May 10, 2010
February 4, 2010
Artists and Art can bring about cultural revolution. Manifest Equality has a call out to artists to submit work for a juried contest. Entries must fit one of the theme’s Equality, Justice, Respect, Unity, Civil Rights and Love. Entries must be submitted no later than 11:59AM February 19, 2010.
The Five first place winners will have their pieces shown at the Manifest Equality Gallery along side nationally known contemporary artists such as Barry McGee, Clare Rojas, Shepard Fairey among others in a show that will open to the public on March 3, 2010.
Additionally there will be 10 second place winners. Their work will be seen at an online gallery set up by Manifest Equality. The 5 first place winners will also have their work displayed in the online gallery.
DETAILS: Manifest Equality will be open to the public, Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 through Sunday, March 7th, 2010 between the hours of 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM with extended hours Friday – Sunday.
1341 Vine, LA CA 90028.
December 3, 2009
Please Join us in supporting John Perez for Assembly Speaker
Assembly Speakership drum roll please...
Please Join us in supporting John Perez for Assembly Speaker
Karen Bass will be passing the torch of the Assembly Speakership and announced her support of John Perez from Assembly District 46. As usual however this is not without a fight. John has been the underdog in his quest for speaker, but has become a rapidly growing favorite amongst the public, consitituents and not to mention fellow lawmakers.
John is just genuinely a good guy. He brings a new and fresh perspective to a tough situation. Please help us help John.
Call Karen Bass
(916) 319-2047 or
(323) 937-4747
Just let her know you support her choice of John as Speaker
Call Your Assembly Member and voice your support for John
Please Join us in supporting John Perez for Assembly Speaker
Karen Bass will be passing the torch of the Assembly Speakership and announced her support of John Perez from Assembly District 46. As usual however this is not without a fight. John has been the underdog in his quest for speaker, but has become a rapidly growing favorite amongst the public, consitituents and not to mention fellow lawmakers.
John is just genuinely a good guy. He brings a new and fresh perspective to a tough situation. Please help us help John.
Call Karen Bass
(916) 319-2047 or
(323) 937-4747
Just let her know you support her choice of John as Speaker
Call Your Assembly Member and voice your support for John
August 26, 2009
Ted Kennedy passes away...
Tonight we mourn the loss of Ted Kennedy.
He stepped out of the shadow of his famous brothers and battled many personal demons to become one of our finest examples of an elected leader. Senator Kennedy dedicated his life to fighting for Health Care, Equal Rights, and fare wages. He fought for us when no one else cared.
Ted Kennedy fought for us for almost 40 years, and now it our turn.
In the early hours of the morning, we ask that you pledge to take up his cause for Health Care for All Americans, not just the priveleged few.
We ask that you to fight for Health Care even for the people who fight against us.
We ask that you fight for Health Care for Senator Kennedy and help realize his lifelong goal, Health Care for All Americans.
August 20, 2009
The PolicySpeak Disaster for Health Care
George Lakoff is a Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkely. Please read, learn, and start changing the dialogue!
by George Lakoff
Wed Aug 19, 2009 at 10:25:18 PM PDT
Barack Obama ran the best-organized and best-framed presidential campaign in history. How is it possible that the same people who did so well in the campaign have done so badly on health care?
And bad it is: The public option may well be gone. Neither Obama himself nor Senior Advisor David Axelrod even mentioned the public option in their pleas to the nation last Sunday (August 16, 2009). Secretary Sibelius even said it was “not essential.” Cass Sunstein’s co-author, Richard Thaler, in the Sunday NY Times (August 16, 2009, p. BU 4) called it “neither necessary nor sufficient.” There has been a major drop in support for the president throughout the country, with angry mobs disrupting town halls and the right wing airing its views with vehemence nonstop on radio and tv all day every day. As the NY Times reports, Organizing for America (the old Obama campaign network) can’t even get its own troops out to work for the President’s proposal.
What has been going wrong?
George Lakoff's diary
It’s not too late to turn things around, but we must first understand why the administration is getting beat at the moment.
The answer is simple and unfortunate: The president put both the conceptual framing and the messaging for his health care plan in the hands of policy wonks. This led to twin disasters.
The PolicyList Disaster
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Howard Dean was right when he said that you can’t get health care reform without a public alternative to the insurance companies. Institutions matter. The list of what needs reform makes sense under one conceptual umbrella. It is a public alternative that unifies the long list of needed reforms: coverage for the uninsured, cost control, no preconditions, no denial of care, keeping care when you change jobs or get sick, equal treatment for women, exorbitant deductibles, no lifetime caps, and on and on. It’s a long list. But one idea, properly articulated, takes care of the list:
An American Plan guarantees affordable care for all Americans.
Simple. But not for policy wonks.
The policymakers focus on the list, not the unifying idea. So Obama’s and Axelrod’s statements last Sunday were just the lists without the unifying institution. And without a powerful institution, the insurance companies will just whittle away at enforcement of any such list, and a future Republican administration will just get rid of the regulators, reassigning them or eliminating their jobs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why do policymakers think this way?
One: The reality of how Congress is lobbied. Legislators are lobbied to be against particular features, depending on their constituencies. Blue Dogs are pressured by the right’s communication system operating in their districts. Congressional leaders have a challenge: Keep the eye of centrists and Blue Dogs on the central idea, despite the pressures of right-wing communications and lobbyists’ contributions.
Two: In classical logic, Leibniz’ Law takes an entity as being just a collection of properties. As if you were no more than eyes, legs, arms, and so on, taken separately. Without a public institution turning a unifying idea into a powerful reality, health care becomes just a collection of reforms to be attacked, undermined, and gotten around year after year.
Three: Current budget-making assumptions. Health is actually systematic in character. Health is implicated in just about all aspects of our culture: agriculture, the food industry, advertising, education, business, the distribution of wealth, sports, and so on. Keeping it as a line item — what figure do you put down on the following lines — misses the systemic nature of health. The image of Budget Director Peter Orszag running constantly in and out of Senator Max Baucus’ office shows how the systemic nature of health has been turned into a list of items and costs. Without a sense of the whole, and an institution responsible for it, health will be line-itemed to death.
Obama had the right idea with the “recovery” package. The economy is not just about banking. It is about public works, education, health, energy, and a lot more. It is systemic. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
The PolicySpeak Disaster
PolicySpeak is the principle that: If you just tell people the policy facts, they will reason to the right conclusion and support the policy wholeheartedly.
PolicySpeak is the principle behind the President’s new Reality Check Website. To my knowledge, the Reality Check Website, has not had a reality check. That is, the administration has not hired a first-class cognitive psychologist to take subjects who have been convinced by right-wing myths and lies, have them read the Reality Check website, and see if the Reality Check website has changed their minds a couple of days or a week later. I have my doubts, but do the test.
To many liberals, PolicySpeak sounds like the high road: a rational, public discussion in the best tradition of liberal democracy. Convince the populace rationally on the objective policy merits. Give the facts and figures. Assume self-interest as the motivator of rational choice. Convince people by the logic of the policymakers that the policy is in their interest
.
But to a cognitive scientist or neuroscientist, this sounds nuts. The view of human reason and language behind PolicySpeak is just false. Certainly reason should be used. It’s just that you should use real reason, the way people really think. Certainly the truth should be told. It’s just that it should be told so it makes sense to people, resonates with them, and inspires them to act. Certainly new media should be used. It’s just that a system of communications should be constructed and used effectively.
I believe that what went wrong is (a) the choice of PolicySpeak and (b) the decision to depend on the campaign apparatus (blogs, Town Hall meetings, presidential appearances, grassroots support) instead of setting up an adequate communications system.
What Now?
It is not too late. The statistic I’ve heard is that over 80% of citizens want a public plan, but the right wing’s framing has been overwhelming public debate, taking advantage of the right’s communication system and framing prowess.
The administration has dug itself (and the country) into a hole. At the very least, the old mistakes can be avoided, a clear and powerful narrative is still available and true, and some powerful, memorable, and accurate language should be substituted for PolicySpeak, or at least added and repeated by spokespeople nationwide.
The narrative is simple:
Insurance company plans have failed to care for our people. They profit from denying care. Americans care about one another. An American plan is both the moral and practical alternative to provide care for our people. Read More
by George Lakoff
Wed Aug 19, 2009 at 10:25:18 PM PDT
Barack Obama ran the best-organized and best-framed presidential campaign in history. How is it possible that the same people who did so well in the campaign have done so badly on health care?
And bad it is: The public option may well be gone. Neither Obama himself nor Senior Advisor David Axelrod even mentioned the public option in their pleas to the nation last Sunday (August 16, 2009). Secretary Sibelius even said it was “not essential.” Cass Sunstein’s co-author, Richard Thaler, in the Sunday NY Times (August 16, 2009, p. BU 4) called it “neither necessary nor sufficient.” There has been a major drop in support for the president throughout the country, with angry mobs disrupting town halls and the right wing airing its views with vehemence nonstop on radio and tv all day every day. As the NY Times reports, Organizing for America (the old Obama campaign network) can’t even get its own troops out to work for the President’s proposal.
What has been going wrong?
George Lakoff's diary
It’s not too late to turn things around, but we must first understand why the administration is getting beat at the moment.
The answer is simple and unfortunate: The president put both the conceptual framing and the messaging for his health care plan in the hands of policy wonks. This led to twin disasters.
The PolicyList Disaster
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Howard Dean was right when he said that you can’t get health care reform without a public alternative to the insurance companies. Institutions matter. The list of what needs reform makes sense under one conceptual umbrella. It is a public alternative that unifies the long list of needed reforms: coverage for the uninsured, cost control, no preconditions, no denial of care, keeping care when you change jobs or get sick, equal treatment for women, exorbitant deductibles, no lifetime caps, and on and on. It’s a long list. But one idea, properly articulated, takes care of the list:
An American Plan guarantees affordable care for all Americans.
Simple. But not for policy wonks.
The policymakers focus on the list, not the unifying idea. So Obama’s and Axelrod’s statements last Sunday were just the lists without the unifying institution. And without a powerful institution, the insurance companies will just whittle away at enforcement of any such list, and a future Republican administration will just get rid of the regulators, reassigning them or eliminating their jobs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why do policymakers think this way?
One: The reality of how Congress is lobbied. Legislators are lobbied to be against particular features, depending on their constituencies. Blue Dogs are pressured by the right’s communication system operating in their districts. Congressional leaders have a challenge: Keep the eye of centrists and Blue Dogs on the central idea, despite the pressures of right-wing communications and lobbyists’ contributions.
Two: In classical logic, Leibniz’ Law takes an entity as being just a collection of properties. As if you were no more than eyes, legs, arms, and so on, taken separately. Without a public institution turning a unifying idea into a powerful reality, health care becomes just a collection of reforms to be attacked, undermined, and gotten around year after year.
Three: Current budget-making assumptions. Health is actually systematic in character. Health is implicated in just about all aspects of our culture: agriculture, the food industry, advertising, education, business, the distribution of wealth, sports, and so on. Keeping it as a line item — what figure do you put down on the following lines — misses the systemic nature of health. The image of Budget Director Peter Orszag running constantly in and out of Senator Max Baucus’ office shows how the systemic nature of health has been turned into a list of items and costs. Without a sense of the whole, and an institution responsible for it, health will be line-itemed to death.
Obama had the right idea with the “recovery” package. The economy is not just about banking. It is about public works, education, health, energy, and a lot more. It is systemic. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
The PolicySpeak Disaster
PolicySpeak is the principle that: If you just tell people the policy facts, they will reason to the right conclusion and support the policy wholeheartedly.
PolicySpeak is the principle behind the President’s new Reality Check Website. To my knowledge, the Reality Check Website, has not had a reality check. That is, the administration has not hired a first-class cognitive psychologist to take subjects who have been convinced by right-wing myths and lies, have them read the Reality Check website, and see if the Reality Check website has changed their minds a couple of days or a week later. I have my doubts, but do the test.
To many liberals, PolicySpeak sounds like the high road: a rational, public discussion in the best tradition of liberal democracy. Convince the populace rationally on the objective policy merits. Give the facts and figures. Assume self-interest as the motivator of rational choice. Convince people by the logic of the policymakers that the policy is in their interest
.
But to a cognitive scientist or neuroscientist, this sounds nuts. The view of human reason and language behind PolicySpeak is just false. Certainly reason should be used. It’s just that you should use real reason, the way people really think. Certainly the truth should be told. It’s just that it should be told so it makes sense to people, resonates with them, and inspires them to act. Certainly new media should be used. It’s just that a system of communications should be constructed and used effectively.
I believe that what went wrong is (a) the choice of PolicySpeak and (b) the decision to depend on the campaign apparatus (blogs, Town Hall meetings, presidential appearances, grassroots support) instead of setting up an adequate communications system.
What Now?
It is not too late. The statistic I’ve heard is that over 80% of citizens want a public plan, but the right wing’s framing has been overwhelming public debate, taking advantage of the right’s communication system and framing prowess.
The administration has dug itself (and the country) into a hole. At the very least, the old mistakes can be avoided, a clear and powerful narrative is still available and true, and some powerful, memorable, and accurate language should be substituted for PolicySpeak, or at least added and repeated by spokespeople nationwide.
The narrative is simple:
Insurance company plans have failed to care for our people. They profit from denying care. Americans care about one another. An American plan is both the moral and practical alternative to provide care for our people. Read More
August 14, 2009
Santa Barbara Organizers take to the Steets for Health Care Reform!
AWESOME Organizer Sherry Holland and her band of Uber Organizers took to the streets in Santa Barbara with a demand for Health Care Reform. Way to go SB Obama Team!
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