People Before Profit blog

I was there – Peekskill 1949

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:57:00 +0000

A personal memoir on the 60th anniversary of Peekskill

On August 27, 1949, Paul Robeson was scheduled to sing at a concert sponsored by the music group People’s Artists at the Lakeland Acres Picnic Grounds, a few miles north of Peekskill, New York, about fifty miles north of New York City. This was a favorite summer resort area frequented by progressive intellectuals, especially because of its proximity to Croton-on-Hudson, where many progressive artists and writers lived. The author, Howard Fast, who was vacationing in Croton-on-Hudson, was asked to chair the concert.

At this time Robeson had been under fierce attack from the right because of a speech he had given at an international peace conference in Paris at which he declared that “it is unthinkable that American Negroes will go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against a country [Soviet Union] which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.” The Peekskill Evening Star called for a public response to Robeson’s appearance that would guarantee that he did not return to the area. The American Legion joined the call to ensure this.

As the potential audience began to drift into the concert grounds, the Legionnaires attacked the concert grounds and set fire to the wooden chairs and stage. The concert had to be canceled.

The progressive community responded quickly. A new concert was scheduled a week later on September 4 at the same place under the sponsorship of the Civil Rights Congress. Left-wing trade unions organized security for the concert. The plan was to guard the entire hollow by surrounding it with a double ring of some 2000 unionists. The evening before the concert I was called by my union (United Public Workers Local 5) and was told that our group would assemble at 6 am for the bus ride to Peekskill. We were deployed into two concentric rings separated by some fifty or so feet. The security command of some twenty persons was organized by Milt Wolfe, leader of an organization of Spanish Civil War veterans who had fought as members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

As the afternoon approached, the Legionnaires and their supporters paraded on the road outside the hollow with flags and signs generally carrying the words, “Wake up America, Peekskill Did.” Although they harassed those arriving for the concert, the violence was minor compared to what was to come later. Occasionally, a provocateur broke through the fence that surrounded the ground and headed toward us, but the state police would grab them before they reached us.

We heard a report that armed snipers had been spotted in the hills near the hollow. A shield of some ten volunteers surrounded Paul Robeson as he sang. An estimated 25,000 people filled the hollow for the concert.

The main violence began as the concert-goers were leaving the grounds. The sole exit road was lined with the Legionnaires and their supporters, who pummeled the cars and buses with rocks, while the state police stood idly by. My wife, who left by bus, had a tooth broken by a rock thrown through the bus window. Several hundred people were hurt in this fashion. Details of the entire Peekskill episode can be found in the book Peekskill written by Howard Fast, who had served as the chair for the aborted Peekskill concert.

Fast’s account, however, omits what happened to the last five hundred guards to leave the grounds and the members of the command post. After the concert-goers had left, the guards began their exit. When we were down to about five hundred, the state police took the bus drivers off somewhere, and formed themselves into two long lines, forcing us to run the gauntlet between them several times, clubbing us as we ran. Although many of us were hurt badly, I managed to escape without significant bruises. It seems that I had acquired skill in running the gauntlet way back in my Cub Scout days, when the kids with too many demerits were punished by being belted as they ran a gauntlet formed by the other kids.

I later learned from my dentist that Milt Wolf, who used the same dentist, lost several teeth from the beatings to which the members of the command post were subjected about the same time that we were running the gauntlet. The members of the command post had been taken off to where we could not see them and beaten mercilessly by the state police.

The state police then returned the drivers to their buses, which we were then allowed to board. We were not yet free, however. The drivers were made to follow the instructions of the state policemen that had been assigned to all the buses. To terrorize us, they whispered directions to the drivers and would give us no information about where we were going. After a long drive to nowhere, the buses turned around and continued the long drive to nowhere in another direction. At about midnight, we were brought to a left-wing resort near Peekskill and ordered off the buses. The buses then drove off with only the state policemen as passengers.

A call went out for cars to bring us back to New York City. By 2 a.m., I was on my way home. Recently, Communist Party Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner told me how Paul Robeson and Communist New York City Councilman Ben Davis escaped unscathed thanks to Irving Potash, a Communist who was in the leadership of the Furriers Union. Potash had responsibility for the overall security arrangements. Instead of their car taking the road south to New York City, they took the road north and stayed overnight in a Westchester County home. In the morning they returned to New York by train.

Needless to say, the commission appointed by Governor Thomas Dewey to investigate the “disturbance” that had occurred at Peekskill pinned the blame on those who had attended the concert.

Erwin Marquit is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Minnesota and publishes the Marxist journal Nature, Society, and Thought.

Peekskill remembered

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:49:00 +0000

The concert scheduled for Aug. 27, 1949, in Peekskill, N.Y., was supposed to be routine. Though it had been organized by People's Artists, a brand new spin-off organization of the People's Songs formation that had launched the Weavers into the top-40 charts, it was the fourth such concert to benefit the Harlem Chapter of the Civil Rights Congress.

With the backing of people like Pete Seeger, and headlining the world-renowned Paul Robeson, it promised to be an extraordinary event.

However, the year 1949 was not one of ordinary times. The year before, Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace's run for president, as the mantle-bearer of the New Deal-era Popular Front coalition of progressive forces in American politics, had been trounced by readily anticommunist Democrat Harry Truman, who embraced rapid preparations for a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, if it could not be "contained" in its "Iron Curtain."

Precursors to the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee were already issuing subpoenas designed to make prominent radicals "name names," so that progressives could be blacklisted out of their career fields, and especially out of the left-led CIO unions.

In 1946, Winston Churchill at Fulton, Mo., proclaimed the start of the Cold War and the arms race with the Soviet Union. In 1947, the anti-union Taft Hartley bill became law coupled with its non-Communist oaths forced on unionists, the Hollywood 10 hearings before HUAC began as did the Soviet spy hysteria.

Twelve leaders of the Communist Party were indicted in 1948 shortly before the elections, which placed a pall over the left and the Wallace campaign.

Furthermore, early that year in Paris, France, Robeson had made an unrecorded but much misquoted observation that it was ridiculous to expect African Americans, who were subjected to Jim Crow discrimination, to blindly follow into a war on the Soviet Union, a country that had eradicated legal discrimination in its borders within a generation. This had been turned, in the early Cold War press, into a statement of disloyalty against the United States.

Despite the best efforts and highest hopes of the progressive forces, post-war America was not headed for a new age of global peace, democratic cooperation and social progress, but rather for an era of witch hunts, nuclear arms race, a stifling of democracy and an attempt to project a compliant culture exemplified by the mythical "Leave It To Beaver" image of consumer-driven, suburban contentment.

Cutting edge of reaction

And the People's Artists show at Peekskill was about to bear the full brunt of a consciously-organized reactionary attack against progressive social forces.

Author Howard Fast arrived early for the concert, only to find him and the handful of other early arrivals vastly outnumbered by an unruly mob of hundreds of already-drunk Legionnaires, Klansmen and local business leaders. Fast helped organize the 40 or so men and boys there to stave off physical assault of the campsite and its inhabitants.

While the police stood by doing nothing and two FBI agents impassively took notes, these few brave souls held a line at the entrance against several assaults by the rock-throwing, epithet-spewing, anti-communist mob, who were screaming, "We're Hitler's boys! We'll finish his job!"

Most concertgoers never made it to the campgrounds, nor did any of the performers. Those few who had come early did not make it out of the besieged site all night. The mob burned the 2,000 rented chairs, as well as books and records intended for sale to the concert audience. Thirteen people were seriously injured in the course of the right-wing riot.

‘We shall not be moved'

Concert organizers were not going to take this lying down. Regrouping in New York City, Robeson spoke to a crowd of thousands of people at the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem, promising to sing wherever people wanted to hear him. The pro-concert Westchester Committee for Law and Order played its part by issuing an invitation for Robeson to return on Sept. 4 to perform.

Volunteers from unions like the Fur and Leather Workers, the United Electrical Workers and District 65, Retail, Wholesale and Distributive Workers, many of whom were veterans, along with other World War II and Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans were organized to form a human chain around the entirety of the campgrounds to secure the concert.

Some 25,000 people showed up. Just going to the concert was like a mass collective message by progressives and democracy-loving people, saying "We shall not be moved."

The concert goers saw Hope Foye, Pete Seeger and others perform. But the show was headlined by Robeson, and organizers were concerned for his safety in particular.

While the whole perimeter of the concert -- a huge area -- was protected in big stretches, veterans and unionists standing shoulder-to-shoulder, it was too big to do that through the overhanging hills. The stage had a special guard of black and white veterans in uniform who surrounded it in a way that there was no way for a sniper to hit Robeson without hitting a guard first.

Yet, the concert went on without incident, until people returned to their cars and buses to leave when the show was over. Police directed exiting traffic into an ambush. Departing vehicles were sent into a gauntlet of rock-throwing thugs screaming racial epithets against Blacks and Jews, as well as Communists. Windows were smashed. Cars overturned. People were dragged out of vehicles and beaten by the organized mob under police protection.

When the police did move in, it was to arrest the unionists, particularly targeting African Americans, who were part of the concert security detail. Over 160 people were hospitalized, yet no one was ever brought to justice for these outrageous acts of violence. A lawsuit against the authorities who had failed to uphold public order, as well as against two groups involved in perpetrating violence on concert-goers, was eventually thrown out of court.

Estelle Katz was living in the Bronx at the time, and attended the Sept. 4 concert. She was well aware of events because her husband Max, an Abraham Lincoln Brigade veteran, was one of those present to defend the campsite on Aug. 27.

"Frankly, I was not frightened," recalls Katz. "I was so angry, I walked up and down the aisle of the bus to make sure that everyone was safe, and the young man who was driving told me that he'd make sure everyone got home."

Seymour Joseph was there as well. He'd gone up with several other youths, in a car one of them had borrowed from his father. "We felt that when the concert was on, that we were accomplishing something," says Joseph. "We were holding this concert at the beginning of the McCarthy period, and the Cold War was on."

However, Joseph adds, leaving through a gauntlet of rioting reactionaries was "one of the most frightening experiences of my life. It was obvious the police were on the side of those attacking us. If they wanted to, they could have arrested the rioters in masse. The car was damaged severely."

A compelling, concise retelling of events may be found in the song "Hold the Line" available in the 10 CD set "Songs for Political Action." The audio recording includes Robeson, some of the Weavers and others singing, as well as narrations by Fast, Seeger, and others. It even includes a chilling audio snippet of reactionary rioters screaming racial epithets and the perennial classic, "Go back to Russia!"

Peekskill today

Westchester County has formally apologized to survivors of the Peekskill Riots and participated in a 50th anniversary "Remembrance and Reconciliation Ceremony" that included the participation of Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson Jr. and others in 1999.

This Sept. 4, several 60th anniversary events are being held around the country, including one at Peekskill. Kenneth Anderson, the bass-baritone whose voice bears an uncanny resemblance to Robeson's will be part of the Peekskill event. (For tickets, http://www.robesoncelebration.org/)

"Paul was a giant. He was a Renaissance man. An artist, a statesman. He spoke truth to power and was prescient in terms of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He was unafraid," he said.

Peekskill and the courage shown by Robeson and the concert-goers remain an important part of progressive history.

--Daniel Rubin and John Pietaro contributed to this article.

September 4, 2009 8:00pm
at Paramount Center for the Arts
An Evening with Friends, A Celebration of the Legacy of Paul Robeson
A benefit concert featuring David Amram
Roy Haynes, Ty Jones, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Kenneth Anderson, Beth Lamont, Jon Batiste Band, Ray Blue and more special guests
Tickets http://www.robesoncelebration.org

On the passing of two "lions"

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:43:00 +0000

Two “lions” died last week. One was known, adored by millions, and a life-long Democrat. Born to a privileged life, he could have done anything, including choosing a life of relative leisure. Instead, he turned into a tireless liberal warhorse for justice in all its many forms.

On Saturday a Catholic mass, included a eulogy by President Obama, celebrated his life of public service to the commonweal. I am obviously speaking about Senator Ted Kennedy.

The other lion, born into poverty, far less known, and a life-long Communist, also turned his energies at an early age to making life better for exploited and oppressed people. For his entire life our dear Julie Margolin was where “workers fight and organize.” Like Senator Kennedy, he was the “real deal.”

Last year, both of them, even though in poor health, occupied a space in the same coalition – one at the top and the other at the grassroots – that only because of its breadth of reach defeated the right wing decisively and elected the first African American president in our nation history.

A fitting tribute to these two lions would be to lend our energies, grace, and wisdom to the further building of this coalition in the post election period. Nothing I suspect would please them more.

Letters – August 29, 2009

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:44:00 +0000

General strike of 1934

Thank you for the article on the strike of 1934 ("Display honors San Francisco General Strike anniversary").

I was born and raised in San Francisco and Harry Bridges was a guest in my family home many times while I was growing up. Both my parents were very involved in the strike.

My mother was a nurse at San Francisco County hospital and was on the front lines down at the docks working the aid station, helping those who were beaten bloody by the cops and the union-busters.

Out of this strike came so many things that we now take for granted including the California Nurses Association, which my mother and Harry Bridges helped found.

It was a very violent and bloody period but no one gave up until all the demands were met. The workers said "Enough! We demand a living wage and the right to a safe working environment."

My father met his best friend while organizing the strike. His name was Charlie Cannon, he was one of the first African American landscapers. Charlie's family came from the deep South and he grew up in extreme poverty. My father's family were Irish immigrants and he also grew up in terrible poverty, in the slums of San Francisco.

Nob Hill mansions were home to some of the richest Americans and the rest of the city had pockets of immigrants from all over the world, who were dirt poor with very little hope of ever climbing out of poverty. So many of these men found work on the docks for terrible wages and even worse working conditions.

My father and Charlie spent many years organizing the docks, the slots, slaughterhouses and even the fisherman from North Beach.

My mother worked with the nurses who made poverty wages, worked long hours, six and a half days a week with no benefits. The half day was so they could go to church on Sunday morning or Wednesday night.

The nurses worked for the city and county of San Francisco and were promised benefits including health care after 90 days. On their 89th day they would be called in the office and laid off; this would go on for years.

My uncles worked for Southern Pacific railroad as engineers. They were the ones who had to move the goods from the docks to the rest of the country. They were warned by the SP not to take sides in the strike or they would lose their jobs. My uncles chose to stand up for the workers.

When I was young Herbert Philbrick was an FBI agent on TV always looking for the "Communists." I found it hard to understand why the public was so afraid of communists as my father, Charlie Cannon and the other men and women who met weekly in our house were all about jobs, and people's rights.

The older I got, the more I understood what actually happened in 1934 and how much danger my parents placed themselves in to help bring about the right for workers to organize and to determine their own future. Both my parents were heroes for the roles they played in the General Strike in San Francisco in 1934.

Sheila Malone

Waterville ME

Netroots

Tony Pecinovsky's article "Netroots movement essential to pass Employee Free Choice" was really great - thank you.

Kate Thomas

New Media, SEIU

Via e-mail

National rallying symbol

I have made and put up symbols in my yard to show my support to ALL my neighbors for health care reform.

I would like to see my "Gauze For A Cause" on every health care supporter's tree.

I support the public option and think it is a must-have for America.

I hold the block watch meetings for my neighborhood at my house and will be having one on Sept. 3, where if asked I will let them know my opinion.

Many Americas remember the yellow ribbon campaign that showed the American spirit during the Iran hostage crisis.

Simple white ribbons could be used to focus America and its politicians on health care reform.

Al DiPiazza

Phoenix AZ

Town hall majority

On Aug. 19, Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., held a town hall meeting at 6 PM to discuss health care. Although the Warwick City Hall is only a 15-minute drive from my home, it took me almost one hour to arrive. At 5:30 the doors were closed and a crowd of several hundred milled around outside. Later I was told that people waited in line as early as 11 a.m. to gain entrance. I guess they did not have to work that day and thus those inside were very vocal in their disdain for the plan. I joined the outside group for an hour. Although the local media portrayed the attendees as overwhelmingly opposing reform, I found just the opposite with the crowd in front of City Hall. I would estimate that 2/3 supported the president's plan in this very Democratic state. Many young people representing "Health Care for America" politely carried signs supporting reform in contrast to the minority (mainly well dressed and older) who screamed and waved signs portraying Obama as Hitler or stating that his plan would give free care for "illegals." Our only major newspaper, the Providence Journal, included more photos of those in opposition in spite of the fact that they were outnumbered by supporters of the plan.

Norma LaSalle

Exeter RI

Calls to my senators!

Yesterday, I called both of my senators here in West Virginia (Sens. Byrd & Rockefeller) and asked one simple question. "Do you support the public option?" According to an aide in Sen. Byrd's office, he has not made a commitment yet to support the public option. I let her know that people in our state really needed the public option, that I had been a long-time supporter of Senator Byrd. I came away from that conversation with a lot of bad feelings.

Also called Sen. Rockefeller's office and was advised that he does support the public option.

I did not call Congressman Shelley Moore Capito. She is a Republican. You know what they are - those who kiss the corporate ass.

Lots of protests going on down here. Have been a lot of fistfights, too!

Just know that we are doing everything we can down here to get the public option included.

Ed Cook

Via e-mail

New Orleans calling!

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:37:00 +0000

Four years ago a hurricane named Katrina destroyed a great American city named New Orleans.

The unprecedented natural disaster was followed by a disaster that was much worse.

The ultra-right, under the leadership of George W. Bush, used the remains of a devastated city as a laboratory in which it tested almost every horrific right-wing social experiment imaginable. Nothing withstood the ravages of the monster they turned loose on New Orleans and its people. Homes, hospitals, schools, roads, utilities, infrastructure destroyed, people left stranded as they tried to put their battered lives back together, immigrant workers exploited by fly-by-night contractors who had carte blanche to do as they pleased, African Americans effectively barred from coming home and many more were crushed by the right-wing steamroller.

The result is a city that is still a wreck.

So President Obama's agenda takes on even more urgency in New Orleans than it does everywhere else. The job that remains to be done in that city requires overhaul of health care so everyone has access to quality, affordable care; passage of the Employee Free Choice Act so that new, good paying jobs rebuilding the ruins become available; approval of new rules that require payment of prevailing wages not only at federally funded construction projects but at all types of government funded operations; immigration reform to end the inhuman exploitation and discrimination; stimulus funds for public schools; and financial reform that will stop banks from preying on the victims of the disaster.

New Orleans, perhaps more than anyplace else, shows why this agenda is both necessary and timely.

New Orleans, perhaps more than anyplace else, shows why the working class and its allies must view this period in our history as the time to continue building a powerful movement that can put an end, once and for all, to the ultra-right schemes that were really responsible for destroying a great American city. The election of Barack Obama, our first African American president, was our first big victory. Growing and strengthening the labor-led coalition that won that victory is our next big job.

I remember Ted Kennedy

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:31:00 +0000

I was a senior at Amherst College in the spring of 1964 when I boarded a chartered bus with my wife Joyce and our son Morgan, then less than six months old, for a trip to Washington, D.C., to lobby for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When we arrived in the nation's capital we went to a hearing room in the Russell Senate Office Building.

We were greeted there by a young freshman, senator from Massachusetts named Edward M. Kennedy. He welcomed us and offered some strong comments in favor of passage without crippling amendments of this landmark bill to end the shameful legacy of racist segregation. He was getting really wound up when Morgan started fretting. Joyce and I tried without success to quiet him and finally I took him and started for the door.

"Don't leave. Come on back and sit down," Kennedy said. "A baby crying isn't going to hurt any of us. Someday he's going to be a Young Democrat." The crowd laughed and applauded and I sat down. And as I remember, Morgan stopped crying. I never forgot that incident. Ever since, I've had a warm spot in my heart for Ted Kennedy.

That feeling persisted even after I became Washington correspondent of the Daily World. Kennedy sponsored S.1, a highly repressive piece of Cold War legislation that critics charged could open the door for Joe McCarthy-style witch-hunts. I wrote scathing articles quoting Frank Wilkinson, founder of the National Committee to Abolish HUAC, and other civil liberties groups. Thanks in part to their efforts, S.1, and its offspring, "son of S.1" died. But that stain on Kennedy's record was far outweighed by his many pro-labor, pro-worker, pro-people stands on a wide range of issues.

During most of the years I covered Washington, Kennedy was a lion, a powerful stump speaker who would come out of the Capitol building and address AFL-CIO rallies, blasting the unionbusting policies of President Reagan and later George W. Bush. Workers loved Kennedy's gravel-voiced, thundering orations against corporate America and the rich (notwithstanding the fact that he himself was a millionaire many times over). He loved to pump up the crowd with lines like. "Are you ready to fight? Let me hear you." The crowd would roar!

Health care was his defining issue. He was badly injured in the crash of a small plane near Northampton, Mass. (It happened while we were living a few miles away in Amherst. Kennedy recuperated at the Northampton Hospital where Morgan had gone for surgery as an infant a few months earlier).

Kennedy suffered the rest of his life from chronic back pains and maybe that pain was a constant reminder of the urgent need for reform. I remember a conference on health care sometime in the mid-1970s sponsored by the AFL-CIO and other advocates of health care reform. A woman who lacked health insurance brought a computer printout of her hospital bill to the conference. A friend held one end while the woman unrolled the bill that stretched across the front of the ballroom, up one side, across the back, down the other side, all the way around the vast room. A gasp went through the crowd and while she unrolled that graphic emblem of financial ruin, Sen. Kennedy delivered an angry stemwinder blasting the insurance companies for their profit greed. He demanded that Congress enact comprehensive, universal, health care for all.

Kennedy kept hammering away at that demand until he died. A fitting memorial for Edward M. Kennedy would be enactment of comprehensive, universal health care for all, government financed, that protects every child, woman, and man in America. It should be called the "Kennedy Act."

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

LETTERS: public option, getting to the roots, Labor Day, film showing

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:46:00 +0000

Public option

We need the public option now more than ever. What the Tea Party elderly don’t know is that they are bankrupting government Medicare without some other form of health care reform. The public option would allow people to choose a health care program that would fit their wallet. Without the public option, more and more people are relying on the only government health care program that works for everyone. With so many people in need of health care, Medicare will go bankrupt in the near future. Baby boomers were once the major contributors to Medicare but are now aging and using the program more. The generation behind us is incapable of paying into the system where demand will eventually overcome supply. The Tea Party elderly should not fear the government taking their Medicare but rather fear that Medicare will go bankrupt. The Tea Party elderly are only ensuring that Medicare goes bankrupt without some other form of health care to adjust to our current supply and demand.

Alexander Monarrez-Maldonado

Tucson AZ

Getting to the roots

The recent article by Emile Schepers — The Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest: ‘uppity’ in 2009 — hits on the legal reasons why the police were out of order for their actions.

I would like to go a step further.

I’ll say from the outset that this may not apply to all police.

In New York the NYPD has killed 35 people over the past two-three years. The taser death of a mentally ill man (Iman Morales) last year by an officer who received direction from a seasoned officer was a glaring disregard for human life. (The officer who gave the order committed suicide.) There are too many of these tragic deaths.

The protection of private property is the priority of the police department and the mayor’s office. This idea permeates the mentality of all those who come in contact with it. Recruits are indoctrinated with the “us against them” mentality — New Yorkers are too familiar with The Blue Wall — and all the implications connected with it.

The badge and the gun are the symbols and ultimate weapons of this distortion.

We in New York do not have to continue down this polarizing path. We can elect Bill Thompson mayor. The mayor appoints the police commissioner.

Gabe Falsetta

Glendale NY

Labor Day takeover

It seems like Labor Day is becoming less and less related to labor.This year in Iowa City, the Labor Day weekend is being turned into an annual tribute to a former football coach (Hayden Fry) — the new festival is being called “Fry Fest,” with all sorts of amusements and it even has the right-winger Charlie Daniels as the star music performer. It makes me sick to see that Chamber of Commerce-led takeover for Labor Day weekend.

Charlotte Walker

Iowa City IA

Stop union-busting at Neil Med

You might be interested in helping the workers at Neil Med. If you go to the website below, you can check out what is at stake and send your own message directly to the relevant decision makers. Take action on this important campaign at .

Gary De Santis

Via e-mail

E-mail newsletter

I want to compliment you on the PWW e-newsletter. I enjoy your articles and find a refreshing honest approach to the events of the day. I consider myself to be a progressive leftist and I enjoy reading the news with a “leftist viewpoint.”

The older I get, and I’m 56 years old, the more convinced that the future of this country rests in the hands of the leftist movement, be that Communist or simply Socialist. I believe that people in this country are waking up to the fact that the “old” ways of our government need to be changed, altered or reworked. Capitalism does not work for the majority of the working class of this country, if anything it prevents the working class from getting a fair shake from the corporate forces which control Congress.

If ever I see or hear of something here in Denver I would like to write an article for you and show that we in the Western part of the U.S. have concerns just as on the Eastern seaboard. Thanks again for your e-mail newsletter and keep up the good work!

Peace!

Tom Melvin

Denver CO

Editor’s note: We encourage all readers to sign up for our e-headlines at www.pww.org.

Film showing

If you live in the Rochester, N.Y., area or have friends there, tell them about the 20th annual Rochester Labor Film Series. It will be showing our film “Never Turning Back, The World of Peggy Lipschutz” on Sept. 11. The festival continues through October with a great lineup of films, all screened at the Dryden Theater, 900 East Ave., in Rochester.

For a complete schedule, visit: www.rochesterlabor.org. The film series is sponsored by the George Eastman House and the Rochester Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

Jerri Zbiral

Mark Rogovin

Sharon Karp

The writers are producer/director, executive producer and editor, respectively, of “Never Turning Back, The World of Peggy Lipschutz,” .

Health care reform and criticism of weapons

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:49:00 +0000

OPINION

I spoke last weekend at a public library in Blue Hill, a small coastal town in Maine. Most in the audience worked and voted for President Obama, but in the course of what was a very interesting conversation, it became clear that most of them haven't done much since then. How to explain this? Probably they thought that they had done their part in electing a new president and that the country would move in a progressive direction on the strength and momentum of that victory.

Obviously, this hasn't happened. Since President Obama entered the White House, opposition to his agenda has been stiff, but none of the earlier legislative struggles match the scope and intensity of the current struggle over health care reform.

The Republican Party and its echo chambers in the mass media, shamelessly spewing hate, and racist caricatures and code words, and lies, want nothing more than to put a stake into the heart of health care reform. Then there are the private insurance companies who turn blue at the thought of a Medicare-like public option that would cut into their profits and power. And if this isn't enough, sections of the Obama-led coalition, while supporting some aspects of health care legislation, are busy trying to torpedo a public option as well.

Marx once said that 'the weapon of criticism can never replace the criticism of weapons.' Marx wasn't making a pitch for violence, but rather suggesting that social change, above all, requires the united action of millions. Marx's observation was insightful then and resonates now as far as the struggle over health care reform is concerned.

If the people who elected the president and a new Congress (as well as others who didn't vote for them, but desperately need health care overhaul) become political actors (criticism of weapons) in the next few weeks, the American people will seal the deal on real health care change and set the stage for other reform struggles, including radical ones.

Admittedly, mobilization by labor and others is going on, but I suspect from my experience in Blue Hill that many decent-minded people who could and should be engaged in this battle are still on the sidelines. If this is so, the main task of supporters of health care reform is to immediately draw these very people into the struggle in very practical ways.

Maybe it's organizing a phone tree to a congressional representative, a visit to a legislator's office, a local demonstration, a town hall meeting, a resolution in a city council, church or union, civil disobedience at corporate headquarters of a private insurer ...

Victory is assured if we do!

Sam Webb (swebb @ cpusa.org) is the Communist Party USA's national chairperson.

Health care public option debate cut the baloney

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:51:00 +0000

OPINION

A lot has been written about the health care public option over the past few days. While some commentaries discuss the honest concerns many Americans have, others claim the would-be government-run plan is dead in the water.

The public option is going nowhere, nor will it cut costs, they argue.

For example, Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein writes, 'There is nothing about having a government-owned health insurance company that is likely to change the competitive dynamic and bring costs under control.'

Quite pessimistically, he adds, 'If there is anything that's been made clear over the last two weeks, it is that the public option is a political non-starter that threatens the entire reform effort.'

What does Pearlstein mean? What evidence does he use to back up his claims?

First, according to our esteemed columnist, costs won't come down because hospital chains 'dictate rates to private insurers' and 'drug companies have monopoly pricing power ... Ditto for medical-equipment makers.' Additionally, 'there's no particular evidence that a government-run insurance plan will be any more successful than what we currently get from big private insurers.'

Second, Pearlstein argues that 'liberals have played right into the hands of Republicans who aim to defeat any reform by mischaracterizing it as a government takeover.'

According to this theory, since Republicans will inevitably mischaracterize the public option, liberals, progressives and average Americans shouldn't fight for it — or else we play into their hands and threaten other, more realistic reforms.

So just to be clear, here is what Pearlstein's logic boils down to: The health care reform movement should give up on the public option because hospitals dictate rates and drug companies price fix. Additionally, we should give up on the public option because Republicans will lie about it.

Wow, that is quite the logical summersault! I wonder if Pearlstein actually read what he wrote. Because it sure as hell didn't make any sense to me!

To the average American, I'm sure it sounds like a lot of baloney. To them, it sounds like the insurance companies, the drug companies, and the hospitals all have too much power. And as for the Republicans, average Americans are tired of their outright lies. In addition, the professional town-hall disrupters from the fringe, with all their yelling, heckling and assaulting, only illustrate the right wing's desperation.

In fact, the only thing the past two weeks has proven is the desperate depths to which the Republicans and their health care industry lobbyists will go.

If anything, to honest, sincere people — to the majority of Americans — the health care public option is a complex — maybe even scary — plan that they are unsure about. But, that's OK. After eight years of government mismanagement a little skepticism is only natural.

However, most Americans want to have a sincere, open, honest discussion, free from lies and mischaracterizations. If open, honest discussions take place, most Americans will continue to support a health care public option — as they currently do.

Far from threatening the entire reform movement, the public option emboldens the reform movement. It provides cohesion and a unified voice. It provides a benchmark. As Gov. Howard Dean recently remarked: 'You can't have reform without a public option.' In addition, it would give the Obama administration another victory, reinforcing its progressive trajectory, while giving millions of Americans access to health care.

tonypec @ cpusa.org

British citizen speaks out about health care

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:10:00 +0000

OPINION

I am English (and a dual citizen of England and the United States) and I am increasingly frustrated with the misinformation reported regarding socialized medicine. Several opponents of health care reform--including major conservative radio and TV commentators and several Republican politicians--claim that in England major surgery is not given to those over 59. This simply is NOT TRUE!

My mother had open heart surgery at age 81, is now 88 and doing well. She received excellent care, did not wait three months for a specialist; her surgery was immediate. My cousin recently had heart and lung surgery, he is 70 and his surgery was immediate and successful. Unlike the United States, all people and particularly the elderly are taken care of in England. Further, all English citizens do not pay for any prescriptions after the age of 60.

The biggest difference between their system and ours? Everyone has access to healthcare. Everyone. Comprehensive health care in England, like every civilized country except the United States, is considered to be a right of all people. Apparently, in the United States the people concerned about their rights don’t care that millions of Americans currently don’t have the same rights.

Opponents to health care reform probably haven't lost a job recently and also lost their health insurance too. As executive director of a major non-profit organization in the U.S., I see people everyday who have been laid off, who need medication, need care, but no longer have insurance and cannot afford to buy it.

Are there problems with the system in England? Of course there are, just like there are problems at any other hospital. Is it acceptable for hospitals to turn away the uninsured? Is that the American Way? What does it say about our system when the first question at the emergency room is not “what is the problem” but “do you have insurance?” And don’t we all know someone who has cancer, is struggling with treatments and sickness but must continue to work so that they don’t lose their insurance and can continue the treatments? As long as our system ties health insurance to employment, the people of this country will be unable to get sick without being financially devastated.

If our system is so superior, why is the United States so low on the list of the healthiest countries? The USA spends the most on health care of any country in the world yet is ranked only 11th in healthy population. Canada is ranked 8th and has the longest life expectancy in the world; they must be doing something right. Australia is ranked 6th; government involvement seems to work there too.

I am appreciative that my employer provides a health plan that I can buy into and I am very satisfied with the quality of care that I receive and I hope that that quality will not be affected. But I cannot in good conscience support a system that excludes the unemployed, the underemployed and does not support the elderly.

Rita Inklovich attended college at the University of London and Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, grew up and worked in England and is employed in the U.S. This article was distributed by journalist Walter Brasch, www.walterbrasch.com

Truth-telling time

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:18:00 +0000

This is truth-telling time in the fight for health care. The voices of the uninsured and underinsured, of those who have insurance but live in fear of losing it, must be heard. The stakes could not be higher.

The right-wing campaign to whip up anti-health-reform hysteria and demonize the Obama administration is based on lies, lies and more lies.

Insurance companies will stop at nothing to protect their giant profits. They are rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of funneling the 50 million uninsured into their clutches.

The truth is that 14,000 people lose their health coverage each day — that’s 2.3 million each year. One in six people in the U.S. have no health coverage.

Health care is a basic human right. That right cannot be fulfilled when health care depends on profit-driven corporations. A public option is essential.

As Howard Dean noted, the Veterans Administration and Medicare, both public, are 'two very good programs that have been around for a long time.'

Republicans and conservative Democrats are holding health care reform hostage, placing the insurance companies above their constituents’ needs.

But a growing number in Congress say they will not support a health care bill unless it includes the public option.

The choice of a public option is included in the House bill that will be voted on in September.

The big fight now is to get enough support in the Senate to win the public option there. The White House has reiterated that President Obama 'believes the public option is the best way.'

The far-right attacks are a signal that the task of mobilizing the 83 percent who support health care for all is vital.

Union members are setting the pace. They know that if this fight is lost it will be very hard to win the Employee Free Choice Act for the right to organize.

The time is now for everyone to get involved. Attend your lawmakers’ town hall meetings. Phone-bank. Knock on doors. Get the truth out. Join the national day of action Sept. 3 to send members of Congress back to Washington with the message 'We can't wait.'

This is a fight for the future of our country. It is a fight for democracy and progressive change. It is a fight that can be won with a groundswell of truth-telling and participation.

Why is Viagra popular and the condom controversial?

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:37:00 +0000

BALI, Aug 14 (TerraViva/IPS) - Why is the popular drug Viagra so praised for its virtues, while the condom is vilified by conservative religious groups among others the world over?

Both are ‘external’ technological interventions that relate to sexual activity. They are among the most prominent tools in the area of reproductive health and sexuality.

But it is the gender and sexual ideologies behind them - especially when combined with conservative religious forces and aspects of patriarchal culture - that put them on opposite ends of the spectrum of public acceptance.

The result is a paradox that has huge implications for public health, especially in relation to the HIV and AIDS pandemic that is now entering its third decade and affects 33 million people worldwide.

As Michael Tan, a reproductive health activist and chair of the University of the Philippines anthropology department put it: 'Why is Viagra so desired and condoms so repulsive in many cultures?'

Tan stressed, condoms are in the World Health Organisation (WHO) list of essentials - unlike Viagra. In other words, the social and institutional acceptance levels of Viagra and condoms are 'totally opposite to the biomedical truth.'

As has been stressed over and over in the hundreds of sessions at the 9th International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) that ended here this week, condoms remain the most effective way today to have safer sex, which is key to curbing the transmission of HIV and AIDS.

Condom usage campaigns have been central to efforts by countries like Thailand to slow the transmission of the virus and to achieve a reduction in the number of new cases.

But in many countries, including in Asia, condoms continue to be a loaded word, a magnet for conservative groups that say they corrupt values and encourage early sexual activity or go against religious teachings that sex should go with procreation.

Condoms and pills are also often linked to their contraceptive roles - which are of course absent in marketing for Viagra, packaged by pharmaceutical firms for improved sexual experiences.

There is also the argument by many men that condoms diminish sexual pleasure. This feeds into the gender and cultural bias that societies often have, that men’s pleasure is most important, Tan added.

'Condoms and pills tend to be resisted and demonised, blamed for promoting promiscuity and are sometimes even said to fuel HIV itself,' Tan explained at a discussion organised by the Institute of Population and Social Research at Mahidol University.

In India, studies show that condom use tends to be linked more to educated men, according to Jayashree Ramakrishna of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, India.

While religion may not be such a big factor in this debate in India, Ramakrishna added that the focus on condoms in fighting the epidemic eased a bit after the Indian government revised its HIV prevalence figures some years ago.

Likewise, she says, taboos remain on the open discussion of sex, which makes it harder to deal with reproductive health and HIV and AIDS. 'Women say ‘we might have sex, but we don’t talk about it,’' she said. Officials argue that sex education materials should not be too frank. Eight states in India have banned sex education in schools, Ramakrishna added.

In mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, the Church and religious groups argue that condom use breaks religious and moral values because it prevents pregnancies when sex is for having children within marriage - and that the its health benefits cloak the fact that it promotes free sex.

This controversy is the reason why proposed laws on reproductive health in the Philippines - where the population growth rate is a high 2.1 percent in a country of 92.2 million people - ignite a firestorm of campaigns by pro- church groups saying such are 'anti-life.'

In the conservative Catholic context and in Philippine society, Tan explains, the importance attributed to extending the family line is key to male gender roles. Thus, 'being ‘baog’ - the Tagalog word for both impotence and infertility - is to many a fate worse than death' because it is linked to male sexual prowess.

But this same focus on the need to reproduce also generates the view that men are the ones ‘responsible’ for it, and women are mere receptacles in this process. Tan explained, 'Males are seen as the source of life and are therefore privileged when it comes to pleasure, and women are seen as a source of pleasure or of men’s babies.'

In sharp contrast to the controversies around the condom, Viagra - a drug that was meant to cure erectile dysfunction but is also used to enhance sexual performance - is widely accepted. It has not drawn attention from conservative quarters that say they are worried about promiscuity or free sex, reproductive health activists say.

The most number of spam email messages these days are even about Viagra- type medication, Tan says, pointing out how widely known and popular this has become.

The obsession with male reproduction and pleasure in many societies leads to undercutting the usage of 'life-saving devices' such as the condom, Tan said. 'Shrill voices have been head about condoms, but they have been too silent on Viagra,' he argued.

Drug approval institutions in countries like the United States and Japan have also been quick in approving Viagra, which is manufactured by Pfizer, but slow in approving other reproductive health-related items.

For instance, Tan said, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took six months to approve Viagra in 1998, but four years to give its approval for the abortion pill. In Japan, authorities approved Viagra for public use in a few months, but it had taken 35 years to approve the use of the oral contraceptive for women.

Some published reports allege that Viagra, or sildenafil citrate, was first being clinically tested to treat angina, but that it was finally marketed for erectile dysfunction after trials showed this as the stronger result.

Looking into the Viagra versus condom paradox goes far beyond just these two particular products in order to show that 'technology is much more than just a tool,' explained Rosalia Sciortino, a professor at Thailand’s Mahidol University and gender and reproductive health expert who chaired the session on this topic at ICAAP.

These two well-known tools offer a lens that show how gender values influence expressions of sexuality and how these can in turn have key impacts on public health risks like HIV and AIDS, Sciortino stressed.

Hiker rescued, hit with whopping bill

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:46:00 +0000

Opinion

You are attempting a 17-mile hike on and around Mount Washington in New Hampshire. It’s late April but you face anything but a typical New England spring in the White Mountains. You have to keep in mind that Mount Washington is reputed to have the worst weather in the world. That’s right. Not Everest, not Kilimanjaro. In a day’s drive or less, millions of people can experience the best and the worst that Mount Washington can offer. Just ask Scott Mason.

Scott, a 17-year-old from Halifax, Mass., was attempting the above hike when he sprained an ankle. His decision to leave the marked trails would be costly. He was eventually confronted with deep snow and swollen streams. He ended up spending three nights alone on the mountain. His Eagle Scout skills were put to the test. As he was making his way out of all this, a rescue team met him. He has also been met with a bill for more than $25,000 for the rescue.

Syndicated columnist Tim Jones writes about outdoor recreation. His focus is hiking and mountain climbing. He asked for opinions on this incident and paying for rescue by the people or person being rescued. Here is my response:

I find the 'bill' to rescue people in the mountains a heartless act. It is a symptom of a society that was going down hill ethically and culturally. The $25,234.65 reimbursement bill laid on teenager Scott Mason certainly falls in this category.

In 1979, I fell near the top of Algonquin Mountain in the Adirondacks.

It was February with temperatures into the minus 30s degrees and lower. We were coming down on hard packed snow and ice after peaking.

The fall initially knocked me out and separated my right shoulder. I was well equipped as was my large party. After securing my shoulder, we started down while one member went for assistance.

We were about halfway down when state park people reached us. While we were doing OK, it was reassuring that they were there. For example, they had a boat sled in case I couldn't walk any longer. We all walked out together well into the night. A state employee took me to the hospital. I certainly got a hospital bill but that was it.

I find these huge rescue bills, as exemplified by the Scott Mason incident, particularly cruel when laid on young people. It seems vindictive. Everyone can't know everything about mountain hiking in a short period. This is particularly true of working class urban youth who may not have that tradition in their families.

The idea of a non-mandatory hiking permit has merit and goes in a healthier direction.

I suggest we use the National Guard for mountain rescues rather than military adventures in other countries. After 30 years of the myth of rugged individualism, self-aggrandizement and more, I think we are slowly righting our ethical, cultural ship. The surging movement for strengthening Medicare and health care for all is an example.

Let’s hear from others concerning being billed for your own rescue. For more background on the 'debate', go to the forum at Mount Washington Observatory, .

And Tim Jones gives excellent hiking tips at .

Whats really behind the death panel scare?

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:31:00 +0000

Telling seniors they will have to appear before “death panels” which will decide whether they live or die is not just another one of the many outrageous lies invented by the right wing. More than just a scheme to kill health insurance reform, it is part of a major effort to shift the nation’s seniors to the right of the political spectrum.

This can be done, the right wingers figure, if they create an uproar big enough to help seniors forget the many scary things they really do have to worry about – scary things foisted upon them during the last 30 or more years that the ultra-right has been in control.

The first real worry older Americans face, a year after the massive financial collapse in the stock and housing markets, is a retirement far leaner than anything they had ever expected.

Even those with employer-guaranteed pension plans are finding that, at a minimum, many of the fine-print frills in those plans are being revoked.

Then there are the individual savings accounts such as IRAs and 401(k)s that so many seniors depend upon. Those have lost a third or more of their value.

A huge form of personal savings that workers count on for their retirement years is home equity and that too is evaporating with the 30 percent drop in home prices.

What all of this means is that Social Security – a government run program that the ultra-right tried but failed to privatize – remains as the only true source of reliable retirement income for millions of seniors.

Even its harshest critics admit that government-run Social Security will remain fully funded for the next 28 years, making it, by far, more certain than anything in the “free market” economy.

While Social Security is the surest thing seniors have, many of those who are union members also have their defined benefit pensions.

In a defined benefit pension plan the employer promises a retirement benefit and makes regular contributions to a fund so that the promises can be kept. The fund is invested. If the investments don’t work out employers must increase the amounts they contribute.

As a result of the current financial crisis defined benefit plans are under stress because so many investments have done poorly. But most of them are still able to pay the core benefits they promised.

It should be noted that defined benefit pension plans, like Social Security, did not arise naturally out of the free market capitalist system.

It was bargaining by unions that resulted, after World War II, in making the guaranteed pension a standard benefit for American workers, even for workers not in unions.

The two things keeping most seniors alive today – Social Security and, for a smaller number, defined benefit pensions – are the result of organizing by unions and a government run program set up largely in response to that organizing.

It is the dismantling of such programs, which the right wing constantly advocates, that would result in the early death of seniors, not the fictitious “death panels” the Sarah Pailins claim the Obama administration has up its sleeve.

The right wingers are talking about “death panels” because they don’t want seniors to realize that it was the political right that launched the first attack on their dream of a secure retirement back in the 1980’s with the introduction of 401(k) “defined contribution” retirement savings plans.

In the 1980’s, more than 80 percent of large and medium-sized firms offered a defined-benefit plan; today, less than a third do, with unionized companies rapidly becoming the last holdouts for traditional pensions.

I was a member of the UFCW’s contract negotiating committee in northern New Jersey during the early 2000’s. Each time the meat cutters’ contract was up we faced company demands that we give up our defined benefit pension and accept in its place a 401K. We decided to re-name the defined contribution plan repeatedly proposed by the company and refer to it in all our discussions with company reps as a 201K. The name change reflected our belief that, at best, the offer would eventually be worth no more than half of what the company said it would be. The reason for our concern was that we knew 70 percent of 401K funds were then invested in the stock market That was still the case when the market crashed last year.

Even those with pensions, though, have real reason to be scared. The reason for concern comes because the defined benefit pension funds are invested in the capitalist “free market.” Due to stock market losses that hit the pension fund assets many union locals are meeting to discuss pensions and the cuts they have to make to get the pension funds out of the danger zone.

In summary, it’s not the government or government-run programs that seniors have to fear, when it comes to their well-being.

The danger comes when big business gets its hands on the money seniors have worked a lifetime to save for a secure retirement. Private industry has shown that it is all too capable of taking our hard earned money, wherever and however we have it stashed, and permanently separating us from it.

Government run health insurance is not the danger we face. In fact, government-run Social Security is looking better and better than anything else these days.

Private businesses got their hands into our retirement investments and have thus far suckered us out of trillions of dollars we would otherwise still have. We need to be angry and we need to fight. We don’t need to be afraid of phony “death panels” or of anything else, for that matter. And we need to be thankful that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

As George Miller, D – Calif., the House Education and Labor Committee Chairman put it recently: “Thank goodness we didn’t get suckered into gambling Social Security funds at the Wall Street casino.”

EDITORIAL: The good news of Sotomayors confirmation

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:02:00 +0000

The confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as the first Latina and third woman ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme court should be regarded with a deep sense of satisfaction by all lovers of justice in this country. The People’s Weekly World wishes Madame Justice Sotomayor the best of fortune in what we hope will be a long and fruitful tenure.

At the same time, the conduct of some of the Republican senators and other political and media figures in the debate that preceded Ms. Sotomayor’s confirmation, first by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and then by the full Senate, will go down as an ugly stain on the politics of our era. The fact that only nine Republican senators out of 40 voted to confirm such an obviously qualified candidate is only part of the disgraceful story. The leading role in the persecution of Sotomayor was played by Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions. He had the gall to intimate that Ms. Sotomayor is a “racist,” for daring to say that a wise Latina judge might make better decisions than an ignorant white man. Sessions, an ignorant white man if there ever was one, himself was once defeated for confirmation as a federal district court judge (a Reagan nomination) when people who had worked with him when he was a U.S. attorney testified about his history of grossly insensitive racist comments and attacks on the civil rights movement as “un-American.” So his attempt to characterize Ms. Sotomayor as a Latina “racist” is the continuation of a decades-long pattern.

That most of the Republicans in the Senate went along with this method of challenging Sotomayor’s candidacy shows what the Republican Party is rapidly becoming. It is in line with the smear attacks against the Democrats’ efforts to craft a health care reform bill, which has now moved into the terrain of actual physical violence. It is a continuation of the long campaign by the utra-right against Latino immigrants and their descendents, and the lunatic “birther” campaign to prove that President Obama is not a born citizen. This is creating a perfect storm of obscurantism, bigotry, hatred and potential violence, which takes on a more and more fascist tinge. We have to fight these people as hard as we can.

W.Va environment agency renamed Department of Incompetence

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:04:00 +0000

The Coal River area of West Virginia continues to be the focus of the most blatant conflict between environmentalists and the mining industry. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in West Virginia has been owned, more or less, by the coal industry for decades.

Now it’s being called the “Department of Incompetence” for its complete disregard for the environment in favor of the coal companies. Some say the same thing about the entire state government - a strange fact considering that the coal industry today employs less than 20,000 people in West Virginia, the second poorest state in the nation. The only other downward economic path is 'goin to Mississippi'.

So powerful are the coal companies, and their chosen Senator - the not quite passed on Robert Byrd - that federal government statistics agencies have even been banned from collecting data on the social and environmental impact of coal mining - especially 'mountaintop removal' mining, the current point of contention.

The state DEP has now certified numerous blasting operations, as part of its unfettered support for mountaintop removal mining and the daily detonation of 3.5 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives in historic mountain communities. Scores of fed-up coal miners and coalfield residents also rallied at the agency's office recently and presented an embarrassingly long list of the agency's failure to hold up its mandate to protect and restore the environment, ensure water quality, and enforce strip mining, and demanded the resignation of West Virginia DEP Secretary Randy Huffman.

According to the coalfield residents, the DEP has: • failed to hold mining operators accountable for violations; • refused to thoroughly address the potential dangers of coal slurry injection and set permit limits for abandoned mine site discharge; • and misled residents on regulatory actions. It’s hard to find a more blatant case of industry government corruption and collusion on environmental issues. Nonetheless the United Mine Workers has sided with coal operators on the mountaintop removal question: On these issues, the union known for its fierce opposition to coal operators has allied itself with the industry, including longtime nemesis Arch Coal Inc. of St. Louis, the nation’s second-largest coal producer. The position disappointed environmental activists. 'Don’t they understand that this could mean more jobs?' asked Laura Forman, spokeswoman for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. 'If they can’t use mountaintop removal to strip it,' she contends, 'they’ll mine it underground,' a much more labor-intensive method. Cecil Roberts, UMW President, has said that idea 'is ridiculous.' 'If somebody could tell me how to mine this much coal with picks and shovels, I’d be glad to hear it,' he said. 'But it can’t be done.' His first duty as a labor leader is to represent his members, he said. 'I have an obligation to side with my members, first, and second, some of these environmentalists are living in a fantasy world,' Roberts said. 'I have to live in the real world.'

Well, in the 'real world' where people have to live on the land and drink water that flows upon it, this type of mining has to go. But - and here is a lesson that many who support progressive, environmentally friendly laws don't seem to get - workers who lose their jobs to progress must be compensated with full and complete retraining and transition costs. You can't have environmental progress at the price of workers becoming poorer. That too is 'the real world'.

EDITORAL: Act now for a nuclear weapons-free future!

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:19:00 +0000

EDITORIAL

The annual commemorations of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are solemn reminders that for the last 64 years humanity has existed on the brink of a precipice ― the threat that life as we know it could be snuffed out if the terrible power of the world’s nuclear arsenals were ever unleashed.

In remarks to the World Federation of United Nations Associations meeting in Seoul, South Korea this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon highlighted both the urgency and the possibility of nuclear disarmament.

Noting that with the ongoing talks between the U.S. and Russia, “for the first time in a decade, negotiators have agreed to a package of measures that can move the world away from nuclear weapons,” he added, “Now is our time … time to build on this momentum.”

And indeed, momentum IS building around the world. In June the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution affirming cities’ role in ending nuclear weapons by 2020. “As long as nuclear weapons exist,” the resolution warns, “cities around the world will be vulnerable to instantaneous devastation on a scale exceeding even that experienced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”

The International Trade Union Confederation and the worldwide Mayors for Peace have launched an international campaign leading up to next May’s UN Review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Their petition calls for the review to make “strong and clear conclusions” and for all UN member countries to sign the treaty. Others are conducting related activities.

And the broad national United for Peace and Justice coalition has launched a petition commending President Obama’s statement in Prague last spring that “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” and urging him to initiate “good faith multilateral negotiations” to end nuclear weapons “within our lifetimes.”

These campaigns are an excellent springboard for everyone concerned about the world’s continuing closeness to the nuclear brink. Now is the time to act for a nuclear weapons-free future!

Don't let right-wing astroturfers scare Americans into silence

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:34:00 +0000

Opinion

ST. LOUIS — While a healthy, public debate around health care reform positively reinforces our proud democratic traditions, heckling, yelling, disrupting and even assaulting those you disagree with doesn't. But that's exactly what's happening here in St. Louis and across the country.

On Aug. 6, Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., held a town hall meeting at Bernard Middle School Gym in St. Louis County. An overflow crowd showed up. Then things got out of hand as anti-public-option protesters began to disrupt and interfere with the planned proceedings. In all, six people were arrested by St. Louis County Police — hecklers and bystanders.

Rep. Carnahan issued a statement the following day. It said in part:

'Sadly we've seen stories about disrupters around the country, and we have a handful of them here in Missouri. Instead of participating in a civil debate, they have mobilized with special interests in Washington who have lined their pockets by overcharging Americans for a broken health care system.'

In my opinion, Brown Shirt, Nazi tactics — or astroturfing as it's being called — has no place in American politics. And those fringe elements who participate in such activity have no place in mainstream political discourse.

Their assaults aren't just assaults on the individuals and issues involved. They are an assault on the American body politic. They are an assault on the traditions of Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton. On Emerson and Thoreau. On Douglass and Tubman. On Dr. King and Rosa Parks. And on President Obama and all of the hope and change his administration represents.

Unfortunately, it seems the right-wing, anti-public-option forces are desperate. That is why they have dropped the bar so low and are relying on Brown Shirt tactics.

However, their desperate acts only prove that they have lost the war of ideas and intelligent discourse. They know that they are going against mainstream America, which is why they are relying on fringe elements and bully tactics.

Their goals are clear. First they want to disrupt and confuse public forums, preventing real issues from being discussed. Second, they want to gain media attention and project a distorted view of American sentiment towards health care reform. Third, they want to scare members of Congress into silence or submission, as well as ordinary citizens.

The experience was so traumatic for Javonne Spitz, from O'Fallon, Mo., that she told the St. Louis Post Dispatch: 'These tea baggers are dangerous. I'm not going to any more town hall meetings until these people calm down.'

Unfortunately, that's exactly what the right-wing, anti-public-option forces want. They want people to stay home. They want people scared. They want people to feel intimidated and afraid. Their tactics are Nazi tactics.

Joyce Flecke, from south St. Louis County, said the forum became 'a complete waste of time.' Undoubtedly, the hecklers kept her from participating in any meaningful way.

According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, astroturfing is 'nothing more than destructive efforts to interrupt a debate that we should have, and are having. They are doing this because they don't have any better ideas.'

As long as a healthy public discourse on health care reform and the public option continues, we will win. Millions of Americans will gain health care, something every citizen of every other industrial nation has. Additionally, the Obama administration will score another victory — further isolating the failed policies of the Bush administration and the right wing it represents — and grassroots people's forces, unions and community groups, will gain momentum and energy as we try to move our country in another direction.

Beware: Astroturfing harmful to democracy

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:14:00 +0000

Mob rule sweeps America, Big Insurance hires storm troopers

Athletes complain about it. Astroturf causes injuries.

And now the fake grass spread on many a field across the country has a new meaning.

“Astroturfing” and “Astroturf groups” simulate grassroots organizing. And beware: These far-right ideologically driven groups, like the name “Astroturf” implies, are phony. And they cause injury to the body politic.

At a town hall meeting Aug. 2 in Philadelphia with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter on health care reform, media focused on a handful of “right wingers” who were “aggressive and rude,” according to one of the event’s organizers.

These “right wing groups vastly amplify their small numbers by making a ruckus,” the organizer for Health Care for America Now, Marc Stier, said. And make a ruckus they did, sometimes shouting down the speakers.

According to Peoples World correspondent Ben Sears, “The organized ‘Tell Washington No’ crowd was loud and disruptive enough to get a mention in the New York Times which reported that the secretary and the senator were “booed and heckled”, but that was not the big story of the afternoon. In fact, while the hecklers may occasionally have been louder, the majority of those in attendance including some disabled citizens in wheelchairs, had come to ask serious questions about the legislative work going on in Washington and to show support for universal health insurance.”

But the “spin” coming out of these events makes it sound like there is a grassroots revolt against health care reform, activists charge.

Stier said HCAN “has built the biggest issue campaign in Pennsylvania history” with 20,000 health care activists on their rolls. “We have three-four events everyday” across the state. “People know there is a crisis and things cannot stay the same.”

But a few “lunatics” come to one event and the media makes it sound like there is huge opposition to reform. That’s just not the case, Stier said.

These types of aggressive tactics have been reported across the country, in Colorado, Missouri, New York, Wisconsin, Texas, Maryland and North Carolina.

The groups behind astroturfing are corporate-backed and closely connected with far-right GOP politics. Their main ideological viewpoint is a hatred for the Obama administration, Democrats and so-called “big government.”

After 30 years of far-right politics ruling this country, the new administration is reintroducing a policy which is the anathema to the Bush-Rove-Cheney-Chamber of Commerce types – that government can and should play a role in curbing corporate power.

And in the health care fight, the “public option” where a government-sponsored insurance program would compete side-by-side with private insurance has these economic elites scared.

So they are fighting for their profits and ideology, because a successful “public option” is the death knell to the anti-government, privatize Social Security and Medicare crowd.

The astroturfers are succeeding in setting the parameters of the national debate in the corporate media. According to blogger Litz on Daily Kos, a Nashville CBS affiliate WTVF ran a canned piece provided by CBS about a recent “anti-healthcare reform rally” in Denver.

In the piece, CBS interviewed Jeff Crank, who was identified only as 'a cancer survivor.” Litz writes, “He made the outrageous claim that he would have died had there been government health care during his ordeal.”

However, Litz, exposes that Crank is a “crank.” Crank is “Colorado state director of Americans For Prosperity--as well as a conservative talk radio host, failed Republican candidate for Congress and a lobbyist. AFP is a right-wing group which first made its name--wait for it--fighting workplace smoking regulations.”

Workers Independent News also reports that Americans for Prosperity is a group with direct ties to Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed. Reed is also a former leader of Century Strategies “helped launder money for Jack Abramoff.”

According to WIN, “Americans for Prosperity is currently paying to bus individuals around the country under the guise of an organization called Patients United Now.”

In May, Susan Webb of People’s World, wrote about Patients United Now. “It doesn’t take much scratching beneath the surface of the web site “Patients United Now” to see its anti-union, far-right roots,” she wrote. Webb linked this group to far-right billionaires like the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is part of the Koch Family Foundations.

According to SourceWatch, Webb wrote, “The Koch brothers control the three family foundations that have 'lavished tens of millions of dollars in the past decade on 'free market' advocacy institutions in and around Washington.' [The Nation, 'What Wouldn't Bob Dole Do for Koch Oil?']

“The foundations are financed via the oil and gas fortunes of Fred G. Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society. David is a libertarian who ‘provides a significant amount of funding for the Cato Institute's $4 million annual budget.’”

Some kind of grassroots operation, this is not. More examples of astroturfing come from Politico and Think Progress. Politico reported that Democratic members of Congress are increasingly being harassed by “angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior” at local town halls.

Some of the harassment has turned violent, the blog reports. “Recently, right-wing demonstrators hung Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-Md.) in effigy outside of his office. Missing from the reporting of these stories is the fact that much of these protests are coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama’s reforms.”

The lobbyist-run firms are Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year. FreedomWorks is chaired by former Rep. Dick Armey, former Republican House Majority Leader and notorious Bush-supporter. A memo was leaked to the press on the “best practices” to “rock” town hall meetings. The memo was written by Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots. He wrote “We here in Fairfield County Connecticut conducted an action at Congressman Jim Hime’s Town Hall meeting in May 2009. We believe there are some best practices which emerged from the event and our experience, which could be useful to activists in just about any district where their Congressperson has supported the socialist agenda of the Democrat leadership in Washington.” (Emphasis added).

MacGuffie goes on to list such best practices as “artificially inflate your numbers,” “be disruptive early” and “often and try to rattle him, not have an intelligent debate.”

Think Progress says “The memo above also resembles the talking points being distributed by FreedomWorks for pushing an anti-health reform assault all summer. Patients United, a front group maintained by Americans for Prosperity, is currently busing people all over the country for more protests against Democratic members. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the NRCC, has endorsed the strategy, telling the Politico the days of civil town halls are now ‘over.’”

Apparently the only way they can win is by shouting, heckling and violence. Sounds more borderline fascist than promoting democracy.

Besides sending in storm troopers for Big Insurance to town hall meetings, other reports of using fraudulent letters from organizations like the NAACP and a Virginia-based Latino group Creciendo Juntos have emerged. According to Grist, 12 members of Congress have reported receiving forged letters opposing the climate bill. A coalition with the paradoxical name “American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity” said it had hired Bonner & Associates to do “outreach” on the climate issue.

Bonner & Associates promotes itself as a builder of grassroots campaigns. Some of the forged letters were traced back to a Bonner employee. Groups like Sierra Club and MoveOn are calling for a Department of Justice investigation into the fraud.

Not to be outdone on the anti-government bandwagon, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced in June I would “develop a sweeping national advocacy campaign encompassing advertising, education, political activities, new media and grassroots organizing to defend and advance America’s free enterprise values in the face of rapid government growth and attacks by anti-business activists.”

Targeting “union leaders, environmentalists and a growing force of anti-business activists” the Chamber’s president, Thomas Donohue, said these constituents are “pushing governments at all levels” to among other things “lock down capital markets, expand entitlements and raise taxes.”

The Chamber of Commerce has also helped to create a faux-grassroots campaign against a legislative priority of labor’s, the Employee Free Choice Act. Their fear? A more organized and united multi-racial working class, their free ride will start costing them some of their billions in profit.

It’s clear the ultra-right cabals – from fringe elements to those who enjoy holding the levers of economic power – are united in their efforts to thwart the Obama administration’s mandate and agenda from the American people. Worried about the seismic shift taking place in the American political landscape, these groups and interests are working on all levels to reverse this shift. Reports show the nation has shifted from “center-right” to “center-left” nation on issues like health care.

The economic meltdown from September 2008 rocked the nation’s confidence in capitalism, too. After 30 years of ultra right “trickle down” policies – meaning tax breaks to the super rich and everyone else gets “trickled on” – which has created the largest wealth gap in our nation’s history, the tide has shifted to the election of Barack Obama – and an era of reform. An April Rasmussen poll said that 47 percent of Americans either favored socialism over capitalism or weren’t sure which was better.

These shifts are real among the American people. Not the trumped up politics played on Astroturf.

Health insurance companies send me birthday greetings so why I am nervous?

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:07:00 +0000

I'm turning 65 soon and the only people who have sent me birthday greetings so far are private, for-profit health insurance companies.

While I have yet to receive a single card from any friend or family member, I did get nice letters from Humana, AARP, HAP, CIGNA, Wisconsin Physicians Service (who?), United of Omaha Life Insurance (what are these guys doing selling health insurance anyway?), Bankers Life and Casualty (same goes with these guys) and a guy named Keith.

Some of these companies have even sent me more than one greeting. If they do that to everybody turning 65, it could get expensive. To tell you the truth, these mailings were more on the order of business solicitations than birthday greetings. They all wanted to sell me supplemental insurance to cover what Medicare doesn't.

In the first mailing I got from Humana, they said, “This birthday is a special milestone.” They said it was time for me to make an important decision about my future health coverage! (The exclamation point is theirs, not mine.)

I guess out of concern for what I might “miss out” on, my concerned friends at Humana wrote me again. This time they said my 65th birthday “brings a special opportunity.” With HumanaChoice PPO (“preferred provider organization”), I will get “the peace of mind I deserve.”

Definitely agreeing with that, I looked up Humana's ratings in my latest Consumer Reports magazine. It turns out that while Humana is great at sending out multiple birthday greetings, they ain't so hot when it comes to “choice of doctors” and “billing.” In those categories, Humana was rated Worse Than Average. Overall, this insurance giant came in 35th out of 41 rated PPOs. That certainly didn't give me any peace of mind.

Actually, there seemed to be a trend emerging. Those health insurance companies who send out the most birthday greetings did the poorest in the Consumer Reports ratings. For the record, the insurance company that AARP fronts for — UnitedHealthCare — came in 39th out of 41. Just thought, you'd like to know.

To their credit, though, AARP did have the sexiest mailing of them all. Lots of happy, smiling, good-looking, and healthy old people. The big print was nice and very important for us progressive lens-ers. And charts. Wow. One of them even explained all about the three AARP options for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program that turned out to be a huge boondoggle for the pharmaceutical companies and a budget buster for seniors who fell into that famous donut hole.

So there are the AARP Saver, Preferred and Enhanced plans. AARP says you can “choose the plan that best fits your needs.” The problem is they don't tell what you should do if the plan that best fits your needs is the one you can least afford.

So the free market scores huge points for sending out the most and fanciest birthday greetings when Americans turn 65. For the record, I should mention that the government program — Medicare — only bothered to send me one letter. And that just said, “Welcome to Medicare.” I wished my great-grandson could have gotten a letter like that when he was born, though.

The booklet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent out wasn't all that fancy, but it was very informative and easy reading. And I'm not just talking about the print size. I was able to figure out in no time exactly what my benefits were going to be.

And while the free market is a pretty good when it comes to sheer volume of mail (and TV commercials and magazine advertisements and billboard signs and radio spots), that can't do much for saving money for using it where it really counts — namely, providing health care services. You know what they say: there ain't no such thing as a free mailing.

The small print made me kinda nervous, too. Like on the front cover of the Humana letter it says I will have the “freedom to choose any doctor, specialist or hospital with no referral required.”

But if you bring the other side of the letter closer to the light and squint a bit, you will read that “sometimes the selection of in-network providers is limited in certain geographic areas or in some specialties. If the network in your area doesn't offer the specialist you need, you MAY (my emphasis, not Humana's) be allowed to go to non-network provider at the in-network rate.”

Smells like they left themselves an out, just in case they might need one. Ya think?

On the other hand, the government-sponsored “Medicare and You” booklet, probably written by some pointy-headed bureaucrat, says in very plain English on page 45, “You can go to any doctor, supplier, hospital, or other facility that is enrolled in Medicare and is accepting new Medicare patients.”

I think that's what even John McCain might call straight talk, with no small print and no legal traps to catch you with.

Now I understand why so many conservatives out there don't want “government” messing with their Medicare.

So if government can do the job for us seniors, just maybe it can do the same for everybody else. Who not give it a try, eh?

What's the worst that can happen? You won't get as much mail as you used to? Hell, I can live with that.