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Northeast Democratic Club PO Box 50672 Los Angeles, CA 90050-0672 (323)225-0501 E-mail: info@northeastdemocrats.org Meetings: Every third Wednesday of the Month El Arco Iris, 5684 York Ave Los Angeles 7:00pm
Board Members
Bill Rumble
President Liberty Mesa 1st Vice Presdent Carmela Gomes 2nd Vice President Ana Mascarenas 3rd Vice President Paul Habib Recording Secretary Mark Gonzalez Treasurer Dick Price & Sharon Kyle Corresponding Secretary/Newsletter Editors Mary Garripoli Past President | Welcome to the Northeast Democratic Club of Los Angeles! The NEDC serves Democrats in Northeast Los Angeles, including the communities of Cypress Park, Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Glassell Park, Highland Park, Hermon, Lincoln Heights, Montecito Heights, Monterey Hills, Mt. Washington, and others. NEDC Campaign HQ  The NEDC has set its sights on a location for our general election headquarters and is in negotiations to rent the property. We are hopeful that if we get this location, we will be able to open the HQ earlier than the traditional 2 month period commencing after Labor Day.We have raised a significant portion of our operating budget and wish to thank those of you who have donated thus far. Special thanks go to our electeds who have generously contributed and helped us get such an early start to the process. Our thanks to: Assemblymember Kevin DeLeon (AD 45), Assemblymember Anthony Portantino (AD 44) and LA City Councilmember Jose Huizar (CD 14) and LA City Councilmember Ed Reyes (CD1). We still need contributions to help with operating costs, so there will be a series of small fundraisers to be held by NEDC members during the summer, so stay tuned! In addition to electing Barack Obama as our next President, the headquarters will also serve as a place for education and activism on issues of concerns to local Democrats. We want the headquarters to serve as your political home where you can become actively involved in this most crucial of election years. If you would like to be a volunteer for the headquarters, hold a fundraiser, make a contribution and/or take part in this historic election, please contact Bill Rumble p: 323 225 0501 or e: brumble@roadrunner.com We welcome your participation in any form it may take. Read the rest ...   Fourth of July Picnic  SAVE THE DATE!Attention All Members of the Northeast Democratic Club- Please save the date of Friday, July 4, on your calendars for the annual Independence Day picnic. NEDC members, families, and friends are invited to celebrate our nation’s independence. We will meet at Debs Park, 4235 N. Monterey Road, Los Angeles 90032 from 12 noon to 3 PM. Your $5 admission buys you a hot dog, drink, and the best darned political conversation west of DC and south of Sacramento. Members are encouraged to bring side dishes to share with others. All of the local elected officials have been invited and many will attend. Bring your friends and families! Bill Rumble President Read the rest ... Time to Start the Fall Campaign  Last Tuesday, June 3, Illinois Senator Barack Obama won enough delegates in the last two presidential primary states (Montana and South Dakota) to declare himself the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president.From Wednesday through Friday, the nation’s mass media engaged in a round of speculation regarding the future of New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Might Hillary contest the nomination all the way to the floor of the national convention in August? If so, would she challenge the recent compromise decision of the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Committee regarding the Florida and Michigan delegations to the convention? Might she suspend her campaign? If she did, would she do so with a clear call for all Democrats to unite behind Senator Obama? On Saturday, Senator Clinton suspended her campaign, endorsed Senator Obama, and called on all Democrats to support him. Just as power abhors a vacuum, the media detests a lack of copy. So, by Sunday, the speculation began anew. Whom would Barack name as his vice-presidential nominee? Would it be Senator Clinton? Would Obama/Clinton be a dream ticket or a match made in hell, dooming the Democrats to defeat? While the answers to the first set of questions regarding Senator Clinton’s withdrawal from the campaign wound up being “No-No-Yes-and Yes” and were forthcoming by last Saturday, the speculation regarding the vice-presidency is likely to be around for awhile. Should Northeast Democrats care that it will be? No. Questions regarding Clinton’s withdrawal from the campaign and the identity of the vice-presidential nominee all pale in comparison with a more basic concern. Will the Democratic Party work hard enough to elect Barack Obama president? Read the rest ... Northeast Democratic Club Endorsements for the Primary Election of June 3  US House of Representatives- District 31: Xavier Becerra State Senate- District 21: Carol Liu Assembly- District 44: Anthony Portantino Assembly- District 45: Kevin De León Assembly- District 46: John Perez Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors- District 2: Mark Ridley-Thomas Judge of the Superior Court- Office No. 69: Harvey Silberman Judge of the Superior Court- Office No. 84: Lori-Ann Jones Judge of the Superior Court- Office No. 95: Patricia Nieto Los Angeles County Democratic Party Central Committee Assembly District 44 Joe Brown Gail Burns Mark Gonzalez Clarice Knapp Bobbie McGowan Karen Wingard Bill Zuke Los Angeles County Democratic Party Central Committee Assembly District 45 Robert Nakahiro Bill Rumble Read the rest ... Our Award-Winning Club  My wife, Carol, and I returned from the recent California Democratic Party convention via Highway 1. We ate dinner in Carmel and spent the night in Big Sur. Right outside of Pacific Grove, we passed the Asilomar Conference Grounds.For more than half a century, Californians have met here. In sheer historical significance, however, the most important meeting of all was held in 1953. State Senator George Miller, Jr., whom author Ethan Rarick called “…a gruff but brilliant political strategist…” invited Democratic Party leaders and activists to a conference entitled “What’s Wrong with the Democratic Party in California?” Democrats were incredibly frustrated. Only one Democrat had been elected governor in the previous half century. All but one state-wide office was held by Republicans. The cross-filing system, a radical, open primary system, resulted in numerous Republicans defeating Democrats in our own primary elections. Despite the formation of dozens of Stevenson Clubs in 1952, GOP presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower had carried California handily. The conferees were adamant that Republican voters’ discipline and the weakness of formal party structures were responsible for the GOP’s dominance of California politics. They resolved to break the Republican stranglehold. They created the California Democratic Council, a state-wide umbrella organization which would spearhead the formation of Democratic clubs throughout the state. Read the rest ... Northeast Democratic Club Endorsements At its March meeting held this past Wednesday, the Northeast Democratic Club unanimously endorsed by voice vote unopposed candidates serving our immediate area:US House of Representatives—District 31: Congressman Xavier Becerra State Senate, District 21: Former Assembly Member Carol Liu Assembly, District 44: Assembly Member Anthony Portantino Assembly. District 45: Assembly Member Kevin DeLeón We also endorsed the following candidates by secret ballot, with the endorsed candidates needing 60% of the votes to win endorsement: Assembly, District 46: John Perez Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, District 2: State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas Judge of the Superior Court, Office 69: Havey Silberman Judge of the Superior Court, Office 95: Patricia Nieto We deeply appreciate the time and energy of the candidates who debated and answered Club member questions: Carol Liu, John Perez, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Bernard Parks, Harvey Silberman, Cynthia Loo, Thomas Robinson, Patricia Nieto, and Lance Winters. Next month’s meeting returns to El Arco Restaurant after our enjoyable visit to La Casa Blue and may feature additional endorsement debates. Read the rest ... Year Six  by Mary Lyon19 March 2008 The woman stammered. She obviously knew she was still on the air and had to maintain her composure. But it was clear to anyone's ear that she was having a difficult time. Her voice clouded with emotion as she struggled to tell the talk show host and his audience of her story, as a mom whose son was in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. She hadn't heard from him in weeks. She had just written him an email - "Son, I haven't heard from you in a long time. Are you okay?" And amazingly, she was able to get through that recounting without crying. I had a harder time. And hey, I have no horse in this race. I AM a mom, however, so in one respect, I have thousands of horses and other beloveds in it. Almost four thousand of them returning to me in long neatly-wrapped, patriotically-covered boxes (because, as we all know but still aren't allowed to see) the wrapping paper on these boxes is always an American flag. We do know that the wrapping paper eventually gets folded up in the finest military precision and handed to the grieving survivor - usually a widow or a mother - as a consolation prize. A party favor to take away from the big event. A lovely parting gift. I'm sure the frantic mom on the radio was terrified at the prospect of being one of those graveside mourners. Wowee - she'd have a front-row seat, too. My heart could only sob for her in her nightmarish uncertainty. But you won't see much of this examined in the media, even while talking heads are talking about it on this Iraq War anniversary day. The war coverage, and its true cost, have been thoughtfully sanitized for your protection. And it's still going on that way, even while public opposition to the war has grown substantially. I can remember seeing exactly ONE such funeral. It was early-on. Maybe somebody at the TV station or the parent network hadn't gotten the memo yet. Read the rest ... Our Joshua  by Mary Lyon18 March 2008 "I may not get there with you..." So said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., once upon a time, talking about a figurative Promised Land that he himself would indeed never reach. It was a Moses reference, with the Promised Land in this case being the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave - in its most perfect form, evolved, open, transcendent, every inch the land of opportunity for ALL - not just those well-heeled, well-positioned, or exclusively white-skinned. It was a portrait of a Promised Land that he envisioned for everyone in the dream he had for America. Moses never made the transition to the Biblical Promised Land with his people. It was left to Joshua to lead the Israelites there. Perhaps we in early 21st-Century America have our own latter-day Joshua, finally? Or at least the hint of one? I suspect the younger ones among us will someday point to the Philadelphia speech of Barack Obama as their latter-day version of the "I Have a Dream" speech. This will have become a watershed moment that signifies a leap forward. It will render all those yammering empty-heads, fear-mongers, and hatred-hawks - who insist on obsessing on selected clips of Pastor Wright in full-eruption mode - suddenly passe, so yesterday, so last century or more, so pitiful, small, and small-minded. It's as though they can't make the leap. Their feet, like their minds, are fixed and fixated, embedded in a sociological concrete, leaving them unable to rise to the next level. They'll forever be philosophical groundlings, as though evolution did not allow them to transcend their lizard phase and sprout wings or sailing skins. We all certainly could go there and wallow in that, Obama said. And the Swiftboat 2.0 crowd surely will. But if they insist on embracing the past, the old, the stale, the obsolete, the increasingly irrelevant, fine. Let them. And let's leave them there, where they're sadly comfortable. The rest of us need not join them. There were many reasons why I loved Barack Obama's speech about "a more perfect union." Read the rest ... The Winter Soldier Returns  by Dick Price8 March 2008 In 1971, a group of veterans—current Massachusetts Senator John Kerry prominent among them—staged a protest called “Winter Soldier” that helped end the Vietnam War but that also unfairly saddled the Democrats with a “soft on defense” label that dogged the Party for decades. Today, a new generation of antiwar veterans similarly hopes to help end the Iraq War with its own Winter Soldier protest. But with “Certified War Hero” John McCain heading the Republican presidential ticket, the question already arises whether Democrats will once again suffer at the polls for years to come for ending another unjust, unwise, and immoral war. In his first-time political campaign for a city council post in a suburb south of Los Angeles, Iraq War veteran Tim Goodrich (pictured) might help answer that question. Read the rest ... Keep Your Eyes on the Prize  by Bill Rumble8 March 2008 Remember February 5, 2008? A spirited contest for the Democratic nomination for president resulted in a record turnout of voters in the California presidential primary. Hillary Clinton won a majority of those voters. But exit polls revealed that a large majority of California Democrats were pleased about the choice they had between Clinton and her opponent, Senator Barack Obama, and would happily vote for either one in the November general election. How things have changed since then! Exit polls taken in the states of Texas and Ohio after the primaries of March 4 find that only 40% of those Democrats who strongly support either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama are certain that they will support the opposing candidate if she or he should win the party’s nomination. Why the stunning turnaround? Read the rest ... |
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