People Before Profit blog

Indigenous people walk off set of Adam Sandler film "Ridiculous Six"

Fri, 01 May 2015 14:37:00 +0000

Native Americans, including myself, were excited to hear that Netflix and Adam Sandler used real Native actors on the set of his new film Ridiculous Six. We were told that there was going to be cultural advisor to make sure the production would be culturally sensitive to the Native American actors on set.

Then, on Apr. 23, over a dozen of the Native actors and the cultural advisor walked off the set. Why? Because in the year 2015 we have to deal with racist stereotypes, for the sake of comedy. Clips of the movie were released after the walkoff. It shows names of some of the female characters in the movie and the jokes that went along with them. Characters with distasteful names like " Beaver Breath" or "Never-Wears-A-Bra." The script goes on having the "Native" characters speaking in old hollywood Indian style broken english with fake Native words. Not only did the actors talk about the racist script but also the complete lack of respect for anything Native on the set including the props and parts of the set.

Two actors that walked off the set, Loren Anthony and Allison Young, of the Navajo Nation, gave a detailed interview with Indian Country Today, saying "We were supposed to be Apache but it was really stereotypical, and we did not look Apache at all. We looked more like Comanche."

Reducing a whole group of people down to stereotypes further dehumanizes Native people. The indigenous peoples of this land come from over 500 nations, all with their own cultures and traditions. Allison Young speaking of her experience on set, remarked, "The producers just told us, 'if you guys are so sensitive, you should just leave.' " I was just standing there and got emotional and teary-eyed. I didn't want to cry, but the feeling just came over me. This is supposed to be a comedy that makes [people] laugh. A film like this should not make someone feel this way." She concluded, "Nothing has changed. We are still just Hollywood Indians."

No one should have to be reduced down to hurtful and harmful images. This is one of the reasons why Native people are fighting so hard to end racist team mascots. These images hurt people. And when groups of people are dehumanized like this, it opens doors to social and economic violence. Reducing our women to harmful stereotypes brings harm to our women, by turning them into objects instead of people. This is one of the reasons why there is an epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women.

So why didn't the producers listen to the actors? What happened to that cultural advisor? The film cultural advisor Bruce Klinekole (Apache) also walked off the set of the movie, after seeing that the production team did everything in their power to ignore him. In his interview with ICTMN, he talked about the harmful and unsafe props they were having the Native actors use for the stereotypes they were planning on using on the set design. One of the largest disagreements Klinekole had was on the use of a tipi on the set.

"I know the significance of a tipi - and they disgraced that tipi. I told them to have the front door facing east; I also said it would need a very wide door with the smoke flaps down, and that it would need to be big enough so that people could stand inside of it. I told him that the Medicine Man would be right there. When I saw the tipi they not only had a front door, but they had a back door, I said "What's this back door stuff?"

He continued, "They also had flower and vines and stuff all over the tipi and they had fake eagle feathers on each of the poles. I said, 'what's going on here?' I talked to the guy who was designing this, and asked who told him to do this. He said he was just going by what they told him to do. I told him it was a total disgrace."

So they hire a cultural advisor but completely dismiss his wishes. Who are they trying to fool here? Perhaps people like Vanilla Ice. After the walk-off, Vanilla Ice, who is also in the film as Mark Twain, sent out a tweet claiming that he was Native. He proclaimed he is "Chactaw Indian;" I'm not sure what a Chactaw is, but we think he meant Choctaw. The Choctaw Nation looked into his claim; they found out that Vanilla Ice is not a member of the Nation.

And they further went on to show that he has German family history. Now we wait to see if Adam Sandler or the rest of his team will make a statement about these events. Personally, I think Sandler needs to re-evaluate what is satirical comedy, and how to execute it without reducing it to harmful and disgusting stereotypes. If he can't do this, then perhaps he should step away from satire.

Photo: Loren Anthony (right), one of the indigenous actors who walked off the film set. | Instagram

King and his radical vision: a study for today

Fri, 01 May 2015 13:28:00 +0000

I have heard - and rightfully so - the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s name and words referenced in the wake of the murder of Freddie Gray and subsequent events in Baltimore.

In this spirit, it would seem worthwhile at this moment to study in some detail how MLK and his coworkers drew the clergy and trade unions into the civil rights movement of their time; how they transformed an initiative that was local in its origins into a movement that was national (even international) in scope; how they reached and changed people, especially white people in the South as well as the North, who were considered unreachable and unchangeable by many; how they allied themselves, despite many pressures from within the movement not to do so, with allies that were unreliable and not in the struggle all the way; how they developed a legislative, electoral, and political dimension to their activity to complement their grassroots initiatives; how they resisted pressures to narrow down the movement to only those who were fully on board and disposed to the most militant forms of action; how they pressed their vision, agenda, and tactics, while at the same time maintaining unity and cooperation among the diverse actors in the civil rights coalition; how they interacted with the Kennedy and then Johnson administrations, not to mention Congress, at each stage of the civil rights struggle; how they created a range of entry points to allow people with different levels of commitment and understanding more than one way to participate in the struggle against racism.

In short, how they (with great courage, creativity, and confidence in the American people) scaled up and out their movement to the point where it became, I would argue, the most notable and successful movement (it brought down a century old system of brutal and humiliating racist oppression and exploitation) of a mass, progressive, and radically democratic character of the 20th century.

While nonviolent mass civil disobedience was at the core of their vision and strategy (and, I would argue, should be at the core of the current struggles for racial justice and justice generally), much else can be learned from MLK and the movement he ingeniously led that would well serve today's emerging movements for racial justice (and justice generally).

Photo: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the historic Selma to Montgomery march which united civil rights, labor, and a broad coalition of organizations. | archive photo

On 40th anniversary of Vietnam War’s end, it’s mea culpa time

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 12:40:00 +0000

Last year I went to Vietnam. At Huế, site of fierce fighting during 1968's Tết Offensive, I visited the Citadel via cyclo, a rickshaw/bicycle hybrid. I asked cyclo driver Trần Văn Thảo what he did during the Tết Offensive? The short, sturdy, gray-haired cyclo-ist replied: "I was in the Viet Cong." After I told him I marched for peace when I was a teenager Thảo stuck out his hand, sincerely saying: "You're a good friend to Vietnam. Thank you."

Oh, there they were: Those magic words Uncle Sam, for 50-odd years, has still never managed to say to us. No expression of gratitude to the millions of Americans who demonstrated to save lives, for peace, against war and disastrous foreign policies that killed 58,000-plus U.S. soldiers and millions of Indochinese.

But the Vietnamese - victims of invasion, aggression and atrocities - haven't forgotten us. Whenever I mentioned to a Vietnamese I'd opposed the war I was always politely thanked. At the Hanoi Hilton, near the display case exhibiting John McCain's aviator's uniform, is a wall of photo murals depicting Vietnam's global friends protesting for peace - including Americans.

This April 30th marks 40 years since 1975's end of the Vietnam War - the biggest foreign policy and military defeat in U.S. history. This 40^th anniversary comes as Washington's overseas policies again face serious setbacks. At an April 18th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books panel I asked former antiwar activist and California state legislator Tom Hayden "what lessons should be learned" from this anniversary?

"Our generation was lied to," insisted the onetime Chicago 7 defendant. "Fathers, mothers didn't expect to send sons to war by a president who lied. One has to wonder: 'What was it all about?' Three million people died. Couldn't negotiations have worked?... How many people were thrown out of think tanks for stupid ideas? They're still there. We need a collective apology and to credit people who were 20, who opposed the war. They should be honored: They knew more than those with ribbons on their chests and medals around their necks."

In an email Hayden added, "Families of the dead are owed an apology for their sons having been sent into an unwinnable war... Those who were right - the antiwar movement - have never been credited for trying to prevent a disaster."

The point of a collective apology by the U.S. government and military-industrial-media- think-tank-complex is not just to make "peaceniks" feel better, although that would be nice. More importantly, admission of wrongdoing and acknowledgement of colossal mistakes can help lead toward more enlightened policies that won't endlessly, heedlessly waste lives and resources, resulting in more debacles.

After 1945 America has been in a state of near-perpetual war. Since Korea, despite infinite amounts of money, weapons and warriors squandered on imperial misadventures - usually against countries that never attacked us - America has actually not decisively won most of these wars. Those mindlessly saying "support the troops" with unconditional ballyhooing of administration and Pentagon policies are parrots, not "patriots." What kind of "patriotism" and "support" mistakenly sends young Americans unnecessarily afar into harm's way? How can anyone who claims to favor "small government" also believe America should be Earth's self-appointed, self-anointed global cop? Talk about budget busting big government!

Just as children are taught apologizing is important for making things right, kids also know people should mind their own business. Nobody likes being bossed around by busybodies sticking their noses into others' concerns, telling them what to do. Interlopers, intruders, invaders are widely despised. Smacking beehives with sticks is a surefire way to get stung. This, in a nutshell, has been U.S. foreign policy since 1945; uncorrected, it continues today, with cataclysmic consequences. Constantly intervening in others' internal affairs is surely the road to rack and ruin, not to mention bankruptcy. Being the world's policeman is an extremely expensive proposition, in terms of both blood and treasure.

As Hayden noted: "It's unfortunate that it's politically impossible for our government officials to acknowledge they failed in Vietnam, much less say they lost.... The architects and present-day supporters of that war have paid no price, but in fact advanced their careers.... As a result of all this our political spectrum favors neocons and excludes principled opponents of the war."

Ex-New York Times propagandist Judith Miller exemplifies these blithe spirits. Her Big Lies that paved the road to hell in Iraq would make Joseph Goebbels blush. Miller's current book tour provides this fiction writer under the guise of reporting fact with more high-profile forums for spreading disinformation. Among the falsehoods the delusional Miller's perpetuating is that she reported what "everyone" else was saying about Saddam's purported WMDs. Apparently, Miller was too busy currying favor among her high level D.C. contacts to notice ex-UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter, IAEA's Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, UNMOVIC weapons inspectors, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire, etc., not to mention 15 million protesters around the world who marched - in one of history's largest international demonstrations - against invading Iraq.

It turns out those ordinary folks in the streets were correct: Iraq didn't have WMDs or pose any imminent threat. What did those everyday people know that Miller, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Pearl, etc., didn't? Miller should have interviewed the protesters instead. While they might not have had the cachet or the status Miller's official sources had, it turned out they had something far more important: Truth.

CIA chief George Tennet was not punished by a Nuremberg-style tribunal for his "slam dunk" assurance about wildly inaccurate WMD "intelligence" - rather, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is because U.S. ruling circles never acknowledge foreign policy catastrophes or express gratitude to common citizens who try to change this country's devastating course. Instead, decision makers, profiteers and their academic/media lackeys receive undeserved prizes, praise, pay, perks - never mind they're always wrong. What matters is they do the bidding of an empire at endless war and their glib mouthpieces, or as George Orwell put it, "defend the indefensible."

Hayden and other antiwar activists will gather May 1-2 at Washington's New York Avenue Presbyterian Church and march past the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. This peace movement commemoration should demand a long overdue collective apology from the U.S. government. President Obama recently apologized for killing two Western hostages in a drone attack, but much more is needed.

By collectively apologizing to and honoring Americans who opposed Vietnam War madness, we can recognize the folly of endless militarism and interventionism and begin to put our warlike nation on a peaceful path. And while we're at it out, how about officially apologizing to the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos? And how about saying you're sorry to the hundreds of thousands of veterans, dead and wounded servicemen/women, who were drafted and needlessly shipped far from home to fight a completely unnecessary war? If the U.S. continues to not apologize to the Indochinese, peace advocates and vets at home, it is no better than those who, for 100 years, have covered up and denied the Armenian genocide - and will end up like the Ottoman Empire.

Ed Rampell co-authored "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book."

Photo: A napalm strike erupts during the Vietnam War. | AP

Burger King worker is only a pawn in their game

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 12:56:00 +0000

In 2012, I started working at Burger King, which is franchised out through Goldco LLC. I took the job mainly to supplement my income from another job I held at the time and thought it would be a great chance to make money on the side. I was sadly mistaken.

I started off as a team member, making and serving food. Soon I realized however, that I was unloading and stocking the food truck and maintaining the stock room and doing maintenance work around the restaurant as well. I never missed work, did everything above and beyond the call of duty and never complained.

One day an employee told me I should ask for a raise since I was doing some assistant manager duties as well as what I was already assigned in my normal duties. So I went to my manager on two separate occasions and asked for a raise. I was making minimum wage, which in the state of Alabama is $7.25, and only asked for a small increase in pay. I also argued that since I received no insurance and was working 28-30 hours a week I thought that it wouldn't be a big issue.

I was rejected twice and told to go back to work and quit being silly.

I learned that another employee who'd been working with Burger King for 17 years was making the same wages as I, and I started to do some research on the matter. I discovered that the former baseball player Hank Aaron and his corporation owned this particular franchise (though they sold out to another franchisee not too long after I started working there). I thought to myself: why would he not be willing to pay higher wages? Of course you know the saying that, under capitalism, the rich just keep getting richer while the poor just keep getting poorer and in debt.

The conditions at this Burger King were deplorable to say the least and unsanitary, and they would put off spending any money maintaining the facility as long as possible. It's truly despicable how much money the franchise owners and the people in the corporate offices made, compared to what the store manager, assistant managers, and employees made. We had several great managers come and go simply because they weren't paid fair wages.

I left after two years of working there as a result of how they got around Obamacare. They cut everyone's hours in half and hired double the employees to keep from having to pay for Obamacare. That had little to do with me leaving, however. I left because I knew I would never receive a pay increase and that I was viewed like Bob Dylan's song: "Only a Pawn in Their Game."

Photo: Consumerist Dot Com/CC

People of the U.S. are key to ending blockade of Cuba

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 14:15:00 +0000

In the wake of the breakthrough announced last December by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro, who announced on that date their agreement to end the 54-year U.S. blockade of Cuba, the biggest problem facing foreign policy makers today may not be immediately apparent to the average person browsing the internet.

Designation of Cuba as a so-called terrorist nation was a cold war strategy which served to encourage opportunistic violence derived from illegal methods condoned by the highest echelons of government. The legacy of Helms-Burton (1996) is its perverse nature.

Codification in the Helms-Burton Act of blockade policy (previously changeable at the president's discretion) gave cover for wage economic and cultural warfare on Cuba through clandestine operations from U.S. soil. Creating an enemy for short-term political advantage in which changing tactics for particular situations were developed in order to provide a pretext to extend the US blockade against Cuba was the ultimate aim.

In hindsight, political inertia due to isolationist policy does not fully explain the contempt and arrogance displayed by US government bureaucrats in maintaining Cuba on an arbitrary list of rogue nations (the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism) since 1982.

When economic returns on such an obsolete policy became too costly for either US political party to quantify, the capitalist class was forced to make a concession to a more gradual implementation of its long-range plan of regime change. While the objective to permit US farmers and business to trade with their Cuban partners is a worthy goal, as pointed out by many progressive leaders, U.S. people hold the key to driving this process forward.

Solidarity, friendship and cooperation have been hallmarks of the Cuban Revolution, yet vigilance is the price of liberty. The duty of the Left now is to demand accountability from Congress to respect international law and support repeal of the extra-territorial Helms-Burton Act.

Any political pretense that aids counter-revolutionary activity must be abandoned if U.S. negotiators expect to find common cause with their Cuban allies. Whether revoking the latest decree against Venezuela or removing Cuba from a phony terrorist list, the political will to negotiate complex issues on equal terms in good faith depends on credibility and good leadership.

Photo: Lynne Sladky/AP

Three legs of the economy: The past is prologue

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 12:45:00 +0000

The religious spring festivals of Passover and Easter are behind us. We've paid our taxes. Congress has passed another bill to give the top two-hundredths of one percent another windfall. I think a big-picture look at the structure of this economy might help us all take a deep breath. If my guess is correct, we'll need it for the work ahead. This kind of economy stands on three legs: raw materials, cheap labor, and as little regulation from government as possible.

Raw materials were the reason why Europe's empires stumbled across the Western Hemisphere in the first place. Looking for an easier route to the profitable spice markets of the East Indies, the Spanish found the West Indies and began a centuries-long exploration and exploitation of everything it uncovered. Extraction of natural resources - from tomatoes to gold to, one day, black gold - led those powers to exploit South and Central America as well as Africa, Asia, and eventually, the Middle East. It drove colonialism.

Nobody called it capitalism in the very early days, but it was the same driver: the search for huge profits from taken goods. Of course in those days, the monarch got a cut of everything, usually the biggest slice. Many of those cathedrals and palaces that Americans love to visit came from those ventures.

Now that humans have exploited the easy sources for raw materials, we push the edges to discover more. That need for more takes us to riskier places to supply the hunger: Drilling in the deep sea or the Arctic for oil and gas, leveling mountains for coal, killing forests for shale, polluting aquifers with waste. If we go to another planet, it will be for its resources - the need for basic materials never ends.

Cheap labor is the second requirement of this economic structure. From the beginning it drove the importation of slaves from West Africa. Well before the cotton plantations of the American South, that first successful colony in Jamestown prospered because a ship of slaves arrived. As recent scholarship has shown, the aristocrats who led the founding of the first English colony succeeded because a pirate ship with a load of cheap labor brought captured slaves. The colonists put them to work growing the cash crop, tobacco. African slaves did the work that aristocrats wouldn't and the colonists couldn't.

When America finally outlawed using slaves for cheap labor, a flood of peasants from Europe and elsewhere did the menial, dangerous and back-breaking labor. From girls poisoned by making matches to children dying in coal production to men caught in assembly line machinery to field workers sickened by insecticides, lives need to be cheap - and with another worker waiting in line for the same job. Thirty years ago, when manufacturing began its massive exit from this country, to no one's surprise, jobs moved to places where labor was cheap.

Both exploitation and extraction required stability and a common legal structure. American self-rule provided these elements so the economic machine could develop with few restrictions. Although the American Revolution replaced a foreign monarchy with self-government, and despite its stirring rhetoric that has often inspired struggling people across the planet, America's version of democracy was constructed to maintain a powerful and wealthy elite. In its early decades it was composed largely of slaveholders so opposed to national infrastructure investments that by the time of the Civil War railroads and telegraph lines were built in market-to-port patterns that rendered the nation divisible. According to historian Daniel Walker Howe, not only had the social fabric frayed, North-South systems that could bind the country together barely existed. Intentionally weak national government has characterized this country from its inception.

Between hobbled government and the power of wealth, the chewing at the earth and the skewing of workers' pay toward the bottom feels relentless. To adjust any of these three economic legs even a little will require the kind of persistence it takes Christians to get through Lent to Easter. It will take the metaphorical time it took the slaves fleeing Egypt to reach a promised land. Perhaps only a continuous Passover/Easter kind of hope can see us through the tough work ahead.

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renter's rights campaign.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Capital & Main

Photo: A detail from Discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto, by William H. Powell, 1852.

St. Louis single mom swept into office on winds of change

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 14:06:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS - Cara Spencer, 36, a long-time South City resident and single mom, is now alderwoman-elect here. She defeated an entrenched incumbent during the March primaries and then successfully faced-off against a so-called "progressive independent," who not only hired a Republican to run his campaign, but also employed Koch Brother-style tactics in an effort to discredit Spencer - the real progressive.

"We ran a positive campaign," she told the Peoples World a few days after the Apr. 7 general election here. "We kept it focused on the issues and the residents of Ward 20 responded. Democracy is the real winner in this campaign."

In the Mar. 4 primary election, Spencer defeated 20-year incumbent, Craig Schmid, and another lesser-known Democratic candidate, with 48 percent of the vote. In an off-year election in a ward with historically low voter turn-out, Spencer's campaign increased voter participation by nearly 50 percent compared to the most recent off-year aldermanic election.

In the Apr. 7 general election, Spencer defeated Stephen Jehle, a so-called "progressive independent," with 70 percent of the vote. Spencer's campaign again dramatically increased voter turn-out, this time by an even larger percentage, thereby trouncing Jehle - who had hoped that negative campaign tactics would squelch voter turn-out, increasing his margins and chances for winning.

Jehle's tactics of negativity clearly failed.

Ward 20 is the largest African-American ward on St. Louis' south-side, working class in character with a high vacant house and crime rate. It has, undoubtedly, been neglected by city investors over the past 20 years, largely due to racist dis-investment policies.

It has recently become one of two target wards for the community-labor based, 501(c)3 non-profit St. Louis Workers' Education Society, of which Spencer is a supporter. The other target is Ward 9, which is directly to the east of Ward 20. As a non-profit, the Workers' Education Society did not endorse either candidate.

Spencer's campaign has larger political implications for a number of reasons.

First, it signals a sea change for Ward 20 residents who will now have a real advocate in City Hall, not another entrenched 'yes man' for Mayor Francis Slay, who is currently serving his forth-term and is poised to become mayor for life, which partly explains why voters turned-out in such large numbers.

Second, prior to this election campaign, Spencer had been a long-time community advocate and activist - active in numerous community, small business and transportation-based issues - like the Consumers' Council of Missouri and the Friends of North-South Metro Link. Unlike her opponent, she brings a wealth of grassroots knowledge and experience, the ability to work with diverse groups - often with conflicting agendas - and a dogged determination to bring good-paying jobs to Ward 20 residents.

Third, by defeating a so-called "independent progressive," whose smear campaign came directly from the Republican, Koch Brother play-book, she sent a clear message to other opportunist candidates masquerading as independents. Ward 20 voters clearly saw through the lies, attacks and sexism. They spoke in a unified voice, thereby providing Spencer - a real independent progressive - with a mandate for change. Other so-called "independent progressives" should pay close attention.

Fourth, Spencer's campaign and victory was largely independent of the mainstream Democratic Party apparatus. Rather, it was aided and led by other independent progressive women - like former State Sen. Joan Bray, and City Treasurer Tishaura Jones - who, in many ways, represent the left-flank of Democratic Party politics here in St. Louis. Former State Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford, and current State Representative Clem Smith are also part of this larger independent left trend.

Understanding this independent trend requires a nuanced analysis of politics and an objective assessment of the political balance of power within differing spheres of influence that all coalesce under the larger Democratic Party umbrella - an issue that, undoubtedly, confused some well-intentioned progressive voters who unfortunately saw separation from the Democratic Party as the only avenue for change within a two-Party electoral system, which Jehle's campaign disingenuously emphasized.

Additionally, it is this nuanced analysis - of Spencer's independence - that lead some Democratic Party operatives to secretly support the opposition and claim the title "independent progressive" in-spite of Jehle's Republican-libertarian politics.

In short, some Democratic Party operatives sold their values down the river in order to unsuccessfully maintain a stranglehold on Ward 20's (small d) democratic apparatus. This partly explains why Spencer's opposition ran such a fierce, negative and underhanded campaign. They wanted to maintain the status quo. They were the status quo candidate, in spite of their "independent progressive" label.

Fifth, Spencer's campaign objectively challenged racism and sexism in Ward 20 by empowering women and people of color at every level of the campaign. She will add the voice of a single mom to St. Louis city politics, which is dominated by men, and advocate strongly for the majority black ward.

"The level of community support we've received is truly humbling," Spencer added. "We started this campaign with no institutional support. We were the outsiders. People said we would never beat a 20-year incumbent.

"But, we did the hard work of talking to the voters. Our team knocked on every voter's door ten or twelve times. Our message of change resonated. People see that we are different. This isn't about me. It's about us - the residents of Ward 20."

Democracy won the day in Ward 20 on April 7th. Bolstered by this victory, a new independent political apparatus is consolidating its presence, which engenders larger political significance for St. Louis City politics. The consolidating of this new apparatus makes this victory the beginning of something special.

Photo: Spencer with Firefighters Local 73. | Tony Pecinovsky/PW

Chicago’s mayoral election: A tale of two cities

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:32:00 +0000

CHICAGO - As the supporters of the Jesus Chuy Garcia campaign gathered at the Alhambra Palace here after the elections in February it had become clear that not only had a run-off against Mayor Emanuel been achieved in the primary but that he had obtained almost 34 percent of the vote. It was the first time an incumbent had been forced into a run-off in Chicago and there was a feeling of coming victory.

Chuy was developing a narrative of Chicago as a tale of two cities, one of a gleaming downtown, the other of neighborhoods being neglected.

It is a city where the rich corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes and the poor are being fleeced through red light traffic schemes to raise revenues on the backs of working class people.

It is city plagued by violence, leading the nation in murders every year of Emanuel's mayoralty.

It is a city that closed 50 schools mainly in Black and Latino neighborhoods by fiat. Yet, the next day following that February primary, the issue in the media became: What is Chuy's financial plan? Did he have the skill to manage a city budget?

Chuy was hammered by the media and the Emanuel campaign to be specific. He proposed cutting tax increment financing districts and sharing expenses with other governments and possibly a graduated income tax, which was said to be unconstitutional in Illinois. He argued upon election he would audit the books to see how money was spent and how to make changes, something not done by Emanuel.

The question of finances and managing the budget would not go away for Chuy , but the same concern was not raised about the horrible financial condition of the city under Emanuel's leadership. Under Emanuel the city's bond rating has been downgraded five times. It is barely above junk status. No determination was made on how to make payments for pensions.

Emanuel's narrative was that he is leading the city in the right direction, making hard tough decisions and that the city could not afford to make a change and risk becoming bankrupt like Detroit. Chuy challenged this narrative as not being enough, with working and poor people suffering as a consequence, but there was little challenge from the media.

Of course, money does matter, Emanuel outspent Chuy $23 million to $6 million and while not knowing how all the money was spent, television and radio was saturated with commercials for Emanuel. While Chuy was constantly seeking ways to introduce himself to the electorate, Emanuel was recreating himself as a gentler person that was learning to listen to people's concerns and defining Chuy through negative commercials as not prepared for the job.

Chuy was able to run a competitive campaign due to committed volunteers that provided a strong ground game. The unions provided money and workers. The Chicago Teacher Union, SEIU, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 and the Electrical Workers Western Region among others contributed significantly. Emanuel also claimed union support, especially surrounding himself in commercials with union members.

In the Apr. 17 run-off election Emanuel won 64 percent of the white vote, 57 percent of the Black vote and 39 percent of the Latino vote. He was able to increase his Black vote by 14.5 percent, the white vote by 11.25 percent.

This election deserves serious study by progressive forces. Among the most important question to solve is how to interest the over 50 percent of people who don't participate in Chicago politics.

Photo: Terrence Antonio James/AP & Chicago Tribune

Gutting teacher tenure hurts the children

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:13:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Public education is under attack. Our children are labeled failures and teachers are criticized as lazy, ineffective, and overpaid, to name a few. This war on education took a horrific turn on March 31 with the passage of heavy-handed, punitive teacher evaluation measures, tucked away in the New York State budget.

The "reforms" effectively gut teacher tenure and make it nearly impossible for teachers to build long, meaningful careers. Governor Cuomo proposed tying 50 percent of a teacher's rating to student test scores, reducing the weight of principals' observations, and hiring outside evaluators to rate teachers based on a single brief classroom evaluation.

Democrats who supported this plan acknowledged that they voted for it with "heavy hearts" and that they have serious concerns about it." And well they should.

Effective teaching can't be assessed through a single metric any more than a basketball team can be ranked based on the number of points they score in a single period of play.

As the parent of a fourth grader and kindergartener, in a family full of veteran teachers, I've watched effective teaching my entire life. My kids attend Central Park East 1 (CPE 1) Elementary School, a small progressive school in East Harlem.

At CPE 1 children are encouraged to explore the world and question it. Their teachers allow them to ask questions and then guide them to find answers to their questions, rather than to assign questions with pre-determined answers.

At CPE 1, kids find answers through experiments and investigation rather than textbooks. They learn history and social studies through songs and field trips rather than pop quizzes. At CPE 1, each child brings value to the curriculum. Cultures, traditions, ethnicities, hobbies, and families are shared and celebrated.

In CPE 1 classrooms, teachers don't need tally marks or gold stars to tell them which students are the smartest because they believe that all students are smart. Every student has a voice, not just the ones who raise their hands first. At CPE 1, teachers don't use punishments and rewards as motivation to learn; they instill a love of learning.

This is effective teaching. This is learning. This is education. I had this education and I will choose it for my children at every opportunity. It is because of this education that I am unwavering in my decision to opt-out of the state tests. It is because of this education that I know each of us has power to take a stand in the face of injustice.

Judging teachers based on students' test scores and pitting public schools against charter schools is injustice. Selling education and commodifying our children is injustice. Teaching doesn't happen under the threat of failure or punishment, nor does learning. Education isn't quantified in terms of right and wrong, pass and fail, good and bad, and certainly not by test scores.

There is a place for standardized tests in helping teachers to support students. Not in determining school funding allocation or teacher effectiveness.

I've taken standardized tests. Those test answers have long escaped my memory but I still know how to explore, discover, investigate and question. You can't put a price tag on that. Not even a $32 million Pearson contract.

I appreciate that deciding whether or not to opt out of the upcoming tests is difficult and I feel strongly that, unless you fundamentally agree with this new plan, everyone should opt out.

Taking the tests may be a safer decision to bolster my daughter's middle school applications next year but it is a far more dangerous decision for her education in 2 years, 4 years, and for the education of children who follow her.

This new plan will lead to the push out of great teachers, closure of public schools, expansion of charter schools, and other unwanted consequences.

My daughter asked why, on a cold, damp Saturday, we had to rally. I told her that we must rally because, while we don't have millions of dollars to shape the education system, we have our voices and our bodies, and that can be just as powerful. And, like me, long after she forgets what happened when a pineapple challenged a hare to a race, she'll remember how to change the world.

Toni Smith-Thompson is a parent and an activist in the fight for education in New York.

Photo: Students hold a sign during the teachers rally in Albany. | Shannon DeCelle/AP

Erwin Marquit, 89: a lifelong communist

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 13:21:00 +0000

A delegate from Minnesota, Erwin Marquit was in the audience listening at the 30th Convention of the Communist Party USA in Chicago when John Bachtell paid tribute to Party members who had died since the previous convention.

Among the fallen was Marquit's wife, Doris, who died May 29, 2014.

The Marquits, Bachtell said, were "lovers, partners, and comrades for 46 years." They fought against the oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, he continued. The Communist Party was "slow to change" but the Marquits persisted in raising the issue at all levels of the party.

"For that, we are eternally grateful," added Bachtell who was elected National Chair of the CPUSA at that convention. "We are a stronger, better party for it. Today, a growing number of LGBTQ activists have found a home in our ranks."

Erwin Marquit, himself, passed away Feb. 19 at the age of 88 less than a year after Doris died.

Marquit recounts his life story in his online autobiography, "Memoirs of a Lifelong Communist."

He was born in the Bronx August 21, 1926. His father had arrived from Odessa with the name Lazar Baer Lapatukhin. He was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War I, and was imprisoned with hundreds of other conscientious objectors at Leavenworth Pentitentiary in Kansas for refusing to fight in an "imperialist war."

When he was finally released after the war ended, he changed his name to Leo Marquit to avoid being blacklisted. Leo Marquit was a garment worker in New York, a staunch union member and a Communist.

Erwin Marquit inherited class consciousness, as well, from his mother, Edna Schweitzer. Both his parents, Erwin writes, were voracious readers, working-class intellectuals, and labor activists.

Marquit graduated from high school in New York and attended City College of New York. He joined the U.S. Navy during World War II. He returned to CCNY after the war. He joined the Communist Party USA in 1946.

He shifted to physics in his post-graduate years, studying Quantum mechanics with Nobelist, Hans Bethe, at New York University.

Unable to complete his doctoral dissertation at NYU because of Cold War anti-communism, he emigrated to Poland where he lived for 13 years securing a position at Warsaw University's physics department and winning his doctorate in physics. He joined the Polish United Workers Party.

He returned to the U.S. in 1963, and found a job in the physics department of the University of Minnesota where he worked until he retired.

His career at UM was marked by continuous battles against efforts by Cold War elements to get him fired. He was repeatedly denied salary raises and promotions granted to his colleagues. Many years later, Marquit finally won his fight for a full professorship.

He led the drive to organize the UM faculty, and graduate students, into the American Federation of Teachers. That election was lost but the struggle continued until the faculty finally won union recognition.

Marquit established a course in Marxism at UM that attracted a steady, impressive enrollment among UM students. He often said that as far as he knew, it was the only course in Marxism offered for credit by any college or university in the U.S.

This writer was privileged to be invited to deliver a lecture to this class while I was serving as Editor of the People's Weekly World.

He re-joined the Communist Party USA in 1974 after discovering the Party's Marxist bookstore in Dinkytown, near the U of M campus. He worked with many Party members including Matt and Helvi Savola, and recruited many new members to the Party in Minnesota.

Erwin Marquit was a Marxist philosopher writing books and articles arguing for the application of the dialectical method to the study of nature and society.

He and Doris founded the Marxist Educational Press (MEP) and for 25 years organized annual conferences of Marxist scholars in the Midwest. MEP published 30 books. He was the founder of the Marxist journal Nature, Society and Thought.

Erwin left the CPUSA during the bitter factional struggle in the early 1990s but rejoined in 1995. Doris joined the CPUSA about this same time.

Marquit fought racism against African Americans, Latinos, Native American Indians, and other victims of oppression. In their living room, in 1973, leaders of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression met with leaders of the American Indian Movement to draw up action plans to defend Native American Indians after the infamous FBI military assault at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Out of that meeting, a rally was organized at Northrop Hall on the university campus attended by 2,000 people. Angela Davis was the main speaker.

Erwin and Doris Marquit promoted independent politics, working with progressive forces in the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party while also helping Communist Party candidates. In 1968, they were active in the campaign of Charlene Mitchell, Communist Party candidate for President and in subsequent elections, Gus Hall, and his running mates, Jarvis Tyner and Angela Davis. In 1974, Erwin Marquit, himself, ran for governor of Minnesota, receiving about 4,000 votes.

Marquit had a whimsical sense of humor and faced the end of life with a matter of fact scientific detachment. Sitting down with other delegates at the CPUSA's 30th convention in Chicago, as if he wished to chat, he announced that he would die "sooner not later." He sent out an email to his legions of admirers around the world announcing his "imminent demise." He attached a link to a website featuring Woody Guthrie singing, "So Long, its been good to know you."

Photo: University of Minnesota, School of Physics and Astronomy

Emanuel re-elected, but progressives are real winners

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 16:53:00 +0000

Last night, Rahm Emanuel came out on top in Chicago's mayor's race, but the real winner is the grassroots organizing that forced this runoff to happen in the first place.

Six months ago, most political observers anticipated an election in which progressives would be struggling to protect progressive incumbents. Instead, we built a real fight for City Hall, giving Jesus "Chuy" Garcia a shot at winning.

And not only did Emanuel fail to defeat a single member of the Progressive Caucus, but independent political organizations helped grow caucus membership to at least 10-and likely more-from seven. Disinvested and marginalized neighborhoods stretched their political muscle. The reawakening of a broad-based progressive coalition will have political consequences well beyond this election, through new electoral infrastructure like United Working Families and Reclaim Chicago.

Most never believed that this moment even would be possible. With over $30 million in campaign contributions, largely from well-connected insiders and corporate executives, Emanuel blanketed Chicago with a media storm that defined Garcia as fiscally inept. The irony of this attack is that it is Emanuel himself who failed in the past four years to offer equitable, constitutional solutions to fixing our budget problems. He created a climate of fear among voters around the economic challenges that he himself helped create.

We need progressive revenue solutions to support neighborhood economic development-such as demanding that big banks stop gouging our city through toxic interest rate deals, having tax subsidy policies with real requirements for creating neighborhood jobs and investments, and passing a millionaire's tax and a financial transaction tax.

Though Garcia ultimately came to support many of these measures, his campaign did not offer them in a clear, comprehensive way early in his candidacy. That was unfortunate. For it is clear that the majority of Chicagoans share the values of adequate, equitable revenue and making big banks pay their fair share so that we have the resources needed for great schools and quality services. These measures are elements of the financial plan that our city needs.

Forced to retreat

Emanuel was forced to retreat from many of the policies favored by his elite backers-capitulating to low-wage worker demands for a higher minimum wage, unplugging many red light cameras and running a slew of commercials targeting working families with a politically left message frame. He spent the past four years governing as a corporate Democrat, but he won re-election campaigning as a progressive.

The grass-roots progressive movement that defeated Rahm Emanuel on Feb. 24 and made him struggle to keep his seat on April 7 is not going away. Just next week, thousands of us will take the streets to demand a $15-per-hour minimum wage. This summer and fall, we will be fighting for a state and city budget that adequately funds the public services we need to build strong, healthy communities.

We will build on ever-growing public support for progressive revenue solutions. And for years to come, we will continue to deepen and expand the ward-level, neighbor-to-neighbor political infrastructure we need to elect city and state leaders who stand with working families.

This election showed us that we have the power to win real change. The people of Chicago will keep organizing to build a better Chicago for all. Emanuel won another term, but he fell far short of defeating the broad-based grass-roots coalition represented by Garcia's candidacy.

Reposted from Crain's.

Amisha Patel is executive director of Grassroots Illinois Action and founding member of United Working Families.

Photo: Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Chicago, Facebook.

Strange convergence: Billie Holiday and Ethel Rosenberg at 100

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 16:11:00 +0000

If Billie Holiday and Ethel Rosenberg were alive, they'd both celebrate their 100^th birthdays this year. At first glance they may seem an unlikely couple, but a closer look reveals surprising parallels.

They were each born into poverty six months and a hundred miles apart. Billie in April 1915 in Philadelphia, and Ethel in September in lower Manhattan. Both had extraordinary singing voices, although Billie's vocal genius eclipsed Ethel's. Still, Ethel's teachers considered her voice so special that they called her out of class to sing the national anthem at assemblies.

Both girls were precocious. Ethel graduated high school at 15 and tried to pursue a singing and acting career. At the height of The Great Depression, she could only find work as a clerk-typist in New York's garment district. There she helped organize and lead a strike at 19. Billie was singing in clubs in Harlem at 17, and made her mark as a recording artist before she was 20.

Both got in trouble with the law. Billie first ran afoul of powerful forces for singing "Strange Fruit," the anti-lynching anthem. Her performances generated threats, even riots. Josh White also sang the song and was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy period. He bowed to their demands that he stop. Billie defiantly refused and continued singing "Strange Fruit." Many believe that her resistance led law enforcement to hound and arrest her in 1947 for drug possession. She served almost a year in prison, and her conviction disrupted her career for the rest of her life.

In 1950 Ethel was arrested with her husband Julius and charged with Conspiracy to Commit Espionage; they were convicted and sentenced to death. The government knew she had not committed espionage, but they held her as a hostage to coerce her husband into cooperating with the authorities. She refused to confess to something she did not do and backed her husband's refusal to implicate others. The FBI files never claimed she was guilty, but consistently described her as "cognizant and recalcitrant."

You might conclude that Billie and Ethel had similar talents and defied similar enemies.

Both died prematurely, victimized by law enforcement. Ethel was executed in 1953 at age 37, and Billie died in a hospital bed at age 44, while awaiting arraignment after another drug arrest.

Billie and Ethel followed different paths in life and probably never met, but they converged in death. High school English teacher, poet, and songwriter Abel Meeropol wrote "Strange Fruit" after seeing a photograph of a lynching. He played it for Billie Holiday in 1939, when she was performing at Cafe Society and she subsequently began performing it.

Fourteen years later, Abel helped carry Ethel Rosenberg's coffin to her grave site. Within a year, Abel and his wife Anne had adopted Ethel and Julius' sons. The man who abhorred lynching and wrote one of the most iconic songs in Billie Holiday's repertoire, adopted Ethel's orphans, my brother Michael and me.

In 2015, the centennial year of both of their births, we remember Billie Holiday for singing about lynching, and we remember Ethel Rosenberg for being legally lynched.

Hear more from Robert Meeropol about the iconic song, Strange Fruit, see its relevance to the Black and Brown Lives Matter movement today, and watch a powerful performance of it by artist Pamela Means, in the video.

Video: Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday, and the Rosenberg Fund for Children

Reposted from The Rosenberg Fund for Children

Indiana "religious freedom" bill: bad for state and my family

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 11:38:00 +0000

As a tax-paying citizen, it appalls me that our legislators used my tax dollars to create, lobby for, and now defend a law that opens the door for discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens and visitors. Governor Pence insists that this law is about protecting religious freedoms from the government, yet the law's language, the most broadly written of all 20 religious freedom laws around the country, does not support that statement. When asked repeatedly if the law could allow bakers to turn away the business of gay patrons, the governor would not answer. In a notable and much commented-upon alliance, businesses are speaking out against the law because it hurts commerce, plain and simple. So as a voting taxpayer, I oppose this law because it is bad for our state.

As the mother of a gay child however, it breaks my heart.

I recall my daughter as a small child, already displaying preferences contrary to cultural tradition. My husband and I already had one daughter and naively thought our second daughter would be similar, and in many ways they were similar. But in other ways they were not. I thought having a second daughter meant I could pass down the wardrobe, but it quickly became clear that she had no interest in wearing her sister's clothes. She preferred jeans, t-shirts, and plain clothing to the flower patterns and lace.

Of course her clothing preference did not necessarily mean our daughter would be gay, but it became clear from early on that she had different and clear gender type preferences. She was always "Ken" when she played Barbies with her sisters. She had a slew of Ninja Turtles and super hero figurines. We did not try to dissuade her preferences much, though maybe we had to bribe her to wear her communion dress and veil by buying her a new pair of Air Jordans. But for the most part our family just accepted her for who she was because that's how we saw each other, as individuals with different paths in life. When the time came for us to meet her first girlfriend, it happened so unremarkably our family barely blinked an eye. Acceptance was immediate, but from then on our daughter's struggle became a family struggle.

Outside of our immediate family, our daughter definitely stuck out as needing more acceptance for falling outside the normal lines. Her grandparents were from a judgmental generation and were not as open as we were. They felt we should make her do as she "should," so we often found ourselves dealing with those battles. And being different and not understanding what that meant always made our daughter feel excluded. This was a cross she would bear for most of her childhood.

Fast-forward a few decades. We are still fighting the battle of acceptance for our daughter. Though we have come some distance in my lifetime, this law sends us backward. It is still so hard for me to believe that our society is so cruel as to not want a daughter or son to experience love, marriage, and family like anyone else. It hurts to know that even some friends see my daughter as sinful or unnatural. What an awful thing to think about the child of a friend.

And, as a resident of Indiana, I knew the day might never come to see my daughter's marriage recognized here. But I maintained hope that the wheels of justice would eventually turn -until I found out this law had passed. Now instead of hoping my daughter can someday be married here, I find myself dreading the day she is refused service when dining out, shopping, vacationing, or due to the broad scope of this law, doing just about anything! Who would want their child to live a life like this, always wondering if she will run into a Christian business owner who will demean her existence by refusing to provide a service to her? Would any parent want that for their child? The supporters of this law say discrimination is not what this law is about, but I beg to differ. The law was intentionally written more broadly than any RFRA law out there. Gov. Pence has gone on record opposing any laws that protect the civil rights of gay people.

What else could this law be about besides discrimination?

Photo: Opponents of the discriminatory Religious Freedom Restoration Act demonstrate for LGBT rights at the Indiana Statehouse. | Doug McSchooler/AP