Got Equality? Not if you’re 51% of the population.

The new campaign slogan for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women certainly gets right to the point. And if anyone is unconvinced of their assertion, then I wish you could have attended Women’s Day at the Capital on Tuesday.  Invited speakers and the public submitted testimony on Tuesday and called attention to many issues like health care, domestic violence and protection, education, employment, women in politics, and childcare.  Two high school students from the Young Women’s Leadership Program essay contest also read their winning essays which focused on breaking the cycle of domestic violence and the need for more women in leadership positions. Read the full story

Author Carlos Martinez discusses politics in Venezuela.  Martinez is co-author of Venezuela Speaks! Voices from the Grassroots.

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Governor M. Jodi Rell finally will allow the state to pass a biennium budget this week.  Rell did not agree to sign the bill, but instead will wait five days to go by after the General Assembly passed it, therefore making it law.   However, Rell will make her presence felt in the form of line-item vetoes.   Democratic leaders had added approximately $8 million dollars in spending earmarks, which the governor called “a slap in the face of our taxpayers.”  Not surprisingly, what Rell also called “pork-barrel spending” includes programs and services for vulnerable CT populations.  Read the full story

RadioActive hosts a community roundtable discussion evaluating Barack Obama’s first six months in office.

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By Steve Thornton (courtesy of Homefront) – It’s August 6, 2009. On this warm summer night, the Diaz family is walking through Riverside Park in Hartford. The kids are thirsty and they’re on the way home across the highway to their house in the new Stowe Village. Read the full story

Shawn Lang (CT AIDS Resource Coalition) and Matt O’Connor (SEBAC) of BetterChoicesforCT.org discuss advocacy efforts at the state capitol to create a more progressive and egalitarian state budget.

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