People Before Profit blog

400.000 exigen investiguen mentiras Bush

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 06:45:00 +0000

Mientras oficiales de la Casa Blanca excusan al presidente George W. Bush, cientos de ciudadanos estadounidense están exigiendo que hagan una investigación sobre el porqué la administración Bush se fue a la guerra contra Irak. En la última tres semanas el grupo pro democracia de la Internet, MoveOn.org, consiguió 400.000 firmas en una petición que le exige al Congreso que forme una comisión independiente para investigar al gobierno de Bush y sus razones por hacer guerra. El 23 de julio el grupo ayudó organizar eventos en 12 ciudades para lanzar una campaña de base para responsabilizar a la administración por mentirle al público.

Mientras más y más tropas norteamericanas mueren cada día, se están levantando voces exigiendo audiencias públicas abiertas, de ambos partidos, e independiente. Kathleen McQuillan, directora de programa de Iowa para el American Friends Service Committee, le dijo a Nuestro Mundo, “La gente está más y más confundida e incierta”. En camino y al empezar la guerra el público quería creer a Bush, dijo McQuillen. Pero la confianza en la administración ha bajado y sigue bajando dijo ella.

Esta semana 27 legisladores adicionales en el Congreso firmaron para apoyar el proyecto de ley HR-2625. Esta legislación fue introducida por el congresista demócrata por California, Henry Waxman, y busca una investigación independiente de las afirmaciones de la administración Bush sobre las alegadas armas de destrucción masiva. El proyecto está apoyado por 52 congresistas.

En el Congreso, el senador Pat Roberts, republicano por Kansas y presidente de la Comisión del Senado sobre Inteligencia, aceptó que se tendrá que hacer vistas públicas después de escuchar testimonio a puerta cerrada del director de la CIA George Tenet.

Mientras tanto, la Casa Blanca continúa el echarle la culpa a la CIA y al Consejo de Seguridad Nacional diciendo que son los responsable por los “errores”. Pero más y más preguntas sobre las razones de la administración por la guerra y el precio de $4 mil millones mensual por la ocupación han forzado a la Casa Blanca a hacer público unos documentos que anteriormente eran secreto. Pero estos esfuerzos para tratar de convencer a la gente de su posición solo ha servido para provocar más preguntas.

Hany Khalil, un organizador de Unidos por la Paz y la Justicia, una coalición nacional de más de 600 grupos le dijo a Nuestro Mundo, “Oficiales de la CIA, el Consejo de Seguridad Nacional y el departamento de Estado están documentando lentamente las mentiras que Bush dijo para llevarnos a la guerra. Necesitamos vistas públicas, abiertas, televisadas y amplias en lo que tratan sobre las mentiras que nos dijeron para engañar al público estadounidense para que apoyen a la guerra”.

Por lo tanto, la administración Bush argumenta que el uso de evidencia falsa no es importante. McQuillan lo contradice diciendo, “No podemos hablar de qué pasa ahora sin entender ... como llegamos a la guerra sin tener claridad”. Ella dijo que los congresistas “que tenían preguntas pero todavía votaron para autorizar esta guerra” tienen una responsabilidad específica de seguir con esas preguntas.

La Casa Blanca, el Comité Nacional Republicano, y el Pentágono han tratado de silenciar toda oposición. Un reportero del Noticiero ABC de televisión que citó las palabras de tropas norteamericanas en Irak cuestionando la política de la administración Bush se convirtió en un blanco de los ataques de la ultraderecha que están usando el hecho de que él es homosexual y canadiense para que duden de su credibilidad. Cathie Levine, portavoz de ABC, respondió, “Es desafortunado que cuando gente se sienten heridos por el reportaje veraz tratan de matar al mensajero”.

Caroline Hunter, abogada del Comité Nacional Republicano, envió una carta amenazante a una estación de televisión en Madison, Wisconsin, por presentar un anuncio pagado por el Comité Nacional Demócrata buscando el apoyo público en favor de una investigación independiente. La carta insinúa que puede que la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones revoque la licencia de transmitir de la estación. Comprometiéndose a luchar, el Comité Nacional Demócrata anunció que va aumentar el uso de tal anuncios.

El congresista Waxman y otros hicieron énfasis en la necesidad de acción de base, incluyendo hablando con amistades y familiares, cartas a los periódicos, y llamar a los oficiales electos. “Una gran parte del problema a que se enfrentan los demócratas es que el público no le está haciendo caso”, dijo Waxman. “Están adoptando políticas descaradas, pero la gente no lo nota porque no le están prestando atención. Básicamente, la administración Bush está apostando en una amplia apatía como parte principal de su estrategia electoral. Los esfuerzos de base pueden hacer la diferencia aquí”.

Sherrod Brown, congresista demócrata por Ohio, tiene 2.300 cartas de sus constituyentes sobre como la administración Bush manipuló el caso en favor de la guerra. Khalil le dijo a Nuestro Mundo, “La gente están cobrando energía otra vez. Cada día más y más gente están llamándonos, enviándonos correo electrónico, y llegando a nuestras oficinas pidiéndonos que tomemos acción contra la guerra y que desenmascaremos las mentiras que Bush usó para manufacturar apoyo popular para la invasión de Irak y para empezar el fin de la ocupación”.

Radical right imposes austerity on Texas

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:28:00 +0000

AUSTIN, Texas – After three years in power, the Bush administration’s vision is coming more sharply into focus. Its foreign policy goal is to use military force to expand its domination of foreign markets; its domestic goal is to build a dictatorship of business so that corporations don’t just dominate government, they monopolize it. Both goals are poison for working people.

In Texas, the Bush domestic policy has advanced a little further than it has nationally. Corporate special interests, working through radical right-wing political candidates, have seized control of state government. Texas has always been a “business-friendly” (read anti-labor, anti-consumer) state, but today, state government serves big business exclusively.

The takeover was clinched last November when Republicans, using what some believe were illegal campaign contributions, wrested control of the only state institution not yet under its thumb – the state House of Representatives.

The next step for Republicans is to use their base in Texas to expand and consolidate their control of the federal government.

Austerity means cutbacks for workers

The right-wing takeover has been a disaster for working people in the state, especially those from minority communities. The recently concluded regular session of the Texas Legislature enacted a budget that imposes an austerity program on working families similar to the ones imposed on people in developing countries by the International Monetary Fund.

The Texas austerity budget hits African American and Latino families the hardest.

African Americans and Latinos make up about 78 percent of Medicaid enrollment and 61 percent of enrollment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides health care coverage for children of families who can’t afford health insurance premiums.

These programs suffered huge cutbacks.

The state budget cuts social services and health care for working people, makes it more difficult for working families to send their children to college, and sets up their public schools for failure. Related legislation eliminates thousands of state employee jobs by consolidating and privatizing health and human services.

Rep. Pete Gallego (D-Alpine), speaking at the National Council of La Raza conference in Austin earlier this month, said the cuts in the state’s health and human services were especially damaging to Latinos. Gallego told the Austin American Statesman, that “75 percent of our budget is either health and human services or education, so if you’re looking for cuts, where do you go? And who’s impacted by the cuts? We are.”

Health care under the knife

Working families’ health care suffered some of the most severe cuts. Twenty-three percent of Texans do not have access to health insurance. This number will grow over the next two years. Enrollment in CHIP will decline 169,000 as a result of more stringent eligibility rules. Medicaid enrollment will drop by 332,000.

The counties with large minority populations will be most affected. Harris County (Houston), which has the state’s largest African American population, will lose over $353 million in combined Medicaid and CHIP money. Dallas County will be the next biggest loser.

The third biggest loser is Hidalgo County on the Mexican border. Its population is predominantly Latino, many first- or second-generation immigrants.

In addition, more than 18,000 elderly and chronically ill children and adults will no longer qualify for Medicaid and about 8,300 fewer women will receive pre-natal care each month through Medicaid.

Many working families will see their health care benefits sharply reduced. The Los Angeles Times tells the story of such a family, the Kolodziejczyks of Victoria in south Texas. Billy Kolodiejczyk, who works as a mechanic for an annual salary of $23,400, and Sharon, who works temporary jobs at $8 an hour, have two teenage sons with Type 1 diabetes. They require daily insulin injections and special equipment to keep their blood sugar levels in check.

Currently, the Kolodziejczyks qualify for CHIP. Most of their $800 monthly medical bills, including medical equipment for each son, are covered by CHIP. When the CHIP eligibility rules required by the new budget go into effect in September, Sharon will have to quit temping in order for her sons to stay on CHIP. Even if they remain on CHIP, the Kolodziejczyks’ out-of-pocket medical expenses will increase substantially. CHIP will no longer cover the boys’ medical equipment.

Education to suffer, too

The Texas budget cuts will also make it more difficult, if not impossible, for the Kolodziejczyks and other working families to send their children to college.

Presently, Texas offers some of the lowest tuition in the nation at its public universities, but the cuts will soon end all that. To allow universities to make up some of their fund cuts, the legislature deregulated tuition and allowed each university system in the state to set its own tuition. Rates could rise by as much as 23 percent by January 2004. In a state where 30 percent of the households earn $25,000 a year or less, this kind of increase could keep many qualified students out of college.

Public education took a big hit from the state budget. Teachers will have to pay a bigger share of their health care and retirement costs, in effect reducing their take-home pay. This pay cut will cause many experienced teachers to quit and worsen the shortage of qualified teachers in the state.

Once again, minorities will bear the brunt of the damage. African Americans and Latinos make up 56 percent of the state’s public school students.

Anti-Latino bias

The Latino community took heavy hits from other legislation that passed during the session, as well. Marcela Urrutia, a policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza, told the American Statesman, “It was a very difficult session.” Urrutia noted that attempts to provide access to Medicaid for documented immigrants and legislation allowing immigrants to use their consular identification to obtain drivers’ licenses failed. Latino immigrants won one small victory, though: the attempt to stamp “non-citizen” on their drivers’ licenses was defeated.

State workers also come out on the short end of the austerity program. Legislation that consolidates health and human service agencies and privatizes jobs will hit state employees hard. The Texas State Employees Union estimates that job losses due to privatization of eligibility services alone could be as high as 10,000.

Big money behind the Right

The key to the Republican victories last November was large, last-minute contributions from businesses around the state.

The Texas Association of Business (TAB), the state’s largest business trade association, collected contributions and forwarded them to Texans for a Republican Majority, founded by U.S. House Speaker Tom DeLay. Texans for a Republican Majority used this money in an “attack ad” campaign and coordinated work with individual right-wing candidates.

This spring an Austin grand jury began investigating these contributions for possible violations of a state law prohibiting corporations from donating money to political candidates. Four officials from TAB were called to testify before the grand jury and were asked to name the businesses that made contributions. All four refused, and were found in contempt of court. They are awaiting a decision on their appeal. If they ever are forced to name contributors, those named will no doubt turn out to be those who profited most from this session of the legislature.

Texas: Part of a national game plan?

The 2002 elections didn’t just sweep radical right-wingers into power; they made possible the establishment of what amounts to a dictatorship of business in Texas. With right-wingers in control of judicial, executive, and legislative branches, business power, while always dominant in the state, is now unchecked.

The goal of the Bush administration and the Republican Party is to extend this dictatorship to Washington. To do this they will have to maintain the presidency in 2004, gain 60 Senate seats to create a filibuster-proof Senate, and increase the number of radical right-wingers in the House so that DeLay can consolidate his authoritarian rule.

That is why Gov. Rick Perry, after consulting with DeLay, pushed for a congressional redistricting plan in Texas that would guarantee that five to seven traditionally Democratic seats would be replaced by right-wing Republicans. The plan would redraw congressional district boundaries to dilute minority voting strength by shifting predominantly African American and Latino urban communities into congressional districts dominated by affluent, white, suburban voters. On the very face of it, such a move appears to violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and is likely to result in a lawsuit or calls for a Justice Departments investigation.

About 50 Texas House Democrats made headlines last May when they crossed over into Ardmore, Okla., to deny the House a quorum and to frustrate Republican plans to ram through the redistricting plan. Texas Republicans sought the assistance of Tom Ridge’s Department of Homeland Security to track down, arrest, and drag the legislators back, all to no avail.

Since that time, Gov. Perry has called a special redistricting session of the legislature.

As expected, the House quickly passed the redistricting proposal, but major snags were encountered in the Senate when at least one Republican, Sen. Bill Ratliff, joined the Democrats in opposing it.

Prospects for a turnaround

There are signs of potential for building a progressive electoral movement that can defeat the right-wingers.

First, the redistricting plan has galvanized a fightback. In Brownsville, on the Mexican border, the GI Forum, a civil rights group of Latino military veterans, took over a redistricting hearing and exposed it as a sham. Thousands of people came to hearings in other cities to testify against redistricting and tens of thousands contacted their legislators to oppose it.

These actions have started to pay off. The biggest blow to redistricting came on July 14 when Sen. Ratliff said that he would vote against bringing a redistricting map before the Senate for a vote. Ratliff, who is concerned because his rural district would be included in a district dominated by affluent Dallas suburbs, has so far refused to support the plan.

His decision, combined with 10 Democratic senators who said that they would vote against bringing redistricting legislation before the Senate, has temporarily blocked the measure.

Looking ahead, one key to building a progressive electoral majority in Texas is to give working-class and minority voters a reason to vote. In the past, issues that have dominated state elections have been issues of concern to suburban voters – keeping taxes down, letting their school districts keep local revenue instead of sharing it with poorer urban districts, etc. Working-class and minority issues – an unfair judicial system that primarily victimizes young African American and Latino men, a lack of funding for urban school districts, lack of health care, social services, access to higher education, and opportunities to hold decent paying jobs – are rarely part of the discourse during elections.

Minorities will soon no longer be the minority in Texas. If workers and minorities have a reason to vote, and if larger numbers are registered and mobilized to vote for candidates who support their issues, it could mean the end to the right-wing’s grip on the Lone Star state.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Ann Arbor says, Save civil liberties

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:21:00 +0000

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – By a 9-2 vote, the Ann Arbor City Council passed a “resolution to safeguard the civil liberties of Ann Arbor residents,” according to a statement by the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union. The resolution expresses the city’s opposition to the repressive USA Patriot Act pushed through Congress by the Bush administration.

Kary Moss, executive director of the Michigan ACLU, said, “More and more people around the country are objecting to the way that this administration is conducting its ‘war on terrorism.’” Moss welcomed Ann Arbor’s resolution and called it part of a growing national “suspicion” of the Bush administration’s domestic security policies. Over 130 cities have adopted similar statements.

Ann Arbor’s resolution, developed in close communication with the city’s police chief, Dan Oates, asks the police department to keep in contact with the city council about the efforts of federal officials to obtain information about Ann Arbor residents. It also requires the police chief to stop enforcing federal immigration laws inserted into the Patriot Act, unless he deems a “legitimate public safety concern.” It requires other city officials to report to the city council any federal surveillance of Ann Arbor residents who are engaged in First Amendment activities.

City Council member Bob Johnson (D-1st Ward) expressed his shock at the continuing effort of the federal government to hide the names of detainees held since Sept. 11. He told the packed council chamber before the vote, “People are being held and we can’t even find out what their names are. This is so outrageous. It is an outrage to the Constitution.”

Mary Bejian, of the Safe and Free Campaign, which supported the resolution, said that it will increase community trust in local law enforcement and will “send a message to Washington that yet another city in the United States does not support the current dismantling of the Constitution.” The Safe and Free Campaign, locally, was endorsed by hundreds of area residents and local organizations such as the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace, Veterans for Peace, and the Washtenaw County ACLU.

The author can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net

GAO cites failures in home elder care

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:18:00 +0000

In some states, home and community-based alternatives are replacing nursing homes as the primary form of long-term elder care. Despite widespread support for home care for the elderly as more desirable and less costly, there are problems with this picture, including problems of quality assurance.

Medicaid spending for long-term care grew to $75 billion in 2001. This is roughly one-third of the total Medicaid budget, with the majority spent on caring for the elderly. Efforts to increase home and community-based care while decreasing institutional care have been effective, with the share of the Medicaid budget spent on institutional care declining.

Although states that participate in the Medicaid program must provide nursing home and home health care to those who meet eligibility requirements, things get murkier when other services are considered. States can apply to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for waivers of some federal Medicaid requirements in order to provide alternatives such as transportation, caregiver training for family members, nursing services, and respite care.

Waivers allow states to offer such services in geographically limited areas and/or to specific populations, to limit the number of persons served, and the like. Every state but Arizona has at least one waiver for elderly services. According to a General Accounting Office report released July 7, Medicaid spending on “waiver care” grew from 5 to 19 percent of long-term expenditures, from $1.6 to $14.4 billion, between 1991 and 2001, with 55 percent of beneficiaries being elderly. This is an incredible increase in elder care that need not meet the usual Medicaid requirements.

Even worse, the GAO found little, if any, quality control over this care. In fact, CMS hasn’t even provided quality assurance guidelines as part of the waiver approval process. Of the state annual reports reviewed by the GAO, more than a third had no information on quality assurance measures and more than 70 percent of reviewed waivers contained quality of care problems.

Perhaps not surprisingly, since waivers are about limiting services, the most frequent problem was failure to provide necessary services, followed by weaknesses in care plans and case management. More and more federal tax dollars are being spent on elder care that is less regulated, with fewer guidelines, resulting in clear lapses in the services provided for some of those in greatest need.

Most home-based care is provided by family members, a major source of the cost savings over institutional care. Many of these family members must limit or even give up paid employment in order to provide care, a serious financial blow to the family. Many caregivers themselves are older, suffer health problems of their own, and develop more health problems as a result of caregiving. Thus, even if the home and community-based care programs operated within all requirements and without quality shortcomings, they would still fall short of an optimal caregiving situation.

Frail and disabled elders and their family caregivers need all-inclusive, high quality care. Decisions regarding such care cannot be left to individual states, many in cahoots with a right-wing administration, with waivers from federal regulations. Despite the unquestioned value of Medicaid and Medicare, only a solid national health care program, providing universal, comprehensive services can assure elders of the most comfortable old age possible, whether that be in a nursing home or the family home.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Rhode Island budget coalition scores win

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:14:00 +0000

Around the country, state budgets have been in crisis. Rhode Island’s budget is no different, with a deficit in the hundreds of millions – a big number for a small state. Newly-elected Republican Gov. Don Carcieri began a campaign to trim the budget by forcing teachers and state employees to contribute more to pension and health care plans and reducing funding for child care.

But unions and community groups came ready for the fight. Many of the state’s anti-poverty advocates banded together and created ONE Rhode Island, a platform of policies to improve state programs that affect working families. A broad group of state legislators introduced proposals for modest increases in areas such as food stamps, affordable housing, child care, health care, and cash assistance.

Over 130 groups endorsed the program, from service-based groups like the United Way, Goodwill Industries, and the RI Food Bank, to faith-based groups like the Rhode Island State Council of Churches and the state Board of Rabbis, and labor unions including Service Employees 1199, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 217, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers, as well as community-based groups such as Direct Action for Rights and Equality, the Day Care Justice Co-op, and ACORN.

A well-coordinated series of lobby days, letter-writing campaigns, postcard drives, phone banks, constituent meetings, and a rally attended by over 500 Rhode Islanders pressured the state legislators to resist the proposed cuts. Independent of the coalition, many groups called for fairer tax structures.

In the end, a one-time “windfall” from the Bush tax program brought enough revenue into the state to fund the teachers’ and public employees’ benefits, restore almost all of the cuts in child care, create an Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income families, improve access to food stamps, and construct more affordable housing. Both the House and the Senate have ample votes to override the governor’s threatened budget veto.

And yet it remains to be seen how funds will be secured next year to win many of the other programs that were not funded this year. Can a strong coalition of groups be built to create a fairer tax structure?

Few Democratic legislators will want to call for tax increases in 2004, especially as the governor tries to re-build the state’s weak Republican Party by running candidates against them and wielding the discontent of unorganized private sector workers as a weapon against the better-organized public sector.

To counter the governor’s divisive strategy, the labor movement in Rhode Island must shift the terms of the debate, so that unorganized workers come to see these pension and health care benefits as entitlements and ask, “Hey, how come I don’t have a pension or health insurance?” instead of, “Hey, why do my tax dollars have to pay for that guy’s pension?”

In Rhode Island, this partial victory has given the coalition of groups a sense that in order to win big, they must continue to think big. More information on the ONE RI platform can be found at www.povertyinstitute.org

We need a national health plan for all

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:01:00 +0000

Workers Correspondence

The other day, I went to the drug store to fill five prescriptions for my wife and me. My total cost was $10.

There were two other retired workers in line with me, also getting prescriptions, one Black American, the other Polish American. The Polish American worker paid $200 for three prescriptions, and the Black American worker paid $150 for four prescriptions.

At first I thought they must have been prescribed some unusual medicine, but I found out that two of the prescriptions that each of these workers bought are the same as I purchased. In talking, I discovered that the two workers didn’t have a union at their place of employment.

I realize how fortunate I am to be covered by a union contract that charges me $2 co-pay. This strengthens my resolve to support brother Gettelfinger’s (UAW president) position to General Motors, Ford, and Daimler/Chrysler to keep our health care as it is and to push for a national health insurance plan to cover all Americans.

– Jim Gallo, Daimler/Chrysler retiree

Town meetings oppose Bush drug plan

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 03:19:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Unable to get heard on the floor of the House, over 70 members of Congress convened town hall meetings in their home districts over the weekend to expose the truth about the phony prescription drug plan that passed the House by only one vote.

Nearly 300 seniors, who crowded into the community room at Bella Vista housing complex July 19 to hear from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, applauded her commitment to vote against any bill that goes in the direction of privatizing Medicare.

“Medicare and Social Security have raised our older Americans out of poverty,” said DeLauro. “This is about the values we have as a nation.”

DeLauro spelled out the weaknesses of the bills that passed the House and Senate and are now in conference committee. One of the worst features is the cut-off of prescription drug benefits once expenditures reach $2,000, not resuming until they exceed $4,900. Monthly premiums must continue to be paid during that time.

In addition, the cost of premiums, deductible and co-pay will increase as prescription drug prices rise on the market. Moreover, the bill would outlaw negotiation for cheaper prescription prices in bulk. The plan would not begin until 2006. By 2010 it would penalize those who choose to stay with Medicare.

“This is a critical moment,” DeLauro told the seniors. “We need your activism. This is going to affect your lives sooner rather than later.”

The pharmaceutical industry is spending millions of dollars on a national television and radio ad campaign, sponsored by the Partnership for Safe Medicines and The Senior Coalition (TSC). Having emerged in the 2002 congressional elections to support Republicans, the phony TSC is now opposing a bipartisan proposal for re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada, England, France and Germany where they are sold at a much lower price.

The misleading ads claim these drugs are unsafe. DeLauro cited FDA official William Hubbard’s assurance that of the millions who have traveled to Canada for prescriptions to date, no unsafe case has arisen.

“The corporations are working on our minds and trying to put us against ourselves,” warned retired labor leader Carmen Romano. “We have to fight the greedy for the needy. We can march on Washington. We have to stick together and fight like hell,” he said to loud applause.

“Bush is raising $200 to $300 million for the elections from businessmen,” said retired UNITE leader Nick Aiello. “They expect to get repaid by privatizing Medicare and Social Security.”

Bush allies, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), have both openly called for the end of Medicare.

Aiello, who is organizing with the labor-affiliated Association of Retired Americans and the National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare, urged everyone to “stay with Medicare.”

The seniors signed letters to Congress expressing their opinion against the bills under consideration. “We’ve been fighting for prescription drug coverage for years, and we’ll keep fighting,” said one Bella Vista resident. “With the plan they offer, we are better off without it.”

The author can be reached at joelle.fishman@pobox.com

National Clips

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 02:52:00 +0000

CHICAGO, Ill.: Show us the evidence, Mr. President

Thirty Chicago aldermen, a majority of the Chicago City Council, signed a letter this week to President Bush urging him to reveal to the nation all the evidence on which his claims of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were made.

The unprecedented letter came on the heels of a White House admission that a prewar claim about Iraqi uranium purchases was false.

The City Council letter to the president noted that the “alleged existence of such weapons of mass destruction provided the principal justification for your decision to wage war against Iraq,” and noted that no such weapons have been found.

Ald. Joe Moore (49th Ward), the drafter of the letter, said, “It’s long past time for the President and his administration to come clean about the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction. In the view of a growing number of Americans, the weapons of mass destruction have become ‘weapons of mass disappearance.’ As members of the City Council, we are the elected officials closest to the people. All of us detect a growing sense of public betrayal about the war. Many lives were lost and billions of dollars were diverted from pressing needs at home to eliminate the alleged threat posed by Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. And yet, the Bush administration has not produced any evidence that these weapons ever existed.”

BATAVIA, Ill.: Riot police ‘greet’ retirees protesting Bush drug plan

On July 21, five busloads of retired workers arrived at the district office of Congressman Dennis Hastert, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House. They came to lobby on the issue of prescription drug coverage under Medicare. Instead of a handshake, they were greeted by local police outfitted in full riot gear and barred from meeting with their congressman.

Up went a picket line around the congressman’s office. “Don’t privatize Medicare,” read one hand-printed sign. “The Bush Plan is the wrong prescription,” read another. Some blew whistles to literally “blow the whistle” on the proposed drug plan.

The Batavia police chief received a letter from the group, organized by the Alliance of Retired Americans (ARA) and other community groups. The letter outlined a better prescription drug plan for Medicare and how to pay for it.

“I have a pretty good drug benefit now, thanks to my retiree coverage with Utility Workers Local 18007,” said retired utility worker Joseph Botte. “But I absolutely fear I’ll lose it and be forced into a situation where there are huge coverage gaps. I intend to keep protesting. The only thing that will stop me is death and I don’t intend to die in the near future.”

In 2002, the 50 most prescribed medications for seniors skyrocketed in cost at a rate 3.5 times that of inflation.

DALLAS, Texas: Bush gets the money, but no free ride

George W. Bush received “no questions asked” from the commercial news sources while he raised more campaign millions at the Wyndham Anatole hotel on July 18. Supporters forked over $2,000 each for Bush’s short reception and speech. Nobody asked him why he lied about invading Iraq or about the bulging economic deficit.

Outside, 300 protesters chanted “Bush lied, People died!” and held up giant banners and signs describing the agony that the Bush administration is inflicting on America to thousands of people driving home from work. Banners and signs stretched completely around the three public-access sides of the luxury hotel. The temperature was 100 degrees, but the protesters stayed for four hours. Peace activists were joined by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Coalition for the Advancement of Civil Rights. Press statements also came from leaders of the AFL-CIO and a prominent United Auto Workers local union.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.: No evidence, trial or jury – but deported!

Rabih Haddad was secretly deported to his native Lebanon earlier this month. Haddad, a prominent leader in Ann Arbor’s Muslim community, was detained for 19 months by the Justice Department. Although the Justice Department told Haddad’s family that he was alleged to have aided terrorists, those charges were never filed. The Justice Department had no evidence.

In Lebanon Haddad may face threats due to the hysteria generated by John Ashcroft and the Justice Department Haddad had requested asylum in the United States. At a July 16 press conference, Haddad’s wife, Salma Al-Rushaid, vowed to clear her husband’s name. U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that he is investigating the events leading up to Haddad’s deportation.

National Clips are compiled by Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinebr696@aol.com). Jim Lane, Joel Wendland, Ted Wood, and Roberta Wood contributed to this week’s stories. Joelle Fishman contributed to last week’s story on same-day voter registration in Connecticut.

La Raza calls for massive voter turnout

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 02:44:00 +0000

AUSTIN, Texas – Calling George W. Bush’s campaign promises “a false image, a mirage,” Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), called on Latinos in the United States to register and vote in support of their communities. Yzaguirre’s comments were made during the annual conference of his organization, held here from July 12-15.

Yzaguirre noted at the opening plenary, titled “The State of Hispanic America,” that Latinos are over-represented in the U.S. Armed Forces and have “fought hard for democracy. Now democracy has to work for us.” He said that Latinos “seek nothing less than the chance to control our own destiny.”

Interrupted by applause, Yzaguirre criticized what he termed “piñata politics,” where political candidates campaign for the Latino vote by “taking as many pictures with us as possible” and speaking a few words of Spanish, instead of dealing with the issues that affect the Latino population.

He criticized the Bush administration, saying that its policies towards Latinos represent “two years of neglect, disinterest, and disrespect.” Yzaguirre ticked off a list of Bush policies that he said show that “the Bush administration doesn’t seem to care” if Latinos benefit from democracy. The tax cuts were “dramatically tilted towards the wealthy, excluding millions of hard-working Latino families. … Bilingual education, English as a Second Language, and parent involvement were cut to the bone.”

With approval from conference participants, Yzaguirre lashed out at Attorney General John Ashcroft’s attack on immigrants’ democratic rights, saying these attacks are “what alarms me the most. Because our skin may be different, or because we speak with an accent, we are back to being the enemy.”

Recalling the struggles of years gone by, Yzaguirre said, “We know how to fight when our country is threatened. … It’s time to fight when our community is threatened.” Saying that “voting is not enough,” he urged the organizations represented here to register the 7.3 million Latino citizens who are not yet on the voting rolls, and to mobilize “the 1.6 million registered Hispanic voters [who] did not go to the polls in 2000.”

Democratic presidential candidates Howard Dean and John Kerry addressed the meeting and received enthusiastic applause. President Bush, while invited, did not attend.

In a workshop called “Mobilizing the Latino Vote,” Clarrisa Martínez de Castro, NCLR director for state and local public policy, noted that because the electorate seems to be evenly divided, Latinos can be a swing vote because they tend to vote on issues rather than by party affiliation. She rejected the concept that some have put forth that it is part of Latino culture to abstain from voting, noting the high voter turnout in Mexico and Puerto Rico. She said that even non-citizen immigrants “can and have gotten three to five voters out to vote” that they know.

A joint program that the NCLR runs with the National Association of Latino Appointed and Elected Officials (NALEO) and the offices of the Puerto Rican government in the U.S. found that, among Latino registered voters who have nevered voted or who haven’t voted in four years, 8-12 percent will come out and cast their ballot when they are approached on the issues, according to María de la Luz García, head of NALEO’s get out the vote effort.

Political analyst Sergio Bendixen echoed that sentiment and added that Latinos tend to come out to vote when they feel threatened. “In the vote to defeat Pete Wilson,” he said, “a higher percentage of Latinos voted than lawyers and show business professionals.” He said that the Latino vote goes down when there is a “lack of an enemy like Pete Wilson or Newt Gingrich.”

Bendixen pointed out that there was an upsurge of Latinos who came out to vote for Antonio Villaraigosa when he ran for mayor of Los Angeles. In contrast, in the New York mayoral race, many Latinos refused to vote for Mark Green after he attacked fellow Democratic candidate Fernando Ferrer in the primary.

Bendixen criticized the fact that the 50 percent increase in the Latino population has resulted in only three more Latino members of Congress. He said this was due to the redistricting following the 2000 census.

In the workshop on “Continuing the Latina Movement,” Lulu Flores, vice president for diversity and outreach of the National Women’s Political Caucus, spoke on the need to train Latinas to run for office so as to be able to provide better leadership in the communities.

The growing Latino population in the South received special attention at the conference. According to Lynda Barros, director of NCLR’s Emerging Communities Initiative, additional resources are

required “in response to the growing [Latino] numbers in the Southeast.”

The author can be reached at j.a.cruz@comcast.net

New U.S. report on Patriot Act abuses

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 02:18:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – A report released July 20 by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) charged that federal law enforcement agencies have abused and even beaten people detained after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. It was the second OIG report on Patriot Act abuses in as many months.

The report said that in the six months ending June 15, OIG received 34 credible complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations committed under the USA Patriot Act. It included complaints by Muslim and Arab detainees that they had been beaten and verbally abused in federal detention centers.

The OIG received nearly 2,000 complaints, but most were not Patriot Act related. At least 272 complaints within OIG jurisdiction are under investigation. The report suggests that OIG is overwhelmed, stating, that “given … its limited resources, the OIG does not investigate all allegations of misconduct against Department of Justice employees.”

Among those accused were agents of the FBI, Bureau of Prisons guards, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Naturalization Service. In one case, a federal prison doctor was accused of telling detainees, “If I was in charge, I would execute every one of you (for the) crimes you all did.”

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said, “This report shows that we have only begun to scratch the surface with respect to the Justice Department’s disregard of constitutional rights and civil liberties. … The administration’s war on terror has misfired and harmed innocent victims with no ties to terrorism whatsoever.”

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said, “The recent findings coupled with the earlier Inspector General report show that there is a pattern of violating rights and that policies set at the highest level were responsible for such violations.”

This was a reference to Attorney General John Ashcroft, who pushed through Congress the USA Patriot Act with its sweeping expansion of police state powers. Foes of the bill attached a provision requiring OIG to monitor enforcement of the law for abuses and report back to Congress.

The earlier report exposed physical and verbal abuse of 762 detainees at federal detention centers. The victims were held incommunicado for as long as 18 months, often in solitary confinement, with only one hour each day for exercise in leg and arm shackles.

The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is one of 13 civil rights groups demanding that the Justice Department release the names of the detainees. A federal judge last year ordered release of the names but stayed her ruling pending appeal by Ashcroft. An appellate court reversed the ruling and the Justice Department continues to withhold the names. Said a statement by the ADC, “Secrecy invites abuse … transparency is an indispensable element in the pursuit of justice.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

GOP slammed for police state tactics

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 02:01:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – An angry melee July 17 in which Ways and Means Chair Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) called out the Capitol police to evict Democratic House members from a congressional meeting room is part of a ruthless Republican “power grab,” warn lawmakers, labor, and other grassroots advocates.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said the Democrats are “mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. … The idea that a member of Congress would call the Capitol police on other members performing their constitutional duties is deplorable.”

The incident erupted in the Ways and Means Committee when the Republicans suddenly introduced a 91-page substitute for a pension “reform” bill the committee had been drafting for months.

To slow the runaway train, the Democrats requested that it be read into the record line by line, a parliamentary maneuver that can be blocked only by a unanimous vote of the committee. As the clerk read the bill, the Democrats left the hearing room to strategize on how to stop this legislative coup. They left behind Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) to monitor the proceeding. But as soon as the Democrats were out of earshot, Thomas called for a unanimous vote to suspend the reading.

Thomas ignored Stark’s “no” vote and announced that the committee would begin mark-up of the substitute. When Stark protested, Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) told him to “shut up.”

Stark shot back, “Oh, you think you are big enough to take me, you little wimp?”

Thomas meanwhile sent his chief of staff to evict the Democratic lawmakers from the committee library. The Democrats refused and Thomas called Capitol police to evict them. When they arrived, the police said it was a matter for the House Sergeant at Arms to settle and he, in turn, said it was an internal matter for the committee to resolve. By that time Stark had joined his Democratic colleagues in the library. The Republicans then voted unanimously to report to the House floor the pension takeaway bill.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution to censure Thomas. “It is clear that the Democrats must draw a line in the sand on the repression of our rights in this Congress,” she said during a stormy debate on the House floor.

Stark scorned GOP charges that he had threatened a colleague with bodily harm. “Chairman Thomas’ behavior today should not be allowed in a democracy. It is reminiscent of a police state, not America,” Stark said.

A senior staff member of the Ways and Means Committee told the World, “In my years on Capitol Hill, I have never seen anything like that, Republicans calling out the police on members from the other party.” The staff member said Thomas had vowed to cut the dollar value of the pension bill from $230 billion to $50 billion. “The substitute they approved provides $48 billion. He more than achieved his goal.”

At stake in the legislation are changes in federal pension law which for decades set the statutory rate for calculating pensions to the 30-year Treasury Bond. Corporations demanded, and got, a rate pegged to corporate bonds, saving them tens of billions in pension contributions. The American Association of Retired Persons warned that workers who depend on lump sum pension payouts could lose 25 percent of their benefits under the GOP scam.

Bruce Bostick, a United Steelworkers organizer assigned to the bitter struggle to restore pensions stripped from thousands of steelworkers, including himself, told the World, “It is particularly revealing that they had to use police state tactics to ram this bill through. They call it ‘pension reform’ but what it really means is that well-to-do people can put more of their money in tax shelters while allowing rich corporations to underfund their pension funds for workers. It’s right in line with what George W. Bush is trying to do to retirees.”

Connie Engholm, Midwest regional organizer for the Alliance of Retired Americans, an AFL-CIO-affiliated retiree group, said, “It’s part of the epidemic of retirees losing their pensions. We’re all going to be affected by their attempt to turn Social Security into a savings plan through the stock market, their plans to privatize Medicare. These cutbacks are an outright crime against the people who worked to build this country.”

Andrew Wheat, a senior researcher at Texans for Public Justice in Austin, told the World the incident reminded him of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s calling up Homeland Security agents to track down Democratic members of the Texas Legislature a couple of months ago.

They had fled to Oklahoma to deny a quorum needed by the Republicans for a session to redraw the congressional district lines in Texas to give DeLay seven more safe Republican districts. “It was a clever move by the Democrats to run to Oklahoma,” Wheat said. “A lot of this hardball politics is DeLay, DeLay, Delay. He’s a ruthlessly cunning individual who understands the connection of corporate money and politics.

“The goal of DeLay and [Bush political operator] Karl Rove is to eliminate any checks and balances of any kind. Their credo is: ‘We’re going to crush anybody who stands in our way.’ It is very dangerous.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Chicago mulls resolution against Patriot Act

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 05:27:00 +0000

CHICAGO – On July 9 a multiracial coalition of aldermen submitted a strongly worded resolution to the Chicago City Council calling for repeal of the USA Patriot Act.

The act was approved by Congress with no debate on Oct. 26, 2001, in the atmosphere of the aftermath of Sept. 11. Many congressmen have since admitted that they never even read the act before voting in favor of it. Since that time, as the contents of the act, seen by civil libertarians and many others as a frontal assault on First Amendment and due process rights, have become more widely known, a national movement has grown up calling for its repeal.

Part of this movement has consisted of a wave of resolutions in city councils and county and state legislatures calling for the repeal of the act and non-cooperation with its repressive measures. So far, more than 130 city and county governments and three states (Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont) have adopted such resolutions, all of which can be read on line at bordc.org, the website of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Northampton, Mass., which started the resolution campaign.

If Chicago approves the resolution, it will be the largest city to do so to date. Other major cities which have passed such resolutions include Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco and Tucson.

As soon as the Chicago resolution was presented, no fewer than 31 of the 50 aldermen expressed their intention to support it. Though the group of aldermen who announced their support cross cuts Chicago’s usual political divisions between “regular” and “independent” Democrats, it is also true that support for the resolution is especially high among African American and Latino aldermen. Still more aldermen are expected to sign on before the vote.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Injury, illness prevention now city policy

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 04:02:00 +0000

On June 17, 2003, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted an historic principle of public health that should be an example for every municipality and for the nation itself. The term they used is “precautionary principle,” and it calls for a more proactive approach to the public’s health and well-being.

By enacting this directive, the city of San Francisco stated clearly that, “Every San Francisco resident has an equal right to a healthy and safe environment. Standards involving air, water, earth and food must be strong enough that everyone lives in a safe and healthful status.”

This will not be a “performance rule.” Rules establishing performance standards are promoted by corporations and are designed to wait for something to happen before government is allowed to seek corrective measures that are often too late. This has allowed Corporate America to force the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt this kind of disastrous “wait and see” rule.

Now, at least in the Bay Area, “risk management” ideologues must take a back seat to officials who demand that the least dangerous method of disposing of the problem be used. Another provision of the ordinance is that the best available science be used to determine remediation and prevention. Costs are not to be considered when different methods of correction are being reviewed.

The practical steps that government officials must take include the following:

• Seek proactive remedies. Arguments by those opposing prevention measures by saying that there is “nothing wrong, let’s wait until a problem surfaces” must be set aside when a problem is deemed a possible hazard. The ordinance calls on government, business, community groups, labor unions and the general public to bring to the attention of city officials potential hazards well before they cause injury, illness or epidemics.

• Consider all options. In addition to the traditional “right to know” aspect of existing laws, and full transparency of all meetings, there is now a clear obligation on the part of the city of San Francisco to consider all remediation possibilities, and to choose the method that has the least damaging impact on human health, including the possibility of not taking any action.

• Assess the human impact. The ordinance also requires that all costs be considered when looking at alternative, including all health costs of not taking immediate action, not just the cost to polluters. This is a crucial issue since the costs to human health are often not considered.

A recent alert has come from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in regard to the health and safety of Latino workers. In this alert, NIOSH cites the increase of injury and occupational illness by more than one-third of the Latino worker population. The concentration of these workers is in three high-hazard industries: agriculture, construction and food processing. Mortality of Latino workers increased by 9 percent in 2001.

By “connecting the dots” between the San Francisco ordinance on preventive health and the federal warning of high risk dangers facing Latino workers, it would be incumbent upon these officials to conduct an immediate survey to determine the actions they could initiate to deal with this crisis.

Granted, this would mean the city of San Francisco would have to demand that California’s occupational health and environmental agencies initiate this process. Nonetheless, the initiative could serve as a spark plug to get the occupational and environmental movement back into high gear.

The Bush administration is highly vulnerable in the areas of occupational and environmental health. All national organizations, especially labor unions and environmental health groups, should seek congressional action for OSHA and EPA to conduct their activities to prevent hazards, thus returning these people’s agencies to their original purpose. Worker and community health and safety must be a front-burner issue in the 2004 elections.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Dont privatize care for the disabled

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 04:00:00 +0000

News Analysis

HARTFORD, Conn. – The outside thermometer said 90, but the temperature was more than sizzling last Thursday when the State Department of Mental Retardation (DMR) refused to allow 20 family members of group home residents to enter the premises.

Furious about an auction to the private sector of the first 30 of 410 state-run group homes, and worried about the fate of their loved ones, the family members traveled to the capital city from all corners of the state. Their hopes to meet with Commissioner Peter O’Meara were immediately dashed. The group, largely senior citizens, was greeted instead by state police, armed guards shouting “SOS!” and news that the entire building was on “lockdown.”

The parents, siblings and guardians gathered with members of New England Health Care Union District 1199 to voice their outrage. Under the group home privatization plan, union members who have been caregivers for many years to the same individuals would be yanked from their jobs in favor of nonunion temporary workers.

“I’m afraid to even tell my son about this,” said one parent, recalling past poor treatment in private institutions. “He has a mental capacity of three, and he will not understand. He’s in his 50s now, and it’s getting harder.”

Rose Tiernan, who served as spokeswoman for the group, has a 52-year-old brother in a group home in eastern Connecticut. “These residents have come to know the group home workers as family,” she said. “They receive excellent care. Privatization is unacceptable.”

The crisis with DMR is only one of many unfolding as a result of the continued refusal of Republican Governor John Rowland to agree to a fair budget for the state and a fair contract for state workers. Rowland claims privatization will save money, and is needed because so many state workers took early retirement.

Both the early retirement package and the layoff of 3,000 state workers are being challenged by SEBAC, the coalition of all state worker unions.

Like most states, Connecticut faces a significant budget deficit. If the income of the richest five percent of the population were taxed an additional two percent, the budget deficit could be resolved, vital programs could be restored, and all 3,000 state workers laid off in the beginning of the year could be rehired.

Offers by SEBAC to defer raises due to the budget crisis have been dismissed by Rowland, who insists on far deeper concessions. SEBAC has joined with One Connecticut, a coalition of over 100 advocacy and religious organizations to demand a “fair share budget” through rallies, sit-ins, vigils and lobbying efforts.

The governor has twice vetoed the Democratic-controlled State Legislature’s budget proposals, although they included deep sacrifices by children, families and state workers, with only minor increases in taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals.

While Rowland would like to be known as a moderate Republican, he has adopted the radical right-wing policy of slashing and privatizing government programs and destroying unions. He is using the budget crisis to advance these aims, putting not only the people of the state, but its whole future stability at risk.

In addition to DMR group homes, Rowland is attempting to sell off public transportation, and send 2,000 prisoners to out-of-state privatized facilities in Virginia, where they will in all practicality be cut off from family visits. Family members of incarcerated prisoners and the prison guards’ union, AFSCME, are both publicly opposing any out-of-state moves.

“Privatization isn’t the answer for everything,” one mother of a mentally retarded son told the World outside the DMR office. “Privatization is the answer for the profiteers. What about the trauma to all the handicapped and to the staff?”

As the budget debate continued at the state capitol, DMR parents circulated thousands of flyers, postcards and petitions at churches, supermarkets and community events across the state with the message, “Stop putting the developmentally disabled on the auction block.”

It remains to be seen how long the State Legislature will hold firm against the governor’s tactics. If they are listening to the public, they will refuse to give in. Policies which bankrupt government and leave the most vulnerable in the lurch must be rejected in Connecticut, as across the country. We can afford no less.

The author can be reached at joelle.fishman@pobox.com

National Clips

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 02:51:00 +0000

COLORADO SPRINGS, Col.: Air Force covering up rape charges?

Since the winter over 60 women cadets the Air Force Academy have charged their co-cadets with rape, but remedies proposed by the Air Force will only worsen the dangerous atmosphere for women. Former Rep. Tillie Fowler (R) heads a seven-member panel investigating the charges and reviewing Air Force proposals, including the proposal to remove the shield of confidentiality from female cadets reporting sexual assault. Fowler says that female cadets will be less likely to report sexual crimes and that will result in phony statistics from the Air Force.

“The female cadets have told us that they are going to be even less willing to come forward if they can’t do it confidentially,” said Fowler. “The command structure will announce great progress because the number of reported incidents are down. But that will be because a lot of women won’t report. We talked to victims who were scared to report they were raped, or pressured not to report. The result is these women saw their assailants graduate from the Air Force Academy the next spring. We are sending into our Air Force these predators.”

Military politics pollutes the air at the Academy. Air Force Secretary James Roche proposed stripping the confidentiality shield. The Bush administration has nominated him to become Secretary of the Army. His senate confirmation hearing is later this summer.

Currently, 16 percent of the 4,200 cadet corps are women.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Job losses hit Blacks hardest

It used to be that African Americans were the last hired and the first fired, and now entire plants are closing throughout the country, including the South, and the unemployment rate among Black workers is soaring.

The government reports that 2.6 million jobs, 90 percent of them in manufacturing, have been wiped out in 28 months. The unemployment rate among Black workers is rising at twice the rate as white workers. While 10 percent of white workers are now in the street, 15 percent of Black workers’ families are wondering where their next meal is coming from. There are 20 million manufacturing workers in the U.S. Of that group, 1.7 million white workers are unemployed and 300,000 Black workers are unemployed, a disproportionately high number.

A case in point is Autoliv in Indianapolis. The Swedish company which makes seat belts is closing, putting 350 workers, 75 percent of whom are African American, back in the street. “They were taken from the street into decent paying jobs; they were making $12 to $13 an hour,” Michael Barnes, director of the AFL-CIO training program that assisted workers in finding jobs, told a reporter from The New York Times. “These young men started families, dug in, took apartments, purchased vehicles. It was an up from the street experience and now they are being returned to their old environment.”

It is not just the most recently hired workers that are seeing their future evaporate. Throughout the South, tens of thousands of textile workers, most of whom are Black men and women, are seeing companies send their work to China and India. Workers earned $11 an hour plus a full benefit package, a good wage for small communities.

“This is not like the cyclical downturns in the old days,” said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “These jobs are gone and that represents a potentially significant slide in living standards.”

HARTFORD, Conn.: Governor vetoes same-day registration

Despite overwhelming support in the state legislature, Gov. John Rowland vetoed a bill which would have enabled voters to register and vote on election day.

“The legislation had broad bipartisan support,” said Bettye Jo Pakulis, regional director for the Center for Policy Alternatives. “It passed the Senate 27-9 and the House of Representatives 83-63. We had a real opportunity to involve many more of our citizens in the democratic process.”

Americo Santiago, program and policy director of Democracy Works, agreed. “This is a crushing blow for everyone who is working to open the democratic process in Connecticut,” he said. Gov. Rowland’s concerns about the integrity of the system had been addressed with passage of the statewide voter system, signed into law June 18. The Connecticut law had been hailed as a model of reform to encourage greater voter participation. Connecticut slipped from the top third of states in voter participation to the bottom half since 1996.

Six states, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming, have same-day voter registration.

National Clips are compiled by Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinbr696@aol.com). Roberta Wood contributed to this week’s clips.

NOW launches drive to equality

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 02:43:00 +0000

CRYSTAL CITY, Va. – The 1,000 delegates to a conference of the National Organization for Women here chanted “Carol, Carol” when Democratic presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun arrived July 11.

Braun was one of four Democratic candidates who participated in a NOW presidential candidates forum marked by angry blasts at George W. Bush for using lies to trick the nation into a war on Iraq and for his open warfare on women’s rights.

“This is such an incredibly important session,” said NOW President Kim Gandy in opening the forum at a hotel across the Potomoc from the capital. “You are the women and men who have been the backbone of successful election campaigns,” she said. “At this critical time in politics, voters need and want to know where the candidates stand on the issues women care about. Going on the record as a strong supporter in these critical issues is a sure-fire way to mobilize women to get to the polls next year. There is no election more important to the lives of women than the 2004 elections.”

The other candidates were Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, and the Rev. Al Sharpton. But Braun was clearly a favorite. “Is America ready for a woman president?” she cried. The crowd roared “Yes!”

The former U.S. senator and ambassador charged that the “extreme right wing path of this current administration is the path to ruin for the American dream. They have a tax policy that gave $87,000 to each and every millionaire while leaving no poor child a dime.” The occupation of Iraq, she said, is costing lives and $4 billion each month, “borne almost entirely by the American people. This administration has pandered to fear and used our grief from Sept. 11 to rollback the rights we fought and died for.”

Kucinich said the real “weapons of mass destruction” are Bush policies that have caused poverty, soaring unemployment, lack of health care and underfunded public schools.

Sharpton pointed out that Bush was defeated in 2000. “He must be defeated so decisively in 2004 they can’t use any trickery to steal the election again. … It seems lunatic to me that we can’t find any money for the 50 states we occupy but we can find $100 billion to occupy Iraq.” He called on the grassroots coalitions to “reach out to half the electorate that stays home election day.” Galvanize them to vote, he said, “and we will turn Bush out of the White House.”

The purpose of the conference was to launch NOW’s five-year “Drive for Equality.” Gandy explained, “With two branches of government aligned against us, and the Supreme Court precariously balanced, women’s rights are in greater peril than they’ve been in over a decade. We’re fighting back by launching a new campaign to preserve women’s rights through a massive grassroots mobilization of feminist voters – aptly titled the ‘Drive for Equality.’”

Breakout sessions discussed topics such as poverty, peace and stopping hate crimes. NOW Action Vice President Olga Vives told the peace workshop, “Women are calling for a feminist agenda for peace to answer the Bush administration’s exploitation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to advance their right-wing agenda. They have a lot of money, our money, enough for war, enough for tax cuts for the wealthy, but no money for Head Start and family planning. I truly believe when people lie, it catches up with them. It is catching up with Bush. The weapons of mass destruction was all a lie.”

Cynthia Miles, a delegate from Georgia, told the World she lives a few miles from Fort Stewart, home base of the Third Infantry Division now deployed in Iraq. “They’ve had 35 soldiers from the Third Division killed in Iraq so far,” she said. “That’s an average of one soldier each day. You can’t put gas in your car without hearing people talking about it. They are saying, ‘It’s time to bring the troops home.’”

Alexandra Wishart, a high school student from Valdosta, Georgia, echoed that view. “We had rallies at the courthouse every Friday before the war,” she told this reporter. When the war started, she said, people rallied round the flag. “After people started getting killed there was a change. We can’t stand there and [let people] die! If we believe something is wrong, we have to act on it to make it right.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

La Raza demands action on Latino issues

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 02:34:00 +0000

AUSTIN, Texas – Thousands of people streamed into the Austin Convention Center July 12-15 for the National Council of La Raza Annual Conference and Latino Expo fair. A general theme running throughout the conference was, as NCLR President Raul Yzaguirre put it, “We [Latinos] fought hard for democracy. Now democracy has to work for us.” Organizers estimate that about 20,000 participated during the four days of the event.

The conference featured a wide variety of workshops on topics ranging from problems facing Latino communities and their different segments; youth, seniors, women and new immigrants, and how to organize around them; and issues of everyday living and strategies for how to deal with them.

A number of political leaders addressed the conference. Among these were Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, both candidates for the Democratic nomination to run against George W. Bush in 2004. Both Kerry and Dean took the opportunity to blast Bush and his administration’s policies towards Latinos and other minorities, the poor and working people.

At the July 13 opening plenary, titled “The State of Hispanic America,” Yzaguirre criticized Bush, saying, “The truth is that for the issues that matter to us, this administration has been a major disappointment for the Latino community.” He said the Bush’s campaign promises had “turned out to be a false image, a mirage.” Saying “we have already much too waited too long,” Yzaguirre called on the assembled Latino leaders to not just get out the vote but also become informed about the real issues affecting the Latino communities throughout the country.

The NCLR was founded in 1968 to “reduce poverty and discrimination and improve life opportunities” for Latinos in the U.S., according to its mission statement. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has over 300 affiliated organizations in 35 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Most of its affiliates are located in the western and southwestern part of the country.

A more extensive report on the conference will appear in next week’s issue of the PWW/Mundo.

The author can be reached at j.a.cruz@comcast.net

Labor blasts recall drive in California

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 02:27:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Labor and other progressive organizations are denouncing a recall petition bankrolled by extremist Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) aimed at ousting Gov. Gray Davis as a blatant power grab.

Issa has poured more than $2 million of his car alarm fortune into hiring 200 professional signature gatherers who were paid $1 for every signature on the petition calling for a special election. The ultra-right, Republican-backed “Rescue California” announced July 16 that 1.6 million signatures have been gathered to put the confusing and complex question on the ballot.

Voters would be confronted with two questions: first, whether Davis should be removed, and second, who should replace him. If ten or more candidates qualify by paying a fee, a candidate with as little as 15 percent of the vote could walk away with the California governor’s office.

The California State Building and Construction Trades, AFL-CIO, denounced the recall as a scheme “to allow right-wing Republicans like Issa to sneak into the governor’s office through the back door.”

The recall scheme “seeks to subvert last year’s legitimate election and replace it with a phony election effort. ... Even if the money contributed to the recall by Issa proves to be legal, his motives are devious and ignores the wishes of California voters.”

The labor statement adds, “Issa wants to turn back the clock on California unions and get rid of the eight-hour day, daily overtime, unemployment insurance, workers compensation benefits, Project Labor Agreements and all the hard-fought victories earned by unions since Gov. Davis took office. We can’t let that happen.”

The union leaders pointed out that Davis “has the best record for unions of any governor of California in decades. The recall is not about Davis. The recall is an attempt by the Republicans to have a second shot at last year’s election at the expense of the voters.”

The Bush Republicans have been setting the stage for this crisis for years, starting with energy deregulation rammed through by former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and now aggravated by California’s $28 billion budget deficit. Budgets must be approved by two-thirds majorities so even though the legislature is majority Democrat, the GOP has been able to block any resolution of the crisis.

Taxpayers Against the Governor’s Recall points out that Issa, who represents a district in Southern California, seeks to outlaw abortions, opposes the minimum wage and overtime pay, wants to overturn the ban on assault weapons, favors drilling for oil off the coast of California, and opposes affirmative action.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said, “I will not participate in any other way than to urge voters to reject this perversion of the recall process. … The will of many should not be set aside for the ambition of the few.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said, “We don’t need the distraction of a mean-spirited recall that will only divide our state further and make finding solutions that much more difficult.”

Even the California Business Roundtable opposed the recall on grounds it would add to the crisis and paralysis, pushing the state’s economy further into recession.

NAACP cheers call to oust Bush in 2004

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 02:11:00 +0000

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – In the state where the 2000 presidential election was stolen, NAACP delegates cheered calls to oust George W. Bush from office “and send him back to Crawford, Texas” in next year’s election.

In his July 13 keynote to the civil rights organization’s 94th annual convention at the Miami Beach Convention Center, NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond blasted Bush for dragging the nation into war, for tax and economic policies that reward the rich and punish the poor, and for his frontal attack on civil rights.

“The Bush Brothers are big on preemption,” Bond said. “First Gov. Jeb Bush became the only governor to carry out a preemptive strike on affirmative action and then President George Bush carried out a preemptive strike on Iraq, the only president in our nation’s history to attack a country which did not threaten or attack us first. Both strikes were unnecessary and unwise.”

Racist bias remains deeply embedded in U.S. society, he said. An estimated 12 percent of Black men ages 20 to 34 are incarcerated compared with 1.6 percent of white men. College-educated Black and Hispanic men earn 30 percent less than white men with similar education.

“Into this mass of economic inequality marches the president for the rich,” Bond said, assailing Bush’s trillions in tax cuts “not just to further enrich the already wealthy, but also to starve and bleed the government, making it unable to meet human needs, signing a death warrant for social programs for decades and decades to come.”

Recalling that Jeb Bush hired a Republican-connected firm, ChoicePoint, to purge 94,000 mostly African American voters from the Florida rolls in 2000, Bond commented, “This was truly a weapon of mass voting rights destruction.”

Nevertheless, African Americans increased their total vote by two million in 2000, he said, noting that “more than a million African Americans voted here in Florida accounting for 15 percent of the total, a state record.”

If Hispanics, Blacks and whites turn out in 2004 in the same percentages as they did in 2000, “the no-show National Guardsman in the White House and his draft-avoiding vice president will lose by three million votes,” Bond said. “That’s why voter registration and voter turnout must be a top priority for every [NAACP] branch and every state conference from now to Election Day. The countdown starts now. If a branch isn’t registering voters and isn’t preparing for a grassroots turnout program next year, it isn’t doing its job.”

Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, “You are what you do,” Bond told the delegates, “What you do between now and Election Day next year will decide who you are and will decide what kind of world we live in.”

The next day, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume also blasted Bush, saying, “We find it peculiar that President Bush can travel across the ocean to meet with legitimate Black leaders in Africa yet cannot meet with legitimate Black leaders right here at home.” As the crowd roared, he warned Bush, “You will never be president of all the people as long as you only want to deal with some of the people.” Mfume also criticized Democratic presidential candidates who did not attend the NAACP’s candidate forum.

Those who did attend joined in denouncing Bush’s lies on Iraq as well as the cost of the occupation. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who voted against the war resolution, suggested there are grounds to impeach Bush.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said it was important “for people like me” not just to come before the NAACP to talk about racism, but “to talk to white people all around America about racism.”

Former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun said quality public education for every child would top her priorities. African Americans have been excluded from “ownership and wealth,” she charged. “We need to invest in ways that create opportunity across the board. We need to provide public sector employment at the end of the day for the long-term unemployed.”

In the crowd were members of many unions in the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. Bert Boca, a delegate from Massachusetts who was staffing the UNITE table in the exhibition hall, said, “The trade union movement and the civil rights movement are two movements with one goal. Those who have the most in common with the NAACP are workers, low-income people.”

Larry Bowman, a delegate from Saginaw, Mich., and a United Auto Workers member, said Black workers have been decimated by the loss of two million industrial jobs. “We are losing through job attrition. People who retire are not being replaced even though the contract calls for them to be replaced. The corporations have decided they are not going to replace them.”

“Elections are always crucial,” Bowman said. “We just need to come together to do what we all need not just what a few need.”

Tim Wheeler can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com. Debbie Bell can be reached at pww@pww.org

Latino population grows in U.S.

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 04:47:00 +0000

At the recently concluded convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Louis Kincannon, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, announced that Latinos became the country’s largest minority group in July 2002. The Latino population grew 9.8 percent since April 2000 to 38.8 million, about 500,000 more than the African American population. Since African Americans are counted as a race and Latinos are counted as an ethnic group, there is an overlap of 1.7 million. More than half the U.S. population growth since 2000 was Latino.

About 53 percent of the Latino growth is the result of immigrants coming to the U.S. With one-third below the age of 18, this population is expected to continued growing rapidly.

But just seeing these numbers alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

While for most people the term “Latino” is short for Latin American, it means something totally different when the government counts people. For the Census Bureau, “Latino” includes people from Spanish-speaking countries or who identify with any Spanish-speaking country including Spain. It doesn’t count people from Brazil (estimated at 600,000 by the government of Brazil) nor Haitians (estimated at anywhere from more than 500,000 on up), who are counted as Black.

The U.S. Latino population is very diverse, coming from different countries with different, albeit similar, experiences and traditions. A majority are people from Mexico or of Mexican descent who make up 58.5 percent of the Latino population. This is followed by Puerto Ricans with 9.6 percent, Cubans with 3.5 percent, Dominicans with 2.2 percent, and Salvadorans with 1.9 percent. Central Americans (including Salvadorans) make up 4.8 percent. People from South America make up 3.8 percent, with Colombians the biggest group at 1.3 percent.

While Latinos are found in every state of the Union, they are concentrated in certain areas. The city with the largest concentration of Latinos is New York with over 2 million, according to the 2000 Census. This is followed by Los Angeles with 1.7 million, Chicago with over 750,000 and Houston with 731,000.

The cities with the largest Mexican population are Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. Of the top ten cities with Mexican populations, four are in California with a combined population of 1.8 million and four are in Texas with 1.7 million. The second largest Mexican population is in Chicago (530,000).

The second largest Latino population, Puerto Ricans, is concentrated in New York (789,000), followed by Chicago (113,000), and Philadelphia (92,000). Other large Puerto Rican communities can be found in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio and Florida.

California has the highest Latino population of any state, but it is second to New Mexico in terms of percentage. Texas follows California in both percentage and numbers. Illinois, New York, Florida, and New Jersey are among the top ten states for Latinos.

While the Southwest, Northeast, Illinois and southern Florida have been the traditional areas of Latino concentration, many new immigrants have been settling in other locales over the last 20 years.

One of these areas is the South. The metropolitan Atlanta area has a Latino population of over a quarter of a million, ten times what it was in 1980. Greensboro, Charlotte, and Nashville have all seen their Latin American population grow six to nine times in the same period. Raleigh, N.C., takes the grand prize in Latino population growth, with an increase of over 1,000 percent since 1980. The Raleigh metro area now has a Latino population of almost 73,000.

The author can be reached at j.a.cruz@comcast.net