BTW, if you don’t live in Chapel Hill you can sign the petition but the council would be most impressed by signatures from their constituents and people who live near and work in Chapel Hill. Lets continue speaking out! Thank you to everyone who has signed the petition already.

To: Chapel Hill Town Council

The time has come for the Town of Chapel Hill to build a free, community-owned, public municipal network. The network should have wireless access and provide an open, unfiltered, and unmonitored connection to the Internet available to ALL people. It must be maintained by a local nonprofit for the people of Chapel Hill. Not by a private business or corporation.

We request that the Chapel Hill Town Council act swiftly to bring this service to the people.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

via: Paul Jones and Ed Cone

This controversial telecommunications legislation would permit phone and cable companies to operate Internet and other digital communications service as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight.

via: Democracy Now!

North Carolina

Source for data above

Side note: Remeber that post I wrote called Harnessing the Work of Bloggers? Well it seems Bora the professional negotiated a good deal. One he was happy with. That’s what matters. Why havn’t I heard more stories like this amongst the old school newspapers?

Over one hundred years ago armed white men overthrew the LEGALLY elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina killing many people, driving out the local Republican leadership, and terrorizing the Black community. (Lest we forget the Republican party of those days was supportive of equal rights. It was the Dixie Democrats who were the racist segregationist.) You can read more about this untold historic event in the book “Democracy betrayed: the Wilmington race riot of 1898 and its legacy” and the website For The Record.

An interesting part of this story is the suppression of African American free speech. During the attack the Daily Record, reported to be the only black newspaper in the country at the time, was burnt to the ground. Some say this action was the spark that lit the massive violence of November 10. The Commission report writes of the involvement of North Carolina newspaper editors like Josephus Daniels – founder of the Raleigh paper The News and Observer.

Involved in the conspiracy were men prominent in the Democratic Party, former Confederate officers, former officeholders, and newspaper editors locally and statewide rallied by Josephus Daniels of the Raleigh News and Observer.

– Wilmington Race Riot Commission [PDF], Summary, pg. 5

Its important to note that the beginning of many coups and military actions begin with the destruction of communications. First a rally cry to those sympathetic to the cause via racist newspaper articles. Then outright physical destruction of the source of the oppositions communications. In this case it was the destruction of a black owned newspaper.

So when the modern conservatives try and dispel this report saying it doesn’t have anything to do with people in the present, tell them, “This violence was committed in your white name. To preserve white dominance over politics and power. Help restore the damage of the past now!”

I second the recommendation of the Commission that an endowment be created for young black journalists in North Carolina.

Newspapers (News and Observer, Charlotte Observer, Wilmington Star, Washington Post, etc.) should acknowledge the role of media in the events of 1898 and work with the North Carolina black press association to prepare a summary of the Commission report for distribution statewide. The Commission calls upon said papers to study the effects of 1898 and impact of Jim Crow on the state’s black press and to endow scholarships at the state’s public universities.

Hopefully these funds will be available to all types of media makers. Not just for young men and women entering corporate media outlets. Community journalists in small magazines, blogs, podccasts, public access tv, vloggs, etc. should be included too. Fund the salaries of several committed black activists to mentor and encourage young media makers.

Read what other bloggers have to say about the report from Wilmington.
Eric Muller
Sally Green
Y. Carrington

Read more about this case in my post North Carolina Obstructs DNA Testing for Condemned Man and podcast Save Jerry Conner. Its possible that our grassroots blogging and podcasting mission could have helped bring the attention this case deserved. I’m not going to celebrate this fact just yet. The important thing is Mr. Conner gets another DNA test. More details soon.

The event will be moderated by Shannon Schelin, Ph.D. of the Institute of Government at UNC. She will also make a presentation. Other speakers include Casey Lide of Baller Herbst in Washington, DC, Lynda Goff, Executive Director of WinstonNet in Winston-Salem, NC, Ray Reitz, Chief Technology Officer of Chapel Hill Carrboro School System, and Chad Johnston, Executive Director of The People’s Channel. For more information about the speakers please see the Town event webpage. There will be time at the end of the event for questions and answers. If you can’t make it in person you can watch the event on Public Access channel 18.

I believe this resolution reflects the opinion of the majority of citizens who vote in local elections. An overwhelming majority of them are liberal democrats. They’re tolerant and loving people. This atmosphere allows for very liberal people to have a friendly home. Especially in conservative North Carolina. We really are lucky here.

Lest you think the only people who vote here are liberal college students, the petition that brought about this resolution was submitted by local citizens group Elders for Peace. I signed that petition as soon as I was asked!

PDF : Petition to Impeach Bush from Elders for Peace

An informal, inclusive progressive drinking club. Raise your spirits while you raise your glass, and share ideas while you share a pitcher. Drinking Liberally gives like-minded, left-leaning individuals a place to talk politics. You don’t need to be a policy expert and this isn’t a book club – just come and learn from peers, trade jokes, vent frustration and hang out in an environment where it’s not taboo to talk politics.

Bars are democratic spaces – you talk to strangers, you share booths, you feel the bond of common ground. Bring democratic discourse to your local democratic space – build democracy one drink at a time.

Via: OrangePolitics, BlueNC

The state of North Carolina is refusing to conduct a new DNA test for Jerry. The accuracy of DNA test since 1991 have improved dramatically. On top of that a NC State Bureau of Investigations agent was fired recently for mishandling lots of DNA test evidence. A new test could demonstrate Jerry’s innocence and save his life. We need to work to prevent the state sponsored killing of an innocent man!

You can find action items, such as calling the governor of North Carolina, in my blog post North Carolina Obstructs DNA Testing for Condemned Man. You can also goto jerryconner.blogspot.com for more information. Please link to this site in your blog posts about this.

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It appears that earlier DNA tests taken by the FBI in 1991 are not as reliable as test done today. Not only that but, “The SBI (State Bureau of Investigation) agent in charge of handling, preparing and transmitting the 1991 DNA to the FBI was Brenda Bissette, an agent who was forced to resign from the SBI lab for mishandling DNA evidence in up to 50 cases.” [1] Instead of preventing new DNA tests the State of North Carolina should fix the mistakes of one of their former employees. ESPECIALLY if it could mean the death of an innocent man.

The information in this post was obtained from the blog called jerryconner.blogspot.com. You can find many more facts there. (I also know one of the Attorneys working on Mr. Conner’s case. I have great trust in the attorney so I trust this information.)

If you want to help stop Mr. Conner’s death you can do several things. All the links bellow will take you to the info you need to act.
1) Contact Governor Easley
2) Contact Attorney General Roy Cooper
3) Contact Your Legislators
4) Write a Letter to the Editor
5) Write a blog post
6) Record a podcast

If you know me even just a little bit you might be thinking I’m biased on this. (I’m getting married to Ruby in July. The best decision I ever made.) Hell yes I am! But that is beside the point. Really!

In this day and age, when our national government is run by money hungry religious fanatics with no space for people who are different than them and will stop at nothing to retain control, you start looking around you for options. Really close around you. Options for positive change that you think have a chance.

One good example of the national-local phenomena is municipal internet networks. (WiFi) Network World writer Susan Briedenbach in her article Building boom for Wi-Fi networks says,

This ripple in the pond of municipal infrastructure advancements quickly became a tsunami. By the middle of last year, MuniWireless.com noted that it was “raining RFPs,” and The Yankee Group analyst Lindsay Schroth estimates there are some 320 U.S. municipalities that have or are planning to cover themselves with broadband wireless networks.

When you have access to the entire worlds worth of information – not a big exaggeration – you pull the power of global politics to you. When power is near you it’s local. When your local government can empower it’s citizens – and our guest non-citizens that work so very hard for us – the balance of power shifts. This is only one example of real change happening locally.

Ruby was just on a panel at SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive) called Revenge of the Blogs. She was joined by national blogers Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos – US Liberal) and Mike Krempasky (Right March Red State – US Conservative). In her post Revenge of the panelists she shared some of what happened,

We struck a good balance between talking about the influence of local and national blogs, and some people even began to draw a connection between the two. Judging by the people who came up to talk with me afterward, I think I must have said some interesting and useful things.

She’s been modest I’m sure. She’s been trying to convince liberal activists for years that if you mobilize your neighbors electronically you’re activating the real grassroots. These people are the ones that cause actual change to happen in national politics. The people who are very close to you.

I think that some US national politicians understand this. But they already have their piece of the power pie and are afraid of sharing. Many other circumstances prevent them from really listening to their grassroots. This is not democracy. This is not how the US should exist.

Work with your neighbors online and in person to take over national and local politics.

I wish Ruby could have been there. But I don’t feel too bad for her. She was in Montevideo, Uruguay, is going to Austin for SXSW today, and then off to Seatle for NTEN. I’m jealous. (only a little bit) Thanks to Bora for emailing us about the guests and Anton for his steadfast community building. We owe Anton a lot!

Side note:
Q: What the hell does this post have to do with Activism?
A: Everything! Community building is EXTREMLY important in movement building. True these folks I met with last night aren’t all part of some movement. But we are all creative people who blog. Creativity is a political act. Viva La Blogs!

I hope it will help people learn about these lifestyles and have respect for them. So much fear and ignorance abounds. Even the most progressive democrats I know are terrified by the ideas behind Anarchism. It isn’t just made up of the violent, no rules, black hooded, molotov cocktail throwing crowd.

Fear of Anarchism is truly perpetuated by governments. Mainly because some Anarchists suggest that governments aren’t necessary. Some are against ANY government and some are against national governments only.

One of my favorite parts is:

After Isabell came home from college an anarchist herself, I began to put aside my preconceptions about these people — as disorderly, violent and destructive — and to see them as a community dedicated to replacing hierarchy with consensus and cooperation. (Isabell once described them as Quakers who swear a lot.) Over time I found myself drawn to their hopeful view that people know best what is best for them and to their determination, naïve or not, to build a better world right away. Anarchism, at least as practiced here, seemed to be more about building community gardens and making your own fun than about black bandannas and confrontations with the riot police (although it was about those things, too).

If you want the facts about Anarchism I recommend you read An Anarchist FAQ Webpage. But the only way to really understand is by getting to know people with an open heart.

Alan McSurely gives an update on efforts to get our member of congress, David Price, to support impeachment of President Bush. There’s been a community forum, two meetings with Price, and now…

We present the Case for Impeachment on Tuesday, February 28th at 7 p.m. at Chapel Hill Town Hall. Michelle Cotton Laws and Rev. Robert Seymour will participate, along with Prof. Dan Pollitt and myself. We will be announcing the formation of GRIM, and asking for your help to build the Movement.

Since the press reported the massive unconstitutional domestic spying program of President Bush and Vice President Cheney 2 months ago, a spontaneous grass roots impeachment movement has taken off. One poll showed over 53% of the American people favored an impeachment investigation, over 90% of African Americans were for such an investigation, and over 24% Republicans. This belief that our two leaders have committed crimes is well grounded. The men lied to Congress to give them authority to invade a sovereign nation. Their intentional lies, mixed with their massive ignorance of the Iraqi nation and stumblebum incompetence in handling basic governmental functions has led to the murderous mayhem in Iraq that has destroyed the Nation’s leaders, its culture, and tens of thousands of its children. This is a high crime.

The carefully constructed plausible deniability of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield about U.S. intelligence forces torture program has been blown. They knew about, permitted, and ratified the most cruel and unusual punishments of prisoners including tying prisoners to waterboards for faked drownings, mocking prisoner’s sexual mores and religious beliefs, and other cruelties that have been photographed and shown to the world. They have ordered prisoners held for years without hearings or charges. These acts have been outlawed by every civilized society, including the U.S. for centuries. Bush knew the poor Black neighborhoods of New Orleans would be wiped out when the dams broke. Bush fiddled on his Texas farm while Black people drowned. Intentional failure to provide equal protection to all citizens is a constitutional violation. These are high crimes.

Bush/Cheney set up a massive spying program that was specifically prohibited by the 4th Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) after the unconstitutional abuses of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the Defense Intelligence Agencies were exposed in the 1970´s Watergate inquiries. It is such a blatant violation that Republican Senators are trying to blunt the impeachment movement by talking about retroactively making the violations legal. This far-fetched fig-leaf will draw more attention to the impeachable crimes they have already committed.

If such convincing evidence were presented to a competent law enforcement official, prosecuting attorney, grand jury, or probable cause Judge, they would quickly file charges and set the trial date. Taken together the lies, spies, torture and ethnic cleansing in New Orleans is overwhelming. This is the basis for the grass roots impeachment movement.

BUSH AND CHENEY HAVE BEEN CAUGHT BLUFFING

Like poker players who have been caught cheating and who have nothing in the hole, Bush and Cheney’s initial reaction is to bluff some more. Bush’s handlers send him out to his vetted daily photo opportunities where he tries to impersonate his hero, Ronald Reagan, acting like his hero, the Marlboro Man. But as people jump his right wing ship daily, Bush’s personal insecurities are beginning to take over. Compare his facial expressions when he lies now with how he acted say, six months ago. His frat boy cockiness covers a very short fuse.

As Scooter Libby can begin to hear the jail doors clanging, he and his lawyers are implying that Cheney directed Libby to out a CIA agent Cheney didn’t like. This stressful news was on the Sunday morning talk shows two weeks ago, but Cheney got as far away from D.C. as possible, to a beer party at a Texas ranch with old friends. He was so relaxed he shot a friend in a bright orange coat about 30 yards away on Saturday about 5 p.m. Instead of reporting this shooting immediately, so he could be given a breathalyzer and the forensic and other material evidence could be preserved, law enforcement and the public were not given any facts until after the Sunday morning talk shows and the alcohol were past/passed. Cheney’s psychological state was revealed by his hostess. She said her first thought, when she saw Cheney’s secret service detail rushing toward him, was that Cheney had suffered a heart attack. Bush and Cheney´s psychological state is not our concern. Their corporate sponsors will pay for empathetic handlers to approach them with golden parachutes, as they did with Nixon when his lies and crimes became evident to everyone but himself.

The task of the Grass Roots Impeachment Movement (GRIM) is to make it clear to every politician, Republican and Democratic, that the criminal acts of Bush/Cheney must be tried quickly in the U.S. Senate. For this trial to take place, 218 members of the House of Representatives must file charges against them. We are working on the one member we have some control over, Cong. David Price.

AN INTERIM REPORT

The Carrboro Forum: Starting from scratch in mid-January, we held an overwhelmingly successful forum, ¨The Case for Impeachment¨ in Carrboro in late January. At the close of the presentations, Carrboro Alderman to be, Dan Coleman, asked the crowd of over 140 how many supported asking Cong. Price to be a sponsor of House Bill 635, that calls for a Congressional investigation leading toward impeachment. Practically everyone raised their hands, except for the two members of Cong. Price´s staff who were there. Coleman then asked how many people would support a candidate to run against him, if Price refused to sponsor the impeachment bill. Practically everyone raised their hand again.

1st Price Meeting: The following week, a dozen people who had attended the Carrboro forum met with Cong. Price and the two staffers who had briefed him on our agenda. He implied the impeachment demand was not “middle America” and said he was interested in requesting a special prosecutor, like Clinton had agreed to Kenneth Starr, to investigate Bush´s acts. Price said he got the idea from Al Gore´s recent speech. We asked him pointblank whether he would become the first white Southerner to sponsor Cong. John Conyers´ bill that had about 10 sponsors then. Price asked whether Cong. Mel Watt had signed it. (No.) Shortly after our meeting, Price and Watt had a meeting with a predominantly Black group at the N.C. Mutual Building in Durham. Watt said he thought talk about impeachment was premature. Professor emeritus Chuck Stone polled the crowd as to whether they favored impeachment and about half raised their hands. Stone chided the rest for being timid.

2nd Price Meeting: We met with Price again last week. He showed us a letter that he and another member had written Bush, asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate himself. We asked, incredulously, did he think Bush would respond? He said no. We again asked him to sponsor the Impeachment Investigation Bill, which now has over 25 sponsors. The only southern sponsors are two Black members from Georgia, John Lewis (the “conscience of the House”) and Cynthia McKinney. We also suggested he and like-minded Members hold hearings throughout the South to educate the people about the crimes and the need for impeachment. He implied he believed coming out openly for impeachment hearings now would marginalize us. We left agreeing that there are many approaches to this constitutional crisis.

Other Developments

Mr. Kent Kanoy, from Carrboro, who works at Duke, filed in the Democratic Primary and is carrying the Impeachment Banner proudly. The Primary is May 2nd. According to experts, about 20,000 votes will carry the Democratic primary.

The first counterattack from Rove to the national Impeachment Movement is that the more we ¨extremists¨ talk Impeachment, the more it will mobilize the Republican right wing base for the off-year election. If every time Rove trots out one of his dirty tricks we play into it, we should hang it up.

We present the Case for Impeachment on Tuesday, February 28th at 7 p.m. at Chapel Hill Town Hall. Michelle Cotton Laws and Rev. Robert Seymour will participate, along with Prof. Dan Pollitt and myself. We will be announcing the formation of GRIM, and asking for your help to build the Movement.

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The first thing I noticed is that both these posts were by women who are dating a geek who is man. This seems to be the most common situation. Mine is a bit different in two ways. I’m a geek, who is a man, and I’m dating a woman who is a geek. We self identify as geeks. I’m not putting words in my geeks mouth at all. We like to describe this relationship we have as Geek Socialist Love. Super dorky I know.

So after reading Maryam’s post about dating geeks I wanted to say hell yes much of what she says is true. But also the feminist in me wants to say, DAMN what’s with all these “don’t tell him” and “Do make him” and “Do indulge him“? So many of these good suggestion can go both ways for geek women and geek men. I mean I could just email my partner the URL of this post and say, DO this for ME. Nope. Just too damn selfish. For just about every instant in the Do’s and Don’ts I could replace the female gender in the sentence and have very good advice for my geek partner. It’s interesting when dating advice is two way. No disrespect to Maryam. I’m VERY lucky to be with a geek who understands me as a geek.

What we need is more gender neutrality here. (I can hear people groaning already…) Yes your words and thoughts alter our existence and control the equality or lack of it. If we don’t stop thinking of MEN as the sole owners of brains and geekiness then our society is screwed. Not to mention the future of young girls who want to be programmers, scientists, engineers, physicists, etc. Show some respect. Stop looking at men as the only geeks!

(If you insist on maligning this little rant by calling it Political Correctness think about the propaganda of concervative think tanks and how they’ve planeted the desire to be perjorative in your brain. )

One of those new types of access is Internet access. (Wi-Fi is one way to access information on the Internet.) It is steady stream of information that allows people to do all kinds of valuable and important things. In only a few years we have seen this access move from a mere toy to an extremely valuable tool. Very soon Internet access will be more than a tool but a resource that we all can not live without.

In order to assure that public Internet access is consistently provided, maintained, upgraded, and use education is made available we need a long term solution provider. This Internet access provider must have the resources to continue services well into the future. This robustness requires the service provider to function through difficult and prosperous economic times. Because of technologies swift rate of change, profit can not be the primary goal if public Internet access is to be consistently provided.

For these reasons and many others we have a public non-profit entity called OWASA provide our water access. They have the support of the town and county governments and a mandate to continue providing equal access to water resources indefinitely. This type of organization is the best kind to provide public information access to the Citizens of Chapel Hill. Let’s all work together to facilitate the creation of a new non-profit organization to provide public Internet access for all citizens of Chapel Hill.