But really, for every bad teacher, I’ve had a good one. A teacher who gave me faith in the human race. A teacher that would listen to me. A teacher who gave me friendship. Now that friendship comes with a jail sentence.

The final push for a midterm wake-up call.

It’s natural to feel good about buying a product from a company that is contributing money to a good cause like breast cancer prevention. But what are we buying into? And is it part of the problem?

Written by jaz for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive justice.

The real drama playing out with today’s release of The Social Network is not Mark Zuckerberg’s past, but what will happen in the future to those of us who are entrusting Facebook with our personal information.

Originally posted at Citizen Orange.

The fate of almost a million lives could be decided in the next six hours.  As a voter, as a millenial, as a migrant, as a Guatemalan, I’m writing to say that I will be watching along with the vast majority of those who will determine the future of the United States of America. 

If you already haven’t heard already, Harry Reid is going to offer the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act up as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.  The Senate is scheduled to vote on taking up the Act tomorrow at 2:15 p.m.  If you haven’t called you’re Senator yet in the support of the DREAM Act please do so now by calling:

888-254-5087

It is imperative that you focus on these Senators.  If you’ve called already, call again.  If you’ve called again, ask five friends to do the same.  If you’ve done all that, here are some more actions you can take.

Back in October 2009 my friend and co-founder of ReLegalize Indiana started a Facebook Page to get things going for our effort to legalize medical cannabis and industrial hemp in Indiana. This was before I got involved in organizing the effort with Bill, and it was this Facebook page that prompted me to get involved in the first place.

We’ve formed a Facebook group asking all our friends to LOG OFF Facebook at 4:20 everyday for one hour to protest FB’s censorship of the Just Say Now campaign ads.

Just Say Now launched the Campus Challenge yesterday, with Students For Sensible Drug Policy chapters competing to see which one can gather the most signatures for the petition asking President Obama to end the war on marijuana.  The first chapter to reach 50 signatures gets 50 Just Say Now stickers and 50 Just Say Now [...]

By

Nancy Bordier and Joseph M. Firestone

Overview

The two of us met recently at an AmericaSpeaks event in Fairfax, VA, on June 26th. We decided independently to attend the event, but for the same reason. We wanted to protest the undue attention being given the federal budget deficit compared to the far more critical need to restore job-creating economic growth. Increasing tax revenues by getting the unemployed into new jobs is a more effective way to reduce the deficit than self-defeating cuts in entitlement expenditures. We also wanted to protest the bias built into the event, which Joe later analyzed in a seven part series, The Procrustean Democracy of AmericaSpeaks.

After the AmericaSpeaks event, we discussed the problem of powerful special interests that mislead the public, distort U.S. priorities and deform public policies. A prime example is the billionaire deficit hawk who is advocating entitlement cuts and funded the event. We agreed that the increasing enfeeblement of the electorate is part of the problem. Voters’ influence over the agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties and their elected representatives grows weaker as the influence of the business and financial interests that finance the parties and the campaigns of their candidates grows stronger.

Corporate-funded mainstream media have joined forces with the compromised parties and their elected representatives to put special interest priorities in the limelight, and create a political climate conducive to the enactment of public policies they favor, to the detriment of the public interest. Governing officials who should be protecting the American people from predatory special interests have joined forces with them to further their depredations.

Discussion of how Facebook (and Firedoglake) have made an impact on my life