People Before Profit blog

Wisconsin students fight for right to cast vote

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:43:00 +0000

BELOIT, Wis. — Emotions ran high at the polls here on Election Day, as Republican lawyers from Washington and Democratic lawyers from the Chicago area made their presence felt at the polling place for Ward 15, where Beloit College students registered and cast their votes.

The Republican legal team challenged several Beloit students at the registration table, saying that a college ID alone was insufficient proof of residency.

Wisconsin law, unlike many states, allows voters to register on the day of elections, as long as they provide proof of identity and residence. For example, unregistered voters can bring a driver’s license or other picture ID and a piece of mail with their current address to register.

The Beloit College ID has the name of the college, the student’s picture, mailbox number and student identification number, but not the address of the college, and so cannot be a legal proof of residency.

Beloit students were outraged at being challenged at the registration tables and the team of Democratic lawyers, as well as volunteers from Beloit College’s League of Pissed-Off Voters, the Beloit College Democrats, and the Victory Wisconsin 2004 office swung into action to ensure that all students would be able to register to vote.

Student volunteers at the polls, like senior Seth Ballhorn, verified residency for the unregistered students. Wisconsin law allows a registered voter to vouch for the residency of an unregistered voter in lieu of other documentation. Ballhorn said that the challenging of student registration was unprecedented in his experience.

John Burris, Beloit College president, gathered appropriate documentation for the contested students. “[Beloit College Registrar] Mary Boros-Kazai ran a list of all the students with all their local addresses and certified it and dated it as of Nov. 2 and that clarified the problem,” Burris said.

Hillary Schwab, an assistant state attorney general, was at the Ward 15 polls at the time of the challenges and she ruled that the certified list of students was adequate.

Burris explained his quick actions to ensure the rights of Beloit students. “The one thing that I really want to make certain is that we don’t discourage the next generation of voters from voting.”

Burris was also concerned that Beloit students were being targeted on the basis of the college’s very liberal and Democratic reputation. “The thing that was frustrating obviously was that this was being done only in Ward 15 where the students were voting and it was on a technicality,” Burris said.

Ballhorn gave credit to Beloit students for their tenacity. “[The Republican lawyer] slowed down voting, but didn’t stop people from voting. If anything, it pissed people off and got them to vote,” Ballhorn said. “I think the fact that students were willing to stand in line for two hours, and skip classes, shows how committed students are and that this is one of the most important elections of our lifetime.”

President Burris applauded the students who registered and voted in the face of legal challenges. “The students have done an amazing job. It was wonderful to see the turnout. The students are the heroes in terms of their willingness to make the effort to vote.”

— Excerpted from the Beloit College Roundtable and reprinted by permission of the author, who can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Book Review

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:10:00 +0000

Book Review

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade By Robert M. Grippo and Christopher Hoskins Arcadia Publishing, 2004 Softcover, 160 pp., $21.99

“Let’s have a parade” is the phrase that begins a beloved American tradition, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 1924, employees of the R.H. Macy and Company store in New York City’s Herald Square, many of whom were immigrants and first-generation Americans, chose to give thanks for their good fortune in a manner reminiscent of the festive parades held in their native countries. The excitement and praise from crowds lining the route that first year led Macy’s to issue an immediate proclamation: the parade would become a tradition.

Before the parade’s first decade passed, Macy’s welcomed the huge and spectacular helium character balloons that became its goodwill ambassadors. Since then, the parade has become a world famous. Through more than 240 stunning vintage images, the authors of the new book, “Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade,” capture the wonder that is the annual tradition of the parade and share the its history through nostalgic and present day images.

Highlights include:

• Rare photographs, many never before published or seen by the public.

• Photos from the historical New York Daily News Archives.

• Vintage advertisements not seen since their original publication.

Author Robert M. Grippo has participated in the parade since 2001 as a volunteer clown and has been researching the history of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for many years. His first year as a clown was just two months after Sept. 11. The parade that year drew record crowds and those who gathered remembered the victims of the tragedy and paid tribute to the heroes of the day.

“I have been a fan of the parade since the age of 4. The year was 1965 and it was Underdog’s first flight in balloon form,” Grippo says. “Underdog was, and still is, my favorite cartoon character.”

He compiled this work with the help of Christopher Hoskins, a professional photographer who also worked for Macy’s in the early 1980s and who was a volunteer balloon handler in the parade during his years there. It took the pair nearly seven years to complete the project.

“Looking back, I now know how Indiana Jones felt about finding lost artifacts in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” He discovered one treasure trove in Akron, Ohio. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., which had built the big balloons from 1927 until the early 1980s, had donated their archives to the University of Akron and the photo find was “spectacular,” Grippo says. He found even more rare photos at the Ballard Institute of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut.

“Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” brings a unique and dramatic collection of historical images to print, hopefully triggering parade memories and making the event available to everyone to remember.

MOVIE REVIEWS: Finding Neverland & Sideways

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:05:00 +0000

Hold onto the child within

Johnny Depp won my heart in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and now I can’t get enough of him. “Secret Window” looked like it was going to be a cheesy horror film but I went anyway because he was in it and was rewarded with an intelligent horror film.

I was even more apprehensive about Depp’s latest, “Finding Neverland.” I figured it could easily go either way — very good or very bad. Thankfully, Johnny has come through for me again.

“Finding Neverland” is loosely based on the life of “Peter Pan” author J.M. Barrie, whose friendship with a widow, Sylvia Llewelyn Davis (played by Kate Winslet), and her four young sons helped inspire the play. (In reality, there were five sons but the movie’s four provide more than enough chaos to get the idea of what poor Sylvia was up against.)

When we meet Barrie, his latest play is a disaster and he’s in an unhappy marriage. He meets Sylvia and her sons in the park one day and immediately joins them in their world of make-believe. Before long, he is spending more time at the Davis home than his own, raising eyebrows in his social circle and the disapproval of Sylvia’s mother (Julie Christie).

The boys inspire his creativity and he inspires theirs. One of them, Peter, who has suffered the most from his father’s death, begins to write page after page of his own stories, which he then gets his brothers to perform.

Unfortunately, once Sylvia coughs ever so slightly you just know it’s not going to end well. By that time, though, Barrie is too attached to this family to turn back. He’s in it for the long haul.

“Finding Neverland” is never maudlin and the actors are superb. Depp is being touted as a potential Oscar winner. I don’t know about that, but he does a great job, as does Winslet.

Freddie Highmore, who plays Peter, so impressed Winslet, she recommended him for “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” where he is again working opposite Depp.

Although “Finding Neverland” is about the inspiration for “Peter Pan,” it’s not necessarily for children. This is a grown-up story about not wanting to grow up.

Spill the wine

“Sideways” is the terrifically funny story about a depressed failed novelist, written by a depressed failed novelist — failed, that is, until he wrote the book on which “Sideways” is based.

This wonderful new movie from director Alexander Payne (“About Schmidt,” “Election”) follows the misadventures of Miles (Paul Giamatti), a divorced unpublished novelist and wine lover. His pre-wedding gift to his best friend, Jack, a former TV sitcom actor and wild man, is to take him on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards.

Former sitcom actor Thomas Haden Church (“Wings”) plays Jack. Church may or may not be a wild man. Judging from a panel discussion with the cast at the New York Film Festival last month, he more than likely is.

“I’m probably a lot more like Jack than I’m even aware,” Church says.

Payne agrees. “His humor, his craggy and handsome looks, his goofiness and the fact that he also had a lot of experience in TV,” the director says, “all had an interesting crossover with the character.”

There is a definite comic chemistry between this odd couple of Giamatti and Church, so much so that they were asked if they knew each other before this movie. “I did not know Thomas,” Giamatti deadpanned. “I now know Thomas very well.”

Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that the cast steeped itself in the culture of the wine country before shooting began.

“We hit the wineries,” Church explained, “which was weird because it was 11 o’clock in the morning. [We’d say], ‘Hey, research!’”

“Sideways” is from a Rex Pickett novel by the same name. Pickett based it loosely on his own weekend trip with a friend. At the time Pickett was a divorced, unemployed, debt-ridden screenwriter reduced to getting free tickets to movies through his Writers Guild membership and then selling them later when the lines were long.

As Pickett and his friend tasted more and more wine, Pickett began to entertain him with outrageous stories “about these two guys who come to the wine country and get nuttier and nuttier.” His friend advised him to turn the stories into a screenplay. He failed at that but did turn them into a novel, which found its way to Payne. And a sweet, funny, memorable movie was born.

The film also stars Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh (Payne’s real-life wife) as the women with whom Miles and Jack become involved.

“I think the story is about examining the male psyche, and also how women deal with the male psyche,” Oh has said. “It’s about two completely opposite men who can’t quite grow up and need each other to survive — and it’s about wondering ‘what have I done with my life and where am I going?’”

Asked if “Sideways” is a comedy or a drama, Payne said, “It’s a movie about people.”

The author can be reached at crummel@pww.org.

Dr. Frists Tennessee brings up the rear

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:15:00 +0000

A new report from the United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and the Partners for Prevention has found that Tennessee, the home base of Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, ranks 48 out of the 50 states in the health status of its population.

The report, “America’s Health: State Health Rankings, A Call to Action for People and Their Communities,” documents state by state the main indices of health care, including infant mortality.

It’s unlikely the health situation for Tennesseans is going to get better anytime soon: the state is in the process of dissolving its Tenncare program and reverting to Medicaid. The office of Gov. Phil Bredesen reports that 430,000 out of 1.3 million enrollees could lose their health care in the transition.

A major reason for dropping the program, according to a statement by the governor, is a recent change in the formula for federal funding that will reduce the federal dollars from Washington for the program. Sen. Frist’s office did not return phone calls from this newspaper asking for his plans to address this crisis.

The America’s Health report begins with the World Health Organization statement of what health is: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The report continues: “In addition to the contributions of our individual genetic predispositions to disease, health is the result of our personal behaviors, the environment of the community in which we live and the policies and practices of our health care and prevention systems.

“These three areas which we as individuals and as members of society can influence, interact to create the healthy outcomes we desire, including a long, disease-free and robust life for all individuals regardless of race, sex or socio-economic status.”

These goals and statements of what should be considered health have been given short shrift in recent years. It is significant that these three organizations, especially the American Public Health Association, are recommitting themselves to this definition of health. It is especially important that the report holds individual state policy leaders responsible for their health policies.

The criteria used to evaluate the individual states include smoking rates, infant mortality, infectious disease deaths and level of residents’ coverage by some kind of health insurance plan. The report also takes into account the poverty and education levels of people in the state. The combination of these factors, which truly determine the health and social status of people, makes this report a clarion call to action.

But, like any report or statement from professional people, the value of the words is only as good as their utilization by activists and their organizations that directly represent people. The “call to action” admonition should serve as notice especially to federal oversight agencies that have financial obligations to make sure federal funding, which is significant, is done appropriately.

The report, to its credit, also compares the U.S. experience to that of other countries. The report makes it clear that individual health measures that can be used to compare the U.S. with other countries show “what other countries have already achieved and this indicates the potential for the United States.”

The executive summary ends by stating that “28 countries have healthy life expectancies that exceed the United States, including the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and Japan.” These countries still have strong government health programs. They resisted the privatization and market reform demanded by the World Bank 20 years ago. A recent World Health Organization report said that these two failed strategies account for a widening of the health gap between those who are healthy and those in poor health.

Bill Frist continues to extol the virtues of profits and personal ownership of health and also Social Security in the U.S. Senate as his home state subjects its own people to misery and premature deaths and disabilities.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Many positives in N.Y. elections

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:12:00 +0000

NEW YORK — New York State had some interesting election races, with results that could lead to a state legislature that addresses the most important issues facing working people. These include a new formula for public school funding, mandated last year by a high court but not yet acted upon; the ongoing battle to increase the minimum wage; and blocking proposed fare hikes and service cutbacks in the New York City transit system.

At press time, Democrat Brian Higgins appeared very close to winning the 27th Congressional District seat, which represents parts of Buffalo. The GOP has held the seat for 12 years. The vote tally was extremely close and continuing.

Higgins had the strong support of labor and the Working Families Party. The WFP also attracted 150,000 votes on its line for Sen. Charles Schumer, and about 120,000 for Kerry. War Resisters League leader David McReynolds ran against Schumer as a Green Party candidate and garnered 33,000 votes.

The WFP candidate for Albany County district attorney, David Soares, won in a huge victory for grassroots activism against the draconian Rockefeller drug laws.

The 13th CD, which includes Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, between Frank Barbaro and Republican incumbent Vito Fossella, started out as a long shot bid by Barbaro and wound up being hotly contested.

Barbaro, a veteran campaigner and public figure, known when he was in Albany as “labor’s assemblyman,” closed a 70-30 polling gap despite having a modest war chest. His lack of funds was compensated largely by a dedicated contingent of volunteers.

Fossella, unable to defend his abysmal record — and refusing to debate Barbaro openly — resorted in the closing days of the campaign to slanderous statements and distortions in an attempt to smear his opponent. He mailed out two full-color glossy brochures in the last week of the campaign.

Barbaro won Brooklyn but was unable to reach all of Staten Island with his pro-working families, antiwar, anti-Bush message. He received about 42 percent of the vote overall.

The big gains were at the state level. State Senate seats were won by some progressive Democrats: In the 28th district, José M. Serrano, New York City councilman, defeated Olga Mendez, a former Democrat turned Republican. The WFP, Jobs with Justice, and other grassroots organizations had hammered Mendez on the minimum wage bill, which her Republican colleagues had held up for four years.

At press time, Republican Nick Spano of Yonkers was in a very close race with Andrea Stewart-Cousins, an African American county legislator and parent activist, who has made education her focal point. Ballots have been impounded so that the count can be closely monitored.

In another close state Senate race, Syracuse Democrat David Valesky beat incumbent Nancy Larraine Hoffmann by a few hundred votes. Hoffmann had been expected to win, but Bush did poorly in the district, partly due to the surge in new voters among the area’s many college students.

Jeffrey Klein won in the 34th District (Bronx, Westchester County) with the help of labor. He takes the Senate seat formerly held by Republican Guy Velella, who has been convicted of corruption charges.

Democrat Diane Savino won the Brooklyn-Staten Island seat of a retiring Democrat, and her victory was important given the strong grassroots labor component to her campaign. Savino is vice president for political action of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 37, the largest in the country.

Tom Duane, David Paterson, Eric Schneiderman, and Liz Kruger, all of Manhattan, all retained their Senate seats. Brian McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, won a seat in the Assembly.

The authors can be reached at pww@pww.org.

October jobs report: Bush job flop gets blip

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:03:00 +0000

Republicans are celebrating the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing 337,000 new jobs created in October.

However, a look behind the BLS numbers shows a discouraging trend that has been consistent over the past four years. Manufacturing jobs are shrinking. It appears that the U.S. economy is only creating jobs in government and in areas of domestic services that cannot be outsourced or replaced with imports.

The October report shows that government employment accounts for 41,000 of the new jobs. In the private economy, 296,000 jobs were created. Of these, 71,000 were in construction; 36,000 were in wholesale and retail trade, transportation and warehousing; 17,000 were in credit services; 55,000 were in employment services (primarily temporary help); 62,000 were in school administration, teaching, health care and social assistance; and 20,000 jobs were in bars and restaurants.

Manufacturing lost 2.7 million jobs since Bush took office, with losses being registered in every category, in both durable and non-durable goods. These losses continue in the latest report, despite gains in other categories. “New economy” jobs in information, computer equipment, and Internet-related firms were either flat or down, and in most cases still behind where they were a year ago.

The report also shows that foreign trade continued to erode U.S. production of both goods and services during the third quarter. According to Charles W. McMillion, president of MBG Information Services, and the Washington Post, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services is now soaring past $1.2 million each minute.

Record-breaking levels of global sourcing has resulted in a 5.5 percent drag on the U.S. gross domestic product, paid for by accumulating an equivalent level of additional foreign debt and asset sales. As a share of GDP, the economic drag from unbalanced trade is at least two times worse than it was during the “competitiveness crisis” of the mid-1980s, when rumors of Japanese economic supremacy were rife.

The loss of production to net imports goes a long way to explaining the sluggish job and income growth since May. There has been job growth for 15 consecutive months and the addition of 2.1 million jobs. But, beyond any precedent, 35 months after the start of the current cyclical recovery, private sector workers are still being paid for virtually the same total hours worked as when the recession ended.

Three consecutive years of Bush tax cuts gave a temporary bounce to growth in disposable income and (after-tax) profits. But real income has been stagnant since April, with spending growth weak and uneven. Savings rates have fallen to post-Depression lows, plunging to just 0.17 percent of disposable income in September. Household debt has now spiked to 117 percent of annual disposable income, and debt service obligations in the past three years remain far higher than ever before — even with record low interest rates.

As a curious sidelight to the many election statistics available, it’s worth noting that in the month prior to the election, voters in Ohio and West Virginia — two hotly contested states — told pollsters that their number one issue was the “economy and jobs.” The jobs issue led by an 8-10 point margin over the next biggest issues, “terrorism” and “moral values,” which were tied, followed closely by “Iraq.”

In the last weeks before the election, the Kerry and Bush campaigns focused heavily on Iraq and questions of national security, and the religious right on “moral values” — all in contrast to the emphasis placed by Bill Clinton and others on the importance of keeping the focus on economic issues.

For those who still felt the “economy and jobs” was the most important question, Kerry was the choice in both states by a whopping 85-15 percent margin. Not surprisingly, these were also voters in the “under $50,000 annual income” category. Kerry also enjoyed a big margin among voters who thought Iraq was a big issue.

But those voters who were distracted by the campaign rhetoric about terrorism and moral values, or about Bush’s phony claims about job growth, were seriously misled.

The October jobs report is a blip that really disguises a continuing flop. Perhaps voters’ failing to focus on jobs may have helped re-elected Bush, the Blip-Flop President.

The author can be reached at jcase@steuber.com.

International notes

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:49:00 +0000

South Korea: Union strikes for recognition

The Korean Government Employees’ Union (KGEU) launched a general strike Nov. 15 despite government efforts to squelch its demand for full labor rights, including the right to strike. Last week the government forcibly disrupted a strike vote by the unrecognized union of 140,000 members. It has also issued arrest warrants for 33 KGEU leaders, including Chairman Kim Young-gil.

The existing Civil Service Law bars most government workers from joining a union or participating in collective actions. The government said it would severely punish or dismiss strikers.

At the same time, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which backs the public workers’ strike, said its 620,000 members would walk off their jobs Nov. 26 after a government bill on non-regular workers is presented to the National Assembly. The KCTU wants temporary and other non-regular workers to have the same protections as regular workers.

Sudan: Gov’t and rebels sign pact

The Sudan government Nov. 9 agreed to end military flights over Darfur, and signed a pact to end 20 months of hostilities with rebels from western Sudan, the UN’s IRIN news agency said.

The government, the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equity Movement signed measures to end further fighting. The accords, reached after three weeks of talks sponsored by the African Union, provide for disarmament of the Janjawid militia.

This will allow relief efforts to reach some 1.5 million people who have been displaced by the conflict. The agreements had been held up by the government’s rejection of a no-fly zone.

In a reminder of continuing difficulties, however, the BBC reported that on Nov. 10, Sudanese security forces stormed a Darfur refugee camp for the second time in a week.

Peru: Children send message re: Cuban 5

Over 200 Peruvian children have sent messages of solidarity and encouragement to Ivette Gonzalez, daughter of René Gonzalez, one of the Cuban Five.

“The world is with you,” the children told young Ivette. “We want to greet you and wish you the best,” wrote the children from the working-class district of San Juan de Miraflores in Lima. “We are sure you will soon see your father and will be happy.”

Prensa Latina said the names, signatures and identity cards of 205 children were presented at a ceremony Nov. 12 at National Telephone Union headquarters.

The event was part of a coordinated series of solidarity activities with the Five put on by Peruvian-Cuban Friendship Houses, trade unions and political organizations.

Finland: Bus drivers’ strike spreads

An unofficial strike by 1,300 Finish bus drivers in the southern region around Helsinki was spreading late last week, threatening to disrupt nationwide wage talks now in progress between central unions and employers’ organizations, Morning Star Online said.

The strike, which started Nov. 9, spread to central Finland as hundreds more drivers walked off the job to protest bus company policies, including an increase in the amount of part-time work.

The labor dispute occurred as the central trade unions and the main employers’ organization were negotiating wages and working conditions for more than a million Finnish workers. Employers’ organizations are demanding an end to unauthorized strikes, more flexible employment policies and the right for companies to negotiate wage contracts directly with employees without union involvement.

Burma: Forced labor continues

In a Nov. 12 statement, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) released new evidence of forced labor taking place throughout the country.

For the fourth time since June 2004, the ICFTU has provided specific examples of forced labor of various types, including road construction, building and maintenance of military camps, carrying of army supplies and ammunition, agricultural work, and many others — some as recent as last month.

The ICFTU’s examples are based on data collected by the Federation of Trade Unions–Burma (FTUB), an underground workers’ organization active inside Burma and maintaining offices and training facilities in neighboring countries. Three FTUB leaders were sentenced to death last year after the Burmese dictatorship found they were giving the ILO information about forced labor. Though their sentences have since been reduced to prison terms, they remain in detention, and their cases are being featured in discussion of the Burma situation by the International Labor Organization’s Governing Body this week.

International Notes are compiled by Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel@pww.org).

Teamsters seek probe of killing in El Salvador

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:40:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — Teamsters President James P. Hoffa asked Secretary of State Colin Powell last week to pressure El Salvador to investigate the Nov. 5 killing of a member who was trying to unionize port workers.

Teamster Jose Gilberto Soto, 49, was shot in the back and killed in Usulutan, El Salvador. Hoffa said police there have done little to apprehend “what appears to be a death squad” that killed Soto.

“We urge you to demand that the government of El Salvador initiate an intensive manhunt (to) capture and bring the murderers to trial,” Hoffa’s letter said. Soto, a U.S. citizen and resident of Cliffside Park, N.J., arrived in El Salvador on Oct. 30 to meet with the country’s trade union leaders and port drivers.

“We are concerned that Mr. Soto’s murder is related to his leadership position with the Teamsters” and his intention to meet with labor leaders and port drivers in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, the Teamster leader said. His letter said Soto was gunned down in front of his mother’s home, and that witnesses saw three men, including one on a bicycle, at the scene.

Hemingway papers in jeopardy

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:36:00 +0000

Cultural connections between Cuba and the United States persist in spite of the U.S. blockade. The two countries venerate each other’s music, art, and literature, and the life of Ernest Hemingway is remarkable as an example of shared cultural ties.

The renowned U.S. author lived in Cuba longer than anywhere else, and his widow Mary donated Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s Cuban home, to the people of Cuba. It is now a museum where manuscripts, 9,000 books, thousands of photographs, and letters are stored. The collection includes 21 years of correspondence between Hemingway and his literary agent Maxwell Perkins.

But rain and tropical humidity have taken their toll. According to a Nov. 9 Boston Globe article, “Finca Vigia has been called a preservation emergency by experts: It is in such bad shape that the next hurricane could blow it away.” Led by Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), U.S. foundations and benefactors have undertaken to preserve the memorabilia stored there. Supporters of a project to repair the house and protect its contents recently sought permission from the U.S. Treasury Department for architects and engineers to visit the island. They had planned to study practical aspects of the undertaking, together with their Cuban colleagues.

But the Bush administration turned them down. It claimed that a refurbished Hemingway museum might encourage tourism, something the administration wants to stamp out in hopes of further starving the Cuban economy.

An appeal of the decision is planned. In the meantime, the administration is content to let the winds blow, the termites burrow, and world-class cultural treasures rot away.

— W.T. Whitney Jr.

CPUSA mourns the death of Yasser Arafat

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:22:00 +0000

On Nov. 16 the National Board of the Communist Party USA issued the following statement from its offices in New York City.

The Communist Party USA expresses its deep sorrow on the death of Yasser Arafat, the decades-long leader and larger-than-life symbol of the Palestinian people’s quest for justice, human rights, self-determination and statehood.

From his earliest days as a student activist, to his later roles as chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat devoted his entire life to the cause of his people’s freedom, to an end to the cruel U.S.-backed Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands seized in the 1967 war, and to the cause of national liberation and peace.

Despite incessant efforts by the Israeli government to vilify and discredit him, despite all the slanders and snubs (including by President George W. Bush, who shunned the Palestinian leader in his last years), Arafat remained until the very end a dignified symbol of resistance to colonial occupation and aggression, and a steadfast champion of freedom and justice.

Whether he was presenting the case for the human and national rights of the Palestinian people before the United Nations, or building the PLO, or meeting with leaders of the Israeli and U.S. peace movements — which he frequently did — Arafat was untiring in his search for a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He rejected terrorism as a path to liberation, and harshly condemned the harming of innocents. He and the PLO officially recognized Israel’s right to exist within secure borders.

At the same time, Arafat was unyielding in his support for the internationally recognized right of the Palestinian people to resist the Israeli occupation, and he refused to give up East Jerusalem or to renounce the right of Palestinian refugees to return. For that he was condemned and reviled by the U.S. and Israeli governments.

At a time when the United States is seeking to recolonize Iraq and to dominate the entire Middle East, and as our government continues to pour billions of dollars each year into Israeli coffers for new missiles, bombs, helicopter gunships, apartheid-like walls, and prisons to subjugate the Palestinian people, we vow to redouble our efforts to build solidarity with the embattled people of Palestine.

The Communist Party USA pledges to honor Yasser Arafat’s memory by intensifying the campaign against the illegal, U.S.-backed Israeli occupation and against all U.S. efforts to meddle in the affairs of the Palestinian people.

We join with other peace forces, including Jewish peace activists in the U.S. and Israel, in calling for an end to all U.S. military aid to Israel until it returns to its 1967 borders. We support a two-state solution, with the state of Israel alongside a sovereign, viable, and contiguous state of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem. And we support the right of return to Israel of all Palestinian refugees, as spelled out in the relevant UN resolutions.

The road to peace in the Middle East is through justice and self-determination, adherence to international law, and strict compliance with the historic UN resolutions on Palestine and the Palestinian people. There is no other path. We stand firmly for that path.

We offer our deepest condolences to the family, comrades, and friends of President Yasser Arafat.

High-tech voting needs transparency

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:09:00 +0000

Enlisting technology creates a whole new set of problems in the election process.

With touch screens, there are no hanging chads, but there is typically no paper trail either. There are glitches, unusual crashes and security loopholes. Then there are “conflict of interest” relationships between the electronic machine manufacturers and the Republican Party.

How can such problems exist in a country that prides itself on cutting-edge technology?

Let’s look at Australia, which used electronic voting in 2001. A private company, Software Improvement, designed the system code based on specifications by independent election officials. The software code was then posted so everyone could see it — making it a truly “open” source.

In open source software, everyone from an “alley hacker” to an expert can take a look and point out what the security loopholes are. Then they get fixed or “debugged” and the code becomes more robust and not easily hacked. The code is then verified and validated by an independent company, and the machines are then tested. Every step of the process is transparent.

Why couldn’t this happen here?

Well, in the land of the free, software codes used by e-voting companies are proprietary. They are kept secret by a contract between the private company (like Diebold or ES&S) and the government, which is the client. Examining the software code would require a court order.

If anything, Election 2004 should be a wake-up call. We must demand accountability and transparency at every step. Elections must be decided by the people, not by flawed programs with “mystery” glitches.

Shelley Delos, a media activist and IT specialist, can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Same-sex marriage was not the deciding issue

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:05:00 +0000

News Analysis

Even before the polls closed on Nov. 2, the political slings and arrows were being aimed at the movement for marriage equality.

Citing the prevalence of “moral values” as the top concern for voters, some election analysts pinned John Kerry’s loss of the presidential race on an alleged backlash against the nationwide movement for same-sex marriage rights.

Voters in 11 states passed ballot initiatives amending their states’ constitutions to ban same-sex marriage. In eight, the amendments also ban any civil union or domestic partnership, regardless of sexual orientation. The ballot measures, the handiwork of the right wing, were calculated to spur voter turnout among conservatives.

However, more than just the gay marriage issue spurred the “moral values” vote. Under the direction of Bush campaign advisor Karl Rove, hot-button issues around women’s rights, racial justice, sex education, the Faith Based Initiative and stem-cell research were also used to galvanize the conservative evangelical vote.

“The right wing was indeed energized,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, in a statement, noting that the Bush administration had “catered to [the right wing’s] every request.”

At the same time, he said, “It’s sickening and fascinating that when one in five voters said that ‘moral values’ was the most important issue for them, pundits immediately equated that with gay marriage.”

Politicians also seized on the passage of the amendments to make the false accusation that the issue of same-sex marriage swung the presidential vote for Bush, something disproved by the numbers. Kerry won the states of Oregon and Michigan, where amendments against gay marriage passed, with percentages at or above those received by Al Gore in 2000.

In Ohio, nearly 200,000 people vote for president bypassed State Issue 1, the same-sex marriage measure. Clearly, the presidential race itself was paramount.

While the media focus has been on the passage of the amendments, a large majority of voters support legal protections for same-sex couples. Exit polls showed that 20 percent of voters said moral values were the most important issue also showed that 60 percent supported either legal marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples.

Although the end result of the vote was a disappointing setback, gay and lesbian groups are looking at the election as a point of departure. Lambda Legal and the Georgia ACLU said they will file a lawsuit to overturn that state’s new amendment, which bans both same-sex marriage and legal status for unmarried couples. Similar suits may be filed in other states. Shortly before the election, an amendment to the Louisiana Constitution was overturned on this basis.

There were some positive developments. A majority of Cincinnati voters voted to repeal a city charter article that denied gays and lesbians protection under the city’s human rights laws. In 40 races across the country, candidates who openly supported gay rights were elected. All of the Massachusetts legislators who supported that state’s historic legalization of same-sex marriage were re-elected. In four of the 11 states that passed discriminatory amendments and in two of the six states that already had such amendments, voters elected openly gay or lesbian candidates.

The author can be reached at jbarnett@pww.org.

Election update: Ohio to recount vote

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:00:00 +0000

A statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote will take place next month, according to the Green Party. Two third-party presidential candidates, David Cobb (Green) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian), announced their intention to request a recount last week. Over $113,000 was raised in four days to pay the required fees.

A recount request must be filed five days after the secretary of state certifies the vote. The secretary’s spokesman put the certification date sometime around Dec. 6.

Voting rights organizations support the Ohio recount, but they don’t expect it to change Ohio from a “red” state to “blue” one. “It is not our expectation that a recount will change the outcome of the presidential election, nor is that the intent of this effort,” stated a coalition of “election protection” groups, including People for the American Way, Fannie Lou Hamer Project and Common Cause. “We believe it is imperative that, in a democracy, every citizen’s vote be counted.”

With the unofficial count, George Bush won Ohio by about 136,000 votes.

The Ohio Democratic Party, attorneys for the Ohio Kerry campaign, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich also committed to “count every vote.”

In a Nov. 10 open letter, Kucinich promised to keep a close watch on voter suppression and theft concerns. “Serious problems surfaced in this election that must be addressed,” Kucinich stated. “I am paying close attention to this important period of time between the initial results and the official vote tabulation and will not hesitate to take appropriate legal action where supported by facts.”

Among the serious problems reported in Ohio were:

* Glitches in electronic voting, especially the widely-reported problem in Gahanna, Ohio, just outside of Columbus, where over 4,000 votes were posted for George Bush although only 638 people voted in that poll.

* More than 92,000 “spoiled” ballots due to punch card ballot problems similar to the ones in Florida in 2000.

* Tremendous lines where voters waited for hours because of insufficient number of voting machines; these appeared to be concentrated in working class precincts, many of them predominantly African American and Latino.

* Dirty tricks and voter intimidation.

* Thousands of provisional ballots improperly disqualified.

Citizens groups are holding hearings in Columbus to take testimony from voters, poll watchers and election experts about the Ohio vote problems.

Further irregularities nationwide include Sarper County, Neb., where a computer glitch doubled the votes in half the precincts; Guilford County, N.C., where vote totals were so large that the computer threw votes away; Carteret County, N.C., where a machine discarded 4,532 ballots; and Boulder County, Colo., where an optical scanning system stretched or crushed thousands of paper ballots, rendering bar codes unreadable.

Election Day problems cry “system failure,” charged voting rights groups.

The Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002 to reduce vote problems that happened in Florida in 2000, introduced the paperless electronic touch-screen voting machine. But many, including researchers from Johns Hopkins who tested the machines, find the system unacceptable, lacking the minimum security and audit standards.

Six Democratic House Judiciary Committee members, John Conyers (Mich.), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Robert Wexler (Fla.), Robert C. Scott (Va.), Melvin Watt (N.C.) and Rush Holt (N.J.), have written to the U.S. comptroller general asking for an investigation into voting irregularities.

Holt said the Government Accountability Office should “examine the scope and validity of complaints from voters” about malfunctioning electronic voting machines, failures to count absentee ballots, and attempts to prevent the monitoring of vote counts.

Nadler said he hopes “the information people provide will be helpful.” The House Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over the Voting Rights Act, the Help America Vote Act, and constitutional rights to free and fair democratic elections, he said.

The authors can be reached at pww@pww.org.

The authors can be reached at pww@pww.org.

National Clips

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:53:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES: Council bars sweatshop products

In the heart of the “sweatshop capital of world,” LA’s labor leaders, workers and cuty residents demanded the city only buy products made by workers who labor under humane conditions and are paid fair wages. They won.

In a 13-0 vote, Nov. 9, the City Council approved an ordinance requiring that the city and its contractors purchase products — from police uniforms to paper clips — from an approved list of vendors who have signed a “labor code of conduct.” The council appropriated $50,000 to enforce the new law. If a company violates the code, it loses its contract.

Guadalupe Hernandez, a sweatshop worker for 12 years, testified about poverty wages and 12-hour workdays. “I’m a taxpayer and I don’t want my tax money used for this type of exploitation,” she told the council.

Councilman Eric Garcetti, author of the ordinance, rejected arguments from the Garment Contractors Association of Southern California that LA’s 1,000 garment companies, employing 30,000 workers, would lose profits and close their plants if the law was passed. Garcetti said the employers have to obey labor laws, and that “taxpayers should not subsidize sweatshops.”

SMITHERS, W.Va.: Union-busting hurts communities

Reporters needed a shoehorn to squeeze into Valley High School, Oct. 21, as over 1,500 coal miners, their families, and others jammed into the gym to attend a public hearing on the economic and social impact of coal company union-busting and the corporate slashing of health care and pensions. A blue-ribbon panel, consisting of elected officials, ministers, and others, heard the testimony.

Smithers is located in Fayette County, southeast of Charleston, and its population is 876.

Earlier this year, the bankruptcy of Horizon Resources, a major coal company, resulted in a federal judge tearing up the United Mine Workers union contracts, which provided health care and pensions, and selling off the corporation’s mines. The notorious A.T. Massey Energy Corporation bought two of them near Smithers. Massey has announced that it plans to reopen the mines in early 2005, but to operate them nonunion.

Students testified that they would have to leave college or stop participating in school activities if the coal operators eliminated their health insurance. Retired miners detailed the life-and-death choices they make when coal companies and judges choose to rob them of health care and pension checks. Elected officials said that Smithers would collapse because the tax base would be wiped out by the judge’s corporate decision.

A report from the panel, called the Community Impact Board, is expected in two weeks.

OKLAHOMA CITY: Peace marchers undeterred by Bush election

Over 200 residents marched Nov. 7 by the Murrah Building National Memorial, site of the April 1995 homegrown, right-wing terrorist bombing that killed 168 federal workers and family members, in a post-election demonstration for peace and an end to occupation of Iraq.

The silent march demonstrated “our expression of our continuing commitment to peaceful pursuits, regardless of the election outcomes,” said Nathaniel Batchelder, director of Peace House.

Marchers brought their message to the community as they lined up behind banners reading, “Spiritual March for Peace” and “Give Peace a Chance.”

At the rally following the march, things got a little noisier. Residents and activists strode up to the open mike to speak for peace and justice, and to sing songs like “This Land is Your Land,” the Woody Guthrie classic from the Great Depression.

CHICAGO: City college teachers ratify pact

The City Colleges of Chicago and the union representing its striking full-time faculty have reached an agreement on a new contract, allowing tens of thousands of students to resume classes on the system’s seven campuses.

The agreement between City Colleges negotiators and representatives of the Cook County College Teachers, AFT Local 1600, was reached on Nov. 5, and was ratified by a 95 percent affirmative vote by the union’s membership on Nov. 7.

The teachers agreed to accept a 3 percent raise. While they successfully rebuffed a drive by the administration to immediately increase their teaching load from 12 to 15 hours a week, a 15-hour class load is set to take effect in 2008.

Although Perry Buckley, president of the AFT local, characterized the contract as generally fair, he expressed concern that several part-time teachers who joined the three-week walkout in solidarity with the union are facing dismissal. Buckley said such actions appear to violate a clause in the contract that forbids reprisals against “students, clerks or any other person” for supporting the strike.

National Clips are compiled by Denise Winebrenner Edwards (dwinebr696@aol.com). Brad Jenzen and Rosalio Muñoz contributed to this week’s clips.

Chicagoans rally against Daley school plan

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:44:00 +0000

News Analysis

CHICAGO — If Mayor Richard M. Daley thought he could sneak a new school privatization scheme by the public, he’s had a rude awakening. Vowing to block the mayor’s “Renaissance 2010” plan, over 500 union members, parents, community activists and students rallied Nov. 12 across from City Hall.

Since it was announced this spring, the Renaissance 2010 plan has sparked a firestorm of grassroots protest, particularly in the African American community, which stands to suffer most under the plan’s provisions.

“Children are being treated worse than cattle,” declared Jhatayn Travis, executive director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization and chair of Chicagoans United for Education. “This plan won’t benefit our children, but it may benefit corporations.” CUE is a grassroots labor-community coalition that has led the fight against the mayor’s scheme.

The plan will close 60 schools and open 100 new schools, 70 of which will be charter and “contract” schools. Unionized teachers, custodians and operating engineers and local school councils are to be eliminated in most cases. Contract schools are a way to get around the limited number of for-profit charter schools permitted by law.

The school closings will primarily hit the African American community in the city’s mid-south corridor, where large public high rises have been torn down to make way for luxury condominium developments. But the plan sets a precedent for closing practically any school for any reason.

“Gentrification shouldn’t be a catalyst to school reform. We want local school councils, union workers and the right to elect a Board of Education for us and not the business community,” said Travis.

The Chicago Teachers Union says 1,200 experienced teachers would be eliminated and replaced by new, lower-paid, nonunion teachers. State law allows for existing charter schools to operate with 25 percent of their teachers being uncertified, or 50 percent in the case of new charters.

Daley sprung the plan on the unions and community without warning. He has the backing of the Commercial Club, an association of Chicago’s richest corporate and institutional leaders. The Civic Committee, an arm of the Commercial Club, has been advocating the business takeover of public education and the establishment of exclusive schools to serve the city’s wealthy.

This approach is being challenged. “We spend $18,000 per pupil in New Trier (a wealthy township) and one-third of that per pupil in Chicago,” said William McNary, president of USAction. “We need funding that is fair, equitable and adequate for all our children. We don’t need a bunch of businessmen coming in from New Trier saying they will run our schools better.”

For-profit education corporations have lobbied against union wage requirements, work rules and class-size caps, and have demanded more money per pupil to make it more profitable to run the schools. At a recent closed-door meeting, Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan increased the per-pupil allotment and lavished other goodies on the corporations.

Critics of charter and contract schools point out their poor track record, and say the plan will result in greater racial and class segregation and the destruction of public schools.

The author can be reached at jbachtell@rednet.org.

Conf. on race calls for proactive agenda

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:34:00 +0000

BERKELEY, Calif. — They came from all regions of the country and from every arena of the racial justice struggle, and with one voice they declared that in the wake of Nov. 2, their determination to fight for democracy, equality, social and economic justice is more powerful than ever.

Well over 500 leaders and activists participated in a conference held Nov. 11-13 at the University of California at Berkeley, sponsored by the Applied Research Center (ARC) and titled “Race and Public Policy: A Proactive Agenda for 2005 and Beyond.” The mostly youthful participants — largely people of color — represented hundreds of grassroots organizing movements.

Plenaries and workshops ran the gamut of struggles to end racial and national oppression, from voting rights and electoral reform through education, job quality and access, racial profiling, health, housing, language access, immigrant rights, media, Native American sovereignty rights, and building labor and community coalitions. The conference presented over a dozen model policies that come out of recent legislative and legal victories.

Opening a plenary on next steps after the election, Tammy Johnson, program director of Race and Public Policy, emphasized the movements built during the campaign as the foundation for further advances. She cited passage of minimum wage initiatives in Florida and Nevada, election of nine Native Americans to the Idaho Legislature, and the entry of Illinois Democrat Barack Obama and Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar into the U.S. Senate.

Jacqueline Berrien of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund called for seeing voter empowerment as a continuous process: “We disempower ourselves if we only pay attention to the presidential election every four years.” Berrien urged measures to make voting easier, and called the IRS challenge to the NAACP’s tax status “not just chilling – freezing.”

Maria Blanco of the Bay Area Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights called for an “offensive defense” against the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General, a new voting rights act that bans voter suppression, and a stepped-up fight for legalization and amnesty in the wake of Arizona’s Prop. 200.

The war in Iraq was addressed by many speakers. Norman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy called the antiwar movement “the intersection between war, militarism, race and poverty.” ARC co-founder and executive director Gary Delgado pointed out that the Iraq war and the “war on terror” now absorb 40 cents of every tax dollar.

One of the most striking stories was the campaign described by newly elected Rhode Island State Representative Grace Diaz. Her candidacy arose out of the movement of Rhode Island’s home child care workers to win dignity and respect — a struggle that began in direct action community organizing in the early 1990s and has evolved into a unionization drive today. She has been a leader in the organizing committee of the child care providers union, District 1199 of SEIU.

Diaz is the first Dominican American woman elected to statewide office in the U.S. Her multiracial campaign in a majority-Latino district, backed by unions, organizations and community members, defeated a four-year incumbent. Now, said Diaz, “I have to keep in contact with my community, because the racial justice movement doesn’t end when you get elected. We need to build unity of the community, building from the root, the family.”

The conference opened with an evening presentation by television personality Tavis Smiley, whose shows are featured on PBS and NPR. Smiley called for developing a “Contract with Black Folk,” a set of principles to demand of candidates. “We must be clear about the distinction between electability and accountability,” he said. “We have to hold elected officials accountable on racial justice issues.”

In closing the event, Delgado declared to a standing ovation, “We must be willing not just to say No, but to be proactive, propose, give our people clear choices. Fairness, equity and justice are our values, our strength — we cannot concede them.”

The author can be reached at mbechtel@pww.org.click here for Spanish text

AFL-CIO head focuses on unity

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:30:00 +0000

Just one week after the disappointing outcome of the Nov. 2 election to which the American labor movement had committed unprecedented money, troops and passion, leaders of the AFL-CIO gathered in Washington, D.C., for a one-day meeting to draw lessons and plan for the difficult battles ahead.

The council met Nov. 10 with defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who came to thank labor for its support. To huge applause, Kerry pledged to continue battling. He vowed to raise his profile on workers’ causes such as overtime pay, trade, health care reform, and raising the minimum wage.

While expressing disappointment that Kerry did not win, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney focused most of his attention on the political potential of the network that labor built. “Never before have so many different unions done so much,” he said. “Never have we been so unified, moving forward together. We built a lasting force to continue the fight against attacks on working families, the fight for economic justice.”

The meeting also set up a process and timeline to consider much-discussed changes to the federation’s structure at the next regular meeting of the 54-member executive council in Los Angeles in February. The council is not only faced with the inevitable dismay at the electoral defeat. There is long-simmering frustration at the fact that big membership losses, due to outsourcing and technology-driven productivity gains, especially in the manufacturing sectors, have not been matched by organizing victories. Sweeney appeared to be going to great lengths to preserve unity of the 59-union federation in the face of these challenges.

Sweeney announced the formation of a “committee for change” composed of the federation’s 25-member executive committee, which he will chair. He said the committee will reach out to all unions, state federations, central labor councils and constituent organizations as well as to rank-and-filers for proposals.

One of those pushing most aggressively for structural changes is Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. Prior to the meeting, Stern issued a 10-point program for major change in the structure of all unions, including merging smaller unions into larger, more powerful ones.

Leo Gerard, president of the Steelworkers Union, put his focus on the continuation of campaigns that could broaden the base of the labor movement. Gerard proposed that a massive campaign for national health care should be used to keep in place the national structure that was constructed for this year’s election campaign.

“In the private sector, we need to have a huge focus on health care to rebuild our manufacturing base,” Gerard said, alluding to the large number of manufacturing workers in the U.S. who lack basic health insurance.

The author can be reached at rwood@pww.org.

Health care is a right

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:17:00 +0000

Los Angeles struggles to save trauma center

LOS ANGELES — In a massive show of strength, thousands of South Los Angeles residents and labor, community, and religious leaders gave notice Nov. 15 to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that its plans to close the Martin Luther King/Charles Drew Medical Center’s (KDMC) trauma center will be met with unprecedented opposition every step of the way.

Rep. Maxine Waters, who has spearheaded the movement to save the trauma center, acknowledged the scores of, unions, churches, neighborhood groups, and grassroots people who have joined in the struggle to save the unit. Referring to the campaign’s growing momentum, she said, “You haven’t seen anything yet!”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Diane Watson, Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally and scores of other state and local officials added their voices to the rally held in front of the local high school down the street from KDMC. The supervisors were holding a hearing there to consider the trauma unit closure.

“This is bigger than King/Drew,” said Jackson, addressing the crowd. He noted that the struggle of the 1960s was the impetus to build the hospital “out of the ashes of Watts,” and that now “40 years later, the trauma center is threatened with closure.”

Pointing to hospital closures in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago and Washington, D.C., and to nationwide service cuts for the poor, Jackson said, “This is about Schwarzenegger and Bush.”

Mayor Hahn pointed out that the area served by the trauma unit gave overwhelming support to a successful $170-million county bond issue to maintain and extend the countywide trauma system in 2002. “We need to keep that money in the community,” said Hahn.

Last week the City Council unanimously joined Hahn in opposing the closure. Villaraigosa said the city of over 4 million should have a say in the matter. “We have a responsibility for public safety,” he said, emphasizing that the trauma centers are key to the safety net. “Health care is a right, not a privilege.”

At the hearing, county officials claimed that pressure from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO) led them to propose that the hospital’s trauma unit be closed.

The county says it could lose $200 million in federal funds and loss of accreditation for KDMC if hospital improvements are not made, but that closing the trauma unit, where patients require disproportionate care, would free funds to correct alleged deficiencies.

However, both CMS and JCAHO said that closing the trauma center is not necessary to meet their concern about overall care at the hospital, according to a letter to the board from Rep. Juanita McDonald-Millender, who represents the community surrounding the hospital.

Administrators’ promises that trauma patients could be taken to alternative units were rebutted by testimony at both the rally and hearing. Representatives of local government in Long Beach and Lynwood testified that the hospitals in their areas are not prepared to treat King /Drew patients without additional funding, despite the county’s promises.

Hahn and Compton Fire Chief Rico Smith reported that paramedics in their cities say longer drives for trauma patients would mean loss of lives and take up much more time per case for the paramedics. King/Drew Trauma Director Dr. Jean Claude Henri added that extra time in transit before trauma treatment would also reduce trauma victims’ possibilities of recovery.

Perhaps the sharpest point of contention was the county claim that the closure was not a matter of money, but solely one of quality care.

Dr. Fred Hyde, a consultant on preventing hospital closures, admonished the Board of Supervisors, saying that “you can’t outsource the safety net.”

Trauma units are being closed worldwide, he said, because the volume of uninsured makes them big money losers. The real solution for King/Drew, according to Hyde, is for the hospital to hire two or three dozen additional critical care nurses.

Understaffing and county administrative neglect are the cause of breakdowns in service, not the doctors, nurses and staff, Waters said. Representatives of SEIU Local 660, which represents most of the hospital staff except the doctors, outlined in a detailed presentation how closure of the trauma unit would lead to the inevitable closure of the entire hospital and the Charles Drew Medical School associated with it.

A vote on the issue is not likely until sometime after Nov. 23.

The author can be reached at rosalio_munoz@sbcglobal.net.

What moral values?

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:01:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

Political commentators are making “moral values” the issue that squeaked President Bush back into the White House.

I think we need to look a bit further into “moral values.”

My first year in college was in a small school in central Mississippi. It was located in Congressman Bilbo’s district, the heart of the “Bible belt” with the reputation for being the headquarters of Jim Crow. It later got even worse recognition when three civil rights workers were lynched there during the civil rights struggle.

There was absolute segregation. The section where Black people lived was complete poverty. White male students would harass any Black young woman who came into the little town to shop. One of my professors boasted in class of attacking a Black woman bus rider in New York City when she sat near the front of the bus.

The Christian right, which had a decisive part in the election Nov. 2, is the heir to that tradition. Civil rights is just one target of religious fundamentalism. Science, particularly the scientific method, is in their sights. Some of them have graduated from the Flat Earth Society. They oppose the use of science in important fields of research. Many of them reject the concept of evolution.

These folks are being manipulated by corporate wealth. They have been blinded to their own self-interest by religious flim-flam. Unfortunately it is not just they who will suffer the consequences of their political decisions. The corporate agenda will destroy Social Security, civil and human rights and a decent standard of living for our citizenry.

There are more important ‘moral values’ than those promoted by the religious right.

— George Edwards

The writer is the editor of OldTimer magazine, published by the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees. He worked 39 years at the USX Lorain Works in Lorain, Ohio, USWA Local 1104.

Minnesota sees high turnout, some gains

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:52:00 +0000

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The deep disappointment among progressives which was felt with the election of George W. Bush to a second term was tempered somewhat in Minnesota by the gains made by the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party in the state House, a gain of 13 seats, leaving the Republicans with only a two-seat majority.

Of even greater comfort is the fact that John Kerry prevailed in the state of Minnesota. In St. Paul, the vote was 73 percent for Kerry and 26 percent for Bush. Minnesota had the highest voter turnout in the country, 72 percent.

The fact that we were able to get so many first-time voters to the polls, young people as well as immigrants voting here for the first time, bodes well for our ability to engage in effective struggle against the right-wing agenda.

In St. Paul, of particular importance is the election for mayor in 2005. The current mayor, Randy Kelly, a token “Democrat,” not only endorsed Bush for president, but also actively campaigned for him. If St. Paul progressives are able to mobilize the same degree of participation in 2005 they did for the presidential election, it may be possible to elect a truly progressive mayor.

— Janet Quaife (pww@pww.org).