People Before Profit blog

Sophie Gerson, labor heroine and communist, 96

Fri, 26 May 2006 08:06:00 +0000

Sophie Gerson, a legendary figure in the history of textile union organizing in the South and a lifelong fighter for peace, justice and socialism, died March 20. She was 96.

Like many in her generation, Gerson was inspired by Russia’s socialist revolution, which she witnessed as a child. Sophie Melvin was born Feb. 22, 1910, in a Jewish village in the Ukraine, the second youngest of six children. Among her earliest memories was the arrival of the Red Army in the village. A soldier knocked on the door and invited the family to a meeting in the town square where an end to anti-Semitic pogroms was proclaimed. The soldier carried Sophie to the meeting in his arms. Her older brothers left Ukraine to avoid conscription into the Czar’s army. With her mother Esther and youngest brother Moish (Murray), Sophie came to the United States, settling in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

By age 15, Sophie was already going to meetings, marches and rallies. In 1926, at age 16, she traveled to Passaic, N.J., where she helped staff a day camp for the children of 16,000 striking wool workers. There she was exposed to socialists, communists, and militant working-class struggle. Her commitments were formed, and she never wavered.

At age 19 in 1929, Sophie, then a member of the Young Communist League, hitchhiked to Gastonia, N.C., to join in support of 2,000 workers on strike at the Loray textile mill. Evicted from company housing, the workers were living in tents outside town. Company gun-thugs attacked one night and during the melee, the police chief was killed. Sixteen strikers and their supporters, including Sophie and two other women, Vera Buch and Amy Schecter, were arrested and charged with murder. A few days later the thugs assassinated the striker leader and songwriter Ella May Wiggins.

The National Textile Workers Union and the International Labor Defense mounted a legal defense. The defendants won a change of venue and were later acquitted although the strike was broken. Sophie continued her work with the NTWU, and was arrested twice for “illegal picketing” during a textile strike in Patterson, N.J.

Simon W. Gerson had rushed to Gastonia to join in defense of Sophie, to whom he was engaged to be married, and the other arrestees. He and Sophie were married in 1932.

As a relief worker during the Great Depression, Sophie helped mobilize a demonstration of more than 100,000 unemployed in Union Square, March 6, 1930. Mounted police brutally attacked the peaceful marchers but the struggle of the unemployed led to huge victories — unemployment compensation, Social Security, laws upholding workers’ union rights, and a ban on job discrimination based on race and gender.

Si Gerson became New York City Hall correspondent for the Daily Worker. Later Manhattan’s liberal Republican Borough President Stanley Isaacs appointed Si to his staff. For the first time, the Gerson family enjoyed a livable income with health benefits. A year later their first child, William, was born. While Si served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II, Sophie and son Bill lived with Sophie’s brother Moish, his wife Bella and their daughter Beezy. Sophie worked as a nursery school teacher and later as a camp counselor with Bill as a camper.

In 1946, daughter Deborah was born. In 1948 the Gersons moved to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where Si and Sophie lived the rest of their lives. The democratic voting method called proportional representation had enabled the election of progressive, minority party candidates, including Communists Peter Cacchione and Benjamin Davis, to the New York City Council. Sophie was an active participant in these victories. When Cacchione died in office in 1947, Si was appointed to complete his term. But McCarthyism engulfed the nation. Tammany bosses refused to seat him and organized to eliminate proportional representation.

Si Gerson was one of dozens of Communist Party USA leaders indicted under the Smith Act in 1949 and 1950, charged with advocating the overthrow of the government by “force and violence.” The FBI arriving to arrest Si at their Brooklyn home was a bitter memory for the family. Sophie threw herself into the Families Committee of Smith Act Defendants, which organized material and emotional assistance for the defendants and their families. Si was acquitted, but in 1953, in what Si called “a low, vindictive blow at my family,” the federal government attempted to strip Sophie of her citizenship and deport her.

In her later years, Sophie was a tireless activist with the National Council of Senior Citizens, fighting for universal health care and defense of Social Security. A woman of charm and passion, she developed ties with a range of local activists, including nuns and other local Catholics. She became known to elected officials leading groups to the State Assembly and relentlessly advocating for social benefits.

A joyful grandmother, she loved being with children and said she regretted that she hadn’t had more.

Both Si and their son Bill passed away in 2004. Sophie is survived by her daughter Deborah of San Francisco, granddaughters Timi Gerson of Washington, D.C., and Frieda B. Gerson of Paris, France, and many nieces and nephews.

One woman revolution

Fri, 26 May 2006 08:04:00 +0000

Katherine Dunham, a pioneering dancer and choreographer, author and civil rights activist who founded America’s first major Black modern dance company, died May 21. She was 96.

Dunham was perhaps best known for bringing African and Caribbean influences to the European-dominated dance world. An indomitable cultural figure that Dance Magazine once called a “one woman revolution,” Dunham fought barriers and prejudices to integrate the rhythms she learned in Haiti, Brazil and Cuba into American formal dance.

Dunham choreographed “Aida” for the Metropolitan Opera and musicals such as “Cabin in the Sky” (although she did not receive credit) for Broadway. She also appeared in several films, including “Stormy Weather” and “Carnival of Rhythm.”

Dunham was born in Glen Ellyn, Ill., on June 22, 1909, the daughter of an African American dry cleaner and a French Canadian mother.

At the University of Chicago, she became a promising anthropology student, winning a fellowship to study anthropology in the Caribbean. But she always loved dance. At 21, she founded the Ballet Negre, her first company, in Chicago.

Dunham married costume designer John Pratt in 1941 and they adopted an orphan, Marie-Christine, from Martinique. John Pratt died in 1986.

Judith Jamison, the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, said that Dunham “made it easier for dancers of color to realize the possibilities of being on stage; being visible; showcasing our theatricality, creativity and beauty as well as celebrating the [African] diaspora.”

Her dance company toured internationally from the 1940s to the 1960s, visiting 57 nations on six continents. Her success was won in the face of widespread discrimination, a struggle Dunham championed by refusing to perform at segregated theaters.

“Katherine Dunham lived through an America that was deeply segregated, where race was always an issue of crisis,” said actor Harry Belafonte, a friend and supporter. “For her to have made the contribution she did to culture, through her dance and her intellect, enriched America. She brought, through her art and intellectual passion and power, an insight into Black life that shaped everyone’s thinking of who we are.”

In Cuba, Dunham was honored by the socialist nation with its Fernando Ortiz International Award for her lifetime contributions to dance and choreography and her promotion and celebration of African and African American culture.

Battling racism was a constant for Dunham and she felt its oppression deeply. In an interview with Cuba Now magazine in 2005 she said, “I got tired of certain kinds of problems. What hotel and where, and somebody couldn’t get a seat in the audience. ... I won’t say that drove me out of the country, but it had an effect.”

In 1951, she moved audiences with “Southland,” a dance about a Southern lynching that Dunham believes hurt her efforts to obtain U.S. sponsorship for her overseas travels.

The ballet was premiered in the Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile, in January 1951. In the program notes to the ballet, Dunham wrote: “This is the story of no actual lynching in the Southern states of America, and still it is the story of every one of them.” She spoke a prologue on stage at the premiere: “Through the creative artist comes the need … to show this thing to the world, hoping that by exposing the ill, the conscience of the many will protest. This is not all of America, it is not all of the South, but it is a living, present part.”

After 1967, Dunham lived most of each year in East St. Louis, Ill., where she struggled to bring the arts to the Mississippi River city of burned-out buildings and high poverty rates.

“She was a legendary person who was committed to doing the hard work you have to do … in a community like East St. Louis,” said poet Quincy Troupe, a St. Louis native who visited her there. “That’s important work that sometimes goes unnoticed. It’s not glamorous.”

Dunham kept up her activism and made international news in 1992 when she undertook a 47-day hunger strike to protest the U.S. policy of turning back Haitian refugees to their military-ruled island.

EDITORIAL: A chilling raid

Fri, 26 May 2006 06:55:00 +0000

The unprecedented FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.) congressional office sends a chilling message to Congress and to African American elected officials.

In the twilight hours of May 20, 15 FBI agents spent 24 hours searching the congressman’s office. Jefferson has been under investigation since August on bribery allegations, and the FBI found $90,000 in his home freezer. But he has not been indicted, denies any wrongdoing and refuses to step down. No one can excuse corruption, but there is much more to this raid. Racism, trampling constitutional separation of powers, and ultra-right desperation all loom large.

The battle for control of Congress is raging. The president’s approval rating is in the basement. Republicans have been wounded by their widening “culture of corruption” that has put former Rep. Duke Cunningham in jail while Rep. Tom DeLay, under indictment for money laundering, is resigning. Then there is Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio who is under investigation in connection to the crimes committed by lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Other GOP congressmen may be next. Why didn’t the FBI raid any of those congressmen’s offices?

One obvious difference: Jefferson is Black. There has been a long-standing FBI pattern of setting up and targeting Black officials. Remember the bug in Philadelphia Mayor John Street’s office?

Scholars say such a raid on a congressperson’s office is a first in U.S. history. The FBI is under the Justice Department, which is part of the executive branch of government, controlled by the president. Congress is a co-equal in governing and the Constitution protects its members from harassment by the executive branch. That’s what protects us from a presidential dictatorship. Correctly, House leaders of both parties denounced the raid as violating this essential constitutional protection. They demanded the return of all papers seized.

If indicted, Rep. Jefferson will have his day in court and probably resign. Jefferson represents Louisiana’s 2nd district, which includes New Orleans, where people desperately need outstanding representation and advocacy. Yet, Jefferson is entitled to the same due process in investigations and judicial treatment as any other member of Congress. And constitutional separation of powers must be protected.

Shaking and making U.S. history

Fri, 26 May 2006 06:06:00 +0000

After almost nine decades, it’s clear there’s no stopping the country’s young communists

Over its 84-year history, the communist youth movement has taken part in and led some of the most important struggles of working-class youth — against poverty, unemployment and racism and for multiracial unity. It has fought for socialism in each generation, carrying the traditions of the working-class movement to young people, and enriching those traditions with the concerns and thinking of each new generation of youth.

• The first organizations of young communists in the U.S. were the Young Workers League (the youth section of the Workers Party) and the Young Communist League. Both were founded in 1922. The YWL campaigned against child labor, organized young workers into trade unions and engaged in solidarity campaigns against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. It emphasized the growth of the new urban Black proletariat as a movement that was revolutionary itself. Special attention was also given to the 9 million African Americans in the South facing the daily threat of lynching. The YCL had a similar program, but because of government and employer repression, the YCL remained an underground group.

•In 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression, the YWL merged into the Young Communist League as a result of the reorganization of the Workers Party into the Communist Party. As the Depression deepened, the YCL, no longer banned, fought against youth unemployment and for free school lunches for the children of the unemployed. It joined in the struggle to free the Scottsboro defendants from legal lynching in Alabama.

• Working with the Communist-led Trade Union Unity League, the YCL began to organize industrial unions. Young Communists were active organizers and participants in the 1926 Passaic, N.J., textile strike, the 1929 Gastonia, N.C., textile strike, the National Miners Union strikes of 1928 and ’29, and the 1934 San Francisco waterfront general strike. Harry Simms, a 19-year-old YCL member, was assassinated in 1932 during efforts to organize the coal mines in rural Kentucky. The 1930s marked the largest growth of the YCL. The struggles to build the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the auto, steel and other industries was a central activity for YCL members.

•As the danger of fascism became more apparent, the YCL turned its attention there. When the fascists launched a civil war to overthrow the democratic government of Spain in the 1930s, YCL members made up a large number of the 3,000 Abraham Lincoln Brigade volunteers who went to Spain to defend the republic. When WWII broke out, hundreds of YCL members volunteered and many gave their lives in the fight to defeat fascism.

•The YCL was involved in the revolutionary youth culture of this time. It was one of the first organizations to fight against the exclusion of Black players from professional baseball. It organized interracial dances and promoted jazz as an authentic working-class voice, rooted in the African American experience. In the 1930s, it held a swing concert, attended by 10,000 people, in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

• As World War II was raging in Europe, some Communists, influenced by Earl Browder, then general secretary of the Communist Party USA, came to believe the wartime unity of the Soviet Union and the United States would continue and that the class struggle had ended. Based on these theories, the Young Communist League was dissolved in 1943 and replaced by American Youth for Democracy. In 1944 Browder dissolved the Communist Party, replacing it with the Communist Political Association. The Communist Party was refounded in 1945.

The AYD campaigned for youth rights and struggled against racism, the Cold War and anticommunism, but it did not meet the needs of youth in the post-war era.

• In 1949 young Communists and other working-class youth formed the Labor Youth League, a Marxist-Leninist youth organization with fraternal relations with the Communist Party. At the height of anticommunist hysteria spurred by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Paul Robeson addressed more than 5,000 youth at the LYL’s first national convention, Nov. 24, 1950. The revered singer, actor and political figure told the youth, “You are acting in the best tradition of the young generations which have preceded you at every critical moment of our history.”

During the worst days of McCarthyism, when Communists all over the country were being tried and convicted on trumped-up charges of “conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government,” the LYL did all it could to continue the tradition Robeson spoke of. Fighting for peace, racial equality and democracy won the LYL the attention of the Subversive Activities Control Board, which placed the LYL on its subversive organizations list in 1953.

With many LYL and Communist Party members in jail or losing their jobs, some felt that youth would not join a Marxist-Leninist organization and proposed establishing “socialist clubs.” The LYL fell apart and youth activists across the country started local independent radical youth organizations.

• The 1950s also marked the birth of the civil rights movement, with young people marching and sitting in. In the 1960s students across the country started demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. These new movements became turning points in the rebirth of a working-class youth and student movement.

In 1964, the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs were formed, named after the champion of African American liberation who joined the CPUSA in 1961. The first mass youth demonstrations against the war in Vietnam were organized by the Du Bois Clubs. The Du Bois Clubs also were active participants and leaders in civil rights struggles.

The Du Bois Clubs were targeted by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which also targeted the CPUSA, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party and other progressive fighters. The Du Bois Clubs were subjected to police attacks, infiltration and disruption. When the organization’s San Francisco headquarters was bombed in 1966, authorities never investigated the crime and no one was ever convicted.

• As the antiwar movement grew and conditions for youth worsened, an increasing number of youth believed socialism was the solution to the problems they faced and saw the central role of the working class in social change. In 1970, the Du Bois Clubs, other young radicals and youth members of the Communist Party founded the Young Workers Liberation League. It was based on several concepts: the need to unify all youth across racial and ethnic lines, and the strategy of organizing young workers around wages, job security and discrimination in the workplace and for peace, and relating these struggles to the working class and socialism.

Shortly after its founding the YWLL was invited by the Ho Chi Minh Working Youth Union to visit Vietnam to see areas destroyed by U.S. bombing and to exchange experiences with Vietnamese youth fighting for national liberation. The YWLL played a key role in the antiwar movement in the 1970s, emphasizing young workers’ interest in ending the war.

The YWLL also spearheaded the struggle for youth jobs at union wages, affirmative action and academic freedom. It helped to make the connection between jobs and peace, social needs and military spending, and racism and budget cuts. It organized among young workers, especially in basic industry.

The YWLL led solidarity campaigns for Chile’s Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, elected in 1970. At a World Federation of Democratic Youth conference in Chile, the YWLL delegation was invited to a reception with President Allende, just weeks before he was murdered in the 1973 U.S.-backed coup. After the bloody overthrow, the YWLL played a leading role in organizing a movement to support the Chilean struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship.

• In 1983, as the Reagan administration cut more and more money from social programs and diverted it to the military to fight the “Evil Empire,” the YWLL reorganized itself into a new Young Communist League. With the new generation of youth and students no longer cowed by Cold War anticommunism, the times demanded the rebirth of the YCL and a new approach to organizing youth for peace, jobs and equality, the organizers felt.

The new YCL fought against campus budget cuts, union-busting and Reagan’s dirty wars in Latin America. The YCL was a key fighter against apartheid South Africa. It held sit-ins demanding that CPUSA leader and activist Angela Davis and CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall be allowed to speak on campuses.

The YCL built voter registration coalitions and focused special attention on the oppression of working-class youth and especially youth of color, disproportionately hurt by cuts on social programs under Reagan and Bush I.

The YCL campaigned in the 1980s to defend affirmative action, abortion rights and gay and lesbian rights. In 1990-1991 the YCL opposed the first Gulf War and the genocidal effects of economic sanctions on the Iraqi people. The YCL was part of the “Battle in Seattle,” working to expose the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-youth policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In 2000 and 2004, YCL members fought to defeat George W. Bush and the ultra-right. The YCL played very important roles in local and national coalitions and in get-out-the-vote drives in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, California, Texas, New York and across the country.

•Today, the YCL is in the forefront of the mass peace movement. It is a leading member of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition and a steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice. The YCL and NYSPC have initiated annual “Books Not Bombs” campaigns on campuses nationwide. YCLers are active in the Student Labor Action Project supporting struggles of campus workers around the country, in the immigrant rights movement, and a host of other struggles. Its magazine Dynamic reflects the politics and culture of today’s youth movement.

In this time of anti-corporate upsurge and youth activism, the YCL is working with student, community, labor, environmental, LGBT and all peace and social justice groups and coalitions to build a broad youth and student movement.

Building on 84 years in the struggle, the YCL is looking ahead. The next 84 years are bound to be just as exciting, as it continues to struggle for equality, education, health care, union rights, voting rights, peace and socialism.

Tony Pecinovsky (tonypec@pww.org) is a member of the Young Communist League and is on the staff of the Missouri/Kansas Communist Party.

Students challenge unequal education: Tests that deny diplomas are in dispute

Fri, 26 May 2006 04:34:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — As seniors across the state try on their caps and gowns, California is embroiled in controversy over its high school exit exams in English and math, slated to be required for a high school diploma starting this year.

Exit exams are a growing phenomenon across the country, with 26 states, enrolling nearly three-quarters of public school students, expected to mandate such tests by 2012.

Earlier this month, in a case brought by a group of high school seniors who had not passed the exams, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman ruled that because of inequities in the school system, many students have not had a chance to learn the material covered by the tests.

“There is evidence in the record that students in economically challenged communities have not had an equal opportunity to learn the materials,” Freedman wrote, adding that English-language learners continue to suffer disproportionately from lack of educational resources, including qualified teachers.

Freedman said students would suffer “significant risk” of emotional and practical harm from being denied a diploma, and ordered that diplomas be given this year to students who had completed all other graduation requirements.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell immediately appealed to the state Supreme Court to overturn Freedman’s ruling and to restore the exam as a requirement for diplomas this year. On May 24, the Supreme Court restored the requirement and sent the case to the state Court of Appeal for further action.

Among those who support delaying the requirement, there was general agreement that many districts, especially poorer working-class districts with large African American and Latino populations, had more limited funding, poorer facilities, higher class sizes, more English-learners, fewer teachers credentialed in the subjects they taught, and shortages of textbooks and other vital equipment. Many called for alternative types of assessment.

“Exit exams should be given when everything else is equal,” said Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association. But now, he said, funds, facilities and quality instruction are not equal throughout the state. “Therefore,” he added, “to expect that all students should meet a uniform standard based on a norm that doesn’t apply to many of the children and youth is patently unfair.”

“You’re actually punishing students for not getting the appropriate instruction, for not getting all the classes they need,” said Christina Wong, policy advocate with Chinese for Affirmative Action/Center for Asian American Advocacy. Wong said much more investment of time and resources will be needed to assure that all schools, starting with elementary grades, provide students with quality education.

While the numbers are smaller, Wong said, a significant portion of Asian students — especially those whose families have come as refugees — share the problems faced by Latino students who are English-learners. “These students are already playing catch-up,” she said. “To be faced with high stakes testing that will decide their future is really disheartening.”

Three Oakland High School students, sophomore Ashley Rivers, junior Airrika Williams and senior Jesse Green, said they encountered problems with test items they had not been taught in class, particularly in math. “Some of the questions we had, I didn’t get because they weren’t teaching it yet,” said Rivers. Williams pointed out that “sometimes kids have the ability to take the exam and pass both parts, but actually taking a test is a different story.”

“What they need to do instead of pressing the test on students is to teach the students effectively,” said Green.

All three said they had experienced overcrowded classes, unqualified teachers and shortages of textbooks. Besides adequate resources, they said, students need more tutoring and preparatory classes, particularly in math, so they can really understand what they’re being tested on.

The California Federation of Teachers “believes that any student who completes the requirements for graduation should receive a diploma,” said George Martinez, CFT’s early childhood/K-12 president. While diplomas could show who has passed the tests, Martinez said, exit exams “don’t go to the heart of the matter,” for not every student has the same pattern of abilities.

“We don’t think it’s a bad thing to test students’ skills,” said Mike Chavez, spokesperson for Californians for Justice, “but we do think there are much more effective ways to test skills, and to see if students are prepared for college and for different occupations.” In a second lawsuit, rejected by Judge Freedman, Californians for Justice had called for using alternative means such as senior portfolios and classroom evaluations.

A state law authored by then-state Sen. Jack O’Connell and passed in 1999 started the ball rolling for California’s exam. The requirement was initially set to take effect in 2004, but was delayed after an independent state-funded study found that instruction, especially in math, had not been effective for all students.

While overall nearly 90 percent of this year’s California seniors have passed the tests, an estimated 47,000 seniors have yet to pass one or both parts.

Researchers at UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (UCLA-IDEA) pointed out in a 2005 study that more than a quarter of students who failed the English and/or math sections were concentrated in schools with overall failure rates of 40 percent or better. These schools, they said, made up about one-eighth of the state’s high schools and had eight times the rate of severe overcrowding and eight times the rate of severe teacher shortages, compared with schools with low failure rates.

Gran oposicin a discurso Bush sobre inmigracin

Fri, 19 May 2006 07:59:00 +0000

Mientras el debate sobre la reforma migratoria se reanuda en el Senado el 15 de mayo, el presidente Bush pronuncia un discurso televisado a nivel nacional, tratando de motivar a su base conservadora atemorizándolos con cuentos de espanto antiinmigrantes, pero a la misma vez aparecer como persona compasiva.

Bush prometió mandar a 6.000 efectivos de la Guardia Nacional a la frontera para sustentar a la Patrulla Fronteriza y financiar más mecanismos de alta tecnología para controlar la frontera austral. También prometió aumentar centros de detención en la región fronteriza.

Sin mencionarlo por nombre, él dio a entender que apoyaba el proyecto Hagel-Martínez en el Senado. Este proyecto promulga un programa de trabajadores huéspedes sin derechos laborales. Apoyado por las corporaciones grandes, esto se ve como una forma de minar los derechos de los trabajadores y los salarios.

La oposición al discurso de Bush, especialmente de latinoamericanos dentro y afuera del país fue fuerte.

Silvestre Reyes, congresista demócrata por Tejas, dijo que “Una ola de sentimiento antinorteamericanos está barriendo por América Latina” y la militarización de la frontera lo aumentaría.

Actualmente, 10.060 agentes patrullan la frontera austral mientras solo 980 patrulla en la norteña, según el departamento de Seguridad Patria.

Louis Velásquez, un representante de la arquidiócesis católica de Los Angeles, dijo, “Ahora seremos dos países amistosos con una frontera militarizada entre medio. Por favor dígame porqué tenemos que tener soldados para encontrarse con gente que vienen a buscar trabajo. Ellos no son un peligro”.

Políticos de ambos partidos principales, los demócratas y republicanos, cuestionaron la sabiduría de estirar a la Guardia Nacional aun más cuando la guerra en Irak se ha llevado a tantos. En la respuesta oficial demócrata el senador Dick Durbin de Illinois dijo que Bush está proponiendo “una solución militar para romper un empate político”.

Durbin dijo que esto puede convertirse en “un despliegue de largo plazo”. Aunque los demócratas apoyan el uso de la Guardia Nacional en la frontera, él dijo, el plan de Bush “provoca más preguntas serias sobre el futuro de la Guardia Nacional” y su capacidad a responder a emergencias nacionales como el huracán Katrina.

Los gobernadores de los estados fronterizos expresaron opiniones diferentes. Arnold Schwarzenegger de California y Bill Richardson de Nuevo Méjico criticaron al plan de Bush, pero Janet Napolitano de Arizona y Rick Perry de Tejas parecían verlo más favorable.

Muchos vieron al discurso como un intento eleccionario para atraer a la base ultraderechista del Partido Republicano.

“Dentro de la ala conservadora del Partido Republicano, a quienes este presidente está tratando de aplacar, puede que sea buena política. Pero es una política pésima”, dijo Ted Kulongoski, gobernador de Oregon.

El congresista Jesse Jackson, hijo, dijo que el discurso de Bush era para “Motivar la base. Ese es el mensaje verdaero”. Agregó el congresista demócrata por Illinois, “Esto es porque temen que los demócratas puedan ganar control de la Cámara y el Senado en noviembre”.

Partidarios de los derechos de los inmigrantes están de acuerdo de que la reforma migratoria es necesaria, pero argumentan que la reforma tiene que ser pro inmigrante y no antiinmigrante.

El Sindicato de Trabajadores Agrícolas Unidos dijo en una declaración, “Todo el mundo está de acuerdo de que nuestro sistema migratorio está quebrado. Millones han marchado y expresaron su opinión sobre la creciente preocupación por la reforma migratoria. La solución necesita ser la de incluir una vía clara a la legalización ganada para los inmigrantes indocumentados que están viviendo y contribuyendo a la economía estadounidense”.

En una declaración, el Partido Comunista de Estados Unidos, fuertemente criticó a Bush por usar su discurso para “complacer a los esfuerzos de extrema derecha y racistas de sacar a los inmigrantes del país”. El programa de trabajadores “huéspedes”, dicen los comunistas, “institucionaliza a la vulnerabilidad [de los inmigrantes] y minan la posición de todo trabajador ... El sistema de identificación propuesto para los inmigrantes es un paso hacia una tarjeta de identidad que puede ser extendida a todos los trabajadores”.

Los comunistas notan que “La inmigración indocumentada a través del mundo es un fenómeno mundial causado por la creciente diferencia en riqueza entre y dentro de los países ... La política de comercio de la administración estadounidense obliga a millones ... [de los países de] América Latina, Asia, y África a desarraigarse y buscar empleo aquí”.

La reunificación familiar, derechos civiles y laborales, junto con la regularización de sus estado de inmigrantes, son las demandas claves de los millones de inmigrantes y sus partidarios que han marchado en los meses recientes.

A la hora de cierre, autobuses de activistas de por lo menos 20 estados estaban en camino a Washington para cabildear por varios días y participar en una manifestación el 17 de mayo. Esta manifestación fue convocada por la Alianza Somos América, una coalición de iglesias, sindicatos y otros grupos pro inmigrantes.

El movimiento se enfrenta al reto de prevenir que pasen una ley antiinmigrante. El proyecto Hagel-Martínez, S 2611, ahora conocido como el proyecto Specter, hace casi nada para proteger a los inmigrantes y sus familias.

El proyecto divide a las comunidades de inmigrantes indocumentados para que solo una pequeña parte puedan ser elegible para la ciudadanía o la residencia permanente. Algunos analistas piensan que tan poco como tres o cuatro millones de los 12 indocumentados podrían regularizar su condición de inmigrante bajo este proyecto. El proyecto divide a la gente en tres grupos y los que han estado en el país menos de dos años son excluidos de normalizarse.

Mega-rich families spend millions to repeal estate tax

Fri, 19 May 2006 06:23:00 +0000

“Money to get power, and power to guard the money,” was the motto of the powerful Medici family in 16th century Florence, Italy. It is getting to be a successful modern political strategy for some of America’s wealthiest families today.

A new report by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy shows how 18 of these families, including the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame, spent millions of dollars to push for the repeal of the estate tax.

The estate tax is paid by wealthy heirs when they receive inherited wealth. Using trade associations and influential lobbyists, these extremely wealthy families stand to gain an astounding $71 billion from the repeal.

The White House and Republican leaders are hoping to permanently get rid of the estate tax. About 99.7 percent of Americans are not rich enough to be affected by the estate tax. The existing exemptions will allow their heirs to get whatever is left to them without paying any taxes.

But that other 0.3 percent increasingly find themselves in the role of “the deciders.”

Proponents of repeal have gone to great lengths to convince people that the estate tax is a threat to small businesses and farms. The story of people having to sell the family farm to pay the tax was getting fairly good play until Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston found that there were no known instances of anyone having to sell the family farm due to the estate tax even though President Bush said he had spoken with such farmers in June 2001.

The Republicans even came up with a scary-sounding name for the estate tax that became widely used: the “death tax.”

Getting rid of the estate tax is consistent with the overall thrust of President Bush’s “ownership society,” which is one in which the rules are tilted ever more favorably towards owners, especially the big ones. One goal seems to be to rewrite the tax code so that owners of wealth do not pay taxes on the income that their wealth generates.

Lowering the tax on capital gains has primarily benefited rich people. The same is true for cutting the tax of stock dividends. Only about half of Americans hold any stocks at all, and for those who do it is generally in retirement accounts, where they would not benefit from the stock dividend tax cut.

Many people think that such changes don’t affect them if they are not rich. But since the government does not stop spending money (the Iraq war has cost about $300 billion so far), the result of these changes is that people who get their income from labor rather than ownership — the overwhelming majority of Americans — will end up paying more taxes so that rich people can pay less. Repealing the estate tax would be another big step in this “rich get richer” program, costing the Treasury about $1 trillion in the first decade.

A few months ago, the repeal of the estate tax looked like it would pass Congress. But the anger over rising gasoline prices in the face of record oil company profits has begun to hurt President Bush. Coming on the heels of a succession of scandals and a deeply unpopular war, the gasoline controversy has driven Bush’s approval rating down to a personal worst of 33 percent and has begun to weigh on the Republican party’s prospects for the November congressional elections.

Do the Republicans really want to add another trillion dollars to the future U.S. national debt in an election year, just so a handful of rich families can pass even more wealth to their children? Only if they can do it when no one is looking.

Mark Weisbrot (www.cepr.net/mwbio.htm) is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Reprinted by the author’s permission from Knight Ridder newspapers.

Growing determination to free Cuban Five

Fri, 19 May 2006 05:21:00 +0000

The Cuban Five — Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González, Gerardo Hernández and Fernando González — were defending Cuba against right-wing, Miami-based terrorism when they were arrested by U.S. authorities almost eight years ago.

Despite an international outcry, they remain unjustly imprisoned. They await an appeals court decision, due sometime this year. Their spirits are unbroken.

The Five sent greetings to the Cuban people on May 1. “Today we celebrate Workers’ Day,” they wrote. “The people are all marching together, guided by the Revolution, united in showing support for the social projects we have chosen, built by our heroic efforts.

“We are with you today,” they said. “Yes to the nation, to the Revolution, to socialism!”

At a giant May Day rally in Havana, President Fidel Castro inveighed against U.S. hypocrisy, contrasting the cruel fate of the Five with leeway given Luis Posada Carriles, an admitted terrorist, in his bid for U.S. citizenship. In 1976 Posada bombed a Cuban airliner, killing 73 passengers.

The five anti-terrorist prisoners, Castro said, have been “turned into hostages, even from the North American legal point of view.”

In April, Leonard Weinglass, appeals attorney for Antonio Guerrero, was interviewed by Cuba’s Granma newspaper. He said he is optimistic that the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will uphold last year’s court decision for a new trial, even though it hasn’t decided for the defense in 25 years.

Weinglass said recent publicity about the terrorist activities of Posada and others is good news for the prisoners. It shows that “Cuba has been the victim of an aggression that emanates from the United States.”

“This has been the fundamental defense position we have taken in our case,” he said.

Meanwhile, Geoff Bottoms, leader of the British movement for the Five, bemoans “this awful limbo period when we are all awaiting the outcome of the appeal hearing.”

Even so, support for the Five is continuing to build.

Russian physicist Zhores Alferov recently joined seven other Nobel Prize laureates who had previously called for the prisoners’ freedom. In Portugal on April 29, the Women’s International Democratic Federation did likewise. Nicaraguans rallied for the Five in Managua on May 1. On March 29, the Detroit City Council joined the chorus. On April 12, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers called for the prisoners’ release.

Organized support groups exist in at least 79 countries, including the U.S.

Kgalema Motlanthe, general secretary of the African National Congress, recently headed an ANC delegation to Cuba. He recalled that René, Fernando, and Gerardo had fought against South Africa’s apartheid troops in Angola, and pledged to step up the fight for the freedom of all five men.

Olga Salanueva, wife of René González, responded: “We are not demanding a new trial, but their immediate freedom. A person who has dedicated his life to save the lives of others at the risk of his own life cannot be condemned by any law in the world. Enough of this! Condemn the real terrorists, and let the Five come home.”

Bush speech falls flat: Border militarization dubbed lousy policy

Fri, 19 May 2006 04:32:00 +0000

If President Bush thought he could mobilize his conservative base with anti-immigrant fear-mongering while still appearing “compassionate,” his efforts fell flat.

In his May 15 speech the president promised to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border to provide support for the Border Patrol, as well as funds more high-tech border control mechanisms. Bush also promised sharp expansion of detention facilities for non-Mexican undocumented immigrants caught in the border region, plus allowing local police departments on the border to participate in immigration enforcement.

Without mentioning it by name, Bush hinted support for the current Senate bill that pushes a guest worker program with no labor rights. This program — backed by business interests — is seen as a way to undercut wages and labor rights for all.

Around the country, people who had marched in the streets for immigrant rights gathered in restaurants, social clubs and homes to watch the president’s speech. Most reacted with disappointment to talk of increased border militarization and a renewed push for a guest-worker program, with no concrete action on legalization. Full legalization, family reunification, civic participation and workplace rights are the key demands of the millions of immigrants and supporters who marched during recent months.

The United Farm Workers of America called the speech a “puppet show,” saying that millions who marched have expressed their growing concern on immigration reform. The solution, the union said, must include a “clear path to earned legalization for undocumented immigrants who are living and contributing to the U.S. economy.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “Reasoned border security is important, but it will not fix our broken immigration system.” He called for immigration reform that provides “protection of rights and standards” for all workers including the millions of undocumented workers.

Democrats and even some Republicans questioned the wisdom of straining the National Guard even further at a time when Iraq duty has it stretched thin already. President Bush is proposing “a military solution to break a political stalemate,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, in the official Democratic response. “It could turn into another long-term military deployment.”

While Durbin didn’t rule out using the National Guard for border issues, he said Bush’s plan “raises serious questions about the future of the National Guard” and its ability to train and to respond to national emergencies such as the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Border governors expressed differing opinions: California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico’s Bill Richardson criticized the plan, but Arizona’s Janet Napolitano and Texas’ Rick Perry appeared to be more favorable.

The Mexican government said border militarization would stir up anti-U.S. feelings in that country, and indeed, Mexico’s political opposition strongly denounced the move.

Currently 10,060 border agents patrol the U.S.-Mexican border, while 980 agents patrol the U.S.-Canadian border, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Louis Velasquez, a representative of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which has been outspoken in its opposition to any laws that criminalize undocumented immigrants, said, “We will now be two friendly countries with a militarized border in between. Please tell me why you have to have soldiers to meet people who are coming over to get a job? They are not a danger.”

Many saw the speech as an election year attempt to appeal to the far-right wing of the Republican Party with the imprint of GOP puppetmaster Karl Rove.

Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-Ill.) said “Rove’s fingerprints” were all over it, especially in its “illegitimate” use of anti-immigrant fear. “Motivate the base! That’s the real message,” the congressman said. “This is because they fear Democrats could regain control of the House and Senate in November.”

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski said trying to “appease” the Republican far-right may be “good politics. But it’s lousy policy.”

Busloads of activists from at least 20 states were headed for Washington for several intensive days of lobbying and a May 17 immigrant rights rally on the National Mall called by We Are America Alliance, a loose coalition of churches, unions and other pro-immigrant groups.

The Senate is discussing the Hagel-Martinez compromise bill, now confusingly called the Specter Bill, S 2611. At least 30 amendments are scheduled for debate.

S 2611 faces strong opposition from the immigrant rights movement. The bill slices and dices undocumented immigrant communities so that only a small proportion would be eligible for citizenship or permanent residency.

Other problematic aspects of the bill are the creation of a national identity card and a large guest worker program with no enforceable labor safeguards.

Illinois lawmakers seek Bush impeachment

Fri, 12 May 2006 07:43:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Last month Illinois state Rep. Karen Yarbrough (D) introduced into the General Assembly House Joint Resolution 125, calling for procedures of impeachment to begin against President George W. Bush for violating his oath of office.

In a recent telephone interview, Yarbrough talked about how she came across Section 603 of Thomas Jefferson’s “Manual of Parliamentary Practice and Rules of the House of Representatives,” written in 1801, and immediately saw its contemporary relevance.

According to the manual, “There are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion. … [One of them is] by charges transmitted from the legislature of a state.”

Yarbrough’s resolution points out that the Bush administration has used the National Security Agency to illegally spy on American citizens, broke the Geneva Conventions’ torture provisions, and lied to the world and misguided the nation into a deadly war with Iraq.

Yarbrough said she “discovered a trap door that Jefferson left us,” and introduced the resolution to see if it would get traction. She mentioned that people are “kind of squeamish about doing something during an election year.”

Nonetheless, “even some Republicans have supported this resolution,” she said. So far it has 20 co-sponsors.

Although the Illinois General Assembly spring session is over and it won’t meet again until November, Yarbrough feels that the resolution has “given people a reason to hope.”

“The bottom line,” she said, “is that Bush is bad news, and that he has decided to do his crime, and those crimes are grounds for impeachment.”

Issues like health care here at home are important, said Yarbrough, yet the Bush administration is spending billions of dollars on the war in Iraq.

“We think about the lies, our young people in harm’s way, 2,400 of them coming home in body bags. Bush misled the country about Iraq.”

Yarbrough said she has heard from many countries as far away as “New Zealand, England, Cuba, Spain and all over the world, that this president has not done the right thing.”

“Sometimes when Congress doesn’t act,” she said, “the state must step up and do something.”

Yarbrough agrees with the strategy to “take back” Congress from the right-wing Republicans and build voter confidence.

Paul Koretz, a member of the California State Assembly, and Vermont state Rep. Dave Zuckerman have also introduced impeachment resolutions, and are expected to have debates of their own legislatures.

Democratic state legislators in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina are also considering impeachment or censure proposals.

In Chicago, a group of activists including administrative law judge Ann Breen-Greco has sent a letter to the City Council asking aldermen to adopt their own impeachment resolution.

If Yarbrough’s resolution passes the Illinois General Assembly, it would then go to the U.S. House, where it would be referred to the Judiciary Committee.

Toussaint released, contract battle continues

Fri, 12 May 2006 04:54:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, was released from jail on the morning of April 28 after serving less than five days of a 10-day sentence for violating the anti-strike provisions of New York state’s Taylor Law.

Toussaint’s jailing was accompanied by daily attacks on his character from certain segments of the media. But it also became a focus of mass solidarity. A march of thousands of workers across the Brooklyn Bridge protesting his jailing was followed by a round-the-clock vigil outside the jail. At the vigil, TWU members were joined by other unionists, leaders and activists in community groups, elected officials and members of the general public.

Toussaint’s early release in the midst of this highly charged atmosphere led many observers to conclude the solidarity actions had an impact.

Sentencing Judge Theodore T. Jones originally stated that Toussaint would not be eligible for early release. However, the growing vigil, the continued public focus and the obviously increasing prominence and prestige of Toussaint caused alarm in some sectors. An additional factor may have been that the route of NYC’s April 29 peace march would have brought hundreds of thousands of protesters past Toussaint’s jail cell.

After his release, Toussaint marched with the lead contingent of the April 29 demonstration. Marching behind him was the largest labor antiwar contingent ever. An anti-Taylor-Law “sub-theme” was indicated by the double-sided signs carried by labor marchers, calling for peace on one side and for Taylor Law reform on the other.

Meanwhile, despite transit workers’ recent overwhelming approval of the originally rejected contract, the Metropolitan Transit Authority remains intransigent. The agency is refusing to recognize the membership re-vote that approved the contact, saying that the original “no” vote rendered the contract null and void.

On May 1, the union filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court to compel the MTA to accept the result of the re-vote. The union cited several precedents for such action, and noted that when the Public Employees Relations Board rendered its decision providing for binding arbitration after the initial “no” vote, it explicitly said a re-vote on the original contract was possible and that the MTA still had legal obligations under the original agreement.

Segments of the media are calling upon the MTA to accept the agreement, as are leading political figures, including Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Speaker of the State Assembly Sheldon Silver. Even TWU adversary Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called for acceptance of the re-vote.

The union is asking supporters to deluge the MTA with letters and phone calls demanding that it accept the TWU members’ contract vote.

Looking beyond the contract, the union plans to kick off a campaign for Taylor Law reform with a day of rank-and-file lobbying at the State Capitol in Albany on May 16.

GOP mounts stealth attack on fuel efficiency standards

Fri, 12 May 2006 04:40:00 +0000

Under the pretense of doing something about gas prices, President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress are seeking to gut the nation’s 30-year-old system for mandating fuel efficiency of cars and trucks. At the same time, their effort to weaken environmental restrictions on refinery construction failed in the House, with many Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.

It was part of a flurry of activity as public outrage over soaring prices and eye-popping oil corporation profits, coupled with deepening concern over the nation’s energy and environmental policies, has Republicans worried about whether they can hold onto their lock on Congress in the fall elections.

Last week the Bush administration asked Congress to allow the White House to radically change rules established in 1975 requiring auto corporations to meet “fleet-wide” fuel efficiency standards for the vehicles they produce.

Consumer advocates and environmental groups are pushing the administration to raise the miles-per-gallon requirement, currently 27.5 mpg, as a way to lower gas prices by reducing fuel demand, and help the environment. The Sierra Club says technology exists to make all new vehicles average 40 mpg within 10 years. That would save the average driver more than $5,000 over the life of the vehicle, even including the added cost of fuel-saving technology. It would also save the U.S. 4 million barrels of oil per day, “equal to what America currently imports from the entire Persian Gulf and could ever get out of the Arctic Refuge, combined,” the group’s Global Warming Program director Daniel Becker said in a statement.

Instead, the administration wants to throw out the current system, known as corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, substituting one that sets fuel efficiency standards by vehicle size with higher standards for smaller cars and weaker ones for bigger vehicles like the profit-laden SUVs, Sierra Club energy spokesperson Brendan Bell told the World.

“This is not the first time this administration has engaged in smoke and mirrors,” said Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America. Rather than promoting fuel efficiency and lower gas prices, Bush’s corporate-friendly plan offers automakers “tremendous incentives” to push sales of gas-guzzlers, Cooper said.

On May 2, 10 states sued the federal government seeking to force the Bush administration to strengthen gas mileage requirements for SUVs and pickup trucks. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal called the Bush plan “a complete sham and a gift to the auto industry.”

Several bills before the House call for raising fuel efficiency standards as well as promoting alternative energy sources, mass transit and similar steps. A measure introduced in the Senate by Byron Dorgan (N.D.) would impose a windfall profits tax on energy corporations. Even though many of these have bipartisan support, the Republican leadership has bottled them up in committees. Meanwhile, the administration and many Republicans in Congress are pushing expansion of oil drilling in protected coastal and wilderness areas, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Last week, the House overwhelmingly passed legislation making energy price gouging a federal crime. But that move is seen by some as empty posturing, since the administration itself would define price gouging. “The problem is they are setting a standard nobody is going to cross,” said Carl Wood, a former California public utilities commissioner who now consults for unions. “I think it’s a red herring. I don’t think you’re going to end up with any definition of price gouging that the industry is going to agree to. It misdirects the public.”

Unfortunately, said Wood, in Congress “there’s more than a reluctance, there’s an absolute terror of doing anything that would fundamentally reduce the profits of the oil companies.”

Steps to reduce demand for oil, like raising car mileage requirements, are “one of the fundamental solutions,” Wood said. But more is required. Regulating the refinery industry is “a biggie,” he added.

The California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights charges that oil refiners, most of which are directly owned or controlled by the oil giants, are manipulating the market and deliberately restricting supply. The group urges California residents to send an online letter to their state lawmakers, demanding regulation of oil supplies and a windfall profits tax on oil companies. The letter (available at www.consumerwatchdog.org) says the Legislature should act to “return some of the oil companies’ windfall to consumers who are suffering these unaffordable pump prices.”

Gasoline prices nationally are up about 70 cents over a year ago. Increases have been particularly sharp on the east and west coasts, with California — at an average $3.34 a gallon —showing an 82-cent rise.

A May 4-8 New York Times/CBS poll found 79 percent disapproved of Bush’s handling of gas prices. In a late April USA Today/Gallup poll, 70 percent favored gasoline price controls, two-thirds favored a “significant” additional tax on oil company profits, and 56 percent favored breaking up big U.S. oil companies.

8 Mos. After Katrina: Dont Come Back to New Orleans Unless You Intend to Fight for Justice'

Wed, 10 May 2006 05:25:00 +0000

On Monday, April 17, 2006, two bodies were found buried beneath what used to be a home in the Lower 9th Ward. Their discovery raised to 17 the number of Hurricane Katrina fatalities that have been discovered in New Orleans in the past month and a half. Katrina is now directly blamed for the deaths of 1,282 Louisiana residents. Eight months after Katrina, the state reports 987 people are still missing.

Chief Steve Glynn, who oversees the New Orleans Fire Department search effort that found the latest two bodies told CNN: “You want to put it to rest at some point. You want to feel like it’s over and it’s just not yet.”

Eight months after Katrina, there are still nearly 300,000 people who have not returned to New Orleans. While we can hope that our community is nearing the end of finding bodies, the struggle for justice for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people continues.

Election Blues

The right to vote remains displaced from New Orleans.

In what was billed as “the most important election in the history of New Orleans,” only 36 percent of those registered voted in the recent city elections. Turnout was heavy and high in the mostly prosperous and white areas of Uptown where little damage occurred and exceptionally low in the heavily damaged and mostly black areas of the New Orleans East, Gentilly and the Ninth Ward - where some precincts reported as few as 15 percent voter participation.

The state refusal to set up satellite voting for those displaced outside the state resulted in exactly the disenfranchisement predicted.

While Iraqis who had not lived in Iraq in years were helped to vote in the U.S. by our government, people forced out of state by Katrina for seven months were not allowed to vote where they are temporarily living. This has national implications. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that in the 2002 U.S. Senate seat runoff between incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell, the Orleans factor made the difference for Landrieu. The senator won Orleans by 78,900 votes, compared with her statewide lead of 42,012. In the 2003 gubernatorial runoff between Democrat Kathleen Blanco and Republican Bobby Jindal, Blanco won statewide by 54,874 votes. She won by a margin of 49,741 votes in New Orleans. Worse, the systematic exclusion of the displaced gives fuel to those who do not want the poor to return and helps create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low turnout in poor neighborhoods where the displaced could not drive back in to vote can now be taken as an indication of lack of interest and an excuse to further silence their voices. As the Washington Post noted: “How many people turned out to vote in each precinct was being viewed as an indicator of which neighborhoods are likely to be rebuilt; in many abandoned neighborhoods, people fear that residents who have left for good would not vote, revealing their lack of interest in the neighborhood and the city. Turnout could offer clues to the future racial makeup of the city.”

Healthcare Crisis

New Orleans has lost 77 percent of its primary care doctors, 70 percent of its dentists and 89 percent of its psychiatrists since Katrina.

National Public Radio reported that the few hospitals in New Orleans are dangerously overburdened, especially emergency rooms. Nationally, it takes an average of 20 minutes to take a patient from an ambulance waiting in front of hospital to emergency room. In the New Orleans area, according to one surgeon at the East Jefferson Hospital, load times are usually 2 hours, but sometimes more. The longest time he’s seen is 6 hours, 40 minutes, of a patient waiting in ER driveway to receive care.

Non-emergency care in New Orleans is also in crisis. With the closure of Charity Hospital and most public health clinics, it is very difficult to get a child tested for lead poisoning or other toxins - even though recent reports indicate there are 46 environmental “hot spots” in the city. One corner, Magnolia and First in Central City, showed lead levels of 3,960 parts per million - nearly 10 times the acceptable level. Dr. Howard Mielke of Xavier University says 40 percent of the city soil has elevated lead levels.

Among the displaced, the healthcare situation is much worse. The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health surveyed hundreds of the thousands of families living in FEMA trailers and found: Nearly half of the parents surveyed reported that at least one of their children had emotional or behavioral difficulties that the child didn’t have before the hurricane; More than half the women caregivers showed evidence of clinically-diagnosed psychiatric problems, such as depression or anxiety disorders; On average, households have moved 3.5 times since the hurricane, some as many as nine times, often across state lines; More than one-fifth of the school-age children who were displaced were either not in school, or had missed 10 or more days of school in the past month.

Public education phase out

New Orleans has become the national experiment for charter schools. Pre-Katrina 60,000 students attended over 115 New Orleans public schools. Now about 12,000 students attend public school in New Orleans. However, only four public schools are operated by the elected school board - the rest are now privately operated public charter schools or operated directly by the state. State authorities recently approved opening 22 more charter schools in the fall. Still many children in New Orleans are not in school at all because no schools have opened in their neighborhoods.

Where Has All the Money Gone? Robin Hood in Reverse

People who visit New Orleans are amazed at how devastated it still is. Where has all the money gone, they ask? Follow the money. “How many contractors does it take to haul a pile of tree branches?” asked the Washington Post. If it's government work, at least four: a contractor, his subcontractor, the subcontractor's subcontractor, and finally, the local man with a truck and chainsaw. The big contractors typically receive between $28 to $30 a cubic yard for the debris. By the time they subcontract the work out to smaller and smaller companies, the guy in the truck receives about $6 to $8 per cubic yard. The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver of federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi from Army Corps of Engineers. The paper reported that the company does not own a single dump truck! All they do is subcontract. Ashbritt, however, had recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also trucked $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004. Draw your own conclusions about where the money has gone.

Federal Housing Funds for Rehab of Private Housing

Unfortunately, not a dime of the billions of federal housing reconstruction money from the Community Development Block Grant has yet made it to New Orleans. Seventy percent of CDBG money is usually targeted to low and moderate income families. HUD has already lowered that to 50 percent and for poorest among us, there will be little help at all.

Despite the fact that New Orleans was over half renters and that 84,000 rental units were destroyed or damaged, only 6,000 low-income rental units are part of state plan.

People are already living in damaged houses all over the city, many without electricity. A night trip through New Orleans neighborhoods shows people on porches surrounded by candles. Louisiana calls its CDBG plan the “The Road Home.” Obviously, few of the working poor are going to be able to go on this road trip.

Public Housing Closed

In 1996, New Orleans had 13,694 units of public housing. In August 2005, they reported 7,381. Now? Maybe 700. Residents returning to New Orleans who want to move back in their apartments are being told they forfeited their public housing apartments because they abandoned them! Abandoned apartments which have been forcibly closed for months? Many apartments are closed by locked metal shutters and surrounded by chain link fence. The housing authority also has a secret list of 1407 units of housing scheduled to be demolished. The housing authority let go 290 employees, mostly maintenance. Does it sound like they are planning to reopen?

In New Orleans, public housing was occupied by women, mostly working, children and the elderly. How are they supposed to return when private rents have skyrocketed?

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, whose agency is now running the local housing authority, stated clearly that public housing residents should not be allowed to return. In an interview with the Times-Picayune, Jackson said: “Some of the people shouldn't return. The developments were gang-ridden by some of the most notorious gangs in this country. People hid and took care of those persons because they took care of them. Only the best residents should return. Those who paid rent on time, those who held a job and those who worked.' The blunt-spoken Jackson, who is black, acknowledged his comments might be seen as racially offensive. He told a white reporter, “If you said this, they would say you were racist.”

Signs of Hope

Despite our very serious problems, there are also serious signs of hope. For every campaign of injustice and ugliness, there are people struggling despite the odds to create opportunities for justice and beauty. The people of New Orleans, joined with allies from across the nation and indeed the world, continue to resist the forces of injustice and to create opportunities for decency, community and equity. Here are a few examples.

St. Augustine’s Church, one of the oldest black catholic churches in the nation, was abruptly closed by the Archdiocese of New Orleans in the months after Katrina. St. Augustine was dedicated in 1842 by the free black citizens of New Orleans and welcomed both free and slave as worshippers. It served both as a multiracial church and a center of community activities. After continual petitions, vigils and protests by community, neighborhood and church members, including direct action where some young people locked themselves inside the rectory, the Catholic hierarchy reversed itself. The joyous reopening of St. Augustine is a great cultural, spiritual, community and neighborhood victory.

Lower Ninth Ward residents have had no public schools open since Katrina. They wanted their neighborhood school, Martin Luther King, Jr., repaired and fixed up after it took in ten feet of water. Authorities refused to fix it up. So the residents, joined by members of Common Ground and the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, decided to do it themselves. They started gutting the moldy parts and repairing and re-painting the school. They continued until the State Superintendent of Education called the police and stopped the work saying the neighbors were doing more harm than good. After days of public outcry of support of the volunteers, the State backed off. Volunteers went back to work, creating a place for education in the neighborhood as well as a symbol of resistance.

Mildred Battle is 70 and gets around in a wheelchair. She is one of more than 1,000 families who been displaced from their apartment in the St. Bernard Housing Development in New Orleans since Katrina. Despite coming back three times, she was never allowed to go back to retrieve her belongings. Her apartment has heavy metal sheets locked into place over the windows and a new heavy metal door for which she is not allowed a key. The ramp to her building that allowed her to roll up to her apartment is blocked by a block-long chain link fence to keep all residents out.

This month, Ms. Battle’s wheelchair was the first one through the gate in the chain link fence as dozens of residents past the lone security guard and broke back into their own homes. Friends of Ms. Battle helped her retrieve a picture of her dead son and a broken glass Martin Luther King award she received in the 1990s. She clutched them to her breast and cried saying, “This has been my home for decades. I want to come home.” She and the other residents, along with veteran public housing organizers and activists from C3, a local anti-war organization, vow there will be more direct actions to enforce the rights of public housing residents to return home. Before this action, veteran organizer Endesha Jukali yelled through a bullhorn to the crowd outside the St. Bernard Housing Development. “Those who attack public housing refuse to understand that we are talking about poor women and children, the poorest of the poor. Why attack them? Some people say do not come back to New Orleans if you don’t intend to work. We say something else. Don’t come back to New Orleans if you don’t intend to fight! The only way that we are going to be able to come back, is to fight for justice every step of the way!” He then dropped the bullhorn and started pushing Ms. Battle in her wheelchair across the street and through the gate so she could break into her own home.

Bill Quigley is a civil and human rights lawyer who teaches at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. Quigley@loyno.edu

Blaming immigrants lets the real culprits off the hook

Tue, 09 May 2006 08:04:00 +0000

The dramatic events in Congress and on the streets have intensified the national debate about immigration. Some polls show the public agreeing that immigration is “out of control” and that “something must be done.” But there are clear indications that the public is not averse to giving the undocumented a break.

Anti-immigrant forces such as the Minutemen and FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) have laid down a barrage of misinformation, repeated ad nauseam on talk radio, CNN’s Lou Dobbs show and Fox Cable TV, and in the pages of the Washington Times. This misinformation seeps out into the mainstream media. “Findings” from the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies are retailed as if they were objective science.

We are told that immigrants, especially undocumented ones, take jobs from Americans, drag down our wages, cause unemployment and poverty among African Americans, use up social services, increase crime and the risk of terrorism, threaten public health, cause the current health insurance crisis and destroy the environment.

From the wilder elements: Mexicans contaminate our culture and undermine the English language, breed like flies, and are a secret army sent by President Fox to “reconquer” the southwestern states that the USA grabbed between 1836 and 1853.

These false accusations range from the superficially plausible to the absurd, but all serve to get powerful interests off the hook for societal problems by using immigrants as scapegoats. Here’s how:

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, private contractors brought in large numbers of immigrant day laborers for the cleanup. The complaint was that these immigrants displaced locals, including many African-Americans, who had just seen their homes and livelihoods destroyed and could surely have used the money.

Indeed, in some cases contractors imported immigrants rather than hiring local people, or even fired better-paid U.S. workers to hire immigrants at lower pay. But how could that happen?

Immediately after Katrina, the Bush administration suspended all kinds of regulations, including the Davis-Bacon Act and affirmative action rules in contracting and hiring. This took away the only mechanisms for ensuring that African-Americans were hired and adequately paid and protected. This is the fault of the government and greedy contractors, not of the immigrant workers, many of whom ended up being put in danger of their lives and then stiffed of their wages.

Beyond Katrina, unemployment and poverty among African Americans stem from:

* long-term and present-day racist discrimination,

* the impact of corporate globalization, imperialism and technology on manufacturing jobs,

* welfare “reform” which made things so much worse for poor people,

* the across-the-board assault on affirmative action,

* what Jonathan Kozol calls “savage inequality” between elite, mostly white, and minority schools,

* the drastic decline, in real dollars, of the minimum wage,

* the destruction of college financial aid,

* the moves to dismantle voting rights,

* the decades-long weakening of U.S. labor law,

* the belittling and marginalization of the righteous movement for reparations for slavery.

Why is nothing ever done about the inner city schools? Why is the minimum wage not raised? Why are employers who discriminate not sanctioned? Why isn’t the health insurance crisis resolved?

And why, given all this, are corporations (including those who gain extra profits from exploiting undocumented workers) and the rich given obscene tax cuts, while billions are wasted on illegal wars?

Not immigrant workers, but profit-hungry corporations and reactionary politicians are responsible for these outrages.

Attacks on immigrants phrased in terms of hypocritical solicitude for the well being of U.S. workers and minorities come from the most improbable sources. Congressman Tancredo (R-Colo.) wants to throw immigrants out, but supports a temporary worker program in which the workers would have no rights. Congressman Rohrbacher (R-Calif.) proposes to replace undocumented farm workers with prison inmates, a move from serf labor to slave labor. This tells us something about the real goals of the anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Since it is physically impossible to deport all the 12 million undocumented, anti-immigrant campaigns and repressive laws serve only to make immigrants more vulnerable and more willing to accept wages and working conditions that citizens and legal residents would not. This undercuts all workers.

The solution to the problem of undocumented immigration is to get rid of the “undocumentedness” rather than to get rid of the immigrants. By making sure that all workers have full rights, we all advance. The immigrant rights street demonstrations themselves show that legalized immigrant workers would stand up and fight for better conditions in the workplace and community.

So it is in all of our interests to support the complete legalization, with a clear path to citizenship, of the undocumented immigrants, and an immediate end to the raids and deportations.

Emile Schepers is an immigrant rights activist.

EDITORIAL: Our anthem nuestro himno

Fri, 05 May 2006 07:31:00 +0000

Always on the lookout for wedge issues to divide us, President Bush waded in on the side of “English only,” proclaiming it is wrong to sing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish.

“I think people who want to be citizens ought to learn English,” Bush opined. “And they ought to sing the anthem in English.”

A background check revealed that the Star Spangled Banner was sung in Spanish at Bush rallies when he was campaigning for Texas governor and at his inauguration in Austin. The hypocrite is once again pandering to jingoism, pouring fuel on anti-immigrant hysteria. His efforts in recent days have also included Homeland Security dragnet roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants, seeking to repress the rising movement for immigrant rights.

The U.S. Bureau of Education translated the Star Spangled Banner into Spanish in 1919. It has been rendered into German, French, Samoan, Cajun and Yiddish. Translation of songs is a way of expressing admiration for a nation’s culture, and the Spanish translation of the Star Spangled Banner is no exception.

On the Internet, Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi’s stirring rendition can be heard by clicking on The New York Times or NPR web sites. With its Latin rhythm, guitars and chorus, her version soars. Many people tuning in to sports events these days hear wildly diverse performances of the national anthem including rhythm and blues, pop, and jazz versions. It is just another sign that our country is becoming more multiracial, multinational and multilingual, a gorgeous mosaic we should celebrate, not fear.

Those who want to reverse this trend are like King Canute ordering the ocean tides to recede. The Spanish version is not a word-for-word translation, but the question it ends with still must be answered: “Despliega aun su hermosura estrellada, Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?” — Does the sacred flag still display its starry beauty, over the land of the free?

Will we as a nation do what is right for 12 million undocumented people, and for all our country’s workers, by ensuring their labor and civil rights while providing them a path to citizenship?

U of Miami janitors celebrate victory

Fri, 05 May 2006 05:58:00 +0000

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — After two months of struggle, including picket lines, demonstrations and a three-week hunger strike, striking janitors at the University of Miami have won the right to unionize through the method of their choice, a card check process.

At 5 p.m. on May 1, the Service Employees International Union announced an agreement with UNICCO, the private contractor that provides janitorial services on the UM campus.

The spontaneous celebration among the workers and their supporters camped out at a “Freedom City” on the edge of campus was so spirited it drowned out the sounds of rush-hour traffic on nearby U.S. Highway 1.

Under the agreement, all striking workers will be able return to their previous jobs. Zoila Marsuli, a janitor who had been fired for her union activities, will receive back pay covering the time she was out of work up to the beginning of the strike.

On May 3, the janitors returned to work with their heads held high.

Workers will sign new union pledge cards, with results to be verified by the American Arbitration Association, an independent agency. SEIU has until Aug. 1 to collect signatures from a supermajority — 60 percent — of the 410 UNICCO janitors on the UM campuses and at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

The agreement includes a code of conduct that says neither side will interfere with the workers’ decisions, a stipulation that should put an end to UNICCO’s anti-union intimidation and harassment.

The workers vowed to obtain union authorization cards from well beyond the 60 percent minimum to demonstrate to UNICCO that there will be no division between janitors, only unity. They said they are aiming for a signed contract before classes begin in late August.

The workers and their supporters, including other labor activists, clergy and students, said this historic agreement will change the face of South Florida. No longer must low-wage workers settle for “their lot in life,” for below-poverty wages without benefits, for super-exploitation. The agreement opens the region for unionization, and the UM janitors pledged to help other workers achieve similar victories.

Workers and SEIU representatives alike credited unity for this victory — unity among workers and unity between workers and students, faculty, clergy and the wider community.

One participant said the victory was “a sweet way to celebrate International Workers Day!”

Labor summit: Beat Bush agenda, save affirmative action!

Fri, 05 May 2006 05:54:00 +0000

DETROIT — A clarion call for unity was sounded at a Labor Summit on Affirmative Action and Segregation here April 28. Conference-goers heard the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and local civil rights and labor leaders urge the civil rights movement, labor and their allies to turn out the vote in November to defeat the Bush agenda.

Nearly 1,000 people attended the summit, which was initiated by the Detroit NAACP.

In 2006, Michigan is ground zero in a national struggle for equality. An initiative to outlaw affirmative action is on the November ballot. It was introduced into Michigan by California millionaire Ward Connerly, whose paid signature collectors deceptively told signers they were supporting civil rights.

Besides destroying affirmative action in Michigan, the measure is meant to help the Republican Party draw its base to the polls.

Detroit NAACP President Rev. Wendell Anthony said the state could either be a model for the nation or a starting point for a new assault on democracy. “Michigan is the citadel of labor and civil rights,” he declared. “We cannot allow someone from the outside to divide our house.”

Affirmative action is about giving people the opportunity to compete on a more level playing field, said Granholm, a Democrat. She warned that both Michigan’s Republican-controlled Legislature and the state’s Supreme Court are turning back the clock on labor and civil rights.

A negative high court ruling on the constitutionality of requiring photo identification at the polls will jeopardize the voting rights of 370,000 voters who do not have Michigan-issued photo driver’s licenses. Forcing them to pay for a state photo ID will be the equivalent of a poll tax, Granholm said, adding that Republicans “will try to manipulate every institution possible to win.”

The governor said the Republican Legislature is “all about division” — rural residents from city dwellers, Black from white, and haves from have-nots. She said the Legislature has repeatedly singled out Detroit for punishment by cutting funding for the city’s Wayne State University and earmarking mass transit funds and increased tax revenues for every city except Detroit.

Lowery, a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said America’s “soul” is in greater peril than it was 50 years ago. Quoting retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, he said the current assault on the judiciary is a prelude to dictatorship, adding that it is time for a rebirth of labor, civil rights and women’s groups.

Lowery warned that our democracy is also threatened when corporate executives make 400 times the average worker’s wage, and a handful of people have more than they will ever need, while others have so little.

Jackson, head of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, emphasized the common threads that bind all workers and people of color. He told the crowd that NAFTA has allowed subsidized U.S. agricultural products to undercut Mexican farmers, forcing millions to abandon their farms. Job losses in the auto industry, he said, are not caused by undocumented workers, but by U.S. trade policies.

Detroit NAACP Executive Director Heaster Wheeler pointed out that from gay marriage to immigration, the Bush administration is using weapons of “mass distraction” to split the people’s movement. “Talk of building a wall with Mexico is foolishness, unacceptable. We don’t talk of building a wall with Canada,” he added.

State AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney, a leader in the effort to save affirmative action, said that with 5 million more people impoverished because of Bush’s policies, and the wealthy becoming wealthier, “this is an election we cannot afford to lose.”

United we march — Sí se puede!

Fri, 05 May 2006 04:16:00 +0000

It was a May 1 like no other. On the day celebrated around the world as International Workers Day, 2 million-plus people marched in the U.S. for justice and a path to citizenship for immigrant workers.

More than a million filled the streets of Los Angeles in two marches, one midday and one in the late afternoon. Maria Elena Durazo, interim head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, emceed the after-work march. She received a rousing ovation after chanting a major theme of the actions, “Hoy marchamos, mañana votamos” — “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.”

In Chicago, where May Day originated, a march of up to 700,000 immigrants and their supporters wound up with a massive rally at Grant Park near Lake Michigan. Rally speakers included nearly all the city’s labor union leadership, national AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, Democratic Reps. Luis Gutierrez and Jan Schakowsky and Cardinal Francis George.

Working-class families — men with cowboy hats and calloused hands, grandmothers with lined faces and gold-toothed smiles, teenagers with cell phones and children holding their parents’ hands — walked past the monument to the Haymarket martyrs whose struggle gave birth to May Day. The marchers were overwhelmingly Mexican and other Latino immigrants but also included Irish, Polish, Arab, and Asian American contingents and many labor, student, religious and gay and lesbian supporters of immigrant rights.

They carried signs reading, “We want legalization,” “We are not criminals, we are workers,” and “Immigrants forged America.” Dozens of factories, restaurants and other businesses throughout the city and suburbs closed or gave employees the day off to participate in the march.

In Los Angeles, the midday downtown march called for an economic boycott and full legalization, and the late afternoon march, aimed at allowing participation for those who went to work and school, called for comprehensive reform. The people voted with their feet for both actions. The Democrat-led state Legislature did not meet May 1, following the lead of untold numbers of businesses that honored the immigrant rights efforts and closed for the day.

At the Long Beach/Los Angeles harbors, where 40 percent of the nation’s imports are unloaded, a boycott organized by the predominantly Latino port truckers significantly slowed down port activity.

May 1 actions organized to influence the immigration reform debate in the Senate took place in numerous cities including Seattle, Detroit, New York, New Orleans and Orlando, Fla. The actions, including boycotts in some areas, opposed harsh legislation like HR 4437, passed by the House in December, which would criminalize the 12 million-plus people living here without documents and anyone who helps them. The movement is demanding legalization, not criminalization.

“This issue affects all of us, all immigrant communities,” said Chris Zala, from the Indo-American Center in the heart of Chicago’s South Asian community. The center, which serves some 10,000 people a year with civics lessons and advocacy work, would be negatively affected by measures like HR 4437. “We should be able to serve,” said Zala, who was born in India.

Jose Artemio Arrellano, a suburban school janitor and SEIU member and a key organizer of Chicago’s May 1 action, urged youth to go to school, pursue a college education, get involved in the community and learn how to change the system.

“Register and vote,” he said, “and demonstrate to the electoral process our strength, numbers and power. The future is in your hands.”

With recent polls showing that registered voters are rejecting Republicans and their agenda by a 15 percent margin, the immigrant rights upsurge could tip the balance in this November’s congressional races.

Many Chicago schools reported higher than usual absentee rates. In high schools where a majority of students are Latino, as many as 80 percent were absent.

Kelly High School sophomore Isamar Romero told the World she wanted to march because “it shows that anybody who tries to go against any race, it doesn’t matter what nationality you are, we will be united in the end.”

Isaac Santiago, 20, stood outside the local TCS wireless store he manages, watching hundreds of marchers pass through Chicago’s Pilsen community. He said if it were up to him he would have closed the store and marched, but his boss insisted that he stay open.

“You have everybody here — white, Black and Brown. We got to support each other,” he said.

Terrie Albano contributed to this article.