From The Half-Red House

The police in Minneapolis have been raiding places where journalists and documentarians preparing for the Republican National Convention are staying, handcuffing people and rifling through computer files. Documents and warrants obtained by the attorneys for the journalists imply that the police consider the nonviolent protesters and journalists to be armed terrorists. Listen to this report from KPFA reporter Brian Edwards-Tiekert  . (http://157.22.130.3/news/stories/brian_on_police_raids.mp3)

Newspeople are certainly not armed terrorists, but they have the potential to publicize the scandalous facts about the way our political system is operating and the way our police forces have become enforcers of official opinion. The brutality in Denver, sanctioned by the Democratic Party to a  greater or lesser extent, may prove to be “small potatoes” compared to what will happen in Minneapolis with the tacit or not-so-tacit support of the Republican Party. I urge you to take every opportunity to keep informed on this anti-democratic activity surrounding the convention and not get caught up in the pageant the Republicans will provide via the mainstream media this week. Check back with Pacifica’s election411.org frequently and listen to/watch Democracy Now each day, starting Monday

John McCain’s choice of a female governor as a running mate is symbolically significant, even though the politics she espouses are antediluvian and anti-woman. It shows that McCain’s advisors know how important female voters will be in this election. My MySpace friend, local musician Abbie Barrett said yesterday that she “can tell the difference between two women. Glass ceilings shouldn’t be broken this way.” MoveOn.org  has produced an excellent outline of Sarah Palin’s views, that should give any Hillary Clinton supporter all the reason she/he needs to continue to oppose the McCain-Palin ticket vigorously. In the near future, you should be able to download (from New Hampshire Public Radio) and listen to an excellent lecture on why women matter (politically and in other ways) by Lisa Witter, “The Not-So-Secret Secret To Changing The World: How Women Can Lead The Way” given at the Monadnock Lyceum last week.

The latest issue of Toward Freedom Magazine features this video by Naomi Klein in which she says that progressives must not wait until after the election to push for complete US withdrawal from Iraq, real economic preferences for working people, preservation of the bill-of-rights, and meaningful action for solar/wind energy, because the powerful well-heeled lobbies will not wait to steer a new Obama administration away from progressive goals.

In a recent post, I suggested that we all need to be prepared to go into high gear after the election, but Klein states unequivocally that we can’t just take a pause in progressive activism for the election. She understands that the Clinton administration started off of a regressive footing (budget cuts, NAFTA, welfare “reform”..) because the reasonably progressive positions taken by Clinton during the campaign were eroded by influence from the financial services industry and other powerful lobbies and the progressives were not prepared to lobby aggressively during the transition period. The video is well worth watching.

This issue of Toward Freedom also features some gripping coverage of the effects of Global Warming (now, not in some undefined future) on the Inuit peoples who still rely on subsistence hunting to some extent.

Viewing this video of (unmarked?) Denver policemen brutally attacking one Code Pink demonstrator, a small woman, and roughly arresting another simply for speaking her mind, has left me with the impression that the parallels between the Democratic National Convention of 1968 and that of 2008 are not at all far fetched. Last night, 10,000 people marched on the convention center to demand fair health care treatment of Veterans, an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage caused by the US invasion. This report from Pacifica
indicates that the spokespeople for Iraq Veterans Against the War got a promise from Obama’s people that they would get a hearing. It does not say how many people were arrested or beaten during the unauthorized march and its aftermath. The Democratic Party is a tacit partner in the repressive and brutal way the “security” arrangements for the convention have been implemented.

The more important parallel with 1968 is that the rifts within the Democratic party that were brought about by the police brutality and inability to agree on a peace/justice platform caused the party to lose the election. I have met Joe Biden and he is a thoughtful and pleasant man to talk with, but I hadn’t realized how many stands he has taken that are diametrically opposed to mine. Juxtaposed with the announcement of Obama’s choice of Biden, I happened to hear a DLC spokesperson on the radio saying that we need to build more nuclear plants. With Biden in place, I suspect the DLC will dominate party politics in the upcoming election and bad policies (economic, social and foreign) will result if the Democrats win. Of course, worse policies, disastrous policies, will result if the Republicans win, so we’ve got to back the Democrats and then, to quote Mother Jones out of context, get out in the streets to “fight like hell for the living”, whichever dinosaur wins this battle of the titans. I really really wish I could be voting Green or voting for Dennis Kucinich, (who incidentally gave a speech brimming with sensible calls to action).

Frances “Aunt Fannie” Gage’s 19th century song One Hundred Years Hence, made popular by the Hutchinson Family Singers, said:

Actually, we a little behind in living up top these prophecies

Of course we no longer have corrupt money-grubbing  politicians who mix religion with politics, and you have only to take a look at our late-lamented prison system and our well-educated population to verify the truth of some of the predictions, but why, in the age of the internet and instantaneous global communication, do we still have conventions?!

Much pompous posturing and symbolism will be seen at this week’s Democratic Party convention, and most of it will be piped straight to our ears and brains by the mainstream media (including NPR and PBS). Nevertheless, there are life-or-death issues being discussed in the background at these conventions, and some of that discussion is happenning in the “protest cages” outside their walls. So where do you go to hear the important stuff? I’d start with the Pacifica Network’s election411.org  website. Pacifica was founded by a WWI conscientious objector to war, and it still retains a little of the democratic, internationalist and pacifist orientation that he gave it. Global Exchange
will be focussing on the life-or-death decisions on energy and global warming. Code Pink will be highlighting the war and peace issues. This blog will clue you in to one of the reasons why Joe Biden is not the friend of a free and open internet and is a great friend of media giants bent on consolidating their media monopolies.

Anyway, if you are bored or unstisfied with teh speechifying that will be going on this week, you have some other places to turn. And Democracy Now will help to sum it up for you if you don’t have the time to ferrett out the truth single-handed.