Black & White Postcard OR Color Postcard to send to a KINKOS-type printer (with print/bleed marks). Print a bunch of these and pass them out to your friends & community!
WARNING! It has come to our attention that it is taking 2 months or more for mail to get through the postal systems in DC to Congress due to Anthrax check points. We are having constituents put their return address and comments on the card, then return the card to us.
Focus on Nelson Postcards c/o 4630 South Kirkman Road #723 Orlando, LF 32811-2802
We will then mail the cards in one package to the CODEPINK house in DC to have them hand delivered to Senator Nelson's office. Please consider doing this in your own local area.
DESCRIPTION: Announcing the first of 8 meetings at Senator Nelson's offices in Florida. Help us put the HEAT on NELSON this summer. He needs to explain to us WHY he is voting for continued funding for illegal torture. We want to know WHY Senator Nelson gave Bush billions more to fund the war we told him to STOP in November! Visits are scheduled at Nelson's offices beginning Monday, June 11th and continuing through Tuesday, June 19th. If you can't meet at the office, can you commit to calling the office for 2 hours during the visit? Tell the Senator's aides that Lydia and the other people visiting represent YOU!
The schedule is as follows:
Date of Visit Office Location Times Telephone #'s Mon, June 11, 2007 Tampa 2:00-4:00pm 813-225-7040 Tues, June 12, 2007 Fort Myers 2:00-4:00pm 239-334-7760 Wed, June 13, 2007 Coral Gables 9:00-11:00am 305-536-5999 Wed, June 13, 2007 Davie 2:00-4:00pm 954-693-4851 Thurs, June 14, 2007 West Palm Bch 2:00-4:00pm 561-514-0189 Fri, June 15, 2007 Orlando 2:00-4:00pm 407-872-7161 Mon, June 18, 2007 Jacksonville 2:00-4:00pm 904-346-4506 Tues, June 19, 2007 Tallahassee - this meeting is scheduled with an aide in Senator Nelson's office. To join this meeting contact codepinktally(at)yahoo.com
Update 04-06: Join the state wide conference call on Wednesday, June 6th at 8:30 PM. Dial 1-712-945-0210 then dial 26337465# (codepink#) to enter the call. You can press 6 to "mute" and just listen, if you'd like. There are no additional charges for this call. Just the cost of a long distance call. Please join us. We NEED everyone on this!
Dear Peace Makers, Please join a new, state wide action in Florida. Senator Nelson has missed two recent opportunities to vote to bring our troops home from Iraq. This action will focus on educating Senator Nelson and Florida constituents about the true costs of war to our State. The goal is to change Senator Nelson's mind and his votes.
Phase I begins today, June 1, 2007. Please join any Phase at any time. This phase involves writing a letter and sending an e-mail to each of Senator Nelson's offices, every day, for 10 days. The purpose of the letter is to: 1) express your misgivings about his recent votes to continue funding the war and 2) to ask for an appointment. Many of us will use the same letter over and over. Senator Nelson's office addresses and phone/FAX numbers can be found at http://billnelson.senate.gov
Phase II is from June 11th - June 20th. During this period we will visit each of Senator Nelson's Florida office locations and his office in Washington, D.C. We hope to have people from many dirrerent peace groups innvolved in these visits. The purpose of these visits is to personally request an appointment time. We will be assisted during these visits by CodePINK Central and a call in campaign that will happen exactly at the time we are in each office.
Phase III is from June 21st - July 1st. During this phase we will ramp up our letters and FAXes to Senator Nelson's offices and include daily phone calls to every office as many times a day as one can call. At the CodePINK House in D.C. we put our representatives' numbers on speed dial - makes it that much easier.
During Phase III the group will work together through conference calls, e-mails and the Florida For Peace Yahoo Group to organize street actions.
Street actions will begin after the July 4th holiday week.
The last part of Phase III is from July 9th - July 20th. This portion involves loud street actions, props and banners, Home for the Holidays balloting boxes and phone-a-thons outside of every office.
I am willing to come to your town/city to help with office visits and actions. I can bring props and ideas. It only takes 2 or 3 people to do a great action. And, of course, the more the merrier.
A crucial vote comes to Congress right before the August break. The August break begins August 4th. The action hopes to focus intense pressure on Senator Nelson to start voting us out of Iraq. It is quite probable that he wants the troops home as soon as possible and we will show him that we are here to support him should he agree to step out on a limb and end the war.
The final Phase of this action is to camp out at Senator Nelson's house and bring as much media to the issue as we can. Polls show that Floridans want to end the war and bring the troops home.
Senator Bill Nelson Votes for Torture by Cenk Uygur Posted June 1, 2007 Bill Nelson sold us out. So much for the Democratic majority. It doesn't mean much when you have "conservative" Democrats who are consistently willing to make deals with the Bush administration to allow them to continue their hideous practices.
The Democrats are in the majority in the Senate Intelligence Committee and all they needed was all of their party members on the committee to vote the right way to end torture by the US government. But Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) wouldn't have it. He likes torture too much. I'm sorry, let me use the Orwellian language they use - he found value in the enhanced interrogation techniques used against detainees in the war on terror...
As conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan pointed out recently, "enhanced interrogation" is literally what the Gestapo called torture in 1937 Germany. But even they didn't approve of waterboarding. I'm not kidding. They thought it was too cruel. But Senator Bill Nelson thought it was just a-okay. To be fair to Senator Nelson, the Gestapo later changed their mind and agreed that further torture was necessary.
Since "Democratic" Senator Bill Nelson wouldn't agree to cut off funding for torture, the committee had to approve a watered down version of the report instead (waterboarding pun not intended, but enjoyed once realized).
Let me pause here to say that the original proposal co-sponsored by Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that funding would be cut off if the US government didn't abide by the Army field manual on detainee treatment. Not a human rights manual. Not a hippie, tree-hugger manual. The Army field manual!
Apparently, the Army field manual is not tough enough for Senator Bill Nelson and all of the Republicans on the committee. Not enough torture in there. But to go out of their way, the original Democratic proposal even had a provision that allowed the president to authorize torture under "dire emergencies." I think that's absolutely ridiculous, but even that wasn't good enough for Nelson. He had to have torture, all of it. Not just in emergencies, but at all times. One can't have enough torture.
Now, let me give credit to the other Democrats on the committee. This issue would have never even brought up under a Republican reign in Congress. How do I know? They had five years and they didn't bring it up at all. Case closed. But in case we were confused on where they stood on the issue, the Republicans made it clearer by all voting for torture in this instance as well (the famous maverick Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is on the Intelligence Committee and once again, for the two hundreth time in a row, voted with the administration here and allowed torture to continue).
I have been critical of Senator Feinstein in the past because she seems to lean a little too close to the Bush administration on some "defense" issues, but credit where credit is due, she came through here by co-sponsoring this proposal.
And Sheldon Whitehouse is a walking testament to why you have to throw all of the so-called moderate Republicans out of Congress. Some people made the case that it was better to have Lincoln Chafee challenging the Republican Party from the inside instead of another Democrat in the Senate. Ridiculous. Senator Whitehouse has been a smart, effective and moral leader in the Senate since he took office and he has blocked the Republicans from rubberstamping all of the administrations hideous programs with their majority in the Senate.
Look at what so-called moderate Republicans do, they always vote to cover for Bush. Always! Even for horrific programs like torture that sully the good name of the United States of America.
We fight against torture because we love America, we believe in America. These senators betray our faith with their callous political calculations and their gross moral indifference.
Some make the argument that it is better to have people like Senator Bill Nelson in office serving as a Democrat then to have a Republican in there instead. So, we have to put up with their occasional votes for torture and senseless wars against countries that didn't attack us.
Senator Nelson won his re-election campaign by 22 points. If we had run a real moderate with moral convictions instead of the conservative Democrat Nelson what would have happened? We would have beat Katherine Harris by only 12 points?
Senators like Bill Nelson are not a necessary evil. They need to be challenged in primaries. If they have no concern about a challenge from the left or the center, they will only appease the right more. If they think they only have to worry about a challenge from the right, they will only lean in that direction to guard against that challenge. At the very least, challenges from the left help to balance these representatives and make them actually represent the interest of the majority of their electorate.
In the end, what we got instead in this case was a report that says Congress will evaluate whether the benefits of torture (the CIA claims they stopped terrorist plots by torturing people, they have never shown any proof of this and I don't believe it for a second) outweigh the negative consequences. Great, evaluate away.
By the way, three Republicans even voted against evaluating the program. They don't even want to know what we do with our prisoners. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. As long as we don't know what horrible things our government is doing, then we're okay. That's real responsible. Remember when the Republican Party claimed to be the party of personal responsibility?
So, this final proposal that the Democrats pushed through is definitely slightly better than what the Republicans would have done. But I'm so tired of slightly better than these Republicans. Slightly better than the guys who support Dick Cheney lock-step.
Frankly, I don't care about the Democrats. The fact that someone who calls himself a Democrat wins is of no consequence to me. I care about results. I care about policy. If they lead us away from the disaster of the Bush administration, I am ecstatic. If they move to appease them, mollify them and meet them halfway or often times let them get their way completely, then I am not interested.
You don't have to waste your breath telling me about the consequences of opposing Democrats who do terrible things. What if the Republicans win instead?! I know how bad they are and I know that democracy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils. But it doesn't always have to be. That's why there are primaries.
Conservative challengers to Republicans in Congress are usually slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun. Progressive challengers to Democrats in Congress these days are the most reasonable people I have ever met. I used to be a Republican and the average Democratic incumbent is way to the right of me. This country has tilted so far to the right we have no idea where the center is anymore.
In the short term, it is imperative to remove all of these rubberstamping, pro-torture, pro-war Republicans. In the long term, the Democrats have to clear their own house.
The fact that Senator Bill Nelson calls himself a Democrat is useless if he doesn't vote that way. A vote for torture is a dark stain that should mark the legislative career of any politician who ever casts it. I hope it haunts Senator Nelson for the rest of his career. If he is going to smear the name of our country by endorsing torture, then at least his name should be smeared, too.
Our main goal is to pressure Senator Bill Nelson (D) of Florida to take effective steps in the Senate to bring an end to the military occupation of Iraq.
