People Before Profit blog

Sacramentans rally for gardens

Fri, 31 May 2002 05:52:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Nearly 400 demonstrators heard Julia “Butterfly” Hill declare, “The Ron Mandella Community Garden is the giant redwood of Sacramento,” at a rally here late last month to save the garden from developers and to build support for affordable housing in the city.

Julia Hill, famous as the “butterfly” who lived more than two years in the top of a 1,000-year-old redwood tree in a successful campaign to save it from Pacific Lumber Company chainsaws, told the audience, “Take off your shoes and feel the earth beneath your feet.” Many did, walking amid the lush garden greenery with toes wiggling and faces smiling.

As Glayol Sahba, M.D., a member of the Mandella Garden Board of Directors, pointed out, the struggle to save the garden has become part of the fight to save low-income housing in downtown Sacramento. While rents have increased 11 percent in the last year, Sacramento central city has 272 fewer affordable apartments than 15 years ago.

Mandella garden supporters are asking the City Council to accept the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association’s offer to build low-income housing on the parking lot next to the garden, leaving the garden in its present state.

Meanwhile, the state agency responsible for the property plans to sell it to a developer from Portland, Ore., who intends to build 118 units for people with incomes of at least $68,000 a year. And so it goes in Sacramento, and elsewhere – profits before people.

Some say Sacramentans should plant many more community gardens. If we are known as the city of a million trees, why not the city of a hundred gardens? Many cities now consider these gardens a necessity. New Orleans boasts 150 community gardens funded through a non-profit community garden foundation. Philadelphia has more than 500 gardens. New York City has 700 community gardens maintained by 22,000 regular gardeners. Just outside Cleveland is a one-half acre garden tended by people with minor driving and alcohol related violations. Instead of a weekend in jail, the offenders see their efforts provide food for the local Salvation Army food kitchen.

Many advocates say that, along with affordable housing, community gardens are vital to assure the quality of life for millions in our country’s cities.

The author can be reached at ncalview@igc.org

Cheap theater tickets

Fri, 31 May 2002 05:50:00 +0000

The prices of Broadway theatre tickets are well beyond working-class people’s financial capabilities. However, the Theatre Development Fund (TDF) makes it possible to see Broadway and off-Broadway shows for reduced ticket prices, usually ranging from $10 to $20.

The normal price for tickets to Broadway shows ranges from $60 to $100 for dramatic plays and at least 25 percent more for musicals. Off-Broadway productions are divided into two ranges. Some of the off-Broadway productions price their tickets between $40 and $80. The other range is for companies that charge around $30 per production.

These levels of production, called “letter of agreements” scale productions, are union productions. Actors and stage workers are represented mostly by Actors’ Equity.

Some off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows are produced on a special Actors’ Equity level called a “showcase production” where actors and stage personal are paid mostly expenses.

Equity negotiates these below-scale agreements so that the hundreds of actors who are unemployed – remember, actors are unemployed 80 percent of the time – have an opportunity to act.

A yearly fee of $10 makes it possible to access TDF’s web site (www.tdf.org) and also receive period offerings through the mail. Almost all Broadway and off-Broadway shows find their way into a TDF offering at some time during their performances.

For example, Tony nominee, Elephant Man, starring Billy Crudup, is available for $17.50. Crudup was the rock star in the movie, Almost Famous.

The success of this season’s theatre productions was due to some extent to special ticket pricing policies and the TDF program.

These reduced ticket prices make it possible to support this valuable cultural part of New York City.

Building Middle East peace with justice

Fri, 31 May 2002 05:45:00 +0000

Calling the crisis in the West Bank and Gaza “an enormous human tragedy that cannot be solved by war,” journalist and Communist Party Vice Chair Judith Le Blanc last week told northern California audiences that it is urgent for Americans to act now for peace and justice in the Middle East. She said Palestinians and Israelis told her that while half the responsibility to resolve the crisis is theirs, the other half is in the hands of the American people.

Le Blanc, who spent two weeks in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel with a delegation from Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), was joined at a public meeting in Oakland by Hanan Rasheed, national executive secretary of the Palestinian American Congress, and Rebecca Vilkomerson, an activist with Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

All three emphasized the role of ordinary people in spreading understanding of the depth of the devastation and crisis the Sharon government’s attacks have wrought in Palestine, and in asserting democratic control over U.S. foreign policy to serve the needs of the great majority of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians.

“It is a crisis that is all-sided, and requires a political solution, including international intervention,” Le Blanc said. Discussions must start from the fact that despite the ultra-right’s powerful efforts, major polls show that a majority in Palestine, Israel and the U.S. – even among backers of the Sharon government’s actions – supports a two-state solution, she added.

“It isn’t enough to build a movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people alone,” Le Blanc said, “because U.S. foreign policy is an issue of democracy.” She called for bringing the solidarity movements, including the movement in support of the Colombian people and others, together to affect the 2002 elections.

Le Blanc cited Peace Action’s call to freeze all U.S. military aid and arms sales or transfers to Israel until the Sharon government commits not to use the funds for military occupation in the Palestinian territories. “Waging such a fight is to bring up the age-old issue of whether our government should fund guns or butter,” she said.

Rasheed called on media in the U.S. and Israel to be “pro-truth, not pro-Palestine or pro-Israel. “If the people of the U.S. and Israel know exactly what the Israeli military is doing to the Palestinians, they will not support the Israeli government,” she emphasized.

“When we send billions in arms, a three-year-old child in Palestine knows what kinds of weapons these are and who sent them,” she said. “At what price do we support Israel? We need to take responsibility as Americans because I believe everything gets decided in Washington, not Tel Aviv. We can press the representatives we elected not to send money that we need here for our elderly, our homeless, for jobs, to fight AIDS and hunger and cancer, to take care of our schools and all the other problems we have.”

“We’re at the moment in time where the movement needs to be built across all kinds of boundaries,” said Vilkomerson. Citing JVP’s campaign to end military aid to Israel, she compared the present Middle East crisis to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the struggles for democracy in Central America. “We certainly have a responsibility in terms of the aid that has gone with our tax dollars, and bringing it back to how much is being spent on military aid that could be used on domestic issues,” she said.

The author can be contacted at ncalview@igc.org

Reports cite U.S. health failures

Fri, 31 May 2002 05:38:00 +0000

A recent USAToday Gallup public opinion poll showed that President Bush’s main weaknesses are in the area of social policy, with his attitude toward health care in general and abortion high on the list. The polls also show broad support for a strengthened Medicare program with a strong prescription drug benefit.

These demands and the failure of the U.S. system to deliver decent health care are also becoming the focus of a number of national institutions able to exert a strong influence on the health care policy debate. This year’s congressional races are an opportunity to make some changes in the composition of both House and Senate and make these demands heard.

One of the most vocal critics of present policy is Dr. Arnold S. Relman, Professor Emeritus at Harvard and former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, who told the U.S. Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology that our present system is “expensive, inefficient and inequitable.”

An important aspect of Relman’s testimony is that he points to the quest for profits as the reason for this failure. “I am now at work on a book that surveys the present unhappy condition of the U.S. health care system, with particular attention to the role of private enterprise,” he told the senators, adding: “The U.S. may be a world leader in medical science and technology, and its major medical centers may provide some of the best and most sophisticated care available, but taken as a whole, our health care system is failing and will need major reform very soon.”

Relman said the U.S. had “tried private for-profit markets, first in hospitals, in ambulatory care facilities and services, and in nursing homes, and then more recently, in the ownership of insurance plans and the experiment has failed.”

Nor was Relman a lone voice crying in the wilderness. A recent study by the prestigious Commonwealth Fund based on a review of 150 studies and reports, found a “lack of preventive care, medical mistakes, substandard care for chronic conditions, disparities in care” and other major problems in the U.S. health system.

In another study, the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine (IOM), found an obvious, but important, fact: “Being uninsured can be bad for your health,” the academy said.

“If you lack health insurance coverage you’re going to have a poor health status, greater chance of dying early and your quality of life is not going to be as good because of poor health care,” said Mary Sue Coleman, co-chair of the IOM committee that produced the report.

The report also found that people who have even a relatively short interruption in coverage tend to have a decline in their health.

This last fact is particularly important as the rolls of unemployed rise. Many, if not most, of the newly unemployed cannot afford the price – ranging from $600 per month and up – of continuing the health care benefits they are entitled to.

The only solution to this crisis is rejecting the for-profit ideology that Dr. Relman has documented as the culprit. The first step is to call for support of Universal Health Care Access Legislation, such as the concurrent resolution introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), and by making health care a priority in the upcoming election.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Phillip Hellesto: worker and anti-imperialist American

Fri, 31 May 2002 05:29:00 +0000

Phillip Hellesto’s wife wanted everyone to know that her husband was an anti-imperialist and a patriot. She wanted to “dispel the notion that radicals cannot be patriots.”

Hellesto was a merchant seaman who was killed on the job working on a U.S. Navy ship, March 31. Phillip’s widow, Sandra Fancher Garcia, was speaking at his memorial service held here in Bellingham, Wash., April 28, Worker’s Memorial Day.

Looking out behind her, out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal, the sky was a soft blue and clouds slowly drifted by. Choppy waves covered the bay, dotted by small boats, sailboats, kayaks and canoes, and birds. Off in the distance, the enigmatic shapes of the San Juan Islands on the horizon completed the backdrop to the stories of this man who loved the sea, loved his family – his wife, four-year-old daughter and his two sons, entering into adulthood – who loved his shipmates and all of humanity.

Hellesto, who was assistant to the chief engineer, and another shipmate responded to a fire in an engine room. They donned their fire gear and went in to rescue the three men trapped inside, including the chief engineer. Their heroics saved those they sought to rescue, but took their own lives. They were found later, inside the engine room, overcome by smoke inhalation.

This man who gave his life to save his shipmates, who died serving on a U.S. Navy ship, believed the United States government was imperialist and that government needed to be held accountable, Fancher Garcia said. In fact, Sandra and Phillip met through CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador). During the early ’90s they hosted El Salvadorans running from the terror of the El Salvadoran regime, a regime supported by the U.S. government. But when he was called up to serve on the navy ship, Fancher Garcia said, “he said it wouldn’t be right to not go when called after living on the government’s ‘dime’ for three years.”

Representing Phillip’s MEBA union local in Seattle, John McCurty said Hellesto was “a stand-up guy, a delegate to the King County Labor Council who was always there to help new members.”

“He was a man who loved the sea and his family. He loved to be near nature’s elements, which he loved and respected,” McCurty said. “He strove for unions ... actively fighting for his shipmates, for all union members and others fighting for justice.”

John Anderson, MEBA representative from San Francisco, remembered Hellesto, saying, “he had a fire and he was a warrior on many fronts.”

Phillip’s step-mom, Barb, remembered him in his youth, “As a teenager, the Hardy Boys ate alone, Phillip ate with Lenin, Trotsky and Marx ... I remember he drew Fidel [Castro] on the teen room wall of the church.”

A friend spoke and said that, “to Phillip, it was no contradiction to be a communist and join the navy after high school graduation.”

When he went to sea, Barb said, he sent letters “filled with comments on life’s ironies and [his] own frailties. [Phillip] used his talents to turn inequities into studies for justice.”

Phillip’s life was documented in a multi-media presentation produced by a brother-in-law. His love for family and friends depicted in photos, the many images of him on picket-lines and in demonstrations, and the accompaniment of Billy Bragg’s version of “The Internationale,” among other music from classical to rock to R&B, provided a moving testament to everything that was being said about him.

The depth of Hellesto’s impact on those around him was also expressed by the many people who attended his memorial, from all facets of his life, present and past. A high school friend, who had not been in regular contact with Phil for many years, sent an e-mail reflecting on the life-long lessons he learned from him. They had grown up in a conservative community, he wrote, and Phillip showed him how to question the mores of society, lessons which continue to serve him well. Hellesto especially won his respect, he wrote, because “he recognized racism and treated me as a human being.”

Another friend said that Phillip never forgot him throughout the years. “I’d receive an e-mail from him, I had value to him as a friend. He taught me how to fight – not with fists, but with heart and brains.”

Through the tributes and stories of Phillip Hellesto, a man of action emerges. A man whose social consciousness led him to picketlines for farmworkers, to demonstrations for peace in Central America and the Gulf War, who actively fought for the rights of his shipmates on the job. The world Hellesto stood for was a world of justice and peace. He was an anti-imperialist. He was a radical. And no one can deny he was indeed a patriot.

Chris Lindberg is a contributor and activist from Bellingham, Wash.

Retirement, pensions and all that

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:58:00 +0000

The stock market grew by 248 percent between 1989 and 1998, accompanied by a skyrocketing increase in the number of households with 401(k) pension accounts. Together, they made possible the promise of a secure retirement. Or at least that’s what we’re told.

But here, as is always the case when we talk about retirement wealth and pensions there is a yawning gap between fact and fiction.

Edward N. Wolff, a New York University economist, is not impressed by the increase in the number of those who have staked their future on a 401(k) account. “I think the 401(k) is a real scam,” he told The New York Times recently. “People get their monthly statements and they say, ‘Wow, look at how much money is in my 401(k),’ and they don’t see what has disappeared.”

That “what” is that by focusing on the balance of their 401(k)s people fail to realize that company-paid pension plans with their “defined” benefit would have made for a more secure future than can be achieved by saving for retirement on one’s own.

According to Wolff, the number of “breadwinners” in households with annual incomes of between $35,000 and $75,000 – 35 percent of the total – with defined benefit pension plans declined from nearly 70 percent in 1983 to a little more than 40 percent in 1998. He says that families in this income bracket saw their wealth – the combined value of their homes, personal savings, stocks and bonds – decline by more than 13 percent during those years.

While it is true that the “magic of compound interest” may have worked for some people, the numbers tell a different story: According to the Labor Department, the average balance in a 401(k) account is too meager to pay for more than two or three years of retirement. Other data show that the average 401(k) account lost $5,000 last year.

The swing from company-guaranteed pensions to 401(k)-style plans has relieved employers of billions of dollars in pension obligations. US workers now put more money into employer-sponsored pensions and retirement savings than the companies themselves and, more to the point, 401(k)s sent $2 trillion in employee pension funds into the stock market in recent years. Worse yet, as witness Enron, more and more companies are making their contributions in the form of company stock, proof if proof is needed, that when workers cast their lot with capital, capital usually wins.

Other statistics are equally disturbing:

• Only about 43 percent of today’s senior households have any private pension.

• Fewer than one-third of workers in companies with less than 100 employees participate in an employer-based retirement plan.

• Fewer than one-fifth of low-income workers have pensions while part-time workers have even less access to these plans.

• The share of households with private pensions equal to half or more of their pre-retirement income declined for 42.5 percent to 30 percent between 1989 and 1998.

Nor is there any light at the end of the tunnel. According to Labor Department projections, 18 of the 30 occupations that will grow the fastest between 2000 and 2010 will provide annual incomes of less than $27,000. If we assume that a worker employed in one of these jobs and his/her employer will each have contributed 3 percent of earnings to a 401(k) account for 40 years – an optimistic assumption – a worker in those occupations will only have accumulated enough savings to provide for less than a quarter of pre-retirement income.

So what to do in a situation where 40 percent of senior women, African Americans and Latinos have incomes below 150 percent of poverty and where seniors in the bottom income quintile get nearly twice as much of their income from public assistance agencies than from private pensions?

The Communist Party has a solution: Increase all categories of benefits – old age, survivors and disabled persons – paid under the Social Security Act by an average of 50 percent, with the increase apportioned in such a manner that no beneficiary has an income of less than 150 percent of poverty. Had this proposal been in effect in 2001, the minimum benefit would have been $1,100 instead of a little over $700.

For those who ask where the money will come from, we answer simply, “From them that’s got it.” And believe me, there’s plenty there – all we need to do is figure out how to get it!

The author can be reached at fgab708@aol.com

Kaiser workers win back pay in NLRB ruling

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:53:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH – In a case involving the longest illegal lockout in U.S. labor history, a federal administrative law judge has ordered the operating subsidiary of Kaiser Aluminum Corporation to “make whole” 3,000 steelworkers for any loss of earnings and other benefits during the company’s illegal 20-month lockout in 1999-2000, the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) announced here May 15.

While the final amount would be reduced by interim earnings during the period of the lockout, the ruling by National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge Michael Stevenson would be the largest backpay award in the history of the NLRB – an estimated liability that “could likely total over $100 million,” according to a notice filed by the NLRB in federal Bankruptcy Court.

“By wielding the hammer of the lockout,” Judge Stevenson wrote in his 65-page decision, Kaiser “unlawfully `insisted’ that the Union accept a contract,” containing an illegal “blank-check” wage proposal and “malevolent” language that would have unlawfully changed the scope of the bargaining unit – actions that “constituted illegal coercion of the Union.”

“We’re absolutely thrilled to be one step closer to justice in this struggle, which has gone on far too long and caused needless misery to thousands of working families,” said USWA President Leo W. Gerard. “But the greatest tragedy is that this didn’t have to happen.”

“Kaiser’s ‘Rambo’ bargaining strategy – take no prisoners, obey no laws – was a mistake from Day One,” Gerard added. “If the company is really serious about restructuring and returning to profitability, it’s time for management to start obeying the law and work with us to build a stronger Kaiser Aluminum.”

Stevenson’s decision follows an exhaustive trial that began November 13, 2000, and concluded September 14, 2001.

“Throughout this long struggle, Kaiser Steelworkers earned a place of great distinction in the history of America’s labor movement,” said David Foster, Director of USWA District 11 and chair of the USWA/Kaiser Negotiating Committee. “Their solidarity and determination overcame the largest illegal lockout in U.S. history, forged landmark alliances with the environmental movement and spearheaded the labor protests against the WTO [World Trade Organization] in Seattle.”

Kaiser’s illegal 20-month lockout, which began January 14, 1999, is only part of a larger pattern of lawbreaking by the company, including persistent air quality violations, serious violations of workplace health and safety standards and impeding a federal investigation of the July 1999 explosion that substantially leveled its Gramercy, La., alumina refinery.

Israeli student condemns occupation

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:48:00 +0000

Haggai Matar, an 18-year-old Israeli high school senior, first strikes the eye as a quiet, studious, and modest young man. He may be all of that, but when he speaks, he speaks with conviction and power, and his message packs a wallop: Matar, along with 62 other Israeli Jewish teens, have publicly stated that they will refuse to serve the Israeli government’s “aggressive and racist policy” against the Palestinian people.

“We strongly resist Israel’s pounding of human rights,” reads their statement. “Land expropriation, arrests, executions without a trial, house demolition, closure, torture, and the prevention of health care are only some of the crimes the state of Israel carries out, in blunt violation of international conventions it has ratified.”

“We will obey our conscience and refuse to take part in acts of oppression against the Palestinian people,” the statement continues, “acts that should properly be called terrorist actions. We call upon persons our age, conscripts, soldiers in the standing army, and reserve service soldiers to do the same.”

Their statement has caused an uproar in Israel. Several of these young refusers have already been jailed, and Matar matter-of-factly states that “I myself will probably be sent to prison in July.” Interestingly enough, since the statement was published last August and, despite the Sharon government’s crackdown, the number of signers to the “Seniors Statement” has more than doubled.

Matar was among the initiators of the statement, and his message to a crowded banquet hall was this: keep up pressure on the U.S. government to end its support of Israel’s war against the Palestinian people. World pressure is critical, he said, and especially from the U.S.

Matar’s talk was peppered with numerous anecdotes. As part of a newly-formed Arab-Jewish Partnership, Ta’ayush, Matar has participated in several food convoys to besieged Palestinian villages in the West Bank. Such convoys have been subjected to constant harassment and punitive measures by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He also related several incidents of extreme brutality and viciousness on the part of IDF personnel against Palestinian Arabs that he has personally witnessed, both in the occupied territories and within Israel itself.

Matar’s appearance here, which included speaking engagements at five high schools in the Chicago area and a number of interviews with the media, was part of a multi-city tour organized by the “Courage to Refuse” project initiated by a Jewish peace group, Not In My Name. The project involves the cooperation of groups like Yesh Gvul (“There is a limit”) and New Profile, a woman’s organization.

Other resisters will be touring the U.S. this Spring in Minneapolis, Madison, San Francisco, New York and again in Chicago. For more information on these speaking engagements, visit the Courage to Refuse web site at www.couragetorefuse.org.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

NAACP announces action against racial disparity

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:45:00 +0000

ATLANTA – The NAACP announced May 16 a major directive against states where racial disparity still exists in public school systems. This marks the first wave of direct actions to achieve equity in education as outlined last fall by the “NAACP Call for Action in Education.” The Call for Action aims to reduce racial disparity in the nation’s public schools by 50 percent over the next five years.

“Twenty-eight governors have pledged to join the NAACP and our partners in the efforts to reduce racial disparity and close the achievement gap. However, 22 states failed to respond by the May 10 deadline,” said NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume. “The NAACP will file Title VI complaints with the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department against those states that did not submit an equity in education plan.”

The complaints will be first filed against the states of Florida, Louisiana and Ohio. “The basis of the complaints is the continued existence in these three states of clear and consistent racial disparities in testing, graduation rates, suspensions, placement in special education and the lack of access to gifted and talented programs,” said NAACP Education Director John Jackson.

The NAACP will begin work immediately to ensure that smaller class sizes are implemented in every county in Florida. Numerous studies have outlined the benefits of smaller classes, yet the state of Florida’s data shows disparities in class sizes in every county. The NAACP is spearheading a campaign to collect the more than 400,000 signatures required in Floridaa to place this issue on statewide referendum on the November 2002 ballot.

As part of this long-term, sustained initiative, the organization will take the lead in pursuing legislative action and ballot initiatives thoughout the nation.

Refuseniks speak to full house

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:42:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Every pew in Westminster Presbyterian Church was full when two Israeli reserve soldiers, who have proclaimed their refusal to serve in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, spoke here May 22.

Earlier in the week, threats had forced the cancellation of their participation in a debate at the Congregation B’nai Israel synagogue.

Twenty-five-year-old Ishai Sagi, who was drafted at 18, said that he had believed that the occupation was necessary to protect Israeli people in Israel, but found that the army was actually abusing Palestinians in order to protect Israeli settlers outside the borders of Israel.

“We were given a standing order to open fire at every Palestinian who picked up a stone to throw at a car, even a six-year old,” he said. However, the settlers who regularly stoned Palestinian cars could only be touched by the police, who were a good 50 minutes away, he said.

Sagi had followed orders to raid Palestinian village homes in the middle of the night, man military checkpoints, and stand guard at the Army Civilian Administration, where Palestinians must go to get permits to travel or work.

There he had seen an officer draw a loaded weapon on a man who had spoken to another person in the waiting line.

“When we order the father of a family to drop his pants in public so that we can search him at a checkpoint, we are teaching his kids to hate Israel. My deepest nightmare is that the same kid I stood guard over in 1995 is a suicide bomber today,” Sagi said.

Last year, Sagi, called up as a reserve officer, asked to serve instead at the Egyptian or Syrian border. When he refused the order to serve in the occupied territory, he spent 24 days in military prison.

Ram Rahat-Goodman, 45, is a long-time member of Yesh Gvul (“there is a limit”), an Israeli peace organization that gives support to the “refuseniks.” Rahat-Goodman refused in 1982 to go to the Occupied Territories. “I believed then, as now, that we have an obligation to defend our country, but not to use the army as a tool of oppression,” he said.

The Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985 followed the refusal of 2,500 reservists to fight in that country, he told the audience. “We did it then, we can do it again.”

So far, he said, out of 1,000 “refusenik” soldiers, 110 have gone to jail, 70 in the last two months. About one-third of the “refuseniks” are officers. “If there were 500, they could force the end of the occupation,” Rahat-Goodman said.

Most Israelis know that things are being done that should not be done, he said. The recent Israeli peace demonstration of 100,000 people called for ending the occupation now, not for more negotiations. “I do believe things will get worse before they get better, but I believe we will eventually get there,” he said.

Asked about the nature of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Rahat-Goodman said that 20 percent are “ideological settlements” where the people really believe that God gave the land to Israel.

“Most of the 200,000 settlers are people who wanted a better economic situation than they could get in Israel,” he told the audience. “Now they are stuck, and many of them would go home if they could. I hope that the Israeli government would be courageous enough to give them compensation for leaving.”

The audience gave a standing ovation to each of the speakers.

The event was sponsored by the Sacramento Middle East Peace Project, and endorsed by many peace and community organizations.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Janitors rally at Laclede Gas

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:38:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 50 rallied outside of the Laclede Gas Building here on May 25.

The janitors who clean the Laclede Gas Building are employed by Mitch Murch Maintenance Management (4M), a member of the Contract Cleaners Association (CCA). Local 50 has been in contract negotiations with CCA, an association of eight cleaning companies, since November 16, 2001.

According to Charlie Hatcher, Local 50’s organizing director, “4M pays its janitors poverty wages.”

One janitor said, “I’ve been working for Mitch Murch for 14 years. I make $6.95 an hour. I have no health benefits. And no pension plan.” She told the World that she was making $6.70 before the 25-cent wage increase was put into effect.

CCA instituted an across-the-board 25-cent increase in wages in early May in an attempt to weaken the campaign. Local 50 is demanding a $1 an hour wage increase.

“I’m worth more than a quarter and I’m gonna keep fighting,” said janitor Santois Tucker.

Thirteen independent cleaning companies have signed on to the new master agreement that includes a $7.25 hourly starting wage and a 70-cent wage increase in the second year of the contract.

“Mitch Murch, tell the people of St. Louis why you think it is okay to pay janitors poverty wages?” Hatcher said, as his voice blasted from a bullhorn at the rally. “Can you live on minimum wage? The janitors that clean St. Louis office buildings will not work for poverty wages anymore.”

Recently, First Bank made a commitment to put 21 First Bank branches, employing over 25 janitors, out to bid. “Mitch Murch used to have those building accounts,” Hatcher said. “Not anymore! Now independent cleaning companies, that are willing to pay a decent wage, will get those accounts. Mitch Murch is gonna feel the pinch. And this single account change has cost them close to 2 million dollars.”

The author can be reached at tonpec2000@yahoo.com

Tortilla tossing protested at graduation

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:33:00 +0000

Schoolteacher Ray Siquieros and a group of his pupils protested “disrespectful” tortilla tossing by graduates at the University of Arizona (UA) commencement ceremony in Tucson May 11.

Siquieros, a UA alumnus who teaches Mexican-American studies at Sunnyside School District’s Alternative Education Program, said the tortilla throwing demeans Mexican American culture and is an affront to the area’s homeless and hungry. “Tortillas are a staple of my culture,” he said.

Siquieros and his teenage pupils carried banners and food donation boxes around the graduation hall urging students to donate tortillas to a food bank instead of throwing them around the hall. Their signs read “I love tortillas” and “Comida es cultura [food is culture].” Siquieros said his students “are learning to stand up for what they believe in in a nonviolent way.”

After seeing tortillas thrown into the air, one of his pupils, Phillip Gonzalez, 14, said, “I felt bad. There’s a lot of people who would like to eat these.”

Tortilla throwing at UA graduations started several years ago, but gained national attention this year largely because of Siquieros’ efforts, starting last December, when he and his family experienced it at his wife’s graduation from UA. “What you are doing is disrespecting my culture,” he told students at that time. Siquieros wrote to UA President Peter Likins, the UA Alumni Association and other groups. Likins received some 300 postcards protesting the tortilla throwing.

“We had an impact at the May graduation,” Siquieros told the World. “People still threw tortillas, but not as much as before. The fact that we were able to mount enough pressure to get … Likins to come out and make a statement against tortilla tossing speaks to our moral power.”

Before the event, Likins had urged students not to throw tortillas, calling it an “offensive” practice. At the ceremony, he asked the graduates to respect the millions of hungry people in the world by refraining from tortilla throwing.

But Siquieros also noted racist comments he and his pupils received from some students in response to their protest. “White racism at the UA towards Chicano culture and people is the real ‘tradition’ that needs to change,” he said.

Siquieros noted that nearly all the workers who cleaned up after the graduation were Mexican immigrant workers. “I talked to about 20 of them in Spanish. … They all agreed that throwing tortillas was disrespectful and a sorry excuse to have fun.”

Siquieros said that he and his students and two sons, Humberto and Reies, 10 and 8 respectively, stayed to clean up. “We picked up hundreds of tortillas and helped out our Mexican brothers and sisters who are overworked and underpaid.”

He said he is “starting a new tradition” of staying after the ceremonies to collect thrown tortillas to give to the food bank. But, he said, “this in no way excuses the throwing and wasting of tortillas.”

The author can be reached at suewebb@pww.org

Milwaukee kicks off campaign to free Cuban Five

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:25:00 +0000

MILWAUKEE – The Milwaukee Committee to Free the Cuban Five kicked off its efforts with a gathering here May 19 of about 30 activists and a discussion with special guest Esperanza Luzbert, head of the United States group of the Cuban Peoples’ Friendship Institute.

Luzbert began by explaining that Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González were arrested in September 1998, accused of spying against the United States. Two were U.S. citizens. In December, 2001, they were given maximum sentences for every charge, ranging from 15 years to 15 years plus two life sentences. Guerrero was sent to the U.S. penitentiary at Florence, Colo., which, Luzbert noted, is “one of the worst prisons in the United States.”

Luzbert said the men were indeed spies, but never against the United States. Rather, they infiltrated terrorist groups. “Cuba was the first country to condemn the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States,” said Luzbert, “We in Cuba have been the victims of terrorism many times.”

Luzbert particularly mentioned the 1997 bombing of a Cuban hotel that killed an Italian citizen, and a plot to bomb the Havana tunnel connecting the East and West portions of the city, a plot she said was foiled “thanks to the work of people like [the Cuban Five].” The Cuban government has declared the five heroes for their efforts, at risk to their own lives, to stop terrorist attacks. Former heads of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Southern Command testified that the actions of the five did nothing to compromise U.S. security.

The trial, Luzbert said, reflected “manipulation” by expatriate Cubans in Miami, noting that Judge Leonard refused to move the trial, despite jurors saying they feared violence at the hands of anti-Castro Cubans if they did not convict. The FBI has listed Miami Cuban groups as the top U.S. domestic terrorist threat. Yet Miami officially enacted “Orlando Bosch Day,” honoring the mastermind of a 1976 Cuban passenger plane bombing that killed 73.

Luzbert held up a copy of the book, With Honor, Courage and Pride, distributed free at the event, about the five and showing their faces on its cover. She pointed in turn to each face and told a little about that person and their family. “This is cruel, this is criminal,” she said of the U.S. government’s refusal to grant visas so the family of René González could visit him in prison. The book contains the allocutions of the five at sentencing, speeches in the tradition of Fidel Castro’s 1953 “History will absolve me” speech, to which Luzbert alluded.

“We would appreciate whatever you can do to spread the word,” said Luzbert. She noted that once informed, 80 percent of Americans sided against the Miami expatriates, favoring return of Elián González to his father.

The authors can be reached at babette37@juno.com

Health care: Mill closes but problems stay

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:19:00 +0000

The fortunes of Sterling, Ill., a small town of 14,000-plus, due west of Chicago, have moved up and down with the fortunes of Northwestern Steel & Wire (NW Steel). Today the fortunes of both are scraping bottom.

Over the past year, thousands of Sterling-area residents, long accustomed to free or nearly free medical, vision and dental care, have found themselves thrust into the hardscrabble economic landscape of the uninsured, where routine preventive care is an unattainable luxury and a patchwork of aid programs provides a hit-or-miss safety net for those unlucky enough to fall sick.

When NW Steel collapsed a year ago, 1,400 employees lost their jobs. But the shutdown of the region’s leading employer took a much bigger toll: When Northwestern went under, about 10,000 people – retirees, their dependent wives, surviving widows and, of course, the wives and children of active mill workers – lost their health insurance.

According to Russ Lovell, president of Steelworkers Local 63, the blow staggered the community. “There’s more to it than five miles of shuttered plants,” he told the World. “And it’s not going to get prettier anytime soon.”

“Even before the shutdown we had 2,500 retirees who were entitled to pensions and lifetime health care. Then we got 600 more retirees and another 600 who have lost their health care coverage. What happened is criminal, that’s what it is,” he said bitterly.

When asked how people were coping, Lovell said, “Many of them are dying – they’re not taking their medicines because they can’t afford them.” Lovell said retirees used to meet at a local fast-food restaurant to swap pills left over from past ailments.

But money is not the only obstacle. Kate Vos, a community-health specialist with the Whiteside County Health Department, told the Chicago Tribune that many older workers have been denied private insurance because they suffer from pre-existing conditions, such as heart disease or lung problems, that frequently develop in people who have spent a lifetime in the mills. “Some of these people are very sick,” she said.

Vos and other authorities are urging Gov. George Ryan to issue a rare “declaration of medical necessity” that would, among other things, allow for distribution of low-cost pharmaceutical products to uninsured area residents.

As the situation in Sterling and surrounding Whiteside County shows, when a steel company quits paying, workers’ health-care needs don’t go away – and much of the financial burden falls on the community, to be absorbed by a hodgepodge of understaffed government and private organizations.

Local health-care providers have been stuck with unpaid bills. Overbooked veterans’ hospitals have seen a flood of new applicants. Workers scurried to jump on the plans of working spouses, driving up insurance costs for area employers. Lovell said he knows NW Steel retirees who have taken jobs for $6 or $7 an hour, just to get some kind of insurance.

CGH Medical Center, the area’s biggest hospital, has seen its “charity work,” or uncompensated medical care, climb 50 percent in the last year, while the bad debt the hospital has written off has climbed as well.

What’s happening in Whiteside County is not an isolated incident. Over the past four years, 17 U.S. steel companies have folded, and about 125,000 active and retired steelworkers, widows and dependents have lost their health-care coverage.

“You never want to believe it will happen to you,” says Steve Nelson, who went to work at the mill two weeks after his 18th birthday, in 1974. “For 28 years, I never had to pay for medical care.” Now, Nelson’s two youngest children are covered under the state-federal low-income insurance program known as KidCare.

Nelson and his wife, hoping their health will hold, pay $200 monthly for a policy that carries a $1,000 deductible and has little value except to mitigate a medical catastrophe, such as surgery or a prolonged hospital stay.

When asked what could be done about the situation that sees more than 40 million people without insurance and, therefore, without adequate health care, Lovell said, “We need some kind of a national health care system. Things cannot go on this way.”

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

International notes

Fri, 31 May 2002 04:11:00 +0000

Leaders highlight poverty, inequality

Latin American leaders participating in the 2nd Summit of the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean in Madrid last week urged increased attention to globalization’s consequences in the region, including growing poverty and inequality.

Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said that while the problem of terrorism needs to be taken seriously, it should not obscure the fight against poverty and social and cultural exclusion.

Carlos Lage, Vice President of Cuba’s Council of State, stressed that foreign debt, the conditions placed on foreign loans, migration and scant financial aid for development from the major industrialized countries continue as major problems in the region. Cuba calls for equal trade conditions for all countries.

“We go from summit to summit and our people go from abyss to abyss,” said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, adding that “changing this situation is one of the most imperative tasks for Latin Americans and for others who want to help the forgotten ones.”

The summit strongly criticized the unilateral trade policiesof the U.S., and denounced all unilateral and extraterritorial measures that are contrary to international law and the rules of free trade.

Nepal emergency extended over strong opposition

On recommendation of Nepal’s Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, King Gyanendra this week issued an executive order extending the national state of emergency for another three months. The action was taken though a majority of the ruling Congress Party’s central committee voted last week that the extension is not needed, and the main parliamentary opposition, the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), had announced that it would vote against the measure.

The state of emergency was declared last November as the government combatted a murderous Maoist insurgency. Under its terms all rights except that of habeas corpus are suspended.

Germans don’t like euro

In a recent survey conducted in Germany, 54 percent of respondents would be very happy to abandon the euro and get the Deutschmark back. They now call the new currency the “teuro,” a combination of the German word “teuer” (expensive) and “euro.”

Since the new currency was introduced, Europeans generally have been complaining that prices have gone up for everything. Economists counter that the cost of food and some other goods has risen but that more expensive items cost the same. Before the euro was introduced, opponents’ warnings about rising prices were ignored.

Cuban, South African CPs sign agreement

Following a bilateral meeting, Dr. Rodolfo Puente Ferro, head of the African Section of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Dr. Blade Nzimande, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, on Monday signed an agreement committing the two parties to ongoing cooperation, solidarity and mutual support.

The meeting paid special tribute to the work of Cuban doctors in South Africa, where in recent years they have seen more than two million patients, performed tens of thousands of medical operations and saved countless lives.

The gathering also emphasized the need to work together to defeat the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, condemned the Bush administration’s unfounded allegations about Cuban biological warfare activity, and called for solidarity with the five Cubans falsely imprisoned in the U.S. on allegations of espionage.

Panama wants U.S. to clear explosives

The Panamanian government is pressing Washington to clear unexploded munitions left behind on three former U.S. firing ranges, in formerly isolated areas that now are experiencing large-scale population growth. Despite a partial U.S. cleanup, the 44,000 acre area is estimated to hold a remaining 100,000 “duds” left behind on the ranges after U.S. live-fire training and testing of weapons ranging from land mines to cluster bombs.

Though U.S. officials say it’s impossible to clear all explosives from the steep hills and thick jungle of the area, Panamanian officials say that, as the demand for land grows, they cannot keep people out, and Panama lacks the technology and funds to finish clearing the area.

Panama maintains that the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty commits the U.S. to turn over areas it earlier held, free of every hazard to human life, health and safety. Observers point out that Panama’s concerns are echoed around the world, by other nations, including the Philippines, where the U.S. has maintained military installations.

War clouds loom in South Asia

Fri, 31 May 2002 03:58:00 +0000

NEW DEHLI, India – The Indian subcontinent is again on the edge of a war. India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers, are at loggerheads. Heavy exchange of fire is going on at the border, where thousands of panic-stricken residents are fleeing from the Kashmir valley, abandoning their houses.

After the massacre of Indian soldiers’ families in Kashmir, May 14, allegedly by Pakistani-sponsored Kashmiri terrorists, the Indian government cut off all diplomatic relations with Pakistan. The right-wing-led government met and decided to combat Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir valley with arms, not other methods.

Most of the other major political parties, excluding the Left, are also backing up the national government for a full-scale war instead of diplomatic, economic or political solutions.

General Secretaries of both the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist) met with Prime Minister Vajpayee, separately, and asked him to avoid armed conflict, stressing that “war is no solution,” whether it is a limited or a full-scale war. Both stressed diplomatic and economic measures to end terrorism, saying, “India should ask Washington to put greater pressure on Pakistan to shut down the terrorist camps on its soil and cut back economic aid.”

While publicly the Bush administration is urging Pakistan to cut support for the Kashmir terrorists and urging India not to move to war, the U.S. clearly has its own interest in a further destabilized region and a so-called independent Kashmir. With U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, another military base in Kashmir can be used to target Russia, China, India, Iran, Iraq and smaller countries of the region. U.S. military and economic interests are not in the interests of the people of Pakistan and India, including Kashmir.

Also, a war between India and Pakistan would benefit U.S. arms dealers. According to the reports from the inner circles of the Indian Defense Ministry, India is considering weapon imports from the U.S., to bridge the gaps in their defense arsenal.

Over one million soldiers from India and Pakistan have massed on the border, and tanks, warships and fighter jets are in action in the area.

Pakistan President Musharraf denies arming or funding the Kashmiri militants, saying it only provides them with “moral” support. Yet, as reported by many, the Pakistan military, along with the “notorious” Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have developed a vested interest of their own and, through repressive methods, uses Kashmir for its own undemocratic purposes.

The Kashmiri people have expressed their will to stay with the secular Indian Union, but Pakistan continues to undermine this on the basis of religion. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over this Himalayan province since independence from Britain in 1947.

The danger is heightened by the right-wing, Hindu-extremist nature of the leading party in the national government, the BJP, which has been hostile to the autonomy of Kashmir. The government has targeted the Muslim minority in India for repression, undermines Indian secularism and seeks U.S. support, undercutting the long-standing Indian foreign policy of non-alignment and independence.

Terrie Albano contributed to this story.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Charleston crane operators win after walkout

Fri, 31 May 2002 03:52:00 +0000

South Carolina crane operators won a whopping labor victory this week after their refusal to work nearly shut down all operations at the Port of Charleston, the nation’s fourth largest container port.

In a phenomenal two-day protest in this right to work state, crane operators employed by the State of South Carolina walked out after the State Port’s Authority (SPA) fired a crane operator, Virgil Cross, for criticizing the SPA to a television crew.

The operators have been angry for months over SPA budget cutting that was targeting them. Among the most contentious issues was that in February the SPA had unilaterally changed work rules, making it more difficult for operators to get overtime pay on weekends, resulting in significant pay reductions.

Those SPA actions were seen by operators as unfair retaliation for their decision to become members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1422. Upon walking out the crane operators congregated in the local union hall where they received the solidarity of their union brothers and sisters.

Although as state employees, the crane operators are not allowed to have collective bargaining or to strike under South Carolina’s right to work law, they joined the union two years ago, nevertheless. However, right-to-work law still has authority, making their walkout a truly courageous act in one of the nation’s most anti-labor states.

On May 11, after 32 of the port’s 35 crane operators refused to work, the SPA suspended 18 of them. This added fuel to the fire, with crane operators then adding to their walkout demands a refusal to go back to work if SPA retaliations against their jobs continued for their walkout.

Weekends are the highest traffic times at the three container terminals in Charleston Harbor, and the protest slowed work to a crawl, forcing supervisors to fill in for the missing crane operators. At best, management might do 10 to 15 containers per hour, while regular crane operators do 40 to 45 an hour. In addition, idling a vessel in port can cost an ocean carrier as much as $150,000 per day.

The work stoppage was quickly costing millions, forcing SPA officials to give crane operators all their demands including the change of one overtime work rule. In addition officials pledged to study their concerns about pay and overtime. The SPA also agreed not to fire those who failed to man their machines.

This waterfront triumph comes on the heels of the historic victory of the Charleston Five, ILA dockworkers who were freed after falsely being charged with felony conspiracy to riot for participating in a picketline against a ship carrying non-union labor. Four of the five are members of Local 1422.

The author can be reached at evnalarcon@aol.com

Judiciary committee vote insults women

Fri, 31 May 2002 03:38:00 +0000

The field of credible Democrats running for President was significantly narrowed today when two rumored candidates insulted every employed woman, every woman in business, and every woman who has been a victim of violence in this country. In casting their votes to promote Judge D. Brooks Smith to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, only one step below the Supreme Court, rumored candidates Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) disregarded the extensive evidence of unethical behavior and discriminatory conduct that caused The Washington Post, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times to oppose Smith’s confirmation.

In an embarrassingly convoluted rationale, Biden expressed disappointment in Smith’s strong criticism of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), but said it would be a “double standard” to vote against Smith because Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist held a similar opinion on VAWA.

Apparently Biden doesn’t recall that his vote for Rehnquist was cast many years before VAWA was even introduced. As for a “double standard,” someone should tell Sen. Biden that double nothing is still nothing.

Biden’s previous leadership on violence against women is just that – previous. He has jettisoned it in favor of friendship – his stated presumption of supporting any nominee sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). No doubt the people of Delaware will want to know that they have elected a Republican from Pennsylvania to represent them.

Another presidential wanna-be, Sen. Edwards, hid out in his office across the hall from the hearing, and didn’t even have the courage to cast his “Yes” vote in public. Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wisc.) joined all of the committee Republicans, whose cowardly votes betrayed the women of their states by recommending elevation of a judge whose repeated “ethical lapses” deserve censure, not promotion.

The Senate’s reputation as an “Old Boys Club” was reinforced by today’s vote, in which both of the women on the Judiciary Committee voted against Smith, but he won anyway because 12 of the 17 men voted in his favor. To promote a judge who will have to decide on cases of discrimination, when that judge has himself cavalierly participated in discrimination and even ruled in favor of discriminatory practices, is the height of irresponsibility by those who are charged with that duty.

NOW commends both of the women who serve on the Judiciary Committee, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose votes against confirming Smith spoke volumes, as well as Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who spoke eloquently about discrimination against women, and Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

NOW intends to seek a filibuster in the Senate against Judge Smith’s confirmation, and will urge every senator to participate who cares about protecting the last 40 years of progress women have made. The Judiciary Committee’s vote for D. Brooks Smith made a mockery of judicial standards. Unless the full Senate reverses, it will send a message to women that they can’t expect to have civil rights – or ethics – taken seriously by the Senate or the courts.

Kim Gandy is the president of the National Organization for Women.

Arab-American relief worker freed

Fri, 31 May 2002 02:53:00 +0000

Dr. Riad Abdelkarim, chairman of KinderUSA, an American Muslim charity, arrived home in Irvine, Calif., May 20, after being held for 15 days without charges in an Israeli prison.

Abdelkarim, born in California of Palestinian parents, was completing a fact-finding mission with the International Medical Corps in the Israeli-occupied territories when he and a colleague from the mission were arrested on May 5 at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv as they prepared to depart for home. Another colleague, Dalell Mohmed, KinderUSA executive director, was arrested at gunpoint in her hotel the same day. All three are U.S. citizens.

The three were held “on suspicion of membership in a terror organization,” but no charges were filed. A hearing on Abdelkarim’s detainment scheduled for May 19 was canceled without explanation and he was released along with his co-workers.

Abdelkarim was held at the Petach Tikva Detention Center in an 18-foot-wide by 15-foot-high cell which he shared with 13 others. He spent the last three days of his detention in solitary confinement.

Before his arrest, he had traveled to the Jenin refugee camp, where the Israeli military had left widespread death and destruction. In an e-mail home, he wrote, “I feel an uncomfortable mixture of sadness, grief, anger and shame. I also feel guilt. My tax dollars helped pay for those bullets.”

Relief workers in the occupied territories say the arrest is part of a determined effort by the Israeli authorities to block all humanitarian aid to the victims in Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah.

At the time of the arrests, KinderUSA, a Dallas-based nonprofit relief organization, was assessing humanitarian aid needs in the areas most severely affected by the Israeli occupation.

“We had only just begun our work,” said Mohmed. “On Sunday, the day of our arrest, our food distribution in Jenin was to begin.”

Miranda Sissons of Human Rights Watch told the World these detentions are “very clearly part of a wider pattern.” Since last winter, and especially since the Israeli military offensive in the occupied territories, she said, there has been a sharp increase in Israeli obstruction of reputable international human rights workers, including denials of entry and detentions.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) issued a statement welcoming Abdelkarim’s release, but called on the Bush administration to ensure that Americans being held by Israel are given their due process rights and are not mistreated. The ADC said it is specifically concerned about the fates of five men who were arrested after delivering food to Palestinians in the Church of the Nativity on May 2. At least some of these men are reported to be U.S. citizens.

The ADC said there are numerous cases of Arab Americans being tortured while in Israeli detention and subjected to trials involving secret evidence, military judges and inadequate representation. The group said there are also many cases in which Israeli authorities have refused to recognize the American citizenship of Arab Americans in Israel and the occupied territories.

Sissons confirmed this, saying the Israeli government refusal to recognize the U.S. or other citizenship of people of Palestinian descent is a long-standing concern. The ADC asked the U.S. government to “provide equal protection to all of its citizens abroad, regardless of their ethnicity and regardless of which state’s authority they are under.”

Sabiha Kham, spokesperson for the Southern California Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Abdelkarim “was on a humanitarian mission. You can’t get more American than that.”

Mohmed said that, with Abdelkarim’s release and return home, their relief work will continue. “What Dr. Abdelkarim and myself have gone through pales in comparison to what the Palestinian people must endure on a daily basis,” she said. “We cannot sit back and bear witness to the inhumanity taking place against these innocent civilians, particularly the children.”

The author can be reached at suewebb@pww.org

Labor: Port Commission must support bills

Fri, 31 May 2002 02:41:00 +0000

OAKLAND – A wide array of labor and community groups, joined by local public officials, is calling on the Port Commission here to support legislation that would compel marine terminal operators to improve safety and reduce pollution by trucks.

Judy Goff, Alameda County Central Labor Council executive secretary-treasurer, said the AFL-CIO is supporting two companion bills before the California state legislature and similar efforts by labor-community coalitions on the West Coast because of the grave concern for the “health and safety for our workers and our communities.”

Assembly Bill 2650, sponsored by Assembly member Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), requires marine terminals to reduce truck idling to 30 minutes outside a terminal gate or face a $250 fine for each truck in violation. Currently, trucks often idle for two hours.

Senate Bill 1507, introduced by State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), requires terminal operators to inspect the chasis of intermodal trucks and holds them, rather than drivers, liable for safety violations, as well as protects drivers from threats for requesting an inspection.

Romero’s bill passed the senate earlier this week and Lowenthal’s was expected to pass the assembly as we went to press. Both bills then go to the opposite house for consideration.

Oakland City Councilmember Nancy Nadel, who represents the neighborhoods next to the port, spoke at a press conference here May 21. Nadel said heavy concentrations of diesel emissions have been shown to spark asthma attacks in a community where 25 percent of public school children suffer from asthma. She urged the port commission to back the bills because it “should be obligated to look at every possible way to mitigate pollution” that threatens the community and children’s health and education when they have to miss school.

In addition, Willie Keyes, president of West Oakland Neighbors, said he joined the protest because the 9,000 to 22,000 trips per day that trucks at the port make produce cancer-causing dioxins that must be drastically reduced.

“We have two new terminals coming, we have a railroad yard coming and all these are going to increase the amount of diesel emissions in the community,” warned Lawrence Thibeaux, Northern California District Council legislative representative for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Along with the bill to cut down on truck emissions, Thibeaux argued that, as ports expand and container trucking increases in the community, legislation like the Romero bill is needed to “make sure this equipment is safe for all people on the road.”

Joe Silva, Teamsters Local 70 president, joined the others in calling for the port commission to “step up and support” the two bills and “protect the health and safety of everyone involved.” Additional local groups supporting the legislative bills include the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, which has sponsored several successful living wage initiatives in the area, and the California Trucking Association.

The author can be reached at ncalview@igc.org