People Before Profit blog

“America Wants to Work” kicks off this week

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:28:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Beginning on Labor Day, the AFL-CIO and its allies will spend weeks organizing an "America Wants to Work" campaign to focus on what they see as the nation's real crisis: jobs.

The federation has already launched an online petition drive that allows supporters to demand massive job creation. Once there, they can not only sign the petition, but can forward it to 10 friends, asking them to do the same. The federation expects more than 800,000 signatures in a few weeks.

The launching of the campaign comes just days before the White House prepares to roll out its new jobs package. Unions want a dramatic plan that can actually decrease the unemployment rate, and they believe a substantial jobs package - even one that comes with a high price tag - can create a public groundswell that Republicans controlling Congress can't ignore.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has called for a jobs plan that is "adequate to the moment. Who knows what's politically achievable until we try? The president should articulate a solution of the size and scale necessary to solve the problem. We have a jobs crisis. If you do only what you think the other side and the 'tea party' will agree to, then they control the agenda."

The labor federation's jobs plan includes rebuilding schools, roads, ports and energy systems; reviving the manufacturing sector and stopping the flow of jobs overseas; preventing layoffs in state and local governments; and measures to avoid home foreclosures. Trumka has also called for the investment of $400 billion a year over 10 years on public works projects. That would be on top of the $4 trillion he says needs to be spent on infrastructure.

Estimates published by the American Society of Civil Engineers are that it will cost more than $2 trillion just to rebuild currently crumbling infrastructure. The other $2 trillion, says the AFL-CIO, are needed to invest in the technologies of the future, including high-speed rail and modern transportation networks.

Addressing concern about the deficit, unions and their allies say that job creation and deficit reduction go hand in hand. "They complement one another," said Trumka. "You want to get rid of the deficit? Put 25 million people back to work and you won't have a deficit problem."

Working America, the AFL-CIO affiliate for people not in unions, is continuing the Buyers Remorse campaign it started this summer. The campaign allows voters to return their ballots for the GOP politicians who made promises about jobs and failed to keep them. "The Republicans elected in 2010 often made promises about jobs and the economy that turned out to be as truthful as a 3 a.m. infomercial," said Mike Hall, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO. "Instead of the promised jobs and fixed economy, voters got only a box full of shoddy political games, extremist rhetoric and corporate coziness."

On Working America's Main Street blog, Doug Foote reports that several thousand people have turned in Buyers Remorse postcards.

Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., is among those whom Working America has targeted in its campaign. The republican lawmaker said his vote to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act was, in reality, a move that would create jobs. As a result of the Buyers Remorse effort, 600 people who had voted for Walberg in 2010 have returned those votes by postcard.

Buyers Remorse campaigns are expected to be launched in numerous congressional districts this fall.

Click here to get to the Main Street Blog and Working America's Buyers Remorse campaign.

Organizers of the America Wants to Work campaign point to the long lines at job fairs and wherever job openings are announced as evidence of the urgency of their effort.

Aldi Supermarkets in Detroit, Chicago and other cities, for example, have announced a few job openings recently. More than 1,000 showed up for six job openings at a store in Detroit and, last week, an Aldi store on Chicago's South Side posted five job openings. More than 1,200 people responded to the five postings.

Ohio Republican forced to retract voter supression threat

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:19:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Facing calls by area members of Congress for a Justice Department investigation, Secretary of State John Husted retracted a threat not to process mail ballot applications sent to voters by the Cuyahoga County government.

Last week Husted, elected last November on the Republican slate headed by Gov. John Kasich, issued an order prohibiting county boards of elections from sending unsolicited mail ballot applications to voters. Since 2006, Cuyahoga and five other mostly Democratic urban counties had mailed the applications as a way to encourage voting. Husted based his order on House Bill 194, enacted earlier this year by Kasich and the Republican controlled legislature.

The law stops elections boards from sending unsolicited mail ballot applications to voters and contains a host of other restrictions limiting ballot access. It has sparked outrage, especially in the African-American community as well as in labor and the Democratic Party circles. The measure faces a repeal effort by Fair Elections Ohio, led by former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The group is circulating petitions to place the measure on the 2012 ballot. If 231,147 valid signatures are collected by Sept. 29, the law will be on hold until next year's election.

If not enough signatures are collected, the law goes into effect Sept. 30. Husted's order was aimed at stopping county elections boards from sending out the mail ballot applications before that deadline.

To circumvent the order, Cuyahoga County Executive Edward Fitzgerald announced plans to print and send the applications to 650,000 active voters with return postage paid by the county government.

Asked Sunday what legal power he had to stop Fitzgerald, Husted said, "We could look at prohibiting the board from processing the applications...There are a lot of things that could be done that we're exploring."

Fitzgerald responded by sending letters to U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman and to Reps. Marcia Fudge and Dennis Kucinich, urging them to refer Husted's threats to the Justice Department to investigate possible violations of federal voting rights laws.

Both Fudge and Kucinich immediately complied with the request. In his letter to U.S. Attorney Steven Dettlebach, Kucinich wrote:

I ask that you conduct an investigation of all tactics being contemplated by Secretary Husted, his assistants, and his staff, including the stated threat of a ballot processing prohibition and all other tactics his office is exploring to suppress the vote. I ask that you take all appropriate administrative or judicial actions, alone or in concert with other U.S. Attorneys, to enjoin any stated or unstated actions which would suppress, discourage, or otherwise disenfranchise the electorate in Cuyahoga County or other counties in the State of Ohio, whether within or outside your jurisdiction.

Husted's proposal was opposed in an editorial in the Plain Deale,r and a few hours before the Cuyahoga County Council backed Fitzgerald in a 10-0 vote, including the votes of two Republicans, he withdrew his threat.

The mail ballot applications "will be processed," said a spokesman for the secretary. "The voters are not going to be affected negatively in some way."

Photo: Progress Ohio // CC 2.0

The Keystone Pipeline: can labor and environmentalists work together?

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:06:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Building Trades unions are backing - and transit unions opposing - the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, from the tar sands of the Canadian province of Alberta to the oil refineries of the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The unions' stands come as the $7 billion project, which is estimated to create at least 20,000 construction jobs and another 100,000 indirect jobs, was apparently found to have little environmental impact, in the final required analysis that the State Department released.

The deadline for the Obama administration's approval of the project - 1,384 miles in the U.S. and just under 400 miles in Canada - is mid-December. The House's ruling Republicans have passed legislation ordering the agency to decide by Nov. 1, with the clear implication that they want the pipeline OK'd. When complete, it could transport up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day, State's environmental impact statement says.

The building trades strongly support the project, which would carry oil from Alberta through a new pipeline from Morgan, Mont., to Steele City, Neb., an existing pipeline to Cushing, Okla., and a new pipeline south to the Gulf Coast. TransCanada, the pipeline's owner, signed a project labor agreement with the Teamsters, the Laborers, the Plumbers and the Operating Engineers for new pipeline construction.

But environmental groups strongly oppose the project, saying it would increase carbon emissions. Some environmentalists have staged daily anti-Keystone protests in front of the White House. The transit workers' unions oppose it for the same reason.

"America's building trades unions are pleased the Department of State issued an Environmental Impact Statement that concludes the Keystone XL pipeline poses no significant environmental concern," Building Trades President Mark Ayers said Aug. 29.

Then Ayers addressed the environmental objections. Construction unionists, like other Americans, "enjoy and value our nation's environment...In keeping with these concerns, the Building and Construction Trades Department studiously reviewed and digested the environmental claims" by those with legitimate concerns, he told Press Associates.

Ayers stated a crude oil spill from the pipeline "moves so slowly that it would hardly endanger water quality before being successfully contained." Other pipelines, besides Keystone, already cross the Ogallala Aquifer, the huge underground reservoir of drinking and irrigation water that concerns environmentalists, Ayers said.

"Further, TransCanada [has agreed to] 57 safety conditions that the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, has recommended," Ayers said.

The State Department report confirmed that statement.

The Building Trades Department is "satisfied the environmental claims being bandied about by KXL opponents were not based in fact," Ayers said. He then touted its economic impact, in creating jobs and injecting $7 billion into the economy in "family-supporting wages and benefits...without one dime of public expenditure."

Almost a year ago, the presidents of the four unions on the project labor agreement wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging quick approval of the pipeline. They called it a "game-changer" for construction workers and the economy.

"Each week that goes by in the permitting process of the Keystone XL...is lost ground for thousands of workers who are sitting on the sidelines of our ailing national economy," presidents Terry O'Sullivan of the Laborers, Vincent Giblin of the Operating Engineers, William Hite of the Plumbers and James Hoffa of the Teamsters said then.

However, all this did not satisfy Amalgamated Transit Union President Larry Hanley and Transport Workers President James Little.

"We call on the State Department not to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline or to take any actions that lead to the further extraction of Tar Sands oil from Alberta," they wrote to Clinton in late August 2011.

"We share the Environmental Protection Agency's concerns. These cover the potential impacts to groundwater resources from pipeline spills, the high levels of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the proposed project, and the inevitable damage to the health of communities affected by the increase in refinery emissions. Approval of this project at this time would therefore be reckless, given the EPA's own assessment of the environmental risks."

Hanley and Little agreed that construction workers need jobs, but pointed out the workers could be employed in rebuilding water and sewer pipelines and repairing aging bridges and tunnels, instead of building Keystone XL.

Photo: This 2008 photo shows rail cars loaded with pipe for the first Keystone Pipeline project, which now carries crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois. (Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald/AP)

Community forum targets "Secure Communities"

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:10:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. - Concern is rising rapidly among immigrant communities and civil liberties advocates, as law enforcement agencies step up sharing of personal information garnered from individuals through programs such as the controversial Secure Communities (S-Comm) and the rapidly expanding Next Generation Identification project.

An overflow crowd gathered Aug. 27 for a forum conducted largely in Spanish, where they shared concerns about S-Comm's' devastating effects on families and friends and projected fight-back actions, including backing state legislation to let counties opt out of S-Comm.

Under S-Comm, attorney Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus told the audience, fingerprints of people stopped by local law enforcement are forwarded first to the State Identification Bureau and then to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which in turn sends the prints on to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE then runs the prints to see if an immigration issue exists.

"Over 120,000 people have been deported under S-Comm in the last couple of years," Chan told the crowd. California leads the nation, with more than 46,000 deported in the last couple of years. "A lot of them do not have criminal convictions, or were arrested on minor offenses, and those arrested for more serious offenses may not have committed them," she said.

Among the hardest hit, she said, have been victims of domestic violence, who may themselves be tagged for deportation when they seek protection from their abusers.

Lily Haskell of the San Francisco-based Arab Resource and Organizing Center highlighted the dangers of the national, multiple-agency Joint Terrorism Task Force, under whose auspices police officers can follow the same practices as FBI agents, including entrapping people, infiltrating mosques and terrorizing people.

Those telling their personal stories included undocumented "Dream Act" students from the University of California at Berkeley, who shared their concerns about family members.

"I have such a supportive community to stand up for me," said one. "But I am always afraid when my father gets behind the wheel, even driving to pick up my mom, or going to the grocery store. He could be pulled over for any arbitrary reason and his fingerprints sent to ICE. It's such a terrible tragedy that this supposed program could separate my family at any point."

Among a number of local elected officials participating were Berkeley City Councilmembers Jesse Arreguin and Kriss Worthington, and representatives of U.S. Rep. George Miller, Assemblymembers Tom Ammiano and Nancy Skinner, and Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan.

When S-Comm began in 2008, states and counties understood they could decide whether to participate, but ICE now asserts the program is mandatory. Massachusetts, Illinois and New York, and several counties around the country, are trying to opt out, while Washington state, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania said earlier they wouldn't participate.

In California, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, has introduced the TRUST Act (Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools), AB 1081, to make S-Comm an "opt-in" program for the state's counties, with safeguards against racial profiling and wrongly targeting individuals. The bill is now before the state Senate.

Actions proposed at the forum included a 48-hour vigil at the state capitol, mass marches of people affected by S-Comm - especially women and children, demanding that candidates for election pledge to oppose S-Comm, and urging Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris to reject S-Comm and support passage of the TRUST Act.

Speakers saw President Obama's recent announcement that immigration enforcement would focus on people with serious criminal records as a first step toward a thorough and fair immigration reform.

S-Comm is part of a broader, emerging information-sharing program, Next Generation Identification, which civil liberties advocates call an even bigger threat because it will expand data collection to palm prints, iris scans and other biometric information, and share information with other federal agencies without a person's knowledge.

Photo: Lily Haskell of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. Marilyn Bechtel/PW

Tea party tries to stop hurricane cleanup

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:31:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Hurricane Irene is history, but the cleanup efforts and a new controversy over allocation of federal money remain.

Despite the severity of the storm and the destruction in its aftermath, the Republican Party has worked to impede relief efforts. Virginia U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, has left those wishing to see their homes, businesses and municipalities fixed especially frustrated: Despite a state of emergency having been declared in his home state, Cantor's spokesperson Laena Fallon has suggested that money for relief would only be released were equal cuts to be made elsewhere in the federal budget.

"Eric has consistently said that additional funds for federal disaster relief ought to be offset with spending cuts," she told the press.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said, according to the AP, "I guess I can't help but say that I wish that commitment to looking for offsets had been held by the House majority leader and others, say, during the previous administration when they ran up unprecedented bills and never paid for them."

Carney went on to say that clean up should be an immediate priority. Early on, President Obama sent the same message. "Our thoughts and prayers are with those who've lost loved ones and those whose lives have been affected by the storm," Obama said Aug. 28. "You need to know that America will be with you in your hour of need."

"We continue to have search and rescue personnel on alert, as well as water, food and other needed resources," the president continued. "And moving forward, FEMA is working with state and local responders to assess damage and assist in the recovery."

But it may be hard for FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to fulfill the president's words. According to a CNN report, the agency has fallen on hard times, with only $800 million on hand. To put that number in perspective, the federal government spends $964.8 billion on defense and $206.7 billion on interest payments each year.

When FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate was asked by CNN whether there was enough money on hand to clean up after Irene, he responded: "Don't know."

In addition to emergency clean up of the recent hurricane, FEMA should also deal with ongoing cleanup efforts from the rash of tornados earlier this year. However, according to CNN, unless more money is forthcoming, the agency will have to drop all non-emergency projects, including the rebuilding of schools and roads destroyed by storms.

The destruction of the storm, as it tore its way up the Atlantic coast, though less than some predicted, is quite real. It first made landfall in North Carolina and reached here at Coney Island in the early morning hours Aug. 28. When it hit New Jersey, it was the first full-fledged hurricane to do so in more than a century, since 1903.

Emergency crews were still responding today as far north as Vermont, where food was being airlifted to those trapped by floodwaters. In several states, including New York and New Jersey, the worst flooding in several decades was seen. Hundreds of people were trapped in their homes; more than 600 so far have been airlifted to safety.

7.4 million customers lost power across the eastern seaboard due to the storm, with 3.3 million still out as of today.

According to the most recent count, the storm killed at least 40 people in the U.S.

While there has been some grumbling about the scale of preparations for the storm, most people were generally happy with this city's efforts.

"I'm glad I live in New York," said Lin Xiang, a resident of Coney Island, an area that was evacuated. "They [Mayor Bloomberg and city officials] kept updating us, telling us what to do, and gave help to people who needed to escape from low [-lying] areas."

"Better than New Orleans," Lin said, referring to the botched evacuation efforts in that city after it was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Asked whether he agreed with any of the anti-government talking points of the tea party movement, Lin said, "No. I love the government. Small government wouldn't be able to evacuate a whole area. Small government in New Orleans didn't do anything, and everyone in Louisiana dead or stuck in extradome [actually Superdome] hell."

Still, Rep. Cantor would apparently beg to disagree.

Photo: Oregon Inlet, N.C. Coast Guard // CC 2.0

Unemployed no longer welcome to apply for jobs?

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:18:00 +0000

Big business has set up a new roadblock for the jobless: in a discriminatory practice that is becoming increasingly widespread, employers are only considering hiring those who are already working, reported the AFL-CIO. In other words, the unemployed need not apply.

This policy was not the type of change President Obama had in mind when he told the unemployed there was hope on the horizon.

As it stands now, said the report, for every one job open, there are 4.7 people who are jobless. Meanwhile, roughly 25 million Americans overall are either unemployed, underemployed, or have stopped looking for work altogether.

What's worse is that, according to Color of Change, Black communities in particular are suffering, as about 15 percent of African Americans are without jobs.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that job websites like Monster.com and Career Builder fail to ban job listings that appear to treat the jobless with exorbitant prejudice.

However, the working class doesn't intend to endure the discrimination without putting up a fight: Kelly Weidemer, an unemployed business analyst, launched a viral campaign on Change.org that calls on supporters to correct this issue, and has already recruited tens of thousands of supporters to the cause.

Weidemer said: "At the end of the day, it's all about the money. It also helps [employers] reduce the number of applications they have to wade through." Moreover, "they believe the unemployed are "bad apples" and are jobless for a reason," she continued, highlighting yet another discriminatory thought process on their part.

And, Weidemer remarked, "It's gonna affect the older people the most."

According to BNET, there are various other reasons why employers are avoiding those who don't have jobs - all of them unfair. These include, for example, the fact that, because years ago the unemployed were fewer in number, those jobless were considered by employers to be at fault for being so. This opinion, however, has not changed to accommodate the times, and so unemployed people get categorized under this stereotype.

Another concern among employers is the possibility of skill deterioration among those who have not worked in some time, and it is this fear that makes them more prone to hire, say, a nurse who is still working in the field, as opposed to one who has been out of work for three years.

What is important now is the responsibility of the working class to examine and handle this issue - to fight back and refuse to be discriminated against.

Weidemer's advice? "A lot of people are afraid to speak out. People that have been out of work a year or longer have only a 9 percent chance of finding work. But if people speak up, we can put an end to this."

For example, at real estate company 21^st Century, you must be "employed or recently employed" to get a job there, according to Campaign for America's Future.

Post-Recession, that's not feasible for a lot of people.

So far, however, progress is slow: Monster not only refused to ban ads that discriminate against the jobless, but threatened to take legal action against Weidemer's campaign for challenging them, according to a press release by Color of Change.

Speaking from personal experience, Weidemer elaborated, "It's one thing to lose a job because of the economy. It's another thing to be denied the right to pursue the American Dream."

Photo: Job seekers gather at an Aug. 15 career fair in Plano, TX. About 15 percent of African Americans now face unemployment. (LM Otero/AP)

Boom or bust? Two visions from a Pennsylvania park

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:56:00 +0000

COLTON POINT STATE PARK, Penn. -- "Sacrifice our water? No fracking way!" I found this slogan inked on the wooden fence of a scenic overlook point in Colton Point State Park, perched on a slope above Pine Creek in the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon and sitting squarely atop one of the world's richest natural gas deposits, the Marcellus Shale. 'Fracking' refers to hydraulic fracturing, where chemical-laced water is pumped into the earth at high pressure to break the friable stone that holds the gas.

A broad people's movement against fracking is coalescing in small farming communities across Northeastern Pennsylvania. Few of these towns are without some sign of the gas industry, whether a drilling rig, the scar of a buried pipeline, or simply the ubiquitous trucks of Chesapeake Energy, the major operator in the region. Equally few, however, are without some sign of protest: an inked slogan, a yard sign, perhaps a church billboard with a prayer for the preservation of clean water and untainted farmland.

The movement is inchoate yet, still navigating the confusing terrain of boom-time blessings set off by the terror of what might remain when the gas is gone: contaminated streams and aquifers, ruined farmland, and the economic and social desolation of a region whose last resources have been sucked dry.

Some residents are already getting a taste of this bleak future. On April 19, a wellhead in Canton, PA blew out, releasing thousands of gallons of fracking fluid over pastures and into streams and forcing the evacuation of seven families. In an unrelated incident a month later, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined Chesapeake Energy $900,000 because improper well casing and cementing had allowed gas from some wells to seep into groundwater.

People now realize that such is the price, on credit, of the gas rush that has enriched landowners, brought an infusion of cash into small businesses, notably in the hospitality and construction industries, and lowered official unemployment in my home county of Bradford (where the Canton blowout happened) to 5.8 percent, down from 6.6 percent a year ago and well below the national average.

Colton Point State Park is a particularly apt place for meditation on alternatives to the lopsided, boom-and-bust capitalism of the gas rush. In addition to stunning views and free, well-maintained campsites, the park features a number of beautiful stone picnic pavilions, the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The CCC was one of the most successful employment programs in our country's history because it was founded on the idea that government could serve the public interest by employing workers to produce for the public good. The parks, trails, and campsites built by the CCC stand as monuments to the political vision of the New Deal, and to the power and courage of the working class movement that made such a vision achievable.

That courage is not dead. As right-wing attacks on the environment and workers' rights escalate, a new coalition of labor and progressive forces is gaining ground and finding its political voice. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) has recently authored a bill to create 2.2 million new jobs in a School Improvement Corps, a Health Corps, a Community Corps, a Child Care Corps, and Neighborhood Heroes Corps. The bill also provides for a Parks Improvement Corps, which would employ 100,000 young people, ages 16-25, to maintain and improve our recreational and scenic resources, places like Colton Point State Park. These programs will put Americans back to work for the public good and provide them with the income they need to stimulate our flagging economy.

Colton Point and thousands of public parks like it are more than recreational areas. They are urgent calls to recapture the political will behind the Civilian Conservation Corps. They show us a vision of an America that did not entrust the public welfare to a handful of profit-hungry corporations.

They teach us, in the midst of gas booms, real estate bubbles, and the whole apparatus of crisis-wracked capitalism, that economic renewal is an illusion as long as its benefits are restricted to a few privileged shareholders, landowners, or businesspeople. The sturdy stone pavilions at Colton Point are monuments, but not only to the triumphs of a past age. They are monuments to the future, beacons on the hilltops of a better world that is just now, once again, coming into view.

Photo: One of the beautiful stone picnic pavilions built by the CCC. Scott Hiley/PW

Workers say King's dream not yet realized

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:00:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - A panhandler in New York's subways had worked for years as a union painter and carpenter before he was reduced, by job cuts, to begging for a living.

Some of the children at a public school in Cincinnati show up for class hungry every single day. Teachers at the school, who have not had a pay raise in five years, pool their own money to feed these kids.

Some 300 people at a national symposium on Jobs, Justice and the American Dream heard these stories here this morning while tens of thousands watched it live, over the Internet. The event, sponsored by the AFL-CIO and the King Center, took place just two days before the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the National Mall [now postponed due to hurricane Irene].

Devon Lomax, a member of the Painters and Allied Trades District Council 9 in New York told the gathering about how he hasn't had a job for more than a year and how his co-worker had lost his home and ended up begging in the subways.

Katie Hofman, one of the Ohio teachers chipping in to buy food for hungry kids, told the gathering also about widespread homelessness among her students.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said King's vision was more than ending racism. He said that King saw that goal as part of a larger struggle for human dignity, "a larger struggle centered on economic justice.

"The tragedy of American history in our lifetime, while we have defeated legal segregation and driven open racism from our public life," said Trumka, "is that we live in a country less economically equal than in Dr. King's time. Jobs are scarcer, it's harder to go to college and the right to a voice on the job has been largely taken away from America's workers."

All the speakers agreed that 48 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous "I have a Dream" speech, at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the nation is still far from having achieved the slain civil rights leader's vision of a nation where everyone who wants to work has a good job, and the freedom to achieve to the best of his or her abilities.

"We're here to do the work that must be done to represent what Martin Luther King stood for," said Martin Luther King III, president of the King Center.

Rep. John Lewis, D, Ga., the last living person who spoke at the 1963 rally, said, "To get Americans back to work will require people to join together, make some noise, and get in trouble again, by taking to the streets and demanding that Congress approve the money for a massive national jobs program."

Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, said organizing and mobilizing were critical to the building of a movement that will realize King's dream.

Hofman said she was encouraged because she sees "real passion for change." She talked about a teacher who ran the 100 miles between Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio to deliver petitions in the referendum fight to overturn Republican Gov. John Kasich's law that killed collective bargaining rights.

Bruce Western, a public policy professor at Harvard, said unions were the key to creating the kinds of jobs needed to restore the nation's economy. "The decline [in the number] of unions coincides with the decline in good-paying jobs and the increase in job insecurity," he said.

In her call for creation of good jobs, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker mentioned the earthquake that rattled Washington, "Just as our nation's capital literally shook this week, we hope that discussions like the one we are having today will shake our elected officials to move with boldness and a fierce urgency of now."

Photo: Rep. John Lewis brings bottled water to those waiting in line during a job fair, sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, Aug. 18, on the campus of Atlanta Technical College. (Bob Andres /Atlanta Journal & Constitution/AP)

Youth unemployment exacerbates violence

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:31:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The recession is literally a matter of life and death this summer for the youth who are facing record levels of street violence resulting from of unemployment. In this city, there have been funeral services for youth killed by gun violence nearly every two weeks this summer. At the same time, the city's youth summer jobs program was only able to employ half the number of youth as it did last year.

New Haven's youth unemployment rate reflects the Bureau of Labor Statistics' recent assertion that the national youth unemployment rate reached an all-time high this summer.

"If you have a job, from, say, 7:00 to 3:00, then you only have about three or four hours afterwards to possibly get yourself in trouble," explains David White, a 26-year-old youth organizer in New Haven. "But if you don't have a job, you have all day long to get yourself in trouble and into bad situations."

The problem of unemployment and violence extends far beyond New Haven, which was labeled this past May as the nation's fourth most dangerous city in an FBI crime statistics report. The Hartford Courant has reported double the number of gun-related homicides in Hartford this summer as there were last year at this time. In Chicago, during Memorial Day Weekend alone, six people were killed and 21 were injured by gun violence. That same weekend, 1,000 youth were part of a gang-related fight on Carson Beach in South Boston. In general, the Center for Disease Control reports that youth violence is the second leading cause of death for young people in the U.S.

Communities and government officials are responding by calling for youth job training, employment opportunities and educational advancement.

In Massachusetts, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick has authorized a $10 million program to create youth job training in Boston communities. He is also calling on the private sector to play a leading role in creating employment for young people.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa began a program four years ago called Summer Night Lights, which keeps public parks open until midnight with activities for youth and families. Summer Night Lights created 1,000 jobs this past summer, including "Youth Squads" of young counselors assigned to each park to oversee activities. The program reduced gang related homicides by 57 percent, making 2011 the safest summer in Los Angeles since 1967, according to the City of Los Angeles's home page.

In New Haven, recent high school graduate Inez Bell spoke on a panel about jobs and economic opportunity with Rep. Rosa De Lauro. Bell highlighted the importance of Pell grants and other financial assistance for students seeking higher education, and reminded the audience that any financial support makes a difference for students who are struggling to pay for school. The jobs panel was organized by the Connecticut State AFL-CIO and other organizations who are concerned with the ways that proposed government budget cuts will affect working class people.

Rep. De Lauro emphasized that the current "debt crisis" has been fabricated, and reminded the audience that George W. Bush raised the debt ceiling during his presidency seven times.

Also in New Haven, David White and others are reaching out to youth organizations, labor unions and elected officials to build a coalition that can advocate for youth jobs. The coalition is planning its first meeting in late September.

At the national level, within Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky's Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act, the Congresswoman has proposed that 100,000 of those jobs be earmarked for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 to restore public lands, parks, and historical sites.

Communities and government working together can heal the devastating cycle of unemployment and youth violence. This can be achieved especially if large corporations are required to pay their share of taxes and invest in job creation programs.

Missouri GOP rep feels heat on Social Security

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:28:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS - "I am on Medicare, and Medicare is critical for me and over one million Missourians," Earlene Jones, a leader in the Alliance for Retired Americans, told nearly 100 community, senior and faith leaders as they braved the August heat here Aug. 24 demanding to speak with Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo.

"We are here because congressional leaders are considering making changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the lifeline of support for seniors," Jones, who is also a vice president of the Communication Workers' of America Local 6300, added.

Akin is a right-wing Republican who favors tax breaks for the rich and profitable corporations. He wants to balance the federal budget on the backs of working families by cutting Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. (story continues after video)

Additionally, Akin has repeatedly refused to meet with constituents. After numerous phone calls, emails and in-person visits to Akin's offices, local community, senior and faith organizations called a town hall meeting at the United Food and Commercial Workers' Local 655 union hall, just two blocks from Akin's west county office.

Even though Akin is 'in district' during the congressional recess, he refused to meet with the assembled community, senior and faith leaders.

Standing in front of Akin's office, Rev. Krista Taves, said, "We sent forth an invitation with respect to meet with our representative and we have been treated as an enemy."

Apparently, Congressman Akin or one of his staff had requested police presence in order to keep constituents off of the office property. A half-dozen police cars greeted community, senior and faith leaders when they marched to Akin's office.

"We have been barred from his office," Rev. Taves continued. "Todd Akin is responsible to us and he has turned us away at the door. And he claims to be a Christian."

"He is ignoring the people, and he is ignoring his responsibility to our families. Missourians believe in taking care of our families and communities," Taves added.

"We want our kids to have health care. We want our seniors to retire with dignity, and be able to get the medical care they need. It is irresponsible to balance the national budget on the backs of children, retirees and the American middle class."

Congressional leaders return to Washington D.C. after the Labor Day holiday. Jobs and the national debt will likely be on the top of their priority lists. Constituents hope Rep. Akin gets the message: "Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are off the table."

The town hall and rally were called by Jobs with Justice, Missouri Pro-Vote and the Alliance of Retired Americans.

Photo: Tony Pecinovsky/PW

A march for jobs and justice to MLK monument

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:39:00 +0000

The Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network , the NAACP and others have called for a march for 'Jobs and Justice' in DC August 27^th.

The march will end at the new Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. monument.

The 30-foot tall monument of the late civil rights giant was recently unveiled to the public to great acclaim, and stands between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. The statue was carved of granite by Lei Yixin, a Chinese sculptor.

Also marching Saturday with Reverend Sharpton will be Martin Luther King III, Tom Joyner, CEO of the National Urban League Marc Morial, and NAACP President Ben Jealous. Labor leaders and clergy will also be speaking at the event and calling for a solution to the unemployment problem in America.

Speaking of King and the march, the National Action Network said, "It was his work for civil rights and labor rights that made him the historic figure he has become. It was near the grounds of his monument that he was planning a tent city for poor people when he was killed. NAN will use the occasion of August 27^th to raise this unfinished business and challenge those that seek to undo what Dr. King tried to do for working people and labor in this country."

At the announcement of the march, Reverend Sharpton said, "There are relatively few moments in our lives that make history; The weekend of August 27-28will be one for the history books as we not only commemorate the 48^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream Speech', but also when the world bears witness to the unveiling of the national King Memorial".

The march will begin on Constitution and 17^th at 1:30pm and go to the new monument on the National Mall.

The United Federation of Teachers is organizing buses and reported an enormous response from its members. All of the union's buses were full as of Wednesday.

Organizers asked participants to pay attention to possible inclement weather related to Hurrican Irene.

A ceremony to unveil the MLK statue is scheduled for Sunday. President Obama is scheduled to attend.

Photo: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is seen on the first evening of its "soft opening" ahead of its dedication this weekend in Washington, Aug. 22. (Charles Dharapak/AP)

Hurricane forecast moves closer to home for millions

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:20:00 +0000

National Weather Service officials are warning New Jersey residents to prepare for Hurricane Irene now as a confluence of factors align to make the approaching storm a potential disaster for that state.

As of Thursday morning forecasts have Irene tracking within miles of the New Jersey coast as a full-force hurricane on Sunday, meaning possible catastrophic effects in many areas of the state. "Everyone should be preparing for this storm as now is the time. Have a plan in place," wrote Dean Iovino and Michael Gorse, meteorologists at the National Weather Service, in their morning forecast discussion. "Everything remains on the table with this hurricane, which includes widespread damaging winds, torrential rain, coastal flooding, dangerous rip currents/waves and beach erosion."

The National Hurricane Center said it appears a trough will form along the east coast, providing a pathway for the mega-storm to travel north rather than blow out to sea.

Many New Jersey towns have already had triple their usual August rainfall and, with river levels already far above average and soil already super-saturated, the high winds will more easily uproot trees. Several dams failed in New Jersey already, during a storm two weeks ago.

The state is expected to be hit with heavy rain and flash flooding during storms today and tonight, making things worse just before the hurricane. To add even more to the problem, Irene will arrive during a new moon, meaning that high tides will already be at much higher than normal levels.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie, notorious for his insistence that the federal government stay off of everyone's back in New Jersey, is already demanding federal aid. He actually began demanding that aid last week, in the wake of seven days of heavy rainfall that inundated his state.

"The disaster is of such severity and magnitude," Christie said, "that effective response is beyond the capability of the state and the affected local governments and federal assistance is necessary."

The governor also asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to designate agricultural emergencies in 17 New Jersey counties because of this summer's heat and excessive rain and winds.

Christie is not the only opponent of federal aid who represents people in areas lying in the path of Irene.

Virginia, a state that is expected to be impacted before New Jersey, is home to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, another leading opponent of "big government."

Cantor, whose district is close to the epicenter of the 5.8 earthquake earlier this week, led the charge in the House against funding for the United States Geological Service, which studies, measures and predicts seismic activity and evaluates geological conditions after earthquakes.

A nuclear power plant just 20 miles from the quake's epicenter is also in Cantor's district.

The GOP majority leader also opposed funding for the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, two agencies critical to the hurricane preparedness activity that now involves as many as 60 million Americans on the eastern seaboard.

Cantor-backed budget cuts will close 12 NOAA offices. which provide warning services for 230 million Americans. The National Weather Service budget would be cut by $126 million over the next six months with layoffs at 22 forecast offices and shorter work weeks for the storm prediction center and the national hurricane center.

Accurate tracking of hurricane paths is made possible, in part, by two polar satellites, one of which is nearing the end of its expected lifetime. Cantor's House-passed bill denies the Obama administration its request for funds that would allow the satellite to be replaced.
Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, whose department includes the NOAA, warned lawmakers, at hearings last March, of the consequences of losing one satellite. "We are now able to provide forecasting as far out to seven days, whether it is for hurricanes, major snowstorms, and so forth. That ability will be reduced to just three days, at best," Locke said.

Photo: GOP budget cuts will close 22 National Weather Service forecast centers and force layoffs at the National Hurricane Center. (Jeffrey M. Boan/AP)

Working class issues highlighted in Kentucky governor’s race

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:12:00 +0000

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The latest polls for the Kentucky gubernatorial election between Democratic incumbent Steve Beshear and Republican nominee David Williams are showing a massive lead for Beshear, with 52 percent of likely voters leaning towards him compared to the 28 percent leaning towards Williams. Independent candidate Gatewood Galbraith has 9 percent, with 11 percent undecided.

Beshear ran unopposed in the primary, choosing former Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson as his running mate. Abramson decided not to run for mayor in 2011 so he could run for lieutenant governor.

Beshear's years as governor have coincided with a Republican majority legislature. Nevertheless he has launched a green energy initiative and protected education funding from cuts. In addition he has backed labor rights and other labor-backed measures.

Despite opposition from the reactionary Republicans, in April 2008 Beshear announced that he would divide the state's Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet to form a new Energy and Environmental Cabinet. This was a reversal of the consolidation of Environmental, Public Protection, and Labor Cabinets effected under Republican Ernie Fletcher, whom Beshear unseated in 2007. Beshear initiated a comprehensive energy plan allowing for the expansion of solar, wind and biomass energy generation, as well as coal gasification. The plan discussed the use of nuclear power favorably, but Beshear stopped short of advocating an end to Kentucky's ban on construction of nuclear reactors.

During budget cuts earlier this year, Beshear protected SEEK, the primary formula for state education funding, from the $1 billion that was cut from the state's budget.

The Kentucky AFL-CIO has decided to endorse Beshear again for the 2011 election. Beshear has spoken in opposition to right-to-work legislation and supports Kentucky's prevailing wage law, which like the federal Davis Bacon Act, requires workers on public construction projects to be paid based on the wages prevailing in private construction in the area - in other words it aims to prevent exploitation of these workers.

Earlier this year, Williams and his running mate Richie Farmer defeated tea-party-backed candidate Phil Moffett by 10 percentage points in the Republican gubernatorial primary, a stark contrast to last year's U.S. Senate primary when tea party candidate Rand Paul won in a landslide over establishment GOP candidate Trey Grayson. Williams, president of the Kentucky state Senate, attempted to ram a right-to-work law through the legislature and is against the prevailing wage law. In 2009, he voted in favor of requiring pre-abortion ultrasounds, a bill that ultimately passed. He also voted in favor of restricting public employee benefits to only spouses defined under Kentucky's marriage law, considered by many to be purely anti-LGBT in purpose. He has continuously come out in opposition to the teachers' unions (in his words, they "constantly stand in the way of better schools.").

Galbraith, the independent, is a lawyer and was a former candidate with the Reform Party in 1999. Galbraith's campaign seems to be targeted at Kentucky's younger voters. He has proposed giving high school graduates $5,000 for books, tuition, and fees if they attend any higher education institution in Kentucky. He is against mountaintop removal, and puts the environment as one of his top three issues in his campaign. Galbraith is a supporter of the Second Amendment (gun rights) and believes that the federal goverment is overstepping its boundaries. He was critical of the stimulus package and says he favors private sector growth. He has become the first independent candidate endorsed by a labor union, the United Mine Workers. The UMW had endorsed Beshear in the 2007 campaign, but were disappointed when Beshear chose Abramson as his running mate, as Abramson is seen as anti-union.

This election is key for Kentucky's union workers and working-class communities. Williams has said that he is an admirer of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, known for his anti-union actions. If Kentucky workers want to retain their pensions and benefits, they'll have to fight Williams and the Republican Party every step of the way. The Kentucky AFL-CIO is sponsoring a Labor 2011 program. All across the Bluegrass State, union volunteers will be phone banking, distributing literature and talking face to face with union members at their workplaces, urging them to support labor-endorsed candidates with a people's agenda.

Photo: Gage Skidmore // CC 2.0

Black scientists face discrimination in health funding

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:51:00 +0000

A recent study, reported in the journal Science, indicates that black, Latino and Asian scientists face discrimination in research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health.

According to the study, Asian scientists are 3 percent less likely to receive awards. However, African-American scientists faced special discrimination and were almost 14 percent less likely to receive awards.

Dr . Tyeese Gaines writes in thegrio .com, "Regardless of achievement or education, black scientists are more likely to be rejected for medical research funding."

The funds, "typically in the range of $1.6 million, including overhead, for a four-year project, are the foundation of independent biomedical research."

While race and ethnicity are included in the application process, this information is not available to selection committees. The study suggested that other factors, including school attended or the applicants' surname, may be a factor.

Even when resubmitting applications to NIH, black scientists face extra hurdles. "Black investigators that do resubmit have to do so more often to receive an award," says Science.

On a positive note, the study concluded that while African Americans face far greater obstacles to high school and university graduation for those who do complete advanced degrees in biology and medical science: "Upon entering the biomedical academic career track, black and white faculty members are equally likely to be tenured at institutions that grant doctorates."

Still the researchers found, it is "troubling that the typical measures of scientific achievement - NIH training, previous grants, publications and citations - do not translate to the same level of application success across race and ethnic groups."

In addition to racial prejudice, perhaps a reason for ongoing patterns of discrimination is the influence of money and business in scientific research, at least in the opinion of one NIH scientist, Dr. Kevin Beck, a white researcher quoted by thegrio.com. He says, "One of the things that initially attracted me to careers in the sciences was that I believed science to be a meritocracy. Those with the best work published the best papers, got the best jobs, and got the most funding. After being in science for more than a decade, I no longer hold that viewpoint as strongly. While merit is important, science, like everything else, is a business and is political."

African Americans only earn only 2 percent of PhDs in science.

Proposals to address the crisis include additional measures to mask the identities of applicants and mentoring for young scientists.

In an editorial, however, the Washington Post calls for a cultural revolution. The Post says. "...a hard truth is there must be a cultural revolution led by university deans, department chairmen, Nobel Prize winners and other scientific bigwigs. Until they become vocal advocates for enabling minority researchers to fulfill their potential - a key factor in the future of America's scientific enterprise - progress will be halting and limited."

Photo via NIH.

Smiley and West's Poverty Tour: A call for unconditional brotherhood

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:43:00 +0000

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - On August 12, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West brought the last stop of their "Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience" to Memphis, Tennessee. The location was chosen in recognition of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s support for sanitation workers and as the site of the National Civil Rights Museum (former Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated).

As stated in previous interviews on major media outlets including CNN and MSNBC, their purpose was to raise consciousness about the plight of the poor in America amid ongoing recession and joblessness, as well as to highlight indifference by many of America's leaders and the press.

Both Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have recently drawn flack from some within African-American communities because they criticized President Obama as not addressing poverty during his policy speeches and debates. While this may appear justified in light of recent conciliatory gestures to Republicans in Congress, Obama, to his credit, has fought consistently to extend unemployment benefits, to fund public health clinics, and to promote better nutrition for the schoolchildren of impoverished families.

Billed as a Town Hall Meeting to air general community grievances, the event took place at the St. Andrew AME Church, located in poverty-stricken southwest Memphis.

It opened with a call to prayer that foreshadowed the night's topic with reference to the "hard-hearted" policies of past months, the result of tea-party Republican candidates' election to Congress. In characterizing the recent debt-ceiling deal, Tavis Smiley listed the negative impact of: no extensions this time for unemployment benefits, no calls for new revenues, and no closing of tax loopholes for corporations. He reported that the initial consideration of cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security were put on the table not by Majority leader Boehner, but by President Obama himself.

In short, he said, the deal was all "cuts-cuts-cuts," with a questionable resolution by a 12-member Super-Congress that would supposedly determine, in draconian fashion, what Congress could not. According to Smiley, as a result of the debt-ceiling deal, things are about to get worse for many Americans.

Addressing a near standing-room-only audience, the speakers were not there, however, to criticize President Obama's performance, but to uplift, in the old Southern religious tradition, and to mobilize poor communities, those hit hardest by the current global economic crisis.

Cornel West spurred the audience to better inform themselves, organize, and to push Obama and their congressional representatives to promote their needs. He stressed the need to inspire politicians to turn away from "America's 30 plus-year-old culture of greed." by reconnecting with the poor in a new covenant of brotherhood.

West's comments resonated powerfully with those assembled by insisting that poverty is not just a political and economic issue, but also a moral and spiritual one. This turn from politics to religion and back again fit the style of the meeting's setting and purpose. But some observed that it left specifics of just what was needed to help those economically devastated unaddressed. The audience left uplifted, though a bit befuddled about a practical strategy for tomorrow.

Having travelled to nine states and eighteen cities in just under two weeks, the Poverty Tour, like a communal "Love Train" (to quote the O'Jays), left its church-packed participants with the stories of families and young people struggling to find jobs. While facing homelessness, cuts (or coming cuts) in federal assistance, and a new social status (from middle-class to poor), these people shared a common story in the tearful frustration that their education and job experience had not saved them from social disaster.

West told of a white family that they stayed with in Columbus, Mississippi, who now lived on federal assistance after both had been laid off. The husband is now cutting grass and the wife is cleaning houses to make ends meet.

While in Washington, D.C., in the shadow of the State Capital Building, they slept among the street people. Two were twenty-three year old students, one in college "part-time" studying architecture while looking for work.

On the Lac Courte Oreilles Native American reservation in Wisconsin, where the tour started, the recession had hardly been noticed among the Ojibwe: the situation there had always been dire since the best land on the reservation belonged to wealthy, corporate families, either in the form of beach-front property or fishing-resort vacation spots on Lake Superior.

Has the tour achieved its goal to place poverty once more in the center of the nation's discussion about a proposed historic economic recovery? The three proposals coming from Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are: (1) defend the President against Republican, tea-party critics, but encourage him to make sustained policy investments in poor and working-people's needs, (2) promote new media voices outside the corporate "mainstream" (especially online) to spread awareness of new, alarming trends in American poverty, and (3) build bridges between successful individuals supportive of social justice and poor, working-class Americans. All of these presuppose the desire and ability to organize, which Tavis Smiley and Cornel West built their 2-week tour to help re-invigorate.

New federal immigration policy a step forward, supporters say

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Last week the Obama administration announced it would suspend deportation proceeding against thousands of undocumented immigrants that pose no serious threat to national security or public safety.

Recognizing the failure of Congress to pass immigration reform, activists say the new policy is largely due to their on-going nationwide campaigns and protests pressuring the president, who they support, to use his executive pulpit and act on immigration. Activists note the increasing demands over the years by elected officials, labor and civil rights leaders and the entire Latino and immigrant rights community, has in the short run, finally paid off. And although the new changes are far from a complete immigration victory, they are a major step forward in the movement for immigrant rights.

White House officials and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said they would exercise "prosecutorial discretion" to focus enforcement efforts on cases involving criminals and people who have flagrantly violated immigration laws. DHS also announced the creation of a joint committee with the Department of Justice that will review nearly 300,000 cases currently in removal proceedings to determine which ones are low priority and can be administratively closed in order to begin unclogging immigration courts.

"Prosecutorial discretion is not a new concept, and is exercised on a daily basis by law enforcement agencies," said Melissa Crow, director of the Legal Action Center at the American Immigration Council, during an August 22 telephonic press briefing.

"It refers to the authority of a law enforcement agency or officer to decide whether - and to what extent - to enforce the law in a particular case," she added.

Also on the call was Javier Morillo-Alicea, president of the Service Employees International Union, Local 26 in Minnesota.

"For years now we have reminded the [Obama] administration that their stated enforcement priorities of going after criminals - not law-abiding citizens - was not an on-the-ground reality," he said. "Last week's announcement, if properly implemented, will give teeth to long-stated enforcement priorities which is an extremely important move on the part of the administration. It is right on policy and it is right on politics."

Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza praised the new policy as a significant step forward.

"Advocates across the country have been doing an incredible amount of work to share the countless stories of how current policies are creating fear and suffering in communities nationwide," said Murguía in a statement. "We are hopeful that this new action will bring us to a place where community safety is the focus of enforcement actions, and the pain felt in communities is diminished. If executed correctly, the changes announced will bring much-needed relief."

According to officials, those who qualify for relief can apply for permission to work in the U.S. and will probably receive it.

Under the new policy immigration officials can provide relief through administrative action that would protect undocumented immigrant students who would qualify for legal status under the DREAM Act, legislation that has been stalled in Congress for a decade.

The DREAM Act would allow millions of youth who came to the U.S. as children and graduated from high school with the opportunity want attend college or serve in the armed forces. More than two million people might be eligible to apply for legal status under the DREAM Act and up to 200,000 could eventually earn citizenship.

Under the new policy DREAM students, military families, victims of crime and many other individuals who pose no threat to public safety may receive a reprieve from immigration removal.

However supporters of the new policy warn it does not impact individuals who are not currently in removal proceedings. DREAM students and others unlawfully present in the U.S., but not in removal proceedings, should not actively seek out immigration authorities. There are no guarantees that an individual removal case will be administratively closed and anyone who seeks to be placed in removal proceedings could end up being deported.

In response to the new policy the New York Times wrote in an editorial that the White House has just taken a large step toward a more sensible and lawful policy on immigration. Immigration enforcement officers and lawyers should not target people with clean records and those who came here as children, notes the editorial. The elderly, pregnant women, veterans, service members and those with serious illnesses or disabilities should also be excluded.

The editorial charges those who accuse the Obama administration of "'back-door amnesty,' are living in a fictional world, believing that all immigrants are dangerous criminals and that harsher laws and a border fence will make our immigration problems disappear. With this new policy, the administration is rejecting inflexible deportation policies that solve nothing."

The editorial concludes, "Though Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving in the right direction, many states and local governments are not. Police are still rounding people up needlessly and legislatures are passing harsh laws to criminalize civil immigration violations. There is no question that the government needs to enforce immigration laws vigorously to protect the country from criminals and others who would do us harm. The new policy promises to do that."

Photo: Pepe Lozano/PW

Ohio rallies for union rights, voter rights

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:50:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Thousands rallied in Columbus and hundreds in Cleveland Saturday to support efforts to repeal laws suppressing trade union and voting rights enacted by the extremist Republican administration of Gov. John Kasich.

Senate Bill 5, the union-busting measure stripping the right of collective bargaining from public employees, will appear as Issue 2 on the Nov. 8 ballot but now a new campaign has been launched to repeal a voter suppression measure known as HB 194.

"Did you ever think, in this day and age, we would still be fighting for the right to vote and for the right to have a union?" Arlene Holt Baker, national vice president of the AFL-CIO, told a crowd of several hundred in the auditorium of Cuyahoga Community College.

"They are trying to take away our voice at the bargaining table and our voice in the voting booth. But we are one. We are together and nobody is going to turn us around."

The event, sponsored by CAUSE (Community Affirming Unity for Social Equality), a coalition of labor, civil rights and faith groups, kicked off the campaign in Cleveland to repeal HB 194 aimed at reducing voter turnout in heavily Democratic urban areas.

Last week Attorney General Mike DeWine authorized Fair Elections Ohio, headed by former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, to circulate petitions to repeal the law. The group has until Sept. 29 to collect 231,147 signatures to place the measure on the 2012 ballot. Otherwise the law will go into force and affect elections beginning this year.

The law prohibits county boards of elections from sending mail ballot request forms to all voters and paying for return postage on the applications as well as the mail ballots. Since 2006 election boards in six urban counties have used this to encourage voter participation particularly in minority and low-income areas with historically low turnouts.

The law also sharply reduces the days for early voting, prohibits early voting in the three days before an election when voting has been heaviest, stops poll workers from telling voters where to vote if they are in the wrong precinct and creates new technical reasons to disqualify eligible votes.

Another bill requiring voters show state-issued IDs at the polls has been introduced.

"The 2008 election of Barack Obama sent shivers down the spines of the rich and wealthy," said William Lucy, founder of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and NAACP national executive board member. "They are trying to do everything they can to keep us from voting. They want right-wing radical control of our government."

"The banks, Wall Street and the corporations are loaded with money but won't create one job because that would help Obama." he said. "There is reason to be frustrated but there is no reason not to go out and vote."

Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, echoed this, saying "Bad politicians are put in office by good people who don't vote."

Meanwhile in Columbus a Stand Up for Ohio Music Festival at the State Fair Grounds drew thousands from noon to dusk to hear Grand Funk Railroad, the Ohio Players and other groups, poetry by Nikki Giovanni and speeches from both Fair Elections Ohio and We Are Ohio, the labor-community coalition to repeal SB 5.

"These issues are two sides of the same coin," said Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore AFL-CIO "They are both key to the opposition's strategy to severely restrict our rights. By limiting the rights of voters, they can best assure that voters will not be able to successfully defeat attacks on workers at the polls. By limiting the rights of workers, they can remove the strongest organizational obstacle to complete corporate takeover of our democratic system. Without these rights, we cannot preserve democracy.

"To defeat SB 5 we need to stop HB 194 by signing and circulating petitions and to stop voter suppression we need to vote No on Issue 2."

Photo: The Ohio Songwriters in the Round, featuring former First Lady of Ohio Frances Strickland, perform at the Stand Up Ohio Music Festival, Aug. 20. Columbus Education Association

West Memphis Three freed, but they still seek justice

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:04:00 +0000

In 1994, three young men in West Memphis, Ark. were wrongfully tried and convicted of the 1993 murder of three boys. However last week the trio known as the West Memphis Three (or WM3) were freed.

Their release was based on new evidence showing that none of the DNA found at the crime scene matched that of the three men. Instead, the DNA found actually matched Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the victims.

For the WM3, their freedom arrived in a less-than-pure fashion. An Arkansas courtroom released them August 19, but only after Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin entered Alford pleas.

Essentially that meant they could profess their innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict them. And after serving over 18 years, the three were released with 10-year suspended sentences.

"It's not perfect by any means," said Echols to the Imperial Valley Press. Echols had spent his imprisonment on death row. "But at least it brings closure. We can still try and clear our names. The only difference is now we can do it from the outside."

So how did these three young men come to receive such harsh sentences for a crime they did not commit?

The answer lies in a story that outlines a criminal justice system permeated with inequality and corruption.

The murders the WM3 were charged with were gruesome in nature and in the way in which they were carried out, leading community members to point to the three.

Their reasoning for this assumption is easy to believe, but hard to hear according to Echols' defense attorney Stephen Braga. The three young men at the time were different describes Braga on AlterNet.org.

"They dressed in black. They listened to heavy metal. They were goths before goths were fashionable [and considered more normal by mainstream society], so they were easy targets," notes Braga. West Memphis was a small town community, added Braga, and as a result the three young men "were the unusual kids in town."

When families and neighbors pegged the incident as part of an "occult ritual" carried out by the three outcasts, the local police bought this hook, line, and sinker.

In the 2003 book Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, author Mara Leveritt reveals how local law enforcement mishandled the crime scene. For one, the police did not wait until the coroner arrived before moving the bodies of the boys.

"Police records were a mess," Leveritt writes. "To call them disorderly would be putting it mildly."

Throughout their imprisonment, the WM3 case was followed by a number of celebrities, musicians, and civil rights activists, who doubted the young mens' guilt. Many believe that the three were prosecuted simply for being different and enjoying an underground (and misunderstood) form of music.

Eddie Vedder (lead singer of rock band Pearl Jam), filmmaker Joe Berlinger, metal musician Ozzy Osbourne, and actor Johnny Depp were among the supporters who traveled to Jonesboro, Ark. in celebration of the three young men they had actively defended for years.

One of the WM3's most recent and passionate supporters was alternative metal artist Marilyn Manson.

In a 2010 MySpace blog by MansonWiki, Manson said that Damien Echols, who was deemed by police as the supposed "ringleader" of the "occult-centric" trio, "Is on death row for a crime he did not commit. Mostly because he dressed like we do, listened to music like we do, and acted like we do. This is a person who was singled out in a small town with his friends, and subjected to the basic Salem Witch Trial that everyone talks about."

Manson continued, "So for 16 years, these guys - who were teenagers at the time of their trial - have gone through things that we can't even imagine. I wish I had the strength that [Echols] had, because he's gone to prison for just looking and thinking [like an individual], which is what all of us as a music community believe in [doing]."

Berlinger, who released the Paradise Lost documentary, told the LA Times the release of the West Memphis Three was "a bittersweet moment," partially because they had to plead guilty even though they were let go. But two decades of their lives were lost, said Berlinger.

"My daughter is 17. And every time she went through a landmark - her first steps, middle school, high school, first boyfriend - I thought of Damien Echols, rotting in prison," said Berlinger.

James Hetfield, front man of thrash metal band Metallica, showed his support for the WM3, calling their release an "amazing" outcome. "The way you dress, the things you listen to..." he said. "I can basically speak for myself, growing up, that that was just a sign of wanting to be creative and different."

Baldwin, one of the three recently freed, notes the way in which they were released actually added insult to injury.

"They're not out there trying to find out who really murdered those boys, and I did not want to take this deal from the get-go," Baldwin says in the Huffington Post.

But Baldwin's main focus was to save his friend Echols' life. Echols was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

"Sometimes you just got to bite the gun to save somebody," said Baldwin.

But for Baldwin and his friends, the struggle to fight this injustice is far from over.

"This was not justice," says Baldwin. "We told nothing but the truth. We were innocent, and they sent us to prison for the rest of our lives."

Photo: Damien Echols (left), Jessie Misskelley (middle), and Jason Baldwin, sitting in the Craighead County Courthouse Annex in Jonesboro, Ark. George Jared, The Jonesboro Sun/AP Photos

Campaign to solve housing crisis and create one million jobs

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:36:00 +0000

In talks with the nation's state attorneys general, the New Bottom Line Campaign campaign turned up the heat this week on the big banks responsible for billions of dollars in mortgage fraud. The NBL is a nationwide campaign representing 1,000 faith based and community organizations.

In conjunction with a state-by-state petition drive aimed at the 50 state attorneys general, NBL on Aug. 17 released a hard-hitting report that exposes bank practices and details a solution to the foreclosure crisis that would result in over one million jobs.

The petition calls on the state attorney generals to put "the interests of people ahead of huge corporate profits" and ensure that any foreclosure settlement with the big banks include "principal reduction on all underwater mortgages to current market value."

The NBL report calculates that writing down the principals and interest rates on all underwater mortgages to current market value would:

Pump $71 billion into the economy every year.
Create more than one million jobs annually.
Save families an average of $543 per month or $6,516 per year.

The report, entitled The Win-Win Solution: How Fixing the Housing Crisis Will Create 1 Million Jobs, shows that the $6 billion monthly currently going to mortgage payments would instead go into buying "groceries, school supplies and other household necessities."

Putting an additional $71 billion annually into consumers' pockets, the study calculates, would result in spiking consumer demand, encourage businesses to start hiring again and, consequently, translate into more than one million additional jobs per year.

The report cites s statistic reported in the New York Times showing that unemployment is now the "primary cause of foreclosures." As of March 31, 23 percent of homeowners were underwater on their mortgages.

The homeowners among these million newly employed workers, the report argues, could, if employed, afford to pay their mortgages and stave off foreclosures, thus breaking the devastating cycle of unemployment and foreclosure.

The report notes that banks could well afford to implement the proposed plan.

The nation's largest six banks last year paid out $146 billion in bonuses and compensation, more than twice the plan's cost. Currently, the nation's banks are sitting on cash reserves of $1.64 trillion, a historical high.

"For too long, Wall Street banks have avoided paying their fair share of taxes and drove this country into a financial crisis," said George Goehl, executive director of National People's Action, a NBL coalition member.

"Not one more child," Goehl added, "should have to sacrifice her health care or education because big banks cook their books. Not one more senior should have to live in poverty because a bank shifted its profits to an overseas account."

In May, the NBL campaign organized large-scale actions at shareholder meetings of JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo demanding the banks help the economic recovery. In addition to the principal reduction for defrauded homeowners now being demanded, the campaign demanded the banks:

Pay their fair share of taxes. The banks must pay the federally mandated 35 percent tax rate, instead of the 11 percent of their pre-tax earnings they paid in 2009 and 2010. They should pay the $13 billion in back taxes they owe from the two years.
Invest in American jobs. The banks should start making loans to small businesses to create more jobs, instead of shipping jobs overseas. JP Morgan, for example, has reduced small business lending by 75 percent in the wake of taxpayer-funded bailouts designed to spur lending.

After all, the report points out, the banks received $14 trillion in taxpayer-funded bailouts and backstops in large measure so they would start lending in order to jumpstart the economy.

Photo: taberandrew// CC 2.0

Rally tells Sen. Feinstein: Fight for Social Security

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:07:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO - They came from all over northern California - by bus, by train, by carpool - to deliver a powerful message to Senator Dianne Feinstein: Stand up and be a champion for Social Security!

As hundreds of demonstrators stood just feet from the senator's downtown office Aug. 17, California Alliance of Retired Americans (CARA) President Nan Brasmer told the crowd, "We're here today to ask Sen. Feinstein to tell us, her constituents, that she will support and champion Social Security, and fight against cuts and proposals to privatize the program by Congress, the super committee and even by the president, who keeps tossing it out on the table."

The senator has "often said she supports Social Security," Brasmer said, "but most of us are tired of the lip service, we want some real action from her. That means no means testing, no raising the retirement age, no downsizing of the program in any way."

Pointing out that Social Security, funded by workers who have paid into it all their lives, does not contribute to the deficit, Brasmer said, "Let them solve those problems with the money they're squandering on the wars!"

The rally celebrating Social Security's 76^th birthday brought together participants from many unions and community organizations, across generations. Organizers said it and a companion rally in Los Angeles drew over a thousand people.

Said one college student, "The cuts being made on our parents and grandparents are being waged against us. The cuts to education and child care are cheating young people out of our dreams and our futures. Let's fight together to protect those rights and futures."

Maria Luz Torre of Parent Voices spoke of being in the "sandwich generation" - living with her mother, who receives Social Security, and raising children about to go to college. "I'm really worried," she said. "Wall Street wants more money to play with, and they're looking at Social Security." Pointing out that those who would be most affected by cuts would be people of color, young children, single parents and women, she urged Feinstein to "be our hero!"

Student and Jobs with Justice activist Eric Griffis recalled the 1930s to note that the greatest New Deal social programs, including Social Security, emerged not in the earliest years of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, but after "a wave of actions, a wave of strikes like the Verizon strike now, all across the country. We can learn from that, that we have to fight to save and expand these programs," he said.

Asked before the program, what Social Security means to her, CARA board member Pauline Brooks said it makes up her entire income. "I'm 73 now, I started working at 14," she said. "I worked in apparel, and for non-profit organizations. They don't provide pensions."

Fellow retiree Kokoye Sande added, "Social Security is not why we're in our present economic situation. We shouldn't be penalized."

Meanwhile, a delegation had gone to meet with the senator, but returned empty-handed.

"We had worked for months to get a meeting with her," said Michael Lyon of San Francisco Gray Panthers. "And it was arranged we would finally be able to meet with her and urge her to make a statement."

But, said Lyon, when they approached the office, the group was told there was no meeting, and that perhaps someone would come downstairs to pick up the 2,000 cards collected in recent weeks.

"So this fight is going to go on throughout next year," he said. "Social Security is our right, we are not going to give up this fight!"

Photo: Marilyn Bechtel/PW