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http://seeingtheforest.com/one-threat-progressive-power-unifying-in-democracy-initiative/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SeeingTheForest+%28Seeing+The+Forest%29
"Union and environmental leaders arrested together over immigration? What’s up? Here is what’s up: Corporate-funded conservatives … “view us as one threat, and fundamentally we are acting like that now, as one threat.”
Corporate-Conservative War On Democracy
For decades corporate-funded conservatives have gone after all branches of progressive thinking and even potential progressive thinking. Environmentalists, unions, civil rights advocates, public school supporters, Social Security supporters, consumer-rights advocates, professors, scientists, women’s-rights advocates, students, immigrants, minorities, health and nutrition advocates, good-government advocates, you name it, they have been and are being attacked by the conservative movement. You don’t even have to identify yourself as progressive-aligned to be attacked as part of the socialist/communist/terrorist/anti-American/anti-God/whatever conspiracy. You do not even have to think of yourself as progressive-aligned to suffer an attack...
...Union and environmental leaders were among 41 arrested together last Thursday at a sit-in outside the US Capitol, fighting for action from Congress on immigration. The arrests signify a new phase in the fight against the corporate/conservative takeover of democracy.
Among those arrested were labor leaders — including Eliseo Medina, secretary treasurer of the Service Employees International Union; Arlene Holt Baker, a vice president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.; and Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America — as well as Deepak Bhargava, Angélica Salas, Gustavo Torres, Petra Falcón and other immigrants’ rights advocates from around the country...
...Phil Radford of Greenpeace recently posted If You Want to Breathe Clean Air, Senate Reform and Democracy Matter over at HuffPo,
So what can we do about all of this? For one, we can start seeing ourselves as we are seen by the forces that are hell bent on fighting the promise of American democracy — as one movement with a shared vision of inclusion, of every voice counting, and of a government working for all of the American people.
United by this vision, a new force — The Democracy Initiative — was born, committed to getting big money out of politics, voters in (universal voter registration and an end to voter suppression), and reforming the Senate rules to get the government working again. Groups such as Greenpeace, the Communication Workers of America, the NAACP, Sierra Club, Public Campaign, Common Cause, People for the American Way, National People’s Action and dozens of others representing tens of millions of people are determined to win back what we’ve lost in the past four decades..."
...The Democracy Initiative, launched in 2013, seeks to restore the core principle of political equality. Labor, civil rights, voting rights, environmental, good government and other like-minded organizations with broad memberships commit to build a movement to halt the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics, prevent the systemic manipulation and suppression of voters, and address other obstacles to significant reform, including the abuse of U.S. Senate rules that allow a small minority to obstruct deliberation and block action on legislation drafted to address the critical challenges facing our nation."