People Before Profit blog

Climate change, militarism, and the 2014 elections

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 14:56:00 +0000

I was really proud to participate in the massive People's Climate March, along with hundreds of thousands of others. I was struck by the incredible breadth and grassroots depth of this sea of humanity streaming through the streets of New York. A mass movement has emerged, whose impact will only grow in the politics of the nation.

"The only recognizable feature of hope, is action," said poet Grace Paley. And so this is a movement of hope for the future of humanity.

New alliances are being built around this issue; just think of the Cowboys and Indians encampment. People's consciousness is changing rapidly in response to extreme weather events, massive tornadoes and hurricanes, droughts covering half the country, wildfires, floods, and the rapid extinction of species and destruction of habitat. It reminds me of the rapid change in public sentiment toward marriage equality that occurred over the span of a few years.

A delegation of 24 people came from Moore, Okla., representing the 24 people killed by a monster Category 5 tornado that destroyed much of the town in 2013.

A similar group came from New Orleans that suffered that horrendous tragedy from Hurricane Katrina in 2006.

Tens of thousands turned out from New York City, which experienced the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. That catastrophe has literally transformed its residents and led to a grassroots mobilization in every neighborhood. The labor movement was deeply involved in every aspect.

Big-tent coalition

The march was a united front, if you will, against the fossil fuel industry.

Before the march, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who walked in the lead contingent, announced his administration's plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. New York becomes the largest city in the world to commit itself to this goal, one projected by climate scientists as necessary to avoid the worst-case scenarios of climate change.

Since the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions in NYC are buildings, the plan calls for retrofitting all public buildings to conserve energy. Incentives will be offered to private building owners to do the same. This will also create thousands of new jobs.

There are new possibilities of growing the movement to divest city and state pension funds from the fossil fuel industry, building on what is happening on the campuses.

This opens a new front of struggle - utilizing the power of city and state governments to address the climate crisis. It shows the importance of electing progressive, pro-reform, pro-climate governments at every level.

Only a movement of previously unseen magnitude, of the vast majority of people crossing class, race, gender and national boundaries, of all sorts of class and social forces, including governmental entities and institutions, can counter the obstruction of the fossil fuel industry.

Capitalists worry

A couple of months ago a group of Wall Street leading lights rang the alarm bell on the climate crisis - Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, Democrats and Republicans, including EPA administrators in Republican administrations and others in the Risky Business Project. They represent very powerful sections of the capitalist class and are calling for radical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Objectively, this puts them at odds with the fossil fuel industry, which along with the military industrial complex is the support base of the extreme right and Tea Party. It puts them in the broad multi-class climate justice movement. But that does not mean they will advocate sustainable, public-oriented solutions.

On Sept. 22, Google quit the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), following Yelp, Facebook, and Microsoft. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said ALEC was "literally lying" about climate change. The Koch Brothers and other fossil fuel companies including Exxon Mobil, TransCanada, and Peabody Energy fund ALEC.

While those calling for greenhouse gas emission reductions are concerned about the future of humanity, their own class interests also motivate them. They fear for the stability of capitalism, the status of Wall Street investments in the fossil fuel industry and the massive resources that will be diverted to protect against its effects.

And they are right, as author Naomi Klein has so eloquently observed: The climate crisis is a fundamental threat to the existence of capitalism.

Anti-capitalist sentiment and demands

I was struck by the anti-corporate and anti-capitalist sentiment throughout the People's Climate March. This movement has the potential to challenge the capitalist system and in that sense has revolutionary implications. It can deepen the already growing sentiment that sees socialism as more attractive than capitalism. This should be fertile ground for the CPUSA vision of Bill of Rights sustainable, democratic, and demilitarized socialism.

The scientific community is united in its belief that humanity is on the clock. And while capitalism and sustainability are incompatible, we can't wait for socialism or even radical anti-monopoly reform governments to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Even a movement to save humanity can't escape the class struggle. But who will decisively imprint it - Wall Street or the working class and its allies?

For example, Rubin, Al Gore, et al, believe greenhouse gas emissions can be lowered through market forces. They envision sustainable capitalism.

Certainly market forces will play a role, but we must demand an expansion of the role of the public sector, stronger regulation of corporate polluters, progressive public policy such as New York's, restrictions on capital including investment, protecting the health of workers, etc.

How will the working class and communities of color, which suffer additionally from the effects of environmental racism, be protected against the ravages of climate change? How will incomes of millions of workers in the fossil fuel industry be protected whose jobs will be eliminated?

How will poor and developing countries be assisted in the transition to green economies and protected from the ravages of climate change?

Who will pay for this transition - the people or Wall Street?

The CPUSA and the left have to put an imprint on this movement too. For example, we explain the incompatibility of capitalism with sustainability and offer a longer-term solution of socialism. We bring a strategy and broad flexible tactics that can achieve this transition. We identify all the key class and social forces that need to be assembled, work to bring the labor movement to the forefront of this struggle, build broad unity of the working class and its allies, including labor with environmentalists and peace activists.

Elections matter: militarism, regulations, and radical reforms

We also understand the decisive importance of the electoral arena and defeating the right wing and the climate deniers as a precondition for advancing.

We offer innovative programmatic demands. We envision changes going far beyond mere technological fixes - changes that will affect every area of life and society.

For example, we advocate a guaranteed social wage for all unemployed, including those workers displaced by the transition to renewables until they can be retrained for new careers and find new jobs. No worker will be left behind. After all, the federal government pays farmers not to plant crops, so why can't miners be paid not to mine coal?

One of the greatest sources of unity of labor and environmental movements are the immense number of jobs that will be created in the transition to renewable energy sources and conservation measures.

We envision more radical reforms like curbing the power of the energy monopolies, making all natural resources and energy utilities a part of the public domain.

We advocate redistribution of the wealth of the 1 percent and cutting the military budget to pay for the transition.

Just the other day the New York Times ran a front-page story about the Pentagon's plans to modernize the nuclear weapons arsenal. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.

"It will soar after 10 years as missiles, bombers and submarines made in the last century reach the end of their useful lives and replacements are built," the Times said.

That's on top of current military spending, which is over 50 percent of the federal budget. And as we might expect, the military industrial complex is pressuring to grow the military budget in light of the current fight against ISIS, salivating over big profits.

No way! Our nation needs to make a fundamental choice - guns or butter and saving humanity.

Because the climate crisis is with us for the foreseeable future, it will increasingly become a decisive issue determining who gets elected at every level. It could be a major issue in the 2014 elections on November 4.

In June, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared at a Koch Brothers event at California's St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort. McConnell pledged that if the Koch Brothers help Republicans take control of the Senate, he'll return the favor by using the appropriations process to "go after" the EPA.

McConnell's promise is a stark reminder of the dangerous consequences of a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate and domination of Congress: The Affordable Care Act defunded, EPA and Consumer Financial Protection Agency gutted, abortions banned after 20 weeks, a national right to work law, accelerated deportations, and more attacks on basic democratic rights including the right to vote.

If we thought gridlock has been bad, it will be ten times worse going forward. It will be obstruction and an assault on democratic rights on steroids.

Of course the Koch Brothers are among the biggest funders of ALEC and the climate deniers. To elaborate on the well-known expression by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Where you have a race baiter, you have a labor hater," and a climate denier.

Inspiring voter turn out

This should motivate us to work tirelessly from now until November to elect pro-labor and pro-climate advocates. Victory is possible. Many contests remain very close. In 2010 there was a surge in support for the Tea Party, and Democratic base voters stayed home, with truly tragic consequences for our nation. A similar surge has not taken place this year. It's still a matter of turning out the vote.

The thinking of the American people has shifted. On many issues the Republican right is increasingly on the defensive: climate change, minimum wage, marriage equality, immigration reform, women's rights, student loan debt and voting rights. The old wedge issues don't work like they once did. If we sharply define the debate, we can win.

As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in his brilliant speech on racism, class and solidarity to the Missouri AFL-CIO convention, "Black and white, immigrant and native born, gay and straight. Where your picket line is my picket line. And my picket line is your picket line. Shoulder to shoulder. Arm-in-arm. All day. Every day. As long as it takes. Standing together. Fighting together. Voting together. Winning together. Winning for working families! Winning for America!"

Photo: Representatives of Indigenous and Native peoples begin to line up for the People's Climate March step off, New York City, Sept. 21. (Teresa Albano/PW)

Sorry, Wall Street is closed today!

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:38:00 +0000

NEW YORK - On September 22, one day after the 400,000-strong People's Climate March, another environmental justice event occurred in New York City. "Flood Wall Street," as it was called, targeted the singular place the participants saw as the heart of the problem: the financial district.

Clad in shades of blue to illustrate the wave of action to come, the activists of Flood Wall Street gathered first at the tip of Manhattan in Battery Park for a rally, teach-in, and breakfast.

By 11 am, the group, increasing in size seemingly by the moment, began moving toward Wall Street. Carrying placards reading 'Capitalism = Climate Chaos,' some 1,000 commandeered the streets to tell the corporate beast that it must become responsible to our planet. Tight, shadowy lower-Broadway was shut down all the way to the water's edge. For the stock and hedge fund people, it must have felt particularly confining.

Quickly, street traffic was halted by the sea of bodies. Among the vehicles blocked were two sight-seeing double-decker buses, a city bus, and a truck. To a soundtrack provided by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra and varied chanting, colorful blue tarps were held aloft above huge sections of the demonstrators. One of these was stretched over the cab of a stalled truck as the driver sat motionless, looking out. Harried New Yorkers had to sit tight as the crowd swelled, blocking out the black-top. Without breaking up the proceedings, the NYPD cleared a path after an hour and let the traffic through; the tourists up on top of the bus cheered the protesters on. As soon as the vehicles were moved out, the human "flood" moved back in, securing the ground, sharing again in song and chant.

Later, in the afternoon some protestors moved into barricaded areas and the police responding intolerantly. Up until then and for most of the day, however, Flood Wall Street was peaceful and non-violent. In contrast to how things probably would have gone under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, the NYPD tactic for this event was geared to making no arrests.

The crowd communicated via the Occupy Wall Street "people's mic" with multiple relays carrying the message outward. Some of the speakers were from other countries. One young man, a self-identified member of the IWW, climbed on top of a pay phone and spoke about the cause of all oppressed peoples. The police stood by close, seemingly unaware of what to do next. He held his ground but was arrested while descending from his make-shift podium.

With the majority of the demonstration happening further south, the action thinned as one walked northward up Broadway. All of the adjoining streets were closed to traffic but Wall Street had a small squadron of police guarding against any entry. Behind the barricades stood several annoyed brokers in European suits trying to get back to work after lunch. New York's finest were standing guard over the institutions of profit and no one was getting by. "Show me your ID please." Fumbling for their wallets, they did.

The irony was unique to the moment: the demonstrators were enjoying a sit-down on lower Broadway with police protection as men with $600 haircuts were being carded.

Just then, a group of visitors intent on taking selfies on the steps of the Stock Exchange were stopped too. "But, officer, I just want to see Wall Street," a blond traveler beseeched the policeman.

The cop's response was, of course, the key phrase of the entire event: "I am sorry but Wall Street is closed today."

The Street would later report that it held its own but if you looked closely, you could almost see it cringe as the echo of chanting soared through the canyons of capital.

Photo: John Minchillo/AP

The 2014 midterm elections: Fear and promise

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 16:27:00 +0000

Election season is upon us. Like summer locusts, emails are invading my inbox with threats and prognostications of Devastation! Disaster! Latest attacks! $750 gazillion of Koch Brothers money on GOP Senate race!

It's gotten to the point where they're even posing as apologetic: "Sorry to bother you on a Sunday evening but...." A year ago, the Democratic National Committee got hold of my contribution to a locally successful House candidate, and now I receive campaign alerts from all over the country, some of them several times daily. Except they got my name wrong. "Thank you for your past support, Jeffrey, we need your help again."

Jeffrey? Yeah, they're all calling me Jeffrey West. I've "replied" many dozens of times. I'm not Jeffrey. I'm Eric. No one listens, no one responds, probably no one reads my pleas. Jeffrey West, if you're out there reading this, would you please get in touch with me? Are they calling you Eric? Maybe we can straighten this out together.

But seriously, our country is in trouble. We must do better, and the time is growing very short now.

In past years, since I have a personal and professional background in the faith and interfaith communities, I have sent out election-time appeals to my friends to vote their moral conscience. On every issue of concern to Americans, the ultra right has taken depressingly inhumane, regressive positions: No to raising the minimum wage, No to fixing our broken immigration system, No to investing in our infrastructure of roads and bridges, No to the Affordable Care Act, No to making college more affordable, No to ensuring equal pay for women, No to closing tax loopholes that reward corporations for moving jobs overseas. And on and on. What a catalogue of sins to confess! How do they sleep at night? What kind of God-fearing people are ministering to them in the houses of worship they so like to coddle?

All these progressive measures would improve our country for future generations while bringing well paying jobs to our communities. Congressional inaction has been the moral disgrace of the nation. The corporate right wing is salivating at the potential to take the Senate for the GOP, and make President Obama's last two years in office not only a lame-duck hell, but a frontal attack on the nationwide electoral mandate that twice put him in the White House.

We've just seen the largest demonstration in history concerning the crucial issue of climate change: Four hundred thousand people in New York City!

Plus contingent marches all over the world. With her drought and floods, superstorms and melting glaciers, the very Earth is clamoring to put the needs of people-and the only planet we live on-before petty politics and greed.

Every issue is interconnected to every other. My friends in the religious community sing, "He's got the whole world in His hands." That's a way of saying, It's all one, we're all one. Not too many degrees of separation stand between education and climate change, or women's rights and climate change, public transportation and climate change, jobs or global hunger and climate change.

I was proud of my colleagues on a United Auto Workers political endorsement panel that I served on recently. We had a candidate appear before us seeking our blessing whose campaign literature carried the union bug, who spoke well about financial reform, foreign policy, education, unemployment, and the rest. And then he made a fatal mistake: "But I gotta say this," he said. "If it's a choice between jobs in my district or saving some little salamander, you can bet I'm going for the jobs."

I thought maybe it was just me, representing the National Writers Union in Southern California (a UAW affiliate), who was appalled by this guy's crass dismissal of a unique creature that somehow made it, along with the rest of us, through the evolution wars of the last several billion years-or again, as my religious friends might put it, "one of God's creations."

But no. Everyone else on that panel reacted the same way. The overarching supremacy of climate change has really gotten through. Because in the end, what happens to that salamander will happen to us. Labor knows that, and the world knows that now. Maybe more than anything, we all felt pandered to, as if a bunch of crude working stiffs would love nothing more than hearing tough man-talk about jobs, as if we didn't also inhabit this gorgeous, fragile world of ours.

Ours. Yes, ours. The world does not belong to the oil companies, the frackers, the extractors, the refiners, the pipeliners, the coal companies, the ocean polluters, the warmongers who stalk the globe and wreck whole countries to access the gold and dollars underground.

There's just a little over a month left before Election Day in America, one of the most fateful elections the world has ever known. Fear and promise are the two sides of this coin. It's common knowledge that turnout falls in off-presidential election years. This time, let's fool the pundits and the naysayers. Let's support the candidates we like, keep the Senate, turn the House, and get out the vote, uh...like our lives depended on it!

Life itself depends on it!

Photo: Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., would lose his position as Senate Majority Leader if the GOP takes control of that chamber after the November elections.

History shows that joblessness among Native Americans can be lowered

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 18:27:00 +0000

President Obama has said that he will issue executive orders where Congress will not act. We can rest assured that Congress will do nothing to help American Indians in the jobs category; hence, executive orders are a must.

I must preface this column with the fact that nothing has substantially changed in Indian Country with the Obama presidency. Longtime, distinguished Indian activist, John Trudell, recently expressed the sentiments of many Natives when in the press he said, "When you look at the sovereignty, the economics, the cultural well-being of the Native people [Obama] hasn't done one thing. He's just like every other U.S. president. I think a lot of Native people are just glad to be acknowledged. You look at the time Obama has been in office, and the teen suicide rates are [still] out of control, the poverty is out of control."

In regard to Native American unemployment I had written, in the Native press, what Obama could do early on in his presidency based on programs initiated during the Great Depression of the 1930s. During that era thousands of Native Americans were employed on reservations under a separate division of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in soil erosion control, forestation improvement, restoration of grazing lands and other land-based conservation programs. American Indians were employed in developing natural resources on reservations across the country. This division of the CCC was called the Indian Emergency Conservation Work (IECW) program or the Indian Division of the CCC, popularly abbreviated as the ID-CCC.

The CCC itself was established as an agency to provide employment and training to young men and war veterans, and separately to a limited extent to young American Indian men who could not find work otherwise during the Great Depression. The CCC included public works projects and also conservation and the development of natural resources, which is where reservations were involved. Ironically, because of these programs, for many Indian peoples, the Great Depression was a time of comparative plenty due to the CCC. Participants received food, clothing and a base monthly wage.

During this time officials in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) became very excited over having an Indian component in the then newly formed CCC. These authorities knew that the reservations were in dire need of soil erosion control, forestation improvements, restoration of grazing lands and other CCC-type projects that could provide employment to Native Americans. Further, BIA leaders strongly believed that Indians should have their own organization apart from the regular CCC. President Roosevelt heartily approved it. In the first program sign-up period over 14,000 Native Americans were employed in just six months' time.

Since the massive unemployment of the Depression severely limited the possibility of virtually any off-reservation work, the main focus was to provide assistance to reservation populations. The goal was to conserve and improve reservation land so more Native Americans could make a living from ranching and farming.

The original IECW projects were based in cities located near reservations or in heavily populated Native areas such as Muskogee, Okla.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Spokane, Wash.; and Albuquerque, N.M. These district offices corresponded to major geographic regions with the largest American Indian populations. By July 1933, 56 reservations were involved.

Worked on bridges, roads and clinics

Indian men worked on bridges, roads, clinics, shelters and other public works on or near their reservations. The CCC often provided the only work on the reservations. A huge drawback, and bias, was that no women were allowed to participate. Enrollees had to be males between the ages of 17 and 35. For example, in 1933 nearly half the males in households on the Sioux reservations in South Dakota were employed by the IECW. With grants from the Works Progress Administration (WPA, renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) the Indian Division constructed schools and maintained extensive road systems in and around numerous reservations.

The objective also was to reduce erosion and improve the quality of Native land. Squads of enrollees built diversified types of dams on creeks and other waterways, and sowed grass and planted groves of trees. In many areas they actually built new roads. The Division also trained participants in gardening, livestock raising, safety issues and many academic subjects. The IECW differed from other CCC activities in that it also trained enrollees in carpentry, truck driving, radio operation, and to be mechanics, surveyors and technicians. During the program's existence over 85,000 American Indians from over 70 reservations were enrolled. The steady income produced an improved sense of morale and uplifted the living standards of the enrollees and their families.

The Indian Division produced awesome results. To cite only a few, reservation forests had 9,739 miles of truck trails laid out; 1,351,870 acres put under pest control; and countless fire lookout towers constructed. Indian grazing and farm lands had 263,129 acres subject to poisonous weed eradication, and 1,792 large dams and reservoirs were constructed. Reportedly, at no time before or since have reservation forests and lands been in better condition than in 1942, when the program ended.

Also, large tracts of grazing land benefited from the IECW. Fencing out white ranchers' strays, water development and reseeding helped to raise sales of Indian cattle from $263,095 in 1933 to a whopping $3,126,326 in 1939. This likewise led to the acquisition of more cattle, discouraged leasing to white ranchers, and encouraged loans for foundation stock and organization of Indian cattlemen's associations. Such were the benefits of the IECW of the 1930s.

The singular importance of this program was that it worked in terms of providing employment to reservations that had been bereft of jobs for generations. There was a huge diversity of work performed by enrollees. To be more specific, program reports list 126 types of projects, ranging from improvement of grazing lands in Arizona to the operation of fish hatcheries in Wisconsin. CCC field inspectors worked to start projects based on geographic conditions and distinct reservation needs with the goal of affording Native Americans a decent livable wage. Hence, the IECW in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes region focused largely on forestation. Native enrollees commonly built trails, cut forest lanes and constructed lookout towers to protect Indian lumber resources from fires. Also, large areas of timber were covered by crews who combated blister disease and pine beetles. Just as necessary were the miles of telephone lines strung by enrollees between lookouts and headquarters so reservation fires could be quickly detected and extinguished.

In the Southwest, the Northern Great Plains and the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, the IECW concentrated on improving reservation grazing lands. Native enrollees controlled rodent populations, drilled wells, reseeded range lands, developed existing springs and built thousands of earth and masonry dams. In particular, in the Southwest, to improve grazing, enrollees were able to control wild mustangs on livestock lands. This provided increased rangeland for cattle, goats and sheep.

In tandem with range advancement was the control of soil erosion. The very dams that stored water for livestock also reduced erosion and made possible reseeded range that was resistant to the ravages of drought and wind. Oklahoma enrollees built check dams and terraces to stop topsoil loss from water runoff and set some 200 miles of shelterbelts in the western sector of the state to prevent wind erosion. The timber of the shelterbelts grew lush and tall, presenting mute testimony against the notion that trees could not flourish on the Great Plains.

Also, the IECW offered educational benefits to Native participants.

The point to be made is that Native Americans saw more employment opportunities during the Depression than before or after that economic collapse. Looking forward to today, a permanent program should be in place to provide income for the economically strapped reservations.

President Obama must see the urgency for jobs. He has the constitutional power by executive order to create tens of thousands of jobs for Native Americans and for the rest of the country. He has the power in his hands; he must use it!

But he will not act without mass pressure, and obviously it would help if he had a cooperative Congress. There are only two years left to get him to do what we would like him to have done in his first 100 days in office.

Photo: Civilian Conservation Corps - NARA - 195832 Public Domain. CCC workers constructing a road, 1933.

Dead child walking: A cry from the heart

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:03:00 +0000

I met a young man, a teenager, in line at a convenience store last night. His grandfather had served with the Marines in Vietnam. He told me we were going to war again, and he had joined the Marines and was leaving for boot camp next month. He already had his hair in a buzz cut and was excited. He was going to stand tall just as his grandfather had in Vietnam. It was a family tradition. The indoctrination had worked well: He could hardly wait to rise up on the warhorse, protect his country, bathe in the blood of his enemy. I wondered if he even knew who his enemy was and if I was looking at a dead child walking.

I had lab tests at the VA on the Pease National Guard Air Base last week. It's in Newington, New Hampshire, at the Portsmouth International Airport. The VA and the Air Guard medical clinic occupy the same building. They share a waiting room. I watched young man after young man walk to a window staffed by a young woman dressed in camouflage. They carried a packet in their hands, all the same, a blue folder, large brown envelope and paperwork, like high school students in the hall on the way to the next class. They walked to the window and handed a paper to the camoed young woman. She looked up, took the paper, smiled and said, as if asking a question, "You're going to recruit training," and the young men would proudly reply, yes. She stamped the paper and said, "Good luck down there."

If the military is anything, it is a proficient processor of young warm bodies. I watched the young mothers of these men as they sat in the waiting room. A new process: When I went in we weren't allowed to have family members on the base, they dropped us off out front. The mothers, not quite middle aged yet, seemed to develop lines of fear and worry right in front of me. There were no brave smiles on their faces. They were turning over their most precious possession of heart to a heartless machine, and they knew it. They will have no peace, no easy rest until their child, their heart, the focus of their life returns unharmed, commitment completed. Some will never rest again, never have peace nor see her child follow a path she had hoped for. No grandchildren, birthdays, anniversaries. Just a long barren existence of what could have been.

We are on the wrong path. "Peace Through Strength" only creates profits for the few and the same mistakes over and over again. The true enemy resides within our borders and on our airwaves. We all pay a price for this policy, but the young people I saw, both mothers and sons, pay the highest price, in blood, fear, anger and worry.

I know not what space I inhabit anymore, what landscape. Though I have been traveling it for 65 years, it's unrecognizable. I want to cry for our children, but tears do no good in the face of nationalistic propaganda. I truly don't know what to do. I feel that somewhere, somehow, I have failed, and this failure will be pronounced with the blood of these children and the heartache of their mothers staining my soul.

Photo: Veterans lead the "We Know Who Is Responsible/Peace and Justice" contingent of the Climate March in New York City. Veterans for Peace members carried the "Stop the War on Mother Earth" banner and the inflatable bomb. Earchiel Johnson/PW.

Ice buckets, Cuba, walking and wills

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:27:00 +0000

Ice buckets have been featured in the news much of late: Celebrities-and ordinary mortals, too-are subjecting themselves to a cold shower by a few hurled gallons of ice water, dared by their friends to do it, to benefit research on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, known as ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease.

This brilliant PR campaign, reminiscent of a fraternity stunt for charity, has so far raised $100 million, according to a recent NPR story on ALS, which also raised critical questions on the quality of scientific research today. In the case of ALS, which has proven to be severely disabling and often fatal within three years of onset, no effective drugs or treatments have been found.

In a period of shrinking federal support for basic research some scientists have been scrambling to get their names into print-and their labs into money-by publishing "revolutionary," "pathbreaking," "earthshaking" studies that rely on deeply flawed protocols with many cut corners and little peer review. Science itself runs the risk of becoming merely a monetized cog in the wheel of commerce, little more principled than the snake oil barker at the traveling medicine show.

Perhaps this is an overly cynical view. But other critics of the ice bucket phenomenon have cited statistics showing that ALS, while extremely serious for those who suffer from it, is not one of the world's major killers. Many other diseases can claim that title. When the faddism of the ice bucket wanes, as surely it will in time, will the PR team who came up with it devise something equally attention-grabbing for ALS, or perhaps move on to another disease?

One could be forgiven for thinking that Marx's "anarchy of private production" applies. Is it the need, the demand, the numbers of people affected, that determine funding and research? Or it is the whim, the "anarchy" of the marketplace, perhaps a well-heeled philanthropist's personal idée fixe, to focus on ALS this year, Ebola next year, and later some other cause, maybe the local philharmonic orchestra or another endangered species?

Speaking for myself, I'd like to see a little more central planning. I know I am not alone: Many societies around the world have created national health programs and federally-funded research centers, where the best scientific and medical minds, working with generous budgets administered by the most competent and disinterested professionals, have committed to organize treatment and research in approximate proportion to current and projected needs.

Those countries are not necessarily only socialist. Some are advanced social democracies where major areas of life, such as healthcare, are simply thought of as the commonweal of the nation. In such places, the sheer volume of philanthropic fundraising nowhere compares to what goes on in the U.S.

This tendency in my thinking is not new. I've been writing an autobiography over the last few years, and in the course of my research uncovered the draft of a will that I composed in the mid-1980s-a document that I never formalized, but that's another story. It's interesting what I had to say about donations: "If anyone wishes to make personal or organizational contributions in my memory, I would prefer that these not go to funds supporting health research (cancer, AIDS, etc.), as I have always believed that such research is entirely the responsibility of government to undertake, not the private sector. Instead, such contributions should go to organizations and publications whose purposes are consistent with my political and social outlook-humanitarian, secularist, internationalist, and supportive of gay and general sexual liberation, interracial justice and peace."

In a way, I'm shocked by my own statement. Especially as a gay man living in New York City at the height of the AIDS epidemic!

Tremendous humanity involved

Naturally I observed the tremendous humanity involved in the gay and lesbian community stepping up to the plate in face of the AIDS crisis, and I played a certain role myself in attending benefits, making contributions, visiting the sick, singing at funerals, and so forth. At the same time I decried the Reagan Administration's complete, disgraceful inaction on AIDS: He never even publicly uttered the word "AIDS" until the last year or two of his presidency. Earlier intervention, with research, treatment, and widespread, unbiased public education recognizing in a medically and morally neutral manner the fact of sex between men, would have prevented millions of infections and slowed down the progress of the disease. "Silence = Death," the AIDS activists rightly proclaimed, as they sat in and got arrested by the hundreds in the fight for speeded-up treatment protocols.

From the beginning, I observed how New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis emerged, as well as hundreds of other organizations around the country, largely following the model of other proprietary disease support groups-cancer, birth defects, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, etc. I promulgated to anyone I could the idea that instead of competing against each other for precious donor dollars, the whole nation ought to join in a mass movement for universal health care, such as Europe had, or the socialist countries, with no health "insurance" at all but the good faith of the government acting for the benefit of all.

As someone sympathetic to the Cuban Revolution-more than that, highly enthusiastic about it-I nevertheless raised many questions many times about the way the Revolution regarded its gay/lesbian citizens in its first thirty years or so, up to about 1990. We all know about the imprisonment, the re-education camps and overt social prejudice in the early years, and the low esteem many LGBT activists held for Cuba (for all of which Cuba at its highest governmental levels has in later years expressed deep remorse). I was among those severe critics, with my North American civil libertarian convictions, who felt appalled by the Cuban government isolating HIV and AIDS carriers into special sanatoriums miles away from Havana.

As much as I admired the overall advances in the Cuban healthcare system, and recognized how much we could learn from it, I perceived an unjustified, irrational and inhumane intent to stigmatize HIV/AIDS inappropriate for any enlightened country. I connected HIV/AIDS "quarantine" with Cuba's poor attitude in general toward gay people.

In the U.S., AIDS spread rampantly in part because we had no effective public education about the new disease. At first no one even knew how it multiplied. The system of silence, denial, and punishment for having acquired HIV demonized both the disease and those living with it. Since in its early years in the U.S. it appeared to affect mainly gay men, it did not seem overly paranoid to us in the gay community that unofficial policy amounted to little more than "Let them all die."

Contrast, for example, the phenomenon of "Legionnaire's Disease," which erupted on a cruise ship full of American Legion vacationers and attracted large-scale government interest and research, but which killed no one. Today ship-borne illnesses are so common that barely anyone takes notice.

With the perspective of more than 25 years' distance, I have evolved a substantially different thinking on the issue of quarantine. Of course, any suggestion of quarantine at that time would have offended my understanding of civil liberties in a modern society. But faced with a new, unknown epidemiological crisis that no one really understood, the Cubans, in their fearful wisdom, resorted to the classic strategy of isolation, which in fact had worked historically for many other diseases. This was planned, organized, socialist healthcare policy seeking to ensure the good of the entire population. (It appears that HIV/AIDS had been introduced to Cuba by its soldiers returning from helping the Angolans defend themselves from apartheid South Africa, so in those days the disease was not even necessarily identified only with gay men.)

Today I have no doubt whatsoever that isolating those few individuals at that early stage, before they could infect other people, did prevent AIDS from becoming the devastating epidemic in Cuba that it became in Haiti, elsewhere in the Caribbean, and many countries in Africa, where in some places HIV infection runs up to 20% or more of the population, and treatment is sketchy. Cuba has a lower HIV-infection rate than any other country in the Americas. Of course by now their understanding and treatment of the disease are far more scientific and humanitarian. (One co-factor to the low HIV incidence is the near absence of recreational injectable drugs.) If I were living with HIV in any of the world's poor countries, I would want to be a Cuban, though naturally it would help if the U.S. blockade finally came to an end.

Started with socialist politics

From my many years of association with the Workmen's Circle (Arbeter Ring), a national secular Jewish organization that started off with openly socialist politics, I have also moderated my hardline view of charity and philanthropy. Workmen's Circle has advocated for a national healthcare system since its founding in 1900, and I have taken from it the idea that Yes, we urgently need a national health plan and generous public investment in medical research; but in the meantime we must look out for one another the best we can. My thinking also changed in the course of a long struggle to comfort and support my best friend and partner Ricky, who died in 1993, sadly a couple of years before the new antiretroviral drugs came along.

Well, I am living with HIV in the richest country the world has ever known, and still this is no paradise. With a million-plus infected people, HIV/AIDS is still a threat here in the U.S., and some of the same old factors apply: Shame. Silence. Ignorance. Invisibility. Alienation. Racism. Sexism. Tragic gaps in educating young people about sexual health. Every 9 ½ minutes, someone in the U.S. is infected with HIV-more than 50,000 new infections every year nationwide, and six new infections in Los Angeles each day. Half of those infected with HIV are under the age of 24, more than a few of them young kids kicked out of their homes when their families learned they were gay. According to public health authorities, 20 percent of those infected with HIV do not even know it. American notions of civil liberties allow parents to keep their children unvaccinated against crippling diseases, thus endangering the whole population; and in the absence of comprehensive, universal healthcare, allow vast numbers of people to go around completely unaware what infectious diseases they may be carrying.

So for the second year, on October 12^th, in the event's 30^th year, I, who was once so critical of healthcare charity, am participating with thousands of others in AIDS Walk Los Angeles. I'm walking with the Being Alive team, a self-help organization I'm affiliated with, entirely run by people with HIV, providing medication and referrals, art classes, yoga, acupuncture, counseling and therapy, cultural outings, a speaker series, all to help improve our health and our spirits. Funds raised through the AIDS Walk also support vital prevention efforts that help stop the spread of HIV.

As I write this I have just passed the halfway mark on my fundraising goal. Here is my personal page link.

Profound questions still remain for any thinking person: Is my disease (or issue or cause) more important than yours? Will socialism, however it looks eventually, meet all my aspirations about allocating just the right attention to the right priorities at the right time? Will the need for charity ever entirely disappear?

Don't worry. I still support Medicare for All here in the U.S. The sooner the better. But until then, and maybe after then too, one walk, one ice bucket at a time.

Photo: The author on the 2013 AIDS Walk, with a blind friend who was able to walk the whole 10K down West Hollywood's streets without his cane, holding hands. PW.

U.S. foreign policy, what is going on?

Fri, 19 Sep 2014 15:12:00 +0000

Thinking about U.S. foreign policy these days brings to mind a line from songwriter/comedian Tom Lehrer: if you are feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis you have good reason.

1) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is creating a Rapid Reaction Force to challenge Russian "aggression" in Ukraine, and the U.S., the European Union, and Russia are lobbing sanctions at each other that have thrown Europe back into a recession. Russian planes are buzzing U.S. and Canadian warships in the Black Sea.
2) The U.S. is bombing Iraq and Syria in an effort to halt the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), while at the same time supporting insurgents trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Damascus, the pool from which ISIL was created.
3) After 13 years of war, Afghanistan is the verge of a civil war over the last presidential election, while the Taliban have stepped up their attacks on the Afghan military and civil authorities.
4) Libya has essentially dissolved as a country, but not without supplying insurgents in central Africa and Nigeria with greatly enhanced firepower.
5) The U.S. encouraged the Japanese government to bypass Article 9 of Japan's peace constitution that restricted deploying its military outside of Japan. Washington also committed the U.S. to support Tokyo in the event of a clash with China over the ownership of a handful of islands in the East China Sea. American, Japanese and Chinese warships and military aircraft have been playing chicken with one another in the East and South China seas.

What is going on? Did some Pandora open a box she shouldn't have? Is the Obama administration-take your choice-incompetent? Trying to wind down two of America's longest wars? Giving liberal cover to a neo-conservative strategy to re-institute a new cold war? Following an agenda?

How about all of them?

There certainly has been incompetence. The 2009 surge into Afghanistan did nothing but kill a lot of people, and the Libya intervention substituted "Chaos Theory" for diplomacy.

It is also true that old wars are winding down. In 2008 there were 110,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 182,000 in Iraq. By the end of 2014 there will be no U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and-at this time-only a handful in Iraq.

Cover for the neo-cons? The Obama administration did help engineer the coup in Ukraine, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland-who oversaw the action and handpicked the interim coup president-was Dick Cheney's principle foreign policy advisor.

And the U.S. certainly has an agenda, which may best be summed up by 19^th century British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Henry Lord Palmerston-England's hammer of empire, who oversaw the Opium Wars with China and the Crimean War with Russia: "We have no eternal allies and we have no eternal enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests it is our duty to follow."

What are our "interests" in Ukraine?

Certainly not spreading democracy. We supported a coup against a corrupt, but legally elected oligarch, and replaced him with another oligarch in an election that excluded half the country.

There are, in fact, multiple currents at play. During the Cold War disagreements about foreign policy among the ruling elites were suppressed by the overarching need to defeat what was perceived as a real threat to capitalism, the socialist world. "Politics stops at the water's edge" was the watchword back then. But once that threat evaporated with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, those disagreements were free to come pouring out. Democrats and Republicans now openly sabotage one another's policies in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and different wings of both parties battle over using the American military.

Which doesn't mean there isn't common ground.

One shared interest is pushing NATO east, something the U.S. been doing since the U.S. double-crossed Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. Gorbachev agreed to pull 380,000 Soviet troops out of East Germany provided NATO did not fill the vacuum. "Not one inch east," U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised. Now, virtually every Warsaw Pact country is a member of NATO.

There is also general agreement-underlined at the recent Alliance meetings in Wales-to expand NATO into a worldwide military alliance, although that creates a certain dilemma for Washington. Currently the U.S. foots 75 percent of NATO's bill, but is finding that increasingly hard to do, given the enormous costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars, the pivot to Asia, and the expanding war in Iraq and Syria.

The Ukraine crisis has served as the perfect excuse to dragoon other members of NATO into increasing their contributions, though that won't be a slam-dunk. Most of Europe is in recession, and while the NATO ministers are all for becoming global policemen, their constituents are less enthusiastic. European publics turned sharply against the Afghan War, and most polls show strong opposition to any more "out of area" deployments or increased military spending at the expense of social services.

One strong current at work these days are the neo-conservatives, whose goals are not to just break Ukraine away from Russia, but go for regime change in Moscow. They also lobby for overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria, and for war with Iran. They are overwhelmingly Republicans, but include Democrats.

Allied to the neo-cons in policy-if not politics-are the liberal interventionists, most of whom are Democrats. The interventionists led the charge on Libya and also lobbied for bombing Assad. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Samantha Powers may not have the same politics on all issues as the neo-conservatives, but in places like the Ukraine they share common ground.

A leading "interest" in Ukraine is challenging Russia's designation as the world's top energy exporter and throttling its oil and gas industry. With Siberian fields almost tapped out, Russia is developing offshore and arctic sources, and the sanctions are aimed at blocking Moscow from getting the technology it needs to do that. The sanctions are also aimed at the South Stream pipeline, which, when completed, will run from the Caspian basin, across the Black Sea, to Europe. South Stream will eventually supply Europe with 15 percent of its gas and generate $20 billion in yearly revenue for Moscow. The U.S. and Turkey have been trying to derail South Stream for over a decade.

There are minor currents and back eddies as well.

Eastern Ukraine has large shale deposits that Chevron has been sniffing around, and-if you like conspiracies-one of U.S. Vice-president Joe Biden's kids, Hunter, is on the board of Burisma Holdings, the Ukraine group exploring the country's energy potentials. Joe Biden has been particularly hawkish on the Ukraine, comparing it to the Munich appeasement with Nazi Germany in 1938.

But the overriding "interest" of American foreign policy-regardless of the different currents-is to marginalize competition. Russia's economy is no competition for Washington's, but Moscow is a major supplier of energy to China. The two countries recently inked a $400 billion pipeline deal.

China's economy is on the verge of passing the U.S. as the world's largest, and it has already replaced the U.S. as the leading trade partner for most of the world. It is also the globe's number one consumer of oil and gas.

This latter fact is a sensitive one, particularly given growing tensions between the U.S. and China. Some 80 percent of Beijing's energy arrives by seas currently controlled by the U.S. Sixth and Seventh fleets.

Russian supplies, however, travel mostly by train and pipelines, and are, thus, out of the U.S. Navy's reach. China is also negotiating with Iran over energy, and once again, those energy supplies would mostly move through pipelines.

To understand U.S. interests in the Ukraine involves tracking all of these currents, some of which may run at cross purposes. Obama's push to damage the Russian energy industry is not popular with the American oil company ExxonMobil. He wants to push NATO east, but there is no indication he is seeking regime change in Moscow, and he has even tried to reduce some of the Sturm und Drang around the crisis. The neo-conservatives, on the other hand, want to arm Ukraine and put Putin's head on a stake.

Of course the "interests" the Obama administration is pursuing in Ukraine are not the "interests" of the majority of Americans-or Ukrainians, for that matter. They are the "interests" of the neo-cons, energy companies, arms manufacturers, and international financial organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank. In short, the interests of the 1 percent over the 99 percent.

Up until ISIL started cutting American journalists heads off, U.S. polls reflected overwhelming exhaustion with foreign wars. The Center for Public Integrity found 65 percent of Americans would choose to cut military spending. But Americans are also easily stampeded by bombast: The "Russians are coming" (while it was the West that marched east). "Chinese cyber warriors are going to crash our national power grid" (except we don't have a national power grid and the only countries that have engaged in cyber war are the U.S. and Israel). "And the turbans are going to get you in your bed" (even if U.S. intelligence agencies say the ISIL has not threatened the U.S.).

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the U.S. has spent almost $70 million an hour on security and around $62 million on domestic needs. Since 9/11 some 23 Americans have died as result of "Muslim terror plots" in the U.S., while the number of those killed by right-wing extremists is 34.

The reality is the U.S. cannot do much about climate change, growing economic inequality, infrastructure deterioration, and the slow motion collapse of our education system without confronting the $1 trillion it spends annually on military and defense related items, or the $4 to $6 trillion that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will eventually cost us.
With the U.S. about to begin an open-ended air war in Iraq and Syria (to join those in progress in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia) the cost of fighting an almost non-existent "terrorist" threat to the U.S. is about to sharply escalate. In whose interest is that?

Increasingly, what is in the interest of the few is incompatible with the interest of the many.

Reposted from Dispatches from the Edge

Graph: The inflation-adjusted defense spending of the United States federal government from 1962 to (forecasted) 2014. It is derived from the FY2012 "President's budget" Historical tables (Table 3.2-OUTLAYS BY FUNCTION AND SUBFUNCTION: 1962-2014), adjusted using CPI inflation data. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

What our society needs to learn from the Ray Rice scandal

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 16:29:00 +0000

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)

Last week, I wrote that a fading story surrounding the violent assault on Janay Palmer Rice by her then-fiancé and now husband, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, had gotten new legs.

What triggered this renewed attention was the public release of a new tape - a second tape - that shows Ray Rice knocking out Janay with two powerful blows to her face in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino hotel in February. The first tape had shown Ray Rice dragging her unconscious off the elevator, but not the actual assault.

Almost immediately upon the new tape's release, calls for a stiffer penalty for Rice (he had been given a two-game suspension by National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell) flooded the media. But the uproar didn't stop here. Criticism of Goodell for the way he handled this case of domestic violence became louder and wider. Some commentators, including myself, said Goodell should be fired.

Sensing this shift in public mood, the Ravens released Rice and Goodell suspended him from football indefinitely. But these actions didn't mollify the growing disquiet.

Indeed, disquiet turned to outrage by the end of the week when the Associated Press reported that the commissioner's office had access to the second tape months ago, in late March, in fact not long after the battering took place.

Goodell, not unexpectedly, went into and remains in damage control mode. First his office announced with great fanfare the formation of an "independent" committee, whose job is to determine if the second tape had been sent to the commissioner's office and if so, who knew about it. But the problem here, as more than one sports commentor mentioned, is that the committee members, some of whom have close ties to the NFL, will be paid by the NFL and will report to two owners of NFL teams.

Next Goodell did an interview with Norah O'Donnell on "CBS This Morning," where he denied any knowledge of the second tape. He never saw nor knew anything about it, he claimed, despite the fact that the police have an audio recording of someone (unnamed so far) in his office receiving it.

Then the NFL team owners, who are Goodell's employer, publicly expressed their unqualified support for him. And maybe none more than Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who himself is a subject of a sexual assault suit.

But the growing legion of critics was unwilling to fall for the commissioner's tale. If Goodell didn't know of the tape, he is either very incompetent or willfully ignorant, most said.

More than one cited his insistence in recent disciplinary cases against football players, coaches, and teams that ignorance can't be an excuse to either justify bad behavior or escape punishment.

For example, in the "Bountygate" scandal (paying bounties to physically harm the team's opponents) involving players on the New Orleans Saints football team two years ago, Goodell levied penalties against Saints head coach Sean Payton and general manager Mickey Loomis as well as Saints players. When Payton and Loomis claimed that they had no knowledge of the locker room practice, Goodell very righteously ruled "ignorance is no defense."

Thus, Goodell's claim now that he didn't have access to the second tape and thus didn't know the full story as to what happened on the elevator is, by his own standards, no defense. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, Rog!

But, thinking more about it, it really doesn't matter in some ways whether he did or did not know of the second tape. Nor does it really matter how he ruled on Bounty gate.

The fact of the matter is that Goodell forfeited his position as commissioner of the NFL in the first go-around in this investigation. How can anyone have any confidence in him when in the same "CBS This Morning interview mentioned above, in a reply to a question by O'Donnell about his light penalty - a two-game suspension - for Rice, he said,

"When we met with Ray Rice and his representatives, it was ambiguous about what actually happened."

O'Donnell asked the obvious follow-up question: What was "ambiguous about her laying unconscious on the floor being dragged out by her feet?"

"That was the result that we saw," Goodell incredibly replied. "We did not know what led up to that."

Which prompted another question from O'Donnell: "But what changed? I mean, on the first tape she was lying unconscious on the ground, being dragged out by her feet. Did you really need to see a videotape of Ray Rice punching her in the face to make this decision?"

To which Goodell replied, "No. We certainly didn't. And I will tell you that what we saw on the first videotape was troubling to us in and of itself. And that's why we took the action we took."

It is hard to find a single term that captures Goodell's rhetorical dance - obfuscating, duplicitous, disingenuous, evasive, dissembling ... the list could go on.

What it reveals is a very insensitive and callous commissioner - a commissioner lacking a moral compass and possessing an inexcusable blind spot when it comes to domestic violence against women in general, and, one has to think, against Black women in particular. It would be naïve to think that the unremitting demeaning of African American women in our culture, in large measure the doing of right-wing ideologues in the media, academia, think tanks, politics, and pulpits, has had no effect on public attitudes, Goodell's included.

Much the same argument could be made about the owners of the NFL teams. They too have a blind spot. And like Goodell, they can't wait until the controversy surrounding Ray Rice and other episodes of domestic violence involving Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers and Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers (and now the parental abuse charge against Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson) blow over and the football season goes on unencumbered by such "distractions."

People who follow the game are saying that the owners will take violence against women seriously and will consider disciplinary action against Goodell only if and when corporate sponsors begin to pull their financial support, which sponsors like Budweiser are hinting they might do.

In other words, the battering of women by men matters in the exclusive world of NFL owners only to the degree that it interferes with their cash flow.

But then again such a calculus is not peculiar to football. Profit-making no matter the human and social cost penetrates every aspect of our society. Nearly everything is subordinated to the cash nexus. Unless there is an aroused and united people demanding and fighting for justice, human values and decency - not least the right of every woman to live without the fear of physical threat and violence and in conditions of full equality - stand no chance in the face of the machine of corporate profit-making.

I don't say this to excuse Roger Goodell or Jerry Jones and the other football owners or Ray Rice or Greg Hardy or Ray McDonald or Adrian Peterson. I do so to bring into clearer view the deep social roots of this problem and the necessity of many-layered and deep-going solutions. Cleaning up football is a beginning, but not an end. Much more will have to be said and done.

As I said in my earlier article, football, despite its violent and masculinist culture, isn't an island unto itself, but rather a microcosm of social crisis that ripples across every segment of our larger society.

Nor, I should add, is domestic violence confined to any race. Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Ray McDonald, and Adrian Peterson, who are African Americans, are high-profile perpetrators of domestic violence. But hidden from view is a broad array of men of different races, incomes, backgrounds, and classes who are batterers of women. Many studies prove this.

And yet, we run the danger at this moment of creating a misperception - an untruth - because of the public prominence of professional football players and the 24-hour news cycle, that African American males have a lock on domestic violence of women (and children). That untruth can't be allowed to propagate.

It would not only sustain a belief that has no grounding in fact, but also divert public attention and initiative from the incontestable fact that this is a problem and crisis that engulfs our our entire society, and men of all races and backgrounds in the first place.

Photo: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. thebiglead.com/Michael Shamburger @mshamburger1

Sweaty palms and election choices: Your mailman talks turkey

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:04:00 +0000

I glanced furtively at my hands. The knuckles were turning bone white as the blood rushed to my fingertips. Grasping the handle bar controls with a death grip, we were ascending eight miles on barely a road straight into the clouds. I looked once to my right and saw nothing but air and rocks for as far down as I could see. Focus was key here: focusing completely on this hellacious pathway. As we groaned up the tar-covered thoroughfare in first gear, I yelled out each mile marker as we passed it. One, two, three, then finally eight. We had reached the summit of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. The Great White Steed, our 1,000-pound prize of an iron horse, climbed the Mt. Washington Auto Road in stately fashion.

It was 44 degrees up there on this particular August day. As I tried to inhale the splendor of the views at 6,288 feet of elevation, only one thought was racing through my simple mind: I still have to ride back down this infernal road. A pleasant distraction helped to get my mind together. I enter the visitor's center and what do I see? On the summit of Mt. Washington, on the highest peak in America's Northeast, sits a post office. An employee goes up to this post office every day, collects the mail, and then brings the mail down that road again back to civilization. After scribbling a few postcards, and with a regained confidence, we rode the eight miles down from the summit in first gear. We had conquered the Mt. Washington Auto Road, and I have the sticker slapped on my Harley to prove it.

After traveling all across this land, from coast to coast, from north to south, that was not the worst road we have traveled on. There was a back road in Colorado I was sure we were not going to traverse unscathed. The many torrential rainstorms Madame Dick and I have endured along our excursions could fill an evening of conversation. I do not like horrible roads or detestable weather, yet we keep coming back for more year after year. Why? I have found that there is a sense of satisfaction unlike any other that comes from overcoming a fear and escaping from your comfort zone. That sense of staying comfortable leads to lack of growth and a lethargic state of being. Eleanor Roosevelt said it best: "Do one thing every day that scares you."

We are entering a most historic election cycle in the state of Michigan right now. We have a governor's race that is at a dead heat between Republican Rick Snyder and Democrat Mark Schauer. The race for the U.S. Senate seat between Republican Terri Lynn Land and Democrat Gary Peters is a 50-50 tie as well, according to the latest polls. We have a chance to throw out the "Nerd" Snyder, whose administration made Michigan a "right to work" state as well as making corporate interests a priority before the interests of the working class. Terri Lynn Land is cut from the same cloth: Her husband is a multi-millionaire real estate developer. Ironically, she showed making only $33,000 on her last year's tax return.

On the other hand, Mark Schauer is a card-carrying union brother. He belongs to the Laborers Union and proudly waved his card to the crowd at the Detroit Labor Day March. Gary Peters is an honorary member of our National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 3126. In his four years in Congress, he has supported every piece of endorsed legislation by our Union to preserve the Postal Service. He is a motorcycle enthusiast; so he'll be getting two votes from me!

The choice is clear. Crystal clear. But we need to do more than just get to the polls on Election Day. With the numbers being this close, we have to engage and influence our friends, family members, co-workers, and even some strangers to vote for these and other pro-worker candidates. This is the hard work, the work that most of us want to shy away from. We need to make phone calls, knock on doors, put up yard signs, talk politics with family and friends. We need you to step outside your comfort zone for just one day and make a commitment to yourself that you will do some of this hard work. The other side has millions of dollars to push this election in their direction. We have just thousands of dollars, but we have one thing more powerful if we harness the energy; the power of one-on-one communication. People Power!

As I was delivering my route last Saturday, I saw a familiar face walking down the street toward me with a clipboard in his hand. It was my friend Mark, and he was out canvassing the neighborhood and knocking on doors doing this good work for Schauer and Peters. A retired school teacher and a committed union and community activist, I asked him how it was going. He answered me quite frankly, "I really don't like doing this knocking on doors thing, but I know I have to." He knows he has to. And we have to. We cannot put the burden of doing this important, uncomfortable work strictly on the shoulders of folks like Mark. The stakes are too high. One person speaking up makes more noise than a thousand people who remain silent.

Photo: John Dick (courtesy of Jacqueline Dick)

J. J. Goldberg speaks on Israel and Palestine: Is there a way out?

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 16:48:00 +0000

The distinguished journalist J. J. Goldberg is currently editor-at-large of the Forward, the national Jewish newsweekly published in New York that is the sister publication of the 1897-founded and still published Yiddish newspaper Forverts. Goldberg has served as a syndicated columnist, and as U.S. Bureau Chief of the Israeli newsmagazine, The Jerusalem Report. In 1996 he authored a study of Jewish political clout, "Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment." He is a sought-after guest on many media outlets for up-to-the-minute commentary on Israeli developments.

As a longtime writer embedded in the worldwide Jewish community, and known for his fresh independence, he is taken into confidence by a wide range of actors. He often serves as an unofficial go-between, connecting people and movements who are not officially on speaking terms, floating proposals, concessions and talking points before the parties get to the conference table.

It was J. J. Goldberg who broke the news, in the Forward, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response to the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers early this summer had been manipulative and exploitative. Almost as of the first moment, from cell phone recordings, the government knew the boys were dead, but used the next three weeks to orchestrate a manhunt up and down the West Bank, arresting hundreds and killing several "suspects," not forgetting to destroy their homes in the process, and whipping up Israeli fury against Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular, which he accused, without any evidence, of the killings.

Many people around the world had already lost any hope that Netanyahu was at all serious about pursuing peace with the Palestinians. This new level of cynicism shocked even Israel's traditional allies. Goldberg deserves much credit for, in effect, blowing the whistle on the Prime Minister.

Goldberg came to speak in Los Angeles on September 7, sponsored by Ameinu (formerly Labor Zionist Alliance) and attended by some 75 deeply concerned people. The title of his talk: "Israel and the Palestinians: No Way Out?"

The pessimism implied by Goldberg's question may be justified, but it's his explanation of "facts on the ground" that is so interesting. Following are some of Goldberg's key observations:

Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, just about half the population is Palestinian. Gaza, controlled by Israel, which intentionally isolates it from other Palestinians living in the West Bank, has at best an ambiguous political status, while the West Bank is under extremely repressive Israeli military control. For the last almost half a century now, since the 1967 War when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Golan Heights and Sinai, there has been no agreement about the borders of the territory that is or is not part of Israel, not to mention what borders an eventual Palestinian state will assume.

In the meantime, as the prospect looms in a future peace agreement of possibly dismantling Jewish settlements in the occupied territories-as happened in Gaza-the numbers and percentage of modern Orthodox Israelis in the military has grown exponentially. In half a dozen years the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) may have a cadre of commanding officers no longer answerable to the Israeli government, but to their fundamentalist rabbis back home, some of them in the very settlements they may be asked to evacuate. These extremist rabbis claim that "God gave us this land" and would punish Israel harshly for ever giving it up.

As the recent film "The Gatekeepers" clearly showed, every living former head of Israel's "Homeland Security," Shin Bet, is in favor of Israel coming to terms over a final border with the Palestinians. These men have been joined, according to Goldberg, who knows them all, by almost every other Army and Mossad (secret service) leader past and present. They recognize, more than anyone, that the present situation is untenable: Surely the IDF can ably defend the country's borders. What is unsustainable in the long run, they say, is controlling a "Greater Israel" of undefined borders in which so large a percentage of the populations is angry, resentful, and repressed basically under conditions of permanent house arrest. That can only worsen over time if nothing gets resolved.

It comes down to this: From their point of view, Israel would be far safer if the Palestinians were on that side of the border, not on this side. Not for the generals, and for all practical purposes for no Israelis (not to mention for Jews worldwide), is a unitary secular state a possibility, not in this historical epoch, and maybe not ever. Two nations exist there on the same land. Each seeks and requires its own national destiny.

In short, for mystical, Biblical reasons, the religious zealots seek to hold onto the West Bank, or what they call the ancient Judea and Samaria, while the military (at least until now) believes that the West Bank under continued Israeli control is indefensible.

In 2002 the Arab League adopted a program, drafted by the Saudis and signed onto by 22 Arab states, that called for a final settlement, including normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel, based on the 1967 borders, with appropriate exchanges of territory that might incorporate into Israel some 80 percent or more of the current settlements. That offer has been renewed several times, most recently in 2012, and has been agreed to by all the non-Arab Muslim states, including Indonesia and Iran.

But, Goldberg explained, Israel's internal politics are such that although a majority of Knesset members would agree to a "1967" plan, they are unable under Israel's parliamentary system to form a government. In part it was Netanyahu's idea to ratchet up an almost fascistic anti-Arab sentiment in Israel in order to guarantee future majorities for right-wing parties holding the balance of power in the Knesset.

Israel's educational establishment, and just as important, Israel's increasingly militaristic media, has served to keep Israeli citizens ignorant. According to Goldberg, 85 percent of the Israeli public has never heard of the Arab peace plan. He fantasizes about a grand international press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with all the Arab countries publicly reaffirming the plan, and a broad-based organization in Israel, headed by generals, granting its approval and support.

So much depends on changing Israeli public opinion, on capturing a peace-oriented majority in Knesset, on electing a prime minister willing to sign an agreement. Can this happen? Can it happen before the religious demographics within the IDF no longer make it possible? Can it happen before secular-minded Israelis lose faith in the country's future, and start leaving (a process that has actually been going on for many decades already)? Is there a way out, indeed? Goldberg honestly doesn't know. "Prophecy," he says, "is for children and fools, and I am neither."

And yet, is it good politics for progressives to passively "wait and see" what develops in Israel under admittedly gloomy conditions? Proud Israelis, like most people, do not like being ordered or pushed around. Official Israeli policy seems to be: Stomp out all authentic movements for peace, domestic and global, such as Peace Now or J Street, by claiming they "support Arab terror," and watch the American politicians stumble over each other in the rush to defend Israel, especially her precious "right to defend herself."

The world, however, does not care to sit on the sidelines and watch two mortal enemies slug it out, both of them feeling like wounded martyrs, but one a military superpower, the other a stateless, restless people struggling to establish a home for themselves. A global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) has emerged, and while Israel hates to admit that it's making any inroads, millions, perhaps billions of people are seeing Israel today in an unfavorable light. The BDS campaign can only grow, to the point of making a real dent in Israel's prosperity, if there is no discernible movement toward peace.

For Americans the challenge is to keep up the pressure on Congress, the State Department, and the President, as well as on corporations with investments in the West Bank, to adopt policies that are not only "pro-Israel" but pro a democratic Israel at peace, and pro-Palestine as well. A solution to this long irritant to world peace - from a technical standpoint not that far out of reach, as all the essential elements are well known - would be a positive affirmation that just about any global problem can be resolved with sufficient political will.

Photo: Sept. 3, Palestinian children play outside a U.N. school in Gaza City where they live after their houses were destroyed by Israeli strikes. With a population of 1.8 million people, the Gaza strip is a densely populated coastal strip of urban warrens and agricultural land that still bears the scars of previous rounds of fighting. Rebuilding Gaza will take years, and some Palestinian officials say it could cost in excess of $6 billion. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Lessons from Chile on September 11

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 13:27:00 +0000

September 11 was also a day of terror -- in Chile in 1973, "I've been through this before," Chilean author Ariel Dorfman wrote of the 2001 U. S. terror day. "The world will never be the same," he recalls Chileans saying after their September 11.

President Salvador Allende's Popular Unity movement was the product of long, peaceful political struggle on the part of justice-hungry compatriots who came together as diverse leftist currents. Amidst great hopes, Popular Unity took charge of the government in 1970, through elections. Three years later a military-dominated government under Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, fascist in all but name, carried out a violent coup and would reign until 1990.

In his farewell message while waiting for his death on September 11, 1973, President Allende explained what was happening: "Foreign capital and imperialism, united with reactionary elements, created the climate for the armed forces to break with tradition [breaking with constitutional guarantees.]"

The next year, writing in the British New Statesmen, the famous novelist and astute political observer Gabriel Garcia Marquez identified a contradiction; Allende was both a "congenital foe of violence and a passionate revolutionary." His followers likewise wanted change that was both peaceful and revolutionary. Hopes were high, but a script calling for fatal consequences was already written. That was tragic.

The dilemma was impossible. Says Garcia Marquez: "Experience taught him (Allende) too late that a system cannot be changed by a government without power." That lesson has application now. In Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia where elected socialists are at the heads of governments and are advancing programs. What is their power?

Perhaps the most poignant message left over from U.S. support for the Chilean coup relates to a U.S. approach to terror that seems not to change. Murder, chaos, and fear were predictable, before the coup. Presumably U.S. schemers regarded these as acceptable outcomes. Such fallout had marked interventions in the region earlier in the century, examples being Haiti, 1915-1934, and Nicaragua, 1912-1933. And easy tolerance of terrorism continues now as regards Cuba, Colombia, and Honduras, and in regions elsewhere in the world.

The distinction is thus drawn between good terrorists, so to speak, and bad terrorists. One set was at work on September 11 in 1973, the other that day in 2001.

The Chilean coup has lessons for people today concerned about U.S. domination in the world. Henry Kissinger, then National Security Council Director, famously articulated U.S. motives in 1970 in anticipation of a likely Allende electoral victory. He told U.S. officials planning support for the coup that, "I don't see why we have to stand by and watch a country go communist by the irresponsibility of its own people." One takes Kissinger's sentiment then as precedent for attitudes of entitlement and control prevailing today.

After the Chilean coup, U.S. interventionists were adjusting methods on how to bring down objectionable governments. Direct use of U.S. troops, military proxies, or U.S. agents has waned since Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, Colombia in 1964, the Dominican Republic in 1965, and Nicaragua in the early 1980's. The U. S. government began to prioritize destabilization campaigns. The U.S. role in Chile was a forerunner of actions taken in Venezuela toward political and economic destabilization of a country engaged in building socialism.

Latin American Regional solidarity organizations emerged. The principal ones are the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Their watchful presence may serve to block, or at least inhibit, violent, far reaching U.S. interventions in the future.

Salvador Allende was a teacher who projected courage and optimism. In his last message he said, "Tomorrow belongs to the people, the workers. Humanity advances toward the conquest of a better live. History is ours and the people will make it."

Photo: Chile's President Michelle Bachelet, left, greets Isabel Allende, head of the Senate and daughter of former President Salvador Allende, before a ceremony marking the 41st anniversary of Chile's 1973 military coup, at La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile, , Sept. 11, 2014. (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)

Economic spin doctors

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:20:00 +0000

HARPER'S FERRY, W Va. - It's easy to feel you are being pressured against your intuition and instinct to accept a miserable marriage when listening to many economics pundits, columnists and bloggers trying to be "upbeat" about the economy. This is the case with more than a few liberal, as well as ordinary pro-business writers.

For example, the President, the Economist, the editorial pages of the Washington Post and other papers, all tout the steady "progress and recovery" reflected by recent declines in the official unemployment rate. The last paragraph of the best of these articles will mention, but not explain, that unemployment stats can decline because millions are simply leaving the workforce, as they are doing, and creating that "standing at the altar" feeling of abandonment. Are they sick of the low wages? Is it because the baby boomers are forced to retire early because of jobs destroyed in the 2008 depression? Is it because of so-called "structural" problems in matching jobs to existing skills? Is it because of the Republican juggernaut that we impose the miserable failure of austerity economics to substitute government action to aid job creation? Why, for example, are young people among the biggest forces virtually locked out of the workforce since 2008? No one seems to know.

Despite the flattery of pro-biz writers, many Americans feel gloomy about the economy. Here in Jefferson County, W. Va., I periodically ask people how they think "the recovery" is going. Most often, I get a deer-in-the-headlights look, followed by "huh?" And Jefferson County is doing better than all other West Virginia counties due to some increase in local tourism as a consequence of D.C. area folks looking for a quaint, but cheaper vacation destination.

Explaining the gloom are two graphs from Jared Bernstein's economic blog. They show the gaps between real GDP growth, corporate profitability, the stock market, and middle-class household incomes.

The graph above shows modest improvement in Gross Domestic Product -- the usual baseline for economic growth. But corporate profits and the stock market are increasing 4 and 9 times the GDP growth rate, while median family income -- the broadest measure of working people's economic health -- has declined 3% since the onset of the 2008 crash and depression!

Despite rosy press stories about recovery, the American people are not buying it, as the results of the poll below dramatically show:

The poll demonstrates the increasing loss of hope by American workers that more positive pre-Reagan trends in wages and incomes will return. It will take numerous years, at full employment, to even repair the enormous damage of this depression --- estimated by Jared Bernstein to be an average annual $7500 per household.

Think about it: A full employment economy is an economy that must: a) completely reject austerity politics; b) raise the minimum wage; c) return proportional increases in worker productivity to workers' wages and salaries; d) greatly expand worker bargaining power and rights; e) tax outsized 1 percent incomes to pay for doubling educational, infrastructure, and environmental performance.

How close can we get to that without virtually overthrowing the corporate and billionaire dictatorship that seems to be emerging?

Time to leave behind the flirtations with economist spin doctors, and find some real partners!

Graph source: BEA, Standard and Poor, Sentier Research.

More war will not defeat ISIS and terrorism

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 13:02:00 +0000

As we reflect on the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that shook our nation, it appears little progress has been made in the "war on terror." The gruesome beheadings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by the shadowy Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) are testimony to that. But the sad reality is that too many U.S. actions, both before 9/11 and since, have inflamed the problem of terrorism. And both liberal and conservative hawks are now pushing for more of the same.

Remember that al-Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden got their start with U.S. support in the 1980s in Afghanistan. This fact was acknowledged by none other than the very "establishment" bipartisan 9/11 Commission report. Al-Qaeda and bin-Laden were backed by the U.S. in a war that was supposedly to defend democracy for the Afghan people. But the real purpose was to advance a top U.S. geopolitical aim, defeating the Soviet Union. Close to 3,000 Americans paid the price for this on Sept. 11, 2001. The Afghan people have paid a terrible price throughout and continue to do so.

That U.S. military venture laid the seeds for what we're seeing today. ISIS is just the latest incarnation of vicious, reactionary extremism wrapped in a distortion of religion, funded by key U.S. allies - Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular.

On Thursday night, President Obama announced an expanded military campaign reaching into Syria as part of a strategy to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS.This is a dangerous development.

Administration officials say the Syria campaign could last three years or more. Antony Blinken, Obama's deputy national security adviser, told CNN, "It's going to take time, and it will probably go beyond even this administration to get to the point of defeat." That is disturbing. We recall that during the Iraq quagmire, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talked of a "long, hard slog."

Last week, the president announced a new "core coalition" for the military campaign against ISIS. The coalition is composed of the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Turkey. Coalition of the willing?

That announcement came on the sidelines of a NATO summit meeting in the UK. The New York Times noted: "But some diplomats said they were uncomfortable using a summit meeting of the 28-nation alliance as a backdrop for a smaller group with no NATO imprimatur and, except for Turkey, no named Muslim partners."

That raises the question of why the NATO meeting did not officially sign on. Is it possible that some members, looking at the chaos and rise of extremist militias in Libya following the 2011 U.S./NATO bombing campaign, were not eager to launch another military venture in the region?

After in-person lobbying by Secretary of State John Kerry, the Arab League announced support for national and international measures to stop ISIS. It did not specifically endorse U.S. military actions but, according to NBC News, "diplomatic sources" said the Arab League statement "could be read as a tacit agreement to back Washington's campaign against the group." It is widely reported that some Arab rulers, most notably Saudi Arabia, were angry that Obama had so far refused to directly intervene militarily in Syria. The Saudis, aiming to advance their own power in the region, are hot to topple Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime. Does this Arab League agreement represent a deal with the Saudis and others with their own agendas, to carry out regime change in Syria?

Have we learned nothing from the disastrous military regime-change operation in Iraq? Or from the air-war regime-change operation in Libya that has left the country in a state of collapse and beset by extremist militias?

In addition to the much-publicized beheadings of the two U.S. reporters, ISIS has spread death and devastation in the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria, including beheadings of civilians, rape and other abuse of women, ethnic cleansing killings and expulsions. It does demand world attention and action. But what action?

From Afghanistan to Libya to Iraq, military interventions have not brought "success" even by U.S. policymakers' terms. (Nor have drone assassinations in Yemen and Somalia or the killing of Osama bin-Laden, cited as positive examples by the president in his speech Thursday.) They certainly have not made those countries more secure or stable or democratic. They have not ended terrorism there or elsewhere: after each of these ventures, terrorism has sprouted new and more virulent shoots. They have not made our country safer. In short, they have been horrible failures. They have, however, cost millions of innocent lives, and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars - while racking up unimaginable fortunes for corporate war manufacturers and contractors. Indeed, from the point of view of war profits alone, does it even matter who's winning, as long as they're fighting with our weapons?

The president announced efforts to cut off funding flowing to ISIS and related groups, and to block people from other countries from traveling to the Middle East to fight for ISIS. These are good and vital steps. Of course, the administration ought to be self-critical about the fact that it contributed to the problem by backing an unclear, shifting array of "rebel" groups in Syria, helping turn a democratic movement into armed chaos, thereby helping give birth to ISIS. And these positive steps are likely to be undermined by ramped up moves to do more of what helped cause the problem in the first place - aid supposedly "moderate" rebels in Syria.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation has put forward excellent recommendations for what the U.S. should do. Initially addressed to the crisis in Iraq, they apply to Syria as well. We urge you to read their statement in full. Because of the urgency of the situation, we include the recommendations here:

In the short term:

* Provide humanitarian assistance to those who are fleeing the violence. Continue to air drop food and much needed supplies in coordination with the United Nations.

* Bring the bombing campaign to an immediate end and set a strategic frame for U.S. interests in Iraq. Already the purported justifications and goals of U.S. military engagement have changed from genocide prevention to rolling back the Islamic State. Such dangerous mission creep increases the prospects of protracted U.S. military intervention in Iraq.

* At a minimum, members of Congress should insist that the president seek congressional authorization before taking any further military action.

* Stop channeling more weapons into an already volatile situation. ISIS is well-armed in large part because the group has captured U.S. weapons provided to the Iraqi government. Further arming the Kurdish or Iraqi army only adds fuel to an already raging fire.

In the medium term:

* Work regionally to impose an arms embargo against all armed actors in Iraq and Syria. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are key regional players who have provided weapons to the armed opposition, including ISIS, in Syria. The U.S. has provided weapons to Iraqi security forces despite widespread human rights violations, and many of those weapons have ended up in the hands of ISIS.

* Work through the UN Security Council to impose financial sanctions against armed actors in the region. Cutting off financial support can go a long way toward to blunting extremist violence.

In the long term:

* Work for a political settlement to the crisis in Iraq and Syria. These two conflicts are intricately connected and should be addressed holistically. Return to the Geneva peace process for a negotiated settlement to the civil war in Syria and expand the agenda to include regional peace and stability. Ensure Iran's full participation in the process.

* Address both political and economic grievances of the population - particularly among vulnerable populations where ISIS is most likely to feed off the desperation of Sunni-majority and other marginalized communities. Strengthening long term political and economic security will help to build a stable and non-sectarian society in Iraq.

* Support Iraqi civil society efforts to build peace and reconciliation at the community level. Deep sectarian and ethnic divisions have long been exacerbated by U.S. military intervention and the current crisis. Sustainable peace will require peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts from the ground up."

The Friends Committee urges, "The U.S. must break out of this cycle of violence - acting immediately to address the crisis at hand and save civilian lives, but in a way that will help to unravel, not deepen, the entrenched conflicts behind the violence. Military action cannot address these root causes of violence."

We couldn't agree more. We urge you to contact the White House and your senators and congressional representative and ask them to take these steps and turn away from military action.

Photo: Whitehouse.gov

New upsurge against racism and police crimes is being born

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:58:00 +0000

The African American Equality Commission of the Communist Party USA released the following statement on the killing of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, Mo.

With the cold-blooded murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot six times by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, once again our hearts and souls are torn asunder. Once again, millions of African Americans and people of all races are asking, "How long will these injustices endure?"

We must renew the struggle and confront and defeat the racist idea that Black lives are expendable in this country that is our home.

Daily mass demonstrations all over the world have continued for over a week. A new mass upsurge against racism and against police crimes is being born.

We must tell our children that although we have traveled the long and arduous roads toward freedom, we have not arrived yet. We still must struggle for a just and fully inclusive society. In times such as these, African American people are looking for approaches that will bring about swift justice and accelerate our fight for freedom.

In Dr. King's "I Have a Dream Speech" (1963) he spoke of many trials and tribulations that African Americans have historically faced. His words still ring true today:

"We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.... We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity with signs saying 'For Whites Only.' We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing to vote for. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

What do those words mean for us today?

First and foremost, we must demand justice for Michael's family and community!

We must demand a full federal investigation into the murder of Michael Brown! If any evidence of excessive force is found-and we firmly believe this is true-Officer Darren Wilson must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We demand that Governor Jay Nixon appoint another prosecuting attorney because St. Louis prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, has a record stained by racial bias toward people of color. Furthermore, considering the history of racism in the courts, the jury selection should reflect the racial makeup of the community where the crime took place. As of now, we've learned that the grand jury is two-thirds white when the majority of the St. Louis County population is Black.

We also demand that a full apology be extended to Michael's family and community by the captain of the police department of Ferguson. Although a price tag cannot be put on the loss of one's child, city and state authorities should compensate the family for what Michael would have potentially earned had his life not been prematurely taken. What we lost was more than a life: It was an opportunity to contribute to building a stronger community. It was an opportunity for this young man to get an education and a decent job, and raise a family.

We need broad-based unity within our own communities! We must bring together both organized and unorganized sectors of the Black community. Mobilize the Black vote for the November mid-term elections, including a special effort to win more progressive Black representation on all levels of government.
We must have police review boards that have prosecutorial powers! When police officers commit a crime against humanity, they too must go to jail!
We must be full participants in the fight for good union paying jobs for our people! We must challenge all racial discrimination in hiring. According to Senator Bernard Sanders from Vermont, African American unemployment is at 35 percent and in St. Louis, it's even higher.
Work with the ACLU especially in communities of color. Since young people are a special target for racial profiling, they should know their rights and how to protect themselves in the event they are stopped by the police. It must be mandatory for every school district to provide this training.
All police - old and new-- must go through extensive race relations training. Community-sponsored events must define what are our rights when dealing with law enforcement?
Recruit law enforcement from the respective communities.
Federal and local funding for more recreational facilities in communities of color.
Bring back Black History Classes to our schools! Our children must learn accurate representations of their history. If the educational system is so poor that the children can barely read or write, we run the risk of lowering the nation's productivity and creating an unsafe and unhealthy environment for Americans.
More free mental health clinics for all.

The struggle for many of these ideas will take time. Once again, the cry reverberates throughout our land, "How long?" We believe not long, if we can successfully dislodge the underpinnings of institutionalized racism.

This can only happen if we seek every opportunity to build greater unity within the working class despite color, gender or religious beliefs -a goal not easy to achieve, but fundamental to the liberation of us all.

As MLK stated (1963):

"But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

"We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. NOW is the time to make real the promises of democracy. NOW is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. NOW is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. NOW is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

The Communist Party USA is committed to broadening multiracial people's unity to achieve that goal. Join with us!

Photo: Protesters march on W. Florissant Ave., in Ferguson, Mo., Aug. 19, demanding justice for Mike Brown. (PW/Earchiel Johnson)

Ray Rice and his enablers: why men must speak out

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 16:32:00 +0000

On Sunday night, TMZ Sports released a new video showing Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out Janay Rice, his then-fiancée and now his wife, on an elevator in a casino hotel. By Monday morning, sports networks and morning talk shows were abuzz, talking again about what is far too familiar in our national life - male violence against women - and the mishandling of this gruesome incident by National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell and the Ravens football team - not to mention the entire National Football League.

An earlier tape that had showed Rice dragging Janay Rice, obviously unconscious, off the elevator, but not striking her had resulted in an investigation of the incident by the commissioner's office and eventually a two-game suspension of Rice. But, to Goodell's surprise, the announcement of the suspension caused a firestorm of protests. The great majority of sports commentators (many of whom are retired athletes), advocates against domestic violence, and the general public strongly felt that the investigation disregarded most of the protocol as to how matters of domestic violence should be dealt with, and that the punishment was much too light - so much so that Goodell, who usually drips with arrogance, had to make a public apology for his mishandling of this domestic violence incident.

But with the release of this new tape showing Rice actually knocking out his then fiancée in the elevator with two punches, what Goodell, the Ravens, and the NFL owners had thought they had quickly washed their hands of is again aflame in the 24-hour news cycle, where millions will revisit this incident and its mishandling by Goodell and the NFL.

In an attempt to get ahead of this new tape and the buzz that it was expected to create, the commissioner's office released a statement to the media early yesterday, saying that it didn't know about this tape when Goodell and its other representatives met with Rice and his wife and then announced Rice's two-game suspension.

No pass for Goodell, Ravens and NFL

Even if we accept their claim (which is pretty hard for me to do), its unavailability at time of the investigation shouldn't give Goodell (and for that matter, the Ravens) a pass for the way that they (mis) handled this gruesome episode of domestic violence. And from what was said by commentators in the sport's world and elsewhere yesterday and today, it's more than apparent that NFL and Goodell's defense that "we didn't have the tape at the time of our investigation so we really didn't know until now what really happened" isn't going to fly.

Think about it: before Goodell as well as Ravens coach Jim Harbaugh and Ravens officials saw this new tape, what did they think had transpired on that elevator? Did the new tape really tell them something that they didn't already know? Wasn't the first tape enough to tell that something very wrong had happened in that elevator?

C'mon, it takes little imagination to reach the conclusion that Ray Rice did something very, very violent to Janay Rice in that elevator before the doors opened. What else could explain the fact that when doors did open, she was flat on her back, badly bruised, and unconscious?

Goodell as well as the Ravens' coaches and management had to know that Janay Rice had been brutalized. Goodell is very arrogant, as I said, but he's not very stupid! Sorry, Roger! Don't expect most people to buy into the idea that if you had been in possession of this new tape earlier, you would have acted differently.

So what now?

Well, last night the Ravens released Rice and the NFL has terminated his contract and banned him indefinitely from football. Should he be banned for life? Is one year enough? While these questions will be discussed and decided, no less urgent is that the "enablers," to use Keith Oberman's term, not be given either a free pass or a light reprimand. Goodell should be fired. He mishandled nearly every aspect of this incident. It is obvious now that he never wanted a full investigation of this episode of domestic violence. His main concern was to stuff the "genie" of violence against Janay Rice, and women generally, back into the bottle ASAP and turn public attention back to the good vibes and the mountains of revenue that will flow to the owners and the league with the opening of a new season. In short, Goodell revealed both enormous insensitivity to the reality of domestic violence against women and a loyalty no matter what the cost to the league's owners and the league's bottom line.

As for the Ravens they shouldn't get a free pass either. They too were enablers and should be penalized for their role. But even if all this is done (and it won't be done without a public outcry), neither the National Football League nor our society can let things rest here. Why? Because many people know that what happened on that elevator isn't isolated or infrequent.

Teachable moment

As quiet as it is kept, violence against women permeates society as well as sports. It doesn't come out of the blue or once in a blue moon. Instead, it is reoccurring, widespread, and deeply embedded in - and a too frequent expression of - male supremacist behavior and thinking. Spokespeople for organizations fighting against domestic violence have amply documented this fact. And yet there is little evidence that this shameful and violent reality is being attended to on the scale that it urgently requires.

Changing our sports and broader culture overnight won't be easy, but the controversy and discussion surrounding Ray Rice and the shameful response of Goodell, the Ravens, and the NFL should not become lost in tomorrow's news cycle. Instead, they should be turned into a teachable and action moment. This teachable moment should include all forms of violence, including the horrendous rates of sexual assault on college campuses and across the nation.

Each of us, and especially men, fathers, and male athletes should find ways to speak out and do something about what can accurately be called a national social crisis. The first victims of violence against women are obviously women, but it also morally scars, diminishes and disrupts our community, social institutions, our society, and each of us individually.

End gender inequality

No country or culture or class or nationality or race has a franchise on misogyny and violence against women. It cuts across all these social groups. And while we should join others in condemning acts of violence against women in other lands, it should in no way take away from the imperative to clean up our own backyard. Moreover, it has to be addressed at every level where people live, work, recreate, and gather - and maybe none more so than in politics, where right-wing extremists in the Republican Party and on talk radio and TV, animated by the most backward male supremacist ideas, unapologetically make "war" on women. After all it was the GOP who stonewalled the renewal of the Violence against Women Act because they rejected extending the law's protections for women who are undocumented immigrants, Native Americans, LGBT, or students on campuses.

And finally, such a campaign should be combined with other initiatives and measures to bring an end to gender inequality in our society.

Photo: Baltimore Ravens tight end Owen Daniels, left, and head coach John Harbaugh laugh during an NFL football practice at the team's headquarters, Monday, Sept. 8, 2014, in Owings Mills, Md. Ravens running back Ray Rice was let go by the Ravens on Monday and suspended indefinitely by the NFL after a video was released showing the running back striking his then-fiancée in February. (AP/Patrick Semansky)

Chicagoans demand justice for victims of police crimes and torture

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:13:00 +0000

The Chicago Sun-Times announced Sept. 4, that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon and FBI Special Agent Robert Holley have stated that there is no "sweeping investigation of shootings by Chicago police officers."

This statement by the Feds was released a week after an attorney, representing the police, wrote to the Fraternal Order of Police warning that an FBI probe of the CPD was in the making.

Not only has the U.S. Attorney and the FBI denied the existence of a "sweeping investigation," they basically rule out the need for any. Fardon and Holley issued this rather shocking statement: "As Acting Assistant Attorney General Molly Moran stated today, there is no open pattern-and-practice civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department."

On September 3, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression presented to U.S. Attorney Fardon a complaint letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, signed by 65 victims of police crimes of murder and torture.

This letter documents that there is in fact an "open pattern-and-practice of civil rights violations and crimes perpetrated by the Chicago Police Department.

Emmett Farmer, the father of Flint Farmer (who was murdered by a police officer while lying defenseless on the ground) was among the signers of the letter. Yet within 48 hours after it was presented, we witness this shameless arrogance by representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice.

We live in a city that is infamous for police torturing hundreds of innocent, young Black and Latino people, most of who remain incarcerated, and where too many parents are still grief-stricken because their children were murdered by the police.

So why on earth in these circumstances would the U.S. Attorney and the FBI rush to a news conference to assure us that they are not investigating a pattern of civil rights violations and crimes committed by the Chicago Police Department?

This is unacceptable. This is an insult to the people of Chicago, to the victims and their families and to the numerous investigating reporters who have demonstrated an open pattern-and-practice of civil rights violations and police crimes.

We, like the people of Ferguson, Missouri, are demanding a federal investigation and justice for all victims of police crimes.

Frank Chapman is Education Director and member of the executive committee of the Chicago Alliance Against Racial and Political Oppression.

Photo: Names of known victims of police torture conducted by CPD and Commander Jon Burge. There are still countless others unknown. Banner at rally against police crimes Aug. 28, Chicago. John Bachtell/PW

Hope is a theme of the BRICS summit

Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:56:00 +0000

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit recently concluded in Brazil, in July 2014, carries the hope of change awaited by many peoples denied their righteous place in the world community of nations.

When Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa formed an economic bloc for developing the industrial capacity in the South/South region [also known as South America-Africa cooperation], the right to self-determination for many still remained a distant reality.

Let U.S. recall that the awakening of Latin America in the wake of the victorious Cuban revolution of 1959 is a continual process of change. State terrorism, military intervention, hotel bombings and an economic, commercial and financial chokehold underwritten by an extraterritorial Helms-Burton law (1996) fell short in the U.S. attempt to isolate Cuba.

Formation of a deep respect between Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez Frias based on the Bolivarian principles of mutual reciprocity and political independence catalyzed unexpected change. By 2009, the Bolivarian Alliance of Latin America (ALBA) had solidified its reach to include Nicaragua, Bolivia. Venezuela, Ecuador, Uruguay, Dominica, Trinidad/Tobago, Cuba, St. Vincent, Antigua, though Honduras and Paraguay remain estranged from the group at this time. In 2012, consolidation of 33 countries known as CELAC was achieved. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States referred to as the second independence of Latin America seeks liberation from imperial domination.

The apparent outcome of these events is a fundamental shift toward a more equitable redistribution of wealth between North and South with the ultimate goal as socialization of the means of production to encourage social, economic and political equality. A widening gap between rich and poor countries, depletion of natural resources, the climate change phenomena and unsustainable capitalist consumption that includes unending warfare also stokes this process.

Drawing the correct conclusions requires consideration of important realities certain to influence future events. The United Nations has voted to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba since 1992, yet restrictions have intensified against Cuba. Furthermore, ongoing military genocide launched by the ultra-right Israeli government against Palestinian civilians exposes U.S. foreign policy as both terrorist and expansionist. Only through solidarity, good will and commitment by governments to honor international law can a resolution of this stalemate occur.

Several examples highlight a trend becoming more pronounced in Latin America. Reforming the structure the UN was a strong priority of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez before his death in March 2013. Later, BRICS partner Russia helped negotiate a solution to the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. China is overtaking the U.S. as an economic power and South American countries continue to integrate their economies by means of solidarity, cooperation, complementarity and unity mandated through the Bolivarian initiative of 2004.

Strengthened by the Union of South American countries (UNASUR), BRICS/CELAC leadership envisions democratization of the United Nations as part of the new horizon that may precipitate greater accountability of U.S. foreign policy. The signing of 38 agreements between China-Venezuela and 29 agreements between China-Cuba signals the possibility of a realignment toward multilateral relations previously unknown in the American continents.

The outcome of these events also support the struggle to force the U.S. to meet its obligations to justice while 3 innocent Cubans remain incarcerated for fighting against terrorism. According to law, the remedy is to free Gerardo, Antonio and Ramon, and return them to their Cuban homeland. There is no valid reason to hold them. A civilized world expects no less.

Photo: BRICS leaders in Brazil CC BY 3.0. Presidential Press and Information Office.

Impressions of marriage

Fri, 05 Sep 2014 15:59:00 +0000

I'm a guy who's never been married, but I have some definite impressions of the institution that I'd like to share. You see, I marry people. At my current rate, over 300 couples a year! No, my dateline is not Las Vegas. It's Los Angeles, where I volunteer for Los Angeles County as a Deputy Commissioner of Civil Marriages (a Justice of the Peace in many places).

Actually, my dateline should be Beverly Hills, because that's where I go, to the old Courthouse on Burton Way, every other Wednesday morning, where from 9 to 12, at 15-minute intervals, I have a dozen couples on my roster.

Sometimes the couple doesn't show up for one reason or another (recent cases: heavy traffic, the bride was still 30 miles away getting her hair done at the appointed time, they already got married somewhere else and neglected to cancel their appointment with us, last-minute failure to secure a pre-nup). Maybe someone got cold feet.

But then we have walk-ins, too, usually more than no-shows. A couple gets their marriage license and just can't wait any longer to tie the knot; so if I or another Commish is available and willing, we'll squeeze them in as a courtesy. A little last-minute change in the schedule is always fun.

And, yeah, fun is why I do it. I have a fabulous time meeting all these beautiful people from every corner of the world and partaking in the joy of their wedding day for just those few minutes that in all likelihood I'll ever see them. It's a Felliniesque morning of short subjects on the theme of marriage, in which I play the same recurring character.

Of course, when a same-gender couple shows up (which a quarter to a third of my marriages are) I tell them why I started volunteering in the first place: When the Supreme Court threw out California's infamous Prop 8 a year ago, and same-gender marriage returned to the state, I wanted to be part of making history in this country.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit to a palpable sense of pride being in all these couples' photographic and digital albums. Who knows how far abroad, onto how many cell phones, iPads and desktops my picture has traveled? Occasionally someone Skypes the whole ceremony to loved ones in the Old Country - Italy, Romania, Turkey, Argentina. I wave to the folks at home.

It didn't take me long to sense that my couples were standing before me for much more than love. In countries with universal healthcare not tied to employment, where not so many people are immigrating to, or where seniors are cared for well and irrespective of their or their spouse's career success, marriage is less of an economic imperative. Here in the U.S., these are undeniable factors. I've had couples, together for decades and never before uncomfortable with the unformalized nature of their relationship, finally getting hitched. I ask, Why now? "Our lawyer said we have to!" Inheritance, Social Security, power of attorney, and many more - not to mention the refusal to testify in court against your spouse - are all rights pertaining to the institution of marriage.

Right-wing politicians and church leaders are always sniping at the poor because the rate they get married is noticeably low. Well, duh. A big wedding is an expensive enterprise. That's another reason I volunteer - to help provide couples a short, not elaborate, but meaningful opportunity to make it legal. I take special comfort in seeing them come in with a child or two, or maybe one on the way.

And then there's the cost of having kids: For all the prattle about the village it takes to raise them, where are the community elders (i.e., government, because private philanthropy can never adequately step in to do the job it requires) when it comes to education, sports, camp, lessons, vacations, counseling, after-school programs, decent housing, meals and clothing, etc., etc?

We provide a distinctly secular, civil ceremony. It couldn't be any other way, as so many of the couples come from different nations and religious/cultural backgrounds. That's why I always say "as long as you both shall love," because "live" lays too heavy an emotional weight on their shoulders. I don't want some person I married to be tortured in a relationship gone bad by the belief that they had once promised to keep their vows until death. That would feel too psychologically damaging.

When I have a substantial turnout for a wedding, say, eight or ten or more, I'm often moved to give them a mini-sermon along these lines: "Thank you all for attending this ceremony today. It's so important for the couple to know that their family and friends are here supporting them in this momentous decision. But a marriage is not just for the couple alone. No, it's about the weaving together of families and communities, a reminder that we are all part of each other's happiness. The vows you hear today about respect, honor, integrity, transparency, honesty, generosity and love recall the commitments we all have made, to spouses and partners, to parents and siblings, to ourselves and to whatever groups we are part of, to treat other people decently, to put their concerns on the same level as our own. The ripples of all that consciousness go far out, reaching many people we will never see or know, making for a kinder, more tolerant, stable world."

In that sense I guess I have become - what? - a little more "conservative." I am no longer marching on Gay Pride Day shouting "2-4-6-8, Down with family, church and state!" I do believe that marriage can help people combat the crippling loneliness and anomie of modern life, and provide a healthier environment for kids to grow in. I don't make this a moral preachment, as other "conservatives" might, except in the largest sense: A world at peace, where we devoted our attention to solving the problems of conflict, hunger, homelessness, disease, exploitation, climate change, is a morally better place to live. Maybe there's a reason they call what I do "justice of the peace."

Black and Brown brought together by Ferguson police killing

Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:47:00 +0000

The atrocious killing of the young Black teen, 18 year-old Michael Brown, has outraged all decent citizens of this country and galvanized people into action coast to coast. The murder exposed the police racism that abounds and festers throughout the U.S.

Representative of the feelings of the American Indian community, the headline of a recent article in the Native newspaper Indian Country Today reads, "Police Brutality Against Black and Brown People: We're In This Together."

Since the inception of this country, people of color, in particular Native Americans and African Americans, have been the special targets of racist law enforcement. As that article in the Native press so aptly brought to light, Brown and Black people are the victims of death by multiple police gunshots for reasons as trivial as misdemeanors - the smallest offense under the law. In other cases, these killings are simply the result of racist police harassment.

In the Michael Brown case, it was alleged after the shooting that he stole a box of cigars. In trying to smear his character, the police perversely implied that in some surreal fashion this led to the tragedy. Is execution the penalty for shoplifting, or allegedly shoplifting a paltry item, or simply for not walking on the sidewalk, just jaywalking? It seems so if one is a person of color - immediate execution by the local police. (Newsflash: Just as I was writing this, online information posts that a new video shows Brown buying the cigars and getting into a fracas with the clerk over being allegedly rude, and not because of any theft. This just keeps getting worse and worse.)

What was so immeasurably shameful about the Michael Brown slaying, among all the other horrors, was that this young man was shot twice in the head and also shot four other times. The two shots to the head meant that the officer had every intention of killing the teenager. This is barbaric!

At the very least, the officer had no justification for the use of deadly force. Then, shortly after the Brown killing, police in nearby St. Louis shot a young Black man allegedly for stealing doughnuts and an energy drink. This young man was shot ten times. St. Louis police said he was armed with a knife, but according to reports, video of the incident appears to contradict that account.

The intention of the police in these situations is not just to stop but to kill. What kind of training are these officers receiving? One would think that the only means of apprehension the police have at their disposal is the gun. Is every Black or Brown suspect to be gunned down, killed on the spot?!

Hideously, now the police are concocting a real Johnny-come-lately story that the Ferguson cop was beaten "nearly unconscious" before the shooting. What next? A police version that Michael Brown was carrying a gun? Like the old police practice of carrying a gun to plant on a hapless victim of an unjustified shooting. The police are attempting to lay the legal groundwork before the grand jury for justifiable homicide. Now the officer is alleging that he thought he could get killed. The police have lost all credibility. This can only inflame an already infuriated populace.

Indeed, many parts of the country seem to have taken a step backward into the 1950s South. The tear gas attacks on demonstrators, the violent suppression of the press, the militarization of the police, bring to mind Alabama's Bull Connor, only with a lot more armament.

I was raised, like the writer of the referenced article in the Native press, in a "Don't talk to the cops" family. I wrote this column after much reflection, because I was so moved by what happened to Michael Brown. And also because of the police harassment, including racial profiling, I have experienced, including a SWAT detachment descending on my home (later claimed to be a mistake, for which I later filed a lawsuit) while running for political office some years ago.

But for the protests, this atrocity would never have received widespread news coverage. The brutality is so indicative of the genocidal treatment of people of color not just in this country but hemisphere-wide. A byproduct of racism is that its victims are not regarded as really human. In the Brown case, his companion said Michael was "shot like an animal." Of the two shots to the head, the first was to his right eye and the second to the top of his head. This is inhuman! The young man was unarmed and had not committed any crime.

In the rest of the hemisphere Native people are killed not just with impunity but as if they were part of the fauna - the wildlife. This brings to mind an account related by a good friend of mine in the early 1990s, an internationally known American Indian poet, who was on a flight returning to the U.S. from Brazil. She was sitting behind some U.S. and Brazilian businessmen who were discussing the joys of hunting, and heard one of the latter blithely remark, "Brazil is one of the few places where one can still hunt Indians." The conversation continued on with great enthusiasm by all parties, as if they were discussing deer or peccary. This is the same type of attitude that led to the killing of Michael Brown - disregard of people of color as being equally human.

Further, the young man's body was reportedly left uncovered on the street in a pool of blood for several hours while his family went without notification. This is unspeakable.

The Washington Post reports that the shooter, police officer Darren Wilson, came from a police department in Jennings, Mo., that was disbanded by the city council over racial tensions, and described in the media as "a mainly white department mired in controversy and notorious for its fraught relationship with residents." The Post story surfaces amid reports that neighboring police departments have engaged in alleged misconduct.

The Ferguson police department likewise needs to be disbanded and a new one built "from scratch" as took place in Jennings. Further, officer Wilson needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

There needs to be some kind of national coordination to deal with these kinds of racist atrocities. Otherwise this case could end up like the Trayvon Martin tragedy: The perpetrator will walk free and this will happen again and again and again. The cycle of racist horror must be broken.

Photo: Thousands mourn Michael Brown at Aug. 25 funeral in St. Louis. (Robert Cohen/AP)

"Speak Progress" activists coming to a venue near you

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 13:43:00 +0000

From Occupy Wall Street to the murder of Mike Brown, progressive mass movements are reshaping the conversation. More and more people are rejecting the ideas of the global 1%. More and more people are challenging racist police brutality, violence and murder. People want perspectives that side with them, not those in power.

Speak Progress, a national speakers' bureau, brings to your campus, community or local union the voices of those who advocate for the rest of us, the 99%. We provide "inspiring voices for change."

We represent a growing list of speakers, performers and trainers involved in the ongoing struggles for economic, environmental and social justice. We are union organizers, campus and peace activists, radical professors, spoken word artists and more.

Speak Progress speakers provide ideas, analysis and interactive trainings that can inspire your campus, community or union.

The Speak Progress speakers' bureau is uniquely working class and Speak Progress speakers are uniquely situated to lend their expertise and experiences to your struggles. Our speakers are not armchair revolutionaries. They are the people engaged on-the-ground doing the hard work of building a broad-based movement for social and economic justice.

Want to have someone speak to your union or community organization on the impact of the Affordable Care Act? Some of our speakers were instrumental in building the national grassroots infrastructure that led to the passage of the ACA. Others have led the ongoing struggle for single payer health care.

Trying to help local janitors, retail workers or state employees, for example, organize into a union? Many of our speakers have years of union organizing in their background. Others are full-time union officers, organizers and staff.

Looking to address the historic roots of slavery, Jim Crow and racism in America? Our speakers - African American, Latino and white - are in the forefront in the struggles to build a society free of racism, in all of its manifestations, subtle and not so subtle.

Not sure how to build momentum in your local peace organization around the continuing - and complex - conflicts emerging all over the world? Many of our speakers are leaders in the national peace movement. Some are veterans fighting for peace, while others helped to organize the nation's largest peace coalition.

Speak Progress was created to build a national network of progressive speakers. We work with local student, religious, labor and community organizations to find speakers, performers and trainers to inspire, teach and entertain.

Among our featured speakers are:

Stewart Acuff is the national organizing director for the National Union of Hospital and Healthcare Employees 1199. Formerly, he served as organizing director for the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation representing over 12 million union members.

Judith Le Blanc is the national field director for Peace Action, the nation's largest grassroots peace organization, with chapters and affiliates in states across the country. From 2003-2009 she worked with United for Peace & Justice (UFPJ) coordinating national outreach. She served two terms as UFPJ's national co-chair.

Gerald Horne is the author of dozens of books about U.S. history. He holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His most recent books are: "Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle" and "Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation."

Speaking topics include (but are not limited to): radical history; anti-racism; women's equality; LGBT rights; the labor movement; access to affordable, quality health care; environmental justice; socialism and Marxism; campus organizing; the peace movement, among many other topics.

The Speak Progress website is now public, and we are on Facebook. While we are still finishing-up some functionality issues, adding speakers' photos and bios, and testimonials, among other things, I hope you will find it a valuable resource. Please contact us at info@speakprogress.org or at 646-556-7412.

We look forward to speaking at your campus, community meeting or local union hall.