People Before Profit blog

Rosa Parks American heroine

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 03:43:00 +0000

Letters

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 03:02:00 +0000

Investigate oil swindlers

This letter was sent to our senators and our congressman:

We just called for a price on #2 heating oil this morning. It was $3.09 per gallon, provided we buy 200 gallons or more! What a shock!

We do not wish to go into detailed accusations of a conspiracy between the evil troika of Bush-Cheney, the oil sheiks and the oil monopolies. There is no smoking gun, but circumstantial evidence is abundant. These three parties combined are the biggest thieves, swindlers and liars in history.

As in Europe, if these fantastic overcharges were used for the people’s welfare, to improve education, housing, national health care or public projects to ease unemployment, then most people would gladly accept them. But to line the pockets of this unholy trinity is the greatest sin and crime.

A thorough investigation is called for. Hearings and exposure of these thieves are in order. The people know the truth and are waiting for your action, which is long overdue.

Saib and Janet Shunia White Lake MI

Go Houston

Re “White Sox head to World Series” (PWW 10/22-28), in all fairness to the rest of the country, it should be noted that the Chicago White Sox have two defectors from the Cuban national team pitching for them. Jose Contreras and “El Duque” both defected from Cuba to play baseball in the USA. Not only that, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf was the team owner who conspired with Bud Selig to force the baseball players’ strike of 1994. Go Houston, where they play real baseball, National League, no designated hitters.

Joe Hancock Los Angeles CA

Dark times

I was much impressed by Wadi’h Halabi’s article on “Life and Debt in the USA” (PWW 10/22-28). Recently, I have found myself suffering from the dilemma of being in debt but not able to declare bankruptcy because of the new law. I could always blame myself for overextending my credit, but then again the system demands that we always blame ourselves for being the victims. It’s not surprising I received an offer for a Citibank credit card the day after the law came into effect!

The capitalist system has lost its democratic value for most working people and definitely for those on fixed incomes. We may have temporarily succeeded in blocking the right wing from dismantling Social Security, but for most of us on fixed incomes it is harder and harder to make ends meet. The 1-1/2 percent cost of living increase for Social Security is simply not commensurate with the average 8 or 9 percent increase in living costs during the last several years.

As fuel prices soar and in many urban areas housing costs are unaffordable due to speculation, so many of us are beginning to experience a future that is bleak. Even food costs are on such an increase that it is getting harder and harder to obtain the proper nutrition for many.

The Bush years have led most of us into darker times economically and poverty is ever becoming a bigger issue although the capitalist media paint a rosy picture.

Kelly McConnell Los Angeles CA

On global worker solidarity

General Motors announced an agreement with the United Auto Workers reducing health care benefits to autoworkers and retirees in the U.S. The amount is about $1 billion annually.

This accommodation by the union highlights, indeed magnifies, the continuing squeeze on workers and their unions in the U.S. and around the world. The squeeze is, of course, embedded in the model of corporate globalization to benefit corporate profits, and it is far from over.

A recent New York Times article describes concessions forced from city workers — teachers, streets workers and others. New York City workers like all others face a corporate political atmosphere and the globalization squeeze reaches out to all.

How far will they go? History suggests they will go as far as they can.

This unfolding process has caused some to be skeptical of the labor movement’s response, failing to recognize the enormity of the foe and the current relationship of forces. Skepticism in the working-class movement and among allies and potential allies can weaken the potential for struggle. I’d like to see the PWW help fill the gap. A weekly column on efforts to build international solidarity and address the problems in a practical fashion would make a contribution.

Beth Edelman Via e-mail

Blaming poverty on the poor

Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses hoping for a gentler taskmaster Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, Poverty A.K.A., cheapest labor force Poverty works, never ever unemployed

A much needed commodity to justify White-collar crime classes Teaching dastardly deeds — to procure monetary needs — fostering avarice greed …

Poverty creates jobs for those financing the societal Institution of ya godda pay more taxes Blaming poverty on the poor Look! what Enron did to those less fortunate

Blaming poverty on the poor

Did not corporations want a billion-dollar welfare check

Blaming poverty on the poor Blaming poverty on the poor

Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses hoping for a gentler taskmaster Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, poverty A.K.A., cheapest labor force

No penance just punishment augmenting the pillar of economic pillaging Poor people put in the pillory from the political pulpit Poverty is prime property

Poverty pimps portrayed as political preachers purely punitive but polite The pluralization of poverty provides prestige of the patricians Poverty, the promissory note from the bureaucratic infidel The truth will tell — the truth will tell.

Josephine Dixon Banks Via e-mail

Informative

W.T. Whitney’s informative coverage of Cuba and other areas of Latin America is a welcome addition to the PWW. His compact, well-written reports give us an insight into aspects of life and developments in a region about which we are subjected to too much misinformation — when there is any at all. Congratulations to the PWW and thanks to Whitney.

Ellen Perlo Croton-on-Hudson NY

San Diego labor stresses unity

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 02:49:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

On Nov. 8 organized labor and its allies in San Diego will face their first significant political challenge since the landmark AFL-CIO convention last summer. What’s at stake is the future of a labor-community coalition that has navigated one of America’s largest municipalities out of the “conservative” doldrums, and a strategy for defeating the ultra-right in the coming year.

The engine for the upcoming struggle is the California “special” election. Industry groups, ideologues, political partisans, religious fanatics and their financial backers propel most of the propositions on the ballot. The presence of an undemocratic “Conflicting Ballot Measures” section within the proposals makes their overwhelming defeat a must. Meanwhile, affordable housing, livable wages, public employee pensions, health care access and public education are in the mix in the upcoming municipal elections in the city of San Diego. The city will elect its first ever “strong” mayor and one-quarter of its city council.

Lace Watkins, Service Employees International Union Local 2028 member and organizer with the Alliance for a Better California, framed our approach in the last phase of this campaign as “moving with urgency in a unified and determined way to take back San Diego and ... the future of California.” Unity forged in the crucible of conflict as the key to winning was not lost on Mickey Kasparian, president of the San Diego/Imperial Counties Labor Council (AFL-CIO) and president of Local 135 United Food and Commercial Workers. Referring to the grocery workers strike last year he said, “We won’t forget the support of the labor community during our 20- week strike.” UFCW 135’s hall is the center for phone banking, precinct walking and other campaign activities here.

“There is not a union in San Diego that isn’t about helping workers and their families live better lives,” said Donald Cohen, executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives and political consultant to the labor council. Don has organized successful Community Benefits Agreements and living wage campaigns to help everybody in San Diego live better lives. As a former political director of the labor council, he knows, however, that what’s gained on the picket line can be lost at the ballot box.

“The important thing is that we have a unity in the San Diego labor movement that doesn’t exist in other places,” said Jerry Butkiewicz, secretary-treasurer of the San Diego Labor Council. How we articulate that principle this Nov. 8 will have state and local consequences and a significance on the national level as well.

The author is a shipyard worker.

Blockade puts cruel limits on Cuba travel

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 02:41:00 +0000

News Analysis

Sen. Brian Dorgan (R-N.D.) had high hopes for the passage of his amendment to an appropriations bill that would have cut funding for the Treasury Department’s enforcement of the Cuba travel ban. Supporters of the democratic right of U.S. citizens to travel to the island were also optimistic about the amendment’s chances.

But at the 11th hour, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) attached a “second degree amendment” related to the issue of parental consent for abortions. The sensitivity of that issue threatened to distract senators from voting on the merits of Dorgan’s proposal, and he withdrew it on Oct. 20. He condemned Ensign’s maneuver as anti-democratic and arbitrary.

Most senators apparently agree on the cruelty of recently tightened Bush restrictions on visits by Cuban Americans to relatives in Cuba. A 69-page report released on Oct. 19 by Human Rights Watch–Americas Branch (HRW) concurs. It criticizes recent Bush policies that limit trips by Cuban Americans to visits with parents, grandparents or children, and then only with special permission and only every third year.

The HRW report demands that Washington eliminate all restrictions on Cuban American travel to Cuba and recommends that in the meantime humanitarian exceptions be allowed. In fact, it condemns the embargo in its entirety. The report contains no reference, however, to travel as a human right or for purposes of scientific interchange, academic pursuits, cultural enrichment or just plain pleasure. Nor does it touch upon the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA).

The CAA, passed in 1966, encourages any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. soil to stay, regardless of how he or she arrives. It provides the person with an instant work permit and, within two years (now one year), permanent residence. In contrast, undocumented immigrants from other countries face an uphill, almost impossible struggle for asylum.

From the Cuban point of view, the enticements to Cubans contained in the CAA bear responsibility for much death and mayhem off the Florida coast, and encourage the smuggling of human beings, often with tragic consequences.

A report Oct. 15 from the British newspaper The Guardian is illustrative.

A U.S. Coast Guard vessel apparently stopped a speedboat loaded with people. The boat overturned and a 6-year-old boy drowned. The adults, Cubans headed for the United States, were taken into custody and then returned to Cuba. A smuggler in human beings, based in Florida, had been operating the boat.

Or take another incident, this one on Aug. 30, where 31 people died when a smuggler’s boat capsized off the coast of Matanzas province, Cuba.

Such smuggling, while dangerous for the passengers, is extremely profitable, with boat owners charging $8,000 to $15,000 dollars per person to take them across the Florida Straits.

The Cuban government says the CAA’s effect is to reward illegal migration. To cut down on the illegal and dangerous crossings, U.S. and Cuban negotiators agreed in 1994 that the U.S. government would permit 20,000 Cuban citizens to immigrate legally every year. The U.S. promised to return to Cuba people who arrived by irregular means. But Washington has fallen short of the agreement on both counts.

Florida’s human smuggling industry is growing. As of Sept. 30, the U.S. Coast Guard had intercepted and repatriated 2,712 Cubans, up from 1,225 during the previous 12 months. But 2,530 Cubans made it into the United States, up from 954 in 2004.

The HRW report, in the spirit of “evenhandedness,” also criticizes Cuba. (For all its positive work, HRW has too often been willing to conform to the exigencies of U.S. foreign policy, particularly when it comes to criticizing Cuba.) The report specifically focuses on Cuba’s five-year prohibition on return to the island by those who leave it illegally, and on its refusal to allow some highly trained workers, particularly physicians and scientists, to leave the island permanently.

The impact of the U.S. blockade on travel to and from Cuba has consequences that are both cruel and dangerous. Caught up in all but a war, Cuba too sometimes resorts to harsh measures, but the effects are less random and less wrenching than those of U.S. policies.

Cultural notes

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 02:17:00 +0000

‘North Country’ inspired by women miners

When Josey Aimes (Academy Award winner Charlize Theron) returns to her hometown in northern Minnesota after a divorce, she needs a good job. A single mother with two children to support, she turns to the predominant source of employment in the region — the iron mines.

The mines provide a livelihood that has sustained a community for generations. The work is hard but the pay is good, and friendships that form on the job extend into everyday life, bonding families and neighborhoods with a common thread.

Encouraged by her old friend Glory (Academy Award winner Frances McDormand), one of the few female miners in town, Josey joins the ranks of those laboring to blast ore from rock in the gaping quarries. She is prepared for the backbreaking and often dangerous work, but coping with the sexual harassment she and the other female miners encounter proves far more challenging.

North Country is a fictionalized story based on true events — the struggles of the women miners at Eveleth Mines, who some 30 years ago lodged a class action suit against their employer and made history. The movie is inspired by the book “Class Action: The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law,” by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler.

New Orleans public libraries closed indefinitely

The American Library Association reported on Oct. 7 that the nearly 200 New Orleans Public Library staff have been let go as part of Mayor Ray Nagin’s Oct. 5 directive laying off 3,000 city employees in the wake of “financial constraints in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”

City Archivist Wayne Everard said, “Approximately 197 NOPL staff members have been laid off” and the “remaining 19 have been retained as essential to the operation of city government.”

“Thus far,” he said, “we have been working on NOPL business, but if the city decides that we are needed for other tasks, we are subject to reassignment. There are no plans to restore library services in New Orleans anytime in the near future.”

Letters

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 02:08:00 +0000

Humor too subtle? I thoroughly enjoy the PWW, and read it regularly as well as distribute it among the people of my town. However, there is one matter that troubles me. Recently there was an article titled “Delay, Frist to wed.” It’s a very comical and very truthful-sounding article about the two ardent Republican leaders. However, it is easily believable! Yes, the article was quite funny, but unfortunately, folks unlike me won’t think to read the small bold print at the bottom explaining, “Andy Borowitz writes a humor column.” I feel that if someone else not accustomed to the PWW’s subtle style when it comes to comedy might take it as fact, and then, upon discovering that it wasn’t true, might begin to doubt the factuality of news from the PWW, and may even become disinterested. So, please, if you’re going to put humorous articles in the paper, perhaps a box surrounding it titled “Humor Article.”

Martin Droll Via e-mail

Pogo rides again I have observed that Pogo has become very popular again, due to that cartoon quote from long ago: “We have met the enemy and it is us.” The following are exact excerpts from Bush’s own “War on Terror at the National Endowment for Democracy” speech (Oct. 6, 2005): “Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken seriously — and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply. They exploit modern technology to multiply their destructive power. They target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. They have endless ambitions of imperial domination ... to make everyone powerless except themselves. And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor (people)* is that they become killers ... though he never goes along for the ride.” (I substituted “people” for “Muslims.”) My god, Dubya, look into the mirror and meet that enemy! I thought you would appreciate the tragic irony of Bush’s own words, if it weren’t so unbearable!

Stan Via e-mail

Miers is not ‘neutral’ It has long been a principle of advertising that people are ignorant (meaning they don’t know the relevant facts) and stupid (meaning they can’t or haven’t been taught to think logically and rationally) and for those reasons you can, with the right commercial campaign, sell them anything. This is obviously the way that the Bush administration is selling Harriet Miers. Is this longtime Texas conservative Republican operative and Bush associate a “neutral” candidate for the court? Is Miers, a leader a dozen years ago in a Texas Bar political maneuver to put the American Bar Asociation’s support of Roe v. Wade up to a membership vote, someone who can be trusted on reproductive rights? Yes, she was the first woman to head the Texas Bar Association, as Margaret Thatcher, Tom DeLay’s pal, was the first woman to be prime minister of Britain. Besides a difference in gender, a Southern Methodist rather than Harvard Law School background, and a career as a direct servant of Bush and the famously vulgar Texas moneyed classes rather than a career in the upper echelons of the Washington legal establishment, Miers has no serious differences with John Roberts, unless one is ignorant of the available facts and can’t or won’t think rationally and logically. Her victory will put Bush one vote away from a right-wing majority on the court.

Norman Markowitz New Brunswick NJ

Big Oil’s grip is big news I read Susan Webb’s article titled “Breaking the grip of Big Oil” (PWW 10/15-21). Why don’t our local newscasters and financial news groups pounce on this? Are they controlled by “Big Oil,” too? This should be front-page news in every newspaper and on every TV channel in America.

Tom Via e-mail

Gains for liberties There is good news for people who, like me, think that human rights and civil liberties should apply to everyone all the time. The Senate approved, by a vote of 90-9, an amendment to a military spending bill that would prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment of anyone detained in U.S. custody. George W. Bush doesn’t like this amendment. In the Middle East, the Israeli Supreme Court has banned the army from using Palestinian civilians as “human shields.” And the United Kingdom will probably allow some prisoners and former inmates the right to vote after a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.

Chuck Mann Greensboro NC

Put on marching shoes The complete collapse of the defined benefit plans negotiated over 80 years into thousands of labor contracts is in front of us. That’s an underlying message in the Delphi bankruptcy. Attacks by corporations, unbelievable prejudice by the courts, the insolvency of the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation, and the cooperation of politicians — especially but not only the Republicans — are making this almost a certainty. Combine this with the Social Security and Medicare crisis and you have a pending catastrophe for seniors — and everyone who has a senior relation, or who considers “becoming” a senior. When you think about it, why should General Motors be held responsible for the health and retirement of almost a million people — that’s a social responsibility. Didn’t someone with the initials “KM” once write about the contradiction between the social nature of production and its private appropriation? It’s time for a 10 million seniors (and their relations) to march on Washington!

J. Case Via e-mail

The joys of Citgo I felt so proud, driving for the very first time into my local Citgo station and filling up, then asking the proprietor, “Guess why I am buying my gas here now?” “Because,” she replied with some weariness, “Venezuela is not part of the American oil cartel which supports President Bush and makes us dependent on Middle Eastern oil, and because Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a socialist and has nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry.” I almost keeled over in disbelief. That response alone was worth $2.69 a gallon for 87-octane regular! You can do likewise.

Willard B. Shapira Minneapolis MN

Labor Update

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 01:59:00 +0000

Sprint workers strike

Almost 1,000 Sprint workers were forced to strike Oct. 10, the Communications Workers reported. Picket lines went up in Ocala, Fla., where CWA Local 3176 represents 500 workers, Bluff City, Tenn., where Local 3871 represents 300 workers, Hickory, N.C., where Local 3672 represents 100 workers and Evansville, Ind., where Local 4700 represents 40 workers

The top issue is Sprint’s demand to eliminate the cap on employee contributions to health premiums. That would let management shift up to 100 percent of health costs to the workers, CWA said. Sprint also wants to get rid of limits on contracting out, dump its contributions to the workers’ 401(k) plan, cut disability benefits and eliminate overtime pay for Sunday work. It wants to cut vacation time, holidays and sick leave and weaken workers’ seniority rights.

The telecom giant is flush with cash, so much so that it diverted $8.7 billion since 1999 from local phone service to its wireless network construction, said CWA Vice President Jimmy Gurganus.

Card check wins

The Communications Workers racked up two more card-check wins in late September among former AT&T Wireless workers now employed by Cingular. The union has a card-check recognition agreement with the telecom firm. In Illinois, 191 retail sales consultants were certified as part of Local 4202 on Sept. 30, after the American Arbitration Association verified that a majority had signed cards. In Maryland, CWA Local 2107 will be the bargaining representative for Cingular’s statewide unit of 23 former AT&T Wireless network technicians. Since August, CWA has added 6,100 ex-AT&T Wireless workers to its rolls, with most of them in the South.

AFL-CIO approves return of Transportation Union

The AFL-CIO approved the reaffiliation of the United Transportation Union on Oct. 6, four years after the union’s departure. Talks with the AFL-CIO began last year, following the election of Paul Thompson as president of the 60,000-strong UTU. Formal affiliation will take place after the union’s delegates vote on the issue on Nov. 8.

UTU spokesman Frank Wilner said, “It’s more about a philosophical belief that there should be one umbrella organization in order to send a clear and unambiguous message to lawmakers.”

Community support for copper miners

Tucsonans turned a “Community Town Hall” meeting on Asarco into a rally against the policies of Asarco and its parent company, Grupo Mexico. Copper miners here are on strike over the company’s unfair labor practices. The Oct. 10 meeting filled Tucson’s First Christian Church to capacity.

Cheryl is a single mother of three who works as a shovel operator at the Silverbell mine. During the three-month strike, her 13- and 14-year-olds have sold their CDs and video games to help pay the bills, she testified. “I’m not doing this because of what I believe in, but because of what I don’t believe in — Asarco’s cutting pensions, and disability payments and their drive to make taxpayers shoulder the costs of environmental cleanup,” she said.

Carolyn Trowbridge. a member of the Pima County Board of Health, called for holding Asarco/Grupo Mexico accountable for poisoning the communities where they operate.

Daniel Patterson from the Center for Biological Diversity, commented that this struggle against corporate greed unites striking workers and environmentalists.

There is an Arizona law allowing for confiscation of a concern that creates a public nuisance, pointed out Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal. “We should have a way to take the mine and use its income to clean up the environment and care for the community,” he said.

AFSCME, SEIU in joint campaign

“This should stop the presses,” joked AFSCME President Gerald McEntee in announcing that his union and SEIU have launched a joint radio advertising campaign in Iowa, Maine, Oregon and Rhode Island. The campaign will oppose the Republican’s efforts to cut vital public service programs and give new tax breaks to the wealthy in the name of funding hurricane relief efforts. The GOP legislators have proposed $35 billion cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and Housing and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). They are also pushing $70 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy.

Asked about the collaboration between the two unions, which have been at odds since the SEIU left the AFL-CIO in July, McEntee said he has always thought that “on major issues and major political campaigns,” the two would pursue “a lot of cooperation.”

Wal-Mart: Sells hammers and buys them too

When former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted for illegally funneling corporate money to Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature, what did Wal-Mart do? They cut him a check! Wal-Mart Watch reports that DeLay’s Congressional Committee received $5000 two days after a Texas grand jury handed down the indictment. Wal-Mart’s Political Action Committee doled out $2.1 million to politicians in 2004, with $1.6 million going to Republican candidates or organizations.

NLRB paves over worker rights

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that an employer’s right to control its parking lot trumps the workers’ right to engage in on-site job actions. The Board’s decision gave its stamp of approval to Houston air conditioner manufacturer Quietflex Co. which fired 83 non-union employees who gathered in the company parking lot to air their grievances in January 2000.

The workers who gathered were Latino immigrants who felt that their managers were treating them unfairly compared to other workers, according to American Rights at Work. The workers also sought a raise and improved vacations and holiday pay.

After 12 hours, the company president, who refused to meet with the workers, threatened to fire them if they remained in the parking lot. But they stayed until police escorted them off the property. When they returned to work, they were fired. Although the workers were not union members, the Sheet Metal Workers Union stepped in on their behalf and filed charges with the NLRB.

Four-and-a-half years later, the board ruled that after 12 hours, the workers had exhausted their rights and Quietflex could reclaim its parking lot.

American Rights at Work slammed the board’s decision. “All workers are supposed to be protected under the National Labor Relations Act when they engage in reasonable on-site … job actions,” the group said, “but the rights of employers far outweigh the rights of employees in this country …[and] the board keeps tipping the balance of power even further in favor of employers.”

Fortunately, soon after the action, the SMWIA was able to help the workers get their jobs back in spite of the board’s action.

Labor Update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org). Joe Bernick and PAI contributed.

Agreement near on local, state labor unity

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 01:28:00 +0000

The struggle to preserve labor unity at state and local levels appeared to make some progress last week as the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federation reached an “agreement in principle” on implementing a “Solidarity Charter” program. The program would allow locals of unions that disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO at the national level to continue as members of state federations and central labor councils.

Solidarity Charter compromise

“We have made progress in our discussions with the Change to Win unions concerning the terms of the Solidarity Charter program,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney reported Oct. 17. Sweeney said that the AFL-CIO has agreed that members from CTW unions could hold office in the state and central bodies. He reported that CTW unions had agreed with the concept of sharing the cost at the national level of supporting the work of the state feds and CLCs.

Change to Win Chair Anna Burger was more tentative in describing the agreement. “We are hopeful that an agreement will happen soon,” she said. She told the BNA news service that the discussion of financial support to the work of the state and local bodies would be in the context of an “overall financial discussion.” That discussion would include the issues of back per capita payments owed by the CTW unions to the AFL-CIO and participation by CTW in the AFL-CIO’s credit card program, which generates $25 million of revenue annually.

Five unions have broken away from the AFL-CIO: the Carpenters, Service Employees, Food and Commercial Workers, Teamsters, and Unite Here. Two others, Laborers and Farmworkers, are affiliated with both federations.

Local leaders insist on unity

Leaders of local affiliates from both federations have been adamant in their insistence on preserving the networks of solidarity that they have developed in recent years. Political action, strike support and organizing campaigns, they say, demand unity to be effective.

Jerry Butkiewicz, secretary-treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, told the World that if the agreement is cemented, “our local unions here in San Diego will be elated and relieved. We were worried that [the fallout from the breakaway] would destroy our unity and we had no control over it.” Labor unity, he stressed, has been responsible for great progress in electing labor-friendly candidates in his area. “We quit fighting ourselves and started taking on the enemy,” he said.

The San Diego City Council has passed a livable wage ordinance and is about to conclude a community-based agreement for the biggest development project in city history, Butkiewicz reported. The agreement will include provisions for environmental protections, card check union recognition, project labor agreements, affordable housing and affirmative action. “This is amazing because San Diego is known as a right-wing, military town,” Butkiewicz said.

Margaret Blackshere, president of the Illinois State AFL-CIO, was also optimistic about the new agreement. All of the affiliates from both sides of the split “have told us they want to continue to be part of the state federation,” she told the World. Unions are very loyal and committed to their national leadership, she explained. “We’ve been trying hard not to press them to make a choice. Leaders here have said they have no fight or disagreement with state and local leaders.”

Blackshere pointed to many accomplishments of the state federation, especially in the legislative arena: raising the state minimum wage, pay equity for women, and card check. “There’s things we can do even to protect ourselves from Bush,” she said, citing legislation to protect the overtime pay of the state’s workers. “It works if we all work together, so it’s frustrating to think that division is happening at a time when we all need to be together,” she concluded.

The AFL-CIO will extend its deadline for reaching final terms on the solidarity charters to Nov. 15. This will allow state and local affiliates to maintain their unity through the many state and local elections that will take place Nov. 8. Burger said she was scheduled to meet with Sweeney Oct. 21 to continue discussions.

Letters

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 04:01:00 +0000

Medicare Part D scam

The following is excerpted from a letter sent to President Bush with copies to Sens. Schumer and Clinton of New York.

I am just one of the people who will be losing Medicaid Medicine Coverage because of Medicare Reform Bill S1. Starting on Jan. 1, 2006, several million people, some like me who are covered by Medicare and Medicaid together, will be receiving medicine coverage through Medicare Part D after losing Medicaid Medicine Coverage.

While Part D does offer lower costs for people on limited income like myself, there are still out of the pocket expenses. Also some drugs are exempt from coverage.

I currently am taking 10 medications — five of them brand name for which no generic is marketed, and five generic. One is not covered and costs $118 a month.

The out of pocket expenses for me will be $146 a month.

My current Social Security benefits are $567 a month. After basic necessities — rent, food and transportation — I have a grand total of $15.54 a month. That doesn’t even leave room for laundry detergent, fabric softener and an occasional takeout meal. Obviously with only $15.43 “extra” I cannot afford $146 for my medicine.

I am not in this situation by myself. In 2002, 8 percent of those on Medicare, 8 percent of privately insured, 26 percent of Medicaid patients, and 29 percent of those uninsured were not filling prescriptions due to costs.

Starting on Jan 1, 2006, I will no longer be able to get my medicines. This will mean hospitalization for serious conditions at an expense of thousands of dollars. It is not a very economical approach.

Kenneth BeSaw

Bronx NY

German elections

Regarding “Germany: Left gains in elections” in World Notes (PWW 9/24-30), there is additional information. The DPK (German Communist Party) had called on left forces, almost as soon as the party was formed, to organize and work together with the newly formed “Linkspartei” (Left Party). It also raised its own demands, which it publicized in various forms, and some of its members ran on that party’s ticket. The DPK’s newspaper Unsere Zeit reports that through the party’s active participation in the electioneering process, the DPK gained recognition, more respect, new members and the paper new readers.

Miriam Pandor

Berlin, Germany

Poetic response

This poem I wrote in response to the antiwar actions of the military families and all the other individuals and organizations that are coming together to end the war in Iraq.

Mother (for Cindy Sheehan)

The wound is deeper

for the woman —

that life came

from her body,

and now someone

has taken it away.

All you who nurse

your vigil at

the gravesides of

your sons and daughters

are building shrines

of anger and remembrance

in the consciousness

of America.

At the barricaded

ranch of the oil billionaire

deep in the heart of Texas

she is there day

after day, grieving too

for the Iraqi innocents

covered by sweet soil

in the deep wounds

of their gardens,

made prisoners

in their own homes

by the Texan rancher’s

occupation forces.

She will not be moved —

her existence has

taken root in the earth.

Tom Pearson

Sydney, Australia

What has happened?

What country is this? Or maybe Earth has been inhabited by aliens from Planet Dumb. My country less and less resembles the grand and glorious land of Jefferson, Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, William O. Douglas, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and yes, Bill Clinton — all individuals of high intelligence and humanity — great thinkers and leaders who had a clue! We Americans must rid ourselves of the terrible blight that has robbed this land of decency, fairness and compassion. Down with George W. Bush and his abhorrent cronyism and woeful lack of leadership. Needless to say, down with Harriet Miers, with whom I would not even share a brown bag lunch. I mean, she thinks George W. is smart? The early warning alarms are deafening!

Kelly Taylor

New York NY

Not as loveable as Peanuts

Like his counterpart Charlie Brown, Charles Schultz’s famous character, Michael “Charlie” Brown’s reputation will live on forever, and truly earned the name Blockhead. Much like Charlie Brown, each time he pitched his best pitch, problems too large for him to handle came back at him and knocked his socks off, displaying for all the world a defeated loser unable to get the job done. It wasn’t a matter of fumbling the ball; FEMA’s Brown never even laid his glove on it as it zoomed by him and knocked him on his backside, feet up, minus his socks and shoes.

FEMA’s Brown proved his cowardice at a recent Republican-run investigation, when he blamed anyone he could find when questioned about his own inaction and ineptitude.

The FEMA cronies gave the impression of a Snoopy lost in fantasyland rather than a well-oiled crisis management team.

Ron Stewart

Wading River NY

Robot calling

I got a phone call from a robot last week. It wasn’t exactly a robot, but a robot-like recorded phone voice from my health insurance company, rattling into my answering machine about pap smears and checkups for women my age. My machine cut off before it finished.

It says a lot about the state of our country’s profit before people health industry. I have no problem with getting an automated reminder, but how on earth do they know if I actually got the message, or understood it, or will remember to do what they advised?

Why doesn’t my primary care doctor or other live human health care professional monitor my care and give me a real phone call? That would be real preventive medicine with a heart and soul. But it might not be as cheap for the company as a robo-call. They don’t have to pay wages and benefits to a machine.

Renee Weisman

Chicago IL

Labor Update

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 03:48:00 +0000

Supreme union buster?

“The threat of a union organizing effort or strike can be traumatic for any company — which is why you need an experienced partner on your side,” says the public relations promo material from Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’ former law firm, Locke Liddell & Sapp. “Locke Liddell labor and employment law lawyers have extensive experience in union avoidance counseling. ... For union-free companies, we provide union-avoidance advice and strategies in emerging situations,” the promo continues.

Miers’ former firm represents a large association of building owners that has been fighting SEIU-represented janitors in Houston who have been demanding union recognition.

Endangered species?

One case that could be making its way to the Supreme Court involves the giant inflatable rat, which has been an effective and even beloved tool of unions, used to embarrass companies employing nonunion labor. A union’s use of the rat may constitute unlawful picketing, according to an administrative law judge who ruled against the Laborers union in disputes with two companies, the Ranches at Mount Sinai and Concrete Structures. The union has appealed the decision to the National Labor Relations Board.

The outlook appears grim for the rat, reports Workforce Management, a magazine specializing in human resource issues.

“As a management lawyer, I would like to see this get decided by the Supreme Court because there are many employers that are impacted by this conduct,” Kathryn Davis, a San Francisco attorney told the magazine.

But even if the rat is exterminated, there are other animals than can fill the breech, said Lowell Peterson, who represents the Laborers Eastern Region Organizing Fund. “Some unions are already using skunks and cockroach balloons,” he said. “There are plenty of other animals.”

Letter carriers save lives too

Saving lives is nothing new for firefighters, police and EMTs — and it’s nothing new for letter carriers, either. That came through loud and clear when the National Association of Letter Carriers presented its Heroes of the Year awards Sept. 28 in Washington.

Willie Hayward, named Eastern regional hero, rushed into a burning apartment along his Miami route this past Jan. 31 and saved two of his elderly customers after calling 911. He banged on the door before Manuela Perez answered and Hayward pulled her outside. Hayward figured Perez’s husband was probably still inside, so he crawled back in underneath the smoke, got the sleeping husband out of bed and dragged him out the door by his feet.

Richard Bergonzi, the Western regional hero, rushed into a burning house in Moore, Okla., to rescue an 8-year-old child recovering from brain surgery. The family could not speak English well, but he got them away from the house and figured out that one woman repeating “smoke, smoke” meant someone else was still inside. Bergonzi raced in, “scooped up the youngster” from the floor “and carried him outside just as a large burst of black smoke billowed into his face.”

4-year delay fatal to union drive

In what The Newspaper Guild calls “the poster child” case for the Employee Free Choice Act, workers at the Chinese Daily News voted against the union by a 92-52 margin on Sept. 23. That came almost four and a half years after they voted for the union 78-63. The National Labor Relations Board, dominated by Bush appointees, sat on the case for four years, while the workers’ Los Angeles employer, the nation’s largest Chinese language paper, appealed and delayed and spent more than $1.6 million to keep the union out.

Finally, on the flimsiest of grounds, the NLRB upheld the company’s claim that one supervisor may have tainted the vote by supporting the union. It annulled the first vote and called for the rerun. The company fired one of TNG’s leaders a few weeks before the second vote. The delay was fatal.

The Chinese Daily News case “shows breaking the law and exploiting the NLRB’s evident lack of support of workers rewards unjust and illegal behavior,” TNG concluded.

Forced overtime hot issue

Steelworkers from U.S. Steel’s Clairton, Pa., coke plant are supporting state legislation that would prohibit forced overtime, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Working in a coke plant is brutal. Temperatures in the ovens are over 2,000 degrees, and the workers who work on top of the ovens’ lids deal with temperatures up to 150. Workers typically work in pairs, alternating 30 minutes on and 30 minutes off, but the plant’s 1,120 work force is down 400 workers. The 2003 contract eliminated 20 percent of the workers.

One coke plant employee was disciplined for refusing to work his third double shift in one week because he had to take his son to a doctor’s appointment, said USW Local 1557 President Andy Miklos.

State Sen. Sean Logan (D-Monroeville) is sponsoring the legislation. “It’s a safety issue,” he told the Post-Gazette. Even though anti-forced-overtime proposals have been turned down by the Legislature in the past, “I would hope the General Assembly would take a hard look” this time, he said.

Sweet victory for grape workers

Grape harvesters will receive $1.7 million in back pay as a result of a federal class action lawsuit arising out of United Farm Workers union organizing efforts. Kovacevich “5” Farms required its workers to show up every day at 6 a.m., but the first half hour they spent unloading wheelbarrows and supplies was considered off-the-clock or unpaid time. Under the settlement, covering the years 2000 to 2003, Kovacevich will pay 500 workers for all time worked.

Union for Oregon child care workers

Nearly 5,000 certified home child care providers will begin bargaining after the state’s governor, Ted Kulongoski, signed an executive order recognizing AFSCME Council 75 as their exclusive representative Sept 23. “We hope this gives a more professional look to child care workers,” Sue Mackey, of Salem, told the World.

Mackey cares for 7 children, aged 3 months to 11 years, from 5:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in her home. She hopes the recognition eventually leads to health insurance. Mackey said the statewide group meets once a month in different locations to encourage participation of more providers.

Communicators coordinate

Ten AFL-CIO unions in the telecommunications, arts, entertainment and media sectors will work together to devise joint organizing and collective bargaining strategies in the federation’s first Industry Coordinating Committee, the federation’s newly elected Executive Council announced after its first meeting Oct. 6.

The unions, which represent nearly 1 million workers, include Communications Workers, Electrical Workers, The Newspaper Guild, Actors’ Equity, Musicians, Television and Radio Artists, Theatrical Stage Employees, Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Screen Actors and the Writers Guild.

Labor update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org). PAI, Jim Gallo and Paul Kaczocha contributed.

Venezuelas president, PWW staff congratulate White Sox

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:19:00 +0000

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has congratulated White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen for leading his team to the playoffs.

Chavez spoke to Guillen, who’s from Venezuela, by phone last week during his weekly television and radio program, “Hello President.”

“Congratulations, Oswaldo. All of us here in Venezuela are so proud of you,” Chavez said in their conversation, broadcast live nationwide in the South American country.

Guillen, the first Venezuelan manager in the majors, said his spirits were raised when his team won American League Central.

“Now I want to win more than ever,” said Guillen, whose team beat the Boston Red Sox, 14-2, in the opener of the first-round series Oct. 4 in Chicago.

Chavez, who said he once dreamed of pitching in the major leagues, told Guillen he has always been an example to follow.

“We are with you, always following your success,” Chavez said. “And we’ll be waiting for you when you come back, hopefully as world champion.”

The PWW editorial office is just blocks away from Sox Park, where White Sox fans there seconded Chavez’s congratulations. “Our paper is infused with the Sox’s fighting spirit of the underdog,” Editor Terrie Albano said. “When our staff, struggling against a deadline, hear the fireworks go off [signaling a Sox homerun] we cheer — hey, hey for the underdog!”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Letters

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:01:00 +0000

Time has long since come

The American nation is plummeting into an abysmal crevasse of political, social and economic deterioration as a result of the Bush administration’s ineptitude and the American people’s submission to it. Time and again, our president has defiled the credibility of the U.S. as well as casting us into financial mire — from 9/11, his ridiculous claims of weapons of mass destruction, the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, the ongoing war on Iraq disaster, to his ineptitude in the Katrina relief. Bush is a criminal.

Even though those in denial would call this statement “unpatriotic,” one can easily see reflections of Nazism within our administration. Have people so quickly forgotten the Patriot Act? Have people already forgotten how our leader manipulated the ambivalence and the fear pertaining to 9/11 to suit his own devices? When will we as American citizens come to understand that times like this transpire to test the strength of the American people and democracy itself? We cannot remain mere bystanders in the face of the injustices performed by our government, for by doing so, we might as well be committing them with our own hands.

It has far exceeded the time when we citizens need to remove that which is hiding and destroying this nation. If we fail now, then we are doomed to fail each and every time another Bush gains power in our republic.

Torrese Ouellette

New Haven CT

Demand a warning

Every day our children are bombarded with commercials of soldiers having fun, excitement, adventure and pride in their jobs and their duty. They want the adventure and excitement. It is burned into their souls. I spent time with some elementary school children. I was alarmed to find so many wanting to join the military. They could not wait to be old enough to join so that they could shoot and blow things up. None of them realized that war is a two-way firing range.

Today, I wrote my senator asking him if cigarettes must carry warnings and medicine must list adverse side effects, then why doesn’t the military have to explain possible results?

I was in the Army. I joined when I was 18. I knew the possibilities. I grew up with visions of Vietnam on TV — scenes of the dead, injured and the pain of the living in the war zone. Now, kids have no viewpoint of the horrors of war.

I was lucky. There were no battles for me. I thank all my lucky stars that I did not have to go through the terror that numerous combat vets I have talked to told me of through tear-stained eyes and cheeks.

Everyone needs to write their elected officials and demand that the military show both sides of the coin in their ads. People in this country need to find out all they can about war. How are we to be able to make educated decisions that affect all if we only know half of the story?

Vincent Eberle

Via e-mail

Paul Robeson stamp

Regarding the letter about the Paul Robeson stamp from Ros Spitzer (PWW 8/27-9/2), it may still be possible to get Paul Robeson stamps from the USPS. I called their number (1-800-782-6724) and the customer service representative told me there were some left. They can be ordered from the USPS using that number. She also said that stamps from the African American series did not usually get printed more than once.

Julia Lutsky

New York NY

Public ownership now

The idea that the natural wealth of a country should belong to the people and be used to improve the well being of everyone, starting with the least fortunate, has become a material force throughout Latin America.

Governments in Ecuador and Bolivia that have promoted the private ownership and exploitation of natural resources have been forced to resign, while governments that understand this new mood of their people — support for public ownership — have come to enjoy greater popularity.

The communist parties in the region deserve the credit for this understanding taking root among the vast majority of the peoples of Latin America. They have always called for the nationalization of the region’s vast natural wealth.

It is therefore surprising to read in the People Before Profits column (PWW 9/24-30) a column attributed to the Communist Party’s economic commission that attempts to offer a solution to the current price gouging by oil and gas companies by offering a number of warmed-over, New Deal, liberal solutions. The article does not come close to a call to nationalize the energy industry. The author even fails to mention, in a discussion of the California “energy crisis” of 2000-2001, that Los Angeles residents were largely exempt from that “crisis” because they had a municipally owned electrical utility.

American workers will never come to understand that profits, stockholders, bondholders, equity firms and the like are not necessary but antithetical to a humane and just social system if the PWW doesn’t tell them. If not you, who?

Walter Tillow

Louisville KY

Greg Godwin

Pittsburgh PA

Art Perlo responds: I fully agree that the natural wealth of a country should belong to the people and be used to improve the well being of everyone. Nationalizing the energy industry is a necessary part of any fundamental solution.

The column in question was focused on oil company profiteering in the wake of Katrina. The “warmed over liberal solutions” it presented, if enacted, could bring relief to millions of consumers and workers, and greater stability in energy supplies and pricing. Reforms of this nature help lay the groundwork for nationalizing the industry.

I also hope that future columns can more fully explore elements of a people’s energy program, which will include nationalization. Then, at last, we may realize the biblical injunction that “the profit of the earth is for all” (Ecclesiastes 5:9).

Acorn doesn’t fall far

It certainly is inspiring to learn from wherest George’s fabled compassion and family values spring, isn’t it? As his mother, Her Ladyship Barbara, put it whilst gracing some of the hurricane victims with her presence: “So many of the people in the arena [the Astrodome] here, you know, were underprivileged anyway — so this is working very well for them.” Ah — in times of great national stress, high birth, station and breeding certainly will tell, won’t they? God save The King and bless the Aristocracy!

William Ramsay II

Grand Junction CO

Editorial: A racist, genocidal regime

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 01:58:00 +0000

Speaking of the Bush administration’s lackadaisical response to Hurricane Katrina and the misery inflicted on the people of the Gulf Coast, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) recently commented, “The system devalues human lives.”

We now know just how little value is placed on human life by the regime now in power: So far, 964 bodies have been recovered from the muck of New Orleans. They are so decomposed that most have not been identified. Yet certainly these human beings were African American and poor by a large majority, lives that could have been saved if this administration valued human lives above crony corporate profits and tax cuts for its wealthy patrons.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson predicted that New Orleans will never again be a “majority Black city,” as if the hurricanes were an opportunity for massive urban removal. In this scenario, the Big Easy would be gentrified into a majority white, affluent city. Its half million residents scattered in a vast diaspora, New Orleans’ voters would no longer stand as the bulwark against a Republican right-wing takeover of Louisiana.

As the body count in New Orleans began to rival the total of dead GIs in Iraq, former Reagan and Bush I cabinet member William Bennett let slip his Nazi-like beliefs. “If you want to reduce crime … you could abort every Black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down,” he told a listener on his radio call-in show. The White House was forced to disavow Bennett’s comment. But Bush-Cheney and company cannot so easily distance themselves from Bennett, a leading Republican ideologue who played a big role in building the machine that put Bush in the White House.

Bennett revealed what Karl Rove and other White House spinmeisters try to keep under wraps: This is one of the most racist, genocidal administrations in our history. It was carrying out Bennett’s final solution when it cut funding for levee repair in New Orleans. When those levees failed, Bush stalled for six days while the city’s Black, poor and elderly people died.

Labor Update

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 01:51:00 +0000

Contract at Boeing

SEATTLE (PAI) — Members of the Machinists union marched back into Boeing plants Sept. 29 after ratifying a new three-year pact with the airplane maker by a 4-1 margin. They had been on strike since Sept. 2.

The pact, covering 18,500 workers, does not include a general pay raise. But each worker gets a signing bonus equal to 8 percent of pay in the last 12 months, plus $3,000 payouts in the second and third years. And it increases pensions to $70 monthly for each year of service.

The contract has no changes in health care and continues medical benefits for retirees. Boeing had wanted to do away with health care for new retirees and demanded huge increases in workers’ share of health care costs at a cost of $4,000 each annually.

Boeing was also forced to back off its demand for a separate contract with worse pay and benefits for workers in its Wichita, Kan., facility.

Exhausted truck drivers

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Thousands of local delivery drivers will be forced into working 14 consecutive hours on the road as a result of new rules implemented Oct. 1 by the federal Transportation Department. Overly tired truck drivers increase the risk of accidents, the Teamsters say.

Wal-Mart pushed the GOP-run Congress to insert similar onerous hours for truck drivers into the highway bill lawmakers approved earlier this year, but Teamsters lobbying beat back the anti-worker retailer’s effort.

“Corporate trucking interests have gotten” from the federal agency “what they’ve been unable to get from Congress,” Teamsters President James Hoffa said. “The agency turned a blind eye to protecting health of truck drivers and safety of the public.”

Living wage victory at Cintas

“It feels good to finally get what we deserve,” said Francisca Amaral, one of 219 industrial laundry workers who will share in a $1.1 million court-ordered payment from the Cintas Corp. The nation’s largest industrial laundry violated the Living Wage Ordinance of the Northern California community of Hayward when they paid Amaral and her co-workers less than the $10.71 an hour required by the local law. Amaral, a 14-year employee, was paid only $8.20.

Over 100 municipalities across the nation currently have living wage ordinances, according to Unite Here researcher Jason Oringer. Such ordinances set a minimum pay level for employers who do business with the city. Unite Here is campaigning to organize the 10,000 Cintas laundry workers who make and clean work uniforms and other industrial materials in 170 locations nationwide. The Teamsters union has a coordinated campaign to organize the company’s 7,000 drivers.

The victory should give a boost to the laundry workers’ organizing campaign, said Oringer. “The company keeps telling the workers they will never win anything,” he said, but here they worked together and, even without formal union recognition, were able to win the back wages they deserved.

Labor Update is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org).

Ct. labor seeks unity

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 01:46:00 +0000

News Analysis

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Delegates to the Connecticut AFL-CIO convention here showed their commitment to unity in words and deeds as they grappled with changes in the labor movement and sharpening attacks on workers by the Bush administration.

The state federation re-elected all its officers, including those whose unions recently split from the AFL-CIO, in hopes that continuing national negotiations will have positive results.

Brian Petronella, re-elected as general vice president, is president of Local 371 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union that left the AFL-CIO for the Change to Win federation. “I enjoyed the Change to Win convention in St. Louis,” he said, “but the bottom line is here in Connecticut, and protecting workers here.”

Speaker after speaker emphasized that every union member can make a difference by letting their national leaders know the labor movement cannot afford to splinter.

Wayne Burrus, international president of the American Postal Workers Union, called upon the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to “move together as a combined force in the face of mighty capitalism.”

“The $5 an hour meat plant worker, the unemployed auto worker, the unorganized Wal-Mart worker demand of us to represent their interests,” he said.

Morton Bahr, retired president of the Communication Workers of America, appealed to the convention to support a national effort to organize workers at Verizon, a “viciously anti-union” employer. Along with Barr, delegates boarded school buses and traveled in the rain to North Haven for a lunchtime picket at a Verizon outlet.

The convention adopted a wide range of resolutions including support for universal health care, affordable housing, extension of the Voting Rights Act, and for the rapid return of U.S. troops from Iraq. “Is this war patriotic?” asked Machinist union delegate Bill Shortell. “George Bush treats the vets like laid-off workers,” he said. “This is a corporate war being fought for profits of Exxon and Texaco. I am proud to be in a movement that is against it.”

Western Connecticut Central Labor Council president Blair Bertaccini emphasized that “just as labor has been in front to protect Social Security, for health care and better wages, labor should be in the front” against the war. “End the war now,” he said to applause.

A one-day constitutional convention will be held at the end of the year to assess the results of national negotiations between the AFL-CIO and Change to Win and determine their impact on Connecticut.

N. Calif. banquet to honor social activism

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 01:20:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — A political, cultural and culinary feast is in store at the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo banquet here on Saturday evening, Nov. 5.

Bringing to life the theme, “Connecting the dots … from California’s Special Election … to the Gulf Coast … to Iraq,” will be leaders in the movements to bring our troops and tax dollars home now, and end the Schwarzenegger-Bush war on the American people.

Speaking from the heart about the urgency of ending the war will be Anne Roesler of Military Families Speak Out and Ramon Leal of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Roesler’s son is now serving his third deployment in Iraq. Leal was deployed to Iraq with his Army reserve unit in June 2003.

Roesler, a community public health educator and assistant professor at San Jose State University, has been a featured speaker at many antiwar events. Leal, a communications specialist and military policeman while in the Army, is now a college political science major.

Sharon Cornu, executive secretary-treasurer of the Alameda County Central Labor Council, will share her thoughts about dealing a decisive defeat to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s anti-people ballot measures on Nov. 8. A former communications director for the California Labor Federation, Cornu is a member of the AFL-CIO’s national advisory committee on labor councils.

A lively cultural program will be headlined by vocalist Emily Baloney of the cast of the long running musical “Beach Blanket Babylon.” Wavy Gravy, an acclaimed activist clown and a “Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor,” whose motto is “Peace is Patriotic,” will also perform. Joining Baloney and will be the hip-hop dance troupe Bodirock and the East Bay Raging Grannies.

The Alliance for a Better California, which is leading the fight against Schwarzenegger’s pro-corporate ballot measures, is among organizations to be honored. The Alliance, a coalition of nearly 2.5 million teachers, firefighters, nurses and other public workers, will be represented by Pixie Hayward Schickele, a member of the California Teachers Association executive board.

Another honoree, the California Alliance for Retired Americans, has spearheaded work in California to preserve Social Security. Director Jodi Reid and Vice President Andy Barnes will represent CARA. Reid has worked for over 25 years to help senior, health, housing and neighborhood organizations develop into strong, successful grassroots advocacy organizations, while Barnes, a retired international representative for the Machinists union, was a leader in the Congress of California Seniors before helping to found CARA in 2003.

Lateshya Johnson will represent Oakland’s Mosswood Park Recreation Center. Johnson has been part of the Mosswood family since age 12 when she joined former Mayor Elihu Harris’ youth leadership program. Now she is responsible for day camp and holiday camp programs, and teaches jazz dance, cheerleading and other activities.

The banquet, on Saturday, Nov. 5 — dinner at 6 p.m. and program at 7 p.m. — will be held at the Snow Building, 9777 Golf Links Rd. (Oakland Zoo entrance). Reservations are $40. Proceeds will benefit the PWW. For information, call (510) 251-1050.