APRIL Dems

This club is named after three exemplary American liberals: Jane Addams, Frances Perkins, and Bayard Rustin.

Introduction. Grassroots activists helped to elect Barack Obama to the Presidency and progressive Democrats to the U.S. Congress. In 2009, we'd like to continue to participate in the movement that the Obama campaign and now the Obama presidency represents. Hence we're forming a new Democratic club.

We invite you to become a member of APRIL Dems and we'll work together to realize our country's ideals and promise. In February 2009, the initial organizing meeting for this club will be held in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. But we welcome new members who live elsewhere.

Inaugural Meeting: February 21, 2009, 10 AM. 1521 Martin Luther King Jr. Way (between Cedar and Vine), Berkeley. Please let us know if you're planning to attend by contacting us.

Agenda:

1. 25 minutes: What's involved in becoming an official Democratic club? What is the path of our club going forward?

2. 40 minutes: Presentation on the current economic crisis. Our speaker will be Don Goldmacher, who is a psychiatrist, documentary film maker, and delegate to the Democratic State Central Committee. He's making a film entitled “Heist" about the economic crisis. We'll view a 15-minute trailer that explains the origins and development of the crisis. We’ll then discuss what can be done to end the crisis.

3. Informal discussion and getting to know one another.

The Democratic Party has over the past several decades gradually freed itself from Dixiecrat domination (domination by Southern conservatives) and opened its doors to the grassroots activism that today is rebuilding a progressive movement in America. It’s true that the Party remains notoriously conflicted internally and unclear about its aims. (Hence Will Rogers’ quip, “I'm not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat!”) Yet there are ideals that the Democratic Party, at its best, embraces: democracy, non-violence and fair-minded diplomacy, freedom of conscience and action, justice, reproductive rights, care for the environment, health care for all. Within our ranks there have been admirable models. Jane Addams, Frances Perkins, and Bayard Rustin -- among many others, of course -- balanced commitment to their ideals with a pragmatic willingness to work with others to resolve differences and reach consensus. For a good examination of 20th-centiry left-liberalism see Doug Rossinow's book, Visions of Progress.		Jane Addams was a pioneer social worker, peace activist, and a philosopher in the American Pragmatist tradition. She is best known for having founded the Chicago social settlement, Hull-House. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
		Frances Perkins was FDR's Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and designed New Deal reforms including social security, unemployment insurance, the NLRB, and other labor protections. She said that poverty is "preventable, destructive, wasteful and demoralizing." See also Remembering Frances Perkins.
		Bayard Rustin was a mentor to Martin Luther King, a Quaker, pacifist, singer, gay movement leader, and Democratic Party activist. See also Rustin's Work and rustin.org. For a nuanced view of Rustin's political life in the late '60s and '70s, read David McReynold's On Bayard Rustin.