FBI or CIA agents. Have you ever happened upon a one of those?

More often by far, during WWII, the job of asking for a traveler’s “Legitimacion” was assigned to the gendarmes of the occupied countries, or to the collaborators who’d been deputized. These were ordinary constables and men who otherwise were unfit to serve in combat. Old frumps, maligned and bitter. If you can picture the run-of-the-mill TSA troll, you see where I’m going.

Public Transportation
Where travelers a half-century ago were taking trains, today the public city-to-city lattice is airborne. Today we queue for planes, not trains. And instead of producing our “papers” –I should say, IN ADDITION to producing our papers– we are required to remove our shoes, all sorts of articles, submit to searches, and refrain from carrying certain items, in order to thread the needle that allows us access to public travel. I’m not sure if today’s security screening isn’t the equivalent of the depiction of the 40s silver-screen.

Before you argue that I’m being alarmist, please consider that most Germans during the war, indeed the overwhelming majority of citizens of occupied Europe, had little to fear by being asked for their documents. You or I are not insurgents on the lam, nor aspiring bomb-throwers. We do not fear being sent to Guantanamo.

Indeed, you might remember, the movie heroes who sweated the Nazi checkpoints were always resistance fighters, saboteurs, or escaped Allied prisoners. Today, ask yourself how an enemy of the USA would fare trying to use an airport. If you have become aware now that our US Homeland does not show reticence to torture, or disappear, persons of interest, would modern airport security be any less a terrifying prospect for people who may not be in lockstep with the ever rogue-ideology of the current global administrators?

And so, what was the main purpose of policemen monitoring the trains of occupied Europe? To prevent illegal travel, or to deter the thought of sedition? Both. But those were the days of imperfect intelligence.

Today, we know that even the 9/11 hijackers were tracked well in advance of their boarding at Boston Airport. Since then, we know that intelligence agency Fusion Centers also parse the surveillance data of persons of mere tangential interest. We know that the NSA records all phone calls. We know the telecoms are doing something for which they are very insistent about receiving preemptory immunity.

Potential terrorists/hijackers have everybody on their tail.

The TSA fat bastards are for the rest of us.

Airport Fear-mongering
Do you remember the days when you could linger as you dropped off your loved ones at the airport? You could wait with them, or you could meet them as they walked off the plane. Now you are greeted by concrete barriers at the curb, you can’t help anyone with their bags. America’s airports have become high security zones, unwelcoming to all.

Permit me to interject the observation that there has not been a single domestic airport attack to justify the draconian measures which have impacted American tranquility. We abide being yelled at, for absolutely no reason except the scare-phrase “Remember 9/11.” Remember the Maine? Remember Pearl Harbor? Japanese Internment Camps anyone?

If you are the traveler, you have to strip yourself of dignity before a thick-necked tin-pot. Now airports are even replacing the metal detectors with X-ray gateways. You are required to raise your arms for a virtual strip search, where digital images of your nakedness are reviewed by the airport security. Official TSA statements explain that these digital records go no further than their desks.

You can choose to believe that, or believe that all our faces are being blurred, or that our corresponding identities are not matched with the images.

(A digression on the subject of intelligence files:
Meanwhile, consider that the NSA is recording ALL satellite borne phone calls. International and domestic. They get around the “wire-tapping” restrictions by addressing it as “packet collecting.” To their devices, it’s an altogether new technology, thereby unencumbered by civil right legislation protection.

Our imaginations cannot fathom how spooks can listen to all the world’s satellite calls, but their imaginations know that someday the software will be developed to accomplish that task. Won’t they be kicking themselves later if they hadn’t stored as much as they could of our conversations BEFORE anyone suspected all telephones were eavesdropped upon?

-By the way, did you miss the memo that every cellphone is capable of being an eavesdropping device, even when it’s not engaged in a phone call? Would it be beyond the pale to imagine that if a near infinite number of calls are recorded, another near infinite amount of off-line talk is being aggregated in addition? If you can store more on your iPod than you can read in 100 lifetimes, supercomputer storage can probably lap your imagination by 100 to the 100th, I’m just thinking.)

Respect Authority
Well look at me, I’m only underlining where the DHS is happy to have us all place emphasis. FEAR. The security at today’s airports won’t keep box cutters off of airplanes, but it will keep a citizenry from daydreams of dissent.

So much ado,
And not enough DO? You already know what to do. Respect authority? Disrespect false authority! Take a lead from Comrade al-Zairi, you too can make it about the shoes.

We’ve all of us, you know it, mouthed to ourselves the defiant retort, rehearsed for if and when that imaginary Nazi hits us up for our papers: “Papers? I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”

From LA, I remember a variant which Hispanics directed at La Migra. They wished.

Anyone WITH papers can defy authority with the full confidence that comes from “I am an American” impunity. But can undocumented immigrants say it? Can Middle-Eastern-looking gentlemen say it? Not hardly.

YOU CAN.

My brave little fantasy insurgent, why not offer that rebel yell to the TSA? Tell them you don’t need to remove your stinkin’ shoes! (Double- entendre unintended.) They won’t let you on the plane, but that’s where beloved Capitalism provides your audience.

Put your courage where your mouth is
Let the airlines hear your rebel yell. “We don’t need your stinkin’ airplane!” If they don’t remove the Beirut decor concrete barriers, if they don’t send the TSA mini tyrants packing, if they don’t let you travel with toiletries of your damn choosing, you’re not going to take their stinkin’ flights.

If they’re not going to let you park up close to the terminal, where you used to be able to park but now those spaces are let out to valet parking outfits, you’re not going to visit their airport. Period.

Is there anywhere that you need to go in a hurry, besides out of the country for a long, long spell?

Drive, it’s still free
If you’re going to stick around, boycott the airlines. Use your car.

As has been demonstrated at Arizona checkpoints –as seen on YouTube– a car and a video camera can get you anywhere unmolested. If you are stopped at an DHS “immigration” checkpoint, you hold the upper hand. You can persist in being let to pass without answering a single question. If they detain you, you have a lawsuit. In your car, you can say with impunity still “I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”

US racially motivated murders post Katrina investigated by Nation Magazine

black woman, New OrleansA.C. Thompson at the Nation Magazine has done a fine bit of investigative journalism published this last week titled, Katrina’s Hidden Race War. In it he investigates the murders of Blacks by Whites in that city after Hurricane Katrina hit, and speculates about how nobody at either local, state, or federal governmental levels seems in the least bit interested in investigating the White racist vigilante violence there, which left some untold number of Blacks murdered or severely injured.

This violence was in the first place really fomented by the news media and these same governmental bodies, and now America is basically expected to forget all that? Should we though?

The violence that is reported on here is quite parallel to the violence of hundreds of Mexican and Central American immigrants being murdered by US governmental immigration policies, usually out in the hot deserts of California and Arizona, but often times in Mexico itself. Then we get down to the racial murder of Arabs in Iraq, and the deadly bombings of Pashtun civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Then let’s not forget the racially motivated pogroms against the Somali people. What unfolds to us as we contemplate all this, is just how genocidal the mentality really is up in Washington D.C., take a Cheney or give a Barack as it be. Seems like little changes in the USA through the decades? Oh, and did I mention Gaza?

Work in a capitalist society does make people sick

chain gangIn a previous commentary here at Not My Tribe … I wrote that there was scientific evidence, as well as everyday common sense evidence, that work as defined and dished out by our upper crust bosses under capitalist society in America makes people sick. I was amazed that such a simple and easily verifiable observation provoked so little intelligent discussion by our esteemed readers! What gives?

Personally, I have easily worked about a dozen made-dangerous-by- capitalism job types in my lifetime and feel fortunate that I have not been totally crippled by the experience. Apparently not all of us have had these work experiences though, and not having actually done any of the dangerous work in America might put rather rosy blinkers over the eyes of some few folk about the dangers of American capitalism as well as world capitalism as a whole?

The experience of writing here on this blog about how work under capitalism eats away at workers, and then getting dissed off personally for having brought the subject up at all, I have found profoundly demoralizing. (what discussion began to occur about my previous commentary was quickly erased from this site//// I hope and trust that it does not happen again?). Why write about everyday life for me and others in this country, when one only gets disrespected and put down as being an idiot for doing so? There may very well be much better venues for political expression than this blog if this sort of thing was to become routine here on Not My Tribe?

Back to the subject at hand though. Much work in the US, as in all other capitalist societies is undertaken with little concern for the physical safety, let alone emotional well being, of the workers doing the actual work. Farm workers are put out into fields with cancer causing chemicals all around, not given adequate water to drink under the hot sun, and then are harassed like they are some sort of human vermin by Immigration. Yes, work in a capitalist society does make people sick, and many farm workers get sick here in America. Only a totally hard and contemptuous person would actually call such observations about the dangerousness of work in capitalist America into any kind of real question, IMO.

Farm work is only one single egregious example of the abuse of the American worker (YES, Migrant workers are from the Americas and should be considered American workers), and this abuse of us all who do the actual work goes on in each and every sector of our economy, and the damage to our health is extreme. This is a rather simple and obvious truth, and it should not need for multiple examples to be listed out to anybody, who has been living in US society and not born with a totally dead soul.

I have vacationed myself (kind of) from writing for over a week now, and will not write any further on Not My Tribe unless I feel it has some value. The value I have seen for my writing previously, was that simple observations of current events that were not totally rank with corporate lies was of some value even if done for only a small readership. That can still be of value if allowed here by the powers to be of this blog?

A blog that is written from a consistent Left perspective is a novelty here in Colorado Springs, as it is everywhere in this imperialist and hate driven society we call the USA. There are those who either don’t want that, or are in fact totally lacking in any appreciation for why Left viewpoints need to be given opportunity to rise up from out under the blanket of total corporate censorship and non-sponsorship of such? The motives are many for some folk not wanting a Left perspective ever to be expressed anywhere and always, and I won’t attempt to guess the motives of all who dislike what I have said about work under capitalism. We live in a soceity with multiple life viewpoints and perspectives.

Work under this capitalist society is a sickening experience, and some relief from it can actually be obtained by just being exposed to some simple honesty. That is what I strive to do when I write my commentaries here on Not My Tribe. Most all of you who have read this commentary actually do realize the simple truth that work under bosses put above us in the work force as overseers, is a profoundly alienating and deadly daily grind to our souls and our bodies. Not hard to figure out. I will write about it and other similar topics that express simple truths from a Left perspective. (if allowed to do so?)

Kenyan struggles for US political asylum

asylum-deniedCOLORADO COLLEGE- Tonight in McHugh Commons, 7pm. Political refugee David Ngaruri Kenney will present a slide show about his ordeal, assisted by his lawyer and ASYLUM DENIED co-author Georgetown Law Professor Philip Schrag. Persecuted for organizing agrarian reforms, Kenney escaped Kenya and sought asylum in the USA, opposed by the US gov. Tonight’s event is sponsored by the PIKES PEAK IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE COLLABORATIVE and advocates for immigration law reforms.

ASYLUM DENIED begins:

After the security officers decided not to shoot me during the night in the forest, they blindfolded me again and forced me back into the van. Terrified, I lost track of time. Finally, the van stopped, and they told me to get out. The officers took me to a building and led me through it. They removed the handcuffs from my wrists and the blindfold from my face. As my eyes adjusted slowly to the light from the only bulb, I could see that I was in some kind of prison. Heavy wire links covered the window.

They ordered me to remove all my clothing. When I was naked, they pushed me through a doorway, and I fell into what seemed to be a dark room. Soon I realized that it was a small cement cell below the level of the prison floor: in essence, a pit. This was the beginning of the worst ordeal of my life.

Why don’t we just round up all the aliens and go torture them at Guantanamo?

guantanamo-speedo Even the same week ‘The Debates’ between the puppet figures went on, them illegal aliens were spoiling our domestic tranquility here in The Homeland. That’s right, 300-plus workers detained in illegal-immigration raid So why don’t we just round up all the aliens and go torture them at Guantanamo? They’re messing up our nice American lives, aren’t they?

You might say to me,

‘Tony, you’re being a tad bit too extreme here, are you not?’

However, some of you just don’t see the benefit of having a Lilly American Homeland at all though, so I’m not going to try to reason with you at all here. But to the other real Americans, think about it some, why not throw those aliens into the slammer we already have built for them in Cuba? Guantanamo already has been torturing aliens now for close to 7 years, it’s just that they were aliens from alien lands. That’s right and that’s wrong!

All those people captured by our ever so alert and incredibly illiterate and monolingual Armed Forces were actually handed over to us because they were foreigners! And now judges (with the quick speed of our lawfully illegal American Legal Injustice System are letting them trickle forth once again. The Cheney Regime just got ordered to free (Oh life is so unfair to them!), a whole shitload of alien Uighurs, and here are two more of them aliens in an alien land getting released, too. They were 2 aliens (Algerian and Sudanese) caught in Pakistan. Yes, definitely aliens there caught by Pakistani folk who think just like Full Blooded American Patriots think. Two 50-Year-Olds Released From Guantánamo

‘Let’s Get Them Foreigners and let’s torture them!’

So there are already aliens in Guantanamo (other people’s illegal aliens… Aw who cares?) and the liberal courts are now freeing them inexplicably so? I guess they think that there are some legal limits on torturing these people who broke the law? Liberals can be such pussies.

Those last 2 aliens, Hassan and Mammar got off early. I would have held them until they were in their 80s, not letting them go so soon, and it would have been all for their own good! What type of people go on vacation in Pakistan anyway? These are just people prone to getting themselves in trouble, and torture they deserve! Pedophiles!

Still, gone they are at last, so why are Our Troops wasting money by allowing the spacer to go unused, when we have so many chicken butcher aliens in South Carolina just captured? The troops in Guanatanamo know how to torture people good, unlike the ICE folk in Aurora, Colorado. All those idiots know how to do is take away the blankets and turn up the air conditioner on their Detainees. Some torture that is. I bet they don’t even know how to piss on a Koran?

These are felons with their little tykes out there in South Carolina, and why is President Bush going so easy on them while federal dollars are being spent to torture other aliens and not our own? Please write a letter to your Senators and House Representative today and tell them that you are fed up with their coddling of alien criminals! And tell them that you want them ALL to be tortured at Guantanamo as the American law allows and mandates.

Americans need these high paying good jobs that aliens robbed from them at once. And their fine and luxurious housing, also. Shame on the corruption there in DC that allows aliens to not be tortured adequately to keep America safe from foreign terrorism against our American Gway!

What is… illegal immigration

uighur
Game show question… ’17 Wee’ gurz is?’
 
Answer- ‘What is US illegal immigration promoted by Republican and Democratic Party politicians alike.’ Judge: Let Chinese Muslims in Gitmo into U.S.

That’s right! Isn’t the Guantanamo concentration camp something that both unconscionable groups fully supported running? Didn’t they support that use of US torture on Pentagon held POWs, illegal detention of them, and what can only be called ultimately illegal immigration of them into this cursed land called America?

The all powerful America, a country which trots itself around the world waving its own flag, wrecking other people’s countries, and then tries to build a wall up to keep its victims out of the US itself. It’s the Department of Pompous, Self Serving Security in Homeland Stupidity.

Let these 17 Chinese citizens in! Maybe they can help educate Americans on why they are hated so?

Fodor’s guide to Denver and the DNC

Marie
To answer the obvious questions. If you’re worried about tear gas, saturate a bandana in Apple Cider Vinegar, and bring swimming goggles. For a tip of where you’ll find the action in the next several days, below is a list of where legal observers are planning to be. Meaning, where there might run afoul. Otherwise check with Recreate-68, Codepink, UFPJ and Unconventional Action.

The purpose of legal observing is to protect the civil liberties of political activists. Legal Observers do not intentionally become involved in the actions or intervene in any confrontations with police or others. Legal Observers strive to refrain from actions that could be construed as participating in the demonstration.

Legal Observers can make the following contributions:

– Legal Observers may deter police misconduct,

– Legal Observers may testify about their observations,

– Legal Observers may assist activists who are detained, arrested, or who need medical attention, by alerting the appropriate support teams associated with the demonstration.

CALENDAR

Sunday August 24, 2008

1. END THE OCCUPATIONS RALLY & MARCH
This is a permitted rally and march organized by the Re-Create 68 coalition and other groups. Due to expected large number of participants, many Legal Observers are needed. Please check in at the office at approximately 9:00 a.m. to obtain materials and hats. Please return materials to the PLP immediately after the March. For details about speakers and plans, go to: www.recreate68.org.

Rally at 9:00 AM
March steps off from the Capitol steps at 10:30 AM. End at approximately 3pm. Location: West Steps of the Capitol Building

2. CODE PINK FREEZE TO STOP THE WAR
CHECK IN AT NOON AT PLP OFFICE. 16th Street Mall

3. FUNK THE WAR DANCE FOR PEACE
This action is comprised of four feeder marches which will converge on the 16th Street Mall. It is sponsored by Tent State University. For details, see: http://tentstate.org/funkthewar.htm The Funk marches shall depart the following locations around 1:00 PM. CHECK IN AT NOON AT PLP OFFICE

The marches will converge at Union Station at 2:00 PM.
– Union Station (17th & Wynkoop) Women’s Convergence led by Code Pink
– Skate Park (2205 19th Street, near Coors Field) Youth Convergence w/ Ralph Nader
– MEPS Center (19th & Stout) Iraq Vets Against the War and Allies
– Curtis Park (30th & Curtis in Five Points) Power to the People led by C. McKinney

3. UNCONVENTIONAL ACTION – RECLAIM THE STREETS
From 3:00 to 5:00 PM. FLOATER LEGAL OBSERVERS CHECK IN AT 2 PM AT PLP. Legal observers may be dispatched to locations downtown, particularly near delegates’ hotels, where coordinated direct action and protests may take place after the End the Occupations march, per Unconventional Action (U/A) (see: http://www.unconventionalaction.org/downloads/Disrupt_the_DNC.pdf)

4. TENT STATE UNIVERSITY MOVE TO FREEDOM CAGE
CHECK IN AT 10:30 PM

Monday August 25, 2008

1. PROTEST THE FREEDOM CAGE
March sponsored by Re-Create 68 to call attention to the undemocratic clamp down on free speech, in particular the abysmal cage erected near the Pepsi Center where non-delegates have been relegated to a fenced-in pen obstructed by the massive Media tent. This march will leave Skyline Park South (15th & Arapahoe) at 9:00 a.m and go to the Pepsi Center. CHECK IN AT 8 AM AT PLP OFFICE

2. FREEDOM MARCH TO SUPPORT POLITICAL PRISONERS
Rally and speakers begin at 10:00 AM. Location: Civic Center Park amphitheater. March will proceed from Civic Center Park to the Federal Courthouse (19th & Champa). CHECK IN AT 9 AM AT PLP OFFICE

3. SHAKE YOUR MONEY MAKER
Demonstrators will surround the Denver Mint at approximately 5:00 PM in an effort to draw attention to issues of wealth and poverty. CHECK IN AT 4:30 PM AT PLP OFFICE. The Denver Mint is located at 320 W. Colfax and Cherokee Street.

4. NO BUSINESS AS USUAL
Theatrics and street actions at various locales, such as fundraisers, in downtown Denver sponsored by Unconventional Action. Begins at 6:00 PM at Civic Center. FLOATER LO’S CHECK IN AT 5:00 PM

5. FESTIVAL OF DEMOCRACY MUSIC SHOWCASE
3pm to 9pm at Civic Center Park. We will be dispatching a few Legal Observers to this location during the concerts. Please notify Heather about your availability.

6. TENT STATE UNIVERSITY AT THE FREEDOM CAGE
CHECK IN AT 10:30 PM AT OFFICE

Tuesday August 26, 2008

1. PROCESSION FOR THE FUTURE Puppet March
Starts at Civic Center Park at 9:00 AM.
CHECK IN AT OFFICE AT 8:30 AM

2. CODE PINK
CHECK IN AT OFFICE AT 10:30 AM

3. CONFRONT THE SPECTACLE
Marches beginning at approximately 3 PM near or at the Pepsi Center. Sponsored by Unconventional Action. Technical blockades, street theater, and other diverse actions may attempt to block the flow of delegates fro their afternoon platform meetings to the convention hall.

Legal Observers CHECK IN AT 2 PM AT PLP

3. TENT STATE
CHECK IN AT 10:30 PM for move from Cuernavaca Park to Pepsi Ctr Freedom Cage

Wednesday August 27, 2008

1. ECO ACTIONS – ALL DAY
Direct action for the environment all day downtown. Polluters and greenwashers’ corporate headquarters downtown Denver. Check in at 10 AM and throughout the day at PLP offices

2. WOMEN IN BLACK
12-2 PM at Skyline Park. Check in at 11:30 AM at PLP Office.

3. IRAQ VETS AGAINST WAR MARCH 3-6 PM
** LEGAL OBSERVER CHECK IN AT FOURNEY’S TRANSPORTATION MUSEUM ON BRIGHTON BLVD AT 3 PM.

4. CRITICAL MASS BIKE RIDE – NO WAR, NO WARMING

6 PM. Check in at PLP at 5:00 PM for details on locations.

Thursday August 28, 2008

1. DNC MOBILIZATION FOR JUST AND HUMANE IMMIGRATION REFORM
Potentially massive, epic march for immigrant rights. For details, see: www.weareamericadnc.org
Legal Observers meet at PLP office at 8:00 a.m. March Step-off at 9:00 a.m. from Rude Park (2855 W. Howard Place). Rally to follow at La Alma / Lincoln Park (W. 12th Ave. and Mariposa St)

2. LOCKSTEP BEHIND THE PARTY
Action at the Pepsi Center at 11:00 AM. Further details on this action needed.

3. END WHITE SUPREMACY – Media Savvy Actions sponsored by Unconventional Action.
Times and locations to be determined.

5. MARCH TO INVESCO FIELD
March starts at Lincoln Park (Mariposa Street) at 2:00 PM and goes to Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field.

Patient Dumping the MexCare way

St Josephs Cuba exports patient care, but America deports care the MexCare way. MexCare is a public relations corp that helps American for-profit hospitals dump-deport people. It seems that there is no need to call Immigration in, just let the local Catholic Hospital call MexCare instead.

Jesus would turn over on his cross if he wasn’t already up in Heaven with Dad! The churches just aren’t what they used to be it seems, now that they are corporate run hospitals instead, hiding behind Jesus. The Christian Cross at the local hospital is just for public relations and it is the bottom line that rules now. Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals

Unconventional Denver DNC schedule

DNC Disruption 08From Disruption’08:
Denver is currently overflowing with plans from an extremely diverse array of groups for different types of demonstrations, music festivals, street parties and actions that will occur during the entire week of the convention. The many events are roughly broken down into theme days (see below). Anarchists and anticapitalists are working on many aspects of this mobilization but have a general focus of expanding acts of resistance outside permitted areas, radicalizing the debate around the Democrats, and ensuring that during the convention there will be no business as usual in Denver!

Schedule of actions:

SUNDAY the 24th
-10:30am, Civic Center Park: Massive march against militarization and occupations called for by Recreate 68. This will be a family-friendly, low-risk event.
-Midday: Funk the War! Following the march, a large, low-risk street party called for by the Alliance for Real Democracy will fill downtown with music and festivities against the war
-Late Afternoon: As the convention-goers check into hotels and attend their pre-convention party, our own raging party in resistance to the militarized occupation of Denver and the world will reclaim public space and spread the festivities onto the streets. Be ready to take the rowdy celebration to the doorsteps of delegate hotels etc.

MONDAY the 25th
-10:30am, Civic Center Park: March against the prison industrial complex and for freedom for all political prisoners.
-Evening: Meet at the Civic Center at 6pm to join the anticapitalist march (see below) or participate in organized and decentralized actions that will actively disrupt the capitalist corruption and cronyism of the two party system by targeting specific fundraisers, delegate parties and corporations backing the DNC. come ready for quick decentralized actions spanning the downtown area at a variety of risk levels.

TUESDAY the 26th
-Afternoon: Confront the Spectacle- We vote no! As delegates are arriving at the Pepsi Center, snake marches will converge on the entrances through the fence of the no-protest zone in order to create spaces for different levels of delegate movement disruption. Flying squads will assist the disruption and create distractions as we bring their party to a halt.

WEDNESDAY the 27th
-All day: Actions and alternatives- Real solutions to the climate crisis! A day of direct action against ecological destruction. We will create solutions to global warming without the politicians by shutting down sources of greenhouse gas emissions and corporations who destroy the earth (and fund the Democrats). we will also engage in creative resistance outlining solutions and alternatives; bike bloc! car free zones! guerrilla gardening!

THURSDAY the 28th
-10:30am, Rude Park: No Borders March! No one is illegal! Join this national mobilization for immigrants rights and help us draw connections between the struggles of immigrant communities and the struggle against global capitalism. This will be a low-risk event safe for all people regardless of immigration status. so play nice.
-Evening: A special Denver anarchist variety show party, put on by none other then Denver’s Louis Vitton.

ALSO:
A precarious workers council of UA has called for an anti-capitalist force to manifest at the DNC as a black bloc on the evening of Monday the 25th. This will meet at Civic Center Park at 6:00pm and will coincide with Unconventional Denver’s call for organized and decentralized no-business-as-usual actions during the same evening. More details TBA.

*this is by no means a complete list of all actions planned by the many groups involved in the Denver mobilization. Check dncdisruption08.org, recreate68.org, realdemocracy2008.org, and weareamericadnc.org for other events and actions.

Denver D’Alliance for Democracy

Alliance for Real Democracy
Here is current the schedule of ARN events:

———————————-
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23

All Day City Park
Set up at City Park

Afternoon (TBD) City Park
Resurrection City Free University
Non-Violence Training

5:00 – 10:00 PM Gates Crescent Park
Welcoming BBQ & Drinks for the Delegates

——————————-
SUNDAY, AUGUST 24

All Day Platte River & Cherry Creak Trails
AFSC Banners
AFSC is planning on displaying banners for about 100 yards in each direction from REI.

All Day City Park
Art Installations
A variety of art pieces representing progressive ideals.

(9:00 AM
Begin at the WEST STEPS OF THE CAPITOL.
End on Speer Blvd in front of the Pepsi Center.
End the Occupations March and Rally
March to end all illegal imperialist occupations in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Hawaii, North America, and others.)

1:00 PM Various Denver Locations
Funk the War: Dance for Peace
A creative action with an emphasis on music and visuals. Smaller feeder marches lead to a central location with a concert.

Immediately Following Funk the War/Dance Party for Peace City Park
Concert featuring: Son of Nun, Jello, Brian Harvey, David Rovics

7:00 PM Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater
Evening of Conscience: No Attack on Iran
Feature performances on opposing any moves towards a U.S. attack on Iran.

(Evening Central Presbyterian Church, 1660 Sherman St.
Progressive Welcome to Denver)

——————————-
MONDAY, AUGUST 25

10:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.

12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory

5:00 PM City Park
Nomination of Partyless Youth Ticket
A chance for the youth to nominate a candidate that speaks to them.

Evening (TBD) TBD
Cynthia McKinney Speech
Speech by presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney.

6:30 PM City Park
CODEPINK Concert
A concert highlighting many powerful and talented women.

——————————–
TUESDAY, AUGUST 26

10:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.

11:00 AM Skyline Park
A Walk in their Shoes
Thousands of shoes will represent the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.

12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory

3:00 PM City Park
Concert featuring Blue Scholars, David Rovics, and others.

Afternoon (TBD) City Park
Partyless Youth Platform
The youth will be given an opportunity to create their platform.

Afternoon/ Evening (TBD) Downtown
Operation First Casualty
Street theater that demonstrates the reality of war.

(6:30 PM City Park
Democratic Party “Watching Party”
Local Democrats will host a big-screen TV for non-seated Democrats to watch the Convention.)

————————————-
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27

10:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.

12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory

12:00 Noon City Park
Concert featuring: Flobots, State Radio, The Coup, Wayne Kramer, Son of Nun, Jello, and others.

Afternoon (TBD) City Park
Partyless Youth Acceptance Speech
The Partyless Youth nominee will give an acceptance speech.

3:30 PM TBD
IVAW March to End the War
Iraq Veterans Against the War will march in opposition to the war in Iraq.

(Evening Buelle Theater
Cultural Events: Cornel West and the Flobots)

———————————–
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28

10:30 AM City Park
Town Hall Meeting
Brief ARD meeting to review the day.

TBD TBD
Immigrant Rights March and Rally
The march, with a national scope, will provide a venue for immigrants and their allies to demonstrate their decree for just and fair reform for our country’s broken immigration system.

12:00 – 6:00 PM City Park
Resurrection City Free University
A free university focusing on praxis and theory

(TBD INVESCO Field
Obama’s Acceptance Speech
Obama will give his acceptance speech to 75,000 people at INVESCO Field. ARD hopes to have a presence outside.)

—————————–
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29

All Day City Park
Tear Down and Clean Up
All of ARD will be needed to help clean and clear City Park

All Day TBD
Buses to St. Paul
ARD would like to help coordinate buses and carpooling to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention.

Kids make an offer Denver must refuse

DNC Disruption 2008Recreate 68’s anarchist faction, the younger protest participants represented by Unconventional Denver, got their unviolent say in a RMN article today: Anarchists promise to sit out DNC. They offered to halt their DNC disruption efforts if the City of Denver would spend its 50 million dollar security grant on social problems instead. It’s an offer Denver cannot accept, but in making it, the anarchist activists were able to spell out why they object to the Democratic Party’s business as usual, and what social change they would like to see. Nothing extreme about it.

Here is the UNCONVENTIONAL DENVER Call to Action:

The Queen City is heating up as anarchists, witches, clowns, Iraq vets, artists, SDSers, radical queers, immigrants, Earth First!ers, rebel Democrats, parents, precarious workers and others are making it known that, come August, the Democrats’ attempt at co-opting our energies and power will fall short as we make it clear that change will come from below not above, in the streets and not in their stadiums.

Here’s the latest call to action from Unconventional Denver to help maximize our impact this August.

sunday the 24th { RECLAIM THE STREETS. RESIST MILITARIZATION}
Late Afternoon: After the 10:00am Recreate 68 anti-war march and the early afternoon Alliance for Real Democracy Funk the War celebration, a raging party in resistance to the militarized occupation of Denver and the world will reclaim public space and spread the festivities onto the streets. Be ready to take the rowdy celebration to the doorsteps of delegate hotels etc.

monday the 25th { NO BUSINESS AS USUAL}
Evening: Meet at the Civic Center at 6pm to join the anticapitalist march or participate in organized and decentralized actions that will actively disrupt the capitalist corruption and cronyism of the two party system by targeting specific fundraisers, delegate parties and corporations backing the DNC. come ready for quick decentralized actions spanning the downtown area at a variety of risk levels.

tuesday the 26th { CONFRONT THE SPECTACLE}
Afternoon: As delegates are arriving at the Pepsi Center, snake marches will converge on the entrances through the fence of the no-protest zone in order to create spaces for different levels of delegate movement disruption. Flying squads will assist the disruption and create distractions as we bring their party to a halt.

wednesday the 27th { ECO ACTIONS AND ALTERNATIVES}
All day: direct action against ecological destruction. We will create solutions to global warming without the politicians by shutting down sources of greenhouse gas emissions and corporations who destroy the earth (and fund the Democrats). we will also engage in creative resistance outlining solutions and alternatives; bike bloc! car free zones! guerrilla gardening!

thursday the 28th { NO BORDERS. NO ONE IS ILLEGAL}
Morning: Join this national mobilization for immigrants rights and help us draw connections between the struggles of immigrant communities and the struggle against global capitalism. Meet at Rude Park at 10:30am. This will be a low-risk event safe for all people regardless of immigration status. so play nice.
E X A C T T I M E S A N D L O C AT I O N S T B A .
S TAY T U N E D F O R M O R E I N F O

What is PPJPC old blood trying to stop?

What information was the PPJPC staff trying to keep from their members by thwarting a meeting? Below is the text of the meeting invite. Not only is the staff discouraging activism, it will act to prevent it.

“I just got back from Denver in meetings with both ARD and R68, and boy is there a lot to report! Good ideas, lots of young energy, opportunities for us to participate, alliances possibly to avoid, and some serious organizers with which to network. We’ve now got posters and fliers to distribute, and contacts for the various events. Not just for the DNC but for upcoming campaigns and actions. The August 2 national DON’T BOMB IRAN rally for starters.

We definitely want to get the word out and discuss what Colorado Springs can add to the message(s). There will be a march for the poor, a march for prisoners’ rights, antiwar, immigration, etc, and the schedules and permits are evolving everyday. Access to Denver is going to be very restricted. Do you want to be apprised about that?”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful… if only…

… the people who loudly proclaim they oppose Immigration, only on the basis of Respect for Law and Order and not out of racist fear and racist fearmongering, start opposing the United States Army exporting a Violent and Deadly form of illegal immigration, where they forcibly take over a nations economy, government, society…

And imprison, torture or kill anybody in the “Host” country who objects…

That violates many many laws, including and especially the Constitution of the United States, which is the standard by which ALL American laws, statutes and government actions are to be judged.

For instance, foreign treaties, according to the Constitution, are supposed to have as much full weight of law in American Jurisprudence as the Constitution itself.

Treaties like the Charters of the League of Nations and the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague conventions, the World Court, the international doctrines which provided the basis for prosecuting the Nazis for war crimes like the ones Mr Bush orders committed daily.

Risks?

US Gov does not condone torture
…..Risks Incorporated,
US firm,
………… has been doing US government torture training for instructing police in Leon, Mexico. This US company is now embroiled in a scandal in Mexico because one of its how to torture training clips was exposed to public scrutiny.
 
Next time you want to get tough on undocumented Mexican workers in the US, think a little bit about this US company and what it is doing in Mexico. It is a US firm training Mexican police on behalf of the American government on how to torture Mexican citizens. This government doesn’t practice torture, its employees do! That would be both the US and Mexican governments which use torture on people…

Community should learn to welcome immigrants

Imagine my surprise today, to open up The Gazette and see the Metro section of the paper with a column by opinion writer Barry Noreen titled “Community should learn to welcome immigrants.” I have read this paper for two years now and had not yet found any commentary by its opinion writers that I agreed with 100%. And here it was at last!

Noreen spotlighted the efforts of Megumi Nakamura and others in the community to befriend immigrants coming into the US, rather than to persecute them. Reminds me kind of the All- American holiday Thanksgiving even, where American immigrants made an annual meal to thank those that were kind and gave them assistance. For Megumi, everyday should be Thanksgiving American style, rather than persecution American style with ICE, which is the new name La Migra has given to itself.

One thing missing from the commentary though, was any thought that most immigrants are fleeing from countries that our own US government has Big Time helped mess up. Fact is, our own government is all over the world right now, messing up the lives of other peoples. It has been this way for decades now, too. So we should try to stop allowing government officials to do that so that maybe we would have less poor people entering our US Borders looking for a new life, for their families and their kids. And we should learn to welcome those that do enter meantime.

Barry Noreen, thank you for being brave and bucking the Far Right trend over at The Gazette. It was a brave thing to have written the column the way you did. Thanks.

A soulless candidate- Barack Obama

Anybody but McCain? Why? …McCain is liable to collapse The Empire and that would be a good thing. Still, it is rather bad politically to push for collapse of one’s own nation even if it might benefit the rest of the world. So we turn to Barack Obama and see what the man offers up to us for our possible votes? Would we be doing better to vote for Obama or cast a vote for one of the marginalized non-candidates instead? Or to not even ‘vote’?

OK, so we agree that McCain is a bad vote, right? To vote for McCain is to vote for Incompetent Imperialism, Incompetent Empire, to vote for an Empire without future. But what are we voting for if we vote for Barack Obama? Obama himself offers up the answer, but is it really the case, this ‘CHANGE’ he talks about?

We have some recent history to offer US some insight to this question. We have the 12 years of Reagan-Bush and the arrival of the Clinton team offering up the same mantra of ‘hope’. Clinton promised us something different than the Reagan Era but instead gave us only a minor and insipidly weak gap time between Reaganism and Dubya. In fact, he was prep for getting us to Dubya.

So along comes the new ‘Blacker’ version of Clintonism which is Barack Obama, and we have to have some parameters and guidelines to evaluate him with. These parameters must at least include race, sex, labor, immigration, health environment, and war. What is Obama planning for us in these areas of policy? What is this ‘CHANGE’ he talks about? Sadly, he only seems to be talking changing the incompetence level of the Dubya clique in governing The Empire.

Of the issues noted above, the question of war is by far the most dominant and important one. Bush gave us war, McCain is a continuation of that, but is Obama a negation of what the other 2 stand for concerning war and peace? Or is Barack Obama a soulless candidate who promises change, yet will do the exact same imperialist aggressions in a stealth manner?

The key to evaluating Barack Obama’s positions of war and peace can be summed up in the name of one country- IRAN. Sadly, the news is bad. Barack Obama has clearly signed himself and the Democratic Party as a whole on to a planned war with this country Iran. He has signed himself up to an extension of the Iraq war into yet more neighboring lands!

Let’s face it, the time to speak out against this planned US-Israeli aggression is now, not tomorrow. Barack Obama has done quite the opposite though. Barack Obama has made it entirely clear that he supports going to war with Iran and Syria, and thereby spreading even further the bloodshed to inside Lebanon, too.

He is a man without soul, a liar and a con, when he talks about bringing us a change from Bush’s foreign policy. He now leads the element of the Democratic Party that has totally acquiesced to the neo-con game plan. And they want war with Iran.

What we will get with Barack Obama, is a new administration with an improved international public image, that will then carry out the Dick Cheney agenda in the Middle East. This is just not a good vote or a good way to spend one’s activist energies, spreading the word to vote for such a soulless creature. We will get more war.

Sad to say, that leaves us with voting for one foe the marginalized candidates (Nader, McKinney, etc.), or just not voting in an election rigged from the beginning to not give us any real choices. We do not have a functioning democracy in the US. We do not have a democracy unless the people can have a voice in the government, and not just the corporate world running the entire show.

Barack Obama is a dead end. Or worse yet, like Clinton before, Obama is just a further bridge to increase the stranglehold of the Far Right on our nation’s affairs. He will do nothing to breakdown the Right’s total current control over power in America. Vote for him at your own risk then. Vote for him if you are into self-delusion?

The Republican crowd votes for what they want and get it. The Democratic party voters seem to doom themselves to always chasing a pot of gold to be found at the end of a delusional rainbow. What is to be gained by this?

Zebulon Pike was an Illegal Alien (In the No Hater Zone)

posted this on Craigslist… Date: 2008-05-25, 1:31AM MDT

Just to remind people, since the Old Colorado City Territory Days celebration of colonialism and Imperialism is going on…

Young Lieutenant Pike, and his merry crew of saboteurs, spies and setup crew for the eventual Yanqui invasion, came to Colorado when it was SPANISH territory. Not that the Spanish had actually asked permission when they took over, but hey, according to the “Well, Illegal Immigration is against the Law, so the Immigrants are Felons” argument should apply equally, yes?

Pike and his crew encountered troops (the Spanish version of I.C.E., Da Fuzz, cops, whatever, but they had at least paper title to be here, and Pike didn’t) and did what any Honest, True, Red Blooded American Officer and Gentleman would do… he lied his ass off.

Said he was lost. Never mind the surveying equipments, wagonload of freshly drawn and annotated MAPS, and Native guides who knew damned well which invading force was occupying the Springs at the time. Heavens no, it’s not like a Mapping Expedition (into a foreign country no less) could possibly know where in Hell they’re located.

I wrote this just to remind all you sissy ass, titty baby fearful wannabe terrorists who have been crying and bitching and snivelling about somebody actually having a darker complexion or speaking with an accent, or in a different language, actually sharing YOUR personal universe, of which, no doubt, you racist Hate Freaks own every cubic inch…

To remind you that your own titty-baby whining arguments can be used against you as well.

If you want to live in America, learn the damn language… in this area the languages are Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Lakota, Uintah and Athapascan (Apache and Navajo), and those are just the largest language groups.

You freaks who want to impose “English ONLY” are also insisting that we of the Native Persuasion not be allowed to speak OUR languages, and even in our own homes.

Your leaders actually do say exactly that. Because (so they claim) speaking in a non-English “foreign” language like Cherokee would “hold the children back when they go to school and later when they join the Slave Labor Forces”

I should clarify that, Cherokee isn’t actually a language, it’s a dialect of Muskogeean.

Those of you who cry and snivel the longest and most fervently about “wetbacks” not speaking English well, (I’ve noticed) don’t bother to learn to actually read and write or even speak English FLUENTLY yourselves… and it’s the only language you ever learned.

I realize that you sissies will spend hours of your time debating a phantom issue, you’re very good at that game. I’m personally not going to even read your insignificant ignorant replies to this post. You’ll be screaming (figuratively speaking), Ranting, insulting, calling me a LiberalIntellectualCommiePinkoNiggerLovingFagJewBoy or whatever, and either challenging me to a fist fight (I would win) or threatening to kill me and my entire family.

I’m used to such childish threats and tantrums.

Get over it.

Location: In the No Hater Zone
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 694154329

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Demonstrate Saturday to remove racist El Paso County Commissioner, Douglas Bruce, from office

We have some real losers holding reigns of power in Colorado. We are talking people like racists Tom Tancredo, Colorado Congressman from the 6th District centered by nearby pueblito, Castle Rock, and local yokel racist, Douglas Bruce, El Paso County Commissioner and Colorado State Congressperson both.

Both these men are totally unfit for office, even though one of them actually had the temerity to run for President of the US! Tomorrow is your chance to demonstrate against these two racist clowns, and to demand that they both be censured and removed from the offices they hold.

Tom Tancredo, you shouldn’t get a free pass tomorrow either, though it is the toad, Douglas Bruce, that is the immediate target of the demonstration. In fact, you are the ignorant peasant that gives fuel to the other Colorado dimwit, Don Bruce, who is actually a transplant (from Southern California), another Right Wing loser region of our country, like our own Colorado Springs.

Actually, I happen to be a transplant myself from yet another loser Right Wing idiot center of the US, called the not so great State of Texas. I have nothing against immigrants from other parts of the Americas at all, You Right Wing Bastard pigs! (Oh sorry, I’m not behaving very well, Dear Aryan brothers.)

What sparked the call for a demonstration, were the most recent anti-immigrant comments of the not so-beloved El Paso County Commissioner, Senor Bruce, who got his rocks off calling immigrants from Latin America illiterate peasants. Douglas Bruce is a long time slum lord, who actually likes to abuse immigrants for profit by renting sub standard housing to these hard workers from other lands.

I really can’t stand these racist and hateful bullies. I will be there at Acacia Park tomorrow on Saturday at 3 PM. Hope to see you there, Paisanos. Just say No to racist meatheads being allowed to stay in political office. Deport them out of their seats of power, where they can only do injustice to others.

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.

Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:

On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.

I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!

With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.

Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!

In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.

In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.

As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.

And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.

To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:

Hands off Haiti!

Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!

And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.

We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.

I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!

Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.

Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions

Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.

Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.

In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.

Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.

What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?

First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.

All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)

The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.

Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.

I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.

Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.

We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.

In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.

I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.

PROTESTCOLORADO targets the 2008 Colorado State Democratic Convention

The City of Colorado Springs has interesting plans for you if you feel inclined to raise a citizen’s voice at the 2008 State Democratic Convention to be held May 16-17 at the World Arena. The city is hosting a public forum or two, scheduled to run at the same time as the convention, for the public to vent its concerns without having to disrupt the Democratic Party activities. Possible demonstration areas for the 2008 Democratic State Convention As for protest, they are hoping to see no more than the 2005 Bush visit demo which police contained to the west side of Venetucci Boulevard. This time however, there will be no presidential secret service prerogative to commandeer public property.
 
You may be excited about Obama, but has he promised anything substantive on issues dear to you? Come let the Democrats know what you think of their centrism –when it leaves unresolved immigration, economy, labor, environment, health care and war. Join the fun on Friday evening, May 16, as the delegates arrive, and all day Saturday May 17.
No permits are needed. Check PROTEST COLORADO for updates on logistics. Make this Representative Democracy a Participatory Democracy!

Stop plans for ICE detention in Denver

OPPOSE the construction of a new immigrant detention center in Aurora!
Colorado Progressive Coalition office, 1600 Downing St. Suite 210
Saturday, March 1 11:00 a.m.

The GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest private prison corporations wants to build a new 1,100 bed immigrant holding facility in Aurora. The Aurora Planning Commission will vote on the proposal to build this facility March 12.

If you would like to help stop this facility from being built:

1. Contact Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition with your name and/or organization to sign on to the attached petition. Contact: chandrarusso-at-gmail.com

2. Contact the Planning Commission directly, along with the Mayor and Aurora City Council, and tell them to oppose the detention center. Their email addresses: schapel-at-auroragov.org, citycouncil-at-auroragov.org, etaur-at-auroragov.org, and rrpeters-at-auroragov.org

3. Personalize and print the petition as a letter to be sent to: Planning Commission Members, Aurora Mayor and City Council c/o Susan Chapel, 15151 E. Alameda Parkway, 2nd floor, Aurora, CO 80012

4. Join us on Saturday, March 1 at 11 a.m. at the Colorado Progressive Coalition, 1600 Downing St. We will meet to review strategy, talk about how to engage safely and respectfully. We will then drive out to Aurora to flyer. If you are unable to make it to this event but know others that might, please forward this message to them.

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Dear Planning Commission Members,

As you may know, the GEO Group, a billion dollar corporation, wants to build a new 1,100 bed immigrant holding facility in Aurora. This facility will hurt our community and lead to great suffering while putting millions of tax dollars into the pockets of a destructive corporation.

We strongly urge you to OPPOSE the construction of a new immigrant detention center in Aurora when it comes up for hearing on March 12.

Here is why:

Detention hurts asylum seekers and other victims of torture and trauma Torture survivors, victims of trafficking, and other vulnerable groups can be detained for months or even years, further aggravating their isolation, depression, and other mental health problems associated with the horrors they have experienced.

Conditions in detention are atrocious Detention centers across the country have prevented men, women and children access to phones and food. Several people held in immigration detention have died because they did not receive basic medical care. The GEO Group was forced to close detention centers after the US Justice Department sued for “abuse and neglect,” “life threatening conditions,” and sexual assault of children.

Private prisons profit off of misery GEO is expecting $30 million a year in profits for its new Aurora facility. GEO has a vested interest in having sufficient men, women and children to fill its beds. To GEO, they’re not people, they’re profits- at $95 per person per day. To this end, the GEO group has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to ensure elected officials push for policies that benefit GEO- more detentions nation-wide.

A detention center can become a poorly run state or federal prison almost overnight The GEO Group has not been granted an immigration contract for its proposed Aurora facility, meaning it could be used as a prison. Private prisons have been shown to cut corners, have inadequate staffing levels and receive little government oversight.

As decision makers for Aurora, we trust you will make choices that strengthen our communities and enhance our way of life. We believe you will support development that enriches our neighborhoods and maintains our values.

Building one of the country’s largest immigration detention center in Aurora does neither of these things. It is an affront to communities, families, workers and tax-payers. We trust you will not allow this detention center to be built.