People Before Profit blog

Tribute to Gil Scott-Heron

Tue, 31 May 2011 12:15:00 +0000

One of my favorite musicians, Gil Scott-Heron, has died. Scott-Heron and his band performed on the seventh episode of Saturday Night Live (the one with Richard Pryor), and their music so moved me that I ran out the next day and bought their album, "From South Africa to South Carolina," the first LP I ever owned.

A student of African master drummer Babatunde Olatunji and of the Harlem Renaissance, Scott-Heron brought traditional African rhythms and instruments of a new contemporary style of soulful, folksy jazz, infused with both African and American history in a way that politically pulled no punches.

He took a bold stand against nuclear power with his hit, "Shut 'Um Down." He performed at numerous political rallies and benefits, and incorporated "spoken word" into his work, earning him the name of "Godfather of Rap."

He served as an inspiration to a generation of Afrocentric "guerilla poets." Scott-Heron contributed significantly to the Artists Against Apartheid's Sun City project, a collaborative recording of American and international musicians, including Bruce Springstein, Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel, Bonnie Raitt and Bono, whose goal was to raise awareness about apartheid in South Africa. Ronald Reagan was president at the time, and along with Israel, the U.S. was the last influential country to maintain a policy of tacit support for the apartheid regime.

Just this year, Scott-Heron cancelled a booking in Tel Aviv after Palestinian rights activists appealed to him, comparing Israel's policies to those of South Africa's apartheid regime.

At a time when the organic musical genre of "rap" was being heavily co-opted by commercial interests that emphasized violence and sexism, the genre's "godfather" responded musically with a piece called "Message to the Messengers," which offered brotherly, or perhaps fatherly, advice to contemporary rappers to focus on real issues relevant to the welfare of their communities and to treat women with respect and as equals.

Tupac Shakur soon after had an epiphany and followed Scott-Heron's advice, releasing the single "I Ain't Mad at Cha." That was also the year that two major gangs, Crips and Bloods, signed an historic truce in Los Angeles. When I interviewed one of the Bloods' leaders who signed that truce, he shared with me that Scott-Heron was, indeed, one of his influences.

Scott-Heron also championed the cause of undocumented immigrants with his often excerpted ballad "Alien (hold on to your dream)."

However, Scott-Heron may be best known for his poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," a scathing indictment of capitalism, racial and economic inequality, and media censorship. The title of the poem has been expropriated for any number of political and commercial applications, most of which bear little resemblance to the poem's original point, which was summed up by the line; "... andwomen will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day."

Many artists have covered or quoted Scott-Heron's compositions over the years, but the raw, heartfelt energy of his original performances, especially with long-time collaborator Brian Jackson and the rest of the Midnight Band, set a standard in political jazz, and bridged cultural and generational divides in a way that few American artists have accomplished.

I had been a fan of Scott-Heron's for more than two decades before I learned from Professor Cornel West, that he was also an author. His two novels, "The Vulture and The Nigger Factory," (released most recently as a single volume) described life in the ghetto with stark honesty, and yet showed a glimmer of genius that brought to mind the works of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. His writing approached greatness, and that was from the earliest days of his artistic development.

But Scott-Heron struggled with an assortment of vices, which inhibited his creativity and significantly narrowed his opportunities to perform or publish. He attempted a few comebacks in the first years of the new millenium, but reviewers described his speech and singing as muffled and incoherent.

I interviewed the Midnight Band's former saxophonist Bilal Sunni Ali, who had settled in Atlanta, and had a weekly jazz show on community radio station WFRG. He said Scott-Heron had developed a neurological disorder which affected his speech.

Nevertheless, he said, there were plans for some kind of possible reunion. Sadly, Sunni Ali, himself, suffered a medical challenge that halted his own musical career shortly thereafter.

Scott-Heron wound up doing a bit of time in prison on a drug possession charge, reportedly after having failed to comply with the terms of a very lenient parole sentence handed down by a judge, who was apparently a fan. Not long after his release, however Scott-Heron's efforts at self-resurrection finally began to pay off and late in 2010 he released his final album, "I'm New Here," a selection from which debuted on the airwaves in Columbus, Ohio, via my own weekly music program on WCRS communty radio.

I had hoped that someday Gil would actually return to Columbus and visit the station in person. Some years before WCRS hit the airwaves, I convinced local jazz DJ Wayne Self at the NPR affiliate, WCBE, to do a Gil Scott-Heron retrospective, for which I provided some of the material. I'm sure Wayne would agree that this monumental artist has yet to be adequately recognized on the local airwaves. There will be tributes, relegated primarily to community radio stations like WCRS, where Gil's music and the causes he was passionate about will always have a home.

Evan Davis reports for Free Speech Radio News on Pacifica Radio, and hosts a weekly music program on community radio station WCRS in Columbus, Ohio, a station he helped launch in 2007.

Photo: Gil Scott-Heron plays at WOMAD 2010, World of Music Arts and Dance festival, in the United Kingdom. He was the final act on the main stage. (Stuart Madeley/CC)

"Born This Way": Lady Gaga's anthem of acceptance

Tue, 31 May 2011 11:35:00 +0000

Music Review

Lady Gaga

Born This Way

Interscope Records

Lady Gaga's position at the summit of pop culture cannot be denied or overstated. She recently bumped Oprah Winfrey from the top of the Forbes list of most powerful celebrities. Her YouTube channel has received over 1.5 billion views. Her global appeal transcends demographic boundaries of race, class, and sex. According to Billboard.com, her latest album, "Born This Way," is expected to sell a million copies the first week.

Unlike most pop music phenomena, Lady Gaga is a genuinely talented musician, singer and songwriter. Sitting at a piano, unplugged from studio effects, she can belt out a song worthy of the music legends that precede her. A pop visionary, she bypassed the banality of typical pop culture by assembling "The House of Gaga," a group of designers, artists, and filmmakers that help produce her jaw-droppingly original music, fashion, video, design, and photography culture products. Odd as it may sound, Lady Gaga can be credited for bringing a higher level of culture to a mass audience.

"Born This Way," while technically Gaga's third release (after 2009's "The Fame" and "The Fame Monster"), still feels like a sophomore effort. It further develops Gaga's out-there expressions of self through the lens of fame and celebrity, but it lacks the break out brilliant dumbness of "Just Dance" and "Bad Romance." The lyrics are at times a bit too self-aware ("I just wanna be myself/And I want you to love me for who I am.") The songs, while inventive, at times are over-produced and bombastic.

That said, the album's creativity and emotionally honest underpinnings still elevate it high above other pop fare. Rather than just dropping more radio-friendly hits that celebrate obscene wealth and hedonism, Gaga at least uses the bully pulpit of superstardom to promote a progressive value: acceptance of diversity.

"Born This Way's" title track has been accused of being derivative of Madonna's 1989 hit, "Express Yourself." The tunes are arguably similar, but there's a big distinction between the lyrics. The words in the Madonna song betray hetero-conformist limitations:

"What you need is a big strong hand/ to lift you to your higher ground/Make you feel like a queen on a throne/Make him love you till you can't come down"

Lady Gaga's message is more inclusive, celebrating difference and self-love:

"No matter gay, straight or bi/lesbian transgendered life/I'm on the right track baby/I was born to survive"

The song is a bouncy, catchy anthem of inclusion that will surely become ubiquitous at Pride festivals everywhere.

"Born This Way" taps into many sources from the '80's besides Madonna. The dominant mode is still Disco, but a more Euro Disco with a techno-German vibe, replete with unnecessary umlauts, German accents, und lyrics auf Deutsch ("Scheiße"). Some tracks reference the era's electronica, like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. In a strange mix that cuts across the dominant music trends of the decade, these sounds are hybridized with '80's arena rock, with its soaring keyboards, amped-up Dire Straits guitars, and big echo-y drums. Some tracks, "The Queen," for example, sound a bit like Pat Benatar singing Bruce Springsteen. In fact, Lady Gaga has cited the latter as a major songwriting influence.

By the end of the album's prolix 22 tracks, one's ears are exhausted from the tumult and overproduction. "Born This Way" is a creative, exciting work from a still-developing star, but could have benefited from some simpler, more stripped-down tracks.

Photo: www.ladygaga.com

Elizabeth Warren versus corporate shills

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:39:00 +0000

It's over the top.

Republicans are practically foaming at the mouth in their crusade to block the nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In a House subcommittee meeting this week they fired a barrage of insults and completely baseless attacks at her.

It was so bad that Democratic subcommittee member John Yarmuth of Kentucky felt compelled to apologize to Warren. He pointed to what it's really about, telling her:

"This hearing is all about impugning you because people are afraid of you and your ability to communicate in very clear terms the threats to our consumers and the threats to our constituents and possibly very, very effective ways to combat them."

Yarmuth continued, "In one respect, I congratulate you for instilling such fear in the committee, on the majority side, and in some aspects, or segments, of the business community."

Republicans have been battling the creation of the CFPB since President Obama proposed it.

ThinkProgress notes that "Warren in particular has emerged as the GOP's primary enemy on the issue." Why? "She is almost universally opposed by those in the financial industry because she has made a career out of alerting consumers to the ways in which financial companies were taking advantage of them."

Warren has a long record as an expert and outspoken defender of consumers - in other words, a defender of the American public. As head of the Congressional Oversight Panel looking into the TARP bank bailouts in 2009, she even challenged the Obama administration for handing over bailout money to banks who then turned around and jacked up homeowners' mortgage interest rates or slashed people's credit lines.

Our columnist John Case put it this way last August, when this nasty battle was already raging on Capitol Hill:

"Why would Warren not be confirm-able? Because she told the truth about frauds perpetrated? Because she made the full dimensions of the crisis transparent? Because she favored strong penalties for thieves posing as bankers? Because Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, is a socialist and he supports her? Because the banking lobby wants no part of ANY real consumer protection? Yes."

This simple, modest step to protect the public is just "too much for the lords of finance to stomach," as columnist Sam Webb wrote here recently. He noted that the Wall Street lobbying machine has "gone into overdrive" to crush, or at least weaken, this and other financial reform measures.

Their Republican frontmen in the Senate are now trying to use a procedural maneuver to block the president from making a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren while the Senate is on break next week.

"Bottom line," Case said last summer, "you want credit or a mortgage that doesn't turn into Frankenstein on you?? -- call and write your senators and congressperson to confirm Eilzabeth Warren."

Do it now!

Photo: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Einstein meets Eisenstein in "The Tree of Life"

Thu, 26 May 2011 12:38:00 +0000

Movie Review
The Tree of Life

Written and directed by Terrence Malick
Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain

138 minutes, 2011, PG-13

Four words I never thought I'd see in the same film: Sean Penn and dinosaurs. Yet they co-exist in Terrence Malick's latest cinematic tour de force, The Tree of Life. The movie's meaning is as elusive as its writer/director is famously reclusive. At its Cannes Film Festival premiere Tree was both booed and applauded, yet went on to earn the coveted Palme d'Or.

Tree comprises at least three stories. Ostensibly the primary plotline, and the most accessible, is the saga of the O'Briens, a Texas family whose strict businessman patriarch is portrayed by Brad Pitt. Jessica Chastain depicts Mrs. O'Brien as a loving, nurturing mom of three sons. Malick also cast non-actors in significant roles, notably Hunter McCracken, debuting as Young Jack, the eldest O'Brien boy.

Malick deepens the complexity and even mystical nature of Tree by intricately interweaving the conventional O'Brien narrative with the two other storylines. Sean Penn portrays the adult Jack as an alienated architect, estranged in a wilderness of contemporary skyscrapers, brooding on the meaning of life. These sequences feature Fellini- or Antonioni-esque existential ruminations on modern life. Penn's essentially dialogue-less role recalls the expressiveness of the great silent screen actors.

The third leitmotif is the film's most obscure yet virtuoso. In visually stunning sequences, the ambitious Malick and his stellar FX team attempt to render nothing less than the Big Bang Theory of the cosmos, the origins of life itself, and the Darwinian process of natural selection. The "tree" of this 138-minute extravaganza is of course the one in the Garden of Eden, with the fruit that bestows life everlasting. Tree is Albert Einstein meets Sergei Eisenstein.

In the intense inter-cutting of these three cinematic strands, Tree asks really big questions: Why are we? What are we doing here? What does it mean? What is the nature of being and consciousness?

Along the way, some viewers are bound to get lost in space, while others more attuned to spirituality and pondering the splendor and wonder of it all will go along for the ride, watching in hushed awe, as if beholding a religious experience. Malick has made visual what the quest for enlightenment looks - and sounds - like.

Since the beginnings of film, cineastes have debated how to make films. Should movies be a strictly storytelling vehicle, unspooling in a logical, linear manner, like a novel or play? Or is there another path to pursue, one less traveled by an expensive medium dominated by commerce? Should films be expressed cinematically, utilizing the uniquely, purely audio-visual language, structure, and attributes of the art form? The American motion picture industry has overwhelmingly embraced the traditional narrative anchored in dialogue.

That's why the appearance of a Terrence Malick movie is greatly anticipated and treated as a special event by lovers of fine filmmaking: Malick reignites this almost forgotten aesthetic debate.

Although Malick is highly regarded as a movie maestro, Tree is only his fifth feature since his directorial debut almost 40 years ago, 1973's desperados-on-the-run drama Badlands (Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek). There was a full 20-year hiatus between the 1978 pro-labor ballad Days of Heaven (Richard Gere and Brooke Adams), and his 1998 return with an adaptation of James Jones's classic WWII novel, The Thin Red Line, with Penn, Nick Nolte and George Clooney. In 2005, The New World, inspired by the Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) and John Smith (Colin Farrell) saga, was full of the emotional verve and cinematic timbre that characterize a Malick production.

Tree is in the tradition of experimental cinema, exemplified by Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas; but unlike his predecessors, Malick has managed through Fox Searchlight (a Rupert Murdoch company!) to create a big-budget avant-garde movie with high production values. Malick marries music, sound, and sight in a form that is one with, and organically expresses, content. In a sense, Tree is actually closer to Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was similarly obsessed with evolution and our role in the cosmos.

Terrence Malick is among moviedom's singular stylists and poets. Some may be left in the dark by The Tree of Life. But if bewildered at times, I was also bewitched, going with the filmic flow of solar nebulae and, yes, the aforementioned dinosaurs. It's important for this type of experimental cinema to be created, and that there be a place for it in our over-commercialized culture. After all, one filmmaking size does not fit all.

Photo: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thetreeoflife/

What do IQ tests really measure?

Thu, 26 May 2011 11:54:00 +0000

Ever since I can remember, IQ tests and what they are supposed to measure have been one of the biggest controversies in psychology. The one thing most people agreed upon was that, whatever was being measured, these tests did not measure "intelligence."

The latest explanation is that they measure a person's "motivation" and the likelihood of future success. And by "motivation" is meant that of the person being tested for taking the test itself.

Research carried out at the University of Pennsylvania by Angela Lee Duckworth looked for a correlation between IQ test scores and the motivation shown by the test takers - did they bother to finish; did they rush through the test just to be done with it; were they just going through the motions, having no real interest or belief the test meant anything, versus following orders, taking it seriously and thinking a high score would benefit them?

"When people use IQ tests in social science research, where thousands of kids are taking IQ tests where it doesn't matter to them what they get, what's the effect of motivation on those scores?" Duckworth asked.

What the research showed was that long-term outcomes could be predicted by these tests (higher economic and social status). "But," Duckworth said, "what our study questions is whether that's entirely because smarter people do better in life than other people or whether part of the predictive power [is] coming from test motivation." In other words, the IQ tests may be measuring motivation to succeed rather than raw intelligence.

Then she asks, "Could it be that part of the reason doing well on this test predicts future success is because the kinds of traits that would result in you doing well - compliance with authority, self-control, attentiveness, competitiveness - are traits that also help you in life?"

Now "compliance with authority" and "self-control" (i.e. not being rebellious) may well be traits that exploited groups within society lack and thus are traits valued by mainstream society. It would seem the tests also measure docility as well as motivation.

Duckworth's conclusion regarding her study is that it "means that for people who get high IQ scores, they probably try hard and are intelligent. But for people who get low scores, it can be an absence of either or both of those traits."

So, if you get a low score, you are either not intelligent or not motivated, or both. It follows, however, that intelligent, even very highly intelligent, people could score low on the IQ test because they are not motivated to go along with the social regime in which they find themselves. Therefore IQ tests are unreliable measures of a person's "intelligence."

On the other hand, people who are docile around authority and take orders easily are likely to score high on the test compared to people who question authority and the status quo - everything else being equal - so the test's main use would seem to be as a tool used by the powers that be to identify and hold back people who might potentially challenge their monopoly and control of power.

The results of Duckworth's study suggests that progressives should object to the use of IQ tests on students and young people by the authorities in an attempt to classify their future behaviors.

Image: Oliver // CC 2.0

Eric Cantor's ugly ransom

Wed, 25 May 2011 14:07:00 +0000

Yesterday night, MSNBC showed a clip of high school students at a graduation ceremony in Joplin, Mo., last week hearing a speaker tell them how fortunate they were to be embarking on a new and exciting chapter in their lives.

One of those graduates, who is now homeless, talked about how different things were a week later and how fortunate he was to be alive.

Surveying the ruins of her home and the rubble around her, an elderly woman shook and cried as her husband put his arm around her. "All we have now is each other," she told the TV cameraman.

In the wake of the deadliest tornadoes in Missouri's history Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor said he wouldn't okay aid money for the Joplin tornado victims unless Democrats agreed to an equal amount of spending cuts. Cantor said, "If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental."

"Having pay-fors for that supplemental" is Washington-speak for budget cuts - in other words, screwing the working class and poor.

Republicans gained the opportunity to hold hostage the storm victims because the federal disaster fund had to be replenished before the government could send the suffering people of Joplin the aid they so desperately need.

Hundreds are dead, and hundreds are still missing in the working-class Missouri town where the average family earns $30,000.

Unlike the wealthy to whom Cantor gave huge tax breaks, the people of Joplin pay big chunks of their meager incomes in taxes.

Unlike the wealthy who got the tax breaks, the people of Joplin have no powerful lobbyists working for them on Capitol Hill.

Republicans were happy to get votes in Joplin, but, when disaster struck, they told the people of the town, "You're on your own, folks."

Residents of Joplin and the American people see, once again, what Republicans mean when they talk about "small government." They mean big tax breaks for oil companies. They mean that when disaster strikes working families are left to die in the piles of rubble that were once their homes.

There can be no political or moral justification for holding ransom disaster relief from the injured, from the dying and from those who must go on in Joplin, living with the memory of their nightmare. Human decency demands that any lawmaker who would do this be turned out of office forever in the elections next year.

Photo: Neighbors learn that someone had been found alive under the rubble and taken to a hospital, May 23, in tornado ravaged Joplin, Mo. Mike Gullett/AP

Illinois plans devastating cuts in disabilities services

Wed, 25 May 2011 12:23:00 +0000

Illinois is planning devastating cuts to services for individuals with physical, developmental and intellectual disabilities. These cuts target our most vulnerable citizens and are being sold as a way to balance Illinois' estimated $13 billion deficit. The truth is, these cuts are short sighted and will send us on a path of destruction.

Illinois ranks last in the nation for supporting citizens with disabilities in their home communities. Disability services that are the lifeline to more than 220,000 people with disabilities and their families have already experienced deep cuts and are hanging by a thread. In addition to funding reductions several critical programs are being eliminated and it's estimated that 3,052 direct care staff will be laid off as a result.

The budget has the wrong priorities and the process is flawed.

There are currently three budget proposals on the table, one each from the governor, the state House and the state Senate.

The House's estimate of revenues is about $1.1 billion lower than that from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (CGFA), a bipartisan agency with a proven track record of making accurate revenue projections. Using CGFA's reasonable estimate of revenues could save critical disability programs.

The Senate's proposed budget disproportionately impacts individuals with disabilities by prioritizing programs that do not maximize taxpayer dollars.

The Governor's budget appropriates $30 million to state institutions and cuts community based services by $76.3 million even though numerous studies prove community services are safer, more effective and efficient. Four people can be served in a community setting for every one person in an institution.

Furthermore, the proposed budgets do nothing to address the backlog in payments owed to disability service providers. Some have been forced to shut their doors and others are on the brink of collapse because the state is six months behind in making payments.

The disabled community cannot withstand additional cuts. The proposed budgets deepen the gap to accessible disability services and do nothing to address the 21,000 people on the waiting list. None of the proposed budgets does anything for those who are desperately waiting for state services.

Most people would agree that services to help people with disabilities live life with independence, equality and dignity are the kind of programs that are worthy of taxpayer funds. That is what our society was built on. We must provide assistance to help those who truly and desperately need it. It's not a hand out it's common decency. Now it's up to our lawmakers to make the right choices.

Tony Paulauski is the executive director of The Arc of Illinois

Photo: At a protest against proposed cuts in LIHEAP funding, March 2. Disabled Americans, who already see 70-80 percent unemployment rates, would be further victimized by the GOP plan to cut LIHEAP funds. Teresa Albano/PW

Coffee with John

Tue, 24 May 2011 13:48:00 +0000

A dear comrade of mine passed recently, one John Gilman - and when I say "one" John Gilman, those of us familiar with this man immediately recognize the redundancy. He was singular in his time. As we may remark casually to a friend, mutually admiring some phenomenal relic of the past, "They don't make 'em like they used to!" If anyone I knew embodied such a phrase, it was Mr. Gilman.

Once you live to a ripe old age, you seem to reach a point where very few people, if any at all, remember you when you weren't old. In the time that I knew John, the past 10 years or so, he was always old. Not just "older" but old. Like, Great Depression old. Steam locomotives old. Nazi-killing old. HUAC old. You get the point.

What a privilege it was. What a privilege to be able to sit down with an elder over a boiling hot cup of coffee on so many freezing Wisconsin evenings and look back with him over those many years. John told stories the likes of which I had never heard before.

John could bring me back to his grammar school, as he threw the principal down a flight of stairs. Back to the Depression as he sauntered nightly through the saloon district of his hometown, Chester, Pa., peddling magazines and tomatoes. Back when the buzz bomb destroyed the hospital where he was being treated during the war, catapulting him a hundred feet in the air, breaking his back. I could go on, but then again, there's a reason that he published his autobiography.

Those afternoons and evenings with John were equal parts inspiration and nostalgia. Ten years ago, before May Day was reborn in the United States with our brothers and sisters in the modern immigrants' rights movement, the flame was kept alive through stories like John's stories that I am sure many of us can recall our elders passing down to us. The streets filled with throngs of workers bearing red flags and picket signs on May 1, militant sloganeers often literally painting the town red. Such stories kindled my own imagination.

I have to wonder on whose shoulders the responsibility of the past rests. Is it up to the younger generation to listen to our old-timers and the stories they pass down before they pass on? Or are our elders the ones we must hold accountable for our history? Where does the past begin and where does it end?

In its ideal form, the past is a dialogue, a burden that no one generation should bear individually. It is something to be shared, even if it is unpleasant to our ears. At the risk of sounding a bit too purple in my prose, this communion of memories is one of the great ways that we humans have been able to show our love for one another, generation after generation.

After countless cups of coffee with John, I only now realize that I was really drinking history. I sip another cup and think about my dear friend as I write these untamed thoughts. I see the lesson of those afternoons and evenings. I'll say it as directly as I can - we must love our elders, listen to them, learn from them and care for them. Not because the thought that they may not be with us someday is never far from our mind (or theirs), but simply because they are here with us now, the only time that truly matters.

Photo: John Gilman wears his uniform and many medals at an anti-war rally in Milwaukee, Wis. (PW file)

The Oprah Winfrey Show: union made

Mon, 23 May 2011 15:22:00 +0000

CHICAGO - As Oprah Winfrey says her long goodbye to fans of her 25-year daytime TV talk show, the media is churning out a mountain of terms to describe Winfrey and her impact. "Most influential celebrity" "most powerful woman" and "richest African American" are popular along with "pioneer," "self-made" and "queen of talk."

One phrase has escaped the attention of most entertainment reporters, "union employer and member."

That's right. The most influential celebrity, a woman who wields so much power the beef industry felt threatened when she said she wouldn't eat a hamburger, an African American billionaire whose biography reads like a classic rags to riches storyline, has produced her show with union contracts.

The self made pioneer who revolutionized daytime talk is also a union member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, AFTRA.

"From the beginning 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' has been produced under an AFTRA contract," said Christopher de Haan, AFTRA director of communications. "Anytime she has a performer on her show they are paid and covered under an AFTRA contract."

As the union name indicates, AFTRA represents on and off camera professional performers, called "talent" in the entertainment business, explained de Haan.

The industry is highly unionized with a myriad of collective bargaining agreements covering union members from actors to writers and directors to stage hands.

Winfrey's company Harpo signed a contract with AFTRA, as did Winfrey's new network, OWN.

AFTRA's largest contract is with the big five networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and the CW. That contract expires Nov. 15, 2011. Contract talks begin in September.

Winfrey's fans aren't the only ones who will miss the union-made show. AFTRA's de Haan said the talk show provided union jobs for 25 years for the Windy City. "What's good is programming coming in after the show goes off the air is also union," he said.

Although her show is union made, Winfrey never chose to be a "union maid" and use her status to amplify any union causes.

On education, for example, Winfrey finds common cause with other billionaires by promoting the anti-teacher union documentary, "Waiting for Superman," and supporting charter schools. Winfrey's charity, Oprah's Angel Network, donated $6 million to charter school programs, despite there being no evidence that charter schools out perform public schools.

While millions of Winfrey fans champion her personal story-driven, self help approach, admire her tenacity through her own battles with weight, sexual abuse, poverty, gender and racial discrimination, and applaud her breaking through on topics from rights of children to positive portrayals of gays and lesbians, she has her share of critics.

Author Janice Peck, a media studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote "The Age of Oprah, cultural Icon for the Neo Liberal Era." Wanting to put Winfrey's rise and impact in a political-economic setting, Peck argues that Oprah's show, at its essence, reinforces the tried and true talking points of corporate America: there are only individual problems and solutions.

"We can be personally generous with others when we find people who are the deserving needy but we don't ask questions about the way our society is organized and the way resources are distributed," Peck said in a 2008 interview with Black Agenda Radio.

Peck situates Winfrey's influence in the developments of the last 30 years with the rise of a "neoliberal" economic model that shifted the role of government from a New Deal approach to the Reagan Revolution of privatization of public resources, tax cuts for the super-wealthy and corporations (trickle down economics), deregulation of industries and large cutbacks to any and all social spending.

"My argument is that the way to understand the journey of this woman is to understand neoliberalism as a political and economic project," Peck said.

"[I]t argues that any political or social issue that we encounter today must be seen through the lens of the free market. It turns all problems into individual ones that can be solved in the market. If there's contamination of the water table, for instance, we should buy bottled water. That we should solve problems with the market and through individual activity, and individual transformation is ultimately the same message that Oprah Winfrey sells to us."

However, Winfrey fans swear by the improvement of their lives by connecting to others through her show, and breaking out of isolation, realizing they aren't the only ones who have faced a particular problem, and every individual has value.

Like AnnieX30 who commented on oprah.com, "I've been a loyal viewer all 25 years that your show has been on. I can't count how many times you've gotten me through a tight spot, a tough decision, including 3 suicide attempts, and numerous 'a ha' moments ... At age 52, I find myself unemployed, and suffering from horrible lifelong depression. I continue to wonder why I am here and 'is that all there is?' But, in all the life lessons I have learned from and through you over the years, I know I will continue to fight for the happiness I deserve in life."

Winfrey's shows have had recurring themes of resiliency, forgiveness and redemption through individual - and group - action. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders first bus rides, Winfrey celebrated these brave Americans by reuniting 178 of them on a recent powerful show.

The debate and analysis of the impact of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and of Winfrey herself will continue beyond the last episode on May 25. "Contradictory" and "complex," along with the others, are sure to be part of the Oprah lexicon.

Which way to socialism?

Mon, 23 May 2011 15:07:00 +0000

In the folklore of my home state, Maine, a story goes that a lost traveler trying to get to a tiny rural town asks two old men sitting on the porch of a country store, "Which way to East Vassalboro?" The two men look at each other and then one replies, "You can't get theyah from heeah."

Hopefully, if asked about the road to socialism, people of socialist inclinations can give a better answer than the two Mainers did to the lost traveler.

While any answer will be speculative to a degree, it still is a question that socialist-minded people have to address.

So here is what I think.

The transition to socialism will be a complex and long process. There will be pauses as well as surges. Unforeseen events will upset political calculations on both sides of the class and social divide. Advances will combine with setbacks. Momentum will shift hands. One phase of struggle will give way to another. And turning points will occur during which the balance of power will shift decisively in favor of the working class and its allies.

Working people - those who create the wealth, make things run, invent new technologies, educate our children, care for the sick and build the future - will democratize and transform the state - the government structures, courts, military.

But of crucial importance is that, at the same time, they will also breathe democratic life into every sphere and institution of society.

All this will hinge on building up the political and organizational capacity of the working class and its allies, on sustained mobilizations at the grassroots and nationwide, on an ability to resist and block attempts to illegally and unconstitutionally reverse working class and people's power, and on a sound strategic policy at each stage of struggle.

It will also depend on the presence of an experienced, tactically flexible, and united leadership (including parties and social movements) that fights for breadth of alliances, takes advantage of the slightest differences among its adversaries, seizes the initiative, shapes the popular discourse, adopts timely and appropriate policies, and above all, fights for broad working class and people's unity.

In recent years, radical social transformations have occurred in relatively peaceful circumstances in Latin America. In a number of countries, an organized and overwhelming majority of working-class and indigenous people led by left coalitions (in which communists are a part) have democratically won political positions in state structures and then utilized them to isolate elites, dislodge discredited neoliberal governments, and enact democratic and socialist measures.

The left and socialist movement in the United States should study these experiences closely. Broadly speaking, the transition to socialism in the U.S., I would argue, will likely follow (and we should struggle for) a similar path, differences notwithstanding.

The traditional imagery of the revolutionary process - economic breakdown, insurrection, dual power, bloody clashes, "smash the state," and direct path and quick rollout of socialism - provides few insights in the present era. In fact, it is disabling strategically, it dulls and dumbs down the socialist imagination, and it fails to understand the overriding necessity of a peaceful (which does not mean passive) transition in today's world.

Rather than one insurrectionary event - the "great revolutionary day" - a series of turning points will define the road to socialism. During these turning points, the relationship of forces, structure of the economy, and people's consciousness will change quantitatively and qualitatively. In other words, the transition period to socialism will be composed of multiple building-block moments in a protracted process, during which socialist relations will become organically embedded, in a certain sense "naturalized," in the politics, economics and culture of our society.

Underlying this outlook is the notion that the state isn't simply a monolithic and seamless (capitalist) class bloc and weapon to be employed against the forces of anti-capitalist and socialist change. While the capitalist class is dominant over the capitalist state, the state is filled with internal contradictions and is a site of class and democratic struggles. It is not just any site, though, but a crucial and decisive site that the movement for radical change ignores at its peril.

Thus the nature of the struggle isn't "the people against the state" as is sometimes suggested. Rather an overriding task is to win positions and influence in the state through mass democratic struggles, and then utilize those positions, in conjunction with masses of people in motion, to transform the state and society along socialist lines.

Now some will say that this is highly unlikely, even utopian. But one has to ask: has the idea of the seizure of power and quick dismantling of the existing state in favor of a new "out of the ashes" socialist state been borne out by historical experience? I don't believe so.

I would go further and say that the path I have outlined isn't utopian at all. It's the only road to socialism in our time.

It's the way we can get there from here.

Photo: conbon33 CC 2.0

Progressives prepare for zombie doomsday

Thu, 19 May 2011 16:13:00 +0000

Christian radio host Harold Camping predicts that the rapture is going to happen on May 21, 2011, and that the world itself will end on October 21, 2011. "I know it's absolutely true," said Camping, "because the Bible is always absolutely true." The tautology of this statement not withstanding, progressives know better: they're all going to go down in one big zombie apocalypse. Or, at least, that's what the popular entertainment scene is talking about these days.

The Center for Disease Control recently posted, on their Public Health Matters blog, a humorous guide on how to survive a zombie Armageddon event . They provided a list of what your typical emergency kit at home should contain. Water, food, medication, sanitation supplies, clothing, and tools (like utility knives and duct tape) are all suggested. Also mentioned was an emergency plan and an evacuation route. The piece was meant to be entertaining and informative on how to survive a real disaster.

What with the 2012 hype and Camping's prediction (aimed solely at capitalizing on the marketability of end of the world fixations to make money), it seems that a fusion of the zombie genre with the 'end of days' story is a combination destined to attract plenty of fans.

These fans will be happy to know that Chicago is hosting its 4^th annual Zombie March on June 11. People will dress up like the living dead and parade the streets, their trek beginning in Millennium Park.

But does zombie fiction contain progressive elements? In order to look at zombie fiction from a sociopolitical perspective, people must examine the situation of human survivors in a zombie end-of-world event. Almost always critical to survival are the ideals of common cause and collective action as opposed to hiding out in a hole somewhere on your own.

In a 2009 article written for The American Prospect , Paul Waldman says of zombie apocalypse survivors, "A small group of people from varying backgrounds are thrust together and find that they can transcend their differences of age, race, and gender. They understand that if they're going to get out of this, they've got to act as though they're all in it together. Surviving the tide of zombies requires community and mutual responsibility."

An important lesson from this would be to take steps to ensure that, if offshore oil drilling or lack of health benefits cause a real apocalypse, we can stand united and band together to do something about it.

As for the zombies - there doesn't seem to be a single piece of zombie literature that encourages right wing ideologies. In April, a Florida activist group calling itself "Organize Now" dressed up like zombies and protested outside a town hall meeting held by Rep. Dan Webster (R-FL). Those zombies had a hunger for positive social change. They protested Webster's efforts to cut crucial services, including his move to effectively end Medicare.

For Harold Camping's part, he previously claimed the world would end in September 1994, in his book, 1994? Since no one is going to get taken up into the sky on May 21, and everyone is going to stay right where they are, what's the real challenge? Continuing to integrate popular culture with positive political viewpoints so the real tragedies the CDC wants to help prevent need not come to pass.

At the end of most zombie-centric films, the victims eventually begin to fight back. And at a time when the right wing is infecting society with dangerous ideas, it's time for real live people to fight back!

Photo: Pittsburgh "Zombie Walk" in 2006. Wikipedia by MissDee CS

GOP would sacrifice environment, thousands of women for profit

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:17:00 +0000

A study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and recently published by Science Daily has found that both young girls and women (after their first baby) who have been exposed of air pollution may have had their DNA mutated so that they will contract breast cancer before menopause.

This DNA mutation was greater in areas with higher levels of air pollution than in those with lower levels. These findings were presented at a recent meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. The chief investigator, Katharine Dobson, stated, "The investigation looked for an association between exposure to pollution and alterations to DNA that influence the presence or absence of key proteins. Such genetic changes are thought to be major contributors to cancer development and progression, including at very early stages."

With this information at hand, plus the information we already have - that air pollution causes untold numbers of deaths due to respiratory failures - you would think our lawmakers would want to reduce air pollution as much as possible to save women from these unnecessary deaths and the associated pain and suffering.

But it seems that Republican lawmakers (and conservative Democrats) and public officials are more interested in the money they get from the lobbyists representing the big polluting corporations - oil, gas, coal, utilities, mining, etc. - than they are in the health of the American people. They are perfectly willing to expose children to the deadly effects of air pollution and try and prevent any regulations from going into effect that might limit the rights of big business to dirty our air. They are on a mission to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency - which one of their own helped set up (President Nixon.)

Newt Gingrich, now running for the Republican nomination for president, for example, supports the movement to abolish the EPA entirely and thus give free reign to the polluters. He claims, according to the Center for American Progress, that people who want to control the air have no respect for ordinary people and their jobs.

Meanwhile, surveys by the American Lung Association and public opinions polls show that around 75 percent of the American people support the EPA and want even more regulation than the agency now tries to enforce. It is at least a good sign for progressives that the extremist Republican right hasn't the faintest idea what the American people really want.

The American people want healthy air for themselves and their children - the big energy corporations want bigger profits for themselves. Whose interests should prevail in a democracy? We shall soon find out as Congress hold hearing on these subjects.

The EPA says that newly proposed rules for reducing, forget about eliminating, deadly pollutants from power plants, cement kilns and industrial boilers - pollutants such as toxic metals, mercury and acid gases - will save tens of thousands of lives every year. Tens of thousands!

So are those people are just collateral damage to the executives of the big polluting industries and their Republican lapdogs? Representatives of the polluters have testified to Congress that they just can't comply with the Clean Air Act, and besides it will cost too much and also cost jobs. Sorry no can do.

Riling the Republicans is the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that carbon dioxide can be considered a pollutant because of global warming and is therefore subject to EPA regulation. But Republicans don't even believe in global warming! How can the Supreme Court rule on a non-existent thing?

The good news is that the movement to abolish the EPA is limited to the House. The GOP doesn't have control of the Senate or the presidency. It is our job to keep it that way and to recover the House from the lunatic fringe. This must be done in the name of our health, the atmosphere and the fight against breast cancer and other deadly diseases spread by Republican politics.

Photo: World Bank Photo Collection // CC 2.0

Song and struggle: “Bravely Comrades, In Step”

Thu, 19 May 2011 11:41:00 +0000

The struggle for socialism is international and constantly evolving. Socialist music is the same. Bravely Comrades, In Step is a good example.

Bravely Comrades, In Step was written in 1896 by Leonid Radin while in czarist Russia's Taganka prison, where he was incarcerated as part of the Moscow "Workers' Union" case. Radin himself was a story in internationalism and evolution. His first activity was as a Narodnik - a middle-class movement in support of the oppressed peasantry - in the 1880s, but during a spell in emigration he came into contact with the growing European Marxist movement and converted to Marxism.

Radin's song blazed through Russia's radical circles. It reached Lenin's place of exile, the Siberian village of Shushenskoye, in 1898. Lenin was reportedly enraptured. It has even been said that Bravely Comrades, In Step was Lenin's favorite revolutionary song.

Leonid Radin died of tuberculosis in 1900. Had he lived, he would surely have been overwhelmed with emotion as his song echoed through revolutionary Petrograd, one of the most popular of 1917.

It was in 1917 that German conductor Hermann Scherchen heard the tune. Scherchen had happened to be in the territory of the Russian Empire at the outbreak of World War I, conducting in Latvia. Interned by the tsarist regime, he had been a sympathetic witness to the Russian revolution. Scherchen, like Latvia, was liberated by the new Soviet power. He returned to Berlin, where he introduced his version of Bravely Comrades, In Step, called Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit (Brothers, to the sun, to freedom), to labor choruses. The tune was the same, the spirit similar, but the lyrics were drastically altered.

Germany, like many other European countries, was revolutionary at the end of World War I. The last straw came when the Navy brass ordered a final suicidal attack "to preserve the honor of the Navy," despite the nation having already surrendered. The sailors mutinied, workers responded, and they set up soviets - workers' councils to direct society - all over the country. In this context, Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit rose to popularity.

The ultimately unsuccessful German revolution burned the song into the collective consciousness, but like the legacy of the revolution, the song remained contested long after the fighting was over. In the 1920s a fourth verse was added that was sung by adherents of the labor movement. Subsequently, Communists added a fifth verse that only they sang. The verse reaffirms the 1918-1919 revolutionary attempt, and makes clear German Communists' opposition to what they viewed as the suicidal complacency of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the SPD. It reflects the desperate conditions of interwar Germany; after World War II this verse was typically omitted.

While indicative of bitter political disagreement, the difference between the three-verse SPD version and the five-verse Communist version pales compared to that between them and the Nazi version, Brüder, in Zechen und Gruben. The Nazis converted the revolutionary hymn into a nationalistic paean to Hitler, bringing to mind German-Jewish Marxist Walter Benjamin's adage that "every fascism is an index of a failed revolution."

After the war, the Nazis' Brüder, in Zechen und Gruben fell into disuse, while Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit was resurrected. The West German SPD took the three-verse version as their anthem, and the song was also sung at the congresses of the East German Socialist Unity Party.

The song lives on today, not as fossilized history but as part of living culture: some question whether the SPD, which worked hand-in-hand with the right-wing to suppress the 1919 revolution, "deserves" to use the song as an anthem; anarchists sing "black banner" instead of "red." As the French say, "la lutte continue."

Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit / Brothers, to the sun, to freedom

Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit / Brothers, to the sun, to freedom
Brüder zum Lichte empor. / Brothers, get up to the light.
Hell aus dem dunklen Vergangnen / Brightly from the dark past
Leuchtet die Zukunft hervor! / The future is shining through!
Seht nur den Zug der Millionen / See only the train of the masses
Endlos aus nächtigem Quillt. / Endlessly filling the night.
Bis eurer Sehnsucht verlangen / Until your longing request
Himmel und Nacht überschwillt! / Overcomes heaven and night!
Brüder, in eins nun die Hände. / Brothers, unite your hands.
Brüder das Sterben verlacht. / Brothers, death laughs.
Ewig der Sklaverei ein Ende, / Forever an end to slavery,
Heilig die letzte Schlacht! / Holy is the last fight!

(Labor 4th verse)

Brechet das Joch der Tyrannen / Break the yoke of tyranny
Das uns so grausam Gequält. / That tortured us so cruelly
Schwenket die blutrote Fahne / Wave the blood red banner
Über die Arbeiterwelt! / Over the workers' world!

(German Communist 5th verse)

Brüder, ergreift die Gewehre / Brothers, seize the gun
Auf, zur entscheidenden Schlacht / On, to the decisive battle
Dem Kommunismus zur Ehre / For the honor of communism
Ihm sei in Zukunft die Macht. / Let the future (power) belong to it.

Links

Russian version
Recent live performance (Russian)
4-verse German version sung by Ernst Busch
3-verse German version

Jim Crow move over, the Wisconsin GOP is here

Wed, 18 May 2011 15:01:00 +0000

"Jim Crow move over, the Wisconsin Republicans have taken your place," said state Sen. Bob Jauch, a Democrat from Poplar, Wis., comparing his state's new voter ID law to segregationist policies.

Under the new law, voters will for the first time be required to show photo identification this summer in recall elections seeking to unseat several Republican legislators who pushed through Gov. Scott Walker's highly unpopular anti-union bill. Voters will be asked to show drivers' licenses, state IDs, passports, military IDs, naturalization papers or tribal IDs. College IDs will not be accepted.

"Hundreds of thousands of people will stay home because of this legislation," said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Milwaukee. "By the time Republican senators are done it will be easier to carry a concealed weapon than it will be to vote."

To make matters even worse, the Republican-run state election board is in charge of running a public education campaign about the new law and the Republican-run legislature has not allocated any funds for the campaign. Republicans are expected next to oppose even the issuing of free state ID cards.

Scarier still, is that Wisconsin-style Jim Crow voter ID laws are in the works now in at least 22 states.

In the days of Jim Crow and poll taxes the segregationists, like the Republicans today, also argued that what they were doing was preserving the "integrity" of the vote and protecting us from "fraud."

Polls show that large majorities disapprove of the GOP's vision for America. People want to preserve Social Security and Medicare, they want the rich to pay a fair share of the taxes, they want to end subsidies to big oil companies, they want the right to form unions at their workplaces and they generally approve of the job being done by the nation's first African American president. The response from the GOP is to cut millions of those Americans - Africans Americans, seniors, immigrants, youth and students - off the voting rolls under the guise of protecting us from "voter fraud."

It is plain now for all the world to see. Democracy goes out the window when Republicans are put in control of a state's legislature and governorship. International UN observers, if they were allowed to monitor elections in the U.S., would have an eyeful.

These voter suppression laws make it clearer than ever what the real fraud is here: Republican lawmakers loyal to their corporate masters, pontificating about democracy while wrecking it. They have shown clearly that they will not act in the interest of the people and that they cannot be trusted to take care of anything as sacred as our democratic rights and freedoms.

Mitt Romney's Mexican roots

Wed, 18 May 2011 14:31:00 +0000

As a Latino, family heritage is important to me. I believe we can all learn from the journeys of our ancestors. For some, these may have involved crossing the border without papers, seeking freedom from persecution or fleeing the violence of revolution. These struggles and sacrifices have made our country great.

By the way, I'm not talking about my family. I'm referring to the uniquely American story of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. I only wish the former Massachusetts governor's views on immigration were informed by the reality of his background, rather than the generic Republican Party rhetoric he's espousing more and more often.

Romney says undocumented immigrants should all go home, because they're breaking the law. But his family history encompasses the flouting of the laws of two countries. His great-grandfather Miles Park Romney fled Utah for Mexico in 1884 to avoid persecution for the Mormon practice of plural marriage. Miles promised the Mexican government that his large family - he had five wives - would live peacefully and in accordance with all local laws. Still, he continued to practice polygamy, which was illegal in Mexico, even after it was banned by the Mormon Church in 1892.

Mitt Romney has spoken out against "sanctuary cities," municipalities that protect the rights of the undocumented. He says they wrongfully harbor unauthorized immigrants. How ironic. His own family obtained sanctuary in Mexico when the U.S. government was imprisoning Mormons, stripping them of their rights, and even killing them because of their beliefs.

Romney also thinks the border should be secured, because we can't have people coming across without papers. Yet in 1912, when the chaos of the Mexican Revolution threatened the Mormon settlements, his family returned to El Norte with no apparent need for papers or legal authorization from Washington. Mitt might never have had the chance to become a successful American businessman, the governor of a key state, or the savior of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were it not for our porous border with Mexico.

Under normal circumstances, the children of Americans who are born abroad are still considered citizens. But the Romneys' Mexican roots run deep. Three generations of the family lived there. Four of Mitt's great-grandparents died there. His father was born there. Mitt's father George, who served as the governor of Michigan, himself could have been a poster child for the DREAM Act. He was the son of a foreign-born immigrant who entered the United States without documentation with kids in tow.

So, if the nation were to deny the children of immigrants birthright citizenship, as some GOP legislators believe we should, could Mitt be deported?

That's why I find the story of the Romneys quite fascinating. Mitt's ancestors sought religious freedom and the chance of a better life. They took their future into their own hands. They did what they needed to do to survive - just like millions of undocumented people continue to do today, including many from Mexico.

And while I don't condone polygamy, I do admire the Mormon pioneers who risked everything for what they believed in. If only Mitt had such strong principles. As the governor of Massachusetts, he was in favor of accessible healthcare for all. Now he soundly opposes the federal government's new health program. He was once pro-choice but now favors outlawing abortion. He takes a firm stance against employing undocumented immigrants, yet has been caught twice with workers without papers who were mowing his lawn and doing other work on his property. This kind of flip-flopping and fudging on the issues hardly shows a commitment to leadership.

During his last run for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney told the Christian Science Monitor that he was proud of his Mormon faith. "These are my beliefs," he said. "They form who I am." Sadly, I have to wonder about that, for the Book of Mormon itself instructs compassion towards all immigrants. In 2 Nephi 1:6, the prophet Lehi speaks of the New World (America) and his message could not be clearer: "There shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord."

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and columnist in New York City. This article originally appeared in Other Words, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. Photo: Talk Radio News Service // CC 2.0

What will it take to pass a jobs program?

Wed, 18 May 2011 14:05:00 +0000

The failure to enact a big enough economic stimulus in the early days of the Obama administration is perhaps the single biggest reason the country's in the mess it's in.

While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act certainly helped ward off the worst effects of the crisis, official unemployment still rose to over 10 percent. Feeding on the resulting anger and disillusionment and adding an additional dash of racism, the GOP/tea party nightriders rode to victory in last fall's mid-term elections.

Sensible voices from the left and center, including the president himself, sought a larger spending package. The labor movement pushed for it, and sympathetic academics and talking heads made impassioned appeals. "You'll only get one shot at this," warned Paul Krugman, Princeton's liberal economist, time and again.

Powerful elements were opposed. After Wall Street and its corporate lobbyists called in their marks and the votes were counted, a smaller-than-envisioned stimulus was passed by Congress.

Was another alternative possible? Not according to former Obama advisor Larry Summers, recently interviewed by the New York Times Magazine.

Summers, who, ironically, helped during the Clinton years to implement policies that led to the crisis, argued that the Obama team supported a bigger stimulus package, but that the votes just weren't there: "It was entirely clear in the meeting where this was discussed that a larger fiscal program would have larger multiplier effects. The constraints were political, and indeed the seriousness of those constraints is demonstrated by the fact that the ultimate bill that passed was between 70 and 80 percent as large as what the president sought."

As Summers made clear, the president's initial plan was headed straight into a right-wing Republican gale. And even though the Democrats held a congressional majority, a monolithic Republican minority along with conservative elements among the Democrats themselves doomed larger spending proposals. Indeed, in the months after the bill passed, a deaf ear was turned toward calls for a second stimulus, calls that largely came from the labor movement.

Thus, way before the tea-party-led landslide last November, in fact a full year before, in the midst of the crisis and at the very height of the new president's popularity, the votes just weren't there. The newly-elected Democratic majority, many of whom had narrowly won election in Republican districts, couldn't muster the muscle.

The Obama coalition and the movement that led to his election were too young; the victory was too new and fragile. This could be seen much more clearly just two years later when many of these same Democratic freshmen, along with a number of veteran Blue Dogs, went down to defeat, some for voting for the stimulus in the first place.

What, then, are the prospects for the struggle for jobs after 2012? Even a centrist like Summers seems deeply concerned: "I worry for the medium and long term about where the jobs are going to come from for those with fewer skills," he told the Times. Summers continued, "One in five men between 25 and 54 is not working, and a reasonable projection is that it will still be one in six after the economy recovers. It was one in 20 in the 1960s."

Summers, perhaps, precludes a government-sponsored public works green jobs program repairing and renovating the nation's infrastructure and providing valuable job training in new technologies. The Obama administration has stressed instead private sector initiatives focused on small businesses.

On the other hand, labor, community and civil rights groups clearly have not given up the idea of the need for the public sector to play a major role in job creation. Nor should they.

Clearly a precondition for moving forward along these lines is defeating the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and re-winning the presidency next year. In light of the blitzkrieg of anti-labor legislation this past winter and spring, state legislatures and governors' mansions are exceedingly important contests as well.

While much will depend on the size of the hoped for victory, it is likely, as suggested above, that a simple Democratic win will not be enough.

For a meaningful jobs bill to pass in the next administration, the grassroots labor and community movement that is building across the country in response to the GOP attack on public workers will have to maintain its organizational strength and independence. It will surely have to fight like hell after the election for enactment of campaign promises.

How this is done is as important as the demand. Winning ever-wider sections of the people, including sections of the business community (particularly small and medium-size businesses) along with small towns and rural communities will be critical. Swing states and communities will be highly contested areas and even conservative areas cannot be written off. The working class and people as a whole are suffering from the crisis caused by the banking financiers.

It is worth recalling that in the battle over the Employee Free Choice Act, and the more recent attack on public workers, the president voiced support for labor and the right to organize. It would be a huge mistake to view this administration as an obstacle to progress on the jobs front.

In this regard, an eye toward unity when placing demands is an important consideration. As important is keeping focused on the far right and their corporate sponsors.

Only enormous public pressure will insure that a desperately needed public works green jobs program gets passed by the next Congress. Nothing less will stand a chance.

Photo: Takver // CC 2.0

Backbone: Schneiderman investigates Wall Street

Tue, 17 May 2011 17:56:00 +0000

Backbone. That is part of what's been missing over the past few years, and particularly the last few months, as politicians and public officials wavered in the face of the financial and political tsunami's that have rocked the the country.

As a result, notwithstanding evidence of massive fraud on the part of the big banks, not a single person or institution has faced criminal charges or gone to jail. Significantly, that may be about to change.

Reports indicate that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into Wall Street banks mortgage operations. Schneiderman's request for information from three major Wall Street banks, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, signals that the N.Y. AG has backbone.

As bank executives were scheming and loan-sharking their way to billions from subprime and other mortgage plots, real people spent their money for the "American dream" of home ownership.

And they were encouraged to do so from the top. After all, it was President George W. Bush who called for an "ownership society."

The banks' predatory lending practices, much of which was systematically racist, have gone from a mortgage crisis to a foreclosure and eviction crisis, which according to at least one report, has caused the "greatest loss of wealth for communities and individuals of color in modern U.S. history."

People are being kicked out of their homes, illegally in many cases, across the country by the same institutions that caused the economic chaos. The banks' mortgage servicers are pushing through foreclosures using numerous questionable, and even illegal, ways such as "robosigning," an electronic signature system, which enables banks to (illegally) transfer mortgages without recording them with state governments.

State governments have had to deal with this economic and political fallout. Attorneys general of all 50 states are demanding the major banks and their mortgage servicers pay compensation for their fraud and illegal consumer lending practices.

But the banks are pushing back hard, taking advantage of any and all divisions between the attorneys general, and between the states and federal governments.

For example, federal bank regulators, signed their own settlement with eight of the nation's largest mortgage servicing companies in April.

According to numerous reports, the settlement negotiated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an "independent bureau" of the U.S. Department of the Treasury tasked with regulating banks, is "weak," and lacks any real enforcement or supervision. It is not expected to help struggling homeowners, and falls far short of what the AGs had put on the table.

What the AGs had demanded was $20 billion in compensation (banks made $25 billion in mortgage servicing fraud) and most significantly, reductions on the highly inflated principal, which by some estimates could cost banks up to $160 billion.

While the lead AG, Iowa's Tom Miller, had said the OCC settlement wouldn't derail the states case, it seems to have. Last week, Miller proposed "new terms" to the top five mortgage servicers that "drop some controversial provisions of their first attempt at a settlement, including a push to force banks to reduce principal on thousands of mortgages," according to American Banker. Republican AGs oppose the demand to reduce mortgage principals.

With all this jockeying, many say it's doubtful that the AGs will force a settlement anytime soon. The banks seem to have the upper hand. And while the AGs have been working with the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a product of financial reform law and much hated by Wall Street and Republicans, Washington seems anxious to let the banks move on and get back to foreclosures and more wealth transfers.

Enter Schneiderman. He has said he would not be party to any deal -- AG-negotiated or otherwise -- that precluded his "office from pursuing claims against the banks relating to their mortgage origination, securitizations and marketing practices," according to The New York Times.

Despite abundance of evidence that reckless and fraudulent behavior by banks and other financial institutions contributed to the U.S. housing meltdown, and triggered the current global financial and economic crisis, these cartels are operating with impunity.

People are suffering all over, except in the people in the corporate suites. As filmmaker Charles Ferguson said as he accepted his Academy Award for "Inside Job," no one has gone to jail for the massive fraud. Outrageous!

If Schneiderman's investigations exacts justice he deserves the nation's applause and support.

Should Cuba send SEAL team to Florida?

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:57:00 +0000

Was the killing of Osama bin Laden justified? Perhaps it's a rather useless question, since he is now most certainly dead. But despite their distance in time and space, some recollections insist on recurring, right next to terrible images of those two planes and the huge buildings collapsing in New York 10 years ago.

Yes, I still think about that Cuban plane which exploded on October 6, 1976, in the Caribbean, killing the five crew members and all 73 passengers, including the entire champion fencing team of Cuba, many of whom were teenagers. All four men directly responsible for this horror had ties to the CIA which, it was later revealed, knew of the bombing in advance.

Then I must go back to an event 15 years earlier, in April 1961, when an attack unit, armed, trained, financed and transported by the CIA, after destroying many Cuban airplanes on the ground, invaded the so-called Bay of Pigs in the south of that country. Perhaps as many as 4,000 Cubans were killed while fighting off the attack.

Those mainly responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion, then CIA Director Allen Dulles and two presidents who approved the action, Eisenhower and Kennedy, are no longer alive.

But I learned as a kid that "sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." Wouldn't Cuba have been justified (or still be justified today) in "taking out" the organizers of the plane bombing - Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch Avila - by sending in a Cuban equivalent of SEAL Team 6?

The two were never holed up in some cave or secret mansion but have been enjoying carefree lives in Florida, with court decisions preventing their extradition to Venezuela, where they were once sentenced, or to Cuba where, it was said, they "might be tortured." (This time the reference was not to the U.S. Army base at Guantanamo.)

Posada Carriles, after being acquitted of minor immigration violations, is completely free. Bosch, referred to years ago by a U.S. expert as "one of the deadliest terrorists in the hemisphere," was officially amnestied years ago by - guess who - President George H.W. Bush, who just happened to be CIA Director at the time of the plane bombing.

The thought is mind-boggling! Would Cuba be justified in sending some kind of helicopter over to Washington to "take out" the top people responsible for such Cuban events? Let's not even think of Chile, Congo, Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan or all the others.

What is clearly needed is a better definition of terrorism and terrorists, and how to treat them. I personally am against killing anyone - not Osama bin Laden and certainly not George H.W. Bush or anyone from his family.

But a short epilogue is necessary. Orlando Bosch, it seems, has just died peacefully in Florida, four days before his famous fellow terrorist was shot dead in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, five Cuban men who had been in Florida trying to discover when and where the Miami-based "freedom fighters" might next strike against their country, and thus to prevent such strikes, are serving life sentences in five different maximum security penitentiaries in the USA (in one case, "only" 75 years). No one can really explain why. But the current president has not responded to pleas that he fight his war on terror by freeing these obvious anti-terrorists.

I should add that I am glad the racist right-wingers who love to smash the U.S. president by calling him a "Muslim friend of terrorists" (or else a socialist and communist) have become much quieter as of late, at least for a while. That is a good thing. But the questions remain: What is terrorism? Who are terrorists? And how does one best oppose them?

Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia.

"Chinese Massacre" dramatizes little-known history

Mon, 16 May 2011 11:41:00 +0000

Theater Review

If Karl Marx wrote, "The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle," one can add that American history is also the history of ethnic struggle. In The Chinese Massacre (Annotated), playwright Tom Jacobson takes a Howard Zinn-like "people's history" look at Los Angeles, revealing a little-known, yet significant, episode. In 1871, long before the 20th century's Zoot Suit, Watts and L.A. riots, there was a pogrom against L. A.'s then-200 inhabitants of Chinese ancestry.

There are few more important, serious subjects than ethnic cleansing and genocide. Jacobson and Circle X Theatre Co. are to be commended for rescuing this butchery and burning 140 years ago from our collective amnesia. The killing of 18 Chinese men - almost 10 percent of Chinatown's population - surpassed the number of victims of the Manson tribe, yet is as forgotten as Squeaky and Charlie remain remembered.

Massacre weaves a multicultural fabric of a far smaller, yet still ethnically complex, city of not such Angels, with competing groups of American, German and French-born whites, Jews, Hispanics, newly freed blacks, and Chinese. The solidarity that historical figure Biddy Mason, former slave turned community leader, extends to the beleaguered Chinese in their moment of need is moving, especially in light of today's antagonisms between Korean immigrants and African Americans here.

Jacobson also takes some pointed jabs at racial and religious stereotypes, delighting in lampooning the hypocrisies of Christianity. And there's a startling bit of Jew-against-Jew content that forms a piece of the ethnic background of L.A. Who knew of the Paris Commune's impact on L.A.'s fledgling population?

East West Players' literary manager Jeff Liu directs the sprawling drama and large ensemble, with most of the actors performing multiple roles. Along with the cast, the technical and scenic designers convincingly evoke what may have been L.A.'s first race riot. The play features one rather stunning special effect that I can only describe as Harry Houdini meets Ku Klux Klan.

Massacre makes reference to subsequent racial clashes between Angelinos, up to the early 1990s. In view of the troubled history of Chinese immigrants 140 years ago, it's astounding to consider the impact of today's large Asian-American and Asian population in Los Angeles County. Parts of communities such as Monterey Park or Koreatown seem more as if one is in Asia than America. Melding and conflict between people of Asian ancestry and those of other ethnic backgrounds continue today: An infamous recent incident involved a UCLA white female student's YouTube rant about Asian pupils in the library. Racism, alas, remains with us, and Massacre provides some needed historical context.

Playwright Tom Jacobson unfortunately undercuts not only the seriousness of his content but its power and cohesive flow with a self-reflective, self-indulgent form that repeatedly disrupts and distracts from what otherwise would be compelling storytelling. So-called "Annotators" frequently interrupt the drama, interjecting relevant commentary, in the mode of Bertolt Brecht's "Epic Theatre," we are told, so as to "alienate" viewers from sentimental emotionalism. The Annotators reveal, for example, that the fact-based play is fictionalized, the dialogue derived from sources outside the domain of the action.

But for me, Jacobson's technique not only militates against an intellectual grasp of these atrocities, but weakens any cathartic outrage and passion to these crimes against humanity. The L. A. Times reviewer called Jacobson's formal exercise "pretentious," which may aptly define that full "annotated" title.

In spite of Massacre's self-referential methodology, viewers who enjoy dramatizations of history, and their drama brewed strong, will likely welcome this dip into the annals of our not so La-La-Land. In the immortal words of that great philosopher King (Rodney, not Martin Luther): "People, can we just get along?"

The Circle X Theatre Co. production of The Chinese Massacre (Annotated) runs through May 28 at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village (Los Angeles), on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 pm; and Sundays at 2 pm and 7 pm. Reservations: (323) 644-1929; www.circlextheatre.org.

Photo: Elizabeth Ho and West Liang onstage in Chinese Massacre. Courtesy Shane William Zwiener.

The battles that must be won

Mon, 16 May 2011 11:27:00 +0000

If the nation is to reach a qualitatively more democratic stage of development some critical battles must be won.

Everyone who has been paying attention knows that the 2012 election will determine the direction of society and individual lives for some time to come. It will be a mighty confrontation and the outcome of which will shape the survival prospects of tens of millions of working and middle-class people.

The current debate around the budget - is it a spending problem or a revenue problem - is really a debate around drastically cutting social services or increasing the taxes on the rich.

This is the current manifestation of a sharpening class struggle that the capitalist class and their political surrogates on the extreme right started.

On Election Day, however, voters from all backgrounds but particularly working and middle class voters, racial minorities, women, youth and senior voters can have the last say in this battle.

By defeating the Republican extreme right, a powerful and historic blow for a more democratic and just society can be landed.

As the debate rages on, understanding the strategic importance of defeating the extreme right does not mean that the people totally agree with President Obama and the Democrats.

The great bulk of everyday working people, a majority of whom have been negatively effected by the economic crisis and the attacks on public unions and public services, understand this is a basic way out of the crisis.

It is a battle that must be won.

Indeed, the action of labor and its allies in Wisconsin, which has sparked a nation wide upsurge of militant action in defense of pubic sector workers, shows that millions of working people understand what is at stake.

They understand that defending and building a strong and growing U.S. trade union movement is strategic. Seen as part of a broad social movement of everyday working people it can bring a more democratic and just society.

This too is a battle that must be won.

High on the list of battles that must be won is the fight against structural racism and all forms of anti-immigrant bigotry. Every anti-working class, anti-immigrant and anti-people program that's pushed by the right has a strong racist content: their white supremacy is rooted in an ideology that puts profits before people.

In this economic crisis it's becoming clearer to millions of white working people and trade unionists that racism isn't just a bad thing, it hurts all working people.

Having an African American president facing reelection who stands with labor on many vital issues helps tens of millions of understand that the fight against racism is central to the fight for jobs and a more democratic and just nation.

When racism goes unchallenged the unity of action of the multi racial working class suffers, mass class consciousness lags, and with it the confidence needed to win the overall battle.

Therefore defeating racism is also a battle that must be won.

The fight for peace and disarmament is also critical - in particular, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. These too are battles that must be won.

U.S. wars of aggression around the world are driven by the drive of global capitalists for maximum profits and power.

Imperialist wars prevent the building of a more democratic and just society here at home.

It costs lives (both U.S. and others) and builds hatred between our nation and peoples around the world. As a result it promotes more war and conflict.

Meanwhile the waste of trillions of national treasury dollars negates any effort to end poverty, hunger and homelessness at home and worldwide.

It means that generations of working-class children, especially children of color, will never have quality schools or a decent place to live. It means millions of the elderly will be deprived of a decent retirement.

War is always a catastrophe. It legalizes murder and genocide. Ending the wars, bringing the troops home, promoting nuclear disarmament, peace and cooperation and transferring military spending to human needs is a battle that must be won.

The same goes for the fight for women's equality and LGBT rights.

Can the U.S. be a just and more democratic society without ending the mass incarceration of millions of blacks and Latinos who receive preferential treatment when it comes to being convicted and incarcerated by the courts?

Can the nation and world survive without ending global warming, along with air and water pollution?

These are battles that must be won.

Defeating the right in the next election is vital to winning all these battles and more.

If the political majority currently ruling the U.S. House of Representatives today takes over all three branches of the federal government again, all the battles that must be won will be that much more delayed.

We say that they must be won and they can be won but only through organized democratic and united struggle. The coming election requires all democratic and progressive forces to unite and roll up their sleeves and get real busy.

Things can get a lot better or a lot worse. If anyone thinks U.S. capitalism is going to stay the same forever they've got another thing coming. As Marx once said, the only constant in this world is change.

The battles that must be won, can be won. A great change indeed is coming.