People Before Profit blog

Still an open wound

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:14:00 +0000

In late January, a Mississippi man was arrested for a 1965 murder. James Seale, now 71, was arrested on kidnapping charges related to killing two Black teenagers, who were tied to trees, whipped and drowned. Seale’s arrest, and others like it, shows that the nation is still struggling to come to grips with its violent history around the treatment of Blacks and the Civil Rights Movement.

The two young Black men who Seale is charged with kidnapping were murdered during Freedom Summer, the summer of 1964 when civil rights workers converged in Mississippi to register Black voters. This push to register voters brought with it a wave of terror and violence wrought by the Ku Klux Klan.

When Seale’s victims were found, they initially attracted some media attention, because it was thought they might be the bodies of the three civil rights workers who had recently disappeared. However, when it became clear they were not those workers, federal officials quickly turned the investigation over to local authorities, and the inquiry into the deaths was quickly swept under the rug. Not surprising, as Seale was a former deputy.

It is good that Seale is finally being brought to justice, but we cannot forget that these murders are only two of countless murders that remain unsolved. The only reason that this case was even re-opened was that a reporter, Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., wrote extensively about the case, showing that investigative files were recovered and that the murders likely took place on federal land.

Who knows how many murders of Blacks remain unsolved because of a lack of interest from either local or federal officials? As this case showcases, if the people killed weren’t high-profile, very little effort was expended to bring their killers to justice. Many murders were half-heartedly investigated and then promptly closed, their victims forgotten. Seale’s arrest should serve as a poignant reminder of how far we as a nation still have to go in righting the wrongs of more than a century of Black oppression.

Eliza Brinkmeyer is a media relations specialist with the Advancement Project. This article is reprinted with permission from the organization’s blog, .

The Bush library: who needs it?

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:02:00 +0000

George W. Bush has selected Southern Methodist University in Dallas to maintain and extend his political legacy. In addition to the most expensive presidential library in history, the Bushites plan to add a “think tank,” sometimes referred to as the “Institute for Democracy,” to continue doing what they have been doing to America.

The outcry began with a modest and extremely civilized commentary in the campus newspaper last November. It has risen to a nationwide roar that includes leading Methodists, SMU faculty members, recognized historians, other academics and the public at large. A web page dedicated to the issue, www.protectsmu.org, claims over 10,000 signatures objecting to the “prospect of the George W. Bush library, museum, and think tank being established at Southern Methodist University.” Residents of the area began petitioning, and students on campus started a petition of their own.

The first objections were of a moral nature. The Rev. William K. McElvaney, professor emeritus of preaching and worship, and Dr. Susanne Johnson, associate professor of Christian education at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, wrote in the campus newspaper on Nov. 10: “Do we want SMU to benefit financially from a legacy of massive violence, destruction and death brought about by the Bush presidency in dismissal of broad international opinion? What moral justification supports SMU’s providing a haven for a legacy of environmental predation and denial of global warming, shameful exploitation of gay rights and the most critical erosion of habeas corpus in memory? Given the secrecy of the Bush administration and its virtual refusal to engage with those holding contrary opinions, what confidence could be had in the selection of presidential papers made available to the library?”

Recently, McElvaney told the World, “Former students have written in, ‘What this administration has done is totally contrary to what we learned at SMU.’ Methodists have a strong antiwar position. It certainly doesn’t fit within our Methodist principles. And the same thing certainly can be true when you talk about habeas corpus and torture. Let’s face it, torture is not on the list of Methodist virtues!”

When he co-authored the original objections, McElvaney did not even know that the Bush representatives were insisting on attaching a think tank to the library and museum proposals. He said, “SMU originally proposed a school of public service, as they have at the Clinton library in Little Rock. But the Bush representatives replied with their desire for a think tank or institute.” He added, “The library would be less damaging than the institute; that’s the most positive thing I could say about it.”

As faculty members began to add their objections, the SMU administration held a special closed-door meeting in December. McElvaney says that faculty members then found out, for the first time, that Bush planned more than a library and museum. He said, “We didn’t know about the institute until the faculty meeting on Dec. 20.” Afterward, participants told reporters some of the faculty concerns.

Apparently, the proposed “policy institute” would not be run by the university, but by a Bush foundation. Consequently, the university would have little say-so about what the institute might do or say. Other faculty members raised issues of openness in the adoption process. One professor said that she wasn’t sure the university would be able to recruit a diverse student body if it were associated with Bush policies. Others wondered if traditional SMU supporters would continue to donate funds if Bush-type ideas were being promulgated from the campus. One faculty member described the meeting itself as “intimidating.”

McElvaney told me, “I think it’s fair to say that there were statements made that certainly were received as intimidating. And it’s fair to say that there is a palpable fear on the part of the faculty to speak out on this if they don’t have tenure.”

By early February, Bush’s mania for secrecy had become a big part of the public discussion. Major historians and archivists argue that the Bush presidency has been the most aggressively secretive in history. Bush’s Executive Order 13233 smothers access to presidential records. The experts are pressuring the university to refuse the Bush plans with hopes of pressuring Bush to relax his unprecedented secrecy moves.

On the other side of the argument, university administrators and others claim that the $500 million library would be an economic asset to the university and to the city of Dallas. After the news story began breaking, more people joined the fight. Deborah Lewis of nearby Garland wrote: “It seems that everyone who defends the idea of locating the Bush library at SMU uses the justification that it will bring visitors and money to Dallas. Using that logic, I guess we should be pleased that the Kennedy assassination happened in Dallas!”

Will the protests continue to grow? McElvaney said, “It’s going to continue at a pretty strong pace.”

People are writing to President Turner, Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX 75275. They can also sign online petitions.

If the Bushites win out, they will employ the reputations of Southern Methodist University and the city of Dallas to extend Bush ideology into the indefinite future.

Who wants that?

Jim Lane (flittle7 @ yahoo.com) is a labor activist in North Texas.

Bush budget would slash Medicare, reward rich

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:33:00 +0000

“The president’s budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction,” charged Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, on Feb. 5.

“This administration has the worst fiscal record in history and this budget does nothing to change that,” he said. “It clings to the same misguided policies: costly tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest, cuts in domestic priorities and more fiscal irresponsibility.”

In his $2.9 trillion budget, which does not include all the spending on the Iraq war, President Bush is proposing to slash $80 billion from Medicare while once again giving huge tax breaks to the very rich.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said that people whose income exceeds $1 million per year would get an average $162,000 yearly tax reduction by 2012 under Bush’s plan. At the same time, seniors who have worked their entire lives would pay more for doctor visits (Medicare Part B) and watch their costs for prescription drugs skyrocket (Medicare Part D).

The Congressional Quarterly concluded, “The budget proposal includes an ambitious attempt to slow spending on entitlement programs, with Medicare as a particular target.” Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, summed it up: the administration’s plan for Medicare is “declaring war” on Americans.

Stark called for cutting payments to insurance companies that get Medicare checks and then disburse the money to hospitals, doctors and other professional providers. He proposed cutting funding to the middlemen who shuffle paper from stack A to stack B and focusing on maintaining doctors.

The Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) said Bush’s proposed Medicare cuts are $30 billion deeper than the cuts he proposed last year. Congress rejected Bush’s cuts at that time, and SOAR is urging that it do the same now.

The steelworker retirees noted with alarm that since Bush took office, 6.8 million more Americans have no health insurance and health care costs have shot up 66 percent.

Research by SOAR estimates that Medicare overpayments to private insurance companies amount to about $50 billion over 10 years. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said cutting the role of insurance companies “should be on table” as Congress, the “decider” on spending, begins debate on the budget.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney condemned the proposed Medicare cuts as “unconscionable,” saying the Bush plan would shift more costs to the states.

Slashing Medicare would place even the limited state health care initiatives to cover uninsured residents, like the Massachusetts program or the plan being debated in Pennsylvania, at greater risk.

House Democrats, with a groundswell of support from labor and seniors groups, including the AARP, sent a salvo across the administration’s bow. By a 255-170 vote, with some Republicans joining in, they passed the Medicare Price Negotiation Act, HR 4, which enables the government to leverage mass buying power, as it already does at the Veterans Administration, to lower the cost of prescription drugs. It addresses the onerous provision jammed through by Republicans with their prescription drug plan, Medicare Part D.

A big issue in the 2006 midterm elections, especially in states like Pennsylvania, Medicare drug price negotiation passed during the first 100 hours of the new Democratic-controlled House.

dwinebr696 @ aol.com

A decade of fighting old battles in the New South

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:18:00 +0000

Much has written about the New South and expanded opportunity for Blacks and others in the old bastion of Confederate pride, but human rights and civil rights leaders in the region point to racial injustice, voter disenfranchisement, workplace violence, violations of women’s rights and other issues as proof that the New South still has its old problems.

The days of the hooded night riders may take on different forms, but Blacks and people of color still live lives often controlled by others, often through economic slavery.

For the hope brought by African Americans drawn to Atlanta as the Black Mecca of the South, the increased number of Black elected officials at the local, state,and national levels, and the old saying that race relations in the South are more honest than the more subtle racial interactions up North, there are other signs of how far we have to go.

It was in Atlanta, Ga., that a 90-year-old grandmother was shot to death by cops, who invaded her home. It was in Florida that a young Black man died at the hands of guards at a boot camp that was supposed to help turn his life around. In New Orleans, Blacks are denied the right to return to their homes, while Latino workers are scapegoated, exploited, often not paid and threatened with deportation.

In Texas, Wal-Mart underpays and takes advantage of workers fearful of losing low wage jobs, even if it means not receiving hard earned overtime pay and enduring the whims of harsh Supercenter taskmasters. In Mississippi, casinos are rebuilt and speculators gobble up land, but the poor people who suffered the wrath of Hurricane Katrina see the remains of the destruction and little progress toward life as usual.

The land where cotton was king has new rulers that employ old tactics of intimidation to keep workers from complaining, organzing and hoping for a better way of life. Still there is a strain of southern resistance that refuses to accept these conditions, these assaults on human dignity and violations of human rights.

Part of the battle is understanding that these injustices aren’t just wrongs that need to be righted, but violations of international principles that protect people worldwide. The U.S. isn’t exempt from standards of behavior it loves to foist on others around the globe.

Just as the segregationists of the 1960s had a “Southern strategy” for their political success, a Southern organzing strategy is needed to combat today’s challenges. Part of the strategy involves building effective coalitions across the South to show the connections between seemingly different struggles, lend support to varied campaigns, share effective organizing tools and build a bigger base of folks that support social change and justice.

Over the past 10 years, the Southern Human Rights Organizing Network and the bi-annual Southern Human Rights Organizing Conference has been the engine for a growing regional movement that tackles economic justice and other issues.

Since its establishment in September 1996 in Oxford, Miss., the network has sought to link regional organizations and support workers’ rights and other campaigns. When farmworkers launched a battle against Mount Olive Pickles to heighten awareness about that company’s plantation work conditions and rampant unfair labor practices, the Southern Human Rights Organizing Network was there. Network members participated in demonstrations at supermarket chains in key southern cities.

Joining with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a member organization, the network supported a boycott against Diamond Walnuts. The best example of long-standing successful collaboration between the network and its members is found in the support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Taco Bell Boycott. The boycott pushed for an increase in the amount paid laborers in Immokalee, Fla., for back-breaking work picking tomatoes.

Network members participated in the coalition’s Truth Tour and in major demonstrations at Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, Calif., and at Yum Brands company headquarters in Louisville, Ky. After several years, the campaign won a major victory for the Florida farmworkers.

Most recently, Southern Human Rights Organizing Network organizers joined picket lines in Houston to support the Justice for Janitors strike, which also proved successful.

The network has supported organizing efforts for reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and efforts to combat police brutality, racial profiling and felony disenfranchisement.

In a partnership with the Mississippi ACLU and NAACP, the network raised public awareness to force governmental accountability after Hurricane Katrina. Southern Human Rights Organizing Network members campaigned for decent, affordable housing and challenged state and federal officials to provide equal access to post-Katrina resources, including food and shelter.

In the next phase, the Southern Human Rights Organizing Network will establish state caucuses to strengthen the organizations. These state leaders will organize public events and actions to address human rights violations and injustice.

The determination to fight runs deep in the South and these old problems will be attacked with a historic determination to put an end to oppression. When that day comes, we will truly be able to celebrate the rise of a New South.

Jaribu Hill is the founder of the Southern Human Rights Organizers Conference, and founder and executive director of the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights, based in Greenville, Miss.

Fighting like hell to stop county cuts

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:13:00 +0000

This testimony was presented to the Cook County, Ill., Board of Commissioners at a public hearing Jan. 29 in Chicago.

The proposed $500 million in cuts will severely affect every county service and devastate the county’s public health care system.

This is a life and death issue for hundreds of thousands of residents — those in poverty, the working poor, immigrants, mothers and children. The cuts’ racist character will deeply impact African American, Latino and other minority communities.

The jobs of thousands of health care and human services workers, public safety officials and public defenders will be lost. Most services are already severely understaffed.

Cook County is not alone. State, county and municipal governments across the country are being bankrupted by Republican right-wing policies, tax cuts for the rich and privatization. They are forced to fight each other for dwindling resources.

The cuts, carried out with Bush-administration-style vengeance, can only propel services into a death spiral. One can already see the first steps to privatize the public health system.

We think all our elected officials ought to be fighting like hell to change these policies without raising taxes on working families, including pressing Springfield and Washington, D.C., for more funding. Why not call for the emergency mobilization of your fellow county governments across the nation?

Slashes to Medicare/Medicaid funding, inadequate state financing, and patronage and corruption in the county Bureau of Health Services are some of the chief causes of the immediate crisis.

However, the resources exist to save and radically expand services.

Why not address the accumulated $1.4 billion in Medicaid reimbursements owed by the state and insurance providers but not processed because of understaffing? Gigantic insurance corporations are being subsidized with millions of dollars by Cook County.

Why not fight to get the state fully reimbursed for health care expenses by lobbying for changes in the federal law? Illinois cares for 4.5 percent of the nation’s Medicaid population, yet receives only 3.6 percent of total federal Medicaid spending. Stroger Hospital is funded nearly 70 percent by Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements.

While the county was announcing cuts, President Bush was calling for $27 billion for U.S. military escalation in Iraq.

To date over $360 billion has been spent on the war, including $8.3 billion from Cook County.

Let’s bring the troops home and use those funds for human services.

The Communist Party supports the call for a regional health care system and urges the following:

• No privatization.

• Create a public watchdog agency of union staff, doctors, nurses and patients empowered to oversee the Public Health Department and root out corruption.

• Tax all stock and bond transactions at the Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which could generate billions in revenues. Thirty-nine countries now do this.

• Increase taxes on all incomes exceeding $200,000 and on luxury condominiums.

• Work with the state to renegotiate the federal reimbursement rate for Medicaid, currently at the lowest level. Demand Congress increase funding to Medicaid/Medicare and fight the Bush administration’s plan to cut reimbursements for public health care.

These solutions will not solve the basic underlying problems of the health care system, which will reoccur. Ultimately we need a single-payer “Medicare for all” health care system that guarantees universal coverage.

We urge you to stand up for the constitutional mandate of Cook County government, and guarantee the right of citizens to health care and basic services.

John Bachtell (jbachtell @ rednet.org) is district organizer of the Communist Party of Illinois.

EDITORIAL: The courage of Paul Robeson

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:39:00 +0000

In February we celebrate African American History Month. That history has given us some of humanity’s greatest freedom fighters: Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Rosa Parks, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

All of these women and men shared a common characteristic: They drew their strength from the masses, understanding the power of our multiracial working class and its allies to make history in the face of reaction’s stubborn resistance.

None stood taller than Paul Robeson, the “great forerunner,” who spearheaded a civil rights movement decades before the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s. He led the movement against fascism, war and Cold War repression. Together with William L. Patterson, he presented to the newly founded United Nations the “We Charge Genocide” petition exposing widespread lynching, segregation, discrimination, hunger and poverty inflicted on the African American people. The petition exposed this system of racist oppression as a source of billions of dollars in corporate superprofits.

Enraged, the U.S. Senate dragged Robeson before a witch-hunt hearing. The all-white, all-male senators impugned Robeson’s patriotism. One asked him why he didn’t “go back to Russia.” Robeson leaned into the microphone and replied, “Because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I’m going to stay here and have a part of it. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am here because I am opposing the neo-fascist cause which I see arising in these committees.”

It isn’t fascism we see arising in the U.S. Senate today. But the cowardly Republican minority is doing the bidding of the Bush-Cheney administration in its illegal, immoral Iraq war, blocking an increase in the minimum wage, pushing to make permanent trillions in tax cuts for the rich, and otherwise serving the interests of corporate America.

Surely what we need today are courageous leaders like Paul Robeson who tell the high and mighty in Washington: “Here I stand!” So this cold February, let us honor African American History Month by remembering Paul Robeson. Let us try to live as he lived.

EDITORIAL: Senate battleground

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:35:00 +0000

The people, at the ballot box, in the halls of Capitol Hill and in the streets, have demanded that Congress act on the Iraq war, the minimum wage and other pressing issues. Just this week, Democrats in the Senate fought to debate Bush’s call to increase troops in Iraq, but their razor-thin majority was not enough to enact the people’s will in the face of Republican back-stabbing, stonewalling and back-room arm-twisting reminiscent of their notorious Dixiecrat predecessors.

In the first 100 hours, House Democrats made good on their promise and passed a minimum wage increase, a “clean” bill, no strings attached. But in the Senate, Republicans obscenely insisted on tying it to business tax breaks, stalling the first raise the lowest paid workers in the country would have had in 10 years. Evidently these senators and their president believe that low-income families surviving on a little more than $10,000 a year is the natural law of the land, and holding these families hostage to favors to business is just good ol’ politics.

This same Republican/Bush ploy lied and twisted its way to stall debate on a resolution opposing Iraq escalation. Loyal Virginia Republican John Warner helped block the bipartisan resolution he helped write. But despite the best efforts of the White House and right-wing schemers, four years of Senate silence on the Iraq war are coming to an end.

The U.S. Senate for decades was a bastion of reaction. Diehard segregationists like South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond jammed up civil rights legislation for years saying, “All the laws in Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force … the southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.” But the civil rights movement, with broad, mass street heat, patience and thoughtful political savvy, prevailed, not the Dixiecrats.

We are confident that today’s Senate Republican schemers and stallers will go the way of the Dixiecrats and McCarthyites.

The fight for a people’s agenda is on — on Capitol Hill and on Main Street.

Bush budget: billions for greedy, bones for needy

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:12:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — President Bush sent a $2.9 trillion “guns not butter” 2008 budget to Congress Feb. 5, loaded with goodies for the rich, for corporations and the war-makers, but bare bones for working people, senior citizens, children and the poor. Bush told the media his budget will erase hundreds of billions in deficits by slashing entitlement programs while also making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.

Bush’s plan would slash or eliminate entirely funding for 141 federal agencies. It earmarks, in a separate section of the budget, $99.6 billion in supplemental funds to continue and escalate the Iraq war. Antiwar lawmakers have introduced bills in the House and Senate to block that request. Bush’s budget also requests $145.2 billion for the Iraq war in 2008. This is in addition to his request for $481 billion in military spending, an 11 percent increase. Spending for discretionary domestic programs, excluding Homeland Security, is slashed by about 4 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, blasted Bush for proposing permanent tax cuts for the richest 1 percent that will cost the treasury trillions in lost revenues. “As we enter the fourth year of a costly military conflict abroad, the president wants to make permanent tax cuts for the rich that no commander-in-chief should support during time of war,” said McEntee. “It’s an outrage that he wants to gut domestic services to do it.”

He cited Bush’s proposal to slash Medicare by $75 billion and Medicaid by $25 billion, balancing the budget on the backs of senior citizens and the poor. “To pay for his expensive war abroad, President Bush is willing to abandon basic domestic responsibilities like health care here at home,” McEntee said.

Lena O’Roark, director of government affairs for Families USA, told the World Bush’s request for only $5 billion to fund CHIP, the low-income children’s health care program, will mean that hundreds of thousands of children will lose benefits. “We need at least $15 billion just to stay where we are,” she said. “The president’s budget means kids are going to lose coverage. My feeling is that this Congress is not going to allow children to lose coverage. But we still need a grassroots upsurge to let Congress know that more money is needed.”

The CHIP program, together with Medicaid and Medicare, “has really reduced the number of uninsured children. But we still have 9 million children without health care coverage. If universal coverage of every child is truly a national priority, then Congress can find the funds to pay for it.” Just allowing Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy to lapse “means there would be funds to cover every uninsured child in America.”

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, pointed out that Bush’s proposed cuts in CHIP, Medicaid and Medicare “contravenes his explicit promise at the 2004 Republican convention. It also stymies efforts by Republican and Democratic governors to expand health coverage to the 9 million children who are uninsured today.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said the budget “would essentially further enrich the most well-off at other Americans’ expense.” Those with incomes over $1 million annually “would get tax cuts averaging $160,000 a year,” its statement said.

The CBPP statement continued, “According to the administration’s own figures, the number of children in low-income families who receive child care assistance would be cut by 300,000 between 2006 and 2010. The number of children in Head Start also would be cut as the funding for the program would be sliced $100 million below the 2007 level in the House-passed Continuing Resolution.”

Marie Antoinette advised the poor to “eat cake.” Bush goes her one better. He calls for termination of a program that provides a bag of surplus food commodities at a cost of $20 per bag to 440,000 low-income seniors. The flour, rice, powdered milk, etc., is aimed at keeping these seniors from running out of food toward the end of each month.

At the same time he proposes sharp cuts in the Low Income Energy Assistance Program. “These poor elderly individuals would face cuts in both food assistance and in help paying for their heating bills at the same time,” the CBPP statement charges.

In other words: Let the poor starve and let them also freeze.

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

State of Black California points to inequalities

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:09:00 +0000

A report released last week by the California Legislative Black Caucus titled “The State of Black California” reveals the glaring inequalities faced by the state’s African Americans and Latinos in overall economic well-being, housing, health, education and treatment by the criminal justice system.

The report, commissioned by the Black Caucus and conducted by Steven Raphael of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and Michael A. Stoll of the School of Public Affairs at UCLA, also found that African Americans’ civic participation outpaces that of the other racial and ethnic groups.

Taking the status of white Californians as a baseline at 1.0, an overall Equality Index found Black and Latino Californians scoring 0.69. African Americans’ economic well-being was rated 0.59, while their quality of housing, health, education and treatment by the criminal justice system ranked between 0.66 and 0.69. However, civic participation by African Americans, measured by union membership and armed services participation, scored 1.30.

At a Jan. 31 press conference, caucus members, including its chairman, Assemblymember Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton), projected legislative and other proposals to redress the gaps and emphasized the measures will help all racial and ethnic groups.

“All Californians who find themselves unemployed or underemployed will benefit,” Assemblymember Sandre Swanson (D-Alameda) told reporters.

Assembly Majority Leader Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) said she hoped the findings would help correct a misconception among the general public that African Americans are faring well.

“The lack of respect and dignity for African American families in California is astounding,” Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) told the press conference. “The entire Democratic caucus is committed to removing the barriers of inequality that stand in the way of the African American community in our state.”

Among a broad range of legislative proposals being prepared by the Black Caucus are an action plan to revitalize low-income neighborhoods in Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego; the establishment of standards to hire people from poor neighborhoods to work on projects funded by public infrastructure bonds; the reform of education to improve both college prep and vocational courses and provide more counselors; and a study of the disproportionate homicide rates among African American men, particularly in inner city neighborhoods.

The need to help people emerging from the criminal justice system get job training and find employment was highlighted.

Other proposals included expanding community and school health clinics, as well as HIV/AIDS screening and treatment in low-income and minority communities, and using Housing Bond funds to develop affordable rental units. Opportunities for minority-owned, woman-owned and small businesses would also grow, including in infrastructure related projects.

The report, prepared over a year and a half, with funding from Southern California Edison and the nonprofit California Endowment, also included involvement by the nine Black Caucus members in a series of town hall meetings around the state. Caucus members plan follow-up meetings this spring.

Black Californians — 6.6 percent of the state’s population in 2000 — had a median income of $35,000 compared to nearly $54,000 for whites and $36,500 for Latinos. Conversely, the poverty rate among African Americans was 22.4 percent, compared to 8 percent among whites and 22.1 among Latinos. While Asian Americans scored as well as whites on the overall Equality Index, their poverty rate of 12.8 percent points to serious inequalities within that group as well.

A key health index, infant mortality, was much higher among Black Californians — 11.6 per 1,000 live births, compared to 4.1, 5.2 and 4.8 among Asian Americans, Latinos and whites, respectively. Death rates were also higher, and children’s health worse, among African Americans.

Average jail sentences and months of probation were also significantly longer for African Americans than for whites.

The full report and recommendations can be found at .

mbechtel @ pww.org

GOP squelches Iraq debate War opponents declare, We will not be silenced

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 06:52:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — The antiwar movement voiced outrage that the Republican minority in the Senate voted Feb. 5 to block debate on a bipartisan resolution condemning President Bush’s plan to send an additional 48,000 troops into the bloody Iraq quagmire.

The vote was 49 in favor of opening debate and 47 opposed, 11 short of the 60 required to move forward on the resolution. Only two Republicans, Susan Collins (Maine) and Norm Coleman (Minn.), voted with 47 Democrats to open the debate. Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), an independent, voted with the GOP obstructionists. Even Republican Sens. John Warner (Va.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), sponsors of the anti-surge resolution, voted for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s motion to quash the debate.

“Senator Warner voted to filibuster his own resolution,” said Moira Mack, spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. “It is incomprehensible that he would draft a resolution against escalating the war, work out a compromise with Democrats and members of his own party, but then join forces with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the Republican leadership ... and obstruct a debate on the most important issue facing the country, the war in Iraq.”

Warner “should drop the political games and allow the bipartisan resolution, his resolution, to come to a vote,” she told the World. “President Bush is escalating the war against the opposition of a bipartisan majority in Congress, his own military commanders and an overwhelming majority of Americans. Escalating the war will not make this country safer, and the American people deserve to know where every member of this Congress stands.”

The GOP’s obstructionist maneuvers on the Iraq war are similar to their tactics on raising the minimum wage. Senate Republicans loaded the minimum wage bill, approved overwhelmingly in the House, with billions in “poison pill” tax cuts for businesses. The Senate is emerging as the stronghold of the corporate ultra-right in blocking delivery on the voters’ mandate in the Nov. 7 elections.

Americans Against Escalation in Iraq is a grassroots movement including the Service Employees International Union, MoveOn.org, VoteVets.org, Win Without War, US Action, the Campaign for Americas Future, the United States Student Association and other organizations with millions in combined membership.

“We’re going to continue to push for a vote on this resolution,” Mack said. “We have veterans and military families lobbying on Capitol Hill this week to demand that the lawmakers allow a vote this week in the Senate and in the House next week.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said they would open debate on the anti-escalation resolution in the House, where a stronger antiwar majority makes passage more likely.

Mack said her group “recognizes that this nonbinding resolution is not perfect. It is a very important first step. We think a strong bipartisan vote for this resolution in the Senate would be very representative of the American people’s point of view.”

VoteVets.org staged a “fly around” to eight cities in seven states with “moderate” Republican senators Jan. 30-31 to urge them to vote for the anti-escalation resolution. The effort also included running local television ads in Maine, Virginia and Minnesota against escalation during the Superbowl football game.

“But only two senators, Collins of Maine and Coleman of Minnesota, heeded that message,” Mack said. VoteVets.org left a warning with each of the GOP senators that their group will work actively to defeat them in upcoming elections if they refuse to take a stand against escalation.

During Senate floor debate, Feb. 5, McConnell, the GOP minority leader, claimed the Republicans favored debate provided the Democrats also allowed a vote on a bill by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) stating that Congress would not cut funding for troops in the field. It was a pre-emptive move to squelch any future attempt by Congress to use the power of the purse strings to force Bush to end the war, as well as divide Democrats and Republicans who are against the surge but aren’t yet committed to cutting funding. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) angrily rejected this “stay the course” ploy.

Several binding resolutions are pending in the Senate and House, including one by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to restrict funding to only what is needed to safely withdraw U.S. troops on a clear timetable and to provide reconstruction aid to the Iraqi people.

Reid blasted the GOP for blindly supporting Bush’s war. During the four years of Republican majority control, “the Senate sat silent as thousands of United States soldiers died, billions were spent and Iraq lapsed into chaos,” he said. “As Americans, we cannot allow the silence to continue.” A vote for McConnell’s motion “is a green light for Bush to continue down the same track, sending 48,000 more troops. We must heed the results of the November elections … send a clear message to President Bush that escalation is not the answer.”

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

Which trees are best to plant to help combat global warming?

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:54:00 +0000

Trees are important tools in the fight to stave off global warming, because they absorb and store the key greenhouse gas emitted by our cars and power plants, carbon dioxide (CO2), before it has a chance to reach the upper atmosphere where it can help trap heat around the Earth’s surface.

While all living plant matter absorbs CO2 as part of photosynthesis, trees process significantly more than smaller plants due to their large size and extensive root structures. In essence, trees, as kings of the plant world, have much more “woody biomass” to store CO2 than smaller plants, and as a result are considered nature’s most efficient “carbon sinks.”

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), tree species that grow quickly and live long are ideal carbon sinks. Unfortunately, these two attributes are usually mutually exclusive. Given the choice, foresters interested in maximizing the absorption and storage of CO2 (known as “carbon sequestration”) usually favor younger trees that grow more quickly than their older cohorts. However, slower growing trees can store much more carbon over their significantly longer lives.

Scientists are busy studying the carbon sequestration potential of different types of trees in various parts of the U.S., including Eucalyptus in Hawaii, loblolly pine in the Southeast, bottomland hardwoods in Mississippi, and poplars in the Great Lakes. “There are literally dozens of tree species that could be planted depending upon location, climate and soils,” says Stan Wullschleger, a researcher at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory who specializes in the physiological response of plants to global climate change.

Dave Nowak, a researcher at the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Syracuse, New York has studied the use of trees for carbon sequestration in urban settings across the United States. A 2002 study he co-authored lists the Common Horse-chestnut, Black Walnut, American Sweetgum, Ponderosa Pine, Red Pine, White Pine, London Plane, Hispaniolan Pine, Douglas Fir, Scarlet Oak, Red Oak, Virginia Live Oak and Bald Cypress as examples of trees especially good at absorbing and storing CO2. Nowak advises urban land managers to avoid trees that require a lot of maintenance, as the burning of fossil fuels to power equipment like trucks and chainsaws will only erase the carbon absorption gains otherwise made.

Ultimately, trees of any shape, size or genetic origin help absorb CO2. Most scientists agree that the least expensive and perhaps easiest way for individuals to help offset the CO2 that they generate in their everyday lives is to plant a tree…any tree, as long as it is appropriate for the given region and climate. Those who wish to help larger tree planting efforts can donate money or time to the National Arbor Day Foundation or American Forests in the U.S., or to the Tree Canada Foundation in Canada.

CONTACTS: American Forests, ; National Arbor Day Foundation, ; Tree Canada Foundation,

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine P.O. Box 5098 Westport, CT 06881 submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/ or e-mail: earthtalk @ emagazine.com. Read past columns at: .

Texas Without Ivins: Wholl Keep Us Laughing?

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 07:44:00 +0000

Texas progressives mourn the death of columnist and author Molly Ivins, who succumbed to cancer on January 31. Even the people she antagonized most – corporate bigwigs and greedy politicians – are making public lamentations about the loss of our true Texas satirist. Governor Rick Perry, who will be always remembered by Ivins’ own name for him, “Governor Good Hair,” made a statement. “Shrub,” the offspring of former President George Bush The First, did too.

Ivins’ memory will forever remain in the warm spot she created in the hearts of the state’s progressives in the 1970s, when forward-thinking political figures weren’t even numerous enough to be called a minority in the Democratic Party. The tiny Austin weekly, Texas Observer, hired her during the time when there were only 30 state legislators who would take a stand for minorities and the state’s poor. They were called, of course, the “Dirty Thirty.” It was a time when so many bad things happened in the Texas Legislature that laughing was the only possible relief, and Ivins led that laughter.

Mercilessly, she pointed out the large and small peccadilloes of state government. “The only legislature we have,” as Molly Ivins called it, ordinarily meets for only a few months every two years. For concerned Texans, those months belonged to Molly Ivins and the Texas Observer. She would sound the alarm when they were preparing to meet, and she would announce the “all clear” when they finally adjourned.

Ivins’ talent made her one of America’s most read syndicated columnists and the author of a number of hilarious books.

Even though Texas Democrats do not control a single state office nor either house of the “Lege” today, Molly Ivins lived to see the Democratic Party’s more liberal wing take control, as more and more Black and Latino candidates took office and the racist Dixiecrats died off or switched parties.

Fittingly, Molly Ivins’ last published column was a rant against the war in the Mideast and “Shrub’s” demands for escalation. She wrote, “Every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.”

Unbelievably crazy things continue to happen in Texas. Senator Cornyn voted to abolish the minimum wage, then proposed that wealthy people should be able to deduct the cost of their health spas. Eccentric millionaire James Leininger of San Antonio announced a new publicity campaign to undermine the public schools. Progressive Democrats have infuriated the powers-that-be in the Lege by voting to uphold the constitution. TXU, the giant utility, says that Texans should believe them, just one more time, when they say their 11 new coal-fired plants won’t increase pollution. Some of the Methodists are calling the other Methodists names because they don’t want Shrub’s presidential library (and reactionary think tank) ensconced on the campus at Southern Methodist University. The Baptists fired their Hebrew teacher because they found an obscure biblical warning against having women teach men. Hungry Texans are terrified that the Baptists will also find the injunction (Leviticus 11:10) against eating catfish.

How will we bear the news in Texas without Molly Ivins?

College admissions: a pain in the class

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 10:09:00 +0000

As a high school senior dealing with the college admissions process, I know a few things about needless pain. I didn’t expect choosing what to do with the rest of my life to be quite such a problem. But that’s not the worst of it. I discovered the worst of it when I was sitting in the rusty desk-chair in my guidance counselor’s office.

I discovered the dirty little secret of college admissions. I’d always hoped that this process would be a model of intellectual enlightenment, but, woe, my naiveté confounds me.

The college admissions process is all about class.

I know the average PWW reader will immediately think: “of course it’s based on class!” and the oppositional reader will think: “it’s fair and objective, what is this guy talking about?” but it’s true: students in public high schools are guided along certain avenues of study based not on interest or best interest but on social class.

Here’s an example: I am a rich student. My parents are white rich landowners who, in turn, are the progeny of other white rich landowners. My good friend Amber, however, comes from a relatively working-class, single-parent background. We take the same classes and have approximately the same grades, and are both primarily interested in the study of philosophy. It should be obvious, right? Our guidance counselor should steer both of us toward the same high-caliber schools with high-caliber philosophy departments. Think again.

I was given expert information on the strength of various philosophy programs. I was given rates and statistics about Ph.D. and master’s degree programs. Ultimately the information afforded me by the College Board and by guidance counselors primarily involved a certain ivy-walled school in Cambridge, Mass. But what of my friend Amber?

She was given a market test. What is a market test, you ask? It is a system of questions designed to fit a high school senior’s personality to a certain job that analysts predict will be in high demand in upcoming years. Among these jobs are acupuncturist, medical assistant and paralegal. I was handed the fast track to professorship. She was handed a book on how to become a masseuse.

Huh?

How could this happen? The same admissions officer tells me I can lecture on the meaning of life and tells her she can rub the trapezius major to relieve stress in the heart chakra. It seems to me to boil down to the concept of “realistic success.” The reasonably dumb rich kid is more likely to “succeed” in an intellectually rigorous profession such as law than a reasonably smart poor kid, because the reasonably dumb rich kid is told that “realistic success” is becoming a lawyer for $100 an hour, and the reasonably smart poor kid is told that “realistic success” is becoming a paralegal for $20 an hour. People believe it when they’re told what they can and cannot be. Guidance counselors, promoting the capitalist mindset, tie the wealth of a student when he or she comes into the office to the extent to which that student can achieve.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Marx describes the dictatorship of capital consisting first of binding the means of production to the market, with the proletariat forced to sell their labor in a market controlled by those who own the goods they produce. The proletarian sells sweat not sweaters. Has college now taken on the same quality? Must proletarian students now sell their minds to future production rather than to education? The long and short of the matter is that the guidance counselor sees success for Amber at $60,000 a year and a three-room suburban, while the same counselor sees success for me at $600,000 a year and a penthouse with Manhattan skyline. She is told to bend to the market, I am told to make the market bend for me.

Is it fair? Hell no. But it’s capitalism. Maybe someday the working class will have the same opportunity for education as the upper class. Maybe someday class won’t matter in what college admissions officers expect students to want. Until then, working-class students have the hope that maybe one day, with the right education, they’ll be able to give rich people back rubs for $80 an hour.

Roger Hobbs, 18, is the author of “Flood Tribes: Sahara’s Requiem.” His web site is . He is still applying to colleges.

A good first step on student loans

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 10:01:00 +0000

Polling prior to last fall’s midterm elections indicated that education and the cost of college are top concerns among young people today. We took those concerns, made our voices heard on Nov. 7 and made another historic increase at the ballot box. With over 2 million more young people voting last year, we made our presence known.

The United States Student Association (USSA) is working with members of Congress and the College Affordability Coalition in support of real access for students to higher education. This includes the recently passed legislation HR 5 to cut student loan interest rates for federally subsidized Stafford Loans for undergraduates over the next five years. This is a pivotal first step in providing real access and affordability for students.

Each year on campuses across the nation, students are having to pay more and more money to receive an education, while at the same time programs designed to help ease that burden are being cut. In comparison to 20 years ago, students now need to work longer hours and assume increasing amounts of debt to pay for college. Student loan debt has shot up to unmanageable levels, in some cases being extended to 20 or even 30 years of repayment. This is a threat to American families’ future financial security and the success of our country.

As the president of USSA, and as a recent graduate, I am deeply affected by and concerned about this growing problem. On average, a student graduates with more than $19,300 in loan debt. I have a debt burden that is double that amount, nearly $40,000, and unfortunately, I am not alone in this struggle.

As a first-generation college student at the University of California, San Diego, I have been a recipient of many federal financial aid programs that have been repeatedly targeted for elimination or reduction. I hope that future students, including my three younger sisters and the 200,000 qualified students who are priced out of a college education each year, will be able to benefit from HR 5. In addition to HR 5, Congress must assess the real problems that young people face when trying to attain higher education.

In order to compete in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive global market, Congress must invest in our future. The future of our country, the future of our economy and the future of our success is in education. Students and families have suffered enough in order to pursue higher education. HR 5 is one step in ensuring that education is a priority.

USSA is proud to be in solidarity with others who support this move for change, a change that will lift us out of debt and allow working families to succeed in higher education. This change will secure our future and make education a right!

Jennifer Pae is president of the United States Student Association, .

EDITORIAL: Revive New Orleans

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:09:00 +0000

Mardi Gras parades begin Feb. 10 in New Orleans. The Big Easy will party and dance across the country’s TV screens. That is the New Orleans the corporate elite and the multi-billion-dollar tourist industry want us to focus on.

But today, as African American History Month opens, New Orleans has another story to tell the nation. This city, a world-renowned vital center of African American history and culture, which figures so large in the story of our nation, continues to reel under the criminal neglect of George W. Bush and his administration, a full year and half after Katrina struck.

Thousands of New Orleanians, mostly African American, are still in forced exile, while their neighborhoods back home remain storm-devastated ghost towns. Public housing units sit padlocked while Bush’s Department of Housing and Urban Development goes to court to keep people from reclaiming their apartments.

We watched in horror as Katrina swept ashore in August 2005. We saw heroic rescues by first-responders and ordinary folks, then we saw the inhumane nightmare at the convention center and Superdome. And we witnessed a ceaseless effort to criminalize New Orleans residents, in particular African Americans. Unsubstantiated stories of looting and mayhem were just the opening gun in a continuing drive to convince the rest of the country that working-class New Orleans residents don’t deserve to return to their homes or receive extraordinary assistance from the federal government. Outside of Monday Night Football’s gaudy broadcast from the Superdome, it seems as if every media story about New Orleans leads with murder or local corruption.

Bush did not even see fit to mention New Orleans in his State of the Union address last month.

It would befit African American History Month for Congress to take decisive action to make sure this legendary American city is rebuilt for the benefit of its people. Congress can expel the Bechtel and Halliburton privateers and roll out a massive federally funded reconstruction program. It can put architects, engineers, bricklayers and nurses to work, with union cards, and bring the real New Orleans back to life.

What will your legacy be?

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:01:00 +0000

CHICAGO -- A founder of one of the oldest African-American history museums in the country has died.

A spokesman for the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, Raymond Ward, says Margaret Burroughs died in her sleep at her Chicago home Sunday morning, Nov. 21.

The Associated Press reports President Barack Obama said in a statement that Burroughs was "widely admired for her contributions to American culture as an esteemed artist, historian, educator, and mentor."

Burroughs founded the museum with her husband and others on Chicago's South Side in 1961.

The museum has pieces of art, exhibits on civil rights and a display on Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington. It was named after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, widely regarded as Chicago's first permanent resident.

The following is a brief biography about Burroughs, along with her poem, "What Will Your Legacy Be?" originally published by this publication in 2007.

Internationally prominent as an artist, educator and writer, Margaret Burroughs is renowned as the founder, along with her late husband, Charles, of the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago. Opened as a modest display in the couple’s South Side house in 1961 as the Ebony Museum of African American History, the collected artifacts expressed Burroughs’ commitment to exploring and sharing the cultural heritage of African Americans.

Born on Nov. 1, 1917, in St. Rose Parish, La., Margaret Burroughs graduated from Chicago Teachers’ College in 1937 and then received an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1948. During the ’40s she taught art in Chicago elementary schools, and published her first children’s book, “Jasper, the Drummin’ Boy.”

In 1967, she and Dudley Randall edited an anthology called “For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm X” and published several volumes of her own poetry.

Burroughs’ art works have been exhibited internationally.

In her biography of Burroughs, writer Marion Tumbleweed Beach describes this vibrant, gifted woman as an “African American and citizen of the world … a universal woman with golden fingers that capture time, human passions and record the landmarks of the triumphs, foibles, and calamities of the African American people. These golden fingers can sketch, chisel, tie, brush, carve, mold, or write while she sits visiting with friends, attending meetings in a corporate board room, on an airplane, train, or even on the back of a camel. She has a high level of controlled energy that enables her to create quality art while making it all look so easy to do.”

Although Burroughs has worked in sculpture, painting and many other art forms throughout her career, it is her exceptional skill as a printmaker that has earned her a place within the history of art. For many years, she worked with linoleum block prints to create images evocative of African American culture.

Burroughs’ work has been featured in exclusive shows at the Corcoran Art Galleries in Washington, D.C., and at the Studio Museum in New York. She has served as art director for the Negro Hall of Fame and has illustrated many books. She did her own illustrations for her celebrated poem “What Shall I Tell My Children Who are Black?”

In 1975 she received the President’s Humanitarian Award and in 1977 was named one of Chicago’s Most Influential Women by the Chicago Defender. February 1, 1986, was proclaimed “Dr. Margaret Burroughs Day” in Chicago by Mayor Harold Washington. Today, she remains active in the institutions that she created in her lifetime.

At 90, she recently visited Venezuela, in part to witness the Bolivarian Revolution and its impact on Afro-Venezuelans.

Burroughs, who wrote the poem “What will your legacy be?” for all young people to consider the dignity and contributions African Americans have given to humanity — and to consider their own contribution to society — is available for speaking engagements.

“I wish my art to speak not only for my people but for all humanity … my subject matter is social commentary and seeks to improve the condition of life for all people,” Dr. Burroughs once said.

What Will Your Legacy Be?

Legacy? Legacy?

Do you know what the word “Legacy” means?

Well, if you don’t know, let me tell you what the dictionary says it means.

Legacy: property or money left to someone by a will; something handed down from those who have gone before; a legacy of honor, our legacy, of freedom.

In this poem, I’m not referring to material things like property or money, either of honor or of freedom.

I am referring to what a person has done with this life that God has given to him or her.

Yes, I want to know what will your legacy be? This is a question that I would like to put to each and every one of you?

What will your legacy be?

When you have finally cast off these mortal coils?

When you have crossed the great divide?

What will your legacy be?

When you can no longer run life’s race.

When you no longer have a place; when you have at last completed the circle round and when an escape is no longer to be found.

What will your legacy be?

When you walk into the unknown all by yourself and alone,

What will your legacy be?

Stop for a moment and listen to me and answer this question if you can.

What will your legacy be?

When you must cross that great divide into an area from which none can hide. When you, alone, with no one by your side with no friend to lead you or to hold your hand?

What will your legacy be?

What deeds have you done in your lifetime which will be left for you to be remembered by?

Will it be just a gray decaying tombstone standing alone in a cemetery or will it be, as it should be some act, some service or some deed that will insure that you will be remembered on and into the eternity of life’s game?

I ask you. What will your legacy be?

Will it be the fact that you helped somebody along the way, during the time while you were here on earth?

What will your legacy be?

Will it be similar to the legacies left to our generation by people like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Ida B. Wells, Mary Bethune and so many others who made of their lives a bridge for us to cross over on and whose lives were an inspiration for us of today to make of our lives bridges for future generations to cross over on?

What will your legacy be?

Legacy! Legacy!

Let us stop for a moment and recall some of our people who left their lives as legacies to us, and who always will be honored and remembered. They were people like:

Harriet Tubman: her legacy was the work that she did on the underground railroad in which she brought hundreds of our ancestors out of the bonds of slavery; and,

Frederick Douglass: his legacy was the work that he did to help abolish slavery; and, fought against the evil of black men being lynched in this country; and,

Mary McLeod Bethune: her legacy was that she worked for the education of our youth by starting on faith, a small school which grew to be a great university; and

Dr. Martin Luther King’s Jr.: his legacy was that he devoted his life to fighting for full equality for our people; and,

Sojourner Truth: her legacy was her fight for the liberation of and full equality for all women in our country; and,

John Brown: his legacy was that he sacrificed his life for an end to slavery and for freedom of our people; and,

Bessie Coleman: her legacy was that she became the first woman in America, black or white, to acquire a pilot’s license; and,

Paul Robeson: his legacy was that he was a renaissance man. He was a concert and folk singer, an athlete and a linguist and that he fought for the liberation of all oppressed people all over in the world; and poets,

Langston Hughes and Margaret Walker: their legacies were the many inspirational poems that they wrote which expressed the soul of our people; and

Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois: his legacy was his life long struggle for the liberation of our people in his actions, his speeches and his writings; and,

Dr. Carter G. Woodson: his legacy was the fact that he early brought to the attention of the world the numerous and significant contributions of people of Africa and African descent to the attention of the world; and,

Booker T. Washington: his legacy was the fact that he worked for the education of our people when he founded and opened Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; and,

George Washington Carver: his legacy was his significant and important accomplishments in the field of science; and,

Jean Baptiste Point DuSable: his legacy was the fact he, a black man, was the first person to settle in the area that became Chicago and grew into a great trading center from the little post that DuSable of African blood started over 100 years ago; and, last but not least,

Charles Gordon Burroughs: his legacy was the first black history museum in the world which he as co-founder started in his living room at 3806 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

This act inspired many who were interested in the recognition and preservation of black history to the point that today there are over 100 black history museums in our country.

These are just a few as you well know.

There are many, many others who like these, left, though their contributions in their lifetime, their legacies as bridges for us to cross over on. So, I ask you, what will you leave as your legacy, as a bridge for those now and those coming on to cross over on. What will your legacy be?

I ask you, what will your legacy be? Do you know? Have you thought about it? Do you have an answer? What will you leave as your legacy? If you have no answer, if at this point, you cannot say: Hearken! Listen to me! This is the moment. This is the prime moment for you to think and to get to work and identify what you will leave as your legacy for you to be remembered by. You are here. You are still here, alive and quick and you have time. You have time on your side. You have time to begin even now so get busy and do something to help somebody. To improve the conditions of life for people now and for those who come after. To build institutions to educate and broaden the minds for people now and for those who came after and to make your life a contribution that will be your legacy. Do this and your name will be remembered from now on and into eternity.

What will your legacy be? Hopefully, it will not be just a gray and decaying tombstone.

Think now! Act now! To insure that your legacy will be a positive contribution to humanity and you will be remembered, yes you will be remembered, on and on and in eternity as God wills it.

Photomontages by PWgraphic artist Marguerite Wright.
Sources: Chicago Public Library, Historymakers.com, Dr. Margaret Burroughs

Updated: Nov. 21, 2010.

Dismal stats call for action: New BLS report shows urgency of Employee Free Choice Act

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:26:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — The number of unionists declined by 326,000 from 2005 to 2006, dropping to 12 percent of the U.S. labor force, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. But there were big jumps of 52,000 in Arizona and 26,000 in Washington, a small rise in Minnesota, and increases in 17 states, including “red states” Montana and both Carolinas.

The BLS reported the nation had 15.4 million union members last year, down from 15.7 million in 2005. Unions represented another 1.5 million people who were not members in 2006. Many of them pay “agency fees,” but some do not. Unionization among public sector workers, at 36.2 percent, was five times that of private sector workers, 7.4 percent.

“The most important thing the numbers show is how critical it is to pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said in a telephone interview. EFCA would “restore the freedom to form unions without interference, retaliation and intimidation” by employers, he added.

Data from an AFL-CIO-commissioned poll show 53 percent of nonsupervisory workers who are not now in a union would join one if they could without employer interference. That means 60 million would vote for unions, but only 15.4 million are in unions, Acuff noted. That gap is due to employer interference and intimidation, he said.

The BLS report shows the most densely unionized field in 2006 was local government — especially firefighters and other protective services, plus teachers — at 41.9 percent. More than one-fifth (23.2 percent) of transportation and utility workers were unionists last year, as were 17.6 percent of construction and extraction workers and 20.7 percent of telecom workers.

Reflecting the Communications Workers’ recent card-check organizing successes, the number of unionized telecom workers rose by 11,000 in one year, to 245,000, though the percentage declined. Factories had 1.8 million union workers, or 11.7 percent. That’s down almost 200,000 workers, 1.3 percent, in one year.

In almost every occupation and demographic, unionists increased their advantage in earnings over their nonunion colleagues in 2006, the BLS said. The median weekly earning for unionists nationwide — that point at which half are above and half are below — was $833, up by $32 (3.9 percent) in one year. The median for nonunion workers was $642, up by $20 (3.1 percent).

Unionists had an edge in median earnings in factories (unionists $755, nonunionists $692), construction (unionists $969, nonunionists $610) and almost everywhere else in 2006. For retail workers, the edge for union over nonunion workers was $65 a week ($583 vs. $518).

Union members were concentrated in the Northeast, the Midwest and on the Pacific Coast. Just under half of all unionists lived in six states: California (2.27 million, down 150,000), New York (1.98 million, down 109,000), Illinois (931,000, up 4,000), Michigan (842,000, down 38,000), New Jersey (770,000, down 21,000) and Pennsylvania (753,000, down 8,000). Those states have one-third of all U.S. workers.

The problems of the auto industry, which is going through massive layoffs at Ford and GM and a bankruptcy at Delphi auto parts, showed up in the Ohio and Michigan numbers. Unionists were 14.2 percent of Ohio’s workers last year, down from 16 percent the year before, and Ohio dropped to seventh place, with 734,000 unionists last year, down 70,000 in one year.

New York and Hawaii traded places as the most-unionized state, but density dropped in both. Hawaii led in 2004 and New York in 2005. Hawaii reclaimed the lead last year: 24.7 percent of its workers are unionized, ahead of 24.4 percent in New York. Other high-density states were California (15.7 percent), Alaska (22.2), Michigan (19.6, down from 20.5), Illinois (16.4) and Minnesota (16 percent, up 0.3).

Spokeswomen for Change to Win and the AFL-CIO said the big jumps in Washington and in Arizona — where unions added 52,000 workers, to 197,000, and went from 6.1 percent to 7.6 percent of the workforce in one year — were due to different reasons.

The 26,000-member increase in Washington was driven by successful organizing of health care workers, they said. Arizona’s hike came from “no one campaign, but from growth in a wide range of unionized sectors, including the public sector and grocery stores,” an AFL-CIO spokeswoman added.