Advocacy & Activism

Activists from Sacramento, CA area attended the Global March Against Chemtrails and Geoengineering, in Old Sacramento on August 25, 2013.

Guest Zaher Wahab, Professor Emeritus from Lewis & Clark College and a native of Afghanistan, describes the current condition of and how the American occupation and other civil disturbances have harmed the Afghan educational system. The Afghan government is a puppet government and is seen as illegitimate by the people, in part because of the power of NGOs operating there. Reconstruction efforts have been a failure with most of the money going back to the donor countries or spent by donor country's own NGOs.

Populist Dialogues host David Delk talks with Linda Gustitus, President of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. The first part of program deals with America as a torturer and changes in that since Pres. Obama became president. And then moves on to talk about another form of torture, solitary confinement in the US. The US has over 80,000 people in solitary, some of them being there for over 30 years. Linda describes some of the effects on people and how we can help end solitary confinement by organizing in our local communities.

The Oregon legislature passed a bill regulating drone use in Oregon by public agencies but left drone use by individuals and corporations without rules or oversight. Guest Jason Kafoury, a Portland Trail lawyer and organizer with the Oregon Progressive Party, talks about the party's campaign first with the City of Portland and now the state to craft laws which would ban private drone use, create a registry of drone users (both public and private) and put in place effective controls on public agency use of drones.

Guests Tamara Staton and Phil Carver discuss the growing Citizens Climate Lobby (CLL) and how people can be involved to advance a Fee & Dividend Proposal to reduce the amount of climate carbon to below 350 PPM. Tamara Staton is the leader of Portland's CCL chapter and Phil is a policy advisor to Oregon's Department of Energy. Fee & Dividend would impose a fee on the production of fossil fuels and rebate it back to the citizens, creating an incentive to reduce the amount of fossil fuel production and use.

Paul Cienfuegos returns for part 2 of our discussion of creating local community rights movements to prevent usually large national and multinational corporations from dominating our democracy. Paul reviews the history of the regulatory box designed by corporate interests to regulate the peoples' participation in decision-making. He also discusses the movement to give nature rights, enforceable by citizens and looks at how the community rights movement is developing here in Oregon.

Community Rights organizer Paul Cienfuegoes wants to reduce or eliminate corporate rule by engaging communities to enact community rights ordinance which says that corporations are prohibited from engaging in certain activities in local communities, many times in direct contradiction to state or federal law. Paul discuss successes in American local communities as well as internationally. Part 1 of 2 part series

--We visit Red Mountain Park in Birmingham, Alabama.

--We talk with Michael Ronkin about the importance of destinations for pedestrians.

--We learn how speed kills at a pedestrian safety event in Silver Spring, Maryland.

--We meet the executive director of the Palmetto Cycling Coalition in Columbia, South Carolina.

--We meet a mother whose daughter was killed by a speeding driver in Irmo, South Carolina.

--We travel to Gaithersburg, Maryland, to learn about fire and evacuation research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

--We look at the role of cognitive systems in managing large crowds, such as the 2009 Inauguration of President Obama.

--We visit the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS) in Richmond, Virginia.

--We meet a maker of bamboo bicycles.

--We meet a maker of titanium bicycles.