[Sosfbay-discuss] McKinney gets press coverage in Denver & Dana Point

[Drew Johnson]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: McKinney gets press coverage in Denver & Dana Point
From:    "Drew Johnson" <JamBoi at Greens.org>
Date:    Tue, August 26, 2008 08:13
To:      natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. CNN} McKinney slams Democrats over Iraq war funding
2. Democracy Now} Antiwar Activists Take to the Streets to "Defend Denver"
4. Thousands of Protesters Converge on Democratic Convention in Denver
5. Don’t ignore Green Party: Presidential candidate McKinney speaks at Merc
6. Party for Socialism and Liberation ’salutes’ McKinney, Sheehan
7. Getting Started: The Democrats Convene in Denver [McKinney's treatment
by Fox 'News']
8. Cynthia McKinney Runs for the White House [Dana Point interview]
9. Green Party presidential candidate to visit state [Michigan over Labor
Day]
10. SocialistWorker.org} Between rhetoric and reality


___

1.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/25/mckinney-slams-democrats-over-iraq-war-funding/

McKinney slams Democrats over Iraq war funding
Posted: 04:00 PM ET

>From CNN Correspondent Joe Johns

[PHOTO]

Cynthia McKinney is criticizing Democrats on Iraq funding.

DENVER, Colorado (CNN) — Controversial former Georgia Congresswoman
Cynthia McKinney is in Denver this week, but she isn’t exactly here to
attend the Democratic National Convention.

In fact we found her at a protest against US government detainment of
“political prisoners."

These days McKinney is the Green Party nominee for President, and she’s
blasting the Democrats in Congress for not cutting off funding to the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I've been liberated from the values that I believe are the failed values
of the Democratic party. I'm proud to be outside,” she said.

Back in 1996, McKinney was not only on the inside of the Democratic
convention in Chicago — she was even one of the speakers. She praised
then-President Bill Clinton, and lashed out at the Republican Party for
its opposition to abortion.

McKinney was well known on the Hill for her run-ins with everyone from the
Anti-Defamation league to the Capitol police. But for the record, the
protest she attended was peaceful and came off without a hitch.

___
2.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/25/anti_war_protests_begin_in_denver
Antiwar Activists Take to the Streets to "Defend Denver"
by via Democracy Now
Monday Aug 25th, 2008 4:59 PM

    Monday, August 25, 2008 :Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill
heads to the streets of Denver to report on day one of protests
outside of the Democratic National Convention. He speaks to antiwar
activist Cindy Sheehan, Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia
McKinney, Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, M1 of Dead Prez, Leslie Cagan of
United for Peace and Justice and others.

___

I just wanted to post some reassurance to folks that despite the
(previously reported here) misunderstandings b/wn the McKinney campaign
and the Green Party of Colorado folks, the McKinney appearances in Denver
are going well.

3.
By the way: Zogby Poll: McKinney 1%, Nader 1%, Barr 4%
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/08/zogby-barr-4-mckinney-1-nader-1/

My mom went and saw Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente, Cindy Sheehan and
other peace luminaries at the Mercury Cafe Monday evening Aug. 25th and
reported there was a large diverse progressive crowd with local Greens,
Code Pinkers and a number of other similarly-minded peace type folks.


Green is Spreading!

Drew Johnson
GPCA delegate

Here's two local Denver newspaper reports about McKinney appearances:

___
4.
http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?aID=1664

Don’t ignore Green Party
Presidential candidate McKinney speaks at Merc
Daniel Williams, DDN Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Barack Obama is not the only presidential candidate in Denver this week.
Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has also been in
Denver since Sunday, and she spoke yesterday at the Mercury Café.

McKinney spoke passionately to a capacity-plus crowd of supporters, and
she wanted to make sure all of the Democrats downtown for the Democratic
National Convention knew she was here.

“We must have an opposition party in this country, and the Green Party
with over 200 elected officials on the local level can be that opposition,
but we have to expand and broaden the Green Party to reflect the entire
fabric of all of the communities that are in this country,” McKinney said.

McKinney is a former United States Congresswoman who served as a Democrat
in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003, and from 2005 to
2007. McKinney joined the Green Party in September of 2007, leaving the
Democratic Party on Youtube.com clip.

McKinney said she has been in town to raise awareness for her party, not
just to take away from the DNC.

“We have done a great job of reaching out to people of all diverse
backgrounds, and we wanted to make sure that people understood that not
only is Green Party a viable alternative, it is imperative,” McKinney
said.

During her speech, McKinney also spoke briefly about her party and her
party’s politics on the issues of environmentalism, non-violence and
social justice, and the large crowd of “Greenies” went wild for her.

When asked what she thought about the DNC, McKinney said: “I am not there
so I cannot comment on it. But Denver has proven itself to be very
hospitable for those of us who choose to express ourselves and our dissent
from the current political order.”

McKinney was also asked what she would do if elected president, and she
responded: “We would instruct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up an
orderly withdrawal process for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, I
would make public the papers pertaining to certain tragedies in the life
of our country like the JFK assassination, Martin Luther King Jr., and the
9/11 Truth Movement. I would release everything the Bush administration
knew about September 11.”

McKinney leaves Denver today, but said she enjoyed her time in Colorado
and will return in the future.
___

5.
http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_world/august2008/us-convention082508.html
 Thousands of Protesters Converge on Democratic Convention in Denver

Denver, Aug 25, (RHC).- Thousands of protesters have converged on Denver,
Colorado, where the Democratic National Convention got underway on Monday.
At a march and rally held on Sunday, organized by the group Recreate 68,
the protesters temporarily blocked access to the convention site before
police ordered the crowd to disperse. Speakers at the rally included
anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia
McKinney, and Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic.

Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent with the popular radio and TV program
Democracy Now, says that "the city of Denver has been converted to a
massive monument celebrating Barack Obama. This weekend, some 4,000
delegates to the Democratic National Convention began flooding the city
for the much-anticipated coronation of the man chosen by the Democrats to
face John McCain in November." He said that there are about 15,000
journalists to cover the convention.

Scahill said that "the convention could be described as one big political
NASCAR race, with corporate logos splashed on practically everything
related to the big show." He emphasized that the total cost of the
convention could well top $100 million" -- on track to be the most
expensive political convention in U.S. history.

Over the weekend, just two days before the convention opened in Denver,
Barack Obama announced that he had chosen Joseph Biden as his running
mate. The vice presidential candidate has served in the Senate since 1972
and is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2002, Biden
was one of twenty-nine Democratic senators to vote to authorize the
invasion of Iraq. He later said his vote was a mistake. Biden has also
taken the controversial position of advocating for the partitioning of
Iraq into three or more regions.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader described Biden as the
MasterCard Senator. One of Biden’s biggest corporate backers is the
Delaware-based credit card company MBNA. Biden was the key architect of
the 2005 bankruptcy law which made it harder for consumers to file for
bankruptcy protection. At the time, Biden’s son was working as a
consultant to MBNA.

___
6.
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/08/party-for-socialism-and-liberation-salutes-mckinney-sheehan/

Party for Socialism and Liberation ’salutes’ McKinney, Sheehan
August 23rd, 2008 · 8 Comments

On its website, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, “itself fighting
to obtain ballot status for presidential candidate Gloria La Riva in a
number of U.S. states, salutes Cindy Sheehan and Cynthia McKinney for
their successful efforts at securing ballot access for their candidacies.”
The PSL says McKinney and Sheehan “bring much-needed progressive voices
into the electoral discourse. Their ability to gather support for their
candidacies indicates that growing sectors of the population are rejecting
the two-party framework that has yielded only war and death. Their
leadership can advance the development of a politically independent mass
movement capable of challenging imperialism.”

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr011=ortc84ryr4.app13a&page=NewsArticle&id=9739&news_iv_ctrl=1261

PSL congratulates Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan
Saturday, August 23, 2008
By: Natasha Persaud

Women candidates take struggle to the electoral battlefield

The Party for Socialism and Liberation, itself fighting to obtain ballot
status for presidential candidate Gloria La Riva in a number of U.S.
states, salutes Cindy Sheehan and Cynthia McKinney for their successful
efforts at securing ballot access for their candidacies.

[Photo Cindy Sheehan]
Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic congresswoman from Georgia, accepted
the Green Party’s presidential nomination at their Party Convention in
Chicago in July. The Green Party is on the ballot in 22 states and is
currently working on obtaining ballot status in many more.

On Aug. 8, Cindy Sheehan officially announced that she had guaranteed her
spot on the November ballot. The announcement followed the collection and
validation of thousands of signatures required to gain access as an
independent candidate in San Francisco’s 8th Congressional District.
Sheehan is running against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Sheehan and McKinney are running campaigns with strong anti-war,
anti-imperialist orientations. Getting on the ballot is quite a feat for
any independent candidate and an even greater feat for progressives. But
in the male-dominated, capitalist-controlled realm of electoral politics,
the achievement of these women is a testament to their perseverance and
strength.

In 2005, Sheehan first gained prominence in the anti-war movement
following the death of her son Casey—killed in the early months of the
Iraq War—when she set up camp near Bush’s residence in Crawford, Texas, to
challenge the war. She became a catalyst to the movement. On Sept. 24,
350,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., in what was a brief resurgence
of mass anti-war activity.

[Photo Cynthia McKinney]
The aftermath of the 2006 Congressional elections proved decisively that
the Democrats would not end the war. Since that time, Sheehan has been a
major voice for a layer of anti-war activists who are sickened by the
warmongering of Republicans and Democrats and who seek a progressive
alternative.

During her time in the U.S. Congress, McKinney became known for upholding
highly principled positions and being supportive of a variety of different
progressive causes. She has become well-known for her activism around
Hurricane Katrina, her consistent stance and activism against the war, her
support of the Palestinian struggle and bringing attention to the plight
of political prisoners. She has overcome tremendous obstacles, not only as
a woman but also as a person of color.

These are noteworthy developments for the people’s movement. Sheehan and
McKinney bring much-needed progressive voices into the electoral
discourse. Their ability to gather support for their candidacies indicates
that growing sectors of the population are rejecting the two-party
framework that has yielded only war and death. Their leadership can
advance the development of a politically independent mass movement capable
of challenging imperialism.

Gloria La Riva, the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s presidential
candidate, is proud to join these progressive women by bringing a
socialist voice to the electoral arena. The La Riva/Puryear campaign is
already on the ballot in eight states with more to come. The PSL’s La
Riva/Puryear campaign stands side by side with McKinney and her running
mate Rosa Clemente in challenging the two-party system

The PSL welcomes McKinney’s and Sheehan’s candidacies as expressions of
the outrage, frustration and desire for radical social change in the
United States. Together, these campaigns have the potential to build a
stronger base for the people’s progressive movement in the coming period.

___

7.
Getting Started: The Democrats Convene in Denver
AUGUST 25, 2008 - 12:28 PM
Jackson Baker

DENVER -- On Sunday morning, I woke in a Denver hotel room, and, while
channel-surfing, discovered Fox News broadcasting a new version of the
Fall of Man. While it was not exactly Miltonian in scope, no loss of Eden
per se, the network's treatment certainly had its apocalyptic moments.

There was its reporter, a neat-looking bespectacled young man who appeared
to have been time-traveled from, say, 1957, to the scene of a gathering
march whose members, far scruffier by contrast, belonged to the social
tableau of roughly a decade later. Like 1967, the age of Dangerous
Long-Haired Hippies. Or 1968, to be precise, since the leaders of this
demonstration in downtown Denver had explicitly promised to re-create that
year of revolutionary ferment and, specifically, to re-do the
Democratic-convention chaos of Chicago 1968.

What did I say, Milton? No, Dante, make it. Or how about George Romero.
Over the bottom-of-the-screen slug "Leftist Protesters," the Fox man
betook himself into the maelstrom of marchers, extending his portable mike
to this one and that, asking each of them in turn what it was they thought
they were doing. What ensued had to be a Sunday morning first on
prime-time cable.

The response that Foxman got from anyone he approached was threefold.
Either "Fuck you!" (unstrained by any seven-second censor), or the middle
finger (in several cases, the two-fisted version), or both. This went on
for a full minute while the young reporter began to resemble some dogged
but courageous fool lost in a No-Man's-Land on Flanders field and the Fox
anchor-lady back in the studio viewed the proceedings with alarm.

"Things are out of control here, as you can see," he said.

"Yes, I can see things are out of control there," she said. And that was
but a segue into an even grimmer announcement. "And wait 'til you see
what's going on inside the Pepsi Center itself!" she teased.

[SNIP STUFF ABOUT FOX EXAGERATION OF 'THREAT' OF DNC AND PROTESTERS]

Were orgies taking place inside? Were dark conspiratorial plans being
hatched amid Satanic trappings? Just what, Fox lady? I was on the edge of
my seat. (Hotel bed, rather.)

In fact, once the break was over, there was no more reference to anything
hot and heavy going on in the Pepsi Center. Instead, what the Fox lady and
her cohort on the anchor desk went back to reviewing the End of the
Civilized World as they had just seen it before the break. They went
through a list of some of incendiary presences who were slated to appear
at a rally at the end of the ongoing march, and, lo and behold, one whom
they lavished several admonitory words on was former Georgia congresswoman
Cynthia McKinney, the current presidential nominee of the Green Party USA.

Among the horrors so far inflicted on honest society by McKinney, as the
Fox folks reminded us, was her alleged physical assault some years back of
a U.S. Capitol policeman who, befuddled by a brand-new Afro hair style she
was sporting, stopped her at a congressional checkpoint and challenged her
for her ID.

Not long after tabloid-style treatment of McKinney,...

[SNIP STUFF ABOUT FOX ATTACKS ON MICHELLE OBAMA...]

Rotsa ruck, I thought, and decided I'd had enough for one day of the Fair
and Balanced network. I turned off the TV and fell to thinking about my
own conversation in Memphis last week with a visiting Cynthia McKinney,
who was accompanied by the Green Party's candidate for U.S. Senate, Chris
Lugo.

I had sat down with them at the Barnes and Noble store at Wolfchase
Galleria for a brief chat on their way out of town, and either McKinney
and Lugo were concealing their involvement in what Fox saw as a concerted
effort to undermine the Western World and its values or they were - or at
least could be - calm, reasonable people, possessed of a will to protect
the environment, reform the political apparatus, and impose some
restraints on what they saw as an unbridled capitalist system that had run
amok for the last eight years (and for some time before that, actually)

McKinney had served two different stints in Congress, and Lugo had so far
not made a scratch during his two statewide races to date. (He had,
however, succeeded in gaining some name recognition.) Neither had
realistic hopes of winning this time around, and there was something both
forlorn and heroic about their current effort. Since they could not be
said to represent large numbers of people in the body politic, they might
even have been regarded as irrelevant - maybe even in the comic, almost
vaudevillian way that the Fox folks portrayed such types (as an
alternative to their being villains at the gates).

But, as Lugo emphasized, they were taking the first, perhaps tentative
steps toward organizing a base of support among public interest groups - a
foundation that could give them leverage in the system. Maybe so, maybe
no. McKinney and Lugo were, in any case, as intolerant of what might be
described as liberal condescension as the people at Fox News were.

Barack Obama? They saw him to be the same old same old - just another
sellout to the special interests, and McKinney was on hand at Sunday's
rally and during the rest of the proceedings in Denver this week to make
that point to whatever audience she might be able to command.

She'll have trouble. All eyes and all expectations are on the man from
Illinois (by way of Hawaii and Indonesia), and, as the Tennessee
Democratic chairman Gray Sasser got the first meeting of the state
delegation to this year's party convention under way on Monday morning,
that sense of hopefulness (or simply "hope," as the candidate himself
likes to say) was palpable among the delegates.

[...]

525-5765
-- Jackson Baker is senior editor of The Memphis Flyer and a contributor
to Memphis magazine. His primary concerns are political coverage and
general news; other duties include editorials, op-ed contributions, and
the paper’s online edition. He has worked as a reporter for the Arkansas
Gazette and as an aide in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington,
D.C. He was a panelist on the WKNO-TV series Informed Sources and an
assistant professor of English at the University of Memphis. Jackson has
won numerous journalism awards, including four Green Eyeshade Awards from
the Society for Professional Journalists. A frequent TV commentator, he
has written for such periodicals as Time Magazine and the New York Times.
He is married and has four children and two grandchildren. He lives in
Cordova.

___

8.
Cynthia McKinney Runs for the White House

Published on 25 Aug 2008 at 10:21 am. 2 Comments.
Filed under Feature Stories.

Listen to this segment:
http://www.archive.org/download/DailyDigest_08_25_08/2008_08_25_mckinney.mp3

The entire program:
http://www.archive.org/download/DailyDigest_08_25_08/2008_08_25_uprising.MP3

[Photo cynthia mckinney]

In Orange County this past weekend, former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia
McKinney continued her Green Party presidential campaign. With Hip Hop
activist and independent journalist Rosa Clemente as her running mate,
McKinney is currently polling at around 1% of the total vote. For her
campaign, victory will be defined by obtaining 5% of the national vote
needed to secure federal funding. The McKinney-Clemente Green Party ticket
faces significant challenges in reaching that goal. They are currently on
the ballot in only half of the states in the union and face a near
blackout in the corporate media. Nonetheless, the first African-American
woman to represent her state in Congress for twelve years, is still
campaigning strongly articulated policy differences that distinguish her
from the two major party candidates. In a recent interview with Grist
Magazine, McKinney defined her energy policy as “leave the oil in the
soil.” She went on to say that the assumption that a Green Party candidacy
only serves to take away votes from the Democrats is ludicrous.

Uprising producer Gabriel San Roman spoke with Cynthia McKinney in Dana
Point during a recent campaign stop.

GUEST: Cynthia McKinney, Green Party Presidential Candidate.

For more information visit www.runcynthiarun.org.

___

9.
 Green Party presidential candidate to visit state [Michigan]


Photo
Monday, August 25, 2008 at 10:10 a.m.

(AP) -- LANSING, Mich. - Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia
McKinney plans to spend much of the Labor Day weekend campaigning in
Michigan. The state party announced the trip Friday.

McKinney has Detroit area events planned for August 30 through Sept. 1.

McKinney is a former Democratic congresswoman from Georgia. Libertarian
Party presidential candidate Bob Barr had a stop in Michigan scheduled
earlier this month.

___

10.
SocialistWorker.org} Between rhetoric and reality

As you listen to the Republicans pilloried at the Democrats' Denver
convention, pay close attention to what Obama says he'll actually do if he
wins this election.

August 26, 2008

[SNIP STUFF ABOUT OBAMA AND McCAIN ...]
There are two independent presidential campaigns to the left of Obama
whose political positions match their rhetoric. Ralph Nader is repeating
his independent run from 2000 and 2004, and former Rep. Cynthia McKinney
has won the presidential nomination of the Green Party.

On most every question--war, civil liberties, jobs, corporate power,
health care, the environment--McKinney and Nader represent a stark
alternative to the two mainstream parties.

Eight years ago, Nader was able to win millions of votes--and, more
importantly, bring together people from different struggles to recognize
their common commitment to an alternative to the political status quo.
Unfortunately, this year, neither is likely to get a significant hearing.

McKinney and Nader do offer voters the chance to cast a protest vote
against war, racism and corporate greed, even if they will not be able to
break through the media blackout on their candidacies. That vote won't
count for much in this year's electoral arithmetic, but it can be a marker
for the future.

However, the more important task before and after the election will be
building connections among people and organizations in preparation for the
struggles to come--including among those who continue to be enthusiastic
about Obama's candidacy.

Obama's campaign has raised the hopes of many people, but it should be
recognized that the enthusiasm for the Democrats in this election is
symptomatic of a larger change among growing numbers of people in the
U.S.--a rejection of the right-wing dogmas that dominated mainstream
politics for decades and a searching for answers and ideas about what
could be different.

That's where the opportunities lie for rebuilding a left alternative in
the months before and after the election.