People Before Profit blog

10,000 march to close School of the Americas

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 07:10:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ga. – Despite apprehensions that they would be labeled “terrorists,” at least 10,000 people from across the country gathered at Ft. Benning to protest the School of the Americas (SOA). Recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the SOA is responsible for training soldiers, mostly from Latin America, in torture techniques, assassination and psychological warfare.

“Money and resources that go into this school create injustice and oppression,” said Tom Strunk of United Students Against Sweatshops. “This school is not a force for democracy and freedom.”

Established in 1946, the SOA took on a Cold War focus in 1963 and moved its location to Georgia from Panama in 1984. Among the graduates of the school are dictators such as Manuel Noriega and Hugo Banzer Suarez, as well as hundreds of torturers, assassins, terrorists and death squad leaders.

Baldemar Velasquez, of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, told the crowd at a Nov. 17 rally at Golden Park, “When we have economic, political and social institutions who have such a disregard for human life ... this becomes a struggle about life and death.” He also asked the U.S. government to “stop training Osama bin Ladens.”

The next day, protesters marched to the eight-foot high chain-link fence, separating the SOA from the rest of the community, and placed thousands of crosses, flowers, wreaths and banners on the fence. Some protesters climbed the fence, while others lay in front of the gate entrance.

Throughout the day the names of those murdered in Latin America – peasants, workers, clergymen and children – were read aloud. After each name thousands of crosses were lifted into the air.

Most of the protest was without incident. Sunday evening around 30 protesters set up a peaceful blockade of the SOA compound. Police in riot gear surrounded the demonstrators and arrested them. They were charged with unlawful assembly, obstructing justice and obstructing a public highway.

Mainers take war protest to Bush familys door

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 07:07:00 +0000

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine – On Nov. 17, about 350 Maine residents joined in a “day of solidarity with the people of the world.”

They gathered at St. Anne’s Church, to carry their opposition to the U.S. anti-terrorist war to the Bush family doorstep.

Ten years ago Episcopalian John Schuchardt interrupted a service at the same church with then-President George Bush in attendance. He spoke out against the indiscriminate killing of children in Iraq and was hauled out by Secret Service agents.

This time protesters listened to songs and speeches and then slowly walked the mile to the Bush family complex, located at Walkers Point.

Liam Burnell, speaking during an “open mic” session in front of the Bush home, described the war as between two camps of rich people, the corporate crowd in the United States and Arab millionaires. Poor people on both sides are being left to suffer, he said.

Weeks of public protests and vigils in at least 12 Maine cities – all of them calling for an end to the bombing and for solidarity with the victims of Sept. 11 – led up to this action.

After the march, the protesters returned to the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Kennebunk for four hours of workshops on such topics as the history of Islam, strategies for opposing neoliberal globalization, the history of resistance to the Vietnam war, methods for fighting corporations, and how to build support at the local level.

Put America back to work

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 07:05:00 +0000

Our country is facing a two-pronged crisis: a crumbling infrastructure and meltdown of our steel industry and sharp decline in all sections of manufacturing. All sectors of manufacturing are in a free fall with huge layoffs and declining industrial production throughout 2000 and 2001. More than a million jobs were lost prior to Sept. 11 and over 450,000 additional jobs have been lost since.

The AFL-CIO, in a document titled “A Blueprint for Economic Recovery,” calls for a “campaign for economic recovery that will put America back to work.”

The plan calls first for an immediate stimulus package for aid to working families who were devastated by the terrorist attacks, and for the additional millions who are facing total loss of income with unemployment benefits already running out.

It then calls for “addressing long-ignored critical infrastructure needs ... will serve not only to shore up our national security and improve our capacity to respond to national emergencies, but also to create jobs and improve the overall quality of American life.”

The document calls for urgent “federal intervention to save and restore steel and other manufacturing industries,” citing the announcement of Bethlehem Steel’s bankruptcy.

The Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure Act (HR-1564) would go far in meeting the demand for federal intervention called for in the AFL-CIO program.

HR-1564 draws on the conclusions of a special panel of the American Society of Civil Engineers that indicated America’s infrastructure is crumbling and in need of $1.3 trillion in the next five years to remedy the problem.

A study by the Levy Institute on needed infrastructure repair and the costs involved pointed out that local governments do not have the ability to finance the large projects needed to bring the nation’s infrastructure up to acceptable standards. Co-sponsors of HR-1564, Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), stressed their proposal will make available to states and municipalities funds needed by creating interest free loans for investment in infrastructure.

Federal programs already in place for infrastructure repair do not cover heavy infrastructure investment needed by states and municipalities. Normally, states and municipalities “provide the largest share of investment in infrastructure,” said the Institute, “and their declining ability to do so in recent years is fueling the economic downturn.”

The loans from HR-1564 would be administered by a Federal Bank for Infrastructure Modernization (FBIM), to be established under HR-1564 as an extension of the Federal Financing Bank under the U.S. Treasury. Loans would amount to $50 billion annually over 10 years, with 20 percent earmarked for schools. “One billion dollars in infrastructure repair will create 40,000 plus jobs,” said LaTourette.

This and other proposals for government intervention and control, such as the Steel Revitalization Act (HR-808), have generated intense opposition from the steel and other manufacturing corporations and the banking industry. But it has become crystal clear that without government intervention our country is on the verge of losing our steel industry and with it much more of our fast shrinking industrial base.

Bankers and Wall Street financiers are trying to impose controls on our economy based on the rules of the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund. Nations around the world have been forced into bankruptcy by the dictates of these international corporate, financial centers that have a stranglehold on the world’s economy with one single goal: extract the highest profits wherever and however they can get them.

A crisis situation is building in cities, states and nationally. It is pushing the issue of government control and, if necessary, ownership of our core industries, to the forefront. But while we consider what must be done to build a just and democratic society for working families, we must support HR-1564. While this measure will not solve the economic crises looming on many fronts, it will go a long way in shielding working families from the worst hardships, will begin to curb the uncontrolled economic power of corporate greed and will push our government into the business of administering to the general welfare of all the people.

Day of Action concert supports union 9/11 funds

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:59:00 +0000

NEW YORK CITY – Manhattan’s Winston Unity Auditorium was the site of a concert as part of a worldwide union Day of Action Nov. 9.

This global effort on the part of the world labor movement coincided with the start of the World Trade organization ministerial meeting in Qatar and included protests, forums and cultural events in cities around the world.

The New York event, sponsored by the People’s Weekly World and hosted by the New York State Communist Party, also was a fundraiser for families affected by the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

“Solidarity forever – an evening of international labor unity and benefit for NYC unions’ Sept. 11 relief funds,” was organized and emceed by labor activist and musician John Pietaro, who also preformed.

The list of performers included radical journalist and vocalist Amina Baraka; punk-folk singer-songwriter Kirk Kelly, a business representative of Musicians Local 802; and the South-Asian fusion music of Avir Mitra and his band.

Guest speakers were Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash, “exiled” WBAI-FM labor reporters; the Black Radical Congress Esteban Nembhard; and Jeff Oshansky and Susan Morris of NYC Labor Against the War.

Highlights of the evening included the unplanned duet by Rosenberg, a delegate of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, and Nash, a delegate of District Council 37, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

New Yorkers on the left are very much aware of the role these two played at Pacifica-owned WBAI prior to the station’s recent history of purges of respected long-time on-air personalities.

The evening’s performances were educational and exciting. Kirk Kelly, who The Los Angeles Times called “the Billy Bragg of New York City,” opened the show with original songs about the war in Afghanistan, as well as labor’s activist heritage. He also performed a unique version of “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier” to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.”

Baraka’s set was a wonderful mix of her own poetry and adaptions of others’ songs, sung in a sultry, soulful style reminiscent of Nina Simone or Carmen McRae. Pietaro accompanied her on a bodhran, a large Irish frame drum.

Her selections included a version of a Stevie Wonder song shaped toward the Sept. 11 survivors and her piece for the Charleston 5, “I Got a Right to Sing the Blues,” performed in an improvisational style.

Mitra, of Providence, R.I., presented a fascinating set of South Asian fusion music with musicians Alan Dodd (vocals, rapping), Karl Sukhia (electric guitar, vocals) and Siddarth “Sid” Mehta (tabla drums).

A vocalist/guitarist and songwriter, Mitra has established a highly original style, equal parts pop, ballad, rap and the music of South Asia. His songs are tuneful and memorable and Dodd’s stream-of-consciousness rapping was heard both on its own and as a complimentary part of Mitra’s songs.

Lead guitarist Sukhia also offered a lead vocal with a clear, strong voice. Mehta’s tabla playing was precise and full. No one noticed that there was no drumkit or bass guitarist present.

Before his set, Pietaro, a delegate of Local 1199 SEIU, talked about his union’s Sept. 11 Relief Fund. He performed several songs on five-string banjo and vocals at once in a traditional labor song style and reflective of his extensive music background. His selections included Phil Ochs’ “I A’int Marching Anymore,” his own “September’s Divide” and the evening’s closer, the Labor anthem “Solidarity Forever.”

As Marines dig in, our troubles get deeper

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:56:00 +0000

I will not join in unity, national or otherwise, with those who are waging this war and the financial elite who stand behind them. They are not protecting my interests or the interests of workers in general, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe they ever will.

One only needs to consider this fact in relation to the mass layoffs and the surging growth of unemployment and ask what will they do in response? Will they tell the corporations implementing these layoffs not to lay workers off for the sake of achieving unity in support of the war effort? No.

Will they ensure that these same corporations do not take advantage of the worsening economic crisis by permanently downsizing their work force? Of course they will not.

What they are willing to do is to use this war to promote their own agenda and attack civil liberties. One need only consider that while the bombs are raining down on Afghanistan, the Bush administration is trying to take advantage of the situation to ram an agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) through Congress.

Both the U.S. and Canadian governments are enacting measures that will sharply curtail civil liberties. Specifically, the Chretien government is determined to pass Bill C-36, which will give police powers of “preventive arrest” even in the absence of legal charges. It will also compel individuals to give self-incriminating evidence against associates at a secret “investigative hearing.”

George W. Bush’s exploitation of the war to facilitate FTAA negotiations is indicative of the fact that Corporate America’s interests guide foreign policy and their interests extend into Central Asia, including Afghanistan. This is the objective, overriding reality within which this war must be seen if its significance is to be fully grasped.

If one does this, one inevitably comes up against the question of the rich oil and natural gas reserves in Central Asia. These reserves can only be effectively accessed, according to major oil lobbyists who appeared before the U.S. Congress a couple of years ago, by way of a pipeline through Afghanistan to the coast of neighboring Pakistan.

They stated that Central Asia has 236 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves and over 60 billion barrels of known oil reserves. Can anyone imagine this not looming large in the thinking of U.S. foreign policy circles with respect to the future of Afghanistan?

This makes even more sense if one considers that such a pipeline is viewed as critical to supplying Asia’s expanding oil and natural gas markets. Bringing such large quantities of oil and natural gas onto the market will inevitably increase global supplies and put downward pressure on oil and natural gas prices with far reaching macroeconomic effects.

Not accessing these large energy reserves will have the exact opposite effects on oil and natural gas prices. Of course such considerations go unmentioned in the mass media and the conclusion is never drawn that installing a U.S. and investor-friendly government in Afghanistan would be the best way to secure cost effective access to these energy reserves.

Instead, we are being fed a carefully-crafted interpretation of what the reasons for this war are. And it is one that is not subject to serious, critical scrutiny. Serious, critical scrutiny would, for example, question why the U.S. and Russia are backing the Northern Alliance, an organization that has a worldview essentially the same as the Taliban’s with respect to issues such as the position of women in Afghan society, and with a long track record of heavy involvement in Afghanistan’s heroin trade.

Questions like this compel one to ask what the point of this war really is if the end result will be an Afghan government wholly, or in large part, led by another gang of Islamic reactionaries? Does this justify a war? And will putting the Northern Alliance in power constitute in any way just retribution for what took place on Sept. 11?

If we really want to effectively rid the world of the Taliban and the like-minded Islamic reactionaries who rule Iran, we should be doing everything possible to support the secular opposition in those countries.

Such opposition is especially strong in Iran and includes a potent labor movement. We will not rid the world of such reactionaries by supporting a war waged by those who do the bidding of Corporate America and who are drawn from the ranks of Corporate America , like George W. Bush.

There is one other issue that must be addressed. This is the matter of bringing the Saudi Arabian millionaire Osama bin Laden and his accomplices to justice and whether a war is necessary to rid us of these people who, for many years, were directly allied to the United States.

To answer this question I simply want to note what fate befell Carlos the Jackal, the person who was the world’s most-wanted terrorist before Osama bin Laden. Today he is locked up in a French maximum-security prison serving a life sentence. And a protracted war did not have to be waged to capture him.

Bruce Allen is the 1st vice-president of the St. Catharines and District Labor Council in Canada.

Bombing peasants doesnt stop terrorism

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:52:00 +0000

The bombing campaign against the people of Afghanistan will be described in history as the “U.S. Against the Third World.” The launching of military strikes against peasants does nothing to suppress terrorism, and only erodes American credibility in Muslim nations around the world.

The question, “Why do they hate us?” can only be answered from the vantage point of the Third World’s widespread poverty, hunger and economic exploitation.

The U.S. government cannot engage in effective multilateral actions to suppress terrorism, because its behavior illustrates its complete contempt for international cooperation. The United States owed $582 million in back dues to the United Nations, and it paid up only when the Sept. 11 attacks jeopardized its national security.

Republican conservatives demand that the United States should be exempt from the jurisdiction of an International Criminal Court, a permanent tribunal now being established at The Hague, Netherlands. For the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, the U.S. government authorized the allocation of a paltry $250,000, compared to over $10 million provided to conference organizers by the Ford Foundation.

For three decades, the U.S. refused to ratify the 1965 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Racism. Is it any wonder that much of the Third World questions our motives? The carpet-bombing of the Taliban seems to Third World observers to have less to do with the suppression of terrorism, and more with securing future petroleum production rights in central Asia.

The U.S. media and opinion makers repeatedly have gone out of their way to twist facts and to distort the political realities of the Middle East, by insisting that the Osama bin Laden group’s murderous assaults had nothing to do with Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. Nobody else in the world, with the possible exception of the Israelis, really believes that.

Even Britain, Bush’s staunchest ally, links Israel’s intransigence towards negotiations and human rights violations as having contributed to the environment for Arab terrorist retaliation. In late September, during his visit to Jerusalem, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw stated that frustration over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might create an excuse for terrorism.

Straw explained: “there is never any excuse for terrorism. At the same time, there is an obvious need to understand the environment in which terrorism breeds.”

Millions of moderate and progressive Muslims who sincerely denounce terrorism are nevertheless frustrated by the United States’s extensive clientage relationship with Israel, financed by more than $3 billion in annual subsidies.

They want to know why the U.S. allowed the Israelis to move over 200,000Jewish settlers – one half of them after the signing of the 1993 peace agreement – to relocate in occupied Palestine.

It is no exaggeration in saying that for most of the world’s one billion Muslims Israel is as anathema to them, as the apartheid regime of South Africa was for black people. How does terrorist Osama bin Laden gain loyal followers from northern Nigeria to Indonesia? Perhaps it has something to do with America’s massive presence – in fact, its military-industrial occupation – of Saudi Arabia.

The Washington Post recently revealed that in the past two decades, U.S. construction companies and arms suppliers have made over $50 billion in Saudi Arabia. Today, over thirty thousand U.S. citizens are employed by Saudi corporations, or by joint Saudi-U.S. corporate partnerships.

Just months ago, Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest corporation, reached an agreement with the Saudi government to develop gas projects worth between $20 to $26 billion. Can Americans who are not Muslims truly comprehend how morally offensive this overwhelming U.S. occupying presence in their holy land is to them? Even before Sept. 11, the U.S. regularly stationed 5,000 to 6,000 troops in Saudi Arabia. Today, that number probably exceeds 15,000.

How would the U.S. government react if the PLO’s close ally, Cuba, offered to send 15,000 troops to support the Palestinian Authority’s security force? There is, to repeat, no justification for terrorism by anyone, anytime. But it is U.S. policies – such as the blanket support for Israel, and the blockade against Iraq that has been responsible for the needless deaths of thousands of children – that help to create the very conditions for extremist violence to flourish.

There is a direct link between the terrible events of Sept. 11 and the politics represented by the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, held only days prior to the terrorist attacks. The U.S. government in Durban opposed the definition of slavery as “a crime against humanity.”

It refused to acknowledge the historic and contemporary effects of colonialism, segregation and apartheid on the underdevelopment and oppression of the non-European world. It manipulated the charge of anti-Semitism to evade discussions concerning the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people.

The world’s downtrodden masses represented at Durban sought to advance a new global discussion about the political economy of racism – and the United States insulted the entire international community. The majority of dark humanity is saying to the United States that racism and militarism are not the solutions to the world’s major problems.

Transnational capitalism and the repressive neo-liberal policies of structural adjustment represent a dead end for the developing world. We can only end the threat of terrorism by addressing constructively the routine violence of poverty, hunger and exploitation, which characterizes the daily existence of several billion people on this planet.

Racism is, in the final analysis, only another form of violence. To stop the violence of terrorism, we must stop the violence of racism and class inequality. To struggle for peace, to find new paths toward reconciliation across the boundaries of religion, culture and color, is the only way to protect our cities, our country and ourselves from the violence of terrorism. Because without justice, there can be no peace.

Dr. Manning Marable is professor of history and political science, and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York.

Labor wins big in union-busting South Carolina

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:33:00 +0000

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Gathered in the union hall and parking lot on East Bay Street, the dockworkers of International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1422, mostly African American men, celebrated their hard-fought victory in the case of the Charleston Five. Elijah Ford, Peter Washington, Jr. and Ricky Simmons were freed Nov. 13 and Kenneth Jefferson and Jason Edgerton were freed the previous Thursday.

All five union dockworkers, four African-American and one white, pleaded “no contest” to a misdemeanor and paid $309 in fines and court fees. Their attorneys told the World that the workers were making “no admission of guilt.”

They spent nearly 20 months under house arrest following the riot by 650 heavily armed state troopers who brutally attacked the 150 workers walking on an ILA picket line the night of Jan. 19, 2000. The dockers had been protesting Nordana Shipping Company’s use of non-union labor, a brazen attempt to break the union and force down the wages and benefits earned by the ILA dockers.

“No worker is going to sit idle while they take our jobs away,” said Frank Jenkins, a second-generation dockworker. “This is the strongest union in the state of South Carolina. We’ve built a good life for ourselves and our families. We can afford to send our children to college.”

As a result of the ILA, wages and working conditions are a “thousand times better than when I went to work here in 1960,” Jenkins said. “Back then it was all manual labor. If you didn’t have a strong arm and a strong back you didn’t make it.”

The 1,100 active members of Local 1422 work at the three terminals that make up the Port of Charleston, fourth largest port in the U.S. “Every ship we unload and load in this port adds $70 million to the economy of South Carolina,” said Myron Washington, a 17-year ILA veteran. “Cut that off and the entire economy of South Carolina and the Southeast region would be crippled.”

The night I arrived, the South Carolina Progressive Network (SCPN), a multiracial and multi-issue organization was holding its monthly meeting in the Local 1422 recreational room. Kenneth Riley, president of Local 1422 and himself a SCPN member, thanked the group for their staunch support. “You were there from the beginning,” he said. “We couldn’t have won this victory without the backing of groups like the Progressive Network.”

“The Progressive Network is building a strong coalition movement in South Carolina,” said Torreah “Cookie” Washington, chair of the Charleston branch of the Progressive Network. “I put it this way: We all have to go to each other’s parties. We got totally involved in the Charleston Five case. I can’t tell you how many ILA members were at our rally in Columbia to demand that the Confederate flag be taken down from the state house. And we, in turn, went to the Free the Charleston Five rally in Columbia last June 9. It is so exciting that we have won a victory.”

After the meeting, SCPN Director Bret Bursey said that the ILA “is the oldest, largest, richest union in the state of South Carolina. For workers, they present a simple, tangible example of the benefits of unionization. Charlie Condon thought they would be easy pickings. He was wrong. The traditional anti-union racist South that Condon was depending on simply wasn’t there. He couldn’t railroad the Charleston Five with that strategy.”

Condon, Bursey added, is a “symptom of the larger crisis which is South Carolina’s union-busting ‘right to work’ law and the vicious anti-union sentiment that has become the law of this state.” Repealing that law is a top priority, he said.

“There is an attack on the labor movement that is not going away,” Leonard Riley, brother of Kenneth Riley, said. “In Oklahoma they just passed a right-to-work law. If we allow the erosion of workers’ rights, we are going to be in trouble. We need to use the momentum of this victory to organize the south. We built a statewide and worldwide coalition for workers’ rights in this battle to free the Charleston Five. It gave us just a glimpse of what is possible.”

The breaking point in the case, he said, came when South Carolina’s Chief Solicitor, Charlie Condon, issued a press release just before the scheduled Nov. 14 trial, comparing the Charleston Five to the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and promising to “put them under the jail,” a phrase resonating with KKK lynch terror.

“That press release by Condon was so inflammatory I almost couldn’t stand to read it,” Kenneth Riley told the World in an interview at the union hall. “It was unbelievable that Condon would compare these workers to terrorists.”

Condon’s statements were so out of control that the State Court agreed to a defense motion asking that Condon be removed from the case. A day before the hearing, Condon removed himself. The “felony riot” and “conspiracy” charges, which Condon had pushed for, were dropped.

Condon had been favored to win the Republican nomination for governor next spring; railroading the Charleston Five and breaking South Carolina’s strongest union would be his ticket into the governor’s mansion.

Condon has continued his offensive, wrapping himself in the “war on terrorism” as he pours out his racist venom against immigrant workers employed in loading and unloading containerized cargo. The U.S. Border Patrol has been brought in to patrol the Port of Charleston, Riley said. Undocumented workers, who earn wages half or a third of those paid to ILA workers, face arrest and deportation if they protest this super-exploitation.

Riley said the goal now must be to inflict a crushing defeat on Condon in next year’s gubernatorial election. “We want to defeat him in the Republican primary. It would be a big victory if he goes down to defeat in his own party. Condon is too extreme even for the GOP,” Riley said.

“Condon spoke at a meeting out in the Isle of Palms, a very wealthy enclave,” he said. “I got a call yesterday from the same group telling me, ‘We heard Condon’s side of the story, now we want to hear yours.’ I said I would come. There is no way I’m going to pass up an invitation to tell the truth about the Charleston Five to an affluent crowd like that.”

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South Carolina struggle: past and present

Every victory for workers and their allies in South Carolina is a victory over the grim legacy of chattel slavery. On a side street here is the “Old Slave Mart,” now under reconstruction, but for many years hidden and crumbling like a dirty secret. From the battery at the end of East Bay Street, the first shot of the Civil War was fired against Fort Sumter and there is a big monument to Confederate war veterans. One of Charleston’s main thoroughfares is Calhoun Street, named for the chief ideologue of white supremacy, slavery and secession.

Torreah “Cookie” Washington told me of another South Carolina case involving Charles Condon. The movement for women’s equality is defending a group of mostly African-American women arrested on drug charges immediately after childbirth. Over a two-year period, she explained, a doctor at a Charleston hospital was taking blood samples as the women went into labor. This “evidence” was turned over to Charleston police. “There were cases of women being arrested in the delivery room and dragged off in handcuffs,” Washington said. “Charlie Condon was Charleston District Attorney at the time. He was saying, ‘put them in jail.’”

The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last spring that the women’s Fourth Amendment protections from “unreasonable search and seizure” were violated. The high court remanded the case to a lower court with the stipulation that the blood samples cannot be used as evidence. The struggle to free these women continues, Washington said.

In the summer of 1968, I came to Charleston to cover an organizing rally sponsored by the hospital workers’ union, Local 1199, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The nation was still reeling from the assassination a few months earlier of SCLC leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The rally was held at a church attended by Denmark Vesey, leader of a celebrated 1822 slave revolt. I wanted to visit that church once again. Myron Washington rode with me and together we found the soaring Emanuel AME Church where Vesey had served as a lay preacher. We also found the house where Vesey had lived after purchasing his own freedom.

An estimated 9,000 slaves had enlisted in a plan to seize ships and, relying on Vesey’s knowledge of navigation, sail to Santo Domingo where slavery had been abolished in 1790. The plot was betrayed and Vesey and 27 other freedom fighters had been hanged a few dozen yards from the church.

“It’s wrong that his house is not open to the public,” Washington said. “That house should be a shrine.”

As we drove off, Washington spoke of how hard it is to organize workers in the face of employer union-busting. I nodded, “But if Denmark Vesey could organize 9,000 slaves in 1822, I guess we can organize workers in Charleston in 2001.”

One step in that direction involves Winyah Stevedoring, the company that supplied the non-union workers that touched off the struggle. The company is suing ILA locals, local presidents and 27 members of the union individually for $1.5 million, claiming loss of income. But, as Kenneth Riley said, the Winyah workers themselves are organizing to become members of the ILA.

Students protest against school privatization

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:27:00 +0000

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Some 1,000 Philadelphia public school students led a demonstration here Nov. 20 against privatization and for full school funding.

Busloads of trade unionists, parents, and community leaders joined the students. Hospital Workers Union 1199C paid for the buses. Adults visited friends and foes in the state legislature while Philadelphia Student Union leaders addressed the crowd from the Capitol steps.

The students noted that advocates of privatization and charter schools do not ask suburban public schools to share their funds with corporate executives, nor do they ask rich school districts to accept non-union workers. The students vowed that rallies would continue as long as their democratic rights are challenged.

Jacob Winterstein of the Student Union denounced administrators who care less about education than about the amount of money they can make.

The reference was to the Edison Corporation, a company picked to evaluate the Philadelphia public school system in defiance of Judge Doris Smith’s court order to desegregate and fully fund Philadelphia’s schools.

Signs read, “Keep our public schools public,” “Our schools are not for sale” and “Private corporation does not equal public education.”

Hospital Workers President Henry Nicholas said that he was honored when the Student Union asked for buses and vowed to promote unity in the struggle to save the city’s schools. The students invited State Rep. Curtis Thomas to address the crowd. Thomas said that although the schools have problems, they can be solved if given the proper resources. He said that there can be no quality education when paint peals from classroom ceilings and books are in short supply.

Gov. Mark Schweiker agreed not to put the central administration under Edison control. Schweiker and Philadelphia Mayor John Street are to negotiate on the remainder of the plan.

The students vowed to walk out of school and rally at City Hall Nov. 29, one day before the scheduled date for the governor to decide on the fate of the schools.

Rifle shot causes stir at airport

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:24:00 +0000

DALLAS – A passenger accidentally fired a hunting rifle at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport on Nov. 23 but no one was hurt, an airport spokeswoman said.

The incident occurred as the passenger was complying with a request by airline employees to demonstrate the rifle was unloaded in accordance with regulations, spokeswoman Tina Sharp said.

“There was an accidental discharge but nobody was injured and airport operations were not affected,” she said.

The shot damaged a window and momentarily caused panic among other passengers near the Delta Air Lines check-in counter. The passenger, whose name was not released, was not charged and was allowed to board his flight, Sharp said.

Peace activists demand justice, not war

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:22:00 +0000

BALTIMORE, Md. – “Baltimore wants justice, not war” was the cry of several dozen members of the Baltimore Antiwar Coalition, who gathered outside the Garmatz Federal Court House here Nov. 6.

The demonstration was held to protest the continued bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and the new USA Patriot Act, which nullifies many basic human rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Throughout the day, the coalition gathered signatures, for a petition decrying the loss of civil liberties, to be presented to Sen. Paul Sarbanes’ Baltimore office.

The dangerous provisions of the Patriot Act include the following:

• The federal government now has the power to enter a citizen’s home in secret, with no previous notice.

• The Justice Department now has the power to spy on U.S. citizens and legal aliens with no foreign intelligence connections.

• A federal district judge may issue a permit allowing the government to read a U.S. citizen’s e-mail if the attorney general deems it “relevant.”

• A judge may allow the FBI to wiretap a U.S. citizen without a criminal investigation or probable cause.

• Upon certification of a judge, the federal government now has access to any education records of both U.S. citizens and foreign students studying here. This same provision provides $16.8 million for a database program to track the 600,000 or so foreign students of any nationality enrolled in U.S. colleges.

• The federal government can secretly access the credit reports of U.S. citizens and others, and credit reporting agencies are forbidden by law from informing the consumer.

• These vast amounts of increased information will be controlled, analyzed and collected by the CIA, thereby involving them in a much more expansive domestic spying role.

• The Patriot Act greatly broadens the term “domestic terrorism” to include any demonstrations or political protest, no matter how peaceful, that the Justice Department declares to be an attempt to influence government policy through intimidation or coercion; this includes even giving financial support. The burden of proof will be on the individual that he or she had no knowledge or intent.

• Any foreign citizen, who the Justice Department declares to be suspected of “terrorist” activity, can be detained without a trial or hearing for six months. This is subject to review at the end of six months and every six months thereafter.

“We come in the American tradition of protest, like those who fought against unwarranted taxation at the Boston Tea Party, with the abolitionists who questioned slavery in the 19th century, and in the spirit of those who marched against the unjust Vietnam War in the 20th century,” David Walsh-Little, a civil rights lawyer, told the rally.

“For the present Bush administration to say that people are either with the policies of the present government or with the terrorists takes away the possibility of dialogue,” John Schneiderman, a political science major at John Hopkins University, said, “Dialogue is what every community needs in a time of crisis.”

GOP peddling same old failed policies

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:16:00 +0000

The coincidence of Sept. 11, the war and a global recession mark the end of the neo-liberal age, a span of 20 years of unrelenting (ruling) class warfare against working families.

Bill Moyers summed it up: “Contrary to right-wing denigration of government ... today’s heroes are public servants. The 20-year-old dot-com instant millionaires and the preening pugnacious punditry of tabloid television and the crafty celebrity stock-pickers on the cable channels have all been exposed for what they are – barnacles on the hull of the great ship of state.”

Not that the GOP (the guardians of privilege) can or will admit the error of its ways. In this time of crisis they seem intent on peddling the same failed policies, as if nothing has changed.

One living legacy of neo-liberalism is a shredded safety net at a time when the casualties of recession and Sept. 11 combine to overwhelm the capacities of “faith-based charities,” exposing, in the process, the limits of “compassionate conservatism.”

In contrast, the nationalization of airport security signals the beginning of the end of privatization. The looting and collapse of the Texan energy giant, Enron, has come to serve as a cautionary tale of the greed and irrationality of deregulation.

Global recession

The Economist recently observed, “The world economy is flirting with a ... deep recession.” Bloomberg News reported that the Central Bank of Japan “darkened its outlook ... The substantial decline in production [is] beginning to have an adverse effect on private spending through decreases in employment and income.”

The New York Times reported Germany is “close to recession.” Since Germany accounts for a third of the economic output of the Economic Union, its problems quickly spread to the entire Euro zone.

Export-dependent economies of Singapore and Taiwan are experiencing “sharp economic contraction due to sour economic conditions in Japan and the United States.”

While the U.S. economy has been shedding manufacturing jobs for some time (1.1 million over the past year), the pace of unemployment surged in the fall of 2001. The official unemployment rate jumped to 5.4 percent in October from a 4.9 percent rate the month earlier, with 415,000 workers losing their jobs and more to come.

Approximately 110,000 of the lost jobs were in the service sector, the primary engine of job growth and a harbinger of things to come. The vast majority of jobs lost were low-wage.

Compounding the economic crisis is the fiscal straightjacket that is forcing states and municipalities around the country to cut spending (despite growing need) in the face of sharply lower revenues.

According to the NYT, New York City will face a budget deficit of between $4 and $6 billion next year, while New York State might have to close a $4.3 billion gap.

On the West Coast, California confronts a projected $11.3 billion shortfall in state education revenues, according to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). “The faltering economy is putting at risk the advancements that many states are making to improve the quality of their education systems,” he said.

Responses

With the social safety net in shreds after two decades of neo-liberalism hubris, with an unemployment system that covers less than 40 percent of the jobless, with the end of welfare, with a public health-care system unable to cope with the existing load, let alone the newly uninsured, with unemployment rising and state budgets contracting, what is the federal government to do?

The GOP plan is to make a bad situation worse. Their goal is to stimulate the rich and reward wealthy corporations through hefty tax cuts, with, of course, no guarantee that the beneficiaries would actually use the tax windfall productively.

Paul Volker, former Federal Reserve chairman, thinks it’s a bad idea, as does Robert Rubin, a former Treasury secretary. Even current Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has derided the effort as “show business.”

Given existing industrial overcapacity and the limited prospects for profit, were Republican tax cuts actually enacted they would have no stimulative effect on the economy. But that is not their goal.

The multibillion-dollar giveaways to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population and the most profitable corporations (the latter in the form of a retroactive repeal of the alternative minimum tax) are really designed to use up the budget surplus in order to “create a fiscal straightjacket for Congress.”

As NYT columnist Paul Krugman recently observed: “the GOP plan has nothing to do with stimulating free markets: it’s about taking from the poor and giving to the rich.”

It can be expected that as domestic economic casualties mount and states confront mounting fiscal crises due to declining tax receipts, the GOP will try to block federal revenue sharing.

The administration is already trying to stiff New York, the main site of the terrorist attack. While promising $20 billion in recovery support, House Republicans have authorized only $11 billion.

What is happening to New York, Krugman points out, is part of a larger picture: the reluctance of GOP congressmen to help states caught in a “financial squeeze.”

Krugman anticipates that states, desperate to balance their budgets as mandated in the mania of two decades of neo-liberalism, will “slash spending – with the biggest cuts falling on education and medical care for the poor.”

The GOP is cynically and unpatriotically banking on Sept. 11 and the war to mute opposition and divert attention from the fact that its stimulus plan “provides,” as the AFL-CIO points out, “almost no help to the workers already displaced and depends heavily on tax cuts, which primarily benefit corporations and the very rich.”

But the Republicans have overplayed their hand. Exploiting pain, hardship and sacrifice for the selfish benefit of a few is not only unconscionable but comes with a political-economic price: a growing struggle to redefine “homeland security” to include the right to: a job at a living wage; quality education; universal health care; a dignified retirement; a healthy and sustainable environment; and the right to enjoy the protection of civil liberties.

Crisis at LTV

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:12:00 +0000

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Once again, the owners and managers of the LTV steel corporation are jeopardizing the jobs, pensions and health care of 100,000 Northeast Ohio residents.

On Nov. 20 the company filed a petition in the Northeast Ohio Federal Bankruptcy Court to “cease operations and abrogate worker and retiree agreements.”

In an Amicus brief filed with the court Nov. 21, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) asked that the LTV petition be rejected. His brief states that LTV “walked away from negotiations with the USWA without notice.”

In a membership update, the USWA cited LTV’s move to shut down the steel plants as “the latest betrayal in management’s Mission of Greed.”

Previous actions by Ohio’s steel summit – led by Kucinich and including other area Congressmen, county and city officials, the USWA and Cleveland’s labor movement – had slowed if not halted, LTV’s actions to close the plants. Community pressure won loan commitments from local banks and the USWA bypassed management and negotiated directly with a creditors’ committee.

The company agreed to go back to the bargaining table.

Suddenly, according to the USWA, “management literally filed its shut-down petition with the bankruptcy court while our negotiators were engaged in constructive talks with the Creditors Committee ... this latest action leaves no question that their motives all along have been to destroy our union.”

The Kucinich brief asks the court to reject the company attempt to close the mills, and to “appoint a trustee to take over the operations of LTV.” A hearing has been set for Dec. 4.

However, the Cleveland community and labor movement are not sitting idly by awaiting the judge’s decision, holding rallies Nov. 29 and Dec. 1.

Cleveland City Council President Mike Polensek, at a Nov. 27 press conference, announced the council had filed a friend-of-the-court brief in bankruptcy court, supporting Kucinich’s brief, to set aside LTV’s request to shut down the plant and to appoint a trustee to take over plant operations.

Polensek referred, as other officials have done, to a successful campaign to keep neighborhood hospitals open. Possible use of eminent domain action was discussed in the course of that campaign.

“We are not going to allow this steel mill to shut down,” Polensek said, “We are going to do everything legally possible to keep this plant open.”

Colombias Communist Party meets in Bogota

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:08:00 +0000

BOGOTA, Columbia – Under the banner “Por Una Patria Nueva” – For a New Country – over 1,500 people gathered at the Gonzalo Jimenez De Quesada Convention Center here Nov. 8 for the opening session of the 18th Congress of the Colombian Communist Party.

Jaime Caycedo, general secretary of the Colombian Communist Party, greeted the enthusiastic crowd with a call for unity among all those who support real democracy in Colombia to find “a political solution to the current crisis in Colombia, a solution through dialogue and negotiation based on dignity, national independence and sovereignty for Colombia.”

Sarah Staggs, a member of the CPUSA National Committee and chair of the Party’s Peace and Solidarity Commission, brought greetings from the CPUSA. Staggs spoke of the growing movement against the war in Afghanistan and its adoption of a broader agenda including the endorsement of the pursuit of peace through economic justice and the defense of all democratic rights and civil liberties.

“We resolutely reject President Bush and his administration’s application of the terrorist label to those movements which legitimately struggle for independence, self determination and for social and economic justice,” Staggs said. “We remember well that Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress of South Africa were once labeled as terrorists. Such a definition of terrorism applied to U.S. history would surely have branded the American revolutionaries as terrorists as well.”

The crowd, with a large and spirited youth contingent, endorsed the General Secretary’s charge that the Free Trade Area of the Americas was an aggressive economic plan aimed at colonial domination of the Americas and in particular aimed at blackmailing Venezuela and its government of democracy and national independence led by President Hugo Chavez.

“Plan Colombia, fumigation, and military intervention are connected with a project that goes beyond fighting drugs,” Caycedo said. “The Colombian Communist Party calls on all those of democratic opinion in our country to advance a movement for peace, peace with sovereignty, with dignity, and, therefore, a peace with social justice.”

Pressure to overhaul unemployment

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:06:00 +0000

DALLAS, Texas – Jim Lange has worked at LTV for 27 years and the company has filed for bankruptcy twice.

“Each time the union has made concessions in order to keep the outfit going,” Lange said. “But one of these days they’ll shut it down and we’ll all be out of work and have to depend on unemployment insurance to keep us going – and the way things are with unemployment insurance that’s going to be impossible, all of which means we have to modernize it.”

Lange said it is up to Congress to overhaul the system and “it’s up to us to see that they do.” That’s why he and his co-workers are circulating the following resolution demanding that Congress pass a stimulus package with strong language – and sufficient money – to deal with the plight of the unemployed:

Whereas: The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system was enacted into law during the Great Depression of the 1930s as the result of a fierce struggle by the unemployed for basic economic justice, and

Whereas: UI was designed to help protect the incomes and well-being of workers and their families when the economic system failed to provide gainful employment, and Whereas: There has been no overall or comprehensive federal updating of the UI system since the 1930’s, even though the American economy has changed dramatically, and

Whereas: The system is woefully inadequate to meet the challenge of the times and is broken and scattered into an unequal patchwork of state systems, with wide disparities, and gross inequalities in coverage and benefits from state-to- state, and

Whereas: Fewer than 40 percent of those losing their job receive any kind of UI benefits, and Whereas: Hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers who managed to get benefits are now exhausting them, and

Whereas: Congress acted quickly to bail out corporations hit by the terrorist attacks and the economic recession, with no aid provided working families laid off by these same corporations, now

Therefore, be it resolved: That [local union or organization] calls on Congress and the president to enact legislation to update, reform and modernize the unemployment insurance system into a single federal program, providing equal and adequate income and support levels for workers and their families in times of economic crisis, and

Be it further Resolved: That such reform include as a minimum: Full and livable benefits for the duration of unemployment for those who want to work, coverage for first time jobseekers and part-time workers, full coverage for all and provide grants to cover Medicaid costs for all unemployed workers and their families, and

Be it further Resolved: That copies of this resolution be sent to our congressional delegation and the president, calling on them to introduce and sponsor such legislation with a reply to us in a timely way as to their intentions.

Workers lose at WTO meet

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 06:02:00 +0000

George Becker, in a message from Doha, Qatar, told the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), “The apparent goal of the [World Trade Organization] at this session in Doha is to eliminate forever the idea that trade and labor rights can or should be linked ... Indeed, if the existing language on labor rights, as weak as it is, is rolled back, it will be a major defeat for workers the world over.”

Becker, the former president of the USWA, was representing the Steelworkers at the WTO ministerial meeting earlier this month. He was exactly right.

In truth, any move to raise labor rights was handily defeated in Doha. Labor around the world, including the AFL-CIO, has been pressing the WTO to incorporate the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) “core labor standards” in its trade agreements. No progress was made. Labor, environmentalists, human rights activists and youth were shut out again and not just by Qatar’s repressive police state; the WTO turned a deaf ear.

The ILO, part of the United Nations, includes in its core labor standards the right to organize and bargain collectively; freedom from discrimination based on race, nationality or gender; equal pay for equal work; no child labor; and prohibition against forced or slave labor.

It should be noted that the U.S. has only ratified two of the eight standards – the convention against forced or slave labor and one on the worst forms of child exploitation like child pornography. However, the convention prohibiting child labor is among those not ratified.

The Doha meeting sent steelworkers another signal from the Bush administration. Out of one side of his mouth, President Bush, through the trade commission, told steelworkers he will act to protect jobs. In Doha, out of the other side of his mouth, he agreed to let the WTO override U.S. trade law.

The U.S. negotiating team, led by Bush-appointed trade representative Robert Zoellick, agreed to put U.S. anti-dumping laws up for negotiations. Regardless of what many of us might think about the limitations of anti-dumping laws to protect jobs, Bush and big business are telling steelworkers to forget any government help.

To top it all off, the GOP right-wing leadership in Congress has called for a vote on Fast Track legislation for Dec. 6. Fast Track would give the president the right to sign trade agreements with only a yes or no vote of Congress, leaving Congress with no right to modify such agreements.

If you ask me, it’s time to get good and mad, and shed a few illusions. Labor is fighting the good fight, but the WTO is one of the main instruments of capitalist globalization. It is of, by and for the transnational corporations. It will not be an instrument for protecting labor’s rights. The foxes will not protect the henhouse. Instead, the ILO and the U.N. should be the world bodies regulating world trade and setting labor standards.

Despite all their problems, the U.N. and ILO are 1,000 times more democratic than the WTO. Labor, environmentalists, women and youth advocates, human rights activists, anti-globalization forces already have a seat at the table. Scrap the WTO altogether. We can start by mobilizing to demand that Congress ratify all of the ILO core labor agreements.

Sure, Jesse Helms won’t like it. It would mean that Congress would have to repeal right-to-work (for less) laws and truly allow the right to organize and bargain collectively. And you have to ask, why doesn’t Bush or the Congress want to ratify anti-discrimination and child labor conventions?

Secondly, only mass action is going to save the steel industry. U.S. Steel is buying up steel mills in Eastern Europe. With steel capital going global, can we really expect the companies or the Bush administration to stop imports to protect steel jobs? Not a chance.

Steel is still a decisive industry for rebuilding America and putting the country back to work. It’s in every working family’s interest to demand that local, state and federal governments use the right of Eminent Domain to take over the steel mills that the companies want to shut down. With public ownership and a skilled work force, steel can be made for what the country badly needs rather than to serve corporate greed.

Lastly, Fast Track has to be defeated. The Steelworkers just had the Supreme Court reject their challenge to NAFTA as unconstitutional. Forgetting the law that Congress has to ratify treaties, the court rejected the suit saying it was political. Damn right it was, but the court that appointed George Bush president isn’t about to challenge big business’ right to globalize as they see fit. Defeating Fast Track is the best first step in stopping trade agreements on the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the WTO.

Afghan childrens fund: show us the money

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 05:58:00 +0000

“America’s Fund for Afghan Children” – this is the name George W. Bush has given his “dollar for Afghan kids” drive. My daughter received a letter from her school requesting that she bring a dollar in for this drive.

Since donors are instructed to send their money to the White House, I figured I’d do some checking. When I called the White House to ask what they were going to do with the money raised by kids, they told me it would be turned over to the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross, it turns out, is actually officially chaired by President George Bush.

The president had promised, in his press conference announcing the birth of America’s Fund for Afghan Children, that the American Red Cross would work with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to make sure that “every dollar, every single dollar that’s been raised by the boys and girls of America will be spent on the needs of the boys and girls in Afghanistan.” The USAID, of course, is a federal agency that has been notorious for its close historical links to the CIA.

The American Red Cross website indicates that it will use “an integrated approach to provide food, water, shelter, clothing and basic health care and preventative health education in Afghanistan with partners including the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations.”

It cites the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees as estimating the number of refugees at 2.6 million.

It does not mention, however, that the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for a suspension of the U.S. military campaign to enable relief workers to get food into Afghanistan to avert starvation.

I called the American Red Cross and asked them whether they had staff or facilities in Afghanistan that would enable them to provide relief to children, how they might actually get food to the children, whether they would cooperate with the U.N. and other non-governmental organizations, how much of the money raised would be needed for their administrative costs and whether I could get an accounting of how the money would be spent.

It took several bounces before I was finally able to reach a supervisor willing to answer my questions. She answered them as follows: (1) No, the American Red Cross did not have staff or facilities in Afghanistan. (2) They were going to give the money to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Association. (3) No, they did not plan on cooperating with the U.N. and other non-governmental organizations, only with the International Red Cross/Crescent. (4) She didn’t know the answer to my question about administrative costs. (5) She said they couldn’t give an accounting until the end of the fiscal year, but that there would be something on the website of the International Red Cross about it.

I checked the International Red Cross website, but there is nothing there specific to “America’s Fund for Afghan Children.” It was interesting to note that the supervisor I spoke to denied that the U.S. had bombed an International Red Cross warehouse in Kabul. She said that it wasn’t true, and that the media had carried a retraction!

Upon checking the BBC website on the subject, however, I viewed a video clip in which a representative of the International Red Cross complained bitterly that the U.S. had destroyed its warehouse and injured one of its employees. He said that the buildings were clearly marked and should have been off limits.

This was before the second bombing of International Red Cross warehouses on Oct. 26. The U.S. military at first had declared the second bombing to have been a mistake, but they have since reversed themselves, indicating that they had intentionally bombed the Red Cross because the Taliban was supposedly exercising control over Red Cross activity.

Since my conversation, the disorganization and inefficiency of the American Red Cross has become public. Bernadine Healy, the organization’s $450,000-a-year CEO, has been forced to resign. The Chicago Tribune called the situation a “fiasco.” Its lead editorial on Oct. 31 was titled, “Red Cross Squanders Goodwill.”

It made the case that the ARC had lost credibility in the eyes of the American people and that donations that had been given for victims of Sept. 11 were being siphoned off to other projects. The American Red Cross, the article revealed, is not a full, dues-paying member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

There is ample cause for concern about whether any of the dollars raised in response to President Bush’s call will actually reach children in Afghanistan. The administration has no mechanism for delivering relief supplies to Afghan children, other than dropping those famous yellow food packages, which are the same color as the unexploded cluster bombs.

The American Red Cross has no staff or facilities in Afghanistan, and is dependent upon the International Red Cross for distribution. The International Red Cross facilities are the ones that have been twice bombed by U.S. forces.

U.N. officials and Oxfam International, which has staff and facilities in Afghanistan, have both pleaded for a pause in the bombing so that they can actually get food, medicine and supplies into rural areas before winter sets in.

At the very best, the mechanism set up by the Bush administration for collecting and distributing the funds is bureaucratic and inefficient. The money must pass through several layers and transfers before it gets to an organization that can actually deliver.

Why not send it directly to the International Red Cross? And why not ask Bush to stop bombing the International Red Cross facilities so that what our kids actually have raised will not be destroyed by our own military?

Tim Yeager is a parent and a trade unionist in Illinois.

Its official! Economy in recession

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 05:54:00 +0000

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the Nov. 26 announcement that the economy was now officially in a recession confirmed what America’s working families have known for months.

Pointing to the fact that 2.2 million workers have lost their jobs since the recession began in March, Sweeney blasted Congress, which “has failed to take any action to relieve workers who have felt the effects for over nine months.”

Sweeney added, “The formula to end this recession and protect unemployed workers is simple. We need to ensure that families can afford the basic needs such as housing, child care, transportation and health care during periods of unemployment.”

Sweeney also called for federal help to states in order to ensure adequate funding of services to the unemployed and the creation of new jobs through public works projects. The AFL-CIO’s weekly Economic Impact Report shows that nearly three-quarters of a million workers have lost their jobs since Sept. 11. Although the loss of jobs has been the greatest among workers in manufacturing industries (287,000 since Sept. 11), workers in low-wage sectors of the economy have also been dealt devastating blows.

Tom Snyder, communications director of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union, said “at least” 90,000 of their members have been laid off, with thousands more put on short weeks. “Our members are already being evicted, losing their cars and having their utilities cut off,” he told the World.

Snyder called for action by Congress to do more for the unemployed. He said “the place to start” is with an overhaul of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system by increasing benefits, extending their duration to at least 39 weeks and relaxing eligibility requirements so that more workers – especially low-paid and part-time workers – can qualify for benefits.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a labor-supported Washington think-tank, says the UI system, created during the depths of the Great Depression to protect workers and their families against the prospect of poverty when they lose their job through no fault of their own, “is about to be severely tested” and is “poised to fail” unless states act immediately to raise weekly benefits.

An EPI study says average weekly UI benefits, which replaced approximately 38 percent of weekly earnings in 1990, eroded by five percentage points (13 percent) by 1999 and now replace barely one-third of lost income. According to the study, “UI benefits for a typical worker with children fall short of what a family needs to meet its living expenses. A single working parent with two children will fall $1,317 short each month of the amount of money needed to maintain a minimal, no-frill living standard.”

Other studies project a huge increase in the number of people living in poverty and in the number of workers without access to unemployment insurance unless Congress acts, and acts quickly. The National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support says an increase in the unemployment rate by two percentage points from the 3.9 percent reached in August 2001 could drive an additional 3.4 million persons below the poverty line, raising the national poverty rate from 11.9 percent to 13.1 percent. The same study says the number of unemployed workers denied unemployment benefits, now at more than 4.2 million, would jump by another 1.7 million.

While UI is the first line of defense for laid-off workers, millions of workers must depend on other components of a safety net that has been torn to shreds in recent years. In addition to an ancient UI system, we have a crumbling welfare system, a steadily eroding minimum wage and supports like food stamps, Medicaid, childcare and job training that are serving fewer and fewer families – least of all the thousands of immigrants that are shut out of the system altogether. Structures that once provided at least a modicum of support have become increasingly irrelevant to the lives of most low-income families.

As Sweeney said in his statement, Congress must take immediate steps to provide states with the money necessary to maintain – and even expand – safety net services. Nearly all states have been hard hit by declining revenues – a disproportionate share of which comes from sales and property taxes – as consumer spending on taxable items has slowed while mounting layoffs have driven up the cost of state welfare and Medicaid programs. The National Governors Association says the total gap between income and outgo stands at about $15 billion and could easily double if the economy doesn’t turn around.

The association’s wish list begins with the demand for a $5.5 billion increase in federal support for Medicaid, a program that has emerged as the fastest-growing cost to most states. States are also asking the federal government to pick up the tab for a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits. Some economists estimate that unless they are given the money to finance these and other social services, the 50 states may be forced to undertake spending cuts or tax increases by as much as $75 billion.

Labor takes a stand for justice

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 05:42:00 +0000

Union forces seek points of unity

On Sept. 11 thousands said goodbye to their families and went to work. Thousands died that day, including 600 union members. Thousands continue to labor at Ground Zero, recovering the remains of the victims and clearing the smoldering rubble. Some 700,000 have lost their livelihoods as a result of the events of Sept. 11.

The labor and people’s movements face a recovery that is full of complicated questions. The search for solutions goes on in a world changed forever by acts of terrorism. The struggle to recover stretches from Ground Zero in New York City to Capitol Hill, which has become a second “Ground Zero” for working families.

Trade unionists across the country are grappling with the need to unify the labor movement to counter the right-wing Congressional agenda, while at the same time finding the ways to speak out for justice, economic and civil rights, and peace.

Amber Amundsen lost her husband, Craig, in the terrorist act at the Pentagon. “My anguish is compounded exponentially by fear that his death will be used to justify new violence against other innocent victims.”

Craig Amundsen, a 28-year-old father of two, proudly drove to work every day with a “Visualize World Peace” bumper sticker on his car. Amber is now on a peace walk that began in Washington, D.C. and is scheduled to end in New York City Dec. 2.

“I am not comforted by Afghani women losing their husbands,” she told the World. “Will it truly feel better to be a part of more [women] losing their family members?”

The expanding war is one aspect of a many-sided crisis. Labor activists organizing Peace and Justice Committees believe that finding the points of unity in the labor movement is the key to a unified response to the right-wing agenda, including the war.

Michael Letwin, president of United Auto Workers Local 2325 – Association of Legal Aid Attorneys and one of the co-convenors of the NYC Labor Committee Against the War, described the committee’s two-tiered approach toward working from points of unity. First, he said, the committee serves as a gathering point for those who oppose the war.

“At the same time, we want to work with people who don’t necessarily agree with us on the war, but who oppose the assault on civil liberties and the war profiteering that is going on,” he said. “We want to find common ground. That is why we are having a forum focusing on the attack against civil liberties. We think that issues are inherently connected to the war. We want to work with people on civil liberties, racism, immigrant rights, the economic fallout, regardless of their disagreement on the war itself.”

The NYC Labor Committee Against the War circulated a statement as a response to losing several hundred union brothers and sisters at Ground Zero with the aim of promoting a dialogue about both issues affecting working families at home and the meaning of the war in Afghanistan. They now have more than 700 signatures, and 13 area union local presidents and three union bodies have endorsed the statement.

Letwin said it is “a small but growing informal labor anti-war network, which includes local committees in San Francisco, Sacramento, Washington D.C., New York City and Albany, N.Y., as well as international contacts in the UK, France, Belgium, Canada and Spain.”

Labor’s response to racial profiling and attacks on the Arab community has been a point of unity for labor and community groups. The Sacramento Central Labor Council has opposed the use of the tragedy of Sept. 11 to bust unions and limit the Constitutional freedoms of residents of the United States by passing a resolution Oct. 16 calling for the defense of civil liberties.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting Nov. 8, said in a statement, “We can defend an open society only by extending justice, spreading democracy, empowering working people and defending human rights.”

Labor and the people’s movements are finding the ways to challenge the policy of an administration that now is taking the people’s concerns for security at home as a basis to extend its military operations to countries beyond Afghanistan. Though their statement comes out strongly in support of military force to fight terrorism, the executive council statement also called for other action, “Never has the call for global justice been more vital. The AFL-CIO will redouble our efforts to ensure that this nation and nations across the world address a global justice agenda that for too long has been ignored.”

The San Francisco Labor Council also responded to this aspect of the Sept. 11 crisis by passing a resolution on Sept. 24 that said, “No one, in this country or any other, should suffer the fate of the victims in these attacks. We demand that the perpetrators of these crimes be brought to justice ... The tragic attacks of Sept. 11 should be treated as a heinous crime rather than an act of war.”

The statement continued, “As we mourn this tremendous loss of life, we declare our resistance to efforts to use this tragedy to engage in military actions that can lead only to more carnage and senseless loss of life.”

Though public opinion remains strong for the Bush administration’s war effort, many don’t like the idea of going off to war. “People don’t have short memories,” said Brenda Stokely, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 215. “They remember the Persian Gulf. The people who went were working people.”

Stokley, who got the executive boards of both her local and AFSCME District Council 1707 to endorse the NYC Labor Committee Against the War statement, noted that the human toll and the search to end the cycle of violence that Sept. 11 set in motion is often ignored in the media.

“A lot of these people are not polled, these voices are not in newspapers or on TV,” she said. “We in the labor movement have a commitment to get their voices heard. In my union we actually talked about what it really means to go to war. We would be the ones to carry the weight. Whose children will be coming back in body bags?”

For one widow, the solution to the complex problems does not include Bush’s expanding war. “Our national leaders must listen to the families of the victims to bring justice without violence,” said Amundsen. “I urge them to take up this challenge and respond to our nation’s and my personal tragedy with a new beginning that gives us hope for a peaceful global community.”

The author can be reached at jleblanc@pww.org

Steelworkers struggle to survive

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 05:35:00 +0000

BURNS HARBOR, Ind. – Bankrupt Bethlehem Steel and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) are meeting with creditors in Pittsburgh to hammer out a proposal on a revised contract for submission to the bankruptcy judge. Union sources say that the contract cuts will be much deeper than those proposed earlier this year with LTV.

A few weeks ago the bankruptcy judge approved a $15 million repair of one of the two blast furnaces at Bethlehem’s Burns Harbor plant.

The furnace was three years overdue for a major reline and when it was taken down for 40 hours last month, it failed to restart properly. It was then shut down cold and had a 20-foot hole cut in the side in order to clean it out and repair it for a restart. The huge blast furnace can put out 7,000 tons of iron a day when it is running.

This furnace failure has resulted in severe cutbacks in production across the plant. Layoffs and short workweeks are being scheduled through the beginning of next year, when repairs are anticipated to be complete.

However, what the state of the steel industry and economy will be at that point is in question. Some union representatives are saying that if the government doesn’t give Bethlehem and the other steel companies relief from retiree health-care costs, the companies will cease operations soon.

With rank-and-file steelworkers having little faith in the Bush administrations expressed desire to help save a basic industry, it looks like mass action by steelworkers may be the only way to pressure Congress to do something.

HR-808, which would limit imports and have tariffs cover the cost of retirees’ healthcare, and HR-1564, which would provide for a massive rebuilding of our nation’s infrastructure, are two bills currently before Congress that would help in the long term. However, the steel industry needs to be saved now with immediate relief in the form of a government takeover.

Private industry has run the industry aground and – just like the government rescues ships, communities and people in disasters – we need the government to rescue the steel industry. We can’t wait until the industry is gone. We have to act now.

As Maine goes, so can the nation

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 05:32:00 +0000

Maine has been leading the country in driving down the cost of prescription drugs and in the last two months has moved to do the same for health insurance. In September, the Maine legislature enacted a bill to set the wheels in motion for establishing a universal health-care system for all Maine residents.

Now, the city of Portland has passed a referendum supporting a universal health system. There is little doubt that the people of Maine are sending a message to the rest of the country, especially to Congress, that there is a crisis in health care and it is time to act now.

Why is Maine in front?

Residents of the state, long angry about the price of drugs, have become regular visitors to Canada to purchase their prescription drugs at a far lower price. The logical question arose, why should residents have to travel to Canada ... why not provide the same affordable drugs here in Maine?

That simple question resulted in Maine becoming the first state to enact a law forcing drug manufacturers to lower prices to affordable levels. They generally are using European prices as a guideline.

A similar questioning took place in regard to providing coverage for the 175,000 Maine residents without health insurance. Why not cover them now? As a result of the legislature’s bill and the Portland referendum, they are well on their way to becoming covered.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and 28 other members of the House of Representatives have authored a resolution for universal health care, taking the Maine initiative and similar ones elsewhere and making them a national movement.

The AFL-CIO has targeted health insurance as a major issue in Congress’ socioeconomic recovery package. Conyers’ resolution fits nicely into that scenario.

Opposition in high gear

The opposition to drug pricing regulations and universal health insurance has no shame. The drug cartels initially called for a boycott of sales to Maine. Anthem Insurance Company of Indiana, which recently bought Maine’s non-profit Blue Cross-Blue Shield, is leading the fight against calls for universal health insurance.

The medical-industrial complex, led by the drug and insurance monopolies, fears that the example of Maine might be followed across the country and that Congress might be compelled to act.

There is no time like the present to pressure every member of Congress to support the Conyers resolution as the first step toward universal health insurance in our country. At the same time, Congress must act to make all drugs available at affordable prices.