People Before Profit blog

Letters

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 06:34:00 +0000

No guns for kids

NY Assembly Bill A1530 would lower the hunting age for children from 16 to 14 years old to kill bears and deer. It must be soundly defeated. It is inappropriate for the State of New York to entice youths with a candy store variety of weapons to enter the arena of “big game” season in which hunters experience the highest number of fatalities. Children will be caught in the crosshairs of such hunting “accidents.”

The original justification for the bill portrays it as a remedy for youths who have been excluded from Olympic target competitions. However, the bill’s author, Assemblyman Richard Smith, who has repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to lower the hunting age via other bills, is apparently unperturbed by the string of shootings by children with hunting weapons in schools.

In the late l990s, there were 13 separate incidents in which 27 victims were killed (including a pregnant teacher) and 50 were wounded. Just recently, minutes away from the state capitol in Albany, where this bill’s fate will be decided, a student at Columbia High School used a hunting gun purchased by his mom to shoot squirrels to hunt people instead. It could easily have been another Columbine. Let’s hope that the only thing that misfires now is Smith’s irresponsible bill.

Mary MaxNew York NY

Kudos

A beautiful and important story about the life of Hattie Lumpkin (PWW 7/10-16)! Thank you very much.

John StanfordSan Antonio TX

Don’t blame everything on the CIA

While the CIA has committed numerous crimes since its inception in 1947, it shouldn’t be made the scapegoat for Bush’s foreign policy. Its primary problem has always been, not its intelligence-gathering techniques, but its real mission, which CIA defector Philip Agee once described as acting as the “secret police” of imperialism. It is clear that Bush was going to war in Iraq regardless of objections raised at home and abroad. The CIA’s assignment was to find “evidence” to justify the attack. The best way to “reform” the CIA is to get rid of both the Bush administration and an imperialist foreign policy. If we did the latter after doing the former, we wouldn’t have any need for the CIA.

Norman MarkowitzNew Brunswick NJ

Danger of dictatorship

Some people in the Bush administration want the power to cancel elections if there is a terrorist attack on or near Election Day. They should never get that power. If a precinct is attacked before the polls are closed and the votes counted, the affected voters could vote somewhere else the next day.

Our country held elections during the Civil War, Depression, World War II, and the Vietnam War. Postponing or canceling elections is something that is done in dictatorships, not the United States. What will the neo-conservatives suggest next? Maybe martial law can be declared, and habeas corpus suspended.

Chuck MannGreensboro NC

Kids lose out in Texas

A private firm, Clarendon National Insurance Co., bilked the state of Texas over $20 million for administering the CHIP program (Children’s Health Insurance Program). The Health and Human Services commissioner did not properly manage the contract or didn’t care. Last year legislators cut $525 million from the CHIP program, causing more than 169,000 children to be dropped from the program and another 20,000 will drop next year.

VWSan Antonio TX

Safe state?

Re letter by Don Sloan (PWW 7/17-23): We don’t elect our president by popular vote but by 51-state, winner-take-all Electoral College contests.

In New York, Al Gore beat George Bush by 25 points in 2000. In 2004, Kerry is so far ahead of Bush in New York that neither national COPE or the Kerry campaign, or any other liberal organization, will spend any money on Kerry in New York.

So what will a vote for Kerry in New York represent? Is there any ambiguity in Kerry’s positions on Iraq, Israel, Cuba, Venezuela, health care, no child left behind or his now announced support for the doctrine of preemptive attack? Should Kerry win won’t he have the right to take Sloan’s vote as an endorsement of his clearly stated positions?

In New York, as in other “safe” states, Sloan could vote his conscience and still get the outcome he apparently wants but may live to regret.

Walter TillowNew York NY

No safe state

My friend lives in what is considered a “safe state” for Kerry, and so she told me she’s considering voting for Nader or Cobb to register a progressive vote this fall. But I had to ask her this: If Gore hadn’t won the popular vote in 2000, from “safe states” and battleground states alike, would anyone have paid much attention to the theft of votes by Bush in Florida? After thinking about it, she told me, “Yeah, you have a good point.” The popular vote is a powerful political voice. In what will be a very vicious, dirty fight by the ultra-right, the bigger the popular vote for Kerry the better! There are no “safe states” in this race.

Renee WeismanDetroit MI

Editorials

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 06:22:00 +0000

Falling wages

After adjusting for inflation, workers’ real wages fell 1.1 percent in June on top of a 0.8 percent decline in April. Workers are falling further and further behind as the soaring cost of gasoline, prescription drugs, food, and housing eats into wages that are either frozen or barely rising.

The explanation offered by pro-corporate economists is that there is no pressure to push wages up since too many unemployed workers are competing for too few jobs. And it is true that the jobless rate is stuck at 5.6 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the current plunge in real income is the steepest since the recession of 1991. That was the recession that doomed the presidency of the first George Bush. But wages are not like the weather. They are falling because corporate America, aided and abetted by the Bush administration, is engaged in ruthless efforts to reduce workers’ share of the value their labor produces. Organized workers are striking, sometimes for months, to win contracts that provide raises barely above the increased cost of living even though their productivity has soared in the past decade. As for the unorganized workers, millions are falling into the ranks of the working poor because their wages have been pushed so low. Corporations have reaped an enormous profit bonanza from the sharply rising productivity and declining wages. Big Business put George W. Bush in the White House to make it happen.

Declining income, even as unemployment stays high, is proof that Bush’s “economic recovery” is as believable as those “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. Since Bush took office, we have seen trillions in tax cuts that lined the pockets of his wealthy contributors coupled with cutbacks in vital human needs programs. He has stripped federal workers of union rights and wants to strip 8 million workers of overtime pay. With good reason, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has blasted Bush as the most anti-worker, anti-union chief executive in history. It is time to send him back to Texas.

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For a new foreign policy

Mark Twain, a pillar of American literature, culture and humor, once said, “I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” He stood up against imperialism during its dawning days. A member of the Anti-Imperialist League, Twain joined other notable anti-imperialists Jane Addams, Samuel Gompers, W.E.B. Du Bois and Clarence Darrow in opposing the 1899 U.S. takeover of the Philippines, in which 5,000 American soldiers and 250,000 Filipinos died.

As quiet as it’s kept, U.S. history is full of anti-imperialist individuals and movements. While the ruling powers seek to dominate other lands, labor and markets, Americans of all races and languages – starting with organized working people – have acted in favor of our nation’s true interests by opposing war and domination.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted the “Good Neighbor” policy to reign in U.S. “Monroe Doctrine” interventionism throughout the Americas.

The Vietnam War was ended because of a combination of the Vietnamese people’s anti-imperialist actions and the American people’s antiwar actions. President Ronald Reagan’s dirty war in Central America was exposed through anti-imperialist efforts.

The present U.S. regime’s foreign policy can be characterized as unilateral, outlaw-like and perilous to all of humanity. This administration has even sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons as a first-strike option. They have withdrawn from international treaties and flaunted international law. They lied to rationalize a unilateral and preemptive war.

They wield unrivaled military, economic and political power – not for democracy and humanitarian uplift – but for unbridled imperialist domination.

It’s in the American people’s self-interest to have a foreign policy that adheres to international law and respects the sovereignty of all nations, a foreign policy that values peace-making, not war-waging, and most of all, a foreign policy that won’t use military and economic might to impose corporate domination on the world.

LABOR UPDATE

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 05:13:00 +0000

Extremists vs. freedom to organize

While labor and its congressional allies push legalization of card-check recognition of unions to represent workers, a group of radical right Republicans is pushing to outlaw card check.

The Democrats, led by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), want to make it easier for workers to organize, following the intent of original U.S. labor law passed in 1935. The Republicans, led by Reps. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio), don’t.

The present battleground is the GOP-run House Education and the Workforce Committee. Boehner is its chair and Miller is its top Democrat, who would take over if Democrats win the House Nov. 2.

The battle pits two pieces of legislation: HR 4343, named “The Secret Ballot Protection Act,” versus the Miller-Kennedy bill, the “Employee Free Choice Act” (HR 3619 and S 1925).

Miller’s bill would establish card check as the prime alternative to the NLRB’s slow pro-business election process. It provides that if a majority of workers sign authorization cards the employer must automatically recognize that the union represents the workers.

No further sessions to mark up any labor bill and get it out of committee are scheduled.

Miller has more than 200 representatives – including half a dozen Republicans – as co-sponsors of the pro-card check bill, and Kennedy has signed on more than 30 senators.

Board to Tas: You aren’t really workers

The National Labor Relations Board ruled July 15 that teaching and research assistants at private colleges are not “employees” covered by labor law.

“The board concluded graduate student assistants, who perform services at a university in connection with their studies, have a predominately academic, rather than economic, relationship with their school,” the NLRB stated in its 3-2 ruling in a Brown University case, reversing a previous NLRB ruling.

Teaching assistants (TAs) suffer from low stipends, lack of health benefits, no tenure and huge teaching loads, among other ills. The decision not only affected Brown’s TAs, but also left in limbo the 1,200 TAs at New York University who won the original pro-employee ruling in November 2000.

AFT Secretary-Treasurer Edward J. McElroy said, “Graduate employees are obviously workers. … If a member of the NLRB can’t recognize a worker when they see one, they shouldn’t be on a national labor board.”

Farm workers win travel time pay

A federal judge has ordered a big Salinas, Calif., produce farm to pay 3,000 farm workers for the time they spent riding its buses, under its orders, from its parking lot to its fields.

The case involves workers for D’Arrigo Brothers, a giant produce farming operation headquartered in Salinas, but with fields all over the state’s productive Central Valley.

For years, D’Arrigo forced its workers to drive from their homes, often 35 miles away or more, to its Salinas parking lot to board buses to the fields. Sometimes the fields were near the workers’ homes, but that didn’t matter, UFW Vice President Efren Barajas said.

The UFW sued in 2000. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in late March that D’Arrigo owes the workers money for time they spent aboard the company buses from 1996-2000.

“The main thing was that the company was in violation of the law, and now they’ll pay for the time they didn’t pay for the workers. There wasn’t any respect for the workers’ time,” Barajas said.

OSHA ‘alliance’ leaves union out

United Steelworkers of America President Leo W. Gerard expressed astonishment that OSHA and several steel industry trade associations had formed an “alliance” on safety without any union involvement.

Gerard said, “The trade associations have opposed every OSHA standard that applies to the steel industry. Meanwhile, many steel companies have made deep cuts in their own safety and health staff.

“If they were really interested in safety, they would have turned to the men and women who make these plants run,” Gerard said. “Apparently, OSHA’s political bosses and the industry trade associations are more anti-union than they are pro-safety.”

“I want to make it clear that our criticism applies to the political appointees running OSHA,” Gerard said. “The dedicated career inspectors in the field had no part in this charade.”

Labor Update was compiled by Terrie Albano (talbano@pww.org). Roberta Wood and Mark Gruenberg contributed.

Labor organizes to protect 2004 vote

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 03:07:00 +0000

MILWAUKEE – About 50 people gathered at the headquarters of the Milwaukee AFL-CIO County Labor Council July 10 for a four-hour training session on voter rights.

The training was headed by Shiela Cochran, secretary-treasurer of the Milwaukee County Labor Council, and included extensive presentations by Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the Wisconsin State Elections Board, and Vicky Beasley, deputy national field coordinator for the People for the American Way’s (PFAW) Voter Protection Project. The participants included roughly equal numbers of African American and white activists, many wearing the purple jackets of the Service Employees Industrial Union. Many of those in attendance had experience as election observers, and a few had served as election inspectors or chief inspectors.

The “Election Protection” program is a joint effort of 25 national organizations, including PFAW, the NAACP and the SEIU. According to PFAW, the effort is responding to the denial of the vote to voters of color in 2000 “by a combination of illegal actions, inadequate voter education and poll worker training and faulty voting machines,” and to new dangers in 2004, such as “unfamiliar machines, new identification requirements, and potential voter intimidation and suppression activities in minority communities.”

“We can’t have any repeats of Florida,” Lora Jo Foo told the participants. Foo is national coordinator of the AFL-CIO Voting Rights Protection Program. For the presidential race, Election Protection will be active in 50 states, but it has “targeted 12 battleground states and 32 individual communities, including Milwaukee,” Foo said.

Because voter disenfranchisement is such a problem in minority communities, “are targeting African Americams, Latinos, the Hmong community, and any other communities that are interested,” Beasley said.

The July 10 session was the first of several planned here and one of many being held across the country intended to protect against voter disenfranchisement in 2004. “We wanted to start with a core group right away,” said Cochran. She said PFAW has already established a field presence in Milwaukee. Participants received “Voters’ Bill of Rights” literature that will be distributed in advance of the election, and also discussed at length the current procedures for advance registration of voters. Kennedy said that in Madison election commissioners were already receiving 250 cards a day.

In Milwaukee, Beasley said, one goal is to “have at least three poll members at every polling site at all times on Election Day.” Another objective is to develop a team of lawyers trained in election law to assist the monitors. “We’ll have separate trainings for lawyers and activists,” she said.

Monitors on Election Day will wear T-shirts that say, “You have the right to vote.” The shirts were first used in nationwide efforts in 2002.

Beasley said the T-shirts could be powerful in getting others to stop harassing voters. “We experienced this in 2002, when the suppression activity went on in the city of Milwaukee, and it did,” she said. Those who came to poll sites to challenge voters “took a back seat” as soon as they saw the Election Protection shirts.

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

Letters

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 05:18:00 +0000

My soldier son opposes this war

I have a son in the National Guard who was supposed to get out in June of this year, and there is a stop loss order for his unit just before he was to get out. So now he is trying to get a hardship release – which may mean a “less than honorable” discharge and who knows what else.

He is the sole and full custodial guardian of his daughter. At first he was given no information on what to do to get out and then they got angry when he did something to get out. He has been in the Guard for eight years. He disagrees with this war! Anyway – he knows it’s all a smokescreen. Do you have any suggestions on how to get him released soon? Isn’t this involuntary servitude, aka slavery?

Mother of a soldierVia e-mail

Editors’ reply: You and/or your son might want to get in touch with the GI Rights Hotline: phone: 800-394-9544, web site: girights.objector.org

Enron lesson

The indictment of ex-Enron officer Kenneth Lay should be a wakeup call to all workers and retirees that their health care benefits and pensions no longer are safe if ever they were. Now is the time to demand of your federal congresspeople that they immediately enact legislation preventing corporations from depriving retirees of today and tomorrow of their hard-earned “golden years” retirement.

Act now, before it’s too late.

Willard B. ShapiraMinneapolis MN

Ode to Neruda

But stand up with me and let us go off together to fight face to face against the devil’s webs, against the system that distributes hunger, against organized misery.

– Pablo Neruda

In spite of our fierce opposition to all, comrade Neruda, I take up your verb and proclaim: Bard, we still get stirred up, when fleeting meteors cruise the black abyss we called night. Poet, I am letting you know that the entire day is still long and prohibitive here.

The muddled and obstinate bury us and persist, cruelly make us forget the infinite stars and our humble origins of ashes, clay and corn.

In spite of our fierce opposition to all, comrade Neruda, our persistent verses like clandestine daggers of refined metal will glimmer victoriously upon the dangerous path of splendid battle (where murderous and wicked war breaks out), land and language will be reclaimed then as letters and magic for all.

Yes! to all the hungry children of heroic peoples resolved to die or to overcome.

Comrade Neruda, upright in struggle with our feet planted firmly on this black soil of fire, tyranny and battle, from academic halls of oppressed universities, from bleeding plazas, from shelters of volcanic mountains and clandestine trenches, we’ll always remember, and hail to you!

Rolando CarrilloVia e-mail

Conservatives for Nader?

Word has it that some state conservative parties are working to put Ralph Nader on their ballots in order to further dilute the Kerry vote. These are special times. Our nation and its people are in such dire straights that a second Bush administration will bring the fascism that is at our doorstep inside our homes. We must therefore adopt a new tack.

I urge we change our mindset from a pro-Kerry, pro-Nader, pro-Cobb or pro-anyone stance to an anti-Bush stance. Plan to enter the booth in November and pull for a candidate who has the only realistic chance of unseating the president – John Kerry.

Debs wrote that he would rather vote for a candidate he wanted and not win than for one he did not want and win. That is not true in 2004 as it was when said back in 1920.

We must enter the booth in November, grit our teeth, and vote anti-Bush. That will keep hope alive and afterwards we can use some of it to carry on our struggle.

Don Sloan MDNew York, NY

Teachers’ election brigade

As a family, we have watched the Bush administration bring our country into an unjust war. We have seen neighbors and friends lose their jobs. And we have seen “No Child Left Behind” take a wrecking ball to public education. As a mother of two teenage daughters, with the fear of the possibility of having them drafted into an unjust war, my daughters and I joined the Dump Bush Committee of the United Federation of Teachers and got on buses bound for Levittown, Pa.

It was a wonderful experience. We were greeted by the IBEW, and welcomed by a number of different unions. We were told that we were in Republican territory. They had us go out in teams.

My daughter and I did about five streets. The overwhelming majority said they were voting for Kerry, that Bush to go. One family with five family members, all in unions, said they were all voting Bush out. The father is now on strike and is witnessing what outsourcing is doing to the factory he works for.

One moving experience for us happened when we approached a house with a big banner that read “Support our Troops.” The mother came to the door and said, “Oh, yes, Bush has got to go. My son is coming home from Iraq for a visit today.” There were a number of undecided. Out of the five streets we canvassed only three households said they were Bush people.

It was announced that over the weekend 4,000 households were canvassed. We as a family are very proud that we have contributed in some way in helping to defeat Bush.

Maria OrtizMember, UFT Brooklyn, NY

Editorials

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 05:08:00 +0000

The ultimate dirty trick

The effort by the tottering Bush administration to find ways to postpone the Nov. 2 national elections is its latest and most serious dirty trick to keep control of the government.

According to a blockbuster story by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, American counter-terrorism officials are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of a terrorist attack.

The Department of Homeland Security asked the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit an election postponement in the event of an attack, according to Newsweek.

But it gets even scarier. DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of a newly created U.S. Election Assistance Commission, sent a letter to Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge seeking emergency legislation from Congress to empower his agency to make the call on election postponement. Soaries is a Bush appointee who two years ago was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Congress.

In the history of the republic, even in times of acute crisis, elections have been held without interruption. The U.S. held elections during a Civil War to end slavery. It held two elections during World War II. The un-American idea of postponing the elections is illegal and unconstitutional.

Scare tactics are the stock in trade of the Bush gang, but what they fear most is the American people. Polls show the incumbents teetering on the edge of being put out of office. So they have to cook up new horror stories and new schemes to retain power. Desperation brings desperate acts. The ultra-right will engage in the most extreme forms of electoral terrorism to stay in power. After all, that’s how they came to power.

It is time to invoke the spirit of Paul Revere. Sound the alarm! Every member of Congress, every elected official, and the White House should receive a deluge of calls, e-mails, faxes and personal visits. No election postponement. Our democracy is in danger.

It is more urgent than ever to register voters, organize protests, and get out the vote Nov. 2.

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Ken Lay and Abu Ghraib

What do Former Enron CEO Ken Lay and the U.S.-run torture chamber at Abu Ghraib have in common? They are two faces of ruling class hypocrisy and cowardice.

George W. Bush’s buddy, “Kenny Boy” Lay, who oversaw the biggest corporate scandal in U.S. history, is facing 11 criminal charges of fraud. His defense? Ignorance.

At a Houston press conference Lay told reporters, “As CEO of the company, I accept responsibility for Enron’s collapse. ... However, that does not mean I knew everything that happened at Enron.”

When the photos and videos of the unspeakable torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib hit the eyes of the American public, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bush both pleaded ignorance. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee May 7 that he did not “recall” ever approving interrogation policies. Documents released later showed Rumsfeld approved torture techniques and Bush looked for legal loopholes out of the Geneva Conventions.

It’s one of those funny realities of ruling class power and capitalist “ethics” that corporate-government leaders often project themselves as “tough, take-charge” kind of guys, who aren’t afraid to make decisions. But then when the going gets tough for them, they are mysteriously out of the loop.

So which is it? Are you in charge, ready to take responsibility? Or are you so out of it that crimes are committed right under your nose?

The ultra-right often hammers public schools, children and teachers for not being “accountable.” Where is the accountability for Lay, whose thievery and fraud left thousands of workers without jobs or pensions? Where is the accountability for Rumsfeld and Bush-Cheney, who signed off on torture and misled the American public into war?

These people are making a mess of things. It’s up to the great majority of honest, hard-working people to make them accountable. They certainly won’t do it themselves.

RedPoppy.Net a tribute to Pablo Neruda

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 05:27:00 +0000

To commemorate the centennial of the birth of famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, a new web site and non-profit organization has emerged. Red Poppy, named for the favored use of the flower in Neruda’s poetry, states that its mission is to be “committed to fostering peace, justice and all human rights.” The organization also aims to facilitate progressive development projects which self-sustain the local economy, environment and culture of Latin America.

The founding mission of Red Poppy was the production of a new documentary film about Neruda titled “Pablo Neruda ¡Presente!” It premieres July 12, Neruda’s birthday, at the Festival Neruda SF in San Francisco. The film, narrated by Isabel Allende, will include archival photographs, excerpts from Neruda’s work and interviews with friends and colleagues. The documentary is expected to be first of many such projects with the goal of progressive social change through the use of the art of documentary.

Red Poppy has four components. The first is the production of documentary films. The second includes several micro-projects of peace, justice, human rights and sustainable development. The third includes an on-line journal and book projects.

The first book project to be completed is a new translation of nearly 50 selected poems. The translations are vibrant and are printed on opposing pages with the original Spanish text for comparison. Edited by Red Poppy’s executive director, Mark Eisner, “The Essential Neruda,” published by San Francisco’s City Lights Publishers, has garnered rave reviews.

The fourth and maybe most exciting aspect of Red Poppy is the Art House located at 23rd and Folsom in San Francisco’s Mission District. This center features a range of work in fine arts, film, poetry, live music and dance with a Latin American focus. Adult and children’s art classes are available for a minimal fee. The Art House is also the hub of the Mission Arts & Performance Project, a bi-monthly collaboration between visual artists, musicians and performers.

Red Poppy is a dynamic tribute to the life and work of Neruda. With the soon-to-be-released documentary and a full slate of new projects, the words, ideals and humanity of the great communist and people’s poet should become well known to a new generation.

Information about the Festival Neruda SF, July 12-18, can be found on the web site also. The festival looks to be a must-not-miss event featuring poetry reading, panel discussions, art, music and dance.

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

Letters

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 04:53:00 +0000

Saluting the courage of Lila Lipscomb

I just saw Lila Lipscomb, [featured in “Fahrenheit 9/11”] on “Good Morning America.” I don’t know if you know how to reach her. Your web page popped up when I put in her name. (“Grieving moms & dads: ‘End the war!’” by Tim Wheeler, PWW 3/20-26.)

I want to thank her for her courage and for what she is saying and doing. It helps many other mothers and relatives, who can’t say anything publicly due to political reasons.

I will be voting in November and it won’t be for Bush!

MarcyOntario CA

SBC settlement and problems of long-term contracts

Like trade unionists across the country, I was delighted to see that CWA members got a contract offer from SBC that 85 percent of them approved of. The same goes for the fighting flight attendants at Southwest Airlines. But I want to point out a disturbing trend.

A lot of American progressives have always hoped to see European-style coordinated trade union action on broad social questions. Over there from time to time, the unions unite over issues to hold united job actions.

The fact that American trade union leaders are allowing longer and longer contract periods with no-strike clauses shows how difficult such united action would be here.

Years ago, in the flowering of the CIO, contracts were of indeterminate length or for one year. Many did not have no-strike clauses. Now, 5-6 year contracts that lock away our legal right to job actions are becoming the norm.

American workers eventually will unite and carry out job actions over broad social issues, but these long-term contracts will hinder that process.

Jim LaneDallas TX

George W. Bush’s lost year in 1972 Alabama, or was it?

G.W. Bush and his brother Jeb, governor of Florida, had to revert to voter fraud: butterfly ballots, punch card voting machines, removing thousands of eligible voters from the rolls. When all that illegal activity failed to give G.W. Bush the plurality he needed to win Florida’s 40-plus electoral votes, they had to use their friends in the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the recount.

Here we are three and a half years later and the rallying cry of the same Mr. Bush is: “I will bring honor and integrity to the presidency.”

Bush has used his family name to make a lot of money and to get out of trouble (DWIs, drug problems, etc.) and when that didn’t work he lied. When he lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, thousands of innocent people died, including over 1,000 of our own military.

In baseball to get a base hit, a batter must keep his eye on the ball. In 2004 we must keep our eye on the Karl Rove/G.W. Bush dirty tricks gang. The Bush neocons will do anything to win!

Tom TullyVia e-mail

In solidarity

Today is my first browse at your esteemed site. Congratulations for the subject and the contents. I am an Iraqi living in the UK for the last 37 years and have been an opponent to Saddam and his predecessors’ Baathist regime and their wars and abuses, on one hand. And on the other, I am an opponent of imperialist wars and sanctions imposed on our people for such a long time which have ended up with an armed robbery of our heritage and wealth and the destruction of infrastructure, electricity, telephone communications, etc. (“Iraq: Where did the $20 billion go? by Susan Webb, PWW 7/3-9.)

Your article about the no accounting for the $20 billion is an excellent example for decent investigation.

Hani LazimVia e-mail, London UK

Home health care aides and military spending

As if we did not have enough, I can conceive of no greater shame than to read side by side stories in the press of the billions that were again just appropriated for the Iraq campaign while America’s home health care aides are forced out on strike to protest an embarrassing $7 an hour wage rate.

Nothing happens in a political vacuum. As vast as our economy is, there are limitations, and the two events are very much interrelated.

A day does not go by that we are not exposed to another egregious economic political policy by the Bush administration. It is for that reason that November should logically bring the people a victory. But that does not say we can let down our guard or ease up on our efforts.

The same GOP that pulled off the Florida coup in 2000 did not do so for one lousy four-year term. They have their sights on many.

We must all stay united and awake and make sure we are registered and vote. Spread that word. That must be our battle cry.

If the king is evil and the people protest, shame on the king; but if the king is evil and the people remain quiet, shame on them.

Don Sloan MDNew York NY

Iraqi democracy

So, the prime minister of Iraq is thinking about postponing elections and imposing martial law. I guess democracy is in the eye of the beholder.

Chuck MannGreensboro NC

Editorials

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 04:42:00 +0000

Bush fiddles while AIDS burns

The United Nations opens its 15th World AIDS Conference in Bangkok July 11, just days after a grim UN report that 5 million more people have become infected with the deadly virus in the past two years. That is the fastest rate of new infections since the epidemic was recognized two decades ago.

Asia and Eastern Europe could suffer an AIDS epidemic equal to that of Africa, where some nations report rates of 20 percent, the report warned. So far, 20 million people have died from AIDS, 2.3 million in 2003 alone.

Kathleen Cravero, an official of UNAIDS, says that a small “window of opportunity” is still open to reverse the pandemic. “If we miss it, it will slam shut forever.” The UN has less than half the $15 billion needed for treatment and prevention.

George W. Bush has spent $160 billion for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to grab Middle East oil and expand the global reach of his corporate cronies. By contrast, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) fought a bare-knuckle battle to force the GOP-controlled Congress to approve just $4 billion annually to fight the AIDS epidemic, which she calls the “other war.”

In the final week of June, Bush issued regulations stipulating that any group receiving funds to combat AIDS must inform recipients that condoms are “ineffective” and “abstinence” is the only protection.

The UN warns that campaigns based on “abstinence” are proven not to work while condoms are a proven measure for curbing AIDS. Bush’s right-wing prudery is a menace to human life. The disease is now the number-one killer of African American women ages 18 to 35 and AIDS is spreading in the U.S., while Bush squanders trillions in tax dollars on his crazed schemes of global domination. It will take a “regime change” in Washington to end the deceitful “war on terrorism” and launch a real war on AIDS.

Media wars

A federal appeals court in Philadelphia recently rejected Bush administration ploys to revise media ownership rules. The Federal Communications Commission, headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell’s son, Michael Powell, had proposed changes that would have allowed a single company to own as many as three television stations, eight radio stations and the monopoly newspaper in a given market, giving the green light to further monopolizing an already highly monopolized industry.

Despite increasing availability of Internet access, control of the media is still equivalent to the control of information.

While the court’s April 25 ruling is being hailed as a victory for diversity, it did not reverse the FCC’s allowance of a company to own both television stations and newspapers in the same city.

Corporate conglomerates controlling the public’s access to information is a huge problem. Many people come out of “Fahrenheit 9/11” asking, “How come we never saw these clips before?” The New York Times was forced to give a half-hearted apology May 26 for its one-sided coverage leading up to the Iraq war. Corporate ownership threatens the very existence of the “fourth estate” and by so doing threatens democracy.

Media conglomerates are already preparing for battle, but so are grassroots groups. One of the two Democratic FCC commissioners, Michael J. Copps, said the decision gives the FCC an opportunity to do the right thing. “This time we must include the American people in the process instead of shutting them out,” Copps said.

The American people must not be shut out of decisions on media ownership. As Michael Moore’s recent movie shows, the independent media – independent from corporate and right-wing control – is also critical for democracy in the information age.

Deregulation – whether in airlines, energy or the media – only serves the monopoly corporate interests, not the vast majority. The Bush administration, famous for attacking court rulings it doesn’t agree with, has to be made to respect this court’s decision.

Tony de la Rosa: Presente!

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 07:57:00 +0000

On June 2 the Mexicano community in South Texas – not to mention the entire nation – lost a cultural treasure when Tony de la Rosa, a Conjunto music pioneer, died during heart surgery in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was 72.

De la Rosa became a trailblazer in the Conjunto music genre in the 1950s and ’60s with an innovative pyrotechnic accordion style and the first use of amplified instruments.

Conjunto is a blend of Spanish and Mexican folk music, the accordion music of 19th-century German immigrants, and Anglo American country music.

De la Rosa’s innovations allowed the transition of the genre from the cantinas to the dance halls throughout the underground communities of migrant and immigrant workers across the United States. De la Rosa honed his skills while performing for the hidden army of farm workers that built the economy of the Southwest and still keep the supermarkets full of produce.

He provided the music that was often the only moments of joy for migrant workers that were forced to live in subhuman conditions and often found whole families working dawn to dusk picking the fruits of the factory farms.

The dance halls where he performed were islands of humanness that reminded the migrants of their culture and home. It was a ritual of identification that resisted assimilation into a world that accepted them as workers, but created an “otherness” that justified (and continues to justify)their exploitation.

Today his music still fills the migrant camps thought the agricultural belt of the United States. His music mixes in with the Banda music and Cumbias that provide the soundtrack for a workforce that is often forgotten but crucial to the American economy.

In the thousand of dance halls in Texas and throughout the U.S., working-class couples still fill the dance floors when the first notes of “Atotonilco” by Tony de la Rosa is played. With the smoothness of skaters on ice, they dance the unique shuffle style of the taquachito into the wee hours of the night. This is where Tony de la Rosa’s legacy was born and, ultimately, where it will live on.

De la Rosa was the classic organic intellectual that defines a working-class culture that is well aware of the nature of its exploitation. He was a cultural “guerillero” whose weapon was the accordion.

– Raul Cano

Letters

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 06:56:00 +0000

COs in Canada

Here in Toronto there are several cases of U.S. soldiers pending before the refugee board applying for refugee status. A former Vietnam draft dodger now Canadian lawyer, Jeffrey House, is handling the cases. It has gotten a lot of press here. House was interviewed on the Canadian TV the other day and says he is getting a large volume of calls from American soldiers about fleeing to Canada to escape a war they don’t want to fight in. He is advising them to seek all remedies in the U.S. first because none of the refugee clams have been decided here yet.

During the Vietnam War the Canadian government had a policy of accepting people evading the draft and deserters granting them permanent resident status. Some 50,000 came to Toronto alone, and most of them stayed.

We are not sure what regime will be in power until after June 28, the date of our federal elections. If the incumbent liberal win with social democratic support (NDP) then it is likely they will support these people. If it is a right-wing government under the conservatives then the situation becomes more difficult as the conservatives are neo-fascists and love George Bush.

Christopher BlackToronto, Ontario The author is a lawyer in Canada.

Appalled at free speech

I am appalled at your leftist/neo-communist website. All of you should reanalyze your hypocritical stance and come around to reality. It is easy to stand on your little red soapbox, espousing communistic nonsense, with the Communist Manifesto in one hand and a Big Mac in the other. Value your freedoms or risk losing them.

Peter DelgadoVia e-mail

Editor’s note: The image of one of us holding a Manifesto in one hand and a Big Mac in the other while standing on a little red soapbox is comical, but the anti-communism isn’t. Communists, leftists and progressives were jailed for their beliefs in the 1950s – one of the country’s worst anti-democratic times. Anti-communism is not about democracy, it’s about limiting democracy. We do value freedoms and the expansion of them. That’s why we publish what we do.

Three Bs

Greetings from Mexico. I am receiving the PWW within two weeks of publication. Your publication is very interesting therefore I don’t mind the delay. Just keep kicking the hell out of Bush’s butt to get him back to Texas brush country. Give him a triple dose of the Bs regularly. (Bush Butt Brush Country.)

George S. BencichMazatlan, Mexico

The myth of Reagan

Jarvis Tyner’s wonderful article demystifying Ronald Reagan deserves the widest circulation possible. (“The Real Ronald Reagan,” PWW 6/19-25) We should all remember that before he became a HUAC friendly witness in 1947, Reagan was a “volunteer” FBI informer against the left in Hollywood.

Rather than being a strong leader, Reagan was a mouthpiece for studio executives and GE in the 1950s, rightwing California millionaires who ran him for governor in 1966 (he initially told them that he didn’t know if he could run because he never played a governor in the movies), racists (he began his campaign for President in 1980 by advocating states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three Civil Rights workers were murdered in 1964), union busters, and, of course, the military-industrial complex.

In this election, we can beat the “little Reagan,” George W. Bush, and reverse the policies that have been so destructive for people everywhere.

Norman MarkowitzNew Brunswick NJ

Capitalism and jobs

Pat Barile’s article is right on target. (“Capitalism and jobs – the fundamentals,” PWW 4/24-5/1). Since the early seventies I’ve read the “paper of record,” The New York Times, and always purchased the first edition of the new year because they printed a supplement that gave its opinion/prediction for the coming year concerning jobs; growth, stagnation and decline. For the many years I had followed these educated predictions, the Times strongly suggested that computerization of industries would create jobs. I had my doubts back then and for good reason (unionized typesetting jobs disappeared in a very short time period). The Times continued this line until the late eighties and then reversed course, basically saying “well maybe computers actually eliminate jobs”— Awe shucks, everyone makes mistakes!

The question one must ask is, did the “paper of record” really believe what they were saying, or was it business as usual – protect the sacred cow, profits, and to hell with truth?

Gabe FalsettaGlendale NY

USS Jimmy Carter

Peace activists from around Connecticut marched to the Main Gate of the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton June 5 to protest an event celebrating the U.S. Navy’s most advanced fast-attack submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter.

Six people at the peaceful protest were arrested after they crossed police lines to urge guests to boycott the ceremony.

Trident Resistance Network Coordinator Steven Kobasa described the Seawolf-class submarine as the “newest model for future military intervention by the U.S.: efficient, covert, and able to operate at a vast distance.” The $4.4 billion vessel will be equipped with an expansive arsenal of torpedoes and cruise missiles, he added.

Demonstrators carried large banners calling attention to U.S. war crimes in Iraq, handed out leaflets, and chanted, “Money for schools, jobs, and health-care – not war!”

Kobasa told reporters, “In these days of endless war I think it is absolutely crucial that people be here to say no.” Demonstrators criticized former President Jimmy Carter – who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 – for being both pleased and honored at having the ship christened with his name.

As Kobasa wrote in a letter to the editor of the New London Day, “What honor will there be when we count the dead of future wars waged with this terrible weapon in (Carter’s) name?”

Patricia GinoniBridgeport CT

My thoughts

I not only find this website informative but it is also helpful when I need ‘talking points’ for certain issues! Although I get the paper, it’s also great to have it on line.

K. Salazar-SmithVia e-mail

Editorials

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 05:26:00 +0000

Stop Bush’s hidden draft

The Pentagon plans to call up 5,600 retired or discharged soldiers, members of a group of 117,000 so-called “ready reserves.” This comes on top of the so-called “stop loss” policy, which has extended for a year or longer the deployment of National Guard and Reserve troops in Iraq, part of the 140,000 U.S. occupation force.

Gone are the days when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld blithely brushed aside warnings that far more troops would be needed to crush Iraqi resistance and impose a “Pax Americana” on the oil-rich nation. Then he bragged that “light, agile” U.S. military forces could conquer any opposing army. Now the Bush administration speaks of needing more troops, who will remain in Iraq indefinitely.

Their real plans are more likely a permanent military garrison in Iraq similar to their deployments in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Some warn that these maneuvers are part of an “unofficial draft” or “poverty draft” in which poor and working class youth – disproportionately African American, Latino, and other people of color – bear the burden of Bush’s costly Iraq fiasco.

Already the burden on military families is crushing. Soldiers with children who signed up in the Guard and Reserves expecting to be absent on weekends and two weeks during the summer are now forced into long separations from their families, at risk of being squeezed out of their regular jobs. The roster of dead is nearing 1,000; the ranks of the seriously wounded, 10,000. Iraqis see U.S. troops as hostile occupiers, not liberators. It attests to the abject failure of the Bush Doctrine of unilateral, preemptive war. If Bush steals another term, we can expect a full-fledged return of military conscription as he seeks more cannon fodder in his crazed lust for world domination. Save many lives at home and abroad. Vote against Bush Nov. 2.

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The Fourth of July – then and now

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…”

With that opening line on July 4, 1776, a band of 56 anti-colonialists signed one of the most revolutionary and historic documents of all time: The Declaration of Independence.

The revolutionaries put forth heretical ideas at the time. It states “all men are created equal” and have “certain unalienable Rights” and when a government becomes destructive it is the “Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

The Bush administration certainly fits the bill of being destructive. In response, a growing movement in the U.S. is coalescing to assert the “Right of the People” to get rid of a government that is shredding our most basic rights and principles. This is part of the American Revolutionary heritage.

So is sovereignty. On June 28, the Bush administration declared Iraqi sovereignty like it was something they could check off their “to do” list. Yet over 140,000 U.S. troops remain. Iraqis will have to battle to wrest their oil and resources from U.S. corporate control. Security – a problem stemming directly from the war and occupation – remains a huge issue for the Iraqi people. Some sovereignty!

In the Declaration the “founding fathers” listed numerous grievances against England and King George. Among them: “For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.” And using “Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny…”

We cannot allow the U.S. government to violate our own nation’s founding ideals by continuing to control Iraq. We need U.S. troops out now, the UN in to help transfer full sovereignty to the Iraqi people, with U.S. corporations paying reparations.

Let’s get rid of King George W. Bush. Long live the spirit of ’76!