Articles on "Americans Coming Together" org. for electoral mobilization

[Kolesar]

These are excerpts.

http://www.gristmagazine.com/thegist/gist081203.asp?source=daily

With a substantial chunk of money but a minimum of fanfare, environmentalists, labor leaders, feminist organizations, and other left-leaning groups convened last week to launch Americans Coming Together, a new PAC dedicated to defeating President Bush in 2004. The name of the alliance is terrible going on tawdry, but the acronym is apt: If we want ACT's dream to become reality, then precisely what we must do is act -- or, more bluntly, get our acts together.

It goes without saying that any environmentalist worth the name should support the ouster of Bush, whose record with respect to Planet Earth hovers somewhere between that of James Watt and the Martians in War of the Worlds. ACT plans to spend $75 million (a bundle, but bear in mind that Bush alone will likely raise more than twice that) to bankroll media blitzes, register voters, and sponsor get-out-the-vote drives in key states. It has already secured backing (and, in some cases, bucks) from, among others, gazillionaire George Soros, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union, and Ellen Malcolm of EMILY's List, the grassroots organization dedicated to mobilizing female voters and getting pro-choice women elected to office. All told, it's not a bad start; as the New York Times reported on Friday, political commentators are calling the formation of ACT one sign of the earliest, most intense, and most coordinated political organizing effort in decades.

If environmentalists want to avert another four years of deregulation and rollbacks, this anti-Bush push is a bandwagon we should all be on. That means green organizations have to start making the connections between local environmental issues and national environmental policy, and actively encouraging their members to vote accordingly. It also means environmentalists are going to have to start working with the many other movements interested in unseating Bush -- even if it means diverting some energy from business as usual, whether that's salmon recovery or urban sprawl. (One obvious patch of common ground: opposition to the corporate takeover of government, an issue that enviros, labor organizers, the poor and working class, and, for that matter, anyone who makes under $100,000 a year should be able to get behind.)


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/08/08/national1039EDT0521.DTL
(08-08) 11:02 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Making a major foray into partisan politics, multibillionaire George Soros is committing $10 million to a new Democratic-leaning group aimed at defeating President Bush next year.

Soros, who in the past has donated on a smaller scale to Democratic candidates and the party, pledged the money to a political action committee called America Coming Together, spokesman Michael Vachon said Friday.

The group plans a $75 million effort to defeat Bush and "elect progressive officials at every level in 2004," targeting 17 key states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

"The fate of the world depends on the United States, and President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction," Soros said in a written statement. "ACT is an effective way to mobilize civil society, to convince people to go to the polls and vote for candidates who will reassert the values of the greatest open society in the world."

Soros has been better known for his philanthropy and a $1 billion effort to try to prevent the proliferation of Russian nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union's collapse. He announced earlier this summer that he was scaling back his Russian spending after finding it was subsidizing programs such as education reforms better paid for by the government.

Soros helped finance an ad in The New York Times two Sundays ago accusing Bush of using intelligence "exposed as exaggerated or even false" to justify the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

ACT said it plans a large-scale effort to register voters and mobilize them to go to the polls. It has $30 million in commitments so far and plans a national fund-raising drive starting next month.

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