People Before Profit blog

Letters

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:58:00 +0000

Global AIDS crisis

I work massaging clients with AIDS and HIV under the Ryan White CARE Act. Every year we worry about funding. In Illinois we are lucky because our state Legislature passed extra funding for medicine but in some states clients with AIDS are on waiting lists to get medicine. Your article on AIDS (PWW 6/18-24) points out the global crisis, which is even being felt in this country. Great article. I am going to pass it on.

Also, you had very good coverage on the GM cutbacks. I’ll pass it on to my cousins in Michigan who work for GM in management jobs.

Eva Gornik

Chicago IL

More on meat

I hope Teddy Wood was kidding in his celebration of meat eating (Letters, PWW 6/18-24). Human beings have eaten a largely non-meat diet throughout most of history and their brains have remained the same in size, although their modes of production and cultures have changed. Heavy meat diets have been associated throughout history with ruling classes and in modern times, industrialized capitalist/imperialist countries.

The slaughter of animals for human consumption distorts the planet’s ecology, and greatly intensifies world hunger as grain-producing lands are turned into pasture for the meat industry. The results have been more hunger in places like Central America, which provides cheap beef for the U.S. fast food industry and an overpriced and unhealthy diet for large numbers of working-class people in the U.S. and other industrially developed countries.

For large numbers of people, myself included, there are moral and ethical reasons to oppose the slaughter of animals for food. In a communist society, people hopefully would reject meat consumption as wasteful and destructive to themselves and the species with whom they share the planet.

Norman Markowitz

New Brunswick NJ

Concealing class

The word “privilege” applied to the plight of white workers is ridiculous (“More about ‘white privilege’ concepts,” PWW 6/18-24). It masks their exploitation and blurs the common class interests of all workers and oppressed peoples. Super-exploitation of the racially and nationally oppressed better expresses the essence of the problem. Fighting against the super-exploitation of some helps the fight against the exploitation of all. Racism and national oppression are major social factors because they help increase the rate of exploitation and oppression for all races and nationalities.

Taking the profit out of racism and national oppression would make it easier to dismantle institutional racism. Although, under socialism, a protracted struggle against the concepts and social practices of racism and national chauvinism will have to be waged.

The term “self interest” of any sector of the working class is unfortunate. Class interests of all the sectors are the same. In some situations, “white privilege,” or “middle class,” “consumer society,” “service economy” may have limited use, but in the end they block the development of class consciousness.

Rosalio Muñoz

Los Angeles CA

No retreat

Tillow, Godwin and Kenny in their May 14 PWW opinion page article assert that CPUSA chair Sam Webb’s position is “a retreat from the theoretical foundations of communist activism,” that a “vanguard party is not merely a doorstop for more popular bourgeois parties.” The support that Communists gave to the anti-imperialist forces within the Democratic Party, such as the Kucinich campaign for the presidential nomination, refutes the charge.

Marx was not retreating into petty bourgeois reformism when he wrote, “As the proletariat in the period of struggle leading to the overthrow of the old society still acts on the basis of the old society and hence still moves within the political forms which more or less correspond to it, it has at that stage not yet arrived at its final organization, and hence to achieve its liberation has recourse to methods that will be discarded once that liberation has been attained.”

The CPUSA is using a variety of political forms available to us now to reach the U.S. people at a wavelength to which they are presently tuned.

Erwin Marquit

Minneapolis MN

Attack on Soviet Union is wrong

As a member of the CPUSA for 20 years I am finding it very difficult to accept attacks on Stalin and the former Soviet Union, which seems to be so popular now during the Communist Party’s preconvention discussion. The Soviets were under immense external forces, which were — from the very beginning — out to destroy any attempt at socialism. Not to mention internal forces, which were out to sabotage all collective efforts in creating a socialist economy. If we write off the heroic attempt of the Soviets and struggles to build socialism as misguided and fraudulent we may as well agree with all those that have opposed socialism. In my opinion this is surrendering Communist ideological foundations as well.

Kelly McConnell

Los Angeles CA

Western Sahara exchange

I read with interest Martin Frazier’s article on Western Sahara (PWW 6/18-24). I respect his viewpoint and right to express it. However, I want to ask you a question: To which country did Western Sahara belong before it was invaded by Spain in 1884? The history of this land did not start with the Spanish invasion. It has been populated for more than 5,000 years. In 1042, it became a part of the Moroccan empire.

The situation in Western Sahara is sad and dramatic, but above all, it is very complex. It requires a basic knowledge of the tormented history of this region. Every analysis that starts only with the Spanish occupation will suffer from myopia.

Mohamed el Baroudi

Morocco

Martin Frazier replies:

I appreciate your point of a historical context that predates Spanish colonialism. However, my point of beginning is self-determination of the Saharawi people, which in no way assumes the Spanish occupation was the beginning of Saharawi history.

One of the legacies of colonialism in Africa is the artificial carving out of nations and peoples throughout the continent. This is why the principle of self-determination of all African peoples is the only guarantee for a peaceful future on the continent. These principles and the respect for international law as prescribed by the United Nation and the African Union is the prism in which I understand the Western Saharan/Moroccan conflict and its resolution.

Editorial: An uneasy summer

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:55:00 +0000

On the first day of summer, June 21, the Winn-Dixie grocery chain, located primarily in the Southeast, announced that 22,000 workers would end up on the street and over 300 stores will be darkened.

Earlier this month GM took a meat cleaver to 25,000 jobs, 22 percent of their workforce.

Railroad workers and telecommunications workers are not buying new cars as their jobs fall into the shaky category.

For the second year in a row, no hamlet, town or city has money for youth jobs.

This is summertime. ‘Livin’ is supposed to be easy.

Reports have surfaced that the Bush administration plans to tinker with the formula that tracks U.S. jobs. Is the jobs crisis to the point that the Bush administration wants to change the numbers? “Change the numbers, change the reality,” they figure.

Before Bush’s number zapper strikes, the AFL-CIO reports that as of March, 13.6 million workers were out of work, a figure roughly equivalent to every man, woman and child in the state of Pennsylvania.

There is no measure of the statistics of pain. From homelessness to bankruptcies, pain and insecurity have increased in the first five months of the Bush second term.

The Republican tax cut to the super-rich has paid off — for them. And skyrocketing worker productivity has paid off — for corporations. In 2004, according to Forbes, CEO’s at the top 500 corporations saw their bank accounts increase by 54 percent, from $3.3 billion to $5.1 billion.

Bush’s economic policy of “free trade,” shipping jobs overseas, tax cuts to the corporate rich and rejection of investment in building the U.S. results in “the 500” doing great and the rest — the 130 million U.S. working-class people — feeling “uneasy,” to put it mildly.

Capitalism is designed to produce individual profits, not create democratic prosperity, and every U.S. government grapples with its contradictions. But this brand of Republican rule pours gasoline on every fire by bringing in the corporations to call the shots for maximum profit.

With unemployment ratcheting up just like gasoline prices, calls for impeachment are not in the wilderness. And neither are demands for public ownership, wage increases, guaranteed full employment and a shorter workweek.

Labor Update

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:48:00 +0000

Unity resolutions

Three central labor councils in Ohio passed resolutions this week calling for labor unity in response to warnings of a possible split in the U.S. labor movement. CLCs in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus (Franklin County) focused on the urgency of solidarity in the face of the anti-labor offensive of the Bush administration and corporate America. The Warren/Trumbell County AFL-CIO Retiree Council also passed a similar resolution.

In Philadelphia, a resolution passed unanimously June 15 by AFSCME District 47 stated that “divisions in the labor movement, always harmful and undesirable, are especially dangerous in the present political situation,” therefore the Council “appeals to all of our sisters and brothers in the labor movement to debate all differences and solve all problems, however substantial, within the structure of organizational unity of the AFL-CIO.”

JwJ to meet Sept. 22–25

“Educate, agitate and celebrate our growing movement” urged Jobs with Justice, announcing its Annual Meeting in St. Louis Sept. 22–25. The national community-labor organization’s newsletter promises more details shortly. Last year’s meeting in Miami brought together a diverse group of more than 1,000 people.

Angelica settles

A new contract signed by UNITE HERE and Angelica Corp. June 14 is a step forward for workers in both organized and unorganized plants of the national industrial laundry chain. The new collective bargaining agreement will cover 23 facilities already represented by the union in Antioch, Fresno, and Sacramento, Calif., Batavia, N.Y., Tampa, Fla., and Dallas and Wichita Falls, Texas. A union statement emphasizes the final agreement is subject to a ratification vote.

Also under the agreement, workers in Angelica’s nonunion plants will have “a fair selection process” to determine the question of union representation. A union spokesperson told the World that the process will vary from facility to facility, but in all cases will be a “majority verification process which includes neutrality. It won’t be the NLRB process where the company gets involved and campaigns against the union.”

‘Like working in the tailpipe of a bus’

“Working in an underground mine can be like working in the tailpipe of a bus,” said USW President Leo Gerard, June 7. Gerard criticized the U.S. Department of Labor for weakening the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s 2001 standard for diesel fumes underground.

“Diesel fumes cause cancer and lung disease,” Gerard said. The new standard

allows mine operators to avoid engineering controls and opt for having workers use respirators instead, a cost-saving alternative. But the extra effort to breath through respirators can cause severe harm to miners with undiagnosed heart or lung problems, said a union statement. “MSHA standards are supposed to save lives, not threaten them,” said Gerard.

Labor Update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org).

Capital campaign tops $330,000

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:27:00 +0000

CHICAGO — The campaign to raise money for three working-class centers of unity, action and education reached $330,000 last week, just $70,000 shy of its $400,000 goal. With two weeks left in the campaign, spokespeople for the New York-based Chelsea Fund for Education and Chicago-based Workers Education Society — the co-sponsoring, nonprofit entities — are cautiously optimistic about reaching the goal by the July 1 deadline.

“The reception has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Roberta Wood, WES board member. “People are so happy to give contributions to renovate buildings in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago to become three regional centers of education and struggle.”

The centers will house offices for the Communist Party, Young Communist League, Marxist libraries and progressive bookstores and the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo newspaper. The centers will be a community resource and provide public space for activities and organizing for social change and progress.

Wood urged PWW readers and friends to consider making a $1,000 contribution, which could be donated over the course of a year, to the tax-exempt entity of their choice.

Contact: Chelsea Fund for Education, 235 W. 23rd St., New York, NY 10011, (646) 437-5318 or Workers Education Society, 3339 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60608, (773) 446-9925.

Bolivias crisis unresolved, say Communists

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 05:23:00 +0000

LA PAZ, Bolivia — The resignation of President Carlos Mesa, said the Communist Party of Bolivia, “has not solved the political crisis that burdens our country.”

The statement, made by Marcos Domich, first secretary of the party’s Central Committee, followed Mesa’s resignation on June 10. Mesa’s action came on the heels of massive street protests here in the nation’s capital and elsewhere in the country. Mesa was succeeded by former Bolivian Supreme Court Chief Justice Eduardo Rodriguez after the first two people in line for succession were forced to decline the job in the face of popular pressure. Rodriguez is the third president Bolivia has had in a little more than year and a half.

Bolivian Communists said that the new interim president should not undertake any measures except the “routine administration of the state and general elections within the next six months.” The party also demanded that parliament “pass no laws until the holding of general elections,” with the exception of laws for “the recovery of Bolivia’s energy resources” from foreign interests.

Domich denied reports in the Bolivian and international press that protests were limited to the western part of Bolivia, pointing to widespread protests and actions throughout the country. He said efforts to portray the protests as a conflict between regions is a dangerous view that could lead to national disintegration.

The Communist Party also called for action by the central government to control the violence of the ultra-right against the progressive organizations in Santa Cruz, an area known as a base for corporate interests in the expropriation of Bolivia’s resources. At the same time, the party called upon unions, community organizations, and revolutionary and patriotic parties “to unify the demands, the objectives and procedures of the present fight.”

Letters

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 04:55:00 +0000

Marxism without meat?

I was shocked by your article “Marxism Without Meat” (PWW, 6/4-10). I thought the PWW was into taking my side, not the side of cows and chickens!

Meat is one of the most wonderful things on the planet. Studies of human history show that the more meat humans ate, the more strong and intelligent they became, and the more strong and intelligent they became, the more they wanted to eat meat. Meat provided the perfect amount of proteins and vitamins to build bigger muscles — and bigger brains.

I eat meat every day and while I can’t easily show anyone my brain, I can point to my stomach and show at least six good reasons to eat meat (show me one vegetarian with a six pack.) Of course, one shouldn’t consume meat to excess but that’s true with everything. So I suggest that everyone who reads this go out tonight and have some kind of meat. It’ll be good for you and you’ll be happy you did.

Teddy Wood

Santa Cruz CA

Take back America?

“Take back America?” (PWW, 6/11-18). My question is, when was it ours? First white people stole this land from the Native Americans. Then they enslaved Africans and spoke of freedom and justice for all. They built railroads with the lives of the Chinese in the West. They killed countless peoples right here. Most have been forgotten in the history books.

Then the real fun begins when the U.S. government starts killing people around the world for peace, liberty and freedom. Of course, they use working-class folks as cannon fodder. This land is their land. I am not a historian but I hope I have made my point.

Kim O’Brien

Los Angeles CA

On U.S. socialism

Re: “Building socialism in the U.S. — One brick at a time” (PWW, 6/4-11), I agree that we should raise the question to consider nationalizing oil, gas, electric utilities and the use of eminent domain or maybe occupying these plants (sit-down strikes a la 1936), but after socialism is built, will we have job security? Will we have safer working conditions? Decent wages and hours? In some socialist countries I understand that union membership is not compulsory. This leaves the union in a weakened condition. Will we have the right to strike? These and other ideas should be discussed. What if some zealous manager wants to build something or wants to increase production? How much democracy will we who create the value have? What if this factory is losing money?

Jim

Via e-mail

Tim Wheeler responds:

Thanks for responding to my article. Your questions are excellent. One of the most important achievements of socialism has been the guarantee of full employment, health care and quality public education for all. I believe making those guarantees ironclad is a basic determinant of whether a socialist society is truly socialist. Mass unemployment has always been a defining characteristic of capitalism and we cannot say we have truly achieved socialism until full employment is achieved.

Let’s work together

The May 14 article “Upholding Theoretical Foundations” by Tillow, Godwin and Kenny, while conveying some interesting points, is a false alarm to the Communist Party USA. The Communist Party has never been an organization dedicated to ideology through declaration, but to ideology rooted in day-to-day struggle in the improvement of lives of poor people and working people. There is little if any evidence that the party at any level from top to bottom is wavering or is befuddled.

To the contrary, the Communist Party, with its own occasional ebbs and flows, has come through difficulties with its own resilience and resolve. If there is any caution here, it should be for the party to reinvigorate itself, to continuously challenge itself and its members and members’ peer groups to respond creatively and energetically to the enormous challenges before America and before working people and, above all, to challenge the left and everybody else to stay united and work hard together united.

The largest coalition of forces ever in our country — possibly the world — is in full agreement: Bush and everything he represents must go. There is no telling what the right wing will do to stay in power beyond 2008.

We may not even have seen the worst of it yet. But America as a nation can’t wait till then to react and organize. Let’s get the work done now and not wait till it’s too late.

George Mores

Via e-mail

Welcoming the discussion

Our recent op-ed piece “Upholding Theoretical Foundations” (PWW, 5/14-20) expressing misgivings about one characterization of the draft of a new Communist Party USA program has generated three published responses. We welcome these responses. We hope this is the beginning of a serious discussion in the PWW as well as at the various discussion web sites and e-mail addresses of the necessity of maintaining the CPUSA as a Marxist-Leninist organization and resisting any drift towards social democracy.

Lawrence Albright, Nick Bart and Emil Shaw center their thinking on the defeat of the Bush administration, something that we can all agree would benefit the working people of the world. However, this is not a uniquely Communist task, but a task for many political parties and tendencies. There has never been a moment in CPUSA history when the party has not enthusiastically joined others in fighting the most backward, terroristic, or aggressive enemies of working people. But at no time has the Party surrendered its identity, its ideology, or its fervent commitment to socialism for the sake of some ill-defined, class-neutral idea of unity.

We contend that it is possible, even necessary, to join others in the anti-Bush struggle while at the same time advancing the cause of socialism. The anti-Bush struggle needs maximum unity. But that unity will be strengthened if, on the left of that anti-Bush coalition, the CPUSA is fighting shoulder to shoulder with all the other opponents of Bush, but also projecting advanced ideas for political independence of labor, for a fierce fight against racism and against opportunism, for anti-monopoly unity, and above all, for abolishing capitalist exploitation itself, i.e., for socialism.

Walter Tillow, Greg Godwin, and Thomas Kenny

Via e-mail

Labor Update

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 04:37:00 +0000

NLRB give OK to nurses’ firing

Overruling a prior precedent, the National Labor Relations Board decided last year that the Alexandria (Minn.) Clinic could fire 22 members of the Minnesota Licensed Practical Nurses Association over what many see as a ridiculous technicality.

The union gave a 10-day strike notice, as required by law. The notice gave the time of the strike as 8 a.m. on Sept. 10, 1999. However, when the actual walk out occurred four hours later, at noon, management seized on the discrepancy to fire the nurses.

The union took its case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, but its panel agreed with the NLRB, not the nurses. “If Congress intended to allow either party to extend the (strike) notice unilaterally, it could easily have said so — but it did not,” the appellate judges said.

The AFL-CIO cites that NLRB ruling as one of many agency decisions showing a consistent anti-worker trend during the Bush administration.

Rutgers students won’t choke on Coke

Hundreds of Coke machines and fountains from the three Rutgers New Jersey campuses are being removed along with Coca-Cola scoreboards, clocks and other Coke ads that “polluted” the university. The ban on Coke is in support of a nationwide campaign of student-labor activists to “stop the gruesome cycle of murders, kidnapping and torture of union leaders and organizers involved in daily life and death struggles at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America,” says the Stop Killer Coke campaign.

The decision that effectively bans the sale and marketing of all Coke products from campus was made on May 10 after a long-fought, two-year campaign led by student organizations and the faculty union.

Public support for United Airlines workers

“It is highly unusual to receive letter after letter from airline passengers and ordinary Americans, with no union affiliation whatsoever, who commend us for standing up and fighting on behalf of our members,” writes Randy Canale, president of Machinist Union District 141.

Writing to District 141 members about the union’s negotiations with United Airlines, Canale reported a “surprising ... outpouring of public support that we are receiving daily in phone calls, letters and e-mail.

“They are especially offended by United’s termination of our pension plan and the attempt to wipe out our contracts in bankruptcy court,” Canale wrote.

“This isn’t about the ailing airline industry,” wrote one supporter from Little Rock, Ark. “This is about every poor bastard who put in 25 years with the expectation — the promise — that they would have something at the end of it. This is just the start, and if we don’t move to stop it now, it will happen to others.”

Canale concluded his letter with a personal message: “To each and every person who is supporting us in this struggle, I thank you as a proud American and a very, very proud union member.”

Bulls Eye on FMLA

The U.S. Department of Labor officially announced that it will make changes to the Family and Medical Leave Act, but didn’t say when these changes will be released or what they’d look like, the AFL-CIO warned in a letter to working women June 6.

Since the law passed in 1993, more than 50 million working people — half of them men — have been able to take time off to bond with new babies, care for seriously ill family members or recover from their own illnesses.

But FMLA needs strengthening, not weakening: The FMLA does not cover all workers, and the leave is unpaid. Three in four workers who needed to take FMLA leave, but did not take it, said they couldn’t afford to go without a paycheck.

However, says the message, “statistics only tell us so much. So, we need your stories to put a personal perspective on the campaign to save FMLA.” If you or someone in your family used FMLA leave and would like to share your story, e-mail workingwomen@aflcio.org.

Methodists support EFCA

The General Board of Church and Society of the 8.3-million-member United Methodist Church officially offered its support for the Employee Free Choice Act and majority sign-up agreements (also known as card-check). In its May 20 statement supporting the campaign to restore workers’ freedom to form unions, the board called on “all employers to abide by their employees’ decision when a majority has signed union authorization cards or otherwise indicated their desire to be represented by a union, and to refrain from using National Labor Relations Board hearings, elections, and appeals as a means for delaying or avoiding representation for their employees.”

Labor Update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org). PAI and YCL updates contributed to this update.

OAS stands up to U.S., supports Venezuela

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 04:25:00 +0000

News Analysis

“Madam Secretary, democracy cannot be imposed,” said Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, in reply to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the 35th General Assembly of the Organization of the American States (OAS). “Latin America has its own identity,” he said. “It has recuperated its dignity — not to confront the United States, but to confront imperialist politics.”

That was the kind of roughing up Bush officials faced at the first OAS meeting hosted on U.S. soil in 31 years, this time in Ft Lauderdale, Fla. The OAS was set up in 1951, and shortly became an instrument of U.S. cold war politics.

The Assembly turned aside U.S. proposals directed against the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela, as it passed declarations supportive of both national independence and a common front against the region’s social and economic devastation. Only a month earlier, in an unprecedented move, the OAS had rejected Washington’s choice for OAS leader in favor of Chilean diplomat Jose Miguel Insulza.

Speaking to reporters, Secretary of State Rice, apparently alluding to the need to intervene in Venezuela, declared, “The OAS has intervened in the past,” adding, “It is a matter of intervening to try and sustain the development of democratic institutions.” In an address to the Assembly June 7, President Bush said, “We must replace excessive talk with action.”

The U.S. government offered a “Declaration of Florida,” which would have authorized OAS-sponsored military interventions in member countries on behalf of “democracy.” The Assembly ultimately voted 28-6 to back a watered-down version of the resolution, holding that OAS interventions would have to wait on an invitation from an elected head of a targeted government.

The OAS Assembly passed eight out of nine resolutions introduced by Venezuela. One of them, offered in response to the U.S. interventionist proposal, stated that “for there to be world peace there must be respect for sovereignty.” Another condemned media concentration and rejected “support of hate” in the media. Still another called for member nations to “commit themselves not to support terrorists that are wanted for crimes in other countries,” a clear reference to U.S. sanctuary provided to Cuban-exile terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

Delegates backed the social and economic rights of Latin America’s estimated 240 million poor. As Venezuelan Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez noted: “In these conditions quality of life simply doesn’t exist, adding, “Where the calamities of hunger and poverty exist, democracy is in doubt and human rights are a fiction.” The Assembly’s final declaration incorporated a Venezuelan resolution calling for adoption of a “Social Charter of the Americas.”

Roger Noriega, U.S. Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, staged a “temper tantrum,” in the words of one reporter. Apparently reacting to Washington’s failure to have its way, Noriega proclaimed that Venezuelan money and influence were behind unrest in Bolivia, a charge immediately dismissed by the Venezuelans.

Secretary of State Rice met June 5 with Maria Corina Machado, head of the Venezuelan group Sumate, accused of bringing in National Endowment for Democracy funds in the efforts to defeat Hugo Chavez at the polls. Machado took part in the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez, and is reportedly preparing to oppose him in the 2006 presidential elections.

The week before, Machado met with President Bush in the White House. By contrast, Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington, has been waiting two months to meet with U.S. State Department officials.

Outside the Assembly, police from 26 agencies stopped delegates’ cars at roadblocks, searching them with dogs and metal detectors. The Mexican daily La Jornada reported that journalists required a State Department escort to approach OAS delegates.

Some 20 Secret Service agents detained Venezuelan reporter Lyng-Hou Ramirez. She came under suspicion when police, searching her bag, found an OAS document on human rights. Agents reportedly refused to verify her credentials with the OAS. After all, they said, “They don’t make the rules, we do.”

Harilaos Florakis, Greek leader, dies

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 02:33:00 +0000

The Communist Party of Greece announced that its honorary chairman, Harilaos Florakis, died May 22 at the age of nearly 91.

Florakis was born July 20, 1914, in a village in Thessaly. At the age of 15 he joined the Communist Youth Federation of Greece and in 1941 he joined the Communist Party. During the World War II occupation of Greece by German and Italian fascist forces, Florakis worked underground and was detained twice by the police. He helped lead the strike of Post, Telephone, Telegraph workers in April 1942, the first large strike during the occupation and one of the first in enslaved Europe.

Florakis joined the National Liberation Front a day after it was founded. He fought against the occupation forces as a member of the National People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), and later against U.S. and British imperialism as a member of the Democratic Army, ultimately reaching the rank of major general.

In 1949 Harilaos Florakis was elected to the party’s Central Committee. He was persecuted, imprisoned and exiled for a total of 18 years — 12 years in prison serving a life sentence, and six years in exile. He was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment many times, one of the best known being the “Great Trial” in May 1960 at the Athens Court Martial.

From 1972 to 1989 Florakis served as the party’s first secretary. He was awarded the ELAS Medal of Honor and the Medal of Military Merit of the Democratic Army of Greece. He was given the Lenin Peace Prize and the medal of the Friendship of the Peoples by the USSR, the Karl Marx Award by the German Democratic Republic, and the Dimitrov Award by the People’s Republic of Bulgaria.

Crash into racism

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 02:32:00 +0000

Movie review

Crash

Directed and co-written by Paul Haggis

Rated R

Distributed by Lions Gate Films

In the beginning of “Crash,” the directorial debut of Paul Haggis (he won the Oscar for writing the screenplay for “Million Dollar Baby”), you hear what you think is going to be a long narration by Don Cheadle. Outside, it’s smoky and steamy, and it’s night. He’s just been rear-ended. His voice is soft, slow and clear. He’s expressing the explosion that humans need to have happen every now and then, so we don’t live our whole lives inside the bubble of the glass and metal of a car.

He’s arguing that the car’s protection keeps us from interacting with everyone else who’s also bubbled. We’re in Los Angeles, the bubble center of the universe. Cheadle’s quietly explosive words only last about 30 seconds. He’s an L.A. detective investigating a dead body. His partner, Ria (Jennifer Esposito), thinks he’s lost his mind or been knocked semiconscious. They both get out of the car and start doing their detective work in the most mundane of ways. Car crashes keep happening, and their inhabitants play out the consequences of these random acts.

All of the many characters in “Crash” are strongly affected by racism in contemporary Los Angeles. Racism holds them together and pulls them apart. The individual vignettes concerning the characters wouldn’t even intersect if it weren’t for racism.

Like racism itself, “Crash” isn’t a simple or easy movie. It isn’t even easy to follow. In fact, you might want to remember who is driving which car at the beginning of the film. There is nothing uplifting about the topic, but some of the stories about how people deal with racism are.

Don’t go to see “Crash” because Sandra Bullock is in it, because she barely is. The long list of million-dollar actors and actresses also make very short appearances.

But the ensemble cast probably couldn’t be better, and better not said is the story line so you can enjoy your own surprise, but the roles played are real and breathless.

Curly Cohen and Jim Lane contributed to this review.

Letters

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 02:11:00 +0000

History lesson

In the 1930s, the right of workers to join unions, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, minimum wages, and the 40-hour week were enacted into law after a fierce struggle in which the Communist Party USA, through the leading role of its activists in the mushrooming labor movement and other people’s organizations, played a central and indispensable role. Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal government also played a central and indispensable role in the passage of the legislation, especially Social Security, which the Bush administration is attempting to destroy.

Your readers should remember and tell their friends as they fight Bush today that it was the postwar attack on both the labor movement and the Communist Party and the weakening of both which created the opportunities for Nixon, Reagan and two Bush presidents to redistribute wealth from working families to the wealthy. Only huge organizing drives and increases in the membership of both the labor movement and the Communist Party USA, the only political party in the United States fully committed to regaining and expanding working people’s rights and eventually establishing socialism can defeat the Bush agenda. What Ben Franklin said at the Continental Congress in 1776 holds true today for labor and the left. If we don’t hang together we will certainly hang separately.

Norman Markowitz

Via e-mail

We said it first

Over two years ago, the PWW was one of the first publications to carry an item urging its readers to buy CITGO gas as a way of supporting the progressive developments in Venezuela.

“As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA,” the PWW wrote, “purchases of CITGO eventually work their way back to Venezuela to fund the ambitious social development programs being undertaken by the government of Hugo Chavez.”

What the PWW suggested over two years ago has recently gotten a big boost with a posting May 16 on CommonDreams.org by Jeff Cohen, a founder of FAIR. Cohen suggested a “Buycott” of CITGO for the very same reasons the PWW gave. Cohen’s posting has been picked up by several publications and listservs.

The Cohen posting came just a few weeks before President Hugo Chavez’ announcement that Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) will allocate 2.3 billion bolivares for housing projects, 500 billion bolivares for a series of social missions and 450 billion bolivares to pay off 200,000 Mision Ribas scholarships, giving proof to what benefits a “Buycott” of CITGO could entail.

Readers of the PWW can get a free “Buy CITGO Gas — Fuel Democracy” bumper strip by sending their snail mail address to Fueldemocracy@yahoo.com, indicating an English or Spanish version.

Walter Tillow

Louisville KY

Harmful books?

According to Human Events Online, a conservative weekly newspaper, the Communist Manifesto is “appropriately” ranked as the most harmful book of the 19th and 20th centuries. But what, one might ask, is so “harmful” about communism? Nothing.

The only substantive attacks made by the weekly include calling Engels a “limousine leftist” for his financial support of Marx and the naively judgmental assertion that the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union put the Manifesto into practice.

Marx’s “Das Kapital” was ranked sixth. Marx, according to the weekly, failed to see “21st century America” as “a free, affluent society based on capitalism and representative government that people the world over envy and seek to emulate.”

It is tempting to dismiss such rankings as the result of misunderstandings about Marx’s work or the truth of human suffering in our supposedly “free” and “affluent” society. We may even cynically retort that President Bush has done little to preserve and extend that freedom and affluence to the American people. But as the CPUSA approaches its July convention, I would suggest that the Party steer clear of the ad hominem attacks on President Bush, since these attacks expend crucial energy on the mere figurehead of a massive economic power structure that oppresses us. Weeds are killed only when pulled up by the roots, not when their top is cut off.

Tony Thomas

Columbia MO

Job programs needed

Just read Jarvis Tyner’s excellent article on the Internet at www.cpusa.org on the “leading role of the African American people’s movement.”

It is not accidental that the ultra-right attack on working families has had a racist edge. In the downsizing of mass industries such as steel and auto, the African American percentage of the workforce has declined. This creates a danger for the labor movement and the progressive movement in general.

I believe we must aggressively fight for public works jobs with a strong affirmative action policy.

Some years ago, Gus Hall proposed that we fight for a massive affordable housing program. This would also be a job-creation program. It must have affirmative action at its heart. It would also take head-on the new urban planning policy that is changing the face of Chicago. Luxury housing is being built while lower-cost housing is torn down. The working class is being driven out of our city into suburban ghettos.

Let’s move the fight for public-works jobs programs back to the top of our agenda.

Beatrice Lumpkin

Chicago IL

Good work

I just returned from a trip to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. While there, I could not help but notice how many people were reading the People’s Weekly World. I asked about it and I was informed that one person has quite a large distribution. I was very pleased not just to see stacks of PWWs in local shops, coffee houses, and buildings, but by the fact that people were reading them and that shop owners had a hard time keeping them in supply. Sitting in a coffee shop in St. Paul, I saw two women seated a few tables away reading a copy of the PWW. Those bistros, as well as other storeowners, have a reserved spot for the PWW, as do other places. Storeowners sometimes put the PWW right on the front counter by the checkout line. It seemed that everywhere I turned around I saw the paper. One shopkeeper told me that they disappear quickly. A special thanks goes out to Morgan Soderberg for his tireless work.

Michael Adam Reale

Via e-mail

S. African Communists eye next steps

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 01:49:00 +0000

News Analysis

When the African National Congress of South Africa won a popular mandate of 70 percent of the vote in a landslide victory in 1994, following the overthrow of the racist, U.S.-supported apartheid regime, popular expectations ran high. The inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the first president of a new, nonracialist South Africa symbolized a historic turning point.

Since then the ANC government has sought to address the Black population’s overwhelming poverty and the country’s economic development, working in concert with its key allies in what is known as the Tripartite Alliance — the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

When the Special Congress of the South African Communist Party convened April 8-10 in Durbin to assess the “challenges, shortcomings and lessons to be learned” over the past decade, the atmosphere was sober but upbeat.

National Chairperson Charles Nqakula greeted the 600 delegates and guests and noted that despite profound changes, “our society continues to be dominated by a brutal and inhumane capitalist accumulation regime. It is an accumulation path that remains fundamentally untransformed.”

Nqakula’s remarks and those of Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the SACP, placed renewed emphasis on the urgency of job creation and the elimination of poverty, especially in view of heavy layoffs in recent years. Nzimande spoke of “intensified worker action” and “escalating class struggles” to advance the interests of the working class and the landless poor. The congress also outlined what it called a Medium Term Vision, declaring the next 10 years to be a “decade of the workers and the poor.”

Nqakula called for intensified involvement by Communists in every sector of government, in neighborhoods, in factories and mines, on campuses, and elsewhere.

The deep respect enjoyed by South Africa’s Communists was evident, including in the form of a speech to the congress by the country’s president, Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki saluted the SACP for its pioneering political role in characterizing pre-apartheid South Africa as reflecting a “colonialism of a special type,” and in charting a path to liberation from the racist system of oppression.

He said the nation’s main priorities today are the building of a nonracist and nonsexist society, and the struggle against poverty. “What sorts of interventions should we make to impact on the capitalist system so that we are better able to fight against poverty?” he asked. “It can’t just be a negotiated resolution or [an] act to say ‘down with poverty.’”

Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of COSATU, expressed his solidarity with SACP and said workers had benefited from the first decade of democracy.

“First, we won democratic space within which to operate, underpinned by a progressive constitution,” he said. “You only have to look at our neighbors in Zimbabwe and Swaziland to understand the extent of the political space won by the working class and its allies in South Africa.”

“Second, workers have gained rights in the workplace, as contained in our progressive labor laws,” Vavi said. “The third major gain for the working class was the provision of basic services, including shelter, health care, water, electricity, education and so forth, especially in the rural areas. [The] rollout of basic services is critical in the struggle to transform the gendered household division of labor and to relieve the burden currently borne by women. Still, millions do not have access to these basic services and there is a real possibility that rising user fees may cut off those that currently enjoy access.”

Unemployment is estimated at 30 percent, he said, and job elimination is a big problem, particularly in the mining and textile industries. Youth unemployment is severe, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to take a heavy toll.

In short, Vavi said, “the political transformation has not been matched by substantial transformation of economic power. … In economic terms, capital scored the most and has reaped massive profits” with large-scale job cuts.

Vavi observed, “Economic power is still in the hands of white monopoly capital. The aspirant and vocal Black bourgeoisie remains numerically small and depends heavily on the state and white business for its survival.”

Among the resolutions adopted at the end of the SACP congress was one relating to electoral activities, particularly the upcoming local elections. Delegates agreed to fully support “ANC-led campaigns,” and SACP members who run on the ANC line were reminded that they will be checked up on to ensure that they conform to the SACP’s high principles and moral standards.

For more information, visit the SACP’s web publication, Umsebenzi Online, at www.sacp.org.za/umsebenzi/online/.

No party, no socialism

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 05:09:00 +0000

The right wing has attacked historian Moshe Lewin’s new book, “The Soviet Century,” which covers the Soviet Union from the early 1920s through its implosion in 1991, for its sympathetic treatment of Lenin. His principal conclusion, backed by newly available archival materials, is that Stalin subverted the Bolshevik Party’s Leninist tradition of democratic centralism and assumed Czar-like dictatorial powers. The Communist Party (CPSU) consequently lost its character as a political party. It became an administrative appendage of the unwieldy bureaucratic state structures created by Stalin’s precipitous and premature introduction of an overcentralized planned economy.

Lewin stresses the system’s industrial and scientific achievements and the tremendous rise in living standards, education and culture. Soviet leaders after Stalin never acquired, however, the ideological unity necessary to restore the damage done by Stalin to the CPSU’s political guiding role. Thus the party remained powerless to cope with the imbalances of the over-bureaucratized centralized state structures. These imbalances led to an increasing technological gap in relation to the capitalist economies, crises in industrial supply, and inability to meet the growing needs of its people as their skill, culture and education developed.

Lewin begins his history with Stalin’s clash with Lenin on the national question shortly after Lenin suffered a stroke in 1922. Lenin envisaged the Soviet Union as a federation of independent republics. Stalin proposed instead semi-autonomous republics under which political and economic policies would be determined by Moscow-based, Russian-dominated commissariats. Lenin disagreed sharply, but Stalin prevented his written criticism from reaching the Central Committee.

Instead of winning support for his positions by convincing arguments, as Lenin had done, Stalin increasingly resorted to strong-arm measures to defeat ultra-leftist attacks on the worker-peasant alliance that formed the basis of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) for the advance to socialism.

Under NEP, the initial industrialization occurred in a mixed economy with state and private sectors. Peasants were taxed in kind reasonably to provide grain and industrial crops for domestic use and for foreign exchange. The left opposition led by Trotsky and Zinoviev argued for rapid industrialization funded by maximal expropriation of grain from the peasantry.

In fact, when the peasants did not get the needed affordable tools, fertilizer, textiles, and leather, a severe shortage of grain developed suddenly in December 1927. Stalin’s reaction was a 180-degree reversal of course. He abruptly destroyed the worker-peasant alliance and adopted Trotsky’s solution for setting the peasants back into serf-like status. He sent out party leaders to seize grain from the peasants. The peasants resisted, and he forcibly imposed collectivization to prevent concealment of grain.

Molotov, in post-retirement interviews (not referred to by Lewin), recounts with pride how he went out for the next five years to seize grain from the peasants, not just the wealthy but all the peasants (including the collectives), “at miserably low prices — they gained nothing.” Molotov quotes Stalin’s praise: “I will cover you with kisses.”

Without adequate organizational preparation, Stalin also adopted Trotsky’s previous demand for precipitous industrialization. Economic experts now agree that had the NEP worker-peasant alliance been continued, increased agricultural production would have led to a higher level of industrialization than was achieved, even according to the figures released about the first Five Year Plan (now known to be falsified).

Lewin describes how the growing alarm of “Old Bolsheviks” at Stalin’s breach with Lenin’s policies led to their mass execution. Quotas for arrests were fixed in advance. In most cases neither the accused nor attorneys were present at the “trials,” which could be as short as 10 minutes. The archives disclose that 681,692 persons were executed in 1937-38. In the few show trials, the only evidence presented was confessions obtained by beatings and torture personally authorized by Stalin.

Lewin might have referred to Molotov’s later admission that he never believed in the charge of conspiracy to turn over Soviet land to Germany, Japan and Poland in exchange for support for a coup, for which Bukharin and other former political leaders and Marshal Tukhachevsky and most of the officer corps were executed. Molotov still justified the killings as preventive executions on the grounds that these were rightists and that there was no telling which way they would turn in the case of a crisis.

Lewin maintains that although the party never did, it could have recovered its political function to the point that it could have introduced changes in the economic system needed for successful socialist construction. Without its Communist Party, the socialist Soviet Union could not survive.

Letters

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 05:02:00 +0000

Educators refuse Wal-Mart

Thought your readers might be interested in this note from “the far Northwest” about the campaign against Wal-Mart’s exploitive policies, which include thrusting onto taxpayers the burden of paying for healthcare for many of its employees.

My union, Washington Education Association, sponsors the WEA Children’s Fund, which helps out kids who can’t afford school supplies or other items — perhaps a child needs a coat or a backpack. A WEA member can draw on the fund to purchase what a child might need.

The WEA board recently asked for members’ comments on covering purchase from Wal-Mart. There must have been many negative responses, including mine, as shortly later I received a note from the president stating, “You’ll be please to know that we will no longer reimburse members for purchases from Wal-Mart.” One small victory!

Elizabeth Yates

Seattle WA

Egypt: Great state, criminal regime

The majority of Egyptian people boycotted the referendum vote on May 25. Poll centers were empty all day long. Tens of thousands of demonstrators rushed to intersections and squares in Cairo, Alexandria, and cities nationwide to challenge the new constitutional amendment and to shout “No to [Pres.] Mubarak and no to Gamal, his groomed son.”

The cosmetic amendment does not add any real power sharing with the opposition and just institutes the status quo. Eyewitnesses said the notorious state security hired criminals to fight the demonstrators and to sexually intimidate female reporters and demonstrators. The head of Kefaya (the anti-Mubarak coalition, which means “enough”) and tens of other opposition leaders ended up with broken noses or ribs and hundreds were detained.

Egypt is sliding into civil disobedience and chaos. Mubarak, who served four successive six-year terms and brutally oppressed all forms of opposition, is determined to do whatever it takes to stay in office or to assign his son as a successor. However, the people of Egypt are uprising and more determined to throw both out of the office.

Mohamad Anwar

St. Paul MN

Treating mental illness

This is in response to the op-ed piece “Morality vs. Mental Illness” by Frank Valdez (PWW 5/7-13).

This was a brilliant analysis of how the Texas state government chooses to imprison mentally ill inmates who conceivably could have legal recourse, if treated in the community. Valdez skillfully exposes how “paranoid” diagnoses of the mentally ill are treated.

Hello, does anyone remember the COINTELPRO program?

John Kargewski

Jersey City NJ

The French vote

The French rejection of the proposed European Union constitution was more important than some people think. Why did Chirac choose to seek a referendum and not just have the Parliament vote on it, where he would have won easily? He has his own party’s “yes” vote; and, he saw a compliant Socialist Party, in full “yes” support. The Socialist Party’s labor federation, the CFDT, was also in full “yes” support. He surmised that the French Communist Party would follow the Socialist Party.

So, if you were sitting in Chirac’s chair, why not seek a referendum to show the French people support your presidency?

What happened?

Well, the Chirac privatization efforts in the health care system (the top health system in the world by World Health Organization standards); an over 10 percent unemployment rate; an agricultural economy that was teetering; the closing down of 25 percent of the much revered post office system; and a proposal that workers from Eastern Europe who are hired in France can be paid wages at the level of their home countries, not French workers’ wages (incredible but true) — all of these factors came to bear. The concept of “social solidarity” the basis of French society for decades would be destroyed.

The French Communist Party split from the Socialist Party and ran an aggressive “no” vote campaign.

The CGT labor federation’s executive board rejected their officers’ position and called for a strong “no” vote, and they mobilized the membership to vote no.

The mystery about the “no” vote is over. And the future of Europe as a playground for transnational corporations under the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank is also over. The “Bush agenda” for Europe was rejected by the French as it was rejected in Holland. The “house of cards” of the European constitution is about to collapse.

The rebirth of the political and labor left in France is well underway. While all life does not live in Europe, especially with the rebirth of the progressive movements in Latin American, Asia and Africa, Europe is still a key financial and industrial center of activity that cannot be neglected by activists in the United States.

Phil Benjamin

New York City NY

Myths still guide policy

Norman Markowitz is absolutely right in his characterization of the president’s recent speech in Riga, Latvia, as consisting of myths (PWW 5/14-20). Bush’s notion that the United States should have used military force against the just victorious Red Army to “roll back Communism” is both ignorant and irresponsible, for the result would have been an immediate start of World War III.

However, this is not really the point of Bush’s speech. As he said last week at the International Republican Institute, “The United States has a new policy, a strategy that recognizes that the best way to defeat the ideology that uses terror as a weapon is to spread freedom and democracy.”

Bush is taking what would have been an insane policy in 1945 into 2005, where it is 1,000 times as insane. His administration’s sights are set on Iran, and the control of the lion’s share of the world’s energy resources that are under the countries of the Middle East. This is the lever with which they will rule the world.

Question: When do the ravings of a pathological lunatic make him incapacitated and incapable of continuing in his current office?

Ted Pearson

Chicago IL

Labor Update

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 04:52:00 +0000

UAW endorses Sweeney

The United Auto Workers has endorsed John Sweeney for re-election as president of the AFL-CIO, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger announced May 26.

Sweeney, he said, “has actively encouraged a lively, open and much-needed debate on the future of the labor movement.”

“Sweeney has focused squarely on issues and on doing what’s in the best interest of workers and their families, refusing to be drawn into divisive personal squabbles,” Gettelfinger continued. “He believes in reaching out and bringing people together, not driving them apart.

“The UAW has supported important reform proposals within the AFL-CIO to help create a stronger and more effective labor federation,” Gettelfinger said. “And while different unions approach the challenges we face from different perspectives, we believe it’s important to focus on what unites us.

“We are united in demanding an end to the human rights abuses in American workplaces which deny millions of people a free choice about whether to join a union. We are united in our belief that working families must have an effective voice in the political process. We are united in recognizing that today’s global economy demands a global labor movement that can fight for workplace democracy and rising living standards for all workers, no matter where they live,” Gettelfinger said.

A fair minimum wage

The number of Americans in poverty has increased by 4.3 million since President Bush took office, says a statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Sweeney urged passage of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2005, which was introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). The act would bring the federal minimum wage up to $7.25 an hour.

“As real wages continue to deteriorate for workers, members of Congress consistently increase their own pay,” said Sweeney. Meanwhile, “low-income working families are making sacrifices to pay for food, gasoline and rising health care costs.”

Keeping passenger rail on track

A new caucus has been formed in Congress to protect passenger rail in America, the online Political/Legislative Action Center of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers reported. Representatives Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Castle (R-Del.) and Andrews (D-N.J.) initiated the caucus, which plans to begin holding briefings this month with groups that are interested in strengthening passenger rail.

Continental Tire runs over laid-off workers

Continental Tire North America terminated health insurance for nearly 200 workers and their families in spite of a written agreement to provide continued health insurance in case of a shutdown, said the workers’ union, United Steelworkers Local 665. After laying off the workers, the company “is now trying to argue it was not a shutdown,” said Terry Beane, Local 665 president. Beane vowed to “fight this action all the way to Continental’s corporate headquarters in Germany if necessary.” Until the issue is resolved, the workers and their families will have no medical benefits, the union reported.

Retreating in order to advance

United Students Against Sweatshops issued a call to students across the country to participate in a summer retreat in Chicago Aug. 12-15 to build organizing skills and strategize about campus living wage campaigns, Wal-Mart and international solidarity actions.

Participants will also have the opportunity to hear from USAS international interns who will spend their summers in India, Haiti, Mexico, Turkey, Cambodia, Hong Kong, China, Kenya, South Africa, El Salvador, Philippines and Korea.

Travel scholarships will be available for those who register early, according to an announcement issued by USAS. The retreat will be held on the campus of Loyola University, and housing and food are included in the registration. For more information, contact USAS at www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org/register.php.

Labor Update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org).

Black trade unionists urge labor unity

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 04:14:00 +0000

Warn against AFL-CIO restructuring that reduces minority representation, call for new Black political agenda

PHOENIX — “There are no more common allies than the broad community and organized labor, and there are no more natural allies than organized labor and the African American community,” Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President Bill Lucy told the estimated 1,500 delegates at the 34th annual CBTU convention here May 26.

The convention theme, “CBTU: Forging a New Vision for Tough Challenges Ahead,” attests to what many see as a critical moment for the U.S. labor movement. It is under intense pressure from an administration bent on destroying it. Meanwhile, some in labor are concerned that a restructuring proposal to drastically downsize the AFL-CIO Executive Council threatens to marginalize workers of color and women representation in the national labor federation.

In a unanimously passed resolution on reorganizing the AFL-CIO, the CBTU resolved to submit a proposal for “an immediate campaign to organize workers in the South and the Southwest where there are large sections of unorganized and exploited workers of color.”

In his keynote address, Lucy said Black workers — like other people of color and women — are central to organized labor’s attempt to become more relevant to an American workforce and labor movement that have changed greatly over the past half-century.

Lucy said, “I, for one, reject the notion that a select few shall dictate the needs of millions of current members of organized labor.” He added, “If labor’s mission is to raise the standard of living and improve the quality of life for all workers,” then labor must reflect not only its current members’ concerns, “but the hopes and aspirations of the millions that would join based upon that mission.”

Addressing the convention, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the CBTU the “heart and soul” of labor. No one has suffered under the policies of the Bush administration more than the families of African American workers, he noted. Fifty-five percent of the union jobs lost last year were held by African Americans, with 100,000 African Americans losing their jobs in 2004, many of them single mothers, Sweeney noted.

Repeating the theme, “It’s time to go back to Gary” — referring to the 1972 National Black Political Assembly in Gary, Ind., the largest African American political convention in the nation’s history — Lucy called for a new national meeting to develop an independent political agenda in the African American community to address these critical economic and social issues.

In an interview during the convention, Lucy told the World that in referring to the “Gary movement of old,” he was calling for “a recommitment” to formulating a Black social, political and economic agenda “that is applicable to all groups of our society but comes out of the Black condition.”

Sweeney told the convention he had invited suggestions and proposals for change from across the labor movement, resulting in thousands of responses from individual union members; national unions; state federations, central labor councils, constituency groups, and AFL-CIO departments, and from partner organizations and academics.

One of the most thoughtful proposals came from the CBTU, Sweeney said, quoting Lucy’s suggestion that “the federation leadership resist the call to reduce the size of the Executive Council. The added size of the council bears no relationship to the decline in labor’s fortunes.”

CBTU’s proposal, Sweeney said, urged integration of constituency group leadership into the AFL-CIO’s political and organizing programs, and strengthening of the labor movement at the state and local levels where AFL-CIO organizations are in close touch with allies and constituencies.

At a “town hall meeting” on African American, Native American, Asian American and Latino relations, including leaders from these communities, panels pointed out the importance of united action to defeat the ultra-right attacks on labor and the poor. After addressing the meeting, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told the World, “The issue for people of color in the labor movement is that they have to stay together. As organizations change sometimes people of color are overlooked. And if they don’t stick together they lose out. And one of the things I want to share with them is if you don’t stick together then you come in on the short end of the stick.”

Dr. Juan Andrade Jr. of the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute told the town hall meeting that those in the room “represent the majority in every single one of the 100 largest cities in America. The largest cities in America look like you and me.”

This fact, he said, represents a potential for coalition building that can change the political equation in the country. “We can win” if we form the necessary coalitions, he said.

The convention unanimously passed a battery of progressive resolutions ranging from condemning the Iraq war to opposing Social Security privatization to setting up local anti-Wal-Mart committees, to calling for workshops at all levels of the labor movement that will “show the particular relationship between racism, capitalism and imperialism.”

Participant Eric Bitbull of AFSCME District Council 37, New York, told the World he found the convention “extremely successful.” It was a “unity party,” he said.