tagged w/ Community Organizers
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In the early 20th Century---coal mine operators had become so blatantly abusive and exploitive that they were even doing things like hiring private armies of mercenary thugs to intimidate labor organizers. In several cases they even murdered people indiscriminately in areas where labor organizing activities were taking place. This is when the word "thug" came into common use, after a group in India that murdered people by strangulation----paid assassins.
-------" Throughout the early 20th century, West Virginia coal miners attempted to overthrow this brutal system and engaged in a series of strikes, such as the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912, and which coal operators attempted to stop through violent means. Mining families lived under the terror of Baldwin-Felts detective agents who were professional strikebreakers under the hire of coal operators. During that dispute agents drove a heavily armored train through a tent colony at night, opening fire on women, men and children with a machine gun.[8] They would repeat this type of tactic during the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado the next year, with even more disastrous results.[9]"--------
Blair Mountain is the site of the largest armed conflict in the United States outside of the Civil War. As many as 130 people were killed in battle with Logan County sheriff's deputies and paid strike breakers from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.
Now, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, in moves that only highlights its well known and well paid position of bought and paid for by wealthy industrial interests-----not only wants to destroy the environment which they are supposed to be protecting, they also want to destroy our history as well by allowing the mountain top removal mining of Blair Mountain. Destroy the environment, destroy the people who have to work in the mines(WVDEP allowed violations that led to the deaths of 29 miners last year at a Massey Energy mine----and countless others)-----and now, they want to destroy our history as well. By erasing the memory of miners who gave their lives trying to make better working conditions.
Tom Clark---the director of WVDEP called the efforts to end the mountain top mining destruction of Blair Mountain---and preserve the site of one of the most significant pieces of the history of the the United States---"frivolous".
I suspect he calls anything that doesn't show a profit and put money in his pocket frivolous.
Please lend your support to stopping the destruction of Blair Mountain---and lets do what we can to preserve this site of an important piece of US history as a national park. Send letters to your congressmen and let it be known that you don't want our environment, our history and a piece of who we are destroyed to the profit of a few industrialists.In the early 20th Century---coal mine operators had become so blatantly abusive and... more
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Wetdog
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added this
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6 months ago
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PRESENTATION
W: We’re going to hear from Steve Lerner next, of SEIU, the Architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign. Currently, he’s working on partnering with unions and groups in Europe and South America, it’s building campaigns to hold financial institutions accountable.
S. Lerner: It seems to me that we’re in a moment where we need to figure out in a much more, through direct action, much more concrete way how we really are trying to disrupt and create uncertainty for capital, for how corporations operate. And it may sound like that’s a crazy thing that in a moment of weakness we could deal with it, but the thing about a boom and bust economy, it is actually incredibly fragile, because it’s not based on real way, well, it’s based on gambling and all of that. And so there are actually extraordinary things that we could do right now that would start to de, destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement. And for example, 10% of homeowners, going back to where you started, who are under, a quarter of all people who own a home are under water. Right? Their home is under water, they’re paying more for it than it’s worth. Ten percent of those people are now in strategic default, meaning they’re refusing to pay but they’re staying in their homes. That’s totally spontaneous. Right? They figured out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because the mort, the foreclosure’s backed up. I’m going to say I won’t pay. It’s just what business does, it’s a good, a good business decision. If you could double that number, you would make banks, put banks on the edge of insolvency again.PRESENTATION
W: We’re going to hear from Steve Lerner next, of SEIU, the... more
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From http://ridavio.com/
This short documentary follows a unique group of local leaders starting a community center for gay and transgender individuals in a working class neighborhood of Lima, Peru. I had the opportunity to shoot and edit this piece thanks to a good friend who works on this project. It was a rare opportunity to see a side of Lima that I otherwise never would have witnessed.
In a poor neighborhood of Lima, Peru, five local leaders are trying to start a community center for gay and transgender individuals. The president of the center, Cuti, explains what it’s like to be gay in the neighborhood, how he came to open his own beauty shop and why he decided to participate in the project. The group talks about their activities, challenges they face and what they want to do in the future. The ASOCAHU center is a project of the University Cayetano Heredia and the University of California Los Angeles. Its goal is HIV & STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection) prevention in men who have sex with men (MSM).
To support ASOCAHU and similar groups in Peru send an e-mail to: info@epicentro.org.pe.From http://ridavio.com/
This short documentary follows a unique group of local... more
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A former education organizer at the scandal-scarred activist group ACORN fraudulently used Department of Education phone-bill accounts to cash in on more than $500,000 in lavish Verizon customer rewards, city investigators charged yesterday.
Donnett Davis, 31, of Brooklyn, allegedly obtained spa retreats, Yankees and Mets tickets, $5,000 IBM gift certificates and gobs of other garish goodies from Verizon by registering 9,000 DOE telephone billing codes under an ACORN account in her name, probers said.
According the investigator's report, Davis told investigators she had enrolled ACORN in the rewards program and that she shared the gift certificates with fellow staffers and people who signed up as ACORN members.
A receptionist at two ACORN offices told probers she had accepted 40 to 50 packages and envelopes on Davis' behalf, and that Davis had offered her clothing-store gift cards and tickets to ball games that she said were free rewards from Verizon.
A former neighbor said she had similarly signed for deliveries to Davies, Condon's report said.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/acorn_phone_jYRxDlNUWo0HYaXUIvg8yL#ixzz0YXxP44SLA former education organizer at the scandal-scarred activist group ACORN fraudulently... more
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JohnA
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added this
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2 years ago
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Dennis Burgess started out wanting to throw hot parties and events. But the needs of his community would eventually catch up to his big dreams of entrepreneurship, and transform them into a philanthropic mission.
Witnessing a new generation of young people fall prey to the same negative influences that plagued his peers growing up, Dennis is determined not to see another young person become victim to the same fate.
Oh, and he's NOT going to wait for a politician to do something about it.Dennis Burgess started out wanting to throw hot parties and events. But the needs of... more
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A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a passionate campaign by the local Khoi-San community, tribes commonly known in the West as Bushmen.
But the filmmakers underestimated the will of the local 5,000-strong population who put the spiritual value of the land over any potential economic gain and nixed the plan last month.
"No money in the world can buy this land," says Ina Basson, secretary of the Pella Community Forum. "It is ours and has sentimental value. Our forefathers fought the Germans for this land and had to battle to keep it. They have spilled blood for the land and for us, and it is not for sale.
"[The producers] said Mel Gibson and Halle Berry would fly in to do movies, and that Tiger Woods would design the golf course," adds Ms. Basson. "We don't care about them. We want to live here."
The Rev. Cyril Smith, whose cathedral would have been made into a Mexican village film set, says the consortium miscalculated the level of opposition and the legal status of the land. "They should have consulted the residents first but they didn't, which made them very angry," he says. "The government, as trustees, aren't allowed to sell this land without their consent, so the film studios will not happen."
"Not even a handful will I sell to them," says farmer Piet Eiman, one of the area's oldest residents, holding pieces of soil in his hands. "We are part of the land, it can support you from a baby, to a young child, to a man. It is part of us."
Rudolf Markgraaff, chief executive at Charis Productions, one of the companies looking to purchase or lease the tribal land, says he was surprised at the opposition. "This area is desperately poor with 70 percent unemployment, high rates of AIDS, and limited facilities like hospitals and schools.
"We had letters of support from the [African National Congress] Youth League, the ANC Women's League, and another group begging us to make it happen," Markgraaff says. "They're not doing anything with this land."
But Mr. Markgraaff is wrong. The local population is preserving their culture, with some families practicing the traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle, and others herding cattle and goats, or farming desert crops. These ways of life would be threatened or destroyed by the presence of such large-scale commercial development.
A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part... more
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teland
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added this
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3 years ago
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Acorn was the group which Obama was a member while he was a community organizer. Why would such a great group be targeted for voter fraud, this must be the work of George Bush trying to sway the election.Acorn was the group which Obama was a member while he was a community organizer. Why... more
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In Downtown Los Angeles's Skid Row, General Jeff proves that community activists can make a powerful difference.
On a corner deep in the heart of Skid Row during a hot, sunny afternoon, there are a couple dozen people milling around the entrance to the Midnight Mission, one of the homeless shelters and recovery facilities in the neighborhood. One man is selling cigarettes. Another man, in a dingy white Panama hat and white loafers sits in a lawn chair, listening to his boom box. Just down the street sits the Central Division Police Station. It looks like a fortress.
Beyond law enforcement, this is not a neighborhood that gets a lot of attention. The man I am meeting, who asked to be identified as General Jeff, is a community organizer, a job that was recently vilified and mocked by Gov. Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani [recently] at the Republican National Convention. Jeff is a c.o. for what is perhaps the least organized community in the country. And it's quite large. According to the 2000 Census, there are approximately 17,000 residents in Central City East. (For the record, that is approximately three times as big as Wasilla when Palin was elected). There are 3.7 million people in the City of Los Angeles -- and only one mayor.
On this afternoon, Jeff is late. He has been passing out fliers for the new DASH (Downtown Area Short Hop) route starting in Central City East (Skid Row's official name). It's Jeff's responsibility to "give out all this information to [his] constituents". He talks about their short attention spans, how some of them can't read, how he would go through the flier "line by line" if someone needs it.
Palin and Giuliani's mockery indicated that they didn't think a community organizer had any real worth or power: the race for the presidency is a race for the most constituents, and maybe the Republicans don't believe community organizers have any. Or perhaps the Republicans and Palin think community organizers don't do anything. According to Palin, being "a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."
Well, it certainly looks like Jeff has responsibilities, but what exactly is a community organizer, who are his constituents and what does he do for them?
General Jeff is the first to admit that it's hard to stick a definition on the title of "Community Organizer." He thinks that's why it's so easy to laugh at the idea — "even if you could stick a definition on it, that would be limiting," he says.
"There isn't enough paper in the world to list everything I do."
In the past year, General Jeff has taken part in starting a basketball league, a street-cleaning program, and a program to put murals on some of the grey, depressing walls that line Skid Row's streets. This doesn't include any number of other, quotidian measures he has accomplished -- like handing out the DASH public information fliers)to better the lives of Skid Row's residents.
To him, a community organizer is someone who is "active in the community, doing good things, fighting the good fight, if you will."
That's fairly vague, but he's also at City Hall everyday. Every week, he reviews the Council's agenda, highlighting any item dealing with Skid Row. He attends those hearings, filling out a speaker's card and testifying on behalf of residents. Jeff says that there are three shifts on Skid Row: the day shift, the night shift, and the graveyard shift, and he hits the streets during all three, checking in with the residents and passing along information.
That morning, he had also met with a representative from one of the developers who is converting lofts along Main Street to discuss some of the issues related to the new development. "I go heavy on the emails," he laughs. *CONTINUES In Downtown Los Angeles's Skid Row, General Jeff proves that community activists... more
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Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972, Carmel, California) is generally considered the father of community organizing.
Obama seems to be following Saul's playbook.
Wikipedia has decent article with links. Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972, Carmel,... more
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SDLN
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added this
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3 years ago
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I guess corporate lawyers and oil executives is coool but people who help out their communities aren't poppin.I guess corporate lawyers and oil executives is coool but people who help out their... more
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