People Before Profit blog

High court upholds affirmative action

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 06:26:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – The grassroots movement that marched and rallied in defense of affirmative action over the last decade hailed the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision, June 23, upholding race-conscious admissions programs at the University of Michigan (U-M) Law School. Wade Henderson, executive secretary of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), called it “a great victory for America.”

It was the first ruling on affirmative action since the Supreme Court’s Bakke decision in 1978 and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, cited Justice Lewis Powell’s opinion in that case: Racial diversity is a “compelling state interest” that can justify the use of race in university admissions, he wrote. “Today,” she wrote, “we hold that the law school has a compelling interest in attaining a diverse student body. ... [It] is at the heart of the law school’s proper institutional mission.”

She quoted favorably from the U-M’s brief that a “critical mass” of African American, Latino and American Indian students are needed, not a “token” number. She concluded, “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.” She was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, and Stephen Breyer.

In a separate decision, written by Chief Justice Rehnquist, the court voted 6 to 3 to strike down the U-M’s undergraduate admissions program in which minority students were awarded points to help insure diversity. O’Connor and Breyer voted with the right-wing bloc in that decision.

Ginsberg defended Michigan’s undergraduate admission program. “The racial and ethnic groups to which the college accords special consideration ... continue to experience class-based discrimination to this day,” Ginsberg wrote in her dissent. “The stain of generations of racial oppression is still visible in our society, and the determination to hasten its removal remains vital.”

Henderson told the LCCR news conference crowded with civil rights leaders that the law school ruling is a “truly momentous decision in upholding the compelling national interest in insuring diversity.”

Marisa Demeo, a leader of the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, said, “An unprecedented chorus of voices spoke out in support of affirmative action. The court heard that voice. Overall, the court reaffirmed that race can be used as a criteria in its admissions programs. It should help us in preventing the resegregation of education.”

The law school decision was seen as a major defeat for George W. Bush, who delivered a speech on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday urging the Supreme Court to use the two Michigan lawsuits to overturn affirmative action as “unconstitutional.”

Yet, in another attempt to “revise history,” Bush hypocritically greeted the Supreme Court’s June 23 ruling. “I applaud the Supreme Court for recognizing the value of diversity on our nation’s campuses,” he said.

Communist Party Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner said, “We have to do everything we can to defeat George W. Bush and break the ultra-right’s stranglehold on Congress in the 2004 election. Bush is determined to stack the Supreme Court with more ultra-rightists like Scalia and Thomas and roll back every civil rights gain we have made over the past 50 years.”

It was a broad cross-section of the American public who showed support for the U-M policies – civil rights activists, students, trade unions, elected officials, universities and even the military and some corporations.

Lisa Navarette, a spokesperson for the National Council of La Raza, greeted the law school ruling. “But we are still outraged by the Bush administration’s role” in supporting the plaintiffs, she told the World.

Nicholas Centino, director of the U.S. Student Association’s Student of Color Campus Diversity Project, told the World he attended the huge April 1 demonstration in front of the Supreme Court the day oral arguments were heard in the Michigan lawsuits. “I can’t stress enough the fact that affirmative action was legally upheld,” he said. Centino urged a continued fight since affirmative action opponents see the decision as “a call to arms.” He said, “As students, we must not only stop them, we must go on the offensive ourselves.”

United Auto Worker President Ron Gettelfinger said the law school decision “sends the powerful message that we all benefit from diversity in our schools, workplaces, military and society as a whole. Although we’re disappointed the court did not uphold Michigan’s undergraduate admissions as well, we’re pleased that the court provided ... a ‘road map’ for using affirmative action in a sensitive, individualized way. The UAW is proud to have been part of the remarkably diverse coalition.”

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, warned that the one-vote margin for the law school plan “is a brutal reminder of the court’s delicate balance and what is at stake with the next resignation from the court.” NOW’s “Save the Court” mobilization, she added, “will press senators to confirm justices who will uphold civil rights laws.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

National Clips

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 09:15:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif.: Feed the hungry or the corporations?

Bill Camp, executive secretary of the Sacramento AFL-CIO, led 1,000 workers, environmentalists, and food activists through city streets to the State Capitol steps protesting the invitation-only, U.S. government-sponsored Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, June 23. Selling genetically modified seeds and high tech techniques to poor countries was the mission of the conference.

“There are alternatives to industrialized farming practices and genetically engineered food that do not risk public health, harm the environment or threaten the livelihood of small farmers around the globe,” said organizer Leda Dederich.

A public debate at Crest Theatre that night drew as many participants as the conference itself. Representatives from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture faced scientists and representatives from developing countries who argued that there is no evidence that genetically altered food is safe for either consumers or the environment. They pointed out that the patents on the technology are privately held by major corporations for profit.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.: Hungry? Fill out a 23-page form

The number of families receiving food stamps in Jefferson County has surged to 58,000 as of June 23, and they could remain hungry for a month while the paperwork is processed. Each applicant must fill out a 23-page form and bring in the family’s financial records and history. Caseworkers handle 725 cases each, double the national average, interviewing 12 to 16 people per day, including Saturday. Meanwhile, the county is cutting support to food banks, which provided a stop-gap to families waiting for the paperwork to move. Half of the county residents receiving food stamps are children.

HOPKINTON, Mass.: Cheney catches heat from the people

Stopping into town to pick up a check for the 2004 presidential campaign, Vice President Dick Cheney ran into hundreds of residents vowing to chuck him and President Bush out of the White House next year. The “We the People” reception condemned the administration’s war policy. Mayflower descendent and very distant cousin of George Bush, Alice Copeland Brown, joined the demonstration dressed as a pilgrim. Stella Penzer, a Holocaust survivor standing amid a busload of Teamsters, told reporters, “My whole family was wiped out by the Holocaust and I am a passionate believer in peace.”

UPPER ST. CLAIR, Penn.: Homes and water before profits

Branson Hudock, 27, who started a hunger strike on June 20, was joined by scores of his neighbors on “Coalfield Justice Day,” June 23, on the steps of Consolidation Coal Corp. (Consol) headquarters. Homeowners and farmers from around the southwest Pennsylvania coalfields protested the coal operators’ destruction of their homes and drinking water.

“The house I built fell four-and-a-half feet and split into three pieces,” said Don Stark, 54, a math teacher. “We’re still living there because the coal company has not settled with us.” Water is being trucked in to provide drinking water to Stark and 26 other neighbors. Run-off from Consol’s Maple Creek mine destroyed the drinking water.

Tombstones listing the names of families whose homes and drinking water have fallen to the corporation’s drive for profits lined a 50-yard stretch of a major road.

Families and businesses are demanding that the state legislature change regulations for underground mining to protect homes and the environment. For example, Section 23 of southwest Pennsylvania property deeds allows coal companies to mine underneath homes, schools and any other surface structure without permission from the owners.

McARTHUR, Ohio: Federal budget slashes youth jobs

On June 13, the state of Ohio, under Republican Gov. Robert Taft, eliminated the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), closing down the camp in rural McArthur and leaving young adults aged 16 – 25 on the street. The work they performed fighting the states’ forest fires, maintaining and creating recreation areas and repairing and cleaning nature preserves will be privatized.

Unemployment in Ohio is 5.5 percent, with corporations eliminating 202,300 jobs since January 2001. Over 10 percent of Ohio’s population, or 1,174,000 people, live below the poverty line.

“Obviously, state governments have to make very tough decisions,” said Harry Bruell, national director of the National Association of Service and Conservation Corps, “but it’s flabbergasting to us that they would target these [programs]. In most cases, the Corps save more money through their efforts than they are costing.” CCC operates in 31 states and the District of Columbia.

“I don’t want it to close. I have no idea what I’ll do,” said a tearful Angrea Fiebiger, a Corps member in McArthur. “This place has given me so much, especially direction in my life.”

National Clips are compiled by Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinebr696@aol.com).

National Clips

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 09:05:00 +0000

National Clips

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 08:55:00 +0000

The roots of Pride Month

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 08:14:00 +0000

This week marks the end of June – Pride Month – the commemoration of the Stonewall Rebellion and the celebration of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) community.

Pride celebrations have been in the news this year, the 24th anniversary of Stonewall, primarily because of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s refusal to allow a Pride celebration to be held on Justice Department (DOJ) grounds in Washington. While Ashcroft was subsequently forced to rescind his ban on the use of DOJ facilities, he has continued to withhold official DOJ sponsorship.

Pride month is something to be celebrated by more than the GLBT community, though. It is a commemoration of the fight for civil rights and against police repression.

Leading up to the Stonewall events of June 28, 1969, many had been fighting against anti-homosexual laws. While Stonewall was perhaps a sea change in the strength of the movement, the struggle for GLBT equality had been around for years.

Gay bars were deemed illegal, and any place where three or more homosexuals gathered was considered a gay bar and subject to losing its liquor license. Such rules added to an already homophobic society. The Mattachine Society of New York, a gay rights organization founded in the 1950s, and the American Civil Liberties Union challenged this unconstitutional law head on. Though no lawsuit was ever filed, the news coverage of the challenge forced the city to legalize gay bars. (Among the Mattachine Society’s founders was Communist Harry Hay.)

What still remained was police entrapment and repression. Vice cops would go to the newly legal gay bars and arrest patrons, treating them as prostitutes. Between pressure from judges, whose schedules were being overwhelmed with these cases, and from the community, the police commissioner announced that this policy would end.

However, as the events of June 28, 1969, showed, the issue of police targeting of gay bars was far from over. In a summer flurry of bar raids, focused on gay, Black and Hispanic bars, the police charged that the Stonewall Inn was violating liquor control laws. At 3 a.m., eight plain-clothed police officers entered the bar and ushered patrons out. As raids had become a common event, most peacefully walked out and waited for their friends.

The mood shifted, though, when a police wagon drove up. The raiding officers forced two bar employees and four patrons into the wagon. The patrons realized that this was not the same as the other raids they had been through. As a result, people started throwing things at the wagon as it drove away. The crowd grew more and more angry and the items being thrown became bigger.

Violence broke out between police, who had stationed themselves inside the bar, and protesters. The police response was to beat protesters and threaten to shoot.

The protests continued on and off for a number of days. The crowd at the June 29 demonstration was estimated to be in the thousands.

On July 2, the demonstrations turned more violent, with the police using their nightsticks indiscriminately in the crowd. Those out in support of gay rights were left battered, bruised and bloody in the streets.

The significance of Stonewall is not the violence, though. It was the first time that there was active resistance against the persecution of homosexuals. While the GLBT rights movement stretches back much earlier than June 1969, the Stonewall Rebellion set off a new militancy and openness to the movement.

Starting in 1970, marches have been held every year to mark that shift, and the entire month of June has been set aside as a time to be proud of the past, present and future of the GLBT movement.

The author can be reached at jbarnett@pww.org

Weikko Jarvi quiet working class hero

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 04:55:00 +0000

Over 100 people gathered in Superior, Wisc. June 1 to pay respects and celebrate the life of Weikko Jarvi, who was described at the service as “a quiet, working class hero.” He died May 29 after a lengthy illness.

Weikko was born on Minnesota’s Iron Range during the Depression to Finnish immigrant parents. After a stint in the Army during the Korean War, he worked in the iron ore mines and as a carpenter.

In 1959 he began work as a linotype operator with the Finnish working class newspaper, Tyomies-Eteenpain, or in English, “Working Man Forward.” He continued to work on the Finnish language paper until it ceased publishing in 1998. He was featured in a recent film about Tyomies by Tom Selinski of Duluth, called “For the Common Good.”

Jarvi served on the board of directors of Mesaba Co-op Park for many years until he death. Mesaba Co-op Park played a major role in his life. He served many functions there, from board member to carpenter, handyman, cook and cooperator. There is hardly an item at the Park that he did not help to build or repair. Weikko’s principles formed the basis for the way he lived his life. He saw the inequality of our economic system as being morally wrong, and that conviction gave energy to many hours of political discussion with friends and political action in the form of contributions of time and money. He absolutely believed in the value of work and gave every task his best effort, whether he was on the job or volunteering or working on projects at home.

He believed that people are fundamentally good and honest and accepted everyone he met on those terms. Warner Wiirta, an old friend, described Weikko as a “welder of people.” He welded people together. That was evident from the wide and diverse group of people who got together and celebrated his life.

He will be sorely missed.

Review roundup

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 04:47:00 +0000

Book review:

Capitalist haircut

Cosmopolis, by Don DeLillo, Scribner, 209 pp., $25

Following 28-year-old billionaire Eric Packer as he crosses Manhattan to get a haircut, Don DeLillo gives readers a tragicomic glimpse into the heart of capitalism. After waking up in his 48-room condo, Eric finds his white limo and security guards and goes crosstown for the most mundane of things.

During his all-day trip, he runs into a funeral for a musician, a presidential motorcade, an anti-WTO protest led by anarchists in rat suits, and a number of other traffic blocks. This gives him – and DeLillo – time to demonstrate a shallowness that makes Eric truly unlikable and unsympathetic. He mistreats women, having sexual encounters with several women and emotionally tormenting his new wife, he commits cold-blooded murder, and he toys with world economies, trying to make more money through controlling and devaluing world currencies.

Eric is one of the most disgusting protagonists you’ll be able to find in a book – and that’s the point. DeLillo gives a human embodiment to all anti-globalization protesters fight against; it’ll make you want to go to support the next WTO, G8 and IMF protests all the more.

– Jennifer Barnett

Movie Review:

Suppose you knew?

Amen, dir. by Costa Gavras, 2 hr. 10 min.

Suppose you knew that your own government was violating international law and all norms of human decency. What if it promoted oppression and stifled dissent, and you knew about it? Suppose that people didn’t want to believe the obvious criminality of their own government and chose, instead, to dress up in uniforms, salute one another, and wave national flags. What if people were being incarcerated, or even killed, and the situation was steadily worsening, and you knew about it?

Suppose there was a movie about government-perpetrated horrors in Nazi Germany, about people who knew, and they fought what seemed an impossible fight to convince others, and what if that movie was available in your own city.

Would you tell?

– Jim Lane

Music Review:

A clear bold call to the sleeping giant

Anne Feeney: Union Maid, www.annefeeney.com

Anne Feeney’s deep conviction for the working class comes alive through her voice with a great band backing her up.

She breathes new life into some old standards in her unique way by blending reggae, country and folk into one enjoyable CD. Many of the songs are written by Feeney, who is also the lead vocal on all cuts.

This a must for anyone who works or has ever worked for a living. Uplifting and driving, “We just come to work here, we didn’t come to die,” is one song that should be piped into executive offices around the world. Anyone who ever considered crossing a picket line sure would abandon the notion upon hearing Feeney’s rendition of “Scab.”

Whoever thought that issues like eight hours of work and healthcare could sound so good?

The Anne Feeney songbook with lyrics, sheet music, guitar chords, stories and photos will be available by Labor Day 2003.

– Gabriel Falsetta

Looking for truth in all the wrong places

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 04:33:00 +0000

What is true? This is the question troubling Rose, the main character in the Jules Feiffer play, A Bad Friend, which opened June 9 at New York City’s Lincoln Center Theater.

Unfortunately, A Bad Friend, while pretending to be an accurate moment in history – U.S. Communists in the McCarthy-era 1950s – is really only one man’s view looking through a warped lens.

The story focuses on Rose, the teenage daughter, who rejects her parents rigidity and constant lectures on “Marxism-Leninism.” Uncle Morty, also a Communist, is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, who visits them frequently.

Rose’s mother and father, Naomi and Shelley, distribute the Daily Worker and are staunch supporters of Joe Stalin. The Rosenbergs have been executed and everyone is looking over his shoulder or watching someone else. Rose is followed by an FBI agent, who tries first to charm her, then – more successfully – to trick her into informing on her family and others.

Well-acted and briskly staged, the play is for the most part a humorous portrayal of over-zealous Communists in 1950s Brooklyn. In fact, quite a bit of dialogue is used to detail the many issues and movements of which the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was in the forefront: peace, union rights, the integration of baseball and against racism in general. The list could – and did – go on and on.

Shelley, Morty and especially Naomi are all confident in their belief in socialism as a better, fairer system. They look to the Soviet Union as a model because it is the first country of socialism. The eventual news that Stalin had, in fact, caused the deaths of thousands of his countrymen – many of them Communists – leaves them shell-shocked and demoralized.

It’s in the final scene that the real point of A Bad Friend becomes clear (especially when coupled with two nasty anti-Communist articles in the companion issue of the “Lincoln Center Theater Review”).

At her father’s funeral, a now-adult Rose declares he died a broken man and that all the stories about the Soviet Union, which her parents had so eagerly followed in the Daily Worker, were “an insult to their intelligence.”

But what is the whole truth?

Because of the overall positive role played by the Soviet Union during the fight against fascism, some Communists, like Naomi and Shelley, did develop an uncritical and unquestioning – maybe even extreme – faith in Stalin. Was it due to “intellectual dishonesty,” as Rose says, or was it a product of the times and a reaction to U.S. foreign and domestic policy, whose aim was to finish what Hitler could not?

There were indeed many writers, politicians, and others knowingly practicing extreme forms of intellectual dishonesty – just as there are today – but their aim was to end the new movements for social progress here and throughout the world.

The real tragedy in A Bad Friend is that the characters – after spending their lives trying to make this a better place – simply give in or give up. On the other hand, the CPUSA is still here fighting for that better world.

– Carolyn Rummel

Howard B. Silverberg: Fighter for peace and equality

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 04:35:00 +0000

BALTIMORE, Md. – Howard B. Silverberg was remembered at a memorial here June 1 as a giant of a man with big hands and big feet. But his niece, Ruth Caley, told the crowd, that “biggest of all was his heart,” never so true as when he was standing up for working people, the poor and the oppressed.

A tireless community organizer, a peace and anti-racist fighter and a leader of the Communist Party of Maryland, Silverberg died here May 27. He was 86. He was born in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1917 and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he joined the Young Communist League. During World War II, he was a merchant seaman, an active member of the National Maritime Union, making 24 voyages to defeat Hitler fascism.

He moved to Baltimore after the war and met and married Regina H. Rosen. They participated in the legendary July 11, 1948, interracial tennis match at Druid Hill Park to protest segregation, eight years before the modern day civil rights sit-in movement erupted.

“His wife was arrested but he was too big and the police gave up on trying to arrest him,” his brother-in-law, Michael Dresser, told the crowd at the Captain James Landing restaurant. Dresser likened him to the “tree standing by the water,” in the union song, “We Shall Not be Moved.” It was one of several songs sung at the memorial.

Longtime friend Milton Bates used Yiddish terms to capture Howie’s personality, “shtarka,” a person of strong convictions, and “mensch,” a person of integrity and caring. He praised Silverberg’s courage in refusing to “rat on” his comrades when hauled before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings during the 1950s, a stand that cost him his job as a Sparrows Point steelworker. Later, he was active in the Baltimore Committee to Free Angela Davis, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Joan Burns, a neighbor, said Silverberg was a member of the executive board of Citizens for Washington Hill, helping save 200 homes. “He fought to preserve the lovely historic neighborhood. If you look around today, it’s gorgeous. Howie loved Baltimore. He loved life.”

Rosellen McDavid, who had served with Silverberg on the executive board of Jobs With Peace, recalled that he had proposed the “Save Our Cities” march on Washington in 1991 to protest the trillions squandered on the Pentagon while Baltimore and other cities crumbled. It was endorsed by Mayor Kurt Schmoke and the City Council. Thousands joined the march and rally on Capitol Mall.

Maryland state legislator Salima Siler Marriott delivered a citation with the Maryland state seal honoring Silverberg. She recalled her political discussions with Silverberg at countless backyard cookouts by Party members. “It has enabled me to speak truth to power even in the halls of the General Assembly and to write a letter to President Bush telling him his war on Iraq is wrong,” she said.

PWW editor Tim Wheeler said, “Howie never wavered in his confidence in the working class. … After the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, Howie was as clear as a bell that we had to stand against the ultra-right using this terrible tragedy to advance their agenda of repression at home and preemptive war abroad. Last March, in a driving rain, there were Howie and Jeannie down at the War Memorial picketing against the Iraq war.”

Margaret Baldridge told the crowd she visited Silverberg in the hospital the night he died. His parting words, she said, were “’Give ‘em hell!’ That is so typical of the fighting legacy that Howie left us with.”

Tina Wheeler, organizer of the Maryland CP, said that when she first took on the task two years ago, she turned to Howie and other Party elders for guidance. “We know the problems of our city, our country, and internationally. Howie said, ‘Give em hell!’ So let’s just do it!”

Silverberg is survived by his wife of 18 years, the former Jeanne Dresser. His friends and comrades are raising funds for a memorial in the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo, a newspaper he loved and distributed.

Making a movie against all odds

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 04:31:00 +0000

Review

The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America, by James L. Lorence, University of New Mexico Press, 256 pp, $21.95

To many older progressives, activists, union organizers, socialists and communists, the story of how the movie Salt of the Earth came to be, its production and blacklisting, is a cherished something to be told and re-told.

But, to a later generation it is a story rarely heard. James J. Lorence’s The Suppression of Salt of the Earth is just that story.

Written in a clear concise way, Suppression details how the lives of rank and file Mexican-American mine workers, members of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 890 (IUMMSW), intersected with blacklisted Hollywood directors, reactionary politicians, conservative union leaders and the business community, in what became the most recognized case of censorship in Cold War America.

The story of Salt of the Earth began in Bayard, New Mexico. In the early 1950s Local 890 went on strike against the Empire Zinc Company in protest of their “dual wage” policy of paying Mexican-American workers less than their white counterparts. Local 890 eventually won the strike and gained the attention of Howard Biberman, Paul Jarrico and Michael Wilson, all blacklisted Hollywood directors.

Biberman, Jarrico and Wilson came together to form the Independent Productions Company (IPC), in an attempt to challenge the mainstream movie industry’s fear of dealing with serious social and economic issues. Salt of the Earth was their first and only collaboration.

From the first days of production they were met with hardship and resistance. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) advised union film crews to not touch the film. Roy Brewer, IATSE representative in Los Angeles, said the “communists” only wanted to use “labor for their own ends,” and vowed that the film would “never be shown in the United States.”

Brewer’s opposition to the project presented a serious challenge to IPC. In addition to his IATSE post, Brewer also chaired the AFL Film Council, was active in the conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, and was a key figure in the Motion Picture Industry Council, which spoke for all Hollywood unions and major industry organizations.

On the political front things weren’t much better for the Salt crew. Rep. Donald Jackson promised to do “everything in [my] power to prevent the showing of this communist made film in the theaters of America.”

While many politicians made a career of anti-communism and while most of the anti-communist tirades were found to be little more than fabrications and lies, there is even less truth to the claims of Jackson and Brewer that Salt was a “commie” film.

Indeed, some members of IPC were or had been members of the Communist Party, and there were CP members within Local 890. But, this was not a CPUSA initiative. And as Lorence documents, “When IPC leaders approached the Communist Party to intervene with communists in the union [IATSE] party higher up’s refused to help. The CP … concluded that the IATSE ties superseded Salt in importance and therefore refused to assist IPC.”

And like the conservative union leaders and politicians, the business community was more than happy to challenge the production and distribution of Salt, claiming that any dialog with the Communist Party proved that Moscow was somehow involved.

Throughout the book Lorence uncovers and documents the complacency or hostility many unions, politicians and business interests showed concerning the plight of Mexican-American union members and cultural and intellectual progressives in their attempt to produce something never done before – and not seen since.

While Suppression documents Cold War censorship in all of its horrible detail, it also highlights the irrepressible courage, tenacity and perseverance of a small group of people, union members and cultural producers, coming together and doing what is right. The Suppression of Salt of the Earth is a wonderfully enlightening book.

– Tony Pecinovsky (tonypec@pww.org)

The floating zoo

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 04:28:00 +0000

Review

Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Harvest Books, 336 pp., $14

Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a sensational tale of a boy, his religious beliefs and his zoo animals in a lifeboat. It is where Dr. Doolittle meets The Old Man and the Sea.

Nowhere in the world except in India will you find Mormons, Jesuits, Catholics, Evangelist Christians and Masons on the same street. Not to mention the Hindu gods here and there on various trees and street corners or charms. Thrown into the mix are the Communists.

This is where Pi Patel grew up. A country filled with diversity of beliefs. What’s more interesting, he lives in a former French colony in south India. His father, a hotel manager turned zoo owner. Pi believes in all Hinduism and Christianity, and he is also a devout Muslim. His beliefs will be tested greatly when his family embarks on their emigration to Canada. Did I mention on a Japanese ship with Taiwanese sailors and zoo animals as cargo?

When tragedy strikes, Pi is left with a hyena, a zebra, a female orangutan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal Tiger on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific. Life is more than survival to the fittest now. It is a delightful read for both atheists and religious folk alike. It will question your very senses and your beliefs with one or two lessons about Jesus, Vishnu and zoology.

Adventure beckons!

– Shelly Delos (pww@pww.org)

What the U.S got away with

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 04:18:00 +0000

Review

An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, by William F. Pepper, Verso, 320 pp., $25

William Pepper’s book An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King makes us realize that extra-judicial executions such as those carried out by the Colombian military and their proxies, the paramilitaries, are not exclusive to South America.

When I told a friend, who has spent her life working in the Black community, that we now had proof positive that government agents had planned, orchestrated, and covered up the murder of King, she soft-peddled my news flash, saying, “The Black community knew it all along.”

It isn’t only the boldness of proclaiming the United States guilty of King’s murder that makes Pepper’s book remarkable; it is his documentation and evidence. Pepper sought to follow the rule of law that state security forces trampled.

HarperCollins was ready to publish the book up to the last moment, according to Pepper (who was convicted assassin James Earl Ray’s attorney from 1988-98), but the publisher wanted him to remove the chapter that implicated government officials, from the Pentagon on down to the Memphis Police Department.

Denying that the full force of the state was directed at King would have changed Pepper’s book. Harper-Collins wanted Pepper to present the execution of Martin Luther King, Jr. as merely a mafia hit. Pepper, to his credit, refused to buckle under the pressure.

The most unsettling question pertains to what happens now. Pepper’s book points to the need for a Truth Commission.

It is a daunting task to deal with a state (whether Colombia or the United States) that kills the leaders who would challenge the status quo. King planned to bring one million dispossessed to “take up a tent city residence in the capital and lobby Congress for long over due social legislation.” This was a capital crime.

In Colombia, those killed were working for the poor. In the U.S., similarly, those killed represented a challenge to the status quo on behalf of the poor.

The Colombians have full knowledge of if not the identities of, the killers and the corporate and military forces behind them. With Pepper’s book, although in many cases the actual identities of the conspirators are not revealed, the book indisputably proves that the killer was sponsored and protected by aspects of military and security forces inside the government.

Hopefully, William Pepper’s heartfelt pursuit of the truth, amidst the best efforts of the state to suppress his investigation and prevent the trial that would have freed James Earl Ray, will do much to inform Americans about the country in which they live.

U.S. citizens will likely be behind Latin Americans and Europeans to respond to Pepper’s matter-of-factly grim assessment, expressed in his Epilogue: “The corporate-dominated economy and the now clearly transnational corporate state [have] consolidated their power over almost every aspect of public and private life.

“Footsoldiers like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the ever-dutiful Bush family ... working with the timeworn International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and ultimately with the new engine of globalization, the World Trade Organization, [have] ensured that the interests of capital were nowhere endangered by the needs of the world’s three billion poor to eat, have shelter, clothing, sanitation, medical care, and education.”

In order to prevent populist measures, the United States (using a lot of hired hands) was willing to execute Martin Luther King. They got away with it.

– Mansur Johnson (mansurjohnson@hotmail.com)

First Cities: Treasure shown and tragedy known

Fri, 06 Jun 2003 04:02:00 +0000

In 1997, an exhibit was conceived to welcome in the third millennium, by mirroring the time frame. “Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus” opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, May 8.

The opening was a triumph of cooperation from various museums around the world, especially those in the Middle East. It was also the focus of international attention, as it occurred only a few weeks after the looting the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, and the exhibit centers on artifacts from Sumer and Akkad.

The first cities appeared in Sumeria – the land of “the black-headed ones” – within land made fertile by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, near the Persian Gulf. Mud and reeds were used to make housing and inscribed tablets, originally for record keeping. Cylinder seals, which make an impression by rolling a cylinder on clay, are a large source of representative art, showing gods or goddesses with horned headdresses and flounced skirts, along with plants and animals.

Cuneiform started as pictographs, and over several stages developed to groups of marks. Thousands of fragments of tablets have survived and been pieced together to give us not only storage records, but religious liturgies, fables, laws and king lists. One bit of wisdom passed down is that “You should not establish a home with an arrogant man: he will make your life like that of a slave girl.”

The liturgies have a repetitive quality to them. Some may have derived from oral tradition and been sung or chanted. But within the written mythology, the goddess has already been usurped by male deities and reappeared in guises of secondary positions, and along with that, kings ruled the cities, although the cities “belonged” to a god or goddess.

The temple was the main structure of the city. It was usually built to represent a mountain, as mountains were the link between heaven and earth. Within the temple, approaching the inner sanctum, the king, and other members of the elite, placed statues representing themselves in an attitude of prayer, so that the god could see them being worshipful 24/7. The inner sanctum was a chamber where the god lived, but had no representation of the god.

Along with kingship came the idea of extensive grave goods. Some burials even contained human attendants and animals. The most spectacular of these came from Ur and were discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s. The “royal tombs,” of which only that belonging to Queen Puabi was relatively intact, contained beautiful and exotic artifacts, many made of gold with lapis and carnelian, which intrigue the imagination.

That expedition was sponsored by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, who shared half of the findings, the other half remaining in Iraq. Both institutions have lent items from the Ur excavations to the exhibit, including the “Standard of Ur,” a mosaic done in lapis, Queen Puabi’s headdress of lotus flowers and leaves made of gold and lapis, and her cape made of carnelian beads. There is a full-sized harp decorated with a golden bull’s head of which texts say sounds like the divine bull.

Also from the cemeteries at Ur is a statue of a goat standing on its hind legs up against a flowering plant. Made of gold, silver, lapis, copper, shell and limestone, it is the most beautiful and well known treasure of Ur and represents fertility for both plants and animals.

These very rich materials were not native to the area. As Joan Aruz, curator of the exhibit, said, the cities did not come to being in a vacuum. There were influences through trade throughout the region. The exhibit includes items from Troy and the Aegean, from Anatolia, from the city of Agade (Akkad) which was north of Sumer and had dominance over Sumer for a while, from the Harappan culture of the Indus valley and from other settlements along the Persian Gulf, which show the exchange of materials, techniques of decoration and design motifs.

But most importantly, Phillippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum said, “What we have on view at this moment may be the bulk of what has survived,” after the looting of the Baghdad museums.

The exhibit will be on view through Aug. 17.

– Karen Moy (kmoy@pww.org)