Rich's explanation as to how to get to the online chat room starts at the 2:40 minute mark (I though several voices were really fading and breaking up, but it turned out that was just my equipment). Virginia introduces Leah Bolger at the 8:00 minute mark. Leah had just finished with a Veterans for Peace convention. She described several speakers at the convention, including Phil Donahue, Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright, Alice Walker and several speakers from Latin America and the Caribbean. Leah discussed the TV show “Stars Earn Stripes” and strongly recommends protests against it. She also discussed her disruption of a “Super Committee” meeting. She was reasonably pleased with how it all turned out.

Sandy spoke about the NATO Summit in Chicago and Amnesty International's “shadow summit.” Unfortunately, AI suggested that the US presence in Afghanistan was helpful to the human rights of the women there. Code Pink was one of the groups protesting Amnesty's stance. AI does good work in other areas, so it's distressing to see them whitewashing the US presence in Afghanistan.

We had a question about Palestine where Leah expressed her own and VFP's support for Palestine. Sally was aware that PDA as a whole is pretty evenly split on the issue and so was hesitant to say anything about it.