People Before Profit blog

1916 2005 Lalo Guerrero, trovador chicano presente!

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 12:55:00 +0000

“Without tortillas there would be no burritos, Without the corn ones there would be no Fritos.”

So crooned Eduardo “Lalo” Guerrero to the tune of “O Sole Mio” (at the same time Elvis Presley used it for “It’s Now or Never”), reflecting the daily Chicano life of mexicano culture meeting gringo corporate realities. Known by all as Lalo, the Chicano trovador (troubadour) extraordinaire sang, composed and played mariachi, swing, bolero, boogie, mambo, cha-cha, rock and norteño music, often in poignant yet comic parodies, from the time of the Great Depression until he passed away March 17 in the Palm Springs suburb of California’s Coachella Valley.

Guerrero was born Christmas Eve 1916 in the poorest barrio that housed the families of workers in the copper mines, rail yards, foundries and fields around Tucson, Ariz. His father was a boilermaker for the Southern Pacific railroad. One of 24 siblings, he was taught guitar and song by his mother and he worked at it all of his life.

Growing up in the borderlands, Guerrero became adept at crossing over culturally, but not so much commercially, outside the barrios. He played the circuit of cafes, bars, dance halls and clubs along the rail lines and migrant farmworker routes, adapting his unique repertoire to the changing musical tastes of both sides of the border, decade after decade. In some ways he was a latter-day Chicano Woody Guthrie and an organic musicologist, an early Taj Mahal or Dave Van Ronk who specialized in barrio blues.In 1937 he wrote and composed “Cancion Mexicana,” which hit the top of Mexican mariachi charts. Between gigs in 1941 he worked on B-24 bombers for Consolidated Aircraft. In 1949, ever the Chicano, he wrote and composed “Los Chucos Suaves” (the cool guys), which was featured in Luis Valdez’s play and movie “Zoot Suit,” about a notorious 1942 racist attack by servicemen on Mexican American youth wearing the distinctive baggy clothing. The song was written in caló, the “Spanglish” street slang of the zoot-suited pachucos. It celebrated the popularity of the mambo over swing, boogie and jitterbug at the time. In 1955, Guerrero’s parody of Davy Crockett, Pancho Lopez (“The King of Olvera Street”) was so popular on both sides of the border that Walt Disney did not sue — instead he signed Guerrero to record the hit, earning the singer enough royalties to open a nightclub in East Los Angeles.

In 1966, Guerrero wrote and composed “El Corrido de Delano,” chronicling the emergent United Farm Workers union and its young leader, Cesar Chávez. In 1968, as the Chicano movement exploded, and one of the student walkout demands was for Mexican food in the cafeteria, came the song “There’s No Tortillas.” In the 1970s Guerrero’s “El Chicano” projected demands for worker and immigrant rights and bilingual education. In the ’80s came “There’s No Chicanos on TV” and “Mexican Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Busboys.” In the ’90s he recorded “Papa’s Dream” with the popular Chicano rock group Los Lobos. (In the 1940s Guerrero’s swing, boogie and mambo band was known as Lalo Guerrero and his Cinco Lobos.)

Though not a professional philosopher or politician his obra (work) reflected upon the realities of mano de obra barata (cheap labor), or discrimination, exploitation and the collective community culture and struggle to overcome. He played catchy tunes, but his lyrics are etched in the minds of generations of Chicanos.

For example:

“Jobs ain’t easy to find and they’re harder to hold especially if you’ve just crossed the border looking for gold,” or “I think that I shall never see any Chicanos on TV There are Chicanos in real life, doctors, lawyers, husbands and wives But all they show us on TV is ‘illegal aliens’ as they flee.”

Lalo Guerrero’s genius came from his close contact with the people; it broadened and deepened with the movimiento chicano/a. Perhaps his most classic work came in 1990 with the nostalgic ballad “Barrio Viejo,” recalling in old age his childhood days in the Tucson barrio that, bit by bit, has been bulldozed away. It ends with Lalo asking to be buried in the soil of that barrio so they could both be “difuntos rodeados de mil recuerdos” (defunct ones surrounded by a thousand memories). Three of his songs will soon be released on “Chavez Ravine,” a CD by guitarist Ry Cooder.

In 1996 he received the President’s Medal of the Arts from Bill Clinton. In 1980 the Smithsonian Institute named him a National Folk Treasure.

Lalo the performer touched millions of lives personally. My mother and her siblings and friends were contemporaries of Lalo in the Tucson colonias and barrios. At a family reunion memorializing my mother, two days after Lalo’s death, stories were told of how my uncle, Rodolfo Urias, had Lalo accompany him to serenade his soon-to-be wife, Artemisia. Mom’s lifelong friend Alva Ruiz recalled how she interviewed Lalo in the 1930s as likely the first Chicana Spanish-language radio DJ in Tucson. My cousin Ricardo spoke of how his grandfather, Quiroz, sang in a mexicano band with Lalo. My sister-in-law Rosemary said her dad, Ernesto Durazo, and buddies palled around with Lalo in the ’30s as well.

Indeed, Papa Lalo was — and is — presente!

rosalio_munoz @ sbcglobal.net

Calif. govs ballot measures rev up opposition

Fri, 11 Mar 2005 06:02:00 +0000

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s road trip last week to gather signatures on three pet ballot measures has raised the likelihood of a special election later this year featuring a series of anti-people initiatives. Labor and community organizations are springing into action in response.

On March 8 a new labor coalition named “Seriously, Saving California” announced it will “fund and fight a vigorous campaign against the governor’s special interest-sponsored ballot initiatives that would harm California’s workers and families, and will push alternative measures to protect California’s health care, education and public safety systems.” Besides the California Labor Federation and the Service Employees International Union, the nearly 2-million-strong coalition includes school administrators, teachers and education workers, nurses, firefighters, corrections officers and other public service workers.

The new coalition’s statement quoted California Professional Firefighters President Lou Paulson: “The governor’s priorities today are completely out of step with what’s important to working families in California.” Paulson urged that funds needed to put on a special election should be used instead for vital public services.

Also this week, California for Democracy said it will use modern communications to flag places where signatures are being gathered on the governor’s initiatives, so volunteers can distribute leaflets urging people not to sign, and opposing the special election and its estimated cost of $50 million to $70 million. California for Democracy is affiliated with the national organization Democracy for America.

Other public workers’ unions are also up in arms. Willie Pelote, political and legislative director for AFSCME California, said in a telephone interview that Schwarzenegger has “joined the very special interests he said he came to Sacramento to clean up.” Pelote called it “irresponsible, un-American, un-Californian” to privatize pensions of state workers, including firefighters and police officers who may be killed or disabled in the line of duty, and to thereby jeopardize the economic security of their families. Spending millions of dollars on a special election is not the way to solve a problem, he said.

Backing Schwarzenegger is Citizens to Save California, headed by top advocates for big business, including state Chamber of Commerce head Allan Zaremberg and Business Roundtable President William Houck. This committee has already sponsored Schwarzenegger campaign appearances and assembled a large crew of paid signature gatherers.

Last week, chiding the California Legislature for failing to act by his March 1 deadline, Schwarzenegger jumped into a military-style Humvee convertible bearing the legend “Reform 1” and rumbled down the road on another of his “made for TV” publicity stunts — this time to gather signatures on three ballot initiatives. At stops including in the Bay Area, he was greeted by loud protests from unionists and other opponents.

Schwarzenegger’s initiatives would force all new state employees, including teachers, to take 401(k)-style defined-contribution plans instead of the present defined-benefit plans, extend to five years the time required for public school teachers to get tenure, and turn redistricting over to retired judges instead of the Legislature.

At least 600,000 valid signatures must be collected by the end of April for an initiative to qualify for a special election in November.

Meanwhile, the governor has suffered some setbacks. On March 4, a Superior Court judge ruled that the state must implement a 1-to-5 nurse-to-patient ratio called for in 1999 legislation, overruling Schwarzenegger’s objections.

Last month public pressure forced the governor to back away from merging many state boards and commissions that oversee workers’ rights, health care standards and other professional standards and licensing.

mbechtel@pww.org

Honor voting rights martyrs with deeds

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 07:25:00 +0000

Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. The names of the three civil rights martyrs still ring like a bell four decades after they disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi, June 21, 1964. Their deaths, together with the violence inflicted on civil rights marchers in Selma, Ala., played a huge role in galvanizing the fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Their deaths also inspired the battle by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be seated at the national Democratic Party Convention in the summer of 1964.

James Earl Chaney was a native of Meridian, Miss. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled from New York City to join in the Freedom Summer project helping African Americans register to vote. All were in their twenties.

Their mutilated bodies were found in an earthen dam months later. The gruesome multiple murder of the three young martyrs is dramatized in the 1988 film, “Mississippi Burning.”

In 1967, 18 Klansmen were indicted for violating the civil rights of the three. Seven Klansmen were convicted and given slap-on-the-wrist sentences of three to 10 years. Eight were acquitted.

The trial of Edgar Ray Killen, sawmill operator and Baptist preacher, ended in a hung jury in 1967. One of the 12 jurors said she would “never vote to convict a preacher.”

Killen was arrested again this past January, the first Klansman to face murder charges for the triple murder. The attorney general of Mississippi reopened the case after a Mississippi newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger, published excerpts of a secret interview with Sam Bowers. Bowers, former Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the KKK, is now serving a life sentence for the 1966 murder of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer Sr. Bowers identified Killen as the mastermind in the killing of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

Killen’s trial is scheduled for April 18.

Many martyrs for civil rights

Many died in the struggle to end racist segregation, among them four young girls in the Klan’s 1963 bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit homemaker, was murdered in Alabama during the Selma voting rights struggle. Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers was shot in the back outside his home in Meridian. And Dahmer Sr. died in the firebombing of his home in Hattiesburg, Miss.

Yet the brutal slaying of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner galvanized the struggle for justice in a special way, proving that the struggle to end racist segregation involved people of all races and religions. The Klan would target anyone, white or Black, Christian or Jewish, who attempted to register African Americans to vote. The three became heroes for a younger generation of civil rights workers, Black and white, in the South as well as the North.

Chaney’s brother remembers

Ben Chaney was 11 years old when his brother died. “I remember him as a pretty cool brother,” Chaney told the World in a telephone interview from his New York law office. “He took me to the barbershop for hair cuts. He bought me my first Little League football uniform. He was a prankster. But he was also a very quiet and serious person who people listened to with respect.”

James Chaney “would be very disappointed by conditions in Mississippi today,” his brother said. “In many parts of the state, including Neshoba County where he died, time has stood still. Look at Jackson. It has a Black mayor and a growing Black middle class. But at the same time, the level of poverty has grown. Even though the appearances have changed, the power itself has not changed.”

Many white Republican politicians in Mississippi, including Gov. Haley Barbour, are members of the so-called Conservative Citizens Council, a sanitized version of the racist White Citizens Council. A shadowy, secretive outfit, it gained some notoriety when Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was exposed as having delivered a white supremacist speech to a CCC convention.

Barbour tries to face-lift Mississippi, giving hypocritical lip service to a “new” Mississippi where racist violence is best forgotten. By contrast, Ben Chaney is determined to preserve the memory of his brother’s sacrifice by carrying on the struggle for voting rights. These rights were threatened by the voter suppression tactics of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Ben Chaney has set up the James Earl Chaney Foundation (http://jecf.org), a nonpartisan organization to conduct voter registration campaigns and defend voting rights.

Voting rights in 2005

“I have received so many e-mails from voters in Florida and Ohio complaining that there were not enough voting machines and they had to wait hours in line to cast their ballots last November,” Chaney told the World. “There’s no excuse for having so few machines in Black polling places when plenty of machines are provided in white Republican precincts. They should have taken care of that early on. It adds up to a violation of voting rights.

“We’re so concerned about validating the right to vote in places all around the world but what about the denial of voting rights here at home? Those in power have created a mechanism to insure that they stay in power, that power does not change hands. We must fight for an amendment to insure a paper printout from these voting machines so the accuracy of the vote can be insured.”

Ben Chaney pointed out that “identity theft” of people’s credit card, Social Security, and driver’s license numbers is rampant and has received widespread media coverage. “If they can steal my identity, they can also steal my vote,” he said.

The Chaney Foundation organized a “Freedom Summer 2004 for Justice” bus trip that began in New York City and looped through the South, including Mississippi, registering thousands of mostly young first-time voters. “The response was just great,” he said. “We took young adults to parts of the South and let them do exactly what my

brother James, Andrew and Michael were doing in 1964 — going out and registering people to vote, talking to them about the importance of registering to vote and getting to the voting place on Election Day. A majority of the young people we reached told us that no one had ever talked to them about the importance of voting.”

Enthusiasm ran so high that already they are planning another “Freedom Summer 2005 for Justice” next summer. It will begin as Freedom Summer 1964 began, with a training session at the University of Ohio in Miami, Ohio. Participants will learn about the history of the civil rights movement and the battle for the Voting Rights Act. “We will focus on those parts of the Voting Rights Act that are up for renewal in 2007,” Chaney said. They will travel to Cincinnati to register people to vote. Then they will head for the Mississippi delta, visiting the sites of past struggles and continuing the effort to register people to vote.

“The best and most fulfilling way to honor the memory of my brother and Goodman and Schwerner is in action,” Chaney added. “This is hands on, going into poor Black communities, building coalitions with local groups. It makes me feel that the future is in good hands because of the energy and commitment of these young people.”

"I knew my son didn’t die in vain"

Soon after Andrew Goodman died, Robert and Carolyn Goodman established the Andrew Goodman Foundation (http://hometown.aol.com/andrewgoodmanfdn/) in memory of their son. Andrew is described on the foundation’s web site as a gifted clarinetist, an actor in off-Broadway productions and a teacher of theater arts to underprivileged children in New York City. From his early youth, he was an activist in the peace and civil rights movements.

Robert Goodman died several years ago but Carolyn Goodman, now 89, carries on the foundation’s work. The foundation has produced a video titled, “Hidden Heroes: Youth Activism Today,” to promote the activism for equality and peace that Andrew gave his life to.

“It’s important to get the word out that people are being firm, not breaking down or giving in to this man [Killen],” Carolyn Goodman said. “I was in Mississippi myself. Everyone I spoke to told me that the Klan is still alive and many people are victims of the Klan. I think it is a problem all over the country, not just in the South.”

Goodman cited strong evidence that Neshoba County law enforcement officers were involved in the triple murder. She said, “They released [the three young men] from jail that night knowing they were targeted for murder.”

Goodman is not surprised that it took so long to bring the killers to justice. “I knew it would take time to work it through,” she said. “But you sow seeds and they sprout and grow. I knew my son did not die in vain. Now it is happening. So many people now are saying to themselves, ‘We’re not going to give in to those who would destroy democracy.’ There are too many good people in this world who want peace and justice. They will not be denied.

“We have to stand up for the right to vote. It doesn’t matter what color you are,” Goodman said. “That’s what my son was killed for, fighting for the right of African Americans to vote. I’m 89 and I’m still standing up to defend that right.”

“Bush will only be around for four years. There have been people like him throughout our history. It hurts to have people in power like (Attorney General Alberto) Gonzales and Bush. I don’t think of Bush as being the top man. He’s a puppet controlled by others who are pulling the strings.”

She added, “We lost a great man just recently, Ossie Davis. He was out there on the front lines. Ossie Davis should have been president. I’m looking at a picture on the wall of my office, of a tall Black man, Paul Robeson. He was a friend of mine. He lived with us in our house for a while. He was a wonderful, great human being. He didn’t die.

He lives on in our hearts and minds. He was a hero. What do heroes do? They stand for peace and justice. They say, ‘I can take it!’ and they lead people. They continue leading even after they die.”

By their example, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, are leading people today, four decades after they died.

(See related story below.)

* * * *

Thousands expected for Selma bridge crossing jubilee

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) was beaten nearly to death by Alabama troopers when he and hundreds of other voting rights protesters marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965.

Lewis was then a field organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the brutality spurred Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act five months later. He will return Sunday, March 5, to lead a re-enactment of that bridge crossing, the seventh time he has led the annual “Bridge Crossing Jubilee.”

This time he will be joined by a host of celebrities at least 40 members of the U.S. Congress, including leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties, the largest contingent of lawmakers ever. Instead of clubbing the marchers, the police will provide a polite escort.

But voting rights activists charge that voter suppression and denial of voting rights is still rampant although it takes subtler forms, such as ChoicePoint Corp. purging voter lists at the request of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act lapse in 2007. Already the voting rights movement is mobilizing pressure on Congress to extend those measures. They include:

• The section requiring three states, Texas, New Mexico and California, to provide bilingual ballots and bilingual voting instruction materials.

• The section requiring the Justice Department to provide election monitors in states with a history of voter disenfranchisement.

• The section requiring states with that kind of history to prove that changes in their election procedures will not negatively impact Black, Latino, or other minority voters. (Enforcement of this section is badly needed in Texas, where House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has rammed through redistricting to grab five more House seats for the Republicans. Black and Latino voters were the big losers in this scam.)

The movement is also pressing demands for changes in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) enacted after the stolen 2000 election. One proposal would require a “verifiable paper trail” for all electronic voting machines, to curb the theft of votes. Another proposal would make Election Day a national holiday.

There are growing demands that the vote be restored to ex-felons, disproportionately African American. Others are calling for abolition of the Electoral College and the direct election of the president. Also under discussion are reforms that would end the “winner take all” system in favor of proportional representation in which seats in legislatures are apportioned on the basis of the share of votes received by a given party.

— Tim Wheeler

Americans force Bush to regroup on Social Security

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 06:06:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH — “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That’s the message that hundreds of thousands of seniors, students, clergy and union members have sent to Republicans, who have been out on the stump to sell the privatization of Social Security.

As the smoke cleared and Bush administration officials circled their wagons, schemes surfaced to cobble together a compromise — some way for Bush to save face. The best spin Republicans could put on the situation is that the American people have a healthy “skepticism” regarding the proposal to replace Social Security with private accounts invested in the stock market.

Unions have adopted the slogan, “Not one inch” in their efforts to save Social Security from Wall Street, whose crash in 1929 spawned the social insurance program in the first place. Already, the New Mexico and Nevada legislatures have enacted resolutions rejecting Bush privatization efforts. (See National Clips, page 4.)

“Scrapping the cap” on Social Security is a common thread running through retirees’ proposals to adjust the fund to meet the needs of the 66 million baby boomers soon to leave the workforce. Currently Social Security taxes (FICA) are capped at $90,000. Once a worker reaches the $90,000 threshold, the 6.2 percent tax ends, as it does for the employer, who also pays 6.2 percent.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), eliminating the cap would virtually guarantee Social Security’s solvency for the next 75 years, without raising the rate of FICA taxes.

The EPI said any privatization scheme or hybrid, such as one where only 4 percent of Social Security revenue would be diverted to private accounts, would have a devastating effect on state economies. The national average, according to the EPA, is 16 percent of the U.S. population depends on Social Security for their income. The scheme to salvage some form of privatization would hit some of the country’s poorest states the hardest, including Mississippi and Kentucky, where a quarter of the population receives disability benefits.

As the debate swirls, only the Bush administration appears to insist on privatization, in some amount or form, as a pre-condition. For Democrats and a few Republicans, taking revenue out of the system and giving it to Wall Street speculators is a deal-breaker.

Currently, there are three workers for every one retiree. By the time the baby boomers hit Social Security age, the ratio falls to 2-to-1, according to AARP figures.

The former commissioner for Social Security, Kenneth Apfel, warned against believing doomsday claims about a crisis in Social Security, especially because today’s workers are more productive, earn higher wages and could stay in the workforce longer. “It isn’t going to be Armageddon,” he said.

dwinebr696@aol.com **(see related story below)

* * * * * *

Calif. legislators come out swinging

CASTRO VALLEY, Calif. — An overflow crowd jammed the Public Library here Feb. 26 to hear Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) call Social Security the country’s “most effective anti-poverty program,” and to emphasize that the system is solvent and will continue to be so long into the future.

Lee drew resounding applause as she called President Bush’s proposed privatization “a risky scheme” aimed at making more profits for money managers and Wall Street.

Scott Frey of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare called Bush’s plan “appalling.” He warned that under it, both those who opted for private accounts and those who did not will face huge losses of benefits. Frey emphasized that people of all ages receive Social Security benefits, with nearly 40 percent of recipients being surviving spouses and children and the disabled.

The Castro Valley gathering was one of over 100 such meetings around the country last week, to galvanize opposition to Bush’s scheme.

In San Francisco, Feb. 23, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) called Bush’s plan a costly “diversionary tactic” and a blatant effort to “divide the generations.”

Saying that Bush has wrongly claimed Social Security is in crisis, Pelosi said that in private meetings, the president had acknowledged that no crisis exists.

Earlier last month, California Sen. Barbara Boxer warned seniors, “If you’re 55 and older, you can’t count on a thing. Don’t breathe a sigh of relief. Don’t pull the covers over your head.”

— Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel@pww.org)

GOP slime machine targets AARP

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 05:49:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Defenders of Social Security angrily demanded that President George W. Bush disavow a right-wing attack ad that targets the AARP, the nation’s largest organization for people 50 and older, for its opposition to Bush’s plans to privatize Social Security.

The ad, sponsored by the far-right front group USA Next, features a photo of a soldier with thick yellow lines crossing him out. Beside it is another photo of two men in tuxedos kissing. The caption reads, “The real AARP agenda.”

Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) accused Bush and his White House minions of instigating the attack on the AARP. In a blistering letter to the president, Corzine wrote, “Deploying mercenaries to smear opponents of your plan is beneath the dignity of the American people and not an honorable tactic.”

His letter continued, “The motive for USA Next’s irresponsible use of such hot button issues is not difficult to decipher: If you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger, no matter how dishonest and off-base those attacks become.”

Corzine demanded that Bush “without delay or ambiguity … repudiate the tactics employed by USA Next” and “restore civility and honor to the ongoing Social Security dialogue.”

Patti Reilly, communications director of the AFL-CIO-affiliated Alliance of Retired Americans, said, “These ads have no place in a truthful Social Security debate. The producers are just hired guns engaged in despicable scare tactics.”

USA Next calls its campaign, “Stop Scaring Seniors.” In 1992, the group, then called United Seniors of America, sent out a deceitful mailer headlined, “All the Social Security Trust Fund Money is Gone.”

Ever since, the group has used fear mongering to promote turning Social Security over to Wall Street profiteers. “They accuse us of spreading fear but they use those tactics, not us,” Reilly said. “It is Bush and those who want to demolish and privatize Social Security who use those scare words. They try to convince people there is a crisis when there is no crisis. The system is not going bankrupt. Bush was asked to condemn USA Next’s scare tactics and he did not.”

More than 50,000 people have signed an online petition initiated by Democracy for America demanding that the media refuse to air the USA Next ads. “I demand that you keep hate speech and false claims off the air,” the petition reads. DFA Communications Director Noreeen Nielson told the World the outpouring has been so widespread and angry that USA Next was forced to pull an ad originally scheduled for $10 million worth of airing across the nation.

David Smith, Human Rights Campaign vice president for policy, called the USA Next ads “nothing short of vile.” They are “just appealing to the most base anti-gay prejudices and trying to exploit prejudices for political gain,” he said.

The ads are seen as a maneuver to shore up Bush’s floundering crusade to privatize Social Security. A recent USA Today poll showed that 56 percent oppose the scheme. Support fell after Bush traveled to eight states to drum up enthusiasm. Every participant at his staged rallies was screened to insure that only Bush supporters were admitted.

During the recent congressional recess, lawmakers, both Republican and Democrat, ran into a wall of opposition during town hall meetings in their home states.

AARP, which claims 38 million members, began airing television and full-page newspaper ads three weeks before Bush’s inaugural, debunking his claims that Social Security is in crisis and should be privatized.

The USA Next attack ads were produced by the same right-wing public relations crew that turned out the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ads that slandered John Kerry in last year’s presidential election. Kerry, a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, was depicted as a coward and a war criminal in those ads.

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich), ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee and the Democrats’ leader in the fight against privatization, said, “The president can’t simply look the other way as supporters of his Social Security privatization plans … launch a character assassination campaign against the AARP. He must condemn these efforts immediately.”

AARP media spokesperson Steve Hahn told the World, “We are advocates of Social Security based on the issues, not the distractions. We have not taken positions on gay marriage or the troops. But it has been known for a long time now that [USA Next] gets its funding from the pharmaceuticals. It’s widely known that Social Security is fully funded until 2042. They are using erroneous information to divert attention from the real issues. They do have the ability to raise lots of money from their corporate donors.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com