Dear friend,
I just learned about a case of segregation-era oppression happening today in Jena, Louisiana. I signed onto ColorOfChange.org's campaign for justice in Jena, and wanted to invite you to do the same.
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2427-229363
Last fall in Jena, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."
A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
It's a story that reads like one from the Jim Crow era, when judges, lawyers and all-white juries used the justice system to keep blacks in "their place." But it's happening today. The families of these young men are fighting back, but the story has gotten minimal press. Together, we can make sure their story is told and that the Governor of Louisiana intervenes and provides justice for the Jena 6. It starts now. Please join me:
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2427-229363
The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the stage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the next couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of Jena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same weekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by a young white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran away. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students were later arrested for the theft of the gun.
That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was beaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black students "nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. He was taken to the hospital, but was released and was well enough to go to a social event that evening.
Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified minor, were expelled from school, arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder. The first trial ended last month, and Mychal Bell, who has been in prison since December, was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery (both felonies) by an all-white jury in a trial where his public defender called no witnesses. During his trial, Mychal's parents were ordered not to speak to the media and the court prohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or where the judge could see them.
Mychal is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, and could go to jail for 22 years. Theo Shaw's trial is next. He will finally make bail this week.
The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fighting tooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they are standing strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone, their sons will be a long time coming home. But if we act now, we can make a difference.
Join me in demanding that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco get involved to make sure that justice is served for Mychal Bell, and that DA Reed Walters drop the charges against the 5 boys who have not yet gone to trial.
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2427-229363
Thanks.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Police attack immigrant rights march: Rhode Island
Apparently, North Providence police officers have some serious, serious issues in their Department. In a peaceful labor march yesterday, they broke the knee of a young 22 year old woman, Alex Svododa. This kind of gross and excessive police brutality should not be tolerated and the Attorney General should immediately commence an investigation. Further, the North Providence police should immediately drop their baseless charges against these peaceful protesters.
After the march - targeting Jacky’s Galaxie restaruant - started in the right lane of Mineral Spring Ave, the police ordered the march to move to the side. The protesters, numbering about 60, complied in an orderly and peaceful fashion. As the march was complying, several officers took the opportunity to make a vicious example of a peaceful protester by beating her, breaking her left leg, pepper spraying her, and then having the nerve to charge her with the triangle of charges that police always do when they are covering up their brutality: assaulting an officer, resisting arrest and obstructing “justice”.
While the BeloJo has a very sympathetic “pro-police” headline for their story, here are real pictures of the brutality. Click on each picture to see a blown up version.
Here are the protesters obeying police orders on where to march:
Here are the police beginning their assault:
Here are the police attacking Svoboda (notice her knee bending in an unnatural way):
The BeloJo story did include this quote:
When Deputy Police Chief Paul Marino approached to tell the protesters they needed to move onto the sidewalk instead of standing in the parking lot, one responded, “Hell of a day to be an officer, breaking a young girl’s leg!”
Indeed. They must be so proud.
Click here to see more pictures. Also, the protesters are accepting donations to help defray Alex’s medical costs. You can call Mark Bray at 201-669-0714 for more info or mail your donations to
Providence GMB
PO Box 5795
Providence RI 02903
After the march - targeting Jacky’s Galaxie restaruant - started in the right lane of Mineral Spring Ave, the police ordered the march to move to the side. The protesters, numbering about 60, complied in an orderly and peaceful fashion. As the march was complying, several officers took the opportunity to make a vicious example of a peaceful protester by beating her, breaking her left leg, pepper spraying her, and then having the nerve to charge her with the triangle of charges that police always do when they are covering up their brutality: assaulting an officer, resisting arrest and obstructing “justice”.
While the BeloJo has a very sympathetic “pro-police” headline for their story, here are real pictures of the brutality. Click on each picture to see a blown up version.
Here are the protesters obeying police orders on where to march:
Here are the police beginning their assault:
Here are the police attacking Svoboda (notice her knee bending in an unnatural way):
The BeloJo story did include this quote:
When Deputy Police Chief Paul Marino approached to tell the protesters they needed to move onto the sidewalk instead of standing in the parking lot, one responded, “Hell of a day to be an officer, breaking a young girl’s leg!”
Indeed. They must be so proud.
Click here to see more pictures. Also, the protesters are accepting donations to help defray Alex’s medical costs. You can call Mark Bray at 201-669-0714 for more info or mail your donations to
Providence GMB
PO Box 5795
Providence RI 02903
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Conyers controversy
Que vergüenza..
The Conyers Controversy and Progressive Unity
Mark Solomon
August 12, 2007
Perhaps the moment has arrived for reflective reconsideration of the conflict on the left over the recent sit-in at the office of Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
In contesting Rep. Conyers' decision not to offer a
resolution to impeach George W. Bush, protesters and
some of their supporters invariably described the
congressman as another "good guy" Democrat. Given the
quality and reach of Conyers' record and his distinctive
political roots, that borders on willful ignorance.
From an auto worker family (John Conyers, Sr. worked at
the Ford plant), Conyers embodies and represents the
twin pillars of Detroit -- the African American
community and the labor movement -- that historically
have driven the radical and progressive dynamics of the
Motor City and constitute the foundation for a resurgent
progressive movement in the entire country. (Full
disclosure: I have known Rep. Conyers for nearly a half
century dating back to the first picketing of
Woolworth's in Detroit to protest the chain's jim crow
policies in the South.)
The second most senior member of the House, Rep.
Conyers' congressional service stretches from before the
Watergate impeachment process to recent efforts to
convene a commission to investigate impeachable offenses
by the Bush administration. Conyers was a founding
member of the Congressional Black Caucus and is
considered its dean. His major contributions to a
progressive agenda include the Violence Against Women
Act of 1994, the Motor Voter Bill of 1993, the Martin
Luther King Holiday Act of 1983, the Alcohol Warning
Label Act of 1988, and the Jazz Preservation Act of
1987. He is a principal author of the Help America Vote
Act of 2002 to protect voting rights of oppressed
nationalities and citizens with disabilities. He is also
the leading congressional voice for institutional
reparations to the nation's African American community
for the crime of slavery.
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Conyers
introduced the "Military Tribunal Authorization Act of
2002" to limit Bush's efforts to define military
tribunals and proposed legislation to protect
whistleblowers who report FBI malfeasance. He is the
primary author of "End Racial Profiling Act" that bans
racial profiling nationwide and introduced the "Hate
Crimes Prevention Act" to place a range of hate crimes
under federal investigative and prosecutorial
jurisdiction.
Fighting for constituents under economic siege, Conyers
has challenged Bush administration attempts to undermine
worker safety standards, substitute flextime for
overtime and virtually eliminate collective bargaining.
He is currently formulating legislation to protect
workers' pensions and health care from Enron and
Worldcomm type bankruptcies. He is founder and chair of
the Congressional Universal Health Care Task Force and
under its banner has introduced HR 676, the Medicare for
All Single Payer Health Care bill that is the
legislative standard for the rapidly growing movement to
provide medical services for all and take the profit out
of health care.
In the global arena, Rep. Conyers has been an
inseparable participant in the movement to end the Iraq
war and bring US forces home now. Among a handful of
House members he has spoken forcefully against the war
at major peace rallies. He was signatory as a plaintiff
in a lawsuit that challenged the House resolution
authorizing the invasion of Iraq as unconstitutional.
Conyers has fought for fair US trade with Haiti and has
worked hard to secure multilaterally funded economic aid
for that nation severely victimized by the global
system.
While Conyers has been justly criticized for questioning
Jimmy Carter's characterization of Israeli actions
towards the Palestinians as apartheid, Conyers
practically alone has resisted the Israeli lobby's
attempts to force Congress to march in lockstep in
support of Israel and in implacable hostility to the
Palestinians. Glen Ford, the prominent progressive
African American journalist, recently stated that in the
last few years a corporate-AIPAC offensive has
intimidated a major segment of the Congressional Black
Caucus. Ford went on to note that a recent AIPAC
inspired bellicose resolution denouncing Iran was voted
favorably by the entire caucus with only Conyers
declining to vote for it.
Conyers, of course, is not purely above the hard
political world of vote counting and deals. Neither he
nor any other member of Congress could survive
politically or achieve any meaningful legislative
advances if oblivious at all times to the realities of
partisan politics and the demands of party leaders. At
times compromises and accommodations merit sharp
criticism. But that cannot diminish the significance of
Conyers' congressional role. He and Rep. Barbara Lee,
represent the crucial conjunction of the movements for
racial justice and peace, movements whose unity is
absolutely essential to building a progressive majority.
More than a year ago, Conyers joined with 28 other House
members to call for launching an impeachment process
against George W. Bush. That stemmed from hearings on
impeachable crimes that Conyers was forced by the then
Republican controlled House leadership to conduct in a
crowded basement room. As Rev. Lennox Yearwood (one of
the sit-in protesters) noted: Conyers and his staff
"wrote the book" on impeachment. With that awareness,
one can reasonably question why the protesters did not
ascribe some weight to Conyers' assessment that the
current positioning of various forces in Congress would
frustrate the chances for advancing impeachment.
Some on the left have contended that Conyers should have
placed an impeachment resolution before the Judiciary
Committee despite substantial obstacles and that such an
act itself would focus a strong, inhibiting spotlight on
Bush and his accomplices. That is a weighty argument but
it does not account for the potential damage stemming
from failure of the chair to win the support for
impeachment by a majority of his own committee. Such a
defeat would constitute a setback for a range of efforts
to resist the unconstitutional acts of the Bush
administration. Before the showdown on impeachment,
Conyers pleaded for "three more votes" to advance the
resolution. There is merit to the claims of critics of
the sit-in that the protesters should have focused their
efforts on attaining those three votes.
One of the most controversial aspects of the debate over
the Conyers sit-in is the charge of racism directed at
the protesters. The existence of racism is inseparable
from its historical roots exemplified by the ideology
and practice of institutional oppression. A protest
directed against a relatively empowered African American
politician is arguably not racist. But a statement by a
prominent leader of the protest that Conyers "is no
Martin Luther King" is racist. As many have noted, that
statement is a crude reflection of the historic practice
of empowered whites to arrogantly select and define
Black leadership. By linking Conyers to King, the
impeachment controversy was framed in racist terms --
terms that insulted both Conyers and King. The statement
by another protest leader that Conyers "betrayed the
American people" is more subtle in its negative
implications, but perhaps no less racist. It reflects a
historic posture of dominant white entitlement in
commanding prescribed behavior from African Americans.
The author of this declaration apparently had no
interest in respecting or considering Conyers' estimate
of the positioning of various forces on the impeachment
issue nor did she fully consider the congressman's
record as a leading progressive voice on the issue
before leveling the charge of "betrayal."
Reverend Lennox Yearwood has eloquently explained his
decision to sit in and court arrest at Rep. Conyers'
office in terms of a moral compassion to demand
impeachment of this immoral administration. There comes
a time, Yearwood argues, when one must stand up to the
best of friends and allies such as Conyers in advancing
a vital cause. That viewpoint, represented also by
others, is worthy of respect. Yet it is not fully immune
to questions and reservations. Few if any progressives
would argue against impeachment (nearly all would like
to see the impeachment of the entire Bush crowd
immediately), but on a tactical level, there is no
consensus for it in the peace movement and among a broad
range of progressives. The major antiwar coalitions have
not prioritized impeachment, choosing instead to focus
on efforts to end the war and occupation of Iraq and to
prevent a war on Iran. The protest at Conyers' office
represented the tactical priority of a segment at best
of the antiwar and progressive movements, therefore
limiting its moral authority.
The sit-in had to be weighed in moral and practical
terms against the damage in relations, potential and
real, among diverse progressive forces. Efforts to
obliterate the divisions, cast along racial and ethnic
lines, between peace and justice movements have been
weakened. The image of predominantly white activists
assailing a leader of antiracist legislation to
eliminate racial profiling and hate crimes, to advance
universal health care, to bring the troops home from
Iraq -- has doubtlessly widened racial fissures as well
as disagreements among left and progressive forces of
varying racial and social backgrounds.
However, the Conyers controversy can be a catalyst for
renewed determination to forge a progressive majority by
uniting various movements. It can spark a heightened
awareness of the need for peace and justice activists to
not only speak to each others' concerns, but to act
forcefully upon them. By building upon the conjunction
of peace and justice exemplified by political leaders
like John Conyers and Barbara Lee, by recognizing and
acting upon the reality that rebuilding areas devastated
by Katrina is inseparably linked to ending the Iraq war,
by demanding justice for immigrants and for all working
people, by working to prevent environmental catastrophe,
by fighting the attempted legal assault on six Black
teen agers in Jena, Louisiana, activists in all
political arenas will be advancing a just, sustainable
world. Such actions and commitments point the way to
unity of all progressive forces that can in the coming
weeks and months crystallize, consolidate and advance at
the grass roots the demand for impeachment -- the arena
where all progress begins and where all who work for
justice and peace should be engaged.
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
The Conyers Controversy and Progressive Unity
Mark Solomon
August 12, 2007
Perhaps the moment has arrived for reflective reconsideration of the conflict on the left over the recent sit-in at the office of Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
In contesting Rep. Conyers' decision not to offer a
resolution to impeach George W. Bush, protesters and
some of their supporters invariably described the
congressman as another "good guy" Democrat. Given the
quality and reach of Conyers' record and his distinctive
political roots, that borders on willful ignorance.
From an auto worker family (John Conyers, Sr. worked at
the Ford plant), Conyers embodies and represents the
twin pillars of Detroit -- the African American
community and the labor movement -- that historically
have driven the radical and progressive dynamics of the
Motor City and constitute the foundation for a resurgent
progressive movement in the entire country. (Full
disclosure: I have known Rep. Conyers for nearly a half
century dating back to the first picketing of
Woolworth's in Detroit to protest the chain's jim crow
policies in the South.)
The second most senior member of the House, Rep.
Conyers' congressional service stretches from before the
Watergate impeachment process to recent efforts to
convene a commission to investigate impeachable offenses
by the Bush administration. Conyers was a founding
member of the Congressional Black Caucus and is
considered its dean. His major contributions to a
progressive agenda include the Violence Against Women
Act of 1994, the Motor Voter Bill of 1993, the Martin
Luther King Holiday Act of 1983, the Alcohol Warning
Label Act of 1988, and the Jazz Preservation Act of
1987. He is a principal author of the Help America Vote
Act of 2002 to protect voting rights of oppressed
nationalities and citizens with disabilities. He is also
the leading congressional voice for institutional
reparations to the nation's African American community
for the crime of slavery.
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Conyers
introduced the "Military Tribunal Authorization Act of
2002" to limit Bush's efforts to define military
tribunals and proposed legislation to protect
whistleblowers who report FBI malfeasance. He is the
primary author of "End Racial Profiling Act" that bans
racial profiling nationwide and introduced the "Hate
Crimes Prevention Act" to place a range of hate crimes
under federal investigative and prosecutorial
jurisdiction.
Fighting for constituents under economic siege, Conyers
has challenged Bush administration attempts to undermine
worker safety standards, substitute flextime for
overtime and virtually eliminate collective bargaining.
He is currently formulating legislation to protect
workers' pensions and health care from Enron and
Worldcomm type bankruptcies. He is founder and chair of
the Congressional Universal Health Care Task Force and
under its banner has introduced HR 676, the Medicare for
All Single Payer Health Care bill that is the
legislative standard for the rapidly growing movement to
provide medical services for all and take the profit out
of health care.
In the global arena, Rep. Conyers has been an
inseparable participant in the movement to end the Iraq
war and bring US forces home now. Among a handful of
House members he has spoken forcefully against the war
at major peace rallies. He was signatory as a plaintiff
in a lawsuit that challenged the House resolution
authorizing the invasion of Iraq as unconstitutional.
Conyers has fought for fair US trade with Haiti and has
worked hard to secure multilaterally funded economic aid
for that nation severely victimized by the global
system.
While Conyers has been justly criticized for questioning
Jimmy Carter's characterization of Israeli actions
towards the Palestinians as apartheid, Conyers
practically alone has resisted the Israeli lobby's
attempts to force Congress to march in lockstep in
support of Israel and in implacable hostility to the
Palestinians. Glen Ford, the prominent progressive
African American journalist, recently stated that in the
last few years a corporate-AIPAC offensive has
intimidated a major segment of the Congressional Black
Caucus. Ford went on to note that a recent AIPAC
inspired bellicose resolution denouncing Iran was voted
favorably by the entire caucus with only Conyers
declining to vote for it.
Conyers, of course, is not purely above the hard
political world of vote counting and deals. Neither he
nor any other member of Congress could survive
politically or achieve any meaningful legislative
advances if oblivious at all times to the realities of
partisan politics and the demands of party leaders. At
times compromises and accommodations merit sharp
criticism. But that cannot diminish the significance of
Conyers' congressional role. He and Rep. Barbara Lee,
represent the crucial conjunction of the movements for
racial justice and peace, movements whose unity is
absolutely essential to building a progressive majority.
More than a year ago, Conyers joined with 28 other House
members to call for launching an impeachment process
against George W. Bush. That stemmed from hearings on
impeachable crimes that Conyers was forced by the then
Republican controlled House leadership to conduct in a
crowded basement room. As Rev. Lennox Yearwood (one of
the sit-in protesters) noted: Conyers and his staff
"wrote the book" on impeachment. With that awareness,
one can reasonably question why the protesters did not
ascribe some weight to Conyers' assessment that the
current positioning of various forces in Congress would
frustrate the chances for advancing impeachment.
Some on the left have contended that Conyers should have
placed an impeachment resolution before the Judiciary
Committee despite substantial obstacles and that such an
act itself would focus a strong, inhibiting spotlight on
Bush and his accomplices. That is a weighty argument but
it does not account for the potential damage stemming
from failure of the chair to win the support for
impeachment by a majority of his own committee. Such a
defeat would constitute a setback for a range of efforts
to resist the unconstitutional acts of the Bush
administration. Before the showdown on impeachment,
Conyers pleaded for "three more votes" to advance the
resolution. There is merit to the claims of critics of
the sit-in that the protesters should have focused their
efforts on attaining those three votes.
One of the most controversial aspects of the debate over
the Conyers sit-in is the charge of racism directed at
the protesters. The existence of racism is inseparable
from its historical roots exemplified by the ideology
and practice of institutional oppression. A protest
directed against a relatively empowered African American
politician is arguably not racist. But a statement by a
prominent leader of the protest that Conyers "is no
Martin Luther King" is racist. As many have noted, that
statement is a crude reflection of the historic practice
of empowered whites to arrogantly select and define
Black leadership. By linking Conyers to King, the
impeachment controversy was framed in racist terms --
terms that insulted both Conyers and King. The statement
by another protest leader that Conyers "betrayed the
American people" is more subtle in its negative
implications, but perhaps no less racist. It reflects a
historic posture of dominant white entitlement in
commanding prescribed behavior from African Americans.
The author of this declaration apparently had no
interest in respecting or considering Conyers' estimate
of the positioning of various forces on the impeachment
issue nor did she fully consider the congressman's
record as a leading progressive voice on the issue
before leveling the charge of "betrayal."
Reverend Lennox Yearwood has eloquently explained his
decision to sit in and court arrest at Rep. Conyers'
office in terms of a moral compassion to demand
impeachment of this immoral administration. There comes
a time, Yearwood argues, when one must stand up to the
best of friends and allies such as Conyers in advancing
a vital cause. That viewpoint, represented also by
others, is worthy of respect. Yet it is not fully immune
to questions and reservations. Few if any progressives
would argue against impeachment (nearly all would like
to see the impeachment of the entire Bush crowd
immediately), but on a tactical level, there is no
consensus for it in the peace movement and among a broad
range of progressives. The major antiwar coalitions have
not prioritized impeachment, choosing instead to focus
on efforts to end the war and occupation of Iraq and to
prevent a war on Iran. The protest at Conyers' office
represented the tactical priority of a segment at best
of the antiwar and progressive movements, therefore
limiting its moral authority.
The sit-in had to be weighed in moral and practical
terms against the damage in relations, potential and
real, among diverse progressive forces. Efforts to
obliterate the divisions, cast along racial and ethnic
lines, between peace and justice movements have been
weakened. The image of predominantly white activists
assailing a leader of antiracist legislation to
eliminate racial profiling and hate crimes, to advance
universal health care, to bring the troops home from
Iraq -- has doubtlessly widened racial fissures as well
as disagreements among left and progressive forces of
varying racial and social backgrounds.
However, the Conyers controversy can be a catalyst for
renewed determination to forge a progressive majority by
uniting various movements. It can spark a heightened
awareness of the need for peace and justice activists to
not only speak to each others' concerns, but to act
forcefully upon them. By building upon the conjunction
of peace and justice exemplified by political leaders
like John Conyers and Barbara Lee, by recognizing and
acting upon the reality that rebuilding areas devastated
by Katrina is inseparably linked to ending the Iraq war,
by demanding justice for immigrants and for all working
people, by working to prevent environmental catastrophe,
by fighting the attempted legal assault on six Black
teen agers in Jena, Louisiana, activists in all
political arenas will be advancing a just, sustainable
world. Such actions and commitments point the way to
unity of all progressive forces that can in the coming
weeks and months crystallize, consolidate and advance at
the grass roots the demand for impeachment -- the arena
where all progress begins and where all who work for
justice and peace should be engaged.
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Friday, August 10, 2007
ICE Raids
Update on Smash ICE Project
To Everyone Concerned,
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch of the National
Security Agency continues to aggressively conduct raids against immigrant
communities, both in the Pacific Northwest and nationwide. The detentions
and deportations that come as a result effect more than just the families
that are broken within the process, they are of concern to every person that
knows feelings of compassion and empathy.
There is a network of groups forming in the region attempting to address the
issue of immigrant rights (basic human rights) rapidly and thoroughly. If
you or your organization would like to be contacted to help mobilize a
response in the event of a raid, please send an email to smashICE@gmail.com
with your contact information. The informal group behind this project
currently resides in the Puget Sound area. While each of us differ in our
politics, we all agree that what ICE is doing, what the government is doing,
and what the system is doing must stop immediately.
Currently a tentative meeting is planned for the Saturday following a raid
at 2:00pm at the Tacoma Federal Building*. This location has been chosen
because Tacoma is the location of northwest regional detention center.
Thanks for your efforts!
-SmashICE
*Location:
Tacoma Federal Building, on Pacific Avenue between South 17th Street and
South 19th Street.
--
To Everyone Concerned,
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch of the National
Security Agency continues to aggressively conduct raids against immigrant
communities, both in the Pacific Northwest and nationwide. The detentions
and deportations that come as a result effect more than just the families
that are broken within the process, they are of concern to every person that
knows feelings of compassion and empathy.
There is a network of groups forming in the region attempting to address the
issue of immigrant rights (basic human rights) rapidly and thoroughly. If
you or your organization would like to be contacted to help mobilize a
response in the event of a raid, please send an email to smashICE@gmail.com
with your contact information. The informal group behind this project
currently resides in the Puget Sound area. While each of us differ in our
politics, we all agree that what ICE is doing, what the government is doing,
and what the system is doing must stop immediately.
Currently a tentative meeting is planned for the Saturday following a raid
at 2:00pm at the Tacoma Federal Building*. This location has been chosen
because Tacoma is the location of northwest regional detention center.
Thanks for your efforts!
-SmashICE
*Location:
Tacoma Federal Building, on Pacific Avenue between South 17th Street and
South 19th Street.
--
National meeting on ICE Misconduct
National Meeting on ICE Misconduct and
Violations of 4th Amendment Rights
Sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Thursday, August 16, 2007
9 AM – 4 PM
Westside Community Conference Center
3534 South 108th Street
Omaha, NE 68144
AGENDA
8:30 Continental Breakfast
Check In
9:30 Welcome – Omaha Together One Community (OTOC)
10 Remarks on ICE Raids and the Swift Workers
Joe Hansen, UFCW International President
Violations of 4th Amendment Rights
Sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Thursday, August 16, 2007
9 AM – 4 PM
Westside Community Conference Center
3534 South 108th Street
Omaha, NE 68144
AGENDA
8:30 Continental Breakfast
Check In
9:30 Welcome – Omaha Together One Community (OTOC)
10 Remarks on ICE Raids and the Swift Workers
Joe Hansen, UFCW International President
National meeting on ICE Misconduct
National Meeting on ICE Misconduct and
Violations of 4th Amendment Rights
Sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Thursday, August 16, 2007
9 AM – 4 PM
Westside Community Conference Center
3534 South 108th Street
Omaha, NE 68144
AGENDA
8:30 Continental Breakfast
Check In
9:30 Welcome – Omaha Together One Community (OTOC)
10 Remarks on ICE Raids and the Swift Workers
Joe Hansen, UFCW International President
Violations of 4th Amendment Rights
Sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Thursday, August 16, 2007
9 AM – 4 PM
Westside Community Conference Center
3534 South 108th Street
Omaha, NE 68144
AGENDA
8:30 Continental Breakfast
Check In
9:30 Welcome – Omaha Together One Community (OTOC)
10 Remarks on ICE Raids and the Swift Workers
Joe Hansen, UFCW International President
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Correa's War : Ecuador
By Mark Weisbrot
Guardian (UK) - July 26, 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_weisbrot/2007/07/democracy_in_ecuador.html
In Ecuador a reforming government is battling against a
hostile opposition media as well the country's corrupt
political class
In his recent book The Assault on Reason, former vice-
president Al Gore describes how "the potential for
manipulating mass opinions and feelings initially
discovered by commercial advertisers is now being even
more aggressively exploited by a new generation of media
Machiavellis." The concentration of broadcast media
ownership is indeed a real threat to democracy, as we
learned the hard way when more than 70% of Americans
were convinced, falsely, that Saddam Hussein was
involved in the attacks of September 11 - thus enabling
the launch of a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq.
The problem is even worse in Latin America, where
monopolised TV media provides a much larger share of the
news that people receive, and is even more shamelessly
manipulated for political purposes. In Ecuador,
President Rafael Correa, an economist with a PhD from
the University of Illinois, was elected last November
with a broad mandate for economic reform, pro-growth
development policies, and poverty alleviation. One of
his government's first acts was to double the monthly
stipend for single mothers, the disabled and elderly
poor.
Although Corrrea ran without a political party or
candidates for the congress, his mandate was strongly
reinforced when the government won a referendum to draw
up a new constitution by an even larger margin of 82%.
As in a number of other countries in the region, which
has seen a record economic failure over the last 25
years, voters endorsed the sweeping institutional and
political changes they saw as necessary to enfranchise
the majority.
But on May 21 the opposition media launched an assault
on President Correa's finance minister, Ricardo Patino.
In a seven-minute grainy video clip from a hidden
camera, they showed the minister meeting on February 12
with two representatives of a New York investment firm,
as well as a former finance minister. Patino talks about
"scaring the markets", in what looks like a plot to
manipulate the country's bond market. The clip, taken
out of context, was shown repeatedly for days on the TV
news, spliced with gratuitous, unrelated images of
faceless people counting large amounts of cash.
It turns out that the video was authorised by Patino
himself, an odd thing to do if one is meeting to plan a
crime. Patino claims that the purpose of the meeting and
the taping of it was to investigate corruption. And
indeed the rest of the video - not shown on TV but
presented in a transcript published in Ecuador's major
newspapers - supports his explanation. In the rest of
the meeting, Patino is probing for information on
corrupt activities - including past market
manipulations. He allows the others to present and
explain the possibilities in detail, never agreeing to
go along with anything - just as one would expect in an
investigation of this sort.
In fact he states that it would be wrong to manipulate
the market. The meeting ends with one of the investors
stating that nothing would be done regarding the current
debt payment - which was due three days after the
videotaped meeting - but that they could think about
what to do in the future.
But the TV media's repeated, propagandistic images -
playing on people's cynicism from decades of corrupt
government - had the most influence. This emboldened the
opposition to make more wild allegations of secret deals
with foreign banks, and vote to censure Patino in the
Congress - which they control. All of this has been done
without anyone presenting evidence that the finance
minister was involved in any wrongdoing.
If all this seems Orwellian, it is. Ecuador currently
has the most honest government it has ever had - that is
why it has had so much support from the beginning. Yet
the impression that is coming across in the media - both
Ecuadorian and now spilling over into the international
press - is one of corruption.
Correa remains immensely popular, and he has defended
Patino, who has now taken another cabinet position. The
government will survive this assault, and move forward
with its agenda. But the opposition, led by the
traditional elite and corrupt politicians, will use this
"scandal" - with the help of the media - to undermine
the government and the reforms that the voters have
chosen.
Guardian (UK) - July 26, 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_weisbrot/2007/07/democracy_in_ecuador.html
In Ecuador a reforming government is battling against a
hostile opposition media as well the country's corrupt
political class
In his recent book The Assault on Reason, former vice-
president Al Gore describes how "the potential for
manipulating mass opinions and feelings initially
discovered by commercial advertisers is now being even
more aggressively exploited by a new generation of media
Machiavellis." The concentration of broadcast media
ownership is indeed a real threat to democracy, as we
learned the hard way when more than 70% of Americans
were convinced, falsely, that Saddam Hussein was
involved in the attacks of September 11 - thus enabling
the launch of a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq.
The problem is even worse in Latin America, where
monopolised TV media provides a much larger share of the
news that people receive, and is even more shamelessly
manipulated for political purposes. In Ecuador,
President Rafael Correa, an economist with a PhD from
the University of Illinois, was elected last November
with a broad mandate for economic reform, pro-growth
development policies, and poverty alleviation. One of
his government's first acts was to double the monthly
stipend for single mothers, the disabled and elderly
poor.
Although Corrrea ran without a political party or
candidates for the congress, his mandate was strongly
reinforced when the government won a referendum to draw
up a new constitution by an even larger margin of 82%.
As in a number of other countries in the region, which
has seen a record economic failure over the last 25
years, voters endorsed the sweeping institutional and
political changes they saw as necessary to enfranchise
the majority.
But on May 21 the opposition media launched an assault
on President Correa's finance minister, Ricardo Patino.
In a seven-minute grainy video clip from a hidden
camera, they showed the minister meeting on February 12
with two representatives of a New York investment firm,
as well as a former finance minister. Patino talks about
"scaring the markets", in what looks like a plot to
manipulate the country's bond market. The clip, taken
out of context, was shown repeatedly for days on the TV
news, spliced with gratuitous, unrelated images of
faceless people counting large amounts of cash.
It turns out that the video was authorised by Patino
himself, an odd thing to do if one is meeting to plan a
crime. Patino claims that the purpose of the meeting and
the taping of it was to investigate corruption. And
indeed the rest of the video - not shown on TV but
presented in a transcript published in Ecuador's major
newspapers - supports his explanation. In the rest of
the meeting, Patino is probing for information on
corrupt activities - including past market
manipulations. He allows the others to present and
explain the possibilities in detail, never agreeing to
go along with anything - just as one would expect in an
investigation of this sort.
In fact he states that it would be wrong to manipulate
the market. The meeting ends with one of the investors
stating that nothing would be done regarding the current
debt payment - which was due three days after the
videotaped meeting - but that they could think about
what to do in the future.
But the TV media's repeated, propagandistic images -
playing on people's cynicism from decades of corrupt
government - had the most influence. This emboldened the
opposition to make more wild allegations of secret deals
with foreign banks, and vote to censure Patino in the
Congress - which they control. All of this has been done
without anyone presenting evidence that the finance
minister was involved in any wrongdoing.
If all this seems Orwellian, it is. Ecuador currently
has the most honest government it has ever had - that is
why it has had so much support from the beginning. Yet
the impression that is coming across in the media - both
Ecuadorian and now spilling over into the international
press - is one of corruption.
Correa remains immensely popular, and he has defended
Patino, who has now taken another cabinet position. The
government will survive this assault, and move forward
with its agenda. But the opposition, led by the
traditional elite and corrupt politicians, will use this
"scandal" - with the help of the media - to undermine
the government and the reforms that the voters have
chosen.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Cesar Chavez and Unions
No Cesar Chavez
Leo Casey
As an undergraduate in the early 1970s, I attended Antioch College, a great institution of education in the John Dewey mold of learning by doing. This is a distinction I share with some notable activists in the field of education [Deborah Meier and Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools] and teacher unionism [the late, sorely missed Tom Mooney of the Cincinnati and Ohio Federation of Teachers and Mark Simon, currently director of the Institute for Teacher Union Leadership]. There was something about the Antioch experience that set us all off on remarkably similar life journeys.
Antioch is apparently in its last days, barring a miraculous resurrection. Its departure will leave American education all that much more poorer. In an age when some conservatives are engaged in thoughtless assaults on the very idea of an education committed to social change, Antioch continued to proudly wear the motto of Horace Mann, its founder and a pivotal figure in the emergence of American public education — “Be ashamed to die until you have won some visctory for humanity.” Antioch led the way in admitting women and African-American students into its student body and its faculty, well before the Civil War.
One of Antioch’s distinctive features from the Depression era presidency of Arthur Morgan until a decade ago was a work-study program, in which one studied for six months of the calendar year and worked for the other six months in a field related to your studies. My second six month job, as a 19 year old young man, was working with Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers [UFW] in California. It was there that I first learned, in a way that book learning itself could simply not convey, the centrality of trade unionism in the struggle for human dignity and social justice. It was my first schooling in the techniques of organizing, as Chavez was a very able student of the famous Saul Alinsky, but it was much more: it was an introduction into the great untapped potential of ordinary working men and women as agents of progressive social change, once they were 0rganized. I went to the UFW an anti-Vietnam War activist of the Catholic Left, attracted by Chavez’s dedication to non-violence in the tradition of Martin Luther King, and I left with an immeasurably enrichened and broader understanding of the world.
Antioch was also one of the first testing grounds of my parent’s remarkable patience with their son’s political activism. They were awoken in the middle of one night, about 3 AM New York City time, to be told that I was in a California hospital, having been hitten over the head and knocked out cold while canvasing for the UFW. But don’t worry, the caller told them, he will be okay. My mother slept not another wink, and called sick into her job in a Bushwick elementary school the next day — for which she received some less than supportive comments from the officious school principal. Some things never change.
I offer this little autobiographical sketch of a moment in my life as an explanatory preface to the fact that one of the more powerful moments of my UFW experience was seeing Cesar Chavez in action, up close, a number of times. I can still recall a moment at a staff meeting at the La Paz union headquarters in the California desert where Chavez took on, directly and without the slightest equivocation, a Chicano narrow nationalist who suggested that there was no place for non-Chicanos in La Causa. The UFW was a multi-racial institution of all working people, Chavez responded, and so long as he was its leader, it would never turn one race against another, set up one ethnic group in opposition to the next. Anyone willing to assume the conditions of all UFW staff [which could only be described as a form of extreme voluntary poverty] was welcome in its ranks. I also recall how Chavez would join us, as we spent hours holding signs on freeways — the UFW’s answer to the grower bought advertising — to convince voters to reject a ballot referendum designed to destroy the UFW. No organizing task was below him.
This moment came back to me when I read this remarkable post from Mike Klonsky’s Small Talk, “Chavez and DuBois Rolling In Their Graves?” Klonsky provides a remarkably long list of charter schools that have assumed the name of Cesar Chavez, while denying their teachers the right to organize into an union. To borrow a somewhat worn turn of phrase, I knew Cesar Chavez and the members of the boards of trustees of these schools are no Cesar Chavez.
There is an incredibly thin, transparent veneer to the right wing rhetoric in education which seizes the mantle of the civil rights movement. The notion that Chavez would have given a moment of his day, much less his good name, to an anti-union institution is shameless.
UPDATE:
Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham thinks it is “preposterous” to suggest that unions have more of “a claim” on the legacy of Cesar Chavez than an anti-union Chicana daughter of migrant workers. But this is precisely the sort of shallow identity politics that Chavez so strongly opposed — the notion that one’s ethnic identity, one’s parentage, is more important than one’s substantive politics and one’s actual work in the world. Chavez’s unambiguous stand on this question was exactly the point of the anecdote I cited in the original post. The notion that Chavez would lend his name to an enterprise that opposes the right of its employees to organize into an union and bargain collectively, whether those employees be farmworkers or teachers, is one that can only rest on a complete misunderstanding of his life’s work for justice for all working people. The argument that he would have foregone the core principles of that life’s work simply because opposition to them came from a Chicana is beyond incredulous. There are also a great many teacher unionists of Latin American descent, including notable AFT leaders, who would take considerable exception to the notion that the union to which they belong is an “Anglo” institution.
Further, the notion that Chavez was a man whose principles could be bought for any amount of money, much less for $200,000 a year of AFT support for the United Farmworkers, is completely scurrilous. He led a life of great sacrifice for La Causa. Union solidarity may be a foreign concept to some, but in the AFT, it is a principle we hold dear — and that it why we have supported the UFW and other unions, when we could. We are proud of our solidarity work. That the claim of Chavez’s silence for money comes in the form of a report of a rumor of a personal conversation — none of it in the slightest verifiable — says just about everything that needs to be said on the subject.
Leo Casey
As an undergraduate in the early 1970s, I attended Antioch College, a great institution of education in the John Dewey mold of learning by doing. This is a distinction I share with some notable activists in the field of education [Deborah Meier and Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools] and teacher unionism [the late, sorely missed Tom Mooney of the Cincinnati and Ohio Federation of Teachers and Mark Simon, currently director of the Institute for Teacher Union Leadership]. There was something about the Antioch experience that set us all off on remarkably similar life journeys.
Antioch is apparently in its last days, barring a miraculous resurrection. Its departure will leave American education all that much more poorer. In an age when some conservatives are engaged in thoughtless assaults on the very idea of an education committed to social change, Antioch continued to proudly wear the motto of Horace Mann, its founder and a pivotal figure in the emergence of American public education — “Be ashamed to die until you have won some visctory for humanity.” Antioch led the way in admitting women and African-American students into its student body and its faculty, well before the Civil War.
One of Antioch’s distinctive features from the Depression era presidency of Arthur Morgan until a decade ago was a work-study program, in which one studied for six months of the calendar year and worked for the other six months in a field related to your studies. My second six month job, as a 19 year old young man, was working with Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers [UFW] in California. It was there that I first learned, in a way that book learning itself could simply not convey, the centrality of trade unionism in the struggle for human dignity and social justice. It was my first schooling in the techniques of organizing, as Chavez was a very able student of the famous Saul Alinsky, but it was much more: it was an introduction into the great untapped potential of ordinary working men and women as agents of progressive social change, once they were 0rganized. I went to the UFW an anti-Vietnam War activist of the Catholic Left, attracted by Chavez’s dedication to non-violence in the tradition of Martin Luther King, and I left with an immeasurably enrichened and broader understanding of the world.
Antioch was also one of the first testing grounds of my parent’s remarkable patience with their son’s political activism. They were awoken in the middle of one night, about 3 AM New York City time, to be told that I was in a California hospital, having been hitten over the head and knocked out cold while canvasing for the UFW. But don’t worry, the caller told them, he will be okay. My mother slept not another wink, and called sick into her job in a Bushwick elementary school the next day — for which she received some less than supportive comments from the officious school principal. Some things never change.
I offer this little autobiographical sketch of a moment in my life as an explanatory preface to the fact that one of the more powerful moments of my UFW experience was seeing Cesar Chavez in action, up close, a number of times. I can still recall a moment at a staff meeting at the La Paz union headquarters in the California desert where Chavez took on, directly and without the slightest equivocation, a Chicano narrow nationalist who suggested that there was no place for non-Chicanos in La Causa. The UFW was a multi-racial institution of all working people, Chavez responded, and so long as he was its leader, it would never turn one race against another, set up one ethnic group in opposition to the next. Anyone willing to assume the conditions of all UFW staff [which could only be described as a form of extreme voluntary poverty] was welcome in its ranks. I also recall how Chavez would join us, as we spent hours holding signs on freeways — the UFW’s answer to the grower bought advertising — to convince voters to reject a ballot referendum designed to destroy the UFW. No organizing task was below him.
This moment came back to me when I read this remarkable post from Mike Klonsky’s Small Talk, “Chavez and DuBois Rolling In Their Graves?” Klonsky provides a remarkably long list of charter schools that have assumed the name of Cesar Chavez, while denying their teachers the right to organize into an union. To borrow a somewhat worn turn of phrase, I knew Cesar Chavez and the members of the boards of trustees of these schools are no Cesar Chavez.
There is an incredibly thin, transparent veneer to the right wing rhetoric in education which seizes the mantle of the civil rights movement. The notion that Chavez would have given a moment of his day, much less his good name, to an anti-union institution is shameless.
UPDATE:
Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham thinks it is “preposterous” to suggest that unions have more of “a claim” on the legacy of Cesar Chavez than an anti-union Chicana daughter of migrant workers. But this is precisely the sort of shallow identity politics that Chavez so strongly opposed — the notion that one’s ethnic identity, one’s parentage, is more important than one’s substantive politics and one’s actual work in the world. Chavez’s unambiguous stand on this question was exactly the point of the anecdote I cited in the original post. The notion that Chavez would lend his name to an enterprise that opposes the right of its employees to organize into an union and bargain collectively, whether those employees be farmworkers or teachers, is one that can only rest on a complete misunderstanding of his life’s work for justice for all working people. The argument that he would have foregone the core principles of that life’s work simply because opposition to them came from a Chicana is beyond incredulous. There are also a great many teacher unionists of Latin American descent, including notable AFT leaders, who would take considerable exception to the notion that the union to which they belong is an “Anglo” institution.
Further, the notion that Chavez was a man whose principles could be bought for any amount of money, much less for $200,000 a year of AFT support for the United Farmworkers, is completely scurrilous. He led a life of great sacrifice for La Causa. Union solidarity may be a foreign concept to some, but in the AFT, it is a principle we hold dear — and that it why we have supported the UFW and other unions, when we could. We are proud of our solidarity work. That the claim of Chavez’s silence for money comes in the form of a report of a rumor of a personal conversation — none of it in the slightest verifiable — says just about everything that needs to be said on the subject.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Drug money and the Mexican government
From Wikipedia
Zhenli Ye Gon (Traditional Chinese: 龔 禎利 葉[1]) (born January 31, 1963, Hong Kong[2]) is a Mexican business man of Chinese origin, accused of trafficking pseudoephedrine into Mexico from Asia. He is the legal representative of United Pharm Chem.
In an interview with the news agency AP, Mr Ye Gon stated that he kept the money found recently in his house in Mexico, which is the largest illegal fortune ever found in the world, after having been blackmailed by Mexican Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano. According to Mr Ye Gon, the money's ultimate destination was the presidential campaign of Felipe Calderón, the current president held by many to be spurious. In this respect the money scandal has become a nightmare for the current presidency, which is still under attack by the opposition under charges of committing fraud in the 2006 general election against Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
According to Mr Ye Gon, Mr. Lozano told him he should "cooperas o cuello" (literally, cooperate or neck), by this meaning if he did not co-operate then he would be killed.
The fortune, found by the police on March 15, 2007 at his residence at Lomas de Chapultepec in Mexico City included the following:
205 million American dollars
18 million Mexican pesos
200,000 Euros
113,000 Hong Kong dollars
11 centenarios (highly valued Mexican gold and silver coins)
A great amount of jewels, of unknown value
Confiscated along with the money were also:
2 Mexican style dwellings of approximately 20 million pesos
1 lab in construction of unknown value
Zhenli Ye Gon (Traditional Chinese: 龔 禎利 葉[1]) (born January 31, 1963, Hong Kong[2]) is a Mexican business man of Chinese origin, accused of trafficking pseudoephedrine into Mexico from Asia. He is the legal representative of United Pharm Chem.
In an interview with the news agency AP, Mr Ye Gon stated that he kept the money found recently in his house in Mexico, which is the largest illegal fortune ever found in the world, after having been blackmailed by Mexican Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano. According to Mr Ye Gon, the money's ultimate destination was the presidential campaign of Felipe Calderón, the current president held by many to be spurious. In this respect the money scandal has become a nightmare for the current presidency, which is still under attack by the opposition under charges of committing fraud in the 2006 general election against Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
According to Mr Ye Gon, Mr. Lozano told him he should "cooperas o cuello" (literally, cooperate or neck), by this meaning if he did not co-operate then he would be killed.
The fortune, found by the police on March 15, 2007 at his residence at Lomas de Chapultepec in Mexico City included the following:
205 million American dollars
18 million Mexican pesos
200,000 Euros
113,000 Hong Kong dollars
11 centenarios (highly valued Mexican gold and silver coins)
A great amount of jewels, of unknown value
Confiscated along with the money were also:
2 Mexican style dwellings of approximately 20 million pesos
1 lab in construction of unknown value
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Guerrillas attack Pemex pipelines in Mexico
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pemex13jul13,0,5950315.story?coll=la-home-center
From the Los Angeles Times
Mexico sends 5,000 troops to guard energy facilities
President Calderon dispatches an elite unit in response to guerrilla attacks on oil and natural gas pipelines. Fuel shortages have forced thousands of businesses to close.
By Héctor Tobar
Times Staff Writer
3:08 PM PDT, July 12, 2007
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched a new 5,000-strong elite military unit to guard strategic sites, including oil refineries and hydroelectric dams, in the wake of guerrilla attacks on pipelines operated by the national oil and gas company, Pemex, according to news reports Thursday.
Business leaders said as many as 1,000 manufacturing plants and other businesses in the Guanajuato-Queretaro region of central Mexico have been forced to shut down or scale back operations this week due to fuel shortages caused by the July 5 and July 10 attacks.
The leftist Popular Revolutionary Army, known by the Spanish initials EPR, claimed responsibility for the attacks Tuesday, saying they were in retaliation for the disappearance of two of their militants last year in the southern state of Oaxaca.
The EPR communiqué said the rebels had bombed three pipelines and a switching station in the states of Queretaro and Guanajuato. The explosions severed natural gas pipelines and a crude oil pipeline that links storage facilities in the Gulf of Mexico port of Poza Rica to a refinery in Salamanca, Guanajuato, reducing fuel supplies in the region.
A fire that had burned in Queretaro since a bombing at 1 a.m. Tuesday was extinguished late Wednesday, Pemex officials said. Two hundred workers were working Thursday to repair the damaged lines.
Natural gas deliveries to residential customers have scaled back in several cities in the region this week, including Celaya and Irapuato.
The attacks shook a government already facing challenges on several fronts: drug traffickers who outgun the police in several corners of the country, a stalled immigration reform bill in the United States, and declining output from Pemex, the country's main source of foreign exchange.
"All we Mexican men and women of good will categorically reject violence because we wish to live in liberty and peace," Calderon said Wednesday in his only reference to the attacks this week, at a ceremony announcing a new commuter rail project for Mexico City.
Calderon is dispatching the Corps of Federal Support Forces, an elite army unit created in May in response to the challenges of the government's war against drug trafficking, the newspaper El Universal reported Thursday. Mexican officials have confirmed the presence of troops at the oil facilities, but have not said which units have been sent.
The Chamber of Transformation Industries, a business group, estimated that shutdowns caused by the pipeline explosions were costing businesses in central Mexico between $5 million and $10 million in losses each day.
The region known as the Bajio, centered in Guanajuato and Queretaro, is home to some of Mexico's largest industrial plants. And at least a dozen major companies in the region reported shutdowns or slowdowns this week related to the attacks, including Honda Motor Co., The Hershey Co., Kellogg Co and Nissan Motor Co.
Grupo Modelo SA, Mexico's largest beer maker, was impacted because Mexico's largest glassmaker, Grupo Vitro, temporarily shut down glass factories in Queretaro and Guadalajara.
"The damage to the economy is serious," Ruben Aguilar Valenzuela wrote in the commentary in the newspaper Reforma on Thursday. "This [guerrilla] action was well thought out.... They picked a strategic objective."
According to news reports, Mexican authorities believe the bombers used an explosive gel often used in underground mining. A similar explosive was used in an attack on three banks in the southern state of Morelos in 2005.
hector.tobar@latimes.com
From the Los Angeles Times
Mexico sends 5,000 troops to guard energy facilities
President Calderon dispatches an elite unit in response to guerrilla attacks on oil and natural gas pipelines. Fuel shortages have forced thousands of businesses to close.
By Héctor Tobar
Times Staff Writer
3:08 PM PDT, July 12, 2007
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched a new 5,000-strong elite military unit to guard strategic sites, including oil refineries and hydroelectric dams, in the wake of guerrilla attacks on pipelines operated by the national oil and gas company, Pemex, according to news reports Thursday.
Business leaders said as many as 1,000 manufacturing plants and other businesses in the Guanajuato-Queretaro region of central Mexico have been forced to shut down or scale back operations this week due to fuel shortages caused by the July 5 and July 10 attacks.
The leftist Popular Revolutionary Army, known by the Spanish initials EPR, claimed responsibility for the attacks Tuesday, saying they were in retaliation for the disappearance of two of their militants last year in the southern state of Oaxaca.
The EPR communiqué said the rebels had bombed three pipelines and a switching station in the states of Queretaro and Guanajuato. The explosions severed natural gas pipelines and a crude oil pipeline that links storage facilities in the Gulf of Mexico port of Poza Rica to a refinery in Salamanca, Guanajuato, reducing fuel supplies in the region.
A fire that had burned in Queretaro since a bombing at 1 a.m. Tuesday was extinguished late Wednesday, Pemex officials said. Two hundred workers were working Thursday to repair the damaged lines.
Natural gas deliveries to residential customers have scaled back in several cities in the region this week, including Celaya and Irapuato.
The attacks shook a government already facing challenges on several fronts: drug traffickers who outgun the police in several corners of the country, a stalled immigration reform bill in the United States, and declining output from Pemex, the country's main source of foreign exchange.
"All we Mexican men and women of good will categorically reject violence because we wish to live in liberty and peace," Calderon said Wednesday in his only reference to the attacks this week, at a ceremony announcing a new commuter rail project for Mexico City.
Calderon is dispatching the Corps of Federal Support Forces, an elite army unit created in May in response to the challenges of the government's war against drug trafficking, the newspaper El Universal reported Thursday. Mexican officials have confirmed the presence of troops at the oil facilities, but have not said which units have been sent.
The Chamber of Transformation Industries, a business group, estimated that shutdowns caused by the pipeline explosions were costing businesses in central Mexico between $5 million and $10 million in losses each day.
The region known as the Bajio, centered in Guanajuato and Queretaro, is home to some of Mexico's largest industrial plants. And at least a dozen major companies in the region reported shutdowns or slowdowns this week related to the attacks, including Honda Motor Co., The Hershey Co., Kellogg Co and Nissan Motor Co.
Grupo Modelo SA, Mexico's largest beer maker, was impacted because Mexico's largest glassmaker, Grupo Vitro, temporarily shut down glass factories in Queretaro and Guadalajara.
"The damage to the economy is serious," Ruben Aguilar Valenzuela wrote in the commentary in the newspaper Reforma on Thursday. "This [guerrilla] action was well thought out.... They picked a strategic objective."
According to news reports, Mexican authorities believe the bombers used an explosive gel often used in underground mining. A similar explosive was used in an attack on three banks in the southern state of Morelos in 2005.
hector.tobar@latimes.com
Howard Zinn, on the purpose of the war on immigrants
Of the People:
A Conversation with Howard Zinn
by Gabriel Matthew Schivone
G.M.S.: Here in Tucson, Arizona, 70 miles from the border, we are feeling the effects of President Bush's deployment of National Guard troops at the U.S. border. The first hundreds arrived last summer, and 2,500 are expected to be in our "Tucson Sector" by August. Moreover, the Border Patrol is to grow from 12,400 agents today to 18,000 by 2008. What are the purposes of a greatly militarized border?
H.Z.: I think the main purpose is not so much to keep people from crossing the border -- they will always find a way to do so -- but to create an atmosphere in the country which is viciously nationalistic, xenophobic, hostile to strangers of any kind. Creating fear of people on the other side of the border gives the government more control over its own people.
There are many striking parallels in immigration policies and social discriminations against the Mexican and Chinese throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which included massive deportation and legal exclusion, for instance, through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. What conclusion may be drawn from the treatment of the Chinese, Mexican, and other immigrant workers?
The conclusion to be drawn from this history is that we have an economic system which sees human beings as property, to be used when it is useful, to be discarded when it is no longer profitable.
The Chinese were welcomed to provide cheap labor on the transcontinental railroad, but then they were not needed, and creating hostility against them turned the attention of white workers away from their own exploiters and against "the other." This has been the historic device used by the great corporations to divide the working class. The same factors operate today with Mexicans and other immigrants.
You've written and spoken much about how crucial a knowledge of history is for us to understand the present conditions in which we find ourselves. You, as well as others like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky, emphasize that it is a vital interest of the government to keep people in a state of "historical amnesia." Would you explain?
When people don't know their history (and I'm not speaking of the sanitized, nationalistic history that we get in school and in the media) -- they are easily deceived. When the President tells the nation that "we must go to war" for liberty, or democracy, or because we are being threatened, a public with no knowledge of history has no way of checking up on this. But if people knew the history of presidential deceptions to get the nation into war, they would not go along, they would be very skeptical. If they knew history, they would know that U.S. President James Polk pretended he was making war on Mexico because of a clash on the border in 1846 and bringing civilization to the Mexicans. They would understand that he lied about his true motive, which was to acquire almost half of Mexican land. If they knew history, they would remember that the U.S. went into Cuba in 1898, claiming to liberate the Cubans, and then made Cuba a virtual colony of the United States. They wou
l!
d know that President Mckinley lied about his real motive for going into the Philippines, and Woodrow Wilson lied about World War I, and Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin in getting the U.S. into the Vietnam War.
You have done extensive research on war and human nature. What can studies of history, psychology, and anthropology tell us about human nature and the conditions of war?
A common belief, which you see all the time, is that wars are the result of "human nature." But there is no evidence for this in genetics, or in anthropology, or in psychology. The only evidence given is that we have always had wars. True, but you could say the same about slavery, or any institution that has lasted a long time. But it's a way of avoiding the fact that war, slavery, and other phenomena are not natural but created by human beings under certain social conditions. If wars were the result of human nature, it would not be necessary for governments to work so strenuously to mobilize their populations for war. People would naturally, spontaneously rush to kill. But that's not the case. Governments have to deceive the population, use enormous amounts of propaganda to persuade people to go to war, entice young people of the working class into the military in the hope of bettering their lives. And if none of that is sufficient, the government must coerce the yo
u!
ng, draft them, threaten them with prison if they don't join.
I can tell you from my personal experience in the Air Force in World War II: my fellow crew members were not lovers of war. They were persuaded that they were doing something good in fighting fascism, that this was a just war. You can see, in the Vietnam War, how, once soldiers saw through the propaganda of the government, many of them turned against the war.
Why do some believe that there is a human instinct for war and that it's inherent human nature to kill?
It is an easy explanation. And it is useful for governments because it turns people away from examining the imperial motives of governments.
You have expressed immense reverence and gratitude for artists during times of war and popular struggle. Would you discuss the role of artists?
Artists have a special role in social movements -- they lend passion, poetry, humor to the principles any movement espouses. With that, they enhance the power of a social movement, which needs every additional strength it can muster to challenge the power of authorities.
The opening passage in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls quotes a very moving "Meditation" by John Donne: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am a part of mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." What do you feel it says, not only to activists, but all people who are seemingly safe and far away from misery, famine, atrocity, and injustice?
It reminds people that we all share a common humanity and that if we turn our faces away from people who are in trouble, we are being less than human.
You've written and spoken much about the importance of civil disobedience. A prevalent mood of ordinary citizens is aversion to breaking the law under any circumstances. Many are led to believe, "If it's against the law, you shouldn't be doing it." What moral and pragmatic arguments would you give, both to activists and the public, regarding the legitimacy of civil disobedience in the face of legal injustice?
It's important to know that the law is not made by any divine being, it is not sacred; that the law is made by the people who run the society; and that they make the law to serve their own interests.
Even if there are organs of representative government in the United States, these are not truly representative of the people but serve the interests of the elite, so it is not sufficient to tell people, "Go through the regular channels," because those channels are controlled in such a way as to block radical change. That's why civil disobedience is necessary, in order to fulfill the requirements of democracy, that the interests of the people should be served. Without civil disobedience, we are at the mercy of people in power who make the laws, execute the laws, decide which laws to enforce and which not to enforce.
A Conversation with Howard Zinn
by Gabriel Matthew Schivone
G.M.S.: Here in Tucson, Arizona, 70 miles from the border, we are feeling the effects of President Bush's deployment of National Guard troops at the U.S. border. The first hundreds arrived last summer, and 2,500 are expected to be in our "Tucson Sector" by August. Moreover, the Border Patrol is to grow from 12,400 agents today to 18,000 by 2008. What are the purposes of a greatly militarized border?
H.Z.: I think the main purpose is not so much to keep people from crossing the border -- they will always find a way to do so -- but to create an atmosphere in the country which is viciously nationalistic, xenophobic, hostile to strangers of any kind. Creating fear of people on the other side of the border gives the government more control over its own people.
There are many striking parallels in immigration policies and social discriminations against the Mexican and Chinese throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which included massive deportation and legal exclusion, for instance, through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. What conclusion may be drawn from the treatment of the Chinese, Mexican, and other immigrant workers?
The conclusion to be drawn from this history is that we have an economic system which sees human beings as property, to be used when it is useful, to be discarded when it is no longer profitable.
The Chinese were welcomed to provide cheap labor on the transcontinental railroad, but then they were not needed, and creating hostility against them turned the attention of white workers away from their own exploiters and against "the other." This has been the historic device used by the great corporations to divide the working class. The same factors operate today with Mexicans and other immigrants.
You've written and spoken much about how crucial a knowledge of history is for us to understand the present conditions in which we find ourselves. You, as well as others like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky, emphasize that it is a vital interest of the government to keep people in a state of "historical amnesia." Would you explain?
When people don't know their history (and I'm not speaking of the sanitized, nationalistic history that we get in school and in the media) -- they are easily deceived. When the President tells the nation that "we must go to war" for liberty, or democracy, or because we are being threatened, a public with no knowledge of history has no way of checking up on this. But if people knew the history of presidential deceptions to get the nation into war, they would not go along, they would be very skeptical. If they knew history, they would know that U.S. President James Polk pretended he was making war on Mexico because of a clash on the border in 1846 and bringing civilization to the Mexicans. They would understand that he lied about his true motive, which was to acquire almost half of Mexican land. If they knew history, they would remember that the U.S. went into Cuba in 1898, claiming to liberate the Cubans, and then made Cuba a virtual colony of the United States. They wou
l!
d know that President Mckinley lied about his real motive for going into the Philippines, and Woodrow Wilson lied about World War I, and Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin in getting the U.S. into the Vietnam War.
You have done extensive research on war and human nature. What can studies of history, psychology, and anthropology tell us about human nature and the conditions of war?
A common belief, which you see all the time, is that wars are the result of "human nature." But there is no evidence for this in genetics, or in anthropology, or in psychology. The only evidence given is that we have always had wars. True, but you could say the same about slavery, or any institution that has lasted a long time. But it's a way of avoiding the fact that war, slavery, and other phenomena are not natural but created by human beings under certain social conditions. If wars were the result of human nature, it would not be necessary for governments to work so strenuously to mobilize their populations for war. People would naturally, spontaneously rush to kill. But that's not the case. Governments have to deceive the population, use enormous amounts of propaganda to persuade people to go to war, entice young people of the working class into the military in the hope of bettering their lives. And if none of that is sufficient, the government must coerce the yo
u!
ng, draft them, threaten them with prison if they don't join.
I can tell you from my personal experience in the Air Force in World War II: my fellow crew members were not lovers of war. They were persuaded that they were doing something good in fighting fascism, that this was a just war. You can see, in the Vietnam War, how, once soldiers saw through the propaganda of the government, many of them turned against the war.
Why do some believe that there is a human instinct for war and that it's inherent human nature to kill?
It is an easy explanation. And it is useful for governments because it turns people away from examining the imperial motives of governments.
You have expressed immense reverence and gratitude for artists during times of war and popular struggle. Would you discuss the role of artists?
Artists have a special role in social movements -- they lend passion, poetry, humor to the principles any movement espouses. With that, they enhance the power of a social movement, which needs every additional strength it can muster to challenge the power of authorities.
The opening passage in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls quotes a very moving "Meditation" by John Donne: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am a part of mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." What do you feel it says, not only to activists, but all people who are seemingly safe and far away from misery, famine, atrocity, and injustice?
It reminds people that we all share a common humanity and that if we turn our faces away from people who are in trouble, we are being less than human.
You've written and spoken much about the importance of civil disobedience. A prevalent mood of ordinary citizens is aversion to breaking the law under any circumstances. Many are led to believe, "If it's against the law, you shouldn't be doing it." What moral and pragmatic arguments would you give, both to activists and the public, regarding the legitimacy of civil disobedience in the face of legal injustice?
It's important to know that the law is not made by any divine being, it is not sacred; that the law is made by the people who run the society; and that they make the law to serve their own interests.
Even if there are organs of representative government in the United States, these are not truly representative of the people but serve the interests of the elite, so it is not sufficient to tell people, "Go through the regular channels," because those channels are controlled in such a way as to block radical change. That's why civil disobedience is necessary, in order to fulfill the requirements of democracy, that the interests of the people should be served. Without civil disobedience, we are at the mercy of people in power who make the laws, execute the laws, decide which laws to enforce and which not to enforce.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Murder of women in Guatemala
Gender Savagery in Guatemala
by Michael Parenti and Lucia Muñoz
Published on Sunday, July 8, 2007
by CommonDreams.orghttp://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/08/2380/
On the outskirts of Guatemala City the body of an 18-
year-old woman of indigenous ethnicity was recently
discovered by her frantic parents who had been
searching long and hard. Forensic evidence showed that
she had been repeatedly raped and tortured and that her
head had been severed from her body with a blunt knife
while she was still alive.
This killing was more than just a passing aberration.
Nightmarish crimes against women have been occurring
with horrifying frequency in Guatemala. In the last
seven years, over 3,200 Guatemalan women have been
abducted and murdered, with many of them raped,
tortured, and mutilated in the doing. The number of
victims has shown a striking increase in the last few
years with some six hundred murdered in 2006 alone.
The victims often are from low-income families
deracinated from their rural homesteads during the
civil war and forced to crowd into Guatemala City and
other urban areas in search of work.
We might recall Guatemala's horrid history of violence.
From 1962 to 1996, a popular insurgency was defeated by
that deranged murder machine known as the Guatemalan
Army, trained, advised, financed, and equipped by the
United States. A United Nations-sponsored Truth
Commission in 1999 characterized much of the
counterinsurgency as a genocide against the Mayan
people, a holocaust that left 626 villages destroyed,
approximately 200,000 people dead or disappeared,
including many labor union leaders, student leaders,
journalists, and clergy. Hundreds of thousands more
were either displaced internally or forced to flee the
country.
Those years of untrammeled massacres provide some
context for the current wave of femicide sweeping the
country. The 1996 peace accords officially declared an
end to the butchery but the war against women continues
albeit in more piecemeal fashion. Guatemalan women are
enduring the whiplash of decades of dehumanizing
violence-boosted by the same kind of deep-seated sexism
and gender-specific crimes (rape) that are perpetrated
in many societies around the world.
Independent investigators charge that the vast majority
of present-day atrocities against women have been
committed by current or former members of the
Guatemalan intelligence services. Having escaped
prosecution for human rights violations during the
internal war, these trained killers are now members of
private security forces or police and paramilitary
units that have been strongly implicated in the crimes
of the last seven years.
For the most part, authorities show little inclination
to bring the perpetrators to justice. Some officials
blame the victims for their own deaths, implying that
the women bring it on themselves because of their
supposed involvement in gang activities or drugs, or
because in some way or another they refuse to lead
properly conforming lives within the safe confines of a
traditional family and community
Some of the victims indeed may have been entangled in
shady operations. But many more have been working
women, including those of indigenous stock, trapped in
poverty. They are the prime victims of a broader
'social cleansing' that reactionary hoodlums are
conducting against a variety of groups including street
children, teenagers, gays, and homeless indigents, a
campaign that has claimed thousands of additional
victims.
Guatemala is known as the country of 'eternal spring.'
Some analysts have called it the land of 'eternal
impunity,' given how right-wing thugs continue to get
away with rape, torture, and murder. Statistics reveal
that hardly one percent of the perpetrators are ever
tried and convicted and the sentences are outrageously
light.
Even those rare cases that make it all the way to a
prosecutor's desk have little chance of resulting in a
conviction due to the lack of reliable evidence. Recent
reports reveal the continuing failure of investigators
to collect and preserve essential evidence from crime
scenes. More than ordinary incompetence is operative
here. Guatemalan authorities manifest little interest
in training skilled cadres who might unearth really
damaging information about who is behind the crimes.
Anonymous death threats have been sent to the volunteer
exhumation teams that locate and examine the bodies of
the murdered women and who try to publicize the
evidence they discover. In May 2007 the leader of one
such team was informed that his sister would be 'raped
and dismembered into pieces' if he continued to
investigate the crimes.
While these murders may seem like little more than
random thrill killings to some observers, in fact they
serve a function of social control much as would any
form of state terrorism. The violence perpetrated
against individuals creates a pervasive climate of fear
and horror within the victimized families and
communities, thereby discouraging social protest and
popular resistance. Instead of organizing around any
number of crucial politico-economic issues, many of the
demoralized and traumatized families cower in stunned
silence.
In time people grow numb to the violence. Feeling
helpless they almost routinely check the news each day
to see how many additional victims have been reported.
The effects on children can be especially telling.
Growing up in a climate of fear, they learn that their
parents and community cannot keep them safe and that
homicidal fury might strike anyone at any time.
Family members of murdered women report that
authorities show hostility towards them when they
request government intervention.
Guatemala's legal system is rife with provisions that
minimize the seriousness of violence against women, a
system codified and enforced by men who have seldom
displayed any concern for the safety of women. The
Guatemalan Penal Code long reflected this bias,
treating domestic abuse as a minor offence and
generally offering scant protection from gender-based
violence.
Guatemalan president Oscar Berger voices a commitment
to confronting the crisis but has done next to nothing.
Rather than devoting the necessary resources to
investigation and enforcement, Berger appeared on
national television in 2005 to announce that, for their
own safety, women would do best to stay at home.
In 2005 Guatemala appointed its first female Supreme
Court President, Beatriz De Leon, and two years later a
female police chief. But there is little indication
that high-placed female officeholders are going to buck
the Old Boys network. Until the government makes some
significant efforts towards implementing the
recommendations outlined by human rights organizations
(such as Guatemala Peace and Development Network, MIA,
NISGUA, GHRC-USA, Rights Action, and Center for Gender
Studies), the lives of Guatemala's women will hang in
the balance.
There are some encouraging signs. The Human Rights
Committee of the Guatemalan Congress is giving serious
consideration to a bill that purports to guarantee
life, liberty, dignity, and equality for women along
with stiffer penalties for those who physically and
mentally abuse women and otherwise violate their
rights.
Meanwhile a growing number of Guatemalan women are
moving into nontraditional careers. In the upcoming
election, at least one hundred women will be running
for Congress. Some parties have designed campaign
strategies intended to promote electoral victories for
more women. At present of a total of 158 seats in the
Guatemalan Congress only fourteen are occupied by
women.
There also are efforts by human rights organizations to
create a central, unified database of femicide victims,
as well as an emergency response system for missing
girls and women that would include utilization of
state-of-the-art internet capabilities, DNA testing,
and the like.
Awareness of the atrocities has been reaching other
countries and gaining international attention. There is
a growing demand from abroad that Guatemalan law
enforcement agencies get serious about responding to
the gender-based atrocities. The U.S. Congress is being
pressured to get into the act. A House resolution
condemns the murders and expresses condolences and
support to the families of victims. The resolution
urges the government of Guatemala to recognize domestic
violence as a crime, and to investigate the killings
and prosecute those responsible.
The U.S. Senate passed a resolution calling on the
Guatemalan Congress to approve the actions of the U.N.-
sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in
Guatemala. The commission intends to investigate the
clandestine groups that use violence to advance their
illicit political and financial interests.
Meanwhile innocent and unoffending women continue to
suffer nightmarish fates at the hands of misogynistic
maniacs who, some years ago, developed a taste for
inflicting rape, torture, and death 'in service to
their country.'
-----------------
Michael Parenti is a noted author and social
commentator. His recent books include Contrary Notions:
The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights); The Culture
Struggle (Seven Stories); Democracy for the Few 8th ed.
(Wadsworth/Thomson) and The Assassination of Julius
Caesar (New Press). See www.michaelparenti.org.
Lucia Muñoz is founder and president of Mujeres
Iniciando En Las Americas, and co-founder of Guatemala
Peace and Development Network. She has lectured widely
across the United States on the struggles facing
Guatemalan women. See www.miamericas.info.
by Michael Parenti and Lucia Muñoz
Published on Sunday, July 8, 2007
by CommonDreams.orghttp://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/08/2380/
On the outskirts of Guatemala City the body of an 18-
year-old woman of indigenous ethnicity was recently
discovered by her frantic parents who had been
searching long and hard. Forensic evidence showed that
she had been repeatedly raped and tortured and that her
head had been severed from her body with a blunt knife
while she was still alive.
This killing was more than just a passing aberration.
Nightmarish crimes against women have been occurring
with horrifying frequency in Guatemala. In the last
seven years, over 3,200 Guatemalan women have been
abducted and murdered, with many of them raped,
tortured, and mutilated in the doing. The number of
victims has shown a striking increase in the last few
years with some six hundred murdered in 2006 alone.
The victims often are from low-income families
deracinated from their rural homesteads during the
civil war and forced to crowd into Guatemala City and
other urban areas in search of work.
We might recall Guatemala's horrid history of violence.
From 1962 to 1996, a popular insurgency was defeated by
that deranged murder machine known as the Guatemalan
Army, trained, advised, financed, and equipped by the
United States. A United Nations-sponsored Truth
Commission in 1999 characterized much of the
counterinsurgency as a genocide against the Mayan
people, a holocaust that left 626 villages destroyed,
approximately 200,000 people dead or disappeared,
including many labor union leaders, student leaders,
journalists, and clergy. Hundreds of thousands more
were either displaced internally or forced to flee the
country.
Those years of untrammeled massacres provide some
context for the current wave of femicide sweeping the
country. The 1996 peace accords officially declared an
end to the butchery but the war against women continues
albeit in more piecemeal fashion. Guatemalan women are
enduring the whiplash of decades of dehumanizing
violence-boosted by the same kind of deep-seated sexism
and gender-specific crimes (rape) that are perpetrated
in many societies around the world.
Independent investigators charge that the vast majority
of present-day atrocities against women have been
committed by current or former members of the
Guatemalan intelligence services. Having escaped
prosecution for human rights violations during the
internal war, these trained killers are now members of
private security forces or police and paramilitary
units that have been strongly implicated in the crimes
of the last seven years.
For the most part, authorities show little inclination
to bring the perpetrators to justice. Some officials
blame the victims for their own deaths, implying that
the women bring it on themselves because of their
supposed involvement in gang activities or drugs, or
because in some way or another they refuse to lead
properly conforming lives within the safe confines of a
traditional family and community
Some of the victims indeed may have been entangled in
shady operations. But many more have been working
women, including those of indigenous stock, trapped in
poverty. They are the prime victims of a broader
'social cleansing' that reactionary hoodlums are
conducting against a variety of groups including street
children, teenagers, gays, and homeless indigents, a
campaign that has claimed thousands of additional
victims.
Guatemala is known as the country of 'eternal spring.'
Some analysts have called it the land of 'eternal
impunity,' given how right-wing thugs continue to get
away with rape, torture, and murder. Statistics reveal
that hardly one percent of the perpetrators are ever
tried and convicted and the sentences are outrageously
light.
Even those rare cases that make it all the way to a
prosecutor's desk have little chance of resulting in a
conviction due to the lack of reliable evidence. Recent
reports reveal the continuing failure of investigators
to collect and preserve essential evidence from crime
scenes. More than ordinary incompetence is operative
here. Guatemalan authorities manifest little interest
in training skilled cadres who might unearth really
damaging information about who is behind the crimes.
Anonymous death threats have been sent to the volunteer
exhumation teams that locate and examine the bodies of
the murdered women and who try to publicize the
evidence they discover. In May 2007 the leader of one
such team was informed that his sister would be 'raped
and dismembered into pieces' if he continued to
investigate the crimes.
While these murders may seem like little more than
random thrill killings to some observers, in fact they
serve a function of social control much as would any
form of state terrorism. The violence perpetrated
against individuals creates a pervasive climate of fear
and horror within the victimized families and
communities, thereby discouraging social protest and
popular resistance. Instead of organizing around any
number of crucial politico-economic issues, many of the
demoralized and traumatized families cower in stunned
silence.
In time people grow numb to the violence. Feeling
helpless they almost routinely check the news each day
to see how many additional victims have been reported.
The effects on children can be especially telling.
Growing up in a climate of fear, they learn that their
parents and community cannot keep them safe and that
homicidal fury might strike anyone at any time.
Family members of murdered women report that
authorities show hostility towards them when they
request government intervention.
Guatemala's legal system is rife with provisions that
minimize the seriousness of violence against women, a
system codified and enforced by men who have seldom
displayed any concern for the safety of women. The
Guatemalan Penal Code long reflected this bias,
treating domestic abuse as a minor offence and
generally offering scant protection from gender-based
violence.
Guatemalan president Oscar Berger voices a commitment
to confronting the crisis but has done next to nothing.
Rather than devoting the necessary resources to
investigation and enforcement, Berger appeared on
national television in 2005 to announce that, for their
own safety, women would do best to stay at home.
In 2005 Guatemala appointed its first female Supreme
Court President, Beatriz De Leon, and two years later a
female police chief. But there is little indication
that high-placed female officeholders are going to buck
the Old Boys network. Until the government makes some
significant efforts towards implementing the
recommendations outlined by human rights organizations
(such as Guatemala Peace and Development Network, MIA,
NISGUA, GHRC-USA, Rights Action, and Center for Gender
Studies), the lives of Guatemala's women will hang in
the balance.
There are some encouraging signs. The Human Rights
Committee of the Guatemalan Congress is giving serious
consideration to a bill that purports to guarantee
life, liberty, dignity, and equality for women along
with stiffer penalties for those who physically and
mentally abuse women and otherwise violate their
rights.
Meanwhile a growing number of Guatemalan women are
moving into nontraditional careers. In the upcoming
election, at least one hundred women will be running
for Congress. Some parties have designed campaign
strategies intended to promote electoral victories for
more women. At present of a total of 158 seats in the
Guatemalan Congress only fourteen are occupied by
women.
There also are efforts by human rights organizations to
create a central, unified database of femicide victims,
as well as an emergency response system for missing
girls and women that would include utilization of
state-of-the-art internet capabilities, DNA testing,
and the like.
Awareness of the atrocities has been reaching other
countries and gaining international attention. There is
a growing demand from abroad that Guatemalan law
enforcement agencies get serious about responding to
the gender-based atrocities. The U.S. Congress is being
pressured to get into the act. A House resolution
condemns the murders and expresses condolences and
support to the families of victims. The resolution
urges the government of Guatemala to recognize domestic
violence as a crime, and to investigate the killings
and prosecute those responsible.
The U.S. Senate passed a resolution calling on the
Guatemalan Congress to approve the actions of the U.N.-
sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in
Guatemala. The commission intends to investigate the
clandestine groups that use violence to advance their
illicit political and financial interests.
Meanwhile innocent and unoffending women continue to
suffer nightmarish fates at the hands of misogynistic
maniacs who, some years ago, developed a taste for
inflicting rape, torture, and death 'in service to
their country.'
-----------------
Michael Parenti is a noted author and social
commentator. His recent books include Contrary Notions:
The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights); The Culture
Struggle (Seven Stories); Democracy for the Few 8th ed.
(Wadsworth/Thomson) and The Assassination of Julius
Caesar (New Press). See www.michaelparenti.org.
Lucia Muñoz is founder and president of Mujeres
Iniciando En Las Americas, and co-founder of Guatemala
Peace and Development Network. She has lectured widely
across the United States on the struggles facing
Guatemalan women. See www.miamericas.info.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Vieques: Puerto Rico
Vieques: The Struggle Continues
Vieques and Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is a Caribbean archipelago: the smallest of the Greater
Antilles. Invaded by the United States in 1898 during the Spanish American
War, Puerto Rico was put under US rule as war booty. Today, Puerto Rico is
still a militarily occupied colony. In 1917 US citizenship was imposed upon
Puerto Ricans without the right to vote for president or be represented in
the US Congress. However, Puerto Ricans were and are subject to obligatory
U.S, military service.
Vieques is an island municipality of Puerto Rico. Just 21 miles long and 4
miles wide, it is located 8 miles from the southeast coast of the main
island. During the1940s the U. S. Navy occupied three-fourths of the
territory of Vieques. For sixty years the Navy utilized Vieques as a base
for its military operations in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. The
Navy transformed Vieques into one of the world's most active bases to train
pilots and test new armament systems. The Navy also rented the facilities
to arms manufacturers and allied armed forces for practice and testing.
The military exercises provoked grave ecological, economic and social
damage, which contributed to extreme poverty and forced migration of many
Viequenses to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the United States. For
decades those who remained lived in terror of the physical and physiological
impacts of live, high explosive bombs. They also suffered from hostile and
abusive behavior by US Navy personnel, many of whom sexually assaulted women
and attacked and even murdered civilians.
The bombardments contaminated the waters, soil and air with alarming levels
of heavy metals and toxins such as mercury, lead, cadmium, aluminum and
uranium, which has provoked a health crisis among Viequenses. For example,
Vieques' cancer rate is at least 30% higher than that for the rest of Puerto
Rico. In addition there are high incidences of lung disease, respiratory
aliments and skin problems, all of which are associated with the
high levels of environmental contamination.
Resistance
For over six decades the people of Vieques have used different forms of
struggle against the military presence. In April of 1999, a bomb
accidentally hit an observation post, killing a local security guard named
David Sanes. This incident triggered the best-known and most dramatic phase
of Vieques resistance, which included massive civil disobedience.
The Vieques campaign against the US Navy received help and solidarity from
nearly all sectors of Puerto Rican society, as well as from the
international community. People from Vieques appeared several times before
of the United Nations Decolonization Committee and addressed multiple forums
in the United States and other countries, such as Brazil, Cuba, India,
Philippines, Japan, Korea, Guam, Guatemala and Geneva, Switzerland. Nearly
1,500 persons were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience in Vieques.
Hundreds of these people served time in federal prison for misdemeanor
trespassing. As consequence of this Puerto Rican struggle with international
help, military operations ceased on May 1, 2003, and the US Navy left
Vieques.
What does peace really involve?
The people of Vieques have a vision for the development of a new Vieques,
free from the US Navy, living in peace with a quality of life that responds
to the people's historic demands, which are summarized as follows:
· Recognition by the United States government of the right of the people of
Vieques to their lands.
· The departure of The Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States
Department of Interior from Vieques
· Creation of an organization of Viequenses to conserve, preserve and
protect the demilitarized lands, not to restrict the people but to help
teach them how to love, manage, conserve and protect their resources.
· The Master Plan for Sustainable Development should include mechanisms of
land control, conservation and management to guarantee proper use in
accordance with the interests and necessities of the community.
· Community control of the lands rescued from the US Navy through a
Community Land Trust or Cooperative to avoid speculation by large foreign
interests.
Recognition and realization of the above will fulfill the historic demands
of the people of Vieques, also known as the "Four D's":
Demilitarization, Decontamination, Devolution and Development.
For complete demilitarization the people of Vieques demand withdrawal of all
military personnel and all war related artifacts in Vieques. This includes
the Relocatable Over The Horizon Radar (ROTHR).
For complete decontamination, the US Navy must clean all contamination
caused by sixty years of bombings and other war related practices. They must
leave our house as clean as they found it when they first arrived. This
process requires that the corresponding governmental agencies give priority
attention to the most serious health problems in Vieques caused by the
contamination - because without good health there is no peace.
For complete devolution every inch of Vieques land must be returned to its
people. We need land to build homes, schools and hospitals, to develop
agricultural, tourist and fishing projects, and to leave to our future
generations. The rescue of this land is absolutely indispensable for the
future development of Vieques.
For sustainable development the people of Vieques must be allowed to put
into practice their vision of a Vieques not only without the US Navy, but
truly at peace. Community-controlled projects centered on eco-tourism,
agriculture and fishing, studies in marine biology and archeology - among
other economic sectors - will provide employment for our population and will
generate momentum to end the socioeconomic crisis of the past sixty years.
What can you do for Vieques?
· Start discussions of this new phase of the Vieques struggle in your
workplaces, schools, universities, and communities, as well as in meetings
with religious and governmental leaders. Call us and ask for a speaker to
come and give a presentation on Vieques.
· Write articles and letters to the editor in local and national newspapers
· Participate in activities of mobilization and protest
· Keep informed about activities through our electronic newsgroup:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bieke_pr/
__._,_.___
Vieques and Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is a Caribbean archipelago: the smallest of the Greater
Antilles. Invaded by the United States in 1898 during the Spanish American
War, Puerto Rico was put under US rule as war booty. Today, Puerto Rico is
still a militarily occupied colony. In 1917 US citizenship was imposed upon
Puerto Ricans without the right to vote for president or be represented in
the US Congress. However, Puerto Ricans were and are subject to obligatory
U.S, military service.
Vieques is an island municipality of Puerto Rico. Just 21 miles long and 4
miles wide, it is located 8 miles from the southeast coast of the main
island. During the1940s the U. S. Navy occupied three-fourths of the
territory of Vieques. For sixty years the Navy utilized Vieques as a base
for its military operations in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. The
Navy transformed Vieques into one of the world's most active bases to train
pilots and test new armament systems. The Navy also rented the facilities
to arms manufacturers and allied armed forces for practice and testing.
The military exercises provoked grave ecological, economic and social
damage, which contributed to extreme poverty and forced migration of many
Viequenses to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the United States. For
decades those who remained lived in terror of the physical and physiological
impacts of live, high explosive bombs. They also suffered from hostile and
abusive behavior by US Navy personnel, many of whom sexually assaulted women
and attacked and even murdered civilians.
The bombardments contaminated the waters, soil and air with alarming levels
of heavy metals and toxins such as mercury, lead, cadmium, aluminum and
uranium, which has provoked a health crisis among Viequenses. For example,
Vieques' cancer rate is at least 30% higher than that for the rest of Puerto
Rico. In addition there are high incidences of lung disease, respiratory
aliments and skin problems, all of which are associated with the
high levels of environmental contamination.
Resistance
For over six decades the people of Vieques have used different forms of
struggle against the military presence. In April of 1999, a bomb
accidentally hit an observation post, killing a local security guard named
David Sanes. This incident triggered the best-known and most dramatic phase
of Vieques resistance, which included massive civil disobedience.
The Vieques campaign against the US Navy received help and solidarity from
nearly all sectors of Puerto Rican society, as well as from the
international community. People from Vieques appeared several times before
of the United Nations Decolonization Committee and addressed multiple forums
in the United States and other countries, such as Brazil, Cuba, India,
Philippines, Japan, Korea, Guam, Guatemala and Geneva, Switzerland. Nearly
1,500 persons were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience in Vieques.
Hundreds of these people served time in federal prison for misdemeanor
trespassing. As consequence of this Puerto Rican struggle with international
help, military operations ceased on May 1, 2003, and the US Navy left
Vieques.
What does peace really involve?
The people of Vieques have a vision for the development of a new Vieques,
free from the US Navy, living in peace with a quality of life that responds
to the people's historic demands, which are summarized as follows:
· Recognition by the United States government of the right of the people of
Vieques to their lands.
· The departure of The Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States
Department of Interior from Vieques
· Creation of an organization of Viequenses to conserve, preserve and
protect the demilitarized lands, not to restrict the people but to help
teach them how to love, manage, conserve and protect their resources.
· The Master Plan for Sustainable Development should include mechanisms of
land control, conservation and management to guarantee proper use in
accordance with the interests and necessities of the community.
· Community control of the lands rescued from the US Navy through a
Community Land Trust or Cooperative to avoid speculation by large foreign
interests.
Recognition and realization of the above will fulfill the historic demands
of the people of Vieques, also known as the "Four D's":
Demilitarization, Decontamination, Devolution and Development.
For complete demilitarization the people of Vieques demand withdrawal of all
military personnel and all war related artifacts in Vieques. This includes
the Relocatable Over The Horizon Radar (ROTHR).
For complete decontamination, the US Navy must clean all contamination
caused by sixty years of bombings and other war related practices. They must
leave our house as clean as they found it when they first arrived. This
process requires that the corresponding governmental agencies give priority
attention to the most serious health problems in Vieques caused by the
contamination - because without good health there is no peace.
For complete devolution every inch of Vieques land must be returned to its
people. We need land to build homes, schools and hospitals, to develop
agricultural, tourist and fishing projects, and to leave to our future
generations. The rescue of this land is absolutely indispensable for the
future development of Vieques.
For sustainable development the people of Vieques must be allowed to put
into practice their vision of a Vieques not only without the US Navy, but
truly at peace. Community-controlled projects centered on eco-tourism,
agriculture and fishing, studies in marine biology and archeology - among
other economic sectors - will provide employment for our population and will
generate momentum to end the socioeconomic crisis of the past sixty years.
What can you do for Vieques?
· Start discussions of this new phase of the Vieques struggle in your
workplaces, schools, universities, and communities, as well as in meetings
with religious and governmental leaders. Call us and ask for a speaker to
come and give a presentation on Vieques.
· Write articles and letters to the editor in local and national newspapers
· Participate in activities of mobilization and protest
· Keep informed about activities through our electronic newsgroup:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bieke_pr/
__._,_.___
Friday, June 29, 2007
Supreme Court decision on school integration
It is important to select and fight current battles based upon the reality of our cities, not based upon how segregation worked prior to 1954.
I am not certain how this decision will impact mega cities like New York, Boston, etc. In mid sized cities like Sacramento, Seattle, Louisville, all of the high schools are integrated. In Sacramento they range from 25% Latino, 23 % African American, 26% Asian, 24% Anglo. Each category ranges up and down 10- 15 %. Elementary schools are far more diverse. So, each school will have a minority population of at least 45%. The argument is that an Anglo student should not be allowed to transfer out of a school if it impacts the demographics of the school. So, the debate is should a student be restricted if he chooses to move from a school that is 20% Anglo to a school that is 40% Anglo. Unlike prior to Brown: there are no all white schools in the cities. There are overwhelmingly white schools in the suburbs, but since these are in separate districts, the court long ago decided that governments could not mandate across district integration.
The Brown decision said that separate and equal was never equal, and it mandated forms of integration. What we have now is integrated and unequal- and the urban schools have a series of crises. Until we begin to provide quality schooling in our urban schools, until we act upon the unequal part of the Brown decision, we really are not making much progress.
Duane Campbell
I am not certain how this decision will impact mega cities like New York, Boston, etc. In mid sized cities like Sacramento, Seattle, Louisville, all of the high schools are integrated. In Sacramento they range from 25% Latino, 23 % African American, 26% Asian, 24% Anglo. Each category ranges up and down 10- 15 %. Elementary schools are far more diverse. So, each school will have a minority population of at least 45%. The argument is that an Anglo student should not be allowed to transfer out of a school if it impacts the demographics of the school. So, the debate is should a student be restricted if he chooses to move from a school that is 20% Anglo to a school that is 40% Anglo. Unlike prior to Brown: there are no all white schools in the cities. There are overwhelmingly white schools in the suburbs, but since these are in separate districts, the court long ago decided that governments could not mandate across district integration.
The Brown decision said that separate and equal was never equal, and it mandated forms of integration. What we have now is integrated and unequal- and the urban schools have a series of crises. Until we begin to provide quality schooling in our urban schools, until we act upon the unequal part of the Brown decision, we really are not making much progress.
Duane Campbell
Thursday, June 28, 2007
SEIU and Andy Stern : Savior or Sellout?
> Andy Stern: Savior or Sellout?
>> by LIZA FEATHERSTONE
>>
>> [from the July 16, 2007 issue]
>>
>> When Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International
>> Union (SEIU), and Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart, appeared onstage
>> together in early May, the pairing drew attention. The occasion
>> was a lunchtime meeting of Better Health Care Together, a
>> coalition of business, labor and political leaders, at a Hilton
>> hotel in New York City. Stern had initiated the coalition with a
>> letter to all the Fortune 500 CEOs inviting them to work with him
>> on a solution to the nation's healthcare crisis. He says he was
>> surprised that Wal-Mart--and so many other companies--responded.
>> "When I write letters to CEOs," he explains matter-of-factly, "I
>> usually don't get a response."
>>
>> Outside the Hilton, several hundred men and women wearing United
>> Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) T-shirts, some of whom had come
>> all the way from Maine and Pennsylvania, picketed the event,
>> objecting to the "hypocrisy" of Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott's
>> appearance. Scott is accustomed to dodging protesters; his company
>> has been engaged in a bitter public relations battle with the UFCW
>> for years, with the union charging that Wal-Mart routinely
>> violates the right to organize and offers stingy health benefits.
>>
>> But the Wal-Mart boss wasn't the only target of righteous ire t! hat
>> day. The union activists were also upset about the presence of
>> Andy Stern. "People feel he has sacrificed some of the basic
>> principles of the labor movement" by appearing onstage with the
>> Wal-Mart CEO, said Pat Purcell, an organizer of the Hilton picket.
>> One of those principles is solidarity. "Our union is losing
>> members every single day because of Wal-Mart," explains Purcell,
>> director of special projects for UFCW Local 1500. "When we ask for
>> help from other unions, we don't mean, You can have lunch with
>> them but not dinner!" Though Purcell says he has "great respect"
>> for Stern, he and other unionists feel that Stern enabled a public
>> relations stunt by Wal-Mart, aimed at making the company look
>> socially responsible.
>>
>> Inside the Hilton, Stern was more popular. Over a dry repast of
>> chicken, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell hailed Andy Stern and
>> Lee Scott as "the odd couple of healthcare." Stern beamed when
>> Arnold Schwarzenegger, who spoke by satellite, thanked him for his
>> "great leadership."
>>
>> To be fair, this moment aside, Stern's relationship with Wal-Mart
>> is hardly chummy. SEIU continues to fund Wal-Mart Watch, an
>> organization dedicated to relentless criticism of the retailer's
>> practices, and this year the union will allocate more funding than
>> ever to such efforts. In March Stern gave a speech at a Bank of
>> America gathering blasting Wal-Mart for undermining "fair
>> competition" and adopting practices that were "bad for business
>> overall."
>>
>> But many in the labor movement view Stern's overtures to Scott as
>> typical manifestations of his business-friendly unionism, more
>> focused on partnering with employe! rs than on joining other
>> progressives in a struggle against corporate power. Stern's 2006
>> book, A Country That Works, is full of statements like "employees
>> and employers need organizations that solve problems, not create
>> them" and "all parties want a mutually beneficial relationship
>> based on teamwork." (Sometimes the business-speak in this book
>> reaches comic proportions; at one point Stern praises civil rights
>> icon Jackie Robinson as "a change agent who endured indignities as
>> a pathbreaker.") Stern has unsettled many of his staff by publicly
>> suggesting that he might not be against Social Security
>> privatization or school vouchers (one organizer in the Midwest
>> probably speaks for nearly everyone in SEIU in calling such
>> statements "a bunch of horseshit...in fact we are against those
>> things"). Paul Krehbiel, an organizer who until recently worked
>> for SEIU Local 660 in Southern California, points out that Stern
>> briefly attended the Wharton business school before becoming a
>> social worker: "Andy's just doing what he started out doing. He
>> loves the business community!" Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director
>> of the California Nurses Association (which competes with SEIU to
>> organize nurses), bluntly calls Stern "the neocon of the labor
>> movement."
>>
>> Many progressives would be startled by DeMoro's characterization
>> of Andy Stern. His union is the employer of choice for many
>> idealistic college graduates. That's only in part because the
>> membership of SEIU--African-Americans and immigrants toiling in
>> underpaid jobs--inspires a natural solidarity from the left. It's
>> also because Stern's personal style is agreeable to middle-class
>> progress! ives. Th e 1960s-generation, University of Pennsylvania-
>> educated former social worker is reflective and contemporary, not
>> macho or swaggering like many old-school union leaders. He's also
>> willing to try new things, and like many of his generation harbors
>> a profound contempt for stagnant bureaucracy. These attitudes can
>> be refreshing in a labor leader. Even photo ops with Scott can be
>> attributed to this aspect of his temperament: When Stern is asked
>> about his perceived coziness with business, he is quick to insist
>> that he is pragmatic, often using phrases like "it's not academic"
>> or "these are real-life choices" to suggest that critics are
>> ideologues or pie-in-the-sky idealists.
>>
>> Stern is also an internationalist. He's assigned SEIU staff to
>> Australia, Poland,England, India, France, Switzerland, Germany,
>> the Netherlands and South America, with an eye to running global
>> campaigns pressuring multinational employers. As Stern explains in
>> his book, "Imagine simultaneous protests on service contractors'
>> global clients, or outsourcing strikes to countries where strikes
>> are legal and will not provoke government retaliation." When SEIU
>> was having trouble organizing American security guards employed by
>> the Swedish firm Securitas, it sought help from the Swedish
>> Transport Workers Union, which had a good relationship with the
>> company. Securitas agreed to drop its opposition to the union drive.
>>
>> More controversially, Stern has formed relationships with the
>> Chinese state union, which has been been criticized for helping
>> the government suppress workers' rights. Stern, who played a key
>> role in forcing Wal-Mart to allow the union into its Chinese
>> stor! es, beli eves that a cold-war approach to China is obsolete.
>> When I interviewed him, he had just returned from his sixth trip
>> to China. "Our members and their members work for the same
>> employers," he explained. "I just think workers' solidarity has a
>> lot more possibilities when you're not dealing with ideology."
>>
>> Another reason to cheer for Stern is that in a time of dismally
>> declining union density, SEIU under his leadership has added
>> members and seen some victories, improving the lives of home
>> health aides, janitors and security guards, some of the country's
>> most exploited workers. In May, for example, 4,000 Los
>> Angelessecurity guards joined SEIU as part of a nationwide
>> campaign to raise standards in that industry. Ruth Milkman,
>> director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and
>> Employment, has called SEIU a "model of dynamic unionism,"
>> pointing out that "no other union has been more effective in
>> organizing the unorganized in recent years."
>>
>> But many observers wonder what Stern's new federation, Change to
>> Win (CTW)--founded with great fanfare when he led six other unions
>> in a split from the AFL-CIO in September 2005--has thus far
>> accomplished. ("Press releases," grumbles one internal skeptic.
>> "Where is it headed? is something a lot of people here are
>> asking.") Milkman, who championed the formation of CTW in
>> articles, op-eds and scholarly work, calls it "a bit early to
>> assess this" but agrees that "it is fair to say that, to date,
>> there is not much to point to in the way of concrete organizing
>> victories that were the work of Change to Win itself."
>>
>> Within SEIU most people agree that Stern has been quite successful
>! ;> in implementing what is often referred to by his union's foot
>> soldiers as "the program": building density in the union's three
>> industries, building services--the public sector and (most of all)
>> healthcare. During his tenure, the union has grown by 980,000
>> workers (some of that growth has come about through mergers, but
>> the "vast majority," according to SEIU communications director
>> Steve Trossman, are newly organized members).
>>
>> Stern believes that unions are losing political power--and
>> bargaining power--because they represent a declining share of the
>> population (at present, 12 percent of the workforce and 7 percent
>> of private-sector workers). More controversially, he believes the
>> only way to reverse this sorry state of affairs is to sign up more
>> members by just about any means necessary. Many within SEIU worry
>> that this near-exclusive focus on growth is hampering the union's
>> ability to serve its existing members; they observe that with more
>> resources directed to organizing, and more emphasis on
>> consolidating small locals into larger organizations, it's
>> becoming harder for workers to find their union rep or file a
>> simple grievance. If union members don't feel the union is serving
>> them, organizers say, they begin to ask why they are paying dues.
>> Former SEIU organizer Krehbiel points out that in Stern's "200
>> page book, if there was half a page about current dues-paying
>> members, that was quite a bit." Stern acknowledges the problem,
>> but says, "You can't be islands of strength in a nonunion sea....
>> The history of the labor movement is that we polish the pearls we
>> have rather than trying to extend what we have to other people."
>>
>> Stern is ! also com ing under fire within the labor movement for, as
>> CNA's De Moro puts it, "organizing corporations, not workers."
>> Perhaps because Stern's views on these issues are so public, he's
>> come to personify an increasingly common phenomenon in unions: a
>> "partnership" approach to employers. Often, this means that
>> companies agree to recognize the union if a majority of workers
>> sign cards ("card check") in return for concessions from the union
>> that will help boost company profits. Many organizers--inside and
>> outside SEIU--say that workers signed up for union membership in
>> this manner aren't as committed to the union as those who have won
>> membership themselves, through a fight in which they were
>> personally engaged. This matters especially when the "partnership"
>> sours and the union faces a decertification campaign. Krehbiel
>> acknowledges that workers signed up for SEIU in this way are
>> "better off" than they would be without the union. But, using a
>> metaphor evoked by several other people interviewed for this
>> article, he said of Stern's emphasis on density, "He's building
>> this huge shell, hoping the size will somehow carry us."
>>
>> To many others, the idea of post-class-conflict partnership
>> obviates a union's most basic purpose: to defend workers'
>> interests. To DeMoro, Stern's view of a union's role amounts
>> simply to supplying capital with workers--and managing those
>> workers. "To him, the union is just a human resources department,"
>> she says. "Or a temp agency." (DeMoro is an outspoken Stern
>> critic. But committed SEIU staff members interviewed for this
>> article--mostly on the condition of anonymity--shared most of her
>> concerns. As if they were working for ! Wackenhu t or Wal-Mart, some
>> were even afraid to communicate using SEIU e-mail addresses or
>> phones.)
>>
>> But there's an even more controversial aspect to Stern's
>> commitment to "partnerships." In his book, Stern writes that
>> unions should "add value" to companies and assist "employers in
>> overcoming unnecessary legislative and political obstacles to
>> their success." These ideas have played out in recent contracts.
>> Internal memos--obtained by SF Weekly--show that two large SEIU
>> locals had made a deal with a group of California nursing homes,
>> in which SEIU agreed that workers would not speak out publicly
>> against abuse of patients, or health code violations, and would
>> lobby for limiting patients' right to sue. (SEIU later backed out
>> of its commitment to tort reform.) In exchange, the union could
>> organize a certain number of nursing homes without interference.
>> The SF Weekly story was based in part on an internal report from
>> one of the largest locals involved in the deal, United Healthcare
>> Workers West (UHW-West).
>>
>> Such deals raise questions about how far unions should go in this
>> vaunted pursuit of density. Many wonder if it is wise in the long
>> run to act against progressive ideals in order to win new members.
>> Working against patients' rights could, after all, alienate
>> natural allies. Backroom moves like this also undermine the
>> union's efforts to emphasize common interests among healthcare
>> workers and patients. In June SEIU launched SEIU Healthcare, which
>> will push for reforms like improved nursing staff-patient ratios
>> and more training for nurses, changes that would be in the
>> interest of members and would also, as SEIU's Steve Tro! ssman is
>> quick to point out, "improve the quality of care."
>>
>> When I asked Andy Stern about the deal discussed in the UHW-West
>> memo and the SF Weekly article, his response was strange and
>> contradictory. He at once questioned whether SEIU had in fact made
>> such a deal, claimed he wasn't familiar with the details and
>> blamed the local. (Much of the criticism of the nursing home
>> deals--inside and outside SEIU--has been directed personally
>> toward Stern, and it is clear from some UHW internal documents
>> that the local holds the international at least partly
>> responsible.) Stern admitted that sacrificing principles for
>> growth is a danger in partnership deals but pointed to the
>> complexity of organizing in today's workplace: "Here's the
>> question we face. Ninety percent of nursing home workers in this
>> country live pretty much in poverty. Don't have unions. Don't have
>> healthcare. All of our activities to date to solve that part of
>> the problem have not worked. So every day, nursing home workers go
>> to work and they're poor." To some organizing in the SEIU
>> trenches, their boss's realism resonates--to a point. "We've
>> negotiated some really shitty contracts," says one staff member.
>> "Sometimes you have no choice--you just keep trying to build
>> density and hope you build enough power to get a better deal next
>> time." But even this veteran of labor realpolitik said he was
>> surprised by the California contract: "The tort reform is bad!"
>>
>> What's more, Stern's business-friendly orientation appears to
>> influence his approach to national policy questions. More
>> problematic than the photo-ops with Lee Scott, Stern's crusade for
>> "healthcare reform" is v! ague ("n ot even an inch deep," according
>> to one SEIU researcher). His support for any sort of change has
>> been promiscuous: He's praised Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan
>> and Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal in California, which have
>> been criticized as giveaways to the insurance industry and don't
>> adequately address affordability or cost issues. Asked if the
>> Better Health Care Together Coalition has agreed on anything more
>> than the fact that there is a problem, Stern says, "That's
>> probably all we will agree on." Of a single-payer system, Stern
>> said in a speech given at the Brookings Institution, "I think we
>> need to find a new system that is not built on the back of the
>> government. I am here to also say I don't think we need to import
>> Canada or any other system." One SEIU staff member says sadly of
>> such comments, Stern "doesn't hold social democracy in high regard."
>>
>> Stern is not oblivious to the suffering caused by health insurance
>> companies denying care--a problem that none of the incremental
>> plans he supports can address. But to him, the problem of insuring
>> the uninsured is the paramount moral question: "It's a question
>> of, How are we going to get everybody covered?" Then, Stern
>> thinks, something more like a single-payer system will be more
>> politically palatable: "Once we have everybody covered we're going
>> to realize there are more efficient ways and less efficient ways.
>> More costly and less costly ways to do it."
>>
>> Stern's views on this are significant because several other major
>> labor unions and other progressive groups--buoyed by Michael
>> Moore's new movie--have been campaigning to pass single-payer
>> healthcare in California. SB 840! , writte n by State Senator Sheila
>> Kuehl, passed the State Senate, 23 to 15, in early June and is
>> headed to the Assembly. Given the tremendous public interest in
>> and the widespread frustration with the current system, many
>> activists think we have the best opportunity in years for
>> comprehensive reform. Stern's lack of enthusiasm for single-payer
>> healthcare is one of the main reasons the California Nurses
>> Association, a longtime independent union, joined the AFL-CIO this
>> year when that federation agreed to support single-payer.
>> Explaining why it is so important that unions work toward this
>> goal, CNA's DeMoro, whose union is leading theCalifornia fight,
>> explains, "There has never [in any country] been a single-payer
>> healthcare system without the labor movement."
>>
>> To the CNA, Stern's refusal to put his political weight behind
>> single-payer is unconscionable. "The single biggest obstacle to
>> single-payer healthcare in this country," says Michael Lighty,
>> CNA's policy director, "is Andy Stern." I laugh at this, thinking
>> of a few others (the insurance industry and American
>> individualist, anti-government ideology, to name a couple). But
>> DeMoro clarifies her colleague's point with an analysis of the
>> current fight in California: Stern "is the biggest obstacle to
>> moving the Dems, because he gives them cover to do nothing."
>>
>> However, when asked about single-payer, Stern insists he's not
>> against it: "We supported Howard Dean, and he was for single-
>> payer." (In fact, when Dean ran for President, he said he would
>> not propose such a system, because it wouldn't pass Congress. He
>> also said, "I do not believe in free healthcare or free
>> anything...! . If you want to totally reform the healthcare system,
>> I'm not your guy.") More significant, Stern claims that in
>> California SEIU has been lobbying for Sheila Kuehl's bill and
>> expects to support some version of the governor's as well. Indeed,
>> besides the CNA, he boasts, SEIU is "probably the leading
>> supporter" of the single-payer bill. Those involved in pushing for
>> that bill in Sacramento were, to put it mildly, surprised by this
>> contention (reactions ranged from "outrageous" to "bullshit--
>> absolutely not!"). SEIU has turned out members to some hearings in
>> support of the bill but has not otherwise been active in the
>> fight. Yet Stern's statement is, in a Clintonian way, true: SEIU
>> has formally endorsed SB 840 and is one of the largest
>> organizations to do so.
>>
>> Nationally, Stern says, SEIU is supporting a single-payer
>> "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All" bill introduced by
>> Representative John Conyers, in addition to several other
>> healthcare proposals moving through Congress. Defending his
>> strategy of lobbying for multiple, often conflicting, reforms,
>> Stern is (almost) self-deprecating: "People at the Brookings
>> Institution joke, Next month we're going to have four different
>> proposals about universal healthcare and Andy Stern's going to be
>> supporting all four." To justify his support of tepid reforms,
>> Stern tells me several heartbreaking stories about people he has
>> met who have no healthcare, including a man in Minnesota who sat
>> with his wife at the kitchen table and decided which of their kids
>> was least likely to get sick, since they couldn't afford to insure
>> all of them. Of the Massachusetts plan, Stern argues, "People are
>> working n! ow, thro ugh a political process, particularly now that we
>> have a new governor there, to make it better. Most states have
>> nothing to make better. Is it better to be in Massachusetts with
>> someone trying to make it better, or waiting forCalifornia to pass
>> single-payer? I don't know." He adds defensively, "We are not
>> going to let the perfect become the enemy of the good on this issue."
>>
>> Within SEIU, the rumor mill hums with speculation that Andy Stern
>> has ambitions beyond the union. Certainly, some of his rhetoric
>> and triangulation make him sound like a politician, but Stern
>> denies any plans to step down from SEIU or seek public office.
>>
>> Labor dissidents can denounce him as a sellout, and of course some
>> will. But they could also read Andy Stern as a sign of the times.
>> When Stern makes compromises that cause fellow progressives and
>> unionists to cringe, it's because he doesn't think there are other
>> ways for the labor movement to grow. He speaks of unions "adding
>> value" to corporate enterprises and crusades for dubious, middle-
>> of-the-road reforms because he doesn't think there is any other
>> language, or any other ideas, that will resonate with Washington
>> policy-makers. An effective grassroots movement for social
>> democracy could change that. The rumblings of discontent within
>> SEIU--and the growing movement for real healthcare reform
>> inCalifornia--may be hopeful signs. Stern is a close reader of the
>> zeitgeist. As Rose Ann DeMoro says, "If he sees the tide is
>> turning, he'll change."
>> by LIZA FEATHERSTONE
>>
>> [from the July 16, 2007 issue]
>>
>> When Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International
>> Union (SEIU), and Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart, appeared onstage
>> together in early May, the pairing drew attention. The occasion
>> was a lunchtime meeting of Better Health Care Together, a
>> coalition of business, labor and political leaders, at a Hilton
>> hotel in New York City. Stern had initiated the coalition with a
>> letter to all the Fortune 500 CEOs inviting them to work with him
>> on a solution to the nation's healthcare crisis. He says he was
>> surprised that Wal-Mart--and so many other companies--responded.
>> "When I write letters to CEOs," he explains matter-of-factly, "I
>> usually don't get a response."
>>
>> Outside the Hilton, several hundred men and women wearing United
>> Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) T-shirts, some of whom had come
>> all the way from Maine and Pennsylvania, picketed the event,
>> objecting to the "hypocrisy" of Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott's
>> appearance. Scott is accustomed to dodging protesters; his company
>> has been engaged in a bitter public relations battle with the UFCW
>> for years, with the union charging that Wal-Mart routinely
>> violates the right to organize and offers stingy health benefits.
>>
>> But the Wal-Mart boss wasn't the only target of righteous ire t! hat
>> day. The union activists were also upset about the presence of
>> Andy Stern. "People feel he has sacrificed some of the basic
>> principles of the labor movement" by appearing onstage with the
>> Wal-Mart CEO, said Pat Purcell, an organizer of the Hilton picket.
>> One of those principles is solidarity. "Our union is losing
>> members every single day because of Wal-Mart," explains Purcell,
>> director of special projects for UFCW Local 1500. "When we ask for
>> help from other unions, we don't mean, You can have lunch with
>> them but not dinner!" Though Purcell says he has "great respect"
>> for Stern, he and other unionists feel that Stern enabled a public
>> relations stunt by Wal-Mart, aimed at making the company look
>> socially responsible.
>>
>> Inside the Hilton, Stern was more popular. Over a dry repast of
>> chicken, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell hailed Andy Stern and
>> Lee Scott as "the odd couple of healthcare." Stern beamed when
>> Arnold Schwarzenegger, who spoke by satellite, thanked him for his
>> "great leadership."
>>
>> To be fair, this moment aside, Stern's relationship with Wal-Mart
>> is hardly chummy. SEIU continues to fund Wal-Mart Watch, an
>> organization dedicated to relentless criticism of the retailer's
>> practices, and this year the union will allocate more funding than
>> ever to such efforts. In March Stern gave a speech at a Bank of
>> America gathering blasting Wal-Mart for undermining "fair
>> competition" and adopting practices that were "bad for business
>> overall."
>>
>> But many in the labor movement view Stern's overtures to Scott as
>> typical manifestations of his business-friendly unionism, more
>> focused on partnering with employe! rs than on joining other
>> progressives in a struggle against corporate power. Stern's 2006
>> book, A Country That Works, is full of statements like "employees
>> and employers need organizations that solve problems, not create
>> them" and "all parties want a mutually beneficial relationship
>> based on teamwork." (Sometimes the business-speak in this book
>> reaches comic proportions; at one point Stern praises civil rights
>> icon Jackie Robinson as "a change agent who endured indignities as
>> a pathbreaker.") Stern has unsettled many of his staff by publicly
>> suggesting that he might not be against Social Security
>> privatization or school vouchers (one organizer in the Midwest
>> probably speaks for nearly everyone in SEIU in calling such
>> statements "a bunch of horseshit...in fact we are against those
>> things"). Paul Krehbiel, an organizer who until recently worked
>> for SEIU Local 660 in Southern California, points out that Stern
>> briefly attended the Wharton business school before becoming a
>> social worker: "Andy's just doing what he started out doing. He
>> loves the business community!" Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director
>> of the California Nurses Association (which competes with SEIU to
>> organize nurses), bluntly calls Stern "the neocon of the labor
>> movement."
>>
>> Many progressives would be startled by DeMoro's characterization
>> of Andy Stern. His union is the employer of choice for many
>> idealistic college graduates. That's only in part because the
>> membership of SEIU--African-Americans and immigrants toiling in
>> underpaid jobs--inspires a natural solidarity from the left. It's
>> also because Stern's personal style is agreeable to middle-class
>> progress! ives. Th e 1960s-generation, University of Pennsylvania-
>> educated former social worker is reflective and contemporary, not
>> macho or swaggering like many old-school union leaders. He's also
>> willing to try new things, and like many of his generation harbors
>> a profound contempt for stagnant bureaucracy. These attitudes can
>> be refreshing in a labor leader. Even photo ops with Scott can be
>> attributed to this aspect of his temperament: When Stern is asked
>> about his perceived coziness with business, he is quick to insist
>> that he is pragmatic, often using phrases like "it's not academic"
>> or "these are real-life choices" to suggest that critics are
>> ideologues or pie-in-the-sky idealists.
>>
>> Stern is also an internationalist. He's assigned SEIU staff to
>> Australia, Poland,England, India, France, Switzerland, Germany,
>> the Netherlands and South America, with an eye to running global
>> campaigns pressuring multinational employers. As Stern explains in
>> his book, "Imagine simultaneous protests on service contractors'
>> global clients, or outsourcing strikes to countries where strikes
>> are legal and will not provoke government retaliation." When SEIU
>> was having trouble organizing American security guards employed by
>> the Swedish firm Securitas, it sought help from the Swedish
>> Transport Workers Union, which had a good relationship with the
>> company. Securitas agreed to drop its opposition to the union drive.
>>
>> More controversially, Stern has formed relationships with the
>> Chinese state union, which has been been criticized for helping
>> the government suppress workers' rights. Stern, who played a key
>> role in forcing Wal-Mart to allow the union into its Chinese
>> stor! es, beli eves that a cold-war approach to China is obsolete.
>> When I interviewed him, he had just returned from his sixth trip
>> to China. "Our members and their members work for the same
>> employers," he explained. "I just think workers' solidarity has a
>> lot more possibilities when you're not dealing with ideology."
>>
>> Another reason to cheer for Stern is that in a time of dismally
>> declining union density, SEIU under his leadership has added
>> members and seen some victories, improving the lives of home
>> health aides, janitors and security guards, some of the country's
>> most exploited workers. In May, for example, 4,000 Los
>> Angelessecurity guards joined SEIU as part of a nationwide
>> campaign to raise standards in that industry. Ruth Milkman,
>> director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and
>> Employment, has called SEIU a "model of dynamic unionism,"
>> pointing out that "no other union has been more effective in
>> organizing the unorganized in recent years."
>>
>> But many observers wonder what Stern's new federation, Change to
>> Win (CTW)--founded with great fanfare when he led six other unions
>> in a split from the AFL-CIO in September 2005--has thus far
>> accomplished. ("Press releases," grumbles one internal skeptic.
>> "Where is it headed? is something a lot of people here are
>> asking.") Milkman, who championed the formation of CTW in
>> articles, op-eds and scholarly work, calls it "a bit early to
>> assess this" but agrees that "it is fair to say that, to date,
>> there is not much to point to in the way of concrete organizing
>> victories that were the work of Change to Win itself."
>>
>> Within SEIU most people agree that Stern has been quite successful
>! ;> in implementing what is often referred to by his union's foot
>> soldiers as "the program": building density in the union's three
>> industries, building services--the public sector and (most of all)
>> healthcare. During his tenure, the union has grown by 980,000
>> workers (some of that growth has come about through mergers, but
>> the "vast majority," according to SEIU communications director
>> Steve Trossman, are newly organized members).
>>
>> Stern believes that unions are losing political power--and
>> bargaining power--because they represent a declining share of the
>> population (at present, 12 percent of the workforce and 7 percent
>> of private-sector workers). More controversially, he believes the
>> only way to reverse this sorry state of affairs is to sign up more
>> members by just about any means necessary. Many within SEIU worry
>> that this near-exclusive focus on growth is hampering the union's
>> ability to serve its existing members; they observe that with more
>> resources directed to organizing, and more emphasis on
>> consolidating small locals into larger organizations, it's
>> becoming harder for workers to find their union rep or file a
>> simple grievance. If union members don't feel the union is serving
>> them, organizers say, they begin to ask why they are paying dues.
>> Former SEIU organizer Krehbiel points out that in Stern's "200
>> page book, if there was half a page about current dues-paying
>> members, that was quite a bit." Stern acknowledges the problem,
>> but says, "You can't be islands of strength in a nonunion sea....
>> The history of the labor movement is that we polish the pearls we
>> have rather than trying to extend what we have to other people."
>>
>> Stern is ! also com ing under fire within the labor movement for, as
>> CNA's De Moro puts it, "organizing corporations, not workers."
>> Perhaps because Stern's views on these issues are so public, he's
>> come to personify an increasingly common phenomenon in unions: a
>> "partnership" approach to employers. Often, this means that
>> companies agree to recognize the union if a majority of workers
>> sign cards ("card check") in return for concessions from the union
>> that will help boost company profits. Many organizers--inside and
>> outside SEIU--say that workers signed up for union membership in
>> this manner aren't as committed to the union as those who have won
>> membership themselves, through a fight in which they were
>> personally engaged. This matters especially when the "partnership"
>> sours and the union faces a decertification campaign. Krehbiel
>> acknowledges that workers signed up for SEIU in this way are
>> "better off" than they would be without the union. But, using a
>> metaphor evoked by several other people interviewed for this
>> article, he said of Stern's emphasis on density, "He's building
>> this huge shell, hoping the size will somehow carry us."
>>
>> To many others, the idea of post-class-conflict partnership
>> obviates a union's most basic purpose: to defend workers'
>> interests. To DeMoro, Stern's view of a union's role amounts
>> simply to supplying capital with workers--and managing those
>> workers. "To him, the union is just a human resources department,"
>> she says. "Or a temp agency." (DeMoro is an outspoken Stern
>> critic. But committed SEIU staff members interviewed for this
>> article--mostly on the condition of anonymity--shared most of her
>> concerns. As if they were working for ! Wackenhu t or Wal-Mart, some
>> were even afraid to communicate using SEIU e-mail addresses or
>> phones.)
>>
>> But there's an even more controversial aspect to Stern's
>> commitment to "partnerships." In his book, Stern writes that
>> unions should "add value" to companies and assist "employers in
>> overcoming unnecessary legislative and political obstacles to
>> their success." These ideas have played out in recent contracts.
>> Internal memos--obtained by SF Weekly--show that two large SEIU
>> locals had made a deal with a group of California nursing homes,
>> in which SEIU agreed that workers would not speak out publicly
>> against abuse of patients, or health code violations, and would
>> lobby for limiting patients' right to sue. (SEIU later backed out
>> of its commitment to tort reform.) In exchange, the union could
>> organize a certain number of nursing homes without interference.
>> The SF Weekly story was based in part on an internal report from
>> one of the largest locals involved in the deal, United Healthcare
>> Workers West (UHW-West).
>>
>> Such deals raise questions about how far unions should go in this
>> vaunted pursuit of density. Many wonder if it is wise in the long
>> run to act against progressive ideals in order to win new members.
>> Working against patients' rights could, after all, alienate
>> natural allies. Backroom moves like this also undermine the
>> union's efforts to emphasize common interests among healthcare
>> workers and patients. In June SEIU launched SEIU Healthcare, which
>> will push for reforms like improved nursing staff-patient ratios
>> and more training for nurses, changes that would be in the
>> interest of members and would also, as SEIU's Steve Tro! ssman is
>> quick to point out, "improve the quality of care."
>>
>> When I asked Andy Stern about the deal discussed in the UHW-West
>> memo and the SF Weekly article, his response was strange and
>> contradictory. He at once questioned whether SEIU had in fact made
>> such a deal, claimed he wasn't familiar with the details and
>> blamed the local. (Much of the criticism of the nursing home
>> deals--inside and outside SEIU--has been directed personally
>> toward Stern, and it is clear from some UHW internal documents
>> that the local holds the international at least partly
>> responsible.) Stern admitted that sacrificing principles for
>> growth is a danger in partnership deals but pointed to the
>> complexity of organizing in today's workplace: "Here's the
>> question we face. Ninety percent of nursing home workers in this
>> country live pretty much in poverty. Don't have unions. Don't have
>> healthcare. All of our activities to date to solve that part of
>> the problem have not worked. So every day, nursing home workers go
>> to work and they're poor." To some organizing in the SEIU
>> trenches, their boss's realism resonates--to a point. "We've
>> negotiated some really shitty contracts," says one staff member.
>> "Sometimes you have no choice--you just keep trying to build
>> density and hope you build enough power to get a better deal next
>> time." But even this veteran of labor realpolitik said he was
>> surprised by the California contract: "The tort reform is bad!"
>>
>> What's more, Stern's business-friendly orientation appears to
>> influence his approach to national policy questions. More
>> problematic than the photo-ops with Lee Scott, Stern's crusade for
>> "healthcare reform" is v! ague ("n ot even an inch deep," according
>> to one SEIU researcher). His support for any sort of change has
>> been promiscuous: He's praised Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan
>> and Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal in California, which have
>> been criticized as giveaways to the insurance industry and don't
>> adequately address affordability or cost issues. Asked if the
>> Better Health Care Together Coalition has agreed on anything more
>> than the fact that there is a problem, Stern says, "That's
>> probably all we will agree on." Of a single-payer system, Stern
>> said in a speech given at the Brookings Institution, "I think we
>> need to find a new system that is not built on the back of the
>> government. I am here to also say I don't think we need to import
>> Canada or any other system." One SEIU staff member says sadly of
>> such comments, Stern "doesn't hold social democracy in high regard."
>>
>> Stern is not oblivious to the suffering caused by health insurance
>> companies denying care--a problem that none of the incremental
>> plans he supports can address. But to him, the problem of insuring
>> the uninsured is the paramount moral question: "It's a question
>> of, How are we going to get everybody covered?" Then, Stern
>> thinks, something more like a single-payer system will be more
>> politically palatable: "Once we have everybody covered we're going
>> to realize there are more efficient ways and less efficient ways.
>> More costly and less costly ways to do it."
>>
>> Stern's views on this are significant because several other major
>> labor unions and other progressive groups--buoyed by Michael
>> Moore's new movie--have been campaigning to pass single-payer
>> healthcare in California. SB 840! , writte n by State Senator Sheila
>> Kuehl, passed the State Senate, 23 to 15, in early June and is
>> headed to the Assembly. Given the tremendous public interest in
>> and the widespread frustration with the current system, many
>> activists think we have the best opportunity in years for
>> comprehensive reform. Stern's lack of enthusiasm for single-payer
>> healthcare is one of the main reasons the California Nurses
>> Association, a longtime independent union, joined the AFL-CIO this
>> year when that federation agreed to support single-payer.
>> Explaining why it is so important that unions work toward this
>> goal, CNA's DeMoro, whose union is leading theCalifornia fight,
>> explains, "There has never [in any country] been a single-payer
>> healthcare system without the labor movement."
>>
>> To the CNA, Stern's refusal to put his political weight behind
>> single-payer is unconscionable. "The single biggest obstacle to
>> single-payer healthcare in this country," says Michael Lighty,
>> CNA's policy director, "is Andy Stern." I laugh at this, thinking
>> of a few others (the insurance industry and American
>> individualist, anti-government ideology, to name a couple). But
>> DeMoro clarifies her colleague's point with an analysis of the
>> current fight in California: Stern "is the biggest obstacle to
>> moving the Dems, because he gives them cover to do nothing."
>>
>> However, when asked about single-payer, Stern insists he's not
>> against it: "We supported Howard Dean, and he was for single-
>> payer." (In fact, when Dean ran for President, he said he would
>> not propose such a system, because it wouldn't pass Congress. He
>> also said, "I do not believe in free healthcare or free
>> anything...! . If you want to totally reform the healthcare system,
>> I'm not your guy.") More significant, Stern claims that in
>> California SEIU has been lobbying for Sheila Kuehl's bill and
>> expects to support some version of the governor's as well. Indeed,
>> besides the CNA, he boasts, SEIU is "probably the leading
>> supporter" of the single-payer bill. Those involved in pushing for
>> that bill in Sacramento were, to put it mildly, surprised by this
>> contention (reactions ranged from "outrageous" to "bullshit--
>> absolutely not!"). SEIU has turned out members to some hearings in
>> support of the bill but has not otherwise been active in the
>> fight. Yet Stern's statement is, in a Clintonian way, true: SEIU
>> has formally endorsed SB 840 and is one of the largest
>> organizations to do so.
>>
>> Nationally, Stern says, SEIU is supporting a single-payer
>> "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All" bill introduced by
>> Representative John Conyers, in addition to several other
>> healthcare proposals moving through Congress. Defending his
>> strategy of lobbying for multiple, often conflicting, reforms,
>> Stern is (almost) self-deprecating: "People at the Brookings
>> Institution joke, Next month we're going to have four different
>> proposals about universal healthcare and Andy Stern's going to be
>> supporting all four." To justify his support of tepid reforms,
>> Stern tells me several heartbreaking stories about people he has
>> met who have no healthcare, including a man in Minnesota who sat
>> with his wife at the kitchen table and decided which of their kids
>> was least likely to get sick, since they couldn't afford to insure
>> all of them. Of the Massachusetts plan, Stern argues, "People are
>> working n! ow, thro ugh a political process, particularly now that we
>> have a new governor there, to make it better. Most states have
>> nothing to make better. Is it better to be in Massachusetts with
>> someone trying to make it better, or waiting forCalifornia to pass
>> single-payer? I don't know." He adds defensively, "We are not
>> going to let the perfect become the enemy of the good on this issue."
>>
>> Within SEIU, the rumor mill hums with speculation that Andy Stern
>> has ambitions beyond the union. Certainly, some of his rhetoric
>> and triangulation make him sound like a politician, but Stern
>> denies any plans to step down from SEIU or seek public office.
>>
>> Labor dissidents can denounce him as a sellout, and of course some
>> will. But they could also read Andy Stern as a sign of the times.
>> When Stern makes compromises that cause fellow progressives and
>> unionists to cringe, it's because he doesn't think there are other
>> ways for the labor movement to grow. He speaks of unions "adding
>> value" to corporate enterprises and crusades for dubious, middle-
>> of-the-road reforms because he doesn't think there is any other
>> language, or any other ideas, that will resonate with Washington
>> policy-makers. An effective grassroots movement for social
>> democracy could change that. The rumblings of discontent within
>> SEIU--and the growing movement for real healthcare reform
>> inCalifornia--may be hopeful signs. Stern is a close reader of the
>> zeitgeist. As Rose Ann DeMoro says, "If he sees the tide is
>> turning, he'll change."
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Villobos on Chavez
From Marc Cooper's blog:
Villalobos V. Chavez
Joaquin Villalobos, the former commander of the Salvadoran FMLN
guerrilla army, takes on Hugo Chavez in this tangy opinion piece
(which I had the fun of translating).
Back in 1988 I had the privilege of doing the first American TV
interview with Joaquin (for PBS Frontline) -- and I never regretted
the four days of hiking through mountainous war-torn northeastern El
Salvador (along with $100k in TV equipment) that it entailed.
Villalobos was -- and is-- a fascinating intellect. And on the
surface, about 150 times brighter than the brutish Mr. Chavez. After
participating in the historic 1992 peace talks that ended the
Salvadoran civil war, Joaquin hung up his guns and uniform and entered
civilian political life. Along with most of the top guerrilla
leadership, he left the FMLN and he attempted the formation of new,
more democratic progressive political force. It didn't go very far,
unfortunately.
He did, however.
Completing his studies at Oxford, Villalobos is now one of the more
sought-after consultants on security and development in Latin America.
He takes a lot of gruff from various U.S. and European arm chair
revolutionaries -- fantasits who are all for "people's war" so long as
other people are fighting it.
Having led one of the most tenacious, and in many ways. one of the
most successful insurgencies of the past 25 years, Villalobos prefers
to draw some sober lessons from the entire experience.
Anyway, his thoughts on Chavez should be taken quite seriously.
The Nation
Revolution in Venezuela?
Joaquín Villalobos
This essay originally appeared in the Madrid daily El País. Translated
by Marc Cooper
Hugo Chávez has committed a grave error in closing down the opposition
TV station, which has been on the air a half-century. Like it or not,
this was not a frontal attack on the economic elite but rather a blow
to the cultural identity of millions of Venezuelans--and it will have
severe consequences for the government. Trying to replace popular soap
operas and game shows watched by the poor with pathetic
"revolutionary" programming is as bad as leaving them without food.
What Chávez has got wrong is his belief that he has made a revolution
when in fact he's simply won some elections. And even those victories
are more attributable to an arrogant, bejeweled opposition that lacks
mass adherents than to Chávez. This has allowed Chávez to dominate
some state institutions and to change some of the rules of the game,
but it doesn't give him the leverage needed to impose the sort of
drastic ideological sea change he clearly intends.
In Venezuela there has been no revolutionary rupture, as there was in
Cuba and Nicaragua, two countries where there was no democratic
history. In Cuba the change was violent and encompassing; all of the
institutions were recast. And to date there is no real Cuban
opposition--nor are there real elections, freedom of the press or
private property. In Nicaragua the change was equally violent, and
though mistreated, the institutions of press freedom, political
opposition, elections and private property all survived.
CONTINUED BELOW
Venezuela might be experiencing a period of extreme polarization and
social conflict, but that is not a revolution. In revolutionary times,
violence becomes prevalent, first in the form of rebellion and later
in the form of counterrevolution. So far in Venezuela, political
violence has been more verbal than material.
Forty years of peaceful transitions of government power created a
democratic culture among Venezuelans that has, fortunately until now,
made violence unnecessary. The rule of law might be weak, but there is
nevertheless the rule of law. The mistake made by the opposition in
the attempted coup of 2002 was precisely to undervalue this democratic
tradition. Overthrowing governments is no easy task, nor is peacefully
modifying the basic pillars on which they are built. A revolutionary
rupture creates a situation of great social exaltation that--for
better and worse--opens up spaces to change many things, including
prevailing ideologies and cultural traditions. But short of
revolution, these things are difficult to change.
Anticapitalist revolutions are fueled more by dictatorships than by
poverty. In Venezuela there was no dictatorship, and poverty was not
key to Chávez's ascent. Every revolution imposes austerity, and this
is something to which Venezuelans on the right and left remain immune.
Venezuela is not an industrial capitalist state but rather one of
export and consumerism. Chávez is strengthening the economic role of
the state, redistributing oil income and forming new economic elites,
all mixed with doses of populism, corruption and business
opportunities. All this is new--but it is not revolution and it is not
socialism.
Chávez lacks a revolutionary party and instead depends on a fragmented
political structure rife with different ideologies. To his right is
the military, to his left some intellectuals and below him a
politically diverse base. Converting this into a unified party would
mean butting heads with a lot of local bosses who like to disagree.
Chavismo has accomplished something important by giving power and
identity to thousands of Venezuelans who had been marginalized, but it
is not cohesive, either ideologically or historically. Rather, it is
held together by petrodollars.
Nor does Chávez have a revolutionary army. On the contrary, the army
has defeated him twice (1992 and 2002). The complicity of the army
with Chávez today rests solely on weapons purchases, and that is much
more about corruption than about preparing for war. It's exactly this
sort of privileged corruption that closes the path to authentic
revolutionary change. The Venezuelan military will neither kill nor
die for Hugo Chávez.
Fidel Castro survived all the many attempts on his life. Daniel Ortega
led a successful insurrection in Nicaragua and Evo Morales made a
swift transition from the barricades to the presidency of Bolivia.
Chávez, by contrast, sells oil to the Americans; on two occasions he
surrendered to his enemies with no fight; and he currently sleeps with
an enemy army. This pushes him to engage in public provocations in
order to burnish his revolutionary credentials, as he has by insulting
George W. Bush. Attacks strengthen Chávez. Tolerance weakens him.
Chávez needs external enemies to help him hide the corruption of his
own functionaries, the incompetence of his government, the division
among his supporters and the lack of security in the streets of Caracas.
With his latest acts Chávez has turned the process of accumulation of
forces against himself and has suddenly revitalized a demoralized
opposition. Maybe he will be able to make some more changes in
Venezuela. But he will never be able to get rid of elections. And as
long as there are elections, there will be no permanent majorities, no
fraud so great as to be insurmountable, no set of alliances that are
eternal. Oil money can help Chávez do many things--but it will never
be enough to buy himself a revolution.
Villalobos V. Chavez
Joaquin Villalobos, the former commander of the Salvadoran FMLN
guerrilla army, takes on Hugo Chavez in this tangy opinion piece
(which I had the fun of translating).
Back in 1988 I had the privilege of doing the first American TV
interview with Joaquin (for PBS Frontline) -- and I never regretted
the four days of hiking through mountainous war-torn northeastern El
Salvador (along with $100k in TV equipment) that it entailed.
Villalobos was -- and is-- a fascinating intellect. And on the
surface, about 150 times brighter than the brutish Mr. Chavez. After
participating in the historic 1992 peace talks that ended the
Salvadoran civil war, Joaquin hung up his guns and uniform and entered
civilian political life. Along with most of the top guerrilla
leadership, he left the FMLN and he attempted the formation of new,
more democratic progressive political force. It didn't go very far,
unfortunately.
He did, however.
Completing his studies at Oxford, Villalobos is now one of the more
sought-after consultants on security and development in Latin America.
He takes a lot of gruff from various U.S. and European arm chair
revolutionaries -- fantasits who are all for "people's war" so long as
other people are fighting it.
Having led one of the most tenacious, and in many ways. one of the
most successful insurgencies of the past 25 years, Villalobos prefers
to draw some sober lessons from the entire experience.
Anyway, his thoughts on Chavez should be taken quite seriously.
The Nation
Revolution in Venezuela?
Joaquín Villalobos
This essay originally appeared in the Madrid daily El País. Translated
by Marc Cooper
Hugo Chávez has committed a grave error in closing down the opposition
TV station, which has been on the air a half-century. Like it or not,
this was not a frontal attack on the economic elite but rather a blow
to the cultural identity of millions of Venezuelans--and it will have
severe consequences for the government. Trying to replace popular soap
operas and game shows watched by the poor with pathetic
"revolutionary" programming is as bad as leaving them without food.
What Chávez has got wrong is his belief that he has made a revolution
when in fact he's simply won some elections. And even those victories
are more attributable to an arrogant, bejeweled opposition that lacks
mass adherents than to Chávez. This has allowed Chávez to dominate
some state institutions and to change some of the rules of the game,
but it doesn't give him the leverage needed to impose the sort of
drastic ideological sea change he clearly intends.
In Venezuela there has been no revolutionary rupture, as there was in
Cuba and Nicaragua, two countries where there was no democratic
history. In Cuba the change was violent and encompassing; all of the
institutions were recast. And to date there is no real Cuban
opposition--nor are there real elections, freedom of the press or
private property. In Nicaragua the change was equally violent, and
though mistreated, the institutions of press freedom, political
opposition, elections and private property all survived.
CONTINUED BELOW
Venezuela might be experiencing a period of extreme polarization and
social conflict, but that is not a revolution. In revolutionary times,
violence becomes prevalent, first in the form of rebellion and later
in the form of counterrevolution. So far in Venezuela, political
violence has been more verbal than material.
Forty years of peaceful transitions of government power created a
democratic culture among Venezuelans that has, fortunately until now,
made violence unnecessary. The rule of law might be weak, but there is
nevertheless the rule of law. The mistake made by the opposition in
the attempted coup of 2002 was precisely to undervalue this democratic
tradition. Overthrowing governments is no easy task, nor is peacefully
modifying the basic pillars on which they are built. A revolutionary
rupture creates a situation of great social exaltation that--for
better and worse--opens up spaces to change many things, including
prevailing ideologies and cultural traditions. But short of
revolution, these things are difficult to change.
Anticapitalist revolutions are fueled more by dictatorships than by
poverty. In Venezuela there was no dictatorship, and poverty was not
key to Chávez's ascent. Every revolution imposes austerity, and this
is something to which Venezuelans on the right and left remain immune.
Venezuela is not an industrial capitalist state but rather one of
export and consumerism. Chávez is strengthening the economic role of
the state, redistributing oil income and forming new economic elites,
all mixed with doses of populism, corruption and business
opportunities. All this is new--but it is not revolution and it is not
socialism.
Chávez lacks a revolutionary party and instead depends on a fragmented
political structure rife with different ideologies. To his right is
the military, to his left some intellectuals and below him a
politically diverse base. Converting this into a unified party would
mean butting heads with a lot of local bosses who like to disagree.
Chavismo has accomplished something important by giving power and
identity to thousands of Venezuelans who had been marginalized, but it
is not cohesive, either ideologically or historically. Rather, it is
held together by petrodollars.
Nor does Chávez have a revolutionary army. On the contrary, the army
has defeated him twice (1992 and 2002). The complicity of the army
with Chávez today rests solely on weapons purchases, and that is much
more about corruption than about preparing for war. It's exactly this
sort of privileged corruption that closes the path to authentic
revolutionary change. The Venezuelan military will neither kill nor
die for Hugo Chávez.
Fidel Castro survived all the many attempts on his life. Daniel Ortega
led a successful insurrection in Nicaragua and Evo Morales made a
swift transition from the barricades to the presidency of Bolivia.
Chávez, by contrast, sells oil to the Americans; on two occasions he
surrendered to his enemies with no fight; and he currently sleeps with
an enemy army. This pushes him to engage in public provocations in
order to burnish his revolutionary credentials, as he has by insulting
George W. Bush. Attacks strengthen Chávez. Tolerance weakens him.
Chávez needs external enemies to help him hide the corruption of his
own functionaries, the incompetence of his government, the division
among his supporters and the lack of security in the streets of Caracas.
With his latest acts Chávez has turned the process of accumulation of
forces against himself and has suddenly revitalized a demoralized
opposition. Maybe he will be able to make some more changes in
Venezuela. But he will never be able to get rid of elections. And as
long as there are elections, there will be no permanent majorities, no
fraud so great as to be insurmountable, no set of alliances that are
eternal. Oil money can help Chávez do many things--but it will never
be enough to buy himself a revolution.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Venezuela Media Conflict
Venezuela and the Media: Fact and Fiction
by Robert McChesney and Mark Weisbrot
CommonDreams.org - June 1, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/01/1607/
To read and view the U.S. news media over the past week, there is an episode of grand tyranny unfolding, one repugnant to all who cherish democratic freedoms. The Venezuelan government under "strongman" Hugo Chavez refused to renew the 20-year broadcast license for RCTV, because that medium had the temerity to be critical of his regime. It is a familiar story.
And in this case it is wrong.
Regrettably, the US media coverage of Venezuela’s RCTV controversy says more about the deficiencies of our own news media that it does about Venezuela. It demonstrates again, as with the invasion of Iraq, how our news media are far too willing to carry water for Washington than to ascertain and report the truth of the matter.
Here are some of the facts and some of the context that the media have omitted or buried:
1. All nations license radio and TV stations because the airwaves can only accommodate a small number of broadcasters, far fewer than the number who would like to have the privilege to broadcast. In democratic nations the license is given for a specific term, subject to renewal. In the United States it is eight years; in Venezuela it is 20 years.
2. Venezuela is a constitutional republic. Chavez has won landslide victories that would be the envy of almost any elected leader in the world, in internationally monitored elections.
3. The vast majority of Venezuela’s media are not only in private hands, they are constitutionally protected, uncensored, and dominated by the opposition. RCTV’s owners can expand their cable and satellite programming, or take their capital and launch a print empire forthwith. Aggressive unqualified political dissent is alive and well in the Venezuelan mainstream media, in a manner few other democratic nations have ever known, including our own.
Now consider the specific facts of RCTV as it applied to have its broadcast license renewed.
The media here report that President Chavez "accuses RCTV of having supported a coup" against him. This is a common means of distorting the news: a fact is reported as accusation, and then attributed to a source that the press has done everything to discredit. In fact, RCTV - along with other broadcast news outlets - played such a leading role in the April 2002 military coup against Venezuela’s democratically elected government, that it is often described as "the world’s first media coup."
In the prelude to the coup, RCTV helped mobilize people to the streets against the government, and used false reporting to justify the coup. One of their most infamous and effective falsifications was to mix footage of pro-Chavez people firing pistols from an overpass in Caracas with gory scenes of demonstrators being shot and killed. This created the impression that the pro-Chavez gunmen actually shot these people, when in fact the victims were nowhere near them. These falsified but horrifying images were repeated incessantly, and served as a major justification for the coup.
RCTV then banned any pro-government reporting during the coup. When Chavez returned to office, this too was blacked out of the news. Later the same year, RCTV once again made all-day-long appeals to Venezuelans to help topple the government during a crippling national oil strike.
If RCTV were broadcasting in the United States, its license would have been revoked years ago. In fact its owners would likely have been tried for criminal offenses, including treason.
RCTV’s broadcast frequency has been turned over to a new national public access channel that promises to provide programming from thousands of independent producers. It is an effort to let millions of Venezuelans who have never had a viable chance to participate in the media do so, without government censorship.
The Bush Administration opposes the Chavez government for reasons that have nothing to do with democracy, or else there would be a long list of governments for us to subvert or overthrow before it would get close to targeting Venezuela. Regrettably, our press coverage has done little to shed light on that subject.
Our news media should learn the lesson of Iraq and regard our own government’s claims with the same skepticism they properly apply to foreign leaders. Then Americans might begin to get a more accurate picture of the world, and be able to effectively participate in our foreign policy.
[Robert W. McChesney is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).]
________________________________
by Robert McChesney and Mark Weisbrot
CommonDreams.org - June 1, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/01/1607/
To read and view the U.S. news media over the past week, there is an episode of grand tyranny unfolding, one repugnant to all who cherish democratic freedoms. The Venezuelan government under "strongman" Hugo Chavez refused to renew the 20-year broadcast license for RCTV, because that medium had the temerity to be critical of his regime. It is a familiar story.
And in this case it is wrong.
Regrettably, the US media coverage of Venezuela’s RCTV controversy says more about the deficiencies of our own news media that it does about Venezuela. It demonstrates again, as with the invasion of Iraq, how our news media are far too willing to carry water for Washington than to ascertain and report the truth of the matter.
Here are some of the facts and some of the context that the media have omitted or buried:
1. All nations license radio and TV stations because the airwaves can only accommodate a small number of broadcasters, far fewer than the number who would like to have the privilege to broadcast. In democratic nations the license is given for a specific term, subject to renewal. In the United States it is eight years; in Venezuela it is 20 years.
2. Venezuela is a constitutional republic. Chavez has won landslide victories that would be the envy of almost any elected leader in the world, in internationally monitored elections.
3. The vast majority of Venezuela’s media are not only in private hands, they are constitutionally protected, uncensored, and dominated by the opposition. RCTV’s owners can expand their cable and satellite programming, or take their capital and launch a print empire forthwith. Aggressive unqualified political dissent is alive and well in the Venezuelan mainstream media, in a manner few other democratic nations have ever known, including our own.
Now consider the specific facts of RCTV as it applied to have its broadcast license renewed.
The media here report that President Chavez "accuses RCTV of having supported a coup" against him. This is a common means of distorting the news: a fact is reported as accusation, and then attributed to a source that the press has done everything to discredit. In fact, RCTV - along with other broadcast news outlets - played such a leading role in the April 2002 military coup against Venezuela’s democratically elected government, that it is often described as "the world’s first media coup."
In the prelude to the coup, RCTV helped mobilize people to the streets against the government, and used false reporting to justify the coup. One of their most infamous and effective falsifications was to mix footage of pro-Chavez people firing pistols from an overpass in Caracas with gory scenes of demonstrators being shot and killed. This created the impression that the pro-Chavez gunmen actually shot these people, when in fact the victims were nowhere near them. These falsified but horrifying images were repeated incessantly, and served as a major justification for the coup.
RCTV then banned any pro-government reporting during the coup. When Chavez returned to office, this too was blacked out of the news. Later the same year, RCTV once again made all-day-long appeals to Venezuelans to help topple the government during a crippling national oil strike.
If RCTV were broadcasting in the United States, its license would have been revoked years ago. In fact its owners would likely have been tried for criminal offenses, including treason.
RCTV’s broadcast frequency has been turned over to a new national public access channel that promises to provide programming from thousands of independent producers. It is an effort to let millions of Venezuelans who have never had a viable chance to participate in the media do so, without government censorship.
The Bush Administration opposes the Chavez government for reasons that have nothing to do with democracy, or else there would be a long list of governments for us to subvert or overthrow before it would get close to targeting Venezuela. Regrettably, our press coverage has done little to shed light on that subject.
Our news media should learn the lesson of Iraq and regard our own government’s claims with the same skepticism they properly apply to foreign leaders. Then Americans might begin to get a more accurate picture of the world, and be able to effectively participate in our foreign policy.
[Robert W. McChesney is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).]
________________________________
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