Labor Day event

Annual Labor Day Picnic – Meet Jerry Brown, Controller John Chiang, AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler & more!

We are pleased to announce that gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown will be attending our Annual Labor Day Picnic this year!  Brown will be a strong voice for working families as Governor!  Please come and hear his message for California.

This year’s picnic will also be attended by Controller John Chiang, a champion of working families and public workers in particular; AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler and Labor endorsed candidate for Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Our Annual Labor Day Picnic will be held Monday, September 6th at William Land Park (Village Green Area).  The picnic will take place from 11 am to 3 pm (food will be served until 2 pm).  There will be a BBQ, a beer garden, children’s activities, karaoke, a Texas hold-em tournament, bingo, and more. 

We are looking for volunteers for various duties (set up, cooks, servers, clean up, etc.) between 8 am and 5 pm.

For more information, or to volunteer, please contact Teresa at 916-927-9772 or teresa@sacramentolabor.org. 

Meg Whitman. the candidate from Goldman Sachs

Whitman fails

CELEBRATE THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 19TH AMENDMENT

A Celebration of Women’s Suffrage and a Protest of Meg Whitman – Whose Voting Record Dishonors that Tradition

Thursday, August 26^th, 2010

3 PM: Gather for March at the Sacramento Convention Center

4 – 6 PM: March to the Capitol’s West Steps & Rally

Join our special celebration of Women’s Right to Vote and protest billionaire CEO Meg Whitman’s record of rarely voting for nearly three decades - except now that she is on the ballot.

Thousands of women, and men, fought for decades to secure this basic democratic right.

On August 26, we will honor the achievements of the suffrage movement, and the women who were imprisoned and abused in the fight.

We will also continue our protest of Meg Whitman, who has disgraced the suffragists’ legacy, and now thinks she is entitled to be governor because of her wealth and privilege as a billionaire corporate CEO. 

No corporate takeover of our society- Obama

Brown V. Whitman- Its the economy

Reviving California's economy: Meg Whitman versus Jerry Brown

Both have put forth plans to address the state's loss of industrial manufacturing. Neither goes far enough.

Harold Meyerson

For all their differences, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown agree on one thing: California needs an industrial policy.

For half a century, aerospace was California's dominant economic engine. But then the end of the Cold War led to a radical contraction of the aerospace industry. Since then, the state has subsisted on bubbles, and it has wilted each time they popped. Neither the dot-com industry nor housing — the two chief sources of economic activity in this state for the past 15 years — offered the kind of sustainable and broadly shared prosperity that Californians took for granted in the years between 1940 and 1990. The high-tech companies that have flourished in this state over the past 20 years have created great wealth, but with much of their manufacturing done offshore, that wealth has not been shared with California production workers.

Both Whitman and Brown understand that loss of manufacturing is a key factor in the state's economic decline, and they have put forth economic plans to address it. But neither of their strategies does enough to restore the state to its onetime industrial preeminence.

Whitman seeks to remedy the problem through classic Republican policies: reducing taxes and regulations on businesses. Some of her targeted tax cuts make sense, like increasing the R&D tax credit and creating a tax credit for factory equipment. But the massive cuts she proposes to state services will only further the decline of California's aging infrastructure and harm a public education system that badly needs improvement.

Governor imposes furloughs- restaurant provides $ 7.25 dinners

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger and staff,

The Greek Village Inn would like to invite you to our California state workers dinner specials going on Monday through Friday starting at 4 o’clock. Below are the following specials:

$7.25 dinner specials, all served with soup.

v Soup and Salad your choice of Avgolemono or our soup of the day

v Pikilia Platter

v Souvlakia Plate 2 skewers of your choice: pork, chicken or lamb

v Makaranada your choice of brown butter or red sauce.

v Gyros Sandwich served with French fries

v Pastichio served with mixed greens

v Vegetable or Regular Mousaka served with mixed greens

v Stuffed Bell Pepper with seasoned ground beef in a house-made red sauce topped with mizithra cheese and served with Greek Potatoes

All specials will be served until the budget is signed and a valid California state I.D. is required.

 Sincerely,

Cathy Tsakopoulos-LaGesse and

Leo LaGesse

P.S. We allow cigar smoking on our patio !!

;-) $7.25 per hour is the federal minimum wage which the Governor has tried to impose upon state workers.

Protest Right Wing Congressman Dan Lungren

Rep. Lungren Town Hall Protest

TODAY, Thursday, August 19th @ 7 PM

Wackford Community and Aquatic Complex – Valley Oak Ballroom

9014 Bruceville Rd. Elk Grove, CA 95758

Join SEIU, Justice for Janitors, the Sacramento Labor Council, HCAN, Americans United for Change and other progressive allies in Sacramento to let Congressman Dan Lungren know that he is voting against the interests of his constituents. 

Congressman Lungren voted against health care reform, supports the repeal of the 14th amendment, voted against the financial reform bill to hold Wall Street banks accountable and voted against bringing more jobs back to California through the stimulus and fiscal relief for the states.

Let’s make our voices heard against the Republican agenda in Congress that supports cuts and privatization of Social Security, eliminating Medicare and replacing it with vouchers for private insurance; and extending three quarters of trillion dollars of tax breaks to the rich, at the same time most oppose unemployment compensation and funding for teachers, firefighters, police and other critical public services.

Join us in saying NO to Congressman Lungren’s extreme agenda!

Contact: Sylvia Ruiz Sylvia.ruiz@seiu-usww.org 408-660-6907 or Mekahel Francois mekahel.francois@seiu-usww.org 510-613-5643

Latino Voter Registration Drive in Sacramento

Service Employees International  Vice President, Eliseo Medina, speaks to  a crowd of over 100 on the Capitol Steps in Sacramento  on August 17, 2010, as they complete phase I of the campaign,  For our Families: Todas A Votar.

The campaign organized by several unions including SEIU, the California Teachers Association, and others  traveled to by bus to some 9 cities in the state,  from San Diego to Sacramento to initiate a the voter registration  campaign in each of these areas.    

   In Sacramento Assembly Speaker Perez and some 8 members of the Latino caucus joined labor and religious groups to welcome the caravan to the state capitol. 

 In cooperation with unions and community groups, the campaign will be  providing offices and registration efforts  in each of the 9 cities in targeting thousands of new Latino voters.

"For Latinos, the election of 2010 is more than just  choose one candidate or another, it's about taking a role  active, more than ever, in decisions that affect  our families and create a better future for our

children and grandchildren, "said Eliseo Medina, vice president

of SEIU. "We have the potential to influence the elections and  Now this is where our voices must be heard.”

The Manhattan Mosque controversy

BTW. There is an Episcopal Church and a Greek Orthodox Sanctuary within blocks of Ground Zero.

Sacramento Latino Voter Registration Drive

 Sacramento LATINO VOTER REGISTRATION RALLY 

Tuesday, August 17^th at 5 PM
State Capitol, West Steps

The goals of the Cambiando California…un voto a la vez are:

·         To bring people together and focus on the necessity that all eligible Latinos are registered and, where possible, are absentee voters

·         To generate enthusiasm among Latino voters, instilling confidence that they have the power to change California by voting in November.

Participants in the Sacramento event include labor and faith-based community organizations and elected officials. 

One Nation March on Oct.2

One Nation Formed to Bring Back the American Dream

Posted By James Parks On August 5, 2010

Working people are frustrated and angered ^[1] by the inability of lawmakers to stop the massive loss of jobs and decline in living standards, while Republicans—and some Democrats—freely hand over the economy to corporations that are growing richer and more powerful each day.
To help renew the American Dream for everyone, some 170 progressive groups, including the AFL-CIO, NAACP ^[2], National Council of La Raza ^[3] and many affiliated unions, have come together in One Nation ^[4].       
One Nation is a multi-racial, civil and human rights movement whose mission is to reorder our nation’s priorities to invest in our nation’s most valuable resource—our people. One Nation is holding an Oct. 2 rally at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. with tens of thousands of activists taking part. They will then return to their neighborhoods, congregations, schools and, especially, voting booths, fired up with new energy to take back the country.
On the same day, the union movement will walk door-to-door in targeted states around the country, mobilizing union members exactly one month before the fall elections.

Arizona students to be deported : please assist

Please spread this to supporters. Saludos Companer@s, The last five months have been intense. Along with working collaboratively with you on the resistance against racism we have created and continue to develop on the ground grassroots organizing with families in the barrio and we continue to develop protection networks for undocumented families. There is more work to do and we welcome that challenge because we know we stand side by side with you. For now TYLO is sharpening our focus, stepping back for reflection after the last months and evaluating for our future work. This week we are doing internal work to prepare for the future and supporting one of our youth members through our protection network. As you all know on of our community members Nancy family members is in ICE detention. He was handed over to Border Patrol and then ICE after a minor traffic stop by Pima County Sheriffs. He is currently in a CCA/ICE prison in Florence. The family is in grief but standing strong. Many of you know Nancy and her family is protected under our protection network. TYLO is supporting Nancy's family with immediate economic help as well as mobilizing for bail. The bail hearing with the ICE judge is Wednesday, August 12 in the morning. We need to raise $5,000 in bail. We have raised $2,000 dollars already and we are working on raising the rest.

[Editor's Note: The Progressive Alliance welcomes our friend and comrade Bill Fletcher, Jr. to the PDA Advisory Board. Welcome aboard Bill! -- Paul B ]

  

Welcome Bill Fletcher Jr.!

Dear Friends,

It is with great pleasure, we announce our newest PDA Advisory Board member, Bill Fletcher Jr.

Bill has forged an amazing career as a longtime labor, racial justice, and international activist, as well as being an outspoken advocate working for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the International Labor Rights Forum , Executive Editor of The Black Commentator , and founder of the Center for Labor Renewal . Bill is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, a national nonprofit organization organizing, educating, and advocating for policies in favor of the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. He is also a founder of the Black Radical Congress and is a Senior Scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.



Bill is the co-author (with Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice (University of California Press). He was formerly the Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the George Meany Center of the AFL-CIO. Prior to the George Meany Center, Fletcher served as Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO.

Upon joining the board, Bill said, “I am pleased to come on board and offer whatever input I can in advancing a progressive approach to electoral work.” Read his entire statement here.

After working together as allies for the past six years, we look forward to this new relationship and the fruit it will bear in the coming years as we work together building the progressive movement.

In solidarity,

Tim Carpenter

National Director