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Monday, January 14, 2008

MN United Steelworkers (USW)

Twin Cities DSA supports the MN United Steelworkers (USW) campaign 'Moving the Midwest towards Energy Independence'. The campaign aims at expanding renewable energy development and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
Less reliance on foreign oil will reduce the chance of going to war over limited resources. More renewable energy and alternative fuel sources in Minnesota will create quality jobs for MN workers and family farmers. Other benefits include less pollution and global warming as well as greater price stability and energy reliability for MN consumers.
Building links between the labor and environmental movement is a step towards ecological socialism. Check out these links at:
www.blugreenalliance.com and www. apolloalliance.org

Recent Events


November 2007:
Guest speaker, Kip Sullivan, author of one of the finest researched books on the American health care system entitled The Health Care Mess: How we got into it and how we'll get out of it. He works at COACT (Citizen Organizations Acting Together). He has worked closely with HCCM (Health Care Campaign of Minnesota), and more recently the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition.

September 2007:
During the week of September 17, 2007, four executive committee members of the Luxembourg local of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) visited the Twin Cities. The tour was sponsored by the Washington Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The members were Koba Krause, Renata Fackler, Nikolaus Bahn and Bianca Bethke. There were several events scheduled around town, with the main theme of discussion being health care, renewable energy, Iraq War and European unification. The first major event was at the home of former Mpls. mayor and long-time Congressman Don Fraser and his wife Arvonne. 30 people from the DFL Education Foundation and Twin Cities DSA were present. The second day, MN Rep. Steve Simon (DFL) gave the visitors a two hour tour of the state Capitol building in St Paul, much more extensive than a regular tour. For lunch, there was a discussion with at the University of Minnesota Center for German and European Studies, led by director Sabine Engel. Representatives from the political science department, history, European studies, and others were in attendance-among them Minnesota's most famous historian, Prof. Hy Berman. Sabine Engel then treated the visitors to a tour of the University of Minnesota campus. There was also a brief talk with the dean of the Humphrey Institute, Brian Atwood. Wednesday, there was a roundtable discussion with ten or so labor union leaders at the AFL-CIO headquarters in St Paul, led by the editor of Workday Minnesota, Barb Kucera. The Luxembourg delegation then had conversations with staffers of a feminist bookstore in Minneapolis and also the "Wedge", the Twin Cities largest food co-op. A political report followed up their visit in October.

April 2007
Special guest, Saul Escobar Toledo, from Mexico's PRD party visits from Mexico City. Events in Mpls-St Paul included student student activities scheduled at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, DSA dinner in Minneapolis, and events in Chicago, IL.