Community Leaders in Virginia Join Together to Push for Quality, Affordable Health Care for Every American

Today, in Richmond and in 52 other cities across the country, including 37 state capitals, a new national campaign is bringing together millions of Americans to demand quality, affordable health care for all. Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is being launched by 95 national and local groups that represent labor, community organizations, doctors, nurses, women, small businesses, faith-based organizations, people of color, netroots activists, and think tanks. Health Care for America Now is organizing to assure that the first order of business of the next President and Congress is to pass legislation in 2009 that guarantees quality, affordable health care for all.

Health Care for America Now is an unprecedented coalition including ACORN, AFSCME, American Academy of Pediatricians, American Nurses Association, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America's Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, MoveOn, National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Education Association, National Women's Law Center, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, SEIU, United Food and Commercial Workers, and USAction.

I AM LEAVING FOR IRAQ WITH A CPT DELEGATION

“What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to loving and doing good to their enemies as armies devote to war?”

By xofferson, DocuDharma

I had promised to report on the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation held June 28-29 in Cleveland, but delayed it to await an official summary of the actions taken there. Unless you were in the room almost all of the time for the debate and votes, it was impossible to know exactly what decisions the 400-plus participants made. And I confess to spending a good chunk of time "networking" and kibitzing in the halls.

Now the organizers have produced their summary and evaluation, which you can read it its entirety here.

By Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK/Global Exchange

Stop a War with Iran! Stop House Res. 362 and Senate Res. 580!

Please join us for a week of activities on Capitol Hill related to Iran.

By Bryan McKenzie, Charlottesville Daily Progress

It was an exciting weekend of patriotic fervor with a presidential appearance, minting of new citizens, protests and other fireworks.

The events and surrounding media hoopla, however, begged questions of what patriotism is and why it’s useful, so we sought answers in many different places. Here’s what we found: READ THE REST AND POST YOUR COMMENT.

By Alix Bryan

Greeting friends, I hope there is joy in your lives. If you get the chance, I would love to hear from you. If you want to be removed from this, let me know. There won't be many more of these updates....

By David Swanson

Charlottesville Daily Progress columnist Bryan McKenzie reported on our recent protest of Bush at Monticello that we had made our point of diminishing a citizen naturalization ceremony? We did? McKenzie had plenty of communication from protesters before and after the event, all of which made perfectly clear that we wanted to NOT do that, that we wanted in fact to counter Bush's diminishment of the day and to communicate to the world that Americans oppose our president's crimes at home and abroad. McKenzie can claim that diminishing someone's day was what we in fact did and that having done so is more significant than all the days for the rest of their lives that Bush has ruined of the relatives of the people he's killed and is going to continue to kill as long as we allow him, but McKenzie can't claim that that's what we intended to do.

The Interfaith Cooperation Circle has been offered the use of the Gravity Lounge in downtown Charlottesville for our next event: a celebration for the International Day of Peace on Sunday, September 21.

What would it take to get one person to post one article on this website? Prizes, money, fame, glory, a sense of peaceful bliss? What would be required?

Admittedly, the site has been changed around so that it's much less obvious, but you CAN and are ENCOURAGED TO post your news on peace and justice on this website. First log in at right. Then click on "Contribute Content" on the left.

By David Swanson

Congressman Virgil Goode recently responded to a statement I'd blogged about him. Here's what I wrote and his response:

That's $4,681 per household, $1,721 per person, $341.4 million per day.

Taxpayers in Charlottesville, Virginia will pay $75.1 million for total Iraq war spending approved to date. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
490 Affordable Housing Units
OR
1,094 Elementary School Teachers for One Year
OR
10,478 Head Start Places for Children for One Year
OR
9,350 Scholarships for University Students for One Year
OR
21,036 People with Health Care for One Year

These are the new numbers from the National Priorities Project ( http://www.nationalpriorities.org ). So, these numbers need to be multiplied by about 10 to give you the true cost as calculated by Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz to include interest, rising price of oil, care for injured veterans, etc. And, of course, we aren't actually spending this money, we're borrowing it and expecting our kids and grandkids to pay it. Hence the need to tell people how much it is!

A Letter to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation

George W. Bush has replicated more of the ill deeds charged by the Declaration of Independence against King George III than any other President in our history. He is the first President to claim that torture is legitimate and to proclaim that he is violating the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution (requiring warrants to examine citizen's communications).

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration precisely to resist that kind of usurpation of power. To invite Mr. Bush to speak on the Fourth of July at Monticello makes a travesty of that sacred day and the sacred work of Mr. Jefferson. I have strongly urged the Thomas Jefferson Foundation to withdraw the invitation.

With joy in the blessings of freedom,

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D., director, The Shalom Center
http://www.shalomctr.org

NOTE: THIS COALITION DOES NOT INCLUDE CCPJ

Update: RVA for Peace, a group from Richmond, is part of this effort.

A growing coalition of groups and individuals plans to protest President George W. Bush's Fourth of July visit to Charlottesville on Friday. Participating organizations include the Augusta Center for Peace and Justice, CODE PINK Women for Peace both National and Charlottesville, AfterDowningStreet, Democrats.com, and Charlottesville MoveOn.org. Many other people expected to participate are not members of any of these groups.

The protest will take place at Route 20, outside and a ways removed from the grounds of Monticello. Participants will gather at 7 a.m. at Quarry Park, the entrance to which is on the west side of Rt. 20 just north of Interstate 64.

The full remarks as provided by the White House:

THE PRESIDENT: Distinguished guests, fellow citizens, and future citizens: the grounds of this house, which saw so many changes during President Thomas Jefferson's lifetime provide an ideal setting to reflect on the history of our nation. We have progressed so far in so many ways since that day on which the Declaration of Independence was signed, in that distant time when slaves inhabited this place.

Charlottesville Municipal Ban Ready To Play For President.

I read that and hoped for this.

While George Dubya will desecrate Monticello with some dishonest remarks from a podium on Friday as new citizens swear to defend the Constitution he has destroyed, this AP story has the plans of the man in charge. Dick Cheney will make his remarks on a ship named the Constitution and talk about fighting pirates rather than being one:

By David Swanson

The number and variety of the excuses for failing, in various ways, to resist the transition we are in from democratic republic to dictatorship never ceases to amaze me. A lot of the time I imagine that Congress members hold all the prizes in this regard, with perhaps some dishonorable mentions for party leaders and directors of national activist organizations. But I've been repeatedly jolted out of that notion by being involved in specific plans to organize protests, most recently protests being planned for Bush's Fourth of July visit to my town of Charlottesville, Virginia.

TJMC PEACE CONVERSATIONS HOSTS "EYES WIDE OPEN" MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

Over Memorial Day weekend, TJMC Peace Conversations, along with three other local groups, Veterans for Peace, the Charlottesville Quaker Meeting, and the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, hosted Eyes Wide Open at the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall. The exhibit, created by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), is part of a national campaign to show the human cost of war. It includes combat boots tagged with the names of the 117 service men and women from Virginia who have died in the war and a visual representation of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people who have died during the conflict.

Documents that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently released as a result of the lawsuit "Veterans for Common Sense v. Peake" reveal that vets are suffering suicide at a rate of 500 a month. This statistic means that more veterans die by suicide than in combat. To read this yourself, go to the following and look at News Brief, page 2:

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.
By Naomi Wolf, The Guardian, Tuesday April 24, 2007

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

READ THE REST.

By Medea Benjamin, July 3, 2005 -- updated July 3, 2007

This Fourth of July, while Americans are marching in parades and oohing and aahing at the fireworks, it would be a patriotic gesture to also spend some time thinking about what independence means today.

Our nation was founded on a determination to be free of domination by the British empire. The US Declaration of Independence proclaimed the need to fight the War of Independence against Britain because King George III had 'kept among us standing armies' that committed intolerable 'abuses and usurpations.' Today it is our government whose standing army is committing abuses and usurpations in foreign lands. Today it is our government that is in the business of empire-building. Even before 9/11, the US military maintained over 700 foreign military bases and installations and almost 250,000 troops in 130 countries.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all warned that the invasion and occupation of other lands would turn America into precisely the sort of empire against which they had so recently rebelled. "We should have nothing to do with conquest," asserted Jefferson in 1791.

READ THE REST.

Issued by Veterans for Peace for July 4

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are instituted to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But