People Before Profit blog

Right wing schemes to block changes in Mexico

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:35:00 +0000

News Analysis

Conservative forces in Mexico, alarmed by the electoral successes of left-wing movements in South America, are showing signs of mobilizing to prevent similar developments in that country.

Mexico appears to be poised for a movement leftward, following the emerging trend established in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The left’s recent victories in these countries signal a repudiation of unrestrained capitalism and the neoliberal, “free-trade” policies of the World Bank.

The growing ferment in Mexico dates back to 2000, when widespread disgust with the decades-long corruption of the government-supported Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) resulted in the election of Vicente Fox Quesada of the National Action Party (PAN). Since assuming the presidency, Fox has largely continued the policies of his predecessors and operated in a manner designed to please the United States.

However, Fox was forced by public opinion to oppose the Iraq war, and this earned him a cold shoulder from the Bush administration. Meanwhile living standards for the majority of Mexico’s 100 million people continue to decline.

Recent polls indicate that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) is the favorite to win the 2006 presidential elections. The popularity of Lopez Obrador — who currently serves as the governor of Mexico’s federal district, the equivalent of Mexico City’s mayor — is based largely on his having marshaled the resources of his administration to help the working class, the poor and the elderly.

The PRD was formed in 1989 by left-wing elements of the PRI, the Communist Party of Mexico, and other left and progressive groups. It has had only marginal success in organizing, but the high visibility and popularity of Lopez Obrador may prove to be advantaggeous to in the PRD’s growth and influence.

Conservative forces in Mexico, led by Fox, recognize the political threat posed by Lopez Obrador and have been quick to label him a dangerous populist. There are credible suggestions that the Bush administration is also involved in the campaign to malign him. Now the Mexican administration’s efforts have gone beyond name-calling and includes an attempt to derail the PRD frontrunner’s campaign by prosecuting him in the courts.

In 2001, the Federal District government was expanding an access road to the ABC Hospital. The owners of an adjacent property went to court, claiming the work on the road was encroaching on their land. Although the property boundaries seem to be in doubt, a judge ordered work stopped.

The accusation against Lopez Obrador is that his people did not stop work immediately. The Fox administration subsequently decided to prosecute him for felony contempt and to move to strip him of his immunity under Mexican law.

A parliamentary committee approved the revocation of Lopez Obrador’s immunity last month. On April 7, the full lower House approved the revocation by a vote of 360 to 127. The whole PAN delegation voted for the motion, along with all but 12 PRI representatives and eight members of the Green Party, despite strong public sentiment against the move. It is expected that Lopez Obrador will be arrested shortly.

If Lopez Obrador is prosecuted, he cannot run for election until the courts decide the case in his favor. The court proceedings would likely drag out and prohibit him from running as a candidate.

In spite of the efforts by the Mexican president and conservative forces to prevent his candidacy and damage the PRD, Lopez Obrador remains unbowed. He has announced his candidacy for the presidency and vowed not to seek bail, but to go to jail in protest.

“They [the Fox administration] are the ones who carry out the trick of calling what little is given to benefit the majority ‘populism’ or ‘paternalism,’ but the huge amount that they give to the rapacious few they call ‘development’ or ‘recovery,’ he declared.

Many Mexicans believe the charges against Lopez Obrador are trumped up and another example of a political culture that has been characterized by mind-boggling corruption. The Mexican stock market has reacted nervously, fearful of public outrage. And Lopez Obrador appears committed to running a presidential campaign from the inside of a jail cell.

Grassroots environmental victory in Chicago: No dumps, no deals, again!

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:32:00 +0000

By Beatrice Lumpkin WELCOME TO CHICAGO, the sign says, as you cruise northwestward on I-94. “Close the windows!” I yelled to my kids. Never mind the day was hot and the car’s air conditioning was not working. The stench from the garbage dumps was making my stomach turn. I felt I had to vomit. That would be inconvenient, to say the least, because I was driving.

On the right side of the road, mountains of garbage hid the view of beautiful Lake Calumet. Just a few blocks further east, Com Ed’s coal-fired power plant was coughing up puffs of smoke full of soot and mercury. “How can the people who live here stand it?” I wondered.

The answer to my question was easy. There is no way the people can stand it. And the people of Southeast Chicago are rising up to stop the dumps.

Taking a stand

“No dumps, no deals, again!” This was the slogan plastered all over the Southeast side of Chicago last winter. Demonstrators, carrying a sea of signs, brought the demand to City Hall Dec. 7, 2004. A militant group of Latina mothers caught the ear of the press. “We can’t let our kids out to play, the smell is so bad,” one mother said.

A two-and-a-half-foot stack of petitions, with 17,000 signatures, repeated: No dumps, no deals, again!

The “No dumps” part is easy to understand. The “No deals, again” part reflects the 25 years of struggle against Waste Management of Illinois. Over the years, some victories were won. Too often, promises were made … and broken.

Waste Management

Waste Management, the nationwide, multi-billion dollar corporate garbage powerhouse, asked for an extension to dump another 6 million tons of garbage over five years in Southeast Chicago. The community, fed up with the stink and stinking deals, said “No!” Without the extension, the dumping contract expires in 2005.

Close to 100 million tons of garbage have already been dumped in Southeast metro Chicago. This area has the largest concentration of garbage landfills in the Midwest. More out-of-state garbage has come into Illinois than any other state in the U.S.

Even without garbage dumps, Southeast Chicago already had a serious pollution problem. For over 100 years, workers in this area labored in the steel mills and other heavy industries. They made the companies and the city rich. The companies were allowed to foul the rivers and lakes, and pollute the soil and air. The workers and their families paid the price with higher rates of cancer, asthma and other illnesses.

The company tried to buy off some protesters by sweetening the deal. Let us dump 6 million more tons of garbage, they said. Then, we will build a park on top of the garbage and give it to the community.

Only a couple of leaders bit at the bait. Everyone else saw through the fake offer.

The sweet smell

of success

There’s nothing like 17,000 petition signatures to turn a city alderman from “We have to study this issue” to staunch support of the “No dumps” position. John Pope, 10th ward alderman, wrote an ordinance to extend the moratorium on dumping for two years. It passed the City Council unanimously. Now Pope has pledged to seek a permanent moratorium against dumping in Southeast Chicago.

“How did you get 17,000 signatures?” the World asked Marian Byrnes. Byrnes is secretary and a founder of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. “We formed a very broad coalition,” she replied.

Over 100 people, from high school students to retirees, worked on the “No dumps” petition. On Election Day 2004, they covered the polling places and collected 7,000 signatures. On Report Card Day, when parents pick up their children’s report cards, they petitioned at the schools. Church services were another good opportunity to get many signatures. The “No dumps” petitioners went wherever people gather.

Environmental racism

The majority of the residents of Southeast Chicago are people of color. Residents of Altgeld Gardens, a Chicago housing project here, are 97 percent African American. Residents describe their location as “the toxic doughnut.” Dumps and other major polluters surround their buildings.

In 1969, Hazel Johnson, mother of seven, lost her 41-year-old husband John to lung cancer. She suspected that the polluted air was a factor in her husband’s untimely death. Many neighbors agreed with her. With the help of her neighbors, Johnson organized “People for Community Recovery” in 1982.

The next year, a study showed that cancer rates in Southeast Chicago were double the rate of other Chicago communities. Johnson called it environmental racism. “Environmental racism is genocide,” she charged.

People for Community Recovery won a number of local victories. They won water and sewer service for the senior housing annex of Altgeld Gardens.

Johnson has earned the honorary title of “Mother of Environmental Justice.” Johnson said her belief is, “The world should not be disintegrating around us because of our neglect. We should be able to pass on to our children the same blue sky and fresh air we grew up with.”

A massive struggle in Warren County, N.C., helped make environmental racism and justice a national issue. Residents were fighting the expansion of a PCB landfill in an African American neighborhood. Several hundred protesters were arrested. They did not stop the expansion of the landfill. But their protest sparked a congressional investigation and better regulations.

Hoosiers fight

a toxic dump

At the state line, Southeast Chicago ends and Northwest Indiana begins. Little else changes. The state line is just a political boundary. Geography and the economy are the same except most Chicago mills have closed. Indiana steel mills and the oil refineries are still running. In Illinois, the issue is dumping solid wastes. In Indiana, there is an equally deadly buildup of poisons in the waterways.

Now the Army Corps of Engineers says something has to be done about the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal. They are not worried about the signs that say, “Don’t eat the fish or swim in these waters.” (As though anyone would want to eat those fish!) According to a 1996 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report, many of the fish have “eroded fins, swollen eyes, deformed lower jaws, and evidence of internal hemorrhaging.”

The reason the Corps of Engineers wants to dredge the canal is that it has filled up with sludge. They want to dredge the canal to make it easier (cheaper) for ore boats to deliver to the steel mills. But the canal mud is loaded with mercury, lead, arsenic, zinc, chromium, benzene, naphthalene and PCBs. The heavy pollution was the result of unregulated dumping by the steel mills, oil refineries, and city sewage plants.

What should they do with 4.7 million cubic yards of dredged toxic sediment? The Corps of Engineers got permission from the city of East Chicago, Indiana, to dump the poisoned mud near two schools, Central High and West Side Junior High. They would construct a “confined disposal facility,” or CDF. Over 30 years the CDF would grow into a 28-foot-tall truncated pyramid covering 134 acres of land. Work would continue for 30 years. Only then would the CDF be sealed with a cap of clay, sand, and topsoil.

Residents were never consulted about the toxic waste dump. The East Chicago government was notoriously corrupt. It was charged that they were absentee politicians who did not even live in the town they were willing to further pollute. They would have gotten away with it if people had not organized and fought back.

Coalition for a Clean Environment

A truly rank-and-file movement formed “Citizens for a Clean Environment.” It was as grassroots as it gets, working out of members’ homes. They came together to demand safeguards, especially for the children attending the adjacent schools. It took a big fight just to get information. In time, sympathetic university scientists provided the coalition with the technical information they needed. As residents suspected, Army Corps plans did not provide safeguards for the people. The Army Corps was sent back to the drawing board. And in a stunning political upset, the East Chicago mayor and council were voted out of office.

Letter writing, phone calls, petition signing and indoor rallies were all part of the fightback. A march of hundreds to East Chicago’s City Hall in April 2003 put the issue into the national media. Marchers charged environmental racism. About 88 percent of East Chicago residents are people of color, with 52 percent Latino and 35 percent African American.

The protests have forced the Army Corps to redesign the CDF with additional safeguards against leakage. Betty Balanoff, a coordinator for Citizens for a Clean Environment, told the World: “We do want the canal cleaned up because it is evaporating and polluting our air. But we do not want toxic wastes dumped in a CDF that is poorly built and will further pollute our air and soil.” She added that requests for improvements are met with the excuse of no money.

Balanoff continued, “There is no money to insure the project, to indemnify the community for property losses or for additional health problems. The law mandates a cleanup of the site and the dredging of the canal. But if there is not enough money to do it safely, more money must be found. … The community cannot be expected to pay the difference in human life and damaged children.”

Beatrice Lumpkin (bealumpkin@aol.com) is a leader of Illinois Alliance of Retired Americans and a longtime activist in South Chicago and among steelworkers. Lumpkin wrote “Always Bring a Crowd,” a book about her steelworker husband, Frank Lumpkin.

Steelworkers union supports

clean environment

The fight against the dumps received strong support from the United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO. Pollution was sickening steelworker families. It was natural that the union would fight to clean up the environment. Unions have been slandered as posing jobs vs. environment. This official USWA statement answers the slander:

“The problems of acid rain, global warming, ozone depletion, oceanic pollution world remind us that we can no longer think of oursc1ves solely as citizens of the U.S. or Canada, or even as North Americans. The potential catastrophe is global. Environment must be a global issue.

“But is it a union issue? Should we work to protect the environment merely as good citizens, or is there a special role for our union to play?

“We believe the answers are clear. Environment is an essential union issue. Environmental work must be part of our mission at every level of the union. We must continue to work for progressive legislation. This includes:

• Improving air and water quality.

• Requiring reductions in toxic waste and restricting the use of toxic chemicals.

• Promoting recycling in ways that protect union jobs.

• Protecting “whistleblowers” who report suspected environmental violations, and workers who refuse to carry out an order that violates environmental laws or endangers the public.

• Guaranteeing income protection and job retraining for workers displaced because of environmental problems.

• Ensuring that new technology is introduced in a way that is subject to democratic planning, and protects the interests of working people and their communities.

• Banning, or defining as an unfair trade practice, the import of produts made abroad under conditions that do not meet environmental standards.

• Prohibiting the dumping of toxic waste from North America in developing countries, and the export of products or processes that are banned in the exporting country for environmental reasons.

• Supporting strong international agreements on greenhouse warming ozone depletion, and other global issues.

• Giving financial aid and debt relief to developing countries, in order to help sustainable development.”

–B.L.

What the Communist Partys draft program is all about

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:31:00 +0000

At the heart of a communist party program are questions of strategy. Why? Because strategy matters — big time! Tactics yes, organizing skills yes, militancy yes, but in the end, strategy is the locomotive that sets the other cars, including the beloved caboose, in motion.

All the creative tactics, righteous militancy, and innovative organizing techniques in the world will not shift the balance of class and social forces in a progressive and left direction, will not enable progressive and left people to move from the politics of protest to the politics of power, unless they are fastened to sound strategic positions.

By the same token, ill-advised strategic choices, no matter how militant and tactically clever, can lead (and have led) to long-lasting defeats and political isolation.

Which brings me to the Communist Party’s draft program. In first specifying the immediate and longer-range objectives of the class struggle and then identifying the main forces that have to be assembled for social progress, and the main class and social forces blocking that progress at each stage of struggle, it does what a party program should do — it provides a general strategic path for near- and longer-term struggles.

In a nutshell:

• It singles out the Bush administration as the main obstacle to social progress, and the struggle against it as the main form of the class struggle at this moment;

• It argues that the ruling class isn’t one undifferentiated, homogenous social class;

• It makes the point that differences exist between the two major parties without suggesting that the Democratic Party is (or can transform itself into) a people’s anti-corporate party;

• It recognizes the emergence of a broad, loosely constructed, people’s movement which possesses the potential power to go on a counteroffensive against the Bush administration;

• And it goes to great lengths to spell out the main social and class forces that have to be assembled to defeat the extreme right, and then reassembled at each succeeding stage of struggle, including the socialist stage.

At the center of this assembly of forces is the multiracial, multinational, male/female, young and old working class. And to the working class the program couples the national and racially oppressed, women and youth.

Together, they are what I call the “core constituencies” of the all people’s front, a designation that acknowledges that the participation of these social forces in the broader people’s front is a necessary condition for victory at every stage of struggle. Remove any one of them from the mix and the prospects for winning are not simply greatly dimmed, but doomed.

Around them are gathered other diverse social movements whose interests and issues of struggle ally them with these core constituencies.

While the draft program resists the idea that the working class on its own has the political capacity to bring its class opponents to its knees, it doesn’t minimize its strategic power nor occlude the Marxist insight that the working class, because of its interests and political capacities is best positioned to emerge as the general leader of the broader democratic movement.

Implicit in all this is the notion that there is no direct, smooth path to socialism nor a “Great Revolutionary Day” when the economy breaks down, the workers suddenly revolt and seize power, and the state, economy and civil society are “smashed” and remade in one swoop.

Some readers may think that is a caricature, but such utopian ideas have always had some currency in the communist and left movements. Lenin characterized them as infantile. Drawing on the experience of the Bolshevik party that he led over two decades, he said the struggle for socialism goes through different stages and phases during which the configuration of contending class and social forces changes, requiring, in turn, new strategic policies to match the new alignment of political forces and the new level of political consciousness of tens of millions.

More than a decade later, Georgi Dimitrov, then leader of the Communist International, made similar arguments to an international meeting of communists. The difference this time was that fascism was gathering its forces in Germany, Italy and elsewhere. That made it all the more imperative that communists shed themselves of simplistic concepts of the revolutionary process like “class against class,” skipping intermediate stages of struggle, and countering every demand of their coalition partners with a demand that is twice as radical. The whole thrust of his report was an impassioned plea against “self-satisfied sectarianism,” an attitude and practice that was content to take good formal positions and hive itself away in organizational forms detached from the main organizations of the working class and people, and tone deaf to the actual dynamics of the class struggle.

Our draft program avoids these political pitfalls and instead outlines strategic policies that are embedded in existing political, economic, and cultural realities and sculpted to influence broad social currents. It’s deserving of a serious and lively discussion.

Sam Webb (swebb@cpusa.org) is national chair of the Communist Party USA. This article is based on remarks at a recent meeting of the party’s New York district. The full text and the party’s draft program appear at www.cpusa.org.

State of Black America 2005: Prescription for change

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:27:00 +0000

The National Urban League’s latest report, “State of Black America 2005: Prescription for Change,” is yet another warning that structural inequality and racism are leaving Africans Americans behind, marginalizing major segments of our society. Warning “our nation [to] wake up” to the stark realities of African American problems, the report presents data and analyses showing that inequality between Blacks and whites in urban America is not improving. The report recommends urgent changes in national policies and priorities, including an increase in the minimum wage and expansion of job training and career counseling efforts with a focus on young urban males.

The League, which has been producing the report for 29 years, says improvements were made in the first few years, but a disturbing negative trend has developed more recently. Urban League President Marc Morial characterized it as “the Great Backslide.”

This follows other troubling studies showing similar trends in health care, education, civil rights, and employment, as well as other systemic problems affecting the African American community that reflect “an incomplete civil rights agenda.”

“When one community in America suffers,” Morial said, “our entire economy suffers.”

Unemployment rates for Black men age 20 and over remains in double digits — the highest in all categories. Overall, Black unemployment is more than twice that of whites.

According to the Community Service Society of New York, unemployment for Black men in New York City is above 50 percent. CSS reported that unemployment of African Americans in the 16-24 age group is even higher. Three million jobs have been lost during the George W. Bush presidency.

Basil Wilson, provost of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, told the World that unemployment is one of the chronic issues of U.S. capitalism.

“In a context of enormous rates of surplus labor, many people find refuge or survival through underground, illegitimate kinds of hustling, as in the drug trade.”

Federal, state and local incarceration rates are increasing, particularly among Black men. African Americans are three times more likely to be incarcerated and the average jail sentence for the same crime is six months longer for Blacks than whites. African American incarceration statistics almost mirror unemployment rates.

“What is paradoxical is that we have had a reduction in crime and yet the incarceration rates continue to climb,” said Wilson. “A lot of the incarceration stems from drug arrests … [And] there is a disparity in how the drug strategy is manifested more in Black and Latin communities than in white communities.”

African American males born today have a 1-in-3 chance of going to prison during their lifetime, compared to a 1-in-17 chance for white males. African American inmates represent an estimated 44 percent of all inmates with sentences of more than one year.

In addition, African Americans are twice as likely as whites to die unnecessarily or prematurely — from diseases, homicide, accidents, etc. Even Black professionals die at higher rates than whites. One in every four African Americans lives in poverty and almost half of those who live in poverty live in extreme poverty.

Despite the bleak picture, there are some positive trends. There is an increase in the numbers of African Americans entering college.

Labor has been recognizing that there is an important role it can play, Wilson noted. The labor movement has stepped up its efforts in “mobilizing constituencies, such as women, Blacks, immigrants, in order to address the social disintegration that has been occurring,” he said.

Wilson sees hope for change in social movements as a way to counteract the negative effects of the Bush administration and capitalism. The increasing activism within the hip-hop community, such as involvement in protests and voter registration campaigns, also bodes well for change, he said.

Bolton called serial abuser, spreader of war lies

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:25:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Carl W. Ford Jr., former chief of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told senators April 12 that John Bolton, President Bush’s choice for UN ambassador, is a “serial abuser … an 800-pound gorilla” who “devours” anyone who disagrees with him.

In testimony before a Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing, Ford said Bolton had demanded that he fire an intelligence analyst for contradicting Bolton’s claim that Cuba was developing weapons of mass destruction.

“I’ve never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton,” Ford said. “There are a lot of screamers that work in the government but you don’t pull someone so low down in the bureaucracy that they are completely defenseless.” Ford said he left the meeting feeling that, for the first time in his career, he had been asked to fire an intelligence analyst out of vindictiveness, for calling things as he saw them.

It was not the first time Bolton attempted to get someone fired for telling the truth. Stuart Cohen, former acting chief of the National Intelligence Council, told a closed-door Senate hearing that Bolton visited his office to demand removal of the council’s top expert on Latin America. He too had challenged Bolton’s fabrications that Cuba was developing biological weapons.

Bolton erupted in similar tantrums when analysts challenged claims by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and close ties to al-Qaeda, now widely exposed as lies.

Bolton is a vociferous enemy of the United Nations and was a top aide to racist former Sen. Jesse Helms, who blocked U.S. payment of its UN dues.

A decade ago, Bolton told a conference in New York, “If the UN building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” More recently, Bolton said the UN Security Council should be changed to put the U.S. in the driver’s seat.

“I would have one permanent member, the United States, because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world,” he said.

Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) has mobilized a “stop Bolton” effort that includes an open letter to Senate Foreign Relations Chair Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) signed by 67 former ambassadors.

“Stopping this nomination is especially urgent since Carl Ford’s devastating testimony that Bolton is a ‘serial abuser’ of intelligence that has not been cleared,” CGS Communications Director Harbinder Alwha told the World. “It’s scary to think of him in such a crucial position at the UN.”

The CGS letter assails Bolton for spearheading the drive against U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as well as the effort to sabotage the

Ottawa Land Mine Treaty, which the U.S. refused to sign. Bolton also led the successful campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty.

“Bolton crafted the U.S. withdrawal from the joint efforts of 40 countries to formulate a verification system for the Biological Weapons Convention … in a period of increasing concern over potential terrorist use of these weapons,” the diplomats charge.

“Bolton’s insistence that the UN is valuable only when it directly serves the United States … will not help him to negotiate with representatives of the remaining 96 percent of humanity,” the letter says. “John Bolton cannot be an effective promoter of the U.S. national interest at the UN. We urge you to oppose his nomination.”

Mass struggle on the upswing in Iraq

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:24:00 +0000

Tens of thousands of Iraqis demonstrated against the U.S. occupation, April 9, in Baghdad. Some estimated the numbers as high as 300,000. The rally reflected the virtually unanimous anger in Iraq over the U.S. military presence and the devastation it has caused. At the same time, it indicated the complexities facing Iraq’s democratic and progressive forces who are seeking to build a united, secular, democratic state.

The peaceful protest, held on the second anniversary of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, was initiated by backers of Islamic fundamentalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Observers saw it as evidence that Sadr is engaging in the political process instead of armed actions. It was also widely seen as a flexing of political muscle aimed at increasing Sadr’s clout in the transitional government now in formation.

Last month, an armed group associated with Sadr attacked students picnicking in a park in Basra. Using truncheons and rubber cables, the attackers beat female students not wearing headscarves, shaved off one woman’s hair, and smashed cell phones, cameras and stereo players. One student was shot and later died.

The incident sparked mass protests, including a strike by university students, who said they would not stand for “the new tyranny” of “political Islam.” Student groups negotiated with the provincial governor and won the removal of Islamic “security and protection” committees from the campus. It was the first mass action of this type since the U.S. invasion, and has helped galvanize student activism in Iraq, said Iraqi Communist Party spokesperson Salam Ali. “It was a test of strength, part of the fight for democratic rights.” He called it an indication of the growth of mass organizations in the country.

This month, a new ICP office in Baghdad’s impoverished Sadr City neighborhood was attacked and burned in the middle of the night. Many believed that Sadr supporters were behind the attack, as retaliation for the party’s active role in the Basra student protests. The attack drew wide condemnation in Sadr City and beyond. Soon after, Sadr’s group asked for a meeting with the ICP leadership. A high-level delegation met with ICP leaders and delivered a personal letter from Sadr, distancing himself from the attack and saying he wished to cooperate with the Communist Party.

Sadr’s movement is not homogeneous, and he is not able to fully control it, the ICP’s Ali noted. He called Sadr’s overture to the ICP a “very significant” development, showing that the cleric is open to pressure.

The Iraqi Communist Party works to maintain “normal relations” with Sadr and other Islamist groups, Ali told the World. “At the same time, we are determined to stand up for democratic rights, for women, for students, and others,” he said.

“The main contradiction we face is with the U.S. occupation,” Ali said. “We are very careful not to raise contradictions with other Iraqi groups.” But, he emphasized, defense of democratic rights is “essential to our big battle to end the occupation and move forward to an independent, sovereign Iraq.”

“The U.S. will try to maintain its influential position in Iraqi politics without being seen to openly do so,” Ali commented. How Iraq’s new government deals with the occupation will depend on the balance of social forces, he noted. He expressed hope that independent voices will make themselves heard calling for a clear timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, with UN participation.

The government will be dominated by three political blocks, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, the Kurdish block, and previous prime minister Iyad Allawi’s group. Its key tasks include drafting and ratification of a constitution, and organizing national elections at the end of the year.

The delay in forming the government, due to extended jockeying for power, aroused considerable public anger and has undermined the credibility of these groups, especially the Shiite alliance.

Critical problems that Iraqis expect the government to deal with include security, public services, employment, and accountability of public officials.

Living conditions are “really bad — actually they have worsened” under the occupation, Ali said. He cited a recent UN report that malnutrition in children under 5 has nearly doubled. More than one-quarter of Iraqi children don’t have enough to eat. Infant mortality has also risen.

There is great concern that areas that were bombarded by the U.S. are heavily contaminated by depleted uranium, and Iraqi groups are demanding an independent UN investigation.

Poverty and joblessness are major problems, with unemployment around the country ranging from 25 to 50 percent. Needed services and supplies, such as medicines, don’t reach the people because of “unprecedented corruption within the government,” Ali said. “It is one of the hot issues.”

Thabit Abdullah, an Iraqi exile who is professor of history at York University in Canada, said addressing the “overwhelming bread and butter issues” is a priority to advance Iraq’s progressive and working class movement.

He cautioned that the Iraqi left is working under extremely difficult conditions and is forced to make difficult decisions and concessions. “In no way does that mean the American left should moderate its opposition to Bush and neo-imperialism. But don’t blame us [the Iraqi left],” he said. “I believe the Iraqi democratic movement is coming back, but you have to have patience.”

Steelworkers come out swinging

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:22:00 +0000

Merged union adopts grassroots action plan

LAS VEGAS — Perhaps more than any other union, the United Steelworkers of America has confronted head-on corporate liquidation, government betrayal, and outright attacks affecting hundreds of thousands of steelworkers. As the union’s 2,100 U.S. and Canadian delegates met here April 11-14 at its 32nd Constitutional Convention, it was obvious that having met this crisis, the union is changed. It’s larger and looking to expand and to sharpen rank and file mobilization.

Across the street from the steelworkers, delegates representing 260,000 members of PACE, the paper workers, oil, atomic, chemical and energy workers union, held a simultaneous convention. Delegates from both unions voted to merge. With 850,000 active members, the new union — the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, or the United Steelworkers (USW) for short — will be the largest industrial union in North America.

The union grew by 100,000 members since 2002, union President Leo Gerard reported to steelworker delegates, by signing up 42,000 new workers into the union and merging with the Flint Glass Workers, Canadian Industrial Wood and Allied Workers and a part of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way at CN Rail (in Canada).

Size matters when facing the rapacious assault by multinational corporations and the bellicose Bush administration. Equally important, Gerard said, is grassroots activism. During the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, over 4,600 steelworkers knocked on doors in battleground states. Building on the spirit of expanding rank and file activism in political struggle, delegates enacted a far-reaching “Building Power Action Plan” that has more workers lobbying, writing letters on issues, and running for elected office. Based on extensive experience on the picket lines and political campaigns, the Action Plan seeks to improve workers’ effectiveness to convince their neighbors and co-workers on issues like trade, civil rights and labor rights.

The Action Plan foresees larger and larger community coalitions building worker-neighbor support to restore power at the bargaining table against multinational corporations.

Gerard called for the delegates’ “commitment, energy and passion to make a different future possible.” He added, “The power to improve the lives of working people is in your hands. It’s in the hands of thousands who aren’t here but want to make a difference if we give them the tools.”

Tenacity and imagination are unique steelworker strengths. It took seven years on the picket line, but steelworkers at Colorado Fuel and Iron won their jobs back from scabs and the largest back pay settlement in history — $100 million.

Twelve years ago, 26 miners died in an explosion at the Westray Mine in Nova Scotia. Vern Therriault, a steelworker organizer at the time, helped rescue miners. He received the Canadian government’s Medal of Bravery. Steelworkers didn’t stop there. In response to 12 years of lobbying and protesting, Canada’s Parliament finally passed a law that will mean jail time and big fines for owners of companies that ignore lethal working conditions. An unsafe workplace in Canada is now a criminal offense.

Steelworkers breathed life into solidarity when they managed to blunt the effects of the collapse and liquidation of LTV, Bethlehem and scores of other companies. The Steelworkers, said Gerard, is the first union ever to not only assist in the consolidation of a major industry, but restore a limited health care plan to retirees. Steelworkers also forced the new corporation, International Steel Group (ISG), to re-invest in new steel mill technology. Key to this historic achievement, Gerard continued, was the unity between active and retired steelworkers. “What should make us proudest of all is that not a single one of our active members ever voiced a word of protest” over the emphasis on saving retiree benefits in the wake of bankruptcy, he said.

The Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) held its 7th International Conference here April 9-10. In its largest gathering to date, 154 delegates, veteran steelworkers representing 70,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, set the policy for their organization. Delegates approved resolutions protesting the Iraq war, calling for national health care and re-invigorating the fight to save Social Security.

Terminators pension scam takes hit

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:21:00 +0000

Gov feels ‘street heat’

SAN FRANCISCO — In a surprise announcement April 7, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he is delaying until June 2006 a controversial ballot initiative to change state workers’ pensions from public, guaranteed-benefit programs to privatized 401(k)-like pensions.

“The governor’s retreat on the pensions initiative is a huge defeat for the corporate special interest agenda,” Jim Farrell, spokesperson for the 2-million-member Alliance for a Better California, said in a telephone interview.

“But,” he warned, “the fight isn’t over. The governor has broken past promises.”

For weeks Schwarzenegger has encountered large and vocal picket lines at most major appearances. In San Francisco last week some 3,000 labor and community activists “welcomed” the governor as he attended a fundraiser at the swanky Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Taken together with other recent setbacks, withdrawal of the pension measure was seen by many as an important but temporary victory. Labor and community leaders warned that Schwarzenegger is still backing other destructive measures, including one that would virtually bar public workers from participating in political activity.

Though an official announcement has yet to be made, Schwarzenegger is still pursuing a special election next November that would cost taxpayers over $70 million.

“Schwarzenegger hasn’t backed away at all; he’s just delaying a faulty initiative,” Willie Pelote, AFSCME California’s political and legislative director, told the World.

“He still plans to take away the pension money of California workers and give it to Wall Street. That won’t save the state money, and people may never be able to retire.”

The corporations involved in private pensions “may be no better than Enron,” he added.

“He’s lost one big bargaining chip,” said Fred Glass, communications director for the California Federation of Teachers. “His failure to move the pension initiative means he needs to think more clearly what to do about the others.”

“Unfortunately, he is still pushing several other seriously flawed initiatives toward a wasteful, unnecessary special election next November,” Dave Lowe, chair of California Families against Privatizing Retirement, said in a statement.

“And now he’s raising more corporate special-interest money for his half-baked initiative ideas than any governor in history.”

The $30 million Schwarzenegger has taken in so far is twice that raised by former Gov. Gray Davis, who was pilloried by the corporate press for his fundraising.

The struggle over California’s public pensions has national implications. Labor observers have remarked on its links to the Bush administration’s drive to privatize Social Security, as well as to efforts in other states to privatize public workers’ pensions.

While broad opposition has been building to the concept of privatizing pensions, the final straw was the initiative’s denial of survivors’ benefits to families of firefighters, police and other public workers killed or disabled on the job.

Schwarzenegger has aroused popular ire by calling teachers, nurses, firefighters and police “special interests.”

“We are glad that Gov. Schwarzenegger has admitted that the pension initiative was a mistake,” said Low. “Now he needs to admit that the entire $70 million special election is a mistake. Instead of moving forward with flawed initiatives he should get to work on fixing the state budget and taking care of the people’s business.”

Even Republican political gurus are becoming uneasy about the fate of the program the governor unveiled with such fanfare in his January State of the State address.

“The whole special election … and direct democracy is looking more complicated to his people than maybe a few months ago,” Republican political consultant Dave Gilliard told the Los Angeles Times.

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, another Republican, has said he cannot accept his employees being “tossed to the winds of uncertainty” if pension benefits are not guaranteed.

Even Schwarzenegger’s much vaunted proposal to cap spending across the board if it exceeds revenue, and his effort to move redistricting out of the Legislature, are now said to be subject to negotiation. Some commentators speculate that the education proposals — merit pay for teachers and lengthening the time needed for tenure — may end up being dropped as well.

A poll released April 7 by a research institute at San Jose State University showed the governor’s approval ratings continue to slip, with only 43 percent of all adults now agreeing that he is doing a good job, down from 59 percent in January. Some 49 percent now think the state is on the wrong track, up from 35 percent in January.

“People are finally getting it,” observed AFSCME’s Pelote. “People expected something more, but this isn’t reform. He’s putting the welfare of the public at risk and protecting those the Chamber of Commerce says to protect. That’s not someone coming in to clean up a mess.”

In another setback to Schwarzenegger’s agenda, the state Senate last week rejected the governor’s nominee for the state teachers’ retirement board, in response to his earlier action revoking nominations of four potential board members who opposed pension privatization.

GOP takes flak on Bolton, filibuster

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:24:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Messages like Gail Keen’s e-mail to Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) are signs of grassroots fightback against a menacing extremist agenda pushed by President Bush and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. It includes the fight to block Bush’s nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador and a looming battle against the Republicans’ drive — via the so-called nuclear option — to pack the judiciary with ultra-rightists by ending the Senate’s filibuster rule.

“I sent an e-mail to Voinovich urging the Senate not to confirm Bolton,” Keen told the World in a telephone interview from her home in Springfield, Ohio. “Why would Bush nominate as UN ambassador a man who hates the United Nations?”

A few days later, Voinovich, perhaps reflecting the tide of similar messages from his constituents, jolted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by announcing that he was “not comfortable voting for Mr. Bolton.”

Voinovich’s stance forced Committee Chair Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to postpone a vote on the nomination for three weeks. It also brought into the open a deepening rift in GOP ranks.

Citizens for Global Solutions spokesperson Harpinder Alwha told the World that Bolton could be blocked. “This is someone who continues to lie about the international situation,” she said. “After what we have gone through in Iraq, we’ve had enough of officials picking and choosing intelligence data to support their highly ideological views.”

Scott Lynch, spokesperson for Peace Action, said, “It shows just how radical these people in the executive branch are that they would name a fanatic unilateralist like Bolton as UN ambassador.”

But the drive to terminate the filibuster rule and pack the federal courts “is even scarier,” Lynch said.

Several moderate Republicans have voiced concern about Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) drive to terminate the filibuster rule so Bush can ram through his extremist court nominees with a simple majority vote.

At risk are principles enshrined in the Constitution like the separation of church and state and the system of checks and balances that protect the nation from tyranny, Lynch said.

He cited Frist’s appearance on the April 24 “Justice Sunday” telecast sponsored by the Family Research Council.

On the simulcast that went out to churches around the country, Frist accused the Democrats of being “against people of faith” in using the filibuster to block a handful of Bush’s extremist nominees.

MoveOn.org, the Internet grassroots organization, held rallies in 192 towns and cities, April 27, to protest the drive to eliminate the filibuster rule. Former Vice President Al Gore told a MoveOn rally in Washington, “This is a poison pill for American democracy. It is aimed at one-party dominance of all three branches of government and … an effort to replace persuasion on the merits with bullying partisan domination.”

The Rev. Carlton Veazey, national president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, said, “Justice Sunday was not about religion. It was part of an ongoing power grab to take over the courts and reverse decades of progress for minorities, women, the environment, workers’ rights and other issues and groups that have been relatively powerless.” Veazey spoke at an April 25 teleconference sponsored by the Interfaith Alliance, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

“We must not compromise on our rights and freedoms,” he said.

Jim West, 91, Communist leader

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:23:00 +0000

In an unpublished memoir, Jim West, a lifelong Communist Party organizer, wrote that he “was prepared to go wherever the Party or YCL thought I might be helpful … I had decided to dedicate my life to working for the ideal of socialism.”

West did just that. In 70 years of organizing, he drew downright joy from the class struggle, wherever it took him. He was a member for many years of the Communist Party USA’s National Committee. West died last month in Seattle at 91.

He was born Isador Wexler in New York City on Jan. 8, 1914, son of a shoemaker and a garment worker. Attending evening classes at Brooklyn College, he met Young Communist League members who gave him a copy of the Daily Worker.

“I took to the paper like a duck to water,” he wrote. “I took the DW, the Communist Manifesto, and other pamphlets home to read more thoroughly.”

His father kicked him out of the house. Homeless, he volunteered as a copy boy with the Daily Worker, which provided him with a meal ticket and a cot.

His first arrest came while distributing the YCL’s newspaper to strikers in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. He and his comrades spent a night in jail before an International Labor Defense lawyer won their release on grounds they were “underage.”

It was then that he legally changed his name to James W. West to spare his family FBI harassment. He served as a YCL organizer, at $10 a week, in New Jersey and Schenectady and Buffalo, N.Y.

He helped organize rallies in defense of the nine Black youth framed on rape charges and sentenced to the electric chair in Alabama in the infamous Scottsboro case.

He also helped organize Unemployed Councils and Erie County’s participation in the 1932 Hunger March on Washington to demand jobless benefits for the unemployed.

West worked with the Buffalo Young Women’s Christian Association to found a local chapter of the American Youth Congress, mobilizing against the rising fascist menace. He even convinced the Young Republicans to join.

West was a delegate to the 1935 Congress of the Young Communist International (YCI) in Moscow. A sharp debate was raging, with the Soviet Young Communists calling for a narrow working-class base for the antifascist front while the YCLs of France, the U.S. and other countries argued “that the struggle to stop and defeat fascism required the unity of the young generation as a whole,” West wrote. That position ultimately prevailed.

A few weeks later, West was a YCL delegate to the 7th Congress of the Communist International, which adopted Georgi Dimitrov’s Popular Front strategy, key to the defeat of fascism. West stayed on in Moscow as the YCL’s representative to the YCI until 1937.

Soon after his return, the YCL sent him to Seattle. He secured a job at the Todd shipyard mucking bilge from the holds of ships, the dirtiest job in the yard.

West served in the U.S. Army in Korea at the end of World War II. There he contacted the Korean Workers Party in Seoul, developing a lifelong love of the Korean people and their struggle for reunification and peace.

After the war, West was assigned to Gary, Indiana. He was framed and sent to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute in 1961 on charges that he violated the union-busting Taft Hartley Act. His wife Molly and their son Steven visited often, a memory that West calls his “happy hours.” Later the couple was divorced.

Following his release from prison, West participated in the struggle to rebuild the party hard-hit by anticommunist repression.

Communist and other progressive union members had formed Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy to unite and mobilize the rank-and-file caucuses then springing up in labor.

“The ‘fresh winds in labor’ which Communists predicted and worked for has arrived,” West wrote. “Gone with the old wind are Lane Kirkland and many of his ilk.”

As the party’s Ohio organizer, West led the struggle there to collect signatures to win ballot status for the CPUSA presidential ticket in 1976 and again in 1984. That Herculean task, he said, “brought Ohio’s Communists into live contact with more than 100,000 people.”

In 1977, West went to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to join the staff of the World Marxist Review. By then he was married to his second wife, Audrey, who served as the Prague-based correspondent for the Daily World.

They returned to the U.S. in 1983 and West became the CPUSA international secretary. In the mid-1990s, he and Audrey moved to Seattle, where they remained active in Party work. Audrey died a year after their move.

West participated in the labor-led 1999 “Battle of Seattle” that forced the early adjournment of a meeting of the World Trade Organization.

“It served notice that the fight against international monopoly was no longer confined to national boundaries,” West wrote. “Hands were being joined across borders in a common struggle for a better world.”

In addition to his son, West is survived by a daughter, Marilyn, a granddaughter, and Paul and Eda, Audrey’s children from an earlier marriage. His ashes are to be interred in Chicago’s Forest Home (Waldheim) Cemetery.

Martial arts star calls for landmine ban

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:22:00 +0000

Action movie star Jackie Chan has called for a global landmine ban at the start of a three-day visit to Cambodia. Chan, who is scouting locations in the country to make a film on the subject, said, “I have to stop them. They are hurting so many children.”

Chan is visiting recovering victims and a mine education project in northwest Cambodia as part of an Asian tour for the United Nations Children’s Fund. About 4,200 people have been killed by landmines in Cambodia since 2000.

Chan, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, arrived by plane in Battambang, a town 155 miles northwest of the capital Phnom Penh, April 20. “I want to make a film to promote the campaign to stop land mines,” Chan told reporters. Chan will meet landmine victims at a Battambang hospital and visit the heavily mined nearby Pailin area.

Chan, star of films like “Shanghai Noon” and “Around the World in 80 Days,” will be given a chance to help experts detonate unexploded mines.

Chan first met child landmine amputees during a 2004 UNICEF HIV-awareness visit to the Siem Reap province, Cambodia’s main tourist destination. The UN says a quarter of people killed by landmines are children. “He was very moved by what happened to them and wanted to come back,” said a UNICEF spokesman.

Gospel stars to come out for UN Environment Day

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:21:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — Legendary gospel singers are voicing their support for a greener planet Earth. Not since the recording of “We Are the World” 20 years ago has the music industry come together for such a global issue.

“United Nations, Together We Can,” written and produced by legendary, four-time Grammy winner Edwin Hawkins (of “O Happy Day” fame), is being recorded this week. The song will debut with a 1,000-voice choir on “Flower Power Day” on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall, at the closing ceremony of the United Nations World Environment Day June 5.

The nondenominational song is being recorded in Berkeley, Calif., and features gospel artists The Williams Brothers, Richard Smallwood, Daryl Coley, Three Bridges, Virtue, Walter Hawkins, Lashun Pace, Byron Cage, Tramaine Hawkins, Donald Lawrence, Tone’, Karen Clark-Sheard, Kim Burrell, and others.

Proceeds from the sale of the song will be donated to “A Community of Unity,” a nonprofit led by Hawkins that raises funds for a variety of San Francisco Bay Area charities.

“For the sake of our children, it is our responsibility to heal the planet,” said Hawkins. “We should take responsibility to maintain the natural resources we were given. I contributed this song to help raise awareness for the need for change before it is too late.”

Celebrity gospel and pop artists who participate in the recording will be invited to sing with the choir, at which UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to give the closing remarks. The ceremony will cap a weeklong series of environmental programs, including an international sustainable floral symposium, an environmental education program for local youth, and decorating the city with organic flowers and floral sculptures.

Steelworkers convention: back to class struggle basics

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:18:00 +0000

The 32nd Constitutional Convention of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) two weeks ago came at a critical time for the union and the labor movement. With 50 steel companies in bankruptcy in the last few years, times have been tough. Jobs have been lost. Contracts have been shattered. Pensions and health care have been lost or sharply cut for thousands of retired steelworkers.

All this is getting worse in the Bush administration’s second term. It has launched renewed attacks on union rights, including the right to organize by card check. It promotes trade policies that serve big capital and the transnationals at the expense of workers everywhere. And it joins with the extreme right in Congress to advance policies that will further drive down the standards of all workers, everything from bankruptcy “reform” to severe budget cuts for people-helping programs.

The steel convention also came at a time of intense debate in labor. Whole sections of the labor movement are engaged in a historic examination of program, strategy and direction. With their convention the Steelworkers took that debate to the rank and file in a big way. But they framed the debate from a steelworker’s point of view. They ignored the sensationalism and the personalities of the general debate and stuck to the issues of change most relevant to their union.

Some have dismissed the debate as being too academic or too isolated from the day-to-day struggles of unions and workers. The steelworkers see that labor must make big changes to fight back effectively against the ultra-right and transnational capital. This convention took the issues straight to the membership. The steelworkers showed that the debates in labor are vital and mandated, not by any small group of labor leaders no matter how well intentioned, but by the very conditions and demands of the class struggle today.

The steel convention illustrates where these discussion and debates in labor are going. Some important features of the convention are signposts:

The USWA merged with PACE (Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers) at this convention. The new union, United Steelworkers (USW) for short, will strengthen each union in some key industrial sectors of the economy. Even if you are bothered by the growth of “general unions,” this merger was done thoughtfully and democratically with rank-and-file participation and ratification. Care was taken on questions of unity and union culture, traditions and history. The energy and militancy that rippled through the combined delegates from the two merged unions on the convention’s final day was moving and powerful.

The convention approved new international strategic agreements with Brazilian and Mexican unions. These add to an already extensive network that the Steelworkers have built with unions from around the world. These agreements go far beyond just talk and exchange of information — they mandate joint action. Growing anger against, and awareness of, capitalist globalization was apparent from the rank and file and the leadership. Fifty-three international delegates attended.

Perhaps the most important business of the convention was adoption of a “Building Power Action Plan.” The theme of “building power” ran throughout the convention. The action plan is a program to educate and mobilize the membership. It speaks to most aspects of the current debates in labor: organizing, independent political action, building national and international labor solidarity, labor/community coalition building, collective bargaining and defending the wages and working conditions of members.

Over and over, from the floor and from the podium, the point was made that the action plan means nothing if it remains a booklet. All agreed that only by taking the action plan and theme back into the locals and communities will it “build power.” Throughout the convention it was clear that this union and its membership are taking responsibility for the whole labor movement, for all workers. At the heart of the “building power” theme and plan is mobilizing the grassroots of labor in a movement of, by, and for workers. It is a return to the basics of class struggle trade unionism and another giant step towards ending business unionism.

What stood out overall was the participation from the floor, from the elected delegates. It is clear that the “building power” militancy is coming from the rank and file. The leadership is drawing on the anger and spirit of the membership and organizing it for action. Even the language reflected a change. Delegates and leaders spoke of the working class. They used words like “militancy” and “pissed off.” “Capitalism” and “socialism” were even mentioned a few times with no one running for the exits.

There were certainly things said and positions taken to disagree with. But the debate is on and headed in a good direction if judged by the Steelworkers convention.

Scott Marshall (scott@rednet.org) is chair of the Communist Party USA’s Labor Commission.

Young workers, unorganized and unnoticed in the era of McJob

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:17:00 +0000

With the complex internal discussion occupying the entire labor movement today, I can’t help but add another dimension to the conversation. Within the AFL-CIO, many constituency groups are valiantly fighting for the interests of women, people of color, same-gender loving and other historically underrepresented workers … and are doing it so that these voices won’t be muted in the inevitable reorganization of organized labor. After all, nearly 30 percent of union workers are people of color, according to an article by Dwight Kirk in Black Commentator, and women now make up 42 percent of union membership. These workers clearly have much at stake as so many of them have lost their stable union jobs.

But who is fighting for the young worker? The bulk of young workers in the United States, especially those in the above constituency groups, haven’t lost their union jobs. Most of them never had a union job at all.

In an article entitled “Eyes on the Fries” that appeared at CampusProgress.org, Elana Berkowitz writes, “Only 5 percent of workers under 25 are unionized, and workers under 35 make up only a quarter of union membership.” She goes on to highlight how “young people — along with immigrants, minorities, and the elderly — make up the vast majority of workers in the service economy,” and despite the popular perception of young workers just earning an extra dollar during the summer, many are attempting to support their families or pay for school.

So why is there so little discussion of the role of youth, in particular young workers, in the internal labor debates? So many proposals call for organizing the unorganized into unions, and yet there is little mention of any well-resourced effort to target young workers. Where is the representative of young workers on the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO? Where is the industry map of unorganized young workers and what is the plan to organize them?

To their credit, many unions have begun to recognize the importance of strengthening existing members under the age of 25. But most young workers have been left to fend for themselves in the so-called era of McJob.

The anti-union movement has done more than hire expensive lawyers and lobbyists to erode labor law. They have also implemented a generational war, targeting youth — a population barely touched directly by unions, having never been a part of the workforce — as a way to avoid working with organized labor. Employers see youth as fresh, non-union bait — often indifferent to unions and separated from the history and importance of organized labor. Unions, on the other hand, often do not see young workers at all. If the labor movement continues to ignore this incoming workforce, no level of reorganization will guarantee its survival.

Many have spoken theoretically and quite eloquently about the importance of the relationship between labor, youth and students. But just as the labor movement must make itself relevant to youth and students in general, it must prioritize how relevant it is to young workers — the incoming generation of union membership. If only 5 percent of young workers under 25 years old are in a union, are we satisfied with the possibility that as they grow older this 5 percent will represent workers under 35 or 45?

A lot of young workers won’t be satisfied. In fact, many young workers have founded organizations to support our generation at work. Though these organizations are based locally, such as Young Workers United in San Francisco, they tend to do wonders for the youth they represent. Even if the AFL-CIO is not quick to form a youth constituency group from its ranks, it could aid efforts to connect these local organizations into a national network of young workers.

This leads me to question the potential role we could play in helping to organize young workers. In a recent national council meeting, the Young Communist League discussed the importance of strengthening key organizational allies as a way to aid the building of such a network in order to increase the presence and influence of young workers. With our current alliances and contributions to such groups as the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, the YCL is poised to play a distinctive role in such an effort. Even so, organized labor will have to develop infrastructure to prepare for incoming young workers, prioritizing this constituency among the others in the discussion.

A good friend of mine reminded me recently that there has never been a successful revolution where young people were not at the forefront leading the way. We can easily apply this to the revolution brewing within the labor movement. Why run the risk of all generations of workers having to transition from union job, to McJob, to no job at all? Why not just bring in the youth?

Erica Smiley (yelimske@hotmail.com) is on the National Council of the Young Communist League.

EDITORIAL: For peace and liberty

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:12:00 +0000

With the tide turning on some issues, it’s time to step up the struggle for peace abroad and civil liberties at home. Two Bush administration priorities gravely threatening these core values are the USA Patriot Act and the drive to develop new nuclear weapons.

With the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago, a scourge was unleashed for the first time that could wipe most life from the face of the earth. Since then most of the world’s people have supported removing that scourge forever. Today, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its 2005 Review Conference are key to that goal.

The 1972 NPT commits the U.S. and the other weapons states to ending the nuclear arms race and achieving nuclear disarmament. They reiterated this pledge at the 2000 NPT Review Conference.

As the first nation to develop nuclear arms and the only nation to use them in war, the U.S. has a special responsibility to be first to fulfill this commitment. But instead, the Bush administration’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review called for improving existing nukes, and designing and building new ones. It also announced its nukes are targeted on seven countries, including Russia and China.

The May 1 March for “No Nukes, No Wars” kicks off a new phase in the people’s drive to win total nuclear disarmament starting with the United States, and to end U.S. involvement in wars abroad and bring our troops home once and for all.

At home, the USA Patriot Act, passed in haste after Sept. 11, has jeopardized nearly every civil liberty the American people hold dear. Under the heading “domestic terrorism,” it potentially subjects every people’s organization to Orwellian surveillance and draconian penalties. The Patriot Act has brought wholesale interrogation, harassment, jailing and summary deportation of tens of thousands of U.S. residents by making racial and national profiling, rather than judicial proof, the standard for action. The Act is before Congress for renewal this year. Hundreds of communities have denounced its devastation of our constitutional rights and rejected implementing its provisions.

Tell your representatives in Congress: No Nukes, No Wars, No USA Patriot Act!

May Day: Made in the USA

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:10:00 +0000

The battle for time

By Roberta Wood

“Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what we will!” was the slogan of the 340,000 workers who marched in cities across the U.S. on May 1, 1886, calling for the eight-hour day.

Since the dawn of capitalism up until today, workers have been fighting for their time. To workers, our time is our lives. To employers, our time is their money.

The fight for time is about exploitation

In early agricultural societies, the level of productivity was so low that humans had to work all day just to produce enough to sustain their own families. Exploitation was obvious: the feudal lord demanded a percentage of each peasant’s crop. In effect, the serf might work five days for himself and one for the overlord. The seventh day was set aside for rest. The Fourth of the Ten Commandments, to honor the Sabbath, is the world’s first labor contract limiting hours of work.

Based on the scientific and technological achievements of past generations, a worker today produces goods and services of far more value than are needed to sustain his or her family. But the exploitation is harder to see. Today’s workers produce for a global market, not for their own consumption. They purchase what they need to live and raise their kids from that global market.

U.S. agriculture is a good example of this. Only 3 million workers, or less than 2 percent of the U.S. work force, produce the corn, wheat, grain, soybeans, vegetables and fruit that feed our country’s 290 million people — with a lot extra to export. Farm workers in Immokalee, Fla., who pick the tomatoes used by Taco Bell, recently won a dramatic victory. A four-year struggle forced the fast food giant to nearly double their pay, from 1 to 2 cents per pound. Even allowing for overhead, 2 cents a pound is an amazingly tiny fraction of the 69 cents per pound or more that consumers pay for those same tomatoes in the supermarket.

Marxist economists estimate that U.S. workers produce enough value to sustain themselves and their families in the first two hours of work every day. The rest stays in the hands of the employers. The difference between the value workers produce and what is compensated is what is filling billionaire’s bank vaults.

Capitalists steal workers’ time to boost profits

As capitalists seek every avenue to increase profits, the push is on today in a hundred ways, small and large, to lengthen the hours of work. The squeeze is on when it comes to workers’ time and no minute in a worker’s day is safe.

Ten minutes in the bathroom is 10 minutes you could have been plugged in to the profit machine, so the pressure is on to reduce toilet breaks. Call center workers report that their computers monitor the time between keystrokes to produce records of their personal activity for supervisors to audit.

Indeed, gains won in the 20th century are being reversed in the 21st. In California, Gov. Schwarzenegger seeks to “terminate” the state law requiring a half hour lunch break, while in Chicago, Mayor Daley has done away with city workers’ coffee breaks.

Corporate chiselers have rolled together sick time, vacation time and holidays and replaced them with a drastically reduced total of “PTO” — paid time off — days. Standards for maternity leave have been reduced from two months before delivery and three months after to a period starting on the day of birth and ending a few weeks later. The Family Medical Leave Act, passed only in 1993, which allows unpaid time for caring for sick family members and newborns, is on the Bush administration hit list.

President Bush’s “Labor” Department eliminated the requirement to pay overtime after 40 hours work for millions of workers, gutting the Fair Labor Standards Act, in place since 1938. Other big business initiatives on the Bush agenda include having people work extra hours without pay, but for “comp” time instead (in other words, you work for nothing and in exchange get time off at the employer’s convenience).

Perhaps the biggest threat to workers’ time is the assault on Social Security. Bush proposes raising the retirement age, which would result in America’s working class putting in entire years of extra work.

There are other new wrinkles on extending the hours of work. It is now the accepted norm that two wage earners are needed to keep the family afloat; in many situations, to pay the family’s bills teenagers also put in long hours before, after or instead of going to school. So instead of 40 hours a week supporting a family, the capitalist class gets 80 or more.

Part-time work is everywhere, but it doesn’t necessarily mean fewer hours on the job. More often it’s an excuse to pay lower wages. Many folks are working two and three “part time” jobs just to make ends meet. And for many workers, modern technology like cell phones and laptops doesn’t mean more freedom, but instead the obligation to work additional hours from home.

We work to live, not live to work

The flip side of obscene profits and billionaires with ownings greater than entire countries is a working class exhausted, stressed out and struggling not only for the resources, but the time to sustain a family. Strikers from the Staley corn syrup plant in downstate Illinois struck in response to their employer’s demand to work them unlimited overtime. “We want to work to live, not live to work,” they chanted on their picket line.

“Time for working-class families is becoming an emergency,” said Bishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of the Chicago Archdiocese. “Families need time to be together.”

Workers need time to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to help kids with their homework. We need time to go to concerts or the beach, to buy groceries and cook dinner, to play ball or watch someone else do it. We need time for quiet time alone, time to enjoy nature, time to hang out. “Time helps people to become human, to develop their divine side,” said Bishop Garcia-Siller. “When you take away the time, we are stealing life.”

Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org) is the People’s Weekly World labor editor. Wadi’h Halabi contributed to this article.

May Day: Made in the USA

By William J. Adelman

Probably no single event has influenced the history of labor in the United States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket affair. It all began with a simple rally on May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today.

In the summer of 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, the predecessor of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), set May 1, 1886, to kick off a nationwide movement for the eight-hour day.

Eight-hour day

The eight-hour day movement caught workers’ imagination. Everywhere slogans were heard like, “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Sleep, Eight Hours for What We Will!” or “Shortening the Hours Increases the Pay.”

In 1886, on May Day, 340,000 workers in 12,000 factories across the country lay down their tools. Chicago, with its strong labor movement, had the nation’s largest demonstration, according to reports, with 80,000 people marching up Michigan Avenue arm-in-arm, singing and carrying the banners of their unions. The unions most strongly represented were the building trades. This solidarity shocked some employers, who feared a workers’ revolution, while others quickly signed agreements for shorter hours at the same pay.

Albert and Lucy Parsons

Two of the organizers of these demonstrations were Lucy and Albert Parsons. The beautiful and talented Lucy had been born a slave in Texas about 1853. Her heritage was African American, Native American and Mexican. She worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau after the Civil War.

After her marriage to Albert, they moved to Chicago where she turned her attention to writing and organizing women sewing workers. Albert was a printer, a member of the Knights of Labor, editor of the labor paper The Alarm, and one of the founders of the Chicago Trades and Labor Assembly.

On Sunday, May 2, Albert went to Ohio to organize rallies there, while Lucy and others staged another peaceful march of 35,000.

But on May 3, the peaceful scene turned violent when the Chicago police attacked and killed picketing workers at the McCormick Reaper Plant at Western and Blue Island Avenues. This attack by police sparked a protest meeting, planned for Haymarket Square on the evening of May 4.

While the May 1 events had been well planned, the events of the evening of May 4 were not. Most of the speakers failed to appear.

Instead of starting at 7:30, the meeting was delayed for about an hour. Instead of the expected 20,000 people, fewer than 2,500 attended.

Two substitute speakers ran over to Haymarket Square at the last minute. They had been attending a meeting of sewing workers organized by Lucy Parsons and her fellow organizer, Lizzie Holmes. The last-minute speakers were Albert Parsons, just returned from Ohio, and an English-born Methodist lay preacher who worked with the labor movement, Samuel Fielden.

Police attack meeting

The Haymarket meeting was almost over and only about 200 people remained when 176 policemen carrying Winchester repeater rifles attacked. Even Lucy and Albert Parsons had left because it was beginning to rain.

Fielden was speaking when someone, unknown to this day, threw the first dynamite bomb ever used in peacetime in the history of the United States. The police officers panicked, and, in the darkness, many shot at their own men. Eventually, seven policemen died, only one directly accountable to the bomb. Four workers were also killed, but few textbooks bother to mention this fact.

Martial law declared

The next day the federal government declared martial law throughout the nation. Anti-labor governments around the world used the Chicago incident to crush local union movements.

In Chicago, police without warrants rounded up labor leaders, searched houses and closed down union newspapers.

Eventually eight men, representing a cross-section of the labor movement, were selected to be tried. Among them were Fielden, Parsons and a young carpenter named Louis Lingg, who was accused of throwing the bomb, although he had witnesses proving he was over a mile away at the time.

The two-month trial ranks as one of the most notorious in American history. The Chicago Tribune even offered to pay money to the jury if it found the eight men guilty.

Trials ends in death penalty

During the trial, Albert Parsons was asked about his philosophy of government and he said the following: “I am an anarchist. … What is socialism, or anarchism? Briefly stated, it is the right of the toilers to the free and equal use of the tools of production and the right of the producers to their product. That is socialism.”

On Aug. 20, 1886, the jury reported its verdict of guilty, applying the death penalty by hanging for seven of the Haymarket Eight, and 15 years of hard labor for the final defendant.

On Nov. 10, the day before the executions, AFL President Samuel Gompers came from Washington to appeal to Illinois Gov. Richard Oglesby for the last time. The national and worldwide pressures did finally force the governor to change the sentences of Fielden and Michael Schwab to life imprisonment.

On the morning of Nov. 10, Lingg was found in his cell, his head half blown away by a dynamite cap. Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Albert Parsons and August Spies were hanged on Nov. 11, 1887.

In June 1893, Gov. John P. Altgeld pardoned the three men still alive and condemned the entire judicial system that had allowed this travesty.

The real issues of the Haymarket affair were freedom of speech and the press, the rights to free assembly and a fair trial by a jury of peers, as well as the right of workers to organize and fight for reforms.

Many of those who were tried were not even at the Haymarket meeting, but were arrested simply because they were union organizers.

International Labor Day

In 1889, the International Labor Congress, meeting in Paris, adopted May Day as International Labor Day in memory of the Haymarket martyrs. Today, in almost every major industrial country, except the U.S., May Day is Labor Day.

For example, in 1925 in the town of Matehuala, on the main highway between Monterrey and Mexico City, the trade unions of the area unveiled in the Plaza de Chicago a monument to the “Martyrs of Chicago.” Each May Day, workers from surrounding towns come here on the “Day of the Martyrs of Chicago,” which is what May Day is called in Mexico.

Excerpted from “The Day Will Come … Stories of the Haymarket Martyrs,” and “Haymarket Revisited,” both available from the Illinois Labor History Society (www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/).

Chicago labor reclaims May Day

By Terrie Albano

CHICAGO — “Attention Working Families” is the leaflet heading. On the bottom it reads, “All workers welcome — all workers unite!” In between are these words: “May Day Celebration — Reclaiming the original Labor Day in Chicago at the site of the new Haymarket Memorial.”

That’s the announcement for the May Day event — sponsored by the Chicago Federation of Labor and other labor groups — here in the city of its birth.

“It’s a forgotten holiday for workers here. But the roots are so deep in Chicago. Such a celebration is long overdue,” Jeff Weiss, CFL director of communications, told the World.

Because May Day is celebrated all over the world, whenever trade unionists from other countries would come to Chicago, the first thing they would ask to see was the Haymarket site. Until last September, the only commemoration at the desolate site was a small plaque. CFL President Dennis Gannon said local trade unionists felt embarrassed and worked to get a new memorial statue placed on the site.

“After 119 years of silence on May Day in our city, the Chicago labor community will begin a new chapter, paying tribute to the fallen heroes of Haymarket and continuing the martyrs’ tradition of promoting and fighting for social justice in the workplace,” the CFL press statement said.

“Hopefully, this will spark a national movement for labor to reclaim May Day. This rally is a good start,” Weiss said.

USW investigates Teflon chemical

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:07:00 +0000

Citing worker and consumer safety concerns, the nation’s largest industrial union, United Steelworkers (USW), announced that it has launched an inquiry into the use of a Teflon-related chemical by hundreds of food packaging and other paper manufacturers across the country.

Boyd Young, president of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) before last week’s merger of PACE with the United Steelworkers of America, sent a letter to the CEOs of more than 200 major paper companies to alert them about possible health risks associated with using Zonyl, a chemical produced by DuPont.

Zonyl is a fluorinated telomer that breaks down into C8, a suspected carcinogen currently being investigated by the EPA and the subject of a major lawsuit settlement this year in West Virginia and Ohio.

While the extent of Zonyl’s use in the paper industry remains unknown, the union, now known as the USW, with 850,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, is conducting a preliminary survey among 1,200 local union officials to collect initial information on the prevalence of Zonyl’s use, and how workers are exposed to it. It is believed that Zonyl is used widely in the paper industry, including the manufacture of packaging for food products.

“It is our duty to protect the health and safety of the workers our union represents,” said Young.

Dr. Timothy Kropp, senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, said, “While nearly every American has in their blood Teflon chemicals used in food packaging and other paper products, workers may have higher levels. Studies have found that workers exposed to the Teflon chemical known as C8 are at risk for increased stroke, leukemia and prostate cancer.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has filed a federal suit alleging DuPont hid from workers and the public information showing C8 causes “substantial risk of injury to human health.” DuPont also recently settled a $108 million class action lawsuit for polluting the drinking water of West Virginia and Ohio residents with C8, pollution the company failed to report since 1984.

Initial responses to the survey indicate Zonyl is often mixed with other chemicals before being applied to pulp or paper products, such as food packaging. Workers who interact with the mixture are potentially exposed through significant airborne and skin contact.

Workers Memorial Day: Honoring those who lost their lives from workplace injuries or illnesses

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:06:00 +0000

People's Health

Workers Memorial Day is an international day of remembrance, held on April 28, the day the Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed in 1970. That day, people gather in hundreds of communities across the U.S. and more than 29 countries worldwide to honor those who have lost their lives as a result of work-related injuries or illnesses.

In 2003, more than 4.3 million workers were injured and 5,559 were killed due to job hazards. Another 60,000 died due to occupational disease. Clearly defending job safety is defending life.

Please support the following life-defending activities by writing or calling your elected officials:

• Do not slash the job safety budget.

President Bush’s budgets have all moved to reduce the federal government’s commitment to protecting workers’ safety and health. The 2006 budget is no exception, reflecting the administration’s priorities and policies that favor employers over workers and voluntary compliance over enforcement. Taking into account inflation, this year’s proposed budget freezes OSHA’s and the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s enforcement programs.

• Do not dismantle worker safety and health training programs.

While expanding outreach to employers, the Bush administration has tried to gut the training and education programs for workers, previously proposing to slash the worker training budget by 75 percent and to eliminate funding for union-run programs. For Fiscal Year 2006, the president’s budget eliminates the worker training and education programs all together.

• Do not shut down new workplace safety and health rules.

The Bush administration killed dozens of worker protection measures under development at OSHA and MSHA, including rules on cancer-causing substances, reactive chemicals, and infectious diseases such as TB. They have even refused to issue a rule requiring employers to pay for personal protective equipment, particularly important for immigrant and low-wage workers. The Bush administration has the worst record on safety rules in OSHA’s entire history, issuing no new significant rules during its first term.

• Do not favor employer voluntary programs over enforcement and do not exclude workers and unions.

The administration has made expanding voluntary programs and outreach to employers a top priority. Bush’s OSHA has set up partnerships and alliances with dozens of employers, largely excluding unions. Union representatives critical of the administration have been removed from all agency advisory committees in an attempt to silence opposition.

• Do not kill workplace ergonomic protections.

The Bush administration started its assault on worker safety soon after taking office, joining with anti-worker business groups to repeal OSHA’s ergonomics standard. The standard, 10 years in the making, would have required employers to protect workers from the nation’s biggest job safety problem — injuries caused by heavy lifting and repetitive work.

• Strengthen criminal penalties under OSHA.

Despite 170,000 workplace fatalities in the U.S. in the last 20 years, there were only 81 convictions and only 16 carried jail sentences. It is only a misdemeanor to kill a worker by willfully violating safety laws. The maximum sentence is six months in jail.

American workers need a strong workplace safety agency that puts workers, not employers, first and protects safety and health, not corporate interests. Please defend life by fighting for strong safety and health protection for all workers.

The author is a member of the Allegheny County (Pa.) Labor Council Workers Memorial Day Committee.

Asbestos bill fatally flawed

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:05:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Despite some improvements in the latest legislation, the AFL-CIO has dropped its support of a comprehensive asbestos victims compensation bill.

Asbestos victims suffer from mesothelioma — a form of cancer — asbestosis and other lung diseases caused by years of inhaling the asbestos fibers as they worked in buildings, in mines, in shipyards and at factories.

The fund is supposed to pay them for their medical bills and lost earnings with money from asbestos producers and their insurers. But in return, ex-workers would be barred from suing.

The measure, drafted by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), would establish a $140 billion fund to compensate the 200,000-plus workers who are victims of asbestos. The Senate may debate the bill by the end of May.

Specter’s new bill “includes some important improvements such as increases in award levels for some disease categories and a bar against any liens on workers compensation awards,” AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said in mid-April. But it also bars money “for a large group of lung cancer victims, without allowing these individuals to document asbestos exposure through CT scans, and the absence of remedies for victims during the period” before the asbestos fund starts.

The federation also objected to a statute of limitations for victims to file claims, and the lack of details about what would be done if the fund runs out of money. Business groups oppose refilling the fund, and the AFL-CIO objects to their stand, too.

Asbestos victims’ groups note asbestos-caused disease takes so long to develop that the number of victims will peak in 2020.

The victims’ groups and the firefighters union, which represents workers who toil in asbestos-laced, older burning buildings, are battling the bill. On April 1, they launched last-ditch lobbying to stop it, arguing it’s too pro-business and does not help victims.

According to the Environmental Working Group, “The Senate’s latest scheme to limit the liability of asbestos makers would cut benefits dramatically to people dying of the fatal asbestos cancer, mesothelioma, and pre-empt laws in 12 states, and court cases in at least eight, that guarantee a speedy trial to terminally ill plaintiffs.” EWG said dying mesothelioma victims would see their cases thrown out or would have to wait for nine months before restarting their cases or filing claims. “Hundreds of people would die waiting,” EWG adds.

Rumsfeld encouraged as Iraqis chant, You go, America!

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:04:00 +0000

Concedes he does not know Arabic

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said today that he was encouraged by massive demonstrations in Baghdad marking the second anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein, telling reporters that he was particularly heartened by the Iraqis’ chant of “You go, America!”

“I have not seen so much excitement since the Army-Navy game,” a beaming Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon press briefing. “You could tell that they were awfully worked up about something.”

While conceding that he did not know “a lick of Arabic,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, “You don’t need to know the language to see how excited those folks were — they were hooting and hollering up a storm.”

The Defense Secretary took particular pride in pointing out that the Iraqis had “gone to the trouble” of building a life-like effigy of President George W. Bush.

“They were jumping up and down, passing that darned thing back and forth,” he said. “You could feel the love!”

But Tariq Rasouli, professor of Arabic language studies at the University of Minnesota, cautioned against what he called Mr. Rumsfeld’s “overly optimistic” appraisal of the demonstrations: “He’s right that they were chanting ‘You go, America!’ but he left out the part where they chanted ‘immediately!’”

For his part, the Defense Secretary refused to announce a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq: “How can I talk about leaving them when they remembered our anniversary?”

Andy Borowitz writes a daily humor column at www.borowitzreport.com.