Since there aren’t any People with Disabilities for Obama logos on the Obama site, I made my own.  Feel free to spread the word and share these around.

Use this link for a high resolution version.

This link is for a buddy icon.

This link is for a grayscale version.

Right-click these links to save them to your computer.

As I related in an earlier post, Obama spoke at the United Church of Christ’s General Synod meeting last summer in Hartford, Connecticut.  I was not at that meeting, but many youth from my church were.  In August the youth reported to the congregation about their trip.  There were the usual comments about making friends, stories about horseplay, complaints about the dorm food, and stories about this boy, and that girl.  But as some of the kids started talking about seeing Obama, and listening to his speech, their excitement was palpable.  Teenagers are not typically excited about politics, but these kids were.  These kids want change, they expect change, and they deserve change.  We must have a candidate that can bring the youth vote into the polls.  We can’t afford to allow them to sit out this election because we can’t win without their involvement and their vote.

Yesterday I was making calls to Montana absentee voters, and I was relating this story to some of the voters I was talking to.   One voter was still waffling between HRC and Obama when I ended the call.  A couple hours later she called me back, to say that she was filling out her ballot for Obama.  She had called her grandkids to ask them who she should vote for, and the answer was Obama.

Over the past couple of days McCain has reinforced his claim that he will nominate Roberts and Alito clones to the federal judiciary.   Alito and Roberts clones will not only be staunch conservatives, but also young.

The next president will likely appoint several supreme court justices, as well as scores of appellate and district court judges.  All the progress made over the past 60 years in developing civil rights law will erode away if the Scalia, Alito, Roberts and Thomas voting block is enlarged.

Justice Stevens is 88 years old,  Justice Ginsberg is 75, Justice Breyer is 69, and Justice Souter is 68.

In contrast Chief Justice Roberts is 53, Alito is 58, Thomas is 59, and Scalia is 72.

As Justice Stevens pointed out in a New York Times article, every justice since 1971, with the exception of Ginsberg, has been more conservative than his or her predecessor.  The 14th amendment, providing equal protection under law, will be dead (unless it were necessary to hand an election to McCain, a la Bush v. Gore).  Decisions such as Shelly v. Kraemer (prohibiting enforcement of race based restrictive housing covenants), Brown v. Board (prohibiting segregated schools), Loving v. Virginia (prohibiting anti-miscegenation laws), and Romer v. Evans (striking down Colorado’s Amendment 2) are all flawed under the Scalia/Roberts/Alito model.  Civil rights law as we know it would be dead.

Every delegate counts.  It is imperative that every Obama delegate and alternate show up to congressional district assemblies this Saturday (for CD1, CD2 an CD7).  Despite the best effort of party leaders and staffers, the scene will be chaotic at times, lines will be long, bleachers will be hard, and the day will be long.  However, every delegate counts, and we need  you there.

Go Gary, IN! and yay NC!

I don’t know why they couldn’t release returns, but I am thrilled HRC’s margin kept shrinking all night long.  I am reading reports that HRC has canceled all media appearances for tomorrow.  It is time to end this process and focus on winning in November.   Obama’s speech was fabulous. I look forward to seeing him inagurated as our 44th president.

It is with a heavy heart that I have read reports of Wright’s media circuit the last few days. I respect the man for what he has accomplished. He is a powerful theologian, a great leader, but I don’t agree with all he says. I am certain Obama does not either. Obama will have no choice but to split with Wright.

That being said, Wright’s comments demonstrate the racial divide our country faces.  His HIV remark, for example, was entirely off base, however, our government’s refusal to address the AIDS crisis under Reagan’s leadership not only an overt act against the GLBT community, but also people of color, in the US and around the globe.  Due to homophobia and racism, our government did not address this public health crisis for years, and the impacts are most felt in communities of color.   It is unfortunate that Rev. Wright is unable to articulate that message without resorting to fallacies and half-truths to make his point.

I was hoping for more ground in PA to push HRC to look at the numbers. On one hand the extended primary is getting more and more people involved in the process, the mudflinging by HRC may help her win a battle, it will not get us a win in November.  She is certainly in until IN and NC vote May 6.

I have been following the Bob Schaffer Northern Mariana Islands stories with great interest. In the mid-1990s, I moved to Saipan, where I was a classroom teacher for three school years, teaching middle school science and social studies.

I encountered the garment factory abuses on my first night on island. A college friend was already teaching there, and we planned to be roommates. When I arrived at our apartment, I was surprised to see a fence topped with barbed wire adjacent to our building. The fence surrounded a low metal building, along with several rusty shipping containers. I later learned that the shipping containers were the barracks for the young Chinese women who worked at the garment factory. I later learned from the Filipina supervisors who lived in an adjacent apartment, that they all worked in sweltering and dangerous conditions. The Chinese laborers were prohibited from leaving the compound. A couple of times a month the factory owners would take the young women on outings where they would be closely watched and monitored.

The church I attended, Immanuel United Methodist Church, had four congregations: Korean, English, Tagalog (Filipino), and Chinese. The Chinese congregation primarily meet in small groups with factory workers at their compounds because they were prohibited from attending church. I joined our Chinese minister in working with the women at a factory down the road from where I taught school. Those women described terrible working conditions, subject to sexual harassment on a daily basis.   Many of these workers had to pay large sums of money to recruiters to obtain their jobs.  They had little take-home pay because most of their pay went to repaying the recruiters.  The women described how their friends who became pregnant were forced to leave the island, leaving their families with huge debts to repay.

Saipan is a small island, only 14 miles long, and 7 miles wide at it’s widest point. Most of the island is 3-5 miles wide. The island has no addresses, and there are only four main roads. The first runs the length of the island, Beach Road. A second road, Middle Road, runs up the middle of the island in the wide section, and a third road loops around the back of the island to the Kagman Peninsula. The final road, As Lito road connects other roads to the south. Only a couple of weeks before I moved on island, Saipan got its first stop light, and McDonald’s.

The garment factories were ubiquitous on the island. There was no zoning on the island, so the factories were tucked in everywhere. As I described, there was the factory next to my apartment building. There was one across the road from the middle school where I taught, where you could see the exits chained and padlocked from the exterior. Everyone on island knew that Willie Tan had a couple of model factories where he would send inspectors and visiting dignitaries.

The island has a long tradition of wowing visiting dignitaries.  It doesn’t matter if you are a U.S. Congressman or a lower level inspector, you will be wined, dined and entertained with tropical flair.  In Saipan you aren’t usually greeted with a lei, but you will usually be treated to a mwar mwar, a ring of flowers for your head.  You will be offered a coconut with a straw, and offered all kinds of stereotypical island foods, albeit not traditional Micronesian food. .  You may be taken parasailing, snorkling, scuba diving, fishing, etc.  It is an effective system.    I saw it in action as the co-chair of my school’s accreditation committee.  The school where I taught should not have been accredited.  I taught science, and had no lab equipment, outdated textbooks, and little in the way of supplies and instructional materials.  I also taught social studies,  and didn’t even have a world map.  A loss of accreditation would force district administrators to confront the corruption and embezzlement of funds within the school system.  However, true to form, the accreditation committee was wined and dined, and the accreditation remained intact with only a slap on the  wrist.

As a result, I have been following the Denver Post stories with great interest, and was prompted to respond. My letter to the editor of the Denver Post is below:

It’s ironic that Bob Schaffer finds the Denver Post stories about his involvement with Jack Abramoff’s firm disgusting. Having lived on Saipan for several years shortly before Schaffer’s visit, I find it disgusting that this Senate candidate characterizes the propaganda produced by Preston-Gates as “fact-finding.”

It was well know by most residents in Saipan that the garment factory industry had a handful of model factories with pristine conditions to show to visiting dignitaries. Dignitaries were wined and dined with exotic flair. However, the abusive, illegal, and disgusting environments of the remaining garment factories were in plain view island wide. Perhaps drinking from coconuts and parasailing so dazzled Schaffer that he could not see the thousands of women living in shipping containers that doubled as barracks in the hot sun. He could not see the factories with padlocks on the exits. He never bothered to talk to the local critics of the factories like the people sneaking into factory compounds to provide hold secret worship services with workers who were not allowed to go to church.

Instead Bob Schaffer believed only what Jack Abramoff’s associates told him, and closed his eyes as he rode up and down the island’s three roads.

My church has been in the news this week, over Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, and his connection to Barack Obama. Trinity UCC is Obama’s home church. Obama has long been a proud UCC member. You can read Obama’s speech at our biennial denominational meeting last summer.

I grew up in a United Church of Christ faith community, Faith United Church of Christ, in Windsor, Colorado. I am currently a member of Parkview United Church of Christ in Aurora, CO. I went to seminary, was a youth pastor at several UCC churches, and was approved for ordination when I was called to serve my community as an attorney.

The UCC in its present form is a fairly young denomination, 50 years young in 2007. However, the roots of the denomination, and our predecessor denominations go back centuries. In 1957 the UCC was formed by a union of the Reformed and Evangelical church and the Congregational Christian church. The UCC has a long history of involvement in political, theological and social reform in the US. We were the first mainline denomination to ordain a woman, and the first to ordain an openly gay person.

Trinity UCC is our denomination’s largest church, with over 8000 members, and Trinity’s growth and leadership among Christian churches in the US is in large part attributed to the leadership of Rev. Wright.

While I don’t agree with everything Wright says, I respect him as a prophetic leader.  Some highlights of his leadership:

When Wright became pastor at Trinity, there were 87 members.  He grew the membership to over 8,000 members.

During his pastorate, Trinity UCC has given in excess of $1 million dollars in scholarships to high school graduates entering college.   They have also given an additional $1.5 million dollars to the United Negro College Fund.

The motto of Trinity UCC, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” was coined by its third pastor, Rev. Rubeun Sheares, and adopted by the congregation before Rev. Wright became pastor.

It is a statement of affirmation of the congregation’s belief in Christianity and belief in themselves.  It simply means that the congregation is not ashamed of it’s ethnic heritage, nor will it disavow its Christian identity despite the historic role of the Christian church in  the slave trade and subsequent systems of racism facing African Americans due to the color of their skin.

Several people have asked me this question in the last few days.  An assembly selects local, state, and congressional candidates.  A convention selects presidential candidates.  The result is that each Colorado county has both an assembly, and a convention.  The same is true for each congressional district, and for the entire state.  The multi-county assemblies are only assemblies because presidential campaign delegates are not selected at these meetings.