Wasco County Updates
Oregon Food Bank Action Alert: Ask President Obama to support SNAP
Click here to take action now
Chalkboard Peoject: Virtual Brown Bag Series Begins With Focus on Teacher Evaluation : 1/12/2012
The Chalkboard Project is kicking off a series of digital conversations to help our Citizens’ Corps become informed about emerging issues in education. We count on you and members of this active alliance to advocate for meaningful policy change that will address Oregon’s education challenges.
Each of these virtual brown bags are designed to provide you with relevant news about education issues and to hear first-hand accounts of ongoing developments from local, state and national policy experts and educators.
Join us for this conversation.
Book Review : Walking with the Wind, John Lewis story of the civil rights movement
John Lewis is a current congressman from Georgia, but he was a major leader in the civil rights movement back in the 60s. This book is his story of the civil rights movement. It is a great historic account written by someone who is a true American hero. Nothing else can describe his perserverance and what he went through.
The civil rights struggle is one of the great American stories of the last century. A time when America was made to live up to its creed and highest ideals. The ending of segregation and the expansion of voting rights were victories won from the bottom up. This book and the history of the civil rights struggle should be required reading and understood by all Americans. The civil rights movement made us what we are today.
He starts the book describing his life as a child growing up in a poor share croper family. How hard it was to keep your head above water. It reflects the stories of so many who struggle on the edge of poverty.
In college as a young kid, he was one of the leaders of the Nashville sit-ins aimed at ending segregation within local businesses. They took inspiration from the Montgomery Bus Boycott which introduced Martin Luther King Jr to the world stage. Lewis’ group devoted themselves to learning the principles of non-violent struggle which had such a direct impact on their success.
One of the interesting people he introduces here is Diane Nash, she was the leader of the Nashville sit-ins and is one of the un-sung heros of the movement. I have daughters and I was especially inspired by hearing her story. For all its high aims of freedom, the civil rights movement did struggle with issues of gender equality. Many of the female leaders had to struggle within the struggle to develop and exert their leadership.
Update from Oregonians for working families
Campaign to Increase the Oregon Earned Income Tax Credit
Near-Term Goals for the EITC Coalition
Our EITC coalition can achieve important wins next year, despite the fact that continuing budget constraints make it unlikely that the 2012 legislative session will seek to improve Oregon's Earned Income Tax Credit.
One such win would be to obtain an extension of the credit's expiration date. The Oregon EITC currently is scheduled to sunset January 1, 2014. Unless the legislature extends the sunset date, the EITC will expire by that date, with serious economic consequences for low-income working families with children. Now is a good time to push for extending the EITC's sunset, a move that would have no impact on the current biennial budget.
Another important step is to make sure that improving the EITC is a part of any state strategy to reduce poverty. Governor Kitzhaber's office has indicated that in the coming months it will release a plan to address poverty. Our coalition will encourage the Governor's office to include improvement of the EITC, one of the most targeted and effective ways to make work pay for low-income working families with children, in any such plan.
For updates on efforts to improve the EITC go to www.oregoniansforworkingfamilies.org.
Defend TANF and Other Safety Net Services
Occupy Portland & MoveOn
Saturday, I went to a meeting about the Occupy movement, sponsored by MoveOn.org. "House" meetings like this were happening all over the country! (I always find that so inspiring!).
The meeting provided an insightful look at how this movement is developing. One of the attendees has been on the General Assembly of Occupy Portland from the beginning. The discussion we had centered on how the movement is growing, being organized, and avoiding a "take-over" by any 1 grp.
Eventually, the hope is that the main theme, that our legislators and elected officials work FOR us, and that our corporations should not be allowed to run ramshod over the middle class, will bubble up to affect change. After all, people that are involving themselves in these movements are 99% of Americans!
It will take time for this movement to affect change; however, I have no doubt whatsoever that it WILL do so. The Council rep for MoveOn gave us a model that politicians everywhere could follow in responding to the Occupy movement. It's what MoveOn did when they realized they needed to get involved. They listened to their people!
Here's what happened: MoveOn's agenda had been to call and petition our legislators to help get the Obama jobs bill passed. This particular Council rep said that she could not do that. She told MoveOn she didn't feel that blitzing reps with calls would do anything to get it passed, as it's being stonewalled by Republicans. She was planning on backing off the Council for a while.
Simultaneously, and unknown to her, Council members all over the country were reporting the same thing to MoveOn.
So, guess what MoveOn did? They changed course! They decided to figure out how best to liaison with the Occupy Movement across the country. That's when they set up meetings with members and an Occupy rep from each relevant city.
Access denied?
I'm a bit dismayed that we, the Democratic Party, don't make more of our functions accessible and affordable to the poor, or even to the less wealthy.
For instance, the 2011 Neuberger Banquet and Auction, the topic of which is making the American Dream once again possible for ALL Americans. How many of those Americans can afford $100 tickets? Or, even $90 tickets, if you're a PCP, Senior, Student or Veteran?
I'm both a PCP and a Veteran, and I'm coming up on being a Senior. I'd (still) consider myself middle-class, but that price is not one that I can justify on my family's present budget. Although I think I could both contribute meaningful dialogue AND learn a quite a lot at a function like that, I don't think it's a fair price for the "average" American.
If part of our party's agenda is to LISTEN to the voices of those usually unheard, how can we expect to do that when access to events with high party officials and state big-wigs is determined, in essence, by the size of our bank accounts?
~Kathy Cvetko
Occupy Portland
Notes on Occupy Portland
18 October 2011
I spent an hour and a half at Occupy Portland tonight. These notes are for those who wonder what is really going on but only have time to watch the evening news. This is not definitive but merely a set of observations.
It is currently a tent city of about 300 tents, or perhaps 600 or more people. They have been in the park for 13 days. It bears some resemblance to the Rainbow Gathering, particularly in the level of amorphous organization. It has art venues, a health clinic, waste disposal services, music, a central information area, a mediation patrol for disputes, and a host of people doing things like coordinating to help the truly homeless in Portland and working with Portland Parks to set up secure funding to make sure parks are restored when this is all over.
It is not frivolous and it is not just a flash in the pan. Although there are some street people and people for whom the venue is a refuge (as was the Rainbow), the most active people see this as the start of a very long grass roots battle that must be waged to restore the democracy of the 99%. Many of them are young, but they are much more organized than you might imagine. They have lists of volunteer work to do, they take care of the poop stations, they have a group kitchen with certified food handlers, they have ways of finding camp sites, and they are slowly becoming more organized and are growing. This may change when really crappy weather sets in, but the core realizes that the system is not working for them or many in the country and want to see a situation where the democracy is not controlled by 1% . They are very serious about this.
