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Issues We Care About
Democracy in Action works for protection of clean, safe water.
Pennington County Septic Ordinance was passed unanimously by the County commissioners after months of meetings and a series of contentious public hearings. The ordinance establishes installer and installation guidelines plus septic inspection and registration every six years with a $20 permit to be filed with the county. DIA member Karen Hall was a member of the draftting group. DIA members have been actively involved in testimony in support of the ordinance.
Karen Hall and Jim Coleman were elected by the County Commissioners to fill vacancies on the Planning and Zoning Commission after being interviewed by the Commissioners. Congratulations, Karen and Jim.
Affordable Health Care
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DIA supports "Health Care for America NOW!
DIA signed on September 23, 2008. DIA supports the campaign's statement of common purpose stated at Health Care for America NOW! plus the campaign goal and strategy. Urge The President and congressional supporters of the Health CAre bill to explain its benefits to the public before the November elections.
"Let's achieve quality, affordable health care for everyone in our nation."
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A Click a Day Makes a Difference
If you check email daily, sign up at The Hunger Site The Hunger Site to receive a daily reminder. You can quickly navigate to click for free mammograms for poor women at the breast cancer site, or click for child health, literacy, animal rescue and rain forest, too. This is not a scam-- it costs you nothing but a few seconds a day.
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Responsible Environmental Stewardship
Read Clean Water Resolution adopted by Pennington County Commissioners
We advocate responsible environmental stewardship and our Position Statement on the Environment “supports mandatory recycling by residential, commercial, industrial and government entities.” Read the letter we sent July 2, 2009 to Public Works Director Robert Ellis, The Mayor and City council Members.
Please download, use and share Recycling in Rapid City, an SDDIA-RC publication, 2nd. edition, produced in cooperation with local businesses and RC Sold Waste Management.
Read Opinion/Editorial: "Lifestyle, Off-Shore Drilling and the Price of Gas" by Karen Hall, DIA member and an environmental engineer. |
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Strong Public Schools
Click on Our Rapid City Schools. Mission: Promoting excellence in education to grow our economy, increase opportunity and enhance the quality of life in Rapid City.Our Rapid City Schools was launched to make it easier for parents and community members to get the information they need about our schools. Subscribe here.
Members of the DIA-RC Education Task Group prepared this opinion piece, published June 7, 2008 in the Rapid City Journal on the education funding discussion. Education funding was be a major issue for the 2009 Legislative session. It continues to be a problem.
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Native Justice and Racial Reconciliation
Democracy in Action Postion on Bear Butte
Democracy in Action supports efforts to preserve Bear Butte and protect it from commercial encroachment because it is a significant sacred cultural site for indigenous people and an endangered National Historic Landmark for everyone.
Empowerment of Women
Women's Health Issues
What's ahead? Proponents of Measure 11 promise to fight on. Since many legislators who supported the measure were elected or re-elected, many anticipate the issue to re-surface in the legislature. This is not simply a South Dakota issue, rather one that could impact all American women. Emergency contraception, access to birth control and patient-physician privacy issues will again be under discussion.
"Pro-Life" is a "spin" term that I refuse to use,” writes Ellen Snortland [sister Mary Snortland is a Rapid City resident] in the Passenda Weekly. Read the full text of Snortland's article.
It's still THE issue! Read "Quiet Campaign Against Birth Control" by Cristina Page, author of “How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex." Pa is spokeswoman for birthcontrolwatch.org.
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Economic Opportunity
Global Cooperation
"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who ae cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."------Dwight D. Eisenhower
DIA Eve sponsored "From Harm to Home: the Iraqi Refugee Crisis"
Elissa B. Mittman, the Immigration & Refugee Expert on the Iraqi Refugee Crisis, direct from presenting at American Immigration Lawyers Association convention, spoke June 10 at SDSMT. The International Rescue Committee enters many crisis zones to assist the vulnerable populations as well as rescue and rebuild.
Civil Public Policy Dialogue
Read our 2008 Voters Guide on ballot issues and candidate endorsements.
Bill Moyers writing in Christian Century April 17, 07 on democracy and journalism:
So here is the deepest crisis as I see it: we talk about problems, issues, policy solutions, but we don’t talk about what democracy means—what it bestows on us, the power it gives us—the astonishing opportunity to shape our destiny. i mean the revolutionary idea that democracy isn’t merely a means of government, it means of dignifying people so that they have a chance to become fully human. Every day I find myself asking, why is America forsaking its own revolution?
“Take Back Our Language: The Reframing of Political Issues” by DIA member Shirley Frederick October 2006
According to linguist George Lakoff, people do not think in facts. They think in frames. If a fact doesn’t fit the frame, it fails to register. Some examples of frames:
Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like "revolt," that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly…and they are throwing off their rulers, that would be considered a good thing. That’s a frame.
If you then add the word "voter" in front of "revolt," you get a metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like "voter revolt" …
Here's another example of how powerful framing is. In Arnold Schwarzenegger's acceptance speech, he said, "When the people win, politics as usual loses." What's that about? Well, he knows that he's going to face a Democratic legislature, so what he has done is frame himself and also Republican politicians as the people, while framing Democratic politicians as politics as usual — in advance. The Democratic legislators won't know what hit them. They're automatically framed as enemies of the people.
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