All of us following the events in Southeast Asia over the holidays saw a gut-wrenching revision of statistics: 4,000 reported dead in the first hour, corrected to 20,000 dead later that day, then 45,000 dead the next. The best guess now stands at over 150,000 killed by the horrific tsunami.
Images of a suffering child or a house destroyed move our spirit, but understanding the massive scale of this catastrophe -- entire cities obliterated, more residents dead than alive -- must move us to action.
Save the Children is the kind of organization that knows how to deal with widespread disaster -- they have been on the ground protecting the most vulnerable from natural disasters, war and genocide. And, they are in it for the long-haul -- they will be there even after the tsunami coverage recedes from the headlines to rebuild these devastated towns.
Our compassion, our common humanity, and the task of restoring America's role as a moral force in the world demand that we act now. Contribute what you can to Save the Children:
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/helpasia
We are engaged in another kind of rebuilding here at home -- rebuilding our party, our democracy and our sense of community. At stake in the coming year is nothing less than what kind of society we will be. And to shape America we have to start locally.
Join us at 7 PM tonight in your community for the Democracy for America Meetup:
http://dfa.meetup.com
This month your local group will present a special DVD from Professor George Lakoff, who is fast becoming one of the most influential thinkers in the progressive movement.
His work has helped us understand how conservatives use language to reinforce their positions. Take, for example, when corporate elites set their sites on repealing the estate tax, which only affects a few thousand people with multimillion-dollar estates. They coined the phrase "death tax" in order to bamboozle ordinary non-millionaires into supporting the repeal.
Conservative politicians and Fox News anchors simply stopped calling it the estate tax and adopted the new phrase. Soon Democrats were calling it the "death tax", too -- even as they tried to explain why it should stay on the books (so that massive wealth doesn't become permanently concentrated in the hands of just a few).
In order to rebuild our party and communicate our values, we have to understand how the other side works and avoid this kind of trap. Tonight's DVD will spark a discussion at your Meetup -- and the lessons learned will be crucial to our success. Please join us tonight:
http://dfa.meetup.com
Providing disaster relief abroad and rebuilding community at home are complex, long-term projects. But we all have a responsibility to one another -- and they can only happen with your active engagement.
Thank you.
Governor Howard Dean, M.D.
