People Before Profit blog

Letters

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:40:00 +0000

What goes around…

Well, the irritable little man from Connecticut (who pretends to be a Texan) has managed to finagle his way back into the White House. “Thank goodness,” he probably thought, that his oh-so-gracious opponent conceded the election — even before all the votes had been counted.

Still, it’s in the air, this notion that G.W. has managed to misappropriate a second presidential election. A growing body of evidence points to significant problems with the vote tallies produced in certain crucial Ohio districts that happened to use those no-paper-receipt Diebold machines, whose manufacturer once boasted that he’d bring in the Ohio vote for George W. Bush.

Many years ago, Richard Nixon won a second term, only to be run out of office for criminal acts arising out of a desperate, venal partisanship within Republican campaign circles. Karl Rove cut his political teeth during that time as a young Nixon worker. Truly, it would be sweet justice if history repeated itself and Rove’s current boss was also brought down by an angry, affronted nation.

Cord MacGuire…Boulder CO

Reach out and struggle…

It is very important for all of us to view this past election as not one that divided the country into those who want improved social benefits and those who oppose that concept.

The exit polls indicated that despite the vote for Bush, these same people recognized, in overwhelming numbers, the need for universal health care, a deep concern regarding our actions in Iraq, an opposition to the economic policies of the administration, as it relates to taxes and other giveaways to the rich. These are the people we have to organize, in their own interests, for these objectives. In the struggle to obtain these benefits they will learn who their friends are and who their enemies are.

Karl Dennis…Tucson AZ

Buffalo libraries to close…

I am stunned, surprised, shocked and scared. The government is cutting the budget by 80 percent to public libraries in the Erie County-Buffalo area and 52 libraries will be closing in January. I received an e-mail from the public library announcing this.

I know that the best way of dominating people is to make them more ignorant. That is the best explanation. They do have money to slaughter people. They do have money to spend in wars, but they cut the budget to educate the people. Their strategy is to make people ignorant to rule them easily. This is very scary. George Orwell predicted the future when he wrote “1984.”

I think we must do something to prevent them from closing all these libraries. I am already sending a letter to the people in power urging them to do something about this. We should all do something.

A reader…Via e-mail

Parade ordinance…

Regarding Sacramento’s parade ordinance (PWW 8/14-20), I hear that it is going to be voted upon soon, and I have some thoughts to share.

There are many different kinds of problems with it. But what I don’t like about it is it conditions one’s participation in lawful First Amendment activity upon such person’s willingness to subject him/herself to the full impact of any police weaponry that might be used. It does so by prohibiting ordinary, lawful participants from wearing bulletproof vests or gas filtration masks as a reasonable safety measure.

Suppose that I want to engage in lawful First Amendment activity at an organized event, and my intent is to do so peacefully; but suppose I am concerned that others might attend the event who might not be peaceful, and that they might cause the police to respond with tear gas and/or rubber bullets. With this ordinance, I am not lawfully permitted to attend and/or participate unless I agree to subject myself to the full impact of any police weaponry that might be used.

The condition is overbroad, and it’s an unlawful prior restraint. People who attend protest events are often reasonably concerned about the potential for violence. To require them to maximize their vulnerability to such violence as a condition of participation is absolutely the opposite of what the framers of the First Amendment had in mind!

Stephen S. Pearcy…Berkeley CA

The author is an attorney

Wrong on 62…

In “Results mixed in California contests,” (PWW 11/6-12) there are several things wrong in the paragraph about Proposition 62.

Proposition 62 was the “top two” initiative that would have done away with partisan primaries. It was defeated, and Proposition 60, the measure upholding the current primary election system passed.

It is politically wrong to characterize Proposition 62 as a “right-wing challenge” or a “right-wing initiative.” The backers of Proposition 62 were centrists, not right-wingers, who explicitly said that their goal was to elect more “moderates” (by which they meant pro-business politicians who wouldn’t promote divisive social issues that distract from improving the business climate). Their goal was to narrow the political spectrum in California government so that it would run from Dianne Feinstein on the left to Richard Riordan on the right, excluding most current Republican officeholders as too far to the right and most current Democratic officeholders as too far to the left.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties opposed Proposition 62, as did all of the smaller parties, both of left and right. While Prop. 62 was anti-democratic, it wasn’t a left vs. right issue as much as a business-oriented centrists vs. everyone else.

Dave Kadlecek…Via e-mail

The author was the Peace and Freedom Party’s campaign coordinator on Prop. 60 and 62.

Editorials

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:33:00 +0000

Giving thanks

As we sit down to our turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day, we should give thanks to the thousands of volunteers who went door to door in a mighty effort to register and get voters to the polls Nov. 2 to oust George W. Bush. While short of the goal, we give thanks to the millions who labored against his anti-people agenda and his atrocious Iraq war. These millions gave birth to a new labor and all-people’s movement for democracy.

It took courage for that movement to keep fighting in the face of the Bush-Cheney-Rove dirty tricks. These hypocrites wrapped themselves in “moral values” even as they waged a lie-based war that has cost 100,000 innocent Iraqi dead and thousands of GIs dead and wounded. They used their corporate contributions to fill the airwaves with slanderous ads smearing John Kerry, and whipped up fear and bigotry over issues like same-sex marriage, abortion and terrorism.

Bush-Cheney and the ultra-right stand for corporate rule. Their policies further divide our country into “haves and have-nots,” a tiny super-rich elite and a majority whose incomes are declining, without health care or pensions. Poverty has risen under the Bush-Cheney regime: 39 million now live in poverty, most of them children. Some morality!

By contrast, the all-people’s movement stands for “people before profits.” It stands for living-wage jobs, the right to organize, universal health care, quality integrated public education, restoring a progressive tax system that puts the burden on those most able to pay. It stands for race and gender equality, for world peace and international law. Those values represent the vital interests of an overwhelming majority in both “blue” and “red” states.

Leaders of this movement have made clear they will not retreat. They vow to stand against Bush’s preemptive wars, privatization of Social Security and Medicare, and packing the Supreme Court with right-wing extremists. Because of the heroic efforts of the all-people’s movement, these are battles that we can win. And for that, we should all give thanks.

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Ditching Private Ryan and Saving Mr. DeLay

A large number of ABC-TV affiliates censored the World War II movie “Saving Private Ryan” by refusing to show it on Veterans Day. Fearful that the powerful Federal Communications Commission would fine them for airing “bad” language, the companies in major markets like Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas and Orlando banned the movie.

“Saving Private Ryan” is a tribute to veterans of the “greatest generation” who fought in World War II. It also shows the horrors of war — even a just one. Conservative groups threatened to complain if television stations broadcast the movie because it contains 20 “F” words and 12 “S” words.

Welcome to post-election America, where ultra-right blowhards swagger, self-righteously, proclaiming they own morality. The “moral values” pundits tell us that voters are more socially conservative than ever before. But don’t believe the hype. Certainly morality is in the national political dialog, but so are Iraq, jobs, health care, and terrorism. The defining of morality is an arena of growing contention.

Fast forward to the House Republicans. To save the position of Majority Leader Tom Delay, GOP House members propose to amend their party’s ethics rules, which call for any House leader who is indicted to step down from his or her leadership position.

Delay is facing possible grand jury indictments in his home state of Texas, where he led a fanatical campaign to oust five Democratic representatives and elect Republicans. Three top Delay aides were indicted for fundraising fraud during this campaign. Delay himself is staring down the barrel of an indictment gun.

The GOP wrote their party ethics rule in 1993 to draw attention to investigations of prominent Democrats. But in the present-day world of Republican leadership, ethics don’t matter if you own the naming rights to morals.

Perhaps the ABC affiliates that chose to censor “Saving Private Ryan” will replace it with their own epic, extolling their own twisted morality. Call it “Saving Tom Delay.”

B.D. AmisBlack Communist & labor leader

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:29:00 +0000

While little known today, during the late 1920s and the 1930s, B.D. Amis was one of a small cadre of African Americans leading the fight for workers’ rights and racial justice. Urbane in demeanor and a dynamic speaker, he was one of the most important Black activists of his time. His commitment was to the working class and, in particular, the Black working class.

Amis was born in Chicago in 1896. In his youth he was influenced by the anti-lynching writings of pioneering journalist and civil rights crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who became his mentor while he was still in high school.

Amis became politically active in the early 1920s and by 1928 was president of the NAACP branch in Peoria, Ill. He addressed many civic and church groups about the activities and goals of the NAACP and gave speeches in defense of the rights of his people. A May 1928 article in The Peoria Journal described him as a man who “has a pleasing personality and made a deep impression upon his hearers this morning.”

After discussions at the 1928 congress of the Communist International, the Communist Party USA had pledged to take up the “Negro Question.” The CPUSA leadership invited Amis to come to New York after seeing his effectiveness as a local activist. The party’s determination to address the issue of Black rights was extraordinary because almost no other non-Black organization was willing to address this issue in the 1920s and 1930s.

Amis was also one of the first native born and working-class Black leaders of the party. Other early Black Communist leaders, such as Cyril Briggs and Otto Huiswoud, had been born in the Caribbean and had college educations.

Communism’s appeal to Blacks

It is not surprising that the Communist platform was attractive to African Americans in the 1920s and the 1930s. The Black community still strongly felt the legacy of slavery and the betrayal of Reconstruction. There were also thousands of Black soldiers who had fought for democracy in World War I, only to return home to an America rife with Jim Crow laws, segregation, discrimination, lynching, and near-peonage for many southern Black farmers.

Black workers were generally excluded from labor unions. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, Black workers, who already were suffering economically, lost jobs by the tens of thousands. Three to four times as many Blacks as whites ended up on the relief rolls in urban areas. The Communist Party, by virtue of its openness to Blacks and willingness to take up the Negro Question, became the choice for Amis and other prominent Blacks of the era.

The NAACP and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, also known as the Back to Africa movement, were other organizations vying to represent the interests and needs of the Black population at that time.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis, had proposed his idea of educating the best and most capable Blacks, a “Talented Tenth.” Garvey was interested in racial uplift through Black economic and political independence. The party, however, offered a political arena and an activist agenda to deal with the Negro Question that these organizations eschewed.

Writer, speaker, mass leader

As a member of the National Committee of the American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC), Amis plunged wholeheartedly into CPUSA activities and quickly became one of its most visible members. He recruited, organized rallies, spoke at conferences, and wrote articles for the Daily Worker, the CPUSA’s newspaper and predecessor of the People’s Weekly World.

Articles such as “ANLC as Mass Organization of Negro Workers,” “Vote Communist – Negro Workers,” “Fight Against White Chauvinism,” “Negro Workers Are Hard Hit by Unemployment; Must Organize,” and others are indicative of the issues that concerned not only him but also the party as a whole.

In 1930, Amis became the general secretary of the newly formed League of Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR) and an editor of its publication, The Liberator. The role of the LSNR was to publicize the issues of the day, especially lynching, through rallies, conferences and picketing. The well-known Black poet Langston Hughes was the group’s honorary president.

Among its other activities, in 1933 the LSNR drafted a “Bill of Rights for the Negro People,” which was carried to Washington by 3,500 demonstrators demanding that the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration enforce the Constitution and give Black Ameri-cans their rights.

Aside from his engagement with many movements for social justice and equality, Amis was involved in three of the most celebrated political frame-up cases of his time: the Scottsboro case, the Angelo Herndon case, and the case of Tom Mooney.

The Scottsboro 9

In 1931, just after he had written the pamphlet “Lynch Justice at Work,” came the event that was to epitomize lynch justice and symbolize the oppression of Black Americans: the Scottsboro case. Nine Black youths riding on a freight train were falsely accused of raping two white women.

Today it is hard to imagine the resonance that the case had in the 1930s. It pitted Southern lynch justice against the legal challenge to racism and discrimination, the more conservative NAACP leadership against the more militant Communist Party, and the power of direct action against the passiveness of the legal process.

The party immediately recognized the significance of what was happening and acted swiftly to organize the defense for the nine accused youths through the International Labor Defense (ILD). Amis contributed to the defense effort as author of the pamphlet “They shall not die! The story of Scottsboro in pictures,” put out by the LSNR. The cry, “They shall not die!” spread not only throughout the United States, but across Europe as well.

The strategic decision to organize mass demonstrations, to issue posters, and to write articles brought national and international publicity that ultimately saved the lives of the accused.

Amis was deeply involved in all of this, including traveling to Alabama. The virulent racism spurred a clamoring for the deaths of the accused in spite of the overwhelming proof of their innocence. The party took an open and committed stand against racism and injustice, thereby enhancing its standing in the Black community.

The success of the activist tactics of the Scottsboro case would eventually lead to A. Philip Randolph’s proposed March on Washington in 1941, the Montgomery bus boycott, the 1963 March on Washington, and the civil rights movement. The LSNR and the ILD demonstrated that picket lines, pamphlets, posters, magazine and newspaper articles and anti-lynching rallies could be effective tactics in the fight for workers’ rights and justice for African Americans.

Herndon and Mooney

The very next year, 1932, 20-year-old Angelo Herndon, a member of the Young Communist League, was arrested in Atlanta and later sentenced to 18-20 years on a Georgia chain gang for attempting to “incite insurrection” based on his possession of Communist literature. Soon the ILD was leading a nationwide campaign for his freedom.

Herndon wrote in his autobiography, “Let Me Live,” that at the first All-Southern Conference for the Scottsboro Defense in Chattanooga, May 31, 1931, “Perhaps the most eloquent address of the meeting was made by B.D. Amis. ... He brought both whites and Negroes to their feet cheering loudly. … So great was the enthusiasm and militancy of the audience that the cops looked scared.”

The third highly visible case that Amis had a connection to was that of the militant labor leader Tom Mooney, who had been convicted of a bombing in San Francisco. Mooney was sentenced to death, later reduced to life, even though the evidence against him was shown to have been faked and several witnesses’ testimony was proven false. Amis read a statement written by Tom Mooney’s aged mother Mary to crowd of 12,000 at the Bronx Coliseum in February 1932.

Further recognition of the stature that Amis had during this period is Nancy Cunard’s inclusion of his essay, “The Negro National Oppression and Social Antagonisms,” in her seminal anthology, “Negro.” The list of contributors to this now classic work looks like a Who’s Who of the 1920s and 1930s. Amis was right there among them.

Party and union leader

Amis went on to become the district organizer for the Communist Party in Cleveland for a couple of years and traveled to the Soviet Union on two occasions. The second trip lasted about a year-and-a-half. While there, he took courses in Marxism, traveled with other Americans, such as Paul Robeson, and wrote articles for the Negro Worker, the newspaper of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers.

Upon his return to the United States, Amis settled in Philadelphia and joined the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) as a field organizer. He also was the head of the Philadelphia committee of the National Negro Congress, an organization established in 1936 to “secure the right of the Negro people to be free from Jim Crowism, segregation, discrimination, lynching, and mob violence” and “to promote the spirit of unity and cooperation between Negro and white people.”

Amis was also the chairman of the Philadelphia Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia and member of another committee to raise funds for the defense of the Republican (anti-fascist) government of Spain. As if these activities were not enough, Amis also ran as the Communist candidate for auditor general of Pennsylvania in 1936 and made an “Appeal to the Colored Voters to Vote Communist” on a local radio station.

By the late 1930s Amis had begun to shift from political activism to union organizing. He was having success with the SWOC and in two years had organized 15 groups of steelworkers into unions or lodges, negotiated union contracts, had acted as spokesman in labor board cases.

Among the companies organized were Lukens Steel, Allenwood Steel and the Pacific Steel Boiler Company. An article in the October 16, 1938, Philadelphia Independent said, “The labor press hailed his victory in organizing the J.E. Lovergan Company of Philadelphia, pointing out that for 100 years this had been a nonunion concern.”

His success with the steel workers led the local joint board of the Hotel, Restaurant and Service Employees International Alliance and the Bartenders International League to ask him to organize the Black service workers in Philadelphia, who were subject to “unequaled exploitation,” in the words of a trade unionist of that time.

Once again it didn’t take long for Amis to have success. He organized Local 758 of the Colored Catering Industry Workers, and soon local newspapers were reporting that for its members in Philadelphia, “Wage increases have become effective for all cooks and kitchen employees, porters, etc., at leading caterers.” He also won jobs for them at the new Cotton Club restaurant.

Unfortunately, Amis’ success with Black workers brought resentment from white unions, who called upon the international union, headquartered in Detroit, to dismiss Amis and to have Local 758’s business transacted through the local white union. This move demonstrated how embedded racism was in the AFL. This changeover in power eventually nullified many of the gains that Amis had won.

A unique vision

Amis’ career represents a remarkable record of unrecognized achievement during an incredibly racist and anti-union period. The Communist Party made much of this possible through entities that led the fight for racial justice and workers’ rights such as its Negro commission, the American Negro Labor Congress, the International Labor Defense, the Trade Union Unity League, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights and the National Negro Congress.

Perhaps if more people knew the stories of how ordinary individuals such as Amis (or Ned Cobb or Fannie Lou Hamer) rose to extraordinary achievement, they would be encouraged to take on the questionable activities of many of today’s governmental and corporate leaders.

Dr. Barry D. Amis is a former professor at Michigan State and Purdue and a former school administrator. He is the son of B.D. Amis. He can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Colombia deports 4 unionists

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 06:34:00 +0000

Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, condemned the Colombian government last week for deporting four senior international trade unionists from the international airport in Bogotá in early November.

“In a country where union activists are being killed as they fight for their rights, it is intolerable that international unionists expressing solidarity and support should be victims of a political game of intimidation,” said White.

The four labor leaders, due to attend an international union meeting, were detained at the El Dorado airport by agents of Colombia’s secret police, DAS. They were told by senior immigration officials that their names appeared on a “list of people denied entry to Colombia” because they had attended an international union conference last September later described as “illegal” by senior government officials.

The four included Victor Baez Mosqueira, general secretary of the world’s biggest union confederation, the Inter-American Regional Organization of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

In Brussels, a delegation led by ICFTU Assistant General Secretary Jose Olivio de Oliveira told Colombia’s ambassador, Nicolás Echavarría, that the deportation marks an escalation of the government’s anti-union policies.

Following strong international condemnation, Colombia’s Vice President Francisco Santos and Foreign Minister Carolina Barco apologized for the deportation, arguing it was a “mistake by immigration officials.”

According to ICFTU Online, the delegation told the Colombian ambassador that this explanation “could not be accepted.”

“This is no accident or mistake,” Olivio de Oliveira said. “The government’s explanations are simply not credible, and we are determined to respond to this hostile development with all available means.”

The delegation also expressed its concern that the Colombian government’s list may fall into the hands of extremist paramilitaries.

According to a new report by Colombia’s National Labor College, attacks against trade unionists have increased during the government of President Alvaro Uribe by almost 20 percent. More than 50 union activists have been assassinated this year by state security forces and right-wing paramilitary death squads.

In another development, union leaders from Great Britain, Ireland and Spain who had arrived in Colombia to attend a meeting of women trade unionists had their 60-day visas suddenly cancelled and were permitted to stay only three days in the country. The government’s decision was reversed following a formal protest to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented by representatives of the global union federations and Colombian unions.

— Reprinted with permission from ANNCOL (www.anncol.org).

No quick fixes

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:18:00 +0000

Opinion

A major tactic of the ultra-right over the last four years was courting the religious right, the “evangelical” crowd, pouring our tax money into both Black and white churches under the pretext that they are the best sources for dispensation of charity. This has been going on in violation of the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state.

With the religious right as their base, they concentrated in small town, rural America, deriving millions of votes from these areas. The dominant farm organization, the Farm Bureau, representing the largest farms and agribusiness, has always been reactionary, a base for the Republicans. Organizations representing small farmers, such as the Farmers Union, are politically progressive, but they are relatively small and could not penetrate very deeply into the general farm population.

But in this election a new element was added: the Catholic Church. The church itself attacked the strongest base of support for Kerry and progressive Democrats — workers and their families — and it opened the doors for the political right to penetrate that base. Millions of workers, particularly in the industrial sector, are Catholics. Some labor leaders told me they were very upset by what they heard in church before the elections.

We should not, however, overlook the fact that millions of Catholic workers did not follow their church leaders, and voted for Kerry. Walking house to house among Italian workers in Ashtabula County, Ohio, we found that over 90 percent supported Kerry.

A coalition of conservative, ultra-right forces has emerged, controlled by the most reactionary transnational corporations. It has built a mass base among the electorate, allowing for successful attacks on democratic rights and living standards of the American people, a massive transfer of wealth to the rich and most reactionary corporations, and the waging of war for world domination.

However, four years of reactionary policy and program coming out of the Bush administration has, in turn, forced a polarization of political forces. This has led to the rise of a powerful mass movement fighting for democratic rights, economic justice, peace in the world, and preservation of our environment.

In the face of a billion-dollar multi-faceted attack encouraged by a compliant mass media, 56 million people voted for Kerry. The movement built to elect Kerry is based on numerous political currents and organizations, the most powerful being organized labor, combined with civil rights, professional, educational, environmental, and peace groups, with an emerging youth and student movement.

The fight to defeat Bush and elect Kerry brought together a coalition of political forces in the voting rights movement. It has a strong political base among progressive Democrats, who have already begun to outline a fightback in speeches and interviews by figures like John Edwards and Nancy Pelosi.

A few days must be allowed for activists and fighters to work through their disappointment, get back on their feet, and get to work for election 2005. State governments dominated by right-wing Republicans have to be won, like the “take back Ohio” campaign already started.

Expect street heat to be escalated, with renewed economic battles over wages and benefits, to save Social Security from the Wall Street brokers and bankers, to end war and foreign policy based on American imperialist domination of the world.

Of course, there are those of weak heart and the ill-informed who were in for a thrill and quick fixes, but they will be in the minority. The majority look forward to seeing the Bush gang exposed, with their lies and escalating attacks on the welfare of the American people and the world.

Hope is on the way!

Wally Kaufman is an officer and activist in the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans. He can be reached at wallyk@ncweb.com.

Letters

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 07:36:00 +0000

Cut to the chase

The only prisoners being tortured in Cuba are in Guantanamo. Viva Fidel!

William BungeMontreal, Canada

Religion column needed

In this past election and, through my work in the community, I have met countless numbers of people who support the working class and people’s movements. Some of them play leadership roles in their communities organizing for peace, universal health care, workers, democratic and human rights. However they are terribly frightened of joining the struggle for a socialist future. They believe that goes contrary to their beliefs and church participation.

At the same time I have met many religious people who saw no contradictions between the two. Bea Lumpkin’s article “Hattie Lumpkin, mother and fighter for socialism” (PWW 7/10-16) moved me. The story, it seemed, also aroused a reader’s curiosity who wanted know if the mother-in-law continued her church participation while still being active in the Communist Party. Perhaps the curious readers wanted some assurance about joining the Communist Party?

Claridad, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party newspaper, had a regular column on religious issues and the struggles for Puerto Rican independence. I believe the time is right to have a column in the PWW/Nuestro Mundo that deals with religion and the struggle for socialism and communism.

Sijisfredo AvilesChicago IL

To Sherwood Baker’s family

I knew Sherwood on a professional level. He came to our office several times a month to check on the welfare of his clients. Sherwood meant to so much to so many people. Many of his clients still speak of him often. One in particular wishes “his buddy” were still around to see how well the Eagles are doing. We passed around your article and felt the same stinging slap we felt six months ago when we heard the news. I sometimes think I see him out of the corner of my eye when I am working only to see some other tall man standing there. We could never understand what your family has been through but we are thinking of him often and wondering why it had to happen.

Heather WhiteVia e-mail

Editor’s note: Sherwood Baker was a Pennsylvania guardsmen killed in Iraq in May. His family members wrote several letters and articles published in various news outlets. The PWW published his brother’s letter, “Mr. Bush, you’d have liked my brother,” in the May 29 issue.

Treating mentally ill prisoners

With roughly one in six inmates suffering from mental illness, the American prison system has evolved into something of a mental institution by default. But mentally ill prison inmates receive little or no help when they are locked up. Rather, they are usually dumped onto the streets with neither treatment nor medication when their sentences are finished. It should come as no surprise that large numbers quickly end up back behind bars.

A recent study found that nearly a quarter of all inmates in disciplinary lockdown — confined to small cells for 23 hours a day — were mentally ill. Their symptoms worsened in isolation, and many tried to commit suicide.

Curbing recidivism means treating the mentally ill while they are still in custody.

The Mentally Ill Offenders Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, which has now been passed by Congress, falls short of this ideal, but it moves national policy along in a fruitful direction. The Senate proposed spending $100 million for a variety of programs. The House agreed to go along with the bill, but only if the Senate cut the funds in half. Such a small budget allotment falls far short of the national need, but the innovations and philosophical underpinnings of the bill make it more than worthy of the president’s signature.

Steven E. CottinghamEl Paso TX

The author is a prison inmate at the El Paso County Detention Facility.

Same day registration

Milwaukee was the scene of an outstanding mobilization. Reports from wards in predominantly minority neighborhoods showed unusually high turnout. Of the first 900 votes cast in wards 300 and 308, poll workers thumbed through hundreds of cards for same-day registrants. Some wards reported upwards of one quarter of those voting were registered there at the polls. Many were first time voters, but many reported having voted in the same wards before, and being surprised not to find themselves on the list. Because of the extremely narrow margin by which Kerry won Wisconsin, it is clear that the election would have gone the other way if GOP efforts to suppress and challenge these voters had been successful.

Gary GrassMilwaukee WI

No surrender

Thank you for a fine editorial on the election (PWW 11/6-12). The phony “values” of the ultra right can only be exposed and defeated through the values of working families, as you put it, “unity and organization.” No surrender!

Ted Pearson Via e-mail

Veteran for peace

Bush’s war policy in Iraq is very bad. Almost every day I’m reading of our soldiers getting killed. Iraqis are getting killed too and we destroy lots there like buildings in their cities. That war brings hardship not only on the people of Iraq, which the U.S. bombs, it damages their economy and killed some innocent people. Everyone should write their representative in Washington D.C. to call on President Bush and tell him they all should work together to find ways to stop that ugly war and work so that peace and justice would prevail!

I’m working for peace in the world! Thank you for working on it.

Tero NikovSan Gabriel CA The author is a WWII veteran.

Editorials

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 07:24:00 +0000

Stop new witch-hunt

The Internal Revenue Service sent a letter to the NAACP Oct. 8, warning the civil rights organization that it was under investigation for possible violations of its tax-exempt status. The letter complained that NAACP Chairman Julian Bond gave a speech to the group’s convention in Philadelphia last summer in which he “condemned the … policies of George W. Bush on education, the economy and the war in Iraq.”

This attack by the Bush administration was timed to cripple the NAACP’s fundraising and suppress the African American vote in the Nov. 2 election.

You can judge Bond’s speech for yourself. He told the NAACP delegates, “When any party places politics over principle, we’re going to give them non-partisan hell.”

Passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, he said, “marked the beginning of the dependence of the Republican Party on the politics of racial division to win elections and gain power … they’ve appealed to the dark underside of American culture, to the minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality. They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division. They write a new constitution for Iraq and ignore the Constitution here at home. They say giving health care to all Iraqis is sound policy … giving health care to all Americans is socialism.”

Was this a partisan statement prohibited by IRS regulations? No. Was it an indictment of the extremist GOP? Yes! The First Amendment protects Bond’s right to deliver that speech without fear of reprisal.

Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Pete Stark (D-Calif.) wrote to the IRS accusing it of attempting “to intimidate the members of the NAACP … in their get-out-the-vote effort nationwide.” They demanded that the IRS “publicly, specifically, and immediately repudiate the recent actions against the NAACP.”

This attack on the NAACP could be the opening of a Bush-Cheney witch-hunt aimed at the entire democratic movement. Call your senators or representative at 202-224-3121 and tell them to demand that the IRS end its harassment of the NAACP.

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Honor our veterans

As Veterans Day rolls around, we can expect President Bush to shed a few crocodile tears. This administration, which is responsible for the deaths of more than 1,100 U.S. soldiers in the Iraq war alone, would have us believe that it is the troops’ strongest backer.

The president lies to the American public on two counts: Bush says that he supports the American soldiers in Iraq. He also says that the peace movement and the soldiers, mainly working-class men and women with few options, are polar opposites, when in reality these two groups substantially overlap.

How could anyone who “supports the troops” be closing down VA hospitals or cutting benefits to soldiers’ families? Why would someone who “supports the troops” refuse to attend their funerals? The heartbreaking stories of families saving money to buy protective gear for their loved ones serving in Iraq, because the government has not provided it, serve as a perfect example of an administration that does not truly care about the soldiers’ lives.

On the other hand, there is the peace movement. This movement not only supports the troops — saying that the best way to support them is to bring them home from an unnecessary and illegal war — but also is a movement that now and historically has included the participation of soldiers themselves.

During many unjust wars, soldiers themselves have taken a lead in demanding an end to the unjust aggression. During Vietnam, the antiwar movement was augmented and strengthened by soldiers returning home, scarred by and appalled at what they had seen and been forced to do.

The same is true today. The many Iraq war protests in around the country include soldiers and veterans organized by groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace.

This Veterans Day we should truly honor the veterans by joining with them to demand an end to the illegal occupation of Iraq, increased funding for VA hospitals and medical services, and a strengthening of other veterans’ benefits.

Nevada volunteers came close

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 11:51:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — One of the big positives about the get-out-the-vote operation here was the number of volunteers. America Coming Together expected 300 people and 700 showed up before Nov. 2 and 1,400 on Election Day itself. Many were high school and college students or union members.

One volunteer, Valley High School junior Gerardo Perez, 16, said he was volunteering because “I don’t want to be drafted.” Despite the Bush administration’s denials, many fear with the war on terror another military draft is in the offing.

Nevada was the site of an FBI investigation on voter fraud. A Republican-leaning voter registration group called Voter Outreach America was accused of throwing away Democratic registration forms.

Bush narrowly won Nevada, a traditional “red” state, by 21,000 votes, although the Bush plan to bury nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain galvanized significant opposition.

Letters

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 10:09:00 +0000

Now what?

No matter who sits in the Oval Office, our society is plagued with problems: the gap between the Haves and Have-nots grows exponentially. Our prison system is bursting at the seams with mentally ill people and addicts. They need treatment, not incarceration.

I let apathy win in my younger years. Now, as I have become a great-grandfather, I realize how we are responsible for our government. We must participate in the process.

Cletis Harry Beegle?Tucson AZ

Bush will ‘win,’ then be impeached?

Someone just asked me what my latest prediction is. “As of today, who do you think will win on Tuesday?”

My prediction is this: George Bush will win. Why? No-brainer! Even as we speak, members of the George Bush fan club who are willing to do anything to see that their guy wins have been embedded in positions of influence in every electoral board, registrar of voters’ office and secretary of state staff in America. I predict that we will see innumerable election dirty tricks — from the precinct levels on up, not to mention Diebold data manipulations, corporate welfare’s huge campaign contributions, Sinclair’s misrepresentations, the misleading swift boat/wolf ads, a partisan Supreme Court, etc. Bush will win again but, like in 2000, it will be another coup.

Then what happens? There are two possible scenarios.

(1) George Bush will continue doing what he does best — fouling up, making mistakes, mismanaging so badly that he will be impeached by popular demand, if not run out of town on a rail. Tarring and feathering is a possibility.

(2) Americans will continue to put up with the neo-con stumbling, bumbling and greed. Like sheep, Americans will settle down to accepting the end of the Grand Experiment and the beginning of becoming just another part of the Third World.

But if most of America follows Scenario Two, what will the rest of us — the unlucky ones who are not addicted to Limbaugh and Fox — what will we do? Move to Ireland or Peru? Take to the streets? Pray a lot? What can we do?

For whatever reason, ballots cast at our local precinct no longer seem to count. But real Americans will still want to vote. We are used to voting. We like to vote. And if no other recourse is available to us, we will vote with our feet.

Jane Stillwater?Via e-mail

Bush and the election?

I predict that if Bush and his evil right wing in Congress win this election, either honestly or dishonestly, the country of Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson will be no more. In its place will be a government that will have a society similar to the religious-dominated societies in the Middle East.

John Borowski?Via e-mail

GOP suppresses Florida voters?

An attitude of voter discouragement is rampant at polling places across the state. The Republican Party plans to have their “poll watchers” or “poll challengers” to disqualify as many Democratic votes and voters as possible.

J. Corlett?Via e-mail

Federal Reserve is the problem?

You will find this odd coming from a conservative Republican, but I recently visited your web site based on a friend’s recommendation. And while I disagree philosophically with the majority of your content, I am impressed by the professionalism of your web site.

One hint: You could focus less on Bush and tone down that rhetoric. Historically presidents have had very little impact on the economy, one way or the other.

In reality, the Congres in concert with the Federal Reserve, dictates our economic booms and busts. When the money supply is loose, i.e., low interest rates, the economy grows as it is now. When interest rates set by “the Fed” are high, i.e., Jimmy Carter, we have some of our worst economies on record.

Under Carter for instance, interest rates were nearly 20 percent, unemployment was 9.8 percent, the stock market had lost 50 percent of its value, and we had soaring energy prices. And Carter had little control over those circumstances. He presidency was destroyed by Congress and the Fed.

The Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve. It is a private corporation made up of member banks, solely chartered to lend money to the U.S. taxpayer through a congressionally funded debt service. Look at any “dollar bill” in your pocket if you doubt me. Look at the top of the bill. What does it say? “Federal Reserve Note.” It is an instrument of debt creation, as it states right on the front of the bill, “good for all debts public and private.”

The Federal Reserve drains about $400 billion a year for debt service interest payments from our budget. This is the issue you should be fighting. And the Republicans and Democrats are in bed on this issue.

Keep up the good work. Even as a conservative, I would never deny anyone their convictions. We need to hear all voices.

Jeff?Reading PA

EPA pays families to expose kids to pesticides

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

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is paying selected Florida families who “spray or have pesticides sprayed inside your home routinely” to study their infant children, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). When agency scientists started questioning the ethics of the study, EPA removed the study protocol from its web site and distributed a short “Desk Statement” that the scientists say is misleading.

Conducted with funding from the American Chemistry Council, which represents 135 companies including pesticide manufacturers, the Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) will monitor developmental changes in babies, from birth to age 3, who are exposed to pesticides in their homes. Set in Jacksonville, Fla. (Duval County), the study looks at 60 infants and toddlers. Agency scientists not connected with the study are expressing concerns about the following:

• Financial incentives. The study makes payments to families totaling $970 for participating throughout the entire two-year period. Families who complete the study also get to keep the camcorder they are provided to record their babies’ behavior. In addition, families are given bibs, T-shirts and other promotional items. Families are recruited from public clinics and hospitals.

• Lack of treatment. The study makes no provision for intervening if infants or toddlers show signs of developmental problems or register alarmingly high exposure levels in their urine samples. Instead, families continue in the study so long as researchers are notified when each pesticide application occurs.

• Lack of education. Unlike other EPA programs in this area, the study does not provide participants information about the safe or proper ways to apply or store pesticides around the home. Nor does the study furnish participating families with information about the risks of prolonged or excessive exposure to pesticides.

EPA scientists began raising these concerns and questioning the value of the study itself. Farm workers or others who have pesticide exposure outside the home are not excluded, nor are children with pre-existing health issues. In fact, the study protocol declares, “It will not be possible to draw inferences to a larger population from the results of the study.”

EPA reacted to these questions by removing the study protocol from its web site. The agency then began distributing a two-page Desk Statement that claims, “Participants are not required to use pesticides.” While 10 percent of the participants are the control group with no or low pesticide exposure in their homes, the remaining 90 percent are eligible to enter and remain in the study only if they spray routinely. Indeed, the infants are selected based upon pesticide residue levels detected in “a surface wipe sample in the primary room where the child spends time.”

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said, “If EPA is going to engage in experimentation on human subjects, especially infants, it should go the extra mile to be aboveboard and protective of the subjects’ health.” He noted the Bush administration has been pushing to liberalize rules on using human testing of pesticides and other chemicals. He added, “Removing the study design from the EPA website and then issuing defensive, weasel-worded statements is hardly confidence inspiring.”

In its Desk Statement, EPA claims that the “study protocols have been reviewed and approved by four Independent Institutional Review Boards for the protection of human subjects” but does not make copies of those reviews available.

The American Chemistry Council, which contributed $2 million to CHEERS, also successfully lobbied to include exposure to flame retardants and other household chemicals in the study. EPA defends the industry involvement, pointing to 80 similar research agreements it has with industry.

“The danger of these arrangements is that, in order to win industry support, EPA tailors its research to serve the objectives of corporate R&D first and public health second,” Ruch said.

— PEER

Israeli CP denounces Sharons Gaza plan

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 06:58:00 +0000

On the same day that the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, voted 67-45 to support Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip, the leader of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) denounced the plan as a maneuver to block and “bury the very idea” of an independent Palestinian state.

Issam Makhoul, CPI general secretary, said the Oct. 26 vote authorizes a plan that, if implemented, “will turn all of the Gaza Strip into one big prison camp, dominated on all sides from the air, sea and land by the Israeli army.” Instead of ending the 37-year occupation, the plan will allow Israel to intervene in Gaza anytime it likes and simultaneously “disclaim any responsibility as the occupying power for the daily conditions of life Palestinians in Gaza living under Israeli occupation.”

At the same time, Makhoul said, the plan will give Sharon the means to tighten Israel’s grip on the occupied West Bank, facilitate the creation of apartheid-like “bantustans” for Palestinians, win international support for the occupation, and even win approval of parts of the Israeli peace camp for his policies.

Sharon proposes to close 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza and evacuate 8,200 Jewish settlers in the summer of 2005. Settler families are to be compensated with packages ranging from $100,000 to $500,000 each. About 1.3 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip under conditions of extreme poverty.

Four small Jewish settlements, comprising a few hundred settlers, are also to be dismantled in the northern West Bank, although 240,000 Jewish settlers will remain there. The West Bank is a much larger and resource-rich territory.

The Knesset vote was preceded by 17 hours of acrimonious debate over the plan, with ultranationalists, the religious right, and nearly half of Sharon’s own Likud Party ultimately voting against it. Some accused Sharon of being a traitor for offering to “give up” even one inch of land.

Ironically, Sharon drew decisive support from his traditional opponents — the Labor Party and the more dovish parties, which cited the closing of any Gaza settlements as a positive development. Some peace activists shared this view.

For example, Gush Shalom, a predominantly Jewish peace group, called the Knesset vote “a great victory for the peace camp” and as a rejection of “the ideology of the settlers.” It called for holding Sharon to his promise about carrying out the withdrawal.

The parliamentary deputies of the Democratic Front from Peace and Equality, Hadash-Ta’al, which includes the CPI, decided to abstain rather than vote against Sharon’s plan. While they restated their opposition to the plan, they said they did not want to risk contributing to a right-wing parliamentary victory.

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

Florida minimum wage amendment passes

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 06:51:00 +0000

TAMPA, Fla. — One of the bright spots in Florida was the passage of the amendment for an increase in the state minimum wage, starting at $6.15 an hour and beginning six months after enactment. The wage is to be annually indexed to inflation thereafter. Amendment 5, one of eight ballot initiatives here, won with 71 percent of the vote, 4,834,437 votes to 1,990,465. It appears that the amendment got more votes than Bush. It passed despite a massive ad campaign on radio and television to defeat it. The only ballot initiative that got a higher vote was a patient’s right to know provision about medical mistakes, which won with 81 percent of the vote.