People Before Profit blog

EDITORIAL: May Day, now more than ever

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 04:52:00 +0000

Ever since 1890, May Day has celebrated the unity and fighting spirit of working people around the world. This year more than in many decades, workers in the U.S. will be in the streets May Day, inspired by the rising struggle for immigrant rights. Workers of all national backgrounds, born in the U.S. as well as immigrants from other lands, will call for Congress to enact legislation providing a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants while also ensuring their labor rights and civil rights.

In addition, workers across the nation will demand passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, single-payer health care for all, an increased minimum wage and other measures on behalf of America’s working families.

This upsurge could not come at a more crucial moment. Corporate America, with the backing of the Bush administration and the Republican-majority House and Senate, is waging war on the jobs, wages, health care and retirement security of working people. Driven by runaway gasoline and home heating fuel prices, workers have seen their real take-home pay plummeting. Corporations have jettisoned pension plans and health benefits covering millions of workers.

Workers are fighting back. But they need maximum unity of the labor movement and its allies in this life-and-death struggle. Witness what can be won when we march together as one: Already those who back the punitive Sensenbrenner bill that criminalizes 12 million immigrants are on the defensive. This vicious legislation can and must be killed!

And look what student-youth-worker unity achieved in France: their president had to withdraw an anti-labor law that gave employers the right to fire young workers without cause.

This is a big election year for American workers. Ending Republican control of the House and Senate, electing legislators sympathetic to the vital needs of the people, rests on the unbreakable unity of the labor movement and all progressive forces. Our get-out-the-vote effort must not be dampened by divisions and rivalries. So much is at stake! We must start now to build that “all people’s unity” to defeat the ultra-right Republicans Nov. 7.

Immigrant rights forces keep up the heat

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 03:17:00 +0000

The continuing mass upsurge for immigrant rights, with hundreds of May 1 demonstrations being organized nationwide, drew a reaction from the Bush administration last week. Nationwide raids by the Department of Homeland Security on April 19-20 were followed by presidential pro-immigrant rhetoric and meetings to broker a compromise Senate immigration bill.

Although the Senate reconvened April 24 after a two-week recess, Republican leaders Bill Frist (Tenn.) and Arlen Specter (Pa.) delayed any formal debate on immigration legislation on the floor and in committee until after the May 1 demonstrations. Frist announced he wanted to bring a bill to the floor for debate and passage before Memorial Day, May 29.

The May 1 actions will continue to keep the issue in the light of day rather than behind closed doors. Massive marches are planned for Chicago, home of the 1886 Haymarket Square rally memorialized as International Workers Day, as well as Washington, Los Angeles and uncounted other cities and towns. In many areas workers have convinced employers to close workplaces in solidarity with pro-immigrant events. Many are not working, shopping or going to school to dramatize the contributions of immigrants to the economy and society.

The May 1 events are united in calling for the defeat of HR 4437 and for the principles of a path to citizenship, family unification, worker rights, due process and civic participation for all immigrants.

In many cities, voter registration will take place to back up the slogan, “Today we march, tomorrow we vote,” which resonates louder and louder for congresspersons as the November elections draw nearer. In Los Angeles, the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SWVREP) is coordinating voter registration at several rallies.

SWVREP President Antonio Gonzalez said that among Latinos the immigrant rights movement has given an “added burst of energy for political action particularly among youth who have been the least likely to vote.” In recent years increased voting by the sons and daughters of immigrants has pushed the increase in Latino voting beyond expectations, and an extra burst of pro-immigrant voters this year “can make a difference in many House, Senate and other key races all over the country.”

Gonzalez said anti-immigrant Republicans are now especially vulnerable in two California congressional races in the “San Diego and Stockton areas, as well as Senator Kyle (R) in Arizona and likely other states.”

At an April 15 student-organized rally for immigrant rights in Los Angeles, California state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D) said that 750,000 youths will be newly eligible to vote by the Nov. 7 elections. He told the students, “If you register and get out the vote you can help send [California Gov.] Schwarzenegger back to the movies.”

Politicians are particularly conscious of potential changes in voting patterns, as a switch of 15 House and six Senate seats from Republican to Democrat in the November elections would change the leadership of each chamber.

The Republicans could lose a seat as early as June 6 in the runoff to fill the vacancy in California’s 50th Congressional District left by Randall “Duke” Cunningham, who resigned in disgrace in a corruption scandal.

Francine Busby, a moderate Democrat and school board member, won 44 percent of the vote in an open primary in the heavily Republican district. Her opponent, Brian Bilbray, a former congressman, is running on an anti-immigrant platform, calling for authorizing military deployment on the border and denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented workers. A Democratic victory in the district north of San Diego would likely reduce pressures to crack down on immigrants in Congress.

Joelle Fishman, chair of the Political Action Commission of the Communist Party USA, said, “More pro-immigrant political action can amend or hopefully block the worst the Republicans have been trying to rush or maneuver through.” She added that the immigrant rights upsurge “now filling the streets in a quest for equality is creating a new political landscape that will benefit all working people in our country.”

The immigrant rights movement, joined with peace, labor, African American, Latino, women and youth and other democratic causes, can defeat right-wing Republican control of Congress, said Fishman. Republican loss of House leadership would replace James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), author of the racist, anti-labor HR 4437, with progressive African American John Conyers (D-Mich) as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

“The movement for immigrant rights would be strengthened in its ability not only to stop draconian legislation, but to demand that Congress act in the interests of immigrant and native born workers alike,” Fishman said.

EDITORIAL: Happy birthday, Lenin

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:01:00 +0000

The following is an editorial written in 2006 when this publication was a 20-page print weekly called People's Weekly World and Nuestro Mundo. While the global movement for socialism continues to assess the incredible gains people won after the 1917 Russian Revolution, and, ultimately, the fatal weaknesses that ended socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the ideas of Vladimir Lenin still carry currency today. Happy birthday, Lenin!

More than 60 years ago, the great African American poet Langston Hughes wrote:

Lenin walks around the world.

Frontiers cannot bar him.

Neither barracks nor barricades impede.

Nor does barbed wire scar him.

Lenin walks around the world.

Black, brown, and white receive him.

Language is no barrier.

The strangest tongues believe him.

Lenin walks around the world.

The sun sets like a scar.

Between the darkness and the dawn

There rises a red star.

Hughes was writing about Vladimir Lenin, a leader of the Russian Revolution — the world’s first socialist revolution. April 22 is the anniversary of Lenin’s birth.

Lenin took up scientific socialism where its founders, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, left off. He analyzed imperialism, a phase of capitalism he said was characterized by huge monopolies, the dominance of big banks and the carving up of the world among the great capitalist powers.

The growth of the transnational corporations and the ruthlessness of many imperialist governments, with the U.S. at the fore, show that Lenin’s analysis was right. The war in Iraq is a prime example. It’s a war for U.S. corporate control of resources, especially oil.

But Lenin didn’t stop there. He underlined the need of workers in the imperialist countries to see their own self-interest in allying with the peoples of oppressed nations.

He noted that the exploiters of those countries were the same exploiters of workers in the oppressor nations. Seeing the need to end that shared exploitation, he called for changing the slogan “Workers of the world unite” to “Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite.”

That slogan still rings true today. For those of us in the U.S., it calls upon us to fight to bring our troops home, to demand no permanent bases in Iraq, and that reparations be paid to help the Iraqi people rebuild a secure and sovereign nation.

The contribution that Lenin made to the theory of imperialism was immense, as were his other contributions, like the need for a political party that represents the interests of the working class and allies, known in many countries, including this one, as the Communist Party.

Lenin still walks around the world — in the struggles for workers and oppressed people to be free from poverty, exploitation, war and racism — and to join together to build a better world.

Photo: The largest statue of Lenin in the United States can be found in Seattle. (djwhelan/CC)

EDITORIAL: A decent future for Palestine

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:00:00 +0000

The European Union’s decision to join the U.S. and Canada in halting funding to the Palestinian National Authority is greatly sharpening the ongoing crisis Palestinian people face in the Occupied Territories. Ever since Hamas won elections in January, the U.S., the EU and Israel have intensified their efforts to isolate, blockade and starve the Palestinians into submission.

The cutoffs come after decades of the Israeli government’s systematic ravishing of the economic and social basis of Palestinian society.

In recent years Tel Aviv has been building an illegal wall that cruelly separates Palestinian family members, cuts farmers off from their fields, schoolchildren from their schools and workers from their jobs. Israel has withheld tens of millions of dollars it collects on behalf of the Palestinian government. Add the persistent Israeli shelling of Gaza and its targeted assassinations, and the life of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories is one continuous brutal assault.

The PNA says it is now out of funds and cannot meet its payroll. A January 2006 United Nations report said the salaries paid to PNA employees last year supported almost a million Palestinians, a quarter of the population.

Acts like the Passover Week suicide bombing, which killed nine people in Tel Aviv, deepen the tragic consequences of this conflict for both sides, but do not point to a solution.

This crisis can be resolved. The majority of the Israeli people support withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and evacuation of the settlers, clearing the way for a viable Palestinian state. But observers warn that the newly forming government led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promises to continue repressive policies.

In many ways Washington holds the key to the Palestinian people’s future. For over 30 years the U.S. has given Israel far more aid than it has any other country, with far fewer strings attached.

The Bush administration as well as the new Israeli government must be compelled, through mass political struggle, back to the negotiations table and to recognize and uphold the Palestinian people’s right to an independent state.

Bush administration wounded, yet more dangerous

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 07:53:00 +0000

Everybody seems to agree that the Bush administration has lost much of its political support. No longer does it speak with the same authority.

But it is not yet on its deathbed. In fact, there is no evidence that it is ready to make even a tactical retreat.

Internationally, the Bush administration continues its bloody occupation in Iraq, threatens to cut off funds to the new Palestinian government and people, cooks up plans to drop nuclear weapons on Iran, conspires with counterrevolutionary forces in Venezuela, and tightens the embargo on socialist Cuba.

Likewise on the domestic level, the Bush White House has given few signs that it is ready to throw in the towel.

With no popular mandate whatsoever, the Bush administration, in collaboration with the Republican congressional majority, is cutting billions from the budget for people’s needs while throwing billions to the Pentagon.

It is pressing for permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations and families, thus ballooning the federal deficit to record levels.

It is washing its hands — and they didn’t get too dirty in the first place — of any responsibility for rebuilding the shattered lives of hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans and the Gulf states.

It continues to undermine every regulatory rule that impedes corporate profit taking, while giving a green light to every attack on labor, civil, women, gay and democratic rights generally.

Finally, it is not only breaks and claims to be above the law, but it is also puts in place the legal statutes, institutional structures and personnel in critical agencies that will facilitate this power grab. So far the Republican congressional majority with hardly an exception has given the veneer of legality to this very illegal process.

U.S. imperialist counteroffensive

What explains these very dangerous developments?

I don’t have a complete answer, but I would argue that it is bound up with a counteroffensive of imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, a quarter-century ago. This counteroffensive took on three formidable barriers to its hegemony. The first was the new configuration of power that took shape on a global level in the late 1960s and 1970s. The defeat in Vietnam, the successful national liberation struggles in Africa and Latin America, and the growth of the socialist camp had tilted the balance of forces on a world scale against U.S. and world imperialism.

The second was the remarkable and rapid crystallization during this same period of new oppositional movements (civil, women, antiwar, labor rank-and-file, student, etc.) that secured new democratic rights and reforms in the course of fierce struggles. In our country, the “Sixties” is still remembered by the reactionary right as a political moment when powerful challenges to “our way of life” were coming from all directions and threatened the stability of our society. Even today, right-wing ideologues bemoan the persistence of the “Vietnam Syndrome” and the “Rights Revolution,” while backgrounding many of the their current struggles (anti-abortion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, union busting, projecting military power, etc.) with references to the upheavals of that earlier era.

And lastly, the eruption of new contradictions, instabilities and imbalances in the U.S. and world capitalist economies at roughly the same time constituted a powerful barrier to the hegemonic rule of U.S. imperialism and world capitalism. Economic stagnation and falling profit rates combined with exceedingly high rates of inflation, the breakdown of the international monetary system (fixed exchange rates of currencies and convertibility of the dollar into gold), and the rise of new competitive rivalries (Germany and Japan, for instance) within the capitalist core to throw capitalism into its deepest crisis since the 1930s.

The aim of this counteroffensive — rationalized ultimately in the language of militant anti-communism, national chauvinism and racism — was clear: to decisively tilt back the balance of power in the direction of capitalism and imperialism, to reestablish the unchallengeable dominance of U.S. imperialism domestically and internationally, to restore the power, profits and wealth of the ruling classes in the main centers of the capitalist world, and to give new momentum to the world capitalist economy.

Roots in Reaganism

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began this process in the mid-1970s. Her draconian cuts in public services, privatization of the public sector, and employment of the full force of the state to crush the miners’ strike was a harbinger of what was to come elsewhere in the capitalist world. But Thatcher’s Britain did not have the political, economic, and military might to move this offensive to the international plane.

That would await the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. His ultra-right administration was quick to initiate a many sided offensive against its foes at home and abroad. As you would expect, it was closely intertwined with a brutal assault on wages, conditions and rights of workers at the corporate level that continues to this day.

The Soviet Union became the “Evil Empire”; wars using surrogate forces were fought against progressive and left regimes worldwide; a second arms race ensued; strikebreaking and union busting came into favor; civil and women’s right movements came under savage attack; and neoliberal economic policies were applied with a vengeance. Early on in his presidency, Reagan allowed interest rates to climb to nearly 20 percent in order to drive unemployment up to double-digit levels, weaken the most powerful unions, wring inflation out of the economy, restructure and deregulate industries, give free rein to financial institutions and markets, reassert the international role of Wall Street and the dollar, and rollback the “welfare state.”

Post-Reagan period

In the post-Reagan years the offensive continued, but the methods and mix of imperial rule — economic versus political, consent versus coercion, some concessions to democratic movements versus retrenchment — varied, depending on the administration in the White House. It is no accident that the point man for the Clinton administration was the secretary of the treasury and Wall Street financier, Robert Rubin, who favored economic, multilateralist, and less punitive methods of imperial rule, though not in every situation — remember “welfare reform” and the bombing of Yugoslavia?

By the end of the 1990s, the consequences of this counteroffensive — now nearly two decades old — were apparent and contradictory. The balance of forces was shifted to the advantage of capitalism. Class power in the U.S. and in the other main capitalist countries was reinforced. The dominant status of U.S. imperialism was fortified. And the widening and deepening of capitalist relations — an objective process intrinsic to capitalism — accelerated, reaching nearly every nook and cranny of the globe. But there were unintended consequences too.

New economic contradictions and instabilities on a domestic and global level (a near global financial meltdown in the late 1990s) were triggered. Income inequality within and between countries and regions was aggravated to the extreme. Class, racial and gender tensions were heightened. The environment was despoiled. And robust and durable growth was a no show.

What is more, geopolitical rivalries among the core capitalist countries over resources (especially oil) and spheres of influence (especially the Middle East) were intensified. New economic competitors and configurations of regional power on nearly every continent arose. China arrived as a potential counter-hegemonic power to U.S. imperialism.

Finally, widespread and fierce popular resistance in all quarters of the globe surfaced during this period.

Thus, as Marxism would anticipate, the very advances of capitalist development and the very successes of capitalism’s fierce offensive generated the conditions and forces for its own future undoing.

Order, secrecy and force

Faced with this problematic situation, a section of the U.S. ruling class and its ultra-right political representatives decided that a change of policy, qualitative in nature, was necessary — from hegemony that combines consent and coercion to uncontested world domination that relies exclusively on force — a decision made much easier because of the removal of the Soviet Union from the geopolitical mix earlier in the early 1990s.

Thanks to a right-wing dominated U.S. Supreme Court, the 2000 elections brought into the White House a team of neoconservatives that was chomping at the bit to pursue a far more muscular, coercive and unilateralist policy than previous administrations. And then thanks to 9/11 the following year, this bellicose gang was handed the pretext to employ their new policies full throttle.

Yet, six years later, this project of world domination is in near shambles. Even among some sections of the U.S. ruling class, Bush’s policies, and especially the military intervention and occupation of Iraq, are considered unmitigated disasters that no matter how they resolve themselves have weakened U.S. imperialism economically, politically and ideologically.

This, however, is no reason to lower our activity or vigilance. To the contrary, a more vigorous and mass fight to end the occupation and to preserve democracy is necessary and possible.

After all, this administration doesn’t fit easily on the spectrum of bourgeois democratic rule. It prefers to be on the offensive; retreat is not a word it is comfortable with. It is untroubled by its violations of democratic rights and procedures

Its accent is on order, secrecy and force. Democracies, in its worldview, are messy, disorderly and unable to address perceived internal and external threats to U.S. imperial interests in a timely way. Indeed, when threats appear to emanate from many directions to U.S. imperialist dominance, it gravitates toward employing naked power, shorn of any democratic pretensions.

Break right-wing grip on the Congress

In the “Project for a New American Century,” the neoconservative authors write, “We cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before they emerge, and meet threats before they become dire.”

When I first read this passage I assumed that the authors were referring only to external threats. But given the assault of the Bush administration on our democracy, I have to ask if it doesn’t guide its actions within our borders as well.

This, of course, goes against the grain of our traditional notion that a ruling elite moves in an anti-democratic direction only when the internal threat to its interests is immediate, palpable and formidable. But, as we well know, there is something “untraditional” about the crop of conservatives and neoconservatives now occupying leading positions in the executive, legislature, military, security apparatus and judiciary.

And herein lies the danger.

Our rallying cry is for broad unity of action. Anything that impedes that should be rejected. Every inch of democratic space must be defended. The occupation of Iraq must be ended.

And, above all, democratic and peace minded people must throw themselves into the 2006 congressional elections. While we should not dismiss the possibility of an “October surprise,” the main thing is to fight for the broadest mobilization of the American people to break the right-wing grip on the Congress. Nothing would better secure democratic rights and peace.

Sam Webb (swebb@cpusa.org) is the national chairman of the Communist Party USA.

Ruin, rubble & race: Lessons on the centennial of the Great San Francisco Earthquake & Fire of 1906

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 03:50:00 +0000

It’s as if the spotlight that Hurricane Katrina cast on the inequities of disaster relief never happened. San Francisco’s high and mighty are in full-throated self-celebration of the city’s “rising from the ashes” of the April 18, 1906 earthquake and fire. Forgotten are people like my great-great grandfather Lee Bo-wen who immigrated to San Francisco Chinatown in 1854 and reared two generations at 820 Dupont Street. My whole family was forcibly evacuated, never to return. Even Dupont Street itself vanished forever, as post-disaster faux Chinese architecture buried the people’s Chinatown and made its successor, the now famous Grant Avenue, the centerpiece of the city’s newly minted Chinese tourist industry. Indeed the same scandalous profiteering, racism, incompetence and mendacity that have characterized the response to Katrina had an antecedent in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. It is now fully documented that during and after the 1906 disaster developers, insurance companies, corporations led by the Southern Pacific railroad, city leaders, newspapers and army brass shamelessly lied and promoted anti-Chinese racism to downplay and distort the disaster in order to advance their own selfish agendas. The 1906 earthquake and fire rendered homeless half of San Francisco’s population of 500,000. It destroyed 28,000 buildings and 498 city blocks. Authorities claimed that only 300 people had died, the better to undercut claims against the city and the business community. It took decades of painstaking documentation by Gladys Hansen, the city’s archivist, to prove that in fact more than 3,000 had died. The newspapers and city leaders talked only about the fire because it was considered a more normal event than an earthquake, which they feared would terrify potential investors and affluent homeowners. The San Francisco real estate board met a week after the earthquake and passed a resolution that the phrase “the great earthquake” should no longer be used; it would be known instead as “the great fire.” The army and the police blamed their failure to control the fire on a lack of water. Later it was proved that this was a bald-faced fabrication. Water was plentiful: the problem was that the city and the army grossly failed to mobilize enough manpower to pump the water and fight the fire. Meanwhile insurance companies paid up to $15,000 per photo—real or falsified—that could “prove” that a building was damaged by the earthquake rather than the fire, because they were not required to pay for earthquake damage. Businesses and building owners countered with massive arson in order to collect on fire insurance. And everyone from the mayor to labor leaders promoted gross racism in order to justify their attempt to grab the prime real estate upon which 25,000 Chinese lived. The Organized Labor railed: “Great as the recent catastrophe has been, let us take care lest we encounter a greater one. We can withstand the earthquake. We can survive the fire. As long as California is white mans country, it will remain one of the grandest and best states in the union, but the moment the Golden State is subjected to an unlimited Asiatic coolie invasion there will be no more California.” Take care they did: A recent article by the National Park Service reports that Hugh Kwong Liang, only 15 at the time, recalled, “I turned away from my dear old Chinatown for the last time and city officials directing the refugees’ march approached us and told us to proceed toward the open grounds at the Presidio Army Post.” Despite the presence of the military, newspaper reports tell of extensive looting, including “the National Guard, stripping everything of value in Chinatown.” At the same time, the police and National Guard were unleashed against any Chinese suspected of looting. Historian Connie Young Yu’s grandfather, Lee Yoke Suey, was suspected of looting in his own store and bayoneted. A white crowd stoned to death a young man who was trying to salvage items from his home. Chinese refugees quickly flooded relief camps in San Francisco, Alameda and Oakland. As the Chinese exited Chinatown, city officials sought to prevent them from returning. A committee of top leaders was quickly established that focused exclusively on the permanent relocation of the Chinese, finally settling upon Hunter’s Point as a likely new location. The Overland Monthly editorialized: “Fire has reclaimed to civilization and cleanliness the Chinese ghetto, and no Chinatown will be permitted in the borders of the city.... it seems as though a divine wisdom directed the range of the seismic horror and the range of the fire god. Wisely, the worst was cleared away with the best.” But for the active fight waged by the Chinese community and actively supported by the Chinese consulate, this racist prediction might have been fulfilled. The San Francisco Examiner reported, “The committee’s protestations that what it intends is for the benefit of the Chinese is received with suspicion on the part of the Chinese.” In fact, few Chinese voluntarily took advantage of relief help when they discovered it meant being held as virtual prisoners in squalid, segregated camps. Despite their estimated population of 60,000, only 186 Chinese refugees remained at the Fort Point camp by May 8. Meanwhile, Chinatown merchant/property owners who owned one-third of the Chinatown property organized to defend their rights. Dupont Street Improvement Club representatives pointed out that trade in Chinatown the previous year had amounted to $30 million, that the Chinese paid their share of municipal taxes and that property owners could rent to anyone they wished. The Chinese government’s consulate also made clear its intention to rebuild on its property in San Francisco Chinatown and to protect the rights of overseas Chinese. Although many Chinese residents were never able to return, the power elite’s plan to destroy Chinatown was foiled by a combination of Chinese resistance and the city’s desire for Chinatown taxes. That latter desire merged with the interests of Chinese merchants in shaping the new Chinatown around a tourist theme park. But at least Chinatown was saved for many of its residents. My family, like many others, finally settled in Oakland, where they were greeted by the likes of the Oakland Herald: “One of the evils springing from the late disaster to San Francisco, one that menaces Oakland exceedingly ... is the great influx of Chinese into this city from San Francisco. Not only have they pushed outward the limits of Oakland’s heretofore constricted and insignificant Chinatown, but they have settled themselves in large colonies throughout the residence parts of the city, bringing with them their vices and their filth.” To frustrate Oakland’s racist redliners, my great-great grandfather anglicized his name from Lee Bo-wen to Lee Bowen and was thereby able to record his purchase of a home in what was then the segregated, lily-white Fruitvale district. Thousands of other Chinese took advantage of the destruction of San Francisco’s records to claim U.S. citizenship. We failed to learn the lessons of the San Francisco earthquake before Katrina. We must learn the lessons of both now. It should be crystal clear that disasters are not purely natural events: they can be caused or seriously aggravated by human action like global warming, racism, poor city planning, economic inequality, incompetence, greed, politics and war. When a disaster like the SF earthquake or Katrina hits, your average person empathizes with the appalling loss and pain of the victims, and joins in to help by volunteering with rescue and reconstruction efforts, contributing money or any number of other humanitarian acts. But many businesses and politicians act like sharks in bloody waters: they know that disasters open up new opportunities to remake the city in their interests, to make vast sums of money and to reorganize political power in their favor. They know these events provide a chance to rid themselves of poor communities, especially communities of color, that they consider a blight on their vision for the city and an obstacle to their own enrichment. Disasters not only reveal hidden inequalities but also grossly aggravate the existing power imbalances between rich and poor, between white and non-white. The power elite has usually planned ahead for disaster, suffers less and recovers faster from the shock. They have lawyers, bankers and politicians, ready to fight for their interests. For most of us, the most vital response to natural disasters—before, during and after the event—is organizing our communities and workplaces to survive, rebuild and fight for our interests against the predators in our midst. In areas susceptible to disaster, it is critical to integrate disaster planning into our day to day organizing against gentrification and for social justice. For example, in the Bay Area we should include planning for the next big earthquake in the ongoing struggle against the gentrification of the Bay View, West Oakland and other poor communities in the region. And of course the fight in the Gulf region is still at fever pitch. It is crucial to support the fight to prevent the transformation of New Orleans from a largely Black working class city into a gentrified theme park featuring jazz, creole food and gambling.

Bob Wing is an Oakland Bay Area based activist and writer. Thanks to Nicole Derse, Donna Linden, Richard Marquez, Jane Kim and David Ho for organizing the Ruin, Rubble and Race symposium in San Francisco that inspired and informed this article.

Billionaires For Bush Celebrate Tax Day

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 08:25:00 +0000

New York, N.Y., Thursday, April 13, 2006 — Dressed to the nines in tuxedos and ball gowns, delighted Billionaires For Bush will gather in cities across the country to say to American taxpayers, “Thank YOU for paying OUR fair share!”

As Ola Garky, Senior Policy Analyst for Billionaires For Bush explained, “This most recent round of tax cuts will continue to explode the deficit by giving away over $900 Billion to the super-rich over the next ten years. The Bush administration forecasts that the deficit will hit a record $423 billion this year. Thanks to tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate subsidies, and no-bid contracts, most of that is going right into our pockets. All I have to say to the future middle-class generations who’ll b e picking up the tab is: Thanks, kids.”

In New York City, Billionaires will celebrate with a public Waltz for Wealth from 2-4pm on Monday, April 17th, at Columbus Circle. With champagne flutes, extra copies of IRS Form 8302 (for electronic deposit of a refund of $1 Million or more), and signs reading “It’s a Class War, and We’re Winning!,” Billionaires will express their exuberance in a spectacular burst of upper-crust dancing. Between waltzes and chants of “Let the workers pay the tax, so investors can relax!” the Billionaire Follies will croon gospel-style anthems celebrating the end of the Dynasty Tax.

“Since George W. Bush took office, Tax Day has become a national holiday for Billionaires everywhere,” says B4B National Co-Chair Monet Oliver de Place, lounging on his yacht, the SS Write-Off. “Thanks to Bush’s most recent tax & gt;cuts for the wealthiest 1%, I was able to open my eighth factory in China. See? Who says tax cuts don’t create jobs?”

The Monday festivities will tie up a full weekend of well-heeled revelry. Billionaires will also party it up at the feisty and hilarious Billionaire Follies show “Spring Bling!” Saturday, April 15th’s show is “The Big Tax Day Blowout,” and Crazy George will be slashing programs for the middle class like they’re Brazilian rainforests! 7:30pm, Ace of Clubs, 9 Great Jones Street. Tickets available at www.TheaterMania.com.

Some have suggested that, with scandals clattering around their ears, now is not the time for Billionaires to gloat about their success at gaming the system. But B4B National Co-Chair Meg A. Bucks scoffs at the notion. “Balderdash. It’s possible that all these scandals will drive some of our ‘investments’ out of office. Now is the time for a take-no-prisoners looting of the treasury. You never know when the salad days will come to an end. Carpe Diem! Or as I prefer to say, Carpe…Everything.”

About Billionaires For Bush

Billionaires For Bush is a do-it-yourself street theater and media campaign using humor to show how the Bush administration has favored the corporate elite at the expense of everyday Americans. B4B is an independent 527 committee, with headquarters in NYC and chapters nationwide. For more information, please visit: www.BillionairesForBush.com.

Immigration upsurge ups the ante. News analysis.

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 07:23:00 +0000

According to Time magazine, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) decided not to support the Republican-led Senate “compromise” bill on immigration reform because he felt he was walking into a trap. This recalls Patrick Henry’s famous quote, “I smell a rat,” when the U.S. Constitution was first proposed without a Bill of Rights.

Reid’s refusal to accept Republican maneuvers to add more repressive amendments to the compromise kept the Senate from passing a 500-plus page proposal by Senators Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Mel Martinez (R-Fla.). Action is now postponed until April 24, after a two-week recess. The delay gives the immigrant rights upsurge time to press for stronger legalization and civil rights protections.

The Hagel-Martinez bill has one program with a path to permanent residency for undocumented people here five years or more, and another with a more conditional permanent residency path for those here two to five years. For the rest there is a possible temporary worker program and the requirement they leave the country with no assurance of being able to return.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney immediately opposed the measure as projecting “an undemocratic, three-tiered society that degrades and marginalizes millions of immigrant families … driving down wages and benefit standards for everyone.” The National Organization for Women called for its defeat because of its heavy burdens to qualify and limits to judicial review and due process, saying the bill would “create a permanent underclass that may never get to participate in the U.S. democratic system.”

The movement for immigrant rights has focused heavily on opposing the blatantly anti-democratic HR 4437, especially its provisions making felons of undocumented workers and those who provide them humanitarian support. Increasingly civil rights/civil liberties activists object to other aspects of HR 4437 that have been incorporated into all the bills being considered in the Senate.

Many point to “poison pill” or “booby trap” provisions that could disqualify immigrants for driving without a license, using an invalid Social Security card or other ID, or overstaying a visa. These dangers are reinforced by denials of appeal and court access in many cases. Provisions for mandatory deportation, unlimited detentions and deputizing police as immigration agents extend and expand dangerous precedents. Organizers for the April 10 National Day of Protest sent out an alert calling such provisions unacceptable.

On top of all this, whether they support guest work programs or not, right-wing Republican leaders are prioritizing draconian border and interior enforcement measures. President Bush, Senate Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) are clearly working to include as many repressive, HR 4437-type provisions as possible in any bill.

On April 10, key Democrats Sen. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Reps. Luis Gutierrez (Ill.) and Hilda Solis (Calif.) urged returning the Kennedy-McCain bill to congressional debate instead of seeking to amend the Hagel-Martinez compromise.

The Kennedy-McCain bill has the strongest path to citizenship and least onerous enforcement provisions in the Senate. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) says the more liberal bill could pass the House but the Republican leadership would not allow this.

At the grassroots, supporters of stronger legalization measures and opposition to punitive enforcement are calling for continuous mass demonstrations, voter registration, people’s boycotts and work stoppages. On April 15 a mass student protest is being held in Los Angeles. On April 29, a “citizenship training event” is planned in Chicago. On May 1, mass demonstrations are being organized in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities, with many groups calling for a national boycott of work and school.

EDITORIAL: Long live spring!

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 06:30:00 +0000

Rumors of history’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Spring 2006 has blossomed with millions of workers and students in the streets in London, Paris, Athens and Los Angeles defending the rights of workers and youth. It’s history in the making, as the people flex their marching muscles. And it’s only mid-April. The size and unity of the people’s anger at the “free market” pro-corporate assault by governments on these continents keeps growing.

Here in the U.S., the immigrant rights movement is expanding in breadth and organization. While demonstrations in Chicago and Los Angles grabbed headlines, thousands of immigrant workers and supporters of immigrant rights marched in Nashville, Tenn., South Bend, Ind., and just about every city, town and hamlet in the country. The defiant message is consistent: “We are not criminals. We are hard working, dignified families who, like everyone else, are building a better life. We demand dignity and opportunity.” The demonstrations are militant, determined to win.

It is a remarkable statement by working-class people, straining under the pressures of over 25 years of assault by reactionary ideologues. A barrage of racist, divisive propaganda, provocation and even violence in the form of Minutemen vigilantes has been hurled at immigrant workers and their supporters, and still the demonstrations are larger and larger. Religious leaders have vowed to go to jail if that’s what it takes to provide aid and comfort to immigrants and their families. Their congregations are renting buses, raising money and rolling into Washington, Charlotte and Chicago. The banners of unions dot the massive street actions and their numbers are increasing. Students are packing up their books, heading out the school doors, not for a spring break, but to march in the streets of Las Vegas and Reno and New York and Los Angeles for democratic human rights. Television cameras are documenting courage born in the fight for justice.

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” wrote the revolutionary British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. We welcome this spring of unity and struggle for human dignity, peace and workers’ rights.

Dramatic Senate showdown on immigrant rights. News Analysis.

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 13:45:00 +0000

The Senate debate on immigration “reform” was moving toward a dramatic showdown during the week of April 3, and no one can say what kind of legislation will eventually be passed, or if any legislation will be passed. There are competing bills from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and the Senate Judiciary Committee, and there is a possibility of a filibuster or a stalemate, both of which would delay the whole issue.

On March 27, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that is now being called the Specter-Leahy bill, S 3192, named after the chair of the committee, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and ranking committee member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). Starting with a draft (or “chairman’s mark”) by Specter that greatly resembled HR 4437, the repressive House bill that is the motive for massive immigrant rights protests around the country, Democratic and some Republican senators were able to add amendments that significantly modified the bill in the direction of legislation introduced last year by Senators McCain (R-Ariz.) and Kennedy (D-Mass.).

A mechanism for legalization and access to citizenship for the 11-12 million undocumented immigrants was added to the bill, plus a guest worker program which allows guest workers eventual access to full permanent resident status. Important victories in the committee were the approval of the Agjobs bill as an amendment to Specter-Leahy, which will allow 1.5 million undocumented farmworkers to eventually become legal, and the DREAM Act, which will help undocumented youth who have grown up and gone to school in the U.S. to access college education.

Also, the Sensenbrenner-Specter proposal to declare all undocumented immigrants to be felons was stripped out of the bill, and a similar plan to turn people who help the undocumented into felons was significantly weakened. Finally, the total number of permanent resident visas was expanded by separating those obtained on the basis of having close relatives in the United States from the overall limit, and by expanding the number of work-related visas for unskilled workers somewhat.

However, Specter had imported so much repressive language from HR 4437 into his “mark” that much of it still remains in the Specter-Leahy bill, and this is very dangerous stuff indeed. Only a small sampling of repressive, anti-immigrant elements in Specter-Leahy include the following:

* Although people who help undocumented immigrants as a “charitable act” will not be felons if Specter-Leahy becomes law, it is by no means clear that people who rent them apartments or provide them with other day-to-day services that make their illegal presence in the country possible would not be persecuted, even by forfeiture of property. Will all landlords in the country now have to check the immigration status of their tenants? And it is not even clear that friends and relatives of immigrants, or unions and labor centers, fall under the “charitable” category.

* There are big assaults against due process in the Specter-Leahy bill. Room will be made to detain up to 100,000 immigrants at a time, as the government will have the right to detain indefinitely immigrants under deportation orders whose countries will not take them back — reversing prior Supreme Court decisions forbidding this. Immigration officials will have increased summary power to kick immigrants and refugees out of the country without judicial review. Immigrants petitioning for legalization will have to waive the right to appeal adverse decisions by the government.

* Language in the bill bars the possibility that an immigrant gaining legalization if the person has falsified documents in order to live and work in the U.S., e.g. if they fudged a fake Social Security number on their I-9 forms when they applied for a job. Conceivably, millions of immigrants could be denied legalization because of this, particularly if it is applied retroactively.

* Employers who receive Social Security No-Match letters (informing them that one of their employees has submitted a Social Security number that does not match up with the government’s database) will now have to report to the government on what action they have taken with respect to that employee, even though the database in question, which employers will now have to use proactively, is known to be full of mistakes.

In every respect, the Frist bill, S 2454 is worse, so some immigrants rights groups are taking the stance that the Specter-Leahy bill needs to be supported in order to defeat Frist. The National Immigration Law Center and the Rights Working Group feel that Specter-Leahy itself cannot be supported unless more of the negative elements are eliminated by amendments.

All are united in the determination to keep on lobbying to remove the negative elements of Specter-Leahy and to at least defeat the Frist bill, for which purpose there will be major labor-led rallies all around the country on April 10. On the other side, President Bush continues to project an image of humane moderation, but we must remember that when the ghastly Sensenbrenner bill was passed in December, he said not one word against its viciously repressive dimensions.

Meanwhile, on a separate tack, Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.) has introduced a new bill in the House, HR 5035, which attempts to address one of the brutal effects of the repressive approach to immigration.

There are hundreds of thousands of spouses and minor children around the country, U.S. citizens and permanent legal residents, who have been left without a mother, father or spouse who has been deported either for being undocumented, or because of conviction for certain offenses, some of them rather minor.

Before 1996, immigration judges, and regular federal court judges on appeal, had wide discretion to allow such spouses and parents to stay in the United States because of the hardship their deportation would create for the family. In that year, Congress passed and President Clinton signed two bills, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, that began a process of taking away this discretion and in fact of making it harder and harder for immigrants to appeal the decisions of immigration judges (who are not part of the independent judiciary, but are within the executive branch) to the regular federal courts.

Serrano’s bill begins to correct this huge injustice by restoring the judges’ discretion in cases wherein there are U.S.-born and U.S. citizen children who will be harmed by the deportation of an undocumented parent.