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     * In Petaluma, progressives have a big stake in the city council campaigns of Teresa Barrett, Jason Davies and Gabe Kearney, and the mayoral candidacy of David Glass. The future direction of Petaluma's city government hangs in the balance.      * In Santa Rosa, I recently spoke at a fundraiser for Larry Haenel, and in…

By Norman Solomon Take it from David Axelrod. "Almost the entire Republican margin is based on the enthusiasm gap," the president's senior adviser said last week. "And if Democrats come out in the same turnout as Republicans, it's going to be a much different election." But we don't get to have a different election. After…

This article appeared in the Marin Independent Journal on October 7, 2010: By Norman Solomon      Today, the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan is beginning its tenth year, with 100,000 American troops in that country nearly a decade after the invasion started on Oct. 7, 2001.       When I returned home from a brief visit…

This letter was published in The Nation [October 11, 2010 print edition]:      The "Debating Obama" forum spotlighted some big obstacles to progressive change, but the discourse was notably hazy about presidential accountability for calamitous policies. It was a bad sign that the word "Afghanistan" did not appear anywhere in the forum's seven pages. (What would we…

By Norman Solomon      Autumn 2010 is a time of disillusionment for many who deplore the USA’s current political trajectory. Some who’ve been active for progressive causes are now gravitating toward hope that individual actions — in tandem with higher consciousness, more down-to-earth lifestyles and healthy cultural alternatives — can succeed where social activism has…