People Before Profit blog

Immigrants, allies call for halt to deportations, path to citizenship

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:43:00 +0000

ORLANDO, Fla. - A coalition of immigrant groups and community allies kicked off a 1,000-mile caravan to Washington, D.C here on Jan. 3, with a press conference at Orlando City Hall. The purpose is to press President Barack Obama and Congress to stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants until the passage of comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented.

"As [Obama's] campaign slogan said, 'Forward,' we now tell him to move forward with his promise" to push for comprehensive immigration reform, said Daniel Barajas, an organizer of the Forward-With-Your-Promise Caravan. The caravan is sponsored by The Centro Campesino Farmworkers Ministry, Farmworkers Association of Florida, Farmworkers Self-Help, Redlands Christian Migrant Association, WeCount!, and Young American Dreamers.

The caravan participants are bringing thousands of petitions calling for a halt to deportations, which they will present to political leaders in Washington when they arrive there on Jan. 20, one day before President Obama is inaugurated for a second term.

"Families are being ripped apart by raids and deportations," said Barajas. "We need a way to keep a father who is a farmworker, a mother who works in hospitality and a son who is a high school student all together as they work toward citizenship."

Barajas, of Auburndale, Fla., who was raised in a migrant farmworker family, said he has witnessed first-hand the effects when undocumented immigrants are arrested.

"I've seen the fear in the eyes of friends as Border Patrol agents yanked them out of my car and threw them on the ground," Barajas told the crowd of about 75 supporters and media. "I've seen the fear and desperation from friends who came to my house telling me they came home after school, but] their parents didn't--they were detained in a raid at their job."

Sister Ann Kendrick, of the Hope Community Center, said that her organization supports comprehensive immigration reform. "We've been on this road for many, many years. The lives of farmworkers, the lives of immigrants are not better today than they were 10 years ago, or 20 years ago," Kendrick said. "The problems still exist: low wages, exploitation, lack of immigration status."

The Hope Community Center is located in Apopka, Fla., a town with a sizable immigrant community, about 15 miles northeast of Orlando. Hope provides services for immigrants and the working poor and organizes for social change.

Creating a way that the undocumented can become permanent residents would allow them to "come out from the shadows," said Kendrick. It would mean that "they don't have to be exploited at work, they don't have to hide their status, they don't have to drive with fear that they're ultimately going to be in immigration detention for driving without a valid license," she said.

Other groups with a presence at the event included Mi Familia Vota, Central Florida Jobs with Justice, Organize Now!, and the Orlando-based Black-Latino-Puerto Rican Alliance for Justice.

The Los Angeles Times reported Dec. 7 that, according to unnamed officials, the Obama administration would begin "an all-out drive" for comprehensive immigration reform in January that likely would involve the same groups and unions that helped drive Latino voters to the polls for the president. Reportedly, Obama wants to include a means by which America's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants could become citizens. Florida's undocumented population was estimated to be 740,000 in 2011.

In a Dec. 30 interview on Meet The Press, Obama said, "fixing our broken immigration [system] is a top priority" in his second term and that the White House would introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.

From City Hall, the caravan and its supporters marched to the office of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for a protest.

Jose Manuel Govinez Samperio, of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Coalition, said the immigrant community wants Obama "to stop the family separations, to take leadership on immigration reform, and for Sen. Rubio to take leadership on immigration reform as well. We want a true immigration reform with papers, with a green card, [and] with a path to citizenship."

Spirited chants of "El pueblo unido / Jamas sera vencido!" (The people united cannot be defeated!) and "What do we want? Immigration reform! / When do we want it? Now!" echoed from the sidewalk as the organizers met with Rubio's staff.

A few dozen protestors accompanied the organizers to Rubio's third-floor office where they congregated outside the doors. The senator's staff, apparently alarmed at the sight of so many people exercising their free speech rights, called police. Around 15 Orlando police showed up, and escorted the crowd downstairs where they resumed their protest.

The Cuban-American Rubio has been touted by some in the conservative movement as the GOP's Great Latino Hope in 2016 -- a candidate who would enable Republicans to win the increasingly important Latino vote. Rubio has said that some in the Right Wing "have used rhetoric [about immigrants] that is harsh and intolerable, [and] inexcusable," and has called for Republicans to support less punitive immigration policies.

However, Rubio's desire to address immigration reform one bill at a time (along with his failure to support the DREAM Act) before dealing with legalization of undocumented persons puts him at odds with those--Democrats, immigrant communities, the progressive movement, labor, faith-based groups -- pushing for one comprehensive bill that would address all the problems with the current immigration system.

In the early evening, more than 150 people participated in a march for immigration reform in downtown Apopka that was organized by the Forward-With-Your-Promise Caravan and its community allies. The caravan will make stops in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.

Photo: Paulina Clemente/Flickr

Ten Commandments monument spurs controversy in Oklahoma

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:35:00 +0000

The American Civil Liberties Union is considering challenging the placement of a Ten Commandments monument near the Oklahoma state Capitol, said the executive director of the Oklahoma ACLU.

The 6-foot-tall granite block was installed Nov. 9 on the lawn of the Capitol building in Oklahoma City, funded by the family of state Rep. Mike Ritze (R-Broken Arrow). The installation of the monument was authorized by a bill introduced by Ritze in 2009.

"The placing of a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol would help the people of the United States and of Oklahoma to know the Ten Commandments as the moral foundation of law," reads the bill. "The placement of this monument shall not be construed to mean that the State of Oklahoma favors any particular religion or denomination thereof over others."

Ritze characterized the installation of the monument as a tribute to Oklahoma's cultural heritage, stating in a House press release that the Ten Commandments were "the historical foundation of modern law."

Multiple misspellings were found in the text on the monument shortly after it was erected. The errors were subsequently corrected.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a secularist activism group, said, "Bible edicts have no business on government property." She continued, "There is no country where there is a greater freedom of religion or where churches have taken greater advantage of it."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is communicating with the ACLU about the possibility of taking legal action to get the monument removed, said Gaylor. There is a strong legal precedent for the removal of religious monuments from the lawns of government buildings. In
2009, the ACLU obtained a ruling against the placement of a Ten Commandments monument on the lawn of the Haskell County courthouse in Stigler, Okla., on the grounds that it constituted an official endorsement of religion.

Some states have addressed this issue by permitting members of all religious groups to install monuments on those states' Capitol or courthouse lawns, a solution hinted at in the text of Ritze's bill. However, Gaylor says such a solution would be inadequate because it could crowd the Capitol lawn and open the monuments of marginalized religions like Islam to vandalism.

"The monument must be removed," said Gaylor. "The First Commandment is the antithesis of the First Amendment." The First Commandment declares the supremacy of the Biblical God.

Plans to erect a similar Ten Commandments monument at the LeFlore County courthouse in Poteau, Okla., have been postponed until the legality of the Oklahoma state Capitol monument is resolved, Lance Smith, county commissioner, told the Tulsa World.

Photo: Flickr

Fix the economy: Only way to erase the debt

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:09:00 +0000

They are trying to tell us that the problem with the economy is the "debt."

It makes sense because "they" are the billionaires who are doing very well in today's economy. In order to continue doing so, however, they have to make "debt reduction," not fixing our broken economy, the focus of national attention.

The billionaires don't need jobs. For the 99 percent, however, fixing the economy means creating a good-paying, family-sustaining job, not a part-time gig at McDonald's, for every one of the 25 million people still looking for work.

The billionaires don't worry about plummeting wages - that's how they make their billions, in fact. For the 99 percent, however, fixing the economy means stopping the continuing free-fall of wages. More than 93 percent of the "growth" in the economy last year went to the top 1 percent of the population. The billionaires are happy about record corporate profits. For the 99 percent, however, those record profits are the result of the falling wages they have been experiencing for the last 30 years.

For the 99 percent, fixing the economy means ending the greatest gap between rich and poor that we have ever seen.

For the people, the goal is an economy that works for working people.

Republicans have reluctantly agreed to higher taxes for some of the richest folks. But now, they say, we have to make spending cuts, particularly in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. What they really mean: More workers need to be thrown out of work providing these services. More families need spend more on health and survival, and lose their homes in the process. More children need to go to bed hungry.

You can't rebuild a broken economy by dismantling key parts of it (in this case Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.)

When World War II ended, the U.S. debt was at a historic high - larger than the entire Gross Domestic Product - and has never been that high since then. That debt was ended, not by cutting budgets, but by passing massive jobs bills for returning veterans, massive spending bills to subsidize housing for millions and construct interstate highways from one end of the country to the other, and by spending billions on a Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. (That, by the way, was how they created a big overseas market for U.S. goods). It was those moves, not cuts to Social Security, that balanced the post-war economy and thereby ended a historic "debt crisis."
Investing trillions of dollars in modernizing our infrastructure, our schools and our communications systems, and in developing green energy, would put untold millions to work. They would be paying taxes, patronizing businesses and keeping the economy cooking.

So when the Republican billionaire frontmen tell you we need "shared sacrifice" or a "balanced approach," don't listen. Should sacrifices be shared by the criminal and his victim? How can you ask everyone to sacrifice when, last year, the top 1 percent grabbed 93 percent of the growth of the entire economy? How can you ask everyone to sacrifice equally when, over the last 30 years, the working people are the ones who have made all the sacrifices?

The big long-term deficit is driven by our broken job-shedding economy. Fix the economy to benefit the vast majority. End the jobs deficit, and the "budget deficit" will be a thing of the past.

Photo: Glyn Lowe Photoworks // CC 2.0

Unions to aim for labor law, immigration reform

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:48:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - For organized labor, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says, reforming labor law to help balance the scales between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining, will always be labor's number one legislative priority - until it passes.

For the Service Employees, comprehensive immigration reform tops the list, General Counsel Judy Scott says. That's an important cause, she adds, on humanitarian grounds. But it also reflects SEIU's concentration on organizing low-paid, often immigrant workers - many of whom leave in fear of deportation.

But after those top two priorities, labor's legislative agenda for the new 113^th Congress is very much up in the air.

One reason is what was left undone, by the lame-duck session of the 112^th Congress, ostensibly called to work out a compromise to prevent the nation from going over the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes, an end to jobless benefits, an increase in payroll taxes and cuts in defense and domestic programs - along with a tax hike on the rich.

Labor spent December, during the lame duck, campaigning for the tax hikes for the rich, and to preserve Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and avoid deep cuts in other domestic programs. The ruling Republicans wanted exactly the opposite.

If that GOP combination kicks in and sucks billions of dollars out of the economy, throwing the U.S. back into recession, labor must re-juggle its legislative priorities to concentrate - even more than before - on jobs, jobs, jobs.

But if Congress came up with a solution, then labor could turn its attention to other issues, with job-creation legislation still at the fore. But before any or all of those causes can be tackled, labor must deal with the second factor that hamstrung almost all action the last two years: The filibuster.

The Republican-run House is still expected to be a graveyard for worker-backed and pro-worker legislation since the GOP's Radical Right Tea Party wing runs the show there. But with labor playing a huge role in re-electing Democratic President Barack Obama and expanding the pro-worker Senate Democratic majority, unions and their allies expect progress - which puts pressure on the House to acquiesce. The filibuster derails any such plans (see separate story).

The new Senate is apparently headed for a showdown on plans to curb the inordinate use of filibusters to block virtually everything. As of early December, 389 filibusters and filibuster threats had been launched in the 112^th Congress. They blocked everything from National Labor Relations Board nominations to, in the prior Democratic-run 111^th Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor law reform legislation.

They also blocked jobs bills, equal pay for equal work, immigration legislation and much more. The filibuster plague became so bad that curbing - if not ending - the scourge of such minority rule became a key cause of the Communications Workers in particular and labor in general.

CWA President Larry Cohen helped stitch together a "fix the Senate" coalition, including the Auto Workers and allied progressive groups, to put pressure on lawmakers to end the situation where a minority of 41 senators can bring everything to a halt. "This is not what democracy looks like," Cohen says of the GOP minority's filibuster abuse.

If and when the filibuster roadblock is overcome - and various proposals are flying around about how to overcome it - other union legislative agenda items includea push for equal pay for equal work, again, by the Coalition of Labor Union Women. The filibuster threat killed it in 2012. It got a Senate majority, but needed 60 votes.

National Nurses United is campaigning for a tax on financial transactions. The tax would discourage the speculation that led to the Great Recession, force the financial institutions to pay for the damage their finagling and fraud caused, and bring billions of dollars into the Treasury for people programs and to cut the deficit, NNU says.

Transportation and building trades unions will seek a longer highway-mass transit bill. Congress approved a 2-year bill, not the normal six years. A six-year, multi-billion-dollar measure would put people back to work on infrastructure, at a time when officially 12 percent of construction workers are jobless. Union leaders say it's double that.

CWA could resume the campaign to extend broadband coverage to the entire country, boosting telecommunications jobs and Internet availability.

The Letter Carriers and other postal unions will resume their campaign for a permanent solution to the Postal Service's financial ills to eliminate the multi-billion-dollar prepayment of future retirees' health care expenses. The union also wants to open USPS to marketing more goods. USPS wants to fire workers, instead.

The Amalgamated Transit Union could resume pushing a cause dumped in the bargaining over the last highway-mass transit bill: Letting federal mass transit funds go for bus drivers' pay as well as for bus purchases, in cities and metro areas with more than 250,000 people.

Photo: For the Service Employees, immigration law reform is a top priority this year. Progress Ohio/Flickr

GOP vacations as nation teeters on the brink of “cliff”

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 14:03:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - President Obama flew back into the nation's capital today reportedly with a new offer to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff on Jan. 1. While the Senate is here, the GOP-controlled House has not returned from Christmas vacation and the GOP leadership in the Senate, in defiance of the facts, is claiming that Democrats have not yet offered anything that can keep the country from falling off the cliff.

Democrats counter that they have already passed in the Senate a bill that would extend the tax cuts for those making $250,000 or less, the bottom 98 percent of the nation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., predicted this morning that the nation could go over the cliff because there may not be enough time to avoid the combination of devastating spending cuts and tax hikes on working people set to take effect on Jan. 1. Reid declared that the only "viable" solution was for the GOP-controlled House to approve the Senate bill that would preserve existing tax rates on income under $250,000. "Everyone knows that if they had brought up the Senate-passed bill, it would pass overwhelmingly. But the Speaker says, no we can't do that," declared Reid. "It's the House being operated by a dictatorship of the Speaker."

Adding to the crisis is the ignoring by GOP leadership in the Senate of the president's efforts to compromise and the bill Democrats in the Senate have already passed.

"The leader is happy to review what the president has in mind, but to date the Senate Democrat (sic) majority has not put forward a plan," said a spokesman for Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Reid countered: "If we go over the cliff, and it look like that's where we are headed, Mr. President - the House of Representatives as we speak with four days left after today before the first of the year aren't here with the speaker telling them he'll give them 48 hours notice. I can't imagine they're out there wherever they are around the country, I can't imagine their consciences and we're here trying to get something done."

The political storm inside the Capitol seemed to be reflected in the dark black clouds gathering in the sky above Washington as a winter storm approaches.

Workers across the country are saying that the massive budget cuts slated for Jan. 1 will make life far more difficult for them, especially for the millions of unemployed and poor who have already fallen off the fiscal cliff.

"People will start to feel it quickly in their paychecks," said Ian Shepherdson, an economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics Advisers.

Households will see their paychecks get smaller when a two-year payroll tax holiday expires Dec. 31. The new rate will slash 2 percent of every dollar of wage income or about $20 per week for someone making $50,000 a year.

As for unemployment, although hiring picked up a bit recently, the pace is far slower than normally seen in any previous economic "recovery." Since 2007 the number of part-time workers who can't get full-time work has been stuck at twice the level seen when the recession began.

Photo: Kay Gaensler // CC 2.0

Obama tries again on fiscal cliff

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 13:49:00 +0000

WASHINGTON -- President Obama is still trying to negotiate an arrangement with Congress to head off or to postpone tax increases on working people and the massive cuts scheduled to begin after Jan. 1.

No bill dealing with this, however, is on the schedule of either house in Congress, both of whose members are returning to Washington Thursday, Dec. 27, after the Christmas break.

The talk here is that a small deal to head off the spending cuts and most of the tax hikes could have enough votes to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate if Republicans don't use the filibuster to block the deal. GOP leaders have not yet promised that they will avoid using that filibuster.

If any bill raising taxes on the rich were to have a chance of passing in the House, however, it would have to be done in a bi-partisan fashion. The 191 Democrats could get it through, for example, if they had the agreement of 26 Republicans. It is the only combination that could approve the tax hikes on the rich that the president is demanding.

Observers of the scene in Washington say that at least some of the needed GOP votes could come from people who are retiring or from among those defeated in the November elections who wouldn't have to fear reaction from right-wing sections of their constituencies.

Another scenario is that Congress could let things go off the fiscal cliff and allow income taxes to go up on everyone as now scheduled on Jan. 1 and then, in a few days, craft a deal to cut those taxes for the majority, but not for the rich, and combine that vote with another that would postpone the $109 billion in automatic cuts.

The benefit of this approach to spineless Republicans is that, as of Jan. 1, no lawmaker would have to vote for a tax increase on anyone, since taxes would already have gone up automatically. Any votes would then involve decreasing tax rates for the majority of Americans back to 2012 levels.

Photo: Groups protest in Freedom Plaza in Washington. Jacquelyn Martin/AP

ACLU criticizes record deportation numbers

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 11:49:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - In a continuation of a disturbing trend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Dec. 21 that in the past fiscal year, it deported nearly 410,000 immigrants, a record number. As with previous years, almost half of those deported had no criminal records.

ICE also announced new guidance on detainers that is a step in the right direction; however, ACLU immigration expert say it does not go far enough to resolve rampant civil rights abuses.

"Detention and deportation should be the very last resort," said Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "We must move away from policies that waste taxpayer money on the detention and deportation of immigrants who pose no threat.

"The detention guidance does not fix the fundamental problem with ICE detainers," said Kate Desormeau, an attorney with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "Unlike any other area of law enforcement, ICE uses detainers to lock someone up based solely on an individual officer's suspicion, without having a judge sign off. That flies in the face of our most basic constitutional rights. As a result, ICE detainers have caused serious civil rights abuses, including the illegal detention of U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants based on sloppy investigation or prejudice."

Photo: Signs in Spanish that say, "Don't separate our families," and "We are not criminals," during an immigrant rights rally in front of the Capitol in Washington. Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Republicans fall off the deep end

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:09:00 +0000

Capping off what was the biggest legislative circus in a hundred years was the collapse on Capitol Hill last night of Republican House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B," an attempt to avoid the "fiscal cliff" by continuing tax cuts for most of the wealthy and by slashing programs critical to poor and working-class people.

Boehner conceived the plan as a means to pressure President Obama and Democrats to make bigger and bigger compromises in the high stakes "fiscal cliff" negotiations going on in Washington.

"If House Speaker John Boehner really wanted to address the true causes of our long term budget imbalance, the last thing he would ask Congress to do is pass more wasteful tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans," AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bull Samuels said in a letter he fired off to lawmakers just hours before the vote.

Boehner, instead of continuing negotiations with President Obama, decided earlier this week to push his "Plan B" that would make permanent the tax cuts on people making $250,000 to $1 million a year. The Boehner plan also called for making permanent huge cuts to the estate tax for wealthy Americans while ending tax credits for students and workers.

"While showering tax breaks with hundreds of billions of dollars on the richest Americans, Republicans continue to demand over $100 billion in cuts to Social Security cost-of-living-adjustments through the so-called chained CPI," said Samuels.

Alliance for Retired Americans Executive Director Edward Cole said, "Under what is coldly labeled as the chained CPI, a worker retiring in 2011 at age 65, would lose over $6,000 over 15 tears. We must reject that and we must change a tax system that puts Social Security at risk to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy."

"Austerity is not the answer," said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United. "A modest tax on Wall Street speculation could generate $350 billion every year. An amount that could save over 1.7 million homes from foreclosure, or finance 9 million new jobs."

The speaker pulled his plan last night after it became clear that he didn't have the 217 votes needed for it to pass in the House. The failure to get it passed is seen as changing the dynamics in the negotiations to reach a deal.

Right wing extremist groups jumped to claim credit for Boehner's failure. Mike Needham, executive director of Heritage Action, told the Huffington Post, "We were on the phone all day long today, talking to members of Congress." Heritage Action is the political action committee of the Heritage Foundation. "I think we definitely changed people's minds today, absolutely," he said.

Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times "the Republican crazies have (actually) saved the day.

"Earlier this week progressives suddenly had the sinking feeling that the Obama administration was...giving way on issues where it had promised to hold the line - perpetuating a substantial proportion of the high-income Bush tax cuts and effectively cutting Social Security benefits...The Republican crazies are doing Mr. Obama a favor, heading off any temptation he may have felt to give away the store in pursuit of bipartisan dreams."

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich declared, after the spectacle on Capitol Hill last night, that the Republican Party "has become a party of hypocrisy masquerading as principled ideology. The GOP talks endlessly about the importance of reducing the budget deficit. But it isn't even willing to raise revenues from the richest three-tenths of one percent of Americans to help with the task we're talking about 400,000 people, for crying out loud."

When he pulled Plan B last night, Boehner adjourned the House.

As of Friday afternoon, Dec. 21, no negotiations between Republicans and the White House on the expiring "middle-class" tax cuts and automatic spending cuts set to go into effect Jan. 1 are scheduled.

But a White House spokesman said, "The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution that protects the middle class and our economy."

Photo: National Nurse's United vigil to call on Congress to oppose fiscal cliff cuts, Facebook page.

10 things that did not happen in 2012

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:52:00 +0000

1. Zombie apocalypse.

2. Mitt Romney elected president, hails handout-dependent rich people who backed him.

3. Paul Ryan elected vice president, smirks.

4. Adam Sandler makes a good movie.

5. National Institutes of Medicine says aspirin, between the knees, is effective contraceptive.

6. Rolling Stones say no more concert tours, cite arthritis pain.

7. Scientists discover fat and grease are good for you, warn against vegetables, whole grains.

8. Donald Trump receives Mensa IQ award.

9. Monday, most disliked day of week, eliminated in 25 countries.

10. World ends Dec. 21.

Photo: Luke Roberts // CC 2.0

Walmart and gun makers, drivers of the right wing

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:49:00 +0000

Gun production and sales is big business in America and a major driver of the nation's right wing.

Walmart, the nation's largest retailer, is also the country's biggest seller of firearms and ammunition.

The Bushmaster AR-15 model used by Adam Lanza to take the lives of 20 children and six adults last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, is being sold by some 1700 Walmart stores nationwide, though the actual assault weapon used by Lanza has not been connected to the national chain.

Executive vice president Duncan Mac Naughton told shareholders in October that gun sales contribute handsomely to the chain's overall profit margin, according to the Nation's George Zornick.

Naughton said that in little over two years gun sales at Walmart stores open for a year or more shot up by 76 percent while ammunition sales increased by 30 percent.

Given Walmart's aggressive gun sales, the chain's logo "shouldn't be a smiley face; it should be an automatic weapon," Bertha Lewis told the Nation. Lewis has been organizing Walmart workers to protest low wages and poor working conditions this year.

"Don't tell me that you're trying to give fresh fruit and vegetables to people so that they can have a healthy life," Lewis added, "and then on the next counter you have instruments of death."

Walmart was one of the principal supporters of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) when the rightwing group, made up of many of the nation's top corporations and Republican state legislators, promoted "stand your ground" laws in states throughout the country. Public pressure has since compelled Walmart to officially drop out of ALEC.

The "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida, also known as the "Shoot First" or "Kill at Will" law, was initially invoked by law enforcement to prevent the arrest and prosecution earlier this year of high school student Trayvon Martin's killer.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) revealed that Marion Hammer, lobbyist of the National Rifle Association (NRA), pushed the bill through the Florida legislature in 2005.

Hammer then brought the law to the closed door ALEC task force meeting in Texas that summer to become a priority for ALEC state legislators across the country.

According to the NRA at the time, Hammer's pitch was "unanimously" adopted by the private and public sector members attending the ALEC task force then led by Walmart.

The NRA, for its part, has used ALEC as a key venue to promote bills to bar and impede laws that would protect Americans from gun violence, which in many instances have become law in states across the country.

The NRA has helped protect and expand the market for the firearms sold by the weapons companies that bankroll its lobbying operations.

The People's World's Susan Webb reported earlier this week that some of the nation's biggest gun makers are owned by private equity funds run by Wall Street giants.

The singular mission of these firms is to make quick maximum profit for its investors, at the expense of workers, communities, and working class hunters and gun owners whose interests they falsely claim to champion, Webb noted.

For these Wall Street firms and gun manufacturers in general, military sales have been a large lucrative piece of their business.

In 2011, U.S. corporations sold 75 percent of all arms sold in the international weapons market, some $66 billion out of $85 billion total. Russia was a distant second at $4 billion in sales.

It's no wonder that these private corporate interests in the business of making and marketing weapons for a profit together with sectors of the military establishment, making up the "military industrial complex" of which former President Dwight Eisenhower warned, play a major role in driving our nation's foreign policy to the right.

Photo: Ted Swedenburg // CC 2.0

GOP Grinches trying to steal Christmas

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:04:00 +0000

The AFL-CIO is tweeting today that GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, by continuing their push to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, are keeping company with the Grinch that stole Christmas.

The federation has launched an on-line campaign telling the two leaders to "stop holding working people hostage just so the wealthiest 2 percent can receive more tax giveaways." They are urging people to click here to join the campaign:

"Anyone who wants to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits to finance tax giveaways for the rich must have a heart two sizes too small," writes Jackie Tortora on the AFL-CIO Now blog today.

Boehner has just rejected a compromise offer from the administration to avoid going over the so-called fiscal cliff. That offer, not good enough for the Republicans, is actually opposed by labor and many of its allies as one that pads the pockets of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The compromise offer changes the way cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits are calculated - to the disadvantage of benefit recipients.

Democrats in the House are speaking out against the proposal, known as the "chained CPI."

"It's a benefit cut - pure and simple," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Il.). "An average earner retiring in 2011 at age 65 would lose $6,000 in benefits over 15 years. It's particularly devastating for women - who live longer, rely more on Social Security and receive lower benefits."

"The less money our Social Security recipients - including 9 million veterans - are able to spend, the less money goes to the businesses that create jobs," said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. "Chained CPI makes life harder for millions of retirees, weakens Social Security and doesn't reduce the deficit by a penny. It's a Beltway fig leaf that I will never support."

Grijalva said that, instead, there should be talk about lifting the cap on high earners paying into Social Security, "not inventing reasons to take money from American retirees."

"Social Security has nothing to do with the debt problems that we're facing in the first place," noted Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla.

Political strategist and community organizer Mike Lux writes movingly in a Daily Kos article about what happens when Social Security benefits are cut:

"When I was a young organizer for Iowa Citizen Action Network, we were doing a lot of work on utility rate hikes. I met an elderly woman, maybe late 70's, who was living on her Social Security check. As utility prices went through the roof, her cost of living increase in that check wasn't coming anywhere close to covering the costs she had. She was extremely worried, because as frugal as she was she couldn't figure out how to keep her heat on, pay her rent, and buy a few meager groceries. She thought the utilities might end up shutting her heat off.

"I suggested a social services agency she could go to, and that she might check with neighborhood churches to see if they had funds that could help. And I promised that I would do everything I could to fight for her. I pushed hard on the local utility companies to try and shame them away from turning the heat off the dead of an Iowa winter, which didn't work very well because the utility companies had no shame.

"And my organization pushed in the legislature to get a bill passed that would prohibit utility shutoffs in the wintertime, which didn't pass the first year but did the second year we worked on it.

"But it didn't pass in time to save the woman I met. Reading the Cedar Rapids Gazette one day that winter, I saw that the woman I met had been found dead in her apartment of hypothermia after the utility company had turned off her heat."

Photo: Loren Javier // CC 2.0

New Yorkers continue the fight for paid sick leave

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:05:00 +0000

NEW YORK -- In spite of petitions, press conferences by community organizations and city representatives, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn continues to stonewall the issue of paid sick leave.

We all have a question for the speaker: Speaker, do you get paid when you are out sick?

I'll answer for you. You bet!

So why is it that the working class of this city can't have the very, very small "luxury" of minimal paid sick time? Could it be that once again, doing the right thing takes a back seat to one's opportunism?

I think that is just what it is - pure and simple. But you know, in the end, doing the right thing is what the people of New York City will remember when they go to the polls.

The speaker already disconnected herself from the working families of the city when she voted for and pushed others to allow billionaire Mayor Bloomberg to run for a third term; spending over one hundred million dollars of his own money!

Thirty-seven members of the Council have signed the bill and labor unions have been outspoken in favor of the bill for paid sick leave.

How can it be, that in this day and age when poverty is visiting more and more households and with the pressures of making ends meet, can we not have the most basic paid sick time?

Some one million New Yorkers can't take a day off when they're sick. The bill would make sure they earn paid sick days and would prevent workers from losing their jobs just because they or their children get sick.

And, New Yorkers overwhelmingly favor the proposal, e.g., Quinnipiac Polling Data: 73% in NYC Support Paid Sick Days Legislation

The original bill required most businesses with five or more employees to provide up to five days of paid sick leave a year, but also required that those with twenty or more workers provide each with as many as nine paid sick days. Bloomberg's response, as would be expected, was, "It would be disastrous for the local economy."

A weaker version of the bill has been introduced by City Council member Daniel R. Garodnick. It would require businesses to allow five paid days for employees, but exclude seasonal workers, and allow employees, for example restaurant workers, to "swap" shifts rather than take a paid sick day.

As the pressures of every day life on working families escalate, the need for a stronger, not a weaker, sick leave bill is necessary. And, if the mayor is right, and the speaker continues to sit on the bill because they believe it will drive business out of the city, what is the remedy?

Many Americans agree that it's time to move to a higher stage of civilization - more socialization of basic needs, people before profits - but until we do, we have no choice but to put pressure on Speaker Quinn to do the right thing, disregard billionaire Mayor Bloomberg who hasn't a clue what it means to live day to day from hand to mouth, and get this bill passed!

City Council person Gale Brewer, District 6, the author of the bill, told the Peoples World: "I strongly support the bill and the Council is willing to compromise to get the bill passed. We are working with community organizations that are involved and fighting with low wageworkers. There will be a hearing in early January."

City Controller John Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer have come out in favor of the bill and support raising the living standards of the more than two million minimum wage workers in New York City.

Photo: nycforpaidsickdays.org

Pickets protest Murray Energy layoffs

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:22:00 +0000

PEPPER PIKE, Ohio - Two dozen activists picketed the corporate headquarters of Murray Energy in this Cleveland suburb Dec. 17 protesting the anti-labor and right-wing policies of company owner Robert E. Murray.

The immediate cause for the protest Monday was Murray's layoff of 163 miners and transport workers in Utah, Illinois and West Virginia on Nov. 7, which he blamed on Obama's re-election.

"Murray is a bully," said Lisa Ciocia, chief organizer of the protest. "He runs his company with threats and fear. He is trying to blame Obama for his company's problems."

Holding large signs, the pickets stood for several hours on both sides of busy Chagrin Boulevard as motorists honked horns to show support.

"Modernize Your Mines Instead Of Trying To Score Political Points," one sign read.

A major donor to the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, Murray gained national notoriety last August when he closed his Bealsville, Ohio, mine and ordered workers to stand behind Romney at a campaign rally without pay. The event was used as part of a Romney campaign ad purporting to show that miners opposed Pres. Barack Obama for allegedly conducting a "war on coal."

In announcing the layoffs Murray read a "prayer" to employees, which was published on the Intelligencer/Wheeling News Register website.

"Dear Lord," Murray began. "The American people have made their choice ...away from the idea of individual freedom and individual responsibility...away from capitalism, economic responsibility and personal acceptance."

Voters, the prayer continued, chose "redistribution, national weakness and reduced standard of living and lower and lower levels of personal freedom...The takers outvoted the producers."

"Lord," he continued, "please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build."

Signs carried by the pickets blasted Murray's hypocritical use of religion to justify the layoffs and demanded that he rehire the workers.

"Leave My God Out Of Your Ungodly Labor Practices," one read.

Murray Energy is the largest privately owned U.S. coal company with 3000 employees producing 30 million tons of bituminous coal annually. While the company has specialized in "dirty," high-sulfur coal and lobbies against environmental regulations, economists say the industry's problems stem from competition from low-cost natural gas and rising production costs.

The company also vigorously lobbies against mine safety regulations and Murray is an outspoken critic of scientific opinion on climate change, which he calls "global goofiness." In a 2007 article he wrote the "environmental risk associated with carbon emissions is highly speculative."

The company has a notorious record of safety violations and was fined $1.85 million for causing the deaths of 6 miners in the 2007 collapse of its Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. The event also caused the death of three rescue workers.

Earlier this year, Murray hosted a $1.7 million fundraiser for Romney and in September Murray contributed $100,000 to American Crossroads, the superPAC run by Karl Rove to support the Republican campaign.

In October, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission charging Murray Energy forced its salaried employees to contribute one per cent of their earnings to the company political action committee.

Most of the protesters were members of Patriots for Change, an independent grassroots group with about 350 members based in nearby Chagrin Falls. Judy Kramer, a retired teacher and the group's president and founder, said it formed in 2008 to oppose the Iraq war and has continued to work on various issues including voter registration and the Obama campaign.

"We going stronger than ever," she said. In the wake of the Newtown, CT, shooting tragedy, she hopes the group will address the issue of gun regulation.

Photo: Cleveland Jobs With Justice FB page

Progressives: No cave-in to Republican fiscal cliff demands!

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:57:00 +0000

With less than two weeks until the Bush tax cuts die and harsh automatic cuts to the human safety net kick in, the GOP is insisting that there can me no "fiscal cliff" deal unless Democrats agree to cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"They are holding the most vulnerable people in America hostage," declared Roger Hickey and Robert Borosage this morning in a statement they issued on behalf of the Campaign for America's Future. "There are two words to say to that: No deal."

As media reports about a "compromise" deal circulated this morning the nation's small business owners added their voices to the demand that lawmakers not cave to Republican demands.

Lawmakers received letters this morning signed by more than 2,000 small business owners telling them to "extend middle class tax cuts but let breaks for higher earners expire."

The letter said that more consumer demand, not lower budget deficits, is at the top of small business owners' wish list this holiday season. The letter asked lawmakers not to hold the middle class tax cuts hostage to cuts for those in the top two tax brackets, which include only three percent of small businesses and two percent of all Americans.

"I gladly signed the letter to let politicians know that the most important thing for my business right now is ensuring my customers have the means and the confidence to continue using my services," said Trish McCabe, owner of Feng Shui By Design in Winter Park, Fla. "Every small business owner I know makes most business decisions based on consumer demand. If that demand isn't there because our customers don't have as much spending power, that's going to hurt us all."

In a separate letter sent today to the White House, more than 75 small business owners from Western states urged protection of public lands during and after the fiscal cliff negotiations, "as these natural assets are essential to small business' financial success and that of local economies."

According to news reports today a budget deal is shaping up that includes ideas strongly opposed by labor and its allies. The deal floated in the press includes the "chained CPI," a backdoor method of actually cutting Social Security benefits for both current and future recipients.

The chained CPI cuts benefits 3.7 percent for the typical 75-year old, 6.5 percent for an 85 year old, and 9.2 percent for 95 year olds.

According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration, to break GOP intransigence, has put out to House Speaker John Boehner, a number of offers including limiting the tax hike on the rich to households earning more than $400,000, the chained CPI to reduce the cost of Social Security and an unspecified increase in overall spending cuts. In addition, the reports say, the administration's offer includes dropping its demand for the payroll tax cut extension. The same report says the administration is not yielding on its insistence upon $80 billion in new spending on infrastructure and unemployment benefits.

Boehner and top Republicans have quickly rejected, at least publically, even those compromises. Boehner is demanding a one-to-one ratio between tax hikes and spending cuts, and Republicans argue that the latest proposal from Obama doesn't meet that demand, partly due to the president's insistence upon new infrastructure spending and an extension of unemployment benefits.

Boehner told his conference today that he will move to a "Plan B" on the fiscal cliff that would involve the House voting on legislation to extend the tax rates on all income below $1 million, allowing rates on people making more than one million to go from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.

Progressives are not at all happy with any plan that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.

"This is not America's deal," wrote OurFuture.org's Richard Eskrow, this morning, in response to the press reports of compromises floated by the administration. "Our leaders in Washington heard from the voters last month. They may need to hear from them again."

Justin Ruben, speaking for MoveOn.org, said his organization will encourage Democrats to block any such bargain. "If such a deal were proposed by the president and the speaker, MoveOn members would expect every Senate and House Democrat to do everything in their power to block it," Ruben said.

Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman stopped short of completely nixing a deal that included changing the way cost of living adjustments are made to Social Security.

Those changes are not "nearly as bad as raising the Medicare age, for two reasons," he said. "The structure of the program (Social Security) remains intact, and unlike the Medicare thing, they wouldn't be totally devastating for hundreds of thousands of people, just somewhat painful for a much larger group.

"Oh, and raising the Medicare age would kill people," he said. "This benefit cut (the chained CPI), not so much. But is this rumored deal better than no deal? I'm on the edge."

Another cut to Medicare being trial ballooned by Republicans includes "means testing" whereby higher-income seniors would pay more for the program.

"Higher income workers already pay more for Medicare," said Jackie Tortora, speaking for the AFL-CIO. "Medicare Part B has been means tested since 2007."

"Additional means testing would undermine the social insurance nature of Medicare and ultimately raise costs for middle-income seniors who depend on it," said the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, in a statement recently. "If means-testing results in Medicare become increasingly unfair to higher-income beneficiaries, they may opt out and purchase their own policy on the private market. The departure of higher-income beneficiaries, who tend to be younger and healthier, would increase overall costs and reduce public support for the program."

Photo: National Committee volunteers gather in Billings, Montana in front of Senator Jon Tester and Senator Max Baucus' offices to show support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Facebook page.

Could you survive on $2 a day?

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:48:00 +0000

Two years ago, Harvard professor Kathryn Edin was in Baltimore interviewing public housing residents about how they got by. As a sociologist who had spent a quarter century studying poverty, she was no stranger to the trappings of life on the edge: families doubling or tripling up in apartments, relying on handouts from friends and relatives, selling blood plasma for cash. But as her fieldwork progressed, Edin began to notice a disturbing pattern. "Nobody was working and nobody was getting welfare," she says. Her research subjects were always pretty strapped, but "this was different. These people had nothing coming in."

Edin shared her observations with H. Luke Shaefer, a colleague from the University of Michigan. While the income numbers weren't literally nothing, they were pretty darn close. Families were subsisting on just a few thousand bucks a year. "We pretty much assumed that incomes this low are really, really rare," Shaefer told me. "It hadn't occurred to us to even look."

"Deep poverty" to "extreme poverty"

Curious, they began pulling together detailed household Census data for the past 15 years. There was reason for pessimism. Welfare reform had placed strict time limits on general assistance and America's ongoing economic woes were demonstrating just how far the jobless could fall in the absence of a strong safety net. The researchers were already aware of a rise in "deep poverty," a term used to describe households living at less than half of the federal poverty threshold, or $11,000 a year for a family of four. Since 2000, the number of people in that category has grown to more than 20 million-a whopping 60 percent increase. And the rate has grown from 4.5 percent of the population to 6.6 percent in 2011, the highest in recent memory save 2010, which was just a tad worse (6.7 percent).

But Edin and Shaefer wanted to see just how deep that poverty went. In doing so, they relied on a World Bank marker used to study the poor in developing nations: This designation, which they dubbed "extreme" poverty, makes deep poverty look like a cakewalk. It means scraping by on less than $2 per person per day, or $2,920 per year for a family of four.

In a report published earlier this year by the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center, Edin and Shaefer estimated that nearly 1 in 5 low-income American households has been living in extreme poverty; since 1996, the number of households in that category had increased by about 130 percent. Among the truly destitute were 2.8 million children. Even if you counted food stamps as cash, half of those kids were still being raised in homes whose weekly take wasn't enough to cover a trip to Applebee's.

In the researchers' eyes, it was a bombshell. But the media barely noticed. "Nobody's talking about it," Edin gripes. Even during a presidential campaign focusing on the economy, only a few local and regional news outlets took note of their report on the plight of America's poorest families. Mitt Romney told CNN that he wasn't concerned about the "very poor," who, after all, could rely on the nation's "very ample safety net." Even President Obama was reticent to champion any constituent worse off than the middle class. As journalist Paul Tough noted in the New York Times Magazine this past August, the politician who cut his teeth as an organizer in inner-city Chicago hasn't made a single speech devoted to poverty as president of the United States. (Although Paul Ryan has.)

Fresno, California: Second poorest

If you want to explore the dire new landscape of American poverty, there's perhaps no better place to visit than Fresno, a sprawling, smoggy city in California's fertile Central Valley. Heading south on Highway 99, I pass acres of grapevines and newly constructed subdivisions before reaching the city limit, where a sign welcomes me to California's Frontier City. Ahead, no doubt, is a city, but all I see is brown haze. It's as if a giant dirt clod had been dropped from space. The frontier looks bleak.

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina briefly focused the nation's attention on the plight of the poor, the Brookings Institution published a study looking at concentrated poverty. Only one city fared worse than New Orleans: You guessed it, Fresno. Earlier this year, the US Census identified Fresno County as the nation's second-poorest large metropolitan area. Its population has nearly doubled over the past three decades, which means more competition for minimum-wage farm and service-sector jobs, and a quarter of the county's residents fall below the federal poverty threshold. With fewer than 20 percent of adults 25 and up holding bachelors degrees, there's little prospect of better-paying industries flocking here.

Crossing the tracks, I find myself in a virtual shantytown, with structures of pallets, plywood, and upended shopping carts

For those living on the margins here, daily life can be a long string of emergencies. "There's this whole roiling of folks," says Edie Jessup, a longtime local anti-poverty activist. "They are homeless, move in someplace else, lose their jobs and are evicted, maybe end up in motels."

If I want to see how bad things are, Jessup advises, I should check out the area southwest of downtown. She gives me directions, and after crossing some train tracks near a pristine minor-league baseball stadium, I find myself in a virtual shantytown. Amid boarded up warehouses and vacant lots, the streets begin to narrow. They are filled with structures made of pallets, plywood, and upended shopping carts. A truck pulls up filled with bottles of water, and a long line of thirsty people forms.

Amid the makeshift shelters, one section of pavement has been cleaned up, fenced off, and filled with more than 60 Tuff Sheds-prefab tool sheds brought in to provide emergency housing for Fresno's growing street population. "It's not ideal," concedes Kathryn Weakland of the Poverello House, the nonprofit that oversees the encampment and doles out 1,200 hot meals a day. "But like one of the homeless told me, it beats sleeping in a cardboard box."

The collection of sheds even has a name: "Village of Hope."

Working poor

In the wee hours of the following morning, I pay a visit to Josefa, a 37-year-old single mother from Mexico who lives in a low-slung apartment complex just north of downtown. She's awake and ready by 3 a.m. when the first family knocks on her door. A Latino couple hands off two children and a sleeping baby and then disappears into the dark, heading for fields outside of town. Over the next half hour, two more farmworker families do the same. The small living room is soon filled with kids in various states of somnolence. Some nestle together on couches; others spread out on blankets on the floor. Josefa heads down the hallway to her bedroom, cradling the baby girl and walking quietly to avoid waking her 10-year-old daughter in the next room.

Four hours later, she has accomplished the morning's major chores: Five of the six kids are awake, fed, and dressed. The only holdout is a feisty toddler who is waging a mighty fuss over the prospect of wearing a t-shirt. Josefa gives the edges of the boy's shirt a sharp downward tug and smiles, winning a small but important battle. After pulling her curly black hair into a ponytail she looks at her watch. "Let's go!" she calls, waving her hands toward the door. "We're going to be late."

The group heads down a dirt alleyway, led by a tiny girl wearing a pink Dora the Explorer backpack that looks big enough to double as a pup tent. The school is three blocks away. Along the way, we pass modest but tidy single-family homes, a few shoddy apartment complexes, and two boarded-up buildings. On the surface, there's little to distinguish this neighborhood-known as Lowell-from other hardscrabble sections of Fresno. But Lowell is, in fact, the poorest tract in the city and among the poorest stretches of real estate in America. More than half of its residents, including nearly two-thirds of its children, live in poverty. One in four families earns less than $10,000 a year.

In a county where unemployment now hovers around 14 percent, Josefa is lucky to have work. Even better, she loves her job, and 10 minutes in her company is enough to realize she's got a gift with children. "They run up on the street and hug me," she says, beaming. "What could be better?"

What she lacks is money. Her farmworker clients are barely scraping by, so she only charges them $10 a day per child. At the moment it's late September, the heart of the grape season, so she's got a full house. But at times when there's less demand for farm work, or the weather is wet, she gets by largely on her monthly $200 allotment of food stamps. "I don't even have enough to pay for a childcare license," Josefa says. (Because of this, I've agreed to change her name for this story.)

Josefa estimates that her childcare business brings in $7,000 a year. She visits local churches for donated food and clothes, and has taken in relatives to help cover her $600 rent. Until earlier this year, Josefa and her daughter shared their small apartment with her niece's family. It was hardly ideal-some days, there were 12 people sardined in there. "Of course I need more money," Josefa tells me, pushing a stroller and holding the toddler's hand as we arrive back at her place. "But how can I charge more when no one has any more to give?"

Her niece, Guillermina Ramirez, is sitting in the apartment complex's small courtyard and overhears Josefa's last comment. "The key is to learn English," she announces. Guillermina, like Josefa, is undocumented, but she's married to a US citizen and says she will be a legal resident soon. She recently enrolled in English classes and anticipates securing "a really good job" once she's done. "That's what you need to get ahead."

Gary Villa and Jim Harper speak English and both are American citizens-as a member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, Harper's lineage goes way back-but neither would say he's getting ahead. I run into the two men outside a temp agency three miles from Josefa's apartment. They've been waiting around since well before sunrise in hopes of finding something.

Villa, a stocky 23-year-old with a shaved head and goatee, tells me that he was pulling in a decent paycheck installing phone boxes for an AT&T subcontractor before he got laid off in 2008. He was evicted from his apartment and now lives with his mother-"It's kind of embarrassing," he mutters-while his girlfriend and two kids moved in with a relative. "You can't pay $800 in rent making $8 an hour."

Villa peers inside the job office, trying to discern any movement.

"At least we have family to fall back on," says Harper, 33, who keeps his long brown hair tucked beneath a red-and-blue Fresno State cap. After being let go from his job delivering radiators, he tried starting a handyman business called Jim's Everything Service. It didn't work out, so now he now begins each day by calling seven temp agencies. But Fresno was slammed hard by the housing bust, and it remains a tough place for unemployed blue-collar workers. Harper, who is staying with his stepfather, says he's lucky to pull in more than $200 a month. His monthly food stamp allotment tacks on another $200, for an annual income of $4,800.

By now the sun is well above the horizon and it's shaping up to be yet another day without a paycheck. "The working class isn't the working class if there's no work, right?" says Harper, who is wearing paint-stained Dickies and a faded t-shirt. "We're getting pretty desperate out here."

"I like to joke that I'll take any job short of being a male whore," he adds.

True enough, when the temp office clerk announces that there's a job available, Harper leaps at it even though the gig starts at 2 a.m. and he knows he'll have to arrive at the work site in the early evening, thanks to Fresno's limited bus service. He shrugs off the six hours he'll waste "twiddling his thumbs." What matters, Harper says, is to keep knocking on doors and making the calls, because "you never know when you might get your foot in the door."

Fleeing Fresno's hostile job market might seem like the logical solution, but it's never that simple. As frequently happens with the very poor-especially in light of the restrictions put in place with welfare reform-the informal safety nets that help keep people afloat also tend to keep them rooted in place. Losing his delivery job left Harper homeless. For a few months he lived out of his car or in a room in Fresno's "motel row," notorious for drugs and prostitution. But since moving into his stepfather's house, he's been able to use food stamps in lieu of rent. Leaving town would mean running the risk of being homeless again. And given Harper's income, there's no room for error.

Neither is there a clear path out of deep poverty for Josefa. She puts in twelve-hour days six days a week, so there's not much room to increase her workload. By allowing six other families to work, she plays a small but key role in making Fresno an agriculture powerhouse, but her cut is miniscule. "That's why it's so important for my daughter to study," she says.

The last time I speak to Harper, he tells me he's landed a stint working overnight at a series of grocery stores that are overhauling their freezer compartments. "It looks like it will be a 10-day job," he says, excited. In Fresno, that counts as a big success. I ask where he hopes to find himself in five years. He pauses and takes a deep breath. "Best case scenario, as sad as it sounds, is to be no worse off than I am right now," he says. "That's about all I can hope for."

Reposted from Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Photo by benjaminbarnett on Flickr

Sandy Hook vigils mourn victims, vow action

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:55:00 +0000

CHICAGO - They gathered to share their overwhelming grief. But they also came together to share their anger and determination that something be done to stem the growing gun violence across the country that is claiming thousands of lives.

Hundreds of candlelight vigils were held nationwide over the weekend mourning the victims of the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn., along with hope for a national conversation and vows for action.

Moveon.org alone organized over 300 vigils. In a message to its members, Lori Hass, whose daughter was wounded at the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre wrote:

"My daughter Emily was in French class at Virginia Tech when a gunman opened fire, killing her teacher and 11 of her friends and classmates. Emily was shot twice in the back of the head, but survived. We can't let this continue.

"Now is the time for neighbors to comfort one another, keep the victims of the Connecticut tragedy in our hearts, and call for a plan to end gun violence."

A typical vigil was like the one that attracted nearly 30 people in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago on Dec. 15, called on a day's notice.

Participants from Melrose Park, Evanston, other suburbs and neighborhoods across the northern part of the city huddled together under a steady rain. They expressed deep frustration that elected officials were fearful of confronting the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers, responsible for flooding communities with weapons, including assault weapons and weakening and eliminating many gun restrictions.

They also decried the destruction of mental health facilities and services through defunding at every level and the current attacks on Medicare and Medicaid.

"I am so frustrated that this continues and no one is opposing the NRA," said one participant. "We need to raise our voices."

"What happened in Newtown happens daily in Chicago, but at a slower pace so it's not called a massacre. But it's the same," said Jill.

One participant, a teacher and parent of a child in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) remembered the teachers who died in the Newtown massacre and also spoke about the daily loss of life from gun violence in Chicago neighborhoods.

Over 440 people have died from gun violence in Chicago so far this year.

"The loss of life is unspeakable, and the rest of the kids are being daily traumatized when they see their family members and friends killed. As the need for services rises, CPS has drastically cut back on the number of school social workers. In some cases there is 1 for every 600 students," she said.

"Can we see those children and their parents? Can't we reach out and comfort one another no matter what you believe," said another participant. "Let goodness and kindness come into this world and let each of us play our role. I'm sick and tired of the violence. I'm angry with the NRA. "

She then led the group in a moment of silence.

"I am terminally ill," began another participant. "But I'm determined to do what I can in the remaining time I have left to do something about this. It's not right."

The vigil then proceeded four blocks west to Roosevelt High School where a shooting nearby claimed the life of 22 year-old Keith Shaw on Nov. 20, symbolizing the connection between the Newtown massacre and the killings taking place daily across the nation, a point also made by President Barack Obama.

There has been a marked increased in shootings and deaths in the neighborhood over the recent months, which has residents greatly concerned.

"I have two kids and everyday I am nervous for their safety," said Irma, who brought her daughter Annette.

Washington DC teachers organized a candlelight vigil Dec. 15 at Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. Participants urged President Obama make good on his pledge to act forcefully to end the spiraling violence.

At a vigil at a Van Cortlandt Park playground in the Bronx several people spoke eloquently about the teachers who died, saying teachers should be praised, supported, and heralded, not bashed as they regularly are.

Another vigil took place at the Iowa state capitol building in Des Moines. Ryan, 40, said that she believes mass shootings will keep happening until the nation has an honest discussion about what causes them.

"The only way to stop it is to be proactive and actually start having the conversations that already needed to be had: about gun control, about mental illness and about health care and providing services for people that need them," she said.

Congressional progressives: “Chained CPI” throws seniors off the cliff

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:55:00 +0000

As talk of compromise to avoid the "fiscal cliff" increases in Washington, members of the Progressive Caucus in Congress are calling on colleagues to oppose what they say is nothing more than a dangerous back-door attempt to cut Social Security: the "Chained CPI."

They say it is a "back door" attempt because, if it becomes part of any final deal, it will be described as a new and accurate way to calculate cost-of-living adjustments rather than the cut in benefits it would actually be.

The chained CPI will trap seniors, the progressive lawmakers say, including those now collecting benefits, in a cycle in which their checks cover less and less of their living costs each year, making seniors poorer over time.

Almost 40 members of Congress have reportedly signed the letter initiated by Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., which she began circulating last week Experts who have examined the "Chained CPI" proposal, the Edwards letter says, have found that the change would amount to a cut in Social Security benefits.

It would amount to a five percent across-the-board cut over 12 years and be coupled with a 0.19 percent income surtax on middle-class seniors, according to the Edwards letter.

Blogger Dave Johnson noted Dec. 14 at blog.ourfuture.org that the move amounts to "DC elites literally saying that because old people cut back to cat food when people food is expensive, then we shouldn't let Social Security rise enough to keep covering people food."

The "Chained CPI" is touted as taking into account that seniors cut back when prices rise. "They are actually saying," Johnson wrote, "that because people have to cut back to cat food, then they should only be getting enough to pay for cat food. The elites love the 'Chained CPI' because it helps keep the government from raising taxes on the rich to pay back what was borrowed from Social Security and used to give tax cuts to the rich."

Advocates of the "Chained CPI" say that traditional cost-of-living adjustments are too generous because, while they account for increases in prices, they don't account for how humans behave when prices go up. For example, a hike in beef prices would push up the traditional Consumer Price Index. What the Chained CPI advocates say is that rather than giving a cost-of-living hike we should wait to see, first, if consumers might switch to a cheaper meat product.

The members of the Progressive Caucus urge everyone to call 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to your House representative. They ask that callers insist that their representatives sign the Edwards Letter that says no to the "Chained CPI."

Photo: At a "Jobs Not Cuts" rally in Chicago, Dec. 10. PW

How to rebuild after the violence in Conneticut

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Once again violence has shattered a place of innocence, and an elementary school in Connecticut takes on the appearance of a battlefield.

To think that it was only iIn July of this year that I submitted an article to the Peoples World entitled, "Seeking solutions to a violent society". It was written to reflect upon the massacre of Colorado citizens attending a midnight movie.

In the previous article I tried to cast a wide net, exploring and examining the various aspects to a violent society, from a romanticized gun culture with a powerful lobby that stifles reasonable debate to the alienation of individuals who cannot keep up with rampant consumerism.

The conclusion of my amateur analysis was that the reason we cannot get to the bottom of the problems that plague our society is because the citizenry itself, the citizenry that is suffering once again, this time with a classroom full of murdered children.

There is no doubt, that any society, organized along socialist or capitalist lines will be confronted by serious problems. Problems that stem from corruption, ignorance, neglect and even as yet not understood phenomena of the psyche and human personality.

However, the difference lies in how those problems are addressed, and by whom. Everywhere the capitalist system under which we live is rigged. Working people do not have access to the rooms in which the decisions are being made. In fact, quite the contrary, everywhere the ruling class is trying to shut them out, Michigan being the latest example.

For as long as anyone can remember the ruling class has been braying that the solution to all our ills is to cut spending, especially on the dreaded "entitlement programs."

When the pressures of unemployment, drug abuse, untreated disease both mental and physical come crashing down on families if the right wing solutions were followed we would reduce the number of weeks a person has on unemployment, keep them further away from grocery stores and clinics by slashing mass transit and poison the air and the water by scaling back previously agreed upon environmental regulations. Teachers would do double or triple duty and social workers, well, they're superfluous.

Successful programs, from the arts to head start , are frivolous. In 1994 President Clinton was howled at and ridiculed by the ultra right for what was termed 'midnight basketball' which was a very modest proposal aimed at giving urban youth outlets for constructive interaction and activity. Like anything aimed at assisting people rather than preserving profit it was termed "wasteful".

No one thing, the restricting of firearms ownership, the censoring of violent films and music, the expanding availability of social workers to monitor those suffering from disorders, is going to bring tragedies such as we saw in Connecticut to an immediate and complete halt. Just as no one single thing usually motivates those who perpetrate such crimes. However, a system organized by people and designed for the benefit of society as a whole will at least have a chance to put the priorities in order.

A nation that kills its own citizens by remote control drones does not set an example for peace. A society that pits neighbors against its communities teachers does not set an example of respect. A government that strips workers of their rights does not set an example of valuing one's skills. A people that embrace the slogan "he who dies with the most toys wins" does not embrace an ethic of love. The ridiculing of multi-culturalism and the labeling of human beings as "illegal" does nothing to uproot the poisonous weeds of racism. The children who are raised in this environment are lost to us before they have a chance to grow.

Mumbled prayers and flags at half staff may appropriately symbolize our grief as a nation, but only the unity of people will break down the barriers that stand in the way of addressing the problems that plague us, sometimes created by those who rule, other times simply left to fester.

The situation however, while bleak, is not hopeless. Human history holds numerous examples of people rising to the occasion to prevent their own bondage, humiliation and destruction at the hands of uncaring others. The people can put this nation right. The working class is equipped to grapple with the ills that are destroying our nation's children. They only need to be let into the room and take a place at the table.

Threatened Philly school closings face growing resistance

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:50:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA - As the Philadelphia School District pushes ahead with its plan to close some 40 schools at the end of the current school year, deep and organized resistance is growing. On Dec. 12, the District announced the names of the schools slated to be shuttered in June; in the late afternoon a dense crowd of hundreds of protesters massed on the steps of district headquarters to voice their anger, their determination and, in some cases, their heartbreak.

The lively and diverse crowd included students, parents, teachers, school support staff and community activists. Chants of "Hey, hey, hey! Don't take our schools away" and "Don't believe the hype!" rang out across Broad Street. As darkness fell and TV cameras rolled, one speaker after another took the microphone to blast the School Reform Commission's plan to downsize the District and hand off many of the remaining schools to outside managers.

Kia Hinton, a parent of four and herself a graduate of Philadelphia public schools, told the crowd she was "disappointed and appalled" at the District's plans and that she had "grave concerns about our school system that keeps failing our children...that had its funding cut by the governor in order to invest in building prisons instead of investing in our children.... Why build new prisons based on the number of third graders who can't read instead of investing in their education? We need good schools, we need good, living wage jobs, and we need thriving neighborhoods!"

Although District officials have insisted that the proposed changes were for educational as well as financial reasons, press reports acknowledge that the School District's actions are being driven by budget concerns. Ron Whitehorne, a retired teacher and an organizer of the Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS) used his time at the microphone to address the long standing funding issues facing the District. He blamed the persistent crisis on policies that favor bankers over students, "They say there is no money. That is a lie! The deficit exists because corporations pay no income taxes. It exists because Harrisburg invests in prison construction while closing schools."

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) President Jerry Jordan told the crowd that "this rally is about more than school closings. The closings are symbolic of an ineffective approach to education that we are not going to put up with. Budget cuts and school closings do not make students achieve any better. Schools will improve when parents, students and teachers come together to decide what is best for them." Local NAACP President Jerome Mondesire urged the students present to go back their schools and "organize, organize, organize!"

While the district says it plans to close about 40 schools and reconfigure others in June, it has also proposed the closing of additional schools over the next five years. The news came out during the last school year that it had commissioned an expensive study by an outside firm, the Boston Consulting Group, to recommend ways to solve its financial problems. It has already imposed severe staff and program cuts, and the effect of the latest round of school closings threatens the jobs of additional school workers. The District says that teaching staff cuts will be "minimal", but it has not mentioned other categories such as school support staff or administrators.

In fact, demonstrations of varying size in front of School District headquarters have occurred frequently over the last couple of years. In late December a year ago 50 school nurses received layoff notices; they held regular weekly rallies for months as a result. Over the past summer, 2700 custodial workers, bus drivers and others belonging to SEIU Local 1201 were threatened with the wholesale privatization and elimination of their jobs. Following protests and appeals to the Philadelphia City Council, they did manage to win a contract. The regular and visible expressions of resistance have caused the School District to move more slowly with its plans than it originally intended. It now says that the proposed school closings will be voted on in March of 2013.

Yesterday's rally showed that ongoing organizing efforts by PCAPS and its constituent groups are producing results. The coalition includes parent and community organizations, the teachers' union and other unions of school employees, and student groups. The coalition came together last winter and spring as the state appointed School Reform Commission (SRC) publicized its plans for downsizing and privatizing the school system. Meanwhile PCAPS has sought and received input from thousands of parents, teachers and others about their views on solving the problems of the public schools. It was announced at the rally that the effort is continuing and the coalition will soon issue its own comprehensive proposals for addressing the problems faced by Philadelphia's schools and students.

Photo: Ben Sears/PW

Video: “Pot” tops “church” on Family Feud

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 12:51:00 +0000

A hilarious moment on game show Family Feud, where the answer to the question "name something that gets passed around" - a joint - topped the second answer -"church collection" - may provide more insight on a changing America than laughs. (Story continues after video.)

Legalizing and decriminalizing marijuana is sweeping the nation. In November, voters in Colorado and Washington State approved measures that legalized recreational use of pot. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia allow its use for medicinal purposes. Numerous states and local governments have taken the step to decriminalize pot, making its possession a misdemeanor or ticketing offense. This year Rhode Island became the 15th state to reduce charges and penalties for pot possession. Emboldened by the Colorado and Washington votes, the tiny New England state and Maine introduced bills to legalize recreational use of pot a week after the November election.

Public opinion has shifted considerably on legalizing pot in the last two decades. A survey by Rasmussen earlier this year found that 56 percent of respondents favored legalizing and regulating marijuana. A national Gallup poll last year showed support for legalizing pot had reached 50 percent, up from 46 percent in 2010 and 25 percent in the mid-'90s.

Dan Bernath, of the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-legalization group, told IPS news service in a 2009 interview, "There's been a slow realization over the last couple decades that marijuana prohibition doesn't work. Arresting 872,000 Americans every year outweighs costs of marijuana itself," he said.

Marijuana arrests are considered part of the failed war on drugs policies. They have also helped to create the "New Jim Crow" with law enforcement filling up jails with Black and Latino prisoners.

In an expose by Chicago-based The Reader, journalists Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky say people of all races smoke pot in Chicago, but almost everyone busted is Black.

"The ratio of black to white arrests for marijuana possession in Chicago is 15 to 1," they wrote.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has said the county jails and courts are jammed with petty marijuana offenders. She has indicated in the past that the "war on drugs" is a failure and doesn't help reduce crime.

Recently Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he'd be in favor of decriminalization.

Photo: screenshot