People Before Profit blog

Pipe breaks common

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:44:00 +0000

CHICAGO – On Feb. 26, a 40-foot wall of fire emerged from the ground where a 6-inch gas line broke here on the city’s South Side. Fortunately, only minor injuries occurred, though it took over four hours to extinguish the blaze.

Though this story did make the headlines of local and citywide media, a source from People’s Gas admits that hundreds of similar incidents that occur throughout the city every year do not. Most are largely unpublicized, but because this incident was accompanied by such a large and sustained fire, it was especially noticeable by the public media.

Though these breaks are common, People’s Gas does not regularly check any of the city’s mains for weaknesses or damage. People’s Gas maintains that breaks are solely caused by city workers who disregard notices not to use their digging equipment near the mains. People’s Gas says that city workers cause all damages to main lines.

However, despite the knowledge that city workers use digging machines near gas mains, People’s Gas makes no attempt to check or supervise digging around mains to see if they have in fact been damaged or weakened by such work. Instead, People’s Gas believes it is better to wait and see if a large break occurs, rather than prevent the damage that will eventually and certainly does occur.

In fact, People’s Gas does not regularly check or inspect pipe mains for damage or weaknesses no matter how old the pipe is. People’s Gas did say that they read the pressure of mains as a way of checking for leaks, but that no physical check of the pipe structure is made until a break is reported by an outside agency.

In the event of an actual break, simply fixing the pipe must be preceded by not only turning off all gas to the pipe but actually turning off all individual consumers’ connections and pilot lights to that main. In the case of the recent fire, this resulted in the gas being shut off for 4,554 residents. This meant that those customers were without heat and some without hot water. People’s Gas was able to turn the heat back on for most of these customers within two days, and all by the third day. Thankfully, this accident occurred during a particularly warm spurt of a very mild winter.

All of the city’s gas pipes are made of cast iron. Though strong in itself, the material is possibly susceptible to damaged by water from sewers or drainage pipes, making breaks more likely. Still, even though these cast iron pipes are so near to sewage pipes that hundreds of breaks occur every year, People’s Gas does not check to see if water damage is adding to the high frequency of these breaks.

The author can be reached at brandikishner@yahoo.com

Of rags and bushes

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:35:00 +0000

When I worked in Washington State’s tall and uncut on the foot hills of Mt. Rainier we had a saying for the unbelievable or outlandish: “That takes the rag off the bush,” we would say, expecting that to end the conversation.

And so it is in Georgia where the GOP has gone to federal court to challenge the newly drawn map of congressional districts, charging that the new map discriminates against African American voters by “diluting” their voting strength. Now that takes the rag off the bush and stands as the ultimate example of hypocrisy on the part of those who wrote the book on hypocrisy, double talk and just plain meanness.

What’s really behind the sudden “concern” of the Georgia Republican Party is that congressional redistricting following the 2000 census gave Georgia two additional seats in the House of Representatives. The new map, which enjoys the support of every one of Georgia’s major African-American elected officials, may very flip the makeup of the state’s congressional delegation from the present 8-3 GOP majority to a 7-6 majority in favor of the Democrats, reason enough for Republicans to say, “That takes the rag off the bush.”

Think about it: does Rep. Jack Kingston, who enjoys a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union, care about Black representation? What about Max Collins, he with only a 6 percent approval rating from the ACLU? Or Bob Barr, a lead hyena in the Clinton impeachment battle, who moved to another congressional district because he feared defeat in 2002 if he didn’t?

Compare their records with that of Cynthia McKinney’s 100 approval rating from American For Democratic Action or John Lewis’ 100 percent from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers – make that comparison and you will understand the what’s and why’s of the GOP challenge in Georgia.

But there’s even more reason for their concern: given changing voting patterns in Georgia, the new map, with its more equal distribution of African-American voters, may very well increase the number of African Americans in the Georgia delegation where all three of the present Democratic seats are held by African Americans. As they see it, that would really take the rag off the bush!

The new map leaves John Lewis with a district where 52 percent of the voting age population is African American, down considerably from the 63 percent under the 1990 map. Cynthia McKinney stayed about even at a few tenths of a percent over 50 percent. Both won reelection with overwhelming majorities: Lewis by more than 75 percent; McKinney by 61 percent. Sanford Bishop, the state’s third Black member of Congress, won by nearly 60 percent in a district where only 37 percent of the voting age population is African American. Thus a lesson from Georgia: African-American candidates do not not need to be ghettoized into “Black max” districts in order to win.

While reapportionment following the 1990 census resulted in the election of a record number of African Americans to the House of Representatives in 1992, there was a down side. By creating congressional districts where African Americans made up an overwhelming majority of voters, the “bleached” districts that this process created were fertile ground for the right wing assault led by Newt Gingrich that saw the 73 Republicans elected to the House of Representatives in 1994.

Georgia’s new map of congressional districts has created three districts where African Americans make up more than 35 percent of the voting age population, a large enough block upon which to anchor a progressive electoral challenge. In that regard, Georgians – and progressives everywhere – can take a page from the playbook used in this year’s New Jersey elections.

There, a coalition of African Americans, Latinos and whites shifted voters from heavily minority districts around Newark into adjacent, largely white, districts. The result was the first Democratic majority in the state assembly for a decade and an increase in the number of minority legislators.

The GOP challenge in Georgia – and similar battles in other states – are key fights in the national battle to break the right wing grip on Congress. A pick up of three seats there would be a giant stride in winning back control of the House, and with it, a better chance of reversing the programs and policies of the Bush administration.

That would really take the rag off the bush – no pun intended.

The author can be reached at fgab708@aol.com

Michigan ups benefits

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:27:00 +0000

LANSING, Mich. – Two thousand workers attended a rally here March 13 at the state capitol. The rally was called by the State AFL-CIO to pressure the right wing Republican-controlled legislature to increase the benefit amount to unemployed workers.

The maximum benefit has been frozen at $300.00 a week since 1995 when the legislature followed the lead of the chamber of commerce to create “ a friendly business climate” in Michigan.The present legislature originally refused to raise the maximum amount even though inflation would have raised the benefit to $415 a week.

They also tried to put in a penalty week, which would make workers wait a week to get a check. This week would be returned if a worker was off before the full 26 weeks. Most workers are off after an average of 15 weeks. Seasonal and construction workers would especially be penalized since they would have to serve a penalty week every time they were laid off.

Another penalty that was in the Republican-sponsored bill was a clause that would have taxed every worker $12.a year to pay for their unemployment insurance.

Speakers at the rally included Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan State AFL-CIO, Bob King, vice president of the United Auto Workers, Larry Roerigh, vice president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25, Harry Lester, regional director of the United Steelworkers of America, Don Boggs, president of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO and retired Bishop Jesse DeWitt of the United Methodist Church. DeWitt encouraged the workers to lobby their representatives, with special emphasis on moderate Republicans, since all the Democrats were committed to support the increase and oppose the penalties.

Several days after the rally a bill passed the house that eliminated the penalties and raised the benefit to $375. The State Chamber of Commerce is lobbying the State Senate to keep the $300 cap and reinstate the penalties. Organized labor and their supporters are ready to return to see that this does not happen.

Another right wing group

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:23:00 +0000

Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT), a newly founded neo-conservative organization headed by William Bennett, has launched a full-blown public relations campaign meant to silence critics of President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism.

Other rightwing luminaries associated with Bennett include James Woolsey and William Barr. All three served in the administration of Bush the First, Woolsey as CIA director, Barr as Attorney General and Bennett as Secretary of Education. Frank Gaffney, a Pentagon official during the Reagan years is also a senior advisor to AVOT.

Lawrence Kadish, a real estate investor in New York and Florida, and chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, group’s main financial backer, was cited by Mother Jones Magazine as one of the country’s top individual donors, having given $532,000 to the GOP.

In announcing the group’s formation, Bennett said its intention is to “take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing,” who need to be resisted both here and abroad. A full-page AVOT advertisement carried in the March 10 New York Times, at the cost of $128,000, lambasted those at home “who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of ‘blame America first’.”

“Both [internal and external] threats,” the ad continues, “stem from either a hatred for the American ideals of freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals and their practice.”

As part of that effort AVOT has compiled a sample list of statements by professors, legislators, authors and columnists that it finds objectionable. Bennett’s claim that AVOT “does not wish to silence people,” and that the group plans only to hold teach-ins and public education events is contradicted by the names on its hit list.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) earned a place on the list when she said, “Some of us, maybe foolishly, gave this president the authority to go after terrorists. We didn’t know that he, too, was going to go crazy with it.”

Former President Jimmy Carter is blacklisted for saying Bush’s use of the phrase “axis of evil,” was “overly simplistic and counter-productive” and Robert Kuttner, editor of American Prospect, was put on the watch list for criticizing “Bush’s dismal domestic policies” and his “dubious notion of a permanent war.”

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was singled out for accusing the president of “canceling, in effect, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments” and for calling the war “the patriot games, the lying games, the war games of an unelected president.”

Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper’s and one of those listed, said Bennett is a “wrong-headed jingo and an intolerant scold.” He added that AVOT appeared to be a new “front organization for the hard neo-con [neo-conservative] right,” which has gained unprecedented influence in the Bush administration, particularly among the top political appointees in the Pentagon and Dick Cheney’s office. “This is the war-monger crowd,” he said. The AVOT web site includes links to all of Bush’s speeches since Sept. 11.

The author can be reached at fgab708@aol.com.

Health care: No level playing field

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:15:00 +0000

A study by the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine shows racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive lower-quality health care than whites do, even when insurance status, income, age and severity of conditions are comparable. The committee that wrote the report also emphasized that differences in treating heart disease, cancer and HIV infection contribute to higher death rates for minorities.

The study was done at the request of Congress, which asked the Institute of Medicine to assess the extent of racial and ethnic differences in the quality of health care received by patients that were not attributable to known factors such as access to care, ability to pay or insurance coverage.

At a press conference announcing the report, Dr. Alan Nelson said, “As the committee dug deeper into its work, it became clear that there are many complex sources of racial and ethnic disparities in health care that exist even when insurance status, income, age and severity of conditions are comparable. And because death rates from cancer, heart disease and diabetes are significantly higher in racial and ethnic minorities than in whites, these disparities are unacceptable.”

Dr. Lucille C. Perez, president of the National Medical Association (NMA), which represents African-American doctors, welcomed the report. “It validates what the NMA has been saying for so long - that racism is a major culprit in the mix of health disparities and has had a devastating impact on African Americans.”

“The differences are pervasive,” Martha N. Hill, of Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, “It cuts across all conditions of health and across the entire country, and we think this is a very serious moral issue.”

“Disparities in the health care delivered to racial and ethnic minorities are real and are associated with worse outcomes in many cases,” Nelson, a retired physician and former president of the American Medical Association who chaired the committee, said in his statement. “The real challenge lies not in debating whether disparities exist, because the evidence is overwhelming.”

Using language typical of that used in such reports, the committee said unequal treatment “occurs in the context of persistent discrimination in many sectors of American life,” and that there is some evidence “suggesting” that bias, prejudice and stereotyping on the part of health care providers “may contribute” to differences in care.

The committee pointed to studies showing that minorities are less likely to be given appropriate cardiac medications or to undergo bypass surgery and are less likely to receive kidney dialysis or transplants. Nelson said several studies show significant racial differences in who receives appropriate cancer diagnostic tests and treatments.

“By contrast,” he said, “minorities are more likely to receive certain less-desirable procedures, such as lower limb amputations for diabetes and other conditions.” He pointed to a study of major medical centers in New York State that found African Americans were 37 percent less likely to undergo angioplasty and other heart procedures than whites and were 3.6 times as likely to have their lower limbs amputated as a result of diabetes. In 90 percent of the cases where the patient did not get the surgery, the doctor had not recommended it.

Minorities are more likely to be enrolled in more affordable but “lower-end” health plans, a situation the report said, that is a potential source of disparities in treatment. “Insurance companies’ caps on the coverage of treatment costs can pose greater barriers to minority patients since they are less likely to be able to afford high co-payments or deductibles,” the report adds.

The committee made several recommendations aimed at eliminating the disparities, among them a call for more minority health care providers who, the report said, “are more likely to serve in minority and medically underserved communities.” The committee added that public programs such as Medicaid should “strive to help beneficiaries access the same level of care as privately insured patients” and that “if Congress passes a ‘Patients’ Bill of Rights’ to protect enrollees in private HMO plans, it should accord the same protections to people in publicly funded HMO plans.”

David R. Williams, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan called the report “a wake-up call” for doctors and patients. “We have a health system that is the pride of the world,” Williams said. “But this report demonstrates that the playing field clearly is not level.”

Dr. Quentin Young, a leader in Physicians for a National Health Plan, welcomed the report. “Racial disparity in the provision of health care is a terrible reality,” he told the World. “important as it is, the report makes clear that merely having insurance is not the complete answer.” Young said a national health care system modeled after that in Canada “would go far” in equalizing health access to all forms of health care.

Mayor Bloombergs first budget

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:09:00 +0000

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the 70th wealthiest person in the world – a multi-billionaire. After he bought the New York City Mayor’s job – at a cost of almost $100 million dollars of his own money – Bloomberg is laughingly referred to as a mayor with only one special interest to be concerned about: himself.

Of course, that is a little naive since Bloomberg is a card-carrying member and leader of the Wall Street millionaires and billionaires who are seeking a second career as elected officials whose first priority is to make sure their money is well spent and that private interest prevails over the public’s interest.

Looking at the series of cuts in Bloomberg’s 2002 budget one can see the way in which private interest will benefit. As public programs are cut back, private hospitals, clinics and corporations will be left to take up the slack – with fewer services, a far higher price and far fewer people.

Overall, $57 million of health funding has been cut in the city’s 2002 budget. The Department of Health cuts include cuts in family health clinics that stand to lose many staff members in order to save about $5.5 million.

Infant Mortality in New York City has been on the decrease over the past decade. However, while the overall numbers appear to be rather good, infant mortality in poor and economically depressed areas continue to be far too high, often equaling those in developing countries. But, rather than increasing the funding, to increase the effectiveness of the Infant Mortality Reduction Program, Bloomberg is proposing to reduce the budget from $5 million to a paltry $700,000.

Dr. Tom Frieden, the new health commissioner, has announced that anti-smoking programs will receive his highest priority. But it seems that his employer, the mayor, and he were not on the same page. Bloomberg proposes to save $13 million by totally eliminating the Tobacco Control Program. Keep in mind that the tobacco settlement of a couple of years ago, which sent about $100 million to New York State, was almost entirely directed to New York City’s private hospital system by Republican Governon George Pataki. This cut in the budget, just like Pataki’s actions, is sacrificing the future lives of teenagers who can be influenced by a strong advertising anti-smoking program.

The Bloomberg budget is particularly cruel in the field of HIV/AIDS. It is well known that the excellent educational programs in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community have radically reduced HIV/AIDS disease and deaths. But Bloomberg is cutting similar education initiatives in communites of color and among intravenous drug users, all in the name of saving $5 million.

Another $1.2 million is being cut from cancer research and education programs, the Department of Social Services/Human Resource Department is getting a $69 million hit and the Department of the Homeless and Housing, Preservation and Development will be cut nearly $44 million.

The broadest of coalitions are forming to fight these cuts. Getting rid of Giuliani has been a great step forward. Now we have to get rid of the Bloomberg budget cuts that are reminiscent of the Giuliani administration.

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

YCL leadership meets

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:08:00 +0000

NEW YORK – Members of the Young Communist League’s (YCL) National Council met here March 23-24. The meeting, also attended by YCL friends and allies, discussed the goals of the YCL in the period leading up to the National March for Peace in D.C. on April 20.

Libero Della Piana, national coordinator of the YCL, began the meeting with a main political report. He said that “there are huge opportunities for the YCL. We are working together on a national level with many diverse organizations. We should also work together locally. The YCL can play a key role in coalition work.”

“It is empowering to see the youth lead this march,” said Shelly Delos, managing editor of the YCL’s magazine. “The April 20 march is the beginning. We need to look for ways to go beyond April 20.”

Jennifer Perna, a National Council member from Philadelphia, tied the issue of civil liberties and the increased war budget to education, the focus of the YCL’s national campaign. “A fight for civil liberties is a fight for education,” Perna said.

Perna, a teacher, mentioned the continuing attempts by Edison to take over Philadelphia’s public schools. She also discussed the money being diverted from social programs, like education, into the production of bombs and bombers.

The YCL Membership Committee held an interactive workshop on recruitment and club building in the afternoon.

On Saturday evening, the 55 youth gathered again with many older comrades, Communist Party members, friends and allies, and celebrated the 80th anniversary of the YCL with music, laughter, reflections and food.

Jarvis Tyner, former national chair of the Young Workers Liberation League (YWLL), a precursor to the YCL, said, “The youth are carrying the torch. You are the bulk of the anti-globalization movement. You are the active core of the peace and justice struggles.”

Gloria Freedman, an 86-year-old member of the Communist Party, said, “My life started when I joined the Young Communist League.” The YCL and the Party have been the “most glorious things in my life for 66 years,” Freedman continued.

Speakers reminded the audience that it takes money to run any organization, including the YCL. A fundraising campaign around the YCL’s 80th anniversary was introduced.

The second day of the meeting focused on the YCL convention, draft budget for the fiscal year 2002 and the proposed new National Council, to be voted on at the convention. The YCL convention will be held in Chicago November 22-24.

The Young Communist League USA can be reached at ycl@yclusa.org

Health care activists push for single-payer

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:03:00 +0000

Advocates of single-payer health care are working to persuade the nation that nothing less than a major change to a single-payer system can solve our health care problems. They propose to cut out the insurance companies and HMOs with their high administrative costs and profits and to redirect those funds to coverage for all.

Ida Hellander, MD, executive director of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), told the World, “Single payer would cover more people for less. Once people learn about single payer, they never forget. Vague talk of universal coverage is inadequate. We need to speak specifically as to why single payer will bring higher quality, is more humane, and is much less expensive. We are spending more than we need to. We are spending more money on healthcare than other countries – and getting less care.”

The U.S. spends over 14 percent of its national income on health care yet more that 40 million people are without coverage. Another 40 million have inadequate coverage. Insurance and prescriptions costs have escalated geometrically, and unions find it harder to negotiate health benefits. Shutdowns and layoffs threaten millions of workers, including tens of thousands of steelworkers, with loss of their health plans. HMOs often deny care as evidenced by the photos taped to glass jars in convenience stores as families and friends try to raise the money for care.

Single payer advocates are raising healthcare to code red on the nation’s priorities. Dr. Hellander projected that a single payer bill will be introduced into Congress sometime this spring. PNHP has two dozen chapters working on both the national and the state efforts. “The state and national activities are synergistic – each helps to advance the other,” said Dr. Hellander.

In 2000, Maine lawmakers created the Health Security board to generate a proposal for universal single-payer health care. The report and plan are due in March 2002. Last November the Maine People’s Alliance and Consumers for Affordable Health Care beat the wealthy insurance industry 52 percent to 48 percent when voters expressed public approval in a referendum for universal health care in Portland, Maine. The opponents outspent them by 25 to one. Still universal healthcare won. Maine’s single payer bill (LD-1277) passed the state’s House but not its Senate.

Oregon activists have collected over 40,000 of the 67,000 signatures necessary to place their single payer initiative on the ballot for Nov. 5. Health Care for All Oregon plans to collect 80,000 signatures by July. On March 10, the group was successful in winning adoption of a “single-payer health care delivery plan for all of Oregon” as the top priority plank in the state Democratic Party platform.

The Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care has won referenda questions in at least six senatorial districts and seven representative districts. The campaign achieved city council, select board or town meeting endorsements in Brookline, Cambridge, Northampton, Amherst, Leverett, Hawley, Greenfield, Adams, Hancock, Windsor and Lee. The Campaign, a coalition of over 75 organizations, is working to build the grassroots clout to pass the Massachusetts Health Trust Bill.

In Vermont, single payer advocates are preparing for a statewide conference on May 11 to plan their campaign. Last November Vermonters welcomed a study by the Lewin Group that found that the state could save $118 million a year while extending care to everyone under a single payer system.

At a meeting in Bellow Falls to report on the study, Rockingham physician Matthew Peake asked why anyone would oppose universal healthcare with such dramatic cuts in costs. Dr. Deborah Richter, a Cambridge Physician and member of Physicians for a National Health Program, responded: “Did you miss the part of the plan that gets rid of the insurance companies.” She stated that two thirds of the people in the country agree with universal single payer healthcare while the insurance and pharmaceutical companies have a lot of money to work against it. Still she predicted that Vermont would win universal single payer health care within five years.

In Rhode Island, the coalition for Consumer Justice won a legislative grant for an economic feasibility study of Rhode Island’s health care system in mid-2001. The School of Public Health of Boston University will be conducting the study.

Single payer advocates have achieved introduction of the legislation in Missouri, Vermont, California, Massachusetts, and the list is growing. The Des Moines Register, the largest daily newspaper in Iowa, endorsed single-payer national health insurance last January.

“This issue is the same as abolition of slavery and the women’s right to vote. It is not minor,” said Dr. Hellander. “It means a total revamping of the way we look at health care. Corporations see health care as a commodity – a way to make money. People see it as a right.”

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Police repression, racism and class struggle

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:00:00 +0000

Racism has always been the strongest bulwark of class rule in the United States. Racism divides and weakens the working class and provides monopoly capital with super-exploited minorities from whom they can extract extra profits.

Racism makes the bombing of countries whose inhabitants look like U.S. minorities more acceptable to sectors of white public opinion stateside, and so is a bulwark of imperialism and war.

Racism is a powerful tool of the ruling class and a powerful enemy of the working class. We draw from this knowledge the understanding that we must fight racism day and night, with every fiber of our being. We also understand from this that white working people have a special responsibility not to falter in the struggle against racism.

However racism is not an abstract thing; it manifests itself in specific practical forms of social, economic and political activity. The ideology of racism is based on the practice of racism, as well as vice-versa. The practice of anti-racism must also, then, be based on active struggle against specific racist practices. Exhortations “not to be racist” are totally inadequate.

How does racism manifest itself in the United States today? It manifests itself in media and in the symbolism of daily and public life, for example in the insulting stereotypes of Native American people used by sports teams. It manifests itself in discrimination in hiring and on the job in discriminatory practices. It manifests itself in the channeling of African-Americans and other minorities to certain (inferior) housing stock or under-funded schools. It manifests itself in court decisions against affirmative action. It manifests itself in a thousand economic and cultural practices that keep African Americans, Latinos and other minorities in a disadvantageous position.

These forms of institutional racism destroy more lives than the Ku Klux Klan ever did. Yet there are many who deny that these things constitute racism at all. And that denial is itself one of the most dangerous forms of racism, akin to Holocaust denial except much more widespread and found among much “nicer” people.

An extremely important way in which racism manifests itself is in police brutality, racial targeting for repression and other abuses of the criminal justice system, such as:

• The channeling of young, poor and minority people into modes of life that entangle them permanently with the criminal justice system.

• Physical brutality, including police murder – remember Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Rodney King, LaTanya Haggerty and Bobbie Russ.

• Frame ups, including suborning of perjury by witnesses, concealment of exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys, confessions extorted by torture, etc.

• Discrimination in the provision of adequate criminal defense.

• Discrminatroy sentencing, especially for drug-related offenses.

• Denial of rehabilitative possibilities of prisoners and ex-convicts.

• Probable execution of innocent people.

• Life-long discrimination including the denial of the right to hold many jobs and the denial of the right to vote and hold public office in many states.

Remember that 30 percent of African-American men were not able to vote in Florida in the 2000 elections, more than enough to put George W. Bush in the White House. Imagine the impact of a 30 percent disenfranchisement rate on other elections, from state governor to county sheriff, in the Sunshine State and beyond where similar practices abound.

Consider, also, that these abuses of the criminal justice system are denounced every day, all over the country. We write, we speak, we picket, we march against them. Yet they go on and on, decade after decade, with no letup. That means they are a systemic feature of our society, not an aberration. Were it not so, they would have been stopped long ago.

You will then understand that abuses of the criminal justice system are deliberate political acts, not mistakes or unfortunate social problems to be cleared up by philanthropy or social engineering One must conclude that these forms of class and race repression are part of the central strategy of the ruling class. On this basis, it is important that all labor and community activists and working people in general get involved in the struggle against them.

Emile Schepers is a reader in Chicago. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

Texas celebrates Chvez

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:55:00 +0000

FORT WORTH – On the weekend before Easter, Texans celebrated the memory of union organizer César Chávez all over the state. Here, a coalition of labor and community organizations put on a mile-long parade through downtown, then ended with a grand fiesta on the courthouse lawn.

Union people with the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) were part of the initiating group. LCLAA volunteers obtained donations from a local grocery store and provided free hot dogs and tortilla chips. One of the floats in the parade represented the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), which is another labor-related organization. Unionists from the Painters’ union had the biggest contingent with three floats and a walking group. Civil rights activists from three Autoworkers’ locals also participated.

The rally had senoritas on horseback, traditional folk dancing, a brass band and mariachi music. A stream of local political leaders talked about César Chávez and how his life can guide us today. Fort Worth is the County Seat of Tarrant County, where public employees traded their Columbus Day holiday for César Chávez Day two years ago. All Texas state workers may choose César Chávez day as one of their optional annual holidays.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Something must be done to save humanity

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:55:00 +0000

The following is the speech delivered by Dr. Fidel Castro, president of the Republic of Cuba, at the International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Monterrey, Mexico, March 18-22.

Excellencies: Not everyone here will share my thoughts. Still, I will respectfully say what I think.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

The prestige of the international financial institutions rates less than zero.

The world economy is today a huge casino. Recent analyses indicate that for every dollar that goes into trade, over one hundred end up in speculative operations completely disconnected from the real economy.

As a result of this economic order, over 75 percent of the world population lives in underdevelopment, and extreme poverty has already reached 1.2 billion people in the Third World. So, far from narrowing, the gap is widening.

The revenue of the richest nations that in 1960 was 37 times larger than that of the poorest is now 74 times larger. The situation has reached such extremes that the assets of the three wealthiest persons in the world amount to the GDP of the 48 poorest countries combined.

The number of people actually starving was 826 million in the year 2001. There are at the moment 854 million illiterate adults while 325 million children do not attend school. There are 2 billion people who have no access to low-cost medications and 2.4 billion lack the basic sanitation conditions. No less than 11 million children under the age of five perish every year from preventable causes while half a million go blind for lack of vitamin A.

The life span of the population in the developed world is 30 years higher than that of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa. A true genocide!

The poor countries should not be blamed for this tragedy. They neither conquered nor plundered entire continents for centuries; they did not establish colonialism, or re-established slavery, and modern imperialism is not of their making. Actually, they have been its victims. Therefore, the main responsibility for financing their development lies with those states that, for obvious historical reasons, enjoy today the benefits of those atrocities.

The rich world should condone their foreign debt and grant them fresh soft credits to finance their development. The traditional offers of assistance, always scant and often ridiculous, are either inadequate or unfulfilled.

For a true and sustainable economic and social development to take place much more is required than is usually admitted. Measures as those suggested by the late James Tobin to curtail the irrepressible flow of currency speculation – albeit it was not his idea to foster development – would perhaps be the only ones capable of generating enough funds, which in the hands of the U.N. agencies and not of awful institutions like the International Monetary Fund, could supply direct development assistance with a democratic participation of all countries and without the need to sacrifice the independence and sovereignty of the peoples.

The Consensus draft, which the masters of the world are imposing on this conference, intends that we accept humiliating, conditioned and interfering alms.

Everything created since Bretton Woods until today should be reconsidered. A farsighted vision was then missing, thus, the privileges and interests of the most powerful prevailed. In the face of the deep present crisis, a still worse future is offered where the economic, social and ecologic tragedy of an increasingly ungovernable world would never be resolved and where the number of the poor and the starving would grow higher, as if a large part of humanity were doomed.

It is high time for statesmen and politicians to calmly reflect on this. The belief that a social and economic order that has proven to be unsustainable can be forcibly imposed is really senseless.

As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger.

It should definitely be said: “Farewell to arms.” Something must be done to save humanity! A better world is possible!

March will be biggest ever

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:51:00 +0000

ALBUQUERQUE – “This year’s march to commemorate César Chávez will be the biggest ever,” said Coralee Holguin Anderson, the coordinator for the 2002 César Chávez march in Albuquerque, to be held March 30.

“Our mission is to reach youth as to who Chávez was and what he stood for,” she continued.

A special feature of this year’s celebration will be to call the public’s attention to New Mexico state constitutional amendment seven – “To Declare a Legal Holiday for César Chávez’ Birthday.” The amendment is to be voted on in the next general election, Nov. 5, 2002.

Special efforts have been made to popularize this event amongst the city’s high school students and to obtain greater support from the University of New Mexico Mecha club and the University Young Democrats.

Leading off the march will be Daniel Rivera, executive secretary of the N.M. Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO). At the head of the procession will also be Ehatle Dancers of Mexico, followed by contingents representing various community and labor groups such as N.M. Central Labor Council, SWOP, ABQ Anti-Sweatshop Coalition, Mecha and other student groups.

Chávez is best remembered in New Mexico for his efforts to have the short handled hoe outlawed in the fields of California and New Mexico. His tactic of massive non-violent resistance to anti-labor legislations and practices by large farm growers, greatly influenced the struggles of labor and people in this state.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Economics of injustice

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:47:00 +0000

So it is 2:00 a.m. and I can’t sleep, again! And I’m lying in bed thinking to myself about the St. Louis Justice for Janitors Campaign and how this struggle ties into the inner contradictions of capitalism.

I’m thinking about the Contract Cleaners Association (CCA), an association of eight different cleaning companies, and how they have bound themselves together to keep the wages of 3,000 janitors down. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 50 has been negotiating with CCA since November 16, 2001 for a $1 an hour, annual increase. CCA says its final offer is 25 cents an hour, annually.

Here in St. Louis, CCA plays a dominant role in the custodial and janitorial business. They are the price-setters. They have come together to control the market on custodial and janitorial work. Sort of like how OPEC controls the oil market.

The cleaning companies that make up CCA are mutually interdependent also. In capitalist society this means if a member of the association raises janitors’ wages no one else in the association will follow. The other association members will wait and watch. The margin of profit for the one company will decreases as the standard of living of its employees’ increases. There is a dialectical relationship here. And as this margin of profit decreases the remaining association members scurry to appropriate the share of the market it can no longer maintain.

Even if other companies in the association wanted to increase the standard of living of the janitors by granting wage increases, health care benefits and comprehensive pension plans they would be compelled not to. They would face the possibility of losing their share of the market and eventually be run out of the business by the remaining members of the association.

Cleaning companies bid for contracts. The number of contracts they get is their market share. And the lowest contract price gets the bid. Thus the largest market share. The purpose of CCA is to keep the contract minimum artificially low, which means keeping wages artificially low, and to eliminate competitors.

But there is some competition. It makes up an insignificant share of the market though.

Recently SEIU Local 50 announced a “historic” agreement with 10 independent cleaning companies, covering several hundred janitors. These cleaning companies have agreed to wage increases of 70 and 75 cents an hour, annually.

According to Local 50, building owners would need to increase operating expenses by 5 percent to provide all janitors with contract wages and health benefits. The average rental cost for a 100,000 square foot building in St. Louis is $15.92 per square foot. Increased operating expenses translate into 1.6 cents per square foot for building owners.

In the short term, the 10 independent cleaning companies may be willing and able to cover the additional costs, which means a cut in profits.

In the long run though, the opposite is true. The 10 cleaning companies will become more sensitive to the relevant market and increase their share of profits by cutting into the living standards of the janitors, thereby increasing their market share, or CCA will eventually gain back the portion of the market it has lost.

All gains under capitalism are temporary. The contradictions become even more clear in this period of economic crisis. Capitalism is to blame for poverty wages. No system based on greed can provide for the needs of the many. The barbarity is obvious! Socialism is the answer!

Tony Pecinovsky is a frequent contributor to the PWW from St. Louis, Mo. He can be reached at tonpec2000@yahoo.com

Mistreatment of detainees puts all at risk

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:40:00 +0000

The man’s voice sounded desperate as he told his story. Rounded up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he has languished for five months in a New Jersey jail despite the fact that the FBI apparently has cleared him of involvement in the attacks. The last five months have been a living nightmare. “There is no sun,” he says. “My hands hurt from the handcuffs – it’s like living in a cemetery.”

Of the 1,200 people taken into custody following the Sept. 11 tragedy, some 300 are believed to remain in Immigration and Naturalization Service detention. Many of them, like this man in New Jersey and others whom we have interviewed, continue to be held in legal limbo, treated as if they are guilty long after they have been “cleared” by the FBI.

Amnesty International (AI) has the utmost sympathy for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and for the unspeakable pain borne by their families. We also recognize that the U.S. government has an obligation to protect its borders and our lives and to investigate crimes and potential threats to national security. But the government appears to have used its expanded powers to detain non-nationals in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks without the necessary safeguards required under international law.

Recently, AI interviewed seven detainees at the Hudson and Passaic County Jails in New Jersey, where many of those rounded up are being held. Our researchers found that the detainees lacked access to legal counsel and medical care and suffered verbal and physical abuse, including the reported use of dogs to intimidate them. Many were held for well over 48 hours without charge and one for 116 days without knowing what he was charged with. Others have been charged with routine visa violations for which they would not normally be detained.

Rabih Haddad, a Muslim pastor from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was arrested in December for overstaying his visa and denied bail, even though he applied for permanent residency eight months earlier. He wrote to us that he is in a six-by-nine foot cell, allowed one 15-minute call to his family each month, and is given food through a slit in the door – the same slit that is used to handcuff him whenever the door is opened. “Where do we draw the line between justice and oppression,” he asked. “I have been treated like the worst criminal you can imagine.”

Our research findings on the detainees confirm that a significant number of them continue to be deprived of certain basic rights under international law, including the right to protection from arbitrary detention, the right to have access to an attorney, and the presumption of innocence. We have received reports of cruel or inhumane treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement and heavy shackling of detainees during visits with relatives or appearances in court. All this would be unacceptable if it happened to common criminals but, in these cases, the vast majority of detainees are guilty of no serious crime.

This is no way to build a more secure America. It is no way to convince the detainees, their families and their communities that ours is a just cause. It is no way to “win friends and influence people” to support a worldwide struggle that President Bush has said is being carried out to defend the principles of freedom and the rule of law.

Violating human rights standards ourselves compromises our ability to hold other governments accountable for their own abuses. And that makes for a more dangerous world for all of us.

Dr. William F. Schulz is executive director of Amnesty International USA.

Thousands march to commemorate Chvez

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:35:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO – Thousands of Bay Area workers, social activists and their families marched through the streets of San Francisco to the city’s Civic Center March 24 to mark the 75th birthday of César Chávez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and the first union leader and Mexican American to have a statewide holiday named after him.

The festive march and rally of more than 10,000 participants featured many contingents from organized labor, student and community groups. The event also commemorated the 40th anniversary of the founding of the UFW, and a large contingent of UFW members marched behind their union banner.

UFW President Arturo Rodriguez spoke of continuing the legacy of César Chávez, for farm workers who are still struggling in the fields. Rodriguez specially urged festival participants to support the Pictsweet mushroom workers by building the boycott against Pictsweet and calling on Pizza Hut to join the boycott. He also emphasized the need for Congress to pass laws to make legalization easier for undocumented immigrants, saying farm workers deserve to work without being intimidated and fearful for their safety.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democratic Party Whip of the House of Representatives, hailed as an important first step in this struggle is the House vote extending Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which allows many undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. while they apply for permanent residency. She joined San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in calling for a national holiday honoring César Chávez.

Grand Marshals of the Parade and Festival were Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Chávez of the UFW, Richard Chávez, brother of César and also a founding member of UFW, and Pelosi.

Others who spoke praising the role of César Chávez in leading the farm workers to dignity and decent wages and benefits included California Labor Federation (CLF) Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski, CLF Executive Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus John F. Henning, San Francisco Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Walter Johnson, S.F. Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano and Evelina Alarcon, state coordinator of the successful campaign to have Chávez’ birthday declared a state holiday.

As people lined up to sign petitions and to volunteer, Alarcon, now national coordinator of the campaign for a national holiday honoring César Chávez, expressed confidence that the holiday will be won with grassroots mobilization. “We’re not going to give up until we win,” she declared.

Musical entertainment at the Festival was provided by several groups including Los Diamantes del Norte, La Paz, Viva Mexico and Charlie Zamora y Su Grupo de Banda. Poems were read by the César E. Chávez Project.

Marxism and the movement of women

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:28:00 +0000

Marx was very harsh in his criticism of bourgeois morality and society on the question of women. Marx and Engels elaborated a theory of the oppression of women, which is still debated today. Marxism argues that, fundamentally, the oppression of women rests with the emergence of private property in human societies and not with biological differences between women and men. How so?

Marxism argues that women were enslaved to satisfy the needs of private property relations. By private property, Marxists are referring to the individual ownership of those things that are utilized in the production of the economic way of life of a particular society.

At one time, the major means to produce the economic way of life of society were not owned by individuals. Land, for example, was not the private property of individuals but the domain of the group as a whole.

The emergence of private property was the basis on which class divisions in society evolved and signaled the enslavement of the female gender.

Women of propertied classes were enslaved to the reproduction of the heirs to private property. Ideologically, the notion of the inferiority of women became infused in the culture influencing the lifestyle and ways of property-owning and non-property-owning classes. Women of non-property- owning classes were enslaved to the precarious process of trying to eke out a means of subsistence, as were men, and child bearing and rearing. Under capitalism, particularly in our country, the precariousness of the lives of the masses of women can be readily observed. Women are by and large of the working class and are by and large low-wage workers or unemployed. Our capitalist society takes on little responsibility for the welfare of human beings be they women, men or children. In our society, all women suffer gender oppression, but working-class women are also exploited and women of color suffer national amd racial oppression as well.

Hence, the potential of women to engage in struggle, which I will refer to as the movement of women, is much broader and deeper that the traditional women’s movement, as grand as the traditional women’s movement is and has been. The potential of women to engage in struggle around a range of multifaceted issues in their own interest and in the interest of their families is vast.

It is the responsibility of the working class, the communist movement in particular, to win women to the side of socialism and to the side of the working class as the only real solution to the exploitation and oppression women face.

Socialism will not automatically solve the problems of women, as history reveals. Socialism allows for the creation of conditions conducive to continuing to consciously struggle to solve the inequality and oppression of women, the nationally and racially oppressed, and the working class.

Conscious forces must get the point: we can not claim to be scientific yet backward on the question of women or race and nationality.

Male supremacy has many purposes: the main one being extra profits and the domination and control of women. We cannot claim to be steadfastly opposed to bourgeois ideology yet embrace and promote male supremacy in any form. We cannot claim the goal of freeing the working class without working to win to the side of the working class all of the forces who seek freedom as well. To begin the process of freeing humanity from exploitation and oppression is the task of socialism. Socialism can not be allowed to fail women. It will not work; it cannot be done; it will not last!

Dee Myles is the chair of the Communist Party’s Education Commission.

China 2002: Building socialism with Chinese characteristics

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:23:00 +0000

Earlier this month, a Communist Party USA delegation – National Chairman Sam Webb, Vice Chairman Scott Marshall, African American Equality Commission Chairwoman Debbie Bell and International Secretary Marilyn Bechtel – visited China for a week on invitation of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The group was the first official party delegation since long-time National Chairman Gus Hall visited China with a delegation in 1988.

In studying China today, it is important to recall where the great-great grandparents of today’s Chinese people were a century and a half ago. Together with many Chinese visitors, we viewed that story in well-designed museums in each city we visited – Beijing and the southeastern cities of Shanghai, Suzhou and Jiaxing.

The story begins with the starved, miserable, disease-ridden existence of most Chinese in the mid-19th century, as a corrupt and crumbling empire gave way before European colonial powers who would “oversee” China’s economy, steal its riches and distort its social development. The saga continues through the many sharp struggles that led to the 1949 revolution and the enormous effort that continues today, to bring a vast, impoverished developing country into the modern world and to begin the building of socialism.

In even an exceptionally well-planned whirlwind tour, following an itinerary we requested because it let us glimpse the fast-developing southeastern area that is open to foreign investment – we could only scratch the surface. We came away realizing that before any firm conclusions can be drawn, much further study is needed of the way in which the Communist Party of China is leading the building of the New China in the world’s largest socialist country; Of how party, government and people are working to solve the very difficult, long-term problems of rural-urban and regional economic disparities, massive reorganization of major industries and participation in a capitalist-dominated global economy. Many questions remain, and time and further experiences will tell if the policies now being pursued in a very thoughtful manner will succeed.

The CPC believes that China is in the primary stages of building socialism. When the Communist Party won state power in 1949, China had been ravaged by civil war and invasion. The early years after 1949 were marked both by periods of substantial economic and social progress, and by costly mistakes. During the “cultural revolution,” from 1966-1976, continuous political upheavals dealt a grievous setback to economic and social development.

The policies of reform and opening to the outside world that underlie China’s development today began in 1978, with the renewed leadership role of Deng Xiaoping. In practice, this means a thorough restructuring of the state owned sector aimed at bringing these industries up to world standards, and a planned opening of the economy to domestic and foreign private investment.

The CPC maintains that public ownership must remain primary. In 1997, for example, over 75 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) came from the state-owned sector. Here, the future trend will be important.

In the cities we visited, construction, both commercial and residential, is booming. Architecture is attractive – often elegant – and strikingly varied. This construction boom could serve as a metaphor for the energy and enthusiasm that is apparent among people on the street as well as among the Communist Party, academic, enterprise and government leaders with whom we met.

Among the issues on our minds was the effect of opening China’s economy to transnational capital, and in particular China’s newly acquired membership in the World Trade Organization. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping asserted that opening up to private domestic and foreign capital was necessary to jump-start a developing economy. He emphasized that communism does not mean shared poverty, and stated that developing certain areas and industries was necessary to speed the development of the socialist economy as a whole.

We explored the issue at the Development Research Center of the State Council – the government’s top policy think tank. Director Wang Menkui emphasized the necessity for China to enter the global market in depth by trying to increase the power of developing countries and to influence policy in the World Trade Organization.

China faces major challenges because the WTO is controlled by the United States and other developed countries, but Wang and others we talked with believe that China will gain vital economic experience and information from WTO participation.

China is now much more directly affected by the global economy, Wang said. The world economic slowdown has negatively affected China’s exports, though last year China’s growth rate remained above 7 percent while worldwide economic growth stagnated at around 1.6 percent. Chinese agriculture, improvement of which is high on the priority list, will be sharply challenged, especially by U.S. agribusiness.

The impact of foreign investment was most visible in Shanghai, which was opened to international capital in the 1980s. A stroll through a brightly – even gaudily – neon pedestrian mall revealed a profusion of storefronts beckoning the strolling throngs with foreign as well as Chinese goods – electronics, clothing, furniture, appliances, consumer goods of all sorts. Had we wished a change from the Chinese haute cuisine we were served at every meal, we could have found McDonald’s, KFC, Starbucks, Burger King and more.

Another facet of foreign invest-

ment is exemplified by the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) – the newest and most competitive of China’s more than 40 such parks. The city of Suzhou used to be a tourist magnet. Now, industrialized, its GDP is seventh in the country.

The park itself is the only joint venture project between the Chinese government and a foreign government – Singapore. The object is to gain the up-to-date technology, commercial and management experience of Singapore with its booming economic development, while giving the foreign investors an avenue to the vast Chinese market.

We inquired about the level of unionization at SIP – the All China Trade Union Federation had said its goal is to organize all the workers in the private sector as well as the state-owned enterprises. We were informed that over 20 unions function at the industrial park, and more than 75 percent of workers are organized. Under government agreements, joint venture companies must not place any obstacles in the way of workers who want to unionize.

Our hosts seemed sure that developing a mixed economy and encouraging foreign investment is not only necessary for the economy of a vast developing country in the early stages of building socialism, but offers benefits that far outweigh the risks. Naive? Perhaps – but having state power gives them added confidence in their ability to keep the public sector dominant.

The other prong of the economic development approach is the rigorous reorganization of the state-owned enterprises, or SOEs. Though there are many small- and medium-sized SOEs, the industrial heavyweights tend to be in this sector. The one we visited, the giant Bao Steel, appears to be doing a booming business in structural and other forms of steel.

Over the country as a whole, restructuring the SOEs is in full swing, and is resulting in significant unemployment. The official figure is given as 3.6 percent, and it is stated that 90 percent of these receive some level of subsistence allowance.

But the size of the migrant population there – 3 million temporary residents beyond the city’s 13 million population, bespeaks a larger problem. Our hosts asserted – we felt accurately – that these serious problems will take considerable time to surmount, but that the restructuring of inefficient SOEs is urgent for China’s future economic progress.

Related long-term problems are the differences in economic development between rural and urban areas, and between western and eastern China. Though agriculture accounts for only 20 percent of today’s GDP, 60 percent of the population lives in rural areas. With little arable land and low productivity, it is necessary to encourage people to move to the city, at the same time agricultural productivity is improved and small and medium industries are encouraged in rural areas. The population movement puts further pressure on the cities.

At the same time, the Chinese take great pride in the reduction of the number of people living below the poverty line by about 10 percent per year. They say the number of rural poor has decreased from 250 million in 1978 to about 30 million today. However, they express great concern that urban per capita incomes rose by 8.5 percent last year, but rural incomes only by 4.2 percent.

Our visit took place at the same time the National People’s Congress – the national legislature – was meeting in Beijing. We noted that a wide range of issues received media coverage. Discussion there was for the most part very open about problems as well as successes. One such issue is corruption, which the Chinese are dealing with as a major issue for immediate correction.

Another is the need for greater environmental protection – brought home to us by the constant pall of smog in the cities. China is waking up – a little late – to the fact that environmental prevention is vastly better than cure.

A third is housing, a national priority in the current five-year plan. In addition to the new high rise housing springing up everywhere, our hosts showed us tightly packed, shabby older housing still often found even in Beijing and Shanghai.

Our hosts were eager for our views on many questions including our estimates of the future direction of U.S. society. This provided an opportunity to convey our sense of urgency about the Bush administration’s adventurous ambitions at home and abroad.

Our Chinese hosts emphasized that they seek normal, stable state-to-state relations with the United States. At the time of our visit – just before the revelation that China is a Pentagon nuclear target – the biggest problem they cited was Taiwan. They insist the island must be recognized as part of China, albeit under a “one state, two systems” policy of accepting Taiwan’s capitalist economy, as has been done in the case of Hong Kong, and they are very concerned about U.S. intervention that could necessitate a sharp Chinese response. Particular ire was aroused by Washington’s invitation to Taiwan’s head of state to participate in a U.S. arms seminar earlier this month.

Our Chinese hosts welcomed us with great warmth and prepared the itinerary with much care, scheduling meetings with a member of the CPC’s Political Bureau, the Minister of the CPC International Department and the head of the government’s principal policy think tank, as well as visits to a variety of enterprises, the trade union federation, and historical/cultural sites. We found our hosts willing to discuss both successes and potholes in China’s developmental path.

Many questions and concerns about China’s future development remain open, needing both much further study, and further time to ascertain. A short visit did not allow assessment of the level of popular participation in the grassroots organizations of the party and government.

But we came away with a new respect for the thoughtfulness, thoroughness, energy and optimism with which the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people are going about the complex, long-term process of building socialism in a vast developing country, which is of necessity part of an increasingly globalized economy.

Marilyn Bechtel can be reached at cpusainternat@mindspring.com;

Debbie Bell can be reached at Damisbell@aol.com

State-sanctioned killing is American dilemma

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:15:00 +0000

Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America’s Future, by the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., and Bruce Shapiro. New York: The New Press, 2001.

“Lock ‘em up and throw away the key.” Though many Americans have come to accept this as a viable alternative to the death penalty, others remain undecided. It is for those “who have supported the death penalty in years past but now find themselves troubled by the record number of executions and the revelations of death-row frame-ups” that the Reverend Jesse Jackson and his son, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), have written this book.

Last year Rep. Jackson introduced the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2001 (HR-1038), which calls for a moratorium on federal executions and the establishment of a commission to study the application of the federal death penalty. The act calls on states to consider similar moratoriums.

Legal Lynching’s short history opens in New York State, where execution entered the modern era in 1890 with the introduction of the electric chair. It traces the death penalty since the ancient Greece. Americans are not a cruel people, the authors contend, yet the United States is the only industrialized nation utilizing a punishment the rest of the world has long rejected as barbaric.

Though there is no evidence that capital punishment is a deterrent there is much to indicate gross miscarriage of justice in the charging of capital murder; in conviction; and in the execution of those so convicted. “The death penalty is imposed not for the worst crime but for the worst lawyer – and the outcome is usually a matter of economics.”

Death row prisoners had been able to count on federally funded death penalty resource centers for help in their appeals. In 1996, however, Congress ended funding effectively leaving prisoners without representation and without resources for investigation. One can only conclude that executions are often carried out simply for the crime of being poor.

Many death row residents have proven their innocence and been released – some within days or hours of their executions. This raises the distinctly uncomfortable question of the number of innocents who may have been executed for want of proper representation.

The legacy of slavery permeates the criminal justice system. A disproportionate number of members of minority groups are accused, tried, convicted and executed. This is true both in state and federal courts. “Between 1789 and 1967, the federal government executed 336 men and four women. Of those a staggering 61 percent were minorities. ... If you count only the federal executions since 1900, precisely the same margin holds: 61 percent of all federal killings ... were members of minority groups.”

While “[w]ho is sentenced to life in prison and who receives the ultimate punishment is supposed to follow from objective factors,” the authors write, “[t]he reality is that the death penalty is essentially an arbitrary punishment, a product not of blind justice, but of geography and ethnicity.”

The authors conclude that the death penalty serves “[n]ot vindication, surely, just simple and brutal vengeance, with no other social or moral purpose [whereas] .... the entire purpose of criminal law is to step between the victimizer and the victim, to substitute balanced justice for individual vengeance.” “Closure” for crime victims is theoretically brought about when the individual convicted of the murder of their loved ones is executed. The daughter of one victim disagrees: “‘I have never met anyone who healed better because of an execution.’ ... Execution, [she] is convinced, represents nothing but ‘false closure’”

The dilemma presented by the death penalty is perhaps clearest when considering the positions taken by religious organizations. Those opposed argue the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” while those in favor argue the lex talionis, “ an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The Bible provides arguments to either side as well as to the many gradations between. Unfortunately the authors do not also consider other religious texts such as the Koran, which contains equally contradictory assertions.

Finally the authors ask if the death penalty is not a deterrent, does not provide closure, is not the mandate of God, then what does it accomplish?

They also point out that it costs a great deal of money: “The Death Penalty Institute Information Center estimates that each executed prisoner costs more than $1.3 million from trial to killing, compared with $18,000 a year for incarcerating a non-death row [prisoner].”

The book’s final chapter looks to tomorrow: though the authors argue for a moratorium their real aim is the abolition of the death penalty. Nevertheless, the book is not intended for death penalty supporters but for those undecided and for death penalty opponents. Though the Jacksons’ opposition to the dealth penalty appears to be founded on the Fifth Commandment, there are many more arguments here to arm those willing to undertake the struggle to end the death penalty.

An Afterword contains the text of HR-038 and a list of national organizations that provide information and resources to those who wish to become involved.

– Julia Lutsky

Langston Hughes: Working-class voice for equality, peace and socialism

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:11:00 +0000

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is justifiably known as the Poet Laureate of the African-American people. He consciously carried on the unfinished equality struggles bequeathed by African-American history and of his own day. Not a poem, story or libretto by him did not speak out against racial oppression and give voice to aspirations of first-class citizenship in all walks of life. Always with him the equality cause was linked with the cause of the multi-racial working class as a whole and oppressed people and people of color world wide.

Outstanding is the working-class content of this life and writings of Langston Hughes. He grew up in a struggling working class family in Jim Crow USA. From his first job, in 7th grade as a cleaner in a hotel, until about age thirty, when he was able to do writing full-time, he worked at many jobs. At the same time he always wrote, invoking the life and culture of the African American people.

Even after his momentous decision to do writing full-time, he was a working journalist from the 1930s to the 1960s. From the 1940s to the 1960s he regularly wrote a column for The Chicago Defender. This column consisted of imaginary conversations with Jesse B. Simple, a Black worker in Harlem. It made clear that while his writing was inspired by and addressed to the African American people as a whole and the working class as a whole, his main focus was on left-leaning Black workers.

In one conversation Simple says, “Is it red to want to earn wages? Is it red to want to keep your job? And not to want to take no stuff off bosses?”

From an early age Langston Hughes identified with working-class internationalism and to the role of workers in basic social change.

In 1917 when the Russian working class came to power and withdrew their country from World War I, Langston Hughes and his fellow students at Central High School in Cleveland held a celebration for the Revolution and its leader V.I. Lenin.

Of the Soviet Union, which he visited in the 1930s, he wrote, “The daily papers picture the Bolsheviks as the greatest devils on earth, but I couldn’t see how they could be so bad if they had done away with race hatred and landlords – two evils that I knew first hand.”

He made clear his admiration for Communists. For instance, he wrote about Mother Ella Reeve Bloor, a leader of the Communist Party USA and a women’s rights leader. “She battled the capitalists tooth and nail for seventy years.”

He himself was involved in the defense of the Scottsboro youths in the early 1930s, which was led by the International Labor Defense and the Communist Party. His poem “Scottsboro” is a monument to the worldwide movement that saved the lives of these nine innocent Black youths from the death penalty.

The profoundity and courage of Langston Hughes shines through with his opposition to imperialist war. In his poem on World War I, “The Colored Soldier,” he says the war was supposed to be for democracy, but returning African American soldiers were greeted with lynchings. In “Give Us Our Peace” he shows that military buildup was at the expense of schools and decent housing.

He supported the Spanish Republic (1936-1939) against the fascist overthrow by Franco and his generals and the armies of Hitler and Mussolini. Support for the Spanish Republic was an important part of Hughes’ credo of opposition to war and fascism.

In Spain, Hughes was a correspondent for the African American press. His “beat” was the interracial Abraham Lincoln Brigade that put their lives on the line to fight fascism in Spain. Hughes himself put his life on the line, as he went to the front with the Brigade as battles raged.

The defeat of the Spanish Republic meant combating fascism in World War II. Hughes showed deep understanding of the issues and outcome of the war, as it was being fought. Hughes linked the struggle against fascism with the struggle against racism. In the poem “How About it, Dixie,” he wrote:

Freedom’s not just To be won Over There. It means Freedom at home, too – Now – right here!

In the postwar period there were both advances in democratic rights and vicious racist, anticommunist attempts to halt these advances. The bigots targeted Hughes.

Langston gave the bigots his answer to their threats by speaking out and writing more. He also gave his answer in a statement, “Concerning Red Baiting”(1963) in which he said “The organizations which have attacked me are, for the most part, the most anti-Negro, anti-Jewish, anti-labor groups in our country.”

His poetry of the 1960s gave invaluable support to the resistance and equality struggles of the African American people in the South and in the North. He combined support with vistas of ultimate victory. For example in “Birmingham Sunday” (September 15, 1965) he wrote:

Four little girls Might be awakened some day soon By songs upon the breeze As yet unfelt among the magnolia trees

Langston Hughes sought basic solutions to oppression. For example in “Dinner: Guest: Me” he wrote about being invited to a dinner engagement at which well-heeled hosts discussed the “Negro problem.” His response in this poem was:

To be a Problem on Park Avenue at Eight Is not so bad. Solutions to the Problem Of course wait.

Years ago he had already pointed to socialism as the basic solution to the nightmare of capitalism. He now restated this understanding in a conversation with the entire working class, indicating their power, because of their position in production to bring about a basic transition. In “If You Would” he wrote:

You could stop the factory whistle blowing, Stop the mine machinery from going, Stop the atom bombs exploding, Stop the battleships from loading, Stop the merchant ships from sailing, Stop the jail house keys from turning ...You could If you would

Langston Hughes is of our time. His linking of his writing with the struggles against racism, working-class exploitation, poetry, war and capitalism is of first rate importance today as Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft assault innocents abroad and the democratic rights of the American people – in the name of war on terrorism. His writing will continue to be deeply inspiring in the struggle through the achievement of socialism in our land. Through it all, the life and writing of Langston Hughes are unbending in their inclusiveness. In one of his last poems, “Dream of Freedom” he wrote:

This dream today embattled With its back against the wall – To save the dream for one It must be saved for all – Our Dream of freedom.

The author can be reached at fishman@aft.workfam.com. This is part of a larger article on Hughes’ life.

Philly students:Stop greed! Im not for sale

Fri, 29 Mar 2002 08:08:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA – As angry students, parents and community activists chanted “Stop corporate greed” and “I am not for sale,” the School Reform Commission (SRC) voted unanimously March 26 to hire the school privatizer, Edison Schools Inc. as its lead consultant to manage Philadelphia schools.

The Philadelphia fight back against privatization and the undemocratic processes of the state of Pennsylvania started back in August 2001 when former Gov. Tom Ridge hired Edison Schools Inc. to do an assessment of the Philadelphia schools at a cost of $2.7 million. Two coalitions, Philadelphians United to Support Public Schools and the Coalition to Keep Our Schools Public, have led the opposition with protest marches and rallies, educational forums, petition drives in the neighborhoods, sit-ins, sleepovers and lawsuits in the courts. Members of the Philadelphia Student Union have played a leadership role.

The City Council passed a law requiring that a 75 percent majority of parents at a school would have to approve any privatization before it could be implemented. Mayor Street refused to sign it. He said it was not enforceable because Act 46, the state take-over law, supercedes it.

On April 1 a lawsuit, which shows the state take-over to be illegal, will come before a federal judge. The SRC has agreed not to sign any contracts with consultants until after this hearing.

Slowly the people of Philadelphia are beginning to understand that their school system is being dismantled without their consent and a few companies will profit greatly.

Edison, a for profit school management corporation, will provide an 18-month plan for a new CEO to be hired by September. Edison will design plans for recruitment and retention of teachers and principals, staff development and assessment and classroom management and behavior. Eleven other companies will be hired to do food service, procurement and other jobs. All will report to the SRC and no contract will extend more than two years. Edison had wanted all operations reported to them rather than the SRC.

Gov. Schweiker had repeatedly said that he wanted Edison Schools Inc. to run the Philadelphia Schools’ central administration office as well as 60-100 low-performing schools.

Mayor Street had strongly opposed Edison taking over the central administration office and Schweiker seemingly compromised. But on Mar. 22 the SRC announced that it would be cutting 325 administrative positions to save the district $25 million. The former CEO had cut 197 administrative positions last fall. It seems that Edison may be able to slip in the backdoor.

Because of a $200 million deficit, the school district was subject to state take-over under Act 46. The district was also deemed “Distressed” by Act 16. Both laws give the state the power to run the Philadelphia schools in the manner it sees fit. After the SRC vote to approve the privatization scheme, Gov. Schweiker announced his satisfaction and promised to end the State’s withholding of financial aid to the City’s beleaguered school system. He vowed to ask the state legislature to approve $75 million in state funding, much of it to flow into Edison coffers.

The five-person SRC took over on Dec. 21, 2001 with three commissioners appointed by Gov. Schweiker and two appointed by Mayor Street. James Nevels, an African-American Republican and investment firm CEO, was appointed chairman. Schweiker and Street agreed on a reform plan back in Dec. However, no one has ever seen the plan nor is there a written copy of the plan, belying Schweiker’s claim that the state takeover is a “partnership” with the city.

The SRC has held 8 public meetings. Parents and organizations have testified at those meetings and have asked questions but no answers were forthcoming. The SRC has not asked for input from parents, community, students or educators who are the stakeholders in the system.

The SRC has approved a number of Educational Management Organizations (EMOs) that may be hired to manage some low performing schools. Edison Schools Inc. is one of them. Philadelphians will have to wait until April 17 to find out which schools have been auctioned off to which EMOs.

The author can be reached at phillyrose1@earthlink.net