Progress Now Action

We had a little fun with 'Foxy' the fox today... NO, not That Kind of Fun!

We heard that Frontier was doing a Campaign Interview style promo for the 'Foxy' Frontier's Favorite Animal at the Civic Center today across from the City Hall. So we thought this would be great test of our Concept of Instant Vigils.

We flew downtown and did a 'one indian' to their 'circle the wagons' maneuver. The media types applauded my arrival but grumbled later when they had trouble getting a shot without our signs in the background.

Our sign on one side said.

Call Foxy and tell her to
Stop the Iraq War
and impeach Bush

and on the other side

Call Foxy and say
Stop the War and
impeach Bush.

Amazing the amount of eyeballs these signs got.

It was Fun...
you all shoulda been there.

Maybe next time, eh! Join Us.
Impeachment can be fun.

John

WeeklyVigilsToImpeach.Us
Link

ProgressNowAction Member
Link

Unfortunately, this is how Colorado is rated by the national organization NARAL Pro Choice. This means that the coming legislation protecting women's choice is that much more important and needed. A "D" rating is unacceptable.



Protesters rally at Planned Parenthood

March 2, 2006
By Chuck Slothower | Herald Staff Writer

Colorado received a "D" grade for abortion rights from NARAL. Seventy-eight percent of Colorado counties do not have an abortion provider, according to the organization.

This is a really significant step forward for women, as support for a woman's right to use over the counter Emergency Contraception is acquired on the CU campus from both political parties. Personal choices should not be controlled by the government. This agreeance on the CU campus should be a model for Democrats and Republicans all over the country, at all levels of government and political activity. It's not simply a matter of Republicans vs. Democrats. It's a matter of women having control of their own bodies.   Read More »

Rocky Mountain News


Abortion proposal tweaked
By Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News
February 23, 2006

Sponsors of a proposed initiative on late-term abortion are making what they call "voter friendly" word changes after a recent poll showed lower-than-expected support.

The Legislative Council will rule today on whether the changes are substantial enough to require a hearing.

The initiative has gone through four changes since September, the most recent one last month. All changes must be approved by the Legislative Council and the title board before sponsors can seek voter signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot.

Now those steps must be retraced.   Read More »

Women won't "just get over" reproductive freedom

By Diane Carman
Denver Post Staff Columnist
DenverPost.com

I will fight against anybody, including those in my own party, who say abortion should be a litmus test.

- Sen. Ken Salazar,

endorsing Bill Ritter for governor.

So it's come to this. The right to privacy in a fundamental health-care decision is trivialized as a petty, narrow, political litmus test.

With women making up 58 percent of Democratic voters in the state, Salazar's threat is a risky strategy.

"I don't think that was necessary," said Dottie Lamm, a Democratic pro-choice advocate for 40 years. "I think he could have made that pitch for solidarity without alienating the very people he was trying to bring in."

Lamm has not leapt aboard the Ritter bandwagon - at least not yet.

"I'm still kind of reeling from John Hickenlooper's decision not to run," she said. "I'm feeling very ambivalent."

It's going around.

Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald said Salazar's office has encouraged her to endorse Ritter. But his unwillingness to support women's reproductive rights still makes her uncomfortable.

"I understand where he is on this issue," she said. "It's not where I am."

Judging by the storm of calls and e-mails to NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado on Wednesday, the abortion issue is not going to go away just because Salazar says that it should.

"For the 1 million women of childbearing age in Colorado, the issue of nongovernmental interference in their private, personal lives is of paramount importance," said Kathryn Wittneben, executive director of Colorado NARAL. "Women's reproductive rights are fundamental freedoms that cannot be lightly dismissed by political candidates for political gains."   Read More »

The woman warrior
By Ellen Goodman | February 7, 2006

WHEN THE news came of Betty Friedan's death on her 85th birthday, I remembered Aug. 26, 1970, the Women's Strike for Equality. I remembered Betty Friedan parading down New York's Fifth Avenue, with tens of thousands of exhilarated women behind her.

I also remembered the afternoon edition of my paper illustrating that march with two front-page photos. On the left was the pretty, blond, smiling figurehead of some unknown group of Happy Homemakers. On the right was Betty Friedan, mouth open in midshout, face contorted, as unattractive a photo of this woman as was ever chosen by any editor. Under both pictures ran a simple, loaded question: Which one do you choose?

This came to mind not only because Betty won her place in the history books. It reminded me of what this passionate and irascible, strong-willed, and difficult woman was up against: a culture with prescribed roles for women and harsh ways of slapping down those who didn't conform.

Betty Friedan, author and agitator, most assuredly did not conform. Not to Peoria, Ill., where she grew up. Not to suburbia, where she raised her children. Not even, always, to feminism.

She was born the year after suffrage passed. Her book, the book, ''The Feminine Mystique," was published in 1963, the year that Adlai Stevenson told my graduating class at Radcliffe how important our education would be in raising our children. It was released to paperback and fame in 1964, the year I worked in the sex-segregated research pool at Newsweek magazine -- and thought I was lucky to have the job.

It's easy to forget now what it was like before Betty named ''the problem that had no name" and, in futurist Alvin Toffler's words, ''pulled the trigger on history." We know how far women have come, but for every woman who believes life has improved, there is another who believes that life has become more stressful. Some of us believe both things at the same time.   Read More »

Rocky Mountain News

Ex-DA still 'has problem': abortion

By Lou Kilzer, Rocky Mountain News
February 7, 2006

Now, a new waiting game begins.

Minutes after Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper announced he would not run for governor, attention turned to candidate Bill Ritter.

Will certain reluctant Democrats rally behind the former Denver district attorney, or will they seek an alternative?

Alice Madden, the majority leader in Colorado's House of Representatives, said she might just be that alternative.

"I'm seriously considering running," she said after the mayor's announcement.

Several big-money Democrats and old party pols were working to conscript Hickenlooper, political consultant Floyd Ciruli said.

Some in the party are "having trouble uniting behind Ritter," he said. "He still has a problem."

That problem centers on one issue: abortion. Ritter is personally opposed to abortion, although he says he would not back any effort to criminalize women or their doctors.   Read More »