People Before Profit blog

Supreme racism tramples democracy in voting rights

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:21:00 +0000

The 30-year project of the Republicans and ultra-conservatives to crush civil rights took a qualitative leap forward when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a 5-4 decision announced on June 25.

This is the 50th anniversary year of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which the Rev. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Outrageously, Chief Justice John Roberts trampled the legacy of King and the civil rights movement by citing Selma, Ala., and Philadelphia, Miss., where blood was spilled to uphold the right to vote, in his majority opinion discarding a crucial section of the Voting Rights.

The court's majority lied to America about both the past and the present, presenting a mythology of a "post-racial" society and scolding Congress for voting by large bipartisan majorities in 2006 to reauthorize the law. The ruling claimed that the nine Southern states and numerous counties that the law singles out for special attention had changed and therefore don't need to be "precleared" by the Department of Justice before changing any voting law, district or procedure. The reality, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in her dissent, is that whatever positive changes have happened in those states is in part because of the existence of the Voting Rights Act. In fact, recent data has shown that more than 1,000 attempts to change voting laws were either blocked or withdrawn because they violated the Voting Rights Act.

Throwing out the law's provisions, Ginsburg said, makes as much sense as throwing away an umbrella because it keeps you dry. In other words, when a law works, you do not get rid of it.

Republicans, hell-bent on suppressing the vote, have continued to create new schemes to deny Americans their basic right of self-government. Gerrymandering, voter ID laws, restrictions on voter registration drives, disenfranchisement of ex-felons, purging of voter lists, impossibly confusing ballots that create chaos and long lines at the polls - all these are not of the past. These are the new poll taxes aimed at Black, Latinos, Native and Asian Americans, immigrants, college students, seniors and low-income voters.

The Voting Rights Act was won after massive struggles to break the back of Jim Crow racism and segregation of African Americans. But the law also expanded democracy for all. It afforded multiple protections for all voters, such as providing ballots and instructions in Spanish, Chinese or other languages, and special provisions for senior and disabled voters.

On Aug. 24, people will gather at the Lincoln Memorial to "realize" King's freedom dream. This 50th Anniversary March on Washington takes on additional importance given the Supreme Court's evisceration of the law won by struggle and sacrifice.

Organizations like ColorOfChange and the Advancement Project are calling for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. Congress - even in its dysfunctional state - needs to be pressured to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act with an expanded and updated map of districts and states requiring "preclearance." But most importantly, this court decision should serve as a wakeup call for mass mobilization for the 2014 midterm elections - to take Congress and statehouses out of the hands of tea party extremists.

Photo: The "Youths of Selma" photograph by Bruce Davidson became a U.S. postage stamp in 2005, (via USPS)

Paula Deen shows racism has not gone away

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:37:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks Paula Deen has gone from so-called celebrity chef to national pariah - and rightfully so.

The admitted use of the "n word", the desire to see a plantation-style wedding and the Lisa T. Jackson lawsuit - filed against Deen and her brother accusing them of sexual discrimination and racism at a Deen-owned restaurant - alone justify Deen's pariah status.

Under pressure, she has issued public apologies of sorts. But Deen has refused to honestly acknowledge her words and actions. Instead she claims the accusations are "horrible, horrible lies" perpetrated by "someone evil out there" who wants what she has.

Deen's response to the scandal has verged on the ridiculous at times. For example, she claims to only be "prejudiced against ... thieves and liars" - apparently she means the people bringing the accusations against her.

She attempted to claim the mantle of righteous indignation when she said, "If there's anyone out there that has never said something that they wish they could take back, if you're out there, please pick up that stone and throw it so hard at my head that it kills me."

While we could speculate that Deen may have had a complete break with reality, her personal mental health isn't the main issue here. Her denial of racism is. It serves to highlight the insidious nature of oppression in today's society, as people like Deen not only deny their racism, but also claim to be the victim.

That a celebrity with a TV show, multi-million-dollar endorsement deals, recipe books, brand-name cookware, restaurants, etc., can claim to be a victim while being so successful for so long only serves to illustrate the point that racism today is different from Jim Crow "legal" racism.

Racism today is hidden, denied, and treated like a thing of the past. In Deen's mind the "South is almost less prejudiced [than the North], because black folks played such an integral part in our lives. They were like our family."

The nostalgia Deen has for this bygone way of life, this bygone era, is further proof of her racism, even if it is unconscious racism, as the South she imagines so dearly was a society based on lynch law and slavery, a society where African Americans were seen as second class citizens, servants and slaves to be bought and sold.

Deen is oblivious to or completely ignores the structures of racism, designed to institutionalized and perpetuate the continued exploitation and subjugation of people of color. She refuses to see how her comments and actions - as a well-known celebrity - reinforce those structures of oppression.

To their credit a number of endorsers - including the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Caesars Entertainment Corp. and Walmart - have severed ties with Deen. While I can only speculate, in my opinion their actions have more to do with money concerns than with a sincere commitment to anti-racism.

Regardless, the public outcry against Deen is heartening, as it wasn't so long ago in our nation's history that celebrities could make similar comments with little or no public scrutiny, with little or no fear of losing their jobs.

Troubling, however, is the fact that some fans have flocked to Deen's restaurants in support, and advance orders for her new book have surged amidst the scandal. Apparently, some of Deen's fans see her as a victim, too.

While the final outcome to this scandal remains to be seen, I am optimistic that the controversy surrounding Deen will serve to shed new light on our nation's racist history and the insidious nature of racism today.

Paula Deen's comments and actions, the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act and the unfolding court hearing of the Trayvon Martin murder case are all reasons to pause and recommit ourselves to the struggle against racism in all its forms, the insidious and the obvious.

Photo: Paula Deen is a walking Smithfield Foods ad, at the Bristol, Tenn., Motor Speedway in 2007. Bristol Motor Speedway & Dragway CC 2.0

Ingredients for a movement that can transform our country

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 15:33:00 +0000

I have written before that the people's movement that is now emerging doesn't yet possess the transformative power of the movement of the 1930s. That movement set in motion an era of broad, deep-going, democratic, anti-corporate restructuring of our political and economic institutions - and also changed the thinking of tens of milliions.

But what today's movement does possess is the potential to develop in that direction. All of which begs the question:

How do we accelerate this transition from a movement with transformative potential to a movement with transformative power and capacity?

Here are a few thoughts:

* Contrary to what some on the left think, the starting point of transformative politics isn't political desires and wish list, but a sober and concrete assessment of the balance of class and social forces on the ground, not least of which is the political consciousness of the majority of working-class people and what they are ready to fight for.

And by this measure, a movement with transformative hopes must be up to its ears in the struggle for jobs, a higher minimum wage, immigration reform, gun control, infrastructure renewal, abortion rights, protecting the climate, preserving earned-benefit programs, marriage equality, voting rights, saving public education, reversing the sequester, winning a federal budget favoring people's needs, cutting the military budget, and many more issues at the federal, state and local level.

It should also be an energetic part of the struggle to give the Republican Party a licking in next year's congressional elections. Defeating right-wing extremist candidates is the key link in moving the whole chain of struggle forward. It will take an expansive coalition of voters, including independents, centrists and even some moderate Republicans.

Far from a diversion, these democratic struggles to protect, extend and deepen political, economic and social reforms and change the balance of forces in our nation's capital and beyond are the incubator of a movement that possesses the necessary unity, understanding and capacity to effect more basic changes, which I will come back to below.

I realize that many people feel frustrated with the Democratic Party. Who doesn't?

In the past 30 years the top layers of the Democratic Party have not fundamentally resisted the main direction of neoliberalism - that is, the supremacy of capitalist markets, deregulation, financialization, the pruning of government's role, and an economics that redistributes wealth upward.

In fact, at many important turning points, Democratic Party leaders have brokered deals and greased the skids for neoliberal policies.

It was Bill Clinton who campaigned for NAFTA, squeezed the heart out of the safety net welfare program, lobbied hard for bank deregulation, and famously said, "The era of big government is over."

At the same time, the Democratic Party has been a necessary, albeit inconsistent, component (at this stage of struggle) of the broad "small d" democratic coalition blocking the imposition of some of the worst features of the extreme right's agenda, not to mention its more ambitious effort to gain unchallenged dominance over the federal government, thereby enabling the right to impose an authoritarian and austere form of capitalism on the American people.

Moreover, since 2008 the Obama administration has advanced many positive reform initiatives which the movement would be foolish not to welcome and support - the latest of which is the administration's new efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Finally, the mass base of the Democratic Party includes major sections of the people's movement and a substantial layer of progressive elected representatives who, while not completely happy with the centrist positions of its top leaders, are still not ready to bid goodbye and join a new political/electoral party.

In these circumstances, it would be foolhardy to refuse in advance to cooperate with the Democratic Party as a whole or sections of it under any conditions. That would be a prescription for marginalization.

Nor would it bring the movement any closer to building a new political vehicle that consistently speaks for a broad array of people and organizations who feel the crushing weight of the corporate class and its political sponsors. In fact, it would move its realization further away.

* Vital to building a transformative movement is an understanding of which social forces have to be brought together for progressive and radical change. Not any kind of movement can make fundamental change; it takes more than the left, more than progressives, more than radicalized youth. A transformative movement will only materialize to the extent that it is able to attract the working class and its organized sector, people of color, women and youth into its center.

New movements like Occupy can have a dramatic impact on the political discourse of the country and stimulate a surge of activity, but to see them as the hub of a broader movement with progressive and radical aspirations, as some did, betrays any understanding of the power relationships in capitalist society.

* A commitment to participate in every arena of struggle, flexible tactics, a readiness to employ various forms of struggle, and robust use of social media are imperative. The allergy that some on the left display toward electoral forms of struggle - sometimes dismissively called "electoralism" - is wrongheaded. As I see it, a movement that entertains transformative objectives will leave a larger and larger and increasingly independent electoral footprint on the political landscape going forward.

* A constant struggle for unity in all its forms is an overriding task. At its core is the fight against racism, male supremacy, nativism, homophobia and other forms of inequality and oppression.

The search for common ground and a common program of action is not at loggerheads with the fight for equality. In fact, the common ground will be wider, deeper and more durable to the degree that the broader movement vigorously fights for equality in all its forms.

In recent decades vast political, economic, social and demographic transformations have occurred, but the fight for full racial equality retains its overarching importance. And white people and white workers in their own interests should be in the middle of this fight.

* The revitalization of the movement's own political and organizational capacities to reach, mobilize, and unite millions is an essential part of the mix. For a number of years people's organizations and the left - all of which are too small and not yet fully attuned to the times in which we live (and I include the Communist Party here) - have been exploring new ways of thinking and organizing in order to expand their size, influence, and power. Some successes have been achieved no doubt, but this process of renewal and growth has a still considerable distance to go.

* A vision of deep-going democratization (radical reforms) of our economic and political institutions has to be combined with small bore reform struggles. In this era of economic stagnation, multiple crises and shrinking democracy, the reforms applied in the post-World-War-II period no longer suffice. What is needed is a program that breathes new life into our democracy and challenges the logic, profits, prerogatives and growth imperative of corporate capitalism. Among other things, some public ownership is in order at the level of the commanding heights of economy (for example, the financial sector) and an expansion of worker/locally owned and operated businesses.

* A willingness to challenge the harmful growth of the coercive powers of the state and the military-industrial complex with its far-flung network of bases, both of which are rationalized in the name of fighting the "war on terror," can't be sidestepped.

* Transforming the economy along sustainable lines and make the world a habitable for human beings and other species is an existential imperative. In the words of the notable climate scientist James Hansen, we are facing a "planetary emergency."

* "Keep Hope Alive." The three-decades-old neoliberal corporate offensive, ramrodded first of all by right-wing extremism, galvanized resistance. But it also crushed the hopes of countless numbers of people in the possibility of social change. Thus a task of a movement with transformative desires is to articulate a compelling and hopeful narrative that convinces millions that collective avenues of action will bring changes for the better in their everyday lives.

The above is not meant to be exhaustive, but only to outline in broad strokes some directions that the people's movement should consider in order to qualitatively ramp up its transformative power and capacity. I'm sure readers of People's World have other ideas on this subject that merit close consideration as well. So let's compare notes and in the meantime continue to fight the good fight.

Photo: Mural in East Germantown, Philadelphia. MTSOfan CC 2.0

Lying about austerity serves "special interests"

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:10:00 +0000

Ideas and ideologies are rarely if ever free from class interests. If there ever were a controversy that validated the truth of that, the continuing "debate" over austerity fills the bill.

A few weeks ago, the most prestigious apologists for austerity in the economics profession, Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart of Harvard University - now known as R & R - were brought up short when a blatant spreadsheet error in their published work showed their vaunted rule "proving" that slowdowns occur when debt-to-GDP ratios exceed 80-90% was not a rule at all.

This was and is not just an academic debate. The GOP (Paul Ryan, erstwhile VP candidate) and blue-dog Democrats (Erskine Bowles of the Simpson-Bowles catfood commission) explicitly and repeatedly cited R & R research in their attacks on any additional job stimulus, and in efforts to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, food stamps, unemployment insurance extensions, and education.

The so-called "rule" was already a canard before the R & R spreadsheet flap. It was never clear in many of the countries R & R studied whether it was debt that caused low growth, or low growth that caused debt. Nonetheless it was a comfort to the country club "wisdom" of millionaires and billionaires, and their paid flunkeys, ergo, that "the hungry dog hunts harder," as if poverty were actually a gift to the poor and a necessary virtue for society.

Oblivious not only to well-founded economic knowledge demonstrating the complete failure of this ideology during the last Depression, they also appear to ignore the plain news of Europe's never-ending and deepening depression from austerity policies. Nonetheless, this bourbon wisdom has possessed the entire Republican Party, and about ¼ of the Democratic Party leadership. R & R did not disdain the affectionate but tainted embrace of these forces - an error greater than the spreadsheet mistake.

The latest to join the country club party is the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of central bankers with, as economist Paul Krugman quips, all the prejudices of that tribe concentrated by an order of magnitude. "In its latest report." Krugman writes, "The BIS really transcends itself. Part of what makes the report so awesome is the way that it trots out every discredited argument for austerity, with not a hint of acknowledgement that these arguments have been researched and refuted at length." For example it repeats the R & R "80% debt/GDP rule" as if that mouse had not already roared its irrelevance.

Interest is the mother's milk of ideology. One may ask: How is it that intellectually refuted austerity ideas - predicting catastrophic inflation and high interest rates from public stimulus in a depression - became the stitching in the "sequester" blanket now smothering U.S. recovery in employment?

Well, for example, if you are Mitt Romney, or the Koch brothers, owners of considerable wealth in both global finance and energy, you have two major political concerns:

One, control the state institutions that regulate your business, property and employer rights, that subsidize your infrastructure and security needs, and set your taxes - oh, if you can't control it, nullify it, make it dysfunctional.

Two, maximize the amount of private wealth and resources available for investment, by cutting and grabbing public wealth and resources.

Every question is subordinated to these concerns. In addition, you became successful in part because of skill at sales - frankly, an occupation, though necessary in a market economy, with scant prohibition against lying.

Photo: Members of the "Save Our News'' coalition, including: Courage Campaign, SEIU, Forecast the Facts, Greenpeace and the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, rally before delivering a 500,000-signature petition urging the Tribune Co. management to reject any offers by the Koch Brothers to buy The Los Angeles Times newspaper outside the newspaper headquarters in Los Angeles, May 29, 2013. Damian Dovarganes/AP

Perspectives on Pfc. Bradley Manning from an anti-war veteran

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:38:00 +0000

As an anti-war veteran, my perspective on the Bradley Manning trial is that capitalism/imperialism has once again turned truth into a victim of war.

The Manning court martial trial presents challenges to vets. The government public relations campaign puts out allegations, disinformation and outright lies about what Manning is alleged to have done. Too often veterans are expected to support the official government and Pentagon positions no matter what, but anti-war vets typically don't fit this traditional mold. We are outspoken, go against the grain and are demonstrative, for which we are criticized and attacked by conservative and pro-war forces.

The protests at Fort Meade, Md. where Pfc. Manning's trial is taking place include many vets who are members of a number of anti-war veterans organizations as well as some who are unaffiliated.

As a Vietnam-era vet I've seen the attacks and lies before. I got out of the navy in 1969, fourteen months before the Pentagon Papers hit the streets. The Pentagon Papers validated what I had known to be true for the second half of my four-year enlistment: the government lied to get us into war and continued to lie to keep us fighting. Many of us veterans consider Bradley Manning to be this generation's Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Political and military "leaders" have consistently lied to get public support for waging wars in other people's countries, and the corporate media falls in line until long after the fact, when the truth is eventually exposed. LBJ lied to get us into Vietnam; Reagan lied to invade Grenada and to overthrow the Sandinista government in the "Contra war" in Nicaragua; George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to wage war in Iraq. The list goes on and on. Service members, vets, the American public and those in far off lands who are subjugated by our political, military and economic "leaders" pay the price in blood and treasure for these lies and wars. Meanwhile, the war profiteers get rich.

Fourteen American resisters from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, some of whom are veterans and others who fled to Canada rather than continue their part in the two wars, sent a representative to the Bradley Manning protest on June 1 with a statement which she read at the rally: It stated in part:

"Many of you might remember what it was like under similar circumstances during the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, we are living proof that not much has changed since then. The imperialist war machine is still turning out young killers with factory-like efficiency. Nowadays at the crew-served weapons ranges at Ft. Benning, they teach you to hold the butterfly trigger for three words, four syllables: "die-Hajji-die". Since the start of these wars, thousands of U.S troops have deployed overseas to kill and die for these scumbags who run the show: the profiteers and the zealots. But, just as in all wars that are unjust and based on false pretenses, there springs forth an organic resistance to the bullshit.

Young people like Camilo Mejia, Mike Prysner, Kelly Doherty, Jeremy Hinzman, and Bradley Manning-- you can't really fit us into one category. We are not all socialists; we are not all pacifists; not all of us began our resistance from a place of ideology. Some of us had to see and do the things we did to figure out that we didn't want to do them anymore, and some of us figured it out right away. We here in Canada left our contracts early, while those resisters who chose to stay behind became outspoken while respecting their contracts. Resistance has been unique to each individual-as it should be."

This new generation of young war resisters has said 'no' to being a part of the U.S. military machine. They're risking a lot to speak the truth from their 'inside' perspective. Bradley Manning risked everything to speak truth from his perspective. And at the Ft. Meade Main Gate they are represented by fellow young vets and by seasoned vets for whom the "organic resistance" to injustice and war has endured a lifetime.

The trial is expected to continue through the summer. You can be sure that U.S. veterans will continue to be there, supporting the truth-telling patriot and exposing the real criminals-the corporate-military-industrial-financial elites.

Photo: Dozens of veterans and activists demonstrated at President Obama's campaign office in Oakland, Calif., August 2012, demanding Pfc. Bradley Manning's freedom. (Bradley Manning Support/CC)

Poll reveals contradictory views on affirmative action

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:41:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio - On June 8, the Columbus Dispatch carried a poll that measured people's opinions on issues concerning affirmative action, race, and LGBT questions. The results were generally what I would consider positive. But the affirmative action/race questions and answers were particularly revealing.

The LGBT results showed the basically positive movement in people's opinions that all media outlets have been reporting recently. Marriage equality was supported by 52 percent, with 43 percent in opposition. Support for anti-discrimination legislation that includes gays and lesbians was higher, with 73 percent supporting it and only 22 percent stating opposition.

But where the poll got more complicated was the next section, on affirmative action.

First question: "In order to make up for past discrimination, do you favor or oppose programs that make special efforts to help blacks and other minorities get ahead?"

The responses to this question were positive and overwhelming, 68 percent in favor and only 24 percent in opposition.

The very next question was worded as follows: "Do you think black people and other minorities should receive preference in college admissions to make up for past inequalities?"

To this, similar, if not exactly the same, question, however worded much differently, the results were a surprising only 29 percent in favor and 64 percent against - basically opposite the responses to the first question.

Why? The easiest answer is that the public is overwhelmingly in favor of affirmative action favoring minorities, unless they are overwhelmingly opposed to it. However, the poll actually contains some further valuable information on this issue.

The next two questions were whether those being polled had ever been 1) personally either helped or hurt by race in college admissions, and 2) ever been personally helped or hurt in their job/career by race or ethnicity?

In answer to these two questions concerning the actual real-life experience of the folks answering the poll questions, an unbelievably tiny percentage of people reported that they'd been affected personally in any manner at all. In response to the first question, only 20 percent (10 percent helped/10 percent hurt) said they'd been affected, while on the second question, only 18 percent felt they'd been affected at all personally, with seven percent saying they'd been "helped" and 11 percent "hurt" in their job situation.

For working class and social justice activists who want to, as Karl Marx said, "Change history, not just observe it," these answers are revealing. People have extremely strong views on race and affirmative action, but in fact say they have never noticeably been personally affected one way or another by affirmative action.

Placed another way, the poll exposes the deeply felt racial (and sometimes what could be seen as racist) views that capitalist society has driven into them; however those views in most cases have no actual connection to their own personal lives.

The wider issue is that it shows how the wording of messages, the "feeling" on an issue, regardless of real, personal experience in most cases, influences people's opinions on real-life issues in regard to race and affirmative action. For us, I believe, the real question becomes, "What is the class perspective of those asking the question, and what result is the question actually aiming to get?"

This poll brought to mind the experience of the fight against entrenched racist corporate practices that took place, led by the rank and file movement, in the steel industry.

In 1974, a consent decree was signed by the Steelworkers Union (USWA), the major steel corporations and the U.S. government, which did the following;

* opened the craft/trade jobs to African Americans, women, Latinos, including the apprentice training programs, also setting target numbers that had to be met;

* set up a bidding system that opened all jobs to a bidding process, that allowed all workers, regardless of race, etc., to bid to leave departments where they were assigned and move to other, higher paying or more desirable areas. African American workers were given some preference, due to past discrimination, on some jobs;

* awarded monetary compensation to African American workers who'd suffered past discrimination.

This historic agreement was the result of years of tough struggle by African American steelworkers, as well as the multiracial and left-center-led rank and file movement in steel. In this fight, George Edwards, chair of the National Steelworkers Rank & File Committee and a leader of the Communist Party USA, played an extremely important role.

Almost before the ink was dry on the decree, an ultra-right assault was launched by corporate-supported, racist elements. Most prominent of those challenges was the Weber case, where a white worker at a Kaiser plant in Louisiana sued, stating that he was "better qualified" than a minority worker who was awarded a craft job, and that he should have gotten the position. (Only 1.8 percent of craft jobs were held by African American workers at the time.) This case had immediate political impact on mainly white workers across the steel industry, with racist-supported groups popping up opposing the consent decree.

George Edwards and the rank and file committee rallied the pro-consent-decree forces, calling national meetings and getting out literature supporting the decree. The key point was that he insisted that the fight be oriented on the gains that ALL workers got from the victory over racism in the decree. All workers now had the right to bid jobs and move, not only African American workers. The companies had to begin recruiting badly needed trades workers, and all could apply. Further, the victory over racism was a victory against the boss's favoritism. It leveled the playing field for all. Within this overall context, the argument that the victory over racism also meant unity for all workers and strengthened our joint hands together, while weakening that of the corporation/boss, carried concrete meaning for those workers on the job.

It was not long before those arguments had positive impact. It is not an exaggeration at all to say that anyone coming to a Steelworkers union hall to propose ending the consent decree would be thrown out on their ear, and the arms doing it would be multi-racial! Weber lost his case in 1979 and the language of the consent decree was placed into the basic steel contract. While those gains have certainly been harmed by jobs loss and mill closures, the lessons are still very applicable.

These lessons apply to today's battles. While we've won gains unless a principled independent, working class voice can carry the unifying message to regular working folks, they will continue to hear only those messages coming from ruling class sources, confusing and carrying racist poison pills. A pro-corporate, racist Supreme Court stands ready to kill key provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Social Security, Medicare, and workers' rights to organize and be represented by unions are all under attack.

Without hearing a unifying message, working people in our nation will continue to be influenced by irrational fears, divisive messages from corporate sources. The real lesson, however, is that when regular working people see their united interest in the struggles and victories we win, they will unite and act in their own interests.

Photo: Demonstrators at Temple University in Philadelphia call on the university to make sure that the workforce on its multi-million dollar building program is diverse in both race and gender, February 2012. PW

The real meaning of Fathers Day

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:35:00 +0000

Father's Day is right around the corner. And while I don't usually pay much attention to it - or Mother's Day or Easter or Thanksgiving or most other holidays, for that matter - it isn't because, as some would say, they are business gimmicks or tricks designed to make us spend money. It's because I'm just usually not that into holidays.

This Father's Day, however, is a little different. It has taken on a new importance, as it will be my first Father's Day as a father.

In years past, I would make the obligatory call to Dad. We'd talk a little, plan to get lunch, and see a movie - science fiction, usually - and then we wouldn't talk for a month or two.

This year however, I'm a dad. And I'm oddly excited about it.

My wife and I had Baby Ida almost five months ago. I would be lying if I said it hasn't been stressful. Julie and I are both tired. Our schedules are out-of-whack. It seems almost impossible to find the time to do all of the ordinary things we used to do, like get dinner as a couple or hang-out with friends and enjoy a few cold beers.

Additionally, as parents and full-time activists/organizers we are both faced with a whole new set of challenges.

As a family, we are committed to the class struggle. We both work on electoral and issue-based campaigns. We both work with broad-based coalitions, unions, community groups, faith, and student leaders. We both optimistically and gladly take on the daunting challenge of trying to build a more just, more equal society, in a far-right state in the heart of a center-right nation.

However, now we have an even more difficult challenge: How do we raise a child, while maintaining the values and political commitments we hold so dear?

How do we balance the meetings, the pickets, actions and strikes with the dirty diapers and bottles? How do we balance the need to travel to meet with members and activists all across the region and all across the country with the fear that we might miss the first step or first word?

While I'm not usually the sentimental type, and while most of the activists/organizers I work with are all about the business of getting the work done, I'm going to take this Father's Day to not only recommit myself to fighting for a socially and economically just future, but to also recommit myself to being a father, the best dad I can be.

Julie and I are pretty traditional working class people. We both work. We both do the chores - dinner, yard work, laundry, cat boxes, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming. The list goes on and on. And we both try to spend as much time as possible with our beautiful baby girl.

We both come from union families. Her father and grandfather were both union roofers. My father and grandfather were both union autoworkers. Both my grandfather and father served in the military. We were both told "never cross a picket-line," that's stealing someone else's job. We were both told "it's because of the union that we have a roof over our head and clothes on our back." So we were raised with certain values and beliefs, values we hope to share with Baby Ida.

As a father I'm beginning to think about my life and its meaning a little differently. Yes, I want to change the world. Yes, I want to make the big banks, the corporate CEOs, and the super-rich pay their fair share - since they are the people ruining our economy anyway. Yes, I want to help all of my union brothers and sisters - and all working class folks - make a living wage with health care benefits and pension security. Yes, I want to be a part of the emerging labor-lead grassroots coalitions that will transform our country into the promise of what we all know it can be.

But, I also want to lounge around on the couch and watch Blue's Clues with my daughter, and blow in her hair because it makes her giggle. And sing to her. And put her in the stroller and walk her around. And watch her as she begins to explore the world around us with so much potential and promise.

I'm a father and a full-time activist/organizer. I feel like I have to be both because the fight for social and economic justice isn't just vanity. It isn't just ego or pride. It is a heartfelt desire to make sure that my daughter - and all children - grow up in a world fundamentally different, fundamentally better. We can do so much better.

That, to me, is the real meaning of Father's Day.

Photo: Tony and daughter Ida. PW

Letter from the heartland: Who should get the scholarship?

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:56:00 +0000

Dear friend,

My letters to you have spoken of the workers and the elderly, but I've not mentioned the young people of this area. Recently, I had an opportunity to be a part of a committee that was awarding scholarships to local students.

The interviews took place in a small meeting room at the local high school. The guidance counselor had prescreened about 15 students for us to meet and interview. She called them before us one at a time.

It was our committee's job to ask them penetrating questions that would, hopefully, give us insight into their career plans.

Ah, there was the problem. Well, two problems actually. First, we realized very quickly that it did not take profound questions to get to know these kids a little better.

Secondly, it became quickly apparent that few of them had career plans.

Even questions such as, "What will your major be?" proved difficult for them. Most of them had few plans beyond what they would be doing with friends over the weekend.

About midway through the process, one girl came in wearing a nice business suit. That in and of itself was unusual, because most of the students had chosen to wear jeans and regular school attire.

In our small town, everyone knew her. They knew her family was not rich. They knew her mother had addiction issues. They also knew that the girl made good grades, worked 30 hours a week at a McDonald's in a nearby town, and still managed to find time to be captain of the softball team. So she is what we would call an over-achiever.

Besides, it's difficult having to be mother to your mother at age 17.

We asked her what her plans were, which is about as open-ended a question as you could possibly ask a young person, and her confident answer stunned us.

"I want to live in another country."

In the silence that followed her response, I grinned and asked her why.

"Because America just isn't working anymore."

That's when another member of the committee, the local elementary school principal, who knew the girl and her family well, chimed in, "What do you mean?" He leaned over the conference table towards her, eager for her response.

"I mean our system isn't working, is it? People don't have work. Corporations run everything. The political system's corrupt. I want to go to a place where people care about each other."

Stunned silence from the committee. What could they argue with, friend? She was right. Not necessarily about the moving to another country part, but she was right about the brokenness of this country. Right about how rotten our systems have grown. Right about how corporations had replaced caring.

A woman on the committee, the local bank manager, sputtered, "Well we do have our problems, but we also have a great system for fixing them. Things are getting better."

This made the girl smile. Where we had spent most of our morning looking at kids who had no clue about the world around them and their futures, we now saw a look on this girl's face that mirrored our smirks of, "Oh, you poor dear thing."

In church circles, what we usually say about someone who has no clue is "Bless his heart." It's church-speak for "sweet moron."

That was the look - a bless your heart look - that the girl gave the bank manager. It was an amazing moment.

The guidance counselor quickly changed the subject, and we spoke of the girl's family for a moment before the counselor brought in the next kid.

During the discussion after the interviews of who would be awarded the scholarship, the girl's name was not mentioned.

But she's right.

And she said it in such a sweet and innocent way as a child can, a way that cuts to the very heart of the matter. There was nothing threatening on the surface of her words, because there was no guile behind them, no agenda.

Yet, this 17-year-old had thrown the destroyed American dream in the faces of that committee. And none of them could disagree.

Meanwhile, I hope your struggle goes well.

In solidarity,

Charlie M.

Photo: Allie/CC

European Social Contract betrayed

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:49:00 +0000

The austerity regimes being imposed on the European working class and some elements of the middle classes by the IMF and the central banks of several large European countries, especially Germany, have resulted in millions of working people rejecting the traditional mainstream capitalist parties and voting for parties labeled by the mainstream media as "fringe." Some of these "fringe" parties are so large that they determine the outcome of national elections (the Five Star Movement in Italy for example) and pose a serious threat to "business as usual" in the social democratic movement.

It should be noted that after World War II and the collapse of German and Italian fascism, there was panic in the West European and American business circles that Communist Parties would be swept into power either by uprisings or elections. To fight this threat concessions were made to the working people in the form of social welfare programs based on socialist principles but trimmed down so as not to threaten the power and control of the international banking system led by the United States.

The United States basically financed the reconstruction of Western Europe and European capitalism and both the traditional conservative and right-wing elements as well as the social democratic and center-left elements teamed up to back social programs designed to lessen the appeal of the demands of the Communist and workers movements. This system worked fairly well until the breakdown of the capitalist system starting with the 2007 housing bubble and subsequent banking crisis. What has happened to the working people in Europe since the outbreak of the crisis is described by David C. Unger in his recent New York Times article "Europe's Social Contract Lying in Pieces."

Unger in his article laments that this "Social Contract" has been abandoned by the European center left parties and as a result "democracy's best advertisement to the Communist East" had been "undermined ... in pursuit of a perverse economic dogma." The point of course is that all the social gains granted by the capitalists to the West European working people were begrudgingly conceded out of fear of the appeal of the Soviet Union and the world communist movement.

With the undermining and collapse of the Soviet Union and East European socialism, big capital no longer saw the need to make concessions to the working class and has reverted true to form to reimpose a regime of extreme economic exploitation in order to maximize its profits. Austerity is simply the redirection of social wealth from programs, such as health care, housing, unemployment, pensions, etc., into the coffers of the bankers and financial speculators where it rightfully belongs under the capitalist system, "a perverse economic dogma" which I take, unlike Unger, to be capitalism itself.

What have the social democrats done? Especially the Democrats in Italy, the Socialist Party in France, the Spanish socialists, Pasok (the Greek socialist party) and others? They have abandoned the very people they are supposed to represent and have backed and voted for policies that will bring about "many more years of cuts in social spending" and they are "increasingly out of touch with the desperate situation of young people." This is why millions of voters have deserted these parties for so-called "fringe" groups.

What are the consequences of this social democratic betrayal? This is how Unger describes the scene in Mediterranean Europe: "You see shuttered groceries and clothing shops, abandoned restaurants, idled factories and half-built housing developments overgrown with weeds. Newspapers carry heartbreaking stories of families evicted from modest apartments, people losing their jobs and then their health benefits, young and not-so-young women turning to prostitution to make ends meet, even suicides by self-immolation." This is the modern day equivalent of the heartless inhumane capitalism described by Marx in Capital.

Unger points out that the economic power of Germany is so great it probably could have dictated the present regime of austerity without the cooperation and even against the hostility of social democracy. Today's Germany has attained what it failed to achieve in two world wars, economic (and hence political) dominance of Europe. The tragedy of social democracy is that it collaborated in the destruction of its own electorate instead of fighting, even if a losing battle, to protect it. That betrayal did not go unnoticed.

As the European workers begin to fight back, as the communist and workers parties begin to gain in strength other social forces are also rapidly growing. Forces from the Dark Side are also beginning to proliferate such as the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece ("Greece for the Greeks"), the United Kingdom Independence Party (right-wing Eurosceptic [anti EU] libertarians), the National Front (a "whites only" party in the UK). The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) and the UK Conservative Party should also take notice as they too are losing members to the "fringe." Unger says Germany too should not be too confident. Their present economic dominance may evaporate if the rest of Europe dissolves into political and social chaos due to the on going capitalist crisis. An ultra-right movement in Germany may become ascendant. We wouldn't want that to happen again.

Photo: Thousands of union members march outside of the EU summit in Brussels on March 14. They demonstrate to demand an end to years of austerity measures imposed by EU leaders that are only worsening the recession while driving ever more people toward unemployment and poverty. Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

Spying, privacy, and “brave new world”

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:31:00 +0000

Last month, President Barack Obama promised to move the country away from the "state of perpetual war" otherwise known as the endless "war on terror," which began under the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Obama eloquently quoted President James Madison's warning "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." In that speech, the president renewed a promise he made five years ago to close the shameful Guantanamo prison and vowed to dial back (a bit) on the indefensible drone strikes. The president defended the expansive seizure of media organizations' records, while calling on Congress to pass a "shield" law to protect journalists.

But "continual warfare" is not only about military matters. It also concerns the collection of intelligence. What was sorely lacking from the president's speech was a brisk defense of individual freedoms - right to privacy, constitutional and civil liberties - all of which are too often and unnecessarily casualties of warfare. The Bush administration became a great practitioner of unwarranted spying, until forced to stop by the American people.

In hindsight, Obama's omission is glaring after last week's bombshell reports that the U.S. government is conducting massive data collection on Americans and foreign nationals.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and current employee at military-security contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked secret documents to the UK's Guardian and The Washington Post detailing the enormous collection of telephone call and electronic communication data. Apparently Booz Allen was working with the National Security Agency on a secret program called Prism in which the government can clandestinely access the servers of the world's biggest private data collectors, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, Skype, AOL, and Apple, looking for patterns of behavior in order to predict and therefore prevent terrorist attacks. In addition to electronic data, documents also revealed that the government collects telephone data from Verizon Business customers. It is not known if the government collects data on Verizon residential customers or if other telephone companies are also part of any surveillance orders OK'd by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

After the revelations, the president attempted to assure the public that phone conversations were not being listened to. And, Americans should rest easy because the Prism program "does not apply" to U.S. citizens and residents, although Americans' electronic information housed on say a Google server could certainly be collected. Call it collateral collection damage.

Obama defended the programs as vital to national security. He offered a feeble rationale, by saying "you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy." No one in this day and age of social media, cell phones and omnipresent security cameras thinks they can have 100 percent privacy. And the Boston Marathon attack certainly proves you cannot have 100 percent security - even when U.S. authorities are warned in advance of extremist activities.

What Americans do expect is a government that is restrained by transparency and public oversight. It is incredible that as a candidate in 2008, President Obama promised a return to constitutional norms after the Bush administration trampled the Bill of Rights and civil liberties time and time again, but has presided over an exponential growth of government spying - and drone attacks. That was not the "change" Americans voted for.

The Obama administration is not being accused of breaking any U.S. laws with these policies. And that is part of the problem. After 9/11, President George W. Bush asked for and Congress passed the dystopian Patriot Act, reauthorizing it most recently in 2011 with provisions that permit widespread surveillance and record seizures with court-approval. One concrete way to signal an end to the endless war is to repeal the Patriot Act and its granting the government limitless spying powers. Of course with the Republicans in charge of the House and able to stymie any action in the Senate, there will have to be a mighty movement to win such a demand.

While the president and Democrats surely bear much responsibility for what widely seems a gross overreach of power in not only the surveillance programs and records seizure of journalists and millions of other Americans, but the severe prosecutions of leakers/whistleblowers, including Bradley Manning, and the lack of transparency on both the drone and spying programs, the impact of the Republicans and the ultra-right cannot be minimized nor ignored. Remember Bush's Total Information Awareness Program, its shredding of the Constitution, and endorsement of renditions and torture? Not only did their undemocratic policies set the stage for this current day crisis, but their constant pressure and attacks on the Obama administration as well as their hawkish push for a larger military-technology complex has to be taken into account for any movement to win civil liberties victories.

Let us remember that this is not the first widespread governmental spying on ordinary Americans. There was the vile hounding of communists and suspected communists by the FBI and Congress in the 1940s and 1950s. There was the infiltration of peace and civil rights movements by police and other government agents during the 1960s and 1970s. Today the police and law enforcement spy on law-abiding Americans active in an Occupy protest, and for years now, innocent Arab and Muslim Americans have been caught in a government dragnet that targets those communities often indiscriminately.

But today, because of the cyber-world where almost unlimited data can be stored and combed through in a blink of an eye, the spying seems to become easier - more open to abuse. Developing definitions of privacy in this "brave new world" are areas of class and social contention. The merger of state interests with corporate technology giants' interests is undoubtedly one side of this brave new world's arena of struggle. How the other side shapes up to guarantee an Orwellian Big Brother stays in the realm of fiction is in formation.

Photo: (Steve Garfield/CC)

Your mailman and the old lady who died alone

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:54:00 +0000

Down the tree-lined street we make our way. An elderly lady pulling a two-wheeled hamper, trying her best to keep pace with the middle-aged gent three strides in front of her who seems to be on a mission to get some sort of job accomplished. They both catch a glimpse of the paper bag, bulging with boxed and canned foods, sitting on the porch steps beneath the mailbox. "I see a bag," the senescent one hollers to the other as he approaches the house. This is the ninth year that this duo has repeated this ritual. This day is May 11, 2013, the day of the National Association of Letter Carriers National Food Drive. It is the one day my mother walks my entire route with me and, just coincidentally, it is the one day of year that I am on my best behavior.

On one particular street that day, I pass a house that is overgrown by the passages of nature and time. A sense of melancholy surrounds the entire lot. A lone miniature scarecrow adorned in the colors of autumn is limply tied to what was once a flag holder. When the wind is blowing, the sad figure ever so gently bobs back and forth as if to tell me, "You think yourself immortal. Even you are in the fall of your life." I flash back to a January day only four months previous.

A mailman completing his appointed rounds was what I was doing that cold sunny day in January. As I stuffed the mail into the last mailbox of my loop, I saw a screaming young figure dash across the street hollering at the top of her lungs. Pounding at the door of a neighbor's house, and getting no response, the frail figure crumpled into the street in a ball of tears. I was only a few feet from my postal vehicle when my eyes told my brain what was happening, so I threw my satchel into my truck and ran over to help.

"I think my grandmother is dead inside the house," the young lady sobbed. "I just came over to visit her and it looks horrible." I pulled out my phone and called 911. As I tried to calm down her down, waiting for EMS to arrive, she told me, "I haven't seen my grandmother in months. She doesn't want anything to do with me or my family. The only reason I came over was to borrow a coat hanger because I locked my keys in my car three blocks away. I can't believe this is happening."

The police and EMS arrived. I stuck around because the cops asked me to. When the police finally came over to me, they asked me a few questions. Did I notice anything, did I smell anything, and did anything look suspicious? No, the old woman was a recluse and I saw her maybe twice in the last couple of years. I didn't even know she had a family.

The gumshoes told me she had been dead for at least three, maybe four weeks. Apparent suicide, 20 bottles of empty vodka bottles strewn about the place. Drank herself to death. We see this all the time. Sad, no family to take care of her. The coppers are pretty matter of fact about this kind of thing. I thought to myself, yeah, sad that they are so matter of fact about death. Guess that's why I'm a mailman.

I tell my mother this story as we walk by the house on Food Drive Day. There is nothing to say afterwards. We collect many bags of food and we finish the route before I get hollered at by my boss. It is a good day for both of us as well as the whole city of Royal Oak, Mich. Our city collected 28 tons of food in just one day for our local Salvation Army food bank. They tell us that our one-day food drive gives them enough food to sustain their food bank for four months. That is an amazing statistic. Nationwide, in one day, we collect over 70 million pounds of food for neighborhood food banks. On that day, I am most proud to be a member of the Labor community. As I reach for each bag of food and load it into my postal vehicle, I sense on the strongest level the connection between each of my patrons, the community in which I live and work, and my commitment to the principles of unionism.

And I don't want to say just unionism. I want to talk about the precepts of social unionism. This is where the crossroads of unionism and social activism come together. Labor unions in this country are dying. There is no sugar coating that fact. Our union, the NALC, is losing members every year. Nationwide, organized labor consists of less than 12% of the workforce. Can we turn this around? I believe it is possible, but only with a major rethinking of our roles as union members and what it means to be a member of the working class.

We feel so proud and humbled on our Food Drive Day to be serving the community, and let me say the working class, by our efforts. I hope that in the coming year we can become more enlightened to engage in more social unionism by paying attention to the plights of the striking Walmart workers, the fight in the fast food industry to obtain a living wage, the defense against banks evicting folks unfairly, and the host of other social injustices brought against working people whether they are in a union or not. We are past the point of worrying about saving the labor movement. We need to save the working class.

If we don't rethink our strategy, our noble goal of a Saturday Letter Carrier Food Drive will be a moot point. The community will no longer support Saturday delivery, because we did not support them when they asked for our help. We will have cut ourselves off from our family of fellow workers in our own narcissistic sense of what it means to be a "union" member. We will die in our own sad house, alone, with no one even caring to look for our corpse. The only thing left will be to clean up the empty vodka bottles.

Photo: Postal workers in Atco, N.J., at the end of their food drive, May 11. Stamp Out Hunger/Facebook

Fast food strikers teach some important lessons

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:27:00 +0000

St. LOUIS - Over the past few months thousands of low-wage fast food workers have walked off their jobs at Hardees, Jimmy Johns, McDonalds, and dozens of other fast-food restaurants - at hundreds of locations - all across the country.

In New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and other major cities - most recently, Seattle - they have demanded "$15 and a union."

In most cases, fast food workers are making minimum wage. Some make $8, maybe $9 an-hour. Almost all work without benefits, sick time or paid vacation. They are some of the most exploited workers in our increasingly service sector driven economy. In fact, many work two or three jobs, while the industry as a whole rakes in billions in profits every year.

Additionally, "dignity and respect" is a major demand of all low-wage fast food workers. Favoritism, racism, and sexism are common practices in the industry, an industry with very high turnover and very little, if any, third party, independent mediation.

Remarkably, due to the overwhelming community, clergy and labor support, as well as the unity of the fast food workers themselves, very few have faced retaliation or reprisal from management. And where reprisals have occurred the community response has been swift and decisive.

The strikes and the communities' response of support are important for at least three reasons.

First, the strikes have forced recalcitrant managers, franchise owners and restaurant CEO's to take note and come to the realization that the community - labor, clergy, student, academic, etc. - intends to mediate low-wage fast-food worker grievances regardless of union recognition and in-spite of the relative ineffectiveness of the NLRB.

The significance of this should not be understated, as it demonstrates the power low-wage workers have when they are unified and working side-by-side with the broader movements for social and economic justice, especially the labor movement.

As someone who walked into a St. Louis area Jimmy Johns and a McDonalds with clergy, labor, and community representatives to deliver letters of intent - notifying management of the employees right to strike and informing them that we will not tolerate reprisals or retaliation - I am optimistic that this tactic of community third-party mediation is not only an exciting development, but is also an empowering one.

Second, the strike wave has hit the fast-food industry in its collective pocket book. If for no other reason, the strikes are important because managers, franchise owners and corporate CEOs are beginning to address at least some of the grievances brought to their attention, due to the loss in profits and bad publicity.

For example, here in St. Louis one local Jimmy Johns manager was forced to transfer to another store due to his treatment of employees. And at a Domino's Pizza, the local manager called striking workers and asked them, 'How much would it cost for you to never do this again?' Their response was '$15 and a union.'

Which brings me to the third and possibly most important item: worker empowerment. The strike wave has empowered a whole new section of the working class to the possibility of collective action as a means to redress grievances.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2009 the service sector accounted for 79.6 percent of U.S. private-sector gross domestic product, or $9.81 trillion. At that time, services jobs accounted for more than 80 percent of U.S. private-sector employment, or 89.7 million jobs. Undoubtedly, the service sector's dominance in our economy has continued to increase since 2009.

Empowering this sector, especially the lowest paid and least represented workers in this sector, is a key task of the labor movement and all of its allies moving forward, as upward pressure in the low-wage fast-food industry will raise wages in all service sector jobs.

Also significant is the fact that most service sector workers generally and low-wage fast-food workers specifically are women and people of color, people who have been historically denied the promise of the American Dream.

An offensive attack on the low-wage fast-food portion of the service sector is also objectively an attack against racism and sexism. Some commentators might miss this fact, but it should be widely understood that we cannot raise the working class into the commanding heights - politically or economically - without raising women, people of color and other specially oppressed groups out of poverty-wage jobs.

Empowering low-wage fast-food workers helps to accomplish that goal.

There will likely There will likely be more strikes as we move forward. New and different tactics and strategies will likely be used. The work isn't done. But even in its infancy the fast food industry strikes have already taught us some important lessons.

Photo: Tony Pecinovsky/PW

Letter from the heartland: Getting rid of blue votes

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:06:00 +0000

Dear friend,

Our struggle continues.

This week we got news that the way we vote here in rural Tennessee has been changed dramatically. Remember that this is an island of blue in one of the reddest states in the Union. And we, being blue and rural and poor, are decidedly different than the southern part of the county which is deeply red and suburban and politically only slightly right of Attila the Hun.

The county commission as well as the election commission are controlled by these upper-middle-class conservatives. They are a growing demographic since our county has become an exurb of a larger metropolitan area.

Their political power has likewise increased. In the last election cycle, a 10-term Democrat in the state House of Representatives who represented our area was forced to resign rather than face certain defeat because of the gerrymandered election district that split his base.

And now, the election commission has taken further steps to water down any remaining political power the left may have in our area. With very little fanfare, and even less public discussion, the commission decided to eliminate two of the polling places within 10 miles of our little town.

What they are forcing these poor, mostly retired, people to do is rather than come to our town to vote, they must drive 25 miles to the county seat to cast their ballots.

What they have done is effectively eliminated a large block of rural, more likely Democratic voters.

Even the local media, owned by large corporations, buried the story on back pages and neglected to mention it in local broadcast and electronic media.

Friend, I failed to mention that these media companies are among the large corporations that contribute lustily to the campaign coffers of the same election officials who ordered this disenfranchisement.

Needless to say, it is shocking for citizens of this country - many of them veterans - to wake up one morning and find themselves effectively out of a vote.

Remember, these are people who struggle paycheck to paycheck. They often scrape coins out of their ashtrays to buy milk. Having the gas and having the time to drive 50 miles round-trip to vote is simply out of the question for many of them.

In the only news story I could find about the decision, the head of the election commission was quoted as saying that the change in voting/polling place would save around $20,000 per election.

$20,000. That's an incredibly great return on an investment in that elected official by her corporate owners.

About 7,000 voters are affected by this change. So, for about $3 per voter, there are now several fewer potential Democratic votes that will be counted.

While this is incredibly disheartening, we must, as the Communist Manifesto says, "never cease for a single instant to instill into the working-class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat."

Of course with obvious object lessons like this one, it makes that instillation much easier.

Meanwhile, I hope your struggle goes well.

In solidarity,

Charlie M.

Photo: A political rally in rural Tennessee. Charles Millson

New York mayoral race: look at social forces behind candidates

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:53:00 +0000

BROOKLYN - The most important criterion for judging the New York City mayoral candidates is who are the social forces behind them. (See "With unity, New Yorkers could elect mayor for the 99 percent" for an overview of the candidates.)

In the case of Christine Quinn and Anthony Weiner, this is clear: of the Democrats, they are the preferred candidates of big capital. Quinn will also have some special support from women and gay people. Those two and Bill DeBlasio will likely divide up the bulk of the white vote, with DeBlasio getting more of the liberals. DeBlasio also has been endorsed by SEIU 1199, the city's biggest union, and could garner some additional big union endorsements and of the Working Families Party.

Bill Thompson will have the overwhelming vote of the African American and the Afro-Caribbean community, where his roots are. He has strong ties in Brooklyn where both he and his father had long political careers, and has been endorsed by Bronx Congressman Jose Serrano, state Senator Jose Serrano, Jr., Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., and the Bronx Democratic Party. That gives him a leg up on the city's Latino vote. As well, Thomson has the endorsements of a growing number of African American elected officials, including Manhattan Democratic Party leader Denny Farrell, State Assemblyman Karim Camara, Congressman Greg Meeks and the Rev. Floyd Flake.

Thompson also is endorsed by Merryl Tisch, the head of the State Regents and by former Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch, who is in charge of the campaign's team dealing with budget and finances. And Thompson has a shot at some labor endorsements, especially from unions that backed him when he ran in 2009. It is expected that racially oppressed voters will go for Thompson, assuming that John Liu's numbers do not improve. Thompson has had strong ties to the Jewish community that may produce some results

Weiner is a wild card with his late entry into the race, but is still polling second behind Quinn, and with a very large campaign war chest.

The real question is who come in second after Quinn in the Sept. 10primary. Can DeBlasio or Thompson defeat Weiner, so that the Sept. 24 run-off does not end up being between two white and more conservative candidates? Given the demographics, it is very possible that the runoff will be between Quinn and Thompson.

In such a scenario, there is a real possibility that Thompson, with the support of the racially oppressed, labor and liberal white vote, and could beat Quinn and then Lhota in November. Such a result would clearly change the character of city government in a big way, with new policies that would range from somewhat better than Bloomberg's to considerably better.

In the race for public advocate, progressive Tish James has many endorsements from labor, including one of the major unions, 32BJ, from a number of Black ministers, the Working Families Party, and from the Latina city council members, but she cannot match State Senator Daniel Squadron in money. In addition, there are two additional African American women running for the position, neither of whom has a chance to win but can take votes away from James, helping Squadron, whether they wish to or not. Robert Jackson, another Black progressive, has a good shot at Manhattan Borough president. The City Council Progressive Caucus is supporting six candidates for city council for open seats. For information on which seats and the names of the candidates, they may be acquired from the Progressive Caucus or from this writer. In addition, the caucus offers a good platform on issues for the election.

Photo: "Billionaires" thank the 99 percent of New Yorkers for paying taxes - so billionaires won't have to (Fred Askew/billionairesforbush).

With unity, New Yorkers could elect mayor for the “99 percent”

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:56:00 +0000

The New York City elections are exceptionally important this year, and a large part of the electorate understands that. For 20 years, the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations have fed the big real estate developers, Wall Street and the city's 70 billionaires while imposing austerity on almost everyone else. Now there is a real possibility of moving forward.

To move forward would mean jobs creation (to deal with nine percent unemployment), and measures like a living wage and a higher NYC minimum wage (30 percent of the population live in poverty). It would mean increasing the stock of affordable housing, and keeping the definition of affordable at 25-30 percent -- not 50 percent -- of income. It would mean immediate improvements in the conditions facing the 400,000 public housing residents, and a halt to threats to privatize city housing.

It would mean putting the brakes on the Bloomberg-led drive to privatize public facilities, services, institutions and resources.

The potential is there to elect a mayor who will be responsive to the needs of the city's "99 percent" and who will begin to tackle these grave social issues. But it will require a high level of unity. A winning coalition will have to start with the city's working class, which includes a million union members of diverse backgrounds. It must be rooted in the seventy percent minority and immigrant population, and also include liberals including the large section of the Jewish population who regularly vote for progressives. It must include women and young people and seniors.

In all areas vital to a decent life, the overwhelming majority at the bottom are African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Africans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans and other Latinos, Chinese, and many other peoples from East and South Asia. It is a matter of racism in all its forms. The Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations over the last 20 years have protected and favored the corporations and the wealthy, and pushed the poor and especially the nationally oppressed out of the city, especially Manhattan. The NYPD's stop and frisk policy is a part of this effort.

While the powers that be have succeeded in reducing the African American and Puerto Rican populations, new groups of immigrants have made their way to the city in search of a better life. Living conditions for many immigrants are also dire, and abuse of undocumented workers in a range of industries is part of the landscape.

The last 20 years have also witnessed strong anti-union city administrations, and at present, none of the municipal workers have union contracts. Bloomberg has especially singled out the teachers and the school bus drivers for attack.

To do anything significant to tackle these problems will require substantially more public spending. For example, class size reduction -- a key goal - will require hiring substantially more teachers.

Basically, to meet these needs the billionaires and several thousand additional millionaires and the big real estate interests must be seriously taxed. Also, the city must receive its fair share of financial support from the state and federal governments matching how much they collect from the city now. And this means cutting the military budget in the first place.

The question is how does such an alignment need to express itself, to compel the city to move in this new direction, defeat the forces that want to continue the path of the last 20 years or even go further to the right with a Joe Lhota on the Republican ticket? And how should we judge the candidates?

The preferred candidates of Wall St. and the developers are evident several ways. One is by looking at who gets the biggest contributions from these sources. While such quarters donate to all candidates, covering their bets, Christine Quinn, Anthony Weiner (based on the money in his last mayoralty campaign coffers), Lhota and Bill DeBlasio are the favorites.

Lhota and Weiner on the police and stop and frisk issue are furthest to the right - supporting this system and Commissioner Kelly. Quinn was pushed to support an Inspector General for the police but then promised to reappoint Kelly. DeBlasio, Bill Thompson and John Liu all promised not to reappoint Kelly. Liu called for ending stop and frisk, while DeBlasio called for modifications and Thompson called for even more modifications.

This is the pattern of positions on issues. Since the city is now overwhelmingly Democratic in registration, the main contest is the Democratic primary and the likely runoff. Of these candidates, Weiner and Quinn are consistently to the right, and are at best compromisers on all issues. Weiner is also well-known as picking one issue to appeal to the left and one to appeal to the right. He is opposed to all tax increases, has called for tax decreases and makes no distinction between the wealthy and working people. On education he proposes vouchers to enable children to go to Catholic and other private schools at public expense. His "left" issue is a city "single payer health plan," only it turns out public workers would have to pay more for their medical coverage.

Liu is clearly the most consistent progressive, calling for an end to stop and frisk and an $11 an hour minimum wage, among other things. The problem is the two-year long investigation and recent conviction of two of his fundraisers, who will be sentenced at the height of the election cycle. While Liu himself points out that he has never been charged, his ability to raise money has been seriously damaged, and he will probably be cut off from receiving public matching funds. He is not considered to have a serious chance of making the runoff.

Both DeBlasio and Thompson are inconsistent progressives, with both strengths and weaknesses in their positions. Thompson has an especially good proposal for funding sources. One is money from the state and federal governments so that it recovers the excess it pays them in taxes. Another is to cut outsourcing of work that had and could be done by city workers. The outsourcing proved to be riddled with corruption under the Bloomberg Administration. Another is reinstituting the payroll tax on companies to help finance spending on mass transit. Thompson has expressed a strong desire to help all sections of the population, including the racially oppressed on the major issues of living but mostly with small proposals for steps forward. He avoids discussion of higher taxes on the city's big corporations and wealth, and he has said his education proposals will not require additional tax income.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew has praised a document issued by the Thomson campaign as containing "smart ideas." One of them was to change the composition of the present policymaking board so it is no longer a rubber stamp for the mayor. He calls for teacher and parent input, and generally opposes closing schools against community sentiment and co-locating charter schools in public school buildings, and is for reducing greatly the importance of testing.

DiBlasio now claims he is the only genuine progressive in the elections. That does not match his history as a city councilman and then Public Advocate, where sometimes he responded to the developers more than to working people. He has avoided taking positions on more than a few issues. But now DeBlasio has issued a position paper on long-term development of the city, which is generally quite positive. DiBlasio's signature issue is quite good -- providing preschool education for all children by taxing Wall St. and the rich, although he does not say he will favors such taxes for other programs. As on this, his position on issues often has to be closely parsed to see where the commitment really is.

In the next article, we shall examine the most important criteria in judging candidates: who supports them financially, and who will pull out the campaign troops and the voters.

Photo: This youngster was among a coalition of immigrant groups, unions and Occupy Wall Street who took to the streets on May 1 in New York City, targeting restaurants and other low wage businesses with demands for sick leave and living wages. Thousands of people rallied at Union Square to march downtown to City Hall demanding jobs, decent wages and immigration reform. (Michael Fleshman/CC)

South Dakota commits shocking genocide against Native Americans

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 15:13:00 +0000

Genocide is not too strong a term for what is now happening in South Dakota. The huge, shocking violation of legal and human rights being carried out by the state is tantamount to genocide against the Native American nations, the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Sioux, residing within its borders. It is the abduction and kidnapping by state officials, under the cover of law, of American Indian children.

This is a gross violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978. Further, these abominable kidnappings are being upheld by the courts of that state.

The best approach to this crime against humanity is by the following initial checklist:

1. Over 700 American Indian children are removed by South Dakota state officials from their homes every year.

2. These hundreds are sent to white foster homes or group homes.

3. Many are adopted by white families.

4. Indian children account for 13.8 percent of the state's child population, yet they represent 56.3 percent of the foster care population.

5. Of the hundreds of Native children in foster care in 2011, 87 percent were placed in non-Indian homes while Native foster homes went empty.

6. Because of its targeting Native children, South Dakota is currently removing children from their families at a higher rate than the vast majority of other states in the U.S.

7. Once removed, the state's courts routinely keep Indian children from even seeing their families for at least 60 days.

8. The state's Department of Social Services (DSS) workers warn Native children that if they become emotional during a visit with their parents, the visits will be discontinued (this is incredible!).

This is genocide as defined by the United Nations General Assembly's Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This Convention (Article 2) defines genocide as follows :

"... any of the following acts commit with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

South Dakota is committing blatant and flagrant genocide against the Sioux people in violation of subsection (e) of Article 2 by transferring Indian children to white homes, and also of subsection (b) amid allegations of sexual abuse and drugging of Native children in DSS foster care. Those responsible need to be brought to justice in an international court of law in addition to the lawsuit already filed in U.S courts (see below). This is a most serious case of ethnic cleansing.

One Indian mother had 62 hearings and was never allowed to present any witness testimony, never even allowed to see the petition filed against her. This is a huge violation of long established U.S. due process. Also, the Indian Child Welfare Act mandates that Native children shall first be placed with tribal relatives, non-related tribal members, or members of other tribes before non-Indian families can be considered.

South Dakota has taken a step back into the late 19th century, when thousands of Indian children were forcibly removed from their homes by U.S. soldiers and sent to boarding schools - allegedly for education, where the motto was "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." In some of these schools the motto was more akin to simply "Kill the Indian."

This journalist has heard numerous accounts from families across Indian Country who had lost at least one child to the boarding school system in the 19th century. They were told that their child or children had run away from the school and could not be found. In other cases they were informed that their child had died from illness.

For the Lakota people this has been a continuation of a 100-year history of child abduction. This began in the 1880s under the U.S. government policy of forced assimilation (genocide); children as young as 5 years old were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to boarding schools hundreds of miles away. Now it is happening again, this time under the mask of state-run foster care. Over the past decade over 5,000 Sioux children have been removed from their homes. According to a recent report by the Indian Child Welfare Act directors in South Dakota, 740 Lakota children are removed to foster care each year and 90 percent are placed in white homes and institutions.

A vigorous campaign is currently being waged by the Lakota People's Law Project to secure the return of over 2,200 Lakota, Dakota and Nakota children illegally taken from their homes by DSS.

Among the results of the LPLP efforts was the recent Great Plains Indian Child Welfare Act Summit held May 15-17 in Rapid City, South Dakota. The summit was held in an atmosphere that has been characterized by the Oglala Sioux Tribe as a "child welfare emergency."

The summit also had as a backdrop a federal class action lawsuit that was filed on March 21 by the Oglala and Rosebud Sioux Tribes and tribal members, challenging the continued removal of Native children in Pennington County, South Dakota, from their homes.

South Dakota DSS has asserted that it had authority to remove children by tribal court order or tribal council agreement. The states have no authority over such youngsters; the tribes have exclusive jurisdiction over Indian children residing on reservations.

However, investigations by LPLP found that South Dakota's assertions are blatantly false.

Typically, DSS would receive a false report of child neglect on a given reservation and without any legal authority would snatch the child in question without any notification to the child's relatives. In one such instance DSS abducted a young boy when he left his relatives to use the restroom while family members were attending a high school graduation ceremony. It was weeks before his family found where he had been taken.

Aside from the genocidal racism involved there is a financial motive on the part of the state. South Dakota receives $79,000 from the federal government per year per child for every Native youngster it removes, but provides only $9,000 to a white foster home. The remaining $70,000 is deposited in state coffers.

The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and other Natives feel that the ICWA lawsuit is for greater fairness for all families, regardless of race, including whites. But, it must be remembered that white youngsters are not being sent to non-white homes; for whites, genocide is obviously not an issue. The humanity of Indian people, particularly in the face of the racism they have endured is truly poignant and moving. This becomes a movement not just for Indian people, but for all, led by long-suffering, grieving Native families.

Update: The Lakota People's Law Project website has petitions that people can sign and also a place to sign up to receive updates on developments as they happen.

Photo: Pine Ridge Indian Reservation child. Pamela Cook, Flickr, CC BY NC SA 2.0