Text Fwd: WORKING AT THE STATE LEVEL

Bruce Gagnon's Organizing Notes
Friday, March 04, 2011
WORKING AT THE STATE LEVEL

It's good to see folks making the key connections in the photos above. Hopefully this will keep spreading. Here in Maine we are doing our bit as last Saturday, yesterday, today, and Monday rallies are being held in our capital city, Augusta, to protest the draconian cuts in our state budget by our new Tea Party Republican governor. He has publicly been giving high praise to the Republican governor of Wisconsin for attacking the unions.

We've had people holding Bring Our War $$ Home signs and banners in Augusta each day and yesterday began handing out flyers for a rally we are organizing inside the state capital on April 4.

I too will join the events today in Augusta as I first attend a morning conference on the state budget cuts and then will head over to the capital building where union teachers, who are under attack, will be rallying. I'll hold a sign that reads "Education not Warfare" and hand out flyers as well.

Our campaign in Maine is also now raising funds to purchase full-page signatures ads calling on the public and all elected officials in our state to make the connections between war spending and economic crisis at home. We have also just paid for radio spots on three stations along Maine's populated coastal region with the same message. So we are trying hard to focus people on the pot of taxpayer gold that is being pissed down the rat hole.

It's the states that are now the central organizing focus for the nation and the peace movement needs to be out there contributing this broader vision of cutting military spending and creating more jobs by converting the military industrial complex rather than destroying social progress.




See this video of yesterday's union rally in the cold in Augusta. At 3:07 check out how the camera zooms in on our Bring Our War $$ Home banner. Right there up front and center! That is the kind of bold action we need.