Move to Amend Reports

In light of Martin Luther King Day and the fifth anniversary of Citizens United this week, we feature an excerpt from Dr. King's Beyond Vietnam speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. Following this speech, we talk with National Leadership Team members Daniel Lee and George Friday about the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and its connection with the Democracy Movement.

You can listen to the full speech here.

This week features Stop LAPD Spying organizer Jamie Garcia to talk with us about the police militarization, public-private surveillance, and the convergence of counter-terrorism policies with civilian law enforcement.

Jamie Garcia is an organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and Register Nurse in the city of Los Angeles, CA. Stop LAPD Spying Coalition was founded in September 2011 to study and expose Los Angeles Police Department's policies of surveillance, spying, and infiltration. The Coalition is working to build a grassroots movement against the convergence of counter terrorism policies with domestic policing under the guise of intelligence lead policing.

For more information, visit StopLAPDSpying.org.

This week features lifetime activist and affiliate organizer for Move to Amend in Tuscaloosa, Jim Price, to talk with us about his experience as a Southern organizer for justice and how to approach grassroots organizing in "red states" like Alabama. 

Jim Price has spent most of his adult life as an activist and organizer for justice in the southern United States.  For twenty-six years, Jim served as a field representative, grassroots organizer, and lobbyist at the Sierra Club.  He was a founder of the Club’s National Environmental Justice Grassroots Organizing Program through which he supported numerous local organizations representing low income white and nonwhite communities throughout the U.S. in their struggles.  During the 1990s, Jim helped initiate the Sierra Club’s Corporate Accountability Project.  He presented a popular presentation “Corporations and the Deterioration of Democracy” at over fifty venues. In the mid-90’s Jim became a Principal with the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD).  He was also a founder of the Alliance for Democracy, served on its first Board of Directors, and helped found the Birmingham, Alabama Chapter.  Jim’s Unitarian Universalist community has been a great support to him.  The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tuscaloosa’s Social Justice Team and Board of Trustees have both endorsed the Move to Amend amendment. Since retiring to Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 2012, Jim has been an active organizer in the Move to Amend – Tuscaloosa affiliate.

Happy New Years from Move to Amend Reports! 

On our first edition of the New Year, we feature Move To Amend Executive Director Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap along with Outreach Director and Leadership Team member David Cobb to talk with us about where we have been in 2014 and where together we are going through 2015.