I've created this string (topic) to deal with the Democratic National Convention being held in Charlotte, NC between September 3rd - 6th. Please keep all DNC related posts withing this string. Thank you!
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I've created this string (topic) to deal with the Democratic National Convention being held in Charlotte, NC between September 3rd - 6th. Please keep all DNC related posts withing this string. Thank you!
Here's a link to the official Democratic National Convention website:
http://www.demconvention.com/
and the Charlotte in 2012 website:
http://charlottein2012.com/charlotte/
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/0...8K23QN20120902
UPDATE 2-Charlotte ready but still waiting for big protests at Democratic convention
REUTERS
Mon, Sep 3 2012
* Sunday's turnout appears short of expectations
* Organizers say goal is for peaceful demonstrations
* Some banks in Charlotte to close for week
By Colleen Jenkins and Rick Rothacker
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Sept 2 (Reuters) - The big protests that were planned outside the Republican National Convention last week in Tampa, Florida, never really materialized, doused in part by a tropical storm. But activists say they expect a stronger showing this week, when Democrats gather for their nominating convention in Charlotte.
If Sunday's march in Charlotte was any gauge, those predictions might fizzle. Police said about 800 to 1,000 demonstrators paraded through the city, far less than the thousands some had predicted would gather to protest everything from big banks to the deportation of immigrants.
The 80-plus groups that make up the Coalition to March on Wall Street South held a 3-mile (5-km) march on Sunday aimed at putting a spotlight on Charlotte as the United States' second-largest financial center, behind New York.
Activists stopped in front of the headquarters of Bank of America and utility Duke Energy to speak out against what they see as a range of injustices, including foreclosures and high student loan debt.
Organizers had expected several thousand people to participate, including some coalition members who were involved in much smaller protests last week in Tampa, during the convention where Republicans nominated Mitt Romney for president.
On Sunday, demonstrators carrying signs and bottled water gathered on a hot, humid day as organizers said they were not disappointed by the smaller-than-expected crowd.
"We are happy with the turnout," said Bryan Perlmutter, 21, a North Carolina college student who has helped organize the event. "We are here to raise up the demands of the people."
Captain Jeff Estes of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said the event went smoothly, with only one arrest as the march was winding down.
"This is the Constitution in practice," he said. "People were out here exercising their free speech."
During one stretch of the march, a famous bystander grabbed as much attention as the protesters. Walking back to his hotel from preaching at a church, civil rights advocate Reverend Jesse Jackson stopped for photos with spectators and to talk with reporters.
The protest organizers are seeking to distinguish their efforts from those of the anarchist movement, which in recent years has destroyed property and tried to disrupt activities at major political and government events.
The FBI warned of possible action by anarchists in Tampa last week, but the protests there were small, peaceful and overwhelmed by the thousands of security officers.
The demonstration in Charlotte on Sunday was intended to be nonviolent and family friendly, said Ben Carroll, a volunteer organizer.
Representatives of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which has its eastern hub in the city, say the banks have plans in place to minimize disruptions to their operations during the Democratic convention, which is expected to draw about 35,000 people to North Carolina's largest city.
Both banks are closing some branches for the week near the convention sites in Charlotte, and employees will work from alternate bank locations or from home.
Bank of America has 15,000 employees in the Charlotte area, and Wells Fargo about 20,500.
BEEFED-UP SECURITY
Unlike Tampa, Charlotte officials have to contend with the sitting president coming to town, as well as key convention events being held at two venues instead of one.
The convention starts on Tuesday at Time Warner Cable Arena, which seats about 20,000. On Thursday, when President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will speak, the convention will move outdoors, to the nearly 74,000-seat Bank of America Stadium about a mile (1.5 km) away.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department will nearly double the size of its force of 1,760 officers by bringing in law enforcement from other jurisdictions to help with security during the convention, Mayor Anthony Foxx said.
Several hundred members of the state's National Guard will support the security effort, and about 2,000 more will be available to assist with security if necessary, said Guard spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Robert Carver.
Charlotte received a $50 million federal grant to help cover security costs. Also assisting police is a new local law that allows the city manager to declare a large-scale gathering an "extraordinary event" and lets law enforcement set up security boundaries and limit what can be brought into the event zone.
The ordinance includes a long list of items that are prohibited, including hammers, paint guns, water guns, gas masks worn with the intent to obstruct police and backpacks used to conceal weapons.
Not everyone carrying a backpack will be automatically searched, but officers will stop people who appear to be up to trouble, said police department attorney Mark Newbold.
"We did not suspend the Fourth Amendment," Newbold said, referring to the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches. "I think a good, lively demonstration is great. We're just hoping it doesn't get out of hand."
'FREE SPEECH' ZONES CRITICIZED
Charlotte set up a designated parade route and speakers platform as "free speech" areas for activists to express their opinions during the Democratic convention. The city hosted a lottery to assign time slots for speaking and marches.
The range of protest issues is broad, with activists expected to travel from across North Carolina and other states to push for fewer restrictions on marijuana, separation of church and state, marriage and religious liberties and causes affecting senior citizens and immigrants.
Protesters have criticized the speakers' platform, which is about six-tenths of a mile (1 km) from Time Warner Cable Arena, as being too far from the main convention activities to be effective. Organizer Carroll described the designated parade route as "a tour of parking lots and abandoned lots."
"It will make it difficult or impossible for bankers or any (Democratic) delegates to actually hear the complaints," he said.
Tampa officials quickly learned that protesters were loath to stay within the city-established spots but tended to comply with police orders as long as they got time to make their case in front of television cameras before being asked to move along.
The strategy proved effective: Tampa authorities said on Friday they arrested only two protesters during the Republican convention. One man had an 18-inch (45-cm) machete strapped to his leg, and the other violated the city's event ordinance by refusing to remove a bandanna that concealed his face, said police spokeswoman Laura McElroy.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn's advice for Charlotte officials? Be flexible.
"You really have to be fluid and nimble," he said. "If you take a rigid approach to this, that's when you're going to have a problem."
http://www.examiner.com/article/chic...lotte-nc<br />
Chicago police assigned to Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC
EXAMINER.COM
Chicago Police Department
September 3, 2012
By: Scott Paulso
On the heels of a weekend which ended with 2 more dead and 22 more injured from Chicago street's gunshots, persons attending the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina are shocked and confused to see about 50 Chicago police officers assisting with the Convention’s security.
NO CHICAGO TEACHER CONTRACT AND NO MURDER RATE REDUCTION IS NO SWEAT FOR CHICAGO MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL
Another surprising move regarding Chicago and the Convention this week is that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be present to give a speech on Tuesday when Chicago is allegedly near-collapse with a teachers’ strike likely to begin within a week as the city is crowned the murder capital of the country.
ILLINOIS POLITICIANS TO SPEAK AT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION
Making the Chicago police presence in Charlotte even more unbelievable is that Rahm Emanuel and his Superintendent of Police Garry McCarthy asked for federal agents and U.S. Marshals to help combat Chicago’s violent crime wave just last Friday. Naturally, one wonders how Chicago finds it publicly-palatable to assign 50 police officers to the perimeters of the Democratic National Convention in another state when it claims to need federal assistance with its horrific and record-breaking murder rate.
At a news conference, Chicago Superintendent of Police Garry McCarthy said this past week:
The help comes in the form of additional agents to target guns, gangs, and drugs.
The confusion of the assignments is not being explained by the officers who are already at their assigned duties in Charlotte because – as they told reporters – they have been instructed to not talk to reporters about their duties.
A Chicago Police Department spokesperson claims that the officers are there on the out-of-state special assignment during their days off. This would indicate that the officers will likely be switching duties with other officers before the end of the week since they likely don’t get more than two days off in a stretch. The information is unexplained and confusing.
Even if the officers are doing the duty on their days off, the entire operation is a magnet for severe criticism to Mayor Emanuel and Supt. McCarthy. The officers could obviously be kept active in Chicago during their days off – especially during the Labor Day weekend - or simply be preparing for yet another demanding week at their primary jobs in Chicago.
Besides the public and press being curious about the presence of Chicago officers at the Convention, Chicago’s own Fraternal Order of Police’s union officials are asking why it is that Chicago cops were chosen at this time for such duties.
According to ABC News, Pat Camden, a Chicago Fraternal Order of Police spokesperson, said:
I think the average person would shake his head over <this situation>.
Logically, the officers are not paid by Chicago but from elsewhere. There is a federal grant provided for security at the Convention.
The assignment is obviously a huge change for a Chicago police officer as some have been seen stationed at the entrances to the Charlotte Convention Center as opposed to the endangered streets of Chicago. After all, Chicago’s murder rate is approximately 31% higher than last year. As of two weeks ago, the city had 346 murders committed in 2012 already.
With all that Rahm Emanuel does for the sake of his promoting himself in a positive image since becoming the mayor of Chicago 16 months ago, he has tarnished his high-profile image with the public this past week concerning Obama’s Democratic National Convention.
The primary source of this article is ABC.
http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/2...20903012<br />
Unions shun North Carolina to spend in friendlier states
THETOWNTALK.COM
1:43 PM, Sep 3, 2012
Written by: Fredreka Schouten and David Jackson
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – What a difference four years make.
President Barack Obama moves toward a Democratic National Convention here this week with many unions, such as the AFL-CIO, refusing to financially support the three-day political extravaganza -- in sharp contrast to the $8.3 million the inion contributed toward the Denver convention where he was nominated in 2008.
Unions leaders opposed the selection of a convention city in a state where teachers and other public employees are barred by law from collective bargaining.
At the same time, organized labor has failed to gain traction on key priorities during Obama's administration, including legislation that would have allowed workers to join a union by signing a card instead of holding a secret ballot vote.
And unions already have expended millions in the past two years on state battles, beating back legislation in Ohio that would have curbed bargaining rights for the state's public employees and pushing a failed recall against Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker.
Many labor leaders, however, said their snub of the political gathering in North Carolina will not stop them from mounting what they say will be one of their biggest political efforts this fall to re-elect Obama, who is relying on heavy labor spending to counter deep-pocketed Republican super political-actions committes.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that opened the door to unlimited corporate donations to super PACs also freed unions to spread their voter outreach to non-union homes, unleashing what unions say will be their biggest voter-outreach effort yet.
"The convention is just a multiday event," said Jim Spellane, a spokesman for the 750,000-member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, one of the unions that has declined to underwrite the Charlotte convention but is deploying members across the country to register voters on Democrats' behalf.
"What matters most is what happens between the convention and Election Day," Spellane said.
Earlier this summer, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced the 12 million-member labor federation would not make any "major monetary" contributions to the convention. Instead, it is directing its money with get-out-the-vote efforts and recently announced a partnership with the liberal group MoveOn.org to deploy nearly 400,000 volunteers by Election Day.
Michael Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO, said the goal is to build a "permanent mobilization" force, ready to turn out voters not just in November, but to "hold politicians accountable" long after Election Day.
The selection of North Carolina as the convention site is "almost an insult" to unions, said Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
But Chaison said labor leaders have little choice but to back Obama. "They know that if Democrats don't win the Congress and the White House, it will be very close to the last gasp for the organized labor movement," he said.
Declining membership
Nationally, organized labor has been on a long decline. A slim majority of Americans — 52 percent — approve of labor unions, down from a peak of 75 percent in 1957, a Gallup Poll released Friday shows.
Union membership also has dropped sharply — to 14.8 million or 11.8 percent of U.S. workers in 2011, down from 20.1 percent in 1983, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Nowhere is the proportion of unions lower than in North Carolina, where 2.9 percent of workers are union members.
The 2010 and 2011 elections gave Republicans control of 29 governorships and brought new threats to union clout. Last year, Republican governors in Ohio and Wisconsin pushed through measures to curb collective bargaining by public employees as part of their drive to trim state budgets.
A June 5 union-led recall effort against Walker, the Wisconsin governor, failed. In Ohio, however, organized labor, aided by some 2,400 volunteers with Obama's campaign organization, defeated a law pushed by Republican Gov. John Kasich that would have banned public-sector strikes and curtailed the bargaining powers of more than 350,000 public employees in the state.
Those fights in two presidential battleground states won by Obama in 2008 galvanized rank-and-file workers and have boosted unions' ground operations ahead of the presidential election, union officials say.
"Firefighters have awakened from a long slumber. They care about politics now," said Doug Stern, a 16-year veteran of the Cincinnati Fire Department who was part of the "We are Ohio Coalition" that helped roll back the law.
Seeing Kasich campaign with Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Ohio only helps to stoke union anger ahead of Election Day, Stern said.
Speaking last week to reporters at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Kasich said those workers had a personal stake in the fight.
"People really were directly affected," he said. "I don't know if that carries over to something like a presidential campaign."
While most unions back Democrats, some law enforcement groups have backed Republicans. The 325,000-member Fraternal Order of Police supported Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, four years ago. The group's 54-member national board meets Friday in Ohio to decide whom to support in this election.
Unions haven't always agreed with Obama, either.
This year, for instance, he signed off on a free-trade pact with Colombia, over the objection of U.S. unions who cited its country's record of violence against labor leaders. And the Obama administration's $4 billion "Race to the Top" school-improvement program links teacher evaluations, in part, to students' test scores, a move long resisted by teachers unions.
But Romney has drawn teachers' ire by making a voucher-like program the centerpiece of his education plan. Under his proposal, $25 billion in federal money would be available for students to attend a public, private, online or charter school of their choice.
Romney has been fiercely critical of unions. Organized labor, Romney told a crowd in May in Lansing, Mich., has "contributed to disappearing companies, disappearing industries and disappearing jobs."
The party platform approved last week at the Republican convention in Tampa calls for a national right-to-work law and accuses Obama of helping to concentrate "power in the Washington offices of union elites."
Strong relationship
"The relationship is strong," said Brian Weeks, the political director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees of his union's ties to Obama. "We didn't get everything we wanted but we knew the challenge he faced with a Congress that opposed a progressive agenda."
The union has contributed to the Charlotte convention, Weeks said. He would not say how much the 1.6 million-member union has given to the event nor how much it will spend on Obama's behalf this fall, but he said about 33,000 new people became active in the union's state battles in the past two years.
"We will spend whatever it takes to support our members and the middle class in these fights," he said.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), meanwhile, is planning what it calls "the largest and most-targeted political field campaign" in its 91-year history. The goals include making 13 million phone calls and knocking on more than 3 million doors to reach union members, young voters, African Aericans and Latinos in eight swing states.
Brandon Davis, the SEIU national political director, said the goal is not just a victory, but a "mandate."
Last week, telephone company worker Norwood Orrick joined the protests outside the Republican convention hall. This fall, the 47-year-old union activist from Tampa plans to knock on doors to help Obama and other Democrats on the ballot, he said.
"The Democrats could be much stronger in their support of unions," Orrick said. "But when the other side is attacking you, you are forced to respond."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-violence.html
Fifty Chicago police officers sent to help with security at Democratic National Convention as Windy City raked by gun violence
* Officers were sent to reciprocate for Charlotte police that helped with NATO summit in Chicago
* Cops serving in Charlotte will be paid through a special federal grant of $50million
* Chicago police force has a total of 12,244 sworn officers
* Fifty federal agents were sent to Chicago to help with crime epidemic
By Snejana Farberov
PUBLISHED: 17:07 EST, 3 September 2012 | UPDATED: 17:20 EST, 3 September 2012
A wave of violence has been sweeping through Chicago in recent months, leaving dozens of victims in its wake, but that did not stop the local police department from sending 50 officers to help out at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
On Monday morning, Chicago cops in their unmistakable checkerboard-brimmed hats were seen positioned outside the Charlotte Convention Center.
A Charlotte police department spokesperson confirmed that ‘roughly 50 officers from Chicago’ were on duty at the high-profile political event being held this week.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z25Sth3X8r