Patriots for Change: Economic Social Justice Education Community Action

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Patriots for Change

139 Bell St. #204/206

(Ground Floor)
Chagrin Falls, OH 44022
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Steering Committee Meetings
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Second Friday of each

month at 10:00 AM

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Every Saturday
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Public Officials

PUBLIC OFFICIALS

John Kasich
Governor of Ohio

Sherrod Brown
josh mandel

U.S. Senator

Rob Portman

U.S. Senator

David Joyce

David Joyce

Congressman
14th District

Marcia L. Fudge

U.S. Congresswoman
11th District

Timothy Grendell josh mandel

Ohio State Senator
18th District

Thomas Patton

Ohio State Senator
24th District

Nina Turner

Ohio State Senator
25th District

Marlene Anielski

Ohio State Representative
District 17

Armond Buddish
Buddish

Minority Leader,
Ohio State Representative District 8

Richard Hollington

Ohio State Representative District 98

Jack Schron

Cuyahoga County Council District 6

Ed Fitzgerald
Cuyahoga County Executive

If your official is not listed, use one of the following links:

Locate Ohio officials by zipcode

Ohio maps with district names and links to websites

Patriots For Change Officers 2013

Patriots for Change

2013 Officers

Judy Kramer-President

Ray Kolcaba-Vice President

Kathy Kolcaba-Treasurer

Debi Thomas-Secretary

Steering Committee

UPCOMING EVENTS

UPCOMING EVENTS

P4C MEMBERSHIP MEETING

SAVE THE DATE

JUNE 22nd

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

NEW OFFICE

Please visit our new offices

Just not very far... from the second floor to the first floor. Still at the same old address - 139 Bell Street in Chagrin but now the office numbers are 204 and 206. It’s a bigger, brighter office.

BILL ROWE PRESENTS

Bill Rowe Presents

THE ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Saturday, April 20th
10:00am
Chagrin Falls Library

This is a preview for a talk Bill will be giving in Charleston West Virginia in June to academics for the Julian Jaynes Society.

The talk in Chagrin will be two presentations. How consciousness arose historically, and how it arises in infancy.

The first part will outline Julian Jaynes's theory of consciousness as presented in his 1977 book

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

The second part will look at what is unique about the human infant/caregiver relationship that allows consciousness to emerge in children

FRACKING AND YOUR HEALTH

FRACKING AND YOUR HEALTH

Presentation

Deborah Cowden, MD

Friday April 26th at 6:30 pm

Huntsburg Town Hall

16534 Mayfield Rd. Huntsburg Ohio

Refreshments Available!

Hosted by Frack Free Geauga

Co-sponsored by:

Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake County Farmers Union
Ohio Ecological Food and Farmers Association
Ashtabula County Water Watch
Concerned Citizens Portage County

Frack Free Lake County

KELLY'S WORKING WELL FARM

KELLEY'S WORKING WELL FARM

Save the date.

Saturday May 11th

10:00 at South Franklin Circle

Kelly Clark will be presenting a talk "The Farm Next Door" Followed by a tour of the farm next door.

More details to follow.

PATRIOTS ANNUAL GARAGE SALE - SEPTEMBER 2013

SPRING CLEANING??

THINK OF DONATING

TO OUR

ANNUAL GARAGE SALE

Hello Patriots! If you are tired of endless politics and petitions, or even if you still love it all, your heart COULD (also) turn to Spring. For some of us, that COULD mean the urge to clean out the garage, the attic, the household dust collectors, books and CDs, kitchen ware, etc. And we have just the repository for your boxed up items and small furniture before our Annual Garage Sale in September. You can bring your treasures to the Patriots office at 139 Bell St, on Saturday mornings from 10-12 when the office is generally open (remember we are now on the first floor making access easy). OR you can bring items to any of our programs and a member of the Steering Committee will take your stuff to our office. We have at our disposal and empty two-car garage where the stuff can be stored as it comes

ISSUES AND NEWS

ISSUES AND NEWS

HOW WILL THE SEQUESTER AFFECT OHIO

HOW WILL THE SEQUESTER AFFECT OHIO

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/sequester-factsheets/Ohio.pdf

EARTH JUSTICE PETITION

From Fred Welty:

earth justice

EARTH JUSTICE PETITION

Please send this petition out to P4C members. It is important to eliminate the exemptions from environmental laws which drillers now exploit. Please follow the link for an explanation and the petition. https://secure.earthjustice.org

Redistricting

Redistricting

Another 2013 Position for Patriots

I want to share something about redistricting with all of you. This is from Fred Livingstone, husband of Pearl the founder of NOVA. It should be extremely interesting to those of you who are concerned about redistricting. Fran Dryer will keep up to date with this information, and I will keep up with the League of Women Voters involvement. As you can see, any discussion will be highly politicized, and progress will be slow.

Becky Thomas

From Fred: I wanted to bring you up to date with what has been going on with redistricting. There is a group headed by the League of Women Voters in Ohio which has been working with the Ohio Modernization Commission to get a proposed fix for the redistricting system now in the Ohio Constitution. In the last legislative session two bipartisan proposals were submitted, both of which provided for a redistricting commission comprised of the Governor, Secretary of State, State Auditor and the minority and majority leaders of both the state house and senate. This commission would need to agree on a map to be proposed to the voters and either one or two members of the minority party would have to be included (one proposal provides one and the other two minority votes). Both proposals would provide for compactness and continuity and one would include the criteria included in Issue 2 including competitiveness. Both would only be effective after the next census in 2020.

I have suggested to the League representative on the group that there should be 3 simultaneous efforts:

1.Get the General Assembly to propose an amendment along the lines of the above proposals for the composition of the commission, the criteria to be utilized (including competitiveness) and, if possible, making it effective before the next election after passage of the amendment (highly unlikely).

2. Get the modernization commission to propose a similar amendment and;

3. Draft a proposed amendment which could be the subject of Initiative Petitions circulated and filed by early July to get on the November ballot. The Initiative would be effective for the next election.

The speaker of the House has stated that the Modernization Commission should deal with this issue as part of their work. What that commission ends up doing is making recommendations to the General Assembly which has the last word on what, if any, amendments to the constitution will be proposed to the voters. At a recent City Club debate on this issue, Representative Mike Curtin stated that the issue has been studied enough and that it would be a waste of time to go through the modernization commission when it has to end up with the General Assembly anyway. Rep. and House Minority Leader Armand Budish recently stated that redistricting is the most important issue facing the General Assembly. We shall see what evolves...

Fred J. Livingstone

fred_livingstone@yahoo.com

GUN SENSUS

GunSensus

Building Consensus to Reduce Gun Violence

Background Checks on All Gun Sales--

Stop Sellin' to Felons!

As you contact your members of Congress about proposals to reduce gun violence in our communities, you may find the information below useful.

Making the Case for Universal Background Checks

on All Gun Sales.

The "Gun Show Loophole" is a gap in federal law that allows private citizens, who are not licensed firearms dealers, to sell guns without conducting background checks or keeping records. These "private sellers" often sell guns at the thousands of gun shows that take place every weekend across the country. But, private sales of guns also take place daily between individuals as people sell guns to family members, friends and strangers without any requirement that the purchaser undergo a background check.

Federal law requires federally licensed gun dealers (FFLs) to conduct background checks on all buyers to make sure they are not felons or otherwise prohibited from owning guns. Dealers must conduct background checks whether at their primary place of business, or at a gun show.

Private sellers are not required to conduct background checks or keep records. In fact, federal law prevents private sellers from access to the National Instant Background Check System (NICS).

Many criminals know they can bypass background checks by purchasing from private sellers, and use gun shows and individual sales as their sources for obtaining guns.

Background checks work. Since the Brady Background Check Law took effect in 1998, 1.7 million people have failed background checks, preventing them from purchasing guns from a licensed dealer. Unfortunately, private sales without a background check may have permitted many of them to get guns illegally.

The gun show loophole facilitates sales to criminals:

80% of felons admitted getting guns from private sellers. A 2009 study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research states, "Data from a national survey of inmates indicated that nearly 80 percent of those who had used a handgun in a crime had acquired it through a transaction with an individual who was not a licensed gun dealer."

"Gun shows and flea markets are a major venue for illegal trafficking."[1] according to the ATF.

Columbine: All four guns used in the Columbine school massacre were bought at gun shows without background checks.

New York City's investigation of gun shows: In 2009, the City of New York sent undercover investigators to gun shows in Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada to find out if private sellers and federally licensed gun dealers at the shows would engage in illegal sales practices. They found that74% of sellers approached by investigators, who verbally indicated they were legally prohibited from having guns, were willing to make the sale.

Widespread support for closing the gun show loophole:

A majority of Americans, NRA members included, support closing the loophole: In a series of polls conducted since the Newtown, CT massacre, approximately 92% of Americans, including gun owners and NRA members, support requiring a background check for all gun sales.

[1] Dept. of the Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, "Following the Gun: Enforcing Federal Laws Against Firearms Traffickers" (June 2000), available at http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/pdf/followingthegun_internet.pdf (documents criminal investigations started July 1996 through December 1998).

Thank you for all you do to make our families and communities safer!

If you would like to discuss anything related to gun violence or policy, please feel free to call me at 216-470-3086, or email me at loneillpost1@aol.com .

Want news and information on gun-related issues? Please follow me on Twitter. Find me @Gunsensus on Twitter.com, and click follow.

NOVA VOLUNTEER MEETING NOTES

NOVA Volunteer Meeting Notes

Fran Dryer (member of the NOVA Board) and I attended a meeting of the new Board and some volunteers to hear about plans for 2013. After having a very successful 2012 where they registered over 3,000 people in under-served areas of Cuyahoga County, they have made a commitment to being proactive in continuing to register voters even in non-election years. They are in the process of establishing relationships with social service agencies and schools to register voters on a regular basis throughout the year.

Norman Robbins, former professor at Case Western Reserve, is the statistician for NOVA. Because of his expertise and leadership, NOVA has been asked to testify at the Board of Elections in Cuyahoga County and in Columbus about numbers of absentee voters, voter ID policy, and how to better register voters in social service agencies.

Below are the areas of concentration that they will need volunteers for.

*Research: using our registration data for research purposes, using data from the Board of Elections (BOE) and other sources to show voting issues that need to be addressed. Norman Robbins has contacted members of his group on current priorities.

* Advocacy: supporting positions on issues that increase voting access via letters to the editor, attending or speaking at BOE meetings, and joining other local or statewide group activities that support fairness in elections.

* Database: creating a database with specific information on all our volunteers (app. 60) to effectively schedule them for appropriate registration times and locations, match them with new social service organizational opportunities, etc.

* Relationship Expansion: Thanking people we're previously registered, asking if they have received confirmation from the BOE on their registration, how to keep registration current/moving, upcoming elections, etc.

* Infrastructure:Organizing registration packets for volunteer pick-up and drop off at a new, convenient location, help with proofing and scanning the registrations for research purposes, and delivering the cards to the BOE.

* Liaison w/neighborhood and social service organizations: establishing a relationship for ongoing registration of groups of 25-30. We'll be checking out some of these locations with our volunteers before our March meeting.

* Pearl has contacted the Cleveland School District; we are waiting for information on registration for this spring and next fall.

NOVA which is a nonpartisan organization has a new president, Susan Alcorn, who is a trusted experienced colleague of Pearl Livingstone (founder of NOVA).

NOVA will continue to need your help to register voters or become more involved on other committees. Please contact Fran Dryer if you are interested.

Click here to visit NOVA's site.

--Becky Thomas