Fund Our Communities, Not War!

Petitions are ready!  Pick them up at:

Mass. Alliance of HUD Tenants, 42 Seaverns Ave., Jamaica Plain.   Contact Michael Kane, michaelkane@saveourhomes.org, 617-233-1885

American Friends Service Committee (starting 4/27), 2161 Masschusetts Ave., Cambridge.  Contact Paul Shannon, pshannon@afsc.org, 617-661-6130 (w) or 617 623 5288 (h).

American Friends Service Committee (starting appx. 5/3), 2 Conz St. Suite 2B, Northampton.  Contact Jeff Napolitano, jnapolitano@afsc.org, 413-584-8975

To add your organization’s name to the list of endorsers, fill in this form.

Join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/245861088845210/.

Download and print the referendum flyer.

See the lists of districts we are targeting and those in which we need coordinators here.

Can you help collect signatures?  Volunteers are needed across the Commonwealth to gather 200 signatures per state representative district between April 26 and July 3.  If you are interested in helping out, sign up here or contact one of the above names.

The Referendum Kick-Off Meeting will be held Sunday, May 6, 2-5 p.m. at Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor, Boston.   Take the T to Chinatown station.

We will live-stream the meeting  for those who cannot attend in person.   The stream will probably be on http://masspeaceaction.org/1980; check back closer to the date for confirmation.

The meeting will include training on:

1) The policy issues which the Referendum addresses, and on how to talk to voters about those messages

2) How to gather signatures correctly.   Registered voters.  Districts.   Voter file lists.

3) Review of the districts we are targeting, and what the members attending the meeting can plug in.

Also, a Referendum Planning Meeting will be held Friday, April 27, 3-5 p.m. at American Friends Service Committee, 2161 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA.   This meeting is generally held every Friday at 3 at different locations.   Contact Paul Shannon, pshannon@afsc.org, for details.

All Referendum supporters, please help us gather signatures at Brookline Town Election Day, Tuesday, May 1, from 7am to 8pm.  The best times to work are 7am-10am and 4pm-8pm.   Please contact an organizer to let us know when you can help!

Fund Our Communities Not War is uniting with a coalition of groups to put a non-binding opinion question on the November ballot across Massachusetts.

The wording of the question will be:

Shall the state Representative (or Senator) from this district be instructed to vote in favor of a resolution calling upon the Congress and the President to:

1. Prevent cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans benefits, or to housing, food and unemployment assistance;

2. Create and protect jobs by investing in manufacturing, schools, housing, renewable energy, transportation and other public services;

3.  Provide new revenues for these purposes and to reduce the long-term federal deficit by closing corporate tax loopholes, ending offshore tax havens, and raising taxes on incomes over $250,000;  and

4. Redirect military spending to these domestic needs by reducing the military budget, ending the war in Afghanistan and bringing U.S. troops home safely now.

To add your organization’s name to the list of endorsers, fill in this form.

AFSC’s South Eastern New England program has some great resources for anti-war activists (and everyone else!)

The Fund Our Communities Not War – Massachusetts network will hold its next general meeting Saturday, October 29, 12:30 – 3:00 pm,  at Worcester Friends Meeting, 901 Pleasant St.

1. Alert: The Supercommittee and the deficit deal
Word from Washington is that the Supercommittee is trying to wrap up some deal by late October so that the Congressional Budget Office has time to check their figures and make sure they’re really cutting $1.2 trillion from the deficit. (This is known as “scoring.”) They make not make that deadline, but the next two weeks are prime time for us to

• deliver postcards, letters, and petitions to Congress if we are collecting them;
• meet with local Senate and Congressional staff and tell them what we want — ideally, go in with other community groups, service providers and advocates, and unions that are also pushing for a decent deficit deal
• organize call-ins to their offices, and
• write letters to the editor or even op-eds.

We and many, many others are stressing these themes:

• Don’t cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid benefits or social programs that our families and cities need.
• We can eliminate the deficit by ending tax breaks for millionaires and corporations, ending both wars, and cutting the Pentagon.
• Create jobs and pull us out of the recession — that will get taxes flowing back into the government and end deficits.

Our four-point program is: create jobs, save services, tax millionaires and corporations, end the wars and cut the Pentagon.

All senators and congresspeople need to hear this, but Supercommittee members need to hear it most. Please email cutmilitaryspending@gmail.com and let us know what you’re doing.

2. New resources on the New Priorities website

• We and our national partners have hundreds of local affiliates around the country. Are you working with the ones near you? Go to http://newprioritiesnetwork.org/about/organizations-in-the-network/ and scroll about one-sixth of the way down to Find a group near you to organize with. The list is organized by state and where possible by city. (We will keep adding groups as new networks join, so keep checking this list.)
  
• Go to  http://newprioritiesnetwork.org/resources-by-category/ and http://newprioritiesnetwork.org/ for new resources on: our fall Deficit Deal initiative, the economy, debunking the Pentagon’s “doomsday” scenario, animations, videos, and other tools.

3. Occupy and us
Wondering how to relate? Check out this great article by Peace Action’s Judith Le Blanc:http://www.organizingupgrade.com/2011/10/leblanc-interview-about-occupy/

Mike Prokosch
for the New Priorities Network continuations committee

Our next meeting will take place this coming Saturday, September 17, at 12:30 p.m. in the Worcester Friends Meetinghouse.