General D4U Business

Nevada is making plans to build three large coal plants that, when operating, will emit pollution affecting Utah since we will be directly down wind of the sulfur dioxide and carbon emissions.

You can do something to help stop their production. Email Utah Governor John Huntsman and let him know that you’re concerned about the effects the plants will have on our environment. It only takes a few voices to have our concerns heard.

Email bbruso@utah.gov and let Governor Huntsman know that we agree with U.S. Senator Harry Reid: these plants are not the answer for Nevada’s energy needs.

Want to learn more about coal plants, the pollution they emit and energy alternatives?

Read articles from the:

New York Times

Las Vegas Sun

The map at right shows the locations of everyone who's attending the DFA Training next weekend. We've got attendees from as far away as St. George, Cedar City, Whiterocks (near Vernal), and Howell (up by Idaho).

Plus, our RSVP count (currently at 73) has exceeded that of the New Hampshire, Nevada, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Indiana trainings. Everything is coming along nicely, and it looks like this event will be a big success!

We're at 61 RSVPs for the DFA Training Weekend on June 16-17. That beats both Indiana with 60 and Tennessee with 58! And we still have three weeks to go!

The training agenda for the DFA Training Weekend on June 16-17 is now available in PDF format (UT_Agenda_2007.pdf). Sunday's breakout sessions include Campaign Advertising, Working with News Outlets, Running a Canvass, Developing a Phone Program, Volunteer Management and Leadership Development, Precinct Organizing, and Working with a Voter File.

We've got some great trainers coming including Arshad Hasan, DFA's Training Coordinator, and Tom Hughes, DFA's Executive Director.

Tom Hughes

Executive Director, Democracy for America. Active in Democratic politics since 1988, Tom has worked on most divisions of a modern campaign, including management, field work, fundraising, communications, political outreach, scheduling, and advance. Executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party in 1998, Tom helped elect a state house and senate that went on to pass historic Civil Unions legislation. In 2003–2004, Tom directed the Dean for America field operation in New Hampshire. He has been with Democracy for America since April 2004.

There's still time to register for the training if you haven't already.

Salt Lake City Weekly's 2007 "Best of Utah" issue names D4U member Larry Bergan as Best Lone Demonstrator:

It's one thing to march en masse against George W. Bush during an anti-war rally in downtown Salt Lake City. It's another, several months before the war rally, to get out on the streets carrying a sign demanding Bush's impeachment — by yourself. Bergan has walked 400 miles up and down Salt Lake City streets over the past four years making his lone protest against the U.S. war in Iraq. Now he stands on street corners collecting, he says, as many thumbs up as he does birds. The 54-year-old out-of-work optician has lost three signs to irate citizens but that hasn't stopped his urgent sense of civic duty one iota. He's Utah's last angry man, it seems, and we're all better off for him.

Thanks, Larry, for making a difference.

Review of John Dean's new book Conservatives without Conscience by Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory:

Dean contends, and amply documents, that the "conservative" movement has become, at its core, an authoritarian movement composed of those with a psychological and emotional need to follow a strong authority figure which provides them a sense of moral clarity and a feeling of individual power, the absence of which creates fear and insecurity in the individuals who crave it. By definition, its followers' devotion to authority and the movement's own power is supreme, thereby overriding the consciences of its individual members and removing any intellectual and moral limits on what will be justified in defense of their movement. [...]

What excites, enlivens, and drives Bush followers is the identification of the Enemy followed by swarming, rabid attacks on it. It is a movement that defines itself not by identifiable ideas but by that which it is not. Its foreign policy objectives are identifiable by one overriding goal — destroy and kill the Enemy, potential or suspected enemies, and everyone nearby. And it increasingly views its domestic goals through the same lens. It is a movement in a permanent state of war, which views all matters, foreign and domestic, only in terms of this permanent war.

See this post for one example of the right wing terrorizing "the Enemy" — in this case, that perennial enemy, The New York Times.

Last week's meetup featured a presentation by Linda Hilton of CORC, the group responsible for making the repeal of sales tax on food a major issue in the Utah Legislature this year. See this post for a recap of Linda's presentation.

The main thing the Steering Committee took away from the meetup is that D4U needs to find a signature issue to work on. CORC is known for their work on repealing the sales tax on food. Equality Utah is known for opposing Amendment 3. HEAL Utah is known for trying to stop nuclear waste storage in Utah. The common thread with all these issues is that people have very strong feelings about them. People are motivated by anger, and they're not going to be motivated to action unless they're fed up.

So, our question to you is: what needs to be changed that no one else in Utah is working on? What issue gets people so worked up that they'll join our cause? In other words, what makes you mad? Let us know — post a comment!

(At this point, let's just brainstorm and take all suggestions, even if they're national-level issues or are kind of "out there." Even an issue like Social Security might trigger more ideas, or there might be something we can do about it at the state level. So fire away!)