People Before Profit blog

Neil Youngs Greendale fights corporate greed

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:45:00 +0000

Music review

Greendale, the new CD from Neil Young, definitely continues the mystery and awe from his devotees and critics, and is clearly a new direction for Young.

Young refers to this production as a “Music Novel.” Others are calling it a rock opera. He screened the movie version of Greendale – a major creative step for him – at the Toronto Film Festival.

Here he tells a story about “Grandpa” and his family and the Double E ranch. Young offers a booklet with the CD that gives thumbnail descriptions of each cut, but much of the happenings are still within the lyrics and music.

On the Neil Young website, www.neilyoung.com, which he refers to on the CD jacket, you can retrieve the complete lyrics of each song.

The music on the CD is quintessential Neil Young. From the opening guitar to the end, it would seem that nothing is new. But, there are plenty of new lyrics on this CD.

From the opening song, “Falling From Above,” Young talks of “Rollin’ through the fighting; rollin’ through the religious wars; rollin’ down the temple walls; and, the church’s exposed sores.” Young is looking way back to find some meaning to the present. Maybe that is why “grandpa,” with his long history on earth, is used. His sings about a “little love and affection” in the first song, which references his flower-child roots, but he is clearly more angry these days.

In “Leave The Driving” Young makes his statement for gun control. His description here of the unfortunate killing of a policeman, “Carmichael,” by Jed who “was one of ours,” shows the importance of gun control for everyone. The lives of Jed and Carmichael appear in the following songs.

The press doesn’t escape his angry comments in the song, “Grandpa’s Interview.”

Sun Green, the granddaughter of grandpa takes over in the last two songs. She is angry and is “makin’ waves.” Sun is particularly angry at the lies being told her. “She chained herself to a statue of an eagle in the lobby of the power company.” She yelled there is corruption on the “highest floors.”

Her repeated refrains, “Hey Mr. Clean, you’re dirty now, too,” probably refers to all big-time, powerful people, including the White House. Sun is particularly angry at the FBI, which followed her and “trashed her room.” The FBI agent shot her cat and left it “Lyin’ in a puddle of blood at the foot of Sun Green’s bed.”

Make no mistake on Young’s intentions: at concerts, photos of George Bush, John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge are show on the giant screens.

Greendale comes to a crashing crescendo with his final song, “Be The Rain.” Here he attacks “big oil” and other polluters. But, he just doesn’t complain about the out-of-control big logging corporations that are killing our trees; he is siding with the hunters, fisherman and farmers who are being attacked by “corporate greed and chemicals” that are “killin’ the land.”

His chorus: “we got to wake up; we got to keep goin’, if they follow us; there’s no way of knowin,” a clear reference to Ashcroft. “We got a job to do; we got to; save mother earth.”

This CD is Neil Young’s call to arms. Coming from a mega-star, it will have an impact. Let’s hope that this Canadian-born artist keeps on track for years to come. He will join a long list of north-of-the-border performers who are trying to help the U.S. to become less greedy and more humane.

No wonder reviews were mixed. Clearly the anti-political reviewers are not happy with this turn of events; while others, perhaps, are looking for more.

– Eric Green (pww@pww.org)

Warren Zevon left something wonderful

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:42:00 +0000

Music review

I knew Warren Zevon was dying of lung cancer when I started this review last month. Still, I put off finishing it. Somehow I thought he would live forever. I was wrong. He died Sept. 7 at 56.

You can’t blame me, though. He’d already lived more than a year even though the doctor who diagnosed him only gave him three months. Here was the guy who wrote “Werewolves of London,” “Detox Mansion,” “Mr. Bad Example,” and “Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song).” Who could believe that this funny, brilliant and demented songwriter – this poet – was doing something as unfunny as dying?

“I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years,” he told David Letterman last October. “It’s one of those phobias that didn’t pay off.”

Ah, but Zevon has left us with the greatest gift he could, The Wind, his best album yet. Instead of lying around feeling sorry for himself or suddenly having a change of heart about his life so far, Zevon wanted to spend time with friends and family and he wanted to leave his fans one last album.

“The Wind is something he wanted to give to everybody he [couldn’t] speak directly to,” his son Jordan told the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger in August. The result is typical Zevon: funny, loud and outrageous at times (“Disorder in the House,” “[Party for] The Rest of the Night”), and heartbreakingly beautiful at other times (“She’s Too Good for Me,” “Keep Me in Your Heart”). No saccharine, no sap; just pure poetry and good old rock n roll.

– Carolyn Rummel (crummel@pww.org)

Artists and fans are taking their music back

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:38:00 +0000

In April 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced an unprecedented lawsuit against four college students for a combined amount of $98.7 billion. Their crime? Hosting a search engine on their dorm room computers.

The RIAA, a conglomerate of the most powerful and influential record companies in the world, from Sony to Time Warner and BMG, proudly declares a stranglehold on almost 90 percent of all “legitimate” music recorded and distributed in the United States.

With the rising tide of Internet sharing, largely by youth and students, the corporate puppet-masters behind this monopoly have begun to lash out. The multi-millionaires running the RIAA, and its cousin the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), contend that downloading free media will hurt artists and restrain creativity.

However, many students and activists have argued that the industry’s super-exploitation of artists and tight controls over who and what gets produced has usurped our common culture and driven many to file sharing networks for our entertainment.

Copyrights were originally designed during the industrial revolution to protect inventors’ ideas for seven years, after which they could be released for the benefit of the public. The drive to extract as much profit from this “ownership of ideas,” however, led to recent laws passed by the U.S. Congress that extend copyrights to the life of the author plus 75 years! The commodification of music rights has allowed companies in the RIAA to become the sole possessor of artists’ creations.

If an artist under contract to Sony writes a song, it is the property of Sony. If that song makes $1 million, it is all profit for Sony. In fact, many artists make less than one cent per track on a CD that sells for upwards of $20.

Did you know that if you work at a Blockbuster video store, any and all movie scripts you write while employed are considered the property of Blockbuster Entertainment Corp.?

But there is hope amid this madness of infinite copyrights and corporate exploitation. Many artists are creating their own record labels, free from RIAA control. In the face of corporate censorship, this “indie” rock has boomed across the Internet. Artists are also signing onto new copyright contracts like “Creative Commons” (www.creativecommons.org), which allows them to release their material into the public domain for all to enjoy.

Legal defense teams like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.com) have also pledged to defend artist and consumer rights against the corporate siege on digital media.

Ordinary consumers are fed up as well. A grassroots movement to boycott the RIAA (www.boycott-riaa.com) has been going strong for many years now. Their web site urges music lovers to download songs released by independent artists instead of buying RIAA CDs, in hopes that they can send a message: artists and fans across the country want their music back!

This September, the four college students sued by the RIAA for “facilitating” file swapping settled for amounts of around $15,000.

Meanwhile, the RIAA has stepped-up their reign of fear. On Sept. 8, corporate lawyers announced hundreds, possibly thousands, of pending lawsuits against mostly college-aged students for “loss of profits” due to file sharing. The suit that got the most press was the one filed against a 12-year-old New York girl. And, in the tradition of all good witch hunts, RIAA lawyers have announced “amnesty” for file swappers who sign a written confession, pledge to destroy all their copyrighted digital material, and use a photo ID to notarize their admission of guilt (www.musicunited.org).

The struggle against this blatant capitalist fear mongering is in full swing. Which side are you on?

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Victory at Yale, Hospital next

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 02:06:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN – Even as jubilant members of Locals 34 and 35 at Yale University cheered, sang, and celebrated the best contracts in their history, they vowed to keep up the fight in support of their sisters and brothers in the dietary department of Yale New Haven Hospital. University officials agreed to the major demands of the unions, affiliated with Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE), within six days of a solidarity march of 10,000 union members from the East Coast.

The 140 members of District 1199 went on strike along with the clerical and maintenance workers at the university. While the giant struggle forced Yale to offer strong contracts, accepted nearly unanimously by the 2,500 striking university workers, it did not yet force the hospital administration to change its stance. At a sober meeting early on Sept. 19, the District 1199 members voted to reject a final offer from the hospital that included only merit pay raises and severe cuts in health coverage. They then voted to return to work and continue the struggle for a new contract from the inside. Their last contract expired three years ago.

The Service Employees International Union, parent of New England 1199, immediately launched a national campaign to expose Yale New Haven Hospital’s vicious anti-worker and anti-community practices. In a New York Times ad on Sept. 22 headlined “There’s a sickness at Yale-New Haven Hospital and it’s spreading,” the union announced a new report which details the health system’s practices of suing patients and placing liens on their homes instead of utilizing “free bed funds” for those who cannot afford necessary hospital stays.

On the same day, a press conference in front of the hospital, attended by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Mayor John DeStefano, members of the clergy and local and national union leaders put the Board of Trustees on notice that the struggle will continue until dietary workers achieve parity with university workers and 1,800 additional hospital workers are afforded the unimpeded right to choose union representation.

“We will fight until we get a fair contract no matter what it takes,” Mamie Evans, an original member of 1199 at the hospital, said defiantly as she and her co-workers prepared to go back to work.

“On the picket lines, workers in Locals 34 and 35 at the medical center bonded with dietary workers in 1199,” HERE President John Wilhelm said. “They are our friends, comrades, sisters and brothers. We will not rest until unfinished business is taken care of and justice comes to this medical center.”

The historic contracts won by Locals 34 and 35 include a “revolutionized” pension formula which will increase payments by about 40 percent, along with improved provisions for early retirement. Workers will receive wage increase of three percent to five percent a year, with retroactive paychecks ranging from $1,500 to $6,000. Use of subcontractors will be reduced resulting in new union jobs. A union-university-community committee will be established to increase hiring, training and promotion of Latino and African American workers.

The three-week strike was marked by many marches and rallies involving the entire New Haven community, a sit-in by retirees, participation by Rev. Jesse Jackson, and a walk-out by Latino contract workers who joined the strike, all part of organizing efforts by the Connecticut Center for a New Economy. In Democratic primary elections held the second week of the strike, every candidate who supported the Yale administration over the unions was defeated.

The day before the final negotiations, hundreds of delegates to the Connecticut AFL-CIO convention marched on Yale to join a retirees vigil protesting poverty-level pensions. Following a passionate address by Wilhelm, union after union offered large contributions for the Yale workers’ strike fund. Especially meaningful was a presentation of $5,000 from International Association of Machinists President Thomas Buffenbarger and 48 striking machinists at Standard-Knapp in Portland, Conn., fighting to save their jobs. “We share each others’ pain,” said Buffenbarger.

The contracts won by university workers strengthen the bargaining position of hospital dietary workers and also give a boost to organizing efforts by hospital workers and graduate student teachers. While the university publicly dismisses the mass pressure exerted by the unions and their allies, the unity was critical to achieving decent contracts.

“The eyes of the nation are upon you,” exclaimed a joyous Congresswoman DeLauro, emphasizing that the achievement of improved pensions at a time when they are being dismantled by other employers gives inspiration to workers everywhere to take up the fight. DeLauro and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus had issued a letter condemning Yale’s use of racial divisions during the strike.

The author can be reached at joelle.fishman@pobox.com

Small changes, big benefits

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 01:51:00 +0000

Over the next few months, you may notice some changes taking place on the front page of the People’s Weekly World. They might not seem like much, but they’re helping us improve our circulation.

Last week, we changed the format of the date. Instead of this being the Sept. 27 edition, it’s the Sept. 27-Oct. 3 edition. Many of our distributors had requested this change, and we agreed. By putting the entire week’s dates on every issue of the paper, the “shelf life” of each copy is extended. You don’t need to explain on Tuesday why you’re selling or handing out a paper from three days ago.

We’ll also be adding a bar code to our front page. This will make it possible for the PWW/Mundo to be distributed at stores across the country. For better or worse, the world is run on UPC symbols and codes, and many bookstores and newsstands aren’t able to carry the PWW/Mundo without one.

The PWW/Mundo is also being indexed. Many libraries rely on indices for choosing which publications to carry. An index provides librarians and researchers with a quick reference to the articles printed in a publication. Instead of paging through all 51 of last year’s copies of the PWW to find one article about the longshore negotiations, for example, an index gives you the exact issue number that article appears in.

These changes, along with much other “behind-the-scenes” work, will increase our circulation.

But increasing circulation takes more than just a bar code, and a bar code takes more than ink on paper. It all takes money, especially contributions from our dedicated readers and supporters.

We have to pay for our UPC number and the symbol we’ll be printing. We have to pay for sample copies sent to distributors. Of course, all of these costs are small when compared to the benefit we’ll reap from them.

Your Fund Drive contribution will help us make these changes that are necessary for getting the PWW/Mundo into the hands of more people across the country. You love the PWW/Mundo, and your donation will help others see what they’ve been missing.

The author can be reached at jbarnett@pww.org

Soldiers dad to Bush: Stop playing with lives

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 01:18:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – Larry Syverson, father of two combat soldiers deployed in Iraq, told a National Press Club news conference Sept. 24 that George W. Bush is “playing with my sons’ lives” to secure control of Iraqi oil.

Syverson’s son Branden is attached to the 4th Infantry Division, and Bryce is with the 1st Infantry Division, with no word on when they will come home, Syverson said.

The news conference was convened by Win Without War, one of the nation’s largest antiwar coalitions, which released an open letter to Bush and Congress demanding the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and transfer of authority in Iraq to the United Nations. It says Congress should reject the $87 billion requested by Bush unless these two conditions are met.

The letter has already been signed by 196,000 people through the Moveon.org and Win Without War web sites.

Syverson said he was galvanized by Bush’s July 2 speech in which the commander in chief made his “bring ‘em on” taunt. Since then, the toll of dead GIs has passed 300. “With his bravado statement, President Bush was playing with my sons’ lives,” Syverson charged. “Secretary Rumsfeld’s bad planning has left our troops poorly equipped and vulnerable, the country degenerating into chaos and the Iraqi people embittered and hostile,” Syverson added. “And now Americans are being asked for an additional $87 billion for this quagmire and no exit strategy in sight.”

An environmental scientist for the state of Virginia, Syverson said he pickets the Federal Building in Richmond, Va., several times each week holding a sign with photos of his sons and the message, “Iraqi oil is not worth my sons’ blood.”

As the occupation drags on and the roster of combat dead lengthens, he said, scores of motorists honk and wave in solidarity. “I’m proud of my sons and the honorable service they give to our nation,” he said. “But the leaders they serve have not acted honorably. They have failed them and failed all of us. It is time for them to go, starting with Donald Rumsfeld.”

Syverson was flanked by former Maine Congressman Tom Andrews, who is Win Without War’s national director, and by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Wilson was sent to Niger by Vice President Dick Cheney to check out the authenticity of documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from that African country. Wilson told the World that he reported back that he, as well as the U.S. ambassador to Niger and a Marine Corps general, had examined the documents. All warned the administration they were forgeries. Yet Bush used these forged documents in his State of the Union speech.

“This goes beyond spin to using fundamental inaccuracies to justify a march to war,” Wilson told the World. “Condoleezza Rice appeared on “Meet the Press” and said ‘Somebody in the bowels of the State Department may have known about this but not the White House.’ That was an out and out lie.” Wilson charged that the Bush doctrine of unilateral preemptive war has inflicted a heavy blow to “collective security” that is the only hope for peace.

Andrews called Bush’s speech to the UN General Assembly Sept. 23 “a failed opportunity – for which our soldiers in Iraq will continue to pay the highest price.”

Andrews added, “Instead of taking responsibility for this historic mistake, the president attempted to justify it by saying the United States and its allies ‘acted to defend the peace and the credibility of the United Nations.’”

“You don’t defend the United Nations by violating the will of its members and arrogantly dismissing it as irrelevant,” Andrews said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who also addressed the General Assembly, said Bush’s advocacy of preemptive war “represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last 58 years.”

Speaking after Bush, French President Jacques Chirac said, “The war, launched without the authorization of the Security Council, shook the multilateral system,” and put the United Nations through “one of the most grave crises in its history. … No one can act alone in the name of all.”

Last week, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) called the administration’s case for war against Iraq a “fraud … made up in Texas” to set the stage for the 2004 elections. He also charged that money for the war is being used to “bribe” other countries to send troops.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) labeled Bush’s request for $87 billion for Iraq “fiscal shock and awe.”

A study released Sept. 23 by the House Budget Committee’s Democratic staff said the cost of the Iraq war and occupation could easily reach $417 billion over the next decade.

The authors can be reached atand suewebb@pww.org

Who owns history?

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 06:46:00 +0000

Book review

Who Owns History: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, by Eric Foner, Hill and Wang, 2003, 233 pp., Paperback, $13.00

Eric Foner, a Columbia University professor probably best known for his groundbreaking history of post-Civil War Reconstruction, provides nine speeches, delivered over a span of 20 years, in his most recent book “Who Owns History.”

The book focuses on many different aspects of the historical profession. In the chapter “My Life as a Historian,” Foner tells us about growing up among a family of historians, whose careers were ruined by the anti-communist hysteria of the times, and how family views helped to shape his political and historical perspectives. Foner’s father, Jack D. Foner, and uncle, Philip S. Foner, along with sixty other faculty members of City College of New York were “dismissed” from their teaching positions “after informers named them as members of the Communist Party.”

To highlight how the historical profession has changed over the past 50 years, Foner reminds us that the Communist historian “Herbert Aptheker ... along with black scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois, had begun the process of challenging the prevailing stereotypes about black history,” long before his work on African American history become recognized and respected.

In 1990 Foner taught at Moscow University for four months. The chapter “The Russians Write a New History,” tells us some of Foner’s impressions of the new Russian society. On May 9 he took his daughter to Gorky Park to celebrate one of the U.S.S.R.’s most popular holidays – the anniversary of Germany’s surrender in World War II. “To my surprise,” he wrote, “no young people took part in the celebration. When I asked a student about this, he remarked, ‘My generation has no interest in May 9.” Then Foner added, “The rethinking of history, I realized, has opened a deep fissure between the generations.”

Foner also spoke with a life-long Soviet Communist Party member who said, “I feel my life has been wasted.” Foner comments, “They deeply resent having their ideals, struggles, and accomplishments forgotten or, worse still dismissed.”

Foner is at his best, though, when he writes about African Americans, their struggles, aspirations and achievements. In 1989 Foner was asked to deliver the Herbert Gutman Memorial Lecture at the City University of New York. He spoke on the “long, complex constitutional history of African Americans.”

In that chapter, “Blacks and the U.S. Constitution,” Foner shows how historical perspectives shape and influence modern political dialog and are sometimes used to justify reactionary legislation. According to Foner, conservative Supreme Court judges who argue “original intent,” a “refreshingly naive, almost quaint ... idea that any text, including the Constitution, possesses a single, easily ascertainable, objective meaning,” are using it as a “justification for the undoing” of affirmative action and other democratic gains made through years of struggle.

Foner continues, “differing understandings of ... history continue to play a central part in the debate over civil rights.” Throughout Foner’s study a concern for historical objectivity, and modern political understanding of how history shapes our perspectives is prevalent.

In the Preface to “Who Owns History,” Foner writes, “History always has been and always will be rewritten, in response to new questions, new information, new methodologies, and new political, social, and cultural imperatives.” Then he asks, “Who owns history? Everyone and no one – which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.”

– Tony Pecinovsky (tonypec@pww.org)

The Vanquished: A Puerto Rican novel The Vanquished: A Puerto Rican novel

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 06:41:00 +0000

Book review

The Vanquished, by César Andreu Iglesias, University of North Carolina Press, 2002, 232 pp., Paperback, $19.95

This coming week, on Sept. 23, thousands of Puerto Ricans will converge on the mountain town of Lares to commemorate the 135th anniversary of El Grito de Lares, the site of the failed revolt against Spanish colonialism in 1868. They will also demand an end to 105 years of U.S. colonialism.

This date, celebrating the anti-imperialist struggles of the Puerto Rican nation, has also been one of reflection and evaluation of the Puerto Rican national struggles, both in Puerto Rico and within the United States. This includes the various issues in the approach to the fight for self-determination and the ideological struggles within the independence movement.

The main ideological struggle has always been between those who had a nationalist bourgeois and petty bourgeois approach, and those who held a Marxist working-class approach to the same question. That difference is the underlying dispute in César Andreu Iglesias’ novel Los Derrotados, which was just released in an English translation last year by The University of North Carolina Press as The Vanquished.

Andreu Iglesias served at different times as trade union secretary, chairman and general secretary of the Puerto Rican Communist Party (PCP). He wrote for Pueblo, the PCP newspaper. He was a founder of the Movimiento Pro-Independencia, which later became the Puerto Rican Socialist Party and was founder of its newsweekly, Claridad. Andreu Iglesias founded La Hora, which reflected the views of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. He wrote a weekly column for one of the major dailies. He also worked with and for a number of labor unions, including the Teamsters, National Maritime Union and Puerto Rican independent unions.

While his novel was originally published in 1956, the issues Andreu Iglesias raised are pertinent to the movement for Puerto Rican self-determination and, for other peoples, to understand the Puerto Rican discourse on the issue of the political status of this Caribbean nation.

Andreu Iglesias’ main character, Marcos Vega, is a traveling salesman who spent five years in jail for his activities as a member of the Nationalist Party, led by Pedro Albizu Campos. His father-in-law is a businessman who wants to put Vega in charge of one of the new stores he is opening. The only problem is that he wants Vega to tone down his nationalist politics and opportunistically proclaim support for the up and coming Popular Democratic Party. However, Vega has agreed to take part in an “armed action” against a U.S. general.

Andreu Iglesias contrasts this with the working-class movement through the character of Paco Ramos, a strike leader and brother-in-law of Delia, the Nationalist woman he has fallen in love with.

In the narrative Andreu Iglesias shows, albeit fleetingly, the conditions of the Puerto Rican working class. He also highlights the differences in thinking of the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie (whether nationalist, autonomist or annexationist) during the 1950s, the start of a period of rapid industrialization in Puerto Rico. It is a bourgeosie that is always on the verge of being proletarianized and pauperized, that is forced through the colonial relationship to play second fiddle to U.S. ruling class or rebel against it in desperation, without any idea of how to move the working-class majority. In reading the novel in English, this writer kept making mental footnotes for the non-Puerto Rican reader. It is more obvious to me, after reading it in English (having first read it in Spanish in the 1970s) that Andreu was writing for a Puerto Rican audience.

The translator, Sidney W. Mintz, did not provide any notes, and unless the reader is familiar with Puerto Rican culture and political thought, they will miss many things. This should not deter anyone from reading the novel, however. Having lived and worked in Puerto Rico, Mintz, who did a beautiful translation, is familiar with the Puerto Rican culture and reality.

The dialogue may seem a bit preachy, especially to leftist readers of the novel in English. The truth, however, is that these discussions take place among Puerto Ricans. All discussions on the issues of the day in Puerto Rico eventually reach the point of what political status is the best for resolving them.

I urge the readers of the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo and all progressives to pick up a copy of this book, read it, and learn more about the Puerto Rican nation from a Marxist writer. That will go a long way towards what Jesús Colón wrote about in the sketch, “How to know the Puerto Ricans,” in the book A Puerto Rican in New York: “Before you come to understand a person, to deserve a people’s love, you must know them. You must learn to appreciate their history, their culture, their values, their aspirations for human advancement and freedom.”

– José Cruz (j.a.cruz@comcast.net)

World offers food for thought and waffles, too

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 02:04:00 +0000

Marc Brodine grated apples, chopped walnuts and fried bacon for his famous waffle breakfast. And for the more healthy-minded, he had whole-wheat waffles with sesame and sunflower seeds. Brodine, whose satire columns often grace the PWW’s op-ed pages, hosted, along with his family, a waffle breakfast to raise money towards the newspaper’s $200,000 fund drive. Friends and supporters of the People’s Weekly World/

Nuestro Mundo munched on waffles while listening to Judith Le Blanc, Communist Party vice chairwoman, speak on “Build peace, defeat Bush.” The cozy gathering raised $300.

Three weeks into the launching of the PWW fund drive, supporters have donated a total of $40,853.

Many PWW/Mundo events not only provide food for thought, but revolve around the tried and true, working-class fundraising approach: always make and serve good food.

Readers in Oakland, Calif., will host a “Ribs yes, recall no” house party this week. They will be passing the hat there to raise badly-needed funds for this working class press.

Tim Wheeler, the World’s political correspondent, has been in California covering the fierce battle to defeat the ultra-right power grab there. From the south to the north of the Golden State, labor and community activists voiced their appreciation for the PWW/Mundo.

Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital workers have warmly received the PWW with on-the-spot coverage from Joelle Fishman and Art Perlo. Fishman, who was arrested in last Saturday’s civil disobedience, says many workers see the coverage and distribution of the PWW as part of the strike support effort.

It takes money to put this paper together. It takes money to pay for the distributions at rallies, strikes and marches – all places where working-class people are in motion, in struggle. The $200,000 will defray these circulation and advertising costs.

You can help today by making a $1,000, $500, $100, $50, or $10 donation.

Checks and money orders can be made out to Long View Publishing. Credit cards are accepted – online or over the phone. Go to www.pww.org and click “Support the PWW” or call Jen Barnett at (212) 924-2523 ext. 363 Tuesdays through Friday, from noon to 6 p.m. Eastern time.

10,000 marchers back Yale strikers

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 01:28:00 +0000

New Haven police arrest 100

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Downtown New Haven came to a standstill Sept. 13 as the nation’s labor movement turned out more than 10,000 union members from the Northeast and as far away as Nevada and Florida in support of striking university and hospital workers at Yale University.

The busloads of needle trades workers, carpenters, laborers, steel workers, transit workers, healthcare workers, hotel workers, and students crossed industry lines and geographical boundaries in the cause of equality and workers’ rights.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and four international union presidents set the example by leading over 100 workers in civil disobedience at the end of a spirited march which filled the city streets for nearly a mile. As the workers sat down in a major intersection,

they held hands and faced outward to the crowd.

“We have no choice but to fight,” said one clerical and technical worker who was arrested. Many of the workers had never taken part in such an action before. The demonstration was one of the largest in New Haven’s history.

Picket signs highlighted the $42,000 monthly pension Yale President Richard Levin will receive as compared to $621 for the average union retiree. A quarter of the unionized workers are expected to retire during the life of the next contract.

The labor rally kicked off a national campaign aimed at the 16-member board of the Yale Corporation. Actions are taking place this week in Boston, San Francisco, New York, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati and Edmonton, Canada.

On Sept. 17, the Connecticut AFL-CIO marched from their annual convention to join striking workers and retirees holding a daily vigil at President Levin’s office until decent pensions are won.

National attention has also been focused on the university’s discriminatory hiring practices. Only 3 percent of Yale workers are Latino in a city with 20 percent Latino population. Hiring from the community, training and upgrading is a union demand.

Community leaders and elected officials reacted in outrage when the university brought a group of Latino workers, hired by a janitorial contractor in place of the largely African American striking workers, provocatively across a picket line on Sept. 8.

Following a press conference organized by the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, Rep. Rosa DeLauro and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus issued a public letter to “strongly condemn Yale’s cynical and disrespectful treatment of Hispanic/Latino workers.”

Within two days, 13 Puerto Rican, Mexican and Guatemalan workers walked off the job and joined the union. They reported bigotry and abuse from Yale managers. “The same way we came in the back door, we want to come in the front door,” said Angelica Aponte at an emotional press conference on the New Haven Green. “We want union jobs at Yale, not scab jobs.”

“These are our new sisters and brothers,” proclaimed Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 35 President Bob Proto, welcoming the workers as heroes.

“I am forever proud of Local 35,” said HERE President John Wilhelm at a special picket line vigil and rally on Sept. 11. “You did not stoop to divide and conquer tactics.” Remembering the 105 members of the two striking unions who were killed in that tragedy, Wilhelm said, “It falls to us to honor them by making sure there is justice in America, justice in New Haven and justice on this campus.”

The striking workers are holding firm despite daily propaganda aimed at scaring them to go back to work. Some clerical and technical workers who stayed on the job attended the Saturday labor rally. “I couldn’t go out this time with emergency family bills, but I do not support the university,” said one worker.

Striking clerical and technical workers have had some success at convincing co-workers who did not originally strike to come onto the picket line and join the strike. Large national contributions to the strike fund have made it possible for the union to provide substantial “picket pay” and other aid to forestall evictions, foreclosures or repossessions.

Strikers have also received support from over 100 professors who called on the university to negotiate or submit to binding arbitration, and who are holding 300 classes at off-campus locations including restaurants, churches, community centers and City Hall.

Students from 21 campuses organized by United Students Against Sweatshops participated in the labor rally and march.

National union presidents arrested include HERE President John Wilhelm, Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern, Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees President Bruce Raynor and Carpenters President Douglas McCarron.

The author can be reached at joelle.fishman@pobox.com

This week in sports Trade Regrets?

Fri, 12 Sep 2003 06:48:00 +0000

The Thrill and the AgonyThis week in sports by Chas Walker

Trade Regrets?

The crisp fall air can only mean one thing: it’s football season. So whether you root for the top dogs or the underdogs, get out your large foam hands and get ready for the action. Two of this week’s games were punctuated with irony: players traded to other franchises proved decisive in determining the outcomes of games against their former teammates.

Washington 16

New York Jets 13

The NFL season started off with a bang as D.C. hosted the New York Jets on Aug. 4. Washington’s kicker, John Hall – a former Jet – nailed three field goals, including a 50-yarder to end their first drive, and a 33-yarder with five seconds left on the clock to win the game.

Wide receiver Laveraneus Coles, another former Jet, provided some explosive offense, gaining 106 yards on five catches. Washington quarterback Patrick Ramsey threw well, completing 17 of 23 passes for 185 total yards and one touchdown. Ramsey, not known for his speed, also made a memorable scramble for over 20 yards on Washington’s final fourth-quarter drive, which placed Hall in field position.

The Washington defense held New York’s offense to 158 total yards. And the pain was surely worsened by the success of their former teammates.

Buffalo Bills 31

New England Patriots 0

Drew Bledsoe passed for a total of 230 yards. Lawyer Milloy got a sack, five tackles, and forced an interception. “So how could the Patriots lose?” cry my fellow New Englanders, until they remember: these guys don’t play for us anymore!

The Patriots’ trounced the Bills twice last season (outscoring them 65 to 24), and no one regretted the decision to dump Bledsoe in favor of the younger quarterback Tom Brady. But Bledsoe erased the ghosts of last year by completing 17 of 28 passes, and he lead an 80- and a 90-yard scoring drive, respectively.

The loss of linebacker Milloy less than a week ago sent things over the edge, and it generated some defensive magic for the Bills. Newcomer Takeo Spikes contributed two interceptions and six tackles for the Buffalo defense, and the Patriots were shut out for the first time since 1993.

“From the first play on,” Brady admitted, “it was Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo.”

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

The cultural work has just begun

Fri, 12 Sep 2003 06:40:00 +0000

The Cultural Worker:

The notion of the Cultural Worker, the artist-activist, walking among the ranks of radicals, is an idea that has been well-developed over many years.

During times of strife, revolutionary music, poetry, prose, theater, dance, and visual art seem to develop organically. Each and every movement of a people’s fight for justice has its legacy of art, often outlasting the cultural workers who created it, if not the movement itself. In a perfect world, the radical artform would outlast the need for continued actions in that movement.

So, if people’s movements have always made such great use of its artworks, why then is the cultural worker so often relegated to the role of entertainer, passing point of interest or mere filler?

Even the Industrial Workers of the World, that which came closest to producing a “singing Labor movement,” used their musicians as organizers (or worse, organizing aids), while their speakers stood among the leadership. We may recall Joe Hill as one of the foremost Wobblies, but in his time, Hill’s role was much smaller than one might assume. While his legend had always loomed large, it was most fueled by the 1940 song, “Joe Hill,” a creation of two cultural workers: composer Earl Robinson and lyricist Alfred Hayes. Once again, it falls on the artists to mark our history.

All too often, it is a great challenge to secure a spot for music and/or cultural work among speakers and dignitaries at many events. Next time you see a performer at a rally, fundraiser or some other event, remember that he or she probably got the call just before the event, arrived early to set up, is responsible for an opening set while guests socialize, will be asked to stay to perform a piece or two midway, and may also be asked to close the evening with yet another. And, of course, he or she will rarely, if ever, be paid.

So why do we keep coming back? Gallantly noble or simply insane, we are here to stay. Our calling is from two irresistible forces – art and the movement. We are the product of art beyond art’s sake. So the next time you’re planning such an event, why not give extra consideration to the artists who might make that occasion truly memorable?

The author can be reached at leftmus@aol.com

Whats on your plate?

Fri, 12 Sep 2003 06:33:00 +0000

Book review:

Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto—The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest by Peter Pringle, Simon & Schuster, 356 pp., $25

In Food, Inc., journalist Peter Pringle presents a detailed, balanced and accessible statement of the battles – and many of the issues informing those battles – over genetically modified (GM) foods. While it is a well-written history of the GM food fights, don’t depend on it for understanding whether or not GM foods are needed.

Although foods have been genetically modified since the 19th century, GM foods are those that have been developed using modern molecular genetics and biotechnology. Instead of just crossing two plants to get traits – good and bad – from both, scientists can now extract the DNA from one plant, select a particular gene or set of genes and insert them into the other.

The battle lines are drawn between, on the one side, the giant agribusiness corporations that have developed GM crops and the conservative media and political leaders, and on the other, a potpourri of scientists, small-holder and organic farmers, and environmental and other activists. Early in his book Pringle claims the middle ground, between the special interests for and against GM foods. This attitude allows the author to tell colorful stories in an enlightening way. But it also permits him to avoid very important questions.

While the range of traits that can be newly incorporated into a plant is huge, most contain genes from two bacterial species.

Some of the GM crops contain a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuriengensis (Bt). Bt produces a protein that injures or kills caterpillars that ingest it. The use of Bt genes has led to reduced insecticide spraying, which may be good news for farm workers and the environment. One criticism of the use of Bt is that humans also end up eating the protein and scientists don’t quite know how we react.

Another criticism is that as farmers increasingly use crops with the Bt gene, just as happened in the past with the chemical DDT, insects will evolve resistance to the Bt protein. The agribusinesses have developed strategies they think will prevent such resistance from spreading, but the jury is still out.

The other gene confers resistance to Roundup, an industrial chemical, glyphosate, invented by Monsanto. Glyphosate kills plants and is widely used as a weed killer. The resistance gene does nothing to reduce overall industrial chemicals in the environment or make our food tastier or safer, or improve yields, or improve industrial farm practices. By incorporating the trait into soybeans, Monsanto ensures that farmers who buy Roundup Ready soybeans use fewer other weed killers and more Roundup.

Pringle’s efforts to remain neutral result in his coming to grips with the basic questions that must be asked about GM foods only in the last three pages of his last chapter. His initial conclusion is on the mark: “Big corporations hijacked the technology.”

However, because Pringle focuses on the battles over GM, two critical contexts are not furnished. The first: What does the world’s population need in the way of food, and how can those needs best be satisfied?

Biotechnology offers the promise for producing more food, producing more food on marginally fertile lands, producing individual food items that are more nutritious, producing crops that require fewer industrial chemical inputs – at least as compared with a future of simply expanding conventional industrial agricultural practices. So far GM has failed to produce.

Pringle offers a whole chapter on Ingo Potrykus and his technical “fix” to a serious nutritional deficiency suffered mainly in Asia. Potrykus invented golden rice, a GM variety containing vitamin A. Critics say a simpler solution is to give the malnourished vitamin A pills or encourage them to grow vegetables containing the vitamin. Potrykus is now engineering golden rice to have higher iron to prevent anemia (a serious disease in much of the world), zinc and more protein. Is that what we want for ourselves and others – fewer kinds of food that satisfy all of our nutritional needs? Agriculture should be working to supply ample nutrition to all through variety, not monotony.

Also largely missing are the economic and ecological consequences of the concentrated control of the global farm and food economy now in only a handful of private mega-corporations and giant farms. The poverty of those who work the farms and harvest our food in the U.S. is missing.

Pringle is also right by blaming both the companies for misleading the public and also many of the activists for avoiding scientific discussion in favor of “scaremongering.” He is right that subsidies have been “rigged in favor of rich countries” and, we should add, in favor of the rich within those countries. Farmers who can’t afford the expensive GM seeds are left behind or put out of business.

GM foods may prove invaluable to put food on our tables in the future. With agribusiness behind the tractor, however, we’re in for a rough ride.

– Chester Steorra (pww@pww.org)

Uncovering the real Arnold Schwarzenegger

Fri, 12 Sep 2003 02:18:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. – Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was a “no show” Sept. 3 when California Gov. Gray Davis and five candidates for governor explained their positions on a wide range of issues in the first debate of the Oct. 7 recall election.

Schwarzenegger’s Hoover Institution handlers are exploiting the Hollywood actor’s “star power” while keeping his positions on issues under tight wraps.

Schwarzenegger paid a price for his absence. “Arnold’s decision to avoid debating and answering questions insults all Californians,” said Phillip Muller of the non-partisan California Voter Project. “Is it because he has something to hide or simply because he doesn’t have any answers for the problems facing California?”

While Arnold continues to draw crowds, the truth is beginning to slip out. Women picketed his campaign headquarters in posh Santa Monica last week holding banners that proclaimed, “Terminate the Barbarian” and “Governor Gang Bang.” They were protesting Schwarzenegger’s 1977 interview in Oui magazine. He boasted of engaging in group sex with a woman at a Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach. As recently as July, he told an Esquire interviewer that a blond woman can be “as smart as her breasts look, great as her face looks, beautiful as her whole body.” Code Pink spokesperson Karen Pomer told reporters that Schwarzenegger “owes an apology to women he has abused.”

African American body-builder Robby Robinson, a former Mr. Universe, has charged that during a banquet in San Jose following the Russ Warner Classic body building contest, Schwarzenegger came in late and began shouting racist epithets, including the “n-word” at him. Another Black body-builder, Rick Wayne, confirms that Schwarzenegger hurled the “n-word” at him as well.

Then there is Wendy Leigh’s book, Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography. She reports that Schwarzenegger’s father, Gustav, was a Nazi Brown Shirt, a police chief, and an admirer of fellow Austrian, Adolph Hitler. The sins of the father should not be visited on the son. But why have Hollywood agents insisted that journalists seeking interviews sign an agreement not to ask Schwarzenegger about Leigh’s book?

And why did Schwarzenegger invite former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim who was implicated in Nazi war crimes to his wedding? The actor was so moved by a gift that Waldheim sent that he offered a toast: “My friends don’t want me to mention Kurt’s name because of all the recent Nazi stuff,” Schwarzenegger said. “But I love him. … So thank you, Kurt.”

Schwarzenegger made his millions in a string of films in which he “terminated” a sum total of 300 people, according to critics of Hollywood’s gratuitous violence and sex. “Hasta la vista, Baby,” he snarls as he blows people away. Now Schwarzenegger T-shirts are for sale sporting Schwarzenegger in dark glasses and the message, “Hasta la vista, Davis.”

Leigh quotes the body-builder: “I wanted to be part of the small percentage of people who were leaders, not the large mass of followers. … I was always fascinated by people in control of other people.”

Schwarzenegger repeated a similar line when asked about his acceptance of contributions from wealthy corporate executives even as he denounced contributions to his Democratic rivals. “I will never take money from the special interests, from Indian gaming, from unions,” he told reporters on Labor Day. Later he added, “I get donations from business and individuals, absolutely, because they’re powerful interests who control things.” So far, Schwarzenegger reports $6.3 million in contributions from wealthy agribusiness, real estate developers, and Hollywood circles.

Schwarzenegger is an immigrant yet he voted for the racist Proposition 187 that would have denied undocumented immigrant children the right to attend public schools or receive public assistance benefits. Gov. Davis and the courts blocked its enforcement. Schwarzenegger came out against a bill just signed by Davis granting undocumented workers the right to obtain driver’s licenses.

For 15 years Schwarzenegger has served on the advisory board of U.S. English, a group that campaigns against bilingual programs. The Southern Poverty Law Center has revealed that U.S. English co-founder John Tanton funded 13 “hate groups” and is tied to the Council of Conservative Citizens once known as the White Citizens Council. Tanton delivered a speech a few years back in which he said, “As whites see their power and control … declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”

The Republicans have been grooming Schwarzenegger for the California governorship for years. He served as chairman of the President’s Council on Fitness in the first Bush administration. He is a close friend of the Bush family.

The Republicans have toiled to airbrush his violent on-screen image. He was cast as a kind-hearted L.A. detective in “Kindergarten Cop” and as Danny DeVito’s brother in the comedy, “Twins.” He put his name on Prop. 49 the “After School Education and Safety Act.”

Like Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” this proposition was opposed by the League of Women Voters and California teachers’ unions on grounds that it would “rob Peter to pay Paul,” slashing funding for existing programs that benefit children.

Schwarzenegger flew to Washington and visited the White House last April 10. He met with Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s chief political strategist. A White House spokesman said that Schwarzenegger “dropped by to talk about an after-school program … and to see what he could do to support U.S. troops overseas.” When reporters asked about the meeting, Rove said with a straight face, “politics were not discussed.”

Rove flew to California just before the recall was certified for the ballot. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Rove met at the Bohemian Grove with “the Republican hierarchy, especially those close to former Gov. Pete Wilson” and signaled that the White House “would favor Schwarzenegger.” Within hours, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) who had poured nearly $3 million of his own car alarm fortune into the recall, tearfully announced he would not seek the governorship.

Ever since, Rove and other GOP power brokers have been pressuring the other Republican candidates to remove themselves from the recall race. Bill Simon soon withdrew, as did Peter Ueberroth. The heat is now on Sen. Tom McClintock to step aside to avoid splitting the GOP vote.

In announcing his candidacy on the Jay Leno show, Schwarzenegger loudly proclaimed himself an outsider free from the “political class.” If you can’t get things done, he exclaimed, “Hasta la vista, Baby.” Yet he quickly named billionaire Warren Buffett and former Secretary of State George Shultz of the Bechtel Corp. (one of the no-bid Iraq contractors) to head his Economic Recovery Council.

Then he named the despised former Gov. Pete Wilson to direct his campaign. The California AFL-CIO responded by releasing a leaflet with a graphic of Wilson’s head grafted on Schwarzenegger in his “Terminator” role.

“I’m back,” the leaflet reads. “My old staff and I are running the Schwarzenegger campaign. When I was governor, I almost terminated prevailing wages. … I did terminate daily overtime pay. … This time, I’ll finish the job. Hasta la vista, unions!”

Wilson is loathed for ramming through Prop. 187, stripping hardworking, taxpaying, immigrants of public assistance. Wilson rammed through and signed the law deregulating the state’s energy market. It opened the door for Enron, Reliant, and Houston-based El Paso Natural Gas to create a phony “energy shortage” in 2001 with rolling brownouts across the state. Even the Bush-dominated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) admitted that these energy traders “gamed” the California energy market, forcing ruinous contracts on beleaguered ratepayers. Yet FERC refused to nullify those contracts and now the Bush-Cheney gang is blaming Davis for the crisis they created.

While the lights were dimming, Enron CEO Ken Lay, summoned top Republicans to a secret meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, May 11, 2001. Among them was Arnold Schwarzenegger, convicted junk-bond dealer Michael Milken, and L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. Reporter Jason Leopold who covered the California energy crisis for Dow Jones News Wire writes that Lay “handed out a four-page document to Schwarzenegger, Riordan and Milken titled ‘Comprehensive Solution for California’ which called for an end to federal and state investigations into Enron’s role in the California energy crisis and said consumers should pay for the state’s disastrous experiment with deregulation through multi-billion rate increases.”

On his official website, Schwarzenegger vows, “I will address high energy costs. California has the highest commercial and industrial electricity rates in the nation. Therefore I will renegotiate the energy contracts ….”

But why only “commercial and industrial” rates? Will Schwarzenegger deliver on promises he made to Lay and shift ruinous electricity rates even more to hard pressed working families?

Schwarzenegger convened a news conference Sept. 7 to announce that the California Chamber of Commerce has endorsed him. The agribusiness Western Growers Association has also endorsed him. He promised to fix California’s Worker’s Compensation system and limit the number of times people can visit doctors. “We have medical bills that are just gigantic,” he said. “People go twice as many times to doctors. … There’s a lot of fraud there.”

For a time it seemed the recall would pass easily and Schwarzenegger would waltz into the governor’s mansion with a plurality as low as 15 percent of the vote cast for the 135 candidates.

Now that is looking more doubtful. A front page headline in the Sept. 7 Oakland Tribune reads, “Davis’ ouster may not be a sure thing.” The subhead reads, “Governor’s future looking brighter as opposition stumbles.” The article cites widespread disgust at the “circus” atmosphere and the deepening splits among recall candidates, notably the hostility between the rabid GOP Sen. McClintock and the Schwarzenegger camp. A Field poll released Sept. 9 reports that support for recall has dropped from 58 percent to 55 percent and opposition to recall has risen from 37 percent to 40 percent.

Central to the shift is the labor-led alliance that is campaigning tirelessly against the recall and against the racist Prop. 54 “Racial Privacy Act.” Davis hammers out a warning: “This recall is bigger than California. It started with the impeachment of President Clinton. … It continued in Florida where they stopped the vote count. … This year they’re trying to steal additional Congressional seats in Colorado and Texas. … Now they’re trying to use this recall to seize control of California just before the next presidential election.”

This reporter spoke with Eliseo Medina, international vice president of the Service Employees International Union, moments after 600 leaders of the AFL-CIO voted unanimously to fight the recall and oppose Prop. 54 at a special convention in Los Angeles, Aug. 26. They also voted to call for a “yes” vote for Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on the second part of the ballot.

“It is important that we are all together,” Medina said, “whether we are public employee unions, service unions, industrial unions, or the building trades. This recall fight is not just about one election. It’s a question of the direction of the state and the nation. We’ve come too far to go back now. Look at who is behind Schwarzenegger: Pete Wilson and his gang! They are anti-worker, anti-immigrant. They are trying to take a free shot at the biggest state in the union. I absolutely believe that the White House is behind this. It is up to us to mobilize to stop it.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Chile conmemora 30 aniversario golpe

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 03:38:00 +0000

Los chilenos están conmemorando el 30 aniversario del golpe fascista y la muerte del presidente Salvador Allende con diversos actos. Las actividades empezaron el 31 de agosto y culminan el 12 de septiembre y son organizado por el Comité Iniciativa 30 Años.

Allende fue el primer socialista en ganar el puesto de primer mandatario de un país a través de la vía pacífica en el 1970. Su gobierno, una coalición de izquierda llamada Unidad Popular, duró hasta el 11 de septiembre 1973 cuando fue derrotado por los militares encabezado por el general Agusto Pinochet.

Los actos de conmemoración empezó con el Almuerzo Aniversario de El Siglo titulado Homenaje a los Testigos de la Historia, donde le brindaron honor a los militantes de partidos de izquierda e independientes que lucharon y contribuyeron a la victoria del gobierno de Unidad Popular y a la lucha de los trabajadores. El Siglo es el semanario del Partido Comunista de Chile.

Entre las actividades habrán exposiciones de pinturas, fotografías, y esculturas. También habrá una exposición de material impreso de la época – “Afiches, Volantes, Periódicos 70 – 73 / 73 – 90” y de películas y documentales del mismo tiempo.

El 7 de septiembre será dedicado a un seminario sobre “Las Alternativas y la Perspectiva Socialista en América Latina” y una fiesta cultural, además de actos en las diferentes poblaciones con delegados del extranjero. Los dos días siguientes Los próximos tres días son dedicado a exposiciones y testimonios en torno al proceso de la Unidad Popular.

El mismo 11 de septiembre, aniversario del golpe y el asesinato del presidente Allende, que murió combatiendo a los golpistas, habrá una gran marcha y manifestación, donde se realizará un acto político cultural.

El último día se celebra el Acto Víctor Jara en el actual Estadio Chile. Ese día es estado se le dará el nombre oficial de Estadio Víctor Jara. Ese estadio es donde los golpistas encerraron a los capturados durante el golpe. Jara, un cantante y comunista, estaban entre ellos. Según reportes, Jara usaba su guitarra y voz para animar a los presos con cantos revolucionarios. Como castigo los militares le rompieron las manos y después lo mataron.

Otras actividades se está celebrando en un campamento juvenil desde el 4 al 11 de septiembre. Delegaciones de otros países y de Chile tomarán parte en estas.

September in History

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 03:30:00 +0000

Sept. 1, 1903 – Over 30,000 women from 26 trades march in the Chicago Labor Day Parade.

Sept. 2, 1921 – Battle of Blair Mountain, W.Va.: 10,000 striking union miners fight against coal operators for recognition of UMWA. At governor’s request, federal troops are sent in, killing 16 miners.

Sept 1, 1919 – Communist Party USA founded in Chicago.

Sept 4, 1949 – Audience of 25,000 hears African American peace and civil rights activist Paul Robeson sing in outdoor concert in Peekskill, N.Y., after earlier concert was prevented by racist mob.

Sept. 5, 1882 – First Labor Day parade held in New York City.

Sept. 8, 1965 – United Farm Workers begin successful five-year grape strike and boycott in Salinas, Calif.

Sept. 11, 1973 – Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government in Chile overthrown by bloody CIA-backed coup.

Sept. 14, 1929 – Ella Mae Wiggins, union organizer, songwriter and folk singer, killed in Gastonia, N.C., textile workers strike.

Sept. 15, 1963 – Four young Black girls killed in infamous Birmingham, Ala., church bombing.

Sept. 16, 1969 – On Mexican Independence Day, Rosalio Munoz refuses induction into army; action initiated draft resistance and antiwar movement among Mexican Americans.

Sept. 17, 1787 – U.S. Constitution ratified by Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia after struggle for Bill of Rights.

Sept. 19, 1981 – Solidarity Day demonstration in Washington, D.C.: 500,000 workers protest Reagan’s economic policies.

Sept. 22, 1862 – President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in the Confederacy as of Jan. 1, 1863.

Sept. 22, 1919 – The Great Steel Strike: over 365,000 workers strike for the right to organize and for shorter hours, the first general strike in the steel industry. Led by William Z. Foster, an organizer of the American Federation of Labor and later chairman of the Communist Party USA.

Sept. 23, 1868 – Proclamation of Republic of Puerto Rico: El Grito de Lares.

Sept. 28, 1864 – The International Workingmen’s Association, the First International, is founded in London by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Sept. 30, 1994 – Flint, Mich.: 11,000 striking UAW workers win fight against speedup at General Motors.

Hes a deceiver

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 03:28:00 +0000

This parody tracks The Monkees’ seminal 1967 arrangement of the song “I’m a Believer,” right up to the fade … Sing along!

They said Bush was only spinning fairy tales

Made to terrorize both you and me

Saddam was out to get me (doo doo doo do)

That’s the way it seems (di doo doo doo do)

Selling nukes to Osama in my dreams

Then I saw his face, yeah he’s a deceiver

Not a trace of truth in his eyes

Is he on drugs? (Mmmmmm … Noooo …)

He’s a deceiver and a believer in his lies

I thought trust was more or less a giving thing

Seems the more we gave the less we got

We all know he’s lying (doo doo doo do)

Georgie’s looking strange (di doo doo doo do)

Tied his tongue so much it’s tied his brain

Then I saw his face, yeah he’s a deceiver

Not a trace of truth in his eyes

Is he on drugs? (Mmmmmm … Noooo …)

He’s a deceiver and a believer in his lies

(Cheesy Solo)

Saddam was out to get me (doo doo doo do)

That’s the way it seems (di doo doo doo do)

In bed with al Queda in my dreams

Then I saw his face, yeah he’s a deceiver

Not a trace of truth in his eyes

Is he on drugs? (Mmmmmm … Noooo …)

He’s a deceiver and a be-liever in his lies

Yes I saw his face, and he’s a deceiver

Not a trace of truth in his eyes

Well, he’s a deceiver yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

yeeeaaaahhhhh

He’s a deceiver

Yeah he’s deceiver yeah (he’s a deceiver)

Yeah he’s a deceiver yeah (he’s a deceiver) …

Music reviews: Four CDs from around the world

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 03:26:00 +0000

Natural, Celso Fonseca (Six Degrees)

This release establishes Celso Fonseca as one of Brazil’s up and coming Bossa Nova stars. His compositions are elegant, graceful and sensual, ranging from cool bossas like “Bom Sinal” and “The Night We called it a Day” to upbeat insturmentals like “consolacao.” His rendition of “Ela e carioca” also stands out.

Asian Underground, Various Artists (Music Rough Guide)

This CD takes us on an exotic journey through the contemporary East Indian music scene in Britain. Beginning in the 1980s, Indians living in the United Kingdom began to mix western electronica with classical Indian music, creating a new musical genre. Never able to achieve long-lasting commercial success, these musical pioneers – aided by BBC radio play – nevertheless established a foothold in the British music scene.

While devoid of shrill Bollywood vocals, Asian underground is artfully suffused with Indian sitar, drums, flute, Hindi sound bites and technopop. The music is largely instrumental, but there are some beautiful vocal compositions such as “Fundamental,” “Debris” and “Out of Place.”

Suite for New York, D.D. Jackson (Justin Time)

D.D. Jackson’s effort at jazz fusion paying homage to New York City is an unremarkable effort. While there are flashes of brilliance such as “BQE” and “El Barrio,” this release veers towards dullness.

IF, Myriam Alter (Justin Time)

Jazz pianist Myriam Alter decided to stand this one out and instead directed a group of musicians to perform her compositions. What resulted is a tango flavoured jazz CD that is original and lush. The harmonic movements and instrumental techniques are symmetrical and flawless. In particular, Dino Saluzzi’s bandeoneon and John Ruocco’s clarinet work shines. With IF, Alter has left her indelible mark on jazz.

Film review: Balseros reveals complexities of Cuban emigration

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 03:24:00 +0000

Carlos Bosch and Josep Maria Domenech are Spanish television journalists who were assigned by Barcelona’s public television to cover the 1994 exodus of Cubans to the U.S. The film that resulted, Balseros, Spanish for “rafters,” has won major awards at both the Miami and Havana film festivals.

The movie provides filmgoers with an insight into the reasons why some people left Cuba during that difficult period. The number of those who left Cuba is estimated to be between 20,000 to 50,000; how many of those made it to the U.S., returned to Cuba or died at sea is not known. Five years later the film crew visits them again, to see how they fared.

In a National Public Radio interview, Bosch revealed his approach to his television documentary. The interviewer suggested that the exodus, which was eventually made legal by the Cuban government, was evidence of the failure of the Cuban system. Bosch was quick to disagree. He said that his observation was that they left for economic reasons, i.e., because of the collapse of the world socialist economic system and the U.S. blockade.

Not fully explored in the film was the turnaround of Cuba’s economic system. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba was an active partner in the political economy of the socialist world. It was an international socialist economic system that, with its flaws, helped in the construction of socialism around the world.

The film contributes to a better understanding of this important historical period by focusing on the dramatic story of real people in this 40-year history of struggle against U.S. imperialism. Bosch, the senior filmmaker, clearly understands this crisis and in the objectivity of the film, the reality of what precipitated the crisis is clear.

Without the film being openly pro-Cuba, by just describing the people’s economically harsh conditions and where they came from, Bosch and Domenech draw a creative parallel to the lives they encountered in the U.S.

In the mid-1990s, an emigration agreement was reached by Cuba and the United States. But, while the Cuban government upheld its end of the bargain, U.S. anti-Cuban right-wingers were able to scuttle most of the U.S. side of the deal. Under the agreement, the U.S. was to provide visas for up to 20,000 Cubans each year. For the first half of 2003, however, the U.S. has issued only 2,200 visas.

The filmmakers gained the confidence of the émigrés and carefully and sensitively followed some key characters. They were able to portray their harsh everyday existence in Hartford, Conn., San Antonio, Texas, the Bronx, New York, and New Mexico. The filmmakers intersperse clips of the families in Cuba watching films of their loved ones in the U.S.

There is so much to this film that writing a review that gives it justice is next to impossible. The film ran for less than a week in New York City. Bosch has reported that HBO has shown interest in showing it this fall. Film enthusiasts in all parts of the U.S. should contact their public television stations and request that it be aired.

We can only hope that Bosch and Domenech return in a few years to catch up with the cast of characters they followed in the U.S. and Havana. This kind of honest, open depiction of real life in socialist Cuba and the U.S. are a valuable tool.

The authors can be reached at

Thou shalt not ignore the First Amendment

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 03:22:00 +0000

I’m not a particularly religious person. Though many in my family are Catholic, I’m happy to identify myself as agnostic. But I do know about the Ten Commandments. Blame TV for showing Cecil B. DeMille’s epic every Easter, I guess.

Every year, I see Charlton Heston, now the National Rifle Association’s poster boy, hoisting up those two stone tablets. But this year, I don’t have to wait until spring to see those famed words from the Old Testament, the foundation for the Torah, the Bible and the Quran. No – this year, thanks to Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, I’m getting my fill of the Ten Commandments.

When I got married at New York City Hall a few weeks ago, the separation of church and state was almost humorously clear. A fake stained glass window in the little chapel was clearly developed to be non-sectarian – two interlocked gold rings and a dove (although, being New York, it might’ve been a pigeon).

Not the case in Alabama during the past few years. In 2001, Justice Moore “snuck in” a two-ton chunk of stone with those famous two tablets carved on top. So any couples seeking a simple non-religious wedding first had to pass by this massive display of Judeo-Christian behavior rules.

When a federal court ruled that the monument had to be removed, protesters flocked from around the country to camp out on the courthouse steps in support of Moore’s choice of statuary. Those supporters and the lawyers representing Moore all had the same basic argument. They all say that the concept of separation of church and state is a false interpretation of the Bill of Rights, that the founding fathers were Christian men, and that an acknowledgement of “the almighty God” is completely appropriate, just like in the Pledge of Allegiance. Some of them even point out that the Ten Commandments can be found in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, so it’s not a Christians-against-the-rest type of thing.

On that last one, I agree, the Ten Commandments isn’t just Christian. However, its display on government property slights the many, many other religions besides the Big Three, and those who have no religious affiliation. It sends the message that if this isn’t the background you walk in there with, it’s going to be the code you’re judged by anyway.

Which is fine on the big ones like “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal.” That’s a pretty universal moral agreement. Honor elders – everyone agrees with that unless you run an HMO or are a Medicare privatization lobbyist. No adultery – good. No lying – good.

But, keeping Sabbath, no other God, no “graven images” – those are the ones that get a little sticky. In the current climate, with hate crimes being committed by individuals and governments against anybody who might possibly be Muslim, and with a history of houses of worship being bombed and torched in this country, should the courts be enforcing rules of a particular religion, or of any? Do we want to have a state-endorsed religion, given preference over any others?

The battle continues. U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan assure the public that every single religious faction will be respected in the formation of new governments, but that principle isn’t being upheld by Alabama Attorney General and Bush federal court nominee Bill Pryor, who says that the Ten Commandments will “save our nation.” Now removed from sight in Alabama, the Ten Commandments granite has already been offered a home in the statehouse of neighboring Mississippi.

The case of this washing-machine-sized piece of stone, locally dubbed “Roy’s Rock,” will likely make its way to Washington, along with the hundreds or even thousands of similar, though smaller, carvings in government buildings around the country. (As it turns out, many of these, though not Moore’s rock, were marketing gimmick giveaways to promote DeMille’s movie.)

The U.S. Supreme Court has avoided taking up any of the Ten Commandments cases that have been presented to it since a 1981 decision overturning a Kentucky law requiring the display of those religious rules in every classroom. But it seems that avoidance may come to an end, with politics and emotions over the issue hitting a fever pitch.

With the current Court, it’s hard to say which way the rock will crumble. However, if the altar boy in the White House is given the chance to fill a vacated seat, it’s possible we’ll be seeing more and more rocks like Roy’s.

Jen Barnett is circulation and marketing manager of the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo. She can be reached at jbarnett@pww.org