WELCOME MAINERS - ARISE & COME TO UNITY! COME SPEND THE FIRST AUTUMN EQUINOX OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM CONSPIRING WITH SIX POPULIST LEGENDS: Carolyn "2nd Maine Militia" Chute, Ronnie "Alliance for Democracy" Dugger, Richard "Taking Care of Business" Grossman, Doris "Granny D" Haddock, Jim "America's #1 Populist" Hightower, David "When Corporations Rule the World" Korten, & Maine's most dynamic labor,     citizen and student groups! HELP DEVELOP NEW STRATEGIES TO RECLAIM OUR LAND FROM THE CORPORATE COUP. THE POINT “Practically every progressive struggle--campaign finance reform, sweatshops, family farms, fair trade, health care for all, unionization, military spending, tax reform, alternative energy, healthy food, media access, hazardous waste dumps, redlining, alternative medicine, you name it--is being fought against one cluster of corporations or another. But it is not that corporation over there or this one over here that is the enemy. It is not one industry's contamination of our drinking water or another's perversion of the lawmaking process that is the problem--rather it is the corporation itself that must be addressed if we are to be a free people... The piecemeal approach to fighting corporate abuses keeps us spread thin, separated, on the defensive, riveted on the minutiae, and fighting on their terms. Piecemeal battles must certainly continue, for there are real and immediate corporate harms to be addressed. But it's time for our strategic emphasis to shift to the offensive, raising what I believe to be the central political issue for the new century: Who the hell is in charge here?" -- Jim Hightower BACKGROUND A century ago in the populist era, chautauquas were 2- or 3-day regional hoedowns featuring equal parts preaching, teaching and wall-banging boogie. Masterful speakers would ignite the crowd with fiery progressive ideas, and the audience would then discuss life in their communities in light of these truths (and vice versa). And whenever they got tuckered thinking and jawing, the whole congregation would clear the floor, crank the band, and dance. We hope to revive that civil, sensual spirit in Unity this fall and invite your active participation. These bashes were also intense news swapping events and we of course bring our share - both good and bad. FIRST THE BAD NEWS IT'S TIME TO FACE FACTS, FRIENDS. WE THE PEOPLE HAVE REALLY LOST CONTROL - CONTROL OF OUR MEDIA, CONTROL OF OUR ECONOMY, CONTROL OF OUR STATES & NATION. As VISA founder, Dee Hock put it, "Global corporations now have implicit sovereignty over people throughout the world, since they are beyond the reach of any nation-state. They hold governments to ransom for use of land, for reprieve from taxation, for natural resources far below cost, for direct monetary subsidies, and for use of land, air and water as repositories for their refuse; all by the simple means of bargaining one government against another for the claimed economic benefit of their presence. Global corporations are creating a market for governments in which they are the sole buyers." OR IN THE PITHIER WORDS OF ALLAGASH LOGGER, HILTON HAFFORD, "THE MAINE PROBLEM IS CORPORATIONS HAVE BOUGHT OUR GOVERNMENT, AND WE CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY IT BACK." Virtually every threat we face as citizens today - whether it endangers our health, peace, children, basic rights, or the green surround - is caused or worsened by the unbridled reign of big corporate bodies. We have treated these symptoms as separate issues and often grown desperate or hopeless as they continued to multiply. And as the corporate fraternity grew larger, more arrogant and unified, the diversity of crises they provoked kept citizen activists competitively divided and, well, yes, conquered. That's pretty much how we lost control. "The government has ceased to function, the corporations are the government." - Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy "Our priorities are that we want to dominate North America first, then South America, and then Asia and then Europe." - David Glass, Wal-Mart CEO NOW THE GOOD NEWS WE ARE FINALLY WAKING UP TO THEIR TRUE DESIGNS AND ARE ABOUT TO TAKE BACK CONTROL. NOT BEG, BORROW OR BUY IT BACK, BUT RECLAIM OUR SOVEREIGNTY CRISPLY, FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL, WITH THE NEAR FORGOTTEN POWERS OF OUR GENIUS, LAWS AND HISTORY. "This country, with all its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." - from the 1861 inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, a true man of the Sixties. THIS NEW CHAUTAUQUA WILL BOTH ADVANCE THAT AWAKENING AND CELEBRATE IT. JUST THINK OF IT AS A SERIOUSLY GREAT SHINDIG TO TOAST THE PASSING OF CORPORATE RULE AND HASTEN THE ENDGAME WITH SIX WILY PROPHETS WHO SHOWED US THE WAY. WE STILL HAVE AN AWFUL LOT OF WORK TO DO, BUT WE WILL FINALLY HAVE A GAME PLAN THAT EQUALLY EMPOWERS US ALL, AND GIVEN THE RECENT GLOBAL GLOOM, THAT SURE AS HELL CALLS FOR A PARTY.

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