People Before Profit blog

Your vote - it's your right - not a privilege!

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:57:00 +0000

This Labor Day, your vote is critical to your future as never before. And for working women the results of the November 2014 election will determine much about your life on and off the job. If you have been disillusioned with this Congress (and who has not) and are thinking of sitting this election out - read on to find out why you must not.

The Coalition of Labor Union Women since 1974 has been on the forefront in advocating for equal pay and work/family benefits on the job, and many union contracts now include those provisions. One of our top priorities is to help organize women in to unions, as that is the best way for women to achieve equality.

However the numbers of people in unions in the U.S. is dismal. In 2013, the union membership rate - the percentage of wage and salary workers who were union members - was 11.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of workers belonging to unions is at 14.5 million.

So we know we have much to do to increase those numbers and must look beyond bargaining contracts to secure a better life for most Americans.

Much of CLUW's work centers on advancing legislative priorities with our allies in the labor and women's community that will benefit women who may not be fortunate enough to have the benefit of a union contract,

Let's start with equal pay: Last summer we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, but we all know that law has brought us only so far...

In 1963 women made 59 cents for every man's dollar. Today that number has grown to 77 cents. That translates into $11,608 less per year in median earnings, leaving women and their families shortchanged. The wage gap for women of color is even more alarming:

African American women make 64 cents, and Latina/Hispanic women make 54 cents for every dollar earned by their white, non-Hispanic counterparts.

Mothers are paid less than fathers. Mothers who work full time, year-round make $38,000, compared to $55,000 for full-time year-round employed fathers, meaning mothers only make 69 cents for every dollar paid to fathers.

Unions have been successful in helping to close the wage gap. In 2013, union women earned 33 percent more than nonunion women.

Not all workers, however, are fortunate enough to have a union contract and equal pay. We, therefore, continue to actively promote and support the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), which gives the Equal Pay Act of 1963 teeth. PFA will update and strengthens that law to ensure that it will provide effective protection against sex-based pay discrimination.

We also support the Healthy Families Act, to allow workers to earn up to seven paid sick days a year to recover from short-term illnesses like the flu, access preventive care, care for a sick family member or seek assistance related to domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. Many workers who are not represented by a union do not have paid sick days and are forced to make impossible choices when illness strikes: Stay home, lose pay and risk their jobs, or go to work sick, risk their health and spread disease to co-workers and communities.

Income inequality is on the rise in the U.S. One small step in the right direction is passage of the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which we strongly support, but failed in the current Congress. It calls for:

Increasing the minimum wage over three years from $7.25/hour to $10.10/ hour

Indexing future annual increases to inflation thereafter.

Raising the tipped minimum wage from $2.13/hour to $7.07/hour.

Another piece of legislation we are actively supporting is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that addresses problems many pregnant workers - who do not have a union - face on the job. The act requires employers to make the same types of accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions that they already make for disabilities.

A few weeks ago our Supreme Court delivered a decision that is especially detrimental to women workers and their families. When that decision, called Hobby Lobby - the company that sued-was announced, CLUW immediately issued a statement, saying CLUW "views this ruling as a dangerous precedent, as it permits for the first time for-profit corporations with nothing to do with religion to refuse to follow the law on religious grounds."

The court said that a company that is family-owned - not publicly traded - could ignore the section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requiring corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception. The majority of justices said it violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. The justices thus gave these employers the right to allow their religious beliefs to trump the health needs of their employees, making it harder for American families.

The only way Hobby Lobby stands even a chance of being overturned legislatively is if House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is forced to hand over the Speaker's gavel to a Democrat. And that will only happen if the Democrats win a majority in the fall.

We reiterate the closing sentence of our statement when the Hobby Lobby decision was issued: We hope American voters remember these court decisions when it comes to voting in federal elections, as it is the president who appoints these justices and the Senate that confirms them.

None of the problems addressed by the legislation described above will pass until we elect a Congress that understands the needs of working families. You must VOTE-so women and their families do not continue to be at risk!!

Connie Leak is president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the AFL-CIO's constituency group for woman workers. For further information, see www.cluw.org.

Photo: Fibonacci Blue CC 2.0

New grassroots movements show: Never count out working people

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:28:00 +0000

The last several years have been rough on working people, but the folks who make the products, fix the machines, fry the chicken and keep the place clean should never be counted out. Grassroots movements to restore opportunity for working Americans are emerging across the nation.

I listened closely when workers across throughout the country participated in a national telephone call to approve a national strike earlier this year. I could barely contain my excitement as, one-by-one, workers from cities across our country enthusiastically endorsed the strike: "Atlanta? Yes!" "Pittsburgh? Yes!" "Wausau, Wis.?" "Yes, because we can't survive on $7.25!" Their request was a simple one: A $15 an hour minimum wage and the right to organize a union.

When it was time for workers in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Antonio to weigh in on the strike, they responded with a time-honored resistance chant that should resonate with anyone familiar with historic organizing campaigns waged by migrant workers:

"McDonalds/Escucha/Estamos en la lucha (McDonalds, listen, we are in the fight)." When New York's turn came, a strike leader on the call spoke to the persistent economic insecurity driving this movement: "I'm tired of picking out what bills to pay. I need to pay them all."

And just like that, some of the hardest working and lowest-paid Americans declared they aren't taking it anymore. Although they come from different communities and cultural backgrounds, they're joining together today to fight for a fair wage and a voice on the job.

But why now? What is driving these Americans to take their case to the street?

They know the stock market is at a record high and the purchasing power of the minimum wage is at a 40-year low. They know out-of-touch Republicans in Congress-philosophically opposed to programs that give working people a leg up-aren't going to help. They don't want to rely on assistance from the government or charity, but because they are paid so little, they have no choice.

And they're not alone.

In my home state of Minnesota, Enrique Barcenas struggles every day to feed his family

on $8 an hour. He, like hundreds of Minnesotans, leaves home to work late night shifts cleaning retail stores for contracted janitorial companies. Enrique and his fellow workers can barely afford the basic necessities on the shelves around them.

Enrique and his fellow workers said enough is enough. They banded together to convince Target Corp. to enact a new contractor policy. Enrique worked with his colleagues at

CTUL (Centro De Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha) to help Target establish its new "Responsible Contractor Policy," which says that if you're a vendor who wants to do business with Target, you must pay your workers fairly and allow them a voice on the job.

Workers are leading movements for better pay and higher working standards all over the country. Federal contract workers successfully organized last year to urge Democratic President Barack Obama to sign an executive order raising their pay. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which I co-chair, supports this campaign. We passed amendments earlier this year in Congress to stop federal contractors who steal from their employees from receiving federal contracts.

And I recently introduced the A. Philip Randolph Employee Empowerment Act, which enhances worker protections by allowing victims of discrimination to receive remedies like back pay, injunctive relief, and punitive and compensatory damages in federal court. By expanding protections for workers we can expand opportunity.

Working people are reclaiming opportunity and the American Dream. Working Americans from different parts of the country and from different walks of life are marching in the direction of more economic opportunity for all.

As the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone always said, "We all do better when we all do better."

In solidarity.

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, represents Minnesota's 5^th District (Minneapolis) in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Photo: Fight for 15 National Convention, Facebook page.

A great way to celebrate Labor Day: Raise the minimum wage!

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:16:00 +0000

Labor Day is a time for Americans to pause and celebrate the valuable contributions workers have made to the social and economic fabric of our country. It is a chance to consider the important achievements of American workers in seeking fair wages, a safe workplace, and a dignified, secure retirement. As we look back on all that our nation's workers have accomplished, however, we must also look ahead to the work we have left to do to strengthen the middle class and protect these hard-fought gains.

Make no mistake: It is a challenging era for workers and retirees in America. Income inequality is at levels not seen since before the Great Depression. While those at the top have accumulated more and more wealth, real median wages remained flat for nearly 30 years.

In addition, unemployment rates have been slow to fall as we continue to bounce back from the Great Recession. America's workers are more productive than ever before, yet wages and benefits haven't been rising in step. All of this has placed an increasing strain on our nation's workers and retirees.

Prosperity and peace of mind shouldn't be reserved for the richest of the rich. Across the country, Americans are demanding that fairness and opportunity be restored to our economy. American workers deserve a system that works for everyone, not just for the wealthiest 1 percent.

While the rising tide of inequality has been a burden for workers across the board, it has been our most vulnerable workers, those with earnings at or near the minimum wage, who have been hit the hardest. Adjusted for inflation, today's federal minimum wage is lower than it was in 1968. In the wealthiest country in the world, people who work hard and play by the rules should not be forced to live and retire in poverty. It is long past time for Congress to take action to raise the federal minimum wage.

Despite what some conservative commentators may claim, minimum wage workers are not teenagers looking for extra pocket money. According to the Economic Policy Institute, of the workers who would receive a raise if the minimum wage were lifted to just $10.10 by 2016, only 12.5 percent are teens. In fact, of those affected, more are age 55 or older than are teenagers. The average age among affected workers is 35 years old.

More than a quarter of those who would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour are parents providing for children. More than half are women.

Not only would restoring the minimum wage improve the lives of millions of American workers, but it would also benefit our nation's current and future retirees.

With fewer and fewer employers offering defined benefit pension plans, many seniors depend on minimum wage jobs to supplement their Social Security benefits. Not only do seniors benefit directly from the wages, but the financial health of our Social Security system is affected by economic growth, wage levels, and the number of workers paying into the system.

Increasing the earnings of low-wage workers would mean more revenue coming into the Social Security system and a brighter financial outlook for the program in the future.

Furthermore, since Social Security benefits are based on lifetime earnings, a higher minimum wage would mean enhanced benefits for these workers when they hit retirement. Since low-wage workers rely on Social Security for more of their retirement income than other workers, higher benefits are particularly important when it comes to keeping these seniors out of poverty in their later years.

In addition, a higher minimum wage makes it easier for workers to save. For many low-wage workers, just putting food on the table is hard enough. When workers are struggling to get by, there simply isn't anything left over to set aside at the end of the month. Restoring the minimum wage would make it easier for Americans to save for retirement.

Earlier this year, a proposal to restore the federal minimum wage fell victim to election-year politics as Senate Republicans blocked the measure from coming up for a vote. The U.S. House's ruling Republicans flat-out defeated it on a party-line vote. As Republicans in Washington protect the interests of their wealthy donors, our most vulnerable workers and retirees are falling further and further behind.

Leaders in state capitols across the country aren't waiting for Washington to get its act together. Already this year, states from Connecticut to Hawaii have taken the lead and passed legislation to raise their minimum wages. Fighting this battle state by state, however, just isn't enough. The time has come for Washington to raise the minimum wage for the good of all of our nation's workers and retirees.

The fight to restore the minimum wage is important for all workers, union and non-union alike. The cornerstones of retirement security always had their beginnings in organized labor. We've all heard the slogan: "The Labor Movement: The Folks Who Brought You the Weekend." We can also say, "The Labor Movement: The Folks Who Brought You Retirement."

If it were not for the labor movement, there would be no Social Security. There would be no Medicare. It was only through our collective bargaining rights and our political strength that we were able to make these things happen. Fighting to raise the minimum wage is a part of the struggle to protect retirement security in America.

This year, let's make Labor Day more than a chance to throw hot dogs on the grill. We have to let our friends, neighbors, senators and representatives know that the fight over restoring the minimum wage isn't just about raising wages and fighting inequality. It's about keeping our Social Security system strong and healthy, about enhancing benefits for future retirees, and about helping working seniors to make ends meet. Restoring the minimum wage is about protecting the retirement security of all of us, and it's time for Congress to act.

Barbara J. Easterling is president of the Alliance for Retired Americans. She was previously the Secretary-Treasurer of the Communications Workers of America. For more information, visit www.retiredamericans.org

Photo: ARA Facebook page.

Nightmare begins as GOP takes over Senate

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 14:33:00 +0000

That is not the headline we want to see the day after Election Day, Nov. 4.

If that nightmare scenario unfolds, Mitch McConnell, the GOP senator from Kentucky, or some other Republican, will replace Harry Reid, the Democratic senator from Nevada, as leader of the Senate.

"So what?" some may ask. "You're just replacing one career politician with another."

The leader sets the agenda, however, and a GOP takeover would transform the Senate calendar to reflect the concerns of people who have nothing but scorn and contempt for working people, democracy or any type of good government. Whether it's union organizing rights, the minimum wage, consumer protection, Social Security, Medicare, health care, regulation of Wall Street, voter rights, women or anything else, a Republican-controlled Senate will do all in its power to turn the clock back.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) put it this way: "If you want to know what a wholly Republican Congress would do, the thing to do is to look at what they've done in state capitals where they can. In Ohio, they've gone after voters' rights, workers' rights, women's rights. They'd bring that to Washington."

The Republicans have already laid out their plans for the weeks after their hoped-for takeover.

Once they install Mitch McConnell they will propose and pass a federal law banning all abortions after 20 weeks. Next they will propose and pass a law to cut the funds the government needs to implement the Affordable Care Act. Then they will gut both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, both of which they hate so much.

If there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court the Senate will stall until President Obama's term is up, preventing the seating of a progressive judge who can rescue that court from the current right-wing pro-corporate grip.

And the GOP Senate leaders will crank out a steady barrage of right-wing measures, forcing President Obama to veto bill after bill. Any liberal or progressive legislation put forward by the president would go down to defeat in the Senate.

The GOP-controlled Senate will thoroughly "investigate," whenever it can, any plausible Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2016. It will also "investigate" members of the Obama administration itself - all in an attempt to improve GOP prospects for taking over the White House in 2016.

A GOP takeover of the Senate will guarantee that almost nothing in the interests of the people will get done. The Republicans will conclude that their obstructionism was a good strategy for them, that it helped them take over the Senate. They will, if anything, ramp it up. The present gridlock situation in Washington will look like Gridlock Lite. In this warped view, it will make sense to continue hurting, rather than fixing the economy because that will improve the party's presidential chances in 2016.

It doesn't have to happen this way, however.

Working people and all progressives must not allow themselves to be out-voted in this year's elections. Too often they stay home during such "off year" elections while more conservative voters turn out in larger numbers. That trend, for the sake of all Americans, must be reversed this time around.

There are many reasons to vote this November. High on the list of those reasons is one we believe is crucial - preventing the "nightmare" of a GOP takeover of the Senate.

CORRECTION: In an earlier version, Harry Reid was identified as a senator from Utah instead of the state of Nevada. We regret the error and thank our eagle-eyed readers for pointing it out to us.

Photo: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, and GOP lawmakers, from left, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, talk to reporters after a GOP caucus meeting. AP

U.S. use of sanctions could spur dollar's decline

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:56:00 +0000

The recent round of sanctions aimed at Moscow over the crisis in the Ukraine could backfire on Washington by accelerating a move away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency. While in the short run American actions against Russia's oil and gas industry will inflict economic pain on Moscow, in the long run the U.S. may lose some of its control over international finance.

Proposals to move away from using the dollar as the international currency reserve are by no means new. Back in 2009, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) proposed doing exactly that. SCO members are Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia have SCO observer status, and the organization has close ties with Turkey and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Ever since the 1944 Britton Wood Agreement, the world's finances have been dominated by the U.S. dollar, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. But, according to economist Jeffrey Sachs, that world is vanishing and the dollar cannot continue to hold the high ground, because "the role of the United States in the global economy is diminishing."

While it may be diminishing, the U.S. and its European allies still control the levers of international finance. For example, the U.S.' slice of the global GDP is 19.2 percent, and its share of IMF voting rights is 16.8 percent. In contrast, China, with 16.1 percent of the global GDP, has only 3.8 percent voting rights in the IMF. The presidency of the organization is reserved for a European.

In 2010, the World Bank "reformed" its voting rights to increase low and middle-income countries from 34.67 percent to 38.38 percent, although even this modest adjustment has been sidelined because the U.S. Senate refuses to accept it. The wealthier countries still control more than 60 percent of the vote. The presidency of the Bank normally goes to an American.

In early August of this year, the BRICS countries-Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa-launched a series of initiatives aimed at altering the current structure of international finance. Besides pushing to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the organization created a development bank and a Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). The former would allow countries to by-pass the IMF and the World Bank, with their tightfisted austerity fixation, and the latter would give countries emergency access to foreign currency.

The development bank will start off with $50 billion in the kitty, but that will soon double. The BRICS will also be able to draw on $100 billion from the CRA. While by international standards those are modest sums-the IMF has close to $800 billion in its coffers-the BRICS bank and CRA has just five members, while the IMF serves hundreds of countries. Eventually the BRICS observer members may be able to tap into those funds.

Last month's sanctions went straight for Russia's jugular vein: the development of its massive oil and gas reserves and Moscow's construction of the South Stream pipeline. When completed, South Stream will supply Europe with 15 percent of its natural gas and generate over $20 billion in annual profits. Indeed, there is suspicion among some Europeans that the real goal of the sanctions is to derail South Stream and replace it with U.S. shale-based American oil and gas.

Sanctions can do enormous damage.

The United Nations estimates that the sanctions against Iraq were responsible for the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children from 1991 to 1998.

The sanctions aimed at Iran's oil and gas industry have cut deeply into government revenues-80 percent of the country's foreign reserves are generated by hydrocarbons-resulting in widespread inflation, unemployment and a serious national health crisis. While humanitarian goods are not embargoed, their cost has put medical care beyond the reach of many Iranians.

Associated Press reporter Nasser Karimi wrote last year that some medicine and medical equipment costs have risen 200 percent: "radiology film up 240 percent; helium for MRIs up 667 percent; filters for kidney dialysis up 325 percent." The cost of chemotherapy has almost tripled.

Iran's exclusion from the Society for World Wide Banking (SWIFT) makes it impossible to transfer funds electronically. That, in turn, makes buying the raw materials to manufacture generic medicines expensive and difficult.

The recent crash of an Iranian passenger plane that killed 39 people was, in part, the result of sanctions. Because Iran cannot purchase spare parts for its Boeing and Airbus planes, it is forced to use alternatives, like the trouble-prone Ukrainian-made A-140 aircraft that went down Aug. 10. Another A-140 crashed in 2002, killing 46 passengers.

In short, opposing the U.S. and its allies can be dangerous to one's health.

There is growing opposition to the widespread use of sanctions, as well as to the ability to isolate countries from international finance by excluding them from things like SWIFT. Coupled with this is a suspicion that the U.S. uses its currency to support its economy at the expense of others.

After the 2007-08 economic meltdown, the U.S. lowered its interest rates and increased its money supply, thus making its exports cheaper and other countries imports more expensive. Developing countries have blamed these policies for artificially driving up the value of their currencies and, thus, damaging other countries economies. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega calls it waging "currency war."

With the U.S. now pushing higher interest rates and throttling back on buying foreign bonds, many developing countries fear that international capital will flow back to the U.S., leaving countries like Brazil high and dry.

But as long as the world's reserve currency isin dollars, the U.S. will be able to manipulate global finance and block countries like Iran from any transactions using dollars. But that may be coming to an end. With China set to replace the U.S. as the world's largest economy, it is only a matter of time before the renminbi-or some agreed upon international method of exchange-replaces the dollar.

China is already moving toward bypassing New York as the world's financial center, instead routing finances through Hong Kong and London. "There can be little doubt from these actions that China is preparing for the demise of the dollar, at least as the world's reserve currency," says Alastair Macleod of GoldMoney, a leading dealer in precious metals.

A number of countries are already dealing in other currencies. Australian mining companies have recently shifted to using China's reniminbi. How dumping the dollar will affect the U.S. is not clear, and predictions range from minor to catastrophic. What will almost certainly happen is that the U.S. will lose some of its clout in international finance, making it easier for developing countries to move away from the American economic model: wide-open markets, fiscal austerity, and hostility to any government role in the economy.

Diminishing the role of the dollar may make it harder to apply sanctions as well, particularly in those areas where Washington's policies are increasingly alienated from much of the world, as in Iran, Cuba, and Russia. The European Union (EU) has sanctioned Russia over Ukraine, but not to the extent that the U.S. has. The EU's trade with Russia is a major part of the Europe's economy, while Russian trade with the U.S. is minor. And the BRICS-who represent almost a quarter of the world's GNP and 40 percent of its population-did not join those sanctions.

Addressing the BRICS delegates in Fortaleza, Brazil, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that "together we should think about a system of measures that would help prevent the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decision made the by the U.S. and their allies."

In the long run, the EU may come to regret that it went along with Washington. German industry has taken a big hit-trade with Russia fell 20 percent from January through May-and Russia's ban on EU agricultural products has badly hurt Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, Finland and the Netherlands. Indeed, European Bank President, Mario Draghi, warned that the current EU recovery is extremely fragile and that sanctions could push it back into recession.

The Germans are especially worried that Russia will turn to Asia, permanently cutting Berlin out of Moscow's economic sphere.

There are enormous changes ahead as a result of climate change and population growth. While there has been a reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty-making less than $1.25 a day-almost all that reduction was in China. Things have actually gotten worse in parts of Asia and Africa. By 2050 the world's population will grow to nine billion, and 85 percent of that growth will be in developing nations, the very countries that most need help to confront the consequences of that future.

Unless the institutions of international finance are wrested from the control of a few wealthy nations, and unless there are checks on the ability of the U.S. and its allies to devastate a country's economy over a disagreement on foreign policy, those figures bode for some serious trouble ahead.

This article was reposted from Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: William Murphy/Flickr (CC)

Robin Williams suicide should spark a national conversation

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:49:00 +0000

I did not know Robin Williams personally. I loved his movies and his talent. If I saw him on the street we would probably pass by one another without much more than a "hello." Yet I see in Robin Williams a kindred spirit. That is because I, like Mr. Williams, suffer from a mental illness. The news media reported that Williams suffered from severe depression. Yet the bigger picture suggested that he had the same burden I carry: bipolar spectrum disorder, characterized by extreme mood swings that affect every person differently. I happen to have been diagnosed with Type Two Bipolar.

I was heartbroken to hear that Robin Williams died by suicide. Suicide has always been a difficult topic. We all have been affected or know someone who has been affected by suicide. When committed by someone who has a mental illness, suicide represents a failure by society to care for one of its own. In fact, one could argue that most suicides are committed by persons with mental illness since self-preservation is generally so engrained into our psyche.

This country is long overdue for a serious national conversation on the treatment of mental illness. Robin Williams' suicide is just the tip of the iceberg. It seems every week I read stories where police were "forced" to kill someone with a mental illness because they were concerned for their own and the general public safety.

A person who suffers from a major mental illness will die typically 25 years earlier than the national average. Most of our homeless and poor are mentally ill because they suffer from addiction or are unable to hold a decent job. (And figure, too, that if you're driven to homelessness by life circumstances, a few months on the street will almost certainly leave you in dire mental distress.) People with mental illness are 70 percent more likely to be severely overweight, be addicted to drugs/alcohol, and have debt and money problems well above the national average. These facts are not the end result; they are indications that something is wrong. Addictions, poor lifestyle choices, and bad money management are signals of a person reaching out for help in the tumultuous ocean of chaos that is their mind.

Not that long ago people with a history of mental illness could be denied coverage for health insurance. Now that the health care laws have changed, private health insurance for the mentally ill is so expensive they cannot afford it. That's the way the insurance companies want it: Leave the fringes of society to be the government's and charity's problems. It is also why many people with mental illnesses choose to try and hide their conditions as best they can. If you were to see me on the street I would look completely normal, yet the storm that rages inside my brain is known only to a very few - my wife and my doctor, that's it.

Since I was diagnosed at a later age in life, 27, I have been able to hide my status from most of my family, my employers, and even my friends, and for good reason, too. Capitalistic society has no place for the mentally ill. They are too much of a drain on the social system. Like the poor or those who suffer from addictions, they cost the taxpayer and the corporations too much money and should be left to fend for themselves. The political right wing seeks to give the mentally ill a stigma so as to maintain access to their guns and keep gun regulations lax. For someone who suffers the burden of mental illness, it is most distressing to see mental health treatment played out in the political arena. We did not choose this. Mental illness is not something we enjoy.

In the practice of medicine, doctors don't treat the signs and symptoms of a disease; they treat the underlying cause of a disease. In America the mistreatment and misunderstanding of people with mental illness are signs and symptoms of something wrong. That wrong is the social conditions we live under. It is the way society "does business" in the realm of economics and governance. We must work to make social conditions better, and if we do, then our treatment of the mentally ill would improve.

Socialism seeks to provide better access to health care for all. It uses tax revenue to support social programs instead of an overinflated military budget. Our national discussion needs to include better mental health treatment, but that is not our only goal, nor even an achievable goal under present conditions. The goal is to change America for the better, to give a bright future for all people regardless if they live on the ragged edge of society or not. America needs to "do business better" to support the people, and not rich corporations or right-wing lobbyists.

Photo: Robin Williams. AP

Cop stop: Driving while gay

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 12:24:00 +0000

I was nineteen at the time. A country girl working my way through college, never flush with cash, but I'd made some friends in the small gay community of Odessa, Texas.

They were kind enough to include me in treks to the clubs. Since I was young and clueless, they warned me not to go outside alone since bar patrons occasionally were attacked in the parking lot by gay bashers.

Sensible advice, which I followed. One night, well before the bar closed, we piled into a car and headed off to finish the night at someone's apartment.Before the car rolled off the parking lot, a police car stopped us. Our driver, Richard, hadn't had a chance to display whether or not he was drunk driving. Not in the space of a few yards, at any rate.

The police officer ordered us all out of the car. Shortly, another police car pulled up and two more officers joined the first.

I was standing next to Richard, a large, generous man fated to die a few years later of AIDS-related complications. In vain he tried to explain that he wasn't drinking and driving. He'd barely driven at all.

The officers demanded our wallets (and my billfold), then made quite a to-do out of writing down our names and addresses.

There'd been the occasional officer who'd come into the club, circulate around, then stand for a few minutes by the door before leaving. Some of them made a point to be rude.

Richard had said that was indeed the case, then he added, "they're not all bad."

Then came that night. The main officer, the one who'd stopped us, waved our IDs in our faces and said he planned to contact our employers. One of the other men in our group broke into tears at that point and said, "Please don't do that."

I was freaking by that point and probably would have fallen apart, too, but I looked at Richard. He wasn't crying. He was saying Yessir and Nosir like the rest of us, but not melting down. So I decided I wouldn't either.

The main officer, who in my memory had a lizard-like face (but was probably as nondescript as most people), proclaimed and declaimed for the next few minutes. I looked over at the other two officers at one point and realized that they were laughing. Snickering. Having a good time.

We were the night's entertainment. I went from fearful to angry in a heartbeat, but I had no place to put that emotion. Not then.

Finally, the main officer handed back the IDs. When he reached me, he waved my driver's license in my face and said I had no business being with these men, that it would get me in trouble. He said I needed to stay away from places like the bar. Then he handed me my ID.

The cops left. We comforted the one man in our group who had totally lost it. He worked in the oilfields and was convinced that he'd be dropped off a derrick or meet some other gruesome fate. Which didn't happen, thankfully.

For me, it was a formative experience. I learned going to a gay bar meant I was asking for trouble-but I kept going anyway. That being gay or a lesbian meant getting dirt kicked on you with no means of fighting back. That cops were trouble. It meant knowing, at an atomic level, that I was a member of a despised group. Possibly worthless. Definitely up against the odds.

Yet I couldn't forget one fact: Richard didn't cry. He remained strong, even dignified. I might well be cursed with this trait of suspect sexuality, but I didn't have to play the victim.

In my lifetime, I've had interactions with police-most positive, a couple most decidedly not-but through it all I've been "blessed" with the fact that I'm white.

My whiteness provides me with a layer of protection when I'm shopping in a store, and decides at what level I'll be profiled by law enforcement during my ordinary, non-lawbreaking day.

Yet I can't forget what it was like during those years of visiting gay bars and feeling police eyes on me. Knowing that it could all go so very badly, for no reason at all other than for my not being straight.

In a growing number of places, being LGBT is a nonfactor in people's lives. Law enforcement is less inclined these days to target us even though incidents still occur. Yet in many places both at home and abroad LGBTs, particularly those who are transgender, are still very much at risk for being charged for driving-or walking or breathing-while gay.

That's one strong reason why the travesty of justice which is the targeting of African-Americans by frightened white people, should resonate with the LGBT community, even those of us who happen to be white. We may or may not be in a less targeted category, and may not have to worry anymore about enduring police harassment.

I ask that, even those of us who are young, pale, and relatively privileged, please honor the memory of people like my friend, Richard, who kept his pride intact that night outside an Odessa gay bar. Because of him, I didn't feel so alone.

When we see police acting like soldiers and getting it oh so wrong, remember that we once were villains too, nothing more than the usual suspects - and can be again some night, some place.

And for those of us who are people of color, who are transgender, who read as being "Other," what should we expect from those who care? More than words of understanding and a handkerchief to wipe away the blood.

If there's a march you can join, join it. If there's a cause you can actively aid, do so. These are the years of the Unified No. No to ethnic targeting, No to fear-based politics, No to a system that favors the rich over the rest of us.

No more.

Photo: AP

Don't write stupid stuff: Al Sharpton and the New York Post

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 16:46:00 +0000

While the Obama administration's dictum "Don't do stupid stuff" may not have the cachet of "Speak softly and carry a big stick" it is nevertheless sound advice for the conduct of foreign policy, even sounder than the latter. It has more general scope as well.

When it comes to writing, for instance, the constraint of "Don't write stupid stuff" would be well to implement. You could also save a lot of time if you applied the rule "Don't read stupid stuff." You can't always follow the latter because it may only be post facto that you realize the author you have read did not comply with the former.

Here is a recent example. I have learned, as a general rule, that the op-ed pages of The New York Post are populated by writers who specialize in writing stupid stuff. Every once in a while, however, I check out the Post to make sure I am not over generalizing.

I had never read a column by Andrea Peyser before I read her Post op-ed piece of 8 August 2014, "Al Sharpton just isn't my type." I wasn't surprised to find that it was full of really stupid stuff. Peyser says that Sharpton "is a bigot and a race-baiter who would sacrifice his most ardent fans-people of color [a racist assumption on Peyser's part since Rev. Sharpton has many ardent fans of civil rights in all ethnic groups] in pursuit of personal fame and glory. Her evidence? She has none. It's just her personal feelings at work. This is however the reason she gives for her statement: "it's old news." Really stupid.

She also maintains that Sharpton is "a private citizen who's been handed unprecedented influence over New York City's police by his ideological twin, Mayor Bill de Blasio" -- the mayor also a bigoted race baiter? What is this "unprecedented influence?" As far as I can tell the NYPD does whatever it likes and it doesn't pay much attention to what Sharpton wants them to do at all except for token public relations. That is why he has to lead rallies and demonstrations to demand changes.

Peyser thinks he has been granted this "unprecedented influence" because Mayor de Blasio invited him to be part of a round table discussion with himself and Police Commissioner William Bratton concerning the recent homicide of Eric Garner on Staten Island. During the discussion Sharpton told his "ideological twin" that he would be his "worst enemy" if the police target minorities for arrest. "Unprecedented influence," "ideological twin"? Really stupid.

The real purpose in attacking Sharpton is to deflect attention from the actual issues. The medical examiner has declared Garner's death a homicide -- who is going to argue with Quincy? The NYPD has disproportionately made arrests in and harassed minority communities and is in need of more civilian control. The Post and other right-wing media prefer to attack personalities than to deal with the issues. Really stupid.

Peyser's article stems from a phone conversation she had with Sharpton a few days before in which he told her, among other things, that he did not take attacks against him personally and that someday he and Peyser might even be friends.

That olive branch was quickly brushed aside. Peyser thought he was "vain" and "obsessed" and "wants to be liked"-"Even by me." She says he isn't her type. Slow down Andrea. The man was just trying to be polite. He definitely doesn't go for your type. He's not really stupid!

Photo: Rev. Al Sharpton speaks alongside Rabbi Michael Miller, second from left, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, third from left, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, center left, NYPD police commissioner Bill Bratton, right, following a multi-faith roundtable meeting Aug. 20, brought about by the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who was placed in an apparent chokehold by a police officer, The mayor said he believes the meeting can help a city gripped by protests and distrust of the police in some minority neighborhoods. John Minchillo/AP

Guatemalan children at U.S. border there because of U.S. backed genocide

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 17:08:00 +0000

"Obama vow to speed deportation of children at odds with public opinion." So reads the headline of Reuters online for August 10. What does this have to do with the Guatemalan tragedy in which tens of thousands of Maya Indians were slaughtered in the latter 20^th Century?

The majority of border crossing children are from Guatemala and large numbers, if not the majority, are monolingual Maya speakers. The policy of deportation of these children is particularly heinous in light of the fact that they who are here because of the disaster of policy supported by the U.S. - the policy of genocide against Guatemalan Indians. As far as this writer is concerned, if the President persists in the deportation policy the question will arise whether he can ever be trusted again.

But to get back to the subject of this discourse, the American public needs to know the current situation in Guatemala and that the U.S. was responsible for both the carnage of the 1980's and 1990'and the mass migration from that land. The border crisis has brought back memories of my time in that country in October 1991 as a delegate to the 500 years of Resistance - Second Intercontinental Indian Conference.

The Guatemalan military made it known that it was deadly hostile to the Conference being held in that country, as we were in open support of the Maya forces opposing the government. The civil war was still raging at the time. We had to travel by bus from Guatemala City to the Conference site, the town of Quetzaltenango, in the western highlands. Our buses were festooned with banners spelling out our support, in no uncertain terms, for the Indigenous insurgents engaged in armed struggle with the Guatemalan armed forces. Traveling the mountain roads was considered dangerous because of frequent firefights between the Maya guerillas and government forces.

But what is most important is that the U.S. public know basically what happened in the civil war and that this country, the United States, was responsible for the worst and longest war in modern Latin American history (the war actually started in 1960) and for the commission of the most horrendous war crimes. It is also important that the public know how what happened then is impacting the current border crisis. This was a fiendish, genocidal war waged against the Maya Indian majority by Guatemala's military from 1981 to 1996. In sheer numbers and nightmarish, beastly brutality it was unequaled in the annals of 20^th Century Latin American history.

More than 626 Maya towns were literally wiped from the face of the earth. More than 200,000 Indigenous men, women and children were bestially slaughtered, more often than not with unspeakable torture. Some 1.5 million were displaced either internally or externally.

The arms used in this genocide were supplied by successive U.S. administrations beginning with that of Ronald Reagan. The U.S. supplied the Guatemalan military with weapons of mass destruction.

The butchery was carried out in the name of the American people, ostensibly 'to stop communism in this hemisphere." As a related side note it was made public at the Conference that the right-wing newspapers in Guatemala City were advocating that the army "storm" the meeting grounds because we were " all communists."

At critical times in this war Guatemalan army units were accompanied in their "search and destroy missions," so repugnantly reminiscent of Vietnam, by U.S. advisers. These advisers were complicit, to say the least, in the war crimes committed against the Maya people and other citizens.

The United States, in unleashing the proxy armies of the dictatorships, was responsible for the war crimes. These horrific atrocities included the literal skinning alive of Indian young people, male and female; the literal burning alive of Native men, women, children, the elderly who had been soaked in gasoline; Indian infants kicked to death as footballs by the military; the drowning of Indian prisoners in pits filled with human waste; the wholesale forcing of entire village populations into their community churches and the locking of the doors and the burning of those buildings while the screams of the victims echoed throughout the countryside. Countless thousands of Maya women were bestially raped, many until they hemorrhaged to death; the survivors summarily executed. These atrocities have all been copiously documented. As it was in Vietnam, the U.S. is responsible for war crimes in Central America generally and in Guatemala in particular.

In an explosive report issued in February, 1999, the United Nations Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) charged the U.S. government and American corporations with complicity in the genocide of over 200,000 Maya people in the bloody civil war. The final 3,600 page CEH report clearly placed the guilt for the thousands of deaths on the "racist" policy of the Guatemalan government and held the military and paramilitary forces responsible for the actual murders, tortures and disappearances. It charged the U.S. with directly and indirectly maintaining a "fratricidal confrontation" by furnishing prolonged training, arms and financial aid. The murderous U.S. role plateaued in 1981-1983, but did not cease until the peace accords were signed in 1996.

The CEH report determined that 626 massacres were attributable to the military and its allies and these were described as " strategically planned genocide against the Mayan people." The scorched earth campaigns, specifically in the early 1980's, wiped out entire villages of men, women and children. The report went on: " Special brutality was directed against Mayan women, who were tortured, raped and murdered." Large numbers of girls and boys were victims of especially violent killings of unspeakable, tortuous cruelty.

The Guatemalan government used "anticommunism" as an excuse for the "physical annihilation' of vast numbers of unarmed civilians. The country was transformed into a surrogate Cold War battlefield by the U.S. government. Successive American administrations knew of the atrocities that were being committed.

Other segments of the population such as trade unionists, political progressives and community activists were singled out by successive barbaric regimes and tortured and murdered. In the 1970s and 1980s, a U.S.- owned bottling company licensed by Coca-Cola made war against Guatemalan trade unions in which scores of citizens were killed by the military.

To bring matters up to the present, in recent years, since the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords, there had been a strong movement to have those internally responsible brought to justice, in particular military commanders, such as Guatemalan dictator General Efrain Rios Montt. The general, a staunch anti-communist, was a favorite of President Reagan. In May 2013 Montt was convicted of genocide and war crimes against the Maya people in the civil war and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. But the conviction was promptly overturned by the Constitutional Court, which ruled that he had been denied due process.

The human rights organization, Amnesty International, denounced the ruling as a "devastating blow for the victims of the serious human rights violations committed during the conflict."

General Montt's 17 months in power are considered to have been one of the most violent periods of the entire war. He is accused, along with other charges, of personally ordering the deaths of over 1,771 Ixil Maya men, women and children while holding office in 1982-1983. The trial is to resume in January 2015.

As a consequence of this horrific, violent legacy conditions of life are deplorable in every respect imaginable for the Indigenous, poor and working masses of Guatemala. The U. S. is responsible in every sense of the word for the Guatemalan migration, and also for that of El Salvador and Honduras. It is no coincidence that the mass migrations are from these three countries that were the focus of the U.S. government 's Latin American "anticommunist" crusade of the late 20^th Century.

It is incumbent upon President Obama to take responsibility and make amends to those whose misery is directly attributable to the machinations of the government he now heads. The present course he is on now - pursuing deportations - can only reopen the pitiless wounds for which this country is responsible, in particular those sustained by the Indigenous of Guatemala and others in the region.

Photo: Ixil women during a protest in front of the Court of Constitutionality over the decision to annul the genocide conviction of Guatemala's former U.S.-backed dictator Efrain Rios Montt and restart his trial in Guatemala City, May 24, 2013. Sign in the back says: "More than 626 massacres of indigenous communities and they still deny there was genocide?" Luis Soto/AP

Accumulation of greenhouse gases a "planetary emergency"

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 15:21:00 +0000

The piling up of carbon and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere has become, in the words of James Hansen, one of the foremost climate change scientist in the world, a "planetary emergency."

In other words, while the worst consequences will weigh most heavily and immediately on the working class, the racially oppressed and the poor, and especially on countries and peoples in the developing countries, no one will escape the clutches of climate catastrophe in the long run.

What makes matters worse is that time is becoming humanity's enemy; the window to act is closing. Never before has such a challenge confronted the human species; and yet too many sensible people sit on their hands even as the motley gang of right wing climate change deniers do everything that can to resist the smallest measures that might cut down on carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Closer to home, the response of the left and broader democratic movements hasn't been in any way commensurate to the danger. And if our Party were going to be graded on our performance, my guess is that we would get a D. And the only reason we wouldn't receive an F is due to the regular coverage on climate change and the environment in the People's World.

We can and must do better. I'm reminded of a quote from Martin Luther King in another context,

"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time."

If King's eloquent words and scientific data don't move you to be a better steward of this fragile place we call Earth, then make it personal; that's what I do; I think of my two daughters, step daughter and stepsons, and, I think a lot about Violet and Pearl, my little granddaughters, ages 2 and 4, who hopefully will live long into this century and in climate conditions that are friendly to humans and other life forms.

Whether that happens rests on what tens of millions of people, including our small party, do in the next few years.

But here's the good news if I have made you too gloomy! A movement is being born, and it includes a broad array of people, including the trade union movement, Labor understandably is concerned that working people not bear the weight of a necessary transition to a fossil free economy.

We should join this movement heart and soul. We should bring our energy and our whole tool kit, including our socialist perspective, which tells us that climate crisis is the result of human activity, but with this important caveat: it is activity in the context of a particular system - capitalism - whose logic is endless capital/profit accumulation, compound growth, massive waste in its multitude of forms, and rampant consumerism - all of which are increasingly unraveling and undermining the natural systems that sustain life in its multitude of forms.

In the fall, mass mobilizations are scheduled at the United Nations to demand action from the world's leaders and governments to mitigate climate change. Can we agree that we will join as well as mobilize friends and neighbors for these actions?

A month or two ago I signed up, as did others in our leadership, to commit civil disobedience, if necessary, to stop the Keystone pipeline. How many of you will pledge to do so today?

New beginnings require a first step. And I think we have taken one today!

The article above was part of the report by Sam Webb, the CPUSA's former chair, to the party's national convention in Chicago in June. John Bachtell was elected chair of the CPUSA at the convention.

Out of mouths of babes: "It seems like police are about to go to war with the people"

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:50:00 +0000

This story is a familiar one: Michael Brown, an African American teenager, and his friend are walking in the street. There is an encounter with the police, not because a crime has been committed but because they have been racially profiled by a white police officer. Words are exchanged and there ensues an alleged physical tussle. The two unarmed teenagers run. The officer shoots at them several times. Michael Brown stops running and with hands in the air shouts out, "I don't have a gun, stop shooting!" The police officer continues shooting; Brown collapses into the street and bleeds to death under the broiling, August sun.

No matter what version or twist the police put on this tragic unfolding of events in Ferguson, Missouri, there is one unalterable fact and that is an unarmed teenager was shot multiple times by a cop who was bent on killing him. One who is trained in the use of firearms does not shoot an unarmed person with their hands in the air unless he intends to murder.

Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and all the Black and Latino teenagers murdered routinely by Chicago police do not deserve death at the hands of racist cops.

The media has focused on the so-called "rioting" and the police with dogs, clubs and guns ready were poised for making the usual blood bath to put down the rebellion. But the determined will of the people to stop police crimes also erupted in organized mass protest and cries of "no justice no peace!" We can say to our sisters and brothers in the struggle in Ferguson thank you for not being quiet and tame in the face of death stalking our communities like a hungry lion. Thank you for your outrage and for finding the courage to stand up to police who are more and more behaving like an organized lynch mob. Criminals who operate under the authority of the badge are the worst kind of criminals because the system will not jail them or prosecute them when they commit crimes against African Americans and Latinos. So we say to the powers that be don't you dare counsel us about "rioting" until you stop these lawless acts of cops who kill and brutalize our people with impunity! Who do you think you are that you can murder and abuse us and spew your racist venom at us and then chide us about being outraged?

Let's look at some underlying realities. The population of Ferguson is at least 60 percent African American and its poverty is double Missouri's average. While Black people are struggling with poverty there is also in Ferguson Emerson Electric, a $24 billion company with 132,000 employees all around the world. In an area where there are billions of dollars in revenue, poverty is commonplace and police repression rampant. This is the reality of the United States of North America, which claims to be concerned about democracy in Iraq but can't take a stand against the unwarranted violence perpetrated against its own citizens and residents.

We must make this a political struggle because we are confronted with political repression with a racist cutting edge. In our righteous anger we must not just engage in rants of rage. We must start now to organize people to force our political representatives to enact laws that will empower the people to hold the police accountable for the crimes they commit. We need a strong democratic voice through an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council. That's what we are fighting for here in Chicago, but police crimes are not confined to Chicago we must fight for this everywhere. Ferguson included.

We must find a way to stop police from racially profiling and murdering people. We must call upon and demand that local, state and federal government outlaw police crimes and establish civilian control over the police.

In the aftermath of the rebellion in Ferguson, where police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at non-violent protestors, an 11-year-old boy said to a local news station, "It seems like police are about to go to war with the people."

The insight of this child should resonate in the White House, the statehouses, and city halls because the time to stop this war is long overdue.

Frank Chapman is field organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racial and Political Oppression.

Photo: Heavily militarized police walk toward a man with his hands raised, Aug. 11, in Ferguson, Mo. (Jeff Roberson/AP)

Myths of capitalism: the myth of scarcity

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 13:22:00 +0000

"We have to make the hard choices."

"If we raise the minimum wage, unemployment will increase."

"If we spend money on social programs, our grandchildren will pay for it."

"If we don't decrease benefits, Social Security will become bankrupt."

How often have we seen these ideas, splashed across the editorial pages of newspapers, dribbling from the corporate mouthparts of the pundit class, or floating in the muck of right-wing plans to "reform" us back to the Gilded Age?

All of these ideas offer a "hard choice," an either/or: EITHER we have living wages OR we have jobs; EITHER we foot the bill OR our kids will; EITHER today's senior citizens give up some of what they earned OR tomorrow's seniors will get nothing.

In other words, EITHER we hurt the working class OR we hurt the working class.

In philosophy, this kind of argument is called a false binary: a fallacy where someone offers two choices as the only possibilities, deliberately excluding other options.

In the case of these right-wing talking points, the option no one wants to mention is taxing the rich and cutting corporate subsidies to invest in social welfare, good jobs, and education!

It's not hard to see why the ruling class uses this technique. They want to make workers think that our only choice is between how and when we pay to keep their profits flowing. They want to hide the real choice between paying and making them pay.

We would be wrong to think that this self-serving nonsense is somehow new, a creation of a particularly predatory ruling class or an increasingly fanatical right wing.

The truth is that this fallacy is written in the DNA of capitalism. The basis of capitalist economics is the idea that there isn't enough to go around, that somebody is going to have to go without.

We can see it in the classical definition of economics: "the science of allocating scarce resources to maximize the achievement of competing ends." In other words, there isn't enough to go around; somebody is going to have to go without.

We can see it in the way people talk about education, not as a way of forming citizens for a democracy, but as a way of training young people to compete in an increasingly ruthless job market. There isn't enough to go around; somebody will have to go without.

We see it every time bosses ask for givebacks and benefit cuts, or lay off another round of workers to "stay competitive." There isn't enough to go around; somebody will have to go without.

We see it in the thousands of advertisements claiming to help working people "stretch their dollar," in countless finger-wagging admonishments to "live within our means" as wages stagnate and prices increase. There isn't enough to go around, so the working class can go without.

To scarcity, to going without, to this inhuman and predatory economics, we say ENOUGH!

We, the working class, have had enough of scrimping and scraping and going without.

We, as a society, have enough to go around. We are the richest and most productive society in the history of the world. Our labor has generated untold wealth, now concentrated in the hands of the few while the many go without.

If we think in terms of Dr. King's "radical revolution in values," it is time to replace the economics of scarcity with a new economics of abundance, whose first principle is that however much there is, there is enough to go around.

We might look to tiny Cuba, strangled and impoverished by the U.S. economic blockade, whose entire GDP is scarcely more than the 60 billion dollars a year we lose to legal corporate tax dodges. With its limited resources, Cuba provides housing, education, food, and health care to every one of its citizens.

This is what the story of loaves and fishes, the feeding of the multitudes by fair distribution, looks like in the modern world. If it is a miracle, it is one that we can work for ourselves. We must break, once and for all, with the myth of scarcity.

We are faced with a choice of who will pay to rebuild our infrastructure, educate our children, and transition to a green economy. We will not, cannot, pay, and neither can our children or grandchildren.

So make the billionaires pay. They might have to cut back on buying private islands and elections, but isn't it time they go without for a change?

This article is the first installment of a four-part series about the "big lies" of capitalism, the corporate talking points that bosses and billionaires use to confuse.

Photo: Teresa Albano/PW

How does it feel to be a problem?

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:31:00 +0000

"How does it feel to be a problem?" noted famed historian, writer and activist W.E.B Du Bois, as the underlying question that society posed to blacks in the United States of America. In his famous book, "The Souls of Black Folk," written more than 100 years ago during a time of severe racial unrest, he argued that the question of race was one of the most important questions of the 20th century.

This still holds true today. We do not live in a post racial society.

The question, "How does it feel to be a problem?" is asked of black Americans in different forms and actions by our society every day. But it has warped into a variety of other sentiments. Such as:

* How does it feel to know that one out of four black men in the United States will find themselves in prison, before they ever find themselves in college?

* How does it feel that there's a rising population of black women being incarcerated for misdemeanors, at an alarming rate, becoming one of the fastest growing populations of prison inmates?

* How does it feel that every thirty-six hours a black man (or woman) is killed or brutalized by law enforcement?

Other facts of black life could be put in similar question form. Such as:

* Some sixty years after the historic Supreme Court victory of Brown v. Board of Education, which deemed segregation based on race as unconstitutional, studies have shown that the education system is segregated based on race now more than ever.

* You live under a system where it seems the laws apply differently to you, for example, a white man can walk around touting his assault rifle, while claiming the freedom to bear arms with no worries, but a young black man like John Crawford can be fatally shot in a Ohio Walmart for playing with a toy gun.

* Yet another social media hashtag, like #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, has to be used to bust the media's victim blaming and negative images when a black person is murdered.

The constant state of worry black people face whether it is from being patted down, harassed, and possibly even arrested by the police because you are walking down the street and they deemed this simple act of you existing as suspicious enough to warrant investigation; or worry from calling 911 for help that the police may indeed arrive and arrest you instead; or to hear about New York's Eric Garner, Missouri's Michael Brown, Ohio's John Crawford, California's Oscar Grant, and now in Los Angeles, Ezell Ford, along with the countless other black lives lost due to obvious police misconduct and then be told that you should "trust in the process."

How does it feel to wonder if you'll end up like Michigan's Renisha McBride, gunned down as you look for help with your car, in a different neighborhood, because some white racist didn't like the color of your skin? How does it feel to be treated like a "problem," to be eradicated or controlled, when the very country you're oppressed in was built off of the backs of your ancestors' slave labor?

How does it feel to be angry, and then told you shouldn't be?

How does it feel to revolt and "loot", and then be questioned on why you did so, as if this system doesn't create angry individuals who are sick and tired of being sick and tired?

The question isn't how does it feel to be a problem?

I'm not a problem. This system is and the institutionalized racism and oppression embedded in it.

The people oppressed shouldn't be the ones having to answer for anything. The question that should be asked, of our so-called leaders of this country, is why is this still the state we live in?

Why are cops, who are accused of murdering or brutalizing a black man or woman, given paid leave, when working-class people can get terminated from their jobs, without pay, simply for one too many tardies or absences?

Why is there no national regulation on police enforcement, despite the growing instances of police misconduct?

All too often, black people are told to trust in the system, and told justice will prevail.

And all too often it does not.

Du Bois wrote, "It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

That holds true for black Americans today. It hasn't changed because society refuses to. We need to ask why. And then we need to demand answers.

Photo: Names of known victims of police torture conducted by CPD and Commander Jon Burge stretch the length of the many-feet- long banner at a rally against police crimes in Chicago, Aug. 28, 2013. There are still countless others unknown. (John Bachtell/PW)

Norman Hodgett, 82: Fighter for peace, economic justice, and equality

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 14:00:00 +0000

Activists in the movements for peace, economic justice, civil rights and socialism are mourning the loss of Norman Hodgett who died in New York August 9. Norman leaves behind his beloved Kathy Rutkowsky and countless friends and comrades.

Norman Hodgett was born in the height of the Great Depression in Kewanee, Ill. in 1932.

At the tail end of World War II he went, as a teenager, to live with an aunt and an uncle in Los Angeles, California where he finished high school at night.

He entered the Air Force during the Korean War and served stateside as a dental technician for the men and women who enlisted and servicemen who were drafted. When his service was over he went to the University of Denver in Colorado where he plunged himself into not only his liberal arts studies but into struggles for civil and human rights.

It was in Denver that he met and began working with Howard Wallace, then a young civil rights activist who Norman credited with teaching him the ropes when it came to civil rights struggles.

Wallace fought for the rights of minorities in Colorado and went on to become an iconic figure in the struggle for LGBT rights, forging the alliances between the gay rights movement and the labor movement that would eventually see the formation of Pride at Work, the LGBT constituency group in the AFL-CIO.

Norman was an active participant in those struggles in Colorado and in later years ill he engaged in the fight to get Coors Beer products out of gay bars and restaurants. Civil rights activists took aim at Coors because it was requiring its employees to take lie detector tests that asked them whether they were homosexuals.

Norman and Kathy, who had a life commitment ceremony in 1977, visited Wallace in San Francisco shortly before his death two years ago.

Also while he lived in Denver, Norman met Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez. He joined and became a leading member of Corky's civil rights organization, the Crusade for Justice.

The protests led by the group made Denver the focal point of Chicano activism in the 1960's. Norman helped lead many of the campaigns against police brutality in Denver and, in recognition of his work in those struggles, he was elected co-chair of the Denver chapter of the NAACP.

He made the connection between injustice here at home and a foreign policy that essentially disregarded the rights of people living in other countries and became an activist in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Seeing the connection between his struggles and the capitalist system that caused the problems he was tackling, Norman joined the Communist Party after moving to New York where he continued his work for economic justice, equality, and peace.

He was elected a member of the vestry at St. Mark's Church and led many of the iconic campaigns for peace, progress and justice that operated out of that center in the late 1960's and 1970's.

He became a social worker in New York, working for Protective Services, and was an active member of his union, Local 371 of DC 37.

He was a familiar face at demonstrations organized by Pastors for Peace in his early years in New York and at every civil rights, peace or economic justice rally in New York for the last 40 years.

In his travels Norman became particularly fond of the German Democratic Republic and some of the advances that country had made in the fight to lift people out of poverty. He became a leader of the United States Committee for Friendship with the GDR doing everything from bringing Hollywood actors on trips to the GDR to shipping books from the GDR to German language departments at universities all over the United States.

After the restoration of capitalism in eastern Europe he stepped up another of his many areas of work - building solidarity with Cuba - and he helped organize forums until shortly before his death. He also supported the progressive developments in Venezuela, circulating petitions and joining demonstrations against U.S. interference in the internal affairs of that country.

"Norman taught us all so much," said Kathy, a retired New York City nurse who was at his side and herself a leader in many of his activities from the 1970's until now.

There will be a memorial next weekend on Saturday, August 23 in New York to which the public is invited.

It will take place at St. Mark's Church which is on 2nd Ave. between 10th and 11th Streets in New York City. The affair will run from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. in the Parish Hall. Since the church is undergoing renovation people should use the entrance on 11^th Street which is between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.

Photo: Norman Hodgett, at a demonstration as usual. Courtesty of Kathy Rutkowsky

Wrong way on Iraq

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 14:21:00 +0000

We join with other Americans in opposing renewed U.S. military action in Iraq. President Obama, while saying U.S. airstrikes would be limited in scope, also called it "a long-term project." That is alarming, opening the door for further disasters.

At the same time, the Iraqi people, especially its minorities, are facing a terrible onslaught of vicious religious and political extremism. This is a major humanitarian crisis with many thousands of Iraqis, particularly religious and ethnic minorities, being killed or forced to flee, including into inhabitable areas where they face starvation and death. The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) has declared a Sunni caliphate in parts of Iraq, "in what appears to be a widespread and systematic policy aimed at cleansing non-Sunni ethnic and religious communities from areas under its control," a United Nations official says. The U.S. bears a heavy responsibility for this situation. We, the American people, have a responsibility to help the Iraqi people. But how?

Many lawmakers are saying Congress must approve any military action, and some are questioning the constitutionality of the airstrikes. Those are important issues. But the deeper question is whether there should be air strikes at all.

Of course, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for whom no military action is ever enough, immediately criticized Obama's move as inadequate and called for more massive U.S. military intervention.

Other members of Congress are taking a much more sober approach. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., an outspoken antiwar advocate, said she supports "strictly humanitarian efforts to prevent genocide in Iraq," and said the president "has existing authority to protect American diplomatic personnel." But she expressed concern about "mission creep" and "escalation into a larger conflict."

"There is no military solution in Iraq. Any lasting solution must be political," she said in a statement Aug. 8.

Lee said she was "pleased President Obama recognized this ... when he said 'there's no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq. The only lasting solution is reconciliation among Iraqi communities and stronger Iraqi security forces.'"

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., noted in a letter to constituents that he "was elected to end America's recent history of military hubris in the Middle East." He said, "Americans will not support a new open ended military campaign in Iraq."

The fact is the U.S. played a huge role in bringing about the crisis besetting Iraq today. Earlier U.S. administrations aided the suppression of democratic expression in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, including the extermination of Communists, trade unionists, and intellectuals, and fanning of sectarianism and ethnic strife via bloody repression against the large Kurdish minority and the majority Shia population, which is heavily working class and poor.

Then the U.S. occupation pursued a sectarian/ethnic policy in its "nation-building" operations, promoting self-serving groups and individuals and putting in place the damaging religious/ethnic "power-sharing" governing setup which is destabilizing Iraq to this day. Unfortunately the Obama administration is continuing this harmful policy. Ignored are Iraq's wide array of democratic organizations and their demands and concerns.

Meanwhile, the U.S., through its proxies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere, has funneled weapons and money to a shadowy, shifting bunch of "opposition" groups in Syria, escalating what started as a democracy movement into a bloody battle dominated by horribly reactionary extremists like ISIS. Now this battle has spilled over into Iraq, where ISIS is being assisted if not manipulated by reactionary secular groups like the Baathist supporters of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Reportedly, the administration's decision to launch the new military strikes in northern Iraq was made to prevent another "Benghazi" in Iraq's Kurdish region, where the U.S. has a consulate. But the 2012 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya, would not have happened if the U.S. and NATO had not launched the air war on Libya in 2011 in the first place. And look at the mess in Libya now. Extended U.S. warplane and drone attacks in Iraq can likewise be a recruiting tool for ISIS and its allies and backers including the Baathists.

It is noteworthy that top U.S. ally Britain, while saying it will provide humanitarian aid for Iraq, is declining to participate in military action.

Unilateral U.S. use of airstrikes on other countries has become a new and disturbing pattern, and they have not led to positive results. In most of these cases, including the present actions in Iraq, the U.S. has bypassed the United Nations. That is a bad path to go down.

The UN Security Council on Aug. 7 called on the international community to "support the Government and people of Iraq and to do all it can to help alleviate the suffering of the population affected by the current conflict in Iraq." It also called on "all political entities to overcome divisions and work together in an inclusive and urgent political process to strengthen Iraq's national unity, sovereignty and independence."

Following this lead, the U.S. should meet immediately with allied countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey and agree to stop any financial, logistical or material support, direct or indirect, for ISIS and related groups. That means, among other things, stopping our disastrous support and aid for "rebel" groups in Syria. It means making a deal with the Syrian government to get the Assad regime to help close off its border with Iraq and cut the channels used by ISIS and others to obtain funds and weapons.

Other important UN members can play a big role in helping this effort, and in providing vital humanitarian aid for Iraq and support for democratic development there. That includes Russia and China - with whom we should be cooperating rather than fanning confrontation.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation has put forward Five Ways the U.S. Can Stop the Killing in Iraq:

1. "Stop U.S. bombing of Iraq, which will only result in more bloodshed and instability

2. "Coordinate with the United Nations on evacuation efforts of U.S. personnel from Erbil & Iraq's Yazidi population trapped on Sinjar mountain

3. "Press for and uphold an arms embargo in Iraq and Syria

4. "Engage with United Nations to reinvigorate efforts for a lasting political solution for Iraq and Syria

5. "Increase humanitarian aid."

We urge our readers to contact their members of Congress and the White House and press for such constructive actions.

Photo: U.S. warplanes. U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Joely Santiago

Ending violence must be our passion

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 11:39:00 +0000

Below is a section of the keynote to the Communist Party USA 30th National Convention, June 13-15, 2014, delivered on the convention's opening day by outgoing National Chair Sam Webb. The newly elected national chair is John Bachtell, who previously served as Illinois organizer for the party.

This article discusses one of several challenges for the party and progressive movement. (See previous articles here, here, here and here.) We will feature other sections in the coming weeks.

Challenge 7: End violence and win a world of peace

We can barely turn in any direction without encountering violence of one kind or another. Violence is a pervasive presence in our lives and the lives of people worldwide. It kills innocent people, tears up the social fabric of our communities and societies. It can even numb our sense of outrage to the point where we become accepting of its presence.

But violence isn't natural and eternal. Hate isn't in humankind's DNA; war is a social and political construct; there are alternatives.

Martin Luther King was right when he appealed for a transvaluation of values. His message to humankind was nonviolence and love. But for him neither were passive appeals to people's good will, but categories of struggle.

They rested on the struggle against the structures of exploitation and oppression that are the material ground for violence. He appealed to anyone who would listen that the elimination of what he called the "triplets" - poverty, racism and militarism - was the gateway to a beloved and nonviolent community.

" ... we are called to play the Good Samaritan," he said, "on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice, which produces beggars, needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."

If King were alive today I can't help but think that he would despair at the violence that is so pervasive here and elsewhere, but only for a moment.

And then my guess is he would tell us that our mission can be nothing less than to join with millions of others here and across our planet to insist on peace and an end violence, to study war no more.

More concretely:

1. We should insist that our government make a U-turn in its foreign policy - from one that rests on militarism, power projection, and unrivaled dominance, to one of cooperation, peaceful resolution of conflicts, and equality and mutual respect among nations.

2. We should insist on a nuclear-free world and our government should lead the way.

3. We should insist on the dismantling of alliances and multinational institutions that are nothing but staging grounds to project violence - beginning with NATO.

4. We should insist on a "pivot," not to Asia and the Pacific, but towards a common effort to solve the pressing issues of nuclear proliferation, poverty, and climate change.

5. We should insist on a just settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that that includes at its core an independent, viable and robust Palestinian state existing in peace and equality with Israel.

6. We should insist on hands off Venezuela, no war with Iraq, and a normalization of relations with Cuba and freedom for the Cuban Five.

7. We should insist on an end to the "war on terror" and the "surveillance state." Terrorist actions against innocent people cannot be justified and should be stopped, but the "war on terror" isn't the way to do it. It easily becomes that rationale for wars of aggression abroad and cutting down on democratic rights and neglect of human needs at home. The scourge of terrorist actions can only be counted by the collective effort of the world community.

8. We should insist that big powers - existing and rising - respect the rights of small states.

9. We should insist on a peace budget not a war budget, and a peace economy not a militarized one.

10. We should insist that the judicial system be overhauled, the system of mass incarceration be abolished, and justice be not punitive and retributive, but redemptive and restorative.

11. We should insist on an end to capital punishment and on strict gun laws that prohibit the proliferation of violence in our neighborhoods and schools, and civilian police review boards in every city.

12. We should insist on expansion of health care clinics and school staff to provide humane and nurturing treatment to people - young and old - who have mental health problems - no shame there, right?

13. We should insist on a massive and fully funded plan to restore and sustain hard hit communities, including reservations where Native peoples live in abject conditions.

14. We should insist on a just and humane immigration system.

If we want to fight a war, we should once again declare a war on poverty, joblessness, decaying and underfunded schools and inadequate housing, malnutrition, and all the social ills that make life difficult for millions

We should declare "no tolerance" for racism, male supremacy, xenophobia, and homophobia - all of which can easily turn into acts of violence.

Lenin once wrote, "An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence - such is our ideal." I would modify that in this way: the cessation of violence must become our passion as well as our ideal. It should be encoded into our emotional and political DNA.

In the big universe in which we live and do our politics, our brand should have inscribed on it: "An end to violence, peace, and a peaceful path to socialism." In other words, the image, style, look, slogan, banner, and signature of our party should give pride of place to our unyielding commitment to a nonviolent and peaceful world.

If we want to be rebels, let's rebel against the violence and hate, let's rebel against war and the loss of too many young lives in Chicago, Oakland, and Sandy Hook. Let's become drum majors for peace and against racism, poverty, and militarism. Let's take inspiration from the lives of Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Dorothy Day.

Photo: "Non-Violence" (a.k.a. "The Knotted Gun"), a sculpture by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Malmö, Sweden. Wikimedia

Ukraine, “Morning Joe,” and the new Cold War

Thu, 07 Aug 2014 14:19:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks the American people have been served up a steady stream of words and images by the major media about the conflict in the Ukraine.

The coverage has been almost uniformly one-sided; sometimes things are turned completely on their head. If you believe what you see and hear, the crisis in the Ukraine has no wider context or history. Underlying causes that go to the heart of and sustain the conflict are barely, if at all, mentioned.

One side - guess which - is the perpetrator of violence, the other side - guess again - acts out of self-defense. One side is hostile to "democratic governance," the other side embraces democracy and "western" values. One side has no legitimate grievances, the other side is, without question, the injured and aggrieved party. It's all, the media tells us, Putin's fault!

Furthermore, the loss of lives on the "other" side receives far less attention than losses on "our" side.

Finally, in this version of reality, the U.S. government is a disinterested judge and broker of peace, with no economic or political skin in the game.

"Morning Joe" version of reality

I got a good dose of this skewing of reality while watching a recent segment (July 21) of MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Mika Brzezinski, a co-host with Joe Scarborough and daughter of Cold War warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski, understandably condemned the blowing up of a commercial jetliner over eastern Ukraine in which 298 innocent people died. But then she declared matter-of-factly that the blood for this was on the hands of separatists in eastern Ukraine and their "thuggish" sponsor in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

No one in the conversation took issue with her assertion, even though the investigation into the jet shoot-down has so far reached no conclusions. It may turn out that rebels in eastern Ukraine did fire a missile that brought down the jet, perhaps taking it for a military plane. But still nothing definite has been proved as to who the guilty party is.

And as long as that is the case, it would seem wise for Mika Brzezinski and her media mates to show much more caution before assigning blame. Caution is especially advisable given our government's track record in outright lying to the American people to justify the use of military power, imposition of sanctions on other countries, and overthrow of democratically elected governments - not to mention the readiness of the mainstream media on too many occasions to serve as megaphones for official lies.

Also disturbing is that no one said a single word about the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian government against its own citizens in eastern Ukraine.

Atrocities by "friends and democrats"

One would think, for instance, that Brzezinski or one of her guests, if only for "balance" and "fairness," would take a moment to tell viewers of the horrific murder of 40 or more mainly Russian Ukrainians in Odessa a short time ago. They too were innocent, but that didn't stop our Ukrainian "friends and democrats" from herding them into a building, blocking the doors, and setting it on fire, turning it into an inferno in which almost all perished.

According to historian Stephen Cohen, the perpetrators of this horrific and premeditated crime were members of a group called Right Sector. This neo-fascist movement was an organizing force in the February 2014 coup that ousted the elected president, Victor Yanukovich, and it is now deploying its well-armed militias to help the Ukrainian military intensify its offensive in the eastern part of the country.

Cohen reports that Right Sector, along with Svoboda (another right-wing party with representatives in the government), hailed the Odessa massacre. Dmytro Yarosh, one of its leaders, is quoted as saying that it was "another bright day in our national history." And a Svoboda parliamentary deputy said, "Bravo, Odessa ... let the Devils burn in hell."

The mass murder in Odessa wasn't an aberration. Similar events, Cohen writes, occurred in Mariupol and Kramatorsk, two other cities in eastern Ukraine. But not a word of indignation about these atrocities was spoken by Brzezinski or her companions on "Morning Joe."

Nor did anyone on this popular talk show acknowledge that the shooting down of the jetliner came in the immediate aftermath of the breaking of the ceasefire by Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's new president - a decision, by the way, that he would only make with the approval of the U.S. State Department.

Finally, there was not even a hint by anyone about the fact that U.S. administrations have systematically violated the spirit and letter of an agreement, mutually arrived at in the late 1980s by governments on opposite sides of the Cold War, to forgo any expansion of NATO in an eastward direction. First the U.S. drew Eastern European countries and then former Soviet republics into NATO's orbit. But, surprise, surprise! Mum was the word on "Morning Joe."

Spiking up rhetoric vs. Russia

What did command a good deal of attention on the show was the urgency of spiking up the rhetoric against Putin and sanctions on Russia.

Which is what President Obama is doing, unfortunately. And combined with the renewed and bloody military offensive in Ukraine, this is inflaming and dangerously escalating the situation.

Perhaps the president and his foreign policy advisers believe that Putin has no stomach for sending Russian troops into the Ukraine and is holding a weak hand, and thus the escalation of the conflict by Kiev and Washington carries little risk and offers the possibility of outsized advantages. The advantages: letting Putin and Russia who's boss in the world, and setting the stage to bring the Ukraine, a prized geopolitical asset, into NATO.

But what they forget, and many ordinary people know only too well from bitter experience, is that war has a logic and dynamic of its own that can escape the most skillful policymakers. Things can go awry. The unintended happens. And in this conflict, we should bear in mind that the two chief antagonists are the world's biggest nuclear powers.

To allay such concerns, the president tells us that the negative turn in U.S.-Russia relations doesn't represent a "new Cold War," which brings with it the attendant danger of an actual hot war.

But it strikes me, despite his assurances, that the real question is: Did the "Cold War" ever end?

Did the Cold War ever end?

A plausible case can be made that the present standoff between the U.S. and Russian governments simply continues, albeit in decidedly different conditions, the long-standing U.S. imperial project of encircling, isolating, cutting down the spheres of influence of, changing the behavior of, and, where necessary, overthrowing regimes that potentially challenge the dominance of the U.S.

This policy is complemented by U.S. efforts to form a network of client states worldwide, complete with proxy armies and military bases, that will do its bidding. Despite Washington's almost rote-like invocation of democracy promotion, the actual degree of democracy in these countries is secondary to their willingness to uphold U.S. interests in the new global order.

In the view of top U.S. foreign policy circles, a multi-polar world is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and not a safe bet for promoting U.S. capitalism and a "liberal democratic" global order.

Accordingly, only the U.S. can act as the guarantor of stability, secure global markets, and successfully challenge governments and non-state actors that contest the U.S.-led capitalist world order. This, so say the designers and organizers of the our global grand strategy, makes America's role and power indispensable in the contemporary world.

While President Obama and his advisers have some important differences with the neoconservative wing of the foreign policy establishment and right-wing militarists like John McCain, they share this elite worldview in general and with respect to Russia.

And as the recent segment of "Morning Joe" demonstrates, the mass media assists in this project. While not a dutiful parrot in every instance, it embraces nonetheless the main assumptions, objectives, and worldview of the ruling circles - and their blind spots.

Seeing through the "fog of war"

So much so that it surprises me now and then that the American people are able to see through the "fog" enough to act as a brake on the more aggressive plans of U.S. imperialism. And well they must in today's violent world.

But an about-face in U.S. foreign policy toward substantive and sustainable peace and cooperation will take more than public sentiment for peace. It, in the end, requires the building of a transformative movement that has the ideological and practical capacity to mobilize and unite millions across the country - in red as well as blue states, in suburbs and rural communities as well as cities. Only a broad based, multi-class, and multi-racial movement of the immense majority acting in close alliance with peoples and governments worldwide can "give peace a chance" and turn swords into ploughshares.

In the meantime, we are faced with a crisis that grows more dangerous with each passing day. An immediate task is to demand a mutual ceasefire and the resumptions of negotiations between the parties to the conflict in the Ukraine and between the Ukrainian and Russian governments. At the same time, we should insist that the Obama administration strike a conciliatory note, lift sanctions, and renounce any interest in drawing the Ukraine into NATO.

Maybe if the American people are insistent enough, we can even get "Morning Joe" to sign on!

Photo: Co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, right, on the set of "Morning Joe." Wikipedia

"Bourgeois politics" and the mature left

Tue, 05 Aug 2014 16:44:00 +0000

This article discusses one of six challenges for the party and progressive movement. (See previous articles here, here and here.) We will feature other sections in the coming weeks.

Challenge 4: The elections and the struggle for political independence

An immediate challenge for anybody who cares about the future of our democracy is the elections this fall. Their outcome probably won't shift the political terrain in a deep-going way, but that doesn't take away from their importance.

Whichever side wins will have the wind in its sails over the final two years of the Obama presidency and a leg up going into the 2016 presidential race.

If the Republicans capture control of the Senate, while retaining control of the House, they will claim that the American people have unambiguously rejected the president and his policies of "redistributive" economics, government "overreach," and a supersized "nanny state."

On this ground they will press their reactionary agenda to the max. They will block the president at every turn as well as ramp up their efforts to portray him as incompetent, a voice of "takers and freeloaders," and a weakling in the global theater. Nothing new here, except that they will pursue this smear campaign with more vigor.

This zealousness of the Republican opposition goes beyond the "normal" give and take of politics and heated partisanship, even beyond their zeal to beat the Democrats in the 2016 elections. What it reveals is a barely concealed and deeply felt racist animus toward a Black president who in their eyes symbolizes the imminent demise of the old order that is white, male, and well-to-do.

As fixated as they are on Obama, they are by equal measure indifferent to the plight of tens of millions struggling to survive.

Thus the stakes are tremendously high. And it goes without saying that we should be in this battle; no one should sit on the bench.

This is PLAYOFF TIME!

Now granted, it won't be a cakewalk.

But who ever said the road to freedom would be easy or smooth? Who ever said, for example, that it would be easy to elect the first African American president? None of us, I bet; and most other people shared our view. But life and struggle and a Yes We Can attitude combined to break new ground and make history.

Can we surprise the pundits again and give the Republicans a good thrashing in November? Se puede?

We got the right spirit, but we (and the larger people's movement) have to combine this spirit with two other things, if we are to win in November.

First, good talking points that will convince people that their vote counts and that the right wing can be defeated this fall.

The other thing is a massive voter registration, protect the vote, get out the vote campaign.

If this is done - and I think it can be - then lots of talking heads that predicted a Republican victory will have to eat their words.

Now some left and progressive people minimize the importance of this election - in part because they don't share our concern about the right-wing danger and in part because they feel that the Democratic Party is no great shakes either.

I'm mindful of the fact that the Democratic Party has a class anchorage, and it ain't working class. Despite the broad range of people and organizations that comprise it, not everyone has an equal seat at the table.

But I'm also mindful that any realistic strategy to defeat the right, thereby creating opportunities to move to higher ground, necessarily includes the Democratic Party as part of a growing people's coalition at this stage of struggle.

So how do we square this circle? I'm not sure if I can do it completely, but here are some brief thoughts:

An independent labor-people's based party able to compete with the two main parties doesn't exist now, nor is it on the horizon. And while there is disaffection within the Democratic Party, nearly nobody in the Democratic Party is ready to say "See ya later." What they are ready to do is to fight with the party's leaders and Wall Street over policy and political direction.

So if a third party isn't on the agenda for now, and if there are substantial numbers of people and organizations ready to fight within the Democratic Party over policy and directions, what does the left do in the meantime? Hope the Democratic Party will do right by us? Not at all!

Three interrelated tasks come to mind. One is to continue to build the broadest and deepest (grassroots) coalition, including the Dems, against the right wing in this fall's elections and beyond.

Another is give new urgency to extending and deepening the streams of political independence - both inside and outside the orbit of the Democratic Party - and to press a progressive agenda.

Finally, we need to keep in the conversation at lower volume the need for an alternative people's party at the national level that has the capacity to compete with the two major parties of capitalism.

Will there be tensions in executing this layered policy? Of course! How could there not be? But we will learn how to negotiate these tensions. And we will do it without fracturing the still developing multi-class coalition against right-wing extremism.

I mention this because some on the left - even in our own party - are ready, if not to vacate, then at least to dial down on the struggle to defeat right-wing extremism. In their view, the strategy has come up empty; the two parties are two peas in a pod; the democratic - legislative and electoral - process has become completely compromised and corrupted, thanks in part to Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions. The real action, many now say, is at the state and city level.

And then a few on the sectarian left go a step further, claiming that the effort to defeat right-wing extremists is a retreat from the real class struggle.

None of these claims hold up in the court of life. In the first place, this strategy has stymied the right wing's most extreme plans to restructure political, economic, and cultural relations in a deep-going, permanent, and thoroughly reactionary way. No small achievement; in fact, an enormous achievement!

Second, victories - some of great import, some garnering fewer headlines - have been won. And these victories have made a difference in the lives of tens of millions.

Third, the emerging movement against the right doesn't yet have transformative capacity, but it's closer to it today than a few years ago.

Fourth, there is no other way - and certainly no easy way - at this stage of struggle to get to a future that puts people and nature before profits other than to battle and defeat right-wing extremism.

I wish this stage of struggle could be skipped in favor of something sexier, but it can't. Political possibilities at every level are and will be limited as long as the right wing casts a long shadow over the nation's politics. Islands of socialism, and even progressivism, in a sea in which the right wing makes big waves are a figment of a fertile but unrealistic imagination.

Finally, the struggle against the right is a form of the class struggle. In fact, it's the leading edge of the class (and democratic) struggle at this moment. Only someone with a dogmatic cast of mind would think otherwise. Struggle, class and otherwise, never comes in pure form.

That said, we shouldn't minimize the difficulties, nor conceal the class nature of the two-party system, nor give the Democrats a free pass, but at the same time we shouldn't suggest in the slightest way that the electoral/legislative struggle in present circumstances is a fool's errand. Such a position feels self-satisfying and has a radical ring to it, but in the end it's the real fool's errand. Frustration - and we all feel it now and then - can't be a substitute for informed and sober politics.

Or to paraphrase Engels: impatience is a poor substitute for theory.

In the 20th century two transformative movements uprooted deeply structured modes of political and economic governance - one an unregulated, crisis-ridden capitalism in the 1930s and the other a massive, many-layered, and deeply racist system, sanctioned by law, custom, and violence in the 1960s.

Neither one of these transformative movements, however, boycotted or stood apart from the electoral and legislative process. They were engaged in a very practical way in "bourgeois politics," but that didn't weaken their cause, in fact it was part of the explanation for their historic victories. A mature party and left will not discount these experiences.

Photo: "I voted." Micki Krimmel CC

Upon the fire of war, Netanyahu's government pours gasoline

Tue, 05 Aug 2014 15:19:00 +0000

Join People's World co-editor Susan Webb Thursday morning, Aug. 7, 8 a.m. Eastern, 7 a.m. Central, in a conversation and call to action with peace activist and leader of the Communist Party of Israel Uri Weltmann on Gaza and whether Israel-Palestinian peace is possible. Watch from the video embed at the bottom of this page or from Google+ link: https://plus.google.com/events/cd9lp9fspr8tcunqi99m3a2nt40

HAIFA, Israel - War is a human disaster. Not only due to the victims, but also because it brings in plain view many evil and ugly phenomena: violence, racism, nationalist zeal. The atmosphere here in Israel during the current war is one of bloodletting, that brings to mind prior periods of incitement that preceded the murders of peace activist Emil Grunzweig and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

On a recent Saturday evening, July 19, a joint Jewish-Arab antiwar demonstration took place in the northern city of Haifa. Amongst the demonstrators stood Yara, a young Arab woman from Kufr Yassif and a student at Haifa University. Yara stood with a sign that read "In Gaza and in S'derot, girls want to live." At some point a brick was thrown at her from the right-wing counter-protest. It hit her stomach. She was knocked to the ground. In a Facebook status she published after the demonstration, she emphasized that three young Jewish women whom she did not know came to her aid. Yara saw in this proof that even in difficult times, human decency transcends national boundaries.

The violence was not confined to the demonstration itself. In the nearby square outside the Haifa Arts Cinema, the deputy mayor Suheil Assad and his son were attacked by right-wing activists, because they spoke Arabic. A few hundred meters away, the Hussari brothers were attacked as they left their car. A group of people moved toward them, one shouting, "Are you Arabs?" The brothers did not answer, instead choosing to flee. Their assailants caught up to them, broke the nose of one brother, and the other's arm. When an ambulance arrived to evacuate them, it was surrounded by a furious mob, which proceeded to hit it, screaming "Death to Arabs." If not for the courage of the paramedic, who prevented the mob from taking their anger beyond mere injuries, there would have been people killed that night in Haifa.

It's easy to blame far-right militant Kahanists for the violence. Indeed, racist Kach and Lehava activists were amongst the leaders of the violence in the right-wing demonstration in Haifa. But they did not stand alone. With them stood many people wearing the shirts of Netanyahu's Likud and the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team. It was not merely the radical fringe, but also fans of the ruling party that stood there that night and shouted "Death to Arabs" and "Incineration for Leftists."

This evil wind is not a private initiative. It's a direct result of the fear and incitement spread by the ruling parties. If the prime minister had not called for "vengeance" immediately following the death of three kidnapped teenagers, and if ministers, members of Knesset (the Israeli parliament), and mayors had not denied the right to express criticism of the war, the outbreak of violence would not have occurred.

The government and the man at its head chose the way of war. In the five years of Benjamin Netanyahu's administration, he has conducted a consistent policy of peace rejectionism: he did not agree to freeze construction in settlements in order to allow negotiation over permanent borders, and was careful to keep saying that Abu Mazen is not a possible partner for peace. In the name of the ideology of Greater Israel, Netanyahu and his government chose to leave Israelis and Palestinians permanently on the brink of a clash, when any tiny spark could ignite a conflagration. When this occurred, instead of trying to put out the fire, they continued to pour the gasoline of incitement onto it.

The events of the past weeks can create a feeling of desperation. The pain of grieving families, in Gaza and in Israel, is an intolerable burden. The knowledge that in my city, at the very place where only three years ago we created an encampment for social justice, there was a pogrom attempt against its Arab residents, is horrifying. Yet I choose to remember those incredible moments of hope three years ago, when we marched, Jews and Arabs together, in the biggest protests in the history of this country. We struggled together for social justice, and we knew that this country can be a place that is good to live in, for Jews and Arabs alike.

For that hope to materialize, we must go out into the streets. One week after the demonstration in Haifa, on Saturday, July 26, I participated in the large peace demonstration at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. That square, that has already known one politically motivated murder, is the most appropriate place to demonstrate for sanity. Indeed, it filled with thousands of demonstrators, Jews and Arabs, who called for a ceasefire. The terror that the previous week's demonstration in Haifa had created was replaced with a hope that this Saturday brought forth in Tel Aviv. There is a peace movement in Israel, and despite attempts to silence it, its voice is not gone.

Uri Weltmann is a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Israel, and was an organizer of the Haifa demonstration.

This article was originally published in Hebrew in "Ha'Aretz" daily newspaper, on July 29, 2014. Translated to English by Rann Bar-On.

Photo: Hadash and Communist Party of Israel demonstration in Haifa last month (Hadash-CPI Haifa)

For Native rights, equality and voice in labor movement: Council FIRE

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 17:15:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following speech was given to the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement's convention in 2010 by Kevin Cummings, founder of Council FIRE - First Inhabitants Rights and Equality, an organization that seeks to, as stated in the council's bylaws: "[U]nite tribal leaders and members, labor, religious, and community groups, elected leaders, and any individuals or organizations that share the goals of Council FIRE." These goals include supporting "the rights of first nations' people to protect their traditions and histories, as well as to fully participate in the arena of jobs, health care, education, and in building a bright future together with all people who share these lands today, ... [and to] using our resources and energies to address the human rights issues of Native communities by raising awareness of inequities and conditions that constitute barriers to full participation in the larger society. We will also work to educate the greater population as to the contributions and leadership that Native people have delivered throughout the histories of these lands."

LCLAA convention delegates passed a proclamation of support for Council FIRE - the first labor-based organization in the country to do so. Council FIRE seeks a voice for Native and Indigenous people in the labor movement. Cummings is a Grand Lodge representative for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and traces his family roots to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.

For more information on Council FIRE, including copies of proclamations of support, go to: council-fire.org or on Facebook.

1492 - that is when Christopher Columbus "discovered" these lands. It is amazing to think that crowds of people stood on the shore, some even helped tie off the boats, and still Columbus declared that he had discovered the place - and claimed that it belonged to the Europeans.

A lot has happened in these last 500 years - not all of it has been positive. Sadly, the occupation practices still continue today.

Consider that a recent report by a team of archaeologists, shows that human DNA was discovered in Oregon dating back 14,300 years - that is 138 centuries before Columbus; and in South Carolina, stone tools have been found and carbon dated to show human existence going back as many as 50,000 years.

So, let's be clear... Columbus didn't discover anything; he was actually late for the party!

These lands have long been inhabited by those that we now call American Indians; long before the arrival of the Europeans.

Despite their long tenure as the first people on these lands, Native Americans are lagging behind in nearly every socio-economic category that is measured. It is a shame on these United States that the people, who were first on American soil, are last in the American dream.

From the Trail of Tears - where more than 10,000 men, women and children died on the journey to relocation - to the deplorable conditions that exist right now, these nearly three million people, many living on the more than 500 reservations, deserve better.

These are the statistics:

Native American babies are three times more likely to die from Sudden Infant Syndrome than a non-Indian baby.
Thirty-eight percent of Native women will be victims of domestic violence - one in three will be raped!
Native mothers are five times more likely to give birth to a child that is inflicted with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, - as many as 55 percent of the members of some tribes are afflicted with alcoholism - some victims as young as eight or nine - a direct link to the systemic despair and hopelessness that has become their life.
American Indian girls are two-and-a-half times as likely to become pregnant before the age of eighteen.
Indigenous youth suicide rates are three times the national average.
Twenty-seven percent of American Indian families live below the poverty level - compared to the national average of 10 percent. In some nations, the Navajo for instance (the second largest tribe in the U.S.), roughly 50 percent are living in poverty, and some smaller reservations are worse.
Nearly 50 percent of Indian students never finish high school.
Schools on Indian reservations are funded at less than half the level that public schools are - and public schools are severely underfunded.
Only 17 percent of Indigenous high school graduates enroll in college - compared to a national average of 62 percent.
Indians earn only a little more than half as much as the average American - less per capita than whites, blacks, Asian Americans and Hispanics.
Natives are three times as likely to die of tuberculosis, and twice as likely to die of diabetes.

The original inhabitants of these lands have the highest rates of poverty, unemployment and disease of any ethnic group in America.

These conditions should not be accepted, and raising awareness to this disgrace is a first step in the right direction.

There are plenty of stories about Indians making big money from gambling casinos; however - this is the exception, not the norm.

Some - such as the Mashantucket Pequots of Connecticut, who own Foxwoods, the country's largest casino - have become wealthy; but the facts are that less than a quarter of America's 557 Indian tribes own casinos, and only 48 of those tribes earn more than $10 million a year from them - but the additional crime, alcoholism, and problems that come along with operating a casino, mean that gambling is not an answer to the centuries of neglect, broken promises and oppression.

Remember the pledge - liberty and justice for all - those are supposed to be more than just words.

American Indian ancestors truly discovered these lands, and their children deserve to share in the prosperity of this nation.

American families are NOT the enemy

I ask this convention to stand up and support this proclamation: It declares that Native Americans deserve a chance at the American Dream. Native Americans deserve equality, and respect for their history and traditions.

If any group of people is left behind, then we all lose.

Thank you

Photo: At a gathering of the Inter Tribal Warriors Society in Washington state, General Vice President Gary Allen, second from right, presented a donation to the Council for First Inhabitants Rights and Equality (Council FIRE), an advocacy group for Native American issues founded by Western Territory Grand Lodge Representative Kevin Cummings, right. (via IAM)