People Before Profit blog

New Jersey moves to abolish the death penalty

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:09:00 +0000

News Analysis

The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission, after nearly a year of deliberations, released its report and recommendations on Jan. 2.

Its key findings can be summarized as follows: (1) the death penalty is by no means a deterrent to crime, (2) life without parole is a viable alternative to death row, since it deprives individuals of their capacity to harm the public, (3) keeping an inmate on death row costs more than maintaining a typical inmate and (4) the death penalty is “inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”

In wrapping up its report, the commission urged the Legislature to adopt a draft law that reads in part, “This bill eliminates the death penalty in New Jersey and replaces it with life imprisonment without eligibility for parole, which sentence shall be served in a maximum security prison.”

If adopted, such a law would make New Jersey the 13th state to reject capital punishment.

The report was hailed as a victory by death penalty abolitionists. It was also greeted by anti-racists, who correctly point out that capital punishment is disproportionately imposed on African Americans and Latinos, who, like poor people generally, typically lack the means for hiring defense lawyers.

Lee Hall, a member of the faculty at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., and an activist who has written about the privatization of prisons, observed: “Enlightened people will welcome the New Jersey Commission’s recommendation to abolish the death penalty, a punishment which has long kept the United States out of step with international norms.

“Execution is a simplistic response to complex problems,” he said. “It has only perpetuated violence, and it reflects the culture of domination and control that we’d do well to transcend.”

Despite this important victory, however, parts of the report are troubling, particularly to the extent that they echo many of the myths surrounding the U.S. criminal justice system today:

The report suggests the system simply needs a little bit of tinkering to get things back on track. The U.S. criminal justice system, which puts more people behind bars each year than any other industrialized nation, is fundamentally unjust by design. It is inherently biased against working-class people and racial minorities. The report leaves the problems of systemic class and racial bias unaddressed. And if a judge’s sentence of “life in prison without eligibility of parole” still claims the same group of people with the same frequency, then the severity of injustice will be tempered, but injustice itself will continue.

The commission’s almost exclusive focus on two poles — the death penalty versus a lifetime in jail — has the effect of reinforcing the status quo. It suggests these two are the only possible options, largely ignoring, for example, any prospects for an inmate’s rehabilitation. “Life without eligibility of parole” is an unacceptably rigid formulation.

The report dehumanizes those who are incarcerated. According to the report, one reason why the death penalty should be abolished is that it is a greater drain on the state’s coffers. It cites an annual savings of between $900,000 and $1.2 million if the state were to abolish it. However, one has to wonder about the logic of a system that allows the life or death of a human being to hinge on the cold calculus of cost-benefit analysis.

Under U.S. capitalism today, inmates are routinely exploited as a source of sub-minimum-wage labor. One has to wonder if a vision of extra profits from a “lifetime” of exploitation figures into the commission’s calculations.

The report does offer one ray of hope, namely, the commission’s conclusion that the death penalty is “inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.” It recognizes that the number of people who oppose capital punishment seems to be increasing.

Some of this shift can be attributed to the many cases where death row inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence. Last year’s execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, a rehabilitated inmate in San Quentin Prison in California, also touched a raw nerve, sparking an increase in anti-death penalty activism.

Other factors in this process include the public’s growing revulsion at U.S. atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere, the accounts of torture at Guantanamo, the secret “rendition” flights for torture overseas — all of which lead people to question the government’s use of lethal force.

The New Jersey Commission’s actions are a beginning. But the fight is not over.

Zoé Galletta writes from New Brunswick, N.J.

EDITORIAL: Super breakthrough

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:08:00 +0000

The grand stage in professional sports is the Super Bowl. Amid all the usual accompanying Super Bowl hoopla, for the first time in its 41-year history African Amer-ican coaches will lead their teams onto the field of America’s premier sports event. Super Bowl XLI opens Black History month with a bang.

When Tony Dungy runs onto the Miami field with the American Football Conference champion Indianapolis Colts and Lovie Smith leads the National Football champion Chicago Bears through the tunnel, both men bring forth achievement marked by political and personal struggles. It marks a milestone toward “The Dream” — that persons be judged by the “content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

It took the threat of a lawsuit in 2002 to wedge the doors to the NFL coaches’ offices open. The late Johnnie Cochran, the renowned trial attorney, and Cyrus Mehri, a labor lawyer, presented “Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performances, Inferior Opportunities,” a study by Dr. Janice Madden of the University of Pennsylvania. Madden found that over a 15-year period, while 30 percent of NFL players were white, they comprised 72 percent of the assistant coaches and 94 percent of the head coaches.

While teams led by white coaches made the playoffs 39 percent of the time, African American coaches (only five at the time), took their teams into the post-season 67 percent of the time. In 2000, nine teams hired new head coaches, all white with losing records, and little or no experience.

The owners decided to negotiate. In what is now known as the Rooney rule (Dan Rooney is the owner of the Steelers) teams must interview non-white candidates for their coaching positions. In 2003, the league fined Matt Millen, president of the Detroit Lions, $200,000 for violating the rule.

This season the NFL reached an all time high of seven Black head coaches out of 32 teams.

Whoever holds up the Super Bowl trophy, there are no losers when you know that barriers can be broken and struggles will continue.

Civil rights groups launch 2007 agenda

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 07:18:00 +0000

Civil rights groups see a chance to make important gains during the next two years with the new dynamics in Congress. In a letter earlier this month to members of the House and Senate, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights outlined 16 key issues that the 200-member civil and human rights coalition plans to win.

To galvanize grassroots support for a 2007 Civil Rights Agenda, LCCR held a national conference call with 300 people from 38 states. Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the Senate’s second ranking Democrat, joined the call.

Speakers noted that substantial ground in the fight for equality has been lost over the last six years. The Supreme Court has weakened protections. The Justice Department has prioritized cases that defend majority, not minority, populations. Bills that help combat hate crimes based on gender, sexual orientation or disability have passed both the House and Senate, yet final legislation has been blocked in Republican-controlled joint committees.

With the new Democrat-controlled Congress comes new hope and expectations. Incoming House and Senate key committee chairs earned “A”s and “B”s on the NAACP’s report card while the same committees under Republican control earned “F”s. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus chair some of these committees.

Wade Henderson, LCCR president, hailed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act last summer as a springboard to more gains, including on labor’s right to organize and disability issues. “The civil and human rights communities want to use the next two years to gain ground that’s been lost over the last years,” he said.

He said the number one issue for the civil rights community is winning back that ground and ensuring the nation’s civil rights laws are fully enforced.

Nancy Zerkin, LCCR public policy director, said important issues are in the balance on federal, state and local levels. With the Nov. 7 approval of an anti-affirmative-action proposal in Michigan, she said, “states will be more of a battleground in an effort to protect affirmative action.” On the federal level, she said, another Supreme Court vacancy “still looms.”

Zerkin said the minimum wage increase in the Democrats’ “first 100 hours” program — passed in the House and now before the Senate — is part of the civil rights agenda, as is prohibiting discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation and repealing the Real ID Act, which requires photo identification to vote.

“Voter ID requirements affect all voters,” said National Council of La Raza President Cecilia Munoz. “It was passed to go after a fraud problem that doesn’t exist,” she said referring to the mythology that undocumented immigrants are voting. “It was aimed at immigrants but hits a broad cross-section of the population.”

The intersection of poverty and race, as exposed through Hurricane Katrina shows how important it is to take a comprehensive look at civil rights, said Julie Fernandez, a senior policy analyst for LCCR. “We hope Congress is willing to look comprehensively at this.”

When Sen. Durbin joined the call he emphasized that the Democratic-led Congress will hold the administration accountable on civil rights and not be a rubber stamp. “For the first time in six years Congress is involved and will play offense when it comes to civil rights,” he said. “We will stop those that will do harm.” He pledged to pass hate crimes legislation, comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship and measures to strengthen public education — all on the LCCR’s top 16 list. However, Durbin cautioned, Senate Democrats have 51 votes, but “it takes 60 votes to do anything.”

A “sleeper civil rights issue” for today, Henderson said, is voting rights for District of Columbia residents.

“D.C. residents pay taxes, send their sons and daughters to fight, and sometimes die for this country. We have all the responsibilities yet no voice in the House and Senate,” said Henderson, who is from Washington, a majority African American city. This “taxation without representation” is “one of the most important civil rights issue around,” he said. On April 16, DC Emancipation Day, LCCR and other groups will rally and press Capitol Hill to pass the D.C. Voting Rights Act, introduced Jan. 19 by D.C.’s House delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, and Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.).

LCCR’s legislative priorities also include improving and enforcing voting rights, electoral reform, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, enforcing fair housing laws, ending predatory lending, closing the digital divide, improving access to quality health care and fully funding the Census Bureau.

To get involved, visit .

tablano @ pww.org

Unions keep King dream alive

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:16:00 +0000

HOUSTON — The AFL-CIO’s national conference here, Jan. 11-15, celebrated the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., with a glorious tribute to a great man. Some 500 union activists from more than 15 international unions and many different states, including New York, California, Ohio and Pennsylvania made their presence known in profound ways.

Inspiring speeches on the relationship between civil rights and the labor movement were given throughout the conference.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who worked with King, called for a reinvigoration of the “coalition of conscience.” He said he wants to ordain labor activists as “chaplains of the common good.” He called for a “coalition of the people’s agenda” and noted that King was committed to solidarity and unity to achieve the common good.

“In the old days of anticommunist hysteria,” Lowery said, “we compromised principles, we sacrificed ideals, we glorified violence, we maximized the material and minimized the spiritual, we dehumanized the poor, we trivialized social sensitivity, we castrated compassion, we demonized the saints and canonized the devils. All this in the name of fighting the evil empire.”

Lowery urged activists to “fight for peace” He assailed the forces that divide and challenged people to resist the tactics used by the ruling elite such as “homophobia” and the exploitation of the trauma of 9/11.

Lowery said, “Jesus identified himself with the least. … He did not identify with the fat cats.” Referring to Dr. King, he said, “Martin gave his life for the least of us.”

He also called for a compassionate and sane attitude towards immigration and to save our youth from the exploitation of drugs. He expressed the need for a “rebirth of the excitement of our task when we work for the common good” and added “we need a new belly full of fire — fire that comes from doing the right thing.”

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson called for working people to organize for the fight against “the very worst president…he is not our president.” She said that undocumented immigrants need the opportunity to choose a union and that union workers make 29 percent more than other workers. Among Latinos, union workers make 50 percent more than nonunion workers, she said.

Fred Mason, of U.S. Labor Against the War, led a workshop on the effect of the Iraq war on people of color and put the problem in terms that everyone could understand. “$300 billion have been taken out of our communities to fight this war to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq … to sacrifice over 3,000 U.S. lives,” he said.

“We can spend $14,000 for a single cluster bomb or put three children in Head Start programs for a year.”

To symbolize Martin Luther King’s commitment to solidarity and action, conference attendees participated in a number of community services projects. I worked on a project which sought to beautify the Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center. Over 200 union activists took part and planted azaleas and magnolia trees. Other projects included beautifying the SHAPE community center, a city park and senior center.

At a Jan. 15 labor breakfast. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said he found Bush’s escalation speech last week “chilling” and “the only thing he left out was to say, ‘I’m going to keep on fighting until the last drop of your blood.’” He said under the Bush administration, profits have gone up and wages and vital social programs have gone down. He acknowledged the great electoral victories in November 2006 and called for continued solidarity in the battle against anti-labor forces.

Interestingly, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) was in the audience listening to every word.

Trumka pledged that never again would the people who exploit workers be allowed to “divide us” as they have in the past. “I’d rather die standing on my feet with my brothers and sisters than to live on my knees like a dog,” he said.

Union activists had the largest contingent in one of the three Houston parades commemorating King’s birthday. The contingent was led by a float with union officials and was followed by ten solid waste vehicles. The lead garbage truck had a sign recognizing King gave his life protesting low wages and poor working conditions for sanitation workers.

Among the unions participating was the United Mine Workers, Unite Here, Transit Workers, Seafarers, Ironworkers, Machinists, Painters, Carpenters and the alphabet soup of AFSCME, AFT, UAW, ILA, USW, CWA and IBEW.

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Charles Keller, an appreciation

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:45:00 +0000

Both the art and the political worlds will miss Charles Keller, a great artist of the 20th century. Keller, who seamlessly melded art and politics both in his work and in his life, passed away Aug. 21 at the age of 91.

Keller’s assistant, Michael McBrearty, remarked that Keller’s style could “be stingingly satiric, but always humanistic.” Referring to famous drawings Keller did of workers constructing Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue subway line, McBrearty said, “He excelled in depicting workers laboring together in their environment.”

Keller was born into an upper-middle-class family in Woodmere, Long Island. A love for art ran in the family. Keller’s father had himself wanted to become an artist, but due to the financial necessities that came along with raising a family, which included Charles and his three siblings, he took an opportunity available to him to become a manufacturing entrepreneur.

Money was not a problem for Charles; his father’s manufacturing success saw to that. He therefore had time to become “a bit of a Bohemian,” as Estaño, Keller’s friend and fellow artist would say. Charles was able to devote his time to painting and lithography.

But, according to McBrearty, “Even though Charles never had to work a day in his life, he worked more than most people.” Indeed, Keller’s energy was often astounding. Though at one point he lost sight in one eye, he continued his artwork.

In 1994 — at the age of 80 — Keller taught a course at the prestigious Parsons School of Design. Other schools at which he taught include Vassar and Hofstra University. His own education took place at Cornell University in the early 1930s and New York’s Art Students League from 1937 through 1941.

In the 1940s Keller was part of an artists’ community in Union Square, where he shared a studio with Harry Sternberg, whom he assisted on murals, including for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Keller later reminisced that it was during this period that he learned to “mix yellow ochre with the facts of life.”

Keller’s stature in the art world commanded respect. His work has been exhibited often since the 1940s. He was part of many art shows, from New York to Rome to the Soviet Union, with more than 20 devoted entirely to his work. Currently collections of his work can be found in nearly 20 venues, including the British Museum, the Library of Congress, the Juilliard School and the Charles Keller Studio in New York City (charles.keller.com).

None of this gave Keller an overblown ego, however. He never found it below him to do things other artists might not have wanted to do, such as illustrate children’s books — which he did for several years for Rand McNally.

Though he himself was never short of funds, the Great Depression of the 1930s vividly pointed out to the freethinking Keller that the current profits-before-people system could never work for the vast majority of humanity. He was horrified by the misery inflicted on working people by the capitalist system. At the same time, Keller became enamored of the rising working-class movement. During that period, he became convinced that a new type of society, socialism, was necessary.

This newfound conviction prompted Keller in 1940 to join the Communist Party USA. He never left the party, spending nearly 70 years fighting for a socialist USA. This was reflected in his art, and he became a well-known figure in New York’s social-realist art movement.

“He represents a long working-class tradition of Communist artists who committed themselves to activism,” CPUSA Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner said. “He was a real party activist.”

Keller had a long history with the CPUSA, especially its publications. He was art editor of the party’s famous cultural magazine New Masses from 1945 through 1948. Under the pressure of McCarthyism, the magazine folded, but was later replaced by March of Labor, where Keller also served as art editor. Keller stayed on until 1951, when the magazine moved its offices to Chicago. In those years, before computers and the Internet, Keller was unable to edit the art section from New York.

In his political life, entirely interwoven with his artistic and personal life, Keller worked with such luminaries as Pete Seeger. The introduction to a book of his cartoons was written by Michael Parenti, the well-known political author.

Keller also had his battle scars: His car was attacked during the notorious riot in Peekskill where fascists besieged a Paul Robeson concert. Later, in the 1950s, due to his association with the CPUSA, Keller’s passport was revoked by the State Department, and he was unable to travel abroad until 1960. At that point, Charles left the U.S. to live in Italy. While there, he co-chaired, along with Gore Vidal, an organization of Americans opposed to the U.S. aggression in Vietnam.

Besides being a painter and printmaker, Keller was also known for great sense of humor and his cartooning. This, along with his strong Communist political convictions, made him a treasure to the People’s Daily World, this publication’s predecessor. From 1977 through 1988, Keller routinely contributed political cartoons.

Keller never wavered in his support for the Communist Party. From 1940 until his passing, even while residing in an assisted-living facility, Keller rarely missed a meeting of his party club. He always carried several PWWs with him and was critical of party members who did not.

For years, Keller worked as the art curator of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, which has now been moved to the Tamiment Library in New York City. At the Reference Center, Keller would often go above the call of duty, organizing artists and art shows to raise money for the center’s operation.

Aside from his contributions to the political world and art scene, Keller will be remembered for his extraordinary personality.

“He was a wild character to an extent,” Estaño noted. He recounted an anecdote in which Keller, who was as well-loved by his family and often considered a “favorite uncle” type of person, gave a child relative a duck as a gift. “The mother was horrified to have a duck in her home, but the child was delighted, and so was Charles! He was like a kid himself sometimes.”

Tyner concluded, “Charles will be very much missed. He had a very real presence in the party’s national center. He was a good comrade and we’ll miss him very much.”

A memorial for Charles Keller was held in New York City on Dec. 29.

Keller is survived by Martha Keller (the artist known as Marthe Keller), Kathryn Keller Rule and Daniel Keller, and by his former wife, Judith Keller, and three grandchildren.

No Child Left Behind needs big changes

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:35:00 +0000

While watching election returns last November, I felt particularly proud of friends and family in Montana as they elected to send labor-endorsed candidate Jon Tester to the U.S. Senate. Among his many selling points, Tester is a former teacher and school board trustee, and a state legislator whose voting record was 100 percent in line with the positions of the Montana teachers’ union.

With Tester and other Democrats in a newly elected Congress, things are looking much brighter for public education. The specter of vouchers is (at least for the moment) receding, while increased funding is more likely with a Democratic majority. But there is still much cause for concern regarding the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Both Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), head of the House Education Committee, and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Education Committee, have expressed their support for the main tenets of the law to stay intact.

And these are precisely what need to be changed.

NCLB’s central flaw is its narrow characterization of “accountability” that has led to the use, misuse and abuse of high stakes standardized tests.

Depending on your age, you may recall filling in bubbles as a child, i.e. answering the ubiquitous multiple-choice questions that predominate in standardized tests. Purportedly “objective” due to machine scoring, the content, phrasing and “correct” answers for these questions are all subject to human biases and error, and typically assess only lower-level cognitive abilities of knowledge recall and comprehension.

Attaching “high stakes” to these tests for schools (withholding funds, restructuring schools, replacing staff, state takeovers, etc.) and students (grade retention, denial of diploma, etc.) creates dire consequences for teaching and learning.

Despite copious amounts of research confirming the negative effects of grade retention, this practice is still widespread and becoming more so in the wake of NCLB. Being “held back” a grade dramatically increases the probability of a child dropping out of school, while any academic gains realized in the first year of retention are lost within two to three years.

The higher the stakes, the more schools are pushed to “teach to the test.” As knowledge recall and comprehension on reading, math and (in the future) science are the only skills tested, they become the only skills taught. Analysis, synthesis, creativity and original thought disappear from the curriculum. Social studies, art, gym and even recess are cut from the schedule. Schools become little more than test-prep factories that suck the life out of children and those responsible for their education.

While proponents claim NCLB will narrow the achievement gap, it has the perverse effect of undermining the education of poor and minority students most. When “achievement” is defined as performance on a standardized test, those students who historically perform poorly on standardized tests are the first targeted for instruction on nothing more than how to pass them, and their schools the first targeted for unproven high stakes sanctions.

Though key Democrats and business leaders have expressed support for NCLB, many of the incoming freshmen legislators ran campaigns critical of NCLB, and some of the remaining conservative legislators are wary of the federal intrusion into what has traditionally been an area of state and local control. The debate for them and everyone needs to be reframed from how to “fix” NCLB to how to radically redefine the central idea of accountability.

Deb Wilmer (dwilmer_az @ hotmail.com) is a public education activist.

50 shots and counting

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:33:00 +0000

Violence has always been a feature of police work. Marilynn S. Johnson, in her book “Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City,” details the violent history of the oldest (1841), and largest (over 30,000) organized force in the United States. The targets of police violence have always been those who were seen as powerless: the poor, the immigrant, the working class, and always, despite or sometimes because of class, African Americans, particularly young men and sometimes older women.

The latest well-known killing of an African American young male, Sean Bell, on the morning of his wedding, Thanksgiving weekend, with 50 shots fired at the car he was driving, has brought a storm of protest and suggested solutions. But the killing of African American and sometimes Hispanic males is not just a phenomenon of New York. This killing of young men has taken place in every major city in the country.

In New York City civilian control review boards have been formed or reconstituted after every major or controversial killing. We have had precinct councils and borough committees, and not one of them has ever prevented the questionable death of a young man at the hands of police. These public commissions, which generally have no enforcement muscle, are just used as a way to quiet the community. Unfortunately, they seemed to have worked.

But the police ultimately are not the issue. The police do not make laws or policies. They are charged with enforcement and social order. They don’t even prevent crime; they are there only after the fact. They get their orders from the CEOs and captains of industry, the self-described Masters of the Universe; in former times they were called robber barons, plantation owners and bankers. The police are used to highlight or cover up political issues. When former Mayor Giuliani wanted to show that he was cleaning up the city, he promoted prosecution of what he called “quality of life” misdemeanors, in which people were ticketed and fined for the most minor of offenses — jaywalking, putting personal garbage in public receptacles (I was fined for dropping an envelope addressed to me in a street bin), littering, etc., and used the police for his political gain.

Racism and hatred are an institutional fact of American life. We might be the only nation on earth that has a body of national and local hate crime laws. But that institutionality is played out on a very personal level. What we have to understand is that the police reflect the society, not direct it; that they are doing what those who control them want them to do. The KKK, in its beginnings and in its heyday, was supported by community business leaders to enforce oppression of people who might want to think they are part of society as equal citizens.

An older Republican friend of mine told me he felt there was a lot less prejudice in society than when he was younger. I told him I am neither grateful nor relieved. What he was unwittingly admitting to, of course, is the pervasive social climate of racism.

But what is the answer? The answer is for African Americans to take, not demand, respect. Answers like education and jobs — separate issues — aren’t it. Does it require my walking around with a diploma in full view at all times, not to be harassed?

It also requires, if peace is to reign, that non-African Americans do their own self-inventory. Even those who think they are free of any prejudicial leanings need to think about the ways in which they assume they are superior based on nothing other than their non-Africanness. And African descendants need to examine the ways in which we have incorporated negative images and thoughts of ourselves into our psyches. We do not have to wait until others see us as worthy; we do not have to prove our value — we are human and that is enough.

Jessica Watson-Crosby (jwc215 @ yahoo.com) is co-chair of Black Radical Congress-New York.

EDITORIAL: Progress on womens rights

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:23:00 +0000

Jan. 22 is the 34th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which ruled that state laws barring abortion violate the constitutional right to privacy. Opposition to the court’s decision has been grist for the right-wing political mill for three decades and became a pillar in the Bush/ultra-right seizure of power in 2000.

Debate on a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices generated passions and, at its most vitriolic, attacks on women’s clinics and murder of doctors who provided professional medical services including abortion.

The plus side to this debate is that there has been a public shift toward greater tolerance of differing religious and philosophical beliefs, a cornerstone of democracy.

Evidence of a change in the impact of the abortion debate is the victory of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell over pro-life Republican Lynn Swann last fall. The abortion issue in the fifth largest state has kept Republicans, including former Sen. Rick Santorum, in office for some residents’ lifetimes. But Rendell’s victory was resounding — 61 percent of the vote — in a state that led the country in enacting some of the most repressive anti-abortion laws 34 years ago.

Other indications are the growing number of religious leaders who focus less on abortion and more on ending the Iraq war, raising money and volunteering to rebuild the Gulf Coast, and campaigning for environmental stewardship and addressing global warming.

Even some of the anti-abortion marchers in Washington Jan. 22 may have carried a sign for peace or supporting the rights of immigrant workers.

Women’s rights have always been hotly contested and hard won, including the right to privacy. Reproductive rights — control of one’s body, determination of one’s destiny — have been an age-old struggle. For 34 years, a host of women’s rights organizations have met this challenge courageously.

Related to the abortion debate is opposition to stem cell research, a major issue in this weekend’s anti-abortion events. The new House of Representatives passed legislation allowing federal funding for the vital research. Several “pro-life” Democrats and Republicans voted for this measure — another victory for science over superstition; another step for progress.

Media reform is all about democracy

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 07:29:00 +0000

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The media reform movement has come into its own with its most recent conference held here Jan. 12-14. Emerging out of a loose coalition of forces concerned about corporations controlling most of what Americans see, hear and read, the conference showcased a movement that has reached a new level of breadth and sophistication, and that sees its mission as safeguarding democracy.

The three-day conference, attended by more than 3,200 people, brought together a cross-section of concerned citizens, activists, bloggers, journalists, academics, cultural workers, non-for-profits, union members and big names like Jane Fonda, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Helen Thomas and Bill Moyers. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Reps. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Maurice Hinchey of New York and Steve Cohen of Tennessee, and two FCC commissioners also attended. The FCC, or Federal Communications Commission, is the government agency that regulates media and other communication systems.

Many conference speakers celebrated the defeat of the Bush administration in the November elections. All stayed on message — targeting the big corporate and right-wing interests that have taken over the news and other sources of information. Speakers also blasted the commercial media’s role in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

However, the conference was not only critiques. Creating an alternative democratic vision through stories about, for and by workers, women, youth, people of color and other democratic forces was also in the mix.

“Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t get famous giving a speech called, ‘I have a complaint,’” said Van Jones, founder for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. “The brother had a dream. We need to be able to have a movement that stands for that.”

Actor Fonda, who co-founded the Women’s Media Center, exposed the gaping gender inequities in the media, including the alternative media. “We need more estrogen up here,” she said earnestly.

Nevertheless, Fonda held most of her fire for the commercial press. “The absence of women in the media is glaring. Today, I hope to show you that a media that leaves women out is fundamentally, crucially flawed.” After all, she said, you cannot tell the whole story when you leave out half the population.

Fonda, a powerful icon of the antiwar movement, flogged the media for ignoring women and children in this illegal Iraq war. She charged that the media does not serve the public interests and democracy. “We need a media that enriches public discourse, not one that enriches corporations. A truly powerful media is one that can stop a war, not start one,” she said.

Speakers evoked the civil rights movement, and especially, Dr. King’s legacy, throughout the conference. “The nettlesome task about which Dr. King spoke is still being carried out by people who embody character, courage and the fortitude to make decisions in support of truth, not spin, people who critically embrace diversity and reject monopoly,” actor and activist Danny Glover told the crowd.

With a new Congress, the conference touched on legislative possibilities for media reform. Rep. Hinchey said legislation governing media reform is possible in this session of Congress, but only with continued public pressure. Hinchey sponsored the Media Ownership Reform Act, a bill that would rein in media monopolies and reinstate the Fairness Doctrine that requires broadcasters to present issues in an all-sided manner. That kind of equal access, he said, was “wiped out” in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan.

He urged the public to put pressure on Congress on this issue because it is so crucial to a “free and open society.” It will take some prodding though, he said. “When you’re a politician, you rely on media for your election or re-election. For some it’s difficult to stand up to corporations who own it.”

Sponsored by Free Press, a nonpartisan group co-founded in 2002 by media critic Robert McChesney, lobbyist Josh Silver and journalist John Nichols, the gathering was the third National Conference for Media Reform. Previous conferences were held in 2003 and 2005 in Madison, Wis., and St. Louis, respectively.

“After years of fighting to prevent further consolidation of media ownership and the dumbing down of our airwaves, the movement is ready to pursue reforms that will transform American media,” McChesney said.

In the most recent round, this growing media reform movement is targeting the FCC, which is considering rule changes to let giant media companies get even bigger. For more information and to get involved go to: StopBigMedia.com.

Teresa Albano (talbano @ pww.org) is editor of the People’s Weekly World.

The truth about Gerald Ford: he was no uniter

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:31:00 +0000

A fuzzy aura has been generated around Gerald Ford, 38th president of the United States, who died at age 93 on Dec. 26.

He is hailed as a decent man, a “uniter,” who led the nation out of its worst political nightmare, the Watergate scandal. The accolades contrast Ford with the divisive, arrogant politician who currently occupies the White House.

Yet when I arrived on Capitol Hill in the spring of 1968 as a reporter for this newspaper’s predecessor, the Daily World, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) was still spearheading a racist crusade against Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.). Powell, as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, had pushed through pro-people, pro-labor legislation, including ground-breaking civil rights laws, Medicare and War on Poverty measures. Powell was also outspoken in his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Ford signed the resolution denying Powell his House seat in January 1967, even though Harlem voters had reelected him in an 80 percent landslide. Powell called it a “political lynching” and Ford was leading the mob.

Ford had already won notoriety as a member of the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Serving as J. Edgar Hoover’s handpicked agent inside the commission, Ford doctored the final report, changing the location of the entry wound to the back of Kennedy’s head to buttress the FBI’s line that Lee Harvey Oswald was Kennedy’s “lone assassin.”

President Richard Nixon appointed Ford vice president when Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in 1973. A few months later, then-White House Chief of Staff Al Haig visited Ford in his Arlington, Va., home to warn him that Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal was imminent. Haig outlined a number of options, including that Ford grant Nixon a pardon as soon as he was sworn in as president. Ford always stoutly denied he accepted any quid pro quo. But it did not quiet the outrage when he actually did grant Nixon a pardon. It is widely seen as the reason he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.

The pardon dovetailed with the strategy of the ultra-right Republicans who were seeking to build a firewall around themselves as the Watergate conspiracy was exposed. Blame for the scandal would be pinned exclusively on Nixon and a narrow circle of advisers. The aim was to block any accounting for the broader political crimes that were coming to light.

At the time, the House Judiciary Committee was preparing articles of impeachment that went far beyond the White House “plumbers” break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, June 17, 1972. A young African American congressman from Detroit, John Conyers, for example, was writing an article charging Nixon with “high crimes” in widening the Vietnam War by illegally invading Cambodia. There were also articles charging Nixon with abuses of power in unleashing domestic spying on peaceful law-abiding protesters by the FBI and CIA. Another focused on criminal covert warfare by the CIA including assassinations and coups d’état against foreign governments.

Nixon’s forced resignation killed consideration of these documents before they saw the light of day. Nixon was out but the vast infrastructure built by the ultra-right remained in place. Ford even kept on ringleaders of some of the sordid crimes of this larger Watergate, including two young Republican thugs, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Nixon had assigned them to the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to wreck the anti-poverty agency from the inside. I remember attending a press conference by then-Republican Leon Panetta in which he described in chilling detail their thuggish behavior.

True, Ford was forced to acknowledge the nationwide and worldwide outrage over CIA assassinations, signing an executive order banning these crimes, a ban that remained in place until George W. Bush junked it.

Ford’s pardon of Nixon helped the ultra-right move closer to their goal, realized in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, of establishing an imperial presidency stripped of checks and balances. Reagan, George Bush (senior), Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the neocon crew unleashed the most brutal anti-worker regime in U.S. history, starting with the smashing of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981. Every gain won by the working class in the past century was targeted for outright repeal or “death by underfunding.”

Reagan unleashed a drive for total U.S. global domination, including at one point 60 separate “contra” counterrevolutionary wars around the world. He vowed to spend the Soviet Union into bankruptcy in a runaway arms race.

All these ultra-reactionary currents came to a head when the Bush-Cheney regime seized power in 2000 in what this newspaper called “a very American coup.” The 2006 midterm elections marks the first time since Watergate that the people have succeeded in slowing if not stopping this ultra-right juggernaut.

If he had been a man of courage, a defender of the Constitution he was sworn to uphold, Ford might have averted all this tragedy. He could have started by declaring: “I will not pardon that criminal.”

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com) is national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.

EDITORIAL: The Dream is alive

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:14:00 +0000

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a movement based in the African American working class, which through its dedication to democracy, equality and economic justice, shook and transformed our country. King met with heads of state, but he locked arms with Memphis sanitation workers fighting for a just contract on the day he was murdered in 1968.

On Jan. 15, the nation honors this fallen leader. Today, he would have been 78 years old. Some marchers for peace in Iraq are that age and older. Dr. King, outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, would have been among them.

Millions of African Americans who went to the polls Nov. 7, delivering their pivotal, united strength toward cracking 26 years of reactionary government, marched in the shoes of King’s movement.

Who are the children of Memphis, the 1965 Poor People’s March and the 1963 “Dream”? In Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, some of the Civil Rights Movement’s next generation are mobilizing workers, many of them workers of color and women, to challenge the world’s largest corporation — anti-union Wal-Mart. King could have written their slogan, “End poverty, don’t profit from it.”

They are helping New York’s 21,000 Wal-Mart workers demand that the mega-corporation provide health coverage. They are defending the courageous Chicago aldermen and women who passed a living wage ordinance only to have Mayor Daley veto it and the Chamber of Commerce try to unseat them. In Atlanta they have formed Georgia Stand Up, uniting Wal-Mart workers, native born and from many countries, for a humane standard of living. In Los Angeles they are building a movement large enough to upend Wal-Mart’s city within a city. Their rallying cry is, “The Dream will not die at Wal-Mart.”

Dr. Martin Luther King’s “dream” is alive and growing among American workers, in their struggles for what is rightfully theirs: a livable, sustainable world, at peace, where all prosper and opportunities abound for all.

The labor and peoples movements are in the house

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:07:00 +0000

Pelosi, first woman House speaker, signals big changes

Out of the pain and suffering from Bush policies grew determination for a change. The deep desire to stop the death and destruction in Iraq, and the dire need for decent wages, health care, housing and opportunities for young people, brought out the vote.

The history made as Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives reflected years of long, hard organizing by labor and people’s movements to oust the ultra-right corporate-dominated Republicans from control.

As the children of the members of Congress surrounded Pelosi, she declared that the lawmakers are responsible for the well-being of all the children of the nation.

The message was a repudiation of the manipulations and deceit of the Bush crowd, who have only served the rich and the super-rich.

New opportunities

The ultra-right retains a strong presence in Congress and controls the White House and courts. But the swearing-in of Pelosi represents a significant shift. For labor, African American, Latino, women and youth voters and all democratic and peace-minded people, the new Congress is a big organizing opportunity.

The new Congress better reflects the people of our country. Congressional Black Caucus members chair five influential committees and at least 12 subcommittees, including John Conyers, now chair of Judiciary, and Charles Rangel, chair of Ways and Means. Plus, South Carolina’s James Clyburn is majority whip, number three in the House leadership structure.

Hispanic Caucus member Xavier Becerra is assistant to the speaker. Silvestre Reyes of Texas is the new chair of the House Select Intelligence Committee and said the committee’s agenda includes examining U.S. involvement in Iraq and the nation’s terrorist surveillance program.

Many Black, Latino and women leaders hold their seats as a result of decades of struggle for representation. Many are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Their presence provides the opportunity to get a hearing for more pro-worker legislation.

For working people, every battle was defensive under Republican rule. To “wait and see what the Democrats do,” as some suggest, is missing the boat. This is the moment of big, new opportunities to organize for an agenda that addresses the extreme and growing inequalities in our country and the world. It is a time to mobilize to win new gains, not to sit it out.

In a post-election letter, newly elected Sen. Bernie Sanders Independent of Vermont and a founder of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, confronts the political reality that at the same time that there are great opportunities to move forward, Bush has veto power.

Sanders urges an “inside/outside” strategy, involving progressives in Congress and the grassroots electorate. “Grassroots America has got to raise public consciousness and rally the American people for real changes in public policy,” says Sanders. “If millions of Americans stand up for change, demand action on good legislation and let politicians know that they are watching, we CAN move forward,” he says.

The first 100 hours

The first big fight is already under way. In the first 100 hours, House Democrats aim to pass an agenda of initial reforms to improve people’s lives, including enacting the 9/11 Commission recommendations, increasing the minimum wage, allowing embryonic stem cell research, negotiating lower prescription drug prices, cutting interest rates on student loans, ending subsidies for Big Oil and investing in renewable energy. Topping the agenda is an ethics and lobbying reform package — to battle the “culture of corruption” between Republicans and corporate lobbyists.

These issues have widespread support at the grass roots around the country and can be won. If they pass, the momentum generated will help build support for more substantial legislation.

At the top of the list is the Employee Free Choice Act, which would reaffirm workers’ human right to form unions. This bill would result in a dramatic increase in wages and working conditions and strengthen workers’ power in the electoral arena.

Also at the top of the list is resolving the health care crisis in our country, which has left 47 million people with no care and millions more with inadequate coverage. The U.S. National Health Insurance Act, HR 676, introduced by Rep. Conyers, and other measures to insure health care for everyone will be put forward to address this issue.

Keep the pressure on

It will take a fight to win. Bush and the Chamber of Commerce are exerting political and ideological pressure on the new Congress to not only protect the vast looting of the past 12 years, but also to try to do even more, despite having lost the majority in Congress.

Liz Cattaneo of American Rights at Work warns that while 80 percent of Americans support an increase in the minimum wage, “Ultra-conservative lobbyists, commentators and members of Congress not only oppose increasing the minimum wage — they are actively fighting to abolish it. And unfortunately, they still have tremendous influence in Washington.”

In the Senate, the Republicans will attempt to tie the increase in the minimum wage to corporate benefits. Cattaneo urged calls to tell Congress to support HR 2 to increase the minimum wage from $5.l5 to $7.25 an hour, which would immediately benefit 8 million workers.

HR 4 mandates that Medicare negotiate with drug companies for lower Part D drug prices and report back to Congress every six months beginning on June 1.

“This is the first test to see whether the new Congress will be senior-friendly,” said George J. Kourpias, president of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “This bill is the first step toward improving Medicare — there are still tough issues like the doughnut hole that need to be addressed.”

American Rights at Work and the Alliance for Retired Americans are part of a lively national coalition, Change America Now, mobilizing their members to lobby Congress for the 100 hours program.

Movement on Iraq

In Los Angeles, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace is urging calls to support the 100 hours and also to oppose any “surge” of troops to Iraq. In April, ICUJP will hold a major demonstration to demand a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq and to bring the troops home.

Opposition to the war was instrumental in electing the new majority in Congress. Post-election only 28 percent approve of Bush’s war policy, and a historic plurality of the military in Iraq are also opposed.

Bush’s support for increased troop levels in Iraq is an apparent counterattack to the overwhelming public sentiment to set a timetable and bring the troops home. As well, it comes when Senate hearings to investigate the abuse of power by the White House in Iraq and on other issues are taking place.

Responding to the election results and strong public pressure, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a letter to the president opposing any increase in troop levels, saying it is time to leave Iraq.

Weeks earlier, a flood of protest, along with the military’s reluctance to go along with a troop increase, successfully resulted in Reid backing down from a statement that he would consider the surge of new troops.

Their action strengthens the Democratic caucus, which is composed of a range of ideological approaches from conservative to progressive, including some Democrats who do not want to challenge Bush.

A march on Washington and congressional lobby day is being organized for Jan. 27-29 by United for Peace and Justice. It is expected that every congressional district in the country will have at least one constituent participating in the lobby day to support various bills now being introduced to exit troops from Iraq, stop funding the war and end war profiteering.

The attempt to activate the full force of the peace vote is part of the effort to end control of the White House by the ultra-right Republicans in 2008 and win a larger majority in Congress, with the goal of enacting a new foreign policy based on diplomacy and nuclear disarmament.

From Social Security to immigration reform

A wide array of issues will be debated by the 110th Congress. Republican congressional leaders, Bush and their corporate backers are demagogically calling on the Democrats to take a bipartisan approach as they try to resurrect anti-people legislation, including privatization of Social Security and Medicare.

Strong enough grassroots mobilization can turn the tables to demand bipartisanship for the people’s needs.

In the Senate, immigration reform is on the top 10 list for consideration. The Chamber of Commerce invites labor to support immigration reform with exploitative guest worker programs that create a second-class workforce and separate families. Meanwhile, Bush’s Homeland Security ICE raids have apprehended thousands of immigrant workers across the country.

Many immigrant rights and Latino organizations are calling for a moratorium on raids and deportations, and seeking legislation for legalization with labor and civil rights and with a rapid path to permanent residency and citizenship.

Legislation seeking to correct the wrongs of the past Congress to whatever extent possible will be considered, including to restore funding for human needs and affordable housing, and repeal of tax cuts for the rich. Also on the agenda are rebuilding the Gulf Coast for Katrina victims, and preserving Social Security and public education. The Apollo Project to create jobs in alternative energy, election law reform and trade with Cuba are expected to be considered.

Unity of the labor, African American, Latino, women and youth vote and the broad people’s coalition delivered the victory in November. An even more powerful movement for social change, working in concert with the growing number of legislators who emerged from grassroots struggles, can win progress for people’s needs in the 110th Congress and complete the defeat of the ultra-right in 2008.

Joelle Fishman (joelle.fishman @ pobox.com) is the chair of the Communist Party’s political action commission.

TAKE ACTION

Call your congressperson at the U.S. Capitol switchboard, (202) 225-3121. Tell them to pass the 100 hour agenda. For more information go to: www.cancampaign.org. Tell them to oppose sending any new troops to Iraq. For more information go to:

National AFL-CIO honors Dr. King in Houston

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:22:00 +0000

HOUSTON — For the first time, the national AFL-CIO’s observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday will take place in Texas. The AFL-CIO MLK Holiday Observance, a five-day celebration from Jan. 11-15, will highlight Dr. King’s solidarity with the union movement.

At the time of his assassination in 1968, Dr. King was in Memphis supporting sanitation workers who were fighting to form a union.

A variety of events involving international union leaders, membership mobilizations, worker education and advocacy, and community service projects are scheduled. The “Unions and Community Support Workers’ Rights” events will involve activists from across the nation who fight for the rights of all the people that King supported.

Scheduled guests include Richard L. Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president emeritus, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Bill Lucy, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Norman Hill, president emeritus of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and Nat LaCour, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers.

The conference headquarters will be the Hilton Post Oak Hotel.

The goal of the events is to help advance efforts by the AFL-CIO’s constituency groups, the Texas State Federation of Labor and the Harris County Central Labor Council to forge a strong labor and civil rights agenda and to advance organizing and political empowerment. Many activists in Houston are thrilled at this effort to bring attention to the connection between civil rights and workers’ rights.

The support of civil rights and workers’ rights is crucial to the advancement of working people’s issues. Indeed, this is a central theme running through Dr. King’s work. Historically, there has been a great partnership between the labor movement and the civil rights movement. The conference will serve to build on this strength.

The events will begin on Thursday, Jan. 11. Reports the AFL-CIO’s Rebuilding New Orleans Project and on Zimbabwe trade unions will be featured on the opening day.

On Friday, the general session will begin with a Civil Rights Forum followed with workshops on voting rights; the impact of the Iraq war on people of color; jobs and human rights in the global economy; civil rights, public education and vouchers; and unions and immigrant workers. There will also be a dedication of union-donated playground equipment to the Thurgood Marshall Elementary School.

On Saturday, participants will be engaging in Community Service Projects scheduled for the Martin Luther King Early Childhood Education Center, Golden Age Hobby House Senior Citizen Community Center, the “Our Park” city of Houston park, and the SHAPE Community Center. These projects are intended to uplift a predominantly African American neighborhood which is close to Texas Southern University (the second largest historically Black university in the country) and the area’s NAACP headquarters.

Sunday activities will include a worship service at the Fifth Ward Missionary Baptist Church featuring a sermon by the Rev. Al Sharpton. An awards banquet will be held that evening honoring national and local political, religious, labor and community leaders.

On Monday, the participants will be marching in the Martin Luther King Grande Parade behind the AFL-CIO float. The AFL-CIO contingent will also include two city sanitation trucks to remind people that Dr. King was assassinated while working to help Memphis sanitation workers in their struggle to form a union. The AFL-CIO contingent is expected to be the largest single entry in the parade. The NAACP will also have an prominent contingent in the parade.

After King’s assassination, the Memphis sanitation workers formed a union which is now known as AFSCME Local 1733. It is one of the strongest unions in that city and represents thousands of city employees.

Dr. King’s support of the sanitation workers was part of his “Poor Peoples Campaign.” He recognized that strengthening unions and labor is critical to the struggle for long-term justice for African Americans and all working people.

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Historic inauguration in Massachusetts

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 07:38:00 +0000

BOSTON — A huge crowd, estimated at up to 20,000 people, witnessed the Jan. 4 inauguration of Deval Patrick, only the second African American elected governor of a U.S. state. The election of Patrick, a Democrat, ended 16 years of Republican governors in Massachusetts.

The first elected African American governor, Douglas Wilder of Virginia, was a guest of honor at the event.

The inauguration ceremony was also historic, being the first ever held outdoors — on the steps of the Statehouse — instead of inside the chambers of the General Court. Some legislators had protested holding the event outside, as they did not want to spend a couple of hours in the harsh New England winter temperatures, usually below the freezing point. But the weather turned out to be reminiscent of an early spring day.

The outdoor ceremony was symbolic of Patrick’s pledge that he was running so that the people of Massachusetts could “take back their government.”

For over two years before the elections Patrick met with progressive, grassroots Democrats, trying to win their support for his gubernatorial run. As one television reporter noted, many of the 20,000 who came to the inauguration were “Deval Patrick volunteers, most of whom have only come to the Statehouse to protest.”

Patrick has urged these volunteers to “stay engaged.” Political observers suggest that this network will work to put pressure on legislators to promote progressive legislation. Patrick himself has felt the pressure from these activists and changed his position on a number of issues in a more progressive direction.

Patrick has begun fulfilling his campaign promises by rescinding almost $400 million in cuts in state services ordered by outgoing Gov. Mitt Romney. He also overturned Romney’s order requiring state police to enforce immigration laws.

The tone of the inauguration ceremony was set with the invocation by Rabbi Jonah Pesner. Pesner, a social justice activist, in his prayer called for making Massachusetts “a Commonwealth which acts as a commonwealth,” and spoke of the need to resolve “the secret suffering of immigrants, who come to this place like we did, seeking a better life, and they suffer under hidden and low-paid jobs upon which we depend,” and to attend to “the rights of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,” as well as “those who sleep in the streets, [and] those who are overworked and underpaid,” among others.

The issue of immigrant rights and their importance to the state and the country was also stressed in the addresses of Lt. Gov. Tim Murray as well as Gov. Patrick.

The new governor emphasized that while the founders of what was to become Massachusetts came over on the Mayflower and the Arbella, “there were other boats, too.”

“There was the Amistad and her cargo of kidnapped Africans,” he said, referring to Africans from Mendi in Sierra Leone taken to Cuba to be sold into slavery. These slaves rebelled and took over the Spanish schooner La Amistad and tried to force the crew to take them back home, but were taken to the U.S. where they were captured and taken to New Haven, Conn., to be sold as slaves.

Patrick noted his inauguration was the 165th anniversary of the day when an Amistad slave wrote a letter to John Quincy Adams, the former president, who defended them before the U.S. Supreme Court and won their freedom. As a gesture of their gratitude, they sent Adams a bible, now known as the Mendi Bible. Patrick took his oath of office with his hand on the Mendi Bible.

To showcase the new administration’s reliance on the people, instead of one huge gala inauguration ball, where the only ones invited and able to afford it would be the well-heeled, there were five inauguration receptions over the same number of days with the participation of about 15,000 people. A few thousand tickets were handed out to those who could not afford the cost.

Another part of the inauguration events that was different from prior ones was that the outgoing governor, Romney, took the traditional “lone walk” the day before instead of immediately before the new governor took the oath of office. If he had followed tradition, he would have had to walk through thousands of Patrick supporters.

Romney, who is running for president and has been under intense criticism for spending more days outside the state than in Massachusetts during the last year, did not attend the inauguration. Former Republican governors William Weld, Jane Swift and Paul Cellucci and former Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis attended the ceremony.

jacruz @ pww.org

Texas town pushes through racist ordinance

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:46:00 +0000

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas - Travelers drive through Farmers Branch without realizing it, because the tiny town of 27,508 is crammed into bustling North Dallas. Thanks to its aggressively racist city council and protests by its 37 percent Latino population, though, much of the world is aware of what is transpiring there.

City Hall was packed with newspersons and a mostly-Anglo crowd on the evening of January 8 when the Council decided to defy lawsuits and implement their ordinance to drive undocumented workers out of town. The ordinance makes English the “official language” of the town and provides for prosecution of anyone who rents a home to an undocumented worker. The original proposal by Councilman Tim O’Hare would have penalized employers, but it was not included in the final ordinance. Protesters say that the ordinance is racist, unconstitutional, and completely unenforceable.

So far, three lawsuits have been filed. One Farmers Branch homeowner filed suit to claim that the City Council had violated the state’s “Open Meetings” law when they planned their ordinance. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund filed another one on constitutional grounds. Local merchants joined together in a third suit for damages already being incurred due to a severe drop in their revenues. Similar situations are developing in Hazelton, Mass., Escondido, California, and other towns affected by the general climate of encouraging racism by reactionaries in politics.

The Farmers Branch City Council faces an election on May 12. A special ballot issue, forced on them by a major petitioning campaign, will ask voters to terminate the new ordinance. In light of the lawsuits and the coming election, the City “fathers” might have postponed implementation of their controversial ordinance until after the people have spoken. Unanimously, and to the applause and cheers of their audience, they decided to implement it anyway. It takes effect January 12. The battle lines are drawn until the city election unless courts intervene.

Out in the foyer, where the overflow crowd watched the proceedings on closed circuit TV, one of the observers commented, “They already had their minds made up. If Jesus Christ walked in there and opposed that ordinance, they would boo him!”

The truth about Gerald Ford: he was no uniter

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:12:00 +0000

A fuzzy aura has been generated around Gerald Ford, 38th president of the United States, who died at age 93 on Dec. 26.

He is hailed as a decent man, a “uniter,” who led the nation out of its worst political nightmare, the Watergate scandal. The accolades contrast Ford with the divisive, arrogant politician who currently occupies the White House.

Yet Ford does not deserve any credit as a “uniter.” When I arrived on Capitol Hill in the spring of 1968 as a reporter for this newspaper’s predecessor, the Daily World, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) was still spearheading a racist crusade against Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.). Powell, as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, had pushed through a long list of progressive, pro-people, pro-labor legislation including ground-breaking civil rights laws, Medicare, War on Poverty measures, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and so on. Powell was outspoken in his opposition to the war in Vietnam, often speaking at antiwar rallies.

Ford signed the resolution denying Powell his House seat in January 1967, even though Harlem voters had reelected him in an 80 percent landslide. Powell called it a “political lynching” and Ford was leading the mob.

President Richard Nixon appointed Ford vice president when Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in 1973. A few months later, as a particularly incriminating tape was about to surface implicating Nixon in the Watergate conspiracy, then-White House Chief of Staff Al Haig visited Ford in his Arlington, Va., home to warn him to get ready to assume the presidency. Haig outlined a number of options including that Ford, as soon as he was sworn in as president, would grant Nixon a pardon. Ford always stoutly denied he accepted any quid pro quo as a condition of his appointment as vice president. But it did not quiet the outrage when he actually did grant Nixon a pardon. It is widely seen as the reason he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.

The nation might have taken a radically different turn if Ford had not granted that pardon and Nixon had been impeached and convicted for his crimes. The strategy of the ultra-right Republicans was to build a protective firewall around themselves as the Watergate conspiracy was exposed. Their scheme was to pin blame exclusively on Nixon and a narrow circle of advisers. The aim was to block any accounting for the broader political crimes that were coming to light.

At the time, the House Judiciary Committee was preparing articles of impeachment that went far beyond the White House “plumbers” break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, June 17, 1972. A young African American congressman from Detroit, John Conyers, for example, was writing an article charging Nixon with “high crimes” in widening the Vietnam war by illegally invading Cambodia. There were also articles charging Nixon with grave abuses of power in unleashing domestic spying on peaceful law-abiding protesters by the FBI and CIA. Another focused on criminal covert warfare by the CIA including assassinations and coups d’état against foreign governments.

In forcing Nixon to resign and then granting him a pardon, the fix was in. Nixon was removed. But the vast infrastructure built by the ultra-right remained in place. Ford even kept on many of the ringleaders of the worst crimes of this larger Watergate: Henry Kissinger, and two young Republican thugs, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who had been assigned by Nixon to the Office of Economic Opportunity to wreck the agency from the inside. I remember attending a press conference by then-Republican Leon Panetta in which he described in chilling detail their thuggish behavior. Panetta announced he was resigning from the GOP because of this.

True, Ford was forced to acknowledge the nationwide and worldwide outrage over CIA assassinations, signing an executive order banning these crimes, a ban that remained in place until George W. Bush junked it.

But for the most part, the ultra-right came out of the Watergate crisis intact. And Ford’s pardon of Nixon played a huge role in helping them move closer to their goal, realized in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. Reagan, George Bush (senior), Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the neocon crew unleashed the most brutal anti-worker regime in U.S. history, starting with the smashing of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981. Every gain won by the working class in the past century was targeted for outright repeal or “death by underfunding.”

Reagan unleashed a drive for total U.S. global domination, including at one point 60 separate “contra” counter-revolutionary wars around the world. He vowed to spend the Soviet Union into bankruptcy in a runaway arms race.

All these ultra-reactionary currents came to a head when the Bush-Cheney regime seized power in 2000 in what this newspaper called “a very American coup.” The 2006 midterm elections marks the first time since Watergate that the people have succeeded in slowing if not stopping this ultra-right juggernaut.

If he had been a man of courage, a defender of the Constitution he was sworn to uphold, Ford might have averted all this tragedy. He could have started by declaring: “I will not pardon that criminal.”

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com) is national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.