End Wars and Occupations IOT Monthly Conference Call - Progressive Democrats of America
August 2012
|
|
|
|
Link to Sound File |
Link to Chat Room Archive |
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.