Everyone of us is being asked to speak up as loudly as we can about health care for people not profits for health care insurance! Here is note that I wish to send to every of Minnesota's federal level politicians!
Health Care:
Please support a robust public option. I like medicare! I like the government running the health care insurance instead of current health care insurance companies! I want all of my heath care dollar going for health care, not health care INSURANCE company profits, not health care INSURANCE company executive salaries and really not any part of not health care INSURANCE company administration. Health care INSURANCE companies are killing us with delay, denial, overriding the doctor's choices, exclusion of pre-existing conditions and even rescinding coverage long after accepting the first payment. Health Care INSURANCE companies provide no useful service and add a huge cost to getting health care. Don't believe the public relations lies and fake grassroots presentation of Health Care INSURANCE. Be courageous, don't be conned by the lobbyists. Be politically courageous and support a robust public option. If you can be courageous enough, then support single payer. Now is the time that determines whether politicians are corporate puppets or heroes of the people!
You can write a note in your own words. It does not have to be long. It can be as simple as:
I want health care not health care insurance. Please support the robust public option!
The hardest part is having easy access to contact each politician. Fortunately, I have built a list for you, just a click below. Now, feel empowered to make the best of use of time to make an impact. Speak up, it really matters!
The Star Tribune reports that Patrick Uzalac, the gentleman suing Sheriff Fetcher for lack of medical treatment on frozen feet, has now died. It will take an autopsy to determine cause. If there is cause from the jail treatment, then we will have yet another wrongful death case.
Even more telling, is that more and more cases of lack of medical treatment are coming forward. This is also confirmed by the anonymous notes that I have been receiving:
"What has emerged is a pattern of, I don't think neglect, but almost to the point of affirmative abuse," Hajek said. "One guy fell off a cot and broke his heal. He went without medical care for two to three months ... now he's disabled. Another guy, he had broken stitches from an appendectomy and they didn't treat him."
Hajek said he expects to file additional lawsuits.
What the Star Tribune is failing to say, let me say very clearly. This is a widespread pattern of mis-management that displays that Sheriff Fletcher ought to retire to Florida immediately. This is a peace and justice issue of the highest urgency! Only the voters of Ramsey county can manage to force Sheriff Fletcher's retirement. Fortunately, a number of us have been able to persuade a current St Paul Assistant Chief Matt Bostrom to take on the challenge. Matt Bostrom is the opposite of Sheriff Fletcher is in every way: professional, capable, calm and reliable!
As we struggle to balance our state government budget, as we struggle to keep our constitutional civil rights and as we struggle to even provide basic health care and basic food to all US citizens, then we ought to remember how were got here.
How we got here?
War
More than any external threat, the United States is being hurt by the desire for war and insatiable greed. John Marty (not endorsed by me) says it best:
Cost of War is budgetary "Elephant in the Room"
by Senator John Marty
February 26, 2010.
The cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars is the budgetary "elephant in the room." It's enormous and it's right in front of us, yet we don't talk about it as we face our economic woes. We don't need to get into arguments about the wars to consider the burden war places on our economy.
President Dwight Eisenhower, one of our nation's greatest military leaders, late in life, expressed deep concern about what he called "the military industrial complex." Eisenhower stated, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
A couple hundred peace protesters gathered in front of Amy Klobuchar's Minneapolis office to protest ongoing atrocities in Afghanistan as the surge builds. The most recent event was in Marjah, with more slaughtered civilians, collateral damage.
In a surprise move, John Kavanagh, Amy's state director came out and asked for a meeting with representatives of the various peace groups involved in this action.
(Apparently, this group has a different opinion of Erik Paulsen, R-TargetCorp, than I do. Be that as it may, MPP encourages a wide variety of opinions - and I wish this group success in their endeavor. - promoted by TwoPuttTommy)
The 3rd district committee of the Minnesota Peace Project delivered a cup of tea to Congressman Erik Paulsen's Eden Prairie office Friday morning, Jan 29. The committee had struggled to secure a 2nd meeting with our freshman congressman in November. During the meeting Paulsen admitted to lack of knowledge about Afghanistan. He did say he was reading Greg Mortenson's book, "Three Cups of Tea," a longtime NY Times bestseller. This book, which has become required reading for all officers enrolled in counter insurgency courses at the Pentagon, describes Greg's work in building schools for girls in the remote region of Baltistan, in far Northeast Pakistan.
Committee chair Linda Thomson delivered a freshly brewed pot of tea and some homemade pumpkin cookies to the office in furtherance of continued dialog with Paulsen.
The three word peace refrain reverberated and echoed throughout several blocks of Minneapolis skyways on one of the last days of 2009 as our "Gaza Freedom Solidarity March" snaked safely in a bubble protected from the cold Minnesota winter.
On December 30, several hundred Minnesotans marched in solidarity and with 7 Minnesotans joining 100 others struggling to deliver humanitarian aid to the 1.5 million Gazans in open air prison after the Israeli siege that killed some 1400 men, women, children and other innocents in the bombardment a year ago.
Only KSTP offered minor coverage, all other media outlets and the major bloggers ignored the fact of this demonstration of peace and concern. So much for our free press.
A few missiles came from the Gaza strip striking on Israel soil. The Israeli reaction was to invade and stomp out the missile strikers, but it did not stop there. Essentially the Gaza strip has been locked down such that earning a living, getting food and getting medicine is difficult if not impossible. It is the goal of a group of peacemakers from here to observe and to tell that story. Here is the latest report on that mission:
From David Tilsen -
All we wanted to do was speak to a representative at the consulate in Cairo to ask for assistance in getting across the border to Gaza. When we got to the security gate a couple of blocks before the US embassy in Cairo, and showed our US passports and said that we wanted to go to the embassy, we were first asked to wait a while.
My friend, Sylvia Schwarz, in Cairo as part of the Minnesota delegation, told me in a telephone conversation this morning that despite the great disappointment she and others are feeling with regard to the Egyptian government's continuing intransigence on allowing the international human rights activists to travel to Gaza and the state of flux and uncertainty they all face, they are making the best of the situation. Sylvia said that the number of activists assembled in various hotels in Cairo now far outnumbers the 1400 that was initially projected and that the thousands assembled include seven Minnesotans. Sylvia reported that various peaceful vigils have been held around the city and at the international participants' respective embassies.
I have been struck with the side by side existence of people rooted in love with people rooted in hate in the very same religions, institutions and even families. So for me, the measure of goodness for me is whether the actions are rooted in love and compassion. Here is a noble attempt to put all the best universal principles into the Charter of Compassion:
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.;'
It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others - even our enemies - is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledgethat we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.
For the past few years peace demonstrations have been mostly the older folks, like me. Sometimes it looked like the 60's activists aged to the present.
This is changing fast. The crew that took over the streets of Minneapolis on Dec 2 to protest the escalation included lots of young people, some on bikes, most passionately shouting. You could feel the new energy.
Saturday, Dec 5, on Lake Street, the same force was evident. Lots of young people, lots of students. Some organizing other students and kids. All protesting the escalation in Afghanistan
A couple of years, I caused a room of indrawn breaths when I said that the commitment to being a peacemaker was a lifelong commitment. People hoped that a year or two of activism would bring peace then life would get back to normal. After the news of permanent climate change, we have no "back" to go back to. After the extraordinary debt caused by banks and derivatives, we have no "back" to go back to. When the economy recovers, we will find demand for fossil fuels is outstripping supply and again, we have no "back" to go back to.
Never before has the future looked so uncertain. The trials are the most difficult that this country and even the most difficult this world has faced. Yet we have best tools that we have ever had. Ordinary people like the people writing on this blog have found their voice and found each other. It is the time of ordinary people becoming the greatest of heroes.
Sure, we encounter people who walk in self delusion no matter what we say and no matter what happens. The self delusion of "pro life" that condones innocent people killed by the death penalty, that condones millions of innocent civilians killed by the collateral damage of war. The self delusion of "free market" that allows a few giant corporations to charge any price for goods that market will bear, while the deluded wonder why Canada has the same drugs at half the price. The self delusion of the "evils of socialism" where the same people who love their medicare would deny government managed health care for all. The self delusion is so compete that I wonder how the deluded do not actually walk into walls.
The real pain of progressives and peacemakers everywhere is when all of hard fought efforts seem to result in the same decisions yet again. When our President Obama is adding 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan, thinking that somehow the applying the same solution this time will have a different result? Across the universe of progressives and peacemakers, I heard the lament of how can we go on!
The answer is that we go on because that is who we are! Whether I parade in success or whether I am the last voice speaking, I will remain true to who I am. I will not give up. Indeed I will celebrate each setback as just one more hill to climb before we succeed in our dream and in our vision of who we are and what our world should look like. All of you walking beside me is my greatest support. The strength of humans is our ability to bond and create new visions. So I am proudly holding the banner up once again. Together, we can make a difference. We are changing the world. Let's go!
Every peacemaker is struggling with the idea of escalation of US soldiers in Afghanistan. The inherent problem is that essentially soldiering and policing are different roles, with different sets of skills. Afghanistan needs a good police force not foreign group of soldiers trying to act like police. So there is a painful discussion going on within peacemakers, as well as protests for peace now back on the streets.
Last year, the right to assemble and the right to protest was taken away by requiring permits to assemble in both St Paul and Minneapolis. Last night was one the largest challenges by having a unpermitted march down Hennepin Av in St Paul. I applaud the Minneapolis city government and the Minneapolis local police for allowing the unpermitted march, while simply lining up a row of officers on horses on one side and a row of officers on bicycles on the other side. Eventually, those people who wanted to be arrested had to sit down and block the intersection. Those who simply wanted to march then dispersed on police orders. Kudos to the Minneapolis police for acting with restraint.
Craig Stellmacher from the Uptake has an onsite report:
The first war criminal to visit Minnesota since the infamous RNC dropped in to Beth El Synagogue, Sunday, November 8 for a big time fund raiser. Condoleezza Rice, the queen of torture, helped build the coffers of the synagogue and her own pocket with a private discussion with a few hundred close contributors. A dedicated group of peace lovers and torture detesters (150 or so) gathered to welcome her appropriately, peacefully and piercingly.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... Several dozen cameras covered the outside events and a few were allowed in. According to footage aired by the MSM, no recording was permitted of her remarks. Don Shelby introduced her and Norm Coleman was seen in rapt attention.
Community-partnered policing or community policing is both a philosophy and a strategy where police and citizens cooperate as partners. The people of a neighborhood and their local police use relationships, trust, empathy and a common purpose to jointly use the resources of the community to solve the roots of crime. Ordinary citizens take on the responsibility of solving community problems relating to crime, not just leaving it to the police. In this philosophy the police are part of "we, the community," instead of viewing the community as an "us vs them" mentality.
In the community-partnered policing, the first role of the police officer is to know the community well and to support the community. Knowing the community requires that police stations are located more within communities instead of being centralized. Officers are less in their patrol cars and more on the street, in town meetings, talking with people and generally being involved in the neighborhood. Police officers are encouraged to live in the community and to become socially involved in the communities.
The neighborhoods under community policing begin to look different. People form block parties, block clubs, neighborhood watches and action groups. People know and care who their neighbors are. Activities move from closed-off back-yard parties to more open front-yard parties. In walking through the neighborhoods, more people walk and talk on the streets, and kids are actively bicycling. Boulevard gardens display the new front-yard focus.
