People Before Profit blog

Festival profile: The Clement Payne Movement of Barbados

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 07:15:00 +0000

David Denny is the director of international relations for the Clement Payne Movement (CPM) of Barbados, a small island nation in the Caribbean. “Our organization is named after Clement Payne, one of the national heroes of Barbados, a respected leader of the labor and political movements of our country,” Denny said.

Payne was sent to Barbados, land of his birth, by Marcus Garvey to help the movement for independence from British colonialism. The popular leader’s activities got him deported, which launched the July 26 revolt on the island. This was the beginning of winning independence for Barbados.

Today, the CPM celebrates their namesake at a monument to his memory on July 26. July 26 is also the date of the 1955 attack on Moncada barracks by Fidel Castro and others in Cuba. For this reason, CPM uses this date to also commemorate the Barbadian victims who died on the 1976 Cubana Airlines flight from their island that was bombed by the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. There is a close relationship between the Cuban and Barbadian people.

CPM is involved in many political campaigns including opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement and other neo-liberal economic policies. CPM has an affiliated youth organization, women’s federation and trade union movement.

“We are against the Caribbean Single Market Economy,” said Denny. “Though we do support integration that is genuine, not one that is designed to prepare the English-speaking Caribbean for FTAA.”

The main issues facing young people today is Barbados are privatization of public education, massive unemployment and the undermining of the right to organize. “Brain drain” also has big impact on the island. “Barbados is losing a lot of nurses and teachers in particular to the U.S.” because of the lack of jobs and livable wages.

They are also organizing around many other issues of international solidarity including the demand for the return of the democratically elected President Aristide to Haiti.

CPM also supports the Bolivarian Revolution developing in Venezuela. “We have a campaign against our government for refusing to sign the Petro-Caribbean agreement with Venezuela and other countries in the region.”

The organization’s members are in discussion about becoming a political party with a “socialist orientation.”

The Barbadian delegation to the 16th World Festival of Youth & Students is the largest ever with 76 delegates from CPM and other groups. “The Festival has created the conditions for organizing students to come to Venezuela and see for themselves the political developments here,” said Denny. “The Festival is creating the conditions for a Caribbean-wide alliance of progressive youth.”

If only one persons eyes are opened, its worth it

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:29:00 +0000

The following interviews and photos were obtained by Mark Almberg on Sept. 23 in Chicago as antiwar demonstrators waited to load up buses outside the Art Institute.

I don’t believe in what we’re doing over there. The money we’ve spent there could have been spent fixing the levees in New Orleans.

Several of my best friends have been sent to Iraq. One of them considered suicide while he was over there, the situation is so bad. He was sent to Germany to get help.

I hope this march increases people’s awareness. I was asked by an ROTC guy on campus about what good it will do. I told him that if it opens just one set of eyes, if it raises just one’s person’s awareness, it will have been worth it.

— Heiden, 21, is a senior at Western Illinois University from Somonauk, Ill.

I’m going to Washington to protest the war and the Bush administration. We should not be in Iraq. We should be taking care of people here at home first. We have no business being there. I think we’re there to put a strong hold on the oil.

Too many lives have been lost. Our being there is the cause of the problem. It will be tough to pull out but we have to do what’s right for the people of the U.S., too.

I hope some of our elected officials will look out their windows and see my sign.

— Lucious, 24, is a sophomore at Purdue University from Portage, Ind., who was heading for her first demonstration in Washington.

I have several friends in the services and I’ve heard from them off and on. They say they’re miserable, they don’t want to be there, they want to see their family. They say, “I didn’t join for this. I just wanted to get an education.”

— Ortega, 22, is a senior at Purdue from Schererville, Ind.

I’m just against the war. We’re losing troops, were’ losing family and it’s just not right.

— James Jones III, 19, is a sophomore at Purdue from Gary, Ind.

It’s time for the lies to stop. The American people are realizing that we can’t wait any longer to put a stop to this. I’m a veteran, and people who say you can’t be antiwar and still support the troops are wrong. You can oppose the war, and you should, since it’s for an unjust cause.

I spent six months in the Navy, with two deployments in the Gulf. I’ve seen a lot.

I hope this march will have an impact. All the senators and congresspeople should know that the people aren’t going to take the lies any more. Almost every day new allegations of wrongdoing by leading Republicans turn up. If we can stop them in the 2006 elections it will be a big step forward.

— Swanson, 28, is a sophomore at Purdue from Portage, Ind.

CPUSA in thick of antiwar actions

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:26:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — The Communist Party USA played an important role in the Sept. 24 demonstration against Bush’s Iraq war, bringing its own members and mobilizing others to come, as well as forming a large contingent in the march.

“We had a wonderful delegation in Washington,” said Sam Webb, CPUSA national chair. “We joined with hundreds of thousands of others in calling for ending the occupation, bringing the troops home and rebuilding our country.”

On Sept. 26, 11 members and friends of the Communist Party were arrested in a planned act of civil disobedience to protest the war in front of the White House, along with more than 350 others, including Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan. The protesters began attaching the names of Iraqi and U.S. war victims to the fence in front of the White House when police ordered them to disperse. When they refused, the police made mass arrests. Those arrested were issued tickets and later released.

Still other party activists participated in visits to congresspeople on the same day to lobby for a speedy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

The CPUSA has been involved in all of the major antiwar demonstrations. This time the party organized itself to have an even greater public presence in the actions.

In New York City, for the first time in years, the party organized its own bus. With the party still maintaining a focus on working with other organizations, and therefore a large percentage of its membership traveling on buses organized under the banners of other groups. As it turned out, one bus was not enough.

“We had to turn people away,” said Gabe Falsetta, who helped organize the New York bus. “The phone kept ringing, and I had to tell so many people there was no more room. It’s too bad we didn’t have two or three buses.” The ages of people on the bus ranged from 15 to 89.

Besides the bus, the CPUSA organized a contingent that marched behind a huge red banner reading, “U.S. Out of Iraq! Rebuild America! No Money for War!” The diverse, multiracial contingent was made up of hundreds of members and friends, some of whom came from far away, carrying signs and American flags.

“I feel great!” said Matt Parker of Dallas. “This is my first national march to come to, and it’s really a positive and inspiring thing to see all these Communists united here behind our banner. I think people will notice and it might undo some of the stereotypes that have damaged our reputation. It’s a real positive effort.”

The CPUSA and the Young Communist League had tables at the event, and both received warm responses. In addition, party members and supporters of the People’s Weekly World distributed nearly 10,000 sample issues of the newspaper to those attending the actions.

Why no talk of impeachment?

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:24:00 +0000

The following comments were gathered in Washington a few days before the march by PWW reporter Lawrence Albright:

I’m here because I wanted to show my support for ending the war. I think it is criminal how this administration took anger about 9/11 and turned it into justification for invading Iraq. Thousands died on 9/11, and more are dying in Iraq. It is nothing more than blood lust.

— Sharri Chertoff from Indianapolis, Ind.

Clinton lied about sex and they tried to impeach him. Look at what President Bush has lied about. Why is no one talking about impeaching him?

— Chad Underwood from Washington.

The man [Bush] fights a war the way he runs emergency efforts in New Orleans — with callous ineptitude.

— Jim, from Virginia.

My mother and father marched to end the war in Vietnam. I used to think there was a lot that separated us. But now, I think I understand them better.

— Steve Weinberg from Milwaukee.

Bush orders evacuation of Cindy Sheehan

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:23:00 +0000

FEMA dispatches bus to Washington for antiwar mom

Saying that “severe weather conditions could strike at any moment,” President George W. Bush today ordered the immediate evacuation of antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan from the front lawn of the White House.

The president, who had been monitoring Hurricane Rita from the U.S. Northern Command headquarters in Colorado, said that he was flying back to Washington, D.C., “immediately” to take a hands-on role in the evacuation of Sheehan.

“We have learned from Katrina and Rita that early evacuation is the best policy,” Bush said. “Therefore, I want Cindy Sheehan on a bus out of Washington as soon as possible.”

Following the president’s directive, the Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched a bus to Washington for the sole purpose of evacuating Sheehan.

But the antiwar mom, who participated in protests over the weekend with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other antiwar activists, said she was “puzzled” by the president’s evacuation order since “the weather here is fine.”

“We were protesting all weekend and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” she said. “Plus, I checked the Weather Channel and they said it’s going to be nice all week.”

According to the latest report from the National Weather Service, there is a 10 percent chance of precipitation in Washington and a zero percent chance that President Bush will ever talk to Cindy Sheehan.

Elsewhere, recovering from aneurysm surgery on his knees, Vice President Dick Cheney said that repair work on his knees would be done by the Halliburton Company at a cost of $12.8 billion.

Andy Borowitz writes a daily humor column at borowitzreport.com.

Maine activists protest Blue Angels show

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:20:00 +0000

BRUNSWICK, Maine — The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels aviation team roars across the nation, year after year, from crowd to crowd, titillating families and the public with acrobatics in the sky. This year, the “Great State of Maine Air Show” expanded its draw.

Some 350 antiwar activists, including the prominent peace activist Kathy Kelly, were on hand Sept. 10 at the main gate of the Brunswick Naval Air Station to protest the Iraq war and militarism. They joined an estimated 150,000 people who watched the two-day event from inside the base.

Maine Veterans for Peace, supported by a dozen or so other peace groups, organized a two-mile march from downtown Brunswick out to the naval air base. The marchers carried colorful banners, signs, puppets or paper doves with wings that flapped. At the main gate of the naval base, they joined 30 people who spent the night there on a vigil.

At the head of the march were white banners that depicted coffins, each one labeled with the name of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. Several large flowing banners said, “Real angels do not drop bombs.” The statewide mainstream media gave the demonstration wide coverage.

Doug Rawlings, president of Veterans for Peace, welcomed the gathering.

Dexter Kamilewicz of Orrs Island, Maine, told about his son Ben who is serving in Iraq with the Vermont National Guard. Ben’s parents shudder when he tells them about 12-20 hour days, house-to-house searches in Ramadi and narrow escapes from death. Some of Ben’s comrades are now serving their second and third tours of duty in Iraq. Their National Guard vehicles have scant armor and are mechanically over the hill, he said.

According to Kamilewicz, Ben “falters and talks, hardly being able to articulate what they [his fellow soldiers] feel. Knee-deep sewage runs in the roads of the Sunni triangle ... no consistent water or electricity. There’s no local economy for the Iraqi citizens to earn money to feed their children. The Iraqis see nothing but hate … nothing but hate and disgust for Americans for destroying their lives.”

Kamilewicz urged a big turnout for the Sept. 24 march in Washington “to bring the troops home now.” Ben always asks him, he said, to “keep on working to get us out of here.”

The U.S. military uses the Blue Angel shows to bolster recruitment, says Veterans for Peace. They lend an apparent reality to television images and video games that portray killing at a distance as easy and bloodless, enlivened by noise and speed. Organizers had hoped that a well-publicized protest might bestow upon the Blue Angels an aura of controversy, thereby provoking citizens to question the war.

Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness was the featured speaker. In an impassioned, wide-ranging talk, she inveighed against U.S. imperialism. The United States “pioneered the refusal to be colonial subjects of a faraway power, one that wants to take away your resources, and take your sovereignty. And a revolution occurred. It was very similar in many ways to the refusal on the part of the Iraqi people to be colonial subjects of the United States today.”

“We don’t want empire,” she said. She advocated tax resistance as one form of opposing the war machine. “We’ve got to let these war-makers know that we don’t want to collaborate. It’s a moral imperative. Withdraw your support, the one thing they want from us.”

Opening at a living room near you: Film exposes Wal-Marts assault on families and American values

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:18:00 +0000

Some of the best documentary films have been shot on location in the midst of labor and community struggles, like Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County USA,” or Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me.” The work of the director, crew and editor artfully carries us into the midst of these passionate, nitty-gritty events. Robert Greenwald, producer and director of “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” a critical look at the Fox News Network and the control by multinational corporations over the public’s access to news and information, brings a new contribution to the documentary genre with “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.”

Greenwald wants his film to take the viewer on “a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to fight Goliath.” He used dozens of film crews on three continents to bring to the film the intensely personal stories of “an assault on families and American values.” The film includes scenes with workers in Florida, a poet in Mexico, a preacher in California and the owner of a small family business in the Midwest. “Wal-Mart is systematically destroying the fabric of our nation, pretending to be the great American workplace while at the same time showing thinly veiled contempt for working families, small business owners and the very people it employs,” Greenwald said.

The film’s premiere week (Nov. 13-19) is a major part of Wal-Mart Watch’s Higher Expectations Week, a nationwide campaign and week of education and action, including store events, campus events and rallies with state and local legislators. (Info: walmartwatch.com). “The film can shine a light, but the work organizers are doing will make change,” Greenwald said. “I hope people will be affected, moved and inspired by the film. We know Wal-Mart doesn’t stop, nor can we. So the film is designed to be a tool that groups will use as they fight on.”

Greenwald’s new film uses a groundbreaking grassroots distribution strategy: the premiere will take place at thousands of community based settings in all 50 states and 19 countries. Participants include communities of faith (over 1,000 churches have signed on), schools, family businesses, and community and campus groups. The Rev. Ron Stief said, “The point of our sponsorship of this film is that it’s time for this country to have a dialogue about if the Wal-Mart model is the best we can do in our local economic development.”

Many of the film premieres will be at house parties bringing together neighbors, families and friends. Want to attend a premiere? Go to the web site and find one near you: www.walmartmovie.com. (It’s not too late to hold your own premiere event — see the box for more information.)

The film will no doubt cause quite a stir, and battle lines are forming. Wal-Mart has a “secret spin strategy” and plans to respond “very aggressively” to the film as they do to any perceived threat to their corporate goals. Greenwald has a blog that features some of the leaked information of Wal-Mart’s plans: www.walmartmovie.com/blog.

“Hundreds of current and former Wal-Mart employees and executives have already come forward to tell their stories, and we expect thousands more will do so in the near future,” Greenwald said. “It is the people who Wal-Mart has hurt, the families it has destroyed, who are the backbone of this movie and this movement.”

Barbara Russum (brussum@pww.org) contributed to this story.

Host a premiere!

Community centers, churches, schools and campus groups, small family businesses, parking lots, and your living room are invited to host a premiere of “Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price” during the week of Nov. 13-19. The only cost is $10 to purchase a discounted DVD screening kit combo in November and whatever you choose to spend on popcorn.

The film’s web site provides materials to help you make your event a success including downloadable posters, logos, and other graphics. Make your screening public and it will be listed on the web site, so others in your area will be able to find it and attend.

Thousands of screenings are already scheduled in all 50 states and 19 countries. Want to host a premiere? Any questions? Check out the web site: www.walmartmovie.com.

Haitis endless struggle

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:17:00 +0000

Aristide and the Endless Revolution Baraka Productions Directed by Nicholas Rossier 82 minutes, English, French and Creole with English subtitles Showings: Vancouver International Film Festival, Oct. 1 and 10; UN Film Festival at Stanford University, Oct. 19-23.

On Feb. 29, 2004, elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed a second time and forced to leave the country. In “Aristide and the Endless Revolution,” veteran filmmaker Nicolas Rossier takes his camera to Haiti, the U.S., South Africa and Barbados to learn the truth about what led to Aristide’s expulsion from office. The result is an engaging, informative documentary that sheds light on the U.S. role in overthrowing a democratically elected president.

Aristide, a Catholic priest, rode a wave of discontent that took him from a small parish in the Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil to Haiti’s presidential palace. From his parish pulpit, he spoke out against the widespread poverty and inequality that characterized Haitian society. Soon after a popular uprising that overthrew the 30-year Duvalier dictatorship, Aristide founded the Fanmi Lavalas party and contested the country’s first free elections in 1990 as the party’s presidential candidate. Campaigning among the country’s poor whom the country’s elite had long ignored, he defeated the U.S.-backed candidate.

But the Haitian president never had an easy time with its U.S. neighbor. In 1991, the CIA sponsored a coup under the elder Bush administration, which deposed Aristide for three years. In 1994, Aristide was restored to power under the Clinton administration, yet was subsequently betrayed in 2000 by the same administration.

According to John Shattuck, former U.S. assistant secretary of state under Clinton, Aristide tried to be “the voice of the voiceless, the voice of people who had no source of support, victims of a corrupt elite and military regime.” This led, according to Rossier, to Aristide’s ouster.

Once in power Aristide built schools, hospitals and medical clinics in impoverished areas; he raised the minimum wage from 38 cents a day to one dollar; he disbanded the country’s hated military. While earning him a dedicated following among the poor, Aristide’s reforms were deeply unpopular with the country’s elite and Washington. Large U.S. companies such as Walt Disney, which make clothing and other products in Haitian free trade zones, resented that Aristide raised the minimum wage.

Haiti held parliamentary and presidential elections in 2000, which Lavalas won overwhelmingly. While international observers judged the elections to be largely clean, they disputed the results of eight senate seat races. The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) declared Lavalas candidates in these contests to be the winners because they received the most votes. However, according to a former Organization of American States official who observed the elections, the Haitian constitution requires that candidates receive at least 51 percent of the vote to win, and if no one candidate receives this amount, a runoff is held. Seven of the Lavalas senators resigned and Aristide asked the CEP to set new elections.

The U.S. government and Haiti’s business-backed opposition used the senate seat controversy as an excuse to declare the 2000 elections fraudulent. The U.S. then convinced the World Bank to cut off loans to Haiti, depriving the country of funds for social programs. Soon the economy began to fray.

Then, during the George W. Bush presidency, in January 2004, former Haitian soldiers armed with U.S. built M-16s invaded the country from bases in the Dominican Republic. Sweeping aside lightly armed opposition, they marched towards Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. As Aristide prepared to defend the capital to the death, he told Rossier that U.S. soldiers seized him, placed him on a plane and flew him into exile to Africa.

Rossier’s documentary is well researched and balanced. He speaks with both opponents and supporters of Aristide. From the standpoint of cinematography, Rossier artfully mixes images of interviewees, old news footage and lush scenes of Haitian landscape. “Aristide and the Endless Revolution” is an excellent documentary that should be seen by those wanting a better understanding of contemporary Haitian politics.

Oil and Katrina

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:15:00 +0000

As the Asia Times proclaimed: “New Orleans is the first city lost to global warming.”

Lost: that now looks to be the likely scenario for tens of thousands of New Orleans residents, especially its working-class, largely African American, peoples and communities.

Lost to failed recovery, through government incompetence and perhaps blatant cruelty, left to the savagery of the most desperate conditions.

Lost to the war in Iraq, which now caps out the ability of the U.S. government to respond to the catastrophe.

Lost to Homeland Security: It turns out only the rich will escape when our cities are attacked by nature or enemies.

Lost to FEMA, an organization of emergency responders apparently handed over to hapless Bush conservative fundraisers as a campaign reward.

Lost to an underfunded, starved “restoration”: Who will rebuild the homes of New Orleans workers? Not them, but replacements (by executive order of Bush) to be paid “post-9/11 war-on-terror” pay. Who will pay the bill, now that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 have blown the surpluses to smithereens?

The fools we elected (or did we?) president and vice-president should quickly get their just deserts — hard prison time.

But we have another problem to consider: the war over oil, of which Iraq may be only the overture. Note the spectacular shift in public opinion as frustration in Iraq merged with $1 per gallon increases in fuel and the stunning Bush failure in emergency preparedness. A recent column in this paper estimated that U.S. consumers and businesses paid an extra $200 million for gasoline and petroleum products in the week after Katrina. This figure is conservative.

There is no doubt that the public views the availability of affordable energy as a vital interest.

The failure of Bush’s Iraq policy, essentially an oil policy, places the global question of sustainable development and security on family kitchen tables for discussion as the gas and oil expenditures are totaled up.

Congress voted over $60 billion in hurricane disaster aid, but most of it is “off-budget,” i.e., borrowed against the Social Security trust fund, in a vain effort to hide the ballooning deficit.

The problems are mounting, as is the pressure. All hope is not lost. It’s not impossible that a popular upheaval arising from economic fear and political disgust, such as that which eventually brought down Nixon, can do likewise to Bush and the ultra-Reaganite, imperialistic trend so dominant for 25 years. Let us make it true.

But it is also not impossible, in the cauldron of pressures unloosed by the Bush wars, that an even more aggressive, more imperialistic, even more dangerous and arrogant approach may prevail as instability intensifies. Let us make this not true.

John Case (jcase@steuber.com) is a software integrator in West Virginia who follows economic developments.

Browns resignation: its a start

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:13:00 +0000

I guess we should all be happy that Michael D. Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, resigned. It is a step in the right direction, but I believe that Brown did the job to the best of his abilities. Unfortunately, the best of his abilities was in running horse shows instead of managing emergencies. He was not qualified to do this job.

Who is to blame? The people who hired him. They knew that he lacked the qualifications.

George Bush appointed Brown as FEMA director as a political favor. At the time, Bush probably thought the chances of a major disaster occurring were remote. So, he put one of his political cronies in charge of a very important agency.

Trent Lott accused Brown of padding his resume. But, even if Brown did pad his resume, in the business world the resume only gets you an interview and not the job. At the interview, they should have discovered that he wasn’t qualified for the job. Bush didn’t care. This was his friend and he was going to get the job.

It should be obvious by now that Bush does not care about the average person. If you are not a multimillionaire you might as well not exist. He is only in office to help the rich. The people who voted for him should have realized this when he attacked the 40-hour workweek. He wanted to get a bill passed where a worker would get time-and-a-half after working 80 hours every two weeks instead of after working 40 hours a week. That should have indicated to the American people that he just doesn’t care about average people, no matter what color they are. He has created a political climate in which the giant corporations do not have to worry about how much they can exploit workers. They won’t get any resistance from the federal government.

George Bush refused assistance from the Cuban government, which was willing to send over 1,500 medical professionals who were experienced in this kind of disaster. Bush would rather lose human lives than make Fidel Castro look good. Unfortunately, fitting right in with Bush’s philosophy, one of the few entities to look good is anti-worker Wal-Mart, which donated over $20 million dollars to the hurricane relief effort, sending the message that privately run businesses are more efficient than federal agencies.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that the people in charge were ignorant of inner-city life. Of course they were. This right-wing Republican capitalist administration does not even want to know that inner-city life exists.

To acknowledge the fact that there is an inner city is to acknowledge that capitalism is not the perfect economic system that they claim it is. It is to acknowledge that the American dream to become wealthy and successful is not attainable by everyone as they claim it is. The inner city is capitalism’s failure. It is admitting that many have to suffer in order for a few to get rich. One of the things that Hurricane Katrina did accomplish was to show the rest of the world that there are big class differences in the United States. It showed that people who are on the low end of the class scale aren’t worth very much in our society.

So Michael D. Brown resigned as director of FEMA. It doesn’t make much difference to me. George Bush and the other people who run this country are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina, and they still have their jobs.

Doug Freedman is a PWW reader in the Chicago area.

Block captains for peace

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:12:00 +0000

After a period of decreased activity, the antiwar movement is picking up the pace again. What can we do to insure that it grows as quickly and widely as it has the potential to do? What are the segments of the population that we should concentrate our organizing efforts on? What are effective strategies and tactics that we have used in the past that can guide and inspire the movement today? It is impossible to answer all these questions, but through collective discussion and action maybe we can come a little closer to some of the answers.

Many of us have attended antiwar meetings and protests. While we should praise local and national peace groups for all their hard work organizing marches, rallies and vigils, we should also think about some of the weaknesses and see how we can help overcome them.

We should be concerned with a lack of emphasis in some segments of the peace movement on sustained, grassroots growth, especially within the African American community, and on developing a coalition strategy. To build a peace movement that can really change our nation’s policies, we need to move the debate from the meeting room to the neighborhoods; from a core of peace activists to a mass constituency of trade unionists, community residents, religious leaders, students and even military personnel.

It would be a mistake to insist on a list of “correct” strategies and tactics. While general strategies and tactical concepts can be universally applied, the movement must also be flexible and adapt to different situations.

As Marxists, we understand that the working class plays a central, historic role. Because of its fundamental role in creating and maintaining our economy and society, it is the critical force able to change this society. But in our peace activity, are we using this knowledge and making sure that we are employing a class-conscious approach to building the movement?

Are we thinking creatively enough and formulating strategies that show our friends and allies the necessity of focusing organizing efforts on working-class communities, especially communities of color?

During the 2004 elections the anti-Bush forces mobilized an army of people in the largest voter registration drive in history. Key to the drive’s success was expanding registration efforts outside of the usual venues into working-class neighborhoods. The result was an unprecedented success in signing up new voters from traditionally low voter turnout neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, though, the ultra-right had its own grassroots organizing model, based in rural neighborhoods and churches, and was able to turn out more votes. We should learn from this experience.

The strategy used by the Republicans is borrowed from a model of grassroots organizing that the left successfully used many times in the past. By utilizing a block-by-block, neighbor-by-neighbor strategy, we can begin to build a broad political base educated on the issues and ready to be mobilized.

Though it may sound like a fantasy, in some places it may be very possible for peace organizations to organize block meetings and elect a neighborhood leadership. Block captains can become peace captains! And work in the neighborhoods will build personal relationships as the basis of grassroots organizing.

Instituting this kind of organizing is a way to build a pro-peace consensus that extends from inner city to suburb to rural town, and moves us in the direction of electing many more pro-peace political leaders.

When we attend our next peace meeting, let’s ask ourselves and our fellow activists, “What have we done in our neighborhood?” And hopefully we can focus the discussion and our members on a strategy to achieve a sustainable grassroots, pro-peace consensus based on the support, participation and trust of our local communities.

Glenn Burleigh is an organizer with the Communication Workers union and co-chair of the Missouri/Kansas Communist Party education/ideology committee.

Persistent and repugnant discrimination

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:09:00 +0000

For anyone who still believes that racial discrimination on the job has been eliminated, the New York Public Employees Federation has a story to tell you. It shows discrimination still exists. It just takes a more invidious form.

The story begins in Manhattan, where the state Labor Department is planning to shut a call center for telephone claims. The center would move to Endicott, outside of Troy. The state agency claims the move would save money shifting the 250 jobs upstate where costs (and wages) are lower. Half of the threatened jobs are those of PEF members, state union President Roger Benson says.

If the move were strictly for savings, it would differ little from frequent phony corporate moves for the same financial reasons. But there’s a lot more involved.

Because, you see, most of the state Labor Department (DOL) workers from New York City who would have to move, or lose their jobs, are minorities. And most of their clients are in the city and its metro area, not upstate. And many of those clients are minorities too.

A number of the department’s clients don’t speak English very well. The city-based DOL workers are multilingual. The Endicott area is much less racially mixed than the Big Apple. The chance that any DOL workers hired from Endicott are able to fluently speak languages other than English is much less than if the call center stayed put.

Combine all these factors, Benson says, and the conclusion to draw is that there is more than a whiff of racial job discrimination in the move from Manhattan to Endicott.

Yet this is not the type of discrimination on the job that anti-discrimination laws cover. That problem didn’t stop the union from taking the state Labor Department to court. Their suit, charging racial discrimination on the job, was filed Aug. 2 in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. (Note: The State Supreme Court is actually the lowest level of New York’s court system.)

At a press conference outside the state offices before the union went to court, Benson called the call center move “ugly and reprehensible.” He said the center’s workers “have become unnecessary targets of the DOL. The majority of the employees are minorities who are being told they have to choose between their jobs and their communities. That is not a choice.”

“That is racial discrimination and it will not be tolerated.”

Why do I bring all this up? Because the New York State Department of Labor’s move of its call center highlights the invidious and insidious nature of racial discrimination on the job, despite all the laws against it. And the same can be said of discrimination by sex, sexual preference, previous servitude and, yes, union membership.

Substitute any anti-worker company you want for the words “New York State Department of Labor” in the story above — let’s say, “Wal-Mart.” Substitute “China” for “Endicott.” Substitute “women” or “unionists” for “minorities.”

The impact is the same. The discrimination is the same. And the result is the same: People lose jobs due to invidious discrimination, racism, sexism or anti-unionism. Yet laws can do little, right now, to stop such discrimination.

So what can we do? Let’s start by calling such moves what they are, be they racist, or sexist or anti-worker. Blow the horn, loudly, about what companies and agencies do to people’s lives and the subterfuges they use to get away with it.

One of the most powerful tools a worker has is to call “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Use it.

And if a private company is involved, then take the next step. Let’s put our money where our mouths are.

If a private firm acts like that, discriminating against workers on the basis of race, sex, servitude, sexual orientation or union membership, there is nothing — I repeat, nothing — to stop us from taking our dollars elsewhere and explaining our reasons.

After all, that, in so many words, is what Benson and the PEF did to the New York State Labor Department with their lawsuit and their press conference. “Shame! Shame! Shame!” they said — to get public pressure on the agency to reverse its stand.

I hope GOP Gov. George Pataki, who is rumored to be pondering a run for the White House in 2008, heeds those cries, realizes the discrimination his agency is undertaking, and stops it.

But with private firms that act as DOL has, that treat citizens of whatever race, creed, religion, color, sexual orientation or pro-union stand in the same discriminatory way, we can do much more: Raise holy hell. Air the moral issues. Then vote with our wallets and purses, and tell the country why.

Mark Gruenberg is a writer for Press Associates, Inc., news service.

This Houston evacuee is angry

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:08:00 +0000

My family and I decided to follow the evacuation recommendations issued by city officials for Houstonians, which was, “Move to higher ground.” We left at 5:30 a.m. on Sept. 22 in an effort to go to family in Arkansas. This was 36 hours before the projected time of arrival of Hurricane Rita. After traveling nine hours without air conditioning in 100-degree heat, we decided to turn back. We had only traveled 15 miles in that period of time. We were listening to a radio broadcast that repeatedly said evacuating was the right thing to do. They said the city was surprised, but proud of the early response that citizens made to the disaster.

Our fellow travelers were for the most part working-class people of wide ethnic diversity, including many Latinos and African Americans. On the major highway going to Dallas, I noticed a number of 18-wheeler trucks carrying a lot of valuable goods. I also saw trailers carrying valuable cars.

I observed a number of families traveling together. The sad part was that they were in convoy, trying to get all the family vehicles out of town. They were smaller versions of the 18-wheelers, acting out the American Dream by trying to get as much of their material possessions as they could out before the storm.

I did not see a single bus carrying evacuees.

Highways leading out of Houston remained open in both directions. There was a lot of talk on the radio about opening the inbound lanes to outbound traffic but I never saw that happen. Sheriff’s patrol cars blocked the entry ramps, so that made our return to Houston more difficult.

What led us to turn back was the realization that if we continued on our course, we would either die of heat on the road or run out of gas and be stranded somewhere when the storm hit, making our continued existence questionable. When we returned and turned on the news, the mayor of Houston, Bill White, was on the air talking about how these cars were “death traps.”

We saw innumerable vehicles that had run out of gas and were stopped on the highway. The occupants just grabbed as much of their belongings as they could and started walking. I worried that many of them would die when the storm hit, if they survived the sweltering heat. There was virtually no gas or water available in the Houston area as of Sept. 21.

The Houston Chronicle reported a handful of deaths during the evacuation, including a 17-year-old disabled child and a nursing home patient. I also heard reports of family pets who died during the ordeal.

Although the scary forecasts of doom motivated us to leave, when we returned home the television commentators were saying that it would be better for people to stay at home. One woman also pointed out that the evacuation plan was “every man for himself.” When President Bush appeared on TV and said he would keep an eye on this storm, I felt sick to my stomach.

I am really angry about our governmental agencies’ criminal neglect of people’s realistic needs in the face of impending disaster. In contrast, Cuba and Mexico face worse storms with few or no casualties because of their preparedness for hurricanes. Why is it that this country cannot match the record of Cuba and Mexico in disaster readiness? When will the citizens of this country recognize that self-centeredness cannot replace a community approach and massive planning and organization to effectively and safely meet disaster?

Paul Hill (phill2@houston.rr.com) is a contributing writer from Houston.

Editorial: In defense of science

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:01:00 +0000

Oral arguments began this week on a lawsuit by 11 parents in Dover, Pa., seeking to reverse the local school board’s decision to teach “intelligent design” in the system’s biology classes. The school board argues that its decision is an issue of “academic freedom.”

But the 11 parents reply that the “intelligent design” curriculum is a strategy by the Christian right to repackage “creationism” in order to smuggle it into the public schools in violation of the First Amendment requirement for separation of church and state.

The trial in a Harrisburg, Pa., court is being called “Scopes II,” referring to the famous trial of classroom teacher John Scopes in Dayton, Tenn., in 1925. Scopes had dared to teach his students Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Scopes’ case was brilliantly argued by civil liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow and the teaching of evolution as the pillar of modern biology was upheld.

Today, the ultra-right has launched a renewed war against science. George W. Bush claims that global warming is “unproven” even as hurricanes like Katrina and Rita are linked to rising temperatures in the Caribbean. He blocks funding of stem cell research, which could lead to cures to Parkinsons and other diseases.

In the nation’s schools, intimidation is so serious that a survey by the National Science Foundation found that a majority of high school biology teachers fear reprisal if they teach evolution.

Meanwhile, proponents of “intelligent design” plead that they simply want their “science” taught on an equal basis. They are lying. If they get their foot in the door, their next step will be to outlaw the teaching of evolution.

Even more is at stake here than science itself. The ultra-right has seized on the teaching of evolution as a wedge issue to advance their overall ideological agenda.

In defending science, these 11 parents in Dover are defending democracy.

They deserve all the solidarity we can give them.

Mercury emissions expose extreme rights family values hypocrisy

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:00:00 +0000

On Sept. 13 the U.S. Senate narrowly rejected a bipartisan resolution offered by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) that would have maintained a firm timetable for the reduction in mercury emissions from power plants.

Senate Joint Resolution 20 would have rejected a recent Environmental Protection Administration ruling that delayed the reduction of such emissions. The vote was 47-51.

Environmental groups, while expressing disappointment at the vote, vowed to continue lobbying Congress to uphold environmental standards.

“We applaud the bipartisan group of 47 senators who voted to protect the health of women and children by rejecting the Bush EPA’s mercury pollution rule,” said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “These senators recognize that government’s most basic responsibility is to provide for the safety of its citizens, and that includes ensuring that the EPA develops meaningful clean air standards. They voted to put the health of 35 million Americans, including more than 3 million children, who live near a mercury-emitting power plant ahead of utility industry special interests.”

Despite the setback, Callahan said, “We will continue to work with pro-conservation members of Congress to stop corporate polluters from rewriting our environmental and public health laws.”

Some background

The Clean Air Act of 1970 is the primary federal law governing air quality in the United States. The 1990 amendments to the act established a process to begin cleaning up the toxic mercury spewing out of dirty power plants across the country. The amended act requires each plant to use “maximum achievable control technology” on every generating unit. Anything less stringent means more pollution and more long-term health problems.

However, Michael Leavitt, the “market-based solutions” advocate appointed by President George W. Bush as administrator of the EPA, came up with a new rule, dubbed “Clear Skies,” which removes power plants from the list of hazardous air pollutant sources under the Clean Air Act. The new rule treats mercury pollution from power plants as “non-hazardous” even though mercury is one of the most dangerous air pollutants. The new rule is contrary to the intention of the Clean Air Act. It was the new rule that led to Senate Joint Resolution 20.

Why is mercury a problem?

Mercury emissions from fossil-fuel- fired power plants rain down on lakes, streams and the ocean, where it gets into the food chain. At least 44 states have issued warnings to avoid or limit consumption of mercury-laden fish. Because concentrations of the toxic metal accumulate up the food chain, the species of primary concern are bigger fish, like albacore (white tuna), shark, king mackerel, tilefish and swordfish. Mercury contamination is also a serious problem in freshwater fish, including many species prized by sport fishermen. State health agencies across the country have warned people against eating these fish. Many indigenous people and Asian immigrants eat more fish than the rest of the population, which puts them at higher risk.

According to the EPA’s own figures, one in six pregnant women has dangerous levels of mercury in her blood. The National Academy of Sciences says that maternal consumption of unsafe levels of mercury in fish can impact fetal development and cause learning disabilities, poor motor function, mental retardation, seizures, cerebral palsy and other problems in children.

The sides are

staked out clearly

On the right is a group of energy corporations who own coal- and oil-fired power plants. They will probably save billions as a result of this vote. The new rule has polluting corporations’ fingerprints all over it. It contains wording lifted directly from memoranda provided by utility corporation lobbyists. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says that the Bush administration “downplayed scientific evidence of the dangers of mercury and even let corporate energy lobbyists write parts of the new rule.”

The Bush administration’s arrogance doesn’t stop there. The EPA’s inspector general as well as the General Accountability Office (GAO) issued recommendations that were ignored, along with more than 680,000 public comments — a record for any EPA rule. Ignored as well were the comments of many state environment departments and attorneys general, doctors, educators, sportsmen’s groups and the EPA’s own advisory committees. And, although it should not come as a surprise after four years working with this administration, the comments of 45 Senate and 184 House members were also ignored.

Well-heeled defenders

of industry

The most important and most difficult sources to regulate are coal- and oil-fired electric power plants. Strong, well-funded corporate opposition has produced numerous delays and generated extra obstacles for regulating these plants. One example is a fake “grassroots” organization calling itself the “Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy (CARE),” which has used subterfuge and has played the “jobs or environment” card in the hopes of driving a wedge between labor and environmentalists.

In a recent press release, CARE asks Americans to “Please oppose Senate Joint Resolution 20, sponsored by Senators Leahy and Collins. This resolution would override the new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR). CAMR is an effective cap-and-trade system for reducing mercury emissions from power plants. SJR 20 is intended to instead force a plant-by-plant approach requiring the use of ‘maximum achievable control technology’ (MACT).”

“If MACT requirements are imposed, it would increase electricity costs by 20 percent and further threaten U.S. chemical and manufacturing jobs. Substantially higher electricity costs would be passed onto customers, including fixed-income and senior citizens, who are already suffering from skyrocketing energy and fuel costs.”

Where does CARE get

careless?

First, MACT is part of the original Clean Air Act that Bush’s “Clear Skies” initiative would over-rule. The new “Clear Skies” rule is a corporate effort to weasel out of compliance.

Secondly, CARE’s cost estimates for MACT are way out of line. A National Wildlife Foundation study in five states that rely heavily on coal power found that a mercury rule requiring 90 percent emissions reduction would only cost residential customers between 69 cents and about $2 per month. Available technologies and techniques in use today achieve up to 90 percent mercury air emissions reductions over uncontrolled levels, and do so cost-effectively (on the order of 1/50th of a penny per kilowatt hour).

Third, there’s the issue of “cap-and-trade” concepts that allow companies to buy and sell “emission allowances” for mercury.

Pro-capitalist economists favor this approach because it theoretically allows market forces to fix environmental problems. In a cap-and-trade system, the government sets the total amount of a pollutant that can be put into the environment by an entire industry. The government establishes emission allowances, which can be traded among companies in the industry.

Companies that can easily add pollution controls and reduce their pollution can then sell pollution credits to companies that have more difficulty implementing modern pollution controls, or they can “bank” the credits to apply toward emissions in future years. In essence, some companies spend money for the right to continue polluting at higher levels. That’s bad for us, but it’s cheaper for the corporations than modernizing.

Cap-and-trade systems might make sense for emissions that have a global impact but little or no local impact. Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is better suited to a cap-and-trade system because there is no direct effect of local carbon dioxide emissions on the inhabitants of any nearby city, county or region — the problem is only important from a global perspective.

The negative consequences of mercury emissions occur more locally. This makes mercury a bad candidate for a cap-and-trade system. “Hot spots” would be created, where some people would continue to suffer the chronic effects of this potent pollutant.

The best approach for mercury is to hold each source of mercury emissions to a set limit, using the most appropriate available, maximum achievable control technology (MACT).

At this point in capitalism, marked by an overall declining rate of profit, corporations are compelled to increase their profit margins by any means necessary. One major method is to externalize as much of their costs to the “commons” as possible. That means using our air and water as their dump sites, instead of cleaning up their act to levels that will assure a healthy environment and healthy people. This new mercury rule is a great example of what happens when corporate greed trumps science.

“For all their talk of family values and the rights of the unborn, the Bush administration has yet again put the value of corporate campaign contributors — not families and the unborn — first,” said Sen. Leahy.

“It is not a family value to tell a whole generation of women that their health is not important,” he continued. “It is not a family value to put another generation of young kids at risk of learning disabilities. These mercury rules do just that. It is time to put people first, and to stop letting the big polluters and the special interests write the rules and run the show over at EPA.”

Dave Zink (zacd1@juno.com) is a trade union and environmental activist in the state of Washington.

Panel hears bipartisan call to save VA hospitals

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 03:55:00 +0000

NEW YORK — On Sept. 19 the Veterans Administration Local Advisory Panel (LAP) met here to discuss a report by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP that included proposals to close the city’s two VA hospitals, Manhattan and Brooklyn (Fort Hamilton).

Virtually every major elected official in New York City appeared before the committee to reject the proposed closings. In an unusual line-up, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Rep. Anthony Weiner, both Democrats, joined with right-wing Rep. Vito Fossella, Republican of Staten Island, to speak out strongly against the closing of either hospital. Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg also opposed the closings.

For some time now, Veterans for Peace and public health organizations have been pressuring Bloomberg and Fossella to keep both hospitals open. However, until the Sept. 19 hearing, Fossella had only supported keeping Fort Hamilton open, which happens, coincidentally, to be located in his district.

Weiner began his testimony by clearly stating, “VA hospital care cannot be sacrificed for profit-making in health care.” He paid tribute to the excellent care that has been provided by the two VA hospitals in the area, and said that, if anything, the ability of institutions to provide quality care should be expanded, not reduced or eliminated.

Bloomberg’s testimony included statistics showing there are 302,000 vets in the New York City area and 1.3 million in the tri-state area, which includes New Jersey and Connecticut. Approximately 13,000 troops are on active duty from this area, and at least 37 have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Andrew Broughton of the New York University School of Medicine testified on behalf of keeping the Manhattan VA hospital open. NYU has a physician-affiliation agreement there. His medical counterpart at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, which is affiliated with the Fort Hamilton VA hospital, spoke strongly in favor of keeping both VA institutions open.

Members of Veterans for Peace who testified at the hearing made a direct link between recently returning servicemen and women — and the tens of thousands of vets from previous wars and service — and the need for expanded VA health services. They opposed any cuts. George McAnanama of the N.Y. Veterans for Peace said, “Health care is a right, not a privilege.”

BP hit with record $21 million fine

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 03:53:00 +0000

HOUSTON — BP Products North America Inc. has been fined a record $21 million for health and safety violations as a result of a March 23 explosion that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 at its Texas City, Texas, plant, according to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. The penalty was almost twice the previous record fine at the plant.

However, the Houston Chronicle reports that union officials were outraged about OSHA’s secret negotiations with BP, which “left the public in the dark about the full scope of its investigation into the troubled plant.”

Mike Wright, director of health, safety and environment for the United Steelworkers, told the Chronicle, “The workers in the plant, the public and certainly the victims and their families really deserve to know everything that OSHA found before some of it was traded away behind closed doors.”

OSHA is considering whether to refer the case to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. BP denies any wrongdoing and blames the blast on workers. Some workers have been fired and have filed lawsuits, claiming that BP wrongly blamed them for the deadly explosion.

John Miles, regional OSHA administrator, said that management was lax toward safety. He said the violations that led to the blast had existed for years. He also denied that OSHA had failed to properly inspect the plant over the years.

The OSHA report indicates BP Products agreed to:

• Pay $21,361,500 in penalties and abate all hazards for which they were cited.

• Complete a review of the isomerization (ISOM) unit to determine how it can be operated safely, and alert OSHA if and when a decision is made to start up the unit in the future.

• Retain a firm with expertise in process safety management.

• Hire an expert to assess and report on communications within and between management, supervisors and authorized employee representatives and non-management employees, and the impact of such communications on safety practices.

• Submit to OSHA and BP Products’ authorized employee representative, every six months for three years, logs of occupational injuries and illnesses.

• Notify OSHA of any incident or injury at the Texas City facility that results in an employee losing one or more workdays during the same three-year period.

OSHA issued “egregious, willful violations” against BP for operating faulty electrical equipment, failing to correct deficiencies in equipment related to the pressure relief system, failing to compile written process safety information for the ISOM unit, failing to evaluate the safety and health impact of a catastrophic blast near the ISOM unit, and failing to evaluate alarms and instruments for reliability.

Recent BP financial statements note that “BP distributed more than $7.5 billion to shareholders in the first half of 2005 in share buybacks and dividends.”

City urged to uphold rights of immigrants

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 03:52:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — “Every day it becomes more difficult to live,” testified Lupe, a mother and member of Unidad Latina en Accion, at a Sept. 15 public hearing on the status of immigrants. “Landlords exploit us. We don’t have adequate utilities. Our children test for high lead. We are asking the New Haven Board of Aldermen for help in changing the laws.”

The four-hour bilingual hearing presented the board with many proposals toward the goal of ending discriminatory practices and making New Haven a “model city” for immigrant rights.

“We came to this country because there is no work in our countries, even for professionals,” said Juan. He described how his daughter, an honors student, could not attend college because in-state tuition rates are denied to children of immigrants.

Alex described how banks refuse to set up accounts for immigrants with insufficient documents. Addressing the restrictions on driver’s licenses for immigrants, he explained, “With no car, we have to settle for jobs that can’t sustain our families.”

“We are the invisible people in our society,” said John Jairo Lugo, president of Unidad Latina en Accion. “Four years ago we decided to organize.”

Speaking on behalf of those who were afraid to come forward, Lugo told the story of one worker who was never paid after five weeks on a construction job. When confronted, the employer threatened to call immigration authorities if the worker filed a complaint with the Labor Department.

“New Haven should provide protection for these workers,” said Lugo. He described the deplorable living conditions of another immigrant worker who ended up in the hospital because his basement apartment was covered with sewage leaking in, mold and roaches. When the landlord refused to clean and repair the apartment, city inspectors were called, but nothing happened.

Unidad Latina en Accion presented 10 proposals for action. In addition to the creation of a New Haven ID, an immigrant resource center, and bilingual operators at the police and fire departments, the proposals include police training to eliminate racial profiling, and a policy of non-discrimination against immigrants in opening bank accounts.

Unidad Latina en Accion also called on the aldermen to support state and federal legislation that would guarantee a path to citizenship, family reunification, civil rights and equal rights on the job, the right to driver’s licenses and higher education for children of immigrants.

Speaking on behalf of the City of New Haven Peace Commission, Al Marder emphasized, “we can no longer deal with a situation where thousands of people are fearful of walking the streets.” The commission’s request for the hearing had condemned “national policies, under the cover of ‘fighting terrorism,’ that unleashed a campaign of harassment and fear ... including the USA Patriot Act.”

Kika Matos, director of Junta for Progressive Action, urged the board to adopt an official position of non-enforcement of national immigration laws, a policy adopted by the city governments of Austin, Texas, and Denver. She also urged the establishment of a city office of immigrant affairs along the lines of those set up in Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia.

Police Sergeant Luis Casanova spoke of the department’s work with Junta to make New Haven “a model city for tolerance for immigrant rights,” and called upon the board for support to move forward.

Katrina Clark, director of the Fair Haven Community Health Clinic said while the clinic does not ask for documentation, patients without papers run into obstacles when they are referred to other doctors. Despite lack of funding, the neighborhood clinic has accepted over 1,500 patients in recent months who are new immigrants, she said.

The Board of Aldermen will be considering proposals from the hearing.

AFL-CIO urges new direction for U.S. after Katrina

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 03:50:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Saying the havoc Hurricane Katrina wrought exposed to the public the gaping holes in U.S. society and the economy — and the ideologically driven failure to respond to them — the AFL-CIO will launch a mass campaign to promote a “new direction” for the U.S.

The campaign, to be ratified by the AFL-CIO Executive Council on Oct. 6, will emphasize “political and public policy to deal with the realities of the biggest rebuilding job in history,” federation President John Sweeney said in unveiling it on Sept. 22.

But the drive will go beyond the damage inflicted by the hurricane to address broad issues and problems in U.S. society, and it will be nationwide, Sweeney and the other speakers said.

They include raising the minimum wage, rebuilding infrastructure with workers paid at prevailing — not cut-rate — wages, workers’ rights on the job, universal health care and “restoring fair play to Americans in every walk of life,” Sweeney said.

Labor’s answer to the disaster, which the federation will campaign on, is a multi-part program whose length and intensity will be similar to its drive to save Social Security from Bush’s privatization plan, Sweeney said. The “new direction” campaign will include both specific measures for the Gulf Coast and general goals for the country.

The Gulf Coast measures include establishing a Worker Network to coordinate all union responses in the Katrina states “and fight for real support for families through unemployment compensation, public health services, quality education, job training and other sufficiently funded public services,” the federation statement says.

It also will create a Coalition of Fairness in Federal Disaster Relief to lobby against Bush’s plan to cut prevailing wages for federal reconstruction projects in the Katrina area. Painters President Jim Williams noted his typical members in the Gulf States earn $15 an hour, but work just over 1,000 hours a year. Bush wants to cut that hourly rate.

The federation also plans to invest $400 million from union-sponsored pension plans in Gulf Coast reconstruction projects, while establishing a panel, with union allies in communities, churches and civil rights groups “to expose corruption, windfall profits and attacks on workers’ rights” during reconstruction.

The national measures include town hall meetings in dozens of cities nationwide about national priorities and a national “Community Walk for Change” at a November date to be set, to marshal 1 million households to demand changing national priorities.

The changes those marchers and the long-term national campaign would advocate would include “defeating attempts to finance rebuilding the Gulf Coast by cutting programs for working people and the poor while extending tax cuts for the rich,” raising the minimum wage, and demanding a special windfall oil profits tax with its revenue dedicated to families that will need help with their gasoline and heating bills.

Other changes the AFL-CIO’s national campaign will push include pension protections, extending universal health care and passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would level the playing field in organizing drives. It will also include campaigns in the states to enact minimum wage hikes, to force corporations to pay their workers’ health care costs, to stop outsourcing and to bar use of money from state contracts for anti-union drives or “advocating their views on politics and religion in workplaces.”

Steelworkers union President Leo Gerard said reconstruction should be by local workers, with U.S. materials and at prevailing wages. “The WTO can kiss my ass” if it objects to those conditions, he said.

“What we’ve got is a bunch of right-wing radicals in the House and the Senate who want to experiment” with pro-business and ideological ideas for reconstruction, such as school vouchers and destruction of Davis-Bacon wage rates, Gerard added.

Growing unity vs. NYC Mayor Bloomberg

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 03:49:00 +0000

News Analysis

NEW YORK — The campaign to defeat Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ally of President Bush, has swung in the people’s favor following the Sept. 13 Democratic primary and a string of endorsements for the primary’s victor, Fernando Ferrer.

If elected as the city’s first Latino mayor on Nov. 8, Ferrer would represent a major break with the policies of Bloomberg who, despite his moderate or liberal veneer, has been applying Reagan-like “trickle down economics” to the city at the expense of working families and the poor.

Going into the primary, while many regarded Ferrer as strong candidate, some feared he might fall short of winning 40 percent of the vote, forcing him into a bruising runoff that could have threatened the unity of the of the coalition against Bloomberg.

However, when the primary was still too early to call, with Ferrer hovering just shy of the 40 percent mark, his closest challenger, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn), announced his withdrawal from the race, saying “to succeed, we need focus, we need unity.” After that, a unity rally was held in front of City Hall, where Ferrer’s former rivals — Weiner, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, and former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields — endorsed him.

The challenge for Ferrer, many say, is to build a strong coalition of labor, racially and nationally oppressed people, progressive whites, and other democratically minded movements and organizations to support him. In this context, the unity rally at City Hall was especially important. A runoff with Fields, who is African American, could have jeopardized Latino and African American unity. Similarly, a battle between Ferrer and Weiner could have precipitated the use of racism against Ferrer and played into Bloomberg’s hands.

In recent weeks, Ferrer has picked up an impressive, multiracial list of endorsers, including former Mayor David Dinkins, the Rev. Al Sharpton, New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, and other elected officials and religious leaders. The race has attracted national attention from the Democratic Party, and Ferrer has been endorsed by such widely known figures as the Bill and Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, John Kerry, and John Edwards — all of whom said that a defeat for Bloomberg is a defeat for Bush’s policies.

Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused Bloomberg of “cozying up to President Bush and supporting his failed policies.” He said it was time to end “the closed-door CEO culture in City Hall. Together, we will take this city back come November.”

Ferrer has won the endorsement of New York’s ACORN, the local chapter of the national grassroots organization of low- to middle-income families. In a statement, ACORN member Julia Boyd said, “Freddy Ferrer knows what hard working New Yorkers struggle with to get by. That’s why he stood with ACORN and fought for a higher minimum wage and for more funding for all of our schools. As mayor, Freddy will fight to end New York’s drop-out crisis and make sure all of our children have access to a quality education.”

While there have been divisions in the labor movement, Ferrer has recently been on a roll. He previously had the support of Civil Service Employees Association and the Transport Workers Union, but has recently picked up the endorsement of the Communications Workers union, the Retail Clerks, and SEIU Local 1199.

Local 1199 President Dennis Rivera said, “Over 200,000 of our members and retirees work, live, and send their children to school in New York City, and we are hopeful that Freddy will work with us to build a stronger, better and brighter city for all low-wage, working New Yorkers.” Local 1199 is known as an electoral powerhouse, normally putting a virtual army on the streets to mobilize for candidates it supports.