Because it's funny

Not Green, but Kucinich. So close enough.


Childcare rally 9/27 Thursday 2:30-3:30 PM Tate Plaza. Be there.

Occupation!

This wonderful film, narrated by Ben Affleck and directed by Harvard students, covers the living wage movement there which successfully forced the school to respect the rights of its workers and pay them all livable wages.

Occupation: The Harvard University Living Wage Sit-In

Posted Sep 29, 2003

Follow the living-wage sit-in that students organized at Harvard University for better pay for all non-faculty employees.

Good model for UGA, no?

Make sure to leave some comments on the film

Another Year, Many Battles, Hopefully More Victories

So the UGA Greens are starting up against this year.

We are going to go all out this year with a number of events:

- attaching ourselves to the UGA living wage campaign, continuing to pressure the Administration to change their policy on paying really bad wages

- holding a large universal healthcare event

- highlighting the plight of undocumented immigrants

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We have a new campus publication starting up on campus to challenge the right-wing stranglehold on the University of Georgia -- this is for progressives across campus (Democrat, Green, Independent, Not-Crazy-Republicans).

I'll put the meeting times up on the side when I get the new ones confirmed.

And for a little fun: Greenish Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich lighting up the debate at the AFL-CIO Forum:




It's going to be an exciting year ^_^

Zaid

See You Next Semester

Let's get through our finals and enjoy this summer.

Keep up the fight any way you can; we'll definitely go all out this upcoming semester for issues of peace and justice.

Check these things out in the meantime:

www.kucinich.us

www.gp.org

www.commondreams.org

www.counterpunch.org


I'll update meeting times for next semester when I get them.

See us at the Human Rights Festival.

Good luck on your finals!

One last comic, this time a local one:




Zaid

Tomorrow we march

Tomorrow along with many other student organizations we will be rallying from 10AM-12PM to stop the "madness" Dr. King spoke of forty years ago.

What madness is that?

Here is an excerpt of his speech "Beyond Vietnam" which he gave in April 4, 1967 (one year before he was assassinated and forty years ago):

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

You can read the entire speech (and listen to it) here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

As we look at the shootings at Virginia Tech, or the chaos in Iraq, or the deep desparity anywhere in the world, I think we should see things we can act on -- things we can do something about.

Dr. King said in "Beyond Vietnam" that "every bomb dropped in vietnam also explodes in Harlem." I think we have to have the courage to say that every bomb dropped in Baghdad also explodes on Baxter Street. We have enormous resources in this world, enormous possibilities to do good -- and yet we are squandering resources on insane things.

So we are rallying and chanting and marching and organizing for one thing: to end this madness.

All the info you need to know

What: "Beyond Iraq" march for peace and justice
Where: Tate Plaza (and then March to Arch and Chapel)
When: 10AM-12PM rallying, pamphleting out in Tate; 12 PM March
Who: UGA Campus Greens, UGA Pagans, Bahai Student Group, Students for Peace Action, UU Congregation, Women In Black, NAACP, and many more...

Why:




Zaid

Welcome to the Greens!

We've been around since August 2006 and yet we've had no online presence. We've created so many great events and programs on campus that explore the progressive side of social and political issues, like:

- A lecture on the Politics of Global Warming by Meigs Scholar Dr. Porter
- A screening of "American Blackout" along with a speech by Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney
- Marching with Dr. Eugene Wilkes, a scholar of habeus corpus, on the loss of habeus corpus
- Inviting speakers from the World Can't Wait
- Screening an episode of 30 Days and discussing the living wage situation for workers
- Expanding the university's awareness of the Green Party

And yet we haven't had an online presence. Imagine that conversation:

Random UGA Guy: Hey you Campus Greens are kinda cool; I liked that time you made hummus and showed The Corporation movie

Zaid: I agree, that was pretty BA, right?

Random UGA Guy: Hey, yeah, of course it was. I was getting kind of tired of getting screwed by a political system held hostage to Big Business and all that, anyway. I'm interested in getting involved in progressive political and social action and putting the country back into the people's hands. Do you guys happen to have a website, maybe a blog?

Zaid: Erm, well, no.

Random UGA Guy: Are you serious? I was planning on joining the grassroots democracy movement that the Green Party and others around the country are fighting for -- but now I think I'll drive home in my inefficient gas SUV, listen to Rush Limbaugh, put 'ol Glenn Beck on the 'tube, and renew my subscription to The Weekly Standard. DAMN, attacking Iraq was a much better idea than I had previously thought!

Zaid: ;_;

Wanting to avoid that, I created this blog to serve not only as a conduit for the UGA Campus Greens, but for any progressive activities happening around campus. After all, we have the Young Democrats, Womens Studies Student Organization (WSSO), Students for Peace Action, World Can't Wait, ugarendition.blogspot.com, the Pagan Students Association, Students for Fair Trade, Students for Environmental Awareness (SEAS), and a host of other groups on this campus who are more than a little PO'd with the state of the country and world.

As for us Greens, we have a few events coming up in the future you might be interested in:

- April 9th, Mayor Heidi Davidson will be coming to speak at our Annual Meeting in SLC room 248 at 5:35 PM (our regular meetings are at room 274 at 5:35 PM on Mondays) to discuss the city and student involvement

- April 20th, we'll be marching with a bevy of other student groups "Beyond Iraq" for peace abroad and justice at home. Noon at the tate center plaza

- Last week of April: we'll be hosting the Palestinian Picture Balata photo exhibit, to feature speakers and issues related to the Palestinian refugee crisis.

I hope you guys come out to all this and have a great time! We're slowly creating a progressive movement on campus that can challenge the well-organized and well-funded antics of the right on campus.

We may be in the Heart of the South, but there's no reason for us to not behave like we are the bleeding-hearts of the South!

I'll leave this first extensive post with a cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Mike came to speak at UGA about a month ago. He spoke about how he was sought for arrest by the UN and tricked Henry Kissinger into letting him escort him to dinner as a Secret Service agent (among other antics). He's a cool guy ^_^



McCain: Not-the-kind-of-Maverick-from-Top-Gun