People Before Profit blog

This first draft needs work

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:30:00 +0000

One of the best English teachers I know teaches at our high school. She always draws the Senior English class assignment because she can coax out of even the most reluctant 18-year-old a solid “senior paper,” a right of passage at Federal Hocking High School. Amongst her tools is an approach to revision that goes this way: “Nice try, but you can do better, go figure out what is wrong and let me know when you do.”

This is the response I had when reading the first draft of the reauthorization proposals for No Child Left Behind put forth last week in the House. Nice try, you are beginning to figure out how deeply flawed the law is, but maybe you weren’t paying attention when educators told you what needed to be fixed. Go back to your notes, figure it out, and let us know when you do.

There are a few steps in the right direction in the draft. Forum for Education and Democracy Convener Linda Darling-Hammond, in her testimony to the House Education Committee points those out. In particular, the allowing for multiple measures of student and school success is a beginning — that should be expanded in any amendments rather than cut as many of the so-called “education groups” in D.C. will demand. But overall the bill misses the mark when it comes to equity, engagement and community. In the spirit of not giving students more than they can handle at one time, this week’s edits begin with the issue of equity.

Just this week we are again reminded of how inequitable school funding is across this nation by a story in the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal. Two schools, four miles apart, one with the appearance of a college campus, complete with well-landscaped grounds, built in 2003 at a cost of $37 million. The other, serving primarily children of color and poverty, with trash cans in the halls catching leaking rainwater and a tarp stretched over the front of the building to provide shelter when kids arrive. While the condition of a building does not tell the entire story about the education within the walls, it does tell you which children we value as opposed to those we do not.

Leave it to our plainspoken friends in Kansas to make the picture clear. In an editorial in the Tulsa World, senior editor Ken Neal points out that, “When most poverty is factored out of U.S. public school performance, U.S. schools rank No. 1 in the world. Since the U.S. has the highest childhood poverty among the competing nations, what does that say about the schools? About the nation? It says that poverty is the biggest problem of the schools and that poverty, not schools, is the biggest problem in the U.S.”

But does NCLB, or any other federal policy, even begin to address this issue? Nope.

Nothing in the law demands that school funding be equalized, that experienced and successful teachers be equally distributed, or that schools not be allowed to be segregated by socioeconomic status. We have pointed out earlier that simply passing the Student Bill of Rights, which makes moving to school funding equity in the states a requirement for receiving Title I funds, would put the country on track to begin honestly dealing with the disparate funding in our schools. And let’s be honest, it is the schools that our students of color and our children in poverty attend that get the shortest end of the stick when it comes to resources.

Of course, it is not only in schools that we see this. Last month the administration posted rules that will limit eligibility for families to receive subsidized health care. How I wish the bean counters in D.C. would have to sit with me while a young woman in my school battles to breathe through another asthma attack because her family cannot afford to refill her inhaler prescription at the end of the month.

The American public, as reflected in poll after poll, knows that curing poverty by simply demanding better test scores is not the answer. Testing is not investing. And any federal education policy that ignores that fact is doomed to merely rank more schools as failures, while doing nothing to improve the lives of our nation’s neediest children.

When the federal government first became involved in public schools it was as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty — with schools as but one tool in the arsenal against want. Today we seem to have declared unilateral surrender, pulling back all the proven weapons at our disposal in favor of merely demanding that children all test equally.

America owes its underserved communities a growing educational debt, one that Forum Convener Gloria Ladson-Billings has spoken and written so eloquently about. The authors of the House NCLB reauthorization now need to get busy and revise their draft. Let’s hope they do their homework and address the real gaps in America’s educational system: those that separate the poor from the rich in terms of the educational opportunities they are given.

George Wood is director of the Forum for Education and Democracy, and principal of Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio. This article is reprinted from the forum’s web site,

EDITORIAL: From Little Rock to Jena

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:23:00 +0000

This week the nation observed the 50th anniversary of the struggle to integrate public schools in Little Rock, Ark. It came just one week after 50,000 protesters converged on Jena, La., to protest the criminalization of six African American youths for daring to stand up against lynch nooses hung on a tree at their high school. It is especially outrageous that one of the Jena Six, Mychal Bell, remains in jail even though an appeals court threw out his conviction.

Half a century after the Supreme Court struck down the racist notion of “separate but equal,” a racist double standard still rules in the U.S. The Black teenagers in Jena had the book thrown at them for lashing back at racism. The white youths who perpetrated the racist provocations got slaps on the wrist.

The court’s refusal to free Bell reminds us of fanatical segregationist Arkansas Gov. Orville Faubus in 1957. Back then, the balance tipped only when President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to escort nine Black teenagers into Little Rock’s Central High School.

Eisenhower acted when mass public pressure, African American and white, forced him to.

It would require massively bigger pressure to compel our current president to intervene in Jena, but it’s a task that needs doing.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told a news conference he will “press our government for release of Mychal Bell” and will press the Justice Department to take a hard look at the “miscarriages of justice that have occurred in Jena, La.”

This is not a struggle for the African American people alone. It requires an outpouring of Americans of all races and ethnicities, demanding, “Remember the Little Rock Nine. Free the Jena Six.” It’s time to end Jim Crow injustice in America.

Gulf fishermen struggle to rebuild what Katrina destroyed

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:13:00 +0000

YSCLOSKEY, La. — In a shower of sparks, Ricky Robin was repairing hurricane damage to “Lil’ Rick,” his 56-foot steel-hulled shrimp boat, when he spotted an out-of-town reporter snapping photos.

“I built her with my own hands in 1974, 33 years ago,” he said proudly, setting aside his welding torch. He was speaking to me across Bayou LaLoutre, the waterway that cuts through this little fishing village an hour’s drive southeast of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish.

“I rode out the hurricane on board this boat,” he said in the lilting local dialect. “I ran Lil’ Rick up on the levee in Violet as the storm was raging so people could get somewhere safe. In less than an hour, I had 90 people aboard. My cousin Ronald and I pulled about 95 people out of the water.”

More than 300 people were marooned on the levee, said Robin (pronounced Cajun-style, “RoeBEHN”). They waited days to be rescued. “I have a locker on board and it was loaded with over 1,000 pounds of frozen shrimp,” he told the World. “So that’s how I was able to provide people with food and water.”

His heroic exploit was written up in the Sept. 12, 2005, edition of The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “After Katrina, a town of fisherman teeters on the brink.”

Still teetering

Two years later, it is still teetering, the single road through town strewn with the wreckage of houses pulverized in the storm. Many residents, Robin among them, are still living in FEMA house trailers. Robin is still waiting for approval of his “Road Home” grant so he can rebuild his home.

For the past two years, he has shuttled back and forth between Yscloskey and Tennessee where his wife, children and grandchildren took refuge. “I found a house about 20 miles from here and my wife is ready to come home,” Robin said. Even with a payout from FEMA and his insurance company, it has still taken two years to refit Lil’ Rick to return to the Gulf fishing grounds.

Robin and other shrimp fisherman toiled for months to clear wreckage and debris and dredge the channel so they could navigate their boats into Lake Borgne and out into the Gulf. The cost of that operation came out of the pockets of the fisherman. “I’m flat broke, now,” Robin said. “That’s why I have to get back out shrimping.”

Robin has met with President Bush and spoke favorably of him. A majority of St. Bernard Parish voters voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. Yet Robin said this time, “only Sen. Hillary Clinton has come out with a program” to rebuild St. Bernard Parish.

Everyone in the parish suffered a loss in Katrina, he said. His father, Charles Robin, a boatbuilder, overcome by grief at loss of the family home, took his own life a year ago.

A monument at ‘Mr. Go’

On Aug. 29, residents dedicated a granite memorial just down a dead-end road from here in neighboring Shell Beach. It lists the names of 137 people of St. Bernard Parish who died. During the dedication, Robin performed “Taps” and “Amazing Grace” on his bugle. His mother, Ceily, laid a wreath at the monument.

The gray stone monolith, with a tall metal cross behind it, stands on the shore of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO), known here as “Mr. Go.” The people here blame the 76-mile, straight-as-an-arrow ship channel for stripping away 27,000 acres of wetlands since the Corps of Engineers finished it in 1965. It was 650 feet wide when first dug, but four decades of erosion has widened it to more than 2,000 feet.

Residents also refer to MR-GO as a “hurricane highway,” sharply accelerating wind speeds and storm surges right through St. Bernard Parish into the heart of New Orleans. That is exactly what happened Aug. 29, 2005, when Katrina barreled up MR-GO, generating a storm surge 25 feet above sea level.

In his book “The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina,” Ivor Van Heerden, a founder of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said the surge slammed into the levees that protect New Orleans, toppling levee walls along the Industrial Canal, flooding the Upper and Lower 9th Ward.

“Mr. Go never should have been dug,” Robin told me. “The fisherman opposed it when it was proposed. We knew it would cut right through the wetlands and mess up the ecosystem. There is no one in the Corps of Engineers who has an ounce of common sense.”

Lost wetlands

Destruction of the coastal wetlands has also caused a subsidence, or sinking, of the land. Environmentalists charge that MR-GO permits salt water to flow into the marshes at high tide, killing the live oaks and cypress forests that thrived in the fresh-water marshes throughout the region. The silvery skeletons are all that remain of trees that once slowed hurricanes blowing in from the Gulf.

“Years ago, this was forest all the way to the Gulf,” Robin said. “Trees grew on Chandeleur Island and Free Mason Key.” Robin said. “There was farmland right here. Sugar cane grew right here in Yscloskey. Now it’s all under water.”

Exxon Mobil and Murphy Oil Company own refineries in St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish. Oil storage tanks ruptured during Katrina, spilling 8 million gallons of crude in the delta wetlands.

Carlton Dufrechou, executive director of the Lake Ponchartrain Basin Foundation (LPBF), confirmed that erosion of the Gulf Coast is a key factor in the deadliness of hurricanes. Restoration of the wetlands, cypress forests and barrier islands is key to reducing the hurricane danger, he said.

Before Katrina, the most powerful hurricane to slam New Orleans was Betsy in 1965. Dufrechou said his family lived in a house beside the 17th Street Canal at that time, the levees far lower than today. “Yet the majority of New Orleans made it through Betsy with little damage. Now the levees are 17 feet high, yet much of the city was destroyed by Katrina.”

What made the difference? “It’s the erosion of the coast,” he said. “MR-GO cuts directly through 40 miles of wetlands. Once it served as a natural buffer between the Gulf and New Orleans.” Now there is nothing to slow the 100-mile-an-hour winds or absorb the tsunami-like storm surges of a Category 5 hurricane.

More action needed

“There is a recognition that for New Orleans to be sustained for the long term, we need a strong coast,” Dufrechou told the World. “Katrina and Rita really brought that home to people. But is anything being done to address coastal erosion? Only on paper. The funding to date has gone solely into rebuilding the levees.”

The only project aimed at stopping the crumbling away of the coast is $20 million to build an earthen barrier closing MR-GO. While strongly supported by the people, it is only one small step, he said. “Without a plan that restores the coast, we’re whistling in the dark.”

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com) is national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.

Bush veto would strip 5 million kids of health care

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:10:00 +0000

President Bush’s threatened veto of legislation to renew and expand the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) puts at risk medical insurance for 5 million or more poor children, according to fighters for children’s health care.

Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, told the World that representatives and senators must vote overwhelmingly to approve the legislation to “send a signal that they have the votes to override a presidential veto.”

The House was scheduled to vote Sept. 25 on final passage of compromise legislation written by a House-Senate conference committee to extend SCHIP and increase funding over the next five years by $35 billion. The program was scheduled to expire Sept. 30.

The struggle to renew and expand the program “is probably the most important vote on a domestic issue the lawmakers will cast this year,” Weinstein said. “It sends such an important signal on whether they will stand up to the president and abandon his ill-considered policy on children’s health.”

The conference committee leaned toward the less generous Senate version in hopes of attracting a large enough bipartisan majority to override a Bush veto, Weinstein said. “The key element of the legislation is that it will protect all those children currently insured under SCHIP and will expand coverage to nearly 4 million children who would otherwise be uninsured.” A vote in the Senate is expected next week.

Then looms the battle to override Bush’s threatened veto.

Speaking at a White House news conference last week, Bush touted his plan to increase funding by only $5 billion over the next five years. Bush accused the bipartisan majority that voted for the $35 billion expansion of “putting health care coverage for poor children at risk,” as if they and not he were responsible for the veto. Bush charged that expansion of the program “is a step toward federalization of health care.”

Weinstein reacted angrily: “That’s baloney. He is shamefully hypocritical about this. We estimate that under his plan, by 2012 between 800,000 and a million fewer children would be protected than we cover now in SCHIP.” Add to that his veto of a bill that extends coverage to an additional 4 million children and it means Bush is stripping 5 million or more youngsters of protection, she charged.

The SCHIP program runs through private providers, she pointed out. It enjoys tremendous bipartisan support. A letter signed by 30 governors on a bipartisan basis asked Congress to pass this legislation. “Bush is really standing out there alone on this, using this to promote his agenda such as tax credits for the uninsured that are totally ineffective.”

Weinstein added, “All the data shows that children were losing health insurance protection year after year until 1997 when SCHIP was enacted. The private sector has failed to insure children just as it has failed to provide health insurance for everyone else. SCHIP is meeting a need from the failure of the employer-based health insurance system.”

A report released last year by the Campaign for Children’s Health Care titled “No Shelter From the Storm: America’s Uninsured Children” charges that “one of every five uninsured is a child.” Close to 50 million people in the U.S. lack health insurance.

Enactment of SCHIP in 1998 began to reverse the scandalous rate of unprotected children. But the most recent data from the Census Bureau shows that since the Bush-Cheney administration took power, “for the first time since 1998, the rate of uninsured children increased, from 10.8 percent to 11.2 percent. One in nine children is uninsured and more than one-half of all uninsured children live in two-parent families.”

The report adds, “Gone are the days when working parents could rely on employer-based health insurance to cover the whole family. Today, low-income parents often do not have access to a health plan at work, or their employer’s plan may be unaffordable.”

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

Iraq Moratorium asks How many more will die?

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:08:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Dozens of peace activists, covered in white sheets, some stained with fake blood, lay motionless on the concrete with red carnations atop their bodies in a “die-in” at Federal Plaza here Sept. 21, symbolizing the mounting death toll of the Iraq war.

As onlookers watched and crowds gathered to pay their respects, names were read of some of the estimated 655,000 Iraqis who have died since the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of that war-torn country. Many of the names were of children under 10 years old. Organizers of the die-in say that an estimated 100 Iraqis are dying each day. Over 3,700 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq.

Local peace activists, elected officials, and religious, labor and community leaders joined the event calling on Congress to bring U.S. troops home. The American Friends Service Committee and Peace Pledge-Chicago sponsored the event as part of a series of nationwide Iraq moratoriums which, organizers say, will continue to intensify every third Friday until the war ends.

“People everywhere should be doing anything to show public opposition to the war,” said Carl Davidson with Chicagoans Against War and Injustice. Davidson said peace activists should wear buttons or black armbands, refuse to purchase gas, hold vigils or host film screenings to voice the growing antiwar majority. Thousands of actions are taking place throughout the country, Davidson said.

“We have to be organized right at the nitty-gritty to represent popular power,” he added. “If you really want politicians to pay attention, then we need to organize independent peace groups in every neighborhood.”

But some politicians, including Chicago City Council members Joe Moore of the 49th Ward and Ricardo Munoz of the 22nd, are helping to lead the antiwar fight. They are calling on other elected officials, church groups, trade unions, immigrant rights groups, and student and community organizations to join the Midwest regional mobilization that will culminate in a mass peace demonstration here on Oct. 27. (For more information, visit www.oct27chicago.org.)

Over 110 local groups have signed up for the Oct. 27 protest and busloads are expected from Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota and Kentucky. The Chicago demonstration will be part of a mass outpouring of regional actions taking place in 10 different urban centers calling an end to the Iraq war. Other cities include Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Orlando, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“The Chicago City Council has passed twice a resolution to end the war and withdraw troops,” Alderman Moore told reporters after the die-in. “This is an unjust, immoral and illegal disastrous war led by President Bush.”

The war has cost the city of Chicago alone $4.7 billion, according to organizers. “That money could be used toward education, or health care, and to improve the quality of our communities,”

Moore said.

Munoz agreed, saying, “I’m here, not as an alderman, but as a citizen of the world — and I want justice and peace.” He added, “Everybody — city councils, state representatives, moms and dads — should take the war seriously and join this campaign.”

William McNary, co-director of Citizen Action/Illinois, also called on people to join the mobilization for Oct. 27. “Every human being has equal worth, born in America or Iraq,” he said. “The war has cost us $453 billion. This is about priorities, and we need to change our priorities.”

He added, “If we could prove that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were lying about invading Iraq, then they should be impeached.”

Reports say that in the wake of the U.S. invasion, 80 percent of Iraqis lack effective sanitation and 70 percent lack access to clean water. Chronic child malnutrition is estimated at 21 percent and an estimated one-third of the 34,000 doctors who lived and worked in Iraq before the war have left the country. And unemployment has risen from 25 percent to 60

percent.

Michael McConnell, regional director for AFSC, said the die-in was to show people what it looks like in Baghdad, especially since the Pentagon hides what Americans cannot see when it comes to the horrific death toll there.

“We hope to have over 10,000 people marching to express the outrage of this war on Oct. 27,” said McConnell. “Congress needs to cut funding for the war. It’s leaving our communities bleeding.”

Melissa Stanley brought her 14-month-old daughter to the event. She represents a local peace group on the north side of town.

“Being here today really hit home with me, especially when they called out little children’s names,” said Stanley. “It’s devastating.” She said she could not possibly imagine what it would be like

to raise a child in Iraq under such

circumstances.

“It’s scary to think of the war as a mother,” Stanley said, adding that if mothers ruled the world there would be no wars. “We would be thinking of our own children first.”

plozano@pww.org

After historic march: No justice yet for Jena 6

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:00:00 +0000

JENA, La. — The day after tens of thousands marched to free the Jena Six, Melissa Bell stepped out of the LaSalle Parish Courthouse in tears Sept. 21 after the judge denied bail for her son, Mychal Bell.

Bell, 17, is the first of the Jena Six to be tried and convicted — by an all-white jury — on charges of aggravated battery. He has been in prison since last December. Judge J.P. Mauffray refused to release him on bail, even after the Louisiana Appeals Court overturned his conviction on grounds he was improperly tried as an adult.

Bell and five other Black teenagers face years in prison for standing up to racism, in a series of events that unfolded last year when Black students dared to sit under a “white tree” on the Jena High School lawn. The “white tree” was where white students, 80 percent of the student body, would sit during school breaks.

The day after the Black students sat down, nooses — bearing the school colors — were hung on the tree. Three white students were found to have hung the nooses and the principal recommended expulsion. However, the school’s superintendent overruled the principal and instead gave the students a three-day suspension, calling the nooses “a prank.”

Jena’s Black community was infuriated by such light treatment of what was widely seen as a hate crime, given the region’s history of lynchings of African Americans.

Meanwhile, after they endured a series of racial provocations, the six African American youths were charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery for striking Justin Barker, a white youth who had assailed them with racist language including the “n” word, and had supported the noose-hangers.

Seeing the Black youths charged with major crimes for what many feel amounts to a schoolyard fight, while white offenders got off with taps on the wrist, struck a chord nationwide, especially among African Americans. It was seen as a stark evidence of the inequity and racism that riddles the nation’s criminal justice system, from application of the death penalty to drug prosecutions.

These feelings were further inflamed after the manmade disaster of Hurricane Katrina, which laid bare for many the government’s racist and class indifference to African Americans and poor people of all colors.

Fed up with these injustices, a network of students, Internet activists and traditional civil rights groups, especially throughout the South, filled buses, cars and vans that poured into this town of 3,000, Sept. 20, and held solidarity rallies in towns and cities across the country.

Curtis Nelson and 149 other members of a motorcycle club in Moss Point, Miss., joined by 72 bikers from Baton Rouge, roared into Jena on their Harley-Davidsons. “Penitentiary for six teenagers for a fist fight? That’s cruel!” Nelson told the World. “When I was in high school you got suspended for getting in fights. And what about the white student who brought a loaded gun to school? They confiscated his gun and hushed it up. That’s not equal justice.”

Burnell Tolbert, president of the NAACP’s LaFourche Parish branch, came with a busload from Thibodaux, La. Tolbert is a carpenter working to rebuild New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward. Residents there are still waiting for Bush to deliver on promised “Road Home” grants.

“We’re here because an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Tolbert told the World. “They say race is not an issue here. If race is not the issue, then what is?”

Civil rights leaders including the Rev. Jesse Jackson addressed the crowd on the courthouse steps, linking Jena to previous struggles. “Just as Selma was about the right to vote and Little Rock was about the right to first class schools, this is about fairness in the criminal justice system,” Jackson said.

Charleston Hendrix, a retiree from Chicago, told the World, “I blame George W. Bush, not the people of Jena. Bush came into office saying he was going to be ‘a uniter, not a divider.’ He has done just the opposite. He has done everything in his power to divide us, white from Black. They created the climate for incidents like the one that happened here.”

While the demonstrators were overwhelmingly Black, white people were there too.

Linda Smith, a young white electrician at the Ingalls Naval Shipyard in Mississippi, told the World, “I was outraged by how these young people are being treated. They could be my own kids.”

After the rally, we were invited to the home of Robert Bailey, one of the Jena Six. The defendants and their families were not granting media interviews. Yet Bailey and fellow defendant Theo Shaw were greeting well-wishers who arrived at the modest mobile home on a tree-lined street.

After the nooses were found hanging from the limb that morning last year, Bailey stood in silent vigil under the tree. It was reminiscent of the lunch counter sit-ins throughout the South in the 1960s. His aunt told the World, “It gives us such a good feeling that so many have come here to show support for our young men. I’m proud of my nephew.”

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

EDITORIAL: No blank check on justice

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:25:00 +0000

Media pundits, commentators and spin doctors are busy once again, interpreting the choice by President Bush of Michael B. Mukasey to replace the disgraced Antonio Gonzales as attorney general. Missing from most of the “analysis” is the fact that Bush has turned the entire Justice Department, if not justice in America itself, into a shambles.

Civil rights enforcement, laws against wiretapping, laws prohibiting torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, and laws against warrantless searches, to name only a few, have all gone out the window at the Bush Department of Justice. Meanwhile, the department has been turned into a Karl Rove/GOP political campaign machine, much to the dismay of many career employees who thought they were there to enforce the law, not pervert it. A state of emergency exists in the entire area of federal law enforcement and safeguarding of human rights.

The Senate should not confirm Mukasey or anyone else unless the nominee states under oath, in very concrete terms, what he or she will do to repair the dismantled state of the rule of law in our country.

The president’s nominee should pledge to gather civil rights leaders from across the land to help the Justice Department draft a plan to restore the historic role of its Civil Rights Division. The nominee should be required to turn over to the Senate the names of all those in the department, and higher up, who violated federal laws against torture and warrantless wiretapping, and should pledge to prosecute all of them.

The nominee should turn over to the Senate any Justice Department records related to the use of “national security letters” to illegally intimidate U.S. citizens.

In short, Mukasey or anyone else should not be confirmed unless they swear under oath that they will restore justice to the Justice Department and to the country that the Justice Department has robbed, and unless they declare concretely how they will undertake this essential responsibility.

No matter what, Congress and the public will have to keep on top of ensuring that we have a Justice Department that works for us.

Auto union, GM at odds

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:20:00 +0000

DETROIT — Having named General Motors the “strike target” in their negotiations with Detroit’s Big Three auto companies on Sept. 13, the United Auto Workers union had still not reached an agreement with GM as the People’s Weekly World went to press. The contract was scheduled to expire Sept. 14, but was being extended on a day-to-day basis as talks continued.

But union patience with the giant automaker was apparently beginning to run out. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger warned the union would be setting a strike deadline if negotiations with GM did not progress faster. In a message obtained by the Detroit Free Press, Gettelfinger said the talks must accelerate or the union would be forced to establish a firm deadline for strike action.

While no official word from the union had been released, it was widely assumed that health care and job security are the two main issues the union is fighting for.

On health care, GM has been seeking a Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) that would offload the company’s retiree health obligations onto a UAW-administered trust, thereby removing a huge liability from GM’s financial books. Sure to be contested was the extent to which GM funds the trust, since health care costs continue to go up and could easily rise faster than the fund grows.

On Sept. 16, three former UAW regional directors — Jerry Tucker, Paul Schrade and Warren Davis — released a letter critical of a VEBA-type agreement, saying there should be a union-wide discussion before one is agreed to. The letter said such an agreement would “undo decades of hard-won health care benefit protections, paid for in large part by wage diversions, past concessions and increased worker productivity. The potential consequences of adopting such a plan will be economically painful, if not disastrous, to those covered by it.”

Observers note that several existing VEBA-type plans, such as the one at Caterpillar, are already bankrupt.

Another major concern for the union has been getting a commitment from GM for workers’ job security and company investments in U.S. auto plants. The auto companies want the “flexibility” to close plants and take more UAW workers off their payroll by outsourcing to suppliers more non-production jobs and power train work.

Still another concern for workers is the push by GM, in a variety of ways, for wage concessions.

If GM cannot outsource all the work it wants to, it would like to pay lower wages to those who remain on its payroll, especially its new hires. A two-tier wage system for these workers and, for that matter, the entire workforce is an idea that GM has floated for some time now. The union has long resisted the introduction of two-tier schemes or the expansion of those that already exist.

A new contract with GM would affect about 412,000 active members, retired members, surviving spouses and other dependents.

Awaiting the results of its negotiations with GM, the UAW indefinitely extended the contracts it has with Ford and Chrysler. Past practice suggests that agreements with Ford and Chrysler may be patterned after the one with GM.

jrummel @pww.org

After partial victory, momentum builds for Jena 6

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:19:00 +0000

Facing an angry firestorm, a state appeals court overturned the conviction of 17-year-old Mychal Bell on aggravated battery charges stemming from his resistance to a racist hate crime in the town of Jena in central Louisiana last year. Yet Bell still remains in jail.

Louisiana’s 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Sept. 14 that Bell was improperly tried as an adult in the case now widely referred to as the Jena 6. The case has stirred nationwide outrage, with more than 200,000 signing petitions demanding that all charges be dropped against the six African American teenagers. A coalition of civil rights groups was filling buses to bring protesters to a “Free the Jena 6” rally in Jena, Sept. 20.

Alan Bean, executive director of Friends of Justice, the Texas-based faith group credited with shining the spotlight on the Jena 6, hailed the ruling but warned that “it’s still an uphill struggle” for justice.

Bean attended a court hearing in Jena, Sept. 17, expecting the judge to order Bell released from the jail where he has been held since last December, unable to raise the $90,000 bail.

But LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray refused to release Bell. “From that hearing, or ‘non-hearing,’ it appears that Mychal will still be incarcerated at the time of our rally here in Jena,” Bean told the World in a telephone interview. “Our hope was that Mychal would be there with us and we would celebrate with him and his family.”

Instead of a celebration, Bean said, the demonstration will resound with demands that Bell be released and charges be dropped against the Jena 6.

Bean said buses from across the nation would converge on Jena, with as many as 40,000 protesters. “This entire area will be gridlocked,” he said. “The response from Black America has been overwhelming. In conversations I have with African Americans, almost every one of them has been hooked with some private pain from the criminal justice system. Either they or someone they love has been abused. The Jena 6 case gives them a chance to speak out for justice.” The challenge, he added, is to “educate white Americans” about the racism still deeply endemic to the system.

The rally was endorsed by the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson hailed the overturning of Bell’s conviction but warned, “This crisis is not over yet. This ruling leaves in suspension what’s going to happen to the other five. But the Jena 6 and their supporters are now on the offensive. So long as these kids were in the dark without representation, they were all going up the river. When the lights came on and the public pressure flooded in, it began to change everything.” Jackson himself traveled to Jena and spoke to a rally of 300 residents Sept. 9.

The prosecutor, Reed Walters, is threatening to appeal the Bell ruling to the Louisiana Supreme Court which could reinstate his conviction. Reed also has the option of re-trying Bell as a juvenile.

The case began a year ago when African American high school students in Jena asked their principal if they could sit under a tree on the school lawn referred to as “the white tree.” The principal said they could sit anywhere, so they sat under the tree. When students arrived at school next morning, nooses were hanging from the tree, a menacing symbol of KKK terrorism now widely seen as a hate crime.

It escalated into a sharp confrontation that included a fistfight. Bell allegedly punched a white student who hurled a racist epithet at him. The school superintendent dismissed the noose-hanging as a prank, but Bell and five other African American students were initially charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

District Attorney Walters incredibly argued that Bell had struck the white youth with a lethal weapon, which was identified as a tennis shoe.

When Bell’s trial opened, Walters, no doubt reacting to widening protests over the case, reduced the charges to aggravated battery and conspiracy.

It was the aggravated battery conviction that the appeals court overturned Sept. 14. The conspiracy charge was tossed out earlier.

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

More on Barry Bonds and the all-American game

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:02:00 +0000

For the last several years we have seen a feeding frenzy targeting one of baseball’s greatest players of all time. What is behind these attacks? Is it that one man went astray in an otherwise pure game? Or simply a case of cheating?

Hardly. To find the answer we must look at the baseball industry, our culture and indeed our entire system.

In 1994, a massive ball player strike led to the cancellation of the World Series and part of that year’s baseball season. Many people in our country, including some of the most loyal baseball fans, became disillusioned about the sport. The owners of the major teams were desperate to build up the game and increase their profits.

One of the main ways they chose to do this was to build newer (and smaller) ballparks, making it easier to hit a home run. The baseballs, the bats and even the very rules of the game were changed (the strike zone was narrowed to give an advantage to batters) — all so that there would be more home runs.

It would be beyond naive to believe that the owners didn’t also put enormous pressure on the players to take sports enhancing drugs, so as to get more home runs and increase the industry’s profits.

It may be hard to look at Barry Bonds and other major league players, with their wealth and fame, and see them as exploited, but in many respects they are. In many ways they are simply super-sized versions of the grocery store clerk or factory worker who puts his or her life into a job and thereby makes the owner more wealthy. Bonds’ wealth is mere pocket change compared to what some of the team owners and managers make. In this way, Bonds and the other players can be seen as workers confronting management.

And as usual, the management strategy toward their workers is divide and conquer. Consider: in 2005, the famed player Mark McGwire, who currently holds the record for most home runs in a season, was asked to testify before Congress about steroid use by other ballplayers. Fortunately the divide and conquer tactic proved harder than management may have expected. McGwire refused to testify against his fellow players, telling the congressional committee: “I will use whatever influence and popularity that I have to discourage young athletes from taking any drug that is not recommended by a doctor. What I will not do, however, is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates.”

Well said.

Many sportswriters for the corporate media were not nearly as scrupulous. McGwire, like Bonds, was blasted by much of the press. When McGwire became eligible for admission into the Hall of Fame, he was denied the honor, due in large part to negative votes on the board of acceptance — most of whom are establishment sportswriters.

Players are punished not only for what they don’t say but often for what they do say. Take the example of Jason Giambi, a player for the New York Yankees, who was also hauled before the congressional committee regarding drug use in baseball.

Giambi recently told USA Today, “What we should have done a long time ago is was stand up — players, ownership, everybody — and said: ‘We made a mistake.’”

Oops, all of a sudden Giambi’s contract with the Yankees (worth over $100 million) was being reconsidered. Giambi was told by the baseball commissioner (who is appointed by the team owners) to basically shut up.

Do these sound like the actions of an industry that is concerned with players doing drugs? Or are these the actions of an industry that is more concerned with not letting itself be implicated in a scandal?

The evidence indicates that team owners not only tolerate drug use by players but encourage it for the sake of greater profit.

However, the real question about Barry Bonds is simply this: did his steroid use, if he indeed used these drugs (he has never tested positive for them), diminish his legacy?

Drugs may have enhanced his game, but so what? Drugs may have enhanced Shakespeare’s writing, but few question his accomplishments. Drugs don’t create record home run makers any more than they create world-class writers. Bonds got where he is because he was born with a seemingly God-given talent and worked extremely hard to refine it and himself.

That is the mark of a true athlete and something that deserves respect and support, not cheap shots and condemnation.

Teddy Wood is a student, age 23, in California.

New ID card unifies the Elm City

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 07:50:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The big success of the Elm City Residents Card, which has received an overwhelmingly positive response here, has also become a model for other cities. The history of the new ID card is a history filled with the struggle for immigrant rights and workers’ rights.

Some background

After the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the increase in racial profiling, the Latino immigrant community in New Haven came together at the New Haven People’s Center where they helped found Unidad Latina en Accion (ULA).

The biggest concern for everyone was the inability to get a driver’s license for travel to work and for shopping, medical appointments and other necessities.

A bill was introduced into the Legislature to allow any resident of Connecticut, regardless of immigration status, to receive a driver’s license if they passed the test. Despite many hearings, petitions and knocking on doors, the bill was defeated.

After this great disappointment, the question was placed at a ULA meeting: “What else can we do? We’re not going to give up.” The answer came: “Let’s work together to get the city to issue ID cards in New Haven.” This would improve the lives of immigrants who, for lack of an ID, could not get bank accounts or who were reluctant to report crimes to the police for fear of being harassed or deported.

Such a card, its supporters pointed out, would benefit the entire community.

Taking action

The City of New Haven Peace Commission proposed that the New Haven Board of Aldermen hold a series of public hearings to learn about the precarious situation immigrants face every day. Junta for Progressive Action, a nonprofit organization in the Fair Haven neighborhood, which includes a large immigrant population, working with ULA, presented an action program, including the city ID.

But what made this program so successful?

Without the organized voice of the immigrant community, it could not have been achieved. ULA spent many hours knocking on doors, phone banking, talking on the street and distributing fliers to build the base for this effort.

During this same period, ULA and Junta convened a huge meeting at St. Rosa de Lima Church with Police Chief Francisco Ortiz and his staff. The proposal for the ID program and relations with the police were discussed. In the coming months, this resulted in a police order that immigration status should not be requested during other civil matters. Mayor John DeStefano Jr. publicly endorsed the ID program.

In the meantime, the entire community became engaged.

Forums were organized by ULA and Junta in which students from the Yale Law School participated as legal advisers. Public pressure was placed on the mayor to speed up the process for the ID, emphasizing that this card would not just be for immigrants, but for all New Haven residents.

In December 2006, after many months of waiting, ULA organized a press conference at the mayor’s office where they presented him with a giant Christmas card wish list. The top wish was, “Mr. Mayor, the immigrant community needs our New Haven Resident City ID.” DeStefano was willing to hear the concerns and said he was working on it.

To lay the groundwork for the card, the city sought legal advice and raised private funds to cover the costs of the entire project.

In the spring of 2007, a subcommittee of the Board of Aldermen held a meeting to discuss the viability of the ID. The committee members agreed to bring the ID to the full board with a recommendation to adopt.

A big ‘yes’ vote, followed by a raid

On June 4, with aldermanic chambers filled beyond capacity, the final vote was 25-1 to enact the ID program. People throughout New Haven were celebrating.

But 36 hours later, Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) came to New Haven in the early morning hours, snatching 34 people in front of their children, leaving the families terrorized.

Within hours, a meeting of community leaders was held in the office of Kica Matos, director of the city’s community services and former director of Junta, who played a leadership role in developing the ID. Arrangements were made to aid the children and family members of those detained and to raise bail funds.

In response to the ICE raid, ULA called an emergency meeting at the New Haven People’s Center that was attended by clergy, union and community leaders and members of the immigrant community. Four actions were planned.

First, a press conference was held with Lila Downs, a popular Mexican American singer who was performing at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

Second, a solidarity demonstration was held at the federal building in Hartford, where the bond hearing took place for many of those detained by ICE.

Third, a team organized by ULA served as visible guardians in the Fair Haven neighborhood where the raid took place, wearing signs and distributing cards telling people what to do if they were contacted by ICE. This was important to stop rumors and allay fears of another raid.

Fourth, a remarkable march of over 1,000 people was organized within a week. The marchers gathered in the Fair Haven neighborhood. Overcoming great fear, the immigrant community marched and was joined by union members from many states, clergy with their congregations, the mayor and other elected officials and activists who marched two miles in the rain, finishing with a rally in City Hall.

John Wilhelm, president of the hospitality division of the Unite Here union, joined the march in solidarity along with members of his union from the East Coast. Four years earlier, a group of immigrant workers showed solidarity with Unite Here when they refused to break the strike of workers at Yale University.

The card takes off

A political climate was created to defend the New Haven Residents Card. The first ID cards were issued on July 24, with full coverage by the national media. For two weeks, the lines filled City Hall. In the first five weeks, 3,348 cards were issued despite harassment by a small out-of-town anti-immigrant group who picketed City Hall for the first two days.

The New Haven Residents Card is a multipurpose card available to all residents regardless of age or immigration status.

Some banks have already announced they will accept the ID card for opening accounts. Parents are getting the card for their children for safety in case they get lost. Elderly residents without a driver’s license are signing up for the card.

Cards are issued at the Office of Residents in City Hall on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. to those who can provide proof of identity (passport, consular ID, driver’s license) and two proofs of residence (rent receipt, utility bill, pay stub).

The cost is $10 for adults and $5 for children and seniors. In addition to serving as a photo ID, the card includes a library card, access to public parks and the city dump, and can serve as a debit card for parking meters and goods and services at 150 participating stores.

Complete information about the ID card is available on the City of New Haven web site, www.cityofnewhaven.com. For information about Unidad Latina en Accion, call (203) 606-3484 or (203) 479-2959.

Fátima Rojas is a leader of Unidad Latina en Accion. Joelle Fishman is an activist at the New Haven People’s Center and chairs the Connecticut Communist Party USA.

Chrysler workers walk as deadline nears

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 06:13:00 +0000

Three hundred workers represented by the United Auto Workers union walked off the job in Auburn Hills, Mich., Sept. 12, as the People’s Weekly World went to press. The workers who walked out are employed at Chrysler’s technical operations center at the site of the company’s headquarters.

At 12 noon the workers were gathering in front of the main office tower of the Chrysler’s Auburn Hills compound just outside of Detroit. They were waiting for the leadership of UAW Local 142 to speak to them. A spokesman for the union local said the workers were being provided with hot dogs and boxed lunches.

The spokesman said the purpose of the walkout was to protest the slow pace of contract negotiations and any potential outsourcing of jobs held by UAW Local 412 members

The Big Three auto companies and the UAW began contract negotiations in July and their contract is set to expire Friday, Sept. 14.

Although the negotiations are not held in public or open to the media, sources say that health care costs are a key issue, with the automakers seeking to shift responsibility for benefits from themselves to the UAW.

The union local involved in the walkout is one of the largest UAW locals in the country and has a diverse membership that includes salaried, hourly, skilled trades and public sector employees. Members of the local include automotive engineers and designers in both the auto and defense industries, and even attorneys in the public sector. The local has more than 5,000 members.

jwojcik @pww.org

Public education is new freedom struggle

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:36:00 +0000

A teacher’s viewpoint

While large numbers of young people now start school in August, Labor Day weekend still marked the “official” end of summer vacation for hundreds of thousands of others. For too many of these youngsters, the excitement of a new school year will wear off quickly as they feel the impact of underfunded schools forced to deal with the emphasis on high-stakes testing.

Those new to the struggle for adequate and equitable funding for schools are often awestruck by the incongruities that exist: The richest country in the world does not provide quality education to all its children. In spite of the “all men are created equal” principle, kids in poor neighborhoods get poor schools in inadequate facilities, where a librarian or a music or art teacher are all considered luxuries. Schools in wealthy neighborhoods offer small class sizes and a full range of programs.

Even more damning to this “system” is the reality that it’s the kids in the neighborhoods that lack stable homes and have to deal with problems resulting from a high concentration of poverty who need more, not less. While many urban and rural districts report dropout rates at 50 percent or higher, the solutions presented rarely have to do with fixing the inequities, creating fair funding formulas, taxing the wealthiest corporations to help pay for this essential public service or even considering what kind of education may make sense for children growing up in the 21st century.

Instead, the solution offered is the No Child Left Behind legislation which mandates tests to show “adequate yearly progress,” with no offer of funds to make progress possible. In this climate, privatization schemes abound. Private contractors and “education management organizations” are paid enormous sums to run schools with public dollars, bribing districts with false promises of testing success.

The challenge of engaging disenchanted and marginalized youth in educational endeavors is enormous. We have played games with enough “solutions” to finally focus on the real ones:

• Put adequate tax dollars to work offering small class sizes in areas of most need.

• Offer programs that tap into the creative arts and special talents of our children.

• Engage youth in thinking and planning for their future.

• Open up the world to all of our children, not just those who can afford to pay for it.

This is the new freedom struggle. Instead of the excitement of a new school year wearing off, it should continue to reverberate throughout the year.

Detroits Labor Day challenges anti-union drive

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:58:00 +0000

DETROIT — Among the many Labor Day parades and picnics across the country last week, this city’s parade had a special edge.

While the morning editions of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News carried editorials supporting anti-union “right-to-work” bills pending in the state Legislature, tens of thousands of trade unionists marching in the heart of Detroit served notice that the attack on labor rights will not go unanswered.

Members of UAW Local 600 all wore T-shirts emblazoned with the parade’s theme: “Unions benefit all workers.” Local 600 member Matt Jackson said unions help all workers because “unions fight for fair wages for everybody.” Autoworkers are in negotiations with Ford, GM and Chrysler on a contract set to expire Sept. 14. Jackson’s message to the companies was, “No pay cuts, keep my benefits.”

Longtime observers said the march was more spirited than it’s been in a long time. Adding to the beat were members of the American Federation of Musicians from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, who marched in their full orchestra dress while five musicians from the Symphony’s brass section stayed behind to entertain marchers as they walked by Orchestra Hall.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) marched with a national health care contingent whose signs, “Health care, not warfare,” received applause all along the parade route. Asked what it will take to finally win national health care, Conyers said a Democratic president and Democratic Congress will be necessary but he emphasized, “This issue is nonpartisan. Good health care helps everyone regardless of party.”

“Working people of this country have been ignored by the Bush regime for way too long, but we’re coming back stronger than ever,” Conyers declared.

Virginia Cantrell, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said teachers, along with all other union members, need to understand that unions are under attack. Tracy Arnau, a teacher at Detroit’s Cooley High School, said the teachers marching here on Labor Day showed the public that “we are organized labor, we do our job every single day.”

Kerry Scott, a member of AFSCME Local 1259 at the Detroit Public Library, talked about the difficult conditions many in Detroit are forced into. “People are losing jobs, their homes and all of their possessions,” he said. Like many in the parade, Scott placed the blame on President Bush, “He’s no good, he’s caused a war and we need to call him up on that,” he said.

UAW Local 163 member Joe Smith, who works at GM’s Romulus engine plant, had this to say about management: “They get their $10 million bonuses and we get laid off.” Nearby, members of UAW Local 140 at Chrysler Group’s Warren truck assembly plant were all wearing T-shirts reading, “We will strike if provoked.” They said the message they were sending was simply, “We will do what is necessary to get a decent contract.”

jrummel @pww.org

New Orleans residents march on Superdome

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:52:00 +0000

NEW ORLEANS — A five-day observance of the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina concluded Sept. 1 with protesters marching on the Superdome to demand delivery of promised funds to rebuild homes, hospitals, schools and the city’s infrastructure.

It was the second annual “Hands Around the Dome,” sponsored by a grassroots coalition. There was an outpouring during the week of marches, rallies, candlelight vigils, and teach-ins exposing the still unhealed wounds of the storm.

Mtangulizi Sanyika, leader of the African American Leadership Project, pointed to the huge Superdome where thousands took refuge from the storm. “That building is a symbol of the pain, the suffering, the neglect and, yes, the incompetence of the people responsible to look after us,” he told the crowd. “Never again will we put our trust in a federal government that abandoned us. Never again, however, will we let government off the hook because they must be held accountable.”

Sanyika blasted “blame the victim” propaganda about the people trapped for weeks in the Superdome after Katrina slammed the city and the levees broke.

That kind of talk “does not put the Road Home money in our pockets or explain why our schools are not performing. This is where we stand. … We will rebuild this city and make it a livable and equitable and sustainable place to live.”

Rep. Juan LaFonta, chair of the Black Caucus of the Louisiana Legislature, warned, “Six months ago, the secretary of state started purging the names of those displaced by the hurricane from the voting rolls. If you want this city to recover, we must protect voting rights.”

Frederick “Hollywood” Delahoussaye, founder of the New Orleans Renaissance Society, brought the crowd cheering to its feet as he recited his spoken-word poem, “I Am the Soul of New Orleans,” with the lines, “Somewhere between the waterline and the color line is the poverty line. And we stand in line waiting for shelter, safe haven and overdue reparations.” The words came to him while wading waist deep up Elysian Fields Avenue after the levees broke, he said.

Judge Ernest Jones said, “A breach of contract between the people and the government led to the breach in the levees. The hurricane was a natural disaster. The breach in the levees was a man-made disaster.”

City Councilmember Cynthia Willard-Lewis decried the “cronyism and corruption” that has crippled the rebuilding, a reference to Halliburton and other corporations closely tied to the Bush-Cheney regime. Her voice rising in anger, she vowed to continue defending the poor and working people in New Orleans.

As dark storm clouds rolled near, the crowd walked around the giant stadium singing, “This Little Light of Mine.”

LaFonta told the World the Black Caucus, NAACP and other civil rights groups have filed a voting rights complaint with the Justice Department. The purge was not pre-approved by the Justice Department, as required by law, he said. “I look at this as a partisan attack. New Orleans has been a center of Democratic and minority leadership. New Orleans has been frustrating for the Republicans because they could not get their hands around Louisiana because of the Democratic vote in this city. Historically, we’ve been an anchor. Purging voters here is like taking the legs off a table in terms of minority leadership nationally.”

Donatus King, president of the New Orleans NAACP, told the World the main struggles in New Orleans are affordable housing, health care, quality public schools and voting rights. “Not only are they purging the voter rolls, they are changing people’s polling places. It’s an issue that impacts the rights of all of us. That’s what democracy is built on: voting rights.”

It was Labor Day weekend and Ron Daniels, leader of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, praised the AFL-CIO for helping rebuild the city. “It’s a big challenge,” he said. “The income gap between rich and poor is getting wider. Globalization is destroying jobs and driving down wages. Labor has to keep pushing for jobs that provide a living wage.”

Home care provider Ellen Rollins, a member of SEIU Local 521 in California, flew in with another SEIU member. “This is a good place to be Labor Day weekend,” she said. “Our local sent us here to support all the displaced people who want to come home and can’t. I went down to the 9th Ward. The government has no intention of rebuilding there. It’s all corporate greed and avarice. Bush flew in. He should have stayed home and sent the money instead.”

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com