Sunday, February 14, 2021

Baltimore Activist Alert -- Feb. 15 - 16, 2021

18] Moral Monday to Raise Up for $15 – Feb. 15

19] Clean Air Baltimore Coalition meeting – Feb. 15

20] Immigrant Rights -- Feb. 15

21] American Exceptionalism – Feb. 15

22] Maryland Poor People's Campaign meeting – Feb. 15

23] Get Money Out – Maryland – Feb. 15

24] Get rid of the filibuster – Feb. 15

25] Care Corner Food Pantry -- Feb. 16

26] Distribution of food for animals – Feb. 16

27] Refugees at Home in LA – Feb. 16

28] Protest JHU’s weapons research – Feb. 16

29] Watch COUP 53 – Feb. 16

30] Hear about Julian Assange – Feb. 16

31] Cutting the military budget/CODEPINK CONGRESS – Feb. 16

32] Take Action Tuesdays – Feb. 16

33] Write to President Biden – Feb. 16

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18] – Around 58 million workers, nearly half of the U.S. workforce, make less than $15/hour. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour would put $328 billion back into the hands of families, who will spend most of that back into the economy. Amidst pandemic and recession, we need real relief, and we know that real relief includes living wages for ALL.  Join this Moral Monday to Raise Up for $15 at 3 PM ET on Feb. 15 for the live streaming from West Virginia to a nationwide online broadcast to hear from folks who know what it’s like to try to get by on minimum wage in America, and who have borne the pain of the pandemic firsthand.   Rev. Barber is joining the West Virginia PPC for a socially-distanced march and speak-out at the office of Sen. Manchin to demand the Senate pass a real relief bill that includes a $15/hour minimum wage. See https://actionnetwork.org/events/moral-monday-raise-up-for-15?source=direct_link&&link_id=2&can_id=4b9d4061aec5469758759317ac0f5285&email_referrer=email_1074862&email_subject=raise-up-for-15.

19] – On Mon., Feb. 15 from 5 to 6 PM, attend a Clean Air Baltimore Coalition bi weekly meeting.  The next meeting will be March 1. Anti-incinerator bills are gaining traction in Annapolis! The House Speaker is supportive of cleaning up the state's renewable energy mandate to stop feeding our ratepayer (electric bill) money to dirty energy sources. Right now, millions of dollars every year go to each of three trash incinerators (including Baltimore), as well as out-of-state paper mills, tree-burners, landfills, and other dirty sources instead of wind and solar.  How can we can help get legislation passed to move this money from polluters to clean energy?  Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIocO-opjojHNGkAYWFp3jv7vb4JoAU7Cxu.

20] – Immigrant Rights will be discussed at an Our Revolution Baltimore City/County virtual meeting on Mon., Feb. 15 from 5:30 to 7 PM.  The guest this month is Gabriela Roque from CASA, who will be talking about immigrant rights and CASA's legislative priorities in Annapolis. Visit https://www.mobilize.us/ourrevolution/event/269476/?followup_modal_context=newsletter.

21] – On Mon., Feb. 15 from 7 to 8 PM ET, New Hampshire Peace Action for a timely dissection and analysis of the impact of American Exceptionalism on culture & policy with Prof. Eric Cheyfitz and facilitated by NH Peace Action board member, Jeremy Love. Cheyfitz, the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University, is a faculty member of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP). He has served as director of the AIISP, the faculty coordinator of the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, and the director of the Mellon Post-doctoral Diversity Seminar. His scholarship and teaching focus on the force of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples and their ongoing resistance in the form of alternative ways of thought and action to the predatory capitalism embedded in settler existence. His most recent book is The Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States (PaperBoat Press, 2019), which in its final chapter, “Thinking From A Different Place: What Is a Just Society?” offers, beyond “the limits of capitalism’s imagination,” an Indigenous alternative to the way out of the current crisis of climate collapse and wealth inequality. Register at https://actionnetwork.org/events/the-impact-of-american-exceptionalism-on-culture-policy.

22] – On Mon., Feb. 15 at 7 PM, attend a Maryland Poor People's Campaign (PPC) meeting. Hear about the history of labor, housing, and policing. Go to https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvdu6sqzgoHdesizopMgk-wXUigZhxDGRK?link_id=11&can_id=4b9d4061aec5469758759317ac0f5285&source=email-maryland-poor-peoples-campaign-weekly-update-38&email_referrer=email_1063857&email_subject=maryland-poor-peoples-campaign-weekly-update. Email maryland@poorpeoplescampaign.org.

23] – There is a Get Money Out - Maryland BOARD MEETING on Mon., Feb. 15 at 7:30 PM.  There is two ways to join the conference: 1) dial 1 301 715 8592 with a meeting ID: 931 3066 2622. The password is 173976 and 2} click on your device if you have downloaded the app from Zoom.  This is a GMOM Board strategy session. Observers are welcome. Visit https://www.getmoneyoutmd.org/.

24] – On Mon., Feb. 15 at 8 PM EST, get with Filibusted! This is a Multi-State Action to Defend Democracy hosted by Indivisible Colorado and Indivisible California Statewide. Look at indivisible.zoom.us. Register at http://bit.ly/2MpeTOE.  Gather with Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, Indivisible Policy Director of Democracy Policy Meagan Hatcher-Mays and--especially!--other Indivisible activists in a bunch of Western states to tell Democratic Senators to stand firm and get bold to structurally change our government to secure our democracy. We can't make the change we need if we allow the Jim Crow Filibuster to block every bill!

25] – On Tues., Feb. 16 from 9:30 to 11:30 AM ET, get over to the Care Corner Food Pantry at the Pasadena United Methodist Church, 61 Ritchie Highway, Pasadena. This will continue each Tuesday through June 29.  Food bags are available for individuals and families in need. Food bags are first-come, first-served each week.  Volunteers are needed each week to help distribute the food. Sign up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0c49acae2b0-care. All COVID safety measures are followed, including outdoor distribution, mask-wearing and social distancing. 

26] – On Tues., Feb. 16 from noon to 2 PM ET, get over to the Montgomery County Humane Society, Inc., 601 S. Stonestreet Ave., Rockville, for the distribution of food for animals.  The next distribution will be on Thurs., Feb. 18.  And it will continue other days until Feb. 25.  In an effort to help members of our community who have hit hard times, MCHS will be hosting a series of free cat and dog food distribution events at its rescue building in Rockville.  Parking and the front door are located around the back of the building. It is a short walk from the Rockville Metro station. Cat and dog food will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. For everyone’s safety, masks and social distancing are required. See https://www.mchumane.org/.

27] – Welcome to Paradise: Refugees at Home in LA with Mandana Dayani will happen on Tues., Feb. 16 at 4 PM ET.  Hear from former refugees who HIAS welcomed to America years ago and now give back to our country and, especially, the city of Angels. Their experiences illuminate why the fight to preserve welcome is so critical, and why we must take action to advocate for robust refugee and asylum programs. You will hear from Mandana Dayani, a former HIAS client resettled from Iran who went on to become a corporate attorney, talent agent, and producer of hit shows like The Rachel Zoe Project, and later co-founded I am a voter. This program is part of a partnership with the Holocaust Museum LA.  Advance registration is required. RSVP at https://www.hias.org/get-involved/events/welcome-paradise-refugees-home-la-mandana-dayani.  Email HIAS at info@hias.org. 

28] – There is a Vigil to say "No Drone Research at JHU" at 33rd and N. Charles Sts. on Tuesdays from 5 to 6 PM. Contact Max at mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net or 410-323-1607.  You may consider contacting President Ron Daniels and telling him that the university should reject all military contracts, including those for killer drone and nuclear weapons research.  The president’s mailing address is Office of the President, 242 Garland Hall, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218.  You can also reach his office by Phone: (410) 516-8068, Fax: (410) 516-6097 or email: president@jhu.edu.

29] – Watch COUP 53 before Salon which will take place on Tues., Feb. 16 at 6 PM ET on Zoom, hosted by the COMMITTEE FOR THE REPUBLIC. The Film Link is at https://watch.eventive.org/coup53/play/601d30ef570aec00c2aea9e6, and the link for the Salon is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89314495998.

The Committee for the Republic is pleased to offer a private showing of a ground-breaking documentary film of the CIA/MI6 coup in Iran in 1953. Unseen footage and hidden documents dramatically portray the Anglo-American orchestrated overthrow of popularly-elected, secular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh to install the cruel, dictatorial and corrupt puppet Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi.  The Committee's private link (https://watch.eventive.org/coup53/) is active until the salon with London-based Iranian director Taghi Amirani and editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, and The English Patient) to discuss how the 1953 coup is an example of the chosen people narrative of “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” The filmmakers artfully transport you step by step in their unfolding investigation to reveal the dark imperial secrets of those historic four days in August 1953.

 Regime change ended the first and only democratic government in the history of the Middle East and laid the seeds for the 1979 Iranian Revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power, sparked the American hostage crisis, and propelled another wave of Persian regional hegemony. The film highlights Eisenhower's fateful rejection of Truman’s support for Mossadegh. Guided by the Dulles brothers, the new Administration quietly employed for the first time the unconstitutional delegation of the 1947 National Security Act of unlimited presidential power for covert action without congressional accountability: regime change in Guatemala, Vietnam and Libya, the failed overthrow of Indonesia’s Sukarno and Cuba's Castro, a 10-year secret war in Laos, the Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, and on and on.

30] – Join a discussion on Tues., Feb. 16 at 7 PM with documentary film maker and journalist, Kevin Gosztola, to discuss the Julian Assange case! Kevin has covered Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks, the national security state, and much more. He is the managing editor of https://shadowproof.com/. Assange is an activist and publisher who founded the website WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has exposed U.S. war crimes, for example, when it published leaks provided by U.S. Army analyst, Chelsea Manning. The U.S. is seeking to extradite Assange, charging him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. While mainstream outlets like the NY Times and Washington Post have criticized this move by the federal government, calling it an attack on the 1st Amendment, these same outlets have done a poor job of covering the Julian Assange case and the threats it poses to freedom of the press, and democracy.  Register for the webinar at https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pc-yurD0sE9bd8tLItMCYHLeiLay90p5M?emci=bae8008d-906c-eb11-9889-00155d43c992&emdi=9c3ae63c-9d6c-eb11-9889-00155d43c992&ceid=269591.

31] – On Tues., Feb. 16 at 8 PM ET, hear Reps. Lee and Pocan on cutting the military budget as part of the CODEPINK CONGRESS, a new campaign to mobilize co-sponsors and votes for peace legislation!  The representatives, Barbara Lee (D-CA13) and Mark Pocan (D-WI02), are co-chairs of the Defense [sic] Spending Reduction Caucus. They will discuss how we can build congressional support for cutting the military budget to fund Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, education, and much more.  A week after introducing an amendment to cut the military budget by 10%, Pocan and Lee — both members of the House Appropriations Committee — announced in July the creation of the Defense [sic] Spending Reduction Caucus. The caucus intends to build on the support garnered by the amendment, which received 93 votes in the House in 2020.  Sign up at https://www.codepink.org/02162021?utm_campaign=cp_congress_02162021&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink.

32] – The Women’s March Organizing Team [info@womensmarch.com] has created Take Action Tuesdays from 7 to 8 PM ET— a weekly, virtual gathering of women focused on harnessing grassroots organizing power and fighting for meaningful progress in the post-Trump era. This will be a virtual space to share stories and experiences and take meaningful action around key women's issues in the first 100 days of the Biden-Harris Administration. For Tues., Feb. 16, RSVP at bit.ly/takeacttue. 

33] – The Sierra Club [reply@emails.sierraclub.org] is suggesting that you learn about THRIVE  on Tues., Feb. 16 at 8 PM and write a personalized letter to President Biden calling for a just economic recovery.  President Biden is getting ready to unveil his economic recovery package, so our crucial window of opportunity to influence his plan is now! Join us for an activist briefing focused on the THRIVE Agenda, a plan for a just recovery plan that tackles climate, racial, and economic injustice.  RSVP for Tuesday's activist briefing at https://www.mobilize.us/sierraclubvolunteer/event/373306/?utm_campaign=221BICAN04.

To be continued.

Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs  

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