Kennedy and Solomon Attend PDA Event in Original Headquarters City-Phoenix
May 8, 2008, Phoenix, AZ
Dan O'Neal, Mimi Kennedy and Norman Solomon
Last weekend I traveled to Phoenix, AZ, for a PDA fundraiser with Norman Solomon at the home of Dan and Sharon O'Neal. It's always great to go to Arizona. It's the cradle of PDA. It was a little house on Bird Lane, and Tim Carpenter welcomed us there four years ago saying, "Welcome to PDA Worldwide Headquarters!"
Board Member Joel Segal, one of our first D.C. supporters and senior legislative staffer to Congressman John Conyers, used to chide us for not having a D.C. address, saying it was necessary to have credibility on the Hill. When we started in '04, the Democratic Party was just beginning to feel the western winds. But our starter Arizona address is a great part of our history. It was a harbinger—coming from the left-hand side of the heartland. It is ironic—because the right-wing revolution started in Arizona, with Goldwater, and is in its last hour with the nomination of old-guard Arizona conservative John McCain.
There's a new generation in Arizona, and it helped birth PDA. Arizona is rising, and the rest of the nation with it.
About 70 people gathered to hear from me and Norman. Congressional candidates Howard Shanker and Jeff Brown, both running in (AZ-1), John Thrasher in (AZ-2), and Rebecca Schneider and Chris Gramazio in (AZ-6) all spoke. It would be refreshing to hear from any one of them at the House podium. Any one of them would buttress our friends in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Their passion, their courage, their accomplishments (Shanker's litigation wins as an environmental lawyer are stunning) argue well for the Arizona congressional slate. They are in the process of seeking local and national PDA endorsements.
With election protection heroes John Brakey (Audit AZ) and Jim March (Black Box Voting) in the room, I was even more hopeful. They drove up from Tucson, where they have been months in court litigating for custody of electronic election data from Pima County. They've educated the judge, the press and their fellow citizens while establishing precedents for transparency that will reverberate nationwide while ending an oppressive insider autocracy in Pima County elections.
PDA activists in the room included Doris Freeman, Dave Keeler, Joy Marx-Mendoza, Bob Keiser, Judy Whitehouse, and Jeff and Karen Rich, just to name a few. End the War Coalition members and several long time peace movement leaders, including Edwina Vogan, Sheila Ryan, and Kay Grams, engaged in political conversations with Todd Lanfried, Exective Director of the Maricopa County Democratic Party, and John Verkamp, peace activist and former Arizona State Senator. There were new friends, too—attracted by fury at the state of the nation. They had heard about PDA and its strategy and its progressive candidates. I had great conversations ranging from local and national political strategy, environmental and election integrity litigation, to outside plans for the PDA at the national convention in Denver. By the time the party was over a new East Valley (Az-6) chapter of PDA was in the embryonic stages of development.
Vin Gopal was introduced as our PDA development director. Together with the local activists, he did a great job putting this event together. I was glad to see people respond to the idea that PDA benefits most from our Change Makes Change sustainers, even if the annual amount is the same as a one-time donation, because those reliable monthly donations, large or small, allow us to plan ahead—crucial to nationwide organizing on a shoestring budget! We are still enlarging the choir, and that's crucial in this year of a convention and a presidential campaign. Staying on the progressive issues, enlisting more and more people to act on establishing progressive policies inside and outside the party—instead of allowing the corporate party and the media to define what is "left wing" and what is "mainstream" in our party—is our work. PDA stands alone as a party organization representing the majority of the American people—wanting an end to this war, and linking it absolutely with this recession. The right wing media,
still cautious, continues to muzzle guests, spout pro-war propaganda and distract from the truth, as their audience wanes and their pundits' credibility fades.
Norman warned, in his speech and movie snippet, about the media's continuation of propaganda and the necessity for Healthcare NOT Warfare to reach every Democrat at the '08 convention. (Will there be an investigation of the retired military men who were—and are--deployed to illegally propagandize our own population before, during and after the invasion of Iraq?) The root problem underlying our disastrous ill-health, economic and social, is still the one prophesied by Martin Luther King, Jr., in '67 at Riverside Church: a nation that spends so much on military and weapons of destruction is approaching spiritual death.
Thank you, PDA in Arizona. Thank you, all our chapters, for being determined to turn this country in the other direction—towards life for one another and the planet. It's true, what Tim Carpenter said in our first PDA video: In PDA, you meet the best people.
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