People Before Profit blog

Silvio Rodriguez still inspires millions with poetic and visionary song

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:36:00 +0000

HAVANA (AP) — In his 58 years, Silvio Rodriguez has watched wars come and go, ideologies blossom and wither, love emerge and evaporate.

Yet even as the Cuban musician struggled with disappointment and his own faith in the underlying beauty and magic of life, his poetry put to guitar planted hope in millions of fans and turned him into Latin America’s icon of idealism.

Rodriguez is a dreamer, a visionary, the Bob Dylan of the Latin world. Though not well known in the United States, generations of Mexicans, Argentines and Cubans have marked important moments in their lives to his haunting melodies: a first kiss, and ensuing heartbreak; protest marches in college; and subsequent political disillusionment.

An innate hopefulness defines the man and his music.

“I am quite an optimist — at least when I’m singing,” Rodriguez told The Associated Press at his Ojala studio offices. “I say when I’m singing, because it may not be the case in other moments. Perhaps I sing songs to convince myself of exactly that — that one must be an optimist.”

His nature is contemplative, his manner generally serious. Yet he’s still of Caribbean blood, and like his fellow Cubans, he uses his arms, his hands, to communicate, peppering his conversation with bursts of animation and laughter.

In his usual attire of jeans and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt, Rodriguez talked about the birth of his idealism in the turbulent 1960s. He was 12 when Fidel Castro’s rebels toppled Fulgencio Batista’s government. By the time Rodriguez started playing music, he had participated in literacy campaigns and embraced the revolution’s ideals.

They were heady times, and Rodriguez was intoxicated with romantic notions.

“At the time, it seemed to me that song could truly change the world,” he said. “I thought that art had unlimited power. And I dedicated myself with passion to try and be an artist.”

The son of a carpenter and a hairdresser, Rodriguez didn’t start out with such lofty goals. Initially, he didn’t even want to sing.

As a teenager he began composing songs to create music different from what was on the local radio. He was a Beatles enthusiast and an avid reader of history, poetry and literature, all of which influenced him when he put the words and sounds swirling in his head down on paper.

But he always intended for others to sing his songs.

“I don’t consider myself a singer,” he says matter-of-factly. “I have always been more satisfied composing music, as this is the form in which I best express myself.”

Yet as his fan base grew, so did the demand for him to perform the songs himself. “I realized that people weren’t just responding to my songs, they were responding to me,” he said.

As he connected with the crowds, their enthusiastic response inspired him. He met other young musicians and began creating new music — trova — similar to American folk music, sharing social problems through musical storytelling.

“He has a very lucid way of thinking, which he’s possessed since he was an adolescent,” said singer Vicente Feliu, who helped found the modern trova movement and has been a close friend of Rodriguez’s since the two were in high school. “He was always very firm in his convictions about the revolution, about life in general. Silvio has always been just a bit ahead of his time.”

Rodriguez was called a poet, a master songwriter, even a genius for his unique blend of lyricism and musicality. His songs challenged the Vietnam War and racism, embraced women’s rights and the power of love.

But it was not long before reality chipped away at Rodriguez’s rosy outlook: War, poverty and discrimination did not end.

And in Cuba, the revolution was going strong, but Rodriguez, who would later become a congressman and use his fame to help promote the island’s politics, was frustrated with the U.S. rejection of its communist neighbor and despaired of U.S. sanctions aimed at weakening Castro’s rule. His vocal support for the Cuban government had, in anti-Castro circles, brought animosity into a life that largely had been filled with affection.

Rodriguez’s belief in the power of music was also waning.

“I went through a stage of total lack of faith,” he said. “Everything was garbage. Art wasn’t worth anything — it couldn’t change the world.”

Despite his disillusionment, Rodriguez kept writing, his music more melancholy than ever. In this period he created “Unicornio Azul,” or “Blue Unicorn,” a soulful, magical piece in which he yearns for the return of something very special. The song became one of his most famous tunes.

The unicorn represented Rodriguez’s fading optimism. But just as in the song, as he continued to create, his faith in the power of music began to return.

“I see in Silvio a voice constantly trying to bring hope, and belief in a future humanity that we could all enjoy,” entertainer Harry Belafonte, Rodriguez’s friend for some 30 years, told the AP.

Rodriguez is not as well known in the United States as other Cuban greats like the Buena Vista Social Club, Chucho Valdes or late salsa queen Celia Cruz. His CDs are sold in some U.S. stores but are more likely to be found in the luggage of Latin American immigrants coming to America.

It’s not just the middle-aged who love Rodriguez. The performer has always had young fans throughout his lengthy career — testimony, some say, of the emotional relevance and timelessness of his music.

Belafonte recalled a Rodriguez concert in Cuba in the late ’70s and being struck by the reaction of the audience, which was filled primarily with young people.

“It was not only the extreme reverence with which the young viewed him, it was the way they began to sing the songs,” Belafonte said. “It was more than just mouthing the lyrics — they became deeply connected to his poetry.”

Earlier this year, Rodriguez performed to youthful throngs in an open-air concert in front of a Havana university. The audience stayed and sang along for hours despite an intense downpour throughout.

Rodriguez has also shown his support to young musicians, with the recording studio he’s built in Ojala.

On a recent tour of it, just blocks from the ocean and his own house, Rodriguez sweeps his arm around a small, carpeted area.

“It’s very simple,” he said, walking through the studio toward an adjoining room filled with guitars — many of them gifts — and microphones. He runs his fingers across a grand piano, the favorite of Grammy-winning jazz pianist Valdes.

Ojala, a Spanish word with Arabic roots, translates into “God willing” or “I hope so,” an expression that comes to life in Rodriguez’s latest CD, “Cita con Angeles,” or “A Date With Angels.” The CD was influenced by Sept. 11 as well as Rodriguez’s expanding family. As he was mourning victims of the 2001 terrorist attack, his wife, a young flutist, gave birth to their daughter; his first grandson, from a child of a previous marriage, also was born.

“All these things, all this anguish and joy, is put in to that disc,” he said.

An appreciation of John H. Johnson

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:31:00 +0000

Ebony and Jet have been decorating the furniture in African American living rooms and offices for many years. John H. Johnson, one of the wealthiest African Americans in the country and founder of Ebony, Jet and the Johnson Publishing Co., died on Aug. 8. His funeral a week later drew an overflow crowd, ranging from personalities like former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson to throngs of ordinary people who came to pay their respects. What was the essence of the contribution of John H. Johnson to the struggle for social progress?

The African American community is multi-class. Though the working class is the largest segment of this community, there are also classes of small and large Black business people as well as other strata. The African American struggle seeks the unity of those various class forces and strata toward advancing the fight for justice and equality for the African American people, and the general advancement of democracy in our country overall.

For a people to summon all of their strength and courage in the face of brutal, vulgar distortion and degradation of their history, culture, and place of origin, they must come to know who they really are. They must be armed with the truth of their history and culture. Confronting a dominant culture which said that Black people were not only inferior, but ugly, stupid, culturally backward, and less than human, John H. Johnson rose in opposition.

Though Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson and thousands more resisted, and lived lives representing the glory of African American humanity, it was not until John H. Johnson that the pudding representing the proof was regularly available in nationally circulated popular print. Through Ebony and Jet, Black people could read about other Black people who, mostly against the odds, became civil rights leaders, politicians, doctors, lawyers, educators, engineers, artists, sports figures and business people. They could explore a more accurate truth about the history, sociology and culture of the Black experience in America and Africa. Lest we forget, this was vitally important information at a time when Black membership in the human species was still in question. The faces and causes of important leaders were recognizable to African Americans not because of television or Look and Life magazines, but because of Ebony and Jet.

At a time when the dominant culture was committing widespread lynching of Black flesh after church on Sunday and of the Black soul and spirit every day of the week without fail, the significance of the emergence of John H. Johnson and the realization of his vision is undeniable. It was through the pages of Ebony and Jet that Black people got the news of what was really going on and who was doing, accomplishing and achieving what in the African American community. It was the horror of the lynching of young Emmett Till captured on the front cover of the Sept. 15, 1955, Jet magazine that helped to promote the uprising of Black people in the fight for the rights of citizens that shook the nation. Ebony and Jet not only chronicled but also made a contribution to advancing the civil rights movement.

John H. Johnson, the son of a sawmill worker and a washerwoman, is also credited with making major donations to Black colleges and universities and the campaigns of some African American political candidates, and helping to financially sustain budding leaders and movements. The truth that wealthy African Americans also experience racism is revealed most poignantly by one story from Johnson’s life. When he wanted to buy a building in Chicago’s downtown area to house his publishing company, Johnson, an African American, could not make the deal. In order to purchase the building he had to buy it through his white lawyer.

John H. Johnson may not have walked as far as we must walk and he may not have thought all the thoughts we must embrace, but he made an indelible mark on the side of the fight for social progress, and that merits being recognized and applauded.

Dee Myles is a Chicago educator.

Pastors group campaigns for Cuba solidarity

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:11:00 +0000

You might assume that Pastors for Peace, which is being harassed by the U.S. Treasury Department for delivering humanitarian aid to Cuba, is in a pickle. But the Rev. Lucius Walker, director of the New York-based ecumenical group, thinks otherwise. He calls the department’s actions “another gift given to us by the U.S. government to organize and gain support for Cuba.”

On July 21 in Hidalgo, Texas, U.S. border officials blocked 43 boxes of computers and computer-related material from traveling to Cuba for use there by hospitals and schools for children with disabilities. However, 98 percent of the medical and educational supplies, plus 130 Pastors for Peace supporters, did make it to the socialist island.

Seven people stayed behind to launch a campaign for the remaining material to be let through.

Pastors for Peace and its supporters practice civil disobedience, in this instance by challenging two Treasury Department regulations. They neither applied for nor secured the license required for sending humanitarian aid to the Cuban people. Nor did they obtain U.S. government authorization to travel to Cuba.

Now they and their counterparts from last year’s “Friendshipment” caravan have been receiving notices from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control inquiring about their trip. The OFAC letter serves as a hint that fines may be in the works.

The group is undaunted. From Dallas on Aug. 16 the Pastors for Peace team declared, “We are not only working for the release of the seized computer aid. ... We are also talking about the appointment of a U.S. ‘administrator’ (a la Paul Bremer) for Cuba’s supposed transition to a market economy that can be controlled by the U.S. We are sounding the alert about the always-imminent threat of a U.S. attack or invasion of Cuba. .… As we see it, these issues are all part of the same Bush agenda of domination and imperialism.”

From 1996 until now government officials had looked the other way when Cuba-bound humanitarian supplies and Pastors for Peace activists passed through U.S. border stations. They probably wanted to avoid embarrassing publicity similar to that in 1996, when Lucius Walker and four others fasted for 94 days, forcing the release of 430 computers to the Cuban health care system.

The Pastors for Peace group is currently heading north from the Texas-Mexico border. The Rev. Walker, the Rev. Luis Barrios, Ellen Bernstein and Bill Hill are speaking out en route at meetings, rallies, and press conferences. They need to be in Washington, says Walker, “to get right in the faces of the people who make policy decisions. We will be spreading the word, not just about the need to release the computers, but about the need to end the blockade.”

Wednesday vigils for the release of the computers have been springing up across the nation during the past month. According to Walker, their message is: “We, the people, will not let our administration dictate a foreign policy of death, destruction and starvation toward Iraq or Cuba.”

At the same time, Cuba solidarity activists are mobilizing support for the freedom of Cuban Five as they face a new trial and in support of Venezuela’s demand for the extradition of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

atwhit @ megalink.net

American Indians pull with pride in Elwha

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:08:00 +0000

PORT ANGELES, Wash. — “Paddle to Elwha” brought thousands of Pacific Northwest Indians and their friends to the waterfront of this old Olympic Peninsula mill town Aug. 1 to celebrate the arrival of 76 dugout canoes from as far north as Alaska and far south as Coos Bay, Ore.

Voyaging hundreds of miles across the often windswept waters of the Pacific, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Inland Passage and Puget Sound, the “pullers,” mostly youthful Indian men and women, were greeted as heroes as the canoes arrived one by one at Hollywood Beach in downtown Port Angeles.

The canoes are cedar dugouts like those that once plied these waters carrying trade goods or used in fishing and whaling. Makah whaling canoes, some 80 feet long, ventured into the Pacific on whale hunts. Today the canoes are carved and painted with dramatic images of ravens, eagles and whales as authentic as those of the past.

This year, 14 Aleuts from the Pribilof Island in the Aleutians joined the paddle in their bidarkas, or kayaks, made of stitched seal skin.

‘Now we are awakening’

David Hudson, hereditary chief of the Quileute Tribe of LaPush, stood on the beach beaming with joy. “That’s my son, my daughter, my nieces and nephews in the Quileute dugout there,” he told the World, pointing toward a handsome canoe riding a few feet offshore. “They came all the way from LaPush on the Pacific Ocean around Cape Flattery into the Strait. They camped at night, at Wyaatch, Neah Bay, Clallam Bay, Pillar Point. They carried no modern navigational equipment. No cell phones.”

The idea of resurrecting their seafaring heritage began many years ago, he said. “We started back in 1976 when we paddled from LaPush to Neah Bay. I participated in that paddle. Now we are one big canoe family from Alaska to Quinalt. This is an alcohol-free and drug-free event.”

The annual celebration, a combination of powwow and potlatch, combines cultural pride, good food, dancing and music as well as much athletic prowess. “It is pretty emotional for our elders seeing this comeback by our people,” he said. “Some told us we had lost our culture. But our elders told us it was just sleeping. Now we are awakening.”

The waterborne ingathering won national attention in 1989 when nine canoes joined the “Paddle to Seattle,” a centerpiece of the centennial of the founding of Seattle. One of those canoes was skippered by Frank Brown of the Bella Bella tribe of British Columbia. He threw down a challenge to tribes in the U.S. to “Paddle to Bella Bella” in 1993. It was a triumphant success.

The Bella Bellas also took the lead in reviving the craft of canoe-carving. Now Bella Bella carvers travel from tribe to tribe teaching them how to build canoes. Two Bella Bella canoes, again skippered by Brown, arrived from British Columbia, conspicuous for their sweeping lines and magnificent painted prows.

Ten days to paddle 200 miles

Among the newest entrants were the Nooksack tribe north of Bellingham. The Nooksack pullers, young men and women, had just dragged their canoe up on Hollywood Beach when they spoke with the PWW.

“Our journey took 10 days and over 200 miles,” said Alex Cooper, who works fulltime at the Nooksack tribal casino. “We stopped at each village along the way. This was the first time the Nooksack joined. We didn’t even have a canoe. Luckily, another tribe lent us one of theirs. We plan to carve our own canoe. This is the reunification of our native people. It is rejuvenating our spirit. Everyone is welcome.”

Jeremiah Johnny, employed by the Department of Natural Resources at the Nooksack Tribal Center, said the many stops at villages along the shore “gives us an awareness of our gravesites and our sacred grounds. It is a good reason to bring so many of us together. This is our way of honoring the oldest ones, honoring our past and standing up for our future.”

Remembering Tse-whit-zen Village

“Paddle to Elwha” was sponsored by the Lower Elwha S’Klallams for which Clallam County is named. The tribe was forced in the 1930s to leave their ancestral village site where Port Angeles now stands, as well as a site at the base of Ediz Hook across the bay. They had to purchase land to provide the site for the reservation that exists today at the mouth of the Elwha River eight miles west of Port Angeles.

They and all other Pacific Northwest Indians were even denied the right to fish, a staple of their diet, until 1974 when Federal Judge George Boldt handed down a landmark ruling that half the annual salmon catch belongs to the Indians. The Elwha River has been in the news in recent years because of a plan to remove a dam in hopes of reviving a salmon run that once spawned in the headwaters of the stream.

The theme of this year’s paddle was “Reflections on our past: Honoring Tse-whit-zen Village.” The village, sheltered in the cove of Ediz Hook, across the bay, is now estimated to have been inhabited 2,700 years ago. It was discovered last year when the Washington State Department of Transportation began construction of the so-called graving site where giant pontoons were to be fabricated to replace aging pontoons on the Hood Canal floating bridge.

During excavation, intact remains of hundreds of ancestors of the S’Klallam people were unearthed, while the scattered bones of hundreds more were churned up during construction. It touched off an outcry from the tribe that their most sacred burial ground was being destroyed, a protest so strong that the state was forced to suspend construction on the 22-acre site near the old Crown Zellerbach paper mill. The steel ribs of the graving yard now loom silent over the site.

A team of archaeologists, including more than 100 Klallam tribal members, established an archaeological dig to painstakingly sift for more intact graves and to preserve the human remains and artifacts. It is now recognized as the most important archaeological site in the Pacific Northwest since the discovery in 1970 of the Ozette landslide site on a remote stretch of the Pacific coast. (A Makah Indian village had been inundated, instantly, in a landslide 800 years ago, preserving everything so perfectly it was called the “Pompei of North America.” Artifacts from the Ozette site are now housed in a splendid museum in Neah Bay. See “Makah Indians Defend Their Treaty Rights,” PWW, May 12, 2000).

The day after they arrived at Hollywood Beach, the canoes streamed across Port Angeles Bay to the site of Tse-whit-zen Village for a solemn memorial ceremony.

Tribes came in solidarity

As the canoes rode on the tide, Lower Elwha tribal chairwoman, Frances Charles, told the crowd, “We have 316 cedar boxes on our reservation that are waiting to be placed back into their resting place. We have the remains of thousands upon thousands who have died here. We are looking for healing here. We are asking for songs and prayers of healing here.”

An elder stood at the stern of the Blue Heron canoe and replied, “We come here to show our strength when we are together, to show the strength of our solidarity.”

A woman elder from the Muckleshoot tribe thanked the S’Klallams for the difficult struggle they have waged to defend Tse-whit-zen Village. The pontoon construction project had been greeted for the jobs it created in a region with chronic high unemployment and poverty.

“We are thankful to the Elwha people, thankful for the things you are doing to bring out who we are inside,” the Muckleshoot leader said. “Our Indian-ness was almost taken away from us but now you are winning it back.”

There have been Cold War-style attacks on their patriotism. Bangor on Hood Canal is the base for nuclear submarines deployed in the Pacific. The Hood Canal floating bridge is designed to draw back for passage of these menacing leviathans.

In an open letter headlined, “I Wish This on No Other Nation,” Charles wrote, “They tell us that it’s a safety factor that we are faced with — that there is a war out there, and that the submarines have to continue to pass through the Hood Canal Bridge, and that if the submarines can’t get through … we will be to blame. … We are being threatened and threatened.”

Of course, nothing the S’Klallam tribe has done is having any effect whatsoever on passage of the nuclear subs in and out of Hood Canal.

‘We want our dead reburied with dignity’

Charles told the World, “Paddle to Elwha was important for our community in terms of our theme, ‘Reflections on the Past of Tse-whit-zen Village.’ This is a unique situation here, but all the other Native American people across the nation have similar stories of their ancestral gravesites being destroyed. It has given our community the strength and unity to carry on.”

Construction of the pontoon graving site has been halted since last December, she said. Yet the final outcome remains in limbo. “The goal of the Lower Elwha community is we would like to see the reburial of these remains on that site if possible.”

Asked about discussion of a Tse-whit-zen museum like the Ozette museum in Neah Bay, she replied, “What we would like to see in the future is for our people to have a curation facility. It is really important for the Elwha community. We want to maintain and have ownership of the artifacts. We don’t want to be going to any of the other museums to be viewing them. We have over 13,000 artifacts. There are many, many unique arrows, harpoons, etched stones. There are Chinese coins. We have unearthed 800 etched rocks. We found beautiful combs.”

This archaeological dig has also unearthed the foundations of six cedar longhouses. The team is trying to figure out how to preserve the remains of cedar planks on the longhouses, which crumble apart when exposed to the air.

“This village was standing there 2,700 years ago,” she said. “It is reviving me personally, reviving our culture and our heritage. We were in danger of losing it. But now we have our heads held high.”

She voiced frustration at the deadlock. “We are continuing the negotiations with all the key players to move forward with the reburial process,” she said. “We feel we’ve been talking about this for the last seven months, yet we are moving backward.”

The discovery of Tse-whit-zen Village and the struggle now to prevent it being covered over with concrete, she said, brings into sharp focus a centuries-long struggle. “Our people were punished for speaking their own language, our children were taken away from their families, and we were forced to leave our ancestral villages. Now it is emotionally, physically and spiritually hard to see how these remains are being treated,” she said. “Every day is a funeral. We want them reburied with dignity.”

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com) is national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.

Camp Casey puts Bush on the run

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:02:00 +0000

Ignites nationwide movement to bring the troops home

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CRAWFORD, Texas — Just two months ago, people in this quiet, rural town, population 705, lived their lives in relative anonymity. But thanks to the lies of an infamous neighbor, the townsfolk have had to adjust to a daily barrage of photographers, reporters, television cameras and, most of all, protesters.

That infamous neighbor is none other than President George W. Bush. Cindy Sheehan’s courageous vigil outside his ranch has forced Americans all over the country to stand up and ask Bush, “For what noble cause?”

As Sheehan’s supporters streamed to Crawford, Bush interrupted his ranch vacation to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Salt Lake City on Aug. 22, and his backers launched a public relations offensive including a cross-country caravan supporting Bush’s war policy.

However, the president is being met with protests wherever he goes. In Salt Lake City, Mayor Rocky Anderson told thousands of demonstrators, “Those who take a

stand … who stand up to deceit by our government … are true patriots.”

Although Sheehan flew home to care for her ill mother, she was due to return to Crawford this week. Meanwhile, members of Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace continue the fight with the support of courageous volunteers.

The Crawford Peace House has become a center of organization and activity, its property literally overflowing with volunteers, food donations and tents.

Volunteers were busy refurbishing the small white crosses erected in memory of the soldiers fallen in Iraq — desecrated Aug. 15 when a Crawford resident purposefully ran over them — and building new ones.

“We hope to erect all 1,800 crosses, one for each soldier killed in Iraq,” Houston resident Ken Keeling told us as he began repainting a cross smudged by tire treads.

Our driver on the shuttle to Camp Casey II, the encampment’s new site, was Ralph Hutchins, a Republican from Austin. “Cindy’s fight goes beyond party divisions,” Ralph said. As we wound down one-lane roads, past cow pastures, barbed-wire fences and churches, he said he felt a moral imperative to help out with Cindy’s struggle: “I don’t support Bush or the war in Iraq.”

The land for the camp, donated by local rancher Fred Mattlage, flanked President Bush’s ranch. State troopers, Texas Rangers and Secret Service agents guarded the road into the ranch. A giant white tent donated by an Italian company housed a stage and several hundred demonstrators. Peace organizations tabled, sheltered from the sun and the brutal 101-degree heat; hundreds of white crosses bearing the names of fallen soldiers paralleled the tent.

These were not seasoned protesters. Most were ordinary Americans. Many had not been politically active until now.

“I’d never been to a protest in my life until the candlelight vigil in my community last Wednesday,” Johnnie Johnson, an African American from Austin, told me. At the gathering Johnson and others from her community decided to drive to Crawford. “I’m here to support the mothers and families of the fallen and to support the movement to bring the troops home,” she said.

Riding back to the Peace House, I spoke with Vietnam veteran and Veterans for Peace member Carl Risingmoore, who heads Camp Casey’s security team. “Our side has had wonderful relations with the police,” he said. “They’ve arrested several pro-Bush counter-demonstrators that have forced their way into our camps and verbally harassed us.”

Although most were from Texas, many supporters came from other parts of the U.S.

Bill McNulty, from Setauket, N.Y., arrived Aug. 20, and was filling in wherever needed. A member of Veterans For Peace and Pax Christi, Long Island, McNulty said, “Cindy has forced everyone in America to ask the question: ‘For what noble cause?’ Regardless of political or religious beliefs, this question resonates deeply,” he added.

“My church claims to subscribe to the ‘Just War Doctrine,’” McNulty said, “but although none of the seven conditions of that doctrine have been met by the war in Iraq, the Catholic Church does not actively condemn it.”

“Hip-hop music speaks to the youth in American today, and that’s why it’s so important to get this music behind the antiwar movement,” said antiwar hip-hop artist and Gulf War veteran King Flipp. “There aren’t enough hip-hop artists taking a stand against the war in Iraq.”

Flipp, shooting a music video for his next album, “Wake Up!” said “the love Cindy has for her son” convinced him to shoot the video in Crawford. He and Joan Baez were the two scheduled performers that night at Camp Casey.

United for Peace and Justice said this week that Sheehan will speak at the massive Sept. 24 antiwar rally in Washington, D.C. The rally “will bring the protest to the very doorstep of the White House,” said UFPJ Vice Chairperson Judith Le Blanc.

Last weekend, the biggest celebrities were the volunteers, supporters, and demonstrators. This was a time of ordinary Americans remembering the courageous men and women forced to die for a lie and supporting the families left behind, vowing “Never again!”

Televangelist urges killing of Hugo Chavez

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 06:15:00 +0000

Pat Robertson, a former GOP presidential candidate and influential figure in the extreme, ultra-right-wing fringe of Christianity associated with such groups as the Christian Coalition, openly called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his show “The 700 Club” Aug. 22.

Robertson told viewers, “We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

Chavez has led a peaceful revolution in Venezuela, which aims to put human needs above the desires of the rich oligarchy that used to control the country. The revolution has taken profits from the state’s oil company — formerly funneled into the coffers of the rich — and spent them on government programs for the poor. His stances against war in Iraq have angered Washington, and the White House was implicated in an April 2002 coup against Chavez, which was defeated by popular uprising.

“If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson said.

Sheltreese McCoy, who saw Chavez speak at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas this month, took exception to Robertson. “Listening to Chavez’s speeches were inspiring and invigorating. The hope and strength of his words resonated throughout the spirit of the event,” she told the World. “Robertson’s statement shows his ignorance.”

“Robertson is neither a patriot nor a Christian in his attitudes,” the Rev. Gil Dawes, a retired United Methodist minister in Des Moines, Iowa, told the World. “Assuming that someone has the right to eliminate an individual, or eliminate a race, or eliminate a nation, out of their own prejudices is a total misunderstanding of the intent of purpose of Christianity.”

Good news, bad news on Patriot Act

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:30:00 +0000

News Analysis

By the end of this year, 16 items in the USA Patriot Act were due to expire, or “sunset,” and for more than a year civil liberties activists and administration supporters have been squaring off for the big fight.

Months ago, President Bush had called for the 16 provisions to be made permanent, claiming that they were necessary for the “war against terrorism.” On the other hand, civil liberties activists had managed to get nearly 400 city, town and county legislatures, plus those of four states, to pass strongly worded resolutions calling for the entire Patriot Act, or significant parts of it, to be repealed.

When it came down to a vote on July 21 in the House and July 29 in the Senate, there were no big advances for either side. Dubious parliamentary maneuvers were used by the Republican majority to suppress pro-civil-liberties amendments offered by independent Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), some Democrats and even some Republicans.

The bill supported by Bush passed the House 257-171, with 43 Democrats supporting the bill and 14 Republicans opposing. In the Senate, a slightly more progressive version passed as a bipartisan compromise. The two versions have now been sent to a House-Senate conference committee. But whatever comes out of that, the Patriot Act is still in force and still represents a danger to everyone’s civil liberties.

Its most dangerous aspects, namely its overbroad definition of terrorism (which could be adapted to crack down on labor and civil rights activists); its effort to reduce or eliminate independent federal judicial review of FBI investigations, searches and seizures; and its substitution of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for the regular, independent federal courts in getting approval for investigative activities such as secret searches, are all still in place.

However, the government lost on a few points. The effort by the Bush administration to give itself the authority to write its own search warrants (rather than having to ask a judge to issue a warrant) was not tacked on to either version. But the administration is still seeking that power through separate legislation.

In the House version, the time the government has after executing a “sneak and peek” warrant (under Section 213 of the act) to notify the person whose premises were entered was reduced to seven days from three months, but the text allows the government to extend this on its own say-so that such an extension is necessary.

Also, the director of the FBI now has to approve requests by subordinates to demand library or bookstore records, which is hardly a bulwark against FBI abuses. The Senate version requires a periodic report to the public by the executive branch on how its right to view library and other confidential records has been used.

A little more tinkering like this has been included, and some of the sunsetting was extended four more years (e.g., roving wiretaps, or the right to get a warrant to tap any phone a certain individual might use, rather than a specific phone number, and the right to seize library and other records, by the Senate). In the House, the sunsetting of this provision was continued for 10 years. In other cases, items due to sunset were made permanent, and nothing will be allowed to sunset itself out of existence.

The fight to educate the public on the issue and to repeal the Patriot Act goes on. As I write, a group in Illinois has announced a campaign to get the Illinois General Assembly to approve an anti-Patriot Act resolution, which would be the largest state to do so if successful. Many towns, cities and states have similar campaigns. To read resolutions against the act and other interesting materials, go to the web site BORDC.org.

DeLay hit for anti-immigrant remarks

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:30:00 +0000

HOUSTON — House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) told a group of his constituents this month that he thinks laws allowing “illegal immigrants” to be treated in area hospitals and laws permitting their children to attend public schools should be repealed.

He also said children of “illegal immigrants” born in this country should not “automatically” become U.S. citizens, and said National Guard and police departments should “pick up” immigrants and put them in tents if there is no space available in detention facilities.

Some observers said DeLay’s comments evoked images of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

DeLay’s remarks, which were aired on several local television news programs, were characterized as “outrageous” by civil liberties and immigrant rights leaders. The media also reported that DeLay declined to comment when they contacted his office for clarification.

DeLay’s comments came on the heels of his announcement that he favors legislation which would withhold federal funding from cities like Houston that do not enforce immigration law. He criticized the chief of the Houston Police Department for following a policy in effect since 1992 which forbids officers from enforcing immigration laws in most cases.

Houston Mayor Bill White supports continuing the policy so that police officers can focus on violent crime and leave immigration enforcement to federal authorities.

DeLay supports legislation proposed by Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) which would allow undocumented workers to become “guest workers” for up to three years and then would require them to return home. Cornyn, Kyl and DeLay all advocate “securing our nation’s borders” by increasing border patrols.

DeLay does not believe the proposed guest workers should be allowed to bring their families. Critics called this a “Leave all the children behind” policy. He also does not believe people who are currently undocumented should be allowed to become guest workers.

Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have proposed a program in which undocumented immigrants could work toward becoming legal residents and then citizens of the United States. DeLay opposes this legislation and gave his personal guarantee that it would “not do very well in the House.”

Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) introduced legislation this month that would allow governors to “establish and deploy armed citizen militias on the Canadian and Mexican borders.” Militia members would be able to detain ordinary immigrants.

The Houston Chronicle pointed out that “the militias would be official versions, with police powers, of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.” This is the group that gained notoriety by patrolling the Arizona border and which has announced plans to come to Houston in the fall. The group has been called “vigilantes” by President Bush.

The legislation is co-sponsored by 46 House members and calls for $6.8 billion in Homeland Security funding. The aim would be to deputize hundreds of thousands of citizens as auxiliary border guards. The Chronicle said the proposal distracts the Congress from enacting more constructive legislation to manage the problems of immigration, and concluded, “The answer to our nation’s immigration problems is not nearly so plain. Only one thing is certain: It does not involve civilians with guns.”

Discomforting jab at suburban alienation

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:29:00 +0000

The Chumscrubber Directed by Arie Posin, written by Zac Stanford, with Jamie Bell, Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes and others. Music by James Horner.

According to The Associated Press, the Louisiana penal system is reluctantly releasing one of the young men who murdered several schoolmates a few years ago when he was 13. He and another boy had set off a fire alarm in their school so that everybody would come outside, where they were hiding with their fathers’ high-powered rifles….

Movies about the great divide between young people and their parents aren’t new. The 1950s had James Dean and Sal Mineo in “Rebel Without a Cause.” The young rebels had hot rods and a gun. The parents in these older movies were too preoccupied with getting rich to pay attention to their children.

Nowadays, some young people have embraced drugs and violent video games. In “The Chumscrubber,” suburban parents are preoccupied with their own drugs and medications, wine and a desperate egomania that seems to be the natural product of lives of complete alienation.

If the movie is a dark comedy, and it is, the jokes are told deadpan to the very end.

Just a few years ago, in the picture-perfect little rich Texas town of Plano, a series of copycat teen suicides shocked the nation….

Jamie Bell is just as good in this movie as everybody hoped he would be after he dazzled us as the dancing urchin in “Billy Elliot.” Glenn Close, as always, is magnificent. Ralph Fiennes proves again, as if he needed to, that he can play much more than oversensitive romantic heroes.

All the acting is terrific. Even better is the director’s pacing that is set perfectly to the discomforting music provided by Hollywood great James Horner.

The whole movie is discomforting, as it intends to be. Teenagers, drugs, death, insanity and gory video games can be discomforting. Should our discomfort prevent us from making the effort to understand and bridge the generational divide and the extreme effects of modern American alienation?

Not long ago in Colorado, teenage boys brought weapons to school ….

Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer: 1927-2005

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:28:00 +0000

Ibrahim Ferrer, the mild-mannered singer of the Buena Vista Social Club group that brought him world fame late in life, died Aug. 6 in Havana, Cuba. He was 78.

He had been a star in Cuba for decades, but it wasn’t until the hugely popular 1997 album that most music fans in the U.S. heard Ferrer’s golden voice. Thanks to the album and the 1999 documentary film of the same name, Ferrer finally got some worldwide exposure. He eventually issued two solo releases. In 2000 at the age of 72, he earned a Latin Grammy as best “new” artist.

Despite fading health, Ferrer, who suffered from emphysema, continued to perform. During his latest tour in Europe, which took him to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and to Britain, Holland, Austria, France and Spain, Ferrer sang a collection of boleros he had planned to release next year. Known for his trademark cap and gray moustache, Ferrer died after returning ill from the tour. “He was taken to hospital when he got back and his condition worsened,” manager Daniel Florestan said.

A singer of Cuba’s traditional son music, Ferrer was born at a social club dance in Santiago, Cuba, on Feb. 20, 1927, after his mother unexpectedly went into labor. He began singing professionally at the age of 14, later performing regularly with the great Cuban bandleader Pacho Alonso. He also made guest appearances with other legendary names, including Benny More and the Orquesta de Chepin. By the early 1980s Ferrer had left the musical scene, but he came out of retirement to perform with the Buena Vista group.

It was Texas guitarist Ry Cooder’s driving interest in world music that led him to Cuba where he assembled the cream of vintage Cuban musicians who became known as the Buena Vista Social Club. The aging musicians were catapulted to an unexpected second career and international fame that grew further with the film of the same name by German director Wim Wenders. Two of the group’s members, singer Compay Segundo and pianist Ruben Gonzalez, died in 2003.

Buena Vista guitarist Manuel Galban said of Ferrer: “I felt like he was my brother. He was a great musician and a great companion.” Renowned Cuban musician Chucho Valdes, speaking of Ferrer’s death, said “We have lost an icon of Cuban culture.” He called Ferrer an extraordinary artist, close friend and brother whose work remains among the best of Cuban music.

Ferrer was buried at Havana’s historic Colon Cemetery on Aug. 8. Friends, relatives and fans came to pay their final respects while a recording of his tune “Prefiero que tu vayas” (I prefer you go) was played.

Lifelong friend Eduardo Rosillo gave the eulogy. Ferrer was “a truly great singing figure on a universal scale, but never stopped being humble, accessible and human,” said Rosillo. “He was like Cuban music: very spontaneous, very rich.”

On reporting the death of Ferrer, the Cuban newspaper Granma stated, “Luckily, the loss of Ibrahim does not mean silence. He will continue singing boleros until the end of time.”

Salvadoran Day celebrated in L.A.

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:27:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Tens of thousands of Salvadoran immigrants and their children, friends and neighbors joined in the seventh annual “Salvadoran Day in Los Angeles” celebration Aug. 6-7 at Exposition Park here.

The sixth of August is a major holiday in El Salvador, the ecclesiastical Dia de El Salvador del Mundo (Day of the Savior of the World, also known as the Transfiguration). The occasion has emerged as the primary festival of the Salvadoran community in Southern California, a community that numbers over 1 million people.

The celebration featured traditional food, music, clothing and other cultural expressions aplenty. People crowded around colorful booths of community groups, Spanish-language media, and small and large businesses. Food booths were very popular, with the longest lines for pupusa and carne asada plates and soft drinks like tamarindo and agua de chan.

Alongside traditional folk attire were many T-shirts of Latino and North American music groups, as well as of Che Guevara and the left-progressive FMLN movement, which led the revolutionary struggle in El Salvador in the 1980s and ’90s. The FMLN remains the main opposition party in El Salvador today.

Newly inaugurated Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was warmly greeted by the crowd. His election as the city’s first Latino mayor in over a century provided added cause for celebration.

Father John Cortina and the Rev. Frank Alton spoke about the social and economic issues the community faces: poverty and repression in El Salvador, and unemployment, poor housing and inadequate health care in the United States.

The celebration was sponsored by the Salvadoran American National Association, which — as the voting strength of the Salvadoran community grows — is playing an increasingly important role in civic affairs.

Supporters of the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo handed out copies of the paper, and while they were doing so this reporter interviewed a few participants about the situations facing Salvadorans today.

Roxana Martinez, 36, said she felt especially happy to bask in the food, music and atmosphere of her mother country, observing that “this park is like a piece of my country.”

Americo Duran, 62, of the Anastacio Aquino community group in the San Fernando Valley, said he had struggled in his home country for its freedom, but later emigrated to the U.S. He said the celebration was an important way to retain and recover Salvadoran culture.

Duran said he was familiar with the PWW/NM as a paper that “reflects the struggle and problems of our people in El Salvador and here [in the United States].”

Blanca Pastran, a 50-year-old garment worker, said she and her family, like many other Salvadorans here, have a hard time making ends meet because they have only limited work permits. “While my country is beautiful, the work situation makes it necessary to be here,” she said.

Echoing Pastran’s concerns about the economic picture, Edgar Urrutia, 45, said severe joblessness in El Salvador and in the U.S. has fostered delinquency and violence among some youth. He said that while life in the U.S. is better compared to the poverty and violence in El Salvador, youth unemployment is a serious problem here, too.

How I became a Republican for a day

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:26:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from Congressman Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) to join him for a “Fun in the Sun with the Women’s Republican Club of the 10th Congressional District” event. (I know what it sounds like, but it wasn’t anything like that.) The more I thought about it, the more appealing the idea became. I have always wondered what it was like to be a double agent. This would be my chance. I would infiltrate the Republican Party.

On the afternoon of July 17 I drove to Wheeling, Ill., to attend this function. I would make this party fun. I would bring a copy of the People’s Weekly World and shock my new Republican friends with my recent discovery of the existence of the Communist Party.

I arrived at the house and the woman who was collecting admission asked me, “Would you like to join the 10th District Women’s Republican Club?” I thought to myself, “A Communist man in a women’s Republican club?” Quickly I replied, “I’ll join!” I filled out the application and now I was an official double agent.

I walked into the home of the Wheeling Township director of the club, a woman in her mid-50s. I noticed that everyone was white except for one Asian woman. The first person to greet me was Herb Sohn, who ran for Congress in 1992 and 1998 and lost. He was bragging to everyone that his son’s hot dog stand got written up in Chicago Magazine. “He serves 19 variations of hot dogs,” stated Sohn. “One of the sandwiches he makes is a Rueben sandwich made completely out of hot dogs.” I was thinking to myself, “They let people like this run for Congress?”

I was waiting to show them my newspaper when our hostess announced, “The congressman will be here in 10 minutes.” I could wait 10 minutes. I decided that like any good capitalist I would start at the top. I would give Mark Kirk an issue of the People’s Weekly World. Kirk has a decent voting record for a Republican. He has a great record on the environment and a woman’s right to choose. He voted against the amendment to ban gay marriages. He is for stem cell research. Unfortunately, he is for the war in Iraq, and he voted to ratify CAFTA.

Kirk arrived. He went around the room to say hello to everyone. Finally I said to him, “A strange thing happened to me today. I was in the city and I ran into members of the Communist Party. They had a table set up on the sidewalk, and were passing around two petitions. One was to get the troops out of Iraq, and the other was to stop the privatization of Social Security. You should have seen how long the lines were to sign these petitions! They gave me this.” I handed him the copy of the People’s Weekly World.

He started looking at it and said, “The Communist Party? I didn’t know that they were still around.” As he was reading it he looked up and noticed that some people had gathered around him, looking at him reading the paper. He told them, “This is the People’s Weekly World, the newspaper of the Communist Party.” Everyone looked shocked and amused with the exception of our hostess, who had an expression of sheer horror and panic on her face. “The Communist Party?” she whispered as though the words wouldn’t come out at full volume.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” the congressman said to me.

The party went on. I thought that I would hear some political discussion. All I heard were two women talking about how to make piecrust, and a group of men arguing about who manufactures the best barbecue grill.

Come on people, I thought. There is a war in Iraq. Aren’t you worried about Karl Rove? Aren’t the Downing Street memos keeping you awake at night?

Finally, I heard someone say, “Wal-Mart nailed for child labor.” I turned around and saw Kirk’s assistant reading aloud from the People’s Weekly World. He was sitting with two women. One of them was former Illinois state Rep. and “pro-life” activist Penny Pullen. I repeated my story about the sidewalk petition table and Pullen said in a snooty tone, “I bet the Democratic alderman in that area put them up to it. There isn’t much difference between the Democrats and the Communists, don’t you agree?” I stifled my laughter.

The party ended and as I thanked the hostess for inviting me she said, “Thank you for bringing the Communists to the congressman’s attention.” I was hoping that she would elaborate on why she was so afraid of the Communist Party.

The paper was left on her coffee table. I hope she reads it in detail and comes to realize that she has nothing to fear from the Communist Party, and that we are good-hearted people just trying to make this country a better place to live for everyone.

Doug Freedman is a PWW reader in the Chicago area.

Bush AWOL on oil company gouging

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:22:00 +0000

President Bush likes to strut around declaring that he’s a “bold” leader who’s unafraid to tackle “big problems.” So, where’s His Boldness on the gargantuan problem of America’s addiction to high-priced, high-polluting oil?

We recently saw the ballyhooed release of his “new energy program,” which wasn’t new at all and does practically nothing to shift our nation’s policy to a sensible future of clean, renewable energy. But let’s just deal here with the volatile issue of the skyrocketing prices at the gas pump.

Even Mr. Bush’s Hummer-driving constituency is mumbling about $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, and these rising prices are putting a real hardship on cabbies, farmers, truck drivers and other working folks. But Mr. Bold Leader says, “Oh gosh, there’s nothing I can do, it’s out of my hands, I’m powerless ... good luck.”

Hogwash. One thing a real leader would do would be to crack down on the oil companies that are gouging the middle-class and poor folks, robbing us not with a gun, but with the nozzle of a gas pump. The corporate cartel of ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch/Shell, ConocoPhillips, etc., are making a killing from their oil wells, then using their monopolistic control of gasoline refining and marketing to profiteer at our expense. Their windfall profits this year alone are so huge that some of them are complaining that they don’t know how to spend it all.

But our problem-solver-in-chief is AWOL. No temporary price regulations to stop the gouging, no windfall profits tax to recoup the rip-off, no presidential scolding of the gougers, no crackdown by the Federal Trade Commission on price collusion by the oil giants ... nothing.

Of course, this is no surprise, since the Bushites have oil for brains. Big Oil is a big-time campaign donor to the president and literally makes federal energy policy. For example, guess who Mr. Bush appointed to head the FTC, the agency that’s supposed to be the public’s watchdog against such monopolistic gouging? A lawyer from ChevronTexaco.

Jim Hightower is a former Texas agriculture commissioner. This article was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.

The strange trial of Dr. Al-Arian

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:21:00 +0000

After holding Palestinian American Sami Al-Arian in prison for more than two years, the U.S. government began its trial against him June 6 on charges including racketeering, conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. Al-Arian maintains his innocence and contends the government is seeking to punish him for his political views and pursuit of Arab rights. Al-Arian was a computer science professor at the University of South Florida before being fired in the wake of his arrest.

Prosecutors allege Al-Arian was a key fundraiser for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, labeled by the State Department as a terrorist organization in the late 1990s. However, a significant portion of the indictment stressed Al-Arian’s efforts to raise money for the organization before it was placed on the list. Interestingly, Al-Arian was a major fundraiser and supporter of the George W. Bush 2000 election campaign.

The strange trial of Dr. Sami Al-Arian continues with the ongoing “Reader’s Theater,” as role-playing prosecutors read translations of wiretapped telephone conversations from 1994. They take on the voices of the various characters and dramatize the evidence, probably hoping this will keep the jury awake!

Much of the past two weeks of testimony by the lead FBI agent has exhibited what can only be seen as a blatant mischaracterization of Arab and Muslim cultural norms and practices, leading many courtroom observers to conclude that racism is behind much of this prosecution.

Prosecutors have repeatedly attempted to confuse jurors by alluding to common Arabic names and terms of respect as “aliases.” Though Arabic translators have previously testified that calling someone by the name of their firstborn child is a deeply rooted practice in Arab culture, the government has implied that use of such names by the men in this case is an attempt to conceal their true identities.

Also, in one instance, prosecutors attempted to show that one person mentioned by last name only, “Hassanein,” in a 1994 telephone conversation was the same person mentioned in another conversation eight years later, in 2002, by two completely different people. One cannot help but conclude that if the name in question was a common English name such as “Smith,” the connection would be deemed laughable by anyone present.

Throughout the past two weeks, the FBI agent who has been on this case for 10 years was asked to explain particular words in the course of the conversations that he claims are “code.” He ignored the fact that most of the terms referenced were common slang known in many parts of the Arab world, and not something exclusive to the conversants. The term “rabbit,” for example, is used to refer to a sum of money and is common Egyptian slang. He also did not seem to be aware that the word “family” is frequently used among Palestinians (and almost everyone else, as well!) to refer to immediate and distant relatives. The question on many people’s minds has been, if the defendants in the case were African American, would a federal agent have dared to insinuate that their common terms were in fact “code” without being labeled a racist?

Ultimately, most people who have been bored by the prosecution’s case have reached the conclusion that this case is much ado about nothing. In the dramatization that I witnessed one day, about an hour and a half was spent on one conversation. The topic? How to help financially struggling students with employment.

During the week, Judge James Moody was heard to remark, “At this rate, I may not live long enough to finish this trial.” He sarcastically announced a search for a replacement judge.

The government has introduced numerous books, journals, and documents (including a copy of the U.S. Constitution seized from Dr. Al-Arian’s home) as evidence in the case. Judge Moody frequently has instructed the jury that possession of this or that particular document is not illegal. He also instructed the jury that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad had not been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government until 1995.

Thus, it appears that that the government has spent two months and a lot of our tax dollars to prove that Dr. Al-Arian has done a lot of perfectly legal things.

Melva Underbakke (melvau@earthlink.net) is a Florida writer and activist.

Seeing Cindy

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:20:00 +0000

As a member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, I’ve been witnessing Cindy Sheehan’s Crawford odyssey with a bittersweet mixture of pride, support and sadness.

I felt the same way when Megan Bartlett, one of the first EMT workers to arrive at the World Trade Center site, founded Ground Zero For Peace/First Responders Against War; as military parents Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson founded Military Families Speak Out; as the 9/11 widows known as the “Jersey Girls” dragged their government, kicking and screaming, into conducting an independent commission into the 9/11 attacks; and as Michael Hoffman, Kelly Dougherty, Jimmy Massey and others came together to create Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Ordinary Americans with firsthand knowledge of the results of terrorism, violence and war were bearing witness and asking to be heard.

I felt pride at their personal courage, support for their desire to spare others the horrors they had experienced, and sadness at the inevitable response they would draw from the government and its corporate media: Ignore them. They’re small in number. They’re not authentic. It’s all about politics. They’re funded by the Democrats. They’re traitors. They’re an invention of the media. They have a personal axe to grind. They don’t know what they’re talking about.

Every argument raised about Cindy Sheehan has been raised about us, and about the rest, each argument reflecting the same goal: to dehumanize us. Faced with the dissonant reality that 9/11 families might not support the bombing of Afghanistan, or military families might not support the war in Iraq, or that there are people with a few more questions for the 9/11 Commission, our reality — our actual existence — has to be denied. One radio pundit has claimed that we “aren’t even 9/11 family

members.”

Denial and dehumanization are required elements of terrorism, violence and war.

The humanity of our families was invisible to the people who murdered them on September 11th.

The humanity of Afghan civilians, already suffering, was invisible to the Americans who supported the bombing of their country.

The humanity of Iraqi civilians, already suffering, was invisible to the Americans whipped into war on a series of calculated lies.

The humanity of the troops and reservists doing hard time in Iraq is invisible to the people sending them there.

And the humanity of those troops killed or maimed for the rest of their lives remains largely invisible to the American people.

To stand up in the midst of this denial and demand that our humanity, and the humanity of others, be recognized, is not just a patriotic act of a high order. It’s a way of reclaiming the life that was taken away from us. To respond that our demands are inauthentic, insincere, an “invention” — in short, not real — dehumanizes us in the same way that terrorism, violence and war dehumanizes us all.

Even after he has shared his “sympathy,” many continue to ask the president to see Cindy. The fact is, he doesn’t have to see Cindy in Crawford. He can see Cindy in the brave numbers of Americans with firsthand knowledge of the war on terror as they stand up to bear witness to what they, and we, have lost. He can see Cindy in the growing majority of Americans who see war for what it really is, and want the troops home.

And he can see Cindy in the mutual humanity, sense of common purpose and worldwide desire for peace that revealed itself to the United States immediately after 9/11 — and remains, today, our best hope of survival.

Long after his Crawford vacation is over, we’ll still be there — demanding to be seen.

David Potorti is co-director of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows (www.peacefultomorrows.org).

Marching in Atlanta: a personal journal

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:19:00 +0000

The early part of the day, Aug. 6, was overcast with cooling clouds. For summer in Georgia it was actually quite pleasant. As we walked toward where we hoped the “Keep the Vote Alive” pre-march rally was congregating, we could see the massive crowd hidden in the recesses behind the Richard B. Russell Federal Building in downtown Atlanta. We could only see the stage; we could not hear the speakers. It took a good while to move through the crowd.

We got up to the front of the rally just in time to be turned back around to start the march. We could only go inch by inch until the marshals allowed the mass to move. Even though they wanted 15 across, it was too late: we had to move as we were. We pressed to the front to see for ourselves just how large it was. The marchers extended as far back as the eye could see. How many people? We could not tell — we heard someone say 20,000 or more.

In the throng, we saw a sea of T-shirts in yellow (NAACP), white (Rainbow/PUSH), green (AFSCME) and red (Unite Here and Delta Sigma Theta). There were also streams of purple (SEIU and Omega Psi Phi), and a few of the AKAs were there in their pink.

The marchers, some chanting and singing, led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, arms interlocked with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Willie Nelson, moved gracefully down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to Morris Brown College’s Herndon Stadium, where a post-march rally had already begun. Darius Brooks, a Chicago gospel artist, was singing. He broke into a chant, “We got the right to vote,” in a cadence which put the emphasis on “right.” It suggested a statement of defiance rather than a simple fact. As the crowd poured into the stadium, they were welcomed by Illinois state Sen. Rev. James Meeks, vice president of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition.

Every now and then the Georgia sun peaked out, and when it did, more and more of the crowd sought refuge within the bowels of the stadium. Before the heat got too bad, Sweeney and Georgia Congressman John Lewis spoke. Soon after, the crowd was delighted by the words and song of Stevie Wonder. Wonder’s words focused on the ridiculousness of having to march for the right to vote in 2005. But march we must until the right to vote is guaranteed forever, he said. He sang his new release, which says, if we do not do what we have to do, like participate in this march, then “What the Fuss.”

The Congressional Black Caucus was well represented with speakers including Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, John Conyers, Charles Rangel and many others. Dick Durbin of Illinois was the only U.S. senator to speak. Former Atlanta mayor and UN ambassador Andrew Young and Harry Belafonte embraced the audience with their words of warning and inspiration. Belafonte did not sing, but he spoke about the need for the USA to play a better role in the world than that of a warmonger.

Other organizations represented among the speakers included the NAACP, with its new president Bruce Gordon, SCLC and the Deltas. Dick Gregory spoke too. Judge Greg Mathis rocked the stadium by charging that those who would deny us the opportunity to participate in any aspect of this society are criminals who should be locked up. In the ghetto, he said, it is known that when you shoot you do not miss. They attempted to shoot us by not counting our vote in 2000 and 2004. This march represents the fact that they shot and missed, and now we are coming back, he declared. He ended by repeating the refrain, “We’re coming back to get you!”

The exquisite sounds of Roberta Flack singing “Impossible Dream” and “Oh, Freedom” were a memorable moment. John Legend, a new young artist from Ohio, sang a freedom song he wrote but has not yet recorded, with the line, “We need more soldiers in this freedom struggle.” He also sang his much enjoyed and appreciated “Ordinary People.” Dynamic spoken word artists let us know that “somebody’s got to say something, somebody’s got to feel something, somebody’s got to do something … before it’s too late” and “I am not angry, I am anger; I am not dangerous; I am danger …”

It was a march and rally to support reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and more. It was a march and rally for peace and against the war in Iraq, for democracy and against the obstruction of the right to vote, and it was a call to action: “Don’t let them destroy your spirit. Don’t let them take away your joy. Rise up and fight back!”

The rally did not end until early evening. It was a hot, long and wonderful day.

Dee Myles is a Chicago educator.

Editorial: No to anti-immigrant racism

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:15:00 +0000

As the economy continues to slide, pressured by oil corporation price gouging at the pump, accelerating corporate layoffs and the Bush war in Iraq, there has been a surge in racist bigotry directed against undocumented workers.

From the vigilante activities of the so-called Minutemen in the Southwest to the recent declaration of a “border emergency” by the governors of Arizona and New Mexico, attacks on immigrant workers — both open and thinly veiled — are on the rise.

Hostility directed against immigrants is wrongly placed. The real culprits are in the boardrooms of the biggest U.S. corporations.

The failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), now 10 years old, to raise living standards in Mexico has added to a growing crisis for working families on both sides of the border. Just this week, a poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center indicated that 4 of 10 Mexican adults would migrate to the U.S. to work if they had the means. So much for the wild, big-business claims that NAFTA was a win-win situation for everyone.

The recent passage of CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, will only accelerate this dynamic and intensify the exploitation of workers throughout the hemisphere.

U.S.-based corporations, including GM and Alcoa, whose grotesque profits are wrenched from the backs of working families living in cardboard boxes along the border, aren’t talking about the anti-worker fallout of “free trade” agreements, and they won’t. They are too busy counting their money.

Now comes a House bill introduced by Texas Republican John Culberson that would give vigilantes, like the notorious Minutemen, $6.8 billion of Homeland Security money to “use any means and any force” against undocumented workers crossing the border. The bill, HR 3622, has 47 co-sponsors, all Republicans. We wonder: Does the $6.8 billion include jackboots and brown-shirt uniforms?

This is not immigration policy. It is racist bigotry and a recipe for violence.

We stand for working-class internationalism, for unity against the big corporations. We must demilitarize the U.S.-Mexico border, end discrimination against immigrant workers, facilitate their rapid legalization and provide future immigrants with a safe and legal path to citizenship for those who want it.

Editorial: Iran: dj vu, all over again?

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:14:00 +0000

In an eerie echo of events three years ago, the Bush administration is raising the specter of a U.S. pre-emptive military strike over allegations Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Earlier this month, after long discussions with European nations over possible incentives to end programs it says are for peaceful energy production, Iran resumed converting uranium in a process that precedes both energy and weapons production. Iran, which Bush calls part of the “axis of evil,” has long been targeted by the U.S. far right.

“As I say, all options are on the table,” Bush said during an Aug. 12 interview on Israeli television. “The use of force is the last option for any president and you know, we’ve used force in the recent past to secure our country.”

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who opposed the invasion of Iraq, immediately picked up the parallel. “Let’s take the military option off the table. We’ve seen it doesn’t work,” he told an audience in Hanover the next day.

Both chilling similarities with Iraq and glaring inconsistencies lurk behind Bush’s latest threats.

• As a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran resumed its work watched by surveillance cameras it asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to install.

• U.S. allies Israel, India and Pakistan — all of which have nuclear weapons — did not sign the NPT. They are not threatened with attack.

• Neither a recent National Intelligence Estimate nor UN inspectors have found credible evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

• Even the Bush administration admits enriching uranium does not violate the NPT.

• Washington is itself in violation of the treaty, which specifies that the five original nuclear powers must act to cut and finally eliminate their arsenals. The Bush administration is hell-bent on developing giant bunker-busters and mini-nukes.

If the U.S. administration is worried about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it can lead the process of complete nuclear disarmament. Most of the world’s people, including a solid majority of Americans, believe no nation should have the power to end life as we know it.

Worker safety & health + organizing = Rx for success

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:13:00 +0000

There is no disagreement among all of labor that workers and their unions did a good job mobilizing members to vote in 2004. The problem that most of labor agrees on is that the Democratic Party dropped the ball. A large percentage agrees that building the independent role of labor is a clear lesson.

Everyone agrees that increasing the number of union workers is essential to increasing union power. Some have argued that numbers is not the only issue. A militant and progressive vision is needed to encourage workers to join and stay in unions.

There is also general agreement that the struggle to increase wages and reduce hours worked is essential, along with the struggle to improve working conditions. But the issue of working conditions — occupational safety and health as it is called these days — has become a bone of contention introduced into the debates in labor by a few of the more vocal unions.

Eliminate S&H departments?

One recurring call raised by a number of the unions that once formed the New Unity Partnership (NUP) was to eliminate safety and health departments in all unions and in the national AFL-CIO, and spend the saved money on organizing. With the demise of the NUP, it was hoped by many that this proposal would be set aside. It hasn’t been.

The unfortunate aspect of this largely behind-the-scenes debate is that it artificially separates these two major issues: organizing, and protecting workers’ safety and health. It simply makes no sense.

International unions with safety and health departments have always supported and in many instances participated in organizing drives. And labor organizers and union organizing drives have almost always had to respond to occupational safety and health hazards raised by angry workers and their families. Workers’ safety and health was and continues to be a powerful organizing tool.

What better use of labor staff expertise in worker safety and health than organizing workers and keeping them organized?

Corporate power must be challenged

What’s at issue here is underestimating corporate power. Corporations use their own medical and scientific experts to determine what is and what is not safe in the workplace. They do the same in the political arena, using powerful lobbying groups in state capitals and Congress to change and pass laws that permit bosses to further exploit and endanger their employees. The residual burden on state-based workers’ compensation systems is easy to see.

Since the passage of the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, labor has been able to reverse previous decades of corporate control over the workplace. Granted, the OSHA law has been stripped of many of its powers under Reagan and the two Bushes. And Clinton didn’t help matters. But abandoning safety and health to corporate power in the halls of Congress and in state capitals grants the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Heritage Foundation a wish that they could not have won themselves.

Let’s get real

Eliminating union-based safety and health departments and the AFL-CIO’s Department of Safety and Health will not solve the problem of low union membership. There is not enough money spent on occupational safety and health to make that kind of difference. There is simply no evidence that this is a serious strategy that will net membership increases. It certainly will put tens of thousands of workers at greater risk on the job.

Some activists worry that elimination of safety and health departments is actually a reaction by some union officials against a working-class issue they find hard to deal with. It is true that safety and health conditions are never fully resolved. It is also probably true that they are sometimes used to rally forces in insurgent union election campaigns. But this is not a reason to sweep resolving safety and health conditions under the rug.

So what is the answer?

Easy! Combine the power of an aggressive, medical/scientific safety and health department with organizing and political action departments that will attract tens of thousands of workers into labor unions.

Day labor controversy in Virginia:GOP candidate fishes in troubled waters

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 03:12:00 +0000

Like many parts of the country, Fairfax County, Va., just west of Washington, D.C., has seen a recent increase in documented and undocumented immigration from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. Like elsewhere, one visible sign of this increase has been groups of young Latino men waiting in certain open-air areas (such as the parking lots of Home Depot stores) to be offered jobs by contractors or homeowners looking for someone to do construction, painting or gardening work.

Some neighbors complain about these men congregating in their communities. The fear is more about what “such people” might do rather than anything that has actually happened. But standing out in a parking lot in blazing sun or freezing cold without access even to a public toilet is obviously not good for the workers’ interests either. This has led to two responses, one sensible, the other vicious.

The town of Herndon, Va., population 22,000, proposed to deal with the problem by creating a day labor center on city property, where workers could wait to be contacted by potential employers, while also having a chance to use the bathroom and receive social services.

The proposal, coordinated with local community organizations and churches grouped in a coalition called Hope and Harmony, entails investment of some public funds. Fairfax County is proposing to spend about $400,000 for more such centers. There is already a similar center in Washington’s Virginia suburbs, and two in Maryland.

However, nothing has been accomplished toward these goals, because the proposed Herndon day labor center has been met with a hurricane of anti-immigrant opposition. The “Federation for Immigration Reform” has declared that if the center is built, the group will take the town to court, charging it with violating U.S. and state law. Radio shock-jocks have been frying the airwaves with scare stories about immigrants bringing crime, disease and terrorism to Herndon if the day labor center is built.

Hearings held by the Herndon Planning Commission were besieged by anti-immigrant bigots and people they have succeeded in terrifying, and, though saner voices were also heard at the hearing, the body voted 4-3 last week to disapprove the plan for the day labor center. However, the Herndon town council can override this vote, and church and community groups are campaigning for this.

As if the situation were not bad enough, Jerry Kilgore, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia (to replace outgoing moderate Democrat Mark Warner) in this November’s election has jumped into the fight, with purple rhetoric about the menace of “illegals.” On Aug. 8, Kilgore, a former Virginia attorney general, denounced all town plans for workers’ centers as a form of rewarding and encouraging criminals, and demanded that Fairfax County also cancel its plans for these centers.

The Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Kaine, condemned Kilgore’s statements, pointing out that his Republican opponent is jumping to the conclusion that all users of such centers would be undocumented workers, whereas many kinds of workers might find them convenient and helpful. Independent candidate H. Russell Potts denounced Kilgore as a bigot.

Other Republican politicians are demanding that anybody who is allowed to use such a center be vetted for immigration status. Some far-right GOP politicians in Virginia are relishing the idea of making this and other elections in the near future a referendum on immigration. If they do, immigrant workers will face more daunting problems than lack of access to bathrooms while they look for work.