People Before Profit blog

Iraqi unionists Traveling theater

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:02:00 +0000

Iraqi artists, trade unionists and others who fled from persecution at the hands of the Ba’ath regime are joining forces with the newly emerging democratic trade union movement there in a traveling theater company to promote union rights among the people.

With more than 50 percent of the Iraqi people unemployed, Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions’ (IFTU) priority is to secure jobs and a living wage for Iraqi workers.

“To achieve this, the urgent task of educating Iraqi workers about trade unionism, labor and democratic rights, health and safety and other issues becomes more and more urgent,” the IFTU said in a statement.

“It is our modest aim, with the assistance of the international labor movement, to take traveling theater companies to every workplace in Iraq to explain through the medium of theater, poetry and exhibitions. Theatre is a great popular tradition among the Iraqi people.”

The group is launching the project by equipping a bus as a traveling theater to tour Iraqi workplaces and communities. To raise money for the project they are organizing the “Khalil Shawqi Appeal,” named for an actor-playwright and former railroad worker, who was the subject of the Iraqi film “Khalil Shawqi: The Ever Restless Man.” The film won the “Silver Hawk” award for short documentary film at the Fourth Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam last month.

Guthrie portrait dedicated at state capitol

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:57:00 +0000

OKLAHOMA CITY – (AP) Entertainer Arlo Guthrie and other family members led the singing at the Oklahoma State Capitol July 15 to celebrate the unveiling of a portrait of his father, legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie.

The painting by Charles Banks Wilson is titled, “This Land Was Made for You And Me,” a refrain from “This Land Is Your Land,” the folk anthem that is among an estimated 1,000 songs Guthrie is credited with writing.

“This is totally cool,” said Arlo of the honor for his father, who in the past was sometimes shunned in conservative Oklahoma because of the reputation he earned in the 1930s when his songs promoted unionism and reviled banks and other institutions.

One of the songs performed at the Capitol by Arlo, his children and other family members was a tribute to Pretty Boy Floyd, the 1930s outlaw considered sort of a Robin Hood by some downtrodden Oklahomans. It contained the lines:

“Now, as through this world I ramble, I see lots of funny men. Some will rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen. But as through your life you travel, and through your life you roam, you will never see an outlaw drive a family from their home.”

Mary Jo Edgmon of Seminole, Okla., Woody’s 81-year-old sister, helped unveil the painting. She said Guthrie loved Oklahoma and always said, “I would be mighty proud if you would just write Okie on my tombstone.”

Wilson, who has also painted portraits of famous Oklahomans Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe, donated his $20,000 fee to the local chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Foundation of America. Guthrie died from the disease in 1967.

Guy Logsdon, Oklahoma historian, said Guthrie was a poet-philosopher whose status in American literature would continue to grow. Some literary critics are already calling him “the Walt Whitman of the 20th century,” Logsdon said.

Woody Guthrie the real ramblin man

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:50:00 +0000

Book review

Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie By Ed Cray W.W. Norton & Company, 2004 Hardcover, 384 pp., $29.95

Since first “discovering” Woody Guthrie over 30 years ago, I’ve devoured everything about him. I listened to – and loved – his music. I read all the books about him. I even watched that horrid film that Hollywood made about him, “Bound for Glory.”

Woody was the great “traveling troubadour.” He became almost like the wistful legend of the IWW organizer Joe Hill, who will “always be there whenever working folks fight for their rights.”

Woody, however, was a real man: a tough, gritty, skinny, little Dust Bowl refugee who wrote and sang the songs of common folks, songs that lifted the spirits of people beaten down by the corporations and the banks.

Even today, Woody’s songs continue to boost people struggling against injustice, for a better life. While this tough little man is a true hero, an almost mythic figure to many of us, I often wondered who the real Woody was. After reading Ed Cray’s “Ramblin’ Man,” I wonder no longer.

“Ramblin’ Man” is the first piece I’ve seen on the real Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, born in 1912 in Okemah, Okla. For those who want to read of Woody the legend, this is not your book. However, as I read “Ramblin’ Man,” another Woody came alive, this one with warts, shortcomings and personal problems like all of us, but a much more real-life Woody, struggling – like all those around him – against the massive impersonal, and truly evil, power of raw capitalism during that awful period of the 1930s that we have come to call the Great Depression. Instead of being swept aside by this tide of brutal history, Woody saw the possibility of a better life and was driven to fight to get there.

Cray’s book traces Woody’s life from his early days in Okemah, where his father was a rough-and-tumble speculator and politician, through an early marriage, to Woody’s travels (first to the West Coast and later to New York and elsewhere), to his rise as one of the premier people’s musicians of the 1930s.

It describes the insanity that his mother fell into and the death of his young sister in a fire caused by his mother’s infirmity. These were events that Woody carried as scars throughout his life.

The book gives the reader a feeling of being with Woody as he traveled to California to find “his people,” the Oklahoma refugees, “Okies,” who’d fled the loss of all they had in the horrible dust storms of the early ’30s.

Deeply angered by the mistreatment of working people he witnessed, he became radicalized. It takes us with Woody when he sang, with Lefty Lou, at a radio station in Los Angeles and how he came in contact with African American people for the first time. Learning that his use of the N-word was offensive, he vowed never to use it again.

The book traces Woody’s joining up with the Communist Party, his long friendships with actor Will Geer and Cisco Houston, and his later travels to New York where he met Pete Seeger, Leadbelly and many others, including the Almanac Singers. It covers his time in the Merchant Marines, in the war against Hitler, when his guitar carried the slogan, “This machine kills fascists!”

For much of his life, Woody was haunted by the fear that he might be carrying the gene that caused his mother’s insanity. That fear was horribly confirmed when he succumbed to the ravages of Huntington’s Chorea, a horrible degenerative disease that gradually stripped Woody of his talents and abilities and led to his death at age 55 in 1967.

Cray’s book is a fine contribution to Woody’s story. There is one area, however, in which his work comes up short. That is Cray’s use of numerous quotes to show that Woody “wasn’t really a member” of the Communist Party USA. Cray treats the CPUSA in a respectful manner, and acknowledges the role of communists in the building of the great people’s movement during the ’30s and ’40s.

Therefore, I found it somewhat ridiculous and out of character that Cray felt he should publish quotes from others about Woody’s “not really” being in the Party at the same time he is writing that Woody wrote hundreds of “Woody Sez” columns for the Daily Worker and that he stood with the CPUSA during every twist and turn of political events during that terrific period. For me, the only quote that should matter is Woody’s when he stated, “The best thing I ever did was join up with the Communist Party!” (p. 150).

Even with that one flaw, this book is one that will make a great many new friends for our brother and comrade Woody. These new friends will know a newer, much fuller and richer Woody, one with flaws, like you and I, who rose above them and took us up with him.

The author can be reached at bruce@imaginenet.net.

Environmentalism and anti-imperialism

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:43:00 +0000

“Hey Henry, what are you doing in there?”

“Hey Waldo, what are you doing out there?”

This dialogue between Henry David Thoreau and his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson is purported to have occurred through the jailhouse window in Concord, Mass., in 1846.

Thoreau (1817-1862), the philosopher-environmentalist and author of “Walden,” was in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax he felt was supporting the U.S. imperialist drive into Mexico, a drive that would also expand slavery. Thoreau’s fusion of environmentalism and anti-imperialism was a precedent-setting stance.

The baton of anti-imperialism among environmentalists was picked up in the early 20th century by Scott Nearing (1883-1983). An economist by training, Nearing was an early advocate of the simple life as a way to stay physically healthy and mentally alert.

While teaching at the Wharton School of Economics, Nearing began investigating child labor and supporting legislation to prohibit it. At the same time, war drums were beating in Europe in the prelude to World War I. When Nearing agitated to keep the U.S. out of the inter-imperialist war, he was summarily fired by the university. His case still is mentioned when academic freedom struggles erupt.

Nearing is popularly known as an early practitioner and initiator of the “back-to-the-land” movement. His book, “Living The Good Life” (1954), co-authored with his wife Helen, is a classic in this genre. What many don’t realize is that he was a member of the Socialist Party and later the Communist Party USA. He remained a staunch anti-imperialist for the rest of his long life. One of his many books was “The Twilight of Empire: An Economic Interpretation of Imperialist Cycles” (1930).

Many see the rebirth of the modern environmental movement in the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962. Carson (1907-1964) focused on the effects of pesticides on wildlife and their potential harm to people, an issue subsequently taken up by the United Farm Workers in the 1970s.

But a forerunner to these efforts was the work of the Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI). Although CNI was initiated by Barry Commoner, women such as Virginia Warner Brodine (1915-2000) played outstanding roles and helped give the evolving group an antiwar bent.

In the 1950s, with participation of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, where Brodine was a staff member, CNI campaigned to have milk tested for strontium-90, radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. This led to a unique partnership of scientists and grassroots citizenry at the height of the Cold War.

In 1963, CNI morphed into the Committee for Environmental Information (CEI). CEI did seminal work on air pollution, water pollution and pesticides. In 1969 it launched the journal Environment. Brodine had served as editor of its precursor, Environment and Citizen.

Brodine opposed the war in Vietnam, visited Cuba, and wrote on that island’s developing environmental consciousness and the need to defend Cuba from imperialist designs. In one of her last theoretical works she exposed capitalism’s forced alienation of workers from both their work and nature. In the manufacturing sector, she wrote, “nature appears to have nothing to do with the work. Those workers who wish to have a connection with nature think of it as something apart” from their work life. It was her conclusion that this fed the slowness of unions and communist parties to recognize the need for a working-class environmentalism.

The anti-imperialist tradition in the environmental movement needs rekindling now more than ever.

In a recent speech on Iraq, President Bush stated, “We are not an imperialist country.” Among the lies this administration has circulated, this was a whopper.

The U.S. has over 395 major military bases throughout the world, and that’s just the big ones. The military arsenal includes 8,000 strategic and 22,000 tactical nuclear weapons. (How’s that for weapons of mass destruction?) Navy nuclear submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers and other craft are in every ocean and visit every continent. Their total tonnage and firepower surpasses that of all the world’s navies combined. The U.S. military spends more than all other major

powers combined.

But it’s not just the military realm that stamps the U.S. with the imperialist logo. Its flow of capital is a telltale sign. One needn’t look further than Iraq for evidence. Behind the blur of military force in Iraq came the corporate invasion. Eighteen companies, including Halliburton, Kellogg Brown and Root, Bechtel, and MCI WorldCom, lead the profit parade.

Virginia Brodine developed the slogan, “People and nature before profits.” More than ever, it needs to be raised in the antiwar and environmental movements to increase their breadth and deepen their content.

Nick Bart is an environmental activist. He can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Space privatization: Road to conflict?

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:38:00 +0000

Recent news brings us the story of “space pioneers” launching privately funded craft into the heavens. A special prize is offered to the first private aerospace corporation who can successfully take a pilot and a “space tourist” into orbit.

Is this “privatization” of space a good thing? Is there any reason to be concerned about the trend?

Three major issues come immediately to mind: Space as an environment, space law, and profit in space.

We’ve all probably heard about the growing problem of space junk where over 100,000 bits of debris are now tracked on the radar screens at NORAD in Colorado as they orbit the earth at 18,000 m.p.h. Several space shuttles have been nicked by bits of debris in the past resulting in cracked windshields. The International Space Station (ISS) recently was moved to a higher orbit because space junk was coming dangerously close.

As we see a flurry of launches by private space corporations the chances of accidents, and thus more debris, becomes a serious reality to consider. Very soon we will reach the point of no return, where space pollution will be so great that an orbiting minefield will have been created that hinders all access to space.

When the United Nations concluded the 1979 Moon Treaty the U.S. refused, and still does, to sign it. One key reason is that the treaty outlaws military bases on it, but it also outlaws any nation, corporation, or individual from making land “claims” on the planetary body. The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty takes a similar position in regard to all of the planetary bodies, arguing that the heavens are the province of all humankind.

As the privateers move into space, in addition to building space hotels and the like, they also want to claim ownership of the planets because they hope to mine the sky. Gold has been discovered on asteroids, helium-3 on the moon, and magnesium, cobalt and uranium on Mars. It was recently reported that the Halliburton Company is now working with NASA to develop new drilling capabilities to mine Mars.

One organization that seeks to rewrite space law is called United Societies in Space (USIS). They state, “USIS provides legal and policy support for those who intend to go to space. USIS encourages private property rights and investment. Space is the Free Market Frontier.”

The taxpayers, especially in the U.S. where NASA has been funded with taxpayer dollars since its inception, have paid billions of dollars in space technology research and development (R&D). As the aerospace industry moves toward forcing privatization of space what they are really saying is that the technological base is now at the point where the government can get out of the way and let private industry begin to make profits and control space.

Thus, after the taxpayers have paid all the R&D, private industry now intends to gorge itself on profits. Taxpayers won’t see any return on our “collective investment.”

So let’s just imagine for a moment that this private sector vision for space comes true. Profitable mining on the moon and Mars – who would keep competitors from sneaking in and creating conflict over the new 21st century gold rush? Who will be the space police?

In the congressional study published in 1989 called “Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years,” we get some inkling of the answer. The forward to the book was signed by the former Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), among others. The book stresses the importance of military bases on the moon and suggests that with bases there the U.S. could control the pathway, or the “gravity well,” between Earth and the moon. It notes, “Armed forces might lie in wait at that location to hijack rival shipments on return.”

Plans are now underway to make space the next “conflict zone” where corporations intend to control resources and maximize profit. The so-called private “space pioneers” are the first step in this new direction. Ultimately the taxpayers will be asked to pay the enormous cost incurred by creating a military space infrastructure that would control the “shipping lanes” on and off the planet Earth.

After Columbus returned to Spain with the news that he had discovered the “new world,” Queen Isabella began the 100-year process to create the Spanish Armada to protect the new “interests and investments” around the world. This helped create the global war system.

Privatization does not mean that the taxpayer won’t be paying any more. Privatization really means that profits will be privatized. Privatization also means that existing international space legal structures will be destroyed in order to bend the law toward private profit. Serious moral and ethical questions must be raised before another new “frontier” of conflict is created.

Bruce K. Gagnon is coordinator of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He can be reached at globalnet@mindspring.com.

Abu Ghraib abuse part of larger pattern

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:15:00 +0000

I was not surprised at the torture atrocities by United States soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo.

I have traveled to Guatemala many times to be with returning refugees, the survivors of massacres and torture. I was in Guatemala in November of 1989 when Sister Diana Ortiz, a nun from the United States, was seized and subjected to unbelievable torture there. I was also there when, that same month, five Jesuit priests were massacred in El Salvador.

I have read documentation of CIA and Pentagon intelligence training, as well as of training in what was formerly the Army School of the Americas (SOA), now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The United States government has provided training and encouragement in these tactics.

The torture of Iraqi detainees held at the Abu Ghraib military prison is part of a larger pattern of abuse and torture at the hands of U.S. soldiers, U.S.-trained soldiers, independent contractors and intelligence agents around the world. In fact, U.S. Army intelligence manuals advocating torture techniques and describing how to circumvent laws on due process, arrest and detention were used for at least a decade to train Latin American soldiers at the School of the Americas.

“We see a consistent pattern of the Pentagon claiming to work for democracy,” says Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, “while in their prisons and training centers, reports of torture and human rights abuses continue to surface.”

More than 64,000 Latin American soldiers have been trained in combat skills and psychological warfare at the School of the Americas. Graduates are consistently involved in human rights abuses and atrocities.

In 1996, the Pentagon, under intense public pressure, released the classified training manuals used at the SOA. The Washington Post, in a story headlined “U.S. Instructed Latins in Executions, Torture,” reported on Sept. 21, 1996, that the manuals promoted executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion.

The manuals recommended the imprisonment of family members of those who support “union organizing or recruiting,” those who distribute “propaganda in favor of the interest of workers,” those who “sympathize with demonstrations or strikes,” and those who make “accusations that the government has failed to meet the basic needs of the people.” The training manuals are available on the SOA Watch Web site, www.soaw.org.

“Why the great surprise over Abu Ghraib?” asked Jennifer Harbury, a human rights lawyer whose husband, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, was tortured for two years and then was either dismembered or thrown from a helicopter by Guatemalan military officials receiving generous CIA payments. “This has been standard operating procedure for years.”

Reports of torture and abuse at the hands of U.S. and U.S.-trained soldiers, from Latin America to Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib, continue to surface, and the Pentagon continues to distance itself from the abuses.

“As in Latin America, officials claim the soldiers involved in torture in Iraq are ‘just a few bad apples,’” Father Bourgeois continued, “but as instances of human rights violations continue to grow around the world, a much larger picture of systematic abuse becomes clear.”

Peg Morton of Eugene, Ore., is serving a 90-day sentence at Federal Prison Camp Dublin in Dublin, Calif. She was convicted of criminal trespass that occurred during a demonstration last November at Fort Benning, Ga., site of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. She wrote this for Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), www.wand.org; courtesy MinutemanMedia.org.

Message from Missouri: 'This is our country! Let's take it back!'

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 06:08:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS – Voters here in the Show Me State want George W. Bush to show them one good reason to give him four more years in the White House in the Nov. 2 election. Missouri labor and its allies have seen enough already and are working hard to “show Bush the door in 2004.”

Defeat of Bush is not the only aim, however. Missouri Treasurer Nancy Farmer is running hard to oust Republican Sen. Kit Bond, a Bush clone. She hammers Bond for supporting tax giveaways to corporations, rewarding them for closing their plants in the U.S. and moving overseas. If Farmer succeeds, it would be a long step toward ending GOP control of the U.S. Senate. Incumbent Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, is seeking re-election with strong labor backing. There is also a broad movement spearheaded by gays and lesbians to block a constitutional amendment, on the Aug. 3 primary ballot that would ban same-sex marriages.

There is a spirited race for the seat vacated by the former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. Russ Carnahan, son of the popular late governor, Mel Carnahan, is the favorite. But one of his rivals is Jeff Smith, a youthful Washington University college professor whose glossy, widely distributed brochure states, “Hold Bush accountable for his lies. The rush to war in Iraq is one of the biggest mistakes in American history. … This is our country! Let’s take it back!”

‘We need a voice in the Legislature’

John L. Bowman Sr., an auto worker active in the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), is making waves in his campaign for a second term representing the 70th Legislative District that includes his hometown, Northwoods, in St. Louis County. A tall, genial man, Bowman had just come off night shift at the Chrysler plant when he spoke with the World. He chuckled when asked if he was headed home to get some sleep. “No,” he replied. “Sleep can wait.”

He was on his way to the local McDonald’s restaurant where his campaign workers rendezvous every morning and evening before fanning out to ring doorbells and talk to voters. “We need a voice in the Legislature that is a clear advocate for working families on issues like living wage jobs, health care, and education,” he said. “The Bush administration is pushing states into a fiscal crunch. Special interest groups are at an advantage, getting more tax loopholes. The burden is being thrown on lower-income working people.”

Bowman served a term in the Legislature in 2001 and pushed through bills providing tax credits for teachers who dip into their own meager income to buy school supplies for their students, and a bill to mandate teaching of “financial literacy” in kindergarten through 12th grade. He also succeeded in pushing through a bill to extend benefits to thousands of poor people facing termination of their Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) benefits. From 1998 to 2000, he served as a Northwoods alderman.

Bowman said his canvassers urge people to vote in the Aug. 3 primary but also in November to oust Bush and other right-wing Republicans. “My campaign represents opposition to the right wing,” he said. “Opposition at the state level is central to turning back the tide of right-wing oppression at the national level.”

‘Vote theft was not limited to Florida

Bowman has inspired people to canvass door-to-door in 101-degree heat when a Huck Finn-style dip in the Mississippi makes more sense. Much of the sweat is being shed at the headquarters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), where scores of union and community activists staff a state-of-the-art phone bank to register new voters and turn them out both for the primary and general election. An army of volunteers leaves every morning to go canvassing.

A huge voter turnout in the city of St. Louis and surrounding St. Louis County and in Kansas City, Mo., on Nov. 2 is key to defeating Bush in this battleground state. Bush stole Missouri by a razor-thin margin in 2000 amid widespread charges that thousands of Black voters were disenfranchised.

Lew Moye, a 40-year veteran of this city’s Chrysler plant and a close friend of Bowman’s, told the World, “A lot of people in 2000 showed up at their polling places on election day and were told their names were not on the voter rolls. They were purged.” A judge ordered the polls kept open to accommodate thousands of voters who had been waiting in long lines in Black precincts in St. Louis. “Senator Bond went through the roof,” Moye said. “He went to a higher court and got an order to close the polls. It was very similar to what they did in Florida.”

Moye, chairman of the United Auto Workers Local 110 Shop Committee representing 4,000 workers at the Chrysler plant and also president of the St. Louis Chapter of the CBTU, said, “We have to turn out in record numbers Nov. 2. We cannot allow ourselves to be discouraged by what happened in 2000. People need to go to the polls early and report any kind of harassment, any attempt to deny them their right to vote.”

He added, “I think we’ve got a great chance to defeat Bush in Missouri. It’s just a matter of getting our voters out to the polls.”

Working people “are not better off today than they were four years ago,” Moye continued. “Bush hasn’t done anything for us. He’s got us bogged down in a war we can’t win. We’ve got a health care crisis that is just getting worse. If ever there was a need for a change in the White House, it is now. I believe the people of Missouri are going to do their part to make that change this time around.”

Since Bush stole the 2000 election, Moye said, Missouri has lost 37,400 manufacturing jobs and 141,915 workers in the state are unemployed. The jobless rate jumped from 4.4 percent in January 2001 to 4.7 percent in April 2004. At least 28,800 jobless workers in Missouri have exhausted their unemployment benefits without finding new jobs.

“Bush has done nothing to stop the plant shutdowns,” said Moye. “On the contrary, he has encouraged outsourcing with his support of tax loopholes for companies that move overseas.”

‘Bush defeat will boost union power

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, by contrast, vows to close those loopholes and reserve tax credits for companies that build plants in the United States. Moye pointed out that Bush is also a labor-baiter and union-buster who denied union rights for thousands of Homeland Security employees. Kerry refuses to cross picket lines and he supports the Employee Freedom of Choice Act to make it easier for workers to win union rights.

“The defeat of Bush would be a big rebuff to the right-wing tendencies in this country,” Moye said. “It would send a signal that unions must be able to organize workers without restrictions, obstacles and harassment. And it would go a long way to revitalize the labor-African American alliance that is the basis for all progressive change in this country,” said Moye.

“It’s a myth that Bush is going to sweep rural Missouri,” he said. “Factories in rural Missouri are closing the same as in the cities. Who is dying in Iraq? It’s poor rural whites and poor urban African Americans.”

In addition to Bowman, the CBTU has fielded Fay Davis, an autoworker, and Jay Ozier, a carpenter, for re-election to the Missouri Democratic State Committee in their respective wards.

“All of these candidates are pushing to get rid of Bush,” Moye said. “We’re walking the streets, knocking on doors, talking to people about what it will mean to elect workers to office like John Bowman and how his victory in the primary will help turn out a big vote to defeat Bush in November.”

One of Bowman’s most enthusiastic backers is Shirley Johnson, a three-term alderman in the town of Northwoods. “John’s ideas and issues are basically the same as mine,” she said. “The needs of working families, education, health insurance, a woman’s right to choose. The incumbent opposes a woman’s right to choose. I’m definitely in favor of choice.”

She added, “As an African American leader, John is capable of turning out the vote not only on Aug. 3, but also on Nov. 2.”

‘ ‘The feel of a strong people’s movement’

Bowman’s legions of canvassers have included activists with Planned Parenthood, SEIU, and a contingent of members of the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League (YCL). Collectively they have visited more than 1,500 homes in the community northwest of downtown St. Louis. The Party and YCL members are volunteers in the CPUSA-YCL “Midwest Project” that targets key battleground states in the surging “dump Bush” movement. Many canvassers end their conversations with the appeal, “Let’s put John Bowman in on August 3rd, and George W. Bush out on November 2nd.”

Jim Wilkerson, district organizer of the Kansas-Missouri CPUSA and himself a CBTU activist, hailed the team mobilized by the Party and YCL. “The Party and YCL are rising to the occasion, coalescing with other progressive forces to defend democracy and defeat Bush in November,” he said.

Canvassers have come from California, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, and many other states. George Robbins, a teacher from Buffalo, N.Y., said, “Forty years ago I was a volunteer in the Freedom Summer Project registering Black voters in Mississippi. I spent the first evening at the home of Fannie Lou Hamer. Here we are today working for a big vote to get Bush out. Like then, this effort has the feel of a strong people’s movement.”

Across town, Audrey Hollis, an organizer with Jobs with Justice, said her group is “reaching out to under-represented voters and new Americans. We are not only registering them to vote but we are educating them on the issues. The election in Missouri is very, very close. If we get just three additional voters in every precinct, then we will win. Bush and corporate America are shifting costs to the backs of employees and working people. We are losing income, losing health care and pensions. It is hitting everybody. The gap is widening between the wealthy and the workers. Can Bush be defeated? Yes. There is a lot of hope and energy in the air.”

Mark Fraley, civic engagement director for the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition, said that as a rule of thumb, 50 percent or fewer of low-income people vote. But in 2000 and 2002, after an extensive campaign by the coalition, 67 percent of low-income people voted. “It shows that if the means are available, poor people will vote,” Fraley said. “This election is especially unique in that the electorate is so polarized. The two parties are focusing so much on winning over that tiny percentage of undecided swing voters that they ignore this huge pool of disenfranchised people who are disgruntled with the system.”

‘Every vote counts in Show Me State

Fraley added, “We are going to shopping centers, welfare offices, bus and metro stops. We approach people and register them to vote. Sometimes it is in the workplace.”

In the one year since the project began, he said, over 42,000 voters have been registered. “We plan to register 56,000. We are working all over the state of Missouri. We are just now moving into the get-out-the-vote stage. This is the most important election of our lifetime. Missouri has picked the winner in every election since the Civil War.”

This is the state where voters cast their ballots in the 2000 election for Democratic Senate nominee Mel Carnahan, who had died in a plane crash, rather than Republican John Ashcroft. Bush got his revenge by naming Ashcroft as Attorney General.

“That vote for Carnahan symbolized the growing sophistication of Missouri voters,” Fraley said. “After all, if you had a choice of voting for a dead man or voting for John Ashcroft, who would you vote for?”

‘The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com.

Even employer-backed health plans too costly

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 05:53:00 +0000

The rate of health care coverage is falling, even among workers eligible for employer-sponsored health plans, according to a recent survey by the Urban Institute. The survey showed a 2 percent decline in health care coverage among this group during the three-year period 1999 through 2001. In 2002, 88 percent of workers and their families eligible for employer coverage purchased it; 90 percent had done so in 1999.

The cost of health care premiums rose 14 percent for all employers in 2003 alone and even more for small employers. Many small businesses are dropping employee coverage altogether or requiring workers to carry more of the cost. Many workers cannot afford the increased premium and withdraw from company plans leaving them and their families exposed to the full brunt of medical costs.

Other workers, though able to pay the premium for themselves, are unable to pay the amount required to include their families, according to the Urban Institute’s data. In 2002 only 83 percent of working family children were covered, a decline of 3.5 percent during the period studied.

Given present national priorities, one need not be a rocket scientist to understand that those suffering most because of these cutbacks are low-income workers and their families. For the purposed of its study, the Urban Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan policy research and educational organization, classified as low-income an individual earning less than $17,700 annually or a family of four with an income of $36,000 or less. Only 66.8 percent of workers earning such low wages and eligible for coverage purchased it in 2001, down 5 percent from 1999, and only 58.6 of their children were covered.

A brief issued in April of this year by the Commonwealth Fund which analyzed health care coverage during the four years 1996 through 1999 revealed the same trends. According to this report, coverage is even lower among low-income minority workers. Low-income Latinos were particularly hard-hit. Fully 37 percent of Latinos who worked during the entire period were without private coverage. Nearly 80 percent of all low-income Latinos were without coverage at some time during the four years studied. Nearly two-thirds of Latino workers and their families were without insurance for 13 consecutive months.

Racial and ethnic disparity in coverage persists beyond low-income levels: Of Latino workers earning incomes greater than 200 percent of the poverty level, 40 percent were without health coverage at some point during the four years studied. The comparable figures for African American and white workers considered separately were 31 and 25 percent.

We know what happens to those without the means to pay for medical care: they wait until illness or accident is so serious as to drive them to the emergency room. There they receive the care they need, if it is not too late, that is, for the injury or illness may no longer be amenable to treatment.

Early treatment/preventive maintenance checkups save lives and cost far less. More money available for health care means more people successfully treated. Wouldn’t the logical way to handle the cost and availability of health care, therefore, be a national single payer plan? We would all be able to receive the health care we need. Health care is not a privilege; it is a basic human right.

See the reports cited above at www.cmwf.org and www.urban.org. The author can be reached at pww@pww.org. (see related story below)

* * * * * *

Universal health care within reach

“Health Care Crisis and Election 2004,” a conference and rally of the uninsured, will be held at the time of the Republican Convention in New York City, Aug. 31-Sept. 1. Leading off the meet will be Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), whose proposed legislation, the U.S. Health Insurance Bill, HR 676, would provide universal coverage for health care, prescription drugs, mental health, dental, optical and long-term care, according to the conference call of the Campaign for National Health Program Now.

Besides Conyers, scheduled speakers include Steelworkers Union President Leo Gerard, General Secretary of the United Methodist Church Jim Winkler, actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, public television commentator Bill Moyers, Kentucky Nurses organizer Kay Tillow and Dr. Quentin Young from Physicians for National Health Care. The conference will open at 9:00 a.m. Aug. 31 at City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue. For more information call 800-453-1305 or go to cnhpnow.org.

Bush agenda is a cloud over civilization

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 05:44:00 +0000

The Bush administration governs from a script commissioned by oil, finance and military interests. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, these corporate interests represent “a cloud over civilization.”

The key features of the Republican strategy are massive tax cuts for the wealthy and severe increases in budget deficits; permanent war and a sharp increase in military spending; and seizure of the world’s oil reserves.

Professor Michael Klare, one of the world’s experts on the geopolitics of oil, recently wrote “Controlling Iraq is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel. Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan and China. It’s having our hand on the spigot.”

Jim Lobe, long time foreign policy analyst, has written extensively on U.S. military redeployment into the world’s oil-rich regions in order to “enforce a Pax Americana, based on an ability to exert unilateral military control over the production and flow of energy resources from Central Asia, the Gulf region and the coast of West Africa in the face in potential rivals.”

And Robert Ebel, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, views oil as the fuel of military power, national treasuries and international politics. “It’s no longer a commodity to be bought and sold within the confines of traditional energy supply and demand balances. Rather, it has been transformed into a determinant of well-being, of national security, and international power.”

Tax cuts are good news for those Bush refers to as his “base”: millionaires. A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently concluded the wealthy, with income over $1,000,000, will receive an average tax cut of $136,398. However, the bottom four-fifths, those with incomes below $76,400, “would lose more than they gain from the tax cuts once the necessary financing is taken into account.”

The sharp decline in corporate taxes has little to do with lack of profits. Profits are at record levels, but rather than invest in new jobs corporations are using their record revenues in dividend pay-outs and stock share repurchases, while outsourcing jobs to low wage, export zones around the world.

The whole point of tax cuts was never about job formation. It was merely part of a cynical strategy “to starve the beast,” in the words of Republican Party strategist Grover Norquist, to use budget deficits as the rational to radically scale back government social programs while transferring tax revenues to the owners of the national debt.

Bill Moyers, in a speech titled “The Fight of Our Lives,” exposes the Republican efforts to return government to the golden age of “compassionate conservatism,” before Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society program. Summing up Moyer said, “Let’s face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs – if this isn’t class war, what is?”

According to the ultra-right, only three things matter: a permanent war against “terrorism,” who gets to vote and whose vote is counted.

Never mind that:

• one-quarter to one-third of adults under 35 have no insurance.

• jobless claims are rising much faster than expected, and inner city unemployment rates exceed 25 percent.

• the projected federal budget deficit went from a $5.6 trillion surplus in 2001 to a projected $5.5 trillion deficit in the next 10 years.

• unemployment rate reached 9.7 percent in May when discouraged workers are counted.

• 43 million Americans lack health care.

• U.S. prison population is the world’s largest.

• there is a surge in homeless families.

• trade deficit grew to a record $48.3 billion in April.

The Democratic Party Convention priorities have to reject permanent war, adopt a platform that puts people before profits and create an action plan to guarantee the integrity of the 2004 elections.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

International notes

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 04:59:00 +0000

Nigeria: U.S. seeks closer security ties

General Charles Wald, deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, met with Nigerian government and military officials last week in an effort to build closer security ties in West Africa. In a tour of several African nations, Wald was expected to discuss the continent’s strategic position in “fighting terrorism” and protecting natural resources.

The European Command, traditionally focused on Western Europe and the Balkans, has enlarged its area of responsibility to include 93 countries covering much of Africa and parts of the Middle East as well as Europe.

The Gulf of Guinea – from Liberia in the west to Angola in the south – now provides about 15 percent of U.S. oil supplies, and is expected to supply up to 25 percent by 2015. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and its biggest oil producer. In recent years the U.S. has increasingly emphasized Africa’s significance and sought to build ties with many African nations concerning security issues.

Haiti: Lavalas supporters demonstrate

Over 5,000 supporters of Fanmi Lavalas, the party of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, demonstrated in Port-au-Prince July 15 to protest Aristide’s removal in a Feb. 29 coup d’etat and to commemorate his birthday, the Haitian news agency AHP said.

The demonstrators chanted, “We cannot betray our blood because our blood is Aristide’s blood,” and emphasized that even though the president is now in South Africa, the majority of Haitians continue to support him.

Speakers protested the current climate of political persecutions, arbitrary arrests and intimidation, which they said created a climate of fear making a new election impossible. They also cited the population’s worsening living conditions.

A new demonstration was announced for July 28 – the 89th anniversary of the first U.S. occupation of Haiti – to demand release of all Fanmi Lavalas activists illegally imprisoned by the interim government installed by the U.S. and France.

Peru: General strike protests gov’t economic policies

A general strike July 14 against government economic policies drew participation of some 150 different unions and was backed by Peru’s largest opposition party. The strike was called by the country’s largest labor federation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), to protest economic and social austerity policies adopted by the government of Alejandro Toledo at the behest of the United States.

“We want bread with social justice – that is the main message of this national strike,” CGTP leader Juan Jose Gorriti told thousands of union members and supporters in the capital city, Lima. He said reports the union received indicated about 90 percent of workers had supported the strike.

The government deployed some 600 army troops as well as 93,000 police in connection with the strike, a move Gorriti criticized as increasing the risk of confrontation.

Israel: Suicide top killer of soldiers

Citing statistics from the Israeli army’s rehabilitation division, the Hebrew daily Maariv said last week that for the first time, suicide has become the leading cause of death in the Israeli armed forces.

A total of 43 soldiers killed themselves last year, compared to 30 soldiers killed in incidents related to the Palestinian uprising. Maariv said this was a 30 percent increase over the 2002 figure of 31 suicides. Additionally last year, 32 Israeli soldiers died of illnesses or accidents.

While the Israeli Defense Ministry says there is no correlation, it is generally believed that many of the suicides are related to soldiers’ traumatic experiences in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Germany: Autoworkers down tools

Over 60,000 autoworkers struck July 15 to protest DaimlerChrysler’s plan to have Mercedes workers work longer hours, Reuters said.

The company aims to save $618 million in annual personnel costs at Mercedes, its most profitable unit, but the unions have agreed to measures saving just over one-third of that. DaimlerChrysler has said it might cut thousands of jobs at its Sindelfingen plant and shift some production of the new C-class midsize Mercedes to other plants in Germany and abroad if workers continue to oppose new cuts.

“These are not negotiations; this is a brutal attempt at blackmail,” said Erich Klemm, the head of DaimlerChrysler’s works council, at the demonstration in Sindelfingen. The DaimlerChrysler dispute follows a deal reached by Siemens last month with its workers, to increase hours from 35 to 40 without increasing pay.

International Notes are compiled by Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel@pww.org). Julia Lutsky contributed to this week’s notes.

Palestinians press for UN action on wall

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 04:00:00 +0000

Palestinians are calling for swift action by the United Nations to enforce the July 9 ruling by the World Court that Israel’s apartheid-like “separation wall” along the West Bank is illegal and should be torn down. The UN General Assembly’s overwhelming vote in support of the court’s decision July 20 has only strengthened the Palestinians’ resolve.

Citing relevant international and human rights law – including the Right to Self Determination, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – the International Court of Justice voted 14-1 that “construction of the wall and its associated regime are contrary to international law.”

The court said Israel should immediately cease all construction on the concrete and barbed-wire wall and dismantle segments already built. It further called on Israel to pay reparations for the damage done to Palestinians who have been displaced or harmed by its construction. The only dissenting vote was from U.S. judge Thomas Buergenthal, Reuters reported.

The verdict was hailed by a wide spectrum of Palestinian leaders and civic groups, and by Israeli peace forces. Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister, called the decision historic, and Saeb Erekat, minister for negotiations, urged swift UN action to implement the non-binding advisory decision.

The Israeli government of Ariel Sharon said it would disregard the ruling, saying the court had no jurisdiction or authority to rule on the question. In contrast, the Jewish peace group Gush Shalom placed newspaper ads that said, “Three cheers for the judges.” It hailed both the Word Court decision and the earlier decision by Israel’s Supreme Court that the wall, at least in some places, violates the law and imposes unnecessary suffering on the Palestinian people.

The Communist Party of Israel said the World Court’s recommendations “are an important contribution to the public struggle against the construction of the wall and the continuing occupation, and for the achievement of a just and stable peace which is the real guarantee of security.” It said that the true purpose of the wall was not to enhance Israel’s security, but to continue the occupation of Palestinian land, to perpetuate the settlements in the West Bank, and to prevent a viable Palestinian state.

Responding to the Israeli government’s “arrogant dismissal” of the UN court’s findings, the CPI said such a stance may lead to the international isolation of Israel and to the imposition of sanctions such as those imposed on South Africa during the apartheid regime. It called for the immediate dismantling of the wall and of all settlements in the occupied territories.

Many Palestinians remain skeptical of the ruling’s impact. “I will not believe the ICJ’s ruling unless I get my land back and be able to cultivate it once again,” Umm Rabhia, who lost approximately 4,900 acres to the wall, told a reporter from Turks.us. She said she feared the ruling would remain merely ink on paper.

The U.S. government has consistently vetoed UN Security Council resolutions critical of the Israeli government’s violation of Palestinian rights, including one last October condemning the wall.

Meanwhile, as Palestinians sought to enforce the verdict against the apartheid wall, a serious political crisis erupted within the Palestinian Authority (PA). In the wake of a series of kidnappings, including of several Palestinian security officials and four French citizens in Gaza (later released), Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat declared a state of emergency in Gaza.

Prime Minister Qurei submitted his resignation, citing the lawlessness and saying he had insufficient authority to implement reforms, as did a number of other prominent officials. As of July 20, Qurei was persuaded to stay on. Arafat’s appointment of his nephew, Mousa Arafat, to a top security post was met with fierce opposition by resistance groups, including his own Fatah faction. He ultimately stepped back from the appointment by placing another official above him The persistent suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza – stemming from Israeli border closings, massive unemployment, and constant raids by Israeli occupation forces – has torn at the very fabric of civil society and worked to undermine Palestinian institutions, including the PA.

Danny Rubinstein, a columnist for the Israeli paper Haaretz, said, “Israel has done everything to bring about the collapse of the PA.” He said the Israelis have also “cultivated Palestinian corruption,” rewarding corrupt senior Palestinian officials while simultaneously creating severe hardship among the general Palestinian public.

Such moves have undermined Palestinian rule and ushered in a period of chaos, the outcome of which remains unpredictable, he said.

The author can be reached at malmberg@pww.org.

Groups mount challenge to U.S. travel ban

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 03:54:00 +0000

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Ninety-plus members of the Venceremos Brigade, the African Awareness Association, and the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange triumphantly returned July 19 from Cuba to U.S. soil here in defiance of the Bush administration’s recent tightening of the U.S. travel ban to the socialist island.

Almost simultaneously – 2,000 miles to the southwest – about 100 members of the Pastors for Peace Friendship caravan crossed the U.S.-Mexico border at Hidalgo, Texas, after having delivered over 120 tons of medical and educational supplies to the Cuban people, again in defiance of Bush administration policies.

All of the groups refused to apply for a license to travel to Cuba. Taken together, the groups mounted one of the largest organized challenges of the travel ban to date.

On the northern border, the Cuba travelers and some Canadian supporters walked across the mile-long International Peace Bridge to the U.S. Customs office here, chanting “We will break the travel ban!”

They were greeted by cheering supporters on the U.S. side.

The night before, the “brigadistas” had flown from Cuba to Toronto, where they were hosted by the Toronto-area Steelworkers Council. Canada has no travel restrictions to Cuba.

The Venceremos Brigade is an educational work project that has sent brigades to Cuba every year since 1969. This year’s members range in age from 16 to 73, come from all over the U.S. and are of many racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The brigadistas spent two weeks in Cuba working alongside Cubans renovating a school and a health clinic.

All the brigadistas spoke of the warmth, openness and honesty of the Cuban people. Donna Hernández, a researcher on racial and social justice from New York City, commented, “In Cuba, everybody has access to education and health care. No one is homeless or dying of hunger.”

Sobukwe Shukura, from Atlanta, co-chair of the National Network on Cuba and part of the African Awareness Association delegation, said, “Anytime a country with such meager resources, such as Cuba, can spend so much on education and health care, it shows that the government is interested in people first and foremost. Development in Cuba means helping humans. Development in the U.S. means building prisons and expensive housing.”

Samuel Kruger, a student from San Francisco, said the trip to Cuba showed him that “another world is possible.”

One of the Canadians on the scene was Ron Boyer, a retired member of Local 199 of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), and chair of the Peace and Disarmament Committee of the International Department of the CAW. He said the CAW has “long supported free travel to Cuba so people can get their own impressions of life in Cuba and make their own decisions.”

At the southern border, the Pastors for Peace delegation was delayed at the Hidalgo International Bridge by more than 100 Homeland Security, Treasury, Immigration, and Customs officials, who searched the travelers’ luggage and confiscated assorted handicrafts and gifts, including maracas, a book of Cuban poetry, and plastic teddy bear jars of Cuban honey.

The Rev. Lucius Walker, executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, denounced the excessive number of agents as an immoral waste of the country’s resources deployed against peaceful citizens exercising their constitutional right to travel.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.click here for Spanish text

Iron Range stands up to threat of scabs

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 03:30:00 +0000

CHISHOLM, Minn. – A hastily called rally at the Iron Man monument here July 16 drew more than 800 people in the first show of solidarity against Cleveland-Cliffs’ decision to hire replacement workers at four mines if contract talks break down with the United Steelworkers of America. Cleveland-Cliffs, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, is the largest producer of iron ore pellets in North America.

Over a dozen speakers pounded the company for an hour and a half with a message to the company of “Don’t do that here” and to the scabs being trained to take their jobs, “Get the hell out!”

Cleveland-Cliffs has run newspaper ads and sent letters to workers telling them they will hire scabs.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton called the move a savage and lethal assault on the collective bargaining process where workers can withhold their labor for a fair contract. He promised to do all he can with the White House, the Department of Labor, in the Senate and at the Democratic Party Convention “to stop this deplorable action which should be illegal in this country.”

Dayton also promised to make Cleveland-Cliffs “a pariah in their industry” if they follow up on their threats, and said that could include legal action and scrutinizing any tax advantages or trade requests the company makes.

Many local politicians and leaders of other unions took the podium to pledge their support to the USWA if a battle ensues.

Cleveland-Cliffs and the Steelworkers have been in negotiations since early June. The contracts cover four mines – the Empire and Tilden mines in Negaunee, Mich., the Hibbing Joint Venture in Chisholm, Minn., and United Taconite in Eveleth, Minn. – which collectively employ almost 2,000 Steelworkers.

USWA District 11 Director David Foster said the company’s threat is the first time in 65 years that strikebreakers have been threatened against his union on the Iron Range.

He said Cleveland-Cliffs is doing well with “order books that are full” and was saved from the bankruptcy facing 48 other steel firms because the USWA compelled ISG to buy all their pellets from North America and to keep their blast furnaces operating. He said Cleveland-Cliffs is sitting on $500 million in cash because the Steelworkers got it for them.

Foster said this is the first time since the Civil War that America is experiencing a shortage of iron ore and stock prices are up accordingly for mining firms. “The money from the turnaround should not go to performance stock plans for (CEO) John Brinzo, it belongs in pension and retiree health care plans,” Foster told the cheering crowd.

Foster said it is a basic compact in the Steelworkers that you stand up for your parents and grandparents.

“If we don’t live up to that obligation how can we expect our kids and grandchildren to live up to it for us?” he asked.

Foster implored the crowd not to let Cleveland-Cliffs get away with their threats in one of the most unionized places in America and the county with the most union density in Minnesota.

“Our union belongs to this community, you created us out of the aspirations of your community, we’re your institution,” Foster said.

He called on businesses to post signs in support of their Steelworkers, urged solidarity in the ranks and from other unions, and didn’t rule out sit down strikes in the mines.

The author can be reached at labrwrld@cpinternet.com. Reprinted with permission from Labor World, the official publication of the Duluth Central Labor Body, AFL-CIO.

Labor, community fight to save health center

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 03:16:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. – A years-long simmering crisis threatening the existence of the Alameda County Medical Center (ACMC) is heating up again, as a “turn-around” management firm’s drive to cut hundreds of workers is challenged by a labor-community coalition struggling to save the only public health care safety net for thousands of poor, sick and uninsured residents.

During a July 19 public hearing on the fiscal 2005 budget held at Highland Hospital, the medical center’s anchor facility, trustees got an earful from union representatives and ACMC staff about the dire consequences of the proposed cuts on patient care, already stretched razor thin by previous cuts in funding and staff. Unions and staff also pointed out that instead of a deficit, the medical center actually anticipates a modest surplus based on new funding from county ballot Measure A. This proposition, passed in March, raised the county sales tax by 0.5 percent, with most funding going to ACMC.

The medical center operates three public hospitals and three clinics, and serves 125,000 mostly poor and uninsured patients a year. It also runs an outstanding trauma center serving the entire region.

The proposed budget, prepared by Cambio Health Solutions – consultants hired last year to run the center – would lay off 10 percent of ACMC’s total workforce and 21 percent of outpatient clinic staff, said Fred Seavey, research director for SEIU Local 250. The new reductions, coming on the heels of last year’s sharp cuts, would slash staffing in obstetrics and neonatal services, the emergency department and other areas to a dangerous level, he said.

“It’s time to heal the wounds of last year,” declared Bradley Cleveland, spokesperson for SEIU Local 616, as he pointed out the modest surplus in next year’s budget. “We need to address the health care disparities in this county.” Measure A offers a chance to fix medical care, reduce the waiting time (reportedly as much as eight months for routine appointments), “and get people into the clinics so the Emergency Department doesn’t become necessary,” he said.

Citing a large discrepancy in the budget’s expense side, pointed out in earlier testimony, Cleveland said, “Since that $10 million went away, maybe the layoffs should go away, too.”

“This is the time to undertake a long term evaluation of the medical center, to go through the budget and consider what the future of the complex will be,” said Vote Health chair and former ACMC staff member Kay Eisenhower.

“It’s very difficult to ask patients to come here when we don’t have staff to care for them,” said Dr. Linda Price, who heads the maternal and child health department.

The hearing room was packed to overflowing with concerned staff and community members, who responded to union and community speakers with vigorous applause.

In a telephone interview before the hearing, former medical center trustee Robert Phillips, who resigned with four others last fall and now coordinates the Citizens United to Restore ACMC coalition, said the current budget proposals will impact the sickest Medicaid and Medicare recipients and the uninsured most sharply. He called for capping consultant spending and taking time to evaluate Measure A’s impact before making further cuts. The coalition includes SEIU locals 616, 250 and 535, as well as the California Physicians Alliance, Vote Health and other community organizations.

A scathing Alameda County Civil Grand Jury report released last week was the backdrop for the July 19 hearing. In it, the Grand Jury sharply criticized ACMC’s fiscal management, including failure to bill Medicare and Medicaid for a large number of services. The Grand Jury warned ACMC’s trustees to scrutinize Cambio’s recommendations to see if they would harm patient care. It also called Cambio’s $3.2 million, 18-month contract “extremely expensive.”

The author can be reached at mbechtel@pww.org.

National Clips

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 03:12:00 +0000

NEW YORK: City workers to picket convention site

The United Federation of Teachers, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, and the city’s police union have vowed to begin round-the-clock informational picketing at Madison Square Garden when the Republican National Committee (RNC) takes over the site in preparation for their national convention in late August. They plan to picket for at least 10 days.

All three unions have been working without contracts for over two years, and hope to use this as an opportunity to gain national attention for their situation. They are also looking to shame and pressure Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who the unions say has not been negotiating fairly with them, in front of his fellow Republicans and the nation. Union representatives say that they want America to see how Bloomberg has shortchanged them, even though he constantly refers to police and firefighters as the heroes of 9/11. The UFA alone lost over 300 members in the attacks.

The unions’ leaders have stressed that this is an informational picket, and are not asking other union members to not cross picket lines. This is in accordance with an agreement worked out between the city’s Central Labor Council and the RNC. The agreement stipulates that there will be a no-strike policy as long as the RNC uses all union labor for the convention and for its preparations. This does not mean, however, that the CLC will not be supporting the municipal unions. In an interview with The Chief, a newspaper for city public workers, CLC head Brian McLaughlin said, “We will support them with everything we’ve got, the best way we can.”

This is the second time that these unions have come together in a display of solidarity in about a month. On June 8, the three unions held one of the largest municipal labor demonstrations in recent memory.

TAMPA, Fla.: Cuban Americans protest travel restrictions

In what observers are calling a split in the South Florida Cuban American community, Cuban Americans took to the streets, July 17, protesting new Bush administration travel restrictions to the socialist island. “Enough is enough,” they chanted.

Maura Barrios, assistant director of Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of South Florida, told reporters, “This represents a split among Cuban Americans. A lot of them were saying they were Republicans who voted for Bush, and they’re not voting for him anymore because of this particular issue.”

New travel restrictions limit family trips to 14 days, impose a 44-pound luggage weight cap and mandate that travelers can only spend $300, with a maximum of $50 per day. Under the new regulations, Cuban Americans can only send money to immediate relatives in Cuba, excluding aunts, uncles and cousins.

Rolendo Carbonelo, 59, said he is voting for Kerry and charged that Bush “is restricting my right to travel.” Carbonelo had been visiting his four elderly uncles in Cuba until Bush acted.

Cuban Americans have organized the Cuban Committee to Defend Family Rights to oppose the new measures.

BEDFORD, Ind.: Despite corporate violence, workers win contract

Members of the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE/CWA) Local 84907 in this tiny rural community faced down Visteon, a mega-international auto parts corporation spun off from the Ford Motor Company, and won a new contract in mid-June.

The workers struck on May 30, courageously fended off company-financed armed “guards” clad in black military-style uniforms, and ultimately succeeded in blunting major company concession demands. The local achieved its priority: protecting retirees from health care cuts. “We were trying to keep it off them,” Local 84907 President Earl Wilson said.

In a 528-410 vote, workers accepted a new contract that provides job security for 700 workers for the duration of the four-year contract and “buyouts” of $25,000 for up to 250 workers who face layoff, but includes pay cuts of 79 cents per hour. “All of this is about corporate greed,” Wilson told the World. “Visteon makes enough to pay for health care and the 79 cents an hour.”

Visteon owns 137 manufacturing facilities in 25 countries employing 72,000 workers. It reported revenues of $17.7 billion in 2003.

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MILLTOWN, N.J.: First hurdle scaled to prevent deportation

In a 2001 hate crime, Mark Anthony Stroman murdered Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant, who had applied for a green card. Then the U.S. government decided to deport Mr. Hasan’s family, his wife, Duri, and four daughters. It took three years and a national grassroots effort by the National Council of Churches USA and other religious groups to win an act of Congress to allow the Hasan family to remain in the U.S.

On July 8, the U.S. House approved a “private relief act,” HR 867, the first step in granting the Hasan family permanent U.S. residency. The measure now goes to the Senate and on to Bush’s desk.

“I believe that there is no more crucial time to demonstrate to Muslims in America and around the world that we are a tolerant and sympathetic people,” said Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.). “We must seize opportunities to showcase America’s commitment to democratic values that we are making great sacrifices to promote overseas.”

National Clips are compiled by Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinebr696@aol.com). Julia Lutsky, Dan Margolis and Roberta Wood contributed to this week’s clips.

Texas watchdog groups want DeLay probe

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 03:03:00 +0000

AUSTIN, Texas – Three Texas campaign reform groups called July 15 for the U.S. House Ethics Committee to appoint an independent outside counsel to investigate charges that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas illegally funneled corporate campaign contributions to Republican candidates running for seats in the Texas House of Representatives.

“The House investigation of Rep. DeLay must be fair and above reproach,” said Fred Lewis, president of Campaigns for People, one of the groups. Texans for Public Justice and Public Citizen/Texas joined in issuing the call.

Many observers doubt that the Ethics Committee itself can conduct a fair and impartial hearing, because four of the five Republican committee members received campaign contributions from DeLay.

The Ethics Committee’s investigation resulted from a complaint filed by Democratic Rep. Chris Bell of Houston. In March, Bell lost a primary election to Al Green after Bell’s district was carved up as a result of congressional redistricting masterminded last year by DeLay.

Bell charges DeLay with offering favors to businesses in return for campaign contributions that he then distributed to Republican candidates running for Texas House seats. These contributions helped Republicans win key elections in 2002, which resulted in the Republican takeover of the state House.

The Republican takeover led to an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting of the state’s congressional districts that will likely result in five to seven new Republican members of Congress being sent to Washington next year, which will solidify DeLay’s control of the House.

Bell claims that DeLay laundered the contributions to hide the fact that businesses were making direct contributions to candidates, which is illegal in Texas. Bell also accuses DeLay of improperly using federal resources to track down the 51 state House Democrats who left Austin for Oklahoma in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent Republicans from carrying out their redistricting plans.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Republicans on the Ethics Committee received about $28,000 over a seven-year period from DeLay’s political action committees. Rep. Kenny Hulshof of Missouri received $14,777, Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio received $10,553, Rep. Judy Biggert of Illinois received $1,764, and Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington received $1,410.

“DeLay’s underlings should not be entrusted to pass judgment on their leader,” said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice. “This investigation will only be credible if it is independent of DeLay’s widespread political influence.”

Groups in Washington are also calling for an independent counsel to investigate the ethics charges. Common Cause, Judicial Watch, Campaign Legal Resources, Democracy 21, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have all joined the call.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

California labor calls for troops home now

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 02:59:00 +0000

SAN DIEGO – The California Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, has voted in favor of “an immediate end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and to support the repeal of the Patriot Act and the reordering of national priorities toward the human needs of our people.”

The state labor federation, the nation’s largest representing more than 2 million members, met here July 13 for its 25th biennial convention.

The antiwar resolution, proposed by the San Francisco Labor Council, came out of the resolutions committee with the word “expedient” instead of “immediate.” Federation Vice President Nancy Wohlforth took the floor and argued for the restoration of the original language. Her motion passed overwhelmingly by an overwhelming voice vote of the 400-plus delegates.

The California AFL-CIO also adopted a resolution demanding transparency and accountability by the AFL-CIO in its international programs. It urged both the AFL-CIO and its Solidarity Center to “exercise extreme caution in seeking or accepting funding from the U.S. government, its agencies and any other institutions which it funds.” One such governmental funding source is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The California federation’s resolution warned that accepting NED or other funding could “give the appearance, if not the effect, of making the AFL-CIO appear to be an agent of the U.S. government and its foreign policies” which may “taint the good reputation of the Federation … and draw into question the motivation and true independence of the Federation in its international affairs.” The convention called upon the AFL-CIO to fund its international programs with membership- and affiliate-generated funds.

At the Democratic National Convention - Unionists talk jobs, health care

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 02:52:00 +0000

BOSTON (PAI) – When he gets to Boston, Richard Martin will discuss health insurance and homeland security.

When she greets her colleagues, Maria Balestri will push for education issues and raise questions about our future course in Iraq.

After his plane lands, Brett Voorhies will talk trade and jobs. And Ann Henkel of Jacksonville, Fla., and Sharon Palmer of Waterford, Conn., will tell Democrats about “teaching to the test” and “flexibility” in the classroom.

What do all these people have in common? They’re all unionists, and they’re all among the hundreds of union members who will be delegates to the Democratic National Convention here, July 26-29.

A few examples: the American Federation of Teachers will send 121 members. Indiana’s group includes 20 union delegates and four alternates, from eight different unions. And 28 fire fighters hail from 19 states.

Joining them will be dozens of steel workers, laborers, UFCW members, SEIU and AFSCME activists, leaders of state federations, and more. There are so many that labor is co-sponsoring its own discussion during the conclave – on trade – on July 27.

The high number of unionists in Boston is no surprise. They were 26 percent of the vote in the 2000 election, and the AFL-CIO has set a target for union families to be 31 percent of the vote this year.

Voorhies, USWA District 7 coordinator from Avon, Ind., an elected delegate, will talk trade and jobs. “They’re committed to us, and he [Kerry] says he would not sign the Free Trade Area of the Americas pact or CAFTA,” the proposed pro-business Central American Free Trade Agreement, Voorhies says.

Martin, of Murphysboro, Ill., brings the perspective of a small-town firefighter – which he is – as president of Local 3042. He also brings perspectives of a parent and school board member.

“Health care and homeland security are huge, for me and for other fire fighters,” he says. Health care costs are up so high Martin’s members had to sign a contract with no pay raise. “I’m on the school board and because of health care, the money is not there,” for the schools, he adds.

Not only that, but older firefighters, whose reactions are slower, don’t retire, because they can’t afford health care. That reduces fire department reliability, Martin worries. And though Bush promised more homeland security after the 9/11 terror attacks, Martin hasn’t seen it – even though 344 New York firefighters died as “first responders” trying to rescue people from the collapsing World Trade Center.

“I was out in Las Vegas for our IAFF convention and Bush promised us all these things on a nice little video – and the next day he vetoed them,” Martin said, referring to Bush budget cuts in first responder money.

For Balestri, a high school history teacher from LaSalle-Peru, Ill., the convention will be part lobbying effort on education issues, and part civics lesson she can use for her students. “I’ll be talking about issues as an educator, and as a parent, too,” Balestri explains.

Health care troubles Balestri, because she saw a contrast. A friend became deathly ill on a recent trip to Denmark and was hospitalized for 10 days there, she says. “Do you know what her bill was? Zero! Denmark has national health care.”

Henkel and Palmer, two veteran teachers, will raise the impact of the Bush regime’s No Child Left Behind law on both teachers and schools. Henkel notes third-grade pass-or-fail achievement tests put incredible pressure on schools and kids. “I had one third-grader, an outstanding student, who woke up in the middle of the night with an anxiety attack over the test,” she says. “I wonder how many of our legislators would pass it.”

Charter schools are another issue that Henkel, a Floridian, will raise. GOP Gov. Jeb Bush pushes them there but with no standards, unlike public schools. “The bottom line for the schools is to fix and fund them,” Palmer said.

Balestri is also concerned about the war in Iraq. “All these experienced men put our sons and daughters in harm’s way – and for what?” she asks. “But the question we have to answer is what will we do now.”

What would a day without Mexicans be like?

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 06:06:00 +0000

MOVIE REVIEW

Imagine waking up one morning to find that your whole world had changed. You discover that your husband has disappeared; your son is missing.

To make matters worse, your maid, the Latino woman, who you count on to clean your house, prepare the meals, help raise the kids and run errands, has not shown up for work. A call to the police brings the news that this is happening all over California. All the Mexicans have disappeared.

This is the theme of the comedy-with-a-message, “A Day Without A Mexican.”

A calamity has descended upon California. Not only maids, but those who pick our crops, wash our cars, clean our hotel rooms, make our clothing, work in restaurants as cooks, bus boys, waiters and waitresses – in short, all those Mexicans who work at jobs that are considered menial and unimportant by many “Anglos” have all disappeared.

It makes for a funny and entertaining movie. The message is that we should appreciate these Mexican workers because we really can’t get along without them. The film makes that point well.

What’s missing is any mention of what drives these workers from their countries (all people from the different countries of Central and South America are called Mexicans by many non-Latino Californians) to come to the United States. No mention is made of the poverty and high unemployment that our Central American neighbors live under. Also not shown are the hardship, sacrifice and dangers that these immigrants face in their attempts to reach our country.

Missing, also, is any mention of the low wages and the terrible sweatshop conditions that many of these immigrants are forced to work under. Those who are undocumented have no way to protest because they are under the constant threat of deportation.

But, hey, it’s a comedy, and the drama part is held to a minimum. Besides, any movie that gives some exposure to the problems that Latino immigrants face is worthwhile. So, gather up your kids and go see it, they – and you – may learn something.

Armando Ramirez is a member of the Mexican American Equality Commission of the Communist Party USA. He can be reached at mandosthing@aol.com.

Clear Channel censors billboard

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 06:01:00 +0000

NEW YORK – A group of Bay Area peace activists went to court July 13 to try to force Clear Channel Communications to allow an antiwar advertisement on a billboard in Times Square here.

Clear Channel has faced criticism for its ties to the Bush administration and is being accused of censorship by the activists of the group, Project Billboard, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The ad states, “Democracy is best taught by example, not by war,” and was to appear during the Republican National Convention in late August. Its design has see-sawed between a red, white and blue time bomb and a dove.

Although Clear Channel claims it has no objection to the dove ad, it had to be approved by the Marriott Marquis Hotel, where the billboard is located. However, Project Billboard spokesman Howard Wolfson told the Times the contract with Clear Channel did not mention that the hotel would have veto power.

“The same message with a dove image, not a bomb, is fine,” said Paul Meyer, chief executive of Clear Channel Outdoor, adding what could become the new capitalist slogan: “We have absolutely no political agenda. Our agenda is a profit agenda.”

According to the Times, Deborah Rappaport, Project Billboard spokeswoman, said she believed Clear Channel was engaging in censorship. She compared this incident with the company’s decision to drop radio shock jock – and vocal President Bush critic – Howard Stern, and last year’s move by some Clear Channel stations to pull the Dixie Chicks from their playlists after member Natalie Maines said she was “ashamed” that Bush was a fellow Texan.

President Bush has long-standing links to Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, a top Clear Channel executive, the Times noted, “and Clear Channel executives have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes.”

The Project Billboard ad was to be one of several to promote public debate on such issues as the war in Iraq, public education, the environment and dependence on overseas oil, according to Rappaport.

Kathleen Duffy, spokeswoman for the Marriott Marquis, said the hotel had originally understood that the billboard would be used for an ad urging people to vote. She said the hotel was surprised by the submission of an antiwar message.

She told the Times the hotel “reserved the right to turn down ‘anything that has overt sexual content or is political’” and that it had rejected or demanded modifications to past ads with sexual content. “We have not had a political ad presented before,” Duffy said.

“There are a lot of ads in Times Square that I might find objectionable and my wife might find objectionable, but that’s the nature of democracy,” Wolfson told the Times. “When you have a corporation with very clear ties to the Bush administration making decisions on free speech, it’s a problem.”

At press time, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the back-and-forth battle over the advertisement took a fresh turn July 12 when Project Billboard said it will push to display the original bomb image, rather than the dove compromise.

“Bombs are serious images, but war is a serious issue,” said Doug Curtis, a Manhattan attorney representing the group.