Re: <OT> Progressive Democrats of America

"DoD" (thecats@xxxxxx) writes:
> -An organization founded in July 2004 to provide a "philosophical home
> within the Democratic Party for the progressive community"
> -Co-founded and led mostly by activists from failed 2004 presidential
> campaign of Cleveland Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a leader of the radical
> Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives

> -One co-founder is veteran left radical Tom Hayden
> -Helped install Howard Dean as head of Democratic National Committee
> -Supported by several Hollywood stars, including Ed Asner, "Mr. Grant" of
> The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Whoops! Triply damned.



>
>
> Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), founded in July 2004, was "conceived
> as a progressive challenge to the corporate-dominated Democratic Leadership
> Council [DLC]," wrote Nick Jahr in The Nation, and aims to provide a
> "'philosophical home within the Democratic Party for the progressive [i.e.,
> leftwing] community.'"
>
> "Through this organization we shall endeavor, over a period of years, to
> build an unstoppable coalition of the hundreds of millions of Americans who
> would benefit from a taking back of our democracy, our economy, and our
> institutions from the 'moneyed interests,'" says the PDA "Vision" statement.
> "We dedicate ourselves to beginning the long, patriotic, nonviolent, and
> ultimately unstoppable process of transforming the Democratic Party."
>
> PDA reflects the George McGovern, Paul Wellstone, Nation leftwing of the
> Democratic Party and boasts that it helped install Howard Dean as Chairman
> of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
>
> "We believe that the greatest need of our nation," says PDA's Progressive
> Plan to Change America, "is to redirect the resources of our government from
> destruction to creation, from war to peace, from military spending to social
> spending, from sickness to health, from selfish desires to universal needs.
> The future of humanity and our planet are at stake." [Emphasis added] This
> is the oldest line of the fellowing-traveling tradition of the Progressive
> Party which bolted from the Democratic Party in 1948 to oppose its Cold War
> policies against Stalin.
>
> The core of activists who founded and run Progressive Democrats of America
> came from the failed 2004 presidential campaign of Cleveland, Ohio,
> Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a leader of the radical Progressive Caucus - a
> group of socialist Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kucinch
> advocates replacing the Department of Defense with a "Department of Peace."
>
> PDA's co-founder and National Director is Tim Carpenter, who in 2004 was
> Deputy National Campaign Manager for the Kucinich for President Campaign,
> the campaign's state coordinator in Massachusetts and its coordinator at the
> Democratic National Convention in Boston. Carpenter comes from Orange County
> and is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. He describes
> himself as "a social and political activist who, for more than 30 years, has
> worked for causes such as nuclear disarmament, peace and justice, abolishing
> the death penalty, defending the homeless, and fighting for clean elections
> and campaign finance reform."
>
> PDA's Political Director is Kevin Spidel, who was National Field Director
> for the 2004 Kucinich campaign. Prior to that he worked as Western Field
> Coordinator and "grassroots trainer" for Amnesty International. Spidel was
> co-founder of the left group Progressive Vote, which merged with PDA in fall
> 2004.
>
> "The far right has the Christian Coalition, Rush Limbaugh, Heritage and
> Carol [sic] Rove. Now we have the PDA!" wrote Spidel. "Without the
> Progressive Democrats of America, we simply will not have an organized
> grassroots lobby to effectively counter the powerful and well funded right
> wing, which currently has the political strength to privatize Social
> Security, dismantle Medicaid and Medicare, and dramatically reduce funding
> for affordable housing, education, and job programs."
>
> PDA's Press and Media Team Coordinator is David Swanson, who was Press
> Secretary for the 2004 Kucinich campaign. He worked for three years as
> Communications Coordinator for the radical Association of Community
> Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Since May 2004 Swanson has been Media
> Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA),
> an organization of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial
> Organizations (AFL-CIO). He also serves on the Executive Council of the
> Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA.
>
> PDA's Promotions and House Party Coordinator is Judith Shattuck, who
> "studied grassroots organization at the University of Chicago with Saul
> Alinsky during a year-long seminar in the 60s" and managed the Kucinich
> campaign's office in Washington State. Other PDA staff from the Kucinich
> Washington State campaign include its online newsletter editor Rita
> Weinstein and its information technology coordinator Nancy Ging.
>
> Progressive Democrats of America leaves little doubt about its radical and
> socialist orientation. It's short official list of "Alliances, Partners and
> Friends" prominently features "Frank Llewellyn, National Director,
> Democratic Socialists of America [DSA]." DSA is "the principal American
> affiliate of the Socialist International." Congress's Progressive Caucus, of
> which Rep. Kucinich is a leader, had its own pages on DSA's Internet web
> site until 1999, when conservative press reports prompted both groups to
> conceal their connections with one another. In 2004, according to Llewellyn,
> most DSA members "supported Dennis Kucinich or Howard Dean in the Democratic
> primary elections."
>
> Another PDA ally on its list is Tom Hayden, 1960s Marxist activist,
> co-founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), former
> husband of actress Jane Fonda, and term-limited former California State
> Senator. Hayden is co-founder of PDA.
>
> Another radical on PDA's list of allies is Rep. Barbara Lee. Perhaps the
> most leftwing Member of Congress, she represents Berkeley, California as the
> hand-picked successor of her retired former boss Rep. Ron Dellums. Prior to
> working for Dellums, Lee was a confidential aide to Black Panther Party
> "Minister of Defense" and convicted murderer Huey Newton. She was the sole
> congressional vote against U.S.war against the Taliban in retaliation for
> 9/11. In the 1980s, as Dellums' aide, she collaborated with the Marxist
> dictatorship in Granada against her own country.
>
> Another PDA ally is Jeff Cohen, the founder of leftwing "media watchdog"
> organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
>
> Jodie Evans is another activist high on PDA's list of friends and allies.
> She was co-founder of the anti-American group Code Pink for Peace and sits
> on the board of directors of the extremist environmental group Rainforest
> Action Network (RAN). Code Pink, like PDA, works closely with United for
> Peace and Justice (UPJ), whose leader Leslie Cagan is an active supporter of
> Cuba's Communist dictator Fidel Castro. Evans helped organize anti-War
> protests and protests during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New
> York City.
>
> (Aaron Rubin, PDA's Rapid Response Action Coordinator, has worked with the
> National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and with the 2004 TrueMajorityAction propaganda
> campaign of Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, as coordinator
> of its PantsOnFire stunts to grab media attention during the presidential
> campaign. "Together with PDA founder Tim Carpenter," says Rubin's PDA
> official biography, "Aaron set the agenda and drove PantsOnFire II
> throughout the Republican National Convention in NYC.")
>
> Several of PDA's closest allies are Hollywood actors. One is James Cromwell,
> best known for his roles as the crooked police captain in L.A. Confidential
> and as President Bob Fowler in the Tom Clancy nuclear terrorism movie The
> Sum of All Fears. Another is David Clennon, whose career includes a role in
> the leftwing TV series thirtysomething, which introduced the term
> "Politically Correct" to most Americans. Clennon is best known for playing
> Joshua Nankin in the anti-CIA TV series The Agency.
>
> PDA's Honorary Chair and "Acting President" is actress Mimi Kennedy, best
> known for playing the hippie mom of Dharma on the television sitcom Dharma
> and Greg. She was active in the Kucinich campaign in Hollywood and was a
> charter member of Artists United to Win Without War, among many other
> leftwing causes.
>
> "The Democratic Party needs our help to regain its soul," Mimi Kennedy said
> in a July 2004 PDA press release published by the leftwing Common Dreams
> Progressive Newswire. "If this is to be the party of peace, of universal,
> single payer healthcare, of fair trade, then it needs people to speak out on
> those issues."
>
> PDA reaches out to latter-day hippies and to what some harsh critics have
> called the "granola left - flakes, nuts and fruits." Its list of allies
> includes "Caryn Hartglass, Vegetarian activist." (Dennis Kucinich is a
> vegetarian.) PDA's "Volunteer Coordinator, and Acting Chair of Policy Task
> Force on Spirituality/Values" is Nicoli Bailey, who describes herself as
> host of "the on-line radio show Your Planetary Connection.exploring
> geopolitics, philosophy, poetry, myth, and planetary and solar system cycles
> within the context of astrological wisdom." PDA, as a political movement
> with its own staff astrologer, might therefore fairly be described as a "big
> net" organization that also has stars in places beyond movies and
> television.
>
> Ed Asner, who played Mr. Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has been an
> active supporter and fundraiser for Progressive Democrats of America. Asner
> is also a proud card-carrying member of Democratic Socialists of America and
> an outspoken advocate for socialism.
>
> Cindy Asner, his wife, is on PDA's short list of friends and allies. Ms.
> Asner also sits on the Board of Directors of the Free Press Action Fund
> along with the founders of the leftwing "media reform" organization Free
> Press, John Nichols of The Nation and Robert McChesney. McChesney, in turn,
> sits on the board of the Monthly Review Foundation and until 2004 was
> co-editor of the openly Marxian journal Monthly Review.
>
> Another who sits with Cindy Asner on the Free Press Action Fund board is
> Linda Foley, President of the Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of
> America, AFL-CIO, who in spring 2005 accused the U.S. military of
> deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq.
>
> And another board member is Norman Solomon, a former head of FAIR and now
> Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA), a pro-active
> left media-spinning organization on whose board McChesney sits.
>
> On July 29, 2004, PDA National Director Tim Carpenter was a moderator at a
> gathering of approximately 1,000 progressives at Roxbury Community College
> in Massachusetts. This conference, "Beyond Boston: Building the Progressive
> Wing of the Democratic Party," featured among its invited speakers former
> Vermont Governor and failed Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean,
> Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. John Conyers (D.-Michigan)
> (whose senior legislative aide Joel Segal works closely with PDA), Rep.
> Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D.-Illinois), Jackson's father the Rev. Jesse Jackson of
> the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and James Zogby, head of the Arab American
> Institute (AAI) and brother of pollster John Zogby. Others who spoke to the
> cheering college gymnasium crowd included Tom Hayden, Medea Benjamin, and
> founder of the anti-Iraq War group Win Without War former Maine Democratic
> Congressman Tom Andrews.
>
> The organization Muslims for Kucinich described this gathering as "the
> first-ever Progressive Democratic Convention."
>
> "Chris Owens, son of Brooklyn Congressman Major Owens, came to [a January
> 2005 Washington D.C. PDA progressive] summit looking for inspiration," wrote
> Nick Jahr in The Nation. "'This is not an easy thing, to be a 'progressive'
> Democrat,'" said Owens. "'We have a struggle within our party and we have a
> struggle within our country.' Owens stayed through the weekend and seemed
> ready to fight." His father Rep. Major Owens is both a member of the
> Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives and a card-carrying
> member of Democratic Socialists of America.
>
> "We are underfunded and have no available paid positions at this time," said
> the PDA website as of June 2005. "Only 2 staff and 2 interns currently get
> paid, and over 20 people put 40 to 100 hours a week into PDA. If you would
> like to volunteer email our volunteer coordinator." It did not reveal what
> pay, bonuses, benefits, expense accounts and other perks and emoluments Tim
> Carpenter receives for keeping this cattle-like herd of far-left political
> mavericks under the control of the Democratic Party that needs them so
> desperately as voters, donors and activists.
>
> Progressive Democrats of America may have an influence bigger than its
> claims of poverty suggest. As moderates continue to abandon an
> increasingly-extreme Democratic Party, the leftwing activists who remain
> become an ever-larger proportion of the party's core. This, in turn, makes
> the Democratic Party even more extreme, which will prompt even more
> moderates to go elsewhere. PDA's plans and efforts to take over the
> Democratic Party thus may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>
> PDA has, according to its Political Director Kevin Spidel, become "one of
> the fastest growing political organizations in the country." (This is not
> necessarily difficult when an organization starts from zero and enlarging
> from one member to two constitutes 100 percent growth.)
>
> PDA has made itself a squeaky wheel on the Democratic Party's covered wagon
> going left. PDA sharply criticized DNC Chairman Howard Dean for telling an
> American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) gathering in Minneapolis on April 20,
> 2005 that, with regard to U.S. forces in Iraq, "Now that we're there, we're
> there and we can't get out. The President has created an enormous security
> problem for the United States where none existed before. But I hope the
> president is incredibly successful with his policy now that he's there."
>
> PDA's Tim Carpenter urged Howard Dean to reverse his statement and call for
> the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. To this end, Carpenter announced
> that PDA would work with United for Peace and Justice to flood congressional
> offices with telephone calls during the week following Memorial Day 2005.
>
> PDA at the California Democratic Annual Convention in April 2005 fought for
> three days to add a plank to the party platform promising troop withdrawal
> from Iraq "at the earliest possible time." According to PDA National
> Director Tim Carpenter, this effort "faced severe pressures to water down or
> derail the resolution by more hawkish Democrats, including delegates
> associated with the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who
> tried to 'pull' the resolution from the party platform report.. Delegates
> representing former presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark also tried
> unsuccessfully to weaker the resolution."
>
> In the end, PDA persuaded the California Democratic Party to vote against
> the war, thereby giving hope and encouragement to Islamist terrorists to
> keep fighting against America.
>
> PDA in December 2004 also joined forces with Jesse Jackson, Rep. John
> Conyers and other "progressives" in challenging the Ohio vote count that, by
> a margin of more than 100,000 votes, re-elected Republican President George
> W. Bush. For Progressive Democrats, democracy is acceptable only when the
> people vote for them.
>
> If Progressive Democrats of America continues to score such successes, it
> could soon attract big money from the likes of George Soros and other
> billionaire leftists behind the "Shadow Party" on which the Democratic Party
> now depends for money, the mother's milk of its politics.
>
> "PDA," wrote Jahr in The Nation, "may represent the advent of the grassroots
> organization that the Rainbow Coalition failed to sustain. This time around
> it's a movement that doesn't depend on the charisma of a Jackson or a
> Kucinich or a Dean."
>
> The logo of Progressive Democrats of America is the head of a green donkey
> inside a circle. It remains to be seen whether this green donkey will come
> predominantly to symbolize environmentalism, seasickness, a new springtime
> for socialism in American politics, money or jealousy.
> http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/groupprofile.asp?grpid=7123
>
>


.

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