People Before Profit blog

Anti-Castro terrorist illegally enters U.S.

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:34:00 +0000

A notorious anti-Castro terrorist who is still wanted by Venezuela on terrorism charges has been admitted into the United States, underscoring the hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror.

Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile, Bay of Pigs veteran and CIA operative who conspired with Orlando Bosch of Miami to bomb a Cubana Airlines jet in 1976 — killing all 73 on board — has reportedly entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico. His lawyer said Posada will seek asylum here.

Posada, 77, has boasted of his role in that crime. Although he was previously acquitted of the bombing charges, he was in jail awaiting a prosecutor’s appeal when he escaped with help from his Florida compatriots.

He has also bragged about his role in the bombings of Havana tourist hotels in 1997, crimes he described in an extraordinary interview that appeared in the New York Times on July 12, 1998.

In late 2000, Posada was arrested by Panamanian authorities along with three-Miami based Cubans for conspiring to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro during a summit in Panama City. The four were subsequently convicted on lesser charges, but were later pardoned by outgoing President Mireya Moscoso.

Lázaro Barredo, a deputy in Cuba’s National Assembly, called the possibility of a Florida welcome for Posada as an “attack on decency.” President Fidel Castro called Posada a “monster,” adding, “It is as if Bin Laden were in the United States and the U.S. president did not know.”

Posada’s lawyer told Reuters that his application for asylum will party be based on his claim that he worked “directly and indirectly” for the CIA for many years.

Wal-Mart: always low-down lies?

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:19:00 +0000

According to a recent survey commissioned by Wal-Mart, New Yorkers overwhelmingly support the opening of Wal-Mart stores throughout the city’s five boroughs.

According to Wal-Mart’s survey, most New Yorkers believe that Wal-Mart will help the city financially and socially: 78 percent said that when large retailers open stores, they create jobs; 69 percent believed that if allowed to come to New York, Wal-Mart would create jobs, compared to 13 percent who said it would cost jobs; and 75 percent thought getting paid $10.38 an hour (Wal-Mart’s average wage in metropolitan areas like New York City) to work in a Wal-Mart store is a fair wage.

The survey is being touted as proof that the superstore should be allowed to open in New York City. However, what it really shows is that a large percentage of New Yorkers have fallen for the mega-store’s propaganda. Who could blame them? Wal-Mart has billions of dollars and spends millions each year to convince people of these lies.

New Yorkers, like people in general, are smart and will make good decisions, but only provided they have the correct information from which to make their judgments.

Assuming that the Wal-Mart survey is a correct representation of the city’s sentiments — and this is a large assumption — community and labor organizations, such as the NYC Free Wal-Mart Coalition, have a lot of work to do to bring to light the facts about the superstore’s real record.

Wal-Mart will not create jobs — it will destroy them. According to a 2003 report by the city of Los Angeles, stores like Wal-Mart “often can result in the reduction of consumer choice due to their tendency to cannibalize competing retail businesses.” Other studies show that Wal-Mart does create jobs — but unfortunately, it only creates two jobs for every three jobs it wipes out by its “cannibalization” of family businesses and smaller stores. And Wal-Mart’s jobs tend to pay significantly less. Its average $10.38 cents per hour is not a living wage. In Wal-Mart’s world, “full time” workers — about two-thirds of the workforce, can work as little as 34 hours per week. This comes out to $18,352 per year, even lower than the $18,400 federal poverty guideline for a family of four. The federal guideline is too low in general, and far too low for New York City, the fourth most expensive city in the U.S.

Also, according to the AFL-CIO, while 66 percent of American workers get health insurance from their work, less than half of Wal-Mart workers do. This is because Wal-Mart’s health insurance plan is excessively costly — an average of $208 per month (remember the workers make sub-poverty wages) — and deductibles range from $350 for single coverage to as high as $3,000 for family coverage. Wal-Mart workers have to pay 42 percent of their insurance costs, while the national average for large company workers is 16 percent.

Wal-Mart doesn’t help communities’ economies, but weakens them. According to a congressional study, the average 200-employee store costs taxpayers $420,750 per year. This is because the company pays wages that put workers into the category of “working poor,” forced to rely on state programs to survive. In effect, Wal-Mart transfers the costs of its workforce to the community.

Wal-Mart has been so widely implicated in encouraging its workers to apply for public assistance that it has been forced to add a section to its new PR web page attempting to refute that claim.

According to the Wal-Mart survey, New Yorkers believed in Wal-Mart’s purported low prices. Of course, any low prices are offset by the harm the store does to local communities, and the general lowering of wages in nearby areas. However, numerous surveys indicate that Wal-Mart, on the whole, is no cheaper than other stores. It is able to create its “bargain” image through deceptive advertising.

Apparently, Wal-Mart found that consumers know the prices of less than 1-2 percent of the thousands of items in its stores. So the company advertises prices that are much lower than the competition’s on “price sensitive items,” while keeping other products priced just as high, or higher, than the competition. In fact, Wal-Mart has been legally required to abandon its slogan, “Always the Lowest Prices,” because it was not true. They replaced it with a cleverly worded slogan that sounds almost identical: “Always Low Prices.”

The list of Wal-Mart abuses is long. The pro-Wal-Mart poll, even if accurate, only tells us that the superstore’s propaganda campaign has met some success. It is the job of those who value labor and community rights to dispel these lies.

Dan Margolis (dmargolis@pww.org) is on the staff of the People’s Weekly World.

Communists make key points on racism

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:16:00 +0000

Racism, the Communist Party’s draft program tells us, has some new features and new modes of operation (though more study is needed), but it doesn’t lose sight of four critical insights that we have embraced and popularized over decades.

First, racism is deeply embedded in the relations, institutional structures, and system of capitalism. Second, the capitalist class obtains enormous political, economic, and ideological advantages from its dominant position in the hierarchy of racist exploitation and oppression. Third, the journey from formal to real equality requires the radical rearrangement of political, economic, and cultural relations and institutions in our society. Finally, white workers have both material and non-material reasons to fight against racism and for full equality of oppressed people.

The latter insight goes against the grain of “white privilege” theories, which suggest that the white section of the working class is so heavily invested economically, politically, culturally, and psychologically in racist exploitation and oppression that left and progressives forces will have to move heaven and earth before white workers smell the coffee of white supremacy.

While relative differentials continue to exist — and in some instances grow wider — between white people and people of color, and while “whiteness” does confer relative advantages in innumerable ways, it is not sufficient to focus, as white skin theorists do, on these alone.

We also have to bring into the picture the class of capitalists who derive the inordinate share of privileges, advantages, and wealth from racist exploitation and oppression — a result not primarily of their whiteness, but instead of their class position and their control and ownership of a racialized mode of production. We have to shed light on the relationships between super-exploitation of racially oppressed workers and the common class exploitation of all workers. We have to point out that wages and living standards have been stagnant for a quarter century — something unprecedented in U.S. capitalism’s history — and that jobs paying a union wage and providing full benefits have disappeared at an unprecedented rate for most categories of the working class across the same period. Finally, we have to show that white workers have much to gain — economically, politically, culturally, and morally — in fighting racism and can be won to this struggle. Anything less is an unnecessary ideological concession to our class opponents, who would like us to think that white workers are the source and main beneficiaries of the institutions and ideologies of racist oppression.

In Capital, Marx wrote, “Labor in the white skin can never be free as long as labor in the black skin is branded.” The white privilege theorists have inverted this to say, “Labor in the black skin can never be free as long as labor in the white skin is privileged.” This inversion may appear insignificant at first sight, but on closer inspection it takes on more meaning. In Marx’s formulation, the freedom of white labor from wage exploitation is inextricably connected to and hinges on its readiness to join the struggle for the freedom of Black labor. Thus, white workers have an individual and collective interest in the emancipation of Black workers — if they are doing anybody any favors, it is themselves in the first place.

By contrast, the inversion of Marx’s formulation by white privilege theorists suggests that the struggle of white workers against racism is driven not by their individual and class interests, but by a desire to give up their privileges and extend their “beneficence” to workers of color.

It is hard to see how this new theoretical notion will strengthen the struggle against racism — not to mention give workers of all colors a deeper understanding of a system that exploits and oppresses, albeit unevenly and in different ways, the multiracial, multinational working class as a whole. White workers will be unconvinced by this theory. Black and other racially oppressed workers will flinch at its paternalism. And left and progressive people will be served up another reason to think that white people are fatally steeped in racism.

Obviously, this issue merits more attention. The fight against racism is of paramount importance for the future of our country. It can’t be won unless there is a conviction among broad sections of white people that racism is not in their interest and that they have a responsibility to fight against it.

Sam Webb (swebb@cpusa.org) is national chair of the Communist Party USA. The party’s draft program appears at www.cpusa.org.

Letters

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:15:00 +0000

Potential allies

Re: “The ‘middle class’ and the working class” (PWW 4/23-29), it is true that there is no class between the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class) and the working class. As Pat Barile’s article correctly says, the concept of a “middle class” was deliberately designed to weaken the class consciousness of workers.

However, it should be noted that, between the bourgeoisie (the big capitalists) and the working class, there is what Marxists call a petty bourgeoisie (small business people who have others working for them).

Their interests are very often quite different from the interests of monopoly capitalists, and they should not be lumped together with them. Small business people are potential allies in the fight against monopoly capital.

Kevin Lindemann

Winfield IL

U.S. war crimes

While I find your coverage of the war in Iraq interesting, even brave, I think your energy would perhaps be better directed towards a “real costs” assessment of the war. The fact is war is a crime, period. In “post-9/11” America, patriotism will keep most Americans willfully blind to coverage of “war crimes.” However, money talks, even when B.S. walks. This war is bankrupting the U.S. and will continue to do so for many years, just to ensure “cheap” oil supplies. Only when Americans realize how much this war is hurting their wallets will they care enough to do anything about it. I suggest that you would have more success focusing on monetary costs rather than humanitarian costs. Americans just don’t care about people on the other side of the globe whom they will never meet.

Brent Hopkins

Via e-mail

Schools, not war

The following resolution was passed unanimously by the Thomas J. Waters Local School Council on April 18:

Whereas, the Chicago Public Schools has threatened to lay off 800 teachers next year because of a budget deficit;

Whereas 80 percent of the school districts in Illinois are experiencing chronic budget deficits;

Whereas, current funding per pupil on a state level is still $1,000 less than the minimum needed to guarantee two-thirds of students pass the state’s standardized tests;

Whereas, the state and city budget deficits and federal cuts are also deeply affecting the Chicago Transit Authority, LI-HEAP and home energy assistance, health care for millions and veterans benefits;

Whereas, states and cities across the country are experiencing serious deficits, cuts and layoffs in public education and public services generally;

Whereas, the Bush administration policies of funding the Iraq war, militarization and giving tax cuts to the wealthy are bankrupting cities and states across the country;

Whereas, the Iraq war has cost Illinois $87 billion in funding which could have paid for an additional 151,000 teachers or 11 million children in Head Start for a year;

Be it resolved that the Waters School Local School Council calls for a reorientation of federal spending priorities from militarism and war and for funding the urgent people’s needs and those of our communities, and

Be it further resolved that we call upon our elected officials to speak out against these Bush policies and support funding schools and services instead of war and militarism.

John Bachtell

Local school council member

Chicago IL

Vets deserve better

I just read Martin Frazier’s excellent article on health care racism (PWW 4/02-4/08). I was especially struck by the photo of Vernon Baker, the only living African American Medal of Honor winner from World War II. I was shocked to learn that he had to rely on friends and family to raise money to help cover his health care costs. I am disgusted that Baker’s medical care wasn’t fully covered by the VA.

Heroes who fought fascism abroad and racism at home deserve far better. Perhaps if the $16,000 hadn’t been used to send Tom DeLay on a trip to the Bahamas or Disney World, veterans might get better treatment. As it stands the Republicans have cut VA benefits to pay for their tax cuts for the rich. This is both corrupt and immoral.

Joel Wendland

Via e-mail

About the filibuster

The Senate is poised to toss aside an old safeguard, one in place as long as the institution itself, solely to ensure the appointment of conservative justices. Democrats have used the filibuster in the past to oppose judicial appointments through the mechanism of prolonging debate. They might well use it to oppose such presidential nominees as Janice Rodgers Brown, who has questioned the Clean Air Act, the minimum wage, and the 40-hour workweek.

The filibuster has preserved for two centuries the most democratic aspect of our system — the opportunity for the Senate to debate a point so long as a significant portion disagrees with the majority. To abandon it now, for so shortsighted a goal as to appoint reactionary judges, would be foolish.

Elizabeth B. Hovey

New York NY

Fascist danger

Thanks for your editorial against the “nuclear option” (banning the filibuster). In terms of basic democratic rights, this is the scariest move yet from these Washington gangsters. The ultra-right Family Research Council’s website boasted of “Justice Sunday” (April 24), where Senate leader Bill Frist spoke via telecast on the need to use this option against Democrats, saying they’re a “party against people of faith.”

Why such a wild claim? Because Senate Democrats blocked 5 percent of Bush’s 2004 judicial nominees. By comparison, Republicans blocked one-third of Clinton’s nominees, with special contempt for African Americans.

All faces on the “Justice Sunday” ad are older white males, and everyone on the website is white except one Latina who is “pregnant” and “scared”! And they claim they’re not racists?

Add to this the development of new hate groups like the Minutemen Militia. Our Fox “News” affiliate allowed hate spokespeople to express their views unchallenged.

Free advertisements for hate, with no opposing perspectives! We don’t currently live under fascism, but we would be amiss not to recognize that fascist elements, while representing the views of a small section of our population, are too close for comfort to political power in America.

Brad Janzen

Norman OK

EDITORIAL: May Day lives!

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

For decades, May Day, the international workers’ day, has been a celebration of the struggles and achievements of the working class. It is, in most of the world, the official “Labor Day.”

Here in the U.S., increasing attacks on the labor movement and working families by the extremist Bush administration have put workers on the defensive.

But this year, May Day takes place in the context of a resurgence of militancy and unity among labor and the broad movement for progressive social change.

As shown in the recent Steelworkers convention, the labor movement is increasingly returning to its militant, class-struggle roots and emerging as a leading force for progressive change in our nation. Labor showed its renewed muscle and determination with an unprecedented grassroots mobilization around the November 2004 elections, incorporating new organizational forms and activating many rank-and-filers. The movement was able to elect a number of trade unionists to local office.

While some on the left threw up their hands in despair, Bush’s re-election seems only to have spurred the labor movement, and its growing alliance with a wide range of people’s organizations, to fight harder, broader and better.

A few weeks ago, the USWA and PACE merged to form the nation’s biggest industrial union, saying they were doing so to “combat the assault on workers’ rights that is threatening to undermine decades of social and economic progress.” The Steelworkers also threw out the discredited anticommunist clause that was used to divide and disable labor in the 1950s.

Labor and its allies are not only showing new, united strength on defensive battles — with Social Security front and center — but they are also moving onto the offensive, and scoring victories. Of special note are the wonderful student-labor victories at Georgetown University and Washington University in St. Louis, which demonstrate the power of unity between these two key sectors of the American people.

This year, the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Illinois AFL-CIO are sponsoring a historic May Day celebration in the city where the holiday was born.

May Day, the class struggle holiday, is being reborn in the land of its birth. That is cause for celebration.

Contra figures resurface to target Venezuela

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:03:00 +0000

People Before Profits

Hugo Chavez is a wanted man.

His “crimes” include acting as a democratically elected president of a sovereign Venezuela; rejecting the principles embodied in the Monroe Doctrine (i.e., “Latin America is the U.S.A.’s backyard”); challenging neoliberal doctrines that serve the interest of global corporations rather than social development; seeking to solidify the economic and political integration of South America based on the principles of equal exchange and mutually beneficial cooperation; and using Venezuela’s oil income to benefit the majority of Venezuelans rather than an elite few.

To these “offenses” one must add Chavez’s deepening of economic ties with the European Union; encouraging the formation of a progressive Latin American oil bloc; working to select a pro-Latin American (rather than a pro-U.S.) secretary-general of the Organization of American States; acquiring the means of self-defense and building a military reserve force of 1.5 million Venezuelans; guiding the development, together with other South American leaders, of an independent, Latin American television network that will present the world through Latin American eyes; diversifying Venezuela’s oil sales to other countries, including China, India and Cuba; and welcoming Cuban doctors and teachers to work among the Venezuelan poor.

Bush orders Chavez ‘containment’

The Financial Times recently reported that President Bush has ordered the “containment” (i.e., the overthrow) of Hugo Chavez. Roger Pardo-Maurer, deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemispheric affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense, said, “Chavez is a problem because he is clearly using his oil money and influence to introduce his conflictive style into the politics of other countries. … We have reached the end of the road of the current approach.”

This is interesting because Pardo-Maurer, a former Green Beret, was the spokesperson for the Nicaraguan Contras during President Reagan’s dirty war against the Sandinista government.

In fact many of the people in key policy positions to develop and conduct a “new approach” to Venezuela were deeply involved in Central American affairs during the 1980s. John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras (1981-1985) where he was in charge of Central Command’s effort to crush national liberation movements in Central America. While in that position he remained “unaware” of the death squads operating in the region. Now he is director of national intelligence.

The new head of the CIA, Porter Goss (a fraternity brother of Negroponte’s at Yale), was a “007”-type CIA agent in the Caribbean and Mexico in the ’60s and early ’70s, according to investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker.

The new ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, also played a role in Central America during the 1980s. According to journalist Cort Greene, Brownfield, in his capacity as political officer at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, was involved in covering up the killings of Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American Maryknoll nuns. He is also alleged “to have played a key role in directing the death squads and El Salvadoran military.” Brownfield was also temporarily assigned to the Southern Command for the period 1989-90, during which time the U.S. planned and carried out the invasion of Panama.

The contra connection

Roger Noriega, currently the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric affairs, also cut his diplomatic teeth in Central America during the 1980s. According to his profile on Right Web (www.right-web.org), Noriega was in charge of getting money to the Nicaraguan Contras during a period when Congress had cut off official funding. Various other channels were used, including right-wing evangelical and political groups.

Convicted perjurer Elliot Abrams, another old Contra hand, has recently been appointed deputy national security adviser in charge of advancing “global democracy.” This position gives Abrams a perfect platform to meddle in the internal political affairs of countries whose elected leaders refuse to follow George W. Bush’s agenda.

The time is now to build a solidarity movement in defense of Venezuelan democracy.

Letters

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 03:15:00 +0000

On John Paul and Benedict

Millions mourned the death of Pope John Paul II. The grief was felt hard in my home city of Chicago with its large Polish community. As a Polish-American Catholic, I still remember the pride and excitement I felt when a Polish pope was selected in 1978. John Paul supported social justice, peace and many things I agree with.

Nevertheless, I had many disagreements with this pope. Cable news channels boasted of how the pope had disgracefully collaborated with the CIA to overthrow socialism. He maintained ultraconservative positions on abortion and matters of Catholic doctrine. He appointed outright reactionaries to high posts in the church, and all but quashed liberation theology in Latin America. He was cruelly anti-gay.

This was out of touch with how I interpreted the Bible, and it helped to fuel the ultra-right in the U.S.

The selection of the new pope was very much influenced by John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI, a conservative, will have to respect the feelings and outlook of the many Catholics who don’t agree with conservative doctrine. Surveys of American Catholics show majority support for female priests and the right of priests to marry. Plus there is a growing movement among clergy and parishioners to fight poverty, promote peace and fight against the death penalty.

Eva Gornik

Chicago IL

New union can’t lose

Leo Gerard, president of the new USW union, now presides over a mighty industrial army with varied elements of the very militant Mineworkers, Paperworkers, and Steelworkers. Don’t challenge him to a game of “rock, paper, scissors.” He has all three!

Jim Lane

Dallas TX

Those ‘worthless IOUs’

George W. Bush is rich. In May 2004, he filed a financial disclosure report showing that he is worth between $8 million and $20 million. His biggest asset is his ranch, which he values between $1 million and $5 million. He has a number of bank accounts and CDs, and a few other investments. But more than half of Bush’s wealth — between $5 million and $10 million — is invested in U.S. Treasury notes.

This is not remarkable. U.S. treasuries are regarded as amongst the safest investments in the world. And for a politician, it is a completely non-controversial investment.

Except for one thing. Earlier this month, President Bush stood next to a filing cabinet at the federal Bureau of Public Debt. The cabinet holds the assets of the Social Security trust fund: $1.7 billion in U.S. treasury bonds. Bush said that these are not “real assets,” and later said, “There is no trust fund. Just IOUs.”

This begs the question. President Bush, if you really think the treasury bonds held by the Social Security trust fund are not real assets, why have you invested over half your personal fortune in these same worthless IOUs?

Art Perlo

New Haven CT

A rose would be a rose…

I was amused to read Dave Zink’s letter in the April 15 edition of the PWW. While I respect his opinion and realize that the name “People’s Weekly World” is problematic for some, it seems, to me, the most logical descendent of the Daily Worker and the Daily World.

I was also puzzled by the idea that “People’s Weekly World” might be considered “ultra-left.” “Wha?” as we say in cartoonland. I wonder how the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA could be anything other than ultra-left? I would think that anyone who finds being too far left a problem probably wouldn’t agree with the politics of the CPUSA anyway. We should not hide our lineage and affiliations. On the contrary, we should be proclaiming it as loudly as possible.

One final thought. “Weekly World” would be unusable due to the existence of the supermarket tabloid, “The Weekly World News.” Even though the exploits of Bush and Co. push the limits of believability beyond the tales of the Incredible Bat Boy, the World’s Fattest Baby and the Face of Jesus on Mars, I can see the confusion between the PWW’s facts and the Weekly World News’ fiction. If only Bush were a trite work of fiction. The world would be such a better place.

David Baldinger

Greensburg PA

Holocaust lessons

Although seldom mentioned in most Holocaust accounts, the Jasenovac camp, run by Croatian Ustashe, was Hitler’s principal death camp in the Balkans and third largest overall. The victims there included Serbs, Jews, Romas, as well as antifascists of many nationalities.

During a commemoration ceremony on April 17 at the New York City Holocaust Memorial Park in Brooklyn, Father Djokan Majstorovic of St. Sava Church blessed a monument to the camp and its victims. Rabbi Ephraim Isaac recited prayers in Hebrew.

Both Jewish and Serbian survivors of the camp, as well a representative of the Romas, spoke out about the horrors of the Holocaust. Others, including local community activists who established and run the park, spoke about the sufferings of the victims, the dangers of the resurgence of fascism, and what must be done to prevent human rights abuses, including genocide, both now and in the future.

A reader

New York NY

Mothers against police crimes

“Volunteer of the Year” awards highlighted a celebration of Paul Robeson’s life to the applause of nearly 100 Seattle neighborhood activists and supporters April 9.

Mothers for Police Accountability honored the Racial Disparity Project of the Defender Association, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Center School students, and Kristin Joy.

MFPA maintains a 24-hour hotline at (206) 329-2033. Its ACLU wallet card, “What to do if you’re stopped by the police,” is available by phone request or by writing to PO Box 22886, Seattle WA 98122.

“Paul Robeson was a lifelong fighter for world peace with justice,” noted MFPA Director Rev. Harriet Walden. Rev. James Wilmore compared Robeson to Mahatma Gandhi, quoting the latter: “We must become what we want the world to be.”

Don Patrick

Seattle WA

Editorials

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 03:12:00 +0000

Just do your job

When a woman walks into pharmacy she expects the druggist to fill the prescription. But one Chicago woman was stunned to find a pharmacist that refused to fill her prescription for contraceptives. Other women in other states have faced similar humiliation and outrage.

These events spurred Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to approve an emergency rule requiring pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions quickly. Blagojevich said that when a woman goes to get a prescription filled she should be able to expect: “No delays. No hassles. No lectures.” Now anti-birth-control extremists are attacking the governor for his historic action to protect women’s health.

Unfortunately, 13 states are considering legislation allowing pharmacists to refuse to do their job, despite the fact that 95 percent of women in the U.S. use birth control at some point in their lives. These issues affect all Americans, not just women.

“Tomorrow it might be painkillers for a cancer patient. Next year it could be medicine that prolongs the life of a person with AIDS,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who is a co-sponsor of a new bill to ensure pharmacies fill prescriptions.

A parallel and equally dangerous development is the so-called Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (or Weldon Amendment), which allows any federally funded “health care entity” to deny women abortion services or referrals, without penalty. This includes refusing to issue “the morning after pill” even in the case of rape.

In typical right-wing double-speak, the government would be “discriminating” against clinics or hospitals refusing to provide services — even in life-threatening situations — if it penalized them.

NOW says this law should more accurately be called the Federal Refusal Clause. In other words, it allows health care entities to refuse to provide abortion services for any reason. This legislation passed with no debate because it was hidden in the massive FY 2005 omnibus spending bill. A Senate vote to repeal this clause could come anytime before April 30.

These extreme right-wing positions have been repeatedly rejected by the majority of Americans. Once again we have to speak up and guarantee this small group of ultraconservatives doesn’t get its way.

One vote made the difference

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) gave the Bush administration a jolt when he spoke out against the rush to confirm John Bolton as UN ambassador this week.

A vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to send Bolton’s nomination to the Senate floor was expected on a straight 10-8 party line vote, despite vehement accusations that Bolton is abusive in his treatment of subordinates and a purveyor of false intelligence.

But then Voinovich challenged the committee chairman, Richard Lugar. “My conscience got me,” he said after a stormy two-hour session. “I wanted more information about this individual and I didn’t feel comfortable voting for him.”

Reluctantly, Lugar postponed the vote for at least a month to permit other witnesses to testify and to dig deeper into Bolton’s record.

Evidently the senators are beginning to see that Bush has sent them a power-hungry megalomaniac ready to crush anyone who disagrees with him. Other Republicans on the committee are also having second thoughts.

Doubtless a flood of messages from his constituents helped Voinovich see the light. The senators may, after all, send Bolton back to the cave he came from.

This setback for Bush may foreshadow defeat in his drive to terminate the Senate filibuster rule. Democrats have used the filibuster to block a handful of outrageous Bush nominees. The strategy works because the Republicans have only 55 seats, five short of the 60 needed to terminate Senate debate.

Bush is pushing for Senate approval of the “nuclear option” to repeal the filibuster rule so that he can push his nominees through with a simple majority. It is key to his plan to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will join in a Family Research Council telecast this weekend which brands Democrats as “enemies of religion” for filibustering Bush’s nominees.

Once again, several Republicans, including Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Virginia’s John Warner and Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, have voiced doubts about ending the filibuster rule. Contact your senators today at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to vote against Bolton and for preserving the filibuster rule.

NAACP launches SOS: Save our Social Security

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 02:26:00 +0000

When the hawk advises the chicken that its eggs are better off in the hawk’s nest, it makes sense to be suspicious.

Perhaps with that proverb in mind, NAACP chairman Julian Bond and other African American leaders kicked off a nationwide lobbying initiative and cross-country campaign against President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.

In a concerted and highly targeted effort to win over Blacks to the private investment scheme, Bush has tried to use African Americans’ relatively shorter life expectancy, a legacy of chronic systemic inequality, as an argument to junk Social Security. At an April 11 press conference in Washington, Bond called Bush’s ploy “playing the race card to set Americans against Americans.” Instead, “we urge the administration to address the long-term problems the system faces now,” the NAACP leader said. “Recognizing the shorter life expectancy of people of color is commendable, but placing them further at risk is no solution.”

Also speaking at the press conference, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, warned President Bush not to use the fact that African Americans are suffering from a legacy of inequality as an excuse to privatize Social Security.

Dubbed “SOS — Save Our Social Security,” the NAACP campaign will go to New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Dallas, Atlanta, Columbia, Mo., and Washington, D.C. The tour will include meetings with community organizations and on college campuses. Participants will be urged to contact lawmakers to defend Social Security.

The Congressional Black Caucus says it has already held more than 100 town hall meetings on Social Security in the past two months.

Polls are showing that these and other grassroots efforts are having an effect on public thinking. According to the Washington Post, “barely a third of the public approves of the way President Bush is dealing with Social Security.” A majority says the more they hear about Bush’s plan to “reform” Social Security the less they like it. In a Pew Reseach Center nationwide survey, the percentage of Americans who say they favor private accounts has tumbled to 46 percent, down from 54 percent in December and 58 percent in September. Support for private accounts among African Americans is the lowest, slipping from 50 percent to 36 percent.

AARP President Marie Smith, cited by Ebony magazine as one of America’s 100 most influential African American leaders, said in a recent statement, “Social Security is critical to our community. Today only one-fourth of African Americans have a private pension or investment income. That is not expected to improve, so Social Security will remain the foundation of retirement security for the next generation.”

She and other African American leaders say private accounts are risky and would drain the Social Security fund, endangering retirement, survivor and disability benefits their community especially relies on. One out of every three Blacks over 65 counts Social Security as the only source of income, and one in 16 African American children receives income each month from a Social Security check.

According to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog over how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars, “Because of higher disability rates and lower lifetime earnings, African Americans and Hispanics actually receive greater benefits relative to taxes [from the Social Security system] than whites.”

Many agree that the Bush administration would do better to expand the job market if it is sincere about alleviating the African American condition. In its annual report, released last month, the National Urban League concluded that, 40 years after passage of landmark civil rights legislation, economic and social progress for Black Americans remains worrisome. The report shows that the median wealth for African Americans is 10 times less than the median for whites. The official Black unemployment rate, 10.8 percent, remains double that for whites.

While many African Americans agree that Social Security needs to be improved, there is growing consensus that any changes should not be based on the unpredictability and insecurity of private accounts or left to the whims of the stock market. African Americans are also justifiably suspicious of a salesman who has previously paid little attention to their plight.

Chicagos Latino film fest countrys oldest

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 06:08:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Pepe Vargas, from Colombia, was working a job, going to ESL classes and taking college courses when he put the Latino Film Festival on the Chicago map.

Twenty-one years later, it is the nation’s largest and oldest film festival. Below is an interview with Vargas conducted by Curly Cohen. The festival runs through April 20. For information, call (312) 409-1757.

PWW: Congratulations, wow, the 21st anniversary! What is significant about that?

PV: It’s a good feeling. We’ve matured, we have longevity. The festival is here to stay and stay forever. It’s grown and grown, which show’s there’s a need. Since it’s not Hollywood films people are watching, they must be connecting to the stories they’re seeing.

PWW: From the very beginning, the film festival seemed like it was a way to attack the dominant culture, where racism is so abundant and stereotypes were so easy and plentiful.

PV: Definitely. There’s so much power in film. We could use it to break the stereotypes and social separation. People learn and discover that Latinos are human beings. They hear the music, see the food, the way we dress. They see we’re black, we’re brown, we’re Indian, we’re white and blonde. The separation, the discrimination and the isolation, it gets broken down. We get a respect and admiration of who we are.

PWW: Your organization has been leading a fight to build a center downtown. What’s happening with that?

PV: Every day it becomes clear we need a majestic place to offer our culture, not just two weeks out of the year for a film festival — 365 days, 24 hours a day: poetry workshops, dance, music, so we can connect with people. They can stop by, have coffee, a meal. What a great addition to a city that has so much culturally to offer.

We want all people to write the mayor, the governor, and their representatives, become a member. When they say to us, “Start small,” we’ve already started small — 21 years ago. We didn’t even have a screen; we projected the films on a wall.

PWW: Then when will the groundbreaking take place?

PV: We will break ground in the next five years. We want the workers to bring small money, and we want the millionaires to bring very big money, because we must make this big, beautiful, majestic space a reality.

Letters

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 05:59:00 +0000

Getting it right

In response to your article by Paul Hill on “Immigrants’ tragedy and death penalty injustice” (PWW 3/26-4/1): You got it. Right on the nose.

Thanks for having the courage to stand up and voice your opinion about the misguided, unbalanced and supremely unjust system we call the “death penalty.” You just got a new reader, for what it’s worth.

I have some pretty harsh critiques about the way our criminal justice system operates today. Sometimes it seems the only thing that changes is the fluctuation of dollars into prisons. Prevention and rehabilitation are underfunded, ignored or discredited.

With all the media attention lately (the ruling on juvenile death penalties, Sen. Rick Santorum’s comments, etc.), I have some renewed hope on the obliteration of the death penalty. It’s really good to see more writing on the issue. Anyway, thank you and good luck. I look forward to reading your work!

Adam Lobaugh

Portland OR

Respectful and fair …

I was glad to see your balanced view of the Pope in last week’s editorial. I read it to my grandmother, who is Roman Catholic, and she thought it was a good statement. It was respectful to the beliefs of the majority working-class base of the church. At the same time, you didn’t let the Pope off the hook for the major setbacks to humanity that he helped deliver. Thanks.

Michael Reale

Jersey City NJ

… Wrong balance

Your recent editorial on the death of the Pope (PWW 4/9-15) tried to be balanced, and it made valuable points. But I think you got the balance wrong in straining to see “the good side” of the late Pope. I wish you had paid a bit more heed to the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16).

When it came to progressive policies, this Pope only offered words, usually when it was safe. His stance against war, inequality, the death penalty, the Iraq invasion, and “savage capitalism” was mere words. He spoke up for normal relations with Cuba when most of Western Europe and much of the rest of the world had already done so.

But, when it came to counterrevolution, the Pope was all deeds. He left no stone unturned to help counterrevolution in his native Poland. He crushed the Catholic Left in Latin America and its liberation theology, as you correctly note.

In the Catholic Church, reaction fights for its positions in the pews. Progressive ideas, by contrast, gather dust in encyclicals that few read. Ask any union organizer how little it helps to quote Rerum Novarum to a cardinal determined to foil a union organizing drive.

Maybe Marxist-Leninists should return to the scientific materialist approach of Marx and Lenin, who not only battled religion’s right-wing political expressions, but also repudiated its truth claims. The present “softly, softly” approach doesn’t seem to be working. Witness the successful mobilization of religious conservatives to vote for Bush in 2004.

Yes, organized religion is “the soul of a soulless world,” and “the cry of the oppressed creature,” as Marx pointed out. But it also contributes to the clouding of the human mind. Only Americans seriously out of touch with reality could vote for a president whose policies are so anti-people. The Bush regime needs mass stupefaction to stay in office.

Imperialism is not mistaken about who its friends are. The convening of most of the world’s leading reactionaries to honor the Pope in death ought not to be taken lightly. For almost three decades this Pope — who fomented counterrevolution, slowed down revolutionary change, offered otherworldly solace to a world writhing in pain, a world in which genuine solutions have long been possible — added to the misery and despair of the human race. I say the world is well rid of him.

Thomas Kenny

New York NY

Transplant recipient

I was a recent liver transplant recipient at LifeLink/Tampa General Hospital. I had Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, a genetic disorder that leads to end-stage liver disease.

I am blessed for having a donor that gave me the gift of life. All over the world are individuals waiting for organ transplants.

The public should be aware that pairing of organ donors with needy recipients should become a more streamlined process. Surprisingly, Florida has one of the highest number of motor vehicle operators per capita giving organ donations.

While recovering at Tampa General, I pondered about the donor of my liver as I watched the 24/7 news coverage of the Terri Schiavo saga. So to all crazed fanatics like Jeb and his brother George who erred for life rather than follow the wishes of this poor woman — shame on you. Now I will live to see your cronies voted out of office!

Jay Alexander

St Petersburg FL

Death and America

No doubt Lawrence Albright (PWW 4/2-8) had his heart and sensitivities in the correct place when he appealed to us to recognize the Terri Schiavo affair as “an American tragedy.”

Albright reminded us of the hypocrisy of the president who rushed in from his “vacation” and got Congress to sit in special session to “err on the side of life,” as we plan and carry out deaths by the untold thousands in Iraq with no end in sight. But there is an issue Albright did not get around to that should be in the front of the struggle.

America’s preoccupation with death is a part of our history. We slaughtered the native peoples who were flourishing here when Columbus and his cohorts arrived in the 15th century. We continued the genocide with the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican and Spanish-American wars, all for “manifest destiny.”

We made heroes out of those who dropped the bombs in 1945 that killed over 200,000 civilians. Then came the murders in Chile, Grenada, Afghanistan, Libya, and Desert Storm.

We are a highly developed nation without health care for our people, and yet we want a death plan. I would like our energies to be put into finding health means, not death provisions. We need health care, not warfare.

Don Sloan, M.D.

Via e-mail

Editorials

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 05:57:00 +0000

No protection in bankruptcy bill

House Republicans are pushing for quick passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (HR-685), which would make it far more difficult for working people to protect themselves against crushing personal debts by filing for bankruptcy.

The Senate already approved the legislation, voting 69 to 31 to end a filibuster aimed at stopping it. President Bush has promised to sign it.

Shot down was an amendment seeking to establish a ceiling of 30 percent on the interest rates the credit card loan sharks are permitted to charge. For these senators, most of them millionaires, the “sky is the limit” on usury. Doubtless it helped that the credit card companies in the past two election cycles poured $34 million into the campaign coffers of Bush, Bill Frist, Tom DeLay, and other corporate-friendly politicos on Capitol Hill.

Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women’s Law Center, said, “Women will be among the hardest hit by this profoundly unfair and unbalanced bankruptcy bill.” It will impose “additional hardship on over a million economically vulnerable women and their families each year.”

The lawmakers shot down an amendment to exempt Iraq war veterans from this punitive legislation. But the bill does contain an exemption that allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of value in their homes and asset protection trusts and opens new loopholes for bankrupt corporations like Enron.

Last year MBNA and other credit card firms reported $34 billion in profits, highest of any industry. On the other hand, of the 1.6 million bankruptcies filed last year, fully one-half were the result of medical bills.

What’s next — a return to “debtors prisons?” Call your representative now to demand a No vote on this bill.

Tax the rich, fund social needs

Millions of American working people mailed in their income tax returns this week, and many did so with bitterness and anger. Their feelings are fully justified.

Each year, come April 15, workers are brought face-to-face with just how much money the federal government is wringing out of them, while big U.S. corporations routinely evade paying their fair share.

The corporate giants use a variety of legal and not-so-legal tax-avoidance ploys, including offshore tax havens, gross underreporting of profits, and, in cases like Enron and WorldCom, flagrant cooking of the books. Some corporations pay no taxes at all.

The super wealthy, thanks especially to President Bush’s tax cuts for those with the highest incomes, have also managed to radically cut their tax burden. They typically share the view of real estate magnate Leona Helmsley, who once quipped, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

After giving billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich and billions more to the largest corporations, the White House has the gall to claim there is no money for education, for health care, for job creation, or for many other vital social needs.

But it finds plenty of money for new weapons of mass destruction, for financing wars and occupations, and for pouring more money down the drain of Pentagon war contractors like Halliburton.

According to a recent analysis by the War Resisters League, Bush’s official war budget amounts to $427 billion a year, but that figure doesn’t include $106 billion for the military-related spending in other departments, an anticipated “supplemental allowance” of $25 billion, and an unbudgeted estimate of $85 billion for supplemental appropriations to shore up the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The huge tax giveaways to the rich and the corporations, combined with virtually limitless war spending, have spelled an uncontrolled deficit. They also spell disaster for the working class.

It’s time to turn the tables. Tax the rich, tax the corporations, end the occupation, slash the military budget and fund human needs!

Mary Pullins: Steel union pioneer

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 03:31:00 +0000

Pages from workers’ lives

The steelworkers’ retiree meeting sprung to attention when Mary Pullins walked in. Veteran of 24 years at US Steel and only 103 years old, she walked with sure steps to the speaker’s stand.

“What do you think of the Bush plan to privatize Social Security?” some retirees asked. Pullins clenched her fist and drew her thumb across her throat. “He’s trying to cut our throats. Let’s stop him,” she said. The meeting roared its approval. Her fighting spirit is an inspiration to Chicago SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees).

Pullins invited some of the SOAR women to visit her. We rang the bell and her strong voice rang out, “Come on up!” We had to climb the two flights of stairs that Pullins climbs every day. “I walked 116 days on the picket line to fight for what you are enjoying today,” she said. The Steelworkers’ Union won that fight in 1959. But it wasn’t easy.

From Mississippi to Chicago

Little in Mary Pullins life was easy. Born in Aberdeen, Miss., in 1901, Mary Pullins always had a strong streak of independence. At 17, she ran away to get married. When she returned, her father said, “I have never seen anyone run off from a place where you got free rent, free food and free clothing. You must be trying to better yourself!” Asked if she had bettered herself, Mary said, “Oh yes! I got out of the fields and got away from chopping cotton.”

Widowed and the mother of a 4-year-old son, Pullins moved to Chicago to find that “better life.” There she met and married Samuel Pullins, who became her lifetime partner. “He was a charter member of SEIU Local 25,” she proudly said. “He agreed with everything I was doing for the union.” In 1941 her son, Richard Pegue, was drafted “to help stop Hitler from taking over this country.” That same year, Mary Pullins went to work in the tunnels underneath Chicago’s business district. Her job was trucking freight. She pushed a two-wheeler on which she could balance a 500-pound load. “Sometimes,” she said as she raised her arms overhead, “I can still feel it.” The pay was about $7 a week.

When she heard they were paying 41 cents an hour at Carnegie Steel, she decided to apply. She proudly says that she answered the call of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War II, FDR called on women to go into mills and factories to replace men going off to fight. Women workers helped win the war against fascism.

Pullins was hired the same day she applied at Carnegie Steel, later know as U.S. Steel. There she became a union activist. Her local union paper carried her picture with the title, “Go-getter.” She said she got that title by recruiting 100 members into the union. At 103, the title of “go-getter” still fits her.

Union counselor

In 1943, the union sent her to a counselors’ class at the University of Chicago. At the class she met fellow student Charlie Hayes who went on to become a Packinghouse Union leader and a U.S. congressman. As a counselor, Pullins visited the families of steelworkers in the military to find out if they were in need. Then she would arrange for help, whether it was paying the rent or providing medical care.

Her first job at South Works was as a swing grinder. “We rolled stainless steel; we could make anything there,” she said. Women did every kind of job, working on one-quarter-inch to 5-inch stock in the plate mill.

On her next job in the mill, she had to carry test reports to the physical metallurgy lab. The foreman, a great big guy, must have thought she wasn’t working fast enough. He told her, “Sister, you have to take those reports to the lab every hour.” She told him, “My daddy never told me I had a brother who looked like you. If you want to talk to me, call me by my name or by my number.”

“You’re right,” the foreman admitted. Later, she saw her evaluation form. It said, “Very good worker. Learns fast. But very stubborn.”

Fair employment

Pullins always fought racism. In 1941, FDR created the Fair Employment Practices Committee. For the first time, many companies were forced to end their “whites only” employment practices. African Americans were already working at South Works. Still, the superintendent wanted to limit the number. He said, “African Americans are only 17 percent of the population. So we are not going to hire more African Americans than 17 percent.” There were other forms of racist hiring practices in the mill, Pullins said. African American women had to have high school diplomas to be hired. “That job didn’t require a high school diploma,” she explained. The company knew that. They hired white women for the job who had only a sixth-grade education.

Wages were frozen during World War II. When the war ended, Pullins said, “We asked for a $2 an hour raise. We had to strike just to catch up on our pay.” When she reached age 65, she had to retire. Her pension of $343 a month was not bad 40 years ago. It is still just $343 a month. Only $180 is left after her co-pay for medical coverage is deducted. But her Social Security has kept up with the cost of living and is her main support. She will fight anyone who tries to privatize Social Security.

When she retired in 1966, the union presented her with a bronze medallion. It reads: “Mary S. Pullins, for loyal service rendered, is an Honorary Member of the United Steelworkers of America, Local 65.” She has also earned a place in the City of Chicago’s Women’s Hall of Fame. On May 29, at the commemoration of the Republic Steel Massacre of 1937, the Steelworkers will give her yet another honor, the prestigious Union Pioneer Award.

Nine states sue U.S. on mercury rules

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 06:53:00 +0000

In a backlash against what environmentalists call “disastrous” new mercury regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), nine states filed a lawsuit March 29 against the federal government, saying the rules violate the Clean Air Act. One of them, New Hampshire, went further, advancing its own state-level legislation to curb the release of mercury by corporate polluters.

Mercury is a poisonous metal that builds up in the environment, most commonly as a result of the burning of coal. People are exposed to mercury when they eat fish or drink water from polluted lakes and rivers. Ingestion of the metal affects the development of children’s nervous systems and has been linked to cardiovascular problems.

According to Peter C. Harvey, New Jersey’s attorney general and a leader of the lawsuit, scientists estimate that up to 600,000 children are born each year with neurological problems due to exposure to mercury while in the womb. Forty-five out of 50 states have mercury advisories for the consumption of fish in their state. In New Jersey “there are mercury consumption advisories for at least one species of fish in almost every body of water in the state,” he told The Associated Press.

Also included in the lawsuit are California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York and Vermont. “Our ultimate goal is to persuade the court to invalidate the EPA’s rules dealing with mercury emissions,” Harvey said.

The main problem with the new federal rules, environmentalists say, is that the EPA has taken coal-fired power plants — the leading source of mercury emissions — off the list of polluters required to install the “maximum possible control technology” for lowering the release of the poisonous metal.

In addition, the EPA promulgated a “cap and trade” rule, allowing a power company that cuts its mercury emissions by a specified amount to earn “pollution credits.” It can then sell those credits to another company, which can, in turn, release an equivalent amount of the toxic pollutant.

Environmentalists say that while this cap and trade system is bad in general, it is especially bad for mercury. Unlike greenhouse gases, whose harmful effects are widely dispersed, mercury’s fallout is much more localized.

“EPA’s emissions trading plan will allow some power plants to actually increase mercury emissions, creating hot spots of mercury deposition and threatening communities,” Harvey said. “It’s an anti-human health position. The EPA is putting private profit ahead of public health, and it’s a mistake.”

Dr. Richard Nordgren, professor of pediatric neurology at Dartmouth Medical School, told the World, “I wouldn’t eat a fish out of a New Hampshire lake. The FDA says that if there’s one part per million [of mercury] in a fish, pregnant women shouldn’t eat it.” He added that in some fish found in New Hampshire, the level is 250 percent higher.

On March 24, New Hampshire’s Senate passed a bill requiring its two coal-fired power plants to reduce their mercury emissions by 82 percent. It would reduce emissions from the current 130 pounds per year to 24 pounds by 2013, greatly outpacing reduction rates mandated by the EPA.

New Hampshire’s bill, which still has to pass the House, is aimed at the privately owned Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH), which operates the two plants. Although PSNH has lobbied against the bill, The measure has strong bipartisan support in the Legislature.

“I’m really encouraged,” said Catherine Corkery, spokeswoman for the Sierra Club in New Hampshire. “[The Senate debate] wasn’t about whether or not we should reduce the mercury, it was about when.”

PSNH has argued the proposed state regulation would cause a loss of jobs. Corkery said that upgrading power plants would actually create more jobs.

“It requires a lot of highly educated people who know about energy and energy production, and you’re talking about high-paying jobs,” she said. These new jobs would attract people to the state or employ people already there. The resulting growth in incomes would stimulate the economy and have a ripple effect, she said, creating even more employment.

dmargolis@pww.org

Editorials

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 06:20:00 +0000

After Pope John Paul II

Millions around the globe are mourning the passing of Pope John Paul II. World leaders traveled to the Vatican for his funeral and messages of sorrow came from nations as diverse as the U.S., Cuba and China.

The pope’s 26-year reign included many stands people rightly respect. He brought a moral authority to the antiwar movement with his condemnation of the Iraq war and Bush’s aggressive policies. He spoke against growing inequality between rich and poor and stood against the death penalty. He apologized for the historic “sins” committed by the church.

Toward the end of his reign, he developed friendly relations with Cuba and criticized the U.S.-led blockade of that island. John Paul also spoke out against “savage capitalism.”

Yet, on theological issues, he undid much of the progress that the Roman Catholic Church made since the Second Vatican Council.

His lead in suppressing the “liberation theology” movement in Latin America hurt both the church itself and the people there.

John Paul II actively opposed distribution of condoms in AIDS-ravaged Africa and voiced animosity toward the rights of women and gays and lesbians. His ultraconservative positions on stem cell research and family planning negatively affected people both inside and outside the Catholic Church.

The late pontiff leaves behind a church divided after a long sex abuse scandal that reached all the way to the Vatican, after it was revealed that the church hierarchy sheltered priests who sexually abused children. Cardinal Law, who covered for predatory priests as archbishop of Boston, resigned, but was rewarded with a job in the Vatican.

George W. Bush and others hailed Pope John Paul’s role in the destruction of socialism in Poland, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. While John Paul deftly exploited socialist Poland’s weaknesses, the destruction of socialism in the region was a setback for humanity, unleashing the very forces of “savage capitalism” that he later condemned.

Who will the College of Cardinals elect to replace him? Will the right wing dominate?

Or will the cardinals choose a pope who moves to modernize the church — to ordain women as priests, allow priests to marry, embrace reproductive freedom for women, support gay and lesbian rights and other human rights, and challenge the inequities of capitalism?

No to ‘nuclear option’

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) seized on the Terri Schiavo tragedy to divert attention from his own sleazy crimes while instigating mass hysteria against the courts for refusing to order her feeding tube reconnected. The judges will have to “answer for their behavior,” he ranted.

Another Texas Republican, Sen. John Cornyn, went even further. He justified the recent murder of a federal judge in Atlanta and of the husband and mother of a Chicago judge as payback because judges make “political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public.” The frustration “builds up to the point where some people engage in violence,” he said.

Threatening a judge is a crime, but DeLay and Cornyn are so emboldened they now invite retaliation against those whose rulings they don’t like. They would destroy the judiciary as an equal, independent branch of government, undermining the system of checks and balances in the Constitution.

That’s why the “nuclear option,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s drive to terminate the Senate filibuster rule, is so menacing. Democratic senators have used the filibuster, which requires a two-thirds majority to end Senate floor debate, to block extremist, racist and male supremacist judicial nominees.

If Frist succeeds, these nominees would sail through by a simple Senate majority vote, facilitating President Bush’s drive to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing extremists.

Many pro-democracy groups seek a bipartisan Senate majority to preserve the filibuster rule. Sen. John Kerry sponsored an ad in USA Today, endorsed by 200,000 people, in support of the filibuster.

Just as the American people responded to the outrageous congressional actions in the Schiavo tragedy, we need to speak out on this extremist attack. Call your senators at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to vote to save the filibuster rule.

Letters

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 06:18:00 +0000

Can’t be trusted

No matter how hard he tries, no matter how well orchestrated his backdrop, G.W. Bush just can’t seem to connect anymore with the American people in a way that they’ll trust him, at least not on vital pocketbook issues like Social Security.

One reason for the President’s loss of credibility is clear — public realization that the Iraq war has turned out to be a big mess, its painful losses ballooning wildly larger than Bush’s initially soothing assurances.

And long-standing doubts about the president’s competence have resurfaced, as jobs are squeezed, fuel prices soar and GOP missteps take their toll.

Because the president has shown such little regard for the truth concerning his rationale and conduct of the war and its unplanned for consequences, Americans just don’t trust him now with managing pivotal changes to bedrock government programs that have proven vital to generations of working families.

When it comes to Social Security reform, it’s widely felt that the president speaks through his hat. After all, it’s a program for which he may not even be eligible and on which he’ll personally never have to rely.

Cord MacGuire Boulder CO

Bush is history

Does President Bush want to go down in American history as a monster crank? I can hardly believe what we have been reading and hearing about his actions and plans! How Bush is thinking of destroying most of the social programs, safeguards, guarantees, rules which have made this the greatest of countries and unique in the world. Is this possible?

George T. Gaylord Jr. Tustin CA

People’s nostalgia

Donald Todd’s letter in the Feb. 5 PWW, in which he commented on the PWW’s name, and said, “Actually, I do not like the ‘People’s’ part at all as it seems to me that it smacks too much of nostalgia for the 1930s and early 1940s. It feels outdated to me. Several others here agree with me on this.”

I agree with Don, but for a different reason. The word “People’s” has taken on an ultra-leftist connotation, which several people have told me they find to be a bit of a turnoff.

Have you found this to be the case? If so, then you might want to consider shortening the name to just plain “Weekly World.” The main thing is to get our paper read by more people, right? For years, it was called simply “The Daily World” (not the “People’s Daily World”), and it enjoyed a much wider readership. I like the new look. Keep up the good work!

Dave Zink Seattle WA

Editor’s note: When the Daily World merged with the People’s World on the West Coast, in the mid-1980s, it was called the People’s Daily World or PDW. Thanks for the input.

Bush lied

Bush has lied to the people about Iraq and the weapons they were supposed to have. Bush should be impeached. Why is Bush allowing all these young men to be killed when he himself kissed ass to get out? My son, if he were of age, would never go. The American people that uphold Bush must have a problem.

Marge Boudreau Tonawanda NY

Gerry Adams visit

Two events overshadowed Gerry Adams’ annual St. Patrick’s Day visit to the U.S. The first was the Belfast bank robbery (the largest in European history) in December 2004 and the second was the murder of Robert McCartney, a Republican supporter, outside a Belfast pub. Both events have, in varying degrees, been laid at the feet of Sinn Fein and/or the Irish Republican Army.

Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, at the just-concluded convention of his political party denounced acts of criminality and called for McCartney’s murderers to surrender to the authorities. Two IRA volunteers, of the dozen of those involved in the murder, have complied with this directive.

Adams and Martin McGuiness initiated and have pursued the peace process for the north of Ireland since 1998 at which time the IRA called for a ceasefire.

Money from the December 2004 bank robbery in Belfast has been found at a police recreational center. In spite of this and the fact that no evidence has been submitted to prove IRA involvement in the robbery, the British government, the Dublin government and the loyalist political powers have tried, convicted and punished both Sinn Fein and the IRA.

For hundreds of years the British government has appropriated Irish land, slaughtered and starved its people and portioned the country. It’s clear where and why they stand where they do!

It is ironic that Bush, who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of American soldiers currently occupying the sovereign state of Iraq, condemns the occupation of Lebanon by Syria and ignores the 17,000-member British occupying force in the north of Ireland.

Nancy Gallen Franklin Square NY

Not Dorothy’s Kansas

I am a 38-year-old father of three boys. I remember a time when I felt exasperation when a New Yorker would ask me how Dorothy and Toto were. Not anymore.

Somebody please razz me about being from the Land of Oz. I need to hear that so I can forget that Kansas has become a hotbed of bigotry, homophobia and Christian fundamentalism.

Topeka is the home to the “Reverend” Fred Phelps, whose web site states God hates homosexuals and on April 5 the state voted 2-to-1 to outlaw same-sex marriage.

Sam Brownback, one of our U.S. senators, is spearheading the conservative agenda to turn back the clock on many of the progressive gains we have made over the last century. His “glorious” efforts include his strong support of the “Constitution Restoration Act,” which would grant judges the leeway to mete out biblical punishments, and would legally define God as the ultimate source of U.S. law in lieu of our Constitution.

Contrary to Bush’s belief, and that of many of the Christian right, we are not a Christian nation. Our government was intended to be secular.

The Christian Right needs to study history, sociology, psychology, and constitutional law to a much greater depth if they hope to ground their arguments in reality. However, if they studied too deeply, they would find that their position is absurd. Ignorance can be bliss!

Jason Miller Overland Park KS

LETTERS

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 11:16:00 +0000

Hate patrols in Arizona All the racist skinheads and wacko white supremacists with time on their hands and hate in their heart have fallen over themselves to answer the call of the Minuteman Project to “hunt migrants” along this state’s border with Mexico during the month of April.

“Globalization,” and the U.S. policy of protecting the interests of corporations profiting from the mass migration of desperate workers, has funneled hundreds of people to die in the deserts of Arizona year after year.

Even though the 10 million undocumented currently living in the U.S. are contributing billions of dollars in net growth to the U.S. economy annually, migrants are portrayed as dangerous, drug-toting criminals or as “terrorists.”

The Minutemen’s new recruits from across the nation are encouraged to join the usual hate groups who have been operating with virtual impunity in border communities, carrying guns on their “patrols,” bragging that they work in concert with the Border Patrol and facing little resistance from the authorities even though detaining or abusing migrants is against the law.

“I am a missionary for racism and I see fertile recruiting ground!” is a statement put out by one of the recruiters for the Minuteman Project. These bastards need to be stopped in their tracks. --Cheryl Thornton, Tucson AZ

A Bush diversion I didn’t want to get involved with this latest pro-life/pro-choice controversy but it sickens me when I see the Bush brothers and their supporters using a human tragedy to further their political agenda!

The life/death struggle taking place in Florida is being used by Bush and company to cover up the human tragedy taking place in the Middle East. Think about it for a moment.

Every time they are in trouble, whether in the Middle East or here at home with Social Security, unemployment, health care etc., they latch on to an emotional issue to divert the attention of the American people, and the media, led by FOX News, fall in line.

I empathize with Terri’s family and her husband Michael and that is just about all I can do to alleviate their emotional pain.

What I can do and I must do, is expose the political leaders in Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee, Fla., for what they are. Like leeches, they will feed off the emotions of the families involved until it’s all over. They will then forget about Terri and her family and move on to another vote-getting issue. Tom Tully, Via e-mail

Correction to migration story In Martin Frazier’s story about African American migrations (PWW, 3/19-25), I am quoted saying Phil Graves led the African Blood Brotherhood. In fact, it was Cyril Briggs who led that organization. Thanks for letting me clarify that. --Gerald Horne, Via e-mail

Not just a matter of $ To the New York Times: Your March 24th report clamoring over the dire fiscal straits in comparing Medicare and Social Security falls into the trap, in which you are not alone, of putting a price tag on Medicare, Medicaid and all other health care programs. That very practice belittles the problem and relegates it to one of money and available facilities.

We are talking about our health, an entity that should and has to be given number one priority before we should even tackle the machinery needed for its implementation. Until we accept that our health cannot be compromised one iota, we will be allowing the debate to filter down to cost effectiveness.

The fact remains that it is cost-destructive to have ill health. We must then go about constructing the means of giving every existing American resident access to such care, never even mentioning a price tag. Maybe we just have to pretend it is instead building new B-1 bombers or long-range missiles and then we will move forward.

That change in priority must come about before there can be a proper approach to our needed and deserved coverage. Health care is a right, not a privilege, along with free speech, religion, press and freedom from want and fear. --Don Sloan, M.D., New York NY

Support AWOL troops Do we support our troops being sent over to fight in a senseless war? Do we support them when they’re only following orders? Orders to commit war crimes, to commit atrocities, to commit torture? Do we support them then?

Isn’t the U.S. just being in Iraq a war crime in itself? Or, alternately, do we support those heroes, those naysayers to criminal acts, those resisters. Those who have gone AWOL (over 5,500 so far). Those who come home on leave and quietly disappear, and those who give them sanctuary.

Those who desert. Those who refuse to obey unlawful orders. Those who refuse to commit torture and murder of civilians. Those who blow the whistle on torture and murder, at great risk to themselves.

Those who send home show-all photographs and videos to their friends, families, and the media, who write their stories and give interviews, and face reprisals.

These are the troops we should indeed be supporting and we should let them know it! There are more of them out there than anyone realizes and many more potentially. They must hear us. Hearing this support may allow a soldier who is contemplating suicide to explore a better, more morally satisfying alternative. --Barbara Tomlinson, Seattle WA

Nuclear threat The threat of the use of nuclear bombs still hangs over the whole world. Only by an agreement by all countries to stop their manufacture and to destroy what they have can we sleep a little better at night. --Jerry Atinsky, Via fax

All together now The Vietnam War was ended when the American people grew weary of the tremendous cost in money and lives, when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out clearly and forcefully against that attempt to impose a government of our choice on a people that had been fighting French colonialism and Japanese imperialism for countless years. Dr. King called upon our nation’s peoples of color and all their allies to resist taking part in this oppression of another people of color.

Now we have a president calling for “endless war.” He knows it is an unwinnable war, but attempts to prolong the decline of imperialism by seizing control of Middle East oil and imposing permanent U.S. bases.

A coalition of millions of African Americans, veterans, and trade unionists is the recipe for ending this immoral war. Don’t let a day pass without serious effort to save Iraqi and American lives. --Jesse Kern, Via e-mail

NATIONAL CLIPS

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 10:35:00 +0000

Don’t privatize!SALINAS, Calif.: Library to hold emergency ‘read-in’ The United Farm Workers of America and the AFL-CIO are working with the peace group Code Pink and community groups to keep library doors open in this city that was home to writer John Steinbeck.

The groups are holding a 24-hour emergency read-in at the Cesar Chavez Library starting April 2 at 1 p.m. and culminating on April 3 with the yearly Cesar Chavez Holiday march and cultural celebration in Salinas.

Families depend on the public library system not only for books, but for cultural events. More than $80 million of their tax dollars have gone to pay for the Iraq war and now Salinas does not have the $5 million needed to keep libraries open. The “read-in” is part of a campaign to publicize the cost of the war to communities like Salinas.

Among those bringing tents and sleeping bags will be actors Hector Elizondo and Mike Farrell, UFW leader Dolores Huerta, Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero and many writers, poets and local book lovers.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.: Bishops against death penalty A recent poll indicated that 63 percent of Alabama residents support the death penalty. Catholic bishops here want to change that.

The bishops are taking their anti-death penalty message to the pulpits and the State House. With 195 people on death row, Alabama has the largest per capita population of condemned people in the country.

Birmingham Bishop David Foley said the church needs to answer a “culture of death in the United States that is growing and growing and growing. Killing somebody who has killed somebody adds to the violence that goes on.”

Foley is optimistic that the campaign can be successful, despite current public opinion. The South may be conservative, but it’s also fair, he said.

“I have found that when you talk to people, it’s not that people have a closed mind. They [just] haven’t heard the message.”

WASHINGTON: Wal-Mart pays millions in abuse penalty The world’s largest corporation, Wal-Mart, tried to argue that it didn’t know that workers hired to clean its stores in 21 states lacked documents and that supervisors locked night-shift workers inside.

That defense didn’t fly, so Wal-Mart settled a lawsuit workers filed against it, although it did so without admitting any wrongdoing. The $11 million March 18 settlement is the largest ever in a case of abuse of immigrant workers.

Holding the line in Metro DetroitThe record payment “should be a wake-up call to a corporation that has systematically bent and broken the law to increase corporate coffers at the expense of the most vulnerable employees,” said United Food and Commercial Workers President Joseph Hansen. The UFCW assisted in the suit and is campaigning to organize 1.2 million Wal-Mart workers.

Lilia Garcia, executive director of Maintenance Cooperation Trust, which monitors working conditions for janitors, believes that the dollar amount is a drop in the bucket for Wal-Mart, which did $288 billion in sales in 2004.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart janitors in New Jersey are preparing for their day in court in a similar case.

TOMBSTONE, Ariz.: Stop border vigilantes With an estimated 1,000 Minutemen, a racist vigilante group based in California, poised to invade Tombstone April 1 in preparation for a month-long “patrol” of the Mexican border in the San Pedro Valley, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) has appealed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for federal intervention.

Citing the Minutemen’s “disregard for the Border Patrol’s request that they leave border enforcement to trained individuals,” Grijalva said “an atmosphere of fear” can erupt into violence.

“The claim that the Minutemen will only watch for immigrants is absurd,” Grijalva, who represents the area, said in a statement. “It is impossible to visually determine a person’s status. Inevitably, untrained and likely armed volunteers will confront people they profile. Results may range from harassment to deadly altercations.”

Grijalva calls on Gonzales to act to protect people crossing the border, residents and Border Patrol officials.

National Clips are compiled by Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinebr696 @ aol.com). Julia Lutsky and Barbara Russum contributed to this week’s clips.