People Before Profit blog

Dems could sweep congressional races

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:19:00 +0000

A growing tide of support for Barack Obama, including endorsements by several prominent Republicans, is helping propel a potential “sweep” for Democrats in the House and Senate. Most notable was this month’s endorsement by Colin Powell, who cited “the vitriol and bigotry and prejudice” of the McCain-Palin campaign.

Activists are working for a landslide that would produce a bigger majority for Democrats in the House and reach the 60-vote threshold needed to end Republican filibusters in the Senate. These results, along with a presidential win, are key in order to shape policy post-election.

Now, in addition to the expected shift of open congressional seats, additional long-time Republican incumbents are facing defeat.

Alaska’s senate race has surged to the top of possible Democratic upsets with the conviction of incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Stevens on seven felony charges Oct. 28. Despite Stevens’ appeal to Alaskans to stand with him, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich looks poised to take the seat from the 84-year-old sitting senator.

In Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District Republican incumbent Michelle Bachmann set off a firestorm when she called for investigations of “anti-American” members of Congress. Within days, Bachmann’s Democratic opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg was catapulted to frontrunner status.

Distancing himself from Bachmann’s McCarthyite attack, Republican former Gov. Arne Carlson endorsed Obama, to the dismay of another embattled Republican incumbent in the state, Sen. Norm Coleman. He is losing ground to his Democratic challenger Al Franken, now running four points ahead.

Around the country, a quarter million union volunteers have been knocking on the doors of fellow union members since summer to guarantee the “60 pro-worker super-majority” in the Senate needed for battles in the next Congress to pass legislation for union rights, creation of green infrastructure jobs and universal health care.

In a desperate attempt to regain momentum and galvanize his base this week, John McCain began urging voters to choose him as a means of blocking action by a Democratic-led Congress.

Speaking in Cleveland Oct. 27, McCain called Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a “dangerous threesome,” claiming that they would “take your hard-earned money.”

But many voters are now aware that the Bush administration has taken over a trillion dollars of their money and spent it on the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy instead of needed health care, education and job creation programs. The biggest issue for voters is the economic crisis, for which they hold the Bush administration responsible.

At the same time, GOP surrogates are taking to the airwaves arguing that voting for incumbent Republicans would be good “checks and balances” to an Obama administration. However, others note that the concept of checks and balances actually refers to the differing roles of the three branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial (regardless of political party) — a concept violated by the Bush administration.

Republican Senate incumbents who may face defeat on Nov. 4 are John Sununu, being challenged by Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire; Gordon Smith, who is being challenged by Jeff Merkley in Oregon; Elizabeth Dole, being challenged by Kay Hagan in North Carolina; and Thad Cochran, being challenged by Erik Fleming in Mississippi.

The race is also tightening for Saxby Chambliss, facing a strong challenge by Jim Martin in Georgia, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a close race with Bruce Lunsford in Kentucky.

Republican-held seats of retiring senators in Colorado, Virginia and New Mexico are also expected to flip to Democrats.

A survey issued by Democracy Corps on Oct. 27 found that Democratic candidates for House and Senate are running with a strong lead in the 20 most vulnerable Republican-held seats, with a 50 to 44 advantage, and remain close in 33 additional districts.

By a 52-point majority, voters in these Republican districts say that “it is more urgent to change the direction of the country by voting to change who is president and ‘who represents us in Congress’ than it is to support a member of Congress who has done a good job.”

Two-thirds of the 29 open Republican seats in the House are considered vulnerable. Democrats have a strong lead in six of those seats, in Arizona, Illinois, New York, Ohio and Virginia. Another 13 districts are considered toss-ups, in Alabama, California, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Ohio and Wyoming.

Among the endangered House Republicans is Rep. Chris Shays (Conn.-4), the last standing Republican in the House of Representatives from New England. Democratic challenger Jim Himes, who was behind by 10 points several weeks ago, is now in a dead heat to win the seat. Shays has supported the Iraq war from the start as well as tax breaks for the super-rich. The district includes some of the wealthiest and poorest cities in the nation. Also on the newly endangered list is anti-immigrant Republican Brian Bilbray (Calif.-50).

Youth rock the vote -- early

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:47:00 +0000

CHICAGO – In an effort to promote participation in the presidential elections, over 100 youth and students came together here Oct. 28 during a Southwest side early voting rally in order to outline an agenda based on issues important to young people.

Manuel Beltran, 20, is the local coordinator with the Youth Voter Collective (YVC) and has helped to register nearly 1,000 young people throughout Chicago. The YVC teamed up with local youth and community leaders in order to turn out the youth vote.

“People say young people don’t care about voting, but that’s not true,” said Beltran. The rally consisted of food, music, break-dancing and speakers and was organized to celebrate youth voting for the first time, said Beltran.

Beltran said immigration reform is an important issue for him. “Whole families are suffering because of the broken system and that’s why it’s important to vote for change,” he said. “It’s also really hard to get a full-time job with benefits right now.”

Beltran said he personally voted for Obama because, “his views are the closest to what I believe.” He hopes Obama wins. “But there will be a lot of work to be done after the election,” noted Beltran.

The YVC is part of a national non-partisan organization of youth activists that has been mobilizing young voters to get involved and promote unity for a post elections youth agenda. Focused on registering and reaching out to historically underrepresented youth in working class neighborhoods and school campuses, the group is made up of young women, people of color and queer youth in all levels of leadership in order to engage the broadest possible participation.

Docia Buffington, 24, is the national organizer with the YVC. She and Beltran mobilized 100 students in Chicago to canvass in festive costumes on the eve of Halloween to remind young people to get out and vote. The non-partisan action is called “Trick or Vote” and is part of a nationwide effort, said Buffington.

“There is a lot at stake for young people in this election, such as young workers’ rights and the fact that wages continue to decrease,” said Buffington. “Young people need security, quality education and college accessibility. We need to see change on all of these issues,” she said. “It’s important that youth vote for the ‘change candidate’ and join the movement growing across the country so that the next president understands what we want that includes more jobs with living wages.”

Buffington added that the current economic crisis has affected youth like everyone else. “Why do we have to pay the consequences of an insecure future created by the greedy mistakes on Wall Street?”

Aquil Charlton, 28, is the executive director of the Crib Collective, a local youth leadership organization that promotes social entrepreneurship. He came to early vote.

“This is more than just a basic obligation,” said Charlton. “I voted to make a contribution in one of the most active and exciting elections ever.” He hopes young people are taken more seriously. He voted for Obama who he says is the strongest candidate.

Criminalization of youth, the war on drugs, education funding, health care coverage and ending the billions spent on the Iraq war are issues important to Charlton. Young people need to stay involved post elections by advocating and lobbying for a youth agenda, he said.

Although Perla Cervantes, 16, is not old enough to vote she said if she could she would vote for Obama, as she did in mock elections at her high school. Violence prevention is a major concern in her neighborhood, she said. “Obama is smart and knowledgeable about what will benefit the majority of working families and our communities and not only the rich that McCain talks about,” she said. “Obama will provide real change including equal opportunities, better resources and education which will become a priority.”

David Cruz, 33, a real estate agent agrees with Cervantes. “I like Obama’s politics and he’s genuine. He’s exactly the change we need,” said Cruz. “I really believe what he says and this is the first time I ever felt that way about a presidential candidate.”

plozano @ pww.org

Merrilee Milstein Day puts working families needs first

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:53:00 +0000

New Hampshire attracted a lot of excitement in 2004 as the only state in the country to flip from red to blue in the presidential elections. There was jubilation that night as Kerry defeated Bush by just over 9,000 votes, before the national results were counted.

What happened in New Hampshire? A big part was labor’s role.

“An anti-union right wing has been active in the New Hampshire State Legislature for years,” Merrilee Milstein, then AFL-CIO deputy northeast regional director, told the People’s Weekly World at the time (10/16/04).

She credited local unions and the help from neighboring states with “creating a new sense of the labor movement in New Hampshire. Thousands and thousands of people have been involved in a very personal way to fight George Bush and the right wing.”

As labor coordinator in New Hampshire, Merrilee didn’t go for the vote alone. She organized in a way to develop new leaders and lay the basis for a stronger, more united movement that could win better wages and working conditions and increase political power for working families.

When Merrilee died this June at age 61 it was devastating not only in Hartford, Conn., where she lived but in New Hampshire and elsewhere as well.

Like the song “Joe Hill is at your side,” the call went out from the New Hampshire AFL-CIO throughout the state and to Connecticut and Massachusetts for a special Merrilee Milstein Memorial Labor Walk on September 27 to honor “a great woman, great activist and great friend.”

SEIU had organized buses of volunteers from surrounding states, and also declared September 27 as “Merrilee Milstein Day.”

Honoring the memory of their union sister brought the New Hampshire AFL-CIO and SEIU together, even though they had been conducting separate election efforts.

Nearly 50 of Merrilee’s family and friends traveled to Nashua by van and car from Connecticut to knock on the doors of union members and talk about why Barack Obama’s election is so important for working families.

Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, gave a big thank you. “I think for our members the choice is really clear,” he said. “Barack Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act, he has made a commitment to put forth trade agreements that make sense, he is for universal health care, and he will make sure our pensions and retirements are kept secure.”

It was enjoyable to knock on doors and find voters who were enthusiastic and inspired by Obama’s historic candidacy, like the teacher who said her whole family was spreading the word. There were several families of divided opinion and others who declined to say. The most challenging conversations were with voters who did not want to support Obama because they were caught up in the lies and rumors undermining his integrity and patriotism. Those who were ready to discuss appreciated the comparison of McCain’s anti-worker record with Obama’s near perfect score.

It was exciting to be part of the quarter million union volunteers across the country, the biggest election mobilization in labor’s history, which has influenced the political climate in working class swing states and districts, laying the basis for a much larger labor movement.

The example set by labor’s top leaders talking directly with white sisters and brothers about how Obama represents their best chance for a secure future will have a lasting impact.

The idea that it takes unity and struggle to win big gains was something that Merrilee carried everywhere. Insisting on sharing this lesson earned her deep respect.

Merrilee was determined to win on the side of the working class. Her enthusiasm, creativity and persistence were contagious.

On election night 2004, after scores of volunteers had finished their assignments, word came that voters were leaving the polls because of long lines. Campaign workers were immediately dispatched to the polls with bags of candies, chips and other snacks to give encouragement and keep the parents and kids, older voters and young first time voters from leaving. It worked.

This year the chance to uproot ultra-right corporate political dominance is much greater. Voters want to be part of history. They see that the policies of the Bush administration, which McCain-Palin would continue, are bankrupting the country and endangering the world.

This year New Hampshire will not be alone. Merrilee would have been building for a landslide.

Labor’s giant effort along with massive organizing by African American, Latino, women’s and youth groups has turned historically Republican states’ House and Senate seats into battlegrounds, including the Senate seat in New Hampshire.

A landslide victory for Obama and Congress will open the door for big new struggles to organize workers into unions and place the needs of working families front and center in this economic crisis.

See related story: Merrilee Milstein mourned

Talks in Kansas City focus on immigration

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:14:00 +0000

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - 'We can not talk about immigration, without talking about racism,' said Jane Guskin, co-author of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, to a packed audience at the Guadeloupe Community Center here October 23.

As part of a nation-wide tour to promote community dialog on immigration issues, Guskin challenged KC area participants to analyze their own experiences and question stereotypes that lead to racist depictions of immigrants.

She asked the audience participants to tell her some of the misinformation and lies they've heard. Some raised economic issues: “People say immigrants steal our jobs and drive down wages.” Other people focused on social issues: “Immigrants don't pay taxes and commit crime.” Still others commented on legal status: “Why don't they come here the right way, legally.”

'We've all heard these things in our community, at work, and even from some family members,' said Guskin. “But,” she continued, 'We don't always know how to address and answer these comments. Our goal,' she said, 'should be to communicate and dialog with people who may misunderstand the issue, who may have been lied to, who heard something on the news and believed it. We shouldn't just preach to the choir.

'In communities across the country,' she said, 'people are breaking down racist stereotypes about immigrants through grassroots dialog. If we don't communicate with each other, how will we understand each other,' she asked?

Participants spent the remainder of the evening addressing the stereotypes by providing factual context.

For example, according to Guskin the idea that immigrants don't pay taxes 'just isn't true. 75 percent of all immigrant Americans work on the books. They pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and real-estate taxes just like everybody else.' She also addressed the idea that immigrants drive down wages and steal jobs. 'First and foremost,' she said, “bosses drive down wages, not immigrants.”

According to Judy Ancel, president of the Cross Border Network for Justice and Solidarity, U.S. trade policies like NAFTA and CAFTA have made conditions so bad that immigrants are forced to come here in search of work and a better life. 'In fact,' she said, 'the Mexican economy was invaded by U.S. capitalism.'

The Cross Border Network, a non-profit organization, works to develop ties and mutual understanding between working people in the Kansas City area and maquiladora workers in Mexico.

Ancel added, 'undocumented immigrant workers have very few legal recourses against exploitive employers. And when they try to form or join unions, immigration authorities are called in and many of the leaders and activists are deported.' According to Guskin, 'the biggest obstacle to organizing is simply the fear of raids and deportation.'

Lynda Callon, director of the West-side Community Action Network, added, 'We also need to understand that work, even day-labor work, is the first step on the ladder to dignity and opportunity. Work provides everybody, no matter your legal status, no matter your job, with the possibility to give your children a better life and a place to call home.'

Ancel, who is also the director of The Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri Kansas City, emphasized the role of union organizing for immigrant workers. She said, 'Immigrant workers need to be able to organize into unions. Without legal status or social safety-nets in place, immigrant workers are forced into low-pay work. Unions are the only way to break the cycle of low-pay and enable immigrant workers to have dignity and respect on the job, no matter what it is.'

The event was sponsored by the Cross Border Network, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the ACLU of Kansas and Western Mo., Immigrant Justice Advocacy Movement, and MIRA, the Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates.

tonypec @ cpusa.org

Call center workers walk off job rather than read script attacking Obama

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:39:00 +0000

From Talking Points Memo:

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being 'dangerously weak on crime,' 'coddling criminals,' and for voting against 'protecting children from danger.'

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.

'They walked out,' Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. 'They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day.'

The daughter, who wanted her name withheld fearing retribution from her employer, confirmed the story to us. 'It was like at least 40 people,' the daughter said. 'People thought the script was nasty and they didn't wanna read it.'

A second worker at the call center confirmed the episode, saying that 'at least 30' workers had walked out after refusing to read the script.

'We were asked to read something saying [Obama and Democrats] were against protecting children from danger,' this worker said. 'I wouldn't do it. A lot of people left. They thought it was disgusting.'

This worker, too, confirmed sacrificing pay to walk out, saying her supervisor told her: 'If you don't wanna phone it you can just go home for the day.'

The script coincided with this robo-slime call running in other states, but because robocalling is illegal in Indiana it was being read by call center workers.

Representatives at Americall in Indiana, and at the company's corporate headquarters in Naperville, Illinois, didn't return calls for comment.

Related story: Miners plan work stoppage over anti-Obama film

Economic concerns behind political shift in Indiana

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:57:00 +0000

Barack Obama’s surge in Indiana’s Oct. 23 Big10 Battleground Poll to a 10 point lead over John McCain (51 to 41 percent) is not surprising, considering the sharp concerns raised by workers at a union-sponsored forum in Indianapolis Oct. 22.

“It’s not like you can just find another job. There aren’t any around here,” said Kathleen South of IUE-CWA Local 919 at the workers’ roundtable sponsored by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Indiana State AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Joe Breedlove.

A report on the forum, which appeared on the federation’s website Oct. 23, sheds light on the underlying causes of the big change underway on the political landscape in Indiana.

South, who recently lost her job after the Visteon plant she worked at for 22 years closed down in March, was one of eight recently displaced workers who shared their stories with the labor leaders.

South told them: “I’ll be OK for a few more months but I know that eventually, I’m going to lose the house.”

Stories of home foreclosure and the fear it causes and stories about loss of health care benefits took center stage during the round table.

The official unemployment rate in Indiana has jumped two percent in the last year.

“Good jobs in Indiana are being shipped overseas,” Sweeney told the group, “and every person sitting here has been touched by the problems caused by plant closures and companies sending factories out of the United States. Corporate greed created a mess that the rest of us – including the next generation – will have to clean up.”

“I’m having to decide between paying my car bill and my mortgage and taking my medication,” said Sonia Cook, a member of UAW Local 226. “I’ve actually been skipping doses and cutting pills in half to reduce my costs.”

Cook was laid off when International Truck and Engine downsized its operation in Indianapolis.

Despite their deep personal suffering, workers at the roundtable were anxious to move the discussion from one about problems to one about solutions.

Michelle Harrison, who also lost her job at the Visteon plant, said, “We know that in the last eight years, the lives of working people have not been a priority for the Bush administration or Mitch Daniel’s (Indiana’s Republican governor) administration for that matter. We need people in office who are finally going to care about the people sitting at this table, instead of corporate interests. And this year it’s clear that Barack Obama and Jill Long Thompson are going to be the ones to stand up for the middle class.”

Thompson is running against Daniels whose first act after his election was to remove the collective bargaining rights of public employees. He also privatized many state services.

Andrea Mooney of UAW Local 663 saw her job go overseas. She had worked for the Guide Corp. which moved production of auto parts from Anderson, Ind., to Mexico.

“If we don’t elect people who finally protect us from unbalanced trade deals, things are only going to get worse,” she declared, adding, “My husband works for Navistar and we’re scared he’ll end up losing his job too, and we’ll be left with nothing.” She said that she supported Obama because he would fix trade deals and prevent jobs from going overseas.

Miami's early voters talk change

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:53:00 +0000

MIAMI --- With early voting for president in heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County running ahead of 2004, there’s a good chance Florida could end up in the Obama column Nov. 4.

Of the 100 Miami area early voters emerging from the polling places interviewed by this reporter over the past two days, 53 identified themselves as Democrats and 15 as independents while only 32 said they are Republicans.

What’s more, eleven of the 15 independent voters told me they had just voted for Obama. Overall, 67 of those interviewed at two different polling sites Thursday and Friday said they voted for Obama compared to 33 for McCain.

Among the 100 voters, there were nine that voted against their party of registration. Two of the nine said they were registered Democrats that crossed over to McCain and seven said they are registered Republicans that crossed over to Obama. Both McCain’s crossovers were men over 40. One said, “I’m afraid of going toward socialism” and the other said, “I didn’t like Obama’s associations.” Among Republicans that switched to Obama, one said, “I can’t begin to enumerate. Let’s just say ‘leadership.’” Others cited the Iraq war and/or the economy as their reasons.

In the first four days of early voting alone this past week, 60,000 voters Miami-Dade voters stood patiently in line often for several hours or longer to cast their ballots. This reporter, however, waited just 20 minutes and thought the voting was conducted smoothly and efficiently.

In 2004, Democrat John Kerry drubbed President Bush in Miami by 53 per cent to 46 per cent of the 770,000 votes cast but still lost the state, with 47 per cent compared to 52 percent for Bush. This year, the total turnout in Miami could top 900,000 or more, counting the early vote. According to McClatchey Newspapers, since 2004, Miami has added 184,514 voters to its rolls, bringing total registration to 1,243,315.

The outcome in Florida may well depend on the size of the South Florida vote (Miami and Broward counties) and how efficiently those voters are counted Nov. 4.

Among early voters I spoke with, Obama is getting strong support from women and students as well as African Americans. No African American in this sample said he or she would vote for McCain. One of this group identified herself as a Republican but said she voted for Obama because “I’m a conservative, and I have problems with McCain’s personal life.”

Among women interviewed, 36 said they had just voted for Obama compared with 14 for McCain. While women generally vote more Democratic than men, the reason may have less to do with gender and more to do with their higher levels of education. University towns, for example, are commonly thought of as Democratic voting strongholds and those with higher levels of education tend to support Democratic candidates.

One of these, Teddi Litmen, a local dentist, said she voted for Obama because, “I want to get us out of Iraq and to improve the economy.” One African-American woman said, “My only son is in Iraq and they send him back and back and I want to see him. I am sick of them (the Republicans). Another woman, Joan Treacy, of Coral Gables, said, “I am absolutely against the war.” And a woman over 40 dubbed Obama as “The best candidate of my lifetime.”

Among men that supported Obama, Jeff Bailey, a Coral Gables lawyer, said, “He has shown he has the ability to lead with reason.” Among the half dozen students that showed up from the nearby University of Miami campus --- a campus festooned with Obama stickers --- each said they voted for Obama. One 21-year-old finance major said he voted “against McCain because of his tax policies.”

Of those supporting McCain, it was apparent the Republican message that Obama was unprepared to become president had gotten through. One man of about 50 said, “I don’t think Obama is straightforward. I think he’s got a lot of things hidden.”

McCain voters repeatedly said McCain was “better qualified.” David Smith, a senior citizen from Coral Gables, said, “McCain’s experienced. Our Number One fear is terrorism and he’s stronger on that and on defense.” One woman, though, Eris Gonzales of Coral Gables and a lifelong Republican, said she voted for McCain because “I heard Obama was a Muslim.”

This reporter’s sample is somewhat biased as a number of presumably McCain supporters --- elderly naturalized citizens from Cuba --- could not express themselves in English. One Hispanic male, Ignacio Barroso of Miami, however, spoke English well enough: “We need a change. I think the GOP administration is too far to the right favoring capital and large corporations. There’s not enough GDP (gross domestic product) trickling down to the people.”

McClatchey newspapers Oct. 23 reported Republican legislators in Tallahassee three years ago claimed that early voting was too expensive and “set new statewide standards limiting the number of polling sites and their hours of operation,” trimming early voting from 12 to eight hours per day. The results, McClatchey reported, have resulted in waits of from two to five hours for early voting.

Pollsters currently give Obama a very slight edge over McCain in Florida and the race is expected to be a tossup. Given the number of independents that say they support Obama and the larger number of Republicans than Democrats switching sides, Florida could end up in the Democratic column Nov. 4.

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based reporter and press agent for non-profit organizations. Reach him atHe previously reported for the Miami Herald and the Chicago Daily News and worked as a wire service columnist.

Voters in Houston poised to boot out the right wing

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:43:00 +0000

HOUSTON — Deep in the intellectual and financial heart of Texas, voters are turning out in record numbers in early voting here. According to Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman, a Republican, the numbers are up 106 percent over 2004, as of the sixth day of in-person early voting. Early voting will continue until Oct. 31 in Texas.

A Zogby poll indicates most Democrats are ahead by at least 7 percentage points in local and national races in Harris County, the Houston Chronicle reports. This includes the presidential contest and congressional races. One Republican judge who received a great deal of positive publicity during Hurricane Ike may prevail over his Democratic opponent.

If the trends continue, this will represent the first “transitional election in Harris County since 1994,” when Republicans swept Democratic candidates from their jobs “as the Republican revolution led by then-U.S. Rep Newt Gingrich captured the U.S. Congress” according to the Chronicle analysis.

Of course, this is remarkable in the fourth largest city in the country given the strong ties between Houston and the Bush family. President George H. W. Bush calls Houston his home and has his Gulf Coast home nestled in the heart of one of the wealthiest, most privileged sections in the city. Houston has been considered safe territory for the right wing for the past 14 years.

Yet Houston also has a very progressive and proactive central labor council. The Harris County AFL-CIO has been actively pushing its “labor neighbor” program throughout the county to support labor-friendly candidates. The program has union members working very hard to contact fellow union families to educate them about candidates and encourage them to vote. The Sheet Metal Workers, Communications Workers and Machinists have been very visible in these efforts.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was dealt a rough blow during Hurricane Ike when the roof of one of their main union halls was blown off. The building next door, housing the Harris County Democratic headquarters, suffered similar damage and had to be relocated temporarily. One union member quipped that repairing the building would be low on the list of FEMA priorities. However, IBEW has been very active in the elections as well.

The Houston Chronicle, a very conservative newspaper, endorsed Barack Obama for president. Obama is the first Democrat to be endorsed by the Chronicle since it backed native son Lyndon Johnson in 1964. This year the Chronicle has endorsed several progressive candidates in local races as well.

phill1917 @ comcast.net

Block the Vote

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:38:00 +0000

Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?

From Rolling Stone:

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.

Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast 'provisional' ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.

This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. 'I don't think the Democrats get it,' says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. 'All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states.'

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Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. 'Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government,' said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. 'They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.'

Today, Weyrich's vision has become a national reality. Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election — and the commission's own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from 'unreadability' to changes in a voter's signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.

Passed in 2002, HAVA was hailed by leaders in both parties as a reform designed to avoid a repeat of the 2000 debacle in Florida that threw the presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure set standards for voting systems, created an independent commission to oversee elections, and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters whose eligibility is challenged at the polls.

But from the start, HAVA was corrupted by the involvement of Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, who worked to cram the bill with favors for his clients. (Both Abramoff and a primary author of HAVA, former Rep. Bob Ney, were imprisoned for their role in the conspiracy.) In practice, many of the 'reforms' created by HAVA have actually made it harder for citizens to cast a ballot and have their vote counted. In case after case, Republican election officials at the local and state level have used the rules to give GOP candidates an edge on Election Day by creating new barriers to registration, purging legitimate names from voter rolls, challenging voters at the polls and discarding valid ballots.

To justify this battery of new voting impediments, Republicans cite an alleged upsurge in voting fraud. Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. 'They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away,' says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. 'We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico.'

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There's a reason Iglesias couldn't find any evidence of fraud: Individual voters almost never try to cast illegal ballots. The Bush administration's main point person on 'ballot protection' has been Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney who has advised states on how to use HAVA to erect more barriers to voting. Appointed to the Federal Election Commission by Bush, von Spakovsky has suggested that voter rolls may be stuffed with 5 million illegal aliens. In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to a recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Barnard College, federal courts found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. 'The claim of widespread voter fraud,' Minnite says, 'is itself a fraud.'

Allegations of voter fraud are only the latest rationale the GOP has used to disenfranchise voters — especially blacks, Hispanics and others who traditionally support Democrats. 'The Republicans have a long history of erecting barriers to discourage Americans from voting,' says Donna Brazile, chair of the Voting Rights Institute for the Democratic National Committee. 'Now they're trying to spook Americans with the ghost of voter fraud. It's very effective — but it's ironic that the only way they maintain power is by using fear to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to vote.' The recently enacted barriers thrown up to deter voters include:

1. Obstructing Voter-Registration Drives

Since 2004, the Bush administration and more than a dozen states have taken steps to impede voter registration. Among the worst offenders is Florida, where the Republican-dominated legislature created hefty fines — up to $5,000 per violation — for groups that fail to meet deadlines for turning in voter-application forms. Facing potentially huge penalties for trivial administrative errors, the League of Women Voters abandoned its voter-registration drives in Florida. A court order eventually forced the legislature to reduce the maximum penalty to $1,000. But even so, said former League president Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, the reduced fines 'create an unfair tax on democracy.' The state has also failed to uphold a federal law requiring that low-income voters be offered an opportunity to register when they apply for food stamps or other public assistance. As a result, the annual number of such registrations has plummeted from more than 120,000 in the Clinton years to barely 10,000 today.

2. Demanding 'Perfect Matches'

Under the Help America Vote Act, some states now reject first-time registrants whose data does not correspond to information in other government databases. Spurred by HAVA, almost every state must now attempt to make some kind of match — and four states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require what is known as a 'perfect match.' Under this rigid framework, new registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms — Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen — fails to exactly match data listed in other government records.

There are many legitimate reasons, of course, why a voter's information might vary. Indeed, a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that as many as 20 percent of discrepancies between voter records and driver's licenses in New York City are simply typing mistakes made by government clerks when they transcribe data. But under the new rules, those mistakes are costing citizens the right to vote. In California, a Republican secretary of state blocked 43 percent of all new voters in Los Angeles from registering in early 2006 — many because of the state's failure to produce a tight match. In Florida, GOP officials created 'match' rules that rejected more than 15,000 new registrants in 2006 and 2007 — nearly three-fourths of them Hispanic and black voters. Given the big registration drives this year, the number could be five times higher by November.

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3. Purging Legitimate Voters From the Rolls

The Help America Vote Act doesn't just disenfranchise new registrants; it also targets veteran voters. In the past, bipartisan county election boards maintained voter records. But HAVA requires that records be centralized, computerized and maintained by secretaries of state — partisan officials — who are empowered to purge the rolls of any voter they deem ineligible. Ironically, the new rules imitate the centralized system in Florida — the same corrupt operation that inspired passage of HAVA in the first place. Prior to the 2000 election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her predecessor, both Republicans, tried to purge 57,000 voters, most of them African-Americans, because their names resembled those of persons convicted of a crime. The state eventually acknowledged that the purges were improper — two years after the election.

Rather than end Florida-style purges, however, HAVA has nationalized them. Maez, the elections supervisor in New Mexico, says he was the victim of faulty list management by a private contractor hired by the state. Hector Balderas, the state auditor, was also purged from the voter list. The nation's youngest elected Hispanic official, Balderas hails from Mora County, one of the poorest in the state, which had the highest rate of voters forced to cast provisional ballots. 'As a strategic consideration,' he notes, 'there are those that benefit from chaos' at the ballot box.

All told, states reported scrubbing at least 10 million voters from their rolls on questionable grounds between 2004 and 2006. Colorado holds the record: Donetta Davidson, the Republican secretary of state, and her GOP successor oversaw the elimination of nearly one of every six of their state's voters. Bush has since appointed Davidson to the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency created by HAVA, which provides guidance to the states on 'list maintenance' methods.

4. Requiring Unnecessary Voter ID's

Even if voters run the gauntlet of the new registration laws, they can still be blocked at the polling station. In an incident last May, an election official in Indiana denied ballots to 10 nuns seeking to vote in the Democratic primary because their driver's licenses or passports had expired. Even though Indiana has never recorded a single case of voter-ID fraud, it is one of two dozen states that have enacted stringent new voter-ID statutes.

On its face, the requirement to show a government-issued ID doesn't seem unreasonable. 'I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I've got to show a little bit of ID,' Karl Rove told the Republican National Lawyers Association in 2006. But many Americans lack easy access to official identification. According to a recent study for the Election Law Journal, young people, senior citizens and minorities — groups that traditionally vote Democratic — often have no driver's licenses or state ID cards. According to the study, one in 10 likely white voters do not possess the necessary identification. For African-Americans, the number lacking such ID is twice as high.

5. Rejecting 'Spoiled' Ballots

Even intrepid voters who manage to cast a ballot may still find their vote discounted. In 2004, election officials discarded at least 1 million votes nationwide after classifying them as 'spoiled' because blank spaces, stray marks or tears made them indecipherable to voting machines. The losses hit hardest among minorities in low-income precincts, who are often forced to vote on antiquated machines. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in its investigation of the 2000 returns from Florida, found that African-Americans were nearly 10 times more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected, a ratio that holds nationwide.

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Proponents of HAVA claimed the law would correct the spoilage problem by promoting computerized balloting. Yet touch-screen systems have proved highly unreliable — especially in minority and low-income precincts. A statistical analysis of New Mexico ballots by a voting-rights group called VotersUnite found that Hispanics who voted by computer in 2004 were nearly five times more likely to have their votes unrecorded than those who used paper ballots. In a close election, such small discrepancies can make a big difference: In 2004, the number of spoiled ballots in New Mexico — 19,000 — was three times George Bush's margin of victory.

6. Challenging 'Provisional' Ballots

In 2004, an estimated 3 million voters who showed up at the polls were refused regular ballots because their registration was challenged on a technicality. Instead, these voters were handed 'provisional' ballots, a fail-safe measure mandated by HAVA to enable officials to review disputed votes. But for many officials, resolving disputes means tossing ballots in the trash. In 2004, a third of all provisional ballots — as many as 1 million votes — were simply thrown away at the discretion of election officials.

Many voters are given provisional ballots under an insidious tactic known as 'vote caging,' which uses targeted mailings to disenfranchise black voters whose addresses have changed. In 2004, despite a federal consent order forbidding Republicans from engaging in the practice, the GOP sent out tens of thousands of letters to 'confirm' the addresses of voters in minority precincts. If a letter was returned for any reason — because the voter was away at school or serving in the military — the GOP challenged the voter for giving a false address. One caging operation was exposed when an RNC official mistakenly sent the list to a parody site called GeorgeWBush.org — instead of to the official campaign site GeorgeWBush.com.

In the century following the Civil War, millions of black Americans in the Deep South lost their constitutional right to vote, thanks to literacy tests, poll taxes and other Jim Crow restrictions imposed by white officials. Add up all the modern-day barriers to voting erected since the 2004 election — the new registrations thrown out, the existing registrations scrubbed, the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots that were never counted — and what you have is millions of voters, more than enough to swing the presidential election, quietly being detached from the electorate by subterfuge.

'Jim Crow was laid to rest, but his cousins were not,' says Donna Brazile. 'We got rid of poll taxes and literacy tests but now have a second generation of schemes to deny our citizens their franchise.' Come November, the most crucial demographic may prove to be Americans who have been denied the right to vote. If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls — they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the nation's leading voting-rights advocates. His article 'Was the 2004 Election Stolen?' [RS 1002] sparked widespread scrutiny of vote tampering. Greg Palast, who broke the story on Florida's illegal voter purges in the 2000 election, is the author of 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.' For more information, visit No Voter Left Behind and Steal Back Your Vote.

Northeast Ohio senior citizens organize

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:33:00 +0000

Over 200 union retirees filled the Mahoning County Country Club in Girard Ohio, on Friday, October 24th to promote the Northeast Ohio Alliance for Senior Action. The Alliance is promoting greater activism among retired union members on behalf of issues of concern to senior citizens like health care, housing and Social Security.

Mike Rubicz, retired past president of United Steelworkers Local 1375 chaired the event. Rubicz, opening the meeting, stressed that the crisis in the economy is prompting great uncertainty among seniors. “These are supposed to be our golden years” he commented. “I had 44 Social Security units and I was counting on my 401K. Now I don’t want to open the statements that come in the mail.”

Rubicz went on to relate a story about 90-year old woman in Cleveland with a reverse mortgage who shot herself when sheriffs came knocking on to evict her.

The conference was greeted by several speakers including James Mefli, Mayor of Girard, Congressman Tim Ryan representing Youngtown’s 17th District, John Ryan standing in for Ohio Senator Sherrrod Brown, Norm Wernet of the Alliance of Retired Americans, and State Senator Capri S. Cafaro.

Wernet remarked that the Ohio Alliance “is here to build a coalition, a community activist network, an opportunity for seniors to speak to senior issues. It’s not just politics, it’s our politics, it’s about sustaining life after work. It’s about dignity, recognition and accountability.”

The Ohio senior citizen organizer stressed the importance of preserving Social Security pointing out that the average person receives about $12,000. In one Ohio county he said, “over half the woman live on $12,000 or less. By contrast “half of all men in Ohio receive $21,000” (including pension).

Congressman Tim Ryan also pointed to the importance of Social Security. “Some folks tried to take Social Security and put it into the stock market. We were close to a situation of having to bail out Social Security” he said.

Ryan concluded by commenting on a statement recently made by Alan Greenspan. “Greenspan said, ‘this has shaken my faith in the capitalistic system.’ “Hey have you been paying attention? We need to regulate!”

Retirees speaking at the meeting expressed great anger and frustration from the floor. “People are tired of bail outs for banks and corporations. When do seniors get bailed out?” one worker asked from the floor. He continued, : “They took our pension and applied it to hospitalization,” complaining that the workers had never been asked.

Seniors are angry with good reason. Chapter 11 bankruptcies for people over 65 have grown from 1991 to 2007 by 150 percent. For people over 75 bankruptcies are up over 400 percent.

State senator Capri-Cafaro said “We got to more than talk, we got to walk.”

Retirees were urged to vote on Election Day.

Calls mount to bring troops home from Afghanistan

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:42:00 +0000

This month, as the war in Afghanistan entered its eighth year, U.S. military and intelligence agencies warned of growing problems, the country’s economic situation continued to deteriorate, and calls grew for a peaceful resolution.

Demonstrators gathered for a weekend of action Oct. 18 and 19 in 16 cities across Canada, urging the Conservative Harper government to bring Canadian troops home from Afghanistan.

Organizers said some 60 percent of Canadians want to end their country’s involvement in the war. In March the government said it would keep 2,500 Canadian troops in Afghanistan until 2011.

Citing costs of $14 to $18 billion for Canada’s Afghan mission by that year, New Democrat Member of Parliament Olivia Chow told the Toronto protesters, “That is shameful. Can you think of other ways to spend that money? How about dropping student fees, not bombs?”

Ninety-seven Canadian soldiers and at least 542 U.S. soldiers have died as a result of the Afghan war.

The toll on Afghan civilians is far higher. University of New Hampshire economics professor Marc Herold estimates that between 6,800 and 8,000 civilians have been killed since October 2001. Herold says the air strikes U.S. and NATO forces use to prevent their own casualties are 4 to 10 times as deadly for civilians as fighting on the ground. The toll, and the resulting civilian protests, are also growing in border areas of neighboring Pakistan, where U.S. air attacks including use of drones have escalated in recent months.

Last week another NATO air strike killed up to 30 civilians in a village in southern Afghanistan. The local district chief told the New York Times by telephone that 18 bodies had been recovered and as many as 12 other victims still remained in the rubble. The BBC said one of its journalists had seen 18 bodies, all women and children, including a 6-month-old baby. Villagers took bodies to the home of the provincial governor in protest.

While NATO confirmed an air strike in the area, a spokesman declined to confirm any casualties, saying the incident was being investigated. Meanwhile, Pentagon officials and U.S. intelligence agencies take a grim view of the present military, economic and political situation in Afghanistan and predict worse to come.

Earlier this month Admiral Mike Mullen, head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters, “The trends across the board are not going in the right direction. I would anticipate next year would be a tougher year.” He cited the need to curb Afghanistan’s growing opium trade — now estimated to account for about half the country’s GDP — and to strengthen local and district leaders, improve the economy and curb the Taliban’s ability to carry out increasingly well-organized attacks.

About 70,000 U.S. and NATO troops are now in Afghanistan, the majority Americans. The Bush administration plans to send 8,000 more next year, and the top U.S. commander on the scene says he will need 15,000 troops beyond that. A draft National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) slated for release after the election says Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral,” citing a deteriorating central government beset by corruption and besieged by insurgent attacks.

Meanwhile, living conditions in Afghanistan continue to deteriorate. In a graphic account posted recently on Tom Dispatch, Afghanistan-based journalist Anand Gopal said unemployment — at 40 percent when last calculated in 2005 —may now reach as high as 80 percent in some places.

Noting Brookings Institution estimates that about 45 percent of Afghans can’t afford to buy enough food for minimum health levels, Gopal said Afghan officials warn hunger could kill up to 80 percent of people in some northern drought-stricken regions this winter.

Gopal and other commentators say the U.S. and NATO attacks — far from stabilizing the situation — are building support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

On the seventh anniversary of the U.S. bombing, Kelly Campbell, a founding member of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, said polls show a majority of Afghans want U.S. troops to leave their country. “It is time that we start listening to the will of the Afghan people, and formulate our policy accordingly, she wrote in the Huffington Post.

The ultimate injustice

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:34:00 +0000

The state of Georgia is set to kill Troy Anthony Davis on Oct. 27. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme refused to take up Mr. Davis' appeal, terminating a temporary stay of execution.

Davis was convicted in the 1991 slaying of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Nine witnesses testified against Davis, but no physical evidence tied him to the crime.

Since the original trial seven of the nine witnesses recanted their testimony, citing police intimidation or coercion, according to documentation provided by Amnesty International. One of the remaining two witnesses who refused to change his testimony has been blamed for the crime by others. According to the Innocence Project, witness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions.

From the Georgia Board of Pardons to that state's Supreme Court, responsible institutions have refused to consider the new evidence offered in Davis' case. When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the appeal, it basically stated that evidence of innocence is irrelevant when it comes too late in the process.

Let's face it. This case is not about technicalities. It is about racism. Mark Allen MacPhail was a young, white policeman. His family deserves to have his real killer found, but as it stands this has not happened. The state of Georgia may be killing the wrong man.

Racism plays a determining role in who lives or dies in the U.S. criminal justice system. In the state of Georgia, fully half of the death row population are people of color. Of the more than 1,100 executions since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, more than 80 percent of the victims in these cases were white, despite the fact that whites and Blacks are murdered in nearly equal numbers.

Six people convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Georgia have been exonerated since 1976. Georgia has just days to give Troy Davis the chance to become the seventh. That some might be exonerated and others killed shows the deepest flaw in using capital punishment as the ultimate punishment.

Aside from the basic fact that it does not deter crime, is carried out at a staggering cost, is arbitrarily applied (often with political motives), has been overturned by many countries around the world, and violates basic moral principles, capital punishment also fails to deliver justice. In the case of Troy Anthony Davis, it may deliver the ultimate injustice.

Joel Wendland (jwendland@politicalaffairs.net) is editor of Political Affairs.

Jon Burge arrested!

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:41:00 +0000

Hope springs that justice will be served

CHICAGO -- Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, 60, was arrested by federal agents at his home near Tampa, Fla., Oct. 21 and charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury. According to the U.S. attorney’s office Burge lied about whether he and officers he supervised used torture methods on murder suspects, scores of African American men in the 1970s and 1980s, who were forced to confess to crimes they say they did not commit.

The U.S. Attorney’s office charges Burge lied and impeded court proceedings in 2003 when he gave false answers to questions in a civil lawsuit alleging Burge and others led torture and abuse methods on suspects in custody more than two decades ago. The indictment says Burge was present on one or more occasions, and participated in, the torture and physical abuse of suspects in his custody. The indictment also says Burge was aware that detectives under his supervision led such abuses on detained suspects.

“There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station,” said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in a news release. “There is no place for perjury and false statements in federal lawsuits,” he added. “No person is above the law, and nobody – even a suspected murderer – is beneath its protection.”

Robert Grant, special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said, “Police officers don’t serve the public as judge and jury. They have a special responsibility to care for those within their custody, regardless of their alleged crimes.” Grant added, “Today’s announcement brings great shame on the career of retired Commander Burge. These charges will not erase the pain within our Chicago community, but perhaps it can help begin the healing process.”

Flint Taylor, an attorney who has represented Burge victims told the Chicago Sun-Times he is “extremely pleased and gratified that, so many years later, a U.S. attorney has made the move to indict the leader of the police torture ring.” Flint hopes Burge’s “henchmen” will also be brought to justice too.

According to authorities the investigation is ongoing.

While answering written questions in 2003 as part of a civil lawsuit filed by Madison Hobley, a torture victim, Burge denied any abuse took place. Burge repeatedly denied similar charges. In the indictment Hobley said that Chicago police officers under Burge’s supervision at Area Two headquarters in 1987 had suffocated him by placing a plastic typewriter cover over his head forcing him to lose consciousness. Later Hobley says he was coerced into giving a false confession.

In 2006 a $7 million report by two special prosecutors by the Cook County Circuit Court was released that concluded Chicago police officers under Burge used torture methods on dozens of African American men that included electric shock, radiator burns, guns to the mouth, suffocation, beatings, death threats and other abuse forcing false confessions out of them for crimes they say they did not do. According to the prosecutors the actions were too old to warrant indictment and Burge was not charged under the statue of limitations.

Last year, nearly $20 million was spent by the city of Chicago settling four cases of African American men who were freed from Death Row in 2003 by former Gov. George Ryan. They were tortured into giving false confessions by Burge and his officers.

Five Chicago alderman sent a letter to U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald last year urging him to “investigate, indict and prosecute” Burge for abusing suspects.

Burge was a Chicago police officer from 1970 to 1993. He was a sergeant from 1977 to 1980 and a lieutenant and supervisor of detectives for a violent crimes unit from 1981-1986. He was fired in 1993 after he was found using methods of torture on a suspect. He was never brought to justice and he moved to Florida after his dismissal where he continued to receive a city pension and taxpayer-paid legal representation.

Burge faces up to 20 years in prison on each obstruction count and five years on the perjury count.

plozano @ pww.org

For related stories: Torture victim fights for freedom

Chicago torture probe draws worldwide attention

A brutal prison culture

Hillary Clinton rallies Youngstown, Ohio for Obama, Biden

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 07:51:00 +0000

A noisy and enthusiastic crowd greeted Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) at an Obama/Biden election rally held at Youngstown State University’s Beeghly Gymnasium today. With just 18 days left until the election, the Youngtown area is going into high gear with its second rally this week. On Monday vice presidential candidate Joe Biden visited neighboring Warren to kickoff a state bus tour.

Judging by tee-shirts and campaign buttons, UAW (autoworkers), NEA (educators) and IBEW (electricians) union members were high in attendance.

The crowd was greeted by a big “Hello Youngstown” from Luke, an Obama organizer who went on to stress the importance of early voting. “Help us turn out voters, block by block, door by door. If we do it right, there is no stopping us.”

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland attended the rally and was introduced by Congressman Tim Ryan. Ryan stressed the need for a “blow out election.” Strickland introduced Senator Clinton but before doing so harshly criticized the Bush administration: “Soon this long national nightmare known as the Bush/Cheney administration will come to an end.”

Hillary Clinton gave a stirring stump speech for the Obama/Biden Democratic ticket highlighting the importance of Ohio to the general election. “Ohio is battleground state. It makes or breaks presidential candidates,” she said.

McCain represents four more years of Bush policies she warned. “Bush has practiced what John McCain has preached.”

Traveling around the country, Clinton said, she hears many people asking “Who are you for?”

“A more important question,' she said, is “Who is for you?

“I’m for Obama and Biden because they are for you,” she concluded.

Its spelled J-O-B-S!

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 04:28:00 +0000

Barack Obama and John McCain put forward two very different approaches to the economic meltdown last week.

Obama told a crowd of 3,000 in Toledo, Ohio: “I’m proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities and help struggling homeowners. It’s a plan that begins with one word and that’s on everyone’s mind, and it’s spelled J-O-B-S.

“We can’t wait to help workers and families who are struggling right now – who don’t know if their job or retirement will be there tomorrow; who don’t know if next week’s paycheck will cover this month’s bills,” Obama said. “We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle class and we need to do it not five years from now, not next year. We need to do it right now.”

He added several new components to his comprehensive economic plan:

• a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures,

• a temporary tax credit for businesses that create full-time jobs in the U.S. over the next two years,

• a “jobs growth fund” for local municipalities to keep jobs that might otherwise have to be cut for budgetary purposes,

• immediate tax rebates, and immediate tax cuts for working-class families,

• extended unemployment benefits and elimination of taxes on those benefits,

• allowing people to withdraw up to $10,000 from their 401(k)s without penalty through 2009,

• and a mortgage tax credit.

Obama called on Congress to pass the plan as soon as possible. “If Washington can move quickly to pass a rescue plan for our financial system, there’s no reason we can’t move just as quickly to pass a rescue plan for our middle class,” he said. “If Congress does not act in the coming months, it will be one of the first things I do as president of the United States of America.”

Congress is expected to return soon after the election to consider a second economic stimulus package that could include extended unemployment benefits, new infrastructure projects and tax rebates. McCain either opposed or was absent for votes on earlier stimulus packages.

The McCain campaign blasted Obama’s proposals, saying they would require “massive tax increases.” McCain’s campaign has buckled under the weight of growing anger among workers about the economic hardship they face and his long-time links to the economic policies pursued by the Bush administration.

Even fellow Republicans criticized McCain for ignoring the economy and focusing fruitlessly on personal attacks against Obama.

So, McCain reset his campaign tactics yet again, and tried to attack the Bush administration’s economic policies, most of which he has backed in the Senate.

“The hour is late, my friends, our troubles are getting worse, our enemies watch. We have to act immediately. We have to change direction. We have to fight,” McCain said at an Oct. 13 campaign stop in Virginia.

But the venue for his speech was revealing. Virginia is a normally reliably Republican state that GOP candidates have never had to defend. It hasn’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Yet polls now show Obama ahead there.

Later that day McCain held a rally in North Carolina, which hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976. It is now rated a tossup.

Although McCain had promised to unveil his own economic proposals at those rallies he did not do so. The following day, he did put forward a rehash of earlier ideas like unspecified tax cuts (he supports Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest), a sweeping freeze on federal spending that would devastate essential safety net programs and services, and renegotiation of distressed mortgages.

Citing McCain campaign statements that “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,” Obama declared, “Well, Sen. McCain may be worried about losing an election, but I’m worried about Americans who are losing their jobs and their homes and their life savings. They can’t afford four more years of the economic theory that says we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that the prosperity trickles down to everyone else. We’ve seen where that led us and we’re not going back. It’s time to turn the page.”

jwojcik@pww.org

Coalition mobilizes to protect the vote

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:10:00 +0000

The Baltimore Sun debunked Republican charges that ACORN is flooding state election boards with phony voter registration cards. “This sounds more like partisan sniping than legitimate complaints aimed at protecting ballot box integrity,” the Oct. 13 Sun editorial charged. ACORN is required by law to deliver all voter registration cards, including duplicates and those improperly filled out, to election boards, and ACORN flagged all faulty cards, the Sun said. “ACORN says it’s registered 1.3 million voters nationwide. Any operation that big is bound to produce errors but the irregularities cited by GOP critics are miniscule compared with the number of valid applications.”

It’s not voter registration fraud that is the problem, groups charge, it’s potential violations of voters rights. With the Nov. 4 election just weeks away, the nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition warns that tens of thousands of newly registered voters are being purged illegally from voter registration rolls. “We can see a perfect storm developing here,” said Gerry Hebert, executive director of the coalition, which includes among its 100 affiliates the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Service Employees International Union, American Civil Liberties Union, Sierra Club, NAACP, Rock the Vote, and League of United Latin American Citizens.

The Justice Department is not doing enough to guarantee voting rights, Hebert said. The DOJ claims it is fulfilling its responsibility by sending letters to the 50 secretaries of state reminding them of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which prohibits purging voters within 90 days of an election.

Hebert asked, “What will the Justice Department do if within the next three weeks they discover that a state has still illegally purged voters?”

He cited an Oct. 9 New York Times report that election officials in half a dozen swing states have purged “tens of thousand of eligible voters” in ways that “appear to violate federal law.” The article identifies Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina as states where the purges have taken place.

“Some are removed for legitimate reasons like death or moving out of state,” Hebert continued. “But others have been removed because of a mismatch on government databases. That is highly suspect because there are many reasons these databases may not match.”

For example, a voter registration database may use a voter’s middle initial while a motor vehicle administration database may use the full middle name. Names change when people get married or divorced. That’s why the federal Help America Vote Act prohibits purging voter rolls close to an election, Hebert said.

“A mismatch on databases alone is not sufficient basis for purging a voter,” he said. “If your name is not on the voter list, fill out an application, sign it and vote by provisional ballot. No one who believes he or she is registered to vote should leave the polling place without voting.”

The Election Protection Coalition has set up a phone hotline to a center staffed by volunteers trained to assist anyone facing denial of his or her voting rights. The number is 1-866-OUR VOTE in English and 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA in Spanish.

(Another resource is the website CanIVote.org, sponsored by the National Association of Secretaries of State, where you can check if you are registered to vote or not.)

Hebert pointed to estimates of 9 million newly registered voters. “There has been a huge influx of first-time voters,” he said. “For these people to show up at the polls and find they have been struck from the voting rolls because of some mismatch in databases, that’s the worst thing that can happen to a new voter.”

Hebert said the coalition is also concerned that local election boards are not preparing adequately for Nov. 4. “It is their responsibility to provide enough voting machines and ballots for what is expected to be an enormously high voter turnout on Election Day,” he said. “Our coalition has been working with state and local elections boards to make sure these problems have been corrected. We get assurances. But they gave us these same assurances in elections past.”

The Washington Post reported Oct. 6 that about 4 million new voters have been registered in a dozen key states, with Sen. Barack Obama “poised to benefit … in numbers that far outweigh any gains made by Republicans.” The margins favoring the Democrats were 4 to 1 in Colorado and Nevada and 6 to 1 in North Carolina.

In Florida, 800,000 have been added to the voter rolls. Many were signed up by a coalition that includes the AFL-CIO, Alliance of Retired Americans, ACORN and many other grassroots organizations. The number includes 360,478 new Democratic voters compared to 190,137 new Republican voters. Another 253,294 Floridians registered as independents.

Ohio added 700,000 new voters, predominantly in Democratic-leaning parts of the state.

In North Carolina, Democrats gained 208,000 new voters this year compared to 34,000 new Republican voters.

In Pennsylvania, 474,000 voters were added to the Democratic rolls while the Republicans suffered a net decline of 38,000.

In Nevada, the labor-led voter registration drive added 91,000 new voters to Democratic rolls, switching the state to majority Democrat. Colorado added 80,000 new Democratic voters to their rolls and New Mexico 40,000. These gains in voter registration suggest an Obama-Biden landslide may be in the making.

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Biden calls for tax on Big Oil

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:40:00 +0000

YOUNGSTOWN -- Voters in the Mahoning Valley are gearing up for the election with a candidates' forum here along with Hillary Clinton and vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden appearing in the area this week.

Biden spoke to several hundred supporters at a campaign rally in Warren, Ohio, Oct. 14 marking the beginning of a statewide bus tour. Senator Clinton is due to arrive on Friday.

The candidates' forum at New Bethel Baptist Church focused on local issues but invited both presidential campaigns to send speakers. Rufus Hudson spoke for the Obama campaign, “I don’t work for him because he is Black or because he gave a great speech at the Democratic National Convention, but because he has a great program.” The McCain campaign didn’t send a representative.

The Warren rally began with union cheerleaders from SEIU and the Steelworkers rousing the crowd with chants of “Joe Biden,” “Joe Biden” while dancing to the tune of “Got to Give the People What They Want.” Jack Jenkins, regional director of the Obama campaign called on local residents to get involved in voter turnout efforts: “Barack believes change comes from below,” he implored.

Warren Mayor Michael O’Brien welcomed the crowd declaring, “What a great day for Warren. I can smell the fall leaves and I can also smell victory in the air.” He continued, “We are not Bush’s constituents. We are Bush’s victims.” Referring to the Wall Street financial crisis he said, “They want the average Joe to bail them out.”

Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents the area in Washington stirred up the crowd shouting, “We’ve got an election to win.” “The starkest difference between the two candidates” he argued, “is in the first decision they made in running mates. Sarah Palin or Joe Biden?”

Citing the turmoil in world financial markets he warned, “John McCain would have had your Social Security in the stock market.” Ryan was especially critical of McCain’s record on military veterans charging, “You put your party ahead of veterans and country.”

Ryan lambasted McCain’s voting record citing repeated claims that there is not enough money for peoples needs while voting against the minimum wage and health benefits but then turning around and “spending $10 billion a week to fund the war in Iraq.”

AFL-CIO secretary treasurer Richard Trumka brought bad tidings for corporate America to the rally: “The news is that on November 4th working people are going to bring two new leaders to the White House… leaders who are going to end the war in Iraq. Never before have we had the opportunity to vote for two who are so committed to working people and unions.” Trumka noted that under Bush’s and McCain’s watch over 40,000 plants in the US have closed. A middle-class voter choosing McCain, “Is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders,” he warned.

Senator Biden stuck to working-class themes in a strident address. “We want to do more than stop the slide,” he contended. “We want to rebuild organized labor!”

The difference between the two campaigns he said is “One guy is fighting for you and one is fighting mad.”

Pointing to the local effects of the housing crisis Biden said, “500 properties have been foreclosed on this year in Warren.” To address this problem, the Obama/Biden campaign is now calling for a three-month moratorium on all foreclosures.

In addition the Democrats propose a windfall profits tax on oil corporations that would allow for a $1,000 rebate. Biden claimed the idea came from Palin who in their recent debate said a windfall tax was applied in Alaska.

Audience members appreciated the idea, but not the Senator from Alaska. One Italian American senior joked. “I call Palin, ‘the pelican.’ She can’t do nothing but catch minnows.” He continued more seriously, “I hope Obama kicks the shit out of them.”

Union activists told: Drop everything else and get out vote for Obama

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:43:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — Warning of dire consequences if John McCain is elected president, national and local labor leaders urged union activists here to drop everything else and get out the vote for Barack Obama.

“This is the last opportunity to make America look right for many, many years to come,” State AFL-CIO President Joe Rugola told a crowd of several hundred at the Steelworkers Local 979 hall. Rugola, who walked 75 miles over the previous five days in his cross-state Walk for Economic Recovery, stopping for rallies at union halls and closed plants between Youngstown and Cleveland, said the George Bush/John McCain policies have left the Ohio economy “a wreck.”

“Since Bush took office,” he said, “1,087 separate facilities have closed in Ohio. Over 200,000 manufacturing jobs have gone.”

McCain, he said, “acts like he just discovered the problem,” but for “the entire two-and-a-half decades he has been in Congress he supported the policies that led to this problem. He has encouraged Bush to tell Wall Street to do anything they want.”

“If I have to walk around the state 10 times, I will do it to emphasize that we’ve got one more chance and Barack Obama is our chance.”

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Gerald McEntee, who chairs the national AFL-CIO Political Action Committee, said McCain has conducted the “most dishonest, dishonorable campaign of distortion, distraction and lies about Barack Obama,” who has voted with labor almost 100 percent of the time.

Calling McCain “the king of deregulation,” McEntee said the Republican candidate is out to destroy unions and Social Security and tax workers’ health benefits.

Yet “too many people in our unions like John McCain,” McEntee said. “They use code words. In the past it was ‘guns, God and gays.’ Now they are using different code words, saying that Obama is a Muslim and openly saying they will not vote for him because he is Black. You tell anyone saying those things: that is bullshit — total, absolute bullshit.”

“Don’t let them con us again. I’ve seen that movie before and the ending is always bad.”

The same warning was sounded by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who told how white people in the dying Pennsylvania coal town he grew up in were being distracted from the economic and social crisis all around them because of racial bias towards Obama.

“Racism,” he said, “is used to divide us and we lose every time.”

Trumka traced the origins of racism in America to Bacon’s rebellion of 1676 when poor English and African indentured servants and debt-ridden farmers in Virginia made common cause against heavy taxes imposed by wealthy landowners. After the uprising was suppressed and its leaders hanged, Trumka said, the landowners began indoctrinating poor whites that they were racially superior.

“What would those poor workers tell us today? They would tell us: Vote for Barack Obama! Let us elect Obama and put a dent in the most evil system that’s ever been created — the system of racism.

Trumka said the AFL-CIO is mobilizing an army of volunteers and issuing a new leaflet every week. He urged the crowd to talk to their members “five, six, ten times,” to do mailings to members and to sign people up for phone banks and labor walks.

“If we do these things,” he said, “we will have a more progressive country, a more progressive economy and a whole lot more fun.”

Black Panther Party photo exhibition clarifies history

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:46:00 +0000

HOUSTON — There’s another knock your socks off exhibition at the University Museum of Texas Southern University. Entitled “The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History” this is a display of 47 photographs of the Panthers by their close friend Stephen Shames. The photos span the period from 1967 to 1973, one of the most tumultuous periods of U.S. history at the height of the Civil Rights movement.

Shames met Bobby Seale at an antiwar demonstration in San Francisco in 1967 and embarked on an effort to document the Black Panthers for 6 years. Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party in 1966 in Oakland, California.

The exhibition includes photos of “Free Huey” rallies in Oakland in 1968, of the children of party members attending school at the Intercommunal Youth Institute in Oakland in 1971 and of a free breakfast program for children in Chicago, 1971. In addition to many photos of Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton speaking to crowds there are some rare glimpses of private, intimate moments.

Other photos show George Jackson, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale while they were imprisoned. A 1970 photo of Angela Davis shows her speaking in Oakland at a rally supporting George Jackson. Another shows her sister Fania being arrested outside Davis’ trial.

One photo shows Huey P. Newton listening to Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 revisited in Berkeley, 1970. Another shows Eldridge Cleaver at the Black Panther party headquarters after it was shot up following the acquittal of Huey P. Newton in 1968. Some of the final photos are of Bobby Seale campaigning for mayor of Oakland in his unsuccessful bid in 1973.

These stark photos document both the solidarity and the polarization of the Black community which was marginalized by “cultural differences, dismal economic conditions and systemic vilification” during that period in our history.

PHill1917 @comcast.net

The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History

Traveling exhibition from the Aperture Foundation

Through Friday, October 31

At Texas Southern University Museum

3100 Cleburne Street

Houston, TX

Companion book :

The Black Panthers

Photographs by Stephen Shames

Essay by Charles E. Jones, Preface by Stephen Shames, Foreword by Bobby Seale

152 pages, 80 duotone images and 6 four-color illustrations

Hardcover. $35.00

Guide to Bush-McCain economic crisis, week 4

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Articles and Resources on the Economic Crisis

What will be impact of the Wall Street bankruptcies, bailouts and blunders on working people in this country and worldwide? What's the solution to the crisis?

Perhaps only time will tell the full extent of the impact. Needless to say, this week’s developments don’t bode well for the future. Here are some thoughts from contributors to the People’s Weekly World and Political Affairs and leaders of the Communist Party on the current economic crisis, the policies that got us to this point and the historical precedents.

We will update this resource list in the days and weeks to come, as the full scope of the crisis is better known.

Week of Oct. 6

Labor-led coalition demands recovery plan for Main Street
by John Wojcik
Oct. 9, 2008 – People's Weekly World

Is this Capitalism’s End of Days?
by Norman Markowitz
Oct. 8, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

The crisis of family debt
by Art Perlo Oct. 6, 2008 – People's Weekly World

International Responses

Economy is key issue in Canada's elections

RECESSION

Trade Unions Demand Effective Responses to Worsening Financial and Food Crises

Financial Crisis in Europe: Alternatives Demanded

US Crisis Affects Central America

Bailing Out Capitalism
From The Guardian (Australia), Sept. 24, 2008

Bush's Self-criticism
From Cuban News Agency, Sept. 28, 2008

The End of the Illusion
From People's Democracy (India), Sept. 28, 2008

Time to Break with Casino Capitalism
From Akahata (Japan), Sept. 24, 2008

Week of Sept. 29

Obama calls for 'middle class' bailout
by Joel Wendland
Oct. 3, 2008 – People's Weekly World

To bail, or not to bail?
by Teresa Albano and John Wojcik
Oct. 1, 2008 – People's Weekly World

OPINION: Finances and the current crisis: How did we get here and what is the way out? Part 2
by Sam Webb
Oct. 1, 2008 – People's Weekly World

Taking it to Wall Street: Rallies vs. bailout crowd 'the street'
By Libero Della Piana
Oct. 1, 2008 – People's Weekly World

Why the Rush
by Peter Zerner and Joel Wendland
Oct. 1, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

Obama Calls for Comprehensive Response to the Economic Crisis
Oct. 1, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

Financial Crisis, Bailouts, and the Real Economy, Speaking with Sam Webb
by PoliticalAffairs.net
Sept. 30, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

How about a trickle-up bailout instead of trickle down
by Scott Marshall
Sept. 29, 2008 – Labor Up Front

Stock market drops 777 points as House votes down Wall Street bailout
by Joe Sims
Sept. 29, 2008 – People's Weekly World

Audio: Interview with Sam Webb, CPUSA
Sept. 28, 2008 – Political Affairs Podcast

OPINION: Finances and the current crisis: How did we get here and what is the way out?, Part 1
by Sam Webb
Sept. 28, 2008 – People's Weekly World

What the Banking Crisis Really Means
by Norman Markowitz
Sept. 2008, PoliticalAffairs.net

Week of Sept. 22

Editorial: Shock and Awe Revisited
Sept. 25, 2008 – People's Weekly World

$700,000,000,000 for what?
By John Wojcik Sept. 25, 2008 – People's Weekly World

Reject the 'Bankers' Strike': Groups Demand No Bailout Without Conditions
Sept. 25, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

Rescue Me!: What Else Could We Use the Bailout Money For?'
By Peter Zerner and Joel Wendland
Sept. 25, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

Barney Smith, Not Smith Barney
By Joelle Fishman
Sept. 24, 2008 – People's Weekly World

Save Main Street, Not Wall Street
By Communist Party USA
Sept. 23, 2008 – CPUSA.org

Ramming Through the Bailout
By Sam Webb
Sept. 23, 2008 – CPUSA.org

Wall Street Bailout: Not Without Preconditions
By Joel Wendland
Sept. 23, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

Week of Sept. 15:

EDITORIAL: Bailout Main Street
Sept. 19, 2008 – People's Weekly World

Economic Meltdown
By Joel Wendland
Sept. 19, 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

Wall Street meltdown wallops Main Street
By Phil Cadman
Sept. 19, 2008 – People's Weekly World

From Archives:

Is Freddie Mac really never coming back?
By John Wojcik
Sept. 8, 2008 — People's Weekly World

Got money?
By Marilyn Bechtel
Aug. 15, 2008 — People's Weekly World

Mac the Knife: Cut the Needy to Feed the Greedy
By Joelle Fishman
July 24, 2008 — PoliticalAffairs.net

Interview with Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer
May 29, 2008 — PoliticalAffairs.net

It’s

Time for a New Deal
by Norman Markowitz
May 29, 2008 — PoliticalAffairs.net

Financial Crisis and Class Struggle
By Paulo Nakatani and Rémy Herrera
May 28, 2008 — PoliticalAffairs.net

Foreclosures point to systemic crisis
By Denise Winebrenner Edwards
April 4, 2007 — People's Weekly World

Bailout goes to Wall Street, not Main Street
By John Wojcik
March 20, 2008 — People's Weekly World

Things Fall Apart: Wall Street and the Crisis of US Imperialism
By Joe Sims and Joel Wendland
March 2008 – PoliticalAffairs.net

Weathering

the Storm: the economic recession
Video interview with Sam Webb
March 10, 2008 — Communist Party USA

Unions tackle

housing, foreclosure crisis
By John Wojcik
March 9, 2008 — People's Weekly World

Interview

with Art Perlo, CP Economics Commission
Feb. 15, 2008 — PoliticalAffairs.net

To fix economy

put working class first
By Teresa Albano
Jan. 24, 2008 — People's Weekly World

Banks bilk

homebuyers, Black, Latino families hit hardest
By Tim Wheeler
Jan. 19, 2008 — People's Weekly World

A look behind

the housing crisis
By Art Perlo
Aug. 30, 2007 — People's Weekly World

Mortgage crisis

stoked by incredible greed
By Susan Webb
Aug. 16, 2007 — People's Weekly World

Corporate thievery, a new political moment
By Sam Webb
July 20, 2002 — People's Weekly World

En Español:

Salvemos al pueblo, no a Wall Street
por Partido Comunista de Estados Unidos de América (PCEUA).
Oct. 2, 2008 – Nuestro Mundo

¿Rescate económico o no rescatar?
por Teresa Albano y John Wojcik
Oct. 2, 2008, Nuestro Mundo

La crisis económica y las viviendas
Por Art Perlo
26 de Julio, 2008 — Nuestro Mundo

La crisis economica hoy: Entrevista con Douglas Henwood
29 de Mayo, 2008, – PoliticalAffairs.net