Left In Lowell

I haven’t written anything campaignish in the last few weeks. Better to be under the radar and just get the work done, and it’s been getting done, baby! However, we’re at one week and counting!

If you are a Deval supporter and want to pitch in, we have a plan for the next week. There’s something to fit every schedule, every temperament, from here on out! Seriously. Every single day.

Coordinators from every corner of MA were at a meeting on Sunday which included Deval. The place was packed! And this was just mostly coordinators. I can tell you I have every confidence in the plan outlined yesterday morning. It gives us reachable goals and doable tasks, but we need every enthusiastic supporter on board for the last week! You know who you are!

So, if you’ve been holding back due to busy schedules and summer vacations, we understand, and welcome you to jump in at any time in this last week! And if you want lawn signs or bumper stickers, we have those too. Write to me at lynne at leftinlowell.com (replace “at” with @).

Last chance to escape the chicken coop, Bill Galvin.

The Brandeis chapter of Democracy for America is proud to annouce a forum on democracy and voting rights to be held tomorrow (Tuesday September 12th) from 4:00 - 6:00 PM in the library of our university campus

We have invited all three candidates for Secretary of the Commwealth including Jill Stein, John Bonifaz, and Bill Galvin. Jill and John, who have both spoken at Brandeis in the past, excitedly confirmed. Bill Galvin’s office, however, has repeatedly given hopeful but reserved responses. His campaign manager has declined to say whether he will or will not be avaliable, leaving us with numerous planning difficulties. (Bold mine.)

I’m not holding my breath. Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised. But I doubt it.

ThinkProgress (one of my favorite sites for facts to use against the Right’s spin) illuminates our successes against the fakudrama, Path to 9/11. As they say, sadly, the network decided to go ahead with many of the defamitory scenes, as well as broadcasting it unedited overseas with claims of it being the truth about 9/11, and the fallout will be plenty. (American Airlines is threatening to sue and I suspect Berger and others will as well.)

However, it is apparent that America tuned out and watched football and reruns instead. The ratings were quite poor for last night’s PT 9/11.

I will not be watching ABC/Disney from here on in. I’ll be blocking those channels out. They have crap-all for programming anyway, locally or otherwise, so it won’t be hard. It’ll hurt to have to forgo seeing the next Pixar film in the theatre, however. Pixar doesn’t deserve this. Sorry, Buzz.

Update: This dKos diary lists all the things to boycott, and links to this printable list. Sadly, I will not be seeing the sequal to Chronicals of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Oh well, the books were far better anyway. Besides that, and the last Pirates of the Caribbean and Pixar’s Ratatouille, there’s not much I’ll miss. Hell, the Lifetime Channel?? I avoid it like the plague anyways.

Primary challenger against US Rep (9th district) Lynch, Phil Dunkelbarger, has issued yet another challenge to Stephen “the Duckster” Lynch to debate him here in the last week before the primary.

Lynch is, as you recall, a seriously conservative Lieberman lookalike Iraq war cheerleader, anti-choice incumbant who’s been missing in action when it comes to democracy. Dunk is against the Iraq war, pro-choice, and a myriad of other things you can find out on his website. Dunkelbarger writes on BMG:

In the September 7th edition of the Dorchester Reporter Stephen Lynch said, “There’s not a lot of time between now and the [September 19 primary], but there could be another opportunity for a debate if we could work out a date.”

Well, working out a date is no problem for me; any time, any place. If the Duckster has finally been shamed into a debate, the Dunkster is ready.

It is curious to me that he wouldn’t contact us directly, to suggest a time and place. I hope he’s serious.

9th District Congressional denizens, your Congresscritter admits there could be a chance he might yet get out of the chicken coop of shame. Call Rep. Lynch and demand he debate, on television, his opponant in this race.

I didn’t know anyone personally (that I have discovered) who died five years ago on that terrible day, though I had a few acquaintances who were affected.

I tend to avoid all the specials and such at the beginning of September because to a large extent, we’ve already seen this tragedy from every angle in the last five years - from engineers telling us what happened to the structures of the buildings that day, to news anchors reminiscing as to where they were reporting from, to specials on how to make buildings and planes and airports safer.

However, that doesn’t mean I avoid remembering how I felt, or listen to the stories of the people who lost loved ones that day. I watched Flight 93 this weekend and cried through half of it.

In Flight 93, of course, there’s lots of dramatic license taken; we don’t know everything that was said or done on that flight, except through the phone calls from passengers to loved ones and emergency officials about their plans to stop the terrorists from using the plane as a bomb against Washington; and the data from the black box flight recorder recovered after the crash. As a dramatic plot, it was imperfect. And yet, it felt more true and real than this so-called work of truth, Path to 9/11, of which I have seen several scenes posted online.

I look back at the last five years and see the litter of a thousand cynical political ploys strewn across the path from 9/11/06. I am still saddened by the loss we all experienced five years ago; and I am doubly saddened at the crass way this tragedy has been used, over and over again, by the very people who were supposed to protect us. And to all the other losses we’ve had…soldiers barely out of childhood killed and maimed in Iraq…the innocent civilians lost there…victims of government neglect in New Orleans and the Gulf coast…thousands of people dropping back into poverty and hunger in our own country…Sudanese refuges fleeing from genocide…bombing victims in Madrid, London, Bali…for me, this is a day to remember it all. I never forget that the prime reason I fight this administration and engage in politics is for all those people, and the loved ones they’ve left behind. I fight for hope - a better future, one where flood victims are rescued before the levees break; armies are left in their barracks until they are truly needed to protect real freedoms; for dignity, and justice, and truth.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

–Emily Dickenson