Politics
Entries related to things political.
Bring them home now, New Haven
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/19/2005 - 08:58Yesterday, Kim, Fiona and I attended the Bring Them Home Now Tour as it stopped in New Haven Connecticut. I was feeling a little ill and I rested as Fiona and Kim handed out leaflets about the Connecticut Progressive Democrats of America and Mayor DeStefano’s Gubernatorial campaign.
There were other groups there as well. Someone left a card for Connecticut Citizens for Sound Government on my windshield. They are a great group that registers voters and helps get out the vote.
Reform Democrats
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/16/2005 - 10:57(Originally published in Greater Democracy)
What does it mean to be a ‘Reform Democrat’? This is a question that has been talked a lot about since last November and has been getting more discussion as we go through municipal primaries and head into municipal general elections this fall.
To some, it is a very tactical issue. We need a DNC chair who will do X. We need a blogosphere that will do Y. To some, it is a message of opposition, opposition to the abuses of power by the extreme right wing Republicans.
To others, it is about returning to key parts of the Democratic message, from FDR to Clinton. I always come back to the about section of Greater Democracy. There, we talk about things like ‘democratic governance’ and ‘how new communications technologies support democracy’.
Yes, I am a techie and a hardcore democrat. To me, this idea of being a democrat, and I am using a small ‘d’ very intentionally, is in contract to being an autocrat or a theocrat. It is about a belief that we are all in this together, that everyone should have a voice that can be heard, that we are at our best when we are working together to help one another out. It stands in stark opposition to “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
Random Stuff
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/12/2005 - 10:46I’ve been pretty backed up with a lot of stuff going on, especially at the DeStefano campaign, so I haven’t been writing as much here as I would like.
However, there are a few different blog entries that I would like to point to, in no particular order.
Today, I received an email from Britt Blaser about his blog post, Getting Out the 3 Votes. Please read this and follow the links, particularly to the Thomas Friedman endorsement of Andrew Rasiej. As I wrote about over on the DeStefano blog, tomorrow is primary day in a lot of places. Please get out and vote.
Reconnecting citizens with compassionate civic life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/06/2005 - 15:37(Originally published at Greater Democracy
I remember working with my wife on her first campaign speech. There was a bit of biography, talking about “neighborhood Easter egg hunts and the pickup games of whiffle ball that filled our summers”, “being proud to be from Bethany”, and “believing that a community sticks together and helps each other out”.
She went on to say, “September 11th happened, and then it seemed possible, for a brief moment, that we would come together as a nation and rally once more.” Today, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we face the same possibility.
The Patriot Act and Connecticut Libraries
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/26/2005 - 15:21In today's New York Times is an article about the F.B.I.'s use of the Patriot Act in Bridgeport, CT and the ACLU suit that has been filed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/politics/26patriot.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 - Using its expanded power under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, the F.B.I. is demanding library records from a Connecticut institution as part of an intelligence investigation, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday.
The demand is the first confirmed instance in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used the law in this way, federal officials and the A.C.L.U. said. The government's power to demand access to library borrowing records and other material showing reading habits has been the single most divisive issue in the debate over whether Congress should extend key elements of the act after this year.
In a discussion over at Connecticut Local Politics, there is a discussion about this where one person commented, “What's the big deal about library records?”. I wrote the following in response:
