'Next Up, Comprehensive Immigration Reform' at the Center for American Progress - Part 2

cross-posted from Sum of Change

--Latinos' Political Support Over the Last Decade

Following up on our post from Monday, I'd like to bring you a few more clips from a panel entitled 'Next Up, Comprehensive Immigration Reform' at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. This took place in late January, but it operated under the assumption that health care reform would actually pass (at some point and the belief that once it did pass, immigration reform must be the next major issue addressed. In last Monday's post our panelists discussed what the situation with a reform bill is currently and what we can expect the next steps in the effort will be.  The videos in this post, however, will add context to what is going on off the hill and how the efforts on and off the hill relate.

Though America's immigration laws (obviously) affect people from nations all around the world, the population most affected by them in America are those from Latin America.  So in the video above, Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga, the Founder and Editor of Daily Kos, goes into the how Latinos have formed their political affiliations over the last decade. Then in the first video below, María Elena Durazo, the Executive Secretary-Treasurer of The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and Andrea Nill, an Immigration Blogger and Researcher with Think Progress go into how Immigration is beneficial to everyone and would support both employers and their workers.

Next, Mrs Durazo goes into how it is the workers who need to be supported more with this immigration bill (not surprisingly from someone who is a part of the labor) and how by strengthening the power of the workers, the proposed bill can improve the outset for everyone in America. Finally, all three of our experts go into detail on one aspect of the bill, the guest/temporary worker program. This is only one part of the bill, but it is one that can be very divisive, even amongst immigration reform supporters, and their thoughts on the subject are quite provocative.

--Immigration Reform Supports Employers and Workers

--Temporary Worker Programs

--Supporting The Unsung Hard Workers Through Immigration Reform

The panel was sponsored by The Center for American Progress, America's Voice, and Netroots Nation and held at The Center for America Progress' offices in downtown Washington DC.

For Part One, please click here.

For more videos from Sum of Change, please go to www.SumofChange.com

Jim Lindsay: Grassroots Response to Health Care Passage

video cross-posted from Sum of Change

Today we were joined by Jim Lindsay of the Virginia Organizing Project. This is part of a series of interviews we have done and continue to do with grassroots activists who devoted time, money, and energy to passing health care reform.

Mr Lindsay is a member of the VOP's Health Care Reform Committee. We spoke about this recent fight for health care reform and what lessons grassroots activists can take away.

As I said earlier, we continue to reach out to grassroots activists to respond to the recent passage of health care reform. If you would like to suggest someone for us to interview, please contact us.

You can see plenty of our coverage of the Virginia Organizing Project's efforts on health care reform at this link. You should also check out our last grassroots response from Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Training Tuesday: Field Organizing in the Community (Part 1)

cross-posted from Sum of Change

For this week's Training Tuesday, we're going to move to a new venue, the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit, from where we have already posted several videos from keynote addresses (which you can see here).  However we also went to a bunch of interesting and informative panels on a diverse variety of topics and, beginning with the following videos on organizing for green legislation, we will be posting a bunch of clips from many of these panels.

--The Ease of Organizing

Though the focus on this panel was organizing for 'clean energy jobs legislation', the theories and tips on best practices hold true for any kind of organizing.  This panel was more or less hosted by Repower America,  (the moderator and every panelist works for them) and the speaker in all of these clips, Alicia Gurdus, is a field organizer for them.  This is part one of our selections from her remarks.  Check our Green Thoughts post this Thursday for part 2.

In the first video above, Alicia talks about how easy it is to organize in today's world.  The technology you need is accessible and (relatively) cheap, so you if you have the desire to organize for an issue you care about, it is easier than ever to do so.  In the next video (below) she talks discuss the importance on field organizing how it can magnify the power of the individual interaction to build a unified voice for your cause.

In the last two videos, Alicia goes into more specific pieces of advice for how to organize in your community, like on a college campus for example.  First, she'll explain how to approach and engage one or a group of strangers, which is often the hardest part of you job.  Then, she has some strategies for the next step after you've gotten someone to talk with you, getting them to support you and say yes.

--Why Field Programs Exist



--How To Approach and Engage Strangers



--Getting People to Say Yes, Best Practices for Field Programs



Check our next Green Thoughts post this Thursday for Part 2 on 'Field Organizing in the Community'. Next week, Training Tuesday will move on to look at field organizing with in your local business community.

For more info on the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit, please go to www.paprogressivesummit.com

For more Training Tuesday grassroots training videos, please go to www.SumofChange.com/trainingtuesday

No Justice, No Peace

cross-posted from Sum of Change

Warning, the following video is graphic. It depicts American soldiers gunning people down in Iraq, including two individuals who worked for Reuters. It depicts American soldiers giddy at the opportunity to fire on humans. It depicts the worst fears people all across the world have of foreign intervention. And to make it worse is the complete and utter denial of that which turned out to be easily knowable facts by our own military officials. There needs to be a thorough investigation of this cover-up, and, frankly, people need to be made an example of. The individuals that assisted in keeping the truth secret from the public were accomplices to these unjustified murders and to let them go unpunished is to tell future accomplices to murder that they will not be held accountable.

So please keep all this in mind if you choose to watch the video below, Collateral Murder. We have always had a policy of providing our viewers with important content, even the difficult to read or watch material. So we are reposting the video here, but felt a need to warn viewers of the content.

Of course, CNN is running pretty much all day with the "Deadly Blasts Rock Baghdad" story, because when people are killed it is news, unless Americans kill them.

'Next Up, Comprehensive Immigration Reform' at the Center for American Progress - Part 1

cross-posted from Sum of Change

On the same historic day that President Obama's health care reform bill initially passed, hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the mall to remind those running our government that even though health care reform is a major accomplishment, there are many other issues, most notably immigration reform, that need to be addressed, and soon. In this same vein, The Center for American Progress, America's Voice, and Netroots Nation held a panel discussion a few months earlier on an immigration reform bill, it's advantages and issues, and it's likelihood of passage. The panel, moderated by Nico Pitney, National Editor of The Huffington Post, featured María Elena Durazo, the Executive Secretary-Treasurer of The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Andrea Nill, an Immigration Blogger and Researcher with Think Progress, and Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga, the Founder and Editor of Daily Kos.

In this post, Mrs Durazo discusses the priority issues of an immigration reform bill, Ms Nill talks about a progressive immigration reform bill already introduced by Rep Luis Guitierrez (D- IL), and Mr Moulitasas-Zuniga ponders how the immigration reform debate could effect the upcoming 2010 mid term elections. Check back on Wednesday for Part 2 with more clips from these speakers.

--What Are The Priority Issues of Immigration Reform- María Elena Duraz

--The Effect of the Gutierrez Immigration Reform Bill - Andrea Nill

--The Importance of Immigration to the 2010 Elections - Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga

To see more immigration reform related videos from Sum of Change, please click here

For all other coverage from Sum of Change, please go to www.SumofChange.com

Gunn High School Meets Hate With Love

cross-posted from Sum of Change

When students and faculty at Gunn High School in the Bay Area discovered that Westboro Baptist Church would be protesting the school's tolerance they decided to meet them head on:



The students greeted the protesters with song. This is a moment that should be heard all across the country.

Ron Paul is a Nut-Job

cross-posted from Sum of Change

I have few words for what is about to follow. Ron Paul takes wingnuttery to a new level with this interview:

Getting down to the last two questions here.... Most people consider Abe Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest president we've ever had. Would you agree with that sentiment and why or why not?

No, I don't think he was one of our greatest presidents. I mean, he was determined to fight a bloody civil war, which many have argued could have been avoided. For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have been available to buy up all the slaves and free them. So, I don't see that is a good part of our history. Besides, the Civil War was to prove that we had a very, very strong centralized federal government and that's what it did. It rejected the notion that states were a sovereign nation.

The people who disagree want to turn around and say, "Oh, yes, those guys just wanted to protect slavery." But that's just a cop-out if you look at this whole idea of what happened in our country because Lincoln really believed in the centralized state. He was a Hamiltonian type and objected to everything Jefferson wanted.

Forget that no slave-owner was about to sell their entire workforce. Forget that they would simply over-charge the government and turn around to buy new slaves at a cheaper price. I cannot believe I have to explain this, but the point was to make slavery illegal, not to deprive southerners of slaves. This is, frankly, one of the dumbest things ever said by anyone.

Sean Hannity Calls Teaparty Protesters "Tim McVeigh wannabees"

cross-posted from Sum of Change



Wow is all I can say. Now, this may have been said to mock liberals who had previously called the Teaparty a group of "Tim McVeigh wannabees," as Hannity has derided before. Yet still, in the midst of all that has been happening amongst radical conservative whackos, from bricks through windows to rogue militia groups planning to kill authority figures, you would think conservative leaders would work hard to steer clear of the domestic terrorist references.

Interview with Dr. Peter Wilk of Physicians for Social Responsibility

cross-posted from Sum of Change

I stopped in at the office of Physicians for Social Responsibility this morning to meet Dr. Peter Wilk, the Executive Director.

Dr. Wilk is a recognized expert on nuclear disarmament and has been active for the past 27 years in public health advocacy organizations and medical organizations concerned with preventing nuclear war and addressing other threats to global survival.

We talked about the upcoming Strategic Arms Reduction Treay (START) that President Obama and President Medvedev will sign in Prague on April 8th. While the full text of the treaty has yet to be released, the White House has released some "key facts" of the NPT:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release March 26, 2010
Key Facts about the New START Treaty

Treaty Structure: The New START Treaty is organized in three tiers of increasing level of detail. The first tier is the Treaty text itself. The second tier consists of a Protocol to the Treaty, which contains additional rights and obligations associated with Treaty provisions. The basic rights and obligations are contained in these two documents. The third tier consists of Technical Annexes to the Protocol. All three tiers will be legally binding. The Protocol and Annexes will be integral parts of the Treaty and thus submitted to the U.S. Senate for its advice and consent to ratification.

Strategic Offensive Reductions: Under the Treaty, the U.S. and Russia will be limited to significantly fewer strategic arms within seven years from the date the Treaty enters into force. Each Party has the flexibility to determine for itself the structure of its strategic forces within the aggregate limits of the Treaty. These limits are based on a rigorous analysis conducted by Department of Defense planners in support of the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.

Aggregate limits:

• 1,550 warheads. Warheads on deployed ICBMs and deployed SLBMs count toward this limit and each deployed heavy bomber equipped for nuclear armaments counts as one warhead toward this limit.
This limit is 74% lower than the limit of the 1991 START Treaty and 30% lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.

• A combined limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

• A separate limit of 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.
This limit is less than half the corresponding strategic nuclear delivery vehicle limit of the START Treaty.

Verification and Transparency: The Treaty has a verification regime that combines the appropriate elements of the 1991 START Treaty with new elements tailored to the limitations of the Treaty. Measures under the Treaty include on-site inspections and exhibitions, data exchanges and notifications related to strategic offensive arms and facilities covered by the Treaty, and provisions to facilitate the use of national technical means for treaty monitoring. To increase confidence and transparency, the Treaty also provides for the exchange of telemetry.

Treaty Terms: The Treaty’s duration will be ten years, unless superseded by a subsequent agreement. The Parties may agree to extend the Treaty for a period of no more than five years. The Treaty includes a withdrawal clause that is standard in arms control agreements. The 2002 Moscow Treaty terminates upon entry into force of the New START Treaty. The U.S. Senate and the Russian legislature must approve the Treaty before it can enter into force.

No Constraints on Missile Defense and Conventional Strike: The Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs or current or planned United States long-range conventional strike capabilities.

Green Thoughts: The Weatherization Process

cross-posted from Sum of Change

Having already gone through many of the individual aspects of the weatherization process, I'd like to share with you a brief overview of the entire retrofit process. We have shown you how to seal your attic space, ducts, and band joists, and how to control the ventilation of air and moisture throughout your home. But in this video, our expert host Jason with Edge Energy (www.edge-gogreen.com) will explain how all of the individual retrofits are all part of a larger weatherization strategy that makes sure that all systems operating within your home are doing so in efficient unison.  By focusing on every potential spot for energy loss in the house, and not single issues like leaky windows, you can make sure that you're home is as efficient as possible and that you're energy bills are as low as you can make them.

To see more Green Thoughts on Thursday posts, please go to www.SumofChange.com/greenthoughts

Full Disclosure: EDGE Energy hired us, as Sum of Change not individuals, to produce several videos for them including the ones in this post. We have not been hired to distribute, recommend, or advertise for EDGE Energy, rather we are using these videos to explain a vital service and we appreciate them letting us do so.

To learn more about the energy audit from Edge and see more of our videos, please go to www.edge-gogreen.com and see Edge's youtube page