Upper Arlington Progressive Action

by Sarah van Gelder
Yesmagazine.org

We’re entering a new year at a time unlike any other in recent memory. Here are 10 reasons I’m filled with hope as I look ahead at 2009—and three reasons I’m terrified.

Young people are stepping up. They know that they formed the backbone of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and that their work infused the country with the “Yes, we can” spirit. Now that these young people know what success feels like, many will be in it for the long haul.

Election protection is working. Grassroots vigilance, successful lawsuits, and media exposure are making voter suppression efforts less successful. More remains to be done, but the trends are in the right direction. (One terrifying note, though, is the death in a December 19 plane crash of GOP IT expert Michael Connell, who many believe was poised to reveal secrets related to vote stealing.)

There is now overwhelming support for universal health care. This grassroots commitment coupled with Obama’s leadership could make this the year when we finally overcome the roadblocks big insurance and drug corporations have placed in the way of progress. A majority of Americans favor a tax-supported single-payer system like Canada’s. The Obama plan, while it’s not single-payer, is nonetheless a good plan—as long as it retains the option for all Americans to join a public health insurance plan.

Corporate power is on the wane. Barack Obama ran for office without relying on corporate donations in a campaign that saw candidates competing to establish their tough-on-corporate-power bonafides. Even before the Wall Street meltdown, a majority of Americans thought corporations had too much power. The economic collapse is further eroding goodwill towards corporations and big finance, showing instead how both were instrumental in concentrating wealth, creating unsustainable bubbles, and putting our way of life at risk. After the trillions of taxpayer money paid out in corporate bailouts, the American people are looking for more fair and sustainable alternatives.

The failing economy is giving us lots of reasons to be terrified (see below) but also reasons to be hopeful. That rip-roaring economy we’re all supposed to be trying to bring back was tearing through the world’s rainforests, mountaintops, aquifers, fisheries, soils, and other resources, driving thousands of species toward extinction, changing the climate, and leaving billions behind in the rush for “economic growth.” So, painful as it might be, this downturn represents a chance to build a different sort of economy—one that offers dignity, livelihoods, and a future for our children.

We’re finally getting real about the urgency and scope of the climate challenge. The incoming Obama administration takes science seriously, which means taking climate change seriously, too. The nay-sayers have quit denying the existence of global warming, and have resorted to random delay tactics. Many now see the conversion to a climate-friendly economy as a major opportunity, with new jobs and investment needed to weatherize buildings, re-tool factories, develop renewal sources of energy, and rebuild transportation infrastructure (see below for the terrifying flip side).

Social movements are building people power. Nonviolent civil disobedience is back. Climate organizers conduct “die-ins” and climate camps to shut down coal plants. Workers at Republic Windows & Doors occupied their factory when they were abruptly dismissed without severance and vacation pay. President-Elect Obama backed the Republic workers, implicitly inviting others to stand up for their rights. He also continues to organize people at the grassroots—right now through health care discussion groups. Thousands of these meetings being held across the country could build a health care reform movement with enough clout to overcome entrenched interests and move forward. (We may wind up calling Obama, Organizer-in-Chief.)

DIY (do it yourself) communities are piloting the shift to a people-centered society. These folks understand that real security during tough times is found in the “social capital” of community. At the same time, they are creating experiments in green and just ways of life. They aren’t waiting for policy changes or bailouts, instead, they are helping each other now and getting on with the most extraordinary project of our time: building a better world.

International cooperation is now possible, and it’s none too soon. The day of the lone wolf is over. Likewise, the day of the sole superpower that could bend the rest of the world to its will. Climate change, nuclear proliferation, failed states, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the collapse of ocean fisheries, outbreaks of genocide, environmental and human rights refugee crises, HIV/AIDS and other pandemics—all require international cooperation. That means everyone has a seat at the table, no one gets bullied, and the solutions have to be real ones.

Obama! It’s true, he hasn’t lived up to all our hopes with his cabinet picks. On the left-right scale, he’s been pretty centrist, and especially his choices for foreign policy and agriculture posts suggest he may repeat the mistakes of the Clinton and Bush appointees he is surrounding himself with. But on the people-versus-big-money scale, he leans towards people and the common good, as the examples above illustrate. And he has elevated the national dialogue, setting a new standard for intelligent, inclusive, nuanced leadership.

Not bad to be coming into the new year with 10 reasons to be hopeful. That's as good as it's been for awhile. But there are also some good reasons to be terrified:

Runaway climate change. The biggest question of the 21st century may be whether policies can catch up to the dangerous realities of a rapidly changing climate in time to avoid disaster. Will we come together to stabilize the climate? Or are we be the last generation to live on a planet that can support complex civilization?

Loose nukes. We are all in danger from loose nukes, the spread of nuclear materials around the world, and nuclear warfare between India and Pakistan or other nuclear-armed adversaries. Ridding the world of nuclear weapons may be the only way of avoiding a nuclear catastrophe; figures across the political spectrum support such proposals, including former Secretary of State George Shultz. Will we have the political will to rid ourselves of this danger?

Mad Max world. Disruption of life-as-usual could come from economic collapse, runaway climate change, war, peak oil, pandemics, or some unforeseen combination of these and other factors. What makes these prospects especially terrifying are potential human responses to them. We could see either societal breakdown—in which each person turns on others in a battle for dominance or survival—or fascism, in which people allow all-powerful leaders to run things out of fear of chaos.

So which will it be? Are you hopeful or terrified by the coming year and by what we face in the coming decades? What I keep coming back to is this: we humans have the free will to make choices that assure our collective survival, or to do otherwise. We do have the creativity, compassion, and intelligence to build on the best possibilities while averting the worst. This historic moment will test everything we have built and everything our ancestors have passed down to us. The answers are readily available, embedded in all the world’s spiritual traditions, in all the mothers and fathers who have sacrificed to make a good life for their children, and in all the peacemakers who have worked to build a better world for everyone. Will we make the choices for a just and sustainable world? We know, as Obama says, that, indeed, Yes! we can. But will we?

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article December 31, 2008, for YES! Magazine, where she is the Executive Editor. 

Reprinted with permission.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=3184

From the Columbus Dispatch: 'GOP's grip on county suburbs slipping':

"Reynoldsburg went for Barack Obama on Tuesday, the first time in recent memory that the reliably Republican suburb turned to a Democrat for president.

Obama took Franklin County by winning nearly 100,000 more votes than John McCain did, powered by the huge margins piled up in Columbus precincts. But Obama also was aided by once-staunchly Republican suburbs that are becoming more politically diverse and shifting to Democrats, an analysis of Franklin County elections data shows."

Republican divisive political tactics and out-of-touch policies that we saw so much of in this election cycle are taking their toll in UA as well:

"In Upper Arlington, Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by almost 5,000 votes in 2000. Four years later, Bush's victory margin dropped to 2,718. On Tuesday, the suburb went Republican by 886 votes.

Voters choose a candidate "more for what they see the issues are; party loyalty may be getting less firm," veteran Upper Arlington City Manager Virginia Barney said.

Barney said her city shares more similarities with Columbus neighborhoods such as Clintonville and Victorian Village, which leaned toward Obama, than with Hilliard, Grove City or Marysville, which stayed strongly Republican in Tuesday's election."

The “sexual début” of an evangelical girl typically occurs just after she turns sixteen.

The highest divorce and teen pregnancy rates are in red states, the lowest in blue states. Margaret Talbot digs beneath the numbers to wonder, why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?

[T]he red-state [abstinence] model is clearly failing on its own terms—producing high rates of teen pregnancy, divorce, sexually transmitted disease, and other dysfunctional outcomes that social conservatives say they abhor. […]

For too long, the conventional wisdom has been that social conservatives are the upholders of family values, whereas liberals are the proponents of a polymorphous selfishness. This isn’t true, and, every once in a while, liberals might point that out.

America’s dominant political divide:

Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

Over 60,000 Ohioans turned out Sunday afternoon, November 2, for a campaign rally held on the west lawn of Ohio's state house in downtown Columbus. The whole Obama family -- Barack, Michelle, and their daughters Malia and Sasha -- made a final swing through the Buckeye State on the brink of Tuesday's Election Day.

Barack greeted the crowd with a reminder that voting is already underway in Ohio. "If you haven't voted yet, it would be a shame for you to come to a rally and not vote!" He pointed out that the early voting location in Franklin County is merely a few blocks from the state house and encouraged the rally-goers to take the opportunity after the rally to go vote. (Click here to learn more about early voting in Ohio. Click here to see more photos from the rally.)

Visit www.voteforchange.com to find out what you need to know to cast your vote and usher in a new era of change in this country. Click here to volunteer in your neighborhood on Election Day.

Here's a summary of UAPA's position on ballot issues 1, 2, 5 and 6:

• Issue 1: Vote YES.
• Issue 2: Vote YES.
• Issue 5: Vote YES.
• Issue 6: Vote NO.

ProgressOhio has conveniently deciphered the ballot issues and summarized them in a one page document. And here's a sample ballot of endorsed Democratic candidates to print and take with you to the polls.

UAPA's positions on the ballot issues align closely with those of the editors from Ohio's largest daily newspapers:

And here's the our rationale for our positions:

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet.

Posted November 1, 2008.

It must come as a surprise to the Republicans that the public favors Obama's style of wealth spreading by a whopping margin. John McCain and Joe the Plumber are campaigning for Barack Obama, and they don't even know it. The more McCain has ramped up his attacks on Obama as a "spreader of wealth," the more the country has lined up behind the Democrat's plan to spread the wealth. If McCain's economic agenda was a gun and his attacks on Obama's agenda the bullets, the old soldier would have shot both his feet clean off a long time ago.

Watching the GOP's coordinated if increasingly delirious attacks on Obama's economic plan, it's clear that the party is even further out of touch with the America of 2008 than previously imagined. After eight years of establishing and then extending America's lead as the most unequal of all industrialized countries, Republicans thought they could deflect a national groundswell of righteous anger by dusting off and hurling every insult in the conservative arsenal, including old favorites "extremist," "radical," "Marxist" and "socialist." One suspects they are saving "anarchist" and "Hessian" for McCain's last-gasp speech on Monday.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Republican hammer-and-sickle-themed haunted house: Nobody showed. The McCain campaign's attempts to smear Obama as a Trojan donkey for socialistic un-Americanism have belly-flopped, if not backfired. Obama has not only maintained a stable lead under the Republican barrage, he has increased his positives in the traditionally Republican territory of taxes.

Read the rest of the story.

By Alexander Bolton
TheHill.com

Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest.

Public safety officials said in interviews with The Hill that the election, which will end with either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president, demanded a stronger police presence.

Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors . . .

Political observers such as Hilary Shelton and James Carville fear that record voter turnout could overload polling places on Election Day and could raise tension levels.

Read the rest of the story.

Catholics for Obama has found common ground on the single most divisive issue in American politics today: abortion.

Their booklet, 'The Catholic Case for Obama',  is an expose on Obama's core values and how he put them into practice as a community organizer working with Catholic parishes on the south side of Chicago.

They tackle the big questions head on:

• Reducing abortion now vs. criminalizing it later
• Stem cell research and the origins of life
• On the death penalty
• On the question of health care for all Americans
• On the question of preemptive war and the tragedy in Iraq

Here's their abortion stance in a nutshell:

"Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? If you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have."

--- Ronald Reagan, 1980 Presidential Debate

The ad below is currently running on television.

Remember, the payday industry is spending over $15 million, so anything you can do to helps us spread the VOTE YES ON ISSUE 5 message counts!

Forward this video on to your friends, family and colleagues and remember to Vote Yes On Issue 5!

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As part of UAPA's letter writing campaign, two members' Letters to the Editor were published as lead editorials in the Opinion section of the Columbus Dispatch this week --- one on Monday and the other on Tuesday.

Deb Linville and Mike Lorz both made strong progressive arguments that caught the attention of the Dispatch editors. With the volume of editorials submitted in the weeks before an election, this is quite an accomplishment

In case you missed the editorials, Mike's is entitled 'Pro-life means more than anti-abortion' and Deb's is 'Republican Rankin can't rest on record'.

Mike is a pro-life Catholic who makes a strong case that Obama's policies and his Christian values supporting those policies "represent a culture of life, not just birth."

Many other Catholics are supporting Obama, too. Check out the 'Catholics for Obama' web site.

As a long-time Upper Arlington resident, Deb has watched Tim Rankin's divisive political tactics and far-right agenda over the years. In her LTE she calls him out on some of his most divisive wedge issues he championed during his time on City Council in UA.

UAPA has further elaborated on Deb's editorial on Tim Rankin on our web site.

Also this week, the UANews published these two LTEs from UAPA members:

• Rankin has not done enough to reject negative mailings
• Library board appointment reflects badly on Rankin