People Before Profit blog

GOP anti-immigrant agitation backfires

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 06:10:00 +0000

Commentary

Since last December the Republican right has tried to use undocumented immigrants as a collective “Willie Horton” to distract voters’ attention from the massive failures of GOP policy, including the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, declining working-class living standards and the scandals about Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff.

So the viciously repressive HR 4437 was rammed through the House in December 2005 and no progressive legislation on immigration was allowed to advance. Instead, countless taxpayer dollars were wasted on bogus “field hearings” on immigration.

Over the protests of many sectors, legislation was passed to build a “fence” on the U.S.-Mexican border. President Bush did his bit by ratcheting up factory raids, arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. Local politicians got into the act with mean spirited state and local laws aimed at making the lives of immigrants as miserable as possible.

But the trick didn’t work. The counter movement for immigrant rights it helped spark, including the massive marches, appears to have increased Latino, Asian American and other sectors’ voter registration and turnout, and the vast majority voted against the Republicans.

So a number of Republican politicians who had been most identified with strident anti-immigrant rhetoric went down to ignominious defeat. The seats of nine of the 104 members of the viciously anti-immigrant House Immigration Reform Caucus, the brainchild of Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), flipped from Republican to Democrat, including those of Charlie Bass (N.H.), Jeb Bradley (N.H.), Bob Beauprez (Colo.), Joel Hefley (Colo.), Gil Gutknecht (Minn.), J.D. Hayworth (Ariz.), Jim Ryun (Kan.), John Sweeney (N.Y.) and Charles Taylor (Colo.).

Also in Arizona, Randy Graf, a member of the Minutemen anti-immigrant vigilante organization, was defeated by Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, who favors access to legal status for the undocumented. The seat had been held by moderate Republican Jim Kolbe, who refused to endorse Graf.

These seats contributed about one-third of the Democratic pick-ups in the House.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, who had identified himself with the persecution of Latino immigrants by the small city of Hazleton, Pa., was handily defeated by Democrat Bob Casey. In Virginia, “Senator macaca” George Allen was defeated in a squeaker by a newcomer to the Democratic Party, Jim Webb. Webb opposes guest-worker programs, but is open to giving undocumented immigrants a crack at legalization and citizenship, and does not go around calling minority people monkeys.

The Democrats also made very major advances in gubernatorial and state legislative elections. These need to be analyzed in more detail to see what the impact of the uproar about immigration actually was. But it is clear that the Republican right gained little, if anything, with its scare tactics about a Mexican “reconquest” of the United States or the “contamination” of U.S. health and culture by foreigners.

In most, but not all, cases, victorious Democratic candidates had better positions on immigration. However, while the Republicans tried to make the election be about immigration, Democratic candidates, with exceptions, did not campaign on immigration or immigrant rights issues, and a few of them came out on the wrong side of it. Not all the anti-immigrant Republican candidates lost: Thelma Drake was re-elected in Virginia as was Brian Bilbray in California, and anti-immigrant extremist Peter Roskam defeated Democrat Tammy Duckworth for the 6th CD seat in Illinois, which is being vacated by Henry Hyde.

Also, several anti-immigrant ballot initiatives won in Arizona, including an English-only initiative that will cause lots of problems for people whose first language is not English.

Nevertheless, supporters of immigrant rights are in a much better position than we were a year ago. Committee chairmanships in both House and Senate will now be taken over by people much less hostile to immigrants that were the likes of Frist, Hastert and Sensenbrenner.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) will chair the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) will chair the Immigration Subcommittee, and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will chair the Senate Committee on the Judiciary; all are much more open to recognizing the rights of the undocumented than were their Republican predecessors.

The House Hispanic, Black and Progressive Caucuses all come out of the election with much more strength and influence, and all three are sympathetic to immigrant worker concerns. There will probably not be more significant anti-immigrant legislation. But the fact that Bush is still in the White House pushing for both repression and an anti-labor guest-worker program, and that the Democrats will not have a veto-proof majority and will only have a one-vote majority in the Senate, will still be an obstacle to be overcome by the immigrant rights movement. So let’s not put away our marching shoes.

Emile Schepers is an immigrant rights activist in northern Virginia.

EDITORIAL: Thank the workers and common-sense voters

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:15:00 +0000

When working people sit down to Thanksgiving dinner this year they will be savoring more than turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce.

They will be giving thanks that a clear majority in the Nov. 7 midterm elections displayed so much common sense, voting to end one-party, dictatorial rule in Washington. On the Iraq war, their votes said loud and clear that when we are headed off a high cliff, it is not wise to “stay the course.” They voted their hopes and not their fears.

Consider how smart the voters of South Dakota were in rejecting a ballot measure that would essentially repeal the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling. The voters saw through this anti-woman measure.

We are thankful that so many victories came in so-called “red states” long considered “Bush country.” In Kansas, two rabidly right-wing Republican House, members were defeated and the moderate Democratic Kansas governor was re-elected. In Arizona, Republican J.D. Hayworth, a fanatic anti-immigrant lawmaker in the House, went down to defeat. In Sugarland, Texas, Nick Lampson, the labor-backed Democrat is taking Tom DeLay’s seat. How sweet it is!

We give thanks that Florida voters dumped Katherine Harris, who helped Bush steal the 2000 elections. And thank you, voters of Virginia, for sending racist Sen. George Allen packing with a football under one arm and his hangman’s noose dangling from the other.

Republican Bob Corker won a Senate seat in Tennessee by resorting to a racist television ad against Democrat Harold Ford. But we give thanks that the Tennessee labor movement and African American voters mounted a statewide drive that almost elected Ford the first Black senator from the South since Reconstruction. That is a harbinger of victories to come throughout the South.

We give thanks that the forces of democracy ran a “50 state campaign” challenging the Republican right everywhere!

It will take a struggle to make the new Democratic majority deliver on their promises. But in the meantime, we have much to be thankful for.

EDITORIAL: Change policy, not just faces

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:12:00 +0000

When President Bush announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a key architect and executor of the disastrous and criminal U.S. war on Iraq, it was more good news on top of the Nov. 7 election results.

But, while Rumsfeld is going, U.S. troops are still in Iraq. Bush’s appointment of former CIA head Robert Gates to take Rumsfeld’s place does not mean that the president intends to heed the voters’ message: get out of Iraq.

Gates carries heavy baggage. He was tied to the Iran-Contra affair in the mid-80s — Republican independent counsel Lawrence Walsh concluded that Gates was in the arms-for-drugs scheme with Oliver North up to his neck. However, Gates was not prosecuted.

President George H.W. Bush appointed Gates CIA director in 1991. During his tenure at the CIA, a storm of criticism swirled around him charging he “politicized” the agency to fit the administration’s line, including on the first Gulf War.

But regardless of who fills Rumsfeld’s seat at the Pentagon, it’s the policy that counts. The mandate of the voters on Nov. 7 was clear: ending the Iraq debacle was at the top of their concerns, and was a key reason why they booted the Republicans out. They don’t want more of the “same ole, same ole,” with just a different face.

Speaking of the CIA, the agency has now admitted the existence of two documents showing that the trail of torture and violation of international law leads right to the Bush White House. One is a directive signed by President Bush authorizing the CIA to set up prisons outside the U.S. and outlining interrogation methods that could be used against detainees. The other is a 2002 Justice Department analysis specifying “aggressive” interrogation methods that could be used. The CIA claims releasing the documents would damage national security and violate attorney-client privilege.

Voters last week expressed a clear yearning for integrity and transparency in government, respect for the Constitution, and a Congress that uses its oversight power on behalf of the people. That message should be ringing in the ears of the new Congress.

Labor eyes quick passage of new organizing law

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 08:12:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — The new Democratic-run House in the 110th Congress will pass the Employee Free Choice Act, AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel said in a Nov. 8 interview. “It will be nice to be playing offense for the first time in my career.”

Federation President John Sweeney said of the election returns, “I think it’s clearly a mandate for a union agenda, and for addressing the amount of frustration we found” among unionists and other voters on the campaign trail.

Many of the new House Democrats are from normally Republican districts in states such as Kansas and North Carolina. Those Democrats are expected to be “Blue Dogs,” more conservative than Democratic leaders who come from union-heavy areas. Samuel says the equation is not so simple.

“I think there’s a mistaken impression about the ‘Blue Dogs,’ that they’re conservative on all matters,” he said. They may be more conservative than their colleagues on national security and on issues such as abortion, but not on economic issues, he stated.

“They all signed on to the EFCA, for example,” he said, citing Rep.-elect Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), who beat a longtime incumbent in western North Carolina’s mountains. EFCA had 215 co-sponsors, including seven Republicans, in the departing GOP House. Shuler himself made clear that at least on workers’ issues, he was with labor.

Samuel predicted the new House would easily pass EFCA, which outlaws anti-union “captive audience” meetings, writes card-check recognition of unions into law, increases fines for employers who violate their workers’ rights and mandates arbitration should the sides not agree on a first contract.

The prime House sponsor of the law — originally drafted by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) — is Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who will chair the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The prime Senate sponsor is Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who will chair the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Both Miller and Kennedy easily won re-election on Nov. 7.

The Senate is the problem for EFCA, Samuel explained. That’s because the GOP would still have enough votes, 49, to filibuster the legislation to death.

“You need 60 votes in the Senate,” Samuel admitted.

Still, with the GOP in the minority, and bearing in mind the election results, other Republicans in both the House and the Senate “may be reading the tea leaves” on EFCA and other workers’ issues, Samuel said.

There isn’t yet the high public profile on EFCA that there is on raising the minimum wage, Samuel added, but “we hope to build it.”

As for filibusters against EFCA, Sweeney noted, “We’ll face up to that issue when we come to it.”

Mixed results in California elections

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 07:54:00 +0000

Republican Pombo, opponent of the environment, goes down to defeat

Among the most significant election results in California was the 53-47 percent victory of wind power engineer Jerry McNerney over seven-term U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo in the 11th Congressional District, despite a Republican 7-point advantage in voter registrations. The war in Iraq, the environment, and Washington scandals were key issues in the northern California race.

McNerney is among the 34 California Democrats elected to the House of Representatives Nov. 7. Combined they are the largest and arguably the most powerful and most progressive Democratic state delegation. Rep. Nancy Pelosi is expected to be speaker of the House, Reps. Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey have co-chaired the Progressive Caucus, while Rep. Maxine Waters has led the Out of Iraq Caucus. Seven Latino representatives will play a key role in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Veteran legislators Henry Waxman, George Miller and Tom Lantos will likely head the Government Operations; Education and the Workplace; and International Relations committees, respectively.

As chair of the House Resources Committee, Pombo — a Central Valley rancher — tried to gut the Endangered Species Act, promoted increased oil and gas drilling including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and was linked to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Unlike Pombo, who supports the Iraq war, McNerney calls for a phased U.S. withdrawal.

Besides labor backing, McNerney gained support from Pombo’s Republican primary opponents including legendary antiwar, pro-environment former Rep. Pete McCloskey.

By early fall, McNerney and Pombo were neck-and-neck. Environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the League of Conservation Voters, spent over $1 million and mobilized many volunteers for McNerney. The national Democratic Party poured in financial and other support in the final weeks.

McNerney also benefited from demographic changes in the district, including the many working-class people who have come from the Bay Area in search of affordable housing. Though eight-term Republican Rep. John Doolittle won in the 4th CD, similar factors were at work. Democratic challenger Charlie Brown gained 46 percent of the vote to Doolittle’s 49 percent in the district, which runs from the Sacramento suburbs to the Oregon and Nevada borders.

In North San Diego County’s 50th CD, Republican Brian Bilbray’s Democratic opponent Francine Busby, with limited funds, picked up over 43 percent of the vote in a district where Democratic registration is only 30 percent.

Mega-money, media, celebrity status and work by top-level Bush campaign operatives helped propel Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to re-election by a decisive 56 percent, despite a determined campaign by labor and others for his Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides, who took 39 percent.

Having worked hard to appear a moderate after his ballot measures lost overwhelmingly last year, Schwarzenegger benefited from media coverage of carefully staged bill signings, including the much-touted Global Warming Solutions Act, as well as a constant anti-Angelides media drumbeat. Schwarzenegger was able to parlay his multibillion-dollar infrastructure bond issue proposals into bipartisan negotiations in which the Democrat-dominated Legislature gained affordable housing and mass transit while the governor profited from an aura of bipartisan harmony. He also grossly misrepresented Angelides’ proposals to raise taxes on the very rich and to close corporate tax loopholes.

Though Schwarzenegger swore in his first campaign to stay clear of “special interests,” he has raised over $113 million since then, much of it from out-of-state donors and big corporate interests. His administration has included high-ranking staffers from the technology, health care, lumber and agriculture industries as well as the Chamber of Commerce.

The governor’s vetoes of progressive legislation, including universal single-payer health coverage and restoration of benefits to totally disabled workers, and his refusal to index a $1 an hour minimum wage hike to inflation, also revealed the “real Arnold.”

Republican hopes of riding Schwarzenegger’s coattails for further gains in state and legislative offices had limited impact. Republican incumbent Secretary of State Bruce McPherson was defeated by Democratic state Sen. Debra Bowen. However, billionaire high-tech businessman Steve Poizner won the race for insurance commissioner over Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante by over 12 percent. Poizner flooded the airwaves with racist-tinged ads about “cruising with Cruz,” a thinly veiled allusion to the stereotype of low-riding Latino “gang-bangers.”

The state legislative races, despite many seats open due to term limits, made basically no change in the large majorities of Democrats in both Assembly and Senate.

mbechtel @ pww.org

Now is time to move on health care, Conyers says

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 07:41:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Health care activists from around the country gathered here for a strategy meeting Nov. 11-12, energized in the wake of the Democrats winning control of both houses of Congress. The invitation-only group of 60 discussed ways to continue building support for HR 676, legislation establishing a single-payer health care plan, introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). It is also known as the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.”

“We are going to take giant steps,” Conyers told the activists. “Since Nov. 7, more is possible, this bill is possible. Now is the time to move.”

Promising the measure “will be the number one issue in my office,” Conyers added, “We are making history.” He noted that national health care was on Dr. Martin Luther King’s agenda when he was assassinated.

John Horgan of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Boston told the group, “Health care is an equality issue, an economic issue.”

Many participants emphasized the links between health care and other issues. Terming health care a human right, Ajamu Sankofa of New York called it the unfinished business of the civil rights movement.

Linking to immigration and education issues were also cited as ways health care activists could unite with other groups to help win passage of HR 676.

National call-in days and postcard campaigns are being planned to gather more congressional support. In the current Congress the legislation has 79 co-sponsors, some of whom have now been elected to the U.S. Senate. The goal is to reach 100 House co-sponsors by the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, April 4, and to introduce a companion bill in the Senate.

To that end activists, including those involved with Healthcare-NOW, the convener of the meeting, are also intensifying efforts to gain sponsorship by additional labor organizations as well as city councils and other legislative bodies in order to pressure House members and senators to sign on to the legislation.

So far HR 676 has been endorsed by 208 union organizations, including 50 central labor councils and area labor federations and 15 state AFL-CIOs — Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, North and South Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Speaking during the meeting, Dr. Quentin Young, a leader of Physicians for a National Health Plan, noted that advocates of HR 676 are no longer on the “fringe,” but part of the mainstream. Characterizing one of his group’s guiding principles as “everyone in, nobody out,” Young cited a survey showing 84 percent of the people believe the government should provide health care for all.

HR 676 would institute a single-payer health care system in the U.S. by extending a greatly improved Medicare system to every resident. It would cover every person in the U.S. for all necessary medical care, including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including substance abuse), vision care, chiropractic and long-term care. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments.

The measure would save billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

Labor hits the ground running

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 06:57:00 +0000

In Ohio, issues of Iraq, jobs, Social Security and health care top the agenda

CLEVELAND — Flush with victory in the Nov. 7 elections, Cleveland’s labor activists, like their counterparts elsewhere, are pressing to broaden the base of their movement and are already taking initiatives to guarantee that campaign promises are realized.

For Dick Henderson, president of the AFL-CIO retirees organization, “four things are uppermost. We must bring our troops home from Iraq. We must disengage. This is a lost cause. Second, we must bring back jobs and re-establish the middle class. Third, we must preserve Social Security. The Bush administration has not given up on privatization. And, fourth, we need national health care, not some concoction improvised to take care of insurance and pharmaceutical companies.”

Henderson, a retired sheet metal worker, said the leaders of his group met the Friday after the election and decided to work to bring together all retiree and senior groups in the area to map out a legislative agenda.

“We must keep reminding Congress why they were elected. We need to maintain momentum,” he said. “National health care is the starting point for a bigger movement.”

A single-payer state health care plan is the goal of an initiative undertaken by the United Auto Workers and others, said Harold Wilson, chairman of the Cuyahoga and Medina County CAP Council, the UAW’s political arm.

“We need health care that is not for profit and does not have these 30 percent administrative fees,” he said. “We plan to put this issue on the ballot.”

Wilson noted that both Rep. Sherrod Brown, who was elected to the U.S. Senate, and Rep. Ted Strickland, elected as governor, have refused to take the health insurance provided by the federal government to Congress until their constituents receive it as well. “We need to get Sherrod and Ted the health care they deserve,” he said.

“We need to improve cooperation among all the unions and reach out to the pastors,” Wilson said, not only to win health care, but for other issues that were prominent in the campaign, including keeping manufacturing in Ohio and education.

Wilson, an electrician at Ford, was one of the founders of Black Labor for Strickland, which got out 70,000 brochures throughout Ohio exposing Republican Ken Blackwell as a representative of President Bush, not the African American community.

“He may be our color, but he is not our kind,” the brochure stated.

“There was more interest, awareness and sophistication in the Black community than ever before,” said Dick Peery, another member of Black Labor for Strickland. “Because of the war and the Katrina disaster, the dislike of Bush and the administration was as intense as ever in history. The Republican ploy of putting up Black candidates did not work. The Black community rejected Black Republicans.”

Peery, who is chairman of the North Coast (Cleveland) AFL-CIO and recently retired as a reporter for the Plain Dealer, said this was a “higher level of sophistication” than when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court and many in the Black community supported him as one of their own.

Peery said labor must build alliances and especially “its natural alliance with the African American and Hispanic communities.”

“The only way labor can advance is to reach out,” he said. “Building local organization and outreach is the key.”

“We need a two-year outreach campaign to prepare for 2008,” said Merle Johnson, a Cleveland teacher who is another member of the group. “Because of its role in 2006, labor will be at the table with Strickland and Brown. We need a continual series of social and educational events to reach out to the community.”

As a first step, Johnson is organizing a showing of “Iraq for Sale,” a film about the unprecedented theft of public funds by U.S. contractors like Halliburton in Iraq. The event for teachers and the general public will be held Nov. 28 at the Laborers union hall.

Probably no labor leader was more immersed in the election than John Ryan, who took a leave of absence from his position as executive secretary of the North Coast AFL-CIO to be Sherrod Brown’s campaign manager.

“Sherrod ran on a worker platform of economic and social justice,” Ryan said. “He took that message everywhere he went. No matter what his audience was, he talked about job-killing trade agreements, the need to fund higher education and No Child Left Behind and the need for affordable health care for all.

“The results speak for themselves,” he said. “John Kerry narrowly lost in Ohio. Sherrod Brown won by a 12-point margin. He took 46 of the state’s 88 counties, 30 more than Kerry. He won in rural Appalachia and the urban centers.”

This shows the potential that labor has to broaden its base and build alliances, Ryan said. “Now we need to follow up and win on the issues of the campaign. That is how we can make it a mandate not just for one day, but for four years.”

Bernie Sanders elected to U.S. Senate

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:45:00 +0000

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Bernie Sanders, the six-term independent congressman from Vermont, swept to victory in the race for U.S. Senate over Republican billionaire Rich Tarrant. In an election in which 70 percent of Vermonters said they were concerned about the war in Iraq — 60 percent said they were very concerned — Sanders’ unequivocal call to end the war attracted the support of almost 70 percent of Vermonters.

On election night, speaking to supporters as the returns came in, Sanders said, “The people of Vermont have told America that we are sick and tired of the right-wing extremists who have been running this country. It is time that the government start to represent the working families of Vermont and America, not just the rich and powerful.”

He told the crowd the time was long overdue for “the United States to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide health care to every man, woman and child as a right of citizenship.”

Sanders reminded the cheering crowd: “This small state knows what the war in Iraq is about. We have lost more soldiers per capita than any state in the country. I believe that the people of Vermont and the people of America want our troops to come home.”

The audience responded with deafening applause.

Sanders’ strong showing helped Democrat Peter Welch win Vermont’s sole congressional seat with 53 percent of the vote. Welch defeated the former adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard, Martha Rainville.

In other contests, the Republican Gov. Jim Douglas and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie easily defeated the Democratic candidates, who never seemed to take on the incumbents over the major issues of the campaign until late in the campaign.

At the same time, Democrats increased their margins in both houses of the state Legislature.

Despite the overwhelming Democratic political tides, the Progressive Party of Vermont maintained its hold on six legislative seats, returning all but one incumbent and winning a new seat in Orange County. Susan Davis made the breakthrough there, a rural area where Democrats have found it almost impossible to get elected to state office.

Several candidates had run in new districts for the Progressives, and many did well, but only Davis registered a win.

Martha Abbott, the Progressive candidate for state auditor, won 9.4 percent of the vote, thus preserving the Vermont Progressive Party’s status as a major party.

Anti-immigrant Republicans suffer election losses

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:32:00 +0000

Commentary

Time will tell what the impact of the Nov. 7 election on the immigration question will be. For the short term, it is worth noting that the Republicans lost at least 9 House seats held by members of Tom Tancredo’s hateful 104-member “House Immigration Reform Caucus” — the witches’ cauldron in which a lot of anti-immigrant stuff has been cooked up. The incumbent caucus members whose seats were lost to the GOP are Charlie Bass (N.H.), Bob Beauprez (Colo.), Jeb Bradley (N.H.), Gil Gutknecht (Minn.), J.D. Hayworth (Ariz.), Joel Hefley (Colo.), Jim Ryun (Kan.), John Sweeney (N.Y.) and Charles Taylor (N.C.).

Hayworth’s loss is a big victory for immigrants — he is a Pat Buchanan look-alike who has slandered immigrants and believes in the “Reconquista,” the far-fetched notion that Mexico is scheming to re-annex California and the U.S. Southwest.

In addition, Minuteman member Randy Graf was trounced in Arizona’s 8th CD. The seat had formerly belonged to retiring moderate (on immigration) Republican Jim Kolbe.

So we might cautiously conclude that the House Republican tactic of blocking all forward motion on immigration and using fake “field hearings” in an effort to whip up fear and hatred of immigrants may have failed as an electoral tactic. Whether it actually lost them votes requires more analysis; more than any other issue, these election results were a protest against the Iraq war.

Unfortunately, Democrat Tammy Duckworth could not defeat Pete Roskam, successor to Henry Hyde, in Illinois’ 6th CD. Roskam is a horror, but so was Hyde; it is not a step backward, just not a step forward. We need to analyze what went wrong there.

On the one hand, the maneuverings of Rahm Emanuel in blocking the candidacy of Democrat Christine Cegelis, who did well against Hyde in 2004, are partly to blame. But a lack of maturity must also be sharply criticized among liberals and leftists who were so angry at Emanuel’s power play that they let an extremist like Roskam be elected by default. Whether that actually made the difference is not clear.

A few caucus member seats were still to close to call as of Nov. 8, including that of Jean Schmidt, the star-spangled jingoist of Ohio (who was forced to apologize for calling a colleague a coward or traitor or something on the floor of the House earlier this year), and Barbara Cubin in Wyoming.

Most of the new Democratic senators will be better on immigration than their Republican predecessors. Sen. Rick Santorum, who was closely identified with the persecution of immigrants in Hazleton, Pa., is out of there, and good riddance. It appears that Jim Webb has defeated George Allen in Virginia, and, once again, good riddance. Allen is a race-baiting proto-fascist who supports extreme repressive measures against immigrants.

How do we take advantage of these results? First, remember that the Republican right might try to pull some sort of stunt during a special post-election lame-duck session. So we must be wary of that. Although in the House, the Democrats almost exactly reversed the former Republican majority, not all Democrats are equally good on immigration issues. So there will still be a need to mobilize, march and lobby.

Perhaps the best thing that will happen, as far as immigrant rights are concerned, is that Nancy Pelosi will now become speaker of the House and John Conyers will replace James Sensenbrenner as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Real work on the immigration issue will be possible at that level. If Webb has beaten Allen in Virginia, the Senate, too, will have a more favorable climate for discussing the rights of immigrants. Stay tuned.

EDITORIAL: Hail victory, move forward

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:38:00 +0000

It was about Iraq, corruption, economic insecurity and the failure of government during Katrina.

And no matter what name was on the ballot, it was about George W. Bush and the disastrous policies of the Republican ultra-right.

Some 90 million Americans voted to change — not stay — the course: for a real timetable to withdraw from Iraq; for a higher minimum wage; for government accountability, checks and balances.

Like the little engine that could, voters from a wide political spectrum yet united in opposition to extreme right-wing rule made it over the mountain to change the balance of forces in Congress. The Democrats won a solid majority in the House of Representatives and — it appears — won the Senate as well.

In a historic development, Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California will become the first woman speaker of the House. “It sometimes takes a woman to clean house,” Pelosi likes to say with a twinkle in her eye. Exit polls showed women, African Americans and union families voting for change in record numbers.

In the end the Republicans’ nasty tone, dirty tricks and legendary voter turnout effort couldn’t counter the flood of corruption engulfing the GOP. Their base was disgusted. “I feel like the Republican Party is not my party anymore,” said retiree Joan Domek after voting in Parma Heights, near Cleveland.

The course set by the ultra-right and their corporate paymasters has been an unmitigated disaster for the country and for working families forced to bear the burden of war in Iraq and war on democracy and the working class at home.

The most reactionary GOP leaders fell hard. Pennsylvania voters kicked with both feet to boot out Rick Santorum — the third in the GOP’s Senate leadership line. Anti-immigrant hysteria-mongerer Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth went down to defeat. Some solid Republican seats were overturned — among them Tom DeLay’s in Texas, Bob Ney’s in Ohio, Mark Foley’s in Florida, Curt Weldon’s in Pennsylvania and Richard Pombo’s in California. Democrats won in supposedly solid “red” states like Indiana, Kentucky and Kansas.

Republican moderates couldn’t stem the tide. GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee, an opponent of the war, lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse because Rhode Island voters knew the election was more about what party is in power than about which individual.

While some conservative Democrats won, labor-backed antiwar progressives also won big — such as Ohio’s Senator-elect Sherrod Brown, and Minnesota’s Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress and the state’s first African American congressmember.

With the Democrats now controlling the House, strong pro-labor, pro-civil-rights representatives like John Conyers, Barney Frank, David Obey, Henry Waxman and Charles Rangel will chair important committees. This new Congress, and the movement that voted it in, has to hit the ground running and keep up the momentum for progressive action. Pelosi has already put forward a 10-point program including increasing the federal minimum wage and cutting prescription drug costs. Labor, women’s, civil rights, peace, environmental and other grassroots progressive groups have their action lists ready.

Voters want decisive change on Iraq. That means an exit strategy to bring the troops home, beginning promptly, with start and end dates. The resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the ink was dry on election results shows that Nov. 7 marked a defeat for the neoconservative policy of unilateral, pre-emptive war and U.S. global military rule, of which Rumsfeld was a major architect.

For the first time in a dozen years, Democrats hold a majority of the nation’s statehouses, including in battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado. Massachusetts made history with the election of Deval Patrick, the state’s first African American governor and only the second African American governor in U.S. history.

Ballot measure results were more mixed. On the positive side, the South Dakota abortion ban was defeated, minimum wage raises were approved decisively, a same-sex marriage ban was defeated in Arizona and numerous local measures passed to bring the troops home immediately. But the passage of an anti-affirmative-action proposal in Michigan and an amendment making English Arizona’s official language, and same-sex marriage bans in many states, shows more effort is needed to build working-class unity and action against racism, discrimination and other divisions weakening the progressive movement.

Before many others, this newspaper said Congress was not only winnable for the anti-ultra- right coalition, but a necessary step for any democratic progress in this country. We hail this victory and will continue to fight this good fight.

Voters clean house: Rejecting Bush agenda, Americans look for new direction

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 06:17:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Fired by anger and disgust with George W. Bush, the Iraq war, corporate greed, corruption and human needs cutbacks, voters went to the polls Nov. 7 and terminated 12 years of Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives. A switch to Democratic control of the Senate hinged on the undecided Virginia race, with the Democrat leading at press time.

The tidal wave against the Republican right swept every region of the country, including states long controlled or dominated by the Republicans. At press time, Democrats had won at least 229 House seats, guaranteeing them a majority in the 435-seat chamber.

Democrats picked up three House seats in Indiana, three in Pennsylvania, two in New Hampshire, at least one in Connecticut, one in North Carolina, two in Florida, one in Kansas, one in California, and more elsewhere. Several House races remained too close to call in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

In the Senate, the Democrats held all their incumbent and open seats. Democratic pick-ups included Sheldon Whitehouse in Rhode Island, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester in Montana. A victory for Jim Webb in Virginia, who held a razor-thin lead over Sen. George Allen, would strip the Republicans of control of the Senate.

The Democrats also captured a majority of governorships, an important advantage heading into the 2008 presidential season.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), set to become the first woman speaker of the House, told a cheering victory celebration here, “From sea to shining sea, the American people voted for change ... to take America in a new direction ... and nowhere did the American people make it clearer that we need a new direction than the war in Iraq. We cannot continue down this catastrophic path.”

Pelosi underlined the role of women in this election. The women’s equality movement poured into South Dakota and, by a 10-point margin, defeated a ballot question that would have imposed a draconian abortion ban. Women outvoted men in many races across the country, expressing higher levels of revulsion against Bush and the Republican right and stronger opposition to the war.

Overall turnout was over 40 percent, slightly higher than the last midterm election in 2002. Long lines were reported in many big-city polling places.

The labor movement unleashed a powerful get-out-the-vote drive with volunteers canvassing and phone-banking in 32 battleground states. The AFL-CIO reports that volunteers reached 13.4 million union households across the nation.

The African American vote was the key to victory in many races. In St. Louis, the Black vote was the margin of victory for McCaskill. In Maryland, a record 200,000 Baltimore votes, a majority African American, elected Martin O’Malley governor and Ben Cardin to the U.S. Senate. In Memphis, Black voters turned out in record numbers to make Harold Ford’s Senate race competitive, although he did not win election. And in Massachusetts, where Deval Patrick will now become the state’s first African American governor, the Black voter turnout was so huge that polling places ran out of ballots. Patrick, who won in a landslide, will also make history as the nation’s second African American governor since Reconstruction.

Defeated were some of the most virulent ultra-rightists, including Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. In Arizona, Rep. J.D. Hayworth, sponsor of the most racist anti-immigrant legislation, was defeated.

Exit polls revealed that the Bush administration’s effort to use the terrorism fear-factor clearly failed to override voters’ concerns on the Iraq war, the economy and widespread corruption. With millions unable to make ends meet, voters rejected Republican claims that the economy is in good shape.

Robert McChesney, an expert on the media, compared Senator-elect Sherrod Brown of Ohio to the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. “Sherrod has worked quietly and effectively to earn the trust of Ohioans, especially poor and working-class Ohioans,” McChesney said in a blog. Karl Rove orchestrated a “million dollar attack mudball” campaign to re-elect Republican Mike DeWine, but it did not dent Brown’s surge, McChesney noted.

Also noteworthy was the election of Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to the U.S. Senate. Sanders, a progressive independent who describes himself as a socialist, handily beat businessman Richard Tarrant for the seat vacated by James Jeffords.

Ballot questions, including six statewide initiatives to raise the minimum wage and a stem cell research initiative in Missouri, played a major role in turning out voters. All the minimum wage measures and the stem cell initiative were approved. Also on the ballot in 164 cities and towns across the nation were ballot measures calling for an immediate end to the Iraq war. Nearly all were overwhelmingly approved.

However, reactionary ballot questions were also approved, including several banning gay marriage, an “English-only” measure in Arizona, and a measure crippling affirmative action in Michigan.

The Republicans resorted to dirty tricks as they schemed to hold on to power. In Tennessee, Harold Ford narrowly lost in his bid to become the first African American elected from the South to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. A racist ad sponsored by the Republican National Committee played a key role in Ford’s defeat. In Virginia, GOP callers posing as neutral pollsters steered potential voters to wrong polling places.

But voters saw through many GOP scams and dirty tricks and delivered a crushing national defeat to the Republicans.

Oklahoma dreams and nightmares, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:32:00 +0000

BOOKREVIEW

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

By John Grisham

Doubleday, 2006

Hardcover, 368 pp., $28.95

Ada isn’t just the three-letter answer to the crossword puzzle clue “town in Oklahoma.” It isn’t just the place that old-timers remember passing through as they traveled north from Dallas. It isn’t just the home of the famous Ada Cougar High School football team, or of the lesser-known college East Central Tigers. It isn’t just my hometown.

Ada is the setting for world famous John Grisham’s new nonfiction book about the American justice system and some of its victims. The title character is Ron Williamson, a mentally ill man, who was tortured through years of legal railroading and inhuman incarceration before he was saved, at the last moment possible, by the first actual evidence ever presented in his long murder trials and appeals.

Even after he was found innocent and released, even after the actual murderer was clearly exposed by scientific DNA testing, the district attorney of Ada continued frothing that Williamson was still a “suspect.”

Grisham, one of America’s popular authors, is also a legal expert with courtroom and state legislature experience. His report of Williamson’s railroading, and one of his casual buddies, gives grisly insight how the legal system may be employed or ignored for political ends.

His descriptions of the Pontotoc County jail gives readers grave humanitarian concerns — before they learn that Williamson’s other jails were even worse!

While Williamson’s kangaroo courts were in session, a similar Ada drama unfolded with two other accused murderers. They were convicted largely on the basis that one of them explained a “dream” to the eager detectives. In the dream, he was guilty, even though his “admissions” didn’t actually fit the facts in the case. The detectives used it as a confession to put two men behind bars, where they remain after decades.

Ron Williamson, too, was said to have given a “dream” confession. The earlier case makes fascinating reading in “Dreams of Ada” by Robert Mayer.

Grisham’s book is straightforward and factual; Mayer takes the time to try to explain the social schism in Ada that gave rise to such pernicious injustice. Mayer said that Ada has two populations: one respectable, and the other he named “Ada’s running crowd.” For years after I read it, this native Adan tried to figure out how a town could have developed two populations with one so hell-bent on persecuting the other.

When Oklahoma became a state in 1907 and Ada was barely begun, the overwhelming population consisted of sharecroppers, mostly on Native American land or on land that had recently been hornswoggled away from the tribes. Together, they had a powerful political voice.

Oklahoma, prior to the 1917 red-bashing atrocities, was the pride of the Socialist Party. Eugene Victor Debs took Ada, Pontotoc County, and two of the surrounding counties in his 1916 presidential campaign.

In August of 1917, some of the sharecroppers and small farmers of all races united around opposition to President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. An armed posse from Ada smashed them. The editor of the Ada Evening News accompanied the posse, but agreed to cover up the events.

Today, almost nobody in Oklahoma knows about the proud “Greencorn Rebellion” against war, government oppression and lies. Hundreds of sharecroppers and small farmers were stuffed into jails all over the state. Jails became overfull, even in surrounding states.

Their political power, like their dwindling economic base, was gone. Most of them, Black, white and Brown, moved into peripheral areas, peripheral jobs, and peripheral lives in small towns. Ada was close to those events, and remains a center for refugees. The townspeople, then and now, can barely stand them.

John Grisham’s powerful, fact-laden book indicts what passes for a justice system in Ada and in Oklahoma. If Adans, Oklahomans and Americans are ever to be free, we will need to understand the forces that oppress us and the means they employ. With “The Innocent Man,” Grisham has given Ada and America a wonderful gift!

Defeat the GOP to stop their anti-immigrant drive

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:02:00 +0000

Supporters of immigrants’ rights, who showed their strength by the mass marches during the spring, have mobilized to end the Republican right’s stranglehold on Congress and state governments in the elections this week. In this, they have the support of labor and many other sectors. As a recent declaration by People for the American Way, reflecting majority public opinion, puts it:

“We believe that all people are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, and we support policies that open the pathway to citizenship, authentically ensure the safety of our citizens, genuinely protect our border, recognize the many meaningful contributions of immigrants in our country, and recognize the principle that basic human rights belong to everybody.”

The danger is evident. Around the country, right-wing Republicans have used attempts to pass local and state anti-immigrant laws as a mechanism to mobilize the conservative base and frighten voters into voting for the GOP. The Bush administration is playing up to the racist ultra-right, which has been loudly complaining of “nothing being done about illegal immigration,” by stepping up raids, arrests and deportations.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is protesting government plans to make naturalization of immigrants even harder than it is already. The plan is to jack the fees up to as much as $800 per person from the present $400, ask more prying questions on the N-400 application form, and “improve” the citizenship test.

The current test seeks to determine if the person understands and reads English and knows a bit about U.S. history and government. The questions include some that are valid and others that are just silly. But it is clear that the efforts to “improve” this test will have the effect of raising the bar to citizenship higher, with more perfectionistic, but arbitrary, standards.

The effort to make it harder to become a citizen tacitly addresses the concern of right-wing “populists” that the United States is ceasing to be a “white man’s country,” by disenfranchising groups of people least likely to be able to jump through these new hoops. This is a modern version of the old “intelligence” tests that the South used to impose on Black voters (“how many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?”). State laws in Georgia, Missouri and Arizona that make it harder to vote have the same goal.

A few supporters of immigrant rights have fallen for the wrong idea that the Democrats and the Republicans are equally bad on immigration. They shun the slogan “Today we march, tomorrow we vote,” saying, “We don’t have anybody to vote for.” This is difficult to understand. The anti-immigrant legislative campaign was cooked up by the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives and the almost wholly Republican House Immigration Reform Caucus, chaired by the poisonous Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). House Republicans were largely united behind their anti-immigrant thrust, while most Democrats voted against the worst bills and amendments. Senate Republicans too made sure that their final bill, S 2611, would include much repressive baggage (slipped into the draft by “moderate” Republican Sen. Arlen Specter) and would not even provide legalization for millions of undocumented.

We naturally wish for more courageous and consistent behavior from the Democrats, but to let the Republicans, the main instigators of anti-immigrant agitation, win by default because we can’t stomach the lesser sins of the Democrats, is illogical and self-defeating.

After the election, the immigrant rights movement has urgent tasks to take up. In the first place, it is possible that there will be a “lame duck” session of Congress in November, which may consider immigration bills, good and bad. And in the new Congress that will convene in January, we have to work to reverse the damage to immigrants’ rights caused by Republican demagogy, and fight to get legislation passed that will give the undocumented access to legalization and citizenship, remove obstacles to naturalization and restore due process rights to immigrants who are threatened with deportation. This will be a hard fight no matter who wins in November, but it will be easier if the Republicans are defeated.

Emile Schepers is an immigrant rights activist.

The Tigers and the spirit of Detroit

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:59:00 +0000

They came so close, and for most Detroiters that was more than enough — and we did beat the Yankees, to the delight of all but a small section of lower New York.

Ordonez, Monroe, Casey, Polanco and the old man, Rogers. It’s a likable team. And Detroit’s new baseball stadium, though it doesn’t match the intimacy and feel of the old Tiger Stadium, has things to like about it. (It sits smack in the middle of downtown, has interesting tiger sculptures adorning the outside and, inside, has good views of the city.)

The Tigers bounced back from one of the worst slumps in baseball history — three years ago they won just 43 games. The question is, can the city of Detroit also bounce back?

Except for the crowds on game days, Detroit can be very a deserted place downtown. The loss of auto and other industrial jobs has resulted in the city losing one-half of its population over the past 50 years. Schools are losing students and closing down. And in all likelihood, the worst is yet to come. You could describe this city — known round the world for its cars, its hardworking autoworkers and their union, and its music — as a monument to the failure of capitalism.

But for 81 home games this year, the team certainly increased business for the local bars and restaurants. And I’ll admit that for the three games I attended this summer, I did my small part to boost that business.

Even without the baseball, there are gems to be found here. A friend of mine back east thinks the barbecue at Slows may be some of the best in the country. Great music venues, a world-class art museum, opera house, symphony hall and Wayne State University all do their part to keep the city alive. Downtown Detroit was “spruced up” during its hosting of the Super Bowl earlier this year, and some development is taking place. But one wonders who will be moving into the high-priced condos that several of the empty buildings are being turned into. Too many Detroiters and other Michigan residents are facing foreclosure or watching the for-sale signs on their homes go months, years, without coming down. They will not be lining up to buy condos.

Outside the new stadium a large homeless population roams the streets. When I walk by the ballpark (it’s only two blocks from my office), I can’t help but think of the salaries of the auto and other corporate executives who have made or are making their fortunes from this city. What cost would be involved to service the homeless with medical care, counseling, job training — and the jobs to go with them? Per person, it would probably be quite small, compared with those salaries!

The package for new Ford CEO Alan Mulally is reportedly worth $35 million this year, which includes his salary, one-time bonuses and the value of stock options and restricted stock awards. This price tag doesn’t include other Ford-paid benefits, including two years of temporary housing in Michigan and unlimited personal travel on a company airplane. He’s been with the company for one month and has made more than 700 auto workers do in a year.

Or take Kirk Kerkorian, the vulture-like GM board member. Doesn’t he owe something to the people of this city and state whom he’s profited from? How about Mike Ilitch, who owns the Tigers, Detroit Red Wings and Little Caesar pizza chain. As the owner of the MotorCity casino, his wife Marion is a big time player in the “casinoization” of Detroit. Yes, he’s played a role in bringing development downtown, but he’s been given big tax breaks. In addition, he is sitting on a large number of empty downtown buildings and vacant lots, giving one person too much say on the city’s future.

Detroit is proud of and has rallied behind its team. While it’s good to see signs of life downtown, you have to ask: who will be benefiting from these changes? Casinos, ballparks, restaurants, bars — where will the jobs be that allow all of Detroit to be included in the party?

John Rummel (jrummel@cpusa.org) is Michigan state organizer of the Communist Party USA.

EDITORIAL: Your vote matters!

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:47:00 +0000

To the credit of the American people — and despite all the Bush administration/Repub-lican efforts at intimidation, threats, lies, spin and mudslinging — polls have shown the Bush Republicans in a free fall. In this highly charged atmosphere, with so many tight races, each vote can make the difference.

Who and what wins on Nov. 7 will determine the shape of the political landscape on Nov. 8 and beyond. Will Congress enact a planned troop withdrawal from Iraq or stay the disastrous Bush course? On the larger stage, will Congress rein in Bush first-strike aggression and imperial wars or continue to rubber stamp unbridled military might? Voters will set that terrain.

Will more doors open to opportunity, or will affirmative action and steps toward equality and democracy take a hit with the Michigan ballot proposal to bar consideration of diversity in state institutions? Will South Dakotans uphold women’s reproductive rights? Will the openly racist Republican campaign ads divert people from voting their real self-interest? Will Tennessee workers reject the “race card” and elect the first African American senator from the south since Reconstruction, over a century ago? Will immigrants face greater barriers and possibilities for violence, or will the way be open to win a sane, humane and just immigration policy?

Workers’ rights and job health and safety hang in the balance. A change in Congress will make the Employee Free Choice Act a reality, restoring the rights to organize and bargain a contract for millions.

Breaking the Republican control of Congress will open the door for action on key legislation to provide health care for all, rebuild New Orleans for those living there before Katrina, cut rates on student loans, assure a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions, boost clean energy — and assure voters their choices are counted.

Of course, even with the best outcome Nov. 7, today’s issues and crises will not disappear overnight. What happens next will depend on ordinary Americans making sure their elected representatives act to meet the needs of the vast majority in our country for peace, democracy and social and economic justice.

We too sing America. The struggle for African American equality, from slavery to today

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:43:00 +0000

Returning this fall to the campus where he became a professor, Walter R. Allen led a mainly student audience at the University of Michigan’s School of Education through the history of the African American struggle against segregation and racism. He said that he hoped this approach would help many of them better understand the historical context in which this November’s ballot drive by the right wing to overturn affirmative action in Michigan is taking place.

At the outset of his lecture “We Too Sing ‘America’: Race, Citizenship and Higher Education Opportunity,” the professor of sociology at UCLA said he took his title from Langston Hughes’ poem “I, Too” because, like Hughes, he was examining “the status of people of African descent seeking a place at the table in American institutions.”

The law school and undergraduate school of the University of Michigan were sued in two cases (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, respectively) that reached the Supreme Court. Both cases were brought in the name of white female applicants who accused the university of discriminating against them because they were white.

Allen said that the court’s decisions “weakly upheld” the right of the university to consider race in admissions on the ground that a diverse student body meets national objectives, especially those of business and military institutions. The high court “briefly quieted the storm but did not end debates about fairness issues.”

Those fairness issues persist, Allen said, especially the “gap in socioeconomic status” that reflects the history of slavery, segregation and systematic oppression of Americans of African descent.

The dream deferred

A key part of the American Dream, he said, is that “education opens doors to success for those who use their talents and work hard. Talent is often associated with education, so education is vital to achieving that dream.”

But another, “decidedly negative” idea plagues America, Allen said, and “at its core is the belief that whites are innately superior to Blacks and to other non-whites as well. This is woven into the fabric of this society. Racial exploitation, conquest and domination have enriched the country and left marks on every institution in American society.

“Racism has shaped — or better to say it has warped — all institutions in our society,” he continued. “Americans of African descent were long denied the American Dream. They were forbidden to learn to read or write or to practice such if they knew how to do them. At the same time, Blacks were labeled as ignorant, deficient and unmotivated.”

Despite the opposition of racists and burden of systematic racism, “Blacks struggled for access and success in education as they did in other American institutions,” Allen said, “and they made some advances while also occasionally experiencing effective ugly white backlash.”

Instruments of racism

The Supreme Court itself has been an instrument of such backlash, he said, most notably during the slavery era “in the 1857 Dred Scott [Scott v. Sandford] decision that ruled that U.S. law and tradition rendered African Americans as ‘a subordinate and inferior class of beings’ who had ‘no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’”

The Civil War’s demolition of slavery marked an advance for Blacks, but this progress “was blunted by racial codes — the so-called Jim Crow segregationist laws — that the Supreme Court validated in Plessy v. Ferguson. In that 1896 case the high court endorsed the doctrine of ‘separate but equal.’ The country’s highest court thereby approved the construction of a racial apartheid system.”

And that apartheid system lasted 60 years, until 1954, when the Supreme Court overturned it in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which held that “separatist facilities were inherently inferior.”

Many American institutions and citizens resisted the Brown ruling, especially in the Deep South. President Eisenhower mobilized federal troops to defend those who acted upon the desegregation ruling, Allen said, “but even so, progress toward equal educational opportunities in kindergarten through 12th grade and in higher education was excruciatingly slow.”

Civil rights movement creates change

The wide-ranging modern civil rights movement of the 1940s-60s, led by Blacks but also waged by people of all nationalities, coupled with spontaneous violent unrest in one city after another, drew the attention not only of this nation but also of the whole world. “People everywhere wondered what would the country that called itself the leader of the Free World do,” Allen recalled.

The Lyndon Johnson administration responded with a patchwork of relatively weak equal opportunity programs based on the 14th Amendment, which stated that the federal government could insure that citizens possessed full constitutional rights that no states could diminish.

Johnson also issued executive orders targeting Jim Crow segregation and other discriminatory practices that were legacies of slavery.

Allen summarized the two eras preceding the present one in the following way: From 1619 to 1865, slavery was the rule and, until 1865, was protected by the 1787 Constitution of the United States. Then, from 1865 to 1965, the country “legalized segregation and stripped citizens of African descent of human rights and dignity.”

After 1965, the country “tore down formal legal barriers” to equal citizenship for Blacks, but the dominant society “replaced these barriers with more subtle methods of durable structural inequality.” As a result, multitudes of Black Americans have experienced “generations of poverty, discrimination and injustice.”

The 1968 Kerner Report was an important national document that showed that the nation was becoming two societies, “one Black, one White — separate and unequal.”

President Johnson said that the report showed that the citizens whose ancestors had lived “unchained” had built up an unfair advantage over those whose ancestors had lived in bondage.

“Affirmative action recognizes the systemic nature of racism,” Allen said. He added that “other groups arrayed between whites and Blacks have benefited from affirmative action — such as white women, Asians, Latinos, the physically impaired and various sexual-preference groups.”

Affirmative action in the cross hairs

Opposition to this “widened tent” of people helped by affirmative action mounted, most virulently in California, one of the most diverse states and the one in which Allen teaches. Right-wingers there used an African American, Ward Connerly, as the front man in their successful campaign to roll back affirmative action in California, especially race-based affirmative action in higher education. And then they sent him to drum up opposition to affirmative action in Michigan, a traditionally progressive state now plagued by severe economic problems and job loss.

The central premise of the reactionaries was that affirmative action had completed its objectives of assisting Blacks and that continued affirmative action was “reverse-discrimination against guiltless whites,” Allen said.

“These are facetious and weak arguments. We know that affirmative action tore down barriers and changed the face of this country. Groups that were formerly shut out were more widely represented in American society than ever before.”

Nonetheless, amplified in the news media, warped by academic “studies” funded by right-wing foundations, and fueled by the fact that African Americans are “still targets of bigotry,” the seeds of anti-affirmative action propaganda bore fruit in California.

Resegregation and the rise of the Republican right

“Higher education is becoming resegregated” in California, Allen said, and he emphasized that the California campaign is a test case for what the right-wing hopes will be a national retrenchment “like that of the Reconstruction era that reversed many gains won by the Civil War.”

“Black and Latino and Latina enrollments have dropped on California’s prestigious campuses,” he reported. “The incoming class of 4,400 freshmen at UCLA includes only 100 Blacks, only 29 of whom are male.” Under affirmative action, Black enrollment was about three times higher

The “shift in the political context” — that is, the rise of right-wing Republicans — “affects the universities,” Allen said, “and an added factor is that public investment has been misplaced from higher education to prisons, a morally bankrupt transfer of funds. The money that could support 10 undergraduates at a premier campus, $44,000, maintains just one prisoner. But in the last decade or so, California has built 21 new prisons and expanded pre-existing ones while opening only three new campuses.

“Race and ethnicity still challenge our society. Will they be sources of strength or of division? California’s Black students now have lower rates of participation in our public universities than do Southern Black students in their states’ public universities. And Blacks in California show relatively high rates of morbidity and poverty and low levels of education.”

Equality basic to democracy

Despite all the facts showing the benefits of affirmative action not only to Blacks but to California society as a whole, a majority of California voters approved Proposition 209, which gutted affirmative action.

If Michigan voters fall for the same arguments against affirmative action, Allen predicted, “you will see an immediate and precipitous downturn of Blacks and Latinos on this campus, and the reactionary movement may sweep the country.”

Various ethnic groups can be placed in situations in which they feel they are in a contest for social advance, Allen said. Furthermore, downturns in the economy — like the decline in high tech and space industries in California or the drop in Michigan’s auto industry — can lead elites to seek groups “like the poor or Black or Latino or immigrants to serve as scapegoats” for potential discouraged elements in the majority community.

“What, then, is the ideology, the dream, that animates America?” Allen asked. Is it a commitment to fair play, justice and social mobility, or is it white supremacy and an inherently exploitative economic system — an inhumane system?

“Will it indulge the demons of degradation and domination, or will it try to make real the dream of progress and opportunity for all?”

“Colleges and universities are charged with helping win this struggle between America’s contradictory forces.”

Walter Allen is the Allan Murray Cartter chair of Higher Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also director of Choices: Access, Equity and Diversity in California Higher Education, a longitudinal study of the secondary and postsecondary educational opportunities and experiences of African American and Latino students in California. Professor Allen said statistics and research papers supporting his arguments may be read and downloaded from the web at www.choices.gseis.ucla.edu/.

Johnny Woods is a veteran journalist in Michigan.

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then.

Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed —

I, too, am America

— Langston Hughes

Stem cell battle in Missouri

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 08:27:00 +0000

The Stem Cell Initiative on the ballot in Missouri would amend the state’s constitution to protect stem cell research and therapies allowed by federal law. Missouri would be the first state to do so. The campaign on the proposed Amendment 2 has generated more money than any campaign in Missouri history for any ballot measure or for any federal or state elective office — probably more than $40 million by Nov. 7.

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are derived from a blastocyst five days after fertilization of an egg in a lab dish. The blastocyst is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It has no body tissues. The “inner cell mass” of about 30 cells provides the ESCs that can be trained to develop into cells of specific tissues. ESCs have potential for cures of many of the most debilitating illnesses, such as diabetes, macular degeneration, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Ironically, the major opposition to the initiative is the claim that it would legalize human murder. The most aggressive anti-abortion groups have bombarded Missouri with television ads, billboards, weekly half-page ads, and at least five statewide rallies.

The embryo “must be treated from conception as a person,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This doctrine is also espoused by evangelical Protestants and some orthodox Jews. Note, in normal human sexual reproduction, approximately 70 percent of fertilized eggs are never implanted and are expelled from a woman’s body. Are women unknowingly committing murder?

Religions differ

The position “pro-life” is an absurd misnomer. Fertilized eggs are “alive” but so are unfertilized eggs! The issue of when the fetus becomes a unique individual has been driven historically by religion, because theology links the event to the embodiment of a spirit (soul). There are significant differences of doctrine between and even within the major world religions on this question.

Hinduism, well established by 600 B.C. with the first sophisticated doctrine of immortality, proposed an eternal spirit present in all life — the soul present before conception as well as after death. Some Buddhists believe a soul has a choice of where to be incarnated.

For Muslims, the embryo only achieves moral status when the bones have “knit.” Most Sunni and some Shi’ite scholars recognize two stages of pregnancy. The first 120 days is biological life but pre-ensoulment. After this “time of quickening,” the fetus achieves the status of a person.

Some orthodox Jews believe the soul becomes embodied at conception. Another strand of Judaism believes that outside the womb, with no potential to develop into persons, embryos are legitimate sources of stem cells. Jewish scholars Laurie Zoloth and Rabbi Elliott Dorff argue that the duty to heal actually demands an ethical duty to pursue stem cell research!

Many Protestant denominations have had representatives supporting Amendment 2 and similar initiatives.

Disagreements exist within each religion. For centuries, Catholic theology claimed that biological development must first occur (40 days after conception) before embodiment of the spirit. Today, some prominent Catholic theologians propose that it is 14 days, which marks the formation of the primitive streak of cells and development into a “self-organizing being.” Amendment 2 makes it unlawful to harvest stem cells “more than 14 days after cell division begins.”

Religious texts

Can religious texts provide guidance? While not referring to stem cells, the Christian New Testament is instructive. Matthew, first of the four Gospels, contains at least 22 separate instances in which Jesus heals: Jesus “brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments ... and he healed them.” (Matthew 4:24).

The religious right has been used effectively by reactionary forces to divert people’s attention from real problems, weaken social welfare programs and win elections.

But the position of the religious right represents an extreme departure (escape) from reality. The Bush-Cheney invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost over 2,800 American deaths, many more thousands wounded, an estimated more than 600,000 Iraqi deaths, and a massive drain on the resources of our country. And here we are in the hardest fought campaign in state history debating if using a fertilized egg to save lives is murder.

David Kennell (kennell@borcim.wustl.edu) is professor emeritus of molecular microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Latino environmental activists shaping urban agenda

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 07:29:00 +0000

EL MONTE, Calif. (AP) — Maria Valdez didn’t consider herself an environmentalist when she pressed this city east of Los Angeles to buy land ringed with factories and railroad tracks for a new neighborhood park.

The trash lot is now on its way to becoming an oasis with a butterfly sanctuary and community garden — and Valdez is undergoing a transformation of her own. Next month, she will be sworn in as president of the El Monte chapter of Mujeres de la Tierra, a new environmental group that translates as “Women of the Earth.”

“When you get involved and you know that you could make it happen, it feels good,” said Valdez, a stay-at-home mother of six. “I’m interested in the water, the air — for our kids.”

Spurred by high rates of asthma and lead poisoning among their children, Latino immigrants such as Valdez, a U.S. citizen who left Mexico as a child, are embracing green values like never before — on their own terms.

Latino activists and politicians talk about building a unique green movement that distances itself from mainstream environmental groups, even as those organizations hope to tap into newfound Latino political clout.

Those involved in the nascent movement cite a gap between the priorities of traditional environmentalists, who may focus on saving endangered species and preserving roadless areas, and the practical concerns of many Latino immigrants, who confront thick smog and lead-laced water every day in inner-city neighborhoods. Many also are wary of groups like the Sierra Club, which has debated whether to make U.S. immigration control part of its platform.

“If you ask a Latino, ‘Are you an environmentalist?’ they’ll say ‘No’ because it boxes you in,” said Irma Muñoz, founder of Mujeres de la Tierra. “Environmentalists blame Latinos for all the problems.”

The newly defined movement is strongest in Southern California.

Last month, more than 1,200 Hispanic community leaders, activists and politicians gathered in Los Angeles for the first meeting of its kind in decades. Participants in the National Latino Congreso drafted resolutions on issues ranging from emissions reductions to mercury pollution, hoping Latino voters will use them as a litmus test for candidates in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez (D-Los Angeles) co-sponsored a groundbreaking law that makes California the first state to put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, including those from industrial plants. He said his interest grew partly out of his concern for the effect that poor air quality has on Latino children.

“For a long time, the image of an environmentalist in California was a stereotypical brie-eating, chardonnay-sipping, Volvo-driving Marin County-ite,” Núñez told the Los Angeles gathering. “But there were other issues that affected people who wouldn’t commonly be known as environmentalists.”

In the heavily Latino cities of Maywood and Bell Gardens, politicians got elected last year by focusing on industrial pollution, lingering Superfund sites and water contamination.

A 2004 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that nearly 70 percent of Latinos live in areas that violate federal air-quality standards, and that Hispanic children are twice as likely as non-Hispanic white children to have lead in their blood.

Traditional environmental groups, such as the Earth Day Network and the Sierra Club, helped sponsor the National Latino Congreso and work with activists on local projects.

But, some Latinos say, environmentalism can mean building a park, getting rid of a smoke-belching factory or persuading railroads to run freight trains less often — not protecting an endangered species hundreds of miles from their homes.

“We’re not the tree huggers,” said Laura Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “We have to deal with high numbers of asthma patients and Superfund sites and how it affects communities.”

N.J. ruling boosts struggle for marriage equality

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 07:06:00 +0000

A recent court decision has boosted the struggle for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Last week the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to the same state benefits, protections and obligations as different-sex couples. The court split, however, on how to remedy current state law.

The majority ruled that the state Legislature must comply with New Jersey’s constitution by amending state laws to allow equal marriage rights or create a separate legal status like civil unions.

While three dissenting judges argued that granting gay and lesbian couples the fundamental right to marry is the correct solution, the court’s majority tempered its instructions to the Legislature by stating that the legal point at issue was that same-sex couples had a right to equal protection, not a right to marry.

In a press statement, New Jersey Stonewall Democrats President Barbra Casbar responded to the decision saying, “The only currency, the only word that is understood in our culture is ‘marriage’! That is our goal! We will work to achieve 100 percent marriage equality!”

Casbar described the creation of a separate legal status, such as civil unions, as akin to the unconstitutional doctrine of “separate, but equal.”

Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality (GSE), a grassroots organization that has taken the lead on marriage equality issues in New Jersey, denied that the court’s ruling was a victory. “So help us God,” he wrote in a public statement, “New Jersey’s LGBT community and our millions of straight allies will settle for nothing less than 100 percent marriage equality.”

Goldstein announced the introduction of a marriage equality bill in New Jersey’s Legislature and the launch of a multifaceted public relations campaign to rally public opinion. GSE plans to organize a “Statewide Task Force for a Marriage Equality Statute” to mobilize broad support among LGBT and allied organizations for the bill. Dozens of public events across the state are planned as part of its “Awesome Autumn” barnstorming effort. A bus tour called “Equality Express” will bring marriage equality speakers to local forums and of worship to promote passage of the bill.

In conjunction with these public events, television commercials featuring the story of a deceased lesbian police officer and her partner will air across the state over the next few weeks.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, congratulated the court on recognizing the “equal needs of same-sex couples” but also urged the state Legislature to amend state law to include full marriage equality.

Foreman warned that right-wing politicians would use the decision to attack both gay people and so-called activist judges in a “shameless” effort to create “wedge issues” for political gain in the Nov. 7 election. “[T]hey will use us,” Foreman stated, “to try to distract voters from the war in Iraq and failures in education, energy and health care. Again they will resort to lies, myths and fear mongering to promote more discriminatory, anti-family state constitutional amendments.”

Pride at Work Co-President Nancy Wohlforth echoed these concerns, saying, “We need to remind working folks about what we think is important in this election: finding an end to the war in Iraq, ending the ongoing cycle of government scandals, holding our government accountable, and finding candidates who will implement policies that will help working people find jobs, health care and decent wages.”

National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy also guardedly praised the decision. “We regret that the court did not take the final step by ordering that the term ‘marriage’ be applied across the board to all couples,” she said. “No other status can provide the full complement of state and federal protections that opposite-sex couples enjoy without question.”

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruling came in an appeal of the case of Lewis v. Harris, a lawsuit filed in 2002 on behalf of seven same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses.

National marriage equality activists say that regardless of the New Jersey Legislature’s ultimate decision on the issue, federal law, with the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (passed in 1996), will not recognize any same-sex marriages and authorizes other states to refuse to recognize them.