As part of the Bring Them Home Now Tour, which is cris-crossing the country on the way to the huge September 24 march for peace in Washington, DC, there will be a show at the ArtsCenter on Friday:
Relief Not War Fundraiser with Medea Benjamin, “The Lidsâ€Â, and Cakalak Thunder Drum corps.
Friday, September 16, 8:00 pm, Carrboro Arts CenterThe NC Peace & Justice Coalition is Holding a “Relief Not War†Fundraiser, on Friday September 16 at 8:00 pm. The event features performers, speakers, and musicians. Headlined by Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder of Code Pink, performers include spoken word phenomenon Dasan Ahanu, Carrboro cover band “The Lidsâ€Â, Greensboro's “Cakalak Thunder Drum Corpsâ€Â, and Emerson Waldorf Middle School's Flag Corps and Fire Twirlers. We will show excerpts from the Empowerment Project's newly released film, “Soldiers Speak Outâ€Â, show in Fayetteville during the March 19 demonstration.
“Relief Not War†is at the Carrboro Arts Center on 300-G East Main Street, on Friday September 16, 8:00 pm. Tickets are $12, $5 for students, On Sale Now at www.artscenterlive.org.
There are also tons of other events with Cindy Sheehan and other activists in the Triangle and Fayetteville all week, including an anti-war march in Durham on Saturday starting at noon at Brightleaf Square. For more info, visit www.ncpeacejustice.org
Issues:
Comments
By the way if you are going
By the way if you are going to DC on September 24, Internationalist is organizing buses:
As we address this illegal &
As we address this illegal & obscene war, I think it is important to keep three things in mind:
1) The majority of Americans wants the troops out of Iraq.
2) The Democratic Party solidly supports the war.
3) It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that there is no alternative to trying to change the Democratic Party from within, if massive activist energy is absorbed by efforts to change the Democratic Party from within.
Medea Benjamin is one of the
Medea Benjamin is one of the real heroes and stalwarts of the left of recent years. It's a great opportunity Friday night to hear her and to support local peace activism as well.
BTW, it's great to see the Emerson Waldorf students involved in this. Their high-school students didn't get much attention last spring for the semester-long fundraising drive they held to support Architects for Humanity's tsunami relief efforts.
I'm tired of being told that
I'm tired of being told that I must choose the lesser of two evils. It's bad logic (false dilemma; "Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both" --Tryon Edwards).
Is anyone interested in starting a Progressive Party here in NC? Has this been attempted before?
These questions, I think, are related to this post.
It's been done before. Is this the time to do it? Or as my daughter likes to ask on long road trips: Are we there yet?
http://www.progressiveparty.org/about/
More good stuff on
More good stuff on Saturday:
As if by way of reply to
As if by way of reply to David Marshall's comment, this just came in from the Common Sense Foundation:
Well, that answers my
Well, that answers my question pretty clearly. Is anyone other than me outraged?
I've heard the argument against Democratic Party secession already too many times: that the Republicans dominate because there's little division among their ranks, while Democrats find it hard to keep a core unity; therefore, divided we fall.
Welcome to the politics of default. What perfect rationalizing for avoiding our rights as citizens in determining our future! Doesn't there come a time when a shake-up of politics as usual results in some positive outcome.
I won't speak on this anymore on this blog because it's off-subject and because my disgust for party politics has reached a saturation point.
We get what we deserve when we fail to act.
Is anyone other than me
Is anyone other than me outraged?
Duh! Where have you been, David? :-) Some of us have been outraged so long we can't remember what contentment feels like. Why do you think we're investing our energy in LOCAL change?
Seriously, if you want to get involved in these issues http://www.democracy-nc.org is a great place to start.
Yep, I'm new to the game,
Yep, I'm new to the game, but I'm catching up fast.
Mark--What evidence do you
Mark--What evidence do you have that most Americans want to leave Iraq? Most polls I've seen are like this one, from ABC in June:
"As President Bush prepares to address the nation about Iraq tonight, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that most Americans do not believe the administration's claims that impressive gains are being made against the insurgency, but a clear majority is willing to keep U.S. forces there for an extended time to stabilize the country.
The survey found that only one in eight Americans currently favors an immediate pullout of U.S. forces, while a solid majority continues to agree with Bush that the United States must remain in Iraq until civil order is restored -- a goal that most of those surveyed acknowledge is, at best, several years away."
Perhaps the numbers have improved a little since Cindy Sheehan's protest, but surely not by the 35% or so necessary to constitute a majority.
Two points need to be made--the anti-war movement has a lot of work to do to convince the American public of the need to get out of Iraq.
Secondly, the American political system makes it virtually impossible to have a functioning third party at the national level. Dissent is likely to be channeled through the Democrats or Republicans, neither of which is a political party in the European sense--they are more just channels into the government broadly associated with the right or left. Both Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich held anti-war positions of one sort or another (the latter much tougher than the former) and neither managed to get much traction in the primaries, among potentially sympathetic Democratic voters. Had they broke with the Democrats, they probably would have done even worse than Nader's dismal 2.7% in 2000.