People Before Profit blog

News bias in The Associated Press

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 08:17:00 +0000

A new study conducted at Sonoma State University shows widespread bias in Associated Press (AP) news reports favoring U.S. government positions.

On October 25, 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union posted to their website 44 autopsy reports, acquired from American military sources, covering the deaths of civilians who died while in U.S. military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002-2004. The autopsy reports provided proof of widespread torture by U.S. forces. A press release by the ACLU announcing the deaths was immediately picked up by AP’s wire service, making the story available to U.S. corporate media nationwide. A thorough check of Nexus-Lexus and Proquest library databases showed that at least 98 percent of the daily papers in the U.S. did not pick up the story, nor did AP ever conduct follow-up coverage on the issue.

The Associated Press is a nonprofit cooperative news wire service. The AP, with 3,700 employees, has 242 bureaus worldwide that deliver news reports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to 121 countries in five languages including English, German, Dutch, French and Spanish. In the U.S. alone, AP reaches 1,700 daily, weekly, non-English and college newspapers, and 5,000 radio and television stations. AP reaches over a billion people every day via print, radio or television.

Alison Weir, Joy Ellison and Peter Weir of the organization If Americans Knew recently conducted research on the AP’s reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The study was a statistical analysis of the AP newswire in the year 2004, looking comparatively at the numbers of Israeli and Palestinian deaths reported. In 2004 there were 141 reports of Israeli deaths in AP headlines and lead paragraphs, while in reality there were only 108 Israeli deaths. During this same period, 543 Palestinian deaths were reported by AP, while 821 Palestinians had actually been killed. The ratio of actual number of Israeli conflict deaths to Palestinian deaths in 2004 was 1-7, yet AP reported deaths of Israelis to Palestinians at a 2-1 ratio.

The same could be said of AP’s reporting of children’s deaths. Nine reports of Israeli children’s deaths were reported by the AP in headlines and leading paragraphs in 2004, while eight actually occurred. Only 27 Palestinian children’s deaths were reported by AP when actually 179 children died. While there were 22 times more Palestinian children’s deaths than Israeli children’s deaths, the AP reported 113 percent of Israeli children’s deaths and 15 percent of Palestinian children’s deaths.

On February 29, 2004, AP widely reported that President Aristide was ousted by Haitian rebels and that the United States provided an escort to take him out of the country to a safe asylum. Within 24 hours an entirely different story emerged through independent radio. Instead of the U.S. being the supportive facilitator of Aristide’s safety, Pacifica Radio News reported that Aristide was actually kidnapped by U.S. forces. AP quickly changed their story. On March 1, 2004, an AP report by Deb Riechman said, “White House officials said Aristide left willingly and that the United States aided his safe departure. But in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Aristide said: “No. I was forced to leave.”

The last AP report of Aristide’s claiming that he had been kidnapped by the U.S. in a State Department coup was on June 27, 2004. Since then there have been 60 news articles by AP including Aristide’s name. Of these stories none mentioned Aristide’s claim that he was kidnapped by the United States military. None mention the U.S. backing of the coup. AP’s bias in favor of the State Department’s version of Aristide’s removal seems to be a deliberate case of AP-sanctioned forgetting.

AP is a massive institutionalized bureaucracy that feeds news stories to nearly every newspaper and radio/TV station in the United States. They are so large that top-down control of single news stories is practically impossible. However, research clearly indicates a built-in bias favoring official U.S. government positions. The American people absorb these biases and make political decisions on skewed understandings. Without media systems that provide fair, critical and accurate reporting, democracy faces a dismal future.

Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored. University research interns Sarah Randle, Brian Fuchs, Zoe Huffman and Fabrice Romero assisted with this report. The full AP bias study is available at www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/ap_bias.html.

CARTOON

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 08:06:00 +0000

Time to end the Republican war on science

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 07:49:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — “The Republican War on Science,” a best-selling book by Chris Mooney, exposes the multipronged offensive by the Bush-Cheney administration and the Republican Party to twist science to their right-wing agenda..

These modern-day “Know Nothings” rail against climate experts, branding their warnings of global warming as “unproven science.” Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who has served Big Oil in the House loyally for 11 terms, even threatened a witch-hunt investigation of climate scientists for their subversive report that high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are pushing global temperatures to dangerous new highs.

The Bush administration virtually banished any mention of that study as well as a similar study produced during the Clinton administration, the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. This fanatic state of denial includes Bush’s mendacious claim that measures to reduce greenhouse emissions will cost 5 million jobs. The United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club, in their Blue-Green Alliance, argue that the opposite is the case: conversion of our nation’s economy to sustainable forms of energy will create millions of new good-paying jobs.

Yes, it is hotter

The White House suffered a big setback June 22. The National Academy of Sciences released a report that day confirming the accuracy of the earlier reports on global warming. Planet Earth is hotter than it has been in 400 years, the report said, and likely hotter than anytime in the past 2,000 years.

Dr. Ian Kraucunas, director of the NAS team that produced the report, told the World, “This study corroborates the findings” of the climate scientists’ study. “There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, bore holes, retreating glaciers and other ‘proxies’ to say with a high level of confidence that global warming is occurring in response to human activity.”

Al Gore’s hit film “An Inconvenient Truth” is packing theaters across the nation with millions of viewers, who come away with new awareness that global warming poses an immediate threat to civilization, and it is time for drastic measures to curb greenhouse emissions. One clear message is the need to break the stranglehold the big oil corporations have on the federal government.

A new low

The far-right war on science reached a new low with Bush’s veto of a bill to dramatically expand embryonic stem cell research.

The House was unable to override Bush’s veto, his first since he took office. It proved that the House is still dominated by the backward ideology of Tom DeLay, the Texas cockroach exterminator, who recently proclaimed that an “embryo is a person.”

Dr. Mark S. Frankel, director of the Project on Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, pointed out that millions of people are suffering from degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, who have no hope of recovery.

“Stem cell research is a revolutionary way of practicing medicine,” he added. “What we’re trying to do is regenerate cells in the body either by replacing them with new cells or combining them with parts of the body. It holds great promise, eventually, of providing cures for these diseases.”

Bush’s veto “is going to be an issue in some of the congressional races in 2006,” Frankel continued. “If this election changes the composition of the House and Senate, it could make it easier to override a veto.”

Battle in the schools

Asked if the Bush administration and the Republican right are waging “war on science,” Frankel replied, “We certainly have forces who feel threatened by science. They fear science and want to put science in a bad light because they see it as a threat to their values, whether it is evolution or stem cell research.”

The same right-wing forces have bankrolled a slick campaign to smuggle “creationism,” peddled as “intelligent design,” into the nation’s high school biology classes.

But advocates of science are fighting back. Frankel cited a recent school board election in Dover, Pa., in which proponents of the teaching of evolution ousted a school board that had imposed creationism in the public schools. “In recent years, we’ve made some inroads,” he said. “It is the result of coalitions at the local level of high school biology teachers, parents, and organizations like the AAAS that advocate science. This struggle is not over and will continue.”

Hot issue in Show-Me State

Stem cell research is emerging as a crucial issue in Missouri where incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Talent opposes the Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. A poll by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch showed 62 percent of voters favoring the pro-stem-cell-research ballot question and only 35 percent opposed. Ballot Watch ’06 fingered Talent as “one of the most endangered incumbents” in the Senate partly because of his reactionary stand on the issue. He faces State Auditor Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who has built a strong statewide following after losing a close race for governor two years ago. A Post-Dispatch poll has her beating Talent 49 percent to 43 percent.

Space wars

This February, the White House altered NASA’s mission statement, deleting the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet,” The New York Times reported July 22.

In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of NASA was stated as “the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

Several NASA researchers told the Times they were upset that the change was made without consulting the agency’s 19,000 employees or informing them ahead of time.

Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the change might reflect White House eagerness to shift the spotlight away from global warming.

Silencing scientists

Anger is rising that this White House not only is hostile to science but increasingly resorts to bullyboy tactics to silence scientists who disagree with them. Hansen, a climate scientist, said last winter that he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking out about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

He told an audience in 2004, “In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now.”

The Bush administration accepts only scientific results that “fit predetermined and inflexible positions,” Hansen continued. “This I believe is a recipe for environmental disaster.”

Hansen told the crowd he was delivering a talk on the human, or anthropogenic, causes of global warming to NASA officials one day. Sean O’Keefe, NASA’s director at the time, interrupted him and “told me that I should not talk about dangerous anthropogenic interference because we do not know enough or have enough evidence” to prove that use of fossil fuels is causing the earth’s temperature to rise.

While O’Keefe denies having said these words to Hansen, and maintains that several others present at the meeting also have no recollection of such words, Hansen has stuck by his story.

Philip Cooney served on the White House Council on Environmental Quality where his job was to censor government reports by deleting references to global warming. Outrage reached a point where Cooney was forced to resign.

He was hired immediately by Exxon Mobil. Democratic Party chair Howard Dean commented, “This is just one more example of how the Bush White House is bought and sold by the very industries it is supposed to regulate.”

Drug safety endangered

These tactics have reached the breaking point at the Food and Drug Administration. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) jointly released a survey July 20, which found that of the 997 FDA scientists who responded, nearly one-fifth said they had been asked “to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in an FDA scientific document.”

The survey found that 61 percent of respondents knew of cases in which “Department of Health and Human Services or FDA political appointees have inappropriately injected themselves into FDA determinations or actions.”

Dr. Francesca Grifo, senior scientist and director of the UCS’s Scientific Integrity Program, pointed out that FDA scientists conduct scientific tests to insure the safety of prescription drugs and medical devices, and the purity of the nation’s food supply. “Science must be the driving force for decisions made at the FDA,” she said. “These disturbing survey results make it clear that inappropriate interference is putting people in harm’s way.”

Michael Halpern, the program’s outreach coordinator, told the World, “We think these scientists need stronger whistleblower protections to protect them from the intimidation they face. They can be fired if they don’t do as they are told.” The survey found that 40 percent of the scientists feel “uncomfortable discussing their concerns on issues of public health for fear of retaliation. We’ve seen a number of cases recently where there was an irregularity in the drug approval process or monitoring of a prescription drug after it was approved for the market.”

Scientists fighting back

Halpern said 9,000 scientists have signed UCS’s statement, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.” The statement warns, “When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process,” by such tactics as “placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; disbanding existing advisory committees; censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice.”

The statement cites Bush’s “invalid claim that Iraq has sought to acquire aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges” while ignoring “the contrary assessment by experts at Livermore, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.”

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch told the World the “root” of the administration’s war on science is profits for the pharmaceutical corporations and other profit-driven enterprises. Ruch cited the case of FDA drug safety official David Graham, who “found his job truncated,” and has “been isolated and knocked off his career path because he blew the whistle on Vioxx.”

The whistleblower law as currently written limits whistleblowing to “a violation of law, rules, a ‘gross waste of funds’ or an ‘imminent threat to public health or safety,’” Ruch said. “A number of issues concerning scientists and their careers are not covered by that definition.”

He continued, “And thanks to Justice Samuel Alito, in a 5 to 4 Supreme Court ruling, government workers no longer enjoy First Amendment Freedom of Speech protection when they speak as a government employee.” Congress, he said, should enact a bill co-sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) titled “The Scientific Integrity Act” to expand and extend whistleblower protection to scientists. Action on this and a long list of other pro-science measures awaits a new, more enlightened Congress, Ruch said.

Reality-based community

Early in his book, Mooney cites the White House official who condescendingly told journalist Ron Suskind that “guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’” When Suskind “murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism,” the official “cut me off. ‘That’s not the way it really works any more …. We’re an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality.’”

The Bush-Cheney rejection of science in favor of brazen falsehood, deception, spin and delusions of global domination are creating a nightmare. More and more people are saying it is time to wake up and face reality. Our first real opportunity is casting our ballots Nov. 7 to end the nightmare.

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

Despite stem cell veto, scientists and patients fight on

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 04:44:00 +0000

Stem cell therapy holds awesome potential to cure many of humanity’s most debilitating diseases — Parkinson’s, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and spinal injuries — but promising research was dealt a devastating setback July 19 when President Bush exercised the first veto of his five years in office on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. The Senate had given the go-ahead to the research by approving the measure the previous day in a 63-37 vote.

“It is a sad day for science when the president of the United States thwarts the will of a majority of the House and Senate and a majority of the American people in blocking this important legislation,” said Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. “All the polls show that 70 percent or more of the people support stem cell research.”

It was ironic, Tipton added, that Bush used children born of frozen embryos as “stage props” in announcing his veto. “Back in the 1970s, some of these same forces wanted to outlaw in vitro fertilization,” he said. Without in vitro fertilization, none of those children would have been on display behind Bush.

The Senate was four votes short of a veto override and the House 50 votes short. The stakes were high. No other related bill or amendment will be allowed for the remainder of the 109th Congress.

The unsuccessful override vote showed deep splits in Republican ranks.

This issue represents a major conflict between the two foremost allies within the reactionary right. Corporate interests such as the giant health care centers and the pharmaceutical industry stand to profit from the radical new technology. But the opposition is led by their ally, the powerful forces of the religious right which has served corporate America’s right-wing agenda by diverting attention from critical economic issues in order to elect far-right candidates.

The measure would have allowed federal funding for embryonic stem cell research only if such embryos were created for purposes of fertility treatment, were donated with informed consent and not for financial incentive, were in excess of the clinical needs and would otherwise have been discarded.

Tipton hailed the “impressive political coalition of scientists and patients who are prepared to fight on.”

“I fully expect the American public to hold their elected representatives accountable on stem cell research,” he said. “This is an election year. We’ve got some 100 organizations including the American Medical Association who are part of this effort. I think people want scientific decisions made by scientists, not by politicians.”

The actor Christopher Reeve brought national attention to the importance of stem cell research after his paralyzing accident. Shortly before his death, he said, “Having lived with a spinal cord injury for nearly nine years, I still have to emerge every morning from dreams in which I am completely healthy and adjust to the reality of paralysis. ... I believed that the scientists were progressing well ... and that the light at the end of the tunnel would continue to shine brighter every day.

“I never imagined that a heated political debate over the insertion of a patient’s DNA into an unfertilized egg ... would have such an effect on me,” Reeve continued. “Now, instead of waking up just to rediscover that I am paralyzed, I wake up shocked by the realization that I may remain paralyzed for a very long time, if not forever.”

NYC renters revolt for home rule

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 07:28:00 +0000

Unique to U.S. cities, New York is a city of renters. Almost two-thirds of us rent the apartments we call home. In New York, being a renter is often lifelong and the only circumstance under which the not super-rich can live, work and raise children in the city. (NYC is the most expensive U.S. city to live in and ninth most expensive in the world.)

New York is equally unique in having rent controls, in various forms, since the 1920s. The modern version of New York’s rent regulation was born in 1974, when Albany legislators passed the “Emergency Tenant Protection Act” or ETPA. While the name implies government good will, the legislation in fact did two things that have undermined tenants’ rights since its enactment. First, it made tenant protections temporary, subject to renewal every sunset year based on political winds and whims. Second, it concentrated power over rents in the state Legislature, although many lawmakers did not have a single renter in their home district. (From 1962 until 1971, NYC locally controlled its rent regulation system.) The ETPA allows municipalities to opt in if they have a “housing emergency” defined as a vacancy rate less than 5 percent. Currently, four including New York City have opted in.

There are 1.2 million regulated apartments in the state and approximately 90 percent of them are in New York City. This year the NYC vacancy rate was just over 3 percent.

Passage of the ETPA meant the loss of home rule control by New York City over its regulated rental housing. Instead, NYC acquired few, specific responsibilities from Albany. Its most public charge is to annually research changes to landlord’s costs and consequently determine renter increases and a “vacancy allowance” bonus landlords get on units that turn over. These increases are set yearly by the Rent Guidelines Board. The RGB has nine members who, on paper, include two landlord representatives, two tenant representatives and five public representatives. In fact, only one member is actually a renter and most of the landlord and public members have ties to big business and finance. Thus the board votes often isolate the tenant members. Over time, its actions have hiked rents to levels that elevate a mere housing emergency to a housing crisis.

(According to the 2005 NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey, the vacancy rate for units renting under $800 is 1.38-2.3 percent. Apartments at these rents are not hard to find; they are nonexistent. Further, in the 2005 study almost 29 percent of all NYC tenant households pay more than 50 percent of their income toward rent. This is the highest ever recorded in the triennial survey.)

The RGB must hold its preliminary and final votes in public and is required to hear public testimony. However public testimony is taken only after the preliminary vote and the public and landlord members don’t even feign interest in what Joe and Josephine Tenant have to say. Only in 2006 — after years of lobbying by tenants — did the board agree to hold a public session in the Bronx, the borough with the most regulated tenants.

This year the level of Board disrespect for tenants was record and blatant. The one public member who voted in 2005 with the two tenant representatives to freeze rents was removed from the board. One of the tenants’ expert panelists was told to “get the f—- out of here” by the board chair when he pressed a point about eroding tenant protections. A tenant representative proposal to have the board pass an “advisory resolution” in favor of restoring home rule to NYC was voted down 7-2. Through spring and early summer 2006 tenants faced only humiliation.

Until June 27.

The preliminarily vote had set the highest increases in 15 years. This happened despite intense tenant testimony, impressive local political support and almost zero landlord presence. In the Bronx alone over 110 tenants testified in 5-1/2 hours of pubic hearing, one-third in Spanish. One sole landlord bothered to speak. The preliminary vote ignored the decades-long growing low-income and shrinking middle-income patterns in NYC. It also ignored the economic reality: the median income of regulated NYC renters is $32,000. There is very little in our wallets.

The final vote was to begin at 5:30 p.m. on June 27. The jackets-and-ties board sat at a long tableclothed table on a stage above the public, neatly set with ice-water pitchers. Below the board in the cheap seats were the tenants — the hoi polloi, the working people, the seniors with canes. It was nearly standing-room-only in the auditorium. We came with our outrage, desperation and stretched budgets. We came with noise-makers, drums, maracas, chants, percussion, call and response. We were tenants and community groups from all across the city. We came offering ourselves — the only thing we had left to protect our homes. We came to shut the vote down.

From 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., we made so much noise the board could not conduct any business. Every time the chair started to speak, we out-noised him. We were a wall of sound, at rock-concert level, for an hour and were so effective that the board called a two-and-a-half-hour recess. Never had the board suspended activity for so long. By 9 p.m., they reasoned, the older tenants and ones with kids would have left and the remaining rabble would be easier to silence.

We quickly mobilized to not lose forces in the 150-minute recess and made sure tenants knew to stay put or be back by 8:15. We expected the board would bar us from re-entering the auditorium and even begin working before 9 p.m. while tenants were scattered and the room quiet.

Shortly after 8 p.m., we materialized again and chanted and beat drums for 45 minutes before the board reappeared. When members did arrive again, we greeted them with our fists in the air and shouts of “We’re still here! We’re still here!” A big group wearing lime shirts waved signs in Chinese. Senior citizens were numerous and unavoidable in the crowd. The many Latino tenants added “Sí se puede!” to the “We’re still here!” rhythm. We upped the ante with “Home rule now! Home rule now!” to remind the board they, like us renters, should not be beholden to Albany. The sound was joyful, defiant, deafening. And we weren’t stopping. At one point, a young woman dressed in kente entered the hearing, brilliantly playing her bongo drum. She immediately overtook the sound in the room. The rest of us followed her lead with our banging. She was glorious; she electrified our cause.

The board then brought in the police. Worried that the board would try to recess yet again, we boldly took over the stage to make a “People’s Rent Guidelines Board.” The bongo woman led and children, mobile seniors and 20-somethings hopped up to occupy the stage on which the board had so far failed to do its work. Our cacophony continued even after the police cleared us off and representatives resumed their seats.

Our uproar persisted unabated until one of the tenant members raised her hand to speak. She was an ally and her words — the only any board member would utter on June 27 audible to all — were an eloquent description of how the board made the problems of working people in NYC worse.

Once she was finished, we went back to bellowing and banging. Around 10 p.m. the chair brought his stenographer up onto the stage so he could conduct business by passing paper notes. Shortly afterward we saw the chair mouth the words “proposed rent increase” and “do I have a second?” At that point we realized the board would vote.

So what did we achieve? Just a delay of the vote to increase our rents? On the contrary. We created a unique disruption to the Board’s process, embodied business-not-as-usual, exercised people power in a bracing display and animated the sham nature of the RGB’s activity. We also called repeatedly for “home rule” for NYC’s renters. Our rent regulation system should be administered locally. Albany’s control over our homes and the undemocratic actions of our Rent Guidelines Board must end. NY renters need home rule now. The tenant takeover on June 27 was a glorious salvo.

Marina Metalios (marinametalios@yahoo.com) is a longtime tenant activist and board member of Tenant PAC.

EDITORIAL: Hot topics

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 07:03:00 +0000

A sweltering heat wave blanketed much of the United States this past week, with thermometers soaring well over 100 degrees in some places. The scorching temperatures sent millions of people searching for relief.

While nature treats everyone equally, sometimes producing pleasant weather conditions and sometimes hurricanes, torrential rains or extreme heat, capitalism does not. The huge difference between rich and poor in this country dictates how much relief a person will be able to get. In some cases it is a matter of convenience, and in other cases it is a matter of life and death.

All across the country it’s the same: those who have the financial wherewithal are able to air condition their homes; those who don’t have to linger around their local air-conditioned supermarket or sit at home sweltering, relying on a fan that merely blows the hot air around.

While one does not have to be rich to have an air-conditioner, many can’t afford to buy one, and soaring energy prices — necessary to increase the sacred profits of the energy industry — make heat relief more and more prohibitive for the average person.

Do you want to eat, or do you want air conditioning? Your ailing grandmother can’t take extreme heat? Well, you can hold back your mortgage payment, and hope they don’t take your house.

The heat wave has been responsible for the deaths of at least 11 people nationwide. Isn’t it likely that if they had the money for air conditioning, most of these people would have opted to use it?

Of course, unlimited use of electricity to power air conditioners is not environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, while numerous green energy technologies are being developed, they are not being adequately funded.

Our society has the power to make sure that no one goes without protection from the elements, to make sure that everyone has a refuge. What’s more, we have the scientific capability to develop this power in a way that will not destroy the delicate ecosystem that sustains human life.

So what’s stopping us?

The answer is clear: A capitalist system that puts corporate energy profits over people’s needs.

Women face radical right in fight for reproductive rights

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:46:00 +0000

As we enter the 21st century, the status of women is unrecognizable, certainly compared to a century ago, but even to what it was 20-30 years ago.

Globalization has profoundly affected women. New millions are employed in factories around the globe. And globalization’s impact on those most responsible for childrearing — for reproducing the next generation of workers — extends far beyond the workplace. Control of water, food production, pollution and markets: these are women’s equality issues, too.

The struggle for women’s political and social rights is being waged in new ways and new places, and against new threats from religious fundamentalists and the extreme right.

In the United States, the past 25 years of right-wing political ascendancy has had a huge impact in every arena of life. But it is clear that women have been in the bull’s-eye of the far right’s agenda, both politically and ideologically.

Make no mistake: the goal of the extreme right is to dismantle the political, economic and social gains that women have earned through decades of struggle. And it is clear that women’s previous political, cultural and social gains have slipped under right-wing rule.

True reproductive rights

An obvious case in point is the full court press to criminalize and outlaw abortion. While this is by no means the only reproductive rights issue, it has certainly been the focus of the extreme right.

Reproductive rights — the right of women to decide for themselves about childbearing — have been under a stepped-up attack by the Bush administration and the radical right. This basic human right, this fundamental right of choice, was won through years of struggle. It is currently being repealed, piecemeal, by presidential order and by anti-choice majorities in Congress and many state legislatures.

The recent action by South Dakota’s Legislature and its right-wing governor, banning and criminalizing all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the woman, is a case in point.

For the right wing, biology is destiny: women, because they become pregnant and bear children, are “naturally” subordinated to men. As a consequence, such people reason, women’s educational, civic, vocational and social aspirations are secondary to men’s.

Such ideas have had considerable influence. It is remarkable, for example, that in 2004 the head of Harvard University felt free to opine that women’s brains aren’t suited to science. That opinion, we are happy to report, ultimately cost him his job. But it was offered in all seriousness.

The social subordination of women has led to a distortion of the right to self-determination for half the human species, and of society itself.

Without the achievement of social, political and economic security, true equality for women will never be attained. And reproductive rights are a precondition for women’s full participation in social and economic life.

True reproductive rights represent a whole spectrum of health, justice and economic issues. Among these are access to quality and competent abortion services, the availability of safe, effective and affordable contraception, an end to sterilization abuse, access to quality health care and child care, adequate housing, a livable wage, adequate and compensated maternity/paternity leave and the legally protected right to shorter working hours for parents without a loss of pay.

True reproductive rights also include the right of a woman to freely express her sexual orientation.

What is the ‘right to choose’?

It is the right of any woman, regardless of income, marital status, class, social or economic status, belief system or sexual orientation, to choose when or if she will bear children. The right to choose also codifies, in law, her right to access contraception and abortion as tools in managing that choice.

The right to choose assumes that women are moral, intelligent and fully human and are, therefore, free to exercise that choice. It is an expression of the ethical principle of autonomy, as in the right to make decisions about one’s own life and body.

The most well known right-wing attacks have been leveled, since 1973, against Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that freed a woman to decide, in private consultation with her physician and family, whether to maintain a pregnancy or terminate it. Because poll after poll clearly indicates that a majority of people in the U.S. support a woman’s right to choose, the “right-to-life” (or mandatory pregnancy) movement gave up on its frontal legislative assault aimed at an outright nationwide ban on abortion.

In response, the religious and political right wing developed more devious, and sometimes more menacing, tactics. The more obvious ones include terrorist attacks on abortion clinics, physicians, patients and staff.

Other tactics include erecting legislative barriers, such as parental consent forms, onerous waiting periods and mandated unnecessary and inflammatory “education programs” for pregnant women seeking abortions. These programs typically belittle the intelligence and needs of pregnant women and their families.

State-by-state approach

Even more disturbing is the legislation passed by Louisiana that bans abortion under any circumstances, including the possibility of the death of the woman. The life of a pregnant woman apparently has no meaning other than as an incubator for a fetus.

Within the past year, legislators in many states have passed bills that stiffened parental consent requirements (in Arizona, for example, by requiring a notarized signature — a requirement that would eliminate any idea of privacy), required doctors to provide non-scientific information to women (such as a spurious link between abortion and breast cancer), and “protected the moral rights” of pharmacists while denying the same rights to women.

Women, apparently, are also too dim to understand or use contraception appropriately. The religious flavor in the Bush administration’s health budgets, which give more and more funds for “abstinence” education rather than scientifically developed family planning, sex education and contraception, highlights the control that the fundamentalist right has on this administration.

Consider the campaign by religious fundamentalists and right-wing lawmakers to restrict access to contraception. It is clearly presumes that women are not full human beings with the right to control all aspects of their lives, including their reproduction.

Death by a thousand cuts

We need to speak of the death by a thousand cuts suffered by women’s rights in everything from attacks on Title IX of the Civil Rights Act (which was responsible for a cultural revolution by opening the doors of athletics to millions of girls, thereby developing role models for girls and women in the persons of athletes such as Mia Hamm and Cheryl Miller), to destruction of affirmative action, to cuts in funding for social programs that primarily served women and families, for example, WIC and SCHIP.

The struggle for universal health care is also a women’s equality issue. Working women have less access to health care benefits for themselves and their children than do working men.

We have witnessed, too, how critical medications have been only tested on men, leaving women at risk of serious injury or death because of differences in metabolism and hormones.

We have seen drive-by mastectomies forced on unwilling cancer victims. We have witnessed the closure of labor and delivery services in inner city and rural areas, endangering the lives of both women and their babies, because such services are not lucrative enough for profit-hungry hospitals.

The fact that infant and maternal mortality in the U.S. is well above other industrialized nations is a national shame; that the infant and maternal mortality in this country’s communities of color is so high is a crime.

Equal pay

Equal Pay Day was observed on April 25. Equal Pay Day reminds us that the 60 million working women in this country are suffering economically because equal pay is still not a reality.

Women have made some gains in corporate board memberships: they are now an underwhelming 13.6 percent, up from 9.5 percent in 1995. And, no doubt because women get tired of fighting the “men and good ol’ boys first” mentality at most companies, new business start-ups by women are at an all-time high.

But these successes for a relatively few women pale in comparison to the outrageous pay inequity that exists for a majority of their sisters in the everyday workforce. The National Committee on Pay Equity reminds us that even though the Equal Pay Act was passed more than 40 years ago, women working full time, year round, still make only 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

It’s even worse if your skin happens to be black or brown. Black women get 71 cents and Latinas only 59 cents for every dollar a man makes. Asian Pacific women on aggregate earn 86 cents.

The average 23-cent gap adds up over a work life to a very unequal bank account, with the gap totaling more than $300,000 for the average woman’s career. This can mean the difference between owning or renting a home, sending your kids to college or to work at Wal-Mart, and having a decent retirement or living under a bridge in old age. Nationwide, working families lose $200 billion in income annually because of the pay gap.

Right-wingers continue to claim there really is no pay gap. They say the shortfall is due to “choices” women make.

Do women just naturally like the jobs with lower pay or less risk? Tell that to the women cleaning toilets or caring for patients in hospitals every day. And those who refuse to believe there’s a pay gap ignore reality: In every field, from law and medicine to teaching or clerking at department stores, the women make less for doing exactly the same work as the men.

It’s discrimination, not motherhood

Another argument is that motherhood — not sex discrimination — is the real culprit. If that’s so, we all need to take a hard look at why the workplace punishes women for being mothers, but fatherhood carries no economic risk at all. But shortchanging women means shortchanging men and children as well.

Women workers are more likely to have part-time jobs, and more likely to work for minimum wage with no pension or health benefits.

The Fair Pay Act, a bill to level the paying field, has been a perennial on Capitol Hill since 1996. The FPA would outlaw discrimination in pay for jobs that are equal in skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, even if the actual work is dissimilar. Perhaps more important, the bill would require employers to release summary statistics on what they pay women and men, so workers would know where they stood in the workforce.

We must also look at why too many states provide no protection for working mothers in hiring and pay. It is legal in many states to pay working mothers less than other women doing the same work.

Equal pay committees, particularly in areas that have chapters of the Coalition of Labor Women or the National Organization for Women, organize events to call attention to pay inequity and fight to close the gap.

2006 elections

These and other women’s rights organizations are also focusing on the congressional elections this November. Women’s organizations, including NOW, are focused on changing the balance of forces in the national political picture away from the Republican far right.

Women of all classes, races and nationalities have a big stake in this November’s elections. From judicial appointments to ending war, women have a material stake in shifting Congress.

In this midterm election year, we can expect a big surge in women’s participation in the struggle to turn our country around.

Carolyn Trowbridge is a peace and health activist and heads up the Communist Party’s Women’s Equality Commission.

Operation Save America is targeting the Jackson, Miss., Women’s Health Organization, the last remaining clinic in the state to offer the option of pregnancy termination, to make Mississippi “the first ‘abortion-free’ state in America.” Above, Kim Gandy, president of NOW, speaks at a July 15 rally for abortion rights in Jackson. Gandy said Mississippi is a battleground for preserving women’s reproductive rights. If the state’s only abortion clinic is closed, Gandy said, “it’s going to have a devastating impact on the women who live here and don’t have other options that they can exercise.” The pro-choice rally was evacuated when police received a bomb threat.

Immigrant rights groups put unity in action

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:21:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — From the panelists speaking for a spectrum of immigrant communities, to the chants in globe-spanning languages that closed the program, the Community Forum on Immigration, Labor and Interracial Alliances was all about bringing immigrant communities together in action with labor, the religious community and other people’s organizations.

The July 15 program was organized by the newly formed Regional Unity Coalition, bringing together the main coalitions behind the great wave of marches in northern California during the spring. Similar unity actions are also slated for Chicago, New York and many other communities.

Plans are being laid for another national Day of Action during the Labor Day weekend, coordinating with the labor movement’s plans, organizers announced. Community hearings are also slated for San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose in coming weeks.

While Republican congressional leaders are holding hearings around the country supporting their anti-immigrant agenda, “we decided to have our own hearings, and ask ourselves, what are the root causes of migration, unemployment and racism,” Maria Poblet of the Deporten la Migra Coalition, told the audience.

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, “there’s been a significant increase in the deaths among people who come across the desert on the border with Mexico, because they’ve been forced off their land, their way of life and livelihoods have been ripped from them,” said panelist Nancy Hormachea of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “They are forced to come here and take jobs at the bottom of the scale, with no protections for them or their families,” added Hormachea, who just visited Sasabe, Mexico, and Tucson, Ariz., with a delegation from many immigrant rights organizations.

“I see today’s meeting as important to bring all our communities together,” she said, “because our struggles are the same and our strength is in being united.”

In a brief conversation after the program, Hormachea said that within its overall drive to step up enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security continues to specially target immigrants of Arab, Muslim and South Asian origin. Even scholars are denied visas, she said, while student visas take years to process, and people from certain countries are still required to register.

“Should we unite? We’re already united — we have to continue fighting!” declared Regina Douglas of the San Francisco-based People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). “This is a human obligation that we have to each other, to the founding fathers of our Constitution, and to everything that’s right.”

Having come through slavery to sharecropping to workplace exploitation, African Americans still face discrimination, Douglas said, describing POWER’s origins in the struggle for labor rights for workfare participants.

In an account that moved many to tears, 26-year-old Kenyan immigrant Jacqueline Muhoro Coats told how she was denied permanent residency because papers had not yet been filed when her husband, 29-year-old Marlin Coats, drowned last Mother’s Day while attempting to rescue two young boys off San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, NAACP and Police Department have passed resolutions supporting Coats, while the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and her union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, have launched separate petition drives on her behalf. A rally at 11:30 a.m. Aug. 3, at 550 Kearney St., San Francisco, will support Coats’ right to remain in the country.

Most Chinese immigrants continue to face language barriers, discrimination and racism, and are confined to low-income restaurant, factory or health care jobs where they lack labor rights, said Fei Yi Chen of the Chinese Progressive Association. “Only working in solidarity with others can we make a change,” she added.

Among ideas from breakout groups considering how people can move the immigrant rights agenda forward: broaden demonstrations to mobilize non-immigrants, build the links between immigrant rights and workers’ rights movements, and bring the immigration issue into all organizations.

Area immigrant rights activists are slated to gather again for a mid-August planning meeting — details to be announced — in preparation for the Labor Day weekend actions.

Educators challenge No Child Left Behind

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:06:00 +0000

Public schools equal, even outdo, private schools

As teachers unions geared up for campaigns to challenge the Bush administration’s troubled education law, the No Child Left Behind Act, up for reauthorization next year, the U.S. Education Department quietly released a blockbuster report concluding that public schools perform as well as, and sometimes better than, private schools.

Reg Weaver, president of the 2.8-million-member National Education Association, said the report showed that public schools were “doing an outstanding job.” If the results had been favorable to private schools, he told The New York Times, “there would have been press conferences and glowing statements about private schools.” The report was released July 14, a Friday. The American Federation of Teachers said this suggested that the administration saw it as “bad news to be buried at the bottom of the news cycle.”

Four days later, congressional Republicans introduced a new $100 million voucher spending bill. Although they said it wouldn’t be taken up until next year, vouchers are seen as a way to mobilize the GOP base for this fall’s elections.

Weaver said, “The administration has been giving public schools a beating since the beginning” to advance its political agenda of promoting charter schools and taxpayer-financed vouchers for private schools.

Instead, the NEA is calling on Congress to fully fund No Child Left Behind, provide for smaller class sizes and establish an accountability system that does not rely only on standardized tests to measure student achievement.

The law, passed in 2001, mandates that all students be proficient in reading, mathematics and science by 2014 regardless of their race, family income, English language proficiency or disabilities. NCLB declared that its goal was to close the gap between low- and high-achieving students by 2014 and to have a “highly qualified teacher” in every classroom by the end of the school year that just concluded. But the mandate has never been fully funded. In 2005 U.S. schools received $9.8 billion less than promised in NCLB. This year, funding will total $12 billion less than promised.

Ten states and many school districts have had their Title I funds cut, making it even more difficult for them to provide tutoring to low-income students, required by NCLB.

Standardized tests are the only means of assessment. Federal funding is tied to what is called Adequate Yearly Progress. When a school does not meet AYP it is labeled “failed.” Students can then ask to be transferred to a “successful” school in the district. But there are never enough places available. A “failed” school can be turned into a charter school, handed to a for-profit management company or even closed.

Last year the NEA, several of its state affiliates and nine school districts filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education demanding that the federal government pay for the overwhelming cost of the bureaucracy of paperwork and continuous testing required by NCLB. So far the cost is estimated at $27 billion.

They also sought to prevent the government from withholding funds from states that do not comply with the law.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit last fall. The NEA and other plaintiffs have appealed the dismissal. Six states, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and numerous school administrators and elected officials have filed “friend of the court” briefs supporting the appeal. Bush says he wants NCLB to be reauthorized without changes.

NCLB has “no clear uniform standards,” said Gail Sunderman, an author of a 2006 Harvard University study critical of the law.

The study found that the Department of Education has allowed schools in some predominantly white districts to dodge penalties faced by districts with larger African American, Latino and Asian populations. Behind-the-scenes negotiations have allowed states and school districts to reduce the number of schools listed as failing.

The American Federation of Teachers is also working to change the NCLB with its “Let’s Get It Right” campaign, focusing on the problems of funding, AYP goals, teacher and paraprofessional quality and school improvement.

The AFT represents most teachers and other school workers in urban school districts. AFT members, like NEA members, are pressing their union to do something to relieve the pressure of unrealistic demands on them. Their voices will be heard at the AFT convention this month.

phillyrose623@verizon.net. Terrie Albano contributed to this article.

NAACP vows to fight vote suppression

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:55:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — As 3,000 NAACP convention-goers applauded, Julian Bond, the chair of the nation’s largest civil rights group, accused the Republican ultra-right of scheming to block or suppress Black and other minority votes in this year’s midterm election.

“This is a war, friends, and we are on the front lines,” Bond told delegates in his July 16 keynote. “Their weapons this year are discouraging and criminalizing registration drives, purging eligible voters and imposing unreasonable identification requirements.” Bond charged that African Americans are specifically denied the right to vote under the cover of “anti-fraud measures.”

The theme of this year’s convention, held at the District of Columbia Convention Center, was “Voting Our Values, Valuing Our Votes.”

A veteran civil rights and antiwar leader who served in the Georgia Legislature, Bond galvanized the crowd with his scathing indictment of Bush and the Republican ultra-right. He demanded that the Senate quit stalling and approve the House-passed bill extending the Voting Right Act without weakening amendments. The convention recessed July 19 to rally on Capitol Hill to demand that the Senate approve the extension now.

Justice Department lawyer Hans von Spakovsky played a key role in giving “pre-clearance” to Georgia’s law requiring every voter to have a state-issued photo ID card, Bond charged. A federal court has overturned the law. Spakovsky “was the impetus behind the notorious 2000 purge of Florida voters, many of them Black,” Bond said. Bush rewarded him by assigning him to the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section and has now named him to the Federal Election Commission.

“So the campaign to suppress the minority vote continues in places high and low, federal and state,” Bond said. “As we approach this year’s midterm elections, these efforts are again rampant. If they are afraid of our votes, those votes must be really valuable to someone. We vow to protect this precious power.”

Bond cited the state of Florida for a law enacted in January making it virtually impossible for nonprofit organizations to conduct voter registration. The law also imposes onerous fines if registration forms are turned in late for any reason, even hurricanes.

In Ohio, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, “the Clarence Thomas of state elected officials,” who is now running for governor, imposed new rules “making some legitimate voter registration activities punishable as crimes,” Bond charged.

A GOP purge in 2004 targeted Black servicemen and servicewomen overseas, “identifying them as registering to vote from false addresses when letters sent to their home addresses intentionally marked ‘do not forward’ were then returned as ‘undeliverable,’” Bond said. “They even make war on our soldiers’ rights. Iraqi citizens living in the United States could vote in their elections. Some Americans fighting in Iraq could not vote in theirs.”

Bond told the crowd that he personally invited President George W. Bush to attend this year’s convention. Bush was expected to make an appearance. But Bond minced no words. “They know all about cut and run,” he quipped. “Cut taxes for the rich and run the country into the ground. They have continued an assault on our civil liberties and civil rights, orchestrated a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, and increased poverty every year they have been in office.”

Bond added, “We had wondered, if the president has the inherent authority … to eavesdrop, to kidnap and torture, to detain indefinitely, what is it he cannot do?”

Republican lawmakers, including several who pose as “moderates” like former Rep. Robert Ehrlich of Maryland and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, previously forwarded complaints from constituents asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate (and possibly terminate) the NAACP’s tax-exempt status. Similar calls followed Bond’s 2004 NAACP convention speech criticizing Bush’s policies.

The IRS responded with an audit of the civil rights group. Bond said the NAACP will continue to fight this crude intimidation.

Bond’s speech resonated with delegates. “Our primary concern is making people, especially African American people, aware of how important it is to vote in this year’s election,” said Helen Forbes, a member of the Camden County, N.C., branch of the NAACP. “We need to remove from office those who are not working in our interests.

“These elected officials know about our needs — education, affordable housing, health care,” she said. “But they have done nothing. They seem more interested in the needs of contractors in Iraq. When they need some money they get it by the barrelful, without any accountability. We can use that money right here at home to provide for the people’s needs.”

Lee V. Charlton, president of the New Bedford, Mass., branch, told the World, “I take exception to the Bush administration trying to export something we don’t have at home, the right to vote. All over the country, the conservatives are challenging our right to vote, like in Georgia with their photo ID. I think that has a chilling effect on voters who remember the past when sharecroppers could lose their farms if they tried to vote. In Winston-Salem, N.C., Black people were killed for registering to vote, their bodies dragged through the streets.”

Bernard James, president of the Cecil County, Md., branch, emphasized voter turnout. “The main thing is for the Democrats to regain control of the House and Senate. We get a better response from the Democrats than the Republicans,” he said.

NAACP honors abolitionist John Brown

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:36:00 +0000

BALTIMORE (AP) - About 74 years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois led civil rights group the NAACP from its convention in Washington to a historically black college in Harpers Ferry to lay a tablet to honor militant abolitionist John Brown. But Storer College officials objected, saying it was too militant.

On July 14, as the NAACP meets for its 97th convention in Washington, the group's officials plan to take a 1932 eight-car train ride to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, to lay a tablet in a town where Brown captured a government arsenal in 1859.

Julian Bond, the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the raid sent shockwaves through the country - 16 months before the Civil War - spreading fear in the white South and causing abolitionists in the North to celebrate his actions as heroic.

“Most condemned the violence but celebrated the impulse, and I think that that’s generally true today,” Bond said.

“They’re not celebrating the violence that he perpetuated. They’re celebrating his commitment to racial justice, and we think it’s fitting to continue that celebration.”

The tablet to be laid Friday will include the original language, which expresses the NAACP's gratitude for Brown's actions. It also will be the same design and layout of the original.

“With him fought seven slaves and sons of slaves,” the tablet says. “Over his crucified corpse marched 200,000 black soldiers and 4,000,000 freedmen singing ‘John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave but his soul goes marching on!’”

The reenactment is part of a series of NAACP events, leading up to the organization’s centennial celebration in 2009.

In the late 1850s, Brown and 21 others occupied the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in what is now West Virginia to start a “war of emancipation.” The next day a company of Marines under Col. Robert E. Lee took Brown’s last stronghold by assault. Ten people were killed or mortally wounded, including two of Brown’s 20 children.

Brown was convicted of treason to the Virginia Commonwealth and conspiracy to murder. When the Civil War began in 1861, Lee put his loyalty to Virginia first and took command of Confederate forces.

Harpers Ferry has a special place in the history of the NAACP.

It was where the Niagara Movement, which Du Bois founded as the cornerstone of the modern civil rights movement, held its first meeting on U.S. soil in 1906. The first meeting was held in Canada. The site was chosen because of the significance of Brown’s raid and because Storer College offered facilities for the meeting.

Storer College, which was one of the first integrated schools in the United States, closed in 1955.

Problems Found With Diebold Voting Machines in Ohio

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 07:24:00 +0000

Subtle variations on the paper ballots used in a May primary election in Cuyahoga County made them unreadable to optical scanners, a review released Monday found. It was the county’s first election using Diebold’s touch-screen and optical-scan voting systems. Black lines separating sections on the ballots were thicker on the Cuyahoga ballots than on those used elsewhere in Ohio, and the ovals where voters marked their choices had slightly different locations. Officials had to hand-count more than 18,000 paper ballots from the primary because of inconsistent tabulations by the optical scanners. The final count was delayed for days. A spokesman for Diebold declined to comment until a final report was released.

House passes Voting Rights Act renewal

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:05:00 +0000

Southern conservative efforts on amendments fail

Rep. Mel Watt, a North Carolina Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, discusses the Voting Rights Act.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Thursday to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act, rejecting efforts by Southern conservatives to relax federal oversight of their states in a debate haunted by the ghosts of the civil rights movement.

The 390-33 vote sends the measure to the Senate. The act bans discrimination in voting, including through poll taxes and literacy tests, and requires some southern states to clear proposed changes in voting procedures with the Justice Department.

Southern conservatives had complained that the act punishes their states for racist voting histories they say they’ve overcome.

“By passing this rewrite of the Voting Rights Act, Congress is declaring from on high that states with voting problems 40 years ago can simply never be forgiven,” said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican and one of several lawmakers pressing for changes to the law to ease its requirements on Southern states.

The House overwhelmingly rejected amendments that would have shortened the renewal period from 25 years to a decade and would have struck its requirement that ballots in some states be printed in several languages.

Supporters of the law as written called the amendments “poison pills” designed to kill the renewal because if any were adopted by the full House, the underlying renewal might have failed.

Supporters used stark images and emotional language to make clear that the pain of racial struggle—and racist voting practices—still stings.

Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis displayed photos of civil rights activists, including himself, who were beaten by Alabama state troopers in 1965 as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights.

“I have a concussion. I almost died. I gave blood; some of my colleagues gave their very lives,” Lewis shouted from the House floor, while the Rev. Jesse Jackson, another veteran of the civil rights movement, looked on from the gallery.

“Yes, we’ve made some progress; we have come a distance,” Lewis added. “The sad truth is, discrimination still exists. That’s why we still need the Voting Rights Act, and we must not go back to the dark past.”

The very debate over changes to the act is testament to the influence of Southern conservatives, even over their own GOP leaders, who had hoped to pass the renewal as a fresh appeal for support from minorities on Election Day.

With rare bipartisan support among leaders of the House and Senate, the renewal was widely expected to sail through Congress and on to the White House for President Bush’s signature.

Republican leaders, however, were forced to cancel a House vote last month when conservatives rebelled during a closed meeting against provisions they contended singled out Southern states for federal oversight despite civil rights progress they had made in recent years.

Unable to satisfy the dissenters and eager to pass the bill this week, Republican leaders announced late Wednesday they would allow the House to consider amendments, none of which passed.

The amendment that would have extended the act for a decade, rather than the 25 years in the bill, was rejected 288-134. The proposal to strike requirements in the law that ballots in districts with large populations of non-English speakers be printed in other languages failed 238-185.

“What unites us? It’s our language, the English language,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican of California. Without the amendment, the act is “hurting America by making it easier not to learn English.”

Democrats made clear early in the day they would vote against the renewal if any of the amendments were added.

“Any one of them would be a weakening of the Voting Rights Act,” Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said.

The White House also weighed in during the debate, saying in a statement that the Bush administration “supports the intent” of the renewal. The statement did not take a position on the amendments proposed by lawmakers who represented the GOP’s conservative base.

Their objections to the renewal already were being echoed by some Senate colleagues from the same states.

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma noted that the act doesn’t expire until next year.

“It’s 13 months away, and we’re creating a political situation that doesn’t need to be created,” Coburn said in an interview. He said changes such as those proposed by the House amendments needed time for consideration.

Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, called lawmakers who wanted to loosen the requirements in the law “ideological soul mates” of lawmakers who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

“For them, this is not a debate about fairness, it is about ideology. Ideology has no place in today’s debate,” Hastings said. “We should do this not for the partisan benefit but because, as John Kennedy said, it is right.”

Whos got my number?

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:55:00 +0000

The people on the other end of the line all sound so young and cheery. “NSA Public and Media Affairs, how can I help you?” the young woman says.

“I’d like to know if the NSA has copies of my phone records,” I reply. I know I’m not going to get anywhere with this. My e-mail has been ignored. My Freedom of Information Act request has seemingly gone into the ether. I imagine the cartoon embodiment of the National Security Agency laughing as my Privacy Act request gets chucked in an oversized trash can.

The girl on the phone, who sounds like she’s barely old enough to legally hold a job, tells me that she cannot confirm or deny the existence of any records and that I’ll need to submit a FOIA request. She helpfully directs me to the portion of the NSA’s web site where I can make this request.

“So if I file a FOIA request, I’ll be told for sure whether or not the NSA has copies of my phone records?”

She pauses. “Yes. I don’t see why not.”

Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I’m not holding my breath.

Contacting the phone companies is no different. The embattled customer service representatives, at least one of whom told me she was in India, did their best to answer my question, sort of. Both over the phone and by e-mail, the answers I receive are positive but less than reassuring:

“We understand that you would like to know about security of our service. Vonage Holdings Corp. [Vonage] will not trade, sell, or disclose to any third party any form of customer identifiable information without the consent of the customer. This includes information derived from registration, subscription and use of the Vonage service. For more information on our security policy, please visit the link below.”

That’s not exactly an answer to whether the records of my phone number had been given to any third party. I mean, what exactly is “customer identifiable information”?

The young man I speak to when I call 1-VONAGE-HELP isn’t, in fact, much help. When asked to define that rather slippery phrase, Raj pauses, seemingly stunned. After a few “um” and “uh” interludes, he asks, “Can I transfer you to my higher department where they might be able to give you more information?”

While I listen to the ubiquitous “hold music,” a calm, prerecorded female voice comes on to tell me that I can find many answers to my questions on the Vonage web site and that my wait time is currently 5 to 10 minutes, though actual wait time may vary. More music and announcements.

The line begins to crackle. Just when I expect to be cut off, Valerie comes on.

She defines “customer identifiable information” as name, address and phone number. She tells me that call records won’t be released unless there’s a court order. While unable to tell me if there have been any such requests on my phone number, she assures me that I would know. “They would have to tell you and you’d have to have pending litigation,” she says.

Time for the million-dollar question: “So Vonage wouldn’t turn over call records if requested by the National Security Agency?”

“No.”

I thank her and hang up, happy that I switched phone companies a few years ago.

Verizon, the company that used to provide my phone service, is less than reassuring. My e-mail request doesn’t even get a simple privacy statement response — but I do receive a cheery form reply that doesn’t say much of anything. At their 800 number, Sheila tells me, “We don’t give our records out. At least that’s what we’ve been told so far.” My cell phone companies offer me very little information but assure me my privacy is important to them.

AT&T, a company I’ve never had service from, has been stuck in the headlines. After sparring with a Senate committee, the company revised its privacy policy. They now make clear that they own customer data and, as a result, can pretty much do whatever they want to with that data, a position some regard as a dodge against further lawsuits.

In the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s suit against AT&T, filed in January, the group is “accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications.”

AT&T seeks to have the case dismissed.

“We have shown that AT&T is diverting traffic wholesale to the NSA,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl in a June 23 press release. “It is not a secret, and it is no reason to deny AT&T customers the opportunity to show the court that this dragnet surveillance program violates the law and their privacy rights.”

As I wait to hear back from the NSA, reports suggest Internet records might have been requested. Do I dare call Adelphia Cable, my Internet provider, about that one?

Jennifer Barnett (jen@jenthewriter.com) is a member of the People’s Weekly World editorial board.

Truth and a wish for New Orleans

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:33:00 +0000

On a recent visit back to New Orleans I looked out onto Lake Pontchartrain. A dry breeze lifted the water into waves that shimmered in the sun: beautiful, despite the filthy floodwater the lake had devoured.

Everything about the city is sad, including the beautiful parts that remain, because they make the loss of the rest of it so obvious.

Most tragic is the revelation that racism dictated the failed response to the disaster, and accounts for continued ambivalence to the fate of New Orleans and its evacuees.

Recent information published by the Brookings Institution and the Congressional Research Service reveals significant data on the population impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Seventy-five percent of the displaced persons from New Orleans, or 270,000 people, are African American. Many have righteously spoken out against the stereotypical portrayal by the media. Television images focused on criminal behavior, and presented a group of people living in dire poverty, unemployed, uneducated and living in substandard housing.

Displaced Black residents are disproportionately underemployed and undereducated, compared to their white counterparts. However, most African Americans lived on modest incomes and owned their homes.

As everyone knows, the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood was destroyed and hundreds of people died there. But underneath the destruction are nice homes, playgrounds, churches and schools. Sixty percent of the residents owned their homes; some purchased recently, others handed down for generations. Roberta Gratz of the Michigan Land Use Institute describes it as “a mix of finely-carpentered shotgun cottages and bungalows, with brick homes and an occasional larger Victorian. … The Lower Ninth Ward incorporated all of the components of a lively, sustainable, engaging Smart Growth Neighborhood.”

Public housing developments in New Orleans housed 50,000 individuals before the storm. The Neighborhood Story Project documented the stories of young people growing up in these communities in a series of books that came out after the storm. They discuss family problems and crime, and also courageous individuals who tried to build community and positively influence lives.

One person interviewed about Lafitte Housing Development said, “The people know how to make it through the worst and still love where they come from. It’s the place where I went through a lot of different struggles in both my family and the larger community, but it’s also the place where I learned about caring.”

Some of the most treasured artistic and musical traditions of the city originate in these neighborhoods. This side of public housing is not seen by the public, only images of gangs and drug dealers.

Both whites and Blacks from New Orleans are perceived as drunken and irresponsible partiers. The combination of Mediterranean and African-Creole joie de vivre is interpreted as sinful decadence. It is convenient to conclude that everyone was fiddling as the city washed away. But the reality is, people in New Orleans of every race and ethnicity, like the rest of the country, try to provide a life for their families, take care of aging parents, go to school and make good decisions about whom they elect.

Sixty percent of the original population of the city still lives elsewhere. One in three displaced persons remains unemployed. The majority of the evacuees were not able to vote in the mayoral election. There is slim chance that they will ever be able to return to New Orleans.

Once again, it all boils down to privilege: only those with money and power will be able to return. If this is allowed to happen, New Orleans will become a Disneyland and cease to be a real city. Any real city needs all its citizens to survive: all classes, educational levels and ethnicities in communities with their own histories and traditions.

It is in everyone’s best interest to struggle against the systemic effects of racism and economic disparity. The dialogue must cross all lines of race and class and boundaries of north and south, urban and rural. The diversity that made New Orleans unique could provide the strength for its rebuilding and serve as a model of cooperation and equality for the rest of the country.

Sharon LaCour is a native New Orleanian now living in Minnesota.

Housing bubble threatening to burst

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:05:00 +0000

Fed fights inflation by increasing unemployment and lowering wages

Everyone recognizes that the U.S. economy is slowing, but the question is, how bad will it get? One disturbing sign is that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates as the economy slows, and it is not clear when it will stop. This is not good because each rate hike is deliberately designed to slow the economy by causing both consumers and businesses to borrow and therefore buy less. The idea, as Fed economists see it, is that as overall spending is reduced, employers will hire fewer workers. As unemployment rises, employees are in a weaker bargaining position, and this leads to slower wage growth. Slower wage growth, the Fed hopes, will lower inflation.

Although it is no secret among economists, most Americans don’t know that the Fed fights inflation by increasing unemployment and thereby lowering wages. The public probably would find this unsettling. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, has been running at 5.7 percent over the last three months, up from 4.2 percent over the previous year. But most of this is the result of higher energy prices and the fall of the U.S. dollar against other currencies, which raises the price of imports and therefore adds to inflation.

‘Banker’s-eye view’ of the economy‘

The Fed sees rising wages as the problem, because the people who run the Fed do not look at the economy from the point of view of wage and salary earners. They have a “banker’s-eye view” of the economy, which sees even a relatively small increase in inflation as a dangerous thing because it erodes the value of bonds. And for them, the way to keep inflation in check — no matter what its cause — is to keep wages from rising.

Average wages, adjusted for inflation, are less than they were four years ago — which is unfair, to say the least, given the economic growth over this period.

But it’s about to get worse. Since the mid-1990s, the country has accumulated an enormous housing bubble as house prices nationally have risen nearly 70 percent after adjusting for inflation. In some bubble areas, mostly the East and West Coast, the real increase has been over 100 percent. Since house prices have historically increased at about the same rate as inflation, this means that more than $5 trillion of excess paper wealth — similar to the stock market bubble of the late 1990s — has been created. Just as bursting of the stock market bubble caused a recession in 2001, the collapse of the housing bubble will almost certainly do so.

‘Home sales and prices, both down‘

There is evidence that this bubble is already beginning to burst: new home sales, existing home sales, and the median price of existing homes were all lower in the first quarter of this year as compared to peaks last year. Vacancy rates for new homes are rising.

House prices do not have to collapse at once in order to tip the economy into recession. Many Americans use their houses as an ATM machine, borrowing against the value of their homes. These home equity loans, including hundreds of billions of dollars “cashed out” when people refinanced their homes as mortgage rates hit record lows in recent years, are what has driven the U.S. economic recovery since 2001. Falling home prices leave less equity that homeowners can borrow against. The personal savings rate is at a record low for the post-World War II era, hitting negative 1.6 percent in April.

Rising mortgage interest rates will finish off the housing bubble if oversupply and a psychological reversal of the speculative mania don’t do it first. This party is about over, most unfortunately for the majority of Americans who never got to join in the festivities.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. This column was distributed to newspapers by McClatchy-Tribune News Service, and published in the Charlotte Observer. Reprinted with permission of author.

Gulf Coast Update

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:29:00 +0000

Higher jobless rates

Katrina victims who have yet to return home have a far higher unemployment rate than other workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found 1,512,000 people fled the hurricane. Of those victims, 931,000 have returned home and 581,000 have not. Of those who have returned, 600,000 are civilian workers. Their jobless rate in June was 5.9 percent. Of Katrina victims in shelters or living elsewhere, 359,000 are workers. Their jobless rate in June was 25.9 percent.

Sheriff’s statements ‘overtly racist’

The Covington, La., NAACP branch has called for a federal investigation into racial profiling allegations against St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain. The branch said Strain’s statement after a recent quadruple murder that he intends to target people with two distinctive hairstyles commonly worn by African Americans is unconstitutional.

“His announced intention to stop anyone with dreadlocks or a ‘chee wee’ hairstyle is a clear-cut case of racial profiling,” branch President Annie Spell said.

Strain also seemed to equate people from New Orleans as “thugs and trash.”

The NAACP has sent letters to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking them to investigate, said Spell, who called on Strain to retract his statements.

The Louisiana ACLU also blasted the statement, saying it is “overtly racist” and a civil rights violation. Strain has not backed down.

St. Tammany Parish made headlines several years ago when Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke was elected chairman of its Republican Party — the largest Republican Party District in Louisiana.

To view Strain’s comments, go to www.wdsu.com/video/9449345/index.html?taf=no.

Entergy New Orleans seeks 25 percent rate boost

New Orleans residents could see their electric and gas bills rise about $45 a month under a plan Entergy New Orleans has filed with the New Orleans City Council.

Entergy New Orleans is proposing a 25 percent increase in monthly bills for a typical electric and gas customer, making electric costs the highest in the state.

Weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Entergy New Orleans filed bankruptcy, although it still is operating and its assets exceed its liabilities.

The company has also requested $718 million in federal aid.

Parent company Entergy delivers electricity to 2.7 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas and is the second-largest nuclear generator in the United States with annual revenues of more than $10 billion.

Flood or hurricane? Insurers seek to avoid payments

A Mississippi couple’s lawsuit against Ohio-based Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. July 10 became the first case to go to trial over insurers’ denials of Hurricane Katrina claims.

Police officer Paul Leonard and his wife argue the damage was covered by a homeowners’ policy because it resulted from storm surge caused by wind. Nationwide says the policy excludes all water damage.

The trial, starting in Gulfport, Miss., is one of about a dozen such cases in the same court.

The hurricane destroyed and damaged 126,000 area homes, and thousands of cases are waiting to be filed, the lawyers said.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill June 27 that would order an investigation into whether firms that act as claims adjusters for the National Flood Insurance Program misclassified Katrina damage as flooding rather than wind-caused because their own policies cover wind damage.

Other insurers that face suits include Allstate, Metropolitan Life and State Farm.

— Terrie Albano (talbano@pww.org)

Rulings in favor of American Indians called biased

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:20:00 +0000

Government gets judge removed from federal trust fund case.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth was removed Tuesday from a 10-year-old lawsuit in which thousands of American Indians claim the government mismanaged billions of dollars in federal trust funds.

Siding with the government, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that Lamberth had lost his objectivity and ordered the case reassigned to another judge.

Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee known for speaking his mind, repeatedly sided with the Indians in their class-action lawsuit. His opinions condemned the government and found interior secretaries Gale Norton and Bruce Babbitt in contempt of court for their handling of the case.

The appellate court reversed Lamberth several times, including the contempt charge against Norton.

After a particularly harsh opinion last year, in which Lamberth lambasted the Interior Department as racist, the government petitioned to remove Lamberth, saying he was too biased to continue with the case.

Tuesday, in a decision that reversed two more Lamberth rulings, appellate judges said they agreed.

“We conclude, reluctantly, that this is one of those rare cases in which reassignment is necessary,” the judges wrote.

Tell Congress to Stop the War on Birth Control

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:43:00 +0000

Birth control. It’s used by 98 percent of American women. It’s healthy, safe, and effective. It reduces the number of abortions. It’s basic health care. We can all agree on that much, right?

Apparently not. Leaders from the ultra-conservative right are determined to paint birth control as evil, just as they’ve tried to do with abortion. They have attacked the pill and emergency contraception—they’ve even campaigned against condoms!

It’s time to show mainstream Americans who is behind the War on Birth Control.

Urge your senators and representative to sign the congressional resolution on family planning—to say whether they’re for birth control, or against it.

Eighty-nine percent of Americans favor more access to information about birth control, and 81 percent think birth control access is a good way to prevent abortions*, so birth control opponents are clearly outside the mainstream. But a lot of elected officials are silently backing them, scared to offend their narrow political base.

So we’re asking senators and representatives to support a new resolution, just introduced in Congress, which says:

(1) Congress should help women, regardless of income, avoid unintended pregnancy and abortion through access to affordable contraception; and (2) Congress should support programs and policies that make it easier for women to obtain contraceptives.

Can you imagine saying “no” to that? No programs to haggle over, no tough budgeting decisions to be made, no lawmaker’s pet project. It’s just a simple statement: Congress should support access to birth control.

Urge your leaders to support H.CON. Res. 404 and S. Res. 485. Even if your senator and representatives already back this resolution, they still need to hear from you. This resolution could lead to a showdown in Congress, and we want to make sure every last moderate lawmaker is with us.

You can learn more about the War on Birth Control here:

www.ppaction.org/ct/Y1ab9BF1AzDK

Read the text of the resolution here:

www.ppaction.org/ct/Ydab9BF1AzDZ/

Thank you for standing up for what we all know is right.

Sincerely,

Cecile Richards President Planned Parenthood Action Fund

* “Most Americans Back Easy Access To Birth Control, Survey Finds,” Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2006

American Indian mascots harm students

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 08:07:00 +0000

A University of North Dakota survey using the strict guidelines of the Institutional Review Board shows that the university’s Fighting Sioux team name and logo has real effects on students.

Sparked by the controversy at UND, I developed a study based on the Indian mascot and logo issue. The study involved 132 UND students, 37 percent American Indian and 63 percent non-American-Indian.

The survey sought to determine the effects of the mascot and logo on the UND students, and to see if there was a relationship between the team name/logo and racism. Of all students surveyed, 96 percent believe racism is a problem in America, and 90 percent believe there is racial discrimination against American Indians to some extent. The survey also showed that 57 percent of American Indian students want the logos removed or banned, and that a greater portion of American Indian students have negative opinions of the logos than non-American-Indian students. Part of their reaction to the logos could be blamed on the behavior of non-American-Indian students at a March 25 “Fighting Sioux” anti-logo protest, when Native students at UND were verbally attacked with negative stereotypical racist names. Such behavior could certainly be deemed racist and abusive, as defined by the NCAA.

There has been considerable evidence supporting the results of the survey.

The Harvard Law Review says that racial insults are documented to cause psychological and physical harm. Indian team names and mascots have been charged with fostering “racial stereotyping,” causing low self-esteem among American Indians and setting up children as targets for physical harassment by their peers.

The American Psychological Association has found similar results. APA President Ronald F. Levant says, “The use of American Indian mascots as symbols in school and university athletic programs is particularly troubling. Schools and universities are places of learning. These mascots are teaching stereotypical, misleading and, too often, insulting images of American Indians. And these negative lessons are not just affecting American Indian students; they are sending the wrong message to all students.”

Psychologist Stephanie Fryberg of the University of Arizona has studied the impact of American Indian sports mascots on American Indian students as well as European American students. Her research shows the negative effect of such mascots on the self-esteem of American Indian students. “American Indian mascots are harmful not only because they are often negative, but because they remind American Indians of the limited ways in which others see them,” Fryberg says. “This in turn restricts the number of ways American Indians can see themselves.”

According to the many psychologists who have studied issues of race in America, the implications of the inappropriateness and potential harm of American Indian mascots are broader due to the history and treatment of American Indians. As such, Indian mascots are a contemporary example of prejudice by the dominant culture against racial and ethnic minority groups.

Racism can be defined as a belief in racial superiority, and American Indian children come to recognize and internalize it. The Indian mascots are a badge of inferiority because of the mockery and sometimes open ridicule. On the other hand, non-American-Indian children receive a subtle message that their culture is respected and therefore must be superior, which is a powerful and racist message.

Stereotypes are sets of beliefs that are held and recognized by large groups of people and are harmful because they deny, objectify and depersonalize individuality. Negative stereotypes can have adverse effects because they can be the basis for behaviors that lead to fear and curb social interaction with the dominant society. Children are aware of stereotypical depictions of different racial-ethnic groups.

These stereotypical beliefs could be the cause of some of the hate crimes documented by the Department of Justice, whose statistics show that an American Indian is four times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime by a person not of their race than any other racial or ethnic group. Indians are victims of hate crimes at a rate that is out of proportion to their numbers. The persistence of the Indian mascots and logos shows that negative stereotypical images of American Indians are still acceptable today.

However, behaviors that can be learned can also be unlearned. My mother made the issue clear and simple when she asked me, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” What she was saying is that God speaks to us through our feelings.

Michael Eshkibok (meshkibok@yahoo.com) is a full-blooded Ojibwe and a doctoral candidate at the University of North Dakota’s School of Communications.