Jena Louisiana

Venezuela aid to Latin America

Posted on Sun, Aug. 26, 2007
Venezuelan funding to Latin America

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government has pledged more than $8.8 billion in aid, financing and energy funding in Latin America and the Caribbean so far in 2007. Bandes is a Venezuelan state development bank. Below is a list of pledges sorted by type.
ENERGY:

- $3.55 billion. Nicaragua: To build 150,000 barrel-a-day oil refinery. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $1.6 billion. Estimated financing per year under preferential oil deals to at least 17 countries. (Source: Chavez, March 15)

- $340 million. Nicaragua: Grants and loans to supply oil, nine electricity generators. (Source: Venezuela government statement, March 7)

- $240 million. Bolivia: Exploration of gas and oil fields. (Source: Bolivian Hydrocarbons Ministry, Aug. 8)

- $170 million. Bolivia: To build two liquid natural gas extraction plants. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $100 million. Nicaragua: To supply 32 electricity generators. (Source: Chavez, Jan. 10)

- $89 million. Nicaragua: To build 120 megawatt electricity plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $80 million. Haiti: To build 10,000 barrel-a-day oil refinery. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $63.7 million. Jamaica: For state oil company to buy 49-percent stake in Jamaican refinery. (Source: Jamaican Energy Ministry, May 18)

- $56 million. Haiti: To build 60-megawatt electricity plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $30 million. Bolivia: To build diesel electricity generation plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $28 million. Bolivia: To build thermoelectric plant. (Source: Bolivian Hydrocarbons Ministry, Aug. 8)

- $8 million. Cuba: To build liquefied natural gas re-gasification plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $5 million. Bolivia: Electricity-saving project. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $4.7 million. Bolivia: To set up 15 service stations to distribute fuel. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $4 million. Haiti: To build LNG re-gasification plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $200,000. Ecuador: Donation of two drills for oil exploration. (Source: Chavez, Aug. 9)

ENERGY FUNDING TOTAL: $6.369 billion

FINANCING:

- $1 billion. Argentina: Planned bond purchases, including $500 million in bonds purchased in August. (Source: Chavez, Aug. 7)

- $100 million. Bolivia: Planned purchase of Bolivian government bonds. (Source: Cabezas, Aug. 2)

- $30 million. Nicaragua: Debt forgiveness. (Source: Chavez, Jan 10)

- $8 million. Guyana: Debt forgiveness. (Source: Rodolfo Sanz, Venezuela's deputy foreign minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, Aug. 9)

FINANCING TOTAL: $1.138 billion

DEVELOPMENT AID:

- $250 million. Fund to finance joint economic projects in region's socialist-oriented countries. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $150 million. Dominica: Funding for housing, airport upgrade, scholarships. (Source: Chavez, Feb. 15)

- $135 million. Argentina: Bandes loan for Sancor dairy cooperative. (Source: Venezuelan Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas, Feb. 22)

- $88 million. Nicaragua: Grants and loans for tractors, AIDS treatment, sending 86 Nicaraguan athletes to sports tournament, 100,000 Hepatitis B vaccines, etc. An additional $2 million listed below under humanitarian aid. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 7)

- $30 million. Bolivia: Bandes capital for low-interest loans. (Source: Bandes president, May 7)

- $25 million. Ecuador: Bandes capital for new branch to offer low-interest loans. (Source: Bandes President Rafael Isea Romero, May 24)

- $21 million. Haiti: Fund to build homes, acquire unspecified equipment and provide medical aid by supporting the work of Cuban specialists offering health care to Haitians. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 3)

- $20 million. Bolivia: Grants for local infrastructure projects in health, schools, sports and other areas. (Source: Bolivian Public Finance Minister Luis Arce, April 12).

- $20 million. Nicaragua: Loans for rural poor, health care and education. (Source: Chavez, Jan. 10)

- $20 million. Nicaragua: Capital for Bandes branch for low-interest agricultural loans. (Source: Bandes president, May 24)

- $10 million. Nicaragua: Funding for social projects. (Source: Chavez, Jan. 10)

- $2 million. Guyana: Donation to build a homeless shelter. (Source: Guyanese Foreign Minister Rudy Insanally, Aug. 2)

- $875,000. Bolivia: Computers to digitalize Bolivia's national identification card system. (Source: Bolivian government announcement, April 13.)

DEVELOPMENT AID TOTAL: $772 million

INFRASTRUCTURE:

- $350 million. Nicaragua: Donation to build Pacific-Atlantic highway. (Source: Nicaragua Infrastructure Minister Pablo Fernando Martinez, Jan. 22)

- $150 million. Bolivia: Asphalt plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $57 million. Haiti: Funding to expand Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien airports. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 3)

- $5.5 million. Bolivia: Funding for paving streets and other improvements to poor neighborhoods in La Paz. (Source: Bolivian government statement, July 14)

- $3 million. Haiti: Donation for garbage trucks. (Source: Chavez, March 13)

INFRASTRUCTURE AID TOTAL: $565.5 million

HUMANITARIAN AID:

- $15 million. Bolivia: Donation for flood victims. (Source: Chavez, Feb. 26 and March 2)

- $2 million. Nicaragua: Free medicine. Announced as part of larger $90 million in grants and loans. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 7)

- $1.5 million. Peru: Two planeloads of earthquake relief supplies, with more planned. (Armando Laguna, Venezuelan ambassador to Peru, Aug. 22)

HUMANITARIAN AID TOTAL: $18.5 million

MILITARY AID:

- $10 million. Bolivia: Funding to fix military barracks. (Source: Bolivian Defense Minister Walker San Miguel, May 21 and 22).

MILITARY TOTAL: $10 million

TOTAL OF PUBLIC PLEDGES: $8.87 billion



© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

Fr. Jean Juste Returns

Good News From Haiti


Father Jean Juste returns:
Pere Gerard Jean-Juste, an outspoken Haitian voice for human rights, economic justice and democracy, returned to Haiti last weekend for the first time since being hustled out of a prison cell by heavily armed guards and put on a waiting plane to Miami in January of 2006. Pere Jean-Juste, a Catholic priest, had spent nearly six months in a series of Haitian prisons for refusing to stop his public criticisms of human rights abuses by the coup government which overthrew elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Once in Miami, Father Jean-Juste was immediately hospitalized for treatment of leukemia by Dr. Paul Farmer, a long-time friend, who had secretly performed a biopsy on Jean-Juste in his prison cell.

Now, a year and a half later, Pere Jean-Juste was coming home, not knowing how he would be received. As the plane landed in Port au Prince, Father Jean-Juste quietly blessed himself as he saw his home parish, St. Claire, from the window.

As he walked towards the entrance to the Toussaint L'Ouverture airport, dozens of people waved and clapped from the balconies overlooking the landing space. Inside, airport officials, police officers, media and church members crushed in on him. Patting his back, shaking his hands, giving him hugs, the crowds pressed in and called out "Mon Pere!"

A new Haiti greeted him. The unelected coup government had finally left the country. The people elected President Rene Preval. Democracy had returned.

Inside, TV cameras, microphones, and tape recorders were thrust in his face. Many wanted to know if he was going to be a candidate for Presidency of Haiti in the next election. Father Jean-Juste laughed and said, "The only election in the Catholic Church is for Pope and since the Pope is in good health, I do not see an election anytime soon."

Father Jean-Juste spoke of the disappearance of the human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, called for the return of President Aristide, and urged people interested in human rights in Haiti to keep the pressure on nonviolently. He was returning to Haiti on a pilgrimage. Was he afraid of death he was asked? "I am a Christian," he replied. "I know where I am going. If I die, I know the struggle will continue. The struggle must continue for human rights and democratic principles."

Someday, the United States and its surrogates in the UN will allow the Haitian people to chart their own course. Must they be forever punished for one of the most successful revolutions in history against imperialism and white supremacy?
Posted from American Left Blog
Labels: American Empire, Haiti, Neoliberalism

Tell Bush: Stop the Immigration Raids

Tell Bush: Stop the Raids Now!
Instead of doing the hard work of immigration reform, the Bush administration has bowed to pressure from anti-immigrant groups and has pushed to conduct middle-of-the-night-raids in immigrant communities and in workplaces.
The consequences of these raids are cruel and mean-spirited. The raids do nothing to further immigration reform; they only wreak havoc on workers lives, separate children from their parents, tear apart communities, and damage businesses.
Tell President Bush and Julie Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that we want REAL immigration reform with a path to citizenship and an IMMEDIATE END to the ICE raids.
Go here for information and a response form.

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/2007immigration?rk=Vd1WLDS1_NryW

Kurt Stand

Kurt was a strong ally in our work.
To read of his present position see:
Kurt’s recent Letter to Friends, quoted above, can be
found at http://www.klstand.net. Visit this site also to
read more of Kurt’s recent writings or for updates on
his case.

The old Iran-Contra death squad gang is desperate

Democracy and hope in Latin America have been revived by Venezuela's leader. But the forces allied against him are formidable

John Pilger
Friday August 17, 2007


I walked with Roberto Navarrete into the national
stadium in Santiago, Chile. With the southern winter's
wind skating down from the Andes, it was empty and
ghostly. Little had changed, he said: the chicken wire,
the broken seats, the tunnel to the changing rooms from
which the screams echoed. We stopped at a large number
28. "This is where I was, facing the scoreboard. This is
where I was called to be tortured."

Thousands of "the detained and the disappeared" were
imprisoned in the stadium following the Washington-
backed coup by General Pinochet against the democracy of
Salvador Allende on September 11 1973. For the majority
people of Latin America, the abandonados, the infamy and
historical lesson of the first "9/11" have never been
forgotten. "In the Allende years, we had a hope the
human spirit would triumph," said Roberto. "But in Latin
America those believing they are born to rule behave
with such brutality to defend their rights, their
property, their hold over society that they approach
true fascism. People who are well-dressed, whose houses
are full of food, bang pots in the streets in protest as
though they don't have anything. This is what we had in
Chile 36 years ago. This is what we see in Venezuela
today. It is as if Chávez is Allende. It is so evocative
for me."

In making my film The War on Democracy, I sought the
help of Chileans like Roberto and his family, and Sara
de Witt, who courageously returned with me to the
torture chambers at Villa Grimaldi, which she somehow
survived. Together with other Latin Americans who knew
the tyrannies, they bear witness to the pattern and
meaning of the propaganda and lies now aimed at
undermining another epic bid to renew both democracy and
freedom on the continent.

The disinformation that helped destroy Allende and give
rise to Pinochet's horrors worked the same in Nicaragua,
where the Sandinistas had the temerity to implement
modest, popular reforms. In both countries, the CIA
funded the leading opposition media, although they need
not have bothered. In Nicaragua, the fake martyrdom of
La Prensa became a cause for North America's leading
liberal journalists, who seriously debated whether a
poverty-stricken country of 3 million peasants posed a
"threat" to the United States. Ronald Reagan agreed and
declared a state of emergency to combat the monster at
the gates. In Britain, whose Thatcher government
"absolutely endorsed" US policy, the standard censorship
by omission applied. In examining 500 articles that
dealt with Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the historian
Mark Curtis found an almost universal suppression of the
achievements of the Sandinista government - "remarkable
by any standards" - in favour of the falsehood of "the
threat of a communist takeover".

The similarities in the campaign against the phenomenal
rise of popular democratic movements today are striking.
Aimed principally at Venezuela, especially Chávez, the
virulence of the attacks suggests that something
exciting is taking place; and it is. Thousands of poor
Venezuelans are seeing a doctor for the first time in
their lives, having their children immunised and
drinking clean water. New universities have opened their
doors to the poor, breaking the privilege of competitive
institutions effectively controlled by a "middle class"
in a country where there is no middle. In barrio La
Línea, Beatrice Balazo told me her children were the
first generation of the poor to attend a full day's
school. "I have seen their confidence blossom like
flowers," she said. One night in barrio La Vega, in a
bare room beneath a single lightbulb, I watched Mavis
Mendez, aged 94, learn to write her own name for the
first time.

More than 25,000 communal councils have been set up in
parallel to the old, corrupt local bureaucracies. Many
are spectacles of raw grassroots democracy. Spokespeople
are elected, yet all decisions, ideas and spending have
to be approved by a community assembly. In towns long
controlled by oligarchs and their servile media, this
explosion of popular power has begun to change lives in
the way Beatrice described.

It is this new confidence of Venezuela's "invisible
people" that has so inflamed those who live in suburbs
called country club. Behind their walls and dogs, they
remind me of white South Africans. Venezuela's wild west
media is mostly theirs; 80% of broadcasting and almost
all the 118 newspaper companies are privately owned.
Until recently one television shock jock liked to call
Chávez, who is mixed race, a "monkey". Front pages
depict the president as Hitler, or as Stalin (the
connection being that both like babies). Among
broadcasters crying censorship loudest are those
bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy, the
CIA in spirit if not name. "We had a deadly weapon, the
media," said an admiral who was one of the coup plotters
in 2002. The TV station, RCTV, never prosecuted for its
part in the attempt to overthrow the elected government,
lost only its terrestrial licence and is still
broadcasting on satellite and cable.

Yet, as in Nicaragua, the "treatment" of RCTV is a cause
celebre for those in Britain and the US affronted by the
sheer audacity and popularity of Chávez, whom they smear
as "power crazed" and a "tyrant". That he is the
authentic product of a popular awakening is suppressed.
Even the description of him as a "radical socialist",
usually in the pejorative, wilfully ignores the fact
that he is a nationalist and social democrat, a label
many in Britain's Labour party were once proud to wear.

In Washington, the old Iran-Contra death squad gang,
back in power under Bush, fear the economic bridges
Chávez is building in the region, such as the use of
Venezuela's oil revenue to end IMF slavery. That he
maintains a neoliberal economy, described by the
American Banker as "the envy of the banking world" is
seldom raised as valid criticism of his limited reforms.
These days, of course, any true reforms are exotic. And
as liberal elites under Blair and Bush fail to defend
their own basic liberties, they watch the very concept
of democracy as a liberal preserve challenged on a
continent about which Richard Nixon once said "people
don't give a shit". However much they play the man,
Chávez, their arrogance cannot accept that the seed of
Rousseau's idea of direct popular sovereignty may have
been planted among the poorest, yet again, and "the hope
of the human spirit", of which Roberto spoke in the
stadium, has returned.

* The War on Democracy, directed by Christopher Martin
and John Pilger, will be shown on ITV on Monday at 11pm.

www.johnpilger.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited
2007

Missing Human Rights Worker: Haiti

Haiti Action Committee Alert
Where is Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?

Leading Human Rights Activist in Haiti Disappears

Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine is a tireless fighter for the Haitian people: a grassroots leader, member of the Lavalas Party, and the head of Fondayson Tran Septanm, a Haitian human rights organization that advocates for victims of the 1991 and 2004 coups against the democratically-elected governments of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.



Lovinsky has not been seen since the evening of Sunday, August 12, 2007 after meeting with a U.S. human rights delegation currently in Haiti. He usually keeps his family posted on his whereabouts. His car was found on Delmas 10 in Port au Prince. His friends and associates in Haiti and around the world are deeply concerned about his safety and well-being.



As a young psychologist working in Port au Prince, Lovinsky helped establish Fondsayon Kore Timoun Yo (Foundation for the Support of Children) for young street children in Port au Prince ; FAM (Foyer pour Adolescentes Mères), a center for teenage mothers ; and Map Viv ("I Live"), a program designed to give psychological and medical aid to the victims of the first coup against Aristide in 1991. The September 30th Foundation, named for the date of the first coup against President Aristide in 1991, emerged out of this work.

Similar to the work of Mothers of the Disappeared in Central and South America, September 30th Foundation held weekly vigils demanding justice for victims of human rights violations and the release of political prisoners.



Forced to leave Haiti after the 2004 coup, Lovinsky returned to the country in April 2006. Since that time, he has helped center the campaign for the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti, an end to the UN occupation, economic and social justice, and the freeing of all political prisoners. His work helped bring 10,000 people into the streets of Port-au-Prince on July 15th, commemorating Aristide’s birthday. He has been outspoken in denouncing the continued presence of coup participants and supporters within the current government.



A delegation of activists with the Haiti Action Committee had the privilege of meeting with Lovinsky in his home last month. We later saw him lead a spirited protest on July 28th across from UN headquarters on Avenue John Brown in Port-au-Prince, marking the 92nd anniversary of the 1915 U.S. Marine invasion of Haiti.



We are concerned and outraged over the disappearance of this valiant fighter for human rights and dignity. We call on the UN occupation authorities in Haiti, the government of President Rene Preval, and the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince to account for the whereabouts of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.

Children's Hope
c/o Leisa Faulkner
3025A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682
http://sacramentopa.org/ChildrensHope.html
916.801.4184

Linda Chavez: Right Wing Hack, but rich

Linda Chavez and Family: It Sure Pays To Be Rightwing Hacks!

By M.J. Rosenberg | bio
This page one article from the Washington Post is worth a read.
It turns out that one Linda Chavez -- the rightwinger whose bread-and-butter is using her Hispanic last name to bash liberal Latino organization, liberals, and labor unions -- has been raising tons of political money for her own (and her family's) personal use.
I knew Chavez in the 1980's. Her husband Chris Gersten was the AIPAC political director and a key player in moving the organization to the right. Gersten's game was using his labor union background to gain him cred for union bashing while Linda's was to use her union background and her surname for similar purposes.
Both were pretty standard Jewish neocons, at the far right of the Jewish community. Gersten's tenure at AIPAC was short. When he was discovered shilling too blatantly for Republicans, he disappeared.
I always thought that rightwing politics was the Gersten family's racket. Now, according to the Post, it was -- quite literally. What an easy way to make money! Send out fundraising appeals for various causes and do, God knows what, with the money!
Oh those neocons. But better this than dragging America off to war.


In Fundraising's Murky Corners
Candidates See Little of Millions Collected by Linda Chavez's Family
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 13, 2007; A01

Linda Chavez rose to prominence in the 1980s as a tart-tongued Reagan administration official and candidate for the Senate, eventually becoming a well-known Latina voice on social issues and President Bush's choice to lead the Labor Department. With her conservative celebrity came book deals, a syndicated column, regular appearances on the Fox News Channel -- and a striking but little-known success at political fundraising.
In the years since she was forced to pull her nomination as Bush's labor secretary after admitting payments to an illegal immigrant, Chavez and her immediate family members have used phone banks and direct-mail solicitations to raise tens of millions of dollars, founding several political action committees with bankable names: the Republican Issues Committee, the Latino Alliance, Stop Union Political Abuse and the Pro-Life Campaign Committee. Their solicitations promise direct action in the "fight to save unborn lives," a vigorous struggle against "big labor bosses" and a crippling of "liberal politics in the country."
That's not where the bulk of the money wound up being spent, however. Of the $24.5 million raised by the PACs from January 2003 to December 2006, $242,000 -- or 1 percent -- was passed on to politicians, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal election reports. The PACs spent even less -- $151,236 -- on independent political activity, such as mailing pamphlets.
Instead, most of the donations were channeled back into new fundraising efforts, and some were used to provide a modest but steady source of income for Chavez and four family members, who served as treasurers and consultants to the committees. Much of the remaining funds went to pay for expenses such as furniture, auto repairs and insurance, and rent for the Sterling office the groups share. Even Chavez's health insurance was paid for a time from political donations.
"I guess you could call it the family business," Chavez said in an interview.
There is nothing illegal about running political committees the way she and her family have done, and Chavez said that none of the money has been spent for personal items and that she has done nothing wrong.
Still, Chavez Inc. offers a revealing window into a largely unregulated corner of the world of political money, where few constraints exist on spending, candidates often benefit hardly at all and groups face little accountability from donors who remain largely unaware of where their money goes.
More than 2,700 "multi-candidate committees" such as those run by Chavez and her family members are registered with the Federal Election Commission, and unlike the more conventional committees used by candidates to fuel their campaigns, the multi-candidate groups face few rules governing how they can spend money. Only about a dozen are audited each year. And they face little of the public scrutiny that confronts candidate-run committees because no opponent scours their spending reports for irregularities.
"Nobody is looking at these," said Melanie Sloan of the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "It would be nice to know if other people are doing what Ms. Chavez is doing."
Even less information is publicly available about spending by politically oriented nonprofit foundations -- such as those established separately by Chavez and her family members. The four foundations collected $1.4 million from 2003 to 2006 and paid many Chavez family members a steady salary, according to tax records.
Chavez said the goal of her fundraising committees has been to advance her political agenda and nothing more. "I have never tried to enrich myself or my family and have consistently taken salaries from my organizations that were lower than the market, with very few benefits," she said.
But the spending by Chavez PACs appears to depart from standard practices by some other issue-oriented groups, according to lawyers and ethics experts. The National Rifle Association's political committee, for instance, spent nearly a third of the $11 million it raised in the 2006 cycle on political activities, including $1.2 million in direct donations to candidates.
In the 2004 and 2006 election cycles, Chavez's anti-union PAC raised $913,469 and spent less than a fifth on political activity. The Latino Alliance raised $1.2 million and spent 3 percent on political activity. The Pro-Life Campaign Committee raised $7.7 million and spent less than 1 percent on political activity, as did the Republican Issues Committee, which raised $14.6 million, the analysis found. Most of the money came from small donors.
The amounts the PACs spent on telemarketing could not be readily tallied. But an FEC investigation of the Pro-Life Campaign Committee turned up documents showing that the Arizona telemarketing firm Capitol Communications regularly retained as much as 95 percent of the money it collected, to cover its fundraising expenses. Chavez's husband, Christopher Gersten, said the firm handled fundraising for the Republican Issues PAC in the same manner.
Over the past five years, Chavez's family members have been directly paid $261,237 from the PACs, according to FEC reports. In 2001, the PACs paid Christopher Gersten $77,190, her son Pablo $25,344 and her son David $9,687.
Chavez and her immediate family members also earned income from executive positions they held in their nonprofit foundations, such as One Nation Indivisible and Stop Union Political Abuse. Her salary from her Center for Equal Opportunity foundation ranged from $125,000 to $136,250 between 1997 and 2003 and was $70,313 in 2004, the last year for which records are available.
The foundation paid her son David $83,200 in 2004 as its vice president for development. From 1998 to 2001, Christopher Gersten was paid $64,000 a year from another family foundation, the Institute for Religious Values.
Donors Unaware
Several of those who donated to the Pro-Life Campaign Committee, run by Pablo Gersten, said they were surprised to learn how little of the money was spent where they expected. David Barnes, 45, a typesetter from Williston, Tenn., gave the group $500 in February 2006, figuring "the money would go to back candidates who are pro-life."
"I'm appalled," Barnes said. "I try to be a responsible giver. I'm aware that with many charities you have to be careful. I knew better. I contributed based on an outward appearance and didn't do my homework."
Chavez and her husband began operating their first political organizations in the 1980s. They had met in college and moved to Washington, where Chavez worked for the House Judiciary Committee and Gersten was an intern and then the national director of the voter registration arm of the AFL-CIO. At 29, Gersten became the political director of the Operating Engineers International Union and helped build it into a powerhouse.
"I wrote the book on unions using the 'check-off' so their dues could be directed to political giving," he said in an interview.
Chavez was the staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985, giving her a prominent platform to talk up traditional family values, to criticize affirmative action and to debate comparable pay for men and women. Gersten, meanwhile, became political director of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel political committee.
In 1986, Chavez unsuccessfully ran for the Senate on the Republican ticket in Maryland. By then, Gersten had launched a nonprofit group to build ties between Republicans and Jews and a second one to promote reform of the criminal justice system. The latter failed, Gersten said. "I was very amateurish."
A Religious Turn
The family took a break from politics when Bill Clinton was elected president, briefly operating a Mexican restaurant in Gaithersburg called the Santa Fe Express, with Chavez taping television interviews on politics during the day and working the cash register at night. The restaurant went broke. As Gersten recalls it, that was around the time the "partial birth" abortion issue attracted attention.
"I became a point man to organize the Jewish community on that issue," he said. "I knew enough about the Jewish law to understand that it does not allow for a late-term abortion. I got 250 rabbis to sign statements to support the ban on partial-birth abortion and made a lot of good friends in the pro-life movement."
This led him to launch the Institute for Religious Values. Soon after, Pablo Gersten started the Pro-Life Campaign Committee. Christopher Gersten said he drafted solicitations in his kitchen and then, using a small vendor in Purcellville, experimented with mailings. "I couldn't afford to rent lists of 5,000 names, so I got the list vendors to send lists of 2,000 names. I realized I could do this," he said.
Gersten was appointed as a mid-level official in President Bush's Health and Human Services Department and paused his political work. But in 2001, during the period after Chavez's failed nomination to be Bush's labor secretary, the family's political activity thrived. It founded three more PACs -- the Republican Issues Committee, Stop Union Political Abuse and the Latino Alliance -- all to pursue political agendas that had become the foundation of the family members' advocacy careers.
The groups hired direct-mail and telemarketing firms based in Mesa, Ariz., and made solicitations nationwide for each of the PACs. The letters were often strident in tone. One that Chavez sent in 2003 seeking contributions for the Stop Union committee promised that the group would help pass the "Workers' Freedom of Choice Act."
"If we stop now," she wrote, "the terrorists win."
Prospecting on such a scale can be expensive. Lawrence M. Noble, a former general counsel of the FEC, said a new organization looking for donors might choose to plow most of its money back into the fundraising operation but more established ones would not. "Generally the way it works is your initial costs are very high. You're developing a donor base. But as that stabilizes, your costs are supposed to go down," he said.
Authorities' Scrutiny
Over the past two years, the FEC has fined three of the Chavez family PACs a total of $262,500 for repeatedly failing to file timely reports and for not promptly disclosing all the money raised and spent. Chavez notes that the FEC found no intentional wrongdoing.
The Pro-Life Campaign Committee also briefly attracted the attention of state authorities. In 2003, recipients of its phone solicitations in Kansas complained about pushy telemarketers. "They were very aggressive -- pushing for automatic withdrawals from a credit card," said Mary Kay Culp, executive director of the group Kansans for Life, which received complaints from its members.
The Kansas attorney general brought a civil case against Pablo Gersten and the group, alleging that it had engaged in "deceptive solicitation." Gersten denied the allegations, and the case was dismissed three months later. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Paul J. Morrison declined to comment.
Chavez and her husband said the fundraising committees have been productive for their political causes. The Latino Alliance, for instance, "did lots of telephone calls in the 2004 elections," she said. "I believe we did some radio ads. We did outreach into the Latino communities to try and mobilize more pro-Republican votes."
That's the whole point, Christopher Gersten said in a separate interview. "The PACs help Linda and me have a voice. To have a voice in politics in today's world, you really want to be able to leverage the money that you give," he said.
As for why so little of the money wound up with candidates, Chavez said that is simply a reality of the fundraising business. The groups were not formed to make her family wealthy, she said, adding that if she or her husband were to join a K Street firm "to do some of what we have been doing on our own, we would make far more money."
Staff researchers Madonna Lebling and Derek Willis and staff writer Jonathan Mummolo contributed to this report.

Jena Louisiana and Racism

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.

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

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.

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.


--

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

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

Cornel West: What does it mean to be a leftist in the 21st. Century

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.

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.

Julian Bond: 2007. Chair NAACP

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

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

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.

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.

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/

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