People Before Profit blog

Einstein in the hood. BOOK REVIEW: Einstein on Race and Racism.

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:53:00 +0000

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a Communist sympathizer (Commsymp, in FBI parlance). They also called him a radical, a subversive and what would be called today, a liberal. This according to the dossier kept on his speeches, writings and activities, by J Edgar Hoover.

When Einstein left Germany in 1933, Hitler was on his heels. He came to Princeton, N. J., to do research at the Princeton University-financed, but independent, Institute of Advanced Study.

Princeton was a southern town in northern gown. Segregation of Blacks from whites was widely practiced and enforced. A majority of the students were from the south and they expected and got a recreation of their home life.

Einstein, a German-born Jew and naturalized American citizen, was acutely aware of what racism is and does, and was outraged.

But the people of the Black community in Princeton (who outnumbered the whites), especially the children, knew him as this long-white-haired white man who took his daily walk through their Black neighborhood and talked to them. The adults knew he was famous and the children knew he was friendly to them.

Princeton was the hometown of Paul Robeson, who by the time Einstein arrived had been long gone. They came to know one another (both of course knew of the other) when Robeson came home to perform. Einstein went backstage to introduce himself. There began a friendship of almost 20 years. Through his writings, letters and articles in the Black press, Einstein made known his opposition to the racism that lived right outside his door.

This is the story of an unknown Einstein — the social commentator and activist; the part of Einstein that was almost never reported in the public press, but was well known to social activists and the FBI. He was labeled a Communist sympathizer even as Russia was one of the biggest allies of the United States.

Fred Jerome is an Einstein scholar. And Rodger Taylor is an African American historian. They co-authored “Einstein on Race and Racism.” Taylor’s mother told him that she remembered as a little girl running to the window when Mr. Einstein walked down the street, to watch the passing of this famous white man.

Einstein talked and walked his opposition to racism that he clearly knew first hand was dangerous to a democracy. He wrote letters, made speeches and sent articles to newspapers. If his socialist activity was reported on at all, it was in the back pages. America has chosen to see Einstein as a pure genius with no interest outside the university.

This new and different history of Einstein entails the racial history of America during his time and therefore even more than just what Einstein did then.

No matter what stir he was creating at the Institute and at the FBI, Einstein going out for a walk was always an event for the children who walked with and the adults who watched from their porches in Princeton, N.J.

Bushs phony moralism. BOOK REVIEW: With God On Their Side.

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:50:00 +0000

Today Americans are faced with probably the greatest threat to the separation of religion and government in our nation’s history. This is a result of the political power grab by the Christian right in alliance with the Republican Party and the administration of George W. Bush. Esther Kaplan in her book “With God On Their Side” focuses on the “impact the Christian right, as a dogma-driven political movement, has had in dictating American policy.” Due to its political power, the Christian right has exerted its fundamentalist influence on a wide variety of areas including science, social policy, international relations, and our basic values of pluralism and democracy. Kaplan mentions that Bible study groups reportedly abound in the White House and the Justice Department while staff at the General Service Administration are reported to have held revival meetings during lunch hour.

The author reviews many areas of concern, two of which are the effects of religious intervention in the areas of science and in sex education. Kaplan notes, “Bush has appointed Christian activists, not researchers, to scientific advisory councils, while administration officials distorted science on government Web pages to avoid offending fundamentalists.”

National parks in crosshairs

The attack of the Bush theocrats has even put our national parks in its crosshairs. At Grand Canyon, science tells us that the canyon was created over 6 million years ago and rocks as old as 2 billion years have been found at the bottom of the depression. The creationist book, “A Different View,” available at the park’s bookstore, tells us a very different tale. The work claims that Grand Canyon was created several thousand years ago by the flood that launched Noah’s Ark. The creationist explanation would be laughable if it were not for the fact that many of Bush’s supporters and appointees believe this nonsense, and they are using their political clout to place the religious propaganda in the park’s bookstore in violation of a congressional mandate for the park service stores to “promote scientific understanding.”

In addition, tour guides, working for religious groups, are available to give visitors a “Christ-centered” tour of the park, and brass plaques with Christian Bible verses are reported to have been placed on the canyon’s rim. Kaplan admits that the Grand Canyon experience may seem to be minor but its effects have reverberated “throughout the entire Park Service.”

The park experience, the author notes, is typical of the Bush administration. “From global warming to lead poisoning, from AIDS to pregnancy prevention, the Bush administration has chosen to sacrifice science whenever it conflicts with the needs of Bush’s corporate patrons or his evangelical base.”

Sex education

Kaplan voices great concern for sex education and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The Bush administration is pushing its extremist religious philosophy onto young people by emphasizing “No Sex” (abstinence only) over “Safe Sex.” The author comments, “While providers of comprehensive sex education and promoters of safe sex are in the business of saving lives, abstinence educators are in the business of saving souls.” The two groups are locked in a battle over goals: “between protecting health here on earth and seeking salvation in the future.”

The Bush administration has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into abstinence-only programs, mostly conducted by religious-backed groups seeking converts. Federal guidelines for the abstinence-only programs forbid the mention of condoms or birth control with the participants in the these groups even if a participant is sexually active. In addition, federally funded programs emphasizing comprehensive sex education, including birth control and disease prevention, have been harassed through frequent federal audits of their spending.

Brain drain

Kaplan’s book is an important and informative book. Its implications are frightening: the use of a major political party to impose a theocracy on America. Both religious and non-religious progressives need to understand the seriousness of this process and how far it has gone. The casualties in this attack are already high as the relentlessness of the Christian right “has drained the federal government of talent and expertise.” The brain drain is tremendous — the Center for Disease Control’s top AIDS posts are gone. Many other researchers have left, some without taking their retirement, and some even to other countries. The phony moralism of the Christian right is taking lives and not saving them (think of stem-cell research) through its attack on science and medical research. All of this is occurring as the result of a right-wing movement, which in the words of economist Paul Krugman (quoted by Kaplan) “is a movement which does not accept the legitimacy of our current political system.”

Bedbugs!

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:38:00 +0000

In yet another serious episode in the current national outbreak of bedbugs, Congress today approved renewal of TUBA (the Terrorists Under the Bed Act), legally mandating warrantless electronic monitors, or “bugs,” in “every bed, cot, bunk, mattress, futon or foldaway” throughout the nation.

Civil liberties and privacy concerns expressed by moderate Republican senators were swept away when Senate Majority Leader Trogman Bloodaxe warned dissidents that any opposition to the bill was a failure to support the troops, and that billions in crucial pork-barrel spending in the dissident senators’ states could be slashed with a stroke of his pen. Democrats’ loud objections to renewing the act were, of course, ruled irrelevant and dismissed with a wave of the gavel.

TUBA, which was hastily enacted in the days after 9/11, gives the federal government sweeping new powers which wishy-washy critics have called “excessive.” When asked about the renewal of the act, President Bush whipped out the bloody shirt of 9/11, flapped it in front of reporters’ faces like he has done so many times before, and proclaimed, “If Americans are in bed with Al-Qaeda, we need to know about it!”

Political analysts have pointed out that bugs in every bed are not one bit more intrusive than warrantless tapping of Americans’ phone calls, indiscriminate scans of e-mail traffic, opening of personal mail or surveillance of library and credit records.

And the vice president, whose full name and whereabouts must remain classified, recently explained to reporters via encrypted telephone hookup that bedbugs are “[bleep]ing essential” to protecting Americans’ freedom and carrying forward the nation’s thousand-year War on Terror.

Strict “gag-order” provisions of TUBA prohibit individuals from disclosing or discussing how, when, where or even if bugs are discovered in their beds. Legal safeguards set in place with the renewal of the act now allow private citizens for the first time to challenge the bugging in federal court. However, such cases cannot be filed until at least 12 months after discovery of the bugs, and cases may proceed only if government attorneys certify that the government is itself at fault.

Provisions of TUBA scheduled to come into effect in 2007 will impose the additional requirement that Americans prominently display in all bedrooms or sleeping quarters a two-by-three-foot glow-in-the-dark black velvet poster of the Chief Executive, as a gentle reminder to speak clearly and distinctly whenever in or near the bed.

When local business leaders were asked for their reactions to the renewal of the act, most shrugged and went on their way without comment. Chamber of Commerce president Richard Riche, speaking for the vast majority of Chamber members, affirmed that he was not at all worried about government spying: “When they come for the terrorists, terrorists deserve whatever they get. When they come for the Muslims, I’m definitely not a Muslim. When they come for the Democrats, they deserve it, too. And, when they come for me, I’ll cross that bridge whenever I come to it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a business to run.”

Owen Williamson is a contributing staff member at the People’s Weekly World.

Turning point at the Black Radical Congress

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:23:00 +0000

What has always made the Black Radical Congress (BRC) mystique is its perceived ability to mobilize various perspectives of marginalized Black voices around topics plaguing the broader movement. This unique characteristic can even unite disjointed political tendencies, providing a more cohesive contribution to broader movement discussions. Such was the significance of the original Principles of Unity and the Freedom Agenda consolidated after its opening Chicago congress in 1998.

The BRC’s mystique is one thing. But actually living up to it has been challenging. Was this because its purpose was flawed or because of tactical miscalculations? And thus do we let the organization simply fade out or do we reorganize the BRC to better fulfill its purpose?

The original assumption was to fulfill the BRC’s purpose through the construction of national campaigns which local chapters, affiliates (pre-existing organizations such as Black Workers for Justice) and eventually individual members carried out. Thus came “Education, not Incarceration: Fight the Police State,” which fought the privatization of public schools before it was sexy to do, and “Stop War, Racism, and Repression,” which sparked a series of consciousness raising events, among other sub-campaigns.

All of these provided grounding assertions for what the Black left approaches were on education, the police state and war. However, they rarely contained clear indicators for success, and with limited staffing the “national” was unable to provide the support locals needed to successfully sustain campaigns — leaving members demoralized and less willing to participate in the BRC. Even more, many local groupings were already running significant campaigns so nationally coordinated efforts were extra.

Some have also argued that an organization dedicated explicitly to amplifying the voice of one race of people is a mistake; that only through working with other communities can we truly progress and win clear victories for Black people. Though I don’t think anyone would disagree with coalition building as key, I would argue that all coalition partners must bring something to the table, which the BRC could — that is, a united voice of the Black left.

Today’s prevailing belief is that the BRC simply suffered some tactical errors and restructuring will help. The BRC should literally be a forum that mobilizes and unifies the various perspectives of the Black left. A current proposal suggests the organization focus solely on organizing regular institutes that bring together the existing groupings of Black left thought in a well-facilitated dialogue to discuss and build unity around key topics that both affect the Black population, but also are part of a broader movement debate. Such events could value local historically marginalized Black voices, such as disconnected community groups, at the same level as highly sought-after academics and political leaders. Further, the ultimate result would yield a plethora of deliverables —from documented unity to proposed models for approaching Black communities to catalyzing national campaigns — inspired, but not led, by the BRC.

It’s no shocker that the first proposed institute would be on the struggle for peace, tackling such questions as “How do we tap into the antiwar sentiments of Black Americans to move them more to action?” and “What do Black communities see as their main areas of conflict with the war?” and so on — potentially providing the current peace and justice movement with some new insight on increasing its ranks among Black communities, let alone possibly being the largest mobilization of Blacks for peace in recent history. After all, not only should the peace movement better its outreach to Black people (among other communities), but the Black left should aid in providing it with the proper tools to do so.

This reorganization can only help to broaden the various dialogues we are involved in. We all benefit if the different sectors of our movement actively engage in their own discussions. The outcomes yield a more invested base within the struggle to defeat the ultra-right. Do we not benefit when the women’s movement coordinates its own discussion around peace, or youth, or the faith community? Why not the Black community, and in particular those often alienated from traditional “equal rights” mechanisms?

The BRC definitely has a void to fill. It simply has to fill it better. Reorganization brings hopes of a more inclusive, invested base of Black radicals. And for this reason, we all have a direct interest in fighting for its existence.

Erica Smiley is active in the BRC and the Young Communist League.

Fighting racism is at the heart of our struggles

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:19:00 +0000

For the past six years, millions of Americans have been battling the Bush administration and its policies of pre-emptive war, economic austerity, usurpation of democratic rights and racism.

Yet a sober look at the political landscape yields an inescapable conclusion — though the movement has grown in breadth and depth, though this administration is greatly weakened and though some victories have been won, Bush and his right-wing counterparts in Congress continue to drive the nation’s political agenda.

Given these circumstances, nothing is more compelling than the struggle for higher levels of political and organizational unity against the administration’s policies. Only a more united movement can reverse the calamitous course our nation is on.

Such a struggle is a many-sided process. But at its heart is the struggle against racism. At every progressive turning point in our history, rejection of racist ideology and practices by white people and multiracial unity were absolutely necessary conditions for advancing the interests of the movement as a whole.

Racism is one of the main (it could easily be argued the main) fault lines of our nation’s politics, economics, culture and history. It is also the most enduring. It brings billions of dollars and enormous advantages to the owners of capital. It sustains the rule of the capitalist class. It mingles with other backward ideologies — nationalism, anti-communism, male supremacy and “war on terror” — to legitimize exploitation, wars of aggression and denial of democratic rights.

Racism is more than an ideology that claims that racially oppressed people are inferior to white people. It is also embedded in the institutional structures and practices of capitalist society. Both as ideology and practice, it adapts to changing conditions of struggle and popular sentiments.

Racist codes words, symbols and narratives have been among the main tools the ultra-right has used to ascend to and consolidate power over the past two and a half decades.

Indeed, nothing disarms and fractures the working-class movement and its strategic alliance with the racially oppressed to the degree that racism does.

Racist ideology causes white workers to confuse friend with foe and foe with friend. It disfigures their political understanding and obscures the underlying causes of their exploitation as well as the super-exploitation and oppression of their racially oppressed brothers and sisters. And it impedes the realization of maximum unity, which is imperative given the massive concentrations of capitalist class power that the people’s coalitions are up against in our country.

The struggle against racism is not simply a subset of the many-layered and interconnected struggle for democracy, but the most important element of these struggles. Seeing the fight against racism as just one among many democratic tasks is tantamount to conceding victory to the Bush administration and the transnational corporations.

The challenge for white activists is to bring every bit as much political passion, will and understanding to the fight against racism and its influence in the working class and people’s movement as did the white abolitionists in the Civil War or white workers organizing basic industry in the Depression years or white students in the modern civil rights movement.

Marx wrote of the necessity “to awaken a consciousness in English workers that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is no question of abstract justice and humanitarian sentiment, but the first condition of their own social emancipation.”

Marx, I think, wasn’t dismissing humanitarian concerns. Rather he was calling attention to what wasn’t adequately understood by the British working class of his day — that the winning of their freedom from class exploitation and oppression depended on the solidarity that they extended to Irish people in their struggle for national freedom from British colonialism. Adapting this observation to our contemporary political landscape, we can say that the fight against racism and for full equality today is the first condition for the advancement of the interests of every section of the U.S. working class.

Of course, the ideologues gathered in right-wing think tanks go to extraordinary lengths to obscure this fact. These scribes of reactionary politics say that great progress has been made in getting rid of racism, that we live in a post-civil-rights era, that race-conscious remedies foster dependence and poverty and alienate white people, and that individual initiative and responsibility are the sure paths to individual and group uplift.

While this narrative is different in some respects from earlier rationalization of racism, its aim is the same: to convince white people that the racially oppressed are themselves responsible for the conditions in which they live and that white people have no compelling self- and class interest in joining people of color to fight racial oppression.

The stakes are high. And the task of the left and progressive movement is to convince the broadest section of white workers and people that they have a material as well as an ethical stake in engaging in this struggle.

Sam Webb (swebb@cpusa.org) is Communist Party USA national chair.

End the death penalty now!

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:08:00 +0000

Any doubts that even “humane” executions by lethal injection are still cruel and unusual punishment should be dispelled once and for all by the conflict in California over executing Michael Morales.

Morales, a convicted murderer and rapist, was slated for execution Feb. 21. But the action was postponed twice — the second time indefinitely — after two anesthesiologists changed their minds about making sure Morales was unconscious during execution using a three-drug sequence.

When the state then proposed an overwhelming dose of the barbiturate sodium pentothal instead, a district judge ruled that the drug must be injected directly by a medical professional to minimize chances that Morales’ death would be botched and painful. The state rejected that requirement. Now Morales’ fate is in limbo pending further judicial action.

The American Medical Association strongly opposes participation by physicians in executions as unethical, and apparently the two unnamed California anesthesiologists came to the same conclusion when it became obvious they might have to take an active role in Morales’ death.

Morales’ stay of execution came just days before a national week of action Feb. 27 through March 3, “Thirty Years is Enough: End the Death Penalty!” called by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. The campaign points out that in the 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, over 1,000 people have been executed in the U.S., while more than 120 people have been exonerated and freed from death row.

Civil rights organizations including the NAACP and Derechos Human Rights, have pointed out the shocking patterns of racial discrimination in imposing and carrying out the death penalty.

Executions have been abolished either in law or in practice by some 106 countries around the world, 30 of them since 1990. In the U.S., 12 states and the District of Columbia have no death penalty. In view of all the evidence — of injustice committed and cruelty imposed — isn’t it time all the states and the federal government did likewise?

MovieREVIEW: Three noteworthy films

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 10:07:00 +0000

When laughing hurts

The premise that’s not just in the title but in every frame of Albert Brooks’ “Finding Humor in the Muslim World” is perfectly mediocre and outrageous. It’s a great match.

Brooks is an out-of-work actor who’s called for a State Department mission to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh. His charge is to produce a 500-page report. Brooks is ridden with angst and fear of the daunting task — producing a 500-page report — and the delusion of President George Bush wringing his neck with the National Medal of Freedom. Brooks is in his most unappealing state of kvetchiness (he’s more kvetchy than Woody Allen).

That a Jew is making this report is hardly thought about, since the arrogance and absurdity of the mission overwhelms this fact. The mission is a commentary on the Bush administration’s Mideast policies, which are both brutal and inept. It makes the film agonizingly uncomfortable and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Brooks is shut out of every on-the-street-what’s-funny “interview.” That’s when Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” starts going off in your head: “He doesn’t speak the language, holds no currency, he’s a foreign man, cattle in the marketplace, gone, gone, gone…”

Is there a basis to connect this absurdity with current foreign policy? How many people have been convicted of 9/11 crimes during the four-year, costly War on Terror: 0?

What do people laugh at in the Muslim world? Things that are funny. Get it? See it.

Wanted: justice

“After Innocence,” a documentary by Jessica Sanders, tells the story of seven men who combined have spent about 100 years locked up for heinous crimes they didn’t commit. It also tells two other stories, one about The Innocence Project, which came to prominence because the DNA fingerprint could positively rule in or out a suspect. The other story looms large with serious consequences.

One of the innocent men is Wilton Dedge, who we meet handcuffed, legs chained and in an orange prison jumpsuit. He’s 5 feet 8 inches and thin. He was convicted of a rape. The victim had testified that the rapist was over 6 feet and weighed at least 200 pounds. There are two strands of hair and semen that survived the crime scene investigation. For at least three years, the state has known that neither the semen nor the hair belonged to Dedge. Yet the state argues against his release.

Once you see the stories, there’s a nagging, terrible question that we, the nation’s citizenry, must ask: What role do we play when state after state commits a criminal act in order to convict an innocent person, and then commits a second crime, lying to its citizens?

Brutal knockout

Around halfway through Denis Gansel’s “Before the Fall,” a German film with English subtitles, the bite and greatness of the movie knock the breath out of you.

It’s World War II. Two young men are at a palatial estate, the home of Albrecht (Tom Schilling). Albrecht’s father, a governor, is hosting a small birthday party for himself with fat, blond, red-faced SS generals as guests. They are drunk and getting drunker. At dinner, Albrecht stands to recite a poem he has written for his father. Before the first words come out, his father cuts him off, embarrassed.

After dinner, Albrecht and his friend Friedrich (Max Riemelt) are savagely served as dessert to the generals in a brutal boxing scene.

Friedrich is a working-class kid from Berlin. He’s been recruited to the SS against his parents’ wishes. The beautiful mountain estate school where food and heat are in abundance lure Friedrich.

During the vicious fight, Albrecht becomes livid — realizing the hypocrisy and coldness of his upbringing. Friedrich, intoxicated with “privilege,” is not sure how to respond. The tension of class, militarism, morality and homoeroticism keeps getting tighter. Its lessons are relevant for today.

The film premiered last year in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center and will play exclusively at Chicago’s Landmark Century starting Feb. 24.

MovieREVIEW: Munich a Powerful moral thriller

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 10:01:00 +0000

Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” takes a shocking, emotionally fraught historical event — the 1972 kidnapping and killing of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team by the shadowy Palestinian “Black September” group in Munich, Germany — as the basis for a powerful moral thriller.

Its compelling message is especially directed at those who would support Israeli policies of bloody “counter-terrorism,” assassinations, “collective punishments,” and the like. That message is: “Enough!”

“Munich” makes the unmistakable point that the quest for homeland is not just a Jewish concern, but a Palestinian one too.

The film revolves around the growing moral crisis of the “hero,” an Israeli Mossad agent, son of an Israeli military hero, who is pressed into service to head a super-secret assassination squad sent abroad to track and kill a list of figures Mossad considers responsible for the Munich attack. The squad carries out a series of bloody assassinations with the help of mysterious agents in several countries. Eventually, the cynical role of the U.S. government in promoting terrorism comes to light, completing the hero’s disillusionment.

Each member of the five-man assassination squad reacts differently, with vivid character portrayals by actors who are not big-name stars. A particularly powerful scene is a peculiar chance encounter between the Israeli assassination squad and a group of Palestinians apparently on a similar mission. In a highly charged conversation between the leaders of the two “teams,” the Palestinian challenges the Israeli, and the audience, to realize how much the two peoples — Jewish and Palestinian — have in common.

Playwright Tony Kushner co-wrote the screenplay. In a Los Angeles Times commentary, Kushner notes that “the refusal of the film to reduce the Mideast controversy, and the problematics of terrorism and counterterrorism, to sound bites and spin … has brought forth charges of ‘moral equivalence’ from people whose politics are best served by simple morality tales.”

“We live in the Shock and Awe Era,” Kushner writes, “in which instant strike-back and blow-for-blow aggression often trump the laborious process of analysis, investigation and diplomacy. ‘Munich’s’ questioning spirit is an affront to armchair warrior columnists who understand power only as firepower. We’re at war, and the job of artists in wartime, they seem to feel, is to provide the kind of characters and situations that are staples of propaganda: cleanly representative of Good or Evil, and obedient to the Message.”

Spielberg showed a lot of guts in making this film, and it is significant that he chose to do it at this time. It is an unflinching call for a fundamental change in U.S. and Israeli policies, to make possible a real peace that gives both peoples a homeland. It’s also a terrific, polished, unsentimental, edge-of-your-seat thriller. It fully deserves its “Best Picture” Academy Award nomination.

Go see “Munich,” then go see George Clooney’s “Syriana.” Its theme is less controversial — simply that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is all about oil and political domination on behalf of powerful U.S. corporate interests. It must be a commentary on how much the American public has come to recognize this that “Syriana” has not drawn much controversy.

Unique for a Hollywood movie, “Syriana” shows the vast working class that produces the region’s oil wealth. Many are immigrant workers, exploited and discarded at will by the oil multinationals. The intertwining of oil, blood and cynical geopolitics is revealed through a complicated intrigue-filled plot with a shocking finale. If you have ever wondered what one of those aerial assassinations by unmanned “drones” looks like — the kind the U.S. military talks about so antiseptically — “Syriana” shows you. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s one we need to see.

Free the Cuban Five

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:47:00 +0000

The U.S. government is still holding five Cuban nationals in jail for the “crime” of fighting terrorism.

René González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramon Labañino, Fernando González and Antonio Guerrero were convicted of various charges, including “conspiracy to commit espionage,” in 2001 for monitoring terrorist organizations harbored in Miami. These were organizations known to be connected to terrorist acts against innocent civilians — including the destruction of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73, including the entire Cuban fencing team. The Five have been imprisoned in inhumane conditions, including solitary confinement, since their arrests in 1998.

The charges against them, and the lengthy prison terms they have received, are a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Aside from other problems with the 2001 trial, the judge denied the defendants’ requests to move the trial out of Miami, a hotbed of resentment against socialist Cuba, rejecting the defense arguments that the Five could not receive a fair trial there. Finally, in August 2005, three Atlanta appeals court judges agreed with that defense argument, overturning the convictions. But in November, a majority on the full 12-member appeals court reversed that decision and agreed to rehear the case.

The Cuban Five’s new day in court began Feb. 14.

In opening arguments, federal prosecutors insisted that the Cubans had received a fair trial and demanded that the convictions be left standing.

But lawyers for the five men said jurors in the original trial could not help but be influenced by the extreme anti-Cuba hysteria permeating Miami at the time of the Elián González case. Bomb threats, unrest and demonstrations contributed to the tense atmosphere faced by jurors.

The new trial in Atlanta offers a glimmer of hope for these five anti-terrorist heroes. But no one should harbor illusions. The Bush administration, which is protecting known terrorist Luis Posada Carilles in this country, is virulently hostile to socialist Cuba and anyone who defends it.

We urge our readers to contact Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and demand he drop all charges and free the Cuban Five, now.

Not just a hunting accident

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:45:00 +0000

Millions across the nation are shaking their heads over how Dick Cheney handled his shooting of his 78-year-old hunting partner Harry Whittington on Feb. 11.

As always, the secretive Cheney went into cover-up mode. He did not telephone President Bush to inform him he had just shot someone. He did not order his press secretary to inform the media.

The shooting happened during a quail hunt on a 50,000-acre Texas ranch owned by lobbyist Katherine Armstrong, whose mother is a director of Halliburton. It was nearly 24 hours later that Armstrong, not Cheney, contacted the Corpus Christi Caller-Times to report the shooting. Cheney didn’t issue a public statement until Feb. 15, four days after the shooting.

Once the story got out, a “blame the victim” campaign was unleashed, claiming the shooting happened because Whittington failed to announce his presence to Cheney. Hunters widely rejected this excuse. A lifetime National Rifle Association member wrote to The New York Times, “It is the responsibility of the shooter to know the whereabouts of hunting partners.” The “shooter is always responsible for where and what he shoots at,” wrote another hunter.

This is not just a hunting accident, as Watergate was not just a “third-rate burglary.” It reveals the arrogance, callousness, corruption and incompetence that is the hallmark of this violence-prone, secrecy-obsessed, inhumane administration.

Ignore pre-9/11 warnings, then lie, cover up, wrap yourself in flags and start some wars. Lie and scheme to invade Iraq, ignoring warnings that it will unleash a bloodbath, then cover up your scheming and shift blame to others. Ignore warnings that Hurricane Katrina will breech New Orleans’ levees, then blame everyone else, even the storm victims themselves. Help oil companies fleece us, then blandly proclaim that we are “addicted” to oil. Underfund public schools, then blame the schools, the teachers, the kids.

And why is it OK for the nation’s vice president to go on chummy hunting trips with major White House lobbyists, not to mention Supreme Court justices deciding cases in which he’s involved? This disgraceful incident reeks of the “culture of corruption” that this administration has escalated to new heights.

Steelers light a fire for Steel City

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:43:00 +0000

This is Pittsburgh. This is the Super Bowl. There are 250,000 people jammed into the downtown in the middle of a workday in February. As Steeler linebacker number 55 Joey Porter said, “There is nobody working; nobody in school. They’re all here!”

We needed this.

The city is bankrupt. Every scheme to save the region, once the steel corporations, Westinghouse and all the affiliated industries committed murder in the ‘80s, failed. The “new economy” gave us US Air, which after countless concessions from their pilots, flight attendants and mechanics, and millions of public dollars, went bust.

The medical industry produced a handful of superstars of transplant surgery, but tens of thousands of professionals and non-professionals struggle with an endless workday, declining wages and understaffing that makes grownups cry. It is almost totally non-union.

Bio-tech and high tech was supposed to be the corporate lifeline for Pittsburgh. The former LTV and before that J&L Steel Corp. site was devoted to the “future,” in the city where, during the Super Bowl run of the ‘70s, over 20,000 union families were able to buy a home and send their kids to college. That corporate “future” vision saw the city’s population shrink from 600,000 in the era of four Super Bowl victories to about 320,000 when the final gun sounded in Detroit this month.

There are times when it seems like the only guy working is the guy selling exterior grade plywood to board up abandoned property.

The Pittsburgh region had the largest concentration of industrial workers in the world the last time the Super Bowl trophy was carried through the streets by the game’s MVP. Now it has the largest concentration of senior citizens.

Nothing in Pittsburgh is easy. To get to Detroit, even compete on Super Sunday, the Steelers had to win three road games. It was a roller-coaster season with the city’s pride ending up a wild card, sixth seed in the playoff tournament. The road to Detroit, our soul mate, destination of the steel products still rolled in the Mon Valley, went through Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Denver. Somehow, even with a Jerome Bettis fumble, his first in recent memory, and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s game-saving tackle, the Steelers made it. Only in Pittsburgh would a quarterback be remembered for a tackle. They didn’t collapse. Didn’t throw three interceptions. Stayed with what they do best, with a little imagination and a big dose of leadership. They fought as a team and played like there was no tomorrow.

The pride is back. For a brief moment here, the best-known product is steel toughness, steel brains, steel values and steel confidence, not Heinz ketchup, not Santorum.

The grit of Pittsburgh met the laptops of Seattle and, at the end of 60 minutes, the grit walked off with the Lombardi trophy.

Stay tuned. This city, this region, this working class has more history to record and it is not just in the NFL Hall of Fame.

Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinebr696@aol.com) is president of the Wilkinsburg, Pa., Borough Council, next door to Pittsburgh, and a member of the People’s Weekly World editorial board.

Translating Arabic into injustice

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:39:00 +0000

I have been teaching modern Middle Eastern history for more than 20 years. I’ve helped train many graduate students, some of whom have gone on to become professors at universities across the country. But one of my current New York University graduate students, Mohammed Yousry, faces a very different future. Convicted a year ago of participating in a conspiracy to abet terrorism, he may be sentenced to as many as 20 years in federal prison.

Knowing Mohammed as I do, and having followed his trial closely, I am convinced that he is a victim of the kind of excessive prosecutorial zeal we have seen all too much of since 9/11. But his case is especially disturbing because what may put Mohammed behind bars is the work he did in good faith as a translator and an academic researcher. This would turn a travesty of justice into a very dangerous precedent.

A gentle and unassuming man, Mohammed came to this country from Egypt 25 years ago. He and his wife (an evangelical Christian) had a daughter who would eventually graduate from a Baptist college. Mohammed became a U.S. citizen. When I first met him in 1995, he was a graduate student at NYU, paying his tuition and supporting his family by driving a taxi and by working as a translator of Arabic for journalists and lawyers. One of the lawyers who hired Mohammed was Lynne Stewart, among whose clients was Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind former spiritual guide of a radical Islamist organization in Egypt who is now serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks.

When Mohammed began to discuss possible doctoral dissertation topics with me seven or eight years ago, I encouraged him to write a political biography of Abdel Rahman, partly because his employment as a translator for Stewart gave him unique access to the imprisoned cleric. Though a lifelong secularist and democrat who totally rejects Abdel Rahman’s extremist version of Islam, Mohammed started gathering material on the cleric for his dissertation, and even interviewed him about his ideas and political career during government-authorized prison visits with Stewart.

Mohammed’s diligence as a translator and an academic researcher would cost him dearly. In April 2002, he was arrested, along with Stewart and one of her paralegals. They were accused of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Two years earlier, Stewart had told a reporter that the imprisoned Abdel Rahman opposed a cease-fire that his supporters had negotiated with the Egyptian government. Though no act of violence ever resulted, the U.S. government claimed that Stewart had not only violated government regulations — which she had agreed to follow — restricting communications with Rahman but that she had also abetted terrorism.

Whatever Stewart may have done, however, it is hard to see how Mohammed can be held responsible for her actions. As a government-approved translator, he was never even asked to agree to the regulations Stewart was accused of violating, and he had no reason to question the lawfulness of his employer’s instructions.

During the trial, prosecutors made contradictory arguments. They insinuated that Mohammed had knowingly broken the law in order to further his scholarly research, and even that he was an acolyte of Abdel Rahman. But they also acknowledged that Mohammed had never advocated violence or Islamic fundamentalism. My guess is that the real reason they went after Mohammed was to get Stewart: She knew no Arabic, and Abdel Rahman knew very little English, so without including Mohammed in the alleged conspiracy, prosecutors wouldn’t have had much of a case.

Mohammed, shell-shocked by what has happened to him, faces sentencing in March, though appeals will surely follow. Many lawyers have rallied to Stewart’s defense because they believe that the government targeted her in order to deter other lawyers from zealously defending clients accused of terrorism, and because they feel that her case raises serious constitutional issues. Mohammed’s prosecution raises somewhat different, though equally disturbing, questions. Should a translator be sent to prison for following his employer’s instructions, especially when the prosecution failed to prove that he intended to break any law? Can a graduate student’s dissertation research reasonably be construed as contributing to a conspiracy to help terrorists?

If Mohammed’s conviction is allowed to stand, we may well see other translators prosecuted for doing their jobs, and other scholars facing jail terms for conducting research on controversial issues. That would undermine core values we profess to cherish, including academic freedom and other civil liberties. It would also weaken our ability to understand Muslim extremism and successfully confront it.

Zachary Lockman chairs the department of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University. This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times and is reprinted by permission of the author.

To solve the energy crisis, put people before profits

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:24:00 +0000

Statement by the Communist Party USA

Prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, heating oil and natural gas have soared in the past four years, and rocketed to new highs in the last year, undermining the living standards of working people. This winter thousands of Americans have had to choose between heating and eating. The energy and related industries share much of the responsibility, yet they are enjoying record-breaking profits at the expense of working families and the environment. The Bush administration’s policies aim to further enrich its corporate cronies.

In his 2006 State of the Union speech President Bush tried to bamboozle the American public with talk of “advanced energy initiatives” and “addiction to oil.” But Bush’s budget for this year and next provides token funding for a few small initiatives while cutting funds for key alternative energy and conservation programs and basic research. Bush is silent on requiring auto companies to make fuel-efficient cars, trucks and buses, or on expanding public mass transit, while the Republican Congress continues to attack Amtrak. Most telling, Bush’s 2007 budget is filled with handouts to oil corporations, including a big increase in domestic oil drilling in public lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The corporate oil giants and their representatives in the White House and Congress are robbing us today, and gravely endangering our future and the future of the planet.

Immediate heating assistance

Despite the sharp rise in oil and gas prices, and the growing numbers of poor people in our country, Bush’s budget leaves the grossly underfunded Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) with roughly the same dollars as 20 years ago, leaving most low-income families “out in the cold.”

For the remaining winter months, emergency steps should be taken to provide home heating assistance to every low-income person who needs the aid. The same emergency measures will be needed to ensure energy assistance for home cooling in next summer’s heat. This is literally a matter of life and death. No family should be without heat this winter or cooling in the summer!

Congress should act immediately to fully fund LIHEAP up to the $5.1 billion authorized in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. But that would only reach one in seven eligible families. We call for funding up to $35 billion for energy assistance for all 33 million eligible households. No family should be denied aid because of immigration status. No family should pay more than 5 percent of their income for household energy.

State and local governments should pass emergency legislation to prevent energy cutoffs, eliminate reconnection charges, deposits and credit requirements, and establish an aggressive no-cost home weatherization program for low-income utility customers. Congress should provide federal funds for state and local governments to cover their increased energy costs and the increased aid they have to provide to their citizens.

Government at every level — school board, city/town hall, county, state, federal — should be pressed into action on these life and death energy assistance measures.

These programs could be fully funded by a special tax on the outrageous profits of the oil and gas industry.

We support the bills that have been introduced in Congress to tax some of the excess profits. But Congress should do more:

• Tax all excess profits of energy and related companies, including financial institutions and Wall Street commodity traders.

• End utility rate subsidies to corporate customers.

• Save billions by ending the occupation of Iraq, and transfer money from the Pentagon budget. The Bush military buildup of $150 billion per year, and the $80 billion per year cost of the Iraq war, could pay for these needs.

State and local officials should be urged to join with unions, community and environmental groups and all people’s organizations to demand federal action as outlined above and to mobilize their constituents around these demands.

Real hardship, obscene profits

Soaring costs for heating homes and fueling cars causes real hardship for all working people, not only those who qualify for LIHEAP. At the same time, while residents of the Gulf Coast still struggle to put their lives back together, the oil companies are posting record profits. Exxon Mobil has just reported $36 billion in profits for 2005, the largest in U.S. history! Before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, total oil industry profits were running at an annual rate of $62.8 billion, nearly triple their average (in current dollars) over the last five years. After Katrina, the rate of profit doubled again.

When the oil executives appeared before Congress last fall, they offered no apology for their obscene profits during a national crisis. All the Republican leadership did was beg the executives to donate to charity to help a few of the hurricane victims.

Congress, state and local officials, labor unions, and consumer and community organizations should launch independent, public investigations of oil company pricing and profits, going back over the past decade. Such investigations must include participation from the unions representing energy and utility workers who have an “inside scoop” on how these corporations gouge workers and consumers alike.

What’s the cause of this energy crisis?

The reasons for the current energy crisis lie in the long-term negligence and short-term profiteering of energy and related corporations. The crisis is aggravated by the Bush administration’s close ties to the energy industry and by the disastrous war in Iraq. Deregulation of electric and natural gas utilities over the past two decades gave these corporations the green light to sacrifice public interest for private profits.

Energy production and use is at the center of modern civilization. Our U.S. economy has long enjoyed energy sources that were plentiful and among the cheapest in the world. But even though fuel prices were, until recently, relatively low compared to other countries, our energy industries have reaped mammoth profits.

The cost of production, refining, transportation and even exploration is a small fraction of the retail price of gasoline, natural gas and fuel oil. But the energy industries, helped by their friends in Washington, have been allowed to achieve an extreme degree of monopolization, with a handful of giant corporations controlling oil and gas production, refining and distribution, stifling competition, restricting supply and pushing prices up.

The oil/natural gas industry has long exercised immense political power in both domestic and foreign policy and is among the most reactionary sectors of monopoly capital.

Over six decades, the oil monopolies, in collaboration with the auto and rubber corporations, have used their financial and political might to promote policies that have made us highly dependent on nonrenewable fuel — oil and gas. These deliberate policies — many of them anti-working-class and racist — include destruction of urban centers and small-town “Main Streets”; dispersed housing, shopping and workplaces; destruction and underfunding of public mass transit; dependence on automobiles; lack of urban central heating facilities; and globalized production and distribution of commodities.

With a global market and distribution system for oil and its products, the entire world population must compete for the same supply, largely controlled by a few monopoly corporations. The crisis visited on U.S. families is also imposed on the working class throughout the world, as the wealth of whole nations is transferred to the controlling corporations and their financial institutions.

The U.S. imports about two-thirds of its oil needs. Contrary to Bush’s flim-flim about ending our “addiction” to Middle East oil, the Middle East provides only 11 percent of our total oil use. Maintaining and expanding reliable sources of cheap oil is a key driver of U.S. foreign policy and a constant incentive to U.S. aggression.

During the past year, the price of crude oil has risen steeply. The oil companies have deliberately restricted refining capacity, leading to sharply higher prices for refined products. The industry claims that demand for oil and gas has been increasing faster than production capacity. In fact, with this year’s mild winter, demand for natural gas has been soft, producing a glut of natural gas capacity in much of the country. But with energy companies free to charge what the market will bear, natural gas prices have also soared far above pre-Katrina levels, spurring higher electricity prices.

Huge windfall profits have been reaped by the energy companies, related construction and service companies (like Halliburton) and Wall Street financial institutions. Rather than being used for exploration, improving refining and distribution infrastructure or investment in alternative energy, these profits have overwhelmingly gone to the top executives and big investors.

Electricity and natural gas were highly regulated for most of the last century, in large part as a result of popular struggle. But in recent years, there has been a strong push, supported by both major political parties, to deregulate electricity and natural gas. The rest of the energy industry — in particular oil — has always been free to profiteer with virtually no government regulation.

This situation will lead to a permanent, significant reduction in the living standards of the American people, unless a strong popular movement curbs the energy corporations.

Fundamental change needed

Only an active, broad, well-informed people’s movement can solve the energy crisis in ways that benefit people and the environment.

A program to address this crisis must have several levels:

We support public ownership of the energy industries and other decisive sectors of the economy. The highly centralized, technologically advanced oil, gas and electricity monopolies are ripe for nationalization. Their existence as private corporations is a burden on the American people and a constant threat to world peace.

And we must look beyond public ownership of a single industry.

Under the capitalist system, companies make decisions based on maximizing their own profit. Yet their actions, especially in the auto, construction and real estate industries, have a decisive impact on how much and what kind of energy we use. The most fundamental solutions to the energy and related environmental crises will not be possible until we replace capitalism. In a socialist USA, all major industries will be publicly owned, and the working class will control public planning and policies in the interest of the people and of future generations. Only then will it be possible to systematically reduce and eliminate excessive dependence on scarce and environmentally destructive resources.

As a first step toward public ownership, we call for immediate strong public regulation of the energy industries at state and national levels. Prices should be controlled to reflect actual cost-of-service, and profits should be capped. Environmental, health and safety protections and labor rights in these industries must be maintained and strengthened.

Such strong regulation should be restored in the natural gas and electricity industries and should be imposed on all sectors of the oil industry — domestic production, refining and distribution. Tight regulation should also be imposed on the coal and nuclear industries.

Regulatory bodies must consist primarily of representatives from consumer and environmental organizations and unions, particularly those representing utility and energy workers. This will make it possible for these agencies to truly represent the people’s interests.

Regulators should have full rights to examine all company records and to limit profits. Tight curbs should be placed on wholesale energy trading to create transparency and prevent profiteering.

The industry should be required to invest in non-polluting, renewable energy production, as well as facilities for storage of natural gas reserves as a buffer against shortages and price spikes.

It is possible to reduce the nation’s overall energy consumption, without sacrificing our living standards or our jobs. In fact, as demonstrated by organizations like the Apollo Alliance, programs to reduce dependence on fossil fuels can create jobs while revitalizing cities and towns. Sign the Kyoto Treaty and commit our country to reducing reliance on fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.

Implement a national energy conservation program, including measures such as overhauling the nation’s housing stock and public buildings to make them more energy efficient, with subsidies for people who can’t afford to do it themselves. Such a public works program would create meaningful jobs while reducing the demand for oil, gas and electricity.

Fund high quality public mass transit in every state to reduce dependence on oil, cut pollution and promote planned development and green space. Require the auto industry to produce fuel-efficient cars, trucks and buses.

Initiate massive public investment in developing renewable, nonpolluting, nondestructive energy sources.

In the early 1900s, popular struggle resulted in partial restraint of the oil, gas and electricity monopolies. Today, a new level of organization and struggle is needed: to win immediate life-and-death energy assistance for low-income families, and to build a secure energy future that will put people and the environment before profits.

With the 2006 elections drawing near, members of Congress must hear the message loud and clear. Put people before profits.

For more information on the Communist Party USA: www.cpusa.org.

Protests of police brutality mount in St. Louis

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:31:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS — Over 40 outraged citizens, community leaders and family members of victims protested against police brutality here Feb. 1. They gathered in front of the Maplewood police department in support of Edmon Burns, a recent victim of police violence.

Four police officers, three white and one Black, were caught on tape beating Burns two days before the protest. One officer was seen trying to break Burns’ leg.

The FBI and the Missouri State Highway Patrol are investigating the beating. Unfortunately, many feel justice will be difficult to obtain.

“I am tired of seeing people beat and harassed for no reason,” Rodiesha Mohammad told the World. “This is exactly why we need a civilian review board.”

The Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, a local coalition of community, religious and student leaders, has been fighting for over five years to pass a civilian review board bill. While Board Bill 69 has been introduced to the Board of Aldermen, the issue is divided along racial lines. Black aldermen are in favor of the bill, while white aldermen are opposed.

“St. Louis has gone too long without a civilian review board,” said Joan Suarez, co-chair of the St. Louis Jobs with Justice Workers’ Rights Board. “It’s almost as if the controls are off.”

Civilian review boards are designed to investigate complaints independent of police involvement. They examine cases of abusive language, harassment and excessive force. The largest civilian review board is in New York City. It has dozens of investigators and has disciplined hundreds of police officers.

Review boards have been established in 71 of the nation’s 100 largest cities.

St. Louis has a history of police violence. In 2001, Jerome Johnson was shot nine times by area police. Johnson, later found not guilty, was mistaken by police as a drug dealer. He saw a group of plainclothes officers running towards him and thought they were gang members. He ran and the police shot him four times in the back and five more times after he fell.

“As a former police officer, I can’t let my anger rise to the point where I disregard the law,” said Redditt Hudson of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. Burns’ beating was “an egregious and excessive use of police force,” he said.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner: Dont confuse him with Theo Huxtable

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:07:00 +0000

The Chicago State University campus theatre came alive Jan. 28 with A Night of Spoken Word, Jazz, and Funk featuring Malcolm-Jamal Warner. In the words of the Dells, “Oh what a night!”

Don’t make the mistake of confusing this grown man with the young boy who brought Theo Huxtable to life in your living room every Thursday night how ever many years ago, or any other character you’ve seen him play on television. Malcolm-Jamal Warner mesmerized the auditorium with his urban jazz/funk spoken word concert. He and his fellow musicians turned it out. I mean they turned it out!

The theater was packed with young women who revealed they could appreciate the musings of a man whose words gave evidence of serious creative thought even when speaking of the very naughty. He took you into the naughty so cleanly that you willingly followed even though you knew exactly where he was headed. I must say as an over grown woman that his words were oh so clever that you could only ooze joy in the presence of his magic. The men in the audience were all smiles. I looked.

If his concert ever comes to your town, don’t make the mistake of not going because you’ve seen Theo, in the reruns we perpetually watch, enough for a life time. Malcolm-Jamal Warner is a mature thinker who captures urban cool with a style which is pleasingly edgy. He takes you there with language, subject matter, and social commentary, but he does it so well that it’s all good. On a four star scale, I give his spoken word concert five stars!

Malcolm-Jamal Warner will appear Friday, Feb. 24, in Santa Monica, Calif., at The Temple Bar, 1026 Wilshire Blvd., 10 p.m., (310) 393-6611, $12. For more concert information:

www.malcolmjamalwarner.com/calendar.html.

Wal-Mart Flash cartoon jabs low wages, union busting

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 10:35:00 +0000

“It was summer ’05 When Wal-Mart and I Signed the biggest deal of the year. They gave me a pin And a smiley face grin and said, Garth boy, you’ll love it here But I had my doubts So I went to find out what’s Hidden behind Wal-Mart’s smirk I opened that door My jaw hit the floor That’s one f****d up place to work.”

So begins the latest Flash cartoon to attack an important issue with humor. This one called “Friends with Low Wages” plays on the exclusive Garth Brooks contract with Wal-Mart using a hilarious reworking of his 1990 hit, “Friends in Low Places,” to make points about Wal-Mart’s pathetic wages, working conditions and rabid anti-union policies.

The cartoon follows Brooks as he watches Wal-Mart employees work. One scene depicts employees driven by whips as if they were Egyptian slaves dragging blocks to a pyramid construction site. Another employee is forced to clean a toilet bowl with his tongue. That one might be a little over the top but the message is clear — Wal-Mart treats its employees like dirt.

Eventually, the song turns to union organizing and Garth sings, “When those Wal-Mart guys hear the word unionize, they go completely insane.” We see a suited smiley face guy hitting a red “union panic button,” and Wal-Mart parachutes in its anti-union brigades to chase down any union sympathizers. It is particularly funny to see Norma Rae holding up her “union” sign and line dancing employees behind Brooks.

The animation closes with the cartoon Brooks proclaiming, “Its time for us to be courageous to stop these union bustin’ outrages because I don’t need anymore friends with low wages.” Now those are words to live by.

The cartoon, produced by American Rights at Work, is another example of what I like to call the “Jib Jabbing” of political humor. Jib Jab, a small company started by two brothers, specializes in this type of animation using a computer program called Flash. They became very prominent during the 2005 election with animations lampooning G.W. Bush and John Kerry. Their style is instantly recognizable with cartoon bodies and animated photographic faces. I was not able top obtain any production information as to whether “Friend’s with Low Wages” is a Jib Jab cartoon. Flash allows the animation to load very quickly for smooth viewing on most computers. It is also popular to e-mail links to these cartoons around the Internet so friends and relatives can be amused. Since they are disseminated very quickly, they become a very effective method to spread a political message — especially if the cartoon is as funny as “Friends with Low Wages.” Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work, hopes that people find the cartoon hilarious but that they not forget the serious issue. American Rights at Work “encourages the public to find out the truth about Wal-Mart’s unionbusting ways and to speak out against its ruthless tactics.”

The animation can be found at www.walmartworkersrights.org.

Liberation theology: from Iowa to Mexico and back

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 10:25:00 +0000

Our delegation of 12 Iowa Lutherans traveled to Mexico last fall for a weeklong program inspired by the Christian liberation theology movement in Central America. The program, sponsored by the Lutheran Center in Mexico City, caused many of us return to Iowa with our eyes newly opened to the possibilities for social change in America.

We now have human faces for the corporate globalization process that has consigned many to marginalization, economic insecurity and poverty. We visited the simple home of Maria. Her family is active in a local Christian “base community.” As we sat in her small, cramped concrete home in a squatter settlement in Mexico City called La Estacion, one of our delegation members, Sheri, was particularly moved by Maria’s involvement in the Christian movement for radical social change. We learned that Maria’s base community, like many of these communities throughout Latin America, functions like a typical Christian parish and worships on a weekly basis in addition to providing extensive material and emotional support for its members.

We learned that Maria’s Christian base community is also committed to working for a different, better world where women do not have to wonder how to feed their children. I think it was the strength and depth of Maria’s religious faith and commitment to struggle for social justice that moved Sheri. Sheri’s own faith has undergone a profound and deepening change. Since her time in Mexico, she has visited other Lutheran congregations and has given a presentation of her trip to her home congregation’s adult Sunday school class. Sheri voted for George Bush. Now she affirms that her Christian faith calls her to work for a different world for the poor and marginalized in Iowa.

In this trip, we learned about liberation theology, a global movement among Christians that sees the gospel as a message and a task for this world in which believers work for justice, peace and eradication of poverty and exploitation. While traditional Christian theology, including the variety articulated and practiced by George Bush’s Christian-right base, offers hope for the next world, liberation theology clearly calls for social justice this side of the grave. In Mexico, we caught a glimpse of what this kind of Christianity might look like.

For instance, while the Christian right in America calls for workers to wait for the next life for a better life, Christians who are part of the “liberation base communities” like the ones we met in Mexico advocate for social justice and workers’ rights today.

Iowa pastor Dave and I stayed in a worker’s home in the Santa Fe neighborhood of Cuernavaca, and learned about his family and his situation in the globalized economy.

During our dinner conversation the first evening, Antonio spoke with pride about his job, which is to make steel grille doors. He pointed with pride to one of his company’s doors at the front of his small home. I sensed that Antonio’s job was a relatively good one for a working-class Mexican family. Even so, it occurred to me that, in many ways, Antonio is the face of working people throughout the newly globalized, corporate-dominated economy. He works long hours, with little or no time off. He has no benefits and can be terminated at any time. With rapid global changes in the market demand for the product he makes, his job security can easily be subject to quickly changing, up and down market forces of the new global economy.

Later, we learned how the Mexican government is essentially captive to the same large corporate forces that control Antonio’s life, and of the nonexistence of credible unions in Mexico that will actually fight for workers’ rights and living wage jobs for all workers and their families.

Initially, Dave resisted some of the analysis we heard. But in subsequent meetings, Dave shared with our travel group how he had begun to incorporate themes of injustice and God’s will for justice in this world. He told how he had begun to raise concerns in sermons of how affordable housing and living wages in his Iowa community were not realities. He seemed comfortable with this dramatic shift in his working theology. He had profoundly changed his approach to being an ordained Lutheran pastor.

And so, with two Mexican people, Maria and Antonio, who have been marginalized by capitalism’s drive for more and more profits worldwide, we all had our awareness raised.

Yet, in spite of the reality of this corporate-dominated globalization process which daily creates more misery, despair and poverty, we also heard, in the same stories of these same people, hopefulness, empowerment and a vision for a better world. Several of our delegation members have returned to Iowa with new commitments to share in the struggles of the marginalized in Mexico (and other places as well) by working here in Iowa for a better, more just world.

Paul Nelson (larnel@peoplepc.com) is an ordained Lutheran pastor in Ames, Iowa.

LGBT rights on the nations agenda

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 10:14:00 +0000

While support for the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) community has grown over the last two decades, many lawmakers are still stuck in the past.

Fortunately though, LGBT rights organizations and supporters, in coalition with unions and people of color, are trying to make long overdue legislative changes on the state and federal level. In many ways, the workplace, as well as the schoolyard, have become key ideological battlegrounds in the ongoing fight for LGBT rights.

PROMO, a Missouri-based LGBT rights organization, is in the midst of lobbying for two pieces of legislation that would mean the world to the LGBT community locally and broaden the fight for LGBT rights nationally.

The first would expand the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, which protects individuals from sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination in the workplace. PROMO’s legislation will add “sexual orientation” to the list.

Although this may seem like a minor change in wording, PROMO faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives. Currently 47 of the 163 state representatives have signed on.

Missouri state Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford, a co-signer, believes this issue is very important.

“It’s a shame that people can still be legally fired for their perceived sexual orientation,” Oxford told the World. “When younger voters are polled, their support is strong. It shows that as a society we’re moving forward, but it is taking time for legislation to catch up.”

A recent national online survey conducted by Harris Interactive showed that in 2005, 88 percent of LGBT workers consider it very important that their company have a written nondiscrimination policy. Only 50 percent of the LGBT people surveyed felt that they were treated fairly at work.

Currently 17 states have nondiscrimination laws that include sexual orientation.

The workplace is only one front in the battle to expand LGBT rights. Schools are another. PROMO is working on another measure, the Missouri Anti-Bullying Legislation, which would not only protect children from homophobic bullying and discrimination, but would also expand protections for children who face race, gender and other forms of discrimination.

“We’ve had some very good experiences. Some schools take bullying seriously,” Julie Brueggemann, PROMO’s executive director, said. “But we’ve also had very bad experiences. Some teachers and administrators haven’t taken any action to prevent bullying. We need an across-the-board policy on bullying.”

A 2001 National Health Association survey showed that nearly 80 percent of LGBT children were bullied while in school.

According to the survey, 22 percent of gay respondents had skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe. The survey also found that the dropout rate of LGBT teens is three times that of heterosexual students.

“No student can learn effectively in a hostile atmosphere,” said Brueggeman. “LGBT kids are often subjected to bullying and intimidation. Some aren’t comfortable going to teachers or administration because in their experience, they haven’t been helped.”

These issues aren’t exclusive to Missourians. Several national organizations, including many unions, are fighting for LGBT rights across the country. For example, Pride at Work, a constituency group of the AFL-CIO, believes in building unity between LGBT workers and their unions. While passing legislation is a step in the right direction, a union contract is still the best protection LGBT workers have in the workplace.

With the mid-term congressional elections coming up, LGBT organizations are focusing on electing progressive candidates in hopes of shifting the political balance of forces away from the ultra-right.

If we can build a more progressive Congress, LGBT rights won’t be far behind.

Julia Weaver is a media communications major at Webster University and an intern with the PWW in Missouri/Kansas.

Smothering the King legacy

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 10:03:00 +0000

Hours after Coretta Scott King died, President Bush led off the State of the Union address by praising her as “a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream.” For good measure, at the end of his speech, Bush reverently invoked the name of her martyred husband, Martin Luther King Jr.

The president is one of countless politicians who zealously oppose most of what King struggled for — at the same time that they laud his name with syrupy words. It wouldn’t be shrewd to openly acknowledge the basic disagreements. Instead, Bush and his allies offer up platitudes while pretending that King’s work ended with the fight against racial segregation.

Now that Dr. King’s widow is no longer alive, the smarmy process will be even easier: Just praise him as a beloved civil rights leader, as though the last few years of his life — filled with struggles for economic justice and peace — didn’t exist. Ignore King’s profound challenge to the kind of budget priorities and militarism holding sway today.

On Tuesday night, Jan. 31, the president was eager to seem like a fervent admirer of Martin Luther King. But the next day, in the same House chamber where Bush spoke, his administration pushed through a vicious budget measure that will slash $39 billion in spending — mostly for student loans and Medicaid for the poor — over the next five years.

Nearly 38 years ago, Dr. King was killed in Memphis while leading the Poor People’s Campaign for an economic bill of rights. He’d been accusing Congress of “hostility to the poor.” The federal government, King pointed out, was appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity” — but “poverty funds with miserliness.”

Today, a slick rhetorical formula enables current generations of such miserly politicians to keep praising the legacy of Martin Luther King while sticking knives into it.

Such duplicity is facilitated by a baseline of media coverage that automatically recycles the truncated versions of history promoted by the politicians who dominate Washington. At least dimly, those political hacks understand a key axiom described by George Orwell: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

Don’t want to deal with calls for progressive change in the nation’s economic power structures? Then don’t mention Martin Luther King’s statement, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Don’t want to acknowledge King’s assessment of global class war? Then just keep referring to his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech while carefully bypassing his later oratory about “capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.”

Want to keep King boxed as scarcely more than a Jim Crow foe? Then ignore his fierce opposition to the Vietnam War and his broader denunciations of what he called “the madness of militarism.”

President Bush has no tactical interest in criticizing the positions that were central to Dr. King’s final years. Instead, aided by media eagerness to sanitize King’s political evolution, Bush and his right-wing compatriots pose as admirers of King while they desecrate his spirit every chance they get.

After Coretta Scott King died, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund said: “I’m concerned that people don’t take her passing as an opportunity to further antique the causes that she and her husband and others stood for.” Theodore Shaw added, “Anybody who thinks that work is over is either terribly ignorant or willfully blind.”

Whatever his blend of ignorance and intentional evasion, President Bush is a leader of forces striving to roll back the King legacy of activism for social justice and peace. Sadly, the news media continue to be part of that retrograde political process — whitewashing instead of informing.

Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist on media and politics.

Nixzmary Browns tragic death

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 10:01:00 +0000

When 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown was killed in Brooklyn, N.Y., on the 11th of January, it was certainly a tragedy waiting to happen. It was also certain that some of the workers involved in the case would be suspended or fired. Less certain was a reorganization of the agency. This time all three occurred.

Perhaps it is because Nixzmary’s was the third death of a child with a case in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant child welfare office in recent weeks. This pattern of deaths and the particular brutality Nixzmary suffered produced a flurry of media attention.

New York Mayor Bloomberg announced Jan. 24 “a series of new initiatives,” allocating more funds for children’s protective services, creating or renaming several positions in his administration, “increasing supervision of child welfare workers,” and providing more training for staff and services for families in need of help. Another 325 child protective workers will be hired, in addition to 200 said to be in training already. The mayor had already reversed plans to gut the Administration of Children’s Service’s (ACS) budget by a total of $60 million over the current and next fiscal years.

ACS Press Secretary Sheila Stainback said that although there have been cuts in the overall ACS budget in the last four years, the child protective budget has increased. She also said that since there is no civil service list for child protective workers, the new workers will be hired provisionally. The ACS web page lists openings for lawyers, technical workers, administrators and managers, but none for child protection workers.

The Bedford-Stuyvesant child welfare office that had Nixzmary’s case has missed out on what many say were previous improvements in the agency. Workers within the agency and staff of Social Service Employees Union Local 371 of AFSCME, the union representing the workers, describe an office in a crisis of understaffing, big caseloads and high rates of new referrals, insufficient staff training, and low morale. While total referrals for child protective services fell, failure to replace workers has reduced child protection workers by about 10 percent in the last four years, and caseloads have risen. These long-standing problems have produced a high turnover of workers in the Brooklyn office, and slower responses to referrals.

The field director of the Brooklyn office had been promoted into management rather than fired from his entry-level child protective specialist job when it was discovered that he lacked the required college degree. A Local 371 staffer who has had little success defending workers hired without the degree said, “He must have a friend.” (Last month the agency finally fired the field director for falsifying records of another child who died.)

The Bedford-Stuyvesant office covers an area whose residents are victims of racism, poverty, poor health care and deteriorated housing, as well as the related social and economic conditions. All these problems cause higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, more domestic violence and other ills. Certainly only a small fraction of Bedford-Stuyvesant families are abusive, but even that number overwhelmed the understaffed, poorly managed office.

Part of the mayor’s initiative is to “redirect $9 million in existing preventive funding this fiscal year to preventive programs for communities most in need.” Bloomberg did not explain how much will go to Bedford-Stuyvesant, which is widely known to be a community “most in need,” or how other areas will make up for funds redirected away from them.

A question which comes up in these situations is why no one — no family friend, neighbor or relative — reported the abuse even though they knew of or suspected it. Part of the reason is that the arm of the government with which the community is most familiar is the police, who many residents feel act more like an occupying army than a force to “serve and protect.” Given that, another of the mayor’s initiatives — hiring “20 seasoned law enforcement professionals … who will enhance the investigatory practice in the ACS field offices” — is unlikely to stimulate more child protective reports from concerned citizens.

There are no mayoral initiatives to improve housing, health care or education in Bedford Stuyvesant, or to provide good jobs, or meet the other needs of the community. This is why many people consider the mayor’s fix-it plan to be “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” The next death has already happened. Quachon Browne, a 4-year-old known to Child Welfare Services, died of head and liver injuries in a cold two-room apartment on the 30th of January.

Bill Davis (bdavis@cpusa.org) is a retired member of Social Service Employees Union Local 371.