Hudson Valley Radical Calendar (through May 1st)

A selected listing of activist events in Poughkeepsie and the Mid-Hudson area. We compile most of our events from Activist Resource and the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter, so be sure to check these sites for more more comprehensive and up-to-date listings. 

Monday, April 29th @6:00 PM: Meeting to "Raise the Age" of teens tried as adults in New York State at the auditorium of the Coykendall Science Building at SUNY New Paltz. The meeting is being sponsored by the SUNY New Paltz Black Studies Department, SUNY NP Black Student Union, SUNY NP Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, and the SUNY NP Student Association.

Speakers will include Speakers include Diana Metz, SUNY New Paltz student; Hernan Carvente, a John Jay student who was formerly incarcerated as a teenager; Jim LeCain, director of the College Program at Brookwood Secure Center; Judge Michael Corriero: director of New York Center for Juvenile Justice; and Domanique, a young woman who was accused of a crime when she was 16, and is now a student at Baruch.
Information: n02221593@hawkmail.newpaltz.edu

Tuesday, April 30th: Fight with local resident Flavia Perry against Bank of America's attempt to foreclose on her home. The action will begin with a rally at Hulme Park, 72 Market Street in Poughkeepsie and continue with an occupation of the courtroom where her foreclosure trial will take place. The event is being organized by Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson Home Defense Association. 
Visit nobodyleavesmidhudson.org to learn more

Wednesday, May 1st: May Day rallies will take place in Poughkeepsie AND New Paltz. 

The New Paltz event is being billed the "Mayday $5K" and is bring organized by the New Paltz Student-Labor Coalition. The rally will take place at the SUNY New Paltz Academic Concourse from 12-1 PM and is focusing on winning a minimum of $5,000 per course for adjunct instructors.  Speakers will address Adjunct Job Security & Compensation, Lecturer Workload, Campus Policies on Family Leave, Student Loan Interest Rates, Support for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and and other pressing issues. After the event, participants will carpool to the rally in Poughkeepsie. 
Information: United University Professors, cvenic@gmail.com

The Poughkeepsie event is rallying under the slogan, "Legalize, Organize, Unionize!" and is being organized by Vassar Movimento Estudiantil Chicana/o De Aztlán (MEChA), Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson, End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN), and Vassar Young Democratic Socialists. It will begin with activists assembled on the Vassar Quad from 2:30-3:30 PM, continuing with a march to the Family Partnership Center from 3:30-5:00, and ending with a rally and celebration of immigrant and workers' rights in front of the Center until 7:00.
Information: (615) 306 5531, mecha.vsa@vassar.edu

HV Radical Says: NO CUTS!

Social Security in Chains
Obama Balances Budget on the Backs of Workers and Seniors

This past Wednesday, the Obama administration unveiled his budget for the 2014 fiscal policy year. For the most part, the budget maintained the status quo of his administration’s economic policies. But as illustration of the rightward trend of the Democratic Party, it contained one unprecedented provision: An attack on social security. Social Security, instituted in the 1930’s, has remained untouched by Democratic presidents ever since. Until now. Obama’s proposal asserts that social security cost-of-living adjustments should be calculated using “chained CPI.” The logic behind the chained CPI is that because seniors supposedly do not spend as much money as the working population, their payments should be cut. According to this logic, the older you are, the less cash you need. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy research writes that "An average worker retiring at age 65 would get a yearly cut of $650 by age 75, but at age 85, this would be a cut of $1,130 a year."

This capitalistic line of argument ignores the already prevalent poverty among senior citizens, who receive worse care here in the United States than pretty much anywhere else in the industrialized world. No longer part of the labor force? The profit system no longer pays you mind. Social Security should be expanded, but our president only wants to put it in chains.

Final Point w/Fred Nagel: The Liberal Love Affair with Words

Liberals have a love affair with words. Obama's private school and Ivy League education has made him a master of rhetoric. He can repeat the words of Martin Luther King while committing war crimes around the world. A former professor of constitutional law, he can praise human rights while murdering US citizens abroad, without charges and without trial.

Obama's acceptance speech for the Noble Peace Prize will be used in future textbooks as the perfect example of 21st Century sophistry. Yet many liberals couldn't keep from crying during it. Martin Luther King's words spoken by a black president was all they experienced.

President Clinton used to be the nation's best flim-flam artist. He talked about fighting for the good of the people while he slashed the social safety net, liberated big banks and accounting firms from most regulations, oversaw the corporate consolidation of the media, waged war in Yugoslavia, and starved millions of Iraqi children because their US imposed dictator "was building weapons of mass destruction."

Not bad, but Obama will do him one better: for the US war machine, for the major corporations, and for the oil industry. Obama may even succeed in destroying Social Security and Medicare for his major backers on Wall Street. He will dismantle public education, the post office if he can, and destroy what's left of our unions.

Only a fool keeps believing in pretty words over substance. In media driven elections over popular resistance. Now is the right time for liberals' tears.

Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
845 876-7906

word count: 250

Charlie's Letters: The Budget Blues

The following is an open letter to Congressman Chris Gibson (Republican, NY's 20th District) from local activist Charlie Davenport. While the editors of this blog may have differences with the opinions expressed in letters submitted to us, we believe they should always be published. Send us your thoughts on this or any subject at leftunited@gmail.com 

Dear Congressman Gibson,

I appreciate your earnest letter responding to my concerns about the federal budget. We do have some differences of opinion.

I don’t believe that there is, as you stated, “universal agreement among both parties that the primary driver of our deficit is entitlement spending”. You might consult with Sen.  Bernie Sanders on this issue.  Consider that  former President  Reagan said: “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax ... if you reduce the outflow of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit.” (Oct. 7, 1984)

By choosing Obama-Biden over Romney-Ryan in November 2012, the American people spoke emphatically. They do not want cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

I am not interested in discussing who’s to blame for the current budget crisis and sequester.    
        
Primarily, what I would like to know is: with the Stock Market at an all time high, corporate profits at an all time high, CEO pay at record levels, and non-banking corporations holding cash reserves of $2.2 trillion, why are  Republicans in the House and Senate asking for sacrifices from veterans, senior citizens, the unemployed, poor children and others least able to afford sacrifices?

I ask you to join with other reasonable House Representatives to work for a long term budgetary solution that preserves the meager economic progress the country has recently enjoyed, and is fair to all.

                        Charles Davenport

Stop and Frisk Designed to "Instill Fear" in Communities of Color

Although it should probably come as no surprise, the racial bias of the New York Police Department's Stop and Frisk program has been brought incontestably into the open. During federal court hearings challenging the constitutionality of the NYPD's practice of Stop and Frisk, New York State Senator and former Police Captain Eric Adams recounted a conversation he had with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly in 2010.

Adams, who raised concerns about Stop and Frisk's disproportionate impact on people of color, testified that Ray Kelly responded by saying "he targeted or focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that any time they leave their homes they could be targeted by police."

Rank-and-file members of the police operate similarly to the rank and file of the armed forces. Like the attacks on Occupy demonstrators (including sexual violence against female protestors), the Stop and Frisk program's disproportionate impact on people of color is not the result of rouge officers. It is the result of orders from the top.

Last May, following a massive silent march organized by a broad coalition of Black, Latino/a and, encouragingly, LGBTQ organizations, the practice of stop and frisk dropped 70% from earlier in the year. Now, with this revelation, there is a chance that stop and frisk can be ended altogether in the courts. In the meantime, the fightback must continue. Activists must also begin to organize around ending police brutality locally.

While the issue of stop and frisk may not be as acute in smaller cities as in a place like New York, police harassment of the Black and Latino/a community exists without a doubt. In Newburgh, two black men were killed by police just last year.

TAKE ACTION
*Learn more about the epidemic of stop and frisk in New York City 

*Get involved in the struggle against police brutality locally by joining the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN). Our next meeting in Poughkeepsie is Wednesday, April 10th @6:00, at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, Family Partnership Center, 29 N. Hamilton Street.