Impressive.
1) Grand list of co-sponsors especially
the socialist presense.
2) Enheartening seeing
the term "ruling class" (boo) and its associated value
perspective is back again, that's revolutionary lingo and there's that word
"international-ist" too.
3) Malik Rahim is indeed deserving of
laurels by reason of his Southern Reconstruction work and the focus of his
efforts.
-
Wasn't it a delight seeing youth on the
streets of LA and elsewhere? The streets speak loudly, they are the media
of the deep; write it on the walls of America.
-
No youth, no revolutionary change in or out
of Pacifica. "'The streets belong to 'the people'" and so does New
Pacifica.
Join us....EVERYONE. Rich
and poor, broken and hale, black and white , east and west, north
and south. Y'all come! /R from the center
Hi,
Here's a new project that you may find interesting. Its idea
is to flip the National Endowment for Democracy -- a CIA operation which creates
death squads in other countries and finances them to overthrow governments and
popular movements -- and instead create the INTERnational Endowment for
Democracy, which challenges the U.S. ruling class' concept of "nation building"
throughout the world and asks the people of the world to contribute towards
helping to save (and institute for the first time) democracy in the United
States.
This wacky idea was the brainchild of my friend, Professor
Bertell Ollman (NYU), the author of numerous books on Marxism and Dialectics.
But what began as a sort of "Yes-Men" comical satire had recently been
incorporated as a not-for-profit organization and is now taking on quite a bit
of serious substance, given the political and intellectual "gravitas" of the
individuals who have joined the organization's board of directors. This eclectic
collection of progresive authors, professors, and activists includes:
Honorary Co-Chairs: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Ramsey Clark, Harry Magdoff,
Annette Rubinstein, Gore Vidal, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Howard
Zinn;
Executive Committee: Bertell Ollman (President), Michael Brown,
Barbara Foley, John Manley, Michael Smith;
Legal Counsel: William
Schaap;
Other Members of the I.E.D. Board of Directors: Amrita Basu,
James Cockroft, Bernardine Dohrn, John Ehrenberg, Francis Feeley, John Gerassi,
Martha Gimenez, Christine Harrington, David Harvey, Michael Hudson, Abdeen
Jabara, Mark Kesselman, Joel Kovel, Peter Kwong, Sandra Levinson, Michael
Parenti, Michael Ratner, Ellen Ray, Lynne Stewart, Immanuel Wallerstein, Leonard
Weinglass, Suzi Weissman, and Richard Wolff.
You might recognize
the names of some of these "heavy hitters". To find out more about each of them,
go to http://www.iefd.org/about/index.php
One intriguing
project the I.E.D. is initiating is the nominations of people -- so send in
yours! -- for an anually selected "Noble Prize [yes, that spelling is
intentional] for Democracy". I've nominated Malik Rahim (though his name
does not yet appear on the list on the website), as someone who has contributed
enormously to the real democratization of the United States. Malik's work in
establishing the Common Ground collective in New Orleans challenges the utter
and intended failure of basic services in New Orleans not simply by writing
about it, but by directly creating a network of dual-power institutions and
popular assemblies -- that is, grassroots democracy in practice, and not just in
theory. [Note: Neither Malik Rahim nor Common Ground
<www.commongroundrelief.org> are in any way affiliated with the IED nor as
far as I know even aware of its existence. So please do not infer any connection
from my writing about them here.]
You can send in your nominations for
the Noble Prize for Democracy in the U.S. to <comments@xxxxxxxx> .
You might also be interested in reading the large collection of
Democracy-related articles on the website, and in sending in your own articles
or those by others that are relevant to this project, to that same
address.
Below is an abbreviated version of the APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF
THE WORLD that the IED is circulating. To learn more, please visit the websited
at www.IEFD.org. And, please
forward this entire letter to your friends and political associates in the U.S.
and throughout the world.
Thanx,
Mitchel
Cohen
*********************************************************************
To
see this message on the web site in an easy-to-read html format:
http://www.iefd.org/?r=r01
==============================================
URGENT
APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF THE
WORLD
==============================================
March
28, 2006
from the INTERNATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY
(I.E.D.)
HELP! HELP! The house is on fire and we are all
living in it. The United States government and its dependent organizations, such
as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have responded to the fire... by
pouring more oil on it.
They call it "democratic nation building" -
a fancy name for the perpetual wars, theft of the commons, exploding economic
inequalities, weakening civil liberties (including the introduction of torture),
and the intensifying degradation and outright destruction of our natural
environment that lie hidden behind "free" trade and the promise (seldom
fulfilled) of a "free" election. Billions of people outside America want this
madness to stop, but what can they do?
Our new and independent
organization, the International Endowment for Democracy (I.E.D.), believes it
will only stop if democratic nation building (the real thing, not the oil) is
applied to the U.S., which is the country most responsible for these frightening
global developments, and that people everywhere can play a role in bringing it
about.
The I.E.D. is a new non-profit foundation whose Board of
Directors includes:
HOWARD ZINN (America's leading radical
historian)
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL (America's most famous political
prisoner)
GORE VIDAL (America's premier progressive novelist and
essayist)
ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD (winner of the Isaac Deutcher
Prize)
RAMSEY CLARK (world's leading human rights
lawyer)
BARBARA FOLEY (Chair of the Left Alliance, the union of
progressive academic caucuses)
MICHAEL PARENTI (America's foremost
critic of capitalist democracy)
IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN (past president
of the International Sociological Association)
MICHAEL RATNER
(President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and past President of the
National Lawyers' Guild)
and two dozen other major American progressive
scholars, lawyers and activists. Find the full Board of Directors at http://www.iefd.org/about/?r=r01
IN
BRIEF: If groups like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) use
American government money (whence the "NATIONAL") -- and a big dose of hypocrisy
-- to subvert democracy abroad, the International Endowment for Democracy (IED)
hopes to use foreign monies (whence the "INTERNATIONAL") to help build a real
democracy in the country that needs it most, the U.S.A. (See DEMOCRACY LIBRARY,
section III of our website:
http://www.iefd.org/articles/american_democracy.php?r=r01
)
We also call on the international community to monitor
elections in the United States. Is there anyone left in the world outside
the U.S. who doesn't recognize the need for such monitors?
This is
not because there is less democracy in America than anywhere else - a few other
lands are even worse off in this regard - but because the DEMOCRACY
DEFICIT from which our country suffers is a greater threat to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness of people all across the globe than the actions of
any other regime.
As victims of their own government's destructive
policies, the great majority of Americans have no interest in retaining them and
would change these policies in an instant if our democracy really worked as
we're told it does. That they haven't is because they can't, because the
laws, the elections, the media, the schools and other means for making such
changes have been bent out of shape (through systematic bias and, increasingly,
outright repression), hidden (through enforced ignorance), bought up by Big
Money especially this), and - when "necessary" - stolen (as in the last two
presidential elections). Who can doubt that people everywhere have a huge
stake in the democratization of America?
THIS MAY BE A FIRST:
Americans asking people from other countries for help. Many recipients of this
Appeal outside the U.S., however, are probably still asking themselves - "Why
should we help Americans make needed changes in their country? Don't we have
enough to do in our own country?" The answer can be presented best by another
question: Is there any reader who lives outside the capital of his or her
country who believes it is a waste of time and money to try to influence the
policies of the government sitting in the capital? That's where the main
political power is. Well, in this period of American military, economic and
cultural imperialism, Washington has become the real capital of your country,
for it is there that many of the most destructive decisions affecting your life
are made. It would seem to make sense, therefore, good political sense, to
devote at least some of your time, energy and money to helping bring about the
kind of changes you want in Washington. If that's at all
possible...
At this moment in history, those of us who live in the
United States are in the best position to confront our common oppressor. The
responsibility we bear, therefore, is enormous, but our forces are weak.
While the current government's undermining of the democratic process, as
imperfect as it was, constitutes a growing threat to all dissenters, it also
provides us with a key issue on which our rulers are extremely
vulnerable. As the explosion of governmental hypocrisy clearly attests,
democracy remains the American people's favorite virtue. It is on this crucial
issue, with its broad ramifications for government policy in America and around
the world, that we need your help.
There are many groups in the
United States that are trying to defend what remains of our rapidly shrinking
democracy and/or build a better, more egalitarian one. Mostly they are small,
and they all lack funds. The International Endowment for Democracy (I.E.D.)
wants to give people all over the world an opportunity to participate in this
crucial struggle by making a donation (no matter how small) to us, which we will
then distribute to some of these groups. Apart from our small operating
expenses (no I.E.D. board members are paid), all the money received will be
passed on. As odd as this may sound, with this show of solidarity, people
everywhere can now help themselves by helping us to help them. Maybe this
doesn't sound so odd, after
all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
POTENTIAL
CONTRIBUTORS should also know that we will not give money to any political
party, or accept money from any organization involved in violent forms of
political activity or from any foreign government.
To American
readers, who don't need our advice to donate money to their favorite
progressive organizations, we only ask that you continue doing what you have
been (okay, do a little more), but please forward this appeal to your
friends and acquaintances, especially those who come from abroad. (Should you
also want to show your support for this initiative by making a donation, of
course, we won't turn you
away.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
SUCCESS OF OUR PROJECT depends on getting the word out to millions of people
throughout the world.
So...if you approve of what we are doing and
think it could be important, we urge you to send this appeal to all the people
on your e-mail trees, and to the websites and blogs you visit as well as to the
discussion and organizational lists to which you belong, particularly outside
the U.S. And please don't neglect your contacts in the media.
The
MoveOn organization is said to have reached between ten and twenty million
Americans on behalf of Howard Dean during the 2004 presidential primaries in
just this way, but ours may be the first attempt to extend this strategy to the
whole world. It is certainly the first attempt to use the internet to involve
the whole world in the badly needed democratization of the United States.
The supremely serious nature as well as the planetary scope of our problem
is what makes this approach necessary. The new technology of the internet is
what makes it possible. But it still requires a little help from you to make it
happen.
-----------------------------------
WON'T YOU
HELP?
-----------------------------------
See our website
-
http://www.internationalendowmentfordemocracy.org or http://www.iefd.org - for
information on the following, much of it in OVER A DOZEN
LANGUAGES.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
See
HOW TO HELP for details on how to make a donation.
http://www.iefd.org/donations/?r=r01
--------------------------------------------------------------------
See
our STATEMENT OF PURPOSE for a more detailed analysis of the crisis in
American democracy and what we hope to achieve.
http://www.iefd.org/articles/statement_of_purpose.php
See
our PRESS RELEASE.
http://www.iefd.org/press/press_releases.php?r=r01
See
WHO WE ARE for the background and publications of the members of our
Board of Directors.
http://www.iefd.org/about/?r=r01
See WHERE
THE MONEY GOES for our priorities and procedures in passing on funds (and,
later, for how much money we received and who we gave it to).
http://www.iefd.org/money/priorities.php?r=r01
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IN
ENGLISH SECTION OF WEBSITE ONLY
See our DEMOCRACY LIBRARY, which
contains some of the best critical writing on this subject and is divided into
the following sections:
* National Endowment for Hypocrisy Democracy
*
Stolen Election(s)
* American 'Democracy'?
* Is Democracy Compatible with
Capitalism?
(HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for courses that deal with democracy at both
high school and college
levels).
--------------------------------------------------------------------
See,
too, sections on
* FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE / MANIFESTOS AND CHARTERS
*
NOBLE PRIZE FOR DEMOCRACY
* DEMOCRACY QUOTES
* DEMOCRACY CARTOONS
*
DEMOCRACY WATCH BLOG
* WORLD SOCIAL FORUM ON DEMOCRACY IN 2007
* CRITICAL
BOOK, ESSAY, POEM, SONG AND CARTOON CONTESTS ON DEMOCRACY FOR HIGH SCHOOL AND
COLLEGE
* LINKS
and Coming Soon:
* MEDIA REACTIONS TO THE I.E.D.
*
DEMOCRACY VIDEOS
* N.E.D. vs. I.E.D. DOCUMENTARY
* CONFERENCES AND
LECTURES
* LETTERS
*
BIBLIOGRAPHY
--------------------------------------------------------------------
PLEASE
FORWARD THIS APPEAL TO ALL YOUR CONTACTS
AND ASK THEM TO DO THE
SAME.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
CONTACT US:
WEBSITE
http://www.internationalendowmentfordemocracy.org
or http://www.iefd.org
E-MAIL
comments@xxxxxxxx
(for readers' comments or questions)
REGULAR
MAIL
International Endowment for Democracy,
P.O. Box 3005
Prince
Street Station
New York, New York, 10012, U.S.A.
(for all of the above
plus DONATIONS BY CHECK - please include e-mail address with all
letters)
====================================================================
PRESIDENT
OF THE I.E.D.
Prof. Bertell
Ollman
Dept. of Politics,
NYU
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE I.E.D.
Prof. Michael Brown
(former
Chair) Dept. of Sociology, Northeastern Univ.
Prof. Barbara
Foley
Dept. of English, Rutgers
Univ. (Newark)
Prof. Emeritus John
Manley
(former Chair) Dept. of
Political Science, Stanford Univ.
Michael
Smith
Lawyer
====================================================================
FOREIGN
LANGUAGE VERSIONS
Arabic http://www.iefd.org/lang/ar01.php?r=r01
Bengali http://www.iefd.org/lang/bn01.php?r=r01
Chinese http://www.iefd.org/lang/zh01.php?r=r01
Farsi http://www.iefd.org/lang/fa01.php?r=r01
French http://www.iefd.org/lang/fr01.php?r=r01
German http://www.iefd.org/lang/de01.php?r=r01
Greek http://www.iefd.org/lang/el01.php?r=r01
Hindi http://www.iefd.org/lang/hi01.php?r=r01
Italian http://www.iefd.org/lang/it01.php?r=r01
Japanese http://www.iefd.org/lang/ja01.php?r=r01
Korean http://www.iefd.org/lang/ko01.php?r=r01
Portuguese http://www.iefd.org/lang/pt01.php?r=r01
Russian http://www.iefd.org/lang/ru01.php?r=r01
Spanish http://www.iefd.org/lang/es01.php?r=r01
Turkish http://www.iefd.org/lang/tr01.php?r=r01
====================================================================
KEEP
INFORMED
If you wish to be kept informed of later developments in our
project (in English), please send us your name and country by e-mail to
info@xxxxxxxx with "mailing list" in the subject
line.
====================================================================
Copyright
(c) International Endowment for Democracy 2006.
All rights reserved. Site
launch: March 2006.
----------------------- http://www.iefd.org/
-----------------------
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http://www.egroups.com/group/NewPacifica
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