People Before Profit blog

Qu le pas a Juan Torres?

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:36:00 +0000

El soldado del Ejército Juan Torres tenía toda su vida por adelante. Con 25 años de edad, Torres (conocido como John a su familia y amistades) se graduó en contabilidad de la Universidad de Houston y un buen trabajo cuando regresara a Houston. Tenía ahorros en el banco y estaba planeando su boda con Elizabeth Wise.

Torres estaba por terminar sus ochos años en la reserva y servicio activo militar. Él sirvió en Kosovo y Hungría. Recibió cuatro medallas. Estaba en buena salud. No fumaba ni usaba drogas. Él tenía una relación calurosa con su familia y muchos amigos.

El 12 de julio – a solo semanas antes de regresar, después de pasar un año en Afganistán – encontraron a Torres muerto en una ducha/letrina de la base aérea Bagram. La causa de muerte un tiro que él se metió en la cabeza con un rifle – o por lo menos, eso es lo que dice el Ejército.

Su familia y novia dicen que él nunca se hubiera quitado la vida. Y varios soldados que sirvieron con él en Bagram le dijeron a la familia que el Ejército no está diciendo la verdad. La familia tiene preguntas y el Ejército no las está proveiendo.

El padre de Torres, también llamado Juan, es un trabajador de hotel que vino aquí desde Argentina hace 26 años. Él vive en una casa modesta cerca de Chicago. Él participa en las manifestaciones contra la guerra con una foto de su hijo buen mozo, con la esperanza de llamar la atención a su caso.

Torres acababa de volver de una manifestación en la toma de poder del presidente cuando Nuestro Mundo lo entrevistó en su casa el 23 de enero. Con una voz ronca, cansado por su largo viaje desde Washington, y la agitación con la cual ha vivido desde la muerte de su hijo, Torres habló de las muchas cuestiones que perturban a él y su familia.

Él había hablado con su hijo solo uno o dos días ante de la muerte de John. “Papi, estoy tan contento – Saldré de aquí en unas semanas”, nos dijo Torres. “Él me dijo ‘Papi, hay tantas drogas aquí. Yo le digo a la gente ‘no usen drogas’”.

Torres dijo que ellos hablaron de la boda de John y Elizabeth en Las Vegas el próximo agosto, y los planes de la familia para visitar a Argentina. John también llamó a su madre y novia el día ante de su muerte, con entusiasmo por su pronto regreso.

Torres recibe una llamada de su hija en Houston el 13 de julio. “Ella me dijo, ‘Papi, Papi, algo pasó. John está muerto’. El Ejército no dijo que pasó. Yo no sabía si fuera los talibanes o qué. Fui a Houston para el funeral”.

El Pentágono al principio dijo que John murió de “heridas no relacionadas con el combate”, y no reveló ningunos detalles a la familia. No fue hasta que Torres consiguió la ayuda del congresista demócrata por Illinois Rahm Emanuel que la familia por fin obtuvo el reporte de la autopsia del Ejército. El reporte dijo que la muerte fue un suicidio y que encontraron una nota en el lugar de muerte. El Ejército dijo que se estaba quedando con la nota, y la arma envuelta, durante la investigación.

Verónica Santiago, la hermana de John, dijo que portavoces del Ejército habían insinuado a ella y su madre que la nota indicaba que Elizabeth quería romper su noviazgo. Pero Wise dice que ella nunca dijo ni escribió semejante cosa.

Wise está en su tercer año estudiando contabilidad en la Universidad Estatal Sam Houston. Los dos se conocieron cuando trabajaban junto en la tienda Marshall’s. Ellos estaban hablando de casarse por “casi un año”, Wise le dio a Nuestro Mundo en una entrevista telefónica. “No nos queríamos casar simplemente porque él se iba”.

Ella dijo que la mera idea de una nota como esa la pondría loca. “Hacía tiempo que yo no le había escrito por correo electrónico porque hablamos todos los día – la única vez que no hablamos era si yo trabajaba doble turno”, dijo Wise. Precisamente el día ante de la muerte de John, ella dijo, ellos discutieron sus planes de alquilar un apartamento al norte de Houston mientras ella terminaba con sus estudios. En el funeral de John, su capitana le dijo a Wise que ella bromeaba con John sobre sus planes de escoger los anillos de matrimonio. “Ella le dijo a él que la dejara escoger los anillos”, dijo Wise.

John era “una de las personas más compasivas, cariñosa y bondadosa que yo he conocido”, ella dijo. Él había pasado por el suicidio de un amigo y la angustia que eso deja y le había dicho a ella, “Eso es la cosa más egoista que una persona puede hacer”.

Verónica Santiago le dijo a Nuestro Mundo que, en el funeral el 20 de julio en Houston, la capitana, que era una de las comandantes de su hermano en Bagram, “me abrazó y me dijo, ‘Verdaderamente lo siento. No crea lo que te está diciendo el Ejército’”. Un mes después Santiago recibió una llamada de la capitana. Ella le dijo a Santiago que ella tenía documentos importantes de la División de Investigaciones Criminales (DIC) y que “va ser algo grande”. Santiago dijo, “Ella decía otra y otra vez”. La capitana le dijo a la madre de Torres que ella iba escribir una carta larga sobre el caso, pero hasta la fecha la familia no ha oído nada más de ella.

Otra soldada le dijo a la familia que las drogas estaban dondequiera en Bagram y que ella misma había usado drogas allá. De acuerdo a Santiago, la soldada dijo que ella había visto drogas venderse en un cuarto en la base, con mucha cantidad de dinero y drogas en una mesa. La soldada cree que Torres tenía que haber visto de cual no estaba de acuerdo y que pagó poor eso con su vida. Santiago dijo que su hermano era el tipo de persona que habla cuando ve algo que no le gusta. “Conociéndolo a él, él se lo hubiese dicho a alguien ...”

Después, dijo Santiago, la soldada le dijo a la familia que ella no quería estar envuelta en sus esfuerzos por sacar a la luz pública de la muerte porque tenía miedo de meterse en problemas. Después un periodista de otra publicación encontró su teléfono desconectado.

Afganistán está inundado con opio y heroína, su derivado. Desde la invasión estadounidense en octubre del 2001, el comercio en drogas ha aumentado dramáticamente. Un artículo en la revista Time cita a un diplomático en Kabul que dice, “Sin dinero de las drogas, los jefe de bandas armadas amistosos no pudieran pagarle a sus milicias. Es tan simple como eso”.

La posibilidad de problemas de drogas en Bagram fue discutido por el periodista Seymour Hersh en su artículo del 12 de abril 2004 en la revista The New Yorker. Hersh escribió, “Desde el otoño de 2002, un número de oficiales activos y jubilados militares y de la CIA me han dicho de los creciente informes de uso de heroína por personal militar norteamericano en Afganistán ...”. Un “ex oficial alto de inteligencia” le dijo a Hersh que el problema estaba centralizado entre las unidades logísticas y de provisiones en Bagram. El liderazgo alto del Pentágono tiene una actitud de virar los ojos dijo el oficial a Hersh. “No hay ningún deseo de sacarlo a la luz” y hacer cumplir con las regulaciones dijo el oficial.

Tod Ensign de grupo Soldado Ciudadano le dijo a Nuestro Mundo, “El odia la apariencia de que hay uso de drogas. Un comandante hará todo lo posible para no tener un escándalo en su base – es algo que destruye carreras”.

El personal de la DIC del Ejército en tales sitios tienen un conflicto de interés, dijo Ensign, porque uno de sus tareas es “hacer que el comandante se vea bien”. Él dijo que los DIC son conocidos entre abogados por sus “métodos chapuceros”. “Yo no confiaría cualquier cosa que ellos hagan”, dijo Ensign. “Ellos pueden querer encubrir o puede que usen medidas draconianas para borrar [un problema]”.

Frustrado con la falta de cooperación e información del Ejército, Juan Torres también se puso en contacto con el senador Dick Durbin de Illinois el pasado otoño. Durbin y el congresista Emanuel le pidieron al inspector general del Pentágono que investigue.

Respondiendo a estas peticiones, el noviembre pasado, la oficina del inspector general dijeron que estaban investigando. Eso fue lo último que oyó la familia.

Portavoces para Emanuel y Durbin dijeron esta semana que todavía estaban esperando las conclusiones del Pentágono. No quisieron comentar más que eso sobre el caso.

Gary Comerford, vocero para el inspector general del Pentágono, confirmó la semana pasada que habían recibido una carta de Durbin y estaban “actualmente trabajando con eso”, pero que “ni confirmarían, ni negarían” la existencia de una investigación.

Tod Ensign señala que, en el campo, los inspectores se reportan a los comandantes de las unidades que tienen un interés directo en los resultados de las investigaciones. Estos tiene un conflicto de interés, dijo Ensign. Además, la mayoría de los congresistas defieren a los militares y parecen tener miedo desafiarlos, él dijo. Él agregó que sin una investigación externa independiente “tu nunca te vas a sentir con confianza”.

En diciembre 2004, un oficial de asistencia a familias por bajas del Ejército en Illinois, asignado a trabajar con Juan Torres, escribió un resumen de las “circunstancias raras” sobre la muerte del joven Torres. Él lo envió electrónicamente a la división de inspectores generales de la 85ta División “respetuosamente pedir asistencia si hay algo que se pueda hacer dentro” de los inspectores generales.

Entre los 16 puntos sospechosos en el resumen del oficial estaban: Soldados que temían por sus vidas si hablaban de la muerte de John. Un soldado dijo que vio a Torres entrar a la ducha con una toalla pero sin arma. Algunos dijeron que todavía estaban esperando que los entrevistaran sobre la muerte. Testigos dijeron que fueron ordenados a quemar mucha de las pertenencias personales de él. Soldados dijeron que el rifle de John fue entregado al Fuerte Hood en Tejas, en vez de quedarse en Bagram para la investigación. Otros soldados dijeron que la verdad se estaba encubriendo y la DIC estaba envuelta.

Singin the blues: Black artists deserve their due

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:12:00 +0000

In 1964 the Beatles took America by storm on the basis of some catchy original songs and a scattering of ’50s rock and roll retreads like “Matchbox.”

In quick succession they were followed by bands like the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin. What would become known as the “British Invasion” changed the face of American — and world — pop music forever.

What got lost between the lines was that Black American blues fueled the white “British Invasion.”

“Matchbox” is a good case in point, because the Fab Four said they learned it off the 1957 dance album by rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins. Perkins readily admitted, “I just speeded up some of the slow blues licks” for his seminal rock guitar style. He is also given writer’s credit for “Matchbox,” which was written and recorded by blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1927.

The Rolling Stones took their name from a song by blues icon Muddy Waters and patterned themselves after the Waters band. Many of their “original” hits were direct lifts from older blues recordings.

“Whole Lotta Love,” Led Zeppelin’s only Top 10 single, was a close copy of an earlier song by blues man Willie Dixon. Dixon heard the song 15 years later, sued and won a rare settlement.

Many British rock bands did wholesale appropriations of blues compositions, arrangements, lyrics, bass lines, and guitar solos, and directly mimicked vocal styles and intonations much like their white counterparts in the 19th century minstrel shows.

All of a sudden, the rock world was awash with English, Scottish and Irish singers who sounded like Ray Charles, Sonny Boy Williamson and Elmore James.

However, it’s a misrepresentation of the truth to point a disapproving finger overseas. The Brit rockers were only following a long-time American musical tradition of white-owned recording and publishing companies appropriating African American blues for popular and lucrative use in the entertainment world.

The blues can rightfully be called the fountainhead of 20th century pop music, out of which flowed jazz, swing, bop, rock, and — yes — country and western. It was born in Africa, nourished in the wretchedness of slavery and raised in the cauldron of segregation. It is a unique music of an oppressed people, unique because of its honesty, dignity and defiance, and its ultimate 12-bar truth.

The blues is also unique because none of its creators reaped any of the incredible financial payoffs it generated. From the beginning, wads of money flowed not to the community from which the blues emerged, but to the looters who ran away with it.

Muddy Waters wrote famously that “blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll,” but blues also had two older children named jazz and country music.

The extraordinary relationship of blues and jazz has been the subject of many worthy dissertations. The fact that American country music has always been one of the most financially rewarding arenas for blues-based music is not very well known.

Jimmie Rodgers is known as the “Father of Country Music,” but this title is based not only on his incredible impact on generations of performers but also on his sales of millions of blues-laced records of the late 1920s, like “Muleskinner Blues” and “Blue Yodel #2.”

How did the white Rodgers, whose musical tradition comprised modal jigs and reels, morph into a blues lyricist and singer? Easy: when he was not working on the railroad as a young man, he worked in blackface and minstrel shows with Frank Stokes, a Black singer from whom Rodgers is thought to have acquired much of his song repertoire.

However, Stokes’ name does not appear on any of the multitude of copyrighted songs claimed by Rodgers, nor did Stokes share in the recording and publishing windfall.

Bluegrass is regarded as Bill Monroe’s creation, but Dennis Deasy, the late San Francisco musicologist, argued that all Monroe did was inject the blues scale and 12-bar format into Scots-Irish hoe-down music. He believed that it should more rightfully be called “Bluesgrass.” It is also worth noting that the featured instrument in bluegrass, the banjo, came from Africa.

Sometimes the thievery is so outrageous that it boggles the mind. Leon McAuliffe was the signature steel guitar player of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and his trademark tune was “Steel Guitar Rag.” McAuliffe claimed authorship — and, of course, the royalties — for “Steel Guitar Rag.” The truth is that he stole it from “Guitar Rag,” a 1923 recording by Black blues guitarist Sylvester Weaver. In fact, it has been recently established that playing a stringed instrument by sliding a piece of steel on it can be traced to Central and West Africa. Like the banjo, African slaves brought the concept of playing steel to America.

In the early 1950s, Sam Phillips, the genius behind genre-bending Sun Records, reportedly said, “If I could only find a white boy who could sing like a Negro, I could make a million dollars.” Ultimately, he found that boy, who began cutting blues sides written by Big Boy Crudup, Roy Brown, Little Junior Parker, and Kokomo Arnold. That white boy’s name was Elvis Presley.

These are just a few examples of the extent of the cultural theft of African American music. The beat goes on with continuing CD sales, blues festivals, documentaries, and even a sizeable Internet market of instruction videos like “How To Play Guitar Like Blind Blake.”

The money made on record sales alone is formidable. The record company makes money; the publishing company makes money; the recording artist and the songwriter get royalties. Then there are further royalties for performances, radio play, and usage in film and television.

The corporate recording and publishing share of music income is the lion’s share of a very expensive pie, amounting to billions of dollars in rock and roll alone. Blues had a very fat baby, but the African American mother community only received a pittance — if anything — in return.

Blind Lemon died on a street in a snowstorm in segregated Chicago. It was regarded as such an inconsequential event that no death certificate was issued. Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues,” was buried in an unmarked grave. Her recording contract had a “no royalties” clause.

Many other blues geniuses died in Jim Crow poverty and illness. Leroy Carr was barely 30 when he died of alcoholism. As late as 1960, Jesse Belvin, a young rhythm and blues artist, was killed in a suspicious car crash after performing the first integrated concert in Little Rock, Ark. Earlier in the evening, white supremacists had repeatedly disrupted the show.

This is not to say that white musicians didn’t suffer similar fates as a result of corporate exploitation, but the exploitation of the white musicians was not a result of the color of their skin.

The blues was stolen from the Black community simply because the white musical power structure had the ability to do it. It was not given away for free and billions of dollars were made on the blues. It is time for the music industry to pay the bill.

Don Santina is a cultural historian who writes on film, sports and music.

The NED: advance guard for corporate globalism

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:42:00 +0000

OPINIONS

The National Endowment for Democracy has little to do with promoting fair elections, representative government, or any of the ideals and institutions one would normally associate with democracy. What the NED promotes is corporate globalism. In fact, its main political agenda is the derailment of people’s democracy whenever it is in conflict with commercial interests. Thus, the NED represents the political advance guard of neo-liberalism.

The National Endowment for Democracy was created by an act of Congress in 1983, a brainchild of the Reagan administration. Its primary source of funding is U.S. taxes. Nevertheless, the NED is officially designated as a private institution — a non-governmental organization. As such, it is not subject to meaningful public oversight or review. This seems to be intentional. Allen Weinstein, the NED’s theoretical planner, noted in a 1991 Washington Post interview, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

If there are any doubts about the NED’s role in advancing U.S. domination, consider the following statements by Michael Plattner, an NED vice-president and co-editor of the Journal for Democracy:

“Globalization has fostered democratization, and democratization has fostered globalization. Moreover, both trends generally have furthered American interests and contributed to the strengthening of American power ... It is worth emphasizing that the international order that sustains globalization is underpinned by American military predominance.”

Fortunately, the NED and neo-liberalism do not function free of resistance. A top priority among labor unions is the struggle for democratic rights, and, conversely, against corporate globalism. Certainly, in the United States, organized labor constitutes the best organized, most prominent, and most responsive voice speaking for all working persons.

However, on an international level, the situation becomes murkier. For many years, the AFL-CIO provided cover for CIA operations abroad through the old American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD).

The election of John Sweeney, in 1995, as head of the AFL-CIO, was part of a rank-and-file effort to further democratize the organization, and also represented a break with its longstanding CIA collaboration. This reaction against labor’s covert history and the AIFLD led to the creation of the Solidarity Center. Unfortunately, the Solidarity Center is being led by Harry Kamberis, who is a holdover from the AIFLD. Kamberis’ roots are in the State Department, rather than in labor, and his employment history indicates a strong connection with the CIA.

NED allotments provide most funding for the Solidarity Center, which actually receives almost no funding from union dues. In fact, very few union members have been aware of the activities of the Solidarity Center, at least until recently.

Solidarity Center activities in Venezuela have prompted a rank-and-file reaction against NED funding of the center. Many union sisters and brothers were incensed to learn of Solidarity Center aid to those attempting to derail democracy in Venezuela, including support for corrupt union officials and elements involved in the April 2002 coup attempt.

A tremendous movement has arisen among the rank and file that questions acceptance of NED monies and demands accountability from the Solidarity Center. This movement had its largest success in the unanimous approval of the Building Unity and Trust Among Workers Worldwide resolution, July 13, 2004, by the California Labor Federation. This resolution strongly questioned acceptance of NED funding, especially in Venezuela and also in Iraq. The resolution further called on the AFL-CIO to “clear the air” regarding its past associations with the CIA and anti-democratic activities around the world.

Nowhere has the struggle for democracy and the fightback against the NED been as strong or inspiring as among those movements in Latin America most targeted by the NED and other components of neo-liberal expansionism.

A new vision is emerging in Latin America that is inspiring the world with its strength and vitality. It is a vision of real democracy, social justice, anti-imperialism, national sovereignty, community-based development, and international solidarity. It is a vision that challenges the U.S. corporate lust for natural resources, and rejects the rampant privatization that is undermining national sovereignty and the people’s right to make democratic decisions regarding resource development.

As people who cherish democracy and its corollaries of human rights, economic justice, and respect for the land and its resources, we have no choice but to condemn NED interference. The NED is a political trailblazer for neo-liberalism, and thus, for neo-colonialism. For that reason, proponents of real democracy, who love peace and justice, must work together to demand the defunding and the closing of the NED.

We must not, however, think that if we get rid of or bring major changes to the NED, we have achieved our goal. The NED is but one player in the subversion of democracy in service to corporate expansionism.

Our struggle is one of internationalism versus globalism, of people’s democracy versus elitism. Around the world, and here at home, our goal is the same: government by the people, for the people, and of the people — no more, no less.

James Jordan (turnwind_az@yahoo.com) is coordinator of the Latin America Solidarity Coalition’s working group on the NED.

Tort reform means victims cant sue

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:37:00 +0000

OPINIONS

Corporate lobbyists have invented another new “crisis.” It’s called “lawsuit abuse,” a big money effort to call attention to the “frivolous lawsuit crisis.”

If you don’t know what a “frivolous” lawsuit is, think of the suit against the tobacco industry. Because of this lawsuit, the industry had to pay billions of dollars in damages. The suit showed that the industry deliberately concealed information on the dangers of smoking, in the hope of getting another generation of children addicted to its cigarettes.

Another “frivolous” lawsuit may force the asbestos industry to pay billions of dollars to workers who developed lung disease or died of exposure to asbestos. Lawsuits have proven that the industry concealed evidence of the dangers of asbestos from its workers for decades. Asbestos manufacturers were concerned that it would be hard to find workers if they knew that the job might kill them.

A third type of “frivolous” lawsuit stems from situations like Love Canal, where a whole community found it was raising its children in toxic waste produced by area industries. Many of these children were born with birth defects, or developed neurological or muscle disorders that prevented them from living normal lives. “Frivolous” lawsuits threaten to make such polluters compensate their victims.

These lawsuits — and the wrongs that they address — don’t sound frivolous to most people. But make no mistake; lawsuits like these are the target of “tort reform” and the various efforts to reign in “frivolous lawsuits.”

Of course, the corporate lobbyists don’t talk about lung cancer, birth defects and asbestosis when they discuss frivolous lawsuits. They refer to a few real or invented examples (yes, lobbyists make things up — that’s what they get paid to do) of ridiculous lawsuits. They tell the public that these ridiculous lawsuits drive up the cost of insurance, bankrupt honest businesses, and throw millions out of work.

While there are some ridiculous suits, they are generally dismissed quickly. Every day, judges throw out hundreds of lawsuits before they ever get near a jury. It takes a lot of time and money for victims of corporate wrongdoing to get their case to trial. The overwhelming majority of lawsuits never get that far, and almost none of the lobbyists’ poster-child silly suits will ever be heard by a jury.

But, the “crisis” remains. The corporations are concerned that the deck is not stacked sufficiently in their favor. After all, they spend billions buying politicians so that laws on dumping toxic waste, pollution, or workplace safety are weak or go unenforced. This investment will be wasted if victims of corporate wrongdoing can still turn around and get justice through the courts.

To cut off this avenue, the corporate lobbyists want to put up a new set of roadblocks designed to keep victims from ever getting their day in court. These efforts focus on “trial lawyers” because it sounds better to beat up on trial lawyers than the people who have been injured or killed because of corporate misconduct. The tort reforms they propose are designed to make it more difficult to hire a lawyer to go up against a big corporation.

For example, some measures limit the fees that trial lawyers can collect, even when they win a case. (Ever hear of Republicans wanting to limit how much people can earn?) They also want to make it easier to fine lawyers when they bring an unsuccessful suit. (How about fining corporations for bringing up unsuccessful delaying tactics?) The list goes on, but the point should be clear — “tort reform” is about denying people their day in court. And the corporations know that if you can’t get a lawyer, you won’t get to court.

It’s that simple.

Dean Baker is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, www.cepr.org. This article was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.

Stop CAFTA, the latest corporate-led trade deal

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:33:00 +0000

OPINIONS

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) involves the United States along with six other countries and is the latest corporate-led trade deal promoted by the U.S. government. Congress is expected to vote on CAFTA this spring.

The U.S. government utilizes powerful financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank and global trade treaties like NAFTA and CAFTA to help multinational corporations gain more control of human and natural resources across the world and outsource more jobs from the United States.

Trade agreements like CAFTA encourage U.S. corporations to move production anywhere in the world — where wages are lowest, environmental regulations aren’t enforced, and practices such as child labor and prison labor are tolerated. As if it’s not bad enough that our jobs often get moved to these countries, our tax dollars also pay for the U.S. military to help foreign governments repress workers.

The U.S. government funds foreign militaries and police forces, U.S. weapon-makers supply them, and the U.S. military trains them in harsh command and control tactics at places like the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga. The result is repression of community organizers, militarization of their society, and more control of resources by the rich and powerful of this world.

Colombia is one of the worst examples. They have plenty of oil and large U.S.-based multinationals in Colombia, which should help explain things. The worldwide total of murdered union leaders for 2003 was reported to be 123, three-quarters of them in Colombia. The U.S. government funds these Colombia military/paramilitary forces via legislation called Plan Colombia. See www.killercoke.org to learn more about what union leaders face at a U.S.-based multinational corporation operating in Colombia.

It is in the interest of every American worker to see conditions improve for workers everywhere. Higher wages, human/labor rights, and the right to organize for economic justice everywhere in the world will reduce the corporate agenda of pitting workers against each other. It will also reduce the need for working families to migrate elsewhere to provide the basics for their children.

The U.S. military/economic strategies haven’t changed much in the last 100 years. Major Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, wrote in 1933, “...I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Please contact your U.S. congressional representative to request that they oppose CAFTA and Plan Colombia. For additional information about CAFTA, see www.citizenstrade.org. For alternative economic models on global trade, see www.art-us.org. Look up your members of Congress at www.congress.org.

Todd Erickson is active with the Communications Workers of America Local 7200, Veterans for Peace and the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. This article is reprinted from WorkdayMinnesota.org.

Regaining my humanity

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:26:00 +0000

OPINIONS

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors — the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.

And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren’t helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn’t want us there. We weren’t preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn’t find a single good reason for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, I did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me — they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price humanity has paid for war.

Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don’t believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up to the government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.

I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me.

One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.

Camilo Mejia spent more than seven years in the military including eight months in Iraq. Home on leave, he applied for conscientious objector status. Instead he was convicted of desertion for refusing to return to Iraq, and sentenced to one year in jail. He was released from prison Feb. 15.

EDITORIALS

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:42:00 +0000

Glad-handing is not enough

Grinning and glad-handing every prime minister who crossed his path, President George W. Bush crisscrossed Europe last week, seeking to repair U.S.-European relations wrecked by his pre-emptive war on Iraq.

The president was greeted politely but he came away mostly empty-handed. Bush urged NATO forces to help train Iraqi security forces. France agreed to provide exactly one officer based in Brussels, not Iraq. Germany agreed to send a team to the United Arab Emirates to train Iraqi officers. Belgium offered to send 10 instructors to the UAE to teach Iraqis how to drive military vehicles.

Bush wanted to let bygones be bygones, citing the recent Iraqi elections as proof that his war policy is working. But the steady rise in the level of violence in Iraq suggests that the glow of that election is fading fast.

Bush claimed that his differences with Europe are over, in the past, and a new era of cooperation is dawning. But that ignores a tilt in the balance of forces against the U.S. that has been gathering now for over a decade. Despite military supremacy, the U.S. is losing ground to the European Union in economic and political clout, symbolized by the sharp decline in the value of the dollar against the euro.

Meanwhile, pre-emptive war in pursuit of a “new American century” has made Bush the object of growing worldwide revulsion. The overwhelming peace sentiment throughout the continent is driving Europe and its elected leaders to spurn Bush’s appeals to bail him out of his Iraq quagmire.

During the Cold War, European countries were forced into the role of junior partner of U.S. imperialism. That era is long gone.

Europeans demonstrated in Brussels with signs that proclaimed, “Bush: Number One Terrorist” and “Yankee Go Home.” Over 12,000 demonstrators — twice the number originally expected — marched against Bush’s war and occupation of Iraq in the German city of Mainz on Feb. 23, and thousands more rallied in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Berlin and Kassel under the banner, “You’re not welcome, Mr. Bush.”

The task for us here at home is to force Bush to end the war and bring the troops home.

* * * * * *

The Simpsons animate debate

One would hardly believe that last weekend’s most potent televised political discourse was carried out by animated characters. The much-hyped episode of “The Simpsons” — in which the fictional town of Springfield legalizes gay marriage in hopes of bringing in tourist money while also striking “a blow for civil rights” — is a clear sign that gay marriage, and the debate around it, has become part of mainstream American life.

Airing on Fox, a network known for both trashy programming and right-wing politics, the episode was prefaced with a warning that the subject matter might warrant parental discretion. However, what was more warranted, and what seems to be the end result, is a new opening for discussion on the topic of same-sex marriage.

“The Simpsons” episode came less than a month after President Bush’s new education secretary, Margaret Spellings, challenged PBS over an episode of the animated children’s show “Postcards from Buster” featuring a lesbian couple in Vermont. Though that show’s topic was actually farm life and maple sugaring, PBS pulled it, with only a few local affiliates choosing to air it sometime later in the spring.

The broadcast of this “Simpsons” episode was a positive step in portraying diversity. It was not an unabashed celebration of gay marriage, as some critics have indicated. Rather, it showed the many sides of the debate. In the show, the church refused to perform the same-sex marriages, some citizens protested, and the “coming out” of a family member was tackled within the Simpson family itself. The show even took humorous aim at claims that same-sex marriage is a slippery slope to allowing people to marry things, with the sea captain lining up to marry his ship’s figurehead “before she changes her mind.”

Overall, though, the episode brought to primetime television, in a humane and humorous way, the discussion and debate that continues across the country. The People’s Weekly World has been unambiguous in its support for the right of persons of the same sex to marry. State and federal laws should be amended to allow such unions.

Battle over tsunami relief: Indian women challenge systemic inequality

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:36:00 +0000

TAMIL NADU, India — “The sea was like boiling milk. But after the first wave, it was like boiling milk with rice in it, from the sediment the sea churned up,” said the man from the fishing community of Nalla Thanni Odai in North Chennai, India.

Over 8,400 people perished here in the days following the Dec. 26 tsunami.

Three weeks after the tsunami hit, I visited relief camps and localities in the midst of damage assessment and reconstruction with a national women’s organization, the All India Democratic Women’s Association. AIDWA has over 450,000 members in the state of Tamil Nadu alone, so their active involvement in reconstruction work after the tsunami was immediate and coordinated across the coastal region of the state.

The central office of AIDWA arranged for me to join members from their North Chennai group in their relief work on Jan. 15, the last day of Pongal, a harvest festival in Tamil Nadu. During Pongal, rice is boiled in milk until it overflows to symbolize hopes for a year of plenty.

Persisting trauma

Another villager said, “We are not afraid of storms, we have been out fishing in all kinds of weather. But now even the smallest wave wakes us up and disturbs our sleep. We think another tsunami is coming.”

These stories of trauma, loss and dispossession fill the media. People, organizations and nations around the world have found ways to join in the relief effort, by giving time, money and resources towards aid and reconstruction. But the media is also filled with stories of damages that continue to be wrought on displaced people: rapes of women in relief camps in Sri Lanka, dispossession of property in Indonesia, post-traumatic stress, and aid never reaching people most in need.

Unfair distribution of aid

This last issue is usually framed as a problem of “corruption” by greedy government officials or networks of people, rather than as a problem of the unfair distribution of aid. Corruption is rarely if ever discussed as an issue with specific consequences for women.

Only three days before I met with women in Tamil Nadu, the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations and the Indonesian government held a daylong seminar on corruption in Aceh, Indonesia, one of the areas most devastated by the tsunami. Rehabilitation and reconstruction aid, participants said, more than emergency relief, are particularly vulnerable to corruption.

But even with these nuances, “corruption” obscures as it minimizes the problem of people’s exclusion from relief programs. “Corruption” also frames the potential solutions as top-down and bureaucratic, rather than led by the people most affected by the lack of resources.

Women face special challenges

“Distribution is a real problem,” U. Vasuki, the general secretary of AIDWA in Tamil Nadu, told me bluntly before we left AIDWA’s office in central Chennai. “In the villages and areas where we [AIDWA members] concentrate our relief work, we are trying to bring the government relief in an orderly way to reach everyone.”

That afternoon we experienced the inequities that mark poor women’s lives, even without a tragedy like this one. We heard about the protest over government relief distribution after meeting women from three fishing communities. In these three communities of North Chennai, we discussed women’s demand that the national bank forgive their self-help loans. In another area, we learned about the fight for government aid to reconstruct a women-run dried fish business.

Nearby, we witnessed the recent fire that demolished their damaged homes, and some speculated whether the fire was an attempt by the government to relocate the inhabitants for good and appropriate the land to build a bridge. While these communities had not lost lives, everyone faced extensive property damage and loss.

Their demands for compensation and relief from the government mirrored these devastations. Outside of the fish market, even those boat owners with working boats in the harbor were refusing to take their boats into the sea. They struck in solidarity with boat owners whose damaged boats were not insured through the government insurance program. They argued that the government should compensate even those people who had not paid the insurance premium, since for the last year diesel prices had risen so steeply that many boat owners could not meet both the costs of fuel and insurance.

Confronting a local official

We began to move toward an adjacent locality called Didirnagar, a neighborhood that lost many lives as well as homes and livelihood. As we walked, North Chennai AIDWA members Mohanasudari, Mary, Saroja and Lakshmi, who all wore AIDWA badges on their saris, showed me a government coupon for a “second phase” of relief in RK Nagar, a locality five minutes north of the fish market.

The coupon, redeemable for a large vessel to store drinking water and other household goods, was not going to women from the locality, but reportedly to members of the ruling government party, AIADMK, in areas that were not affected by the tsunami. Even those women who had a relief coupon found it was not being honored. Women from RK Nagar planned an action that day at the local AIADMK party secretary’s office where relief distribution was coordinated. The women would confront the local party secretary about his mismanagement and favoritism.

We reached the street outside the party secretary’s office. Many women sat on the road blocking traffic, a “road roko,” while uniformed police milled around. Since AIDWA had been active in the locality since the tsunami struck, women staging the protest gathered around us to explain their grievances.

“When we went to Nagalingam [the local AIADMK secretary], we asked him why he did not give us our relief goods, and why they were going to AIADMK members instead. He said, ‘Because I’m having sex with them. If you people come to me every day, keep your legs open, then I will dump the materials.’”

Vasuki listened to the anger, hurt and frustration of the women and began to speak with the police and the local officials about Nagalingam’s aggressive sexual slurs against the women and his refusal to distribute aid equitably. The voices of the men rose with a blind fury, while Vasuki remained calm and persistent. Other groups of women (members of AIADMK) who had received government relief joined the fray of accusations and denials.

The confrontation escalates

Buses and cars began to line up on both sides of the women blockading the road, and the police demanded that the women rise and the crowd move. They warned the women they could be arrested for disturbing the peace, but the women did not relent. They wanted Nagalingam to apologize for his sexualized verbal assault against them.

The assistant police commissioner urged the buses forward to drive over us as we blocked the street. The women did not move, but continued to demand an apology. “Let them fight each other!” he said of the angry debates surging through the crowd. The assistant commissioner did little, however, when the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) entered the crowd with his supporters. As the hefty men pushed, yelled obscenities and threatened the protesting women, the police merely watched.

The MLA had no apologies for the local secretary’s words or his actions, but blamed AIDWA for inciting the crowd. He left with vague promises to investigate what happened.

After the MLA left, many women began to disperse. AIDWA lodged a complaint with the deputy commissioner of police against Nagalingam and the assistant police commissioner. When they filed the complaint, the deputy commissioner offered to apologize for police rudeness, but did not mention restitution of relief materials for the women from RK Nagar.

A commitment to reach everyone

AIDWA filed the case and the struggle continues for fair distribution of materials, loans, future livelihood means, and funds. Vasuki characterized the relief work of AIDWA as only in part a role of collecting and distributing aid, rebuilding people’s communities and trades for survival, and those many other important tasks reported by the media. She had early described their central mission, “to bring the government relief in an orderly way to reach everyone.”

The organization’s support for women’s struggles to rightfully receive government relief, not on the basis of “benevolence” of the state but as a matter of their rights to livelihood, as in the case of RK Nagar, is critical to that goal.

To call the women’s fight for aid in RK Nagar simply a fight against “corruption” shifts the systemic problem of unequal distribution of resources to one of regional government mismanagement or individual failing. Natural disasters, like the tsunami, make these inequities particularly visible, since victims have such palpable and immediate needs for aid. But the unequal distribution of wealth and resources transcends the sudden devastation of an earthquake.

Different concepts of accountability

Our answers to corruption usually require greater policing and monitoring of relief donations and largely ignore these structural inequities. “Accountability” in this framework means solutions like greater “transparency” of funds dispersal, and “tracking” of government, UN and aid agency spending. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the U.S.-based accounting firm, is presently working with the UN to create an Internet-based tracking system for relief funds, so donors can rest assured their money is well-spent.

Notably, in this discussion, accountability does not refer to ensuring the government’s increased accountability to the citizens they represent, but to the donors who give them aid. Corruption does not define the problems for women and their families in RK Nagar; instead discriminatory and unfair distribution of resources more accurately describes their struggle. The local party secretary and the area’s MLA are guilty of misrepresenting their constituents when they divert aid to their supporters, away from families in need.

In contrast to efforts to streamline surveillance of relief funds from above, groups like AIDWA organize for government accountability to the public, and work to make women’s demands heard. From extensive discussions with women in villages across the coastline of Tamil Nadu, AIDWA has framed a list of demands.

AIDWA’s special demands

The first demand regards distribution: “Relief materials should be distributed in a fair manner.” In this context, special attention is to be given to women’s issues. AIDWA demands that relief programs should recognize those subsidiary fishing industries with large numbers of women workers, such as collecting shells, fish trading and fish selling. They also support relief for women’s agricultural livelihood, such as rice paddies destroyed by seawater flooding. AIDWA also pressures the government to write off self-help loans, often given to women.

Their charter of demands suggests better policies around the form of relief given; whenever possible, relief in kind, rather than money, should be distributed. When money is distributed, AIDWA argues, women in a family should be the recipients of the funds. In addition, AIDWA voiced women’s demand to close the state’s government-run liquor shops for one month to ensure relief money is not spent on alcohol. Whether organizing in a time of relative scarcity or plenty, AIDWA, like many other groups who envision better futures, supports a more just distribution of our resources. Whether working to alleviate sudden devastation or to enable daily survival, AIDWA relies on building the same strength, the collective power of women to win their equality.

Elisabeth Armstrong teaches women’s studies at Smith College. She is working on a book about AIDWA.

Free or low cost tax filing for union members

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:26:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Tax filing for union members is free if your adjusted gross income is under $28,500 with the new Union Plus online tax service. For other union members, the service costs $21.95 — half the cost of Quicken’s Turbo-Tax computer program or of (nonunion) H&R Block.

The service, launched Jan. 17, is easy to use. Log on to www.unionplus.org, answer some simple questions posed by the program, enter the information requested, and relax. The program does the math, even checking for errors.

Unlike other computer tax programs, Union Plus says it bans come-ons and pop-up ads. Refunds are deposited, usually within two weeks, directly into your checking or savings accounts. Also unlike many other tax preparers, Union Plus charges no high-cost “rapid refund” service fees.

Bush shows arrogance, deceit on Blacks and Social Security

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:22:00 +0000

Desperate to turn Social Security into an entitlement program for corporations, President Bush and his right-wing cronies have been making ever more wild and bizarre statements in the face of massive opposition. Bush recently stated that “African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair.” This jumble of logic was supposed to convert millions of African Americans into supporters of social security for financial corporations.

Time to take a big breath, exhale slowly, and look closely at a critical aspect of this extraordinarily duplicitous comment. It is true that African American males die earlier than white males. From the Bush point of view, the logical question that follows is, “How can we capitalize on this fact and turn it to our advantage?” From our point of view, the critical question is, “What is the reason for this inequity?” The ironic answer is that African American males continue to suffer from a shorter lifespan in large part because of what Bush and his right-wing corporate cabal have “accomplished” in the last couple of decades:

• The Bush administration has consistently pushed for weaker standards for the cleanliness and safety of air and water. In light of the fact that low-income minorities tend to live in or near industrial areas, this has resulted in an assault on the health of African Americans and other minorities who are more likely to have low incomes.

• The Bush administration has supported tax breaks and other incentives that have encourage the growth of for-profit hospitals, and at the same time starved support for public hospitals in urban and rural areas. As a result, public hospitals that used to serve low-income urban and rural minorities have closed, leaving in their place for-profit hospitals which reduce community services, and discourage use by those without private health insurance.

• The Bush administration has diverted the nation’s collective wealth to tax breaks for the rich, and imperialist wars around the world. This diversion of hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel, results in massive cuts to important Medicare, Medicaid, and programs that provide low-cost housing for low-income families. The relationship between good housing and good health is widely understood.

• The Bush administration has led an assault on affirmative action, which has deprived African Americans and other minorities from getting higher education, and entering the health professions in adequate numbers. Minority health providers are more likely to stay in their own communities and provide health care in underserved areas, to low-income people.

• The Bush administration has proposed changes in health care financing in the United States, such as health savings accounts (HSAs), which would provide unparalleled tax breaks for the rich, and at the same time result in a more rapid decline of accessibility of health care for working families. At the same time, Bush and his drug and hospital industry allies fight to keep a national health program completely off the radar. This is an extraordinary accomplishment since most of the rest of the industrialized world has publicly operated health care systems that serve all the people.

• The Bush administration, and corporate profiteers before him, have viciously fought against job safety and health improvements for decades. African Americans (and other minorities) tend to work in the most dangerous jobs. Consequently, African American and other minority workers are killed, poisoned, and injured on the job more often than their white, non-Hispanic coworkers.

The Bush administration’s record of helping African American males, minorities in general, and low- and middle-income families is deplorable. Attempting to turn the deadly consequences of his negligence to his advantage is despicable.

Longshore union honors struggle against apartheid

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:14:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — Local 10 members and friends jammed the Henry Schmidt room at the union hall Dec. 3 to remember the union’s historic struggle against racism in South Africa.

Workers refuse to handle cargo

Twenty years before, the Nedlloyd vessel Kimberly remained tied to Pier 80 in San Francisco for 10 days while rank-and-file longshore workers refused to discharge its South African cargo. At that time, the white minority government of South Africa maintained a vicious system of racial separation called apartheid.

Each crew dispatched refused to work the vessel. Word spread along the coast, and the growing movement against South Africa’s racism took heart from the actions of the workers.

Across the bay, students at the University of California-Berkeley occupied the steps of the administration building the next spring and built a shanty town, which they occupied until they were brutally removed by the campus police. ILWU international officers Jimmy Herman, Rudy Rubio and Curtis McClain attended their rallies. Even former ILWU President Harry Bridges came out of retirement to join the demonstration. The students demanded the university rid itself of investments in companies that made profit off the institutional racism.

“Local 10’s struggle against apartheid began in 1958 with Bill Chester, later international vice president, and at that time regional director,” Local 10 retiree Leo Robinson, a veteran of the boycott, told the gathering. “He belonged to the United Negro Congress, a Black workers’ organization, and raised the question of apartheid, the first time it appeared in the records of the ILWU.”

Robinson and former Local 10 member Larry Wright (now in bosses’ Local 91) and others formed an education committee in 1976 to explain apartheid to the members.

Wright and Longshore Local 19’s Bill Procter, Clerk’s Local 34’s Eddie Gutierrez and Local 10 retirees Herb Mills and Howard Keylor and other veterans attended the celebration. Local 10 BA Jack Heyman chaired the event. Members attending got their books stamped for education credit.

Boycott call, 1962

The union’s history against apartheid goes back deep and wide. The Longshore Caucus called for a boycott of South Africa in 1962 and in December of that year. Local 10 members refused to cross an NAACP picket line protesting apartheid cargo on the Dutch ship Raki. Two years later the union opposed political trials of Black South African dockers. The ILWU’s International Convention in 1973 called for strict economic sanctions on South Africa to “take the profit out of racism and the employment of slave labor.”

In January 1977 the hapless Kimberly experienced her first trouble when she arrived in San Francisco with South African cargo. “There was a picket line thrown up around Pier 27 on Easter Sunday, and we didn’t work it,” Robinson told the gathering. “Five thousand people from the community showed up so we stood down on health and safety.”

Harry Bridges speaks

Harry Bridges’ “On the Beam” column in the June 25, 1976, Dispatcher said it all: “For years, all Americans with a shred of decency have understood that the situation — in which a tiny minority of white settlers completely control the destiny of millions of Blacks, totally excluding them from power — could not go on forever even though the whites had created what seemed to be a foolproof police state.

“But everyone knows that it is bound to fall. … The only question, really, was would the white South Africans have the good sense to give up gracefully in order to minimize bloodshed.”

Mandela made honorary member

Cracks began appearing in the apartheid system in the late ’80s. Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for 27 years, was released February 1989. One of the first things he did was thank the ILWU, and he became an honorary member of Local 10 in June 1990. He was elected South African president in 1994. Apartheid was abolished.

Reprinted with permission from The ILWU Dispatcher.

Want to strengthen Social Security? Provide good jobs for youth!

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:07:00 +0000

King George II says he truly wants to strengthen Social Security. So do we! To us, strengthening Social Security means raising not only the benefits, but also the economic security and living standards of retired and disabled people. The productive capacity to do so already exists — one-third of U.S. productive capacity is currently sitting idle for lack of paying demand.

In the interest of reframing the debate constructively, we would like to propose a novel approach to strengthening Social Security: good jobs for everyone, including good jobs for all youth. Our calculations are that this would fund increased Social Security benefits for several centuries.

There are thousands of unmet needs, from food and health care to housing, schools, roads and bridges, to childcare and eldercare. Youth have plenty of great contributions to make on all these needs. Programs of public works are needed to address all of these needs; their total cost would be less than the interest on war expenditures alone.

The King is reportedly worried sick that the ratio of employed workers to retirees is declining. Good jobs for everyone would solve his worry in a hurry. Consider, for example, that the King’s own Department of Labor reports that 63 percent of the 16.3 million people ages 16 to 19 in the U.S. do not currently have paying jobs; 78 percent of African Americans in this category do not have jobs. That’s a lot of potential Social Security levies that are not being collected!

Good jobs for all youth would yield other gains. For example, there are now over 12 million vacant homes and apartments in the U.S., by Census Bureau count. Vacant apartments means no rents are being paid; this can endanger the financial system. With good jobs, young people could afford the rent on their own apartments. And that, in turn, could also mean better sleep and better physical and mental health for parents, youth and ex-roommates alike.

In fact, we will be so bold as to call to strengthen real social security with good jobs for everyone. That means all African Americans, all Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiians, Native peoples, immigrants, people with disabilities — everyone. No more racism, no more last-hired, first-fired policies!

Public health experts have known for decades that physical and mental illnesses, disabilities and deaths rise inexorably with joblessness. Good jobs for all would cut disability rates, and thus further strengthen Social Security for another century or two.

So why hasn’t it entered the mind of King George that good jobs for all would also solve the pension “problem” he seems to be seeing? The fact is, it is beyond the power and interests of the King and the unjust, racist, sexist, crisis-ridden capitalist class that he serves, to achieve full employment.

As in the Great Depression, it is up to the Communist Party, the left, and the unions to take the leadership in the struggle against unemployment and for full employment, and genuine economic security and solidarity among young and old alike.

economics@cpusa.org

For a stronger labor movement: Half-price tools wont do the job

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:04:00 +0000

“Shit!” I hollered at the top of my lungs. When you work in a sewage treatment plant like I did, this four-letter word is not always a curse. In fact, some of my smart-aleck co-workers used to delight in grossing out high school students on field trips by declaring solemnly, “Shit is our bread and butter.”

But on this day, looking at my busted and bleeding knuckles, I said the word with its full weight as an angry expletive. My right hand had just crashed full force into a steel pipe when the socket wrench I was pushing on suddenly stripped out.

My co-worker Ralph looked at me without a hint of sympathy. “That’s what you get for buying that cheap-ass nonunion socket set, Roberta,” he said. Ralph was referring to my recent Kmart half-price-sale tool purchase.

I recalled that painful lesson this week when I read a report about a disturbing new proposal in the ongoing discussions about the future of our country’s labor movement. The new proposal would result in cutting the budget of the AFL-CIO almost in half. The AFL-CIO is funded by contributions from each of the 60 or so unions affiliated with it. The unions pay 61 cents per member per month to the federation. By pooling their resources this way, America’s organized working class has built a powerful organization capable of running the kind of massive political efforts which made it the backbone of last year’s historic voter education and mobilization actions. And this pooled power also gives it the potential to maximize the working class’s power in organizing drives.

A united federation of the nation’s unions is the most powerful tool we as the working class have in our toolbox. Buying a half-price version of this tool could result in disastrous consequences.

But the new proposal would cut the per capita contributions of individual unions in half, rebating the funds to each individual union to use in their own separate organizing campaigns. This, understandably, is a very enticing offer for organizations struggling to make their budgets stretch to match all of the demands on them in the current anti-worker environment.

But, if you ask me, while getting individual unions to spend more on organizing is a worthy goal, experience in recent years has shown that spending alone is not the determining factor in achieving organizing success. Indeed, it’s strategic outlook, coordination, and rank-and-file involvement along with financial commitment that lead to victory. It’s reasonable to ask how much of the rebated per capita will go into duplicated and even destructive union-versus-union turf battles. With a weakened central labor federation, what would happen to the emerging powerful political initiatives we saw go into action in 2004?

With all its room for improvement, it’s in a stronger, more united, more class-conscious AFL-CIO where the potential for solving labor’s problems lies. It’s more coordination, not less, more solidarity that’s needed, not less. That, coupled with mobilization of the rank and file, is what’s needed to take on the Bush corporate outrages.

Let’s not come up bloodied and bruised because we thought the way to get the job done was to buy cheaper tools.

rwood@pww.org

WORLD NOTES

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:59:00 +0000

Colombia: Thousands protest trade talks

Opponents of the proposed “free trade treaty” between the U.S., Colombia, Peru and Ecuador held a national day of protest Feb. 10 against the latest round of talks held Feb. 7-12 in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena.

Weekly News Update on the Americas said thousands of workers, campesinos, indigenous people and students marched in Cartagena. At least a thousand students and unionists braved riot police to march in Bogota, and other protests were held in Cali, Pereira, Medellin and other cities.

Meanwhile, the nearly 1,500 trade negotiators had problems of their own; by the final day, no agreement had been reached on any of the 23 areas discussed. The biggest sticking points were agricultural policy, because Andean farmers are concerned about competing against heavily subsidized U.S. agribusiness, and intellectual property, since the Andean countries worry they would lose their ability to produce generic medicines.

Canada: UFCW continues to back Wal-Mart workers

Wal-Mart’s chief executive sought last week to defend the company’s decision to close its store in Jonquiere, Quebec, after workers had voted to form a union. H. Lee Scott Jr. said the union’s demands would have forced an already unprofitable store to hire 30 more people and follow inefficient work rules. Scott said the company saw no advantage from the higher labor costs, and would not give in to the union to be “altruistic.”

UFCW-Canada’s National Director Michael Fraser responded with a pledge of continuing support to the Jonquiere workers.

“Wal-Mart, which now controls the working lives of 70,000 Canadians, made a business decision that the cost of disposing of 200 men and women in Jonquiere was a good long-term investment in creating fear in the rest of their employees across Canada and the U.S.,” Fraser said. “We will continue to be there for you as long as it takes until the wrong that Wal-Mart has done to you is made right.”

Fraser said the UFCW will file charges in Quebec for bargaining in bad faith, and will ask the Quebec Labor Relations Commission to force Wal-Mart to prove the Jonquiere store was losing money.

Mozambique: Refugees receive identity cards

The Mozambican government has begun issuing identification cards to refugees and asylum seekers, the Maputo daily Noticias reported Feb. 14.

Rosa Chissique, director of the National Institute for Assistance to Refugees (INAR), said the cards will allow refugees to look for work, go to school, open bank accounts, and rent housing. INAR estimates there are about 8,500 refugees in the country, mostly from the Great Lakes region including Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“I am happy,” Rwandan refugee Feliciano Nyaminani told reporters. “I came to Mozambique in 2002, but during all this time I could not work or open a bank account or send money to my country.” Nyaminani, who reached Mozambique after traveling through Congo and Malawi, said his six brothers were killed by the rebels in Rwanda, while his wife and two daughters were kidnapped. He said he hopes to return home some day.

Vietnam: Peace fund will take up Agent Orange

The Ho Chi Minh City Fund for Peace and Development, launched Feb. 15, is an avenue for local citizens to discuss and make proposals to municipal agencies on peace and development related issues, the Vietnam News Agency said last week.

This year the fund will focus on major issues such as mapping out an action plan to raise public awareness concerning the ongoing lawsuit of Agent Orange victims against several corporations that manufactured toxic chemicals sprayed on Vietnam during the war, and will mobilize financial resources for research and charity projects.

At the opening ceremony, former Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh, president of the Vietnam Fund for Peace and Development, said she hopes the fund will actively contribution to the country’s search for peace and sustainable development.

Nicaragua: Nicotex unionists rehired

On Feb. 7 management at the Nicotex plant in the northern community of Sebaco signed an agreement with the left-led Union Workers Federation-Jose Benito Escoba (CST-JBE, formerly the Sandinista Workers Federation) to rehire five union leaders it fired last November, the Campaign for Labor Rights said.

The agreement included compensation to the workers for back pay and damages, while the workers agreed to terminate judicial and administrative claims they had filed against the company. Both sides agreed to negotiate future problems.

Nicotex is a maquiladora (tax-exempt assembly plant producing mainly for export). Its biggest customer is the Montreal-based T-shirt manufacturer Gildan Activewear. Gildan has been the target of an international campaign by labor rights groups over Nicotex’ labor practices and over Gildan’s abrupt closing of its own plant in Honduras last fall, according to Weekly News Update on the Americas.

World Notes are compiled by Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel@pww.org). Julia Lutsky contributed to this week’s notes.

Togolese political crisis spurs regional concerns

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:52:00 +0000

The Togolese people are resisting an extra-constitutional power grab initiated by the son of the late president, Gen. Gnassingbe Eyadema, who died of a heart attack on Feb. 5 at the age of 69. Gnassingbe Eyadema led the Togolese Republic for 38 years, making him Africa’s longest ruling leader.

Despite a constitutional provision that says the speaker of the National Assembly is next in line to head the country, the president’s son, Faure Gnassingbe, seized power on the same day with the support of the military. The dominance of the Kabiye ethnic group within the military, the ancestral group of the late president, was regarded as a factor in the military’s decision.

The National Assembly hastily amended the constitution to allow Faure Gnassingbe’s accession to power, but several African leaders quickly condemned the action as unlawful. South African President Thabo Mbeki, for example, called these maneuvers “unconstitutional charade.”

The sub-regional Economic Community of West African States swiftly imposed sanctions on Togo, including suspension from its activities, the recall of ambassadors, an arms embargo and a travel ban on Togolese leaders. It demanded the immediate handover of power to the rightful successor, parliamentary speaker Fambare Natchaba Ouattaba.

The possibility of military intervention by Nigeria, whose leader, President Olusegun Obasanjo, is the current chairperson of the Africa Union, has not been ruled out.

In response to international pressure, including from the African Union’s peace and security council, Faure Gnassingbe announced that a presidential election would be held within 60 days. He has refused to step down in the interim, however.

A demonstration of nearly 10,000 angry citizens in Lome, the nation’s capital, on Feb. 19 reflected growing opposition to the power grab. A week earlier at least three demonstrators were killed in clashes with police. Union leaders have encouraged general strikes against the government, and protests show no sign of abating.

Since the former president’s demise, a media crackdown has occurred. Two television stations and seven privately owned radio stations have been closed. The organization that regulates national media, ART&P, abruptly stipulated that media outlets pay outstanding financial obligations or be shut down.

Togo is a country slightly smaller than West Virginia, situated in West Africa along the coast of Gulf of Guinea and sandwiched between Ghana and Benin. It stretches for 360 miles going north from the ocean and is only 100 miles across at its widest point.

About 21 ethnic groups comprise a total population of about 5.5 million people. The economy is mainly agricultural, with coffee, cocoa and cotton among its most important crops. Its biggest moneymaker is the mining and export of phosphates.

A French colony until its independence was granted in 1960, Togo remained closely aligned with France throughout Gnassingbe Eyadema’s four decades of rule. The French government often came to his defense when he was criticized in international forums for violating democratic and human rights, and the French military still has troops, air bases, and naval bases in the capital.

As in many other African nations, Togo’s people have suffered under economic austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. An estimated 70 percent of Togo’s population lives on less than a dollar a day. The average life expectancy is 53 years.

ronphillyjr@yahoo.com

Massive conference boosts world literacy drives

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:48:00 +0000

Cuba News

A conference titled “Pedagogy 2005” was held in Havana, Cuba, Jan. 31-Feb. 4, in conjunction with the first World Congress on Literacy. Over 5,400 people from 51 nations were on hand, 1,300 of them from Venezuela, to talk about educational goals and methodology for teaching millions of people how to read and write.

Most participants seemed to agree that the United Nations’ goal of eradicating illiteracy by 2015, first projected in the 1980s, would not be achieved.

Angel Guerra, a journalist associated with the Mexico City daily La Jornada, recently wrote that in Latin America and the Caribbean alone, 40 million people are completely illiterate, and another 40 million are functionally illiterate, unable to read, write or use math to perform basic survival functions.

Opening the congress, Luis Ignacio Gomez, Cuba’s education minister, predicted that over 800 million of the world’s people will still be illiterate by 2015. They could all become readers, he said, if the necessary money was budgeted to teach them. He estimated it would take $8 billion, the equivalent of four days’ worth of military spending in the world, to accomplish this task. The U.S. spends 56 times that amount every year on its military.

Participants in the congress took in 1,500 presentations, workshops, and special lectures, and they visited Cuban schools.

The meeting’s final declaration took note of the enormity of the world’s educational problems. It paid tribute to Jose Marti, the national hero of Cuban independence, and his concept of a continuum from literacy to cultural equality, resistance and social justice. The statement characterized education as the fundamental tool for social transformation.

The document noted that children’s learning begins early and is dependent on support and protection for families, and schools ought to serve as cultural centers in their communities. It called for respecting indigenous languages and histories.

Educational “nuts and bolts” were reviewed: reducing the number of students per teacher, providing extra resources for children with special health or social needs, and stepping up the quality and availability of schools for teenagers. According to Jose Marti’s teachings, education has to do with values and, as such, is good news for young people’s personality growth and their development of humanitarian ideals.

The final declaration also weighed in on the side of Latin American integration. Teachers throughout “Our America” — Marti’s words — were called upon to “struggle tirelessly for Latin American unity and peace everywhere.” The assumption is that people who are literate, cultured, and committed to the elimination of inequalities will be on the side of unity. It cited the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the cooperative trade agreement signed in mid-December by Venezuelan and Cuban leaders, as a harbinger of things to come.

Speakers praised Cuban methods for promoting literacy. These methods are now being applied, or are in the planning stages, in 19 countries, five of them in Latin America. Cuban assistance for Venezuela’s “Mission Robinson” has been instrumental in converting 1.3 million adult Venezuelans into readers. New Zealand educators have used the Cuban approach to enable many of the one in five New Zealanders who are illiterate to read.

Education minister Gomez suggested that Cuba’s methods for reaching the 2015 goals of universal literacy and primary education would be far less costly than those envisioned by UN agencies, which could cost $150 billion or more.

The fight for education looms large in Cuba’s so-called “Battle of Ideas.” Cuban President Fidel Castro has devoted much time and effort over many years to advocacy for the idea that culture and education are essential for fixing a world undone by greed and injustice. Castro attended the congress throughout, commented on the discussions, and made two presentations. The ability to read and write, he declared, is also a sure cure for political illiteracy.

Kyoto treaty, spurned by Bush, goes into effect

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:45:00 +0000

The Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, went into effect on Feb. 16 — without the participation of the United States, the world’s main greenhouse gas producer.

Greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide and other emissions from cars and industrial combustion — contribute to global warming. That process, scientists say, will have disastrous consequences, including droughts, flooding and destruction of highly populated coastal areas and island nations.

Levels of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming gas in our atmosphere, have increased by 30 percent in the past 100 years.

In a report released this January, the International Climate Change Task Force said, “Preventing dangerous climate change” from global warming “must be seen as a precondition for prosperity and a public good, like national security and public health.” The world must rein in global warming by the year 2100, the report warns, or it will cause “mass loss of life, the spread or exacerbation of diseases, dislocation of populations, geopolitical instability, and a pronounced decrease in the quality of life.”

Under the Kyoto treaty, developed nations agreed to reduce their annual greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below the 1990 level. The major stumbling block, environmental groups say, is the refusal of the U.S. to participate. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. emits a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases.

These gases coalesce in the upper levels of the atmosphere and act as a barrier, keeping in heat. This leads to warming of the earth’s atmosphere. The Bush administration claimed, when it pulled out of Kyoto negotiations in 2001, that global warming lacks scientific support, and that implementation would damage the U.S. economy. A few scientists, mainly with ties to greenhouse gas producing industries, agree with Bush. They claim that warming in recent years is due to such things as “natural” fluctuations in climate, or volcanic or solar activity.

Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California have utilized a new study method, involving the analysis of changing ocean temperatures to measure global warming. This method has provided “perhaps the most compelling evidence yet that [human-caused] global warming is happening right now,” says Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the institute. “The statistical significance of these results is far too strong to be merely dismissed and should wipe out much of the uncertainty about the reality of global warming.”

Many environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of working with fossil fuel corporations who will not tolerate giving up even a small portion of their mega-profits.

“The Bush administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in early 2001,” says the environmental organization Greenpeace. “With the active support (some would say under the instruction) of the American fossil fuel industry and its well-funded front groups, the U.S. government worked tirelessly to derail the treaty.”

Canada ratified the Kyoto treaty over the objections of Alberta, a province whose economy is heavily based on fossil fuels. Alberta’s premier argued that the treaty would ruin these industries and cause economic hardship for industrial workers. However, the costs are widely expected to be manageable. The treaty requires the cutback of greenhouse gases, not of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel corporations can simply employ cleaner methods of production and use of their products, with only a small rise in costs.

Rich George, CEO of Suncor, a Canadian energy company based heavily in fossil fuels, said that the costs of Kyoto were just “a small bump in the road.” British Petroleum has already reduced its emissions below the Canadian target, making an actual gain in its profits.

Even without the U.S. onboard, many environmentalists see Kyoto as a reason for “moderate celebration.” The treaty marks the first time an internationally coordinated group of nations has taken united action to reduce the amount of greenhouses gases emitted.

While the treaty focuses entirely on industrialized nations until 2012, there are post-2012 plans that would begin to rein in much smaller, but still substantial, emissions of greenhouse gases from lesser-developed nations.

China, the world’s most populous country, said in the state-run China Daily, “the Kyoto Protocol spotlighted environmental challenges we must meet. … China has a huge stake in keeping its growth momentum in a sustainable way.”

dmargolis@cpusa.org

Arnold going after our pensions

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:42:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

California is saddled with Groper Arnie, an incompetent governor. Being a former steroid-using bodybuilder does not qualify a person to run the sixth largest economy in the world.

Schwarzenegger and his staff rarely do their homework. An example is the attack on the Lanterman Act, which keeps developmentally disabled people out of institutions. When 4,000 activists showed up at the capital he backed off, claiming that he had no idea of the impact of his proposed cuts. Arnie, like Dubya with his attack on Social Security and MediCare, now is trying to harm senior citizens, a group that votes more than any other. It seems like these two bozos didn’t think this through.

Tied to the attempt to privatize Social Security is Arnie’s attempt to force state and other public employees into 401(k) plans instead of our CALPERS pensions. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is the largest public pension system in the world. We pay into it with our own money. Our civil service investment officers have done so well that California has not had to pay an employer portion in two and a half years.

If Arnold gets his way, the state will no longer save the employer portion. But, what is worse, employees could lose their savings in a bad stock market year. People are living longer than ever, so need a steady income. One Sacramento Gray Panther lost $30,000 in one year in his 401(k). Arnie’s so called reforms would end death benefits, COLAs, workers’ compensation and disability programs for new hires.

Arnie claims our pensions are too high. The average state pension is $20,000. The median income in Sacramento County, for example, is $41,500. My pension is $11,400.

Social Security is not broken, and neither is CALPERS. Arnie and Dubya want to make their stock market friends rich with our money. A similar plan was tried in Nebraska and didn’t provide enough income. As a socialist, I don’t want my money in the stock market, but want to have PERS and my credit union continue to safely invest my money.

Please oppose ACA 5 and ACA X1 by California State Assemblyman Richman which are the vehicles for this attack.

— Linda Roberts, state retiree, Sacramento, Calif.

Saginaw says no to privatization

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:37:00 +0000

SAGINAW, Mich. — Eric Friedman walked into a hornet’s nest. The district director for Michigan Republican Congressman Dave Camp was taken aback by the wrath of angry constituents. Calling President Bush’s claim that Social Security is bankrupt “a lie,” they demanded that Camp work to raise the cap on payroll taxes so upper-income people pay their fair share into the Social Security fund.

The emotional and at times loud forum brought dozens of voters from four counties together at a suburban library here to discuss proposed changes to the nation’s retirement safety net that has kept million of seniors from a life of poverty.

Many accused the Bush administration of marketing a Social Security “crisis” like he sold the threat of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Service Employees Local 517M member Beccy Bank recalled how her grandmother spent the last year of her life “living on a diet of pickles,” and told Friedman to “stop funding Haliburton” and spend the money ensuring the Social Security trust fund is solvent.

She said it was a crime that Bush is promoting tax breaks for the rich while the poor are suffering.

Friedman repeatedly assured the crowd that Social Security was just entering the discussion phase, and that legislation is at least a year away.

In a poll of those in attendance, barely half thought there was a problem with Social Security. Nobody believed there was a “severe” problem, and everyone opposed private investment accounts.

Retiree Mohsen Younes said his son’s family had put $8,000 of their savings into a Roth IRA three years ago, after their broker assured them “they wouldn’t lose a penny.” Today that IRA is worth $2,000, said Younes. Social Security is much better than playing with stocks, he told Friedman.

“My children have worked hard all their lives and I worry that they will have nothing when they get my age.”

Mark Kraych, of the Wellstone Civic Dialogue Project, disputed Friedman’s claim that Social Security was the costliest item in the federal budget. “We have a war budget not a social budget,” Kraych said as others nodded in agreement.

“We are spending our money in the wrong place and not on the people who need it the most.”

Others suggested “means testing,” saying that millionaires who don’t need Social Security take it anyway.

The message was crystal clear — no privatization and make the wealthy pay! Congressman Dave Camp has heard from his constituents.

Parents, unionists demand funding for NYC schools

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:32:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Celebrities Susan Sarandon and Cynthia Nixon joined more than a hundred parents, union leaders, education and community activists, and elected officials on the steps of City Hall Feb. 16 to call on Republican Gov. George Pataki to implement a court order requiring the state to increase funding to the city’s schools to over $5 billion per year. Pataki has refused to comply, saying he will appeal.

Speakers included teachers union President Randi Weingarten, whose first words were, “Are you all ready to go to jail?” Weingarten and dozens of others were arrested in Albany last spring, protesting the delay in implementation of a previous school funding order. She noted that eight months had passed since that action, saying, “Enough is enough. Don’t let it go back to the courts. Our kids can’t wait. Settle the case now!”

The Feb. 15 ruling by N.Y. Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse made the state legally obliged to provide the city’s schools with the additional yearly funding, and affirmed an earlier finding that another $9.2 billion for capital projects must be provided over the next five years.

City Councilman Robert Jackson, a longtime leader in the struggle to fund the schools, gave a militant, angry speech, saying, “Anyone who stands in the way of our children will be trampled on … enough rhetoric, enough talk. Millions of children around the state and in New York City are being damaged, and it’s damage that can’t be undone.”

The chant, “How long? Too long!” echoed through City Hall Park, alluding to years of illegal underfunding of the city’s schools. In 2003, after a 12-year legal battle, the state’s highest court ruled that New York’s education funding mechanism violated the constitution by failing to provide all children with a “sound basic education.” It ordered the state to increase its funding.

After the state failed to comply with the order, a court-appointed team of “special masters” came up with the figures now affirmed by Justice LeGrasse.

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, summed up the crowd’s sentiment when he said, “These are our children and they are being cheated.”

Brian McLaughlin, president of New York’s Central Labor Council, described the gathering as “the broadest possible coalition,” and used a hockey metaphor: “We’ve been held, crosschecked, and slashed, and no one has gone to the penalty box yet.” He called on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council members to speak out: “Let’s hear a sense of passion and outrage for the children they’re supposed to represent.”

Many other labor leaders and elected officials spoke or were present at the rally. All urged Pataki not to appeal the judge’s decision, and ridiculed him for saying he had “no idea” what the legal basis for his appeal would be.

Betsy Gotbaum, NYC’s public advocate, said, “Classrooms are seriously overcrowded, 59 percent of our kids don’t graduate on time, teachers are not being paid enough. We need the money. Do it now, governor!”

The rally launched a new web site, www.OurKidsCantWait.org, hosted by the Alliance for Quality Education, which has been fighting for school funding along with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. The web site aims to send thousands of messages to Gov. Pataki and state legislators to pressure them to comply with the judge’s order.

emora@cpusa.org.