People Before Profit blog

Remembering Eric Garner, African American father of six

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 13:53:00 +0000

With relatives and progressive elected officials leading the way, New Yorkers of all walks of life have responded with outrage to the death of 43-year-old African American father of six, Eric Garner. Garner died on Thursday, July 17 while in police custody. He was handcuffed and on the ground after being dragged to the pavement by the chokehold of a plain clothed police officer. Chokeholds are forbidden according to NYPD procedure.

Ramsey Orta, a friend of Garner was with him that tragic day and recorded the incident for the world to see on his smartphone. (link to video: http://time.com/3016326/eric-garner-video-police-chokehold-death/)

Orta understood the importance of recording the police encounter, "I just hope it gives people the courage not to be scared. There's a lot of 'he says she says' but once you have proof..."

He continued describing what transpired after officer Daniel Pantaleo's illegal take down, "All that time his hand was around his neck then he got up and pushed his face into the floor twice then put his then knee on top of his face while Eric was telling him he couldn't breathe. I saw his eyes roll back he was foaming from the mouth and I knew he was gone from there. I kept telling them [the police], I kept pushing the issue to put an oxygen mask on him and all they did was keep the cuffs on him and search him."

While playing the video, Orta and other witnesses can be heard in the background pleading with officers and EMS personnel, and those pleas being ignored by the crowd of cops and medics. Trained responders, on the clock being paid to protect, they surrounded Garner and watched him die.

Kadiatou Diallo, mother of Amadou, who was killed in a hail of 41 NYPD bullets - 19 hitting him - said, "It's just so sad. It brings back terrible memories. After all these cases and all these years, nothing seems to change" Diallo called on Mayor deBlasio and Commissioner Braton "to bring about changes."

Bratton for his part said in news briefing at city hall that he met with the FBI and they are monitoring the death of Garner. The police commissioner added that he would not be surprised if the U.S. attorney opened up a civil rights violation. He went on to pledge the city's cooperation if that does happen. Bratton also explained the need to retrain NYCs 35,000 police officers concerning the use of force.

At Garner's funeral Rev. Al Sharpton responded to the "top cop" from the pulpit, "You don't need retraining you don't need sensitizing... How did we get so cold?" Sharpton asked, referring to the group of first responders who watched in a routine and cavalier manner as Garner fought for his lasts breaths.

"We were moving in the right direction, and unfortunately now we have taken five steps back," said Bronx Council woman Vanessa Gibson.

Public Advocate Letitia James, second in line to the mayor, spoke at the funeral of Eric Garner. She spoke as the city's chief executive, a role she played until deBlasio returned from Italy. "We will demand that all police encounters are video taped," Letitia James pledged to the Garner family and the people of NYC.

Al Sharpton called it "...a test for the deBlasio administration."

City Councilman Jumaane Williams, D-Brooklyn, was furious with what he called "omissions and lies" detailed in an internal NYDP report on their encounter with Garner. The report was silent on the prohibited chokehold used by officers and minimized Garner's calls for help. "He was left to lie on the ground for eight minutes like a piece of meat. And I say 'piece of meat' because if he was a dog, they probably would have assisted him," said Councilman Jumaane Williams, D-Brooklyn. He continued, "If there was no video of this, we would be here listening to the police account of what happened, with no chokehold mentioned, and saying he didn't need medical services."

Those who knew Garner personally described him as a "Teddy Bear" and a "gentle giant", explaining that the contact with police was in response to a fight that broke out where Garner intervened as the peacemaker. Alejandro lives upstairs from the storefront where this tragedy took place and attended the vigil organized a day before the funeral. Alejandro explained that he and Garner didn't speak much because of a language barrier. He doesn't speak English "I never spoke with Eric. We knew each other's faces and we would smile when we crossed paths. I saw him every day and watched him interact with people. He was a good man."

Ramsey Orta lives upstairs from the store where the incident took place and had the presence of mind to record the encounter with his smart phone. Orta's video backs up the claims of witnesses.

Garner can be heard saying "I can't breath," over 10 times on the video before his death. Those words are now a chant repeated at marches and memorials. But before the fatal chokehold take down, Garner powerfully said, "Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it. It stops today."

There are many times more New Yorkers who agree. It stops today.

Photo: Eric Garner, seen on left and then in chokehold by police on right. AP

Fast food workers plan civil disobedience as employers “freak out” over NLRB ruling

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 11:57:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS - On the heels of what many are calling a historic convention of over 1,200 fast food workers held in the Chicago suburbs last weekend, the campaign for "$15 and a union" won a major National Labor Relations Board decision that, if upheld, could have significant repercussions throughout the industry - and dramatically change the organizing landscape in favor of low-wage fast food workers.

The NLRB's general council on Tuesday ruled that McDonald's could be held "jointly accountable" for labor and wage violations by its franchise operators. Undoubtedly, other fast food chains are paying close attention, as they could potentially face similar rulings.

Of the thousands of McDonald's restaurants in the United States, roughly 90 percent are owned by franchise operators, a fact McDonald's routinely emphasizes in its attempts to stifle demands for higher wages, better benefits and dignity and respect on the job. McDonald's claims wages, hours and benefits are set by franchises owners.

Jeanina Jenkins, a St. Louis McDonald's employee, told People's World, "McDonald's can't hide behind their franchises anymore."

Jenkins, a member of the fast food workers national organizing committee, has worked at McDonald's for 2 ½ years. She is currently making $7.97 an-hour and is scheduled an average of 15 to 20 hours a week. "Hardly enough time or money to help take care of my family - my mother, sister and niece," she said.

According to Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas, "Employers like McDonald's seek to avoid recognizing the rights of their employees by claiming that they are not really their employer, despite exercising control over crucial aspects of the employment relationship." If the recent ruling is upheld, "McDonald's should no longer be able to hide behind its franchisees."

In all, McDonald's employs nearly one million people in the U.S. Turnover is about 150 percent. And while the average fast food worker makes about $8 an-hour, McDonald's CEO, Donald Thompson, made a staggering $9.5 million last year.

The NLRB ruling came after its investigation of 181 claims spanning 20 months, accusing McDonald's and its franchise operators of unfair labor practices, including illegally firing, threatening and otherwise penalizing workers for pro-union activities. The charges were filed in 17 different cities, including St. Louis.

The ruling couldn't come at a worse time for the fast food behemoth, which brings in $27 billion annually in revenue, as fast food workers at the recent convention agreed to dramatically escalate their tactics and organize a wave of civil disobedience actions against fast food chains in the coming months - actions that will undoubtedly bring more attention to the industry's poverty wages and poor working conditions.

"We will do anything, whatever it takes to get $15 and a union," Jenkins added. "Workers are very engaged and ready to do anything, even get arrested."

Jenkins said convention participants were "amped-up and excited," ready to take on the fast food Goliath.

"We are all leaders. We're going to keep building this movement and expand it until they pay us more and we get a union. This is our struggle. This is everybody's struggle. We're in this together. We're going to win."

"The convention was the bomb," Rasheen Aldridge, a St. Louis area strike leader, told peoplesworld.org. "It was great to see so many folks from so many different cities fired-up and ready to go.

"It really showed our growth as a movement and helped us gear-up for the next round of strikes. We're working together state by state, city by city, building solidarity."

In all, fast food workers from 30 cities attended the convention. They discussed tactics and where to go from here. And ultimately, agreed to embark on an unprecedented wave of civil disobedience.

"We're building an army of fast food workers," Aldridge concluded. "We're going to do whatever it takes to win."

Ultimately, the NLRB ruling will be taken to administrative law judges. If the judges uphold the ruling McDonald's is likely to appeal to the five-member labor board in Washington, D.C. The case could potentially end up in the Supreme Court.

Additionally, the favorable NLRB decision comes as the AFL-CIO executive council meets to discuss a number of issues critical to working people, including union organizing.

"Under President Obama the NLRB has been getting better and better at issuing rulings that help workers. Remember though that this is as it should be. The NLRB, under U.S labor law, is there to protect and extend collective bargaining rights. This ruling will go far to help do that," said Bill Samuels the AFL-CIO's legislative director.

Companies like McDonald's will have a harder time avoiding responsibility for violating labor law and blocking union organizing efforts.

While the workers suing McDonald's are not union members yet, they do belong to a voluntary membership organization that does not have collective bargaining rights, like traditional unions.

However, "These organizations are going to be very important to the future of labor organizing in America," said Larry Cohen, director of organizing for the AFL-CIO and president of the Communications Workers Union of America. "We're going to see more and more of this kind of organizing."

One fast food leader put it like this: "The business community is scared. This ruling has far-reaching implications on all types of work, not just the fast food industry. They are pretty freaked out."

Photo: St. Louis fast food workers strike for higher wages, better working conditions and a right to unionize, July 2013. (PW)

Voter suppression: NAACP strategizes to turn out vote in 2014

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 16:16:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS - As the 2014 midterm elections quickly approach, the battle against voter suppression is still being waged. This was a topic hit hard at the 105th NAACP convention,held here this month, and took an entire plenary panel, a CLE (Continuing Legal Education seminar) session, along with being emphasized in many other events. The July 19-23 convention comes only months before this year's midterm elections. In November, voters will chose their congressional representative and in many states, their U.S. senator, governor, state lawmakers and local offices and referendum.

These elections are also the first to be held after the infamous Shelby County v. Holder ruling handed down by the Supreme Court just one year ago. The NAACP is a non-partisan organization, which always points out that it seeks to ensure fair representation for all. But their animosity towards the relationship between voter suppression and the concentration of political power in the hands of the extreme "tea party" subset of the Republican Party was clear. The main plenary panel, which included speakers such as political activists and leader of the Moral Mondays movement, Dr. William J. Barber, the senior director of voting rights for the NAACP, Jotaka Eaddy, and others discussed strategies for responding to suppression, and expanding the electorate.

There was a sense that there is hope for a shift in political power towards a broader and more socially conscious coalition, with the power of African American voters (and the growing Latino population) at the center.

During a panel of legal experts on voter suppression, Daniel Ho, of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, noted that after 2008, 20 states attempted to pass some type of voter suppression law. What was so significant about 2008? he asked. This could be seen as a rhetorical question, but the facts are still impressive: African American voters turned out at a higher rate than white voters (repeated in 2012). Just as an example, in North Carolina, 70 percent of African American voters used early voting, where previously it was disproportionately white.

In 2013, North Carolina's Republican dominated state government passed a package of voter suppression laws, which among other things, did away with same day registration for students, cut early voting from 17 to 10 days, and most significantly, it requires every voter to show a state-approved photo ID.

The Justice Department and others filed suit against the state for discrimination. Before the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which gutted the Voting Rights Act, such laws like North Carolina's would have been blocked by the Department of Justice. But that decision fundamentally shifted the playing field, and forced voting rights advocates to change strategy.

Since the high court decision left Sections 2 and 3(c) of the VRA intact, Attorney General Eric Holder is currently using Section 2 to challenge North Carolina's voter ID requirements and changes to early voting.

The problem with an after the fact legal approach is that they can take a long time: Allison Riggs, of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, commented that she is still litigating a case under Section 2 that she filed in 2011.

Congress is currently trying to pass what is being called the Voting Rights Act Amendment of 2014. This amendment is being seen as a bipartisan way to re-establish some of the protections to voting rights that was gutted by the Shelby v Holder ruling.

Yet, many voting rights advocates are not on board with the amendment, feeling it only gives "half a loaf of bread" as opposed to the "whole loaf," that advocates should be fighting for- to paraphrase Dr. William J. Barber from the plenary panel. One of the shortcomings of the amendment, noted by advocates, is that it does not count Voter ID laws as discriminatory.

Latino Victory Foundation President Cristobal J. Alex said there needed to be an "affirmative right to vote for all."

While Eaddy said activists needed to get out of the habit of "popcorn activism," and get into staying in for the long haul in order to fight the long battle against discrimination, all agreed that there was no quick fix, but rather a need to build a large movement.

Barber called what was going on in the government as "Grand Theft Democracy." The thievery runs the gamut from the voter suppression laws to the GOP Congress and conservative Supreme Court's undermining of civil rights to the constant obstructionism thrown at the nation's first black president.

College student Eboni Brown, an intern for the NAACP, urged special attention to educating people on their rights. "There needs to be an increase in voter education. Many people don't know the power of their vote or don't see the use of it," she said.

Roland Martin, who hosted the voter suppression panel, paraphrased a famous quote to the battle against discrimination and voter suppression, "We must fight until hell freezes over... And then we fight on the ice."

Photo: This slide from a power point presentation given during the NAACP convention highlights some of the far right's strategy on voter suppression. (Chauncey Robinson/PW)

Cuba Caravanistas welcomed in Dallas

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 14:24:00 +0000

DALLAS - Lisa Valantes is on her 25th Caravan to Cuba with Pastors for Peace. Pastors for Peace is a special ministry of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, and was created in 1988 to pioneer the delivery of humanitarian aid to Latin America and the Caribbean.

The US/Cuba Friendshipment Caravan each year has the caravanistas originate from different parts of the U.S., then make their way through Texas to the Mexican border on their way to Cuba. Valantes started this trip in Pittsburgh!

At every stop, they gather volunteers and material supplies to break the blockade of Cuba. Their donated cars, buses and trucks stay with the Cuban people.

Valantes told the Dallas supporters, "Don't just think about Cuba, think about what Cuba has done for the world!" Many of the audience members at the Pan African Connection in Dallas were especially appreciative of Cuba's total conquest of internal racism and the military help they gave in resisting the old apartheid South African regime.

The caravanistas have 100 U.S. citizens and Canadians, Europeans and Mexicans taking part this year. They traveled 13 routes through the U.S.

Participants explained why they are going: "To deliver humanitarian aid to our brothers and sisters in Cuba as a direct challenge to the U.S. government's cruel and immoral economic blockade of Cuba. And to assert our right to travel to Cuba and see it for ourselves despite being threatened with fines by the U.S. government."

More information is available at their website and on Facebook.

Photo: Volunteers gather material supplies for Cuba. Facebook

NAACP: "Our agenda is essential" for democracy

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 16:12:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS - Thousands gathered here July 19-23 for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's 105^th convention. The nation's oldest, largest, and perhaps most widely known civil rights organization convened to address a number of issues, including the need to push back against voter suppression with the crucial 2014 midterm elections quickly approaching.

The main theme of the convention was "All In For Justice and Equality." Yet another, perhaps unofficial, theme of the convention, as addressed by newly elected NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, was if the organization was still relevant and influential in present times. It was clear that Brooks, and all of the leadership of the organization, wanted to emphasize a resounding "YES" response to that question.

Close to 1,500 youth, under the age of 21, attended the convention. An emerging sentiment throughout the festivities, stated often by the leadership, was the need to make sure that the future generation of leaders and fighters in the movement isn't killed off by the increasing gun violence and racial injustice across the nation. ACT-SO (the Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) held its awards ceremony at the convention this year. The program, created by the NAACP, was aimed to encourage high academic and cultural achievement amongst high school aged African Americans. There were also workshops geared towards encouraging young people to get involved with civic engagement, know their rights regarding juvenile justice, and avoid the traps of the growing student debt crisis plaguing the nation.

"Empowering women for justice and equality"

The NAACP's committee WIN (Women in NAACP) held a luncheon to highlight women in leadership and the push for female empowerment. With speakers such as NAACP Chair Roslyn Brock, newly elected NAACP President and CEO Cornell Brooks, and the cast of daytime talk show "The Real," the focus was on the need to empower black women in today's society. WIN's theme is "Open Hearts and Outstretched Hands to Women and Children" and it has volunteer coordinators in seven regions.

Brooks spoke a few words at the luncheon, saying that "No civil rights movement would be complete without the women ... Women are the heart of this organization." Brock spoke on how women made the difference in voter turnout, referring to black women in the 2008 and 2012 elections who voted in higher percentages than any other section of the American electorate.

The all female cast of "The Real" did a panel of questions and answers on issues affecting women of color. The hosts of the show, set to premiere in September, include actress Tamera Mowry-Housley, singer Tamar Braxton, comedian Loni Love, and actresses Jeannie Mai and Adrienne Bailon. The hosts touted the fact that they were one of the few shows on television that had a cast of all women of color. They emphasized that this perspective was needed, because positive and well-rounded images of black women, and other women of color, in mainstream society were lacking.

Presiding over the luncheon, NAACP WIN director Dr. Thelma T. Daley quoted the legendary Maya Angelou, stating, "Women have to develop courage. You're not born with courage, but you develop it ... One way to develop courage is to not entertain company who debase you. Don't laugh at someone who is laughing at you or putting you down. Take offense. When someone says 'I hope you won't be offended,' then you probably will be."

"Litigation alone is not enough to win victories"

The 1954 victory in Brown v. Board of Education was shaped and led by the NAACP. It is no surprise, then, that this convention would hold workshops on Continuing Legal Education (CLE) within the movement. One popular panel in the legal series highlighted the resurgence of "stop and frisk." This is a controversial police tactic, in which cops stop and pat down individuals they deem suspicious. The tactic is accused of racially profiling black and Latino people.

Panelist Alexis Karteron, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said "stop and frisk" was not only happening in the streets, but also in places where people live, such as the lesser known "Operation Clean Halls." In this program landlords enrolled their buildings, putting them under New York Police Department surveillance. This operation resulted in many residents and guests, mainly black and Latino, being harassed, and often arrested, by police on suspicion of criminal activities. Karteron and her team have been a part of the class action lawsuit against the city of New York over this practice that they argue is unconstitutional. The team recently won the suit but is still awaiting implementation of the court ruling. That implementation of court rulings is not immediate underscored the theme of the CLE panels: that litigation alone was not enough to win victories. Panelist and attorney Chauniqua D. Young, who worked on the main "stop and frisk" class action lawsuit, pointed out, "Real work starts after the court rules."

Director of the NAACP's Criminal Justice committee Niaz Kasravi highlighted the organization's campaign against the resurgence of "stop and frisk," which they believe is taking on a different form with the "Broken Window" policies now being pushed under New York Police Chief William Bratton, and the need for national policing standards. Kasravi noted that there are currently no effective racial profiling laws, and no national ban against racial profiling. She stated that those were just some of the demands that the NAACP is working on for the future. Kasravi also announced that the NAACP would be issuing a report this fall that addresses "stop and frisk," and racial profiling in general, on a national level.

Black voter turnout and the fight against voter suppression

A well attended plenary featured a panel on black voter turnout and battling voter suppression in the upcoming 2014 midterm elections. Washington, D.C., journalist and radio show host Roland Martin chaired the panel. A theme throughout the panel was the power of the vote, and just how crucial the midterm elections are. The failure to have a large turnout for the midterm elections in 2010 resulted in a major shift, not in favor of black people, panelists said. Panelist and House Minority Leader for the Georgia General Assembly Stacey Y. Abrams said, "State legislatures are allowing voter suppression." Jotaka Eaddy, NAACP senior director of voting rights, said since 2011, more than 250 voter suppression bills were introduced in 41 states across the country. She also noted that statistics show that voter suppression laws are targeted for states where more blacks and Latinos turn out to vote.

Panelist and CNN political analyst Cornell Belcher said the current dysfunction of Congress was a political strategy to suppress voter turnout. He said there are forces hoping that if voters are dismayed by the ineffectiveness of government, then they won't turn out to vote. Belcher said information is a "luxury," and those who know need to help those who don't by getting the information out.

Panelist Dr. William J. Barber, one of the leaders of North Carolina's Moral Mondays movement, said people needed to connect the dots and build coalitions. He said, "Right extremism is undermining everyone's civil rights. Not just black people." State legislator Abrams closed by saying, "It is immoral to vote alone. Take someone with you to the polls." NAACP's Eaddy urged the audience to work to expand rights as well as win back those under attack. She said, "We cannot afford to play checkers in the middle of a chess game."

"These are no ordinary times"

Brooks, who was elected to lead the NAACP this past June, addressed the convention on the question he stated he was asked often: Is the NAACP was still a relevant organization? Brooks said the question was "wearisome, not worrisome." The president drew from the organization's history. When the choice is between "irrelevancy or revolution," he said, the NAACP has always chosen the path of revolution, and this time would be no different. Brooks said revolution is a "time honored tradition," and the NAACP would follow suit. He called for a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and mult- generational NAACP.

Brooks said what the NAACP stands for is good enough for the union halls, and the NAACP, "from the beginning, has always been about the rank-and-file." These are no ordinary times, he said, but rather "NAACP time." After a rousing recount of the history of the organization and the battles it is currently involved in, Brooks confessed that the only answer he could give to critics who questioned the relevancy of the NAACP was an incredulous, "Are you serious?"

"Show up, rise up, and turn up"

Brock, the youngest person ever to be elected to serve as chair of the NAACP's national board of directors and only the fourth woman to do so in the NAACP's 105-year history, reemphasized the theme of the convention, "All In For Justice and Equality," in her keynote. She said half-hearted measures would not solve "the crises of our time."

Brock explained:

"Victory won't come easy and it doesn't come cheap! To serve the present age, we have to go beyond the episodic and reactive responses to assaults on justice. The pressure keeps coming, but we must prevail. For too long we have waited on someone or something to ignite our fire and passion. But now we must do as the young people; Show up, rise up and turn up!"

Brock said even after the murder of Trayvon Martin, "stand your ground" laws are still in place, leaving black communities vulnerable to violence. She also brought up gender-based violence that is suffered by women from "Nigeria to Nevada." She pointed out that even with the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, for the 270 Nigerian girls kidnapped, the girls have still not been returned. She said, "A tweet is no substitute for a sustained world-wide movement to demand respect for human rights, particularly the rights of girls and women!"

Brock also stressed the need to embrace the crisis in Detroit, referring to the thousands of residents who have had their water turned off by the city. She called the crisis a "slow motion disaster" that is a shame to America.

The chairman also assured the audience that the NAACP was on the case in dealing with the death of Eric Garner. Garner was an African American man who recently lost his life after an NYPD officer placed him in a chokehold - a banned maneuver. She said, "The officer's killing of Mr. Garner is a matter for a criminal investigation, and the NY State Conference NAACP will not let it be swept under the rug or reduced to an internal investigation."

Brock brought up the need to restore the Voting Rights Act, and the need to educate "all Americans about the power of their vote."

She closed her address saying, "The survival of our republic depends on our success. Our agenda is essential. It is about the fundamental building blocks of a decent and thriving society. All people-need living wage jobs, affordable quality health care, excellent schools, a clean environment, safe neighborhoods, and a truly fair justice system... Let us go forth from this warm city in the desert burning with determination to make this year the year that we went 'all in for justice and equality.' Courage must not skip this generation!"

Photo: Chauncey K. Robinson/PW

Steel workers campaign to bring outsourced jobs home

Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:48:00 +0000

HANOVER, Pa. (PAI) - Mike Strausbaugh, a steel worker from Hanover, Pa., has a message for Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.: It's time to bring outsourced jobs home.

But Toomey and his fellow Republicans may not get it. Senate Democrats do.

Strausbaugh and other Steel Workers and Autoworkers brought their message to Congress on July 22, with a press conference promoting the Democratic-backed "Bring The Jobs Home Act." Half a dozen Senate Democrats - several seeking re-election - joined in.

The legislation would extend a 20 percent tax credit to companies that had outsourced jobs abroad and that decided to reverse course and return those jobs to U.S. shores. Even more importantly, it would end company tax deductions for expenses associated with moving any U.S. jobs abroad.

Those deductions cost the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars and force U.S. taxpayers - like Strausbaugh - to subsidize the moves. And he's seen a lot of them.

Strausbaugh, who works for SKF Corp., a Hanover, Pa., manufacturer of large bearings for engines and turbines, has seen outsourcing and migration of industrial jobs abroad by area firms for the last decade.

Speaking to Press Associates Union News Service afterwards, he reeled off a list of five companies that left the Hanover-York area alone, taking good-paying industrial jobs to Asia and Latin America, where wages are low and workers are exploited. Only one, Harley-Davidson, brought some back - and those were 100 or so white-collar, not industrial, jobs.

Some of the workers who lost the outsourced jobs have found new ones in the area, Strausbaugh says. But they're at Walmart or making Utz potato chips, both low-paying firms.

Strausbaugh's job outsourcing story has been repeated nationwide for the last decade, and not just in heavy industry. The legislation's co-author, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said some 2.4 million U.S. jobs have been outsourced since the start of the century. Studies show another 21 million - from working at call centers to manufacturing turbines to you-name-it - are endangered.

"This is incredibly basic," said Stabenow, whose state has seen an exodus of auto jobs to Mexico and China. "When we talk about the global economy, we want to be exporting our products, not exporting our jobs."

Added Strausbaugh, a member of USW Local 7343: "It makes no sense that we as manufacturing workers and taxpayers are still being asked to subsidize the cost of shipping our jobs overseas with a tax loophole that should be eliminated."

As a result of such outsourcing, and other factors, "the middle class is on life support," he added.

The U.S. loses in another way, Sen. Stabenow adds: Tax revenues. Outsourcing robs the Treasury of money it would otherwise receive from workers and taxpaying U.S. firms. "The costs are broad, but we're talking about tens of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars," Stabenow says.

While Strausbaugh and his Steel Worker colleagues - Lonnie Young, Joe Brown and Ryan Fairly, all from Pennsylvania locals - drew Senate Democratic support, the Republicans, such as Sen. Toomey, and their business backers are another matter.

Strausbaugh said the four planned to visit Toomey's office to discuss the outsourcing, which Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., told the press conference has cost the Keystone State alone 900,000 jobs. Strausbaugh wasn't sure what reception they'd get from Toomey.

That's because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups strenuously oppose the "Bring The Jobs Home Act," Stabenow admitted. Democrats won 93-7 a vote on a motion to start debate on the measure, S2569, on July 23. But they still needed 60 votes to stop the ensuing GOP filibuster against it. They tried to move the jobs bill two years ago and drew several Republican votes - but not enough, combined with Democrats, to reach 60 "yes."

Those results prompted Casey to challenge the GOP: If they believe the Bring The Jobs Home bill is not the right solution to outsourcing, offer one of their own. That would start "an important national conversation" about outsourcing and its impact, Stabenow added.

The GOP's stance against the anti-outsourcing, pro-return-the-jobs measure puzzles Strausbaugh.

"Why would you vote against it?" he asks.

Photo: USW.

Chicagoans take to the streets against school cuts

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 14:59:00 +0000

CHICAGO - The fight for public education is heating up here, fueled by another round of cuts to public schools and by news reports that Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, is considering a run for the mayor's office.

Last week, an impassioned gathering of students, parents, educators, and community members expressed their outrage at another round of budget cuts for neighborhood public schools - and their determination to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose pro-corporate agenda is driving the attack on public education.

The meeting came on the heels of the announcement that CPS was cutting over $50 million from neighborhood schools and diverting it to politically connected charter school operators-including Concept Charter Schools, which is currently under federal investigation.

More bitter yet was the news that "welcoming schools" - those that accepted students from the 50 schools closed by CPS last year - would take a 5 percent funding cut, despite promises of increased investment.

Backed by a panel of largely silent CPS officials, Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley presented the 2014-2015 operations budget to an audience steeled in the struggle for public education.

According to Cawley, CPS made cuts in the central office to "avoid pain in the classroom" and protect students and teachers. CPS, he claimed, had to make hard choices about how to fill projected deficits of over $600 million.

Those claims rang hollow to many in the audience. After years of fighting school closings and teacher layoffs while new charter schools proliferate, Chicagoans have trouble believing that the Board of Education is looking out for the best interests of Chicago's kids.

Helen Alexander, from Communities United for Quality Education, has her doubts. She says that CPS has set its neighborhood schools up for failure by cutting their funding and funneling the money to charter schools instead. "They failed our kids," she added.

Second ward alderman Bob Fioretti, another potential mayoral candidate, called for a moratorium on charter expansion and took CPS to task for its failure to fight aggressively for funding at the state level. "The fault for the problems in our system is at the feet of CPS," he said. "There's a lack of political will."

Yesterday, those same forces gathered at Simeon Career Academy, a South Side high school where teacher Latisa Kindred has just been laid off. The school, considered by many to be the city's premier public vocational school, is eliminating its electrical and auto shop programs.

Kindred isn't worried about herself, she says. It's her students who are under attack. Trades programs like hers provide a largely low-income, African-American student body with a pathway to good, stable jobs.

Trades representatives spoke of the folly of closing vocational programs even as the nation's infrastructure is crumbling. Community activists reminded the crowd that good jobs, like those in the trades, are the solution to Chicago's deadliest problem: the plague of gun violence that has led some to label the city "Chiraq."

"It's an outrage," says Roberta Wood, a retired member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, summing up the crowd's reaction to the short-sighted decision to cut programs with a proven record of placing young people in good, secure jobs.

As was apparent at both the budget hearing and the Simeon demonstration, outrage is a common theme around the question of public education in Chicago.

Foremost is outrage against a system where the cards are stacked against public schools that serve low-income, mostly black and brown neighborhoods.

People are also outraged that this ferocious attack on public schools is anti-democratic, run from the top down by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his unelected school board.

Finally, they know that, in Fredrick Douglass' words, "power concedes nothing without a fight." They are angry, militant, and united in their push for better schools.

This is, first of all, a good omen for Karen Lewis in the mayoral election. Progressive forces have already mobilized under her leadership in the fight against school closings and in the historic CTU strike of 2012. They are ready to do so again.

More broadly, however, the situation in Chicago highlights the sharpening of class and democratic struggles nationwide. It has become clear that the fight to protect public services is of a piece with the fight to expand democracy by getting corporate cash, and corporate shills, out of our political system.

It has likewise become apparent that this fight brings together labor, faith, and community organizations in a drive that doesn't start, or stop, on Election Day. From Michigan to Mississippi, progressive forces are taking to the streets to demand radical, democratic changes to how resources, power, and opportunity are distributed in our society.

In Chicago and across the country, people are seeing through the old rhetoric about "hard choices" and "necessary sacrifices." As one parent at the CPS budget hearing said, "If you guys were Pinocchio, this room wouldn't be long enough to hold your noses!"

Tell CPS to save Simeon's vocational programs!

Dr. Sheldon House (principal, Neil F. Simeon Career Academy): 773-535-3200

Elizabeth Kirby (CPS network chief): 773-535-8207

Barbara Byrd-Bennett (CEO, Chicago Public Schools): 773-535-1500

Photo: Roberta Wood/PW

Netroots Nation 2014: Building a movement in 140 characters

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 16:20:00 +0000

DETROIT -- What do you get when a well-organized group of left activists, bloggers, and speakers get together in the nation's most iconic city for 21^st century de-industrialization? You get the Netroots Nation conference of 2014, held in downtown Detroit at the historic Cobo Center. But the annual car show and unveiling of new models were the last things on attendees' minds as they prepared for a weekend of talks and panels, including a keynote by Senator Elizabeth Warren, on the subject of defeating the right and rolling back corporate influence in the upcoming November elections.

Netroots Nation as a convention was originally called the YearlyKos, named by the writers and readers of the Daily Kos internet blog. Beginning in 2006, the name was changed in 2008 to both rebrand the conference under a broader title as well to reflect the growing influence the conference had outside of the Daily Kos blog. Bringing in big names such as Bill Clinton and, for 2014, Senator Warren, the conference has been tremendously successful in building awareness of left activism as well as laying out potential strategies for organizing efforts in the subsequent year. Netroots 2014 was no exception.

Many of the panels, views, and strategies focused on at the Detroit conference emphasized activism, getting out the vote and ways to combat right extremism. One panel in particular encapsulated the majority of the discussions in a single title: "Moving your audience in 140 characters." The language is simple: In an age where Twitter and Facebook are the primary means of social communication on a broad scale, understanding how to utilize these technologies to accomplish goals is critical for any practical activist and organizer. Additionally, the title emphasizes the movement of audiences; not merely grabbing their attention nor educating them. It is these concepts combined together: How to engage with and move an audience, and how to do it in an era where the political climate can shift by just 140 typed characters.

The panels grappled with this broad question in a variety of ways. One panel considered the importance of understanding where men fit in the reproductive justice movement for women, emphasizing that their support is not only critical for women but also substantial in transforming the stereotypes of men. Another emphasized the importance to getting women, specifically African American women, to get out the vote and participate in their local community as the benchmark for future success.

At the same time, the conference was acutely connected with the social terrain of Detroit as one of America's primary examples for the faults and handicaps of modern capitalism. One panel, for example, titled "Visionaries for an Inclusive Detroit" explored the ideal possibilities of a transformed Detroit operating under the principles of a 'Beloved Community' where needs were not created then packaged as commodities but rather were responded to as socially-necessary community values. The conference closed on Sunday the 20^th with a reminder of the duties of participants, and the projected future without right-wing extremism.

The question for this writer is is what can one get out of the Netroots Nation as a conference? As a devoted Marxist activist myself, I'm aware that the organizations one chooses to associate with has a profound impact on the way other people perceive not only your politics but your entire worldview. What Netroots Nation provides for people is an outlet to hear leftist opinions without the concern for squabbling and inner-circle debates; a trait common of political action groups.

Importantly what we get instead is a community-driven focus on what is socially necessary for Americans and in the near-future.

Photo: Rev. Dr. William Barber II, the fiery preacher behind North Carolina's Moral Mondays movement, spoke to attendees--and helped set the tone for Netroots Nation--at Thursday night's opening plenary session. Screenshot from video. Click here to watch Rev. Barber's speech in full.

Workers and lawmakers team up to force fair scheduling at Walmart

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:48:00 +0000

WASHINGTON -- Walmart workers were on Capitol Hill today telling lawmakers how the giant retailer's scheduling practices make it impossible for most of them to lead anything approaching a normal life.

In response, Reps. George Miller, D-Calif., and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., introduced a bill called the Schedules that Work Act which would give workers a voice in determining their own schedules.

Our Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart) member Tiffany Beroid told lawmakers how the company's unpredictable scheduling polity made it impossible for her to go to school, despite the company's public commitment to helping its workers improve their lives.

Walmart, many of its workers say, has created an unfair norm of erratic, part-time scheduling, preventing low-wage workers from holding down second jobs, arranging child care, going to school or managing health conditions. What's even worse, they add, is that the Walmart standard has been picked up all across the retail industry.

Beroid worked at Walmart in Laurel, MD for about three years as a customer service manager. When she started going back to school so she could build a better life for her kids, Walmart cut her hours so drastically, she said, that she had to drop out of school for lack of ability to pay for books and fees. Then, after she spoke out about the problems she faced, Walmart illegally fired her altogether.

"I started working at Walmart because I thought if I worked hard, I could give my family a stable home and lift us out of poverty," Beroid told the lawmakers. "Instead, Walmart did everything it could to keep us in poverty and keep me from getting an education. I was a part-time student-I didn't ask for anything crazy, just for tiny modifications so I could go to class. But Walmart punished me for not being available at all hours and cut my hours well beyond what was needed. It was so bad that I couldn't pay for school anymore and I needed to drop out halfway through a semester. I lost all the credits and the money I spent on that semester.

"I stood up and said we shouldn't face problems like this working at a company that brings in $16 billion in profits a year-when all we want is more hours and decent pay so we can support our families. And then Walmart fired me for speaking out."

Tiffany will also discuss how OUR Walmart, the organization of current and former Walmart associates calling for better jobs at the employer, recently won various store-level scheduling and hours victories that led Walmart to roll out a new system nationwide that allows associates to sign up for open shifts in their stores. The victory shows the influence OUR Walmart has at the country's largest employer, but Walmart has failed to inform many associates about the new program, and the system doesn't address predictability in scheduling or the need for full-time hours.

Tiffany is one of the majority of Walmart workers who are paid less than $25,000 a year, and many of them work part-time, relying on unpredictable schedules and must depend on food stamps and other taxpayer-supported programs to survive.

Even though Walmart is supposed to give workers their schedules three weeks in advance, they are often late and shifts are added at the last minute. Walmart gives the most hours to workers who are available at all times (called "open availability"), and workers often report being scheduled when they have class or medical appointments. When workers stand up and opt out of open availability by putting modest restrictions on their schedules for important commitments, Walmart retaliates by excessively cutting back hours.

OUR Walmart member and worker Courtney Moore's situation was detailed in the New York Times on Saturday. The Times reported: "Courtney Moore, a cashier at a Walmart in Cincinnati, said in an interview that she had been assigned about 40 hours a week until she told store management in June that she would begin taking college classes most mornings and some afternoons. She said she asked her manager to put her on the late shift, but to her dismay, the store reduced her to 15 hours a week. 'They said they need someone they could call whenever they need help - and they said I'm not that person,' Ms. Moore said." Walmart cut her hours to a point that her refrigerator was completely empty because she couldn't afford to fill it. She was recently picked up a second job but is unsure how to manage it with school and her schedule at Walmart.

"Even though I work at the country's largest employer and want to work full-time, I don't know when I will work from week to week," said Ronee Hinton who works at Walmart in Laurel, Maryland. "I'm supposed to receive my schedule three weeks in advance, but it's often late, and shifts are added at the last minute. That means I have to miss important doctors' appointments and I can't get a second job. The worst part about Walmart's unpredictable scheduling is my mom is in a nursing home and I can never visit her. It shouldn't be this way. We need Walmart to publicly commit paying us a minimum of $25,000 a year for full-time work and to stop retaliating against workers that speak out for better jobs."

Working women - increasingly the breadwinners and decision makers in households - make up the majority of Walmart's workforce and are often hit hardest by the company's poverty pay and erratic scheduling practices. A group of Walmart moms went on strike earlier this summer to protest the company's illegal retaliation against co-workers who have spoken out for better jobs.

Detailing the widespread problems Walmart women face with low-pay and erratic scheduling, national public policy organization Demos released a report earlier this summer showing how these conditions keep millions of hard-working women and families near poverty. The report finds that establishing a new wage floor equivalent to $25,000 per year for fulltime, year round work at retail companies employing at least 1,000 workers would improve the lives of more than 3.2 million female retail workers and lift 900,000 women and their families directly out of poverty or near poverty.

Photo: Organization United for Respect Facebook page.

U.S. policy driving the children north

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 15:08:00 +0000

Charles Krauthammer, the right wing columnist, pooh-poohs the idea that the child migrants in South Texas, who have been coming in mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, are fleeing violence and poverty. "Nonsense" says Krauthammer, "when has there ever not been violence and poverty in Central America?"

U.N.H.C.R. (the UN Refugee Agency) interviews found that more than for the other countries, the Guatemalan children mentioned poverty and hunger as motivators. Also, 48 percent of the Guatemalans interviewed were indigenous people, of Native American ethnicity and language, instead of Spanish speaking "Latinos." The overall population of Guatemala is said to be about 40 percent indigenous, perhaps an underestimate.

The poverty and suffering of Guatemalans, and especially indigenous Guatemalans, is rooted in long term U.S. policy in the region.

After a long history of U.S. allied military dictatorships and a popular uprising, Guatemala elected a progressive civilian president, Juan Jose Arevalo, in 1944. He and his successor, Jacobo Arbenz, implemented pro-labor, pro-peasant and pro-indigenous policies. Major projects of land reform were accompanied by a huge expansion of labor rights.

Although neither Arevalo nor Arbenz were Marxist revolutionaries, the Guatemalan Party of Labor, the country's communist party, supported the changes. But these policies menaced the interests of the U.S. United Fruit Corporation, which under previous governments had received huge concessions.

In United Fruit's corner was the United States - on general anti-communist principles but also because two important U.S. political figures, the Dulles brothers (Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles) had connections to the firm.

So in 1954, the CIA engineered a military coup that overthrew Arbenz. There followed a long series of brutal right wing governments, military or military-backed, that rolled back all the Arevalo-Arbenz reforms and did their best to crush resistance from unions, indigenous people, peasants and the left. The total death toll was around 200,000 people. One of the worst dictators, General Efrain Rios-Montt, heavily supported by the Reagan administration, carried out a genocidal campaign against the indigenous population.

Rios-Montt was overthrown in 1983, and in 1996 the Guatemalan government signed a peace agreement with leftist insurgents, but the country has remained very violent and its indigenous population has remained poor. During the decades of military dictatorship, state security institutions were thoroughly corrupted and have been infiltrated by criminal elements. This has thwarted the development of democracy and basic social justice. For example, recent efforts to convict Rios-Montt for his crimes of genocide have been foiled by shady machinations within the judiciary. The current president, Otto Perez Molina, is a military man who has been accused of violations of human rights during the Rios-Montt presidency. So Guatemala's murder rate, especially of women, remains sky high, its people, except for a few super rich landowners and businessmen, remain poor, and its indigenous population remains oppressed. This is why Guatemalan indigenous and Latino children show up at the U.S.-Mexico border.

What about Honduras? The country has the highest murder rate in the world, but it was not always so. Honduras has been poor for a long time, but under former President Manuel Zelaya, who was implementing policies similar to those that the Arevalo-Arbenz governments had initiated in Guatemala, things were improving. But in June 2009, Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup that had been abetted by right wing U.S. politicians, and whose resulting government was and is supported by the United States. Since the coup, there has been widespread violence against journalists, peasant and labor organizers, and gay, lesbian and transgendered people, as well as a continuous rise in crime and violence in the society. The current president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, elected in a fishy election last year, has done his best to weaken an already weak and corrupt judiciary.

El Salvador elected a center-left president, Mauricio Funes, in 2009, and a figure more to the left, former FMLN guerilla Comandante Salvador Sanchez Ceren, earlier this year. Both have tried to tackle poverty and injustice, but the obstacles have been huge. Under Funes, the sky high gang violence problem temporarily declined due to a government-facilitated gang truce, but this appears to have broken down and the violence is rising again. But let us not forget that the gang problem in El Salvador started in Los Angeles, where children of Salvadoran refugees, living in poverty and insecurity, got sucked into the already existing gang life, and then were deported back to El Salvador.

And then there is the "war against drugs," which the drugs seem to be winning. Central America and Mexico are the battlefields, but the demand is mostly in the U.S.A., whence come the weapons.

Underlying all is a regional pattern of oligarchic landowners, businesspeople and military despots, bearers of a racist, right wing ideology that approaches fascism. These people protect the interests of U.S., Canadian and other major corporations, and are the ones with whom the U.S. government and military have usually preferred to work. The U.S. has overthrown progressive governments again and again to protect this arrangement. When the workers, poor, women, youth and indigenous and Afro-Caribbean minorities break this cycle, everything will begin to change.

This is what Krauthammer and his ilk will never admit.

Photo: Relatives carry the coffin containing the remains of Gilberto Francisco Ramos Juarez, a Guatemalan boy whose decomposed body was found in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The 15-year-old Guatemalan migrant was buried in his hometown, San Jose Las Flores, Guatemala, July 12. Moises Castillo/AP

Convergence in Jacksonville to call for Marissa Alexander's freedom

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 15:02:00 +0000

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Hundreds of regional and national activists will come together in Jacksonville from Friday, July 25 through Friday, August 1 to support embattled domestic violence survivor Marissa Alexander, build awareness about domestic violence and reproductive justice, and strengthen opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing.

"STANDING OUR GROUND Against Reproductive Oppression, Gender Violence, and Mass Incarceration" is envisioned by organizers as a celebration, an exercise of civil rights, and a call for human dignity. The date marks the one year anniversary of the verdict exonerating George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin and connects to the August 1 hearing where Alexander will argue for Stand Your Ground protection. Participants are linking the call to free Marissa Alexander with Florida-based movements for justice for Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and others.

The week will feature noted speakers, educational panels, workshops, cultural events, and community outreach. An opening ceremony will launch the activities on Friday, July 25. On Friday and Saturday, the national SisterSong Reproductive Justice Institute will hold panels and training workshops. Saturday will also feature a youth assembly. Sunday is highlighted by a benefit concert for the Marissa Alexander Legal Defense Fund.

On Monday, there will be a march from the SisterSong conference to the Duval County Courthouse. Tuesday will feature a keynote discussion by University of Illinois Professor Beth Richie, author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America's Prison Nation, followed by a panel of local and national feminists and leaders in the movement for women's safety.

Wednesday will take on the issues of police brutality and wrongful imprisonment with a panel of speakers organizing on these issues. On Thursday, legal experts will conduct community training to inform people about their rights under the law. The day will end with a candlelight vigil. Throughout the week, activists will also take part in a People's Investigation where they will bring their concerns and questions to organizations and institutions of power on the local, state and national level. Times and locations are being finalized.

On Friday, August 1, participants will attend a hearing on whether Marissa Alexander can argue for immunity from prosecution under Florida's Stand Your Ground law. In 2010, Ms. Alexander fired a warning shot to stop a life-threatening attack by her estranged husband, causing no injuries. She was found guilty of aggravated assault and served two years of a mandatory 20-year sentence before a Florida appeals court overturned the guilty verdict. State Prosecutor Angela Corey has chosen to re-prosecute Alexander, this time threatening a mandatory 60-year sentence if Alexander is found guilty in the new trial currently scheduled to begin December 8.

Local and national leaders of the Free Marissa Now mobilization campaign are partnering with New Jim Crow Movement - Jacksonville, SisterSong, INCITE!, African American/Black Women's Cultural Alliance, Radical Women, Project South, Resist, Highlander Research Center, and National Congress of Black Women to organize the week of events.

National supporters of Marissa Alexander in other cities will also take action during the week to build awareness about ending domestic violence and mass incarceration, and supporting all women's right to self-defense. Participants will take part through daily live-streaming of Jacksonville events and through Facebook and Twitter updates, and a Selfies for Self-Defense campaign.

Photo: Free Marissa Now Facebook page.

Teachers unions to Education Secretary Duncan: Leave!

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 13:45:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - The American Federation of Teachers' convention has a blunt message for Obama administration Education Secretary Arne Duncan: You flunk the test of helping the nation's schools and kids, so leave.

And they're not the first to tell the former Chicago Public Schools CEO to go: Earlier in July, at its own convention in Denver, National Education Association delegates sent the same signal, telling Duncan to resign.

AFT delegates, meeting in Los Angeles on July 14, added the "leave" message to a resolution on how they will fight to improve the nation's schools while launching a national campaign against right wingers and privatizers. Just before that, they re-elected President Randi Weingarten, who has had outspoken differences with Duncan, to a new term.

NEA President-elect Lily Eskelsen-Garcia is on board, too. She told her convention delegates the week before that "no commercial, mass-produced, industrial-strength standardized factory test should ever be used as the determining factor for any student or adult." Duncan is an outspoken backer of using test results to rate, hire and fire teachers.

The last straw for AFT delegates was when Duncan cheered a California court ruling, the Vergara case, tossing out teacher tenure and its protections. The original resolution added Duncan to the list of foes of teachers. That list slammed right wingers who pushed both the California ruling and a successful U.S. Supreme Court case, Harris vs. Quinn, allowing "free riders" among home health care workers nationwide.

The Californians added the Duncan ouster demand. It says that after due process rights - which the California judge stripped from teachers there - Duncan should go, unless he passes the standards for supporting teachers and schools. The AFT resolution also says the union will launch a national campaign against "teach to the test" and to fight the schools' foes and to fight for collective bargaining rights, pointing out how that helps students and schools.

"Proponents of the Vergara and Harris cases - groups opposed to the existence of labor unions - have made clear their intentions to copycat and expand these lawsuits in courthouses and legislatures across the country," the AFT delegates said.

"These decisions are contributing to an escalating and engineered imbalance in our democracy, one where corporations and the wealthy have a dominant voice, and these decisions helped working people see these threats are real and connect the dots between the concerted efforts to silence educators, working people and unions altogether."

"Duncan has aligned with those who have undermined public education, with those who have attacked educators who dedicate their lives to working with children, and with those who have worked to divide parents and teachers," AFT continued.

"He has failed to bring parents, students, teachers and community members together to improve the quality of public education for all children, and he has promoted misguided and ineffective policies on de-professionalization, privatization and test obsession."

So the union, tongue in cheek, asked President Obama to implement "a Secretary-improvement plan" at the Education Department, and see if Duncan makes the grade. As far as AFT is concerned, he flunks.

The "Secretary-improvement plan" would have the secretary stand up for public schools, support teachers and school workers, inspire parents and the public "to join us in creating the public schools we want and deserve," and lead "in reclaiming the promise of public education."

That includes lobbying for more and more equitable education funding, changing the Bush-era No Child Left Behind education law's "'test and punish' system to a 'support and improve' model, and promote rather than question the teachers and school support staff of America," AFT delegates decided.

"Resolved, that if Secretary Duncan does not improve, and given that he has been treated fairly and his due process rights have been upheld, the Secretary of Education must resign," the resolution concluded. In a statement in D.C., Duncan brushed it off.

In addition to re-electing Weingarten, delegates re-elected Baltimore paraprofessional Loretta Johnson as Secretary-Treasurer, the union's #2 post. St. Paul, Minn., President Mary Cathryn Ricker will succeed the retiring Executive Vice President, Francine Lawrence, as #3.

Photo: AFT Facebook page.

Elizabeth Warren stumps for Tennant in West Virginia

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 16:57:00 +0000

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.V. -- Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., stopped here yesterday to campaign for Natalie Tennant's bid to succeed retiring Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller. Ms. Tennant is currently Secretary of State and is in a tight race with outgoing Republican Congresswoman Shelly Moore Capito for the seat. The race could be a decisive one in this year's national battle for control of the U.S. Senate.

Over 500 people (I stopped counting at 320 and barely half the room) packed in the standing-room-only Grand Ballroom of the Clarion Hotel and listened as Ms. Tennant gave a spirited stump speech. Shepherdstown veterans said they had not seen such a turnout in this town of 1800 since Clinton brought the Middle East peace talks to nearby Camp David, and a local public meeting was held.

Tennant's speech sought to contrast her campaign with Ms. Capito's on equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage, financial reform to protect working families, student debt relief, education policy and protecting the jobs, retirement and healthcare of West Virginia miners and natural gas workers.

On all these questions she followed a tried and often true maxim of Senator Robert Byrd: "99 percent of politics is constituent service - that is how most voters evaluate representation." Thus, on every question, Ms. Tennant positioned her role as bringing home the bacon and beans.

While Ms. Tennant warmed to the huge crowd and national press, most knew that something was afoot. Elizabeth Warren's ostensible role was to turnout the progressive West Virginia Democratic vote (concentrated in the Eastern Panhandle where coal is not part of the economy) for Ms. Tennant, despite some aversion to Ms. Tennant's strong support of the coal industry, and her full cooperation in the coal industry's anti-Obama, anti-EPA, "war on anyone who is against coal" campaigns.

Senator Warren performed this task in a striking, but business-like manner by simply highlighting the basic human and democratic values at stake in the national debates over inequality, education and jobs. The protection of those values is fundamental to all issues, including national unity on addressing climate change. She convinced me. I will support Natalie Tennant now, whereas I was holding my nose before.

Senator Warren characterizes what others call her rising "rock star" public persona as more like a lightening bolt from another world on an unsuspecting, plain spoken, ordinary American of modest means who fate placed in a fortuitous position to exercise true citizenship. Duty called her to raise her voice against the massive financial rip offs of recent decades. As an economics professor at Harvard specializing in bankruptcies, she was in a unique, expert position to play a key role in the financial reforms that eventually passed Congress after the 2008 crisis.

The reason why Elizabeth Warren is a rock star, however, is much more than a matter of expertise in finance. It's because of her demonstrated integrity under fire; it's because of her refusal to play the "Washington insiders" game where you have access to powerful people as long as you don't criticize other insiders.

Instead, she kept telling the truth about the financial crisis and its causes. And she did so without being mean-spirited in the face of both administration blandishments and vicious smear tactics by Republican spitball artists. She was doing it again in big red, white and blue colors yesterday. She conveys a trust and connection with ordinary people that Hillary Clinton, the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, will have difficulty matching.

There was no question that the crowd was huge because some are sensing that this progressive favorite and so far steadfastly undeclared candidate for president has the biography, the smarts, the practicality combined with straight dealing, and the values, to lead not only the progressives but the vast center of the country as well . She is "not running," despite some calls of "Thank you, Madame President." But lightning can strike twice.

Photo: Natalie Tennant's Facebook page.

Jose Antonio Vargas, immigrant rights leader, arrested by border patrol

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 15:13:00 +0000

MCALLEN, Texas - One of the best-known advocates for the immigrant rights movement, the undocumented Filipino immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas, was detained this morning at a Border Patrol checkpoint in the airport here before he could get to his scheduled plane to Houston.

He was reportedly handcuffed and taken for processing to the McAllen Border Patrol station, which has been overflowing this month with many of the undocumented immigrants who are part of the steady stream of people coming over the Mexico-U.S. border from Central America.

A blurry photograph sent to the press showed Vargas in the McAllen airport, being handcuffed by a Border Patrol agent.

Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist came to McAllen to participate in a press conference, a vigil and a march sponsored by United We Dream, an undocumented youth organization. He had no intention of going through any border crossing point in either direction, he said. He insisted he never intended to be detained.

"I didn't even think twice about it," Vargas said, when he accepted the invitation by United We Dream to participate in the protests.

McAllen, because of its proximity to the border, has Border Patrol checkpoints at its airport and major roadways.

Vargas is not stopped at regular airport checkpoints because Transportation Security Administration officials check his passport, not his immigration status.

He twittered that he did not know he would be required to go through a Border Patrol check to leave the Rio Grande Valley. Vargas travels on a valid Filipino passport, but it has no current United States visa stamped into it.

He has lived in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant since he was 12.

Vargas was formerly a reporter for the Washington Post, where he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage in 2008. He announced his immigration status in the New York Times Magazine in 2011.

Tania Chavez, who is with the United We Dream Minority Affairs Council, said Vargas was in Texas this past weekend in solidarity with unaccompanied children who cross the Texas border fleeing for their lives.

"He didn't know that Border Patrol checkpoints are all around this area and also at the airport, which means in order to leave, he had to risk arrest and detention.

"That's why we're marching to the airport with Jose to stand with him and families who live on the border," she said.

Chavez said the challenges facing Vargas are ones that many immigrants are facing daily.

"Jose's current situation is our reality every day," she said. "For many undocumented immigrants who live near the border, we can't return to our home countries, and can't travel outside of a 100-mile radius in our home sate of Texas. Were trapped inside a cage."

Chavez was 14 when she came to Texas. She went on to eighth grade, high school in three years and then college. "Today I have two masters degrees," she said, "but I don't qualify for DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]." (She has "aged out" of the group eligible for relief under the program the President signed for young people who came as children. Vargas is not covered by this program for the same reason.)

The solution, Chavez said, is to expand DACA, "so people along the border can be integrated into the United States and reunited with their families."

John Wojcik contributed to this story.

Editor's note: United We Dream and other sources have just reported:

Jose Antonio Vargas released from Border Patrol Station in McAllen; immigrant families are still trapped at the border.

Victory for Al-Arian but justice still denied

Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:41:00 +0000

All criminal charges were dropped against Palestinian leader, Dr. Sami Al-Arian on June 27, a ruling greeted by those who have fought for nearly two decades to free him.

While hailing the victory, those who have defended the college professor assailed the Federal prosecutors for pushing for his instant deportation. Dr. Al-Arian was facing criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify before a grand jury in a case unrelated to his own. Forcing him to testify violated the terms of his plea agreement.

John Streater, a retired Tampa school teacher, who worked in defense of Al-Arian told the World, "This is a huge victory but it is also a mixed thing. The future is undecided." Deporting Al-Arian is a vicious act of revenge that runs counter to the decision to drop all charges, Streater said.

"Think of the ordeal this family went through. Al-Arian spent months and months in solitary confinement. He was bumped around from Florida to Virginia." He almost died from a 62-day hunger strike.

He pointed out that Al-Arian had been a highly respected university professor and community activist. Suddenly he was stripped of his job and thrown in prison under the U.S.A. Patriot Act with smear attacks that he was a "terrorist" sympathizer. The Al-Arian case became the centerpiece of President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism."

Added Streater, "Al-Arian and his family stood strong. He did not cave when Ashcroft leveled those charges at him."

Streater and his wife, Priss, are personal friends of the Al-Arian family. While visiting Washington, D.C. in March 2013, they met with Sami and Nahla over coffee. "He was in much better condition than he had been since his arrest," Streater said. "He was living at his daughter's apartment in Washington, free to move around although he was wearing an ankle bracelet. But the charges were still pending against him. Now those charges have been dropped."

In Dec. 2005, a 12-member jury in Tampa, refused to convict Al-Arian of any of the 51 charges filed against him. The jury found him innocent of eight criminal charges including that he belonged to a "front group" that funneled contributions to "terrorists" in Palestine.

But the jury deadlocked when two of the jurors refused to go along with the majority in acquitting Al Arian and three co-defendants on lesser charges. The Justice Department used that loophole to continue the ruthless persecution in flagrant violation of the spirit of the Tampa jury's verdict.

Al-Arian endured five years in which his case fell into legal limbo over his refusal to testify before the grand jury. Then came the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge, Anthony Trenga. He signed an order to accept the government's motion, ending close to two decades of repression against Al-Arian.

"This ruling was a bolt from the blue," said Mel Underbakke, Director of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms. She added, "His arrest and trial was a great injustice in the first place so they should have dropped the charges long ago." Underbakke, based on Tampa, Florida, played a major role in promoting the mass viewing of a Norwegian film, "The U.S.A. vs. Al-Arian."

Streater remembered the premier showing of that film in Tampa. "We packed the theater and had an excellent panel discussion. There was a strong feeling in the grassroots of Tampa that this treatment of Sami Al-Arian was wrong."

The U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) also hailed the victory and congratulated Al-Arian, his family and his legal defense team "for this huge victory."

The Palestinian group added, "The case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian is one of the most egregious examples of the U.S. government's criminal post-911 policy against our community and its leaders and we stand in support and solidarity with Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashgar and all other political prisoners across the country."

Leila Taha leader of the Chicago chapter of USPCN said victory was won "not only with a great legal team but also with strong community organizing and consistent pressure on the government."

Photo: Still from film USA vs. Al-Aria, Nahla Al-Arian speaking to reporters.

NEA’s Eskelsen-García promises tougher line on public school critics

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 14:42:00 +0000

DENVER (PAI)--The nation's largest teachers union, the 3-million-member National Education Association, will take a tougher, more outspoken line defending teachers and their students against critics - including Education Secretary Arne Duncan - who use test results as the sole standard to rate teachers, NEA's incoming president, Lily Eskelsen- García, says.

And the NEA convention's 9,000 delegates who elected her in Denver in early July also voted overwhelmingly to have the group launch a national campaign against what NEA Executive Vice President-elect Rebecca Pringle calls the "toxic" testing system.

"People who don't know what they're talking about are talking about increasing the use of commercial standardized tests in high-stakes decisions about students and about educators...when all the evidence that can be gathered shows that it is corrupting what it means to teach and what it means to learn," Eskelsen-García told NEA's convention.

Eskelsen-Garcia, now NEA's Executive Vice President and an elementary teacher from Utah, will succeed Phoenix teacher Dennis Van Roekel on Sept. 1, and Pringle will succeed Eskelsen-Garcia. Van Roekel was term-limited to six years in the job.

But some teachers also criticized him for being not forceful enough in pushing back against public school foes. One group of teachers protested by forming their own independent alternative, the Badass Education Association. And several months ago, Massachusetts NEA members ousted their president in favor of a more outspoken teacher.

The other teachers union, the 1.5-million member American Federation of Teachers, opens its convention on July 14 in Los Angeles. AFT President Randi Weingarten has been much more critical of Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan, especially when Duncan cheered a recent California court ruling invalidating the state's teacher tenure and due process laws. NEA and AFT California affiliates defended those laws in court.

Eskelsen-Garcia told the NEA delegates that she wants to give teachers "a platform to fight for what is best for their students." She added: "We know what is at stake and it is why we are who we are. It is why we are fearless and why we will not be silent when people who for their own profit and political posture subvert words like 'reform' or 'accountability.'

"For us, one thing is clear, before anything is going to get better: It's the Testing, Stupid. Better yet, it's the stupid testing," she said. She called the accountability system "phony" and said it hurt students and demeans teachers. Duncan, Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools before becoming Education Secretary, is an outspoken proponent of using tests to measure teacher effectiveness - and to hire and fire them.

"No commercial, mass-produced, industrial-strength standardized factory test should ever be used as the determining factor for any student or adult," Eskelsen-Garcia retorted. Schools, she added, must return to "personalized and humanized instruction by giving authority to caring, competent professionals," she declared.

Photo: NEA President-Elect Lily Eskelsen García addresses the 2014 NEA Representative Assembly.

Labor movement demands immediate relief for 11 million immigrants

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 13:29:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The nation's largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, launched an unprecedented national petition campaign yesterday demanding that President Obama take administrative action to remove the threat of deportation hanging over some 11 million immigrants.

The petition, which is available on the federation's website, was sent to more than 50 member unions and hundreds of allied organizations, according to the AFL-CIO.

Accompanying the petition was a message by the AFL-CIO's president, Richard Trumka, to the working families of the nation. "When I think about immigration, I thing about boats," he said. "I think about boats coming to America long ago, filled with hopeful workers in search of a better life."

In a reference to right wingers at the border who have blocked busloads of children and to tea party and GOP efforts to use immigrants as fodder for political hate campaigns, Trumka continued: "And I think about what those boats would look like now. They'd be turned in the other direction, deporting those hopeful workers and separating our families. Because America doesn't welcome her children now - our broken patchwork of policies turns them away."

Supporters of administrative action note that in 2012 President Obama was able to stop the deportation of hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults under the program known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The idea is that a program like DACA, but only bigger, would allow the millions more of undocumented immigrants to work legally in the U.S. without having to fear expulsion from the country.

In making his argument for administrative action Trumka hit hard at the disastrous impact of U.S. immigration policy on families.

"Too many families have been separated because of our broken immigration system," he declared. "Tragically, this heartbreak happens every day because Congress had failed to act on a commonsense immigration process."

Trumka made it clear that the federation has launched the petition campaign for administrative action by the President because the AFL-CIO does not expect that Republicans in the House will ever be serious about getting anything done on immigration reform.

"The crisis at worksites around the country and in our neighborhoods continues and just can't wait any longer," he said.

"It is downright silly to hold out hope that House Republicans will suddenly rediscover their hearts and realize it's important to have a values-based immigration system."

Trumka shared what he said were his words with President Obama as he urged the president to take administrative action.

"I told the President this is the right thing to do. Every possible step that could be taken should be taken."

The federation has laid out precisely what it believes those steps should be in a memorandum to the Department of Homeland Security.

Trumka explained why unions see the fight for immigration reform as critically important for the labor movement.

"The labor movement can never stand by when workers are mistreated," he said. "We don't stand by when immigrant workers aren't paid fair wages on the construction site, or when employers use shady tactics to fire hotel workers based on their immigration status when they stand up for their rights."

Trumka's remarks reflected the growing willingness in the labor movement to confront those anti-immigrant voices that say immigrants take away American jobs.

"We stand up for immigrant rights because there are jobs on the table," Trumka said. "Like the 800,000 new jobs that would be created by immigration reform, we fight like hell for every single one.

"That's what immigration is all about. It's about work," Trumka said. "About making a better life. And about knowing that if you can just work hard at a good job, your life will be better."

Photo: AFL-CIO website.

Dallas opts to take immigrant children

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 16:38:00 +0000

DALLAS - Up to 2,000 immigrant children will be cared for in Dallas under a plan announced by County Judge Clay Jenkins at the Texas Democratic Party Convention June 28. Federal dollars would pay for the plan. Desperate Central American children, traveling alone, fleeing stunning poverty and violence, have fled into the United States. Around 50,000 of them are in temporary housing around the Texas/Mexico border.

Since Jenkins aired his plan, different letters to editors have appeared in the Dallas newspaper. Some of them would brutally toss the children back across the Mexican border or return them to war-torn Central America. Some say that Judge Jenkins is cynically using the children as an election-year ploy to enhance his re-election effort. Others see the humanitarian side of the proposal.

Union people aren't a bit surprised to see Jenkins step out from the crowd on a controversial issue. Since he was elected to the county's highest office four years ago, Jenkins has consistently stood up for poor and working people. When American Airlines employees desperately needed help, for example, Jenkins joined them on their picket lines. Most recently, Jenkins has distinguished himself by pushing for higher wages for all county employees, including those who are contract labor.

Photo: Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins speaks to reporters at a 2012 rally supporting American Airlines workers. Jim Lane/PW

U.S. trade policy linked to crisis at the border

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 15:03:00 +0000

The mass migration of children from Central America has been at the center of a political firestorm over the past few weeks. The mainstream media has run dozens of stories blaming families, especially mothers, for sending or bringing their children north from Central America. The president himself lectured them, as though they were simply bad parents. "Do not send your children to the borders," Obama said last week. "If they do make it, they'll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it."

Meanwhile, the story is being manipulated by the tea party and conservative Republicans to attack Obama's executive action deferring the deportation of young people, along with any possibility he might expand it, the demand of many immigrant rights advocates. More broadly, the Right wants to shut down any immigration reform that includes legalization, and instead is gunning for harsher enforcement measures. Even Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command, has sought to frame migration as a national security threat, calling it a "crime-terror convergence," and describing it as "an incredibly efficient network along which anything - hundreds of tons of drugs, people, terrorists, potentially weapons of mass destruction or children - can travel, so long as they can pay the fare."

This push for greater enforcement ignores the real reasons families take the desperate measure of leaving home and trying to cross the border. Media coverage focuses on gang violence in Central America, as though it was spontaneous and unrelated to a history of U.S.-promoted wars and a policy of mass deportations.

History

U.S. foreign and immigration policy is responsible for much of the pressure causing this flow of people from Central America. These eight facts, ignored by the mainstream press and the president, document that culpability, and point out the need for change.

1. There is no "lax enforcement" on the U.S./Mexico border. There are over 20,000 members of the Border Patrol, the largest number in history. We have walls and a system of detention centers that didn't exist just 15 years ago. Now more than 350,000 people spend some time in an immigrant detention center every year. The U.S. spends more on immigration enforcement than all other enforcement activities of the federal government combined, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The growing numbers of people in detention, young people as well as families and adults, is being used as a pretext by the anti-immigrant lobby in Washington, including the tea party and the Border Patrol itself, for demanding increases in the budget for enforcement. The Obama administration has given way before this pressure.

2. The migration of children and families didn't just start recently. It has been going on for a long time, although the numbers are increasing. The tide of migration from Central America goes back to wars that the U.S. promoted in the 1980s, in which we armed the forces, governments or contras, who were most opposed to progressive social change. Two million Salvadorans alone came to the U.S. during the late 1970s and 80s, to say nothing of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. Whole families migrated, but so did parts of families, leaving loved ones behind with the hope that some day they'd be reunited.

3. The recent increase in the numbers of migrants is not just a response to gang violence, although this is virtually the only reason given in U.S. media coverage. Growing migration is as much or more a consequence of the increasing economic crisis for rural people in Central America and Mexico, as well as the failure of those economies to produce jobs. People are leaving because they can't survive where they are.

4. The failure of Central America's economies is mostly due to the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements and their accompanying economic changes, including privatization of businesses, the displacement of communities by foreign mining projects and cuts in the social budget. The treaties allowed huge U.S. corporations to dump corn and other agricultural products in Mexico and Central America, forcing rural families off their lands when they could not compete.

5. When governments or people have resisted NAFTA and CAFTA, the United States has threatened reprisals. Right-wing Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) put forward a measure in 2004 to cut off the flow of remittances (money sent back to Salvadoran families from family members working in the U.S.) if people voted for a leftwing party, the FMLN, in El Salvador's national elections. Otto Reich, a violently anti-communist Cuban who was Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said the U.S. government was "concerned about the impact that an FMLN victory could have on the commercial, economic, and migration-related relations of the U.S. with El Salvador." Salvadoran papers were full of the threat, especially those on the right, and the FMLN lost. In 2009 a tiny wealthy elite in Honduras overthrew President Manuel Zelaya because he raised the minimum wage, gave subsidies to small farmers, cut interest rates and instituted free education. The Obama administration gave a de facto approval to the coup regime that followed. If social and political change had taken place in Honduras, we would see far fewer Hondurans trying to come to the U.S.

6. Gang violence in Central America has a U.S. origin. Over the past two decades, young people from Central America have arrived in L.A. and big U.S. cities, where many were recruited into gangs, a story eloquently told by photographer Donna De Cesare in the recent book Unsettled/Desasociego. The Maratrucha Salvadoreña gang, which today's newspaper stories hold responsible for the violence driving people from El Salvador, was organized in Los Angeles, not in Central America. U.S. law enforcement and immigration authorities responded to the rise of gang activity here with a huge program of deportations. Most of the kids in gangs in Central America were originally deportees from the U.S. The U.S. has been deporting 400,000 people per year, more than any other period since the Cold War.

7. And in Central America, U.S. policy has led to the growth of gang violence. In El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, U.S. law enforcement assistance pressured local law enforcement to adopt a "mano dura" or hardline approach to gang members, leading to the incarceration of many young people deported from the U.S. almost as soon as they arrived. Prisons became schools for gang recruitment. El Salvador, with a leftwing FMLN government, at least has a commitment to a policy of jobs and economic development to take young people off the street, and to providing an alternative to migration. Even there, conservative police and military forces continue to support heavy enforcement. In Guatemala and Honduras, the U.S. is supporting very rightwing governments who only use a heavy enforcement approach. While punishing deportees and condemning migration, these two governments actually use the migration of people to the U.S. as a source of remittances to keep their economies afloat.

8. Kids looking for families here are looking for those who were already displaced by war and economic crisis. The separation of families is a cause of much of the current migration of young people. Young people fleeing the violence are reacting to the consequences of policies for which the U.S. government is largely responsible, in the only way open to them.

Economic desperation

Two and three years ago we were hearing from the Pew Hispanic Trust and other sources that migration had "leveled off." No one is bothering to claim that anymore. Migration hasn't stopped because the forces causing it are more powerful than ever.

More enforcement will not deal with the causes of the migration from Central America. In fact, the deportation of more people back to their countries of origin will increase joblessness and economic desperation. This is the largest factor causing people to leave. Violence, which feeds on that desperation, will increase as well.

President Obama has proposed increasing the enforcement budget by $3.7 billion. He has called for suspending a law passed in 2008, which requires minors to be transferred out of detention to centers where they can locate family members to care for them. He instead proposes to deport them more rapidly. Both ideas will cause more pain, violate basic rights and moral principles, and fail completely to stop migration.

NY Times writer Carl Hulse writes that the law transferring minors out of detention centers "is at the root of the potentially calamitous flow of unaccompanied minors to the nation's southern border." This report and others like it not only ignore history and paint a false picture of the reasons for migration, but provide the rationale for increased enforcement.

New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez picked up the cue, declaring "we must attack this problem from a foreign policy perspective, a humanitarian perspective, a criminal perspective, immigration perspective, and a national security perspective." He called for increasing funding for the U.S. military's Southern Command and the State Department's Central American Regional Security Initiative. Giving millions of dollars to some of the most violent and rightwing militaries in the western hemisphere, however, is a step back towards the military intervention policy that set the wave of forced migration into motion to begin with.

Changes needed

Instead, we need to help families reunite, treat immigrants with respect, and change the policies the U.S. has implemented in Central America, Mexico and elsewhere that have led to massive, forced migration. The two most effective measures would be ending the administration's mass detention and deportation program, and ending the free trade economic and interventionist military policies that are causing such desperation in the countries these children and families are fleeing.

Photo: In front of Oakland's Federal Building young people from immigrant youth groups protest against the detention and deportation of young migrants and families on the U.S. border, and especially against President Obama's decision to increase border enforcement and deport them more quickly. David Bacon

“We are the mayor:” Newark inaugurates new mayor

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 14:44:00 +0000

A large and enthusiastic Newark crowd celebrated the inauguration of its 40th mayor, Ras Baraka, last week at the city's New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Gathered in the blazing heat, many sported t-shirts that read in bold and all caps lettering, "I AM THE MAYOR" - echoing the Baraka campaign's main slogan, "When I become mayor, we become mayor."

As Baraka took the oath of office, the audience joined him in reciting it in a collective pledge of governance. "It's a big deal," said one enthusiastic supporter afterward. "Ras is a consistent progressive."

Before addressing the crowd, Baraka introduced Newark's new youth mayor Lucy Lopez, a sophomore at Essex Community College. The youth mayor is tasked with involving young people in civic affairs and giving voice to their vital concerns.

Outspent by over $1 million, Baraka's message of believing in Newark's Broad Street not Wall Street won on Election Day. His inaugural address confirmed and illustrated the campaign's vision and now the administration's mandate of making the city work for all. "Years from now when we look back on this day, let us say this was the day that we all decided to fight back... Let us say this is the day we did it together, that we sacrificed our right now for a better tomorrow."

Plagued by over 100 murders last year alone, a budget deficit topping $90 million, state control of the city's public schools and an unemployment rate twice that of the rest of the state, the mayor elect addressed the problems but didn't stop there, declaring that Newark needed "A mayor that puts his city first. A mayor that never forgets how he got here. Yeah! We need a mayor that's radical."

Baraka pulled no punches pushing back on the One Percent but wasted no breath beating his chest in self-serving sectarianism. Instead he extended a hand in friendship to all residents calling for broader participation in the people's coalition and public life. He explained, "It's easy to hate crime. But we all have to hate poverty the same way, hopelessness, and cynicism the same way, unemployment and illiteracy the same way, disease and poor health the same way."

Baraka went on to invite those who shared these values to buy a home, open a business and invest in a city that supports its working families.

Mayor Baraka did not criticize former mayor, Senator Corey Booker or the recently reappointed, superintendent of public schools Cami Anderson for their role in assisting the corporate drive to dismantle and privatize Newark's public education system.

Although Booker was given no formal speaking role the audience erupted in boos each time he was recognized from the podium. When both Baraka and Booker served on Newark's city council, a clear pattern emerged with one fighting for the city and the other using it as a stepping stone for corporate interests.

Mayor Baraka singled out Governor Chris Christie in the ongoing struggle for local control of the city's schools. "We have a bitter struggle over our schools and a battle over who should lead them. He continued, "Some have chosen dogma over families, expediency over democracy, and even real estate over education."

SEIU 1199 New Jersey President Millie Silva summed up the feeling of many, "My people need to be at the table as much as anyone who invests in the city or has other interests in the city... And he is creating space for people to come express their views."

Veteran activists of the black freedom movement said out loud, "We've lost Chokwe (the late mayor of Jackson, Mississippi) but we've won Ras."

It wasn't uncommon to hear "Amiri is with us." But most powerful of all is the many generations, ethnicities, and races - male and female, gay and straight - ready to rebuild Newark from the bottom up, heeding Ras' call to "keep pushing."

Photo: Crowd cheers Ras Baraka's inauguration. Mel Evans/AP