"Nash-ional" election reform conference, Nashville 4/8-10/05: Y'all come!

Fly by night

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Sun Mar-06-05 09:52 PM
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"Nash-ional" election reform conference, Nashville 4/8-10/05: Y'all come!

Edited on Sun Mar-06-05 09:57 PM by Fly by night

Attention DUers:

The Tennessee election reform grassroots group, Gathering To Save Our Democracy, is pleased to announce (finally) that we will be hosting a three day conference in beautiful Nashville on April 8-10 that will focus on the 2004 election fraud and theft, and the action we must take as a nation to protect the franchise.

We have been really impressed by the successes of the two recent California "teach-ins" and of the other cities that are planning similar "teach-ins". Our goal here in Nashville is to broaden the reach of the conference by inviting the country to join us (literally). Nashville is a very central location, and we have already heard from election reform activists from over 20 states who intend to join us. We have also received a great deal of help and support locally and nationally and are honored by the willingness to participate of some of the national leaders in the election reform movement whom we have all grown to know and love (including some of our very own here on DU). (A list of some of the speakers follows -- more to come.) All of that support and cooperation will make this Nashville conference in April a success.

April 8-10 is a Friday through a Sunday. The actual conference will begin Friday evening at 5:30 pm and end on Saturday evening at 6:00 pm. In addition, we hope to have discussion groups early Friday afternoon (1-4 pm) and Sunday morning (9-noon) before and after the conference. (The list of topics follows below). This is a grassroots conference, organized to serve the needs and concerns of the grassroots around the country who'd like to get together for several intense days of education, discussion and consensus building.

And that means all of you folks. This conference is for you, it is for us.

So please read all about it below, and help me keep this kicked for a while. Let me know what you think and whether you'll be able to join us. In a day or so, people will be able to register for the conference at www.freepress.org, but we're not there yet. (I'll send through another thread when that happens.) In the meantime, send us Gathering folks some good vibes and your thoughts on how we plan to spend springtime in the Orange State takin' our country back. All y'all come now, y'hear?

Here's the detailed info on our goals, our guests and our interests. If you want a copy of the tentative program, email me at tracevu@bellsouth.net and I'll send it to you. Hope to see many of you soon in the mid-South. Bernie
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GATHERING TO SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY
A NATIONAL CONFERENCE
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, APRIL 8-10, 2005

Background

Since November 3, 2004, there has been a groundswell of concern, and a plethora of evidence, that the conduct of the 2004 Presidential election in the United States was highly problematic. These concerns have been belittled by many and ignored by the corporate media in this country. However, the weight of the evidence is overwhelming that a multi-faceted strategy of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement, potential manipulation of electronically cast votes in many states, and other instances of election fraud and theft improperly influenced the will of the American people and may have subverted the “consent of the governed”.

This evidence was sufficient to have stimulated the Government Accountability Office and U.S. Representative John Conyers and other national leaders to investigate the evidence of wrong-doing. This evidence also caused the U.S. Congress to suspend their routine business and to debate the merits of accepting Ohio’s electoral votes on January 6, 2005, a historic occasion that highlighted the many problems in Ohio and also served to shed light on similar problems in other states. With this Congressional debate, the American people’s responsibility to win back our democratic process was enumerated and enjoined.

To date, most of the discussion and information sharing on the problems with the 2004 election have occurred in the virtual world of the Internet. While there have been some local gatherings and regional and national protests focused on this issue, there has been no opportunity for concerned citizens, researchers, activists and elected officials to meet under one roof to review the wealth of evidence for the many threats to our democratic processes which the 2004 election revealed and to discuss the urgent need for election reform. While some panels on this topic have been added to several national meetings, these panels are not nearly sufficient to present all of the evidence for the 2004 election problems. It is also insufficient to fully inform the American people enough to motivate them to seek redress for the violations of our voting rights which occurred with this past election and to coalesce sentiment around an election reform agenda.

For these reasons, this three day Gathering To Save Our Democracy – A National Conference will provide the appropriate forum for expanding public awareness, for congregating the accumulated knowledge under one roof and for providing a platform for mobilizing support for election reform and justice

Nashville, Tennessee is the setting of this conference. Nashville has a proud history of early successes in the 1960s civil rights movement, we are in a Southern and supposedly “red” state (we prefer to consider ourselves an Orange State, in deference to the Ukrainian example), we are centrally located within a day’s drive of 60% of the U.S. population, we have an international airport serviced by a dozen major airlines, and we have several locations tentatively identified as appropriate and historic venues for hosting the conference. But most importantly, we have an energetic (and growing) band of citizen-activists for election reform in Tennessee who would insure the successful implementation of this conference.

This conference will be a comprehensive and historic event that will bring together the “major players” who have surfaced in the dialogue over the problems with the 2004 election and the need for election reform. We also anticipate that the conference will be a gathering place for the many concerned citizens throughout the nation and the world who are intent on preserving democracies. We hope that this conference will help break the media silence about the problems with the 2004 election within our country and provide a forum for increasing the world’s attention to our threatened democratic principles. In addition, we will hold discussion sessions before and after the conference to exchange ideas and build coalitions to pursue the necessary elements of election reform and to redress our concerns with the 2004 election

The conference registration fee is $30 (with exceptions for hardships), and will cover all conference-related activities. Registration details will be posted later re: registering at www.freepress.org. People who cannot attend but who would like to support the conference by making a donation will be able to do that also. We will work to provide copies of the written materials and/or videotapes of the conference for these supporters.

Thank you for supporting the conference and for promoting the preservation of democracy in America.
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NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE 2004 ELECTION AND THE NEED FOR ELECTION REFORM CONFIRMED SPEAKERS (in order of appearance)

Bernard Ellis, Gathering To Save Our Democracy
Civil rights leaders: Dr. Tommie Morton-Young, Dr. Sonnye Dixon, Dr. Charles Kimbrough
Cliff Arnebeck, Moss v. Bush
Bob Fitrakis, Moss v. Bush, www.freepress.org
R.H. Phillips, Ohio election fraud researcher
Joanne Roush, Ohio recount volunteer from Wisconsin
Bernard Windham, Election Incident Reporting System
Judith Alter, New Mexico
Paul Lehto, Washington state
John Gideon, votersunite.org
Kathy Dopp, USCountVotes
Jonathan Simon, exit poll researcher
Brad Friedman, BradBlog/Velvet Revolution
Democratic Underground spokesman
David Cobb, Presidential candidate, Green Party
Lara Schaffer, Verified Voting Consortium
Susan Truitt, CASE-America
Phil Fry, CASE-Ohio
Larry Quick, National Ballot Integrity Project
Teresa Hommel, Where’s The Paper
Larry English, Information Impact Intl
David Lytel, Honest Elections Campaign
Clinton Curtis, Whistle-Blower
(and many more)
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The conference itself will run in Nashville from 5:30 pm Friday, April 8 until 6:00 pm, Saturday, April 9. However, we are also scheduling pre-conference (early Friday afternoon) and post-conference (Sunday morning) discussion groups on topics of interest to the election reform and election justice movement. Topics will include:

1. Worthy (or emerging) state-level election reform models
2. Conducting an election audit: what is required?
3. Be the media: Strategies for increasing public awareness of election reform
4. A status report on Tennessee’s election reform legislation
5. Essential elements of a free, fair and verifiable election
6. Thinking & Acting for the Country: National Election Reform Strategies & Movements
7. Election Statistics 301 – An even more detailed review of the “data”
8. Electronic voting – the good, the bad and the really bad (and what to do about it)
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So, once again, DUers. If you can, try to join us in Nashville. We'll work to find housing for as many of you as possible. It will be well worth it for this chance for so many of us to get together. Besides, Steve Earle's playing in town on Saturday night, so anything's possible....

Stay tuned, and keep this thread kicked. And thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support for this idea that we've talked about here (and everywhere else) for a while. In great part, it's the DUers' spirit that really made this Nashville conference happen.

Hope to see all of you soon. The dogwoods and the democrats will be in bloom.