We are pleased to announce the Grand Opening of the Puma PAC Action Gear Emporium!
We have bumper stickers and magnets; tshirts and tattoos; window clings, PUMA ovals for your cars, and Puma balloons for your Puma PAC Parties! We have EVERYTHING you need to Pumatize the Protest Vote!
Please order today. MP is standing by and the turnaround on shipments will be lightning quick!
Every contribution goes a LONG way towards keeping the lights on at Puma PAC. THANK you!
Puma PAC Tshirts: $25 Donation. (please specify size on the order page comment section) Order HERE:
Hillary Clinton for President Tshirts, COLLECTORS’ ITEM! (please specify size on the order page comment section) – $25 Donation. Order HERE!
Puma PAC Goody Bags: $25 Donation. Order HERE!
Includes: A Puma PAC magnet, lanyard with whistle, window cling, button, bracelet, sunblock, lip balm, sun visor, bumper sticker, balloons, and 5 Puma PAC pens!
Puma PAC PARTY PACKS! Donation $100. Order HERE!
Includes 10 bumper stickers, 10 buttons, 10 bracelets, 10 Puma ovals, 10 window clings. AND 10 free magnets, 10 free balloons, 5 free Puma PAC balloons, and a free TShirt for the Hostess!
Puma PAC Travel Mugs: $12 Donation. Order HERE!
Puma PAC Sports Bottle: $10 Donation. Order HERE!
On a personal note, I have one of the posters we printed for Denver on the wall in my office (aka “the dining room”). All of the Pumas and friends signed it in different colored markers when they were at HQ. I look at the poster at least 100 times a day and I read a handful of names each time: Earlene from Jackson MO, Linda from Atlanta GA, Marji from California, Papau from Boston, and mesofree from somewhere! Wichita, Germany, Portales. What a week it was!
ALSO, Tonight we are hosting a fundraiser to help Heidi Li and her group, Democrats for Principles before Party, place an ad in Congressional Quarterly. The ads Heidi and her partner Marc Rubin have placed were tremendously effective at changing the pre-Denver narrative.
If everyone reading tonight donates just $5 (or $10 if you’ve got it) we can put Heidi over the top!
I am so excited to present this new clip from our film, The Audacity of Democracy: The Hillary Flashpoint and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party. Directed by Brad Mays and produced by Lorenda Starfelt, our documentary tells the story of what really happened and why during the Democratic primaries and in Denver, as well as traces the birth and explosion of the Puma Movement — all of us. Sit back and enjoy. I’ve also included the first clip that we presented in July in case you have not yet seen it. The final film will be released just in time for Inauguration Day, a very fitting moment in time to end this important chapter in the ongoing story of Puma PAC.
I am also excited to announce the opportunity for Puma PAC members to PRE-ORDER a copy of the film. Be the first to own a copy of what I believe will be an invaluable document in the history of not just the Democratic Party but of American Democracy itself.
Everyone who pre-orders in September will receive a VERY SPECIAL gift — a Great Puma PAC Moments in Denver memorial DVD! Everything from our protest at MSNBC to Riverdaughter’s rousing speech at The Rise rally, from Tommy Christopher’s EPIC BATTLE With the Crazed Maniacs at Puma PAC Headquarters (comedy GOLD!) to Lori’s moving interviews with dozens of Pumas who traveled from near and far to be together in Denver. This Great Moments DVD really will make you laugh and make you cry.
One of the things I focus on at my own blog is telling the stories of Women’s History. As a teacher, it became obvious to me early on that there was a lot of focus on black history and practically none on women’s history in grades K-12. In fact, I myself had to attend college to learn anything about this fascinating trajectory within history. I was 22 years old before I ever heard the names Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul. I swore then that I would do my best to educate as many women as I could about their own compelling history. With that in mind, I offer you the tale of one of the most controversial American women to ever grace our great nation. A leader in business and journalism, she came from a poor and questionable background, but she eventually made her way so high that she directly challenged the existing status quo. That’s what gadflies do.
Victoria Woodhull is a special case, and no other time in our history has been more appropriate to a lesson on her than right now. Maybe it’s because I share her wildness, having come from similar poor and roaming roots. Maybe I have an affinity for her because she was ahead of her time. Whatever the reason, she’s one of my all time favorite historical figures. She was controversial and courageous in so many ways. So indulge me a little if you will (it is Sunday after all), as I tell you the story of a poor girl exploited by her family, who then took on the world with her doe eyes, her rosy cheeks, and her mental acuity, and actually made some progress for women in America.
In her most controversial act, fearlessly, Woodhull declared her candidacy for U. S. President in 1872 (Equal Rights Party), and she had the money to support such a campaign, though not the vote. She was the first woman ever to run for that high office in America. But her origins were much different, and along the way, she left a trail broken barriers. She was nothing like Hillary Clinton, who has always played it straight every day of her life, but she was similarly defiant in the face of criticism, and every bit as accomplished and inspiring.
Victoria California Claflin was born in Homer, Ohio to a rough and ready family. Her father, Reuben, eventually took Victoria and her sister Tennessee on a traveling medicine show, exploiting them for “psychic healing.” Tennessee and Victoria grew very close during this tumultuous, uncertain time, and would remain together throughout their lives. At 15, Victoria married a doctor, Channing Woodhull, whose name she would keep even after they divorced ten years later. They had two children, Byron and Zulu.
Before the divorce, though, Woodhull had moved herself, her sister Tennessee, and her two children to New York City where she began to make connections among wealthy New Yorkers. One of these connections, a certain Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, helped finance Victoria in the very first female-run brokerage house in New York City in 1870. Calling it Woodhull, Claflin & Company, she proceeded to expand her empire from there, establishing the Woodhull & Claflin Weekly newspaper shortly thereafter. After success in their brokerage firm, the sisters were given the nicknames “Queens of Finance” and “Bewitching Brokers,” and they quickly earned a notorious reputation for the content of their newspaper. As if it were perfectly normal, the newspaper published articles on “free love,” divorce, sex outside of marriage, and, famously, was the first publication in America to publish the Communist Manifesto.
Of course, this entire time, rumors were swirling within the privileged NYC community (and beyond, due to tabloids) that the sisters were promiscuous or worse, prostitutes, and how their rhetoric was irreligious and immoral. But the sisters didn’t care. They recognized that any publicity was good publicity for women’s rights. And they wanted to be a part of that. Others within the women’s movement disagreed. They thought Woodhull and Claflin were bringing shame and notoriety to the cause of women’s rights, and that it would set it back. I contend that as a matter of history, the sisters were right. They set the margin, quite frankly. Give us rights, or you get more of this. And apparently, it worked, because by 1871, Victoria was giving a speech before Congress.
In fact, she preempted the opening of the National Women’s Suffrage Associations 3rd Annual Convention in Washington D.C., which immediately convened to go see her speak. There she argued such a revolutionary idea–that women already had the right to vote because woman was man’s equal, and thus covered under the Constitution–that many Suffragist leaders, including Stanton and Anthony, immediately invited her to represent their cause. Just as importantly, the argument was powerfully logical to several of the Committee members to which she delivered her speech. Thus, politics was the third realm, after business and publishing, that were traditionally men’s realms, that Victoria had taken on and won.
Reminder!
We have 51 Days to stop the DONC.
We will be mounting a weekend Fundraiser starting later today to raise funds for Canvassing and Outreach for our Protest of the Election. Get a jump now and donate this morning if you can, and THANK you! You can Contribute HERE!
Tonight is the debut of Murphy & Friends on our new station and home — Sheri Tagg’s NO WE WONT blog-talk radio! (www.blogtalkradio.com/no-we-wont) The show starts at 9pm eastern, and we WILL, as always, be taking your calls.
Call In at 347-539-5420
We have a VERY special guest tonight, Gloria Allred, famous women’s rights attorney and heroic Hillary delegate from California. We’ll be talking about the delegate petition, the roll call vote, and what really happened on August 27th.
Please read up on Gloria — she is a FASCINATING and accomplished woman and attorney. Here are some links:
I received this in email last night from a delegate I know and trust. I’ve removed the personal information. Please click on the links to visit the website thegreenpapers.com (it is quite a fascinating site, and worth a few minutes of prowling around — I found myself hooked).
FROM One Democratic Hillary Delegate To Another on 9/2/08:
“Found a tally of votes on this site. http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P08/D.phtml – It appears every vote was in fact not counted. Can’t find anything on DNCC or Alice Germond related sites. What BS. So 18 million votes and what gets recorded is 341.5 delegates??? I’m just glad I’m one of them [State Name], but I’d be really angry if I wasn’t…”
FROM my delegate friend To ME at murphy@pumampac.org later that day:
“Hello: The Green Papers are a very well respected source of non-partisan information on the political process in each state in the US. It includes information on the results of elections, as well as the recent total vote tally at the Democratic National Convention. After all *4,000* Obama and Clinton delegates voted at breakfast last Wednesday morning, press the link below to see just how many votes the Democratic National Committee actually recorded. Most of you will be amazed that your votes were not counted, at least if you voted for Senator Hillary Clinton. You see, the Democratic National Committee did not want the nation to see how close the election actually was, so we voted at breakfast, they tallied the votes, saw how close the race was, and decided they would not add most state’s votes to the official tally. Folks, wake up, this is supposed to be a Democracy. And, this is the party that people want to elect their next president from. If I had the time to tell you about all of the fraud that went on at the convention, you would not have the time to read about all of it. I do not say to vote for the Republican or Democratic Party. At this point, aware that both parties play the same game, I have decided I cannot, in good conscience, vote for either party. To think, they actually had a seminar at the convention called, ” How to be a Practicing Jew and be a Good Democrat.” Click the link to see if your vote was counted, oh, go ahead now, take a look: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P08/D.phtml
…snip…
This is exactly what we were trying to avoid by having the petition for a floor vote. This is what I got into the disagreement with my [state's] Whipover. Gloria Allred was handing out the petitions to get a vote on thefloorand Chris Lavery, who I had a run in with when volunteering for Hillary months earlier, came over to me and intimidated me by saying, ”You realize you are an At-Large delegate for Hillary and Hillarydoesnot want people to sign this. This would be an embarrassment to Hillary.”Later, in a message to my facebook account, Chris told me “he wouldrememberwhat I had done” basically telling me I would never get an at-largedelegate slot again for Hillary. I told him I could care less because politics was not my life and I was there to represent the public and tostand up for the constitution.Check out the bottom of the site, but I will say you will never know howeach individual voted. Those sign in sheets/tally sheets have beenexpunged. I’m sure.”
You can probably imagine what today’s Prowl is Puma PAC. Let’s try to Recreate 8-two-seven-08 shall we?
Call and fax your State Party Chair and ask him or her for the breakdown of the breakfast vote for your state on August 27th. And if they tell you they don’t have the information, ask them — WHY NOT?
Please post in comments any response you receive. We are especially interested in first-hand accounts from delegates of intimidation and bullying. You can send me anything private at murphy@pumapac.org and I pledge to keep the information anonymous for those delegates who still feel intimidated.
There will be a more detailed PROWL in your email boxes later this morning.
If the big-shots at the DONC and the Obama Movement thought Puma PAC was going away to sulk or to conveniently turn into Republicans, they should think again. We will be here EVERY DAY in the Democratic Party, until Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and Donna Brazile ARE OUT OF THEIR JOBS and until Barack Obama is BACK IN CHICAGO where he belongs.
And, A heads-up to Republican interlopers: Puma PAC is a Democratic Party political action committee. We welcome all Democrats and Independents who want to be part of the Voice of the Voters in the Democratic Party. We will NOT be voting for Barack Obama on November 4th because we are PROTESTING the ELECTION. But that doesn’t suddenly make us Republicans. We are still pro-choice, pro-equal-rights for women, LGBT, and people of color, pro sex-ed and pro-science. We like gay marriage. We like labor unions a lot. We like hippies and anti-war protesters. We like immigrants — in fact many of our most passionate and effective members are gay, hippie, anti-war, legal, entrepreneurial immigrants (well, maybe not ALL in one, but pretty close). We want Universal Health Care for every single American. We want to raise taxes and close tax loopholes on the very rich and help the poor. We want to protect and help the old, the ill, and the vulnerable.
So, you know, it’s great if you’re a Republican — that’s excellent and all, but this site probably isn’t for you. And anyway, your work here is wasted. We’re not voting for Barack Obama. We didn’t need your help to get to this decision, and we don’t need you to hold our hands all the way to the voting booth on November 4th. In fact, it’s probably a bad idea — the more you reveal of your true political beliefs the more you will remind us why we are NOT and never have been Republicans. You’d probably be spending your time better trying to make the polar bears cry or writing love letters to Ann Coulter or something.
PUMAs This is a quick accounting of the money that you have donated. We are working with an accountant to make the detailed and permanent records necessary by law and for accuracy. However, I know there is much curiosity and interest in how Puma PAC has been using the money you all have contributed. Our detractors (enemies?) like to throw around irresponsible and volatile innuendoes of fraud and misappropriation on my part. I know these slanders are totally without basis in fact, but that doesn’t mean others don’t sometimes worry. So, here is a quick breakdown of where and how we spent Puma PAC’s money in the last 3 months. The lion’s share of Puma Pac’s money was spent to get to and be effective in Denver, as expected. After that, the biggest expense has been The Audacity of Democracy, our feature-length documentary, part of which we screened to great acclaim in Denver.
Donations directed specifically for use to get to Denver totaled over $8,000. The rest of the Denver expenses were paid for out of the general fund.
I have not included the daily expenses of keeping the blog going and flyers, posters etc. Murphy, Mama, Maryland and the 5 Regional Moderators have not accepted one cent for the work that they do. All of the artistic contributions of graphics etc. have been donated.
As you can see from the tally sheet below, Puma PAC is basically out of funds. Going forward, we have a political action agenda that we will be unrolling this week — The Nothing On Top for Democrats (or N.O.T. for Democrats) in 2008. This will include Prowls and daily actions to get our message out to the DONC and to the country that Puma PAC is Protesting the Presidential Election, but also working hard to reunite the Democratic Party for November 5th. We will be asking ALL of our members to volunteer on November 4th as poll watchers, and to contribute time and leg-work to GOTV and other campaign work in October and during Election week in key districts. We will be targeting Good Guy Democrats for Puma PAC support, and Bad Guy Democrats (Nancy Pelosi? Howard Dean??) for Puma PAC disapproval.
Filming for The Audacity of Democracy is mostly complete — though there will be some scenes of Election Night 2008 — and the editing process is in full swing. I believe it is a smashing film that will be talked about for years to come. Denver was a HUGE success, though draining. We may not have achieved our political goals 100%, but we DID succeed at making the country aware of us as a Powerful Voting Bloc in the Democratic Party. And that IS a political success. Only the Shrieking Panickers refer to us as racists or insignificant anymore. I believe we need to follow our success in Denver with a juggernaut of political activism over the next 9 weeks. I want Puma PAC literature EVERYWHERE in the important swing states and districts. I want people on the ground, knocking on doors, and hosting house parties, getting out the N.O.T. for Democrats in 2008 message. This means printing, and phone-banking, and getting voters’ lists, and mailing, and transportation, and renting a headquarters (I’m thinking Ohio for some reason ).
So, we need to start rebuilding, which means I need to ask for contributions again. We can, and should, build slowly. We learned A LOT in Denver about what are the more and less effective ways to use our funds, and there are definitely mistakes I made that I won’t make again. That being said, an effective political organization needs a working budget to be successful. SO, if you can spare a small contribution today PLEASE consider it. You can Contribute HERE, And THANK you very, very much.
COSTS
Travel Vouchers to help Pumas and Puma Friends get to Denver: $ 10,000.00
Puma PAC HQ and Blogging Center and Lodging for Pumas and Puma Friends (most slept on the floor without a kitchen) $ 11,000.00
Blatant steal from Maryland Puma’s lovely post last night.
“For all PUMAs, it has been a week of excitement, anticipation, disappointment, anger, tears, frustration, surprise and uncertainty. We all need time to evaluate our positions on a very personal level, but let us not forget that it is Democracy we are fighting for.
Of the people, by the people, for the people.
Tonight we take a step away from the politics and platforms to reflect on our journey and our success in Denver.
Let’s step away from the partisan party and celebrate what we, an extremely diverse group of patriots, accomplished in the name of democracy.
Share your stories from this week. What media bite was your favorite from PUMA coverage in Denver? Where were you during the roll call? Who were you with? What shocked you the most? How did your friends and family react to YOUR reaction? Were you in Denver? Who did you meet? What did YOU do in Denver? Insert your story here.
Much love,
Maryland PUMA”
I’ll start.
The first story that comes to mind is Monday night after our long day of demonstrations and The Rise at Cheesman Park, Sheri, MP, and I were back at our tiny crash pad. Mama was asleep, Sheri and MP were snuggled up on the air mattress on the floor and I was trying to keep up with the blog. I thought they were going to sleep, but no way. Sheri and MP started chatting about the days’ events, the people the politics, the gossip and the fun. We ended up out on the balcony until 3 in the morning watching the skyline and the moon and talking about our plans for the future. After they went to sleep I felt so refreshed and rejuvenated that I blogged for another hour and a half. I think Dances was wide awake across town doing the same thing. Southjersey puma too.
PUMAS - stay the course. We expected this. Our mission has not changed. This is no longer about Senator Clinton - this is about all of us who have been told to sit down, shut up and fall in line. This is about all of us in Denver and around the nation who have been counted out.
I ask that ALL PUMAS consider Hillary’s message from last night.
“When you hear the dogs - KEEP RUNNING!”
We will not sit down. We will continue to fight.
We will remember in November.
WE STILL OWN OUR VOTES!
FOCUS ON THE MISSION. DEMOCRACY.
Tomorrow is a new day. Be good to each other. We must remain united.
Mama, Murphy, Maryland
I will post more when things calm down here in Denver.
).
