People Before Profit blog

Seattle City Council panel OKs $15 an hour minimum wage

Sat, 31 May 2014 00:47:00 +0000

(AP) - An ordinance that gradually increases the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 an hour was approved Thursday by a City Council committee, setting up a full council vote next week.

In a boisterous meeting, City Council members approved a delay to the implementation of the ordinance, from Jan. 1, 2015 to April 1, 2015. They voted down amendments that would have sped up phase-ins as well as discounting tips from total compensation. The council also approved a sub-minimum wage for teenagers, a provision opposed by labor representatives.

The whole ordinance, even with the contentious amendments, was approved unanimously by the City Council members present.

"Seattle, and other cities, are taking direct action to close our nation's huge income gap because the federal and state governments have failed to do so. Seattle's new law opens the way for many workers to earn enough to meet their basic needs. It will raise their standard of living and by putting more dollars into our economy, stimulate greater business opportunities. By significantly raising the minimum wage, Seattle's prosperity will be shared by more people and create a sustainable model for continued growth," City Councilman Nick Licata said.

The ordinance came from recommendations made by an advisory group of labor, business and nonprofit representatives convened by Mayor Ed Murray. After more than four months of discussion, the group presented its plan earlier this month. Members of the advisory committee urged the City Council to pass the plan as it was presented without changes.

Murray's plan proposes a phase-in of the wage increase over several years, with a slower process for small businesses. The plan gives businesses with more than 500 employees nationally at least three years to phase in the increase. Those providing health insurance will have four years to complete the move. Smaller organizations will be given seven years, including a consideration for tips and health-care costs during the first five years of the phase-in process.

The full City Council will vote on the ordinance on Monday, but that may not be the end of the minimum-wage debate in Seattle.

A group called 15 Now is collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would amend the city's charter. Its proposal would create an immediate wage hike for large businesses and a three-year phase-in for organizations with fewer than 250 full-time employees. At the meeting on Thursday, group members said they already had 10,000 signatures. They need more than 30,000 to make it on the ballot.

The Seattle Times reports that the bone of contention was on the timing of the wage hike implementation and other amendments:

The vote came after a morning discussion about amendments, including one that passed, that would delay implementation of a new city minimum-wage law from Jan. 1 to April 1.

The seven council members, acting as the committee on minimum wage, were 4-3 split on that vote. Councilmember Sally Clark had proposed the amendment for the delay, saying it would give businesses more time to plan for the increase.

The committee also approved an amendment authorizing the city to set a lower minimum wage for minors and for apprentice and training programs. Mayor Ed Murray proposed the provision saying it paralleled state law. But unions and worker advocates objected saying it could be abused by employers.

The Council voted down a proposal by Councilmember Kshama Sawant that would have sped up the timeline for business to reach the minimum wage. Sawant's allies in the Socialist Alternative Party attempted to present 10,000 signatures backing a charter amendment that would require big business to pay $15 an hour January 1 and give small businesses three years.

When Councilmember Sally Clark, chair of the minimum wage commitee, directed the group to submit the petitions to the City Clerk's office, 15 Now activists broke into a chant of "What do we want? 15! When do we want it? Now!"

Sawant was also unsuccessful in removing the temporary tip credit from the proposal. She argued that a majority of tipped workers were women and that allowing a credit would add to the city's gender wage gap.

Despite the defeats on amendments, the standing room only audience made up of union supporters, fast food workers and 15 Now activists broke into cheers when the Council unanimously approved the legislation.

Tacoma residents have been pressing for a $15 an hour minimum wage as well.

Photo: Seattle residents attend the committee meeting, May 29. AP

High point of the week: House votes to end medical pot crackdowns

Fri, 30 May 2014 16:43:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The GOP-controlled House voted early Friday in favor of blocking the federal government from interfering with states that permit the use of medical marijuana.

The somewhat surprising 219-189 vote came as the House debated a bill funding the Justice Department's budget. The measure now heads to the Democratic Senate.

The amendment by conservative GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California - the first state to legalize medical marijuana - came as almost half the states have legalized marijuana for medical uses, such as improving the appetites of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

Rohrabacher and 11 cosponsors, including California Democrats, Rep. Barbara Lee and Rep. Sam Farr argued that public opinion has shifted strongly to support for medical marijuana and against the federal government's prohibition of pot.

"Public opinion is shifting," Rohrabacher said, noting a recent Pew Research Center that found 61 percent of Republicans support medical marijuana. The numbers are higher for independents and Democrats.

"Despite this overwhelming shift of public opinion, the federal government continues its hard line of oppression against medical marijuana," he said.

Oregon Democrat Earl Blumenauer told opponents "this train has already left the station."

Democrat Lee called for "the implementation of the will of the voters to comply with state law rather than undermining our democracy."

Lee, who represents an area that has medical pot dispensaries, said, "In states with medical marijuana laws, patients face uncertainty regarding their treatment as small business owners who have invested millions, as small business owners who have invested millions creating jobs and revenue have no assurances for the future."

Opponents said marijuana is regulated too loosely by the states and harms the brain.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., cited a recent Drug Enforcement Administration study that said that many in the medical marijuana movement are using it as "a means to an end," meaning legalization for recreational use.

"Congress is officially pulling out of the war on medical marijuana patients and providers," said Dan Riffle, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Rohrabacher's amendment must pass the Senate and be signed by President Obama before it becomes law. Still, today's vote marks a sharp reversal on the issue. KQED reports that six times before, the House had rejected virtually identical versions of the amendment, originally introduced in 2003 by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-New York. The last time the proposal came to a vote, in May 2012, it was defeated by a vote of 262-163.

Medical marijuana advocates hailed the vote.

Steve DeAngelo of Oakland-based Harborside Health Center, described as "the nation's largest, state-legal, model nonprofit medical cannabis dispensary," said in a statement that the vote sends a "message to elected officials and candidates everywhere" to "wake up and smell the cannabis."

"Hinchey-Rohrabacher has been one of the central goals of the medical cannabis movement for almost 20 years, and its passage is a clear sign of our movement's growing political sophistication and potency. Prohibitionists who predicted 'the stoners' would just lose motivation and forget about it have been proven decisively wrong."

DeAngelo has been fighting the federal government's efforts to shut down Harborside, reports SFGate.

In 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that it would "not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana." But that did not extend to businesses that the Justice Department considers hiding "behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal."

The House vote indicates the need to deal with the contradictions between state law, public opinion, science and federal law. Early in the Obama administration, the Justice Department had said it wouldn't focus on medical cannabis dispensaries that followed state law. But in October 2012, alleging many supposedly non-profit clinics are raking in money by supplying people with no medical need, the Justice Department began moving against dispensaries even where states allow them. State and local legislators in states where medical marijuana is legal have been fighting back against the federal campaign for some time.

Sources: Associated Press, KQED, SFGate and peoplesworld.org.

Photo: U.S. marshals at the entrance of Oaksterdam University in Oakland. Noah Berger/AP

Obama rebuffs militarists in speech full of contradictions

Fri, 30 May 2014 16:26:00 +0000

President Obama, in a commencement address at West Point on Wednesday, rebuffed those who are pressing for U.S. military intervention in global hotspots, and made a case for a non-militarist foreign policy. At the same time, however, he advocated for "American exceptionalism" that includes involvement in foreign conflicts, covert operations and drone strikes, and other ways of exerting what he described as necessary "American leadership" in the world.

"[T]o say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution," Obama told the graduating class and their families at America's top military academy. "Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences - without building international support and legitimacy for our action; without leveling with the American people about the sacrifices required. Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans."

"U.S. military action cannot be the only - or even primary -- component of our leadership in every instance," he argued. "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail."

Conservative pundit Robert Kagan, a supporter of aggressive military action, complained to NPR: "If you look at that speech closely, you know, there is a way in which he makes a kind of subtle critique of the general thrust of American foreign-policy since World War II. And I think the critique is one of a nation that was leaning forward and, in some cases, got into involvements like Vietnam and then later Iraq that were a big mistake. I think he is suggesting a different course from what has been the general thrust of American foreign policy for 70 years."

For some, Obama's speech evoked one by President John F. Kennedy at American University on June 10, 1963, just months before his assassination. "What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek?" Kennedy said. "Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war." Many at the time believed that, having gone through near-nuclear-war with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the misguided Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, Kennedy was intending to move away from Cold War confrontation. We never got to see what Kennedy actually would have done.

But, like Obama, Kennedy was nevertheless a liberal defender of U.S. capitalism and its power in the world. He would have had to figure out how to advance U.S. "interests" - at their core, "free markets, meaning a free hand for U.S. transnational corporations - while holding back the extreme militarists.

Obama, in his speech this week, attempted to do something like that.

Hitting back against right-wing efforts to label him as "weak" on foreign policy, he rejected the military adventurism of figures like John McCain, and emphasized an approach that included diplomacy and consultation. But Obama indicated that he has not given up the Bush-Clinton-Bush notion of the U.S. as the unipolar world leader.

In his words, "the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation," and "America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else will."

While advocating multilateralism, what he really seemed to mean by this is getting other like-minded countries to do our bidding - "a strategy that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin, or stir up local resentments." Tellingly, and somewhat shockingly for some, he lumped in among a list of "dangers" we face the fact that "From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums."

Seeing those emerging nations, sometimes referred to as the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), as a threat hardly fits what many would consider a multilateral, democratic world outlook.

Obama emphasized working through international bodies, a welcome change for many from the Bush era. However he placed NATO, a U.S./Western Europe Cold War holdover, first on his list, before the United Nations. Yet many commentators have pointed to NATO as part of the problem in conflicts ranging from the Ukraine to Libya.

He called for a "new Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity, and facilitate partner countries on the front lines." This bypasses the UN.

And, while calling for a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis, he said he would pursue aiding rebels there, claiming he would be able to direct support to those who are not terrorists. This flies in the face of evidence so far, which indicates that money and weaponry flowing into Syria has in fact fueled the rise of Islamist extremists.

Obama made no mention of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, leaving the world to wonder what if anything his administration is planning to do in the wake of the recently collapsed peace talks. He also made no mention of rethinking the U.S. approach to Latin America, even though most of that region objects to much of our existing policies and has indicated they want a different relationship.

The president's speech has drawn praise for its rejection of the militarism pressed by Republicans but also some Democrats. At the same time, he left many centrist commentators dissatisfied. Jacob Heilbrunn at The National Interest commented: "For foreign policy mavens, at least those inclined toward the realist persuasion, there was a lot to like - the dismissal of military adventurism, for example. And for those inclined toward the liberal internationalist persuasion, there was also a lot to like - the embrace of multilateralism and collective security, for example. Obama reverted - actually, it would be more accurate to say adhered - to his old habit of splitting the difference between various schools of thought.

"But Obama has not made clear what he would substitute for the interventionism of the Bush years. A $5 billion 'Counterrorism Partnership Fund'?"

From a left viewpoint, the president's speech indicated his administration's foreign policy is seeking to get rid of the worst of the Bush era - certainly an important improvement - but hasn't really grappled with what "multilateralism" and multipolarity mean in a world demanding political and economic sovereignty and social justice.

Photo: President Barack Obama and West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen participate in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point commencement ceremony at Michie Stadium in West Point, N.Y., May 28, 2014. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

House Dems side with labor on trade pact

Fri, 30 May 2014 13:30:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) -- The controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact must include enforceable labor rights in its text, an overwhelming majority of House Democrats told the Obama administration's trade representative on May 29. And even if it does, the leaders of the group say, the TPP still faces tough sledding on Capitol Hill.

The warning drew high praise from Communications Workers President Larry Cohen, who joined several of the lawmakers in a telephone press conference. Cohen's CWA and the Steel Workers lead labor's campaign against both the TPP and so-called "fast-track" presidential trade authority that Obama needs to jam trade pacts through Congress.

Those pacts lack labor rights in their texts. When labor rights are mentioned, they're afterthoughts and usually the first thing dropped in negotiations, speakers said. U.S. workers suffer as firms use the lack of labor rights to exploit foreign workers and export U.S. jobs.

If Obama Trade Rep Michael Froman tries that in the TPP, and especially in current secret talks with one TPP nation, Mexico, over a side "labor action plan," it won't work, Cohen and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., warned.

Some 153 House Democrats - more than three of every four - signed the letter. Miller and influential Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., previously got 150 House Democrats to sign an anti-fast-track letter to Obama.

Cohen praised the letter and also warned Obama against taking an end-run around his own party, by recruiting 30 pro-fast-track Democrats and joining them with the House GOP majority to approve both fast-track and the TPP.

"The point of this letter is that we're not going to have 20^th century double talk on workers rights" and trade, Cohen said, referring to a 3-year-old side labor rights agreement in the last trade pact, with Colombia. Miller, after trips to and investigations in Colombia, says that side pact is unenforced.

"Labor rights are now government-to-government" in trade pacts, "while corporate rights get to go over the top of governments" to outside enforcement, Cohen added. "There are some 500 cases of enforcement of multi-nationals' rights."

The lawmakers demand that enforceable labor rights, including job safety laws, minimum wage laws, anti-discrimination laws, outlawing pregnancy discrimination, barring use of unpaid slave labor - including prison labor - and implementing other human rights must be in the TPP text. And they must be enforceable and enforced, Miller warned.

"We need results that benefit American workers and make human rights and labor rights essential," Miller added. "Cheap labor abroad leads to unsafe imports at home - and that displaces workers at home," said DeLauro. And without worker rights, she added, TPP is dead. "If these concerns are not properly addressed, this deal will not pass Congress."

Photo: United Steelworkers Facebook page.

Life of General Gordon Baker, Jr. celebrated in Detroit

Thu, 29 May 2014 12:26:00 +0000

DEARBORN, Mich. - The life of General Gordon Baker, Jr. was celebrated with a huge outpouring of many hundreds this past Saturday during a memorial at United Auto Workers Local 600 hall in Dearborn. Baker died May 18 at the age of 72. He was a lifelong revolutionary, a labor and human rights advocate loved by many for his warmth, kindness, and humanism.

Speaking at the event, United Auto Worker International President Bob King lauded Baker's role in organizing a 1968 wildcat strike of thousands against the conditions faced by all workers, but especially the racist treatment directed at black workers at Chrysler's Hamtramck Assembly Plant and the lack of black leadership within the UAW itself. Baker was fired as a result of that strike, but managed to get a job at another auto plant later.

King said the strike, organized by the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), "changed how African Americans were treated throughout industry and the UAW." DRUM was a rank-and-file group left-wing black workers at Chrysler Corporation's Hamtramck Assembly plant, formerly Dodge Main in Detroit.

"Whatever my level of progressiveness, a lot of it was created by my relationship with General. I personally and UAW institutionally, owe General Baker a great deal for challenging us."

King noted that Baker and his wife Marian Kramer-Baker were a team, devoted to each other and to justice.

Michigan Welfare Rights leader Maureen Taylor talked of Baker's 1965 refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army. A vehement opponent of the Vietnam war, Baker was the nation's first African America to refuse induction. He sent the local draft board a blistering letter denouncing U.S. genocide at home and abroad against people of color.

UAW Vice-President Jimmy Settles said the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, meeting in Atlanta, (a meeting he flew out of to attend the memorial and would later fly back to) had moment of silence in honor of Baker.

As had many others, Settles too spoke of Baker's love for people and in particular the children he came in contact with. "He wasn't just a fighter for social change; he was a fighter for every little kid that came through his door."

Photo: Gordon Baker, Jr. Courtesy of Barb Ingalls.

Texas Republicans continue to go for off-the-grid right-wingers

Wed, 28 May 2014 15:50:00 +0000

DALLAS -- Texas completed its Democratic and Republican primary elections on May 27. Unlike the results in other states, "tea party" far-right Republicans triumphed in most of the contests.

Labor's candidates succeeded on the Democratic side.

David Alameel won the Democratic Party senate nomination over Keisha Rogers by 73-27 percent in nearly-final reports.

The defeated Rogers ran the quirkiest of several quirky races. Democratic Party ads said that she was not a "real Democrat" but was instead a follower of Lyndon LaRouche, possibly the national king of quirkiness on the Democratic side. Rogers had a lot of money for advertising her main slogan, "Impeach Obama!" She campaigned with a picture of the President with a Hitler mustache.

Also noteworthy for its quirkiness was the Democratic race for Agricultural Commissioner. "Kinky" Freedman, author, bandleader, and raconteur, campaigned almost solely on legalizing marijuana. His opponent, Jim Hogan, steadfastly refused to campaign at all. Hogan is as unknown now as he was when he first threw his hat in the ring, but he's won the Democratic Party nomination for November!

Free publicity showered down on Republican contests, while the Democrats were barely mentioned. All the Republican winners except Railroad Commissioner nominee Ryan Sitton, claimed the "tea party" mantle. The Railroad Commissioner in Texas has almost nothing to do with railroads but has a great deal to do with regulating the oil industry; consequently big capital was taking no chances in that race.

Most of the Republican losers also claimed to represent tea party values. The newspapers are heralding a giant victory of "tea party" Republicans over "Chamber of Commerce" Republicans, but it was very difficult to tell which candidates were more aggressively opposed to the rights of workers, minorities, or women.

The top of the ticket for the all-important governor's race had already been settled in the first round of voting. It will be Republican Attorney General Gregg Abbott versus Democratic Senator Wendy Davis. Davis has strong credentials and a strong program for women's rights and education, while Abbott will work to make the November election about something else, anything else.

Republicans have dominated state politics almost completely since 1994, and their races drew virtually all the big money and the media attention. One spinoff result of that situation may be dismaying for Democratic hopefuls: approximate turnout figures indicate that the Republicans received 80 percent of the votes cast in the primary runoff! If the Democrats can't turn around the state's lowest-in-America turnout figures, the mighty efforts of unions and progressive political figures will fall short in 2014.

On the other hand, the primary elections are very encouraging to some Democrats because they realize that their November candidates will be running against off-the-grid rightwing candidates with no regard for any of the practicalities of state government.

Photo: Texas Democrats hope voters will reject GOP extremism and elect their candidate, Wendy Davis, governor. AP

Author, poet, activist Maya Angelou dies at age 86

Wed, 28 May 2014 14:24:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) - Maya Angelou was gratified, but not surprised by her extraordinary fortune.

"I'm not modest," she told The Associated Press in 2013. "I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned behavior. But I do pray for humility, because humility comes from the inside out."

Her story awed millions. The young single mother who worked at strip clubs to earn a living later danced and sang on stages around the world. A black woman born poor wrote and recited the most popular presidential inaugural poem in history. A childhood victim of rape, shamed into silence, eventually told her story through one of the most widely read memoirs of the past few decades.

Angelou, a Renaissance woman and cultural pioneer, died Wednesday morning at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, her son, Guy B. Johnson, said in a statement. The 86-year-old had been a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University since 1982.

"She lived a life as a teacher, activist, artist and human being. She was a warrior for equality, tolerance and peace," Johnson said.

Angelou had been set to appear this week at the Major League Baseball Beacon Awards Luncheon, but canceled in recent days citing an unspecified illness.

Tall and regal, with a deep, majestic voice, she was unforgettable whether encountered through sight, sound or the printed word. She was an actress, singer and dancer in the 1950s and 1960s and broke through as an author in 1970 with "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which became standard (and occasionally censored) reading and made Angelou one of the first black women to enjoy mainstream success. "Caged Bird" was the start of a multipart autobiography that continued through the decades and captured a life of hopeless obscurity and triumphant, kaleidoscopic fame.

The world was watching in 1993 when she read her cautiously hopeful "On the Pulse of the Morning" at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration. Her confident performance openly delighted Clinton and made publishing history by making a poem a best-seller, if not a critical favorite. For President George W. Bush, she read another poem, "Amazing Peace," at the 2005 Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the White House. Presidents honored her in return with a National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. In 2013, she received an honorary National Book Award.

She called herself a poet, in love with the "sound of language," ''the music in language," as she explained to The Associated Press in 2013. But she lived so many lives. She was a wonder to Toni Morrison, who marveled at Angelou's freedom from inhibition, her willingness to celebrate her own achievements. She was a mentor to Oprah Winfrey, whom she befriended when Winfrey was still a local television reporter, and often appeared on her friend's talk show program. She mastered several languages and published not just poetry, but advice books, cookbooks and children's stories. She wrote music, plays and screenplays, received an Emmy nomination for her acting in "Roots," and never lost her passion for dance, the art she considered closest to poetry.

"The line of the dancer: If you watch (Mikhail) Baryshnikov and you see that line, that's what the poet tries for. The poet tries for the line, the balance," she told The Associated Press in 2008, shortly before her 80th birthday.

Her very name as an adult was a reinvention. Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis and raised in Stamps, Ark., and San Francisco, moving back and forth between her parents and her grandmother. She was smart and fresh to the point of danger, packed off by her family to California after sassing a white store clerk in Arkansas. Other times, she didn't speak at all: At age 7, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend and didn't talk for years. She learned by reading, and listening.

"I loved the poetry that was sung in the black church: 'Go down Moses, way down in Egypt's land,'" she told the AP. "It just seemed to me the most wonderful way of talking. And 'Deep River.' Ooh! Even now it can catch me. And then I started reading, really reading, at about 7 1/2, because a woman in my town took me to the library, a black school library. ... And I read every book, even if I didn't understand it."

At age 9, she was writing poetry. By 17, she was a single mother. In her early 20s, she danced at a strip joint, ran a brothel, was married, and then divorced. But by her mid-20s, she was performing at the Purple Onion in San Francisco, where she shared billing with another future star, Phyllis Diller. She also spent a few days with Billie Holiday, who was kind enough to sing a lullaby to Angelou's son, Guy, surly enough to heckle her off the stage and astute enough to tell her: "You're going to be famous. But it won't be for singing."

After renaming herself Maya Angelou for the stage ("Maya" was a childhood nickname, "Angelou" a variation of her husband's name), she toured in "Porgy and Bess" and Jean Genet's "The Blacks" and danced with Alvin Ailey. She worked as a coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and lived for years in Egypt and Ghana, where she met Nelson Mandela, a longtime friend; and Malcolm X, to whom she remained close until his assassination, in 1965. Three years later, she was helping King organize the Poor People's March in Memphis, Tenn., where the civil rights leader was slain on Angelou's 40th birthday.

"Every year, on that day, Coretta and I would send each other flowers," Angelou said of King's widow, Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006.

Angelou was little known outside the theatrical community until "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which might not have happened if James Baldwin hadn't persuaded Angelou, still grieving over King's death, to attend a party at Jules Feiffer's house. Feiffer was so taken by Angelou that he mentioned her to Random House editor Bob Loomis, who persuaded her to write a book by daring her into it, saying that it was "nearly impossible to write autobiography as literature."

"Well, maybe I will try it," Angelou responded. "I don't know how it will turn out. But I can try."

Angelou's musical style was clear in a passage about boxing great Joe Louis's defeat in 1936 against German fighter Max Schmeling:

"My race groaned," she wrote. "It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. ... If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help."

Angelou's memoir was occasionally attacked, for seemingly opposite reasons. In a 1999 essay in Harper's, author Francine Prose criticized "Caged Bird" as "manipulative" melodrama. Meanwhile, Angelou's passages about her rape and teen pregnancy have made it a perennial on the American Library Association's list of works that draw complaints from parents and educators.

"'I thought that it was a mild book. There's no profanity," Angelou told the AP. "It speaks about surviving, and it really doesn't make ogres of many people. I was shocked to find there were people who really wanted it banned, and I still believe people who are against the book have never read the book."

Angelou appeared on several TV programs, notably the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries "Roots." She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for her appearance in the play "Look Away." She directed the film "Down in the Delta," about a drug-wrecked woman who returns to the home of her ancestors in the Mississippi Delta. She won three Grammys for her spoken-word albums and in 2013 received an honorary National Book Award for her contributions to the literary community.

Back in the 1960s, Malcolm X had written to Angelou and praised her for her ability to communicate so directly, with her "feet firmly rooted on the ground." In 2002, Angelou communicated in an unexpected way when she launched a line of greeting cards with industry giant Hallmark. Angelou admitted she was cool to the idea at first. Then she went to Loomis, her editor at Random House.

"I said, 'I'm thinking about doing something with Hallmark,'" she recalled. "And he said, 'You're the people's poet. You don't want to trivialize yourself.' So I said 'OK' and I hung up. And then I thought about it. And I thought, if I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in the people's hands - and I hope in their hearts. So I thought, 'Hmm, I'll do it.'"

In North Carolina, she lived in an 18-room house and taught American Studies at Wake Forest University. She was also a member of the board of trustees for Bennett College, a private school for black women in Greensboro. Angelou hosted a weekly satellite radio show for XM's "Oprah & Friends" channel.

She remained close enough to the Clintons that in 2008 she supported Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy over the ultimately successful run of the country's first black president, Barack Obama. But a few days before Obama's inauguration, she was clearly overjoyed. She told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette she would be watching it on television "somewhere between crying and praying and being grateful and laughing when I see faces I know."

Active on the lecture circuit, she gave commencement speeches and addressed academic and corporate events across the country. Angelou received dozens of honorary degrees, and several elementary schools were named for her. As she approached her 80th birthday, she decided to study at the Missouri-based Unity Church, which advocates healing through prayer.

"I was in Miami and my son (Guy Johnson, her only child) was having his 10th operation on his spine. I felt really done in by the work I was doing, people who had expected things of me," said Angelou, who then recalled a Unity church service she attended in Miami.

"The preacher came out - a young black man, mostly a white church - and he came out and said, 'I have only one question to ask, and that is, "Why have you decided to limit God?'" And I thought, 'That's exactly what I've been doing.' So then he asked me to speak, and I got up and said, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.' And I said it about 50 times, until the audience began saying it with me, 'Thank you, THANK YOU!'"

Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

Maya Angelou reads at Robsham Theater in John J. Burns Library at Boston College, March 22, 1984. Following Angelou's lecture, Father Sweeney wrote to Angelou that scarcely could he recall any lecturer who so "touched and delighted the audience." "Without using superlatives", he said, "it would be difficult to comment on your reading." Never, to his recollection, had the audience so thundered applause during the course of "Four standing ovations," which was "without precedent in the 28 year history of the Humanities Series." (Burns Library/Boston College/CC)

National forum on police crimes calls for civilian police accountability councils

Wed, 28 May 2014 13:41:00 +0000

CHICAGO - In response to a national epidemic of police and vigilante killings, a two day "National Forum on Police Crimes" took place here, May 16-17. With some 250 people attending, the forum called for legislation establishing a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) in Chicago and elsewhere.

The Chicago branch of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression on the occasion of the organization's 41^st anniversary organized the forum. Founded in May 1973, the NAARPR developed out of the national and international campaign to free Angela Davis from a racist and politically-motivated frame-up. Over the years, numerous celebrated cases were won through the organizing efforts of the NAARPR including on behalf of the Rev. Ben Chavis, Joan Little, the Wilmington 10, and the Charlotte 3.

Concluding the two day forum, a public rally with Angela Davis was held at the Trinity United Church of Christ. In her address, Davis said mass incarceration and police killings stem from "structural and systemic racism rooted in the failure to fully abolish slavery." Global capital expansion and its pursuit of profit, she said, fuel the prison-industrial complex. While money is spent on building prisons for profit, public education and affordable housing deteriorates, she said. Davis called for the abolition of prisons, disarming of police and freedom for all political prisoners held in U.S. jails from Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier to Chelsea Manning and the Cuban Five.

Frank Chapman, who headed the organizing committee for the weekend's events, introduced Davis and talked about his own freedom from prison won through the efforts of the NAARPR in 1980s. Chapman who is field organizer and education director for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression said that the NAARPR is needed now more than ever and urged rally participants to join. Chicago and Louisville are the two branches of the NAARPR active today.

The forum, held at the University of Chicago, opened with a panel discussing the various aspects of police crimes and the initiatives underway to end them. Lennox Hinds, founding general counsel of the NAARPR, framed the discussion and said, "Police are legally permitted to use deadly force. They have access to firearms 24 hours a day, on-duty and off-duty. They are free to kill anytime they suspect someone is guilty." Black and Latino people are the most likely victims in cities with populations over 100,000, he said, making police abuse a fact of life in African American and Latino neighborhoods.

Rob Warden of the Center on Wrongful Convictions said Chicago is "the false confession capital of the world." Recantations by people who have given false testimony are routinely rejected by the courts," he said. Warden called for adoption of a public policy to encourage recantations.

Bernadine Dohrn, professor of Law at Northwestern University and immediate past president of the Children and Family Justice Center, urged support for a lawsuit that would make public all complaints of police misconduct. Of the 19,000 complaints filed of police misconduct, said Dorhn, only 18 led to a police suspension of a week or more. For 85 percent of complaints, police were never interviewed, she said.

Warden, Dohrn and others talked about the police use of torture to solicit "confessions," citing the case of Jon Burge, a Chicago detective who was convicted of torturing more than 200 suspects between 1972 and l991. The exposure of Burge's crimes led Illinois Gov. George Ryan to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000.

Panelist Jeff Baker, candidate for Alderman representing Chicago's Southside 21^st Ward, called for enactment of a Civilian Police Accountability Council in Chicago. The CPAC model legislation would establish a democratically elected authority with power to directly present evidence of police crimes to a federal grand jury.

Among the participants at the forum were victims of police crimes and family members. Danelene Powell-Watts talked about her son, Stephon, who as a 15 year old autistic youth was killed by police in February 2012 because he held a butter knife. Watts-Powell is an autoworker and member of UAW Local 551 in Chicago. Members of her union local's Solidarity Committee organized protests of the police killing of her son.

Mike Elliott, who chairs the UAW Local 551 Solidarity Committee, is also labor secretary of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. Elliott was one of several Local 551 members who participated at the forum, including at a labor breakout where discussion centered on how to strengthen the labor movement's role in building a national movement against police crimes.

Hatem Abudayyah, executive director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), highlighted rampant police profiling and harassment of Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities. A case in point is Rasmea Odeh, associate director of AAAN, who the Department of Homeland Security arrested in a politically motivated charge of giving false information on a naturalization application 20 years ago. Odeh faces a 10-year jail sentence with a trial set to begin June 10 in Detroit. Conference participants were urged to circulate a protest petition at (www.stopfbi.net).

Police violence against women was highlighted in remarks by Crista Noel who spoke about her friend, Rekia Boyd, who was murdered by police in March 2012 at the age of 22. Boyd was talking with friends when Chicago Police Det. Dante Servin approached the group and opened fire after allegedly mistaking a cell phone held by one of the youths as a gun. Noel launched a campaign for justice that led her to the United Nations where she filed a complaint before the UN Human Rights Commission. Responding to national and international pressure, charges were brought against the police officer, the first charged in a police murder in Chicago in decades. The case has yet to come to trial.

Nelson Linder, president of the NAACP branch in Austin, Texas, spoke about the increasing rate of racist police crimes in his city. In the four year period between 1999 and 2003, 10 of the 11 people who died at the hands of Austin police were African American or Latino in a city with an overwhelmingly white population. In 2004, said Linder, the Austin NAACP and the Texas Civil Rights Project invoked Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and filed a complaint detailing the systemic and widespread police misconduct of Black and Latino communities. The campaign led to demands that the U.S. Department of Justice cut off all federal money to the Austin Police Department.

"The Texas penal codes are penal codes from slavery," said Linder. They require proof of "criminal intent," a high bar in prosecuting police crimes. Linder advocated using "criminal negligence" as grounds for criminal charges against the police and called for establishment of a national data base of police crimes. "Once we understand the game we can win," said Linder.

In panels and breakouts there was discussion of the many forms of police crime including racist and homophobic policing of LGBTQ people, incarceration and deportation of immigrant people, the militarization of the U.S. border with Mexico and the evisceration of the 4^th Amendment through the Patriot Act and NSA surveillance.

The forum brought together many of the long time members of the NAARPR, including founding Executive Director Charlene Mitchell. At a fundraising banquet preceding the rally, Mitchell was honored with the establishment of the Charlene Mitchell Human Rights Award and Angela Davis was presented with the first award.

Many who attended the weekend events said they were energized by the national focus that the Forum provided. Though participants were largely from Chicago, many others came from New York, Nevada, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio and Missouri.

The Forum participants voted to organize campaigns in support of legislation for a Civilian Police Accountability Council and to establish a national coordinating committee to continue networking between local groups fighting police crimes and to coordinate national activities.

For more information about the work of the Forum and the NAARPR, contact www.naarpr.org or call 312.939.2750.

Pat Fry is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Photo: Pat Fry

Los Angeles gears up for a month against torture

Wed, 28 May 2014 12:47:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - In a world where we sometimes feel overwhelmed by tragedy and sorrow, the best antidote to helplessness is to get out and do something, be with people, and imagine a better future.

June is Torture Awareness Month in Greater Los Angeles. Many activities are scheduled to increase awareness of the issue and make a difference. The month is being coordinated by ICUJP (Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace), whose motto is "Religious Communities Must Stop Blessing War and Violence." (see www.icujp.org.)

Saturday, May 31, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.: hear Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the Americas Watch-Los Angeles, at All Saints Church, 132 N. Euclid Avenue, Pasadena 91101. There's no charge at the door, but donations are gladly accepted to support the School of the Americas (SOA) Watch. The guest speaker will be Blase Bonpane. Co-hosts for the evening are Theresa Bonpane and Frank Dorrel and music will be by Fidel Sanchez. The event is co-sponsored by the Office of the Americas and Addicted to War.

Sunday, June 1, 2:00 to 4:30 p.m.: Father Bourgeois will speak against torture at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Los Angeles, 2936 W. 8th St., Los Angeles 90005 (just East of Vermont Ave.). The afternoon is sponsored by SOA Watch-LA and UULAMOR (Unitarian Universalist Latino Americano Monsignor Oscar Romero). Music will be by Andrea Zuniga. This is a bilingual event. There is no official admission price but donations to SOA Watch are greatly appreciated! For further information, contact: sandrasdelmundo@gmail.com.

Father Bourgeois was a naval officer in Vietnam. After he returned home, he joined the Maryknoll Society, an American Catholic organization, and went to Bolivia, where he ministered to the poor. He was ordered to leave the country after speaking out against General Hugo Banzer's oppressive government, which arrested, tortured, and killed many dissidents. From there he went to El Salvador. After witnessing numerous human rights abuses that the Salvadoran government committed against its own population (with U.S. financial support and military aid), Roy focused on exposing where the soldiers had received their training - the School of the Americas.

Roy founded the School of the Americas Watch in 1990. SOA Watch exposes the school, located at Fort Benning, Georgia, and its role in training Latin American soldiers in repressive tactics and then deploying them throughout the region. The School of the Americas changed its name in 2001 to the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security and Cooperation (WHINSEC). In large part because of Father Roy's efforts, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Venezuela no longer send soldiers or police to the school.

Tuesday, June 3, 7:00 p.m.: There will be a performance of If the SHU Fits: Voices from Solitary Confinement, at the Vortex, 2341 E. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles 90041. The event is sponsored by Dramastage-Qumran, ICUJP and Public Works Improvisational Theatre. The play, by Andy Griggs and Melvin Ishmael Johnson, is based on stories of people held in state-sanctioned torture-total isolation for 23 hours daily, sensory deprivation, no contact with family, poor food, and minimal medical treatment. Admission is by freewill donation. There will be a discussion afterward.

Friday, June 6, 7:00-9:00 a.m.: Dolores Canales from California Families Against Solitary Confinement will speak at ICUJP, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90010. Immediately following, from 9:15-10:15 a.m., there will be a vigil and press conference to announce other activities taking place during Torture Awareness Month.

Saturday, June 21, 2:00 p.m.: Exposing the Truth of U.S. Torture: Restoring Human Dignity, will feature Dr. Azizah al-Hibri, of the Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment and Karamah (Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights). The location of the event will be at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. The National Religious Campaign Against Torture is a cosponsor.

Sunday, June 22, 3:00 p.m.: An interfaith gathering about detention and deportation of immigrants will be held at the United University Church, 817 W. 34 St., Los Angeles 90089.

Sunday, June 22, 3:00 p.m.: Fundraiser for Human Rights (for a program for torture victims) will be held at SoulCycle, 8570 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. For more information, see ptvla.org/soulcycle/

Thursday, June 26 is United Nations International Day of Support for Victims of Torture. At 10:30 a.m. the Stand Together and End Torture Vigil will take place at the corner of Jefferson and Hoover, near the USC campus. At 10:45 a.m. there will be a press conference. At 11:30 a.m. the ICUJP Justice Luncheon will feature the attorneys of two of the Guantánamo Bay detainees, Anne Richardson and Michael Rapkin. The event will take place at the United University Church, 817 W. 34^th St., Los Angeles 90089. The suggested donation is $20, but no one will be turned away. Register at http://icujpjustlunch.eventbrite.com.

Sunday, June 29, 3:00 pm.: Members of St. Michael and All Angels Church will read If the SHU Fits: Voices from Solitary Confinement, at 3646 Coldwater Canyon Ave., Studio City 91604. A discussion will follow.

Photo: Mary Button/ICUJP.org

Camden students and community force honest discussion on education

Tue, 27 May 2014 18:09:00 +0000

CAMDEN N.J. -- This month marks the 60^th anniversary of the historic Brown v. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

Yet after all these years racial and class inequalities, residential (de facto) segregation, funding and staffing disparities, nationally engineered shift to charter schools and vouchers, and unequal educational horizons still plague a majority of inner-city school districts.

First Lady Michelle Obama, speaking at a high school graduation event in Topeka, Kansas - the original venue of the Brown decision - earlier this month highlighted the still raging harms of race inequality by noting that Brown's judicial advances were being reversed. "Today, by some measures, our schools are as segregated as they were back when Dr. King gave his final speech. Many districts in this country have actually pulled back on efforts to integrate their schools, and many communities have become less diverse."

The lingering harms of race inequality in the public schools and a host of other public school education ills that plague all come into a super sharp focus as the national spotlight peeked at the unfolding school crisis in what has been called America's poorest and most dangerous city, Camden, New Jersey. A city where a Rutgers-Camden University graduation commencement speaker correctly noted that " this region will never reach its full potential with America's poorest and saddest city Camden in the middle of it ... the city and its residents don't need charity but an honest discussion about race, class and segregation".

For the past week Camden public school student activists, blacks, Latinos and whites, from elementary grades through high school, along with concerned teachers, parents and community supporters have forced that "honest discussion" about race and class inequalities onto the public stage in a big way.

On May 16^th several hundred students erupted spontaneously (prompted via the impetus of social media) and, without permission, left their schools at high noon and marched peacefully to the Camden School District headquarters where they met in protest. Many came from schools two to three miles away.

Their spirited speeches and long list of demands were biting, with student protest leaders launching their most bitter complaints at school superintendent Paymon Rohanifard, an academically unqualified hatchet man for his big boss, New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie. The students noted that Rohanifard had been hand- picked by the then state education commission chief Chris Cherf, a longtime stooge of Christie and former president of Edison Schools, Inc., a private school management corporation, to come in and dismantle the traditional public schools in favor of charter schools, many of which are scheduled to become privately run charters. To do his dirty work Rohanifard's main strategy was to claim that the traditional public schools and their teachers and administrative staff were failing, thus setting up a phony need for public school monies to be transferred to the charters.

In addition hundreds of students organized a mass march and rally at Camden City Hall. With the main slogan: "One School, One Voice," students put forth their key demands, including:

Stop treating us like animals
Fix our schools and make them modern
Give back governing authority to an elected school board
Get rid of Superintendent Rohanifard; he is not certified nor qualified
Re-direct funds spent by Rohanifard to hire his six-figure cronies as main office upper management personnel to improve our schools
Rehire public school teachers and staff eliminated to create phony school crisis
Spend the money on traditional public schools, not charters
Initiate a moratorium on establishing charter schools

Like the earlier more spontaneous protests, the students, now organized as the Save Our Camden Schools Youth United, along with some brave teacher union members of the Camden Education Association, the Camden Save Our Public Schools Coalition, a retired educator, parent and community based support group, representatives of the NJ NAACP, members of the Philadelphia Area Black Radical Congress and spokespeople for Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network South Jersey affiliate came forward with a whole list of demands aimed this time at Camden Mayor Dana Redd, the Camden City Council and South Jersey Democratic Party political boss and corporate heavyweight George Norcross.

Rally organizers hold Redd accountable, because she has the power to appoint three do-nothing school board members; for standing by approvingly last year while Christie announced the blatantly undemocratic state takeover of Camden public schools, and for basically selling the interests of public school children down the drain.

Redd appointees sat there along with other previously elected board members (save one courageous ex-board president and former teacher, Sarah Davis) while Christie took their legal power away without so much as a whimper. The board is now an advisory committee that merely rubber-stamps whatever the superintendent wants.

It has become apparent to all that Norcross himself is not merely a behind-the-scenes puppet master in the fight to take away traditional public school monies in favor of private charters in Camden. Back in March Norcross and his Republican buddy Christie, in concert with the ever willing Mayor Redd, put on a public display of what the future of the charter school movement in Camden will be if not fought against. At a ceremonial groundbreaking in Camden for a new "renaissance" school that will bear his family's name, Norcross announced a $45 million project to bring the renaissance school - a variation of the traditional charter school, with a different financing model and a requirement for local district approval - to the Lanning Square neighborhood which was once the site of a torn down public school that made way for the just built Rowan-Cooper medical school.

According to published reports in NJ.com, funding for the Norcross "renaissance" school comes chiefly through public sources, authorized by the 2011 Urban Hope Act, which was championed by George Norcross' brother Democratic state Sen. Donald Norcross and signed by Christie. KIPP, the charter school management group brought in to run the Norcross creation now runs a network of private charter schools across the country, including six schools in Newark, the corporate model for what's to be done in Camden. Such sterling promoters of privatizing public education as the right-wing Walton Foundation and the "liberal" Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are moneyed sources behind the KIPP group.

While students must be applauded for their great effort, it is important for readers to be clear that the current student led protests in Camden, though assisted through the "miracle" of social media technology, did not appear uninformed out of the blue.

The local movement in Camden to protest Gov. Christie's takeover of the public schools was formally begun in April 2013 with the first mass community meeting of the Camden Save Our Public Schools Coalition. Originally it was called together by longtime community activist R. Mangoliso Davis, retired teacher Joyce Carter, retired school principal Claudia Cream, community arts promoter Rob Dickinson and his Unity Community Center (the parent organization of the world renowned Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble), political activist Keith Walker, this writer and a few others. The coalition held a half dozen community educational forums, events and rallies that mobilized many to clearly see and do something about the school situation in Camden.

The next stop for the student led protests is Gov. Christie's office in Trenton, the NJ state capitol. There the students and their adult supporters hope to impress upon the scandal-plagued governor that the founding principle of democracy is that the people, not corporate profits or party politics, are sovereign. In education, as in all institutional arrangements, the people united will never be defeated. This is the clarion call for an "honest discussion" on race and class educational issues on the road to Trenton.

Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad, Ph.D. retired Camden High School teacher, is co-founder of Camden Save Our Public Schools Coalition.

Photo: Camden parents, students & teachers saying NO to privatization! Save Our Schools New Jersey Facebook page.

Sens. Warren and Sanders, Rev. Barber inspire at New Populism Conference

Tue, 27 May 2014 15:10:00 +0000

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- There was an embarrassment of riches in the vision of the speakers May 22 at the Washington Court Hotel. Activists who are global economists, NGO leaders and union representatives spoke at the New Populism Conference, which was organized by the Campaign for America's Future and supported by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

About five hundred activists crowded into the hotel ballroom where speakers included Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Maya Rockeymoore, President of Global Policy Solutions. All hammered the same theme: the majority of us have been "shafted," "the rules are rigged" and the "oligarchs" are smoothing the path to a complete take-over.

Rockeymoore underscored that in the neoliberal view, capital (and therefore the corporation) is important and workers are not. The X and Y generation have been so badly economically screwed by the great recession they will not recover for the rest of their lives. Black families have been excluded from the economy for 80 percent of U.S. history. The Supreme Court is in the back pocket of the Republican majority that has taken over state government in multiple states.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke of the moneyed interests who spent more than $1 million per day for one year to fight the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she envisioned and fought so hard for in 2011. Understandably, as the CFPB has already returned more than $3 billion dollars directly to consumers since that time.

Warren asked why trade deals are negotiated secretly and answered that if citizens knew what was really happening, they would oppose them. She reminded us that rebuilding the middle class, equal pay for equal work and raising the minimum wage are not just slogans but legislative bills. She urged the audience to "make (legislators) vote as often as possible" on these and other progressive issues.

CWA president Larry Cohen had just returned from Berlin where the International Trade Union Confederation was discussing free trade agreements and their disastrous effects on workers. He led us through talking points from CWA's latest booklet, "50M people building a movement for Economic Justice and Democracy." He told stories of T-Mobile workers unionization struggle, getting Terry McAuliffe elected as Virginia's governor and protesting Wells Fargo's predatory lending practices - practices "that have dragged one in five home mortgage's underwater."

Kica Matos, director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Community Change and Sophia Zaman, president of the U.S. Student Association echoed these thoughts. Zaman's talk was titled, "Big Debts, Lousy Jobs, Catastrophic Climate: The coming Millennial Revolt." She pointed out that millennials are diverse in personality and background, but share an economic burden. Today, the more than one trillion dollars of student debt surpasses total credit card debt. Young people have technology's latest toy, but lack food, housing, heat. Millenials grew up with their parents losing jobs and financial institutions refusing to invest in jobs. "Apathy," she said, "is a myth, alienation is real."

What the millennial generation needs, she concluded, is a strong progressive movement; one that supports quality union jobs, reduction of student debt, divestment from fossil fuels. In return, progressive youth are building power that goes beyond elections.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, of the Moral Monday movement, closed the day by rallying the troops.

They thanked the participants for our long history of progressivism and activism and cautioned, in Sanders' words, "Now is not the time to turn our backs on the political process." Rather we need to continue to push the middle class's issues of jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, raising minimum wage, creating more daycare, making higher education free, and amending the constitution to end the unlimited power of billionaires. "There are more people living in poverty than ever in U.S. history," he said, but by increasing workers' participation in elections by only 5 percent (from 60 percent to 65 percent) progressive goals can be achieved.

Rev. Barber explained that right wing "deconstructionists" understand populist power better than we do. The first reconstruction lasted from 1865 to 1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson) and the second from 1954 (Brown vs. Board of Education) to 1968 when Nixon instituted the Southern Strategy. By voting Obama into the presidency, the U.S. electorate brought about the promise of another reconstruction period; by recognizing our power and by working through "transformative coalition and fusion politics," we can find the on-switch for those harmed and kept down by the anti-human legislation being passed in North Carolina and elsewhere.

The "new populism" spoken of at the conference was described, defined and delivered with hope and realism. The closing chant, "Fight back, go forward," seemed to symbolize the thought of the day: we have to keep marching up the road to freedom, but the view and the company are getting better all the time.

Photo: Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaking at the conference. Campaign for America's Future Facebook page.

U.S. ranks with Haiti, Iran and Mexico on workers rights

Fri, 23 May 2014 16:01:00 +0000

BERLIN - Question: What does the U.S. have in common with, among other nations, Argentina, Bahrain, El Salvador, Haiti, Hong Kong, Iraq, Iran, Mexico and Yemen?

Answer: Those nations, and the U.S., are among the 30 countries who earned a low grade of "4" on a 1-to-5 scale in a comprehensive report on workers' rights worldwide.

The report, released on May 18 at the International Trades Union Congress (ITUC) in Berlin, paints a generally gloomy picture of workers' rights. It notes only 200 million of the world's workers - 7 percent - are members of non-government-run unions, with an equal number in government-controlled organizations.

And only 60 percent of the world's workers are in the formal economy, leaving the rest to perform in informal sectors, whose workers are the most-exploited, ITUC says.

"Workers are struggling everywhere for their right to collective representation and decent work deficits exist in varying degrees in most countries," ITUC reports. "Abuses of rights are getting worse, not better, and too many countries take no responsibility for protecting workers rights in a national context or through corporate supply chains."

Workers are fired or suspended for trying to negotiate better working conditions in at least 53 nations, ITUC said. In most, they got little or no legal protection. "Indeed, employers and governments are complicit in silencing workers' voices against exploitation," it declared.

ITUC delegates set a goal of organizing 20 million more workers worldwide into non-government-run unions during the next four years. Their targets would be "migrant workers or workers in the informal sector; and individuals or groups of workers who are determined to act collectively for rights and social justice in unorganised sectors," ITUC said.

"We cannot and we will not stand silent while workers are impoverished through the supply chains of big business and attacked by their own governments," ITUC President Sharan Burrow, an Australian, told the delegates.

"Our own ITUC global poll tells us 94 percent of people want to strengthen international rules to make companies around the world provide better wage and labour conditions. A mini-mum living wage and a social protection floor are the foundations of dignity and decent work."

But other international institutions aid companies and governments in the race to exploit workers, Burrow said. She singled out the World Bank's Doing Business report, long a target of union criticism, for saying that: "Doing business is best, they say, where employment protections and rights are weak." That's "a big-business scam," Burrow added.

"Doing business in this context is a crime against humanity," she declared, which is why the ITUC compiled its first-ever counter-report. Its Global Rights Index is subtitled "the worst places in the world for workers." But it's not just a handful of bad-apple countries, repressive regimes or failed states that are guilty of trampling on workers' rights.

"Where not to work is the counterpoint to the advocacy of big business to destroy the rights of workers," Burrow said. "Employers have stepped up their anti-union attacks. The drive to export the American corporate model is global. The attacks on the European social model are deliberate, well planned and well resourced. Like the IMF, the American Chamber of Commerce issues their policy prescriptions everywhere and they use the threat of capital flight" to force companies and countries to hew to their views.

The result ranges "from opposition to the minimum wage in Moldova to the opposition of collective bargaining in Romania to a demand for reduction in wages in Belgium!" said Barrow. Qatar said job deaths and injuries "would not happen if workers took more responsibility!"

Developed nations are not immune to trampling on workers, Burrow warned. She singled out the Deutsche Telekom's denial of rights to workers at its T-Mobile subsidiary in the U.S., even while DT obeys German labor law - which is much more pro-worker - there. The Communications Workers are engaged in a long campaign to organize T-Mobile. "We have a message for DT-we expect better and we don't give up!" Burrow said.

The ITUC rated almost all the world's nations on 97 criteria. They included the right to organize, threats against workers, murders of unionists, exclusion from collective bargaining or the right to strike, and, among positive indicators, "effective legal guarantees against anti-union discriminatory measures." In Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and a few republics in the South Asian section of the former Soviet Union, ratings were impossible, ITUC admitted.

"Unions in countries with the rating of 4"-the U.S. and 29 others-"reported systematic violations against workers. The government and/or companies are engaged in a serious effort to crush the collective voice of workers, putting fundamental rights under continuous threat," the ITUC said.

ITUC gave its lowest rating, "5," to 24 nations, including Colombia, Guatemala, Korea and China. A wire story noted Guatemala now leads the world in murders of trade unionists per 100,000 workers, passing Colombia, though Colombia still leads in overall murders. ITUC deemed another eight nations "failed states." They're so disrupted by revolution (such as Syria), war (both Sudans, Ukraine) or occupation (Palestine), that ITUC gave them a "5+" mark, explaining workers have "no guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law."

Other than China and Korea, most U.S. trading partners received marks of "3" or better. "Threes" went to 34 nations, including Britain, Canada, Venezuela and Israel. The 29 "2"s included Japan and Russia. The 18 "1"s were France, Germany, 12 other European nations, Barbados, South Africa, Togo and Uruguay

Photo: International trade union leaders say the U.S. ranks with countries like Haiti when it comes to workers rights. In this photo workers toil in a Haitian shoe factory cited for cheating employees out of their wages. The U.S.-based Worker Rights Consortium says in a report that workers receive an average of 32 percent less than what they should. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery, File)

Massachusetts educators elect a new progressive union leadership

Fri, 23 May 2014 15:13:00 +0000

Delegates to the 2014 annual meeting of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) elected progressive candidate Barbara Madeloni as president of the largest union in Massachusetts. The 113,000-member MTA is the state affiliate of the National Education Association, representing the majority of Massachusetts K-12 teachers and public higher education faculty and staff.

Though her victory over the current vice president Tim Sullivan was a surprise to some, it was the result of a long organizing effort by Madeloni and a rank and file caucus, Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU). Madeloni ran on a platform of maintaining and strengthening union rights, labor solidarity, organizing, and opposition to the privatization of public education and to high-stakes testing.

The MTA joins the Chicago Teachers Union and other large affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers in electing new, more militant and more progressive leadership.

EDU grew out of anger over a series agreements by the current union leadership with the governor and the state legislature weakening collective bargaining, seniority, and pensions for K-12 and higher education workers and increasing the number of charter schools and high-stakes testing. These concessions were made with little or no consultation with local union leadership and rank and file.

When pressed about why the MTA did not try to mobilize its members and fight against the concessions, Sullivan and the current president Paul Toner claimed that it was impossible organize such campaigns because the members did not care and the political climate was too difficult. As a result, leaders and rank and file of many MTA locals came together to try to move the union toward a militant, grassroots defense of union rights and the core values of education workers in K-12 and public higher education.

As part of this campaign, Madeloni was chosen by EDU as a candidate to run against Tim Sullivan because of her ability to speak to the issues of educators in K-12 and higher education. Madeloni is a former K-12 teacher and faculty member in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received national attention when her teacher-training class refused to participate in a corporate teacher evaluation program that would force student teachers to pay for their own evaluation. UMass Amherst tried to fire Madeloni for her role in the students' revolt, but a struggle by the UMass Amherst faculty and librarians local of the MTA along with support from students, community members, and other unions forced the administration to back down and remains a faculty member and secretary of the faculty and librarians union.

Madeloni's campaign seemed like an uphill battle because the MTA tradition is that when the president has served a maximum of two terms, the sitting vice president is almost automatically elected as president. However, she and other EDU members tirelessly crisscrossed Massachusetts, speaking to locals, walking on picket lines, and speaking at public meetings and demonstrations about education. Also, the current union administration underestimated the rank and file anger about the concessions that the MTA had made over the last four years.

When Madeloni received tremendous response to her powerful campaign speech staking out strong positions against high-stakes testing and privatization and for labor rights, union solidarity, and social justice, delegates knew that she really could win the election when the votes were counted the next day.

Photo: Barbara Madeloni for MTA President Facebook page.

Thousands to lobby North Carolina lawmakers Tuesday to repeal rightwing laws

Fri, 23 May 2014 14:38:00 +0000

DURHAM, N.C. - The North Carolina NAACP and its allies in the labor and other movements will be at the state capitol Tuesday, May 27 to lobby lawmakers to rescind laws they say are hurting the state's most vulnerable.

At what they are calling the Forward Together Moral Movement People's Lobby and Advocacy Day, people from across North Carolina will demand that state legislators reverse course and expand Medicaid, restore the Earned Income Tax Credit, the extend unemployment benefits, increase support for teachers and public schools, pass stronger regulations regarding coal ash and pass a tax code that ends windfalls for the rich.

"Last Monday, we entered the General Assembly with tape over our mouths to dramatize Speaker Thom Tillis' and Senate Leader Phil Berger's tyrannical attempt to silence public petitions in the People's House," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the NC NAACP and architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement.

"We said it then, and we will say it again, that was the last time we will be silent when our brothers and sisters are suffering under these extreme policies and laws. This Tuesday, we will go into the People's House ready to make our voices heard on behalf of thousands of North Carolinians. By visiting each and every North Carolina legislator in person, we hope to remind them that their political choices are more than just policy debates - they are hurting real people."

At the People's Lobby and Advocacy Day, volunteer lobbyists will gather at 9 am on Halifax Mall behind the General Assembly building to listen to a policy briefing from scholars and to receive advocacy instructions. The assembled will break into smaller lobbying teams around 10:30 am and head into the General Assembly to visit the offices of state legislators to advocate for repeal. The volunteer lobbyists will reconvene at Halifax Mall at 12 pm for a "Poor Man's Lunch" where they will stand and break bread in solidarity with the working poor.

The Forward Together Moral Movement has also released a new video on May 19's Moral Monday rally and action.

Photo: Forward Together Facebook Page.

Outrage of day: Republicans vote to end door-to-door mail delivery

Thu, 22 May 2014 15:40:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) - Millions of Americans would no longer get mail delivered to their door but would have to go to communal or curbside boxes instead under a proposal advancing through Congress.

The Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on an 18-13 party-line vote, approved a bill Wednesday to direct the U.S. Postal Service to convert 15 million addresses over the next decade to the less costly, but also less convenient delivery method.

Democrats objected to the plan, and efforts in recent years to win its adoption have failed.

"I think it's a lousy idea," Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said. Other lawmakers said it wouldn't work in urban areas where there's no place on city streets to put banks of "cluster boxes" with separate compartments for each address. People with disabilities who have difficulty leaving their homes could get waivers, and people who still want delivery to their door could pay extra for it - something Lynch derided as "a delivery tax."

The measure falls far short of a comprehensive overhaul most officials agree is needed to solve the postal service's financial problems. The committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., acknowledged that at the outset but said it "provides an interim opportunity to achieve some significant cost savings."

Converting to communal or curbside delivery would save $2 billion annually, Issa said, quoting from estimates that door delivery costs $380 annually per address compared with $240 for curbside and $170 for centralized methods. He said less than 1 percent of all addresses nationwide would undergo a delivery change annually and that communal boxes offer a safe, locked location for packages, doing away with the need for carriers to leave packages on porches and subject to theft and bad weather.

According to the postal unions, the biggest fraud being perpetrated on the American public is the idea that the U.S. Postal Service is going broke. In fact, the Postal Service is making a $1 billion operating profit in the first six months of its fiscal year. The National Association of Letter Carriers pointed out that the Postal Service has been turning an operating profit since October of 2012.

(People's World hosted a Google Hangout with National Association of Letter Carriers activist John Dick, who recently won that union's Humanitarian Award, and American Postal Workers Union local President Roscoe Woods. We urge you to watch and share with your friends, co-workers and family. Story continues after video.)

Associate Press reports that postal officials have asked repeatedly for comprehensive legislation giving them more control over personnel and benefit costs and more flexibility in pricing and products. Though various legislative proposals have been advanced, Congress has not been able to agree on a bill with broad changes.

"Lawmakers should fix what they broke, not break what's working," National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando said, referring to a 2006 law that requires the Postal Service to prefund its retiree health benefits. Meeting that requirement accounts for the bulk of the postal service's red ink. He said the Oversight Committee's bill is "irresponsible ... bad for the American public, bad for businesses, bad for the economy and bad for the U.S. Postal Service."

Photo: Letter carrier moving boxes of mail into his truck to begin delivery at a post office in Seattle. Elaine Thompson/AP

Drug companies charged with deceiving public on prescription painkillers

Thu, 22 May 2014 13:30:00 +0000

For over two decades, five large pharmaceutical companies have made billions of dollars in profits by deceiving tens of millions of doctors and patients about the significant dangers and questionable benefits of prescription opioids, a class of narcotic painkillers, for the treatment of long-term non-cancer pain, according to a complaint filed May 22 in California state court.

Filing on behalf of the People of the State of California, Santa Clara County Counsel Orry P. Korb and Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas charge that five of the largest opioid manufacturers - Purdue Pharma, Cephalon, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, and Actavis - concealed the dangerously addictive nature of opioids such as OxyContin and Percocet while touting benefits that had no scientific support, in order to expand the market for the drugs and boost profits.

"As District Attorney, I have the task of protecting the People of Orange County against false advertising and unfair business practices in consumer protection cases," said District Attorney Tony Rackauckas. "We have charged these pharmaceutical companies for knowingly harming public health by waging a massive campaign to sell huge quantities of these dangerous drugs for profit."

"Because of the deceptive conduct of these drug companies, millions of Americans have become prescription drug addicts and abusers. The result has been devastating: broken families, skyrocketing medical costs, and rampant crime," explained Santa Clara Assistant County Counsel Danny Chou. "Instead of taking responsibility for their deceptions, the companies have pocketed billions of dollars in profits. This lawsuit simply seeks to hold those companies accountable for the harms they have caused."

Opioids, which have become the most widely prescribed class of drugs in the U.S., are narcotics that are derived from opium and act like heroin. There is no evidence that these drugs are helpful in the long-term for treating chronic noncancer pain. Moreover, they are highly addictive and cause twice as many deaths as cocaine and heroin combined. Prescription opioid abuse has been described by the Centers for Disease Control as an "epidemic."

The number of new opioid users in the United States increased by 104 percent between 2000 and 2010.
In 2010, there were 2.4 million opioid abusers in the United States, which is about the population of Houston, Texas.
Opioids are now responsible for more deaths than from both suicide and motor vehicle crashes, and cocaine and heroin combined.
1 in 5 doctor visits in the United States result in an opioid prescription.
In California, as many as 4,000 people die from opioids every year, twice the number of homicides in the state.
An estimated 15-40% of opioid users are likely to become addicted to the drugs.
Opioids generated $8 billion in revenues for pharmaceutical companies in 2010.
The number one opioid, OxyContin, generated $3.1 billion in revenue in 2010.

The complaint charges that the pharmaceutical companies marketed opioids as rarely addictive, misrepresented the evidence of their efficacy for treating chronic noncancer pain, trivialized their serious side effects and falsely assured doctors and consumers that opioids were safer than over-the-counter drugs.

The lawsuit seeks to end these deceptive marketing practices, recover restitution for consumers, impose civil penalties, and obtain an order requiring the drug companies to address the harms created by their deceptive conduct, including skyrocketing medical costs and crime. The lawsuit does not seek to limit doctors' ability to prescribe opioids for appropriate conditions; it only seeks to make sure doctors and patients receive complete and accurate information.

These pharmaceutical companies have a long history of aggressively marketing these dangerous drugs through sophisticated campaigns. These campaigns employ industry-funded professional associations, patient advocacy groups, and physicians to deceive consumers and their doctors about the harms and purported benefits of opioids for treating chronic pain.

Because this suit seeks to expose and address the way pharmaceuticals have fraudulently marketed these dangerous drugs, we welcome any information from industry witnesses who may have information they can share. Witnesses should call the Orange County District Attorney's Opioid Consumer Protection Hotline at (714) 347-0501.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Portland, Oregon dumps Walmart bonds

Thu, 22 May 2014 11:28:00 +0000

PORTLAND, Ore. (PAI)--Cheered on by OURWalmart - the group of Walmart workers who campaign for better wages and working conditions nationwide at the monster retailer - and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, the Portland, Ore., City Council voted May 15 to dump Walmart.

The council instructed the city Treasurer to get rid of $9 million worth of Walmart bonds in its investment portfolio that just matured and to dump the remaining bonds when they mature, too. That's another $27 million in bonds, the last of which matures in April 2016.

City Commissioner Steve Novick's resolution also bans any future Walmart bond buys. The legislation makes Oregon's largest city a leader in putting its money where its mouth is, by ridding itself of securities in a firm known for its low prices, rock-bottom wages, bad benefits and rampant labor law-breaking. Novick says it's the first city to do so.

"From what I can tell, no other U.S. city has looked at socially responsible investing in quite the same way as Portland," he told a May 15 press conference. "I'm hopeful other cities and states take note and adopt similar investment principles to hold companies accountable and align our investment policies with our values."

Portland's investments average $1.1 billion yearly, so Walmart is approximately 3 percent of that total. The resolution also establishes a temporary committee to report to the council by July 31 on how to implement the city's socially responsible investment principles covering health and the environment, labor practices and corporate ethics and governance.

"A company's policies and practices have a direct impact on families and individuals living and working in Portland," said UFCW Local 555 representative Bob Marshall. "A city's investments should reflect the values of its taxpayers, and Walmart is consistently out of step with Portland values."

Photo: At a protest supporting Walmart workers, Chicago 2013. PW file photo.

Missouri Republicans fail to achieve much of their agenda

Wed, 21 May 2014 16:17:00 +0000

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - The legislative session here in the Show Me State is finally over. Considering the far-right Republican onslaught, a lot more damage could have been done.

In fact, despite their overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate, Missouri Republicans failed to accomplish most of their far-right legislative agenda, while labor and its community allies are poised to win a major victory for early voting at the polls this November.

At the top of the legislative to-do list for far-right Republicans was passage of so-called "right-to-work" (RTW) and "paycheck protection." Both measures, if passed, would have severely weakened organized labor's ability to advocate on behalf of workers' rights.

"The right wing of the Republican Party only care about the rich. They want to weaken unions and drive down wages and benefits for hard working Missourians," state Rep. Clem Smith told the People's World.

"Their whole legislative agenda revolves around this one central idea: Weaken unions and increase profits for big corporations."

RTW guts union security clauses in private sector employment, basically allowing freeloaders to benefit from union-negotiated contracts, benefits and grievance procedures without paying union dues.

Wages are lower in RTW states, while workplace deaths and injuries are considerably higher. Currently, there are 24 RTW states; far-right Republicans want to make Missouri the 25th.

So-called "paycheck protection" forces public sector unions to sign up each member every year for dues deductions and makes the unions get special permission every time union monies are used for political purposes

Under current law union members can opt out of union dues deductions at any time. Pro-union forces see "paycheck protection" as deceptive and unnecessary, as well as racist and sexist.

"'Paycheck protection' assumes that our membership - which is mostly African American and women - are unable to make educated decisions on their own. It's basically an attack on public sector jobs - jobs held predominantly by women and people of color," Bradley Harmon, president of the Missouri State Workers' Union (MSWU-CWA) Local 6355, said.

Even more damning was an attempt to pass these anti-worker bills into law as ballot initiatives, thereby bypassing Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon's expected veto. Fortunately, the Republicans were unable to muster enough votes - despite their overwhelming majorities - to pass these laws or put them on the November ballot.

Unfortunately though, during the waning hours of the session the Republican-controlled legislature did pass a series of tax breaks designed, as state Rep. Smith said, "to bankrupt our state government."

The tax breaks include: an exemption on fuels used at marinas, an exemption on transactions involving used manufactured homes, tax breaks for large commercial laundries, fast food restaurants and power companies. According to Gov. Nixon, these will cost Missouri between $260 million and $500 million a year.

Earlier in the year the legislature had already passed an income tax cut benefitting upper-income taxpayers that is estimated to cost the state an additional $600 million a year.

Additionally, the legislature also refused - again - to pass Medicaid expansion, thereby blocking access to health care for an estimated 300,000 low-income Missourians, and driving up health care premiums for the rest. Ironically most businesses, the Chamber of Commerce and the Missouri Hospital Association - hardly radical groups - have urged passage of Medicaid expansion for years now

However, the tide may be turning here, as labor and its community allies collected well over 300,000 registered voters' signatures to place on the November ballot an initiative to expand early voting to six weeks - including some weekends.

Considered a possible "game changer" by some, the initiative - if passed - could increase Democratic turnout by 2 or 3 percentage points and possibly turn Missouri "blue "in the upcoming 2016 presidential elections.

Lara Granich, executive director of Missouri Jobs with Justice, said, "This is about people having more time and more access to the fundamental right to vote."

Expanding early voting is seen as especially important to the largely African American and working-class voters in Missouri's main urban centers - St. Louis and Kansas City. Union membership there is also very high.

Increasing early voting to six weeks will have a dramatic impact on African American, women and union voters' abilities to get to the polls, and, progressives here say, hopefully begin a slow but steady transition away from reaction and towards progress in Missouri.,

Photo: Missouri Jobs With Justice.

W.Va. NAACP calls for federal probe of police killing

Tue, 20 May 2014 16:41:00 +0000

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. - At a news conference called May 16, the NAACP of Jefferson and Berkeley counties in West Virginia has called for a federal investigation into the killing of Wayne Jones, a 35-year-old African American hospital worker, by five Martinsburg, W.Va., police officers in March 2013.

George Rutherford, president of the Jefferson County NAACP, and Rev. Vernon Cartwright, president of the Berkeley County NAACP, told reporters at a May 16 news conference that Jones. a worker at Winchester Memorial Hospital who was in town taking care of his mother, was walking alone, breaking no law, when first one, and then five, police officers surrounded him, tasered him twice and then shot him 23 times, including eight times in the back. The police officers are all white. They charged that Jones was in possession of a pen knife. However, Rutherford observed that recently a white man armed with a large sword assaulted the town police office, but was disarmed without injury.

The original police report gave a very sketchy account of the incident, failing to answer three key questions: 1) Why was Jones arrested? 2) Why was he shot? and 3) Why was he shot 23 times?

The officers were initially suspended pending an investigation by the West Virginia state police, but all five have been reinstated. A county grand jury has exonerated the officers. Yet no further explanation satisfactory to Jones' family, or to the local African American community, has been forthcoming. "There has been a wall of silence from the mayor of Martinsburg, the district attorney, the church community," said James Tolbert, president emeritus of the Jefferson County NAACP.

Jones' family, and the NAACP in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia expressed the view that all efforts to find the truth through local courts and officials have been blocked. They said they have no recourse but to appeal to the federal government, and the President, for help.

Rutherford called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the West Virginia U.S. attorney to intervene and convene a federal grand jury to find the facts, and to calm rising fears that there may be a murderous, racist clique in the Martinsburg Police Department that has enough pull to enable a cover-up. There may be other explanations: poor training, panic, unreported actions by the deceased, and more, he noted.

"But the truth must come out," said Rutherford. "Please call or write President Obama and Attorney General Holder to seek the truth, and justice, for Wayne Jones."

Rutherford and Cartwright also called on state legislators and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to enact provisions for a citizen police review board, as has been recently done in Wisconsin, to insure that investigations of clearly questionable uses of force and violence are free from the taint of potentially compromised local grand juries or police departments.

Photo: At the 50^th anniversary March on Washington. Jamelle Bouie. CC BY NC ND 2.0

Thousands rally at N.C. Moral Monday vowing "silence never again."

Tue, 20 May 2014 15:10:00 +0000

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Thousands staged a silent protest at the Capitol here yesterday to kick off the second year of "Moral Mondays," but vowed that they will never again be quieted.

They demonstrated in open defiance of rules Republicans enacted last week to restrict protests in the legislative building. Row after row of people, in protest against the new rules, marched with tape over their mouths into the legislative building. Republicans passed restrictive laws last week that forbid demonstrators, among other things, from speaking any louder than in conversational tone, holding signs that "disturb" legislators and staff, singing and even clapping.

The message of the defiant marchers yesterday was simple: Rules curbing democracy will not silence protests against the legislative actions of the right wing Republicans who have seized power in North Carolina.

Led by members of the North Carolina NAACP, the protesters demanded that lawmakers roll back many of the repressive laws they passed in the last session. Top on that list was what is generally considered the most repressive voter suppression law in the nation.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP and architect of the Forward Together Moral Movment said, in a phone interview today, that "the legislators know why they did this, they know why they are trying to take away the right to vote in this state, it's all about demographics."

Barber explained that 25 percent of the voters in North Carolina are African-American and 3 percent are Latino. "That comes to 28 percent," he said. "If you get just 22 percent of the white voters to vote their futures rather than their fears you have the new electorate the reactionaries fear all over the South. These new demographics will change the center of political gravity in North Carolina and all over the South and this is what these legislators are trying to stop."

"They claim they want voter ID cards so there will be integrity in the process yet they don't want any integrity when it comes to the people keeping an eye on them. They pass tyrannical laws that try to crush the peoples rights."

The new voter repression law Barber is fighting not only requires ID that hundreds of thousands don't have but eliminates same day registration, slashed early voting days and ends pre-registration of young voters.

While the Moral Monday marchers were at the legislative building yesterday lawyers were entering the state courthouse filing a brief that would put most of the repressive measures in the new law on hold until courts can review a full challenge that is underway. If their plea is granted North Carolina will have to carry out the 2014 midterm elections under the same laws that applied before the passage of the repressive law during the last legislative session. If the plea filed yesterday is granted the election will have to be carried out under the same rules that were in place in 2012 and 2008.

"In the face of the overwhelming evidence that the purpose of the new law is to disenfranchise minorities this is the only way," said Denise Lieberman, senior attorney for the Advancement Project, which officially entered the plea.

Barber was asked whether there was still time for civil rights, pro-labor and progressive forces to actually make any headway in the current 2014 legislative elections by removing some of the extremists who backed the repressive legislation.

"We are going to see the most massive registration drives in history happen here this summer," he said "In this Freedom Summer there will be a massive effort in 50 counties across this state to increase and grow the number of people eligible to vote. We will not be deterred on this and one should never underestimate the power of the mass movement when it is driven by strong moral concerns - even on this latest tyrannical effort to crush demonstrations the movement compelled some Republicans to join in with Democrats against the measure. Even though it is harder to remove some of them because of the gerrymandering they did we must remember that when Lyndon Johnson was president the power of the civil rights movement compelled people who had not really been with us to vote for the civil rights law."

Barber explained that although the NAACP does not endorse or run candidates "we will shine a light on what the lawmakers do and don't do and in addition to voting rights we are shining a light on those who voted against Medicaid expansion and those who voted against health care."

Barber was asked whether yesterday's silent protest with a promise not to commit acts of civil disobedience was an appropriate response to the passage of the new law restricting demonstrations. "This is the first and last time that we will promise to avoid civil disobedience or put tape over our mouths and be silent," said Barber. "We went there to dramatize our opposition to tyranny, not our acceptance of it."

He also said that the demonstrations will return to the General Assembly next Tuesday (instead of next Monday, in observance of Memorial Day) for a People's Lobby Day, on which participants will lobby lawmakers to apply pressure directly. "We will give our adversaries a chance to reconsider their misdeeds," he said, "But we will return and we will step up our actions if they do not."

Among the thousands marching yesterday and the thousands expected to march in the coming week were some of the state's most vulnerable residents, including many who are ill or jobless.

Among the repressive laws passed last year, were ones that deny federal funds for Medicaid to 500,000 poor North Carolinians; cut unemployment benefits from 165,000 North Carolinians; taken millions of dollars from public education with a voucher plan to hand out public money to private schools; and raised taxes on 900,000 of North Carolina's working poor by ending the Earned Income Tax credit.

"We are in a state of emergency for the people of North Carolina, and we have to act now," said Dr. Charles van der Horst, a physician from UNC Hospital's Infectious Diseases Division, on the impact of not expanding Medicaid. "There have been now three published studies showing that an estimated one to two thousand North Carolinians will die each year because they lack health insurance. ... This refusal to expand Medicaid is also costing our hospitals and the rest of us millions because people still get sick."

Holly Jordan, a high school teacher from Durham Public Schools and a member of the North Carolina Association of Educators, spoke of Republican Gov. McCrory's plan to fund a teacher pay raise by plundering $49 million from the University of North Carolina system and $122 million from the Department of Health and Human Services. "This is an absolutely unacceptable solution," said Jordan. "You can't rob students and their families to pay teachers."

"The attacks on workers by the corporate-financed North Carolina legislature's agenda shows that the economic recovery sought by big business is one that keeps wages low and restructures work through privatization, sub-contracting, temporary workers and attacks on unions," said Saladin Mohamed, a member of UE 150 and Black Workers for Justice. "It's a recovery for the corporations and the rich - and not for the workers."

Bryan Perlmutter, who was arrested during the first Moral Monday last year as a senior at North Carolina State University, spoke about the work of youth organizers in the movement.

"One year later young people from across the state are still here and still organizing and still fighting back for a better future," said Perlmutter, who now leads a student-run initiative called N.C. Vote Defenders. "We are here because Art Pope, Thom Tillis and the Koch brothers are attempting to silence our voices through new building codes and voter suppression laws, and that is why we must organize. ... We are here to build our own power and to show solidarity across issues because there is only one way for North Carolina to go - and that is forward together."

Photo: Moral Monday March & Interfaith Social Justice Rally, July 29, 2013, T.W. Buckner, CC BY 2.0