Famous Quote of the day:                                                                                                                                     [Forward Widely & Sorry for any Duplicates]

"The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity.

Even a dead fish can go with the flow."

Jim Hightower

MEETING AGENDA FOR MARCH 18, 2009

Dear Progressives,

The monthly meeting of PDA/DFA Progressive Democracy So.Jersey will be held this

Wednesday - March 18th - at 7:00 PM

in the Collingswood Library, 771 Haddon Ave, Collingswood, NJ 08108

PLEASE MAKE AN EFFORT TO ATTEND !!!!

There are many items to be addressed and we need your help and input to make them happen !!!! We are facing a crucial year and we really need everyone to participate, and please donate a couple of hours each month.

No one understands better than me what the past 8 years have done to wear activists down, but we don’t have much time before the Congressional races for 2010 begin.

If you aren’t aware of all the major issues that need to be addressed, you definitely need to attend this meeting. If you are aware, then we need you to be there to help support and work on those issues.

Items to be discussed:

1. Upcoming Elections and candidates -

• the deadline for petitions for Commission seats is on March 19th. [ Anyone taking on Jim Maley ?]
• the deadline for petitions for County Committee seats is April 6th.

It would be nice to see every municipality have candidates for their town's committee seats. Will you consider running in your municipality ? So far we have :

Tim O'Neill plans to run for a Committee seat for the Collingswood Borough again this year. It would be nice to have other members join on the petition and run as a group platform. All it requires for Collingswood is a total of 20 signatures for the complete platform to run, but then we need everyone's help to win.

In all of position in politics, the most important one to hold is on the County Committee, because it all starts here....they decide who runs for the other offices, such as State Assembly,State Senate, House of Representatives, Senate, and so forth. See duties below:

Duties of County Committee people include nuts and bolts things like registering new voters, finding election board workers (e.g. competent people to run voting machines), serving as "challengers" on election day, GOTV (get-out-the-vote) and other campaign and election support.

They also serve as delegates to the annual County Convention (usually in March), where endorsement votes are held for County, State and National offices. Endorsement of local candidates is up to each municipal committee. Endorsed candidates get to run "in the column" with the Regular Democratic Organization on the Primary ballot. Other candidates are still free to run "outside the column" but face steep odds.

( Remember still in Collingswood we are fighting Eminent Domain abuse  [1] from King Maley , who represents over 2 dozen municipalities in  taking private land and turning it over to redevelopers ] and he also just gave 1.5 million dollars [2] to the Lumber Yard Projects to complete the units, since they couldn't secure financing from other avenues, those are your tax payer dollars...do you think your taxes will go up again this year? Now he has his eye on expanding his eminent domain powers , are you his next target?[3]  )

·         [1] http://emdo.blogspot.com/2005/02/taking-sides-on-eminent-domain.html 

·         [2] http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/39274092.html?viewAll=y

·         [3] http://business.camdencounty.com/transitvillagecollingswood.aspx

2. All of New Jersey Assembly and Senate are Up for Election including our Governor.  

Things are not looking good for Governor Corzine to be re-elected. The unions are not in favor of him and we are seriously looking at a Republican for our next Governor.  He is way down in the polls. What do you want to do about this ?

Now is a good time to have our state assembly members and senate  for a Townhall forum to answer questions, and push for their support of the state resolution for HR 676 currently as a resolution in both the assembly and senate. We need help to arrange these forums !!!!

3. Health Care Now – single payer healthcare events and help needed

a) HCAN (which is not HealthCare-Now) is having trainings around the state on their version of healthcare which still includes having the insurance companies involved [4]. If we are going to have a plan to cover all, this is the time to make it happen !!!  We need people to help handout literature on HR676  [5] and the State resolution for those days.

Saturday,March 21^st @ 10 AM - Willingboro &

Saturday, March 28^th @ 10 AM - Sewall

b) NJ: One Plan, One Nation state-wide single payer conference:

·        Sunday, May 31, 1:30 PM to 6 PM (times may change a little).  

Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ

This will be the biggest single-payer event yet in New Jersey.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), when it endorsed single-payer national health insurance, provided $2000 mini-grants for ten regional workshops to take place all over the US where people can learn about single-payer national health insurance, and provide an opportunity for them to get involved in this issue. This is one of them. All are welcome, and many NJ elected officials will be asked to attend and support HR 676.

HOLD THE DATE. Plan to be in Princeton on May 31. Want to Help? We need people to help man a PDA table at the conference. We'll take a van or a bus if enough folks want to go!

c) We have tickets available for a Healthcare Fund Raiser, a Spaghetti Dinner,  to be held Friday, April 24, 2009, 6-9 PM at the Collingswood Presbyterian Church, Fern and Maple Aves. Tickets are $20. We will have them available at the meeting.

·         [4] http://www.healthcare-now.org/about/regarding-hcan/

·         [5] http://www.healthcare-now.org/    

4. Up Coming Speakers

We have numerous opportunities to have some really great speakers again this year !

Like: humanitarian crisis in Iraq, international trade & financial policy, climate change, from fair trade to globalization plus others

And the Steering committee is willing to have them here but we need the members to step up and help put these events together. Is there anyone interested in working on these ?

5. Treasury Report

January 21,2009  Balance                                                       $443.71

Bill for Movies                                                                         -  77.51

Balance                                                                                  $ 366.20

01/21/2009 Donations for NJ -1 Plan,1 Nation                       + 50.00 *

02/13/2009 Movie Donations                                                  + 32.00

Balance                                                                                  $ 448.20

Bill for “Thirst” Movie                                                              - 60.00

Donation to NJ -1 Plan,1 Nation                                             - 100.00 **

03/13/2009 Movie Donation                                                     +   5.00  ***

Balance as of March 18, 2009                                                   $293.20         

* This was 2 donations of $25.00 to the State Coalition for advertising the upcoming 05/31/2009 workshop.

** It was voted for the group to pay the difference to the State Coalition since there were no other donations made to meet the obligation of $100 for the group as part of the coalition.

*** Thirst was a very expensive movie for the group to buy, but since there are communities currently who have their water works privatized (Camden) and others who are fighting it (Red Bank ) in the state of NJ, we thought it is only a matter of time before it will happen in more municipalities across the state.

( We are open to suggestions of which movies the group would like to see . Please tell us at the meeting !)

6. Endorsement of Bail Out the People

April 3 & 4
National March on Wall St.— Jobs Not War!
Anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination
• Vote to decide :  Shall PDSJ add their name as Endorsers for this event ?

7. On the 6^th Anniversary of the War :

A March and Vigil - Thursday, March 19, 2009  5:30 PM

Calling for Divestment From the military and investment in our Families

March starts at George & Albany - New Brunswick,NJ

The Next New Deal

·         Cut The Military Budget Annually By 25% - Make it Transparent

·         End The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

·         Create Jobs and Strengthen our Infrastructure

·         Guarantee Quality Affordable Health Care for Everyone

·         High Quality Education From Early Childhood through College

·         Regulate Wall St. and Support Main St.

·         Clean Energy and Independence From Oil

·         Reduce Poverty and Support the Social Safety Net

For More Information or to Add Your Organization as a Co-sponsor, contact Atif Malik, NJ Citizen Action Organizer at atif@...  or 732-246-4772.

8. Other Business :

·         Tribute for Bill Brown

·         Accountability Group

·         Any other new business that the membership wishes to bring to the floor .