People Before Profit blog

Hip hop for the people

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:48:00 +0000

NEWARK, N.J. – Ras Baraka, an educator and deputy mayor of Newark, announced the founding of Hip Hop for the P.E.O.P.L.E. at a recent press conference. Comedian Bill Cosby and numerous hip hop artists and producers are lending their talents to this ambitious and unprecedented national program.

The organization’s goals, Baraka said, is to utilize the power of hip hop to remediate issues dealing with violence, gangs, drugs, unemployment and education. The organization also has committed itself to narrowing the gap between young people in the hip hop community and the elders, he said.

“The concept of hip hop for the P.E.O.P.L.E. project is to use hip hop as a vehicle to educate on anti-violence in all forms,” Cosby said.

Hip hop for the P.E.O.P.L.E. (Providing Education Opportunity Prosperity and Life Eternally) was created to save lives from the recent increase of gang violence, especially on the East Coast. On May 21, 2004, the City of Newark brokered a “peace treaty” among the gangs, the Crips and Bloods. The idea for the organization came out of that experience.

Hip Hop for the P.E.O.P.L.E. will launch a compilation CD project with several New Jersey and New York hip hop artists, dealing with the issues that currently plague “our communities providing a positive outlook on how to improve our situation.” The project will include street interviews with gang members discussing their needs for a better way, political commentary, inspirational spoken word and positive hip hop.

Also, filmmaker Hafiz Farid has produced and directed a feature-length documentary to provide an understanding of poverty, oppression and “miseducation.” The film features viewpoints from gang members, as well as politicians, educators and law enforcement officials.

Baraka said, “The City of Newark appreciates Dr. Cosby’s support in our on-going efforts to combat gang violence and to take back our communities. … We are also in contact with well-known hip hop luminaries from New Jersey such as Queen Latifah, Wyclef Jean, Rah Digga, Redman, and Treach of Naughty By Nature to participate in the CD and/or the documentary.”

For more information or to get involved: www.hiphopforthepeople.com or call Newark City Hall (973) 733-4361.

Si Gerson, 95, journalist and electoral expert

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:36:00 +0000

Simon W. Gerson, veteran journalist and legendary fighter for working class political representation, died on Dec. 26, 2004 in Brooklyn, N.Y., at 95. A member of the national committee of the Communist Party USA, Gerson’s activism spanned seven decades beginning in the depression era of the 1930s.

Best known for his mastery of the electoral process and strategic coalition building, Si’s contributions toward independent politics have made a deep impact.

“Si was a wise counselor and a tower of strength to all of us in the labor and progressive movements,” said Henry Foner, retired president of the Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union.

In the mid-1930s, during the first administration of New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Si worked as City Hall reporter for the Daily Worker and was a member of the Newspaper Guild.

In 1937 he was named executive assistant to Manhattan Borough President Stanley M. Isaacs, making history as the first publicly known Communist to hold appointive office in New York. Despite attacks and lawsuits by the American Legion to remove him, Si served in the position until 1940.

In 1941, Si managed the victorious campaign of the Communist candidate Pete Cacchione who was elected to the New York City Council from Brooklyn under proportional representation. Si and Cacchione worked closely together on every issue from rent control to taxes.

In 1944, Cacchione was joined on the council by Ben Davis, the Communist councilman from Harlem. On Election Day, observers were outraged at open vote theft by the Tammany Hall machine during the count. Si rushed over from the Brooklyn Armory, where he was watching Cacchione’s votes, and “compelled directors of the count to produce nearly a thousand votes for Davis which had mysteriously gone astray,” wrote political reporter Harry Raymond in the Daily Worker.

During World War II, Si served as an infantryman in the South Pacific, fighting against fascism. Upon return, he plunged back into local politics.

When Cacchione died in November 1947, Si was named to fill the vacancy. The Tammany machine refused, by a split vote, to seat him despite clear provisions in the city charter. Forced to run in a borough-wide race in 1948, Gerson received the endorsement of both the American Labor Party and the Communist Party, appearing on both ballot lines. He received 150,369 votes, 18,000 on the CPUSA line and 132,000 on the American Labor Party’s. It was one of the biggest votes recorded for a Communist in the Party’s history.

In the 1950s Si served as executive editor of the Daily Worker and in the 1960s assumed the same post with its successor, the Daily World. He also edited the English pages of the Communist Yiddish newspaper, Morning Freiheit, under the pen name, Will Simon.

While serving as legislative head of the New York Communist Party, Si was among those arrested under the anti-Communist Smith Act, and later acquitted under judicial order that membership in the Communist Party does not violate any laws.

In 1976, Si became campaign manager for the Communist presidential ticket of Gus Hall and Jarvis Tyner and continued to serve as chair of the Party’s political action commission for many years.

During those campaigns, the Party was instrumental in successfully challenging restrictive ballot access laws in many states, including Connecticut where we took our case all the way to the state Supreme Court.

“He taught so many of us how to build an independent political movement, but not in isolation of those still within the Democratic Party,” recalled Tyner, now CPUSA executive vice chairman.

“Si lived the great left upsurge of the 30s and 40s, which turned mass movements into electoral victories. He maintained a good understanding of how to build Black-Brown-and-white unity along with political independence and how to keep your eye on the grass roots,” Tyner said.

Si gave counsel and advice to many, including this writer, when I ran for Congress and mayor in New Haven on the Communist Party ticket in the 70s and 80s. Our campaign included far-reaching demands like workers’ rights to stop plant closures and runaway shops, taxing the rich and affirmative action. And we won small victories like extending the required advance notice before utility shutoffs. We maintained minor party ballot status and won wide respect.

Through those whirlwind years, Si never hesitated to travel up the highway and lend his expertise on campaign strategy, or help with a press release, position paper or fund appeal.

As a Communist legislative representative, he testified before city, state and congressional committees. He traveled the country encouraging activists to run for office, and served as secretary of the Coalition for Free and Open Elections. He was an expert on electoral reform to open up space for independent candidates and parties, and was dedicated to building a movement for proportional representation and instant runoff voting, and to reduce the huge number of signatures and other onerous requirements that make it difficult for third parties to get on the ballot.

“Si was a model for the way Communists should work — he had working relationships and friendships with all kinds of people, and a deep appreciation for democracy and for the importance of electoral politics,” New York Communist Party Chairperson Elena Mora said.

Si was born in New York in 1909 and attended City College of New York in the 1920s where he met Sophie Melvin. Both were active in the Young Communist League.

In 1929, Sophie hitchhiked to Gastonia, N.C. to join in solidarity with the striking Loray Textile workers. The mill owners attempted to frame Sophie and 14 others on murder charges. Si rushed to Gastonia to join in the defense of the Gastonia 15, a victory won with a worldwide solidarity movement. Si and Sophie were married in 1932.

At their 70th wedding anniversary celebration in 2002, Joe Walker, former editor of Muhammad Speaks, recalled his friendship with the Gersons dating from the struggle to end the Vietnam War and to free Angela Davis.

“In all the years I have known them, they never attempted to sidestep a struggle for justice,” Walker said.

When Si was editor of The Worker and later the Daily World, Tim Wheeler was Washington correspondent. He frequently visited the Gerson home when he traveled to New York, and enjoyed Sophie’s gourmet cooking.

“What I remember most is Si’s insistence on building broad, grassroots movements,” he told their anniversary gathering. “They have never lost confidence in the power of the people to win democratic change.”

Si is survived by Sophie; daughter Deborah, a sociology professor at San Francisco State University, and two granddaughters, Timi Gerson and Frieda B.K. Gerson. Son Bill died in October 2004.

Speaking at their 70th anniversary, Timi praised her parents and grandparents for instilling in her a passion for equality and justice.

Si wrote the book, “Pete — the Story of Peter V. Cacchione, New York’s First Communist Councilman,” for the benefit of future generations. In closing the book, he projected the future for which he gave his talents and commitment:

“Pete’s life should help illuminate the path ahead, a great, new fighting unity of the people from which can develop a powerful antimonopoly coalition and a new, people’s party with a decisive working-class component that can attain governmental power. This in Pete’s vision — and ours — can move our nation to the ultimate goal of socialism and a world free of war, poverty, racism, ignorance and disease.”

Joelle Fishman (joelle.fishman@pobox.com) is chair of the CPUSA Political Action Commission.

Day of Reckoning chronicles lives of Lucy and Albert Parsons

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:22:00 +0000

Review

NEW YORK — Talented young African American playwright Melody Cooper’s historical drama, “Day of Reckoning,” chronicles the lives of famed anarchist and freed slave, Lucy Parsons, and her husband, Albert, a former Confederate soldier. The two-act historical drama features playwright Cooper playing Lucy. Along with Albert, she fought for workers’ rights and the eight-hour workday.

“Day of Reckoning,” which won the Jane Chambers Award and the MultiStages 2003 New Works Playwriting Contest, focuses on the lives of two very different people, whose tragic love story is set against the backdrop of the earliest — and deadliest — days of labor organizing.

Across the U.S., people were calling for an eight-hour workday, proclaiming, “whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases your pay.” May 1 was chosen as the date to kick off the official movement for the eight-hour day.

As a result, 350,000 workers across the nation walked off their jobs to participate in a general strike. Forty thousand workers struck in Chicago, creating a whirlwind of radical activity.

On May 3, a strike at Chicago’s McCormick Harvest Works became violent as police fired into a crowd of unarmed strikers. Many were wounded and four were killed. Radicals called a meeting in Haymarket Square to discuss the situation. Police disrupted the peaceful meeting and an unknown figure threw a bomb, killing one officer. One of the worst violations of U.S. civil rights occurred over the next few days, as police swept the town looking for any and all anarchists and radicals. Although he was not even at Haymarket Square that day, Albert was one of the eight men accused of the bombing.

Cooper, a native of New York City and graduate of Adelphi University, is an accomplished actress and author of several stage works. While at Adelphi, she collaborated (as lyricist) with the late Jonathan Larson (the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning creator of “Rent”) on a number of songs for the stage.

“Day of Reckoning” opens Friday, Feb. 4 and closes Sunday, Feb. 27. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. “Day of Reckoning” is the second production in a three-play Black History Month festival at the All Stars Project’s performing arts and education center, 543 W. 42nd St., between 10th and 11th avenues. Tickets are $15. Group, senior and student discounts available. Box office (212) 941-1234. Tickets available at www.castillo.org and www.theatermania.com.

crummel@pww.org

Shirley Chisholm: Unbought & Unbossed

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:18:00 +0000

Review

1972 was an extraordinary year. Richard Nixon was president, running for his second, ill-fated term. The voting age had just changed from 21 to 18, and millions of new voters were expected at the polls. The Vietnam War was in full swing, as were anti-war protests, a burgeoning women’s movement and the rise of the Black Panther Party.

Into the center of this maelstrom — shocking the conventional political wisdom — stepped Shirley Chisholm, a determined, rather prim and unapologetically progressive Black woman with a powerful message: Exercise the full measure of your citizenship: vote and assert your rights. Quoting Frederick Douglass, Chisholm, who died Jan. 1, liked to remind her audience that “power concedes nothing without demand or struggle.”

Announcing her candidacy for president on the evening news, Walter Cronkite quipped, “A new hat — rather a bonnet — was tossed into the presidential race today.” As P.O.V. “Chisholm ’72 — Unbought & Unbossed,” a feature documentary airing on PBS Monday, Feb. 7, 10:00-11:30 p.m. (check local listings), reveals, this first-ever run by a woman and person of color for presidential nomination was no laughing matter. Nor was it a polite exercise in symbolic electioneering. The New York Democratic congresswoman’s bid engendered strong and sometimes bigoted opposition, setting off currents that affect American politics and social perceptions to this day.

Featuring stirring archival footage, period music, interviews with supporters, opponents and observers, and Chisholm’s own commentary — then and now — “Chisholm ’72” is a remarkable recollection of a campaign that broke new ground in politics and truly reached out to “the people.” Among those interviewed are author/activist Amiri Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones), Black Panther founder Bobby Seale, authors Susan Brownmiller and Octavia Butler, former Congressmen Rev. Walter Fauntroy and Ronald Dellums, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-California), who got her start in politics with Chisholm’s campaign, and journalist/historian Paula Giddings.

Chisholm championed the causes of the poor, the young, minorities, gays, women and other marginalized Americans. In doing so, she prefigured Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition campaigns, not only in substance but also in style. Chisholm saw the presidential race itself as an opportunity to draw to politics people who traditionally did not participate.

In her words, “I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.” In a race with 12 other candidates, Chisholm’s ultimate goal was to reach the Democratic National Convention in 1972 with a strong show of support.

At a time when Americans were just beginning to contemplate the possibility of a black man running for president, Chisholm was black and female. (The first woman to run for president was Victoria Woodhull, who ran on the Equal Rights Party ticket and lost to incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872.) “Chisholm ’72” describes Chisholm’s formative years, from modest roots in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and a childhood in Barbados, to winning election to the New York State Assembly and then, in 1968, to become the first Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress. Although she was no stranger to controversy, the documentary reveals the visceral opposition and blatant disregard the establishment and the media showed the Congresswoman’s candidacy.

Many reporters assumed she had no chance of winning and felt she was a spoiler. Feminists, who agreed entirely with Chisholm’s politics, preferred a different strategy, looking to Sen. George McGovern as the realistic Democratic candidate. (McGovern eventually won the nomination.)

All the while, Chisholm remained the “unbought and unbossed” candidate, poised and determined to direct the debate and news coverage of her candidacy to her stands on education, employment, health care and the rights of minorities, women and gays to full participation in American life. She won a federal court order to break the front-runners’ lock on televised debates, winning the chance to talk directly to a national television audience. Chisholm, in fact, struck a populist progressive chord with many Americans. Managing surprisingly strong showings in some state primaries, she carried 151 delegates at the severely divided 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami and won the right to speak from the main podium.

“I had something important to explain,” recalls Chisholm about her historic speech. “I ran because somebody had to do it first. I ran because most people thought the country was not ready for a black candidate, not ready for a woman candidate. Someday — it was time in 1972 to make that someday come.”

“Chisholm ’72 — Unbought & Unbossed” recaptures the times and spirit of a watershed event in American politics, when a black woman dared to take an equal place on the presidential dais.

“Our goal was to make a documentary as passionate and powerful as Chisholm herself,” says director and co-producer Shola Lynch. “Her story is an important reminder of the power of a dedicated individual to make a difference.” It also reminds us that the country belongs to each of us only if we dare to claim our place in it.”

Unfinished battle for school funding

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:01:00 +0000

OPINION

The following testimony, slightly abridged here, was presented to the New York City Council Commission on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Jan. 13.

I have two children in elementary school in the Bronx and one in high school in Manhattan, and I am the chairperson of the New York State Communist Party, whose members have been active on education issues for many years.

Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds … until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice … until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education.”

He said further: “Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly.”

I want to make four points:

One: Today we are discussing the best way to spend the education money that our children so desperately need and to which our state’s high court has ruled they are legally entitled. But until that money is in the bank, or at least in the pipeline, we still have work to do. Last year’s state budget had a multibillion-dollar shortfall, and I’m sure no one thinks this year’s budget will be anything less than a battle. This goes for the city, too. Other school systems have been found in contempt of state constitutions by the courts, and yet nothing has changed. We can’t allow the hard-won victory of the Campaign for Fiscal Equality (CFE) to go that route. Nor can we allow education funding to be counterposed to Medicaid spending, or any other social program.

Two: I read the transcript of the council’s last hearing on class size, and I was amazed that there is that much to say about it. One teacher, 24 kids at least — we can all do that math. The problem is when the argument becomes a counterposing of smaller classes vs. better-trained teachers. That is the wrong argument — we can and should have both. Obviously the best teachers will deal the best with large classes — but teachers are not supermen nor saints, and we shouldn’t ask them to be. Smaller classes will benefit every child, and should be a bottom line.

Three: On teacher training and quality: Yes, we should invest in recruiting and training the best teachers. But the starting point for teachers’ ability to do the best possible job has to include a fair union contract, with good pay, benefits and working conditions. We should stand by the teachers and their union against the mayor’s intransigence and union-busting (and that’s exactly what it is — look at the day care workers, four years without a contract). It’s an outrage that the teachers have been without a contract as long as they have. We parents and elected officials can defend teachers’ union rights without sacrificing the quality of our kids’ education — that’s another false and downright pernicious argument. Well-paid and well-respected teachers, schools that are safe and clean and thoroughly funded and supported — that’s the basis for the harmony between teachers, parents and kids that we all want in our schools.

Lastly: My second-graders’ school is in a converted car dealership building. The inside is bright and clean, but there is no gym and no auditorium, and subway tracks are just yards from the windows. This year, because we were required to add a class, the library was squeezed into the staff room. My son’s high school has no room for his basketball team, so they practice at Chelsea Piers, which means a minimum of 40 minutes travel after school, and about an hour and a half back home.

Some might say these are minor complaints. A library — a luxury. Basketball practice — optional. I recognize that relative to some conditions that prevail in the worst schools in the city, these are minor. Funding should go to the worst schools first. But my point is that we shouldn’t settle. Not on toilet paper in the bathrooms, not on class size. Until every child in New York City attends a school with good facilities and supplies, small classes, and well-paid, well-trained teachers, we shouldn’t settle. If the many people involved in the long struggle around CFE had settled, we wouldn’t be here. I’m afraid we’ll still be asked to settle, and the struggle still hasn’t been won.

This is a rich city in a rich state in a very rich nation – a nation which spends $4 billion a month on the Iraq war, a state which has cut taxes on its richest residents, a city where fabulously wealthy Sutton Place residents pay $1 dollar rent a year for 50 years to have a private garden along the East River. The money is there and we have to continue to fight for it. Let us be dissatisfied until all of our kids attend great schools. It’s as simple as that.

Elena Mora (emora@cpusa.org) lives in New York City and is chair of the New York State Communist Party.

Disasters, contradictions, and hypocrisy

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 09:44:00 +0000

OPINION

A great wave struck 12 countries Dec. 26 and killed over 150,000 people. The nations and people of the world have come together in a massive demonstration of solidarity that is entirely consistent with people’s essential generosity.

The enormity of this tragedy recalls other disasters that killed great multitudes of people, but were caused by humans — or tolerated by them through policies of non-intervention. Natural disasters get considerable publicity, but catastrophes that stem from human purpose may be glossed over. When the truth comes out, then the stage is set for an unveiling of contradictions and hypocrisy.

The U.S. government, for example, is remarkably quiet about its concern for the 2.3 million sub- Saharan Africans who died of AIDS in 2004. The dead represent 74 percent of the world’s total for the year. The disease is preventable but Washington reneges on the full $15 billion it promised for AIDS treatment and prevention.

Huge contradictions arise from comparisons between the human wastage caused by the tidal wave and deaths from U.S. military operations in Iraq. For one thing, Washington promises $350 million for tsunami relief, and simultaneously pays out more than $5 billion a month for war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We don’t do body counts,” says Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, referring to civilian deaths. A group of courageous epidemiologists, however, estimated that as of September 2004, the U.S. occupation has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, the majority of them women and children. The researchers went out into Iraqi communities to find the truth. Their report appeared in the medical journal Lancet, but very few corporation controlled newspapers covered it as a news story.

Burhan Fasa reports for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. He was in Fallujah for eight days in November while U.S. forces destroyed the city.

“I saw at least 200 families whose homes had fallen in because of the U.S. bombs … From the top of the hospital, U.S. snipers were shooting anyone that moved, anyone they saw. I saw a huge number of people killed in the northern part of the city, and they were almost all civilians … The Americans had no interpreter, so they entered the house and killed people because they did not know English … There were some 20 bodies of dead fighters and some wounded civilians in front of that clinic. I was there in the clinic, and at 11 a.m. of Dec. 16, I saw tanks run over the wounded and the dead that were there.”

Here one learns just how Iraqis die. Reporters serving the U.S. media are on a short leash, however, and go easy on the details. They are, of course, free to tell other horror stories, like, for example, the bodies of tsunami victims caught in trees. Contradictions like these were grist for Rosa Luxemburg’s mill.

The German socialist wrote about the deaths of 40,000 people after Mt. Pelee erupted 101 years ago in Martinique. The imperialist powers of the era communicated sorrow and grief but were silent about misery and slaughter caused by their own armies. Luxemburg cited British crimes in South Africa, German atrocities in Namibia, French massacres in Madagascar and the Caribbean, and Yankee depredations in Cuba and the Philippines.

People kept in the dark, she lamented, are denied the altogether human experience of giving vent to heartfelt outrage. She tells how the Paris Commune ended: “And we have seen you too, oh Mother Republic, you tear distiller. It was on May 23, 1871. No volcano erupted. Your cannons were turned on the tightly packed human crowd. Over 20,000 corpses covered the pavements of Paris.”

Reporting on the Iraq war, Luxemburg would have found an avalanche of material for making the case for socialism. The gulf between rich and poor widens. Global capitalism is again striving for mastery of peoples and regions. The poor and the racially oppressed do the dying and suffering.

The selection of victims for unnatural disasters seems hardly to be accidental. Capitalist chieftains tend to rank people according to value and use, and classify many of them as disposable. Iraqis are learning first-hand about barbarism. The world is watching. For Luxemburg, and for us, socialism is the alternative: “The whole sanctimonious blood spattered culture” has to go. Only then “will the nations come together in true humanity, which will know but one deadly foe” — the deadly force of nature.

C. McKinnon is a librarian and veteran peace activist. W.T. Whitney Jr. is a pediatrician in rural Maine.

Iraqs elections no simple answers for the U.S. left

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 09:34:00 +0000

OPINION

George W. Bush is uniquely unqualified to trumpet free elections, in Iraq or anywhere else. Voter intimidation, suppression, obstruction — these are his trademarks.

Beyond our shores, this administration has tried repeatedly to oust the democratically elected president of Venezuela. Our ruling class has a long sordid history of interfering in elections abroad, ousting elected governments, and assassinating popular, elected heads of state.

It also has an ugly history of helping install and prop up bloody dictators — recall Batista, Trujillo, Noriega, Pinochet … and Saddam Hussein — and then sometimes getting rid of them if they become too “difficult.”

It would be convenient for Bush, his “new American [global domination] century” ideologues, and his oily corporate backers, to have a polite government in Iraq that would hand over that country’s rich oil industry, now state-owned, to U.S. corporate control, and provide a military staging area for the U.S. to project its power across the Middle East and Central Asia. That’s why this administration lied us into an illegal “pre-emptive” war.

With this in mind, some on the U.S. left condemn the Jan. 30 elections as a fraud, illegitimate under foreign occupation. Certainly, the Iraqi people overwhelmingly hate the bloody U.S. occupation. Many question whether these elections will be able to help their country. Some are boycotting the elections. With the wave of terror, many are simply afraid to vote. Nevertheless, the majority are apparently determined to vote, even risking death to do so.

A wide range of political and social forces is contending for votes, with different views on the path for Iraq. Some are tied to U.S. government/corporate interests. But many have other programs: Islamists, Kurds, other ethnic groups, secular centrist groups, Communists. They see it as a step toward real sovereignty, a constitutional government that expresses their will, and ending the occupation.

Remember, this political process was forced on the U.S. To get some kind of UN authorization for its fait accompli occupation, the White House had to agree to a political timetable with the occupation “mandate” expiring Dec. 31 this year. Of course, Bush is counting on having an Iraqi government that will, willingly or under duress, “invite” the U.S. to stay longer.

It’s a contradictory, complex situation. We will see over the next days and weeks whether these elections will help Iraq’s democratic and progressive forces. We can be sure that the U.S. is doing everything it can, overtly and covertly, to ensure a Bush-friendly outcome, or perhaps no outcome at all. Regardless, the Iraqi people face major political struggles ahead.

Some progressive commentators join the commercial media in portraying the Iraqi people as naïve, unsophisticated, with no initiative of their own except, perhaps, religious fervor. It seems patronizing to me. Do we think we are the only ones aware of the role of U.S. imperialism, or this administration’s machinations?

Further, if we scorn these elections, what is our message? Forget any political, peaceful mass process? In our comfortable homes, with clean water and electricity 24 hours a day, are we to tell those willing to risk death to vote in this election that we know better?

The armed attackers have issued no political program. They attack U.S. military forces, but have increasingly targeted churches, mosques, Shiite neighborhoods, workers. Union leaders have been tortured and murdered. It appears that the Iraqi people reject these tactics overwhelmingly. Whether they want to provide information to foreign occupiers is another story.

Many Iraqis believe Saddam Hussein’s Baathist forces are behind much of this. Who has the credentials to know the Baathists best? Us, Americans, who didn’t do much to help those resisting Hussein when he was in power, or the Iraqis who lived and breathed that terror for 35 years? I believe some of us discount the ruthlessness, power and shrewdness of the Baathists, and the possibility that the Bush administration may be playing footsy with them as well. How and why did Saddam Hussein’s forces simply “melt away?” What deals is the U.S. working on now? Who’s being naïve here?

Further, is armed struggle the only “real” resistance to the U.S. occupation? People under foreign occupation have the right to resist, even take up arms if they feel it necessary. But Communists and working class movements the world over always see armed struggle as a last resort. We believe that every effort should be made to wage political struggle, to bring the broadest possible masses of people into a powerful national movement, with the working class at its core. That is the principle that Iraq’s Communists and trade unionists are following.

“We are the resistance!” Iraqi trade union spokesperson Abdullah Muhsin told me recently, with great passion. “We worked against Saddam Hussein. We worked against the war. We are the ones who are standing up to the IMF and efforts to impose neoliberal programs on Iraq — not those who killed 17 workers the other day in Mosul. We are the ones who are building civil society in our country.”

Terror against civilians and rejection of mass, democratic struggle: is that the face of the struggle against imperialism? I think we have to say a resounding “no.” That is the image the ultra-right would like us to have. If we on the left accept it for ourselves, we will never be a mass movement, in the U.S. or anywhere. Our struggle for a humane, just and peaceful world can only succeed with a moral vision and a human face.

The number one task for U.S. progressives today is to oppose our own imperialism, by building the broadest possible movement to end the occupation, bring our troops home, and turn our foreign policy toward peace and justice. That would be the best kind of solidarity with the Iraqi people.

Susan Webb (suewebb@pww.org) is a member of the People’s Weekly World editorial board.

Listening to the inaugural speech

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 09:30:00 +0000

OPINION

It turns out that many, including myself, continue to underestimate the strength of Bush’s commitment to an outright imperial policy unequaled in its scope and unprecedented in its worldwide impact.

Globalization compels all to have global politics. Bush has declared his in pretty clear-cut terms: The whole world needs the Republican Party’s idea of freedom. Those who think otherwise: watch out! We’re in your face. We will kill you or starve you if you don’t “straighten up.” Allies: be careful you’re not “divisive” — that aids the Enemy.

If it wasn’t obvious before, it should be now, that political movements without a clear global vision will no longer be competitive on the national level.

One vision is strengthening international governance and institutions capable of reducing the out-of-control and growing world inequality — arguably the most direct cause of “terrorism.” Another is seizing control of as much territory and wealth as possible before one is compelled, ultimately, if the history of such messianic campaigns is a guide, by catastrophe and cataclysm to adopt the former approach.

The latter is the clear global vision of the Bush administration as it enters its second term: if there’s going to be a global economic and political structure, then it’s going to be “ours”!

Bush articulated his position effectively, even eloquently. It was the kind of “idealism” and rhetoric that George Washington once said should make one unfit for high office. I literally gasped at his words, at the staggering un-reality, and thus immense danger, of the Bush global vision. Iraq, to hear his speech, is just a beginning, is a “success” upon which the spread of “liberty” will be mounted worldwide. He and his administration appear to have a sincere, but radically different, notion of the meaning of “Iraq success” from that of the majority of the rest of the world, and, in the latest polls, of the U.S. public as well.

It’s troubling for there to be such a disconnect over the real situation on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. It means that withdrawal, for Bush, short of outright military defeat, becomes even more unlikely, since, in his view, the fate of Republican Party “liberty” now depends not only on “Iraq success” but its extension throughout the Middle East, and to the entire world.

Much more effective articulations of the first vision — of strengthened international institutions and real reduction in global inequality — are badly needed. Kerry made an effort. It was not good enough.

I heard the pundits debating whether Bush “really meant” it, or was merely indulging in “sermon rhetoric.” Bush may not think there is a difference.

John Case (jcase@steuber.com) is a computer programmer in West Virginia.

EDITORIALS

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 09:09:00 +0000

What’s the difference?

Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers should have spent a few minutes on the Internet before offering his inane comment Jan. 14 that a difference in “innate ability” might be one reason women still lag substantially in the fields of math and science.

Atlanta’s Agnes Scott College offers a web site devoted to hundreds of historical examples of women who excelled in math, going all the way back to the 5th century B.C. Pythagoras’ widow, Theano, kept his school alive after he died and wrote treatises on math, physics, medicine and child psychology. Her most important theoretical contribution was the principle of the “golden mean.”

Florence Nightingale, famed as a wartime nurse, devised a “polar area diagram,” a statistical method of plotting the incidence of needless deaths caused by unsanitary conditions. With this plan she “revolutionized the idea that social phenomena could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis,” her biography on the web site reports.

Swiss-born mathematician Irene Hueter was excluded from math courses. In the schools she attended, girls were forced to take home economics while boys took the math and science courses. Now she is an eminent mathematics professor at New York City’s Baruch College. Or take the case of Rosalind Franklin. Together with Francis Crick and James Watson, she cracked the DNA code. Crick and Watson got the Nobel Prize. Franklin’s role was deliberately hidden. Her scientific genius ranks with Nobelist Marie Curie, co-discoverer of radium with her husband, Pierre.

These women were forced to overcome deeply rooted sexism and discrimination to enter the world of science and math. Summers’ unguarded comment proves that those barriers remain.

* * * * * *

UN: poverty ‘silent tsunami’

In releasing a 13-volume UN report on global poverty, economist Jeffrey Sachs called it a “silent tsunami” that engulfs billions of people around the world. One billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Many millions, especially children, die of starvation, hunger, or preventable diseases each year.

But the good news, according to the report, is that poverty can be cut in half by 2015 and can be eliminated by 2025 with only a modest increase in development assistance from the 22 wealthiest nations. It means those countries must live up to the promise they made in 1970, and renewed at a UN conference in 2002, to devote 0.7 percent of their gross domestic income (GDI) to development assistance. So far only five nations have met or surpassed that target and six others are committed to reaching it by 2015.

The U.S. spends a pitiful 0.15 percent of GDI for development assistance. President Bush has pledged $22.3 billion in aid for 2006 or about 0.18 percent of our nation’s GDI. That’s less than two-tenths of 1 percent of U.S. GDI! The U.S. would have to double that to $54.5 billion to reach its promised target.

The report calls for doubling overall annual assistance for the poor nations to $136 billion in 2006 and $195 billion by 2015. This amount “pales beside the wealth of high income countries and the world’s military budget of $900 billion a year,” the report states.

Sachs charged, “The system is not working right now — let’s be clear. There’s a tremendous imbalance of focus on issues of war and peace and less on the dying and suffering of the poor who have no voice.”

Assisting the poor nations is not charity by a kind-hearted superpower. U.S. transnational corporations reap billions from the toil of impoverished workers in Latin America, Africa and Asia. They reap billions more from the exploitation of these nations’ natural resources. Doubling U.S. aid to meet the UN goal of eliminating poverty is a matter of partial repayment to those countries plundered by the U.S. and other imperialist powers.

Martina Gangle Curl: Peoples art and the mothering of humanity

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:47:00 +0000

PORTLAND, Ore. — In the eight years since Portland artist Martina Gangle Curl passed away at age 88, her stature has steadily risen, spurred by a growing interest in her sometimes heroic, but always loving depiction of ordinary working people, the American Indians, pioneers and workers who created a unique culture in the Pacific Northwest.

Just before Christmas, the Labor Arts Forum (LAF), a project of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, opened an exhibition at the Multnomah County Library in downtown Portland. It focused on the shipbuilding industry that sprang up in Portland and across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington during World War II. Many hundreds of Liberty Ships and Victory ships were produced at these yards operated by the Kaiser corporation, all now closed.

Martina Gangle was one of hundreds of women who worked in Kaiser’s Swan Island shipyard during the war. In the exhibition her leather welder’s jacket was displayed in a glass case and beside it a pencil self-portrait. Drawn in bold lines, she gazes back with the frank expression of an independent and fearless woman, a home-front fighter against Hitler fascism.

A large crowd gathered in the exhibition hall Dec. 18 to honor the shipyard workers, including Chauncey Del French whose memoir, “Waging War on the Home Front,” chronicles those years.

Power of working class women

Several other Kaiser shipyard workers were present, among them Gale Adams, the first woman overhead crane operator west of the Mississippi.

“I wasn’t a ‘Rosie the Riveter’ but I was doing my best for the war effort,” she told the World. “I worked in the yard for nearly four years. I remember the day we launched the first Liberty ship. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was there to christen it. It slid down the keel way into the middle of the river and sank like a rock!” She laughed merrily at the memory.

“A couple of welds gave out. We brought it back up, patched the leaks and off it sailed to war. I later became a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Also in the crowd was Hank Curl, Martina’s widower. They married in 1946. He is a former National Maritime Union seafarer, who sailed in the Pacific theater aboard a Victory ship built at the Portland yard. Now 91, Curl is an honored pioneer of the Oregon labor movement, still active in all the progressive movements in the Portland area. Promoting awareness and appreciation of Martina’s art, including epic murals she painted while serving with the Roosevelt-era Federal Art Project, takes up much of his time when he isn’t out at plant gates and campuses distributing the People’s Weekly World.

Preserving WPA art

David Milholland, Labor Arts Forum project director, told the crowd the aim is to preserve and popularize a side of labor’s heritage that is neglected or even suppressed. “We are working to develop a full inventory of the WPA [Works Progress Adminstration] art in the state. Throughout Oregon there were wonderful projects. This is an opportunity to learn about the literary, artistic, and music heritage of our state.”

Trisha Kauffman is the director of the Museum of People’s Art in Bay City on the Oregon coast. It features works by Martina and her collaborators, Arthur and Albert Runquist, all WPA artists. Kauffman said her mission in life is to promote their art, which celebrates the struggles of working people.

“It’s so exciting to see all of it together here,” she told the World. “The art, the photographs, the welders’ helmets and torches, Martina’s jacket. She was an original Rosie the Riveter.”

Displayed was a full-page ad in the Sept. 20, 1942 Oregon Journal with the banner headline, “10,000 Shipyard Workers Wanted at Swan Island, Vancouver, Oregon Ship.” The wage scale was 88 cents an hour for laborers, 95 cents for helpers and $1.20 an hour for journeymen.

The ship industry attracted thousands of jobless workers, including African Americans who flocked to Portland. And it opened the door for women to enter the workforce as basic industrial workers. Martina had been an impoverished migrant farm worker and domestic worker, who worked her way through the Portland Museum Art School.

One day while walking to school she ran into a demonstration demanding freedom for Tom Mooney, serving a life term on trumped-up terrorism charges. It was organized by the Communist Party of Oregon. She read the leaflet they were distributing and soon she joined the party and was assigned to a club of artists and intellectuals that included artist Arthur Runquist.

She worked an exhausting schedule to support herself and her son, David, while also attending classes at the Museum school.

Art and activism

The WPA’s Federal Art Project came as a magnificent opportunity to earn a living while creating wonderful works of art.

So began a lifelong career of both artistic creativity and militant activism. She was arrested with other women in the late 1930s, protesting the export of scrap metal to Japan, knowing it would be used to fuel the Japanese imperial war machine. In 1975, she and her close friend, Julia Ruutila, were arrested during a sit-in protesting rate hikes by Portland Power & Light. She became a beloved champion of Oregon farm workers’ struggle for union rights. She also marched for civil rights, against the blockade of Cuba and against the Vietnam war.

Over the years she created a body of art that reflected these humanist and socialist values. Together with Arthur Runquist, she painted a WPA mural for a high school in Pendleton, Ore. It is a work in two panels, one celebrating the culture of the Umatilla Indians and the other a cattle roundup honoring the hard toil of cowboys. She was one of 200 WPA artists who provided murals, paintings, watercolors, and wood carvings for one of WPA’s greatest masterpieces, Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. She also did a powerful WPA mural, “The Columbia River Pioneer Migration,” for the Rose City Park Elementary School in Portland.

It is striking that an artist with such a fundamental critique of existing society infuses her work with so much optimism. Her work affirms life amid the misery of capitalist war, racism and greed. The message in her art is “a different world is possible.” And women, starting with pioneer women, are often central to her epic compositions.

Becoming a Communist

A lavishly illustrated full-color brochure of her work titled, “Martina Gangle Curl: People’s Art and the Mothering of Humanity*,” speaks of her vision. The author, Portland State University Professor David A Horowitz, writes that joining the Communist Party was “a natural outgrowth” of her life experience as a worker and an artist. She was attracted by the Party’s popular front strategy, he explains, “a broad anti-fascist coalition emphasizing humanist and democratic values like world peace, labor solidarity, racial tolerance and liberal reform.”

He continues, “In matters of culture, the Front celebrated the dignity and beauty of proletarian art forms … Martina aligned herself with the communists because she hoped that socialism could turn her dreams of a better society into practical reality.”

Real art, real change

A few days after the exhibition, we drove down to Bay City to see the Museum of People’s Art housed in a lovely old storefront called ArtSpace on Highway 101.

Trisha Kauffman greeted us and led us on a tour of the museum, which features the art of the Runquist brothers and Martina as part of its permanent collection. Kauffman and her husband Craig have operated the museum for 17 years. It also offers delicious gourmet food at reasonable prices at the gallery’s restaurant. We missed by only a few days a full-scale exhibition titled “People’s Art in theRoosevelt Era, 1933-1945.”

But Kauffman led us into a room devoted to Runquist and other people’s artists. One big Runquist canvas depicts two workers with missing arms and legs, lying dead from industrial accidents.

“I love this art because it is so real. I love it because I can live it,” she said. “It’s life and life is important.”

Martina Gangle Curl and Arthur Runquist were blacklisted during the Cold War because of their political views, she said. “Thugs beat Arthur up. They injured his hand so badly doctors thought they would have to amputate. He and Martina were working on the Pendleton murals at the time. Luckily, his hand was saved.

“They sacrificed so much during the war to defeat Hitler and then they were treated as enemies. So often communism is equated with ‘unpatriotic.’ But Martina was totally patriotic.”

Kauffman showed me a tiny thumbnail pencil sketch titled “The Gathering of the People,” of working people in a circle, their arms around each other. “That’s the Martina I knew, showing humanity joined together in unity. I want other people to know her, a strong-willed, headstrong woman. She had to be powerful. She was a welder.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Asbestos a disease crisis not a lawsuit crisis

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:40:00 +0000

As an oncologist, I see the deadly and tragic consequences of exposure to the carcinogen asbestos in my patients who suffer from lung cancer and mesothelioma. I also know all too well the inadequacy of the regulatory system designed to protect workers, as my brother was killed due to unsafe working conditions.

On a personal and professional level, I condemn President Bush’s recent campaign to overhaul the civil justice system by urging Congress to limit the legal rights of workers who have been injured by asbestos.

Bush seeks to limit lawsuits that have “bankrupted a lot of companies” and that awarded money to people he deemed are not “truly sick,” but he offered no specific legislation. Justifying his proposed changes, he said they would benefit those who are “truly sick and denied their day in court.”

This egregious “spin” of promoting supposed “benefits” to current cancer patients will destroy the rights of others. It will allow companies to escape accountability for their misconduct. As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has said, asbestos is not just a “litigation crisis, it’s a disease crisis.”

The toll on workers disabled and killed by asbestos disease and on their families has risen to staggering levels over the last several decades. This is the result of willful practices of manufacturers and employers who withheld information about the hazards of asbestos and did little or nothing to control exposures.

While Bush spoke of ending liability for companies, he did not address the need to ban this deadly substance, or the need for stiffer penalties for employers who expose workers to asbestos.

Although Bush says companies are being bankrupted by asbestos claims, many, in fact, reorganize. Halliburton, the large oil field services and construction company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, is an example. Halliburton sought to limit its legal liabilities from asbestos claims against Dresser Industries, a company that made many products that contained asbestos and which Haliburton, under Cheney, acquired in 1998. Two of Halliburton’s units have emerged from bankruptcy protection after formalizing a $4.7-billion settlement of asbestos claims that could involve more than 400,000 people.

More than 100,000 asbestos claims were filed in 2003 alone. Many more people will develop asbestos-related disease for years into the future. A trust fund that provides victims with fair compensation and that could be replenished to ensure that all meritorious claims are paid is needed. If this cannot be guaranteed, then claimants should be allowed to return to the courts.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is drafting a bill to compensate victims from such a trust fund. Corporations like ExxonMobil and DuPont have announced they will oppose this legislation. Sweeney condemned their decision as “read[ing] the results of the November election as license to ignore the plight of asbestos victims and the responsible efforts of a number of other companies to join in the creation of a national trust fund to guarantee asbestos victims fair compensation for their tragic circumstances.”

The influence of corporations is not limited to the Congress alone. They are now adding judicial nominations to their priority list. John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers and one of Bush’s close Republican friends, announced a multi million-dollar campaign to openly support Bush nominees to the federal court. Their campaign is rooted in issues like “tort reform” and pressing for limits on people’s ability to recover damages (like on asbestos-related disease) from business.

This renewed fight to protect corporations from lawsuits, coupled with the significantly larger Republican majority in Congress, has made asbestos “good business.” For example, profits for asbestos maker USG were up 53 percent for the second quarter of 2004.

The profits gained by stripping sick and dying workers of their legal protections were spent in part to celebrate Bush’s inaugural.

ExxonMobil donated the maximum $250,000 to the inaugural committee and the National Association of Manufacturers sponsored four private events including a “denim and diamonds” evening reception for new members of Congress the night before.

Meanwhile, we families of those who have died from unsafe working conditions quietly continue to mourn our losses. And those who are ill from industrial carcinogen exposure are forced to struggle for fairness and justice while battling devastating diseases.

Donna Puleio Spadaro (dspadaro@usachoice.net) practices medicine in Pennsylvania.

The debate in labor just got more constructive

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:35:00 +0000

News Analysis

In early January the leaders of the New Unity Partnership (NUP) decided to disband. NUP was a loose caucus of national unions in the AFL-CIO, including SEIU, HERE, UNITE (now HERE-UNITE), the Laborers and the Carpenters. They got together during the summer of 2003 with the avowed purpose of pushing for reforms in the AFL-CIO.

Their strongest emphasis was on measures to increase organizing and on restructuring unions to maximize their power in specific industries and sectors of the economy.

While many in labor agree with the need for reform and building a bigger, stronger labor movement, much of the NUP program was immediately controversial. Many felt the proposals were too “top down.” Others felt they were too radical. Still others resented what they saw as a provocative and too aggressive approach. The height of this feeling came when SEIU President Andy Stern said, in effect, if the AFL-CIO didn’t adopt NUP reforms then his union might consider leaving the federation.

Still, the NUP group helped start an extremely valuable debate in labor at a time when labor is on the move in new, dynamic ways. The tremendous mobilization in the electoral fight to defeat George Bush and the ultra right stands out. Not since the early CIO days has labor mounted such efforts: impressive, independent grassroots involvement of the membership, ground-breaking coalition building, incredible unity in action, massive dedication of resources, and all with renewed energy and militancy.

What better time for a broad-based debate in labor on program, organizing, structure and direction? A rich and productive debate can take place precisely because labor is so aroused and in motion.

The problems are real. Despite creative and heroic efforts, union membership is in decline. Labor’s political, economic and social clout is not yet strong enough to blunt the corporate and right-wing attack.

While many in the AFL-CIO felt blindsided by the approach NUP first took in demanding the debate, to its great credit the AFL-CIO leadership welcomed the opening for a far-reaching discussion. Embracing the chance to make improvements and reforms, they’ve come up with a great plan to broaden and deepen the discussion. They are calling on all affiliates and related institutions to submit ideas and proposal. They are making special efforts to involve rank-and-file members, local union officers and central labor councils, the grassroots of labor. And they are reaching out to coalition partners and “friends of labor” to participate in the discussion.

Disbanding NUP is a big step towards unity and a more productive and effective discussion. The NUP leaders are putting the goals of reform above their own particular ideas. They clearly don’t want NUP to become a distraction from the broader plan of debate and change being developed by the AFL-CIO.

Despite strong feelings, there has been a lot of positive give-and-take on all sides. These combined efforts point in the direction of rebuilding labor as a social movement that can help lead the struggles of the whole working class.

Scott Marshall (scott@rednet.org) is chair of the CPUSA labor commission.

Devil in the details

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:29:00 +0000

President Bush’s pitch to workers, especially young workers, that privatization will make you rich is a Wall Street swindle. A detailed analysis of the most likely Bush administration proposals for Social Security included in the Goldman Sachs Global Economic Research Bulletin for Dec. 17 shows the Bush program to be a fraud — but a clever fraud.

The Presidential Commission on Social Security in 2001 advanced the leading proposal favored by the Bush team. Under this “Reform Model 2” :

• Workers under 55 could voluntarily redirect four percentage points of their payroll taxes, up to $1,000 annually, into a personal savings account (PSA). Upon retirement, the funds in these accounts would generally be converted into a monthly annuity payment.

• Traditional Social Security benefits would be cut at a rate equivalent to the worker’s PSA contributions, plus a 2-percent compound interest rate, referred to as the “clawback.”

• A new welfare-style change in Social Security would be added, establishing a minimum benefit for long-term low-wage workers and widows at 120 percent of the poverty line.

• A one-earner couple, median income, for example, retiring in 2022 would receive a $1,881 monthly benefit under current law. Under Bush, if this couple invested 4 percent of their SS payroll tax in a PSA and actually reaped “projected” earnings, they would only receive a $1,744 monthly benefit. The base monthly benefit would be reduced to $1,578 for the same couple if they lost their PSA income through stock market losses

• Benefits under the traditional Social Security system would be indexed to prices instead of wages beginning seven years after the reform plan is implemented! This will result in a 48 percent cut in benefits over 75 years.

• Goldman Sachs estimates investment firm profits and administrative fees at 10 percent. However, experience in some Latin America countries (e.g. Chile) where privatization of social security has been showcased, suggest it will be much higher. Reports in recent years show a majority of Chilean workers’ private accounts were wiped out by fees, losses, or penalty withdrawals before retirement. These workers now live on the reduced minimum benefits. Fees in the privatization of British social security ranged from 15 percent to 20 percent.

• Many working families will be under tremendous pressure to cash out their PSAs every time there is a layoff, especially in the absence of universal health care. In addition, financial asset returns are volatile. A 50-percent decline in stock prices — what occurred in 2000 — would cut benefits payments for PSAs by 15 percent to 25 percent.

Bush’s assertion that PSAs are better because “stock returns are better than government bonds” contradicts the plan to sell $1.5 trillion in government bonds (or ... omigod! ... tax increases!!) to “finance” these returns. In reality, the growth in the bond market will restrain stock returns. The immense budget deficits defy any reasonable justification other than they are consistent with an extreme right-wing theory that the way to fully “liberate” free enterprise from the “slavery of regulation and intervention” is to bankrupt the government.

Bush’s plan is under a lot of fire right now. But all he may need to do to achieve his ultimate goal is to pass any plan that diverts Social Security payroll taxes into PSAs. Once that step is taken the social contract between the working generation and their parents and grandparents that they provide for each other is weakened. Not coincidentally, a key political base of the Democratic Party since the New Deal — Social Security retirees — is also weakened and split.

jcase@steuber.com

Labor leads fight to block fare hikes

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:25:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — Over 150 people representing a wide range of organizations packed the hall for a press conference at the AFL-CIO headquarters here Jan. 12 to launch the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition.

The first task is to block a threatened hike in the base fare on a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) bus or subway in the city. The proposed fare increase from $2 to $3 represents a 50 percent increase and one that would put public transit out of reach of many of the people who need it most — working people, seniors and students. The transit agency is also threatening to cut 20 percent of its service by eliminating some routes altogether and reducing the frequency of buses on other routes.

The coalition’s second task is to ensure long-term funding for public transportation in Philadelphia and across the state of Pennsylvania. SEPTA said the fare hikes and service cuts are necessary to fill a $62-million funding gap immediately, but that it needs an additional $282 million annually. The agency said the cuts would take effect Feb. 27 if no solution were found.

Labor groups represented at the press conference included the Alliance for Retired Americans, AFSCME District Councils 33 and 47, UNITE-HERE and the Transport Workers Local 234. Also represented were the Black Clergy of Philadelphia, the Sierra Club and many community groups. Former Gov. Mark Schweiker, president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, addressed the crowd. “We are talking about the economic well-being of our city and region,” he said.

Philadelphia AFL-CIO President Pat Eiding, who played a key role in bringing the coalition together, told a meeting of Central Labor Council delegates, “The house of labor is quarterbacking this thing.”

The coalition aims to build for a statewide rally in Harrisburg Feb. 14. In response to the growing public outcry, legislators and the governor have begun to come forward with various plans for funding mass transit, including raising the real estate transfer tax and motor vehicles fees.

bikerbenn@aol.com.

Steelworkers, PACE to vote on merger

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:18:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH – Corporate mergers, bankruptcies and layoffs dominate the headlines. Below the radar, mining, energy and manufacturing workers are uniting to support their families, sustain their communities and protect retirees.

The 550,000-member United Steel Workers of America (USWA) and the 270,000-member Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) announced the merger of the two basic industrial unions Jan. 11.

The new union will be the dominant one in the North American industries of metals, paper and forestry products, tire and rubber, mining, glass, chemicals and energy. It will represent more than 1.25 million active and retired workers.

“Our unions share a commitment to innovative bargaining strategies that protect our members in many ways, while maintaining and building the productive capacity of the companies they work in,” USWA President Leo Gerard said in announcing the merger.

“We’re also pledged to using our successes with our joint “Rapid Response” and political programs to challenge anti-worker forces bent on undermining the futures of our active and retired members.”

From the PACE office in Nashville, union president Boyd Young hailed the unified strength the merger presents to ExxonMobil, DuPont and other multinational corporations.

“PACE members will have access to a $150-million defense fund so that we can take on employers who make unreasonable demands at the bargaining table. Furthermore, with an organizing budget of over $30 million per year, we will have the ability to strategically organize workers in our core industries.”

Both manufacturing unions know the brutal impact of plant closings, corporate bankruptcies, globalization and anti-worker government policies and have led successful campaigns to protect working families. The USWA has just restored a prescription drug benefit to their members who had suffered the cruel ax of steel corporations’ restructuring. PACE recently beat back the eighth attempt by DuPont to decertify the union.

The membership of both unions will vote on the merger at their conventions in April.

DWinebr696@aol.com.

WORLD NOTES

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:14:00 +0000

Haiti: African Union seeks peaceful resolution

After last week’s meeting in Pretoria with South African President Thabo Mbeki and exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, African Union Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare said the AU is ready to help facilitate the return of peace and the holding of elections in Haiti.

The Haitian news service AHP quoted Aristide as saying he is committed to working with the AU to restore peace and constitutional order in his country. Aristide added, “The Haitian people would have very much liked to be present to thank Mr. Mbeki and Mr. Konare for their efforts to help resolve the crisis.” Mbeki recalled that the South African government welcomed President Aristide as a guest on the request of the AU and the Caribbean Community of Nations, and said it is essential for Haiti to begin a national dialogue and a process of negotiations to reach a political solution.

Canada: Madagascar’s debt cancelled

Canada said this week it is canceling Madagascar’s entire $21 million debt. Paul Boothe, Canada’s representative to the G8 group of the world’s eight wealthiest countries, said Canada is forgiving the debts of countries that are working to modernize and reform.

“African nations that have shown real progress in improving government accountability and strengthening their economies must be allowed the opportunity to invest in their citizens, rather than being compelled to divert their financial resources to interest payments, Boothe said.

Since last September, Canada has also forgiven the debuts of Ethiopia, Ghana and Senegal.

Iraq: Workers strike over attacks

The strike Basra railway workers began early this month has led to the suspension of the city’s railway network, the International Transport Workers Federation (ITWF) said last week. The workers are protesting a number of terrorist attacks in which railway workers have been murdered, kidnapped and assaulted.

Among attacks: in December, two train drivers were kidnapped and five railway workers were seriously assaulted during an ambush of a freight train traveling from Basra to An Nasiriya. In October, four railway workers were murdered on a train between Mosul and Baghdad.

The Iraqi Federation of Workers’ Trade Unions (IFTU) called on the government to help secure the release of kidnapped workers and to provide adequate security. “Our working people are paying with their blood and lives for participating in the rebuilding of their country to end the foreign occupation,” the IFTU said in a statement. The federation emphasized that the interim government is responsible to protect not only the transportation infrastructure, but also the lives of workers as they carry out their jobs.

The International Transport Workers Federation is expressing full solidarity with the workers. Solidarity messages can be sent to the IFTU at abdullahmuhsin@iraqitradeunions.org.

France: Rolling strikes protest cutbacks

Hundreds of thousands of government workers – teachers, civil servants and health care workers – joined last week’s rolling strikes initiated Jan. 18 by postal and rail workers. Strikers were protesting government plans to curb hiring and to weaken the law mandating a 35-hour workweek, and demanding wage increases.

The Education Ministry said over 40 percent of the country’s nearly 900,000 teachers joined the job action Jan. 20, which also halted many domestic flights, closed museums and halted traffic.

Protests were held in Paris and in dozens of other cities and towns throughout France.

An opinion poll Jan. 18 showed 65 percent of the French people supported the labor actions. The unions said participation in the strikes grew as the week went on, and observed that the public mood is shifting against the government’s austerity policies.

Another Day of Action is projected for Feb. 5.

Pakistan: Workers protest firings, prices

Workers organized by the All Pakistan Trade Union Federation (APTUF) rallied in front of the Lahore Press Club on Jan. 9 to protest the illegal dismissals of union officers and activists from textile and printing firms.

On Jan. 11, the APTUF rallied in different industrial areas of Lahore against rising prices and government repression of trade union activities.

The union federation said the demonstrations were successful despite the efforts of a special police force that patrols industrial areas to keep workers from organizing and protesting.

APTUF Secretary General Gulzar Ahmed Chaudhary said workers are finding it increasingly difficult to survive in the face of cost of living increases. Poverty, unemployment and child labor are growing rapidly, he said, adding that over half the population now lives below the poverty line, while the government is doing nothing to ease the economic suffering of ordinary people.

World Notes are compiled by Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel@pww.org).

Cuba trains doctors for U.S.

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 07:04:00 +0000

U.S. young people are off to Cuba in mid February to study medicine at that nation’s Latin American School of Medicine (LASM). They join 8,000 other students already there. The students, from 26 countries, including eight African nations, have promised to attend to the poor and underserved when they return home.

The school opened in 1999 and 1,500 new physicians will graduate in August. Students at the school are unable to find or pay for a medical education in their own countries, so Cuba provides it for them free. The curriculum involves a six-month premedical review course, basic medical sciences for two years and then clinical studies for four years at another Cuban medical school.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), visiting in Havana in 2000, told Fidel Castro about physician shortages in the United States. Cuba responded by offering 500 annual scholarships to the LASM. The first U.S. students who arrived in 2001 will graduate in 2007. Presently the U.S. enrollment includes 75 students from 18 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, most of them Black or Latino women.

The Inter-Religious Foundation for Community Organizing (IFCO), the interfaith solidarity organization led by Rev. Lucius Walker, has recruited students for the LASM. Earlier this year, they were on the verge of having to leave Cuba because of tightened travel restrictions. But, according to Ellen Bernstein of IFCO, that group and the CBC put pressure on the State Department to issue special travel authorization for LASM students.

The LASM is located a few miles west of Havana on the site of a former navy base. When they graduate, the U.S. students will have to find residencies — training posts in U.S. hospitals — and take U.S. licensure examinations, for which IFCO has organized tutoring.

An LASM student from the Bronx writes, “Imagine, growing up in a poor neighborhood and being told, implicitly and explicitly, by society that your career choices were limited. For a long time I didn’t know that someone like myself, an African-American woman, could be, or had the opportunity, to become a doctor.”

It’s a matter of exclusion, writes Fitzhugh Mullan in a New England Journal of Medicine article about the LASM (December 23, 2004). He’s the former head of the U.S. National Health Services Corps.

“Students from these minority groups simply don’t get into medical school as often as their majority peers, which results in a scarcity of minority physicians. This inequity translates into suffering and death.”

Parents of U.S. medical students, whites and minorities alike, are relatively well off. In 2000, the parents of 36 percent of all U.S. freshmen medical students earned between $100,000 and $250,000 annually, and the parents of another 10 percent, more than $250,000. Only six percent of the students had parents earning less than $50,000 a year.

Cuba puts the right to health care into revolutionary practice. In 1961 there were only 3,000 doctors in Cuba and one medical school. Now there are 22 medical schools and 70,000 physicians. Over the course of 30 years, 25,000 Cuban volunteer physicians have worked in more than 60 countries, and 15,000 Cuban doctors are now caring for patients in 50 countries, 11,000 in Venezuela alone.

The LASM is indeed a bold venture, but hardly a surprising one given Cuba’s record of humanitarian outreach. Cuba looks to the long haul and that’s why the LASM exists. In 1998, terrible hurricanes wrought havoc in Central America — 12,000 people died. Cuban doctors were already there, but after the storms, more came.

Castro spoke at the LASM inauguration the next year. “The television images shocked the world,” he said. “But the shock fades away in a few weeks and soon everything is forgotten. The great promises are never delivered. Meanwhile, death continues to quietly take more lives every year than those caused by all the natural disasters together.” LASM-trained doctors will be going back into their own hinterlands and barrios and staying. Some of the Cuban doctors may then be able to go home.

Mexico Citys govt launches programs to help poor

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 06:56:00 +0000

MEXICO CITY — Venezuela President Hugo Chavez is not the only leader undertaking needed social reforms in Latin America. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-leaning governor of this city’s metro-area federal district and a prominent member of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), has been pursuing a progressive agenda since he was elected in 2000.

Mexico City, with 20 million inhabitants, faces grave social and environmental problems — problems that have only been aggravated by U.S.-inspired “free trade” economic policies. With the exception of the upper- and upper-middle-class districts, decaying slums cover much of the rubbish-strewn cityscape. Because wages are low and unemployment high, much of the population lives in poverty. Robberies and violent crime are common. Poisonous gray smog hangs over the city most days, killing around 1,500 people a year.

Despite the government’s limited resources, Lopez Obrador has pushed for new investments in social services and infrastructure improvement. Elderly residents over 70 without pensions, the handicapped and children of single mothers receive a monthly check from the government to help them make ends meet. The poor receive free medical care. Mobile dental clinics roam impoverished neighborhoods, providing low-cost services. The government is building orphanages for the city’s homeless children and is constructing affordable housing for the poor.

Lopez Obrador’s administration has also passed stricter emission standards and has expanded public transportation to reduce air pollution. It has constructed schools for the first time since 1973; restored “heritage neighborhoods” that were crumbling due to neglect; given low-interest loans to people who want to start their own businesses to reduce unemployment; and is embarking on a major recycling program.

Economist Olga Rivera Barragan told the World that Lopez Obrador’s government is carrying out its program on a shoestring budget. “With few resources, the government has been able to do much,” she said. “By undertaking measures such as keeping administrative salaries down, Lopez Obrador’s administration has been able to channel money into social and infrastructure programs.”

Lopez Obrador’s achievements are even more impressive in view of maneuvers by the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the National Assembly to cut the federal government’s contribution to Mexico City’s budget. This was a brazen attempt, said Barragan, to undermine Lopez Obrador.

Another facet of the PRD government has been the tackling of a pervasive culture of political corruption that exists in Mexico, where everyone, from police officers to judges, is demanding bribes, and public servants and politicians are notorious for stealing public money. To combat corruption, the government has implemented a program of public vigilance. The boards of directors of each government agency, from police to public transportation, have two unpaid volunteers who are allowed to scrutinize operations and inform the government of any shady diversion of funds. “The savings from reducing corruption have been noticeable, freeing up resources for programs,” said Barragan. The government has also dismissed over 2,000 corrupt policemen.

Lopez Obrador has not just concerned himself with improving conditions in Mexico City, but has called for changes at the national level, too. Half of Mexico’s 100 million people do not earn enough to meet basic needs. Lopez Obrado has stated that Mexico’s neoliberal, free-market economy “has not produced economic growth in the last 20 years, has not generated jobs, and if there has been no social explosion it is because thousands of Mexicans have emigrated, emptying the country of young people.”

Despite recent scandals that have tarnished the PRD nationally, and recent efforts by the opposition to discredit Lopez Obrador through what some observers charge are politically motivated court actions, he remains a popular figure within Mexico City and beyond. In a December referendum asking city residents if they were happy with Lopez Obrador as governor, 95 percent voted yes.

There is speculation that Lopez Obrador might contest the 2006 presidential elections as the PRD’s candidate. Polls suggest that he would be a leading contender. In the meantime, his popular, left-oriented government continues to lead the way in Mexico.

tpelzer@shaw.ca

Rally defends close election

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 06:49:00 +0000

AUSTIN, Texas — Supporters of Rep. Hubert Vo rallied Jan. 11 at the state Capitol here to demand that the legislature respect Vo’s 31-vote election victory over incumbent Republican Talmadge Heflin.

Vo, who won the race for Legislature from District 149 in West Houston, also won two subsequent recounts. But Heflin, a 20-year veteran of the legislature who chaired the Appropriations Committee, asked his colleagues to nullify Vo’s victory. A hearing on the request was scheduled for Jan. 27 but at press time there had been no ruling.

Vo, a Vietnamese immigrant, ran a campaign based on racial and ethnic unity, with his main themes making health care more accessible and improving public education.

“We registered people who had never been registered to vote before — people living in [government subsidized] housing, ex-felons who served their time and had their rights restored, new citizens — and then we got them to the polls on Election Day,” Richard Leal of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, told the demonstrators.

“When they voted,” he said, “they voted for health care, they voted for education, they voted for Hubert Vo.”

Vo’s multiethnic coalition turned out in force for the rally. Three busloads of supporters — Vietnamese, Latinos, Arabs, Chinese, Korean, African American and white — came to Austin for the rally. At the podium steelworkers from Houston held the boxes containing petitions with more than 3,000 signatures in support of upholding the election results.

After Heflin filed his request, two other GOP losers in state House races asked to have their defeats overturned as well. But both withdrew their requests when they learned that they would be required to provide evidence of voter fraud.

Doctor exposes racism in hospital fight

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 06:45:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES – In 1965, the 265,000 people in the Watts area of South Los Angeles were served by eight small, private hospitals with 440 beds. Today the 1 million people in the area have only two hospitals with less than 300 beds.

These were the opening facts Dr. Samuel Shacks presented to a Jan. 15 Southern Christian Leadership Conference forum on the future of King/Drew Medical Center, which is threatened with decertification for deficiencies reported by the Joint Commission on Accredidation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). If decertified, the hospital would lose $200 million in Medicare funds and face closure.

Shacks, who is a pediatric physician specialist at the hospital and a professor at UCLA and Drew medical schools, outlined how, first, the private medical industry and, now, Los Angeles County Health Services have been abandoning the working-class African American and Latino communities of South Los Angeles. He urged that the hospital services be strengthened by restoring services and filling staff shortages.

The doctor’s data came from the McCone Commission report on the causes of the 1965 Watts rebellion. Those recommendations led to the building of the King/Drew, which opened its doors in 1972. At that time, Shack said, it was recommended that 780 beds were needed. Today there are 233 beds and only 200 in use at the hospital.

In the health Services Planning Area (SPA) 6, which includes Watts, the only other hospital is Metropolitan with well under 100 beds, Shacks said. Overall the doctor-to-resident ratio has fallen from 2,400-to-1 to about 5,000-to-1.

“Actually King/Drew is the only game in town for 1.5 million people,” Shacks said, adding other SPA areas have about 10 hospitals each. Yet “in South Los Angeles, the crisis is not only in access to care — SPA 6 is the poorest, sickest, with the most health disparities as well.”

County cutbacks in health services have added to the health access crisis in South LA, Shacks said. Three community clinics have been closed in the area, leaving only one. The “cascade” of cutbacks at King/Drew led to a staffing shortage of 565 positions. Many nurses at the hospital are from registries, which draw temporary nurses from out of state.

Shacks said JCAHO’s own data shows the crisis developed as cutbacks have been instituted. In view of the crisis, Shacks, who is African American, said, the community need “not apologize” for fighting to save King/Drew.

The Los Angeles Times, which has said African American leaders’ charges of discrimination have been part of the problem of the deficiencies at King/Drew, reported on the forum in a Jan 16 article. The newspaper quoted Shacks only on his “apology” statements, not his data and history. On Jan. 17, undeterred by such coverage, Shacks rode on the Save King/Drew float in the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday parade through the heart of South Los Angeles where thousands upon thousands lined the streets chanting, “Save King /Drew!”

rosalio_munoz@sbcglobal.net