People Before Profit blog

Packed house at 3rd annual Vito Marcantonio Forum

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 15:45:00 +0000

Gaetana's Cucina Italiana was host to a full house on the occasion of the 3^rd annual Vito Marcantonio Forum Oct. 19.

It is difficult to give a full picture of this engaging event... you had to be there.

Vito Marcantonio (1902-1954) was a fourteen-term Congressman from East Harlem.

Professor Emeritus of Hostos Community College, Dr Gerald Meyer and Roberto Ragone, actor/social activist; both founding members of VMF along with co-sponsor The Drama Workshop Project put together this moving and lively event. With Meyer's consultation, the event was envisioned and scripted by Ragone to "add value" to the VMF. Said Ragone, "I proposed that the VMF experiment with a primarily artistic and visual event to engage an audience about the impact of the Marcantonio Phenomenon."

Professor Meyer opened the event by paying tribute to Morgan Powell, a tireless social activist, historian and environmentalist, who died suddenly and was also a founding member of the VMF and a comrade.

There was a memorial service for Morgan on Tuesday, October 28 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Andrew Freeman Home at 1125 Grand Concourse. See https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebration-of-life-for-morgan-powell-tickets-13766288339?aff=efbeventFor more: information:

Dr Meyer made the point that the working class has been robbed of its radical political legacy - using the term "comrade" to describe Marcantonio and the meaning behind the word, he said, "comradeship is more than a friendship; friendships come and go but comradeship is forever, comradeship is based on having similar values, working together for common good."

There were lively readings taken from this "peoples' representative," including speeches that were delivered on the House floor. There were many, all in defense of ordinary people, whether fighting against Jim Crow and anti-Italian discrimination, for immigrant and labor rights or the independence of Puerto Rico. Some readings provoked laughter, e.g., a reading of Gil Fagiani's Litany of San Vito: (truncated)

LITANY OF SAN VITO by Gil Fagiani

San Vito of East Harlem

Pray for us

San Vito bread of the poor

Pray for us

San Vito crucified by Wall Street

Pray for us

San Vito martyr of McCarthyism

Pray for us

From the jail cell walls

San Vito deliver us

From TB and asthma

San Vito protect us

From the social worker's visit

San Vito protect us

From the immigration raids

San Vito protect us

From the landlord's greed

San Vito protect us

Professor Meyer told the story of William Paterson, leader of the Civil Rights Congress, who presented a petition charging the government with genocide against the African American people at a United Nations conference in Paris in 1951. W.E.B. Dubois, also slated to deliver the petition in Paris, had been designated an "unregistered foreign agent" and was deterred from traveling; both were destined to be jailed. Marcantonio defended them in court winning both cases. It is significant to point out that few cases of this type were won during this period of McCarthyism.

The afternoon was arranged as a staged reading with each participant reciting a passage from a speech given by Marcantonio. One of the many highlights was a clever script written by Roberto Ragone: Ragone, playing Vito Marcantonio and Art Bernal playing Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (a mentor of Marcantonio) in a chance meeting at the apartment of the Congressman. This encounter captured what might have been a no holds barred match between two social giants passionately expressing their views on the two party system and the feasibility of many things politic.

Perhaps the most moving reading was of the eulogy given by Paul Robeson to Marcantonio; "In his Congressional District of New York-Marc was revered and loved as a friend, a brother, a true leader, by the scores of thousands of Puerto Rican, Italian, Negro, Irish, Jewish and Slavic families-the families of the poor-whose cause he aggressively championed and whose problems he tirelessly helped to solve. Perhaps no group of Americans is called upon to honor his name and his memory more than the Negro people, not only in East Harlem, but in all parts of this vast land." The actor received a standing ovation.

The Forum held an event on August 9^th at Woodlawn Cemetery on the 60^th anniversary of the of Congressman Marcantonio's death. New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito attended and remarked, "Many people in Puerto Rico don't know about his fight for the independence of Puerto Ricans and how he was vilified for those views. I want New York to progress in the same way that Vito had imagined...New York is for everyone."

Photos: Sarah Marcantonio Coursey

Pictured: Roberto Ragone; Marilyn Ocasio; Eduardo Sanchez and; Art Bernal

A special prosecutor a must in Michael Brown case

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:56:00 +0000

Demands for a special prosecutor to investigate the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson have been ongoing. With last week's leaks of testimony given by Wilson to the grand jury investigating the case, the calls for a special prosecutor have grown louder.

And with good reason.

The leaks, along with analysis by "experts" close to the case published in the Washington Post, the New York Times and the St. Louis Post Dispatch, favor Officer Wilson's version of the events leading up to Brown's tragic death.

Attorney General Eric Holder expressed "exasperation" with this selective leaking of information, the goal of which seems be to influence public opinion prior to the completion of the grand jury's work.

Local activists are understandably angered by these actions, adding to a growing distrust of the legal process led by prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who has close ties to local police. Some have warned that such maneuvers will contribute to an already growing loss of confidence.

They are right.

The family's repeated call for a special prosecutor has so far fallen on deaf ears. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon instead has called for a commission to investigate the social and economic causes underlying the protests. The commission, however, is not empowered to address the legal case.

The appointment of a special prosecutor is not only reasonable but in light of local officials' machinations may be the only way justice will be served. The NAACP has recently said, "If justice for Michael is to be achieved, a special prosecutor must be appointed in this case."

The NAACP statement continued, "The nation is still angry, and we have every right to be. We have every right to demand fairness under the law and deep institutional changes that can save lives and build trust between our communities and law enforcement."

In addition the NAACP demands that Nixon's pending commission "must first advocate for justice for Michael Brown, for ending racial profiling, and for desperately needed reviews of police practices."

Given the national prominence of the case, we think it's no accident that these issues are coming to the fore in the days before the election. They will no doubt have a direct bearing on what happens next Tuesday.

What we do between now and then therefore is extremely important. We call on our readers and supporters to tweet, phone and petition in support of the demands for a special prosecutor. And equally as important, make sure you vote.

Photo: St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCullogh is too closely tied to polce, civil rights advocates note. Jeff Roberson/AP

My first protest demonstration: Where do we go from here?

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 12:12:00 +0000

The People's Climate Marches were held worldwide on the 21^st of September 2014. I participated in the march in Atlanta, Georgia. It was my first protest and I loved it; I had the opportunity to talk to new people. Although I was the only Communist there, the protesters were open to my beliefs and accepted me into the protest and march.

Unity was shown through all 2200 protests around the world, which represents a change in the way we view politics. The People's Climate March was one of the first major left-wing marches where you saw many people of different beliefs coming together for a common goal. Over 100 of my comrades from the Communist Party and the Young Communist League marched in New York City. With the people I talked to in Atlanta, we all agreed that the climate is more important than political parties or rivalry. A lot of people got this message.

I saw reports of the marches on CNN, MSNBC, and the Daily Show. Although the conversation in the media shifted toward the war on ISIS, it was impossible to ignore the 400,000 people who took to U.S. streets in glorious protest along with hundreds of thousands around the world. In global unity, we were all declaring that addressing climate change should be our priority, not another war.

We took a stand for improvement in all our lives: to fight back against pollution, to fight so that our children can see a penguin in a zoo, or maybe in the wild, and not just in a book about extinct species. I want to live in a clean world with trees in every backyard. Where cars are charged with electricity and don't harm our living space. Where diseases such as asthma and cancer no longer plague our world. This I dream for our children, to run down hills of grass and trees. For them to know the beauty of nature. For them to know that they live in a better world because their fathers and mothers took to the streets to fight, not just for themselves, but for the future of civilization. We must advance as a whole, marching on to a glorious victory. We must continue to force the issue of climate change through non-violent protests. The government will see that the people want something, and must respond by taking action. We must do this for the future of the species, not just to improve a nation or for political idealism.

With this I call on you to organize to help in any way you can. Even something as simple as providing food to protesters in your area. Anything that will help people who are standing up for the planet, we must do. We must organize more protests and rallies. It's not just Communists who believe that the climate comes before profits! It is our government's duty to defend its citizens from the harms that will come from climate change. We must defend our planet and each other.

This is the message we must send to Washington in November; that we need action on climate change and other fronts. This is what I ask of you the people, to help get our government back working for us. Elect a progressive Senate, progressive Congress, and progressive governors on November 4^th. When we have a government in place that responds to the people's concerns around climate change, rather than denies that climate change exists, then we will all prosper. To do this we must defeat every right-wing politician and the tea party on Election Day.

This is where I leave you to plan and organize, as I must do the same.

Photo: A sign that perfectly demonstrated the all-inclusive nature of the People's Climate March. Heather Craig/Flickr/People's Climate.org

Read more about the People's Climate March:

Red and green at People's Climate March

RNs to join actions in NYC, Oakland, LA in call for action to stem climate crisis

From trains to streets, Climate March moved people

Labor played big part in massive climate march

Connecticut labor, environmental, peace groups join together for People's Climate March

Review, "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate"

Climate change requires a new abolition movement

Climate change, militarism, and the 2014 elections

Honey Butter Fried Chicken and redistribution of wealth

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 15:26:00 +0000

So how exactly can we address income inequality by simply asking everyone to learn new skills and find a better job, avoiding the reality of the need for a re-distribution of social resources? We can't.

Analyzing the evolution of class and income inequality under capitalism, Marx and Engels famously asserted, "What the bourgeoisie . . . produces, above all, is its own gravediggers." They meant that the capitalist class would through relentless exploitation create conditions for its own death by unifying the working class into an engine of historical change, spurring the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism itself. Marx and Engels, of course, delighted in this prospect, envisioning an egalitarian socialist society.

These days, the prospects do not seem quite as gleeful. While the capitalist class, including but not limited to the infamous-and infamously greedy-one percent, might no doubt be engaged in digging their own graves, the rest of us might really need to worry that they will be digging our graves too-at least one can infer as much from a recent Harvard Business School study. The study, entitled "An Economy Doing Half Its Job," points out that while large and midsize businesses have been performing strongly coming out of the Great Recession, "middle-class and working-class citizens are struggling." This "divergence," the study argues, is "unsustainable." The study underscores corporate America's self-interest in improving the overall standard of living in the United States, warning, "Businesses cannot thrive for long while their communities languish."

***

Even former President Bill Clinton recognizes the need for a change in economic behavior and values suggestive of redistribution. At the recent Clinton Global Initiative, he offered the prediction that corporations will someday care more about their employees and overall social well-being than maximizing profits, suggesting they will do so "because of proof that markets work better that way." He prophesized this choice: "We're going to share inequality, misery, and conflict, or we're going to share prosperity, responsibilities and a sense of community."

While a hopeful prediction, we can find examples of thriving enterprises that already have these values built into their plans; and they aren't necessarily doing so "because of proof that markets work better that way" but because they value people and the work they do, promoting a broader social vision. Take Honey Butter Fried Chicken, a small, independently-owned restaurant on the Northwest side of Chicago. Josh Kulp explains that he and his co-chef and co-managing partner Christine Cikowski, along with their business partners and designers Jen Mayer and Chris Jennings, opened the restaurant "in a conscious attempt to provide a space where employees could thrive." They wanted to be "known and respected not only for offering responsible and delicious food . . . but also for being an amazing place to work." Kulp stresses that "from the outset, we have emphasized paying a fair wage, offering paid sick time, paid vacation time, and health benefits," which they have been able to offer through Affordable Care Act. They share all financial information with their employees and hope to offer profit-sharing to their employees in the future.

They do not ask the busboys or dishwashers to increase their value or improve their skills to earn a higher wage. There is a recognition that for the restaurant to be successful, this work is necessary. They don't try to de-value the work to maximize value. They have in fact re-valued the work by focusing on the vital role the worker fulfills in the enterprise. This is not a redistribution of wealth but simply a sensible distribution of it. In my one visit to the restaurant, Kulp introduced me to several of his employees, including younger ones whom he was encouraging to attend college. It was clear Kulp viewed his business as part of a larger social project that will lead to the kind of humane world he envisions and from which he will benefit.

Click here to read the full article. Excerpted from politicususa.org.

Photo: "Ladies of the line rule brunch today" at Honey Butter Fried Chicken, July 19. (via FB page)

Iranian Communists back Kurds resisting ISIS

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 16:44:00 +0000

The Tudeh Party is the Communist Party of Iran, under repression by the Iranian government.

The following statement has been issued by them in the context of the fight of the people of the town of Kobanê, in neighboring Syria and just across the border from Turkey, against the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forces that have been trying for weeks to capture Kobanê.

The Kurdish fighters defending Kobanê have asked for worldwide support, but the Turkish government of President Regep Tayyip Erdogan has even refused to let help pass over the Turkish border to the Kurdish fighters, because the main Kurdish fighting organization in Kobanê, the YPG or People's Protection Units, is linked to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which for years has been fighting the Turkish government. Worse, although the Turkish government had been carrying out talks with the PPK, the Turkish air force bombed PKK camps within Turkey on Monday. Erdogan also prioritizes the effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashir Assad over fighting the ISIS menace. There have been large protests in Turkey over the government's attitude toward the Kobanê issue, in Kurdish majority areas in Eastern Turkey but also in Istanbul and elsewhere, which have been repressed with dozens of deaths. The Tudeh's view is broadly aligned with those of other left and progressive organizations in the region. - Emile Schepers

Statement of the Tudeh Party of Iran

Solidarity with the people of Kobanê and their struggle!

It has been almost four months since the brave people of the Kurdish city of Kobanê in the North Western Syria and close to that country's borders with Turkey have been resisting- as real symbols of a popular struggle- the attacks and barbarism of ISIS. Kobanê is a small city, but the background of the tragedy which is taking place in this city, must be sought in the George Bush government's policy of aggression and military invasion of Iraq in 2003; it exposes the inhumane logic and goals of the "humanitarian" interventions of imperialist countries in the Middle East region- a policy which is still pursued and implemented by the United States government in the framework of the "New Middle East" plan.

The struggle of the Kobanê people is not only against the ISIS's professional murderers, but Kobanê is also indirectly under attack from the reactionary regimes in the region, and is paying for their refusal to align themselves with the policies of the Turkish government and the Arab Kingdoms in the Persian Gulf, led by the United States, for toppling the ruling government in Syria. Over the past few years, the people of Kobanê have not cooperated with the global imperialism's policy of "regime change" in Syria. By keeping their relative sovereignty and as an autonomous community, in which green shoots of popular democratic currents could be found, and while advancing the struggle for democracy and national rights, the Kobanê people had been opposing the United States' plan for "regime change" in Syria. The tragedy taking place in Kobanê demonstrates how the popular movements in the Middle East have always come under attack from the reactionary and anti-people forces. Kobanê's militant women and men are single-handedly fighting a struggle for the survival of their community against the attacks of one of the most reactionary and destructive forces, which has been borne out of imperialist policies of aggression, and nurtured by the local reactionary regimes. The role of women in the resistance movement of the people of Kobanê is significant and exemplary. The tragedy in Kobanê exposes the inhumane role of those who claim to be the "champions of democracy and human rights", and above all, the United States and Britain that in recent years, by using various forces in the spectrum of the so called "political Islam", directly or indirectly have destroyed the popular movements. Last week, the United Nation's special envoy for Syria indicated that if Kobanê falls, a human tragedy will take place and thousands of citizens remaining in the city will be slaughtered by the "Islamic State".

In spite of possessing extensive military capabilities and having positioned massive military forces a few hundred meters from Kobanê positions, the Islamic government of Turkey, an important NATO member, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan's leadership has taken no effective steps during the last few weeks to support the defenders of Kobanê and prevent their massacre. Erdogan, Turkey's President, has blatantly stated that any kind of intervention from Turkish side against ISIS, will be conditional on the imposition of "no-fly" ban for Syrian air force; which in effect means approval of Turkish military activities in Syria. During the recent years, by keeping its borders open with Syria, Erdogan's government has allowed the transportation and concentration of Salafist and Jihadist forces and ISIS terrorists through the border, and their bloody war against the Syrian government.

On October 2, the world's media reported the United States Vice-President Joe Biden's statement clearly indicating that the US allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have played an essential role in the creation and strengthening of ISIS by pouring billions of dollars of money, arms and equipment. Ironically, during the Turkish people's nationwide protest on October 7^th against the government's inhumane policies, 22 people were killed and a large number of people were arrested by the security forces and militia forces belonging to the "Justice and Development Party". It is also important to point out that in many Kurdish towns in Iran, the theocratic regime's security forces repressed the Kurdish citizens' rallies and prevented the people from expressing their solidarity with the Kobanê's militants.

Even though at present the policies of imperialism in Syria and Iraq are somehow being faced by challenges on the side of the reactionary and anti-people forces created by the United States and its allies in the region, but one thing is certain that imperialism has never acted and will never act in the interests of the popular forces and popular movements. What is needed today is a global resolute and unified action of all progressive and humanitarian forces gathered around the United Nations. The way to save Kobanê is not through arming them or other Kurdish forces in the region by imperialist countries. We must prevent the spread of war and militarism in the region.

Tudeh Party of Iran calls for the immediate and direct involvement of the United Nations in equipping, facilitating and transfer of international peace-keeping forces (instead of NATO) for saving Kobanê, and replacing the NATO forces under American leadership by that of the United Nations.

Tudeh Party of Iran expresses its full and broad solidarity with the people of Kobanê and their struggle to defend and protecting their lives and homes and existence against the terrorism of ISIS.

Tudeh Party of Iran

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Photo: In Basel, Switzerland, Kurds and supporters rally against the Islamic State militants' attack on the Syrian city Kobanê, Oct. 11. Banner at left reads: "Long live Rojava" and at right "Hand in Hand against ISIS! Solidarity with Kurdistan." Rojava is the common name for Kurdish areas in Syria. (AP Photo/Keystone, Georgios Kefalas)

The dark side of academic moonlighting

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:59:00 +0000

Seventy-three percent of polled Americans believe that corruption in government is widespread. That's a lot of distrust. And it leads to a lot of cynicism. A big chunk of that corruption comes from the revolving door of politics, greased by money so great it would make most of us faint-of-heart.

Pols move from elected office to big offices on Wall Street or to lobby firms in state capitals across the nation. Government regulators have often left the very industry they are charged with regulating to join a commission in the sector they are supposed to regulate. Later, they return to the same business they once worked for.

Of course these people are not making decisions in the best interest of the consumer, since even when they are on the government payroll they carry the acute awareness of soon returning to that corporate office. They want to regulate without annoying too many future employers.

But there is a more subtle form of corruption that remains even less transparent. Corporations often deploy faculty members from major universities to testify in regulatory hearings and before legislative committees. Frequently they do not even hire the academics directly, but contribute to trade groups that recruit the professors. For example, Dow Chemical, Bayer and DuPont are among the members of CropLife America, an association of chemical makers seeking to shape the rules set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The organization hires the academics, maintaining the appearance of separation between the regulated and academia.

Often when companies need their positions represented before a regulating commission, they turn to consulting firms to recruit the academic experts. The consultants operate under innocuous names like the National Economic Research Associates, Charles River Associates, Cornerstone Research, or the Global Economics Group - all firms that provide academic spokespersons specifically for Wall Street. They draw professors from the likes of the universities of California at Berkeley, Harvard, North Carolina and Chicago.

The firms seek out university experts because they can rely upon their academic credibility. What the hired guns don't often say is that they work on a retainer from a consulting firm or they moonlight on the tab of a corporation. Characteristic is law professor J. W. Verret, from George Mason University, who managed to supplement his professional salary by an extra $50,000 from Greenberg Traurig, a large lobbying law firm, providing testimony, and only identifying himself by his university credentials.

Sometimes these professors sit on a firm's board of directors. Stanford finance professor Darrell Duffie sits on the board of Moody's, the company that rates bond issues. He collects an extra $200,000 annually, and regularly walks in and out of Congressional committees and regulatory commissions representing...the financial industry. That's a well-paying side job. Other professor-types receive as much as $5,000 for just writing a letter.

Why isn't this behavior illegal? Partly because the Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of corruption so that such duplicity cannot be prosecuted. The Court has limited legislators to outlawing only quid pro quo corruption - that is, "out-and-out bribery," as the New Yorker put it. The Court has ruled that corruption occurs only when an elected official takes money in exchange for throwing support to a particular candidate or a specific piece of legislation. This kind of corporate dissembling doesn't fit that definition so it can't be outlawed by Congress.

But there's an even darker side. Sometimes corporations orchestrate campaigns to deliberately sabotage the credibility and impact of academic research they don't like. For years now Syngenta has run an effort to undermine University of California, Berkeley biology professor Tyrone Hayes. Not only does the agribusiness giant hire other chemists to counter Hayes' research data, they have hired undercover agents to stalk his presentations and paid shills to attack him during open-mike talk-back sessions. Syngenta has bought influence on the Internet so that using Hayes' name as a search term suggests Syngenta's material - not Hayes' - as the first options. The company has purposely constructed an effort to discredit and destroy his academic reputation.

Of course individual scientists are not the only targets. Greenpeace, the environmental organization, has had its activist ranks infiltrated, its research compromised, its leaders shadowed and its campaigns sabotaged. That's what companies do when activists get too close to exposing a source of major profits. It's not just that big business puts money into political campaigns. It's not just that the large money firms offer jobs to regulators or retiring members of Congress. They also buy researchers and university professors to protect their interests from laws and regulations they don't like. No wonder so many of America's citizens think the system's corrupt.

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renter's rights campaign.

Reprinted by permission from CapitalandMain.

Photo: AP

Memories of Ñancahuazú, Tlatelolco and Cubana de Aviación Flight 455

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 10:50:00 +0000

This time of year brings many memories. The memories are like echoes, for they coincide so closely with events of today, equally tragic and bloody.

On October 2, 1968, members of the Presidential Guard of the Mexican president, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, fired on young people and their families, who were peacefully demonstrating for democracy and justice in Tlatelolco Plaza, in Mexico City.

At least 300 people died, and more in other areas of the country, while the offices of the Mexican Communist Party and other leftist groups were ransacked and the leaders arrested. Later evidence showed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was up to its neck in this atrocity from the outset.

Fast forward to Sept. 26, 2014: Local "security" forces in close alliance with the "Guerreros Unidos" drug trafficking gang attacked three busloads of young students of a teacher training college in the small city of Iguala, in Mexico's Guerrero state. Six people were killed on the spot and 43 have disappeared and most likely have been murdered. Questions are being asked about the role of the U.S. funded Merida initiative in this incident.

On October 9, 1967, the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was shot without trial in the village of Higueras, near the Ñancahuazú valley where Che and his Bolivian and Cuban comrades had been trying to get a guerrilla operation going against the military dictatorship of General René Barrientos. Che was captured alive but Barrientos, who was closely advised at every step by the C.I.A., gave the order to kill him without trial. Sergeant Mario Teran did the dirty work: When he entered the room where Che was being held, Che said simply, "Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man."

I recall that a decade or so later the Bolivian government issued a commemorative stamp honoring the "Battle of Ñancahauzú", which enraged Bolivian exiles worldwide.

On October 6, 1976, Cuban exile terrorists based in the U.S. and Venezuela (pre Chavez) set off two bombs in a Cuban civilian airliner, Cuba de Aviación Flight 455, killing all 78 passengers and crew on board. The C.I.A. was fully cognizant in advance of the plans for the attack. The main planners, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, were never held to account. Bosch died in Miami in 2011 and Posada now lives freely in Miami, where he is lionized as a hero by the right wing.

On Oct. 1 of this year, men entered the home of the youngest member of Venezuela's national legislature, Robert Serra, and stabbed him and his compañera to death with sadistic frenzy. Serra had been playing a leading and vocal role in denouncing ties between the Venezuelan ultra-right and fascists and drug cartel members in neighboring Colombia. Some of the right wing activists have been funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

The economic, political and military elites in Latin America have killed and killed, and keep on killing. And the U.S. government continues to be complicit in various ways. But the revolutionary idea cannot be killed, any more than the people can.

The Bolivian noncom who killed Che Guevara, Mario Teran, later was going blind from cataracts while living in exile in Paraguay. It was his good fortune, and an immense irony of history, that there happened to be a Cuban medical team available who was helping people with their eye ailments. They operated on ex-sergeant Teran and restored his eyesight.

The Cuban Communist Party newspaper "Granma" mused:

"Four decades after Mario Teran attempted to destroy a dream and an idea, Che returns to win yet another battle. Now an old man, he [Teran] can once again appreciate the colors of the sky and the forest, enjoy the smiles of his grandchildren and watch football games."

Thus will the future pay homage to all our revolutionary martyrs.

Photo: Relatives hold signs and pictures of victims at the Colon Cemetery in Havana, at a ceremony in memory of the Cubana Airlines bombing of 1976. Cubans marking the anniversary expressed frustration and sadness at the fact that Luis Posada Carriles has yet to be punished for his involvement in masterminding the crime. Jorge Rey/AP

Low prices or livable wages? Let's discuss

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 16:54:00 +0000

My brother read my recent article on income inequality and asked me a question that I think is more generally at play in the debate: "Won't the costs of increasing the minimum wage simply be passed on to consumers?" My first, rather knee-jerk, response to such a question is always why can't these costs come out of salaries at the top of these companies or come out of corporate profits? I did, in that article, refer not just to raising the minimum wage but also to equalizing wages, which-if you didn't get it-means salaries at the top might have to be adjusted lower (go ahead and call me a communist), as any solution to income inequality, almost by definition, will need to involve redistribution of existing wealth. Corporations for decades have maximized profits by lowering wages and decreasing benefits. Can't we ask that corporations show a minimal responsibility not just to their workers but to the society of which they are a part? Such behavior is actually in the self-interest of these corporations-even Harvard says so.

But then I moved past my knee-jerk thinking and considered the question, and it became pretty interesting to me. So what if the costs of raising the minimum wage were passed on to consumers? When that question is posed, it is usually done so rhetorically, with the assumed answer that-God forbid!-it would be horribly unacceptable to raise prices for consumers, and thus we cannot raise the minimum wage-end of conversation. But what would it mean to pass the cost of a minimum wage hike on to consumers (who, let's not forget, are typically workers, too, a fact often lost or neglected in such conversations)? I started to think about this question as something more than rhetorical, and my thinking led me to reflect also on how this debate on income inequality provides an important opportunity for us to really re-assess American values and, in ways we haven't done, consciously craft-and pay for-the kind of world we want.

***

CNBC editor Heesun Wee reports, for example, that, "Particularly for younger consumers, including millennials, purchasing decisions are about more than cheap prices. Shoppers are buying based on a company's values, which can include domestic manufacturing, environmentalism and ethically sourced raw materials, ranging from cocoa to cotton fibers." These millennials, and no doubt others across generations, appear to be thinking very consciously about the type of world they want, buying organic goods and recycled products to protect the environment, free-range chickens to ensure humane treatment of the earth's creatures, fair-trade coffee, and the like.

***

What would the cost be for this Better, if not Good, Society? Well, a 2011 study regarding wages at Walmart offers some insight into this issue, finding that to raise every worker at Walmart to at least a $12 per hour wage would cost the average Walmart customer 46 cents per trip or about $12.50 annually.

This doesn't seem like much to pay so many can receive a more livable wage (we might have to pay more for a true living wage), but maybe I'm wrong...

Click here to read the full article. Excerpted from politicususa.org.

Photo: From the May 15 global strike of fast food workers (PW/Teresa Albano)

Goodbye Columbus, welcome Indigenous People's Day

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 15:57:00 +0000

When I was a kid Columbus Day had always made me feel angry and awkward. I remember sitting in school in the third grade listening to my teacher telling my fellow students about the history of Columbus, and how he " discovered America" and how he was this amazing "explorer and scientist" that helped the world. I quickly raised my hand; I started yelling at my teacher telling her that she was lying. I told her that Columbus was a horrible person that raped and killed Native people. I told her that Native people were here first and that Columbus didn't really "discover" anything. I remember the teacher looking at me blankly not knowing what to say next. Later that day, the school called my mom in.

Sitting there next to my mother, I was thinking about what was going to happen during this meeting with the teacher. The teacher comes in and greets my mother, the teacher proceeds to tell my mother about my outburst. My mother then pursed her lips together and made a sighing sound, which I knew meant someone was about to get yelled at. My mother began to go off on the teacher, yelling at her about Columbus and genocide of our people and that I had every right to be upset and correct her. The teacher first looked shocked and calmly proceeded to tell my mother and me to "get over it" and that "it happened a long time ago." My mother then told her, well...something not so nice. I'm sure readers can add the cursing themselves. We left the school and my mother took me to get ice cream. As I was eating my ice cream, I realized then that our educational system was seriously flawed, and that as a Native person I would have to live with people celebrating a man who caused the genocide of my people.

Indigenous people have been fighting Columbus Day for years. In 1977, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and other Indigenous rights activists presented the idea to get rid of Columbus Day to the United Nations at the International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas. In the last few years, Native people have started a renewed effort in the fight against Columbus Day and ask that the day be changed to Indigenous People's Day and that schools teach the true history of what Columbus did. This would kick off Native American History Month, which is November, a few weeks early.

In April of this year in Minneapolis. Indigenous activists brought a resolution to the city council to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. A large turnout of Native people came out to support the resolution. The city council took a vote on it and the resolution passed. Part of the resolution that was passed reads, "The city of Minneapolis recognizes the annexation of Dakota homelands for the building of our city, and knows Indigenous Nations have lived upon this land since time immemorial."

This was big news in Indian country; our people began to think well, "Where else could we get similar resolutions passed?"

Skip ahead to Monday Oct. 7, the Seattle city council voted to have Indigenous People's Day on the same day as Columbus Day. The Seattle's Indigenous People's Day resolution was drafted by Last Real Indians educator and writer Matt Remle (Haukpapa Lakota). The resolution went into the meeting with the support and/or endorsement by 12 organizations and government agencies, such as the Affiliated Tribes Northwest Indians, the Northwest Indian Bar Association, the Swinomish Tribe, the Tulalip Tribes, the United Indians of all Tribes Foundation and many others.

Bruce Harrell, one of the resolution's co-sponsors, said "We are not relieving the pain of our past, but rejoicing in the celebration of a triumph- the voice of the Indigenous People who are saying: we are still here, we have been here hundreds of years before you, and will be here hundreds of years after you."

The city council put it up for a vote and the resolution was passed. After the resolution passed Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant said " Columbus did not embark on a simple voyage of exploration, it was always intended as a voyage of conquest and ultimately colonization. Columbus indicts himself in his journal as one of the most prolific slave traders in human history, buying and selling more than 5,000 Indigenous people, and helping establish a brutal system of forced labor. Just decades after Columbus' arrival, the Indigenous population had been reduced by as much as 90 percent. This city should not honor a man who played a pivotal role in the worst genocide the world has ever known."

Not everyone who attended the meeting was in favor of the change. Many Italian Americans went to the city council meeting also to voice their opinion on Columbus Day. Many of them voiced support of Indigenous People's Day but a lot them said that making it the same day as Columbus Day robs them of their own holiday. Italian American Seattle City Council member Nick Licata made a response to his fellow Italians, "We are all citizens in a democracy. We are all here to work with each other, and by making Indigenous People's Day we are adding something. We are not taking something away. We can both recognize our strengths."

Even though Seattle and Minneapolis have passed the Indigenous People's Day resolutions, it's still not enough. The Americas as a whole need to look at how the history of Columbus is taught. My hope is that other cities will soon follow with similar resolutions and then hopefully one day there will no longer be a Columbus Day and will have Indigenous People's Day to learn about. I hope my kids will be able to go to school and hear the truth of what happen to our people, and that I won't have to be called in to have a talk with a teacher about Columbus.

Photo: via Flickr/CC

Asleep at wheel: Carriers profit from trucker training mills

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 15:25:00 +0000

A recent New York Times editorial urged the U.S. Department of Transportation to stop "dawdling" on issuing federal regulations for truck driver training.

They wrote, "A disproportionate number of highway fatalities involve large trucks, yet current federal standards are grievously lax. To get a commercial license to operate a big rig, drivers are only required to receive 10 hours of classroom lectures, pass a written test and take a brief road test. While some also receive hours of supervised behind-the-wheel training, many do not."

My firsthand experience with poor and unsafe entry level driver training was so egregious, the problem so vast, that I have spent six years writing about it in order to inform anyone who would listen how unsafe and unaccountable the trucking industry and trucking regulators are for driver training practices.

Student truckers are seen as a for-profit industry, one that is not held accountable to public safety. Profit motive drives the many steps involved in training - from recruitment to loan approval. The federal government, through its MAP-21 and other programs, provides funds to train truck drivers. Yet, hundreds of men and women each year sign on to become truck drivers and fill critical truck driver shortages, and most of them are gone the following year.

The lack of standards in training allow Commercial Driver's License mills to exploit people, who are sold a dream of trucking. Anyone who receives a grant or loan is considered qualified to operate a tractor trailer. It's about money, not about training qualified people to become qualified truck drivers.

Carriers often push their drivers to become trainers to make more money. But they also push bad students to pull real freight, which is a danger to everyone. Some trainers become resentful and violent toward their students, which affects women the most. Carriers use cheap student labor to run team freight and they risk public safety each and every day doing it. Some students who have had a number of mishaps because of their poor training go off driving solo with their bad skills. Out of this mess, they learned the carriers' "golden rule": "Do what it takes to get the job done and don't get caught doing it." This is a hirable driver.

A driver that protests poor training or anything else is considered weak and a troublemaker. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has allowed this to go unchecked for decades. Why should the taxpayers be funding a 100 percent turnover rate and an industry not held accountable for the lack of driver training standards?

In 2013, the vice president of our women's trucking organization read a letter to a listening session on entry level driver training held at the Mid-America Truck Show. Anne Ferro, FMCSA administrator, was there. That anyone from the FMCSA attended was considered a victory. Here is what the letter said in part:

My name is Sandi Talbott, I am 71 years old and I have been driving for 34 years.

Only drivers like me see the effects of poor entry level driver training when we are out on the road, not the CDL school administrators, not the American Trucking Associations not the Commercial Vehicle Training Association.

We see the student truck driver crashes that do not make the news and the scattered rigs along the off-ramps operated by a new drivers that have not been taught to park, back up properly, manage their hours of service, logbook or know how to stick up for themselves against training carriers pushing them because they are an expendable cheap labor source.

In our weekly group we have come in contact with student drivers who are put out on the highway with as little as two weeks experience and they are running freight even though they feel they are not prepared to do so.

There is no oversight on the turnover rate in the training carriers and the claims of the ATA of a critical driver shortage.

As a veteran driver and as a taxpayer I feel if the FMCSA truly cared about safety they would have a cap on how many students could be recruited by a training carrier per year.

Government funding for entry level driver training has become a welfare program for some big carriers that the ATA represents.

This system is setup that someone with my qualified driving experience cannot train an entry level driver but a person who has just a few months of experience CAN train another student.

This is not highway safety.

Our group wishes to educate elected officials and the motoring public how government funds like MAP-21 are being misused at carriers who are recruiting between 90 and 200 entry level drivers each week without accountability.

Carriers like Werner, CR England, Covenant Transport, CRST Van Expedited, SWIFT, US Xpress, New Prime, these are just few of the carriers who use students to run team freight before they have enough skill, sell them on a lease owner-operator one sided sharecropper trucking programs, and do not provide qualified logbook training or equipment training.

The FMCSA should conduct an audit into these carriers with regard to the government funds they are receiving to train students, the turnover rate associated with them, exit interviews from those who sought training and compare just how many of these entry level drivers are now out of the system.

Drivers who have no desire to train are pressured into taking on the task. This is highly dangerous and can become volatile, especially for females.

You can read the full letter and docket of our other comments along with the video of Sandi delivering this testimony HERE.

The FMCSA has been asleep at the wheel, putting people at risk on America's highways. The public must educate themselves on this topic and demand action. They must understand they are at risk by these sweatshops on wheels driving next to them on the interstate.

Desiree Wood is president of REAL Women in Trucking, Inc., a 501 (c) 6 association formed by REAL professional truck drivers to promote safety and to improve truck driver training.

Photo: via FCMSA on Facebook

This is what I see when I drive

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 12:32:00 +0000

As I drive along, I notice the landscape is ever changing. Walmarts and dollar stores sprout from the empty lots, sparked in earlier times by the incessant want of a bargain. We consumed the inexpensive at the expense of well-paying jobs and a decimated economy.

Ninety-nine cent T-shirts as a pathway to poverty. Low-priced televisions to dull our minds to the impending disaster, a nightly fix of propaganda. The corner convenience store where low-wage faceless drones labor under the incessant glare of a fluorescent-lit security camera. But whose security do these cameras look out for? The only credit given here is on a card. No neighbor behind the counter who is a proprietor, willing to wait till Friday for payment on goods needed today.

The inconvenient truth of convenience stores, no grace period, every penny counts and if you don't have every penny then walk away empty handed. No milk for the children, formula for the baby. Starvation is preferable to a short cash register. Corporate does not see hunger, just the bottom line.

I've driven into the new world where money is god, quarterly profit the new charity. A system devised to benefit the very few with a loyalty to the wealthiest only. The vile narcissism of greed, enforced by corruption and enshrined by propaganda. The untouchables, with a sociopathic awareness of the daily bottom line, always looking for a bargain in the halls of congress, the regulatory agencies and the courts. They stand in the ever shifting sands of their definition of patriotism.

We strangle on their greed.

We die without health care to feed their gluttony.
Children go hungry to feed their farm subsidies.
The air is fouled, the water poisoned for their luxury.
The prisons are filled with their slave labor.
The airways filled with their lies.
They fuel the tension of hate with weapons.
Gracie ran a neighborhood store by my grandmother's house, always willing to extend credit to those in need, add a few extra pieces of penny candy to a young boys bag of candy, to share her bounty with others.
Say goodnight Gracie, your humanity is a bad business model.

Photo: AP

Education and low-wage jobs: Time to change the narrative

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:53:00 +0000

Rather than asking individuals to increase their value, we need to transform how we as a society value the work individuals do.

Recently when President Obama admonished corporate CEOs to stop complaining about regulations, he roused a sharp retort from the corporate world, accusing him of "not getting it" and not doing enough to remove uncertainties caused by regulations that discourage companies from hiring. While his remarks were arguably nothing more than a gentle yet scolding reminder that corporations have fared quite well coming out of the recession in comparison to the proverbial "ordinary people" of Main Street, the intensity of corporate blowback underscores just how difficult any political struggle will be to orchestrate meaningful redistribution of resources to address the wealth gap, whether it be through governmental efforts to raise the minimum wage or labor actions such as those in recent months by fast food workers around the nation.

Nonetheless, this tart exchange, an episode of verbal sparring in the arena of class struggle, represents another installment in the unfolding conversation about "income inequality" (a euphemism for class inequality, but "class" is a Voldemort concept that shall not be named in American political discourse, except when invoking the phantom "middle class"). This topic promises to have staying power as it continues to find the center of national debate.

*****

As if on cue, in the midst of the verbal class struggle between Obama and corporate America, the ratings agency Standard and Poor's issued a report claiming the increasing wealth gap has negatively impacted economic growth and slowed recovery from the Great Recession. The report argues this gap makes the economy more vulnerable to a boom-bust cycle and slows growth, causing S&P to cut its growth estimates for the economy because of the increasing concentration of wealth among the notorious one percent. Certainly, by no measure is S&P a progressive or left-leaning organization linked to Obama's supposed socialist agenda.

Neither is the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which recently issued a report asserting that while the 8.7 million jobs lost in the recession have been regained, the average wage has dropped 23 percent. The report also calls the growing income inequality and wage gap "alarming."

So, it seems that even corporate America might begin to recognize that its own interests lie in fostering a healthy economy, which means addressing income inequality.

The solutions so often proposed to countervail income inequality, however, are stale, ineffective, and counter-intuitive if one stops to think for two seconds, invoking the ever-popular and indeed mythical narratives of upward mobility and advancement through education that, quite simply, fail to grasp the reality of how our socio-economic system actually works and promote a blindness to the conditions that cause growing wage inequality.

For example, while the Standard and Poor's study cites spurring educational achievement as a way to narrow the wealth gap and points out that a higher level of education typically translates into a higher wage, this recycled truism does not recognize that regardless of people's educational level, as a collective we as a society still need certain work done. We need the cabbages picked, buildings cleaned, products assembled, children taught. Even if everybody in the U.S. earned advanced degrees, we still need people to do the necessary work that makes our lives possible, which includes the vital work that gets done by those working in low-wage jobs.

Thus, the narrative of upward mobility that hails escape from low-wage work through education might work for some on an individual level, but it doesn't work on a social level; that is, individuals might escape low-wage work, but those jobs will still need to be done by and for society as a whole. Indeed, our beloved narrative of upward mobility merely legitimates low-wage work and economic inequality rather than addressing wage inequality systemically.

*****

Rather than asking individuals to increase their value, we need to transform how we as a society value the work individuals do and how we remunerate the vital contributions of workers, especially those in low-wage jobs, which make our collective lives possible.

Excerpted from politicususa.com. Click here to read the full article.

Photo: Fast Food Forward Facebook page.

Asking wrong questions about Ebola (and other things)

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:35:00 +0000

There is a panic because a man in the heavily populated Dallas-Forth Worth area in Texas, who had recently traveled from Liberia to the United States, has come down with the Ebola virus. There are indications of a lack of vigilance by the hospital: He was sent home for two days before the institution realized what they might be dealing with, even though he had emphatically warned them about his Liberia trip. Then it was found that there were no emergency response protocols to sanitize his dwelling place, clothing and bedding, because of a lack of subcontractors immediately available to do the work. The sick man may have had contact with as many as 100 people in the interim. If any of them have been infected, each of them could have had contact with as many others.

Why should the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and state and local health authorities have been so unprepared? Why should anybody have been taken by surprise by this situation? Why should the situation in West Africa have been allowed to fester?

Do some people think that the three main African countries where the epidemic is raging are on the moon?

Three things characterize today's world:

*First it is highly integrated and there is more trade, travel and exchange of populations than at any time in human history. This is the result of globalization driven by the corporate drive for greater and greater profits, which in turn leads to greater instability and massive population movements, of job seekers and of refugees.

*Secondly, increasingly unsustainable levels of environmental degradation produce such things as global warming, storms and droughts, and contamination of the food and water supplies.

*Thirdly, there are ever-greater extremes of inequality both within and among countries. Countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where the epidemic is raging, are so poor that their state institutional structures are unable to cope with crisis situations, including epidemics, wars and natural disasters.

In short: The potential of Ebola running wild is caused by capitalism run wild.

An immediate reaction on the part of many in the wealthy countries is to pull up the drawbridge, stop people from coming here, and blame the poor countries and their inhabitants for the mess.

Sometimes they even manage to pressure the poorer countries to help with this backward approach. The Liberian government has announced that it may prosecute the sick man in Texas because he did not tell airline authorities that he had helped a person sick with Ebola just before he left.

Another example is the U.S. government's reaction to the "child migrant crisis" earlier this year, which was to demand that the governments of the impoverished countries from which the child refugees were coming not let people leave, and that the Mexican government not let them pass through its territory.

Right now there is a massive drought in Central America, which comes on top of a coffee blight. The drought may be related to global warming. The failure of crops is likely to have a far flung impact, as the people of the region have no other way to feed their families, and the countries lack strong state institutions to help their poor. The result is likely to be more out-migration, more inroads by organized crime, more conflict, more insecurity and more violence. This is a natural disaster leading to population dislocations, but some in the United States will blame it on the "criminal" proclivities of the darker skinned people.

Rather than engaging in panicky reactions which in the end only worsen the situation, our governments should be reminded of the words of the 17^th Century English poet John Donne: Since no man is an island, "therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

We must demand that our leaders prioritize the ending of inequality among and within nations, as well as protection of the natural environment, over the profits of rapacious transnational corporations, Big Oil in the first place. Countries like Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and the rest, need to be able to develop strong institutions to protect their own people against epidemics and other disasters. They cannot do this while mired in poverty. International trade arrangements have to be reworked to the infinitely greater benefit of the poor nations and of the working people of the rich countries.

Slamming the door against the main victims of imperialist exploitation is impossible; microbes know no borders. Ebola bears a strong resemblance to the "red death" in Edgar Allen Poe's short story of "The Masque of the Red Death": Prince Prospero had locked himself and his wealthy friends away from the horrible disease that was depopulating his domains, feasting and dancing while the world outside suffered and died.

But it was no use; the red death got in, and slew the wealthy as well as the poor.

Photo: A young man retrieves food supplies and personal materials left by the North Texas Food Bank and the Red Cross on the front stoop of an apartment at The Ivy Apartments complex, Oct. 2, in Dallas. Dallas County officials have ordered family members who had contact with the patient diagnosed with the Ebola virus to stay inside their home. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)