People Before Profit blog

Sept. 11, 2001 archives: New York City, one month later

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:15:00 +0000

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, only a few members of the then-People's Weekly World staff were in the lower Manhattan editorial office when the airplanes hit the Twin Towers at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. They worked under extraordinary conditions to meet the Wednesday deadline and produce a newspaper that week. It was a four-page edition that contained a statement from the Communist Party USA condemning the terrorist attacks, and praising the first-responders and their heroism. Despite attempts to locate that issue, it is lost to history, a much lesser victim of the aftermath of 9/11.

In the following People's Weekly World issues, reporters worked to gather responses to the crisis by the people who rushed to help at New York City's Ground Zero, as well as at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. Many of the people interviewed urged a firm response to the culprits behind the terrorist attacks, but not for the "war on terror" advocated by the Bush administration. PeoplesWorld.org republishes these stories here as part of commemorating the 10^th anniversary of that tragic day.

NEW YORK - One month can sometimes feel like a lifetime. For many, each day is marked by the struggle to recover. It's another step towards an uncertain future. Sept. 11 has forever changed the city.

At 8:48 a.m., in observance of the moment the first plane hit Tower One, a brief memorial service is held at Ground Zero. Recovery workers with hardhats in hand, singing Amazing Grace paused their recovery efforts in respect for those who had lost their lives.

The smoking remains of the 16 square acres that once was the World Trade Center (WTC), have spots burning at temperatures of 2,000 degrees. Two electrical power stations, 300,000 phone lines, subway stations connecting to every part of NYC were destroyed. Experts are saying that it will take over a year to clear the area even with round-the-clock shifts working seven-day weeks.

Around Ground Zero the devastation can be seen, smelled and felt.

Those who live and work closest to the site go through security checkpoints to gain access to the 'frozen zone' that is secured by National Guard and the NYPD.

People walk the streets with masks or their arms across there face due to the smoke and particles that fly from what is called 'The Pile.'

Leaflets advertise a community meeting tonight to discuss the possible health dangers from the smoldering air that covers the area. The EPA continues to say there are no health risks. Business Week admits, 'For years, Europeans have banned the toxic, carcinogenic building and office products that fill most American workplaces.'

'The Twin Towers were loaded with millions of items - office furniture, computer circuitboards, plastic garbage cans, copy machines - that were never meant to be burned. 'The resulting volcano of hazardous waste spewed carcinogenic chemicals, vaporized organic compounds, and highly dangerous combustible gases.'

Hundreds of small businesses like pizza shops, dry cleaners, delis and newsstands are doing their own clean-up. They are now in danger of going under due to damage, lost business or the lack of customers in the frozen zone.

A Ground Zero task force of elected officials headed by Rep. Gerald Nadler (D-N.Y.) is spearheading efforts to help small businesses, which have largely been ignored.

About 100,000 workers have lost their jobs. Laid-off workers and victims' families in the tri-state area are trying to wind their way through the series of state, city and private agencies for assistance.

Undocumented immigrant workers, who not only worked under duress for a decent life for their families, also perished without their rightful benefits. One month later many families still fear seeking help will cause deportation.

One billion dollars has been raised from all kinds of people - from movie stars to schoolchildren. Yet there is no co-ordinated effort by the private charities to allocate the monies in an equitable way to cover everyone affected. (Story continues after slideshow.)

Business Week reports that it will cost billions to rebuild the area's infrastructure. New York Gov. George Pataki spent the one-month anniversary lobbying Congress for a $54 billion aid package.

The $40 billion already approved by Congress has only $17.5 billion earmarked for New York. Yet even through this tragedy, the ultraright and corporations push their own agenda. The New York Post reports that conservatives in Congress are trying to steer the majority of that money into defense spending.

On Oct. 11, 44 Republican senators used a filibuster to prevent the Senate from adding an aviation worker relief package to airline security legislation.

It's estimated the city will lose $1 billion in revenues this fiscal year plus the budget will be hit by the billions in recovery costs already spent on cleanup and public services. The mayor this week called for a 15 percent budget cut for all city agencies, with the Board of Education and the NYPD taking a 2.5 percent hit.

No plan exists, on any level of government, to put the 100,000 jobless back to work.

National Guardsmen are in Penn Station, Port Authority and Grand Central watching the commuters arrive and depart. The Daily News reports that surveillance cameras are being installed in the 468 train stations, electrical substations, ventilation plants and tunnels city-wide.

Reminders of the tragedy of Sept. 11 are everywhere. Fire stations have become memorials of flowers, candles pictures and notes of condolences. Walls, lampposts and busstops surrounding hospitals still have leaflets with photos seeking information about the missing. Twenty funerals and memorials are held today, as they have been every day this month.

Yet even through the devastation, hope springs eternal with the youth. The high school and college students have come back to their buildings surrounding Ground Zero this week. Many students saw from their classrooms people falling from the WTC and the buildings collapse.

One student, Alex Menglide, said, 'I have completely eliminated the word 'hate' from my vocabulary. So many people died just because of hate.'

Another high school student, Ciama Bejasa, said, 'Bombing Afghanistan does nothing. We're not solving anything - we're only making a bigger problem. We should cut off bin Laden's money. If he has no money, he has no power.'

Abdul-Aziz Hassan from the Harlem-Washington Heights club of the Young Communist League said, 'A lot of young people don't know what to do with this anger they have. Some flip it to forms of racial profiling,' while others take the same anger to fight for a just cause.

'Even myself, I feel some confusion but a lot of it is becoming clearer as I become active in the peace movement and being around people who feel the same as I do.'

Photo: (Israel Smith/PW)

A nauseating situation

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 10:15:00 +0000

Don’t tell me that our country’s airlines aren’t innovators! Take U.S. Airways, for example — it’s the one that pioneered the placement of advertising on its fold-down tray tables.

Not content to rest on its laurels, U.S. Air has now taken another innovative step: It is putting ads on its barf bags! A spokesman says, “We figure while it’s there, why don’t we make it multi-purpose?” The airline is hoping to squeeze some profit out of a nauseating situation — but, I wonder how many customers will pause to peruse an ad before ... you know, barfing?

Not only are ads creeping onto barf bags, but also onto the more prestigious spaces in our culture. For example, the same day that U.S. Air announced its latest advance, the staid old Wall Street Journal said that it will accept ads on its front page — a space once considered sacred and reserved strictly for journalism. The Journal’s upstairs boys note that this prime journalistic real estate could bring in tens of millions of bucks a year ... so the bright line between journalism and advertising now will be blurred.

The publisher brags that his paper’s front page “will provide the most valuable opportunity anywhere in any medium for advertisers who want to reach a large, affluent, and influential audience.” The corporate brass has even dubbed the front-page ad a “jewel box.”

What jewels might go in this box? The Journal says that it will offer the ad space first to its premium advertisers, such as Mercedes-Benz. But a Mercedes spokeswoman says the company is not convinced that a costly, full-color ad on the news page is a good idea. As an advertising agent said: “Putting ads where readers don’t want them is, in a way, like being spammed.”

If the Journal can’t get the high-tone advertisers, I’ll bet U.S. Air would be interested in promoting its ad-covered barf bags on the paper’s front page.

Jim Hightower is a political commentator and former Texas agriculture commissioner. This article was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.

Environmental justice tour takes off

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 07:50:00 +0000

Anniston, Ala., is the first city in the country where the federal government has distributed gas masks to residents living near a chemical weapons incinerator. Gas masks are the government’s solution to the chance that lethal nerve gas could leak during the destruction process.

The question of whether or not chemical weapons should be destroyed in a low-income community — average wage $27,385, population 48.7 percent white and 48.7 percent African American — never seems to have crossed elected officials’ minds. Anniston is a stop on the first-ever Environmental Justice for All (EJA) bus tour, Sept. 24-Oct. 1.

“During this tour we will expose how industry, government and the military have turned the places where people live, play, work and pray into toxic dumping grounds,” said Dorothy Felix, a lifelong resident of Mossville, La., and member of Mossville Environmental Action Now. Communities are organizing to end the injustice “by focusing on solutions that value and protect our health and health of future generations,” she said.

Raising public awareness is not the only goal of the tour, which will bring three buses with activists, health researchers, environmental scientists and public policy experts to cities and towns in the South, Northeast and West. It is to stir up a drumbeat for change in leadership in the 2006 congressional elections, according to EJA spokeswoman Ateqah Khaki.

Sheila Holt of Dickson, Tenn., used to be a body builder. In 2003, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her father suffers from prostate cancer and her mother has cervical polyps. The Holt family is one of many families living in the mostly African American Eno Road community, where local officials decided to place a garbage dump, landfills and a toxic waste disposal site. Elected officials informed white families of the threat to their drinking water, but not the African Americans. The Holt family got their neighbors, family and friends together and sued.

Sheila Holt is on the tour bus with stops in Dickson, Nashville and Knoxville, Tenn.; Port Arthur, Texas; Mossville and New Orleans, La.; Gulfport, Miss.; Anniston, Ala.; Berea and Louisville, Ky; Whitesville, W.Va. and Washington, D.C.

Another bus is traveling to Buffalo, Syracuse, Endicott, Albany and New York, N.Y.; Hartford and New Haven, Conn.; Boston, Mass.; Newark, Linden and Camden, N.J., also ending in Washington.

The Western tour includes Seattle, Wash., and San Francisco, Oakland, Fort Ord, Central Valley, Los Angeles and Calexico, Calif.

For more information, visit eja4all.org.

Judge temporarily halts oil drilling in Alaskan reserve

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 09:25:00 +0000

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A judge on Sept. 7 temporarily halted lease sales of more than 1 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that environmentalists say are essential feeding and breeding grounds for caribou and migratory birds.

Nearly 13 million acres of the reserve in northern Alaska are available for lease sale or have been sold to oil companies, most notably ConocoPhillips. The company hopes to augment waning crude stocks in the Prudhoe Bay fields east of the NPR-A.

Environmentalists filed the lawsuit against the Department of the Interior, the state of Alaska and oil companies in hopes of cordoning off about 600,000 acres of the 23-million-acre reserve from more exploratory drilling. The government had planned to open bids on Sept. 27 for about 1.7 million acres, which encompass the area targeted by environmentalists.

ConocoPhillips has its eye on the contested area, which holds a potential 2 billion barrels of oil beneath the permafrost near Lake Teshekpuk.

The order, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, said the government had not adequately considered the cumulative environmental effects of the lease sales in the eastern and western sections of the reserve.

Environmental impact statements addressed the effects of leasing individual parcels, but those reports were too narrow in scope because they did not consider how leasing in the northeastern part of the reserve would affect land and wildlife in the northwestern section, according to the order.

U.S. District Judge James Singleton chastised the defendants for the oversight, writing that they “violated the National Environmental Protection Act.”

The Department of the Interior and ConocoPhillips did not immediately return messages.

Singleton is expected to make a final ruling the last week of September, said Charles Clusen, director of the Alaska project for the Natural Resources Defense Council based in Washington, D.C., one of the plaintiffs.

A true working class educator

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 09:08:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I attended a tribute to my late friend Wells Keddie, at the Labor Education Center of Rutgers University. Wells died in April after a lifetime of struggle in the labor movement and as a labor educator.

More than half a century ago, as a graduate student at the University of California, he refused to sign the anticommunist “loyalty oath” that the state Legislature had passed. This was shortly before Joe McCarthy got going and lent his name to the purges, blacklists and general policy of political segregation that the whole capitalist class launched against Communists particularly, but also broad left activists of all kinds, to suppress dissent.

They never really got Wells, although they kept on trying, at Penn State where he was fired in spite of mass protests, and even at Rutgers. At Rutgers he played a leading role in building the American Association of University Professors and in training students who went out and became organizers and leaders of the labor movement for three decades.

In labor and in other academic fields which have some connection to the left, there is a practice of rewarding those who educate the least but publish the most in establishment journals, get grant money from establishment foundations and other sources, and in effect contribute the least to labor as a movement.

Wells Keddie’s life was lived in opposition to that “do nothing good for nothing” approach to scholarship and teaching.

Wells sang labor and left political songs, and loved them. At the tribute to Wells, a chorus of New Jersey labor singers, including longtime New Jersey labor and peace organizer and activist Carol Gay (who won the Democratic nomination to run against right-wing Republican Chris Smith and would bring joy to the workers of the world if she won), sang some of these songs, including “Joe Hill.”

Students of Wells got up and talked about being fired from jobs as they fought for workers’ rights. Like Wells, most of the people at the tribute (including myself) who were employed were not receiving equal pay for equal work with their establishment peers, particularly in the universities. None of those establishment types were really there at the tribute, including those in the Rutgers administration who had profited from Wells’ accomplishments while they disdained him.

One prominent person who was there was Bill Kane, president of New Jersey’s Industrial Union Council, a body which proudly seeks to continue the progressive inclusive unionism of the pre-merger, pre-purge, pre-blacklist CIO.

As I listened to the songs, I was inspired to think of what the world would be like if we won, and the champions of big business and the rich were on the outside looking in. I began to imagine the songs they would sing in tribute to one of their own. Say for example, the 19th-century robber baron Jay Gould. Here’s a version of “Joe Hill” that I thought might be sung at such an event:

“The Ballad of Jay Gould”

I dreamed I saw Jay Gould last night alive as he could be

Why Jay, I thought you died of being rich

I never died, says he, I never died, says he.

From San Diego to Guantanamo

From Baghdad to Bayonne

As long as scabs are breaking strikes

And judges and politicians are bribed

Jay Gould will be alive Jay Gould will be alive.

Then I thought of the “Investors’ Internationale” as it might be sung by demonstrators from the American Enterprise Institute.

I thought of some others, from “Outsourcing Forever” to “This Land is Murdoch’s Land,” but that is enough. Wells Keddie will live on in the struggles of the people he educated and the lives he touched (his dog was even named “Struggles”). The establishment types who made more money and received greater accolades then he did will soon be forgotten by the very people who paid them and praised them, since they really had nothing to say or do that was memorable, and, unlike Wells, can be easily replaced.

Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University.

Senator Allens monkeyshines

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:55:00 +0000

Mel Gibson drove drunk and, when stopped by a traffic cop, slurred some anti-Semitic slurs. Some defended him thus: “it was just the liquor talking.” Trouble is, liquor does not talk, but people do, and as the old Romans said, “in vino veritas” — what we blurt out when drunk may well be what we really think, at other times suppressed by our inhibitions.

As far as I can tell (I was not there), U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) was stone cold sober when he managed to call an opposition supporter of South Asian extraction a monkey. Since Allen not only wants to be re-elected to the Senate (over Democrat challenger Jim Webb), but is thought to be interested in running for president in 2008, he had better get his story straight. If it wasn’t the liquor talking, what was it, Senator? And why did you say “Welcome to America” to a man who was born and raised in Fairfax County, Virginia? Could it be that he was the only non-white person within sight?

What happened was that S.R. Sidarth, a young man who was born in Virginia and is of South Asian extraction, was attending an Allen campaign event as an observer and photographer for Webb. Seeing him in the crowd, Sen. Allen called him “Mr. Macaca” and said “Welcome to America.”

“Macaca” is the Latin name for a genus of monkeys found mostly in Asia and Africa. The famous “Gibraltar apes” are not actually apes but are one of the macaca monkey species. So are the cute “snow monkeys” of Japan, and the rhesus monkeys from India, so often used in scientific research. These monkeys are more often called “macaques” (from the French) when referred to in English by people who can tell one kind of monkey from another. I, like many people, happen to like monkeys and am interested in their evolutionary relationship to people. But most people can tell the difference between monkeys and people. Sen. Allen probably can too.

Allen now claims that he did not know that “macaca” meant a kind of monkey. He was just making up nonsense words, perhaps in emulation of the current White House incumbent, who has graced our language with wonders like “misunderestimate.” Supporters said that Allen was referring to Sidarth’s “Mohawk” haircut because “macaca” sort of sounds like “Mohawk” (it doesn’t, and Sidarth does not have a Mohawk haircut). Or maybe the senator was just riffing on the word “caca.” Whether he was calling Sidarth monkey or excrement, it was equally ugly. That he added the pseudo-friendly “Welcome to America,” addressed to someone born only a couple of hundred miles from where the speech was made, gives away the motivation. If Sidarth had been named Smith and were blue-eyed, blond-haired and pink-skinned, would Sen. Allen have said, “Welcome to America” to him? When he is on the campaign trail, does he usually greet potential voters with “Welcome to America”? I think not.

This year, the Republican plan for re-election includes baiting and bashing immigrants. This is supposed to deflect public anger away from the manifold abject failures and crimes of the Bush administration, including the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, and the failure to address any of the real economic and social problems this country faces. Allen has been participating fully in this mean-spirited scapegoating game — more, for example, than Virginia’s other Republican senator, John Warner. The racist content of the anti-immigrant movement is clear for all to see. It is dark-complected immigrants from Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, not those from Europe or Canada, who are being portrayed as contaminating our culture, stealing our jobs, bankrupting our social services and bringing in crime, terrorism and disease. Anti-immigrant propaganda seeks to portray these immigrants as less than human. A horde of “macacas” perhaps?

Could it be that, whether he knew what “macaca” meant or not, what Sen. Allen was doing was baiting the young man as a non-white “foreigner”?

Do we need someone like this in the Senate, or the White House?

Emile Schepers is an immigrant rights activist living in Virginia.

The fear factor

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:51:00 +0000

Here we go again.

George Bush’s recent bellicose speeches on terrorism are a warning to all who care about peace and justice. Those speeches are aimed at discrediting the peace movement and silencing all dissent. They show that the spirit of Joe McCarthy is alive and well and currently living in the White House.

The midterm elections are just eight weeks away and the Republicans are in trouble. The polls are showing that if the elections were held today, the GOP would lose its majority in the House for sure, and possibly in the Senate as well — a powerful setback for the Bush agenda.

Therefore, they are hoping to raise the ideological stakes by scaring the people with racism and anticommunism.

They want to change the national discussion away from their failed war in Iraq, their failed response to Katrina and their ongoing racist, anti-working class policies. They want the people to forget that they are torturing innocent people and are spying and lying while more and more are dying. They want us to forget about the 40-plus million without health care and the crisis in education and the environment. This campaign has all the markings of Karl Rove.

Anti-Arab racism is being whipped up to win support for the war. Anti-immigrant racism is being pushed to split the working class. Anti-Black racism is being used to rationalize inaction on Katrina.

Speaking before the Military Officers Association of America on Sept. 5, Bush described his “war on terrorism” as “the great ideological struggle of the 21st century.” He compared it to the effort to defeat Nazism and Communism. He characterized those who want to end the war in Iraq as appeasers like those who appeased Hitler and who did not see the danger of Lenin.

This is the same old unpatriotic charge. It is the height of hypocrisy to make that charge against those who oppose his illegal war in Iraq, particularly since Bush is the grandson of Sen. Prescott Bush, who did appease Hitler.

It is time to reject the slander and anticommunism. Lenin and Hitler were political polar opposites.

When his grandfather was appeasing fascism, the Soviet people, inspired by Lenin’s political legacy, fought courageously against the fascist invaders. The world’s anti-fascist majority supported them. They almost single-handedly turned the tide of the war, all the while calling for a second front which was resisted by many in the U.S., like Prescott Bush.

In the end, the Soviet Union lost 20 million of their people. However, they inflicted more casualties on the Nazis then any other country and drove the invaders back to Berlin. The land of Lenin represented the highest expression of anti-fascism. To be a Communist is to be anti-fascist. The president’s grandfather, on the other hand, wanted to appease Hitler and the Nazis.

This bankrupt thinking fueled the arms race and the Cold War for 50 years and did great harm to humanity. It must be rejected if the fight for peace, democracy, economic and social justice is to succeed.

Bush is in a panic. He has seen the recent CNN poll that shows that 53 percent agree that the war in Iraq has no relationship to the war on terror. That means that a majority of the U.S. people now disagrees with the core reasons Bush says we should be in Iraq.

So Bush and his cronies panic. They know that the only way they can win this election is to use the fear factor.

This election is a referendum on the war, the economy and democracy. The American people, by a substantial majority, now believe that the war was a mistake and want a way out.

The policies of the Bush administration and the right-wing Republican majority in the Congress are responsible for the enormous human tragedies now taking place in Iraq and on our Gulf Coast. Most voters believe it is time for a change. I think the alienation from Bush and the war runs too deep to be reversed at this point. But they are making a serious effort to do just that.

The anti-Bush labor and people’s coalition must be vigilant and keep up the struggle. We must not become dissuaded by Bush’s antics, and we must be prepared for additional provocations.

We must work to make sure that the current majority sentiments will show up at the polls this November. The GOP is long overdue for a big political defeat and 2006 — and 2008 — could be it. The size and scope of the defeat will be determined by the size and scope of the work being done in the grass roots, door to door.

This battle can and must be won.

Jarvis Tyner (jtyner@cpusa.org) is the executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA.

EDITORIAL: Crass, cheap insult

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:37:00 +0000

The president’s address to the nation on Sept. 11 was the closing scene of the first act of the 2006 elections. While Americans were at the beach, running kids to camp or trying to figure out how high gasoline will go, Bush and endangered Republicans were auditioning a message to lift the sagging polls. The speech fit the Republican campaign schedule.

This was no ordinary presidential address. Bush entered our living rooms on a day when Americans paused to honor those who died at the hands of terrorists five years ago. In the words of political analyst Brent Budowsky, “Who was not moved by the courage of our police and fire fighters rushing into burning buildings to save our fellow Americans? … The infamy of the crime was met with the unified will and united spirit of a United America backed by the decent opinion of men and women in every corner of the world.

“Never before in our history have our people reacted to such infamy, to such hurt, with a greater and more powerful proof of our courage and nobility.

“And never before in our history has any leader of this country exploited such an event with such smallness, such partisanship, such disunity, such contempt and vindictiveness. Never before in our history has any leader of our country surrendered in the challenge of inspiring our people to bravery and valor and tried to make our people act like a timid and fearful nation.”

The closing scene on Sept. 11, 2006, was Bush spinning selfish big lies to tie the heinous Iraq war to terrorism, to justify the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis and Americans and exhort the country to reject its impulse to compassion, collective peace and unity. The speech was a crass, cheap insult.

EDITORIAL: Primary analysis

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:35:00 +0000

Sept. 12 was a “Super Tuesday” with primary elections in nine states. Even those races that turned on seemingly local issues revealed some patterns and trends emerging among voters. They are searching for candidates with the courage and independence to stand and fight the dominant Republican right and its disastrous policies of war and repression. Voters are choosing these candidates not merely as a matter of political conviction but also because they believe they have the best chance of winning Nov. 7. They are especially enthusiastic in rallying behind candidates who effectively link the $400 billion squandered in Iraq to the lack of health care, the fiscal starving of public education, and the crisis of our crumbling infrastructure symbolized by the levees of New Orleans.

Take New Hampshire. Voters bucked the Democratic machine and chose Carol Shea-Porter as their candidate for U.S. Congress from the Granite State. An opponent of the war in Iraq, she decided to run after working as a volunteer in New Orleans and finding the people abandoned by Bush, Cheney & Co.

Or take Donna Edwards, a young African American woman who nearly unseated eight-term incumbent Albert Wynn in Maryland’s 4th CD. Wynn, who is also African American, voted for the Iraq war resolution and for Bush’s outrageous bankruptcy bill. Edwards called Wynn “the Lieberman of Maryland.” The big vote she piled up showed that voters were listening.

Keith Ellison’s primary victory in Minneapolis means that it’s likely he will be the first Muslim member of the U.S. Congress and the first African American elected to Congress from the state of Minnesota. Ellison is compared to the late Sen. Paul Wellstone for his courage in standing against the ultra-right. Among other things, he calls for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

This trend bodes well for the general election, Nov. 7. For the most part, voters used their ballots Sept. 12 to send the message that it is time to change direction. It is time to elect a House and Senate that is responsive to the people, not the rich and greedy.

Black Caucus: End war, rebuild New Orleans, vote Nov. 7

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:42:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Whether the topic was violence in Baghdad or the lack of funds to rebuild New Orleans, the theme at the Congressional Black Caucus 36th Legislative Conference Sept. 6-9 was “changing course,” as the title of the meeting put it.

Speakers stressed that the change must begin Nov. 7 with a huge vote to end right-wing Republican control of the House and Senate. An estimated 20,000 people jammed the cavernous Washington Convention Center to hear that message.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) opened a special issues forum Sept. 8 titled “The Iraq war: what went wrong?” with a blast at President George W. Bush for transferring 14 detainees from secret CIA detention sites around the world to the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba.

“If they can go to a country that they have embargoed and set up a prisoner of war camp, then you have to believe it can happen to you,” Rangel said. “Some believe what the president or Cheney or Rumsfeld say is true because they say it.”

Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) thanked CBC members for standing against the war from the beginning. “I’m way behind these folks. I made a mistake,” said Murtha, a decorated Marine Corps combat veteran who voted for the resolution authorizing the war.

“I go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center almost every week,” he said. “I see young people there blown apart, kids without arms and legs, faces blown away. At first they said, ‘Send me back. I want to be with my buddies.’ Now they are saying, ‘Bring my buddies home.’”

He scorned “chickenhawks” who send the working poor to die. “These guys sit on their fat backsides here in Washington saying, ‘stay the course’ — Karl Rove, Dick Cheney who got five draft deferments” during the Vietnam War. Murtha said 79.9 percent of a flood of messages support his decision to speak out against the war. “We need to change direction. I’ve called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition, quoted Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1967 Riverside Church speech that the “bombs falling on Hanoi are exploding in our ghettoes.” Added Jackson, “There is nothing today bigger than the war. We can, by Nov. 7, change the course of our nation with our votes.” A victory in ending Republican control of the House, he continued, “would make John Conyers the head of the Judiciary Committee and Bush would be facing impeachment.”

The Rev. James Forbes, pastor of Riverside Church said the Iraq war “flunks the test” of a “just war” on every count. The basic lesson of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack “is that war is obsolete in the age of globalization. … Peace is the way of faith.”

He turned to Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), calling her “our angel of peace” for casting the lone vote against a resolution just days after 9/11 giving Bush carte blanche to resort to military force in the “war against terrorism.”

Lee was greeted with a standing ovation. She told the throng: “What went wrong was that Congress voted to let Bush do as he wished in the name of the war on terrorism. We have to continually remind the nation of what went wrong. Our nation and the world, quite frankly, are less safe because of this president and his unnecessary, immoral war.”

She pointed out that Bush recently reaffirmed his “doctrine of pre-emptive war” that has cost 2,300 soldiers dead, countless Iraqis dead and injured, and $400 billion.

“Twenty-three percent of African Americans are living in poverty and we have tax cuts for the wealthy,” Lee said. “This war is costing our children a chance at a quality education. Four hundred billion for an unjust war! The challenge is that we insist that we bring the troops home now. ”

Lee blasted the Bush administration’s “fear and smear” campaign in the 2006 elections, where its spokesmen compare war critics to “appeasers” of Nazi Germany. “We’ve got to beat back these scurrilous attacks,” she said. “Peace is patriotic. We’ve got to tell them we’re going to right these wrongs at the ballot box in November. We’re going to hold them accountable. And we’re going to take back the White House in two years.”

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) chaired a session on financial services that focused on the struggle to rebuild New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told the overflow crowd that one year after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of residents are still waiting for promised federal help.

“There’s $12 billion earmarked for Louisiana but no formula on how much of that is going to be spent in New Orleans, which sustained 60 percent of the damage,” Nagin said. There was a promise of $150,000 per household in federal funds to rebuild homes flooded by the breaching of the levees, he added. “Many have not received a dime of that federal money. They set up this process and created this bureaucracy and the affect is to discourage people from applying.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Latino leaders push voter turnout

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:38:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Dubbed as the first comprehensive gathering of Latino leaders since the civil rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s, over 3,000 participants assembled here Sept. 6-10 at the National Latino Congreso.

Antonio González, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Educational Project, cited a need “to unite across regions and reinvent the basic principles of unity in the Latino community.”

“The Congreso is going to be acting this week against the ugliness of the right wing,” added John Trasviña, interim president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The event, held at the downtown Sheraton Hotel, brought together people from the Latino, African American, Asian Pacific Islander, and Native American movements as well as other allies to develop a new direction for Latinos.

Union representatives and workers, business leaders, community development workers, members of nonprofit and religious groups, students and elected officials met to create a national policy platform and action-oriented agenda. There was a high presence of youth and students from the Los Angeles area.

Sponsors included the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the National Hispanic Environmental Council, the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, and Earth Day Network.

Delegates at daily plenary sessions passed over 70 resolutions, including support for a moratorium on deportations of immigrants, voting rights, election reform, immigrant rights, LGBT rights, the Employee Free Choice Act, increasing the minimum wage, social justice and economic equality and mass voter mobilization drives to make an impact on Nov. 7.

Irma Palacios, national field director of People for the American Way, charged, “States are taking systematic steps to deny the vote to our communities and it does not matter how many of us there are unless we show our strength on Election Day.”

Delegates also called for Latino and African American unity, environmental health, action on global warming, labor rights, peace and ending the war in Iraq.

A resolution calling for ending the U.S. blockade of Cuba was also endorsed.

A speaker in the workshop on LGBT rights highlighted a sentiment running throughout the Congress, declaring, “Todos somos familia” (We are all family).

“Building interracial dialogue is very positive” Kent Wong, a featured speaker at a forum called “Ethnic politics in America: allies or competitors,” told the World. “Questions that confront the Latino community affect all of us.” Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, added, “There has to be a coalition” between communities. “Winning electoral campaigns depends on it.”

Many workshops included both Latino activists and a multiracial array of experts in many subjects, including Judith Le Blanc, a Native American Indian who is co-chair of United for Peace and Justice, the largest national peace and justice coalition.

Bernardo Álvarez Herrera, Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S., spoke at a workshop on social movements and progressive politics in Latin America.

The immigration issue is the most important struggle right now, said Jessica Martínez, 16, state youth director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Martínez, a high school student from Las Cruces, N.M., hopes to “promote youth getting involved early, to be educated and to let high school students know they have opportunities.”

Linda Chávez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, agreed. “We don’t do enough to educate young people to become active,” she told the World.

Speaking to the Congress, Chávez-Thompson called for increasing income for Latinos and closing the economic gaps. She said the country needs higher, livable wages for workers and “affordable health care for everybody, not just the wealthy.” She also emphasized “protection and safety rights for women workers.”

Seven-year-old Saúl Arellano traveled to the Congress from Chicago in support of his mother, an undocumented worker, who has taken sanctuary in a church there. Saúl said he hopes that his mother, Elvira Arellano, will not be deported to Mexico. Recognizing his courage, the assembly gave him a standing ovation.

Cecilia Muñoz of the National Council of La Raza warned that the Republican leadership in Congress is poised to try to push through repressive legislation in piecemeal fashion in the next several weeks.

“We need to put the idea of sanctuary on our agenda,” said United Farm Workers Union co-founder Dolores Huerta. “Free trade agreements are putting people out of work.” She added, “We have got to organize our strength and march between now and Election Day.” Immigrants, she said, could help with a commitment of their time. “They could knock doors,” she suggested. “We’re talking about life and death here for many families.”

Other speakers included Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Speaker of the California State Assembly Fabián Nuñez; State Treasurer Phil Angelides, candidate for governor of California; and María Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

plozano@pww.org

Pilgrimage for justice: Immigrant rights activists march to House Speakers doorstep

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 05:09:00 +0000

Immigrant rights activists march to House Speaker’s doorstep, vow big vote turnout

BATAVIA, Ill. — Bearing American flags and pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary while marching to the beat of Korean drummers, some 400 immigrant workers, their families and supporters walked 50 miles from Chicago to the office of Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to demand action on immigration reform and an end to raids and deportations.

The Immigrant Workers Justice Walk braved the late summer heat, beating sun and a day of rain. It ended with a Labor Day rally of 2,500, including busloads from surrounding cities and towns. Demonstrators vowed the next march would be to the polls on Nov. 7.

Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said, “We’re going to Hastert’s office because he is the single most important obstacle to just immigration laws in this country.” Hoyt added, “Hastert’s approach is to try to win Republican-only legislation through enforcement and criminalization.”

The entire event joined the fight for immigrant rights with workers’ rights. Jorge Mujica, a leader of the March 10th Coalition, called the current immigration law a “killing law,” because of the deaths of 3,000 workers crossing the southwestern desert from Mexico. “They died not on the job, but going to a job,” he said. Three thousand crosses were left on the sidewalk surrounding Hastert’s office.

Mujica called for replacing the broken immigration law with a law that allows people to work and gain citizenship, and added that current labor laws “are on the side of the corporations. This movement is a workers’ movement too and we have to change those laws.”

Lynn Talbot, international vice president of Unite Here, declared, “We can’t accept any immigration law that divides our workers or our families. Immigrants didn’t close plants. The giant corporations did.”

A group of workers from the Smithfield hog processing plant in North Carolina fighting for union recognition joined the marchers for a day. Many marchers donned their yellow T-shirts in solidarity.

Others carried signs supporting Elvira Arellano, the immigrant mother of a 7-year-old boy born in the U.S. Threatened with deportation, she has found sanctuary in a Chicago church.

Other families threatened with deportation and being broken also marched.

The four-day “pilgrimage for justice” started in Chicago’s Chinatown, passed through the heavily Mexican American community of Little Village and then wound its way through the western suburbs, including DuPage County, a Republican Party bastion and a place of explosive growth of the immigrant population.

Many of the suburbs are in the 6th Congressional District, site of a heated battle to replace retiring right-wing Republican Representative Henry Hyde. Throughout the march, participants shouted, “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.”

Bernie Lo Wong, president of the Chinese American Service League, marched with nearly 50 members of her organization.

“It is important to send a message to our elected officials,” Wong said, “that this country is founded by immigrants.” Wong said she would walk “as far as my legs could go.” Wong’s granddaughter also marched.

Fifteen-year-old Devin Davis, an African American student at Senn High School, was among many youth marchers. Davis, a member of the Multi-Cultural Youth Project, said he participated “to show my love and respect for the whole movement. Immigrants face similar treatment as African Americans,” he said.

Milton Rosado, national president of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, was at the rally in Little Village. He said, “We’re continuing the whole debate,” adding that it is a “wonderful idea to go to the Speaker of House’s office with a great message to let them understand this hasn’t quieted down. We are going to continue voter registration and to get out the vote.”

Chicago 22nd Ward Alderman Ricardo Muñoz was the only elected official to march. He said Hastert has “a moral obligation to a comprehensive reform law” for immigrants. “Our job besides marching is that we have to register and vote and come out on Election Day,” he said.

Despite a promised counterdemonstration by the Minutemen, only a few dozen confronted the demonstration in Batavia. The marchers endured some hostile remarks from passing cars, but far more frequently were greeted with honking horns in solidarity. Residents came out of their houses to wave; some stood clapping as the long line passed.

Rallies were held in communities and churches along the way and marchers were greeted with food and water. Churches, a mosque and peace and justice organizations organized housing and meals.

The walk had the total support of the Illinois labor movement. SEIU International Vice President Eliseo Medina, who marched with legendary farm worker leader Cesar Chavez, addressed the Batavia rally. SEIU, UFCW and UE participated in the entire walk. At a press conference before the walk, Carl Rosen, president of UE District 11 said, “We are not going to rest until there is a fair immigration process in this country.”

Ron Powell, President of UFCW Local 881 said “there was unprecedented activism taking place across the country for immigrant rights. We want to make history on Nov. 7 to change Congress.”

Santorum vulnerable in hot Senate race

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 05:38:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH — There’s already been a reported shoving match, negative TV ads, federal money flowing in, and it is only the “dog days” of August. What’s up? Pennsylvania’s hot Senate campaign.

Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is the third-ranking Republican leader in Congress and, after voting 98 percent of the time with the Bush administration, is considered by all political analysts to be the most vulnerable Senate Republican up for re-election.

If money talks, then big money is speaking for Santorum. As of Aug. 2, the Center for Responsive Politics reports, Santorum raised $21 million while Bob Casey, the Democratic candidate, had $10 million. Santorum ranks second among all Senate candidates in raking in contributions. Notably, the amount of money Santorum got from oil corporations was second only to Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Santorum was the front man on the Bush campaign to privatize Social Security. On Santorum’s watch, 180,000 manufacturing jobs are gone forever from Pennsylvania as he voted against any measure to stem the hemorrhage.

The full impact of Santorum’s corporate front-man role is not lost on Pennsylvania’s workers. In August, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO led 25 labor walks, door to door, talking to union members and their families about jobs, health care, Social Security and education. The 900,000-member federation and its powerful retired worker affiliates have never been so united in their efforts to restore the voice of working families in the Senate.

At Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR/USW) picnics in Aliquippa and West Mifflin, the mere mention of Santorum’s name drew loud boos and some cussing.

For the first time in recent memory, even the state Democratic Party is on the move, mobilizing volunteers on Saturdays in August to door-knock, especially in the cities.

Despite a month-long $5 million ad campaign, which was unanswered by the Democratic candidate, Santorum did not gain much in the polls. In May, before Santorum’s media blitz, voters gave him a 39 percent favorable job rating, with 33 percent disapproving. Following the blitz, his approval and disapproval ratings were both 37 percent. But while Casey is still ahead by 48-42 percent, that was down from an earlier double-digit lead.

Polls suggest Bush is no help to Santorum. In a late August Quinnipiac poll, 64 percent of Pennsylvanians disapproved of Bush’s overall performance and opposed the Iraq war.

Casey recently completed a “front porch” bus tour through rural areas of the state. While expressing confidence, he said defeating Santorum was “not going to be easy.” Speaking in Clarion, in northwest Pennsylvania, Casey noted that Santorum voted three times to raise U.S. senators’ pay, while voting 13 times against raising the minimum wage. Casey pledged support for a minimum wage increase and stopping subsidies for oil corporations.

The campaign opens officially with a live debate broadcast nationwide on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sept. 3.