Originally posted at PoliZeros.

I went to a protest in Philadelphia this past Saturday, and it was more disheartening than anything else. It was against the wars and various other injustices, with a special focus on he recent FBI raids of peace activists and Pennsylvania Homeland Security spying on innocent civilians and activists.

By the end of it, I kind of just felt like going up to the megaphone and asking, “How much moral outrage can one person muster? There are more people handing out fliers here than not, and with this country committing so many disgusting, outrageous acts, I don’t blame you.” I won’t lie, I handed a few out myself. Yet the contrast between the righteous causes featured in the speeches and on the signs and on the fliers and the, as a fellow protester said to me, “complete lack of solidarity” was striking.

I’ve been gone all summer – traveling, gardening, volunteering a bit, and doing some other things – and as much as I had a lot of fun, it is nice to be back. In all that time, some interesting things have happened with what I consider to be one of the better Green campaigns in the nation this year, and one that I’m very involved with, Hugh Giordano’s campaign for state legislature as a Green.

In case you don’t know who Hugh is, he’s a 25 year old union organizer running as a Green in PA’s 194th district, which is mostly in Philadelphia and also a bit in Montgomery County (for locals, it encompasses Roxborough, Manayunk, parts of Lower Merion, and some surrounding areas). He’s been running a great campaign, knocking on doors, holding fun fundraisers, getting in the newspaper, and raising as much money as a typical Green congressional candidate.

Anyway, below the fold is some news from the campaign, including an endorsement from a fairly prominent local Democrat.

Philadelphia: Precinct Results

My first post on the swing state Pennsylvania focused on the city Philadelphia, an incredibly Democratic city. At the time, I looked for detailed ward and precinct results but was unable to find any. Recently, however, I have come across a website which maps Philadelphia precinct results across a whole range of elections; it is a literal gold mine. This offers the opportunity to substantially deepen the previous analysis.

Below is a map, derived from the website, of the 2008 presidential election in Philadelphia (by precinct!)

An analysis of this result below.

Recently, at least on the Seminal, there’s been a lot of talk about supporting third parties. There are many in this country, although here the conversation tends to return to the Green Party, the only national progressive party. If Firedoglake is willing to support Green (and other third party or independent) candidates, we could end up changing politics all over the nation.

This is the third part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Pennsylvania. Part four can be found here.

Philadelphia’s Suburbs

There used to be a time when Republicans could count on Philadelphia’s suburbs to counter Democratic margins from the city. Philadelphia and its suburbs, 1988:

Not anymore. Philadelphia and its suburbs, two decades later:

(Note: Because the Times stopped updating before all absentee/provisional ballots were counted, this map does not fully reflect the actual results. I have corrected the discrepancy.)

More below.

This is the second part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Pennsylvania. The next part can be found here.

Like Florida, and unlike Ohio, Pennsylvania’s political geography can be divided into three. The industrial southwest is reddening, the populous southeast is bluing, and Pennsyltucky remains, as James Carville memorably described it, “Alabama without the blacks.” (Actually, Pennsyltucky is a fair bit less conservative.)

The following section will concentrate on Philadelphia, the region upon which Democrats draw the most votes.

Apparently it needs to be asked in the age of the tasering goofball fans who run onto baseball fields. Anyway, wasn’t wiring you up and pulling ‘the switch’ the favored method in all those anti-Nazi and Cold War movies about the evil Gestapo, KGB or Chinese and their methods of ‘making you talk’? How did we get here? And weren’t we reassured by most police departments, not long ago in the first slew of ‘accidental’ killings, that the taser — a torture device if anything is — was only supposed to be used when life or grave bodily harm was threatened?

This Earth Day, while an oil rig was burning and sinking and spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico, I joined a small band of protesters during my lunch break to tell the government to stop a similar crime against nature, one that is taking place in my home state of Pennsylvania. There are no offshore oil rigs here, of course, but the new and dangerous method of extracting natural gas through fracking is becoming a larger and larger threat to our water, our land, and our climate. And Pennsylvania is ground zero.

So I took to the streets at a Green Party-organized protest. We stood outside the regional Department of Environmental Protection and made our voices heard.

(Go below the fold for more info on the protest, fracking, and what you can do, including upcoming actions.)

This is going to be an action packed weekend in DC and around the nation. On Friday, there will be protests of Yoo. On Saturday, there will be a massive antiwar demonstration (there will also be demonstrations in Philly, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Dakota, among other places). On Sunday, there will be a large march for immigration reform. And there will be other related events around the country, along with the small protests and events that happen all the time.

So join me below the fold to see how you can effect change this weekend.

Update: 10/7/09 As of 3:45AM: 3 have been charged & released. 2 await processing. 1 has a court appearance, 9AM today.
Update: Marc Stier (PA HCAN director) and Dennis Short (SEIU) were released at 5AM.