People Before Profit blog

Iraqi Communist Party condemns the criminal attack on shrine in Samaraa

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:21:00 +0000

Statement of the Iraqi Communist Party

In yet another evil and criminal attempt by the enemies of Iraq, the enemies of national unity, a gang of criminals carried out a bomb attack on the shrines of Imams Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari, in Samaraa. The aim is to ignite the flames of sectarian sedition among the Iraqi people and destroy their national unity that we all strive to preserve. The loss of this unity would mean the loss of Iraq, as a land, a people and a civilization.

While expressing strongest condemnation of this criminal act, we call upon all our people, of all religious sects and nationalities, to remain resilient and show a high sense of responsibility, and shun vengeful tendencies. The criminals must not be allowed to achieve their aim of destroying Iraq and shedding more blood. Every effort must be made to preserve our national unity, so that we can eliminate terrorism and terrorists, and continue our march to build a democratic and prosperous Iraq.

We also call upon the government to shoulder its full responsibility by pursuing the criminals, apprehending and putting them to trial to receive just punishment, as well as ensuring security.

Let us all unite and stand firmly together against the terrorists and murderers, and those behind them, and all those who strive to destroy our national unity. Let us work with full determination and perseverance to foil this hellish scheme, that has failed up to now, and must continue to fail. We must double our efforts to preserve and consolidate Iraqi national unity, build a tolerant peaceful Iraq that enjoys peace, harmony and democracy.

22 February 2006

CARTOON

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:25:00 +0000

Barbara Bush a no-show at tea party

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:31:00 +0000

Cindy Sheehan. Photo by paul Hill/PWW.

HOUSTON — On Feb. 6, President’s Day, some 200 supporters joined peace activist Cindy Sheehan in front of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, claimed by Barbara Bush and former President George H. W. Bush as their home church.

“I am overwhelmed by the response. It’s very good,” Sheehan told the World. “We invited Barbara Bush to a tea party,” she said. “I’m waiting for Barbara Bush to come out and join the tea party. Her husband, George Bush, said that if I showed up at her church, she would deal with me. If she shows up, I would like to talk with her.”

Though activists had prepared a table appropriate for the occasion, Barbara Bush failed to join Sheehan for the “tea party.”

The event, in one of Houston’s wealthiest neighborhoods, was organized by Gold Star Families for Peace, Veterans for Peace and Code Pink.

As Sheehan led them in chants of “1, 2, 3, 4, we don’t want your stupid war!” participants were upbeat and enthusiastic about the possibilities for ending the war and restoring peace. Cree Frye, 33, with the Island Peace Front in Galveston, was standing by a huge banner that read, “Jesus Wept.” She said she has been supporting Cindy Sheehan “since we went to Crawford in August.” Frye added, “I don’t believe anyone was put on this earth to kill people. The troops that we send over there are killing people for a lie and they’re dying for a lie. It will be nice to see the mothers’ sons come home.”

“We live in Montgomery and I’m campaigning for Teens for Peace,” said Autumn, 13, at the demonstration with her mother and a neighbor. “We want to send a message to Bush that the teens care. Most people think teens are a mindless mass that will do anything you say. I’m against the reasons for the war. There’s no weapons of mass destruction. Where are they?”

Another demonstrator, Matt, 20, told the World, “I don’t support the war. I don’t think violence in general is a means of solving any problem.” Sarah, 19, a student, added, “one of my good friends is over in Iraq. He’s not very happy with what’s happening over there. The things he has told me are not very pleasant.”

Many families with children participated. “I’m here because I have young sons and if we don’t stop this war, they will be fighting it!” said Regina Neely, 33, who describes herself as an “activist mom.”

James Windham, 33, said, “I’m here because I have young children and I don’t want them to be fighting in this war or paying for this war.”

“It’s really amazing to see such a show of solidarity against the war in such a conservative part of town,” said Free Man Jung, 24. “People from all ideologies came to make a statement with their presence.”

The Cuban Adjustment Act still dangerous after 40 years

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:34:00 +0000

In the Florida Keys on Jan. 5, the Coast Guard removed 15 Cubans from an unused bridge unconnected to land, sending them back to Cuba four days later. Right-wing Cuban Americans are up in arms. Once more the special role played by undocumented Cuban immigrants in the history of U.S.-Cuba relations is on display.

Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the “Democracy Movement,” fasted for 12 days until Bush administration officials agreed to hold talks with Cuban American leaders. His group joined Florida family members of the deportees in suing the Coast Guard. U.S. Judge Federico A. Moreno held hearings Feb. 15 and promised a quick decision.

Declaring that “a total review of the policy is appropriate,” Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Jan. 17 called for a meeting with congressional leaders and Washington officials. The date for the meeting is March 8, according to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Sen. John McCain took the occasion of a Miami fund-raising visit to join his hosts in calling for a policy review.

Sen. Mel Martinez called U.S. policies a “complete and utter failure” as he referred to “arbitrary and dangerous decision-making regarding the repatriation of Cuban nationals.” Martinez, three Cuban American representatives from Florida, and New Jersey’s Sen. Robert Menendez are pressuring the Bush administration. The president of the Cuban American National Foundation advised Republicans not to take Cuban American loyalty for granted.

The 15 Cubans were part of a scenario fashioned over decades to score propaganda points over Cuba and to placate counterrevolutionary Cuban Americans.

The 1966 U.S. Cuban Adjustment (CAA) allows undocumented Cuban immigrants to stay and then, after a year, gain permanent residence. Upon arrival, they receive work permits, Social Security numbers and welfare benefits. During the 1960s, Washington spent over $1 billion helping newly arrived Cubans find jobs, homes and social services.

The effect has been to entice Cubans to cross the Florida Straits in small boats. The Cuban government says 15 percent of this population dies in the process. The scenario has come to include transportation services. Migrants each pay $8,000 to $12,000 for a pick-up off Cuba and a trip to Florida. Officials there are accused of turning a blind eye to institutionalized human smuggling.

The Clinton administration initiated the third part of the drama. According to a 1995 administrative ruling, Cubans apprehended at sea are returned to Cuba. Those who make it to U.S. soil, or sand, stay. This is the part of the policy that is now under the gun.

The two nations signed Migratory Agreements that year, their only accord in 45 years. The impetus was the 1994 migration of 35,000 Cubans to Florida. The U.S. government agreed to issue 20,000 entry visas annually to prospective immigrants, using a lottery. That’s when Washington introduced its “wet foot, dry foot” scheme. Immigrants are useful for embarrassing the Cuban government, but large numbers of them are another matter.

Cuba claims the U.S. government has issued far less than the required 20,000 annual visas. Each year from 2000 through 2002, Washington gave out 10,860, 8,300 and 7,237 entry visas respectively. Last year it dispensed 533. Analysts have long observed that restrictions on legal emigration correlate with increased illegal crossings and loss of human life. Washington accuses Cuba of denying exit visas to prospective emigrants.

The Coast Guard Service intercepted 2,712 Cubans at sea last year and 1,225 the year before. All but 2.5 percent were repatriated to Cuba. Sen. Martinez pointed out that during his presidency, George Bush has sent 7,740 Cubans home, while criticizing the “wet foot/dry foot” policy during campaigns.

During 2005, U.S. officials apprehended 3,612 Dominican would-be immigrants at sea, and in 2004, 3,229 Haitians. In 2004, U.S. border guardians blocked 1.2 million foreigners from entering the country, 93 percent of them Mexican. Cubans are unique for the red-carpet treatment they receive. Now, however, high-level agitators in Florida want more; they want the CAA to rule again at sea, and on land.

Mobile homes sit empty, hurricane survivors still homeless

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:29:00 +0000

At least 10,770 empty FEMA house trailers were parked in Hope, Ark., while 16,500 families made homeless by hurricanes in the Gulf Coast were evicted from their hotel rooms in the last few weeks.

A concerned Arkansas schoolteacher told the World that she saw many more trailers parked by the interstate highway. “We had noticed them before Christmas,” she said. “Why don’t they take them on down there to New Orleans?” She added, “I’m concerned about where my tax dollars are going. They’re being wasted by this. I think they underestimate the common Joe’s intelligence — it’s like they thought we wouldn’t understand what was going on.”

Tracy Young of Arkansas posted her thoughts to a Mississippi online forum. “I live about 35 miles from Hope where FEMA is paying $25,000 a month to keep these trailers here at the airport,” she wrote. “People in Miss-La have had no home now for five-plus months, how awful! My son is working in Mississippi and he says it is just pitiful, some of the living conditions.

“I don’t know what it will take to deliver these manufactured mobile homes but we need to get with it,” Young continued, “and quickly or soon we will have a new burden for the taxpayers: sickness! The only reason I’ve been given by anyone is that they can’t be moved due to paperwork. Let’s do the paperwork! ...Get some hard working good ’ol country boy down there and he can get things going, I’ll bet you!”

Officials in St. Bernard Parish, La., are so desperate for help they started taking trailers without FEMA authorization, KTHV Little Rock reports.

Arkansas Congressman Mike Ross (D) has written three letters to FEMA asking why the trailers are still in Hope. He said, “In a matter of weeks, we built military bases in Iraq, in a land far, far away. If we can do that, we should have the resources here at home to get people who lost their homes, five months after the storm, get them out of hotel rooms, out of cars, out of tents and get them into these manufactured homes.”

Ross told the Los Angeles Times, “It cost $431 million and they’re all sitting there, 75 percent of them literally parked in a cow pasture. They are brand-new, all totally furnished, and yet people have been living in tents for five months in a row. It just makes you sick to your stomach.”

FEMA maintains that the thousands of hurricane survivors ousted from hotel rooms when the government stopped paying for them will receive federal assistance they can use for housing. Attorneys for the evacuees say those vouchers will not be sufficient to obtain reasonable accommodations.

Meanwhile, the trailers, for which the government paid $431 million, are left to deteriorate while security guards watch over them.

Haitians cry foul on election tally

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 07:43:00 +0000

In the wake of an extended vote count after Haiti’s Feb. 7 election, tens of thousands of supporters of presidential candidate Rene Preval took to the streets in Port-au-Prince and other major cities, accusing the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) of rigging the elections and demanding that Preval be recognized as president.

The CEP, the body in charge of the elections, reported Feb. 14 that Preval, an ally of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, took 48.76 percent of the vote, with 90 percent of the vote counted. The winning candidate needs 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a run-off. Former President Leslie Manigat polled 13 percent. The rest of the vote was split between 32 other candidates.

However, two members of the nine-member CEP disputed the official tally. Council member Patrick Fequiere complained that Jacques Bernard, the CEP’s director-general, released election results without notifying other members of the body and without disclosing the sources of his information.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that hundreds and perhaps thousands of ballots were found in a garbage dump in Port-au-Prince, and that a mound of burning ballots was found in another dump.

The CEP’s web site initially reported two contradictory election figures. In one, Preval had 49 percent of the vote, but a computer-generated graphic on the same site gave him 52 percent.

Pierre Richard Duchemin, director of the CEP’s vote tabulation center, told Reuters, “The percent which is given by the graphic is done by the computer according to figures entered by a data operator, and the computer can’t lie.”

“There is an unwholesome manipulation of the data,” he said. “Nothing is transparent.” He called for an investigation.

Several other presidential candidates declared that Preval won the first round of elections. “Christian values prevent me from going along with the dirty tricks and manipulations committed in the counting of votes” said Pastor Chavannes Jeune, who came in fourth.

Kevin Pina, a U.S. journalist and filmmaker, told the World in a telephone interview from Haiti that the CEP prevented many voters in poor neighborhoods that support Preval from voting. In Cite Soleil, for example, voters were asked to walk three to five miles to a polling station. Upon arrival, their names were not on the voter list.

“Some voters therefore gave up,” Pina said. In other poor neighborhoods, such as Grand Ravine and Bel Air, polling stations opened two to four hours late, he said.

In contrast, voters that Pina observed in wealthy neighborhoods had no problem casting their ballots.

Also lowering Preval’s vote tally were the 125,000 ballots that the CEP declared invalid. Pina said many ballots were ruled spoiled because voters wrote an “X” over the photo of the candidate they wanted instead of over a circle next to the photo. “There is a clear preference expressed in those ballots but they are being thrown out on the basis that they are disfigured,” he said.

About 4 percent of the ballots were left blank, a factor that further diluted Preval’s vote count. One anonymous CEP member told a reporter from the Haitian News Agency AHP: “Who believes that thousands of people got up at 3 o’clock in the morning, braving insecurity, running everywhere for hours looking for a voting booth, and then decided to hand in a blank vote?”

Pina noted that the CEP “is solely comprised of rivals to Rene Preval’s party (Platform of Hope). There is not one member representing the Platform of Hope or Lavalas,” the movement associated with Aristide. The CEP is backed by the U.S., Canada, the EU, the OAS and the UN.

At the World goes to press, Preval refused to accept the election results. “We have the conviction that massive fraud has shamed the electoral process,” he told a press conference. He urged his supporters to protest the results peacefully.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in a Feb. 15 statement, “It is absolutely outrageous that the President Aristide-haters, the anti-Lavalas elites and the U.S. government would so openly and blatantly steal these elections.”

In response to public outrage, CEP officials promised to bring in outside experts to examine the ballot count.

WHAT'S ON

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 15:58:00 +0000

CHICAGO March 31, Fri., 1:30 p.m. Jane Finder memorial luncheon. Jane was a retired CPL librarian, CLUW member, longtime Modern Bookstore volunteer, & member of Rogers Park club CPUSA. At Unity Center, 3339 S. Halsted St. Info: (773) 446-9920 x205. Donations to PWW in Jane's memory would be greatly appreciated.

CHICAGO March 31, Fri., 5-9 p.m. “Immigrant Communities Standing Together” Annual Fundraiser for Coalition of African, Arab, Asian, European, & Latino Immigrants of Illinois. At Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. (at Michigan Ave.). Variety of local performance groups: spoken word acts, drumming ensembles, dance troupes, & much more. Info: call Isabel Anadon at (773) 248-1019, visit website www.caaelii.org

CHICAGO Beginning April 1, Saturdays. 3-5 p.m. Spanish for activists! Learn Spanish in a group setting. Various levels of proficiency offered. Led by Guillermo Cohen, language instructor at high school & university level. At Unity Center, 3339 S Halsted St. Sponsor: Workers Education Society. Limited space. Please call (773) 446-9925 or email

OAKLAND, Calif. April 1, Sat., 10 a.m.–noon, Political Affairs Readers’ Group (monthly meeting) will discuss “Terror: Who Benefits and Why?” by Gary Tedman (Jan. 2006 issue). At Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Sponsored by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Club, CPUSA. Info or copy of article, call the library: (510) 595-7417.

PHILADELPHIA April 8, Sat., 9:30 a.m.–2 p.m. Workshop: Fight Against Racism & Fight for Equality. At W.E.B. Du Bois Center, 4515 Baltimore Ave. Registration $10 includes reading materials & lunch. Hosted by Eastern PA & DE Dist. CPUSA. Info & RSVP e-mail or call (215) 222-8895.

ROSEMONT, Ill. March 31, Fri., 8 p.m.–10 p.m. Mo Amer live in Comedy for Justice. Support the demand for justice by friends & family of Army Specialist John Torres (who was Mo Amer’s best friend & died in Afghanistan) & help fund the documentary “Murder & Heroin in Bagram.” At Embassy Suites Hotel Ballroom, 5500 N. River Rd. (2 blocks S of Rosemont stop on Blue Line, in front of Convention Center). Donation $20. Info: (773) 486-8499.

ST LOUIS April 29, Sat., 9:30 a.m. 14th Annual Hershel Walker Peace & Justice awards breakfast. Awardees include: Quincy Boyd (Pres. AFSCME Local 2730), Joan Suarez (JwithJ), & PROMO (Personal Rights of Missourians). Shelby Richardson, recently back from Venezuela, will speak on tremendous changes there. At Postal Workers Union Hall, 1717 S. Broadway. Tickets $10 in advance, $15 at door. Sponsored by MO/KS Friends of PWW. Info: Tony (314) 776-7732 or tonypec@pww.org.

TUCSON, Ariz. April 8, Sat., 2 p.m. No Child Left Untested, presentation & discussion of Bush administration failed education policies where every child is left behind: who profits & what needs to be done? With Deb Wilmer, educator & member of our board. At Salt of the Earth Labor College, 1902 W. Irene Vista. Info: (520) 624-4789, e-mail SELC@webtv.net.

What’s On listings appear in the print edition and the cost is 10 lines for $20. Listed online at no additional charge. Info: e-mail ads@pww.org

Lawmakers assail Bushs domestic spying

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:09:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — At the funeral of Coretta Scott King, Feb. 7, former President Jimmy Carter sounded a pointed warning for today by recalling the dark days of government spying on the King family in the 1960s.

“It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the targets of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance,” Carter said.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Feb. 6, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales offered bland assurances that President George W. Bush is within the law in ordering domestic spying on the people without warrants. But it did not quiet an angry storm that Bush is committing an impeachable offense and should be called to account.

The rising opposition to Bush’s police state tactics is reflected in the fact that despite his plea in the State of the Union address for reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, Congress once again extended the repressive bill for only one month.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) put it bluntly, charging that Bush’s “lying” and “spying on American citizens, no matter how he tries to frame it, are impeachable offenses. … The issue he’s been caught red-handed on is really typical of who he is, how he handles the presidency, and what his leadership is all about: spying and lying … particularly [about] the war in Iraq.”

From the beginning, Gonzales’ testimony was suspect since Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) refused to place Gonzales under oath, a maneuver to immunize him from perjury charges. An antiwar protester was ejected from the hearing room when he shouted “fascist” as Gonzales spoke. Another protester wore a T-shirt with the message, “Enforce the law. Arrest Bush.”

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) told the hearing, “Of course we have a disagreement on whether the witness should have been sworn.” Bush’s warrantless spying “is jeopardizing the principles on which this country was founded,” Feingold added. “This administration has been violating the law and misleading the public to try to justify it.”

Feingold zeroed in on Gonzales’ testimony to the Senate Judiciary just a few weeks ago in which he flatly denied that Bush had ordered any surveillance that violates the Constitution or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA established a secret FISA court to speed up the processing of warrants. But Bush circumvented the FISA court in ordering the National Security Agency to engage in massive wiretapping of overseas phone calls of American citizens.

“That testimony was seriously misleading,” Feingold said. “You wanted the American people to believe this kind of [spy] program was not going on and it was. You could have said the president has the authority…But you wanted to be attorney general so you issued a misleading statement. You were under oath at the time.”

The White House had hoped that Gonzales’ one-day appearance would satisfy the senators. But Specter indicated that the attorney general would be recalled for a second day and in the meantime former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other former administration officials may be called.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas grilled Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, during a White House briefing Feb. 6. “He [Bush] has put his hand on the Bible twice and promised to uphold the Constitution,” Thomas told McClellan. “Wiretapping without a warrant is unconstitutional.”

McClellan, his face red with anger, snapped, “This is a very different situation and you know it.”

“No it isn’t,” Thomas snapped back.

Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, sent out an e-mail warning that the Gonzales hearing “is not enough” and urging messages to senators and House members demanding that “they call for a special prosecutor and the release of all the Justice Department memos regarding spying on U.S. citizens.” The Bush administration has refused to turn over files on the NSA spy operation to Congress. “The Bush White House has consistently worked to avoid judicial oversight and destroy the system of checks and balances on which this country was founded,” Goodman wrote. Gonzales should “tell Congress all the facts regarding the Bush administration spying on Americans. He should also resign.”

CCR also demanded an investigation of Gonzales’ advice to Bush on how to “break the law regarding torture, detention, and rendition” of thousands of detainees.

Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, said that Bush’s power grab is so sweeping he could justify “internment camps for groups of citizens he deems suspicious.” Bush’s plea that people should trust him, Fein added, “is a view that would cause the founding fathers to weep. … Clearly this is inconsistent with the separation of powers.”

What's On?

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:24:00 +0000

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Feb. 9 & 10, Thurs. & Fri., 7 - 9 p.m. Seminar: Another World is Necessary, Socialism! What should a new social order, faithful to our country’s basic values, look like? With Gary Hicks. Center for Marxist Education, 550 Mass. Ave., 2nd Fl. Info: (617) 354-2876.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. March 8, Wed. 6:30 p.m. Annual Red Flame Award Dinner. Sponsored by The Anne Burlak Timpson Labor Forum. Info: e-mail Gary Dotterman gwd19442000@yahoo.com.

CHICAGO Feb. 17, Fri. 6:30 p.m. The war damages our community. Hear Cindy Sheehan & Juan Torres, two parents with one message: Stop the War! Stop the recruitment! Join Cindy & Juan in a discussion about the injustice of the war in Iraq, the aggressive military recruitment of minority youth in our high schools & what we can do to prevent one more person from dying in this senseless war. At St. Pius Church Basement, 1919 S. Ashland. Bilingual program, Spanish & English. Info: call Cristy, Comité Anti-Militarización at (773) 318-0762.

CHICAGO Feb. 18, Sat., 6 p.m. Call to action: Reviving the fight for equality. Hear Debbie Bell, Chair, African American Equality Commission, CPUSA, SNCC veteran & recent visitor to New Orleans. With cultural performance by Valerie Carter & reflections on Chicago Freedom Movement 1966 by participants. $10 donation includes dinner. At Unity Center, 3339 S Halsted St. Info: (773) 446-9925.

CHICAGO Feb. 25, Sat., 2 p.m. Film showing: “Song of Freedom” starring Paul Robeson. Free admission. Unity Center, 3339 S Halsted St. Monthly film series sponsored by Workers Education Society. Info: (773) 446-9925

CHICAGO March 31, Fri., 5-9 p.m. “Immigrant Communities Standing Together” Annual Fundraiser for Coalition of African, Arab, Asian, European, & Latino Immigrants of Illinois. At Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. (at Michigan Ave.). Variety of local performance groups: spoken word acts, drumming ensembles, dance troupes, & much more. Info: call Isabel Anadon at (773) 248-1019, visit website www.caaelii.org

COMPTON, Calif. Feb. 14, Sat., 7 p.m. Terrorist Sheriffs out of Compton! Compton City Council Meeting, Compton City Hall, Compton Blvd. & Willowbrook Ave. Info: (310) 635-6365 or (818) 309-7088.

DOWNEY, Calif. Feb. 18, Sat., 12 noon Stop police brutality! Come to protest at Corner of Firestone Blvd & Woodruff Ave. Gonzalo Martinez was killed by Downey Police 2/15/02. He was shot 34 times with a machine gun while trying to surrender to police. Please help the family and friends of Gonzo fight for justice! Info: Norma Martinez (562) 619-7207 or (562) 619-7208.

LOS ANGELES Feb. 21, Tues., 8 a.m. Justice for Deandre Brunston. Come show your support for the victims of police brutality! Wrongful death civil suit at L.A. County Courthouse, 111 North Hill St., Dept. 20. Deandre Brunston was assassinated by L.A. County Sheriffs’ Deputies on 8/24/03. Info: Keishia (310) 339-1940.

MAINE Meet Bernie Dwyer & Fr. Geoffrey Bottoms speaking on the Cuban Five, showing Bernie Dwyer’s film “Mission against Terror,” & raising money for the Cuban Five Freedom Fund. Dwyer, based in Cuba, is a journalist for Radio Havana. Geoffrey Bottoms, of the Cuban Solidarity Campaign in Britain, heads up support there. Organized by Let Cuba Live Committee of Maine. Info: call Tom Whitney at (207) 743-2183.

Feb. 10, Fri, 4:15 p.m. Bates College, Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, Lewiston, Maine.

Feb. 10, Fri., 7 p.m., Curtis Public Library, Morrell Room, 23 Pleasant St., Brunswick, Maine.

Feb. 11, Sat., 11 a.m. Norway Library, Norway, Maine

Feb. 11, Sat., 3 p.m., Rockland Public Library, 80 Union St., Rockland, Maine

Feb. 12, Sun., 4 p.m., First Parish Church Unitarian Universalist, Parish House, 425 Congress St., Portland, Maine

NEW YORK through March 26 The New-York Historical Society has extended its Slavery in New York exhibit through March 26. At Central Park West & 77 St. Admission: members & children under 12: free; adults: $10; teachers, students, seniors: $5. Info: (212) 873-3400 or visit the website: www.nyhistory.org.

TUCSON, Ariz. Feb 11, Sat. 2 p.m. Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks, video and discussion.

Feb. 25, Sat. 2 p.m. Labor song workshop with Anne Feeney, “activist, organizer, songwriter, folksinger, troublemaker and hell raiser.” Salt of the Earth Labor College, 1902 E. Irene Vista. Nominal registration, scholarships available. Info & registration: (520) 624-4789 or e-mail: SELC@webtv.net.

Ending of protected status to hit Central Americans

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 09:58:00 +0000

As the U.S. Senate gears up to deal with immigration reform, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua are facing a deadline that could lead to a sharp deterioration of their condition here.

About 300,000 Central Americans, most of them Salvadorans, are allowed to stay in this country legally under a special “Temporary Protected Status” negotiated between the United States and their home governments. They were here without documents when Honduras and Nicaragua were struck by major hurricanes in 1998 and when El Salvador was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2001.

The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has been renewed several times. If it were to end and the persons covered by it were deported, El Salvador especially would not be able to deal with the sudden addition of 220,000 people to its labor force, in a country of only 6,900,000 inhabitants. Also, Salvadorans living in the United States, including TPS people, send home over $2.5 billion each year in family remittances, which would be reduced if the TPS people were deported.

All three countries are desperately dependent on TPS, and this gives the United States leverage over their governments. Many Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S. believe that the otherwise nonsensical presence of a contingent of Salvadoran troops helping the U.S. in Iraq must surely be a quid pro quo for the continued extensions of TPS.

The United States has also used the TPS program to manipulate Salvadoran internal politics. During the campaign for the March 2004 presidential election, the U.S. government put out the word that if FMLN party candidate Shafik Handal were to win, TPS would be canceled. The presidency went to right-winger Antonio Saca.

Anti-immigrant forces in the U.S. demand that the TPS program be ended and its participants be deported. Nevertheless, this week Haiti requested that Haitian immigrants be brought under a Temporary Protected Status, and last year Guatemala made the same request after heavy damage from hurricanes. Colombia and Pakistan have made similar requests

Anti-immigrant spokespeople claim that the TPS people are not really refugees from natural disasters, but from poverty and underdevelopment. In this they are probably to some extent right, but draw the wrong conclusions. El Salvador would be an economic basket case with or without earthquakes. The whole Latin America and Caribbean area has been struck by a disaster bigger than any hurricane or earthquake, namely the neoliberal “free trade” and privatization policies imposed on them by the wealthier countries, especially the United States, and the international lending institutions.

Every one of these countries now under TPS or requesting a similar program has been damaged by policies that have devastated local agriculture and industry in favor of large-scale transnational monopoly capitalism. And this has hit other countries, including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.

The ultimate ending of the need for TPS lies in the abandonment of these failed development models by the countries of origin, and their integration into the new economic and political order in Latin America that is being spearheaded by Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and now Bolivia.

Area governments are imploring President Bush to extend the program, but according to a story in the Miami Herald on Jan. 17, the Department of Homeland Security is campaigning against this, and Bush might try to fold TPS into his “guest worker” program. This would turn TPS immigrants into an easily controllable labor source for Big Business in this country, but very likely would prevent them from ever becoming U.S. citizens and full-fledged members of U.S. society.

If TPS is canceled, will El Salvador pull its troops out of Iraq? Will governments in the area defect from the Central America Free Trade Area and join the new regional economic system that the Venezuelans and their allies are building? I hope so. A good sign that all the regional presidents were willing to denounce the anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 16.

Progressive people in the United States have a responsibility to try to overturn the U.S. trade and economic policies that force millions of people to uproot themselves and cross distant borders just to make a living. We must also stop our government from interfering in elections in other countries, which is likely to happen with the Mexican election also.

Meanwhile, the demand should be that TPS people not be turned into guest workers with few or no labor or civil rights, but rather be fully legalized and allowed to eventually become U.S. citizens if they want to. As legal permanent residents and citizens, these workers can much more easily join unions and demand decent wages and working conditions, not only for themselves but for their fellow workers of whatever race or origin. Under President Bush’s guest worker plan, they will be impeded from doing this, which is bad for them and undercuts the position of other U.S. workers.

San Francisco upholds immigrant rights, condemns vigilante violence

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 09:42:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — In what may be the first such action by a U.S. city, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Jan. 24 passed a powerful resolution condemning HR 4437, the draconian anti-immigrant measure now on its way to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

HR 4437 “will do some very scary, chilling things — not only making all undocumented people in the U.S. into felons and criminalizing a whole class of people with the stroke of a pen, but also penalizing U.S. citizens and legal residents who have routine contacts with the immigrant community,” Supervisor Chris Daly told a press conference on the City Hall steps before the Board of Supervisors’ meeting.

“That is why I have introduced a resolution strongly condemning this legislation and asking our Senators Feinstein and Boxer to take very strong stands to kill this bill in the Senate.”

Calling HR 4437 “reminiscent of Senator McCarthy’s ‘red scare’ of the 1950s,” Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi warned that the legislation not only makes immigrants vulnerable, “but it is about the whole melting pot that made this country great to begin with.”

“This is so reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan,” Supervisor Sophie Maxwell said of the Minutemen anti-immigrant armed vigilante group. “Since when does our government say it is okay for people to take the law, to take guns, into their own hands?” she said. Maxwell sharply criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s expressions of support for the Minutemen last year, and called on the state attorney general and the Legislature “to do whatever is possible” to ban future activity by the Minutemen in California.

Renee Saucedo of the San Francisco Day Labor Program and La Raza Centro Legal warned that civilian militias are targeting day labor centers around the country and pledged that San Francisco would continue to support driver’s licenses for all, “a decent and dignified path to legalization and protection for all workers regardless of immigration status.”

Saucedo told the World that San Francisco immigrant rights organizations plan to meet with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, urging her to work to kill HR 4437.

“The Minutemen are the symptom of a much greater problem,” said Sheila Chung of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, adding that reform to fix the “broken” immigration system must include family reunification, protection of civil and workers’ rights, and a path to citizenship.

Provisions in the resolution reiterate San Francisco’s long history of welcoming immigrants, reaffirm earlier “City of Refuge” and “INS Raid Free Zone” resolutions, and support the city-funded day labor program. It condemns HR 4437 and urges other local and state governments to follow suit; calls on local, state and national governments to condemn and protect against anti-immigrant violence; and urges immigration reform upholding the rights of all residents regardless of immigration status.

N.Y. governors budget seen as assault on public education

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 18:24:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Boasting that he was delivering tax cuts for working people and increased funding for schools, Republican Gov. George Pataki delivered his final executive budget Jan. 18 in Albany. Almost immediately afterwards, however, the budget proposal was condemned, especially by education-rights activists.

Critics point out that even though the state has a surplus of over $2 billion, the governor plans to squander much of that in tax cuts for businesses, while leaving schoolchildren illegally shortchanged and raising tuition at public colleges. Also, the vast majority of tax cuts are directed at the wealthy.

“This is a good budget — unless you're planning on staying in New York, which the governor is clearly looking past,” said State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), alluding to Pataki’s rumored presidential ambitions. Silver said in published reports that the vast majority of the governor’s tax cuts would go to people in the highest income brackets.

Pataki’s has received the most flak for his K-12 funding plans. In his address he bragged that he would open more charter schools — in itself a problem, many say — as well as offer a $500 credit to students in the poorest neighborhoods.

The $500 credit is said to be used as a potential voucher for private schools. Critics charge that this is a further attack on public education. Aside from the fact that $500 is not nearly enough to enroll a child in private school, critics charge that this is a “foot in the door” to funding private schools at the expense of public education. Also, the state’s attorney general, Elliot Spitzer, has said that it probably is unconstitutional, given that some of that money would most likely end up funding religious schools.

Pataki also touted an increase of about $635 million for public schools. However, he did not so much as mention that, according to a Supreme Court judgment brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, funding of NYC schools is so low that it needs to be brought up by billions of dollars per year for students to receive a “sound basic education.” The day the governor gave the address, the state was 536 days past the deadline to provide that funding, making Pataki’s budget a violation of the law.

“He’s taking a $2 billion surplus that could fully fund the court-ordered CFE remedy for poor and minority schoolchildren this year and is using it to further his own political ambitions,” said Michael A Rebell, a CFE lawyer. “It’s an outrage.”

Rebell added that Pataki is “making a mockery of our entire judicial and legislative processes.”

While working families may see some tax benefits, such as a fuel rebate, the governor’s budget includes a $1.1 billion tax cut, more than half of the state’s budget surplus, for corporations.

Pataki plans to make up for lost tax revenue through funds generated by state-sponsored gambling, more speeding tickets and, particularly harmful to many working students, an increase in tuition at State University of New York and City University of New York colleges. SUNY tuition is budgeted to increase by $500, and CUNY by $300. In addition, the new plan would allow for SUNY/CUNY tuition to be raised automatically each year.

“Gov. Pataki is leaving Albany in the same way that he came in, forcing students to pay more and cutting back on financial aid,” said Miriam Kramer, the New York Public Interest Research Group’s higher education coordinator in a statement. “The governor’s higher education budget proposal will have the biggest impact on the state’s poorest students.”

According to NYPIRG, another Pataki plan — to raise the number of credits a college student must take to be considered full time for financial aid — would make it more difficult for students to attend school while working. For many students, this is the only way they can afford college, even with financial aid.

Organizing for justice. Migrant and immigrant rights in the U.S.

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:50:00 +0000

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Students at the University of Michigan held a Migrant and Immigrant Rights Awareness and Labor Law Roundtable conference here Jan. 17-19. The gathering, organized by the students of MIRA (Migrant and Immigrant Rights Awareness) and the Labor Law Roundtable, with the support of UM faculty and other sponsoring organizations, was projected as the first of a series of conferences that will address issues of immigration and social justice.

Farm labor organizing

Baldemar Velasquez, founder and president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) of the AFL-CIO, keynoted on FLOC’s new initiatives in North Carolina. Velasquez grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where his grandparents had joined thousands of seasonal migrants during the Mexican Revolutionary War era after the fighting ruined many peasant farmers.

Like many other families, the Velasquezes moved from northern Mexico to Texas, from where they were recruited to work on sugar, beet, tomato, cucumber, cherry, apple and other crops in Ohio and Michigan. “You had to pay someone to get back to Texas before winter fell,” Velasquez said, “but one year my parents didn’t have enough to make it, so we wintered on an Ohio farm.”

The family paid to heat a stove and huddled together in an outbuilding all winter, which left them even deeper in debt that spring. After the following year’s farm labor, they still couldn’t buy their return to Texas. “This went on for eight years,” Velasquez told the audience of 100 students and faculty from Michigan and other universities and immigrants rights organizations. “But it meant I went to the local school. There was no bilingual program, no special ed, so there I was in the regular classroom.”

Over time he mastered English and got good schooling, but the linguistic challenges affected his academic performance, and his low grades never reflected the intellectual abilities he later showed.

“This trajectory is what’s happening all over North America today,” Velasquez said. “Migrants from countries south of the border are coming here to work, although they’re transitioning from agriculture to other industries.”

But some politicians and “talking heads on TV” are misleading the American public about the realities of immigrant labor, he said, and whipping up fear, hatred and threats of deportation, imprisonment and violent assaults by vigilantes and other hate groups at our southern border.

NAFTA and immigration

Most U.S. citizens, he said, are uninformed about the impact of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). The agreement has resulted in the ruin of 1.3 million Mexican corn farmers who have migrated to seek work because they cannot compete with the cheaper, subsidized corn dumped into Mexico by the giant U.S. corn industry.

“If people want a fair situation, why not subsidize the Mexican farmers?” Velasquez said. “Of course that will never happen. So there’s no competition. It’s like a major league baseball team playing a high school team. We have to do something about the cause of immigration if we want a free market.”

Velasquez also noted that the United States had forced Mexico to privatize public national farmlands, land that could be farmed more effectively under communal or nationalized ownership system.

End slave labor programs

“Today, Mexican workers are forced to pay bribes that hike what should be a $360 cost for visa and other legitimate fees to payoffs of $1,800 to $3,500 to corrupt police officials, job recruiters and ‘coyotes’ who carry the workers into the States.

“These are slave labor programs almost as bad as the Braceros Program that was ended in the 1960s,” Velasquez said. After being extorted for high fees and risking their lives to sneak across the border, they are denied the right to complain about working conditions, health care or their pay. “Anyone who speaks up is fired, deported and then blacklisted by the U.S. Customs Service from ever returning to the U.S.,” he added.

The growers use not only the Customs Service but also the U.S. Labor Department, “which does not adequately enforce or oversee labor regulations,” to carry out the systematic exploitation and oppression of immigrant workers.

“A Mexican dies in the workplace every day,” Velasquez said. “And that’s just the official count. It doesn’t include those dying while migrating, and no doubt many work-related deaths are unreported.”

The upshot in the United States, he said, is that a well-designed, formal guest worker program is required. However, FLOC opposes President Bush’s guest worker proposal, which ties workers to a single employer on disadvantageous terms. Velasquez’s group has instead supported the AgJobs bill, which would grant permanent residency to farm workers after a certain number of years in the fields, and the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill of 2005, which, while it includes guest worker provisions, provides more support for migrant worker rights, family unity and a path to citizenship.

Organizing success is possible

Despite obstacles imposed by Mexican officials who arrest and harass union organizers and U.S. growers who deploy a variety of legal and illegal tactics, FLOC has succeeded in organizing several industries. Velasquez says FLOC has gained support not only from the left (though he knocked some segments as “too lazy, inactive, unimaginative and arrogant”) but also from evangelical youth from Republican families.

“Most Americans want to get America right, even if to some that means ‘right with God.’” Velasquez said. He recounted how Toledo-area students of a Christian school had responded to his appeal to raise money for the widow in Mexico of a migrant laborer who had died in North Carolina as a result of hazardous working conditions.

“I showed them how it says in Ezekiel, Chapter 22, that God punishes those who oppress and exploit aliens and widows. I challenged them to fast one day at lunch, and pray, and collect the money. They did it, and eight traveled with me to Mexico to present $1,000 to the worker’s widow. When they saw the thatched huts and barren cornfields down there, they said they’d never complain to their parents about not buying something ever again.”

During FLOC’s successful union organizing drive in Toledo, all segments of the community backed the worker-led boycott of the local pickle company. Farmers and anti-union “right-to-work” groups have continued to fight against the union even after it won its organizing election, but they lost a $12 million judgment against FLOC before the National Labor Relations Board and have failed to break the collective bargaining agreement so far.

“The growers are trying to get the Department of Labor to help them out,” Velasquez said, “so we’re urging everyone to contact the Department of Labor and tell them to stay out of [partisan action in] any labor disputes.”

‘Blood, sweat and fear’ in meatpacking

Panelist Lance Compa, a senior lecturer at Cornell, focused on the human rights dimensions of the immigrant workers’ experiences in the meatpacking industry.

“In 1906 Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘The Jungle’ exposed the horrendous conditions in meatpacking,” Compa said. At first, the novel’s impact was limited mainly to improving meat quality, rather than labor standards. “As Sinclair put it, ‘I aimed at people’s hearts but hit their stomachs,’” Compa recalled. But the great union drives of the 1930s enabled meatpackers to gain wages equal to those in other major industries.

“Then in the 1970s and ’80s, the companies counterattacked,” Compa said, “and today conditions have retrogressed to what Sinclair described 100 years ago, not only in the abuse of workers and animals but there is backtracking on consumer safety as well.”

Compa investigated the industry for Human Rights Watch and in 2005 published his report, “Blood, Sweat and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants.”

“We found massive violations in occupational safety and health, in compensation, in freedom of association” — all on a level that is “a violation of international standards on the treatment of immigrant workers.”

In a hog-processing plant in Tarheel, N.C., where 30,000 animals are killed daily, a worker named Glen Birdsong was sent to clean “byproduct” from a slaughter tank one week into his job. Birdsong was alone, (“that was illegal,” Compa noted) and he had no safety belt (“also illegal”). When fellow workers noticed his absence after 30 minutes, they found Birdsong dead at the bottom of the tank, overcome by toxicants.

OSHA fined Smithfield Foods, owner of the plant, $4,000 for violating federal standards, Compa said.

At a poultry plant in Virginia owned by Tyson Foods, workers on the butcher line were required to make 25,000 cuts per shift. Room temperature was kept at 68 degrees, which meant the line had to be shut down for five minutes every hour to be washed to prevent growth of harmful bacteria.

“The company found out it could get five more minutes of work per hour if it reduced the temperature to 50 degrees,” Compa said. “No more break. And when workers said they needed vests and gloves to keep warm, they were told, ‘You get them.’ Job-related injuries rose.”

At a Smithfield plant in Virginia, investigators proved that in 1997 the company organized an assault on a leading plant activist to intimidate the workers before a certification vote. The union drive failed and the election is still under appeal.

At a meatpacking plant in Nebraska, the company called in the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 2001 to deport 200 workers before a union election. That one was lost, too.

“All of these were violations of international human rights that the U.S. has signed, and they must be analyzed, publicized and fought as such,” Compa said.

Compa said what is needed is a reform of the OSHA Act to make regulation more effective and also an immigration policy that protects workers’ rights. The experiences of workers must become issues in local, state and national elections, he continued, and campaigns at universities like Cornell, Nebraska, Duke and the North Carolina, in which students organize to support workers, need to spread across the country.

“Students — whether they eat meat or not — are interested in the treatment of meatpacker workers and in the treatment of animals,” Compa said. “They are watching to see where their university buys its meat.”

Building coalitions

Panelist Fran Ansley, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, described how community involvement had helped organize 700 workers at a chicken-processing plant in east Tennessee.

Ansley began by saying that “employment relations need to be regulated democratically. That means getting rights and powers to workers. The government entered that relationship in the New Deal era, but now capital wants to jump out of that jurisdiction.”

Big Business’ practice is to escape regulation, or destroy previous regulation, by moving to nonunion areas of the United States. Then, as workers fight back, its practice is to move to cheap-labor regions in other countries. “This leads to global contact points between our workers and others.”

Ansley pointed out that east Tennessee plants moved to Mexico but now Mexicans have immigrated “next door to us right in Tennessee.” An old Koch Foods chicken-processing plant that was once in Morristown, with 99 percent white and Black workers, is now a modern structure on the outskirts of Morristown “with Latino workers doing 99.9 percent of the hard work,” she said.

Where the nonunion native-born workers at Koch Foods, Ansley said, had become “too quiescent and defeatist, prone to not challenging injustices vigorously any more,” the Mexicans proved to be a “great group of workers in the organizing drive, because they brought a lot of experience with them from Mexico.”

The keys to successful union drives like that in Morristown, Ansley said, include an ability to unite “community, labor and student movements” and a “tenacity that is ready for a long-distance fight.”

Organizers made good use of “legal resources via federally funded groups and others, finding a union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, that was willing to get in a fight and also open to work with community partners like Jobs with Justice and others,” and identifying Koch Foods as an “attractive target” because of its poor record in labor relations.

Also important was the priority the organizers placed on “dealing with the language issue by providing simultaneous interpretation at all meetings and home visits, thanks to the key participation of an intern from Tennessee’s renowned Highlander Institute,” which focuses on social justice.

The drive included vigils, boycotts, church folk and letter-writing campaigns to politicians and the press, Ansley said.

The Migrant and Immigrant Rights Awareness conferences aim to bring together leading academics and activists, as well as union leaders and students, to discuss recent developments and new strategies in the fight to organize migrant and immigrant workers. In addition, conference participants are discussing the creation of a university-community-labor partnership in support of immigrant workers in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area.

Speakers included Jennifer Gordon of Fordham Law School; Baldemar Velasquez, president of Farm Labor Organizing Committee; José Oliva, director of Interfaith Workers’ Rights Center; Lance Compa of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations; Perez Rosenbaum of Michigan State University; Fran Ansley of University of Tennessee Law School; Ben Davis of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in Mexico City; and Kate Shaughnessy of Washington, D.C.-based Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

For relevant publications by Ansley, Compa, and Gordon, and other useful links, go to the MIRA conference web site: www.personal.umich.edu/~dandanar/mira/conference.html

Demand grows: Mine safety must be first priority

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:01:00 +0000

Two more mine workers were killed in separate accidents in West Virginia Feb. 1, prompting Gov. Joe Manchin to call on all coal companies to cease production until safety checks can be conducted. “We’re going to check for unsafe conditions, and we’re going to correct any unsafe conditions before we mine another lump of coal,” Manchin said.

The deaths brought to 16 the number of mining-related fatalities in West Virginia since Jan. 2.

Grief and anger throughout the Appalachian region is driving reforms in state mine safety laws and echoing in the chambers of the U.S. Senate.

Over 2,000 miners, their families and residents lined the road in the tiny hamlet of Man, W.Va., Jan. 29, to pay last respects to Don I. “Rizzle” Bragg, 33, one of two coal miners who died in a fire in Massey Energy’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine, Jan. 19. Many held signs reading, “West Virginia loves our coal miners.”

Bragg and Ellery “Elvis” Hatfield, 47, were killed in the nonunion Massey mine just weeks after the Jan. 2 explosion at International Coal Group’s Sago Mine that took the lives of 12 miners. January was the deadliest month in nearly 40 years for coal miners.

Meanwhile, 72 potash miners were rescued after being trapped by an underground fire and toxic smoke in Saskatchewan, Canada, Jan. 30. The miners escaped to airtight underground “safe rooms” packed with oxygen, food and water sufficient for them to survive several days. Unlike their brothers in West Virginia, the Canadian miners had communication equipment as well. “It really looks like a textbook recovery to me,” commented Davitt McAteer, the former Clinton administration Mine Safety and Health Administration head who is leading West Virginia’s investigation into the Sago disaster.

The outpouring of solidarity with the miners pushed the West Virginia Legislature to act before January had ended, enacting reforms in the state’s safety laws including requiring tracking and communication devices, adequate oxygen and improved rescue response time.

Pennsylvania’s 7,000 miners have been battling the Pennsylvania Coal Association to win reforms in the state’s 1961 mine safety laws. Reform legislation was drafted following the 2002 Quecreek mine accident, where nine miners trapped underground by a flood were successfully rescued. Among its many proposed changes is the creation of a three-member panel to update safety regulations based on new technology. Unlike West Virginia, where the Legislature enacted reforms after only one day of debate, Pennsylvania’s bill has languished for three years. A voted is expected in March.

The situation is so bad that even Republicans are feeling the heat. “How can we not do this?” said Republican state Rep. Richard Kasunic, the bill’s sponsor, pleading for support from fellow legislators. “This is about saving lives. If we fail, it would be a travesty to those men and women who have lost their lives in mines and those who have been hurt and maimed in the mines.”

A week after the Bush administration’s acting MSHA head David Dye walked out of a Senate hearing on the Sago disaster, the Senate is considering Bush’s nomination of coal operator Richard Sticker as permanent director of the agency. MSHA records indicate that Stickler was general superintendent and chief health and safety officer for BethEnergy, a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel, with a record of three miner deaths. The worst accident killed Donald J. Smith and injured eight other miners at BethEnergy’s Cambria Slope Mine 3, near Ebensburg, Pa.

“Congress determined in 1969 that the coal industry could not and should not police itself in matters of safety and health in America’s coal mines,” said United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts. “Yet today MSHA is riddled with former coal company executives. The foxes are guarding the hen house and the confirmation of Mr. Stickler would make matters worse for coal miners.”

Roberts quoted the first sentence of the 1969 Act: “The first priority and concern of all in the coal or other mining industry must be the health and safety of its most precious resource — the miner.” He continued, “It doesn’t say the first priority should be higher profits, it doesn’t say the first priority should be increasing production — it says the first priority must be the health and safety of the miner. Yet, we now have a situation where the very people who are supposed to be in charge of enforcing mine safety used to be sitting in coal company offices figuring out how to skate around safety regulations to increase production and profits. Mr. Stickler is a prime example of that.”

Senators, both Republican and Democrat, sharply grilled Stickler on Jan. 31. “It was patently clear to me that the lack or the absence of innovation in communication and oxygen accessibility is the single biggest difficulty,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) told Stickler. “In the case of the Sago Mine, both of those in combination could have allowed us to save those miners.”

Stickler did not comment.

Meanwhile, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) charged the Bush administration with dumping mine safety regulations, stacking MSHA with industry apologists and punishing agency whistleblowers. The charges are detailed in a 14-page report released by Miller chronicling MSHA’s performance since Bush was elected.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Alito confirmed over strong opposition

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 09:39:00 +0000

One day after an unsuccessful filibuster attempt, the Senate confirmed Bush Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito, widely opposed for his extreme right positions, by a 58-42 vote. It was the second closest Supreme Court confirmation vote in 100 years, topped only by the 52-58 vote approving Clarence Thomas in 1991. This time four Democrats — Robert Byrd (W.Va), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Tim Johnson (S.D.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) — voted with the Republicans, while moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) broke ranks to vote no.

The filibuster, led by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), was supported by 24 Democrats and Independent Jim Jeffords (Vt.). It marked the largest revolt in years by senators against Bush’s initiatives.

Hillary Shelton, executive director of the NAACP Washington office, told the World the efforts of Kerry and the other senators were made possible by grassroots opposition to Alito.

“They really are a creation of their constituencies,” Shelton said. “Go back and see who’s at home. You’ll see people who are committed and engaged, that want to see an advancement of civil rights and civil liberties, and racial justice concerns; they give them the support they need to come out and be that champion.”

People For the American Way President Ralph Neas said the close confirmation vote “represents an extraordinary effort by the progressive movement which, despite daunting odds from the beginning, never gave up, made a compelling case against confirmation, and rallied several million Americans to contact their senators to oppose Alito.”

Alito, age 55, is likely to affect the Supreme Court’s decisions for decades to come.

Shelton noted that Alito has “a political agenda that has played out through his judicial role.” As a federal judge, Alito eviscerated “the protection of individual rights in favor of advancing the goals and objectives of large corporations and governments. And that raises concern in a country like ours that puts a high value on democracy and the protection of individual rights.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney noted that the labor federation had expressed “grave concerns about this appointment.” Sweeney said, “As a member of the Supreme Court, Justice Alito will weigh in on cases that will impact generations of workers on vitally important issues ranging from health and safety and discrimination to minimum wage and the freedom to form a union.”

Crystal Plati, executive director of Choice USA, said through a spokesperson, “Alito’s confirmation to the court needs to be a rallying call to all Americans.”

“We can elect pro-choice leaders in 2006 and change the shape of our school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and the U.S. House and Senate to ensure future victories that reflect our values rather than Judge Alito’s,” Plati said.

PFAW’s Neas said people “must work to ensure that someday soon there will be a progressive Senate that better represents the values and beliefs of a significant majority of the American people.”

Some commentators have said the Democrats who voted “no” to Alito but also voted “no” to a filibuster did so because they feared that Majority Leader Bill Frist would force a majority vote to ban the filibuster.

Responding to that, Shelton said, “I don’t think that the members of the U.S Senate should give into the threats of those that would go as far as changing or even breaking the rules of the Senate to get their way. Quite frankly, I think they need to realize that the American people would be on their side. The American people are underestimated too often. We don’t stand for bullies.”

“This is the first of many fights for the soul of our democracy,” Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said, “and we will eventually emerge victorious.”

Chvez: the U.S. people are indispensable

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 09:36:00 +0000

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez told a packed crowd at the Poliedro Stadium here, “The people of the United States are indispensable to saving to world, united with the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.” He said capitalism is destroying the world, and that unless the planet goes socialist, “I’m afraid it may not see the 22nd century.” His remarks, which evoked thunderous applause, were part of a long-awaited speech to the participants of the sixth World Social Forum on the evening of Jan. 27.

Chávez attended the public gathering after spending an afternoon giving out certificates to graduates of an experimental literacy project, Robinson Mission II, which not only teaches adults to read and write, but also brings them up to a sixth-grade education level.

The event at the stadium, billed as a “Mass action against imperialism,” was opened by the Rev. Marcelo Barros, a Brazilian Benedictine monk. Barros said that before he entered the stadium he was asked by a young man if he was there to “bless” the Bolivarian Revolution. He replied, “Your Revolution, our Revolution, needs no blessing. It is She who blesses us.” Barros said a revolution is an act of love, echoing Ché Guevara’s famous words that “revolutionaries must be guided by great feelings of love” toward other human beings.

Chávez said he saw the process in his country as a continuation of the struggles of Tupac Amaru, the indigenous leader who fought the Spanish conquerors, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata in Mexico, the Nicaraguan Augusto Sandino and the Brazilian communist Luis Carlos Prestes. He lastly gave a tribute to the Salvadoran communist and leader of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, Schafik Handal, who died of a heart attack in San Salvador two days before. Handal was stricken at the airport as he was returning from the inauguration of the new progressive Bolivian president, Evo Morales.

Chávez said that the elections in Latin America of progressive regimes are also part of this forward process. “We are going to give the right on this continent the biggest defeat in 500 years,” he declared.

He noted how in the pro-Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) summit held in Quebec City in 2001, “Venezuela stood alone against the FTAA because Cuba was excluded.” Today the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay have joined Venezuela and Cuba in opposition to the FTAA, which would, if implemented, give total control of the hemisphere’s economy to mostly U.S. transnational corporations.

“Venezuela will never again be a U.S. colony,” he declared to a standing ovation. “Oil will be for the poor, the people, not controlled by foreigners.”

While blasting the policies of U.S. corporations and the Bush administration, the Venezuelan president lauded the people of the United States, noting that Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte had recently visited the country. While there, Belafonte called Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world.” He reiterated those words when he returned to the U.S.

Chávez called attention to the presence of Cindy Sheehan on the speakers platform, sitting together with Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s parliament; Aleida Guevara, Ché Guevara’s daughter; and others from the Americas. He called Sheehan, in English, “Mrs. Hope.” Afterwards, he led the crowd in chanting, “Long live the people of the United States — we are counting on you.”

He said that the Bush administration’s pre-emptive war policies were “killing U.S. youth and Iraqis.” He asked people to imagine the U.S. with a government that would “declare peace on the world” and retire all military bases and soldiers from the planet.

“Imagine that the $400 billion used for aggression were being used for education, health” and other human needs, Chávez said. He said that if Cuba and Venezuela can, with limited means, do so much to combat social ills, imagine what could be done “if the governments of the world, starting with the U.S., worked against sickness and poverty.” He added the U.S. working class was a “giant” that needed to be awakened to “join the struggle for justice.”

Chávez also called on the World Social Forum movement to develop a united plan of work and action, and not just talk about the issues. At the same time he hailed the Forum’s interest in the Bolivarian Revolution and its activities against neoliberal policies around the world. Such activities, he said, give hope to the Venezuelan people.

Ford workers run over by profit drive. Communities will be devastated

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 09:30:00 +0000

HAZELWOOD, Mo. — Over 1,900 Ford employees here will soon be out of a job. As part of a broad restructuring effort, dubbed ‘Way Forward,’ Ford Motor Company plans to idle production and begin laying off workers by March 10.

Nationally, six other plants will also get the ax. By 2008, 30,000 Ford employees will be out of a job. Last year, Ford handed out 10,000 pink slips.

On Wall Street, Ford’s restructuring plan boosted investor confidence. Shares rose 5.3 percent after the layoffs were announced. Ford also kicked off the new year with a 19 percent rise in fourth-quarter profits. While Ford’s North American division lost $1.6 billion last year, overall the multinational auto giant is in great shape. It recently boasted of a third straight year of profits.

Ken Dearing, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 325, which represents the Hazelwood workers, told the World, “We’re fighters. We’re going to keep fighting. Our members’ security, their hopes and dreams are hanging by a thread. Nobody here is giving up.”

Ford currently holds 18.3 percent of the U.S. car sales market, down from 25.7 percent in 1998. Simply put, Ford is over-producing and most North American plants are operating at 20 percent below production capacity. According to Dearing, “The plant’s productivity isn’t in question. This is a capacity problem.”

“Ford is taking care of its shareholders, while our members pay the price,” said Dearing.

The Hazelwood plant received a President’s Quality Award last fall and is considered one of the most productive Ford plants in the country.

The UAW, with local and state political leaders, saved the Hazelwood plant in 2003, the first time it was on the chopping block, but prospects look grim this time around. While the plant isn’t closed yet, according to Ford it would cost too much to retool. Many UAW members are beginning to prepare for the worst.

However, thanks to the union, once the plant idles, Hazelwood UAW members are eligible for Supplemental Unemployment Benefits (SUB), a program started by the UAW in the 1950s in response to the industry’s seasonal employment cycle. With the SUB package and regular unemployment compensation combined, most UAW members will receive around 95 percent of their after-tax base pay for up to 48 weeks during the life of the existing contract, which expires in September 2007. If the SUB package is exhausted before that time, the union contract requires Ford to pay workers their base pay under the Guaranteed Employment Number program until the same date.

Missouri state Rep. John Bowman, a 29-year UAW member, told the World, “Very qualified, skilled workers will be out of a job. We have some time and we’ll keep fighting. Ford’s priorities are profits. But we’re not giving up on our union brothers and sisters.”

Hazelwood Ford employees aren’t the only workers feeling the heat. According to Kevin Madden of the St. Louis Labor Tribune, every auto industry job supports 4.6 jobs in other industries. Layoffs would cause “a devastating ripple effect on stores, bars, restaurants, suppliers and taxes in the area,” Madden writes.

One local parts plant is already in trouble. The Lear Corp., which employs around 250 people who make seats for Ford SUV’s, will likely face layoffs once the Ford plant idles. And the Hazelwood school district will lose an estimated $3.3 million annually in property taxes.

According to Dearing, between 7,000 and 11,000 jobs will be impacted. “The bowling alley, McDonald’s, everybody will be affected. This will devastate the community,” he said.

“We are still hoping to find a solution. We’re staying focused,” Dearing continued. “The membership hasn’t faltered. They are holding their heads high. They just want to build a quality product. They just want to work.”

State of the Union: On the wrong track Bush speech pushes war, ignores poverty, joblessness

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 09:27:00 +0000

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan had a special vantage point for the State of the Union address Jan. 31. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) had given her a ticket for a gallery seat. But she never got to hear the address. When she took off her jacket, revealing a T-shirt that said, “2,245 dead. How many more?” she was yanked out of her seat by a guard who called out, “Protester!” By the time the president was telling Congress to approve the USA Patriot Act, Sheehan was in jail.

“I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go?” she wrote the next day.“It is time to take our freedoms and our country back.”

President George Bush’s speech was the opening shot in the 2006 congressional election battle. Pretending to take a bipartisan tone, Bush laid out the main issues Republicans will campaign on: terrorism, stay the course on Iraq and justify illegal wiretapping in the name of national security.

Bush introduced several “initiatives” with pleasant-sounding names. All would benefit corporate profits at the expense of workers and communities.

Majorities of Americans give the president “low marks for leadership” and say “our country is on the wrong track on jobs, health care, retirement security and Iraq,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. “America’s workers are drowning in a perfect storm of job loss, skyrocketing health care costs and disappearing retirement security, but President Bush failed to provide them so much as a raft last night.”

Bush used rosy words but was silent on many pressing matters — 30,000 auto worker layoffs, 48 million uninsured, a half million Louisianans still homeless after Katrina.

Bush’s memorializing of Coretta Scott King sounded as empty as his commitment to civil rights, especially with new Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sitting in the front row, observers said. Programs to end racism and poverty were missing from Bush’s speech.

Bush called the nation “addicted to oil,” an odd charge from a man widely seen as the “war for oil” president. He made no mention of oil giant ExxonMobil’s $36 billion profits last year — the largest ever recorded by a U.S. corporation, while millions of families can’t afford their heating bills.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) challenged Bush’s claim of striving for a “compassionate, decent, hopeful society.”

“This is lofty rhetoric, coming from an administration that utterly abandoned the poor people of New Orleans and continues to ignore not only the reconstruction needs of the Gulf Coast but the poverty crisis facing our nation,” she said.

The speech is not expected to give Bush’s sagging public opinion polls much of a boost.

Outside the White House at a “People’s State of the Union” and across the nation, progressive activists gathered to watch the speech and discuss a people’s agenda.

In Los Angeles, over 100 Latino immigrant rights activists held a candlelight procession to protest Bush’s immigration policies. In his speech Bush called for increased militarization of the border and a vast expansion of temporary work permits, leaving workers and families without rights.

“We say no to more walls at the border and yes to permanent residence — a path to citizenship for immigrant workers who contribute to our economy and communities,” said Angela Sambrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center-L.A. Immigrant rights is expected to come up for debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee later this month.

Congress will be a major battleground on that issue and a number of others between now and November, with labor and progressive forces gearing up to break right-wing Republican control of the Senate and House.

Bush called for bipartisanship, but his policy presentation was “my way or the highway” especially on Iraq, government spying and trade. Mum about his efforts to silence scientists and science teaching, he called for more science and math teachers. He tried to appropriate Democrats’ language on alternative energy initiatives, with little substance. His call for “health savings accounts” will help banks and corporations but do nothing for the health care crisis.

When Bush complained that his Social Security privatization campaign had stalled last year, Democrats stood up, clapping and cheering. But his proposal for a bipartisan committee to “study entitlements” is widely seen as an attempt to undermine the coalition that thwarted privatization.

United Mine Workers representative Bob Butero emphasized labor’s role in the next months. It is vital for working families to vote their interests and regain control of Congress and the statehouses, he said. “This is an opportunity where we need to get involved and build coalitions to get our candidates elected.”

What really happened at the State of the Union

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 07:42:00 +0000

As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight.

I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.

There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened:

This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?

After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn't feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn't disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket and I didn't want to be disruptive out of respect for her. I, in fact, had given the ticket to John Bruhns who is in Iraq Veterans Against the War. However, Lynn's office had already called the media and everyone knew I was going to be there so I sucked it up and went.

I got the ticket back from John, and I met one of Congresswoman Barbara Lee's staffers in the Longworth Congressional Office building and we went to the Capitol via the underground tunnel. I went through security once, then had to use the rest room and went through security again.

My ticket was in the 5th gallery, front row, fourth seat in. The person who in a few minutes was to arrest me, helped me to my seat.

I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; 'Protester.' He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like 'I'm going, do you have to be so rough?' By the way, his name is Mike Weight.

The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, 'That's Cindy Sheehan.' At which point the officer who arrested me said: 'Take these steps slowly.' I said, 'You didn't care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps.' He said, 'That's because you were protesting.' Wow, I get hauled out of the People's House because I was, 'Protesting.'

I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for 'unlawful conduct.'

After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, '2245, huh? I just got back from there.'

I told him that my son died there. That's when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain.

What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for still? For this? I can't even wear a shirt that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing.

I wore the shirt to make a statement. The press knew I was going to be there and I thought every once in awhile they would show me and I would have the shirt on. I did not wear it to be disruptive, or I would have unzipped my jacket during George's speech. If I had any idea what happens to people who wear shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable that I would be arrested...maybe I would have, but I didn't.

There have already been many wild stories out there.

I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for what happened tonight. I will file it. It is time to take our freedoms and our country back.

I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government. That's why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That's why I am not going to let Bushco take anything else away from me...or you.

I am so appreciative of the couple of hundred of protesters who came to the jail while I was locked up to show their support....we have so much potential for good...there is so much good in so many people.

Four hours and 2 jails after I was arrested, I was let out. Again, I am so upset and sore it is hard to think straight.

Keep up the struggle...I promise you I will too.

Love and peace soon,

Cindy Sheehan