Spiritual Progressives' Cafe

Jewish Renewal and the High Holy Days

2009-09-19T08:25:00.001-07:00

Shana Tova / Happy New Year!
Jewish Renewal and the High Holy Days

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Canadians Defend Their Health Care System In Video

2009-09-04T16:49:00.001-07:00

Canadians Defend Their Health Care System In Video

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Whats a Co-Pay?

2009-09-03T14:04:00.001-07:00

This is a must read for everyone!
Whats a Co-Pay?

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Daybreak Breakout Will Beat Out Glenn Beck

2009-09-01T21:12:00.001-07:00

This is a must read for all progressives!
Daybreak Breakout Will Beat Out Glenn Beck

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Healthcare: Of Weakest and Strongest Links in the Battle of Ideas

2009-08-24T10:56:00.001-07:00

Healthcare: Of Weakest and Strongest Links in the Battle of Ideas

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A physician

2009-08-22T19:33:00.001-07:00

A physician's perspective: the moral case for health care.

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NSP Voter Guide

2009-08-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

No matter what election year it is, be an informed voter. This guide from 2008 is as useful now as it was then.

Open publication - Free publishing - More vote

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

2009-08-19T11:11:00.001-07:00

Muhammad said,
If I described the enemy that lives
inside men, even the most courageous would be paralyzed. No one would go out, or do any work. No one would pray or fast,
and all power to change would fade from human beings,...
Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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Petition of Principles

2009-08-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,
I have just read an email from a fellow progressive from CA and signed the online petition he mentions below:

"What We Believe"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at: http://www.petitiononline.com/whatwebe/petition.html

I personally agree with what this petition says, and what we can do forward in its message. I think you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please continue reading below, and consider signing yourself.

Thank You,
WA Spirit Matters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear WA Spirit Matters,

Please consider signing the What We Believe petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/whatwebe/petition.html

This statement of fundamental principles has been developed as a public education tool to encourage positive personal and social change. It is the result of an extensive, collaborative process with more than 25 individuals suggesting changes in early drafts.

At some point, the statement may be used as points-of-unity for new projects, perhaps initiated by existing organizations. Signatories may:

Write essays on “Why these principles are important to me” and/or solicit other signatories to do so. These essays could be posted on the Web and some of them could eventually be published in a book.
Establish a YouTube channel and post interviews on “Why these principles are important to me.”
Prompt some existing organization to undertake a new project to advance these principles. Also, a group of signatories might initiate a new organization to do so.
Invite signatories to brainstorm together (either face-to-face or on the Net) about other possibilities.

If you sign, you will be asked if you want to keep your email address private. Please consider selecting the "Available to Petition Author" option so we can stay in touch. No more than twice a month, we'll send signatories email reports on efforts to advance these principles (and will not give or sell your email address to anyone).

Also, if you can, please help spread the word about the What We Believe petition.

The petition reads as follows:

+++++

To: Concerned Individuals and Organizations

We, the undersigned, encourage concerned individuals and organizations to affirm and implement the following principles.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

We promote the common good and protect the environment by honoring these principles to the best of our ability.

We foster strong communities that nurture personal development, caring relationships, and healthy families. By becoming better human beings, we better serve others.

We believe humanity needs to create and maintain a healthy planet because our complex, fragile ecosystem is endangered by current patterns of consumption and pollution.

Because life is mysterious, wonderful, and awe-inspiring, we cherish beauty, spread joy, and love others as we love ourselves.

We do what we can to prevent suffering and accept our responsibility to help shape our nation’s public policies.

We come together freely, support each other’s empowerment, and resolve conflicts nonviolently. We use force only as a last resort to protect life or prevent physical injury.

We respect others as equals and criticize individuals for specific actions without condemning them, for all of us are imperfect.

We listen carefully and appreciate what is true about all points of view, without demanding complete agreement. Sharing facts, feelings, and opinions enables us to better understand reality.

We experiment in order to discover what works best.

We support businesses that serve the public interest, empower workers, and care for the environment.

We believe all people are entitled to a voice in matters that affect them.

We hold the federal government responsible for wisely managing the economy, sustaining the environment, protecting national security, safeguarding human rights, and guaranteeing all our people the means to live decently.

We believe mutual respect and cooperation are required to build a loving, global society based on democratic local communities.

We work steadily to advance these principles by improving our institutions and ourselves to make the world a better place for all life.

Sincerely,

Wade Lee Hudson
http://wadehudson.net

Only YOU Can Save Health Care Reform-ACT NOW!

2009-08-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

Only YOU Can Save Health Care Reform- so please ACT NOW!
A note from Rabbi Michael Lerner & FROM TIKKUN MAGAZINE'S OUTREACH AND EDUCATION ARM: THE NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES
These next few weeks when Congresspeople and Senators are in their home districts is the critical moment.

The Right knows that. They've organized their zealots to disrupt Congressional public meetings to give the false impression that there is a populist revolt against extending health care to the poor and against challenging the private insurance companies and pharmaeuticals.

The liberals have disempowered themselves by trying to come up with health care plans that extend coverage but meanwhile protect the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and hospital/medical profiteers. The only way they can do that is to raise the costs on the Middle Class, either through taxes or through reduction of services or through hidden price increases. Not realizing that whatever they propose is going to be labeled "socialized medicine," they've already weakened their "public option" dramatically, and worse is yet to come in the Fall.

The only rational alternative is Single Payer, as promoted by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and John Conyers in the House HR 676. But this will not have a chance against the tens of millions of dollars being spent by the insurance companies and pharmaceuticals and health-care profiteers-- unless your Congresspeople hear from you and everyone you know, insisting that they too support some version of "health care for all" (Single Payer).

You can write to your Congressperson's and Senator's home district office. You can find that address for your Congress person by going to https://writerep.house.gov/htbin/wrep_findrep and for your U.S. Senators
try: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

The best thing to do is to write a personal letter-not an email, because a personal letter takes you longer and hence shows your elected Congressional and Senatorial reps that you are really willing to take the time and so they must take you more seriously. Also, find out if there is going to be a public meeting, and insist on speaking. Go with at least 2 other friends who will support YOU to insist that your elected rep support Single Payer. If you can't do either of these, then at least telephone call these representatives or, if you can't do any of the other approaches, then email him or her.

If you don't feel competent to discuss these issues, go to www.tikkun.org and read our editorial and Aaron Roland's article on health care. Or read them in the July/August issue of the magazine. [My editorial about Why The Left Lost Single Payer refers only to the fact that we had not yet gotten it into the national debate, and how we need to reframe it in order to do so. Now that Cong. Pelosi has promised an actual VOTE on single payer, it's back in the game, but what it would need to win is detailed in that editorial.]
Next, go to Physicians for a National Health Plan at http://www.pnhp.org/ and read through that website, plus go to www/guaranteedhelathcare.org/legislation/hr-676-conyers/united-states-national-health-insurance-act/. Contact these organizations to get more information and to help you work with their members in this project to counter the misinformation being spread by the health profiteers and insurance companies.

Now can you see why it would have made sense for you to have taken the initiative to create or sustain a Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) chapter in your area? If that existed now, you'd go together as a chapter to talk about these issues with your elected representatives. You'd be part of an efficient force, and you wouldn't have to face the dichotomy that ethical concern forces on you today: either to act on your own, or just let the Right have its way nationally. So there's a lesson to learn here: please join the Network of Spiritual Progressives now, before passing "Go," before doing anything else. You can do that right now at www.spiritualprogressives.org. Without that support, we have no way of carrying on this kind of public education work!!!

Next, please send this note to every single person on your email lists, and ask if any of them might be willing to go with you to your Congressperson or their own, or to send a letter of their own. Please urge them too to become familiar enough with the issues that they won't be intimidated when your Congressperson pretends that the "public option" is going to do enough. You need only read the details of Obama's deal with the pharmaceuticals (they agree to support his plan plus reducing costs of drugs for Medicare by $80 billion over the course of ten years-in exchange for Obama not backing calls for a plan that would allow Medicare and "the public option" to seek other possible sources of drugs that might drive the cost of drugs down much further and provide much greater savings to the ordinary consumer of prescription drugs (like me, for example, who, post cancer-surgery, now have run out of my limited medicare coverage of drugs and have to pay out-of-pocket (because the limits of drug care coverage has been exhausted for this year-so I'm going to have to pay over $1,000 a month for these prescription drugs). Even if you are on vacation, you could take the time to write the letter that needs to be received by both your US Senators plus your Congressperson (even if you are "sure" that they won't listen-because if enough people write, they will listen).

OK, this is where we get Love Embodied or Compassion Armed or Generosity Empowered-this is the real moment folks, and it all depends on each of us to act now! Spiritual progressives can't be real if they are not willing to struggle for caring-for-all. Of course, if we fail to win at this point, we will continue the struggle in the Fall, and in the future. Just check out our Spiritual Covenant with America and you'll see our larger programmatic vision-because the only way we will ever win the changes that make for a society based on generosity and compassion is when we are willing to fight for fundamental changes. And please read my editorial in the Sept/Oct 2009 issue of Tikkun which you'll be getting in a few weeks if you subscribe or are a payed-up member of the Network of Spiritual Progressives-to get a fuller description of why being "moderate," "pragmatic" and "realistic" has actually undermined Obama's popularity and failed as a strategy.
Don't let anyone convince you to moderate your message away from a Single Payer National Health Plan, because sticking with "Single Payer" may be the only way to get moderates who like to find the "middle" to stick with even a reasonably serious "public option" which they won't stick with if that is the left end of the debate, because they they'll simply try to be realistic by moving further and further from what is needed and toward accommodating to the needs of the insurance companies and health care profiteers. So, advocate for Single Payer to get even a vaguely reasonable "public option." And in general, you'll get more of what you want in social change if you fight for your whole most utopian or idealistic vision--and let others then make the compromises, knowing that they have to take you into account.
The best legislation we've gotten in the past forty years came from Richard Nixon's White House--not because he believed in the things he eventually supported, like the creation of various environmental restrictions and safeguards, but because his positions were trying to head off an even more militant mass movement of progressives that was demanding much more. It is the absence of that movement that cripples the liberals in Congress and Obama in the White House--and our task is to recreate it, but to do so with a different kind of discourse, not a discourse of "rights" but a discourse of love. And in the final analysis, the entire health care debate comes down to this: are you willing to take seriously the Biblical command that we must "love the stranger" and care for the poor and the powerless!
Love and blessings,
Michael

Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun Chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives
RabbiLerner@Tikkun.org 510 644 1200

Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.
Currently, the U.S. health care system is outrageously expensive, yet inadequate. Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates. Moreover, the other advanced nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves 45.7 million completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered.

The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans' health dollars.
Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.
Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formulary or receive salary from a hospital or nonprofit HMO / group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Health facilities and expensive equipment purchases would be managed by regional health planning boards.
A single-payer system would be financed by eliminating private insurers and recapturing their administrative waste. Modest new taxes would replace premiums and out-of-pocket payments currently paid by individuals and business. Costs would be controlled through negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Visit a WA Chapter of NSP or Tikkun and The Network of Spiritual Progressives to learn more.

Obama and the Religious Health Care Reformers

2009-08-10T12:13:00.001-07:00

This is a good first step, but more need to be outspoken. Please share your thoughts.
Obama and the Religious Health Care Reformers

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Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

2009-08-09T11:56:00.001-07:00

"We become partners with spirit in the grand pageant of development wherein our personal evolution is directly linked with our participation in social evolution..."
Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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So what's a progressive spirit to do?

2009-08-07T20:34:00.001-07:00

This is such a great post and the comments are very interesting. Check it out!
So whats a progressive spirit to do?

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Healthcare Within the Context of Human Rights

2009-08-07T13:09:00.001-07:00

Healthcare Within the Context of Human Rights

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Because There IS Enough for Everyone

2009-08-04T10:28:00.001-07:00

Because There IS Enough for Everyone

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Individualism Won't Get Us There

2009-08-01T11:19:00.001-07:00

Individualism Won't Get Us There

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Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

2009-07-29T17:13:00.001-07:00

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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"Caring for each other"

2009-07-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

Why Can't Obama Convince the Dems?
by Rabbi Michael Lerner

It's easy enough to blame the spineless Congressional Dems for the failure of the health care plan. And it's not just the millions being spent by insurance companies and health care profiteers and the distortions put forward by the corporate media--those are important realities, but they don't explain why the Obama voters are not lighting a fire under the butts of their elected representatives to support health care transformation. People are concerned.But their worry about rising costs is not totally irrational. They rightly fear that they might pay the price in the 2010 elections for a new plan that has caused rises in prices by insurance companies, hospitals or pharmaceuticals coupled with taxes on the earnings of middle income people and on small businesses. It's great to see President Obama finally striking out at the Republicans who want no progress and are trying to block every plan for a reason that is despicable: their desire to have Obama fail so that they can go to the election of 2010 and say: "See, this nice guy accomplished nothing."
And it's great to see the President starting to talk about the destructive role played by the insurance companies. Both of these switches in his oratory may be too little, too late. When he had the attention of the country in the Spring he was, instead, teaching the American public that his highest goal was bi-partisanship, and he shaped his economic, environmental and health care programs to achieve that unrealistic and undesirable goal (undesirable,because it meant compromising to the Right and ignoring the people who actually voted for him and their desires).The fundamental problem for Obama is that the plans he is willing to back are all flawed in precisely the way that the Republicans are saying: they will necessarily cause a significant rise in the cost of the total health care bill. There are only two ways to deal with that:
1. Obama could acknowledge that and say: "the issue is simply this: will the wealthy be willing to pay for the poor who are excluded from heatlh care, plus all the others who are kept from health care by the health care profiteers in the insurance companies, hospitals for the rich , and super-rich doctors--because I as President will reject a solution that delivers health care by raising the costs of middle income people who are already struggling. So, yes, this must be paid for by a straightforward tax on the rich and the wealthy corporations like the banking companies that have been reaping billions made possible by the aid we gave them to prevent them from collapsing. So, I won't ask employees making less than $250,000 to carry this burden, but only the wealthy."

Or, and far more persuasive in the long run:

2. Obama could embrace Single Payer: "I've always said that the Single Payer plan was the most rational and that if we had to devise a system from scratch that would be the one to adopt. So if the Congress does not develop the reforms needed that I've proposed, then I will revive Single Payer as the plan to replace all these stop-gap measures. Single Payer will reduce the total cost of health care in this country without new taxes because it will totally eliminate the role of Insurance Companies and their super-profits. It's a plan to extend Medicare to everyone. Like Medicare, you are still free to choose your own doctors. But the government will set limits on how much those doctors and hospitals can charge for any given procedure."
Obama could continue: "There may be some doctors who want to retire from medicine because they won't make the same super-profits the current system allows, but we will actually expand the number of doctors, because part of the plan I will offer is the building and financing of one hundred new medical schools and the creation of a public fund to pay free tuition and living-subsidies to medical, dental, nursing and psychology students so that we can expand the range of qualified students who get to receive the health care training that is needed, and these will be students who will not in their later years be complaining that they have the right to huge profits in providing health care services and justify that on the basis of the suffering that they experienced in taking huge loans to get through their training. The Single Payer plan, which I prefer to call the 'responsibility-for-caring-for-each-other medical plan' will provide reduced costs for pharmaceuticals, because the government will be able to negotiate reasonable prices with pharmacy companies, or eliminate the right of pharmaceuticals to patent any product that is needed for the health care needs of the world. This is the historical moment when patriotic Americans have to say clearly: 'we are all in this together, an offense against one is an offense against all, and we intend to beat the enemy of the well-being of Americans, the enemy that seeks to weaken our country by allowing tens of millions of people to be without adequate access to the health care that they need.' So it's now time to return to the Biblical values of "love they neighbor as thyself," and to reject those immoral values that place self-interest over the need to care for each other. The first step in reclaiming the highest values of America is to back Single Payer or "responsibility for caring for each-other health care"--and that is precisely what I intend to do, should have done from the start, but now will fully embrace if the Congress is unable to find a reasonable way to provide health care for all without raising taxes or otherwise increasing the financial burden on middle income working Americans."
Yes, he'd face the wrath of the insurance industry, the medical profiteers, their friends in the media, and the Republicans--but he'd finally have a stance that he could unequivocally sell to the American public that would make common sense, rally people's sense of caring for each other, and lower the financial burden on most Americans. So if Obama fails to go in this direction, he has only himself to blame for the failure of his health reform.
But lets say he goes in this direction--then what should he do to counter the huge attacks that he is already facing and that would only be stronger after he embraced this direction? Here is what he would need to do:
1.Spend every night for the next 3 months in a different American city where he would conduct public "teach-ins"/rallies on health care and invite anyone in the city who actually wanted a serious health care reform to come meet with him. For the tens of thousands of people likely to show up he would put a simple challenge: they need to promise their elected representatives to Congress (including their US Senators) that if these reps don't support the single-payer plan proposed by Obama, they will personally campaign against them in the primaries and in the election.
2. Obama needs to quietly but firmly get a movement going to run candidates in the primaries against any Democrat who fails to support his plan. Rahm Emanuel recruited many of these faux Dems because he thought it was so important to win that he didn't care what they stand for. Now Obama needs an operative with exactly the opposite intention--to find Dems to run in the primaries against those House and Senate Dems who won't support single payer health care, and against those Republicans who are doing all they can to block every aspect of his program. Then, Obama should announce that if his single-payer plan is not enacted by this or the next Congress, he will run again for President and seek an even stronger mandate from the American people for a cross-party alliance of all those who want a serious health care reform.
3. Obama should ask people in every part of the U.S. who have been hurt by our current health care plan to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods telling their stories and seeking support for a single payer plan, and do the same in some wealthy neighborhood within an hour's drive from where they live.
4. Obama should rename "single payer" the "solidarity and caring for-each-other health care plan."
5. Obama should make it clear that he believes that most Americans would love to live in a world in which ethical considerations, and a sense of community and caring and love were actually the core guide to people's behavior. But since most of us don't realize that this is what most others want, he intends to use his presidency to help people become aware of each other and recognize that they are not alone in wanting to take seriously the teachings of the Bible and of Jesus to "love your neighbor as yourself." Health care, he should say, is the test case, but it is only the beginning of a campaign for a "Caring for each other" politics of the Obama years.Tens of millions of Americans would be mobilized by this kind of approach and he would suddenly find a new poltiical climate favorable to serious health care reform. In every major city in the US tens of thousands would be mobilized into a campaign for health care. Unlike his current strategy, relying on emails and the national media, a strategy of mass mobilization would have an immense impact and be far more "Realistic" than the approach he has taken to date.

Re-igniting the Spirit

2009-07-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

What Reflects our Real Moral Values?
One of the comments made during the presidential primary debates last year has remained stuck in my memory to this day. It came from Joe Biden, who was recalling some "folksy wisdom" from his father. His father had a saying that went something like this: "Don't lecture me about the moral values you claim to have, just show me your budget so that I can see what your real moral values are". As I recall, Joe Biden was making this comment in reference to our national budget, but I shuddered when I think that this commentary applies equally well to my own personal budget. If our moral values were to be judged by looking at our personal budgets, how well would any of us fare?
The idea of a budget being a moral document has been around for several years. In 2005, Rabbi Michael Lerner along with many other religious leaders sent an open letter to congress referring to the Federal Budget as a Moral Document - a specific expression of the values of a nation. I want to focus here on how well our personal budgets express our own values though, or those of our families. In my case you would probably conclude from an examination of my budget that my top priorities were providing a comfortable middle class life for my family and a good college education for my children. While not exactly shameful, that certainly doesn't come close to reflecting the full scope of my real values. Or in fact does it accurately reflect my real values? That's the question I can't get out of my head.
I've also been thinking lately about a closely related idea that Jim Wallis recently wrote about. He pointed out that our calendar is also a moral document - an expression of our values and priorities based on how we spend our time. That gives me something else to think about and work on.
Cross post from Mike Ignatowski over at TD.

Faith Advocacy Day

2009-02-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

Mark your calendar-March 17th 8:30-3pm

Join others in Olympia and let our voices be heard as we advocate for social justice on behalf of the least, the lost and the left behind. Though diverse in our religious traditions and political opinions, we are united in our understanding of God’s peace, justice, compassion and mercy. All faith communities are welcome to worship, workshops and witness.
For non-Christians uncomfortable in Christian worship, attend the morning session beginning with the overview at 9:30 a.m.
Participants gather in the morning at The United Churches of Olympia, 110 11th Ave SE (Capitol Way and 11th Ave SE) for worship and briefings on critical social justice issues, and then walk to the Capitol to rally and to meet with legislators.

Transportation is provided.
For more information, contact and to register visit: PNW-UMW Or Faith Advocacy Day

Hope and Healing

2009-02-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

Today I received an email,as I'm sure others did as well, from Rabbi Lerner. One of the founders and director of NSP. To my dismay it outlined the tribulations he is going through with a serious health problem. Namely, lung cancer ( no,he does not smoke).

Tomorrow he will under-go lung surgery at the University of California Medical Center to remove the cancerous lung. The surgery is to begin at noon and last for several hours. Please take time out of your day,at noon, to say a prayer, meditate or just send good thoughts for his successful surgery and speedy recovery.

You can also post your thoughts, personal message or prayers for him at: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/525/t/8751/blog/index.jsp?blog_KEY=570 .

Let us carry the hopeful, though heavy burden forward. You can read more of Rabbi Lerner's letter here.

Pass It On.

Beyond Our Differences

2009-02-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

If you're a Skagit Dem member:

The Skagit Dems will host a free movie night at the Skagit Dems HQ in Mount Vernon on Friday Feb. 6^th at 6:45. This month the movie is right up our alley.

"Beyond Our Differences-In BEYOND OUR DIFFERENCES, religious leaders, politicians and luminaries in their fields give voice to the positive effects of spirituality and morality, focusing on commonalities spanning all faiths. While the negative even violent side of religion is widely reported, director Peter Bisanz documents the hope for positive change and healing universal to so many."

If you haven't seen it, now is the time. If you have seen it, share your insight with others. There is a discussion period afterward.

PBS's Bill Moyers Journal showcased this film in Dec. on his show. You can read more about it here: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12262008/profile.html

Ongoing Collection for Local Food Banks a Skagit County Democratic Party Commitment Please remember to bring a nonperishable food item when you visit Skagit Dem Party Headquarters. The need is becoming ever more urgent.

What is Progressivism?

2009-02-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

Note: Cross post with permission from UP Cafe:

This question has and continues to be asked and written about by a plethora of people around the world. Most recently during the U.S. presidential campaigns. When thousands of professed American “progressives” worked to get President Obama elected. And are now asking, is he really a Progressive?
According to Webster's dictionary:

pro-gres-siv-ism (n) ---- 1: the principles and practices of
progressives.2:(cap.)the doctrines and beliefs of a Progressive Party.

So, from this definition then, one would look to the who. Progressives'. Yet again we look to Webster:

pro-gres-sive (n) ---- 1: a person who favors progress or reform, as in politics. 2: (cap.) a member of a Progressive Party.

Hmm, not very definitive you say? Ah, but these are but the nouns. And trust, we'll not go into an American language lesson here. So,what else is there to this? The adjective! As described by Webster:

pro-gres-sive, adj.---- 1: advocating progress or reform,esp. in political and social matters. 2: employing or advocating more liberal ideas, new
methods,etc.:a progressive community. 3: marked by progress, reform or a
continuing improvement; as, a progressive people, progressive education.

Eureka! Finally an answer. No? We agree. That it is rather open ended. But perhaps it is as it should be. For what "progress or reform" may look to one may not be to another. Ah, there in lies the conundrum.

As some of you on your quest to find an answer may have encountered,especially if,like us,went to Wikipedia and read through some of the aggregation of information. There and on other online vicinity's was one surprising fact.

Simple Answer: It depends on where and who in the world you ask.

It can be and is very confusing to those just entering the political & social issues arena. And as some have experienced, can be manipulated to serve faux-progressives.

The real answer is with-in all of us. When each one ask, what does “progress or reform” look like,feel like for those less fortunate than ourselves, our children, the aged, the sick, dying and hungry.

You'll know the answer. What will be your definition?

Gov Issues Peace Proclamation

2008-09-12T20:29:00.000-07:00

Governor Gregoire issued the following Peace Day proclamation for the state of Washington.

You can view the proclamation here.

Peace Day Observance

2008-09-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

Please join us! Bring family and friends! Pass It On....

Sept.21st, Skagit Dem HQ, 300A S. 1st St.,Mount Vernon,WA (next to co-op)
International Day of Peace Observance
Community Gathering 11:00am-1:00pm
Non-political and Non-partisan
Music, Refreshments, Mix and Mingle, Special Guests
Peace Box- Drop by and Drop-in your prayers, poems, thoughts,
or wishes for a world and communities at Peace and the thousands in harms way around the world.
Peace Day Invocation at 11:45 by special guest Rev. Amanda Aikman of Everett, WA
followed by a silent vigil and ringing of Peace bells at noon.
Music throughout observance provided by special guest:
Sharon Abreu & Michael Hurwicz of Orcas Island: http://www.sharmuse.com/
They have appeared in concerts with legendary folksinger Pete Seeger,
and at venues as diverse as the Northwest Folk Life Festival in Seattle,
the Network of Spiritual Progressives Conference in D.C.,
and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa.
In 2007. Their Penguins on Thin Ice http://www.penguinsonthinice.com/
climate change musical revue was performed at the United Nations for
the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development.
FMI or if you would like to help co-sponsor this event contact WA Spirit Matters

International Day of Peace

2008-09-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sept. 21st,2008 will mark the 26th anniversary of International Peace Day [IPD]. This year thousands of pro-peace organizations, congregations, communities, governments and individuals across the world will observe PEACE Day in many ways.

We shall be submitting to our Governor for her signature and issuance consideration a Peace Day Proclamation. This document shall be sent to the Governor on Sept. 5th, along with the list of endorsers. Please consider adding your group, organization, business and/or personal endorsement to this pro-peace observance. The only information on the list of endorsers will be Name/Organization and City. It shall not be used for any other purpose.

You may view the proclamation on our group page.

If you or someone you know is holding a Peace Day event in our state let us know. Please share this with others.

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”- Martin Luther King Jr