I hope to post recordings of the speeches when they become available. Meanwhile, here are my impressions of the convention as it happens, subdivided into half-hour portions.
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The opening sequence is pretty impressive visually, making the case for the necessity of a new major party.
Nick Brana's introductory speech: Announcement that MPP's list of subscribers just topped 100,000, 10,000 added just in the past week or two. He breaks down the failures of the R's & D's in greater detail.
At the end, attendees can vote whether MPP will turn into an actual party, but they have to download the app in order to vote. I hate that. Whose phone has space for an app for every damn thing?
Ten minutes in, more than 9,000 people are watching the convention on MPP's YouTube channel alone.
Another high-production-value video about how screwed up the US is and how screwed the world is under the Corporate Duopoly. It's not for the squeamish, includes video of police brutality in action at #BLM protests.
Health care activist Cheng-Sim Lim makes the case for Improved Medicare for All. She also recounts how she campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008 and her disappointment with his public option compromise that became the Affordable Care Act (aka the Massive Giveaway to Big Insurance and Big Pharma Act). Her experience with this month's Democratic Convention: Sanders delegates who were typing pro-M4A and pro–Green New Deal messages in the Chat panel of the Zoom window were blocked from posting. Surprised? Nope. (Brana adds that 75% of Sanders delegates refused to approve the platform.)
Next up, Hanieh Jodat, a Muslim civil rights activist, starts with a #BLM litany of black lives that were ended prematurely and tying it to the struggles of Muslims in the West and in their home countries, as well as to the peace movement and calls to defund the military (and militarized police). Migrant crises continue in Europe, caused mostly by US/NATO interventions. I'm glad to see someone speaking against US imperialism, something you wouldn't hear from speakers at the Democratic Convention. Oh, now she's talking about the cost to working people of our foreign military adventures and domestic police state, as it sucks money from programs of social uplift (as MLK would say).