People Before Profit blog

Conference aims to grow civil rights/labor alliance

Fri, 25 May 2007 04:28:00 +0000

The Communist Party’s African American Equality Commission will hold a conference in St. Louis on June 8-10.

Jarvis Tyner, CPUSA executive vice chair, told the World that the conference is aimed at bringing party members and friends together from across the country to share their experiences in the fight against racism and for equality, and then return to their home states and build on the conference’s collective conclusions.

When “the existence of racism and inequality still prevails,” Tyner said, “it weakens the fight for democracy, peace and justice in general and prevents a better life for all working people.”

During the conference, there will be three panels: one on the state of Black America; one on, in Tyner’s words, “the growing upsurge in the Black community”; and, finally, a panel on building the Communist Party in the African American community.

On the current upsurge, Tyner noted that the 2006 congressional elections would not have turned out the way they did without the African American vote, which, Tyner said, was “nearly unanimous.”

“African Americans understood what was at stake in that election, after 30 years or more of assaults by the Republicans on the fundamental principles and practice and enforcement around civil rights,” Tyner said. “That vote was a call for a stepping up of the struggle against racism, and the Communist Party fully endorses that spirit, relates to it and is a part of it.”

He said, “Our job is to bring together a coalition composed of labor and all of the people’s progressive forces to understand the priority of the fight against racism. The labor/African American alliance is decisive to this.”

The conference will be multiracial, reflecting the CPUSA’s conviction that the fight against racism is a fight that benefits working people of all races and nationalities.

Tyner said it is being hosted in St. Louis because the Missouri party “is one of our finest districts in terms of the presence of Black workers and links to the labor movement, the civil rights movement and the fight against racism.” Tyner expects 100 people to turn out for the conference and related public events.

The opening night of the conference will include a public forum on the current situation in the movement against racism and for Black equality.

Tyner noted that the Communist Party USA was founded as a split from the old Socialist Party because “some on the left thought that the issue of race equality and freedom had to be put off.” In that sense, the struggle against racism and for African American equality is “part of the party’s political DNA.”

Among the things the conference will discuss will be increasing the circulation of the People’s Weekly World in the African American community, Tyner said.

dmargolis @pww.org

When the market god isnt worshipped

Fri, 18 May 2007 06:51:00 +0000

The Republicans, the neocons, the fundamentalist right wing, all make a god of “the market.” The market is the be-all and end-all, the ultimate trump card. The market is the solution they propose for everything — oops, wait a moment, not quite everything.

The market is supposed to regulate supply and demand, and is supposed to be “wiser” than government and people and policy and everything else. Except when it isn’t.

For example, Bush now threatens to veto a bill that mandates that the federal government negotiate Medicare drug prices with the drug companies. Supporters of the bill expect that, since the U.S. government, via Medicare, is the pharmaceutical companies’ single biggest customer, such direct negotiations will result in lower drug prices. (The Veterans Administration does this already, saving millions.) You would think that such negotiations between customer and supplier are a regular part of the market, a typical function of normal business relations. Isn’t that supposed to be what Republicans are in favor of?

It turns out that the Republicans favor the market, except when it might impact the profits of their largest contributors. Bush wants to exempt the drug corporations from any downward pressure from “the market.” Hence, his veto threat. Hence, the massive lobbying effort by the pharmaceutical companies to get rid of the negotiation provision in the Medicare bill that passed the House of Representatives a few weeks ago.

Most Republicans and more than a few Democrats have been swayed by lobbying, by massive contributions from drug companies and by pressure from Bush. It looks like the Senate version of the bill (S 3) will not win enough votes to close debate and allow it to proceed. This means, in practical terms, that without a massive counter-lobbying effort by people’s organizations, mandating negotiations over drug prices won’t even get to Bush’s desk, and he’ll be let off the hook of using his third-ever veto (the first was vetoing a bill on loosening restrictions on stem cell research, the second was against the war funding bill that contained timelines).

The real concern of the Republican program is not the market, but the profits and the big political contributions. In the last several election cycles, the pharmaceuticals have been the Republicans’ largest single source of contributions. These companies expect their bought-and-paid-for officials to help protect their excess profits from any government restriction, even when it comes not in the form of regulation but in the form of market pressure.

The massive corporations want it both ways — they appeal to the “needs” of the market and competitiveness when it bolsters their arguments about why they need outsize profits, but they reject the pressure of the market when it might mean less cash in their pockets.

I don’t think that “the market” is the answer to rising health care costs, especially rapidly escalating drug costs, but a little help pushing back on drug prices would be welcome for everyone. Always excepting, of course, the big drug companies themselves.

The lesson from this is that the policies of the Bush administration (and their right-wing and big business allies) can’t be judged on their proclaimed ideological stance (markets are god), nor on the basis of what they spin in their daily briefings for the media (which doesn’t challenge them often enough), nor on the basis of common sense.

The measure of their policies all comes down to profits. Bush’s veto threats (whether on drug prices or the Iraq war) are all about protecting the massive profit-taking of his base, the big corporations. When drug giants, or Halliburton, or Exxon, or Enron, are exposed for fraud, it always comes down to who benefits. To find out the reasons, follow the money.

The real surge in Iraq, the real escalation, is not just sending more troops; it is the tens of thousands of employees of private contractors. Private contractors who are making big money from the war. They see the war as a “growth opportunity,” a new way to get the rest of us to pay them through our taxes.

Bush and his corporate base may talk big about markets, but this veto threat is the proof that it is really profits they worship.

Marc Brodine (marcbrodine @inlandnet.com) is chair of the Washington State ommunist Party.

Faith-based emergency preparedness

Fri, 18 May 2007 06:49:00 +0000

With Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the Walter Reed hospital scandal — maybe you thought that the incompetence of the White House had bottomed out.

But ... here comes another embarrassment bubbling to the surface. While the president keeps popping back to New Orleans for political photo ops showing him posing with Katrina victims, he hasn’t mentioned that his budget whackers have been steadily shortchanging the National Hurricane Center on the money it needs to do its job — which is to give us as accurate a picture as possible of when and where a Big One will hit our people.

Indeed, the center’s new director says that our nation’s hurricane protection program is now underfunded by “hundreds of millions of dollars.” He also warns of another funding failure that could result in disaster during this year’s hurricane season. The center’s QuikSCAT satellite — crucial to providing accurate, up-to-the-minute forecasts of a storm’s intensity and where it’s headed — is about to go on the fritz. He says that the satellite could fail “at any moment.”

The budget gurus had to know that QuikSCAT went up in 1999 with an expected lifespan of five years, so it’s already overdue to be replaced. Yet, even after Katrina in 2005, Mr. Bush’s budgeteers have failed to plan for its replacement. Apparently, the plan is for everyone in a hurricane zone to cross their fingers and pray. Call it “faith-based” emergency preparedness.

The failure to prepare can’t be a matter of money. Yes, it’ll cost about $400 million to replace QuikSCAT, but the Pentagon blows that amount every two days in Iraq. Plus the president wants to spend at least $170 billion to send astronauts to Mars — shouldn’t he put a pittance of that into protecting people here on earth first?

What we have here is another example of incompetence and callousness. Maybe if a Category 5 storm threatened Washington, we’d get our satellite.

Jim Hightower is a national political commentator. This article was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.

About those gas prices

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:59:00 +0000

The most recent round of exorbitant gasoline price hikes is hurting working Americans directly in the pocketbook and indirectly by feeding inflation. It is high time to seek alternatives.

We cannot overestimate the danger posed by global warming and the over-consumption of carbon-based fuels, while America’s ongoing aggressive resource wars seem to pose an equally great a potential threat to human survival. But cutting oil consumption by uncontrolled gasoline price increase is not the way to go. All it means is that those who have the money can continue to drive as though there was no tomorrow, while the rest of us suffer. Or, as Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake!”

The problem is real and immediate, but how do we address it?

We have no short- or medium-term ways to change the irrational urban and rural structures built up over the last half-century that make most of us pathetically dependent on gasoline to get to work or school, and force us to travel miles and miles just to buy a pair of socks. In most of the United States, decent public transport networks are lacking, but these cannot be created from scratch without years of planning and construction, a massive public commitment, and a change of mindset, overcoming the heavily indoctrinated idea that “my car is my freedom, my car is myself!”

Nonetheless, there are still viable short-term alternatives, even though they would demand sacrifice from all of us, not just from the most vulnerable. Among other options, we could significantly lower gas prices, reduce our nation’s oil consumption and slash our production of greenhouse gasses virtually overnight by rationalizing fuel use as was done during World War II, applying price controls and rationing.

The problems of world over-consumption of oil, oil price competition and global warming are not going to be resolved with half-measures, much less by penalizing those who can least afford it. In the ’70s, millions of gasoline ration coupons were printed in this country, only to be destroyed when the immediate crisis passed. This time the crisis is here to stay, and it is time to urgently reexamine our options. Price controls and fuel rationing are desperately needed to save both consumers and the planet. Of course, such “radical” measures will never be approved while the current leadership is in control, but as gas prices keep on rising and climate change becomes more and more lethal, mandatory controls on oil prices and rationalization of consumption are demands we all can and should make.

Owen Williamson is an English teacher in El Paso, Texas

Harlem on my mind

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:56:00 +0000

In this historic center of African American cultural life, Harlem, the main issue today is the lack of affordable housing.

Right now in Harlem, the prices of all forms of housing — from public projects to affordable rental and coop apartments for middle-income families under the city-state-federal Mitchell-Lama program, to condos — are going sky high.

To the developers and the politicians who are in their pockets, Harlem is a gold mine. It is a beautiful community with broad boulevards, lovely parks — including the northern part of Central Park, and a good stock of large apartments with large rooms and high-ceilings. It is one of the few New York neighborhoods that still have a substantial stock of turn-of-the-century brownstones. And there is plenty of rundown housing stock that can be renovated and sold or rented at market rates. There is a lot of money to be made in real estate in this community.

Location, location, location: Harlem is within minutes of midtown’s jobs, culture, business, entertainment and shopping.

If Bush’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), New York Mayor Bloomberg and the developers have their way, there will be no affordable housing left in Harlem. Public housing will be privatized and the cost of housing in Harlem will soar way beyond the financial means of the average Harlem resident.

Currently the median income in Harlem is a little over $24,000. With the high cost of housing, the working-class Black and Latino people who currently live here will not be able to stay. Already tens of thousands have been run out of Harlem and its sister African American community, Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

What is Harlem?

Harlem is its people. It’s not just buildings and streets. What makes Harlem Harlem is the culture, the working-class Black folks who built the large churches, who brought us jazz, R&B and blues, who in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s migrated from the South and the Caribbean and brought wonderful cuisine, music, dancing and style to this community. These are the people who gave us the street sports, the sharp clothes and, most importantly, who supported progressive politicians and artists who had a big impact on the world. They gave us the Harlem Renaissance: Countee Colleen, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Adam Clayton Powell, Ben Davis and Duke Ellington.

Harlem is the capital of Black America, and it has also benefited all of humankind.

If the developers have their way, Harlem as we know it will be gone. It will be gone because working class Black folks and Latinos in east Harlem will be gentrified out. We said in the sixties, “Urban renewal is Negro removal.” That’s what we are still dealing with and it is a huge battle.

It is not unlike what is happening on the Gulf Coast. They are using devastation caused by Katrina to remove thousands of low-income Black families, to gentrify New Orleans and make it a playground mainly for rich white folks. The Black folks from there have been dispersed all over the country. We are losing a sense of community as a people.

This is headed toward the destruction of Black communities, which weakens the political and therefore economic power of our people.

Housing is a big part of the problems of African American life, along with health care, education and the biggest problem of all: jobs. Building quality affordable housing is one of the best answers. We should use the current vacant buildings and empty lots for this purpose.

Such a program will push the prices of all housing down (even luxury housing). It will create public works jobs rebuilding Harlem for its people. It will make it possible for working-class people to stay here. It will preserve the community.

Who will pay for this?

One: restore the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Make them pay their share of taxes. Super-profits ought to mean super-taxes.

Two: end the war in Iraq. Currently we are wasting $250 million a day in Iraq. This war is costing us $1 trillion right now and if it’s not stopped could cost us $2 trillion.

With those two sources alone there is enough money to pay for a national program to restore the ghettos and barrios of our nation.

Frederick Douglass’ brilliant observation from the anti-slavery period needs to be understood today. He said, “Power concedes nothing with out a struggle.” History has shown us that Douglass was right.

Morally, politically and economically, we can’t be passive on this most basic human right — a decent place to live. It’s time to fight.

We need to revive the civil rights movement and organize and confront the powers that control the housing market. With a strong united movement, power will be forced to concede.

A broad movement is rising to demand affordable housing around the slogan “New York is Our Home.” On May 23, thousands of New York tenants will gather at the Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village housing complex in what may be the largest demonstration for affordable housing in many years. The time is now to build a movement for affordable housing in New York City.

Jarvis Tyner (jtyner @cpusa.org) is executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA. This article is based on remarks given at a meeting of Harlem’s Tau Omega chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority earlier this month.

Release of terrorist Posada sparks outrage

Fri, 18 May 2007 03:59:00 +0000

On May 8, Federal Judge Kathleen Carbone cancelled the trial of Luis Posada Carriles on immigration fraud, set for May 11 in El Paso, Texas. She ruled that the government’s handling of the case had major flaws.

As a result, Posada, a self-admitted terrorist who some call “the bin Laden of the Americas,” is again walking free.

Only days before the ruling, the National Security Archives released declassified U.S. intelligence files providing additional evidence that Posada, a Cuban exile and naturalized Venezuelan, planned the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that took 73 lives. The documents portrayed two Posada employees who planted the bombs as desperately trying to contact him after the attack.

Interviewed by telephone, Jose Pertierra, a lawyer who represents Venezuela in the case, told the World, “It’s really disgusting. The mastermind of terror walks a free man in Miami.”

However, Pertierra characterizes the situation now as “markedly different” from that of March 2005, when Posada first arrived in Florida. Today, he said, “Posada is considered to be a terrorist by most Americans who know him.” Pertierra cited recent disapproving op-ed pieces in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, and questioning editorials around the country.

Demonstrations protesting Posada’s release took place across the U.S. on May 11-12. Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) have demanded that anti-terrorism laws be applied to Posada. Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), along with Kucinich and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), has called for a congressional hearing on the government’s role in the case.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing May 10, Delahunt queried Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the Bush administration’s inaction on Posada’s terrorism involvement, without receiving a direct answer.

Venezuela has yet to receive a reply from Washington on its two-year-old request for Posada’s extradition. The Chavez government is appealing to the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the International Court at The Hague for help in bringing Posada back to Venezuela for trial for the airliner bombing.

A New Jersey grand jury is investigating alleged funding by New Jersey Cuban Americans of attempts by Posada in 1997 to disrupt Cuba’s tourist industry. In a New York Times interview a year later, Anna Louise Bardach recorded Posada’s admission that he recruited Central Americans to bomb Havana hotels. One such attack killed an Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo.

Bardach has been subpoenaed and FBI investigators went to Cuba to gather evidence. This suggests that a Posada trial on charges of terrorism and murder is not impossible. But Pertierra was doubtful. “That’s a long time and there’s lots of evidence, and still we’ve seen no indictment,” he said, recalling allegations that the FBI destroyed evidence about the case in 2003.

Venezuela would be pleased if Posada is prosecuted for the murder of Fabio Di Celmo, Pertierra said, adding that Venezuela’s “extradition request would be held in abeyance, until a trial could be completed.” If no trial takes place, extradition would then be “very much on the table,” he said.

Pertierra connected the Posada case with the anti-terrorist Cuban Five. Noting Posada’s criminal activities and the 1997 terror campaign, he suggested that “Posada was the reason why the Cuban Five were sent to the United States.”

The only way Cuba could defend itself was to find out who was behind the attacks and to inform the FBI, he said. The Clinton administration disregarded such information in 1998, and instead arrested the men who collected it — the Cuban Five.

Pertierra called it a “travesty of justice that Posada Carriles is now walking a free man in Miami while those brave patriots from Cuba who really were combating Posada’s terror in the United States have been given those long sentences.”

He said the imprisonment of the Five is “such a double standard and the height of hypocrisy” that it will raise questions. “And the more that questions are raised, the more the U.S. government can be held accountable and hopefully that will translate into political and legal action.”

To the Cuban Five, he said, “The truth will set you free.”

atwhit @megalink.net

Battle over legal rights of Guantanamo detainees continues

Fri, 11 May 2007 09:49:00 +0000

The tug of war over the due process rights of the 385 prisoners still detained by the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, goes on, in and out of Congress.

On April 26, in the latest step in the contest, the Bush administration filed suit in federal court to ask that the right to attorney of Guantanamo detainees be severely restricted. Specifically, the government is asking the courts to rule that detainees are entitled to only three meetings each with attorneys, and also that the government be allowed to read their attorney-client correspondence.

Under normal proceedings there is no limitation on such meetings, and attorney-client communications are almost always shielded from the prying eyes of the authorities.

From the beginning, Bush and his two successive attorneys general, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, have claimed that due process rights available to U.S. citizens inside the United States do not apply to the Guantanamo detainees, because the Guantanamo base is not part of sovereign U.S. territory, but rather belongs to Cuba.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, other defenders of due process and the volunteer attorneys for the detainees have argued back that the U.S. has total control over Guantanamo; that the detainees there, after all, are not being held captive by the Cuban government but by the U.S. government; and that the detainees therefore have to be afforded the same rights as people under arrest in the U.S., including the right to representation by attorneys.

The federal courts have produced a mixed set of rulings on this affair. Initially, the government was told by the courts that the mere fact that the prisoners were held outside U.S. national territory did not extinguish their due process rights. Responding to this, in the fall of 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which, among other things, strips the Guantanamo prisoners held as 'enemy combatants' of habeas corpus rights.

(Habeas corpus is the very ancient legal doctrine that requires the government to release any prisoner it holds if, within a given period of time, it cannot put forward sufficient preliminary evidence to convince a judge that the prisoner should be held for trial).

In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the government, Boumedienne v. Bush, stating that the Military Commissions Act was constitutional. On April 2, the Supreme Court refused to review this decision.

Buoyed by these court decisions, the Bush administration has now moved to restrict access to the Guantanamo prisoners by attorneys. Attorney General Gonzales has asserted that attorneys have been stirring up discontent among prisoners by means of provocative communications not needed for their legal defense. At the same time, attorneys for the detainees have complained that the government has been deliberately trying to sow suspicion between the detainees and themselves — the old police station tactics of warning the person you have arrested not to talk to lawyers, because they are all crooks.

Barry M. Kamins, head of the New York Bar Association, responded to Gonzales' statement by saying that it is 'astonishing' that the same government which has subjected the prisoners to harsh treatment and taken away their hope of ever having justice is now blaming the inevitable unrest among the prisoners on the attorneys.

Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation into Congress, S 1249, requiring that the Guantanamo Bay prison be closed within one year of enactment; that all detainees be either transferred to a detention facility in the U.S. and charged under normal criminal or military law, or placed at the disposal of an international tribunal under the authority of the United Nations, or transferred for trial to their countries of citizenship or third countries as long as there is a guarantee that prisoners will not be subjected to 'torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment'; or released completely or placed in a military detention facility in the U.S. without being charged with a violation of the law 'if the detainee may be held as an enemy combatant or detained pursuant to other legal authority that Congress may authorize.'

In the latter case, the government could at least no longer claim that the detainee was not under jurisdiction of the United States, which would open up more possibilities for due process claims.

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) has hinted that similar legislation will soon be introduced in the House of Representatives.

Hunger spreads across U.S.

Fri, 11 May 2007 04:20:00 +0000

Oregon Gov. Tom Kulongoski lived on $21 worth of food for a week — the average weekly food stamp budget for his state’s residents — during Hunger Awareness Week, April 20-27. Oregon Food Bank spokesperson Jean Kemp-Ware said the governor’s initiative dramatized the plight of 425,000 Oregonians who rely on food stamps to stave off hunger each month.

The action was part of the successful struggle to block Bush administration cuts that would have terminated food stamps for 50,000 people in Oregon, she told the World. Every month, she said, hundreds of thousands of Oregon’s poor run out of food stamps by the third week and are forced to turn to food pantries and soup kitchens to keep from starving.

Denise Holland, executive director of South Carolina’s Harvest Hope food bank, told the World her organization provides food for 200,000 families across the state. “Every year we conduct a survey of how many people we are serving,” she said. “For the past six years, the rate has risen by about 30 percent every year.”

She added, “We see an incredible number of working families that simply can’t make it. The cost of gasoline, that’s money that was going for food now going to pay those higher expenses. People on the edge are being pushed into a crisis situation.

“There’s no reason for hunger,” she said, but “we have a lot of hunger in America. The face of hunger is real. It could happen to any of us.”

In 1968, a CBS documentary titled “Hunger in America” exposed severe malnutrition in the U.S. Faced with public outrage, Congress enacted a range of measures — the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, expansion of food stamps, the Women, Infant and Children (WIC) nutrition program, free or reduced cost school lunch and breakfast programs and Meals on Wheels for senior citizens — which reduced hunger and malnutrition during the 1970s.

Now it appears that hunger is roaring back.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass), co-chair of the Congressional Hunger Center, charged recently that 40 percent of those eligible do not receive food stamps. The average benefit is $1 per person per meal.

McGovern called it “unconscionable that programs proven to combat hunger in America are continually under attack” by the Bush administration. The surplus food program is continually “zeroed out” by the administration, he charged, and the food stamp program is “constantly derided with ‘fraud, waste, and abuse,’” although the GAO reports the program is corruption-free.

McGovern denounced regulations requiring legal immigrants to wait five years before becoming eligible for food stamps and denying low-income school children free meals during the summer because school is not in session.

At least 5.4 million people have been pushed into poverty since 2000, bringing the total to over 37 million people, 12.4 million of them children. Hunger follows close behind. Disproportionately it is African Americans, Latinos and other people of color who go hungry. Immigrant families are among the hardest hit. Undocumented immigrants are not counted.

Debbie Weinstein, executive director of the Washington-based Human Needs Coalition, blames lack of income for rising hunger. “As we came out of the recession in the early 1990s, the prosperity was never shared, especially with the poorest people,” she told the World. “They have been left struggling to make ends meet. We’ve had report after report of the increasing inequality in this country. The very richest are seizing an ever greater share of the wealth.”

An increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour minimum wage is “anti-hunger” legislation. The House approved it, but Republicans are blocking it in the Senate by attaching new tax giveaways for the rich, she said.

The good news is that since the Nov. 7 election, the political situation has changed, Weinstein said. “We are no longer just fighting to stop cutbacks. We can actually push for increases in these programs.”

The Progressive Caucus introduced an alternative budget, authored by Reps. Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey, California Democrats, which cuts the Pentagon budget by $86 billion this year and saves another $200 billion by leaving Iraq. It raises $300 billion more by ending Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.

The half-trillion-dollar savings is earmarked to fully fund nutrition programs, federal aid to education, CHIP health care for children, rebuilding New Orleans and other human needs.

It failed to win a majority vote, yet that budget sets minimum targets in the current battles over appropriations, Weinstein said.

Eight Republican presidential candidates, in a recent debate at the Reagan Library, could not think of a single thing wrong in the United States. By contrast, Democratic candidate John Edwards is campaigning in poverty-stricken North Carolina and New Orleans.

In his recent book “Ending Poverty in America,” he writes, “The men, women and children living in poverty — one in eight of us — do not have enough money for the food, shelter and clothing they need. ... That is not a problem. That is not a challenge. That is a plague.”

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

A new spirit in the air

Fri, 04 May 2007 08:29:00 +0000

The overwhelming response condemning the reprehensible comments of radio “shock jock” Don Imus is a reminder, if one were needed, that racism and sexism remain a virulent presence in the United States. But it also demonstrated that the 51 seconds of Imus’ comment concerning the Rutgers University women’s basketball team did not go unchallenged.

Although the mainstream media, in its coverage of L’affaire Imus, sought to “balance” its reportage with statements by guests of the show who had been insulted by Imus along the lines of “it’s show business,” as well as with references to the now-fired radio host’s numerous charitable efforts, as if to suggest that he wasn’t such a bad guy, the public wasn’t buying the line.

Indeed, the response to Imus indicated a new spirit of militancy that came as a shock to the communications networks broadcasting Imus, NBC and CBS, and to the corporate sponsors who have been financing his show for decades. The palpable outrage was not only from NBC’s employees of color — such as the “Today” show’s Al Roker who commented, “That could be my daughter,” about the young women Imus victimized — but also from wide sections of the population. It united progressive-minded whites with people of color, coming together to basically say “enough.” And that “enough” was directed not only at Don Imus as a broadcaster, but at those who feel that comments that dehumanize and debase are acceptable or can be ignored.

This certainly was the hope of NBC, whose original action was to suspend Imus for two weeks. The response of CBS was perhaps even more lame: they made no comment at all. Clearly, both corporations had their wet fingers in the air in order to determine which way the wind was blowing. Once they knew its direction, they fired Imus.

But the fact that these corporations waited, even if they waited for 30 minutes, reveals the core link between capitalism and racism. From a moral standpoint (and it is manifestly clear that corporate culture is inherently amoral), there should have been no scintilla of doubt as to the proper action. It was only when the corporate bigwigs felt the outrage, and felt their future profitability would be impacted, that they sent Imus packing.

This new militancy should be embraced and nurtured, and not only by people of color but by all of us. As with any virus, racism is a tough and destructive enemy in the body politic. In 2006, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported it received 27,238 complaints of racial discrimination in employment, a figure that when broken down shows 74.6 complaints per day. And this doesn’t include complaints filed outside the EEOC, nor would it include those who were discriminated against but who did not file a complaint for whatever reason — which typically involves fear of retaliation or loss of future employment, or a feeling that discrimination laws are inadequately enforced by a federal government under control of the ultra-right.

Nevertheless, this figure does indicate that people are willing to assert their rights. It will be interesting to determine whether the outcome of last fall’s midterm elections impacts these numbers when the 2007 figures are released early next year.

In the last analysis, it must be remembered that for every statistic, there is a person behind it. Capitalism has always been good at reducing people to raw data, and it is part of their comfort zone. Like the bombs that are dropped from 30,000 feet, it is much easier if you don’t think about the people on the ground, about who will feel the sting of the unquenchable thirst for profits.

It was showman and profiteer P.T. Barnum who said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The response to Imus’ infamous minute of hatred shows that when it comes to racism and sexism, people aren’t suckers. As with the midterm elections, they’re willing, ready and able to fight back. May it cause the ultra-right and the corporate bean counters many sleepless nights ahead.

Lawrence Albright is a People’s Weekly World reader in Florida.

A critical time for immigrant rights

Fri, 04 May 2007 08:15:00 +0000

May Day demonstrations across the country accelerated grassroots pressure to make legalization and social justice, instead of punitive and profit-oriented measures, the priority in the public and congressional debates on immigrant rights. They also protested the Bush administration’s stepped up repressive raids and increased immigrant-baiting by far-right groups.

The focus on immigrant rights this May Day, in addition to commemorating and building global labor solidarity, comes as Congress prepares to formally take up the issue of comprehensive immigration legislation. Different political forces with different priorities, — on legalization, temporary worker programs and increased border and interior enforcement — believe that any comprehensive measure, whatever the character of its content, must be passed before the August congressional recess. They reason that by Labor Day, the pressures of the 2008 presidential and congressional elections will make a bipartisan consensus impossible.

To date, there are two major proposals on the national scene.

President Bush and right-wing Republican senators have issued a plan prioritizing enforcement and corporate-friendly guest worker programs with limited legalization rights for undocumented workers. It would make business needs rather than family reunification the priority.

A bipartisan bill, HR 1645, prepared by Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has a much more liberal but still problematic legalization program, a guest worker program with some worker rights and less harsh but increased enforcement measures.

The Bush proposal, which has no legislative language yet, is clearly designed to help block or water down immigrant-friendly provisions. It specifies five-figure fines and fees per applicant for legalization. The stepped up vicious raids aim to weaken resistance to the right-wing direction of the administration’s immigration policy.

The Gutierrez-Flake bill aims at ensuring due process legalization for most undocumented workers, with concessions as well to the right wing. A large section of the immigrant rights movement has welcomed the bill, but many of them sharply question the extent of concessions, and many grassroots groups and immigrant rights advocates judge it unacceptable in its current form. The AFL-CIO has opposed temporary worker programs in principle and called for significant improvements over many provisions included in HR 1645.

The devil, as is said, is in the details, and the details will start being concretized in the “mark-up” processes of the House and Senate subcommittees on immigration. “Mark-up” is the process of developing specific legislative language that is submitted for full committee and then floor debate. In the Republican-dominated previous Congress, the House subcommittee mark-up took less than a day, while the Senate subcommittee took many weeks.

The Democratic-led House and Senate leadership have called for fuller debate and oversight in the legislative process. If this is to apply to comprehensive immigration legislation that could pass before August, subcommittee review and mark-up should begin in May.

In the Senate no strong comprehensive bill has yet surfaced. The narrow Democratic majority, the 60 percent requirement to allow debate and the Bush proposal make it more susceptible to right-wing pressures.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) chairs the immigration subcommittee and has been pushing hard for passing a comprehensive bill by the summer. Previously he has said he would like something similar to what passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, which is more limiting than the Gutierrez-Flake bill.

The House subcommittee on immigration is where pressure for immigrant rights can have the most impact. It has 10 liberal Democrats and seven conservative Republicans. Subcommittee chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has indicated that the mark-up process will be open to all bills and proposals by House members. This means the Gutierrez-Flake bill will be only part of the process. However the bill’s impressive list of 53 sponsors, including nine Republicans, and importantly four of the 10 Democrats on the subcommittee, will make sure its provisions are heard. All of the subcommittee Democrats are open to pro-labor and immigrant rights amendments.

Depending on public pressure, the subcommittee could make major progressive improvements on Gutierrez-Flake and/or lay the basis for blocking an unacceptable comprehensive bill. The subcommittee and others could also hold hearings on profiling and other misconduct in workplace and neighborhood raids.

So, in this period, grassroots pressure for immigrant/labor-rights can have a big impact.

Rosalío Muñoz (rosalio_munoz@sbcglobal.net) is organizer for the Southern California district of the Communist Party USA.

EDITORIAL: Privatization = 250,000 displaced New Orleanians

Fri, 04 May 2007 07:56:00 +0000

Some 250,000 refugees from Hurricane Katrina still cannot go home, nearly two years after the levees broke. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin led a march April 28 by former city residents demanding that relief dollars be released so that the evacuees, scattered still from coast to coast, can come home and reclaim their homes and their land.

The racist, profit-driven approach taken with regard to the rebuilding of New Orleans has resulted in the restoration of Mardi Gras and the return of the Saints to the Superdome. The Lower 9th Ward, however, is in essentially the same condition it was the day the floodwaters receded. The working people whose labor built and sustained the city are still scattered across the country.

The money appropriated by Congress remains tied up because of jockeying among private corporations anxious to use it to enrich themselves. Only a tiny number of people have been able to come back to the Lower 9th Ward.

The real estate industry has joined the big business cabal and is readying itself to pounce in what could become one of the biggest land grabs ever.

There is a way to rebuild New Orleans for the people of New Orleans and to get everyone back home.

Congress should nationalize the entire rebuilding effort, taking it out of the hands of the corporations. Then the workers, planners, architects and scientists could be hired directly to commence the needed rebuilding effort that has yet to begin. The greedy corporate middlemen have proven themselves useless in this regard.

The approach we support was the approach used 60 years ago when the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created to build successful projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Boulder Dam. Those efforts helped pull the nation out of the Great Depression.

The Congress should fire Halliburton and all of the other parasitical corporations, put workers and professionals on the government payroll, hire and involve as many of the city’s displaced people as possible, and let them get down to work.

Organizing heats up to defend womens rights

Fri, 04 May 2007 05:03:00 +0000

Last November, South Dakota voters overturned a state abortion ban by a 12 percent margin. The April 18 Supreme Court anti-abortion ruling shows the court is “farther to the right than these conservative ‘red states’ voters,” says Kathi Di Nicola, media relations director for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Mobilizing for the November referendum, “we engaged clergy and farmers and shopkeepers,” Di Nicola said. “It was a real people’s movement.” Now, following the high court ruling, she said, “We are planning a strong grassroots response in all three states.”

The April 18 decision upheld a federal law, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Bush in 2003, which bans vaguely defined abortion procedures used in the second three months of pregnancy. The ban will take full effect four to six weeks from the date of the ruling — mid-May to early June.

The ruling “shifts medical decisions away from women and their doctor to the government,” National Women’s Law Center attorney Gretchen Borchelt told the World.

The main immediate impact, she said, is that the Supreme Court, for the first time, has endorsed prohibition of a medically approved procedure with no exception when women’s health, or fetal health, is at risk.

The federal ban will apply to every state, even if they have laws protecting such procedures, Borchelt said. Moreover, the ruling’s language does not correspond to any actual medical terminology, so it is likely to trigger fears by medical providers about carrying out any type of second-trimester abortion, she said.

The ban and the court decision focus on “partial-birth abortion,” a non-medical label coined by anti-reproductive-rights groups. In fact, medical professionals say, second-trimester abortion procedures, used in a tiny percentage of all abortions, usually involve cases of severe medical complications or fetal abnormalities.

The April 18 decision “undermines the core of Roe v. Wade,” Borchelt said, referring to the landmark 1973 ruling that the U.S. Constitution protects the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, based on the right to privacy.

“It basically declares open season on rights women have relied on for three decades,” she said.

The decision also endorsed the long-discredited notion that women are unable to make rational decisions for themselves, Borchelt noted.

Last fall in South Dakota, “we ignited a conversation about the level of government intrusion” into women’s lives,” Di Nicola said in a phone interview from her Minneapolis office. “I think people are deeply disturbed by this invasion of privacy.”

This February, another anti-abortion measure passed South Dakota’s state House but was killed in the Senate “through grassroots efforts,” Elaine Roberts, a co-chair of South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, said. The Supreme Court decision now “adds fuel to a flame that had maybe slowed down a little.”

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families is a coalition of individuals and groups from across the state — Planned Parenthood among them — spanning both political parties, and including ministers, doctors and nurses. Its co-chairs include the leader of the largest Native American tribe, Cecelia Fire Thunder of the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux.

The coalition will be waging a “strong organizing effort” to “oppose interference of the government in private medical decisions,” said Roberts. “We are not sitting around waiting for something to happen.”

Di Nicola said Planned Parenthood is planning grassroots education, organizing and legislative action. Coming up is South Dakota’s third annual women’s day at the state Legislature, June 30, she said, and student reproductive rights activists in the state are planning a September “summit” to train campus organizers.

The power of the federal abortion ban to override state protections underscores the significance of congressional action to restore and guarantee reproductive rights. The just re-introduced Freedom of Choice Act would “preserve women’s rights as Roe intended,” Borchelt said. At the same time, she noted, the Supreme Court ruling will spur drives for more restrictions and new kinds of restrictions at the state level. Such moves are already happening in several states. Thus, women’s rights and health advocates say, organizing at both state and national levels is essential.

Roberts, a former South Dakota state legislator, called the Supreme Court ruling a reflection of the political landscape over the last few decades. She commented, “We don’t pay a lot of attention to who’s being appointed. Then we wake up and say ‘Oh my, what’s going on?’”

The ruling “has gotten people’s attention,” said Di Nicola. She added, “We are seeing why elections matter.”

suewebb @pww.org