People Before Profit blog

Pope Francis: a breath of fresh air

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 11:09:00 +0000

A recent interview with Pope Francis by Jesuit journalist Antonio Spadaro has excited Catholic and other progressives and ruffled the feathers of some Catholic conservatives-with good reason. While Pope Francis did not indicate any readiness to change his stance on church teachings, his remarks point to a new atmosphere and attitude in the leadership of the Church-and an implicit rebuke to some U.S. bishops who have allied themselves with the political right.

From the immediate political standpoint, the most important point the Pope made regarded the narrow focus of some Catholics on a few controversial issues of sexual morality: "We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage, and the use of contraceptive methods...We must find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel."

Why should this matter to progressives? Because Catholic (and other) right-wingers, including, lamentably, some bishops, have latched on to this narrow set of issues to promote a broader right-wing agenda. If the essence of being Catholic is to oppose abortion, gay marriage, and contraception, then faithful Catholics (and some other Christians) can easily be hoodwinked into supporting rightist candidates who line up with this agenda, disregarding flagrant violations of other aspects of Catholic teaching.

Pope Francis knocked the legs out from under this ploy, saying "the message of the Gospel...is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ."

And Francis has left no doubt where he finds the "heart" of the Gospel message: in service to and solidarity with the poor. Francis is, of course, not the first Pope to advocate what is called in Catholic circles the "preferential option for the poor"; his two predecessors frequently denounced the impact of the "idolatry of the market" and the relentless pursuit of private profit on the vulnerable in society. Nonetheless, there does seem to be something new in Francis' attitude. In practice, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, despite their verbal denunciation of the ravages of capitalism, seemed more concerned with enforcing doctrinal conformity, particularly on certain issues involving sexual morality, than with pursuing active solidarity with capitalism's victims; for instance, in appointing bishops they seem to have privileged rigid orthodoxy over social conscience. While it is obviously too early to discern for sure the direction Francis' papacy will take, there are signs that he gives the pursuit of social justice priority over enforcement of secondary points of church doctrine.

One such sign is his response several weeks ago to a question about how he regarded gay priests, in which he famously said, "Who am I to judge?" Francis was not challenging church teachings on the immorality of homosexual acts; in this interview, he says in reference to such issues, "the teaching of the church is clear, and I am a son of the church"-but he goes on to say "when God looks at a gay person does he endorse this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?" In other words, Francis-in line with the core of Catholic teaching-puts fundamental regard for persons as a whole above moral evaluation of individual acts.

It may seem that we are straying here into a metaphysical realm far removed from the concerns of everyday life. That is not the case. Francis' enacts his attitude in his daily lifestyle. His use of a modest car and his rejection of the papal apartments in favor of a Spartan flats are signs of this; they are, I think, not affectations but part of his effort to live out in his lifestyle his solidarity with the poor-which again, though it is rooted in his vision of the Gospel rather than in any conscious political stance, certainly has political consequences. It throws emphasis on a central aspect of Catholic social teaching-its partisanship for the oppressed.

Progressives should take advantage of this to reinvigorate the relationship between the church and organized labor that goes back over a hundred years to the 1890 encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which Pope Leo XIII spoke out unequivocally for labor's right to organize-a radical position for its day, and one that has been repeatedly reaffirmed by later popes and by the US Bishops' Conference. Organizations such as Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice and Catholics United for the Common Good, seeking to revitalize that tradition, should find Francis encouraging.

No one should harbor any illusions that Pope Francis is likely to challenge positions entrenched in church teaching that many progressives object to, such as those on homosexuality, women's ordination, and contraception. Nonetheless, his focus on the totality of persons rather than isolated moral judgements on particular acts should open up the possibility of respectful dialogue and discussion on these questions, a discussion which has sometimes been very difficult in the atmosphere fostered by Francis' two predecessors. This does not seem to have been lost on the Pope's conservative critics, who have complained of his failure to speak out on abortion and other "litmus test" (for the right) issues.

Finally, there is one aspect of this interview that I think progressives, and especially Communists, should take to heart and ponder, transposing it from the religious to the political realm. Following a discussion of "discernment"-that is, of making choices and determining one's path-the interviewer asks the Pope if "we can make mistakes." Francis responds, "Yes, in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an air of uncertainty. There must be"; and he goes on to say "our life is not given to us like an opera libretto, in which all is written down, but it means going, walking, doing, searching, seeing"-to which I would add, for progressives, "struggling."

There is an emphasis here that rings throughout the interview, and through the Pope's public persona, on humility, on openness to listening to others and to recognizing the possibility of error. I point this out because a look at the history of communism over the past century shows what mistakes and failures and, at times, what horrors, have been wrought precisely because we Communists (worldwide but here in the U.S. too) were too cocksure of ourselves, too confident of schematic reductions of Marxism, too unwilling to listen to other voices-in a word, too arrogant. Whatever our religious or non-religious convictions may be, I think we have much to learn from this man in as he leads one of the most powerful institutions in the world.

Photo: Andrew Medichini/AP

Welcome Pope Francis, campaigner against corporate greed!

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 15:10:00 +0000

The campaign against corporate criminals and their gluttonous greed just added a new speaker with a very loud voice, Pope Francis I.

After hearing stories from the jobless on the Italian island of Sardinia, the leader of the earth's one billion Roman Catholics threw away his prepared text and denounced galloping globalization that impoverishes the masses of people worldwide.

"We want a just system, a system that lets all of us get ahead," the pope said on Sept. 22, according to a story by the Rome correspondent for Catholic News Service. "We don't want this globalized economic system that does us so much harm. At its center there should be man and woman, as God wants, and not money."

Francis told the crowd in the port city of Cagliari that the present worldwide economic crisis is the "consequence of a global choice, of an economic system that led to this tragedy, an economic system centered on an idol, which is called money."

And even his prepared remarks were pointed. In them, Francis emphasized "dignified work." Instead, he said, the global economic crunch led to an increase in "inhumane work, slave labor, work without fitting security or without respect for creation." That's "creation" as in the creation of human beings in God's image.

In a way, we shouldn't be surprised at the Pope's strong words against galloping greed and corporate despotism. He's repeating what has been part of official church teaching for the last 130 years or so, Catholic Social Thought.

Catholic Social Thought, we should note, is very pro-worker and pro-union.

Not all popes have pushed Catholic Social Thought. Not all lay Catholics, Catholic politicians, or leaders within the Catholic hierarchy have paid attention to it.

And somehow we have the feeling Francis' words will fall on deaf ears of the Walton family, "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, the Koch brothers and other - to use Teddy Roosevelt's words - "malefactors of great wealth," regardless of whether they're Catholic or not. We're not sure about House Speaker John Boehner, who is a Catholic.

But that's not the point. Pope Francis has provided a moral bully pulpit to rally the world's workers in the ongoing crusade against corporate greed, in all its manifestations that beat us down. The presumed spiritual guide for one-seventh of the people on the planet has a certain legitimacy when he speaks, after all.

If Francis' words can marshal more people into the streets to stand up for ourselves and against the capitalist chieftains who rob us of our money, dignity, self-respect, right to organize and right to keep the fruits - all the fruits - of our labor, all the better. He might even prick the conscience of a capitalist or two. Who knows?

Photo: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, president of Argentina, appears with Pope Francis in March of this year. (CC)

Obama at UN

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:46:00 +0000

President Obama strained in Monday's United Nations speech to explain the rationale behind U.S. foreign policy.

It was a curious and contradictory spectacle as the president who brought home the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan in the same breath defended his administration's indefensible actions in Libya, drone warfare, and NSA spying on citizen and ally alike.

Had not regime change occurred in Libya under the guise of humanitarian intervention? Wasn't the visit of Brazil's president postponed in outrage over NSA spying? Have there not been untold civilian causalities from drone attacks?

And yet the president sought to cast away charges of imperialism and empire with rhetorical "we're-the-good guy" asides even as he revealed one of the underlying bases of U.S. foreign policy: "The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region," asserted the president. "We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world."

A more blatant exposition of U.S. imperialist oil interests is hard to find.

Note must be taken of the president's positive response to overtures from Iran and highlighting the need for a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict with a two-state solution.

Regarding the crime of nerve gas in Syria, however, the president while pledging continuing diplomacy maintained the now usual military bluster.

For lasting peace to be achieved the U.S. ship of state must be turned around. A first step should be away from an unconditional defense of American exceptionalism. Yes there are many exceptional things about the U.S. including this president's election, a point noted by the Nobel Committee, which awarded the then new incumbent its Peace Prize.

Our exceptionalness however hardly stands alone.

Is not Cuba also exceptional? Its contribution to raising the standard of health care for not only her citizens but also the world is second to none.

What about South Africa? This newly free country is almost alone in voluntarily dismantling its nuclear stockpile in a vastly underrated contribution to world civilization.

We could go on: Each country contributes an exceptional thread to the fabric of humanity. It's time for the U.S. to blend in, Mr. President, not stand out and alone.

Photo: President Barack Obama speaks during his address to the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 24. (Andrew Burton/AP)

Enough “shock,” time to confront prejudice

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 14:05:00 +0000

For years, my father, a federal employee with a top secret clearance, carried a copy of his birth certificate when he went into Baja California from our home in San Diego. Many times, when he tried to reenter the United States, he was stopped by the border patrol.

My father had thick black hair and naturally dark skin, and the patrol thought he was a Mexican brazenly trying to sneak back into the country by claiming to be married to the black-haired, blue- eyed, light-skinned woman he claimed was his wife. It was annoying.

It was also annoying that once back home, he faced discrimination because neighbors thought he was Mexican. Because we lived in an urban area, not many discriminated against my parents because they were Jews, but there were a few with hatred as great as their ignorance.

When I was 11 years old, we moved two hours north, near Los Angeles, and my parents bought a house in a new tract of about 150 houses, all owned by whites and a few Hispanics. Three or four years later, a realtor came by, plastering flyers on all the houses, announcing he had a special real good, one-time only deal. A few wouldn't sell their houses at any price if it was a Black who was planning to move into the area. Someone in the tract took up the offer, and a Black family - he was a mechanical engineer - moved in. It didn't take long before other white families began putting their houses up for sale. Only this time, they weren't getting as much as the first family that sold out. Soon, the prices began tumbling as other Blacks and Hispanics moved in.

But my parents refused to sell their house. They had no intention of becoming involved with what was now known as "block busting." A few of our Hispanic and Black neighbors wondered why we stayed. My parents always responded they preferred to have as neighbors good people, and it made no difference their ethnicity or race.

Until my father died in 1983, he owned that house in a neighborhood that went from almost 100 percent white to almost 100 percent Black, Hispanic, and lower-class white, refusing to be sucked in by racism.

Discrimination occurs throughout our country, whether we want to believe it or not. A secret tape recording revealed Texaco executives are racist. And we are shocked.

The military revealed that some of its male instructors sexually harassed, and sometimes raped, female recruits. And we are shocked.

A former Avis manager revealed that Avis policy in the Carolinas was to discourage Blacks from renting cars. And we are shocked.

We are shocked because we don't think these things occur. But, they do occur.

A good friend of mine--a Navy submarine veteran, a former newspaper editor and business owner--worked as a bartender because he couldn't get hired anywhere else. He scored in the high 90s on numerous state civil service tests, but was never hired. He applied to many companies, and was seldom given an interview. It had nothing to do with his abilities. It had everything to do the fact that he was in his late 50s, and didn't have a college degree. Chalk up ageism and elitism in one interview.

The law specifically states that employers may not discriminate on basis of age. But, in Pennsylvania, the law is silent on hiring women. It's not unusual for employers to not hire women because they "might" become pregnant and leave, or that they're married. In this economy, some stupidly believe, a well-qualified woman with a working husband should give up her place to a semi-qualified unemployed man.

We discriminate against the handicapped, against gays, against people from the coal region, against people from urban areas, against almost anyone who thinks, acts, or looks different from us. Reporters with college degrees will often give higher credibility to a freshly-scrubbed suit-wearing PR person than to someone who is homeless.

Numerous studies reveal that women who are frumpy, no matter what their income or education is, and men who are fat, short, bald, or have beards are discriminated against, both as customers and as employees.

Want to be a CEO for a Fortune 500 company? Make sure you're about 6-foot tall - too tall also doesn't work, either - weigh about 170-200 pounds, have hair, and look good in Armani suits. And, also make sure you're a male.

Most corporations have "diversity" programs to make their employees more "sensitive" to racial and sexual issues. Tolerance can't be taught as a separate class by someone who will make a lot of money telling us we must be "sharing," "caring," and "feeling" people.

It's too late to preach tolerance by the time someone is a full-time corporate employee. Sensitivity must begin before children attend schools, and continue through their formative years. It must pervade their lives - in classes, in community activities; a little now, a little later. It must be taught by parents, teachers, friends, employees, supervisors, community leaders, and even occasional acquaintances or strangers. Perhaps, then, middle-school students will not laugh at a teacher's racist, sexist, or ethnic joke, but will actually express horror that the teacher is so insensitive to people that he or she must tell these jokes to get a laugh.

Until then, the best we can do is not to be "shocked," but to acknowledge that discrimination in all forms exists, and we must all work to reduce it.

Walter Brasch's latest book is the best-selling Fracking Pennsylvania, an overall look at the economic, health, and environmental effects of horizontal fracturing in the natural gas industry.

GOP strategy: Tune out, turn off, drop out

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 16:57:00 +0000

The only way the Republican right wing in this country can get America to be the kind of country they want it to be, one in which a minority rules the nation in the interest of the 1 percent, is to make sure the 99 percent majority stays out of politics.

One of the best ways of doing this is to get everyone disgusted with even the idea of politics - and to this the tea partiers and their ilk have been busily applying themselves.

It goes something like this: Keep waging nasty and prolonged fights over anything and everything that might be progressive. Make people believe that nothing is settled in America, that nothing can really be won, regardless of what the people do.

Take health care, where the tea party Republicans excel at whipping up lies and wacko conspiracy theories. They scream the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not the law of the land; it is a hoax! It is government interfering and wanting to pull the plug on grandma! The right wing is making its proposals to defund it and threatening to shut down the government, even though they are well aware they won't succeed.

But where they could succeed is making people believe that the matter of health care too is not settled; that Obamacare is not something good that has come about because of struggle, but something bad that has been imposed.

The antics of Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, are only the latest example of this. You have a senator so lacking in seniority that he is yet to earn a place on the coffee line in the Capitol telling the House to "defund Obamacare" by shutting down the federal government. Right-wingers in that body signed up for the scheme while Cruz knew full well he didn't have the support in the Senate. None of it will defund Obamacare.

So what does it accomplish? It pulls the political discourse further to the right. Cruz, for example, has called for making every vote in the Senate dependent on a 60 percent super-majority, trashing majority rules. It turns off ordinary Americans to politics, thereby ceding the battlefield to right-wing nut jobs.

That is what happened in 2010. The right-wing Republicans went on the offensive attacking the president and health care, and ordinary people got turned off and didn't show up for the midterm elections. What did we get? A tea party Congress and dozens of statehouses run by zealots paid for by the worst of corporate and right-wingers, like the oil tycoon Koch brothers.

While there are any number of moves made by Democrats that we have questioned and opposed, let's be clear: The right wing's bare-knuckled obstructionism cannot simply be dismissed with "all politicians stink." These tactics are geared to enabling something really dangerous: permanent rule by the one percent over the 99 percent.

Think for a minute. If the Democrats pulled the kind of crap the tea party pulls, the howls and cries of "treason" would reverberate from sea to shining sea. Yet, these Republicans are given air time to spout their lies and hypocrisies, and hold the entire country hostage to their minority opinions. Right after the House voted to defund Obamacare and food stamps, John Boehner and Eric Cantor had the nerve to call press conferences saying they want to get down to business of creating jobs. What planet are they living on? The responsibility for this mess lies with the Republicans and their enablers.

Contact your union, community group, campus organization or church and find out what plans they have to keep up the pressure against the tea partiers. We need those who are willing to stand up to Republican bullying and treasonous tactics to wage serious campaigns in 2014 for Congress and statehouses.

Photo: Texas Sen. Cruz. His brand of right-wing politics is aimed at turning people off and promoting himself. Flickr (CC)

Sandinistas, de Blasio, and American democracy

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:05:00 +0000

According to a recent article in The New York Times, two of the candidates running for mayor of New York have become alarmed about the worldview of Bill de Blasio, the front running candidate of the Democratic Party. You can be sure that whatever his world view happened to be it would have alarmed them simply because they are running against him.

They are alarmed because some 30 or so years ago de Blasio supported the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, which had overthrown one of the most vile dictatorships in Central America: the Somoza regime. The Sandinistas had carried out land reform and brought a modicum of democracy and freedom to the vast majority of the poor people of this impoverished country. Millions of young people, workers and students in the United States - and around the world - supported the Sandinistas and cheered their victory over the fascist thugs in Somoza's private army, the so called "National Guard."

The Republican candidate for mayor, Joseph J. Lhota, a former deputy mayor under the racist Giuliani administration and a supporter of "stop-and-frisk" that selectively targets minority youth for police harassment and has been found unconstitutional by a federal court, is very upset over de Blasio's past support for the people who ended the Somoza dictatorship and instituted free elections in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas are, by the way, the current government in Nicaragua, having been freely elected by the Nicaraguan people.

"It's pretty obvious," Lhota said, "we think very, very differently about the way the governments of the world should work." Well the Republicans under the Reagan administration tried to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, you may recall, by illegally selling arms to Iran and using the money to finance the "contras," the fascist remnants of the Somoza dictatorship. This was the infamous Iran-Contra scandal, so called because the U.S. Congress had passed a law against funding the fascists but President Reagan went ahead anyway behind the backs of the American people. It is pretty obvious that Lhota's way of thinking is very different from the thinking of those who are opposed to fascist dictatorships and presidents who ignore the laws passed by the Congress.

Lhota was also upset that de Blasio had once called himself a "democratic socialist." "It's really unfortunate that that's the level that we've come to in this city," Lhota said. It is only natural that a Republican 1 percenter would be alarmed about a philosophy that considers the interests of the 99 percent. Lhota should be reminded that some of the staunchest U.S. allies are governments run by social democrats. The British Labour Party, which was headed by Tony Blair and allied the United Kingdom with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a social democratic party. It holds observer status with the Socialist International and is affiliated with the Party of European Socialists in the European Union.

While Lhota prides himself in being in the Republican Party, a party that has just stripped $40 billion over the next 10 years from the food stamp program, and is waging a real class war against the poor and the middle class in this country, de Blasio was quoted as saying "Fighting for equality to me - I say this humbly - is my life's work." Mr. Lhota will never have to worry that will be said of him.

The other alarmed candidate, Adolfo Carrión Jr., is running on the Independence Party line. This faction-ridden party has leading figures who subscribe to an ultra-left version of fake Marxism and are followers of the late Fred Newmann, who created his own brand of opportunistic "Marxism," and whose faction was, until recently, dominant in the New York City area. Carrión's criticisms of de Blasio (that he is a Guevarista and that his politics are "right out of 'Animal Farm'") are ludicrous in the extreme. Carrión, who had a promising career as a Democrat, a former Obama official and Bronx borough president, seems to have gone off the deep end with his criticism of de Blasio.

De Blasio, in his support of the Nicaraguan revolution as a young man, is more in line with the founders of the American Revolution than his two vociferous and reactionary critics. Both Lhota and Carrión should reflect a little on the history of the U.S., which was born of just such a revolution against the tyranny of King George III.

Photo: In the 1980s, a large movement in solidarity with the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador and opposed to Reagan's "dirty wars" emerged in the United States. It included a broad section of people, especially from Catholic and other faith-based traditions. The current movement to close the School of the Americas, pictured here, comes out of that 1980s activism. (Roger Hollander)

Tea party's shutdown showdown could crash the economy

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:53:00 +0000

CHICAGO - A homeless man on the corner of Michigan and Lake stopped shaking his change cup last Friday morning to check on a second homeless man sitting in the doorway next to Walgreen's drugstore. The second man had rolled up his pants to reveal a large green and purplish wound covered in crusted blood.

The first man gave his change cup to the man with the bad leg. "I'll be right out," he said. "Walgreens has these cocoa butter sticks for a dollar - just what you need to fix that thing (the leg) up."

When the man came out from Walgreen's he squatted down next to his friend and began applying the cocoa butter to the open sore.

Such would be what constitutes satisfactory medical care if it were up to Republicans who control the House of Representatives these days. The tea party people who use their 80 or so votes to bully the entire 235-person GOP House majority are saying it would be OK to let the entire U.S. economy sink if that's what it takes to destroy Obamacare. What passes for health care on the streets of Chicago - well that's OK too, in their eyes.

The 80 votes the tea party controls are holding the entire country hostage. They are enough to make impossible the passage of a funding bill to keep the government running beyond Sept. 30, or to prevent passage of a bill to increase the federal debt ceiling, a normally routine measure which, the Obama administration says, will have to be done around mid-October.

A government shutdown means real terror for millions. People won't receive their Social Security checks, planes will fly without the guidance of air traffic controllers, and we go back to the days when beef, pork and chicken covered with dangerous bacteria are shipped out for consumption all over the country. Who needs government anyway?

And what about the tea partiers' threat to block a raise in the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling is not raised so we can have an orgy of new spending. The government, when it is faced with paying off bills already incurred, has to raise the debt ceiling when failure to do so would prevent payment of those bills. Governments, like people, must do this all the time. The only other choice is to default on the bills, which most economists say would plunge the U.S. and the rest of the world into a new deep recession, a depression or worse.

Republicans, by the way, don't like reminding Americans that one of the biggest bills we are still saddled with, the big bill that continues to necessitate raising that debt ceiling, is the cost of the Republican-inspired wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the tea party folks have said they'll let up only if the money bill or the debt limit bill or both are written to remove funding for implementing the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). "Mainstream" Republicans, if there are any these days, go along with the right-wingers on this because they fear challenges from their right in the coming GOP primaries.

However, even if the radical right fails to shut down the government or to keep the country from raising the debt limit or to weaken or kill Obamacare, they expect that they will have successfully been able to push the entire debate in this country to the right. If the deal we end up with in the end is one that raises the debt limit and keeps the government open in exchange for continuing current sequester levels of operation, the right wing will have succeeded.

The sequester is automatic federal spending cuts created in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The idea was that if the parties could not reach agreement on a federal budget then the automatic across-the-board cuts would go into effect.

Republican obstructionists have prevented any agreement so the cuts are in effect and have already damaged health, nutrition, education, public safety and many other programs. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs under sequestration, preventing a real recovery from the recession.

The Republicans would like nothing better than for us to consider the sequester, which only a few months ago was seen as an extreme right-wing ax to the budget, as the "moderate compromise" position.

The two men living on the streets in Chicago and the broad majority of working men and women deserve much better than that. We need not just health care for all but massive job creation for all. Continuing to function at the level of the sequester cuts just won't do.

Now is the time to call Republican lawmakers, especially if you live in one of their districts, and let them know that if they continue to put your livelihood, your home or your health in danger they will be in trouble with you. They will not have your vote.

If your representative is a Democrat then urge him or her not to agree to any compromise that destroys the Affordable Care Act or that maintains the awful level of cuts now in place under the sequester.

Call, write or e-mail Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner and demand that he negotiate in good faith, that he tell the right-wing extremists in his party where they can go, so to speak.

Contact your union, community group, campus organization or church and find out about plans they have to keep up the pressure against the tea-partiers.

Talk up with everyone you know the need to go out in the 2014 elections to turn the tea party and its hangers-on out of office. Tea party terrorists and hostage takers, along with the Republicans who support them, have earned the boot.

Photo: Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Tex., center, celebrates with fellow House Republicans after trashing the economy while crippling the Affordable Care Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 20. At right is Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., who led conservatives in persuading Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, to accept defunding the Affordable Care Act. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sept. 10 primaries a turning point in New York

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 16:15:00 +0000

The Sept.10 primaries were a turning point in New York City politics. For five consecutive administrations, the mayor's office has advocated privatization of public schools, hospitals and housing at the expense of the workers who provide those services and to the detriment of the communities that depend upon those services.

City Hall let Wall Street run free and allowed landlords and developers to write their own laws. (All while the "world's seventh largest standing army" - the N.Y. Police Department acts with impunity while holding the ghettos and barrios in a state of siege with "stop-and-frisk.")

In the primary elections last week, hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters selected candidates who advocated a different, more progressive direction for New York City. Bill de Blasio won that contest with 40 percent of the vote. When you add the second biggest vote getter, Bill Thompson, who garnered 26 percent of the vote, you have a clear majority expressing themselves in favor of a basic change of direction. The majority of those favoring change become greater when you include votes that went to city Comptroller John Liu, forced out of contention because of a fundraising scandal surrounding his aides.

New Yorkers, then, said in this last round of elections that they don't want to continue the 20-year-old policy of providing a city government tailored to the needs of the city's 365,000 millionaires and 70 billionaires. They want, instead, a City Hall that gives top priority to the needs of the city's working families.

For much of the race, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and disgraced former U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner were frontrunners. Although Quinn had support from some women and from some LGBT groups, she was seen as the Democratic candidate most connected to Wall Street and the current Bloomberg administration. Weiner, although also pro-big business and pro-Bloomberg policies, shot up in the polls as many voters saw him as progressive, but then dropped quickly after more revelations of his "sexting" scandal. These early two frontrunners only garnered 20 percent of the vote combined.

This primary was also important because Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one in New York City. If the Democrats come out of this united, the people can expect to go on to win the general election.

Although the labor and people's movements did not unanimously back one candidate in the primaries they were united in their vision for a different direction for New York.

Racism has been central to dividing NYC's democratic majority; this election shows that where people have been previously mobilized by fear and isolation, they can also be organized by unity. New York city is now home to over 8 million people, 70 percent of whom are racially oppressed; 45 percent live in or just above the federal poverty level; over 1 million or 12 percent are union members. These votes went in large part to removing a conservative from City Hall and replacing him with the most progressive option. They were concerned with official racial profiling known as "stop and frisk," education, jobs and housing.

In the spirit of unity, Thompson said he will not campaign in a runoff election and has endorsed de Blasio. This was the hope of those who have November's general election in mind. Thompson should be commended for opening the way for his party to unite in the general election in November.

However, it also places greater importance on the campaign for public advocate, where top vote getter Letitia James is in a runoff with Daniel Squadron. James, the progressive African American councilwoman from Brooklyn, needs the city's working families to come out in big numbers on Oct. 1 runoff. Squadron is a well-financed machine candidate and the danger is that money will determine the outcome.

On issue after issue from racism to public education, to housing and rent being "too dam high," to unemployment and job creation, James is in lock step with the sentiment expressed by voters on Sept. 10. In addition, James is the only nonwhite or non-male candidate with a chance of making it to the citywide Democratic ballot.

If you voted for change in the primary, your job is far from done. A strong message has been sent to the nation about the type of party New Yorkers want to belong to in these hard times. The message also needs to be sent that the Democratic Party needs to support grassroots candidates and support diversity. James was elected to the city council on the Working Families Party ticket, and it is how she can be elected this time to become the second in line to mayor - with volunteers and people power. On Sept. 10, we took one step forward, but a machine win on Oct. 1 would mean two steps back.

Deepened unity of labor and all people's movements are the cornerstones of rebuilding our city on a solid and sustainable foundation. It is also how New Yorkers can guarantee a James victory on Oct. 1 and then on Nov. 5.

Overall the Democratic primary was a defeat for racism and the anti working class/pro Wall Street policies of the past 20 years. Given a James victory in the runoff, and the expected Democratic victory in the general election, many progressives are saying the 2013 elections could open up a new progressive era for NYC.

Photo: New Yorkers march for a city that puts the 99 percent first, during the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011. (PW)

Detroit: Through the lens of class and race

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 10:52:00 +0000

"Labor in the white skin cannot emancipate itself when in the black skin it is branded." - Capital, Vol. 1, Karl Marx

Much has been written about the trauma that Detroit is going through. And much of the commentary places the blame for this crisis in one of two places.

One line of thinking, articulated by the likes of conservative columnist George Will , Fox television host Bill O'Reilly, and more recently Kevin Orr, Detroit's emergency manager, is that the people of Detroit - read: its African American majority - are themselves responsible for the city's predicament. In this explanation, supposedly excessive wages and benefits for Detroit's workers, a corrupt political class starting with the city's first African American mayor, Coleman Young, and a "culture of victimization, irresponsibility, and dependency" combined to bleed city finances, wreck its industrial base, turn Detroit into a municipality of "moochers" and "mayhem," and relegate its "glory days" to a distant past when white people were the majority.

The other narrative holds that Detroit's current catastrophic conditions, including the bankruptcy imposed by a right-wing Republican governor, are just the latest stage of an economic decline that dates back a half-century or more. In this telling, the city's fate is simply the result of the impersonal forces of the market that act behind people's backs. It's the consequence of the unstoppable and uncontrollable logic of de-industrialization and globalization, in which there are inevitable losers, such as Detroit and its workers, and winners - the 1 percent and a handful of transnational corporate giants that dominate the world economy. And, it's simply the predictable endgame of a city that unwisely, even irresponsibly, rode a single "horse" (the auto industry) for much too long.

The first narrative is obviously more dangerous, and more outrageous. In fact, it is a shameless appeal to white people to buy into racist images and perceptions of Black people. Its aim is to heighten divisions between people who are absolutely necessary allies going forward - Black and white, city and suburb, and labor and the African American freedom movement. It is also intended to legitimize state and federal government inaction and neglect, and even encourage punitive policies, in response to an exploding and profoundly hurtful urban crisis.

Another objective is to provide fresh fodder to the old (as old as slavery) but recently amplified, especially by right-wing extremism, racist notion that the "problem" of Black people is Black people.

Finally, blaming the crisis on its victims is designed to divert the eyes of the American people from the actual causes of the crisis and its agents. The former are located in the structures and dynamics of racialized capitalism, while the latter are the individuals and institutions who drive the crisis and also enrich themselves mightily from this system of class and racial exploitation and domination of the immense many by the minuscule few.

The second narrative (economic and technological determinism), while not as mean-spirited and toxic, is not much better. It also conceals in its own way more than it reveals about the fix that Detroit is in and what to do about.

How? By blaming Detroit's crisis solely on markets and technologies that are supposedly blind, class-neutral, and independent of human actions, it not only detaches the crisis from its socio-economic, racist, and class context, but also easily becomes the fertile soil for feelings of fatalism, hopelessness, and passivity. This is just what the victims of the crisis and their supporters don't need.

So what does explain the current disaster that is gripping Detroit, this storied and heroic city whose people have contributed so much politically, economically, and culturally to our nation?

I would argue that Detroit's past and present are not the outcome of overarching economic forces that operate outside the rough and tumble of history, politics, and struggle, outside the structures and dynamics of class, race, and capitalism.

Nor are they explained by any mythical "culture of irresponsibility and dependency," supposedly peculiar to Detroit's African American community.

Instead, Detroit and the auto industry's trajectory over the past half century is the result of people, social classes, and diverse and changing coalitions interacting and clashing on a number of different issues and levels over decades. In auto plants and union meetings, in neighborhoods and schools, in the corridors of government and collective bargaining negotiations, on the streets and picket lines, and in churches, barber shops, planning boards, voting booths, and other places far beyond the city limits, Detroit's future has been contested over the decades.

On one side were:

* auto executives who stripped Detroit of its industrial base and relocated production and plants to places that were not steeped in working class and democratic traditions;

*redlining real estate agents who practiced and profited from discrimination against Black homebuyers at one moment and encouraged white flight to surrounding suburbs at another;

* white ethnic working class neighborhoods in Detroit that resisted by any means necessary the "invasion" of Black families into "their" neighborhoods;

* planning boards that sanctioned segregated housing patterns;

* mortgage companies that exacted onerous terms from Black homebuyers over decades, maybe none worse than those that floated subprime mortgages in recent years, knowing all the while that they were unsustainable;

* investment firms that squeezed the city with complicated financial deals;

* elected officials at the state and national level, and especially right-wing Republicans, who relentlessly squeezed Detroit and other urban areas;

* federal housing and transportation authorities whose policies over decades encouraged and subsidized the movement of white homeowners to segregated suburbs.

These are but some of the more prominent political actors on one side of this confrontation that stretched over decades.

On the other side were African Americans and African American workers who seldom yielded in their struggle for a livable wage and city, a people-centered economy, and long overdue equality. It is a story of uncommon courage in the face of difficult odds and belligerent and well-heeled foes.

They were joined in small skirmishes and big battles by a section of their white, Latino, and Arab American brothers and sisters in the UAW (United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America ) and other unions as well as their allies in churches, community organizations, and other progressive and democratic organizations at the local, state, and national level.

Occupying an inconsistent position were a range of social and political forces, but for the purposes of this article, I will mention just one, because its role was so critical: the leadership of the UAW during the second half of the 20th century..

Even when it was negotiating contracts that increased wages and benefits, staking out progressive positions on civil rights, breaking with AFL-CIO President George Meany over Vietnam, and challenging the likes of Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan in the electoral arena, it was slow to bring African American workers into union leadership, reluctant to support Detroit's African American political leaders, less than vigorous in integrating the skilled trades, and, not least, too quick to cede the right to organize production - management prerogatives - to auto companies, including the unilateral right to relocate production to sites of management's choosing.

Moreover, in the early 1980s, regular contractual gains gave way to concessionary bargaining by the union's top leadership, which had a particularly negative impact on Detroit and its African American auto workers.

These struggles in Detroit, stretching out over six decades, didn't take place in a vacuum however. Their character and outcome were shaped as well by a number of interrelated factors operating on a far larger political, economic, and geographical scale.

What were some of the most important ones?

* First of all, the erosion, if not disappearance, of the conditions that powered a nearly three-decade-long expansion of U.S. and global capitalism in the aftermath of Word War II. That expansion gave way in the mid-1970s to slower growth, greater economic (and financial) instability, rising unemployment and inflation, the restructuring and spatial reorganization of capital, economic activity, and the working class, and, not least, a new model of government-corporate governance, popularly called neoliberalism.

This model, in contrast to the Keynesian model that facilitated corporate profit-taking and the post-World-War-II expansion, no longer accented, as its predecessor did, shared prosperity; corporate, financial, and trade regulation; consumer, safety, and environmental protections; expansion of the public sector and public goods (education, health care, retirement security, etc.); an equitable tax structure; a commitment to full employment; and enlargement of civil, labor, and other social rights. The neoliberal model accented, instead, the very opposite, and with a vengeance.

In doing so, it facilitated capital's accumulation (profit-making) and growth, like the earlier Keynesian model did, but in a different way and in decidedly new conditions of exploitation, intra-capitalist competition, monopolization, and market saturation in a global capitalist economy. As a result, corporate profits soared and the unearned income of the 1 percent reached unprecedented levels, even if growth rates never returned to earlier levels. But the cost of this neoliberal turn for working people, people of color, women, youth, seniors, and urban centers like Detroit was enormous.

* Second, the breakup of the New Deal coalition on the shoals of racist (and ultimately self-destructive) resentment harbored by white people in reaction to the new assertiveness and just demands of the African American people. The breakup was made easier by the Cold War repression of the old left (mainly communists), the sectarianism of the new left, and the ascent of business-minded, pro-war, and anti-democratic leadership to the top tiers of the labor movement in the 1950s.

* Third, the difficulty of the African American freedom movement and its leaders, in part due to the assassination of Martin Luther King, in transitioning to a new stage of struggle for full political, economic, and social equality in the post-civil-rights period.

* Fourth, the steady and sustained ascendancy of right-wing extremism, fueled by the mobilizing language of white supremacy and reaching a new level with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

* Fifth, a coordinated and many-leveled intensification of the class struggle by the capitalist class in the mid-1970s that the now badly weakened labor and democratic movement were unprepared ideologically and organizationally to effectively resist and turn back - even now, 40 years later.

* Sixth, the emergence of new global institutions and rules that broke down national barriers inhibiting capital flows, while pressuring downward the price of labor power (in other words, wages) worldwide.

* Finally, the integration of new centers of capital accumulation in the global periphery, with massive pools of low-wage labor, particularly China and India, into the system of global capitalism.

Thus, Detroit's current landscape - marked as it is by huge swathes of vacant and foreclosed homes; shuttered factories; decrepit roads, schools, and infrastructure; homeless and hungry children; violence and crime; failing schools; widespread and extreme poverty; environmental pollution; catastrophic levels of joblessness, and now bankruptcy - wasn't preordained by some kind of irresistible economic logic. Nor can it be accounted for by purported moral and familial failures in the African American community.

It was a product of a protracted, complex, and cumulative process. Its main inflection points were on the axis of class and race. It took place on many levels and played out on a political, economic, and ideological terrain that shifted continually and sometimes in profound ways. And in the end the forces of profit-making, exploitation, political reaction, and, above all, racism prevailed over the forces of economic justice, anti-racism, democracy, full equality, and peace.

If the outcome was dependent on many things, few loomed as large as the insufficient breadth and depth of anti-racist understanding and unity in the labor and people's movement at the local, state, and national levels. The hopes raised by people's victories to expand democracy and freedom and rein in the war machine of U.S. imperialism in the 1960s and subsequent decades never morphed into a lasting, broad, democratic, class based, and consistently anti-racist movement (either in Detroit or nationally).

Forty years later the building of that kind of movement remains the overriding challenge facing Detroiters and others who are feeling the weight of this crisis - while its architects are smugly tucked away in opulent communities, executive suites, and the corridors of political power. Only such a movement can thrust Detroit, other urban centers, and our nation as a whole on a trajectory of economic renewal and security, equality, substantive democracy and sustainability, and peace.

It would be wishful thinking to say that such a movement is around the corner. But it is not a stretch to say that we see early signs of such a movement in the struggles of the present.

They are evident in the day-to-day resistance of Detroiters and other people in similarly situated communities to efforts to sell and privatize vital services, deny them political representation and voice, and impose on them more austerity measures to resolve a crisis that they had no hand in making.

The signs are also apparent in the struggles in Washington for jobs and infrastructure renewal.

They are plain to see in the hundreds of thousands who this August celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1963 march for freedom and jobs too.

In the new energy in the labor movement too, we see signs of a better future.

Much the same could be said about the new initiatives to defend voting rights and resist the new racist offensive.

In the battles to overhaul the system of criminal justice, racial profiling, stop-and-frisk, and mass incarceration that falls so heavily and negatively on African Americans and other peoples of color, especially young men, we detect the beginnings of a better future as well.

The beginnings are obvious in the struggle for gay rights, including marriage equality.

The precursors are found in the inspiring and multi-dimensional campaigns for immigrant rights.

In the ongoing efforts to rein in U.S. military ventures in Syria and other far-flung parts of the world and turn swords into ploughshares and a sustainable economy, we can catch a glimpse of this emerging movement.

Signs are also evident in the actions to heal and cool our planet.

Finally, they are visible too in the new common sense embraced by tens of millions that people's needs, equality and fairness trump corporate profits and the unconscionable piling up of wealth.

I wish there were an easier way to address the crisis in Detroit as well as elsewhere in our country, but if there is it escapes me.

Certainly, schemes that favor real estate interests, downtown development, and gentrification hold little promise for residents living in Detroit's decaying neighborhoods and idled by the lack of jobs, despite claims that economic growth and vitality will radiate from the core to the surrounding city.

Nor, in my opinion, will plans of socially committed people and organizations to reclaim unused land in the city and foster small-scale entrepreneurial development. Such initiatives can bring some relief, and relief no matter how small is to be welcomed. But it seems doubtful to me that these efforts will ever achieve the necessary scale and economic/industrial mix to set Detroit and its people on a new foundation of growth, renewal, equality, and economic security.

Any viable future for Detroit will require a lot of heavy lifting, a sustained popular movement, the full participation of the UAW and the rest of the trade union movement, diverse forms of struggle, and higher levels of multiracial and working class unity and understanding.

It will also entail the re-imagining of Detroit in new ways that empower people and mobilize (and it will have to be mobilized; it won't come on its own) public capital for living wage jobs, infrastructure renewal, neighborhood revitalization, affordable housing, economic and green development, worker/community owned enterprises, quality public education for every child from pre-kindergarten through high school, and so forth.

But those efforts will bear full fruit only if three other conditions are met.

* First, the necessary long-term restructuring of Detroit has to be embedded in the immediate battles to shift the burden of the city's crisis onto the banks, auto corporations, and state and federal government.

* Second, the city's future can't be separated from the overriding political objective in 2014 and 2016 of rolling back the grip of right-wing extremism on the structures of state and federal government.

* Finally, the near- and long-term struggles of the people of Detroit have to be connected to the energies of like-minded people in nearby suburbs and around the country who also aspire to radically restructure the politics, economics, culture, and racial relations of their city, region, state, and country.

But if past history in general and specific historical turning points in particular are any guide, the success of this struggle in Detroit as well as elsewhere will hinge especially on the degree of anti-racist understanding achieved by white people and workers in particular.

Such an understanding (and practice) is informed by a sense of moral outrage. But it also arises and crystallizes into a more durable form from an awareness that, in this era of systemic economic crisis and generalized attack on the entire working class and people, the struggle for racial equality and against racism in its old and new forms is as much a condition for the freedom, well being, and security of people in white skin as it is for people in black and brown skins.

Anything less guarantees that Detroit and other cities and the rest of us will sink together. Maybe not at the same speed or to the same exact place, but wherever we land it won't be pretty for anyone, leaving people morally and psychically scarred, culturally impoverished, economically hurting and fearful, and politically near powerless.

Photo: Street art in Detroit, 2012. Wikimedia Commons

Where is justice in cutting food stamps?

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 15:04:00 +0000

The Republican controlled House of Representatives are scheduled to vote on the Farm Bill; part of which includes a $40 billion cut in the food stamp program.

Of those receiving government help in the form of food stamps or the SNAP program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) 76 percent are children, disabled or elderly. Fifty seven thousand children lost Head Start services because House Republicans voted to keep the sequester (automatic budget cuts) instead of choosing a balanced approach to the budget that makes corporations and millionaires pay their fair share. The WIC program, a health and nutrition assistance program for low income women and children, is also udder fire from the right.

Zoë Neuberger and Robert Greenstein writing for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities say, "WIC will need a substantial funding increase in fiscal year 2014 to be able to serve all eligible applicants. Based on our estimates using the most recent data available, the President's budget request of $7.142 billion for WIC would allow the program to serve all eligible applicants. Competition for discretionary funding for next year will be fierce. But if Congress fails to provide adequate WIC funding to serve all eligible low-income women, infants, and young children at nutritional risk who apply, there would likely be long-lasting detrimental effects for the vulnerable individuals whom WIC serves."

Many American workers who are receiving some food stamps are eligible because wages are keeping them in poverty. Republicans and right wing Democrats should be repeatedly asked, "Why is the minimum wage set below the poverty line?"

A livable wage: Is that too much to ask for? If so, who says so and why? While the right wing are attacking our most vulnerable people who is it that they subsidize and help at every turn: gas & coal companies. The reverse Robin Hood of the American right wing and the heartlessness of American capitalism and apparently many in the tea party and the Christian right has been shocking to see (the extent) but those of us on the left will always fight for the kids, the underdogs, for justice.

Photo: A sign announces the acceptance of Electronic Benefit Transfer cards at a farmers market in Roseville, Calif., on Feb. 6, 2010. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

Wall Street Journal blind to Supreme Court’s impact on union membership

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:06:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - The Wall Street Journal editorial board - the bible of business and a mouthpiece of the Right - recently suggested the decline in union membership over the last 30 years is due to lack of employee interest, but ignored the impact of aggressively anti-labor "right-to-work" laws and a string of pro-business U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

The WSJ claimed the overall decrease in union membership indicates the irrelevance of unionism in the modern workplace. From the September 16 editorial:

"The promise of joining a union has always been it will deliver better pay, benefits and job security. That proposition long ago stopped being true for most workers, and now even the AFL-CIO is tacitly admitting its loss of relevance in the private American workplace. At last week's annual convention in Los Angeles, labor delegates voted to expand AFL-CIO membership, inviting even non-union members to join their flagging consortium...

"As dues-paying membership declines, the AFL-CIO is essentially trying to attract the equivalent of donations from the larger public. Send in whatever "dues" payments the AFL-CIO requires for membership, and in return you get -- what exactly? At least if you donate during one of those PBS pledge drives, you get a tote bag and maybe a CD of Yanni at the Acropolis. It isn't clear what non-union members will get for their cash, other than the pleasure of knowing they've helped AFL-CIO chief Rich Trumka stay in a better class of hotel. Will he throw in a T-shirt?"

(Editor's note: The Journal editorial board can't even get its facts right. The AFL-CIO convention occurs only every four years. As for better pay and benefits for union members, ask the Bureau of Labor Statistics about that.)

What the WSJ neglects to mention is a series of anti-union and pro-business Supreme Court decisions over the last 20 years that drastically reduced union organizers' ability to communicate directly with workers, provided extra protection to employers who try to aggressively prevent unionization, and obstructed access to justice for victims of labor law abuses.

These decisions have eroded unions' ability to engage in meaningful communication with potential members, protect themselves from illegal labor practices, and have generally contributed to the reduction in membership numbers.

Later this year, the court will hear arguments in two cases that could potentially "put a dagger in organized labor" should Chief Justice John Roberts and the five-man GOP-named conservative majority continue its pro-business streak.

The first, NLRB vs. Noel Canning, deals with President Barack Obama's authority to fill open positions on the National Labor Relations Board, the government agency that oversees union elections and hears cases involving unfair labor practices, while the Senate is in recess. Obama filled the vacancies during a Senate break after "Republicans...engaged in an unprecedented level of obstruction of his nominations."

The second case, Mulhall v. Unite Here Local 355, questions the constitutionality of "organizing agreements," to let unions and employers they bargain with establish rules prior to start of contract negotiations. The agreements typically require employers to remain neutral during union organizing drives.

The Atlantic described such negotiated employer neutrality as "probably the most successful union organizing strategy of the last decade." The organizing agreements, challenged in a case from the South, now face extinction if the Supreme Court agrees with the plaintiffs that such arrangements provide "things of value" to unions in violation of the law.

The WSJ avoids a discussion of the blow these cases could deliver to union membership, choosing instead to insist that modern employees simply aren't interested in joining.

The Journal editorial board also suggested union dues are wasted, ignoring that a wave of aggressively anti-labor legislation caused a severe financial strain on unions. Union membership has been significantly and negatively impacted by state-level "right-to-work" legislation and other laws, notably those killing collective bargaining rights.

Since 1947, anti-labor groups managed to pass "right-to-work" laws in 23 states - an Indiana court tossed out RTW law #24, there, last month -- which allow workers to refuse to pay union dues even if they work in a unionized workplace and enjoy all the benefits of unionization. The Journal's ridiculous PBS analogy fails. Nonmembers in unionized workplaces pay nothing and in return they get compulsory union representation at the bargaining table, not to mention free legal representation in the event of unfair labor practices or other workplace abuses.

Ultimately, the WSJ seems to be content in its decision to paint unions as workplace nuisances, even if it means ignoring the facts and the ramifications of the historically anti-labor Roberts court.

Jess Levin is senior director of communications and external affairs for Media Matters in America, a web-based, not-for-profit, progressive research and information center that monitors, analyses and corrects conservative misinformation in the media.

Photo: Supreme Court Justices. AP

More than regrets needed after D.C. shooting

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:50:00 +0000

Twelve people were killed at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday by gunman Aaron Alexis, in yet another go-around of mass killing, followed by lamentation by elected officials, followed by lack of action on gun control or anything else. Police shot and killed Alexis during a gun battle inside the building.

Shots were fired at the Defense Department facility within sight of the Capitol in a city whose mayor, Democrat Vincent Gray, had said after the Newtown killings that "nothing like this could ever happen in Washington D.C."

Senators who couldn't bring themselves to vote even for minimal background checks were on lockdown only a few blocks away Monday, unable to leave or enter their own offices - blocked by military vehicles that surrounded the Capitol.

West Virginia's Democratic Senator Joe Manchin already announced that same day that there were still not enough votes to get his bill passed and not one lawmaker opposed to gun control announced any change in his or her position. Just hours before the shooting, recall elections in Colorado, bought and paid for by the NRA, cost two Democratic lawmakers their congressional seats. Their crime was that earlier this year they supported tighter gun controls.

Proponents of gun control are asking how many more mass killings will have to happen before someone decides to change his or her vote.

It's not just inaction on gun control that is seen as the culprit in this latest horror show, though. Washington D.C. Mayor Gray is already questioning whether congressional inaction on the sequester has contributed to the mass killing.

Gray is saying that sequestration - the law that cemented these automatic budget cuts across the board into federal agencies - may have resulted in tightening security funds that otherwise would have been spent to keep the Naval Yards more secure. The DOD has had, under sequestration, to cut its budget by $37 billion. While there are certainly $37 billion worth of things that Defense could cut, Mayor Gray, and just about everyone else, knows that the cuts are not going to be aimed first at wealthy defense contractors.

Gray was also concerned about how "someone with a record as checkered as this man could conceivably get clearance to be able to get on the base." Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, wanted to know to what extent the private contractor for which Alexis worked might bear responsibility.

The Pentagon says it is reviewing security practices around the world - hopefully the review will take a close look at the practice of privatizing and hiring contractors to do what U.S. troops and government employees used to do.

Then there is the issue of mental health and the availability of mental health care in this country.

Rhode Island police had apparently warned the U.S. Navy last month that Alexis had called to tell them he was "hearing voices" while on business in Newport. They turned over a copy of their report to the Navy.

Alexis had also been arrested twice, in 2004 and again in 2010 for illegally firing guns.

Background checks the FBI relied on cleared Alexis anyway for entry, with his weapons, into the Navy Yard. Here again, many background checks the government relies upon these days are conducted by private contractors. "I want to know if this background check was done by a private contractor," McCaskill said to the press.

One thing is clear so far: A number of things came together to contribute to this latest mass shooting. Many of those factors - lack of meaningful gun laws, availability, and quality of mental health care, sequester cuts and widespread use of private contractors in place of government workers - must be dealt with and they must be dealt with soon.

Alexis fired down from a fourth floor atrium into a cafeteria where workers were having breakfast. Some barricaded themselves in conference rooms, others escaped the building altogether. But, 12 ended up paying the ultimate price for failure to deal with the problems mentioned.

Photo: Victims' family members react to the tragedy and loss of loved ones. Dave Munch/AP

Behind the headlines: Walmart and workplace safety

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:30:00 +0000

Set the scene: a busy street in a major American city. The time: today. A young woman lifts her sign and walks to protest Walmart's treatment of its workers. She is one of many strikers and their supporters who have raised their voices in protests over the past several weeks.

Our striker carrying the sign has a sore elbow, caused by overuse at her job - and by the lack of employer-provided health care benefits that can teat that pain.

She marches on, trying to ignore the discomfort. Likely as not, she isn't alone amongst her fellow strikers in having to deal with work-related health problems.

Walmart and companies like it have few responsibilities to their employees to balance management's right to hire and fire at will, and what legal responsibilities they do bear have been eroded over the past decades.

The labor movement's struggle for worker safety protections began during America's Gilded Age of the late 19th century.

Today's oil companies, Wall Street gamblers, and money market moguls are like yesterday's robber barons. In each case they built their wealth by harshly exploiting workers, mismanaging natural resources, and buying governmental influence.

In an article on the Demos website Sept. 5, scholar Tali Kristal explored how corporate profits have risen in lock-step with a decline in worker compensation, and with the decades-long business push against union organizing.

Quoting from Kristal's piece, "Back in 1979, American workers claimed about 64 percent of national income, and if labor's share had stayed at this level, the 120 million American workers employed in the private sector in 2007 would have received as a group an additional $600 billion in compensation."

This works out to more than $5,000 extra per worker - which would pay for increased wages and health care that our striker with the aching elbow would surely welcome.

The cause of worker safety - long a critical issue for the labor movement - gained a potential champion when Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1980.

However, for every worker-friendly guideline issued by OSHA, labor-hostile factions in Congress mandated paperwork logjams to keep the agency at bay. This included making OSHA run any proposed rules through the Office of Management and Budget, which begs the question of who's really looking after worker safety: OSHA or a budget-strapped OMB accountant?

As explained by law professor and author Thomas O. McGarity in his latest book, Freedom to Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival, Congress "also required OSHA to engage in extensive analyses of costs and benefits before they could promulgate rules. Not surprisingly, OSHA's rulemaking output dropped dramatically."

This handful of useful rules regulating industry shrunk from a trickle during the Clinton administration down to a droplet in the dust during the Bush years.

And OSHA "has published no rules of any significance during the Obama administration, though it has just proposed a rule to protect workers from silica," said McGarity.

Walmart has benefitted from worker-unfriendly statutes, particularly in so-called "right-to-work" states such as Texas. However, a rule that never passed has been particularly helpful to Walmart - although not to its employees.

Ergonomics, put simply, is a way of making the human-made things we encounter in our lives more human-friendly. Moving a pallet of cereal boxes, for instance, takes more than a safety belt and a blinking light to make the task safe for the worker. It also involves figuring out to keep that worker healthy from the first to the 1,000th time she moves that pallet.

In the waning days of the Clinton administration, OSHA published a rule on ergonomics. "That regulation required employers like Walmart to establish worker education programs and take other actions designed to prevent musculoskeletal injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome and strained backs," McGarity noted. "These are the sorts of injuries that primarily afflict Walmart employees."

However, before workplace ergonomics could become the law of the land, President George W. Bush signed a measure effectively vetoing the regulation under the Congressional Review Act. The tangle of congressional red tape imposed upon OSHA had turned into glue, for OSHA was now forbidden from putting forth any rule similar to what Bush rejected.

Our striking Walmart worker with the sore elbow, therefore, can't look to OSHA for a quick fix to her workplace conditions, but can the Obama administration offer any help?

McGarity pointed out that the administration could aggressively enforce the statute's general duty clause, which requires employers to provide workers with a safe workplace.

He added, "It could also do a lot of good by either eliminating or severely reducing the impact of the OMB review requirements. President Obama could do this by issuing a single executive order."

Today or tomorrow: another striker on another street. Someone with a work-related health issue that is predictable, preventable, and treatable.

For Walmart, because of its friends in Congress, worker safety is solely a corporate decision. The ergonomics of profit fits the worker to the cost, and shapes the hand, however painfully, to the wheel. In the end, it makes that worker quite dismissible. Unless, of course, she has a union.

Photo: Walmart workers and supporters demonstrate for "respect," June 7, 2013, in Chicago. PW photo

Young people stand up for respect in workplace

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 14:45:00 +0000

This is a story about my 16-year-old sister Amanda, a courageous young worker, an amazing sister, and the best friend I have ever had. This story is also about her struggle in her workplace with a management team, who because of the environment capitalism creates pushing some to climb the corporate ladder, lose their humanity in the process. This is a story about a young worker who said enough is enough, and her journey to bring justice to her workplace.

Amanda started working at Potbelly Sandwich Company in 2012. The first few months went fairly smoothly until one day when I picked her up from work she mentioned one of her managers had been requesting that she get down on her knees and scrub the floors, not a typical request. This was the beginning of a series of complaints that revealed serious workplace issues that young people, particularly younger women, are forced to face, including sexual harassment, favoritism and double standards. This store has a very difficult time keeping long-term employees because of such a work environment.

One associate, who was promoted to management, regularly had shown girls pictures of himself in women's lingerie, including Amanda! Despite complaints to upper management, there has been nothing done.

Then Amanda began to notice little things between this individual and the general management that made it very apparent that there was an immense amount of preferential treatment, double standards with the dress code and a lot of micro managing. (In addition, there was a female manager's inappropriate relations with a young male worker, who also received very preferential treatment.) There seemed to be a lot of this type of thing going on and not a lot being done about it.

Things began to get worse over time. Sexual harassment increased. Amanda came home one day, almost in tears, telling me she didn't know what to do anymore and she could hardly stand being there because of the negative environment in the work place. At least seven people had quit, because of the current managements treatment, abuse, and bullying. My sister had reached the breaking point and reported it to upper management. She had to do this step repeatedly. Finally she reached someone who assured her that he was going to immediately begin conducting a full investigation. He told her to be certain to contact him if there was any retaliation against her. We will see what happens.

I wanted to share this story because I feel like a lot of people are scared to lose their jobs and tolerate things that they should never have to deal with. I want people to know that there are young people who are waking up, and taking a stand for respect in the workplace. I am so proud of my courageous sister and all the other young people out there that are taking a stand. I know that at her age, I was way too scared to oppose the management at my job, because I was afraid to lose my job, so I put up with a lot in order to maintain my position. I am so proud of our young workers who are fighting back!

The U.S. labor movement and Working America invite you to fix your job! And they are there to help! Watch Working America's "The Office Battle" and learn the moves.

Photo: Many younger workers are employed at fast food establishments like this Potbelly at the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport pictured here. (brewbooks/Flickr/CC)

Need health care? Sign up for Obamacare!

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 14:08:00 +0000

Largely obscured by the Syrian crisis in recent weeks have been the moves - from joke to extortion to possible treason - by Republicans in their rabid war against Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act is law of the land. Health exchange enrollment begins Oct 1. But you would not know it by the actions of numerous Republican governors, attorneys-general, and the leadership in Congress. Outright vetoes of participation in expanded Medicaid, repeated, futile, votes in Congress to repeal the act, obstruction by Republican led states and agencies in establishing exchanges, a deluge of harassing legal actions to derail enrollment are part of a well-funded coordinated legal and political campaign underway.

Given the untimely death, disease and poverty - especially for minorities, women and children - that can be averted by expanded Medicaid, why shouldn't indictments for harm done be brought against these officials who willfully deny working poor and middle class residents the needed health care coverage and services? Can this campaign succeed in killing the signal achievement of the Obama administration?

As the map below shows, only 28 states are moving toward expanded Medicaid. Just over half! Expanded Medicaid provides everyone under 138 percent of the federal poverty level virtually full coverage, comparable to Medicare. It is fully, or 95 percent, federally funded in poorer states for years.

Via: The Advisory Board Company

Huge current uncompensated care charges to states by public emergency rooms for uninsured, or poorly insured, patients can be dramatically reduced. Public health, and thus productivity, is vastly increased, as is public wealth. Health care debts constantly expose working families to bankruptcy and loss of credit.

Compensation to doctors and providers is increased to level of Medicare allowances. The infusion of federal dollars via expanded health care will have a significant jobs and stimulus effect on harder hit communities, and for thousands, perhaps millions, of small businesses who are unable to retain employees and partners - meaning unable to hold teams together - through life and family changes, because they could not afford health coverage premiums.

Traditional Medicaid is plagued by stringent, unjust and cumbersome qualification and asset tests, wide variations in coverage from state to state, insufficient federal funding, large un-served populations without adequate insurance, and very poor compensation to participating doctors. All of these are eliminated or alleviated under Obamacare.

So what explains the states that have declined to participate, as well as political-terrorist obstructionism of some officials in states that are indeed participating? Pretty much, pure ideology and pure class warfare. Newly elected West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey has publicly taken perverse delight in the prospect of the Affordable Care Act becoming "a train wreck," knowing it would bring 250,000 West Virginia workers, the uninsured and under-insured working poor of the state, both health care and a net gain in state income. He tied up release of federal funds to train needed assistants in the enrollment process by harassing the providers with background questions about their employees, which forced one to withdraw.

Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Whip Eric Cantor now plan to refuse to raise the debt ceiling again, or approve a budget, unless Obamacare is defunded. They have already voted 40 times to repeal it in a boundless waste of their employer's money and time. Since their employer is the people of the United States, why should they not all be fired?

Most of the public rationales Republicans give for their opposition to Obamacare are simply lies: that it will cost more; that there will be government "death panels"; that the poor will abuse health care (Limbaugh).

But then there are the truths they tell - like the Kochs and the Romneys (and he's a moderate!!) - that reveal their true motives and allegiances: that there should be "no more free stuff," "less entitlements" - that is, no more rights, like the Bill of Rights, or a right to social security, or to health care, or to education, or to affordable housing, or to food, or to equality of opportunity and justice, that are not wealth's privilege to buy. Their vision of rebuilding the economy is: give the billionaires anything they want, employ the rest of us to build them toys and give good service while scrambling for crumbs from their tables to survive. Ask for more? "The hungry dog hunts harder," they reply.

The section of elites that are bankrolling the Republican leadership appear to think that the capitalist system is in total crisis; that Bolsheviks are at the gates in this never-ending depression/recession; that private capital and all its prerogatives are about to be swallowed by Tyrannosaurus Government if the people get health care.

The president and more liberal, enlightened elites note the facts that social security and the massive public spending reflected in World War II and following, including the GI Bill, Marshall Plan, homeowner assistance, recognition of collective bargaining, etc, provided a new labor force, and new infrastructures both technical and institutional. These "more socialist" changes, including an expansion of public goods, better income distribution and regulation gave rise to an explosion of innovation and a rebirth of capitalist relations in the post war boom.

For working people, the fight for Obamacare is a life and death struggle, and every worker needs to enroll who is not already covered by an adequate private plan. Actually, every worker needs to take the time to enroll ANOTHER worker. This is the first opportunity we have had in at least 20 years (since the height of the tech boom) to RAISE OUR REAL INCOME, as a people, and as a social class.

There are many contradictions and loopholes in Obamacare, but NONE that cannot be corrected by fully enrolling, and organizing members to push the program in the direction it ultimately must go: toward a Medicare for All system. The most important principle -universal coverage - has been passed into law. From there we continue the fight to go from coverage to actual health care.

But gang of nullifiers of no greater character than the "fire eater" scoundrels like John C. Calhoun who drove the slaveholders into armed rebellion, and treason, are trying to strangle the program in its cradle. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters - protect the baby!

Photo: A supporter of health care reform speaks out at a 2009 town hall meeting in Hartford, Conn. (Wikimedia/CC)

Ted Cruz, Jesse Helms vs. the people, the vote

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 13:47:00 +0000

Editor's note: On Sept. 11, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, gave a speech before the Heritage Foundation in which he said, "We need a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate." Helms, the late North Carolina senator, was a notorious lifelong segregationist who also opposed gay and women's rights. Cruz has also championed voter suppression measures.

Voting rights are a foundation for the realization of justice, equality, and freedom for everyone in our world and in our lives.

Historically, voter suppression has been used in an attempt to silence the voices of those considered unworthy of power: the Irish of New York's Five Points district in the 1800s, black Africans under apartheid, American blacks stifled by Jim Crow laws, and women denied the vote.

Today, men like Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas favor making laws that restrict voting rights. Cruz who told the Heritage Foundation on Sept. 11 that the late North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms (a known proponent of racial separatism) was influential in his thinking, thus reveals an attitude that some human beings are superior to others. These men deny that everyone is human enough to participate in and influence their own process of life and its experiences on a political level. These men place no value on perspectives other than their own or on views are not in consensual agreement with their points of view.

In our present cultural environment of ethnic diversity, biased and prejudiced thoughts - based in fear, ignorance, and intolerance - fuel a simmering climate of hate and civil unrest. But most people - the 99% - have evolved beyond the stagnating realm of denigrating racial and gender thought and have learned to rise up peacefully.

The people have evolved into recognition of the strength and power of unity. The racial, religious, and gender divides that the likes of Cruz would like to reclaim, reinstate, and institutionalize through government and laws are regressive to human development. People have progressed in learning to accept differences in others and to appreciate the added value to human life experience and understanding that full participation affords.

The only people threatened by this evolutionary change in thoughts about diversity - a source of freedom and self-expression and an expansion of compassionate humanity and unity - are those who selfishly benefit from oppressive control and domination, malevolent segregation, and divisiveness.

Voting and the protection of those associated rights is the power of the people. It is the license that permits election of officials in a democracy to responsibly serve humanitarian interests and act as dutiful stewards of the world and all that is in it.

Restricting voting rights is the political weapon of mass destruction being used by some elected officials. By suppression of the vote, they hope to sustain the plutocracy that American government has become. When the sitting political regime's dominance is threatened, voter suppression tactics resurge.

The conservatives counted their money, but they didn't count on how their attempts to divide us are actually bringing us closer together. While they were gloating over their positions, they missed the real and present progression of our cultural evolution-not only in America, but around the globe. The people - the 99% - have and will exercise the power of unity and the vote. Count on it.

Dee Scott is a radio talk show host/producer/programmer and human rights activist in Houston, Texas. Her show, "Speak Out Spirit" airs on www.kpft.org HD3 internet radio, Wednesdays at 10 am CST.

Photo: The late Sen. Joe McCarthy, left, and current Sen. Ted Cruz, right, have a lot in common beyond their looks. DonkeyHotey CC2.0

South Dakota covers up sex abuse of Native foster children

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:15:00 +0000

RAPID CITY, S.D. - Forced into sexually abusive foster care. Incredible and atrocious as it may sound, that is the fate the state of South Dakota assigned to several Lakota children through its Department of Social Services.

Few crimes resonate more strongly in human consciousness for condemnation than the mistreatment of vulnerable, defenseless children, but the state of South Dakota has sunk to the bottom of the deepest abyss of human depravity in its treatment of Indian children. The following case and others constitute a singularly shameful chapter in the annals of American history. Something has to be done about South Dakota!

National Public Radio first reported on South Dakota's Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) scandal in October 2011. Since then, People's World has carried several stories (here and here) on the issue.

This journalist had the opportunity in August to go to South Dakota to report on the crisis, in which Native children are seized by the state without proper cause and placed in non-Native foster care, in violation of federal law. This is the first of a series of articles reporting firsthand on this catastrophe based on interviews with Native people in the area. It was truly heartbreaking to listen to grandmothers and mothers recount what had happened, not knowing the whereabouts of their grandchildren and children abducted by the state's DSS.

South Dakota gets about $79,000 from the federal government for each Native child placed in foster care. After paying the foster family about $9,000, the state retains about $70,000 of the funds for each child. Hence, South Dakota Natives speak of the selling of children. "Our kids are not for sale" is a strongly held feeling here.

But the most outrageous, so far, of the child kidnappings and abuse is the Mette case. From 2001 to 2010, South Dakota covered up, and indeed was more than in part responsible for, in an accomplice capacity, the repeated sexual abuse of Native children under its authority. Further, incredible as it may seem, those within the state apparatus who tried to help or rescue these helpless children through official channels were prosecuted by the state and lost their jobs in the process.

In 1999, Richard and Gwendolyn Mette (Wendy in court records ) - a white couple in Aberdeen, S.D. - had five ( not seven as originally reported by other sources) Lakota children placed with them by DSS. The lurid narrative and timeline of sexual slavery began in 2001 when two male foster children complained to state authorities of "inappropriate touching" and physical abuse by Richard and Wendy Mette. DSS also found that pornography was being left in the open in the Mette home, in full view of all the children. Incredibly, DSS just required the Mettes to sign a contract promising to stop any further illegal behavior. That this was the only step taken is astounding.

Predictably, the Mettes did not cease their behavior. In 2007, six years later, DSS received another official referral regarding the couple. Investigating police were told by one of the female children that the foster father made her sit on his lap and sexually touched her. The child said she told the foster mother. No action was taken by the state. Again, DSS kept the children in the home, despite this illicit conduct.

In 2010, three years later, with more complaints from the children of physical abuse and sexual touching, an investigation was launched by Assistant State's Attorney Brandon Taliaferro. The police, upon searching the Mette home, found "enough pornography to pack a store." Much of the pornography was of incest and was entitled "Family Heat." Police reports confirmed the earlier testimony of the children that the porn was in the open in every room of the home where all the children could see it.

Eventually, Richard Mette pled guilty to raping one of the female children, a child under 10 years old. Mette was originally charged with 23 felonies, of which the state dismissed 22. The children told authorities that the foster mother knew that her husband physically and sexually abused them. In fact, testimony given at the trial brought out that the foster mother, Wendy Mette, encouraged the female children not to resist the foster father's advances. She told the children "to make daddy happy." It was disclosed that the Mettes had the children watch pornographic videos with them, after which foster father Richard Mette would engage in sexual activity with the children. The Mettes also had a dice game with porno pictures on the dice that would determine the type of sex to be engaged in with the children. Ms. Mette was obviously a willing accomplice in this horrific sexual abuse that continued for years.

Relatives of the children who attended the trial recounted that at times they simply had to leave the courtroom because the testimony was so graphic that they were physically sickened. Indeed, parts of the case read by this journalist are so graphic as to be omitted from this column.

But the epilogue to this unspeakable tragedy, in many respects, gets even more incredible. The state initially charged Ms. Mette with 11 counts of child abuse, all of which were felonies. Subsequently, the state dropped all charges against Wendy Mette. In August 2012, DSS took the four female children from the custody of their adult biological sister and, incredibly, returned them to Ms. Mette. This is beyond belief. The children were returned to the house of torment.

The entire country, in fact the entire world, should render a huge outcry of anguished protest to the federal government and the state of South Dakota at this continuing outrage. This case demands immediate action by the U.S. Justice Department, which so far has chosen to ignore this shocking tragedy. Continued disregard of this and other such cases can only brand the Justice Department as an accomplice in a moral and legal obscenity.

Daniel Sheehan, chief legal counsel for the Lakota People's Law Project, has termed this case "the crime of the century." Unfortunately it is part of a pattern of abuse other Native children are subjected to at the hands of South Dakota and its DSS. As one Lakota elder recently put it, "Indian children are not even being treated as human beings." Again, something has to be done about South Dakota!

Photo: Ben Piven/Flickr (CC)

Fast-food workers meet labor movement: a super-sized duo

Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:16:00 +0000

As the AFL-CIO, the 11-million-member-strong national labor federation, wraps-up its national convention in Los Angeles this week, thousands of low-wage fast-food workers across the country are continuing to organize, plan and prepare for the next stage in their ongoing campaign to win $15 an-hour and the right to form or join a union.

The fast-food worker strikes started last November in New York and then spread to Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Seattle and other major cities.

As of August 29, fast-food workers in over 60 cities have gone on strike, including in southern states like Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Undoubtedly, there is an emerging nationwide movement of low-wage fast-food workers who have begun to set the tone regarding the federal minimum wage, fast-food workers' rights and the future of service sector work generally.

Due to the strikes, even those who don't support the strikers or their demands have been forced into a national conversation about low-wage workers and the minimum wage.

These workers are striking because they are paid between $7.25 and $8 an hour, without benefits - no sick time, no paid vacation, and very few if any health benefits.

In addition, they have very little control over their hours or working conditions. Their hours are set by managers who play favorites. And most fast-food workers don't get 40 hours in a week; many get 30 hours or less; and some are called into work for an hour or two and are then told to clock out - even though it cost them more than the minimum wage in gas, bus fare, child care, and related expenses to get there.

I've spoken with fast-food workers from across the country. A Detroit striker talked about organizing in the context of that city's bankruptcy; a Seattle striker talked about making half of minimum wage because she is a tipped employee. A Milwaukee striker talked about working 10 hours straight without a break. A New York striker talked about barely getting 28 hours of work a week. And dignity and respect is a common theme running throughout all of their narratives, as most fast-food workers just want to be treated better. Racism, sexism and favoritism are rampant.

The strikers are largely African American and women and mostly young, which makes this campaign a fight against racism and sexism as well. African Americans and women are usually the strike leaders, too.

Though $15 an hour may seem like a lot compared to the current minimum wage, most economists agree that if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation it would be around $17 an hour right now. So fast-food workers' demands are not extreme by any stretch of the imagination, especially for a $240 billion industry. McDonald's alone makes about $21 billion annually in profits. And the top six fast-food CEOs make a combined $40 million annually, averaging close to $6,000 an hour.

Like the AFL-CIO convention with its dramatic new initiatives, the fast-food strikes are important to the broader movement for social and economic justice for a number of reasons.

First, the strikes and the strikers have helped lend a sense of energy and urgency to the labor movement as a whole. They are a shot in the arm in many places, as a new crop of activists and organizers is emerging and beginning to think not only about their individual struggles at their individual restaurants, but about low-wage workers generally.

Second, as we all know, when we raise the wage floor, especially for those at the bottom of the wage scale, it drives up wages for everybody. Seen in this light, I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that the strikers are in the forefront of raising everybody's wages.

Third, the walk-back tactic, which has been very successful in most cases, is significant as community, faith and political leaders are emerging as third-party mediators. Walk-backs generally consist of local community, faith and political leaders literally walking the striking workers back into the restaurants, personally speaking with management and in no uncertain terms informing management that retaliation of any kind will not be tolerated. With the limitations of the National Labor Relations Board, especially for low-wage fast-food workers, this tactic changes the dynamics of power in fast-food restaurants and is radicalizing workers and the very community leaders conducting the walk-backs.

Fourth, the strikers have already won concessions. For example, here in St. Louis I reported on a Wendy's employee whose paycheck had gotten "lost in the mail." After community mediation the worker was paid that night with cash out of the store safe - a victory that should resonate among her co-workers and other fast-food workers across the country.

As we all know, sometimes the threat of a union coupled with some bad publicity can win concessions and alleviate some grievances. This seems to be the case in the fast-food workers' fight for $15 and a union. But they're not stopping with concessions.

Just as the AFL-CIO is rebuilding a vibrant, diverse, forward-thinking labor movement committed to fighting for the rights of all workers, especially people of color, women and youth, the movement of fast-food workers for $15 and a union is actively working with traditional labor unions and central labor councils, along with community, faith, student and political leaders, to deepen its relationships and expand its reach beyond the McDonald's or Wendy's drive-thru

Both know they can't win alone. Both have a common enemy. And both know they need each other to win real change for working people in this country.

Photo: Fast-food workers rally in Chicago on day of nationwide fast-food worker strikes, Aug. 29, 2013. John Bachtell/PW

Should U.S. scorn Security Council over Syria?

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 16:42:00 +0000

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, is reportedly giving up on the UN Security Council, because it likely will not approve armed action against Syria in the wake of the August 21 chemical weapons incident.

Power, who advocates a U.S. military attack on Syria, blamed Russia, because it is expected to use its veto power to block any U.S. resolution for armed intervention.

The five permanent Security Council members are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition, the Security Council includes a rotating group of 10 other countries at any time. These non-permanent members, whose term on the Security Council is two years, have a vote on decisions, but do not have veto power. The Security Council is crucial because it alone can authorize many UN actions, especially, as in this case, armed actions.

All 193 member nations of the United Nations belong to the General Assembly. In both the General Assembly and the Security Council, each country has one vote, no matter what its population.

Power expressed frustration with the potential Russian and Chinese use of their veto power. But an examination of the entire record of vetoes cast in the Security Council shows a different picture. These are listed on the UN website, where one can also read the statements that the UN ambassadors have made in justifying their votes on Security Council resolutions.

At the beginning of the United Nations in 1946, the USSR did indeed cast many vetoes. The very first veto cast by any permanent Security Council member was by the USSR in 1946, on the manner in which foreign troops (mostly French) would be withdrawn from Syria and Lebanon.

The Soviet Union continued to veto many Security Council resolutions, but in 1970 this changed. From that point on, the Soviet Union exercised the veto much less frequently, and the United States became the Security Council's veto champion. From 1970 to the present, the United States (alone or with France and/or the United Kingdom) has vetoed 78 Security Council resolutions, the USSR 10, Russia (after the breakup of the Soviet Union) alone or with China 9, China alone, 2.

A large number of the U.S. vetoes have been cast against resolutions on the Palestine-Israel conflict. The most recent of these was in February 2011, with the United States vetoing a resolution about the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.

Earlier, the United States vetoed Security Council resolutions aimed at the apartheid regime in South Africa, and at Ian Smith's repressive Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and dealing with complaints by Nicaragua about U.S. aggression.

The most recent three Security Council resolutions to be vetoed all had to do with Syria, and were cast in October 2011, February 2012 and July 2012, with both Russia and China exercising their veto power. The objection was mainly to a one-sided condemnation of the Assad regime without referring to abuses by the rebel side in the struggle.

Many resolutions pass without a veto. Others are withdrawn when it is clear that they are going to be vetoed. Of course, some of these resolutions deserve to be vetoed.

The UN Security Council was set up precisely to prevent any one country from barging ahead into a situation of armed conflict without international input. When the Security Council won't rubber-stamp a U.S. demand for armed action, it is working as it was designed to do.

The UN was set up after World War II to make it harder, not easier, for countries to go to war. And UN members have not forgotten how the U.S., France and the UK took advantage of a non-vetoed Security Council resolution (Resolution 1973) on Libya, which was supposed to make "humanitarian intervention" to protect civilians in Benghazi possible, and twisted it into a pretext for an unlimited armed attack and regime change. Libya has not recovered from those events, which have also set off violent shock waves among Libya's neighbors.

There are many things wrong with the United Nations, and many people and states are demanding changes. One problem is the presence of Britain and France, no longer ruling huge empires but just medium sized states, as permanent Security Council members, while many states with much larger populations, such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Japan, Mexico and others, are not permanent members. Among the permanent members, there is no representation of Latin America or Africa whatsoever, and Asia's vast millions are underrepresented.

Demands to change the United Nations should be aimed at improving it, not weakening it by undertaking armed action outside its structure.

Photo: The UN Security Council chamber, at UN headquarters in New York. Wikimedia Commons

States should not reward bigotry

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 15:25:00 +0000

Hackettstown, N.J. - In a Catholic Health Initiatives graphic, the phrase "Extraordinary Family Centered Care" sits in the center of a red cross with the words "Excellence, Compassion, Reverence and Integrity" in a circle around this cross. This is the care model for the state-supported Catholic hospital group, except if your family includes same-sex couples.

CHI, based out of Denver, Colo., employs approximately 83,000 people and has an annual revenue of approximately $15 billion, but it cannot seem to bring itself to offer health care insurance to spouses of its LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) staff members.

Catholic Health Initiatives is a national hospital chain that operates in 20 states and includes 78 hospitals, 40 long-term care, assisted and residential living facilities, two community health-services organizations, two accredited nursing colleges, and home health agencies.

In its statements, the hospital chain says it follows the ethical and religious directives of the Roman Catholic Church, authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, especially with regard to family and life. In other words, they will not allow abortions or sterilizations to be done in Catholic hospitals; they will keep individuals alive through artificial means if necessary, they will only consider valid a marriage between one man and one woman.

However, what is most disturbing is the duplicitous nature in which CHI operates. It seems the religious and ethical principles can be disregarded as it suits them. For example, one of CHI's hospitals, St.Thomas More in Cañon City, CO , in a malpractice suit attempted to argue that a fetus was not a person. CHI argued that (Colorado) state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has stated that life begins at conception. If they believe that life begins at conception then how can CHI argue that a fetus is not a person in court?

The mission statement of CHI reads, in part, "to emphasize human dignity and social justice as we move toward the creation of healthier communities." How are they living up to their call of "social justice" by practicing discrimination in their benefits policies?

When an employee contacts CHI's benefits department they are informed: "Catholic Health Initiatives, in accordance with Roman Catholic teachings, only acknowledges as valid a marriage between one man and one woman." CHI hospitals receive grants from states in which they operate. In New Jersey, Saint Clare's Health System receives a grant from the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Addictions. It receives this grant for Behavioral Health and for Self Help Services.

CHI continually stresses the word Integrity. Integrity means truthfulness and doing what is right or correct. With that in mind, CHI need not acknowledge the "validity" of same-sex marriages yet they can still offer health benefits to spouses in accordance with the laws, especially when they are recipients of state funds. CHI should do it because it is the right thing to do. The fact that CHI does not offer benefits to spouses in a disgrace and it is petty.

Should organizations that receive public money, taxpayer's money, be allowed to discriminate, especially in states where a civil union is supposed to be on a par with marriage. It clearly is not the same nor is it on a par with marriage. This is why marriage equality has to be achieved in the State of New Jersey and across the country.

Photo: via Kelley Reale