This is audio from MPBN's "Speaking in Maine" featuring Bruce Gagnon, co-founder Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. His address in Orono the University of Maine was entitled, “A Leftist Analysis of Elections: Why the Republican and Democratic Parties and the Political Process Are Obstacles to Real Democracy.” Broadcast Date: Friday, April 25 at 1:00 pm

Bay Area Filmmaker Margot Smith has produced a tremendous 10-minute video with highlights of the ILWU March and rally on May Day. You can check this out on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BspANxukBgg

The video includes major excerpts from the rally speeches by Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, Danny Glover, Michael Eisenscher (from US Labor Against the War) -- as well as leaders of ILWU Locals 10 and 34.

Thanks for Margot Smith for this great contribution.

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It's a beautiful San Francisco day for a peace and dignity strike!

One day off to put peace and justice on the table! Today's action is as historically significant as the decision of four young university students who sat in for justice.

The strong, proud men and women of the ILWU have drawn a line in the sand. And I am proud of you!

By your actions here today, you too have declared your independence: from the policy makers now responsible for every bomb dropped, every child killed, every veteran maimed, every dream deferred.

Your line in the sand is a demand for public policy that reflects your values.

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Cynthia McKinney tells black women
to 'get a seat at the table'
http://blackwomenvote.blogspot.com/2008/04/cynthia-mckinney-tells-black-...

If you have never listened to a podcast online before, you absolutely must listen to the one that we had last night with Green Party Presidential Candidate, Cynthia McKinney.

(see our podcast widget on the right)

Cynthia covered a wide range of political issues that have been purposefully removed from the public's discourse by America's two major parties.

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Cynthia McKinney
Statement on the Sean Bell Verdict
April 26, 2008

And with [its assertion about "no rights which the white man was bound to respect"], the United States Supreme Court ensured that the 20th Century would be defined, as W.E.B. DuBois wrote, by the color line. So, while we might be outraged at the Sean Bell decision itself, it comes directly from the flawed jurisprudence that gave us the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, Bakke in 1978, Croson in 1989, Adarand in 1995, Gratz in 2003, and all of the Ward Connerly-inspired attacks on the very same affirmative action hard won by students facing water hoses and dogs; men and women facing jail, lynch mobs, and death.

Interestingly, according to Attorney Roger Wareham of the December 12th Movement's International Secretariat, the criminal justice system in this country "always finds a rationale for letting off cops who kill black and brown people." Indeed, police officers seem to know that they can kill certain people with impunity.

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A Roundtable on the 2008 Race with Clinton Supporter Kim Gandy, Obama Supporter Bill Fletcher and McKinney Supporter Ted Glick

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In Congress, Cynthia McKinney noted the similarity between the food aid packages and cluster bombs dropped by the U.S. on Afghanistan in 2001.

[slideshow]

Credit:Pan-African News Wire

"There needs to be room for a lot of policy threads in American discourse. But the corporate media is not informing the people," Cynthia McKinney, the front-runner for the Green Party presidential nomination, told IPS during a rare 90-minute interview.

. . .

"The Green Party participated in the coalition that led in Germany and in Ireland and in the Kenyan Parliament," McKinney said. "The Green Party is international."

"We have a winner-take-all system in the U.S. that pushes conformity," she added. "Regressive ballot access laws in Georgia [and other states] prevent candidates from getting on the ballot."

"The Green Party is a political entity that deserves to be built," she said.

*This is the first of two articles about the U.S. Green Party and the 2008 elections.

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Cynthia participated in this radio show shortly after returning from Mexico City. She spoke about the occupation of the Mexican Congress and the popular uprising in support of this action, protesting the attempted theft of PEMEX by the administration seated through the stolen elections of that country.

She also addresses the purpose of politics and the exclusion of those who fail to understand and act on that purpose.

The original can be found at:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/04/20/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-...

On Saturday, April 19th, Cynthia Mckinney spoke to the rally for Mumia in the wake of the recent appeals court ruling finding judicial bias in his sentencing hearings while refusing to address the judicial bias and prosecutorial misconduct during the underlying trial. She was joined on that Philadelphia stage by her opponents for the Green Party's Presidential nomination, Jesse Johnson, Kent Mesplay and Kat Swift.

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CNN even tells us in a feature story who suffers as a result of a choice made by our policy makers to emphasize ethanol as a preferred method of weaning a hulking, overfed economy off its petroleum-based consumption habit. But they forgot the other half of that equation: who's winning? And it's the "who's winning" part that is just about always the key piece of information, that could guide us, especially when the choices of our elected leadership diverge from the core values of the voters who elected them.

And yet, as we speak, the Mexican Senate Chamber has been occupied. The massive rally held today has probably just ended, and some of the oppositio n Members of the Mexican Congress are inside the building on the dais and have announced a hunger strike. Days ago, one of the leading papers in Mexico City had a photo of the Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican Congress with an unfurled banner covering the Speaker's Rostrum, proclaiming the Chamber "Closed." The banner was hung by elected Members of the Mexican Congress who constitute the Frente Amplio Progresista that has dared to draw a line in the sand against U.S.-inspired legislation just introduced to allow foreign corporate ownership of PEMEX, Mexico's state-owned oil company.

Mexican women are energized around the idea of nation. The idea of patria. I wrote my Master's Thesis on the "Idea of Nation." And to see the women, in their t-shirts and kerchiefs, so committed to their country, their nation, their identity. To them, that's Mexico's oil, natural gas, electricity, land, and water and it ought to be used by the Mexican people first and foremost for their own national development. But sadly, it's the public policy emanating from Washington, D.C. that threatens that.

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Former Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney looks to be the front-runner for the party nomination at this stage, primarily because of her high name recognition and national reputation. On her web site, McKinney says bluntly, "We want to end the war on drugs now!"

In addition to targeting communities of color, "the War on Drugs has become a war on truth, taxpayers, civil liberties, and higher education for the poor and middle class, and sadly, it has also become a war on treatment, addicts, and reason," says her statement. It also "provides cover for US military intervention in foreign countries, particularly to our south, and that this increased militarization is used to put down all social protest movements in countries like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and elsewhere."

"This is a big issue for Cynthia, especially as it impacts communities of color and regarding the prison industrial complex," said John Judge, a McKinney press spokesman.

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Cynthia speaks to fundraiser in Los Angeles, Saturday, April 12th, 2008.

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