•••A
Sample of Happenings in Branches and among Our Members, October
2004•••
In Maine
During August,
Martha Spiess, a new WILPF member of Freeport, Maine, arranged two
showings of the movie "Thirst." This award-winning film
features the stories of three communities - from Cochabamba, Bolivia,
to Stockton, California, and the Province of Rajasthan, India -
where people were forced to organize and fight for local democratic
control of their water services and resources. Order the film on-line
from Bullfrog Films (www.Bullfrogfilms.com) at the education rate.
It comes with a study guide.
On August
16th, more than 50 people attended a showing at the Rockland Public
Library where afterward Nancy Price of the leadership team of WILPF’s
Challenge Corporate Power, Assert the People's Rights campaign,
and others facilitated a discussion on the problems of privatizing
public water services and the push into Maine by Nestle-Poland Spring
in search of fresh water resources to access for bulk shipment and
for their bottled water plants in Maine and Massachusetts.
The following
evening, August 17th, over 35 people attended the “Thirst”
showing at the Brunswick Library hosted by the local WILPF branch.
Barbara West introduced the film and moderated a panel discussion
that included Nancy Price and other representatives from the Water
Allies Network of which WILPF is now a member. They spoke about
community participatory budgeting as it is used in Brazil and might
be adopted by Maine communities. The intent is to ensure that public
money be allocated to maintain local water systems and create jobs
so that residents wouldn't be attracted to job offers from water
privatizing corporations and bottling plants.
On Saturday
morning, Christine De Troy, who had attended WILPF’s International
Congress in Sweden, hosted everyone at brunch to explore how to
work on education and outreach on issues such as corporate power,
water privatization, bottled water, and, perhaps, the trade agreements.
In
Northern California
Jan Edwards
of our leadership team, along with a few colleagues, conducted a
workshop on October 9 at the Labor and Social Justice Conference
called "Challenging Corporate Rule." On October 23 Jan
will do several workshops in Orange County at the "Caring for
Creation” Conference titled “Corporate Personhood and
the Right to Harm the Environment.”
On
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
The “We
the People vs. Corporate Rule” group (a joint project of WILPF
and Cape Codders for Peace and Justice) continues its work to educate
people on a community-owned universal health insurance plan, Cape
Care, being developed by the health care community and county government.
The Cape branch also established a Radical Democracy group to address
this essential work.
In
Tucson, Arizona
New study
groups are beginning and advanced groups are continuing to meet,
taking some of their material from such sources as Thom Hartmann's
Unequal Protection and Zepezauer's Take the Rich Off Welfare. Joyce
Smith, a new member of the campaign leadership team has been doing
interviews with KXCI, a local radio station and AccessTucson, the
local Indy cable tv station.
Joyce and
other WILPFers (Sally Flax, Pat Birnie and Maggie Newman) have been
“tabling” at showings of “The Corporation”
and at a wide variety of talks and programs in the area including
events with Jim Hightower, Holly Near, and Amy Goodman! A Peace
Fair and Labor Day events also kept them on the go.
These folks
make good use of local e-mail lists to get the word out about WILPF
activities.
---Cover cartoon from CCP, APR “Tips on Passing a Resolution
toAbolish
Corporate Personhood” flyer downloadable from www.wilpf.org,
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