I don't know what the plan is for the future of the Obama-Biden Web Site....I think it should be kept going, just as I think the huge grassroots movement Barack built should be kept going. After all, four years is a short time and its not too early to be thinking about reelection!
Tim & Joyce Wheeler
Latinos Cheer Clinton’s Call “Elect Obama President”
By Tim Wheeler
Denver—More than 1,000 Latino delegates and guests to the Democratic National Convention here stood and cheered as Hillary Rodham Clinton urged them to unite and help elect Barack Obama president on Nov. 4.
“I came here to say ‘Thank you!’” Clinton said in her speech to a meeting of the Hispanic Caucus in a ballroom of the Colorado Convention Center . She thanked the crowd for working tirelessly on her behalf during the hard-fought primaries.
Then she added, “We came here to pledge our support for the next President of the United States, Barack Obama….I know with all my heart we cannot afford four more years of failed Republican policies. On any issue that matters to you, we must have a Democratic president… I want you to work as hard to make Barack Obama the next president as you worked for me.” The crowd erupted in deafening cheers.
The rousing display of unity came amid a media drumbeat that “bitter” Clinton supporters, especially Latinos, plan to sit out the presidential election.
Clinton delivered the same message of unity when she spoke to the DNC Tuesday, only more so. A day later, she called for a suspension of the balloting and the unanimous nomination of Obama for president during the convention..
Colorado ’s Democratic Senator Ken Salazar welcomed the Caucus. “I am 100 percent behind Barack Obama,” he said citing Obama’s pledge to reverse “the most failed foreign policy in the history of the United States . What has George W. Bush done to our world?” Salazar demanded, “Is America safer today than it was eight years ago?” The crowd roared, “No!”
Cuban-American Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said the convention opens “on the edge of the Rockies and the edge of history.” The nation went thirty years without a Latino in the U.S. Senate after Sen. Joseph Montoya (D-NM) left office in 1977, he said. Now, hundreds of Latinos hold elective office and people of Latin American descent have won gains in all walks of life. Henry Cejudo, “son of an undocumented immigrant” has just won a Gold Medal in wrestling at the Olympics, he said.
Menendez branded as intolerable the raids on jobsites and mass deportations of undocumented workers. “Let us tell everyone in this election season that we are not second class citizens,” he thundered.” This year we have a transformational opportunity… More than 17 million Latinos are eligible to vote,” he said.
He decried the Latino jobless rate, highest of any sector of the population; with Latinos also the highest percentage who lack health insurance. ““I believe the road to the White House in this election comes through our communities. We must make Barack Obama the next President of the United States .”
Bridgette Davila, a professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University was wearing a tee shirt she designed with the word, “Obamanos” stenciled on the front and the words “Latinos, Unidos por Obama” (Latinos Unite for Obama). “I think Obama is a leader for the 21st Century,” she told the World. “His policies are going to do better not only for America in general but especially for Latinos: healthcare, the economy, education. His experience as a community organizer was really compelling to me because that is what I do.”
She praised Clinton ’s speech. “I think she was very gracious and politically astute. It is everything I would have expected from a woman of her stature.”
Women’s Message at the DNC: “Keep Going! Never Go Back!”
DENVER—Women were a leading force during the Democratic Party’s 2008 convention (DNC), here, inspired largely by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s history-making presidential bid in which she garnered 18 million votes. She delivered a powerful appeal for her supporters to rally to elect Barack Obama president and a House and Senate friendly to the cause of women’s equality.
Awilda Marquez, a Clinton delegate from Denver was at the head of the march for immigrant rights that began from Denver’s majority Latino west side the last day of the convention. Initially, she said, she could not bring herself to shift her support to Obama. But during Clinton’s speech “I heard her message that it was time to move on. I leaned over and I grabbed one of those unity signs and I waved it.” Now she is wearing a pin on her vest that reads, “Hillary supports Obama and so do I”
Marquez, Director of Excise and Licensing for the City of Denver told me, “I found the convention absolutely exciting and inspiring. This election could change the future of our country.”
Women were visible at every level with 51 percent of the delegates women of all races and national background. They made their voices heard in over a dozen speeches. Michelle Obama pointed out in her convention speech that they were meeting during the 88th anniversary week of women’s suffrage and the 45th anniversary week of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
She stressed her working class roots, daughter of a blue collar worker in a Chicago water filtration plant who was stricken with multiple sclerosis in his early thirties. She said she fell in love with Barack Obama watching him toil as a community organizer on Chcago’s South Side to help steelworkers who lost their jobs when the steel mills shut down. Delegates wept openly as she spoke.
Hillary Clinton demolished Republican hopes of exploiting Democratic splits to bolster John McCain’s faltering campaign. “No way! No how! No McCain!” Clinton thundered. “Barack Obama is my candidate and he must be president.”
She thanked the “sisterhood of the pantsuit” for helping muster the 18 million votes she garnered in her drive for the presidency. She paid tribute to one of her most stalwart supporters, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio who died of an aneurism just days before the convention opened.
Her goal, she said, was “to fight for an America defined by deep and meaningful equality from civil rights to labor rights, from women’s rights to gay rights, from ending discrimination to promoting unionization.”
She added, “I’m a United States Senator because in 1848, a group of courageous women and a few brave men gathered in Seneca Falls, New York…the first convention on women’s rights in our history.” It took another 72 years to win women’s suffrage.
Added Clinton, “And on that path to freedom, Harriet Tubman had one piece advice, ‘If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they’re shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going.”
Lily Ledbetter of Alabama told the convention of learning decades after she went to work for Goodyear, that the company was paying her far less than the men beside her doing the same work. The ”Bush” Supreme Court rejected her lawsuit seeking restitution. “Equal pay for equal work is a fundamental American principle,” she said. “We need leaders in this country who will fight for it.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), just before the convention, pushed through the House her “Paycheck Fairness Act” a measure to guarantee equal pay for equal work. DeLauro told convention delegates that “Barack Obama was right there, applauding the bill’s passage.” But McCain, she said, “continues to say he doesn’t believe there is a wage gap. But what would you expect from a man who cannot keep track of how many houses he owns?”
The Women’s Caucus convened a session on the theme, “Women Making and Shaping History: Every Woman Counts.” Blue tambourines were handed out celebrating the 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. The nearly 2,000 women in the crowd jingled the tambourines and cheered every call for a massive women’s vote Nov. 4 to elect Obama.
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood and daughter of the late Ann Richards, first woman governor of Texas said Obama has been a 100 percent defender of women’s rights. John McCain, she said, “has voted 125 times on the wrong side of women’s health issues” including against funding family planning and comprehensive sex education.
“Five men in black robes don’t know better than women what’s best for their health care,” she said. “My mother would have said that a woman voting for John McCain would be like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.”
Denver March Urges Dems to Back Immigrant Rights
DENVER—Thousands of protesters marched through Mile High City Aug. 28 chanting “Immigrant rights are human rights” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, John McCain has got to go!”
They carried hundreds of signs and banners supporting Barack Obama for president and denouncing the dragnet arrests, criminalization and deportation of undocumented immigrant workers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The march and rally was sponsored by the “We Are America DNC March & Rally For Immigrant Rights,” a broad coalition of labor, religious organizations and other groups working for immigrant rights.
The crowd assembled at a park on Denver’s majority Mexican American west side and marched on a freeway to Lincoln Park downtown with hundreds of motorists honking their horns and flashing the victory sign in sympathy.
The march came on the last day of the Democratic National Convention; among the marchers were DNC delegates like former Denver Mayor Federico Pena who walked in the vanguard of the vast crowd. “It’s important that all of us as Americans defend the rights of immigrant workers,” he told me. “They have come here to work and sustain their families and the economy.”
The next president, and the Congress, he added, “must pass comprehensive immigration reform so people can come out of the shadows. Immigrants are coming to our country and making contributions today just as they did for the past two centuries.”
The We Are America platform urged the DNC to support “just and fair immigration reform,” to stop the criminalization of immigrants; pass the “Dream Act” that permits children of undocumented families to attend college; to stop building walls on the U.SD.-Mexican border; stop the “deaths in the desert” and end the ICE raids.
Marlinda Mendoza , a Denver resident, pushed a stroller carrying two of her five children. “We’re all equal. We need the same rights as everyone else,” she told me. “We’re hard workers. We don’t deserve the laws that are in force today that treat workers like criminals. A lot of my family has been affected by these raids. Children come home from school and their parents are gone, arrested and deported.”
The Agape International Spiritual Center & Choir, a multiracial singing group based in Culver City, CA. sang the opening night of the DNC. They joined the immigrant rights march singing “The Morning Chant.” Choir Director, Rev. Carolyn Wilkin, told me. “We’re sending a message of love, peace and harmony in the world. We are a multicultural, diverse, spiritual organization and we know we are all united.”
“Viva Obama” with several chapters from Oakland to San Diego walked behind their banner. Vicente Rodriguez said “We like Obama a lot better than McCain. McCain backed off saying that he supports immigration reform. He said ‘Security comes first, comprehensive immigration reform second.’ But we know that issues left to ‘second’ never get done.”
He sharply assailed the ICE raids. “They are terrorizing communities, not only the undocumented but the documented as well. These raids are taking away the breadwinners of families leaving children behind who are U.S. citizens without food and shelter. This is nothing but terrorism.”
Cesar Munoz, a Spanish language teacher at Colorado Mountain College was wearing a mock-German army uniform with the insignia of the Nazi SS on the collar and the initials “ICE” on the cap. “These ICE raids are a violation of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” he said. “They are holding people at detention centers. When you are locked up, you lose your human rights.” Just then a TV crew turned its camera on him. Munoz clicked his heels and his arm shot up in a “Seig heil” salute.
Ivonn Cruz was holding a sign “Nuestra voz es nuestra voto!” She too was marching with her children. “I am a member of Local 14 of Unite-HERE,” she explained to me. “I work at the Hyatt Regency, a union hotal in Denver.” She said her sign reflects “that a lot of Latinos are now registered to vote. We broke records. We will make a difference in this election. The people are ready for change. I think Obama is the right person to lead the country.”
McCain’s VP Choice Greeted With Disbelief
John McCain’s choice of Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate stirred disbelief and sharp opposition from women’s organizations, the labor movement, and environmental groups.
Ivan Frishberg, Political Director of Environment America said “Big Oil extended its reach into McCain’s campaign” with his selection of Palin. “Palin has sided with Big Oil over endangered species and has promoted drilling off of America’s coasts and in Alaska’s wilderness.”
Based on her recent statements, “she would have no problems filling Dick Cheney’s shoes with advocacy for Big Oil, dismissal of alternative energy sources and the stunning admission that she does not believe global warming is man-made.”
Frishberg told me in a phone interview that the McCain campaign is white-washing Palin’s record, claiming she supports “renewable energy.” “But that is not at all the Palin we found in the record when we researched her background,” he said. “She has close links with Big Oil, a record of opposition to renewable energy,” he said. She does not believe burning of fossil fuels is a cause of global warming even though it is melting the permafrost, glaciers, and sea ice in her own state. She opposed designation of the Polar bear as aa threatened specie and flaunts a grizzley bear rug in her office, another endangered specie.
Palin’s husband, Todd Palin, is a production manager for British Petroleum, one of the largest oil producers in Alaska’s North Slope. When she was sworn in as Governor, he took a brief leave to avoid conflict of interests. But now he is back in his old job. The Governor claimed her husband is a “blue collar” employee, a member of the United Steelworkers (USWA).
But he has attended management-level sessions where Palin’s drive to re-write Alaska’s Petroleum Tax was discussed as well as Palin’s push for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska. She rammed through a $500 million taxpayer subsidy for the construction of the gas pipeline.
United Steelworkers (USWA) President, Leo Gerard, said Todd Palin’s membership in the USWA “does not automatically qualify her for an on-the-job training program to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.” And her husband’s union membership, Gerard added, “does nothing to absolve Sen. McCain of his long history of anti-union sentiment and anti-worker actions” including opposition to worker’s collective bargaining rights, privatization of Social Security and Medicare and support for job-destroying trade deals like NAFTA.
David Lawrence, a 25-year resident of Anchorage active in the health care movement said his first reaction to the Palin nomination was that the Republicans “must be desperate.” He added, “Palin is ignorant of national, international and even Alaska state issues.” Palin favors privatizing Medicare, Social Security, and public education, he said.
Mayor of a town of 8,000, she ran for Governor on a promise of transparency and openness, Lawrence said. “But she is notorious for breaking appointments and speaking engagements. She has walled herself off from everyone except a narrow little clique that surrounds her.”
The Alaska legislature is investigating Palin for firing the State Public Safety Commissioner (SPSC) with whom she met only once in her 20 months in office. She fired the SPSC because he had refused to terminate an Alaska State Trooper who had been her brother-in-law. Using her office to inflict personal revenge is an abuse of power. She also fired the Commissioner of Health and Social Services with whom she also met only once.
Palin has no time for these state officials but her door is wide open to the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). According to AIP Chairperson, Lynette Clark, Palin was a member of the AIP in the 1990s and attended AIP’s 1994 convention.
She recorded a message welcoming AIP members to the their 2008 convention in Fairbanks praising the Party for its “role in Alaska politics.”
The AIP was founded by the late Joe Vogler who once boasted, “I am a Alaskan not an American….I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has linked the AIP to the “League of the South,” a rabidly white supremacist outfit that seeks to outlaw interracial marriage and wants to “reestablish the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions.” AIP attended the “First North American Secessionist Convention” in 2007 in Vermont and a second convention of the group this year in Tennessee.
Los Angeles free lance writer, Larry Madill, writing in the online Daily Kos asks, “Why after the AIP publicly associated itself with known white supremacist organizations did Sarah Palin record the greetings for AIP’s convention” earlier this year?
McCain hoped that naming Palin would attract women who voted for Hillary Clinton. But most women’s organizations were sharply critical. Nancy Keenan, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League and Pro-Choice America said the McCain-Palin ticket consists of “two anti-choice extremists who will push a rigid, anti-choice agenda….Palin is not just anti-choice. She’s opposed to abortions even in cases of rape and incest.”
Keenan hailed Democrat Barack Obama’s unequivocal defense of women’s reproductive rights. She urged an all-out campaign “to reach hundreds of thousands of independent and Republican pro-choice women” to win their votes for Obama.
Columbia, S.C.- Its primary election day here in South
Carolina and the army of volunteers who have flooded
into the state to campaign for Barack Obama have
already left the YMCA and fanned out to polling places
across this city.
It is chilly and threatening rain but the media is
predicting a record voter turnout of people fired up
by Obama's message of hope. I rode down from Baltimore
on a bus with 40 other volunteers. It
was chartered by three members of the Maryland General
Assembly who have kept us working diligently since we
arrrived. Nights we sleep on the gymnasium floor of
the Y, strewn with mostly youthful volunteers from as
far away as California. Early this morning two more
busloads arrived from Washington, D.C.
I have been canvassing with a friend, Rev. Pierre Williams, a United Methodist minister in Baltimore. We got a vivid feel for just how deeply Obama's
message is resonating here going door-to-door in a working
class neighborhood yesterday. Sherman Stewart,
employed as a maintenance worker at the Governor's
Mansion here in the state capital told us, "I've been
listening to all the candidates and I feel that Barack
Obama is the one who can turn this country around.
Everyone is feeling the insecurity from the way the
economy is going. Veterans of the Iraq war are coming
home and finding out their credit is all messed up,
their health care is messed up. We're spending
billions upon billions over there in Iraq, preaching
democracy to the world, and we have millions of
children here who are hungry and without health care.
I'm getting ready to retire and there are so many
people losing their pensions, or can't afford their
medicine."
Richard Edwards came walking by. He is a student at
Midlands Technical College and a U.S. Navy veteran. He
deplored former President Bill Clinton's divisive
statements here in South Carolina such as his dismissive statement that
Obama's message of hope is a "fairy tale," implying
that the Illinois Senator is too young and
inexperienced to be president. "I think Clinton's
statement really affected Black voters," he told me. "It put the Black community in a negative
light. Obama is trying to unite people of all races
and backgrounds, young and old, men and weomen.
Clinton's statement has divided South Carolina. We
don't need that here. I believe Barack is going to win
but by a narrower margin. I hope Barack sticks to his
message, positive change, hope, bringing us together,
Black, white independent, even Republicans."
