4) THE NEW FACE OF THE CAMPUS LEFT?
                                   5) DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS MAKE THE NEWS



1) YDS CONFERENCE UPDATES: NEW SPEAKERS !
TURNING THE TIDE TOWARDS FREEDOM:
Building the Youth and Student Movement for Justice
February 17-19, 2006 - New York City
[PDF conference flyer] print and distribute to publicize locally


People come to YDS conferences from all over the country. If you are coming from out of town, it is important to plan your trip as early as possible.  Register on-line today!

New featured speakers include:

• Liza Featherstone - New York City-based journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation, Lingua Franca , the San Francisco Bay Guardian , the New York Times, the Washington Post and Ms. She is the co-author of Students Against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement and author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker's Rights at Wal-Mart;

• Anya Kamenetz  Author of Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to be Young (Riverhead Books, 2006).  At 25, her articles have appeared in The New York Times , the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Salon, Slate, The Nation, and the Village Voice . In 2004, the Voice nominated her for a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for her work on the series "Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young." In January 2005, the series became a biweekly column.  Her new book, blog, articles and tour info can be found at: http://anyakamenetz.com;

• Jay Woodson  Black Radical Congress Coordinating Committee and Youth Caucus Member, organizer with the National Hip Hop Convention;

REGISTER TODAY / MORE INFO HERE: WWW.YDSUSA.ORG


2) STATE OF THE UNION PARTIES AGAINST BUSH
The President's State of the Union address is scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday)!
State of the Union parties are a great opportunity to raise funds for your YDS chapter and the perfect excuse to mix politics and fun. United for Peace & Justice (of which YDS is a member org) has compiled a  "Parties for Peace" kit offers lots of tips on hosting a successful event.  If you haven't started planning already... get moving on it now!  Go to the UFPJ website to see the following anti-Bush party kits: www.unitedforpeace.org

• "Track the Lies" Tally Sheet from United for Peace and Justice
• CodePink State of the Union "Liars Bingo"
• National Priorities Project: Local Costs of the Iraq War
• United for Peace & Justice Legislative Action Team
• AFSC's "Ten Reasons Why the U.S. Must Leave Iraq"
• Sojourners and Call to Renewal "The State of Our Values" Toolkit
• Huffington Post State of the Union Games
• State of the Union Drinking Games: Version One | Version Two

The Alternative State of the Union
In a new special issue of The Nation, twenty members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus take on the daunting foreign and domestic policy challenges facing the United States in year six of the Bush/Cheney Administration. They offer road maps to renewal that are both principled and pragmatic. Check out contributions from John Conyers, (democratic socialist) Bernie Sanders, Jan Schakowsky, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur and many others.
View articles here: www.thenation.com/issue/20060206


3) EMERGENCY CALLS ON ALITO & BUDGET CUTS
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Stop the budget cuts:
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Please call your U.S. representative right now and urge him or her to oppose the budget reconciliation bill that attacks students, working families and the poor when it comes up for a vote on Wednesday, Feb. 1.

Call Now, Toll Free: 1-800-393-1082

This budget bill makes devastating cuts to programs that help struggling working families get health care, raise their children, pay for college and more. Some of the cuts include:

• Slashing health care funding for the poor.
• Cutting child support enforcement, making it harder for single parents to raise their children.
• Pushing higher education beyond reach of many young people by cutting $12.7 billion from the federal student loan program--the largest cut in the program's history.
• Forcing states to cut child care assistance to hundreds of thousands of low-income working families.
• Cutting foster care funds for children cared for by grandparents and other relatives.

Despite tremendous public opposition, Republican leaders are insisting upon these deep cuts in order to offset $70 billion in new tax cuts for the rich!

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Filibuster Alito:
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Kerry is filibustering Alito! Call Senators Immediately!

Call the Senators listed in the link below, as well as your own, and tell them:

• a "No" vote is meaningless without a filibuster
• it is cowardly to only fight a fight when assured victory
• the American people need to see the Senate standing up for separation of powers and against the "Unitary Executive"

Use these toll free numbers to call the Capitol: 888-355-3588 or 888-818-6641. If you can't get through, look up the Senator's District Office number in your phone book or here: http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/dbq/officials/?lvl=C

See YDS' statement opposing Alito here: www.ydsusa.org/statements/alito.html


4) THE NEW FACE OF THE CAMPUS LEFT?
The cover article profiling new well-funded center-left student groups in this week's The Nation magazine asks, " Is the future of the progressive movement better off in the hands of young pragmatists or young visionaries?"  Our answer at YDS is: LET'S HAVE BOTH! 

We need a student and youth movement that is pragmatic and can mobilize to win concrete victories but that also opens up space to discuss important questions about our vision for a better world and our analysis of the systems of oppression and exploitation that we're fighting against. 
www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/grahamfelsen


5) DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS MAKE THE NEWS
Project Censored 2005-6: New Book and Report
Project Censored specializes in covering the top news stories which were either ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year. Project Censored is a research team composed of nearly 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who review about 1,000 news story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources, and national significance. The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and most major book stores.
Project Censored is headed by DSA member, associate professor of sociology and media research specialist, Dr. Peter Phillips.
See the most under-reported/censored news stories of 2005 here: www.projectcensored.org

Bush the Incompetent
The war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Medicare Part D -- incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn't explain it.
www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10876

The Color of Disaster
DSA'er Michael Eric Dyson has published a new book, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster. Released on January 16, you can read an excerpt from the first chapter at:
www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/me_dyson.cfm






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