From Friday, February 04, 2011
To Sunday, February 06, 2011

American Renaissance plans to hold their 11th Conference in Charlotte. This gathering will be protested by individual and groups brought together by a coalition lead by the One People's Project, the Southern Anti-Racism Network, IPPN, and a growing number of partners.

American Renaissance publisher Jared Taylor assumes Charlotte, NC is a site where the event will face little criticism; that the city will be more accepting of a white supremacist political conference at one of their local major hotels.

Support our work to build a strong response to this assumption!! This is all we have for now, but we are going to stay on this and update everyone as we go along.

The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the ruling elite against the interests of the American people.

On Wednesday, January 21st in Citizens United vs. FEC the Supreme Court let regular people; working class, low income and working poor people down yet again. They sided with the corporate elite when they overturned the flimsy federal campaign finance reform laws afforded by the McCain-Feingold law, freeing up corporations to open the floodgates and buy elections since they can now spend unlimited money in our elections.

The Court has legalized corporate bribery of our elected officials.

The Court relied on the illegitimate legal doctrine of "Corporate Personhood" in order to justify this profoundly undemocratic decision.

Corporate personhood is the notion that a corporation can claim to be a person, and therefore entitled to basic human rights - also described as political and civil rights - and have courts overturn laws.

As this decision clearly demonstrates, corporate personhood is not an inconsequential legal technicality. Consider this-- the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation was a "legal person" with 14th Amendment protectionsÿbeforeÿthey granted full personhood to African-Americans, immigrants, natives, and women.

And literally hundreds of laws - perhaps thousands - of local, state and federal laws that attempt to protect our environment, our elections, our safety and health, our right to organize have been overturned as a result of this erroneous doctrine.

The world is being destroyed, the federal government is engaged in unending war, and we live in an unjust, unsustainable and undemocratic country. It's time to take ourselves seriously-- both about what is at stake and what it will require to actually assume and democratically exercise real power. We must address the reality that if we want real democracy, we cannot look to the federal courts. It's time to follow the lead of the American Revolutionaries, the abolitionists, the suffragists, the trade unionists, and the Civil Rights activists and to build a broad-based, multi-partisan democracy movement in the United States.

It's time to amend the U.S. Constitution to make it clear that only human beings can claim to be - persons - with constitutional rights.

After you add your name please also post any comments you have, and your views on how we can build a stronger independent progressive movement.

On the first Friday of each month the Labor Department releases the previous month's unemployment numbers, and the issue of unemployment and joblessness gets some attention from the news media. Let’s ramp up – put a spotlight on these figures and help call attention to the overwhelming need for job creation and support of Labor.

The National Jobs for All Coalition is urging groups and unemployed workers to hold news conferences, vigils and pickets at unemployment offices, and to take other creative action to demand jobs and an effective safety net.

The next First Friday Action day will be August 7th.
In September the First Friday will the 3rd, Labor Day weekend. We are asking people to carry “Jobs for All” signs at Labor Day events and marches. Local organizers are encouraged to choose the day to do your action but please do some action this summer.

http://www.njfac.org/ - for more information.

Friday September 4th to Friday October 2nd will be "Jobs and Safety Net Action Month".

Justice Activists Convene in Atlanta
Progressive Dialogue on Organizing Strategies during a Potential Depression
January 23-24th, 2009—Atlanta, GA

People were present from the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin and California.

The goals of the dialogue were summarized this way: “We believe it is time for a weekend conversation focused on organizing strategies to address structural inequality, injustice, poverty and other social and economic ills. We have a new President and Congress, but without strong and coordinated grassroots action, we will not see the kinds of changes needed by workers, low-income people and people of color. Together we will strategize about how to take action during this crisis so that we can emerge with the greatest power for the changes we need.”

How many of us have said it; especially about our local elected officials? “I could do a better job than that!” Well, jump in and run for office!

Many opportunities exist for “regular” people to win elections at the local level. You may be surprised that a local health or school board, city council or district seat is uncontested and your progressive vision and leadership could make a HUGE difference.