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MADISON (WKOW) -- The East Side Progressives are hosting a meet-and-greet social event with the candidates for the Dane County executive position on July 13.

"Pie and Politics" will take place from 3 to 5 p.m. at Elvehjem Park, 1202 Painted Post Road. Participants will be served pie and ice cream and have a chance to meet the candidates for the position with Dane County.

"We wanted to host this event because voter education and engagement is a core mission of our neighborhood action team. The presidential race has overshadowed this important race for leadership of Wisconsin's fastest growing county,"Chair of the East Side Progressive Arden Rice said.

The four candidates are State Sen. Melissa Agard, County Board Supervisor Dana Pellebon, Dane County Director of The Tamara Grigsby Office for Equity and Inclusion, Wesley Sparks, and Alder Regina Vidaver.

Each candidate will have 5-10 minutes to speak, followed by questions from the crowd.

"Many of the day-to-day issues that concern residents of Dane County, such as safety, transportation, and conservation of lakes, waterways, andgreen spaces, are local issues that are governed wholly or in part by county government. Through this event we hope to raise the visibility of this important race and remind voters to turn out for the August 13th primary," Rice added.

East Side Progressives strives to be a radically, ethnically, and economically diverse community of people committed to social justice. The three pillars to their work in the community are engagement, outreach and sustainability.

Do you have a breaking news tip to share with 27 News? Email us at news@wkow.com.

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"Pie and Politics" event hosted by East Side Progressives on July 13 - WKOW

An obvious truth hidden in plain sight is suddenly common knowledge: At 81, Joe Biden is old and losing it.

Apparently we needed an epically disastrous debate performance, an op-ed from George Clooney and Biden mixing up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with Putin, along with referring to Donald Trump as his Vice President at the NATO summit yesterday, for permission to believe our own eyes.

Ive long had concerns about the presidents fitness to run the country, but the debate at the end of June was even worse than I expected. Of course, his 78-year-old opponent is no spring chicken either, but its no exaggeration to say the contrast between the candidates sharpness was as stark as night and day.

But what was most shocking to me is how many other people were shocked by the performance as if theyre only just now realizing that the president isnt as sharp as he used to be.

I have many friends on the left, and I was floored to see how many of my smart, inquisitive, well-informed peers didnt see Bidens blunders coming. Where have they been burying their heads in the sand?

Since the debate, the Overton window shifted. All of a sudden its okay to point out a very elderly doddering man is in charge of our country.

Multiple New York Times editorials have called on Joe Biden to step down. Democratic members of Congress have demanded the same. Even George Clooney, a long time donor and supporter of Biden, pleaded with the President to step aside in a Wednesday op-ed.

Ill give them credit for finally calling a spade a spade. But the spontaneous narrative shift is eyeroll-inspiring.

So many of us have been calling it like it is for ages including reporters at this very paper who have been pointing out Bidens trail of gaffes for years.But, rather than engage with meaningful concerns about Bidens fitness, many on the left roundly dismissed us.

The deniers claimed we were participating in a right wing smear campaign. Unflattering clips of Biden were shrugged off as politically motivated, plucked out of context, surreptitiously edited, or merely in poor taste.

Its not in bad faith to demand that your president have the mental capacity to lead the free world. Just because a media source you dont like points something out doesnt mean its not true.

Conservatives have voiced concerns about the Presidents advancing age since his last campaign in 2020.

Thats when he asserted that poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids. He then inexplicably called a young female voter a lying dog faced pony soldier and also called a retired Iowa farmer who challenged his fitness to run fat and a damn liar.

His presidency, too, has been filled with blunders.

In March 2022, in the early days of the war in Ukraine, he flippantly said Putin cannot remain in power an apparently unauthorized call for a regime change that his panicked staff quickly walked back.

In September of 2022, he looked for a Representative Jackie in a crowd during a speech apparently forgetting her last name, and the fact that she had died a month earlier.

Then, in June 2023, he bafflingly touted plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.

Biden has even read instructions from teleprompters out loud, throwing end of quote, repeat the line, and pause into his speeches throughout his term.

When he was asked about his mental focus on 60 Minutes in 2022, his response inspired minimal confidence: Oh, its focused. Id say its I think its I I havent look, I have trouble even mentioning, even saying to myself, my own head, the number of years. I no more think of myself as being as old as I am than fly.

The list goes on and on and on.Even after the debate disaster, his attempts at redemption have ended with him putting his foot right back in his mouth.

On July 4th, he told WURD radio station that he is proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman to serve with a black president.

And during a campaign speech he confidently asserted, Im staying in the race. Ill beat Donald Trump. Ill beat him again in 2020.

This is sad. This is uninspiring. I dont want to live in a country ruled by a president in mental decline or his unelected handlers.

Bidens health can longer be ignored, but, thanks to some combination of willful ignorance and gaslighting by the mainstream media, many American have managed to miss whats been right in front of them months and years.

This isnt just vindication for those of us who have been sounding the alarm bells. Its also a reminder to those whove found themselves blindsided to evaluate the evidence, think for themselves, and believe their own eyes.

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Dems in denial: Progressives gaslit us about Bidens age for years now theyre admitting the terrifying truth - New York Post

New York Times columnist turns on progressives

Progressives have destroyed Americas west coast, according to a new article by NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof, who himself was a progressive until very recently.

Within a few years of moving from New York to his native Oregon, Kristof announced he was no longer a progressive. Seeing the challenges in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, have made me more wary of progressivism, he told Time in May. He also recently called for more restrictive immigration policies.

The crime and homelessness problems of west coast cities made him reassess his politics and hes far from the first. Progressive shibboleths, particularly lax drug enforcement and generous benefits for the homeless, has a way of turning even the most devout Leftists toward the political centre and Right. You can only free-ride on your regions good weather for so long.

As Nigel Farage launched Reform UKs contract not a manifesto, he maintains today in South Wales, the would-be Reform-voting Right-wing youth were scouring the document for policies aimed at them.

It seems they liked the gist of it, but they want more. So, what are they demanding? Beyond a Reform Youth wing, the Reform Zoomers have asked that the party restore the Ukip promise to abolish tuition fees for STEM subjects, remove interest rates on tuition fees, and remove the Graduate route on student visas.

In addition, the youth want to smoke. Reform UK must repeal the smoking and vaping bans, and commit to no funding of any organisation which aims to curtail our speech and our ability to express our views. Let the kids have fun again!

Read more:
New York Times columnist turns on progressives - UnHerd

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

I didnt leave the progressive movement; the progressive movement left me, Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx recently told City & State New York. He was referring to the conflict within the left over Israel. Describing himself as a Zionist for the past decade, about half of his posts, retweets or interactions since October 7 have been supportive of Israel, City & State reported.

Torres is not a hypocrite. If we take him at his word, hes been a Zionist for a long time. But hes not being entirely truthful about the progressive movement or his place within it either. The movement didnt leave him: He left it, if indeed he was ever fully part of it, by making a series of deliberate choices. One such choice is to support Israel despite the unbelievable brutality it has inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza.

Support for Israel isnt the only reason Torres might find himself outside the progressive movement. During his time on the City Council, Torres angered progressive supporters by agreeing to water down the Right to Know Act, which would have forced officers to provide a business card in every encounter with the public, City & State reported. In 2017, ahead of the vote, he said, I stand by what I have chosen to do, even if it means standing alone even if it means I am no longer beloved in progressive circles. He carried that attitude with him to Congress, where he discovered allies within the Democratic Party, such as Senator John Fetterman. The Pennsylvania senator also holds a stringent pro-Israel position and told comedian Bill Maher this month that progressivism left him after October 7. I didnt leave the label, it left me on that, he said.

Mondaire Jones, whos running to return to Congress, struck a similar note in an interview with Politico. After he endorsed the AIPAC-backed George Latimer over progressive incumbent Jamaal Bowman, he came under significant fire from the left. The political arm of the Congressional Progressive Caucus even rescinded its endorsement of him. These people were never my actual friends, he claimed, saying that he would do nothing differently if given the chance. The appreciation that people have in these actual communities in the Hudson Valley is what matters to me, he said. That as well as my own sense of morality compelled me to intervene, given how god-awful Mr. Bowmans conduct has been.

Torres, Fetterman, and Jones are free to say that the progressive movement has left them behind. Perhaps they think theyre even being honest. The term progressive can be vague, even meaningless. Various Democrats and their supporters interpret it in wildly divergent ways. Its possible, then, for Torres to think of himself as a progressive, though he was never as far left as some may have hoped. But that exercise is difficult to sustain now, as Israel carries out a genocidal campaign in Gaza. Torres and pro-Israel politicians like him have sided with power over the powerless.

In doing so, theyve cast themselves out of the progressive movement. The label didnt leave Fetterman; he merely discarded it. He was happy to call himself progressive in social-media posts, to court the left as a candidate, and to accept a Sanders endorsement during his successful run for lieutenant governor. Now, when it truly counts, Fetterman is likelier to taunt the left than he is to embrace it. The left must employ litmus tests if terms like progressive are going to mean anything at all, and Fetterman would fail. So too would Torres and Jones. If they feel uncomfortable with the progressive movement now, its likely a sign they never belonged in the first place. Their values were always in conflict with the left, and Gaza merely brought that reality into sharper focus.

Its convenient, though, for pro-Israel Democrats to shift blame onto the left. Doing so gives them a chance to present themselves as brave truth tellers: See Jones, speaking of his personal sense of morality. But the left is not as powerful as I want it to be, and no courage is necessary to attack it. Critics instead exaggerate its influence in order to score points. Its a cheap way to look principled. Jones must invent straw men trust fund socialists in Williamsburg, as he put it to Politico in order to sound somewhat reasonable, let alone courageous.

Courage is not in the eye of the beholder. It means something. (So should the word progressive.) Theres nothing brave about rejecting the left in a moment of great moral consequence. Nor is there anything particularly courageous about standing with Israel, a longtime U.S. ally, as it pummels Gaza into dust. Courage in politics looks more like Bowman, who faces a formidable challenge from AIPAC as he defends his seat in Congress. A recent poll showed Bowman trailing Latimer, who is running to his right, but Bowman has refused to compromise his beliefs. Theyve got money, weve got people, he posted on X.

The U.S. needs a viable left: a counterweight to politicians who turn their backs to ongoing mass murder. Without it, were doomed not to ambivalence but something worse, an embrace of brutality and vengeance and horror. Torres, Fetterman, and Jones have made their choices. Progressive may be a mostly toothless label, but if its still too much, the movement is better off without them in it.

A photo-illustration in a previous version of this story incorrectly included Antonio Delgado, not Ritchie Torres.

Sarah Jones covers politics and labor.

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Fetterman, Torres, Jones Chose to Leave Progressives - New York Magazine

The collaboration among the left and socialists in France ahead of the snap parliamentary elections later this month has sparked a big debate in Athens, with voices calling for Greek progressives to join forces on the rise.

The progressive parties must meet the expectations of progressive citizens, who want to see against New Democracy [EPP] a credible power and a pole to win the next elections with strong chances, Nikos Pappas, a lawmaker of leftist main opposition Syriza party told Euractiv.

Centre-right New Democracy party won the EU elections but with heavy losses.

Particularly, the conservatives scored 27.7%, well below the 33% goal set by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and a big drop from the 41% he scored in the legislative elections in July 2023, losing almost 1.1 million votes.

The main opposition Syriza party (EU Left) ranked second with 14.9%, followed by socialist Pasok (S&D) with 13%.

Since then, several members from both opposition parties have spoken publicly about the need to collaborate to overthrow conservatives.

For Pappas, the developments in France sparked the debate.

The snap elections came as a surprise, and the political forces were forced to lock themselves in a room and come out with a political agreement on the program and with candidates in all regions, the leftist lawmaker said.

We look at it very carefully and in a very positive way, he noted, adding that Syriza and Pasok working together can create a major political event.

The time, though, is not an ally, according to him.

If New Democracy falls further in the polls in the next period, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis may be tempted to hold elections, and he will catch us off guard [] there will be no excuse.

This week, progressive politicians are gathering at an international event organised in Athens by former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (Syriza) and Zoran Zaev of North Macedonia.

Among them is also former French President Franois Hollande.

Speaking at the conference, Giorgos Papandreou, former Prime Minister and head of the Socialist International for 16 years, stated:

All the democratic forces can work together for a progressive Europe, for a progressive Balkans, for a progressive Greece.

At the event, a survey was presented on Tuesday, showing that progressive voters want things to move forward.

Particularly, 69% of citizens consider that there should be a convergence of the centre-left parties towards a single form.

Moreover, 83% of Syriza and Pasok voters responded positively to the question of whether there should be convergence into a single form.

Pasok, a member of the EU socialists in Greece, is currently in turmoil.

Its leader, Nikos Androulakis, is being questioned by several politicians within his party, pressuring him to hold internal elections.

All potential candidates, including Athens mayor Charis Doukas, have indicated that a dialogue in the centre-left should start.

Doukas (Pasok) won the municipal elections in Athens in October 2023 in the second round with the support of leftist Syriza.

Read more: Greek progressives deal ruling New Democracy severe blow in local elections

(Sarantis Michalopoulos | Euractiv.com, edited by Alice Taylor)

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France inspires Greek progressives to join forces - EURACTIV