Hudson NH Democrats

State files appeal in ConVal School District case - NH Business Review The state has appealed Judge David Ruoff's order in the suit brought by the ConVal School District finding that the state is shirking its duty to fund an adequate education as required by the Constitution

August 24, 2024 (Saturday)

The raucous roll call of states at the 2024 Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, as everybody danced to DJ Cassidy’s state-themed music, Lil Jon strode down the aisle to cheers for Georgia, and different delegations boasted about their states and good-naturedly teased other delegations, brought home the real-life meaning of E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one.” From then until Thursday, as a sea of American flags waved and attendees joyfully chanted “USA, USA, USA,” the convention welcomed a new vision for the Democratic Party, deeply rooted in the best of traditional America.

Under the direction of President Joe Biden, over the past three and a half years the Democrats have returned to the economic ideology of the New Deal coalition of the 1930s. This week’s convention showed that it has now gone further, recentering the vision of government that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, called upon to make it serve the interests of communities.

When the Biden-Harris administration took office in 2021, the United States was facing a deadly pandemic and the economic crash it had caused. The country also had to deal with the aftermath of the attempt of former president Donald Trump to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and seize the presidency. It appeared that many people in the United States, as in many other countries around the world, had given up on democracy.

Biden set out to prove that democracy could work for ordinary people by ditching the neoliberalism that had been in place for forty years. That system, begun in the 1980s, called for the government to allow unfettered markets to organize the economy. Neoliberalism’s proponents promised it would create widespread prosperity, but instead, it transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. As the middle class hollowed out, those slipping behind lined up behind an authoritarian figure who promised to restore their former centrality by attacking those he told them were their enemies.

When he took office, Biden vowed to prove that democracy worked. With laws like the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats directed investment toward ordinary Americans. The dramatic success of their economic program proved that it worked. On Wednesday, former president Bill Clinton noted that since 1989, the U.S. has created 51 million new jobs. Fifty million of those jobs were created under Democratic presidents, while only 1 million were added under Republicans—a striking statistic that perhaps will put neoliberalism, or at least the tired trope that Democrats are worse for the economy than Republicans, to bed.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination convention suggested a more thorough reworking of the federal government, one that also recalls the 1930s but suggests a transformation that goes beyond markets and jobs.

Before Labor Secretary Perkins’s 1935 Social Security Act, the government served largely to manage the economic relationships between labor, capital, and resources. But Perkins recognized that the purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the community. She recognized that children, women, and elderly and disabled Americans were as valuable to the community as young male workers and the wealthy men who employed them.

With a law that established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services, Perkins began the process of molding the government to reflect that truth.

Perkins’s understanding of the United States as a community reflected both her time in a small town in Maine and in her experience as a social worker in inner-city Philadelphia and Chicago before the law provided any protections for the workers, including children, who made the new factories profitable. She understood that while lawmakers focused on male workers, the American economy was, and always has been, utterly dependent on the unrecognized contributions of women and marginalized people in the form of childcare, sharing food and housing, and the many forms of unpaid work that keep communities functioning.

This reworking of the American government to reflect community rather than economic relationships changed the entire fabric of the country, and opponents have worked to destroy it ever since FDR began to put it in place.

Now, in their quest to win the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz—the Democratic nominees for president and vice president—have reclaimed the idea of community, with its understanding that everyone matters and the government must serve everyone, as the center of American life.

Their vision rejects the division of the country into “us” and “them” that has been a staple of Republican politics since President Richard M. Nixon. It also rejects the politics of identity that has become identified with the argument that the United States has been irredeemably warped by racism and sexism. Instead, at the DNC, Democrats acknowledged the many ways in which the country has come up short of its principles in the past, and demanded that Americans do something to put in place a government that will address those inequities and make the American dream accessible to all.

Walz personifies this community vision. On Wednesday he laid it out from the very beginning of his acceptance speech, noting that he grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people, with 24 kids in his high school class. “[G]rowing up in a small town like that,” he said, “you'll learn how to take care of each other that that family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they're your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you. Everybody belongs and everybody has a responsibility to contribute.” The football players Walz coached to a state championship joined him on stage.

Harris also called out this idea of community when she declined to mention that, if elected, she will be the first female president, and instead remembered growing up in “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses, and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride.” Her mother, Harris said, “leaned on a trusted circle to help raise us. Mrs. Shelton, who ran the daycare below us and became a second mother. Uncle Sherman. Aunt Mary. Uncle Freddy. And Auntie Chris. None of them, family by blood. And all of them, Family. By love…. Family who…instilled in us the values they personified. Community. Faith. And the importance of treating others as you would want to be treated. With kindness. Respect. And compassion.”

The speakers at the DNC called out the women who make communities function. Speaker after speaker at the DNC thanked their mother. Former first lady Michelle Obama explicitly described her mother, Marian Robinson, as someone who lived out the idea of hope for a better future, working for children and the community. Mrs. Obama described her mother as “glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation.”

Mrs. Obama, Harris, and Walz have emphasized that while they come from different backgrounds, they come from what Mrs. Obama called “the same foundational values”: “the promise of this country,” “the obligation to lift others up,” a “responsibility to give more than we take.” Harris agreed, saying her mother “taught us to never complain about injustice. But…do something about it. She also taught us—Never do anything half-assed. That’s a direct quote.”

The Democrats worked to make it clear that their vision is not just the Democratic Party’s vision but an American one. They welcomed the union workers and veterans who have in the past gravitated toward Republicans, showing a powerful video contrasting Trump’s photo-ops, in which actors play union workers, with the actual plants being built thanks to money from the Biden-Harris administration. The many Democratic lawmakers who have served in the military stood on stage to back Arizona representative Ruben Gallego, a former Marine, who told the crowd that the veteran unemployment rate under Biden and Harris is the lowest in history.

The many Republicans who spoke at the convention reinforced that the Democratic vision speaks for the whole country. Former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) identified this vision as “conservative.” “As a conservative and a veteran,” he said “I believe true strength lies in defending the vulnerable. It’s in protecting your family. It’s in standing up for our Constitution and our democracy. That…is the soul of being a conservative. It used to be the soul of being a Republican,” Kinzinger said. “But Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party.”

“[A] harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us,” Harris said. And she reminded people of her career as a prosecutor, in which “[e]very day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and said five words: ‘Kamala Harris, for the People.’ My entire career, I have only had one client. The People.”

“And so, on behalf of The People. On behalf of every American. Regardless of party. Race. Gender. Or the language your grandmother speaks. On behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey. On behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with. People who work hard. Chase their dreams. And look out for one another. On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth. I accept your nomination for President of the United States of America.”

The 100,000 biodegradable balloons that fell from the rafters when Vice President Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president were blown up and tied by a team of 55 balloon artists from 18 states and Canada who volunteered to prepare the drop in honor of their colleague, Tommy DeLorenzo, who along with his husband Scott, runs a balloon business. DeLorenzo is battling cancer. “We’re more colleagues than competitors,” Patty Sorell told Sydney Page of the Washington Post. “We all wanted to do something to help Tommy, to show him how much we love him.”

“Words cannot express the gratitude I feel for this community,” DeLorenzo said.

Congratulations to Erica B. of Hudson on winning the Hudson Democrats raffle at Old Home Days!

Kara has company!

Our monthly Town Committee meeting is at 7pm on the third Thursday of each month at the Rogers Memorial Library in Hudson, NH. All registered Democrats in Hudson are members of the committee. Please consider a donation to help elect our candidates:
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📆 You're Invited - CD2 Candidate Zoom Forum & Many More Events!

From our friends at Kent Street Coalition: We have Kent Street specific actions you can take, AND here are some simple suggestions as well.
We need everyone - introverts, extroverts, combo - including you. ❤️

Kent Street Action Menu for you to choose from here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe121FeIZbjX8EHjpQjn9aJXP_4wTyUN1zeWWKG7jHYI71-jw/viewform

June meeting ...Thursday 6/22 will be 2 parts.
An organizational meeting regarding Hudson NH Old Home Days 2023 (at 6pm) and a meeting with a rep from the Hillsborough County (NH) Democrats will follow at 7pm.

Meeting is at the Rodgers Memorial Library
this is in addition to our regular meeting from 6/8

Thank you to each of you for using your voice to defeat this onerous legislation. I have been very vocal in my opposition to SB272 for its attempt to single out and suppress the rights of a particular group of individuals, students, and exposing them to risk of harm. Yesterday the NH House voted to block this dangerous legislation. Today we celebrate! But tomorrow we remember that this was just one of many pieces of transphobic legislation that made it to our NH House this session, many sponsored by and/or supported by our Goffstown representatives and senator.

April meeting announcement:
Thursday April 13th,2023 at 7pm
George H. and Ella M. Rodgers Memorial Library (Hudson ,NH) with guest speaker

🍀🍀🍀Wishing you a happy St. Patrick’s Day, New Hampshire! 🍀🍀🍀

Reminder.
Hudson postponed to March 28th.
Those who voted absentee for the original town/school elections your vote will be counted at the time of elections on March 28

League of Women Voters NH League of Women Voters. a non-partisan citizens’ organization since 1920 encouraging voting.

Heads up...due to the impending snow storm tomorrow and expectations that conditions will worsen through the day.
Hudson NH town and school elections are now March 28th

TOWN/SCHOOL ELECTIONS POSTPONED
Due to the impending storm, the Town and School elections will be postponed until Tuesday, March 28th, 2023.
Absentee ballots will be available at Town Hall until Monday, March 27th, 2023 until 5:00pm.

https://reflect-hudsonctv.cablecast.tv/store-5/10674-Alejandro-PSA-v1/vod.mp4
PSA announcing the Hudson Democrats Caucus.

reflect-hudsonctv.cablecast.tv

https://reflect-hudsonctv.cablecast.tv/store-5/10674-Alejandro-PSA-v1/vod.mp4

reflect-hudsonctv.cablecast.tv

Caucus: February 9th,2023
Details below

Dear Hudson Democrats and friends, the Hudson Democrats will meet on 02/092023 at 7:00 PM at 194 Derry Rd | Hudson, NH 03051 to elect town Democratic officers and delegates to the New Hampshire Democratic Party state convention. Local Democratic Committee officers and delegates have a vote at annual state Democratic Party conventions to approve the party platform, resolutions, and other party business. There is no cost to attend the virtual caucus, and it is open to all members of the public. Any registered Democrat, regardless of past political experience, can run for an officer or delegate position. "The work to elect those representatives – strong Democrats up and down the ticket, begins with the 02/09/2023 caucus.

Best

Alejandro Urrutia, Chair Hudson Democrats

Heads up

TOWN HALL CLOSED MONDAY, JANUARY 16TH

Hudson Town Hall will be closed in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday: Monday, January 16th

“Prohibiting deadly weapons in the House Chamber is a common-sense policy to keep legislators, staff and the public safe as we conduct the business of the State of New Hampshire." -Democratic Leader Wilhelm

Next meeting is January 12th,2023 at 7pm. .. cancelled by weather

To Sign in to support this bill. Go to Remote Sign In http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/schedule/eventDetails.aspx?event=398&et=1