People Before Profit blog

Unjust, unfair and un-American

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 04:41:00 +0000

Fight erupts to defend kids from Bush budget cuts

WASHINGTON — “Unjust, unfair and un-American.” That’s how the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) describes President George W. Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget.

“It provides the wealthiest Americans with more money, while cutting programs that provide critical services for our most vulnerable children.”

Avram Goldstein, CDF media spokesman, told the World that CDF President Marian Wright Edelman is spearheading a nationwide fight to block the cuts. “Our effort is both national and regional,” he said. “We are going state by state.”

Even with funding at current levels, he said, many federal programs are reaching only a fraction of eligible children. “These budget cuts will force even more reductions. Put it together with billions in tax cuts that benefit only a small percentage of wealthy taxpayers and it adds up to an unjust and immoral budget.”

Edelman spoke to thousands of children’s advocates during a “Leave No Child Behind” teleconference Feb. 16. “If there was ever a time to stand up, speak out and act courageously to defend our children from fear and want, this is it,” she said. “The very future and soul of America is at stake.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said Bush’s budget tells hard-hit working families “you’re on your own” in the name of an “ownership society.” The proposed budget, he charged, “slashes programs that help workers build a future for their children and prepare themselves for changes in the workplace. … The ones most affected by his irresponsible budget policies are the most vulnerable — the unemployed, elderly and children.”

Bush’s permanent tax cuts for the rich will “add $10 trillion to the deficit over the next 20 years,” Sweeney added. And over the next 75 years the tax cuts are three times greater than the claimed shortfall in Social Security.

Bush’s elimination of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) “will have a devastating economic impact on local communities,” leaders of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) said in a joint statement with the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties.

USCM President Don Plusquellic, mayor of Akron, Ohio, debunked Bush’s sleight-of-hand in hiding the termination of CDBG by “consolidating” it with 17 other programs in the high-sounding “Strengthening America’s Communities Grant Program.”

“This new proposal is totally unacceptable and we are extremely disappointed that this tactic is being used as an excuse to eliminate CDBG and cut much-needed resources to local communities,” Plusquellic said.

Ohio’s mayors, both Democrats and Republicans, have united to fight the cuts. Toledo Mayor Jack Ford said his city receives $8.5 million each year in CDBG grants.

“Wiping that out would dramatically delay or end the rebuilding of inner-city housing. By ending community block grants, you’ll be accelerating the decline of urban America.”

Under Bush’s new budget, Ohio would receive $264 million less under the “No Child Left Behind” law for the Title I reading program. It would put Ohio 41st in the nation for allocation of funds to help elementary pupils learn to read.

Bridgette Beeler, a junior high math teacher, told the Toledo Blade that Bush’s cuts in education funding would mean 83,000 children across the state would get no help in learning to read. She also decried Bush’s proposal to slash by $36 million funds for Ohio after-school programs, depriving 36,000 children of a safe place to go after school.

“Fight Crime: Invest in Kids,” a nationwide coalition of police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors, also blasted the cuts in after-school programs. Ingham County, Mich., Sheriff Gene Wrigglesworth, a member of the group, said, “If Congress and the president can find $80 billion for the war in Iraq, basically at the stroke of a pen, it seems to me that they can find a few measly millions of dollars to make this program viable.”

The CDF released a statement, “Choose to Stand for Justice for Children and the Poor,” which charges that millionaires will receive an average tax cut of $136,298, or a combined total of $22 billion a year, when Bush’s tax cuts are fully implemented.

“That would be enough to fund 735,738 child care places for children of working parents … health insurance for 3,130,515 uninsured children … Head Start for 641,092 poor preschool children … full immunization for 6,797,143 un-immunized infants and children … 144,709 new elementary school teachers,” the statement charged.

On the other hand, Bush’s cuts mean that 300,000 children of working-poor parents will lose child care. As many as 300,000 will lose food stamps and 25,000 poor children will no longer be enrolled in Head Start.

Iowa Farmers Union President Chris Petersen blasted Bush for proposing $2.5 billion in cuts in farm programs on top of the $15 billion in underfunding for the 2002 Farm Bill since it was enacted.

“We have a lot of problems in rural America today,” he said. “These cuts will … put still more small- and medium-sized family farmers out of business.”

Howard Bateson, an Ohio grain farmer, who voted for Bush, said, “We wouldn’t call it a double-cross … but I don’t think this [budget] is going to sit real well.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.comclick here for Spanish text

Red states feeling blue over attack on Social Security

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 05:32:00 +0000

When President Bush took his scheme to privatize Social Security on the road last week he came face to face with “red state” reality.

“The president is trying to destroy the social safety net of our society and the people will not allow that to happen,” said Mark Froemke, a Minnesota AFL-CIO vice president, as he marched in Fargo, N.D., with hundreds of workers, active and retired, clergy and students Feb. 3. The demonstration was aimed at Bush, who was in Fargo for a town hall meeting to sell his privatization plan.

“The weather gods must support Social Security and smiled on us,” chuckled Froemke, who lives an hour or two north in Grand Forks. “It was a positive 41 degrees, sun shining, instead of the 43 below zero and windy that it was a week ago.”

But the union leader cautioned that the fight to stop Bush is for “all the marbles.”

“This administration is out to take it all: pensions, health care and decent wages,” Froemke said. “Not one inch on Social Security! That’s the AFL-CIO slogan and it says it all. This is life-and-death.”

From Fargo, Bush flew to the state capital, Bismarck. There, 60 union leaders from around the state, in town for their legislative conference, protested the president’s scheme on the Capitol steps.

Although 66 percent of North Dakotans voted for Bush, a recent poll by the AARP indicates that support for privatization is shaky at best. One in four North Dakotans receives a check from Social Security each month.

“Most North Dakotans aren’t buying into the idea of private Social Security accounts, even with a special visit by the president,” said Janis Cheney, North Dakota AARP spokeswoman.

“When presented with the potential consequences of creating private accounts, up to 75 percent of North Dakotans have serious concerns about the cuts to Social Security benefits that could result and about the new federal debt caused by diverting money from Social Security to create private accounts,” she said.

“It’s important to realize Social Security is not in immediate danger of going broke and can pay full benefits through 2042. Once privatization is off the table, AARP is committed to finding ways to be certain Social Security is solvent for future generations.”

Billings, Mont., was the next stop for the presi-dent’s road show. The state’s senior senator, Democrat Max Baucus, is up for re-election in 2006. Baucus, who voted with Bush on the 2001 tax cut and the sweeping overhaul of Medicare, held his own town meeting to condemn the president’s plan this time.

“All this talk you hear about private accounts,” Baucus told a standing-room-only crowd, “it really has nothing to do with the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. In fact, it makes the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund much worse — much, much worse.”

MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, aired television commercials throughout the state during Bush’s visit, warning that privatization would reduce Social Security benefits and force people into “working retirement.”

When Bush got off the plane Feb. 4 in Tampa, Fla., the final stop of his sales tour, trade unionists and consumer groups met him with a mile-long protest march. Florida leaders estimate that $32 billion in Social Security benefits are spent each year in the Sunshine State. About 3.3 million Floridians cash a Social Security check each month.

“The president is creating a crisis that doesn’t exist,” said Phillip Compton of the Florida Consumer Action Network, “just like with the weapons of mass destruction and the invasion of Iraq. It’s the same strategy to sell the privatization of Social Security.”

U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, a Democrat representing Tampa, said the phones have been ringing off the hook in his office. With the hype surrounding the president’s visit, residents are frightened and confused, the congressman said.

Davis criticized Bush for creating a crisis atmosphere, instead of addressing the long-term reforms required to maintain the country’s most successful retirement safety net.

“This is not about salesmanship,” he said. “It is about statesmanship.”

dwinebr696@aol.com

Bush budget assailed as war on people

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 05:28:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Outraged protests greeted President George W. Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget proposal, with many calling it a fraudulent, radical plan to starve spending on human needs while lavishing billions on the “greedy.”

The 2006 budget Bush sent to Capitol Hill Feb. 7 ratchets up military spending 5 percent, to $419 billion from $400 billion in the current budget. The new figure does not include funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush is requesting an off-budget $81 billion supplement to pay for those adventures, which have already cost $151 billion. Also not included is the cost of Bush’s Social Security privatization plan, estimated to add $2 trillion to the budget deficit over the next 10 years and $6 trillion over the next 20 years if it passes.

On the other hand, spending for health, schools, food stamps, veterans and a sweeping range of other domestic programs, now at $392 billion, would be slashed $3 billion and frozen for four years.

Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, accused Bush of a long-term agenda aimed at terminating domestic programs under the ultra-right slogan “starve the beast,” even as the number of poor and unemployed people dependent on programs like food stamps and Medicaid soars above 50 million.

“Total it all together and it leads over time to a radical shrinkage of the domestic side of the budget,” Greenstein told a Feb. 8 telephone news conference. In the weeks before this budget was unveiled, “we heard more expressions of concern about these cutbacks than we have heard in a couple of decades,” he said. “People were anticipating the cuts.”

Thomas H. Corey, president of Vietnam Veterans of America, accused Bush of waging “a budget war on America’s veterans.”

“With American soldiers deployed across the globe, the administration has uttered platitudes about our brave young men and women on the front lines of freedom,” the veterans leader said. “However, this grossly inadequate budget shows that [administration officials] do not understand our nation’s obligation to care for veterans.”

He was referring to a new $250 enrollment fee that 1 million veterans will be forced to pay to obtain health care from the Veterans Administration (VA). Also, co-pays levied on veterans have been doubled. “The increases in co-payments and the user fee are designed to drive veterans away from the VA,” Corey said. “We believe this budget will constrict veterans benefits. … The president is mistaken if he believes 58 percent of veterans voted for the Bush-Cheney ticket last year to give his administration a mandate to cut funds for veterans.”

Medicaid is another federal health program viciously slashed by $45 billion over the coming decade even as the ranks of the medically uninsured soar toward 50 million. Children would be among the hardest hit. “The food stamp cut would terminate food stamp aid for 200,000 to 300,000 low-income people, most of whom are members of low-income working families with children,” Greenstein charged. “The budget proposes new tax cuts … that will reduce revenues by almost $130 billion over five years and $1.4 trillion over 10 years.” These tax giveaways benefit only the top one percent of taxpayers.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said Bush is seeking to perpetuate “a hoax, pulling a bait and switch. … It’s a budget that rewards the greedy and cuts the needy. It is geared toward making the original tax cuts for the rich permanent and increasing military spending while cutting health programs for poor people and veterans and trimming spending on the environment and education.”

Danielle Ewen, senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, charged that cuts in federal child assistance would mean 300,000 fewer children served over the next five years. “Hundreds of thousands of parents across the United States are working hard but not making enough to fully pay for the child care they need to keep their jobs,” she said. “These working parents should be supported, not penalized.”

Ewen told the World, “It’s pretty clear that the Bush administration’s budget priorities are to protect the tax cuts that benefit a very small number of people, not the programs that benefit everyone and strengthen our country such as child care, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, education, housing and the environment. Virtually everyone in our country is being touched by these budget cuts. They are trying to balance the budget on the backs of everyone who will be hurt be these cuts.”

She urged unity to fight the cutbacks, warning, “One of their strategies will be to pit the advocates for low-income people against each other” with the line, “cut their benefits, not ours.”

Peace Action and United For Peace and Justice organized a “call-in” to Congress Feb. 9 urging lawmakers to reject Bush’s $81 billion supplemental war funding request, with the message, “Not one more dime should go to the war in Iraq.” Scott Lynch, Peace Action communications director, said, “The Bush defense budget is heading toward $500 billion. It is a sham in that it contains no money for the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. What they are doing is hiding the cost of these wars from the American people. It is more dishonesty from this administration. Every dollar spent over there is as dollar taken away from our domestic needs.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.comclick here for Spanish text

Underground Railroad

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 07:57:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS — The history of slavery and racism is a horrible, shameful part of American history. It is a scar on the face of the ideals that our democratic nation holds dear.

Before the Civil War, millions of men, women and children of African descent were held in legal bondage. As slaves, they were denied the most basic of human rights. They were whipped, raped, separated from their families, forced to work horrendous hours, always fearful of being sold to another, more brutal master. Or they were simply killed by their owners.

Many slaves, in an effort to free themselves and their families, escaped to the North. Nearly 100,000 slaves made their way to freedom through the Underground Railroad. Notable former slaves like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass helped fugitive slaves find freedom. Their history, the history of slavery, racism, the struggle against it, and the history of the Underground Railroad, are important parts of our nation’s heritage.

Underground Railroad site

It is no secret that abolitionists worked in Missouri, a slave state before the Civil War. In fact, St. Louis has a dynamic history of abolitionist activity. People like Rev. Elijah Lovejoy, a pastor whose church was a stop on the Underground Railroad, are an integral part of our history. Unfortunately, certain parts of that history are in danger of being forgotten.

At 3314-16 Lemp Ave., just south of Lemp and Utah, on St. Louis’ southwest side, sits an old one-room brick house. It is boarded up and in need of stabilization. From the street, it looks like any number of old, boarded-up brick homes, but many people in the community believe it, and the empty lots surrounding it, were a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The Lemp Ave. structure dates back to at least the 1850s. German immigrants, possibly abolitionists, owned the property. Germans were very active in the abolitionist movement of the time. But given the nature of the Underground Railroad — a network of loosely linked, secret safe houses and abolitionists, who illegally guided slaves to free states or Canada — it is difficult to find evidence directly identifying this as an Underground Railroad stop.

In 1999, St. Louis Gateway Magnet High School teacher Chip Clatto began an archeological dig at the Lemp Ave. site. Clatto said the excavation was “very successful.” The archeologist and his students found three artifacts of possible African origin: a hand-carved elephant bone, a cowry shell and a bone bracelet. They also found a small aqua bottle with the words “MAW & Son,” dating to the mid-1800s.

In addition, they found, under a layer of bricks and limestone, a clear medicine bottle with small animal bones surrounding it.

According to Clatto, this is a “possible indication of an African or Voudun ritual or possible ‘folk magic,’” indicating an African American presence.

The dig also turned up many other artifacts of lesser importance. However, it was unable to find a suspected underground passage to the Missouri Cherokee Caves, a network of caves where several “entrances and exits” to the Underground Railroad have been documented. At least one entrance to the Cherokee Caves was near the Mississippi River, just across from Illinois, a free state, and just miles from the Lemp site.

Clatto’s further archeological digs had been thwarted. The house that stood at 3314 Lemp was demolished by the city of St. Louis in 1999, even though permission had been granted to continue further investigation on the site. In 2001 the archeologist and his students had to cancel their dig prematurely due to a lack of funding.

In Clatto’s summary report, he wrote, “There is no doubt that further excavation is needed ... this site has opened up an incredible glimpse back into the life of South St. Louisians, particularly those of both German and African heritage.”

For three years, the dig could not resume. The site sat vacant, deteriorating more as time passed. Under mounting pressure from St. Louis city officials and the local business community, in December 2004, Ward 9 Alderman Ken Ortmann (the Lemp Ave. property is in Ward 9) and the Benton Park Community Development Corporation (CDC) began the process of hearing bid proposals on the Lemp Ave. site. The bids indicated a desire by site developers to have 3314-16 Lemp developed as private, high-cost condominium housing units, with prices ranging from $350,000 to $450,000 per unit.

Take back St. Louis

After the CDC announcement, Ward 9 residents knew more bid proposals would be heard at the January CDC meeting. With little time to spare, they formed a grassroots community organization called Take Back St. Louis, a coalition of religious, trade union, gay and lesbian and political leaders. The coalition’s immediate goal was to encourage Ortmann and the CDC to have the site developed as a historic site.

“While a direct connection to the Underground Railroad remains unclear, several scenarios provide us with an opportunity to bring important elements of our history together,” said Mark Sarich, director of the Lemp Neighborhood Community Arts Center.

“The possible collaboration of German immigrants and African Americans in the struggle to abolish slavery is clearly an heroic act and should be reserved.”

In just a few days, Take Back St. Louis mobilized a network of volunteers who collected petition signatures from the ward’s residents, calling on Ortmann to support development of the site as a public, historic site.

Take Back printed educational literature, informing the community of the possible historical significance of the site and that private, expensive condominium housing units would add insult to injury by denying the African American community its heritage and further gentrifying the community, pushing people of color and working class people out.

“3314 Lemp is a part of our shared, common history, and should continue to be owned by the public, not sold to private, for-profit condominium developers,” said Glenn Burleigh, Take Back’s volunteer coordinator.

“In a racially divided city like St. Louis, this site should stand as a lesson from the past — a lesson that shows us the way to a future based on unity and justice, not division and inequity.”

Over a three-week period, Take Back volunteers collected nearly 800 signatures. The coalition hoped not only to educate and mobilize resident support for the campaign, but also to send a clear message to Ortmann, who is running for re-election this year. Historically, around 1,000 people vote in off-year elections in Ward 9. That Take Back was able to sign up nearly 800 registered voters is clear indication of community support.

Take Back made the campaign public just one week after volunteers started door knocking. By the end of the week, all of St. Louis’ major newspapers had contacted coalition leaders and expressed interest in running articles on the issue. By the middle of the second week, a public access TV show and a Fox News affiliate invited members of Take Back to speak about the coalition and their efforts to preserve the site. Also, hundreds of Ward 9 and St. Louis-area residents called the alderman’s office and home, expressing their concern about this issue.

According to Ortmann, the CDC’s main concern was that the site might become a public health and safety issue. To answer Ortmann’s concerns, Take Back proposed a 90-day plan to stabilize the structure. First, they asked for 30 days to contact contractors and get estimates on stabilizing the structure. Second, they asked for an additional 60 days to begin soliciting funds to pay a contractor to stabilize the structure, and to start that work. Take Back made clear that all contract work done on the site would be done by union laborers, some of whom have already volunteered their time to the project. While all proposals to develop 3314-16 Lemp into private, high-cost condominium housing units were denied, both of Take Back’s proposals were accepted.

“This is a wonderful turn of events. Take Back has selected the Benton Park area as a community project designed to draw together people from all walks of life, people of all races, genders and sexual orientations,” said Sarich, who is also a member of the Benton Park CDC. “I am certain that the amount of cooperation shown by the alderman and the CDC was greatly enhanced by Take Back’s participation.”

As a grassroots, community-labor coalition, Take Back was able to mobilize Ward 9 residents, attract significant media attention, turn the site into a citywide concern, involve trade unions and present a solid plan with timelines included.

Conclusion

The fate of 3314-16 Lemp remains undetermined. With the renewed attention that the site has received, hopefully archeologists and historians will once again seek ways to investigate it further and ascertain its specific historical significance. Take Back St. Louis would like to see future archeological digs take place so that the history of this site can become the property of all of St. Louis.

While a lot of work remains to be done, Take Back St. Louis, through its coalition efforts, has insured that this site will continue to get the attention it deserves.

For more info: www.digstlouis.com/discover.htm