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Pick up the cry!

by Anthony Noel

Borrowed from the Jefferson Airplane classic “Volunteers,” my headline neatly summarizes what I’m asking each of you to do in this post: Pick up the cry!

Last fall, you – MyFDL readers – chose ten prospective opponents to Barack Obama in the 2012 Democratic primary. You spelled out five relentlessly Progressive platform points, each of which stands in stark contrast to the compromised “progressivism” this president and his corporate-owned, hapless party have force-fed Americans for more than a generation. You even gave this fledgling effort a name: the New Progressive Alliance.

The FDL family of sites was officially neutral during the effort’s founding and remains so, but gave the effort a place to grow – when other purportedly “progressive” sites were banning readers and diarists who dared even suggest the Democrats have sold out their principles to the highest bidder.

Since the nominations and voting last fall, a few volunteers have continued to work on the effort. Last week, they received via e-mail a “sneak peak” at the very first NPA Update. We now share it below, right here – where nearly 150 of you participated in the NPA’s founding.

We’re all frustrated about the sorry state of America and the lack of voice given to Progressive policy objectives at the national level. Those ideals, time and again, are shown in nationwide polling to be overwhelmingly supported by the American people. And certainly, it is great when we “Look what’s happening out in the streets” – in the Mideast and our own Midwest – to borrow another line from The Airplane.

As anti-democratic, anti-union action flows from Wisconsin to Michigan, filmmaker Michael Moore called what’s going on “a class war on the people of this country by those in power and the tools that they have bought and paid for, who now serve in these legislatures.”

He went on to say “This is our moment. This truly is our moment. Everybody, up off the couch right now.”

Watch the incredible interview below:

From Abby Zimet of CommonDreams.org:

Protester Tom Spellman, “Scott Walker is going to go down in history as one of the greatest union organizers there ever was.”

In a bold, idiotic move, Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republican State Senators (minus one), have flaunted Wisconsin law and passed “non-economic portions” of the original budget bill that would have needed a quorum to pass. Acting with impunity like dictators before them, and billionaires at their back, just might have been Walker’s third Mubarak moment. The people of Wisconsin are now moving swiftly to both recall the Republican Senators who went along with a such a mess, and to re-occupy the Capitol building like it were there Liberation Square.

Watch this report from Democracy Now!, and live streaming of what’s happening at the Capitol building below the fold:

By Lucinda Marshall, Feminist Peace Network.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.  It is a time to celebrate the lives of women and to renew our commitment to women’s human rights throughout the world.

Million Women Rise March in London

That it is even necessary to have such a day should give us pause.  There is not, after all, an International Men’s Day.  But the truth is that while women may be half of the world’s population, they most assuredly are not equal stakeholders when it comes to human rights and empowerment.