SIDA General Meeting, Tuesday, October 18th, Walmart-Free NYC & Occupy Wall Street--A View From The Inside
Members, Friends, Media and Interested Citizens;
Given the importance and timeliness of events taking place here in our City and throughout our Nation, I have asked Alex Klaver, currently an activist with the Occupy Wall Street movement, to speak to our Club members this October 18th. Alex will give us an inside view of the occupation and will answer any questions we have regarding this momentous event. This will follow Megan Pierce's presentation on Walmart-Free NYC about the impending possible Walmart invasion. (Our Public Advocate, Bill DiBlasio, may also be in attendance to comment on the Walmart situation.) Megan Pierce's bio and story about Walmart-Free NYC have appeared in our SIDA October Newsletter, but we have not published anything about Alex Klaver. Alex had previously been working together with SIDA and many other progressive organizations to find a way to win back the 13th Congressional District seat from the reactionary Republican and Tea Party forces who have hijacked our country, our credit rating , our jobs-potential and have somehow found a way to blame all US debt on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients, and poor and working families instead of on over ten years of 2 wars and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy!
Alex took a leave of absence from his job as an organizer with the NY Working Families Party to join the Occupy Wall Street movement on September 17th, the first day of the protest. He has been part of the protest every day since then, living off his savings to maintain his participation. He was arrested and held for over 6 hours after the Brooklyn Bridge march. (A class-action lawsuit has been filed in connection with that police action, contending that the demonstrators were led on into the roadway and actually set-up.) Please get the word out so our members, friends, the media and interested citizens may hear not only from our featured speaker, organizer Megan Pierce, and also our friend and colleague Alex Klaver. I hope we will hear both speakers and respond to their messages in this politically and socially tumultuous time. I am asking our Treasurer, Tom Shcherbenko, to forward this e-mail to our membership in an e-mail blast. Also, of import to our SIDA members, is the vote for Nominating Committee members that evening. Without sacrificing the opportunity to have all our members' concerns heard and addressed, we'll strive to end our program by 10:30 PM as we have been doing recently. I look forward to seeing many of you there on the evening of Oct. 18th at 8 PM.Thank you,
Dennis A. Brown, President
Staten Island Democratic Association