Americans cherish our liberty and don't want government or corporations to take away our freedoms. President Obama must be heartened and his Republican challengers concerned about the people's vetoes of extreme tea party corporate libertarian overreach in Ohio (workers' rights) Maine (voting rights) Arizona (immigrants' rights) Mississippi (reproductive freedom), and Iowa (marriage equality).
The messaging lesson is one that we Californians learned in 2005, when defeating Arnold Schwarzenegger's anti-union measures, is that politicians can't win these elections, but teachers nurses firefighters and cops sure can. The labor community's Main Street Movement model has been improved over the last 6 years, backed by Democrats independents and fed-up Republicans, and delivered a pro-labor majority in Wisconsin and rebuked overreach in Ohio. The values-based coalitions of economic and social justice stakeholders have earned a well-deserved victory lap.
The organizing lesson is to reject the old bipolarity of left vs. right and the ineffective top-down pyramids in favor of trans-partisan coalition building using concentric beehive models to engage constituency networks. People distrust institutions but trust their friends and peers. Yesterday's victory was a culmination of the shift first articulated in 2005 by AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee who said that communications have to be "neighbor to neighbor not stranger to stranger."
Last night neighbors spoke and neighbors agreed: Americans prefer individual freedoms to corporate greed. Taking away our freedoms won't create jobs -- only divisions among people who yearn for economic opportunity. To build on this momentum, we must begin with safeguarding our voting rights, which are the keys to all other freedoms. We know that Republicans will only renew their efforts to suppress voting rights and sponsor divisive wedge issue ballot measures -- so we can't stop now. Progressives, take a bow, then get ready to register your friends, run for office and reinforce the fight for freedom and economic opportunity.
Follow Christine Pelosi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sfpelosi
Doug Kendall: A Disastrous Day for the Tea Party
So listen up folks. Your Vote MATTERS! You don't vote, the country goes down the proverbial toilet. So just force yourself to take voting enormously seriously. We must be counted when it comes Nov 8, every single time a vote is up for grabs. We must do our part in making this a democracy. Without us, we're left with things forced upon us, things we don't want happening, and they'll be happening right inside our very own lives, families, and homes. It's up to us, we the people. I say we matter. I say we stand together and never indulge in "staying home" on election day!
Please rewrite this essay or lose points towards your final grade.
Love your last line!
We are just getting started and based on the results from 2010, America agrees with us.
TEA Party 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/09/election-2011-ohio-issue-2-personhood-amendment_n_1083707.html
Sorry, Sparky.
"Overreach" hardly describes what the Tea Party does. Rape and mauling are more accurate.
I agree yesterday had many positive outcomes, but I think I would hold off on the victory lap for now.
The worst thing the Dems did after 2008 was to relax.
The momentum must continue and the only way that can be done is to keep the issues before the people, AND to act on them.
The mistake of 2010 was that Dems felt the T-P'ers weren't a threat. The T-P'ers mobilized their base and got out the vote. You had others who actually believed their propaganda
.
Then once the "JOBS,JOBS,JOBS" people got in, they turned their attention to destroying Planned Parenthood, abolish union rights, and told their constiuents that the Koch Brothers and that Norquest guy were sent by the Creator to lead the nation.
Just like mosquitoes, crabgrass, and sunburn, the T-Party might be a little less of a problem during the cold months of winter, BUT we still have to get through next spring, summer and fall, and we get out the sunblock, the weedkiller and the OFF! so they won't harm us in 2012.
Unemployment continues to hover at nine percent & throwing in the long term unemployed & the underemployed it is likely closer to thirteen percent. HAMP estimates that Home foreclosures are expected to reach 8 million by the end of 2012 and are projected to reach as high 13 million in 2013.
(1) 09/28/10: Tax on Companies that ship jobs overseas blocked by Republicans (2) 09/16/10: Small Business Jobs Act passes after failed attempt to block (3) 06/29/10: Benefits for Homeless Veterans blocked (4) 11/07/09: Affordable Health Care For America Act passed after repeated attempts block and who have vowed to repeal it (5) 10/20/11: The Jobs Bill for Teachers and first Responders blocked (6) 11/03/11: Jobs bill for highway infrastructure blocked (7) 06/21/10:an extension of weekly unemployment benefits for more than a million people out of work more than six months. (8) 11/18/10: Attempt to block a bill that would have extended jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed beyond the holiday season (8)07/15/10: Wall Street Reform passes by 3 votes following extended blocking.
"Fed up" the term is not descriptive enough for how people feel.