Date: Monday, January 18
Time: 10:30 AM Rally at Bethel AME | 11:00 AM March to Yerwood Center
Place: Bethel AME Church, 150 Fairfield Ave., Stamford, CT  | Yerwood Center, 90 Fairfield Ave., Stamford, CT

“Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most
shocking and inhumane.”
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for civil rights, including the right to health care. Come celebrate Dr. King’s legacy and

remind our leaders that the dream includes providing quality, affordable health care for all.

CCAG and Health Care for America Now invite you join and participate in Stamford’s Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. March and Celebration -- “The Dream in Our Time” on Monday, January 18.

We will gather at Bethel AME Church, 150 Fairfield Avenue in Stamford for a 10:30 AM rally. At 11:00 AM, we will march from Bethel AME Church to the Yerwood Center, 90 Fairfield Avenue in Stamford. The march route is approximately one mile; the distance between Bethel AME Church and the Yerwood Center is approximately 1/10 of a mile. Those who cannot march the entire route should walk or drive from Bethel AME to the Yerwood Center.

People who need transportation from the Stamford Metro North station to Bethel AME or from Bethel AME to the Yerwood Center MUST MAKE ARRANGEMENTS IN ADVANCE by contacting Alexandra Ferreira alexandra@ccag.net or
(203) 499-9924.

There will be a short program at the Yerwood Center where Congressman Jim Himes is expected to speak. We need to thank Congressman Himes for his hard work on health care reform so far, and to remind Joe Lieberman of Dr. King's quote about health care.

Lieberman will proudly boast of his civil rights work in the 1960's but is now turning his back on a basic human right -- health care. Let's thank Jim Himes and tell Joe Lieberman "Don't kill the dream!"

For more information, contact CCAG Political Director John Murphy at murphy@ccag.net or (860) 995-3389

Thursday January 21, 2010

Hartford Friends Meeting
144 South Quaker Lane
West Hartford, CT

Potluck dinner begins at 5:30 pm

Presentation begins at 7 pm
featuring Joseph Gerson of the AFSC Cambridge Office
and members of the AFSC-CT Program Committee
with an open discussion to follow

call (860) 523-4823 for further information
visit www.afsc.org for more information about
The American Friends Service Committee.

The AFSC-CT Program Committee is working to develop a new model, using volunteer energy together with resources provided by the New

England Regional Office to continue an active AFSC presence in our state.

We need others to join us in developing this model and are inviting all those with an interest in carrying AFSC’s work forward to join us.

We are inviting people with an interest in progressive social change to begin the process of moving forward.

This meeting will provide an opportunity for those who know little about AFSC to learn more, for those who have partnered with AFSC in the past to participate in developing our future and for all of those with questions and concerns to learn more about the changes that have happened in the past year.

1 January 2010

Freedom Marchers approved today a declaration aimed at accelerating the global
campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid.


Roughly 1400 activists from 43 countries converged in Cairo on their way to
Gaza to join with Palestinians marching to break Israel's illegal siege. They
were prevented from entering Gaza by the Egyptian authorities. 

As a result,
the Freedom Marchers remained in Cairo. They staged a series of nonviolent
actions aimed at pressuring the international community to end the siege as one
step in the larger struggle to secure justice for Palestinians throughout historic
Palestine. 

This declaration arose from those actions:

We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom
March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South
African delegation, state:

In view of:

o Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;
o the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,
and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and
settlements;
o the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;
o the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US,
Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;
o the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;
o the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;
o and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
o all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;
o in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct
economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to
behave with impunity;
o and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)

We reaffirm our commitment to:

Palestinian Self-Determination
Ending the Occupation
Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine
The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call
of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel
Israel to comply with international law.

To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass,
democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with
Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.

Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:

1) An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by
Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society
activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to
this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on
BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public
internationally;

2) Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;

3) A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products,
involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail,
warehousing, and transportation sectors;

4) Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;

5) Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other
pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation
and/or the Israeli military industries;

6) Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to
serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli
government war criminals; coordination of Citizen’s Arrest Bureaux to
identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support
for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;

7) Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality.

From the One Family Fund:

We are Israel’s survivors of terrorism. Young or old, we have all 
experienced trauma that no person should ever know.  We have seen the murder 
of our parents, brothers, sisters and children.  We have suffered injury that 
– in one instant – turned our normal lives into endless nightmares of 
pain, therapy and disability.

Many think that 2009 has been a very quiet year in Israel.  But for us, a 
"quiet year" has meant 17 more people killed by terrorists.  Just last week, 
Meir Avshalom Chai was shot dead as he drove home.  His seven young children, 
the youngest just two months old, are now orphans, joining 966 other children 
who have seen terrorists kill their parents.

Senator Joseph Lieberman
United States Senate
 
Senator:
 
We are rabbis, cantors, and other committed Jews. Many of us were
delighted in 2000 when you were nominated for Vice-President and
proclaimed to all that you were an observant Jew, carrying into the
highest level of public service the values of the Jewish people.
 
Now we see with deep distress that you have announced that you will not
support the bill before the Senate to  bring health care in America
even part way toward the universal and affordable coverage that is
assumed in every other industrial country, including Israel.  You have
announced that you intend to join a quasi-filibuster against even
taking an up-and-down vote on the bill if it contains either a "public
option" provision or one extending the universally praised Medicare
system to some younger people.
 
Doing this would thwart the will of a majority of the Senate, the
majority of the American people, and the majority of the American
Jewish community.
 
In our eyes, this is not the behavior of an "observant" Jew. "Tzedek
tzedek tirdof, justice justice shall you seek,"  is among the Torah's
most important commandments. And in pursuit of justice, no autonomous
Jewish community has ever allowed the poor to go without healing. It is
clear that the present health insurance system based on private
insurance companies is broken in every aspect except assuring enormous
profits to itself. It costs Americans the highest medical costs in the
world while providing mediocre health care as measured by life
expectancies, newborn death rates, and other indices across the
developed world.
 
We recognize that major health insurance companies are headquartered in
Connecticut and that you may view your obligations to them as
constituents as an important political responsibility. Yet thousands of
Americans die each year unnecessarily because they are refused coverage
by or are unable to purchase insurance from these same companies.
 
So we believe your obligation of pekuach nefesh, saving life, saving
the lives of the flesh-and-blood citizens of Connecticut, shaped in
flesh and blood in God's Image and subject to damage of that same flesh
and blood that requires healing, is an even higher obligation than you
owe to your insurance-company constituents. Indeed, two-thirds of your
flesh-and-blood constituents support a health-care bill that includes a
strong public option.
 
We therefore call you to do tshuvah - to turn yourself again toward
fulfilling the commands of Torah and meeting the needs of the American
people. Then we will be happy once again that you are bringing the
values of an "observant Jew" to the public service of the American
people.
 
Signed,

To sign on to the letter, click here.

Jerusalem (ENI). Palestinian Christian leaders have issued a call for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, which they described as, "a sin against God and against humanity," and have appealed for support from the world's churches.

"The injustice against the Palestinian people, which is the Israeli occupation, is an evil that must be resisted," the Christian leaders said in a document that was almost two years in the making. "Resistance is a right and a duty for the Christian. But it is resistance with love as its logic," they said. "It is thus a creative resistance, for it must find human ways that engage the humanity of the enemy."

The initiators of the statement, made public at an 11 December meeting in Bethlehem, have referred to the text as the "Kairos Palestine" document. "Kairos" is a Greek word used in the Bible for a God-given time of challenge, grace and opportunity.

The organizers said that their statement echoes the Kairos document that South African churches issued in the mid-1980s, and which helped galvanise churches and the wider public in a concerted effort that eventually led to the end of apartheid.

"It is a call to the international community worldwide to look at the plight of the Palestinians and put pressure on Israel to conform to international law," spokesperson and coordinator Rifat Kassis told Ecumenical News International.

"Despite the talk about peace and the peace process conducted for 17 years, nothing has happened and the situation continues deteriorating," Kassis said. "It is the right time for a more ethical perspective on the conflict, and that should come from religious leaders."

There can be no other explanation
except that Heaven must have needed
to dance.

Michael, for five decades,
The way you made us feel
You really turned us on
You knocked us off our feet.
Our lonely days were gone

Now that heaven and earth's seven continents
are dancing to the beat of the Primal Force,
all we can sing is:

Keep on with the force, don't
Don't stop till you get enough!
Keep on with the force, don't
Don't stop till you get enough!

We just can't stop loving you.