People Before Profit blog

New Jersey Court Stops Short of Marriage Equality

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 10:57:00 +0000

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 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 New Jersey State Legislature must comply with the constitution by amending state laws to allow equal marriage rights or create a legal status like civil unions. Three dissenting judges argued that the only correct solution, however, is to grant gay and lesbian couples the fundamental right to marry.

The court’s majority tempered its instructions to the legislature, however, by stating that the only legal point at issue was that same-sex couples had a right to equal protection, not a right to marry.

Writing for the majority, Justice Barry T. Albin appeared to argue that traditional marriage, as defined exclusively for different-sex couples, was too strong a concept to apply to same-sex couples and as such warranted creating a separate status for same-sex couples without using the term marriage.

Writing for the three dissenting judges, Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz argued that the law does not defer solely to tradition. Justice Poritz pointed out that the US Supreme Court struck down legal prohibitions on interracial marriage by saying that the right to marry was Constitutionally protected regardless of tradition.

Responses to the New Jersey decision were mixed. The limitations in the decision prompted Arthur S. Leonard, of the New York News to ask, if the aim of the court is to eliminate discrimination against same-sex couples, what possible public need could be served by failing to acknowledging the fundamental right to marry?

Journalist Doug Ireland, writing in his blog DIRELAND, described the ruling as a “a Solomon-like decision that cut the baby in half, so to speak.” The decision appears to give the New Jersey State Legislature far too much room to maneuver on the issue, and may even afford a victory to opponents of marriage equality by creating a “separate, but equal” status, Ireland suggested.

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solomonese called the decision a “a pro-family, pro-equality decision” and asked the state legislature to “do the right thing” and follow the court’s directives.

Expressing some reservations about the wording of the majority opinion, Solomonese added, “This decision recognizes that New Jersey’s constitution protects all families. The legislature should not go down the path of separate but equal, but rather should embrace marriage equality.”

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, 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 November 7th 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.”

These concerns were echoed by Pride at Work, AFL-CIO, the labor federation’s constituency group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender union members. Describing the decision as “great and long awaited,” a statement on Pride at Work’s website reads, “[W]e are sure that our adversaries will try and use this decision to divide working people, as they have tried to do with LGBT issues, immigration, and race-baiting in the past.”

Pride at Work Co-President Nancy Wohlforth said, “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, healthcare , and decent wages.”

Wohlforth preemptively rejected the accusation of “judicial activism” likely to be leveled by opponents of marriage equality. “For those who think this decision goes against the will of the people, it should be noted that 56% of New Jersey residents support legalizing same-sex marriage in New Jersey, so the court is echoing the demands of New Jersey residents themselves,” she stated.

NOW 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,” said Gandy. “No other word has the same power as ‘marriage’ and 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.

The ruling overturns an appellate court decision, which upheld the initial trial court’s rejection of the plaintiffs’ complaint against the state for denying the licenses.

Marriage equality activists say that regardless of the New Jersey State 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.

Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net

San Jose, Calif., mayoral race hangs in balance

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:41:00 +0000

With a poll earlier this month showing the candidates neck-and-neck, San Jose’s nonpartisan mayoral contest between City Councilmembers Cindy Chavez and Chuck Reed has become a real cliff-hanger.

A poll Oct. 3-5 by the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University found Chavez at 40 percent, Reed at 42 percent and 17 percent undecided.

Chavez, a former South Bay Labor Council staff director, was elected to the City Council in 1998 and currently serves as vice mayor. Besides the Labor Council and many labor, community, environmental and political organizations, she is endorsed by U.S. Representatives Anna Eshoo, Mike Honda and Zoe Lofgren; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; several former San Jose mayors; and seven current city councilmembers.

Though she is backed by labor and opposed by the Chamber of Commerce, Chavez emphasizes bringing all segments of the community together to solve problems. As an example, she cites her leadership role on the council for the Children’s Health Initiative, which brings together public and private funding to provide health coverage to most uninsured children in Santa Clara County.

Though the Chamber of Commerce is “literally spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat her,” said Chavez campaign manager Justin Schall, “at the same time, they are doing their ‘report-card’ and give her an A-minus.”

Chavez lists among her accomplishments the significant expansion of parks, neighborhood development that has helped both residents and businesses, and the promotion of “green” building and energy policies.

If elected, Chavez plans major efforts to improve public schools, including not only increased emphasis on math and science, but also bringing back arts programs. She also pledges to increase the city’s use of clean energy and to attract green energy and clean technology businesses “with a goal of making San Jose the hub for the clean economy.”

Her opponent, attorney Chuck Reed, an Air Force Academy graduate, has served on the City Council for six years.

Opponents’ attempts to link Chavez to a garbage contract scandal in which Mayor Ron Gonzales has been involved lost steam after Reed was forced to acknowledge having donated $39,000 of taxpayers’ money to nonprofit community, political and religious groups during his six years in office. Reed has repaid the funds and apologized for his actions.

mbechtel@pww.org

The Founding Fathers views on church and state

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:29:00 +0000

BOOK REVIEW

Under the regime of the Republican right, an aggressive effort is under way to eliminate the separation between church and state.

Some clearly aim for a theocracy.

The right is fond of invoking the views of “the founding fathers,” but on church-state issues they run into a problem: The founding fathers themselves inserted language into the Constitution that prohibited any “religious test” for persons holding federal office, and later added the famous language in the First Amendment forbidding the “establishment of religion.”

To make the case that they did not mean what they plainly said, all sorts of fictions are being put out which would have us believe that the founders wanted a Christian Republic. To be sure, these efforts to depict the founders as highly religious are not new; they started at the beginning of the 19th century with Parson Weems’ notorious inventions about George Washington. But the effort is especially intense right now.

A new book by investigative journalist Brooke Allen, “Moral Minority,” should put a stop to such myth-making, but of course it won’t.

Allen reviews the literature and correspondence of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton, and clearly shows that all except Hamilton eventually distanced themselves from, or actually rejected, Christian religious orthodoxy.

Most tended toward deism or Unitarianism, which means that they believed in a vague concept of a creator God and an afterlife, but rejected miracles, revelation and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Children of the Enlightenment, they thought that reason, not faith, should be the foundation of government. As crafty practical politicians, they did not always say so in public, and were not above mouthing religious platitudes when expedient.

Here are some revealing items from the book:

• Franklin wrote: “A man compounded of Law and Gospel, is able to cheat the whole country with his Religion, and then destroy them under Colour of Law.”

• When George Washington, as president, was given proclamations to sign, he used to edit out any reference to Jesus Christ. He attended church in Philadelphia, but habitually wandered out before communion. When the priest complained, Washington graciously apologized and then stopped going to church altogether on days in which communion was to be offered.

• Jefferson chopped up a copy of the New Testament and re-pasted it together so that only moral sayings of Jesus remained, removing all reference to things like Christ as son of God, miracles, virgin birth, resurrection, etc., which he considered mere fables. He considered this an improved version of the Bible, appropriate for an age of science and reason.

• Adams expressed, in an 1817 letter to Jefferson, the fear that a Calvinist “Protestant popery” could yet be set up as a theocracy. “What a mercy it is that these people cannot whip, and crop [i.e. cut off ears of dissenters], and pillory and roast, as yet in the U.S.! If they could they would.”

• Only Hamilton was strongly religious as a mature adult, and he used religion to “slime” Jefferson in the election of 1800. Jefferson won, and the loser, Adams, later bitterly regretted allowing Hamilton to drag religion into the campaign.

Allen appends three very useful documents: two letters from Jefferson in which the nation’s third president demolishes the idea that the Bible was always considered part of English common law, and a remonstrance by Madison against a proposed Virginia law to use state money to finance the training of religious teachers.

So much for President Bush’s office of “faith based initiatives”!

The founders agreed with another Enlightenment figure, King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who said his subjects were welcome to “go to Hell in the manner that pleases them best.”

Most were for absolute freedom of religion (not mere toleration), to encompass not only all Protestant denominations, but also Catholics, Jews, Muslims and atheists. They wanted to persecute nobody, but simply wanted religion to be completely separated from politics and the state.

These children of the Enlightenment could have used more enlightening with regard to their attitudes toward African Americans (several owned slaves), Native Americans and women. And, of course, they defended the interests of the ruling class to which they belonged.

Yet if our right-wing adversaries insist on claiming that Washington and Franklin actually wanted the United States to be a Christian theocracy, Allen’s book certainly can help to refute that outrageous lie.

Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers

By Brooke Allen

Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2006

Hardcover, 256 pp., $24.95

EDITORIAL: Health care on the agenda

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 08:57:00 +0000

From door-knockers to phone bankers to families sitting around the kitchen table, pre-election conversation reflects a deep unease with the economy.

With newspaper business sections reporting declining gasoline prices, low official unemployment and a skyrocketing stock market, shouldn’t voters want to “stay the course”? Well, no.

News coverage of soaring stock prices creates the impression that all Americans are receiving fat dividend checks. In fact, reports the Economic Policy Institute, fewer U.S. households owned any stock in 2004 than in 2001, the first decline on record. Only a third of all Americans had any stock valued over $5,000 and, among those who did, their investment was in the form of retirement accounts that are costly to convert into cash.

There are big winners, though. The EPI says that 10 percent of the population controls 80 percent of Wall Street’s wealth, with the top 1 percent calling the shots on a whopping 39.9 percent. Indeed, the rich are getting filthy richer and richer while the rest of us rob Peter to pay Paul.

Gasoline prices are down, but still around $2. An unscientific survey of candidate debates on C-SPAN and reports from street campaigners reveals that it is not changing voters’ discontent.

Low unemployment figures neglect to take into account stagnant wages, says the EPI, nor do they show the impact of massive layoffs in the auto industry, destruction of the Gulf region and acceleration of shipping jobs overseas.

Perhaps more than any other issue, the economic gloom revolves around health care. The Annual Health Confidence Survey released by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, funded by corporations and unions, indicated 6 in 10 Americans rate the health care system fair or poor, the first decline measured by the institute.

Support for a single-payer “Medicare for all” health care system is growing. Around the country, Americans are signing petitions, passing resolutions in union halls and town councils, and sharply demanding candidates take a stand on universal, affordable health care. It is emerging as a cutting edge issue, building a base that can force a Democratic Congress to act. It should top the post-election agenda.

Governor race is one to watch in Bay State

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:16:00 +0000

Massachusetts is not one of battleground states for Congress. None of the 10 representatives is in danger of losing their seat. The last GOP congressman from Massachusetts was Silvio Conte, and he was a liberal Republican who voted against the first Gulf War.

The big electoral news here is the fight for the governor’s office, largely between Democrat Deval Patrick and the Republican Lt. Gov. Kerry Healy. Two other candidates in the race are independent Christy Mihos, who originally was planning on running as a Republican, and Green-Rainbow candidate Grace Ross. All four have participated in the debates.

Healy has been running a negative campaign, attacking Patrick, former assistant attorney general for civil rights during the Clinton administration, for his stand in support of undocumented immigrants and his role as a defense attorney in private practice. Nevertheless, Healy’s negative ads have given her only a small bump in the polls, and she still trails 20 points behind Patrick, who seems poised to be the first African American governor in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts voters will also consider a number of progressive ballot initiatives.

The “Home from Iraq” initiative, on the ballot in 36 legislative districts, demands that the state representative from that district “vote in favor of a resolution calling upon the president and congress to end the war in Iraq immediately and bring all United States military forces home from Iraq.” The 36 state representative districts cover all or part of 139 cities and towns.

Labor organizations and independent political organizations have put an initiative on the ballot that would permit a candidate to be nominated by more than one political party, a process known as “fusion.” Supporters of the initiative are also supporting the campaign of longtime labor activist Rand Wilson, who is running as the Working Families Party candidate for state auditor. If he gets 3 percent of the vote, the Working Families Party will be designated a major party under Massachusetts law.

Another labor-led initiative would permit private home, state-subsidized childcare workers to join a union, which could then negotiate with the appropriate state agencies.

Arizona poised to rout Republicans

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:13:00 +0000

TUCSON, Ariz. — In spite of last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for Arizona to require voters to show identification before casting a ballot, public opinion polls show several incumbent right-wing congressmen in deep trouble.

In Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, in a race for a seat vacated by the retirement of Republican Jim Kolbe, Democrat Gabrielle Giffords is way ahead of Republican Randy Graf. Graf, who is the darling of the anti-immigrant militias, is so far to the right that he has been repudiated by many Republicans, including Kolbe. However, he has been endorsed by Arizona Sen. John McCain, who sometimes tries to pose as a moderate. Giffords, who began her campaign last spring refusing to call for withdrawal from Iraq, has gradually shifted her position and is now calling for ending the occupation by the end of 2007.

In northern Arizona’s 1st CD, which includes most of the Navajo Nation, progressive ACLU attorney Ellen Simon is leading incumbent Rick Renzi in the latest polls. Renzi has been described as one of the most corrupt members of Congress. Simon has the support of labor, the Sierra Club, Emily’s List and Navajo elected officials. She is calling health care a “right” and demanding an immediate end to the war on Iraq. Simon minces no words, describing Renzi as “a tool of big business interests, supporting gas, oil and pharmaceuticals over the average person.”

In Phoenix’s East Valley suburbs another Democrat, Harry Mitchell, is in dead heat with Christian-right Rep. J.D. Hayworth. Hayworth is so right-wing that when he first ran for Congress in 1992, former Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater called for his defeat. Mitchell, who is a former state senator and mayor of Tempe, is not running a particularly progressive campaign, concentrating instead on Hayworth’s vile record in Congress. A stronger stand against the unpopular war in Iraq might be enough to ensure a Mitchell victory, analysts say.

In an unsigned opinion on requiring voters to show ID, the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that had blocked the Arizona law from taking effect this year. At least half of Arizona voters are expected to vote by mail and will not be affected.

Ohio lashes out at Republicans: Minimum wage measure gives boost to turnout

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:25:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — Voters in Ohio, the bellwether state that gave George W. Bush the presidency by a slim margin, are poised to deliver a major rebuke to the Republican Party in the Nov. 7 elections.

Barring major vote fraud or an October surprise engineered by the Bush administration, all polls show Democrats taking key state and federal seats long held by the GOP. The surge of voters to the Democrats, fueled by anger and frustration over the war in Iraq, Republican corruption scandals and continual economic decline for working families, seems to grow every day, and the only question is how far it will go by Election Day.

Democrat Ted Strickland seems certain to win the race for governor, an office Republicans have held for 16 years, and his slate could sweep most, if not all, of the remaining four state government offices on the ballot (attorney general, state auditor, state treasurer and secretary of state). Strickland is at least 20 points ahead of Blackwell in the polls.

Rep. Sherrod Brown has pulled significantly ahead in the race for U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Mike DeWine. Brown, who has a 97 percent lifetime pro-labor voting record, has made Ohio’s economic crisis and DeWine’s slavish pro-Bush voting record the main campaign issues.

Democrats are not expected to lose any congressional seats and could gain as many as five traditionally held by Republicans. (See sidebar on page 17.)

Democrats are also expected to make gains in the state Legislature, where Republicans hold majorities in both houses.

Giving an additional boost to the Democrats is a referendum, placed on the ballot by organized labor, to raise the state minimum wage to $6.85 with annual cost of living increases. Democrats support this measure which polls show passing by a three to one majority. Almost without exception, Republican candidates oppose it.

The AFL-CIO reported a steadily mounting flood of volunteers making phone calls and distributing literature to union members throughout the state. According to Kyle McDermott, Ohio AFL-CIO director of field mobilization, “The week of Oct. 16-21 yielded 1,347 union volunteers!” During that period phone canvassers made 163,610 calls, he said. Canvassers report that those supporting the Democratic candidates are angry and high motivated to vote.

With organized labor and its allies leading the charge against them, the Republicans are moving to protect fewer seats while their candidates resort to ever more desperate tactics.

In an effort to counter reports in The New York Times that the Republican National Committee was diverting funds from DeWine’s campaign to shore up more competitive Senate races, the RNC purchased television ads making bogus claims that Brown’s 1992 congressional campaign committee failed to pay unemployment taxes for 13 years. The claims were refuted by the state of Ohio, and when the RNC failed to provide documentation, many TV stations pulled the ads.

“All the ‘Hail Marys’ and mudslinging thrown by Mike DeWine and the Republican national party is not going to change Ohio voters’ minds,” said Joanna Kuebler, communications director for Brown, who holds an 8-10 percentage point lead in the polls.

With his prospects rapidly fading, Blackwell has turned to even more desperate methods. Blackwell’s aides were caught spreading false rumors that Strickland is gay and in their fourth debate Blackwell claimed Strickland knowingly employed a sex offender in a previous campaign and supported the platform of a group advocating pedophilia.

Although his hometown newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, endorsed him, the paper wrote, “Blackwell decided to counter a 20-point deficit in the polls with an unconscionable mudslide of innuendo against Strickland, leaving us with an urge to go shower.”

Blackwell even had Monty Lobb, the assistant secretary of state, back a pathetic effort to challenge Strickland’s residency in Columbiana County and therefore his right to vote. Strickland immediately defeated this effort, which could still end up in court, by casting an absentee ballot.

Blackwell’s ties to extremists, his mudslinging, the abuse of his office to suppress voter turnout in both 2004 and the current election and his connection to the corrupt state administration of outgoing Gov. Bob Taft, have alienated independents and moderate Republicans alike. Fearing Blackwell could drag their entire ticket down to defeat, the state Republican Party has all but abandoned his floundering campaign and admitted they are focusing on the contests for auditor and secretary of state, who will sit on the five-member Apportionment Board to redraw congressional districts after the 2010 census.

Labor and community groups have voiced concern that Blackwell could suppress votes of those supporting Democrats through use of the state’s new law requiring voters to present valid identification at the polls. Similar laws have been struck down in other states as vague, confusing and discriminatory. The Ohio measure is being challenged in federal court by the Service Employees International Union and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.

County election boards have been flooded with absentee ballots sent in by voters seeking to avoid confusion and delays at the polls. Many board officials have expressed concern that they do not have enough equipment to count these ballots on Election Day.

Ohio GOP House seats in trouble

• Six-term incumbent Steve Chabot is attempting to stave off a strong challenge by City Councilman John Cranley by whipping up anti-immigrant hysteria. Cranley supports finding an avenue for undocumented workers to become citizens. The district in Cincinnati was carried by Bush in 2004 by only 3,000 votes.

• Freshman Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who gained notoriety when she called Rep. John Murtha, a highly decorated ex-Marine, a “coward” on the House floor for his opposition to the Iraq war, is tied in polls with Dr. Victoria Wulsin. Murtha recently campaigned in Cincinnati with Wulsin. The district is heavily Republican and runs through rural areas from Cincinnati east to Portsmouth.

• Three-term incumbent Patrick Tiberi is losing his lead in the polls under sharp attack as a “yes-man” for George Bush by former Congressman Bob Shamansky in the 12th CD, which is northeastern Columbus and two adjacent rural counties.

• Seven-term incumbent Deborah Pryce, with close ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff and disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley, is facing a powerful challenge from Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy, the daughter of a Cleveland pipefitter, who calls for national health care and attacks Pryce’s “rubber stamp” record of backing President Bush. This district is in most of Columbus and some suburban areas.

• Rep. Bob Ney’s seat in the 18th CD is made up of the state’s southeastern counties. Ney pled guilty to bribery charges in the Abramoff scandal and withdrew from the race. His designated successor, state Sen. Joy Padgett, is trailing Dover Law Director Zach Space.

— Rick Nagin

Voter revolt could topple GOP: Labor spearheads fight for southern Senate seats

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:23:00 +0000

Harold Ford, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Tennessee, is a “favorite son” of AFSCME Local 1733, a lawmaker with a 100 percent voting record in support of working families in the Memphis district he has represented for 10 years in Congress.

Members of Local 1733 are going door-to-door to elect Ford the first African American senator from the South since Reconstruction.

The public workers union local won fame in 1968 with its heroic sanitation strike under the slogan, “I Am A Man.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while leading solidarity marches with the workers.

If Ford defeats Republican Bob Corker, and the Democrats also pick up five other Senate seats, it would end Republican control of the U.S. Senate. The odds of the Democrats taking control of both the House and Senate seemed impossibly long only a few weeks ago, but anger against the Bush-Cheney administration and the GOP-controlled Senate and House has surged so strong that it is now within reach. At least 48 House seats held by Republicans are now considered “in play.”

Ford has pulled within a few points of Corker in the most recent poll. Corker is so desperate he is running racist television ads portraying Ford as a “playboy.” It only makes Local 1733 more angry and determined.

“We have an AFSCME ‘Big Vote’ campaign that started last Saturday,” said Dorothy Crook, who has served as executive director of Local 1733 since 1969. “We’re going through the precincts in Memphis with the lowest voter turnout, urging them to vote Nov. 7. We think history is going to be made. Our slogan is ‘Hitch a Ride With History.’”

Ford, she said, “is a young man who understands working people. He comes from humble beginnings. This is a time for change. That call is resonating in the minds of voters. We need new leadership.” Ford voted for the Iraq war resolution but now calls for “new approaches” to bring the troops home “soon and with honor.” Corker is a “stay-the-course” warhawk.

Local 1733 was instrumental in electing Harold Ford Sr., who served in the U.S. Congress for 22 years, Crook told the World in a phone interview. “We’re doing it again for Harold Ford Jr. We are the largest labor union in the effort to get out the vote. We’ve seen our movement grow as our children have become young adults. They have been taught the struggle through the union.”

Crook said Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the third African American elected to the Senate in more than a century, came to Memphis last February to stand beside Ford as he announced his Senate candidacy. “We have the same feeling of excitement and enthusiasm here in Tennessee. We look forward to Harold Ford’s victory. We’re telling people how important it is to vote early, to get out and vote.”

That same mood is spurring the labor movement in Virginia where Democrat James Webb, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, is running hard to oust GOP Sen. George Allen. Webb opposed the Iraq war before it began and has been hammering Allen for his rubber-stamp backing of Bush’s failed war and occupation.

Doris Crouse-Mays, secretary-treasurer of the Virginia AFL-CIO, said the 190,000 union members in Virginia played a huge role in electing Democrat Tim Kaine as governor in 2005. The labor movement fielded 1,700 volunteers who knocked on 40,000 doors and distributed 415,000 get-out-the-vote leaflets to help elect Kaine.

Now, she said, union members are working just as hard to elect Webb. “The loss of jobs and the economy, when people are working longer hours, holding down multiple jobs just to stay alive, its time for a change,” she told the World by phone from her Richmond office.

“The minimum wage hasn’t been raised for 10 years,” she said. “Jim Webb has already said he will support an increase in the federal minimum wage. Sen. Allen voted against a minimum wage increase but he voted to raise his own salary. A rising tide is not floating all boats.”

Joe Szakos, executive director of the Virginia Organizing Project, said his group does not endorse candidates yet is mobilizing for a big vote Nov 7. “We point out the obvious: Senator Allen opposes a minimum wage increase. Jim Webb supports an increase,” he said. Also on the Virginia ballot is a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriages, he said. “I think both are real, competitive races. Even if the vote is close it would be a sign that the ground is shifting in Virginia.”

In Missouri, Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill is running TV ads featuring actor Michael J. Fox, a victim of Parkinson’s disease, urging a vote for her on grounds that she strongly supports embryonic stem cell research. Her opponent, incumbent Republican James Talent is a fanatical, misnamed “right to life” opponent of stem cell research.

Dan Duncan, get-out-the-vote coordinator for the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council, chuckled when asked about recent polls showing razor thin gains for the GOP. “All the polls we’ve seen are still within the margin of error,” he said. “We’re not predicting. We’re just working to get out the vote Nov. 7.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

N.J. Supreme Court marriage ruling a step forward

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:09:00 +0000

Statement by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force recognizes as a step forward today’s unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court decision holding that denying rights and benefits to same-sex couples that are statutorily given to heterosexual couples violates the state’s constitution. Three justices voted to end marriage discrimination immediately; all seven of the justices said that same-sex couples must be given all the rights and protections of marriage. The decision gives the New Jersey Legislature 180 days to either amend the state’s marriage laws to include same-sex couples or to create some other statutory structure that will extend the same rights, benefits and obligations borne by married couples.

Statement by Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

“Today’s unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court ruling recognizes the equal needs of same-sex couples and their families. It is now up to the Legislature to implement the court’s decision by amending the state’s marriage laws to include same-sex couples; nothing less will suffice. We look forward to working with Garden State Equality to make that happen.

“Sadly, we know that politicians on the right and their allies in the anti-gay industry will do everything in their power to exploit this decision for political gain on November 7. Again they will denounce ‘activist judges’ and defame gay people and our families to inflame their base. Again they will use us 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.

“Beyond being utterly predictable, these shameless tactics are wedge politics at their worst and a sure sign of desperation. We are confident the vast majority of voters will see them for what they are—reprehensible—and reject them.

“On behalf of our national community, we express our profound gratitude to Lambda Legal for its outstanding legal advocacy, to the plaintiffs in the case for their courage and determination, and to Steven Goldstein and Garden State Equality for their extraordinary work on behalf of marriage equality.”

Katrina may have been a harbinger

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:24:00 +0000

A year after hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, I thought I’d take a look back (like everyone else) and see how we as a country and as an industry have fared since. In doing so I came across a recent study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research titled “The Women of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Disadvantages and Key Assets for Recovery, Part II. Gender, Race and Class in the Labor Market,” which confirmed some of my apprehensions.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited in the study, the unemployment rate in July 2006 among returned evacuees was 4.2 percent — compared with 23 percent among those who had not returned to their homes. A U.S. Census Bureau survey confirms that the New Orleans metro area has become more affluent and more white/less Black, as poorer people have been unable to return.

These developments have had a disproportionate impact on low-income women, who were a hardworking part of the region before the storms and an integral part of its economy. In New Orleans, 45.5 percent of poor women worked, as did 46.8 percent of poor women in Biloxi-Pascagoula, compared with the national average of 41.4 percent — and despite lower wages.

“Working poor women in this region, despite working harder than those in other parts of the country, were generally even more poorly compensated,” remarked Avis Jones-DeWeever, program director and co-author of the report. But with more women than men leaving the region after the storms, they’ll have to be offered “better opportunities for good jobs, along with child care and schools for the children,” to be enticed into returning, she added.

Not much chance of that, though. Indeed, judging by the recently published results of the AFL-CIO’s annual Ask a Working Woman survey, the impoverished women of New Orleans are hardly alone in their needs.

First on the respondents’ list of concerns is affordable health care, cited by 97 percent of the 26,000 women who took the on-line survey this past summer. Such concern crosses all ages and races and across all levels of education. Right behind it is anxiety over the cost of living, cited by 95 percent.

We’re (I participated in the survey) concerned about retirement and whether we’ll have enough to live on. We’re worried about the cost of higher education, even if we don’t have school-age children, because of the growing importance of continuing our own educations. As for those who do have school-age children, will they even be able to afford a higher education? An article I just read described something called “enrollment management,” which manipulates tuition costs not to help the neediest students but to create a student population that will enhance a college’s prestige and rank. So much for extending a helping hand to those who really need it.

But these issues are not just about women, for they affect all of us. And while it’s appropriate to ensure that the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast is fair and equitable, we need to ensure that it’s not just the Gulf Coast educational system that is fixed, but that all children in our society get proper schooling. The good jobs that must return to New Orleans must be available to anyone in this country who wants to work — jobs that pay fair and equal pay for equal work, jobs that come with health insurance and paid medical leave, jobs that provide dependable pensions for when workers can no longer work.

These are the things that made this country great and still entice others to come here.

Debbie Thomas is human rights director for The Newspaper Guild-CWA (www.newsguild.org). This article originally appeared in The Guild Reporter.

EDITORIAL: White-collar crime gets judicial boost

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:01:00 +0000

They are smiling in Hell these days. White-collar criminals just got another free ride from the Reagan/Bush U.S. judicial system. “Kenny Boy” Lay, the recently deceased close friend and supporter of President George W. Bush, has been exonerated by U.S. District Judge Sim Lake. The millions of Californians and Texans who realized during the Enron scandal that they had been robbed are going to find it even harder to collect any damages.

White-collar crime, no matter how large or how blatant the robbery, is barely punished in America. Even before his heart attack, almost no one ever expected the Enron CEO to actually serve time in jail. Lower-level Enron executives still have sentencing pending, but they have already enjoyed America’s “swift” justice in comfort for years. They can imagine Kenny Boy (and Bush) smiling up at them.

While those who rob us at the highest levels of government and in the plush offices of its corporate partners receive little or no punishment, everyday Americans have to worry about their amazing loss of civil liberties during these Bush years. Habeas corpus, the cornerstone of civil liberties for centuries, is just about as dead in America as Kenneth Lay. Torture has found legal justification, though not for white-collar crimes.

Government spying against ordinary Americans has just received a big green light, but corporate secrets and Dick Cheney’s backroom energy deals are still sacrosanct.

Enron stockholders and former employees can take no comfort from the judge who overturned Lay’s conviction. Texans who were harmed by Lay’s support of former Congressman Tom DeLay’s redistricting scheme will take no comfort. The millions of Americans who were bilked through electricity overcharges will take no comfort. George W. Bush and his corporate cronies will take comfort, and their pals are smiling in Hell these days.

Labor: Make police accountable for FTAA violence

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 05:43:00 +0000

$8 million from homeland security funds spent to quell 2003 protest

MIAMI (PAI) — Saying three years is too long to wait, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Florida union leaders are demanding the state’s GOP Attorney General Charlie Crist move against Miami’s police chief and other officers responsible for the violence during the demonstrations against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in November 2003.

In a Sept. 29 letter from Sweeney to Crist — the GOP gubernatorial nominee this fall — and in an Oct. 12 press conference, the union leaders cited independent reports that showed the police were responsible for 300 injuries and 250 arrests during peaceful protests.

Video of the protests showed police beating unarmed demonstrators, shooting — and almost killing — a photographer with rubber bullets, and indiscriminately firing tear gas at students, workers and senior citizens.

“Three years later, no one’s been held accountable, and chief [John] Timoney was the prime mover of this,” South Florida AFL-CIO President Fred Frost said in a telephone interview after the press conference, held in front of police headquarters.

The South Florida federation delayed its demand to Crist while two independent panels probing the police action against the protesters tried, but failed, to get key documents about training and funding. The $8 million spent to train law enforcement personnel against the FTAA protesters came from federal funds earmarked for homeland security.

Immediately afterwards, Sweeney sought probes by the U.S. Justice Department and Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the president’s brother. He never got any response.

“Rights of free speech, peaceful assembly and association, to deliver our message of failed trade policies in a safe environment, were systematically thwarted by public authorities,” Sweeney wrote Crist. “I am asking you ... to mount a criminal investigation and bring criminal charges as warranted” against the chief and others.

“As attorney general, he [Crist] says he’s focused on our safety and security every day,” Frost told PAI. “I got really mad, because he’s done nothing. The first shot in the war on the middle class was in Miami on Nov. 20, 2003.”

Court blocks Arizona voter ID

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 04:57:00 +0000

Commentary

TUCSON, Ariz. — In a victory for democratic elections, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted an injunction that bars enforcement of Arizona’s oppressive voter identification requirements during the Nov. 7 election.

The Arizona law, passed by voters as Proposition 200 in 2004, requires persons to submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote and, once registered, to present identification when casting their ballots.

Masquerading as a law to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting and receiving social services, Prop. 200 was a frontal attack on the ability of many working people to participate in elections. About half of all voter registrations in Arizona have been tossed out by election officials since Prop. 200 was passed.

The most anti-democratic feature of the law is the requirement that voters submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote. That means that a copy of a birth certificate, naturalization papers or passport must be submitted.

Most working-class voters don’t have passports or naturalization papers. Many Americans, especially older, rural people who were not born in hospitals, don’t have birth certificates.

In additon, acquiring a copy of one’s birth certificate can cost $15 or more. Having such a requirement, critics say, amounts to imposing a new poll tax, which courts have ruled to be unconstitutional.

The big-business-owned media completely ignored this feature, alleging only that a citizen need to “show” and not “submit” proof of citizenship when registering.

The requirement to submit such proof has made it nearly impossible to register voters while campaigning door-to-door or while standing on a street corner. The only reason that about half of recently submitted registrations were accepted is that Attorney General Terry Goddard ruled that having an Arizona driver’s license number qualifies as proof of citizenship — if it was issued after 1996. Licenses since that time indicate whether the driver is a U.S. citizen.

At the same time, many older drivers and non-drivers have been prevented from registering to vote.

The corporate media misrepresents the law by stressing the law’s requirement for having an ID at the polling place and underplaying the registration feature of the law. Most people, especially drivers, carry some form of ID at all times.

What the media almost completely ignores is the racist edge to this law, which was intended to racially profile and intimidate Mexican American voters. For example, when I went to vote in last year’s municipal election, I was not asked to produce identification. When I inquired about this with others, all my Mexican American friends said they were asked for an ID.

Arizona has a long history of Mexican American voters being intimidated and challenged at the polls.

The court injunction is to remain in effect pending the outcome of a court challenge to the law. Unfortunately, the injunction came down just three days before the close of registration for this year’s election.

Court challenges to the law have been filed by many groups, including the Mexican-American Legal and Educational Fund, the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the League of Women Voters, the Navajo Nation, the Arizona Civil Liberties Union and the Arizona Advocacy Network.

pwwinaz@webtv.net

Illinois town resists anti-immigrant law

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 04:51:00 +0000

CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. — When nearly 3,000 demonstrators showed up outside a village board meeting here on Oct. 3, mostly to oppose the “Illegal Alien Immigration Relief Act,” town leaders tabled the measure in order to facilitate the discussion in a larger location for public hearings.

Two weeks later, on Oct. 17, after heated debate, the Carpentersville Village Board voted 4-3 to table the measure indefinitely. The board will delay any further vote until litigation with similar ordinances is resolved in towns like Hazelton, Pa., Riverside Township, N.J. and Valley Park, Mo.

The meeting deliberated in front of a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people. Outside, hundreds more protested the proposed law using bullhorns and waving signs.

Carpentersville trustees Paul Humpfer and Judy Sigwalt proposed the divisive local ordinance last month. It made the working-class town, less than 40 miles northwest of Chicago, the first municipality in Illinois to consider making English its official language.

The ordinance would have prohibited “aiding and abetting illegal aliens” and would fine landlords who rent to or conduct business with undocumented immigrants. The town of 37,000 is 40 percent Latino and the ordinance is widely seen as anti-Latino.

Humpfer says he drafted the ordinance after learning the village spent $372,000 last year on ambulance fees for residents who he claims were “illegal.”

Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a village trustee who grew up in Carpentersville, called the measure racist. She said Latinos are being targeted, especially by outside forces like the anti-immigrant Minutemen group. Ramirez-Sliwinski is the only Latina on the seven-member village board.

“They are not doing this for the community, they are doing this to the community,” she said in a telephone interview. “Immigrants pay taxes, they own homes, they pay their bills, own businesses and shop here.”

She said she hoped the ordinance would be defeated. “I would like to see this as a victory for the whole country,” she said.

Village President Bill Sarto called the measure a “political stunt,” telling a local paper, “This is a hot-button issue that a couple of trustees stirred up.”

He said he was concerned about Carpentersville’s ability to obtain grants, maintain a good bond rating and provide the best health insurance benefit rates for employees, all of which could be compromised by the ordinance. The bill’s sponsors are “jeopardizing the financial situation of the village,” he said.

Latino business owners, community leaders including Ramirez-Sliwinski, teachers and ministers came together and formed the Carpentersville Community Alliance in opposition to the ordinance. CCA met with Sarto to give him their support. Although the CCA is mainly composed of Latinos, members said they want to create a voice for the community at large.

In a phone interview, Sarto said the two trustees who pushed the ordinance “are making a big mistake” that will be “detrimental to the entire community.” He said the ordinance encourages racial profiling in a community where 60-70 percent of the Latino residents are legal citizens. “It’s a violation of their civil rights,” he said. “This ordinance puts everyone who is Hispanic in jeopardy.”

Sarto said a number of white business owners support his position and are ready to help defeat the ordinance. The measure does not have the majority of votes on the board, he said.

The Carpentersville bill is among a recent spate of small town anti-immigrant ordinances. In most cases English-only proposals are coupled with measures to block immigrants from access to housing, jobs and education.

Many are in areas with tight election races, where right-wing Republicans hope to benefit from an immigrant-bashing atmosphere.

Hazleton, Pa., made national news when it passed a similar ordinance, which has been put on hold pending litigation. Out of 50 such local ordinances, passed, rejected or under consideration, 28 are in Pennsylvania, a congressional battleground state, where a leading Republican incumbent, Rick Santorum, may lose his Senate seat.

Patricia Garcia, a Mexican-born U.S. citizen, mother of four, is co-owner of a store on Carpentersville’s main business strip. She has been in business for about 16 years selling clothing, food, snacks and other items.

“We are all workers here. We are here to stay and we are going to struggle,” she said in Spanish. “This ordinance affects everybody, not just immigrants, but our children especially. The children are the future of tomorrow and their education is very important.”

Garcia’s daughter Yesnia, 18, called the ordinance “ignorance.”

“If they kick us out who is going to consume?” she asked.

The immigrant rights battles are helping to educate a new generation of voter activists.

Asked if she has registered and plans to vote in the November election, Yesnia replied, “Hell yeah, I’m going to vote. I told my mom, ‘My vote is my voice.’”

plozano@pww.org

Its about turnout, turnout, turnout

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 04:37:00 +0000

Door-knockers urge big drive to get out the vote

PITTSBURGH — It’s about “turnout, turnout, turnout,” says gravelly voiced Allegheny County Labor Council President Jack Shea, speaking from a cell phone on his way to another worksite to hand out election leaflets and talk with workers at shift change. It is not election rhetoric.

Hundreds of union members have been hitting the streets each week in seven southwest Pennsylvania counties, knocking on doors, talking worker-to-worker about Social Security, health care and jobs. Their mission is to get union members and their families to the polls on Nov. 7. Coupled with the phone banks that dot this city and region, including at the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, it is a historic midterm election campaign to oust the most right-wing Congress since just before the Civil War.

The unions’ mobilization in southwest Pennsylvania is not unique. Similar efforts are taking place elsewhere, and the results are reflected in nationwide polling. A memo released by Democracy Corps, founded by Democratic Party strategists James Carville, Robert Shrum and pollster Stanley Greenberg, called the Republican re-election situation a “meltdown.”

Despite the bad news coming out of Iraq and reports of Republicans embroiled in financial and sex scandals in Washington, Democratic candidates stuck at 49 percent for months. Then, beginning in the last week of September, that number leaped to 53 percent.

“The shift is evident on every indicator — party, Bush, war, intensity and morale,” the memo said.

“We highlight these findings because Democrats and progressives need to think radically differently about the 2006 battle,” the memo continued. “In 1994 [the year the Republicans took over the House], the race shifted dramatically at the end, but Democrats have a chance to consolidate gains large enough to affect congressional control over this decade. That means allocating resources and finding new resources to lock in the gains, as the Republicans move their much larger resources up to the new barricades.”

In fact, Democracy Corps polled 1,200 voters in 49 supposedly solid Republican House districts and found Democrats ahead by 4 percentage points overall. The districts were divided into three tiers, based on voting patterns, with the top tier the most likely to swing. The results were startling. Even in the bottom tier, Republican voters were sliding into the Democratic column by 2 points.

Indiana is a case in point. Steelworkers’ union leader Paul Kaczocha is wearing out shoes from knocking on doors and has a crick in his fingers from phone banking. He reports that of the state’s nine House districts, the two Democratic seats are safe, but three Republican seats are in play. The Republican National Congressional Campaign (RNCC) has pulled its money out of two of those and shifted resources to the district in the South Bend area. The Democrats are pumping money into the state. With a lot of work still to be done, Kaczocha sees a chance, since 1995, for the Democrats to take a majority of the Indiana delegation.

Ohio’s incumbent GOP Sen. Michael DeWine might be rich, but the RNCC has pulled its funding out of his re-election campaign, since it is in so much trouble. DeWine is not alone.

Steelworkers’ leader Bruce Bostick, another foot soldier, is feeling “upbeat” in a tough state. “There is shifting going on. Even the “values voters” (abortion, etc.) seem confused, frustrated, angry. Many, especially in the Columbus area, have switched.”

House races in the Cincinnati area are now in play, Bostick said. And in the Appalachian part of the state, disgraced Republican Bob Ney’s district, the contest is neck and neck. “If we get more and more union members out to campaign, we can turn this thing around,” he said.

Autoworkers around the country will have Election Day off with pay, in accordance with their contract. In Missouri, leaders of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists say UAW members will be a big help on Nov. 7. With a minimum wage referendum on the ballot and a recent court ruling that repealed the requirement that voters show a photo ID, they are cautiously optimistic that Claire McCaskill, the Democratic senatorial candidate, will dump Republican incumbent Jim Talent.

Even the Kentucky’s 3rd Congressional District is in the mix, although rated in the bottom tier of possibilities by Democracy Corps. It is a formerly “safe” Republican area that is leaning by 2 percentage points toward the Democratic candidate.

Despite the shifts and 49 House seats now up for grabs, few are taking the election results as a given.

Joelle Fishman, chair of the Communist Party USA’s Political Action Commission, warns, “The right-wing Republican 72-hour program goes into effect three days before election. They’ll use smear attacks and big money to pull out the conservative base and suppress the general vote.

“This juggernaut can be stopped,” Fishman said. “Voters are fed up and angry. Everything is about turning out the vote that will change the leadership of Congress.”

South Dakota ban: taking the long view

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 08:33:00 +0000

On March 6, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds signed a law banning nearly all abortions in the state—the most restrictive state measure enacted since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide. The ban, which was scheduled to go into effect on July 1, included no provision for rape or incest, or to protect the health of the pregnant woman, and only an unusually narrow exception to “prevent the death” of the woman.

Women’s rights supporters throughout South Dakota banded together and collected tens of thousands of signatures, enough to temporarily halt implementation of the legislation, and to refer the law to the voters on Nov. 7.

Now we’re organizing to reverse the law at the ballot box, and polling shows that we’re in a position to win the vote. But here’s the catch: voters believe the ban “goes too far” because there is no rape or incest exception. The same polls show that the ban would be approved if it had those exceptions, even without a health exception and without regard for other circumstances of women’s lives.

But this campaign can’t be about rape and incest, even though those are winning arguments in the short term. Granted, if your message-crafting is based primarily on focus groups and polling, that is no doubt the strongest argument. But it is a shortsighted (and expensive) one because even if the ban is defeated on those narrow grounds, the legislature will simply pass another ban next year which has ONLY those two exceptions. And we would have the expense (both financial and human capital) of fighting another referendum next year without the benefit of those arguments.

In our South Dakota organizing, we are making a strong argument for protecting our health and respecting women’s need to plan their families, while also appealing to those voters for whom the idea of “government intrusion” into personal decisions is anathema. It’s not too late for you to help.

Kim Gandy is president of the National Organization for Women. This article is reprinted from the online National NOW Times. For information or to help with this campaign, see .

Shifting voter mood sharpens battle for Congress

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 08:27:00 +0000

Karl Rove’s fear factor is falling flat. Yes, the threat of terrorism is a scare, but a lot of folks are getting even more scared by the combination of Bush in the White House and a Republican-controlled Congress. “Too dangerous!” is a familiar refrain from voters on the campaign trail.

The millions of dollars Republicans have been spending since summer on “Swift Boat” television ads to smear their opponents as “cut and run” cowards in Iraq are overpowered by the stunning report from U.S. intelligence agencies confirming that the war in Iraq has made our country less safe.

The cumulative effect of constant corruption scandals, topped off with the explosive revelations that Republican House leaders covered up Rep. Mark Foley’s advances on teenage pages for years, has catapulted many more races into play, and shaken the Republican’s religious right base.

Voters in swing districts are starting to reconsider their choices. One couple in Connecticut’s hotly contested 5th Congressional District finds that they will be voting the same way for the first time in 50 years of marriage. The Republican husband is changing his vote. He says Republican control in all branches of government has been “a recipe for disaster.”

His thoughts are echoed in swing districts across the country. These concerns about a constitutional crisis come on top of the economic realities of decreasing good jobs, increasing poverty and skyrocketing numbers who cannot afford health care.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll found a 23 percent lead for Democrats in the upcoming elections, the largest since 1978. Republicans even lost their edge on handling terrorism, with Democrats having a 5 point lead on that issue.

In a poll released Oct. 10 by the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut, 60 percent said the country is on the wrong track, and majorities as high as 82 percent opposed torture, military tribunals and secret search of homes, library records and mail.

“People across the political spectrum believe that the Bush administration has gone much too far in terms of infringing on civil liberties in the interests of fighting the war on terror,” said executive director Roger Vann.

Predictions that the Democrats will win more than the 15 seats needed in the House and even the six seats needed in the Senate for majority control of Congress reflect a deepening shift in voter confidence.

The coming days will be an intense battle for the future of our country. Republican strategists and the Bush administration will use personal attacks, wedge issues and war threats in a desperate attempt to get off of the defensive and maintain control of Congress. The ability of union, civil rights, peace, women and youth organizations to translate the shift in public opinion into a winning vote to change Congress will be tested.

In the Senate battleground states of Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri, the huge Republican war chest will be spent on TV ads. The religious right has enlisted 5,000 “patriot pastors” to distribute voter guides through their congregations.

However, a recent survey among churchgoers revealed that 85 percent thought poverty and affordable health care were more important than abortion and same-sex marriage, including a remarkable 67 percent of the most traditional evangelicals. Many denominations are rallying behind ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, and are leaning Democrat this year.

Republicans will also continue to use anti-immigrant hysteria as a wedge issue, and attempt to tie immigrants to the war on terror through local anti-immigrant ordinances and deportation roundups in key election districts. However, the majority of the public does not favor this vicious and racist enforcement-only approach, and it will cut into the Latino vote Republicans have been so carefully courting.

The Bush administration will attempt to influence public opinion with escalating threats against Iran and North Korea. A full mobilization to bring the peace majority to the polls can change Congress and lay the foundation for winning a change in U.S. foreign policy.

The Bush administration is also attempting to lower union voter turnout. The Kentucky River ruling that eliminates 8 million workers from union representation is meant to discourage workers. Across the country, union members are coming out in force to participate with the historic Labor 2006 program, to discuss the issues with co-workers and deliver an overwhelming vote to defeat the Republican majority in Congress.

Republicans will also continue their infamous vote suppression tactics of harassment, misinformation, voting machines with no paper trail, and other measures to limit the number of votes in heavily Democratic districts, targeting African American voters in the first place. Initiatives like the NAACP’s “arrive with five” campaign aim to bring out the largest vote ever in response. Thousands of volunteers are needed to participate in election protection activities on Election Day, to monitor voting machines and polling places and secure the vote.

We face the greatest challenge of our times in this election. Together, with determination and participation, the will of the majority can be turned into a resounding election victory on Tuesday, Nov. 7.

Joelle Fishman (joelle.fishman@pobox.com) chairs the Communist Party USA Political Action Commission and is also chair of the Connecticut Communist Party.

THIS WEEK IN LABOR

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:37:00 +0000

RNs threaten strike for union rights

Thirty thousand members of the California Nurses Association have signed strike pledges putting employers in all CNA-represented facilities on notice that RN’s will strike any employer who seeks to exploit a recent ruling by the NLRB that many nurses are “supervisors” and thus ineligible for labor law protection. The Board’s decision “provides employers a road map to exclude hundreds of thousands of RNs from their rights,” said CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “It forces RNs to choose between protecting their patients and keeping their job.”

CNA held protests on Oct. 5 in Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Ky., and Bangor, Maine.

Dues up – sign of determination

In spite of a non-stop series of attacks to workers’ rights from the Bush administration’s Department of Labor and NLRB, the nation’s labor movement is showing no inclination to back down. On the contrary, in a development that has received little attention, unions are systematically moving more resources into organizing than ever.

Unions are planning to put an additional $150 million a year into staffing, research and support for workers’ efforts to organize, according to Lane Windham, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO.

At this summer and fall’s regular union conventions delegates have voted to dig deep into their pockets to fund growth efforts. The UAW voted to put $60 million more into organizing, and CWA members voted for industry specific dues increases to the tune of $25 million. The AFT had their largest dues increase ever for organizing, and AFSCME, IBEW and the Ironworkers all voted to put more resources toward organizing. In fact, AFSCME set a goal of organizing 70,000 new members a year.

The grousing and grumbling that often accompanies dues increase proposals were noticeably absent. When workers feel their unions are out there fighting for them, they’re happy to support them, one rank and file activist noted.

$1 billion in red tape

AFL-CIO staff spent nearly 100 hours shifting technical data reporting phone connection charges and other employee travel expenses from one set of forms to another federation President John Sweeney reported. The extra work was required to satisfy the Department of Labor’s insistence that otherwise the federation would be “misrepresenting” its expenses, he explained.

Sweeney was describing a year-long audit of union spending by the DOL. The results uncovered “no questions whatsoever concerning the federation’s expenditure of funds on behalf of workers,” Sweeney said, but reported that the cost of compliance by all labor groups would total up to $1 billion.

It was the first audit carried out using the new LM2 union spending forms that Bush’s Labor Department imposed on all union bodies last year. The forms require disclosure of all spending over $5,000 whether on payroll or paper clips, as well as specific time spent on each program by every staff member.

Ship this, FedEx

After President Bush used a Fed Ex facility as the backdrop for a speech on the economy, Teamsters President James Hoffa slammed the corporation for its “cutthroat” business model.

FedEx exploits thousands of its drivers through an “independent contractor” model which shifts costs for trucks, uniforms and even digital scanners on to the drivers, said Hoffa. “This model allows FedEx to avoid paying unemployment insurance premiums and worker compensation contributions while dodging labor laws” like the Family Medical Leave Act and equal employment opportunity regulations, he continued.

FedEx CEO Fred Smith will collect over $10 million in compensation and dividend income this year, says a Teamster statement.

Sleaze disease

In July, this column reported on a demonstration by leaders of the labor movement in South Carolina protesting the dropping of charges against a member of the state’s Legislature. Republican Rep. Wallace Scarborough had been arrested and charged with assault with intent to kill after shooting at a pair of IBEW linemen, employees of South Carolina Electric & Gas, who were in the yard of Scarborough’s parents’ home checking power lines after a storm.

A South Carolina reader sent an update to This Week in Labor from the Charleston City Paper website. The Paper’s columnist Will Moredock speculates that Scarborough shot at the lineman because he thought they were investigators who had caught him “sharing the house” that night with his clandestine paramour and fellow Republican legislator Rep. Catherine Ceips. Affadavits filed by Scarborough’s wife in divorce proceedings show he was having a long-term affair with Ceips, who was also married.

Both Scarborough, who has two young sons, and Ceips are big promoters in the Legislature of the “defense of marriage” amendment to South Carolina’s constitution. The amendment would ban gay marriage in an effort to keep the institution of marriage sacred.

This Week in Labor is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org). Press Associates, Inc. contributed.

Tainted spinach: experts say govt regulation needed

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:18:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The recent outbreak of E. coli in spinach from California exposed a weakness in the nation’s food chain: A system that quickly delivers meat, fruits and vegetables to consumers just as easily can spread potentially deadly bacteria.

Like most food, spinach travels from the field to a central facility where it mixes with spinach from other fields. If any is tainted, the threat to people is amplified as leaves are washed, dried, bagged and shipped throughout the country.

Within days of the first reported E. coli-related case on Aug. 30, illness from the tainted California spinach had spread to two dozen states. Nearly 200 people were sickened — one-third of them in the first 72 hours. Two elderly women and a 2-year-old boy died.

“When you open a bag of spinach, do you wonder how many different plants are in there, and how many different fields it came from?” said Dr. Robert Tauxe, chief of foodborne diseases at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“If something went wrong on any one of those fields ... one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel,” Tauxe said.

It was the 20th time lettuce or spinach has been blamed for an outbreak of illness since 1995.

On Oct. 8, green leaf lettuce from the same growing area, California’s Salinas Valley, was recalled in more than half a dozen states after Nunes Co. Inc. discovered possible E. coli contamination of irrigation water. The bacteria hasn’t been found in the company’s Foxy brand lettuce. No illnesses have been reported.

Food safety advocates are calling for stringent regulations, and they say a single agency should be in charge of making sure all food is safe.

“If you raise spinach in the Salinas Valley and it’s in 40 states in a few days, you can’t have a system that says we won’t do anything until somebody gets sick,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy for Consumer Federation and a former USDA official.

“Because look how many people get sick before you can even know it,” Foreman said.

The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly told the entire industry to get the problem under control, but FDA does not have inspection or safety programs for produce like the Agriculture Department has for meat and poultry.

While the food system is vastly centralized, “what we don’t have is a centralized agency that’s really in charge of ensuring that the products are safe,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Goodyear workers strike to stop plant closings

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 05:46:00 +0000

Refusing further concessions, this is where rubber workers meet the road

PITTSBURGH — “How would you feel if you worked a lifetime to build a great company, made sacrifices to save the company and now are being told that the company, after paying millions in bonuses to top management and investing in low-wage countries, needs to close more American plants? Goodyear workers and retirees say ‘Enough’s enough!” This is the text of a United Steelworkers union (USW) radio ad that hit the airwaves as 14,000 rubber workers at 12 U.S. Goodyear Rubber and Tire plants hit the picket lines, Oct. 5.

Analysts say the strike could cost Goodyear $2 million a day.

The union is reaching out to entire communities to halt the multinational corporation’s demands to close two U.S. plants and slash pension and health care benefits.

“There’s no sense continuing these talks if Goodyear is intent on gutting our contract and closing our plants,” said Ron Hoover, president of the USW Rubber and Plastics Conference. “The company left us no option. It’s a sad situation and a poor reflection on this company that we are forced to take this action after all we have done for them. We cannot allow additional plant closures after the sacrifices we made three years ago to help this company survive.”

Goodyear did more than survive. It has thrived since the last contract was negotiated in 2003. That agreement allowed the closure of the Huntsville, Ala., facility as well as wage, pension and health care cuts.

Last year, the Akron-based corporation did $19.7 billion in sales, increasing profits by 7 percent to $337 million, and paid its CEO Robert Keegan a $2.6 million bonus. For the second quarter of this year, Goodyear’s workers generated a record-setting $5.1 billion in sales, increasing profits per tire by 7 percent, according to the corporation’s web site.

Goodyear has more than 100 plants in 29 countries. So far this year Goodyear has closed one plant in the United Kingdom and announced the closing of another in New Zealand.

Goodyear ranks 112 on the Fortune 500. It is the largest tire and rubber corporation in North America, with a 50 percent market share, and is in second place in Europe.

“All this is in the context of 2003 negotiations,” said USW spokesman Wayne Renick. “We took cuts and concessions and it’s turned around. Other stakeholders have been rewarded while we’re seeing cuts. In addition to saving two plants, the union is fighting to hold the line on health care coverage, including prescription drugs.”

The strike and Goodyear’s demand to close plants is devastating to communities. The corporation wants to close the 1,300-worker plant in Gadsden, Ala., and the 1,100-worker plant in Tyler, Texas.

According to Gadsden Finance Director Lisa Rosser, Goodyear’s payroll in that city is $80 million annually and accounts for $1.6 million of the $12.2 million the city receives in occupational license fees. Goodyear pays no real estate or sales taxes to the city. “It’s a major deal,” said Gadsden Mayor Sherman Guyton.

Goodyear workers are a mainstay at the 278 Restaurant where Lisa Williams is dining-room manager. Williams told the Gadsden Times that her business dropped on the first day of the strike. “I think the whole Gadsden area will feel the crunch. Everybody will start to watch their purse strings,” she said.

Support for rubber workers is reaching across borders. The International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers union (ICEM), representing 20 million workers in 123 countries, immediately issued a call for its affiliated trade unions to send messages of support to the USW, ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs said. “We also call on trade unions in the rubber industry, particularly at Goodyear plants in Central and South America, to monitor their inventories and production to ensure that they are not undermining the USW’s strike action.”

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Roberta Wood contributed to this story.